Chapter 34

Tennelly was pacing up and down the room. His face was white, his eyes were wild. He had the haggard look of one who has come through a long series of harrowing experiences up to the supreme torture where there is nothing worse that can happen.

Courtland's knock brought him at once to the door. With both hands they gave the fellowship grip that had meant so much to each in college.

A moment they stood so, looking into each other's eyes, Courtland, wondering, startled, questioning. It was Gila, of course! Nothing else could reach the man's soul and make him look like that! But what had happened? Not death! No, not even death could bring that look of shame and degradation to his high-minded friend's eyes.

As if Tennelly had read his question he spoke in a voice so husky with emotion that his words were scarcely audible: "Didn't Pat tell you?"

Courtland shook his head.

Tennelly's head went down, as if he were waiting for courage to speak. Then, huskily: "She's gone, Court!"

"Gone?"

"Left me, Court! She sailed at daybreak for Italy with another man."

Tennelly fumbled in his pocket and brought out a crumpled note, blistered with tears. "Read it!" he muttered, and turned away to the window.

Courtland read:

DEAR LEW,--I'm sure when you come to your senses and get over some of your narrow ideas you'll be as much relieved as I am over what I've decided to do. You and I never were fitted for each other, and I can't stand this life another day. I'm simply perishing! It's up to me to do something, for I know, with your strait-laced notions, you never will! So when you read this I shall be out of reach, on my way to Italy with Count von Bremen. They say there's going to be war in this country, anyway, and I hate such things, so I had to get out of it. You won't have any trouble in getting a divorce, and you'll soon be glad I did it.

As for the kid, if she lives she's much better off with you than with me, for you know I never could stand children; they get on my nerves. And, anyhow, I never could be all the things you tried to make me, and it's better in the end this way. So good-by, and don't try to come after me. I won't come back, no matter what you do, for I'm bored to death with the last two years and I've got to see some life!

GILA

Courtland read the flippant little note twice before he trusted himself to speak, and then he walked over to the window, slowly smoothing and folding the crumpled paper. A baby's cry in the next room pierced the air, and the father gripped the window-seat and quivered as if a bullet had struck him.

Courtland put his hand lovingly within his friend's arm: "Nelly, old fellow," he said, "you know that I feel with you--"

"I know, Court!" with a weary sigh. "That's why I sent for you. I had to have you, somehow!"

"Nelly! There aren't any words made delicate enough to handle this thing without hurting. It's raw flesh and full of nerves. There's just One can do anything here! I wish you believed in God!"

"I do!" said Tennelly, in a dreary tone.

"He can come near you and give you strength to bear it. I know, for He did it for me once!"

Courtland felt as if his words were falling on deaf ears, but Tennelly, after a pause, asked, bitterly:

"Why did He do this to me, if He's what you say He is?"

"I'm not sure that He did, old man! I think perhaps you and I had a hand in it!"

Tennelly looked at him keenly for an instant and turned away, silent. "I know what you mean," he said. "You told me I'd go through hell, and I have. I knew it in a way myself, but I'm afraid I'd do it again! I loved her! God! I'm afraid--I _love her yet_! Man! You don't know what an ache such love is."

"Yes, I do," said Courtland, with a sudden light in his face, but Tennelly was not heeding him.

"It isn't entirely that I've lost her; that I've got to give up hoping that she'll some time care and settle down to knowing she is gone forever! It's the way she went! The--the--the _disgrace_! The humiliation! The awfulness of the way she went! We've never had anything like that in our family. And to think my baby has got to grow up to know that shame! To know that her mother was a disgraceful woman! That I gave her a mother like that!"

"Now, look here, Tennelly! You didn't know! You thought she would be all right when you were married!"

"But I _did know_!" wailed Tennelly. "I knew in my soul! I think I knew when I first saw her, and that was why I worried about you when you used to go and see her. I knew she wasn't the woman for you. But, blamed fool that I was! I thought I was more of a man of the world, and would be able to hold her! No, I didn't, either, for I knew it was like trying to enjoy a sound sleep in a powder-magazine with a pocketful of matches, to trust my love to her! But I did it, anyway! I dared trouble! And my little child has got to suffer for it!"

"Your little child will perhaps be better for it!"

"I can't see it that way!"

"You don't have to. If God does, isn't that enough?"

"I don't know! I can't see God now; it's too dark!" Tennelly put his forehead against the window-pane and groaned.

"But you have your little child," said Courtland, hesitating. "Isn't that something to help?"

"She breaks my heart," said the father. "To think of her worse than motherless! That little bit of a helpless thing! And it's my fault that she's here with a future of shame!"

"Nothing of the sort! It'll be your fault if she has a future of shame, but it's up to you. Her mother's shame can't hurt her if you bring her up right. It's your job, and you can get a lot of comfort out of it if you try!"

"I don't see how," dully.

"Listen, Tennelly. Does she look like her mother?"

Tennelly's sensitive face quivered with pain. "Yes," he said, huskily. "I'll send for her and you can see." He rang a bell. "I brought her and the nurse up to town with me this morning."

An elderly, kind-faced woman brought the baby in, laid it in a big chair where they could see it, and then withdrew.

Courtland drew near, half shyly, and looked in startled wonder. The baby was strikingly like Gila, with all her grace, delicate features, wide innocent eyes. The sweep of the long lashes on the little white cheeks, that were all too white for baby flesh, seemed old and weird in the tiny face. Yet when the baby looked up and recognized its father it crowed and smiled, and the smile was wide and frank and lovable, like Tennelly's. There was nothing artificial about it. Courtland drew a long sigh of relief. For the moment he had been looking at the baby as if it were Gila grown small again; now he suddenly realized it was a new little soul with a life and a spirit of its own.

"She will be a blessing to you, Nelly," he said, looking up hopefully.

"I don't see it that way!" said the hopeless father, shaking his head.

"Would you rather have her--taken away--as her mother suggested?" he hazarded, suddenly.

Tennelly gave him one quick, startled look. "God! No!" he said, and staggered back into a chair. "Do you think she looks so sick as that? I know she's not well. I know she's lost flesh! But she's been neglected. Gila never cared for her and wouldn't be bothered looking after things. She was angry because the baby came at all. She resented motherhood because it put a limitation on her pleasures. My poor little girl!"

Tennelly dropped upon his knees beside the baby and buried his face in its soft little neck.

The baby swept its dark lashes down with the old Gila trick, and looked with a puzzled frown at the dark head so close to her face. Then she put up her little hand and moved it over her father's hair with an awkward attempt at comfort. The great big being with his head in her neck was in trouble, and she was vaguely sympathetic.

A wave of pity swept over Courtland. He dropped upon his knees beside his friend and spoke aloud:

"O Lord God, come near and let my friend feel Thy Presence now in his terrible distress. Somehow speak peace to his soul and help him to know Thee, for Thou art the only One that can help him. Help him to tell Thee all his heart's bitterness now, alone with Thee and his little child, and find relief."

Softly Courtland arose and slipped from the room, leaving them alone with the Presence.

* * * * *

Gila had been gone two months when the day was finally set for Bonnie's wedding.

There had been consultations long and many over what to do about telling Tennelly, for even Bonnie saw that the event could not but be painful to him, coming as it did on the heels of his own deep trouble. And Tennelly had long been Courtland's best friend; at least until Pat grew so close as to share that privilege with him. It was finally decided that Courtland should tell Tennelly about the approaching wedding at his first opportunity.

Bonnie had long ago heard all about Gila, been through the bitter throes of jealousy, and come out clear and trusting, with the whole thing sanely and happily relegated to that place where all such troubles go from the hearts of those who truly love each other and know there never could be any one else in the universe who could take the place of the beloved.

Courtland had been preaching in the Church of the Presence of God for four Sabbaths now, and the congregation had been growing steadily. There had not been much advertising. He had told a few friends in the factories near by that there was to be service. He had put up a notice on the door saying that the church would be open for worship regularly and every one was welcome. He did not wish to force anything. He was following the leading of the Spirit. If God really meant this work for him, He would show him.

Courtland's preaching was not of the usual cut-and-dried order of the young theologue. His theology had been studied to help him to understand his God and his Bible, not to give him a set of rules for preaching. So when he stood up in the pulpit it was not to follow any conventional order of service, or to try to imitate the great preachers he had heard, but to give the people who came something that would help them to live during the week and enable them to realize the Presence of Christ in their daily lives.

The men at the seminary got wind of it somehow, and came down by twos and threes, and finally dozens, as they could get away from their own preaching, to see what the dickens that close-mouthed Courtland was doing, and went away thoughtful. It was not what they had expected of their brilliant classmate, ministering to these common working-people right in the neighborhood where they lived and worked.

At first they did not understand how he came to be in that church, and asked what denomination it was, anyway. Courtland said he really didn't know what it had been, but that he hoped it was the denomination of Jesus Christ now.

"But whose church is it?" they asked.

"Mine," he said, simply.

Then they turned to Pat for explanation.

"That's straight," said Pat. "He bought it."

"_Bought_ it! Oh!" They were silenced. Not one of them could have bought a church, and wouldn't have if they could. They would have bought a good mansion for themselves against their retiring-day. Few of them understood it. Only the man who was going to darkest Africa to work in the jungles, and a couple who were bound, one for the leper country, and another for China, had a light of understanding in their eyes, and gripped Courtland's hand with reverence and ecstatic awe.

"But, man alive!" lingered one, unwilling to leave his brilliant friend in such a hopeless hole. "Don't you realize if you don't hitch on to some denomination, or board of trustees, or something, your work won't count in the long run? Who's to carry on your work and keep up your name and what you have done, after you are gone? You're foolish!" He had just received a flattering call to a city church himself, and he knew he was not half so well fitted for it as Courtland.

But Courtland flung up his hat in a boyish way and laughed. "I should worry about my name after I am gone," he said. "And as for the work, it's for me to do, isn't it? Not for me to arrange for after I'm dead. If my heavenly Father wants it to keep up after I'm gone He'll manage to find a way, won't He? My job is to look after it while I'm here. Perhaps it won't be needed any longer after I'm gone. God sent me here to buy His church when it was for sale, didn't He? Well, then, if it is for sale again he'll find somebody else to buy it, unless He is done with it. The New Jerusalem may be here by that time and we won't have to have any churches. God Himself shall be the tabernacle! So you see I'm just going on running my own little old church the best I can with what God gives me, and I won't trouble any boards at present, not so long as I have money enough to keep the wheels moving."

They went away then with doubtful looks, and Courtland heard one say to another, shaking his head in a dubious way:

"I don't like it. It's all very irregular!"

And the other replied: "Yes! It's a pity about him! He might have done something big if he hadn't been so impractical!"

"The poor stews!" said Pat, dryly, looking after them. "They haven't got religion enough to carry them over till next week, the most of them, and what they'll do when they really see what kind the Lord is I can't guess! I wonder what they think that rich young man that Jesus loved would have been like, anyway, if he hadn't gone away sorrowful and kept his vast possessions. Cut it out, Pat! You're letting the devil in again and getting censorious! Just shut your mouth and saw wood! They'll find out some little old day in the morning, I guess."

Courtland wrote it all to Bonnie, all the happenings at seminary and church, what the theologues had said about his being impractical and irregular, and Bonnie, with a tender smile, leaned down and kissed the words in the letter, and murmured, "Dear impractical beloved!" all softly to herself.

For Bonnie was very happy. The possession of great wealth that would have to be spent in the usual way, surrounded by social distinction, attended by functions and society duties, would have been an inexpressible burden to her. But money to be used without limit in helping other people was a miracle of joy. To think that it should have come to her!

Yet there was something greater than the money and the new interests that were opening up before her, and that was the wonder of the man who had chosen her to be his wife. That such a prince among men, such a friend of God, should have passed by others of rank, of beauty and attainments far greater than hers, and come away out West to take her, fairly overwhelmed her with wonder when she had time to think about it. For she was as busy as she was happy in these days. There was her school work, her music, the little home duties, all she could make Mother Marshall leave for her; the beautiful sewing she was doing on her simple bridal garments; and stealing time from all to write the most wonderful letters to the insatiable lover in the East.

Softly Bonnie went through these days, tender, happy, blithe as a bird; a song on her lips whenever she went about the house; a caress in her very touch for the dear old people who had been father and mother to her in her loneliness; realizing only vaguely what it was going to be to them when she was gone and they were all alone again. For her heart was so full of her own joy she could not think a sad thought.

But one afternoon she came home from school a little earlier than usual. Opening the door very softly that she might come on Mother Marshall and surprise her, she heard voices in the dining-room, and paused to see if there was company.

"It's going to be mighty hard to have Bonnie leave us," said Father Marshall, with a wistful quaver.

There was a soft sigh over by the window, then Mother Marshall: "Yes, Father, but we mustn't think about it, or the next thing we know we'll let her see it. She's the kind of girl that would turn around and say she couldn't get married, perhaps, if she got it in her head we needed her. She's got a grand man, and I'm just as glad as I can be about it"--there was a gulp like a sob over by the window.--"I wouldn't spoil her happiness for anything in the world!" The voice took on a forced cheerfulness.

"Sure! We wouldn't want to do that!"

"It's 'most as bad as when Stephen was going away, though. I have to just shut my eyes when I go by her bedroom door and think about how we fixed it up for her and counted on how she'd look, and all. I just couldn't stand it. I had to shut the door and hurry down-stairs."

"Well, now, Mother, you mustn't feel that way. You know the Lord sent her first. Maybe He has some other plan."

"Oh, I know!" said Mother, briskly. "I guess we can leave that to Him; only seems like I can't bear to think of anybody else coming to be in her room."

"Oh no! no! We couldn't stand for that!" said Father, quickly. "We'd have to keep it for her--for them--when they come home to visit! If any other party comes along I reckon we'll just build out a bay window on the kitchen chamber, and fix that up. Now don't you worry, Mother. You know he promised to bring her home a lot, and it ain't as if he hadn't got money enough to travel, let alone a nottymobeel. I shouldn't wonder maybe if we could go see them, even, some time. We could get to see the university then, too, and go look at Steve's room. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mother?"

Bonnie did not go into the dining-room to surprise them. Instead, she stole away down in the orchard to hide her tears.

A little later she saw the postman ride up to the letter-box on the gate-post and drop in a letter, and all else was forgotten.

Yes, from Paul! A lovely, big, thick letter!

Mother and Father Marshall and their sadness suddenly vanished from her thoughts, and she hurried back to a big stump in the orchard, where she often read her letters.