Mindful of her triple promise to her father Athalie was quite polite, but in a lofty way, like a lion condescending to walk with a lamb.
“So kind of you to come for me,” she said haughtily. “I never went to Sunday school before in my life. What do they do?”
“You—never went—to Sunday school?” Mary paused in horrified astonishment. “Why! Where have you lived? Didn’t they have any Sunday school?”
“Why, I really don’t know. I never inquired. Perhaps they had, but nobody said anything about it. I’m curious to see it! Is it as dull as day school?”
“Oh, day school isn’t dull! We have lovely times. Silver Sands is said to have the best school in Silver County. We have the darlingest teachers! And debating society! And contests and athletics! Oh, it’s great! I feel dreadfully when I’m sick and have to miss a day. I haven’t missed a day now in two years, not since I had the measles.”
“Dear me!” said Athalie. “I should think you’d be bored to death!
Do all those girls you brought to see me go to Sunday school?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Everybody goes to Sunday school in Silver Sands. Most of them go to our church. Only Emily Bragg, she’s a Methodist, but they have a nice Sunday school, too, only not so large. I was allowed to go with her once when she was going to speak on Children’s Day. We have a lovely teacher. Her name’s Pristina Appleby. She lives right across the street from you. She tells us very interesting things about the pyramids and the tablets they’ve dug up and things like that, you know. Sometimes she brings us pictures to help understand the lesson.”
“Lesson? Do you have lessons? Mercy! I hate lessons.”
“Oh, you won’t hate this,” laughed Mary. “She just talks. We call her Miss Prissie!”
“Oh! And this Miss Pussy! Is she an old maid?”
“Miss Prissie, I said. No, oh no, she isn’t an old maid. Her aunts are that. She has three aunts and a grandmother and a great-grandmother, and they all live together in that brick house across the street from you.”
“Oh! I hadn’t noticed. Then she’s a young girl.”
“Well, not exactly young. She’s not as young as your sister. I think she’s lovely. We girls are all crazy about her. I’m so sorry you couldn’t have come to the fudge party the other night. We had such fun. Your sister was wonderful! She started all the games—”
Athalie’s face darkened, but she kept her stiffly polite manner, a trifle more haughty perhaps.
“Yes, it was a pity!” she drawled. “Is this your church? What are they ringing that bell for?”
“Why, for Sunday school.”
“Oh! I thought somebody might be dead! I’ve read of that! You never can tell what curious thing they may do in a strange place, you know.”
Mary started to giggle and then looked at her questioningly and grew red instead. Was this rude girl trying to make fun of her again?
“Especially in the country,” added Athalie.
Mary said no more. Other girls and boys were standing around the entrance as they went up the path. Athalie stared at everyone as if she had come to a show and that was what was expected of her. Bannard came down the street from the other direction and lifted his hat gravely to Athalie. She dimpled and smiled.
“So he goes to Sunday school, too!” she remarked complacently.
“Why, yes of course,” said Mary somewhat shortly. “He’s the minister. Why shouldn’t he come!” She was getting tired of the publicity of escorting this strange girl. She wished Sunday school were well over.
Athalie was much entertained all through Sunday school. She stared at everybody’s clothes, kept her eyes wide open during prayer watching the contortion of the superintendent’s lips as he prayed. The other girls, dully devout, stole curious glances at her between their fingers. Her conduct of the day before had been carefully discussed at the dinner tables and a general taboo placed upon her as far as an associate for daughters was concerned. To find her in Sunday school was therefore a surprise. The more so as a rumor had been started by Pristina Appleby’s essay at the club that Patterson Greeves was one of the new thinkers and had left the faith of his fathers to wander in dangerous speculations.
But when Sunday school was out there was Patterson Greeves coming up the walk with Silver by his side, her sweet face smiling to everyone, her smile almost like a ray of sunshine, her eyes as blue as the dress she wore and the little hat with its black feather. Athalie stood by the door with Mary Truman and watched them approach, noted her father’s fine presence with pride, heard the whispered remarks about him, then heard: “Isn’t she sweet!” and saw that all eyes were directed toward Silver. The sullen fires came back to her eyes. She looked around like a hunted thing, and for an instant thought of bolting straight through the graveyard. Then her father’s grave glance was upon her pleasantly, and her face lit up. He was not displeased with her then. She experienced a sudden surprised pleasure in it. Fiercely did she desire to belong to someone, to have someone care for her, to be able to please. All her life she had met with impatience and curbing. This father she had come determined to win to herself or die in the attempt. Deeply had she longed for a home and parents like other girls and had not had them. Perhaps she had, down deep in her heart, the thought that maybe somehow she might draw hers together. All her young life she had showered upon her selfish mother a degree of devotion, one might almost say adoration such as few real mothers get, and it had only returned upon itself in bitterness. The mother had regarded her lightly, tolerantly, cheerfully, yet if that mother had asked of her any sacrifice, no matter how great, the fierce young soul would have given it, gladly, freely. So now Athalie regarded her father with eyes of pride and of possession.
Another face just then picked itself out from the throng of churchgoers, a young face, strong and manly, vaguely familiar. He was standing under the willow tree near the gravestones, bare headed, cleanly shaven, neat and trim in a much brushed suit, talking to a group of other boys. Presently they sauntered over toward the steps nodding to the girls who came by, calling out a pleasant word. Mary Truman stepped down below Athalie and spoke:
“Why, hello, Barry. Where were you Friday night? Didn’t Mr. Bannard give you my invitation to the fudge party?”
Barry turned quickly and pleasantly. “Sorry, Mary, I didn’t get home till late. Had an errand that kept me. Hear you had a great time. Save some fudge for me?”
Then he lifted his eyes and recognized Athalie. He did not speak. It was rather a lighting of the eyes, a pleasant understanding that gave her heart that warm glow, and she knew him for her captor of the midnight ride. After that Athalie was satisfied to stay and see this thing called church through to the finish.
Oh, she had been to church before of course. At school those things were compulsory. But there was something about this church, like a big family gathering of people who all liked each other and enjoyed being there that was new to the girl. She stared around and wondered at it. Funny old women in strange bonnets, coats that were antique of cut; a few of recognized culture and education, though that counted very little as yet with Athalie; one or two with stylish clothes. She watched the Vandemeeter tribe file into the pew, Grandma, first, slowly with a cane, Mother just behind, Henrietta helping Grandma, Maria in the same black broadcloth coat and black felt hat with the coque feather band she had worn for the last seven years. Maria was never one to put on summer clothes until summer was really there. Harriet and Cordelia with pink velvet roses wreathed around their last year’s dyed straws. She eyed them curiously. Each a replica of the other in a different stage of life. What tiresome people. How did they endure life? She noted Grandma’s bent head, Mother’s closed eyes, the squarely folded handkerchiefs, the little tremble of the feathered bonnet when Henrietta handed Grandma the hymnbook. Everything was strange and unusual to Athalie. She wondered why such common people want to be, why they seemed to take an interest in being. Why did her father stay in a place like this when there were
cities where things were going on, wild, merry life for which she thirsted?
She was surprised to see Barry sitting in the back row of the choir. How strange for a boy like that to be willing to waste his time this way!
Suddenly Bannard’s voice arrested her attention. He was telling a story, though he seemed to have a small leather book open in his hand as if he was about to read. He painted a picture with his words. She forgot the sunny church with its bright carpet and unfashionable congregation. She was seeing a walled city in a strange land, under a blazing sky with hungry faces looking out from little slits of windows in towers and turrets, and an army camped around on every hand. They had been there days and days and had starved out the stronghold. The people were reduced to eating loathsome things. An ass’s head, something that would not be thought of as food at another time, sold for about forty dollars, coarse chickpeas were selling at a prohibitive price. Even the king and his court were starving.
The king was walking on the wall, visiting his sentries. You could see his face, lined with anxiety, as he shaded his eyes and looked out across the sea of enemies’ tents. There was no sign of discouragement on the part of that enemy. They had come to stay until the city surrendered. They knew it would not be long. They had spies who had discovered its state. They were well supplied with food themselves and had nothing to do but eat and drink and make merry until they had worn out the resources of the people and there was nothing left for them but to surrender. The king sighed and passed on; as he went someone reached out and caught his robe with clawlike hands, a woman from the doorstep of one of the little hovels on the wall. There were deep hollows under her eyes and in her cheeks. She looked more like a skeleton than a woman. “Help!” she cried. “Help, my lord, O king!”
The king drew away impatiently. So many cried for help, and what could he do? “Curse you!” he said impatiently. “With every barn floor bare and every wine press empty, what can I do?” And he turned as if to pass on. But the woman continued her strange, weird cry and began a terrible story. Another woman appeared, crouching frightened against the doorway.
“This woman promised if I would kill my baby boy yesterday and cook and eat him that she would kill hers today, but we ate my son yesterday and now she has hid hers today. I pray you, O king, speak to her. Make her give up her son that she has hid.”
Athalie’s eyes were wide with horror. She had never heard a story like that.
The speaker depicted the horror on the face of the king as he listened to the tale and watched the faces of the hunger-crazed women, realized that he was powerless to aid, that things could only grow worse rather than better, that the Lord in whom he had put at least a little of his trust had apparently deserted him, and then he laid hold on his kingly robe and tore it.
Like a crowd of children the listening congregation attended, not an eye looked dreamy, not a brain was planning out tomorrow’s work nor calculating the sum of yesterday’s mistakes. The Bible lived and breathed before them as Bannard spoke. They saw that king reach down and tear his robe as he passed on, they were among those who looked beneath and saw the sackcloth next to his skin, oriental symbol of humiliation, of repentance, of prayer. They caught a glimpse of King Jehoram’s past, his mother the wicked queen Jezebel, his father of whom it was written “there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord.”
One saw that Jehoram was not quite so bad as his father and mother. He put away the image of Baal that his father had set up for worship to please his mother, but he worked evil in the sight of the Lord.
The king on the wall in the torn robe, with the sackcloth showing beneath, suddenly turned and swore a terrible oath that he would have the head of God’s prophet that day, the prophet who had been promising day after day that God would deliver them from the enemy; and now they were come to the great extremity and God was not helping. Why should he wait for God any longer?
The king walked to his palace and sent a messenger to the little house where Elisha lived. One saw the soldier from the palace hurry along with sword in hand down the narrow streets of odd flat-topped oriental houses, and Elisha sitting quietly in his door talking to some of the old men and suddenly lifting his eye to his servant and saying in a quiet voice: “The king is sending a soldier to behead me. Shut the door and lock it. The king will be here presently. Keep the soldier out till he comes.”
The hurrying feet, the hastily shut door, the altercation. Athalie sat breathless with glowing eyes of wonder. The impudent air of the king as he came, the parley: “Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what should I wait for the Lord any longer?” And Elisha’s quiet voice answering: “Hear ye the word of the Lord. This time is up! Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine white flour be sold at less than prewar prices.”
“Ha!” the laugh of the servant on whom the king leans. “If God were opening windows in heaven just now this might be!”
The quiet rebuke: “You shall see it but not eat thereof.”
Night drops quickly, suddenly in that eastern land. Twilight on the white parched city where skulking shadows pass on the wall and huddled human beings sleep and forget for a little while their sufferings. The king in his palace asleep. No faith whatever in what Elisha promised. Twilight outside the wall in the little leper village, four lepers waiting at the gate, starving, talking it over. Shall they throw themselves on the mercy of the enemy, beg something to eat? “If they kill us we shall but die anyway!” The hesitant approach, peering like white ghosts into the first tent, the pause, the eager going forward. No one there! The table spread. They snatch the food and devour it, and move on to the next, suddenly are struck with the silence throughout the great camp. The hurrying investigation then the hastening back to the city to tell, the waking of the unbelieving king, the five men sent to verify the story, the garments strewn in the way as the enemy fled, the rejoicing, the crowding out of the city to spoil tents of the enemy, crushing out the life of the astonished servant who had laughed the day before! The wonderful reason of the enemy’s flight, that the Lord had caused a sound of horses to be heard by them!
Athalie looked around the church to see if anybody was really believing it. Where did they get a strange story like that? The Lord! The Lord! How strange that sounded, as if the Lord was a real person! Did her father believe that? She glanced at him as he sat with stern listening attitude, his gloved hands on his knee. She couldn’t tell whether he was astonished at it or not. She listened again. The minister was talking now about world problems. He said the world was waiting today as then for the Lord to deliver them from a state of siege into which their own sin and folly had placed them, and blaming God that He did not come. They were tired of wearing sackcloth and ready to do murder. When all the time God’s wonderful tomorrow was waiting, just over the way, waiting for them to reach the limit of their own possibilities that God might show His power and grace. He said that the troubles of the world would never be solved and peace never come until Christ came into human hearts, and that all these things pointed to a time close at hand when some tomorrow about this time Christ Himself was coming back to relieve His own forever from a state of siege.
Athalie never took her eyes from the face of the speaker during this closing talk. She had never heard anything like it in her life before. It made realities out of what had been vague mythical stories, like fairy tales, before. Was there really a Jesus Christ then? He died, didn’t He, long ago? On a cross? What did they mean, coming again?
She was silent and thoughtful all that day. Her father looked at her relieved. She wandered around the house, played a few little jazzy tunes on the piano—which scandalized the Vandemeeters and Lizette who both made it a point to listen intently for any sign of a hymn tune—then drifted away to her room and her fast-disappearing stock of chocolates and literature.
Silver had gone to the Mission school at the Flats. The house was silent all the afternoon, with a Sabbath stillness Athalie had ne
ver known before. Sabbath meant nothing to her but a merrier day than usual, the focus of the merriment of the week.
Mary Truman, still under parental pressure, called for her to go to Christian Endeavor that evening, and because Athalie saw nothing else to do, and her father and Silver were talking in the library before the fire, she went. She wondered if the strange boy would be there. Barry. What a nice name!
He was there. He passed her a hymnbook and looked pleased when she came into the bright little chapel room where they met. He sang in a quartet, growling a nice low bass. She watched him wonderingly, remembering how he had held her like a vise when she tried to get the wheel away from him. Remembering how gently he had lifted her and carried her.
It seemed a strange meeting. The girls and boys spoke, just like a frat meeting at school, only they said odd things. They referred to the sermon of that morning as if they were altogether familiar with the story of that siege. They spoke of Mr. Bannard as if he were a brother and comrade. Mr. Bannard was there among them, just like one of them. It was rather interesting, only it was embarrassing when they prayed. She didn’t know what to do with her eyes so she watched them all.
That boy Barry gave an announcement about a committee meeting after service. Two others jumped up and spoke about socials that were being planned. They all seemed so eager and friendly. Athalie felt lonely and outside everything.
When they went in the church again there was Silver sitting with her father. Mary asked her politely to come in their seat and she went. She did not want to sit beside Silver again.
Mr. Bannard spoke about the coming of Christ. He made it plain that He was really coming, and that some people, good people presumably, for Athalie did not understand that language about “believers,” were to be taken away and the world would wonder where they had gone. Athalie looked over at Silver. She thought Silver would be one that would be taken away. Well, that would be good. She hated good people, and she would be left with her father. It was reasonably sure a noted man of the world like her father wouldn’t be taken away from earth like that. He didn’t have that spirit-look that Silver wore as a garment. It frightened her a little—this talk about the Son of God coming back to earth. She hoped on second thought that it wouldn’t come till she was old, very old, and didn’t care about living anymore. It stayed with her after she got home, and when she went to bed and thought of Lilla in a little boat on the great ocean she cried a few tears sorrowfully. Lilla was the only god she had ever had.
Tomorrow About This Time Page 24