"What is that to thee? Follow thou me."
WHEN Rollin started down the street the afternoon that Jasper stood
looking out of his window he was not thinking of Rachel Winslow and
did not expect to see her anywhere. He had come suddenly upon her as
he turned into the avenue and his heart had leaped up at the sight
of her. He walked along by her now, rejoicing after all in a little
moment of this earthly love he could not drive out of his life.
"I have just been over to see Virginia," said Rachel. "She tells me
the arrangements are nearly completed for the transfer of the
Rectangle property."
"Yes. It has been a tedious case in the courts. Did Virginia show
you all the plans and specifications for building?"
"We looked over a good many. It is astonishing to me where Virginia
has managed to get all her ideas about this work."
"Virginia knows more now about Arnold Toynbee and East End London
and Institutional Church work in America than a good many
professional slum workers. She has been spending nearly all summer
in getting information." Rollin was beginning to feel more at ease
as they talked over this coming work of humanity. It was safe,
common ground.
"What have you been doing all summer? I have not seen much of you,"
Rachel suddenly asked, and then her face warmed with its quick flush
of tropical color as if she might have implied too much interest in
Rollin or too much regret at not seeing him oftener.
"I have been busy," replied Rollin briefly.
"Tell me something about it," persisted Rachel. "You say so little.
Have I a right to ask?"
She put the question very frankly, turning toward Rollin in real
earnest.
"Yes, certainly," he replied, with a graceful smile. "I am not so
certain that I can tell you much. I have been trying to find some
way to reach the men I once knew and win them into more useful
lives."
He stopped suddenly as if he were almost afraid to go on. Rachel did
not venture to suggest anything.
"I have been a member of the same company to which you and Virginia
belong," continued Rollin, beginning again. "I have made the pledge
to do as I believe Jesus would do, and it is in trying to answer
this question that I have been doing my work."
"That is what I do not understand. Virginia told me about the other.
It seems wonderful to think that you are trying to keep that pledge
with us. But what can you do with the club men?"
"You have asked me a direct question and I shall have to answer it
now," replied Rollin, smiling again. "You see, I asked myself after
that night at the tent, you remember" (he spoke hurriedly and his
voice trembled a little), "what purpose I could now have in my life
to redeem it, to satisfy my thought of Christian discipleship? And
the more I thought of it, the more I was driven to a place where I
knew I must take up the cross. Did you ever think that of all the
neglected beings in our social system none are quite so completely
left alone as the fast young men who fill the clubs and waste their
time and money as I used to? The churches look after the poor,
miserable creatures like those in the Rectangle; they make some
effort to reach the working man, they have a large constituency
among the average salary-earning people, they send money and
missionaries to the foreign heathen, but the fashionable, dissipated
young men around town, the club men, are left out of all plans for
reaching and Christianizing. And yet no class of people need it
more. I said to myself: 'I know these men, their good and their bad
qualities. I have been one of them. I am not fitted to reach the
Rectangle people. I do not know how. But I think I could possibly
reach some of the young men and boys who have money and time to
spend.' So that is what I have been trying to do. When I asked as
you did, What would Jesus do?' that was my answer. It has been also
my cross."
Rollin's voice was so low on this last sentence that Rachel had
difficulty in hearing him above the noise around them, But she knew
what he had said. She wanted to ask what his methods were. But she
did not know how to ask him. Her interest in his plan was larger
than mere curiosity. Rollin Page was so different now from the
fashionable young man who had asked her to be his wife that she
could not help thinking of him and talking with him as if he were an
entirely new acquaintance.
They had turned off the avenue and were going up the street to
Rachel's home. It was the same street where Rollin had asked Rachel
why she could not love him. They were both stricken with a sudden
shyness as they went on. Rachel had not forgotten that day and
Rollin could not. She finally broke a long silence by asking what
she had not found words for before.
"In your work with the club men, with your old acquaintances, what
sort of reception do they give you? How do you approach them? What
do they say?"
Rollin was relieved when Rachel spoke. He answered quickly: "Oh, it
depends on the man. A good many of them think I am a crank. I have
kept my membership up and am in good standing in that way. I try to
be wise and not provoke any unnecessary criticism. But you would be
surprised to know how many of the men have responded to my appeal. I
could hardly make you believe that only a few nights ago a dozen men
became honestly and earnestly engaged in a conversation over
religious matters. I have had the great joy of seeing some of the
men give up bad habits and begin a new life. 'What would Jesus do?'
I keep asking it. The answer comes slowly, for I am feeling my way
slowly. One thing I have found out. The men are not fighting shy of
me. I think that is a good sign. Another thing: I have actually
interested some of them in the Rectangle work, and when it is
started up they will give something to help make it more powerful.
And in addition to all the rest, I have found a way to save several
of the young fellows from going to the bad in gambling."
Rollin spoke with enthusiasm. His face was transformed by his
interest in the subject which had now become a part of his real
life. Rachel again noted the strong, manly tone of his speech. With
it all she knew there was a deep, underlying seriousness which felt
the burden of the cross even while carrying it with joy. The next
time she spoke it was with a swift feeling of justice due to Rollin
and his new life.
"Do you remember I reproached you once for not having any purpose
worth living for?" she asked, while her beautiful face seemed to
Rollin more beautiful than ever when he had won sufficient
self-control to look up. "I want to say, I feel the need of saying,
in justice to you now, that I honor you for your courage and your
obedience to the promise you have made as you interpret the promise.
The life you are living is a noble one."
Rollin trembled. His agitation was greater than he could control.
Rachel could not help seeing it. They walked along in silence. At
last Rollin said: "I thank you. It has been worth more to me than I
can tell you to hear you say that." He looked into her face for one
moment. She read his love for her in that look, but he did not
speak.
When they separated Rachel went into the house and, sitting down in
her room, she put her face in her hands and said to herself: "I am
beginning to know what it means to be loved by a noble man. I shall
love Rollin Page after all. What am I saying! Rachel Winslow, have
you forgotten--"
She rose and walked back and forth. She was deeply moved.
Nevertheless, it was evident to herself that her emotion was not
that of regret or sorrow. Somehow a glad new joy had come to her.
She had entered another circle of experience, and later in the day
she rejoiced with a very strong and sincere gladness that her
Christian discipleship found room in this crisis for her feeling. It
was indeed a part of it, for if she was beginning to love Rollin
Page it was the Christian man she had begun to love; the other never
would have moved her to this great change.
And Rollin, as he went back, treasured a hope that had been a
stranger to him since Rachel had said no that day. In that hope he
went on with his work as the days sped on, and at no time was he
more successful in reaching and saving his old acquaintances than in
the time that followed that chance meeting with Rachel Winslow.
The summer had gone and Raymond was once more facing the rigor of
her winter season. Virginia had been able to accomplish a part of
her plan for "capturing the Rectangle," as she called it. But the
building of houses in the field, the transforming of its bleak, bare
aspect into an attractive park, all of which was included in her
plan, was a work too large to be completed that fall after she had
secured the property. But a million dollars in the hands of a person
who truly wants to do with it as Jesus would, ought to accomplish
wonders for humanity in a short time, and Henry Maxwell, going over
to the scene of the new work one day after a noon hour with the shop
men, was amazed to see how much had been done outwardly.
Yet he walked home thoughtfully, and on his way he could not avoid
the question of the continual problem thrust upon his notice by the
saloon. How much had been done for the Rectangle after all? Even
counting Virginia's and Rachel's work and Mr. Gray's, where had it
actually counted in any visible quantity? Of course, he said to
himself, the redemptive work begun and carried on by the Holy Spirit
in His wonderful displays of power in the First Church and in the
tent meetings had had its effect upon the life of Raymond. But as he
walked past saloon after saloon and noted the crowds going in and
coming out of them, as he saw the wretched dens, as many as ever
apparently, as he caught the brutality and squalor and open misery
and degradation on countless faces of men and women and children, he
sickened at the sight. He found himself asking how much cleansing
could a million dollars poured into this cesspool accomplish? Was
not the living source of nearly all the human misery they sought to
relieve untouched as long as the saloons did their deadly but
legitimate work? What could even such unselfish Christian
discipleship as Virginia's and Rachel's do to lessen the stream of
vice and crime so long as the great spring of vice and crime flowed
as deep and strong as ever? Was it not a practical waste of
beautiful lives for these young women to throw themselves into this
earthly hell, when for every soul rescued by their sacrifice the
saloon made two more that needed rescue?
He could not escape the question. It was the same that Virginia had
put to Rachel in her statement that, in her opinion, nothing really
permanent would ever be done until the saloon was taken out of the
Rectangle. Henry Maxwell went back to his parish work that afternoon
with added convictions on the license business.
But if the saloon was a factor in the problem of the life of
Raymond, no less was the First Church and its little company of
disciples who had pledged to do as Jesus would do. Henry Maxwell,
standing at the very centre of the movement, was not in a position
to judge of its power as some one from the outside might have done.
But Raymond itself felt the touch in very many ways, not knowing all
the reasons for the change.
The winter was gone and the year was ended, the year which Henry
Maxwell had fixed as the time during which the pledge should be kept
to do as Jesus would do. Sunday, the anniversary of that one a year
ago, was in many ways the most remarkable day that the First Church
ever knew. It was more important than the disciples in the First
Church realized. The year had made history so fast and so serious
that the people were not yet able to grasp its significance. And the
day itself which marked the completion of a whole year of such
discipleship was characterized by such revelations and confessions
that the immediate actors in the events themselves could not
understand the value of what had been done, or the relation of their
trial to the rest of the churches and cities of the country.
It happened that the week before that anniversary Sunday the Rev.
Calvin Bruce, D.D., of the Nazareth Avenue Church, Chicago, was
in Raymond, where he had come on a visit to some old friends, and
incidentally to see his old seminary classmate, Henry Maxwell. He
was present at the First Church and was an exceedingly attentive
and interested spectator. His account of the events in Raymond, and
especially of that Sunday, may throw more light on the entire situation
than any description or record from other sources.