FELICIA started off to the play not very happy, but she was familiar
with that feeling, only sometimes she was more unhappy than at
others. Her feeling expressed itself tonight by a withdrawal into
herself. When the company was seated in the box and the curtain had
gone up Felicia was back of the others and remained for the evening
by herself. Mrs. Delano, as chaperon for half a dozen young ladies,
understood Felicia well enough to know that she was "queer," as Rose
so often said, and she made no attempt to draw her out of her
corner. And so the girl really experienced that night by herself one
of the feelings that added to the momentum that was increasing the
coming on of her great crisis.
The play was an English melodrama, full of startling situations,
realistic scenery and unexpected climaxes. There was one scene in
the third act that impressed even Rose Sterling.
It was midnight on Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames flowed dark and
forbidden below. St. Paul's rose through the dim light imposing, its
dome seeming to float above the buildings surrounding it. The figure
of a child came upon the bridge and stood there for a moment peering
about as if looking for some one. Several persons were crossing the
bridge, but in one of the recesses about midway of the river a woman
stood, leaning out over the parapet, with a strained agony of face
and figure that told plainly of her intention. Just as she was
stealthily mounting the parapet to throw herself into the river, the
child caught sight of her, ran forward with a shrill cry more animal
than human, and seizing the woman's dress dragged back upon it with
all her little strength. Then there came suddenly upon the scene two
other characters who had already figured in the play, a tall,
handsome, athletic gentleman dressed in the fashion, attended by a
slim-figured lad who was as refined in dress and appearance as the
little girl clinging to her mother, who was mournfully hideous in
her rags and repulsive poverty. These two, the gentleman and the
lad, prevented the attempted suicide, and after a tableau on the
bridge where the audience learned that the man and woman were
brother and sister, the scene was transferred to the interior of one
of the slum tenements in the East Side of London. Here the scene
painter and carpenter had done their utmost to produce an exact copy
of a famous court and alley well known to the poor creatures who
make up a part of the outcast London humanity. The rags, the
crowding, the vileness, the broken furniture, the horrible animal
existence forced upon creatures made in God's image were so
skilfully shown in this scene that more than one elegant woman in
the theatre, seated like Rose Sterling in a sumptuous box surrounded
with silk hangings and velvet covered railing, caught herself
shrinking back a little as if contamination were possible from the
nearness of this piece of scenery. It was almost too realistic, and
yet it had a horrible fascination for Felicia as she sat there
alone, buried back in a cushioned seat and absorbed in thoughts that
went far beyond the dialogue on the stage.
From the tenement scene the play shifted to the interior of a
nobleman's palace, and almost a sigh of relief went up all over the
house at the sight of the accustomed luxury of the upper classes.
The contrast was startling. It was brought about by a clever piece
of staging that allowed only a few moments to elapse between the
slum and the palace scene. The dialogue went on, the actors came and
went in their various roles, but upon Felicia the play made but one
distinct impression. In realty the scenes on the bridge and in the
slums were only incidents in the story of the play, but Felicia
found herself living those scenes over and over. She had never
philosophized about the causes of human misery, she was not old
enough she had not the temperament that philosophizes. But she felt
intensely, and this was not the first time she had felt the contrast
thrust into her feeling between the upper and the lower conditions
of human life. It had been growing upon her until it had made her
what Rose called "queer," and other people in her circle of wealthy
acquaintances called very unusual. It was simply the human problem
in its extreme of riches and poverty, its refinement and its
vileness, that was, in spite of her unconscious attempts to struggle
against the facts, burning into her life the impression that would
in the end either transform her into a woman of rare love and
self-sacrifice for the world, or a miserable enigma to herself and
all who knew her.
"Come, Felicia, aren't you going home?" said Rose. The play was
over, the curtain down, and people were going noisily out, laughing
and gossiping as if "The Shadows of London" were simply good
diversion, as they were, put on the stage so effectively.
Felicia rose and went out with the rest quietly, and with the
absorbed feeling that had actually left her in her seat oblivious of
the play's ending. She was never absent-minded, but often thought
herself into a condition that left her alone in the midst of a
crowd.
"Well, what did you think of it?" asked Rose when the sisters had
reached home and were in the drawing-room. Rose really had
considerable respect for Felicia's judgment of a play.
"I thought it was a pretty fair picture of real life."
"I mean the acting," said Rose, annoyed.
"The bridge scene was well acted, especially the woman's part. I
thought the man overdid the sentiment a little."
"Did you? I enjoyed that. And wasn't the scene between the two
cousins funny when they first learned they were related? But the
slum scene was horrible. I think they ought not to show such things
in a play. They are too painful."
"They must be painful in real life, too," replied Felicia.
"Yes, but we don't have to look at the real thing. It's bad enough
at the theatre where we pay for it."
Rose went into the dining-room and began to eat from a plate of
fruit and cakes on the sideboard.
"Are you going up to see mother?" asked Felicia after a while. She
had remained in front of the drawing-room fireplace.
"No," replied Rose from the other room. "I won't trouble her
tonight. If you go in tell her I am too tired to be agreeable."
So Felicia turned into her mother's room, as she went up the great
staircase and down the upper hall. The light was burning there, and
the servant who always waited on Mrs. Sterling was beckoning Felicia
to come in.
"Tell Clara to go out," exclaimed Mrs. Sterling as Felicia came up
to the bed.
Felicia was surprised, but she did as her mother bade her, and then
inquired how she was feeling.
"Felicia," said her mother, "can you pray?"
The question was so unlike any her mother had ever asked before that
she was startled. But she answered: "Why, yes, mother. Why do you
ask such a question?"
"Felicia, I am frightened. Your father--I have had such strange
fears about him all day. Something is wrong with him. I want you to
pray--."
"Now, here, mother?"
"Yes. Pray, Felicia."
Felicia reached out her hand and took her mother's. It was
trembling. Mrs. Sterling had never shown such tenderness for her
younger daughter, and her strange demand now was the first real sign
of any confidence in Felicia's character.
The girl kneeled, still holding her mother's trembling hand, and
prayed. It is doubtful if she had ever prayed aloud before. She must
have said in her prayer the words that her mother needed, for when
it was silent in the room the invalid was weeping softly and her
nervous tension was over.
Felicia stayed some time. When she was assured that her mother would
not need her any longer she rose to go.
"Good night, mother. You must let Clara call me if you feel badly in
the night."
"I feel better now." Then as Felicia was moving away, Mrs. Sterling
said: "Won't you kiss me, Felicia?"
Felicia went back and bent over her mother. The kiss was almost as
strange to her as the prayer had been. When Felicia went out of the
room her cheeks were wet with tears. She had not often cried since
she was a little child.
Sunday morning at the Sterling mansion was generally very quiet. The
girls usually went to church at eleven o'clock service. Mr. Sterling
was not a member but a heavy contributor, and he generally went to
church in the morning. This time he did not come down to breakfast,
and finally sent word by a servant that he did not feel well enough
to go out. So Rose and Felicia drove up to the door of the Nazareth
Avenue Church and entered the family pew alone.
When Dr. Bruce walked out of the room at the rear of the platform
and went up to the pulpit to open the Bible as his custom was, those
who knew him best did not detect anything unusual in his manner or
his expression. He proceeded with the service as usual. He was calm
and his voice was steady and firm. His prayer was the first
intimation the people had of anything new or strange in the service.
It is safe to say that the Nazareth Avenue Church had not heard Dr.
Bruce offer such a prayer before during the twelve years he had been
pastor there. How would a minister be likely to pray who had come
out of a revolution in Christian feeling that had completely changed
his definition of what was meant by following Jesus? No one in
Nazareth Avenue Church had any idea that the Rev. Calvin Bruce, D.
D., the dignified, cultured, refined Doctor of Divinity, had within
a few days been crying like a little child on his knees, asking for
strength and courage and Christlikeness to speak his Sunday message;
and yet the prayer was an unconscious involuntary disclosure of his
soul's experience such as the Nazareth Avenue people had seldom
heard, and never before from that pulpit.
In the hush that succeeded the prayer a distinct wave of spiritual
power moved over the congregation. The most careless persons in the
church felt it. Felicia, whose sensitive religious nature responded
swiftly to every touch of emotion, quivered under the passing of that
supernatural pressure, and when she lifted her head and looked up at
the minister there was a look in her eyes that announced her intense,
eager anticipation of the scene that was to follow. And she was not
alone in her attitude. There was something in the prayer and the result
of it that stirred many and many a disciple in that church. All over
the house men and women leaned forward, and when Dr. Bruce began to
speak of his visit to Raymond, in the opening sentence of his address
which this morning preceded his sermon, there was an answering response
in the people that came back to him as he spoke, and thrilled him with
the hope of a spiritual baptism such as he had never during all his
ministry experienced.