"I think I'll go to church this morning, Nelly. Do you want to go
along?" announced Courtland, the next morning.
Tennelly looked up aghast from the sporting page of the morning paper he
was lazily reading.
"Go with him, Nelly, that's a good boy!" put in Bill Ward, agreeably,
winking his off eye at Tennelly. "It'll do you good. I'd go with you,
only I've got to get that condition made up or they'll fire me off the
'varsity, and I only need this one more game to get my letter."
"Go to thunder!" growled Tennelly. "What do you think I want to go to
church for a morning like this? Court, you're crazy! Let's go and get
two saddle-horses and ride in the park. It's a peach of a morning for a
ride."
"I think I'll go to church," said Courtland, with his old voice of quiet
decision. "Do you want to go or not?"
There was something about Courtland's voice, and the way Bill Ward kept
up winking his off eye, that subdued Tennelly.
"Sure, I'll go," he growled, reluctantly.
"You old crab, you," chirped Bill, cheerfully, when Courtland had gone
out. "Can't you see you've got to humor him? He needs homeopathic
treatment. 'Like cures like.' Give him a good dose of religion and he'll
get good and tired of it. Church won't hurt him any, just give him a
good, pious feeling so he'll feel free to do as he pleases during the
week. I had a 'phone from Gila this morning. She says he's made another
date with her after exams. He fell, all right, so go get your little lid
and toddle off to Sunday-school. Try to toll him into a big, stylish
church. They're safest; but 'most any of 'em are cold enough to freeze
the eye-teeth out of a stranger as far as my experience goes."
"Well, this isn't my funeral," sulked Tennelly, going to his closet for
suitable raiment. "I s'pose you get your way, but Court's keen
intellectually, and if he happens to strike a good preacher he's liable
to fall for what he says, in the mood he's in now."
"Well, he won't strike a good preacher. There isn't one nowadays. There
are orators in the pulpit, plenty of them, but they're all preaching
about politics these days, or raving about uplifting the masses, and
that sorta thing won't hurt Court. Most of 'em are dry as punk. If Court
keeps awake through the service he won't go again, mark my words."
They chose a church at random, these two who had decided to go up to the
house of God. High-arched and Gothic were its massive walls, with intricate
carving like lace in the stonework. Softly swung leather doors shut the
sanctuary from the outer world. The fretted gold-and-blue-and-scarlet
ceiling stretched away miles, as it were, in the space above them, and
rich carvings in dark, costly wood met the wonderful frescoes at lofty
heights. The carpets were soft, and the pews were upholstered in tones
to match. A great silence brooded over the place, making itself felt
above and beneath the swelling tones of the wonderful organ. People trod
the aisles softly, like puppets playing each his part. They bent in form
of prayer for a moment and settled into silence. The minister came
stiffly into the pulpit, casting a furtive eye about his congregation.
They noticed almost at once that the most unpopular professor in the
university was acting as usher on the other side of the church. Tennelly
frowned and looked at Courtland, who sat watching the aforesaid usher as
he showed people to their seats, wondering if that man had a thing he
called religion, and if he was in any way related to Stephen Marshall's
Christ. This was a voyage of discovery for Courtland, this visit to a
Christian church. He had scarcely been to religious services since he
entered the university. He had considered them a waste of time. Now he
had come to see if there was really anything in them. It did not occur
to him that they had a real connection with those verses he had read in
the Bible about "doing the will," or that the going or staying away from
them was in any wise obligatory upon one who had allied himself with
Christ. The church stood to him as to many other young pagans such as he
was, for a man-made institution, to be attended or not as one chose.
The music was not uplifting. It was well done by a paid choir, who had
good voices and sang wonderful music, but they had no heart in their
singing. The congregation attempted no more than a murmur of the hymns.
There was not a large congregation.
The sermon was a dissertation on the Book of Jonah, a sort of résumé of
all the argument, on both sides, that has torn the theological world in
these latter days. Not a word of Stephen Marshall's Christ, save a sort
of side reference to a verse about Jonah being three days and three
nights in the whale, and the Son of Man being three days in the heart of
the earth. Courtland wasn't even sure that this reference meant the
Christ, and it never entered his head that it touched at the heart of
the great doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. As far as he could
understand the reverend gentleman the arguments he quoted against the
Book of Jonah were far stronger and more plausible than those put forth
in its defense. What was it all about, anyway? What did it matter
whether Jonah was or was not, or whether anybody accepted the book? How
could a thing like that affect the life of a man?
Tennelly watched the expressive face beside him and decided that perhaps
Bill Ward had been half right, after all.
On their way back to the university they met Gila Dare. Gila all in gray
like a dove, gray suit of soft, rich cloth, gray furs of the depth and
richness of smoke, gray suède boots laced high to meet her brief gray
skirts, silver hat with a single velvet rose on the brim to match the
soft rose-bloom on her cheeks. Gila with eyes as wide and innocent as a
baby's, cupid mouth curved sweetly in a gracious, shy smile, and dainty
little prayer-book done in gray suède held devoutly in her little gloved
hand.
"Who's that?" growled Tennelly, admiringly, when they had passed a
suitable distance.
"Why, that's Bill Ward's cousin, Gila Dare," announced Courtland,
graciously. He was still basking in the pleasure of her smile, and
thinking how different she looked from last evening in this soft, gray,
silvery effect. Yes, he had misjudged her. A girl who could look like
that must be sweet and pure and unspoiled. It had been that unfortunate
dress last night that had reminded him unpleasantly of the scarlet woman
and the awful night of the fire. If he ever got well enough acquainted
he would ask her never to wear red again; it made her appear sensual;
and even she, delicate and sweet as she was, could not afford to cast a
thought like that into the minds of her beholders. It was then he began
to idealize Gila.
"Gila Dare!" Tennelly straightened up and took notice. So that was the
invincible Gila! That little soft-eyed exquisite thing with the hair
like a midnight cloud.
"Some looker!" he commented, approvingly, and wished he were in
Courtland's shoes.
"She's got in her work all right," he commented to himself. "Old Court's
fallen already. Guess I'll have to buy a straw hat, it'll be more
edible."
Courtland was like his gay old self when he got back to the dormitory.
He joked a great deal. His eyes were bright and his color better than it
had been since he was sick. He said nothing about the morning service,
and by and by Bill Ward ventured a question: "What kind of a harangue
did you hear this morning?"
"Rotten!" he answered, promptly, and turned away. Somehow that question
recalled him to the uneasiness within his soul for which he had sought
solace in the church service. He became silent again, and, strolling
away into Stephen's room and closing the door, sat down.
There was something strange about that room. The Presence seemed always
to be there. It hadn't made itself felt in the church at all, as he had
half hoped it would. He had taken Tennelly with him because he wanted
something tangible, friendly, sane, from the world he knew, to give him
ballast. If the Presence had been in the church, with Tennelly by his
side, he would have been sure it was not wholly a hallucination
connected with his memory of Stephen.
It was strange, for now that he sat there in that quiet room that had
once witnessed the trying out of a manly soul, and saw the calm eyes of
the plain mother on the wall opposite, and the true eyes of the dowdy
school-boy on the other wall, he was feeling the Presence again!
Why hadn't he felt its power in the church? Was it because of the
presence of such people in the temple as that little mean-souled
professor, whom everybody knew to be insincere from the crown of his
head to the soles of his sly little feet? Was it because the people were
cold and careless and didn't sing even with their lips, let alone their
hearts, but hired it all done for them?
And then there had been that call of his name when he was with Gila
Dare, as clear and distinct, like a friend he had left outside who had
grown tired of waiting, and worried about him. Why hadn't the sense of
the Presence gone with him into the room? Would a Presence like that be
afraid of hostile influences? No. If it was real and a Presence at all
it would be more powerful than any other influence in the universe. Then
why?
Could it be that he had gone deliberately into an influence that would
make it impossible for the Presence to guide?
Or was it possible that his own attitude toward that girl had been at
fault? He had gone to see her regarding her somewhat lightly. As a
gentleman he should regard no woman with disrespect. Her womanhood
should be honored by him even if she chose to dishonor it herself. If he
had gone to see Gila with a different attitude toward her, expecting
high, fine things of her, rather than merely to be amused by one whom he
scarcely regarded seriously, perhaps all this strange mental phenomena
would not have come to pass.
Finally he locked the door and knelt down with his head upon the worn
Bible. He had no idea of praying. Prayer meant to him but a repetition
of a form of words. There had been prayers in his childhood, brought
about by the maiden aunt who kept house for his father after his
mother's death, and assisted in bringing him up until he was old enough
to go away to boarding-school. They were a good deal of a bore, coming
as they did when he was sleepy. There was a long, vague one beginning,
"Our Father which art," in which he always had to be prompted. There
was, "Now I lay me," and "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed I
lie upon; Wish I may, wish I might, get the wish I wish to-night!" Or
_was_ that a prayer? He never could remember as he grew older.
He did not know why he was drawn to kneel there with his eyes closed and
his cheek upon that Bible. Strange that when he was in that room all
doubt about the Presence vanished, all uneasiness about reconciling it
with realities, laws, and science fled away.
Later he stood in his own room by the window, watching the great red sun
go down in the west and light a ruby fire behind the long line of tall
buildings that stretched beyond the campus. The glow in no wise
resembled, but yet reminded him, of the fire in the glowing grate of the
Dare library. Why had that room affected him so strangely? And Gila,
little Gila, how sweet and innocent she had looked when they met her
that morning with her prayer-book. How wrong he must have been to take
the idle talk that people chattered about her and let it influence his
thoughts of her. She could not be all that they said, and yet look so
sweet and innocent. What had she reminded him of in literature? Ah! he
had it. Solveig in _Peer Gynt_!
How fair! Did ever you see the like?
Looked down at her shoes and her snow-white apron!--
And then she held on to her mother's skirt-folds,
And carried a psalm-book wrapped up in a 'kerchief!--
That ample purple person by her side, with the dark eyes, the double
chin, and the hard lines in her painted face, must be Gila's mother!
Perhaps people talked about the daughter because of her mother, for
_she_ looked it fully! But then a girl couldn't help having a foolish
mother! She was to be pitied more than blamed if she seemed silly and
frivolous now and then.
What a thing for a man to do, to teach her to trust him, and then guide
her and help her and uplift her till she had the highest standards
formed! She was so young and tiny, and so sweet at times! Yes, she was,
she must be, like Solveig.
If a man with a good moral character, a tolerably decent reputation for
good taste and respectability, no fool at his studies, no stain on his
name, should go with her, help her, get her to give up certain daring
things she had the name of doing--if such a fellow should give her the
protection of his friendship and let the world see that he considered
her respectable--wouldn't it help a lot? Wouldn't it stop people's
mouths and make them see that Gila wasn't what they had been saying,
after all?
It came to him that this would be a very pleasant mission, for his
leisure hours during the rest of that winter. All thought of any danger
to himself through such intercourse as he was suggesting to his thoughts
had departed from his mind.
Half a mile away Gila was pouring tea for two extremely ardent youths
who scarcely occupied half of her mind. With the other half she was
planning a little note which should bring Courtland to her side early in
the week. She had no thoughts of God. She was never troubled with much
pondering. She knew exactly what she wanted without thinking any further
about it, and she meant to have it.