When war was not immediately declared the rector, who on the Sunday
following that eventful Saturday of the President's speech to Congress
had preached a rousing call to arms, began to feel a bit sheepish about
it.
“War or no war, my dear,” he said to Delight, “it made them think for as
much as an hour. And I can change it somewhat, and use it again, if the
time really comes.”
“Second-hand stuff!” she scoffed. “You with your old sermons, and Mother
with my old dresses! But it was a good sermon,” she added. “I have
hardly been civil to that German laundress since.”
“Good gracious, Delight. Can't you remember that we must love our
enemies?”
“Do you love them? You know perfectly well that the moment you get on
the other side, if you do, you'll be jerking the cross off your collar
and bullying some wretched soldier to give you his gun.”
He had a guilty feeling that she was right.
It was February then, and they were sitting in the parish house. Delight
had been filling out Sunday-school reports to parents, an innovation she
detested. For a little while there was only the scratching of her pen
to be heard and an occasional squeal from the church proper, where
the organ was being repaired. The rector sat back in his chair, his
fingertips together, and whistled noiselessly, a habit of his when he
was disturbed. Now and then he glanced at Delight's bent head.
“My dear,” he commented finally.
“Just a minute. That wretched little Simonton girl has been absent three
Sundays out of four. And on the fourth one she said she had a toothache
and sat outside on the steps. Well, daddy?”
“Do you see anything of Graham Spencer now?”
“Very little.” She looked at him with frank eyes. “He has changed
somehow, daddy. When we do meet he is queer. I sometimes think he avoids
me.”
He fell back on his noiseless whistling. And Delight, who knew his every
mood, got up and perched herself on the arm of his chair.
“Don't you get to thinking things,” she said. And slipped an arm around
his neck.
“I did think, in the winter--”
“I'll tell you about that,” she broke in, bravely. “I suppose, if he'd
cared for me at all, I'd have been crazy about him. It isn't because
he's good looking. I--well, I don't know why. I just know, as long as
I can remember, I--however, that's not important. He thinks I'm a nice
little thing and lets it go at that. It's a good bit worse, of course,
than having him hate me.”
“Sometimes I think you are not very happy.”
“I'm happier than I would be trying to make him fall in love with me.
Oh, you needn't be shocked. It can be done. Lots of girls do it. It
isn't any moral sense that keeps me from it, either. It's just pride.”
“My dear!”
“And there's another angle to it. I wouldn't marry a man who hasn't got
a mind of his own. Even if I had the chance, which I haven't. That silly
mother of his--she is silly, daddy, and selfish--Do you know what she is
doing now?”
“We ought not to discuss her. She--”
“Fiddlesticks. You love gossip and you know it.”
Her tone was light, but the rector felt that arm around his neck
tighten. He surmised a depth of feeling that made him anxious.
“She is trying to marry him to Marion Hayden.”
The rector sat up, almost guiltily.
“But--are you sure she is doing that?”
“Everybody says so. She thinks that if he is married, and there is a
war, he won't want to go if he has a wife.” She was silent for a moment.
“Marion will drive him straight to the devil, daddy.”
The rector reached up and took her hand. She cared more than she would
admit, he saw. She had thought the thing out, perhaps in the long
night--when he slept placidly. Thought and suffered, he surmised. And
again he remembered his worldly plans for her, and felt justly punished.
“I suppose it is hard for a father to understand how any one can know
his little girl and not love her. Or be the better for it.”
She kissed him and slid off the arm of his chair.
“Don't you worry,” she said cheerfully. “I had to make an ideal for
myself about somebody. Every girl does. Sometimes it's the plumber. It
doesn't really matter who it is, so you can pin your dreams to him. The
only thing that hurts is that Graham wasn't worth while.”
She went back to her little cards, but some ten minutes later the
rector, lost in thought, heard the scratching of her pen cease.
“Did you ever think, daddy,” she said, “of the influence women have over
men? Look at the Spencers. Mrs. Spencer spoiling Graham, and making her
husband desperately unhappy. And--”
“Unhappy? What makes you think that?”
“He looks unhappy.”
The rector was startled. He had an instant vision of Clayton Spencer,
tall, composed, handsome, impeccably clothed. He saw him in the setting
that suited him best, the quiet elegance of his home. Clayton unhappy!
Nonsense. But he was uneasy, too. That very gravity which he had noticed
lately, that was certainly not the gravity of an entirely happy man.
Clayton had changed, somehow. Was there trouble there? And if there
were, why?
The rector, who reduced most wretchedness to terms of dollars and cents,
of impending bills and small deprivations found himself at a loss.
“I am sure you are wrong,” he objected, rather feebly.
Delight eyed him with the scorn of nineteen for fifty.
“I wonder what you would do,” she observed, “if mother just lay around
all day, and had her hair done, and got new clothes, and never thought
a thought of her own, and just used you as a sort of walking
bank-account?”
“My dear, I really can not--”
“I'll tell you what you'd do,” she persisted. “You'd fall in love with
somebody else, probably. Or else you'd just naturally dry up and be made
a bishop.”
He was extremely shocked at that, and a little hurt. It took her some
time to establish cheerful relations again, and a very humble apology.
But her words stuck in the rector's mind. He made a note for a sermon,
with the text: “Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband
also, and he praiseth her.”
He went quietly into the great stone building and sat down. The organist
was practicing the Introit anthem, and half way up the church a woman
was sitting quietly.
The rector leaned back, and listened to the music. He often did that
when he had a sermon in his mind. It was peaceful and quiet. Hard to
believe, in that peace of great arches and swelling music, that across
the sea at that moment men were violating that fundamental law of the
church, “Thou shalt not kill.”
The woman turned her head, and he saw that it was Audrey Valentine.
He watched her with kindly, speculative eyes. Self-reliant, frivolous
Audrey, sitting alone in the church she had so casually attended--surely
that was one of the gains of war. People all came to it ultimately. They
held on with both hands as long as they could, and then they found their
grasp growing feeble and futile, and they turned to the Great Strength.
The organist had ceased. Audrey was kneeling now. The rector, eyes on
the gleaming cross above the altar, repeated softly:
“Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech Thee, from the hands of our
enemies; that we, being armed with Thy defense, may be preserved
evermore from all perils.”
Audrey was coming down the aisle. She did not see him. She had, indeed,
the fixed eyes of one who still looks inward. She was very pale, but
there was a new look of strength in her face, as of one who has won a
victory.
“To glorify Thee, who are the only giver of all victory, through the
merits of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,” finished the rector.