As he thought out his pilgrimage before him, it occurred to him that the churches should be his goal. He knew that she always went to service, to prayer meetings, and to Sunday school and morning and evening church gatherings. There was his key to the situation. If she was still in the land of the living, if nothing evil had befallen her, she would be at some place of worship at the time appointed. And so, when a bell from some steeple rang a call to worship, he would pause and wait and watch the worshippers till all were in, or if he passed an open church door, he would enter, sit down, and gaze around until he had searched every face and was sure she was not there. Then he would quietly get up and leave. Seldom did he hear the service that went on around him, seldom pretended to listen. He was there but for one purpose, and he had no time to waste. Words indeed passed through his consciousness as they were spoken, in story or song, but they left no impression there. He was not a scoffer at religious things. They had simply never touched him. He stood on the outside of them. Except for that one afternoon in his life when he had sat in the dim aisles of the grove and listened to Mary Massey reading the story of the blind man, he had never really taken heed to the Bible. Oh, he had heard it read in school, of course, and now and then in a service that some strange fancy carried him to as a boy, never in Sunday school, for he had not been sent there, and it was not a place he would have chosen to go, because it meant confinement in the house when one might be out-of-doors. He had always been a law unto himself, and he was rather proud of the fact. Now a great depression was upon him because he felt he had not kept his own law. It was Joyce’s clear eyes, her pointed question, that made him see that in breaking the law of his land, he had broken also the law of that inner, finer self. It was in his thoughts of her that he came to see that there was always something behind a law; it was never just a law.
What was that in Mary Massey’s prayer so long ago?
“Help us for Christ’s sake to have our eyes open to sin, so that we shall always know when we are not pleasing Thee.”
It had been long years since he had heard that first and only prayer of his lifetime, for other prayers that he had happened to hear had meant nothing to him, but the words of this were so clear to him as if it had been heard only yesterday. He pondered on the words as he walked down the highways on his search. “To have one’s eyes open to sin, so that one should always know …” That had been his trouble. Strange! He had prided himself on never making mistakes, on keeping his code in mind, and yet what he had been doing had not seemed to be hurting anyone, and it was not until that clear-eyed girl had been a witness of his deeds in the darkness that he had felt the conviction. There had been something like that in the story her aunt had read. He wished he had a Bible that he might find it and read it again.
The desire grew upon him as the days went by until the next time he reached a city, he searched out a bookstore.
It was a little, dusty bookshop in a back street, with a kindly old gentleman in spectacles in charge, and when Darcy asked for a Bible, he looked at him over his spectacles with a smile and asked what type of Bible he would like. Darcy didn’t know. Did they have different types? He had supposed a Bible was a Bible.
“Aren’t they all alike?” he said with a troubled frown. “I want one that has a story of a man that was born blind and was healed. Would that be in them all?”
“Oh yes, oh yes,” said the man happily, trotting away and returning with an armful of Bibles. “I’ll find it for you. There’s a concordance in the back of this one. This is a very good Bible—Scofield Bible, you know. Has notes and explanations. Good binding, too, though it is a little expensive. Let’s see, let’s see, blind man, blind man—born blind—yes, here it is, one of the Gospels. I thought so. John nine, sir.” And he handed over the open page to Darcy.
Standing in the little, dusty bookshop with the daylight fading and the streetlights beginning to blink out here and there, the young man read the old story over again until he came to the last words of the chapter: “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.”
Like a spear it thrust conviction to his soul. Yes, he had not been blind. He had been proud of his ability to see, to be a law unto himself—and he had sinned against all that was best in himself.
He bought the book and went out into the dusk, pondering. He went to a hotel and read the story over again and turned the pages aimlessly to find more about it, but in his soul there grew that knowledge of himself that brought a sense of sin. So far it was only sin in the eyes of the girl who stood to him for all that was pure and holy in the world, but it was sin, and the weight of the knowledge of it lay like a burden upon him. His smile grew grave whenever it appeared, and his eyes took on their sad wistfulness. People looked after him sometimes and thought how strangely sad he looked for a young man as fine and strong as he seemed to be.
The next time he entered a church in his search, the preacher was reading the Bible, and the words he read caught Darcy’s attention.
They seemed to be stranger and sweeter than any words he had ever heard. They reminded him of the place where Jesus heard that the blind man had been cast out and He came to find him. These words were these: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore, the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.”
So far he had been listening with deep interest. It seemed like what would have been written for Mary Massey and her niece. They were pure. They lived their lives according to what would please God. That was the dominating principle of her existence. He listened wistfully. They were so far removed from his world. He had never counted himself in with them, never expected to be nearer to them, except that one bright day in his childhood; but they had always lingered like luminaries in his sky, and always he had felt that if he had been born into a different walk in life, among Christian people like them, he would have belonged to them, have chosen them for his lifelong companions if they had been willing. He had known even as a child that he did not belong with them—known that he could not fit—and kept away. Yet he had never been able to feel satisfied with other people; always there had been a silent aloofness in his manner, except with children, among whom there was no such thing as class.
He had named this thing that separated them “class” in his thoughts. Now he began to see that it was something else. It was sin. It was right and wrong that had separated them all these years. They were not people who stopped at class. There were no social classes in their eyes, else they would not have companioned with him that glorious day so intimately. He had come to know, years back, that education had something to do with separations, and he had taken pains to study and read and make himself acquainted with the best literature, and now he no longer felt that he would be separated from them in that way. But this thing that was back of it all was sin—had been sin all along. Perhaps if he had gone there, as that woman with the dear eyes had asked, he would have learned to know sin and not have been wise in his own conceit. Perhaps he might even have come to be in the same world with them.
But the words were going on, and they struck him sharply: “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”
Yes, he was a transgressor of the law. He had broken the law of the land. That had never seemed a sin before. It had been only a matter of getting away with it. The sin would have been in being discovered to his mind. Everybody else was doing it, some doing it bunglingly and not getting away with it. He despised them. He had gone into it more for the game than the money. He had known he could do it without discovery.
But he had not gotten away with it. He had been discovered. And by that girl! Not only that, but by
the girl he most honored in all the earth!
If he had been asked at the start whether he would like to have her know what he was doing, he might not have thought much about it, but when her eyes looked into his with their question, it was to him as if the great God had asked him, “What are you doing?” It was like the question that the Lord God called in the garden in the cool of the evening—“Adam, where art thou?”—only Darcy did not even know that story, knew Adam only as a hazy being of history or mythology, he could not have told which.
But he knew God’s voice when he heard it, even though it spoke through the voice of a woman—the woman he loved.
Suddenly, he knew that, too. He loved her. He had loved her all along. That was why he was going after her. She was lost, and he was finding her. And somehow it was beginning to dawn upon his soul that he would not find her until he had found the God she loved and set this thing right that was wrong with himself, if there was any such thing as setting it right in this crooked world.
And then, if Darcy Sherwood had not been bound to find Joyce Radway and bring her safely home, he might have felt that life was not any longer worth living; for all the laws by which he had lived and all the principles by which he had stood were crumbling beneath him like the sands of the sea, and he felt himself stumbling in the darkness.
Chapter 22
About this time the school board members in Silverton were sitting in solemn conclave, deciding who should take the vacant position in the primary department of the public school left vacant by the sudden death of the woman who had taught that department for the last twenty-five years.
The position had been open since spring and filled temporarily by pupils from the normal school, most of whom had not proved satisfactory to someone on the board, although three who had made formal application for the position were now under consideration.
“Well, I have a new name I’d like to present,” said Mr. Powers, who had just entered late and had not heard the wrangling over the three names by their various advocates. “She’s a jewel, too, and I think you’d better take her.”
“Oh, now, Powers, don’t get in any more names. We’re having trouble enough as it is,” laughed a member who was in a hurry to get home. “Let’s put these three to a vote and be done with it. Make that as a motion—”
“I object,” said Mr. Powers. “This young woman has fine recommendations. I took the trouble to look them up. She’s teaching over in Lyman’s church at that summer Bible school he’s so crazy about, and he says she’s the best teacher he ever had. Gets the kids and all that! Don’t have a bit of trouble with discipline, and has ’em right with her from the word go!”
“Where does she come from?” growled one of the men who was trying to get his candidate voted on.
“Why, she lives in the little land office down on Bryant’s lot. Mrs. Bryant can’t get done talking about her, how much go she has and what she can do. She’s bought that building and had it moved there. Has a lot of initiative and all that and is right there in an emergency. It seems she saved their house from getting on fire just by keeping her head. I say that’s the kind of girl we want in our school.”
While he was speaking, the new superintendent entered.
He had just been called to fill the vacancy caused by the old superintendent’s being called to a city school. He was young and good-looking, and they all stood somewhat in awe of him. He had a grave manner and seemed to know just what he wanted. They all rose to greet him.
“Professor Harrington, we’ve just been trying to get this primary teacher decided upon,” said one man. “Powers here is holding us up by presenting a new name. Don’t you think we’d better just stick to the three we’ve decided upon and tried, and pick one of them? At least we know what they are.”
The young superintendent turned toward Powers.
“Who is the person in question?” he asked, looking straight at Powers and trying to find out whether he thought a recommendation from him would be worth the paper it was written on.
“Why, her name is Radway. Miss Joyce Radway,” said Powers. “I’d like to have you see her, Professor. She certainly is intellectual-looking and all that. I had the pleasure of watching her teach this morning over in the Roberts Avenue Church. They have some kind of a religious summer school there to occupy the children during vacation, and the pastor tells me she is the best teacher they have.”
“I shouldn’t think a minister would be a very good judge of what was needed in the public school,” piped up the advocate of one of the other applicants.
“Well, this one is. He’s making that school a success, I can tell you—has something over five hundred kiddies there regularly every day, and crazy about the school. He won’t have anybody there that isn’t a crackerjack teacher—”
But the attitude of the superintendent suddenly drew the attention of the speaker. Professor Harrington was sitting alert, all attention, interest in his eyes.
“Did you say her name was Radway? Joyce Radway? There could scarcely be two of that name, I should think. It is rather an unusual name. If it’s the Miss Radway I know, I should say have her by all means. I’ve been hunting for her for the last two months, only gave it up because I was called here. Did she come from Meadow Brook, do you happen to know?”
“Why, I don’t know, I’m sure. I didn’t ask about that. But I can find out. Suppose I go and bring her!”
“Do,” said the professor. “I’d like to see if she is the same one. She certainly gave promise of being a rare mind. I had the pleasure of looking over her examination papers—”
But Powers had already seized his hat and gone out the door. There was a special reason why he wanted to “put one over” on the men who were sponsoring the other candidates, and he didn’t mean to lose a single chance. He went at once to the school telephone and called up Mrs. Bryant, asking her to ask Miss Radway to be ready to come back with him.
And so it was that Joyce, summoned from her preparation of the Bible school lesson for the next day, hurried into a pretty little blue voile she had just finished and was ready when Mr. Powers arrived to go before the school board.
In a few minutes, she stood at last before Professor Harrington, who had wasted many precious hours of his time, to say nothing of telephone charges and letters, trying to locate this special teacher, and when she finally stood before him, he looked into her clear blue eyes and said to himself, That’s the girl I want. And aloud, to the school board, he said gravely, “I feel sure, from what I know of Miss Radway’s work, that she is eminently fitted to teach in our school.”
Joyce lifted astonished eyes to the fine, scholarly face and didn’t in the least recognize him. But she had sense enough left in spite of her perturbation not to say so, and in a few minutes, she was dismissed from the room and the vote was carried in her favor.
The fact was, every man of them was prepossessed in her as soon as he looked into her eyes, and the three bobbed-haired candidates hadn’t a chance, with her on the spot.
“But I thought she was a cook!” said one wife when her husband got home from the school board meeting and told her about the election of the new teacher. “Mrs. Powers told me she got dinner for her one night when she had company.”
“I asked Powers about that,” her husband answered. “It seems she just did it to help them out when she first came, while she was looking for a job. Powers said he never tasted such cooking. His wife offered her twenty-five dollars just to stay and cook dinner on Sunday for some guests, and she wouldn’t do it.”
“Well, I don’t blame her. Mrs. Powers is very unpleasant to get along with, all the maids say. But it does seem strange to hire a cook to teach in the school. I think we’ll send Genevieve to a private school this fall.”
“No, we won’t send Genevieve to any private school, not if I have anything to say about it, and I guess I’d have to pay the bills. Not while I’m on the school board either. How do you think that would make me look?”
“You could resign. You could say you didn’t approve of having cooks teach our children.”
“Well, I do approve. It’s a pity Genevieve couldn’t learn to cook, too. I’ve seen this girl, and I want my children under her. I count it a privilege to have them under her. I like her looks. She doesn’t paint her face or bob her hair or wear clothes way up to her knees. And she doesn’t wear dangly earrings in her ears or pull out her eyebrows. She wears neat, sensible, pretty things and looks like a good girl, and that’s the kind we want our little children under. That Miss Harlow you wanted me to vote for makes eyes at every man that comes near her, married or single. This girl tends to her business and knows what she’s about. I voted for her, and I mean to stick by her. Now! I want it understood that she is not a cook. She may know how to cook, but that talk about her being a cook doesn’t go another step from his house! Understand! If it does, there’s going to be a big overhauling somewhere.”
“Oh, of course, if you’ve taken her up,” said his wife disagreeably. “It seems she has all the men on her side even if she doesn’t make eyes at them.”
“She doesn’t need to. She’s a good girl, and she doesn’t want ’em; and that’s the kind the children ought to have.”
So Joyce was established in the primary department of the Silverton School under the very immediate supervision of the new superintendent, who paid her marked attention from the first, to her evident embarrassment.
Joyce was not averse to having friends, nor to going out and having good times like other girls, but it happened that the very first thing this luckless young man asked her to was a dance, and she had to tell him she didn’t dance.