Joyce didn’t like to go around flaunting her principles and never talked about those things unless she had to, but he argued the question with her. He certainly wanted to take her to that dance. But when it came to arguing, Joyce just smiled and said she was sorry to seem ungracious, but she didn’t care to learn to dance. Well, would she go to an orchestra concert in the city with him then? Yes, she said she would enjoy that. So they went. But he, poor soul, felt himself called upon to bring Joyce into a better way of thinking about dancing, “a more modern view,” he called it, and they certainly did not get on very well.
Then he told her how he had hunted for her in Meadow Brook and how he had admired her from seeing her just once, how she was different from other girls—that was what he admired about her—and Joyce looked up with a smile and said, “Then why are you trying to make me over just like all the rest?” He looked at her a moment embarrassedly and then began to laugh.
“No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t believe I do want to. I like you just as you are.” After that they talked about books and summer and the beautiful meadows about Meadow Brook, and they seemed quite good friends. He asked her why she ran away, and she said evasively that it was hard for her to stay where she and her aunt had been happy so many years, and she felt it would be better for everybody if she went, and went quietly, without waiting to bid all her dear friends good-bye. She saw he had not been intimate with any of her intimate friends and rightly surmised that he had not heard anything peculiar about her going.
It did occur to her that he might write back sometime and speak about her to someone, but it seemed rather unlikely; and she was going to write home pretty soon anyway, so she thought no more of the matter.
A very pleasant friendship sprang up between Joyce and John Harrington. Not that there was anything sentimental about it, as yet. John Harrington might express his admiration of a girl, but that was all until he was quite sure of himself, also quite sure of her. It was one thing to run after a new teacher with all his heart. It was quite another thing to commit himself personally. Harrington was a most judicious young man. He would not have been called to take charge of the Silverton School if he had not been. He was well satisfied in his mind as to his own feelings toward Joyce, but it was not yet time to commit himself. Joyce needed molding and modifying. She needed modernizing somewhat before she would be fit to become the wife of a superintendent. So he set himself to mold and modernize her.
Joyce was simple-hearted and happy. She loved her work, and she was having a good time. The superintendent did not pick her out to focus his entire attention on her and make her an object of jealousy; therefore she enjoyed the occasional trips to the city to hear some fine music and the constantly kindly helpfulness of the young man as her head in the school. Things were going well with her, and she thanked God every night.
Somehow, however, with Harrington’s advent there had come so many new things that her time was more than filled. The letters she had planned to write to Meadow Brook were still unwritten, and the more she thought about them (usually at night after she had gone to bed and was reviewing the day), the harder they seemed to write. How to explain her going, what to say about Nan and Gene. It would be so disagreeable if Nan should take it into her head to come after her and coax her to come back and live with them. Nan hated housework, and she could not help knowing that she was valuable to her in that way. No, she was not yet ready to write home.
So the days drifted by, full of hard work and pleasantness. She loved her young pupils, and they loved her. Often they invited her to their homes, and here she met many pleasant people who showed themselves as more than friendly. She could have spent every evening in a merry round if she had chosen. But, here again, the fact that she was a very old-fashioned girl and neither danced nor played bridge nor mah-jongg, nor could be persuaded to learn, set her apart and saved many evenings for reading and study and necessary sewing. People tried to persuade her at first, laughed at her and teased her, but she remained sweetly firm yet without preaching to them, and they finally, good-naturedly let her alone.
Sometimes she had little gatherings of two or three people in her wee house and served them chocolate and delectable little cakes or Welsh rabbit or hot pancakes made on her little electric grill. Harrington was occasionally included in these gatherings. No, she never received young men alone. She told them they could not come without some woman friend with them. They laughed at her old-fashioned ideas, but they went away and found some quiet elderly friend and came again. Joyce’s home began to have a reputation all its own, showing a girl could live alone and yet keep free from all the unconventions of the modern world. If anyone grew troublesome, there was always Mrs. Bryant to whom she might call, and Mrs. Bryant understood and always happened in whenever she knew Joyce had a caller who might want to stay alone.
So the fall passed, and the winter entered in.
Jim had finished the chimney and fireplace, and the little room was warm and cozy, even on a bitter November evening with the wind howling outside.
It had not taken Harrington long to find out which was the most influential and intellectual church in the community and to connect himself with it. Thereafter, he set about bringing Joyce to go with him sometime. He felt if she could but listen to the wise and modern thoughts of this most educated theologian, who preached at his chosen church, it would be easier to win her from some of her narrow views. But when he asked her to go to church with him one evening, she told him she could not leave her own, that she had asked her Sunday school class to go with her that night. When he said, then, they would go the next Sunday night, she looked at him with her clear eyes and said, “I’m sorry to have to say no again, but I cannot go to that church at all. That minister dishonors my Lord, and I do not feel I can ever listen to him again.”
He told her it sounded pharisaical for a young girl like herself to set up to criticize a man of the minister’s years and standing. Didn’t she know that the great denomination for which he stood was back of him, and that they knew better than she did, a young girl with little experience? Besides, what about that Bible verse that said you mustn’t speak evil of dignitaries? She had been taught by dear old-fashioned people, and it was beautiful to look back on such an upbringing, but of course it wasn’t progress to stay just where her forefathers had stood. She ought to go on to higher realms of thought. It wasn’t Christian to stand still. Things were not as they used to be. Science and art and everything else had progressed and grown; why shouldn’t religion? People had learned more of God and grown wiser. They had learned that He was not the same God their fathers had supposed.
Her answer was to look at him steadily with rising color and repeat, “‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.’ And I’m not speaking evil of dignitaries. I’m telling you he dishonored my Lord. The Bible says, ‘From such turn away.’”
“Oh, now, don’t you think you are pressing a point too far?” he said. “Of course Christ is the same; it’s our views of Him that have changed. We have grown and are able to see Him in a bigger, broader sense, as a grand example for the whole world, not just a little personal God who attends to each detail of our lives.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t care much about Him if He wasn’t personal and didn’t care for the details of my life,” she said. “I take great pleasure in that verse: ‘He knoweth the way that I take,’ and ‘The very hairs of your head are all numbered,’ and ‘Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.’ And my God isn’t a little one, either, because He attends to all the details. He wouldn’t be a God at all if He didn’t.”
“I certainly wish I had your memory,” said the young man with a look of admiration. “You have a fine mind. You would have made a good lawyer. But I hate to see you so narrow. It isn’t like you in other things to be narrow.”
“‘Enter ye in at the strait gate,’” began Joyce thoughtfully, “‘for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in thereat: Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’”
“And so you are actually priding yourself on being narrow!” He spoke almost angrily. It was annoying to have her so stubborn, so ignorant of modern ideas, so bound by these old traditions.
“No,” she said sadly. “Those are not my words. They are my Lord’s. I didn’t make them. I’m only telling you why I’m narrow, as you say.”
“Well, if you’d only go to a respectable church and hear some really good teaching along intellectual lines, I feel sure you are bright enough and open-minded enough to give up these silly, pharisaical ideas. They are really too egotistical for a sweet young girl like you.”
Joyce lifted her eyes sadly to his.
“You don’t understand because you can’t,” she said. “Your eyes are blinded. There are a great many people like that nowadays. I didn’t know it till I came away from Meadow Brook. I didn’t understand what the verse meant when it said that the natural man could not understand the things of the Spirit. Now I know. You can’t understand because you haven’t been born again.”
The young man made an impatient movement.
“Oh, I dislike that phrase. Please don’t use it. It’s so ridiculous to talk that way in this age of the world.”
“Jesus Christ used it,” said Joyce quietly.
“Well, it isn’t a thing to be talked about,” he said crossly. “How should you propose to say I’m not ‘born again,’ as you say it?”
“Because you don’t understand. Because you can listen to a minister who doesn’t believe that Jesus died to shed his blood to wash away our sins. Because you can listen to a man who can think of any other word to use, and who said the blind man only thought he was blind, and Jesus just woke him up to open his eyes and use them. I heard him say all those things, and I can’t go and listen to him anymore. It is dishonoring my Lord to hear him.”
“Well, I think the person that brought you up was awfully to blame,” he said with contempt in his voice. “To saddle anybody with as many traditional doctrines as you seem to have is a sin. Whoever it was will have to answer for it someday. You have an unusually fine mind, and if you would once give up these foolish legends and prejudices with which your mind is filled, you would be a brilliant woman with a great future before you.”
Joyce stood up and looked at him gravely, her eyes brilliant, her cheeks flushed.
“I may not be a brilliant woman,” she said sweetly, “but I certainly have a great future before me. I’m going to live and reign with Jesus Christ someday, and I don’t really think it matters so very much whether I’m brilliant down here or not with that in view. But you’ll have to excuse me from any further talk on this subject. You have cast a slur on my faith, and we really haven’t anything in common when you do that. I know my Christ, and you don’t seem to. I must go now.”
She swept out of his office, where he had summoned her on pretext of consulting her about some of her scholars who were to be promoted. There was something so final about her going that it quite depressed him, and after a night’s wakefulness he went to see her and had the good grace to apologize to her and to say he would like her to try to show him what she meant by her faith.
“If you will come to the church where I go, you will find out much better than I can teach you,” she said, for she did not more than half believe that he wanted to know.
So he agreed to go with her the following Sunday evening, and she began to mention his name in her prayers as she knelt in the moonlight of her little room. “Dear Father, show me how to make him understand,” she prayed. But always her prayer ended with: “Find Darcy, please, and don’t let him lose the way home, for Christ’s sake.”
Chapter 23
Matters had come to such a pass in the Massey home that Eugene and his wife scarcely had a pleasant word to say to one another, and Nan spent much time weeping.
She had ransacked the house to find some papers of her mother-in-law’s that would prove that the house was theirs but had found nothing. On the contrary, there were letters and papers that showed that both Gene’s mother and his aunt had always known that the house belonged to Joyce. There were also references to “money,” and Nan began to fear that Gene and she would have nothing. Gene’s business wasn’t very good, and it had been growing worse of late, because he was so distracted by this matter of the will that he scarcely gave any attention at all to it; and Nan was running up terrible bills that she dared not tell him about, hoping every day that Joyce would turn up and matters would straighten out. But Joyce did not return, and every day the bills grew.
At first, when she found them, Nan considered burning these letters that said so much about the property, but after reading them carefully over again, she was afraid to do so, lest somehow that would be only making a bad matter worse. What if Joyce knew of these letters and should return someday and demand them? So she purchased a strong metal box, locked them therein, and hid them among her own private possessions. If they were ever demanded, she could say she had put them away for safekeeping. If they were not, and it came out that the house was theirs after all, she could easily burn them sometime.
But things were going from bad to worse, and after two of the tradesmen whom she owed had visited her, demanding their money when she had none to give them, she decided that something radical must be done.
So she dressed herself in deep mourning one day and went to call on the minister.
There were dark circles under her eyes and a sad droop to her lips. She carried a black-bordered handkerchief and asked to see Dr. Ballantine privately.
Mrs. Ballantine took her into the study, and Nan addressed herself to him with instant tears.
“Oh, Dr. Ballantine,” she said, stanching the flood with her handkerchief and sinking into the offered chair, “I’m so miserable and unhappy! I simply had to come and see you!”
Doctor Ballantine put up his pen and slipped a blotter over the sermon he was just finishing for the next day and expressed himself sympathetically, wondering anxiously what had happened. Had this woman come to tell him of some great tragedy or to confess her sins? Alarm filled his heart and instant premonitions of danger to Joyce. Somehow Nan was not the kind of woman whom one would ever think of in connection with any religious convictions. It never even entered the good man’s heart that she had come to inquire about her soul. Afterward he thought of this with some wonder and self-reproach.
But Nan recovered from her brief emotion and began to talk.
“It’s about my husband’s cousin, Joyce Radway,” she stated, and the good doctor was instant attention. “You see, we haven’t heard from her since she went away.”
“Is that so?” said Dr. Ballantine with a startled tone. “Where is she? Perhaps you would like to have me write or telegraph to the minister there to learn of her safety. Are you afraid she is ill?”
“Oh, we don’t know,” wailed Nan, breaking down again. “We don’t even know where she is. She hasn’t told us!”
“You don’t know? She hasn’t told you? Why,” said the minister, half rising from his seat, “that’s not at all like Joyce to leave you in anxiety. Didn’t she tell you where she was going?”
“No,” sobbed Nan. “No, she didn’t tell us. She just walked out of the house without saying a word and never came back. We thought of course she would come back pretty soon. She always did before when she got upset or angry—”
“Upset? Angry?” said the puzzled minister. “What, may I ask, what do you think she was angry at?”
“Oh, nothing at all, just a little thing. You know Joyce has a fearful temper. Or perhaps you don’t know it. Those quiet, mild people never do show up what they are till you come to live with them. Of course, I don’t blame poor Joyce. She had to be on such a strain all the time poor Mother was ill. She wouldn’t let a person but Joyce come near her, and it was almost more than the gir
l could bear. I sometimes used to be afraid she would go out of her mind before the end came, there were so many demands made upon her. And a young girl like that wants to have a good time, you know—”
“That doesn’t sound like Joyce.” The minister spoke gravely. “She was devoted to Mrs. Massey. You haven’t known her as long as I have. She was only a tiny child when I came here, you know, and Mother and I—we loved her. She was like our little one that was taken away.”
“Yes, I know she was attractive,” Nan hastened to say, mopping her eyes daintily. “And she liked to pose as a dutiful daughter. Still, you know, Dr. Ballantine, a girl likes a good time. I knew you thought a good deal of her and were interested in her welfare and all, and that’s why I came to you. I haven’t told my husband I was coming. I don’t know what he would say if he knew. He’s very proud and independent, and he feels this thing intensely. But I just thought I would come to you to see if you couldn’t help find Joyce. You know her friends and know her so well. I thought you might know some place to look for her that hasn’t occurred to us. We have been here so short a time. But you mustn’t tell my husband. You must promise me that before we begin.”
“It’s never a good thing for a woman to hide a thing from her husband,” said the minister, still gravely. “Mrs. Massey, my advice to you is to go home and tell your husband you have spoken to me before you tell me anything more about it. Then if he wishes me to be in your confidence further, we can go on from there.”
“Oh, Dr. Ballantine!” broke out Nan afresh with frightened tears. “I couldn’t possibly do that. You see, he is so sensitive about it because it was his words that made Joyce angry. He told her, very kindly—he always speaks gently in his family—and I was right in the room when he did it. I heard every word. There wasn’t the least reason in the world for her to get angry, only she was just in the mood for it. She’s very temperamental, you know. He asked her to please not let her electric light burn all night, that the bill had just come in and was pretty large, and we must all try to remember and turn the lights out whenever they were not needed. Now, you know there wasn’t anything in that to make a girl get furious and stamp her foot and fling herself out of the kitchen in a fit. I was just putting on dinner when she went, and I thought of course she would come back pretty soon. She always did before. But this time she didn’t. I suppose she must have been waiting for us to come out and coax her back, but we thought it wisest not to run after her, for we had noticed ever since Mother’s death that she showed a tendency to get into a huff and stay there, and we thought if we just went quietly about and ignored her temper, she would come out of it sooner. That’s the way we always do with the children.”