The Window-Gazer Part 31

CHAPTER XXII

It may be said with fairness that the reception given by Miss Campion for her nephew's bride left Bainbridge thoughtful. They had expected the bride to be different, and they had found her to be different from what they had expected. They could not place her; and, in Bainbridge, everyone is placed.

"I understood," said Mrs. T. L. Lawson, whose word in intellectual matters was final, "that young Mrs. Spence was wholly uneducated. A school teacher who met her on the train told my dressmaker that she had heard her admit the fact with her own lips. So, naturally, not wis.h.i.+ng to embarra.s.s a newcomer, I confined my remarks to the simplest matters.

She did not say very much but I must confess--you will scarcely believe it--I actually got the impression that she was accommodating her conversation to me."

"Oh, surely not!" from a shocked chorus.

"It is just a manner she affects," comforted Mrs. Burton Holmes. "Far, far too a.s.sured, in my opinion, for a young bride. I hope it does not denote a certain lack of fine feeling. In a girl who had been brought up to an a.s.sured social position, such a manner might be understood.

But--well, all I can say is that I heard from my friend Marion Walford yesterday, and she a.s.sured me that Mrs. Spence is quite unknown in Vancouver society. But, of course, dear Marion knows only the very smartest people. For myself I do not allow these distinctions to affect me. If only for dear Miss Campion's sake I determined to be perfectly friendly. But I felt that, in justice to everybody, it might be well for her to know that we know. So I asked her, casually, if she were well acquainted with the Walfords. At first she looked as if she had never heard of them, and then--'Oh, do you mean the soap people?' she said. 'I don't know them--but one sees their bill-boards everywhere.'

It was almost as if--"

"Oh--absurd!" echoed the chorus. "Though if she is really English,"

ventured one of them, "she might, you know. The English have such a horror of trade."

These social and educational puzzles were as nothing to the religious problem. Bainbridge, who had seen Desire more or less regularly at church, had taken for granted that in this respect, at least, she was even as they were. But, after the reception, Mrs. Pennington thought not.

"I felt quite worried about our pretty bride," said Mrs. Pennington.

"You know how we all hoped that when the dear professor married he would become more orthodox. Science is so unsettling. And married men so often do. But--" she sighed.

"Surely not a free thinker?" ventured one in a subdued whisper.

"Or a Christian Scientist?" with equal horror.

Mrs. Pennington intimated that she had not yet sufficient data to decide. "But," she added, solemnly, "she is not a. Presbyterian."

"She goes to church."

"Yes. She was quite frank about that. She did not scruple to say that she goes to please Miss Campion and because 'it is all so new.'"

"New?"

"Exactly what I said to her. I said, 'New?' My dear, what you do mean--new?' And she tipped her eyebrows in that oriental way she has and said, 'Why, just new. I have never been to church, you know!'"

"Oh, impossible--in this country!"

"Yes, imagine it! Perhaps she saw my disapproval for she added, 'We had a prayer-book in the house, though.' As if it were quite the same thing."

One of the more optimistic members of the chorus thought that this might show some connection with the Church of England. But Mrs.

Pennington shook her head.

"Hardly, I think. Her language was not such as to encourage such a hope. The very next thing she said to me was, 'Don't you think the prayer-book is lovely?'"

"Oh!--not really?"

"I admit I was shocked. I am not," said Mrs. Pennington, "a Church of England woman. But I am broad-minded, I hope. And I have more respect for ANY sacred work than to speak of it as 'lovely.' In fact, in all kindness, I must say that I fear the poor child is a veritable heathen."

This conclusion was felt to be sound, logically, but without great practical significance. The veritable heathen persisted in church-going to such an extent that she tired out several of the most orthodox and it was rumored that she even went so far as to discuss the sermon afterward. "Just as if," said Mrs. Pennington, "it were a lecture or a play or something."

As a matter of fact, Desire was intensely interested in sermons. She had so seldom heard any that the weekly doling out of truth by the Rev.

Mr. McClintock had all the fascination of a new experience. Mr.

McClintock was of the type which does not falter in its message. He had no doubts. He had thought out every possible spiritual problem as a young man and had seen no reason for thinking them out a second time.

What he had accepted at twenty, he believed at sixty, with this difference that while at twenty some of his conclusions had caused him sleepless nights, at sixty they were accepted with complacency. No questioning pierced the hard enamel of his a.s.surance. He saw no second side to anything because he never turned it over. He had a way of saying "I believe" which was absolutely final.

Desire had been collecting Mr. McClintock's beliefs carefully. They fascinated her. She often woke up in the night thinking of them, wondering at their strange diversity and speculating as to the ultimate discovery of some missing piece which might make them all fit in. It was because she was afraid of missing this master-bit that she went to church so regularly.

The Sunday after the reception was exceptionally hot. It was exceptionally dusty too, for Bainbridge tolerated no water carts on Sunday. It was one of those Sundays when people have headaches. Aunt Caroline had a head-ache. She felt that it would be most unwise to venture out. She even suggested that, no doubt, Desire had a headache, too.

"But I haven't," said that downright young person, looking provokingly cool and energetic. Her husband groaned.

"Don't look at me," he said hastily. "My excuse is not hallowed by antiquity like Aunt's but it is equally effective. I have to go down to the cellar to make ice-cream."

This, as Desire knew, was perfectly legitimate. No ice-cream of any kind could be bought in Bainbridge on Sunday. Therefore a certain proportion of the population had to descend into its cellars and make it. It was even possible to tell, if one were curious, how many families were going to have ice-cream for dinner by counting the empty seats at morning service. Nearly all of the more prominent families owned freezers while many of those who were freezerless did not go to church, anyway. From which it would seem that, in Bainbridge at least, the righteous had prospered.

On this hot morning, therefore, Desire collected Mr. McClintock's belief alone. It was an especially puzzling one, having to do with the origin and meaning of pain and founded upon the text, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."

"There is a tendency among modern translators," began Mr. McClintock, "a tendency which I deplore, to render the word 'chasteneth' as 'teacheth or directeth.' This rendering, in my opinion, is regrettably lax. We will therefore confine our attention to the older version. It is my belief that...."

Desire listened attentively to a lengthy and blood-curdling exposition of this belief and was still in the daze which followed the hearty singing of the doxology on top of it when the a.s.sistant Sunday School Superintendent asked her to take a cla.s.s. He was a very hot a.s.sistant and a very hurried one. Even while he spoke to Desire his eye wandered past her to some of his flock who were escaping by the church door.

"Do take a cla.s.s, Mrs. Spence," he urged.

"Do you mean teach one?" asked Desire. "I'm sorry, but I don't know how."

"Beg pardon? Oh, but of course you do. It is only for today. We are so short. You will do splendidly, I'm sure. They are very little girls and it's in the Old Testament."

"But I don't--"

"Oh, that will be quite all right. It's Moses. Quite easy."

"I have never--"

"It doesn't matter, really. Just the plain story, you know. I find myself the best way is to adopt a cheerful, conversational manner and keep them from asking questions. At that age they never ask the right ones. Stump you every time if you're not careful. Give them the facts.

They'll understand them later."

"I don't understand them myself," objected Desire. But by this time the a.s.sistant's eye was quite distracted.

"So very good of you," he murmured, "if you will come this way--"

Desire went that way and presently found herself seated in the Sunday School room in a blazing bar of sunlight and facing a row of small Bainbridgers, surprisingly brisk and wide-awake considering the weather.

"We usually have our boys' and girls' cla.s.ses separate," explained the a.s.sistant. "But this is a mixed cla.s.s as you see."

Desire saw that the mixture consisted of a very round boy in a very stiff sailor suit.

"Now children, Mrs. Spence is going to tell you about Moses. Mrs.

Spence is a newcomer. We must make her welcome and show her how well behaved we are."