Not My Will and The Light in My Window (41 page)

“Jerry Parnell! That good-looking guy that sings in the choir? You’d better marry him tomorrow. I wouldn’t trust him until June!”

Oh, why had she been so blind? Or why hadn’t someone warned her? Surely
someone
had seen how things were going during those spring weeks. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had suspected something earlier, but to have gone on blindly until the day after the invitations were mailed and then to have found Jerry kissing Grace Sharp! It had been a horrible time, with Grace giggling in embarrassment and Jerry standing white-faced and stricken. Jerry’s almost tearful pleading after Grace had left them alone had not helped at all. She was sure that everyone except herself had been aware of Grace’s conquest of the fickle Jerry, and the thought made her writhe. Daddy’s and Mother Bess’s attempts to comfort her were met with stony refusal to be consoled, and the next day she had left for the city with her half of the bank account. She could never live in that community again. She meant it when she said she would never go home!

During those first weeks Jerry had written several times, but she had returned his letters unopened. At last, when she had found a note from him in a letter from Jack, she had told the folks at home that they must never send even a message from him again. She intended to make a new place in life for herself
here in the city, and the years in Midbury were now a closed chapter. She did not think that Daddy and Mother missed her, though they wrote often even when she was careless about answering. Jack and Judy were big children now, and they were a happy family without her. She was sure that Daddy had never loved her mother or he could not have been so happy with Mother Bess. Mother had not loved Joe Gilpin and
had
loved Daddy. Wasn’t life a mess? She, herself, had always been a misfit. She had had her dream, but it had been only a dream, for Jerry had not been true though she had loved him completely. Life held no more dreams for her, for real love never came twice. Hereafter she must walk alone.

For tonight, she was thankful for this place to stay. The Kings had reminded her that it was an answer to prayer, and in the darkness she murmured a prayer of gratitude. If God were so willing to hear, she had hopes that someday soon He would bring the kind of work she wanted.

T
he next day Hope learned more of the work of the Institute. From her kitchen window she saw children of all ages flocking through the doors of the old church. She heard singing and the sound of noisy games. In the afternoon she saw mothers with babies coming from every direction, and it so interested her that she forgot she had planned to go job hunting. She went through the side gate and across the paved court back of the church. The door was open, and she entered the coolness of the basement. In a large room the mothers were seated along the wall while Eleanor and Billy and a white-coated man worked at the big table in the center. Eleanor was weighing the babies and marking the weights on a chart, while Billy helped the doctor with his examinations. Several older girls were proudly bringing supplies or helping to quiet restless little ones. It all looked so fascinating that Hope wished she were a part of it. Just then Eleanor spied her and called.

“Oh, Hope, you’re just the one I need! Can you weigh these babies while I talk to some of the mothers about the new formulas the doctor is giving them? Check the weights on this chart, and be sure you get them all.”

So Hope found herself a part of the busy scene. Some of the babies were fat little rogues who apparently thrived on the heat and dirt about them. Some were shining with cleanness, and some were soiled and sticky. Some were pitifully thin and pale, and with this latter group Billy and the doctor were working. It
was to the mothers of these little ones that Eleanor was explaining the new formulas, and Hope noticed that from a cupboard in the corner came packages of the necessary ingredients.

“How do you like our baby clinic?” asked Eleanor after the last of the mothers had smiled her thanks and gone off down the street.

“I think it’s grand! Do you do it every day?”

“Oh no! Life is too busy for that, though Billy and the doctor would like it. Most of them come in only once in two weeks. A few of the most frail ones come twice a week so that Dr. Ben can keep an eye on them. By the way, you didn’t meet Ben, did you?”

Hope liked Dr. Ben Madison at once. He was a slight, dark young man on whom either weariness or pain had left its mark. He smiled in friendly fashion and greeted her as a fellow worker. As he turned away from them to enter his car, Hope noticed that he limped slightly. Later Eleanor told her more about the doctor.

“Ben is a product of this neighborhood. He came to the Institute when he was a small boy. He accepted the Lord here, and now he gives freely of his time and knowledge to help other children in like circumstances. He has a fine practice downtown, but this is his love.”

Hope, who had watched the doctor as he and Billy worked together, had decided in her own mind that the doctor’s
real
love was Billy, but she said nothing of this. Eleanor led the way into another basement room, where six or seven boys were engaged in construction of model airplanes.

“They’re in a contest with the boys from Miller Park. The poor youngsters won’t make much of a showing for they haven’t enough material with which to work, and no one has time to help them. All we can do is to give them this room to work in.”

She opened another door and called a greeting to a group of girls. “Such a noise! You sound like blackbirds in the treetops. How go the skirts? I’ll try to come back and show you how to make the plackets in about half an hour.”

As they climbed the wide stairs to the sanctuary above, Eleanor sighed. “Oh, for helpers enough to do a real work here! We could use a half dozen more. There’s so much that we dream of doing.”

They stood for a few minutes at the back of the church. Through the stained glass of the great windows the light fell on the deserted pews where once the rich and proud of the city worshiped. The pews were shabby now. The velvet cushions had long since worn out. The walls were discolored by smoke and streaked by rain that had discovered cracks in the slate roof. The floor was bare. But the graceful arches of the high ceiling still stretched above as of yore, and the beautiful carving of the altar table and the pulpit was unchanged by the time that had passed since the world’s best known and loved evangelist had stood there with his young bride. From that pulpit had spoken some of the nation’s greatest preachers, and a president of our country had worshiped there. In a book titled
America’s Classic Architecture
several pages were devoted to this old church. Eleanor told these things to Hope, and the thought of all that had transpired inside these walls awed them both. Yet as she went back to the house to prepare the evening meal it was not of the history of the church that Hope was thinking. She was seeing again that basement room full of mothers and babies, and a tired young doctor working among them.

That evening, while the Kings attended a meeting at Bethel College, Hope explored the lawn and gardens under Chad’s guidance. They did not go off the walks, for the shrubs and vines had grown unpruned for years and now formed an almost impenetrable jungle.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to fix up this lawn as it should be?” said Hope as they stood looking down a path that ran between tall lilac bushes. They tried to follow the path but could go only a few feet before they were stopped by tangled branches.

“No can do,” said Chad, brushing a dirty little hand across his forehead where a wave of tawny hair was falling into his eyes. “I’ve been wanting to chop and dig here but Daddy says not until someone shows me how. Oh, there’s a pool back behind these bushes, but it’s all dirty. Come and see.”

Just where the walk divided stood the remains of a once magnificent fountain. The stone youth who had poured water from an uplifted shell onto the rocks below was now sadly cracked and inglorious. A limb from a nearby tree had fallen across him and broken one arm. Birds had built a nest in the
shell. The drain of the pool below had become clogged, and the trash that filled it had been soaked and resoaked with successive rains.

“What a place for mosquitoes!” cried Hope. “Give me that stick, Chad, and I’ll open that drain. No wonder your face is all bumps. There. That’s better! Now we’ll let it drain, and maybe your daddy will let us clean it all out tomorrow.”

Between the walk and the side fence they found evidences of a former garden—dried peony bushes, hollyhock stalks, chrysanthemums that had lived bravely through the years, and leaves that told of tulips and iris. Rose bushes thrust out thorny arms and caught the explorers when they tried to reach the gate that led to the vegetable garden behind the lawn, so they returned to the house and washed off the dirt they had acquired.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” Hope promised the little boy.

“Yes, an’ we’ll ask Daddy if we can chop and chop till we get all the old stuff chopped away and we can go down all the paths, won’t we? It’s like the Sleeping Beauty’s hedge that Mary Lou told me about.”

“And who is Mary Lou?” asked Hope, scrubbing at the grimy little hands.

“Oh, she’s my auntie. She lives on a big farm. Mother and I used to live there. I don’t call her aunt. I can’t remember to. She’s not old enough to be an aunt. She knows lots of things and she tells me. She’s going to be a doctor—a Miss Doctor—and I’m going to be Mr. Doctor, an’ we’re going to live together.”

“How fine! There, you’re all clean once more. Now trot in and get ready for bed. Mother said you could do it all alone.”

“I can. But I don’t like to. That’s the only thing I don’t like about being my folks’ child. They go away and let me go to bed alone. Mrs. O’Shea
never
does that. She puts Patsy to bed her own self.”

“I’m sure your mother and father don’t go away unless they have to.”

“No—o, I guess they don’t, but that doesn’t make it any funner.”

“You can’t expect everything to be fun. You’re a big boy now, and it helps your mother and father to know you can do so well by yourself.

“I don’t see how, but I’ll do it because Mother said I had to. When she says I have to, I really have to. And he’s not my father. He’s my daddy. My father’s in heaven. Is your father in heaven, Hope?”

“Yes, we both have a Father in heaven.”

“Do you have any brothers and sisters, Hope?”

“Yes, a brother nine years old and a sister seven.”

“Do they go to bed alone?”

“Oh yes, when their mother says they must.”

“Well,” with a sigh, “I guess I’ll do it right now. I’ll even say my prayers alone. Good night, Hope. I’m glad you came here to live.”

Hope intended to lie awake as she had been accustomed to do, thinking of the unhappy events of the past months and feeding the bitterness in her soul with imaginary pictures of the wedding Jerry and Grace would have in the home church, with the same bridesmaids she had planned and everyone gay and happy with no thought of the one who should have been the bride. But the unusual activities of the day had made her drowsy, and she fell asleep before she had time to get the stage set for the drama.

W
hen Hope awakened the next morning and tiptoed out to get breakfast before the rest of the family should be up, she remembered her intention to go seeking a better job. She did not want to do it, for every time she thought of it the face of Mr. Skeen, with its sickening smile, rose before her and sent cold chills down her back. However, she could not be a cook all her life, so she would have to get out and hustle. Hope really was grateful to God for bringing her here just when she needed both a room and a job, but Mrs. King could eventually get some one who could fill the place better than she could. She was sure she could find another secretarial job—one where there would be no Mr. Skeen.

At breakfast Chad greeted her joyfully. “Miss Hope, Daddy says we can chop and dig all we please if we be careful and if we let him tell us where to chop.”

Dr. King smiled at the enthusiastic little boy and said, “I don’t want you to think you must undertake our landscaping, Miss Hope. Chad says you want to help him chop and dig.”

“Indeed I do,” said Hope, laying aside her plans. She could look for a job tomorrow. “After I get the morning work done and have been to market, I’d like to help him. We could clean out that pool and get rid of the mosquitoes, and I’d like to clear away some of the brush from the fall flowers that are trying to fight through.”

“Flowers?” cried Eleanor in delight. “What kind?”

“Chrysanthemums, cosmos, and asters that have seeded themselves, a big clump of goldenrod, and several others.”

“Grand! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have a really lovely garden? A place where the little children could play and pick flowers and maybe learn to grow gardens for themselves. I dream of it, and if it became a reality I’d—”

She stopped and choked over her own enthusiasm at such a possibility. Dr. King looked across the table, his eyes shining in sympathy, and said, “Keep on dreaming, Len, honey. Such dreams have a way of coming true. But for today, with the mercury pushing one hundred, don’t try to help in any other way. Remember, I’m your boss.”

Eleanor laughed ruefully. “Oh, I’ll remember. It’s hard to get used to being babied. I am not usually so fragile, Hope. But I got too hot in Mother’s berry patch a few weeks ago and am still paying for it. I’ll be glad when this heat is gone.”

Dr. King had arisen to leave the room, and as he passed his wife’s chair he ran his hand lightly over the red-brown curls.

“No, in spite of her brilliant plumage, she isn’t a topical fowl. She’s a snow bird, I guess.”

“More like a fat gray junco,” said Eleanor with a laugh. Then she turned to Hope and spoke seriously.

“Our day at the Institute begins at nine o’clock—that is, the regular work. One of the helpers gets here at seven to open the nursery and take in the children whose mothers go to work. Just before nine Billy and Ben—when he can—come in and we have devotions together. We’d like to have you come over, too. It gives us a good start for the day.”