In the Way (18 page)

             
The minister was praying and lingering in prayer for his church. He was young and these were his first people, and he fairly agonized over them, as a mother will with her first child, whenever they were in danger or doing wrong. It hurt his sensitive nature to have them grieve their Saviour. His high-strung temperament was constantly feeling the slights put upon his Master and theirs. Would they never come to Christ and live for him? Must Satan ever have the mastery? He would not give up the work though he could not see his way clear before him; but he felt sorely discouraged now at the outset. It was the old weary problems so often quoted from Lowell:

             
Truth forever on the scaffold,

             
              Wrong forever on the throne,—

             
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown

             
              Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

JOSEPH Benedict stood before the Haskins door and knocked as an evening caller knocks. He had never stood there in such capacity before. He had never gone to call upon a young woman before, but all the strangeness of his position was overcome by the solemn errand which he felt he had to perform. He had taken vows upon himself with this girl that they would both try to live a Christian life. Without any instruction in the matter, _Joseph understood that a public ball was no place in which to keep such a contract. It is a strange fact that the untutored, un-Christian mind almost always puts down theatre-going, dancing, card-playing, and the like as things unfit for a follower of Jesus. You will find this is especially the case among young men who have been brought up in the country and are familiar with only the crudest kinds of these amusements. Whether they would be refined into thinking differently by coming into constant contact with worldly Christians is a question. But these are by no means all found in the cities. It is true that sometimes such persons, when they become Christians themselves, will be found indulging in and condoning such amusements; but usually before they come to Christ they will criticise them in one who professes Christianity. Such people as Joseph will often have higher ideals for Christians than they have for themselves.

              “Is Miss Ellen in?” he asked of the youngest Haskins, who opened the door and his own mouth at the same time and at about the same width. The boy seemed not to understand, and the question had to be asked again. Then the boy retreated, leaving the door wide open and revealing the Haskins sitting room with the family just gathering after supper. “Ma!” called the boy, “ma, come here!”

             
“Who is it, and what does he want?” answered a woman's voice.

             
“It's Joe Ben'dict! He said 'Mi'zellen'!” said the boy incoherently. Mother Haskins went curiously to the door to see what might be the matter.

             
“Is Miss Ellen in?” asked Joseph with a bow, as he had seen the minister do when he came to call on his sister.

             
“Miss Ellen?” repeated the mother dazedly; “oh, you mean Ellenmelya. Yes. She's here. Did you want to see her?” Mother Haskins did not quite like the idea of so many young men coming around her daughter all at once. She was suspicious, but she supposed he had some message from his sister, and as he did not seem disposed to subject it first to her judgment, she went in search of her daughter.

             
Ellen Amelia came, looking tired and surprised. She had been working hard all day on a ball dress which was not nile-green silk, but which nevertheless did credit both in fashion and taste to her few recent lessons in dressmaking. She had caught the style from one of Ruth's papers, which she wished with all her heart she dared borrow; but something uneasy in her heart told her it was wiser not to let her teacher know of her intention to go to that ball, and so she had plodded on by herself, and had been disappointed even to tears many times, but had still persevered.

             
She invited Joseph into the grim and silent parlor, which was as stiff and unwholesome as the Benedict parlor had been before the advent of Ruth, and Joseph looked about and pitied the girl from the depths of his heart because she had no lovely home like his. It was his way to go straight to business, and so without waiting to be seated he began.

             
“Miss Ellen,” he said with the manner an older brother might have used, “I heard you were about on the point of breaking your promise, or leastways of putting yourself in the way of breaking it, and I came around to see about it. You know there's two of us in it, and I take it that it is the duty of each to see that the other does his part.”

             
“What in the world are you gettin' at, Joe Benedict?” asked Ellen Amelia sharply, a troubled feeling beginning to steal over her as she remembered how little thought she had given to the solemn promise made so short a time ago.

             
“Are you going to that ball in the town hall?”

             
“Well, what if I am?” said Ellen, her cheeks getting red and her eyes defying him. “I don't see what that's got to do with what you were talking about. What's the harm? All the church folks arc going. Why don't you go yourself?”

             
“I don't go because I don't want to,” answered Joseph honestly; "but if I did, I wouldn't after that promise I made. I don't count that as one of the ways to keep such a promise. I don't pretend to know much about this new kind of living we've agreed to try and do, you've had more teaching on the subject than I; but if I know anything, I know that hall tomorrow night won't be a fit place for any young girl, let alone a Christian, and I wish you wouldn't.”

             
There was a little change in Joseph's voice now, a note of anxiety lest he might fail, the smallest trifle of a pleading inflection. It touched the girl's pride and her coquetry at once. She was pleased and would see how far he would go, and how much he cared. Not that she meant to give up the ball now, with that pink tarletan dress almost done on her bed upstairs, and that dollar and a quarter paid to the city dancing-master to teach her a few forbidden steps.

             
“But I can't help it now, it's too late. I've promised, Joe, and besides it'll be heaps of fun.”

             
“Then it's true you're goin' with one of those fellows? I didn't believe that. Ellen Amelia Haskins, don't you know better than to trust yourself for one hour with either of those fellows? If you knew half what I know about them you'd never let them speak to you again.”

             
“Now, Joe Benedict, I never thought you'd go to slandering other fellows just out of jealousy”; it certainly was very silly and conceited and unwise and really unpardonable in Ellen Amelia to so forget herself, but she did say it. She spent many hours of repentance over those few words afterward and remembered them through her life with shame, but she said them, and Joseph stood towering above her, wrath and disgust and pity mingled on his face. He felt that the girl needed a thorough lesson. He wished it was not his duty to give it, for that moment he felt a contempt rising in his heart for the poor silly girl. He jealous! But she saw what she had said, and shame began to rise in her face at sight of his. Then pity came for her and he suppressed his anger by a mighty effort.

             
“Now, look here, Miss Ellen,” he said, his voice kind but firm; “you know you didn't mean to say that. You know that I never asked you to go to that ball, and wouldn't have, and that if I had wanted Our company there were other ways to get it than talking about the man you were going with. That all goes without saying. You wouldn't have said that if you hadn't been put out. I suppose you want to go, and you'll be disappointed about it, and all that, but it really can't be helped. It isn't a proper place for any good woman to go. I wouldn't let my sister go there, no, nor go near those two men either, and isn't it my duty to do all I can to take care of my sister's friend? You know I don't care, except for her sake and for the sake of the promise we both made. If you meant anything by that you must give up this ball. Can't you believe me when I tell you it isn't a fit place for you?”

             
Something in his masterful tone touched Ellen Amelia. Something shamed, and something frightened her too. She could not trust her womanhood in a place of which a man spoke in this way. She had innate refinement enough in her nature for that. It may have been something the same feeling that came to Louise Clifton when she found that she was in danger of falling from her spiritual supremacy over David Benedict. Ellen Amelia said nothing and the tears came to her eyes. For a few minutes words were impossible. She choked and tried to gain control over herself. All thought of the pink dress had vanished now. She felt as if God had sent her a condemning message and she could but yield before it.

             
“What shall I do? I promised,” she said helplessly, looking up at Joseph, who still stood quietly watching her, hardly knowing what to say now that her tears had come and his errand had been told.

             
“Tell them you can't go. Write a note. Put it in the post office.”

             
“But,” said Ellen Amelia, the blood rolling in rich waves over her temples and forehead, “they don't take 'no' easy. I did tell them first I couldn't, 'cause I knew ma wouldn't like it, and I didn't think it was any use tryin' to get pa to say so, he a deacon in the church; but they said, Oh yes, I could, they would come for me and get me off somehow. And now I've promised, they'll be mad. And Bill, he was comin' for me; he'll come anyhow. I just know he will; he's awful set in his way and he said he'd chosen me for his partner tomorrow night, and you see he won't have any other. If he should come after me I don't know what I'd do. I'm afraid I'd have to go anyhow, now. I couldn't do anything. He wouldn't understand if I'd tell him all day why I couldn't go.

             
Joseph set his lips firmly and stopped to consider a moment. As he had come in he made up his mind that Bill Brower should be frustrated in some way. How? He looked down at the melting flakes on his sleeve and on the tops of his boots. It had begun to snow quite hard before he came in. Ah! There was an idea. If it kept on all night there would be sleighing. He looked up with a quick decision.

             
“I will come for you. I will come to take you sleigh-riding. We will go up to our house. You are to take dinner with my sister. Will you be ready? I will come early; it will be dark at six o'clock, and even if they were lingering about they could not know." Half an hour later Ellen Amelia stood in her own little room and looked in the seven-by-nine looking-glass watching the color roll over her face and neck as she thought again of the words she had spoken, taunting this young man and telling him he was jealous of another's having her company. Then she grew redder as she remembered his words which had come with the immediate frankness which utter indifference toward her would prompt, “You know I don't care except for my sister's sake.”

             
She tried to flash her eyes in indignation at herself for having submitted to his talk after that, and called herself a fool for giving up a pleasant companion who admired her, and a whole evening full of untold delights, to go with this man who had said he cared nothing about her, to take a sleigh ride which neither cared to take, and like as not be a burden at a Thanksgiving dinner where she was not planned for nor wanted. But only tears would come instead of flashes, and she turned out her light, and hung away the pink tarletan without noticing how she crushed it, and cried herself to sleep without trying to pray. Poor miserable child! Had God forsaken her at the outset of her trying to walk with him? How tenderly did the watching Father look down upon his child that night! He saw just how he was to lead her feet to pleasant paths and beside still waters by and by.

             
Downstairs Ellen Amelia had been obliged to answer numerous questions as best she could, and she had tried to keep her own counsel, but had failed. What her mother and grandmother could not divine they could draw out of any one. Before the note was written declining to go to the town ball in company with Bill Brower, Mrs. Haskins senior and junior were in possession of such of the facts as they thought were worth while. They did not count Joseph in the case except so far as the sleigh-ride was concerned, though Mrs. Haskins addressed the deacon after their daughter had retired, as follows:               “Deacon Haskins, I think it's time your daughter was attended to She ought to be sent away to school or somethin', unless you want her carried right off before your face and eyes. Since that Benedic' girl has come and rigged her up in those new-fangled things, here's been three young men to see her, and she ain't more'n a babe yet in her understandin' of things. If she can't be made to understand housework, or care for it, maybe she could learn a little more and get ready to teach somethin', for the land knows, if she should be left to keep herself now she'd have to starve! And I'll miss my guess if she wouldn't do it gladly in company with them story papers of hers. I will say in justice to that Benedic' girl, that she has done one good thing in gettin' Ellen 'Melia to give up that ball, but I shouldn't be surprised to hear that there's somethin' a good deal worse gettin' up to match it, or she'd never have give it up. It seems to me it's a pretty state of things, anyway, when a chit of a girl can come in town and get my daughter to do a thing with a few words, that I've failed in with hours and hours of lectures."               Deacon Haskins was not the man to reply that if she had lectured less she might have accomplished more. He only replied that “Perhaps it might be a good plan to send the gearl to schule awhile longer,” and then he turned over his paper and was absorbed in its columns.

             
Joseph strode home through the fast-thickening snowflakes wondering why on earth he had done all this and brought so much extra trouble on himself, and what he should do now, with a sleigh-ride and a dinner party on his own untrained hands. Could it be possible that he was trying to do something in this way for his new Master, or was it merely to get ahead of Bill Brower? He decided that it was a little of both. Then he went to his sister.

             
It was rather hard explaining, but he managed to do it. He tried to make it out that he had done it all for Ruth, and explained carefully that he heard her and the minister talking about it the day before as he was dozing on the sofa. According to his account the whole thing had been a most commonplace happening. He had “seen” Ellen Amelia and the subject of the ball had come up," and he had "found she was going," and had told her it was not going to be a fit place for girls to go to and she had better conic to their house, Ruth wanted her.