Not My Will and The Light in My Window (42 page)

Hope would have preferred not to go, for “devotions” were something with which she had no acquaintance. However, Eleanor had taken her going for granted, and she did not want them to wait for her. So, as nine o’clock drew near, and the dishes were done and the kitchen and dining room cleaned, she took off her apron and crossed the court to the church. Chad was waiting at the door.

“Mother said for me to show you where. They’re in the study.”

Hope had thought that she could not pray aloud. Even in the young people’s group at home she had avoided it. Here it seemed
different. She was seated between Chad and Billy, and after Dr. Ben had read a portion of Scripture and they began to pray she realized they were praying in turn as they were seated. She felt a moment of panic, but when the woman who had been in the nursery had prayed in broken English and Chad had joined in with a sentence or two, it did not seem so hard. As she prayed haltingly and in low tones, Billy’s hand reached for hers, and the warm clasp gave her assurance. It seemed to her as she listened to all the prayers that she was nearer to heaven than she had ever been before. She had not known one could feel such closeness to God as this. He was
here
, in this shabby little cubbyhole. Billy’s and Dr. Ben’s prayers made her eyes sting with unshed tears as she realized that these two young people, hardly older than herself, were giving their labor in this place, helping others in the name of the Lord to whom they were talking.

When Eleanor began to pray, Hope forgot the room and the people in it. There was just herself and the loving Lord who had given His all for a lost world and who was now yearning over that world as He had done centuries before. She was not conscious of the change when Eleanor’s voice ceased and Dr. King’s took up the petition. She only knew that her heart ached with a longing to know better this Lord whom she had accepted years before but who had never seemed real and near at hand as He did today. Chad’s touch on her arm aroused her, and she stole out silently and went to her room where she could be alone. For the first time in her life she had caught a vision of what was meant by “consecration.” She had heard the term used but had thought it would apply only to persons who lived peculiarly isolated lives like old Mrs. Carlisle at home, or like missionaries or nuns.

Today Hope had caught a little of the meaning of the call that the Lord sends to those who are His sheep. She had been in the presence of souls utterly yielded to their Lord and had heard in their voices the submissive tone which told of completely surrendered wills. She only partially understood what she had seen and heard, but she felt chastened and sobered, and wished she might have been privileged to have had the deep and happy experiences that must have been the Kings’ lot, rather than the unhappy ones that had befallen her. She did not expect that life
could ever give her such joy as dwelt in the home and hearts of the Kings, but the sight of it she had had today left an afterglow of glory that she would not forget.

Chad’s voice, calling through the hall, ended her reverie.

“Hope! Mother says she and Aunt Billy have to take the car out to get some s’plies, so they’ll do the marketing. We can clean the fountain now.”

Cleaning the fountain basin was an enjoyable task to Hope. She liked to bring order out of chaos, and this outdoor work just suited her. Chad found a bushel basket in the church furnace room, and the wet leaves and trash were loaded into it and carried out to the vegetable garden.

“They’ll be good for the soil if this is ever plowed,” said Hope. “If not, they can be burned when they are dry.”

They carried buckets of water from the house and scrubbed the basin until the last vestige of soil had run down the drain, and it was all so clean that no mosquito would feel at home in it. Then they picked up the dead branches that were lying about and carried them to the garden where they piled them in a heap. Chad, struggling with an armful of sticks, stumbled over something that protruded from the ground by the back steps.

“What’s this, Hope? It won’t come up. Is it part of a little wagon, or somethin’?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a wagon wheel. Let me see if I can turn it. Maybe it’s—oh, I have a idea. Wait a minute.”

She picked up a stout stick that lay nearby and thrust it through the spokes of the wheel. She pushed and turned this way and that. Through years of disuse the iron had become corroded with rust, and it seemed impossible to turn the wheel. However, Hope was a sturdy miss and a determined one, and at last she felt the stick give as she threw her weight against it. It turned only a short distance, but Chad called excitedly. “There a little bit of water running in the fountain! The boy’s pouring it from the shell!”

After trying in vain to open the valve further, Hope closed it again, promising Chad that she would find a way to open it fully later. She realized as she worked in the old garden that she was enjoying this experience so much that she had become sidetracked from her real purpose.

It was pleasant here, and she felt secure from prying landladies and leering men. The only men she had seen since coming were Dr. King and his gracious kindliness, and Dr. Ben, who probably had forgotten her as soon as she was out of his sight. Outside the high fence she could catch glimpses of the noisy life of a sordid neighborhood. The entire city seemed cruel and wicked, with just this place like an oasis of good. Hope dreaded the thought of starting again the search for work. Yet she must. She
would not
be a cook all her life, and she
could not
go home. Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would try to find work.

Next morning she heard Eleanor regretting her inability to find someone to clean the empty rooms upstairs.

“Katie Berg will help, but she can’t do it alone. She isn’t well and mustn’t overdo. If I had someone to help Billy with classes for several days I’d do it myself!”

“Don’t let me catch you at it,” said Dr. King quickly. “Let it stay dirty.”

“Oh, we can’t. The dust is so thick up there that it flies down the open stairs and doubles the labor of cleaning. Chad goes exploring and comes back looking like a coal miner. We just have to get it cleaned.”

“Then let Katie tackle it alone. She can at least get off the first coat, and maybe we can find someone else later.”

After the Kings had departed Hope hurried about her morning work so that she might feel free in the afternoon. She need not be back until five and so could make some real progress about getting a job in that time.

A crash and a wail from upstairs startled her. She flew up the stairs and down the long hall toward the room from which issued Katie’s lamentations. There she found an overturned stepladder and a bedraggled Katie seated in a pool of soap suds.

“It’s not hurt I am but plenty mad!” she muttered. “T’was a sperrit jerked the ladder.”

Hope helped Katie to her feet. Then she mopped up the streams of water, realizing as she did so how greatly the entire upstairs needed cleaning. She stood watching Katie’s futile efforts and decided that if the task were to be accomplished at all someone else would have to be recruited. Katie was willing but needed supervision.

At eleven o’clock Eleanor, coming in to see how Katie was progressing, found Hope on the stepladder washing woodwork while Katie stood outside on the porch roof vigorously polishing the windows.

“Hope! I didn’t mean that you should do this!”

“I know,” said Hope rather shamefacedly, “but it’s so much fun to scour dirt off and leave things clean and shining. Please don’t feel bad. I wanted to do it. And if you want me to I’ll help Katie whenever I have time until it’s done. It’s really fun.”

It took two weeks to get the house cleaned thoroughly. There were large cupboards and closets to be emptied of trash, scrubbed, and aired. There were plate-glass mirrors to be polished. There were light fixtures to be cleaned and repaired. The workers did not stop at the second floor but went on to the third, where spacious servants’ quarters had once been. Those, too, were cleaned and aired. There was much old-fashioned furniture that Katie cleaned, and that Eleanor said could surely be used when they wanted to furnish rooms for additional helpers. It was a gargantuan task, and several times Hope mentally berated herself for attempting it. However, she did like to see cleanliness emerging from the shadow of grime that had covered the old mansion, and she was loathe to give up a job once started. So she kept on, promising herself that when this was done she would go job-hunting in earnest.

The day they finished Hope took the Kings and Billy and Dr. Ben on a tour of the place to display its newly discovered beauties. They were amazed at the transformation and exclaimed again and again at parquet floors, beautiful woodwork, delicate carving, and, in the master bedroom, walls and ceiling hand-painted in rare beauty of design and color.

“What a beautiful room!” cried Eleanor, standing at the broad tower window. “This huge tree outside hides the ugliness of the street, and one might imagine himself in a castle in the woods.”

“I know what I’d like to do with this room,” said Dr. Ben dreamily. “I’d like to make a room here to bring some of my patients to when they leave the hospital. It makes me sick when
they have to go home, after a hard siege in the hospital, to unspeakable poverty and filth.”

“That’s an idea,” said Dr. King. “Keep on dreaming, Benny. It may come someday. I haven’t any definite plans yet, but I’m sure this monstrous place was not given us just as a home for a half dozen people. I’m asking God to show us His plan for it.”

“He will,” said Eleanor. “When He is ready for us to take another step He’ll lead the way. He always does.”

“And when He does, you folks will have your uniforms on all ready to march,” said Billy. “You never are satisfied. When you get one project going to the point where I begin to breathe freely and plan to settle down to a normal existence, you start two more. If I had half the sense I was born with I’d desert the ship before I’m found dead in a front line trench.”

“You have your metaphors mixed, as usual, Wilhelmina,” laughed Dr. King. “And you know you wouldn’t quit if we fired you. If you and Ben will quit your squabbling and get married, we’ll make another apartment up here and you can run Ben’s hospital.”

Billy turned an outraged face to him.

“Me! Marry a doctor? Not on your life! When I get married, it will be to a man who comes home regularly and
stays
there. Either a banker or a—a—mailman! No doctors for me!”

The others laughed, but Dr. Ben’s face flushed and Hope felt that such an idea was not a joke to him. As they climbed the stairs to the third floor, Billy ran on ahead, the Kings were hand in hand as usual, and Hope fell behind. Dr. Ben, at her side, said kindly, “You’ve done a most thorough job of sweeping and garnishing this old place, Miss Hope. It does me good to see it clean and lived in. Ever since I can remember, it has been forlorn, dirty and empty.”

“It has been just plain fun,” said Hope. “It seemed asleep, and we woke it up and washed its face.”

Dr. Ben laughed at her fancy, and they joined the others in the front hall of the third floor.

“I can see all sorts of possibilities here,” said Eleanor. “Everything from a playroom for Chad in stormy weather to a laboratory for myself. It’s so light and spacious.”

“In time we will use it all, I’m sure,” said Dr. King. “I had thought it would require much repairing and painting, but it is in remarkably good condition. We’ll just go along as God leads and find out what His plans are for this old house.”

H
ope looked at the calendar on the kitchen wall one morning and realized with a start that four weeks had passed since she had come here for “just a few days.” She excused herself for the delay by remembering that she had felt she must help these folks who had been kind to her. However, she resolved to go out that very afternoon and begin the search for a
real
job.

So two o’clock found her again in the downtown block where several employment agencies were located. At the first one there were no vacancies for the kind of work she wanted, but the next one had an opening. In a short time Hope was on her way to the interview. The woman at the agency had painted an attractive picture of the position with its promise of quick advancement, and Hope felt encouraged. Yet, as she sat in the outer office of the prospective employer, she felt again the panicky fear that had been with her before. The two girls working at nearby desks appeared so sleekly sophisticated and efficient that she knew she could
never
be at ease with them. When a young executive stopped at one desk for some letters, his familiar attitude and the pert answers of the typist made Hope even more uncomfortable.

By the time she was shown into the inner office, her ears were burning and her hands were icy. How she did wish the girl who had shown her in would stay with her or at least leave the door open! The wish was in vain, and she braced herself for the interview. She never could remember what happened, having afterward
only a confused impression of questions to which she made stammering answers, of growing impatience from the man at the desk, and a final irritable outburst, “Why did they send you anyway? You don’t act as if you know anything!”

As she went down in the elevator later, Hope wondered what he would have done had she said, “Oh yes, I know lots of things! I can chop and dig with Chad, and I can scrub woodwork, wash dishes, and even cook a meal!”

But most employers wanted typists and bookkeepers and said nothing about chopping and digging. And she was a fast and efficient typist when she wasn’t nervous, having done ninety words a minute on her last speed test. If only she could find an office where there were no men.

Hope did not have the courage to go back to the same agency, so she went to one across the street. They had an opening that might be just what she wanted—typist in a small insurance office. She resolved that this time she would keep cool and self-possessed and would be very, very efficient. No one should guess how timid and ignorant she felt. She almost succeeded in this ambitious plan, answering most of the questions glibly, typing a sample letter without an error, and being told to report for work the next Monday morning. Then, as she turned away, feeling that a real victory had been won over fear and timidity, her new employer laid one hand on her arm.