Tomorrow About This Time (32 page)

The king drew away impatiently. So many cried for help, and what could he do? “Curse you!” he said impatiently. “With every barn floor bare and every wine press empty, what can I do?” And he turned as if to pass on. But the woman continued her strange, weird cry and began a terrible story. Another woman appeared, crouching frightened against the doorway.

“This woman promised if I would kill my baby boy yesterday and cook and eat him that she would kill hers today, but we ate my son yesterday and now she has hid hers today. I pray you, O king, speak to her. Make her give up her son that she has hid.”

Athalie’s eyes were wide with horror. She had never heard a story like that.

The speaker depicted the horror on the face of the king as he listened to the tale and watched the faces of the hunger-crazed women, realized that he was powerless to aid, that things could only grow worse rather than better, that the Lord in whom he had put at least a little of his trust had apparently deserted him, and then he laid hold on his kingly robe and tore it.

Like a crowd of children the listening congregation attended, not an eye looked dreamy, not a brain was planning out tomorrow’s work nor calculating the sum of yesterday’s mistakes. The Bible lived and breathed before them as Bannard spoke. They saw that king reach down and tear his robe as he passed on, they were among those who looked beneath and saw the sackcloth next to his skin, oriental symbol of humiliation, of repentance, of prayer. They caught a glimpse of King Jehoram’s past, his mother the wicked queen Jezebel, his father of whom it was written “there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord.”

One saw that Jehoram was not quite so bad as his father and mother. He put away the image of Baal that his father had set up for worship to please his mother, but he worked evil in the sight of the Lord.

The king on the wall in the torn robe, with the sackcloth showing beneath, suddenly turned and swore a terrible oath that he would have the head of God’s prophet that day, the prophet who had been promising day after day that God would deliver them from the enemy; and now they were come to the great extremity and God was not helping. Why should he wait for God any longer?

The king walked to his palace and sent a messenger to the little house where Elisha lived. One saw the soldier from the palace hurry along with sword in hand down the narrow streets of odd flat-topped oriental houses, and Elisha sitting quietly in his door talking to some of the old men and suddenly lifting his eye to his servant and saying in a quiet voice: “The king is sending a soldier to behead me. Shut the door and lock it. The king will be here presently. Keep the soldier out till he comes.”

The hurrying feet, the hastily shut door, the altercation. Athalie sat breathless with glowing eyes of wonder. The impudent air of the king as he came, the parley: “Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what should I wait for the Lord any longer?” And Elisha’s quiet voice answering: “Hear ye the word of the Lord. This time is up! Tomorrow about this time shall a measure of fine white flour be sold at less than prewar prices.”

“Ha!” the laugh of the servant on whom the king leans. “If God were opening windows in heaven just now this might be!”

The quiet rebuke: “You shall see it but not eat thereof.”

Night drops quickly, suddenly in that eastern land. Twilight on the white parched city where skulking shadows pass on the wall and huddled human beings sleep and forget for a little while their sufferings. The king in his palace asleep. No faith whatever in what Elisha promised. Twilight outside the wall in the little leper village, four lepers waiting at the gate, starving, talking it over. Shall they throw themselves on the mercy of the enemy, beg something to eat? “If they kill us we shall but die anyway!” The hesitant approach, peering like white ghosts into the first tent, the pause, the eager going forward. No one there! The table spread. They snatch the food and devour it, and move on to the next, suddenly are struck with the silence throughout the great camp. The hurrying investigation then the hastening back to the city to tell, the waking of the unbelieving king, the five men sent to verify the story, the garments strewn in the way as the enemy fled, the rejoicing, the crowding out of the city to spoil tents of the enemy, crushing out the life of the astonished servant who had laughed the day before! The wonderful reason of the enemy’s flight, that the Lord had caused a sound of horses to be heard by them!

Athalie looked around the church to see if anybody was really believing it. Where did they get a strange story like that? The Lord!
The Lord!
How strange that sounded, as if the Lord was a real person! Did her father believe that? She glanced at him as he sat with stern listening attitude, his gloved hands on his knee. She couldn’t tell whether he was astonished at it or not. She listened again. The minister was talking now about world problems. He said the world was waiting today as then for the Lord to deliver them from a state of siege into which their own sin and folly had placed them, and blaming God that He did not come. They were tired of wearing sackcloth and ready to do murder. When all the time God’s wonderful tomorrow was waiting, just over the way, waiting for them to reach the limit of their own possibilities that God might show His power and grace. He said that the troubles of the world would never be solved and peace never come until Christ came into human hearts, and that all these things pointed to a time close at hand when some tomorrow about this time Christ Himself was coming back to relieve His own forever from a state of siege.

Athalie never took her eyes from the face of the speaker during this closing talk. She had never heard anything like it in her life before. It made realities out of what had been vague mythical stories, like fairy tales, before. Was there really a Jesus Christ then? He died, didn’t He, long ago? On a cross? What did they mean,
coming again?

She was silent and thoughtful all that day. Her father looked at her relieved. She wandered around the house, played a few little jazzy tunes on the piano—which scandalized the Vandemeeters and Lizette who both made it a point to listen intently for any sign of a hymn tune—then drifted away to her room and her fast-disappearing stock of chocolates and literature.

Silver had gone to the Mission school at the Flats. The house was silent all the afternoon, with a Sabbath stillness Athalie had never known before. Sabbath meant nothing to her but a merrier day than usual, the focus of the merriment of the week.

Mary Truman, still under parental pressure, called for her to go to Christian Endeavor that evening, and because Athalie saw nothing else to do, and her father and Silver were talking in the library before the fire, she went. She wondered if the strange boy would be there. Barry. What a nice name!

He was there. He passed her a hymnbook and looked pleased when she came into the bright little chapel room where they met. He sang in a quartet, growling a nice low bass. She watched him wonderingly, remembering how he had held her like a vise when she tried to get the wheel away from him. Remembering how gently he had lifted her and carried her.

It seemed a strange meeting. The girls and boys spoke, just like a frat meeting at school, only they said odd things. They referred to the sermon of that morning as if they were altogether familiar with the story of that siege. They spoke of Mr. Bannard as if he were a brother and comrade. Mr. Bannard was there among them, just like one of them. It was rather interesting, only it was embarrassing when they prayed. She didn’t know what to do with her eyes so she watched them all.

That boy Barry gave an announcement about a committee meeting after service. Two others jumped up and spoke about socials that were being planned. They all seemed so eager and friendly. Athalie felt lonely and outside everything.

When they went in the church again there was Silver sitting with her father. Mary asked her politely to come in their seat and she went. She did not want to sit beside Silver again.

Mr. Bannard spoke about the coming of Christ. He made it plain that He was really coming, and that some people, good people presumably, for Athalie did not understand that language about “believers,” were to be taken away and the world would wonder where they had gone. Athalie looked over at Silver. She thought Silver would be one that would be taken away. Well, that would be good. She hated good people, and she would be left with her father. It was reasonably sure a noted man of the world like her father wouldn’t be taken away from earth like that. He didn’t have that spirit-look that Silver wore as a garment. It frightened her a little—this talk about the Son of God coming back to earth. She hoped on second thought that it wouldn’t come till she was old, very old, and didn’t care about living anymore. It stayed with her after she got home, and when she went to bed and thought of Lilla in a little boat on the great ocean she cried a few tears sorrowfully. Lilla was the only god she had ever had.

On the whole, she was rather docile about going to school the next morning when her father suggested that she enter high school and finish out the spring term. She remembered what Barry had said about athletics and resolved not to eat any more chocolates for a week after this last box was gone.

So she polished her nails to a delicate point and took herself languidly to school to see how she liked it. She was astonished to see how little impression she made on the wholesome atmosphere of high school. The teacher, a placid-faced elderly woman with a firm chin, said to be the finest school principal in the county, smiled at her pleasantly and put her in the front seat directly in front of the desk. None of the boys gave her a glance, except Barry who showed mere recognition. The girls she had met smiled politely and went on with study. Whenever she looked up she was met with that pleasant challenge of a smile. There was absolutely no opportunity to get away with anything unless one first crossed that friendly smile, and Athalie wasn’t just exactly ready to do that yet until she had tried things out. There had not been too many smiles in her life. She took the book that was handed to her to read, until the principal should have time to examine her and place her in the classes where she fit, and was surprised to find it was an interesting novel. The teacher explained it was the book the English class was reading for review and discussion that week.

Her father glanced into the study hall half an hour later, after an inspection of the building led by an old friend who was the Latin teacher, and saw her absorbed in the book. He went home with a sigh of relief, comforted.

But that very night Athalie wrote eleven invitations to six boys and five girls for a house party that weekend and mailed them early in the morning before she went to school. But that no one in her family knew.

Chapter 24

T
he tramp had found work as a laborer in the glass factory through the efforts of some of the good Presbyterian women whose woodpiles had been supplying his breakfasts and dinners for some time. He worked feebly and with great effort and managed to maintain his role of semi-elderly invalid who was doing his best.

He was working with a gang of other men shoveling sand into a cart when Silver Greeves came by with a basket of broth and oranges and a lovely dolly for the little Mary who was now on the high road to recovery.

The tramp paused in the monotony of his service. He put in regularly one shovelful to the other men’s two. He always paused longest for interruptions and rested his weary back. The other men paused also and watched the progress of the lithe girl as she stepped down the roughly cobbled path and entered the cottage.

“That’s that girl from the Silver family,” said one of the men. “Take notice of her? She’s been comin’ down to that wop’s house every day. She’s been takin’ care of the sick kid.”

“Well, they’d oughta do things like that. They got plenty, ain’t they? Don’t we keep ‘em in cash with our labor? They couldn’t sell this sand if we didn’t shovel it, could they? She’d make a pretty hand shovelin’ sand, now, wouldn’t she? How would she live if we didn’t shovel her sand fer her? I ask you.”

“Oh, they got plenty else ‘thout sand. Anymore. They got stacks and stacks of money. I heard they got sompin’ like a million fer the railroad right of way. She’d oughta take notice of the poor folks. I guess that family wasn’t named Silver fer nothin’.”

The tramp gazed steadily at the door where Silver had disappeared and began to turn around what he heard in his cunning old brain. He let his companions heave five shovelfuls before he started in again at a rapidly diminishing sandpile, and his face wore a thoughtful look. Whenever he stopped to rest he eyed the house where Silver had entered. When she finally came out, lingering on the doorstep to talk with the smiling dark-eyed mother he took another break and studied the scene carefully, talking in details of dress and height and coloring. Then his cunning eyes dropped to his task again and lifted for an instant to meet hers only when Silver passed opposite him, as she smiled and greeted them all in a friendly way.

“Some gurrul!” remarked a short burly man with red curls and a brogue. “The master must be proud o’ her. I guess he’d not take all his millions for the likes of her!”

“Yes, she’s a fine lady! But it’ll take plenty of millions to keep her in all she’ll want,” grouched the other man.

“Well, what’s a lady!” said the tramp as he lifted another shovelful of sand.