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A Preacher’s Love Story
by
On the following Monday morning school began, and as Wallace took his way down the lane the wrecked church came again to his eyes. He walked past it with slow feet. His was a deeply religious nature, one that sorrowed easily over sin. Suffering of the poor did not trouble him; hunger seemed a little thing beside losing one’s everlasting soul. Therefore, to come from his studies upon such a monument of human depravity as this rotting church was to receive a shock and to hear a call to action.
Approaching the schoolhouse, his thought took a turn toward the scholars and toward Mattie. He had forgotten to ask her if she intended to be one of his pupils.
There were several children already gathered at the weather-beaten door as he came up. It was all very American–the box-like house of white, the slender teacher approaching, the roughly clad urchins waiting.
He said, “Good morning, scholars!”
They chorused a queer croak in reply–hesitating, inarticulate, shy. He unlocked the door and entered the cold, bare room–familiar, unlovely, with a certain power of primitive associations. In such a room he had studied his primer and his Ray’s Arithmetic. In such a room he had made gradual recession from the smallest front seat to the back wall seat; and from one side of such a room to the other he had furtively worshipped a graceful, girlish head.
He allowed himself but a moment of such dreaming before assuming command, and with his ready helpers a fire was soon started. Other children came in, timorous as rabbits, slipping by, each with an eye fixed on him like a scared chicken. They pre-empted their seats by putting down books and slates, and there arose sly wars for possession, which he watched with amusement–it was so like his own life at that age.
He assumed control as nearly in the manner of the old-time teachers as he could recall, and the work of his teaching was begun. The day passed quickly, and, as he walked homeward again, there stood that rotting church, and in his mind there rose a surging emotion larger than he could himself comprehend–a desire to rebuild it by uniting the warring factions, of whose lack of Christianity this deserted chapel was a fatal witness.
IV
Now this mystical thing happened. As this son of a line of preachers brooded on this unlovely strife among men, he lost the equipoise of the scholar and student of modern history. He grew narrower and more intense. The burden of his responsibility as a preacher of Christ grew daily more insupportable.
Toward the end of the week he announced preaching in the schoolhouse on Sunday afternoon, and at the hour set he found the room crowded with people of all ages and sorts.
His heart grew heavy as he looked out over the room–on women nursing querulous children, on the grizzled faces of grim-looking men, who studied him with keen, unsympathetic eyes. He had hard, unfriendly material to work with. There were but few of the opposite camp present, while the Baptist leaders were all there, with more curiosity than sympathy in their faces.
They exulted to think the next preacher to come among them as an evangelist should be a Baptist.
After the singing, which would have dribbled away into failure but for Mattie, Wallace rose, looking very white and weak, and began his prayer. Some of the boys laughed when his voice stuck in his throat, but he went on to the end of an earnest supplication, feeling he had not touched them at all.
While they sang again, he sat looking down at them with dry throat and staring eyes. How hard, how unchristian-like, they all were. What could he say to them? He saw Mattie gazing up at him, and on the front seat sat three beautiful little girls huddled together with hands clasped; inexpressibly dainty by contrast. As he looked at them the thought came to him, What is the goodness of a girl–of a child? It is not partisan–it is not of creeds, of articles–it is goodness of thought, of deeds. His face lighted up with the inward feeling of this idea, and he rose resolutely.