In His Steps - New Abridged Editon Read online

  It is not necessary to remind the people of Raymond that the crisis of our city affairs has been reached. The issue is squarely before us. Shall we continue the rule of rum and boodle and shameless incompetency, or shall we, as President Marsh said in his speech, rise as good citizens and begin a new order of things, cleansing our city of the worst enemy known to municipal honesty, and doing what lies in our power to do with the ballot to purify our civic life?

  The News is positively and without reservation on the side of the new movement. We shall henceforth do all in our power to drive out the saloon and destroy its political strength. We shall advocate the election of the men nominated by the majority of citizens met in the first primary, and we call upon all Christians, church members, lovers of right, temperance and the home, to stand by President Marsh and the rest of the citizens who have thus begun a long-needed reform in our city.

  President Marsh read this editorial and thanked God for Edward Norman. At the same time he understood well enough that every other paper in Raymond was on the other side. He did not underestimate the importance and seriousness of the fight which was only just begun.

  It was no secret that the News had lost enormously since it had been governed by the standard of "What would Jesus do?" And the question was, "Would the Christian people of Raymond make it possible for Edward Norman to conduct a daily Christian paper? Or would the desire for crime, scandal, political partisanship of the regular sort, and a dislike to champion so remarkable a reform in journalism, influence them to drop the paper and refuse to give it their financial support?

  That was, in fact, the question Edward Norman was asking himself even while he wrote that Saturday editorial. He knew well enough that his actions expressed in that editorial would cost him heavily from the hands of many businessmen in Raymond. And still, as he drove his pen over the paper, he asked another question, "What would Jesus do?" That question had become a part of this whole life now. It was greater than any other.

  For the first time in its history Raymond had seen the professional men, the teachers, the college professors, the doctors, the ministers, take political action and put themselves definitely and sharply in public antagonism to the evil forces that had so long controlled the machine of municipal government.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  AT THE RECTANGLE that week the tide of spiritual life rose high, and as yet showed no signs of flowing back. Rachel and Virginia went every night. Virginia was rapidly reaching a conclusion with respect to a large part of her money. She had talked it over with Rachel and they had been able to agree that if Jesus had a vast amount of money at His disposal He might do with some of it as Virginia planned. There could be no one fixed Christian way of using money. The rule that regulated its use was unselfish utility.

  Night after night that week witnessed miracles as great as walking on the sea or feeding the multitude with a few loaves and fishes. The transformation of lives into praying, rapturous lovers of Christ, struck Rachel and Virginia every time with the feeling that people may have had when they saw Lazarus walk out of the tomb. It was an experience full of profound excitement for them.

  Rollin Page came to all the meetings. There was no doubt of the change that had come over him. Rachel had not yet spoken much with him. He seemed as if he was thinking all the time. Certainly he was not the same person. He talked more with the evangelist John Gray than with anyone else. He did not avoid Rachel, but he seemed to shrink from any appearance of seeming to renew the acquaintance with her.

  The end of the week found the Rectangle struggling hard between two mighty opposing forces. The Holy Spirit was battling with all His supernatural strength against the saloon devil which had so long held a jealous grasp on its slaves. If the Christian people of Raymond once could realize what the contest meant to the souls newly awakened to a purer life, it did not seem possible that the election could result in the old system of license. But that remained yet to be seen.

  The horror of the daily surroundings of many of the converts was slowly burning its way into the knowledge of Virginia and Rachel, and every night as they went uptown to their luxurious homes they carried heavy hearts.

  "A good many of these poor creatures will go back again," Gray would say with sadness too deep for tears. "The environment does have a good deal to do with the character. O Lord, how long shall Christian people continue to support by their silence and their ballots the greatest form of slavery known in America?"

  He asked the question, and did not have much hope of an immediate answer. There was a ray of hope in the action of Friday night's primary, but what the result would be he did not dare to anticipate. The whiskey forces were organized, alert, aggressive, roused into unusual hatred by the events of the last week at the tent and in the city. Would the Christian forces act as a unit against the saloon, or would they be divided on account of their business interests? That remained to be seen. Meanwhile the saloon reared itself about the Rectangle like some deadly viper hissing and coiling, ready to strike its poison into any unguarded part.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Saturday afternoon, as Virginia was just stepping out of her house to go and see Rachel to talk over her new plans, a carriage drove up containing three of her fashionable friends. Virginia went out to the driveway and stood there talking with them. They had not come to make a formal call, but wanted Virginia to go driving with them up on the boulevard. There was a band concert in the park. The day was too pleasant to be spent indoors.

  "Where have you been all this time, Virginia?" asked one of the girls, tapping her playfully on the shoulder with a red silk parasol. "We hear that you have gone into the show business. Tell us about it."

  Virginia colored, but after a moment's hesitation she frankly told something of her experience at the Rectangle.

  The girls in the carriage began to be interested. "I tell you, girls, let's go slumming with Virginia this afternoon, instead of going to the band concert. I've never been down to the Rectangle. I've heard it's an awful wicked place and lots to see. Virginia will act as guide, and it would be ..." Fun, the girl was going to say, but Virginia's look made her substitute the word "interesting."

  Virginia felt angry. At first thought she said to herself she would never go under such circumstances. The other girls seemed to be of the same mind with the speaker. They chimed in with earnestness and asked Virginia to take them down there.

  Suddenly she saw in the idle curiosity of the girls an opportunity. They had never seen the sin and misery of Raymond. Why should they not see it, even if their motive in going down there was simply to pass away an afternoon?

  "Very well, I'll go with you. You must obey my orders and let me take you where you can see the most," she said, as she entered the carriage and took the seat beside the girl who had first suggested the trip to the Rectangle.

  "Hadn't we better take a policeman along?" said one of the girls, with a nervous laugh. "It really isn't safe down there, you know."

  "There's no danger," said Virginia briefly.

  "Is it true that your brother Rollin has been converted?" asked the first speaker, looking at Virginia curiously.

  During the drive to the Rectangle all three of her friends were regarding her with close attention as if she were peculiar. "Yes, he certainly is. I saw him kneel down, a week ago Saturday," replied Virginia, who did not know just how to tell that scene.

  "I understand he is going around to the clubs talking with his old friends there, trying to preach to them. Doesn't that seem funny?" said the girl with the red silk parasol.

  Virginia did not answer, and the other girls were beginning to feel sober as the carriage turned into a street leading to the Rectangle. As they neared the district they grew more and more nervous. The sights and smells and sounds which had become familiar to Virginia struck the senses of these refined, delicate society girls as something horrible.

  As they entered further into the district, the Rectangle seemed to stare as with one g
reat, bleary, beer-soaked countenance at this fine carriage with its load of fashionably dressed young women. This was perhaps the first time that the two had come together. The girls felt that instead of seeing the Rectangle, they were being made the objects of curiosity. They were frightened and disgusted.

  "Let's go back. I've seen enough," said the girl who was sitting with Virginia.

  They were at that moment just opposite a notorious saloon and gambling house. The street was narrow and the sidewalk crowded. Suddenly, out of the door of this saloon a young woman reeled. She was singing in a broken, drunken sob that seemed to indicate that she partly realized her awful condition, "Just as I am, without one plea."

  As the carriage rolled past she leered at it, raising her face so that Virginia saw it very close to her own. It was the face of the girl who had kneeled, sobbing that night, with Virginia kneeling beside her and praying for her.

  "Stop!" cried Virginia, motioning to the driver who was looking around. The carriage stopped, and in a moment she was out and had gone up to the girl and taken her by the arm.

  "Loreen!" she said, and that was all.

  The girl looked into her face, and her own changed into a look of utter horror. The girls in the carriage were smitten into helpless astonishment. The saloon keeper had come to the door of the saloon and was standing there looking on with his hands on his hips. And the Rectangle from its windows, its saloon steps, its filthy sidewalk, gutter and roadway, paused, and with undisguised wonder stared at the two girls.

  Virginia had no definite idea as to what she would do or what the result of her action would be. She simply saw a soul that had tasted of the joy of a better life slipping back again into its old hell of shame and death. And before she had touched the drunken girl's arm she had asked only one question, "What would Jesus do?" That question was becoming with her, as with many others, a habit of life.

  She looked around now as she stood close by Loreen, and the whole scene was cruelly vivid to her. She thought first of the girls in the carriage.

  "Drive on. Don't wait for me. I am going to see my friend home," she said calmly enough.

  The girl with the red parasol seemed to gasp at the word "friend," when Virginia spoke it. She did not say anything.

  The other girls seemed speechless.

  "Go on. I cannot go back with you," said Virginia.

  The driver started the horses slowly. One of the girls leaned a little out of the carriage. "Can't we ... that is ... do you want our help? Couldn't you..."

  "No, no!" exclaimed Virginia. "You cannot be of any help to me."

  The carriage moved on and Virginia was alone with her charge. She looked up and around. Many faces in the crowd were sympathetic. They were not all cruel or brutal. The Holy Spirit had softened a good deal of the Rectangle.

  "Where does she live?" asked Virginia.

  No one answered. The girl suddenly wrenched her arm from Virginia's grasp. In doing so she nearly threw Virginia down.

  "Don't touch me! Leave me! Let me go to hell! That's where I belong! The devil is waiting for me. See him?" she exclaimed hoarsely. She turned and pointed with a shaking finger at the saloon keeper. The crowd laughed. Virginia stepped up to her and put her arm about her.

  "Loreen," she said firmly, "come with me. You do not belong to hell. You belong to Jesus and He will save you. Come."

  The girl suddenly burst into tears. She was only partly sobered by the shock of meeting Virginia.

  Virginia looked around again. "Where does the Rev. John Gray live?" she asked. She knew that the evangelist boarded somewhere near the tent. A number of voices gave the direction.

  "Come, Loreen, I want you to go with me to Mr. Gray," she said, still keeping her hold of the swaying, trembling creature who moaned and sobbed and now clung to her as firmly as before she had repulsed her.

  The two moved on through the Rectangle toward the evangelist's lodging place. The sight seemed to impress the Rectangle. The fact that one of the richest, most beautifully-dressed girls in all Raymond was taking care of one of the Rectangle's most noted characters, who reeled along under the influence of liquor, was a fact astounding enough to throw dignity and importance about Loreen herself.

  The event of Loreen's stumbling through the gutter dead-drunk always made the Rectangle laugh and jest. But Loreen staggering along with a young lady from the society circles uptown supporting her, was another thing. The Rectangle viewed it with wondering admiration.

  When they finally reached the John Gray's lodging place the woman who answered Virginia's knock said that both Mr. and Mrs. Gray were out somewhere and would not be back until six o'clock.

  Virginia had not planned anything further than a possible appeal to the Grays, either to take charge of Loreen for a while or find some safe place for her until she was sober. She stood now at the door after the woman had spoken, and was really at a loss to know what to do. Loreen sank down on the steps and buried her face in her arms. Virginia eyed the girl with a feeling that she was afraid would grow into disgust.

  Finally a thought possessed her that she could not escape. What was to hinder her from taking Loreen home with her? Why should not this homeless, wretched creature, reeking with liquor, be cared for in Virginia's own home instead of being consigned to strangers in some hospital or house of charity?

  Virginia really knew very little about any such places of refuge. As a matter of fact, there were two or three such institutions in Raymond, but it is doubtful if any of them would have taken a person like Loreen in her present condition. But that was not the question with Virginia just now. "What would Jesus do with Loreen?" That was what she faced, and she finally answered it by touching the girl again.

  "Loreen, come. You are going home with me. We will take the streetcar here at the corner."

  Loreen staggered to her feet, and to Virginia's surprise made no trouble. She had expected resistance or a stubborn refusal to move. When they reached the corner and took the streetcar, it was nearly full of people going uptown. Virginia was painfully conscious of the stares that greeted her and her companion as they entered. But her thought was directed more and more to the approaching scene with her grandmother. What would Madam Page say when she saw Loreen?

  Loreen was lapsing into a state of stupor, and Virginia was obliged to hold fast to her arm. Several times the girl lurched heavily against her as the two walked up the avenue, and a curious crowd of so-called civilized people turned and gazed at them.

  When she mounted the steps of her handsome house Virginia breathed a sigh of relief, even in the face of the interview with the grandmother, and when the door shut and she was in the wide hall with her homeless outcast, she felt equal to anything that might now come.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  MADAM PAGE was in the library. Hearing Virginia come in, she came into the hall. Virginia stood there supporting Loreen, who stared stupidly at the rich magnificence of the furnishings around her.

  "Grandmother," Virginia said, without hesitation and very clearly, "I have brought one of my friends from the Rectangle. She is in trouble and has no home. I am going to care for her here a little while."

  Madam Page glanced from her granddaughter to Loreen in astonishment. "Did you say she is one of your friends?" she asked in a cold, sneering voice that hurt Virginia more than anything she had yet felt.

  "Yes, I said so." Virginia's face flushed, but she seemed to recall a verse that Mr. Gray had used for one of his recent sermons, "A friend of publicans and sinners." Surely Jesus would do what she was doing.

  "Do you know what this girl is?" asked Madam Page, in an angry whisper, stepping near Virginia.

  "I know very well. You need not tell me, grandmother. I know it even better than you do. She is drunk at this minute. But she is also a child of God. I have seen her on her knees, repentant. Grandmother, we call ourselves Christians. Here is a poor, lost human creature without a home, slipping back into a life of misery and possibly eternal loss, and we have mo
re than enough. I have brought her here, and I shall keep her."

  Madam Page glared at Virginia and clenched her hands. All this was contrary to her social code of conduct. How could society excuse familiarity with the scum of the streets? What would Virginia's action cost the family in the way of criticism and loss of standing? The loss of its goodwill was a loss more to be dreaded than anything, except the loss of wealth itself.

  She stood erect and stern and confronted Virginia, fully roused and determined. Virginia placed her arm about Loreen and calmly looked her grandmother in the face.

  "You shall not do this, Virginia! You can send her to the asylum for helpless women. We can pay all the expenses. We cannot afford for the sake of our reputations to shelter such a person."

  "Grandmother, I do not wish to do anything that is displeasing to you, but I must keep Loreen here tonight -- and longer if it seems best."

  Madam Page lost her self-control. "Then you can answer for the consequences! I do not stay in the same house with a miserable ------"

  Virginia stopped her before she could speak the next word. "Grandmother, this house is mine. It is your home with me as long as you choose to remain. But in this matter I must act as I fully believe Jesus would in my place. I am willing to bear all that society may say or do. Society is not my God. By the side of this poor soul I do not count the verdict of society as of any value."

  "I shall not stay here, then!" said Madam Page. She turned and walked to the end of the hall. She then came back, and going up to Virginia said, "You can always remember that you have driven your grandmother out of your house in favor of a drunken woman!"

  Without waiting for Virginia to reply, she turned again and went upstairs. Virginia called a servant and soon had Loreen cared for. During the brief scene in the hall Loreen had clung to Virginia so hard that her arm was sore from the clutch of the girl's fingers.

  Virginia did not know whether her grandmother would leave the house or not. She had abundant means of her own, was perfectly well and vigorous, and capable of caring for herself. She had sisters and brothers living in the South, and was in the habit of spending several weeks in the year with them. Virginia was not anxious about her welfare, so far as that went, but the interview had been a painful one to her. Going over it, as she did in her room before she went down to tea, she found little cause for regret, however.