III

III

AsJulie came forth from the Sunday-School room, breathless and trembling, she paused a moment upon the steps, and there the deep serenity of the night received her. She drew a long breath. Her heart still pounded violently, but she had escaped: she was delivered. Inside, Sister Humphries continued to pray, Brother Seabrook speeding the petition upon its way with ejaculations of “Lord, grant it!” “Amen! Amen!” Outside, the sweep of a starlighted sky covered the world. Julie lingered upon the steps, her tense nerves relaxing gradually, as the safety and reassurance outside wrapped her about. From some near garden the fragrance of roses was borne to her by an idle breeze—a little breeze which, having rendered this service, blew away thereafter into the hills. The mountains were there, the stars, the night.

On a sudden impulse she dropped down upon the top step. It half frightened her to do so, because it would “look so funny” if anybody shouldsee her. But the church was a little distance back from the street, and there appeared to be no passers-by. She clasped her hands lightly around her knees, and leaned against a pillar. She had a feeling of daring and adventure, and yet of utter security. She was tired after her agitation, and the peace of the night received her, like the safety of a deep harbor after a tumultuous sea.

In the church they sang another hymn, and then Brother Seabrook fell upon his sermon. His text was, “The truth shall make you free.” Julie could hear every word, and yet she was completely detached. She sat there sheltered from view, a very still little woman, with the congregation just at her back, Brother Seabrook’s discourse pouring out through the half-open door, and the night all about her, as though she were an invisible soul swung between two worlds. Sometimes she listened to the sermon, sometimes she merely let the stream of it flow by her without bestirring her mind to detain the flotsam and jetsam of ideas.

The wraith of a cloud sailed very softly through the sky, trailing behind it a long wisp of vapor. It passed across the stars and was gone. It wasimmensely tranquilizing. What did all the little hot things of the world matter? Julie had half a mind to go back again into church now and dare whatever might happen. But at the thought her heart stirred and fluttered again. So she did not move, but continued to sit there in the oasis of peace to which she had come. Her eyes were fixed upon the infinite depth of the sky, piercing deeper and deeper into it, until at last it seemed to her as though she were up there above the hills, just below the pattern of stars.

Suddenly, however, she was jerked violently to earth. Her name was being spoken. She froze into a listening terror. Brother Seabrook’s sermon had come to an end, and his voice resounded through the open door: “I will ask Sister Julie Rose to offer the closing prayer,” it said.

Snatched back from the sky, Julie’s clasped hands flew spasmodically up against her breast. Very stiffly she turned and peered over her shoulder. It seemed to her that Brother Seabrook’s eyes must be staring straight at her, but she was still alone, still safely hidden from the congregation.

“Sister, will you please lead us?” the voiceinsisted. A pause followed, then the voice came again—“I thought I saw Sister Rose. Is she not among us?” it demanded.

Very stiffly and silently Julie arose, and tiptoeing down the steps, fled away in a panic toward the safety of her own home. Hastening desperately through the streets, in a few breathless moments she reached the haven of her own back door. With hands that shook, she inserted her key, and whisking inside, slammed the door and locked it.

Safe within the shelter of her own home, her own roof to cover her and her door fast locked against the outside world, she leaned against the wall and panted. “Oh, you fool! You awful little fool!” she cried in passionate self-contempt. “But—but I reckon I oughtn’t to say ‘fool,’” she faltered.

After a moment, she moved over and turned on the light, and then snapped it off again and stood uncertainly in the dark. She was dreadfully afraid some members of the congregation might stop to question her about her strange disappearance; but if her house was in darkness, they would conclude that she had gone to bed.

This was a vain hope, however. She had not been home very long, sitting cowering in the dark, when a sudden knock came, and a voice cried, “Julie—Aw, Julie!”

Julie waited a hesitant moment, but the voice came again and the knock insisted. It was Mrs. Sam Wicket. When she called, people had to answer and doors had to open. With fingers that were still tremulous, Julie turned the key. Three faces peered in at her, sharp with inquiry, in the flare of electricity that Julie turned on again. Mrs. Wicket had in tow her old aunt, Mrs. Stover, and Miss Mary Humphries also. It was a delegation of inquiry.

“Well,” Mrs. Wicket announced. “I didn’t b’lieve you’d gone to bed this early.”

“Walk in,” Julie said, with dutiful hospitality, which was superfluous, for, headed by Mrs. Wicket, the three were already trooping through to the sitting-room.

“Here, I can’t see a thing. Where’s that hateful button? There, now!” Mrs. Wicket flooded the neat little room with light. “Now, then, Julie, we stopped by to see what was the matter with you,” she announced. She was a thin woman,with dark and snappy eyes, very precise in her brown dress, to which there was not a superfluous ruffle, as there was not an extra ounce of flesh on her spare body. “No’m, thank you, I always prefer a stiff-backed chair; you take the rocker yourself,” she interpolated to Miss Mary Humphries.

Miss Mary sat down in the patent plush rocker,—one that Julie’s father had bought in the old days,—and her square figure firmly established there and her hands clasped upon her Gospel Hymn book, she stared at Julie. “What made you slip away like that, Julie?” she demanded.

“Was you feelin’ bad, honey?” old Mrs. Stover asked. She was a tired old woman whose eighty years found it hard to keep up with her niece’s forty-five energetic ones, but she was afraid to be left alone and so was forced to trail feebly in the other’s wake. She gasped now as she sank upon the sofa, her mouth open and tremulous, although she tried every now and again to shut it. But uncertain and dim as her eyes were, they were the only ones that held any comfort for Julie. “Was you sick?” she repeated.

But Mrs. Wicket, who never paid any attention to what her aunt said, cut her short and demanded again, “What made you slip out of church like that, Julie?”

“I—I felt kind of funny,” Julie parried, her cheeks turning red.

“Mrs. Anderson said you stole out like that because you were afraid Brother Seabrook would call on you to pray,” Miss Humphries announced heavily.

“Mrs. Anderson’s right hot with you, Julie, for givin’ her the slip like that,” Mrs. Wicket stated.

Julie said nothing. She sat with tightly folded hands on her knees and forced herself to look straight at first one inquisitor and then the other, with what might appear to be an air of composure, although the eyes seemed to bore into her soul, and to meet them squarely caused her almost a physical discomfort.

“Were you afraid he was going to call on you to pray, Julie?” Mrs. Wicket repeated all over again.

“Well—well, he did,—” Julie blundered—and knew at once that she was lost. “That is—I—Iwas afraid he might,” she added, frightened into the truth.

Mrs. Wicket’s eyes snapped wide open. “Why, Julie,” she cried. “Why, how on earth did you know he called on you?”

But Miss Mary Humphries had been caught by the second part of Julie’s statement.

“Why, Julie, are you really afraid to pray in public?” she demanded. “Why! I think that’s just awful.” Her blue eyes stared at Julie out of her wide heavy face.

“But what I want to know is, how on earth you knew Brother Seabrook called on you,” Mrs. Wicket pursued. “Mrs. Anderson said you left before the sermon.”

Miss Mary, however, was not to be thrown off her line of inquiry. “But, Julie! Not to be able to pray!” she expostulated. “Why, I can’t recollect when I couldn’t pray in public.”

“But how did Julie know she was called on?” Mrs. Wicket demanded. “It wasn’t till after the sermon.”

“In my family,” Miss Mary went on, heavily, “my father raised us up to pray an’ give in experience whenever called on, and—”

“How did you know, Julie?”

“And,” Miss Mary drove straight on, not permitting Mrs. Wicket’s excited interruption to throw her off the track, “and none of us ever did think anything of leading in prayer.”

“Well, now, that’s just it,” old Mrs. Stover suddenly came to the surface long enough to remark. “Maybe if you’d’ve thought more of it, it wouldn’t’ve come so easy to you. Some folks prays easy, an’ some don’t. Julie, you look real tired. If I was you, I’d go right to bed, an’ I’ll be over in the mornin’ to see how you air.”

“Oh, thank you,” Julie said, catching gratefully at the one remark that she dared to answer. “But I’ll not be here in the morning. I’m going to Red River.”

This announcement served as an unexpected reprieve.

“Oh, you going to Red River?” “You goin’ there in the morning?” Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary exclaimed together, deflected from their other lines of thought.

“Yes, to do some shopping,” Julie nodded. And now she relaxed a little inside herself, aware that the bait of Red River, which was the countytown and a shopping centre, would distract the others for at least a little while.

“Well, then, I certainly would be obliged if you’d do a little errand for me,” Mrs. Wicket said.

“An’ I’ll get you to attend to a little business of mine, too,” Miss Mary added.

“I’ll be real glad to do it,” Julie said, eagerly.

Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary proceeded at once to give her minute directions for the carrying out of their desires, and Julie listened, assenting and suggesting with the nervous ingratiation of a little dog, which, having escaped a whipping, hopes to reinstate itself once more in society.

Having laid their shopping burdens on Julie’s shoulders, the visitors rose at last to go.

“Now, Julie,” Miss Mary charged, “don’t you go and let that smart clerk in at Randal’s persuade you into buying any of that cheap piece of goods. It ain’t the shade I want, and if they ain’t got anything better, I’ll have to send off for it myself.”

“And remember to see Mr. Winter himself in at Winter and White’s,” Mrs. Wicket admonished her.

They were outside in the garden now, starting down the little pathway. Julie called a good-bye, and shut her door hastily. A window was open, however, and halfway down the path she heard Mrs. Wicket exclaim, “Why, there now! We never did find out how Julie knew Brother Seabrook called on her.”

“It’s awful, her being afraid to pray,” Miss Mary rejoined. “I ought to go back an’ speak to her about it.”

Here Julie snapped out the light.

“There!” she heard old Mrs. Stover announce. “She’s goin’ to bed, like I told her to!”

“Well, it certainly was mighty funny, but I’ll find out all about it to-morrow,” Mrs. Wicket said, as their heels clicked away down the cement walk; and Julie knew that her having sat upon the church steps would yet have to be faced and explained.

“Oh, Iamsuch an idiot!” she broke out. And now the nervous tears rushed forth, and she went about her preparations for bed, shaking convulsively, wiping them away, and raging at herself. “You idiot! You idiot!” she stormed. Even after the light was out and she was stretchedin bed, the devils of self-hatred continued to tear through her. She tossed unhappily from one side to the other, going over and over the whole miserable evening. Why had she run away? Why hadn’t she stayed and faced it out? Oh, but she couldn’t pray—she just couldn’t! Well then, if she had to go, why hadn’t she come straight home, instead of lingering there on the steps? Of course that was a strange thing to do. Of course people would think it funny if they knew. And they would know. Mrs. Wicket would be sure to find it out, and sure to tell. Julie writhed all through her thin body.

“Oh, you little fool!” she gasped. “What business is it of Mrs. Wicket’s what you do? Why can’t you stand up to her and make her mind her own affairs! Everybody comes an’ bosses you. Mrs. Anderson gave the little bird to the cat, and Mrs. Wicket and Miss Mary poking into all you do, an’ you takin’ everything from ’em just because you’re scared to look ’em in the face. Oh, you fool—you fool!—But I mustn’t go on saying ‘fool’!” she wept.

Her shyness, her reserve, and morbid self-consciousness wrapped themselves about her, as intangibleas spider webs, but as difficult to break as forged iron. As the night wore on, her having sat upon the church steps assumed an enormity out of all proportion to the fact. She knew that this was an obsession, but all alone in the depths of her self-distrust and sleeplessness, she could not break free from it.

“Oh, what a fool I am to take things so hard!” she panted. “Now everybody’ll know I’m afraid to pray in public. There won’t be one person that goes to the Methodist church that won’t know it. Oh, you silly idiot! Oh, how I hate you!” In a culminating burst of rage, she turned over and set her teeth violently into her thin arm.

The hours writhed away at last, and just before dawn she fell asleep, but, even then she was not delivered. In her dreams she herself became horribly confused with the little chimney-swallow, and Mrs. Anderson, in the shape of Blackie the cat, pounced upon her.

There was another cat also—this one with two heads; one head had the snapping eyes of Mrs. Wicket, and the other the broad and stupid face of Miss Mary Humphries. They gazed on her, and she heard them making a dreadful play on words.

“She can’t pray,” said the Miss Mary Humphries’ head.

“If she can’t pray, she’s my prey,” said the Mrs. Anderson cat, and opened her mouth. Julie saw the jaws, she saw the teeth, she saw the red tongue curled back. In a moment everything else disappeared. In all the world there was nothing but herself that was a little naked bird, and that gaping mouth descending upon her. Closer and closer it came, the tongue curled back, the white teeth in rows. It closed upon her, and she shrieked, only she did not shriek in her own woman’s voice but rather in that last agony that the fledgling emitted when Blackie pounced.

With a violent start, she awoke. It was early daylight and she was in her own bed; but the dream was still upon her, and for a moment she could not shake it off. It seemed as though somewhere in her sleep she had doffed her humanity and for a moment had entered into and known the agony of the captured bird, as though that agony were a real thing, detached and tangible, left alive to blow about through the world and fasten darkly upon any wayfarers of sleep. On the edge of waking, Julie found the tears inher eyes. “Poor little bird! Poor little thing!” she cried pitifully.

Then she came to herself. The mystery of sleep withdrew, she slipped back into her own personality, and knew that it was time for her to get ready for her day in Red River.

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