She had done a little cooking early with a view to being ready for a possible visit to Steve, but there was very little else in the bare little house that she could do beyond making the beds and sweeping and dusting a little.
At last she went to her room, locked the door, and knelt down, with a feeling that now she must have it out with God somehow. If He had it in His power to set the life of the Challengers into smoother grooves and there was anything He was waiting for her to do--for them to do--it was time it was made clear. She was going to make a business of praying. It was the last thing left her. True, she came to it with little faith. She had an inward conviction that her prayers were about as worthless as if she were to write her requests on a piece of paper and go and lay them on some wealthy indifferent man's front-door steps.
However, she went into her room, and not being willing to have Bob or Rosalie or Phyllis perhaps come home unexpectedly and find her praying in the daytime, she locked her door. Praying at night was of course customary, in the dark by one's bedside, but praying in the daytime was out of the regular order of things, making almost too much of prayer, putting oneself in a class with fanatics. Mary Challenger did not analyze her feelings. She merely locked the door and knelt down. Then she tried to think of some new and convincing argument to put up before the throne on behalf of her suffering family.
It was strange how her mind wandered. "Oh God--" she said, and that was as far as she would get in her petition. "Oh God----" and her mind would wander off, trying to think of something more that she herself could do. Of course, it wouldn't be right to trouble God with what one could do for oneself. Perhaps she might pray that God would help her to think of someone to go to who would help her out of her difficulty. And her fertile brain would begin at the beginning of all their long list of friends of the years who might possibly do something if they knew the situation. But that was just the crux of the matter. She and Father didn't want their friends to know their desperate situation. They didn't want to be the objects of charity. Oh, if there was just someone, a near relative, loving, kind, with plenty of money! She wouldn't mind humbling herself to ask such a one. Surely--there must be something she could do--!
So her mind wandered from the throne; so she puzzled over her perplexities.
She had not really prayed yet, although she had knelt beside her bed for a long time, when she heard a knock at the door. The telegram at last! Perhaps this was part of the answer to her prayer, she thought as she hurried down the stairs.
Her hand trembled as she opened her purse to pay the messenger boy. It trembled so that she could scarcely sign for the telegram, and she tore it jaggedly across when she opened it, she was so agitated.
She read it and then looked blankly at it. What more did it tell than she already knew? How could she possibly know what to do from this? How could Melissa be so incoherent, so unsatisfactory! If it had only been Phyllis now, she would have put the situation clearly. It was a telegram. It read:
Stephen still under opiates. Leg had to be reset. Doctor says no immediate danger. Not necessary for you to come yet. He will need you more later when recovering. Expect me tomorrow afternoon about three.
It had been a triumph of careful thought, that telegram, wrought out with painstaking mathematical precision during lucid intervals in that awful night curled up on the short willow couch in the visitors' room of the hospital. How not to say the things that would worry her mother. How to tell some of the truth and not let her mother understand that she could not herself find out the whole truth about Steve's condition. These were some of her problems, and to an unaccustomed mind they presented a mountain of difficulty. Melissa was one who had always been sheltered and had questions decided for her. Phyllis had not been that way. She had been much with her father, helping him in his work, and had learned to make quick decisions. Phyllis would have worded that telegram in an instant and made it both soothing and true. But it was a load off of Melissa's mind when it was sent off.
It became, however, a load on her mother's mind when it was received. Stephen, her eldest born, lying under opiates, unable to know anyone, and she not beside him to watch! It made her heart writhe to think of it. And then, why, there hadn't been any answer to her prayer after all. Everything was just a blank wall as it had been all along. She asked--Why! What had she asked? Had she really asked anything at all?
A look of determination went over her face. She would carry this thing through. She would go back again to her knees and really pray, not just let her mind wander.
So back she went and locked her door.
"Oh, God," she prayed, "Thou seest that we are in terrible trouble." She spread her telegram out on the bed and wept bitter tears upon it. "My boy! My boy! Oh, save my boy and help him to get well. Give us back our money, and make us find a nice home in the country where John can get well."
She paused for lack of definite material and then went on. "I'm going out now to see Mr. Mandell. I've just thought of him. He owes John a thousand dollars, and if he knew how we needed it, he might pay it now. He could go out and borrow it. I know John didn't want to press him, but please make it right for me to go to him, and please make him give it to me today. I'm going out to look at that suburban house that was advertised, too. Won't You please bless my efforts and make things come right? It's all I know to do."
After a few earnest tears, she rose from her knees and made herself ready.
She walked away with a brisk step. She had decided on a plan and asked God's blessing upon it. Things ought to be different now if prayers were of avail at any time.
She decided that yesterday's action was a failure because she had not followed up anything after one discouragement. When, therefore, she arrived at J. P. Mandell's house and found it closed with a sign saying for sale on the door, she did not give up. She went to the next-door neighbor and found that Mr. Mandell had moved. The neighbor did not know the exact address, but there was the postman; he might be able to tell. Mrs. Challenger tried the postman and received directions to a far suburb of the city, a rather common, cheap suburb she had always considered it, but perhaps Mr. Mandell did not have her standards of things. So she took a slow trolley line and eventually arrived at the suburb, only to find that Mr. Mandell had been taken very ill with fever and only a few moments before her arrival had been taken in an ambulance to the hospital. The kindly neighbor, who was caring for the children while Mrs. Mandell accompanied her husband to the hospital, confided in the stranger that Mr. Mandell had lost everything in the bank crash last week and they all thought that was the cause of his sudden illness.
"Ain't it awful?" finished the confiding neighbor, and Mrs. Challenger with sudden smarting tears owned that it was awful indeed and beat a hasty retreat, a lump of dismay in her throat and bewilderment in her eyes. Had God then failed her again? She had started out so confidently, after having asked His blessing. What more could she have done? Surely He had promised, hadn't He, to answer prayers? How could He expect her to have faith in Him if He treated her like that! Not that she put these thoughts to words, even to herself, but they ran in an undertone in her mind and kept her stirred up.
It was after three o'clock when she reached home, having eaten nothing except the cracker she had carried with her in her handbag.
She stopped at Brady's to find out if he had seen anything of Melissa. She had not meant to be so late coming home. She wanted to be sure to be there when Melissa arrived. But Brady said he had kept a watch out for her and that she had not arrived.
He handed her a small package as she left.
"Take that home with ya," he said. "It's just a bit of veal cutlet I had left on me hands. You might as well have it as save it over till tomorrow."
"Oh, Mr. Brady!" protested Mary Challenger. "You mustn't! You really mustn't! I'll take this only on condition that you keep account of what we've had, and it shall be all paid, every cent, as soon as we get our money."
"That's all right, Mrs. Challenger! Anyt
hing you like. Sure! Only don't worry about paying till you are easy in money."
She hurried to the house, but there was no sign of Melissa. Bob of course was on his paper route by this time, and Rosalie was to care for that baby again for two hours, so she wouldn't be home. Phyllis? Perhaps she had found another bit of work.
Mrs. Challenger sighed as she took off her things and prepared to set the table and get things ready for dinner. The children would all be hungry, and Melissa would be here presently.
But as she worked, the tears kept coming continually. She felt she had a real grievance against God. Why should He choose them, the Challengers, for all this to happen to? They had always been good churchgoing, well-behaved people, God-fearing, moral. How could He have any better people than they were? The children were well brought up, not like the modern girls and boys of today. Really, it didn't seem fair. They deserved better treatment. Perhaps, after all, there wasn't any God. Perhaps it was even as Melissa had suggested and her college professors believed. It began to look that way. What real ground had they ever had anyway to believe in a God who cared for individuals and noticed trifles, other than that their forefathers had trusted Him?
These thoughts ran wildly around in her mind until she was in a feverish state of irritation.
Phyllis came at half past six, having earned three dollars for her day waiting on tables at a little tearoom where one of the waitresses had been suddenly taken sick.
"Oh, Phyllis!" her mother reproached.
Rosalie and Bob came in together, Bob hungry and noisy, Rosalie shining and sweet, displaying another fifty-cent piece for the family coffer.
But where was Melissa?
At seven o'clock they sat down to dinner. They simply could not wait any longer for Melissa. Perhaps she would come before they were through.
"And anyway, Mother," Phyllis reminded, "you can't tell but you might have to start right back on the next train after she gets here. You ought to be ready to go. You'll have to eat something, and we're all half-starved."
So they sat down. But Mary Challenger could hardly make herself swallow a mouthful of the delicious food. She was by this time a victim of her own tormented mind.
Things were bad enough, but if one couldn't feel that there was a God comfortably up in His heaven and that all would eventually be right with the world, what was the use of trying to go on living any longer?
The evening wore on, and still Melissa did not come.
Brady came in to inquire about the son, and hearing that the sister had not yet arrived, he looked serious and asked what time it was. He tried to bluff it off by saying they likely had a flat tire, tried to joke a little, and then went off again, saying they must remember to call him if they needed any help, but they needn't worry; the young man had his "mom" with him, and Miss Melissa would be all right even if they did have to stay somewhere overnight.
By this time, Mary Challenger was in despair. She went with white face and set lips to her room and locked the door again. The children could hear her crying.
Rosalie crept softly into the closet and knelt down. Phyllis went into the kitchen and looked out into the dark back alley, and by and by, Bob came out and got a drink at the sink. Then he fussed with the electric light, turning it off and on, and eyeing his sister's back. At last he asked:
"Aw, gee! Why'n't we all pray? Rosy got a beefsteak; why couldn't we get something, too?"
Phyllis was silent for a moment, still looking out of the window, then she said in a serious voice: "I'm not so sure that we have any right to ask for things. We've never paid any attention to God before. It doesn't seem reasonable. We have no real claim--that it--does it seem quite fair? We don't even go to church nowadays. I haven't had anything fit to wear to church in a long time."
"Gee! I go ta Boy Scouts when I get home from school in time, an' that's in the basement of a church!" mused Bob.
Phyllis eyed him thoughtfully.
"Somehow that doesn't seem to me to count," she said at last. "You go just for your own fun, don't you? You don't go to worship God or thank Him or anything, do you?"
"We have God in our opening exercises sometimes. There's usually a prayer, ur the Lord's Prayer, anyway."
"But that's not you paying any attention to God, is it? You're usually thinking about other things, aren't you?"
"I s'pose so," admitted Bob reluctantly. "Gee! Whaddaya have ta do anyway? D'ya havta work fer the things ya pray for? What's the use o' prayin' for them, then? Don't He give ya things?"
"Well, I don't know much about God," said Phyllis thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose He gives things--if He answers at all--that's not what I mean. Take it as if He were a man. Take Mr. Brady, for instance. Suppose you'd been too busy to go on that errand for him. Suppose you'd wanted to play ball instead. Suppose you never went near him and didn't smile back when he said good morning. Suppose you'd just simply paid no attention to his kindness at all. You wouldn't feel just like going and asking him for a hundred dollars, would you?"
Bob stood thoughtfully, grinding his heel into a crack of the kitchen floor.
"No, I s'pose not," he reluctantly admitted at last. "But say, if Mother was awful sick and going ta die ef I couldn't get a hundred dollars to bring the right doctor to her, you bet I'd go ask him anyway. I'd tell him I was awful sore at myself fer the way I'd treated him, an' I oughtta be kicked all around the place, an' I wouldn't ever act that way again. I'd tell him I'd be his errand boy and do just whatever he wanted done. I'd tell him I knew I hadn't any right to ask him a favor, the way I'd treated him, but wouldn't he just help me out fer Mother's sake, 'cause he was the only one I knew ta go ta?"
Phyllis looked at him thoughtfully.
"That's what I mean," she said. "You understand. You might try that, if you mean it; it wouldn't do any good just to say it if you didn't mean it, because if He's a God, He would know you were faking."
"Oh sure!" said Bob, dropping his eyes in embarrassment.
"But you couldn't exactly ask God 'for Mother's sake,' could you, Bob? Mother hasn't paid much attention to God, either. At least I never heard her say much about it."
Bob looked at her aghast, then his face suddenly brightened.
"Say, what's that ya say after baby-prayers? 'Fer Jesus' sake'? Wouldn't that be all right?"
"Why, yes, I suppose it would," said Phyllis slowly. "Most prayers do end with something like that. But there you are again. We've never paid any attention to Jesus, either, except just sing a few hymns with His name in them."
"Aw, gee! Ain't He supposed ta love everybody? Didn't He die fer the whole world? He wouldn't be like that, would He?"
"He died for the world," reasoned Phyllis, "but it's not supposed to count unless you do something about it. You've got to accept it, or something. I don't know just what it is."
"I know," said Bob with a swagger. "I went to Bible school last summer for a whole week when I was up in the country with Mick. It's John three sixteen."
"John three sixteen! What on earth do you mean, Bob Challenger?"
"Ho! Don'tcha know what John three sixteen is? It's 'God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' Yer just supposed ta b'lieve an' then yer in somehow. They explained it all out."
"But do you believe? Are you sure you do it in the way they mean?"
"Sure, I b'lieve. Whaddaya think I am? A heathen? There ain't any special way ta do it. Ya just take it at what it says."
"What do you believe?" asked his sister wonderingly.
"Why, I b'lieve God's Son died on the cross ta pay fer my sin. Ain't that what it says? I know I haven't been doin' much about it lately, but I gave my name at that Bible school that I wanted ta, and b'lieve me I'm a-gonta hereafter. I guess that gives me my right, don't it? An' gee whiz! I'm gonta pray fer my mother whether you do ur not! I'm gonta pray fer a home an' money enough ta live on, an' fer Lissa ta come home safe, an' fer Steve ta get
well, an' fer Dad ta come back, an' a lotta other things. Good night! What's the use lettin' things go like this when we gotta heavenly Father?"
Bob suddenly stamped out of the kitchen and up to his room, thumped around noisily for a minute or two, and then Phyllis, still standing by the window where he had left her, heard his door shut, and all was very still. Was Bob Challenger having audience with the King of heaven? Who could tell?
On her knees in the room next to her little son's knelt Mary Challenger, weeping her heart out now, sobbing incoherent sentences into the ear of the Almighty.
"I've reached the end. . .!" she told God. "I've done my best, and it didn't do any good! I'm utterly helpless! If You can't help, we'll have to die! We'll all have to die! We're helpless! Utterly helpless! Ruined! Undone! My boy Steve! Oh, don't let him die! My precious little Lissa! Don't let anything awful have happened to her. Oh, God! I've sinned! I haven't taught her to believe in You. I thought I had, but I hadn't. She said awful things about You, I know, but forgive her, Lord. Don't punish her for it. It was my fault. Oh, God, forgive me! I am a sinner! Oh, God, my poor husband! My poor children! We have lost everything to You. If You don't help, we perish! Oh, God! Hear my cry! Out of the depths of despair, I cry!"
And between every cry, she listened, and listened, for the sound of a car that did not come. Melissa, dear, pretty, proud little scatterbrained Melissa, out somewhere alone in the dark and the night with strangers!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Melissa awoke from her night on the hard wicker couch in the hospital reception room stiff and sore. Though she had her coat on, she was chilled to the bone. Her dress was crumpled, her hair was tumbled about her face, and she felt sticky and dirty.
She woke to the smell of antiseptics, to the sound of the ambulance siren, to the sight of a stretcher being borne though the hall to the operating room and a glimpse of a wan frightened face.