Read The Parkerstown Delegate Online
Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
The Parkerstown Delegate
By
Grace Livingston Hill
The shadows are long and low on the grass, the sleepy road is muddy, the chestnuts look expectantly down from the laden tree with their eager, prickly faces, all ready to leap when the frost shall give the word, the river glides dreamily along, and the rusty-throated crickets sing and sing the whole day. A busy gray spider works hard to finish certain meshes on the railing of the upper porch. Nothing makes any difference to her any way. She builds her house in a convenient place for catching flies, and when that house fails or breaks she builds another, so on to the end, and then it is all over.
Two men come down the road in blue jeans overalls and checked blouses. One is big, with a large neck and no collar, a sunburned face lengthening into sandy whiskers, a broad, coarse, straw hat and hands in his pockets. The other is younger, with a pleasant face, a manly figure and a spade over his shoulder. They both have large, heavy boots spattered with mud, and walk much with their heels, carrying their feet after them with a sort of a rhythmic curve, shaped something like a tie in music.
“Is Lois coming back soon?” asks the younger of the two men as they near the large white house on the right hand side of the road. There is much hesitation in his manner as he asks the question, but he tries to summon a matter-of-fact tone, and swings his body a little more decidedly.
The large man, however, does not notice, for he suddenly seems to be aroused to a piece of news he has forgotten to impart.
“Well, yes, now you mention it, she is.” There is a pleased look in his pale blue eyes and a broad grin of satisfaction over his face as he makes this reply. He is very proud of his daughter Lois, and three months is a long time for her to have been away from home. He wishes all the neighbors to understand that it is a great thing for Lois Peters to be at home once more. “She’s coming on this evening’s express train, and that’s what I’m hurrying home so early for.”
There is a glad ring in the young man’s voice which he cannot repress as he answers: “Well, I declare! I’m right glad of it. You see Harley’s been taking on so of late because she’s been gone so long. He says it seems as if she would never come any more.”
”You don’t say!” says the proud father. “Well, now, that’s too bad. I’m glad she’s coming. I make no doubt she’ll run right over and see him the first thing. How is the little chap these days?”
“Pretty poorly. He doesn’t get any better. Some days he’s able to be dressed and moved about, but most of the time he has to lie quite still. Mother gets discouraged about him, but the little fellow is as patient as can be. Father says he can’t bear to look at him, sometimes, it seems so dreadful to think he can never be well again.”
“Yes, it is pretty hard,” said the rough man, rubbing his checked sleeve across his eyes; “uncommon hard for the little chap. Well, good-evening! Lois will be right glad to see you over, I have no doubt. She’ll come right off to see the little chap, too,” and the two men parted, the younger at his father’s gate, while the older man passed on down the road toward the village.
“So Lois is coming back again. Well, I’m glad of it,” said the young man to himself as he paused a moment by the gate and looked meditatively back up the road he had just come. The distant hills were purpling themselves into their nightcaps, while the sun tore the clouds into scarlet and gold ribbons to adorn them. The young man watched the process a moment as he had watched it many times before, but to-night the gold seemed more glorious than it had for many a sunset eve, and perhaps it was because it reminded him of the light on Lois’s face. At least his heart felt that the sunlight of the village was coming back. He had not thought much of it in that way before, it is true; but he was glad, nevertheless, perhaps for his little brother’s sake, that Lois was coming back. They had been good friends for years.
There was nothing handsome about Franklin Winters except his great, honest dark eyes, and his smile. People said his smile was like a benediction. That smile lighted up his whole face as he turned to go into the house, and made him look handsome. Although he was not a very well-educated young man, and although when he talked he did not always use the best of English, still the slow, even tone in which he spoke his words and the rare smile with which they were often accompanied, took the sharp edge from what would otherwise have grated on the refined ear, and made one feel that here was true heart culture at least, if there was not overmuch education.
It was pleasant, too, to see the tenderness with which he approached the bed of his young invalid brother, after he had removed the great straw hat which covered his well-shaped head, and stood some minutes at the kitchen sink, making a half-way toilet before the cracked looking-glass.
“Harley, I’ve some good news for you,” he said. “Lois is coming home to-night on the evening express, and her father says he’s sure she’ll run right over here the first thing. Maybe she’ll come in the morning.”
The joy of the young invalid was quite apparent. He had very few pleasures in his monotonous life. Ever since the scarlet fever had attacked him, several years ago, his had been but a weary, painful existence.
He was not much more than thirteen years old, but his life of pain had made him old in many ways beyond his years, while the constant necessary reliance upon others had kept him quite a child too. He had the same dark, handsome eyes as his brother, but his face, though a trifle thin and pinched with the pain he had suffered, was beautiful as any girl’s.
“Oh, Frank, I’m so glad!” he exclaimed, catching his brother’s hand and squeezing it. “Now she’ll have more stories to tell, and maybe some new plans for me. I’m so tired of all the old ones, and besides I’ve outgrown them. Three months is a long time when one has to spend it on the bed, you know, and can use the nights to live in as well as the days— that is, most of them”—and he smiled a sorry little smile.
“On the evening express did you say she was coming?” he asked again suddenly as if a new idea had struck him. “Then why couldn’t you carry me into the other room for just a little while and let me watch it go by? It would be such fun to see it and then to think that there was someone I knew in the lighted-up cars. I’ve watched it before, you know, but I didn’t ever have any one in them to feel that way about. Why, it would be ’most as good as going in a train again myself, as I did when I was such a little fellow before I was hurt, with father. I can remember real well about how the cars looked, and if I could see the express go by to-night and could think she was in it, maybe I could imagine myself in those cars whirling along beside her, coming home from the city like any boy. Say, Franklin, you will, won’t you? It won’t hurt me to be moved to-night, a bit, for I’ve had a real good day,” he finished triumphantly, and then looked up to his brother’s face with such pleading in his eyes as could not be resisted, albeit the brother’s were so full of tears that he was forced to turn his head the other way for a moment.
“If mother says so, Harley” he managed to get out, and then strode from the room to find the mother and choke down his rising feelings.
Harley had his wish, although the troubled mother doubted the wisdom of it when she saw the fever into which her boy worked himself before the train did finally rush by. And then it was such a passing pleasure, with all his imaginings of himself on board. A few sparks, a few shrieks, a roar, a rush, a bright, quick glancing of lighted windows with dim figures in them, and then all was over, and Harley could scarcely get to sleep, so excited was he.
He was awake very early the next morning. He knew the colors of the sunrise well, and could tell you all about them, for he had watched them many times from his window, after long nights of weary hours, which it had seemed to him would never end. He watched the pink bars of the sky slowly turn to gold, and then melt away into a glory that burst over the world and filled everything, even his room, and brightened his pale face for a little. Then the world waked and went to work and things began. Harley might hope for Lois to come soon, for had she not been his friend for so long, and did she not love him dearly? She surely would come over directly after breakfast. And Lois did not disappoint him. She came while it was still early, with a great spray of chestnut burs in her hand, that the frost had opened and robbed of their nuts just to show the world what a pretty velvet lining was inside.
Lois had not exactly a beautiful face when you considered it carefully; her skin was pink, and her eyes blue, with yellow lashes, and her hands just the least mite freckled, like her father’s, but the eyes were bright and sweet, and the lashes had somehow caught and tangled a sunbeam into them, and the hands were quick and graceful, nevertheless; besides Lois had hair—wonderful hair! It began by being red like her father’s, but the glory of the sunlight was in it to mellow it, and the soft brown richness of her mother’s had toned it down, until the red only shone through in little glints, and made it the most beautiful halo of soft, rippling light about her head; so that when you considered her hair, Lois was lovely. Harley thought her very beautiful, and I am not sure but his brother Franklin held the same opinion.
“And now, Lois,” said Harley, when the greetings were over, and they had settled down to an old-time talk, “begin! What will you tell me first? Let me see. Begin with the nicest thing first. What was the nicest thing you saw in all the time you were gone?”
Lois raised her eyes a little above their level, and put on her thoughtful expression. Harley liked to see her so, and feasted his eyes upon her as she studied the ceiling, thinking how good it was to have her back with him again.
But Lois’s eyes were beginning to brighten and a smile crept over her face which Harley knew was the harbinger of some good thought or story.
“I think the convention was the best of all,” she said, bringing her eyes back to his face, full of pleasant memories for him to read.
“Convention! What convention?” asked Harley almost impatiently, “and how could a convention be the pleasantest thing in a visit to a big town?”
“But it was,” said Lois emphatically, “the very best thing of all. I think if I had to choose between the whole of the rest of my visit and those three days of convention I wouldn’t have stopped a minute to think, I would have chosen the convention—at least, that’s the way I’d do, now I’ve been to it.”
Harley looked puzzled. He could not understand why a convention should he particularly interesting to a girl, but he had unlimited faith in Lois and her taste.
“Was it politics, or a firemen’s convention? And did they—why, I suppose they had a great many parades, didn’t they? Was that why it was so nice?” he asked, trying to understand.
“Oh, no, indeed!” said Lois, laughing. “It wasn’t politics nor firemen nor Farmers’ Alliance nor any of those things. It’s a long story, and I’ll have to begin at the beginning. It was the State convention of the Y.P.S.C.E. Do you know what those letters mean?” and she stopped to watch the color deepen in Harley’s cheek and his eyes shine as he tried to guess what the mystic letters could mean, but after he had made several unsuccessful attempts she went on.
“It means Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor,” she said, naming each word on a finger of her hand, and nodding triumphantly as she finished. “Do you know about it?”
“No,” said Harley. “It sounds stupid. I can’t see how you could like it so much,” and there was almost a quiver of disappointment about his mouth.
But Lois hastened to take up her story and make its scenes live again before the eager eyes of her small listener.
“It's a very big society,” she began; “there’s one all over everywhere pretty near. They even have one in Japan, they say. It’s a society of the young folks all working for Christ. That’s what Endeavor means, you see. It’s a long story so if you don’t understand all I say you better ask questions, for I may leave out some. All the young folks get together first and say, ‘We’ll have a society’ and then they take the pledge and the constitution and”—
“What’s the pledge and constitution?” interrupted Harley.
“I don’t know much about the constitution,” said Lois. “I guess it’s just their laws; but the pledge I’ve learned by heart:
“Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for strength, I promise Him that I will strive to do whatever He would like to have me do; that I will pray to Him and read the Bible every day, and that, just so far as I know how, throughout my whole life, I will endeavor to lead a Christian life.”
“That’s the first half. I didn’t learn the rest. It’s about being at all the meetings and helping them along, and always going to the consecration meeting once a month, unless you have an excuse you can give to God. I didn’t think it was worthwhile to learn that part, because we haven’t any society here and I don’t suppose we ever shall have. They don’t take to such things in this town, but I thought the first half of that pledge anybody could take and be a society by one’s self, so I have written it down and signed my name to it, and I’m trying to be a Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor all by myself. Well, about once in so often—once a year, I guess it is—they have a convention. There’s a great big one of all the societies in the country, in some big city—that’s what they call the ‘National’—but this wasn’t one of those. This was a State convention. That means just the societies in that State, you know Mrs. Brant said she invited me to come to town early in the season so that I could be there to the convention, because she thought I would enjoy it; and I did, ever so much. Well, the first meeting was in the evening, and they began to come—the delegates—along in the afternoon, from the trains that came in from all directions. Maybe you’d see a young man with a satchel, and then three girls, and then two or three youngish boys, and you’d run to the window and say, ‘There come some delegates! I wonder if they’re the ones that’ll come here to our house!’ You see Mrs. Brant kept three of them, two young men, and a girl that roomed with me, and I got pretty well acquainted with her and she told me all about their society at home and” —
“But what’s a delegate?” interrupted Harley again.
“Oh! they’re the folks each society sends to represent them. The whole society couldn’t come, of course, because it would cost too much and they couldn’t all be entertained, and then some of them would have to stay at home any way, I suppose; so each society sends two or three of its members, and they call them delegates. Some of the delegates were very nice. They all wore badges just like the Grand Army men when they go to a big meeting, only these had Y.P.S.C.E. on them in big letters and the name of the town they came from, and some of them had a motto. It was ever so nice to study their badges and say to them, ‘You live in Newtown, don’t you? Why, I have a cousin there. Did you ever see her?’ I heard from two people I used to know, that way. It was real exciting that first night before I got used to it. Mrs. Brant had raised biscuits and doughnuts and thin slices of ham and some of her nicest preserves for supper, and there was the best table-cloth and the biggest napkins, and the whole house looked so ‘receptiony.’ The three delegates looked as if they enjoyed it, too, when they came downstairs with their hair all combed, and their eyes shining as if they’d just got to the front hall of Heaven and expected to be shown a good way inside before the next three days were over. We had to hurry through supper, for the first bell began to ring early, and it kind of made us all uneasy to get there and begin, we’d heard so much about it and talked it over so long. I’d meant to take real solid enjoyment eating one of those doughnuts, for Mrs. Brant does make such lovely ones, but I was so in a hurry to get to meeting that I actually didn’t finish mine.
“The first thing that night was a sermon, and it was a grand one. I do wish we could have such preaching here in Parkerstown. It just made me feel as if I wasn’t any kind of a Christian, though I have been a member of the church for four years. Why, all those young folks are doing so much and living so differently from what I am, that I felt all sort of left out. I haven’t remembered much of the sermon itself—not the words—but that’s the way it made me feel, and I never shall get away from the feeling that came that night that I mustn’t waste any more time living the way I’d been doing.
“When we got home, after we’d had a talk awhile in the parlor with the delegates, and they’d gone to bed, we got breakfast as near ready as we could the night before, so we could go to the meeting at six o’clock in the morning. When I heard about that meeting I thought it was a dreadfully silly idea to begin so early, and I made up my mind that whatever else I went to, I wouldn’t go to that meeting. I thought I’d have enough without it, but Mrs. Brant said she wanted me to go; that they said it was one of the best meetings of the whole thing, and I felt a little curious about it after the delegates began to talk so much of it, and so we decided to go, and slip out ahead to have breakfast all ready for them when they came back. And we did. You ask about parades. They weren’t exactly any parades, only when church was out they looked a little that way, everybody with badges, you know, but before those morning meetings there was just a procession of folks going. It was interesting to see them. I stood in the door and watched while the last bell was ringing, and the people came hurrying from all directions. There was a family opposite that Mrs. Brant says never go to church, and it was very funny to see them come to the door, and the man poked his head out of the upper window to see if there was a fire or anything that people were all out so early and the bells were ringing. They found out after a few hours, though, that the bell would keep on ringing all day.
“It was the most beautiful meeting that I had ever been to, then. The leader read the twenty-third psalm, about ‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ you know, and then we sang, ‘I was a wandering sheep; and the leader asked them all to pray, and they did, ever so many of them. I think there were twenty or thirty prayers right in a minute or two, and they didn’t try to pray long and ask for everything in the world at once, but each one had some little thing he wanted for himself, or for them all, that he asked for. Then they sang, ‘There were ninety and nine,’ and the leader told them that as there was but half an hour for the meeting any way, that they must all be quick and short, or everybody wouldn’t have a chance, and they all were.
“A girl spoke up just as soon as they got through, and said she had been thinking while he read the verses, how she had heard that it was the lambs that kept close to the shepherd that he cared for most tenderly. He found nice things for them to eat, and he took them up and carried them when they were worn out, and when there was danger they always felt safe, and she thought it was a good deal so with following Jesus: the ones that kept close to Him had an easier time and loved Him better than those that only followed far away. Then one of our young men delegates recited a beautiful poem, and it was so pretty I asked him to write it out for me. I can only remember a few lines of it, but you shall have it all to read when I unpack my trunk. It began like this:
“I was wandering and weary
When my Saviour came unto me;
For the ways of sin grew dreary,
And the world had ceased to woo me:
And I thought I heard Him say,
As He came along His way,
‘O silly souls! come near Me;
My sheep should never fear Me;
I am the Shepherd true.’
“He took me on His shoulder, and tenderly He kissed me;
He bade my love be bolder,
And said how He had missed me; And I’m sure I heard Him say, As He came along His way,
‘O silly souls! come near Me;
My sheep should never fear Me;
I am the Shepherd true.’
“There was an old man sitting way back, and he said, right after that, that he didn’t want to take up the time of the young folks as he knew he was an old man, but he had been a shepherd himself once, and he knew all about sheep. He said they wouldn’t ever lie down until they had had enough to eat and were quite comfortable and that he had been thinking that when Jesus Christ made people ‘to lie down in pleasant pastures,’ that it meant that he always fed them and made them comfortable and happy first. There were ever so many other pretty little things said about sheep and lambs, and some Bible verses and bits of poetry recited, and some more prayers and singing, and I really didn’t think we had been in the church ten minutes, when the leader said the time had come to close.
“We all got back to the church again as soon after breakfast as we could to the business meeting. I had made up my mind by that time that those young folks could make even business interesting, if they could do so much with a half-hour prayer meeting. Besides, I intended to find out all I could about this queer society. The business was just as interesting as could be. They had a bright, quick man for president, and he made things spin; and they settled ever so many questions, and made a dozen committees to attend to things in less than no time, and then he called for the reports from societies. It was just the most amazing thing I ever did, to sit there and hear all those young boys and girls and men and women get up, one after another, and tell of what their society was doing, how many members it had, when it was formed, how it had grown, and all sorts of things about it. They kept calling for new places all the time, and I just expected they would call for Parkerstown next, and I would have to get up and say we hadn’t any society here, and never had even heard of it. I was so ashamed of Parkerstown that I didn’t know what to do. But they didn’t call for it. That afternoon there were two speeches about doing work for Christ, and there were papers five minutes long from different people, telling the best ways of working on the different committees they have in the society, Lookout and Social and Prayer meeting and all those things. I can’t remember the rest of them, but I have a constitution at home in my trunk, and that will tell you what they all mean if you want to see it. They gave some nice ideas that made me wish we had a society here, so we could do some of the things they told about.
“It was great fun in the evening when the secretary came. He is the great secretary, you know, of the National,’ and they felt very proud to think he had promised to come to their convention, because he is so busy that he can’t always go to all the conventions. He came in on the evening train, and came right down to the church without even a chance to wash his hands. We were singing when he came in, because we had been kind of waiting along for the train to come, and at the end of the verses we all waved our handkerchiefs at him as he came up to the platform. He was a splendid-looking young man, real young; you would hardly have thought him more than a boy at first, though when you looked at him closer you saw that he was a good deal older, and he didn’t talk like any boy, I can tell you. He just stood up there and made everybody love him at first. He told us how glad he was to see us, and how he had come a long journey just to be with us. Then we were all so glad he had come, and began to wonder how we had gotten along with our convention so far without him and called it a good time; and we felt right away how sorry we should be when the next day was over and we should have to say good-by to him. He talked beautifully. I wish I could tell you all the stories he told us, and what wonderful things he said we could do if each one did his part. I have some of the things down in my little blank book, and when I come over next time I’ll bring it, and then I can tell you more of his talk. He didn’t talk very long, and then we all went home and went to sleep.
“The next morning’s prayer meeting was just as good as the first one, and a little better because the secretary was there, and somehow he made us feel as if Jesus Christ were a good deal nearer to us since he came, because he seemed to love Him so very much. The next day there were reports and business and talks and a question-drawer where everybody asked questions on paper and the secretary answered them, and there was a story read, a beautiful story. I’ll tell you that, all by itself, another time. It’s too long for now. It was a Christian Endeavor story, too; everything was Christian Endeavor. Early in the evening there was a big reception in the town hall. Everybody went and shook hands with the secretary. I was introduced to him too, and he smiled just as cordially at me as he did to the people he stayed with and must have known a great deal better. Then about nine o’clock we all went in a procession to the church for the closing consecration meeting.
“Why, Harley, I never went to anything like that meeting! I can’t begin to tell you anything about it. There were almost a hundred prayers in just about ten minutes. The singing was so sweet; everybody was so much in earnest; and it seemed as if Jesus was right there in the room waiting to give a blessing to everyone, to me just as much as anyone else. Everybody talked too, and told what the convention had done for them, and how it had helped them. I had to tell too, just a little word. I felt as if it would be ungrateful to go away from that meeting without saying how happy I felt for having been allowed to be there, and how I wanted so much to belong to that society, only we hadn’t any to belong to, but I thought I would try by myself; and then someone came to me afterwards and told me he hoped I would begin a society, that I would likely find someone else to help, and that we would have a Christian Endeavor in our town before the next year’s convention. Of course I didn’t tell them what a hard place Parkerstown is, but I did wish with all my heart I had a society to come home to and join. I’ve been going to the one in Lewiston all the time I’ve been there, and they made me join; so I’m really a member after all.
