FELICIA
started off to the play not very happy, but she was familiar
with that feeling, only sometimes she was more unhappy than
at others. Her feeling expressed itself tonight by a
withdrawal into herself. When the company was seated in the
box and the curtain had gone up Felicia was back of the
others and remained for the evening by herself. Mrs. Delano,
as chaperon for half a dozen young ladies, understood
Felicia well enough to know that she was "queer,"
as Rose so often said, and she made no attempt to draw her
out of her corner. And so the girl really experienced that
night by herself one of the feelings that added to the
momentum that was increasing the coming on of her great
crisis.
The play was
an English melodrama, full of startling situations,
realistic scenery and unexpected climaxes. There was one
scene in the third act that impressed even Rose Sterling.
It was
midnight on Blackfriars Bridge. The Thames flowed dark and
forbidden below. St. Paul's rose through the dim light
imposing, its dome seeming to float above the buildings
surrounding it. The figure of a child came upon the bridge
and stood there for a moment peering about as if looking for
some one. Several persons were crossing the bridge, but in
one of the recesses about midway of the river a woman stood,
leaning out over the parapet, with a strained agony of face
and figure that told plainly of her intention. Just as she
was stealthily mounting the parapet to throw herself into
the river, the child caught sight of her, ran forward with a
shrill cry more animal than human, and seizing the woman's
dress dragged back upon it with all her little strength.
Then there came suddenly upon the scene two other characters
who had already figured in the play, a tall, handsome,
athletic gentleman dressed in the fashion, attended by a
slim-figured lad who was as refined in dress and appearance
as the little girl clinging to her mother, who was
mournfully hideous in her rags and repulsive poverty. These
two, the gentleman and the lad, prevented the attempted
suicide, and after a tableau on the bridge where the
audience learned that the man and woman were brother and
sister, the scene was transferred to the interior of one of
the slum tenements in the East Side of London. Here the
scene painter and carpenter had done their utmost to produce
an exact copy of a famous court and alley well known to the
poor creatures who make up a part of the outcast London
humanity. The rags, the crowding, the vileness, the broken
furniture, the horrible animal existence forced upon
creatures made in God's image were so skilfully shown in
this scene that more than one elegant woman in the theatre,
seated like Rose Sterling in a sumptuous box surrounded with
silk hangings and velvet covered railing, caught herself
shrinking back a little as if contamination were possible
from the nearness of this piece of scenery. It was almost
too realistic, and yet it had a horrible fascination for
Felicia as she sat there alone, buried back in a cushioned
seat and absorbed in thoughts that went far beyond the
dialogue on the stage.
From the
tenement scene the play shifted to the interior of a
nobleman's palace, and almost a sigh of relief went up all
over the house at the sight of the accustomed luxury of the
upper classes. The contrast was startling. It was brought
about by a clever piece of staging that allowed only a few
moments to elapse between the slum and the palace scene. The
dialogue went on, the actors came and went in their various
roles, but upon Felicia the play made but one distinct
impression. In realty the scenes on the bridge and in the
slums were only incidents in the story of the play, but
Felicia found herself living those scenes over and over. She
had never philosophized about the causes of human misery,
she was not old enough she had not the temperament that
philosophizes. But she felt intensely, and this was not the
first time she had felt the contrast thrust into her feeling
between the upper and the lower conditions of human life. It
had been growing upon her until it had made her what Rose
called "queer," and other people in her circle of
wealthy acquaintances called very unusual. It was simply the
human problem in its extreme of riches and poverty, its
refinement and its vileness, that was, in spite of her
unconscious attempts to struggle against the facts, burning
into her life the impression that would in the end either
transform her into a woman of rare love and self-sacrifice
for the world, or a miserable enigma to herself and all who
knew her.
"Come,
Felicia, aren't you going home?" said Rose. The play
was over, the curtain down, and people were going noisily
out, laughing and gossiping as if "The Shadows of
London" were simply good diversion, as they were, put
on the stage so effectively.
Felicia rose
and went out with the rest quietly, and with the absorbed
feeling that had actually left her in her seat oblivious of
the play's ending. She was never absent-minded, but often
thought herself into a condition that left her alone in the
midst of a crowd.
"Well,
what did you think of it?" asked Rose when the sisters
had reached home and were in the drawing-room. Rose really
had considerable respect for Felicia's judgment of a play.
"I
thought it was a pretty fair picture of real life."
"I
mean the acting," said Rose, annoyed.
"The
bridge scene was well acted, especially the woman's part. I
thought the man overdid the sentiment a little."
"Did
you? I enjoyed that. And wasn't the scene between the two
cousins funny when they first learned they were related? But
the slum scene was horrible. I think they ought not to show
such things in a play. They are too painful."
"They
must be painful in real life, too," replied Felicia.
"Yes,
but we don't have to look at the real thing. It's bad enough
at the theatre where we pay for it."
Rose went
into the dining-room and began to eat from a plate of fruit
and cakes on the sideboard.
"Are
you going up to see mother?" asked Felicia after a
while. She had remained in front of the drawing-room
fireplace.
"No,"
replied Rose from the other room. "I won't trouble her
tonight. If you go in tell her I am too tired to be
agreeable."
So Felicia
turned into her mother's room, as she went up the great
staircase and down the upper hall. The light was burning
there, and the servant who always waited on Mrs. Sterling
was beckoning Felicia to come in.
"Tell
Clara to go out," exclaimed Mrs. Sterling as Felicia
came up to the bed.
Felicia was
surprised, but she did as her mother bade her, and then
inquired how she was feeling.
"Felicia,"
said her mother, "can you pray?"
The
question was so unlike any her mother had ever asked before
that she was startled. But she answered: "Why, yes,
mother. Why do you ask such a question?"
"Felicia,
I am frightened. Your father--I have had such strange fears
about him all day. Something is wrong with him. I want you
to pray--."
"Now,
here, mother?"
"Yes.
Pray, Felicia."
Felicia
reached out her hand and took her mother's. It was
trembling. Mrs. Sterling had never shown such tenderness for
her younger daughter, and her strange demand now was the
first real sign of any confidence in Felicia's character.
The girl
kneeled, still holding her mother's trembling hand, and
prayed. It is doubtful if she had ever prayed aloud before.
She must have said in her prayer the words that her mother
needed, for when it was silent in the room the invalid was
weeping softly and her nervous tension was over.
Felicia
stayed some time. When she was assured that her mother would
not need her any longer she rose to go.
"Good
night, mother. You must let Clara call me if you feel badly
in the night."
"I
feel better now." Then as Felicia was moving away, Mrs.
Sterling said: "Won't you kiss me, Felicia?"
Felicia
went back and bent over her mother. The kiss was almost as
strange to her as the prayer had been. When Felicia went out
of the room her cheeks were wet with tears. She had not
often cried since she was a little child.
Sunday
morning at the Sterling mansion was generally very quiet.
The girls usually went to church at eleven o'clock service.
Mr. Sterling was not a member but a heavy contributor, and
he generally went to church in the morning. This time he did
not come down to breakfast, and finally sent word by a
servant that he did not feel well enough to go out. So Rose
and Felicia drove up to the door of the Nazareth Avenue
Church and entered the family pew alone.
When Dr.
Bruce walked out of the room at the rear of the platform and
went up to the pulpit to open the Bible as his custom was,
those who knew him best did not detect anything unusual in
his manner or his expression. He proceeded with the service
as usual. He was calm and his voice was steady and firm. His
prayer was the first intimation the people had of anything
new or strange in the service. It is safe to say that the
Nazareth Avenue Church had not heard Dr. Bruce offer such a
prayer before during the twelve years he had been pastor
there. How would a minister be likely to pray who had come
out of a revolution in Christian feeling that had completely
changed his definition of what was meant by following Jesus?
No one in Nazareth Avenue Church had any idea that the Rev.
Calvin Bruce, D. D., the dignified, cultured, refined Doctor
of Divinity, had within a few days been crying like a little
child on his knees, asking for strength and courage and
Christlikeness to speak his Sunday message; and yet the
prayer was an unconscious involuntary disclosure of his
soul's experience such as the Nazareth Avenue people had
seldom heard, and never before from that pulpit.
