CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 15
Sunday morning Loreen’s body lay in state at the Page mansion on the avenue. The clear, sweet spring air swept over the casket from one of the open windows at the end of the grand hall. Church bells rang, and people on the avenue service turned curious, inquiring looks up at the great house and then went on.
At the First Church, Mr. Maxwell, bearing on his face marks of the scene he had been through, confronted an immense congregation and spoke to it with a passion and a power that came naturally out of the profound experiences of the day before. All through his impassioned appeal this morning, there was a note of sadness and rebuke and stern condemnation that made many of the members pale with self-accusation or with inward anger.
Raymond had awakened that morning to the fact that the city had gone for license after all. A meager majority won the victory, it was true, but the result was the same as if it had been overwhelming. The Christians of Raymond stood condemned by the result. More than a hundred professing Christian disciples had failed to go to the polls, and many more than that number had voted with the whiskey men.
With a voice that rang and trembled and broke in sobs of anguish for the result, Henry Maxwell poured out upon his people these truths that Sunday morning. And men and women wept as he spoke. President Marsh sat there, his usual erect, handsome, firm, bright, self-confident bearing all gone; his head bowed upon his breast, the great tears rolling down his cheeks, unmindful of the fact that never before had he shown outward emotion in a public service. Edward Norman sat nearby with his clear-cut, keen face erect, but his lip trembled, and he clutched the end of the pew with a feeling of emotion that struck deep into his knowledge of the truth as Maxwell spoke it. The thought that the Christian conscience had been aroused too late or too feebly lay with a weight of accusation upon the heart of the editor. And up in the choir, Rachel Winslow, with her face bowed on the railing of the oak screen, gave way to a feeling that she had not allowed yet to master her, but it so unfitted her for her part that when Mr. Maxwell finished and she tried to sing the closing solo after the prayer, her voice broke, and for the first time in her life, she was obliged to sit down, sobbing and unable to go on.
When the congregation had finally gone and Maxwell entered the lecture room, it needed but a glance to show him that the original company of followers had been largely increased. The meeting was tender; it glowed with the Spirit’s presence; it was alive with strong and lasting resolve to begin a war on the whiskey power in Raymond that would break its reign forever. It was a meeting full of broken prayers of contrition, of confession, of strong yearning for a new and better city life.
The Rectangle also felt moved strangely in its own way. Loreen’s death was not in itself so remarkable a fact. It was her recent acquaintance with the people from the city that lifted her into special prominence and surrounded her death with more than ordinary importance. Everyone in the Rectangle knew that Loreen was at this moment lying in the Page mansion up on the avenue. Inquirers besieged Gray and his wife, wanting to know what Loreen’s friends and acquaintances were expected to do in paying their last respects to her.
So that is how it happened that Monday afternoon Loreen’s funeral service was held at the tent before an immense audience that choked the tent and overflowed beyond all previous bounds.
Virginia with her uncle and Rollin, accompanied by Maxwell, Rachel, President Marsh, and the quartet from the First Church, went down and witnessed one of the strangest things of their lives.
A somewhat noted newspaper correspondent passed through Raymond that afternoon. He heard of the service at the tent and went down. His description caught the attention of very many readers the next day.
A very unique and unusual funeral service was held in the slum district known as the Rectangle this afternoon at the tent of an evangelist, Reverend John Gray. The woman, killed during an election riot last Saturday night, had been recently converted during the evangelist’s meetings. She was a common street drunkard, and yet the services at the tent were as impressive as any I ever witnessed in a metropolitan church over the most distinguished citizen.
A trained choir sang a most exquisite anthem. But the most remarkable part of the music was a solo sung by a strikingly beautiful young woman, a Miss Winslow. She had a most wonderful manner in singing, and everybody was weeping before she had sung a dozen words. That, of course, is not so strange an effect to be produced at a funeral service, but the voice itself was one of thousands. Miss Winslow sings in the First Church of Raymond and could probably command almost any salary as a public singer.
The service was peculiar. The evangelist, a man of apparently very simple, unassuming style, spoke a few words, and he was followed by a fine-looking man, the Reverend Henry Maxwell, pastor of the First Church of Raymond. He spoke in a peculiarly sensitive manner of the effect of the liquor business on the lives of men and women like this one. Raymond is full of saloons. I caught from the minister’s remarks that only recently he had changed his views in regard to license. He certainly made a very striking address, and yet it was in no sense inappropriate for a funeral.
Then followed what was perhaps the oddest part of this strange service. The women in the tent, many of them up near the coffin, began to sing in a soft, tearful way, “I was a wandering sheep.” Then while the singing was going on, one row of women stood up and walked slowly past the casket, and as they went by, each one placed a flower of some kind upon it. Then they sat down and another row filed past, leaving their flowers. All the time the singing continued softly like rain on a tent cover when the wind is gentle. It was one of the simplest and at the same time one of the most impressive sights I ever witnessed. There must have been a hundred of these women, and I was told many of them had been converted at the meetings just recently. I cannot describe the effect of that singing. All women’s voices, and so soft, and yet so distinct, that the effect was startling.
The service closed with another solo by Miss Winslow, who sang, “There were ninety and nine.” And then the evangelist asked them all to bow their heads while he prayed. The last view I caught of the service was of the great crowd pouring out of the tent and forming in open ranks while the coffin was borne out by six of the women. It is a long time since I have seen such a picture in this unpoetic republic.