CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 29
The breakfast hour at the Settlement was the one hour in the day when the whole family found a little breathing space to fellowship together. It was an hour of relaxation. This particular morning the bishop read extracts from a morning paper for the benefit of the others. Suddenly he paused, and his face instantly grew stern and sad. The rest looked up and a hush fell over the table.
“Shot and killed while taking a lump of coal from a car! His family was freezing and he had no work for six months. Six children and a wife all packed into a cabin with three rooms, on the West Side. One child wrapped in rags in a closet!”
These were headlines that he read slowly. He then went on and read the detailed account of the shooting and the visit of the reporter to the tenement where the family lived. He finished, and there was silence around the table. “How awful! Where is the place, did you say?” asked Mrs. Bruce.
“It is only three blocks from here. I believe Penrose owns half of the houses in that block. They are among the worst houses in this part of the city. And Penrose is a church member.”
“Yes, he belongs to the Nazareth Avenue Church,” replied Dr. Bruce in a low voice.
Just as the bishop rose from the table, the very figure of divine wrath, the bell rang and one of the residents went to the door.
“Tell Dr. Bruce and the bishop I want to see them. Penrose is the name—Clarence Penrose.”
The family at the breakfast table heard every word. The two men instantly left the table and went out into the hall.
“Come in here, Penrose,” said Dr. Bruce, and they ushered the visitor into the reception room, closed the door, and were alone.
Clarence Penrose came from an aristocratic family of great wealth and social distinction. He was exceedingly wealthy and had large property holdings in different parts of the city. Now he faced the two ministers with a look of agitation on his face that showed plainly the mark of some unusual experience. He was very pale and his lips trembled. Penrose turned toward Dr. Bruce. “I came to say that I have had an experience so unusual that nothing but the supernatural can explain it. I was one of those who took the pledge to do as Jesus would do. And I have been living in a perfect hell of contradictions ever since. My little girl, Diana, also took the pledge with me. She’s asking me a great many questions lately about the poor people and where they live. One of her questions last night touched my sore! ‘Do you own any houses where these poor people live? Are they nice and warm like ours?’ I went to bed, but I could not sleep. I seemed to see the judgment day. I was placed before the Judge and asked to give an account of my deeds done in the body. ‘What had I done with my stewardship? How about those tenements where people froze in winter and stifled in summer? Did I give any thought to them except to receive the rentals from them? Where did my suffering come in? Would Jesus have done as I had done and was doing? Had I broken my pledge? How had I used the money and the culture and the social influence I possessed? Had I used it to bless humanity, to relieve the suffering, to bring joy to the distressed and hope to the despondent? I had received much. How much had I given?’
“All this came to me in a waking vision as distinctly as I see you two men and myself now. I had a confused picture in my mind of the suffering Christ pointing a condemning finger at me, and the rest was shut out by mist and darkness. Then the first thing I saw this morning was the account of the shooting at the coal yards. I read the account with a feeling of horror I have not been able to shake off. I am a guilty creature before God.”
Penrose paused. The two men looked at him solemnly. Into that room came a breath such as before swept over Henry Maxwell’s church and through Nazareth Avenue. The bishop laid his hand on the shoulder of Penrose and said, “My brother, God has been very near to you. Let us thank Him.”
“Yes! Yes!” sobbed Penrose. He sat down on a chair and covered his face. The bishop prayed. Then Penrose quietly said, “Will you go with me to that house?”
For answer the two men put on their overcoats and went with him to the home of the dead man’s family. From the moment he stepped into that wretched hovel of a home and faced for the first time in his life a despair and suffering such as he had read of but did not know by personal contact, he dated a new life.
One afternoon just as Felicia came out of the Settlement with a basket of food that she was going to leave as a sample with a baker in the Penrose district, Stephen Clyde opened the door of the carpenter shop in the basement and came out in time to meet her as she reached the sidewalk.
“Let me carry your basket, please,” he said.
“Why do you say ‘please’?” asked Felicia, handing over the basket while they walked along.
“I would like to say something else,” replied Stephen, glancing at her shyly and yet with a boldness that frightened him. He loved Felicia more every day since she stepped into the shop that day with the bishop.
“What else?” asked Felicia, innocently falling into the trap.
“Why—” said Stephen, turning his fair, noble face full toward her. “I would like to say, ‘Let me carry your basket, dear Felicia.’”
Felicia never looked so beautiful in her life. She walked on a little way without even turning her face toward him. It was no secret with her own heart that she had given it to Stephen some time ago. Finally, she turned and said shyly, while her face grew rosy and her eyes tender, “Why don’t you say it, then?”
“May I?” cried Stephen, and he was so careless for a minute of the way he held the basket that Felicia exclaimed, “Yes! But oh, don’t drop my goodies!”
“Why, I wouldn’t drop anything so precious for all the world, dear Felicia,” said Stephen, who now walked on air for several blocks.
Late in the afternoon, the bishop, walking along quietly from the Penrose district, in rather a secluded spot near the outlying part of the Settlement district, heard a familiar voice say, “But tell me, Felicia, when did you begin to love me?”
“I fell in love with a little pine shaving just above your ear that day when I saw you in the shop!” said the other voice with a laugh so clear, so pure, so sweet that it did one good to hear it.
“Where are you going with that basket?” the bishop tried to say sternly.
“We are taking it to—where are we taking it, Felicia?”
“Dear Bishop, we are taking it home to begin—”
“To begin housekeeping with,” finished Stephen.
“Are you?” said the bishop. “I hope you will invite me to share. I know what Felicia’s cooking is.”
“Bishop, dear Bishop!” said Felicia, and she did not pretend to hide her happiness. “Indeed, you shall be the most honored guest. Are you glad?”
“Yes, I am,” he replied, interpreting Felicia’s words as she wished. Then he paused a moment and said gently, “God bless you both!” and went his way with a tear in his eye and a prayer in his heart, and left them to their joy.