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"Hadn't we better take a policeman along?" said one of the girls with a nervous
laugh. "It really isn't safe down there, you know."
"There's no danger," said Virginia, briefly.
"Is it true that your brother Rollin has been converted?" asked the first
speaker, looking at Virginia curiously. It impressed her during the drive to
the Rectangle that all three of her friends were regarding her with close
attention as if she were peculiar.
"Yes, he certainly is."
"I understand he is going around to the clubs talking with his old friends
there, trying to preach to them. Doesn't that seem funny?" said the girl with
the red silk parasol.
Virginia did not answer, and the other girls were beginning to feel sober as
the carriage turned into a street leading to the Rectangle. As they neared the
district they grew more and more nervous. The sights and smells and sounds
which had become familiar to Virginia struck the senses of these refined,
delicate, society girls as something horrible. As they entered farther into the
district, the Rectangle seemed to stare as with one great, bleary, beer-soaked
countenance at this fine carriage with its load of fashionably dressed young
ladies. "Slumming" had never been a fad with Raymond society, and this was
perhaps the first time that the two had come together in this way. The girls felt that instead of seeing the Rectangle they were
being made the objects of curiosity. They were frightened and disgusted.
"Let's go back I've seen enough." said the girl who was sitting with Virginia.
They were at that moment just opposite a notorious saloon and gambling house.
The street was narrow and the sidewalk crowded. Suddenly, out of the door of
this saloon a young woman reeled. She was singing in a broken, drunken sob that
seemed to indicate that she partly realized her awful condition, "Just as I am,
without one plea;" and as the carriage rolled past she leered at it, raising her
face so that Virginia saw it very close to her own. It was the face of the girl
who had kneeled sobbing that night, with Virginia kneeling beside her and
praying for her.
"Stop!" cried Virginia, motioning to the driver, who was looking around. The
carriage stopped, and in a moment she was out and had gone up to the girl and
taken her by the arm.
"Loreen," she said, and that was all. The girl looked
into her face, and her own changed into a look of utter horror. The girls in
the carriage were smitten into helpless astonishment. The saloon-keeper had
come to the door of the saloon and was standing there looking on, with his hands
on his hips. And the Rectangle from its windows, its saloon steps, its filthy
sidewalk, gutter, and roadway, paused, and with undisguised wonder stared at the
two girls. Over the scene the warm sun of spring poured its mellow light. A
faint breath of music from the bandstand in the park floated into the
Rectangle. The concert had begun, and the fashion and wealth of Raymond were
displaying themselves uptown on the boulevard.
When Virginia left the carriage and went up to Loreen, she had no definite idea
as to what she would do or what the result of her action would be. She simply
saw a soul that had tasted of the joy of a better life slipping back again into
its old hell of shame and death. And before she had touched the drunken girl's
arm, she had asked only one question, "What would Jesus do?" That question was becoming with her, as with many others, a habit of life.
She looked around now as she stood close by Loreen, and the whole scene was cruelly vivid
to her. She thought first of the girls in the carriage.
"Drive on; don't wait for me! I am going to see my friend home," she said calmly enough.
The girl with the red parasol seemed to gasp at the word "friend" when Virginia spoke it.
She did not say anything. The other girls seemed speechless.
"Go on! I cannot go back with you," said Virginia.
The driver started the horses slowly.
One of the girls leaned a little out of the carriage.
"Can't we -- that is -- do you want our help? Couldn't you --"
"No, no!" exclaimed Virginia; "you cannot be of any help to me."
The carriage moved on and Virginia was alone with her charge.
She looked up and around.
Many faces in the crowd were sympathetic. They were not all cruel or brutal. The Holy
Spirit had softened a good deal of the Rectangle.
"Where does she live?" asked Virginia.
No one answered. It occurred to Virginia afterward when she had time to think it over, that
the Rectangle showed a delicacy in its sad silence that would have done credit to the
boulevard.
For the first time it flashed across her that the immortal being, who was flung
like wreckage upon the shore of this early hell called the saloon, had no place that could be
called home.
The girl suddenly wrenched her arm from Virginia's grasp. In doing so she
nearly threw Virginia down.
"You shall not touch me! Leave me! Let me go to hell! That's where I belong! The devil is
waiting for me. See him!" she exclaimed hoarsely. She turned and pointed with a shaking
finger at the saloon-keeper. The crowd laughed.
Virginia stepped up to her and put her arm
about her. "Loreen," she said firmly, "come with me. You do not belong to hell. You belong to Jesus,
and He will save you. Come."
The girl suddenly burst into tears. She was only partly sobered by the shock of meeting
Virginia.
Virginia looked around again. "Where does Mr. Gray live?" she asked. She knew that the
evangelist boarded somewhere near the tent.
A number of voices gave the direction.
"Come, Loreen, I want you to go with me to Mr. Gray's," she said, still keeping her hold
of the swaying, trembling creature. who moaned and sobbed and now clung to her as firmly
as before she had repulsed her.
So the two moved on through the Rectangle toward the evangelist's lodging place. The sight
seemed to impress the Rectangle seriously. It never took itself seriously when it was drunk;
but this was different. The fact that one of the richest, most beautifully-dressed girls in all
Raymond was taking care of one of the Rectangle's most noted characters, who reeled along
under the influence of liquor, was a fact astounding enough to throw more or less dignity
and importance about Loreen herself. The event of Loreen's stumbling through the gutter
dead-drunk always made the Rectangle laugh and jest. But Loreen staggering along with a
young lady from the society circles uptown supporting her, was another thing. The
Rectangle viewed it with soberness and more or less wondering admiration.
When they finally reached Mr. Gray's lodging place the woman who answered Virginia's
knock said that both Mr. and Mrs. Gray were out somewhere and would not be back until
six o'clock.
Virginia had not planned anything farther than a possible appeal to the Grays, either to take
charge of Loreen for a while, or find some safe place for her until she was sober. She stood
now at the door after the woman had spoken, and she was really at a loss to know what to
do. Loreen sank down stupidly on the steps and buried her face in her arms. Virginia eyed the miserable figure of
the girl with a feeling that she was afraid would grow into disgust.
Finally a thought possessed her that she could not escape. What was to hinder her from
taking Loreen home with her? Why should not this homeless, wretched creature, reeking
with the fumes of liquor, be cared for in Virginia's own home instead of being consigned to
strangers in some hospital or house of charity? Virginia really knew very little about any
such places of refuge. As a matter of fact, there were two or three such institutions in
Raymond, but it is doubtful if any of them would have taken a person like Loreen in her
present condition. But that was not the question with Virginia just now. "What would Jesus
do with Loreen?" That was what Virginia faced, and she finally answered it by touching
the girl again.
"Loreen, come. You are going home with me. We will take the car here at the corner."
Loreen staggered to her feet, and to Virginia's surprise, made no trouble. She had expected
resistance or a stubborn refusal to move. When they reached the corner and took the car, it
was nearly full of people going uptown. Virginia was painfully conscious of the stare that
greeted her and her companion as they entered. But her thought was directed more and more
to the approaching scene with her grandmother. What would Madam Page say?
Loreen was nearly sober now. But she was lapsing into a state of stupor. Virginia was
obliged to hold fast to her arm. Several times the girl lurched heavily against her, and as the
two went up the avenue a curious crowd of so-called civilized people turned and gazed at
them. When she mounted the steps of her handsome house Virginia breathed a sigh of
relief, even in the face of the interview with the grandmother; and when the door shut and
she was in the wide hall with her homeless outcast, she felt equal to anything that might
now come.
Madam Page was in the library. Hearing Virginia come in, she came into the hall. Virginia
stood there supporting Loreen, who stared stupidly at the rich magnificence of the
furnishings around her.
"Grandmother" -- Virginia spoke without hesitation and very clearly -- "I have brought one of
my friends from the Rectangle. She is in trouble and has no home. I am going to care for
her here a little while."
Madam Page glanced from her granddaughter to Loreen in astonishment.
"Did you say she is one of your friends?" she asked in a cold, sneering voice that hurt
Virginia more than anything she had yet felt.
"Yes, I said so." Virginia's face flushed, but she seemed to recall a verse that Mr. Gray had
used for one of his recent sermons, "A friend of publicans and sinners." Surely, Jesus
would do this that she was doing.
"Do you know what this girl is?" asked Madam Page in an angry whisper, stepping near
Virginia.
"I know very well. She is an outcast. You need not tell me, grandmother. I know it even
better than you do. She is drunk at this minute. But she is also a child of God. I have seen
her on her knees, repentant. And I have seen Hell reach out its horrible fingers after her
again. And by the grace of Christ, I feel that the least that I can do is to rescue her from
such peril. Grandmother, we call ourselves Christians. Here is a poor, lost human creature,
without a home, slipping back into a life of misery and possibly eternal loss, and we have
more than enough. I have brought her here and I shall keep her."
Madam Page glared at Virginia and clenched her hands. All this was contrary to her social
code of conduct. How could society excuse familiarity with the scum of the streets? What
would Virginia's action cost the family in the way of criticism and loss of standing, and all
that long list of necessary relations which people of wealth and position must sustain to the
leaders of society? To Madam Page, society represented more than the church or any other institution. It was a power to be feared and
obeyed. The loss of its good will was a loss more to be dreaded than anything, except the
loss of wealth itself.
She stood erect and stern, and confronted Virginia, fully roused and determined. Virginia
placed her arm about Loreen and calmly looked her grandmother in the face.
"You shall not do this, Virginia. You can send her to the asylum for helpless women. We
can pay all the expenses. We cannot afford, for the sake of our reputations, to shelter such a
person."
"Grandmother, I do not wish to do anything that is displeasing to you, but I must keep
Loreen here to-night, and longer, if it seems best."
"Then you can answer for the consequences! I do not stay in the same house with a
miserable--" Madam Page lost her self-control. Virginia stopped her before she could speak
the next word.
"Grandmother, this house is mine. It is your home with me as long as you choose to
remain. But in this matter I must act as I fully believe Jesus would in my place. I am
willing to bear all that society may say or do. Society is not my God. By the side of this
poor, lost soul, I do not count the verdict of society as of any value."
"I shall not stay here, then," said Madam Page. She turned suddenly and walked to the end
of the hall. She then came back, and, going up to Virginia, said, with an emphasis that
revealed her intense excitement of passion:
"You can always remember that you have driven your grandmother out of your house in
favor of a drunken woman." Then, without waiting for Virginia to reply, she turned again
and went upstairs.
Virginia called a servant, and soon had Loreen cared for. She was fast
lapsing into a wretched condition. During the brief scene in the hall, she had clung to
Virginia so hard that her arm was sore from the clutch of the girl's fingers.
Virginia did not know whether her grandmother would leave the house or not. She had
abundant means of her own; was perfectly well and vigorous and capable of caring for
herself. She had sisters and brothers living in the South and was in the habit of spending
several weeks in the year with them. Virginia was not anxious about her welfare, as far as
that went; but the interview had been a painful one. Going over it, as she did in her room
before she went down to tea, she found little cause for regret. "What would Jesus do?"
There was no question in her mind that she had done the right thing. If she had made a
mistake, it was one of judgment not of heart.
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