Not My Will and The Light in My Window

by Francena H. Arnold

  Hope liked to help Grandpa in the barnyard and the orchard and garden. She became a good little housekeeper under Grandma’s guidance. But she never got used to being away from Daddy, and the brightest days of her life were the ones that brought him for a few hours. Even the joy of playing with Lucille on the next farm faded into insignificance when Daddy appeared. Then one day he asked her if she would like to have him get a new mother for her so that she could live with him again. On that day her joy was beyond words, especially when she learned that the new mother would be Miss Elizabeth, her favorite teacher. She remembered now how happily she worked as she and Grandma prepared her clothes so that she could go home with Daddy and “Mother Bess” when they should return from what Grandma called a honeymoon.

  She remembered, too, how all that happiness had departed like a burst bubble after her trip over to tell Lucille good-bye. For Lucille had told her that a stepmother was not something to be happy about. All stepmothers were bad. They just married daddies purposely to get a chance to be mean to the children. Folks could not truly love more than once, and if Hope’s daddy loved Miss Elizabeth it was a sign he had never loved Hope’s mother. Lucille was terribly sorry for Hope, for she had read in several books of terrible things that had happened to stepchildren.

  “She’ll pretend to like you,” said Lucille, “but all the time she’ll be making your daddy not like you. If you don’t mind exactly like she says, she’ll beat you and lock you up in the closet and forget you almost forever!”

  Looking back at it now Hope realized that she had been foolish to listen to Lucille. If she could have gone on believing that it was a good thing to have a “new mother” maybe she would never have realized how little she meant in the home in the years that followed. But Lucille was older and had read “grown-up” books, and it had not occurred to Hope to doubt her. She could not tell Grandma how she felt, for it would make her feel bad, and her arthritis was bothering her anyway so she did not need any more troubles.

  When Daddy and Mother Bess came, it was a very sober little girl who climbed into the backseat of the car and watched the farmhouse disappear through a mist of tears. In the days and weeks that followed she never forgot that she did not really belong. She watched Daddy and Mother Bess together, and she knew they loved each other. So Lucille was right, and Daddy had not loved Mother at all. Even when Mother Bess planned all sorts of nice things to please her, she knew it was only to cover up the plan to make Daddy dislike Hope. Sometimes things seemed so pleasant that she almost forgot, but when she remembered she could see many things to confirm her fears. Daddy’s impatience, for instance. He had never been impatient with her. But now he would exclaim, “Hope, what is the matter with you? You aren’t at all like my little sunshine girl anymore.” He would get cross when she did not like to sit with them but would go into her own room and play alone with the door closed. Yet perhaps things might have been smoothed out and she would have grown used to being a stepchild if another blow had not come.

  When school was out she was sent to the farm for the summer. Life became lovely and bright again. She poured the sad story of her unhappiness and mistreatment into Lucille’s ears. Lucille gave her the sympathy she wanted. Grandpa and Grandma were glad to have her back, and there was so much to see and do on the farm that the weeks flew by. Lucille went away on a visit, and Hope and Grandma were busy with canning. As they peeled tomatoes or prepared fruit for the kettles they talked together as they used to do. Grandma told stories of Daddy’s boyhood, and they laughed over his escapades. They canned many jars of fruit and vegetables to take back to town when Hope should go, and as they worked at these the shadows of unhappiness receded and Hope began to look forward to going home almost eagerly.

  On a hot August Sunday Hope lay on her bed reading as Grandma and Mrs. Wilkins from across the creek sat on the front porch and talked. Hope heard them, but it was very uninteresting until she heard her name. Then she sat up and shamelessly listened. It did not occur to her to do otherwise.

  “Yes, Hope’s a smart child. She’s been good help to me this summer. With my feet so bad, I’ve been mighty thankful for her. I don’t know what I’ll do when she goes back to town.”

  “Maybe Min Gilpin can come. She got back from Harrison’s last week. She’s not much good though. Needs too much watchin’.”

  “Well, I might get along alone, seein’ harvest is over, and my cannin’ most done. Will and Bess will need Hope.”

  “Guess they will. She is sure a smart young’un. I’ll bet Will has been glad many a time that he adopted her when he married her mother, so that there’s no chance of that shiftless Gilpin gang gettin’ her.”

  “Yes, he has. Joe Gilpin was the only one of the family that ever had any gumption. If he hadn’t died so young he might have amounted to something.”

  “How old was Hope when her daddy died?”

  “Just three weeks. Susie was all alone in the world. She had worked for me, you know, before she married Joe, so I took her and the baby back. She was like a daughter to me and I was real glad to have her and Will marry later.”

  “Hope was such a young’un when they was married that she probably never remembered that Will wasn’t her own daddy.”

  “She has never known it.”

  “Well, she owes him a lot for savin’ her from the Gilpin family. She ought to be mighty grateful to him.”

  “It’s not a question of gratitude between them. Have you seen my kitchen since I got the new window cut? Let me show you.”

  The women passed out of hearing, and the child at the window above sat in petrified silence. The entire edifice of her life had tumbled about her ears. Daddy wasn’t her daddy at all—and Mother Bess wasn’t her stepmother. She was her step-stepmother! Oh, how could anything so awful happen to anyone? If it were disgraceful to be a stepchild, as Lucille has taught her, how much worse was the state of a step-stepchild! She could not stand it! She would have to hunt up her own father’s folks and live with them where she belonged. Then she remembered who they were. The Gilpin family! Ugh, she couldn’t! She thought of the run-down farm back in the hills, of the slovenly Link Gilpin, and the silly Min. Were they her cousins? She shuddered. No, she could not live with them. She would stay here with Grandpa and Grandma. But Grandpa and Grandma were not hers either, and Grandma had said that Daddy and Mother Bess needed her. And Mrs. Wilkins had said she owed Daddy a lot for saving her from the Gilpins. Well, she would pay it! She would work as hard as she could for them until she was grown. Then she wouldn’t owe anybody anything!

  When she went back to town and found a baby brother, Jack, she kept her resolution and became a very dependable little helper. When Judy came two years later she proved herself, as Daddy expressed it, “the indispensable woman.” She never told anyone what her thoughts or plans were. She worked and studied and looked forward to the time when she would have paid her debt and would be free to make a life for herself away from those who only loved her because they needed her.

  Sometimes she would forget that she was different from other girls. Daddy was so jolly and kind that she had a hard time remembering that he was only her stepfather. Mother Bess was so comfortably “mothery” that Hope would pretend that she really was her mother and would imagine what it would be like to snuggle up to her and rest against her shoulder as Judy did. But that line of thought would bring remembrance of her own mother who had been inexpressibly dear to her. Maybe the reason Mother was taken away was because she realized that Daddy didn’t love her. She was sure that Mother loved Daddy even though she had been married to Joe Gilpin. How could anyone love a Gilpin, even one that had “gumption”? Of one thing Hope was sure: that was Mother’s love for her. The memory of it became a precious comfort that she hugged to her lonely heart on many a night when her pillow was wet with tears and when she envied Jack and Judy because of the love their parents lavished so freely on them. Then she would remind herself again that a step-stepmother could not possibly have any
real love for her and would turn her thoughts resolutely to her distant goal of a life away from them all.

  When she was sixteen, her dreams began to shape into a picture of the home she intended to make for herself in that distant time, “some day.” Later, she dreamed of the one who would share that home with her. Then one day she awoke to the realization that Jerry Parnell, who last year had been the bane of her existence, was the prince of whom she had been dreaming. Jerry had apparently awakened to her charms at about the same time, and life, which had been drab and uninteresting, became a thing of rainbow hue. They realized that they were too young to be married, but it was a lovely thing to talk and dream about, and they started a bank account into which each of them put money in anticipation of the day when the dreams would come true.

  Tonight in a distant city Hope reviewed those years of planning and dreaming while they had waited to grow up. She thought of last January (Was it not even a year ago? It seemed a lifetime away.) when they decided that they had waited long enough and had set the wedding date in June. She had told her plans at a meeting of the Guild. Now, months later, she grew hot and tense as she heard again, in fancy, the exclamations of the girls and the excited giggle of the newcomer, Grace Sharp.

  “Jerry Parnell! That good-looking guy that sings in the choir? You’d better marry him tomorrow. I wouldn’t trust him until June!”

  Oh, why had she been so blind? Or why hadn’t someone warned her? Surely someone had seen how things were going during those spring weeks. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had suspected something earlier, but to have gone on blindly until the day after the invitations were mailed and then to have found Jerry kissing Grace Sharp! It had been a horrible time, with Grace giggling in embarrassment and Jerry standing white-faced and stricken. Jerry’s almost tearful pleading after Grace had left them alone had not helped at all. She was sure that everyone except herself had been aware of Grace’s conquest of the fickle Jerry, and the thought made her writhe. Daddy’s and Mother Bess’s attempts to comfort her were met with stony refusal to be consoled, and the next day she had left for the city with her half of the bank account. She could never live in that community again. She meant it when she said she would never go home!

  During those first weeks Jerry had written several times, but she had returned his letters unopened. At last, when she had found a note from him in a letter from Jack, she had told the folks at home that they must never send even a message from him again. She intended to make a new place in life for herself here in the city, and the years in Midbury were now a closed chapter. She did not think that Daddy and Mother missed her, though they wrote often even when she was careless about answering. Jack and Judy were big children now, and they were a happy family without her. She was sure that Daddy had never loved her mother or he could not have been so happy with Mother Bess. Mother had not loved Joe Gilpin and had loved Daddy. Wasn’t life a mess? She, herself, had always been a misfit. She had had her dream, but it had been only a dream, for Jerry had not been true though she had loved him completely. Life held no more dreams for her, for real love never came twice. Hereafter she must walk alone.

  For tonight, she was thankful for this place to stay. The Kings had reminded her that it was an answer to prayer, and in the darkness she murmured a prayer of gratitude. If God were so willing to hear, she had hopes that someday soon He would bring the kind of work she wanted.

  6

  The next day Hope learned more of the work of the Institute. From her kitchen window she saw children of all ages flocking through the doors of the old church. She heard singing and the sound of noisy games. In the afternoon she saw mothers with babies coming from every direction, and it so interested her that she forgot she had planned to go job hunting. She went through the side gate and across the paved court back of the church. The door was open, and she entered the coolness of the basement. In a large room the mothers were seated along the wall while Eleanor and Billy and a white-coated man worked at the big table in the center. Eleanor was weighing the babies and marking the weights on a chart, while Billy helped the doctor with his examinations. Several older girls were proudly bringing supplies or helping to quiet restless little ones. It all looked so fascinating that Hope wished she were a part of it. Just then Eleanor spied her and called.

  “Oh, Hope, you’re just the one I need! Can you weigh these babies while I talk to some of the mothers about the new formulas the doctor is giving them? Check the weights on this chart, and be sure you get them all.”

  So Hope found herself a part of the busy scene. Some of the babies were fat little rogues who apparently thrived on the heat and dirt about them. Some were shining with cleanness, and some were soiled and sticky. Some were pitifully thin and pale, and with this latter group Billy and the doctor were working. It was to the mothers of these little ones that Eleanor was explaining the new formulas, and Hope noticed that from a cupboard in the corner came packages of the necessary ingredients.

  “How do you like our baby clinic?” asked Eleanor after the last of the mothers had smiled her thanks and gone off down the street.

  “I think it’s grand! Do you do it every day?”

  “Oh no! Life is too busy for that, though Billy and the doctor would like it. Most of them come in only once in two weeks. A few of the most frail ones come twice a week so that Dr. Ben can keep an eye on them. By the way, you didn’t meet Ben, did you?”

  Hope liked Dr. Ben Madison at once. He was a slight, dark young man on whom either weariness or pain had left its mark. He smiled in friendly fashion and greeted her as a fellow worker. As he turned away from them to enter his car, Hope noticed that he limped slightly. Later Eleanor told her more about the doctor.

  “Ben is a product of this neighborhood. He came to the Institute when he was a small boy. He accepted the Lord here, and now he gives freely of his time and knowledge to help other children in like circumstances. He has a fine practice downtown, but this is his love.”

  Hope, who had watched the doctor as he and Billy worked together, had decided in her own mind that the doctor’s real love was Billy, but she said nothing of this. Eleanor led the way into another basement room, where six or seven boys were engaged in construction of model airplanes.

  “They’re in a contest with the boys from Miller Park. The poor youngsters won’t make much of a showing for they haven’t enough material with which to work, and no one has time to help them. All we can do is to give them this room to work in.”

  She opened another door and called a greeting to a group of girls. “Such a noise! You sound like blackbirds in the treetops. How go the skirts? I’ll try to come back and show you how to make the plackets in about half an hour.”

  As they climbed the wide stairs to the sanctuary above, Eleanor sighed. “Oh, for helpers enough to do a real work here! We could use a half dozen more. There’s so much that we dream of doing.”

  They stood for a few minutes at the back of the church. Through the stained glass of the great windows the light fell on the deserted pews where once the rich and proud of the city worshiped. The pews were shabby now. The velvet cushions had long since worn out. The walls were discolored by smoke and streaked by rain that had discovered cracks in the slate roof. The floor was bare. But the graceful arches of the high ceiling still stretched above as of yore, and the beautiful carving of the altar table and the pulpit was unchanged by the time that had passed since the world’s best known and loved evangelist had stood there with his young bride. From that pulpit had spoken some of the nation’s greatest preachers, and a president of our country had worshiped there. In a book titled America’s Classic Architecture several pages were devoted to this old church. Eleanor told these things to Hope, and the thought of all that had transpired inside these walls awed them both. Yet as she went back to the house to prepare the evening meal it was not of the history of the church that Hope was thinking. She was seeing again that basement room full of mothers and babies, and a tired young doctor wor
king among them.

  That evening, while the Kings attended a meeting at Bethel College, Hope explored the lawn and gardens under Chad’s guidance. They did not go off the walks, for the shrubs and vines had grown unpruned for years and now formed an almost impenetrable jungle.

  “Wouldn’t it be fun to fix up this lawn as it should be?” said Hope as they stood looking down a path that ran between tall lilac bushes. They tried to follow the path but could go only a few feet before they were stopped by tangled branches.

  “No can do,” said Chad, brushing a dirty little hand across his forehead where a wave of tawny hair was falling into his eyes. “I’ve been wanting to chop and dig here but Daddy says not until someone shows me how. Oh, there’s a pool back behind these bushes, but it’s all dirty. Come and see.”

  Just where the walk divided stood the remains of a once magnificent fountain. The stone youth who had poured water from an uplifted shell onto the rocks below was now sadly cracked and inglorious. A limb from a nearby tree had fallen across him and broken one arm. Birds had built a nest in the shell. The drain of the pool below had become clogged, and the trash that filled it had been soaked and resoaked with successive rains.