Not My Will and The Light in My Window

by Francena H. Arnold

  “Well, it’s far from being a model kitchen for this day,” said Eleanor, as she carefully adjusted the fullness in the curtain she was hanging. “One woman in a place like this, cooking for a family and trying to keep the place decently clean, would soon work herself to death. That old sink with its wooden drain board would give a modern plumber a nightmare. But I like it. I love old houses, and this one certainly suits our purposes exactly.”

  On Friday they left Chad with Billy and spent the day downtown shopping. Hope knew what she wanted. She had sat up late every night that week making and revising a list.

  “We must not get a lot of things that the girls would never see in their homes. It’s best to have as little equipment as possible, so the girls won’t grow dependent on it. Yet we want nice, pretty things. If their homes are poor, they can be taught to make the best of them. Don’t you think so, Mrs. King?”

  “Indeed I do, though I’m afraid I might not have realized it. You’re right, Hope. No electric or patent gadgets. We’ll stick to the simple life.”

  “One thing I do want, though, that may seem a bit extravagant. If you think so, just tell me and we’ll do without it for a while. I’d like a gay cloth and napkins for the table in the alcove, and a set of pretty dishes, so that once a month each class could cook a meal and serve it attractively. Do you think it would cost too much?”

  Hope looked anxiously at Eleanor as she unfolded her pet plan, and her face lighted with relief as Eleanor answered, “I think that’s grand! I knew it was a burst of genius when I thought of this! It’s going to be the prize department of the Institute. Let’s go to the linen department now and find the prettiest set we can. It will make work in laundering, but it will be worth it.”

  “I thought I’d teach them to do the laundering, too. There will be a lot of towels each week, and the classes can take turns doing them.”

  “Of course. That’s just another idea I overlooked. This is your department, Hope, and you’re going to make a big success of it. There’s one request I’d like to make, though. Our staff is like a family of brothers and sisters working together, and we call each other by our first names. Won’t you call me Eleanor? Mrs. King sounds so formal.”

  Hope looked pleased, though a bit confused. “I’d like to. It will make me feel as if I were really one of you.”

  “It’s a bargain then. And Dr. King is only ‘Phil’ to the workers. It would please him if you would join our inner circle by calling him that.”

  “Are you sure he wouldn’t think me presumptuous? I’d be almost afraid to do that.”

  “He would really like it.” Then Eleanor laughed as at an amusing memory. “I wish you might have witnessed Billy’s pleasure when she was first privileged to call him ‘Phil.’ You see, she had been at Bethel College where he was teaching, and for four long years had to call him Dr. King. When she graduated last spring and realized that he no longer had ‘flunking power,’ as she designated it, she had a gala time for a while. He liked it, however. He and Billy are great friends.”

  Eleanor paid the clerk for the linens and said, as they waited for their change, “I do hope these supplies will be delivered tomorrow.”

  “If they aren’t, I’ll turn my first class into a lecture on marketing and stocking up a kitchen. I think it is as necessary for the girls to know how to buy as it is for them to learn to cook and sew.”

  “It is—it surely is. Where did you learn so much about so many things, Hope? You can do well almost everything that is mentioned.”

  “Oh, no. Just the common everyday things that make up living.”

  “What more could anyone ask in the way of accomplishments—to do well the things that make up living?”

  When they reached home they found Chad helping Billy as she prepared the tots in the nursery for the parents or big sisters who would call for them. This was a process calling for a great expenditure of patience and energy. Eleanor and Hope stood watching as Billy and her assistant, Romilda Ferari, who came in every day from eight to five, washed hands and faces, took off the coveralls serving as uniforms, and put back on the little dresses and suits belonging to the tots. Chad hurried about putting away blocks, dolls, and balls, tremendously elated by his importance.

  “Isn’t this a melee?” laughed Eleanor. “It would drive anyone but Billy crazy, but she thrives on it. Since she came down here as a student worker four years ago, she has been devoted to this work, and especially to the babies. They are her all-absorbing passion in life.”

  “The babies are more attractive than the older children,” said Hope, watching Romilda as she struggled with a black-eyed, curly-headed little son of Italy. “They seem so much cleaner.”

  “Not always,” said Eleanor, her eyes following Chad as he raced back and forth over the floor. “Do you know, Hope, that while the children take their afternoon naps Billy and Romilda often wash and iron some of their clothes? Billy sometimes gives a bath to a bath-deserving youngster, and frequently she shampoos two or three little heads.”

  “Billy is so nice. I like her very much.”

  “Yes, she’s a dear. One would never guess, to look at her there, that she is the only child of extremely wealthy parents, who would give her anything she desired that money could procure.”

  Hope stared in amazement. She had thought of Billy as a working girl, one who had chosen a strange profession to be sure, but nevertheless a wage earner. To know that Billy did not have to earn her living, yet that she labored here at menial and often unpleasant tasks day after day, added one more puzzle to the ones that had caused Hope to wonder since she came to this amazing institution.

  Just then Chad caught sight of them. Immediately his importance and his task were forgotten. He raced across the floor and came to a skidding stop in Eleanor’s outstretched arms.

  “Oh, Mother, I’m so glad you came back. I wanted you such a much!”

  “I wanted you, too, little son. That’s why I hurried back. Were you a good boy?”

  “Yes I was, I truly was. You can ask Aunt Billy.”

  Billy had turned the last scrubbed and polished little one over to Romilda’s guardianship. She walked toward the group in the door. As she drew near, Chad hastily said, “I just ‘membered, Mother. I was a little bit naughty. I pushed Patsy’s face in.”

  “You did what?” said Eleanor in astonishment.

  “I pushed Patsy’s face in. But he ‘served it. Honest he did, Mother. He knocked Margie down … and she’s a little girl.”

  “But sonny,” said Eleanor, motioning Billy to silence, “you can’t fight with everyone who doesn’t please you.”

  “Oh, I don’t … not with everyone. Just with Patsy. I didn’t fighted with any more, did I, Aunt Billy?”

  “No, you didn’t. And you apologized to Patsy, and Patsy apologized to Margie, so it’s all right. And you’re all going to be good tomorrow—I hope.” The last words were added for the adult listeners.

  As they went through the court toward the gate leading into the big yard. Chad thrust one little hand into Eleanor’s clasp and said, “I will be good tomorrow, Mother. Truly and truly I will, Miss Honor.”

  At Hope’s puzzled look, Billy laughed. “You’re wondering at that name. It’s Chad’s nickname for the disciplinary side of his mother’s character. I think he started it in his babyhood when a maid called her ‘Miss Eleanor.’ He has a very wholesome regard for ‘Miss Honor’s’ standards of obedience.”

  11

  The cooking and sewing classes were, from their beginning, immensely popular with the girls of Sherman Street neighborhood. Every afternoon as soon as school was out they would come running through the gate, up onto the back porch, and into the kitchen where Hope awaited them. This afternoon group was made up of grammar school girls, too young to be employed as yet. On two nights each week Hope taught high school girls. There were not so many in this latter class, for down on Sherman Street high school girls often worked in the evenings. All who could come found
it both pleasant and profitable. The fame of the cooking classes spread, helped out by the information that “you get to eat what you cook,” and soon Hope was as busy as the other overworked members of the Institute staff.

  During the hours when school was in session Hope did her shopping, prepared her menus, planned work for the sewing classes, and helped Dr. King in the office. Billy gladly relinquished her position as typist and devoted all her energies to the babies and their mothers. She and Romilda went up and down the streets seeking little ones for the kindergarten. Whenever they found a home where the mother was employed and the children left in the care of some neighbor or a not-too-responsible, aged grandparent, or when they found children playing on the busy streets or in the gutters, they made known the advantages of the care they would receive at the Institute. Each morning while Romilda was busy in the nursery receiving the little ones deposited by working parents, Billy was out in her car collecting others. Dr. Ben would often come in with a child in his arms, while a sick mother waited in his car on her way to the hospital.

  The life at Henderson Institute was an interesting revelation to Hope. She had never known of the existence of such a place as this. She had never met people like Billy and Dr. Ben and the Kings. Billy could have lived a life of ease and pleasure, yet she washed and ironed and cooked lunches for hungry children, and labored gladly in this sordid district. Dr. Ben had an office in a tall building downtown, where a rapidly growing clientele crowded his waiting room. Yet he spent three mornings each week checking on Billy’s little charges and calling on their homes. At any hour of the day or night he would come if they called him.

  Dr. King, Hope had learned, taught four mornings each week in a college far out on the busy boulevard. He had once been offered the presidency of that college but had refused it and instead was giving his life in service here on Sherman Street. As Hope worked with him in the office she grew to realize that he was doing a tremendous work in a place that most men would have rejected. Eleanor divided her time between the home and the Institute. She taught several Bible classes each week, visited the shut-ins, directed the girls’ recreational program, taught English to several foreign women, and helped Dr. King plan and execute the heavy and varied program that made the Institute the busiest place in the district. Yet, Hope had heard a telephone conversation in which Eleanor had refused a position on the teaching staff of the university.

  Truly there was much to cause one to wonder in this unusual situation. As Hope became better acquainted with the workers, as she saw the unselfish service they were giving day after day, as she observed them laboring until they almost dropped from weariness, she came to a new understanding of consecration to the cause of Jesus Christ. One morning in the devotional period Dr. King spoke on “The Love of Christ Constraineth Us,” and Hope listened intently, realizing that herein, perhaps, lay the secret of the lives of her new friends.

  Hope herself had been a Christian many years. Never would she forget the morning when she had talked with her pastor in the home church and told him that she wanted to accept Jesus as her own Savior. She could remember the thrill of joy that was hers at the realization that her sins were forgiven. Yes, she knew she was a Christian. But now, in the office of a shabby old church on a run-down street, she had a newer and bigger vision of the privileges and responsibilities of a Christian.

  Dr. King’s quiet words painted the whole story as clearly as if he were putting it on canvas before their eyes—the greatness of the love of God that caused Him to send His only Son to save unworthy mankind, the tender love of that Son who willingly gave up His life in awful heartbreak and agony for a world that would not receive Him, and the compulsion that comes to each true believer to serve that Savior with all his being. As Hope listened, she wondered that she had been so long blind to this truth—that she was not saved to live for her own pleasure but was saved for God’s service and glory. As Dr. King led them in prayer, she bowed her head and silently prayed, “Dear Jesus, thank You for bringing me here and giving me a part in Your work. Help me to do it well for You.”

  From that day forward, life had a new purpose and meaning for Hope. Heretofore her desire had been only to provide for herself and to secure her independence. Now she had an interest outside herself. To help, even a little, to bring about better conditions in the world, to give a hand to the young girls who swarmed into her kitchen and who needed to be taught so much besides cooking and sewing, to attract them to the Institute where they could learn of the One who could save, even in Sherman Street—to serve in this way among these needy people seemed a high and noble calling that glorified even such humble work as cleaning the kitchen or scouring pans.

  So Hope came to have a kind of peace—not the kind that comes from fulfilled desire, but that which comes when self is laid aside and service for others fills one’s days. She had not forgotten her unhappiness, but it was pushed out of sight for the time by new friends and new work. The busy present took all her time and left no opportunity for daydreams of what might have been. The pranks and escapades of Ginny, Rosa, and Sylvia kept her laughing at and with them, and with their ceaseless chatter flowing around her she could not concentrate on her troubles. So her thoughts were less and less of herself.

  Hope and Billy became fast friends. They worked harmoniously together, Billy’s gay vivacity complementing Hope’s sober quietness. She visited Billy’s home and, seeing the luxury there, was led to appreciate the depth of Billy’s love for her work which could impel her to leave that gracious home. She grew daily more fond of Dr. Ben and wished Billy would learn to love him as he loved her.

  For herself, love was a thing of the past; but she did long to see these two friends find happiness together. Billy had become as dear to her as a sister, and she liked Dr. Ben more than any man she had ever met—unless, of course, it be Dr. King. Even for the latter, whom she admired and respected in a way that was almost hero worship, she had not the feeling of real friendship that she had for Ben. Perhaps it was because of his slight lameness, perhaps because of his diffidence, which was like her own self-consciousness, that her heart went out to him in sisterly sympathy.

  Hope had no other interest in any man, nor did she ever expect to. She wanted only to be left alone here to live and serve as she chose. It was here at the Institute that she had found security when life seemed full of dangers and uncertainty. Here she would stay as long as she was wanted. Even though she had no real fondness for cooking and sewing, Hope had been willing to do both as a means of obtaining the security she sought. Her reward had come with the clearer vision that the last few weeks had brought, for now she saw these humble tasks glorified. They were no longer drudgery but became shining channels of service for Christ.

  12

  Philip and Eleanor King saw the change in Hope and rejoiced therein. As she became increasingly interested in her work, she forgot herself in her interest in the girls who needed her. Those working with her saw the change within, expressed in her face, which had in repose often seemed sullen. Now, in the animation that lit it as she talked to the girls, her real beauty became apparent. She was not gay and lighthearted as Billy was, but the bitter twist had left her lips. When she was alone with her classes she could be heard laughing with the girls. They accepted her as a friend, loved her devotedly, and asked for no other reward than her quiet smile of approval when they had done well.

  “That girl is rather strikingly beautiful when she forgets her complexes and lets her personality have a chance,” said Philip one evening as he and Eleanor stood in the office doorway and watched Hope chatting animatedly with a group of fifteen year olds. “I can hardly believe that she is the same girl I found here when I came home in August. She served a well cooked meal, but I was afraid she’d sour the cream when she looked at it. No one could have convinced me that she could ever look like this!”

  “Isn’t it a wonderful illustration of what God can do when His love shines into a life? Hope is happier now because she
is doing something for someone else and not brooding over her own real or imagined wrongs. She still has her moody moments, but they come more rarely and leave more quickly than at first. Some day I hope the barriers will be broken down so that I can help her as I long to do. The change in her has been so marked that I am encouraged to hope that ere long we can see her moods banished for good. She may surprise us all some day.”

  “We shouldn’t be surprised at anything. Talk about the Seven Wonders of the World! I’d like to write a book about the Unnumbered Wonders of God’s Grace!”

  “When you do, be sure you put me in it. The fact that He has taken me, and forgiven me, and trained me, and used me—”

  “And made you the sweetest helpmeet a man could have—don’t leave that out, Len. I’ll put in two chapters about His gracious dealing with me. Even that would not tell the story.

  Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made;

  Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade;

  To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,

  Nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky.

  “We never can tell the whole story, Phil. But we can pass the good news along and maybe help someone like Hope occasionally. I’m sure God sent her to us for just that purpose.”

  Hope, also, felt that her coming to Henderson House had been the leading of God. She had been frightened, lonely, and unwanted. Her life had been of no value to anyone, and the memory of her unhappy love affair had mocked her whenever she saw the happiness of more fortunate girls. She had been insulted and driven from her position and her abode. Then in her need she had called out to God. He had sent her here to serve, and in that service she had found contentment and a kind of happiness. Not the blissful life of companionship and love that she had expected to have with Jerry, but a substitute joy that, although less thrilling, was comforting in its sense of security.