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By Root 2858 0

Gabriel of other eyes: of his mother’s eyes when she beat him, of Florence’s eyes when she mocked him, of Deborah’s eyes when she prayed for him, of Esther’s eyes and Royal’s eyes, and Elizabeth’s eyes to-night before Roy cursed him, and of Roy’s eyes when Roy said: ‘You black bastard.’ And John did not drop his eyes, but seemed to want to stare for ever into the bottom of Gabriel’s soul. And Gabriel, scarcely believing that John could have become so brazen, stared in wrath and horror at Elizabeth’s presumptuous bastard boy, grown suddenly so old and evil. He nearly raised his hand to strike him, but did not move, for Elisha lay between them. Then he said, soundlessly, with his lips: ‘Kneel down.’ John turned suddenly, the movement like a curse, and knelt again before the altar.

3 ELIZABETH’S PRAYER

Lord, I wish I had of died

In Egypt land!

While Elisha was speaking, Elizabeth felt that the Lord was speaking a message to her heart, that this fiery visitation was meant for her; and that she humbled herself to listen, God would give to her the interpretation. This certainty did not fill her with exultation, but with fear. She was afraid of what God might say–of what displeasure, what condemnation, what prophesies of trial yet to be endured might issue from His mouth.

Now Elisha ceased to speak, and rose; now he sat at the piano. There was muted singing all around her; yet she waited. Before her mind’s eyes wavered, in a light like the light from a fire, the face of John, whom she had brought so unwillingly into the world. It was for his deliverance that she wept to-night: that he might be carried, past wrath unspeakable, into a state of grace.

They were singing:

‘Must Jesus bear the cross alone,

And all the world go free?’

Elisha picked out the song on the piano, his fingers seeming to hesitate, almost to be unwilling. She, too, strained against her great unwillingness, but forced her heart to say Amen, as the voice of Praying Mother Washington picked up the response:

‘No, there’s a cross for everyone.

And there’s a cross for me.’

She heard weeping near her—was it Ella Mae? or Florence? or the echo, magnified, of her own tears? The weeping was buried beneath the song. She had been hearing this song all her life, she had grown up with it, bur she had never understood it as well as she understood it now. It filed the church, as though the church had merely become a hollow or a void, echoing with the voices that had driven her to this dark place. Her aunt had sung it always, harshly, under her breath, in a bitter pride:

‘The consecrated cross I’ll bear

Till death shall set me free,

And then go home, a crown to wear’

For there’s a crown for me.’

She was probably an old, old woman now, still in the same harshness of spirit, singing this song in the tiny house down home which she and Elizabeth had shared so long. And she did not know of Elizabeth’s shame—Elizabeth had not written about John until long after she was married to Gabriel; and the Lord had never allowed her aunt to come to New York City. Her aunt had always prophesied that Elizabeth would come to no good end, proud, and vain, and foolish as she was, and having been allowed to run wild all her childhood years.

Her aunt had come second in the series of disasters that has ended Elizabeth’s childhood. First, when she was eight, going on nine, her mother had died, an event not immediately recognized by Elizabeth as a disaster, since she had scarcely known her mother and had certainly never loved her. Her mother had been very fair, and beautiful, and delicate of health, so that she stayed in bed most of the time, reading spiritualist pamphlets concerning the benefits of disease and complaining to Elizabeth’s father of how she suffered. Elizabeth remembered of her only that she wept very easily and that she smelled like stale milk—it was, perhaps, her mother’s disquieting color that, whenever she was held in her mother’s arms, made Elizabeth think of milk. He mother did not, however, hold Elizabeth in her