So she sat and played at her dear organ, played sweet and tender hymns.
Played gentle, pleading, throbbing themes that almost spoke their words
out, as she saw Elder Harricutt leading his file of elders into the
session room which was just behind the organ. She knew that in all
probability there was to be a time of trial for her father, and that
some poor soul would be mauled over and ground up in the mill of
criticism, or else some of her father's dearest plans were to be held
up for an unsympathetic discussion. She thanked God for the strong
homely face of Elder Duncannon as he stalked behind the rest with a
look of uplift on his worn countenance, and she played on softly
through another hymn, until suddenly somehow, she became aware that the
two strangers on the parsonage porch had left their rockers and were
coming slowly across the lawn. The woman's hard silvery laugh rang out
and jabbed into the tender hymn she was playing, and she stopped short
in the middle of a phrase, as if the poor thing had been killed
instantly. The organ seemed to hold its breath, and the sudden silence
almost made the little church tremble.
She sat tense, listening, her fingers spread toward the stops to push
them in and close the organ and be gone before they arrived if they
contemplated coming in, for she had no mind to talk to them just now.
Then coldly, harshly out from the cessation of great sound came Elder
Harricutt's voice: "But Brother Severn, supposing that it turns out that Mark Carter is a
murderer! You surely would not approve of keeping his name on the
church roll then, would you? It seems to me that in order to keep the
garments of the bride of Christ clean from soil we should anticipate
such a happening and show the world that we recognize the character of
this young man, and that we do not countenance such doings as she has
been guilty of. Now, last night, it is positively stated that he and
this person they call Cherry Penning were at the Blue Duck--!"
Crash! The bells!
Lynn had heard so much through the open session-room door, had turned a
quick frightened glance and caught the glimpse of two people coming
slowly in at the open door of the church peering at her, had made one
quick motion which released the bells, and dashed into the first notes
that came to her mind, the old hymn, "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me, Let
Me Hide Myself in Thee!" But instead of playing it tenderly, grandly,
as she usually did, with all the sweetness of the years in which saints
and sinners have sung it and found refuge and comfort in its noble
lines, she plunged into it with a mad rush as if a soul in mortal peril
were rushing to the Refuge before the gates should be forever closed,
or before the enemy should snatch it from the haven. The first note
boomed forth so sharply, so suddenly, that Elder Harricutt jumped
visibly from his chair, and his gossipy little details were drowned in
the great tone that struck. Behind his hand, the troubled minister
smiled in spite of his worries, to think of the brave young soul behind
those bells defending her own.