CHAPTER IV

A WOMAN IN THE CHURCH

And there was a woman in the church.

There always is,—­one who stands apart, distinct, different,—­in the community but not with it, in the church but not of it.

The woman in David’s church was of a languorous, sumptuous type, built on generous proportions, with a mass of dark hair waving low on her forehead, with dark, straight-gazing, deep-searching eyes, the kind that impel and hold all truanting glances.  She was slow in movement, suggesting a beautiful and commendable laziness.  In public she talked very little, laughing never, but often smiling,—­a curious smile that curved one corner of her lip and drew down the tip of one eye.  She had been married, but no one knew anything about her husband.  She was a member of the church, attended with most scrupulous regularity, assisted generously in a financial way, was on good terms with every one, and had not one friend in the congregation.  The women were afraid of her.  So were the men.  But for different reasons.

Those who would ask questions of her, ran directly against the concrete wall of the crooked smile, and turned away abashed, unsatisfied.

Carol was very shy with her.  She was not used to the type.  There had been women in her father’s churches, but they had been of different kinds.  Mrs. Waldemar’s straight-staring eyes embarrassed her.  She listened silently when the other women talked of her, half admiringly, half sneeringly, and she grew more timid.  She watched her fascinated in church, on the street, whenever they were thrown together.  But one deep look from the dark eyes set her a-flush and rendered her tongue-tied.

Mrs. Waldemar had paid scant attention to David before the advent of Carol, except to follow his movements with her eyes in a way of which he could not remain unconscious.  But when Carol came, entered the demon of mischief.  Carol was young, Mrs. Waldemar was forty.  Carol was lovely, Mrs. Waldemar was only unusual.  Carol was frank as the sunshine, Mrs. Waldemar was mysterious.  What woman on earth but might wonder if the devoted groom were immune to luring eyes, and if that lovely bride were jealous?

So she talked to him after church.  She called him on the telephone for directions in the Bible study she was taking up.  She lounged in her hammock as he returned home from pastoral calls, and stopped him for little chats.  David was her pastor, she was one of his flock.

But Carol screwed up her face before the mirror and frowned.

“David,” she said to herself, when a glance from her window revealed David leaning over Mrs. Waldemar’s hammock half a block away, doubtless in the scriptural act of explaining an intricate passage of Revelation to the dark-eyed sheep,—­“David is as good as an angel, and as innocent as a baby.  Two very good traits of course, but dangerous, tre-men-dous-ly dangerous.  Goodness and innocence make men wax in women’s hands.”  Carol, for all her youth, had acquired considerable shrewdness in her life-time acquaintance with the intricacies of parsonage life.