Edith Russel, a young English writer, now living in Utah, is the author of “The Russells Did Not Go to Church,” a three-part story [continu]ing in this issue. Miss Russell says:

“When I was nine years old we moved to a tiny house in the village of Cottingley, close to the fringe of the Haworth moors and a mere five miles from the haunted shell of ‘Wuthering Heights’ itself.

One year after my baptism into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I became a missionary and was honored by a call to become the only woman ever to edit Millenial Star. During these years, my country was at war, and London, our headquarters, proved a noisy, somewhat dangerous adventure. Then came an invitation to leave England for the U.S.A. to attend an American university, and I to whom school had always been the privilege of ‘the other fellow,’ thought I heard the angels sing!”

The Russells Did Not Go to Church

By Edith Russell

Chapter 2 (of 3)

Synopsis: The Russells, who live on the edge of the Haworth moors in England, do not go to church. However, the daughter Edith almost unconsciously seeks a religious faith to satisfy her spiritual longing. She decides to attend a meeting in the nearby church.

The vicarage was a large, grim house setting its back against the wide, bleak vista of the Haworth moors. The door boasted no bell, but a great iron knocker. It was wet and chilly in my hand and I let it fall with a harsh metallic thud which seemed to place an intolerable weight upon my spirits.

It seemed ages had elapsed before the door was opened and the thin, old face of a woman appeared to inquire my business.

”The Reverend Pratt asked me to come to a meeting of the new churchworkers’ guild, tonight,” I told her.

Hurriedly she opened the door wide enough to admit me.

“Cum in! Cum in! afore all of us freeze t’ death!”

I stepped inside. I heard the door close dully behind me and the old woman led the way down a dark, stone-flagged hall, to a room at the furthest end, the door of which she thrust open to announce: “A young leddy fer t’ meeting.”

I saw a group of perhaps a dozen individuals all sitting within the feeble glow of an oil lamp, all manifestly chilled by the gusty wind-swept night and the patent inadequacy of a small coal fire smoldering in the grate. I recognized two of the men as neighboring farmers and a large woman with a walking cane as a ”ruling hand” in the village.

No one spoke to me as I entered. Everyone was apparently awaiting the arrival of the vicar and the only sensation I seemed to evoke was one of general disappointment.

The reverend gentleman was late. One of the farmers took out his watch— a great silver timepiece with a sonorous tick— and consulted it grimly.

“Five an’ twenty t’eight an’ t’ parson noan ‘ere yit! Ahm noan barn ta wait much longer.” This he uttered in tones implying a serious threat. No one else spoke.

It needed but five minutes to eight o’clock when the outside door clanged again and a moment later, an icy draught blew a somewhat disheveled parson into the room.

His perfectly white hair was wet and windblown as though he had walked far without a hat. His greetings were unexpectedly warm, effusive, almost, and after the previous frigidity manifest in the room, a trifle embarrassing. He walked briskly about the room, rubbing his hands, belatedly seeing to everyone’s comfort, remembering everyone’s name and calling each by it. He was glad I had kept my promise to come. I thanked him for his courtesy. I was waiting to see what in him the villagers had stoned.

He opened the meeting with prayer. It was a fine, eloquent speech and it made me recollect that the man who offered it was something of a scholar; that he quoted Sassoon frequently from the pulpit and that he was writing an autobiography of the Brontes. I thought he was not unlike the Reverend Patrick Bronte, himself – the same unrelenting eyes and thin mouth.

He finished his address to the Almighty with a request that Hannah Shuttleworth of Riddings Farm should be brought, by the whisperings of the Spirit, to realize her unworthiness to belong to St. Matthews since the birth of her illegitimate child, and thus save him, Parson Pratt, the necessity for dismissing her from the congregation.

I opened my eyes, prematurely, at this and found that everyone else, with the exception of Parson Pratt, had ceased trying to keep his closed long ago. They were looking at the devout gentleman, still in prayerful communion, with undisguised admiration. The parson’s command of words impressed them visibly.

The object of our meeting had been the organization of a church-workers’ guild. The church needed workers, and so did Mr. Pratt, but, he had a great respect for organization. There must be a leader and someone who could write letters and make tea. It was gently hinted, too, that there must also be a few members in such an organization who had “long stockings” or a mattress or some other personal hiding place where the rich and eccentric keep their inheritances. The whole thing must be efficiently run in the approved manner if it were to be a success.

There must, of course, be a unity of feeling and purpose among the members. Everyone must lend his whole heart and soul to this first great project of the guild, which was the cleaning out – a moral purging of St. Matthews.

“I’m sure you will all agree with me that it is in the best interests of the church, that such people should be disfellowshipped with all possible speed,” he answered referring to the afore-mentioned Hannah.

“Why don’t yer turn ’er out, Vicar?” a woman’s voice demanded. “Why doan’t yer insult ’er an’ let ’er know she’s noan wanted?”

“I might yet, Mrs. Drake. I might yet,” Mr. Pratt said.

A cold wind blew from the hall under the door at my feet and outside the great door swung a moment then clanged shut, causing the whole house to shudder. With ridiculous optimism it flashed across my mind that God had come; that he wouldn’t stand for it a moment longer and had come to justirfy himself. I waited, one minute, two minutes – but nothing happened; nothing except a voice, curiously like my own, voicing an aching, throbbing protest I thought I never could utter.

“Mr. Pratt!”

He was arrested in his perambulations. he stood looking down upon me, curious.

“Mr. Pratt,” I plunged, desperately, “I don’t know anything about Christianity— lots of people don’t—but, but, supposing some poor unhappy soul were looking for Jesus and had been standing outside this room tonight, listening— to— all this, do you think it would have been any inducement for him to come in?”

I knew it was appallingly weak, but I had an aching lump in my breast which pumped determination, a queer feeling of love, and the instinct to fight and give battle into every vein in my body. A dozen pairs of eyes focused themselves upon me.

“I fear you have misunderstood me. Miss Russell,” he replied, icily. “It is obvious that you are not aware of the character of some of these villagers. Nothing is sacred to them— neither the ornaments of the altar, nor my person. Are you aware that one of them actually stole a candlestick from off the Easter altar?”

I felt a fleeting surprise that this man had evidently never appreciated Hugo’s Les Miserables. Otherwise he would not have afforded me such an excellent opportunity to quote the classic example of the Bishop and Jean Valjean.

”The Bishop forgave Valjean; made him a present of the candlesticks which he had stolen— and brought another soul to God. You see,” I told the furious vicar, “Valjean could resist anything— cruelty, injustice, the beastliness of the galleys—anything at all, except love.

“The villagers are rough and many of them are ignorant,” I said, “but they are not bad. They are like children who do not understand—who need to be shown. You do not love them, Parson Pratt. You have never even tried to understand them. You despise their ignorance, you don’t pity it or try to change it. Hannah Shuttleworth is not a wicked woman— she simply doesn’t know any better— and doesn’t care to know, because the people who have tried to teach her despised her first— despised her and condemned her. Christ forgave the woman who had sinned, he did not condemn her.”

I was awfully near to tears and I swallowed desperately and blew my nose.

“Miss Russell!” The vicar’s voice was bland again. “I am afraid you are too sentimental. You make Christianity sound like a love story …”

“It is a love story, Mr. Pratt,” I broke in, urgently, “The greatest ever told.”

The Reverend Pratt ignored the interruption and surveyed me and the group of startled parishioners with a look depicting an attitude of magnificent fairness.

“I can see you mean well,” he conceded, generously. “You wish to serve God. But— er, not here. You should give your talents to a city poor law mission. You would, I am sure, be very welcome there.”

The inference was obvious. A sense of defeat swept over me as I remembered the country folk of the village, their clean, old-fashioned homes, their uncultivated voices, their superstitions. They believed in God, but they didn’t understand Sassoon.

Looking into the faces of the now silent group, I waited for some feeling of bitterness to well up in my heart. But it didn’t come. Instead, all I was aware of was the unutterable pathos and tragedy of it all. I wondered what the world would be like if all the clever people could just learn to be kind.

And it was suddenly borne upon me that God was here, after all. he must have slipped in once when the door clanged. I could not doubt it though I tried. His voice was in my ears; his love was swelling in my heart; the vision of him was in my eyes.

“You understand, Miss Russell,” Mr. Pratt was continuing, “we cannot ask you now to be a member of the guild—after tonight. We must have unity of thought—and purpose.”

I rose to my feet. A swift new joy surged through me—something exquisite I had not known before.

I said: “Of course, I understand …”

The great heavy door of the vicarage fell shut behind me as I went out into the night. A sense of peace enveloped me. The wind from the moors had blown the clouds into stormy battlements above me. God was waiting.

(To be concluded)