81
K i n g ’ s
T h e
B u s i n e s s
February 1930
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Althea Among the Athenians
“ My dear!” she said in a voice of reproof. “ They have a very great deal to do with the case. They are your background. Their blood flows in your veins. They are your ancestors. You are indebted to them. They were respected, honored people: There was nothing that could be Called peculiar about them.” Althea arose abruptly and walked to the bay window, where she gazed across the river at that old landmark Memorial Hall. She stood silently a moment. Then: “ A year ago that would have made an impression on me, Aunt Elinor,” she said. “ And you ! And the won derful old things here, from Governor Winthrop’s chair to your precious high back-comb, which you have evi dently put on to impress your unruly little relative from the wild West—and the general atmosphere besides, of an older culture than we can boast in newer places! All these would have had weight with me. But not now! I know—-I have something better.” Aunt Elinor did not speak, so Althea continued: “ Those ancestors of mine were Unitarian.” This drew a quick interruption: “ Y e s! And rich in every Christian virtue. The Ser mon on the Mount was the rule of their lives.” Indignant loyalty rang in these words. Althea came swiftly back and dropped down beside her on the colonial sofa. “ Darling,” she said gently, taking her aunt’s nervous hand, “ do not think that I undervalue right living— I, who for so long have reveled in declaring that my one object in life was a good time. ‘Making whoopee’ we call it out W est!” Aunt Elinor’s delicate brows drew together at this slang expression and Althea hastily continued: “ When I was so fearfully smashed up in my car, and thought I had ruined my life, there was no comfort for me in any ethical program. There was no hope—-if Uncle Alan had died because of my wilfulness, I should have been under that shadow all my life. But God in His great mercy spared me that sorrow. As I lay in the hospital, all broken up in every way, I found no refuge nor relief anywhere. And then it dawned on me that I needed a Saviour. I had been told that He took up broken, ruined lives and remade and restored them. And so the Lord Himself came to my bedside before any hu man aid reached me, and gathered me in. This is what God, in Christ, did for m e! And can I look with com placency on Unitarianism ?” There were tears in her aunt’s eyes as she followed the words of the earnest young speaker, but she said: “Unitarians reverence Christ, and live more truly Christian lives, very often, than orthodox Christians.” “ I’m not talking about churches or denominations, Aunt Elinor; I am talking about Christ, my Saviour. I am just a new-born babe in this wonderful joyful life, and if I tried to argue theology with you, I’d probably get
“ For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time' in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.’’- —Acts 17:21. LTHEA ’ S been badly shaken up, you know!” “ Badly broken up, would be more like it.” “ Anyway, she’s not the same girl. She must be sent away immediately, if you. ask me.” Thus Althea’s brother! “ To Boston—to Aunt Elinor,” agreed her mother. And to Boston, accordingly, Althea went. “ My dear !” exclaimed Althea’s cousin Constance, as she fell upon her in the Back Bay Station, “ What have you been doing to your little self ? ‘All right,’ you say !” “ I ’m made over, Connie—a new creature,” was A l thea’s response. And somehow, Constance found no reply to this remark, nor could she analyze the look that accompanied it. “ Beacon Street again !” exclaimed Althea as their car ran smoothly down a rather somber-looking city block, whose houses of brown stone or brick with their high stoops, stood side by side, with no intervening space. “ Yes!” laughed Constance, “ And ‘the water side’ of Beacon Street as well !” They pulled up before one of the many stoops, and an instant later, Althea found herself in her aunt’s embrace. “ What is this that I hear of you, my love?” It was a few hours after Althea’s arrival and they were > sitting, on an old mahogany sofa, with distinctly colonial lines! in a rear room from which they could see the River Charles on its gleaming way to the ocean. “ One hears so many things, Aunt Elinor,” Althea parried. “ Your mother wrote me, after your accident, of the great change in you. She at first thought it due to ner vous shock, but later feared you had come under the influence of extreme religionists. Althea dear ! Look at those portraits on the wall !” Althea looked first at the exquisite face of this middle- aged sister of her own father. She was aware of the fineness of the aquiline nose and its slender sensitive nos tril; the delicate arch of the eyebrow; the fine structure of the temple, eye socket and jaw line—all these points so neglected by average artists, who have succeeded in popu larizing a formless, chubby beauty that is neither typi cally American nor true to thè highest American stand ards. “ It’s enough to look at you, Aunt Elinor,” Althea replied. “ But as you have asked it, I obey ! I look !” And she deliberately shifted her gaze to some fine old Copleys. “ They are some of the Sumners, aren’t they ? Dear funny old guys!” she replied jestingly. “ But what have they to do with the case ?” Her aunt drew herself up so that the old cross of amethysts on her bosom rose and fell rapidly.
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