In her wanderings from church to church she sought her ideal pastor in vain. Ministers began to fight shy of her, and she became increasingly nervous of them, though her convictions never wavered. Her severance from St. Jude’s told both on her and on the children. Church-going became spasmodic and a matter for individual decision. Sometimes of a Sunday the Bannermans would have extra long family prayers at home instead of going to any outside service; and likely as not a Jew from the South Side mission would officiate. But Juley never felt perfectly easy about such shifts. The household seemed dishevelled. Besides, in any other place of worship than St. Jude’s Sholto Bannerman’s widow found herself a nobody. She began somehow to lose caste a little, and shrank from greetings of her husband’s old acquaintances. As time went on she would once in a while steal in on a Sunday evening to the very back of Dr. Ranken’s gallery, taking all precautions to avoid observation. And there she would listen to his arid discourse carefully and with tears, to know whether she might not return to his fold without violating her conscience. The children could always tell by her face at supper when she had been to St. Jude’s.

CHAPTER FOUR

I

Each year the family fell farther apart. Shortly after the interview with Dr. Ranken Juley took his advice, and Georgie was sent to a boarding-school at Bristol. But though the school was only decided upon after much prayer and careful inquiry, the girl returned for her holidays less manageable at the end of every term. Both Juley’s daughters had derived from her in full force the capacity for ecstasy. But she seemed powerless to direct their energies, and with increasing grief she saw her prayers apparently unanswered. Her faith was sorely tried, and often she wept in secret. But she always renewed the attack, and with a peculiar obstinacy, maddening to them, attempted to force her vision on the children. Once they had been ready to drink in their mother’s words as the essence of truth, and she had flashed veritable heaven at her babes from her apocalyptic eyes. Now it needed all her courage to maintain her beliefs in the face of their entrenched hostility.