Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/271



T that moment she heard a distant bell, ringing. It had a high, whining tone, vaguely familiar. Reba listened to it for a minute, searching her memory desultorily. Was it like some bell in the city? Or was it—she had it now. It was like the bell in the Catholic church in Ridgefield.

Reba used to like to hear the Catholic church-bells ringing on a Sunday morning at home. They rang earlier than the other bells—during that quiet, after-breakfast hour, when she was seated in her bedroom reading her Bible—the bedroom furnished with the rose-decorated bed and bureau, marble-topped table, black walnut rocker, and flowered Brussels carpet. How pretty she used to think that carpet was! The sound of this church bell, so like the one at home, recalled to Reba her girlhood room in all its clean orderliness. She saw herself sitting in it, in the low rocker, reading her Bible by the window overlooking the mills. She contemplated the picture for five long minutes, as long as the whining church-bell rang, and afterward she exclaimed softly, "Why, I'll go home!" The very thought of the rigor and sternness of the atmosphere of 89 Chestnut Street acted upon her now as an antidote for the oversweet poison of Chadwick Booth's forbidden caresses. The cold gray house with its granite steps and concrete walks offered a kind of convent peace to Reba. "Yes, I'll go home," she said again.