Page 4 of If Looks Could Kill

To Pearl’s point, to her question, why was I here?

First, it was because I thought I felt God calling me to come.

Then it was because Aunt Lorraine loathed the idea with a quivering passion. I could stop right there.

Then it was because I had all the arguments with her and my dad about it, in which I vowed that I knew what I was doing and was dead set upon going, so to give up now and go back would be to eat crow. No, thank you.

Then it was because I’d been feeling restless, and a bit adrift, ever since my dearest friend and beloved cousin, Jane, only one year my senior, had had the cheek to leave me bereft by getting married and moving to Boston.

She was nauseatingly happy. She barely had time to write, so busy was she with feathering her nest. Her Gerald was, I suppose, acceptable, as bridegrooms go, though I certainly couldn’t see what Jane saw in him.

But I needed something to fill the void her abandonment and betrayal had opened. Not that I was bitter. Ahem.

Then it was because I had promised I would, and then because I had taken the train to the city and was here now, and so I might as well stay, there being no pressing engagement calling me elsewhere.

And then it was because I met our co-commanders, Mr. Ballington Booth and his young wife, Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth.

I would follow Mrs. Booth to Mars if she were forming an expedition, and if she got wind of any poor, lost souls up there, that’s just what she would do.

Both she and her husband are wonderful, and she, so bold!

Such an outspoken leader. Beloved by audiences of both men and women.

I don’t believe she and her husband ever sleep.

They work and work for the good of the poorest people in New York.

They embody what we’re all supposedly trying to be.

Where they lead, I’d like to follow. Even if it means living round the clock with Pearl.

So the Commanders Booth were two of my reasons.

But then it was because I arrived in town and saw the need. So much need. That’s what hooked itself into my heart.

And God’s call? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I know it felt real then. I know I’ve felt nothing like it since. I don’t know if it was a trick of the preaching or the music.

But I know there are an awful lot of folks here needing help.

I think, perhaps, that’s all I know.