"ONE moment, Mr. Butler," said Louise, detaining the minister, as, having given her cordial greeting in the church-aisle, and bowed to Dorothy, and shaken hands with Father Morgan, he was turning away; "we have something to tell you, something that will make you glad; our sister Dorrie has decided for Christ."
Simple words enough; I suppose even Dorothy, though her cheeks glowed, and her eyes were bright with joy, did not recognize the tremendous import of their meaning; and Louise was surprised at their effect on Mr. Butler. He was a young minister, you will remember; and while he had not been doing all that he could, he had scarcely realized that he could do more—at least not until very lately. This was really his first experience in greeting a new-born soul among his flock. It came to him with all the joy of a glad, an almost overwhelming, surprise. True, he had prayed that he might have "souls for his hire." Yet he had prayed, as many another does, without realizing that possibly his prayer would be answered, and actually souls would come into the kingdom, whom he could welcome to his Father's table!
There was an instant flush over his handsome face, an eager flash in his eyes, and he turned to Dorothy again, and held out his hand.
"Welcome!" he said.
Not a word more, but the quiver in his voice told that words were beyond him just then; and Dorothy turned from him with the belief that it certainly meant a great deal to the minister to have a person "decide for Christ." She was very much surprised, and not a little confused. It had not occurred to her that others, outside of Lewis and Louise, would ever know about her new hopes and intentions. I am not sure that it had before occurred to her that any one would care! She had seen very little demonstration of this sort in her life. So it was another surprise to her when Deacon Belknap shook her hand heartily, as he said,—
"So you have experienced religion, have you? Well, now, that's good, that's good!"
And his face shone, and he shook the hand until it ached.
Poor Dorothy did not really know whether to laugh or cry. She had always been a good deal afraid of Deacon Belknap; he was a solemn-faced, slow-toned man, and she had not known that his face could shine, or that he believed anything anywhere was good. Moreover, she was not sure that she had "experienced religion;" indeed, she was by no means sure what those words meant. It was true that she had decided for Christ, or—no, was that it? It almost seemed to Dorothy that, instead, it should be said that Christ had decided for her! How wonderfully he had called her. How almost she had heard his voice. How tenderly he had waited. How he loved her. And how sure was she that she loved him. But to "experience religion" was some wise and solemn thing that it did not seem to her she understood. But Deacon Belknap had something further to say,—
"You are very happy now, I suppose? Yes. Well, young converts always are. But I want to warn you: you mustn't expect to have that feeling last. It is like 'the morning cloud and the early dew.' You must expect trials and crosses and disappointments and unhappiness. It is a hard world. Some people expect to be 'carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.' But I tell you it is a 'straight and thorny road, and mortal spirits tire and faint."
And Deacon Belknap either forgot, or had never learned, the very next line in that grand old hymn; but with an assurance that the sooner she realized that this world was full of troubles and conflicts the easier it would be for her, went away to his waiting class.
Then Dorothy's brow clouded; she was troubled. She felt so innocently glad and happy, so sure of a Friend, so certain that he loved her and that she loved him. Was it possible that she must lose this feeling, and be lonely and dreary and unsatisfied, as she had been ever since she could remember? Was that what was the trouble with Christians, that the feeling didn't last? Almost Dorothy felt as though, somehow, she had been deceived! Her face was not nearly so bright as before when Carey Martyn came toward her.
He had been introduced at the church social, and had not seen her since, but he grasped her hand as eagerly as Deacon Belknap had.
"I hear good news of you," he said simply, with a glad look on his face. Something in his tones made Dorothy understand what he meant.
"Is it good news?" she asked him doubtfully.
"Is it? The very best in the world. You don't doubt it, I hope? Are you going to stay to Sunday school? Come over and join our class. We are getting-up a new class, and we are going to ask Mr. Butler to take it. I never thought I should care to have him; but it seems to me now just as though he would be a good teacher. Do you believe he will take a class?"
Then Dorothy, remembering his hand-clasp and the light in his eyes, said,—
"Yes; I should think he would. But I can't stay, I suppose. Oh, how I should like to!"
"Like to what?" Louise questioned, just at her side. "Oh, you are talking about Sunday school. I think we can manage it. Lewis has been asked to take a class, and I am wanted to supply a vacancy; and father said stay if we wanted to—he was in no hurry."
Then Dorothy went over to the new class that was forming; and the minister came presently and shook hands with them all, and said he felt honoured by being chosen as their teacher, and wondered that none of them had ever thought of it before. And to Dorothy it seemed as though the millennium were coming, or it would have so seemed had she known anything about that word or its meaning. It was a matter of surprise to many where that new class suddenly came from, or who started it; but the simple truth was, that what had been lingering in a sort of homesick way in Carey Martyn's heart for weeks took shape and form along with the hand-clasp of his pastor at that church social. He was used to Sabbath school, and his old class had been taught by his old pastor.
Taken all in all, it was a white day to Dorothy Morgan. Her first Sunday in a new world; a Sunday in which she had received greetings from the brethren and sisters of the kingdom, and been counted in; a Sunday in which she had actually joined in the hymns and the prayers and the readings, and attempted to follow the sermon, though, truth to tell, Dorothy had gotten very little from the sermon. Try as she would to become interested, her thoughts would wander; but they wandered constantly to the hymn that had just been sung, the words of which she felt, and to the prayer of the pastor, the spirit of which she understood.
"Why can't ministers preach just as they pray?" wondered Dorothy.
The ride home in the brightness of the winter day was not unpleasant. Father Morgan, whether subdued by his long waiting, or by the white world glistening in the sunlight, certainly had nothing to say that was jarring, and seemed not dissatisfied with the condition of things. Dorothy stole little glances at him from under her wrappings, and wondered whether he would ever know that everything was different to her from what it had been last Sunday, and what he would say if he ever did know. And then suddenly, like the leap of a new emotion into her heart, came the desire that he knew for himself what it all meant. Oh, how she wished that father was a Christian!
Where did the sudden, intense desire come from? She had never felt anything like it before. Sometimes, indeed, she had drearily wished that they were more like other people—went to church regularly, even went occasionally of an evening as the Stuarts did, who lived no farther away, and had the social appointed at their house. But it had been a dreamy, far-away sort of wish, little desire about it, nothing in the least like this sudden longing.
Then there rolled over Dorothy the sweetness of the thought that she could actually pray for her father, and that may be—oh, may be!—because of her prayer, the father would, some day, when she had prayed for him a great many years, come to know of this experience by personal knowledge. Will there ever be more happiness put into Dorothy's life than surged over her with the possibilities involved in that thought? Still, Deacon Belknap troubled her. When was she to expect all this brightness to go away? And, also, why must it go? Why had not Lewis said something to her about it—warned her, when she frankly admitted to him this morning that she had never been happy before in her life? And oh, how long had the feeling stayed with him? He knew about it, for he had told her that he understood just how she felt; he remembered well his own experience. Then a sudden, bewildering doubt of Deacon Belknap's theories came over Dorothy, for she was confronted with the thought that she did not believe the feeling ever left Louise; it was this which made her different from others. Still, Deacon Belknap ought to know. And, besides, what might not Louise have had to go through before the joy came to stay? Dorothy's brain was in a whirl. Well for her that Louise, standing at one side, had heard every word of Deacon Belknap's well-meant and honest caution. She saw the instant clouding of Dorothy's face, and watched for her chance to remove the thorn. It came to her just after dinner, when Dorothy was upstairs hunting for her apron. Louise, meeting her in the hall, said,—
"So Deacon Belknap thought he ought to caution you against being happy in Christ?"
"What did he mean?" Dorothy asked, her cheeks glowing. "Does the happy feeling all go away? Must it?"
"What does it spring from, Dorrie dear?"
"Why, I think," said Dorothy, hesitating and blushing violently, "it seems to me that it comes because I love Jesus and because he loves me."
"Yes. Well, if Deacon Belknap had told me that I must not expect to be as happy with my husband in the future as I am now, because there would be trials and difficulties of one sort and another to encounter, and that therefore his love and mine would not burn as brightly, I think I should have considered myself insulted."
"I should think so! Do you mean—O Louise, I mean do you think they are a little alike?"
"He calls the Church his bride, dear; it is his own figure; but of course it falls far below the real, vital union that there may be between us and Christ."
"Then what did Deacon Belknap mean?"
"Why, if I should treat Lewis very coldly and indifferently, forget to notice him sometimes, go for days without talking with him, neglect his suggestions, disregard his advice, and all that sort of thing, I imagine that we should not be very happy together."
"Well?" said Dorothy, in bewilderment.
"Well, don't you know, dear, that that is just the way in which many Christians actually treat Christ? And then Satan blinds their hearts into thinking that it is not their own fault that their joy in him is gone, but a necessity, because of this troublesome world. If I were you I would not tolerate any such insinuations; it is an insult to Jesus Christ, who deliberately says he will keep you in 'perfect peace,' if your mind is stayed on him."
"Then all that isn't necessary?"
"No more necessary than that I should have days of gloom and disappointment over my husband. Oh, it is lowering the power and love of Christ to make that comparison, because, Dorrie, his love is infinite, and he says everlasting."
Dorothy went through the hall below singing,—
"Mine is an unchanging love;Higher than the heights above,Deeper than the depths beneath;Free and faithful—strong as death."
She had found that hymn in the morning, while Mr. Butler was preaching, and had rejoiced in it for a little until Deacon Belknap had banished it from her heart. Now it came back in strength, and it will take more than Deacon Belknap to shake it, for it has taken root.
That Sabbath day had one more experience to be remembered. If Louise's little plan for the walk home from the social had been made with a view to rousing Lewis, she could not more successfully have accomplished it.
He had walked ever since in a new atmosphere; he had risen to the glory of the possibilities of his life; he had heard Dorothy say—she had said it that very morning, when he met her early, out in the back kitchen woodshed, where the kindlings were kept—that he had shown her the way to Jesus, and now she had found rest in him. Was a man ever to forget the sweetness of words like that?—a Christian, honoured of God in showing another soul the entrance-way! Shall he sink to the level of common things after that, and forget that he has a right to work with God, on work that will last to all eternity? Lewis Morgan, Christian man though he had been for years, had never heard those words before; but do you think that something of the honour which he had lost, and something of the shame of having tamely lost such honours, did not sweep over him? Surely it should not be the last time that he should hear such words—at least it should be through no fault of his if it were.
Low motive, do you say? I am not sure of that. There is a higher one, it is true; and every Christian who can feel the lower will, sooner or later, grasp the higher. But since God has called us to honourable positions, even to be "co-labourers," shall we not rejoice in the honour?
Well, Lewis Morgan had worked all day in the light of this new experience. He thirsted for more of it; he felt roused to his very finger-tips; he longed to be doing; he had taught that class of girls put into his care as he had not supposed that he could teach. Now he walked up and down their room, while the Sabbath twilight gathered, thinking.
Louise, who had been reading to him, kept silence, and wondered what was the question which he was evidently deciding. She knew his face so well, that she felt sure there was being made a decision. At last he came to her side.
"Louise, I believe in my soul that we ought to go downstairs and try to have prayers with the family. Father might object to it; he thinks all these things are a species of cant, and I have been especially anxious to avoid anything that looked in the least like it. I have been too much afraid of what he would think. I believe I ought to try. What do you say?"
Of course he knew just what she would say, and she said it. Soon after that they went downstairs. Lewis possessed one trait worthy of imitation; when he had fairly determined on a course, he went straight toward it with as little delay as possible. So, directly they were seated in the clean and orderly kitchen, Nellie cuddled in Louise's lap—a spot which was growing to be her refuge—Lewis commenced,—
"Father, we have been thinking that perhaps you would have no objection to our having family worship together downstairs. We would like it very much, if it would not be unpleasant."
Mrs. Morgan seemed suddenly seized with the spirit of uncontrollable restlessness. She hopped from her chair, drew down the paper shade with a jerk, then, finding that she had made it disagreeably dark, drew it up again, set back two chairs, opened and shut the outer kitchen door, and took down a towel and hung it on another nail; then she came back to her seat. As for Father Morgan, he sat, tongs in hand, just as he had been when Lewis addressed him, and gazed unwinkingly into the glowing fire for the space of what seemed to Lewis five minutes, but, in reality, was not more than one; then he said, slowly and impressively,—
"I'm sure I have no manner of objections, if it will do you any good."
It was Dorothy who rushed into the other room, before her father's sentence was concluded, and brought therefrom Grandmother Hunt's old family Bible; and in the Morgan household, after forty years of life together, father and mother met for the first time at the family altar. Howbeit, neither father nor mother bowed the knee, but sat bolt upright in their chairs. But Dorothy knelt and prayed, and dropped some happy tears on her wooden-seated chair the while.
As for John, he would not go to church; would not come to dinner with the family, but took what he called a "bite" by himself when he chose to come for it; would not stay in the room during the reading and the prayer, but strode off toward the barn the moment the subject was suggested by Lewis.
Yet, despite these drawbacks, the voice of prayer went up from the Morgan kitchen from full and grateful hearts.
I AM not sure that I can explain to you the state of mind in which Dorothy opened her eyes to the world on Monday morning. Unless you have had a like experience you will not understand it. She had always been a repressed rather than an indifferent girl. Under the apparently apathetic exterior there had boiled a perfect volcano of unsettled longing. She had not known what she wanted; she had not felt the least hope of ever discovering how her thoughts had taken new shape; she was in another world; she was another person; old things had passed away; all things had become new. She stood before her bit of mirror, and tried to arrange her heavy braids of hair as Louise wore hers; and, meantime, she was in a very eager, very unsettled state of mind. What was she to do? Where commence? The bare walls of her uninviting little room had always seemed to shut her in, and she had always hated them. Now it seemed to her that she had a right to get away from them—get outside, somewhere, and do something. How was it all to be accomplished? She looked with disdain upon her life; she felt her years, thus far, to have been wasted ones. Now she was ready to make a fresh start, only she could not imagine which stop to take first. You see her danger. Many a young life has shipwrecked its usefulness on just such rocks.
She threw down the covering of her bed, opened the window to let in the crisp winter morning, smelled of the frosty, sunlighted air, and looked abroad over her little world, shut in by hills and far-stretching meadows and home-like farms, and wondered just what she should do; and the sense of longing to get away from all this, whore there seemed nothing to do, was the strongest feeling that possessed her, unless the determination to accomplish it was a shade stronger.
She stepped out into the narrow little hall, and came face to face with Louise, who was fresh and smiling in a fresh calico and ruffles.
"Louise," said Dorothy, a whole world of repressed eagerness in her voice, "what am I going to do?"
"Ever so many things, I hope, dear," was Louise's prompt and cheery reply, and she emphasized it with a kiss.
"Yes," said Dorothy, with shining eyes, "I mean to, oh, I mean to; but—I don't know where to commence. What is there to do?—I mean for a beginning—and how shall I get to the first thing?"
"I think," said Louise, with smiling mouth and eyes, and sweet, decided voice, "I think, my dear, if I were you, I would begin with that black kettle."
Then you should have seen the sudden changing of Dorothy's face. Surprise, disappointment, intense mortification, all struggling with a sense of being misunderstood, being wronged, spoke in her eyes and the quiver of her lips.
"You think I am teasing you, Dorrie," and her new sister's voice was very tender. "Nothing is further from my intention. I honestly mean what I say. That very kettle which gives you Monday morning trouble can help you to a first victory; and it is a symbol of all the other things, small in themselves but amounting to much counted together, that can be made to serve you to-day."
"I did mean to try to do right; but I wanted to do something for Christ."
Dorothy's voice was subdued.
"And you think that Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the black kettle, or the boiler, or the sink, or a dozen other things with which you will come in contact to-day? That is such a mistake. Don't you begin your Christian life by supposing that all these duties which fall upon us in such numbers consume just so much time that must be counted out, and with the piece that is left we are to serve him. Remember it is he who said, 'Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' Doesn't that 'whatsoever' cover the pudding-kettle too, Dorrie?"
New light was struggling on Dorrie's face—just a glimmer, though, shadowed by bewilderment.
"It sounds as though it ought to," she said slowly. "And yet I cannot see how. What can my dish-washing have to do with serving Jesus? It seems almost irreverent."
"It can't be irreverent, dear, because he said it himself. 'Diligent in business, serving the Lord.' There is no period dividing these. I long ago discovered that I could make a bed and sweep a room for his sake as surely as I could speak a word for him. It is my joy, Dorrie, that he has not separated any moment of my life from him, saying, 'Here, so much drudgery each day, from which I must be entirely separated; then, when that is done, you may serve me.' Work so divided would be drudgery indeed. I bless him that I may constantly serve, whether I am wiping the dust from my table or whether I am on my knees."
"Well, how?" said Dorothy. She had a habit of occasionally flashing a question at one, a direct, firm way that meant business. The tone of this one said, "This is all new to me, but I mean to get at it, I intend to understand it and do it." "Louise, how could I be doing one thing for Jesus while I was washing the pudding-kettle?"
"Did you ever hear of the young servant-girl who was converted, and presented herself to the pastor desiring to be received into the Church? He asked her what proof she had that she was a Christian, and she answered, 'I sweeps the corners clean now.' I always thought that the poor girl gave good evidence of a changed purpose. I don't know whether she knew that verse, 'By their fruits ye shall know them;' but it is true, Dorrie, with pudding-kettles as well as with everything else."
I suppose that that simple little talk in that upper hall, on that Monday morning, actually changed the whole current of Dorothy Morgan's future life. Hitherto religion had had nothing whatever to do with pudding-kettles, or Monday mornings in the kitchen, or with the thousand little cares of everyday life. She had regarded them as so many nuisances, to be pushed aside as much as possible for actual work. I may as well frankly own to you that this young girl hated the neatly-painted kitchen in which most of her life was spent. She hated the dish-pan and the sink and the dishtowels with a perfect hatred. She hated brooms and dusters and scrub-brushes, and all the paraphernalia of household drudgery. It was literally drudgery to her.
Her new sister's wise eyes had singled out the thing which she perhaps hated most with which to illustrate this germ of truth that she had dropped into the soil of Dorothy's heart. An old-fashioned, heavy, black kettle, which had been handed down as an heirloom in the Morgan family for generations, and in which the favourite Sunday evening dish, hasty-pudding, was invariably cooked. Simmering slowly over the fire all Sunday afternoon, the pudding eaten at supper-time, the kettle filled with water and left to soak over night, and appearing on the scene with relentless regularity every Monday morning to be scraped and scrubbed by Dorothy's disgusted fingers. Dorothy hated hasty-pudding. Dorothy almost never washed that kettle with the degree of nicety that Mother Morgan demanded. She almost invariably left little creases of scorched pudding clinging to the sides, and a general greasiness of appearance about it that was fruitful of many sharp words on the mother's part and sullen defiance on Dorothy's. The idea that her religion actually had to do with this pudding-kettle came to Dorothy like a revelation. She went downstairs thinking it over. She realized that the thought gave new interest to life. If the fruits of Christian living were actually to be looked for in pudding-dishes, then what place was there where they could not show? There was a dignity in living, after all. It was not simple drudgery, and nothing else. She thought of it when the foaming milk was brought in, John setting down the pail with a thud, and saying,—
"Tend to that, and give us the pail; and don't be all day about it either."
I shall have to admit that Dorothy was more or less accustomed to this form of address, and yet that it always irritated her, and she was apt to reply, "I shall be just as long as I please; if you want it done quicker, do it yourself." Then would follow other cross or sullen words, neither person meaning to the full the words used, yet both feeling crosser when they parted. A sad state of living, truly, yet it had actually become a habit with these two, so much so that John looked at his sister in surprise when she lifted the pail silently, and presently returned it to him, with no other remark than the statement that Brownie was giving more milk than before. He made no answer to this, and went away actually surprised at the quietness of the kitchen. It is not my purpose to let you follow Dorothy closely through that day in the kitchen.
Monday morning is a time, you will remember, that tries the souls of many women. Mrs. Morgan was no exception. For some reason, best known to herself, she was particularly tried this morning. Nothing went right, and nothing could be made to go right. The fire at first would not burn enough; and then it burned too much, and sent the suds from the boiler sputtering over on the bright tins that Dorothy had arranged on the hearth to dry; and Mrs. Morgan was betrayed into saying that a child ten years old would have known better than to have put tins in such a place. And, despite Dorothy's earnest care, the starch presently lumped; and, worse than that, certain cloudy-looking streaks, coming from no one knew where, mixed with its clearness, and the mother affirmed that Dorothy ought to have her ears boxed for being so careless. Try as the daughter would, the mother was not to be pleased that morning. And Dorothy did struggle bravely. She made the smooth, black sides of the hated pudding-kettle shine as they had not before on any Monday morning on record. She scoured every knife, not forgetting the miserable little one with a notch in the end and a rough place in the handle, a knife that she had longed to throw away, and to which the mother pertinaciously clung; she rubbed at the hated sink until it shone like burnished steel; she rubbed at the dish-cloth, for which she had a separate and special feeling of disgust, until it hung white and dry on its line; she neglected no cup, or spoon, or shelf-corner, and she moved with brisk step and swift fingers, only to hear the metallic voice say, as it made its entrance from the outer kitchen where the rubbing and rinsing were going on,—
"I wonder if you are going to be all day washing that handful of dishes! I could have had them all put away and the kitchen swept an hour ago. I can't see how I came to have such a dawdler as you!"
Dear me! Have you been so fortunate as never to have heard mothers speak in this way? Good, honest mothers too. Mothers who would have sat with unwinking eyes and patient hands, night after night, caring for the wants, real and imaginary, of their sick daughters, who yet will stab them with unthinking words all day long. Words not true; for Mrs. Morgan knew perfectly well that she could not have finished all this work an hour before. Yet be just to her; she actually believed, energetic woman as she was, that she could have accomplished it all in much less time. For the matter of that, I suppose she could. Certainly Dorothy had not her mother's skill. The wonder was that the mother should have expected young hands to be as deft as her own.
So the day wore on. A trying one at every turn to poor young Dorothy, who had just enlisted, and was trying to buckle her armour on, and who kept up a brave struggle, and went steadily from one duty to another, doing not one of them as well as her mother could have done, but doing each one of them as well as she could. Could an angel do more? A hard day, both over the dishes and the dust and at the wash-tub; yet not by any means so hard as it might have been but for that bit of talk in the upper hall in the morning—a new idea that made a song in her heart despite all the trials—so much of a song that occasionally it flowed into words, and Dorothy's untrained voice was sweet and clear. She rarely used it over her work, but on this Monday twice she sang clear and loud,—
"Mine is an unchanging love;Higher than the heights above."
Mrs. Morgan heard it—heard the tune; caught no words—wanted to hear none. The spirit of song was not in her heart that morning. All she said was,—
"Don't, for pity's sake, go to singing over the dish-pan. I always thought that was a miserable, shiftless habit. There is a time for all things."
And Dorothy, wondering much when was her time to sing, hushed her voice and finished the melody in her heart. So it seemed to her, when the day was done, that really it had been an unusually hard one. Many steps added to the usual routine. A dish broken; a leaking pail sending water all over the clean floor; John's muddy feet tracking through the kitchen just after the mopping was done; John's hands—traces of them on the clean towel; and then, by reason of trying to do two things at once at the mother's bidding, she actually allowed the starch to scorch. So that, in truth, when she sat down in the wooden-seated chair of her own room for a moment's breathing space, before it was time to set the table for tea, she looked back over the day with a little wondering sigh. What had she done this day for the glory of God? How could he possibly get any glory out of her honest efforts to do her whole duty that day? True, she had resisted the temptation to slam the door hard, to set down the tea-kettle with a bang, to say, in an undertone, "I don't care whether it is clean or dirty," when her attention was called to some undone task. Yet what had been the result? Mother certainly had never been so hard to please.
"She has found more to blame to-day than she ever did in the days when I only half tried," said poor Dorothy to herself.
So where was there any glory for the Master to be found in the day? Even then came the mother's voice calling,—
"Well, are we to have any supper to-night? or must I get it, with all the rest?"
Then Dorothy went down, and I am afraid that she set the cups and saucers on the table with more force than was needed. Life looked full of pin-pricks that hurt for the time being as much, or at least she thought they did, as though they had been made with lancets.
What was the trouble with Mother Morgan?
I do want you to understand her. She did not understand herself, to be sure; but that is no reason why you should not show more discrimination. It had been an unusually trying day to her. Apart from the pressure of domestic cares, which she, in common with many other housekeepers, made always twice as heavy as they should be, her nerves, or her heart, or her conscience, or all these combined, had been stirred within her by the words of prayer in the twilight of the Sabbath. Memory took her back to an old hillside farmhouse, surrounded by fields less rich and fruitful than those near which she dwelt; to an old arm-chair, in which an old man sat night and morning, by his side another chair, in which an old woman sat night and morning; and together they read out of the same Bible, together they knelt and prayed, and this cold-faced mother had heard herself prayed for many a time, not only by that old man, but by the gray-haired woman. And they were her father and her mother, both sleeping now, side by side, under the snow; and being dead, yet speaking—speaking loudly to her on that very Monday. As she looked at Dorothy she felt as though she were wronging her of a birthright. Dorothy had never heard her mother pray as she had heard her old mother many a time. Dorothy's mother had never said to her,—
"Dorothy, I want you to be a servant of God more than I want anything else."
That was what leer mother had said to her when she was Dorothy's age, and many a time afterward; and she was not a servant of God yet, and her conscience reproached her; and her child had never heard such words, and her heart reproached her. As truly as I write it, she pitied Dorothy. Yet, can you understand that this very feeling actually made her voice sharper and her words more impatient when she spoke to her? The human heart unchanged is a very strange and contradictory thing.
But I want to tell you what Dorothy Morgan does not know.
Her mother did discover the immaculate condition of the pudding-kettle, and said aloud—
"I declare, for once this is clean!"
I HAVE been tempted to linger over these first weeks connected with Louise Morgan's home-coming in order that you might get a clear view of the surroundings and a true idea of the family life. Now, however, I shall have to take you away into the spring. The long, cold, busy winter, with its cares and opportunities, had passed away, and the buds and blossoms, foretelling of the coming summer, had begun to appear on every hand.
Many changes, subtle and sweet and strong, had been going on in the Morgan household. Dorothy had held steadily on her course; the first lesson in her Christian experience being ever present with her, that in the very smallest matters of life her light might shine for Christ. She was learning the important lesson to be "faithful over a few things." Little realized she the importance of this faithfulness. Not an idea had she of the number of times in which the mother had regarded her curiously, as she looked in vain for careless ways or forgotten duties, and admitted to herself that "something had come over Dorothy, and she only hoped it would last." Oh yes, it would last. Dorothy believed that. She had anchored her soul after the first hours of unrest on the sure promise of His "sufficient grace," and had no idea of doubting him. Not much outside work had she been able to take up. Yet, little by little, came changes. Carey Martyn was full of schemes.
"See here, let us do thus and so," was a favourite phrase of his, and he was growing more and more fond of saying it to Dorothy.
The bright curtains in the parlour had not been taken down again; the old-fashioned sofa still held its place in the coziest corner; and now that the sun was getting around the corner, peeping in at the pleasantest window, the room took a still more cheery look, and Dorothy had fallen into the habit of touching a match to the carefully laid fire almost every evening just after tea, and one by one the different members of the family dropped in.
The long-neglected old-fashioned brass knocker often sounded during these days. People who had never called on the Morgans, chiefly because of the fear that they would be coldly received, began to discover that Mrs. Lewis Morgan was a very pleasant woman, very glad to see her friends; and the mother was not so disagreeable as they had supposed; and, "really, that shy, silent Dorothy had improved wonderfully."
Thus it was when the spring opened, only a few months since the new-comer's first entrance; and nothing very remarkable, so far as outward eyes could see, had transpired, and yet in a hundred little ways things were different.
But on this particular May morning when I bring you into the family circle the prevailing atmosphere was gloom.
In the first place it rained—a soft, sweet spring rain, when the buds swell, and leaves almost seem to increase in size while you watch, and the spring flowers nod at one another, and the world, though in tears, seems to the happy heart to be keeping holiday. Yet, as Louise Morgan stood at her window and watched the dripping eaves, and listened to the patter on the roof, and saw the low gray clouds sail by, a rainy day seemed to her a dreary thing.
The truth was, the Morgan family were in trouble. During these passing months Louise and her husband, reinforced by Dorothy, and afterward by Carey Martyn, had carried John Morgan about on their hearts as special subject of constant prayer. Louise had been often eager, persistent, steadfast for a soul before; yet it seemed to her that the desire had never been so intense as in this instance; and as she looked over the past, it seemed to her that she had never had so little encouragement. From the time when she took that walk home with him in the moonlight, and tried to speak earnest words, John Morgan had seemed to withdraw more utterly into himself. He carefully avoided Louise; he refused, positively, all invitations to attend church on the Sabbath. He plainly informed Lewis that he was wasting words in trying to talk religion at him, and might consider himself honourably excused from any such attempts; and to Dorothy, who, with tearful eyes and trembling lips, said simply to him one night in the darkness, "O John, won't you give yourself to Jesus?" he unceremoniously and roughly answered, "Shut up."
In every respect John had seemed, during the last few months, to travel rapidly backward. The corner grocery now saw him more frequently than ever before; indeed, almost every evening, late into the night, was passed there. The smell of tobacco and of liquor lingered more constantly now about his clothing, and pervaded the atmosphere of his room. In vain did Louise struggle to keep that room pure. Gradually it had changed its outward appearance. Christmas and Now Year, and then John's birthday, had been helpful anniversaries to her plans. The bed was spread in spotless white; the twisted-leg stand had its scratched and pointless top concealed under a white and delicately crocheted tidy; a little rocker occupied the corner by the window, with a bright-coloured tidy fastened securely to its back. The space between the hall door and the clothes-press was occupied by a neat toilet-stand, with all the convenient accessories of the toilet carefully disposed on it; the walls were hung with two or three choice engravings and an illuminated text; and on the white-covered stand there daily blossomed, in a small pure vase, a rose, or a bunch of lilies of the valley, or a spray of delicate wild flower—some sweet-breathed treasure from the woods or garden, which struggled with the tobacco-scented air—placed there by Louise's tasteful fingers.
Once she ventured on a gift in the shape of a nicely-bound Bible, containing John's name and her own on the fly-leaf, and she made a place for it on the white-covered stand; but found that the very next morning it had been placed on the highest shelf in the clothes-press along with a pile of old agricultural papers that reposed there from one house-cleaning to another. All of these patient little efforts had been greeted hitherto with nothing but frowns or sneers or total indifference.
John Morgan seemed to have deliberately determined to ruin his prospects for this life and the next, and to forbid any one to hold him back. Yet they did not give him up, these four. The more hopeless the case seemed to grow, the more steadily did they try to hold their grasp on the arm of power.
But on this rainy morning of which I write, not one of the four but had been plunged into more or less anxiety and gloom. Apparently, not only had all their efforts failed, but the subject of them had resolved to remove himself from all further influence or molestation from them. The threat that he had often and often made, to leave his home and go where he pleased, he had now determined to put into execution. A week before he had suddenly and fiercely announced his decision, and no amount of persuasion had effected the least change. He was indifferent alike to his father's advice or threats.
"You needn't give me a copper if you haven't a mind to," he had said sullenly during one of the stormy talks. "I'll risk but that I can take care of myself. I can beg or can drown myself, if I feel like it. Anyhow, I'm going, and there's no kind of use in talking."
"But where are you going?" pleaded the mother.
One less indifferent than John could not have failed to notice that her face was pale and her voice husky with pent-up feeling.
"Just exactly where I like, and nowhere else. If I knew where that was I might tell you, but I don't. I never did as I pleased an hour since I was born, and I mean to do it now."
What was the use of talking to one in such a mood? Yet they talked, and argued, and threatened, and used sharp words, and bitter words, and words that were calculated to leave life-long scars on hearts; and the talks were frequently renewed, and lasted away into the midnight; and at last John had declared that he would not stand this sort of thing another hour, and he would not take any money—not a copper of it, even if it was offered; and he would not take his clothes along—not a rag.
"You can sell them to the first rag-man that comes along, and build another barn with their value, for all I care," he said to his father, in a pitiful attempt at sarcasm.
And then, without another word or a glance at his mother or a pretence at good-bye, he strode out of the room, closing the door after him with a bang. That was the evening before, just at supper-time, and though his mother did that night what she had never done before in her life—put some of the supper down, carefully covered to keep warm for John—he came not. The next morning's milking was done without him, and as the long rainy day waned it became evident to each heart that John was gone.
Now I have not told you the worst of this. For the past week the mother's heart had been wrung with such anxiety that she had humbled herself in a manner that she, a few days before, would not have imagined possible. She had followed Louise one morning up to her room, coming with slow and doubtful tread, closing the door after her, and looking behind her in a half-frightened way, as if to be sure that there were no other listeners to her humiliation than this one, and had said to Louise, catching her breath while she spoke,—
"You know how I feel about John. I have heard you talk about praying over everything; if you believe that it does any good, why don't you pray to have him kept at home?"
"Mother," said Louise, coming close to her, taking the hard old hand in hers, "I do pray for him, every hour in the day, almost every minute it seems to me, and I believe it will do good; I believe He will hear our prayer. But there is no one who could pray for John as his mother could. I do so desire to have his mother's prayers infold him like a garment. Won't you pray for him?"
"I'm not a praying woman," said Mrs. Morgan, trying to keep her voice steady. "Still, if I believed in it as you do, I would pray now if I never did again."
Then she turned and went swiftly away. She had actually humbled her proud heart to ask her daughter-in-law to pray for John! She could not get away from the feeling that Louise's prayers would be likely to avail if any would. More than that—but this at the time was known only to her own heart, and to the One who reads the heart—in the silence and darkness of her own room, after Nellie was asleep, and before Farmer Morgan had drawn the last bolt preparatory to coming to his bed, she had got down on her knees and had offered what, in her ignorance, she thought was prayer. "O God," she said, "if thou hearest human beings in their need, hear me, and keep John from going away." There was no submission in her heart to the divine will, no reference to the name which is the only name by which we can approach God, no realization of anything save John's peril and a blind reaching out after some hand that had power. Yet it was a nearer approach to prayer than that mother had made for fifty years!
Neither could she help a feeling, which she told herself was probably superstition, that something somehow would prevent John from carrying out his designs. Yet the days went by, and no unseen arm stretched out its hand of power to arrest John. Instead, the rainy day wore on with the feeling settling down hopelessly on the mother's heart that her son had gone from her with hard words on his lips, and with the echo of hard words from her sounding in his heart. For, so strange a thing is this human heart, Mrs. Morgan had actually never seemed more hard or cold to her son than she did during the week that her heart was torn with anxiety for him.
But I have not told you the worst of this. The days moved on, and it became evident to all that John had carried out his threat and was gone. Then the mother's grief and dismay found vent in hard and cruel words. She turned in bitterness from Louise, yes, and from Dorothy, indeed from every one. To Louise she said plainly it was not strange that John had wanted to get away; she had given him no peace since she had been there; always tormenting him to go to church or to prayer-meeting, or to do something that he did not want to do. For her part, she did not see but he was quite as good as those who were always running off to meeting. He could not even have any peace in his own room; it must be cluttered up with rubbish that any man hated—vases to tip over, and tidies to torment him!
And she flung the tidies on a chair in Louise's room, and folded and packed away the cover which she said she had been "fooled into buying," and restored every corner of that little hall chamber to its original dreariness. And, worse than all, she declared that she hoped and trusted she would hear no more cant about prayers in that house. She had not been able to see for many a year that the kind of praying that was being done in these days accomplished any good.
To Dorothy she declared that if she had had the spirit of a mouse she might have exerted herself, as other girls did, to make a pleasant spot for her brother; that she had never tried to please him in anything, not even the mending of his mittens when he wanted them; she would rather dawdle over the fire roasting apples with Carey Martyn than give any thought to her own brother.
Now all this was bitterness itself to poor Dorothy, whose own heart reproached her for having been so many years indifferent to her brother's welfare, but who had honestly tried with all the force of her heart to be pleasant and helpful to John ever since she had been doing anything from a right motive.
Neither did Mrs. Morgan spare her husband. She would not have let a boy like that go off without a penny in his pocket, she said,—no, not if she had to sell all the stock to get him ready money. He had as good a right to money as Lewis ever had, and he had been tied down to the five barns all his life. No wonder he ran away. He showed some spirit, and she was glad he had.
Do you suppose Farmer Morgan endured this in silence? Not he. And sharp words grow sharper, and bitter feelings ran high, until the once quiet kitchen was transformed into a Babel of angry words, and poor Louise could only go away and weep.
But I have not told you the worst of this: actually the worst was in this Christian woman's own sore heart. The awful question, "Why?" had crept in and was tormenting her soul. She had been sincere in her prayers; she had been honest in her desires; she had been unwavering in her petitions. Why had God permitted this disastrous thing to come? Had she not tried—oh had she not tried with sincere desire ever since she came into this home to live Christ in it? Why, then, had she been allowed to so utterly fail? Would it not be to God's glory to save John Morgan's soul? Was it not evident that through him the mother might possibly be reached? Was it not perfectly evident that John, at home, under her influence and Lewis's and Dorothy's, would be in less danger than away among strangers, wandering whither he would? Was it not perfectly evident that this conclusion to their prayers had caused Mrs. Morgan to lose faith in prayer—to grow harder and harder in her feelings toward God and toward Christians? Why was all this allowed?
She had prayed in faith—or, at least, she had supposed she had; she had felt almost sure that God would answer her prayer. She had said to Dorothy, only the night before John went away—said it with steady voice and a smile in her eye—"I don't believe John will go away; I don't think God will let him go."
And Dorothy, half-startled, had answered: "O Louise, I don't mean to be irreverent, but I don't understand. How can God keep him from going, if he will go?"
And Louise, smiling outright now, so sure was she of her trust, had answered: "I don't know, dear; he has infinite resources; I only know that I believe he will do it."
Now what had become of her faith? It grieves my heart to have to confess to you that this young servant of Christ, who had felt his "sufficient grace" in her own experience again and again, allowed Satan to stand at her elbow and push before her that persistent and faithless "Why?"
It was that word in all its changes which was crowding into her heart, on that May morning, as she looked out at the dripping eaves and the leaden clouds.
As for John, perhaps he was quite as much astonished at the turn of events as was any of the family. It is true he had been threatening for many weeks to turn his back on the old homestead, but it is doubtful if he had really, during that time, a well-defined intention of doing any such thing.
No plans as to where he should go or what he should do had taken shape; only a vague unrest, and a more or less settled determination to some time get away from it all.
Therefore, as he turned his back on the familiar barns and long-stretching fields, and went out from them in the darkness of that May evening, not one of the family was more in fog as to what he would do next than was John himself. Instinctively he turned his steps to the village, spending the evening in his old haunt, showing only by a more reckless manner than usual that there had been any change in his life. In fact he realized no change; he never turned toward the family road leading homeward as he came out from that corner grocery at a later hour than usual; but he stopped abruptly before he reached the top of the hill, considered a moment, then turned and retraced his steps, and presently struck out boldly on the road leading cityward. The great city, only sixty miles away, was of course the first point for an enterprising young man about to start out in life for himself.
About midnight he reached the station where the express train stopped. By the station lamps he discovered that the eastern-bound train would be due in five minutes. He drew from his pocket the handful of silver and copper that constituted his available means, slowly counted them, lounged into the station, and inquired the price of a ticket to the city, then smiled grimly to himself to discover that after purchasing one he should have just fivepence left. "I guess I can live on that for a week or so," he muttered; "father could. If I can't I can starve. I'm going to the city anyhow." And the ticket was bought. Presently came the train, and our reckless young traveller sauntered into it, selected the best seat he could find, settled himself comfortably, and went to sleep, apparently indifferent to the fact that his mother was at that moment shedding bitter tears for him. No, he was not indifferent; would not have been, at least, had he known the fact. Nothing in all his young life's experience would have amazed him more. He did not understand his mother, which is not strange, perhaps, when one considers that she had spent years in learning how to hide her heart away from the sight of those she loved best. John Morgan actually did not believe that he had ever caused his mother to shed one tear; he did not believe that she loved him. What did he know about mother love, save as she revealed it to him?
It is not my purpose to take you wandering with John Morgan. Even if we had time for it, the experience would be anything but pleasant. He went into many places where you would not like to follow; he did many things that were better left undone, and are much better left untold. Yet I will be just to poor, silly, wicked John. He held back, or rather was held back by a force which he did not in the least understand, from many a place that otherwise he would have entered. There were depths of sin and folly into which he had abundant chance to sink, and from which nothing in his own depraved heart kept him from sinking, and yet into which he did not sink. He would have smiled in superior scorn over the thought that the incense of prayer, which had been rising day and night concerning him during the passing weeks, had anything to do with the unseen force that held him when he would have plunged headlong. Still he was held. He is not the first one who has been saved from self-shipwreck by a power outside of himself, unrecognized and unthanked.
Still it must be confessed that John Morgan took long enough strides in the road to shipwreck, and did what he could for his own overthrow, goaded meantime by an exasperating and ever-increasing sense of failure. Here was he at last, his own master, able to work, if he could find anything to do, or to let it alone, just as he pleased; no one to direct, or, as he had always phrased it, to "order." No one to complain, no one to question—a life of freedom at last. Was it not for this he had pined? It was humiliating to discover that it did not satisfy him. He could not, even for an hour, cheat himself into believing that he was happy in the life that he had chosen. A very vagabond of a life he led. He tried working and lounging and starving, and the time hung heavily. It was more than humiliating, it was exasperating; but the fact remained that he could no more get away from the memory of that clean, sweet-smelling, sweetly kept room, in which he had lately passed his nights, than he could get away from his own miserable self. Nay, the very smell of the wild-wood violets which had nodded on him from the tiny vase that last morning at home, and which he had affected to despise, seemed to follow and haunt him. How perfectly absurd it was in him here, in the very centre of this great centre of life, to actually long for a whiff of those wild violets! He sneered at himself, and swore at himself, and longed for them all the same.
So passed the days, each one bearing him steadily downward, and yet each one holding him back from the downward depths into which he might have plunged. And the summer heats came in all their fierceness and wilted him with their city-polluted breath; he had been used all his life to the free, pure air of the country. At times it was hard for him to believe that this crowded, ill-smelling city could belong to the same earth on which the wide-stretching harvest-fields lay and smiled. And the summer waned, and the rich, rare October days, so beautiful in the country, so barren of all interest to the homeless in a great city, came to him, and John Morgan had actually become a tramp! The work which he had at first despised and hated he now could not find; and if he would not carry his early threat into execution and literally starve, he must tramp and beg. Now starving had lost its charms somewhere among the parchings of those summer months; he had so nearly tried that way as to shudder over it; to ask for a bite at the back door of country-looking houses was more to his mind.
One never-to-be-forgotten October day he shook himself out from the shelter of a wrecked car, near which he had passed the night, and resolved upon a breakfast of some sort. I wish I could give you a picture of him. His own mother would not have recognized him. His clothing in the old days had been none of the finest, but whatever passed through Mother Morgan's hands was clean, and carefully mended. Now this bundle of rags and dirt would have been in danger of being spurned from her door without a second glance. "There is no excuse for filth!" she was wont to say grimly. Her son John had heard her say it many a time. He thought of it this morning as he shook himself; yet how could he help the filth? He had no clothes, he had no place in which to wash, he had nothing with which to brush, and very little left to brush! True, he had brought himself into this very position, but of that he did not choose to think; and besides, everybody knows it is easier to get into certain positions than to get out of them. I wish I could tell you how he felt. He did not understand his own mood. He was not repentant, not in the least; if anything, he was more bitter and defiant than ever. But he was disappointed: assuming control of one's own actions was by no means so comfortable or desirable a lot as he had imagined. There were days in which he believed that to have milked the gentle cows, and cared for the fine horses, would have been a positive relief. It was not work that John had shirked. Yet he had no idea of going home; his proud spirit and defiant nature would not let him even suggest that thought to himself.
On this particular morning he had resolved to try again for work. He managed to get on the last car of an outgoing goods train, and was thus whirled a few miles into the country. At the first station he jumped off, and began his search for work. He found a farmer who was compassionate, and gave him wood to carry into the already well-stocked shed by way of earning his breakfast. Presently the farmer came to the door and called:
"We are about ready for breakfast now. You can come in while we have prayers and then have breakfast."
"I don't want prayers," said John, stopping short midway between the door and the wood-pile, his arms full. "I asked for something to eat, not for praying."
"I know that, and you shall have the something to eat; but a little praying won't hurt you. Why, man, you can afford to be thankful that you have found a chance to eat again!"
"No, I can't," said John fiercely. "If I can't have the breakfast without the praying, I'll go without the breakfast."
"Very well," said the sturdy farmer, "I'm bound you shall then. I declare, if a fellow has got so far that he can't even listen to a word of prayer, he doesn't deserve to eat."
"Then I'll starve," said John in anger, and he threw the wood on the floor and strode away.
"Oh, I don't know about that, father," said a motherly voice, and a motherly face looking out after angry John. "Seems to me I'd have given him some breakfast if he didn't want to come to prayers. Maybe he was ashamed to, he looks so much like a rag-bag."
"Why didn't he say so then!" said the disturbed farmer. "Who expected him to fly off in a passion at the mention of a prayer? He's a hard case, I'm afraid."
That was true enough; and yet the incident was not so much against John as it sounds. Poor John! he was angry at his own heart for remembering, with a certain lingering touch of tenderness, that prayer in the kitchen at home in the Sabbath evening twilight; he wanted no experience that would call it up more plainly. Breakfastless, and supperless last night, John Morgan! There had always been plenty to eat in his father's house. What a bitterness it was to think that, now he was independent, he was actually a dependent on the chance charities of the world!
He tramped on; he was growing hungrier; he felt that he really could not work now until he had a chance to eat; it was actual pauperism this time. A neat-looking house, a neat kitchen door; he knocked at it and asked for a bit of bread. A trim old lady answered it,—
"Yes, to be sure. Come in. And so you're hungry? Poor fellow! It must be hard to be hungry. No home, I suppose?"
John shook his head.
"Poor fellow! You look young too. Is your mother dead, did you say?"
All the while she bustled about, getting a savoury breakfast ready for him—a cup of steaming coffee, and a bit of meat, and generous slices of bread and butter—bread that looked and butter that smelled like his mother's. And this was a farmhouse, and a neat, clean kitchen, and a yellow painted floor.
At that last question a strange feeling came over John Morgan. Was his mother dead? "No," he almost said. He would not have liked to nod his head to that. And yet, here he was among the October days, and it had been early May when he left her. How many funeral processions he had passed on the streets since, and he had had no word from his mother. Down in the pasture meadow one day his father had said to him, "Don't plough that bit up; I've never made up my mind to it. In spite of me, it looks as if it was meant for a kind of family burying-ground." There was a great tree there and a grassy hillside, and a small clear stream purled along very near. How did he know but a grave had been dug on that hillside since he went away? His heart gave a few sudden thuds, and then for a minute almost seemed to stop beating. Could it be possible that John Morgan really loved his mother! He was eating his breakfast now—a good breakfast it was, and the trim old lady talked on.
"Well, there are a good many homeless people in the world. It must be hard; but then, you know, the Master himself gave up his home, and had not where to lay his head—did it for our sakes too. Wasn't that strange? Seems to me I couldn't give up my home. But he made a home by it for every one of us. I hope you've looked after the title to yours, young man."
No answer from John. The old lady sighed, and said to herself, as she trotted away for a biscuit for him,—
"He doesn't understand, poor fellow. I suppose he never has had any good thoughts put into his mind. Dear me! I wish I could do something for him besides feeding his poor, perishing body."
But John did understand perfectly. What was the matter with all the people this morning? Why were they so persistently forcing that subject at him? He had been wandering almost six months, and had never met so many straightforward words concerning it in all the months as he had this morning. Is not it possible, John Morgan, that God's watching Spirit knows when to reach even your heart? The little old lady trotted back, a plate of biscuits in one hand and a little card in the other.
"Put these biscuits in your pocket; maybe they'll come good when you are hungry again. And here is a little card; you can read, I suppose?"
The faintest suspicion of a smile gleamed in John Morgan's eyes as he nodded assent.
"Well, then, you read it once in a while just to please me. Those are true words on it; and Jesus is here yet trying to save, just the same as he always was. He wants to save you, young man, and you had better let him do it now. If I were you I wouldn't wait another day."
As he tramped down the street, his inner man so wonderfully refreshed by the good coffee and bread and butter, he could not help looking at the card, which, also, after that breakfast, he could not help taking, although he wanted to put it into the cheery fire. It was a simple enough card, and printed on it in plain letters were these words, "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Then underneath, "I am the bread of life. He that believeth on me shall never hunger." Still lower on the card, in ornamented letters, the words, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Then a hand pointing to an italicized line, "I that speak unto thee am he."
"Queer mess that," said John, and he thrust the card into his pocket and strode toward the village depot. He meant to board the next train and get a little farther into the country, and continue his search for work. The train arrived, and he succeeded in slipping into it. But it was hardly fairly under way when he discovered that he had miscalculated, and was being borne back toward the great city, instead of farther into the country.
"I don't care," he said. "I don't know what I want of the country. On the whole, I may as well try my chances in the city. I'll go up Greenwich Street and try my luck in the warehouses. I can roll boxes about now since I've had another breakfast."
But the train presently switched off and ran into another station, into another part of the city, wherein John was as total a stranger as though he had just dropped from the clouds.
"Where on earth am I?" he said bewildered, swinging himself down from the top of the car and looking around. "Just my luck. I'm nowhere. East, west, north, south,—which way shall I go? I'll go north. Which is north? Or no, I won't; it's coming winter. I guess I'll go south, and walk as long as it looks interesting, and see where I'll bring up. What difference does it make which way I go?"
All the difference in the world, John Morgan. It is a link in the chain which is narrowing around you. It is one of the apparently trivial movements which will have its silent, unnoticed, unthought-of part in helping you to decide which way you will go during all your future, and at what station you will finally land.
THE morning service was just over in the great church on Lexington Avenue. A large company of men and women lingered in the broad aisles, shaking hands with each other, saying a word here and there in subdued happy tones. A looker-on, who was familiar with religious meetings, and who yet had not been present at this one, would have known by the atmosphere lingering in the church that the worshippers had been having a happy time. They were loath to leave; they gathered in little knots, at convenient standing-places, and discussed the events of the hour and the prospects of the evening. Large numbers of the ladies had packages of white cards in their hands—not unlike calling-cards in size and texture, and quite as carefully written on as ever calling-cards were. The handwriting was peculiar—delicate, gracefully rounded letters, skilful flourishes. Somebody had considered the work important, and had bestowed time and skill.
"Estelle dear, won't you go forward and get some of the cards? I see very few here who will go up Fairmount Street, and you may be able to reach some who will be otherwise neglected."
So spoke one of the lingerers, a fair-faced woman, with silver-tinted hair, to a very graceful young woman, who was evidently her daughter, and who evidently lingered, not so much from personal interest in the scene as because her mother did. She turned full, wondering, and yet deprecating eyes on her mother at the question.
"O mamma! I cannot offer those cards to people. I am not one of the workers, you know; it isn't expected of me. You have some, and that will be sufficient for our family."
"I am not going up Fairmount Street," the mother answered quietly. "I have only enough cards to meet my own opportunities, daughter. If Louise were here, dear, can't you think how she would scatter those little white messengers?"
"Louise is good, mamma, and I am not, you know; you mustn't expect me to be Louise. I can no more take her place in that way than I can in a hundred others."
"Oh yes, you can, my child; it doesn't require any special skill to hand a card of invitation to a passer-by, or even to speak a word of encouragement to the half persuaded."
"But, mamma, how would it look for me to invite people to the meetings? I am not one of the church members. It wouldn't be very consistent, I think."
The mother's eyes were sorrowful and questioning as they rested on the face of her fair young daughter. She seemed not to know just what would be well to answer to this. At last she said,—
"Estelle dear, even though you refuse Christ yourself, don't you wish that many others might come to him? Poor, sad hearts who have not your opportunities, nor know the way as you do—shouldn't they have their chance to choose, and aren't you willing to extend the invitation?"
The young girl's cheeks flushed a deeper pink, and her eyes drooped, but she answered steadily,—
"Certainly I am, mamma."
Then she went forward and received from the pastor a package of the beautiful cards, turning them over curiously in her hand, wondering much how it would seem to pass them out to people, and whether the cards would be accepted or refused.
Simple little cards they were; nothing pretentious or formidable about them; just an announcement of daily religious services, giving the hours of meetings and the name of the preacher; then, on the reverse side, in the most exquisite penmanship, this simple quotation, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Estelle read it, and the glow on her cheeks did not lessen. There was certainly something very solemn in the suggestion. Estelle could hardly help giving a moment's attention to the inquiry whether the Master really were calling for her. Could she have brought her heart to the point of believing that such was the case, it would have been well with Estelle, for she could not have said the Master nay. The sin in her case was that she would not study the subject long enough to be able to believe that she was personally included in the call. Nevertheless she went her way up Fairmount Street on her unusual errand, a little touch of vexation in her face over the thought that Louise would have done all this so well, and would so have delighted in it, while she must bunglingly try to supply her place. It was about this time that John Morgan turned into Fairmount Street, much wondering where he was and what he could be expected to do next.
"Will you have a card, please?" And a vision of loveliness fell on his astonished gaze, and a delicately-gloved hand was stretched forth with the fair bit of pasteboard. "It is just an invitation to the meetings; we hope you will come." And still the card was outstretched, and still John stood and stared. What was there about that face and voice that seemed familiar to him as one whom he had met in a dream or in the far-away unreality of some other existence? It bewildered him to the extent that he forgot either to decline or accept the card, but stood looking and wondering. Estelle felt the importance of saying something further to this silent starer. "They have very good singing, and great crowds come every evening. I think you will like it. Will you take the card?"
Thus petitioned, John, roused from his bewilderment, put forth his hand for the proffered card, because for the moment he could not decide what else to do.
Then Estelle, her mission accomplished and her embarrassment great, flitted away from him around the corner. "What a strange-acting fellow!" was her comment. "How he did stare! One would suppose he had never seen a lady before. Dear me! He looks as though he needed a friend. Somehow I can't help feeling sorry for him. I really hope he will go to the meeting; but of course he won't." And Estelle Barrows actually realized that for such a dreary, friendless-looking person as he the love of Christ would be a great transformation. She did not mean that she, Estelle Barrows, in her beauty and purity, surrounded by the safeguards of her high position, had no need of Christ; neither did she realize that this was the logical conclusion of her reasoning.
"What in the name of common sense has got into all the people to-day? They are running wild on cards." This was John Morgan's comment. He was ashamed and vexed to think he had so forgotten his sullenness and indifference as to stare at the fair young face. He read the card carefully, more to get away from his present thoughts than from any interest in it; but the verse on the reverse side held his attention for a few minutes, from the fact that the words were the very same as those on the card given him by the old lady who had supplied his breakfast. It struck him as a strange coincidence. Presently he thrust the bit of pasteboard into his pocket, and dismissed the incident from his mind.