THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED
SHE stopped and hesitated.
"Yes," he said impatiently, "besides--?"
"I wonder if it would be right to be quite frank with you?"
"Nothing sincere is ever wrong. Of course you ought to be quite frank
with me,--aren't you that with every one?"
Still she considered.
"What stops you?" he asked. "Go on. Tell me everything. It's my right."
"Why is it your right?"
"Because I love you, and you know it."
She started violently, then turned very white. "Don't say that. I've
always thought of you as engaged to Madeleine. She was talking to me,
and I thought--I--" She stopped, quite shaken.
"You misunderstand her. She's always been in love with one fellow--the
one that her parents are against. He's even poorer than I am."
Then Jane pressed her lips together and interlocked her fingers. "I can
never marry. I never think of it. There's money to be paid, nobody to
pay it but me, and no way to get it except to earn it."
Lorenzo looked almost sternly at her. "What about the book you lent me;
it would say that that was setting limits. It says that we've not to
concern ourselves with ways and means. I've only to concern myself with
loving you. The rest will come along of its own accord."
She shook her head. "No, it won't. This world is all learning, and it's
part of my lesson not to be able to apply it in absolute faith to
myself. So many teachers have wisdom to give away which they can't quite
take unto themselves, you know." She smiled a little tremulously.
"But you ought to take it unto yourself. It ought to be easy and simple
for you to realize that if conditions are false, they don't exist; that
if you want a home, it's because you are going to have one; that if I
love you, it's because it's right that you should be loved."
She put her hands down helplessly on each side of the chair-seat. "I
never even think of such things," she said, almost in a whisper.
"But why not?"
"I've always been so necessary to others. I've no rights in my own
life."
"But if life is a thing to guide, why not guide your beneficence as well
from a basis of home as from one of homelessness?"
"Nothing has ever seemed to be for me, myself. Everything has always
pointed to me for others."
Lorenzo paced back and forth. "But it is the women like you who should
show the way out of the wilderness and back to the right, instead of
attempting to order the chaos while sweeping on with it. If there be a
real truth in this new teaching which lays hold of all those who are in
earnest so easily and so quickly, its first care should be to
demonstrate happiness in the lives of its believers,--not the negative
happiness of wide-spread devotion to others, but the positive lessons of
joy in the center from which springs--must spring--the next generation
of better, wiser men and women, those among whom I expect to live as an
old man."
Jane turned her face away, her eyes filled with tears. "You make me feel
very small and petty," she said; "you show me a way beyond what I had
guessed. But I can't grasp at it; I'm too used to asking nothing for
myself. I'm always so sure that God is managing for me. And I have so
much to do."
"Perhaps realization that God is managing is all that you need to set
right. Perhaps that confidence will bring you all things. Even me." He
laughed a little.
"It has brought me all that I needed. Daily bread, daily possibilities
of helpfulness,--I don't ask more, except 'more light.'"
"It sounds a little presumptuous coming from me, but perhaps I can help
you towards your end, even as to 'more light.' At any rate, I'll try if
you'll let me."
She sat quite still. Finally she lifted up her eyes--and they were
beautiful eyes, big and true--and said, the words coming softly forth:
"It would be so wonderful."
Lorenzo didn't speak. He felt choked and gasping. To him it was also "so
wonderful," as wonderful as if he hadn't lived with it night and day
ever since the first minute of knowing her. "I think I'd better go," he
said very gently, realizing keenly that he must not press her in this
first blush of the new spring-time. "I've 'made my picture' you know,
and I won't let it fade, you may be sure. And you must believe in
happiness for yourself,--you tell us that the first step is all that
counts. Get the seed into the ground then. I'll do the rest."
She sat quite still. "If I could only try," she whispered. He turned
quickly away and was gone.
After a dizzy little while she rose and went into the kitchen. Susan was
moving briskly about.
"Two cups flour, four teaspoonfuls baking powder, one of sugar, one of
salt, two of butter, two of lard, cup half water, half milk, pour in pan
greased and bake in hot oven. Scotch scone-bread for lunch," she said,
almost suiting the deed to the word. "Is Mr. Rath still here?"
"No, he's gone."
"You know, Jane, he's caught your religion. I never heard anything like
it. He's got the whole thing pat. I'd be almost scared to go round
teaching a thing like that. Why, folks'll be doing anything they please
soon. I've been wondering if I could get strong enough to kind of
dispose of Matilda, in some perfectly right way, you know. I wouldn't
think of anything that wasn't perfectly right, you know."
Jane seemed a little numb and stood watching the buttering of the
scone-pan without speaking.
"I keep saying: 'Matilda doesn't want to come back. Matilda's disposed
of in a perfectly pleasant way.' I've been saying it ever since I began
on those scones. I guess I've said it twenty times, and I'm beginning to
make a real impression on myself. I'm beginning to feel sure God is
fixing things up. It's too beautiful to feel God taking an interest in
your affairs. Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda is completely
disposed of in a perfectly pleasant way." Susan's accents were very
emphatic.
"Auntie," said Jane, turning her eyes towards her and rallying her
attention by a strong effort, "you know your perfect faith is because
Aunt Matilda really isn't anxious to come home. It's only if you're
doubting that there's any doubt about it. One doesn't alter Destiny, one
only apprehends it. Oh, dear," she said though, sitting down suddenly,
and hiding her face in her hands, "the thing about light is that it
always keeps bursting over you with a new light, and my own teaching has
suddenly come to me as if I'd never known what any of it meant before.
I'm too stunned at seeing how I've limited myself. I'm really too
stupid."
Susan glanced at her as she poured the batter into the pan, and then
kept glancing. Her face grew softened, "I wouldn't worry, dear," she
said finally, "don't you bother over anything. God's taking care of
everything and everybody. It's every bit of it all right. You must know
that yourself, or you never could have taught it to me."
"Yes, I do know it,--but in spite of myself I can't see--I can't dare
think--"
"You told me not to worry over old Mrs. Croft," said Susan, coming
around by her side and putting her arm about her; "you said worry
spoiled everything. And I did try so hard."
"Yes, I know, I'll try. I really will--But--" suddenly she turned deep
crimson, "it seems too awful for me to take one minute to work on myself
or my life. I need all my time for others."
"But you don't have to," said Susan, "all you've got to do is to know
things are right. You know they're right because they are right.
Everything's coming along fine, and you just feel it coming; that's your
part. My goodness, Jane, isn't this funny? There isn't a blessed thing
you've preached to me that I ain't having to preach back to you now. You
don't seem to have sensed hardly any of your own meaning. Talk about
being a channel; you'd better choke up a little and hold back some for
yourself."
Jane threw her arms around her and kissed her. "Auntie, you're right,
you're right. I won't doubt a mite more. I'll try to know as much as I
seem to have taught."
"Just be yourself, you Sunshine Jane, you," Susan was clinging close to
the girl she loved so well, "just be yourself. Nothing else is needed."
"Yes," Jane whispered, "I will."
"That's the thing," said Susan; "'cause you've certainly taught us a
lot. I'll lay the table now," she moved towards the door, "Matilda
doesn't want to come home. Matilda wants to stay away in some perfectly
pleasant way," she added with heavy emphasis, passed through, and let
the door close.
Jane was left alone in the kitchen.
"He said he loved me!" she thought over and over. "It seems so
wonderful--the most wonderful thing that has ever happened since the
world was made. He said he loved me!"
She went up-stairs to her own room and shut the door softly. "Of course
I can never marry him," she whispered aloud, "but he did say he loved
me. Oh, I know that nothing so wonderful ever was in this world before!"