Professor Trenton had come and gone and the glory of the autumn was over
the land. The early supper was ended and Evadne had ensconced herself in
her favorite window to catch the sun's last smile before he fell asleep.
In the room across the hall Mr. Everidge reclined in his luxurious
arm-chair and leisurely turned the pages of the last "North American
Review." It was Saturday evening.
"Why, Horace, can this be possible?" Mrs. Everidge entered the room
quickly and stood before her husband. Neither of them noticed Evadne.
"My dear, many things are possible in this terrestrial sphere. What
particular possibility do you refer to?"
"That you have discharged Reuben?" The sweet voice trembled. Mr.
Everidge's tones kept their usual complacent calm.
"That possibility, my dear, has taken definite form in fact."
"But, Horace, the boy is heart-broken."
"Time is a mighty healer, my love. He will recover his mental equipoise
in due course."
"But you might have given him a month's warning. Where is the poor boy
to find another place? It is cruel to turn him off like this!"
"Really, my dear Marthe, I do not feel myself competent to solve all the
problems of the labor question," said Mr. Everidge carelessly. "Reuben
must take his chances in common with the rest of his class."
"But, Horace, I cannot imagine what your reason for this can be! Where
will you find so good a boy?"
"I am not aware that Socrates thought it necessary to acquaint the
worthy Xantippe with the reasons for his conduct," remarked Mr. Everidge
suavely. "The feminine mind is too much disposed to jump to hasty
conclusions to prove of any assistance in deciding matters of
importance. The masculine brain, on the contrary, takes time for calm
deliberation and weighs the pros and cons in the scale of a well
balanced judgment before arriving at any definite decision. But my
reason in this case will soon become apparent to you. I do not intend to
keep a boy at all."
"But who will take care of Atalanta? Are you going to forsake your
cherished books for a curry-comb?"
"Really, Marthe!" exclaimed her husband in an aggrieved tone, "it is
incomprehensible that you should have such a total disregard for the
delicacy of my constitution,--especially when you know that the very
odor of the stable is abhorrent to my olfactory senses. Atalanta has
quarters provided for her at the Vernon Livery, and one of the grooms
has orders to bring the carriage to the door at two o'clock every
afternoon."
"But that will make it very awkward, Horace. I so often have to use the
carriage in the morning."
"'Have,' my dear Marthe, is a word which admits of many
substitutions,--'cannot' in this case will be a suitable one. I find it
is necessary to resume possession of the reins. Atalanta is retrograding
and is rapidly losing that characteristic of speed which made her name a
fitting one. There is a lack of mastery about a woman's handling of the
ribbons which is quickly detected by horses, especially when they are of
more than average intelligence."
"But, Horace, if Reuben goes, Joanna will go too. You know she promised
her mother she would never leave him."
"In that event, my dear, you will have an opportunity to become more
intimately acquainted with the mysteries of the culinary art," observed
Mr. Everidge cheerfully. "It will be a splendid chance to evolve that
finest of character combinations, Spartan endurance coupled with
American progressiveness."
Mrs. Everidge smiled. "But what if I do not have the Spartan strength,
Horace?"
"That is merely a matter of imagination, my love. It proves the truth of
my theory that necessity develops capacity. A woman of leisure, for want
of suitable mental pabulum, grows to fancy she has every ill that flesh
is heir to, whereas, when she is obliged by compelling circumstances to
put her muscles into practice, her mind acquires a more healthy tone.
Self-contemplation is a most enervating exercise and involves a
tremendous drain on the moral forces."
"Do you think I waste much time in that way, Horace?" Mrs. Everidge
spoke wistfully, and Evadne, forced to be an unwilling listener to the
conversation, felt her cheeks grow hot with indignation.
"My dear, I merely refer to the deplorable tendency of your sex. All you
require is moral stamina to tear yourself away from the arms of Morpheus
at an earlier hour in the It is a popular illusion, you know, that work
performed before sunrise takes less time to accomplish and is better
done than later in the day. My mother used to affirm that she
accomplished the work of two days in one when she arose at three a.m.,
but then my mother was a most exceptional woman," with which parting
thrust Mr. Everidge retired behind the pages of his magazine.
Upstairs in her own room Evadne paced the floor with tightly clenched
hands. "Oh!" she cried, "what shall I do? I hate him! I hate him! How
dare he! He ought to be glad to go down on his knees to serve her, she
is so sweet, so dear! Oh, I cannot bear it! That she should be compelled
to endure such servitude, and I can do nothing to help, nothing!
nothing!" She threw herself across the bed and burst into a passion of
tears. Was this the silent girl whom Isabelle had voted tiresome and
slow?
A little later than usual she heard the low knock which always preceded
the visit which she looked forward to as the sweetest part of the day.
Could it be possible she would come to-night? Was no thought of self
ever permitted to enter that brave, suffering heart?
She rose and opened the door. The dear face was paler than usual but
there was no shadow upon the smooth brow. Marthe Everidge had crossed
the tempest-tossed ocean of human passion into the sun-kissed calm of
Christ's perfect peace.
Evadne threw her arms around her neck and laid her storm-swept face upon
her shoulder. "Forgive me!" she cried, "I heard it all. I could not help
it. I think my heart is breaking. Do not be angry, you see I love you
so! How can I bear to have you subjected to this? You are so tender, so
true. There is such a charm about you! You are so beautifully unselfish!
Oh, my dear, my dear, how can you, do you bear it?"
Mrs. Everidge lifted her face tenderly and kissed the quivering lips.
"It is 'not I but Christ,' dear child. That makes it possible." Then she
drew her over to the lounge and began to undress her as if she had been
a baby. "My dear little sister. You are utterly exhausted. You are not
strong enough to suffer so."
"Oh, will you let me be your sister and help you bear your burdens?"
cried Evadne, unconscious that all the time the skilful hands were
keeping up their sweet ministry and that her burden was being lifted for
her by the one who had the greater burden to bear.
When she was comfortably settled for the night Mrs. Everidge drew her
low chair up beside the bed. Evadne caught her hand in hers and kissed
it reverently. "I wish I could make you understand how I honor you!" she
said.
"You must not do it, dear!" said Aunt Marthe quickly. "Honor the King."
After a pause she began to speak slowly and her voice was sweet and low.
"When, the first night you came, you asked me if I knew Jesus Christ, I
told you he was my life. That explains it all. It is very sweet of you
to say the kind things that you have about me but they are not true. In
and of herself, Marthe Everidge is nothing. The moment she tries to live
her own life she utterly fails. If there is anything good about her
life, it is only as she lets Christ live it for her."
"I do not understand," said Evadne with a puzzled look. "How is it
possible for any one else to live our lives for us?"
"No one can but Jesus," said Aunt Marthe with a smile. "He does the
impossible. Take that exquisite fifteenth chapter of St. John and study
it verse by verse. 'Abide in me, and I in you.' There you have the two
abidings. We are _in_ Christ when we believe in him and are accepted
through the merit of his blood and brought by adoption into the family
of God, but not until he abides in our hearts shall our lives become as
beautiful as God means them to be. Fruitfulness,--that is the cry
everywhere. Men are calling for intellectual fruitfulness and mechanical
fruitfulness, and are bending their energies to find the soil which will
develop at once the best quality and greatest amount of fruit. Take a
tree, to make my meaning clearer. The tree may abide in the soil and be
just alive, but it is not until the essence of the soil enters into and
abides in the tree, that it really grows and bears fruit. Growers of the
finest varieties will show you plums that look as if they had been
frosted with silver, and peaches with cheeks like the first blush of
dawn. The 'fruits of the Spirit,' have a wondrous bloom and an exquisite
fragrance."
"'Love, joy, peace,'" Evadne repeated slowly, "'long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith.' But those belong to the Spirit, Aunt
Marthe."
"Yes, dear child, the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit whom he sent to
comfort his people when he took his bodily presence from the earth. The
holy, indwelling presence which is to reveal the Christ to us and
prepare us for the abiding of the Father and the Son. It is the
beautiful mystery of the Trinity."
"But we cannot have the Trinity abiding in our hearts!" said Evadne in
an awestruck voice.
"The Bible teaches us so."
"Not God, Aunt Marthe!"
"Jesus is God, little one. He said to the Jews, 'I and my Father are
one.' He says plainly, 'If any man love me, he will keep my word and my
Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with
him,' and in another place we are told to be filled with the Spirit. It
is three persons but three in one."
"I do not understand, Aunt Marthe."
"No, dear, we never shall, down here. Thomas wanted to do that and
Christ said 'Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.'
The Spirit is continually giving us deeper insight into the love of the
Son, just as the Son came to make known to the world the wonderful love
of the Father."
"But 'be filled,'" said Evadne. "That looks as if we had something to do
with it."
"So we have, dear child. Suppose a man owned one hundred acres of land
and gave you the right of way through it from one public road to
another,--that would leave him many acres for his own use on which you
have no right to trespass. I think we treat Jesus so. We are willing
that he should have the right of way through our hearts, but we forget
that every acre must be the King's property. There must be no rights
reserved, no fenced corners. Jesus must be an absolute monarch."
Mrs. Everidge spoke the last words softly and Evadne, looking at her
uplifted face, shining now with the radiance which always filled it when
she spoke of her Lord, saw again that glowing face which she had watched
across the gate at Hollywood and heard the strange, exultant tones, 'He
is my King!' Ah, that was beautiful! That was what Aunt Marthe meant,
and Pompey and Dyce.
"Jesus must come to abide, not merely as a transient guest," Aunt Marthe
continued in her low tones. "We must give him full control of our
thought and will. We must hand him the keys of the citadel. We must give
the all for the all,--that is only fair dealing. You see, dear child,
Christ cannot fill us until we are willing to be emptied of self. He
must have undivided possession. There is a vast amount of heartache,
little one, in this old world, and self is at the bottom of it all, when
we stop to analyze it. We want to be first, to be thought much of, to be
loved best. No wonder that the selfless life seems impossible to most
people. Think what a continuous self-sacrifice Christ's life was! So
utterly alone and lonely among such uncongenial surroundings with
people uncouth and totally foreign to his tastes. Ah! we don't realize
it. We look at him doing the splendid things amidst the plaudits of the
multitude, but think of the monotonous, weary days, going up and down
the sun-baked streets surrounded by a crowd of noisy beggars full of all
sorts of loathsome disease, and the humdrum life in Nazareth; and all
the time the great heart aching with that ceaseless sorrow,--'His own
received him not!' Oh, what a waste of love! We do not realize that it
is in these footsteps of his that we are called to follow. We are
willing to do the great things, with the world looking on, but not for
the loneliness and the pain! It seems a strange antithesis that Paul
should count that as his highest glory, and yet how comparatively few
seem counted worthy to enter with Christ into the shadow of that
mysterious Gethsemane which lasted all his life. 'The fellowship of his
sufferings.' It must surely mean the privilege of getting very near his
heart, just as human hearts grow closer in a common sorrow,--knit by
pain. Yes, dear child, self must die: and it is a cruel death,--the
death of the cross. But then comes the newness of life with its strange,
sweet joy which the world's children do not know the taste of. How can
they when it is 'the joy of the Lord,' and they reject him?"
"You talk of the cross, Aunt Marthe, and other people talk of crosses.
Aunt Kate and Isabelle are always talking about the sacrifices they have
to make, and Mrs. Rivers carries a perfect bundle of crosses on her
back. She is wealthy and has everything she wants, and yet she is always
wailing, while Dyce is as happy as the day is long. Do the poor
Christians always do the singing while the rich ones sigh?"
Mrs. Everidge smiled. "We make our crosses, dear child, when we put our
wishes at right angles to God's will. When we only care to please him
everything that he chooses for us seems just right. I have heard people
speak as if it were a cross to mention the name of Christ. How could it
be if they loved him? Do you find it a cross to talk to me about your
father? People make a terrible mistake about this. The only cross we are
commanded to carry is the cross of Christ."
"And what is that, Aunt Marthe?"
"Self renunciation," said Aunt Marthe softly, "the secret of peace.
"Among all the pictures of the Madonna," she continued after a pause,
"the one I like best is where Mary is sitting, holding in her hands the
crown of thorns; everything else had been wrenched from her grasp, but
this they had no use for. What a legacy it was! As I look at it I see
how he has gathered all the thorns of life and woven them into that
kingly garland which is his glory. All the wealth of the Indies could
not shed as dazzling a light as that thorny crown. Like the brave
soldier who gathered into his own breast the spears of the enemy, Christ
has taken the sting from our sorrows and made us more than conquerors
over the wounds of earth. Surely he has tasted it all for us,--the
baseness and coldness and ingratitude and treachery which have wrung
human hearts all through the ages,--when Judas betrayed him, Peter
denied him and they all forsook him and fled, do you suppose any other
pain was comparable to that? Only our friends have the power to wound
us, you know, and, 'he was wounded in the house of his friends.' When
people talk of the crucifixion they think of the nail-torn hands and
pierced side,--I think of his heart! Oh, my Lord, how _could_ they treat
thee so!"
Evadne looked wistfully at the rapt face, irradiated now by the
moonlight which was streaming in through the window. "_How_ you love
him, Aunt Marthe!"
"He is my all," she answered simply. The girl stroked the hand which
she still held in both her own. She is absolutely satisfied, she thought
sorrowfully, she wants nothing that I can give her. And then through the
stillness she heard the sweet voice singing,--
"I love thee because thou hast first loved me,
And purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree;
I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow,
If ever I loved thee, my Jesus, 'tis now."