Marion entered Evadne's room one glorious winter's morning and threw
herself on the lounge beside her cousin with a sigh.
"I don't see how you do it!" she exclaimed.
"Do what?" asked Evadne.
"Why, keep so pleasant with Isabelle. She works me up to the last pitch
of endurance, until I feel sometimes as if I should go wild. It is no
use saying anything, Mamma always takes her side, you know, but she does
aggravate me so! Even her movements irritate me,--just the way she
shakes her head and curls her lip,--she is so self-satisfied. She thinks
no one else knows anything. It must be a puzzle to her how the world
ever got along before she came into it, and what it will do when she
leaves it is a mystery!"
"She is good discipline."
Marion gave her an impetuous hug. "You dear Evadne! I believe you take
us all as that! But I don't think the rest of us can be quite as trying
as Isabelle. She does seem to delight in saying such horrid things. She
was abominably rude to you this morning at breakfast and yet you were
just as polite as ever. I couldn't have done it. I should have sulked
for a week. I know you feel it, for I see your lips quiver--you are as
susceptible to a rude touch as a sensitive plant--but it is beautiful to
be able to keep sweet outside."
"You mean to be _kept_, Marion," said Evadne softly, "by the power of
God. I have no strength of my own."
Marion sighed dismally. "Oh, dear! I don't know what I mean, except that
I'm a failure. It is no wonder Louis thinks Christianity is a humbug,
though he must confess there is something in it when he looks at you.
You are so different, Evadne! I should think Isabelle would be ashamed
of herself, for I believe half the time she says things on purpose to
provoke you. She doesn't seem to get much comfort out of it any way. I
never saw such a discontented mortal. Don't you think it is wicked for
people to grumble the way she does, Evadne? It is growing on her, too.
She finds fault with everything. Even the snow came in for a share of
her disapprobation this morning, because it would spoil the skating, as
if the Lord had no other plans to further than just to give her an
afternoon's amusement! She is _so_ self-centered!"
Evadne looked out at the street where the fresh fallen snow had spread
a dazzling carpet of virgin white. "He is going to let me give an
afternoon's amusement to Gretchen and little Hans," she said. "Uncle
Lawrence has promised me the sleigh and I am going to take them to the
Park. Won't it be beautiful to see them enjoy! Hans has never seen the
trees after a snowstorm."
"That is you all over, Evadne. It is always other people's pleasure,
while I think of my own! Oh, dear! I seem to do nothing but get savage
and then sigh over it. I know it is dreadful to talk about my own sister
as I have been doing--they say you ought to hide the faults of your
relations--but it is only to you, you know. Do you suppose there is any
hope for me, Evadne?" she asked disconsolately.
Evadne drew her head down until it was on a level with her own. "Let
Christ teach you to love, dear," she whispered, "Then, 'charity will
cover the multitude of sins.'" She opened the book she had been reading
when her cousin entered and took from it a newspaper clipping. "Read
this," she said. "Aunt Marthe sent it in her last letter. If we follow
its teachings I think all the fret and worry will go out of our lives
for good."
And Marion read,--"To step out of self-life into Christ-life, to lie
still and let him lift you out of it, to fold your hands close and hide
your face upon the hem of his robe, to let him lay his cooling,
soothing, healing hands upon your soul, and draw all the hurry and fever
away, to realize that you are not a mighty messenger, an important
worker of his, full of care and responsibility, but only a little child
with a Father's gentle bidding to heed and fulfil, to lay your busy
plans and ambitions confidently in his hands, as the child brings its
broken toys at its mother's call; to serve him by waiting, to praise him
by saying 'Holy, holy, holy,' a single note of praise, as do the
seraphim of the heavens if that be his will, to cease to live in self
and for self and to live in him and for him, to love his honor more than
your own, to be a clear and facile medium for his life-tide to shine and
glow through--this is consecration and this is rest."
When, some hours later, Evadne went down-stairs to luncheon, she felt
strangely happy. Marion had said Louis must confess there was something
in Christianity when he looked at her. That was what she longed to
do--to prove to him the reality of the religion of Jesus. And that
afternoon she was going to give such a pleasure to Gretchen and little
Hans. It was beautiful to be able to give pleasure to people. She could
just fancy how Gretchen's eyes would glisten as she talked to her in her
mother tongue, while little Hans' shyness would vanish under the genial
influence of Pompey's sympathetic companionship, and he would clap his
hands with delight as Brutus and Caesar drew them under the arches of
evergreen beauty, bending low beneath their ermine robes, while the
silver bells broke the hush of silence which dwelt among the forest
halls with a subdued melody and then rang out joyously as they emerged
into the open, where the sun shone bright and clothed denuded twigs and
trees in the bewitching beauty of a silver thaw. It would always seem to
little Hans like a dream of fairyland and she would be remembered as his
fairy godmother. It was a pleasant role--that of a fairy godmother.
She started, for Louis was saying carelessly to the servant,--"Tell
Pompey to have the sleigh ready by half-past two, sharp."
"Why, Louis!" she spoke as if in a dream, "I am going to have the sleigh
this afternoon."
"That is unfortunate, coz," said Louis lightly, "as probably we are
going in different directions."
"I am going to the Park," stammered Evadne, "with little Hans and
Gretchen."
"Exactly, and I to the Club grounds. Diametrically opposite, you see."
"But Uncle Lawrence promised me. He said no one wanted the sleigh this
afternoon."
"The Judge should not allow himself to jump at such hasty conclusions
before hearing the decision of the Foreman of the Jury. It is an unwise
procedure for his Lordship."
"But poor little Hans will be so disappointed! He has been looking
forward to it for weeks."
"Disappointed! My dear coz, the placid Teutonic mind is impervious to
anything so unphilosophical. It will teach him the truth of the adage
that 'there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,' and in the
future he will not be so foolish as to look forward to anything."
Evadne's lips quivered. "You are cruel," she said, "to shut out the
sunlight from a poor little crippled child!"
"My dear coz, I give you my word of honor, I am sorry. But there is
nothing to make a fuss about. Any other day will suit your little beggar
just as well. I promised some of the fellows to drive them out and a
Hildreth cannot break his word, you know."
"You have made me break mine," said Evadne sadly, as she passed him to
go upstairs.
"Ah, you are a woman," said Louis coolly, "that alters everything."
Did it alter everything? Evadne was pacing her floor with flashing eyes.
"Was there one rule of honor for Louis, another for herself? No! no! no!
How perfectly hateful he is!" and she stamped her foot with sudden
passion. "I despise him!"
Suddenly she fell on her knees beside the lounge and cowered among its
cushions, while the eyes of the Christ, reproachfully tender, seemed to
pierce her very soul. "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do
good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you
and persecute you,--that ye may be the children of your Father in
heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
His sorrowful tones seemed to crush her into the earth. Was this her
Christ-likeness? And she had let Marion say she was better than them
all! What if she or Louis were to see her now? He would say again, as he
had said before, "There is not much of the 'meek and lowly' in evidence
at present." "And he would be right," she cried remorsefully. "Oh,
Jesus Christ, is this the way I am following thee!"
"You do right to feel annoyed," argued self. "It hurts you to disappoint
Gretchen and Hans."
"It is your own pride that is hurt," answered her inexorable conscience.
"You wanted to pose as a Lady Bountiful. It is humiliating to let these
poor people see that you are of no consequence in your uncle's house.
Christ kept no carriage. It is not what you do but what you are, that
proves your kinship with the Lord."
It was a very humble Evadne who, late in the afternoon, walked slowly
towards the German quarter. "I am very sorry," she said quietly, when
she had reached the spotless rooms where Gretchen made a home for her
crippled brother, "my cousin had made arrangements to use the sleigh
this afternoon, so we could not have our drive. I am _very_ sorry."
And they put their own disappointment out of sight, these kindly German
folk, and tried to make her think they cared as little as if they were
used to driving every day.
"Did you notice, Gretchen," said Hans, after Evadne had left them, "how
sweet our Fraulein was this afternoon? But her eyes looked as if she
had been crying. Do you suppose she had?"
"I think, Hans," said Gretchen slowly, "our Fraulein is learning to
dwell where God wipes all the tears away."
"Are your eyes no better, Frau Himmel?" Evadne was saying as she shook
hands with another friend who was patiently learning the bitter truth
that she would never be able to see her beloved Fatherland again. "Are
the doctors quite sure that nothing can be done?"
"Quite sure, Fraulein Hildreth," answered the woman with a smile, "but
there is one glorious hope they can't take from me."
"A hope, Frau Himmel, when you are blind! What can it be?"
"This, dear Fraulein," and the look on the patient face was beautiful to
see. "'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty; they shall behold
the land that is very far off.'"
And Evadne, walking homeward, repeated the words which she had read that
morning with but a dim perception of their meaning. 'If limitation is
power that shall be, if calamities, opposition and weights are wings and
means--we are reconciled.'