“What’s the matter, dear?”
“Why, do you think I shall see him,--really see him?”
“Mary Cabot,” she said abruptly, turning to look at me, “who has been
talking to you about this thing?”
“Deacon Quirk,” I answered faintly,--“Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland.”
She put her other arm around me with a quick movement, as if she would
shield me from Deacon Quirk and Dr. Bland.
“Do I think you will see him again? You might as well ask me if I
thought God made you and made Roy, and gave you to each other. See him!
Why, of course you will see him as you saw him here.”
“As I saw him here! Why, here I looked into his eyes, I saw him smile, I
touched him. Why, Aunt Winifred, Roy is an angel!”
She patted my hand with a little, soft, comforting laugh.
“But he is not any the less Roy for that,--not any the less your own
real Roy, who will love you and wait for you and be very glad to see
you, as he used to love and wait and be glad when you came home from a
journey on a cold winter night.”
“And he met me at the door, and led me in where it was light and warm!”
I sobbed.
“So he will meet you at the door in this other home, and lead you into
the light and the warmth. And cannot that make the cold and dark a
little shorter? Think a minute!”
“But there is God,--I thought we went to Heaven to worship Him, and--”
“Shall you worship more heartily or less, for having Roy again? Did Mary
love the Master more or less, after Lazarus came back? Why, my child,
where did you get your ideas of God? Don’t you suppose He _knows_ how
you love Roy?”
I drank in the blessed words without doubt or argument. I was too
thirsty to doubt or argue. Some other time I may ask her how she knows
this beautiful thing, but not now. All I can do now is to take it into
my heart and hold it there.
Roy my own again,--not only to look at standing up among the
singers,--but close to me; somehow or other to be as near as--to be
nearer than--he was here, _really_ mine again! I shall never let this
go.
After we had talked awhile, and when it came time to say good night, I
told her a little about my conversation with Deacon Quirk, and what I
said to him about the Lord’s will. I did not know but that she would
blame me.
“Some time,” she said, turning her great, compassionate eyes on me,--I
could feel them in the dark,--and smiling, “you will find out all at
once, in a happy moment, that you can say those words with all your
heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; it will come,
even in this world, if you will only let it. But, until it does, you do
right, quite right, not to scorch your altar with a false
burnt-offering. God is not a God to be mocked. He would rather have only
the old cry: ‘I believe; help mine unbelief,’ and wait till you can say
the rest.
“It has often grated on my ears,” she added, “to hear people speak those
words unworthily. They seem to me the most solemn words that the Bible
contains, or that Christian experience can utter. As far as my
observation goes, the good people--for they are good people--who use
them when they ought to know better are of two sorts. They are people in
actual agony, bewildered, racked with rebellious doubts, unaccustomed to
own even to themselves the secret seethings of sin; really persuaded
that because it is a Christian duty to have no will but the Lord’s, they
are under obligations to affirm that they have no will but the Lord’s.
Or else they are people who know no more about this pain of bereavement
than a child. An affliction has passed over them, put them into
mourning, made them feel uncomfortable till the funeral was over, or
even caused them a shallow sort of grief, of which each week evaporates
a little, till it is gone. These mourners air their trouble the longest,
prate loudest about resignation, and have the most to say to you or me
about our ‘rebellious state of mind.’ Poor things! One can hardly be
vexed at them for pity. Think of being made so!”
“There is still another class of the cheerfully resigned,” I suggested,
“who are even more ready than these to tell you of your desperate
wickedness--”
“People who have never had even the semblance of a trouble in all their
lives,” she interrupted. “Yes. I was going to speak of them. Of all
miserable comforters, they are the most arrogant.”
“As to real instant submission,” she said presently, “there _is_ some of
it in the world. There are sweet, rare lives capable of great loves and
great pains, which yet are kept so attuned to the life of Christ, that
the cry in the Garden comes scarcely less honestly from their lips, than
from his. Such, like the St. John, are but one among the Twelve. Such,
it will do you and me good, dear, at least to remember.”
“Such,” I thought when I was left alone, “you new dear friend of mine,
who have come with such a blessed coming into my lonely days,--such you
must be now, whatever you were once.”
If I should tell her that, how she would open her soft eyes!