CLOUDS.
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.