One evening late in March Joyce was coming out from the Bible School
on the way to her train. She had omitted the second class that evening
because she had papers to correct when she got home and it would keep
her up very late if she waited until the late train.
As she came into the street a gust of wind caught her hat and flung it
along the pavement. She darted out after it, and after quite a race
captured it, but not till several large drops of rain had fallen in
her face. She turned to hurry toward the station. It was not a long
walk, and she usually preferred to do it on foot rather than to wait
for trolleys, which were few and far between on that side street. But
it was all too evident that a storm was upon her. Dust and papers
and litter were being blown along in the gutter, and the wind lifted
in wild swoops and banged signs and shutters and any loose object in
sight. People hurried to cover, umbrellas were raised and lowered
quickly, or the wind seized them and turned them inside out. People in
automobiles hurriedly fastened on side curtains, and the street was
almost deserted in a trice.
Joyce turned to see if a car was coming, but none was in sight. She
held her hat, and ducking her head, hurried on as fast as she could
fly, but at the second corner the wind took her and almost tore her
from the sidewalk. It was with difficulty she regained her footing and
huddled by some steps with her hand on a building to steady her. Then
the rain fell in torrents, and she turned and scurried blindly into an
open doorway a few feet away.
Other people had taken refuge there also, they were crowding in and
Joyce was pushed with the throng inside the door, not knowing what kind
of a place she was entering. But there were other women in the company,
caught in the storm as was she, so she was not frightened. Before she
had opportunity to look around and know where she was a burst of song
broke about her:
“Free from the law! O happy condition!
Jesus hath bled and there is remission!
Cursed by the law, and bruised by the fall,
Christ hath redeemed us once for all.
“Once for all, O sinner, receive it!
Once for all, O brother, believe it!
Cling to the cross, the burden will fall,
Christ hath redeemed us once for all.”
It was a religious meeting of some sort, right there in the heart of
the city!
She pressed in at last where she could stand behind the last row of
chairs next to the aisle and see the platform. A piano was there and a
girl playing the hymn. A young man was playing on a cornet, and there
were singers and some men seated in chairs behind a low desk table.
She forgot that she was missing her train in her deep interest in the
meeting, and her own voice joined eagerly in the old hymn she had known
ever since she could remember:
“Now we are free--there’s no condemnation,
Jesus provides a perfect salvation:
‘Come unto me,’ oh, hear His sweet call,
Come, and He saves us, once for all.”
Her eyes swept over the congregation. Men and women and children were
there, people of plain dress, mostly, some young giddy children of the
street, some old men in worn garments, a few tired-looking women, not
many mighty. Back by the door, caught as herself in the storm were
a few better-dressed people, in luxurious furs and velvets, people
obviously amused at their surroundings, as they would have been equally
amused if they had dropped into an opium joint for the moment, or a
travelling circus, or a Hindoo temple, or any other alien environment.
But Joyce felt that she had dropped in on home and her heart went out
in the song:
“‘Children of God,’ oh, glorious calling,
Surely His grace will keep us from falling:
Passing from death to life at His call,
Blessed salvation once for all.”
The congregation rustled into their seats with the closing chorus and
gave Joyce a full view of the people on the platform. A man with a good
voice that could be heard out in the street was speaking now. He said:
“Before you go home I want you to listen to somebody else a moment. A
dear brother came to me tonight wanting to tell me what Christ had done
for him, and I have asked him if he will tell you what he told me. He
says he is not a public speaker, but when I put it to him that he might
help somebody else he consented.”
Some one stepped to the front of the platform and began to speak. A man
just in front of Joyce rose up at that instant and put on his overcoat,
and she could not see the platform for a moment, but the voice rang
into her soul like a song of long ago.
“I don’t like to talk about myself,” said the speaker, “never did, but
when your leader showed me a verse in my new Bible that said: ‘If thou
confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that
God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved!’ I had to do
what he asked, because I _believe_, and I want to _confess_.”
Joyce’s heart stood still with wonder and then went flying on in great
glad leaps and bounds. There could not be two voices like that one.
She stretched her neck to see, and when the man ahead of her sat down,
there was Darcy Sherwood standing on the platform, with a new grave
look upon his face, and he was saying the most wonderful thing:
“I’ve been a sinner all my life, but I never knew it until one day God
sent a woman to look into my eyes and ask me what I was doing. I was
in the bootlegging business then and doing pretty well. It had never
occurred to me that there was anything like what you’d call sin about
it. But it began to seem as if somehow God had got into that woman’s
eyes and was looking at me. I saw that the breaking of the law of the
land that had been made for the good of the land was a sin. I was a
law-breaker and I was a sinner. And somehow that sin grew until it was
the heaviest thing I had to carry around.
“I gave up bootlegging right away that night, but somehow that didn’t
seem to make any difference. The sin was there just the same and it
grew heavier and heavier on my soul. I never knew I had a soul before
that.
“I heard a Bible story read long ago about a blind man, and there was
one verse I always remembered. It said: ‘If ye were blind, ye should
have no sin: but now ye say, we see; therefore your sin remaineth.’
“I began to see that was just like me. I had always prided myself on
seeing what was right and doing it. I had been a law to myself. But now
I saw that was all wrong. I had no right to make my own laws. There had
to be somebody wiser than I who could make the laws for everybody.
“I bought a Bible and began to read, and presently I began to see that
there was something else back of it all that I hadn’t got at all yet.
There was something bigger than federal laws. I had broken the law of
the land and I could go and pay the penalty of that and wipe it out,
but there was a higher law, a law of the universe, that my spirit had
been breaking, and I didn’t see any way to wipe out that debt, pay that
penalty. In fact, I didn’t know that higher law, and how was I to keep
from breaking it?
“Then one day I came on a verse that said: ‘And this is his
commandment, that we should believe on the name of his son Jesus
Christ.’
“There it was! I hadn’t been doing that, and I was a sinner. I could
see how God would be very angry with me about that. God, to be a God,
holy and good and all that a real God would be, and I a little creature
setting up myself to not believe on Him! It really seemed a reasonable
offense. As I thought about it, it seemed greater than killing anybody,
or robbing a bank, or forging, or any of the things we count sins in
the world. It seemed--well--so contemptible in me. And the more I felt
it, the more I didn’t like the feeling, and I kept on reading my Bible.
“My Bible is a pretty nice kind of a Bible. I suppose you all know
about it. It is called a Scofield Bible and it has little explanations
and notes here and there that lead you on and that let you in on the
meaning of a word in the original Hebrew or Greek, and make it a lot
plainer to a beginner like me. By and by, after I had worried about my
sin a lot, I found that I didn’t need to worry at all--that my sin had
all been prepared for, and the penalty paid; that Jesus Christ had set
me free from the law of sin and death, and all I had to do was accept
my pardon and go out unburdened.
“Well, there isn’t much more to tell. I took it. You better believe I
did! If you had been as unhappy as I was you wouldn’t have wasted a
minute in taking a pardon like that. Why don’t you, by the way, if you
never have? It pays. I’m here to tell you it pays _above everything
else I’ve ever tried_. If you don’t see it, just try it anyway, and
you’ll find out.”
The audience rose to join in the closing hymn, and during that and the
benediction Joyce’s heart was in a tumult of joy. She could not see the
platform because the two men who stood in front of her were unusually
tall, and some people had come in and were standing in the aisle beside
her, crowding her from her position, but the instant the benediction
was over she set herself to get up that aisle somehow. However, she
might as well have attempted to throw herself out to sea when the tide
was coming in. It was impossible to make any progress, and finally she
slipped into the back seat and decided to wait. She must see Darcy at
any risk, no matter if she lost the next train. She must tell him how
glad she was!
There was a crowd around the platform. Likely people had come up to
speak to him. His words rang over again in her heart as she waited,
her eyes lighted with a great joy. At last the crowd thinned and she
managed to work her way through and get to the front, but as she did
so she saw several men going out a door back of the platform, and when
she arrived there was but one man left up there, seemingly a janitor,
picking up the books. Her heart sank.
“Oh, can you tell me where the speakers have gone? I must see one of
them a minute, that last man, Mr. Sherwood!” she cried eagerly.
“Him? Oh, he went while they was singin’, lady, hed to ketch a train. I
showed him the way to the station. Good, wa’n’t he? Beats all what the
Lord does when He gets a chance at a soul--”
But Joyce had gone, down the aisle with swift steps, out into the
street where it was still raining briskly, and the water pouring along
the gutter in deep angry tides. She paid no heed. She fled along on
winged feet, across the water, down another block; wet and breathless,
she arrived at last at the station.
She did not glance at the clock to see if she had missed her train; she
hurried out to the gates, and scanned every entrance to a train, but
the man was just closing the gate and slipping down the sign for the
New York express, which was moving away in the distance, and there was
no other train sign up except her own, the last one out to Silverton
that night. She glanced at the clock. There were three minutes before
it left. She cast a despairing glance around. He was probably gone on
that train to New York and she had missed her chance of telling him how
glad she was. She must go home of course. She would be in a terrible
predicament if she missed that train, and had to stay in the station
all night, for she had no money for lodging and would not have known
where to go if she had. And there were her examination papers.
The guard had his hand on the gate and his eye on the clock. She
hurried through the gates and onto the train, sinking into a seat just
as the train began to move, and feeling a rush of bitter disappointment
so deep she could hardly restrain the tears.
Yet beneath it all, as she put her head down on her hand and tried to
control her feelings, there was a deep gladness. Her prayers had been
answered. Darcy had found the way home. The horror of that night in the
cemetery was all cleared away. She had her friend once more, whether he
ever knew it or not.
Afterwards, while the wheels were turning in a drowsy tune, and the
sleepy passengers, with closed eyes, were trying to snatch a bit of
rest on the way, her heart woke up and began to tell over to her every
word that he had spoken, every precious look that showed his heart was
changed, every intonation of the voice she had known so long. And to
think the Lord had used her to make him listen to God’s voice! Oh, it
was too dear, too wonderful!
The look of glory stayed on her face the next morning as she came
blithely through the hall at school and met the young professor.
“You look as though you had fallen heir to a fortune,” he said sourly,
as though he begrudged her her happy heart.
“Why, I have,” she said brightly and smiled.
“Can’t you share it?” he said wistfully.
“I’m afraid not,” she said gently. “It wouldn’t share. You wouldn’t
understand.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t?” he said crossly.
“Oh,” she tried to explain. “It’s just--that I’ve heard from home.” Her
eyes were all alight.
“Oh!” he said rudely, and turned away.
“There’s another man in Meadow Brook,” he told himself gloomily. “I
must do something about this right away. I’m a fool, but I can’t help
it.”
At recess time he entered Joyce’s classroom with a smile and handed her
a newspaper still in its wrapper.
“Here’s a paper from Meadow Brook that just came in the mail. I thought
perhaps it might interest you. There’s a boy in High School there who
persists in thinking that I’m interested in their baseball team, and
every time they win a game I get a sheaf of papers. Of course they
don’t interest me. I hardly remember the names of people there any
more. I was there so short a time.”
Joyce thanked him and put the paper in her desk for a leisure moment,
going on with the blackboard exercise she was writing. Harrington was
disappointed. He had hoped she would open the paper in his presence,
and he might perhaps get some clue to her interest in Meadow Brook,
but she was as cool and disinterested as a lily. Well, he must find a
way to keep her in his company, there was no other way. It was against
all his principles to be too attentive until he felt she was worthy of
his position, but there seemed to be no other way, with her. It was
perhaps, after all, a proof that she was really worth while that she
held herself aloof. Or could it possibly be subtlety? No, he decided
not. Her religion was genuine, and that would preclude subtlety. Well,
at least her method had shown him his own heart, and now he must find a
way to win out, for it was getting toward spring and he must have this
matter settled before he went away on his vacation. He had an eye to
another larger school with better pay. It would be an advantage to him
to have it known that he was engaged to a personable young woman. It
was a wealthy community, where he was hoping to be called, and Joyce
would shine in such society with a little tutoring from him, always
providing of course that he could rid her of her ridiculous fanaticism.