“In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and
He shall direct thy paths.”
—_Prov._ iii. 6.
“How excellent a thought to me
Thy loving-kindness then shall be!
Thus in the shadow of Thy wings
I’ll hide me from all troublous things.”
“My life is like Africa; there are no paths anywhere,” said Marion.
She was not petulant; the tone was not petulant; Marion knew she
thought she was bearing her life bravely. The study was cool and
darkened that August afternoon; she lay idly upon the lounge, a fresh
magazine in her lap, and a pile of books on the carpet within reach
of her idle hands.
A year ago she thought she loved books—and music, and life.
Roger liked to have her near him while he wrote and studied, but he
did not like her idle moods. This latest one had lasted two days.
He pushed his large volume away, and taking up an ivory paper cutter
began to run its sharp edges across his fingers. Marion was easily
hurt; he could not advise work as he did yesterday.
“If your life were like Africa,” he began in an unsuggestive tone,
“you would have a beaten track wherever you turned; no unmapped
country in the world is better supplied with paths than this same
Africa that your hedged-in life is like. Every village is connected
with some other village by a path; you can follow ziz-zag paths from
Zanzibar to the Atlantic; they are beaten as hard as adamant; they
are made by centuries of native traffic.”
“I have learned something about Africa,” she answered, demurely, “if
not about my life.”
“Which are you the more interested in?”
“Oh, Africa, just now. I am not interested in my life at all.”
“Marion, dear, is Bensalem a failure?”
“Yes, as far as I am concerned. Not for you, dear old boy; it is
splendid for you, and for Bensalem. Even Judith listens in church.”
“I know she does. I write my sermons for her.”
“For a girl? How do you expect to reach other people, then?” she
inquired, surprised.
“The inspiration came to me, that Sunday she told me she was sorry
for not listening, to begin all over again—to look at life from a
fresh standpoint, from the standpoint of youth, ardent, hungry,
sensation-loving youth—”
“Sensation—”
“Not in its usual acceptation; truth cannot but give you a sensation;
I knew it would not hurt the old people and the middle-aged to begin
again; to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child, and I have
attempted to teach the children in the Kingdom of Heaven; to talk
simply about the grand old truths; to keep that girl before me as I
thought out my sermons—a thoughtful girl who has had some experience
in life, and when a thought or the expression of it was over her
head, I struck it out.”
“Now I know your secret. ‘Simplicity and strength’ are your
characteristics, David Prince, our literary blacksmith, who wrote
Bensalem up for the Dunellen _News_, was pleased to say. Shall you
keep this up?”
“Until I find a better way,” he said, contentedly.
“Everybody listens.”
“Even Miss Rody,” he said, smiling at the memory of Miss Rody’s face.
“And all the other old folks. Old folks and children. What about the
young men and maidens?”
“Aren’t ‘simplicity and strength’ good enough for them?” he inquired,
seriously.
“It’s good enough for me.”
“Not quite,” he answered.
“Why?”
“You listen, of course.”
“But I do not grow fast enough? Roger, I’ve stopped growing. I knew
something was the matter with me, and that’s it.”
“A pretty serious _it_.”
“I know that better than you can tell me. I wish Judith Grey
Mackenzie—how Aunt Rody brings that out—would give _me_ an
inspiration.”
“Bring her here for a week and I’ll promise that she will.”
“Aunt Affy could not spare her. Her yellow head is the sunshine of
that old house. But I’ll have her some day. I wish I _owned_ her.”
“I wish you did. I would buy her myself if I had money enough.”
“I wonder who _does_ own her,” said Marion; “I forgot that she does
not belong to anybody.”
“She does belong to somebody. Her mother gave her to Aunt Affy.”
Perhaps she belonged somewhat to her “Cousin Don.”
Roger never talked about Don. He never read aloud to her the foreign
letters she saw so often on the study table.
A sigh came of itself before she could stifle it; the idle fingers
opened the magazine; Roger’s pen began to race across the paper.
Voices on the piazza brought Marion to her feet; Judith’s voice was
in the hall.
“O, Miss Marion, we came to tell you—” began Judith.
“And to ask you how—” continued Jean.
“To make an Outing Ten,” finished Judith.
At the tea-table Marion told Roger the story of how Jean had an
outing.
“I wish you might have heard the unconscious way she told it. My life
_is_ like Africa: all beaten tracks. I am to be the President of the
Outing Ten. All Bensalem is to be my own special private outing, but
nobody is to know it.”
“Then, Marion dear, you will have the two most blessed things on the
earth.”
“What are they?”
“Don’t you know?”
“You think work is one,” she said doubtfully.
“So you think. And companionship is the other.”
“Roger, dear, I’m afraid I haven’t given you companionship; I’ve been
stupid, self-absorbed, idle—”
“Anything else?”
“But you have been desolate, sometimes.”
“My work has been my companionship.”
“Then there is only one blessed thing to you,” she said, merrily.
“May you get it.”
“I am getting it every day.”
“Then you do not inwardly fret against the limitations of this bit of
a village—” she began, frightened at herself for the suggestion: “I
thought, perhaps, you were _bearing_ Bensalem.”
“So I am, I hope,” he answered, gravely, “in my heart, and in my
prayers.”
“I beg your pardon,” she returned, flushing under the “splendid
purpose in his eyes.” “I might have known you were too broad to feel
narrowed, as I do.”
“You remember what Lowell says: ‘There are few brains that would not
be better for living for a while on their own fat.’”
“And that is better than the fat of the land—which you will never get
in Bensalem.”
“I think I started from my new standpoint without worldly ambition.
Think of Paul writing the Epistle to the Romans from a literary point
of view.”
“Well, then,” with a laugh that was half a grumble, “I despair of
you, if you ‘take pleasure’ as he did in all sorts of infirmities and
limitations—I was beginning to be ambitious for you. You spent all
the afternoon last week with Agnes Trembly’s mother, reading to her,
and telling her stories—you do not take time to _study_ as you used
to study. You were such a student. Now all you care for is people—and
the Bible,” she ran on, discontentedly; “What does Don think of you?”
she asked, with a sudden flush.
“He is in despair,” he replied, thinking of Don’s latest letter of
angry expostulation.
“He is ambitious,” said Marion, reproachfully.
“So am I,” he answered, smiling at the reproach.
“But in such a way. I like ambition. I would like to do something in
the world myself.”
“The man, or woman, or child, who does the will of God is every day
doing something in the world,” he said, seriously.
For a moment she was silenced, then urged by her own discontent she
burst out:—
“But five hundred or a thousand people might as well listen to you,
and be influenced by your ‘strength and simplicity,’ as this handful
of Bensalem.”
“The perfect Teacher was more than once content with but one
listener.”
“Yes; but his sermon was written and handed down to all the ages,”
she answered, in a flash.
“If one life here in Bensalem is moved, and another life moved by
that, who can tell how far down the ages the influence may go?
Beside, that is not my care,” he said, in his rested voice.
“But _wouldn’t_ you, now, candidly, rather influence ten hundred
lives than one hundred?”
“Candidly, I would.”
“And, yet, you have refused a call to Maverick, and stay stupidly
here.”
“Stupidly is your own interpretation. I will be content to move one
man if I might choose the man. I am determined to learn what can be
done in a village by one man who stays for the ‘fat of the land,’ the
youth. From Drummond’s standpoint, only the boy himself and the young
man understand the boy. My outlook just now is from the standpoint of
that big-eyed, sensitive-lipped Joe, and your Judith. Men and women
are but boys and girls grown tall. I find out the boy; you are
helping me to the girl.”
“I am glad I can help,” said Marion, satisfied.