“The love for me once crucified,
Is not a love to leave my side,
But waiteth ever to divide
Each smallest care of mine.”
The three were in the study that Sunday afternoon that the Meadow
Centre minister exchanged with Roger Kenney; the minister, the
hostess, and the girl at boarding-school. The boarding-school girl
had a book in her lap with her finger between the leaves, listening.
“Mr. King talks as though he had never had any one to talk to
before,” Judith thought as she watched the two and listened.
His conversation was filled with bits of information, with incident,
with a thought now and then, absorbingly interesting to a school-girl.
Roger loved people better than he loved books; Judith had not
outgrown her books, and grown into loving people. The Meadow Centre
minister was a chapter in a most fascinating book; he was the hero of
a story; he was not a being of flesh and blood like Roger. She was
afraid every moment the book would shut and she would read no more of
his story; “to be continued” would end this chapter, and then she
might never see the end of the book.
“‘Conversation is not the road leading to the house,’” he quoted,
“‘but a by-path where people walk with pleasure.’”
“I think it leads to the house,” replied Judith, quickly, “if people
are real and sincere. What _does_ lead to the house if conversation
does not?”
“Deeds,” suggested Marion.
“But we can’t do deeds every minute,” persisted Judith; “how could we
do deeds sitting here this afternoon.”
“We have done them,” said Mr. King; “we are resting in a by-path.”
“But we want to get to the house,” insisted Judith.
“Loitering by the way is pleasant; through the by-way we may learn
the way to the house.”
“Marion, that reminds me of Cousin Don,” Judith said, suddenly; “we
know him only through by-ways.”
“Tell me about Cousin Don,” said the minister, interestedly.
Cousin Don was a story Judith loved to tell.
“You expect to find him unchanged after all these years—the time in
his life when a man changes?” he inquired, astonished. “Is that the
way you understand human nature?”
“Perhaps I do not understand human nature at all. But I have his
letters.”
“By-ways—they do not lead to the house,” he replied.
“But they can,” said Judith, vexed.
“Oh, yes, they _can_.”
“And I know they do; don’t you, Marion?”
“In this case, I hope so,” Marion answered; “I don’t see how people
can help being like their letters.”
“Or their letters like them?” corrected Judith.
“Then how is it we are disappointed in people?” Mr. King questioned;
“is it only our lack of insight?”
“People change,” said Marion, with slow emphasis; “if we were with
them all the time we would see the little changes that lead the way
to the great changes. People are even disappointed in themselves; I
am.”
“So am I,” he answered sincerely; “I fall below my own ideal often
enough; if anybody cared enough for me to be disappointed in me they
would have reason enough.”
“I don’t believe they would,” thought Judith.
“Mr. King,” Marion began doubtfully, “do not answer me if my question
is intrusive; but I would like to know how you read the Bible for
yourself.”
“That _is_ a coincidence,” exclaimed Mr. King; “as I was driving
along this morning a question came to me that I never thought of
asking myself before: suppose someone asks you to-day how you study
the Bible _for yourself_, what will you say?”
“How wonderful,” both girls said in the same breath.
“So I told myself what I would say. One of my ways when I am in
special need of a word from my heavenly Father is to ask him to give
it to me, and then I am sure to find it in my reading. Often I open
and find it; often and often I find it in the chapter that comes next
in my daily reading. Asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see
his special word to you in that special need is the safest way and
the quickest for me. I am assured then that I shall learn that day’s
lesson in that day’s place. The truth I need most has never failed to
come.”
“That is a very simple way,” Marion said. “As simple as a child
asking his mother for something she has promised. The only hindrance
is self-will.”
“Oh, dear, that hinders everything,” sighed Judith, who was battling
with the suggestion from within herself that perhaps her
boarding-school days were over and she _ought_ to go back and help
nurse Aunt Rody. The aunts had been so kind to her mother when she
was a homeless little girl, and to herself when she was a homeless
little girl. She had kept it out of her prayers ever since she had
thought of it. If only she had not thought of it. Aunt Affy would
never ask her to give up her studies and her happy home to bury
herself with three old people.
“Are you far enough along in life to know that?” asked Mr. King,
giving the girl of eighteen a glance of keen interest.
“I think I was born knowing it,” said Judith. “Do you know about
anybody who wanted to do right and had a will of his own—”
“Oh, yes; they are plenty of us. Three of us in this room,” he
laughed.
“But I meant some one in the Bible, for then we can know certainly
what happened to him.”
“Yes, I find a king who leagued himself with another king to go to
war; but he was not satisfied that he was in the way of obedience,
and he said to the other king, ‘Inquire, I pray thee, at the word of
the Lord to-day,’ and the other king gathered four hundred men, his
own prophets, and inquired of them what he should do. With one voice
they said, ‘Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hands of
the king.’ Four hundred answers to his prayer; the Lord’s command
four hundred strong. But the king who believed in the true God had
not had his answer; it was the will of the true God he sought. He
said, ‘Is there not here, besides, a prophet of the Lord that we
might inquire of him?’ The answer was, ‘There is yet one man by whom
we may inquire of the Lord.’ If there is one way of knowing the
Lord’s will, there is no excuse for us; we may know it. Four hundred
voices of self-will are no reason, and no excuse, for not knowing it.
This king who believed in God heard the one voice of God—and
disobeyed it. He joined himself in battle with the king who trusted
in the four hundred voices of his self-will. And the battle went
against him; God had told him so. He believed God afterward; so will
you and I if we disobey. He went to battle as though God had not
spoken.”
“Was he _killed_?” asked Judith, fearful some trouble might fall upon
her if she listened to the voice of self-will.
“No, he cried out, and the Lord helped him, and moved his enemies to
depart from him. As he returned to his house in peace, a seer met
him, and said, ‘For this thing wrath is upon thee from the Lord.’”
“‘For this thing,’” repeated Judith. “For inquiring of the Lord,
learning his will, and then believing the voice of the four hundred
who gave him his own way. Oh, dear, I wish those four hundred would
_never_ speak.”
“There is but one way to silence them; listen to God’s voice above
them all.”
“But it is so _hard_,” cried Judith, impetuously.
“Do not choose the easy way of obedience. Choose God’s way, and let
me tell you one of his secrets; _his way is always easier than we
think_.”
To hide the tears which would not be kept back Judith hastily left
the study; he did not know, nobody could know, what obedience would
cost her; life at the parsonage was so different; Roger and Marion
were _young_ with her, and Aunt Rody and Aunt Affy, and Uncle Cephas
were so _old_; they had lived their lives, and their days went on
with a long-drawn-out sameness; nothing ever happened to them, they
were not looking forward to anything, there would be no study, no new
books, no music, no getting near the loveliest things in the world;
it was barrenness and dreariness, it was like death; the parsonage
was hope, and youth, and love and life, with the best things yet to
come. “It will stifle me to go back; I shall die of homesickness, I
shall choke to death.”
Cousin Don had a right to her, he was her guardian cousin. Would he
not have a right to come and take her away? But her mother—what would
her mother choose for her to do?
They had been so kind to her mother.
“I will go and stay—a week,” she resolved, tears rushing afresh; “but
I miss Marion when I stay one single night.”
At the supper-table she announced with reddened eyelids and a voice
that would not be steady that she thought she would go to Aunt Affy’s
before evening service and stay over night; Uncle Cephas had told her
that morning that Aunt Affy was very tired.
“Must you go?” asked Marion. “But I know they need you. Mrs. Evans
said they couldn’t get any one, and Aunt Rody was in bed to-day.”
“Perhaps I’ll find it easier than I think,” said Judith.
“As soon as they find a nurse you will come back,” encouraged Marion.
During the walk through the village and to the Sparrow place Judith’s
courage all oozed away; she grew so faint-hearted that she thought
she was faint; she stopped for a glass of water at the well where the
lilies had come, and went upstairs a moment to talk to Nettie, still
helpless in her invalid chair.
“The minister came to see me this afternoon,” Nettie greeted her; “he
read and prayed and told me things. Has he told you anything?”
“Yes, and I almost wish he had not. I _have_ to do right
things—whether I want to or not.”
“Are you doing one now? One new one. You look so.”
“I am on the way to it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Literally and figuratively I am on the way to it. I am giving up
study and everything else to go and take care of Aunt Rody.”
“How splendid of you. I knew you would do something _real_ some day,”
Nettie said with enthusiasm. “You haven’t been my ideal for nothing.
Mother has kept telling me I might be disappointed in you; but I
_knew_ I never should.”
After that how could she feel faint-hearted?
“O, Judith,” said Aunt Affy, meeting her on the piazza, “how did you
know I couldn’t do without you any longer? Joe has gone for the
doctor; Rody has had another spell.”
In her own little room that night the girl knelt on the strip of rag
carpet, and, with her head buried in the pink and white quilt, prayed
that the voices of her self-will might be lost in the voice of the
Holy Spirit. The coming back was even harder than she feared; Mr.
King had not told her God’s truth when he said: “_His way is always
easier than we think_.”
The thought that she was bravely doing a hard thing did not brace her
to the bearing of it; she was not bearing it at all; she was living
through it.
Roger had not once told her she was brave, Marion was not more than
usually sympathetic; the neighbors were taking her coming back as a
matter of course—something to be expected; they would have blamed her
if she had not come; Aunt Rody every day was less fretful toward her,
more satisfied with her nursing; Aunt Affy busy in kitchen and dairy,
with the new importance of her marriage, and being for the first time
mistress in her own house, seemed forgetful that the girl had come
from any brighter life, forgetful that she had ever left the old
place and its homespun ways, and, most discouraging of all, forgetful
that any other help in household or sick-room was desired or might be
had by searching and for money. For the first time in her life Aunt
Affy was selfish. In her own contentment she forgot, or did not think
it possible that the girl of eighteen could be discontented.
Judith remembered that Harriet Hosmer had said she could be happy
anywhere with good health and a bit of marble.
But suppose she had not had her bit of marble?
These days were the history of her summer of stories.
The doctor told them that Aunt Rody might be helpless in bed for
months; she might gain strength and sit in her chair again. He had
known such instances. That was in the first week; in the second week
he gave them no hope.
The stricken old woman was alive; that was all she was to Judith: an
old woman who was not dead yet.
Judith was pitiful; she loved her with a compassionate tenderness as
she would have loved any helpless, stricken thing; but she was hardly
“Aunt Rody” any longer.
She was as helpless as a baby, with none of a baby’s innocence, or
loveliness or lovingness; there was no hope for this gray-haired,
wrinkled mass of human flesh, but in casting off this veil of the
flesh, no hope but in death. It was as if death were alive before
Judith’s eyes, and within touch of her hand.
She had no memory of Aunt Rody as the others had, to give affection
to; there was only _this_. There was scarcely any memory for her
gratitude to cling to.
There was one comfort left; she was not afraid of her now.
If she had stayed with her, instead of being at home at the
parsonage, she might have grown up to love and understand her;
instead she had grown away from love and understanding.
She dared not think of release coming through Aunt Rody’s _death_.
That would be desiring her death. Desiring one’s death in one’s heart
was—.
There was no hope but in Cousin Don.