“That only which we have within can we see without.”
—Emerson.
Judith stood at the sitting-room window looking out into the March
snow-storm. There had been many snow-storms since that November night
she came to the threshold and stood looking in at the happy
supper-table. Aunt Affy had opened her arms and heart anew and folded
her close: “My lamb has come back,” she said.
“To stay back,” Judith whispered, hiding her face on Aunt Affy’s
shoulder.
That night was nearly two years ago; she would be twenty in April.
She was not “twenty in April” to Aunt Affy; she was still her “lamb”
and her “little girl.”
In her dark blue cloth dress, and with her yellow head and
rose-tinted cheeks, she did not look as grown-up as she felt; she had
taken life, not only with both hands, but with heart, brain, and
spirit, and with all her might. There was nothing in her that she had
not put into her life; her simple, Bensalem life.
“Aunt Affy,” she said, as Aunt Affy’s step paused on the threshold
between kitchen and sitting-room, “Come and rest awhile in this
fire-light. This fire on the hearth to-night reminds me of the glow
of the grate in Summer Avenue when I used to tell pictures to mother.”
Aunt Affy pulled down the shades; Judith drew Aunt Affy’s chair to
the home-made rug—Aunt Rody’s rug,—to the hearth, and then sat down
on the hassock at her feet, and looked into the fire, not the
curly-headed girl in Summer Avenue, but the girl grown up.
“Aunt Affy, tell _me_ a picture,” she coaxed.
“What about?”
“About myself. I’m afraid I am too full of myself. I cannot
understand something. I can tell you about it, for it is past, and I
can look at it as something in the past. You know those years I was
at the parsonage, at my boarding-school, I was crammed full with one
hope.”
Judith was looking at the fire; the eyes looking down at her were
solicitous, tender. She had been afraid Judith “cared too much” for
the young minister; but it must be over now, or she could not tell
her about it so frankly.
“I dreamed it, I studied it, I wrote it, I prayed about it, I
_breathed_ it.”
“Oh,” said Aunt Affy, with a quick, heavy sigh.
“Don’t pity me. It was good for me, blessed for me, or it could not
have happened, you know. I thought there was some great work for me
to do—”
“Oh,” said Aunt Affy, with a quick, relieved cry.
“I was not sure whether it were to write a book, or to teach, or to
go as a foreign missionary; I think I hoped it would be the foreign
missionary, because that was the most self-sacrificing. The book was
all one great joy. The teaching was absorbing, but I must go away to
study. I was afraid to go away, I did not like to go away from
Bensalem, I would miss my mother away from Bensalem, and you, and all
the parsonage, and the whole village. But I thought I was called; as
called as Roger was to preach, or any woman, saint, or heroine, who
had done a great thing. You cannot think what it was to me. It made
me old. I wanted God to speak out of Heaven and tell me what to do.
It began to lose its selfishness, after that. The first thing that
began to shake my confidence was something Mrs. Lane said that
afternoon she talked to Jean and me about what women were doing and
could do. She did not make woman’s work attractive; she took the
heart out of me. I did not know why she should do that. I knew better
all the time. I knew what women had done and were doing. I knew she
was doing a noble work, literary work, work in prisons, temperance
work; the instances she gave me seemed trivial, as if she were
laughing at me. But something opened my eyes; I felt that I might be
disobedient to my heavenly vision, that I was looking up into the
heavens for my call, and the voice might be all the time in my ear.
That was the night I came back here and found you so cozy and
satisfied under your own roof-tree, with the voice in your ear, and
the work in your hand. The world went away from me. I stayed. I am
glad I stayed. My only trouble is, and it is a real trouble, that God
did not care for my purpose, or my prayers; that he has let them go
as if they never entered into his mind; I thought they were in his
heart as well as mine.”
“They are, Deary,” said Aunt Affy, wiping her eyes; “He will not let
one of them go.”
“But He did not do anything with them. He did not _love_ my plan, and
my prayers,” said Judith, wearily.
“Do you remember one time when Jesus was on the earth, a man, clothed
and in his right mind, sat at Jesus’ feet? He had so much to be
thankful for; no man ever had so much. And he sat at Jesus’ feet,
near him because he loved him, and looked up into his face and
listened. That was all he wanted on the earth, to be with Jesus; to
follow him everywhere, to obey every word he said, to always see his
face, to serve him. Did not the Lord care for such love when so many
were scorning him and ashamed to be his disciples? When he came to
his own, and his own received him not. When the man found that Jesus
was going away, that his countrymen were sending him away, beseeching
him to go, he besought Jesus, which was more than one asking, that he
might go with him. That was all he wanted: just to go with him. Just
as all you wanted was to be with him and do something he said, _and
be sure he said it_. But Jesus sent this man away. He refused him; he
denied his prayer.”
“That was very hard,” said Judith.
“Very hard. It was like giving him a glimpse of Heaven—it was Heaven,
and then shutting the door in his face as he prayed.”
“Yes,” said Judith, who understood.
“But he did speak to him; he told him what to do: ‘Return to thine
own house.’ If he had father, mother, brother, sister, wife,
children, go back to them and tell them how good God had been to him.
When I look at you, Deary, stepping about the house, so pretty and
bright, I think of how glad your mother must be if she sees you. How
glad to know the little girl she left was taken care of. And in
church when you play the organ, and in Sunday School, and at the
Lord’s own table, and doing errands all around the village, you are a
blessing in your ‘own house.’”
Judith’s head went down on Aunt Affy’s knee.
“This man went through the ‘whole city’ beside; his own house grew
into the whole city. Your life isn’t ended yet; to old folks like
Uncle Cephas and me, it seems just begun. Your own house is only just
the beginning of the whole city. I’ve only had my own house and
Bensalem, but I seem to think there’s a whole city for you. The Lord
knew about the whole city when he denied his prayer and sent him to
his own house.”
Judith did not lift her head; her tears were tears of shame and
penitence.
“Now, here come the men folks,” roused Aunt Affy, cheerily; “and
supper they must have to keep them good-natured.”
“I am only in my ‘own house’ yet,” said Judith, as she moved about
setting the supper table as she had done when she was a little girl.