"Haven't you got any light, Rachel, that might shine a little for
that child?"
Perhaps that was what the child had come for.
What had the word of the Spirit been to Rachel Froke this day? The
new, fresh word, with the leaven in it? "A little of it;" that was
what she wanted.
Rachel took up the small red Bible that lay on the lightstand beside
her.
"I'll will give thee my First-Day crumb, Desire," she said. "It may
taste sweet to thee."
She turned to Revelation, seventh chapter.
"Look over with me; thee will see then where the crumb is," she
said; and as Desire came near and looked over her upon the page,
she read from the last two verses:--
"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.
"For the _Tenderness_ that is in the midst of the _Almightiness_
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water;
and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."
Her voice lingered over the words she put for the "Lamb" and the
"Throne," so that she said "Tenderness" with its own very yearning
inflection, and "Almightiness" with a strong fullness, glad in that
which can never fall short or be exhausted. Then she softly laid
over the cover, and sat perfectly still. It was the Quaker silence
that falls upon them in their assemblies, leaving each heart to
itself and that which the Spirit has given.
Desire was hushed all through; something living and real had
thrilled into her thought; her restlessness quieted suddenly under
it, as Mary stood quiet before the message of the angel.
When she did speak again, after a time, as Rachel Froke broke the
motionless pause by laying the book gently back again upon the
table, it was to say,--
"Why don't they preach like that, and leave the rest to preach
itself? A Sermon means a Word; why don't they just say the word, and
let it go?"
The Friend made no reply.
"I never could--quite--like that about the 'Lamb,' before," said
Desire, hesitatingly. "It seemed,--I don't know,--putting Him
_down_, somehow; making him tame; taking the grandness away that
made the gentleness any good. But,--'Tenderness;' that is beautiful!
Does it mean so in the other place? About taking away the sins,--do
you think?"
"'The Tenderness of God--the Compassion--that taketh away the sins
of the world?'" Mrs. Froke repeated, half inquiringly. "Jesus
Christ, God's Heart of Love toward man? I think it is so. I think,
child, thee has got thy crumb also, to-day."
But not all yet.
Pretty soon, they heard the front door open, and Uncle Titus come
in. Another step was behind his; and Kenneth Kincaid's voice was
speaking, about some book he had called to take.
Desire's face flushed, and her manner grew suddenly flurried.
"I must go," she said, starting up; yet when she got to the door,
she paused and delayed.
The voices were talking on, in the study; somehow, Desire had last
words also, to say to Mrs. Froke.
She was partly shy about going past that open door, and partly
afraid they might not notice her if she did. Back in her girlish
thought was a secret suggestion that she was pushing at all the time
with a certain self-scorn and denial, that it might happen that she
and Kenneth Kincaid would go out at the same moment; if so, he would
walk up the street with her, and Kenneth Kincaid was one of the few
persons whom Desire Ledwith thoroughly believed in and liked. "There
was no Mig about him," she said. It is hazardous when a girl of
seventeen makes one of her rare exceptions in her estimate of
character in favor of a man of six and twenty.
Yet Desire Ledwith hated "nonsense;" she wouldn't have anybody
sending her bouquets as they did to Agatha and Florence; she had an
utter contempt for lavender pantaloons and waxed moustaches; but for
Kenneth Kincaid, with his honest, clear look at life, and his high
strong purpose, to say friendly things,--tell her a little now and
then of how the world looked to him and what it demanded,--this
lifted her up; this made it seem worth while to speak and to hear.
So she was very glad when Uncle Titus saw her go down the hall,
after she had made up her mind that that way lay her straight path,
and that things contrived were not things worth happening,--and
spoke out her name, so that she had to stop, and turn to the open
doorway and reply; and Kenneth Kincaid came over and held out his
hand to her. He had two books in the other,--a volume of Bunsen and
a copy of "Guild Court,"--and he was just ready to go.
"Not been to church to-day?" said Uncle Titus to Desire.
"I've been--to Friend's Meeting," the girl answered.
"Get anything by that?" he asked, gruffly, letting the shag down
over his eyes that behind it beamed softly.
"Yes; a morsel," replied Desire. "All I wanted."
"All you wanted? Well, that's a Sunday-full!"
"Yes, sir, I think it is," said she.
When they got out upon the sidewalk, Kenneth Kincaid asked, "Was it
one of the morsels that may be shared, Miss Desire? Some crumbs
multiply by dividing, you know."
"It was only a verse out of the Bible, with a new word in it."
"A new word? Well, I think Bible verses often have that. I suppose
it was what they were made for."
Desire's glance at him had a question in it.
"Made to look different at different times, as everything does that
has life in it. Isn't that true? Clouds, trees, faces,--do they ever
look twice the same?"
"Yes," said Desire, thinking especially of the faces. "I think they
do, or ought to. But they may look _more_."
"I didn't say _contradictory_. To look more, there must be a
difference; a fresh aspect. And that is what the world is full of;
and the world is the word of God."
"The world?" said Desire, who had been taught in a dried up,
mechanical sort of way, that the Bible is the word of God; and
practically left to infer that, that point once settled, it might be
safely shut, up between its covers and not much meddled with,
certainly not over freely interpreted.
"Yes. What God had to say. In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was God. Without him was not anything made that was made."
Desire's face brightened. She knew those words by heart. They were
the first Sunday-school lesson she ever committed to memory, out of
the New Testament; "down to 'grace and truth,'" as she recollected.
What a jumble of repetitions it had been to her, then! Sentences so
much alike that she could not remember them apart, or which way they
came. All at once the simple, beautiful meaning was given to her.
_What God had to say._
And it took a world,--millions, of worlds,--to say it with.
"And the Bible, too?" she said, simply following out her own mental
perception, without giving the link. It was not needed. They were
upon one track.
"Yes; all things; and all _souls_. The world-word comes through
things; the Bible came through souls. And it is all the more alive,
and full, and deep, and changing; like a river."
"Living fountains of waters! that was part of the morsel to-day,"
Desire repeated impulsively, and then shyly explained.
"And the new word?"
Desire shrunk into silence for a moment; she was not used to, or
fond of Bible quoting, or even Bible talk; yet sin was hungering all
the time for Bible truth.
Mr. Kincaid waited.
So she repeated it presently; for Desire never made a fuss; she was
too really sensitive for that.
"'The Tenderness in the midst of the Almightiness shall feed them,
and shall lead them to living fountains of water.'"
Mr. Kincaid recognized the "new word," and his face lit up.
"'The Lamb in the midst of the Throne,'" he said. "Out of the Heart
of God, the Christ. Who was there before; the intent by which all
things were made. The same yesterday, and to-day, and forever; who
ever liveth to make intercession for us. Christ _had to be_. The
Word, full of grace, must be made flesh. Why need people dispute
about Eternity and Divinity, if they can only see that?--Was that
Mrs. Froke's reading?"
"Yes; that was Rachel's sermon."
"It is an illumination."
They walked all up Orchard Street without another word.
Then Kenneth Kincaid said,--"Miss Desire, why won't you come and
teach in the Mission School?"
"I teach? Why, I've got everything to learn!"
"But as fast as you _do_ learn; the morsels, you know. That is the
way they are given out. That is the wonder of the kingdom of heaven.
There is no need to go away and buy three hundred pennyworth before
we begin, that every one may take a little; the bread given as the
Master breaks it feeds them till they are filled; and there are
baskets full of fragments to gather up."
Kenneth Kincaid's heart was in his Sunday work, as his sister had
said. The more gladly now, that the outward daily bread was being
given.
Mr. Geoffrey,--one of those busy men, so busy that they do promptly
that which their hands find to do,--had put Kenneth in the way of
work. It only needed a word from him, and the surveying and laying
out of some new streets and avenues down there where Boston is
growing so big and grand and strange, were put into his charge.
Kenneth was busy now, cheerily busy, from Monday morning to Saturday
night; and restfully busy on the Sunday, straightening the paths and
laying out the ways for souls to walk in. He felt the harmony and
the illustration between his week and his Sunday, and the one
strengthening the other, as all true outward work does harmonize
with and show forth, and help the spiritual doing. It could not have
been so with that gold work, or any little feverish hitching on to
other men's business; producing nothing, advancing nothing, only
standing between to snatch what might fall, or to keep a premium for
passing from hand to hand.
Our great cities are so full,--our whole country is so
overrun,--with these officious middle-men whom the world does not
truly want; chiffonniers of trade, who only pick up a living out of
the great press and waste and overflow; and our boys are so eager to
slip in to some such easy, ready-made opportunity,--to get some
crossing to sweep.
What will come of it all, as the pretenses multiply? Will there be
always pennies for every little broom? Will two, and three, and six
sweeps be tolerated between side and side? By and by, I think, they
will have to turn to and lay pavements. Hard, honest work, and the
day's pay for it; that is what we have got to go back to; that and
the day's snug, patient living, which the pay achieves.
Then, as I say, the week shall illustrate the Sunday, and the Sunday
shall glorify the week; and what men do and build shall stand true
types, again, for the inner growth and the invisible building; so
that if this outer tabernacle were dissolved, there should be seen
glorious behind it, the house not made with hands,--eternal.
As Desire Ledwith met this young Kenneth Kincaid from day to day,
seeing him so often at her Aunt Ripwinkley's, where he and Dorris
went in and out now, almost like a son and daughter,--as she walked
beside him this morning, hearing him say these things, at which
the heart-longing in her burned anew toward the real and
satisfying,--what wonder was it that her restlessness grasped at
that in his life which was strong and full of rest; that she felt
glad and proud to have him tell his thought to her; that without any
silliness,--despising all silliness,--she should yet be conscious,
as girls of seventeen are conscious, of something that made her day
sufficient when she had so met him,--of a temptation to turn into
those streets in her walks that led his way? Or that she often, with
her blunt truth, toward herself as well as others, and her quick
contempt of sham and subterfuge, should snub herself mentally, and
turn herself round as by a grasp of her own shoulders, and make
herself walk off stoutly in a far and opposite direction, when,
without due need and excuse, she caught herself out in these things?
What wonder that this stood in her way, for very pleasantness, when
Kenneth asked her to come and teach in the school? That she was
ashamed to let herself do a thing--even a good thing, that her life
needed,--when there was this conscious charm in the asking; this
secret thought--that she should walk up home with him every Sunday!
She remembered Agatha and Florence, and she imagined, perhaps, more
than they would really have thought of it at home; and so as they
turned into Shubarton Place,--for he had kept on all the way along
Bridgeley and up Dorset Street with her,--she checked her steps
suddenly as they came near the door, and said brusquely,--
"No, Mr. Kincaid; I can't come to the Mission. I might learn A, and
teach them that; but how do I know I shall ever learn B, myself?"
He had left his question, as their talk went on, meaning to ask it
again before they separated. He thought it was prevailing with her,
and that the help that comes of helping others would reach her need;
it was for her sake he asked it; he was disappointed at the sudden,
almost trivial turn she gave it.
"You have taken up another analogy, Miss Desire," he said. "We were
talking about crumbs and feeding. The five loaves and the five
thousand. 'Why reason ye because ye have no bread? How is it that ye
do not understand?'"
Kenneth quoted these words naturally, pleasantly; as he might quote
anything that had been spoken to them both out of a love and
authority they both recognized, a little while ago.
But Desire was suddenly sharp and fractious. If it had not touched
some deep, live place in her, she would not have minded so much. It
was partly, too, the coming toward home. She had got away out of the
pure, clear spaces where such things seemed to be fit and
unstrained, into the edge of her earth atmosphere again, where,
falling, they took fire. Presently she would be in that ridiculous
pink room, and Glossy Megilp would be chattering about "those lovely
purple poppies with the black grass," that she had been lamenting
all the morning she had not bought for her chip hat, instead of the
pomegranate flowers. And Agatha would be on the bed, in her cashmere
sack, reading Miss Braddon.
"It would sound nice to tell them she was going down to the Mission
School to give out crumbs!"
Besides, I suppose that persons of a certain temperament never utter
a more ungracious "No," than when they are longing all the time to
say "Yes."
So she turned round on the lower step to Kenneth, when he had asked
that grave, sweet question of the Lord's, and said perversely,--
"I thought you did not believe in any brokering kind of business.
It's all there,--for everybody. Why should I set up to fetch and
carry?"
She did not look in his face as she said it; she was not audacious
enough to do that; she poked with the stick of her sunshade between
the uneven bricks of the sidewalk, keeping her eyes down, as if she
watched for some truth she expected to pry up. But she only wedged
the stick in so that she could not get it out; and Kenneth Kincaid
making her absolutely no answer at all, she had to stand there,
growing red and ashamed, held fast by her own silly trap.
"Take care; you will break it," said Kenneth, quietly, as she gave
it a twist and a wrench. And he put out his hand, and took it from
hers, and drew gently upward in the line in which she had thrust it
in.
"You were bearing off at an angle. It wanted a straight pull."
"I never pull straight at anything. I always get into a crook,
somehow. You didn't answer me, Mr. Kincaid. I didn't mean to be
rude--or wicked. I didn't mean--"
"What you said. I know that; and it's no use to answer what people
don't mean. That makes the crookedest crook of all."
"But I think I did mean it partly; only not contrarimindedly. I do
mean that I have no business--yet awhile. It would only be--Migging
at gospel!"
And with this remarkable application of her favorite illustrative
expression, she made a friendly but abrupt motion of leave-taking,
and went into the house.
Up into her own room, in the third story, where the old furniture
was, and no "fadging,"--and sat down, bonnet, gloves, sunshade, and
all, in her little cane rocking-chair by the window.
Helena was down in the pink room, listening with charmed ears to the
grown up young-ladyisms of her elder sisters and Glossy Megilp.
Desire sat still until the dinner-bell rang, forgetful of her dress,
forgetful of all but one thought that she spoke out as she rose at
last at the summons to take off her things in a hurry,--
"I wonder,--I _wonder_--if I shall ever live anything all straight
out!"