Early one evening Tessa was writing alone in her own chamber; Dinah was
spending a few days in Dunellen; while Dinah was away she wrote more
than usual out of her loneliness.
Becoming wearied she laid the neat manuscript away and began scribbling
with a pencil on a half sheet of foolscap; the disconnected words
revealed the thoughts that had been troubling her all day.
"Counsel. Waiting. Asking. Deception. Years and years. Oh, I _want_ to
go to heaven."
A tap at the door sounded twice before it broke upon her reverie;
absent-mindedly she opened the door, but the absent-mindedness was lost
in the flash of light that burst over her face when she recognized, in
the twilight, the one person in all the world whom she wished to see.
"Oh, I was wishing for you! Did some good spirit send you."
"I have been feeling all day that you wanted me," said the little woman
suffering herself to be drawn into the room. "What are you doing?"
"Feeling wicked and miserable and wanting to go to heaven."
"You are not the kind to go to heaven, you are the kind to stay on
earth; what would you do in heaven if you do not love to do God's will
on earth?"
Tessa drew her rocker nearer the open window and seated her guest in it,
moved a low seat beside it, and sat down folding her hands in her lap.
"What shall I do on earth?" she asked.
"What you are told."
"I can not always see or hear what I must do."
"That's a pity."
"Can you?"
"I could not once; I can now."
"How can you now?"
"Because I desire but one thing--and that is always made plain to me."
"But how can you get over _wanting_ things?"
"I can not."
"I do not understand."
"I mean only this, dear child; I do want things, but I want God's will
most of all."
"Sometimes I think I do, and then I _know_ that I do not. Do you think,"
lowering her voice and speaking more slowly, "that He ever _deceives_
any body?"
"He sometimes, oftentimes, allows them to be deceived,--is that what you
mean?"
"He does not do it."
"No, but He allows others to do it."
"Not--when--they pray--about it and ask what they may do--would He let
somebody who prayed be deceived?"
Miss Jewett was removing her gloves. She smoothed out each finger and
thumb before she spoke, and laid them on the window-sill.
"I have been trying to think--oh, now, I know! Do you not remember one
whom He permitted to be deceived after asking His counsel?"
"No. I thought the thing impossible. I do not see how such a thing can
be."
"It can be; it has been. What for, do you suppose?"
"To teach some lesson. I am learning--oh, how bitterly!--that His teaching
is the best of His gifts."
"So it is, child; but oh, how we have to be crushed before we can
believe it. Is your life so hard? It appears a very happy life to me."
"So every one else thinks. I suppose it would be, but that I make my own
trials; _do_ I make them? No, I don't! How can I make things hard when I
only do what seems the only right thing to do. Tell me about that
somebody who was deceived--like me," she added.
"He was a priest; he ministered before the Lord, and he believed in
David, because he was an honorable man, and high in the king's
household; so when David came to him and said: 'The king hath commanded
me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know it,' of course, he
believed him, and when he asked him for bread the old priest would have
given it, not thinking that in harboring the king's son-in-law he was
guilty of treason; but he had no bread; he had nothing but the
shew-bread, which only the priests might eat. He did not dare give him
that until he asked counsel of the Lord. No priest had ever dared
before, and how could he dare? But David and his men were starving, they
dared go to no one else for help; but the priest didn't know that, poor,
old, trustful man, so he asked counsel, and having obtained permission,
he gave to David the hallowed bread. That was right, because our Lord
approves of it; then David asked for Goliath's sword, and he gave him
that, and went to sleep that night as sweetly as the night before, I
have no doubt, because he had asked counsel of the Lord and followed
it."
"Did any harm come to him?" asked Tessa, quickly.
"Harm! He lost his head; Saul slew him for treason; and he pleaded
before the king: 'And who is so faithful among all thy servants as
David, which is the king's son-in-law, and goeth at thy bidding, and is
honorable in thine house?' God could have warned him or have brought to
his ears the news that David was an outlaw, but He suffered him to be
deceived and lose his life for trusting in the man who was telling him a
lie."
After a silence Tessa said: "He _had_ to obey! I'm glad that he obeyed;
I believe that was written just for me. I asked God once to let somebody
love me, and I trusted him, because I thought that God had given him to
me--and it has broken my heart with shame. I did not know before that He
let me be deceived; I knew that I was obeying Him, but I thought that my
humiliation was my punishment for doing I knew not what."
"Now I know the secret of some of your articles that I have cried over;
not less than ten people told me how much they were helped by that
article of yours, 'Night and Day.'"
"I have three letters that I will show you sometime; I know that my
trouble has worn a channel in my heart through which God's blessing
flows; except for that I should have almost died."
"You do not look like dying; your eyes are as clear as a bell, and
there's plenty of fun in you yet."
"The fun and sarcasm are a little bit sanctified, I think; I never say
sharp things nowadays."
"Perhaps the answer to your prayer has not all come yet; sometimes the
answer is given to us to spoil it or use as we please, just as the
mother gives the child five cents in answer to his coaxing, and the hap
or mishap of it is in his hands. Perhaps He has given you the wheat, and
you must grind it and bake it into bread; be careful how you grind and
how you knead and bake! To some people, like Sue Greyson, He gives bread
ready baked, but you can receive more, and therefore to you He gives
more--more opportunity and more discipline. To be born with a talent for
discipline, Tessa, is a wonderful gift, and oh, how such have to be
taught! Would you rather be like flighty Sue?"
"No, oh, no, indeed," shivered Tessa, "but she can go to sleep when I
have to lie awake."
"Now I must go."
"I'll walk to the end of the planks with you."
Tessa was too much moved to care to talk; the walk with Miss Jewett was
almost as silent as her walk homeward alone.