CHAPTER XII
THE SOUL HEARS A CAUSE
Midsummer heat was advancing and the fashionable residents of the city where our story is located—a city not too large, cleanly, healthful, and beautiful for situation—found it necessary to leave town. Mrs. Gray was among the number whose constitution demanded a change from the accustomed air and scene, and from the round of conventional home life to the equally conventional routine of life in a summer hotel. At least, she supposed she required it. And was it not the regular thing to do? And had she not arranged with Mrs. Dr. Greene long ago that they should secure quarters together in the Loftimore House overlooking the blue waters of Silverguile Lake? But when the last trunks were packed and, gone, and she looked around in the cool quiet of her own home, the soft eyes were troubled and she said to Winifred:
"I wish I were not going, dear. It is a trouble, after all. And you are not going! You will come for a little while, won't you, child?" And she gave her an already homesick caress.
Winifred promised, if it could be arranged. Mr. Gray and Hubert both found it impossible to leave but for a short time, and Winifred was glad of an excuse to stay with them, presiding in the quiet house with its summer lack of visitors and improved opportunity for her new and engrossing pursuit. She would go on to know God better, as she found Him mirrored in the clear, still waters of His Word.
The days sped by all too rapidly. Adèle did not leave for the summer, and the two spent hours together, comparing impressions and experiences and the light gained upon the Scripture portions which they were reading simultaneously. Then Winifred rehearsed to Hubert at night their discoveries and difficulties, and he added the wisdom given to him to their own. Sometimes his sister quoted to him surprisingly original and apt comments from Adèle and he wondered silently. If he had wished to hear from the "sensible interior," he now did so, and it spoke from the depths of a new spiritual insight.
George Frothingham continued to pay occasional court to his ladye faire. The time for his customary holidays drew near, and as he arranged for a flying European trip which he had promised himself this year, it entered his heart to close the anticipated compact with Winifred for the life journey together. Very sweet were the hopes which mingled with shrewd business calculations, and he congratulated himself on assured prospects.
But Winifred was not happy when she thought of him. His coming gave her pleasure always, and it was anticipated with a shy new consciousness since the night they had read each other's hearts more certainly through the tell-tale windows of their eyes. But though his coming gave her pleasure, it left her always with a disappointment. Concerning the one thing that had come to be the most vital interest in her life they were not in sympathy. Sometimes when the beauties in Christ Jesus seemed most patent to her own soul, it seemed that he must surely see them if represented to him. But the mention of that Name froze upon her lips when met with the usual bantering jest, or indifferent acquiescence, accompanied by a look at his watch or the sudden memory of an engagement. The conviction could not be denied that a wall as thick as that of a tomb stood between them in matters of the spirit.
"He is dead," she confessed to herself in honest grief, "as dead as I was before my quickening—just as it says in the Ephesians. He makes no more response to spiritual things than would one of the people in their graves in the cemetery if I talked to them. And what fellowship can life have with death? But—but—I love him!"
The Flesh cried out for the sovereignty of human love, but the Spirit argued for the reign of Christ. Between the two the Soul stood, a tortured arbiter, and heard the cause.
The Spirit pleaded:
"O Soul, if to you to live is Christ, why do you bring into your life's closest fellowship an alien to Him? Why do you give the supremest place of earthly relationship, pledging life-long loyalty and obedience, to one whose mind is foreign—even 'enmity'—to the law of Christ? Can you follow the course of life he would plan, and still serve Christ? Can two walk together except they be agreed?"
"You might win him," the Flesh pleaded. "A woman's power is very great. Remember he loves you."
"I have no power now," the Soul ruled.
"You might have eventually," the Flesh persisted. "The example of a godly life will win."
"You cannot live a godly life while you walk with him," interposed the
Spirit. "'The friendship of the world is enmity with God.'"
Winifred was startled. "That is a very strong text," she thought. "But it probably doesn't mean that. Godly women have lived Christian lives with very ungodly husbands."
"But they did not walk together," argued a voice. "They were only in part united. In the realm of the spirit—the realm that should lead—they were divided."
"There is encouragement held out to believing wives in the Scripture," suggested one who knows how to quote Scripture for his purpose, "that they may win their unbelieving husbands by their chaste behavior."
"There is no encouragement given to believing women to marry unbelieving men," said the Spirit defensively. "A woman whose faith finds her so united may have hope. But can you expect the favor of God upon a mission undertaken in disobedience?"
"Is it quite disobedience?" pondered Winifred weakly. "I must look in the Bible to find all I can about it."
The Flesh resisted this course and suggested delay, at least in searching the Scriptures about it. She might not understand the Scriptures. It would be better to ask some Christian friend.
So the matter was delayed, but not for long. For the Soul grew unhappy with the weight of a matter withheld from the clear light of the Word, and a mist rose between it and the face of Christ. Any sorrow could be borne rather than lose vision of His face, and Winifred brought her cause at last with sobs and tears to the feet of Him who had been crucified, determined that His word should end the case at any cost. Then she searched the Book with what result each Bible student knows. She found permission for a Christian's marriage "in the Lord." But the whole testimony of the Scripture frowned darkly upon a yoking together with unbelievers; and what yoke was closer than the one she contemplated?
The Spirit said amen; and Winifred remembered how all her interviews with George Frothingham had left her not helped at all in the way of the spirit, but rather hindered. What would be a lifelong fellowship? She cast to the winds all thought of inaugurating a dubious mission for the young man's salvation through means of a forbidden fellowship, and so the Soul, led by the Spirit, took wood and fire and repaired to the mount of sacrifice.
The decisive evening came, and Frothingham, never more elegant nor more winning, appeared. He was not dismayed by Winifred's unusual constraint, for he had noticed a growing shyness and drew his own happy conclusion from it. He had brought a roll of music—a new love song, into which he poured the richness of his mellow voice while Winifred accompanied him. But her fingers trembled over the keys and she struck a false note occasionally.
Later they were standing beneath the chandelier, the light falling upon
Winifred's pale face, as she answered words he had been speaking.
"No, I cannot marry you," she said, and her voice shrank from the words as ranch for the pain they must cause him as for her own. "It is impossible."
His handsome face clouded with surprise and alarm. He pleaded, expostulated, reasoned, but in vain. Winifred was firm, and a certain womanly dignity hid the grief that she felt, lest its display should afterward bring humiliating regret. She told him as clearly as she could the reason why she could not become his wife, and to his unspiritual judgment it seemed a petty cause. He was accustomed to seeing a type of religion that could exist in harmony with the world, and he did not see why the fact that Winifred was a Christian and had become uncommonly interested in that sort of thing should hinder her being the best of wives to a worldly man like himself. They need not quarrel about it. As to any scruples that might be entertained in her conscientious little head about all the gaiety he cared for, he inwardly credited himself with skill to overcome them when once she should be his. But Winifred made it clear to him at last that the matter was unmistakably and finally settled, and deep was his chagrin. Wounded pride rose with a sense of his rejection, and he straightened his fine figure in haughty coldness.
"Very well," he said. "I must abide by your decision, and we will part."
"We shall still be friends?" she asked timidly.
He did not look at the little hand she outstretched. "If we cannot be more than friends, we must be less now," he answered coldly.
He bade her an abrupt good-night and she watched him depart. Still standing where he had left her she looked through the graceful palms that from their setting of marble partially veiled the drawing-room from the hall and saw him standing, never so handsome as now in his pale sternness, fastidiously drawing on his gloves according to his wont.
Her heart made a final appeal. Was she mad, that she should drive him away when she loved him? Let her call him back! Love is sovereign. Let it rule.
As a very tiny object may blot out the widest view if it be near enough to the vision, so this glittering treasure of an earthly love swung before her eyes, and it hid the broader prospect of fair and eternal joys in Christ. "Command that these stones be made bread," one had said to her Lord when he hungered, and the same strong and subtle one counseled now: "Take the joy that is offered! Your heart will be starved and desolate if you let it go. Call him back!"
Almost her weak heart assented.
"George!" the cry rose, but it died, mercifully, in a whisper upon her dry lips.
Frothingham had quite prepared himself to emerge from the house—for the last time, probably—and he passed out, giving no backward glance at the figure that stood beneath the light in the drawing-room.
Winifred roused from her statue-like stillness as the door closed behind him. The heavy breath of odorous flowers stole in through an open window and sickened her. For years after she could not dissociate their fragrance from the sorrow of that hour. She turned to the piano. He had left his music—and he would never come back for it! She turned away and climbed the stairs with heavy steps to her own room. And there we will leave her, where, after the battle, a heavenly Visitor was to come forth with bread and wine for her refreshing.