XIII. THE TWO BLESSED THINGS.
“In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and
He shall direct thy paths.”
—Prov. iii. 6.
“How excellent a thought to me
Thy loving-kindness then shall be!
Thus in the shadow of Thy wings
I’ll hide me from all troublous things.”
“My life is like Africa; there are no paths anywhere,” said Marion. She was not petulant; the tone was not petulant; Marion knew she thought she was bearing her life bravely. The study was cool and darkened that August afternoon; she lay idly upon the lounge, a fresh magazine in her lap, and a pile of books on the carpet within reach of her idle hands.
A year ago she thought she loved books—and music, and life.
Roger liked to have her near him while he wrote and studied, but he did not like her idle moods. This latest one had lasted two days.
He pushed his large volume away, and taking up an ivory paper cutter began to run its sharp edges across his fingers. Marion was easily hurt; he could not advise work as he did yesterday.
“If your life were like Africa,” he began in an unsuggestive tone, “you would have a beaten track wherever you turned; no unmapped country in the world is better supplied with paths than this same Africa that your hedged-in life is like. Every village is connected with some other village by a path; you can follow ziz-zag paths from Zanzibar to the Atlantic; they are beaten as hard as adamant; they are made by centuries of native traffic.”
“I have learned something about Africa,” she answered, demurely, “if not about my life.”
“Which are you the more interested in?”
“Oh, Africa, just now. I am not interested in my life at all.”
“Marion, dear, is Bensalem a failure?”
“Yes, as far as I am concerned. Not for you, dear old boy; it is splendid for you, and for Bensalem. Even Judith listens in church.”
“I know she does. I write my sermons for her.”
“For a girl? How do you expect to reach other people, then?” she inquired, surprised.
“The inspiration came to me, that Sunday she told me she was sorry for not listening, to begin all over again—to look at life from a fresh standpoint, from the standpoint of youth, ardent, hungry, sensation-loving youth—”
“Sensation—”
“Not in its usual acceptation; truth cannot but give you a sensation; I knew it would not hurt the old people and the middle-aged to begin again; to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a little child, and I have attempted to teach the children in the Kingdom of Heaven; to talk simply about the grand old truths; to keep that girl before me as I thought out my sermons—a thoughtful girl who has had some experience in life, and when a thought or the expression of it was over her head, I struck it out.”
“Now I know your secret. ‘Simplicity and strength’ are your characteristics, David Prince, our literary blacksmith, who wrote Bensalem up for the Dunellen News, was pleased to say. Shall you keep this up?”
“Until I find a better way,” he said, contentedly.
“Everybody listens.”
“Even Miss Rody,” he said, smiling at the memory of Miss Rody’s face.
“And all the other old folks. Old folks and children. What about the young men and maidens?”
“Aren’t ‘simplicity and strength’ good enough for them?” he inquired, seriously.
“It’s good enough for me.”
“Not quite,” he answered.
“Why?”
“You listen, of course.”
“But I do not grow fast enough? Roger, I’ve stopped growing. I knew something was the matter with me, and that’s it.”
“A pretty serious it.”
“I know that better than you can tell me. I wish Judith Grey Mackenzie—how Aunt Rody brings that out—would give me an inspiration.”
“Bring her here for a week and I’ll promise that she will.”
“Aunt Affy could not spare her. Her yellow head is the sunshine of that old house. But I’ll have her some day. I wish I owned her.”
“I wish you did. I would buy her myself if I had money enough.”
“I wonder who does own her,” said Marion; “I forgot that she does not belong to anybody.”
“She does belong to somebody. Her mother gave her to Aunt Affy.”
Perhaps she belonged somewhat to her “Cousin Don.”
Roger never talked about Don. He never read aloud to her the foreign letters she saw so often on the study table.
A sigh came of itself before she could stifle it; the idle fingers opened the magazine; Roger’s pen began to race across the paper. Voices on the piazza brought Marion to her feet; Judith’s voice was in the hall.
“O, Miss Marion, we came to tell you—” began Judith.
“And to ask you how—” continued Jean.
“To make an Outing Ten,” finished Judith.
At the tea-table Marion told Roger the story of how Jean had an outing.
“I wish you might have heard the unconscious way she told it. My life is like Africa: all beaten tracks. I am to be the President of the Outing Ten. All Bensalem is to be my own special private outing, but nobody is to know it.”
“Then, Marion dear, you will have the two most blessed things on the earth.”
“What are they?”
“Don’t you know?”
“You think work is one,” she said doubtfully.
“So you think. And companionship is the other.”
“Roger, dear, I’m afraid I haven’t given you companionship; I’ve been stupid, self-absorbed, idle—”
“Anything else?”
“But you have been desolate, sometimes.”
“My work has been my companionship.”
“Then there is only one blessed thing to you,” she said, merrily. “May you get it.”
“I am getting it every day.”
“Then you do not inwardly fret against the limitations of this bit of a village—” she began, frightened at herself for the suggestion: “I thought, perhaps, you were bearing Bensalem.”
“So I am, I hope,” he answered, gravely, “in my heart, and in my prayers.”
“I beg your pardon,” she returned, flushing under the “splendid purpose in his eyes.” “I might have known you were too broad to feel narrowed, as I do.”
“You remember what Lowell says: ‘There are few brains that would not be better for living for a while on their own fat.’”
“And that is better than the fat of the land—which you will never get in Bensalem.”
“I think I started from my new standpoint without worldly ambition. Think of Paul writing the Epistle to the Romans from a literary point of view.”
“Well, then,” with a laugh that was half a grumble, “I despair of you, if you ‘take pleasure’ as he did in all sorts of infirmities and limitations—I was beginning to be ambitious for you. You spent all the afternoon last week with Agnes Trembly’s mother, reading to her, and telling her stories—you do not take time to study as you used to study. You were such a student. Now all you care for is people—and the Bible,” she ran on, discontentedly; “What does Don think of you?” she asked, with a sudden flush.
“He is in despair,” he replied, thinking of Don’s latest letter of angry expostulation.
“He is ambitious,” said Marion, reproachfully.
“So am I,” he answered, smiling at the reproach.
“But in such a way. I like ambition. I would like to do something in the world myself.”
“The man, or woman, or child, who does the will of God is every day doing something in the world,” he said, seriously.
For a moment she was silenced, then urged by her own discontent she burst out:—
“But five hundred or a thousand people might as well listen to you, and be influenced by your ‘strength and simplicity,’ as this handful of Bensalem.”
“The perfect Teacher was more than once content with but one listener.”
“Yes; but his sermon was written and handed down to all the ages,” she answered, in a flash.
“If one life here in Bensalem is moved, and another life moved by that, who can tell how far down the ages the influence may go? Beside, that is not my care,” he said, in his rested voice.
“But wouldn’t you, now, candidly, rather influence ten hundred lives than one hundred?”
“Candidly, I would.”
“And, yet, you have refused a call to Maverick, and stay stupidly here.”
“Stupidly is your own interpretation. I will be content to move one man if I might choose the man. I am determined to learn what can be done in a village by one man who stays for the ‘fat of the land,’ the youth. From Drummond’s standpoint, only the boy himself and the young man understand the boy. My outlook just now is from the standpoint of that big-eyed, sensitive-lipped Joe, and your Judith. Men and women are but boys and girls grown tall. I find out the boy; you are helping me to the girl.”
“I am glad I can help,” said Marion, satisfied.