XVI. ONE OF AUNT AFFY’S EXPERIENCES.
“O, Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free;
Tell me Thy secret; help me bear
The strain of toil; the fret of care.”
—Washington Gladden.
The dream of Judith’s girlhood was coming true in a most unexpected way; she did not go to boarding-school, but boarding-school came to her in Bensalem; four days every week she studied at the parsonage with Miss Marion, her cousin Don’s “brown girl”; the dinner was the boarding-school part; often she was persuaded to stay to supper, and sometimes there would be an excuse for her to remain over night.
Aunt Rody thought the excuses were much oftener than need be; she said “it seemed” that something was always going on at the parsonage; the parsonage was a worldly place with games, and company and music.
Cephas replied that the parsonage folks were not going out into the world, but bringing the world in and consecrating it; she must not forget that “God so loved the world.”
Aunt Rody retorted that He commanded his people not to love it, anyway. In his slow way Cephas replied: “He never told His people not to love it His way.”
The worldliness was not hurting Judith; nothing was hurting the little girl her mother left, when she shut her eyes upon all that would ever happen to her.
How it happened that she went to boarding-school she never knew; she knew Aunt Affy cried and could not sleep all one night, that for once in his sweet-tempered life Uncle Cephas was angry, and as he told the minister, “talked like a Dutch uncle to Rody”; she knew a letter came from cousin Don to Aunt Rody herself, and that Aunt Rody did not speak to anybody in the house, excepting innocent Joe, for three whole weeks.
In spite of Aunt Rody, Agnes Trembly made new dresses from the materials Miss Marion took Judith to New York to select, and a box of school books was sent by express, and another box with every latest thing in the way of school-room furnishing. A bureau in Miss Marion’s room was placed at the disposal of her goods, and one corner of a wardrobe was made ready for her dresses.
Still, with all her happy privileges, there was no place she called home; she said: “Aunt Affy’s” and “the parsonage.”
Once, speaking of Summer Avenue, she said “home” unconsciously. She rarely spoke of her mother. All her loneliness and desolation and heartaches she poured out in her letters to cousin Don. He understood. She never thought that she must be “brave” for him.
Nothing since her mother went away comforted her like her boarding-school.
During one heart-opening twilight she confided to Marion about casting lots in the Bible to find out if she would ever go to boarding-school.
“What did you find?” asked Marion.
If she were shocked she kept the shock out of her voice. She told Roger afterward she was almost too shocked to speak.
“The queerest thing that meant nothing: ‘And a cubit on the one side and a cubit on the other side.’”
“I am glad you found that,” said Marion, “I think God wanted to help you by giving you that.”
“But it didn’t help; how could it?”
“It helps me.”
“It doesn’t sound like a Bible verse; it is just nothing,” persisted Judith.
“God’s words can never be ‘just nothing.’ Those words were something to somebody, and they are a great deal to me. Do you remember something Christ says about a cubit?”
“No; did he ever say anything?”
“He said this: Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature? You were taking thought to add something to your life. Your thought-taking has not done it,” said Marion, thinking that her own thought-taking had added no cubit to her own life.
“No, indeed; I never should have thought of the parsonage boarding-school. Who did think of it besides you, Miss Marion?”
“Several people who love you. If you had never thought of it, it would have been thought of for you. In that same talk Christ told the people: Your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all these things: for your heavenly Father knoweth; that’s why we do not have to think about the cubits. I think I’ll give Roger ‘For your heavenly Father’ for a text.”
“I am so glad,” said Judith, with radiant eyes, “I love that ‘cubit’ now.”
“So do I. I will certainly ask Roger to preach about our cubit.”
“But don’t let him put me in,” protested Judith. “I should look conscious so everybody would know I was the girl. Jean Draper will be sure to know.”
“He will not let it be a girl. He will make it somebody who was superstitious, and anxious, and did not trust God, nor know how to learn his will. Trust Roger for that. I always know when he puts people in, for we talk it over together; he puts me in so often that I am accustomed to being made a text of; and his own mistakes and failures are in all the time.”
“I thought mine were,” acknowledged Roger’s attentive and appreciative listener.
“And Uncle Cephas is sure his are in,” laughed Marion. “I think it is only the outside of us that isn’t alike.”
Very often Judith was allowed to sit in the study with her books and writing.
Mr. Kenney told her that she never disturbed him, that he would be disturbed if she were not there with her books and table in the bay-window.
“Ask me a question whenever you like,” he said one day.
But her questions were kept for Miss Marion. The year went on to Judith in household work, in study, in church work and “growing up” with the village girls; Nettie Evans and Jean Draper were her chief friends. The year went on to Marion. June came; the new minister and his sister had been a year in Bensalem.
Marion told him that his sermons were growing up, because his boys and girls were growing up.
In this year Marion Kenney had discovered Aunt Affy.
She said to her one afternoon in the entry bedroom: “I was hungry to find you; I knew I wanted somebody. I knew you were in the world, because if you were not in the world, I should not be hungry for you.”
“‘If it were not so, I would have told you,’” said Aunt Affy, in the confident tone in which she always repeated the Lord’s own words.
Judith heard the words: the wonderful words, and in her fashion, made a commentary upon them: when things were not so, and couldn’t be so, God told you, so that you needn’t be too disappointed; he wouldn’t let you hope too long for things and build on them—that is, if you were not wilful about them. You might think just a little while about a thing, and not be silly about it, and if it were not so you would soon find out. She had found out about boarding-school—only she had been pretty bad about that all by herself, and did not deserve to have Miss Marion for a teacher.
Was Miss Marion paid? She had never thought of it until this moment.
It was “rag carpet afternoon.” Judith coaxed Aunt Rody to allow her to take her half-finished ball and pile of rags up garret again, after Miss Marion came, but Aunt Rody sternly refused: “When I was a little girl I did my stent, company or no company. You can see Miss Kenney after you are through.”
“But I am so slow,” sighed the rag-carpet sewer.
“Be fast, then,” was the grim advice.
Judith and her carpet rags were on the floor of the entry between the two bed-rooms; Aunt Rody was sitting in her bed-room in a rocker combing her long gray hair; the door of Aunt Affy’s room opposite was open; Aunt Affy was seated in her rocker mending the sleeve of a coat for Cephas; Marion Kenney in her privileged fashion had come into the back yard and knocked at the open entry door.
Lifting her head, Judith saw her in the rush-bottomed chair; she had thrown her hat aside, her face was toward Aunt Affy.
Marion Kenney was Judith’s ideal; she was such a dainty maiden, with brown hair and brown eyes, the most bewitching ways, and so true.
It was happiness enough for Judith to sit or stand near her to watch and to listen; and, this afternoon, she had to sit in the entry far away from her and sew carpet rags.
“Aunt Rody,” called Marion across the hall, in an audacious voice, “may Judith bring her ball and rags in here?”
“Affy doesn’t want that room cluttered up,” was the slow, ungracious response.
“Oh, yes, I do,” said Aunt Affy, eagerly. “I like it cluttered up.”
“Go then, Judith,” was the severe permission; “you are all children together, I verily believe.”
With a merry “Thank you” Marion sprang to help gather the rags, and deposited them and Judith on the rag carpet between herself and Aunt Affy.
If it had not been for the rags and the ball that grew so tediously, there would have been nothing in the world for Judith to wish for.
“Aunt Affy, I brought a question to-day, as I always do,” began Marion, and Judith’s fingers stayed that she might hear the question and the answer.
She did not know how to ask Marion’s questions, but she did know how to understand something of Aunt Affy’s answers. In her spiritual and intellectual appreciation she was far ahead of anyone’s knowledge of her. She had a talent for receptivity and, girl as she was, for discipline.
“If you had read the Bible through forty times, as Aunt Affy has, you would know all the answers,” said Judith.
“Forty times,” repeated Marion, in amazement.
“I did not tell her; she found it out,” replied Aunt Affy, with humility; “I read my mother’s Bible, and Judith found dates and numbers in the back of it, so I had to tell her it was the number of times I had read it through.”
“You were as young as I when you began,” said Marion.
“I was twenty; I felt so alone somehow, that year, I yearned for it. I read it through in less than a year, then I began again, and next year again, now it is second nature; I should be lost without it.”
“What is second nature?” asked the girl on the floor, among the carpet rags.
“It is something that is so much a part of yourself,—that comes after you have your first nature—that it is as much your nature as if you were born first so,” answered Aunt Affy with pauses for clearness. “You feel as if you were born the second time, and it would be as hard to get rid of as though you were born the first time with it.”
“Carpet rags will never be my second nature,” sighed Judith, picking up a long, red strip. “I wish reading the Bible would.”
“Aunt Affy, it is only this,” began Marion, again, flushing a little with the effort of bringing her secret into spoken words. “I want somebody to do good to; I have my class in Sunday school, and that is a great deal, but it doesn’t satisfy—and there must be somebody; if it were not so, I wouldn’t be so hungry to do it. I say it with all humility; I know there is something in me to give, and it is growing. But I don’t know how to find somebody.”
Judith’s fingers dropped the long, red strip; it would be a story to hear Aunt Affy tell Miss Marion how to find somebody.
“Then, you are just ready to hear my story.”
“I knew you had it; I saw it in your face.”
“It is one of the true stories, the stories as true as Bible stories, that you and I are living every day.”
How Judith’s face glowed. Was she living a true story? As real as the Bible stories?
“God helps and hears now, as quickly, as willingly, as sufficiently, as he did in the old Bible times; we live in the new Bible times. I heard a woman once wishing for a new Bible, the old Bible seemed written so long ago, and about people who lived so long ago. We are making a new Bible; our life is a new Acts of the Disciples.”
And she was in it? How could Judith think of carpet rags? Unless carpet rags were in it, too.
“I like that,” said Marion, “for Acts has been called the Gospel of the Risen Lord, and we know He is risen, and with us in the Holy Spirit.”
Aunt Affy was silent a moment; like Judith her fingers stayed and would not work.
“Yes,” she said, too satisfied to say another word.
“Aunt Affy’s Bible is full of marks and dates,” said Judith, “as if she were writing her new Bible in her old one.”
“Now I’ll tell you how I found somebody. I wanted somebody to give to, as you do. I felt full of good things to give. The village was more full of young people then; now the boys go to the city, or away off somewhere, then they stayed and married village girls. There were people enough, but I did not know how to find the one willing to take something from me. So I prayed about it: my giving, and the somebody. The first thing I learned when I began to live in the Bible was to pray about everything as Bible folks did—I wanted to do all the right things they did, and shape my life as near to God as some of them did.”
Aunt Affy never talked as naturally as when talking to girls; she felt that step by step she had been over their ground. As Rody said, Affy had never grown up. A woman apart from the world, she lived a wide life; every day her clear vision swept from childhood to old womanhood.
“Before the answer came I read in the Old Testament (for all these things happened for our sakes, the New Testament tells us, throwing light on the old stories), three verses in the first chapter of Judges. How I studied it. And how much for myself I found in it—and for you. Joshua was dead; the children of Israel had no human counsellor, so ‘they asked the Lord.’ They knew he would speak to them as plainly as Joshua had. They had work to do, as you and I have; God’s own planned work. They asked who should go up first to the work; the Lord said: Judah. That was plain enough. As plain as he says to you: ‘Marion, do this.’”
“How does he say it to me?”
“In two ways. First by giving you something to give. Then giving you the longing to find somebody, to give to.”
“Yes,” said Marion, in a full tone.
“With the permission he gave a promise.”
“I like a promise to work on; I feel so sure,” said Marion, brightly.
“This promise was: Behold I have delivered the land into his hand. It is given to him, still he must go and get it; he must work and get it. God does not often put ready-made things into our hands; if he did we would not be co-workers.”
Judith understood. Aunt Affy would not have thought of telling these things to Judith.
“That is his way of working for us, working in us. His work does not interfere with our work, only makes our work sure and strong. We speak the words; he keeps them from falling to the ground. Judah was the strongest tribe; he had been made ready for pioneer work; the first thing he did was to speak to Simeon, his brother, and say: Come with me. He found somebody to work with him. But he had to go first. He chose Simeon. We may choose somebody to work with us.”
“But, Aunt Affy, I meant somebody to work for,” replied Marion, who had a mission to somebody.
“There is nobody in the world to work for; it is always somebody to work with. We are all co-workers with God. The somebody you wish to find is a co-worker, too. Why not? Has God chosen only you for His work?”
Marion looked ashamed; frightened at herself, and ashamed.
“How could I be so proud?”
“Oh, we all can,” said Aunt Affy, smiling. “And this brings me to my own story.”
“The new Bible,” said Judith, eagerly.
“One day I asked our Father to bring some one to me; my life has never been a going out, for Rody could never spare me, it has been a bringing in, instead; then I came in here and read about Judah and Simeon, and waited. The waiting is always a part of it.”
“Why?” asked Judith impatiently.
“Because God says so; that is the best reason I know. And my somebody came. Somebody to help in the work planned for both of us. And the happy thing about it (one of the happy things) was that the somebody started to come to me before I began to ask. Sometimes, people say things will happen if we don’t pray; perhaps they will, it is not for me to say they will not, but the happening will not be in answer to prayer, and that has a joyfulness of its own, that nobody knows except the One who answers and the one who prays. That is a joy too great to be told. Sometimes, I know that I have been as happy over an answered prayer as I can be. And I can be very happy,” Aunt Affy said, with happy tears shining in her eyes.
“This somebody was not anybody new, or strange, or very far off; when I thought about it there was no surprise in it; it was somebody who had been coming to meet me a long while—in preparation. Then, we were ready to be co-workers in a very simple way, making no stir, but I trust our work together will not prove hay or stubble in the last day. It was somebody I chose myself; we do a great deal of our own choosing. But it was God’s work and God’s workers, like Judah and Simeon. There was prayer first, and Judah using his knowledge and judgment. No wonder God could keep his promise; they helped him keep his promise, as you and I do. Do you remember what Andrew did after Jesus called him and asked him to spend that day with him? ‘He first findeth his own brother.’”
“My only brother is found,” said Marion. “Now some one else may be ‘first.’”
“And I haven’t any,” said listening Judith. “But I have my cousin Don; I wonder about him.”
“We each have our own; whoever we find is our own. This is our own world,” Aunt Affy replied in her happy voice.
Marion’s question was answered. Aunt Affy always understood what was surging underneath her restless, foamy current of talk.
Since she had known Aunt Affy she had grown quieter; she had come to Bensalem “in a fume,” she told Aunt Affy, and the air, or “something,” was making things look different.
Aunt Affy smiled her wise, sweet smile; she knew the time came to girls when things had to “look different.”