XXI. MARION’S AFTERNOON.
“Only the present is thy part and fee,
And happy thou,
If, though thou didst not beat thy future brow
Thou couldst well see
What present things required of thee.”
—George Herbert.
More than anything else in the world Marion wished to be alone that afternoon. If it were possible she wished to understand herself. She closed the study blinds, and, in the dim light drew Roger’s study chair to the table; and, sitting down, bent forward, leaning her head on the table.
What did she wish to understand? She wished to know if the years had burnt out that impulse of friendship, or love, she had, then, toward Roger’s friend, and her own friend; she was as light-hearted to-day, but for the shame of it, as if she had never known him so pleasantly and familiarly; her excitement over the letter was—what was it?
If he should enter now she would be startled; she would be startled because of that shame, because of those words that had spoken the truth to him; she had read his letters to Judith week after week all these years; they were delightful letters, he put himself into them; Judith had written him that she always showed them to her; she did not often read the letters Judith wrote to him.
If she knew that he were coming back to—but, why should he? He had not cared beyond friendliness then; there was no reason that he should care beyond friendliness to-day. She was just the same; not any prettier, not any more attractive; she was only a busy worker in her brother’s small parish. Girls always had lovers, she supposed; before she had a thought of it David Prince asked her to marry him, and she refused instantly with no thought but surprise; there had been no one else; she was twenty-one when she thought she cared for Don Mackenzie, she was twenty-six now; an impulsive girl then, a self-possessed woman now; that had been a golden experience; if there were any gold in her it had been tried in that fire.
He was her girlish ideal; he was not her woman’s ideal. Perhaps she was disappointed in him.
“Marion, Marion,” called a voice in the hall; a voice Marion loved; Aunt Affy’s voice.
“O, Aunt Affy,” springing toward the figure in the gray dress and pretty gray bonnet, “how did you know I wanted you more than I ever did in my life?”
“I was sent, may be,” was the simple reply.
“I am sure you were,” said Marion, drawing her into the study and seating her on the lounge. “Now give me your bonnet.”
“But, I can’t stay a minute,” Aunt Affy protested; “Cephas had to come to the blacksmith’s, and he brought me. Rody hasn’t been so well all day, and I hate to leave her. I came to see the minister.”
“The minister’s sister will have to do this time.”
“I’m afraid she won’t. Rody has something on her mind; I thought perhaps he would come to see her and find out. She looks queer at me and will not speak. Mrs. Evans is staying with her. She hasn’t worked too hard this summer; she couldn’t; I’ve done a good deal, and we’ve had one of the Draper girls come in two days every week. I know it isn’t that; it’s her mind. But I’ll stay content till Cephas comes for me. Now, what is, deary?”
“It isn’t anything; only I wanted to hear you talk.”
“Bless the child,” ejaculated Aunt Affy; “I never talked in my life.”
“No, you never do; you only breathe out your spirit and your experiences; they find words for themselves; I truly believe you have nothing to do with the words; they come.”
Aunt Affy laughed; she thought so herself.
“Did you ever want to do anything different from your life? Were you always as satisfied as you are now?” asked Marion, taking Aunt Affy’s hard-working hand into her own pretty fingers.
Then Aunt Affy laughed again. What a tumult her far-away girlhood had been. Did girls now-a-days think so much and have such confusing thoughts and times?
“I had a longing to do a certain kind of work—very practical; and the only relief was praying to be satisfied with the having and doing it. That was a very holy state of mind, you think. I used to think so, too. Would it have been a holy state of mind if I had run next door to see my bosom friend and talked to her continually about it? My praying was simply to unburden myself. I had no bosom friend to talk to; if I had I might have told her about it instead of praying about it. And being devout I talked to God about it, instead of falling into reverie as one less devout would have done. I am not confident all my praying was prayer,” she answered, shaking her head with its two long white curls.
“Yes,” said Marion, who had felt this dimly about her own praying.
“But it held this inestimable blessing—it moved me to study about prayer, as no other experience would have done. And then, as the years went on, the comfort of what I found to believe was so satisfying that I forgot, for the while, the certain thing I was longing for. And then as it was not granted, I began to think the longing had been kept alive and craving that I might be kept alive and craving about prayer. God’s way of answering is as well worth studying as our way of asking.”
“I should think it might be worth more,” said Marion.
“I am glad to hear you say that. Some too introspective people regard more their way of asking—and in that way wander about in the dark while his way of answering is light about them.”
“But then,” Marion said, argumentatively, “don’t you see that unless your prayer were granted what you were learning would not be true; that is, if the promises are to be taken literally and exactly.”
“I do not always know about ‘literally and exactly.’ That depends upon just where we are. A child’s faith may need ‘literally and exactly.’ You and I may be growing into—not a less confident, but a more intelligent faith.”
“Let me read you something. Dr. Parkhurst says—” Marion opened the volume and read:—“‘The longings of the human spirit have their own particular beatitude, and, better than any other interpreters, make clear the meaning of the Holy Word.’”
“Read it again,” said Aunt Affy. “I’ve been all through that.”
Marion read it again, very clearly, then laid aside the book.
“But how do you know if you do give up?” she asked, feeling her own will strong within her.
“There is a great deal in your question. To give up heartily and thoroughly is a rare thing to do. It is more than giving up praying about it. It is even more than giving up wishing for it. It is giving up the place in your heart, the plan in your life that held it; it is so giving up that you can put something else in its stead. It is filling that place so full that the old desire can never get back into it again. And it is doing it of your own free will. It is like what the people might have done by taking God back again as King, and refusing to have Saul. They had the opportunity to do it.”
“Aunt Affy, how have you learned to be so sure about things? You remind me of another thing Dr. Parkhurst says: ‘A Christian has more than the natural resources of thought and action.’”
“So we have. I knew nothing but that God cared for me. And I was eager, impetuous, impatient, wilful, eager for him to walk my way, in the way I should tell him about. It was years and years before his Word became to me the delight, the plain command, warning, rebuke, comfort, it is to-day. But I studied night and day with my longing heart; and he blessed every natural longing; he took not one away; he took each into his keeping and blessed it.”
“Does it take years?” faltered Marion. “I want to learn something to-day.”
“You may learn something to-day; you cannot learn all to-day. Yesterday I opened my Bible to a passage dated thirty years ago; I remember the night I marked it; I was staggered, dismayed at something that had happened to me, something that I thought God would never let happen. I read through tears; I was comforted although the words meant little to me; I was comforted as a child is comforted, snug in its mother’s arms, when the mother does not speak one word. Yesterday, being in a strait again, I read these same marked words; again they were dull and dry; I asked God to tell me what he meant.”
“Thirty years ago did you ask him to tell you?”
“No, I did not think of that. I thought I would be comforted some other way. I had not grown up to the understanding of to-day. You know there’s a natural growing up to understanding God’s words. It took the happenings of these thirty years to make me understand; God worked through them. He makes us grow through the sunshine and rain of his happenings. God has to wait for our slow growing. (And I wish to impress upon you just here, that unless you read and remember and understand the Bible stories you cannot expect to find the lessons for your own life. Superficial reading will not bring out the points; one of his ways of teaching is through the natural method of your own study and memory.)
“‘Therefore they inquired of the Lord further.’ That further helped me through a hard time. The story is this: God had chosen a king for his people, told Samuel all about it, and sent him to pour the anointing oil upon his head and to kiss him; and now when Samuel called the people together at Mizpeh, and caused all the tribes to come near to choose a king for them, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken, then the family in Benjamin, then Saul, the son of Kish, thus confirming the Lord’s choice and Samuel’s mission in the anointing, and then the most astounding thing happened. Saul, the chosen of the Lord, the young man whom the Judge of Israel had anointed and kissed, could not be found. What would you think if you believed that God had bidden you do something, and had confirmed it in such a special, satisfying, convincing manner, and then suddenly you could go no further—it was all taken out of your hands. The prophet sought for Saul and could not find him. Would you not be tempted to say—would you not really say to yourself, and to the Lord, I have been mistaken; I went ahead to do God’s bidding in all the confidence of my faith, and before all the people I am ashamed; it is proven that God did not bid me, that my faith was presumptive, for the time has come to go on, and I cannot go on—the work is not to be done. It looks as if I had deceived myself; God has allowed me to believe something that is not true. Could anything be more heart-breaking? How could God treat you like that when you believed him so, and were so in earnest? Would you have the heart to inquire further? They asked if the man should yet come hither. Samuel had done all he could. The Lord answered, telling them plainly where the man had hidden himself. Oh, these hidden people, the Lord knows about. He is in all their hiding places. Suppose Samuel had stopped, ashamed before the people, angry, humiliated before the Lord. There had to be this last trial of faith. At the last eager, sure moment God may have a new test of faith for us. Is there a hiding place in one of your last, sure moments? Do not fail before it. God’s will is hidden away in it.”
“Aunt Affy, you do not know what you have done for me,” said Marion, solemnly, “I have just been deciding something for myself. I was forgetting that God might have a will about it; that there was any further in it.”
“And here comes Cephas,” Aunt Affy replied, rising; “I know the rattling of those chains—I came in the farm wagon because it was easier than for him to hitch the horses to the carriage. I’m thankful enough if I’ve been of any help to you,” she added, touching Marion’s forehead with her sweet, old, happy lips.
“Shall I send Roger as soon as he comes home?”
“Yes, and Judith. Judith didn’t come yesterday, and Rody kept asking for her.”
“It may be late. They have gone to Meadow Centre.”
“No matter if it is midnight. Rody didn’t sleep last night. She talked in her sleep, and has been muttering all day; I wouldn’t have left her only I wanted to see the minister alone before he saw her.”
The chains of the farm wagon rattled into the lane. Marion, on the piazza, watched the old lovers drive away.