XXIII. VOICES.
“The love for me once crucified,
Is not a love to leave my side,
But waiteth ever to divide
Each smallest care of mine.”
The three were in the study that Sunday afternoon that the Meadow Centre minister exchanged with Roger Kenney; the minister, the hostess, and the girl at boarding-school. The boarding-school girl had a book in her lap with her finger between the leaves, listening.
“Mr. King talks as though he had never had any one to talk to before,” Judith thought as she watched the two and listened.
His conversation was filled with bits of information, with incident, with a thought now and then, absorbingly interesting to a school-girl.
Roger loved people better than he loved books; Judith had not outgrown her books, and grown into loving people. The Meadow Centre minister was a chapter in a most fascinating book; he was the hero of a story; he was not a being of flesh and blood like Roger. She was afraid every moment the book would shut and she would read no more of his story; “to be continued” would end this chapter, and then she might never see the end of the book.
“‘Conversation is not the road leading to the house,’” he quoted, “‘but a by-path where people walk with pleasure.’”
“I think it leads to the house,” replied Judith, quickly, “if people are real and sincere. What does lead to the house if conversation does not?”
“Deeds,” suggested Marion.
“But we can’t do deeds every minute,” persisted Judith; “how could we do deeds sitting here this afternoon.”
“We have done them,” said Mr. King; “we are resting in a by-path.”
“But we want to get to the house,” insisted Judith.
“Loitering by the way is pleasant; through the by-way we may learn the way to the house.”
“Marion, that reminds me of Cousin Don,” Judith said, suddenly; “we know him only through by-ways.”
“Tell me about Cousin Don,” said the minister, interestedly.
Cousin Don was a story Judith loved to tell.
“You expect to find him unchanged after all these years—the time in his life when a man changes?” he inquired, astonished. “Is that the way you understand human nature?”
“Perhaps I do not understand human nature at all. But I have his letters.”
“By-ways—they do not lead to the house,” he replied.
“But they can,” said Judith, vexed.
“Oh, yes, they can.”
“And I know they do; don’t you, Marion?”
“In this case, I hope so,” Marion answered; “I don’t see how people can help being like their letters.”
“Or their letters like them?” corrected Judith.
“Then how is it we are disappointed in people?” Mr. King questioned; “is it only our lack of insight?”
“People change,” said Marion, with slow emphasis; “if we were with them all the time we would see the little changes that lead the way to the great changes. People are even disappointed in themselves; I am.”
“So am I,” he answered sincerely; “I fall below my own ideal often enough; if anybody cared enough for me to be disappointed in me they would have reason enough.”
“I don’t believe they would,” thought Judith.
“Mr. King,” Marion began doubtfully, “do not answer me if my question is intrusive; but I would like to know how you read the Bible for yourself.”
“That is a coincidence,” exclaimed Mr. King; “as I was driving along this morning a question came to me that I never thought of asking myself before: suppose someone asks you to-day how you study the Bible for yourself, what will you say?”
“How wonderful,” both girls said in the same breath.
“So I told myself what I would say. One of my ways when I am in special need of a word from my heavenly Father is to ask him to give it to me, and then I am sure to find it in my reading. Often I open and find it; often and often I find it in the chapter that comes next in my daily reading. Asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see his special word to you in that special need is the safest way and the quickest for me. I am assured then that I shall learn that day’s lesson in that day’s place. The truth I need most has never failed to come.”
“That is a very simple way,” Marion said. “As simple as a child asking his mother for something she has promised. The only hindrance is self-will.”
“Oh, dear, that hinders everything,” sighed Judith, who was battling with the suggestion from within herself that perhaps her boarding-school days were over and she ought to go back and help nurse Aunt Rody. The aunts had been so kind to her mother when she was a homeless little girl, and to herself when she was a homeless little girl. She had kept it out of her prayers ever since she had thought of it. If only she had not thought of it. Aunt Affy would never ask her to give up her studies and her happy home to bury herself with three old people.
“Are you far enough along in life to know that?” asked Mr. King, giving the girl of eighteen a glance of keen interest.
“I think I was born knowing it,” said Judith. “Do you know about anybody who wanted to do right and had a will of his own—”
“Oh, yes; they are plenty of us. Three of us in this room,” he laughed.
“But I meant some one in the Bible, for then we can know certainly what happened to him.”
“Yes, I find a king who leagued himself with another king to go to war; but he was not satisfied that he was in the way of obedience, and he said to the other king, ‘Inquire, I pray thee, at the word of the Lord to-day,’ and the other king gathered four hundred men, his own prophets, and inquired of them what he should do. With one voice they said, ‘Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hands of the king.’ Four hundred answers to his prayer; the Lord’s command four hundred strong. But the king who believed in the true God had not had his answer; it was the will of the true God he sought. He said, ‘Is there not here, besides, a prophet of the Lord that we might inquire of him?’ The answer was, ‘There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord.’ If there is one way of knowing the Lord’s will, there is no excuse for us; we may know it. Four hundred voices of self-will are no reason, and no excuse, for not knowing it. This king who believed in God heard the one voice of God—and disobeyed it. He joined himself in battle with the king who trusted in the four hundred voices of his self-will. And the battle went against him; God had told him so. He believed God afterward; so will you and I if we disobey. He went to battle as though God had not spoken.”
“Was he killed?” asked Judith, fearful some trouble might fall upon her if she listened to the voice of self-will.
“No, he cried out, and the Lord helped him, and moved his enemies to depart from him. As he returned to his house in peace, a seer met him, and said, ‘For this thing wrath is upon thee from the Lord.’”
“‘For this thing,’” repeated Judith. “For inquiring of the Lord, learning his will, and then believing the voice of the four hundred who gave him his own way. Oh, dear, I wish those four hundred would never speak.”
“There is but one way to silence them; listen to God’s voice above them all.”
“But it is so hard,” cried Judith, impetuously.
“Do not choose the easy way of obedience. Choose God’s way, and let me tell you one of his secrets; his way is always easier than we think.”
To hide the tears which would not be kept back Judith hastily left the study; he did not know, nobody could know, what obedience would cost her; life at the parsonage was so different; Roger and Marion were young with her, and Aunt Rody and Aunt Affy, and Uncle Cephas were so old; they had lived their lives, and their days went on with a long-drawn-out sameness; nothing ever happened to them, they were not looking forward to anything, there would be no study, no new books, no music, no getting near the loveliest things in the world; it was barrenness and dreariness, it was like death; the parsonage was hope, and youth, and love and life, with the best things yet to come. “It will stifle me to go back; I shall die of homesickness, I shall choke to death.”
Cousin Don had a right to her, he was her guardian cousin. Would he not have a right to come and take her away? But her mother—what would her mother choose for her to do?
They had been so kind to her mother.
“I will go and stay—a week,” she resolved, tears rushing afresh; “but I miss Marion when I stay one single night.”
At the supper-table she announced with reddened eyelids and a voice that would not be steady that she thought she would go to Aunt Affy’s before evening service and stay over night; Uncle Cephas had told her that morning that Aunt Affy was very tired.
“Must you go?” asked Marion. “But I know they need you. Mrs. Evans said they couldn’t get any one, and Aunt Rody was in bed to-day.”
“Perhaps I’ll find it easier than I think,” said Judith.
“As soon as they find a nurse you will come back,” encouraged Marion.
During the walk through the village and to the Sparrow place Judith’s courage all oozed away; she grew so faint-hearted that she thought she was faint; she stopped for a glass of water at the well where the lilies had come, and went upstairs a moment to talk to Nettie, still helpless in her invalid chair.
“The minister came to see me this afternoon,” Nettie greeted her; “he read and prayed and told me things. Has he told you anything?”
“Yes, and I almost wish he had not. I have to do right things—whether I want to or not.”
“Are you doing one now? One new one. You look so.”
“I am on the way to it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Literally and figuratively I am on the way to it. I am giving up study and everything else to go and take care of Aunt Rody.”
“How splendid of you. I knew you would do something real some day,” Nettie said with enthusiasm. “You haven’t been my ideal for nothing. Mother has kept telling me I might be disappointed in you; but I knew I never should.”
After that how could she feel faint-hearted?
“O, Judith,” said Aunt Affy, meeting her on the piazza, “how did you know I couldn’t do without you any longer? Joe has gone for the doctor; Rody has had another spell.”
In her own little room that night the girl knelt on the strip of rag carpet, and, with her head buried in the pink and white quilt, prayed that the voices of her self-will might be lost in the voice of the Holy Spirit. The coming back was even harder than she feared; Mr. King had not told her God’s truth when he said: “His way is always easier than we think.”
The thought that she was bravely doing a hard thing did not brace her to the bearing of it; she was not bearing it at all; she was living through it.
Roger had not once told her she was brave, Marion was not more than usually sympathetic; the neighbors were taking her coming back as a matter of course—something to be expected; they would have blamed her if she had not come; Aunt Rody every day was less fretful toward her, more satisfied with her nursing; Aunt Affy busy in kitchen and dairy, with the new importance of her marriage, and being for the first time mistress in her own house, seemed forgetful that the girl had come from any brighter life, forgetful that she had ever left the old place and its homespun ways, and, most discouraging of all, forgetful that any other help in household or sick-room was desired or might be had by searching and for money. For the first time in her life Aunt Affy was selfish. In her own contentment she forgot, or did not think it possible that the girl of eighteen could be discontented.
Judith remembered that Harriet Hosmer had said she could be happy anywhere with good health and a bit of marble.
But suppose she had not had her bit of marble?
These days were the history of her summer of stories.
The doctor told them that Aunt Rody might be helpless in bed for months; she might gain strength and sit in her chair again. He had known such instances. That was in the first week; in the second week he gave them no hope.
The stricken old woman was alive; that was all she was to Judith: an old woman who was not dead yet.
Judith was pitiful; she loved her with a compassionate tenderness as she would have loved any helpless, stricken thing; but she was hardly “Aunt Rody” any longer.
She was as helpless as a baby, with none of a baby’s innocence, or loveliness or lovingness; there was no hope for this gray-haired, wrinkled mass of human flesh, but in casting off this veil of the flesh, no hope but in death. It was as if death were alive before Judith’s eyes, and within touch of her hand.
She had no memory of Aunt Rody as the others had, to give affection to; there was only this. There was scarcely any memory for her gratitude to cling to.
There was one comfort left; she was not afraid of her now.
If she had stayed with her, instead of being at home at the parsonage, she might have grown up to love and understand her; instead she had grown away from love and understanding.
She dared not think of release coming through Aunt Rody’s death. That would be desiring her death. Desiring one’s death in one’s heart was—.
There was no hope but in Cousin Don.