XXVII. HIS VERY BEST.
“Lord, teach us to pray.”
—Luke xi. 1.
“O Thou, by whom we come to God,
The Life, the Truth, the Way!
The path of prayer Thyself hast trod;
Lord, teach me to pray.”
Judith stood on the parsonage piazza; a voice within was unfamiliar, then in a change of tone she recognized something and was reminded of her afternoon at Meadow Centre; that laugh she had heard before, it was not Don—it was—the face at the window looked out into the shadows,—it was Richard King. He was a strong tower; he was safe, like her parsonage life; she would go in and feel at home. No new face or voice would ever come between and keep her away. Across the room, as she discovered by a peep through the curtains, Marion sat with some of her usual pretty work in her hand; Roger was not there.
“In the excavations in Babylon,” Mr. King went on in easy continuation of the subject in hand, “a collection of bowls was found, inscribed with adjurations of all sorts of spirits by name, and with indications that could not be mistaken of medicines they once held. You know, that capital R with which the physician heads his prescription, believing it stands for Recipe, in the days of superstition was understood to be an appeal to Jupiter.”
“That was consistent,” Marion replied, still bending over her work.
“Imagine our physicians writing at the head of a prescription: In the name of Jesus Christ.”
“As Peter did when he healed the lame man.”
“Our old Meadow Brook physician prays with his patients very often; I tell him he leaves nothing for the parson to do.”
“Roger says sometimes the doctor has a way of getting nearer our Bensalem people than he has.”
“I am not sure of that. They tell the doctor a different kind of trouble. You would be amazed—if you were not the minister’s sister—at the histories people tell me about themselves, and their neighbors.”
“I am always delighted that people have a story to tell. When I first came to Bensalem I thought no man, woman, or child, lived a life worth living. Now I know the sweetest stories. Aunt Affy is one, and Nettie Evans, and even her hard-featured mother brims over once in a while with an experience.”
The coming back from Babylon to Bensalem brought Judith to the consciousness that she might be considered an eavesdropper; at that instant Roger entered in his shirt-sleeves, remarking: “Let’s be informal, like Wordsworth. He used to take out his teeth evenings when he did not expect callers.”
“But you have a caller,” remonstrated Marion, when the laughter ceased.
“Yes, and here’s another one,” Roger replied, as Judith walked softly in. “Judith, must I put on my coat? I’ve been potting plants for Marion and I couldn’t afford to soil my coat.”
“Yes,” said Judith, who was always on Marion’s side in influencing the Bensalem minister to remember the claims of society.
“I wish you had stayed at home. What are you looking so full of news about?”
“I have come back—to stay. No one else in the world wants me.”
“And we don’t,” declared Roger.
Something in the gleam of the eyes under Richard King’s tangled eyebrows was a revelation to Marion. She knew his secret. She would keep it. Roger was stupid, he would never guess. But how could she keep it from Judith? Poor little Judith, was she growing up to have a love story? To-night Marion did not like love stories.
She wished the tall girl with the serious eyes and braided hair were a little girl with long curls.
“Did you get a letter from Don to-night?” Roger asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you like it?”
“I—think I like it. It will not make any difference to me—only the difference that it hasn’t made.”
“A good distinction,” remarked Richard King.
“May I go upstairs, Marion?”
“Surely—your room has been waiting for you as the Holy Land waited for the Israelites to return from their captivity; nobody spoiled either, or occupied either.”
“Mine was not seventy years,” said Judith, “although sometimes it seemed like it.”
Marion did not follow her; it would not be an easy thing to talk to Judith about Don’s marriage; she was relieved that the only view the girl would take of it would be in regard to the difference it made to herself.
When Judith returned, feeling as much at home as though she had been away but for a night, Marion was matching silks for her work, and the gentlemen were talking, sitting opposite each other in the bay window.
It had been so long since she had heard Roger talk; that “talk” was one of the delights of her parsonage life. She had heard him preach but once during her stay at Aunt Affy’s.
“That point about praying came up,” Mr. King was saying, “and I am not satisfied with the answer I gave. The man gave his experience—it was an experience of years—and then he asked me what was the matter with his prayer, and I decidedly did not know. I know he has fulfilled the conditions, praying in faith, and in the name of Christ, and the thing prayed for was innocent in itself. He said, ‘What is the matter with me?’ and I could not tell. He went away unsatisfied. I went down on my knees, you may be sure, thinking something was the matter with me because I had no illumination for him.”
Roger’s strong, brown hand was stretched along the arm of his chair; he looked down at his fingers in deep thought.
“He said he had been praying months to learn if the petition in itself were not acceptable to God, and had, he thought, studied a hundred prayers in the Bible, comparing his prayer with the acceptable and unacceptable prayers of the old saints.”
“He is determined to get at the bottom of it,” said Roger.
“I never saw a man more determined. I quoted Phillips Brooks to him: ‘You have not got your answer, but you have got God.’”
“He was not satisfied with that getting?”
“No. He said he knew he should not be satisfied until he had God’s answer to himself. I think he has almost lost sight of the thing he was anxious for when he began to pray. It has been worth a course in theology to him.”
Marion dropped her silks; Judith was listening with all the eagerness of her childhood. She felt sure Aunt Affy could explain the difficulty.
“The thing that strikes me,” began Roger, “is that he may be like those men sent to the house of God to inquire about fasting.”
“Well?” questioned Richard King.
“These men went to pray before the Lord and to ask a question. Their question was about fasting; but fasting has to do with praying—your friend has certainly been in a weeping and fasting spirit. They asked: Should I weep in the fifth month separating myself, as I have done these so many years?
“The Lord’s answer came through the prophet Zechariah. He understood all about that so many years separating themselves and fasting. He told them the fasting was not so much to him as for them to hear the words which the Lord hath cried by the former prophets. They might better study his revealed will than seek to find a new answer to this question of fasting. The fasting in itself was all right if they wished to fast. ‘When ye fasted did ye do it to me?’ he asked. ‘When ye did eat and when ye did drink, did ye not eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?’ In feasting and fasting they had been selfish. Then he gives them plain words of command, like the plain words the former prophets had spoken. Obedience was better than fasting; better even than coming to him to inquire about fasting. There is a parallel in the history of one of Joshua’s prayers. He could not understand why the people should flee before their enemies. Then he rent his clothes and fell to the earth, the elders, also, all day, with dust on their heads; praying and fasting.
“But the Lord’s answer was: ‘Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?’
“Tell your old man praying and fasting are good, but sometimes God has enough of them. He prefers obedience. The conditions of the covenant had been violated by disobedience in both instances. Praying in faith, and in the name of Christ, are but two conditions; hearing and obeying is a third condition. Your man may be in the midst of a very interesting experience, but I would advise him to stop questioning the Lord, and try what a little obedience would do.”
“But, he’s a good man, Roger,” urged Judith, “only a good man could bear a trial like that.”
“Good men have favorite little ways of disobedience, sometimes; God’s own remedy is more obedience.”
“I wish we could know all about it—the rest of the story, and, if he ever has his prayer,” said Marion, to whom “people” were becoming a real and live interest.
“Joshua had his prayer. The story of Ai is the story of how God answers prayer when he has made way for it; it shows his disciplinary government; it places obedience before all things; obedience makes God’s answers to prayer a natural proceeding.”
“I’m afraid I have depended too much on prayer,” Judith answered, troubled.
“Oh, no,” Mr. King reassured her, “only you have not depended enough on obedience. I will call upon my old man to-morrow and tell him these two stories of disciplinary government.”
“You are not going home, to-night, old fellow,” urged Roger, “the girls will give us some music. We four will make a fine quartette.”
“Miss Judith, did you know I have a housekeeper?” he asked, turning brightly to Judith.
“I am very glad.”
“So are we all of us,” declared Roger.
“A man and his wife I have taken in. She’s a good cook; the house is a different affair; I wish you would come and see. The man gets work among the farmers and takes care of my horse, which I used to do myself. They are both grateful for a home and I am very happy to be set in a family.”
Judith fell asleep thinking of Aunt Rody’s beef-tea, and wondering if Aunt Affy would remember to keep the water bag at her poor, cold feet.
It was luxury to be at home again; to be at home and in the way of obedience. That was God’s will on earth as it was in Heaven.
The next day the gentlemen went fishing and Marion and Judith kept the long day to themselves. In the afternoon Marion and Nettie had their weekly history talk, and, Judith shut herself up in the study and wrote a story about a girl who learned a new lesson in the way of obedience. The story was from a child’s standpoint; in writing for children she was keeping her heart as fresh as the heart of a little child.
“Judith,” said Roger that evening as the “quartette” were together in the study, “I have a thought of work for you; you smell work from afar as the warhorse scents the battle; how would you like to write up the childhood of a dozen famous women? The study itself will be delightful, and the writing more so. Call the series: ‘When I was a Girl.’”
“I would like it,” was the unhesitating reply, “if I can do it.”
“You can do it. You can do anything you like.”
“Then I will,” she decided, thus encouraged.
“But the books?” said Richard King, ready to place his own bookshelves at her service.
“Oh, the books are easily found. There’s our school library, and the Public Library in Dunellen, and everybody’s house to ransack in Bensalem. Besides, my own library is no mean affair. Books and fishing are my laziness and luxury. No hurried work, Judith, remember. You shall not read the first one of the series to me until a month from to-day.”
“Are you such a slow worker yourself?” Roger’s friend inquired.
“I am a plodder. And I believe in other people plodding. I believe that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. I have sermons laid away to mellow that I’ve been six months on.”
“But you do other writing and studying in the mean time,” said Judith.
“Oh, yes, while the seed is sprouting.”
“Kenney, you are planning something.”
“Yes, I am planning to salt down a barrel of sermons before I take a new charge.”
“Mellowing, salting, sprouting,” laughed Judith.
“Roger, a new charge!” exclaimed Marion, startled.
“A new charge, my dear sister. I am too small for Bensalem, they need a bigger man here.”
“But, Roger,” remonstrated Judith, with big, distressed eyes; “will you not give dear, little Bensalem your best?”
“My very best,” he answered, solemnly.