XXX. A TALK AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
“There is nothing which faith does not overcome; nothing
which it will not accept.”
—Bishop Huntington.
“Roger,” began Judith, doubtfully.
“Begin again, I don’t like that tone.”
“I was afraid you were thinking—”
“I should be sorry not to be.”
“I was afraid you were thinking too deeply to be disturbed.”
“Then I shouldn’t be disturbed; my mind would be absent from my ear and I should not hear that doubtful appeal. The doubt is what I object to.”
Marion and her mother had not returned from their drive to Meadow Centre, where Mrs. Kenney had a school friend. They intended to “spend an old-fashioned day,” Mrs. Kenney remarked at the breakfast table; it was five o’clock in the November afternoon and the old-fashioned day was not yet ended.
Judith and her fancy work, covers for Nettie’s bureau, had taken possession of the light in the bay window; as the light faded, she sat thinking with her work in her lap. Roger entered and threw himself upon the lounge, clasping his hands above his head; his thinking was weaving itself in and out of a suggestion of his mother’s that she should take Judith home for the winter.
To the suggestion he had replied nothing at all.
“Then the doubt is gone,” answered Judith, brightly. “I do not know how to put my thought.”
“Isn’t that rather a new experience?”
“It is the experience of every day,” she answered, unmindful of his teasing. “I wonder why God keeps us so much in the dark.”
“Perhaps we keep ourselves in the dark.”
“That is what I wanted to know.”
“Can you tell me exactly what you mean? Are you in the dark about anything?”
“About everything,” she exclaimed with such energy that his only reply was a laugh.
“Just now I mean one special thing that I cannot tell you about.”
“O, Judith, are you growing up to have secrets?” he groaned.
“I am growing up with secrets. Aunt Rody used to exasperate me by telling me I would ‘outgrow’ something, when all the time I knew I was growing into something.”
“Growing into a new thing is the best way to outgrow an old thing.”
“Then I am satisfied about something.”
Roger wished that he could be—about something.
“I wish I could tell you. But I don’t know why I shouldn’t. I’m afraid Marion doesn’t care for Mr. King, and I want her to so much.”
In the twilight she could not see the illumination in the face across the room on the lounge.
He was satisfied about something.
“What are you getting down into?” he asked jubilantly.
“Why,” pricking her work with her needle, “I think he—cares a great deal, and he is so splendid that I want her to care. How they would work together. Bensalem has been getting her ready.”
“Well, I declare!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet.
“Are you displeased?”
“There’s nothing to be displeased about. Is this the way girls plot against each other? No wonder we men have to tread softly.”
“It isn’t plotting exactly. It’s only hoping.”
“Is that your secret?”
“Yes, and don’t you tell,” she said, alarmed.
“No; it shall be my secret; yours and mine. Now what are we going to do about it?”
“We cannot do anything. She admires him around the edges, somehow. And he’s as shy of her as he can be. I seem to be always interpreting them to each other.”
He laughed, greatly amused.
“In spite of my selecting the most innocent love-stories for you, you have grown up to the depth, or height, of this. I’ll never dare put a finger in a girl’s education again.”
“But, Roger—”
“Don’t ask me to help you out.”
“Marion will not. She doesn’t seem to understand anything.”
“No wonder,” thought Roger, remembering her early experience; “she has been a burnt child; she’ll never play with that kind of fire again.”
Aloud he replied: “She needs a wise head like yours. What would you advise her to do?”
“To be natural; just her own self, and she isn’t. I believe she’s afraid.”
“So will you be when you are as old as she is.”
“I don’t know what to be afraid of.”
“May you never know. Is that all you are in the dark about?” he questioned, seating himself in his study chair, and wheeling around to face the girl in the bay window.
A girl in blue, as she was when she sat in the bay window in Summer Avenue and wrote letters to Aunt Affy; the same trustful eyes, loving mouth, and yellow head.
Now, as then, she did not know what to be afraid of. It was only this last month that she had brought her questions to Roger. Marion had not grown ahead of her to answer her. And Aunt Affy had been so absorbed in Aunt Rody this last year that she had feared to trouble her with questions.
“I have a book-full of questions laid up for you; rather the answers would be a book-full. Life seems full of questions. There’s always something to ask about everything I read.”
“Ask the next book.”
“The next book doesn’t always know.”
“The next person may not always know.”
“I can easily find out,” she laughed.
Then she became grave, and, after a moment’s silence, said: “I wish I knew why we couldn’t have an idea, as we pray a long time for something, whether it were going to be given us or not.”
“Something that you have no special promise for?”
“Yes; something in the ‘what-so-ever.’ It does seem so hard to have it grow darker and harder, and not to know whether you may keep on or not; whether giving up would be in faith—or despair.”
“Judith, you’ve touched a sensitive point in many a heart that keeps on praying.”
“Do you know?” she asked.
“I can tell you a story.”
His story was all she desired.
“You know when Jairus came to the Lord to plead for his daughter, he fell at his feet and besought him greatly, saying: ‘My little daughter lieth at the point of death.’ Then Jesus went with him. We do not know what he said, but he went with him. Then, as they went together, the crowd came to a stand-still that the Lord might perform a miracle and answer the prayer of a touch. But, by this time, Jesus had been so long on the way that news came of the death of the little daughter. It was too late. She was dead. They said to the father: ‘Why troublest thou the Master any further?’ He might as well go home to his dead child, the Master had not cared to hasten—this woman was not at the point of death, she might have been healed another day. But think of the comfort: as soon as Jesus heard the message, he said to the father: ‘Be not afraid; only believe.’ Is he not saying that every hour to us who are fainting because he is so long on the way?”
“Yes,” said Judith, “but he did not say he would raise her from the dead. Perhaps the ruler did not know he had power to raise from the dead.”
“No; he only said: Be not afraid: only believe. Is not that assurance enough for you?”
“Now, don’t think I am dreadfully wicked, but I know I am; I want him to say: ‘Be not afraid, I know she is dead, but I have power enough for that; believe I can do that. He did not tell him what to believe.”
“He told him to believe in the sympathy and power that had just healed this woman who had been incurable twelve years, all the years his daughter had been living.”
“But,” persisted Judith, “he might believe that, for he had just seen it; but to raise from the dead was beyond everything he had seen, and Christ gave him no promise for that.”
“Perhaps he believed that the Master had power in reserve—he surely knew he was going to his house for something—he did not bid him believe, and then turn back; he went on with him to his house.”
“Now you have said what I wanted. It was the going on with him that kept up his faith. As long as Jesus kept on going his way he couldn’t but believe. He gave him something even better than his word to believe in. I shouldn’t think he would be afraid of anything then.”
“Then don’t you be afraid of anything. Not until the Master turns and goes the other way.”
“He will never do that,” Judith said to herself.
The clock on the mantel struck the half hour: half-past five. Judith rolled up her work and went out to the kitchen. The tea kettle was singing on the range; everything was ready for the supper, biscuits and cake of her own making, jelly and fruit that she and Marion had put up together in the long summer days, to which she would add an omelet and creamed potatoes, for Roger was always hungry after a walk, and then coffee, for Mrs. Kenney would like coffee after her drive.
“I don’t mind now if my prayers do get stopped in the middle,” she thought as she arranged the pretty cups and saucers on the supper table, “if Jesus goes all the way with me—he will take care of the rest of it, and next year—if something dies this year, he can bring it to life next year. If He wants to; and I don’t want Him to, if He doesn’t want to.”
Roger came out into the kitchen to watch her as she moved about, and, to his own surprise, found himself asking her the question he had intended not to ask at all.
“Would you like to go back home with mother for the winter? You may have a music teacher, you have had none but Marion, and take lessons in anything and everything. Mother would like it very much,” he said, noting the gladness and gratitude in her face; “Martha will take your place here with Marion.”
“Oh, yes, I would like it,” she answered, doubtfully. “Did she propose it?”
“Yes.”
“You are sure you didn’t suggest it, even,” she questioned, still doubtfully.
“I am not unselfish enough for that,” he answered, dryly.
“But who would pay for it?” she questioned, with a flush of shame. “No; I will not go—until I earn money myself.”
“A letter came last night from your Cousin Don—I really believe I forgot to tell you—perhaps I was jealous of his right to spend money for you. He asked me to decide what would be best for you, from my knowledge of yourself, and said any amount would be forthcoming that your plans needed. His heart is in his native land still. He will never come home to stay as long as his wife”—“lives” in his thought was instantly changed to “objects” upon his lips.
“So you would really like to go back to city life?”
“Yes,” said Judith with slow decision.
Why should she not go home with John Kenney’s mother, she argued, as she stood silent before Roger. He was studying medicine in New York; he had written her once, only once, and then to tell her that he had decided upon the medical course: “If I cannot have something else I want I will have this. Life has got to have something for me.”
A week later Lottie Kindare had written one of her infrequent letters; the burden of the letter seemed to be a twenty-mile drive with John Kenney and an engagement to go to see pictures with him.
“I have always liked John, you know—John with the crimson name.” She was glad of both letters; they both revealed something she had no other way of learning. She had not hurt John beyond recovery, and Lottie would have something she wished for most.
“Don will be glad to take the responsibility of you. You give him another reason for staying alive.”
“Hasn’t he reasons enough—without me?”
“He ought to have,” was the serious reply. “Everybody should have, excepting yourself.”
“Myself appears to be the chief reason to me.”
“Take as much time as you like to decide—and remember, you go of your own free will.”
“Roger, you know it isn’t that I choose to go—” she began, earnestly.
“Oh, no,” he said, as he turned away, “not Caesar less, but Rome more.”
He went into the study and shut the door.
“The child, the child,” he groaned, “she has no more thought of me than—Uncle Cephas.”
When his mother and sister returned, and the supper bell rang, he opened the door to say to Marion that he would have no supper, he had work to do.
“Yes,” he thought grimly, “I have work to do—to fight myself into shape.”