XXXII. AUNT AFFY’S PICTURE.
“That only which we have within can we see without.”
—Emerson.
Judith stood at the sitting-room window looking out into the March snow-storm. There had been many snow-storms since that November night she came to the threshold and stood looking in at the happy supper-table. Aunt Affy had opened her arms and heart anew and folded her close: “My lamb has come back,” she said.
“To stay back,” Judith whispered, hiding her face on Aunt Affy’s shoulder.
That night was nearly two years ago; she would be twenty in April. She was not “twenty in April” to Aunt Affy; she was still her “lamb” and her “little girl.”
In her dark blue cloth dress, and with her yellow head and rose-tinted cheeks, she did not look as grown-up as she felt; she had taken life, not only with both hands, but with heart, brain, and spirit, and with all her might. There was nothing in her that she had not put into her life; her simple, Bensalem life.
“Aunt Affy,” she said, as Aunt Affy’s step paused on the threshold between kitchen and sitting-room, “Come and rest awhile in this fire-light. This fire on the hearth to-night reminds me of the glow of the grate in Summer Avenue when I used to tell pictures to mother.”
Aunt Affy pulled down the shades; Judith drew Aunt Affy’s chair to the home-made rug—Aunt Rody’s rug,—to the hearth, and then sat down on the hassock at her feet, and looked into the fire, not the curly-headed girl in Summer Avenue, but the girl grown up.
“Aunt Affy, tell me a picture,” she coaxed.
“What about?”
“About myself. I’m afraid I am too full of myself. I cannot understand something. I can tell you about it, for it is past, and I can look at it as something in the past. You know those years I was at the parsonage, at my boarding-school, I was crammed full with one hope.”
Judith was looking at the fire; the eyes looking down at her were solicitous, tender. She had been afraid Judith “cared too much” for the young minister; but it must be over now, or she could not tell her about it so frankly.
“I dreamed it, I studied it, I wrote it, I prayed about it, I breathed it.”
“Oh,” said Aunt Affy, with a quick, heavy sigh.
“Don’t pity me. It was good for me, blessed for me, or it could not have happened, you know. I thought there was some great work for me to do—”
“Oh,” said Aunt Affy, with a quick, relieved cry.
“I was not sure whether it were to write a book, or to teach, or to go as a foreign missionary; I think I hoped it would be the foreign missionary, because that was the most self-sacrificing. The book was all one great joy. The teaching was absorbing, but I must go away to study. I was afraid to go away, I did not like to go away from Bensalem, I would miss my mother away from Bensalem, and you, and all the parsonage, and the whole village. But I thought I was called; as called as Roger was to preach, or any woman, saint, or heroine, who had done a great thing. You cannot think what it was to me. It made me old. I wanted God to speak out of Heaven and tell me what to do. It began to lose its selfishness, after that. The first thing that began to shake my confidence was something Mrs. Lane said that afternoon she talked to Jean and me about what women were doing and could do. She did not make woman’s work attractive; she took the heart out of me. I did not know why she should do that. I knew better all the time. I knew what women had done and were doing. I knew she was doing a noble work, literary work, work in prisons, temperance work; the instances she gave me seemed trivial, as if she were laughing at me. But something opened my eyes; I felt that I might be disobedient to my heavenly vision, that I was looking up into the heavens for my call, and the voice might be all the time in my ear. That was the night I came back here and found you so cozy and satisfied under your own roof-tree, with the voice in your ear, and the work in your hand. The world went away from me. I stayed. I am glad I stayed. My only trouble is, and it is a real trouble, that God did not care for my purpose, or my prayers; that he has let them go as if they never entered into his mind; I thought they were in his heart as well as mine.”
“They are, Deary,” said Aunt Affy, wiping her eyes; “He will not let one of them go.”
“But He did not do anything with them. He did not love my plan, and my prayers,” said Judith, wearily.
“Do you remember one time when Jesus was on the earth, a man, clothed and in his right mind, sat at Jesus’ feet? He had so much to be thankful for; no man ever had so much. And he sat at Jesus’ feet, near him because he loved him, and looked up into his face and listened. That was all he wanted on the earth, to be with Jesus; to follow him everywhere, to obey every word he said, to always see his face, to serve him. Did not the Lord care for such love when so many were scorning him and ashamed to be his disciples? When he came to his own, and his own received him not. When the man found that Jesus was going away, that his countrymen were sending him away, beseeching him to go, he besought Jesus, which was more than one asking, that he might go with him. That was all he wanted: just to go with him. Just as all you wanted was to be with him and do something he said, and be sure he said it. But Jesus sent this man away. He refused him; he denied his prayer.”
“That was very hard,” said Judith.
“Very hard. It was like giving him a glimpse of Heaven—it was Heaven, and then shutting the door in his face as he prayed.”
“Yes,” said Judith, who understood.
“But he did speak to him; he told him what to do: ‘Return to thine own house.’ If he had father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children, go back to them and tell them how good God had been to him. When I look at you, Deary, stepping about the house, so pretty and bright, I think of how glad your mother must be if she sees you. How glad to know the little girl she left was taken care of. And in church when you play the organ, and in Sunday School, and at the Lord’s own table, and doing errands all around the village, you are a blessing in your ‘own house.’”
Judith’s head went down on Aunt Affy’s knee.
“This man went through the ‘whole city’ beside; his own house grew into the whole city. Your life isn’t ended yet; to old folks like Uncle Cephas and me, it seems just begun. Your own house is only just the beginning of the whole city. I’ve only had my own house and Bensalem, but I seem to think there’s a whole city for you. The Lord knew about the whole city when he denied his prayer and sent him to his own house.”
Judith did not lift her head; her tears were tears of shame and penitence.
“Now, here come the men folks,” roused Aunt Affy, cheerily; “and supper they must have to keep them good-natured.”
“I am only in my ‘own house’ yet,” said Judith, as she moved about setting the supper table as she had done when she was a little girl.