"Will you tell me everything?"
"Yes, my dear, if the Lord so wills. Let us approach the throne of grace and discover His good pleasure."
Down on my knees by her side I watched her as she asked the Almighty whether He willed that the story of my father and mother should be told me. Grandmother was always fair. She did not try to influence the Lord's decision, as Aunt Jael might have done, by giving undue weight in her supplications to the arguments either for or against.
"Dost Thou will that at this tender age she should learn of these sorrows, that they may be sanctified to her for Thy name's sake; or dost Thou ordain that I should wait yet awhile before I speak?"
We waited the Answer. I knew it would be "Yes," I knew it with the sudden instinct that so often served me. Prayer and intuition were indeed sharply commingled in my mind. One was your speaking to God, the other God speaking to you. God is swifter; instinct is swifter than prayer; answer than question.
"Tell the child now? So be it, Lord; since such is the answer that Thou hast vouchsafed."
Then she prayed that the story might be richly blessed to me, and that he whom it chiefly concerned might be given, despite all, contrite heart and true forgiveness.
When she left me to myself and darkness, I was repeating to myself the stinging words I had heard. Cruelty, adultery, vileness, sin—the fleshly scoundrel—he had hounded my mother to her grave, broken her heart—killed her. He my father. I had a father then. It is proof of the gaps in my many-sided visualizings day after day and night after night that I had never thought of this, never even wondered whether I had a father or not.
I did not know how to wait till the morrow. Perhaps they were talking about it downstairs; I jumped out of bed, crept halfway down the stairs, and listened. The front-room door was shut, and though I soon heard that a duologue between Aunt Jael and Uncle Simeon was in progress, I could make out only a few words here and there. My imagination constructed a conversation connected with myself, and somehow too at the same time with Torribridge and Aunt Martha and studies. I did not think much of it at the time, as my ears were hungry for "father" and "mother" only—"Rachel" and "Rachel's husband."
I went back to bed. Early next day Uncle Simeon and Aunt Martha returned to Torribridge.