Three People Part 10

And then the husband and wife laughed, a half-amused, half-sorrowful laugh.

After a moment Mr. Birge added:

"There _was_ a rather rough-looking boy there; strayed in from the storm, I presume. I meant to speak with him, but Mrs. Hastings annoyed me so much that it escaped my mind until he brushed past me and vanished."

CHAPTER IX.

"TAKE IT AWAY!"

Tode rang the bell at Mr. Hastings', and waited in some anxiety as to whether he should get a glimpse of Miss Dora. He had some momentous questions to ask her. Fortune, or, in other words, Providence, favored him. While he waited for orders, Dora danced down the hall with a message.

"Tode, papa says you are to come in the dining-room and wait; he wants to send a note by you."

"All right," said Tode, following her into the brightly lighted room, and plunging at once into his subject.

"Look here, what did you mean the other night about hearts, and things?"

"About what?"

"Why, don't you know? Down there to the meeting."

"Oh! Why I meant _that_; just what I said. That's the way they always talk at a prayer-meeting about Jesus, and loving him, and all that."

"Was that a prayer-meeting where we was t'other night?"

"Why yes, of course. Tode, have you got the letters and figures all made?"

"Do you go every time?"

"What, to prayer-meeting? What a funny idea. No, of course not. It stormed, you know, and we had to go in somewhere. Wasn't it an awful night?"

"Who is Jesus, anyhow?"

"Why, he is G.o.d. Tode, how queer you act. Why don't you ask Mr. Birge, or somebody, if you want to know such things. Mamma says he is awful."

"Awful!"

"Yes, awful good, you know. He's the minister down there at that chapel.

Wasn't it a funny looking church? Ours don't look a bit like that. Tode, where do you go to church?"

"My!" said Tode, with his old merry chuckle. "That's a queer one. _I_ don't go to church nowhere; never did."

"You ought to," answered Miss Dora, with a sudden a.s.sumption of dignity.

"It isn't nice not to go to church and to Sunday-school. _I_ go. Pliny doesn't, because he has the headache so much. Shall I show you my card?"

And she produced from her pocket a dainty bit of pasteboard, and held it up.

"There, that's our verse. The whole school learn it for next Sunday.

Then we shall have a speech about it."

A sudden s.h.i.+ver ran through Tode's frame as he read the words printed on that card:

"The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good."

He knew very little about that All-seeing Eye, but it came upon him like a great shock, the picture of the eye of G.o.d reaching everywhere, beholding the _evil_. He felt afraid, and alone, and desolate. He did not know what was the matter with him, he had felt so strangely troubled and unhappy since that evening of the meeting. Almost the tears came into his eyes as he stood there beside Dora, looking down at that terrible verse.

"Take it away," he said, suddenly, turning from the bit of pasteboard.

"I don't want his eyes looking at me."

"You can't help it," Dora answered, with great emphasis. "There are more just such verses, 'Thou G.o.d seest me;' and oh, plenty of them. And he certainly _does_ see you all the time, whether you want him to or not."

"Well stop!" said Tode, with a sudden gruffness that Dora had never seen in him before. "I don't want to hear another bit about it, nor your verse, nor anything--not a word. I wish you had let me alone. I don't believe it, anyhow, nor I won't, nor I ain't a going to--so."

At that moment Mr. Hastings' note came, and miserable Tode went on his way. _How_ miserable he was; the glimmering lamps along the gloomy streets seemed to him eyes of fire burning into his thoughts; the very walls of his darkened room, when he had reached that retreat, seemed to glow on every side with great terrible, all-seeing eyes. Over and over again was that fearful sentence repeated: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil." Just then he stopped. He had suddenly grown so vile in his own eyes that it seemed to him that there was nothing good left to behold; he tumbled and tossed on his narrow bed; he covered himself, eyes, head, all, in the bed-clothes; but it was of no use, that piercing Eye saw into the darkness and through all the covering--and oh, Tode was afraid!

He was a brave, fearless boy; no darkness had ever before held any terrors for him. I am not sure that he would not have whistled contemptuously over a whole legion of supposed ghosts. He was entirely familiar with, and quite indifferent to, that most frightful of all human sights, a reeling, swearing drunkard; but this was quite another matter, this great solemn eye of G.o.d, which he felt to-night for the first time, looking steadily down upon him, never forgetting him for a moment, never by any chance turning away and giving him time to go to sleep. Tode didn't know why he felt this terrible new feeling; he didn't know that the loving, pitying Savior had his tender eyes bent on him, and was calling him, that G.o.d had used that powerful thrust from the Spirit to wound his sinful heart; he knew nothing about it, save that he was afraid, and desolate and very miserable. Suddenly he sprung up, a little of his ordinary determination coming back to him.

"What's the use," he muttered, "of a fellow lying s.h.i.+vering here; if I can't sleep, I might as well give it up first as last I'll go down to the parlor, and whistle 'Yankee Doodle,' or something else until train time."

But his hand trembled so in his attempt to strike a light, that he failed again and again. Finally he was dressed, and went out into the hall. Mr. Roberts opened his own door at that moment, and seeing the boy gave him what he thought would be a happy message:

"Tode, you can sleep over to-night. Jim is on hand, and you may be ready for the five o'clock train."

No excuse now for going down stairs, and the wretched boy crept back to his room; _utterly_ wretched he felt, and he had no human friend to help him, no human heart to comfort him. He wrapped a quilt about him and sat down on the edge of his bed to calculate how long his bit of candle would probably burn, and what he _should_ do when he was left once more in that awful darkness. On his table lay a half-burnt lamp lighter. He mechanically untwisted it, and twisted it up again, busy still with that fearful sentence: "The eyes of the Lord are in _every_ place." The lighter was made of a bit of printed paper, and Tode could read. The letters caught his eye, and he bent forward to decipher them; and of all precious words that can be found in our language, came these home to that troubled youth: "Look unto me and be ye saved, all--" Just there the paper was burned. No matter, be ye _saved_, that was what he wanted.

He felt in his inmost soul that he needed to be saved, from himself, and from some dreadful evil that seemed near at hand. Now how to do it? The smoke-edged bit of paper said, "Look unto me." Who was that blessed _Me_, and where was he, and how could Tode look to him?

Quick as lightning the boy's memory went back to that evening in the chapel, and the wonderful story of one Jesus, and the gray-haired man in the corner, who stood up and shut his eyes, and spoke to Jesus just as if he had been in the room. Perhaps, oh, _perhaps_, the All-seeing Eye belonged to him? No, that could not be, for that card said, "The eyes of the Lord," and Tode knew that meant G.o.d, but you see he knew nothing about that blessed Trinity, the three in One. Then he remembered his question to Dora: "Who is Jesus, anyhow?" and her answer: "Why, he is G.o.d." What if it should in some strange way all mean G.o.d? Couldn't he try? Suppose he should stand up in the corner like that old man, and shut his eyes and speak to Jesus? What harm could it do? A great resolution came over him to try it at once. He went over to the corner at the foot of his bed with the first touch of reverence in his face that perhaps it had ever felt. He closed his eyes and said aloud: "O Jesus, save me." Over and over again were the words repeated, solemnly and slowly, and in wonderful earnestness: "O Jesus, save me." Gradually something of the terror died out of his tones, and there came instead a yearning, longing sound to his voice, while again and yet again came the simple words: "O Jesus, save me."

After a little Tode came quietly out of his corner, deliberately blew out his light and went to bed, not at all unmindful of the All-seeing Eye; but someway it had ceased to burn. He felt very grave and solemn, but not exactly afraid, and a new strange feeling of some loving presence in his room possessed his heart, and the thought of that name Jesus brought tears into his eyes, he didn't know why. He didn't know that there was such a thing as being a Christian; he didn't know that he had anything to do with Christ; he didn't know that he was in the least different from the Tode who lay there but an hour before only. Yes, that solemn Eye did not make him afraid now; and with an earnest repeatal of his one prayer, which he did not know _was_ prayer, "O Jesus, save me,"

Tode went to sleep.

But I think that the recording angel up in heaven opened his book that night and wrote a new name on its pages, and that the ever-listening Savior said, "_I_ have called him by his name; he is mine."

In the gray glimmering dawn of the early morning Tode stood out on the steps, and waited for the rush of travelers from the train. They came rus.h.i.+ng in, cold and cross, many of them unreasonable, too, as cold and hungry travelers so often are; but on each and all the boy waited, flying hither and thither, doing his utmost to help make them comfortable; being apparently not one whit different from the bustling important boy who flew about there every morning intent upon the same duties, and yet he had that very morning fallen heir to a glorious inheritance. True, he did not know it yet, but no matter for that, his t.i.tle was sure.

The days went round, and Sunday morning came. Now Sunday was a very busy day at the hotel. Aside from the dreadful Sunday trains that came tearing into town desecrating the day, the whole country seemed to disgorge itself, and pleasure-seekers came in cliques of twos and fours for a ride and a warm dinner on this gala day. Tode had wont to be busy and blithe on these days, but on this eventful Sabbath morning it was different. Gradually he was becoming aware that some strange new feelings possessed his heart. He had continued the repeatal of the one prayer, "O Jesus, save me;" going always to the corner at the foot of his bed, and closing his eyes to repeat it. And now he was conscious of the fact that he had little thrills of delight all over him when he said these words, and a new, strange, sweet sense of protection and friends.h.i.+p stole over him from some unknown source. Now a longing possessed him to know something more about Jesus. He had heard of him at only one place, that chapel. Naturally his thoughts turned toward it. He knew it would be open on that day, and "Who knows," said ignorant Tode to himself, "but they might happen to say something about him to-day."

In short, Tode, knowing nothing about "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," never having so much as heard that there _was_ a fourth commandment, wanted to go to church. And wanting this very much, knew at the same time that it was an extremely doubtful case, utterly unlikely that he should be allowed to go.

He brushed his hair before his bit of gla.s.s, and b.u.t.toned on his clean collar, all the time in deep thought. A sudden resolution came to him, that old man had said Jesus would give us everything we wanted or needed or something like that.

"I'll try it," said Tode, aloud and positively. "'Tain't no harm if it don't do no good, and 'tain't n.o.body's business, anyhow."

And with these strangely original thoughts on the subject of prayer, he went into his corner, but once there the reverent look with which he nowadays p.r.o.nounced that sacred name spread over his face as he said, "O Jesus, I want to go to that church, and I s'pose I can't." This was everything Tode was conscious of wanting just at present, so this was all he said, only repeating it again and again.