The Other Girls Part 27

Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the comfort,--s.n.a.t.c.hed it with a starving madness out of his.

"Do you think it means _that?_" she said.

"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we must repent according to our sin; but we _may_ repent, and they and He will pity. It is the soul-killers--the corrupters--Christ so terribly condemns."

"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "G.o.d let his Christ die--suffer--for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts worthy, die--suffer--for _their_ world. The Lamb is forever slain; the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in his blood--have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.'

He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer, that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in G.o.d, believe also in me.

Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'"

"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them; do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here!

Can I _ever_ have my chances given back again?"

"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.'

That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it.

The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You can be in heaven."

He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do.

She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl; st.i.tches dropped and twisted.

Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got round so as to strike across her where she sat.

The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's touch. One of the girls would be up soon.

Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds; lowered one, raised another; kept the suns.h.i.+ne in the room, but s.h.i.+elded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between them and that heavenly enfolding.

She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and picked up, and with nimble st.i.tches restored the lost rows.

Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled.

Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a printed page since that night in Loweburg.

The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her hand, she thought--she remembered--nothing. Her spirit went from out of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her voice, as one really _reading_; interpreting as she went. All her elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had only been the trick of _saying out_, which is no giving at all.

"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very pretty reading."

Dot came in, and she went away.

She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one; she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,--"For your sake."

And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,--"He that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's reward."

These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old self-accusations.

After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she went,--"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors.

"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there.

And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea, or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own character and fas.h.i.+on. It is so blessed that the word is given and repeated in so many characters and fas.h.i.+ons! That each one receives it and pa.s.ses it on, "in that language into which he was born."

"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray Ingraham had said to her just after she had brought her home. "The kind of comfort she finds for the most wicked and miserable,--people who have done such shocking things as you never dreamed of."

"I want to hear somebody talk to the very wickedest. If there's any chance for me, there's where I must find it. I can't listen with the pretty-good people, any longer. It doesn't belong to me, or do me any good."

"Come and hear the gospel then." And so Ray had taken her down to Neighbor Street, to Luclarion Grapp.

"But the sin stays. You can't wipe the fact out; and you've got to take the consequences," said Marion Kent to the strong, simple woman to whom she came as to a second-seer, to have her spiritual destinies revealed to her.

"Yes," said Luclarion, gravely, but very sweetly, "you have. But the consequences wear out. Everything wears out but the Lord's love. And these old worn-out consequences--why, He can turn them into blessings; and He means to, as they go along, and fade, and change; until, by and by, we may be safer and stronger, and fuller of everlasting life, than if we hadn't had them. I was vaccinated a while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty sick time. It took--ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful evil--in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know--and if you hadn't repented, I wouldn't put it into your head; but it's been put into my head, after I've repented, and I guess it's mainly true. See here!"

And she took down a big leather-bound Bible, and opened it to the fortieth chapter of Isaiah.

"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

"The Old Testament is full of the New; men's wickedness,--it took wicked men to show the way of the Lord in the earth,--and G.o.d's forgiveness, and his leading it all round right, in spite of them all! Only He didn't turn the right side out all at once; it wasn't safe to let them see both sides then. But He _trusts_ us now; He gave his whole heart in Jesus Christ; He tells us, without any keeping back, what He means our very sins shall do for us, and He leaves it to us, after that, to take hold and help Him!"

"If it weren't for them! If I hadn't let them suffer and die!"

"Do you think He takes all this care of you,--lets them die for you even,--and don't take as much for them? Do you think they ain't glad and happy now? Do you think you could have hurt them, if you had tried,--and you didn't try, you only let them alone a little, forgetting? It says, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation.' If we have somebody to take part with us against our sins, how much more against our mistakes,--our forgettings! and _they_ are the propitiation, too; their angels--the Christ of them--do always behold the face of the Father. Their interceding is a part of the Lord's interceding."

"If I could once more be let to do something for them--their very selves!"

"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their errands again."

Marion stood up on her feet.

"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it, because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't mean it; would He?"

She believed in the G.o.d of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of Israel believed in the G.o.d of Abraham.

"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the comfort, just as much as He does the blaming."

Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or even asked anything as to what she should do next.

But now it came of itself.

"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think, Miss Grapp? To be anything--an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here, if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any little girls that might be sick."

Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so easily?

Ah, you call it easily! _She_ knew, how, pa.s.sing through the furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old, unworthy desire vanishes:--the living, awful breath of remorse.

"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs.

Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great, new building, and there'll be people wanted."

"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how.

I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!"