The Chautauqua Girls At Home Part 5

Moved by a sudden impulse, and not giving herself time to shrink from the determination, she bent forward a little and addressed Gracie:

"Read that, Gracie. I have not obeyed its direction to-day; have you? Do you think you have helped me to bear _my_ burdens?"

Would Gracie answer her at all? Would her answer be cold and haughty; as nearly rude as she had dared to make it? Marion felt her heart throb while she waited. And she _had_ to wait, for Gracie was utterly silent.

At last her teacher stole a glance at her. The great beautiful eyes were lifted to her face. The flash was pa.s.sing out of them. In its place there was a puzzled, wondering, questioning look. And, when at last she spoke, her voice was timid, as if she were half frightened at her own words, and yet eager as one who must know:

"Miss Wilbur, you don't mean--oh, _do_ you mean that _you_ want to fulfill the law of Christ; that you own him?"

"That I own him and love him," Marion said, her cheeks glowing now as Gracie's did, "and that I want above all things, to fulfill his law, and yet that I have miserably failed, even this first day."

Among Marion's sad thoughts that day had been:

"There is no one to know, or to care, whether I am different or not. If I could only _tell_ some one--some Christian who would be glad--but who is there to tell? Prof. Easton is a Christian, but he doesn't care enough about the Lord Jesus to rebuke those who profane his name; he has let me do it in his presence, and smiled at my wit. And these girls"

(and here Marion's lip had curled), "they don't know what they mean by their professions."

She was unprepared for what followed. Gracie Dennis, graceful, queenly in her dignity, and haughty, even in her mirth, said, suddenly, in a voice which quivered with gladness:

"Oh, I am so glad; _so_ glad! Oh, Miss Wilbur, I don't know how to be thankful enough!" And then she raised her head suddenly, and her glowing lips just touched Marion's cheek.

It was so unusual for Marion to be kissed. Her friends at Chautauqua had been those who rarely indulged in that sort of caress--never, at least, with her. And, while, as I told you, many of them liked, and all of them respected her, it was yet an unheard of thing for the scholars to caress Miss Wilbur. And then, too, Gracie Dennis was by no means lavish of her kisses. This made the token seem so much more. It felt almost like a benediction.

Gracie's next words were humbling to her:

"Miss Wilbur, will you forgive me? I didn't mean to annoy you. I don't know what has been the matter with me."

But, long before this, the last laggard had finished her line, and was staring in undisguised astonishment at the scene enacted on the platform.

Marion rallied her excited thoughts. "Dear child," she said, "we have each something to forgive. I think I have been too severe with you. We will try to help each other to-morrow."

Then she gave the next sentence as calmly as usual. But she went home that night, through the rain, with a quick step and with joy in her heart. It was not _all_ profession. It meant something to those girls; to Grace Dennis it meant everything. It was enough to make her forget her pa.s.sion, and her wounded pride, and to make her face actually radiant with joy.

It should mean more to _her_. She had failed that day. She had not been, in any sense, what she meant to be; what she ought to have been. But there was a blessed verse: "Who forgiveth _all_ thine iniquities."

What a salvation! Able to forgive transgression, to cover sin, to remember it no more. It all seemed very natural to her to-night; very like an infinite Saviour; one infinitely loving.

She began to realize that even poor _human_ love could cover a mult.i.tude of sins. How easy it seemed to her that it would be to overlook the mistakes and shortcomings of Gracie Dennis, after this!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER IV.

COL. BAKER'S SABBATH EVENING.

AMONG Marion Wilbur's gloomy thoughts during that trying Monday were these: "Some lives are a good deal harder to bear than others. It would be nonsense for some people to talk about crosses. There are Ruth and Flossy; what do they know about annoyances or self-denials? Such homes as theirs and such occupations as theirs have very little in common with hard, uncongenial work such as mine. Eurie Mitch.e.l.l has less easy times; but then it is home, and father, and mother, and family friends. She isn't all alone. None of them can sympathize with me. I don't see how Flossy s.h.i.+pley is ever to grow, if 'crosses are a fruitful condition of the Christian life.' I'm sure she can do as she pleases, and when she pleases."

Thus much Marion knew about other lives than hers. The actual truth was that Flossy's shadows began on Sabbath evening, while Marion was yet on the heights.

It was just as they stepped from the aisle of the church into the wide hall that Col. Baker joined her. This was not a new experience. He was very apt to join her. No other gentleman had been a more frequent or more enjoyable guest at her father's house. Indeed, he was so familiar that he was as likely to come on the Sabbath as on any other day, and was often in the habit of calling to accompany Flossy to any evening service where there was to be a little grander style of music than usual, or a special floral display.

In fact he had called this very evening on such an errand, but it was after Flossy had gone to her own church. So her first meeting with him since Chautauqua experiences was in that hall belonging to the First Church.

"Good-evening," he said, joining her without the formality of a question as to whether it would be agreeable; his friends.h.i.+p was on too a.s.sured a footing for the need of that formality. "You are more than usually devoted to the First Church, are you not? I saw you in the family pew this morning. I felt certain of being in time to take you to the South Side to-night. St. Stephen's Church has a grand choral service this evening. I was in at one of the rehearsals, and it promised to be an unusually fine thing. I am disappointed that you did not hear it."

Here began Flossy's unhappiness. Neither Marion nor Ruth could have appreciated it. To either of those it would have been an actual satisfaction to have said to Col. Baker, in a calm and superior tone of voice:

"Thanks for your kindness, but I have decided to attend my own church service regularly after this, and would therefore not have been able to accompany you if I had been at home."

But for Flossy such an explanation was simply dreadful. It was so natural, and would have been _so_ easy, to have murmured a word of regret at her absence, and expressed disappointment in having missed the choral.

But for that address to the children, given under the trees at Chautauqua, by Dr. Hurlbut, she would have said these smooth, sweet-sounding words as sweetly as usual, without a thought of conscience. But had not he shown her, as plainly as though he had looked down into her heart and seen it there, that these pleasant, courteous phrases which are so winning and so false were among her besetting sins?

Had he not put her forever on her guard concerning them? Had she not promised to wage solemn war against the tendency to so sin with her graceful tongue? Yet how she dreaded the plain speaking!

How would Marion's lips have curled over the idea of such a small matter as that being a cross! And yet Flossy could have been sweet and patient and tender to the listless, homesick school-girls, and kissed away half their gloom, and thought it no cross at all. Verily there is a difference in these crosses, and verily, "every heart knoweth its own bitterness."

Col. Baker was loth to leave the subject:

"Aren't you being unusually devout to-day?" he asked. "I heard of you at Sabbath-school I was certain after that effort, I should find you at home, resting. What spell came over you to give the First Church so much of your time?"

"One would think, to hear you, that I never went to church on Sabbath evening," Flossy said. And then to a certain degree conscience triumphed. "I have not been very often, it is true; but I intend to reform in that respect in the future. I mean to go whenever I can, and I mean to go always to the First Church."

Col. Baker looked at her curiously in the moonlight.

"Is that an outgrowth of your experience in the woods?" he asked.

"Yes," Flossy said simply and bravely.

He longed to question further, to quiz her a little, but something in the tone of the monosyllable prevented. So he said:

"I am at least surprised at part of the decision. I thought part of the work of those gatherings was to teach fellows.h.i.+p and unity. Why should you desert other churches?"

"There is no desertion about it. I do not belong to other churches, and n.o.body has reason to expect me at any of them; but my pastor has a right to expect me to be in my pew."

"Oh; then it is the accident of the first choice that must determine one's sitting in church for all future time?"

"With me it has been only an accident," she said, simply. "I suppose there are people who had better reasons for selecting their church home.

But I am very well satisfied with my place." And then Flossy was very glad that they were nearing her father's house. The gladness did not last, however. There hung over it another cross. This Col. Baker had been in the habit of being invited to enter, and of spending an hour or more in cosy chat with the family. Nothing confidential or special in these Sabbath evening calls; they seemed simply to serve to pa.s.s away a dull hour. They had been pleasant to Flossy. But it so happened that the hours of the Sabbath had grown precious to her; none of them were dull; every moment of them was needed.

Besides, in their walk up the hill from the auditorium one evening, Evan Roberts had said in answer to a wonderment from her that so little was accomplished by the Sabbath services throughout the land:

"I think one reason is the habit that so many people have of frittering a way any serious impression or solemn thought they may have had by a stream of small talk in which they indulge with their own family or their intimate friends, after what they call the Sabbath is past. Do you know there are hundreds of people, good, well-meaning--in fact, Christians--who seem to think that the old Puritan rules in regard to hours hold yet, in part. It begins at eight or nine o'clock, when they have their nap out; and at the very latest it closes with the minister's benediction after the second service; and they laugh and talk on the way home and at home as if the restraints of the day were over at last."

How precisely he had described the Sabbath day of the s.h.i.+pley family.