In the Way (21 page)

             
Louise sat in wonder. The question, the very question that she had sat in her room two days before and pondered whether she could ask of him. For she had actually considered whether she might not try a little real missionary work by finding out if religion was what he was supposed to need to make him a success in the world. It may seem strange that one who did not belong to Christ would care to try to bring another, but it is nevertheless true that some do. They see that religion is a good thing—or would be for another—and while they get along in the world very well themselves without it, they have kind-heartedness enough to make a little effort to help some one else get it. Louise decided that it would be a very novel and a very interesting thing to do, besides being a thing which would surprise and please her mother and brother and Ruth, and perhaps make them treat her with a little more respect.               And now she found her heathen actually asking the very question of his would be missionary which she had half planned to ask of him if the opportunity ever offered.

             
Altogether it was a strange ride and a strange talk those two had out under the starlight that Thanksgiving evening, but there will never come an anniversary of that day when they will cease to be thankful for the ride and the talk and the decisions that resulted there from.

             
Louise found herself set down at her brother's door at ten o'clock a crushed and meek little being whose main desire was to get to her room and cry, and whose heart was burdened with the thought of the searching questions which had been asked her by one who did not know Christ himself yet, but was seeking to find him. When Alonzo Brummel returned from attending to his horse and after making himself presentable in the gentlemen's dressing room went to the appointed spot to meet his young lady, and found her not, he concluded that she had grown tired of waiting and had probably gone into the main hall with some of the girls, as it was a very informal affair. He made his way slowly through the hall speaking in his patronizing way to this pretty girl and that whom he had known in his younger and less pompous days. He was puzzled as to what could have become of Louise. Just then Eliza Barnes, the girl of the hair curler in the dressing room, who had opened the door for David, accosted him.

             
“Hello! there's Lonnie Brummel, girls. Wait a minute; I want to speak to him. Say, Lon, Miss Clifton's gone. I thought you might be lookin' fer her. I guess 'twas her brother come after her in a mighty big hurry, and she looked scared enough. Dave Benedict brought the word in for her to come right out. I s'pose the minister didn't want to come into the hall. He hustled her into a sleigh and drove off quick and slick. I peeped through the curtains and seen 'em myself.”

             
Alonzo Brummel uttered a word under his breath that he would scarcely have liked to speak before the minister's sister; but finding that he was hopelessly left to his own resources he set about finding the prettiest and silliest girls in the room and having as good a time as possible, going home somewhat later than he had planned to take Miss Clifton away, it must be confessed, and letting himself quietly into his father's house by a way known to his younger days when his mother kept a more strict watch over his bedroom door than could have been desired. He received, however, the next morning, a stiff, violet-scented note informing him that Miss Clifton begged his pardon for having left him so abruptly the evening before, and desired to explain that she had been called for in great haste and had not had time to leave any word for him. It was so altogether cutting and summary in its tone that Alonzo Brummel decided to spend the remainder of his vacation with a friend in New York, and he departed that day for a more genial atmosphere. He did not just care to be at home when his mother should discover where he had been spending his time the evening before.

             
When David reached home at last he found that the guests were preparing to take their departure. Indeed, Joseph had been much worried to know how he was to get Ellen Amelia home without the horses and the cutter.

             
When the last one had gone and David had helped to put Miss Haskins into the cutter and watched them drive away, he turned back and stood by his sister Ruth, his face deeply serious. “Ruth,” said he, and she knew by his tone that he had something to tell her which meant more to him than anything he had ever said to her before. “Ruth, you pray, I know. I want you to pray for a—for some one who needs help very much, some one who doesn't know how to pray.” Ruth looked up quickly, her face lighting with glad surprise.

             
“O David,” said she, “do you love Jesus? And is it yourself you mean? I will gladly, but why don't you pray too?”

             
“No, I don't think I know Jesus yet,” he answered simply, as a little child might; “but I want to. I mean to,” he added with emphasis, “and I'd like you to pray for me too, if you will. But this other one is a woman, and she hasn't anything to stay her life on. I shall try to pray for her myself, but I wanted you to help. You know how better than I. She needs it very much. And Ruth, you thought it was queer, I suppose, that I stayed away so long tonight; but I want you to know I had to. No, I didn't go to that ball,” he said as he caught a shade of anxiety across her face. “I was afraid you'd think I did, but I'm not that kind. I had to keep some one else away. If God ever sent any one anywhere he certainly sent inc downtown this evening.”

             
He took his sister's hand and stooped and kissed her on the forehead, and then went upstairs to his room.

             
And as Ruth went to her room to pray as she had promised, she carried a worry in her heart. What village girl had gotten a hold upon David? Was there some one then who would be a drag upon him? Had his heart already been entangled? She had grown to love her brother David very deeply. She sighed and wondered and wished, and then she prayed, and as she prayed the weight passed away from heart and she rejoiced; for was not David seeking for Jesus? And a voice had whispered behind her:

             
Fearest sometimes that thy Father

             
              Hath forgot?

             
When the clouds around thee gather,

             
              Doubt him not!

             
Always hath the daylight broken—

             
              Always hath he comfort spoken—

             
Better hath he been for years,

             
              Than thy fears.

ELLEN Amelia had been very quiet during the entire evening spent at the Benedict Thanksgiving party. She did not seem to recover from the successive humiliations which had brought her here in quiet and accustomed clothing. Her usually gay and voluble tongue was so still that the other girls asked her if she was sick, and Ruth looked at her in a troubled way many times fearing that Ellen was disappointed because she had not gone to the ball instead of coming to her.

              Joseph too watched her in a kind of maze. He had not been at church the Sunday preceding and therefore the effect of the new dark blue dress was particularly bewildering. He was hardly sure he knew Ellen Amelia. She certainly did not look like the same girl, he had known all his life and gone to school with, and, it must be confessed, at whose follies he had laughed many times.

             
What had she done? He was not well enough versed in the art of dress to lay it all to that. The pink tarletan had dazzled him, but the whole question of apparel appeared in a new light when he had noted the marked change in Ellen Amelia wrought, as he had presently to acknowledge to himself, by the donning of a new gown and, most mysterious of all, one not at all extraordinary either in fashion or in material. He could not understand why one dress rather than another should make a person's appearance so different. He did not know that there was all the difference in the world between a dress that fitted the form and one that did not. Neither did he reckon on graceful folds and lines that curved just right, nor—and perhaps this made the most difference of all—upon the soft waves of hair about her face and the low coil behind, which just fitted her face, in place of the hard unbecoming knot and tight frizzes which she had hitherto supposed to be the height of fashion. Ruth had somehow managed to get in a lesson in hair-dressing with all the rest, and the result was a much more pleasing Ellen Amelia. Joseph looked at her as she sat in the big chair in the corner and thought she was not unpleasing. Indeed, on second thought he was not sure that she was not pretty. If she was not so awfully silly he did not know but she would be interesting, but as it was he did not understand how Ruth could waste her time on her. He wondered for the hundredth time why Ruth did it, and then the thought came and softened his expression, “She does it for Christ's sake,” and he thought perhaps he would like to help her, or some one, for that reason.

             
The minister had interrupted his thoughts just then, sitting down beside him and gradually drawing him out with stories of his own life. He asked Joseph about his school days and drew from him the wish that he could have kept on with his studies. “Father always meant I should,” he said suddenly with an impulse of confidence in the man who seemed to be so interested in him. “And my brother was anxious for it too. He had two years at the academy in the city, you know. But we both agreed that I ought not to do it till the farm was clear of the mortgage, and now that it's out of the way I've grown too old.” He heaved a little sigh of regret, like the winding sheet to his desire, and seemed to lay the subject away. Not so the minister:

             
“Not a bit of it. One is never too old to learn. Why, man, you have so much to learn, and if you don't do it here you'll have to waste a great many years of eternity learning it. Learn what you can now.” There followed a quick succession of questions on the part of the minister and answers by Joseph.

             
“Well,” said the minister straightening up at last, an eager light in his eyes, “there is no reason why you shouldn't catch up soon if you want to, and go on to college. I had no idea the schools in Summerton carried one so far. Now, if you would really like to go on with your studies I should be delighted to help you. You know I'm not long from college and I love to teach. You'll have plenty of time these long winter evenings, and if you make good use of them who knows but you might be ready to enter college by next fall? I'm not saying you could, you know, for I haven't examined you yet; but you might. Stranger things have happened. Will you do it?”

             
“Do you mean,” said Joseph his eyes burning with excitement and his hands clenched in his earnestness, “do you really mean you think I could make something of myself in the world?”

             
“I certainly do,” answered the minister.

             
Joseph was so occupied with the wonderful new thoughts that the minister had awakened in him and the stirring of old ambitions, that he scarcely noticed Ellen Amelia till they were half-way home. Then she aroused from her silence and made a remark.

             
“I wish I could get away from Summerton, and learn something and be somebody!”

             
It was said half fiercely, and not in the least as if she expected an answer, but more as if she were thinking aloud. But there was a note in her words which appealed to Joseph. He had had these very same feelings before Ruth had come to them to make home something worth while, and even now his sister's sweetness and brightness made him long to do something to make himself more on a plane with her intellectually. Now this evening a way had been opened, a hope that after all he might possibly be something more than he was, and in his exultation he felt a sympathy for this girl beside him who had the same desires and no hope of their fulfillment, for of course Ellen Amelia had no possibility before her but to live and die in Summerton. He tried to arouse himself from his own pleasant thoughts and say something to comfort her, even as the minister had brought hope to him, but what could he say? He could not promise to help her, for she had been through the same schools in which he had been graduated. She was as far advanced as he. “Couldn't you get some book to read?” he offered lamely as an alternative in place of going away.

             
“Where would I get books, and how would! know what to read? I've read all my life, and it only seems to make me more unhappy. Ma don't like me to read, anyway. Sometimes I think I'll just give up and never touch a book again, if that's what she wants, and go into the kitchen and never do another thing but bake and scrub and wash dishes the rest of my life. I don't see how I'm a-going to keep that promise I made to you, anyway. There isn't any chance at home. I s'pose, to be good, one ought to be willing to do all sorts of ugly things and not care, and not ever want anything else; but I can't help wanting other things. I'd like to do something big and grand. I s'pose I ain't fit; but I'd be willing to go through most anything to make me fit, if there was a chance for anything better than just what all the Summerton girls live for.”

             
“I s'pose,” said Joseph, speaking slowly, as if he were treading on unfamiliar ground and must choose his words carefully, “that if you do the best you can, God will see to the rest. The Bible talks like that, and most all sermons say so, and it seems as if the Christians professed to believe that, though to be sure there don't many of them act as though they remembered it. But look here, Miss Ellen, let us be different from that sort of Christians. If the thing's worth doing at all, let us do it as well as it can be done by us. It seems to mc, it isn't fair to God not to do our best. Then, if he's anything, he's to be trusted to bring it out straight, somehow. I s'pose if he wants you to do some grand work in the world, he could fix it out so you could manage to do it; but if I was you, I'd do first the little things at home he's given you. I tried to find a place last night I used to hear father read at prayers sometimes when I was a little chap, about being faithful in little things and then you'd get to be a ruler over a good deal more, perhaps, sometime. Anyhow, if I was you I'd try it.”

             
“I will,” said Ellen Amelia, with her usual prompt decision. “I'll begin tomorrow morning and darn every stocking in mother's basket before I touch my paper that conies in the morning mail.”

             
They were at her father's door by this time, and as Joseph helped her out and turned his horses homeward once more, he felt a sense of exultation that the little work he had tried to do for Ellen Amelia had not been wholly without effect. There was a new kind of joy in doing this sort of thing, which is given to souls who labor to help others, and which made him long to do more for his new Master. He mused over what the girl had said as he put the horses up and wondered what kind of a paper she took, and thought he would ask her sometime. She might be more advanced than he knew. He had never dreamed that she took a paper all herself. But he decided that in all probability it was a fashion paper.

             
With much excitement and eagerness he went on the appointed evening to meet the minister and take his first lesson in Latin. He had not told Ruth nor David yet. He wished to see whether he could really do anything at it first. He was charmed with the lesson. And indeed he might well have been had he possessed a mind even less eager for knowledge than his really was, for Robert Clifton was a teacher of no mean ability. He had considered seriously at one time whether he would not let his passion for teaching have the mastery over his life, but the Lord had called in the direction of the ministry, and he had obeyed. Ruth would have been astonished to know that a little word of hers, spoken unwittingly at a time when he was unsettled about the matter in that summer of their meeting long ago, had sent the final conviction to his heart that his Master wished him to work as a minister.               The hour of the lesson was long drawn out, and neither teacher nor pupil was willing to stop when the clock struck a warning hour. Mrs. Clifton wondered what in the world Robert could be doing with that young man in the study so long, and wished that—if it was true, as he said, that the fellow was worth anything at all—he would have thoughtfulness enough to bring him downstairs to talk a little while to his sister. Louise was very restless and unhappy. She tried to read and to play and to embroider, and finally, after sitting for a few moments in every chair in the room, had retired. Mrs. Clifton sighed and wondered how long she was going to be able to keep Louise in this little town, and half wished Robert would get married, that she might take Louise where she would not feel hampered by her brother's profession.

             
But the young man was allowed to depart finally without having even been brought into the parlor, and Mrs. Clifton retired, with her curiosity unsatisfied.

             
As Joseph walked homeward that night, his busy thoughts went far ahead of the present, and he pictured to himself many things he would do in the world with the knowledge he should acquire. Summerton was asleep, for the hour was late. As he passed Deacon Haskins' house, a sudden thought struck him. He stopped short and looked up at the house. “Maybe I might,” he soliloquized aloud. “If! thought He wanted me to I would.” He walked on after that, looking up at the clear starlit sky and letting his soul reach out behind that “dim unknown.” He had read Lowell's great poem not many days before, and admired it, and certain lines of it came to him now. He wondered if God was really there behind the dim unknown, standing within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. He wished, as many another has wished, that he could see him once, and be sure—sure beyond the possibility of a doubt—that God did care for little things that people did and said. And there came to him through the still midnight a conviction that God did care.

             
It was the very next evening that Joseph Benedict presented himself at Deacon Haskins' door and asked for the daughter of the house. Her mother called her, and herself gave her the sitting-room lamp to carry into the parlor; but when an hour had passed and there seemed to be no sign of the visitor taking his leave, she thought it high time to do something. She cautiously opened the parlor door, and to her horror saw Joseph and Ellen Amelia bending their heads together over a book. They did not see her, nor apparently hear her, as she opened the door, and went on with earnest talk about some jargon she did not in the least understand. She stood contemplating them for a moment, and then as softly shut the door and turned away. She sat down at her sewing again, but there was a compressed look about her mouth, as if she knew something and had surmised a good deal more, though she said nothing. When Joseph went away, which he did in a few minutes, for he was in a hurry to get back to his own study, Ellen Amelia lingered in the chilly haircloth parlor, and her mother, going in search of her, found her poring over a paper, upon which were carefully written rows of words.

             
“Ellen 'Melya, what on earth has possession of you? I should like to know what that Benedic' girl has on hand now? I do wish you'd come out here and finish up that job of mending you begun. I've got to have them things right away.”

             
The daughter came and sewed quietly for the remainder of the evening, only answering abstractedly, “It's Latin, mother. I'm studying Latin.” But from time to time as she sewed she glanced at the paper in her lap and her lips moved constantly. Mrs. Haskins looked at her eldest child with trouble in her eyes.

             
“I'm just that troubled about her I can't sleep,” she remarked to her mother the next day. “She goes around mumbling all the time, '
A mo, a mass, a mat
.' I'm sure I don't know what high-flown notion'll take her next. If she wanted to study she could have done it some other way than getting a young know nothing of a fellow to teach what he don't know himself. I don't know but I'd rather she'd have even gone to that ball with the Brower boy. He at least looks decent. And after she got her dress made and all!”