MATCHED PEARLS (11 page)

“What does it mean, Connie?” The bright eyes searched her face, and Constance’s heart was wrung. She wanted so much to be of help, and she knew so little. She tried to think what Seagrave had told her in their brief talk on the hillside, but it was all vague.

“Just what it says,” she answered simply. “At least it sounds that way to me, and that’s what he told me to tell you. Just take Him at His word and believe it.”

“Read it again!” pleaded the voice that was weak with pain.

So Constance read it again and again, over and over; and the brilliant eyes were fixed on her face, drinking in the words, trying to puzzle some comfort from it.

“If she could only get a bit of sleep,” whispered the nurse. But the sharpened senses of the sufferer heard her.

“No!” she said with the fright in her eyes again. “No! I must not sleep till I am ready to go. Oh, won’t he come soon?” she cried out in her agony.

“As soon as he can,” answered Constance, “but—he said he would be praying!” She said it brightly, as if prayer now would work some charm, as if she herself believed it would, and then wondered at herself. She had been wont to sneer at prayer; some professor in the early days of her scholastic career had once remarked that the only benefit of prayer was its reflex influence upon the one who prayed. But now she held it out as a charm that would relieve.

“Pray!” said Doris. “Oh, I never knew how to pray! I used to say ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I lie on,’ but that isn’t real praying, is it? I wish I knew how to pray now. Oh, Connie, do you think he really will pray for me?”

“I’m sure he will,” said Constance, looked at her watch, and began to calculate the time. If he should catch the next train after he hung up the receiver—which was scarcely likely; there was still a little over three hours before it was due in the nearby city, and then he would have to wait for a local train—or perhaps he would be thoughtful enough to hire a taxi if he couldn’t make good connections at once. It was the very soonest she could hope to expect him. Oh, would he be too late? Could Doris hold out till then? She was perceptibly failing now, moment by moment, even to Constance’s inexperienced eyes. Would she have it always to remember that Doris died needing comfort that she could not give? Surely as Seagrave had said, if she only knew where to look, there must be somebody who would know the way of life!

But when she thought of all the people in the college and in the village whom she knew at all, there was no one whom she could ask to come here and try to talk to Doris. But wait! There was the janitor. He had a Testament. Would he perhaps know how to pray?

Yet when she tried to imagine him here in this room in his overalls, kneeling beside Doris’s bed, she didn’t know whether it would do or not. She wished she had told Emil about Doris and asked him to pray for her, only she was so unused to talking of such things it had never occurred to her.

Suddenly Doris spoke. “‘God so loved the world,’” she said slowly, sharply. “Yes, but that’s good people, I suppose. I’ve not been good. I’ve never thought a thing about God, not since I was a little girl and had a nurse once who tried to teach me to pray and I wouldn’t. I guess He would have no use for me after that. It’s probably only good people He loves.”

“It says the world,” said Constance, reasoning her way uncertainly. “There are more bad people than good people in the world. It takes them both to make up the world. It must mean both. Listen. You lie still and I’ll read it again, and you just try to believe it, the way he sent you word to.”

Constance read the words slowly, impressively through again, taking in their wondrous beauty and fullness as she read, wondering why she had never read them before, nor known how much they contained, thinking in her subconscious mind that if she ever came through this awful experience she would never be the same carefree girl again. Life could never be the same after this.

And then, just as she was turning the page back to read the verse over again because Doris was less restless when she read, the door opened and Seagrave stood beside her!

“Oh, you have
come
!” she quivered, a great joy and relief in her voice. “How could you get here so soon?”

He gave her a fleeting grave smile and said quietly, “I flew, of course,” and then he turned toward the bed where Doris’s great, frightened eyes were watching him.

Constance came closer to her friend.

“This is Mr. Seagrave, Doris. He knows how to tell you what to do.”

Seagrave’s face lit up with one of his tender smiles.

“Well, little sister,” he said tenderly, “they tell me you are going Home to God. What can I do to help?”

“Oh, but it isn’t home to me,” wailed Doris. “I don’t know God.”

“But God knows you,” said Seagrave gently. “See, it’s this way: He’s always known you, and He loves you. He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to take your place and pay the penalty of your sins so that you might be free and come Home without a spot of blemish or any such thing.”

“How do you know that?” asked Doris in the shrill, high voice of one who is near the end.

“God’s Word tells me so,” said Seagrave, pulling out his little Testament.

“But my college professors say the Bible is just a book written by men,” said Doris with a despairing note in her voice.

“How do your college professors tell you you may be saved?” asked Seagrave.

“Oh, they
don’t
!” wailed the girl. “Most of them think this life is all there is.”

“Then isn’t it better to trust in the only way that gives you hope of everlasting life? Would you rather trust God or your college professors?”

“Oh, I must trust God. My professors cannot help me. I must
believe
God!” she cried.

“Then listen!” he said. “These are Jesus’ own words: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”

The restless eyes were fixed on him earnestly.

“But won’t I have to be judged for my sins?” she asked anxiously. “I have always heard that Christians believed that everybody had to stand up and be judged before the world for everything they had ever done while they lived.”

“No,” said the young man confidently, “Christ says not. If you have heard the word of Christ and believe that the Father sent Him to die for you, you are saved. The question of a believer’s sins was settled once for all on the cross, where our Lord Jesus Christ received in His own breast the judgment that was our due. The believer cannot come into judgment for the reason that Christ was judged in our stead. It is true that believers shall appear before Christ to be rewarded for the way they have lived the Christian life after they believed, but that has nothing to do with our sins.”

“But don’t I have to do anything?”

“Just believe.”

The troubled eyes searched his face.

“Please show me how! Quick! The time is getting so short.”

“Look!” said Seagrave, holding out his little Testament. “Suppose I tell you I want to give you this.”

Her eyes were on him eagerly.

“Would you believe me?”

She nodded.

“Then what would you have to do to get it?”

“Just take it?” she answered wonderingly.

“Then just take what Jesus offers, full salvation,” he answered, smiling. “Will you do it?”

“Oh, I will,” she said with the tone of a drowning person catching at a rope flung to him.

“Then we will tell Him so.”

The young man was down upon his knees now talking to God. Such a prayer! Constance, as she stood at one side, her tears flowing, marveled at the way it brought the little hospital room straight into the presence of God. And Doris was introduced to her Savior and handed over into loving care, like a lost and frightened guest who had wandered away from the mansion to which she had been invited; no, like a child of the household who had been long alienated from her Father’s home. Pleading the claim of God’s great promises, pleading the death of Christ on the cross, and His shed blood, Doris was put beyond the shadow of a doubt into safety and security.

Constance watched her friend’s face change from terror into strange, sweet peace, and then heard to her amazement Doris’s voice, quavering with weakness, yet not frightened anymore: “Oh God, I do believe; please forgive me and take me home.”

And then she opened her eyes and said softly, her voice suddenly so weak it could hardly be heard, “Now I can go. Goodbye.” Her eyes closed gently, and she drew a soft little breath of a sigh.

The doctor and nurse who had come in unnoticed hurried up. They touched her wrist, listened for her heartbeats, but she was gone!

“She is at Home with Christ!” said Seagrave softly. “Isn’t it blessed that it does not take time to know God?” And he drew Constance gently from the room.

S
eagrave took Constance out into the cool evening air, and the stirring of a little breeze revived her. Afterward she remembered how strange it seemed to see the campus stretching away among the trees just as it always had done. Doris was dead and the world was going on just the same! You could even hear the chorus of an old college song from one of the more distant dormitories. They did not know yet that Doris was gone from it all forever. Constance’s head whirled, and she stepped uncertainly.

She was conscious of a strong arm that upheld her, and then Seagrave drew her down to a bench under the trees.

“Rest a minute,” he said. “You have been under a heavy strain. Did you have your dinner?”

“Dinner?” She looked up vaguely, hardly aware of the time of day. “Why, no,” she said slowly and then roused to the situation. “And you? You could not have had time to eat. How wonderful of you to come right away! But I don’t understand yet how you got here so soon.”

“I have a friend who flies,” he explained. “I just happened to catch him on the telephone as he was starting out for Boston—that is, if anything on this earth just
happens.
I don’t believe it does. If I had waited to come on the train I would not have been here in time.”

“She was just staying alive for your coming,” said Constance, weeping now quietly. “You don’t know what terror she was in!”

He let her talk about it a minute or two, judging that it would help her to get adjusted to things, and then he said quietly: “Now, where shall I take you? Would there be someplace nearby where we could go and get a bite to eat together, or would you rather go and lie down and let me send something to your room?”

“Oh, no!” said Constance, shuddering to remember how empty that room would be now with Doris gone and all Doris’s pretty trifles thrown around, her books, her shoes, the hat she did not wear. She caught her breath at the thought. “I will go with you!” she said determinedly. “There is a little tearoom. It will be quiet at this hour, I think. It is not far. They don’t have much but chicken sandwiches and hot soup and ice cream, but that will do, won’t it?”

“It sounds fine,” said Seagrave, giving her a grave smile and helping her to rise.

They walked across the campus arm in arm like old friends, and he managed it so that his strong arm supported her, and she was glad, for she felt inexpressibly weary.

The tearoom was a tiny, old-fashioned house across the street from the campus, kept by a little old lady in quaint attire, and the food was delicious. Sitting and talking while they ate, Constance felt somehow comforted and strengthened.

But suddenly, just when they had almost finished eating, Constance put her face down into her hands and shuddered then looked up apologetically, her face white and drawn with anguish.

“Oh,” she said, “you must excuse me! You’ve been so kind. I oughtn’t to give way to my feelings. But it all came over me just now unbearably. It seems so awful to think she is
dead
!”

“But she isn’t dead!” said Seagrave triumphantly.

Constance gave him a strange, wondering look.

“What do you call it?” she asked in a kind of hopeless tone as if she were humoring some theological whim. “Do you think she is merely asleep?”

“Her body is asleep, yes, asleep in Jesus. It is said in the Bible of believers who die that they ‘sleep in Jesus,’ though I have read that that phrase might be better translated ‘them also who have been put to sleep by Jesus.’ Just as a mother takes her tired, fretful, suffering child and quietly soothes it to sleep, so the Lord Jesus puts His beloved people to sleep. And the time will come when He will raise them up again, when He comes for His own. But it is only her body that is asleep and has to be laid aside for a time. Her spirit is not there. I think we saw it go, did we not?”

Constance gave him another wondering, half-comprehending look as she recalled the look on the face of Doris as she drew her last breath.

“Where?” She half formed the words. “You think she is—somewhere, now? You think she is conscious?”

“I do. I know she is. She certainly accepted Christ as her Savior, and we have Christ’s own words that such go immediately to be with Him. He promised even the thief on the cross who begged for mercy,
‘Today
shalt thou be with me in Paradise.’ And we have several passages where Christ Himself made it plain that those who have departed to be with Him are conscious, even conscious of some things which go on in this world. We are told that there is joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.”

Constance watched him, fascinated with great wistful eyes, and was silent thinking for a moment. Then she said, “Oh, but it will all be so strange there for her. Nobody there she knows!” And she shuddered again and struggled with her tears.

Seagrave looked at her pityingly.

“Do you think the little newborn baby is lonely and frightened in this world when it looks up into the face of its loving mother? And you must remember that your friend is in the arms of a loving Savior. His love will not let her be lonely.”

The girl sat watching him as he spoke, her face full of longing.

“It all sounds strange,” she wailed. “I wish I could see it that way, but I can’t. I never heard anybody talk that way before. All I can feel is that she is dead. Gone! Done forever! That’s what she and I have been taught and have believed for years.”