Part 12

“‘Therefore they inquired of the Lord further.’ That further helped me through a hard time. The story is this: God had chosen a king for his people, told Samuel all about it, and sent him to pour the anointing oil upon his head and to kiss him; and now when Samuel called the people together at Mizpeh, and caused all the tribes to come near to choose a king for them, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken, then the family in Benjamin, then Saul, the son of Kish, thus confirming the Lord’s choice and Samuel’s mission in the anointing, and then the most astounding thing happened. Saul, the chosen of the Lord, the young man whom the Judge of Israel had anointed and kissed, could not be found. What would you think if you believed that God had bidden you do something, and had confirmed it in such a special, satisfying, convincing manner, and then suddenly you could go no further—it was all taken out of your hands. The prophet sought for Saul and could not find him. Would you not be tempted to say—would you not really say to yourself, and to the Lord, I have been mistaken; I went ahead to do God’s bidding in all the confidence of my faith, and before all the people I am ashamed; it is proven that God did not bid me, that my faith was presumptive, for the time has come to go on, and I cannot go on—the work is not to be done. It looks as if I had deceived myself; God has allowed me to believe something that is not true. Could anything be more heart-breaking? How could God treat you like that when you believed him so, and were so in earnest? Would you have the heart to inquire further? They asked if the man should yet come hither. Samuel had done all he could. The Lord answered, telling them plainly where the man had hidden himself. Oh, these hidden people, the Lord knows about. He is in all their hiding places. Suppose Samuel had stopped, ashamed before the people, angry, humiliated before the Lord. There had to be this last trial of faith. At the last eager, sure moment God may have a new test of faith for us. Is there a hiding place in one of your last, sure moments? Do not fail before it. God’s will is hidden away in it.”

“Aunt Affy, you do not know what you have done for me,” said Marion, solemnly, “I have just been deciding something for myself. I was forgetting that God might have a will about it; that there was any _further_ in it.”

“And here comes Cephas,” Aunt Affy replied, rising; “I know the rattling of those chains—I came in the farm wagon because it was easier than for him to hitch the horses to the carriage. I’m thankful enough if I’ve been of any help to you,” she added, touching Marion’s forehead with her sweet, old, happy lips.

“Shall I send Roger as soon as he comes home?”

“Yes, and Judith. Judith didn’t come yesterday, and Rody kept asking for her.”

“It may be late. They have gone to Meadow Centre.”

“No matter if it is midnight. Rody didn’t sleep last night. She talked in her sleep, and has been muttering all day; I wouldn’t have left her only I wanted to see the minister alone before he saw her.”

The chains of the farm wagon rattled into the lane. Marion, on the piazza, watched the old lovers drive away.

XXII. AUNT AFFY’S EVENING.

“When He giveth quietness, who then can make trouble?”

—_Job_ xxxiv. 29.

“I don’t want any supper,” complained Aunt Rody, rising from the supper table and staggering toward the sitting-room door. “I’m too full to eat; too full of deceit; you are all deceiving me.”

“Now, Rody,” protested Cephas, buttering his big slice of bread, with a vigorous touch.

“All, every one of you,” she said with a wail, turning with a slow effort to face the supper-table; “you have deceived me all your life, and Affy has, and Joe, and Judith, and Doodles would if he knew how. Perhaps he does in a dog’s way, which isn’t half so tremendous as the human way.”

Joe burst into a laugh, which Aunt Affy’s look instantly silenced.

“Poor Rody,” she sighed.

In the twilight, after the dishes were done, the two old sisters sat together on the piazza; Rody had insisted upon wiping the dishes, and as she sat upright in her straight-backed chair, she rubbed her fingers dry with the brown gingham apron she had forgotten to take off.

She rubbed her fingers with an unceasing motion, muttering to herself. Affy looked off into the twilight, her hands still in her lap. Joe went whistling up the road to the village; Cephas, in meditative attitude, in his shirt-sleeves, with his straw hat pushed to the back of his head, leaned over the gate.

“All of you, all of you,” mumbled the breaking voice, “from my youth up.”

“Cephas thinks it would be a good thing to sell the milk to the Dutchman that has bought the Elting farm,” began Affy, watching the effect of her words. “Four cents a quart. And we would be saved the churning and washing all the milk things. If Joe goes away to learn a trade we shall have nobody to churn. What do you think, Rody?”

The drooping head lifted itself, the fingers with the gingham fold were held with a loosening hand; sharply and shrilly Aunt Rody replied: “That’s always the way; you and Cephas are always putting your heads together to cheat me out of something. Not a quart of that milk shall go. Joe shall stay and churn. Mother never sold her milk to a Dutchman for four cents a quart. What would we do for butter, I’d like to know.”

“Buy it.”

“Buy it,” she repeated, mockingly; “nobody on the Sparrow place ever paid money for butter.”

“But Cephas thinks—,” began Aunt Affy, patiently.

“Tell Cephas to stop thinking,” replied the weakly imperative voice.

Twilight darkened into night; but Rody refused to go in and go to bed; she was comfortable, she liked that chair, she liked the stars, she could breathe better out here in the night air; she did not want to go into her bedroom, somebody had struck her a blow in there.

So they stayed, the air blew damp, Aunt Affy brought a shawl and pinned it about the stooping shoulders; Cephas came and sat down on the step of the piazza with his hat on his knee, giving uneasy glances now and then at the muffled, still figure in the chair.

“It’s getting dark,” suggested Affy, rising and standing before the bent figure with its head turned stiffly to one side.

“And damp—these nights are chilly for old bones,” replied Cephas.

“There’s a light in the house,” persuaded Affy, “and it’s dark out here.”

“And the bed is so comfortable,” added Cephas; “guess I’ll go in.”

He arose and went in.

“I’m going, too,” encouraged Affy. “Come, Rody, you may sleep in my bed.”

“I won’t sleep in my bed; are you sure there’s nobody to strike me in your room?” she questioned like a frightened child.

“Nobody but me. Come, Rody,” she urged, gently.

Placing a hand on each arm of the chair, the old woman lifted herself to her feet; then she felt out in the darkness for something to lean on; Affy took her arm and led her in. The lamp was burning on the round table where the _New York Observer_ was piled; Doodles slept on his cushion on the lounge.

“I’ll sit here awhile,” said Cephas, pulling his spectacle case from his vest pocket. “I haven’t read the paper to-night.”

“I’ll sit here, too,” said Rody, rousing herself to a decision. “Somehow I don’t want to go to bed. I don’t believe it’s nine o’clock yet. I wish the clock would strike. I wish something would make a noise.”

“It’s a quarter of nine,” replied Affy, lowering her sister slowly down into her chair. “It will soon strike.”

“Take this thing off,” commanded Rody, tugging at the shawl with her weak right hand. “You bundle me up as if I was a baby.”

“There’s a carriage coming,” said Cephas, bending his head and half shutting his eyes to listen; “he’s come, Affy.”

“Who’s come?” demanded Aunt Rody, in shrill tone. “Who comes at this time of night?”

“The minister; he was coming to bring Judith for an hour or two,” Cephas answered, reassuringly. “She didn’t come yesterday. Don’t you want to see her?”

“Just for a look; I don’t want her to stay, I don’t want anybody to stay.”

Roger Kenney and Judith entered quietly; Judith shrank from the old woman as she stood for an instant beside her chair. Roger drew a chair nearer and took Aunt Rody’s hand into his own. The nerveless hand lay in his as if glad of the warmth and strength; as he talked, Roger clasped and unclasped his hand over hers that she might feel the motion and life of his fingers.

“I’m glad to see you, Aunt Rody,” he said in a voice which was a tonic.

“I’m glad to see you,” she replied, with the flicker of a smile about her lips.

“‘Let not your heart be troubled.’”

“It _is_ troubled; it is full of trouble. It’s Affy and Cephas; they are deceiving me. They want to get married and deceive me more and more.”

“Shall I tell you how we’ll stop that?” asked Roger, bending confidentially toward her.

“Yes, do. Tell me quick.”

“Let me marry them, and then you will never think they are deceiving you again. What is the reason they are deceiving you now?”

“Because they think I stand between them; they think I’ve always stood between them,” she said, piteously; “but I never did. I was seeking their good.”

“But don’t you think you have sought their good long enough?” he asked persuasively.

“Yes; I’ve worn myself out for their good. I’m worn out now; they’ll have to do for themselves, after this.”

“Who will take care of Affy after you are gone?”

“I don’t know; I’m sure I don’t know. She doesn’t know how to take care of herself.”

“But she was your little baby; you are sorry not to have her taken care of.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sorry; I’m _very_ sorry.”

Affy dropped on the lounge beside Doodles, and was crying like a child; Judith went to her and put both her strong young arms about her and her warm cheek to hers. Cephas cleared his throat, then busied himself burnishing his spectacles with a piece of old chamois.

“Somebody must take care of her, Cephas knows how best,” said the minister with firmness, rubbing the cold, limp fingers.

“Yes, Cephas knows how best,” she quavered “Come here, Cephas, and promise the minister you will always take care of Affy.”

“Go, Aunt Affy,” said Judith, in her strong, young voice, “go and be married while Aunt Rody knows it. She’ll change her mind to-morrow—”

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t,” sobbed Aunt Affy, “with Rody so near dying, how can I? It’s too hurried and dreadful.”

“It’s too beautiful,” said Judith; “that is all she can do for you; do let her do it, dear Aunt Affy.”

“Come, Affy,” said Cephas solemnly, “the Lord’s time has come.”

“Perhaps it has,” sobbed Affy, trembling from head to foot, as Judith led her across the room.

Roger arose and stood before the old man and the old woman; her head drooped so that one long curl rested on his shoulder.

“I’d ought to have a coat on,” said Cephas with an ashamed face; “it isn’t proper for a man to be married in his shirt-sleeves.”

“And let me fix up a little,” coaxed Aunt Affy; “this is my old muslin, all faded out.”

“Oh, don’t spoil anything,” Judith besought; “see how she is watching you. Aunt Rody, don’t you want Uncle Cephas to take care of Aunt Affy?”

“Yes, yes, oh, yes. Has he promised the minister?” she asked with tremulous anxiety.

“Listen, and you will hear him promise. Joe, come here,” Roger called to the step in the kitchen.

Joe came to the threshold, threw off his hat, and stood amazed.

“Aunt Rody, put their hands together,” said Judith, taking Aunt Rody’s hands as the old bride and bridegroom stretched their hands toward her.

“Did I do it?” she asked, as she felt the touch of both hands. “Is it done for always?”

“Yes,” said the minister, “you’ve done it. Now, listen to every word.”

“Has he promised to take care of Affy?” Rody asked, peering up into Roger’s face.

“Yes, Rody, with all my heart and soul and strength,” answered the old man, with the light of communion Sunday in his face.

The curl drooped lower on Cephas’ shirt-sleeve; Judith stood near Aunt Affy.

The solemn, glad words were spoken, the prayer uttered, the benediction given; Aunt Affy and Uncle Cephas were married.

“Let me kiss you, Rody,” said Affy, through her tears.

“I kissed you when you were a baby,” said Rody. “You were a nice little baby. Mother said I must always think of you first.”

“Now, you will go to bed,” said Affy. “It’s after nine o’clock.”

“Not in my room. I’ll go in your room. Don’t you go away all night. Keep the light burning, and don’t you go.”

“No; I’ll stay, Rody; we will take care of you always, Cephas and I.”

Judith stayed that night; Aunt Rody slept well, and arose in the morning at her usual early hour. She made no allusion to the marriage that day, nor as long as she lived.

XXIII. VOICES.

“The love for me once crucified, Is not a love to leave my side, But waiteth ever to divide Each smallest care of mine.”

The three were in the study that Sunday afternoon that the Meadow Centre minister exchanged with Roger Kenney; the minister, the hostess, and the girl at boarding-school. The boarding-school girl had a book in her lap with her finger between the leaves, listening.

“Mr. King talks as though he had never had any one to talk to before,” Judith thought as she watched the two and listened.

His conversation was filled with bits of information, with incident, with a thought now and then, absorbingly interesting to a school-girl.

Roger loved people better than he loved books; Judith had not outgrown her books, and grown into loving people. The Meadow Centre minister was a chapter in a most fascinating book; he was the hero of a story; he was not a being of flesh and blood like Roger. She was afraid every moment the book would shut and she would read no more of his story; “to be continued” would end this chapter, and then she might never see the end of the book.

“‘Conversation is not the road leading to the house,’” he quoted, “‘but a by-path where people walk with pleasure.’”

“I think it leads to the house,” replied Judith, quickly, “if people are real and sincere. What _does_ lead to the house if conversation does not?”

“Deeds,” suggested Marion.

“But we can’t do deeds every minute,” persisted Judith; “how could we do deeds sitting here this afternoon.”

“We have done them,” said Mr. King; “we are resting in a by-path.”

“But we want to get to the house,” insisted Judith.

“Loitering by the way is pleasant; through the by-way we may learn the way to the house.”

“Marion, that reminds me of Cousin Don,” Judith said, suddenly; “we know him only through by-ways.”

“Tell me about Cousin Don,” said the minister, interestedly.

Cousin Don was a story Judith loved to tell.

“You expect to find him unchanged after all these years—the time in his life when a man changes?” he inquired, astonished. “Is that the way you understand human nature?”

“Perhaps I do not understand human nature at all. But I have his letters.”

“By-ways—they do not lead to the house,” he replied.

“But they can,” said Judith, vexed.

“Oh, yes, they _can_.”

“And I know they do; don’t you, Marion?”

“In this case, I hope so,” Marion answered; “I don’t see how people can help being like their letters.”

“Or their letters like them?” corrected Judith.

“Then how is it we are disappointed in people?” Mr. King questioned; “is it only our lack of insight?”

“People change,” said Marion, with slow emphasis; “if we were with them all the time we would see the little changes that lead the way to the great changes. People are even disappointed in themselves; I am.”

“So am I,” he answered sincerely; “I fall below my own ideal often enough; if anybody cared enough for me to be disappointed in me they would have reason enough.”

“I don’t believe they would,” thought Judith.

“Mr. King,” Marion began doubtfully, “do not answer me if my question is intrusive; but I would like to know how you read the Bible for yourself.”

“That _is_ a coincidence,” exclaimed Mr. King; “as I was driving along this morning a question came to me that I never thought of asking myself before: suppose someone asks you to-day how you study the Bible _for yourself_, what will you say?”

“How wonderful,” both girls said in the same breath.

“So I told myself what I would say. One of my ways when I am in special need of a word from my heavenly Father is to ask him to give it to me, and then I am sure to find it in my reading. Often I open and find it; often and often I find it in the chapter that comes next in my daily reading. Asking the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to see his special word to you in that special need is the safest way and the quickest for me. I am assured then that I shall learn that day’s lesson in that day’s place. The truth I need most has never failed to come.”

“That is a very simple way,” Marion said. “As simple as a child asking his mother for something she has promised. The only hindrance is self-will.”

“Oh, dear, that hinders everything,” sighed Judith, who was battling with the suggestion from within herself that perhaps her boarding-school days were over and she _ought_ to go back and help nurse Aunt Rody. The aunts had been so kind to her mother when she was a homeless little girl, and to herself when she was a homeless little girl. She had kept it out of her prayers ever since she had thought of it. If only she had not thought of it. Aunt Affy would never ask her to give up her studies and her happy home to bury herself with three old people.

“Are you far enough along in life to know that?” asked Mr. King, giving the girl of eighteen a glance of keen interest.

“I think I was born knowing it,” said Judith. “Do you know about anybody who wanted to do right and had a will of his own—”

“Oh, yes; they are plenty of us. Three of us in this room,” he laughed.

“But I meant some one in the Bible, for then we can know certainly what happened to him.”

“Yes, I find a king who leagued himself with another king to go to war; but he was not satisfied that he was in the way of obedience, and he said to the other king, ‘Inquire, I pray thee, at the word of the Lord to-day,’ and the other king gathered four hundred men, his own prophets, and inquired of them what he should do. With one voice they said, ‘Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hands of the king.’ Four hundred answers to his prayer; the Lord’s command four hundred strong. But the king who believed in the true God had not had his answer; it was the will of the true God he sought. He said, ‘Is there not here, besides, a prophet of the Lord that we might inquire of him?’ The answer was, ‘There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord.’ If there is one way of knowing the Lord’s will, there is no excuse for us; we may know it. Four hundred voices of self-will are no reason, and no excuse, for not knowing it. This king who believed in God heard the one voice of God—and disobeyed it. He joined himself in battle with the king who trusted in the four hundred voices of his self-will. And the battle went against him; God had told him so. He believed God afterward; so will you and I if we disobey. He went to battle as though God had not spoken.”

“Was he _killed_?” asked Judith, fearful some trouble might fall upon her if she listened to the voice of self-will.

“No, he cried out, and the Lord helped him, and moved his enemies to depart from him. As he returned to his house in peace, a seer met him, and said, ‘For this thing wrath is upon thee from the Lord.’”

“‘For this thing,’” repeated Judith. “For inquiring of the Lord, learning his will, and then believing the voice of the four hundred who gave him his own way. Oh, dear, I wish those four hundred would _never_ speak.”

“There is but one way to silence them; listen to God’s voice above them all.”

“But it is so _hard_,” cried Judith, impetuously.

“Do not choose the easy way of obedience. Choose God’s way, and let me tell you one of his secrets; _his way is always easier than we think_.”

To hide the tears which would not be kept back Judith hastily left the study; he did not know, nobody could know, what obedience would cost her; life at the parsonage was so different; Roger and Marion were _young_ with her, and Aunt Rody and Aunt Affy, and Uncle Cephas were so _old_; they had lived their lives, and their days went on with a long-drawn-out sameness; nothing ever happened to them, they were not looking forward to anything, there would be no study, no new books, no music, no getting near the loveliest things in the world; it was barrenness and dreariness, it was like death; the parsonage was hope, and youth, and love and life, with the best things yet to come. “It will stifle me to go back; I shall die of homesickness, I shall choke to death.”

Cousin Don had a right to her, he was her guardian cousin. Would he not have a right to come and take her away? But her mother—what would her mother choose for her to do?

They had been so kind to her mother.

“I will go and stay—a week,” she resolved, tears rushing afresh; “but I miss Marion when I stay one single night.”

At the supper-table she announced with reddened eyelids and a voice that would not be steady that she thought she would go to Aunt Affy’s before evening service and stay over night; Uncle Cephas had told her that morning that Aunt Affy was very tired.

“Must you go?” asked Marion. “But I know they need you. Mrs. Evans said they couldn’t get any one, and Aunt Rody was in bed to-day.”

“Perhaps I’ll find it easier than I think,” said Judith.

“As soon as they find a nurse you will come back,” encouraged Marion.

During the walk through the village and to the Sparrow place Judith’s courage all oozed away; she grew so faint-hearted that she thought she was faint; she stopped for a glass of water at the well where the lilies had come, and went upstairs a moment to talk to Nettie, still helpless in her invalid chair.

“The minister came to see me this afternoon,” Nettie greeted her; “he read and prayed and told me things. Has he told you anything?”

“Yes, and I almost wish he had not. I _have_ to do right things—whether I want to or not.”

“Are you doing one now? One new one. You look so.”

“I am on the way to it.”

“Where are you going?”

“Literally and figuratively I am on the way to it. I am giving up study and everything else to go and take care of Aunt Rody.”

“How splendid of you. I knew you would do something _real_ some day,” Nettie said with enthusiasm. “You haven’t been my ideal for nothing. Mother has kept telling me I might be disappointed in you; but I _knew_ I never should.”

After that how could she feel faint-hearted?

“O, Judith,” said Aunt Affy, meeting her on the piazza, “how did you know I couldn’t do without you any longer? Joe has gone for the doctor; Rody has had another spell.”

In her own little room that night the girl knelt on the strip of rag carpet, and, with her head buried in the pink and white quilt, prayed that the voices of her self-will might be lost in the voice of the Holy Spirit. The coming back was even harder than she feared; Mr. King had not told her God’s truth when he said: “_His way is always easier than we think_.”

The thought that she was bravely doing a hard thing did not brace her to the bearing of it; she was not bearing it at all; she was living through it.