Part 17

“She told mother her heart ached to have you back,” persuaded Jean, “since her sister died she had so longed for her little girl.”

“I’m afraid I am not doing right,” confessed Judith, “but I was almost homesick there, when Aunt Rody was sick. And then, I think I _must_ learn to support myself, and not be dependent.”

“Oh, you American girl,” said Mrs. Lane.

“And with Aunt Affy for your _mother_,” added Jean; “I told Mrs. Lane you had ideas.”

“I should think I had,” said Judith, laughing to keep the tears back. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten Aunt Affy. She loves two people in me, she says; my mother and me. I don’t know what _has_ possessed me.”

“Ambition, perhaps,” Mrs. Lane suggested, taking up her knitting,—a long black stocking for her only grandchild.

“Not just that,” Judith reasoned; “it is more making something of myself for myself. Culture for its own sake,” she quoted from Roger, who had warned her against her devotion to self-culture; “and I give it a self-sacrificing name; the desire to be independent. I do not know why I should _not_ be dependent on Aunt Affy. My mother was—and loved it.”

“No service could be more acceptable than serving her,” said Mrs. Lane; “the world is only a larger Bensalem.”

“It isn’t the _world_ I wanted,” replied Judith, impatiently.

When Judith went away Jean walked down the street with her. “Are you disappointed in Mrs. Lane?” she asked.

“She did not tell me what I hoped and expected. She told me something better. I think I can study at Aunt Affy’s,” in the tone of one having made a sacrifice.

“And go to the parsonage every day,” said Jean eagerly, and yet afraid of pressing her point.

“Yes—if I wish to,” replied Judith slowly, surprising herself by coming to a decision.

“Bensalem is such a place for talk,” Jean ventured, not that she was confident of success. “Everybody knows everybody’s business and is interested in it.”

“But it is kindly talk,” said Judith, whom gossip had touched lightly.

“Yes, sometimes—not always,” Jean hesitated; “people will misjudge.”

“Jean Draper, what do you mean?” asked Judith, blazing angrily; “are you trying to tell me something?”

“No,” replied Jean, startled at Judith’s unusual vehemence. “I only want you to understand that Aunt Affy is talked about for letting you stay so much at the parsonage.”

“How could it hurt anybody?”

“They say Aunt Affy is—scheming,” she said, watching the effect of her words.

“Scheming. What about? What does _she_ gain?” asked Judith, provoked.

“The gain is for you,” said Jean, at last, desperately; “they say she wants to marry you to the minister.”

Now she had said it. She stood still, frightened. Judith left her without another word, going straight on to the parsonage. After a moment Jean turned and went home.

What would Judith do? She looked angry enough to do anything. But she had shielded her from further talk. Bensalem should have no more to say.

Judith went on dazed. Now she understood it all; Martha was coming that she might go; they did not like to tell her to go; they were all too kind. As if Aunt Affy could plot like that. As if Aunt Affy cared for that: Aunt Affy who wanted to keep her always.

Had Marion heard the talk? And Roger? Was he glad to send her away with his mother? She would fly to Aunt Affy that very night; the old house would be her refuge. She would go back to Aunt Affy—and her mother’s home. Roger, her saint, her hero, her ideal—he could never think of her—like that.

She opened the door and went in. Marion had taken her mother for a drive. The study door was shut, the usual signal when Roger was busy. But she often ventured; the shut door had never barred her out. Nothing had ever kept her away from Roger. She tapped; Roger called: “Come in.”

He was writing and did not lift his eyes.

She waited; he looked up and smiled.

“Can you stop one minute?” she asked, faintly.

“One and a half.”

“I came to tell you that I have thought it over; I would rather not go home with Mrs. Kenney.”

“Stay then, with all my heart.”

“But not with all my heart. I am going to Aunt Affy’s instead. She wants me,” she said, quietly, with a quiver of the lip.

“I should think she would.”

“I did not know how much. She herself would not tell me. Jean Draper told me. Aunt Affy told her mother.”

“That will not change our plans of study at all.”

“No; it need not.”

“It shall not.”

“I think I can get on alone awhile. You have taught me how to use books. You have shown me that they are tools. I can write by myself. You have been to me like Maria Edgeworth’s father. Perhaps it is time for Maria to stand alone.”

“You are tired of my teaching.”

“Oh, no; I am not tired of anything—excepting Bensalem. I _hate_ Bensalem,” she burst out with anger and contrition.

“What has Bensalem done now?”

“Nothing unusual. Will you tell Marion I am going—home to stay to-night? Martha will come and help her in the housekeeping.”

“Judith, has any one hurt you?”

“No,” said Judith, smiling with the tears starting; “you are all too kind.”

“Is it for Aunt Affy you are going? Judith, you cannot deceive me.”

“No; I do not think I can. I am going for Aunt Affy’s sake, Roger.”

“Because she misses you?”

“Yes, because she misses me, and needs me. People think and say—she is not taking good care of me. I wish to prove to them that she is.”

“That is sheer nonsense,” he exclaimed, angrily.

“It is not nonsense that she misses me now that her sister is gone. I never had any sister excepting Marion, but I know it was dreadful for Aunt Affy to lose her sister. If you haven’t helped me to study alone, to depend upon myself, you have been very little help to me.”

“That is true,” he laughed, “but the studying is only a part of what the parsonage is to you.”

“It was my reason for coming, and staying,” she said, simply, flushing and trembling.

“True; I had forgotten that. Yes; it is better for you to go; best for you to go. Come to-morrow and talk it over to Marion and my mother. I will tell them only that you have gone—home, to spend the night.”

He took up his pen, it trembled in his grasp; Judith went out and shut the door that he might not be disturbed.

“I am giving it all up,” she thought, as she pressed a few things into a satchel; “all I was going away to get; perhaps _this_ is the way my prayer for work is being answered.”

They were at supper when she stood in the doorway; Aunt Affy at the head of the table behind the tea-pot and the cups and saucers; her husband opposite her, genial, handsome, satisfied, and Joe, at one side of the round table, tall, fine-looking, with his gray, thoughtful eyes, refined lips, and modest manner. Joe was a son to be proud of, the old people sometimes said to each other.

There was no chair opposite Joe, no plate, and knife and fork and napkin. Uncle Cephas liked a hot supper; they had chicken stew to-night, and boiled rice. It was like home, the faces, the things on the supper-table. She was homesick enough to long for some place “like” home. The parsonage could never be her home again, with Martha in her place; perhaps Martha had been wishing to come for years; perhaps her selfishness had kept Martha away.

John would be married, Martha would be in her place at the parsonage,—Don was too far away to know, and too absorbed in his wife to care; Mrs. Kenney did not really _want_ her, she had only asked her to go home with her to get her away from the parsonage; the only home she had a _right_ to was this home where her mother had been a little girl.

“Why, Judith,” cried Aunt Affy, rising, “dear child, what is the matter?”

“I wanted to come home,” said Judith.

XXXII. AUNT AFFY’S PICTURE.

“That only which we have within can we see without.”

—Emerson.

Judith stood at the sitting-room window looking out into the March snow-storm. There had been many snow-storms since that November night she came to the threshold and stood looking in at the happy supper-table. Aunt Affy had opened her arms and heart anew and folded her close: “My lamb has come back,” she said.

“To stay back,” Judith whispered, hiding her face on Aunt Affy’s shoulder.

That night was nearly two years ago; she would be twenty in April. She was not “twenty in April” to Aunt Affy; she was still her “lamb” and her “little girl.”

In her dark blue cloth dress, and with her yellow head and rose-tinted cheeks, she did not look as grown-up as she felt; she had taken life, not only with both hands, but with heart, brain, and spirit, and with all her might. There was nothing in her that she had not put into her life; her simple, Bensalem life.

“Aunt Affy,” she said, as Aunt Affy’s step paused on the threshold between kitchen and sitting-room, “Come and rest awhile in this fire-light. This fire on the hearth to-night reminds me of the glow of the grate in Summer Avenue when I used to tell pictures to mother.”

Aunt Affy pulled down the shades; Judith drew Aunt Affy’s chair to the home-made rug—Aunt Rody’s rug,—to the hearth, and then sat down on the hassock at her feet, and looked into the fire, not the curly-headed girl in Summer Avenue, but the girl grown up.

“Aunt Affy, tell _me_ a picture,” she coaxed.

“What about?”

“About myself. I’m afraid I am too full of myself. I cannot understand something. I can tell you about it, for it is past, and I can look at it as something in the past. You know those years I was at the parsonage, at my boarding-school, I was crammed full with one hope.”

Judith was looking at the fire; the eyes looking down at her were solicitous, tender. She had been afraid Judith “cared too much” for the young minister; but it must be over now, or she could not tell her about it so frankly.

“I dreamed it, I studied it, I wrote it, I prayed about it, I _breathed_ it.”

“Oh,” said Aunt Affy, with a quick, heavy sigh.

“Don’t pity me. It was good for me, blessed for me, or it could not have happened, you know. I thought there was some great work for me to do—”

“Oh,” said Aunt Affy, with a quick, relieved cry.

“I was not sure whether it were to write a book, or to teach, or to go as a foreign missionary; I think I hoped it would be the foreign missionary, because that was the most self-sacrificing. The book was all one great joy. The teaching was absorbing, but I must go away to study. I was afraid to go away, I did not like to go away from Bensalem, I would miss my mother away from Bensalem, and you, and all the parsonage, and the whole village. But I thought I was called; as called as Roger was to preach, or any woman, saint, or heroine, who had done a great thing. You cannot think what it was to me. It made me old. I wanted God to speak out of Heaven and tell me what to do. It began to lose its selfishness, after that. The first thing that began to shake my confidence was something Mrs. Lane said that afternoon she talked to Jean and me about what women were doing and could do. She did not make woman’s work attractive; she took the heart out of me. I did not know why she should do that. I knew better all the time. I knew what women had done and were doing. I knew she was doing a noble work, literary work, work in prisons, temperance work; the instances she gave me seemed trivial, as if she were laughing at me. But something opened my eyes; I felt that I might be disobedient to my heavenly vision, that I was looking up into the heavens for my call, and the voice might be all the time in my ear. That was the night I came back here and found you so cozy and satisfied under your own roof-tree, with the voice in your ear, and the work in your hand. The world went away from me. I stayed. I am glad I stayed. My only trouble is, and it is a real trouble, that God did not care for my purpose, or my prayers; that he has let them go as if they never entered into his mind; I thought they were in his heart as well as mine.”

“They are, Deary,” said Aunt Affy, wiping her eyes; “He will not let one of them go.”

“But He did not do anything with them. He did not _love_ my plan, and my prayers,” said Judith, wearily.

“Do you remember one time when Jesus was on the earth, a man, clothed and in his right mind, sat at Jesus’ feet? He had so much to be thankful for; no man ever had so much. And he sat at Jesus’ feet, near him because he loved him, and looked up into his face and listened. That was all he wanted on the earth, to be with Jesus; to follow him everywhere, to obey every word he said, to always see his face, to serve him. Did not the Lord care for such love when so many were scorning him and ashamed to be his disciples? When he came to his own, and his own received him not. When the man found that Jesus was going away, that his countrymen were sending him away, beseeching him to go, he besought Jesus, which was more than one asking, that he might go with him. That was all he wanted: just to go with him. Just as all you wanted was to be with him and do something he said, _and be sure he said it_. But Jesus sent this man away. He refused him; he denied his prayer.”

“That was very hard,” said Judith.

“Very hard. It was like giving him a glimpse of Heaven—it was Heaven, and then shutting the door in his face as he prayed.”

“Yes,” said Judith, who understood.

“But he did speak to him; he told him what to do: ‘Return to thine own house.’ If he had father, mother, brother, sister, wife, children, go back to them and tell them how good God had been to him. When I look at you, Deary, stepping about the house, so pretty and bright, I think of how glad your mother must be if she sees you. How glad to know the little girl she left was taken care of. And in church when you play the organ, and in Sunday School, and at the Lord’s own table, and doing errands all around the village, you are a blessing in your ‘own house.’”

Judith’s head went down on Aunt Affy’s knee.

“This man went through the ‘whole city’ beside; his own house grew into the whole city. Your life isn’t ended yet; to old folks like Uncle Cephas and me, it seems just begun. Your own house is only just the beginning of the whole city. I’ve only had my own house and Bensalem, but I seem to think there’s a whole city for you. The Lord knew about the whole city when he denied his prayer and sent him to his own house.”

Judith did not lift her head; her tears were tears of shame and penitence.

“Now, here come the men folks,” roused Aunt Affy, cheerily; “and supper they must have to keep them good-natured.”

“I am only in my ‘own house’ yet,” said Judith, as she moved about setting the supper table as she had done when she was a little girl.

XXXIII. NETTIE’S OUTING.

“Does the road wind up hill all the way?” “Yes, to the very end.” “Will the day’s journey take the whole, long day?” “From morn to night, my friend.”

—Christina G. Rossetti.

This same evening, in the March snow-storm, Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair beside the table in her chamber. Nettie had not grown up in appearance; face and figure were slight, her cheeks were pale, her eyes large and luminous; her laugh was as light-hearted as the laugh of any girl in the village; her father often told her that she was the busiest maiden in Bensalem.

Her busy times grew out of Mrs. Lane’s secret.

Nettie was the member of a society; the Shut-In Society. It was an organized society; it published a magazine monthly: _The Open Window_, with a motto upon its title-page:

“The windows of my soul I throw Wide open to the sun.”

Since Mrs. Lane had told her about the Society and made her a member she had thrown the windows of her soul wide open to the sun.

_And the Lord shut him in_, was the motto of the Society. Nettie had marked the precious words in her Bible with the date of her accident, and another date: the day when she became a member of the Shut-In Society.

_The Open Window_ had come in to-night’s mail; Nettie had been counting the hours until mail time, and laughed a joyful little laugh all to herself when she heard her father say to her mother in the hall below: “It’s mail time, and I must go to the office to-night, storm or no storm; Nettie will not sleep a wink unless she has her magazine.”

It was her feast every month. The members and associates numbered hundreds and hundreds, Nettie did not know how many; and they were all around the world. Nettie herself had had a letter from the Sandwich Islands: the magazine was sent to a leper colony, but she would never dare to write a letter to such a place. With every fresh magazine she read the object and aim of the Society:—

“This Association shall be called the Shut-in Society, and shall consist of Members and Associates. Its object shall be: To relieve the weariness of the sick-room by sending and receiving letters and other tokens of remembrance; to testify to the love and presence of Christ in the hour of suffering and privation; to pray for one another at set times: daily, at the twilight hour, and weekly on Tuesday morning at ten o’clock; to stimulate faith, hope, patience, and courage in fellow-sufferers by the study and presentation of Bible promises.

“To be a sufferer, shut in from the outside world, constitutes one a proper candidate for membership in this Society. All members are requested to send with their application, if possible, the name of their pastor or their physician, or of some Associate of the Society, as introduction; and no name should be forwarded for membership until the individual has been consulted and consent obtained. If able, members are expected to pay 50 cents yearly for The Open Window. Any who are unable will please inform the Secretary.

“As this is not an almsgiving society, its members are requested not to apply for money or other material aid to the officers, Associates, or other members. Any assistance which can be given in the way of remunerative work will be cheerfully rendered.

“Members are not to urge upon any one in the Society the peculiar belief of any particular sect or denomination.

“Associate members are not themselves invalids, but, being in tender sympathy with the suffering, volunteer in this ministry of love for Jesus’ sake.”

Mrs. Lane had been an Associate member from the time of the organization of the Society in 1877. Jean Draper Prince, coming to Nettie’s chamber upon the Shut-In’s last birthday, and finding her with a tableful and lapful of mail packages, had told her that Mrs. Lane had given her the biggest “outing” any girl in the village ever had.

Nettie had fifteen regular correspondents, and never a week passed that she was not touched by an appeal for letters and did not write an extra letter to some one not on her “list.” The wool slippers in her work-basket she had finished to-day for a Shut-In birthday gift next month. Every night in her prayer she gave thanks for the blessings that widened and brightened her life through “the dear Shut-In Society.”

As she sat reading her magazine, too deep in it to hear a sound, light feet ran up the narrow stairway. She did not lift her eyes until Pet Draper, Jean’s youngest sister, pushed the door open.

“Why, Pet,” she exclaimed. “Are you out in this storm?”

“No,” laughed Pet, “I am _in_ in this storm. I came to stay all night.”

“I shouldn’t think you _would_ want to go out again to-night.”

“Oh, it isn’t so bad. The snow is light. Joe brought me,” she said, with sudden meaning in her tones.

“Did he?” asked Nettie, absently; “just let me read you this. ‘This lady walked forty steps to go out to tea—for the first time in thirty-two years.’ I wonder if I shall ever go out to tea.”

“Nettie, you shall come to my wedding.”

“Pet!” exclaimed Nettie, in delight and surprise.

“Yes. And I came to tell you. I told Joe tonight I would marry him,” she said, laughing and coloring.

“I’m so glad. I’m so _glad_,” repeated Nettie; “he is so good and kind.”

“He is as good as David Prince any day. Jean needn’t put on airs because he was only a farm boy. He is more than that now. Mr. Brush has promised to build a little house just opposite his house, across the road, and Joe is not to be paid wages, but to take the farm on shares. Plenty of people do that. Mr. Brush says he is his right-hand. Father will furnish our house—it will not take much. Perhaps some day Joe will have a farm of his own. My father had to earn his farm, and that’s why the mortgage isn’t off yet. Joe has saved some money, and so have I. Agnes Trembly will try to give me her customers when she is married; she always speaks a good word for me. I’ve made dresses for Mrs. Brush and Judith and Miss Marion.”

“And wrappers for me,” said Nettie.

“Yes, I shall always have you to make my fortune.”

“That is splendid, and I am so glad. But here’s my letter in the _Open Window_: do let me read it to you.”

Pet laughed, and listened. She believed Nettie liked the Shut-In Society as well as having a new little house and a husband. Nettie would have told her she liked it better.

While Pet slept her happy, healthful sleep that night, after her somewhat hurried two minutes of kneeling to pray, Nettie lay peacefully awake remembering the “requests for prayer” in her _Open Window_.

“Our prayers are earnestly asked for an aged man, who has lost the home of his childhood, that he may feel that God does it for the best and may love God. Also a lady whose life is very sad, that she may look up to God and rejoice in him.

“Pray for one who fears blindness, that if possible it may be averted, but if it must be, in the midst of darkness there may be the light of God’s countenance.

“Let us remember the sorrowing hearts from whom sisters or parents or children have been taken by death.

“One long a sufferer from disease, asks us to pray that if it be God’s will she may be healed.

“One who feels that answers to our prayers have been granted, asks that we still pray that the use of his limbs may be restored and that a beloved mother may long be spared to him.”

“One of our number writes, ‘Pray that father and the children may be saved and that mother and I love God better.’ It is hard sometimes for Christians so to live that unconverted members of the family be drawn by their lives toward Christ. This mother and daughter truly need our prayers.

“One of our band is trying to build up a church in a lonely spot. She asks us to pray God’s help for her.”

Nettie’s outing went out farther than anyone knew. She could tell about her gifts and her letters, but never about her intercession.

“I wonder,” she planned, “if I couldn’t have a little Fair; all the girls would do something; I have so little money to give. I couldn’t go—unless I have it in my room.”

She wanted to wake Pet to talk about it, but that would be selfish, and then—Pet might be cross.

She fell asleep beside the strong young girl who lent her life from her own vitality; the full, breathing lips, the warm cheeks, the head with its masses of auburn hair, the touch of the hand upon her own were all life giving. Nettie loved girls; the girls who were what she might have been.

Awaking out of restless sleep, she remembered the Midnight Circle to pray for the sleepless, and prayed: “Father, give them all sleep, if thou wilt; but, if thy will be not so, give them all _something better than sleep_.”

XXXIV. “SENSATIONS.”

“Being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

This same March night in the snow-storm the Bensalem preacher sat alone in his study among his books, with his thoughts among his people whom he loved.

Marion brought her work-basket and took her seat on the other side of the lamp. The evening’s mail was upon the table.

“What do the letters bring to-night, Roger?” she inquired in the tone of one hungry for news.

“Enough to stir us up for one while.”

“Good. I am always ready to be stirred up. I have been stagnant all day.”

“What a girl you are for wanting new sensations.”

“Aren’t you always after them?”

“No, they are always after me.”

“Which one is after you now?”

“Four.”