Part 4

Too startled to speak at first, she kept silent; then, too truthful to speak one word that she was not sure was true, and thinking that she hardly knew what it was to _be_ a Christian, she could not say “Yes”; not daring to say “No,” she stood silent.

“Pray for the Holy Spirit,” he said, moving away.

She knew how to pray; she had prayed all her life; but she had never once prayed for the Holy Spirit. She was afraid to do that.

What would happen to her if she did, she wondered, as she walked down the paved path to the gate; would a tongue of flame come down from heaven and settle on her head? Would she speak with tongues, right there, before them all, in the crowd? Would she heal the sick by prayer and anointing with oil? Would she pray in prayer-meeting, and go about from house to house talking about the Lord Jesus, whose dear, sacred name she seldom took upon her lips?

What a strange thing to say to a girl of thirteen!

There were no young disciples in the Bible; they were all grown up and old.

Just now all she wanted to do was to tell Jesus and his Father everything that troubled her, and everything she was glad of, and read the Bible, and,—“Come Judith,” interrupted Aunt Rody’s shrill voice. She sat on the back seat of the carriage with Aunt Rody; Mr. Brush sat alone on the front seat; Aunt Affy had not come to church to-day; it was her turn to stay at home.

Aunt Rody insisted that some one should always stay at home; there was the silver, and her will, and a great many other things to be guarded from Sunday marauders.

“Judith Grey Mackenzie,” began Aunt Rody, in her most revengeful voice, “you must behave in church or stay at home.”

“I was behaving—I read to help behave; when I cannot understand I think everyday thoughts; isn’t that worse than reading?”

“Nothing is so bad behaved as reading. And all the folks seeing you. What do you suppose the new minister thinks of you?”

“He thinks I am not—”

Her shy lips could not frame the words “a Christian.”

“Not very well brought up,” tartly finished Aunt Rody.

“I brought myself up, that’s the reason then,” replied Judith, her eyes filling with resentful tears. “Mother was always too sick. Cousin Don said my mother was the sweetest mother in the world.”

“You act like a sick mother; but you’ve got an aunt that isn’t sick; and if I ever see you read again in church you shall not go to church for six months. Tell your Cousin Don that.”

“I wouldn’t mind church,” replied Judith.

“To Sunday School then, if that hurts more.”

“Oh, tut, tut,” came good humoredly from the front seat. “Don’t forget your own young days, Rody.”

“I never had any. Just as I shall never have any old age. I’ve never had time to be young or old.”

Judith laughed. Aunt Rody was eighty-four years old.

“Don’t you deceive me about the book, Judith, for I don’t always go to church.”

“Aunt Rody,” with girlish dignity, “I never deceived any one in my life.”

“That’s a good deal to say.”

“I haven’t lived to be eighty-four, but I think I never _shall_ deceive. I would rather _die_ than not be true,” she burst out.

“H’m, you haven’t been tried.”

Judith thought she had; did not this grim, hard old woman try her every day of her life?

The long village street was lined with maples and locusts; inside the yards were horse-chestnut trees, lilacs, and syringas.

All over the beautiful country the fruit trees were in blossom; Judith revelled in the fragrance and delicate tints of the apple-blossom; she called it her apple-blossom spring.

The story and a half red farmhouse, with its slanting roof and long piazza, marked the “Sparrow place”; it had been the Sparrow place one hundred and fifty years. The red farmhouse was built one hundred years ago; the Sparrow girls, the eight sisters, were all born there long before many of the village people could remember.

As Judith stepped up on the piazza the bowed gray head at the window was lifted; the girl went to the open window and stood; Aunt Affy took off her spectacles and laid them in the book she was reading.

Judith thought Aunt Affy read but one book. How could anyone be wise and read only one book?

“Well, dear,” said Aunt Affy in her welcoming tones. To Aunt Affy Judith Grey Mackenzie was the sweetest picture of girlhood in all the world; she was as fresh as the dew, tinted like an apple-blossom, as natural as a wild rose. To everyone else she was a girl of thirteen, with the faults, the forgetfulness, the impetuosity, the thoughtlessness, and above all, the selfishness of girlhood. Her yellow hair fell in long curls to her waist, because her mother had loved it so; her eyes of deepest blue were frank and truth-telling; in her lips, flexible, yet strong, was revealed a world of loving; a world that she had not yet learned herself.

She was impatient, passionate, rebellious; but never was it in face, voice, or attitude when under the witchery of Aunt Affy’s appreciation.

“Aunt Affy, I’ve been wicked,” she confessed in a humiliated voice.

“So have I. I’ve been sitting here grumbling, when I should be the happiest old sinner in the world.”

“I’ve been wickeder than that.”

“How much wickeder?”

“I borrowed a Sunday-school book to take to church because I do not understand Mr. Kenney.”

“Did that help you understand him?”

“I did try at first,” Judith explained, laughing at Aunt Affy’s serious question, “but it was about the things in Revelation, the hard things—”

“Did he not say anything you _could_ understand?”

“No—” said Judith, thinking that his message to her, her own private message, was the hardest of all to understand.

“You were very rude.”

“How was it rude?” Judith questioned, surprised.

“He was speaking to you, and you refused to listen.”

“I was listening to someone else,” said Judith, troubled.

“That was more rude still. That was premeditated rudeness.”

“I hope he did not notice it.”

“You may trust him for that.”

“But I cannot tell him I am sorry; it would choke me to death.”

“And another thing—if he is Christ’s ambassador, and you refused to listen—”

The girl’s eyes filled, and her lips trembled; was it _that_ she had done?

“It’s time to set the table,” were Aunt Affy’s next words, in an unconcerned tone, polishing her glasses with a corner of her white apron. That small, clean old kitchen; how Judith loved it. She loved every kind of work that was done in it, even the wash-tubs, the smell of the suds was exhilarating, and baking and ironing days were her delight. Every nerve and muscle responded to the call to labor.

The south door opened on a flagged walk that led to Aunt Affy’s flower garden, the north door led you out into a deep, square, grassy yard, where the clothes were hung and bleached; a tall, shaggy pine stood sentinel at one side of the door, on the other side ran the bench upon which the milk-pans shone in a row; beyond the grass rose a stone wall, and then there were fields and woods; woods in which the thrush hid, and the whip-poor-will; a brook started from a spring in the woods and tumbled over the pebbles down into the meadows, then out, below the flower garden and across the road, where it was bridged with a stone arch.

In the kitchen was a brick oven, its iron door stood out black among the white-washed bricks; the uneven boards of the kitchen were always scrubbed clean, the stove was brushed into a shining blackness every day, the two tables were as spotless as sand, the scrubbing-brush and Aunt Affy’s strong hands could make them.

Out of the three windows were pictures of which the city-bred girl never wearied. Her apple-blossom spring was the spring of her new birth.

“Aunt Rody, please excuse me,” Judith said, rising from the dinner table.

“You haven’t eaten your custard, and you like it with crab-apple jelly.”

The yellow custard in the big coffee-cup with a broken handle, and the generous spoonful of jelly quivering on top was a temptation; she looked at it, then pushed it away. Nobody would ever know that she was punishing herself for being “rude” in church; it was easier to punish herself than to apologize to Mr. Kenney; and something had to be done.

“I want to study my Sunday-school lesson,” she evaded, and then her heart sank at her deception; she had not told Aunt Rody all the truth.

She fled into the parlor with a question from Aunt Rody pursuing her; her cheeks were burning, and she was trembling with shame and anger.

Why couldn’t Aunt Rody leave her alone? Sometimes she almost hated Aunt Rody. A corner of the stiff, long, horse-hair sofa was her retreat; it was often her retreat; she called it her valley of humiliation.

In her lesson to-day she found the loveliest thing. Aunt Affy was teaching her that the Bible was a treasure-house.

“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

All men know—just by loving—not by doing any great hard thing—by loving—but that was hard, if it meant bearing with Aunt Rody’s misunderstanding and sharpness and fault-finding, and being always on the watch to find evil in you.

But “all men know” was the comfort of it; she need not pray in prayer meeting as Miss Kenney did, nor do the wonderful things the disciples did; all men would know that she wanted to be a Christian, if she tried to be loving.

She repeated the words of Christ in a soft monotone, her small Bible in her hand, and her head pillowed on her hair on the hard sofa-arm.

Aunt Affy pushed the door wider and entered, bringing a glass half filled with crab-apple jelly.

“I saved your custard—it’s on the hanging shelf in the cellar,” she said, opening the door of the chimney cupboard to set the glass in its own space in the row of jelly glasses.

“Aunt Affy,” lifting her tumbled head, and with grave eyes asking her question: “what is—who is a disciple?”

“A disciple is one who learns. You are my disciple when you learn of me. The disciple of Christ is the man, or woman, or child who learns of him. When you are about the farm with Cephas, you are his disciple, in sewing and mending you are Aunt Rody’s, in housekeeping generally you are my disciple.”

Aunt Affy went out, and the tumbled head dropped back to the hard sofa-arm again. Would Christ let her be a “disciple” a little while, and then be a Christian when she grew up, she pondered.

She wanted to learn of him; she would read the Gospels through and through and through. She would learn them by heart. For her lesson to-day she would learn these seven verses he had spoken to his own, real, grown-up disciples.

That afternoon in Sunday-school, after the lesson was ended, the new minister left his class of boys and came to the pulpit stairs and stood and talked to the children; his opening sentence thrilled one small listener:—

“_The disciples were called Christians_ first at Antioch.”

If you were a disciple, only a disciple, learning and loving, you were called a Christian. Then he spoke of the Holy Spirit; he was the very heart and will of Christ; he spoke in a low, sweet voice to children, a constraining voice, making known the things Christ the Lord would have them do; he showed them the things of Christ.

Had she dared she would have stepped out of her pew and gone up the aisle to the new minister and told him that she _did_ want to be a Christian, and she would not be afraid to ask the Holy Spirit to tell her all the things Christ wanted her to do. Miss Kenney, her teacher and the minister’s sister, noticed the start and flush, the hesitancy, the eager look, as the minister came down the aisle and paused to speak to her girls; she saw Judith’s eyes drop as he took her hand, and then her shy withdrawal of herself.

Suddenly the girl turned, and with the flash of decision in her voice, said bravely, detaining the minister with her trembling little hand:—

“I am sorry I read in church this morning; I will never do it again, even if I don’t understand. Please excuse me.”

“I saw you,” he said, smiling, and taking the brave little hand into both his own; “I will try to talk to _you_ next Sunday. Thank you for the lesson.”

Then shy Judith slipped away, and never told even Aunt Affy that she had apologized to the new minister.

That evening in the twilight, sitting on the piazza alone, she wrote on the fly-leaf of her small Bible, in pencil:—

Judith Grey Mackenzie; A Disciple.

And the date, May 15, 18—.

She thought she would like to tell somebody that she was a disciple. But if they should ask how it happened, she could not tell. It had happened as still as a leaf fluttering in the wind, as softly as the apple-blossoms came; nobody could tell about that. She thought the Holy Spirit must know how it happened.

VIII. THIS WAY, OR THAT WAY?

“My times are in Thy hand, and Thou Wilt guide my footsteps at Thy will.”

It was six o’clock that May evening, and Joe was running away. He did not know he was running away. He had never been taught to read, and no one had ever told him a story, and his own experience of life was so limited, that he did not know that he was starting out in the world to find adventures, to find good or evil, to find a new life, and that new life, shaped more by what was inside of himself, than what was outside of himself. If the man who just passed him had asked him what he was doing, he would have said, had he not been overcome by one of his fits of shyness, that he was “gittin’ out.”

The air was damp, and sweet with the scent of blossoms. At his right ran a range of low hills, abrupt and green; at his left, as far as he could see, stretched the swamp, miles of meadow, over-flooded in the spring, waving with grass in the summer, and homely with unpainted one-story houses, and out-buildings in various stages of decay; it was a pasture land for the cattle of the farmers in the upland district, and Joe’s bare feet had trodden its miles morning and night ever since he had been old enough to drive the cows.

He went on slowly, with his hands in his pockets, too heavy-hearted to whistle, not thinking about anything, only feeling, with something in his throat that would not be swallowed down, miserable and defiant; remembering nothing in his past to regret not having learned that there was anything in his future to hope for, he was conscious only of something stirring within, stirring to action, to wideness, to freedom, and therefore he must “git out” to find it; therefore he was getting out.

His plan, if he had a plan, was to find a woman in the village who had once spoken kindly to him, and given him a huge slice of warm bread and butter; in the swamp he knew he might find work among the Germans, but the swamp was so lonely at night, and he did not like the ways of the Germans; in all the world he had but one friend, this woman who had spoken kindly to him.

She might not give him work, or a bed, but she would _look_ at him, as no one else ever looked, and she would speak kindly. The road over the hill drew his lagging feet, then he stood, hesitating, at the turn of the hill road and swamp road; the hill road led to people, and a church, a store, where boys and men gathered at night to read the newspaper, and smoke, and have fun; to the blacksmith’s shop, and, most of all, to the little house next door, where the woman lived who had cut that large slice across her big, hot loaf.

A German, in the swamp, had told him to come to him for a home and work, if he ever wanted to leave his place; work he must, and a home—the woman’s face came between him and the German, his heart began to beat very fast, he wondered why his heart beat so fast sometimes, and he took his life in his hands, and started on a run for the road over the hill, where was the only thing in the world that seemed like love, although of love he had never had one thought. Then he began to walk slowly again; he had decided there was no need of hurrying, there was no need of doing anything—he had never been given a reason for doing anything excepting that one or the other of the old men with whom he had lived all his remembered life bade him do it. He had done things because he was told; he did not know why, excepting that because he was told.

If he were being told now to run away, he did not know; he had never thought that he might tell himself to do things. Not for a moment did he believe that the two old men would take the trouble to look for him, or to wish him back; every day, one, or both, said to each other or to him that he was not worth his salt, and would never amount to anything; they must be glad he was gone. But the cows. They would be sorry, especially Beauty; one of the old men would milk her to-night, but they would not pat her and talk to her, and ask her if she were glad she was a cow and not a boy, and was worth her salt, and all her feed beside; she had no friend but him, and she would look around for him with her big eyes; again he stood hesitating—Beauty wanted him—his tears fell fast; but he must go on, he wanted something better than Beauty.

So he went on down the hill, past the pretty parsonage and the church—wondering, if he had no place to sleep, if he might sleep in the church; then past the school-house, with its large play-ground, and turned by the liberty-pole, and walked very slowly along the street until he reached the blacksmith’s shop, and there, in the doorway of the small house, stood the woman looking for him.

“Why, Joe, what are you doing here at milking time?” she asked in a brisk tone, as the boy stopped before the gate.

“I’m done milking for them two old men,” he said, in a voice he tried hard to make brave. “Chris and Sam don’t want me any longer; I’m gittin’ out.” And then, big boy as he was, feeling lost in a strange world, he began to cry.

“There! there! Sonny,” soothed the voice, changing from its briskness into sympathy, as the woman stepped down the three steps; “Come and eat supper with me; I know what I’ll do with you. I’m glad you happened to come along this way.”

Pushing open the gate, she laid her hand on his arm and drew him into the house by his soiled and ragged sleeve.

“We don’t want a boy, haven’t work enough; but I know somebody who does, late in the season as it is. Mr. Brush, Mr. Cephas Brush, he farms the Sparrow place, you know; while he was waiting at the shop this very morning, he came to the well for a drink, and I went out to give him a glass so he needn’t drink out of that rusty tin cup, and he asked me if I knew where he could find a boy. His boy went off in March. _He’s_ a good master, and that’s a good home; Miss Affy is like a mother to every stray thing and you won’t mind if Miss Rody does scold, she never means any harm. I’ll take you down there right after supper. Mr. Evans had his early because he wanted to go to town, and I was feeding my chickens, two hundred and five now,—Nettie puts down every new brood in a book—and couldn’t stop to eat. I didn’t think I was going to have company for supper. Nettie had hers earlier than usual because she was tired, and wanted to go to bed.” She pulled him through the narrow hall as she talked, Joe, once in a while, giving a quick, hard sob, and opened the door into the tiny kitchen.

The tea-kettle on the stove was singing a cheery welcome, the white cloth and pink dishes on the round table in the centre of the room gave him another welcome, and the touch and tone of the woman who had been kind to him brought him the cheeriest welcome of all, as she pushed him down into the chair opposite her own at the table, saying: “I know what men’s cooking _is_, and I know you are half-starved. Who made the bread?”

“I got that at the store.”

“You had potatoes, of course.”

“Oh, yes, and fried pork, lots of it, and pan-cakes. My! can’t Chris make good pan-cakes!”

“Can he?” inquired Mrs. Evans, doubtfully, taking the tea-pot off the stove and setting it on the table.

“Now, here’s hot fried potatoes for you, and good bread and butter, and a big saucer of rice pudding—Mr. Evans is _never_ tired of rice pudding,—and sponge cake that little Judith brought to Nettie to-day because it is her own baking. Nettie took a bite and said I must put the rest on the supper-table. And you can have tea or milk, or both.”

After bustling about in the shed, Mrs. Evans seated herself at the table opposite her guest.

“Who would have thought I was going to eat supper with you, Joe? The world does turn on its axis once every twenty-four hours, and unexpected things do happen. I’ll tell Nettie all about it tomorrow; it will make a happening in her poor little life.”

Joe gave her a shy, quick glance, then bowed his head; some time, somewhere, not with the old men, certainly, he had bowed his head and said something at the table; he did not remember where it was, or what words he said, or why he said anything at all, but the pretty tea-table, or the savory food reminded him of a life he had once lived; he listened for a chorus of voices:—

“For what we are about to receive—receive—truly thankful.”

It was like music in the boy’s heart; he lifted his head with a light shining in his tear-blurred eyes.

“Well, I never,” ejaculated Mrs. Evans.

The boy held his knife and fork with a grace her husband had not acquired, taking his food as slowly and daintily as a girl.

“Those Tucker men, that old Chris and Sam have no claim on you, and they haven’t done as well by you as they promised they would when they took you, a little fellow, out of the Christie Home. I’ve often spoken to Mr. Evans about it, but he’s so easy going I might as well have talked to the wind. I told our new minister that he must ‘high-way and hedge’ you; he has noticed you; but he is feeling his way among the people, and couldn’t make a stir as soon as he came.”

“Is _that_ where I was?” asked astonished Joe. “I thought I used to be somewhere. _They_ never told me. I seem to remember things that happened before I can remember. They told me that I hadn’t any father or mother, and wouldn’t have any home if they had not taken me in.”

“People thought you ought to be sent to school and Sunday-school, but what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business. I’m glad enough you have left them, but you should have told them you wanted to leave.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” he muttered “they wouldn’t have said anything.”

“Now, I’ll put out the cat, and leave the table standing, and bolt the shed door, and lock the front door, and put on my things, and we’ll be off. Nettie is fast asleep and will never miss me.”

“I will wash the dishes for you; we put them under the pump, then wipe them on anything.”

“That wouldn’t suit me, thank you,” laughed Mrs. Evans; “you can hoe corn better than wipe dishes, and Mr. Brush has acres and acres of corn to hoe, and potatoes too: he’s making that old Sparrow farm pay.”

Joe did not know that he had been lost, but he began to feel very much found.

“I’m glad you went out to the well with that glass,” he said, as his hostess wrapped a shawl about her shoulders and tied the blue ribbons of a blue wool hood under her chin.

“I’m usually glad of kind things I do; I suppose that’s one reason I do them.”

Joe unlatched the gate, holding it open for her to pass through, then pushed it shut; Beauty and this woman seemed to belong to the same order of creaturehood; the woman’s eyes were like Beauty’s, soft, and big and brown, and _they answered you_. She took his hand and drew it under her arm in a sort of comradeship, and then they went on, the woman and the boy, to find the gate that would swing open into a world of which it had never entered the boy’s heart to dream.

The gate was shut and a man in shirt-sleeves with a pipe in his mouth was standing on the mysterious and happy side of it resting his elbows on the pickets, and, attracted by voices, looking up the road in the starlight towards the two figures.

“You stay here, Joe—that’s Mr. Brush. I’ll tell him all your story.”

“My story?” repeated Joe, in amazement.