She looked at her watch as they were coming down the stairs at last from a survey of the upper stories and the amazing wealth of luxuries that had been flung at her feet.
“But, Adrian,” she exclaimed, “look what time it is. I must get back. I told you I had things to do today.”
“Yes,” said Adrian calmly. “We’re getting back all in due time. First we’re taking lunch at the country club nearby, and then we’ll talk about going back.”
In troubled silence, she succumbed. She had promised to go to Mrs. Gray’s, and she didn’t like the idea of disappointing her, but she must handle this matter in a manner that would not bring her trouble later. She must show Adrian that she was in earnest. She must finish the matter once and for all.
But Adrian said nothing more about marrying until they had finished lunch. Laurel had tried to be as pleasant as possible so that he would have nothing to blame her for.
And at last, when he saw her begin to gather up her things and put on her gloves, Adrian spoke, as if he had never left off the one topic that had been in their minds all the time. “Laurel,” he said “you’ve changed. What’s happened to you?”
“Changed?” said Laurel. “Yes, perhaps I have.” She looked at him thoughtfully. “Yes, something has happened to me. I didn’t think it showed on me—not yet!”
He studied her again, almost alarmed now. She was going to admit it. That looked sort of hopeless. “What is it, Laurel?”
She was still a minute, and then she looked up with a sudden blaze of light in her face. “Why, I’ve accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior, and it’s changed a lot of things in me. It’s made things clear in my mind that have been sort of muddled for a long time.”
He looked down at her for a moment with amazed disgust, and then he said with a new kind of contempt in his voice, “You don’t mean you’ve turned religious on me, do you? Good night! It is as bad as that? Well, I only know one thing. You ought to see a psychiatrist at once before this thing sets in and gets a stranglehold on you. You don’t want to lose your mind, do you?”
Laurel smiled. “Oh, there’s no danger of that,” she said almost eagerly. “I was never so happy in my life. I’m sorry for you because I can see you don’t understand, but perhaps someday you will, and now, Adrian, please take me back. I really must go at once. I’m going to be late for something I had planned to do.”
“Do you actually mean that you want to leave this house and go back to that terrible boardinghouse where I found you?” His eyes were so utterly unbelieving that she had to laugh.
“Oh, that boardinghouse is rather terrible, I know,” she admitted. “I mean to get a better place as soon as I have time to look around. And your gorgeous house is marvelous. It isn’t that I don’t like it. But it is not for me. It is not where I belong, and I must go back to my work and to the place God has shown me He would like to have me stay for the present at least.”
Adrian scarcely spoke all the way back, and he drove like an express train, with a stern, disapproving look on his handsome face. Somehow it did not depress Laurel as it might have done, for she was thinking of other things and preparing a pleasant little speech of thanks for him when he would be leaving her.
But Adrian was planning how he would go straight to Cousin Carolyn and beseech her to get Laurel to a psychiatrist as soon as possible before this thing went any further.
Chapter 14
There was a light on Laurel’s face during that drive home that Adrian couldn’t understand. He watched her furtively a good part of the time and tried to think what caused it. She didn’t seem depressed as he felt she should since she had turned fanatic. She seemed really happy, and her eyes were glad eyes.
As they approached the town of Carrollton and Laurel caught the light of the setting sun on Crimson Mountain, something flared in her face like sudden joy as if she really loved that town, and Adrian asked her suddenly, “Who lives in this town that makes you so fond of it?”
She turned with a bright smile. “Oh, there’s no one much here that I really know,” she said. “Just a few old friends of my mother’s. And the old home is here where I was brought up. I’m teaching in the same school I attended as a child. It’s rather interesting. But there’s nothing in the town itself to draw me, of course. There are pleasant memories; otherwise any other town of this size and style might have been as pleasant a background for my first job.”
“Well, then I cannot understand it,” said the young man in his most displeased tone of voice. “There certainly must be something behind all this. I cannot think that just a sudden spurt of religion is responsible for what you have done, turning away from my offer of a happy and luxurious life. You certainly must have lost your head over something.”
“No,” said Laurel, suddenly sober. “I haven’t lost my head. I have just come back to the things my mother and father taught me. And please, Adrian, don’t think me unappreciative of the honor you have done me in asking me to marry you. I do understand what it means, and I am grateful to you for the lovely day you planned for me, the marvelous house you offer me as a home, and the position you offer me in the world. You have been most kind and pleasant to me since I have known you. I am only sorry to have to disappoint you for the reasons I have tried to make plain to you. I do not love you in the way a woman should love the man she is to marry, and I do not feel that we could ever agree in our ways of looking at life. I would never be willing to give up what I feel is right, and you would never be willing to acknowledge that there is such a thing as right and wrong in this world. Now, please understand that this is final, and let us not have to talk about it anymore. Let us be friends and not enemies, please. And I thank you for the pleasant day.”
He had stopped the car by the roadside. He looked down at her and was still a long time, studying her. At last he said in a stern, cold voice, “Very well, we’ll talk no more about this. But I want you to understand that I am not giving up! I mean to marry you. I can wait, and I expect to see you change your mind when you get over this fit of fanaticism. But just to humor you in what seems to be your chief objection to me, that you think I do not love you, I will tell you that I am actually very fond of you. And that I am looking forward to growing more and more fond of you as the years go by.”
Laurel’s chin lifted in a quick, challenging motion. “I’m sorry that you take that attitude,” she said gently. “I am sure I shall not feel differently. I have been looking into my own heart and life, and I am seeing things very clearly. I have nothing but friendliness for you, but I know that your standards and mine are utterly at variance, and I have no desire to be at war with my conscience from this time forth, not even if I were to gain the whole world as represented by that lovely home you have been showing me today. And now, will you please drive me to my boarding place?”
In utter silence, with an almost stony face, he drove her to the ugly house where she was staying and helped her to get out. Then he lifted his hat, said a cold good-bye, got into his car, and sped away. Just once he turned back and looked at that big, ugly, shabby house, with the girl he wanted mounting the steps. It was unbelievable that her devotion to anything could make her choose a life at that Carrollton boardinghouse over a life in the suburban mansion he had been showing her. It was incredible! She must be crazy! And yet her eyes were clear. She looked perfectly calm and sane! Poor kid! She was in earnest. Well, perhaps a psychiatrist could bring things out straight for her. He must go and see her cousin Carolyn tonight and see if she couldn’t do something about it. He didn’t intend to give that girl up. Even in her stubbornness, she had been most charming, had more appeal than any girl he knew. Her eyes were so very blue, and if she could just get rid of those fanatical ideas of hers, she would be a peach.
So he drove away, past gorgeous old Crimson Mountain, and never even noticed it.
But about that time, Carl Byrger was climbing Crimson Mountain in company with two rough-looking fellows, newly arrived, who had been staying
in the third floor back of Mrs. Price’s boardinghouse, and then been called off to be shown some strategic points of the place where they had come to labor. Their names were Gratz and Schmidt.
Laurel went flying up the stairs. At last, at last she could read her letter!
She locked her door, flung her hat and coat on the bed, sat down by the window, pulled out her letter, and read:
Dear Laurel:
Now that I am so far away from you, it fills me with a sense of great daring to be calling you by that lovely name, so intimately. It seems that somehow I must have dreamed all our sweet converse together and am presuming to go on daring to claim a right to address you in this way. It seems as if it cannot be true that I have ever dared to hold your dear hand or touch your lips with mine or tell you that I love you. A thing so wonderful cannot really have happened to me. I must be dreaming still.
Suddenly Laurel put her head down and brushed away the two happy tears that had jumped out upon her unawares, before she could go on reading.
It was a very precious letter, all too short. She read it over and over again, thrilling anew at the sweet memories of those precious hours when he was with her, thrilling at the thought that those memories were staying with him also.
Then suddenly she remembered her engagement with Mrs. Gray, for which she was already late, and jumping up, she began hastily to get ready, her face still glorified with her joy over the letter.
As she turned her car toward Mrs. Gray’s, she was thinking of her letter, and scraps of it ran through her mind, each phrase a delight. She had never known it would be like this when she would come to love someone.
Then it came to her that Adrian could never inspire in her the joy and delight that this stranger had brought. Not with all his wealth and station. How different her day would have been if it had been Pilgrim who had taken her to see a house he had prepared for her!
She almost felt a pang of pity for Adrian Faber. He had tried to plan a pleasant time. He had seemed to care. And yet even his attempt to offer a line of affection had not rung true—“I am actually very fond of you.” Ah! How different that was from “I love you.”
Then another sobering thought came to her.
He had asked her who was in that town that made her want to stay there. Well, there was no one here, but Phil Pilgrim had been here. It was her experience with him that had made her know with entire surety what love could be and had helped her to clarify matters in her own mind and to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she did not love Adrian Faber. But this was not anything she could have told Adrian. His case had to be dealt with alone. If Adrian were the only man on the earth who admired her, she would not want to marry him. And it was no fault of Phil Pilgrim’s that she felt so. It was simply that in Phil Pilgrim she had seen what a man could be, and she could never accept anything less than that for herself.
“Now, forget it!” she ordered herself as she arrived at Mrs. Gray’s door. “I have told Adrian I could not love him, so why do I have to worry about it anymore? I will ask my new Lord Jesus to settle this thing for me in the right way. He can protect me against plans and schemes of those who want to order my life for me.”
Adrian had said he was going to Cousin Carolyn to talk about a psychiatrist. Well, Cousin Carolyn might come down to see her and make things unpleasant for her of course, but she had no real authority over her and could do absolutely nothing. Laurel was of age now, and her own mistress. She must not be afraid of Cousin Carolyn. She had a Lord who would protect her, and she would stay where she was and not yield to their persistence. She would not go riding or walking or partying or anywhere else with Adrian Faber again, no matter what excuses he made to get her consent!
Then she walked into Mrs. Gray’s house smiling and hugging to her heart the thought of Phil Pilgrim’s letter.
“Oh, my dear! I’m so glad you’ve come. I had almost given up on you!” exclaimed Mrs. Gray.
“I’m so sorry!” said Laurel. “I had promised to do something this morning, and I had no idea it was going to take me so long. I’m afraid I’ve hindered you a lot. Perhaps you wanted to go somewhere. If you did, won’t you let me take you there now?”
“Oh no, child! I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was just disappointed to lose the time with you. And now to make up, I’m going to keep you all the evening, and we’ll have a real time together. Unless, of course, you have some other engagement for the evening. I must remember that I’m an old woman and you’re a young one, and I mustn’t barge in on your engagements.”
“Please don’t feel that way.” Laurel smiled. “I would rather be with you this evening than anywhere I could go, and I’m going to enjoy you a lot as a friend if you’ll let me.”
“Let you? Of course I will,” said the little lady, pulling up a rocking chair beside a table where an open Bible lay across a big concordance. “Now, suppose you tell me what it was you wanted to know about the Bible. What has been troubling you?”
“Oh, there is so much I don’t know where to begin,” sighed Laurel.
“Well, you should have a regular Bible course,” the lady said, smiling, “but since you are teaching and probably have a pretty stiff course to get acquainted with at present, I suppose that won’t be possible for you to arrange just now. But I would suggest that you join our Tuesday night class. You can’t have a better teacher. He comes down from the city every Tuesday and returns that night, and he is connected with the big Bible Institute there. It’s marvelous that we are able to get him.”
“Oh, where does the class meet?”
“Right here in my house, my dear. We felt a good many might come to a class in a private home who would not come to our chapel because it is undenominational, and some of them have been made to feel that that is a wicked thing. So, for the present, we are meeting in these two rooms. Now, shall we get to work? Would you like me to run over the work we have had in our class so far this fall?”
“I certainly would,” said Laurel.
“Well, that’s nice,” said Mrs. Gray. “I only wish Phil Pilgrim were nearby and could run in and study with us.”
“Yes,” said Laurel, her cheeks getting pink, “wouldn’t that be nice!”
Then they settled down to work.
Laurel was fascinated with the lesson as Mrs. Gray made it plain to her, and when they finally put aside their study and went out to the pretty kitchen to get ready the nice supper that had been cooking in the oven while they worked, Laurel thought what a pleasant home this was and what a dear friend she had found.
“This is going to be wonderfully interesting to me,” Laurel said eagerly as they sat down to the little round table with its appetizing meal. “And here’s a question that has come to me several times since we were here last Sunday. Tell me, what happens if we fall away from the Lord after we have accepted Him? Does that disqualify one from salvation?”
“My dear, no! A soul that is once saved is saved. The Lord never lets go of His own. We can have perfect assurance of that. ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death unto life.’ Those are Jesus’ own words.”
Laurel’s eyes opened wide. “Judgment!” she said. “Do you mean we don’t have to come to judgment? But I always supposed that everybody had to be at the Judgment and give account of all the sins they have committed while they lived.”
“No, dear. No judgment for your sins, because they have already come to judgment in Jesus’ death. If you have accepted Christ as your Savior, then your sins were judged in Him as He took your punishment for you on the cross. There is a judgment later when rewards are given for the way we have lived the Christian life after we were saved, but it has nothing to do with being saved. It is not a judgment of sin.”
“Why, Mrs. Gray, that is wonderful! I wonder if many people know that.”
“Yes, they ought to. People who study their Bibles should.”
“Then i
f we sin after we are saved, it doesn’t undo what Christ did for us?”
“No, dear. Of course we still have that old sinful nature and will have while we live on this earth, but Christ died for our sin. His death covered all our sin—past, present, and future. All the sin you did commit, all the sin you are committing today, and all the sin you will commit. He took it all upon Himself. You’ll find a great deal about that in the sixth chapter of Romans. We’ll look at it after supper.”
Laurel looked amazed and puzzled. “It is wonderful,” she said. “I never knew there were deep things like that in the Bible. Answers to all the questions and troubles that come to us.”
They had a delightful evening, going into this and that question, as Laurel came up against new things that she had never understood.
She went home rather late and slipped in the side door and up to her room without meeting anyone, for which she was glad. But when she unlocked her door and stepped into her room, shutting the door silently, she heard voices just outside her window, on the upper porch, where usually no one went.
Carl Byrger and the new men, Armand Gratz and Godfrey Schmidt, had come back to the house a little before the bell rang for the evening meal and were given places in the far dining room. Mrs. Price always did her best to seat her boarders with regard to social position. The front dining room was pretty well filled up with what she considered “the elite.” Laurel Sheridan was obviously in the most desirable seat in the front dining room.
But Laurel Sheridan of course was not at dinner that night and did not see any of the new people who had come to the house while she was gone.
Gratz and Schmidt were neither of them troubled by self-effacementor shyness. They considered that anything in the house was theirs by rights. Weren’t they paying their board like anybody else? So they had no sooner mounted to their small third-story room after dinner than they slowly drifted about the third floor taking in all its few points, trying all the doors, opening one that was not locked, just to find out if there were better rooms than the one that had been assigned to them. They examined the articles left in the unlocked room then went back to their own room, looked out the window, and discovered the uncovered porch down below them. They decided that would be a good place to sit, so they put on sweaters and descended the stairs. After mulling about a bit, they found the door to the porch and, marching in, took possession of the three rickety chairs that had been out there all summer. It was just about the time that Laurel walked into her room and shut her door.