"Perhaps you haven't got the reason for being happy," suggested Bruce with a gentleness in his voice.
She looked up puzzled.
"Perhaps you don't know their Lord Jesus," he went on. "You see, it's that that makes them happy, not earthly circumstances. They didn't look happy because they have nice homes and rich friends, and a lot of money, nor even because they were getting their own way. They looked happy because they have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, and they know their sins are forgiven. They are living and rejoicing in eternity, not in this little space of life they are living down here."
"Oh!" she said faintly. "No, I don't know anything about that. Do you believe all that they were saying? You sang as if you did, but I thought maybe you were just singing and didn't really mean it."
"Oh, yes, I meant it. I meant every word I sang. I accepted the Lord Jesus several years ago, when your brother led me to Him, and I've been happy ever since just because I'm saved, and because I expect to spend eternity in heaven with my Lord, and the dear ones who love Him."
"And is it real to you all the time? Don't you ever get away from it all, and forget it, and do the way other men do?"
"I'm not perfect, if that's what you mean. But no, I don't forget. I'm as conscious of the Lord Jesus all the time as I ever was of my friends around me. When you get to be God-conscious, every hour is pervaded with Him, and when you go away and feel He would not like to have you go, you are grieved and want Him to forgive you."
"Don't you ever drink?" asked Coralie sharply.
"No!"
"Because if you drink you couldn't be God-conscious all the time. If you were drunk you wouldn't know what you thought."
He gave her a curious pitiful look.
"If you knew and loved the Lord Jesus you wouldn't ever be drunk. You wouldn't want to lose that God-consciousness."
She studied the thought a moment.
"I don't suppose I ever really liked to get drunk and do foolish things, but then when everybody else does it, what can you do?"
"Why, do differently. Why should you be a fool just because everybody around you is? But, you know, everybody else doesn't do it. There are a great many people who never touch liquor."
She looked up at him thoughtfully.
"I don't believe my father ever got drunk."
"I'm sure he didn't. He was a wonderful man. I'm sure he never took liquor."
"Perhaps if I'd been brought up by him I never would have touched it, either."
"I'm sure you wouldn't."
"Did you know him?"
"Yes. I knew him and admired him greatly."
"Well, I wasn't brought up by him, so what can I do?"
"Why you can act the way you think he would have brought you up, if you want to, can't you?"
"Goodness! What would everybody say if I should?"
"Would that matter?"
"Oh! Wouldn't it? They could make it unpleasant."
"Yes? Well, don't they make it unpleasant for you when they get drunk sometimes? Or, don't they? Perhaps you like the way they act when they are not quite themselves."
"No, I don't. Not when I haven't been drinking myself. I hate them all."
"And yet you put yourself in a class with them! That seems funny to me."
"It is funny, isn't it?" She was silent for a minute, and then with a shrugging of her shoulders and a flinging out of her free hand she said lightly: "Oh, well, what's the use? I couldn't ever be anything worthwhile when I was traveling along with the rest. It isn't in me. And I couldn't go a place like that alone."
"But you wouldn't have to go it alone, you know. One would go with you, if you really started out on that road."
She looked up at him wonderingly.
" 'One'?"
"Yes. The Lord Jesus. If you really took Him for your Savior, you know, He would never leave you."
"That seems strange," she said meditatively. "But I don't think He'd like the company. No, I'd have to leave them. I'd have to go off away from them." She seemed very positive about it.
"Maybe that was what you were meant to do," he said gravely. "You know He has said that we must come out from among unbelievers. We must be separate."
She looked almost frightened at that.
"I wouldn't know how to manage," she said. "Lisa would never stand for my going. And besides, I think she's got my money all tied up so that I couldn't get it."
"Well, you know those things don't count. If you want to go God's way He will make things plain and clear for you. You may have some hard things to bear. But there is always peace and joy when you are in the way with Him. Besides, you only have to go a step at a time. The first step is to take Him for your Savior."
She shook her head positively.
"I wouldn't know how," she said decidedly.
"The way is very plain. Any one of those young Christians you saw tonight could tell you. God's word makes it quite clear."
"Would you tell me how, sometime?" she asked after a moment of silence. "I won't promise I'll do anything about it, but I'd like to understand it."
"Yes, I will gladly tell you," he said.
They had come to a halt before the big old-fashioned house where the Shannons lived, and there was no more opportunity to talk.
"All right. That's a promise. We'll fix a time, and I'll ask a lot of questions."
"Well, I'm going to begin to pray for you tonight," said Bruce.
Then they went in with the rest and found the father had built up a fire in the fireplace and the flames were crackling and snapping cheerily. The mother was there, and the children were there, having just finished their school homework. The piano was there and Valerie soon took her place at it, but to Coralie's amazement, when she began to play it was not jazz. If it had been her crowd, and these young people were anything like all them, they would have been in a wild whirl of dancing at once, but these young people seemed to have no such thought.
Coralie sank into a chair, after the introductions, and stared around. She stared most at the gentle-faced mother and tried to think of Lisa being a woman like that. That sunny look of real love in her eyes! Lisa didn't have it in her. When she tried to conjure her face she could see only the hard steely glitter she wore when she found fault, as when she had railed out at her that morning Dana had come to see them, because she cried. Lisa was hard. Could Lisa ever have been a mother like that? Or was she born hard and selfish? Oh, she was beautiful of course, and that went a great way to make people selfish. But was Lisa born selfish so she couldn't help it? Or did she go to work and make herself selfish by always trying to get her own way?
She pondered this till Mr. Shannon came into the room again with an armful of wood for the fire, and then she saw Kirk and Kendall both spring up to take it from him and make him sit down beside the fire. It gave her a glimpse of what an unselfish, loving family could be, and she watched them all enviously. Then she studied the quiet, pleasant-faced father, whose interest seemed to be bound up in them all. Would her father have been like that? What a pleasant life it must be to live in a home with a father and mother like that. Oh, why couldn't Lisa have been like this Shannon mother and stayed in her home and brought up her children and made life happy for them?
Turla and Leith came in presently with little frosted cakes, a platter of fudge, and a great tray of glasses of lemonade. What fun it was! Nobody asked for anything stronger, nor seemed to want it! And not a soul of all those girls and boys were smoking! It was incredible! Could it be possible that none of them ever smoked? Oh surely they must do it on the sly! Yet these young people did not look as if they ever did anything on the sly.
Norah had grown sleepy. She curled down on the floor on the other side of her mother with her head in her mother's lap and went to sleep. The mother's arm went sweetly around her. How would it have been to be little and sheltered that way? To have grown up in such an atmosphere?
They made Dana sing some more, and then they all sang, several
Scotch songs the grandmother called for, for she, too, had drifted down the stairs and sat in her sheltered rocker near the fire. The father called for some Irish melodies. And by and by they came back to sweet old hymns again.
Only they were not old to Coralie. They were so new she didn't even know they were hymns till she caught a word or two about the Lord and guessed it.
Before midnight they said good night. Wistfully with a backward glance Coralie went out with Bruce and Dana into the clear starlit night again.
"Lovely household, wasn't it?" said Bruce as they waited for Dana who had stepped back with Valerie for a moment to find a piece of music he had promised to learn.
"Yes," sighed Coralie, "but it isn't a bit like my household. You can't think how different it is!"
"Every household is not alike," said Bruce, wisely feeling his way. "Yours would be different, of course."
"Yes, and how!" said the girl with a sigh.
"Oh, but the Lord is able to make beauty and peace abound wherever He goes," he said, smiling down at her.
"I'd like to see Him try it in ours!" she said almost fiercely. "The very devil is to pay there."
"Oh, he's everywhere, doing his best, but he isn't as strong as the Lord. Why don't you try letting Christ come into your household through you, and see what He would do? He is able to save the uttermost, you know."
Then Dana came running down the steps and there was no further opportunity to answer. So Coralie walked along between the two, measuring her steps by theirs, listening to their quiet converse concerning a world about which she knew nothing. Now and then she caught a look on her brother's face that she knew her own face could have carried if it only had the same knowledge and feeling. And then she would steal a glance at his friend. He wore no hat, and his red hair shone coppery in the starlight. She liked the way he smiled and the quick way he looked up in response to something Dana had said, and the way that heavy wave of red hair fell across the whiteness of his forehead.
Then as they neared her home she thought of the sharp contrast of Errol's heavy face, small dull eyes, colorless hair, and the silly look on his drunken face. That was the way she would find him if she were to go into the rooms where they were amusing themselves now. And they would cry out upon her and want to know where she had been. If she should dare to tell them she had been to a prayer meeting how they would laugh and mock her, and refuse to believe her!
But she did not mean to go in there. She would slip into the kitchen area at the back and up the back stairs to her room. She would lock herself in and not appear at all. She could not face them. She would not. She wanted to keep the beautiful vision of that sweet home and family in her heart and memory. She wanted to get into her bed with the pretty starlight coming in on the crisp night air, and read the whole wonderful evening over like a book, letting it thrill her again if it could. That would prove that it was real and not just a fantasy.
She would not turn on her light in her room. She would undress in the dark, and then she would lie down and go step by step through that evening again. She would review every look and word and action. She would study the face of that young man who had walked by her side and looked down at her as he talked. She would study it as she could not study it in reality lest he might see her doing it, and think into her thoughts and know how she had been moved by him. She wanted to think it all out. To hear her brother's voice singing those strange stirring words, and hear that other voice, too, and think of that girl at the piano. How sweet and strong she looked! She would like to know that girl better, but probably there would be no further opportunity, though she had asked her to come again.
No, she did not mean to go into the orgy that Lisa was carrying on, not tonight; she meant to stay by herself.
So when they reached the apartment building she took things in her own hands.
"You're not to go up with me," she said firmly to Dana. "Lisa is having a party up there and you wouldn't fit."
She saw by the quick glance of anxiety that passed between the two that they were instantly worried about her.
"Do you?" asked Dana with a keen glance into her sweet young face.
"Perhaps!" said Coralie with an inscrutable look. "I don't know yet. It's all I've ever known, you know. But don't worry. I'm not going in tonight. I'm going up the back way, and nobody will know I'm home. I want to get by myself and think it all over, and see where I do belong!"
Then suddenly she turned to them, gave a little impish grin, and blew them a kiss on the tips of her fingers, comically.
"Couldn't we--help you?" asked Dana, looking up at the lighted windows anxiously.
"Yes," said Bruce. "Let us go up with you."
"Not on your life!" said Coralie. "That would bring them all down upon me. I'm just going in this lower door and up the back way. The butler's always ready to cover my tracks. Good night! See you again soon."
She half turned and then flashed back again.
"Oh, I forgot. Dana, Lisa wants to see you sometime. Business, I guess. She didn't say what. Morning would be best. Not earlier than eleven. That's what I came to tell you anyway."
"Oh, but you said you wanted to talk," said Dana. "We can walk back to the park, or stop in the parlor of a hotel," he suggested. "I completely forgot what I promised."
"It's all right," said the girl. "It will do another day. Tonight was perfect, and there might not be another such. Good-bye!"
She flashed around the angle of the basement door and was gone. Dana tried the door to follow her but found she had locked the dead bolt and it was useless, so after lingering a little they went slowly on toward home.
Chapter 9
Coralie carried out her plan of undressing in the darkness with a locked door. Lying in her bed with the starlit windows opposite her, she stared at the square of dimness and tried to think her life through.
Never before had she come face-to-face with realities as she had this evening. She had been dissatisfied and unhappy ever since she could remember. There had been nothing to tie to, nothing really to care about except herself, and mostly herself could not satisfy. It had never occurred to her that she had had any part in this unhappiness. It had all seemed to be thrust upon her by some unkind power, mostly through other people who would not do what she wanted them to do. She had fretted and fumed but had never arrived at any solution. She had even blamed her lazy, selfish mother, but it did no good. And she had never really loved anyone. Oh, a dog or a kitten perhaps, when she was little, but then they, too, disappointed her, for when she handled them roughly they died. She had never had any impression of anyone loving her. Human love had meant to her a matter of what you could get out of anyone for the least you could give.
And now this other kind of love--was it God's love?--had come into notice as something of an entirely different nature. Something intrinsically rare. Something that could make a young man look as her new brother looked, and could touch the strong, virile nature of a man like her brother's friend, Bruce Carbury. Love could be something tender and precious. She had seen it in his eyes. She had felt it in the touch of his hand when he laid it over hers for that brief instant of sympathy. It wasn't a fleshy thing, a love like that. It was of the spirit, though Coralie had never before been conscious that flesh and spirit were not one and the same. Now, however, she saw it dimly, and she perceived that others had seen it, too.
There was the whole family of Shannons, father, mother, and all the children. They all had such love for one another. Not for anything each could get out of the other. Just for enjoying the preciousness of each other. Maybe a love like that had been what she had been longing for all her life, vaguely reaching after, thinking that perhaps it might be found somewhere. Yet the yearning was so indefinite that there had been nothing but restlessness concerning it in her mind.
She had never had much faith in married love because of what her mother had done, but seeing those two married lovers at Shannons had given her a different view entirely. It seemed
that two people could go all their days, through hardships, and trials, and perplexities, and yet bear that tender relationship in spite of it all, still look at each other with that almost worship in their eyes. Ah, to be married, like that, to one who loved you so, that would be as near perfection as one could hope ever to get on this earth!
But--and she gave a little shiver--to be married to a man like Errol Hunt--! That, ah, that would be like hell!
She could dimly hear his irrational stuttering voice. She knew just how he looked when he talked like that. He was very drunk indeed!
And now he was calling her name. "Corinne! Co–rinne! Hey, Rinny, where are you? Why'n ya come when I call ya?"
She gave a great shudder beneath the bedclothes. Oh, if she were out there he would be offensively near her. He would be trying to put his arms around her, drawing her head down on his flabby shoulder, trying to kiss her with his thick red lips. She could almost feel the hotness of his breath in her face now, the rankness of the liquor he had drunk. Once he had attempted a caress when he was drunk and she had not had even a glass. The memory of it filled her with horror. Perhaps he had often kissed her like that when she had been drinking herself, and it had made no impression on her memory. But now she was filled with disgust at herself that she ever could have been willing to put herself into a condition where he could dare to be affectionate. Oh, how she hated him! A silly beast! That was what he was.
And it was the memory of that one time when she was herself, and hated his intimate touch on her lips, her hands, her shoulders, that had lingered with her and made her loathe the very thought and sight of him. Made her feel that she would rather die than marry him; though the thought of death was fearful to her.
Vaguely, dimly, now his voice sounded through the halls, through the very walls, and died away. Then grew louder and came nearer. She could hear him stumbling along the hall, lurching against her door, and her heart stood still. Though the door was locked and bolted securely and she knew he could not get in, she was trembling from head to foot. She scarcely dared to breathe.