The freshman, Nan Smythe, kept easy pace with her and talked breathlessly every step of the way.
“They went over the cliff on the river drive! The car is a wreck in the valley! Casper Coulter was dead when they picked him up! Doris was under the car! But she was conscious. They say—”
“Don’t!” said Constance. “Oh, don’t tell me anything more or I can’t get there!” The freshman looked at her speculatively. She was easing her own soul’s excitement by telling the tale.
Constance fled along trying to keep pace with her thoughts. Down there was the drive where they sped away into the sunlight just a little over an hour ago. She could see again the flashing of Doris’s white hand in farewell. The glint of the red hat in the sun. She caught her breath in a deep quick sob and, putting her head down, ran toward the hospital entrance, outdistancing the freshman.
Breathlessly she followed a white-garbed nurse through those white halls that had never meant anything to her before but a haven for a few days’ rest, a case of mumps or measles out of due time, a twisted ankle with plenty of good company and flowers and candy. Now the echo in the marble halls filled her with awe. Death was here somewhere! Death waited to take Doris, her Doris, away forever!
Pale with horror, she arrived at the room where they had laid the poor broken body and approached the bed. And Doris, blithe Doris, cried out in fright and suffering. Constance scarcely recognized her agonized voice. Doris, who had no friends or relatives nearer than California and who turned to her in her calamity!
“Oh, Connie,” she cried out, “they say I’m going to die! They say I’ve only a few hours at most, it may be only a few minutes. Connie, you’ve got to tell me how to die! You joined the church. You ought to know what to do. Tell me quick! For the love of mercy, help me quick!”
Chapter 8
Constance, with ghastly white face and knees trembling so that she could not stand, dropped down beside the hospital bed and struggled for her usual self-control. She had always prided herself on being able to adapt herself to any circumstance, had always thought she could rise to any crisis. But here was one she could not meet.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do to keep this comrade alive longer. She was up against it. Doris had to leave this earth in a few short hours! How terrible!
It had never occurred to Constance that any such horrible situation could ever face anyone whom she knew, and her poise was absolutely shaken, her mind became a blank.
“Try to quiet her,” whispered the nurse. “She’s been calling for you ever since she was brought here. She said you would know what she ought to do.”
“Darling!” murmured Constance from a dry throat and could think of nothing more.
“Oh, don’t waste time,” cried out the anguished girl. “Tell me something quick! He said I might go any minute. I heard him. He didn’t know I heard him. He thought I was unconscious, but I wasn’t. Tell me something quick to do to be safe. What are you going to do when you die?”
Constance had never thought of that before. The question stabbed its way into her own soul. It was as if she were anguished not only for this friend of hers but for her own self, too.
“Do you want me to send for the college chaplain?” she asked frantically at length when she could bear Doris’s importunity no longer.
“Not on your life,” said Doris. “I’ve listened to him four years and he never told us how to die. Why would he know any better now? Can’t you tell me yourself, Connie? Wasn’t there something said the day you joined the church? Oh, Connie, I can’t go out like this. Hurry! Hurry! Can’t you think of something to tell me? They want to give me dope to dull the pain, but I know that’ll be the end. I won’t have another chance after that. And I’m afraid, Connie, afraid to go to sleep like that and wake up—Where? Connie, I’m going to die, right away, pretty soon! Do you realize that? I’m not going to graduate, I’m going to die! I never somehow thought I’d die! Oh, what shall I do? You must tell me. Connie!”
Constance desperately struggled for words, thinking back to that Easter Sunday.
“You have to be saved, Dorrie.” The strange words struggled to her white lips.
“Saved, but how?”
“You have to be born again,” she said, snatching at another word from memory.
“How could one do that, Connie? Oh, hurry! Tell me quick! This pain is something awful!”
Constance gripped her hands together in anguish.
“Why, you just believe and it happens.” She struggled with the torturous alien phrases, surprised to find them indelibly stamped on her memory. How had he put it that day, the handsome stranger? Oh, if he were but here now! He could tell her.
“Believe what, Connie?” Doris clutched at Constance’s wrist until it hurt her.
“Why, believe God. Oh, I don’t know, Dorrie, I don’t know just how they say it. But I’m sure there’s a way and you needn’t be afraid.”
“Oh, Con, if you could just find someone who knows the way before it is too late! Oh, isn’t there someone, someone? Not the one that talked about sweetness and light, nor the one who preached about finding God in nature, nor the one who said that about the greatest sin being the sin against your own personality. I want somebody real, Connie. Don’t you know anybody, not anybody who is sure about what comes after we die? Listen, Connie, I’ve been an awful sinner! I never thought so before, but now I know it! I’ve been thinking of all the things I’ve done—Oh, Connie, I can’t die this way! Can’t you find someone? Isn’t there anybody in the whole world that knows about God?”
“Yes!” said Constance, suddenly springing to her feet. “I know one. I’ll try to get him. You lie still, Doris, and just be as quiet as you can. I’ll get him somehow or make him tell me what to tell you.”
“I will, Connie, but hurry! Oh, hurry!”
Constance, breathless, flew down the hall to the telephone and asked for Long Distance. Her heart was beating wildly. Never in any stress of her own life had she felt so helpless, so utterly frightened, so frantic. She closed her eyes and tried to think what she should say to the operator. He was Mr. G. Seagrave, and he was in the office of Howarth, Well and Company. She tried to locate the exact block in which that firm had its offices, and when the operator answered she was ready with her directions.
It seemed an incredible thing that she should so soon hear his voice answering. That he should be there at the end of the wire without delay. It thrilled her strangely across all that distance.
“This is Graham Seagrave speaking!”
Graham, so that was what the G stood for, said her subconscious mind as she caught her breath and tried to speak naturally.
“This is Constance Courtland, Mr. Seagrave.” Her voice was shaking and sounded unnatural to herself. “This is an SOS for help.”
“Yes?” he said with an eagerness in his tone that thrilled her again with deep relief. His voice was just as she remembered it, dependable, strong, ready to help as she had known it would be. That was why she had dared to call him.
“How can I help?”
“My roommate has had a terrible accident. She has but a very few hours to live, though she may go at any minute, the doctor says. She is horribly afraid to die. She is begging me to tell her what to do, and I don’t know what to say to her. I’ve tried, but I don’t understand it myself”—her voice broke with a quick sob. “Could you possibly come? I don’t know anybody else to ask.”
“Of course I’ll come. Where are you?”
“At college.” She gave brief directions how to find her.
“I’ll start at once. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but—meantime—surely there must be some Christian nearer who can help you at once, at least till I get there?”
“I don’t know one who talks about it the way you do. They don’t any of them believe what you do, and I don’t know how to quiet her. She is frantic.”
“Have you a pencil there?”
“Yes.”
“Then write this down: ‘John 3:16.’ Those are Jesus’ own words. Read them to her, and tell her to trust herself to His promise. Good-bye, I’m coming, and I’m praying.”
Constance turned from the telephone and found that her face was wet with tears. She brushed them away as she hurried down the hall looking at the bit of paper she held in her hand. This would be a Bible reference. She must find a Bible somewhere. The library would be the place to go.
But to her annoyance she found when she reached there that the librarian was not there. No one was there but the old janitor sweeping the front hall. Search as she might she could not find a Bible. It was not in its numbered place. Somebody had likely drawn it out for reference, or perhaps from disuse it had become lost. Anyway she couldn’t find it.
“Oh dear!” she said aloud, thinking no one was in the great empty room but herself. Of course it was late in the afternoon and so near to commencement that nobody would be consulting the library now. “Now what shall I do?”
“You want something?” It was the old janitor who appeared from behind a book alcove, duster in hand.
“Oh, I want to find a Bible, Emil, but you wouldn’t know where they keep it. Is the librarian coming back soon?”
“Her gone for de weekend,” said Emil. “What you want? Whole Bible? I got Testament right here. That do?” He put his hand into the gingham pocket of his jumper and brought forth a cheap little Testament.
“It’s John,” said Constance. “Yes, John is the New Testament, isn’t it? John three-sixteen.”
“Oh, yah! Him! I know him. Gott so luve de worll’—” He opened the little book and there was the verse right before her as if it had been much opened at that place.
Constance seized the book.
“Oh, thank you. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.”
“Keep so long as you need,” said the old man, smiling. “I like lend.”
As she hurried back to the hospital, Constance marveled that the janitor should be carrying a Testament. He was perhaps the last one to whom she would have thought of applying for a Bible, and perhaps the only one in the building who had one. It seemed a special providence that he should have been there. And he knew the verse! How strange! Were there perhaps more people in the world than she dreamed who lived by the Bible, who knew God? By the look of the light in his face when he had brought out that worn little Testament, she had a feeling that this old man was somehow akin to the man of the hillside who had brought her the flowers. What an odd idea to float through her head.
Before she entered Doris’s room again, she paused to read the verse Seagrave had given her, and as she opened the door Doris cried out eagerly:
“Did you get someone? Is he coming?”
“Yes, dear,” said Constance, her voice vibrating with hope. “I got him on the telephone. He’s coming just as fast as possible. But it is a long distance to come. You’ll have to be patient. He has sent you something to help though. Listen. He said it was the words of Jesus, God’s Son, and I was to tell you to trust them utterly.”
Doris fixed bright, haggard eyes upon her face, eyes that had already begun to have that other-world look, and from which gaunt terror driven by pain looked forth to a world that could no longer help nor satisfy.
“Read!” she commanded with quivering lips.
Constance read: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“Read it again.”
Constance read it again, and yet again, and then her eyes catching a word or two of what followed, read on: “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
“What does it mean, Connie?” The bright eyes searched her face, and Constance’s heart was wrung. She wanted so much to be of help, and she knew so little. She tried to think what Seagrave had told her in their brief talk on the hillside, but it was all vague.
“Just what it says,” she answered simply. “At least it sounds that way to me, and that’s what he told me to tell you. Just take Him at His word and believe it.”
“Read it again!” pleaded the voice that was weak with pain.
So Constance read it again and again, over and over; and the brilliant eyes were fixed on her face, drinking in the words, trying to puzzle some comfort from it.
“If she could only get a bit of sleep,” whispered the nurse. But the sharpened senses of the sufferer heard her.
“No!” she said with the fright in her eyes again. “No! I must not sleep till I am ready to go. Oh, won’t he come soon?” she cried out in her agony.
“As soon as he can,” answered Constance, “but—he said he would be praying!” She said it brightly, as if prayer now would work some charm, as if she herself believed it would, and then wondered at herself. She had been wont to sneer at prayer; some professor in the early days of her scholastic career had once remarked that the only benefit of prayer was its reflex influence upon the one who prayed. But now she held it out as a charm that would relieve.
“Pray!” said Doris. “Oh, I never knew how to pray! I used to say ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I lie on,’ but that isn’t real praying, is it? I wish I knew how to pray now. Oh, Connie, do you think he really will pray for me?”
“I’m sure he will,” said Constance, looked at her watch, and began to calculate the time. If he should catch the next train after he hung up the receiver—which was scarcely likely; there was still a little over three hours before it was due in the nearby city, and then he would have to wait for a local train—or perhaps he would be thoughtful enough to hire a taxi if he couldn’t make good connections at once. It was the very soonest she could hope to expect him. Oh, would he be too late? Could Doris hold out till then? She was perceptibly failing now, moment by moment, even to Constance’s inexperienced eyes. Would she have it always to remember that Doris died needing comfort that she could not give? Surely as Seagrave had said, if she only knew where to look, there must be somebody who would know the way of life!
But when she thought of all the people in the college and in the village whom she knew at all, there was no one whom she could ask to come here and try to talk to Doris. But wait! There was the janitor. He had a Testament. Would he perhaps know how to pray?
Yet when she tried to imagine him here in this room in his overalls, kneeling beside Doris’s bed, she didn’t know whether it would do or not. She wished she had told Emil about Doris and asked him to pray for her, only she was so unused to talking of such things it had never occurred to her.
Suddenly Doris spoke. “‘God so loved the world,’” she said slowly, sharply. “Yes, but that’s good people, I suppose. I’ve not been good. I’ve never thought a thing about God, not since I was a little girl and had a nurse once who tried to teach me to pray and I wouldn’t. I guess He would have no use for me after that. It’s probably only good people He loves.”
“It says the world,” said Constance, reasoning her way uncertainly. “There are more bad people than good people in the world. It takes them both to make up the world. It must mean both. Listen. You lie still and I’ll read it again, and you just try to believe it, the way he sent you word to.”
Constance read the words slowly, impressively through again, taking in their wondrous beauty and fullness as she read, wondering why she had never read them before, nor known how much they contained, thinking in her subconscious mind that if she ever came through this awful experience she would never be the same carefree girl again. Life could never be the same after this.
And then, just as she was turning the page back to read the verse over again because Doris was less restless when she read, the door opened and Seagrave stood beside her!
“Oh, you have come!” she quivered, a great joy and relief in her voice. “How could you get here so soon?”
He gave her a fleeting grave smile and said quietly, “I flew, o
f course,” and then he turned toward the bed where Doris’s great, frightened eyes were watching him.
Constance came closer to her friend.
“This is Mr. Seagrave, Doris. He knows how to tell you what to do.”
Seagrave’s face lit up with one of his tender smiles.
“Well, little sister,” he said tenderly, “they tell me you are going Home to God. What can I do to help?”
“Oh, but it isn’t home to me,” wailed Doris. “I don’t know God.”
“But God knows you,” said Seagrave gently. “See, it’s this way: He’s always known you, and He loves you. He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to take your place and pay the penalty of your sins so that you might be free and come Home without a spot of blemish or any such thing.”
“How do you know that?” asked Doris in the shrill, high voice of one who is near the end.
“God’s Word tells me so,” said Seagrave, pulling out his little Testament.
“But my college professors say the Bible is just a book written by men,” said Doris with a despairing note in her voice.
“How do your college professors tell you you may be saved?” asked Seagrave.
“Oh, they don’t!” wailed the girl. “Most of them think this life is all there is.”
“Then isn’t it better to trust in the only way that gives you hope of everlasting life? Would you rather trust God or your college professors?”
“Oh, I must trust God. My professors cannot help me. I must believe God!” she cried.
“Then listen!” he said. “These are Jesus’ own words: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”
The restless eyes were fixed on him earnestly.
“But won’t I have to be judged for my sins?” she asked anxiously. “I have always heard that Christians believed that everybody had to stand up and be judged before the world for everything they had ever done while they lived.”