She wondered shyly whether she was to see her friend Lawrence Earle again soon. Of course, she couldn’t expect that his interest in her would keep up. He was four or five years older than she was, belonged in a different social set from any she would enter. If she ever did belong to any social set … she doubted it. Also, he had many vital interests. Among other things that they had talked about, he had told her of his hopes to go and witness for God in some corner of the earth where witnessing was most needed. He had told her he was studying, preparing for his life’s work, and she knew he expected to be very busy that summer attending conferences here and there where notable Bible teachers were to be present. She sighed wistfully and wished that she might be able to hear some of the good things that he was to have. But perhaps he would come over now and then and tell her about them. And her heart thrilled at the thought of how she would get books and study by herself, so that she would be better able to understand what he told her when he did come.
Then she went downstairs to eat her breakfast and help wash the dishes, for it was the maid’s day off. And almost as soon as they were done, he appeared in an old sweater, with his baseball in his hand.
“I thought we might have a little practice this morning,” he said, smiling. And she went joyously out to play, feeling that life had never, never held so much joy for her as it did just now.
They played for an hour—and the Garner girls had collected quite a little group of the girls behind the hedge and were watching, though of this Euphemia was scarcely aware, she was having such a good time. And then they sat down under the cherry tree, with the sunshine glinting between the branches on their heads, while Lawrence read to her a chapter in his New Testament in Greek and translated as he went, demonstrating a new thought that he had found.
It seemed like heaven opening to the girl whose inner life had been starved so long. And the thought of the summer stretched wide and sweet and helpful as she sat with dreamy eyes and listened to words that opened up a new life to her.
It’s strange how lives touch for a moment in this world and then move apart for years. How interesting it will be hereafter, if we are allowed to study the wise working of Providence and understand all the whys and wherefores.
It would seem to a casual observer that Euphemia Martin needed that sweet new influence that had come into her strong young life and turned it into a new channel, needed it for some time to come, in order that she might be strengthened and taught, and not fall back. But perhaps the Father saw otherwise, saw that this was a soul that could be put to the testing almost at once.
However that was, right there in the middle of a sentence of Gospel truth, Johnnie came rushing into the picture with a message from Mrs. Earle. A telegram had come that her sister in California was very ill, dying perhaps, and wanted her to come. Would Lawrence come home at once?
Of course, Lawrence would come at once. He sprang up, startled, and turned for an instant to the dismayed girl who stood up beside him, her eyes full of disappointment.
“I’m sorry, little pal,” he said, using the old name he used to call her in her baby days when he taught her to throw a ball. “I’ve got to go—probably will have to go with Mother. If I don’t get back, you’ll know. It’s been awfully good to have these nice times with you. And I won’t forget—! You won’t forget, Euphemia! You’ll go on thinking of these things, won’t you?”
Euphemia, with a sudden choke in her throat and a sudden stinging of tears in her eyes, put her hand in his and promised. She would go on. She would not forget!
“And we will both pray—” he added, “for each other!” Then with a quick pressure of her hand, and a sudden lighting of his eyes that she never forgot, he was gone.
And that was the last time that Euphemia Martin saw him for five years.
They left on the noon train for California. Of course Lawrence went with his mother.
He wrote Euphemia a beautiful letter en route, explaining and saying how sorry he was that they could have no more games or rides or reads together, but promised to send her a book he thought she would enjoy, which would help along the lines they had been interested in.
And so Euphemia Martin entered into her testing time.
It would seem that the devil might have been laughing in his sleeve at how quickly the props were knocked out from under this girl’s new resolves. Now, how would she be able to live her saintly life of virtue without anyone to show her the way? The old life, the old temptations, the old hindrances, the old jealousies, all were left, and it would be easy to drop back into the old ways again.
And for a little while, it seemed to the girl that this must be inevitable as her dream of the summer joys faded, and she knew she must struggle on her new way alone.
Yet she was not alone. She remembered that she had “the God of peace” with her, and He was “able and willing to keep her from falling,” any kind of falling her new friend had said. If she would only let Him!
Well, she would let Him as far as she knew how.
It cannot be denied that she felt disheartened when she found that her new friend had gone away. It could scarcely be called a disappointment because his friendship had been so unexpected. But his help had been so great that for a few days she was utterly discouraged and made so many failures and relaxed into her old ways so frequently that she seemed, even to herself, to merit most of the sharp criticisms she had heard of herself. But her soul had grown sensitive by the little praise she had received, and she dreaded again to deserve cold looks and the kind of despairing reproach her mother had in her eyes sometimes. She wanted her mother’s approval, and she wanted most of all to be true to her name. Why was it that she failed so miserably? “The God of peace shall be with you,” the promise read. Why did He not help, then? Perhaps it was because she did not ask Him aright. Perhaps if He was with her, she ought to talk with Him more. In a general way she knew that people who were trying to be Christians read the Bible and prayed every day. She had never stopped to ask herself if she were a Christian before, but now that she thought of it, she supposed she was. But she realized in her heart that she was a very poor specimen.
She was standing by the window one night looking out into the dark. There were no stars shining. Her lamp was still unlighted. All of her life looked dark to her. She felt herself very wicked. The tears chased one another rapidly down her face. Her thoughts grew bitterer until sobs came, and sometimes grew audible as she sank down upon her knees beside the window and abandoned herself to thinking how utterly hateful everything was, including herself.
Mrs. Martin, passing through the hall on the way from tucking in the baby, heard a strange little wail coming from this daughter’s room and went to investigate. And Effie, crying too hard now to notice the opening door, felt her mother’s work-hardened hand in gentle touch upon her head, and then her mother’s arms around her tenderly; and her mother’s voice said, “My poor Euphemia, what is the matter? Will you not tell Mother all about it?”
For a few minutes, the girl cried all the harder, just because of the sympathy and love that had come to meet the ache for it in her heart. But by and by the sobs ceased, and she sat up and told all, beginning with that afternoon under the trees when she had heard herself talked about, every little word she could remember, even down to the biting of her poor fingernails.
It was very hard for her mother to feel that her girl had been so talked about, and thought of, by others. And perhaps it was a hundredfold harder because the mother could see at once that it was because of habits formed in her as a child, which should have been broken; because of the lack of gentleness and politeness and sweet womanliness that she should have tried to train daily in the growing soul. Mrs. Martin blamed herself for not seeing this before and guarding her daughter. She blamed herself none the less that her life was already so overcrowded, and she so overburdened, that there seemed not one minute of time left for anything more. She sighed heavily and was indignant with those girls, and yet could
not altogether blame them. But oh, she did so want all her children to be good and beloved and admired. Effie went on to tell of her ride and runaway, and then her meeting with Lawrence Earle, and her talk with him and his helpfulness. And the mother blessed him in her heart.
Mrs. Martin had never talked her religion to her children. She had not known how to open the subject with them. But she did trust in her Lord, and she lived her life with gentleness and patience, even through days that were hard and wearing to her soul. And now that Effie brought her story to her mother, that mother knew how to point her on the right way she had chosen and to give her much-needed encouragement. Well for her that she had a parent who was acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. Before Mrs. Martin left her daughter that night, she came back from the door hesitating, and gently, quickly, drew her down beside her on her knees. Then in a low, almost inaudible voice that trembled with the fright of hearing itself in prayer before another, she asked her heavenly Father to guide her little girl. She kissed her and was gone. It had been very hard for the mother to pray aloud because she had never been accustomed to such a thing. She had been embarrassed even in the dark. But she had done it.
After that night her mother never called her anything but her full name, Euphemia, and then she began to teach the baby to call her so, and by and by Johnnie and her father and the others took it up, and within a year she was known to them always as Euphemia. The mother hoped by this constantly to remind her daughter of the meaning of her name, and she did not hope in vain. Euphemia was glad to lose her old and rather despised name and gain a new one with her new life.
There began days in which the mother said gently, “Euphemia, I would like you to help in this,” or “Euphemia, if you want to be helpful this morning, there is that,” or “Daughter, dear, that disorderly room is a burden to me this morning. Could you set it to rights?”
This helped Euphemia. She always remembered what she was trying to do when her mother spoke like that. There followed, too, many evening talks with Mother, brief necessarily, because of the many cares, but helpful. It was Mother who suggested ways of helping Johnnie and who seconded her efforts to please her elder sister, and Mother who bade her not despair when she had failed and forgotten all her good resolves. And it was Mother who arranged it so that she should have a certain little quiet time to herself in her room undisturbed, to “think on these things” and to pray. This, after all, was the source and center of her life. She learned to commune with Jesus in those daily thinking times.
And the wonderful peace of God “which passeth all understanding” began to settle down upon her brow in unmistakably sweet and gentle lines. The others could not help but feel it. She was careful for others; careful of their feelings, and of her own actions, to make them pleasant to others. She curbed her desires more often now and tried to do as others wished and not as she would please.
Not that she accomplished this all at once. She had days when everything seemed to settle back to something worse than it had been at first and when she seemed to lie again upon that green moss and hear those voices on the other side of that hedge criticizing her. At such times she would sometimes be brought back from almost despair of heart by glancing down at her hands. The nails upon her fingers were now well shaped and carefully cared for, with dainty white rims and the pink flush of health. There was no need for her to hide those hands now. She never bit her nails anymore; neither did she fidget in church. Certainly, in those things she had been helped by hearing what others thought of her, though it had been very bitter at the time and nearly destroyed her faith in life and humanity.
Lawrence Earle did not return to his hometown within a few weeks as he had told Euphemia he would, and as he had confidently expected to do when he left. His aunt lingered at the point of death all through the summer, and finally crept slowly, but surely back to life. She seemed to need her sister, and Mrs. Earle did not feel that she could possibly leave her, and as there was nothing especially urgent to call Lawrence back alone, he remained.
He wrote Euphemia that he had found a wonderful Bible school out there, where he was taking a course that was most helpful, and from time to time there came to her pamphlets and books and a little magazine, which both cheered and helped her on the way in which she had set her course. It put her into touch with a new world, a world of the spirit, where she found that they were a great fellowship who believed this way and were waiting upon the Lord and “thinking on these things.” When she first realized this she felt greatly strengthened, and it seemed easier to know there was a host of people scattered everywhere doing what she was trying to do.
Then there came a letter one day from Lawrence Earle telling her that he had received a call to go out to India to do some “witnessing” for a year or two and had decided to accept it. He was sorry not to get back for another game of ball and another chance to read Greek with her, but it could not be helped, and he felt sure this call was from God. He sent by the same mail some more literature and a precious copy of a remarkable translation of the New Testament directly from the original, which he said would help her greatly. In the package was also a small but beautifully bound copy of the Scofield Bible, which he said was a gift from his mother to her. His mother and aunt were planning to take a trip abroad and would accompany him partway, as his aunt was able to travel.
So that was that, and Euphemia looked up from her letter with a sad but patient face. Well, she had known in her heart that she would probably never see him again when he went away, but it was somehow a wrench to be sure that he would not be back for a long time, if indeed he ever came back. India! It seemed like going out of the universe. A kind of blankness filled her soul. But then she realized that she must not feel that way. She must be thankful all her life that his way had touched hers for a few days, for oh, what a difference he had made in everything to her! She could never lose the help he had given her, even if she never saw or heard from him again.
So the days and the weeks went by, and an occasional postcard with strange pictures and stranger postmark reached her. Once or twice, a brief letter came telling of the wonders of the new land, but they were hurried letters from a busy man. Already he seemed like a prophet who had larger interests than just to help her little life.
Euphemia put the letters all away in a little old writing desk with inlaid top and a lock and key, which had been the property of her Aunt Euphemia long years ago and had fallen to her lot. Nobody would ever open this, and here she hoarded all her little treasures. Sometimes she took them out and read them over, for they seemed somehow related to her Bible closely, and always there were quotations and suggestions which made her Bible study more interesting.
But the days grew into months, and the months into two and then three years, and Lawrence Earle was still in strange lands, connected with some island mission, preaching, teaching, traveling and establishing new stations, and training new teachers. He did not write much about himself when he wrote at all. She gleaned most of her information concerning his movements from the little magazine that came to her regularly from its far home and gave her a vivid picture of life as he was living it.
Still, it all seemed quite far away and unreal, and more and more she came to depend on her Bible and prayer for her daily strength.
Euphemia had finished school, had graduated from high school with honors not a few, in a gown that was faultless as to fit and appointments, and amid open admiration from her classmates. For the years had brought her a measure of good looks all her own, and her new ways had taught her to be always well groomed, and she looked as pretty as any of them. Flora Garner, who had been ill and had to stay back a year, graduated in the same class with her and seemed quite willing to be friendly with her, always making a point of walking to and from school in her company, and Euphemia was not anymore the lonely, wild thing she used to be.
But Euphemia had worked hard and had not taken much time for social life aside from keeping up her tennis, swimming, and skating,
and these latter she managed to do very often in company with her brother John, who with a group of his “gang,” as he called them, was devoted to her and always ready to have her join them in their sports. So, in a measure, she was the same independent girl, walking much apart from the girls of her age.
Her mother worried over it sometimes, but she had her hands so full with Eleanor’s affairs that she had little time to do anything about her next daughter’s social life. The father said, “Well, Mother, don’t worry, perhaps it’s a good thing for the child. She hasn’t half as many temptations as Eleanor, and she has twice as much character as all those silly girls put together.”
“But she’ll grow old all alone,” mourned the mother, “and perhaps she’ll blame us.”
“Not she,” said her father. “She’s too sweet a nature for that. And she’ll not grow old alone; don’t you be afraid. Somebody’ll snap her up someday, somebody that knows a good thing, and then what’ll we do without her? Besides, if she should happen to grow old all alone as you say, she’ll be such a blessing as she goes that her life will be a happy one anyway. So don’t you worry about Euphemia! I have always told you she would turn out all right. You do your worrying for Eleanor. She needs it! Euphemia doesn’t.”
And Euphemia, who happened to be in the library at the time consulting the dictionary, heard them talking and smiled tenderly. At least she had won the good report with her father and her mother.