CHAPTER FOURTEEN
For the next few days Maris used every leisure moment in studying her new Bible and following out all the suggestions that Lane had given her in his notes. Now and again, questions would come to her mind for which she could not find an answer, and she wrote them down in a tiny notebook, to ask Lane the next time she saw him.
But there were not many opportunities to talk with Lane, even though he was living just next door. He was much engrossed with his young charges. He had established a private school in the backyard. The two boys were carrying on their studies along the same lines as they would have done in school, only perhaps with a little more individual attention than would have been possible in school. He told them reasons for everything that their young minds questioned, and led them on to wonder over the amazing world in which they lived, giving them now and again a Bible memory verse that clinched the nature study they had been carrying on with birds and squirrels and rabbits and butterflies and flowers as intimate subjects.
Maris, as she heard from time to time a report of their work, realized that her young brothers were enjoying a rare privilege of companionship with this man, the memory of which could not but be of lasting benefit all their lives.
"But how can you spare the time, Lane?" she asked him once in a brief moment when she could speak with him. "Aren't you in some kind of business? I haven't asked Merrick about it, but surely you have interests of your own that must be looked after, and you mustn't let our boys absorb even all your leisure, either."
Lane smiled.
"Don't worry," he said. "They are only helping to fill in an interim. Two positions are open to me in the fall, and I'm not sure which I shall decide upon. One will take me to New York. The other is around here. I'll tell you about it sometime when we have more time. But in either case I've got to fix up the house, either to sell or to live in, and that's going along in fine shape. I have a plumber at work now making alterations, putting in another bathroom or two, a more modern sink, and a new heating unit. I have to more or less supervise those things. And the painters will be here next week to assist the ones who have already started the job on the back kitchen."
He grinned at the boys, who were listening wide-eyed on the other side of the hedge, and they responded with adoring smiles.
"Well, it's just wonderful that you are able to take care of the boys," said their sister gratefully. "I'll never forget it."
"That's nice," said Lane pleasantly. "I like to be remembered." Then he chanted with a merry twinkle in his eye a scrap of the old song:
"Thus would we pass from the earth and its toiling,
Only remembered by what we have done."
Maris gave him a quick, keen glance as she smiled. Then after an instant, "It will be more than that, Lane," she said gravely.
He looked at her sharply, quizzically, a great wistfulness in his eyes, and then said,
"Now, just what might you mean by that, kind lady?"
"Why," she laughed half embarrassedly, "I don't just know that I can analyze it, but there'll always be more to your memory than just things you have done, no matter how wonderful they were. Why, you're a very dear old friend, you know," she finished lamely, with a glowing color suddenly stealing over her white cheeks.
He looked at her steadily for an instant, considering that, and a gravity began to dawn in his eyes.
"I see," he said, almost formally. "Well, I mustn't keep you any longer." He went away with the little boys trooping after him, and left her standing there watching him with a vague discomfort in her mind. Had she somehow been rude to him? She hadn't meant to be. She had been trying to make him understand how much she appreciated what he was doing for them, how much he meant to them all as a friend. She might have been blundering and awkward in the way she had put it, but she had meant it all right. Had she hurt him? Just what had she meant anyway when she tried to express herself so awkwardly? And also, just what had been the significance of that grave withdrawing look in his eyes when he went away?
But she had no time, of course, to consider these questions. The very air seemed bristling with questions anyway for her weary heart, and there was little time to take them to the Bible for satisfaction, even little time for prayer, when she was not almost too weary to keep awake.
Two days later she found a little resting place in the middle of the afternoon. The night nurse had appeared unexpectedly and sent her out to get some air. She wandered over once more toward the hedge and looked across. She had somehow felt a reluctance to call Lane on the telephone. He might be busy. Someone might hear her and wonder.
But as she looked across the hedge, she heard his heavy voice speaking:
"I wondered if you were never coming again, lady."
"Oh," she said, "you're there! I'm glad. There are some things I have so wanted to ask you. Can you wait a minute till I get my Bible?"
"All the afternoon at your service," he said pleasantly. "The boys are painting the back door and steps. They're stationary for a time at least."
Maris ran into the house and was back quickly with her Bible, and she found when she came through the hedge that Lane had his Bible, too, the counterpart of hers, only much worn and with the bloom of hard usage upon its leather cover.
Maris put her hand out and touched it as it lay on the arm of the lawn chair next to her own.
"Beautiful with use!" she said wistfully. "I wonder if mine will ever look like that from the same cause. I'm afraid I don't know enough to use mine as much as you have yours."
"You have the same teacher, the Holy Spirit," he said reverently, trying not to show his great gladness in his eyes and voice.
"Oh!" she said with a voice full of awe. "That seems too great to be true, that the Holy Spirit would teach me!"
Their eyes met, and something sweet and tender flashed in their glances, something that thrilled even to their spirits.
"You don't know how I prize this Bible," said Maris, struggling to free herself from a sense of confusion that she did not understand. "It was so wonderful of you to give it to me. I shall always count it one of my dearest treasures."
Another sudden glad look passed between them, and then Lane, unaccountably grave again, said in a quiet voice, "I wasn't sure whether I might presume to give so intimate a gift, but I thought, since you are to be married soon, you would let me call it a wedding present."
A sudden awful silence fell between them like a pall. Something seemed to clutch at Maris's throat and try to strangle her. Her glance went down, and a slow color stole up into her cheeks and then receded quickly, leaving them white again as death. After an instant she spoke, and her voice seemed constricted, embarrassed. It sounded very little and faraway even to herself.
"But you see, I'm not going to be married soon," she faltered.
He looked up quickly, a sort of breathlessness in his voice.
"You're not? Oh, you mean you are putting off the day. You are not going to be married on the thirtieth? I thought you would probably postpone it on your mother's account."
"No," said Maris, and suddenly she knew that she wanted to tell him, even though nobody else knew yet. "No, I am not going to be married at all. I have broken my engagement!"
"Oh!"
There was a great deal in that simple utterance. Astonishment, question, almost bewildered delight, and quick caution, ending in tender sympathy.
Maris couldn't seem to think of anything else to say, and the pause was long.
Then Lane said it again in a more studied tone: "Oh--!" And then added quickly, "I can't say I'm sorry! I didn't know Mr. Thorpe. But, of course, I know your family are the gainers by this. Is it--? Did you--?" He paused and wished he had not begun that idea. But she was quick to anticipate his meaning.
"I don't know." She gave a vague little laugh. "I haven't got used to it enough to know whether I should count it a calamity or not. In fact, there have been so many calamities that I haven't been able to differentiate them yet from one an
other. And, yes, I suppose I did it because of my family. That is, of course, I couldn't go away now. But it didn't have to be for that reason. If things had been right--something could have been arranged."
"I understand," he said gravely, and she knew he did.
"I thought you would," she said, although she had had no idea of saying that. The words just came out of her inner consciousness without her knowledge. "That's why I wanted to tell you. The family doesn't know yet."
"Thank you," he said, and then after a pause, "The family will be very happy over it."
"Will they?" asked Maris. "I've been wondering."
"They will!" said Lane with emphasis, as if he was very sure.
"It almost seems," said Maris, hesitating, "as if God, perhaps, sent all these things--just to interrupt--!"
"I'm sure He did!" said Lane with a ring of assurance in his voice. "He does things like that sometimes."
The pause was longer this time, and then Maris said with a little laugh that covered a great deal of feeling very inadequately, "Well, then, in that case wedding gifts are usually returned. Do you want me to give this Bible back? Because I don't want to do it. I want to keep it always."
His eyes looked at her very tenderly.
"That's what I want you to do, keep it always," he said. Then in a matter-of-fact tone, as he reached for his own Bible: "Now, shall we get to those questions before you are called away again? By the way, apropos of what we were talking about the other day, here's a bit of a quotation I found last night:
"O Lord, my heart is all a prayer,
But it is silent unto Thee;
I am too tired to look for words,
I rest upon Thy sympathy
To understand when I am dumb;
And well I know Thou hearest me.
"I know Thou hearest me because
A quiet peace comes down to me,
And fills the places where before
Weak thoughts were wandering wearily;
And deep within me it is calm,
Though waves are tossing outwardly."
She listened as he read, and a great longing came into her heart to have an experience like that. To be able to trust and rest and find such peace. But she couldn't put what she was feeling into words. It seemed to choke her, and the tears were blocking the way.
"Oh!" was all that she could utter.
"Yes," he said smiling, as if he understood. "It's like that."
"You have experienced that!" she challenged in a kind of wonder.
"Sometimes." He wasn't exactly smiling, but there was a sort of radiance in his face as if he were remembering things too wonderful to tell.
"Oh, I would like to have a trust like that!" she said hungrily.
"You can if you are willing to commit fully to Him," said Lane gently. "Listen to this one:
"But all through life I see a Cross
Where souls of men yield up their breath;
There is no life except by death,
There is no vision but by faith,
Nor justice but by taking blame,
Nor glory but by bearing shame,
And that eternal passion saith,
Be emptied of glory and right and name."
Maris was very still as he finished the words.
"That's very high ground," she said at last. "It makes one's petty outcries and questions seem very small and shaming. I wish I might have had that outlook on life when I was a child, and grown up with it. It certainly would have saved me a lot of mistakes later." She drew a sad little sigh and gazed across the far stretch of lawn with its border of tall trees. "I wasn't brought up to cry for everything I saw, nor to have everything I wanted, but when they came without the asking I guess I was carried away by them and forgot real values. I guess I can see why the Lord had to send me a lot of hard things all at once."
Lane smiled understandingly.
"Yes. I went through that, too. It took a lot of jolts to make me understand. I read something the other day that seemed to fit my case exactly. It said, 'We can't understand why God doesn't want to do nice things for nice people like ourselves! That is because we have never seen ourselves as we are, as He sees us. When we do, we shall be dumb with wonder that He had anything to do with us, and His infinite gift of Jesus Christ His Son shall be all to us, filling our whole heart and life.' When I came to the place where I saw myself in that way, I was bowed with shame. And then when I understood that, in spite of my indifference and foolish lack of understanding, He yet wanted me in a close relationship to Himself, I was filled with a great overflowing joy. It's wonderful, Maris, when you get to realize that. There's nothing like it!"
Maris looked at him wistfully.
"I'm so glad you're like this," she said suddenly. "I didn't know there were any men, not any young men, anyway, that talked this way, that felt as you do. Tell me, how did you get to know God? You weren't interested in such things when you were in school."
"No," he said sorrowfully, "I was going my own way then, just having a good time, the world all before me and everything just lovely. I never thought of God. And then when sudden sorrow came, two sharp blows one after the other, I began to think that God was cruel. That He hated me! I almost doubted what I had been taught, that He so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to save us. But one day I heard someone say that it is because people live in the things they possess instead of in their relationship to God that God seems at times to be cruel. And then I began to think. I began to reach out to God. For I had pretty well tried out everything else that appealed to me. They all had turned to dust and ashes, and I felt God calling me. And as soon as I was ready to listen, I found Him ready to reveal Himself to me. You see, I wouldn't listen to Him as long as I was happy and comfortable and had everything I wanted. So He had to send sorrow to bring me to Himself."
"I wonder," said Maris thoughtfully, "if that isn't just what has been happening to me. Oh, you're helping me a lot to get my feet on solid ground. It seemed to me at first when all these things began to happen at our house that I was utterly dumbfounded. Everything I had believed in or rested upon had failed me. I wondered if there was a God. And yet I had no other refuge. But you are making me begin to get a little glimmer of light."
"Oh, I'm glad!" said Lane, with a lilt in his voice. "But now let's go to His Word. That's better than any explanation of mine. I've been digging deep in this treasure store of late, and God has shown me some wonderful things. Turn to the first chapter of Ephesians and let's see what God says about what we are to Him."
So they sat and studied for an hour and a half. Others might have discussed a trip to Europe, the best modes of travel, the best places to stop, the best side trips to take, but they were deep in the Word of God, talking about the things of another world.
If Tilford Thorpe could have looked in upon them from behind the hedge that shut away the street, he would have been hard put to understand what they were doing. With their two heads bent low over their Bibles, fluttering over the leaves, discovering new thoughts, Lane with his Greek Testament casting new light on old familiar words, talking with wonder in their voices of a spiritual world that was as real to them as if they could see it, shyly comparing similar heart experiences in the Lord's dealing with them. It would have been as inexplicable to Tilford as if they had been discoursing in a foreign language concerning some previously undiscovered country that they hoped someday to find and dwell within. He would not have understood it at all.
They talked until the little boys finished the door and the steps and came triumphant and clamoring, daubed with paint from their eyebrows down and demanding that their idol should come and see if it was all right.
Maris suddenly discovered that it was time her patient had her tray and she must leave at once. But the two separated with one quick glad look into each other's eyes. It was only good night they said as they hurried away, but each realized that it was a good night that they had discovered this great bond of interes
t in the Word of God.
Maris, as she crossed her own lawn, marveled at the thrill in her heart as she thought on all she had been hearing and reading. It occurred to her to wonder how different things might have been between herself and Tilford if they could have had such sweet converse on the deeper things of life together. But it was scarcely conceivable. Trying to imagine Tilford studying the Bible with her was perhaps the most enlightening vision that had come to her yet, to make plain to her how far apart she and Tilford were concerning everything of real value. They would never have been one, no matter how hard she tried. They had so few points of contact. It would have been herself that would have had to measure to Tilford's standards, for it wasn't thinkable that he would be willing to measure to hers, nor even to try. He was all for this world and had apparently no interest in another life.
Was it possible that she could have brought him to know the Lord? She stared at the question in her mind, realizing how far she had been from ever trying to get him to think of another world. Perhaps God had meant her to do that when He let her get to know Tilford. Perhaps she had utterly failed Him. Oh, it was all a terrible maze, and there was just one thing she could do now, and that was to take God at His word and go forward, learning to know and trust Him day by day, feeling her way with her hand in God's, believing that He knew the end from the beginning.
As she entered the house, it suddenly came to her that tomorrow was to have been her wedding night and she hadn't once remembered it all day! That in itself was startling enough. If someone had told her three weeks ago that that could happen, she would have laughed him to scorn. She would not have thought it possible. And now here she was with the whole thing taken out of the picture and herself fully established in another kind of life, as if that had been a dream.
She had a passing wonder about Tilford. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he hurt and sorrowful? She couldn't imagine it. Only angry, and still stubborn. Why was it that she could see that trait in him now so clearly, and only a short time before she did not see it at all? She had thought him charming and admirable in every way. Why, oh, why did all that have to happen? Why did God let her go through all that experience only to put it away from her forever? Could it be possible that this wasn't the end after all? Was God perhaps going to send Tilford back to her and give them a new life and new interests in better things together?