Chapter Seventeen

Meanwhile, Tom, finding his mother tired and indisposed to talk, had stepped in for a minute, as he thought, to speak with Maggie.

"How cozy you look here!" he said, welcomed by a bright fire and a glad face. "After all, if people only thought so, they could get along with far less than they do. Where is Horace?"

"He had gone to see Annie. I thought he could say something to comfort her. But there is little one could do for friends in trouble."

"I don't know about that. I do not believe you realize what comfort your sympathy has been to us. You have been like an own brother and sister."

"That's just what we want to be to everybody who needs us."

"It is a little peculiar, isn't it? Most young folks get out of the way of long faces, if they can."

"But yours hasn't been long."

"Hasn't it? Maggie, I'll tell you what I've been thinking. I want to turn over a new leaf, and live as you and Horace do."

"Really?" cried Maggie, joyfully. "Have you told Annie?"

"Not exactly. You see, it is not so easy to break up old habits. Not that I've been doing anything so very bad. But still I know there's a vast difference between being moral and being religious."

"What shall I say to him?" was Maggie's silent prayer before she replied.

"If the loss of your fortune gains Christ for you, it will be a beautiful loss."

There was a pause, and then she said: "Did you ever hear of a rich man's going around to this and that friend, begging him to spend his life in trying to become rich, hardly taking time to count over his own gains in his eagerness for the welfare of others?"

"Why, no, I never did."

"But those who know the most about the riches Christ gives, can hardly keep their hands off those they meet, they are so much in earnest about seeing His heirs enter into possession."

"Do you feel so?"

"Yes, I do."

"Towards me?"

"Yes, Tom, towards you," she said, her eyes filling with tears.

His eyes filled too.

"I knew somebody was after me," he said, with increased embarrassment, "but I thought it was only my mother."

"It was your mother and my mother and father, and Aunt Jane and Horace, and maybe your little sister Maggie.

"Well, I am not going to stand out against such prayers. I'm an ignorant as a heathen, and somebody will have a hard time pulling me along. But if you and Horace will help me, I will begin."

"Begin what, dear Tom?"

"To be good."

"But you can't be good, and we can't help you to be. All you've got to do you can now, sitting on that chair."

"And what is that?"

"Give yourself to Christ. Then ask Him to give you repentance and faith, and everything else you need."

"But I thought it took a long time, and that people had to read and pray, and get wretched, and then at last they would feel their sins roll off their backs in a great bundle, and go on ever after relieved."

"But that is not true. The first thing is to believe in Christ, give yourself to Him, sins and all. I daresay that you will want to shut yourself up to thank God for accepting your gift, and to read the Bible and to pray; but as to wretchedness, I do not see where there is any room for that to come in. Oh, Tom, it is such a blessed thing to love Christ and to belong to him."

"I've been thinking so ever since we came home and got well acquainted with you and Horace. But we lived in a good deal of a whirl, and I never talked to anyone as I have to you; I don't know how it has happened. And as for Annie--"

"Annie will come out all right," said Maggie. "She has had her head turned for a time, but she is not the only person to whom that has happened. If you take her to your mother's she will come at once under her influence, or if you have a little home of your own, gay friends will soon drop by, and you can live as you please."

"Annie doesn't like my mother. I never could see why. She is a dear, good mother, and loves Annie like an own daughter."

"Annie is very independent, and she is afraid of not having full liberty if she lives with your mother. But you will see that she will become another creature sooner or later. I have known her longer than you, and I know what she was before you began to flatter and to spoil her, an to give her everything she wanted. You have never seen her best side."

"Maggie," he asked, abruptly, "doesn't it say in the Bible that you must repent and believe?" But you say believe and repent. Now, I do believe, I am sure I do; but when I try to realize that I am a great sinner, I can't, and am as hard and cold as a stone."

"I don't think the Bible lays down laws about the order in which God shall grant us His gifts. To one He gives repentance first, and faith and love afterward; to another, faith and love, and they lead to repentance. The more we love Him the more we see how sinful sin is, and the more sorry we are to have been guilty of it."

"Do you think, then, that I am, perhaps, one who loves God, and may get repentance for the asking?"

"Yes, I do. One man enters the kingdom with as intelligent sense of past wrong-doing, and He who came to save from sin becomes the door to it. Another enters, unconscious to a degree of his unworthiness, and is drawn by cords of love, and He who loves those who love Him becomes his door. I know more about these diversities by hearing my father speak of them, than I could do of my own observation, and he always says to those who seek the way of life through Christ, ‘Come in ye blessed of the Lord!' whether they come weeping or smiling. Once in His kingdom He will rectify their mistakes, give courage to the timid, strength to the weak, wisdom to the ignorant, and penitence and love and faith to all. You will fancy it presuming in me to take this ground, but if I had taken it years ago it would have saved me much needless pain. I thought I must force myself to dreadful agonies to repentance. At last it came to me that all I had to do was to believe, and that Christ would give me all else that I needed. And I've been a great beggar ever since."

"And would you have me do that?"

"I would have you go home tonight and say to Annie, ‘God has given me a little faith, enough to make me want to tell you of it, and I am going to pray to Him day and night till He gives me all He has to give.'"

"But suppose when I get up tomorrow morning, feel that no change has taken place in me?"

"I will not suppose any such thing. If you get far enough to say that to Annie, you'll get farther."

"I'll say it," he returned. "And if it ends in my becoming a Christian man, that will be your doing, Maggie. I've tried to be one again and again, but always wound up at the want of feeling right."

He went away and said the lesson Maggie had taught him, like a simple-hearted, obedient boy; and added, "Are you glad, darling?"

"Yes," she said, ready to choke, "I am."

"It will be just like his love to his mother," she said to herself, long after he had fallen asleep. "It will not make any difference how I think and feel; he will do whatever he fancies right. And if he starts under Horace and Maggie, I may as well say good-bye to this world at once. And I do not believe in that. It was made for us to live in and to enjoy. Good people do enjoy it, and expect to go to heaven just the same. Mr. and Mrs. Jay go to the theater regularly, and they belong to the church. Mrs. Bridges goes to balls, and dances round dances, but she is good, and gives away loads of money to the poor. And there's Henrietta Page! She is strict about going to the prayer-meeting, and reads her Bible, and has a class in the Mission school, but she indulges in all the public entertainment, and dresses like a princess; but she expects to go to heaven for all that."

"Will she enjoy heaven?" whispered a voice that seemed to be a re-echo of that of Horace.

"I suppose so. I suppose we all shall. I never did believe that some few saints had a right to lay down laws for everybody else. If they like to sing psalms and go to meeting better than anything else, why, let them; who cares? But why should they force their likings on us young folks? I want to go to heaven, but I want to enjoy myself while I'm here, and what is more, I will. Of course, I am a Christian; if not, father would not have let me join the church; and, of course, I want to be good, and mean to be; but to wear a long face and look solemn--what did you say? Does Maggie? Why, no, I can't say she does, but most of her set do; or at least I should think they would, for they never do anything but visit the poor and the sick, and go to the meeting, and all that. I wonder if I had given more to the poor, whether God would have taken away all our money so? Now, just hear Tom! He is breathing away as peacefully as a little baby, an yet he has lost such a fortune! He little knows what is before him."

Thus musing, Annie grew feverish and sleepless. Everything looked gloomy and hopeless as she lay there alone in the darkness. Worst of all, an uneasy conscience kept her close company. She knew perfectly well that she had not lived up to the vows she had made to God, and that she had taken for her standard not those who loved and served Him best, but those who gave him niggardly gifts from selfish, worldly hearts. But there is really but one true standard, and that is not the life and doctrines of any man or woman on earth. The Bible is our only rule of faith and practice. If that tells us that our chief end on earth is to make ourselves comfortable, why, we need have no misgivings in doing so. But if, on he contrary, it utters such words as these, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth," and calls for self-denial and promises tribulation, it follows that we have something to do in this world beyond seeking mere pastime and amusement. Do these words sound like words of gloom? Ah, then, let us read on, and hear its songs of joy and hymns of praise; what it promises to give and what it has given. Those who accuse the saints of being too saintly, forget that not even the saints originated God's word, but that "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

"What are you doing, Tom?" asked Annie, when she awoke.

"I am reading," he said, coming forward with a book in his hand.

"That's something new," she said.

"Yes, everything is new. Just hear this: I think it is beautiful. ‘In the world you shall have tribulation, but fear not, I have overcome the world.' I suppose I have read that before, but it has come to be this morning as something strange."

"Tom, do you feel well?" asked Annie, abruptly.

"Perfectly well; why not?"

"I didn't know but you were going to die, you're getting good so fast."

"Good? Oh, Annie, I wish I were! But I begin to think that I have done nothing all my life but do everything I ought not. Did you ever feel so?" he asked, with great simplicity.

"I am not a doctor of divinity," said Annie, wearily. "Don't you see that I have the headache, and do not feel like talking?"

Tom was instantly all concern and tenderness, and Annie's undefined, jealous fear that she was losing him, gave way before the pleasant sense of possession.

"I am such a bad old girl," she said, at last, "that I was afraid your getting good would make you care less for me. And indeed, Tom, that wouldn't be fair for I've been the making of you. You always were good-natured and kind; but you wasn't a bit bright, and I took you and woke you up. Everybody says so."

"I know it, darling. And then Maggie woke me up again; or rather, Horace and Maggie did, between them."

Annie had always felt herself to be greatly Tom's superior, but when, after she had risen and breakfasted, he said to her, "If you won't criticize your poor old husband, we'll read a chapter and pray together before I go down town," she was perfectly overawed. She had not aroused that simple but sluggish nature to do this, not she! God's Spirit alone could have emboldened him, whom she had led about as her great plaything, to take the dignified position to which she heard him pray--him, her Tom--her pride broke down, and she burst into bitter, passionate tears.

Nothing could be gained by a description of the weeks that followed. Tom had come into God's kingdom like a simple, single-hearted child. But her return to Him, after careless, thoughtless, prayerless living, was painful and wearisome. Many a time she would have faltered but for the Christian friends who rallied around her with their prayers, their sweet counsels and their faith.

"Oh, Tom, how good God was when he took away my great snare!" she said, at last, when the conflict was over and peace had come in like a flood. "I was not fit for prosperity, and He knew it. He humbled my pride, and made you my teacher! I could not have believed I should ever sit at your feet; but I do; you know more than I do, and I hope you always will!"

Poor Tom! he was six feet high and well built, but when she talked so he felt that he could creep into a nut-shell.

They had left the hotel and its very dangerous temptations, and at Annie's own request had come to his mother's. For the present, at least, it was in every way agreeable. But Annie went because she was beginning to live less in herself and more in others, and at first it was very irksome to her to be dependent on one whom she had recently sneered at as "one of your prayer-meeting women." But Tom soon found employment, and it proved to be pleasant, after the useless life he had led, and he and Annie often discussed the question of setting up the little home of their own. But Mrs. White always had some reason for deferring this, and so they kept staying on.

Horace lost no time, meanwhile, in impressing into his services these two young people, whose cooperation with him in his Mission work was so timely. He gave Annie a class composed of its very worst boys. Her quaint bright words soon secured their attention; they would listen to her when they would let no one else come near them, not even Maggie. And then, in imitation of Maggie, she had them to tea and amused and interested them in ingenious, original ways, such as would have entered no other head save hers.

"She is a strange, bright bird," Mrs. White confided to Aunt Jane. "I never saw anybody like her. She flies into a room on wings, lights down where she will but always in the right place, sings as she flies, and never seems to have a care."

"Don't try to turn her into a little white chicken," said Aunt Jane. "She is one of herself, and must fly where others walk. She seems to me now very much as she did when I knew her as a little girl, full of sunshine, running over with the joy of the moment, glad to be alive. She has vitality enough to make three and four enthusiastic girls."

"Oh, I love her," said Mrs. White. "Only sometimes her odd, imprudent words and songs come back and startle me."

"It will not hurt you to be startled," was the cool reply. "Let my bright bird alone."

And the bird did flit and flutter at first, but after a while found her right place, for a bird of plumage, just as bright as her own, flew from under her wings, and put the whole household into a perfect flood of surprise and delight.

Annie could not be exactly like anybody but herself, nor could her baby; but they both created a new life in a home that had long been too silent, and Mrs. White's health came back as she forgot her ailments in rapturous contemplation of the little stranger.

Of course it was not a common baby. Annie said it wasn't, and Tom said it wasn't, and Horace and Maggie and Mr. and Mrs. Wyman all said the same. And the baby accepted the situation with dignity. And when they all called her their cherub, their rose, their bird of paradise, she smiled with the calm content of one who had long since heard those musical words and learned them all by heart.

But while Annie sang glad songs and talked gay talk to her baby, it was not out of the thoughtless heart of past days. It had been stirred to its depths by remorse, by penitence, by suffering and by joy. She had come out of darkness into a great light; a light that was to shine more and more unto the perfect day, and to serve as a beacon for many tempest-tossed soul that would never have otherwise reached the haven where it would be at rest.

Ah, there must be all sorts of lights on the shores of time! There must be the moonlight radiance that never flickers or goes out; the great glow of the noonday sun, the twinkle of the stars, the erratic shoot of the signal-fire. They shall differ from one another in glory, but each shall have its appointed work and do it well, nor can one do the work the other or shine as to itself.

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