 CHAPTER 18 THE RESULT Now what I want," said Marion, is to have you people who are posted answer a few questions. You know I am not a dancer. I have only stood aside and looked on, but I have as high a respect for common sense as any of you can have, and I want to use some of it in this matter. So just tell me, is it true or not that there is a style of dancing that is considered improper in the extreme? Why, yes, of course there is," Yuri said quickly. Is it the style that is indulged in at our ordinary balls, where all sorts of characters are admitted, where, in fact, anyone who can buy a ticket and dress well is welcome? You know you are particular to state that none of you went to balls. Are these some of the reasons? My principal reason is, Ruth said, with an upward curve of her haughty lip, that I do not care to associate with all sorts of people either in the ballroom or anywhere else. Besides which, you are reasonably particular who of your acquaintances have the privilege of frequently clasping your hand and placing an arm caressingly around your waist to say nothing of almost carrying you through the room, are you not? Ruth turned toward the questioner with flashing eyes while she said, that is very unusual language to address to us, Marian, probably we are quite as high toned in our feelings as yourself. Oh, but now I appeal to your reason in common sense. You say yourself that these should be our guide. Isn't it true that you, as a dancer, allow familiarity that you would consider positively insulting under other circumstances? Am I not mistaken in your opinion as to the proper treatment that ladies should receive from gentlemen at all other times save when they are dancing? It's a solemn fact, said Urie, laughing at the folly of her position, that the man with whom I dance has a privilege that if he should undertake to assume at any other time would endanger his being knocked down if my brother Nell was in sight. And it is true that there are lengths to which dancers go that you would not permit under any circumstances? Undeniable, Urie said again, yet I don't see what that proves. There are lengths to which you can carry almost any amusement. The point is, we don't carry them to any such lengths. That isn't the whole point, Urie. There are many amusements which no one carries to improper lengths. We do not hear of their being so perverted, but we do not hear of them in the ballroom. The question is, has dancing such a tendency? Do impure people have dance houses, which it is a shame for a person to enter? Are young men and young women, our brothers and sisters, led astray in them? We mustn't be too delicate to speak on these things, for they exist, and they are found among people for whom the Lord died, and many of them will be reclaimed and be in heaven with us. They are our brethren. Can they be led away by the influences of the dance? If we are all really an earnest in this matter, will you each give your opinion on this one point? I suppose it is unquestionable, said Ruth, that dance houses are in existence, and that they are patronized by the lowest and vilest of human beings. But the sort of dance indulged in has no more likeness to the dances of cultivated society than the drunkard lying in the gutter bears likeness to the elegant young man of fashion who takes his social sips from a silver goblet lined with gold at his mother's refreshment table. Marian said, interrupting her and speaking with energy. Yet you will admit that the one may be, and awfully often is, the stepping stone to the other. It is true, Yuri said. Both are true. I never thought of it before, but there is no denying it. As for Flossie, she simply bowed her head as one interested but not excited. Then I may bring in one of my verses. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widow in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Does that apply? If the world can carry this amusement to such depths of degradation, and if the elegant parlor dance is or can be in the remotest degree the first step there, too, are we keeping ourselves unspotted if we have anything to do with it, countenance it in any way? Don't you see that the question, after all, is the same in many respects as the card-playing one? We have been over this ground before. Thus we grant, for argument's sake, that not one of you is in danger of being led away to any sort of excess, and I should hardly dare to admit it in my own case, because of a verse in this same old book, let him that thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall. But if it should be so, let me give you another of my selections, rather let me read the entire argument. Whereupon she turned to the tenth chapter of First Corinthians and read St. Paul's argument about eating meat sacrificed to idols, pausing with special emphasis over the words, conscience, I say, not thine own, but of the other. Did I understand you to say, Urie, that it is a very general belief among dancers that Christians are inconsistent who indulge in this amusement? It is a provoking truth that there is. Don't you know, Ruth, how we used to be merry over the Simon's girls and that young Winters, who were church members? Well, they made rather greater pretensions with their religion than some others did, and that made us especially amused over them. Then Urie, wasn't there influence unfortunate on you? I am not on your side, Mistress Wilbur. You should have more conscience than to keep me all the time condemning myself. That is answer enough, Marianne said, smiling. I am only asking for information, you know. I never danced. But in the light of that confession hear this, but if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably, destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died. Let not, then, your good be evil spoken of. Isn't that precisely what you were doing of the good in those church members, Urie? Now a sophist would probably say that the argument of Paul had a reference to food offered to idols and not to dancing. But I think there is a chance for us to exercise that judgment and common sense which we are so fond of talking about. The main point seems to be not to destroy those for whom Christ died. Does it make any difference whether we do it with our digestive organs or with our feet? But what is the sophist going to do with this? It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleeth or is offended or is made weak. You see, he may or may not be a fool for allowing himself to be led astray. St. Paul says nothing about that. He simply directs us as to the Christian's duty in the matter. Ruth made a movement of impatience. You are arguing, Marian, on the supposition that a great many people are led astray by dancing, whereas I don't believe that to be the case. Do you believe one soul ever was? Why, yes, I suppose so. We even know one, Yuri said, speaking low and looking very grave. Do you believe it is possible that another soul may in the next million years? Of course it's possible. Then the question is, how much is one soul worth? I don't feel prepared to estimate it, do you? To which question, Ruth made no reply. Here is another point, Marian said. You young ladies talk about being careful with whom you dance. Don't you accept the attentions of strange young gentlemen who have been introduced to you by your fashionable friends? Take Mr. Townsend, the young man who came here a stranger, and was introduced in society by the Wagner's because they met him when abroad. Didn't you dance with him, Yuri Mitchell? Dozens of times, said Yuri promptly. And Flossie, didn't you? Flossie nodded her golden head. Well, now you know, I suppose, that he has proved to be a perfect libertine. Honestly, wouldn't you both feel better if he had never had his arm around you? Marian, your way of saying that thing is simply disgusting, Ruth said in great heat. Is it my way of saying it, or is it the thing itself? Marian asked coolly. I tell you, girls, it is impossible to know whether the man who dresses well and calls on you at stated intervals, looking and talking like a gentleman, is not a very Satan who will lead away the pretty guileless, unsuspecting young girl who is worth his trouble. And the leading often and often commences with a dance. And the young girl may never have been allowed to dance with him at all, had not stately and entirely exceptional leaders of society, like our Ruth here, allowed it first. It is the same question after all, and it narrows down to a fine point, a thing that can possibly lead one to eternal death, a Christian has no business to meddle with, even if he knows of but one soul in a million years who has been so wrecked. In all this, we have not even glanced at the endless directions to redeem the time to be instant in season and out of season, to work while the day lasts, to watch and be sober. What do all these verses mean? Are we obeying them when we spend half the night in the world of wild pleasure? The fact remains that a majority of people are not temperate in their dancing. They do it night after night, they long after it, and are miserable if the weather or the cough keeps them away. I know dozens of such young ladies. I have them as my pupils. My heart trembles for them. They are just intoxicated with dancing. And they quote you, Ruth Erskine, as an example when I try to talk with them. I have heard them. Whether it is wrong for other people or not, as true as I sit here, I can tell you this. I have two girls in my class who are killing themselves with this amusement, carried to its least damaging extreme, for they think they are very careful with whom they dance. And you are in a measure, at least, responsible for their folly. You needn't say they are simpletons. I think they are, but what of it? Shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died? Now made a remark that startled me a little. It was so queer. Yuri said this after the startled hush that fell over them at the close of Marian's eager sentence had in part subsided. We were speaking of a party where we had been one evening, and some of the girls had danced every set so they were completely worn out. Some of them had been dancing with rather questionable young men, too, for I shall have to own that all the gentlemen who get admitted into fashionable parlours are not angels by any means. I know there are several who are supposed to be of the first society that father has forbidden me to dance with. We were talking about some of these, and about the extreme manner in which the dancing was carried on when Nell said, I'll tell you what, Yuri, I hope my wife wasn't there tonight. Dear me, I said, I didn't know she was in existence. Where do you keep her? He was as sober as a judge. She is on the earth somewhere, of course, if I am to have her, he said. And what I say is, I hope she wasn't there. If I thought she was among those dancers, I would go and knock the fellow down who insulted her by swinging her around in that fashion. I want my wife's hand to be kept for me to hold. I don't think anybody else for doing that part for me. Precisely, Marianne said, it is considered un-ladylike, I believe, for people to talk about love and marriage. I never could see why. I'm sure neither of them is wicked. But I suppose each of us occasionally thinks of the possibility of having a friend as dear even as a husband. How would you like it, girls, to have him spend his evenings dancing with first one young lady and then another, offering them attentions that, under any other circumstances, would stamp him as a libertine? Whichever way you look at this question, it is a disagreeable one to me. I may never be married. It is not at all likely that I ever shall. I ought to have been thinking about it long ago, if I was ever going to indulge in that sort of life. But if I should, I'm heartily glad of one thing, and mind I mean it, that no man but my husband shall ever put his arm around me, nor hold my hand, unless it is to keep me from actual danger, falling over a precipice, you know, or some such unusual matter as that. Flossie hasn't opened her lips this evening. Why don't you talk, child? Does Marianne overwhelm you? I don't wonder such a tornado as she has poured out upon us. I never heard the like in my life. It isn't all in the Bible. That is one comfort. Though, dear me, I don't know but the spirit of it is. What do you think about it all? Sure enough, Marianne said, turning to Flossie as you repossed, little Flossie, what are your verses? You were going to give us whatever you found in the Bible. You were the best witness of all, because you brought such an unprejudiced determination to the search. What did you find? My search didn't take the form I meant it should, Flossie said. I didn't look far nor long, and I did not decide the question for anybody else, only for myself. I found only two verses, two pieces of verses. I mean, I stopped at those, and thought about them all the rest of the week. These are the ones. And Flossie's soft sweet voice repeated them without turning to the Bible. Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. Those verses just held me. I thought about dancing, about all the times in which I had danced, and the people with whom I had danced, and the words we had said to each other, and I couldn't see that in any possible way it could be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, or that it could be done heartily, as unto the Lord. I settled my own heart with those words, that for me, to dance after I knew that whatever in word or deed I did I was pledged to do heartily for the Lord, it would be an impossibility. An absolute hush fell upon them all. Marian looked from one to the other of the flushed and eager faces, and then at the sweet drooping face of their little Flossie. We have spent our strength vainly, she said at last. It is our privilege to get up higher, to look at all these things from the mount whereon God will let us stand if we want to climb. I think little Flossie has got there. After all, Yuri said, that first would cut off a great many things that are considered harmless. What does that prove, my beloved Eureka? Marian said quickly. If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee, is another Bible verse. These verses of Flossie's mean something surely. What do they mean, is the question left for us to decide. After all, Ruth, I agree with you. It is a question that must be left to our judgment in common sense. Only we are bound to strengthen our common sense and confirm our judgments in the light of the lamp that is promised as a guide to our feet. Nothing was said among them after that, except the common places of good nights. The next afternoon, as Marian was working out a refractory example in algebra for Gracie Dennis, she bent lower over her slate and said, Miss Wilbur, did you know that your friends Miss Erskine, Miss Shipley, and Miss Mitchell had all declined Mrs. Garland's invitation and sent her an informal note signed by them all to the effect that they had decided not to dance anymore? No, said Marian, the rich blood mounting to her temples and her face breaking into a smile. How did you hear? Mrs. Garland told my father. She said she honored them for their consistency and thought more highly of their new departure than she ever had before. It is rather remarkable so early in their Christian life, don't you think? Rather, Marian said with a smile, and she followed it by a soft little sigh. She had not been invited to Mrs. Garland's. There was no opportunity for her to show whether she was consistent or not. End of Chapter 18, Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 19 of the Chautauqua Girls at Home. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Chautauqua Girls at Home by Pansy. Chapter 19. Keeping the Promise It was curious how our four girls set about enlarging the prayer meeting. That idea had taken hold of them as the next thing to be done. The wonder was, Yuri said, the Christian people had not worked at it before. I am sure, she added, that if anyone had invited me to attend, I would have gone long ago just to please if it was one that I cared to please. And Marian answered with a smile. I am sure you would too with your present feelings. Still, none of them doubted but that they would have success. They saw little of each other during the days that intervened, and their plan necessarily involved the going alone, or with what company they should gather, instead of meeting and keeping each other company, as they had done in the first days of their prayer meeting life. Marian came first and alone. She went forward to their usual seat with a very forlorn and desolate air. She had entered upon the work with enthusiasm, and with eager desire and expectation of success. To be sure, she was a long time deciding whom to ask, and several times changed her plans. At last her heart settled on Miss Banks, the friend with whom she had almost been intimate, before these new intimacies gathered around her. Laterally they had said little to each other. Miss Banks had seemed to avoid Marian, since that rainy Monday when they came in contact so sharply. She was not exactly rude, nor in the least unkind. She simply seemed to feel that the points of congeniality between them were broken, and so avoided her. She did this so successfully that, even after Marian's thought to invite her to the meeting had taken decided shape, it was difficult to find the opportunity. Having gotten the idea, however, she was persistent in it, and at last during recess, on the very day of the meeting, she came across her in the library, looking aimlessly over the rows of books. In search of wisdom or recreation, Marian asked, stopping beside her, and speaking with the familiarity of former days. In search of some tiresome references for my class in philosophy, some of the scholars are provokingly and earnest in the study, and will not be satisfied with the platitudes of the textbook. That is a refreshing departure from the ordinary state of things, isn't it? Marian asked, laughing at the way in which the progress of her pupils was put. Then, without waiting for an answer, and already feeling her resolution beginning to cool, she plunged into the subject that interested her. I have been in search of you all the morning. That's surprising, Miss Banks said coolly. Couldn't I be found? I have been no further away than my schoolroom. Well, I mean looking for you at a time when you were not engaged, or perhaps looking forward to seeing you at such a time, would be a more proper way of putting it, said Marian, trying to smile, and yet feeling a trifle annoyed. One is apt to be somewhat engaged in a schoolroom during school hours, especially if one is a teacher. They were not getting on at all. Marian decided to speak without trying to bring herself gracefully to the point. I want to ask a favour of you. Will you go to meeting with me tonight? To meeting, Miss Banks repeated, without turning from the bookcase, what meeting is there tonight? Why, the prayer meeting at the First Church, there is always a meeting there on Wednesday nights. Miss Banks turned herself slowly away from the book she was examining, and fixed her clear, cold, grey eyes on Marian. And so there has been every Wednesday evening during the five years that we have been in school together, I presume. To what can I be indebted for such an invitation at this late day? It was very hard for Marian not to get angry. She knew this cold composure was intended as a rebuke to herself for presuming to have withdrawn from the clique that had hitherto spent much time together. What is the use of this, she asked, a shade of impatience in her voice, though she tried to control it. You know, Miss Banks, that I profess to have made a discovery during the last few weeks, that I try to arrange all my actions with a view to the new revelations of life and duty which I have certainly had. In simple language, you know that, whereas I not long ago presumed to scoff at conversion, and at the idea of a life abiding in Christ, I believe now that I have been converted, and that the Lord Jesus is my friend and brother. I want to tell you that I have found rest and peace in him. Is it any wonder that I should desire it for my friends? I do honestly crave for you the same experience that I have enjoyed, and to that end I have asked you to attend the meeting with me tonight. It is impossible to describe the changes on Miss Banks's face during this sentence. There was a touch of embarrassment and more than a touch of incredulity, and overall a look of great amazement. She continued to survey Marian from head to foot with those cold gray eyes for as much as a minute after she had ceased speaking. Then she said, speaking slowly, as if she were measuring every word. I am sure I ought to be grateful for the trouble you have taken, the more so as I had not presumed to think that you had any interest in either my body or my soul. But as I have had no new and surprising revelations, and know nothing about the friend and brother of whom you speak, I may be excused from coveting the like experience with yourself, however delightful you may have found it. As to the meeting, I went once to that church to attend a prayer meeting, too, and if there can be a more refined and long-drawn-out exhibition of dullness than was presented to us there, I don't know where to look for it. I wonder why the school bell doesn't ring. It is three minutes past the time by my watch. Marian, without an attempt at a reply, turned and went stiffly down the hall. She was glad just then the tardy bell peeled forth, and that she was obliged to go at once to the recitation-room and involve herself in the intricacies of algebra. Without this incentive to self-control, she felt that she would have given way to the hot, disappointed tears that were choking in her throat, how sad her heart was as she sat there alone in the prayer-room. It was early and but few were present. She had never felt so much alone. The companionship which had been so close and so constant during the few weeks past seemed suddenly to have been removed from her, and when she assayed to go back to the old friend, she stood coldly and heartlessly, I worse than that, mockingly aloof. She had overheard her that very afternoon, detailing to one of the underteachers fragments of the conversation in the library. Marian's heart was wounded to its very depths. Perhaps it is little wonder that she had made no further attempt to secure company for the evening. There were school girls by the score that she might have asked. Doubtless someone of the number would accept her invitation, but she had not thought so. She had shrunken from any other effort in mortal terror. I am not fitted for such work, she said in bitterness of soul. Not even for such work, what can I do? And then, despite the class, she had brushed away a tear. So there she sat alone till suddenly the door opened with more force than usual and closed with a little bang, and Yuri Mitchell, with a face on which there glowed traces of excitement, came like a whiff of wind and rustled into a seat beside her, alone like herself. You hear, she said, and there was surprise in her whisper. I thought you would be late and not be alone. I am glad of it. I mean I am almost glad. Don't you think, now wouldn't come with me? I counted on him as a matter of course. He is so obliging, always willing to take me wherever I want to go, and often disarranging his own engagements so that I need not be disappointed. I was just as sure of him I thought as I was of myself, and then I coaxed him harder than ever I did before in my life, and he wouldn't come in. He came to the door with me, and said I needn't be afraid but that he would be on hand to see me home, and he would see safely home any number of girls that I chose to drum up, but as for sitting in here for a whole hour, waiting for it to be time to go home, that was beyond him, too much for mortal patience. Wasn't it just too bad? I was so sure of it, too. I told him about our plans, about our promise indeed, and how I had counted on him, and all he said was, don't you know the old proverb, sis? Never count your chickens before they are hatched, or a more elegant phrasing of it, never eat your fish till you catch him? Now I'm not caught yet, some way the right sort of bait hasn't reached me yet. I was never so disappointed in my life. Didn't you try to get someone to come? Yes, said Marion, and failed. She forced herself to say that much. How could Yuri go through with all these details? If her heart had ached as mine does, she couldn't, Marion told herself. She might have known if she had used her judgment that Yuri's heart was not of the sort that could ever ache over anything as hers could, and yet Yuri was bitterly disappointed. She had counted on now and expected him, had high hopes for him, and here they were dashed into nothingness. Who knew that he would be so obstinate over a trifle? Surely it was a trifle just to come to prayer meeting once. She knew she would have done it for him, even in the days when it would have been a bore. She did not understand it at all. Meantime Ruth had been having her experiences. This promise of hers troubled her. Perhaps you cannot imagine what an exceedingly disagreeable thing it seemed to her to hunt up somebody to go to prayer meeting with her. Where could she turn? There were so few people with whom she came in contact that it would not be absurd to ask. Her father she put aside at once as entirely out of the question. It was simply an absurdity to think of asking him to go to prayer meeting. He rarely went to church even on the Sabbath, less often now than he used to do. It would simply be annoying him and exposing religion to his contempt, so his daughter reasoned. She sighed over it while she reasoned. She wished most earnestly that it were not so. She prayed and she thought it was with all her heart that God would speak to her father in some way by some voice that he would heed, and yet she allowed herself to be sure that his only and cherished daughter had the one voice that could not hope to influence him in the least. Well, there was her friend Mr. Wayne. I wonder if I can describe to you how impossible it seemed to her to ask him to go. Not that he would not have accompanied her. He would in a minute. He would do almost anything she asked. She felt as sure that she could get him to occupy a seat in the first church prayer room that evening as she felt sure of going there herself. But she asked herself of what earthly use would it be? He would go simply to please what he would suppose was a whim of hers. He would listen with an amused smile slightly tinged with sarcasm to all the words that would be spoken that evening, and he would have ready a hundred mildly funny things to say about them when the meeting closed. For weeks afterward he would be apt to bring in nicely fitting quotations gleamed from that evening of watchfulness, fitting them into absurd places and making them seem the various folly. That would be the fruit. Ruth shrank with all her soul from such a result. These things were sacred to her. She did not see how it would be possible to endure the quizzical turn that would be given to them. I want you to notice that in all this reasoning she did not see that she had undertaken not only her own work but the Lord's. When one attempts not only to drop the seed, but to make the fruit that shall spring up, no wonder one stands back appalled. Yet was she not busying her heart with the results? The end of it was that she decided whatever else she did to say nothing to Mr. Wayne about the meeting. No, I am mistaken. That was not the end. There suddenly came in with these musings a startling thought. If I cannot endure the foolishness that will result from one evening, how am I to endure companionship for a lifetime? That was a thought that would not slumber again, but she must find someone whom she was willing to ask to go to prayer meeting. There was her miserable promise hedging her in. Who was she willing to ask? She ran over her list of acquaintances. There wasn't one. How strange it was! She could think of those whom Flossie might ask, and there was Yuri surrounded by a large family. And as for Marion, her opportunities were unlimited. But for her forlorn self, in all the large circle of her acquaintance, there seemed no one to ask. The truth was, Ruth was shiveringly afraid of casting pearls before swine. Not that she put it in that way, but she would rather have been struck than to have been made an object of ridicule. And yet there were times when she wished she had lived in the days of martyrdom. The church of today is full of just such martyr spirits. The result was precisely what might have been expected. She dallyed with her miserable cowardice, which she did not call by that name at all, until there really was no person within reach to invite to the meeting. Who would have supposed all this of Ruth Erskine? No one would have been less likely to have done so than herself. She went alone to the meeting at a late hour, and with a very miserable, sore, sad heart, to which Marion's was nothing in comparison. Yet there was something accomplished if she had but known it. She was beginning to understand herself. She had a much lower opinion of Ruth Erskine as she sat there meeting the wandering gaze of Yuri and the quick inquiring glance of Marion than she ever had felt in her life. I said she was late, but Flossie was later. Somebody else must have been at work about that meeting and have been more successful than our girls, for the room was fuller than usual. Marion had begun to grow anxious for the little Flossie that had crept so near to their hearts and to make frequent turnings of the head to see if she were not coming. When at last she shimmered down the aisle, a soft bright rainbow, for she hadn't given overwearing her favorite colors, and she could no more help getting them on becomingly than a bird can help looking graceful in its plumage. Why should either of them try to help it? But Flossie was not alone. There was a tall, portly form and a splendidly balanced head, resting on firm shoulders, that followed her down to the seat where the girls were waiting for her. End of Chapter 19, Recording by Tricia G. Chapter 20 of The Chautauqua Girls at Home. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Chautauqua Girls at Home by Pansy. Chapter 20. How It Was Done. Flossie came quite down the broad aisle to the seat which the girls had, by tacit understanding chosen for their own, her face just radiant with a sort of surprised satisfaction, and the gentleman who followed her with an assured and measured step was none other than Judge Erskine himself. He may have been surprised at his own appearance in that place for prayer, but no surprise of his could compare with the amazement of his daughter Ruth. For once in her life her well-bred composure foresook her, and her look could be called nothing less than an absolute stare. Of the four Flossie only had succeeded. The way of it was this. Having become a realist in the most emphatic sense of that word, to have promised to bring someone with her to meeting if she possibly could, meant to her just that, and nothing less than that. Of course, such an understanding of a promise made it impossible to stop with the asking of one person, or two, or three, provided her invitations met with only refusals. She had started out as confident of success as Yuri. She felt nearly certain of Colonel Baker, not because he was any more likely of his own will to choose the prayer meeting than he had been all his life thus far, but because he was growing every day more anxious to give pleasure to Flossie. Having some dim sense of this in her heart, Flossie reasoned that it would be right to put this power of hers to the good use of winning him to the meeting, for who could tell what words from God's spirit might reach him while there? So she asked him to go. To her surprise, and to Colonel Baker's real annoyance, he was obliged to refuse her. He was more than willing to go even to a prayer meeting if thereby he could take one step forward toward the place in her life that he desired to fill. Therefore his regrets were profuse and sincere. It was club night, and most unluckily, they were to meet with him and he was to provide the entertainment. Under almost any other circumstances he would have been excused. Had he even had the remotest idea that Flossie would have liked his company that evening, he could have made arrangements for a change of evening for the club, that is, had he known of it earlier. But, as it was, she could see how impossible it would be for him to get away. Quick-witted Flossie took him at his word. Would he remember then, she asked, with her most winning smile, that of all places where she could possibly like to see him regularly, the Wednesday evening prayer meeting at the first church was the place. What a bitter pill an evening prayer meeting would be to Colonel Baker! But he did not tell her so. He was even growing to think that he could do that, for a while at least. From him Flossie turned to her brother, but it was club night for him too, and while he had not the excuse that the entertainer of the club certainly had, it served very well as an excuse, though he was frank enough to add. As for that, I don't believe I should go if I hadn't an engagement. I won't be hypocrite enough to go to the prayer meeting. Such strange ideas have some otherwise sensible people on this subject of hypocrisy. It required a good deal of courage for Flossie to ask her mother, but she accomplished it and received in reply an astonished stare, a half embarrassed laugh, and the expression, What an absurd little fanatic you are getting to be, Flossie! I am sure one wouldn't have looked for it in a child like you. Me, oh dear, no, I can't go. I never walk so far, you know, at least very rarely, and Kitty will have the carrage in use for Mrs. Waterman's reception. Why don't you go there, child? It really isn't treating Mrs. Waterman well. She is such an old friend. These were a few of the many efforts which Flossie made. They met with like results, until at last the evening in question found her somewhat belated and alone, ringing at Judge Erskine's mansion. That important personage being in the hall, in the act of going out to the post office, he opened the door and met her hurried, almost breathless question. Judge Erskine is Ruth gone? Oh, excuse me, good evening. I am in such haste that I forgot courtesy. Do you think Ruth is gone? Yes, Judge Erskine knew that his daughter was out, for she stepped into the library to leave a message a few moments ago, and she was then dressed for the street, and had passed out a moment afterward. Then did he know whether Katie Flynn the chambermaid was in? Of course you won't know, she added, blushing and smiling at the absurdity of her question. I mean, could you find out for me whether she is in, and can I speak to her just a minute? He was fortunately wiser tonight than she gave him credit for being, Judge Erskine said, with a courtly bow and smile. It so happened that just after his daughter departed, Katie had sought him, asking permission to be out that evening until nine o'clock, a permission that she had forgotten to secure of his daughter. Therefore, as a most unusual circumstance, which must have occurred for Flossie's special benefit, he was posted even as to Katie's whereabouts. He was unprepared for the sudden flushing of Flossie's cheeks and quiver of her almost baby chin. Oh, I am so sorry, she said, and there were actual tears in her blue eyes. Judge Erskine saw them and felt as if he were in some way a monster. He hastened to be sympathetic. If she was alone and timid, it would afford him nothing but pleasure to see her safely to any part of the city she chose to mention. He was going out simply for a stroll with no business whatever. Oh, it isn't that, Flossie said hastily. I am such a little away from the chapel, and it is so early I shall not be afraid. But I am so disappointed. You see, Judge Erskine, we girls were each to bring one with us to the meeting tonight, and I have tried so hard, I have asked almost a dozen people, and none of them could go. At last I happened to think of your Katie Flynn. I knew she was in our Sunday school, and I thought perhaps if I asked her she would go with me if Ruth had not done it before me. She was my last chance, and I am more disappointed than I can tell you. Shall I try to describe to you what a strange sensation Judge Erskine felt in the region of his heart, as he stood there in the hall with that pretty blushing girl, who seemed to him only a child, and found that her quivering chin and swimming eyes meant simply that she had failed in securing even his chambermaid to attend the prayer meeting? He never remembered to have had such an astonishing feeling, nor such a queer choking sensation in his throat. His own daughter was dignified and stately. The very picture of her father everyone said. He had no idea that she could shed a tear any more than he could himself. But this timid, flushing, trembling little girl seemed made of some other material than just the clay that he supposed himself to be composed of. He stood regarding her with a sort of pleased wonder. In common with many other stately gentlemen, he very much admired real, unaffected, artless childhood. It seemed to him that a grieved child stood before him. How could he comfort her? If a doll now with curling hair and blue eyes could do it, how promptly should it be brought and given to this flesh and blood doll before him? But no, nothing short of someone to accompany her to prayer meeting would appease this little troubled bit of humanity. In the magnanimity of his haughty heart the learned judge took a sudden and almost overpowering resolution. Could he go? He asked her. To be sure he was not Cady Flynn, but he would do his best to take the place of that personage if she would kindly let him go to the said meeting with her. It was worth a dozen sittings even in prayer meeting, Judge Erskine thought, to see the sudden clearing of that tearful face, the sudden radiant outlook from those wet eyes. Would he go? Would he really go? Could anything be more splendid? And verily Judge Erskine thought, as he beheld her shining face, that there hardly could. He felt precisely as you do when you have been unselfish toward a pretty child who, some way, has won a warm spot in your heart. He went to the first church prayer meeting for the first time with no higher motive than that. Never mind he went. Flossy Shipley certainly was not responsible for the motive of his going. Neither did it in any degree affect the honest, earnest, persistent effort she had made that day. Her account of it was simple enough when the girls met afterward to talk over their efforts. Why, you know, she said, I actually promised to bring someone with me if I possibly could. So there was nothing for it but to try in every possible way up to the very last minute of the time I had. But, after all, I brought the one whom I had not the least idea of asking. He asked himself. Well, Marian said, after a period of amazed silence, I have made two discoveries. One is that people may possibly have tried before this to enlarge the prayer meeting. Possibly we may not, after all, be the originators of that brilliant idea. They may have tried and failed even as we did. For I have learned that it is not so easy a matter as it at first appears. It needs a power behind the wills of people to get them to do even so simple a thing as that. The other important thought is, there are two ways of keeping a promise. One is to make an attempt and fail, saying to our contented consciences, There, I've done my duty, and it is of no use you see. And the other is to persist in attempt after attempt until the very pertenacity of our faith accomplishes the work for us. What if we follow the example of our little flossy after this and let a promise mean something? My example, flossy said with wide open eyes, why I only asked people just as I said I would, but they wouldn't come. There was one young lady who walked home from that eventful prayer meeting with a very unsatisfied conscience. Ruth Erskine could not get away from the feeling that she was a shirker, all the more so because the person who had sat very near her was her father, not brought there by any invitation from her. It was not that she had tried and failed, that form of it would have been an infinite relief. She simply had not tried and she made herself honestly confess to herself that the trouble was she could not be satisfied with one who was within the reach of her asking. Yet conscience working all alone is a very uncomfortable and disagreeable companion and often accomplishes for the time being nothing beyond making its victim disagreeable. This was Ruth to the fullest extent of her power. She realized it and in a measure felt ashamed of herself and struggled a little for a better state of mind. It seemed ill payment for the courtesy which had made Harold Wayne forsake the club before supper for the purpose of walking home with her from church. He was unusually kind to and patient. Part of her trouble, be it known, was her determination in her heart not to be driven by that dreadful conscience into saying a single personal word to Harold Wayne. Not that she put it in that way, bless you no. Satan rarely blunders enough to speak out plainly. He has a dozen smooth sounding phrases that mean the same thing. People need to be approached very carefully on very special occasions which are not apt to occur. They need to be approached by just such persons and in just such well chosen words, etc., etc. Though why it should require such infinite tact and care and skill to say to a friend, I wish you were going to heaven with me when the person could say without the slightest hesitation, I wish you were going to Europe with me and be accounted an idiot if he made talk about tact and skill and caution, I am sure I don't know. Yet all these things Ruth said to herself. The reason the thought ruffled her was because her honest conscience knew they were false and that she had a right to say, Harold, I wish you were a Christian and had no right at all with the results. She simply could not bring herself to say it. She did not really know why herself, probably Satan did. Mr. Wayne was unusually quiet and grave. He seemed to be doing what he could to lead Ruth into serious talk. He asked about the meeting, whether there were many out, and whether she enjoyed it. I sort of like Dr. Dennis, he said. He is tremendously in earnest. But why shouldn't a man be in earnest if he believes what he is talking about? Do you suppose he does Ruth? Of course, Ruth said, shortly, almost crossly. You know he does. Why do you ask such a foolish question? Oh, I don't know. Half the time it seems to me as if the religious people were trying to humbug the world. Because you see, they don't act as if they were in dead earnest. Very few of them do, at least. That is a very easy thing to say and people seem to be fond of saying it, Ruth said, and then she simply would not talk on that subject or any other. She was miserably unhappy. An awakened conscience, toyed with, is a very fruitful source of misery. She was glad when the walk was concluded. Shall I come in? Mr. Wayne asked, lingering on the step, half smiling, half wistful. What do you advise? Shall I go back to the club or call on you? Now, Ruth hated the club. She was much afraid of its influence over her friend. She had determined, as soon as she could plan a line of operation, to set systematically at work to withdraw him from its influence. But she was not ready for it yet. And, among other things that she was not ready for, was a call from Mr. Wayne. It seemed to her that in her present miserable, unsettled state, it would be simply impossible to carry on a conversation with him. True to her usually frank nature, she answered promptly, I have certainly no desire for you to go to the club, either on this evening or any other. But, to be frank, I would rather be alone this evening. I want to think over some matters of importance and to decide them. You will not think strangely of me for saying that, will you? Oh, no, he said, and he smiled kindly on her, yet he was very much disappointed he showed it in his face. Many a time afterward, as Ruth sat thinking over this conversation, recalling every little detail of it, recalling the look on his face and the peculiar sadness in his eyes, she thought within herself, if I had said, Harold, I want you to come in, I want to talk with you, I want you to decide now to live for Christ, I wonder what he would have answered. But she did not say it, instead she turned from him and went into the house, and he went directly to his club, an unaccountable gloom hung over him, he must have companionship, if not with his chosen and promised wife, then with the club. That was just what Ruth was to him, and it was one of the questions that tormented her. There were reasons why thought about it had forced itself upon her during the last few days. She was pledged to him long before she found this new experience. The question was, could she fulfill those pledges? Had they a thought in common now? Could she live with him the sort of life that she had promised to live, and that she so solemnly meant to live? If she could, was it right to do so? You see, she had enough to torment her. Only she said about thinking of it in so strange a manner. Not at all as she would have thought about it, if the pledges she had given him had meant to her all that they mean to some, all that they ought to mean to anyone who makes them. This phase of it also troubled her. The Chautauqua Girls at Home by Pansy Chapter 21 Ruth and Harold There had been in Judge Erskine's mind a slight sense of wonderment as to how he should meet his daughter the morning after his astounding appearance at prayer meeting. Such a new and singular departure was it that he even felt a slight shade of embarrassment. But before the hour of meeting her arrived, his thoughts were turned into an entirely new channel. He met her looking very grave, and with a touch of tenderness about his manner that was new to her. She, on her part, was not much more at rest than she had been the evening before. She realized that her heart was in an actual state of rebellion against any form of decided Christian work that she could plan. Clearly something was wrong with her. If she had been familiar with a certain old Christian, she might have borrowed his language to express in part her feeling. To Will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I know not. Not quite that, either, for while she said, I can't do this thing or that thing, she was clear-minded enough to see that she simply meant, after all, I will not. The Will was at fault, and she knew it. She did not fully comprehend yet that she had set out to be a Christian, and at the same time to have her own way in the least little thing. But she had a glimmering sense that such was the trouble. Her father, after taking surreptitious glances at her pale face and troubled eyes, decided finally what was to be said must be said, and asked abruptly, When did you see Harold, my daughter? Ruth started, and the question made the blood rush to her face. She did not know why. I saw him last evening after prayer meeting, I believe, she answered, speaking in her usual quiet tone, but fixing an inquiring look on her father. Did he speak of not feeling well? No, sir, not at all. Why? I hear that he is quite sick this morning, was taken in the night. Something like a fit I should judge. Maybe nothing but a slight attack brought on by late suppers. He was at the club last night. I thought I would call after breakfast and learn the extent of his illness. If you want to send a message or note, I can deliver it. That was the beginning of dreary days. Ruth prepared her note, a tender, comforting one. But it was brought back to her, and as her father handed it to her, he said, He can't read it now, daughter. I dare say it would comfort him if he could. But he is delirious, didn't know me, hasn't known anyone since he was taken in the night. Keep the letter till this passes off, then he will be ready for it. Very kind and sympathetic were Ruth's friends. The girls came to see her and kissed her wistfully, with tears in their eyes, but they had little to say. They knew just how sick her friend was, and they felt as though there was nothing left to say. Her father neglected his business to stay at home with her, and in many a little thoughtful way touched her heavy heart as the hours dragged by. Not many hours to wait. It was in the early dawn of the third morning after the news had reached her that the doorbell pealed sharply through the house. There was but one servant up, she answered the bell. Ruth was up and dressed and stood in the hall above, listening for what that bell might bring to her. She heard the hurried voice at the door, heard the promptery order. I want to see Judge Erskine right away. She knew the voice belonged to Nellis Mitchell, and she went down to him in the library. He turned swiftly at the opening of the door, then stood still, and a look of blank dismay swept over his face. It was your father that I wanted to see, he said quickly. I know, she answered, speaking in her usual tone, I heard your message. My father has not yet risen. He will be down presently. Meantime, I thought you might possibly have news of Mr. Wayne's condition. Can you tell me what your father thinks of him this morning? How very quiet and composed she was. It seemed impossible to realize that she was the promised wife of the man for whom she was asking. Nellis Mitchell was distressed. He did not know what to say or do. His distress showed itself plainly on his face. You need not be afraid to tell me, she said, half smiling and speaking more gently than she was apt to speak to this young man. It almost seemed that she was trying to sustain him and help him to tell his story. I am not a child, you know, she added, still with a smile. You do not know what you are talking about, he said hoarsely. Ruth, won't you please go upstairs and tell your father I want him as soon as possible? She turned from him half impatiently. My father will be down as soon as possible, she said coldly. He is not accustomed to keep gentlemen waiting beyond what is necessary. Meantime, if you know, will you be kind enough to give me the news of Mr. Wayne? I beg you, Mr. Mitchell, to remember that I am not a silly child to whom you need be afraid to give a message if you have one. He must answer her now, there was no escape. He is, he began, and then he stopped, and her clear cold grave eyes looked right at him and waited. His next sentence commenced almost in a moan. Oh, Ruth, you will make me tell you, it is all over, he is gone. Gone, she repeated incredulously, still staring at him, where is he gone? What an awful question, she realized it herself almost the instant it passed her lips. It made her shudder visibly, but she neither screamed nor fainted nor in any way except that strange one betrayed emotion. Instead, she said, be seated, Mr. Mitchell, and excuse me, father is coming. Then she turned and went back upstairs. He heard her firm step on the stairs as she went slowly up, and this poor bearer of faithful tidings shut his face into both his hands and groaned aloud for such misery as could not vent itself in any natural way. He understood that there was something more than ordinary sorrow in Ruth's face, it was as if she had been petrified. Through the days that followed, Ruth passed as one in a dream. Everyone was very kind, her father showed a talent for patience and gentleness that no one had known he possessed. The girls came to see her, but she would not be seen. She shrank from them. They did not wonder at that. They were half relieved that it was so. Such a pall seemed to them to have settled suddenly over her life that they felt at a loss what to say, how to meet her. So when she sent to them from her darkened and gloomy room, kind messages of thanks for their kindness, and asked them to further show their sympathy by allowing her to stay utterly alone for a while, they drew relieved sighs and went away. This much they understood. It was not time for words. As for Flossie, she should not have been numbered among them. She did not call at all. She sent by Nellis Mitchell a tiny bouquet of lilies in the valley lying inside of a cool broad green lilyly, and on a slip of paper twisted in with it was written, Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. How Ruth blessed her for that word. Verily she felt that she was walking through the very blackest of the shadows. It reminded her that she had a friend. Slowly the hours dragged on. The grand and solemn funeral was planned and the plans carried out. Mr. Wayne was among the very wealthy of the city. His father's mansion was shrouded in its appropriate crepe. The rooms and the halls and the rich dark solemn coffin, glittering with its solid silver screws and handles, were almost hidden in rare and costly flowers. Ruth, in the deepest of mourning robes, accompanied by her father, from whose shoulder swept long streamers of crepe, sat in the Erskine carriage and followed directly after the hearse, chief mourner in the long and solemn train. In every conceivable way that love could devise and wealth carry out, were the last tokens of respect paid to the quiet clay that understood not what was passing around it. The music was by a quartet choir of the First Church and was like a wail of angel voices in its wonderful pathos and tenderness. The pastor spoke a few words, tenderly solemnly pointing the mourners to one who alone could sustain, earnestly urging those who knew nothing of the love of Christ to take refuge now in his open arms and find rest there. But alas, alas, not a single word could he say about the soul that had gone out from that silent body before them, gone to live forever. Was it possible for those holding such belief as theirs to have a shadow of hope that the end of such a life as his had been could be bright? Not one of those who understood anything about this matter dared for an instant to hope it. They understood the awful solemn silence of the minister. There was nothing for that grave but silence. Hope for the living and he pointed them earnestly to the source of all hope, but for the dead, silence. What an awfully solemn task to conduct such funeral services. The pastor may not read the comforting words, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, because before them lies one who did not die in the Lord, and common sense tells the most thoughtless that if those are blessed who die in the Lord, there must be a reverse side to the picture, else no sense to the statement. So the verse must be passed by. It is too late to help the dead, and it need not tear the hearts of the living. He cannot read, I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. God forbid, praised the sad pastor in his heart, that mother or father or friend shall so die as to go to this one who did not die in the Lord. We cannot even hope for that. All the long line of tender, helpful verses, glowing with light for the coming morning shining with immortality and unending union, must be passed by. For each and every one of them have a clause which shows unmistakably that the immortality is glorious only under certain conditions, and in this case they have not been met. There must in these verses too be a reverse side, for else they mean nothing. What shall the pastor do? Clearly he can only say, in the midst of life we are in death. That is true, his audience feel it, and he can only pray. So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. But oh, how can the mothers stand by open graves wherein are laid their sons or daughters, and endure the thought that this is a separation which shall stretch through eternity. How wonderful that any of us are careless or thoughtless for a moment so long as we have a child or a friend unsafe. During all this time of trial, Ruth's three friends were hovering around her, trying by every possible attention and thoughtfulness to help or comfort her, and yet feeling their powerlessness in such a way that it almost made them shrink from trying. Words are such a mockery, Marianne said to her one evening as they sat together. Sometimes I almost hate myself for trying to speak to you at all. What can any human being say to one who is shrouded in an awful sorrow? Ruth shuttered visibly. It is an awful sorrow, she said. You have used the right word with which to express it. But there is a shade to it that you do not understand. I don't believe that by experience you ever will. I pray God that you may not. Think of burying a friend in the grave without the slightest hope of ever meeting him in peace again. You have nothing to do with that, Ruth. God is the judge. I don't think you ought to allow yourself to think of it. There I think you are mistaken. I believe I ought to think of it. Marianne, you know and I know that there is simply nothing at all on which to build a hope of meeting in peace the man we buried last week. You think it almost shocking that I can speak of him in that way. I know you do. People are apt to hide behind the very flimsiest veil of fancied hopes when they talk of such things. Perhaps a merciful God permits some to hug a worthless hope when they think of their dead treasures, since it can do no harm to those who are gone. But I am not one of that class of people. Besides, I am appearing to you and everybody in a false light. I am tired of it. Marianne, Mr. Wayne was not to me what he ought to have been since I was his promised wife. You know how I have changed of late. You know that there was hardly a thought or feeling of mine in which he could sympathize. But the worst of it is, he never did sympathize with me in the true sense. He never filled my heart. My promise to him was one of those false steps that people like me, who are ruled by society, take because it seems to be the proper thing to do next, or because we feel it might as well be that as anything, perhaps because it will please one's father in a business point of view, or please one's own sense of importance, satisfy one's desire to be foremost in the fashionable world. I am humiliating myself to tell you plainly that my promise meant not much more than that. I did not realize how empty it was till I found that all my plans and aims and hopes in life were changed. That, in short, life had come to seem more to me than a glittering weariness that was to be born with the best grace I could assume. This was nearly all I had found in society or hoped to find. I followed Mr. Wayne to the grave in the position of Chief Marner, because I felt that it was a token of respect that I owed to the memory of the man whom I had wronged, and because I felt that the world had no business with our private affairs. But he was not to me what people think he was, and I feel as though I wanted you to know it, even though it humiliates me beyond measure to make the confession. At the same time I have an awful sorrow, too awful to be expressed in words. Marian, I think you will understand what I mean when I say that I believe I have the blood of a lost soul clinging to my garments. I know as well as I sit here tonight that I might have influenced Harold Wayne into the right way. I know his love for me was so sincere and so strong that he would have been willing to try to do almost anything that I had asked. I believe in my soul that had I urged the matter of personal salvation on his immediate attention, he would have given it thought. But I never did, never. Marian, even on that last evening of his life, I mean before he was sick, when he himself invited the words, I was silent. I did not mean to continue so. I meant when I got ready to speak to him about this matter. I meant to do everything right, but I was determined to make my own time for it, and I took it, and now he is gone. Marian, you know nothing about such a sorrow as that. Now why did I act in this insane way? I know the reason, one of them at least, and the awful selfishness and cowardice of it only brands me deeper. It was because I was afraid to have him become a Christian man. I knew if he did I should have no excuse for breaking the pledges that had passed between us. In plain words, I would have no excuse for not marrying him, and I did not want to do it. I felt that marriage vows would mean to me in the future what they never meant in the past, and that there was really nothing in common between Mr. Wayne and myself, that I could not assent to the marriage service with him and be guiltless before God. So to spare myself to have what looked like a conscientious excuse for breaking vows that ought never to have been made, I deliberately sacrificed his soul. Marian Wilbur, think of that. You didn't mean to do that, Marian said, in an ostrich invoice. She was astonished and shocked, and bewildered as to what to say. Ruth answered her almost fiercely. No, I didn't mean to, and as to that, I never meant to do anything that was not just right in my life, but I meant to have just exactly my own way of doing things, and I tell you I took it. Now, Marian, while I blame myself as no other person ever can, I still blame others. I was never taught as I should have been about the sacredness of human loves and the awfulness of human vows and pledges. I was never taught that for girls to dally with such pledges to flirt with them before they knew anything about life or about their own hearts was a sin in the sight of God. I ought to have been so taught. Perhaps if I had had a mother to teach me I should have been different, but I am not even sure of that. Mothers seem to me to allow strange trifling with these subjects, even if they do not actually prepare the way. But all this does not relieve me. I have sinned. No one but myself understands how deeply, and no one but me knows the bitterness of it. Now I feel as though the whole of the rest of my life must be given to atone for this horrible fatal mistake. I wasted the last hour I ever had with a soul, and I have before me the awful consciousness that I might have saved it. It is all done now and can never be undone. That is the saddest part of it. But there is one thing I can do. I need never live through a like experience again. I will give the rest of my life to atone for the past. I will never again be guilty of coming in contact with a soul unprepared for death without urging upon that soul, as often as I have opportunity, the necessity for preparation. I see plainly that it is the important thing in life. There hovered over Marian's mind while these last sentences were being spoken, words something like these. The blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth from all sin. She almost said to Ruth that even for this sin the atonement had been made. She must not try to make another. But the error that only faintly glimmered in Ruth's sentence was so mixed with solemn and helpful truth that she felt at a loss as to whether there was error at all, and so held her peace. CHAPTER XXII REVIVAL As the early autumn months slipped away and touches of winter began to show around them, it became evident that a new feeling was stirring in the first church. No need now to look for increased numbers at the prayer meeting. At least there was not the need that formerly existed. The room was full and the meetings solemn and earnest. The spirit of God was hovering over the place. Drops of the coming shower were already beginning to fall. What was the cause of the quickened hearts? Who knew saved the watcher on the tower in the eternal city? Was it because of the sudden and solemn and hopeless death occurring in the very center of what was called the first circles? Was it the spirit developed apparently by this death, showing itself in eager, indefatigable effort wherever Ruth Erskine went with whomever she came in contact? Was it Marian Wilbur's new way of teaching that included not only the intellect of her pupils but looked beyond that with loving word for the empty soul? Was it Urie Mitchell's patient way of taking up home work and care that had been distasteful to her and that she had shunned in days gone by? Was it Flossie Shiffley's way of teaching the Sabbath school lessons to those boys of hers? Was it the quickened sense which throbbed in the almost discouraged heart of the pastor whenever he came in contact with either of these four? Was it the patient, persistent, unassuming work of John Warden as he went about in the shop among his fellow workmen, dropping an earnest word here, a pressing invitation there? Who shall tell whether either or all of these influences, combined with hundreds of others set in motion by like causes, were the beginnings of the solemn and blessed harvest time that dawned at last on those who had been sowing in tears? The fact was apparent, even in the first church, that model of propriety and respectability, that church which had so feared excitement or unusual efforts of any sort, there was a revival. Among those who were coming and who were growing willing to let others know that they were awakening to a sense of the importance of such things, were Doctor and Mrs. Mitchell, Yuri's father and mother. To themselves they did not hesitate to say that the change in Yuri was so marked and so increasing in its power over her life that it obliged them to think seriously of this thing. Among the interested also were a score or more of girls from Marion's room in the great school and more came every day. Marion's face was shining and she gathered her brood about her as a mother would the children of her love and longing. Among them were four of Flossie's boys and half a dozen boys, friends of theirs who were not Flossie's and who yet some way joined her train and managed to be counted in. Among them was Judge Erskine, I mean among those who continued to come to the meetings, coming alone and being reverent and thoughtful during the services but going away with bowed head and making no sign. There was something in the way with Judge Erskine that no one understood. As for Ruth, how she worked during those days, not with a glad light in her eyes such as Marion and Flossie had, not with a satisfied face as if the question of something to do that was worth doing and that helped her had been settled such as Yuri Mitchell wore, rather with a sad feverish impatience to accomplish results, shrinking from nothing, willing to do anything, go anywhere, yet meeting with far less encouragement and seeing far less fruits than any of the others. She did not realize that she was working with a sort of desperate intention of overbalancing the mischief of her mistakes by so much work now that there would be a sort of even balance on the scales. She would have been shocked had she understood her own heart. Meantime, where was Satan, content to let this reaping time alone? Oh, bless you, no! Never busier, never more alert and watchful and cautious and skillful than now. It was wonderful, too, how many helpers he found whose names were actually on the role of the First Church. There were those who had in mind all the fall having little entertainments. Just a few friends, you know, nothing like a party. They were sorry to be obliged to have them just now while there were meetings, but Miss Gilmore was in town and would be here so short a time they must invite her. It would be not treating her well to take no notice of her visit, and really the people whom they proposed to invite were those who did not attend church, so no harm would be done. These were some of Satan's helpers. There were others who were more outspoken. They did not believe in special efforts, seasons of excitement, religious dissipations, nothing else. People should be religious at all times, not put it on for special occasions. It was well enough to have a special season for parties and a special season for going to the seaside and a special season for doing one's dressmaking and a special season for cleaning house and a special season for everything under the sun but religious meetings. These should be conducted at all times. Was that what they meant? Oh, dear, no. They should not be conducted at all. Was that what they meant? Who should tell what they did mean, one lady said? The idea of a bell ringing every evening for prayer meeting. It was too absurd. People must have a little time for recreation. These weeks just before the holidays were always by common consent the time for festivities of all sorts. It was downright folly to expect young people to give up their pleasures and go every evening to meeting. So she issued her cards for a party and gathered as many of the young people about her as she could. And this woman was a member of the first church. And this woman professed to believe in the verse that read, whether therefore ye eat or drink or whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God. There were others who went to these parties, hushing their consciences meantime by the explanation that the social duties were important ones and that one whose heart was right could serve God as well having religious conversation at a party as she could occupying a seat at a prayer meeting. Perhaps they really believed it. What marvel Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. The trouble about the sincerity was that those same persons were not unaware of certain sneering remarks that were being made to the effect that if church members could go to parties when there were meetings at their own church they could surely be excused from the meetings. And they could not have been utterly ignorant of the verse that read plainly, let not your good be evil spoken of. There were still others who compromised matters, taking the meetings for the first hour of the evening and a party for the next three. And the looker's on said sneeringly that there was a strife going on between the soul, the flesh and the devil, and they wondered which would conquer. So all these classes flourished and worked in their different ways in the first church, just as they always will work until that day when the wheat shall be forever separated from the tares. The wonder is why so many blinded eyes must insist that because there are tares there is therefore no wheat. The Lord said, let both grow together until the harvest. I don't understand it, Ruth said one day to Marian as they talked the work over and tried to lay plans for future helpfulness. Why do you suppose it is that I seem able to do nothing at all? I try with all my might, my heart is surely in it, and I long with a desire that seems almost as if it would consume me to see some fruit of my work, and yet I don't. What can be the difficulty? I don't know, Marian said, speaking hesitatingly, as one who would like to say more if she dared. I don't feel confident to answer that question, and yet sometimes I have feared that you might be trying to compromise with the Lord. I don't understand you, in what way do you mean? I try to do my duty in every place that I can think of. I am not compromising on any subject so far as I know. If I am, I will certainly be grateful to anyone who will point it out to me. I am not sure that it is sufficiently clear to my own mind to be able to point it out, Marian said, still visibly embarrassed. But Ruth, it sometimes seems to me as if you had said to yourself, now I will work so much and pray so much, and then I ought to have rest from the pain that is goading me on, and I ought to be able to feel that I have atoned for past mistakes, and the account against me is squared. Ruth turned from her impatiently. You are a strange comforter, she said almost indignantly. Do you mean by that to intimate that you think I ought never to look or hope for rest of mind again because I have made one fearful mistake? Do you mean that I ought always to carry with me the sense of the burden? I mean no such thing. You cannot think I so estimate the power of sacrifice for sin. Ruth, I mean simply this. Nothing that you or I can do can possibly make one sin white, one mistake as though it had not been, give one moment of rest to a troubled heart. But the blood of Jesus Christ can do all this, and it does seem to me that you are ignoring it and trying to work out your own rest. Ruth was thoughtful. The look of vexation passed from her face. It may be so, she said after a long silence. I begin dimly to understand your meaning, but I don't know how to help it, how to feel differently. I surely ought to work, and surely I have a right to expect results. In one sense, yes, and in another I don't believe we have. I begin to feel more and more that you and I have got in some way to be made to understand that it is not our way but the Lord's that we must be willing to do, or what is harder to leave undone, exactly what he says, do or not do. I can't help feeling that you are planning in your own heart just what ought to be done, and then allowing yourself to feel almost indignant and ill-used because the work is not accomplished. I don't know how you have succeeded in seeing so deeply into my heart, Ruth said with a one smile. I believe it is so, though I am not sure that I ever saw it before. I know why I see it, because it is my temptation as well as yours. You and I are both strong-willed. We have both been used to having our own way. We want to continue to have it. We want to do the right things, provided we can have the choosing of them. Flossie now, with her yielding nature, is willing to be led, as you and I are not. I have to fight against this tendency to carry out my plans and look for my results all the time. The fact is, Ruth, we must learn to work for Christ and not set up business for ourselves and still expect him to give the wages. Still, said Ruth, I don't know. There seems to me to be nothing that I am not willing to do. I can't think of anything so hard that I would not unhesitatingly do it. I have changed wonderfully in that respect. A little while ago I was not willing to do anything. Now I am ready for anything that can be done. Are you, Marian asked, with a visible shiver? Ruth, are you sure? I can't say that. I want to say it, and I pray that I may be able. Yet I can think of so many things that I might be called on to do that I shrink from. I have given up trying to do them, and fallen back on the promise, my grace is sufficient, only praying, Lord, give me the needed grace for today. I will not reach out for tomorrow. And, Ruth, I feel sure that neither you nor I must try to cover our past errors with present usefulness. Nothing but the blood of Christ can cover any wrong. We must rest on that and on that alone. I believe I only understand in part what you mean. I don't see how you ever reached so far ahead of me in faith and in understanding. But I believe you are farther. Still, I can't think of anything that I am not willing and ready to do. I wish I might be tried. I wish he would give me some work, not of my own planning, that he might see how willing I am to do anything. This was Ruth's last remark to her friend that evening. Flossie and Yuri both came in, and they went out to the meeting together, Ruth still thinking of the talk they had, and feeling sure that she could do whatever she found. And yet the master was planning away for her that very evening, the entrance to which she had never seen, never dreamed of as possible. So many ways he has for leading us. Blessed are those who have come to the experience that makes them willing to be led, even in darkness and blindness, trusting to the Son of Righteousness for light. Judge Erskine was in his library, pacing slowly back and forth, his forehead lined with heavy wrinkles, and his face wearing the expression of one involved in deep and troubled thought. He had just come home from the evening meeting, the last meeting of the series that had held the attention of so many hearts during four weeks of harvest time. Judge Erskine had been a silent and attentive listener, all through the salemnities of the sermon that seemed written for his sake and to point right at him. He had never moved his keen, steady eyes away from the preacher's face. The text of that sermon he was not likely to forget. He had looked it up and read it with its connections the moment he reached the privacy of his library. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. That was the text. Judge Erskine said it over and over to his own soul. It was true it fitted his condition as precisely as though it had been written for him. The harvest that would tell for eternity had been reaped all around him. He had looked and listened and resolved, and still he stood outside, ungarnered. Moreover, one portion of the salemn sermon fitted him also. When Dr. Dennis spoke of those who had let this season pass unhelped, because they had an inner life that would not bear the gaze of the public, because they were not willing to drag out their past and cast it away from them, Judge Erskine had started and fixed a stern glance on the preacher. Did he know his secret that had been hidden away with such persistent care? What scoundrel could have enlightened him? This only for a moment, then he settled back and realized his folly. Dr. Dennis knew nothing of himself or his past. Then came that other awfully solemn thought. There was one who did. Could it be that his voice had instructed the pastor what special point to make in that sermon with such emphasis and power? Was the keen eye of the eternal God pointing his finger now at him and saying, Thou art the man? He knew all this was true. He knew that the work of the past month had greatly moved him. He knew on the evening when the text had been, almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian, that he had felt himself almost persuaded. He knew then, as he did now, but that one thing stood in the way of his entire persuasion. As he walked up and down his library on this evening, he felt fully persuaded in his own mind that the time had arrived when he was being called on persistently for a decision. More than that, he felt that the decision was to be not only for time but for eternity, that he must settle the question of his future then and there. He had locked the door after him as he came into the library with a sort of grim determination to settle the question before he stepped into the outside world again. How would it be settled? He did not know himself. He did not dare to think how it would end. He simply felt that the conflict must end. Meantime Ruth was upstairs on her knees, praying for her father. Her heart felt very heavy. She had prayed for this father with all her soul. Prayed with what she felt was a degree of faith that this evening at the meeting he might settle the question at issue and settle it forever. She had felt a bitter and almost an overwhelming disappointment that the meeting closed and left him just where he had stood for a month. There seemed nothing left to do. She had not spared her words, her entreaties. She had gotten bravely over her fears of approaching her father. But now it seemed to her that there was nothing left to say. She could still pray, and it was with a half despairing cry that she fell on her knees, realizing in her very soul that only the power of God could convert her father. Into the midst of this longing, clinging cry for help, there came a knock. Judge Erskine would like to have you come to the library for a few minutes if you are not retired. This was Cady Flynn's message, and Ruth, as she swiftly said about obeying the summons, said, Oh, Cady, pray for my father. For among those who, during the last few weeks, had learned to pray, was Cady Flynn. Poor Cady, with the simple childlike faith and loving heart which she brought to the service, was destined to be a shining light in a dark world, and the glory thereof would sparkle forever on Flossy Shipley's crown. Judge Erskine turned as his daughter opened the door and motioned her to a seat. Then he continued his walk. Something in his face hushed into silence the words that were on her lips, but presently he stopped before her, and his voice startled her with its strangeness. My daughter, I have something to tell you and something to ask you. I shall have to cause you great grief and shame, and I want to begin first by asking you to forgive your father. Ruth felt her face growing pale. What could he mean? Had she not always looked up to him as above most men, even Christian men? Faultless in his business transactions, blameless in his life. She attempted to speak, and yet felt that she did not know what to say. Apparently he expected no word from her, for he went on hurriedly. You have, during these few weeks past, shown a sort of interest in me that I never saw manifested before. I have reason to think that you have concluded lately that the most earnest desire you can have concerning your father is to see him a Christian man. I can conscientiously tell you that I have felt the necessity for this experience as I never did before, that I realize its importance, and that I want it. Yet there is something in the way, something that I must do and confess and abide by for the future, that I shrink from more on your account than my own. My child, do you want this thing enough to endure disgrace and humiliation and a cross heavy and hopeless all your life? Father, she said, half-rising, and looking at him with a bewildered air, a vague doubt of his sanity and a half fear of his presence creeping into her heart. What can you possibly mean? How can disgrace or crossbearing or trouble of any sort be connected with you? I cannot understand you. I know you cannot. You think I am talking wildly, and you are half afraid of me, but I am perfectly sane. I wish with all my soul that a certain portion of my life could be called a wild dream of a disordered brain, but it is solemnly true. Ruth, if I come out before the world and avow myself a Christian man with the determination to abide by the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, it involves my bringing into this house a woman who will have to be recognized as my wife and a girl who will have to share with you as my daughter, a woman whom you will have to call mother, and a girl who is your sister. Are you equal to that? Every trace of blood left Ruth Erskine's face. Her father watched her narrowly with his hand touching the bell rope. It seemed as if she must faint, but she motioned his hand away. Don't ring, were the first words she said. I am not going to faint. Father, tell me what you mean. The actual avowal made, and the fact established that his daughter was able to bear it and to still keep the story between themselves seemed to quiet Judge Erskine. His intense and almost uncontrollable excitement subsided. The wild look in his eyes calmed, and, drawing a chair beside his daughter, he began in a low, steady voice to tell her the strange story. Acts that involve a lifetime of trouble can be told in a few words, Ruth. When your mother died, I was almost insane with grief. I can't tell you about that time. I was young and I was gay and full of plans and aims and intentions, in all of which she had been involved. Then came the sudden blank, and it almost unsettled my reason. There was a young woman boarding at the same house where I went, who was kind to me, who befriended me in various ways, and tried to help me to endure my sorrow. She grew to be almost necessary to my endurance of myself. After a little I married her. I did not take this step till I found that my friendship with her, or rather hers with me, was compromising her in the eyes of others. Let me hurry over it, Ruth. We lived together but a few weeks. Then I was obliged to go abroad, away from old scenes and associations, and plunged into business cares. I gradually recovered my usual tone of mine. But it was not till I came home again that I discovered what a fatal blunder I had made. That young woman had not a single idea in common with my plans and aims in life. She was ignorant, uncultured, and, it seemed to me, unendurable. How I ever allowed myself to be such a fool I do not know. But up to this time I had at least not been a villain. I didn't desert her, Ruth. I made a deliberate compromise with her. She was to take her child and go away, hundreds of miles away, where I would not be likely to ever come in contact with her again, and I was to take your mother's child and go where I pleased. Of course I was to support her, and I have done so ever since. That was eighteen years ago. She is still living, and the daughter is living. I have always been careful to keep them supplied with money. I have tried to have done for the girl what money could do. But I have never seen their faces since that time. Now, Ruth, you know the miserable story. There are a hundred details that I could give you that perhaps would lead you to have more pity for your father if it did not lead you to despise him more for his weakness. It is hard to be despised by one's child. I tell you truly, Ruth, that the bitterest of this bitterness is the thought of you. The proud man's lip quivered, and his voice trembled just here. Poor Ruth Erskine. I am willing to do anything she had said to Marian not two hours before. And here was a thing, the possibility of which she had never dreamed, staring her in the face, waiting to be done, and she felt that she could not do it. Oh, why was it necessary? Why not let everything be as it has been? said that wily villain Satan whispering in her ears. They were false vows. They are better broken than kept. He does not love her, though he said he did. And how can we ever endure it, the shame, the disgrace, the horrid explanations, our name, the Erskine name on everybody's lips, common loafers sneering at us. And then to have the family changed, myself to be only a back figure, a mother who is not, and never was, my mother, taking my place. And the other one, oh, it cannot be possible that we must endure this. There must be some other way. They are doubtless contented. Why could it not remain as it is? As if an answer to her unspoken thoughts, Judge Erskine suddenly said, I have canvassed the entire subject in all its bearings. You may be sure of that. I am living a lie. I am saying my wife is dead when a woman to whom before God I gave that name is living. I am saying that I have but one child when there is another to whom I am as certainly father as I am to you. I am leaving them, may obliging them to live a daily lie. I have assured myself to a certainty that one sin can never be atoned for by another sin. There is but one atonement, and the source of all help says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I know there is only one way of cleansing, daughter. Get thee behind me, Satan. The only perfect life gave that sentence once, not alone for himself. Thank God he has many a time since enabled his weak children of the flesh to repeat it in triumph. The grace came then and there to Ruth Erskine. She rose up from her chair and going over to her father did what she had never remembered doing in her life before. She bent down and wound both arms around his neck and kissed him. Her voice was low and steady. Father, don't let this or anything earthly stand between you and Christ. You are not a sinner above all others. It is only the interposing hand of God that has kept me from taking sinful vows upon my lips. Let us do just what is right. Send for them to come home, and I will try to be a daughter and a sister, and I will stand by you and help you in every possible way. There are harder trials than ours will be after all. It was his daughter who finally and utterly broke the proud, haughty heart. Judge Erskine bowed himself before her and sobbed like a child in the bitterness and the humiliation of his soul. God bless you, he said at last, in broken utterance. There is an almighty Savior. I need nothing more than your words to convince me of the truth of that. If love to him can lead your heart to such forgiveness as this, what must his forgiveness be? Ruth, you have saved my soul. I will give up the struggle. I have tried to fight it out. I have tried to say that I could not. For my own sake, and for my own name, it seemed impossible. Then when I got beyond that and felt that for myself, if I could have rest in the love of Christ, I could feel that he forgave me, I cared for nothing else. Then I said, I cannot do this for my child's sake. I can never plunge her into the depth of sin and shame. Then, my daughter, there came to me a message from God and of all those that could come to a miserable man like me, it was this. He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Then I saw that I must be willing even to lose your love to make you despise me. And that was the bitterest cup of all. But, thank God, he has spared me this. God bless you, my daughter. There was something almost terrible to Ruth in seeing her cold, calm father so moved. She had never realized what awfully solemn things tears were till she saw them on her father's cheeks and felt them falling hot on her head, from eyes so unused to weeping. The kisses she gave him were very soft and clinging, full of tender soothing touches. Then father and daughter knelt together, and the long, long struggle with sin and pride and silence was concluded. Do you think this was a lasting victory for Ruth Erskine? You do not understand the power of that old serpent the devil, if you cannot think how he came to her again and again in the silence of her own room, even into the midst of her rejoicings over the newly washed soul, even while the joy in heaven among the angels was still ringing out over her father, came whispering to her heart to say, Oh, I can't, I can't, think of it, the Erskine's, how can we endure it? Is it possible that we must? Perhaps the woman would rather live as she is. As if that had anything to do with the question of right and wrong. The very next instant Ruth curled her lips nearingly over her own folly. She never forgot that night, nor how the conflict waged. She tried to imagine herself saying mother to one who really had a nominal right to the title. Not that it was an unfamiliar word to her. The old aunt who had occupied her mother's place in the household since Ruth was a wee creature of two years, she had learned almost from the instincts of childhood to call mama, and as she grew older and was unused to any other name for Mrs. Wheeler, the widowed aunt, she toned it into the familiar and comfortable word mother, and had always spoken to and of her in that name. Yet she knew very well how little the title meant to her. She had loved this old lady with a sort of pitying, patronizing love, realizing even early in her life that she, herself, had more self-reliance, more executive ability in her little finger, than was spread all over the placid lady who early learned that Ruthie was to do precisely as she pleased. Such a cipher was the same old lady in the household that when a long lost son appeared on the surface during Ruth's absence at Chautauqua, proving, sturdy old Californian as he was, to have a home and a place for his mother and a heart to take her with him, her departure caused scarcely a ripple in the well-ordered household of the Urskans. She had been its nominal head for eighteen years, but the real head, who was absent at Chautauqua, had three or four perfectly trained servants who knew their young mistress's will so well that they could execute it in her absence as well as when she was present. So when Ruth took, in the eyes of everybody, the position that had really been her so long, it made no sort of change in her plans or ways, and beyond a certain lingering tenderness when she spoke of her by that familiar title, Mother, there was no indication that the woman who had had so constant and intimate connection with her life was remembered. But this name applied to another, and that other, one whom she had never seen in her life, and who yet was actually to occupy the position of head of the household. Her father's wife, in the eyes of society, her mother, spoken of as such, herself asked, how is your mother, or what does your mother think of this? Would anyone dare to use that name to her? No one had so spoken of her aunt. They all knew she was only her aunt, though she chose to pet her by the use of that tender name. Could she bear all these things and a hundred others that would come up? Marianne, she said the next day as she chanced to meet that young lady on the street, I have something to tell you. I want to call on you to witness that I shall never again be guilty of that vain glorious absurdity of saying that I am ready for anything. One can never know whether this is true or not, at least I am sure I never can. What I am to say in the future is simply, Lord, make me willing to do what there is for me to do this day. Remember that in a few days you will understand what I mean. Then she went on. Marianne pondered over it. She did not understand it at all. What trial could have come to Ruth that had brought her the knowledge of the weakness of her own heart? She wondered if it had also brought her peace.