Then Ruddy Van Arden slid up to the door in his new gray roadster, and Constance, with a breath of relief, hurried off after her racket and presently was gone into a great bright day of her own world. A world that had nothing to do with odd strangers who made odd remarks and gave lovely gifts of sweet wildflowers done up in fine linen handkerchiefs that smelled of lavender and had a hand-embroidered initial G in the corner.
All day long Constance enjoyed herself, playing tennis with Ruddy Van Arden in the morning, taking lunch at the country club with a party of young people, golf in the afternoon with Sam Acker from Harvard, then another eighteen holes with Ruddy to make up for Sunday morning, a hurried dinner at home with her stately little grandmother in black taffeta watching her across the table in her new rose evening frock and the pearls, a rush to the theater with a Mr. Montgomery whom she had met at luncheon and with whom she attended a play then late supper at a roof garden, and home long after midnight. Constance really had very little time to think of hepaticas and handsome, presumptuous strangers. The little hepaticas in their crystal bowl on the dining room table were all curled shut into sweet buds against the lacy green of the maidenhair when she stopped in the dining room for a drink of water before going up to her room. Little sleepy buds. Probably they would be dead in the morning. Flowers of a day. Like the handsome stranger-acquaintance of a morning.
As she tumbled into bed Constance remembered the half appointment for the morning. Half past five! Well, she never would make it now even if she wanted to, and of course she hadn’t meant to any of the time.
And then she fell asleep.
But strangely enough, a young early robin—or was it a starling or some other bird with a heavenly voice?—flew down on a twig beside her open window and trilled out a bit of celestial song just at a quarter past five. The clear sound dipped deep into her sleep and brought Constance back to earth and day again. She tried to turn over and go to sleep again, tried to tell herself that of course it was absurd to think of getting up at that hour and tramping off to the woods with an utter stranger who said and did odd things. But all the time that fussy little bird by the windowsill trilled out a love song of blue hepaticas growing on a hillside against a tiny forest of maidenhair blowing in the breeze, dew pearled and lovely with the rising sun upon them.
The morning breeze blew the curtain in at the window, blew sweet breath of flower-laden zephyrs into her face, reviving her, and suddenly she wanted to see that flowery hillside very much and to see if that young stranger was really as interesting as he had seemed the day before. She opened one eye, stole a glance at her clock, and then she was wide awake. She found the little nymph-green knitted dress that fit an early trip to the woods and the soft brown suede tramping shoes, gave a hasty rumpling to the big gold waves of her hair, and was ready.
She thought she heard footsteps coming down the pavement in the stillness of the morning as she crept into the hall and down the stairs, softly not to wake that dreadful brother of hers, and when she opened the front door ever so silently, there was the stranger lingering down by the group of hemlocks beyond the daffodils. He gave her his brilliant smile and a quiet lifting of his hat for welcome and seemed to know they would go quietly and not disturb the sleeping town as they walked through it.
Out beyond sight of her father’s house, Constance drew a breath of relief. Her brother hadn’t wakened. It wouldn’t matter whether anyone else saw her, although it suddenly occurred to her that it was rather odd to be walking off with a stranger at this early hour in the morning.
“This is simply great of you,” said Seagrave, looking down upon her, his eyes full of light. “I’ve been wondering all night if you would come.”
“Why, so have I,” gurgled Constance with a breath of a laugh. “Or no, not wondering,” she corrected herself. “I was very sure I wouldn’t, of course.” She laughed. “You see I really haven’t time. I’m leaving in about three hours.”
“I know,” he said gravely. “I’m sorry.”
“I just couldn’t resist the desire to see where those darling flowers live when they are at home,” she said quickly to hide the commotion she felt in her mind at the serious way he took her going. This really was all wrong, she told herself, but it was fun, and of course it would soon be over.
All too soon they arrived at Hepatica Hill and dropped down to worship the beauty. It seemed to Constance that she had never been in such a beautiful spot before, and she drank her fill of the day and the hour, the sky and the wonderful flowers.
Then they grew silent sitting on the hillside with the blue flowers at their feet and the fringe of fern beside them. Looking off over the valley, the town in the distance, taking deep breaths of fine air, thrilling with the song of a bird in the top of a tall tree, they were filled with the awe of the morning.
Suddenly he turned to her with that grave, sweet smile she had seen first on his face at the church.
“How long have you been saved?” he asked, as simply as if he had asked how long before her college would be over.
Constance looked up in a great wonder and stared at him.
“Saved?” she echoed, and again, “Saved? I … don’t know just what you mean. Saved from what?”
He gave her a startled look, and then a great gentleness came upon his face. As if she had been a little child he explained, simply, “Sunday we united with the church,” he said slowly.
“Yes?” she said with a sharp, startled catch in her voice and giving him a keen look. Had he seen through her playacting? Did he know how loath she had been to parade before the world in that way?
“You united on profession of your faith, not by letter from another church as I did. I was wondering—perhaps I have no right to ask on such a short acquaintance—but I was interested to know if you had been a Christian a long time or had just come to know the Lord?”
He waited in a sweet silence for her answer, and Constance looked up and then down in confusion.
“I … oh, I … why—!” and then she stopped with a half-embarrassed laugh. “I’m not very familiar with those phrases you have used,” she said and tried to give a glibness to her speech. “They don’t talk much of such things in the college I attend. But I suppose you must mean something like what they used to call in old-fashioned camp meetings ‘being converted’? Well, I’m afraid then I’ll be quite a disappointment. I haven’t really ever given much thought to these things. You see it was rather sprung upon me, this thing of uniting with the church—” She glanced up with a lift of her dark lashes that gave such a piquancy to her lovely face, and the look she saw in his eyes made her hurry on anxiously, speaking rapidly, trying to get the old-time snap into her words and somehow not making it.
She hurried on, determined to make a clean sweep of it and end this nonsense. After all, the truth was best. She hated to pose as something she was not. That was why she had not wanted to join the church. It seemed to her hypocritical.
“You see my grandmother was determined I should join. The rest of the girls in the Sunday school class to which I used to belong were joining, and she simply had her heart set on my joining, too.”
The young man was so still that she felt uncomfortable. She was afraid to look up and see the look in his eyes. She somehow felt a disapproval, and she did not like it. Her young men friends were not apt to express disapproval of her. She resented it. She tried to put on her worldly drawl.
“I didn’t see joining the church. It seemed rather archaic to me. I tried to get by without it, but it simply didn’t go down. I had to either give in and join or hurt my little old, sweet grandmother—” She finished her explanation flippantly and looked up with what was meant to be a daring glance at her companion, and she found such a look of sorrow in his eyes that her tone failed miserably. After an instant she dropped her eyes again and sat there, with all the still breezes and the vaulted sky and the blue bed of flowers at her feet dropping away from her and leaving her a lone, little, arrogant atom in a worl
d that had just been full of song and sunshine and now seemed to have withdrawn from her its joy.
After a little that seemed a long while, the young man beside her uttered a single syllable, just a long-drawn breath of a word that almost sobbed as it became audible, like the sound of a soul who was pulling from his own heart a barbed weapon that had gone deep and was trying to be brave, but the pain of it made his breath quiver.
“Oh!”
Chapter 3
For a long moment she sat there suddenly covered with shame. She had hurt him. She had pulled down the beautiful vision of herself that he had conjured up and dragged it in the dust.
Why had she been so foolish? Why had she not just kidded him along, asked a few questions, anything to keep him talking for the few minutes they would stay here, and let him think her all that he seemed to want to think? What difference did it make what he thought about her anyway? This was only one morning out of her life. She would likely never see him again or if she did, their ways would not touch again. This was only an incident. Why did she have to be so awfully honest and spoil all their nice time? It was ridiculous. What was it all about anyway?
And then she looked up to try with bright words to regain her place in his estimation. What was he? A country innocent apparently. She must make him snap out of this, show him how foolish and archaic and childish his present attitude was. And so she forced her eyes to look into his and see all the pain and all the disillusion and all the actual dismay that her words had brought him, and she was covered with a shame she had never known before.
She perceived that this attitude of his mind was a basic part of him, something she would never be able to reason out of him nor change, and she had shocked him. He had set her up as a sort of saint, had idealized her, and she had made him understand that she was just a flesh-and-blood girl, a modern person of the world. Well, he had to learn sooner or later that dreams and visions did not go to make up a world in these days. Best laugh it off. He was flesh and blood himself. Couldn’t she laugh him out of this?
“You take it as solemnly as if you were my priest,” she said in a flippant tone.
“No,” he answered quickly, “it’s not what you’ve done to me—though I didn’t know that anyone, not anyone with a face like yours, could stand up and take solemn vows upon them that they didn’t mean—but it’s what you’ve done to my Lord! You’ve mocked Him! You’ve taken vows upon you that you did not mean to perform. You have desecrated the cup of the blood covenant.”
There was such deep pain in his words that Constance was almost stunned for a moment. She drew herself up and looked at him half-bewildered.
“I don’t see why that’s such a dreadful thing to do!” she said crossly. “If it pleased my grandmother I think it was a good thing to do.”
“Would it have pleased your grandmother if she had known that you were only playacting?”
The brown eyes looked searchingly at her and she shivered. She felt as if there was suddenly a God—though she had not believed so for a long time—and that He was standing right there beside her looking into her soul and seeing all her empty vanities, tossing aside her foolish, worthless virtues on which she had so greatly relied.
“She will never know,” said Constance with a toss of her head.
“Perhaps not,” said the young man sadly. “But God knows. It is He, after all, that is hurt. It is He that matters. Not I! Not your grandmother!”
Constance was still a long time. Her throat was hot; her eyes were smarting; the great vaulted sky and the valley were blurred into one with the blue flowers at her feet. She wished very much that she had not come. She wondered what time it was, but she would not look at her watch. She wanted this to be over, but she could not go until she had somehow made this young man think better of her. Even if she missed her train she must do it. She could not stand the thought of his disapproval. She was utterly unused to disapproval.
She cast a quick glance in his direction. He sat with his face half-shaded with his hand, his head bowed, his eyes closed, almost as if he were praying.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean at all!” she burst forth in a vexed tone. “What do you mean by ‘saved’ anyway? Why should I have to be saved? Saved from what? And how? I never in all my life heard anybody talk the way you do. How do you get that way?”
He raised his head and looked at her gravely, and she had a fleeting thought of how very sweet was the look in his eyes, almost it seemed a holy look.
“Saved from death,” he said quietly, “eternal death. That means eternal separation from God, you know, not extinction. We are all sinners and under condemnation of death for our sin.”
“I don’t see that I’m such a terrible sinner!” said Constance indignantly with an upflinging of her patrician chin. “I don’t see that I should be condemned to any kind of death.”
Seagrave looked at her again with that grave, sweet smile.
“And yet you are a sinner condemned to death,” he said impressively. “Please don’t mistake me though. No one could take one glance at you and not know that you are different from the modern girls. I cannot imagine your allowing in your life the things that I know most modern young people delight in these days. Such things would be repulsive to your tastes. But what I mean is this. Ever since Adam’s sin we all were born with dead spiritual natures—you, I, everybody. And a dead thing cannot be improved or made over. The only way that we could get into the presence of God is by being born again, by acquiring a new nature.”
“Just how could one go about doing that?” asked Constance, regarding him with a cold, sarcastic air.
“Simply believe what God says about His Son, that Jesus Christ took our place, suffering on the cross the penalty for our sins, and rose from the dead as proof that God’s justice was satisfied as to the sin question. God Himself comes to dwell in everyone who believes that and makes of him a new creature.”
“I told Dr. Grant I didn’t believe things,” mused Constance a little bitterly. “He said that was all right. He said the church was the place to bring your doubts.”
Seagrave considered this a moment gravely then answered earnestly, “The only place where we can bring doubts and have them cleared away is to the Lord Jesus. When one really comes to Him with a will to believe, He makes it all clear. One look into His face, face to face and heart to heart, is enough to satisfy doubts. But you have to come with the will to accept what He has said and trust yourself to His promises. Believing, you know, is something we will to do. Believing is not a conviction of the mind as a result of reasoning. It is swinging off and trusting to something you haven’t yet proved. The proving comes afterward.”
“How could one ever be willing to trust in something one wasn’t sure about?”
He smiled.
“Did you ever take a ride in an airplane?”
“Oh yes, two or three times. In fact, I’ve been considering whether I won’t go back to college that way.”
“But have you tested the machinery? Did you go over the engine? Do you know the mechanic who made it? Can you be perfectly sure there is not a flaw somewhere that may cause a terrible accident?”
“Why, no, of course not. But others have gone up and come down in safety. The planes are tested. The accidents are very few.”
“Ah, just so. You believe the plane is all right. You do not know yourself but nevertheless you are willing to trust yourself to the plane. Well, take this matter of trusting God the same way. Others have tried Him. Old saints throughout the ages have given witness that He has sustained them through trials, has always kept His promises even unto death. Sinners have accepted Him and been utterly changed by Him. Why could you not swing off and trust Him in the same way? Haven’t you known someone that you are sure has been happy in trusting God?”
“Oh yes, Grandmother, I suppose. At least she banks a lot on such things, although she doesn’t talk as you do. I don’t believe she even knows that line you’re giving me. She thin
ks if you join the church the trick is done. But she’s old, of course. She’s about come to the end. Maybe when I get there I might feel that way, too.”
“I wish you knew me well enough to believe what I say.” He smiled his winning smile. “I’d like to tell you what the Lord Jesus has done for me, has been to me, since I’ve taken Him for my Savior. I’m young. And I can testify that I’ve never had such joy in my life as since I knew the Lord.”
Constance, with a deep restlessness in her soul, studied the face of the young man before her.
“You’re different from anybody I ever met,” she said speculatively. “I wonder why?”
“If I’m different it’s only because He’s saved me.”
“Do you mean you’ve always been this way?” asked Constance, studying him thoughtfully. “How come?”
“No,” he said, “only about two years.”
“But,” she said, frowning, puzzled, “don’t you miss a lot out of life taking a line like this?”
“Not a thing,” he said earnestly. “I’m finding out every day how much I missed before I was saved.”
“But I don’t understand,” said Constance after a moment’s puzzled silence. “You speak as if you were perfectly sure you were saved. How can you possibly know that?”
“Because He has said it, and I believe Him,” said Seagrave jubilantly. “Look, here are the words,” and he drew out a little, soft leather book from his inner pocket and fluttered over the leaves. “Here it is: ‘He that believeth hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.’”
Constance took the book and read the passage over slowly and at last handed it back to him.
“A great many people don’t believe the Bible is anything but a book,” she said with a superior tone.
“Yes, and a great many people don’t know what it means to be saved. Listen to this one”—he fluttered the tiny leaves again and read—” ‘If our gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are lost!’ Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The people who do not believe the Bible do not know it. They may have studied books about it. They may have studied the language and poetry in the Bible; they may have even learned by heart some of its most beautiful passages, but they have never taken it with the help of the Holy Spirit.”