I confess I was somewhat stunned. I was sort of counting on the talk we had promised each other. But then all this mix-up occurred that sent us wildly off in different directions.
Probably it didn’t matter so much to you, but to me it was very upsetting, for I really was in need of advice and help along the lines in which we had been talking, and I was in haste to get home and have that talk.
Well, it seems that God knew my need and sent me a strange kind of help, of which your little poem (for which I sincerely thank you) was a part. But I am getting ahead of my story.
I would so much rather tell you this by word of mouth instead of writing it, but I feel the need of telling someone, and I feel that you will understand, as we had talked of these things.
You see, I was sent out to foreclose some mortgages, and I hated the very thought of it.
He paused to think just how he would tell the story. Then his pen went rapidly on.
He wrote a few words about the first two houses where he visited, described briefly the kindly act of the fellow-laborer on the road, lending the money to one who did not seem to be even his friend, and then went on to describe how he came to walk into the Washburn funeral unawares.
I stood there, startled, and looked down into that casket, shocked, and wondering how I could get out without making a scene.
There in that simple casket I saw an elderly man with white hair and one of the most kindly, saintlike faces I have ever seen. And I had come there to foreclose a mortgage on his home and probably bring sorrow and humiliation on his household.
I felt ashamed and deeply troubled. Somebody offered me a vacant chair and I dropped into it, greatly shaken. When I looked up again, I saw that God was standing there beside the casket, as if He were waiting to take that old saint home.
Someone was praying, and I shut my eyes, but God was still standing there. I could see Him, even with my eyes shut. It was the strangest thing that ever happened to me. It seemed that God was searching my soul, telling me all the wrong I had ever done. I never had my life turned inside out that way before, not even when I was about to face death in battle.
Maybe you will think I am crazy, but that same God came home with me on the train. And He has been beside me ever since in everything I do.
I thought that you might like to know that I have at last surrendered to Him, fully, I think, as you said. I think I can now honestly say, “I am crucified with Christ” the way you told me. And ever since, I’ve had that peace and rest that your poem talks about. It’s a joy such as I never felt before.
And why am I telling you this?
Because you have been the one who introduced me to this subject and pointed the way, and I felt sure you would understand. I knew you would be glad that I have met your Lord and have surrendered.
I have been to see the Shambleys. They seem to be getting well fast, and the father has a job. The doctor has okayed it, and he starts Monday in a filling station.
It is getting late, for I have been interrupted since I came home, but I’ll be so glad to know what you think about this, if you have time to write me. Was this experience I had something real or a figment of an overworked imagination?
But even if you think it isn’t real, I know it is, because I have felt Him near me all day long. And I think you led me to the place where I could understand when I saw Him at that funeral service.
Thank you for writing me, and I hope you’re coming home soon. Please write again soon.
Paige
Paige went to sleep soon after that, feeling he had just had a talk with June. His spirit was soothed and content. And it was not until the next morning as he was getting ready for the day that he remembered his luncheon date with Reva Chalmers. It hung over him like a pall, obstructing the sunshine that his new spiritual experience had shed on his soul.
About the middle of the morning it suddenly came to him that his great peace that had been with him since he went to Boston had fled. Was it not true then that this peace had come to stay? What had he done to drive it away?
What was that they had said, that Christ brought a power out of the tomb when He rose from the dead and His own surrendered ones had a right to claim it? Ah! He would claim it.
For an instant he bowed his head on his lifted hand, closed his eyes, and prayed.
“Oh Lord, this thing is depressing me so! Please undertake for me. Be with me while it goes on, that I may do the thing that is pleasing to Thee.”
Paige was ready when she came, and they went out together, observed by the whole outer office. But there was something grave and dignified about the young man that almost overawed the daring girl who was so accustomed to doing whatever came into her head, without consideration of anybody else.
Paige had a taxi waiting to take them to the University Club, though it wasn’t far away, and they were soon seated in the pleasantest corner of the big, stately room. It was a corner where two windows met, overlooking the city park on one side and the busy shopping district on the other. Paige had noticed it when Mr. Chalmers took him to the club, and decided that that was the most attractive as well as the most secluded spot in the whole place. Therefore he was pleased that they found the table unoccupied.
Paige had not been a society man to any extent, but his home training, and his experiences on the other side of the sea, had given him an easy manner, free from self-consciousness, and Reva was surprised at the smooth way in which he managed the simple affair. There wasn’t an awkward minute that the girl had to cover with some flip remark. In fact, her father would have been surprised if he could have watched the little scene and seen how almost embarrassed the girl herself appeared to be at times. For this young man whom she had selected to bait for her own amusement turned out to be anything but the gauche youth she had fancied him to be. Of course, she had known little of him before her father brought him onto the scene, but his very quiet gravity, and his lack of response to her modern lures, had made her think that he would be easy prey. But now, against her wishes, she was being made to feel that he was very, very much older and wiser than she, that he was a young man of wide experience, not afraid of anybody or anything, and that he was going out of his way now to be nice to her for her father’s sake and not for any wiles of her own.
Before she had quite got her bearings and decided what her line was to be, he opened conversation with a string of bright jokes, so high above the ones she might have chosen that some of them she had to think hard to understand, though she managed to give a surprised laugh, a little delayed, for each one. He was bright, he really was, though in a more distinctive way than the young men she knew. It almost seemed as if she were discovering that he was some wise professor who was stooping to amuse her, or humor her, and she actually felt almost inferior as the talk went on. It was a long time since anyone had ever made Reva Chalmers feel in the least inferior.
Quite casually he asked her what was her college, and she rattled off a list of fashionable finishing schools where she had been endured for brief terms till she passed on to others. But she saw to her amazement that he was not at all impressed. He began to ask her questions about where she had been and what she had done, until little by little he had reversed the role she had intended him to play. He was exerting himself to be nice to her, to be really interesting, and as she watched him and saw the pleasant lights in his handsome eyes, she began to admire him and to think he was really worth angling for.
The ease with which he managed the ordering without any of the quips and sallies that accompanied that act in her crowd, just as if it were an everyday matter and not one of great moment, gave her again a respect for his judgment. And the way he took control of the conversation and sent it along any lines he chose was another thing. She was accustomed to taking matters of that sort into her own hands, and now, every time when she tried it, she was checkmated by some interesting incident of war, or travel, or even college life that completely frustrated her.
To the girl it was
a new experience, like a new game she was trying to play, in which Paige was always one ahead.
To Paige it was like a commission to be fought out, one that he must win, but afterward he realized that he could not have won without the help of that new power into possession of which he had so recently come. He was really fighting this luncheon out as if it were a battle in which he must win, even to death. It was as important as that. It wasn’t something he liked or enjoyed, but there was a delight in feeling that he had done this in the right power.
He had the feeling that he was working in cooperation with his new Guide. Though of course he hadn’t been talking religion nor trying to teach this girl anything, just interesting her in a new line of topics that had not come her way before.
There would come a time in Paige’s life when he would realize that every Christian was here on the earth to do one thing, to witness for Christ, and he would be looking for such an opportunity, knowing that he must await orders before he attempted a word. Paige had not yet reached the point in his new life where he could understand that, but he was witnessing just as truly, perhaps all the more because unconsciously.
So as he led along with stories of battles, stories of braveries, stories of perils and storms at sea, and brief stories of sadness, he found his audience had ceased to grin and sneer and was listening wide-eyed.
Then suddenly their hour was over. It was time for him to go back to the office, and he led a subdued and very admiring girl out to the office building again and bade her good-bye.
She roused at the parting and grew vivacious again.
“And how about taking me to the dance Saturday night? It’s going to be a gorgeous affair, and I just know you’d be a wonderful dancer.”
“No dancing, thank you, and no time for affairs of that sort. I have a lot of other things to do.”
“But don’t you ever have fun? Surely you must have some recreation. You can’t live without that.”
“Well, there are different kinds of pleasure, of course. But a grown person can’t give so much time to it.”
“But what do you do when you want to have fun?” she asked with a puzzled frown.
“Well, I like exercise, of course. Things like tennis and golf, horseback riding, but those take time, too, and one has to be careful about taking time out from real things. Do you play tennis or golf?”
“Oh, yes,” she answered with a shrug, “but I guess I’m too lazy for much exercise. I’d love riding, I guess, only Dad doesn’t want me to ride. I’m sure I don’t see why.”
“Well, I’ll take you on for a set of tennis sometime, if you like.”
“Okay! When?” She seized the idea with alacrity.
“Tomorrow, if you like, in the afternoon. The office is closed on Saturday afternoon, and I can take a couple of hours. Say two o’clock. Where would you like to play?”
“Oh, the country club, I suppose,” she said thoughtfully. “But two hours isn’t much. We might finish up by coming to our house for dinner and then going to a nightclub afterward.”
“Sorry,” said Paige, “I wouldn’t have time for a program like that. Saturday happens to be a rather busy day. I’ve just promised to take a class of boys in the Sunday school, and I have to get ready for that. I’ve been away from such things so long that I’m rather rusty on Bible teaching.”
“Bible teaching!” said Reva, aghast. “Why do you bother with dull things like that? Why don’t you tell your boys some of those stories you’ve been telling me? They would adore that.”
Paige grinned.
“I may use some of those stories, perhaps. There’s many a lesson in them of how to be saved and how to live a Christian life.”
“Well, I think you are hopeless! I don’t see how you make the grade, living like that. But all right, I’ll play tennis Saturday afternoon, and I’ll meet you at the country club at two.”
And so they parted.
Then with a great load off his mind, Paige went back to his desk and did a good afternoon’s work, satisfied that the Lord had taken over and helped him through the ordeal of the luncheon. As he thought it over, it hadn’t been so bad. And he had an idea that that girl was teachable and might even develop into something bearable, even pleasant, if she had the right environment and less money, but he did not want to be her teacher. She got on his nerves.
The day passed quickly, and closing time saw his work pretty well caught up. He would be ready to begin a clean slate the next morning. He got away early, for he had no notion of being held up by Reva again. There were things at home he must attend to, and he was anxious to see if there was any mail at the house for him. Of course, it was too soon for June to have received his letter, but she might just have written another letter on her own account. Although, being June, and not Reva, she would never have done so except under dire necessity. She would never be one to put herself forward.
On his way home he stopped at a florist’s and bought his mother a plant of beautiful roses in bloom that he knew she wanted. Then he went home, presented his offering, gathered up his mother and June’s mother, took them up for a quick visit to the Shambleys, and came back to the nice chicken potpie dinner to which both the Culbertsons had been invited.
That was a pleasant interval. He sat nearly all the evening afterward, downstairs in the living room, talking with both the fathers and mothers and enjoying himself hugely. He liked June’s mother and father, and he could see how she had grown to be the kind of girl she was, with home influences like those. He enjoyed listening to his father and Mr. Culbertson discuss some points of doctrine in their church.
And now as he listened and saw the great love of the Lord shining in both their faces, almost a glory light, he suddenly realized that God Himself was sitting in their midst, as if He enjoyed being with them. Was it possible that God could enjoy human beings? Was that why He had made them, to be His companions? He had a passing memory of that dead face in the coffin. That man had been one of those companions. He felt sure He would have enjoyed sitting here with these men, talking as they were talking, loving their Lord. And Paige was humbly glad that he was one with them.
The Culbertsons left early, and Paige lingered a little longer with his mother and father. When he went up to his room, he looked up that verse about being crucified with Christ, and read the whole chapter, realizing how very little he knew of the Bible after all. He must fix a time every day for reading it. He must learn more about it than just the simple facts that he had been taught as a child. For now he began to realize that there was much more to the Bible than just those facts that everybody knew, and no one heeded. And June knew what it was.
Chapter 13
June was very happy when she received Paige’s letter. She had thought he would be polite enough to thank her, perhaps, though her first brief note did not require it, but she had not anticipated that he would write a long letter, and evidently expect her to write again. He had a lot of friends, of course, and especially that pretty, wealthy girl, who evidently liked him a lot.
And such a letter as he had written! Oh, she had been praying for him, of course, that he might find the light on the problems he had talked about with her. But somehow her faith had not been strong enough to expect such an answer. He had really seen the Lord in his very soul, or he would never have written her all that.
His letter greatly comforted her, for she had been through a hard day of faultfinding by Aunt Letitia, and grumbling on the part of the servants, and she was well nigh on the point of giving up and going home. She was watching every mail and hoping that there would be a word from her cousin that she would soon arrive. So Paige’s letter came like a breeze from another world, a sort of a heavenly world where real things were still going on and God was still caring for His own.
Aunt Letitia had had a bad time that day and cried out in pain, scolded her nurse, and finally sent for June to come and read to her.
June was hoping she would want some Bible reading, but no, the cro
tchety old person wanted a mystery story, and June must walk to the village to get some new ones, with a full list of the many her aunt had already read, so there would not be duplicates.
Back at the house, the aunt was moaning. Her pain was worse. She insisted on having the doctor at once, and he was out in the country on a critical case and could not come. And now Aunt Letitia refused to look at the books June had selected, refused to hear any reading now, and set up more complaints. She sent June to the attic to search out a soft blanket that she said was lighter than those they had put over her, but which after long searching could not be found. Then Jane remembered that her mistress had given that blanket to the missionary society to send abroad to the people who were starving and freezing, but Aunt Letitia could not remember that, declared it was not so, and sent June to look for it again. So June was tired when, after the long, futile search, she came back to her room to rest. She read Paige’s letter over again and rejoiced in it. Tonight, if there was any time at all left to herself, she would answer it.
And Paige, the same night, was thinking of her, wishing he could get up right then and write another letter to her, telling of the delightful evening he had enjoyed getting acquainted with her parents.
But of course it was too soon for him to write her again. He would have to wait and see if she would answer his other letter. Maybe she would think it had been fanciful. Though he knew in his heart she wouldn’t think that. She was too much like that sweet mother of hers to get any such idea from his letter.
When Paige got up to a new day the next morning, it came upon him heavily that he had promised to play tennis with Reva Chalmers. Well, he must put it out of mind until the time came and not let himself grow miserable over it. He had work to do, and he would take the tennis in his stride and not make so much of it. He had always enjoyed tennis, and if Reva was a tolerably good player, it ought not to bore him too much. Forget it, he told himself.