Beauty for Ashes (12 page)

And so she fell asleep, with the haunting tune of a lovely song that had been sung at the close of the service, sung with wonderful effect by Robert Carroll, the gentleman farmer she had heard so much about:

“Oft me-thinks I hear His footsteps
,

Stealing down the paths of time;

And the future dark with shadows
,

Brightness with this hope sublime
.

Sound the soul-inspiring anthem;

Angel hosts your harps attune;

Earth’s long night is almost over
,

Christ is coming—coming soon!”

M
urray MacRae kept his promise Monday evening. He came breezing into the kitchen where Gloria was wiping dishes, took another dish towel from the little line that hung behind the stove, and went to work.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve wiped dishes in this house is it, Mrs. Hastings?” he said as he saw Gloria’s astonished look. “I grew up running over here to play with whoever happened to be living here,” he explained to Gloria.

After the dishes were put away, Murray took Gloria up the road a little way to a spot where the sunset could be better seen than anywhere else in the neighborhood, and they stood a long time watching the great ball of crimson slip briefly down behind a purple mountain. Then while they were watching the tatters of crimson and gold it had left behind till the crimson faded into coral, a pale clear green stole up and spread into the sky and was met by a rosy glow above, turning the mountains and the hills below into deep, dark greens and browns. They watched while the twilight dropped down, shutting them into a great world of wondrous color, and a single star shot out and twinkled at them.

“ ‘When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained,’ ” quoted Murray in a hushed voice, “ ‘what is man?’ ”

“Yes, what
is
man,” broke in Gloria. “What are we here for? If there is a God that made us and put us here as you believe, why did He do it?”

“ ‘Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands,’ ” answered Murray seriously. “Once when I was a little boy, my father made a boat. He was wonderfully clever with his hands, and it was like a real motorboat, every part perfect, and the marvelous thing about it was that it actually had a tiny motor in it and it would go! It was an exquisite bit of workmanship— even as a child, I think I recognized that. I believe he could have sold it for an astonishing amount, but what do you suppose he did with it? He
gave it to me!
We had a good-sized pool in the yard—you saw it there beyond the tennis court—and the boat was mine to sail in the pool. I was delighted with it of course; but childlike, instead of letting my father show me how to run the boat, I deliberately disobeyed him and took it out myself. And in a very short time, the whole thing was a wreck! I have it yet. I keep it to remind me.”

He was still for a moment, a humble, wistful look on his face that seemed beautiful to Gloria. She had never seen that look on a man’s face before, except the time last week when her father was telling stories of his childhood. She was utterly bewildered by what this man was saying, but she recognized that he was not through yet, and she remained silent, waiting.

“God made the earth,” went on Murray, indicating the sweep of horizon they had been watching, “and He gave it to man to rule! But instead of letting God direct him in everything, man deliberately rebelled and disobeyed God. That was sin, and it resulted in the wreckage of the earth—pain and sorrow and hatred and death ruled the world.”

As he spoke, it seemed as if all the unutterable anguish of the whole world of centuries was spread out before them in a ghastly panorama, and Gloria saw her own sorrow there as part of it all.

“When my father came home and saw the boat wrecked, I think it nearly broke his heart, although I believe now that he knew it would surely happen,” went on Murray. “I will never forget his face as he looked at me and then looked back at the boat. He didn’t scold me, but he took me up to my own room, and without a word, he cleared everything off the shelf at the foot of my bed, and there he placed the wreck of the beautiful thing he had made me. You can imagine how I felt. I knew he wanted me to have to see it every day. It is there yet,” Murray said sadly.

“Then Father turned to me and spoke very sternly. His disappointment in me and his love for me together made him say what he did. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘you’ve ruined this boat, but I’m going to make another boat; it’ll be a real boat—this other was the little model of it. This one cost me something; my hands had to work hard to make it. But that one will cost much more— more than you can possibly understand now. And I’m going to give you the real one, but—that will be
when you are a different boy!”
My father said that with such a confident, glad ring to his voice that I have never forgotten it. And, friend, my father did just that thing! May I tell you about it?”

Fascinated, Gloria nodded.

Murray was still again for a moment, as if the thing he was about to tell about his own life moved him deeply.

“I had a wonderful brother once,” he said huskily. “He was a good deal older than I. He went to work for my father when I was just a boy—you know my father used to be a shipbuilder, and at one time he was pretty well-to-do. He made some of the finest ships that are afloat today. As he told me, it was his plan to build a yacht for me when I should grow old enough to use it. The men used to work on it when business was slack. It was my brother’s dearest pleasure to go over to the shipways and work on it himself. He and my father spent hours together doing actually hard labor on it. One night my brother was working there alone, and he fell from a scaffolding! My father found him in the morning!” It was hard for Murray to speak. “He was— very dear—to us all—but that made me a different boy.”

Gloria found the tears brimming over again as she looked with awe into the heart of this strange young man.

“You wonder, I suppose, why I’ve told you all this. It’s not easy for me to talk about it. But I think it all happened for a very wonderful reason, that I might understand a little of what God did when He gave His beloved Son to die for me that I might become ‘a different boy,’ and that He might make a new heaven and a new earth for His ‘new boy.’ You may not understand
how
God can make you and me righteous because Christ died, nor
how
He is going to make a new, happy earth because Christ died, but if you choose to believe it because God says it, you will have the truth of it proven over and over to your heart. And if you had looked at the wreck of that boat every day as I did for twenty years, you would understand why God is waiting a while before He makes over the earth and does away with pain and sorrow.”

“That is all very beautiful,” said Gloria after a moment’s silence, “but I don’t understand how you know that this is so about the earth. Where is there any authority for such a supposition?”

He looked at her with surprise but answered quickly, “In the Word of God. It is all there, plainly told. God has not left us without knowledge. When He gave us the Bible, He meant it to be a full revelation of Himself and His works.”

It was Gloria’s turn to be astonished now.

“You don’t mean that there is any such thing in the Bible as you have been telling me!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, the whole story. Of course, not the story of my boat, but the story of the world that God created, which was ruined by the sin of Adam, the first man. When Jesus Christ, as man’s representative, died and rose again, He rose as the head of a new race, who shall rule with Him over a new earth when God’s appointed time comes. Accepting His death as mine and His life as mine makes me a member of the new race—a ‘new boy.’ ”

Gloria was silent, thoughtful, for some minutes as they walked along together in the twilight.

“I never knew anything about the Bible,” she said with a sigh. “We studied it a little in school, of course, but only as literature. My teachers thought it absurd to believe in it as more than fine literature.”

“There is a curious thing about the Bible,” said Murray; “you have to enter it with belief. Belief is the only key that will unlock its wonders.”

“But how could you believe it if you had not read it?”

“I do not mean belief in the sense of being intellectually convinced that it is true. I mean the willingness to accept it as God’s truth. Then it proves itself to you as you read it and obey what it says. People who presume to teach the Bible without believing from the heart its statements cannot possibly understand it.”

There was another long pause, and their footsteps grew slower as they walked along in the twilight. Then Gloria spoke again. “You make life a very solemn thing,” she said with a sigh. “I would like to understand your Bible. I would like to see if it has a solution for my own personal difficulties.”

“It certainly has,” said Murray with a ring of delight to his voice. “There is a solution in the Bible for every human difficulty. I’d love to introduce you to the Bible if you will let me,” he added eagerly.

“Will you?” she asked, giving him a wistful look. “I would be so grateful!”

Then, just as they came around a bend in the road, they saw a car drawn up in front of the MacRae home and a tall figure coming out of the gate and striding across the road to the Sutherland house.

“That’s Bob Carroll!” said Murray. “I wonder what he wants? They’ve likely told him I was over seeing you.”

They hastened their steps and arrived just as Carroll was knocking on the door.

“Oh, hello, Murray!” he said. “Glad I found you. Good evening, Miss Sutherland. I hope I’m not intruding, rushing over this way after Murray, but I had a message for him. They want you to speak over at Ripley tomorrow night at a young people’s rally. Can you make it? The fellow they had engaged has to go away to a funeral. I told them you would if you could, I was sure.”

“Of course,” said Murray. “When you promise for me, what else can I do? Or suppose I make a bargain. I’ll speak if you’ll sing at the close of my message. How’s that?”

“They’ve already asked me,” said Carroll with a deprecatory shrug.

“Oh, well, you can sing twice then,” said Murray with a twinkle. “That suits me still better.”

“I don’t mind singing, but they have a terrible accompanist over there. I came over hoping I’d find Lindsey home and I could talk her into coming down with me. If I had my own accompanist, they couldn’t feel hurt, you know.”

“Sorry, she isn’t back yet,” said Murray, “though we’re expecting her Friday or Saturday. But how about asking Miss Sutherland? I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if she played, and if she plays the piano just half as well as she plays tennis, she’s a winner!”

Carroll turned eager eyes upon Gloria.

“Why, I could try. Of course I play some. But I wish Vanna was here. She can really
play!”

“And who is Vanna?” asked the young man. “What an interesting name!”

“Vanna is my sister. Her name is Evangeline, but we’ve always called her Vanna,” said Gloria.

“Lovely!” said young Carroll. “But since Vanna-Evangeline is not here, might I be so presumptuous as to ask you to accompany your humble servant?”

“I’ll be delighted,” said Gloria, wondering what she was letting herself in for now, “that is if I can do it. I’d have to see the music.”

“Well, I guess we can manage that,” said Carroll. “Murray, you’ve got one of our books over at your house, haven’t you? And I’ve got a new one along I’d like awfully well to try if you don’t mind. I brought it along hoping Lindsey would be here.”

“Well, you’d better come over to our house. There’s no piano in the Sutherland house.”

“Yes, I’ve missed having a piano around,” said Gloria. “I don’t play nearly as well or as much as my sister, but I do like to sit down now and then and amuse myself.”

“Well, I certainly am in luck finding you,” said Robert Carroll. “Why don’t you and your sister come up here and live, and then we’d always have one or the other about when we needed music?”

It was good to get among young people again even if they were strangers. It was good to hear their pleasant banter and jokes. Yet she wondered as she went up the MacRae steps between the two young men what some of her friends at home would think of her if they could see her now and know that she had actually promised to help in a religious service. She wondered what Vanna would think. She wondered most of all what Vanna would think about the two young men. Vanna had never seen any like them. Would Vanna laugh at them and say they had too religious a complex if she were to see them? Well, it wasn’t in the least likely that Vanna would ever see them. In a few days now, she herself would be gone away from here, and there would be little likelihood that she would ever come again, unless Father wanted to run up for something.

Yet the thought gave her a pang. She wasn’t sure she never wanted to see these young men anymore, especially Murray MacRae. He had promised to tell her more about such wonderful things. He had promised to lead her where her perplexities would be solved, and her heart hungered for such knowledge.

It was a big, pleasant room where the old-fashioned square piano stood, with touches here and there that showed a modern girl had been here: a picture here, a book there, a lovely cushion on the rare old davenport. And there on the piano was a framed photograph of a beautiful girl with one of the sweetest faces Gloria had ever seen. She had eyes like Murray’s. Gloria went to it at once and stood before it.

“That’s my sister, Lindsey,” said Murray with a smile. “I do want you to know her.”

“She is lovely!” said Gloria, studying the face.

“We think she is,” said Murray modestly.

“She’s all that and then some!” said Robert Carroll. “I’m terribly jealous of that professor of hers that she’s going to marry. And the worst of it is that I’m convinced that there isn’t another girl like Lindsey on the face of the earth.”

“Why didn’t you tell Lindsey so before she went off and found her professor?” laughed Murray. “There isn’t another fellow on the face of the earth I’d like half so well for a brother-in-law, I’m sure.”