Substitute Guest (22 page)

So they went sledding again all the morning, a glorious day, with the sun shining sweetly overhead just as if it hadn’t been in hiding for a good many hours. The world was dazzling in its whiteness, and out behind the barn the long hill was packed and smooth, a beautiful slide with nothing in the way to break the thrill of the flight.

They lingered long at lunch, pretending that they were not breaking up in a few minutes, dreading the moment when their guest would leave, and Alan dreading most of all to go. He hadn’t realized until he was about to leave them how his heart was knit to every one of this dear family. And to think he had just happened upon them!

But at last he tore himself away from the pleasant company and went into the guest room to pack his belongings.

Lance went with him to help and they had a heart-to-heart talk together. The dusk of the short winter afternoon was coming down and Father Devereaux had thoughtfully built up the fire. Its bright blaze lit up the gloom that was gathering in the corners of the room. It seemed so pleasant and cheery that Alan looked around and sighed.

“I shall never cease to be thankful that I was thrust in here,” he said as he looked at his new friend wistfully. “Not alone because you did the most wonderful thing a man could ever do for another; or because you have the most delightful family on earth and I love you like a brother; not altogether either because I’ve had the most wonderful Christmas I’ve known since I was a child; but because I’ve found something here that I didn’t know existed. I don’t know just what to call it. Perhaps it ought to be named faith. I was at a critical time in my life, I know now. I had reached a stage where I wasn’t sure I quite believed in anybody or anything, and what was the use of trying to follow a thing you called conscience? Yet I know I was terribly hungry for something. Then I came here and heard you all talking to God as if He were real, and trusting in Him, and reading His Book, and I got a new vision of what life might mean. I can’t say I know much about it yet, but I’m determined to find out, and I can never thank you enough that you started me thinking about these things.”

Lance’s face lit with radiance.

“Well, brother,” he said earnestly, “why not just accept the Lord Jesus as your Savior, and settle the question once and for all now, tonight?”

“Is it as easy as that?” Alan asked wonderingly.

“It’s as easy as that for us!” said Lance reverently. “But it cost Jesus Christ everything to make it so!”

Alan sat thoughtfully gazing into the fire for a little.

“Do you think one ought to make a decision like that quickly, knowing as little as I do about it? I’ve not been living in the atmosphere that you were brought up in. Suppose I’m not able to keep it up?”

“Keep what up?” asked Lance, his bright eyes holding the other’s glance.

“Well, suppose this feeling doesn’t stay with me when I get back into my life again and mingle with my world? Suppose I get over wanting to be good.” Alan laughed embarrassedly.

“Thank God we are not saved by our feelings!” breathed Lance fervently. “Admitting the fact that we are natural born sinners and deserve to die, we are saved by accepting the death of Jesus Christ in our place, recognizing that He took upon Himself not only the penalty of our sins, but the sins themselves.”

“I understand that.”

“Well, if you are saved by His death, and not by your own life, suppose you do lose this feeling of wanting to be good, as you say. Does that take away the fact that Christ died for you?”

Alan’s face lit up.

“Why no, of course not!” he said. “But is it all in what He’s done, then? Haven’t I anything to do?”

“It’s all in what He’s done! The finished work of the cross. Your part is to receive it!”

“That’s great!” he said slowly. “But still, I don’t quite trust
myself
, Lance. Why won’t that feeling of assurance make me feel as if I can go out and do as I please? I don’t feel that way now, but I might when I get away from you all. I just want to understand it thoroughly. It seems too good to be true, the way you put it.”

“It isn’t the way I put it, it’s the way God Himself puts it. See here!” And he pulled out his Testament that was always in his pocket. “See this verse. Mark it down and read it whenever you get to doubting. See, it’s John 5:24. ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me,
hath
everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but
is
passed from death unto life.’”

Alan took out his notebook and wrote down the reference.

If Lance had warmed to his new friend before, he felt now as if his heart was knit with this other one who so humbly and sincerely laid his pride in the dust.

“You see, brother,” he said eagerly, “there’s a mighty good reason why you won’t feel like living as you please. It’s because, if you truly take Christ as your Savior, you’re born again. That is, you have a new nature into which God puts His own Spirit. And the Spirit of God doesn’t feel like sinning. Of course you still have your old sinful nature, too, as long as you’re down here in a mortal body, and it will always have the desire to sin, but the Spirit of God in your new nature is stronger than the desire to sin in your old nature. As you choose deliberately to let the Spirit of God do what He will with you, the old nature is constantly defeated and you do not practice sinning, sins don’t crop out in your life. It is Christ living in you that keeps you.”

Alan looked into Lance’s eyes steadily for a moment. Then he got up and walked to the window, looking out for a long time. At last he came back and sat down by the fire again.

“That’s pretty wonderful!” he said gravely. “How do I go about accepting Him?”

“Your very desire to do it is known to Him,” said Lance gently. “But why not tell Him straight out?”

Lance knelt down and Alan knelt beside him. Quietly Lance spoke as to One in the room with them.

“Father, Thou hast saved me, a sinner, by Thy grace, through the blood of Thy Son. Here is another who wants to be saved—”

Lance paused, and after an instant Alan spoke out clearly.

“Oh, God, I accept Jesus Christ for my Savior!”

It was very still in the room, only the soft flaring of the fire as the two young men remained with bowed heads, while the solemn decision was registered above.

Then Lance’s voice broke the stillness again.

“—let it be according to Thy Word to the glory of our Lord. Amen!” he finished.

Neither spoke for a minute after they rose, but Alan gripped Lance’s hand. Then he said in an apologetic voice, “I’m glad you made me do it. But—I don’t feel any different. Should I?”

“A baby isn’t conscious that it is born, is it? It’s the parents and the rest of the family who feel glad. Our Father is rejoicing over you this minute. That’s something you take on faith, though, and learn later when you get to studying the Word. But I’m rejoicing, too, brother!” Lance’s voice was husky with feeling, and he took Alan’s hand in another strong, warm clasp. “We are really brothers now, do you realize that? Both children in the family of God, both born-again ones.”

“That’s wonderful!” said Alan warmly. “I like that. It’s great to belong to something—to Some
One!”
he added with a reverent lifting of his eyes.

Then they heard Alan’s car driving up to the house, and they hurried out.

Alan had just a minute alone with Daryl. As he took her hand for farewell, he said with a kind of triumph in his voice, “I’m really in the family now, Daryl. I’ve just taken your Lord for my Savior, and I’m going back to begin my life all over again. Will you pray for me?”

Daryl lifted her lovely eyes filled with real radiance and said with unmistakable joy in her voice, “Oh, I am glad,
glad!
And of course I will pray for you! May He give you great joy and blessing!”

Her voice was low and sweet, and suddenly as he held her hand and read the real gladness in her eyes, he felt again that great longing to take her in his arms and lay his lips upon hers. For just an instant something flashed from eye to eye, and then Alan turned quickly to the rest. There were no words further that he might speak now. But he went over to Mrs. Devereaux and kissed her hand, and said, “Mother Devereaux, you’ve been wonderful to me. May I come back again sometime and visit you?”

And Mother Devereaux patted his hand and told him he was welcome whenever he would come. The rest of the good-byes were quickly said, with eager invitations for a return visit, and he drove away into the dusk.

As Lance came back from a last word at the car and stood with the rest on the porch while they watched their guest drive away, he said in a tone of quiet triumph, “He’s
saved!
He accepted Christ just now!” And there was a look on Lance’s face as if he had just had a glimpse of heaven.

“Yes,” said Daryl softly, “he told me!” She said it very quietly, and her brother looked at her and smiled, but wondered in his heart.

Alan, as he drove away into the winter sunset, had a strange feeling that he was not alone. He had a Savior who was to be with him constantly, within him. He need never be alone again! And suddenly a great joy went singing through his heart.

And all the way home through the white starry night, that sense of a Presence traveling with him remained.

But how would Demeter Cass fit in with all that?

D
aryl was lonely after Alan was gone. She wouldn’t admit it to herself that he had anything to do with her loneliness. He was only an incident of course, though a pleasant one. She blamed her state of mind on Harold. And of course he had a good deal to do with her restlessness.

Ruth was still with them, like a sweet sister, but Ruth and Lance had a great deal to talk over together, and they were so all-in-all to one another that Daryl couldn’t help feeling alone sometimes, though she never let them see it. She entered into all their plans, and she and Ruth were like two sisters, bright and happy, going about and doing things together. They went sledding, too, and later when the snow was cleared from the creek below the hill they went skating. It was all very jolly and nice, but there was a decided realization that the true holiday was over.

They had asked Alan to come back for New Year’s, but he had said he couldn’t so soon, that he had a number of engagements that must be kept, especially a dinner on New Year’s Day at the home of his partner, which he could not very well cancel. Daryl didn’t know of course how hard it had been for Alan to say he couldn’t come. He had even weighed the matter of calling off that engagement in spite of his promise to Mr. Meredith. But he had decided against it. It was not only the fact that New Year’s Day would be a very likely time for Harold Warner to come back and try to make his peace, and Alan didn’t want to be there when that happened. But he had a strong conviction that if he stayed longer, or went often to that blessed home, he was going to have a very hard time to keep his resolve not to think of Daryl continually. So he had firmly refused the eager invitation from the whole family and held himself resolutely to the engagements he had made in the city.

Harold did not come on New Year’s Day either. He stayed away purposely, perhaps, to teach his young lady a lesson. Let her spend the day alone for once without word from him and perhaps the next time she wouldn’t be so high and mighty about her refusals. And then, perhaps, New Year’s Day was a time when there were plenty of other things to do, and he didn’t miss his quiet, sweet Daryl so much.

But he came down for the weekend the next Saturday, came in a beautiful borrowed car, looking handsome and sleek and prosperous, and bearing a very nice ring in a velvet case in his pocket, in case he should feel it wise to use it.

Daryl was cool in welcoming him. In fact, the whole family was rather formal with him, but that disturbed him not at all. He blew in exactly like a son of the house who was condescending to them all to waste valuable time in the country to humor them.

Daryl was just clipping off the tips of the stems of some very gorgeous yellow roses that Alan had sent down by express to her for New Year’s Day and arranging them in two tall crystal vases when he came, and she went right on with her work after she had greeted him. He eyed the roses savagely as he took off his hat and coat and hung them familiarly in the hall. He did not want to say anything about them. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of asking about them, but as she went steadily on with her work somehow he couldn’t resist.

“I suppose that ape that was here Christmas sent those!” He glared at her, but she did not look up.

“Oh, did you think he was an ape?” she asked sweetly.

They did not have a good morning together with that beginning. There were long arguments, most of them on the subject of drinking. Now and then a discussion regarding broken promises and parties given by the boss’s daughter, though this latter topic was mostly a monologue by the young man, unsolicited by Daryl, mostly in the nature of apology, with charges of jealousy. Daryl closed her lips quietly and let him talk.

“Now, look here, Daryl! It’s time we fully understood each other!” announced Harold after he had had a good lunch and managed by his ungracious attitude to clear the living room of all the family. “You know your attitude with regard to drinking is absurd! You can’t be a part of the world as it is today and not drink!”

“Well,” said Daryl quietly, “I’m not trying to be a part of the world as it is today. A Christian isn’t intended to be ‘of the world’ anyway. We are ‘called-out ones.’”

“Oh, that’s all very well to talk about,” he said loftily, “but you can’t do that, you know! I’m a Christian myself of course, have been for years. I told you that. I joined the church when I was fourteen, but that doesn’t keep me from being a human being.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” said Daryl.

“Just what do you mean by that?” roared the young man angrily. “Everything you say seems to be full of nasty slams, and I don’t like it!”

“I mean joining a church does not keep anybody from living a worldly life,” said Daryl gravely.