The Flower Brides (94 page)

So trifling souls, even those with jacinth eyes, are sometimes used to mold history and change destinies. This time the whims of a spoiled girl with a heart full of hate for anything that came in her way, even unwittingly, decided a much-debated question of whether the city gas company should expand on its south side or on its north side. It was a question of which block they could soonest get possession, and Stephanie Varrell’s cryptic telegram swung the balance.

I
t was late in the afternoon in camp. The boys had just come in with the fish they had been catching that day, a fine lot of silvery, shining fellows. They were proud of the day’s catch. A certain detachment of the company was cleaning the fish down by the water, and the low-swinging sun made ruby paths across the lake, making the tall pines stand out almost black against the glow. Another detachment was making the fire and getting the mess plates out on the crude table. Still a third was preparing the corn bread; washing lettuce; and getting out the butter, salt, pepper, and other condiments. There was a huge pile of oranges in the center of the table for dessert.

John Saxon, after giving his orders to the young workers, had swung himself in a hammock stretched between two coconut palms, and Wainwright, more weary with the day’s march than he cared to own, dropped silently into another hammock and lay still with his eyes closed and his arms stretched above his head. He was thinking how good it was merely to lie still, how pleasant the smell of jasmine and the odor of the frying fish that was beginning to mingle with the perfume of the flowers. How hungry he was. He couldn’t remember ever having been as hungry in his life before. It was good to be tired and hungry and to anticipate plain food so eagerly. The very smoke from the pine fire was restful and pleasant.

If he looked out across the blood-red path on the water there was a strange picture, quiet, restful; the slipping away of the sun so silently. And presently, while they ate, it would be gone without notice, and they would be left to finish by the firelight.

He opened his eyes now and then and watched the progress downward of the ball of fire that was the sun. There were no gold lights in it now to remind him of golden hair, but there was a quiet darkness in the shadows of the woods that made him think of her eyes, darkly troubled when she had said she was not of his world.

What had she meant? The old question back again as soon as he had nothing else to occupy his mind! She was right, too, he was beginning to realize. Before this he had always thought of only one world, with workers to make it go smoothly. Now he saw there were other worlds, each different. Each complete in itself. Yet somehow he suspected that somewhere there must be a point of contact. And it was that point of contact he was out to find.

He turned his eyes toward John Saxon, lying there in his hammock, one arm swung up over his head, the damp brown curls snapping back from his bronzed forehead, his face so strong and yet so sweet sometimes, and so stern and almost forbidding at other times.

John Saxon was of another world from him also. Was he perhaps of Camilla’s world? he asked himself. Perhaps. Was there no bridge? No bridge but that strange, inscrutable sentence, “ye must be born again,” that Saxon had read that first night in the woods?

He lay watching the other man between the half-open lashes of his eyes. He had come to love and admire him during the few days they had been wandering in this strange tropical world together with these kids. Yet always at night when the Bible was read and he heard the strong tender voice in prayer, John Saxon seemed like another man, a man he only half understood. The best part of him seemed hidden behind a mystery that he could not penetrate.

And why was he so interested in that little worn Testament he carried everywhere, even fishing, and brought out on any occasion? He wished he dared ask him. Somehow he had not yet come to the point where he felt free enough to do so.

Suddenly Jeff followed an impulse and spoke, quietly, in a voice that could not be heard by the boys at work.

“John—”

They had come so far in friendship as to call one another John and Jeff.

“I wish you’d tell me what it means to be born again.”

John looked up with a quick light of joy in his eyes, his face kindling with that strange tenderness that Jeff had seen there before several times and wondered at. It was almost as if John had recognized in him a kinship, which he had not before suspected.

“I guess the best way to understand that,” he said thoughtfully, “is to think what it meant to be born into this world the first time. You did not exist in this world, you know, until you received the life of your parents. Then you were born and became a citizen of this world, gradually growing in the knowledge and privileges of it.”

Jeff was watching him eagerly, weighing every word.

“In the same way,” went on John, “you do not exist so far as the spiritual world is concerned until you receive the life of God. Then He says you are born spiritually and can begin to grow in the knowledge and blessings of the spiritual world.”

Jeffrey was almost breathless with eagerness to grasp every word as he heard again that distinction between “worlds” that Camilla had mentioned.

He sat up in the hammock and put both feet on the ground, his arms widespread, grasping the meshes of the hammock.

Then Camilla had not meant just the difference between wealth and poverty, between social position and the lack of it! He had been sure all along that there was a deeper meaning to her words than he understood!

“How does one receive the life of God?” he asked earnestly, his eyes looking straight into John Saxon’s eyes. “A child in coming into the world has no say in the matter.”

“No,” said John, “a child of this world is born at the will of its parents, but a child of God is born by willingly accepting the gift of God’s life. To do that you must first realize that you need it—that you are a sinner, helpless to make yourself fit for God’s presence, deserving nothing but His righteous judgment of eternal banishment from Him. If you don’t want that banishment, that separation forever from God, if you do want to be with Him and be like Him, you will accept the gift He offers in undeserved kindness—the gift of eternal life, which He purchased for you by shedding the life-blood of His own Son instead of yours.”

John’s voice was full of awe and wonder as he added, “He paid that much for me, too!”

There was silence then for a long minute while Jeffrey studied his friend’s strong face, a trifle puzzled perhaps. He couldn’t quite see what John could have done that should make him so deserving of eternal punishment. His own thoughtless life, filled utterly with his own pleasant self, fulfilling its wishes, nothing very bad, perhaps, but still a life lived apart from God,
might
deserve punishment, though he had never considered the matter before, having always felt that he was a pretty good sort of fellow as the world went. But John Saxon. What could he have done to feel himself such a sinner that the redemption of himself should bring such awe and adoration into his face? There must be more to this than appeared on the surface, and Jeffrey felt himself to be a babe in this new study in which he had engaged.

He was about to ask a question about this matter of being such a terrible sinner when you hadn’t done anything much at all, when suddenly the boys came whooping over to announce supper ready and to drag John from his hammock like so many officers of the law. Little Carlin came to Jeff, too, and slid a grubby little skinny paw into his own confidingly, pulling him up and over to the table.

Jeff put a strong arm around the slender shoulders of the little, loveless child, gave him one of his warmest smiles, and called him “little pard!”

Jeff was more than usually quiet during the evening. He joined to a certain extent in the games the boys were playing, but John noticed that he was deeply thoughtful, and when at last the camp was quiet for the night, John came and sat down beside Jeff. He was reclining by the fire, gazing deep into the night where a tired late moon was making ragged ripples of silver in the blackness of the lacquered lake.

“What’s perplexing you, brother?” said John, sliding down beside him cross-legged in the sand and picking up a small stick, which he began to break into tiny splinters and throw one by one upon the fire.

“I can’t quite see this sin business,” said Jeff, looking up gratefully. “Now, you, I can’t understand that look in your eyes when you spoke of a great price having saved you. You were never a great sinner, I’d wager that! And I, while I’m no gilded saint, of course—I’ve had a good time and not worried much, but I’ve been as good as the average, I’m sure, and a lot better than most. I’ve been clean and fairly unselfish! Where does the sin come in?”

Then did John Saxon unfold to him the story of sin, beginning in heaven when it was first found in Lucifer, son of the morning, the brightest angel of heaven, when pride made him want to be worshipped like the Most High.

John took out his flashlight and read snatches here and there from his Bible as he talked, until Jeff heard the whole amazing story of sin in heaven and on earth, causing the fall of man.

Jeff had never heard it before. Any phrases or references to a devil, or to the fall of man, he had always taken as foolish, whimsical language, and he had never stopped to question what might have been their origin. He listened with deep attention, asking now and then a question.

“And since then,” finished John, “everyone is born with a dead spiritual nature and cannot see the kingdom of God until he is born again.”

It was very still all around except for the snapping of the flickering fire and the far call of some night bird. Presently, John took up the story again, of the love of God for fallen man, and told in clear, descriptive words of the shedding of blood that was necessary to satisfy God’s justice and vindicate his righteousness.

“There you have the story,” he said. “It’s not lying and stealing and murder, nor even uncleanness that makes us sinners. Those are only the result of our being sinners. It’s turning away from a love like that! But a sinner can be made righteous in the sight of God by accepting Christ’s death as his own. Do you understand now how we are all sinners and have come short of the glory which God intended for us when He made us?”

“I think I do!” said Jeff reverently, slowly, sorrowfully. “I never saw that before. I’ve been greatly guilty. I’ve lived utterly for myself—cleanly, morally, cheerfully, kindly, perhaps, but utterly forgetful of God. I think you’ve led me to what I came out to these woods to find. I knew there was something I had to find before I went back.”

“Praise the Lord!” said John softly.

A little later the two bowed their heads beside the fire and prayed together. Perhaps the angels on the ramparts of heaven whispered together, “Behold he prayeth!”

I
t had been snowing hard all day, white, heavy flakes, and when Camilla came downstairs from the office she paused in the doorway in dismay. She hadn’t realized that the snow would be so deep. She was glad she had worn galoshes, although she had hesitated about doing so, for when she started from home there seemed to be only a few lazy flakes and she thought the storm would not last.

She stood there a minute wondering if she kept close to the buildings whether the snow was deep enough to get inside her galoshes, and then just as she was about to plunge in she heard a step behind her and a hand was laid on her arm.

She turned around, startled, and there stood Mr. Whitlock with his nice protective look, smiling down into her eyes.

“How are you going to get home?” he asked, as if he were responsible for her welfare.

“Oh, I have my car around at the garage. It isn’t far,” she answered gallantly.

“Well, I’ll take you to the garage, then,” he said. “My car is parked just outside here. I knew I wouldn’t be upstairs long, and it’s too stormy to go around much without it. I can’t have you getting pneumonia, you know.” And he gave her another of those pleasant smiles that were so almost possessive.

“Oh, thank you,” she said with relief. “That will help a lot. But I have galoshes, you know.”

“I’m afraid they won’t do much good in this depth of snow. Here, where’s the janitor of this building? Joe, where are you? Joe, just get a shovel and run out a footpath to my car, won’t you? You ought to keep this walk clear, you know.”

“Yes, sir,” said Joe, “I was just going out again, sir. Seems like I can’t keep up with this snow, nohow.”

So Camilla walked dry-shod to her employer’s car and was taken to her garage.

“Have you chains on your car?” asked Whitlock.

“Why, no, I’ve never really needed them. I guess I’ll be all right. I drive very carefully.”

“Put some chains on that car!” ordered Whitlock to the man at the garage, and then he insisted on paying for them himself, although Camilla protested.

“That’s all right,” he said. “It’s to my interest, you know, that you should be protected. You’ll need them in the morning, if you don’t now. And I think I’ll just drive along with you a ways and see that you get through all right. This is some weather. Are your windshield wipers in good order?”

When they were ready to start Whitlock said he would go ahead with his heavier car and break the way in case there were streets where no traffic had been, and so in spite of all that Camilla could say, he escorted her to her door, made her get out at the house, lifted her across the deep drift by the steps, and himself put her car in the garage. Then he came in for just a moment, he said just to meet her mother.

But Mrs. Chrystie had been worrying all the afternoon about how Camilla was going to get home, and she was so grateful for Mr. Whitlock’s escort that she insisted he should stay for dinner. So he stayed.

Camilla went flying around in the kitchen helping her mother to get the dinner on the table and wishing in her heart that Mr. Whitlock’s first visit to their home could have been under more favorable circumstances. Somehow she didn’t feel as free with him as she had with Jeffrey Wainwright. There was something rather formal and dignified about Mr. Whitlock. She recalled the quiet dignity of the old inn, the perfect service, the immaculate table. Of course, Mother’s table was always exquisitely clean and lovely, but it happened this night that there was a darn in the fine old tablecloth right where it would show. It seemed too bad when Mother did have lovely things put away that she could have put on if there had been time. But dinner was all ready and could not wait. Camilla did manage to place a lovely doily of beautiful drawn work and set her mother’s little fern on it, but there were no flowers for the table, none of the accessories that Whitlock gave the impression of being so particular about. She did get out some of the best napkins, however, and put a dish in front of the darn, and it had to go at that.