From Jest to Earnest Part 52

She gently replied, "I have, father."

"But I have more reason to thank Him than either of you," said Harcourt, brokenly, "for had you perished I should have been lost, body and soul."

"Then serve Him faithfully, my son,--serve Him as my old friend your father did."

"With His help I will."

CHAPTER XXIX.

HEMSTEAD'S ADVICE, AND LOTTIE'S COLORS.

Soon after the departure of Mr. Martell and his daughter, Hemstead pleaded headache, and retired to his room. Lottie, to escape De Forrest, had also gone to hers, but soon after, at her brother's solicitation, had accompanied him to a neighboring pond to make sure that the ice was safe for him. But, though she yielded to Dan's teasing, her compliance was so ungracious, and her manner so short and unamiable, that with a boy's frankness he had said: "What is the matter with you, Lottie? You are not a bit like Auntie Jane to-day. I wish you could stay one thing two days together."

As may be imagined, these remarks did not conduce to Lottie's serenity.

She did not understand herself; nor why she felt so miserable and out of sorts. She had fallen into the "Slough of Despond," and was experiencing that depression which usually follows overwrought emotional states, and--her knight had disappointed her.

Having learned that the ice was firm, and a.s.sisted her little brother in putting on his skates, instead of returning at once to the house, she sat down in a little screening clump of hemlocks, and gave way to her feelings in a manner not uncommon with girls of her mercurial temperament.

Now it so happened that Hemstead, gazing listlessly from his window, saw their departure, and soon afterward it occurred to him that the fresh air would do his headache more good than moping in his room. By a not unnatural coincidence, his steps tended in the same direction as theirs, and soon he found Dan sprawling about the pond in great glee over his partial success in skating; but Lottie was nowhere to be seen. A sound from the clump of evergreens soon gained his attention, and a moment later he stood at the entrance of her wintry bower, the very embodiment of sympathy, and wondering greatly at her distress.

A stick snapped under his tread, and Lottie looked up hastily, das.h.i.+ng the tears right and left.

"What did you come for?" she asked brusquely.

"Well, I suppose I must say in truth--I wanted to. I hope you won't send me away."

"You ought to have given me a little warning, and not caught me crying like a great baby as I am."

"I wish I were your friend," he said humbly.

"Why so?"

"Because you would then tell me your trouble, and let me try to comfort you."

"I haven't any trouble worth naming. I've just been crying like a foolish child because I was out of sorts. There, don't look at me so with your great, kind eyes, or I shall cry again, and I am ashamed of myself now."

"Something is troubling you, Miss Marsden, and I shall be very unhappy if you send me away without letting me help you."

"You would think me a fool if I told you," she faltered.

"No one will ever charge you with being that."

She gave him another of her quick, strange looks, like the one she fixed upon him when he first moved her to tears by weaving about her the 'spell of truth.' It was a look akin to that of a child who learns by an intuitive glance whom it may trust. After a moment, she said: "If you were less kind, less simple and sincere, I would indeed send you away, and not very amiably either, I fear. And yet I should like a few crumbs of comfort. I scarcely understand myself. Monday and yesterday I was so strangely happy that I seemed to have entered on a new life, and to-day I am as wicked and miserable a little sinner as ever breathed. The idea of my being a Christian!--never was farther from it. I've had nothing but mean and hateful thoughts since I awoke."

"And is this not a 'trouble worth naming'? In my judgment it is a most serious one."

"Do you think so?" she said gratefully. "But then I'm provoked that I can be so changeable. Dan just said, 'I wish you could be the same two days together,' and so do I."

"Let us look into this matter," he said, sympathetically, sitting down in a companionable way on the fallen tree beside her. "Let us try to disentangle this web of complex and changing feeling. As the physician treats the disordered body, you know it is my cherished calling to minister to the disquieted mind. The first step is to discover the cause of trouble, if possible, and remove that. Can you not think of some cause of your present feelings?"

Lottie averted her face in dismay, and thought, "What shall I do?

I can't tell him the cause."

"Because you see," continued Hemstead, in the most philosophical spirit, "when anything unpleasant and depressing occurs, one of your temperament is apt to take a gloomy, morbid view of everything for a time."

"I think you are right," she said faintly.

"Now, I see no proof," he continued, with rea.s.suring heartiness, "that you are not a Christian because you are unhappy, or even because you have had 'hateful thoughts,' as you call them. You evidently do not welcome these 'hateful thoughts.' The question as to whether you are a Christian is to be settled on entirely different grounds. Have you thrown off allegiance to that most merciful and sympathetic of friends that you led me to see last Sunday as vividly as I now see you?"

Lottie shook her head, but said remorsefully, "But I have scarcely thought of Him to-day."

"Rest a.s.sured He has thought of you. I now understand how He has sympathy for the least grief of the least of His children."

"If I am one, I am the very least one of all," she said humbly.

"I like that," he replied with a smile. "Paul said he was the 'chief of sinners,' and he meant it too. That was an excellent symptom."

A glimmer of a smile dawned on Lottie's face.

"And now," he continued hesitatingly, as if approaching a delicate subject, "I think I know the cause of your trouble and depression.

Will you permit me to speak of it?"

Again she averted her face in confusion, but said faintly: "As my spiritual physician I suppose you must."

"I think you naturally felt greatly disappointed that Mr. De Forrest acted the part he did last evening."

This speech put Lottie at ease at once, and she turned to him in apparent frankness, but with something of her old insincerity, and said, "I confess that I was."

"You could not be otherwise," he said, in a low tone.

"What would you advise me to do?" she asked demurely.

It was now his turn to be embarra.s.sed, and he found that he had got himself into a dilemma. The color deepened in his face as he hesitated how to answer. She watched him furtively but searchingly. At last he said, with sudden impetuosity, as if he could not restrain himself: "I would either make a man of him or break with him forever.

It's horrible that a girl like you should be irrevocably bound to such--pardon me."

Again Lottie averted her face, while a dozen rainbows danced in her moist eyes.

But she managed to say, "Which do you think I had better do?"