Daisy in the Field Part 43

"I lack wisdom, very much; but it does not seem to come, even though I ask for it. I am sometimes in a great puzzle."

"About what to do?"

"Yes."

"You can always find out the first step to be taken. Jesus will be followed step by step. He will not show you but one step at a time, very often. But take that, holding His hand, and He will show you the next."

"So I came here," I said.

"And what is the work to be done here? on yourself, or on somebody else?"

"I do not know," I said. "I had not thought it was either.

Perhaps I am learning."

He was silent then, and I sat thinking.

"Mr. Dinwiddie," I said, "maybe you can help me."

"I will gladly, if I can."

"But it is very difficult for me to put you in possession of the circ.u.mstances - or in the atmosphere of the circ.u.mstances.

I do not know that I can. You know that papa and mamma do not think with me on the subject of religion?"

"Yes."

"There are other things in which I think differently from them - other things in which we feel apart; and they do not know it. Ought I to let them know it?"

"Your question is as enigmatical as an ancient oracle. I must have a little more light. Do these differences of feeling or opinion touch action? - either yours or theirs?"

"Yes, - both."

"Then, unless your minds are known to each other, will there not be danger of mistaken action, on the one part or on the other?"

"Telling them would not prevent that danger," I said.

"They would disregard your views, or you would disregard theirs, - which?"

"I must not disregard theirs," I said low.

Mr. Dinwiddie was silent awhile. I had a sort of cry in my heart for the old dividing of the waters.

"Miss Daisy," he said, "there is one sure rule. Do right; and let consequences break us to pieces, if needs be."

"But," said I doubtfully, "I had questioned what was right; at least I had not been certain that I ought to do anything just now."

"Of course I am speaking in the dark," he answered. "But you can judge whether this matter of division is something that in your father's place you would feel you had a right to know."

I mused so long after this speech, that I am sure Mr.

Dinwiddie must have felt that he had touched my difficulty. He was perfectly silent. At last I rose up to go home. I do not know what Mr. Dinwiddie saw in me, but he stopped me and took my hand.

"Can't you trust the Lord?" he said.

"I see trouble before me, whatever I do," I said with some difficulty.

"Very well," he said; "even so, trust the Lord. The trouble will do you no harm."

I sat down for a moment and covered my face. It might do me no harm; it might at the same time separate me from what I loved best in the world.

"Cannot you trust?" he repeated. " 'He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat.' "

"You know," I said, getting up, "one cannot help being weak."

"Will you excuse me? - That is precisely what we _can_ help. We cannot help being ignorant sometimes, - foolish sometimes, - short-sighted. But weak we need not be; for 'in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength;' and 'he giveth power to the faint.' "

"But there is no perfection, Mr. Dinwiddie."

"Not if by perfection you mean, standing alone. But if the power that holds us up is perfect, - what should hinder our having a fulness of that? 'If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it.' Isn't that promise good for all we want to ask?"

I sat down again to think. Mr. Dinwiddie quietly took his place by my side; and we were still for a good while. The plains of Jericho and the Jordan and the Moab mountains and the Quarantania, all seemed to have new voices for me now; voices full of balm; messages of soft-healing. I do think the messages G.o.d sends to us by natural things are some of the sweetest and mightiest and best understood of all. They come home.

"Do you think," I asked, after a long silence, "that this mountain was really the scene of the Temptation?"

"Why should we think so? No, I do not think it."

"But the road from Jericho to Jerusalem - there is no doubt of that?"

"No doubt at all. We are often sure of the roads here, when we are sure of little else."

There was a pause; and then Mr. Dinwiddie broke it.

"You left things in confusion at home. How do you feel about that?"

"At home in America?" I said. "I do not feel about it as my parents do."

"You side with the North!"

"I have lived there so much. I know the view taken there; and it seems to me the right one. And I have lived at the South too; and I do not like the view held there, - nor the practice followed."

"There are some things I can fancy you would not like," he said musingly. "I have not known what to think. It seems to me they have made a false move. But it seems to me they must succeed."

"I don't know," I said. "Perhaps."

He looked at me a little hard, and then we left the hermits'

caves and went down the plain to our encampment.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FORLORN HOPE