Four Girls at Chautauqua Part 15

"And, according to you, there is no such place; so there is no hope for her, after all. Oh, dear! I wonder if you are right, and nothing is of any consequence, anyhow?" And the weary girl turned on her pillow and tried not to think, an effort that was hard to accomplish after a week's experience at Chautauqua.

Flossy sat herself down beside the sleeping darling, and cast about her for something to amuse or interest, her eyes brightening into beauty as she recognized a worn and torn copy of the Bible. Eurie would have been surprised to see the eagerness with which she seized upon the book that was to afford her entertainment. She turned the leaves tenderly, with a new sense of possession about her. This Bible was a copy of letters that had been written to her--words spoken, many of them, by Jesus himself.

Strange that she had so little idea what they were! Marion, with her boasted infidel notions, knew much more about "The Book" than Flossy with her nominal Christian education and belief. She had no idea where to turn or what to look for to help her. Yet she turned the leaves slowly, with a delicious sense of having found a prize a--book of instructions, a guide book for her on this journey that she was just beginning to realize that she was taking. Somewhere within it she would find light and help. The book was one that had been much used, and had a fas.h.i.+on of opening of itself at certain places that might have been favorites with the little mother. At one of those places Flossy halted and read: "'After this there was a feast of the Jews.' After what, I wonder?" she said within herself. She knew nothing about it. "Never mind, I will see pretty soon. This is about a feast where Jesus was. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem." "Oh, how nice to have been there, wherever that was." The ignorant little thing had not the least idea where Jerusalem was, except that it was in that far away, misty Holy Land, that had seemed as vague and indefinite to her as the grave or as heaven. But there came suddenly to her heart a certain blessed a.n.a.logy.

"If I were going to write an account of my recent experiences to some dear friend that I wanted to tell it to," she said, talking still to herself, or to the sleeping baby, "I would write it something like this: 'After this'--That would mean; let me see what it _would_ mean. Why, after that party at home, when I danced all night and was sick. 'After this there was a feast of the Christian people at Chautauqua, and Jesus went there.' I could certainly write that, for I have seen him and heard him speak in my very heart." Then she went on, through the second verse to the third. "'In these lay a great mult.i.tude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water,'" and here a great swell of tears literally blinded her eyes. It came to her so suddenly, so forcibly. The great mult.i.tude here at Chautauqua--blind.

Yes, some of them. Was not she? How many more might there be? Many of whom she knew, others that she did not know, but that Jesus did. Waiting without knowing that they were waiting. With tears and smiles, and with a new great happiness throbbing at her heart, she read through the sweet, simple, wonderful story; how the poor man met Jesus; how he questioned; how the man complained; and how Jesus was greater than his infirmity. Through the whole of it, until suddenly she closed the book, her tears dried, and a solemn, wondering, almost awe-struck look on her face. She had got her lesson, her directions, her example. She could bear no more, even of the Bible, just then. She said it over, that startling verse that came to her with a whole volume of suggestion: "'_And the man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole._'"

CHAPTER XV.

GREAT MEN.

Ruth Erskine, with her skirts gathered daintily around her, to avoid contact with the unclean earth, made her way skill fully through the crowd, and with the aid of a determined spirit and a camp-chair secured a place and a seat very near the stand. The little lady who timidly followed in her lead was not quite so fortunate, inasmuch as she had no camp-chair, and was less resolved in her determination to get ahead of those who had arrived earlier; so she contented herself with a damp seat on the end of a board, which was vacated for her use by a courteous gentleman.

Ruth, you must understand, was not selfish in this matter because she had planned to be, but simply because it had never occurred to her to be otherwise, which is one of the misfortunes that come to people who are educated in a selfish atmosphere. Ruth Erskine had come to this meeting fully prepared to enjoy it. Dr. Cuyler was a star of sufficient magnitude to attract her. During her frequent visits to New York she had heard much of but had never seen him. The people whom she visited were too elegant in their views and practices to have much in common with the church which was so p.r.o.nounced on the two great questions of religion and temperance. Yet, even with them, Dr. Cuyler and Dr. Cuyler's great church were eccentricities to be tolerated, not ignored. Therefore Ruth had had it in her heart to enjoy listening to him sometime. The sometime had arrived. She had dressed herself with unusual care, a ceremony which seemed to be quite in the background among the people who were at home at Chautauqua. But someway it seemed to Ruth that the great Brooklyn pastor should receive this mark of respect at her hands; so she had spent the morning at her toilet and was now a fas.h.i.+onable lady, fas.h.i.+onably attired for church.

If the people who vouchsafed her a glance as she crowded past indulged, some of them, in a smile at her expense, and thought the simple temple made of trees and gra.s.ses an inappropriate surrounding to her silken robes and costly lace mantle, she was none the wiser for that, you know, and took her seat, indifferent to them all, except that presently there stole over her the sense of disagreeable incongruity with her outdoor surroundings; so Satan had the pleasure of ruffling her spirits and occupying her thoughts with her rich brown silk dress instead of letting her heart be touched with the solemnity and beauty of the grand hymn which rolled down those long aisles. Satan has that everlasting weapon, "What to wear, and what not to wear," everlastingly at command and wonderfully under his control. But Ruth, in her way, was strong-minded and could control her thoughts when she chose; so she presently shook off the feeling of annoyance and decided to give herself up to the influences of the hour.

By this time Dr. Cuyler appeared and was introduced, Ruth gave him the benefit of a very searching gaze, and decided that he was the very last man of all those on the platform whom she would have selected as the speaker. Probably if Dr. Cuyler had known this, and known also that his personal presence entirely disappointed her, he would not have been greatly disconcerted thereby. But his subject was one that found an answering thrill in this young lady's heart--"Some Talks I Have Had With Great Men." Ruth liked greatness. In her calm, composed way she bowed before it. She would have enjoyed being great. Celebrity in a majestic, dignified form would have been her delight. She by no means admitted this, as Eurie Mitch.e.l.l so often did. She by no means sought after it in the small ways within her reach. Small ways did not suit her; they disgusted her. But if she could have flashed into splendid greatness, if by any amount of laborious study, or work, or suffering, she could have seen the way to world-wide renown she would have grasped for it in an instant.

The next best thing to being renowned one's self was to have renowned people for friends. This was another thing that Ruth coveted in silence.

She wanted no one to know how earnestly she aspired to, sometime, making the acquaintance of some of the great people not--the vulgarly great, those who were in a sense, and in the eyes of a few, great because of the accidents of fortune and travel. She knew such by the scores. Indeed, she had been in circles many a time where _she_ shone with that sort of greatness herself. Perhaps it was for that reason that it was such a despised height to her. But she meant the _really_ great people of this world--people of power, people who moved the ma.s.ses by the force of their brains. Not one such had she ever met to look upon as an acquaintance; and here was this man telling off the honored names by the score, and saying, "My friend, Dr. Guthrie"--"My good friend, Thomas Carlyle"--"My dear brother, Newman Hall." How would it seem to stand in intimate relations.h.i.+p with one single gifted mind like these, and was she destined ever to know by actual experience?

There was another reason why Ruth had desired to choose Dr. Cuyler to listen to rather than some other names on the programme, because, from the nature of his subject she had judged it most unlikely that he should have about him any arrows that would touch home to her. Not that she put it in that language; she did not admit even to herself that any of the solemn words that had been spoken at Chautauqua had reference to her; and yet in a vague, fitful way she was ill at ease.

She had moments of feeling that there was a reach of happiness possessed by these people of which she knew nothing. Little side thrusts had come to her from time to time in places where she least expected them. That question, asked by Flossy during her night of unrest, "Should you be afraid to die?" hovered around this quietly poised young lady in a most unaccountable manner. All the more persistently did it cling because she could not shake it off with the thought that it was silly. Common sense told her that the strange, solemn shadow, which came so steadily after men, and so surely enveloped one after another among the grandest intellects that the world owned, was not a thing to pa.s.s over lightly.

After all, why should she _not_ be afraid of death? Then that strange gentleman who had persisted in ranking her among the praying people! he had left his shadow. Why did she not pray? She wondered over this in a vague sort of way; wondered how it seemed to kneel down alone, and speak to an invisible presence; wondered if those who so knelt always felt as though they were really speaking to G.o.d.

There were times when Ruth was exceedingly disgusted with these perplexing thoughts, and wanted nothing so much as to get away from them. She resented this intrusion upon her quiet. This day was one of those in which she was impatient of all these things, and she had made her toilet with great satisfaction, and said within herself complacently: "We are to have one hour at last devoted to this mundane sphere and the mortals who inhabit it; most of the time these Chautauquans talk and act as though earth was only a railroad station, where people changed cars and went on to heaven. Dr. Cuyler is going to refresh us with some actual living specimens of humanity. He can't make a sermon out of that subject if he tries."

But Ruth Erskine had not measured the power of the earnest preachers of Jesus Christ. As if Dr. Cuyler could talk for an hour to thousands of immortal souls, and leave Christ and heaven and immortality out.

To Ruth these three words const.i.tuted a sermon, and she got them that day. Not that he had an idea that he was preaching Christ, except incidentally, as a man refers almost unconsciously to the one whom he loves best in all the world but Ruth knew he was. It came in little sudden touches when she least expected it, when heart and soul were wrought upon with some strong enthusiasm by the splendid picture of a splendid man--as when he told of Spurgeon. It was a glowing description, such as thrilled Ruth, and made her feel that to have just one glimpse of that great man, with his great marvelous power over humanity, would be worth a lifetime.

Suddenly the speaker said: "The secret of that man's power lies, first, in his study of the Bible." Ruth started and came down like a bomb-sh.e.l.l from her wondrous height. The Bible! copies of which lay carelessly on every table of her father's elegantly furnished house unstudied and unthought of. How very strange to ascribe the power of the great intellect to the study of one book that was more or less familiar to every Sunday-school boy. "Second, in short, simple, homely language."

Ruth smiled now. Dr. Cuyler was growing absurd, as if it were not the most common thing in the world to use simple, homely language! No Spurgeons could be manufactured in that way, she was sure. "Third, mighty earnestness to save souls." Here was a point concerning which Ruth knew nothing.

Dr. Cuyler's manner put tremendous force into the forceful words, and carried conviction with them. She wondered how a really _mighty_ earnestness to save souls made a man appear? She wondered whether she had ever seen such a one; she went rapidly over the list of her acquaintances in the church. She smiled to herself a sarcastic, contemptuous smile; she had met them all at parties, concerts, festivals, and the like; she had seen them on occasions when _nothing_ seemed to possess them but to have a good time like the rest of the world.

Like the rest of the world, Ruth reasoned and decided from her chance meetings with the outside life of these Christians, forgetting that she had never seen one of them in their closets before G.o.d; rather, she knew nothing about these closets, nor the experiences learned there, and could only reason from outside life. This being the case, what a pity that her verdict of those lives should have called forth only that contemptuous smile! Wandering off in this train of thought, she lost the speaker's next point, but was called back by his solemn, ringing close.

"Put these together, melt them down with the love of Christ, and you have a Spurgeon. G.o.d be thanked for such a piece of hand work as he!"

Another start and another retrospect. _Did_ she know any people who put these together; who made a real, earnest, constant study of the Bible as school girls studied their Latin grammars, and who were really eager to save souls because they had the love of Christ in their hearts, and who said so in plain simple language? "Does he, I wonder?" she said to herself. "I wonder if his sermons sound like that? I should like to hear him preach just once. Oh, dear! if he isn't running off to Moody and Sankey. It _is_ a sermon after all!"

On the whole, Ruth was disgusted. Her brain was in a whirl; she was being compelled to hear _sermons_ on every hand. She was sick of it.

They had been great men of whom she had heard, and she admired them all; she wanted the secret of their power, but she didn't want it to be made out of such commonplace material as was in the hands of every child. She did not know what she wanted--only that she had come out to be entertained and to revel in her love of heroes, and she had been pinned down to the one thought that _real_ men were made of those who found their power in their Bible and on their knees.

The solemn, earnest, tender closing to this address did not lessen her sense of discomfort. Then just beside her was carried on a conversation that added to her annoyance.

"They are big men," a man said. He was dressed in a common business suit; his linen had not the exquisite freshness about it that her fastidious eyes delighted in; his hands looked as though they might have been used to work that was rough and hard; his straggling hair was sprinkled with gray, and there was not a striking feature about him.

"They are big men," he said, "and I've no doubt it is a big thing to know them, and talk with them, and have a friendly feeling for each, as if they belonged to him, but he knows a bigger one than them, and the best of it is, so do we. The Lord Jesus Christ, our Elder Brother, is not to be compared to common men like these."

And now Ruth's lips curled utterly. She was an aristocrat without knowing it. She believed in Christianity, and in its power to save the poor and the commonest, but this insufferable a.s.sumption of dignity and superiority over the rest of the world, as she called it, was hateful to her in the extreme. It would have startled her exceedingly to have been told that she was angry with the man for presuming to place _his_ Friend higher in the list of great ones than any of those given that day; and yet such was actually her feeling. She swept her skirts angrily away from contact with the man, and spoke so crustily to the little lady who had come in her wake that she moved timidly away.

Just at her left were two gentlemen shaking hands. Both had been on the stand together, she knew the faces of both, and _one_ ranked just a trifle higher in her estimation than any one at Chautauqua. She edged a little nearer. She lived in the hope of making the acquaintance of some of these lights, just enough acquaintance to receive a bow and a clasp of the hand, though how one could accomplish it who was determined that her interest in them should neither be seen nor suspected, it would be hard to say; but they were talking in eager, hearty tones, not at all as if their words were confidential--at least she might have the benefit of them.

"That was a capital lecture," the elder of the two was saying. "Cuyler has had great advantages in his life in meeting on a familiar footing so many of our great men. When you get thinking of these things, and of the many men whom you would like to know intimately, what is the thought that strikes you most forcibly?"

"That I am glad I belong to the 'royal family,' and have the opportunity of knowing intimately and holding close personal relations with Him who 'spake as never man spake.'"

The other answered in a rare, rich tone of suppressed jubilance of feeling.

"Exactly!" his friend said; "and when you can leave the fullness of that thought long enough to take another, there is the looking forward to actual fellows.h.i.+p and communion not only with him, but with all these glorious men who are living here, and who have gone up yonder."

Ruth turned abruptly away. The very thought that possessed the heart of the plain-looking man and that so annoyed her; and these two, whom to know was an honor, were looking forward to that consummation as the height of it all!

CHAPTER XVI.

A WAR OF WORDS.

"Well, why not?" she said, as she went slowly down the aisle. Of course all these people would be in heaven together, and why should they not look forward to a companions.h.i.+p untrameled by earthly forms and conventionalities, and unc.u.mbered by the body in its present dull and ponderous state? What a chance to get into the best society! the highest circle! real best, too, not made up of money, or blood, or dress, or any of the flimsy and silly barriers that fenced people in and out now. Then at once she felt her own inconsistency in growing disgusted with the plainly-dressed, common-looking man. If he did really belong to that "royal family," why not rejoice over it? Wasn't _she_ the foolish one?

She by no means liked these reflections, but she could not get away from them.

"How do you do?" said a clear, round voice behind her; not speaking to her, but to some one whom he was very glad to see, judging from his tone. And the voice was peculiar; she had been listening to it for an hour, and could not be mistaken; it belonged to Dr. Cuyler himself. She turned herself suddenly. Here was a chance for a nearer view, and to see who was being greeted so heartily. It was the little lady whose society had been thrust upon her that morning by Flossy. And they were shaking hands as though they were old and familiar acquaintances!

"It is good to see your face again," that same hearty voice which seemed to have so much good fellows.h.i.+p in it was saying. "I didn't know you were to be here; I'm real glad to see you again, and what about the husband and the dear boy?"

At which point it occurred to Miss Ruth Erskine that she was listening to conversation not designed for her ears. She moved away suddenly, in no way comforted or sweetened as to her temper by this episode. Why should that little bit of an insignificant woman have the honor of such a cordial greeting from the great man, while he did not even know of _her_ existence?

To be sure, Dr. Cuyler had baptized and received into church fellows.h.i.+p and united in marriage the little woman with whom he was talking; but Ruth, even if she had known these circ.u.mstances, was in no mood to attach much importance to them.

She wandered away from the crowd down by the lake-side. She stopped at Jerusalem on her way, and poked her parasol listlessly into the sand of which the hills lying about that city were composed, and thought:

"What silly child's play all this was! How absurd to suppose that people were going to get new ideas by _playing_ at cities with bits of painted board and piles of sand! Even if they _could_ get a more distinct notion of its surroundings, what difference did it make how Jerusalem looked, or where it stood, or what had become of the buildings?"

This last, as it began dimly to dawn upon her, that it was useless to deny the fact that even such listless and disdainful staring as she had vouchsafed to this make-believe city had located it, as it had not been located before, in her brain.

When she produced the flimsy question, "What difference does it make?"

you can see at once the absurd mood that had gotten possession of her, and you lose all your desire to argue with any one who feels as foolish as that. Neither had Ruth any desire to argue with herself; she was disgusted with her mind for insisting on keeping her up to a strain of thought.