The Other Girls by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney (little red riding hood ebook .TXT) 📕

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She dropped herself, as it were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could not stay in that house alone, one day.

Ray stayed with her, until after the funeral.

Marion would not go to the church. She had let them decide everything just as they pleased, thinking only that she could not think about any of it. Mrs. Kent had been a faithful, humble church-member for forty years, and the minister and her fellow-members wanted her to be brought there. There was no room in the little half-house, where she had lived, for neighbors and friends to gather, and for the services properly to take place.

So it was decided.

But when the time came, and it was too late to change, Marion said,--"She belonged to them, and they have done by her. They can all go, but I can't. To sit up in the front pew as a mourner, and be looked at, and prayed for, as if I had been a real child, and had only _lost_ my mother! You know I can't, Ray. I will stay here, and bear my punishment. May be if I bear it _all_ now--do you believe it might make any difference?"

Ray stayed with her through the whole.

While all was still in the church, not ten rods off, a carriage came for them to the little white gate. With the silken blinds down, and the windows open behind them, it was driven to the cemetery, and in beneath the sheltering trees, to a stopping place just upon a little side turn, near the newly opened grave. No one, of those who alighted from the vehicles of the short procession, knew exactly when or how it had come.

The words of the prayer beside the grave,--most tenderly framed by the good old minister, for the ear he knew they would reach--came in soft and clear upon the pleasant air.

"And we know, Lord, as we lay these friends away, one after another, that we give them into Thy hands,--into Thy heart; that we give into Thy heart, also, all our love and our sorrow, and our penitence for whatever more we might have been or done toward them; that through Thee, our thought of them can reach them forever. We pray Thee to forgive us, as we know we do forgive each other; to keep alive and true in us the love by which we hold each other; and finally to bring us face to face in Thy glory, which is Thy loving presence among us all. We ask Thee to do this, by the pity and grace that are in Thy Christ, our Saviour."

After that, they were driven straight in, over the long Avenue, to the city, and to the quiet house in Pilgrim Street.

Ray herself, only, led Marion to the little room up-stairs which had been made ready for her; Ray brought her up some tea, and made her drink it; she saw her in bed for the night, and sat by her till she fell asleep.


CHAPTER XVII.

ERRANDS OF HOPE.

"It is a very small world, after all."

Mr. Dickens, who touched the springs of the whole world's life, and moved all its hearts with tears and laughter, said so; and we find it out, each in our own story, or in any story that we know of or try to tell. How things come round and join each other again,--how this that we do, brings us face to face with that which we have done, and with its work and consequence; how people find each other after years and years, and find that they have not been very far apart after all; how the old combinations return, and almost repeat themselves, when we had thought that they were done with.

"As the doves fly to their windows," where the crumbs are waiting for them, we find ourselves borne by we know not what instinct of events,--yet we do know; for it is just the purpose of God, as all instinct is,--toward these conjunctions and recurrences. We can see at the end of weeks, or months, or years, how in some Hand the lines must have all been gathered, and made to lead and draw to the coincidence. We call it fate, sometimes; stopping short, either blindly inapprehensive of the larger and surer blessedness, or too shyly reverent of what we believe to say it easily out. Yet when we read it in a written story, we call it the contrivance of the writer,--the trick of the trade. Dearly beloved, the writer only catches, in such poor fashion as he may, the trick of the Finger, whose scripture is upon the stars.

Marion Kent is received into the Ingraham home. Hilary Vireo and Luclarion Grapp preach the gospel to her.

"Christ died."

The minister uttered his evangel of mercy in those two eternal words.

"Yes,--Christ," murmured the girl, who had never questioned about such things before, and to whose lips the holy name had been strange, unsuitable, impossible; but whose soul, smitten with its sin and need, broke through the wretched outward hinderance now, and had to cry up after the only Hope.

"But He could not forgive my letting _them_ die. I have been reading the New Testament, Mr. Vireo, 'Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it were better for him that a millstone"--

She could not finish the quotation.

"Yes,--'_offend_;' turn aside out of the right--away from Him; mislead. Hurt their _souls_, Marion."

Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the comfort,--snatched it with a starving madness out of his.

"Do you think it means _that?_" she said.

"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we must repent according to our sin; but we _may_ repent, and they and He will pity. It is the soul-killers--the corrupters--Christ so terribly condemns."

"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "God let his Christ die--suffer--for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts worthy, die--suffer--for _their_ world. The Lamb is forever slain; the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in his blood--have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.' He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer, that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'"

"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them; do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here! Can I _ever_ have my chances given back again?"

"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.' That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it. The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You can be in heaven."

He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do.

She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl; stitches dropped and twisted.

Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got round so as to strike across her where she sat.

The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's touch. One of the girls would be up soon.

Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds; lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between them and that heavenly enfolding.

She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows.

Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled.

Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a printed page since that night in Loweburg.

The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her hand, she thought--she remembered--nothing. Her spirit went from out of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her voice, as one really _reading_; interpreting as she went. All her elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had only been the trick of _saying out_, which is no giving at all.

"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very pretty reading."

Dot came in, and she went away.

She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one; she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,--"For your sake."

And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,--"He that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's reward."

These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old self-accusations.

After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she went,--"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors.

"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there.

And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea, or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own character and fashion. It is so blessed that the word is given and repeated in so many characters and fashions! That each one receives it and passes it on, "in that language into which he was born."

"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray