Ester Ried Yet Speaking Part 19

And the circle instantly widened itself to receive Dr. Everett.

It took almost no time to speak the commonplace of the occasion, and get back at once to the business of the hour. It was evident that Dr.

Everett needed no lengthy explanations, and there was apparently nothing bewildering to his mind in the plan. True, it was new to him, but he seemed to spring at once to the centre of their thoughts. His eyes glowed for a moment, and he said with peculiar emphasis:--

"Ried, when the son of man cometh, he will surely find _some_ faith on the earth!"

Then he gave himself to intensest listening and questioning, and presently followed his questions with suggestions which showed that unconventional ways of working were not altogether new to him.

As for Gracie, she had as much as she could do to listen intelligently; she almost caught her breath over the rapidity with which the talkers moved from one scheme to another. All the time there was a curious process of comparison between this man and Professor Ellis going on in her mind. Not that she wished to compare the two! She told herself that it was absurd to do so; none the less she did it. For instance, she reminded herself that she had mentally a.s.sented promptly to the suggestion of inviting the doctor to this room to talk this strange scheme over; she had recognized the fitness of the act. But suppose Professor Ellis should call, would it not be simply absurd to think of explaining to him the uses of this unique room? Who would for a moment think of suggesting his name as a helper?

I do not know how to describe to you the appearance of that room on Monday evening when the boys were in it. I do not know whether the sight to you would have been pitiful or ludicrous. How can I tell--not knowing you? There was a dreadful incongruity between the soiled, ragged clothes and matted hair and unwashed hands and the exquisite purity which prevailed around them. Of course you could have seen that, but the all-important question, the answer to which would have stamped your place in the world's workshop, would have been, Do you see any further than that? and seeing further--which way? Do you see the possibilities, or the certainties of failure? Oh, no, I am wrong; it would take more than that to tell where you belong. Dr. Everett saw the possibilities and gloried in them. Gracie Dennis thought she saw the certainty of failure, and was sorry for it. But Professor Ellis would have seen the certainty of failure, and would have met it with a sneer, if he had not been too indifferent even for that. As for Mrs. Roberts, did she, or did she not, represent a different and higher type than any of the others?

She thought not much about either success or failure, but pushed steadily forward the plan that she believed she had gotten on her knees, born of the Spirit. If it really were of G.o.d, nothing could make it fail; but if she mistook, and the plan was only hers, mere failure in that direction would signify nothing; she would have but to try again.

Something of this she felt, but did not reason out, for she was no logician.

What the boys saw was a great, splendid room, the like of which they had never seen before, for they recognized, without being able to explain, the difference between it and the parlors, and felt freer in it. They all came, and they looked not one whit better than on the Monday evening before. Over this fact Gracie Dennis, with all her public scoffing, was, in private, a little disappointed. It is true she had not expected to see them again; but if they came, she thought it possible that they might have been tempted to appear with clean hands and faces. Possibly some were so tempted, and but for the difficulties in the way, might really have tried for this. But Gracie was not sufficiently enlightened to dream of difficulties in the way of simply washing one's face and hands.

During the Sat.u.r.day evening conference it had been decided that Mr.

Roberts must make acquaintance with his guests. It would never do to have them come familiarly to his house, and he not be able to recognize them on the streets. Several plans were suggested for introducing him skilfully to them, but he disapproved of them all.

"No," he said, "I'll tell you what we'll do. I will introduce myself.

You may receive them, Flossy, and then retire for a few minutes, and I'll let myself in by the conservatory pa.s.sage, and make myself acquainted to the best of my abilities. In ten minutes, Flossy, I'll give you leave to return. As for the rest of you, don't dare to venture in until I have made good my claim as the head of the house. I am jealous of you, perhaps."

To this plan Mrs. Roberts readily a.s.sented, but the young clerk looked doubtful. In common with the rest of his employees, he stood in wholesome awe of the keen-eyed, thorough business man, who seemed to know, as by a sort of instinct, when anything in any department of the great store was not moving according to rule. His knowledge of Mr.

Roberts, outside of the store, was limited, and he expected to find the boys, if not frightened, so awed that they would resolve never to be caught inside that room again.

However, he of course only looked his fears. He was too much afraid of the great merchant to express them, and it had been understood, when they separated, that this plan was to be carried out.

CHAPTER XVII.

"I WONDER WHAT THEY'RE ALL AFTER!"

In the library waited Gracie and Mr. Ried, while Mrs. Roberts went merrily to see whether the boys or their host had proved the stronger.

"I don't believe this part of the programme will work," Alfred said, confidently, the moment the door closed after Mrs. Roberts. "Those fellows will all be afraid of Mr. Roberts, and we shall lose what little hold we have on them."

"They don't look to me as though it ever occurred to them to be afraid of anything," Gracie said; but Alfred Ried, who had studied deeper into this problem of the different cla.s.ses of society, was ready with his answer.

"Yes they are; they can be awed, and made to feel uncomfortable to the degree that they will resolve not to appear in that region again.

One cannot judge from their behavior in Sabbath-school. Some way they recognize a mission school as being in a sense their property, and behave accordingly; but in a man's own house, surrounded by things of which they do not even know the name, he has them at a disadvantage, and can easily rouse within them the feeling that they are 'trapped.' Than which there is nothing those fellows dread so much, I believe."

"But they were not afraid of Flossy last week, even surrounded by the elegances of her parlors and dining-room."

"Ah!" he said, his eyes alight, "she has a wisdom born of G.o.d, I think, for managing these and all other concerns. She is unlike everybody else."

Whereupon Gracie Dennis laughed; not a disagreeable laugh, but there came to her just then a sense of the strangeness of thinking that pretty Flossy Shipley, whom she had known all her life, and half-scorned from the heights of her childhood because she was a silly little thing, who could not do her problems in cla.s.s, should have a wisdom unlike any others. Yet, almost immediately her laugh was stayed, because the change in Flossy was so great that she, too, recognized it as born of G.o.d.

Sometimes it came with force to this proud young girl that if G.o.d could do so much for Flossy, what might he not be willing to do with those whom he had made intellectually her superior, if they were but ready to be led?

The young man, who was studying her, watched the grave look deepen on her face, and wondered at its source. What a pretty face it was. Oh, much more than pretty; there was great strength in it and sweetness, too, of a certain sort, but he could not help comparing the sort with that in some other faces, and he wondered over the difference. This young lady was a Christian. Why should her Christian experience stamp her with such a different expression from that which others wore? He always finished this sort of sentence with a blank s.p.a.ce first, as though he did not choose to have himself tell himself any names. Yet he spoke a name forcibly enough, still gazing earnestly at Gracie.

"Did you ever meet Miss Joy Saunders?"

Gracie turned toward him a laughing face.

"No, but we are very anxious to, Flossy and I. We have both been told that we ought to know her, and told so earnestly that we really think we ought. Who is she? Is she, too, unlike anybody else?"

"Very," he said, promptly. "I know her very little; she is the daughter of our landlady; I meet her in the hall on rare occasions, and sometimes catch glimpses of her just vanishing from some room as I enter; but as for being acquainted with her, I suppose I am not. I think--though of that I am by no means sure--that she is engaged to Dr. Everett.

"Oh, then, of course he would think naturally that people ought to know her. What is she like?"

"Like nothing," said Alfred, with great promptness. "Did you ever know a person named Joy?"

"No;--what a singular name."

"Well, it fits. She is very far removed from mirth, and she is not what people call gay, and she is not outspoken apparently at any time, though, as I say, I do not know her; but there is something in her face that fits the name; I do not know what it is. Sometimes I think it is the shining of Christ's face reflected in her; but the puzzle is, why do not other faces have it? Faces which belong to him?"

"Perhaps there is a difference in the degree of belonging."

Gracie spoke the words very gently, wondering meanwhile at the way in which this thought chimed in with hers about Flossy.

"Oh, there is. But why should there be? If I belong to Christ, I _belong_, don't I? There is no half-way service possible. Why do I not so look that others take knowledge of me that I have been with Jesus?"

"How do you know but they do?"

"Ah, I know. I know too well. They are more likely a great deal to take knowledge that I have been with Satan. I feel the frown all over my face a great deal of the time; and the world goes astray a great many times, when I suppose it is just myself that is wrong. But, Miss Dennis, I hunger for the shining of his face in me."

"That must be the meaning of the beat.i.tude which puzzled my childhood,"

she answered trying to speak lightly, to hide feelings that were deeply moved: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

"Thank you," he said, smiling; "there is actually a promise! I had not thought of it. And yet"--the thoughtful frown gathering almost immediately--"do you suppose that a person who really hungered for a certain thing could be satisfied with anything else? I often have an hour of what at the moment seems to me like hunger for Him, but the hour pa.s.ses, and I get filled--with business, or with plans, or possibly with annoyances, and feel nothing but a general irritation for everybody. Do you think there can be anything genuine about such desires, so easily turned aside?"

"Oh, I do not know," said Gracie, hastily. "Why do you ask me such things? Did not I tell you I was not good? Ask those people who are unlike all others. Why don't you ask this Joy? She could tell you, I presume. I can tell you nothing, save that this is a very strange world, not half so nice as I once thought it, and I don't like to think about things."

How _different_ he was from other young men with whom she had spent fifteen minutes many a time in gay banter! This was, after all, the thought uppermost in her mind at the moment. Nice Christian men, of whom her father spoke well, and who, people said, were young men to be proud of. It seemed to her that she knew them by the dozens, yet with which one of them had she ever carried on such a conversation as this? With which one could she have attempted any thing of the kind, without leading him to suppose that she was taking leave of her senses?

She recalled some of the gay words that she had spoken with these others, and tried, hurriedly, to decide why it would sound to her perfectly absurd to talk with Alfred Ried in that way. However, she did not want to talk with him; he was too full of questionings. "And questions," said poor Gracie, "are all that I can ask myself. I want somebody to talk with who is a.s.sured of the ground on which he stands, and can tell me why he stands there."

There was not time for further talk--they were summoned to the new room.

Bursts of laughter greeted their ears as they made their way eagerly across the hall, and Gracie took time to remark that the boys were certainly not awed into silence, before the opening door let them into the brightly-lighted scene. Every boy was laughing, not quietly, but immoderately, and the centre of attraction was evidently Mr. Roberts.

"I have been giving our friends an account of an old army experience,"

he said, in explanation to Gracie, "and we have been enjoying a laugh together over the old memory. You are all acquainted with Miss Dennis, I think, young gentlemen?"

Clearly there was no need for any one to introduce Mr. Roberts to the boys; apparently they knew him now better than they did any of the others. Yet as Gracie, after shaking hands with each of the guests, took a vacant seat by Nimble d.i.c.k, she was greeted with a confidential whisper:--