Four Girls at Chautauqua Part 20

Flossy hesitated just a moment; the glow on her face deepened and spread. Then she answered in much the same tone that the boy had used:

"I know he _can_, and I have good reason for knowing. I'll tell you a secret; you are the very first persons I have told about it, but he has cured me. I have been sick all my life, when I came here to Chautauqua I was sick. I could not do anything that I was made to do, and I kept doing things all the time that were not meant for me to do, but he has cured me."

The boys looked at her in absolute incredulous wonder.

"Was you sick in bed when you came?" ventured one of them at last.

"No; it is not that kind of sickness that I mean. That is when the body is sick, the body that when the soul goes away looks like nothing but marble, can not move, nor feel, nor speak; that isn't of much consequence, you know, because we are sure that the soul will go away from it after awhile. It is this soul of mine that is going to live forever that was cured."

"How do you know it was?" came again from these wondering boys. Flossy smiled a rare, bright smile that charmed them.

"If _yours_ had been cured you would not ask me that question," she said; "you would _know_ how I know it. But I can't tell you how it is don't you know there are some things that you are sure of that you can't explain? You are sure you can think, aren't you? but how would you set to work to explain to me that you are sure? The only way that you can know how is by going to this doctor and getting cured; then you will understand."

"I'd like him if he would cure folks' _bodies_," began the boy who had a sick mother, speaking in a doubtful, somewhat dissatisfied tone.

"He does," Flossy said, quickly. "Don't people's bodies get well sometimes? and who can cure bodies except the one who made them? If you want your mother cured you ought to try him. If she is to be made well you may be sure that he can do it; but why should he so long as you do not care enough about it to ask him?"

There was a rush and a bustle among the crowds in the distance.

Sunday-school session was over, and the great company were moving for seats for the morning service. The boys took the alarm and fled, each glancing back to nod and smile at the bright apparition who had told them a story. Flossy picked up her Bible; she had not needed to use it during this talk. The story of Bethesda had burned itself so into her heart with that morning reading that she had no need to look at it again. She gave a thoughtful little sigh.

"I don't know about that being teaching," she said within her heart, "but I certainly told them about Jesus, and I told them it was Jesus who had 'made me whole.' I made my own experience 'witness' for me to that degree. If that is what they mean by teaching I like to do it. I mean to go to Sunday-school just as soon as I get home, and if I find out that they just tell about things as they are in the Bible I can do it. I can make the boys listen to me, I know."

Bright little fairy that she was! There was a new glow about her face.

She was waking to the thought that there was such a thing as power over people's brains. No danger but she will use her knowledge. Let me tell you another thing that Chautauqua did for her. It planted the seed that shall blossom into splendid teaching. There was one teacher who gave many glances that morning to the little group around that old tree stump. Mr. Roberts, from his point of observation, not far away, watched this scene from beginning to end. It fascinated him. He saw the timid beginning and the ever-increasing interest, until, when Flossy closed her Bible and arose, he turned his eyes from her with a quiet smile in them, and to himself he said: "Unless I am very greatly mistaken she has found something that she can do."

CHAPTER XX.

PEOPLE WHO, "HAVING EYES, SEE NOT."

"Girls!" said Eurie, as she munched a doughnut, which she had brought from the lunch-table with her, and lounged on a camp-chair, waiting for the afternoon service, "do you know that Flossy taught a cla.s.s in Sunday-school this morning?"

"Taught a cla.s.s!" repeated both Marion and Ruth in one voice, and with about equal degrees of amazement.

"She did, as true as the world. That is, she must have been teaching.

The way of it was this: I went to see the little midgets exhibit themselves, and when I came out of the tent and walked over toward the stand, there sat Flossy on that old stump just back of the stand, and before her were two of the roughest-looking boys that ever emerged from the backwoods. They were ragged and dirty and wild; and as wicked little imps as one could find, I am sure. Flossy was talking to them, and she had a large Bible in her lap and one of those Lesson Leaves that they flutter about here so much; and--well, altogether it was an amazing sight! She was certainly talking to them with all her might, and they were listening; and it is my opinion that she was trying to play Sunday-school teacher, and give them a lesson. You know she is an imitative little sheep, and always was."

"Nonsense!" Ruth said, and she seemed to speak more sharply than the occasion warranted. "Just as if Flossy Shipley couldn't have anything to say to two boys but what she found in the Bible! Little she knows what is in it, for that matter. I suppose she wandered out that way because she did not know what else to do with herself, and talked to the boys by way of amus.e.m.e.nt. She has often amused herself in that way, I am sure."

"Ah, yes; but these specimens were rather too youthful and dirty for that sort of amus.e.m.e.nt, and she had a Bible in her lap."

"What of that! Bibles are as common as leaves here. I found two lying on the seat which I took this morning. People seem to think the art of stealing has not found its way here."

"Flossy is changed," interrupted Marion. "The mouse is certainly different from what _I_ ever saw her before; she seems so quiet and self-sustained. I thought she was bored. Why, I expected her to hail a trip to her dear Saratoga with absolute delight! She belongs to just the cla.s.s of people who would find the intellectual element here too strong for her, and would have to flutter off in that direction in self-defense. Ruthie, you have the temper of an angel not to fly out at me for bringing in Saratoga every few minutes. It isn't with 'malice aforethought,' I a.s.sure you. I forget your projected scheme whenever I speak of it; but you must allow me to be astonished over Flossy's refusal to go with you. Something has come over the mousie that is not explainable by any of the laws of science with which I am acquainted."

"Don't trouble yourself to apologize, I beg. I hope you do not think I am so foolish as to care anything about your hints as to Saratoga. Of course I recognize my right in this world to be governed by my own tastes and inclinations. I have enjoyed that privilege too long to be disturbed by trifles." This from Ruth; but I shall have to admit that it was very stiffly spoken, and if she had but known it, indicated that she _did_ care a great deal. In truth she was very sore over her position and her plans. She who had prided herself on her intellectuality bored to the very point of leaving, and Flossy, who had been remarkable for nothing but flutter and fashion, actually so interested that she could not be coaxed into going away! What _was_ it that interested her? That was the question which interested and puzzled Ruth. She studied over it during all the time that Marion and Eurie were chatting about the morning service.

Flossy _was_ different; there was no shutting one's eyes to that fact.

The truth was that she had suddenly seemed to have little in common with her own party. She certainly said little to them; she made no complaints as to inconveniences, even when they amounted to positive annoyances with the rest of the party; she had given up afternoon toilets altogether, and in fact the subject of dress seemed to be one that had suddenly sunken into such insignificance as to cease to claim her thoughts at all.

Grave changes these to be found in Flossy Shipley. Then, too, she had taken to wandering away alone in the twilight; during the short s.p.a.ces between services she was nowhere to be found, but the Chautauqua bell brought her back invariably in time to make ready for the next service.

"There is certainly more to the little mouse than I ever expected before. If Chautauqua wakes _our_ wits as it has Flossy's we shall have reason to bless the day that Dr. Vincent invented it." This Ruth heard from Marion as she roused herself from her reverie to give attention to what the girls were saying. They had got back to a discussion of Flossy again. It was a subject that someway annoyed Ruth, so she dismissed it, and made ready for the afternoon meeting, whither they all went.

To Marion the morning sermon had been an intellectual treat. She had a way of listening to sermons that would have been very disheartening to the preacher if he had known of it. She had learned how to divest herself of all personality. The subject was one that had nothing to do with her; the application of solemn truths were for the people around her who believed in these things, but never for her; so she listened and enjoyed, just as she enjoyed a book or a picture, just as if she had no soul at all, nothing but an intellect.

It was very rare indeed that an arrow from any one's quiver touched her.

But there was one single sentence in Dr. Pierce's sermon that was destined to haunt her. Said he: "When the blind man was questioned he couldn't argue, he didn't try to; but he could stand up there before them and say, 'Whereas I was blind, now I see; make the most of that.'

And wasn't it an unanswerable argument? There is no argument like it.

When men are honest and earnest and spiritual in Wall Street, it tells."

Now that was just the kind of sentence to delight Marion's heart. The inconsistencies of Christians was one of her very strong points, she saw them bristling out everywhere, and she looked about her with a satisfied smile on her face that so large a company of them were getting so sharp a thrust as this.

And suddenly there flashed across her brain an utterly new thought.

"Whereas I was _blind_, now I see." "Perhaps," she said to herself--"_perhaps_ I am blind. What if that should be the only reason why these things are not to me as they are to others. How do I know, after all, but there may really be a spiritual blindness, and that it may be holding me? How do I know but that the reason some of these poor ignorant people whom I meet are so firm in their belief of Christ and heaven is because they have had just this experience?

"'Whereas I _was_ blind, now I see!' How can I possibly tell but that this may be the case? I wonder what I _do_ think anyway? Do I really think that all these men gathered here are either deceived or deceivers?

One or the other they must be--and either position is too silly to sustain--or else I must be blind. If there should be such a thing as seeing, and I discover it too late! If there is a too late to this thing, and I do not find it out simply because I am blind, what then?

The sun shines, of course, though I dare say an entirely blind man doesn't believe it. Doesn't have an idea anyway what it is--how can he?"

Over and over did she revolve this sentence, and look at it from every attainable standpoint. No use to try to shut it off, back it came. All the clatter with which she had amused herself during the interval between meetings had not banished it. No sooner was she seated under those trees waiting for the afternoon service than the thought presented itself for her to consider.

"I wonder if there are different degrees of moral blindness?" she said, suddenly. "People who can see just enough to enable them to keep constantly going the wrong way, so that they are no better off than the blind, except that they admit that there is such a thing as seeing. The thing is possible, I suppose."

Ruth turned and looked at her wonderingly.

"What _are_ you talking about?" she asked at last.

"I'm moralizing," Marion said, laughing. "You yourself suggested that train of thought. I was wondering which of us was right in our notions, you or I; and, for all practical purposes, what difference it made."

"You are too high up for me to follow. I haven't the least idea what you mean."

"Why, I tell you I was contrasting our conditions. Let me see if I have a right view of them. Don't you honestly think that there is a G.o.d, and a heaven, and a h.e.l.l, and that to escape the one place and secure the other certain efforts upon your part are necessary?"

"Why, of course I think so. I have never made any pretense of disbelieving all these things. I think it is foolish to do so."

"Exactly. Now for one question more: Have you made the effort that you believe to be necessary?"

"Have you been hired as an exhorter?" Ruth said, trying to laugh. "Why, no, I can not say that I have."

"Well, then, suppose you and I should both die to-night. _I_ don't believe any of these things; you do, but you don't practice on your belief. Then, according to your own view, you will be lost forever; and, according to that same view, so shall I. Now, practically, what difference is there between us? So if it is really blindness, why may not one be totally blind as well as to have a little sight that keeps one all the time in the wrong way?"

"I dare say we are quite as well off," Ruth said, composedly; "only I think there is this point of difference between us. I think your position is silly. I don't see how any one who has studied Paley and Butler, and in fact any of the sciences, can think so foolish a thing as you pretend to. One doesn't like to be foolish, even if one doesn't happen to be a Christian."

"Foolish?" Marion repeated, and there was a fine glow on her face.

"Don't you go and talk anything so wild as that! If there is any cla.s.s of people in this world who profess to be simpletons, and act up to their professions, it is you people who believe _everything_ and _do_ nothing. Now just look at the thing for a minute. Suppose you say, 'There is a precipice over there, and every whiff of wind blows us nearer to it; we will surely go over if we sit here; we ought to go up on that hill; I know that is a safe place,' and yet you sit perfectly still. And suppose I say, 'I don't believe there is any such thing as a precipice, and I believe this is just as safe a place as there is anywhere,' and _I_ sit still. Now I should like to know which of us was acting the sillier?"