A Knight of the Nineteenth Century Part 37

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE MIRACLE TAKES PLACE

"The body of my sermon is finished; may the Lord breathe into it the breath of life!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Dr. Marks, leaning back in his chair.

Haldane now secured his attention by knocking lightly on the open door.

The old gentleman arose and came forward with the ordinary kindly manner with which he would greet a stranger.

"You do not remember me," said Haldane.

"I cannot say that I do. My eyesight is not as good as when I was at your age."

"I am also the last one you expect to see, but I trust I shall not be unwelcome when you know my motive for coming. I am Egbert Haldane, and I have hoped that your study would remain open, though nearly all respectable doors are closed against me."

"Egbert Haldane! Can I believe my eyes?" exclaimed the old clergyman, stepping eagerly forward.

"When last in this place," continued the youth, "I was led by your generous forgiveness of my rude behavior toward you to say, that if I ever wished to become a Christian I would come to you sooner than to any one else. I have come, for I wish to be a Christian."

"Now the Lord be praised! He has heard his servant's prayers," responded Dr. Marks fervently. "My study is open to you, my son, and my heart, too," he added, taking Haldane's hand in both of his with a grasp that emphasized his cordial words. "Sit down by me here, and tell me all that is on your mind."

This reception was so much kinder than he had even hoped, that Haldane was deeply moved. The strong, genuine sympathy unsealed his lips, and in honest and impetuous words he told the whole story of his life since their last interview. The good doctor was soon fumbling for his handkerchief, and as the story culminated, mopped his eyes, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Poor fellow!" with increasing frequency.

"And now," concluded Haldane, "if I could only think that G.o.d would receive me as you have--if he would only change me from my miserable self to what I know I ought to be, and long to be--I feel that I could serve him with grat.i.tude and gladness the rest of my life, even though I should remain in the humblest station; and I have come to ask you what I am to do?"

"He will receive you, my boy; he will receive you. No fears on that score," said the doctor, with a heartiness that carried conviction. "But don't ask me what to do. I'm not going to interfere in the Lord's work.

He is leading you. If you wanted a text or a doctrine explained I'd venture to give you my views; but in this vital matter I shall leave you in G.o.d's hands, 'being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.'

I once set about reforming you myself, and you know what a bungle I made of it. Now I believe the Lord has taken you in hand, and I shall not presume to meddle. Bow with me in prayer that he may speedily bring you into his marvellous light and knowledge." And the good man knelt and spread his hands toward heaven, and prayed with the simplicity and undoubting faith of an ancient patriarch.

Was his faith contagious? Did the pathos of his voice, his strongly manifested sympathy, combine with all that had gone before to melt the young man's heart? Or, in answer to the prayer, was there present One whose province it is to give life? Like the wind that mysteriously rises and comes toward one with its viewless, yet distinctly felt power.

Haldane was conscious of influences at work in his heart that were as potent as they were incomprehensible. Fear and doubt were pa.s.sing away.

Deep emotion thrilled his soul. Nothing was distinct save a rush of feeling which seemed to lift him up as on a mighty tide, and bear him heavenward.

This was what he had sought; this was what he had hoped; this strong, joyous feeling, welling up in his heart like a spring leaping into the sunlight, must be conversion.

When he arose from his knees his eyes were full of tears, but a glad radiance shone through them, and grasping the doctor's hand, he said brokenly:

"I believe your prayer has been answered. I never felt so strangely--so happy before."

"Come with me," cried the old man, impetuously, "come with me. Your mother must learn at once that her son, who 'was dead, is alive again';"

and a few moments later Haldane was once more in the low carriage, on his way, with the enthusiastic doctor, to his old home.

"We won't permit ourselves to be announced," said the childlike old clergyman as they drove up the gravelled road. "We will descend upon your mother and sisters like an avalanche of happiness."

The curtains in the sitting-room were not drawn, and the family group was before them. The apartment was furnished with elegance and taste, but the very genius of dreariness seemed to brood over its occupants.

The sombre colors of their mourning dresses seemed a part of the deep shadow that was resting upon them, and the depth and gloom of the shadow was intensified by their air of despondency and the pallor of their faces. The younger daughter was reading, but the elder and the mother held their hands listlessly in their laps, and their eyes were fixed on vacancy, after the manner of those whose thoughts are busy with painful themes.

Haldane could endure but a brief glance, and rushed in, exclaiming:

"Mother, forgive me!"

His presence was so unexpected and his onset so impetuous that the widow had no time to consider what kind of a reception she ought to give her wayward son, of whom she had washed her hands.

Her mother-love triumphed; her heart had long been sore with grief, and she returned his embrace with equal heartiness.

His sisters, however, had inherited more of their mother's conventionality than of her heart; and the fact that this young man was their brother did not by any means obliterate from their minds the other facts, that he had a very bad reputation and that he was abominably dressed. Their greeting, therefore, was rather grave and constrained, and suggested that there might have been a death in the family, and that their brother had come home to attend the funeral.

But the unworldly Dr. Marks was wholly absorbed in the blessed truth that the dead was alive and the lost found. He had followed Haldane into the apartment, rubbing his hands, and beaming general congratulation.

Believing that the serene light of Heaven's favor rested on the youth, he had forgotten that it would be long before society relaxed its dark frown. It seemed to him that it was an occasion for great and unmixed rejoicing.

After some brief explanations had been given to the bewildered household, the doctor said:

"My dear madam, I could not deny myself the pleasure of coming with your son, that I might rejoice with you. The Lord has answered our prayers, you see, and you have reason to be the happiest woman living."

"I am glad, indeed," sighed the widow, "that some light is beginning to s.h.i.+ne through this dark and mysterious providence, for it has been so utterly dark and full of mystery that my faith was beginning to waver."

"The Lord will net suffer you to be tempted above that you are able,"

said the clergyman, heartily. "When relief is essential it comes, and it always will come, rest a.s.sured. Take comfort, madam; nay, let your heart overflow with joy without fear. The Lord means well by this young man.

Take the unspeakable blessing he sends you with the gladness and grat.i.tude of a child receiving gifts from a good Father's hands. Since he has begun the good work, he'll finish it."

"I hope so. I do, indeed, hope that Egbert will now come to his senses, and see things and duty in their true light, as other people do,"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the widow, fervently. "If he had only taken the excellent advice you first gave him here how much better it would have been for us all! But now--" A dreary sigh closed the sentence.

"But now," responded the doctor, a little warmly, "the Lord has saved a soul from death, and that soul is your only son. It appears to me that this thought should swallow up every other; and it will, when you realize it," he concluded, heartily. "This world and the fas.h.i.+on of it pa.s.seth away. Since all promises well for the world to come, you have only cause for joy. As for my excellent advice, I was better pleased with it at the time than the Lord was. I now am thankful that he let it do no more harm than it did."

"We cannot help the past, mother," said Haldane, eagerly, "let us turn our eyes to the future, which is all aglow with hope. I feel that G.o.d has forgiven me, and the thought fills my heart with a tumult of joy.

Your warm embrace a.s.sures me that you have also forgiven the wrong, the shame, and sorrow you have received at my hands. Henceforth it shall be my life-effort that you receive the reverse of all this. I at last feel within me the power to live as a true man ought."

"I trust your hopes may be realized, Egbert; I do, indeed; but you were so confident before--and then we all know what followed," concluded his mother, with a shudder.

"My present feeling, my present motives, in no respect resemble my condition when I started out before. I was then a conceited fool, ignorant of myself, the world, and the task I had attempted. But now I feel that all is different. Mother," he exclaimed with a rush of emotion, "I feel as if heaven had almost begun in my heart! why, then, do you cloud this bright hour with doubts and fears?"

"Well, my son, we will hope for the best," said his mother, endeavoring to throw off her despondency, and share in the spirit which animated her pastor. "But I have dwelt so long in sorrow and foreboding that it will require time before I can recover my old natural tone. These sudden and strong alternations of feeling and action on your part puzzle and disquiet me, and I cannot see why one brought up as you have been should not maintain a quiet, well-bred deportment, and do right as a matter of course, as your sisters do. And yet, if Dr. Marks truly thinks that you mean to do right from this time forward, I shall certainly take courage; though how we are going to meet what has already occurred I hardly see."

"I do, indeed, believe that your son intends to do right, and I also believe that the Lord intends to help him--which is of far greater consequence," said Dr. Marks. "I will now bid you good-night, as to-morrow is the Sabbath; and let me entreat you, my dear madam, in parting, to further by your prayer and sympathy the good work which the Lord has begun."

Haldane insisted on seeing the old gentleman safely back to his study.

Their ride was a rather quiet one, each being busy with his own thoughts. The good man had found his enthusiasm strangely quenched in the atmosphere in which Mrs. Haldane dwelt, and found that, in spite of himself, he was sharing in her doubts and fears as to the future course of the erratic and impulsive youth at his side. He blamed himself for this, and tried to put doubt resolutely away. By a few earnest words he sought to show the young man that only as the grace of G.o.d was daily asked for and daily received could he hope to maintain the Christian life.

He now began to realize what a difficult problem was before the youth.

Society would be slow to give him credit for changed motives and character, and as proof would take only patient continuance in well-doing. The good doctor now more than suspected that in his own home Haldane would find much that was depressing and enervating. Worse than all, he would have to contend with an excitable and ungoverned nature, already sadly warped and biased wrongly. "What will be the final result?" sighed the old gentleman to himself. But he soon fell back hopefully on his belief that the Lord had begun a good work and would finish it.

Haldane listened attentively and gratefully to all that his old friend had to say, and felt sure that he could and would follow the advice given. Never before had right living seemed so attractive, and the path of duty so luminous. But the thought that chiefly filled him with joy was that henceforth he would not be compelled to plod forward as a weary pilgrim. He felt that he had wings; some of the divine strength had been given him. He believed himself changed, renewed, transformed; he was confident that his old self had perished and pa.s.sed away, and that, as a new creature, enn.o.bling tendencies would control him completely. He felt that prayer would henceforth be as natural as breathing, and praise and wors.h.i.+p, the strong and abiding instincts of his heart.