Patricia Read online

  When the meal was over, John went to the shelf at one side of the room and brought a big worn Bible to his father. As if it were a daily custom right after the meal, and while they were still seated at the table the father shoved his chair back a little and began to read. His voice was very sweet and strong and gentle, and the words seemed new and real to the girl as she listened in wonder. She had no experience whatever with which to compare this. She had read, of course, of family worship in old times, but it had not meant a thing to her. Was this what it was?

  And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

  The steady voice read the words as if it were telling of a happening the reader had seen. Patricia’s attention was caught at once and riveted. It was an old story. She had studied it for Sunday school, of course. But never had she heard it read with such clearness, such understanding, as if it were a matter of much importance, a matter that concerned people today. It had never seemed before to her that the Bible had anything to do with today. It had only been a kind of traditional tale that people used in forms of worship to a dim and distant God. Now it suddenly came alive.

  This was a real blind man, whose blindness might be like something in herself. It had never occurred to her that such a thing could be possible. She was not blind. Yet, was she, perhaps?

  Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

  Did that mean that God had let him be blind so that someone should be able to understand what God could do?

  Her eyes grew larger and more thoughtful as she listened to the old story of the blind made to see; and the mother, glimpsing her now in shy admiration, caught her glance and wondered. Bless her, dear Feyther, bless her and teach her, she prayed.

  And Patricia as she listened, wondered, where would be the pool of Siloam if she needed it?

  The prayer that followed the reading was tender and intimate. Sitting there with bent heads around the table, Patricia almost felt she could see the loving smile of the Father as He listened. She never dreamed anyone could be so intimate with the great God. Afterward she looked at John’s father with wonder and awe in her glance. And then when he met her gaze with a pleasant understanding smile, her lips trembled into an answering one, and there was a light in her eyes.

  He had prayed for their “young guest whom Thou hast sent by the hand of Thy rainstorm to be among us for a few hours, and may it be given her to know Thee aright and truly, and to live her life as in Thy sight.”

  The words had thrilled her. They seemed to be graven upon her memory. Somehow they became a great wish of her heart, and afterward when she was alone in her room she said them over softly, then wrote them down on a card, which she laid carefully among her treasures. So when they had lifted their heads and that smile had passed between them, the girl by her smile was thanking the servant of the Lord for introducing her so to God. She hoped he understood how it had pleased her and seemed to lift her beyond the mere common things of life and make her a friend of God’s.

  And then suddenly a ray of a sunbeam shot into the room, and looking out they saw a vast rainbow brightly thrown across the clouds.

  “Ah! The rain is over!” said the man almost regretfully. “It has been pleasant while it lasted.”

  The clouds were indeed breaking and the rain had ceased. The sunbeam glanced away again, for more clouds were hurrying by, but they knew their time was short and they scurried in haste. A low distant rumble of the vanquished thunder seemed to call farewell, and Patricia remembered she lived in another kind of world and must go back to it again. Could she keep the fragrance of this one to take with her? Or would it fade like the little bunch of anemones that she had clutched as she came away from the woods and that now were lying in a wilted heap in her pocket?

  She jumped up and began to pick up the plates.

  “May I wash the dishes?” she asked, her eyes shining, as a child would ask to play a game.

  “You may help me,” said the mother. “John usually helps, but he’ll awa’ ta bed doon the cow and settle the chicks for the night before he tak’s you hoom. And I’m sair loath ta let ye go. I wish ye cud bide wi’ us awhile.”

  “Oh, I’d love to!” said Patricia. “May I come again sometime?”

  “Indeed ye may, lassie. We’ll all be right glad ta see ye.”

  “I’ll come,” said the girl with a sweet, dreamy, faraway look in her eyes, trying even then to plan how she could do it without interference from home, for she knew instinctively that her mother would not permit visits to people of this quiet plain sort, whose only link with her was through that hated school. But there would be a way. She would ask God to make a way for her. So she only smiled when she said, “I’ll come!” so confidently.

  Patricia wiped the delicate sprigged china carefully and put it away where she was told in the quaint corner cupboard, as if it were part of a storybook tale to be handled most tenderly. She let her touch linger on the last cup as though she were wishing it good-bye until she saw it again.

  They started home in the summer twilight, with a sunset so quiet and brilliant in the west that one would never dream the storm that had been raging a few hours earlier. There was clear green like translucent jade, shot through with tatters of scarlet and fragments of coral fringed with bright gold; over against it a formation of purple with gold dashed along its rim; and behind it a delicate rose that peered through crevices in the soft and cloudy wall of gray that loomed, and then crept laughing out and reflected rosy lights into the clouds above.

  “Oh, isn’t it glorious!” exclaimed Patricia with clasped hands, gazing off, and taking deep breaths of the clean air, washed pure by the tempest.

  It was a new world, like stepping into a fairyland, or heaven. The girl thought of both, and her eyes went to John’s eyes as he stood there with his hands filled with lilies of the valley he had picked along the walk to the little white gate that closed the white fence hemming in their garden.

  He held them out, and Patricia put out both hands and gathered them joyously in.

  “All those! For me?” she breathed happily. “I never saw so many together, not even in a bride’s bouquet. Aren’t they wonderful, just as if they had come from—another world!” she finished, and she looked up with the sunset glow upon her face and great contentment in her eyes.

  “They seem like you, lassie,” said John’s mother softly, as she stood in the doorway, and knew she was voicing what her boy was thinking.

  “I’ve always loved lilies of the valley,” Patricia said. “I didn’t know they grew in gardens. I thought they came from hot houses.”

  “Would you like to take a plant home?” asked the boy.

  “Oh yes!”

  The boy was down at once upon his knees digging.

  Patricia put her face down and touched the flowers with her lips then with her eyelids. Their coolness against her face seemed like a message from God, as if He knew what thoughts and feelings and hungers and longings had been stirred within her by this visit, and as if they were telling her He understood. She watched John as he dug.

  “You are taking a lot of trouble,” she said.

  “I like to,” said the boy with a warm smile.

  “It’s been beautiful, being here,” said Patricia. “I thank you!” And her pleasure shone in her eyes.

  They went down the walk together, the tall boy and the young girl, John carrying a goodly clump of lilies in a paper, while the mother stood in the doorway and watched them wistfully.

  “Oh, God, my Feyther,” she murmured with her eyes uplifted to the blue above for an instant, “she is lovely! But please don’t let my lad be hurt by her, not in any way. Please, dear Feyther!”

  The two young people reached the gate and turned, as John put out his long arm and swung it open. Then each of them waved at her with a happy little motion, as if she were a part of the pleasant time, before they walked on down the hill and out of
sight.

  John helped her down the roughness of the path, touching her arm gently with deference. Both of them were conscious that she was going back to her world out of his and that it might be a long time, or forever, before they saw one another again.

  “I’ve had such a lovely time,” said Patricia thoughtfully. “I loved it all. Especially the end. Do you do that every night, or was it just a beautiful courtesy for me?”

  He looked down at her from his tall height and smiled. “You mean the family worship? We do that every night and every morning. It is always a part of our day.”

  “Is that what you call it? Family worship. I’ve read of that, but I didn’t know people did it anymore. I thought it was something of long ago.”

  “I think there are many people who still keep to the custom,” said the boy thoughtfully. “They are Christian people, of course. But I know that many so-called Christians live worldly lives today, because they have gotten away from God.”

  “I think perhaps I only know worldly Christians,” said Patricia. “At least, they are the only ones whose home life I know. My relatives and mother’s friends. But I think it is a beautiful way to begin and end the day. I wish we did it!” She sighed deeply.

  He studied her face furtively, and there was a moment of quietness between them. Then John spoke again.

  “Of course, you could do it by yourself,” he said slowly.

  Patricia’s face was full of brightness as she looked up.

  “I will!” she said with sudden resolve. “Of course, I couldn’t do it as wonderfully as your father did. He made the reading so plain and understandable. I never thought the Bible sounded like that before. But I could read a chapter. And I could—talk to God—although—I don’t know Him intimately, the way your father does.”

  “But He knows you,” said John earnestly. “He’ll make Himself acquainted with you if you will let Him.”

  “Oh I will,” said the girl eagerly. “I’d like to know Him. But I never thought He had time to pay attention to just me. I’ve always thought of Him as paying attention to just the world at large, wanting everybody to do right, just in a general way.”

  “Don’t you know what God says? He says, ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love.’”

  “But would that mean me?”

  “Well, here then: ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son’—listen to that! He gave His Son! His only son!—‘that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Isn’t that for you? You belong to ‘the world,’ don’t you? And you’ll find thousands of other verses that tell how He loves you and cares for you. You begin studying the Bible to find that out, and see how many you find.”

  “I will!” said Patricia.

  They were silent again until they got down the hill and into the broad pasture below, that lay between them and the road. Then the girl spoke again.

  “Oh, I know I’m going to be very glad that I ran away from the picnic and you found me and took me to your lovely home!” she said happily with a sigh of pleasure.

  “Our house is a very plain, shabby little house beside the grand one where you live,” said the boy thoughtfully.

  “But yours is lovely,” said the girl, looking up earnestly. “I think it is wonderful. You have things in your house that our house has not got.”

  He looked at her wonderingly. “What, for instance?”

  Patricia looked off at the sky thoughtfully, considering.

  “Well, you have some lovely old furniture,” she said slowly. “I loved that desk in the room your mother took me to. The wood is just satin-smooth. Of course, we have some handsome furniture, but it’s modern, and I don’t feel that way toward it, as if it were something precious. It’s just furniture, not all full of dear memories like yours.”

  The boy looked at her with his eyes suddenly full of something almost like worship.

  “Do you feel that way about things,” he said happily. “Just things? I do. I always like those old dishes we have. Mother used to tell me about them when I was a little kid. She told me how grandmother bought them and was always so careful of them, saving them for her. It always seemed as if anything tasted better out of those cups with the little blue sprigs on them.”

  “Yes,” said the girl understandingly. “I can see how you love them. And then you have pictures!”

  “Pictures?” said the boy, puzzled.

  “Photographs, I mean, but they are real. Of people, and an old house. I loved the old house. If I ever go abroad, I’d like to see old houses like that. I’d like to see that special one, I think, because it seemed so much like a place where people were happy and where children played.”

  The boy smiled. “Oh, those! Yes, they are that way. I love them, of course. I can just remember playing around there myself. But I wouldn’t expect a stranger to see that in them.”

  “I did,” said the girl thoughtfully. “I thought how nice it would be to live in a place like that with a great big wide yard and mountains in the distance where you could watch them.”

  The walk seemed very short, down the road after they climbed the fence from the meadows and John had helped her down the grassy bank to the roadside. They talked of pleasant things, like clouds and flowers and old homes, even the cows and chickens he knew so much about. He could tell so many amusing little stories about them until it seemed as if his cows and chickens had each a personality.

  Patricia had never had such a pleasant talk with a boy before. Either they had been shy and silent or else they had been boasters and bullies like Thorny. But now Patricia forgot that she was a high school girl walking with a senior. She had a feeling that she had known him a long time and that they liked the same kind of things and could be real friends if things only were different.

  They were coming into the village now and would soon be at the Prentiss gate. Involuntarily Patricia’s steps slowed as she remembered. Would her mother be home yet? She was sometimes late at the club when she was on the committee. She might have to stay and clear up afterward today, as it was a sort of party meeting with guests. Oh, perhaps she wouldn’t be home yet! For if she was and saw her walking with John Worth, what would she say? Very vividly Patricia remembered the awful experience several years ago when John Worth came to sell strawberries. What if that were to happen all over again? Of course, they were both older now, but her mother wouldn’t stop for that. If she happened to recognize John Worth, she would be very angry. And especially since Thorny Bellingham wasn’t anywhere in sight. That would be rather terrible. Oh, if only her mother wasn’t home yet!

  She grew very silent as they neared her home. She remembered that her father was not to be home until the midnight train from New York. She wouldn’t have anybody to take her part.

  The boy by her side studied her furtively. At last he said quietly, “It’s been very wonderful having you visit us today. I’m not going to forget it. I always thought you would be worth knowing.”

  “Oh, thank you!” said Patricia, with her pale cheeks suddenly flaming happily. “I guess I felt that way about you, too. Only, of course, you were older and a lot wiser than I.” She looked up with a sweet glance of humility. “It’s rather wonderful to be walking home with a senior!” And then her cheeks grew pink again.

  “Oh, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter, you know,” said the boy. “I always thought perhaps you were real, and now I know it. It’s being real, that counts, you know. And knowing God. That counts most of all, I guess.”

  Their eyes met in a quick glad understanding.

  But they were quite near to the gate now, and they both realized it. Their steps lagged slower and slower. Patricia was trying to think what to do. In a moment the house would be right in plain sight, and she couldn’t bear the thought that her mother might glimpse them and come out and be disagreeable to John, after the lovely way he and his family had treated her. She couldn’t stand it. But the boy seemed almost to share her feeling, for
his steps lingered, too.

  “Listen,” he said in a guarded tone, as if even now someone might be upon them, watching, listening. “I’m not coming in. I think it’s best not, don’t you? But I’ll plant these lilies. Would it do if I put them right here by the fence behind the evergreens? No one will see me here planting them, and it won’t take but a minute. I have my knife in my pocket. And then if you want to move them somewhere else afterward, it will be all right, you know.”

  He smiled at her engagingly, and his eyes seemed to be pleading with her to agree with him.

  “Oh,” she said with a troubled look, “I could stay here till you have finished. Or perhaps I could plant them?” She looked with a worried question at her useless little white hands that had never attempted such a task.

  He smiled back and the lamps in his eyes flamed out.

  “Of course you could,” said the boy, “but I like to do it, you know. Please let me finish. I like to think I am giving you these and fixing them just right so they will go on growing for you.”

  Her glance beamed in shy response.

  “Besides,” he went on, “I don’t think it would be wise for me to come in, do you? Your mother might not understand. And there are things that can’t really be explained in a case like that.”

  “I know,” said Patricia, suddenly sobered, a shadow coming over her bright look.

  “Are you sure no one will object to the lilies being put here?”

  “Oh, quite sure,” said Patricia. “Nobody ever comes past here to look over the hedge.”

  “That’s all right, then,” said John Worth, dropping down on his knees between the hedge and the tall evergreen trees with their plumy branches that hid the house completely. He began to dig rapidly with his knife. “I guess it would be better if you went into the house now. Your mother might be worrying about where you are. Perhaps she is telephoning all around the neighborhood by this time trying to find out if the others are home. And if you should go in now, I could go right on working here and nobody would notice me.”