Beauty for Ashes

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “Neither!” said Mrs. Sutherland severely. “I take mine straight. Just one lump of sugar. And I never did hold with such heathenish customs as putting lemon in tea. What would lemon have to do with a good, plain, straightforward thing like tea?”

  Emily Hastings smiled. “Well, isn’t it strange what different tastes we have? Now I drink the tea merely for the lemon.”

  “I don’t call it tastes, I call it a slavish adherence to fashion!” said the caller, helping herself to the largest piece of cinnamon toast on the plate.

  “Oh, do you?” said Emily peaceably. “Well, now, I hadn’t thought of that! By the way, how is your garden? Have you got any peas up yet?”

  A garden seemed a safe enough topic, but there were presently caustic sentences being launched about different methods of planting peas, and Emily had to think up some other neutral subject.

  When at last the callers left, Emily sighed. “Poor thing!” she said. “She’s never quite happy unless she thinks she’s making somebody else unhappy. She’s always been that way ever since I knew her. We used to go to school together, and nobody liked her because she had everybody mad in about five minutes after she arrived. Her daughter’s growing just like her, too. It’s too bad! And her husband is so nice and kind. I don’t see how he ever stands it!”

  “He is nice, isn’t he?” said Gloria. “It’s the first time I ever saw any of them, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” Emily said, smiling. “Everybody in the countryside knows. She takes pains that they shall, and you can’t do a thing about it. But don’t worry. She must have liked you, or she wouldn’t have taken the trouble to drive over and see you.”

  “That makes it nice, doesn’t it?” laughed Gloria. Then catching sight of the tennis racket, she glanced at her watch.

  “I was supposed to go back and finish that set,” she said, “but I guess it’s almost supper time, isn’t it?”

  “No, run along. I haven’t got the supper started yet. Besides, tomorrow is Sunday and you can’t finish it then.”

  Gloria gave her a quick, astonished look, but she said nothing. It hadn’t occurred to her that Sunday would be any different from any other day as regarded tennis. But Emily didn’t even see her surprise.

  The twilight almost caught them before they had finished the set, for they both came to it with renewed vigor, and it stretched itself out with exciting fluctuations, till finally with one last smashing blow, Murray landed the ball over the net close to Gloria’s feet, and the set was won.

  “I’d like to come over and talk for a while tonight,” said Murray as he escorted her across the road in response to the supper bell, “but I find I’ve got to do something else this evening. I wonder how about Monday evening?”

  Gloria felt a little disappointment as she turned to go in. She had been meaning to ask him to come over tonight and answer her questions, and now she must wait until Monday night. A long dismal Sunday between! Why couldn’t they play tennis on Sunday? She began to perceive that standards were different, and she sighed as she vaguely envisioned other equally perplexing questions that made a great wall of separation between her world and this one where she was staying for a little while. Why, at home, a tennis tournament would have gone on with more vigor than ever on Sunday because the crowd of observers would be all the greater.

  Well, there would be nothing to do but go to church probably and listen to that droning old preacher she had heard last Sunday, unless she took a lonely walk in the woods, and she shrank from that. The last time she had attempted to walk by herself in the woods she had come upon a man who looked like an old tramp, with shaggy hair and ragged garments, sitting on a log cleaning up a fierce-looking gun. She had been fairly petrified with fright and had stolen back to the road in haste and run almost all the way home. She had not spoken to anybody about it because of a secret fear that perhaps he wasn’t a tramp at all, but a well-known character in the neighborhood, even a fond relative of someone. She had discovered already that you could not always judge a man by his garments and haircut. But she did not care to take any more such chances, so she went to church.

  But there, to her surprise and relief, was Murray MacRae again in the pulpit, and her heart was lifted up with hope. Now she would hear some more of his strange doctrines, and perhaps inadvertently some of her questions would be answered without her having to ask them. She dreaded asking any of her questions, lest her tragedy would be revealed and her heart laid bare. It seemed so dreadful to have him know what she had just been through.

  The sermon was about the coming of the Lord Jesus for His church, a thing she had never even heard of before, and it filled her with a fine frenzy of fear. She watched the young speaker’s face glow with joy over the thought that sometime, perhaps in the glow of early morning or possibly in the solemn hush of night, Christ, his Christ, was coming, and it might be soon.

  It might be all very beautiful for people like Murray MacRae to be glad over a catastrophe like that, but what of a poor lost, unforgiven soul like herself? There were not likely many people like himself in the world, perhaps a few more than she dreamed. She looked about speculatively on the quiet group of elderly people, interspersed with earnest young people, and wondered if they all knew and understood what the preacher was talking about and if they believed it too and were looking forward to a rapture in the air with Jesus Christ. But what would happen to a world left behind with all such true believers taken away? She shuddered almost visibly, and Emily looked over and offered the light shawl she had brought with her, thinking Gloria was cold. Gloria accepted it and threw it around her shoulders, but it did not warm her soul. That was still cold and lonely. Death and horror seemed imminent. Sin and darkness and curse all about! Oh, she hoped such a thing couldn’t be true. She hoped it was only the vision of a dreamer. It would be so much better to have a perfect earth and let it go at that. Why did anyone want anything better? The earth without pain and sorrow. She would ask him all about it tomorrow night. And she would not go to church anymore and hear these unsettling things, things that spoke of another world and made the death of Stan come back so vividly.

  Yet when evening came and she heard the old church bell give the half-hour warning for service, she went upstairs and put on her hat and coat again. Just from very torture of her own thoughts, she must go out and hear more. Perchance there would be something comforting or clarifying tonight.

  And there was! It was made quite plain. She was told that she was a sinner, with no hope throughout eternity, until God sent His own Son to bear the consequences of her sin and die on the cross in her stead. She learned about the shed blood so clearly that she would never be in doubt again what part it played in man’s salvation, and she was made to see what was meant by eternal separation from God, the fate of the unbeliever.

  Most unhappy, she sat and found tears going down her cheeks. She had not cried a tear yet for all the tragedy through which she had passed, but now the tears were breaking through, and she felt that they would soon be beyond her control.

  They introduced her to Robert Carroll after church, and winking back the tears that still stood brightly on her lashes, she looked into his clear, true eyes and saw the same radiance in his face that she had noticed in the face of Murray MacRae. Then there were two such men in the world! And if there were two, perhaps there were more! Why had she never met any of them before? Why had her world contained not even one who seemed to have found that look of peace? There were plenty who were hilariously happy but none with a depth of peace in their eyes like these two.

  She heard talk of the coming of Lindsey, references to her Sunday school class by members who were eager to have her back again after her long absence, and references to the man she was to marry. Bright, eager, interested talk. These people were not gloomy or dull. They were as interested in their lives and church activities as ever her home group had been in parties and good times. They were not in the least discontented. What was the secret? That thing they s
poke of as being saved? Was that it?

  She felt exceedingly small and lonely and left out and was glad when they went home. And that night she wept into her pillow, hot tears that had been rending her soul all these days, and wondered if the God of Murray MacRae had ever really thought about her and knew what she was suffering?

  And now the ice in her heart seemed to be melting and taking away some of the terrible cold and horror, and making her from a cold, frozen girl who never could go on living again into a warm human being once more who was suffering keenly and needed terribly to be comforted. She wished for her father and decided that if he telephoned the next day she would tell him she was coming home. At once. Only she would have to wait until after Monday night, for she must first have that talk with Murray MacRae. She knew that she would never forgive herself if she went away from here without understanding what he had meant that first day when he said that a time was coming when all the sin and pain and sorrow would be taken away from this earth and it was to be full of perfect joy that nothing could dim. She simply must know what he meant. If there was anything in it but a dream, she must know and understand it. Only—it would be too late now, for Stan was dead!

  And so she fell asleep, with the haunting tune of a lovely song that had been sung at the close of the service, sung with wonderful effect by Robert Carroll, the gentleman farmer she had heard so much about:

  “Oft me-thinks I hear His footsteps,

  Stealing down the paths of time;

  And the future dark with shadows,

  Brightness with this hope sublime.

  Sound the soul-inspiring anthem;

  Angel hosts your harps attune;

  Earth’s long night is almost over,

  Christ is coming—coming soon!”

  Chapter 7

  Murray MacRae kept his promise Monday evening. He came breezing into the kitchen where Gloria was wiping dishes, took another dish towel from the little line that hung behind the stove, and went to work.

  “This isn’t the first time I’ve wiped dishes in this house is it, Mrs. Hastings?” he said as he saw Gloria’s astonished look. “I grew up running over here to play with whoever happened to be living here,” he explained to Gloria.

  After the dishes were put away, Murray took Gloria up the road a little way to a spot where the sunset could be better seen than anywhere else in the neighborhood, and they stood a long time watching the great ball of crimson slip briefly down behind a purple mountain. Then while they were watching the tatters of crimson and gold it had left behind till the crimson faded into coral, a pale clear green stole up and spread into the sky and was met by a rosy glow above, turning the mountains and the hills below into deep, dark greens and browns. They watched while the twilight dropped down, shutting them into a great world of wondrous color, and a single star shot out and twinkled at them.

  “ ‘When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained,’ ” quoted Murray in a hushed voice, “ ‘what is man?’ ”

  “Yes, what is man,” broke in Gloria. “What are we here for? If there is a God that made us and put us here as you believe, why did He do it?”

  “ ‘Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands,’ ” answered Murray seriously. “Once when I was a little boy, my father made a boat. He was wonderfully clever with his hands, and it was like a real motorboat, every part perfect, and the marvelous thing about it was that it actually had a tiny motor in it and it would go! It was an exquisite bit of workmanship— even as a child, I think I recognized that. I believe he could have sold it for an astonishing amount, but what do you suppose he did with it? He gave it to me! We had a good-sized pool in the yard—you saw it there beyond the tennis court—and the boat was mine to sail in the pool. I was delighted with it of course; but childlike, instead of letting my father show me how to run the boat, I deliberately disobeyed him and took it out myself. And in a very short time, the whole thing was a wreck! I have it yet. I keep it to remind me.”

  He was still for a moment, a humble, wistful look on his face that seemed beautiful to Gloria. She had never seen that look on a man’s face before, except the time last week when her father was telling stories of his childhood. She was utterly bewildered by what this man was saying, but she recognized that he was not through yet, and she remained silent, waiting.

  “God made the earth,” went on Murray, indicating the sweep of horizon they had been watching, “and He gave it to man to rule! But instead of letting God direct him in everything, man deliberately rebelled and disobeyed God. That was sin, and it resulted in the wreckage of the earth—pain and sorrow and hatred and death ruled the world.”

  As he spoke, it seemed as if all the unutterable anguish of the whole world of centuries was spread out before them in a ghastly panorama, and Gloria saw her own sorrow there as part of it all.

  “When my father came home and saw the boat wrecked, I think it nearly broke his heart, although I believe now that he knew it would surely happen,” went on Murray. “I will never forget his face as he looked at me and then looked back at the boat. He didn’t scold me, but he took me up to my own room, and without a word, he cleared everything off the shelf at the foot of my bed, and there he placed the wreck of the beautiful thing he had made me. You can imagine how I felt. I knew he wanted me to have to see it every day. It is there yet,” Murray said sadly.

  “Then Father turned to me and spoke very sternly. His disappointment in me and his love for me together made him say what he did. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘you’ve ruined this boat, but I’m going to make another boat; it’ll be a real boat—this other was the little model of it. This one cost me something; my hands had to work hard to make it. But that one will cost much more— more than you can possibly understand now. And I’m going to give you the real one, but—that will be when you are a different boy!” My father said that with such a confident, glad ring to his voice that I have never forgotten it. And, friend, my father did just that thing! May I tell you about it?”

  Fascinated, Gloria nodded.

  Murray was still again for a moment, as if the thing he was about to tell about his own life moved him deeply.

  “I had a wonderful brother once,” he said huskily. “He was a good deal older than I. He went to work for my father when I was just a boy—you know my father used to be a shipbuilder, and at one time he was pretty well-to-do. He made some of the finest ships that are afloat today. As he told me, it was his plan to build a yacht for me when I should grow old enough to use it. The men used to work on it when business was slack. It was my brother’s dearest pleasure to go over to the shipways and work on it himself. He and my father spent hours together doing actually hard labor on it. One night my brother was working there alone, and he fell from a scaffolding! My father found him in the morning!” It was hard for Murray to speak. “He was— very dear—to us all—but that made me a different boy.”

  Gloria found the tears brimming over again as she looked with awe into the heart of this strange young man.

  “You wonder, I suppose, why I’ve told you all this. It’s not easy for me to talk about it. But I think it all happened for a very wonderful reason, that I might understand a little of what God did when He gave His beloved Son to die for me that I might become ‘a different boy,’ and that He might make a new heaven and a new earth for His ‘new boy.’ You may not understand how God can make you and me righteous because Christ died, nor how He is going to make a new, happy earth because Christ died, but if you choose to believe it because God says it, you will have the truth of it proven over and over to your heart. And if you had looked at the wreck of that boat every day as I did for twenty years, you would understand why God is waiting a while before He makes over the earth and does away with pain and sorrow.”

  “That is all very beautiful,” said Gloria after a moment’s silence, “but I don’t understand how you know that this is so about the earth. Where is there any authority f
or such a supposition?”

  He looked at her with surprise but answered quickly, “In the Word of God. It is all there, plainly told. God has not left us without knowledge. When He gave us the Bible, He meant it to be a full revelation of Himself and His works.”

  It was Gloria’s turn to be astonished now.

  “You don’t mean that there is any such thing in the Bible as you have been telling me!” she exclaimed.

  “Yes, the whole story. Of course, not the story of my boat, but the story of the world that God created, which was ruined by the sin of Adam, the first man. When Jesus Christ, as man’s representative, died and rose again, He rose as the head of a new race, who shall rule with Him over a new earth when God’s appointed time comes. Accepting His death as mine and His life as mine makes me a member of the new race—a ‘new boy.’ ”

  Gloria was silent, thoughtful, for some minutes as they walked along together in the twilight.

  “I never knew anything about the Bible,” she said with a sigh. “We studied it a little in school, of course, but only as literature. My teachers thought it absurd to believe in it as more than fine literature.”

  “There is a curious thing about the Bible,” said Murray; “you have to enter it with belief. Belief is the only key that will unlock its wonders.”

  “But how could you believe it if you had not read it?”

  “I do not mean belief in the sense of being intellectually convinced that it is true. I mean the willingness to accept it as God’s truth. Then it proves itself to you as you read it and obey what it says. People who presume to teach the Bible without believing from the heart its statements cannot possibly understand it.”

  There was another long pause, and their footsteps grew slower as they walked along in the twilight. Then Gloria spoke again. “You make life a very solemn thing,” she said with a sigh. “I would like to understand your Bible. I would like to see if it has a solution for my own personal difficulties.”