Beauty for Ashes

by Grace Livingston Hill

  “It certainly has,” said Murray with a ring of delight to his voice. “There is a solution in the Bible for every human difficulty. I’d love to introduce you to the Bible if you will let me,” he added eagerly.

  “Will you?” she asked, giving him a wistful look. “I would be so grateful!”

  Then, just as they came around a bend in the road, they saw a car drawn up in front of the MacRae home and a tall figure coming out of the gate and striding across the road to the Sutherland house.

  “That’s Bob Carroll!” said Murray. “I wonder what he wants? They’ve likely told him I was over seeing you.”

  They hastened their steps and arrived just as Carroll was knocking on the door.

  “Oh, hello, Murray!” he said. “Glad I found you. Good evening, Miss Sutherland. I hope I’m not intruding, rushing over this way after Murray, but I had a message for him. They want you to speak over at Ripley tomorrow night at a young people’s rally. Can you make it? The fellow they had engaged has to go away to a funeral. I told them you would if you could, I was sure.”

  “Of course,” said Murray. “When you promise for me, what else can I do? Or suppose I make a bargain. I’ll speak if you’ll sing at the close of my message. How’s that?”

  “They’ve already asked me,” said Carroll with a deprecatory shrug.

  “Oh, well, you can sing twice then,” said Murray with a twinkle. “That suits me still better.”

  “I don’t mind singing, but they have a terrible accompanist over there. I came over hoping I’d find Lindsey home and I could talk her into coming down with me. If I had my own accompanist, they couldn’t feel hurt, you know.”

  “Sorry, she isn’t back yet,” said Murray, “though we’re expecting her Friday or Saturday. But how about asking Miss Sutherland? I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if she played, and if she plays the piano just half as well as she plays tennis, she’s a winner!”

  Carroll turned eager eyes upon Gloria.

  “Why, I could try. Of course I play some. But I wish Vanna was here. She can really play!”

  “And who is Vanna?” asked the young man. “What an interesting name!”

  “Vanna is my sister. Her name is Evangeline, but we’ve always called her Vanna,” said Gloria.

  “Lovely!” said young Carroll. “But since Vanna-Evangeline is not here, might I be so presumptuous as to ask you to accompany your humble servant?”

  “I’ll be delighted,” said Gloria, wondering what she was letting herself in for now, “that is if I can do it. I’d have to see the music.”

  “Well, I guess we can manage that,” said Carroll. “Murray, you’ve got one of our books over at your house, haven’t you? And I’ve got a new one along I’d like awfully well to try if you don’t mind. I brought it along hoping Lindsey would be here.”

  “Well, you’d better come over to our house. There’s no piano in the Sutherland house.”

  “Yes, I’ve missed having a piano around,” said Gloria. “I don’t play nearly as well or as much as my sister, but I do like to sit down now and then and amuse myself.”

  “Well, I certainly am in luck finding you,” said Robert Carroll. “Why don’t you and your sister come up here and live, and then we’d always have one or the other about when we needed music?”

  It was good to get among young people again even if they were strangers. It was good to hear their pleasant banter and jokes. Yet she wondered as she went up the MacRae steps between the two young men what some of her friends at home would think of her if they could see her now and know that she had actually promised to help in a religious service. She wondered what Vanna would think. She wondered most of all what Vanna would think about the two young men. Vanna had never seen any like them. Would Vanna laugh at them and say they had too religious a complex if she were to see them? Well, it wasn’t in the least likely that Vanna would ever see them. In a few days now, she herself would be gone away from here, and there would be little likelihood that she would ever come again, unless Father wanted to run up for something.

  Yet the thought gave her a pang. She wasn’t sure she never wanted to see these young men anymore, especially Murray MacRae. He had promised to tell her more about such wonderful things. He had promised to lead her where her perplexities would be solved, and her heart hungered for such knowledge.

  It was a big, pleasant room where the old-fashioned square piano stood, with touches here and there that showed a modern girl had been here: a picture here, a book there, a lovely cushion on the rare old davenport. And there on the piano was a framed photograph of a beautiful girl with one of the sweetest faces Gloria had ever seen. She had eyes like Murray’s. Gloria went to it at once and stood before it.

  “That’s my sister, Lindsey,” said Murray with a smile. “I do want you to know her.”

  “She is lovely!” said Gloria, studying the face.

  “We think she is,” said Murray modestly.

  “She’s all that and then some!” said Robert Carroll. “I’m terribly jealous of that professor of hers that she’s going to marry. And the worst of it is that I’m convinced that there isn’t another girl like Lindsey on the face of the earth.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Lindsey so before she went off and found her professor?” laughed Murray. “There isn’t another fellow on the face of the earth I’d like half so well for a brother-in-law, I’m sure.”

  Gloria, as she heard the laughter, thought how lovely was the friendship between these two.

  She turned away at last from the picture of Lindsey MacRae, and her eye was caught by another picture on the mantel, a man’s face this time, with a look in the eyes like Lindsey and Murray, yet something deeper, something so strong and noble and tender that instinctively Gloria turned to Murray and said in a low tone, “This was—your brother?”

  Murray had been following her glance, and he was beside her now. “My brother, yes!” he answered her, though his eyes had answered for him first. “This was the brother of whom I told you.”

  Gloria had no words ready to express the emotion that picture stirred in her heart. It was too deep for words. But at last she turned away.

  “Why should a man like that be taken away from the earth when there are so many men who could be spared so easily?” she said, almost as if she were thinking aloud.

  “God’s purposes are often served best in ways that seem to us inscrutable,” answered Murray, “and sometimes it is just to save some poor, worthless sinner like me!” And he drew a deep breath that was almost a sigh.

  Then Gloria, looking up, suddenly saw his face and understood, and the story she had heard a little while before went even deeper into her own soul.

  They gathered around the piano presently, and Gloria shyly attempted the music they put before her. She was not very familiar with sacred music, and hymns and gospel songs had never been in her repertoire at all. She found them very different in character from the jazzy stuff she had been used to rattling off, and much harder to play, though they looked so simple at first sight. But she stumbled on and, with the help of the two young men, presently swung into the right rhythm and was able to follow on after the singing, if she did not exactly lead it.

  Murray MacRae was singing now, too, and the two voices blended beautifully. In spite of her blundering playing, Gloria felt part of a lovely whole and found a thrill in listening to those two voices as they sang hymn after hymn, making the words as well as the music live for her.

  When they finally said good night to Robert Carroll, promising him to drive over to Ripley the next evening for the meeting, and saw him drive away, Gloria suddenly realized that she had had a wonderful evening. She had enjoyed every minute of it.

  “Are you all tired out?” asked Murray solicitously, looking down at her anxiously. “Did we bore you to death?”

  “I’ve enjoyed every minute of it!” she said earnestly. “It is something entirely new for me, but I’ve loved it. Only I do wish you had had a better a
ccompanist. Vanna plays beautifully. I really am more at home on the violin!”

  “Wonderful!” said Murray. “I’ll have to rustle us a violin. And wouldn’t there be some way to get your sister up here? Say! That would be great! But may I ask why you didn’t bring your violin along?”

  Then suddenly plunk! Down came her tragedy upon her! She caught her breath. Perhaps she ought to tell this young man all about herself! But why break this brief, pleasant fellowship that could not possibly last more than a few days longer anyway? Why have to explain and endure commiseration? It would only make embarrassment for them both.

  “I—why—I came away—in a hurry!” she evaded. “I don’t usually take it with me. In fact, I’ve played very little—these last few months. I’m—quite—out of—practice.”

  “It certainly is time you got into practice again,” laughed the young man happily.

  When Gloria went into the house, she was dismayed to find that her father had called on the telephone.

  “How dreadful!” she exclaimed. “What will he think of me? He told me last night he would call again tonight. I ought to have come back sooner! I ought not to have gone!”

  “No, it’s all right,” said Emily Hastings, “I told him you were just across the road at MacRaes’ and I would call you, but he said no, he was in a hurry. A man was waiting for him. He said to tell you it would be another day or two yet before he could possibly come up, and if you should want to start home before that to call his office at ten in the morning.”

  Gloria went up to her room, but her thoughts were troubled. She had had a rare evening and enjoyed it, and it didn’t seem the right thing. If her mother were here, she would be all the time asking her, “What will people think? You in your position?” If her aunt Miranda should hear that she had spent the evening playing the piano for two young men, she would gloat over the news and probably spread it over the countryside. Yet it had been such a pleasant, simple little thing to do whereby to while away the time, and the fact remained that she had enjoyed it. Was there anything wrong in that? In fact, she asked herself, wide-eyed, staring out into the darkness of her room long after the other members of the household were asleep, had she anything tangible to be loyal to? Did a bridegroom who died with another girl deserve loyalty? And even if he did, what had she done but play a few accompaniments? And anyhow, she was committed to the meeting tomorrow night. She couldn’t go back on her word now. And she admitted to herself in the secret of her heart that she really wanted to go to that meeting and hear Murray MacRae speak again. There was something in his words that brought hope. Dim, far hope it was perhaps, but hope, and she wanted to hear more. She could not go home till she understood how to read the Bible for herself and get something out of it. She was sure the brief Bible lessons she had had in school had not had hope in them, and if hope was anywhere to be found, she must find it.

  The meeting the next evening was unlike anything she had ever attended before. A church full of eager young people come together for religious worship. It hadn’t occurred to Gloria that young people ever went into religion, except in a musical or social way. In fact, before she met Murray MacRae, the word Christian in her vocabulary simply meant the opposite of Jew or heathen, and her vague idea of a heathen was a cannibal who worshiped idols. A Christian therefore would be a good, respectable, possibly moral person who lived in a civilized land.

  There was a new phrase that was introduced to her that evening during the course of the meeting. It figured in the prayers, the singing, and several times in the address of the evening. That was the word saved. “Is he saved?” she heard a young man ask of another concerning someone else, and “She’s only been saved about two months, but she’s growing fast,” she heard a young girl on the front seat say to Robert Carroll. But later when Murray began his address, she learned that the strange new phrase meant saved from sin, made fit to be with God eternally.

  Gloria had never had any sense of sin herself. She did not know that she was a sinner. But as the address went on, she learned that she was, for Murray held up Jesus Christ and the Bible like a mirror in which they all might look and see themselves as Christ saw them.

  The service of prayer that preceded the address amazed her. She had never heard young people pray before, and there were so many of them that took part, so freely, so eagerly, sometimes two beginning at once, and so simply, just speaking their hearts to the great God! Gloria found herself wishing that she dared speak out and say, “Oh God, show me how I can go on living!” but her lips seemed to be sealed, and she had a shy feeling that she was not one of these young people, she was a stranger and therefore had no right to come boldly and make her petition. These young people must have passed through some strange initiation or preparation that she had never known that gave them a right of fellowship with heaven. She found her heart hungry to have this same privilege.

  She was seated on the platform of the ornate small-town church. It appeared that the usual pianist was not present, and Robert Carroll begged that she play for the general singing as well as for his solos. Gloria did not feel at all happy about it, for she did not feel confident when it came to hymn playing. But this strange company of young people under the leadership of Robert Carroll and Murray MacRae took up the tune at the first note and bore it above her playing until confidence returned to her and she began to really enjoy being a part of this great tide of song.

  Right in the middle of it all, it came to her suddenly to think how amused her family would be if they could see her. How her friends at home would jeer and laugh at the idea of her playing in a religious meeting. Then something fierce and loyal rose up in her and resented the attitude of her world. There was something wonderful about this new world she was in now that lured her. She was glad to be here. She was not just enduring it. It was like eating hash and johnnycake and applesauce in place of the constant ices and pastries and confectionery she had been used to all her life. There was something deeply satisfying in it that did not cloy like rich sweets.

  There was a testimony meeting after the prayers, and that was another amazing thing. So many of these young people were ready to testify to what the Lord Jesus had been to them since they had accepted Him as their Savior. Gloria did not know what to make of it and watched them jump up all over the house, one after another, with brief messages that sounded sincere. This certainly was a new world! Perhaps she might have laughed at it before she knew Murray MacRae, for some of the messages were exceedingly crude, and the people who gave them both plain and uncultured, but she did not laugh now. She knew her own world would neither understand nor appreciate what was going on. She was not sure she did herself, but she respected it.

  She was deeply stirred by Murray’s address. It seemed to go right on from where he had been talking to her last and to convict her own soul so that she could scarcely keep back the tears.

  And then, at the close of the meeting, a strange thing occurred. She remained in her seat by the piano awaiting her escorts, while the young people surged about the platform, when suddenly a group of girls came toward her.

  “Oh, I do think you play so beautifully!” said a girl with blue eyes and a dress the same color. “I just loved to watch you up here playing!”

  “Yes,” said another girl in brown, “it was so nice of you to come and play for us. Jennie usually plays, but she’s sick tonight. Have you come to live in Afton?”

  “Oh, no,” said Gloria, much amused, “I’m only here for a short time.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said the girl in brown. “I hoped we’d have you to play for us again.”

  “That’s nice of you,” said Gloria, feeling shy herself at so much evident admiration. “I don’t consider myself much of a player.

  “Oh, won’t you write your name in my Bible?” asked the one with blue eyes. “I’ve got Mr. MacRae’s name and Mr. Carroll’s name, and I’d like so much to have yours.”

  “In your Bible?” said Gloria puzzled. “Why, I’m nobody to
have my name in a Bible.”

  “Oh, yes, you are,” laughed the girl. “I want to keep it to remember this meeting by. Hasn’t it been a wonderful meeting?”

  “Why, yes, it has,” said Gloria.

  She accepted the offered fountain pen and the shabby little Bible and wrote her name under Murray MacRae’s, feeling that somehow she was inscribing herself within a charmed circle where she did not at all belong and wondering if this was not presumption.

  “Oh, what a pretty name!” said the blue-eyed one. “It sounds just as you look! I just know you’re a wonderful Christian!”

  “Oh, but I’m not,” said Gloria, full of dismay. Other Bibles were forthcoming, hymnbooks, programs, scraps of paper. Gloria gave a little hysterical laugh, protested that she was nobody and they didn’t want her name, but the rush around her continued and she wrote on, half ashamed of herself that she didn’t frankly tell them she wasn’t a Christian at all, that she didn’t even know what it was all about.

  But somehow when it was all over, she felt that in some way she had identified herself with tremendous things, and a glow was about her heart as she received the warm thanks of the pastor of the church for her part in the evening.

  It was a strange experience. Gloria had never felt half so thrilled at praise she had received from her fashionable friends when she had played at one of their social “benefits” for some cause they had taken up. Although she recognized that the autograph craze was merely silly hero worship, she felt she had been a part of a meeting that had impressed itself upon her as dealing with tremendous issues, and somehow she was glad all through her being that she had been allowed to help.

  Gloria was very quiet all the way home, listening to the talk between the two young men.

  “I am sure Sam Skelton made a decision tonight,” Robert was saying, and Murray’s “Praise the Lord!” spoken in low reverent undertone brought a thrill to Gloria’s heart that she didn’t in the least understand. What was the decision that was so important, and why should she care? Was it just because Murray MacRae cared? She didn’t know. She looked at the outline of his strong fine face as he sat beside her and felt how wonderful he was. Not just different from others, as she had judged him at first, but “wonderful”!