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"Dear Aunt Marthe," cried Evadne one afternoon, "what is love?"
"I will answer you in the words of one who for years has lived the love-life," said Mrs. Everidge.
"'One must be himself infinite in knowledge to define it, infinite in comprehension to fathom it, infinite in love to appreciate it. Love is God in man, for "God is love," and "every one that loveth is born of God;" but love is not merely veneration, nor respect, nor justice, nor passion, nor jealousy, nor sympathy, nor pity, nor self-gratification; to love something as our own is but a form of self-love; to love something in order to win it for ourselves is just a perpetration of the same mistake.' Dr. Karl Gerok wrote,—'Love is the fundamental law of the world. First, as written in heaven, for God is love; second, as written on the cross, for Christ is love; third, as written in our hearts, for Christianity is love,' And Drummond tells us that 'Love—is the rule for fulfilling all rules, the new commandment for keeping all the old commandments, Christ's one secret of the Christian life.' And another writer says,—'You are a personality only as your heart lives, and the heart lives only as it loves. Love is all action, therefore the amount of your active love measures the size of your personal heart.'"
"Love has been defined as 'the desire to bless.' That is like divine love, for there can be no self thought in God. God's love is over all and above all, but when our love responds to his, his love becomes to us a personal experience. Love can reach down when in loving trust we reach up. Love is like the seed. It manifests no life until it begins to grow. Like the seed it must rise out of the dark ground into the light of heaven,—out of self thought into God. God's love to us is like the sunlight. We can make it our own only by being in it, if we try to shut up the sunlight, we shut it out. We forget to do wrong when loving God. As we love God, the love we feel for him goes out to others."
Evadne sighed. "You make it seem a wonderful thing to be a Christian," she said.
"To be a Christian, little one, Andrew Murray tells us, 'just means to have Christ's love.' Real love means giving always, of our best."
[Illustration: THE SILENT FIGURE WITH THE AWFUL ENTREATY IN ITS STARING
EYES]
God so loved that he gave his Son, the essence of himself. Jesus gave his life, not only in the final agony of the crucifixion, but all through the beautiful years of ministry in Nazareth and Galilee. There is a truer giving than of our temporal goods. Our friends, if they really love us, want most of all what we can give them of ourselves. It is those who give themselves to the world's need who come nearest to the divine pattern Christ has set for us to copy, and, if we truly love him, we shall want not his gifts but himself.
"People seek after holy living instead of perfect loving, they do not realize that we can be truly holy only as we love, for 'love is the great reality of the spiritual world.'"
Evadne laid her cheek caressingly against Mrs. Everidge's. "If it were only you, dear, how delightfully easy it would be, but do you suppose it is possible for me to love Aunt Kate and Isabelle?"
"Yes, dear child, with the love of God."
"You can't imagine how I dread the idea of going back!" Evadne said with a sigh. "This summer has been like a lovely dream. How shall I endure the cold reality of my waking?"
"Where is your joy, little one?"
"Joy, Aunt Marthe!" exclaimed Evadne drearily, "why, I haven't got any apart from you. Just the mere thought of the separation makes my heart ache."
"'The joy of the Lord,'" said Mrs. Everidge softly. "If Jesus Christ is able to fill heaven don't you think he ought to be able to fill earth too? The trouble is we turn away from him and pour our wealth of love at earthly shrines. Mary showed us the better way,—she broke the box, that every drop of the precious ointment might fall on his dear head. What is going to be the crowning satisfaction of heaven? Not that we shall meet our friends, as so many seem to think, but that we shall awake in his likeness and see his face. We shall be 'together,'—we have that comfort given us, but it will be 'together with the Lord.' He is to be the centre of attraction and delight always. What an unfathomable mystery it must be to the angels that he is not so with us now!"
Evadne took a long, yearning look at the dear face, as if she would imprint it upon her memory forever. "He is with you," she said softly. " You will never be a puzzle to the angels."
* * * * *
The time of her stay in Vernon drew near its close, and on the last day but one she went to say good-bye to Penelope Riggs. She found her sitting alone in the house, her mother having taken a fancy to have a sun bath. Her right hand was doubled up and she was rubbing it slowly up and down the palm of her left while she sang softly.
"Why, Penelope, what are you doing?" cried Evadne in amaze.
"Polishin', child. I learnt it long ago. One day I was that wore out I wouldn't have cared if the sky had fallen,—things had been goin' crooked, an' Mother hadn't slept well for a fortnight, an' I was that narvous an' tuckered out I thought I'd fly to pieces. There's an old hymn Mother's dredful fond of,—I don't remember how it goes now, but there's one line she keeps repeatin' over an' over till I feel ready to jump. It's this,—'What dyin' wurms we be.' So, when she begun her wurm song that mornin' I just let fly. 'Ef I am a wurm,' sez I, 'I ain't goin' ter be allers lookin' to see myself squirm!' and with that I up and out of the house. My head was that tight inside I felt if I didn't git out that minit somethin' would snap. I went straight up to Mis' Everidge's. She's one of the people you see who always lives on a hill, inside an' out. When I got there I couldn't speak. My heart's weak at the best of times an' the weather in there was pretty stormy. I just dropped into the first chair an' she put her hands on my two shoulders an' sez she,—'You poor child!' an' then she went away an' made me a syllabub."
"'Look on the bright side,' sez she in her cheery way when I had finished drinkin'."
"'Sakes alive, Mis' Everidge,' sez I, 'there isn't any bright side!'"
"'Then polish up the dark one,' sez she, ez quick ez a flash. I've been tryin' to do it ever since."
"You dear Penelope!" exclaimed Evadne, "I think you have!"
"It's all a wale, child, a wale o' tears," old Mrs. Riggs complained as she bade her good-bye in the porch, but when she reached the turn in the road she heard Penelope singing,—
"Thy way, not mine, O Lord,
However dark it be!
Lead me by Thine own hand;
Choose out my path for me.
I dare not choose my lot,
I would not if I might;
Choose Thou for me, My God,
So shall I walk aright."
and Evadne knew that in the brave heart the voice of Christ had made the storm a calm.
"You dear Aunt Marthe! How am I ever going to thank you for all you have been to me; and what shall I do without you?" Evadne spoke the words wistfully. They were making the most of their last evening.
"Why, dear child, we can always be together in spirit. 'It is not distance in miles that separates people but distance in feeling.' Emerson says,—'A man really lives where his thought is,' so you can be in Vernon and I in Marlborough,—each of us held close in the hush of God's love, which 'in its breadth is a girdle that encompasses the globe and a mantle that enwraps it.'"
Evadne caught Mrs. Everidge's face between her hands and kissed it reverently. "I mean to devote my life to making other people happy, as you do, my saint," she said.
* * * * *
"Board!" The conductor's cry of warning smote the air and the train passengers made a final bustle of preparation for a start. Mrs. Everidge caught Evadne close in a last embrace.
"My precious little sister, I shall miss you every day!" Then she was gone, and Evadne, looking eagerly out of her window, saw the dear face, from which the tears had been swept away, smiling brightly at her from the platform.
"You magnificent Christian!" she cried. "You will give others the sunshine always!"
* * * * *
The train steamed into the station at Marlborough and again Louis came forward to greet her with a look of admiration on his unusually animated face.
"Well done, Evadne! If the atmosphere of Vernon can work such transformation as this, it ought to be bottled up and sold at twenty dollars the dozen. You go away looking like a snow-wraith, and you return a blooming Hebe."
Evadne laughed merrily. "Thank you. The atmosphere of Vernon has a wonderful power," but it was not of the material ozone she was thinking as she spoke.
"I believe I will try it. My constitution is running down at the rate of an alarm clock. I must take my choice between a tonic and an early grave. Will you vouch for like good results in my case?"
Evadne shook her head. "I do not believe it would have the same effect upon everyone," she said.
"Ah, then I shall be compelled to go to Europe."
Evadne looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I think Europe would suit you better."
"That is unfortunate,—for the Judge's purse. How is Aunt Marthe?"
"She is well," she answered with a sudden stillness in her voice. She could not trust herself to talk about this friend of hers to careless questioners. "How is Uncle Lawrence, and all the others?"
"The Judge is in his usual state of health, I fancy. We rarely meet except at the table and then you know personal questions are not considered in good form. The others are well, and Isabelle, having just returned from the metropolis of Fashion, is more than ever au fait in the usages of polite society. But none of them have improved like you, little coz. What has changed you so?"
And she answered softly, with a new light shining in her lovely eyes,—"Jesus Christ."
* * * * *
"You poor Evadne!" said Marion that evening, "what a dreary summer you must have had, shut away among those stupid mountains! If you could only have been with me, now. I never had such a lovely vacation in my life. There seemed to be some excitement every day;—picnics and boating parties and tennis matches and five o'clocks——"
Evadne laughed. "You would better not let Uncle Horace know you are 'a votary of the deadly five o'clock' or he will empty his vials of denunciation upon your unlucky head.
"Oh, Aunt Kate, he sent you a large bundle of fraternal greetings. He says that, 'viewed through the glamour of memory, you impress him like an Alpine landscape, when the sun is rising, and he hopes the soft brilliance of prosperity will ever envelop you in its radiance and serve to enhance the beauty of your stately calm.'"
Mrs. Hildreth smiled, well pleased. "Horace is so poetical," she said, "but all the Everidges are clever. What a shame it seems that a man of his talent should be forced by ill health to exist in a place where there is not a single soul capable of appreciating his rare qualities. Even his wife does not begin to understand him. It seems like casting pearls before swine."
Evadne's eyes flashed and her lips pressed themselves tightly together, but Mrs. Hildreth's gaze was fixed intently upon the lace shawl she was knitting and Louis just then gave a sudden turn to the conversation.
She went up to her room with a great homesickness surging at her heart. Only last night all had been lightsome and happy, now the old darkness seemed to have settled down about her again. She knelt before her window and looked at the strip of sky which was all a Marlborough residence allowed her. "Happy stars!" she murmured, "for you are shining on Aunt Marthe!"
Far into the night she knelt there, until a great peace flooded her soul. She raised her hands towards the sparkling sky. "To make the world brighter, to make the world better, to lift the world nearer to God. Blessed Christ, that was thy mission. I will make it mine!"
The next morning Louis drew her aside. "So, little coz, you did not coincide with the lady mother's eulogium of our respected collateral last night?"
"Why, I said nothing!" cried Evadne in astonishment.
Louis laughed. "Have you never heard of eyes that speak and faces that tell tales?" he said. "I will just whisper a word of warning before you play havoc with your web of destiny. Don't let a suspicion of your dislike cross the lady mother's mind, for Uncle Horace is her beau-ideal of a man. I agree with you. I think he is a cad."