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CHAPTER XV
REAL CONVERSATION

BOTH Susan and lover jumped rather guiltily, but Jane didn't notice. Or if she did notice, it did not impress her as anything worthy consideration. Among the little weeds in the rose-garden of life, did you ever think of what a common one is that bother over how people act when you "come in suddenly"? It is one of the petty tortures of everyday existence. "They stopped talking the instant they saw me!" "They both turned red, when I opened the door!" Well, what if they did? Is it a happening of the slightest moment? Unless one is guilty and in dread of discovery, what can it matter who chatters or of what? Stop and realize the real, separate, distinct meaning of the phrase "He was above suspicion," and see how it applies equally to being safe from the evil thoughts of others as well as being safe from the holding of evil thoughts towards others. If people change color at your approach and it makes you uncomfortable, you are not above suspicion either of or from others. Then look to it well that henceforth you manage to root out the double evil. There are a whole lot of very uncomfortable family happenings founded on the absolutely natural crossings of family intercourse, and the only possible way to go smoothly through such rapids is – as the Irishman said – to pick up your canoe and port around them. Don't go down to the level of anything beneath your own standard, because when you go down anywhere for any reason, your standard goes down with you. There is that peculiarity about standards that we keep them right with us, whether we go up or whether we go down.

"Oh, Jane," said Susan, "we're having such an interesting time talking about your religion."

Jane smiled. "I'm glad," she said simply. "Did you decide to absorb some of it?"

"Oh, I'm converted, anyhow," said the aunt; "nobody could live in the house with you and not be, and Mr. Rath is going to try it for a while, too."

Jane looked at Lorenzo a little roguishly. "It's a contagion in the town," she said; "I feel like an ancient missionary."

"I know," said Susan, "holding up a cross. I've seen them in pictures."

"Yes, and I hold up the cross, too," said Jane, "only most people wouldn't know it. Do you know what the cross meant in the long-ago times, – before the Christian era?" she asked Lorenzo quickly.

"No."

"It's the sunbeam transfixing and vivifying the earth-surface. It was the holiest symbol of the power of God. It embodied divine life descending straight from heaven and making itself a part of earth."

"My!" exclaimed Susan, really amazed.

Jane smiled and laid her hand upon her aunt's affectionately. "I love my cross," she said; "it's the greatest emblem that humanity can know, and, just because we are human, it will always keep coming back into our lives. Only it shouldn't be preached as a burden, it should be preached as an opportunity."

Lorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. He felt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl who was so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to just him.

"You'll end by being like Dinah in Adam Bede," he said, trying to laugh; "you like to teach and preach, don't you?"

"I don't know," said Jane; "it's always there, right on my heart and lips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice."

"I don't think she's exactly human," said Susan meditatively; "she doesn't strike me so."

"Don't say that, Auntie," said the young girl quickly; "I want to be human more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feel that I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon as unhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and be loved."

"But you're so different from everybody else," said her aunt.

"But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman – or a girl."

Some kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. "Mr. Rath and I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity it is that there are so few in these days."

"I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't so conspicuous," Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo.

"I think they're more conspicuous," said Lorenzo, "only they're the wrong kind."

"I liked the old kind," said Susan, "the kind that stayed at home and wasn't wild to get away and be going into business."

Jane laughed again. "You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots of them feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out and work. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that's pushing us all on into different places."

"I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. I was thinking of the others."

"They have to go, too," said Jane. "There's a fearful pressure that we don't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that no one can alter."

"Yes, that's true," said Lorenzo; "I never thought of it, but I can see that it is so now that you've put it into my head."

"I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally to women who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wanted to earn my living, but I was forced to it. And ever so many others are, too. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a power that sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be big enough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better."

"Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women are acting now?" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.

"No, I'm afraid not. I think that there's something we don't understand, or grasp, or – or quite see rightly. I believe that everything is ordered and ordered ultimately for the best, and I see the problems of to-day as surely here by God's will and to be worked out by learning the conduct of the current instead of opposing it. But still I really don't understand it all as I wish that I did."

"You really do feel God as a friend," said Lorenzo, watching her illuminated face. "He isn't just a religion to you, then?"

"He's everything to me," said Jane reverently, "Help and Sunlight and Strength and Daily Bread. That part of Him that is energy manifests in us in one way, and that part of Him that is divine right and justice manifests in us in another way. My part in this life is to learn to use them together, but they and all else are all God."

Susan rose from her seat and stood contemplating her niece and Lorenzo by turns. "To think of talking like this in my house," she said; "this is what I call real conversation. I tell you, Jane, you certainly did lift me into another life when you invited old Mrs. Croft here. Every kind of religion sinks right into me now, and I can believe without the least bother. It's wonderful, but I'm going to have a short-cake for tea, so I'll have to go."

She went away, and Lorenzo turned to the window.

There was a little pause while he wondered about many things. Finally he held out his hand abruptly. "You've gone a long way, Jane," he said, "you've got a big grip on life and its meaning, and you make me understand as I never did before how hopeless it is to wish that the wheels of time will turn backward. But whatever you may preach, you only prove what I said and what I feel, that the old-fashioned, sweet, home-keeping, winning and winnable girl is gone, only she's gone in a different way from what most people understand. When she still exists, she exists for herself – not for a man."

Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly. "Why do you say that?"

"Because you prove it. A man might adore you, but he couldn't hope to get you. Could he?"

Her eyes dropped. "Do you think that it's all any harder on the man than it is on the girl?" she asked. "If men feel bad nowadays over the changes, how do you suppose it is with the woman, unfitted to fight and forced into the battle. A woman isn't built as a man is; she's created for another kind of work, much harder and lasting, much longer than any man's labor. And she has to leave that work of her own either undone or only half-done and do things unsuited to her. Of course there are some girls and women who like it, – but most of them don't. Most of them feel dreadfully and would give anything to be able to stay in a home and live the life God meant to be woman's. There's always a pitiful story behind nine out of every ten bread-winning women, whether they go out washing or are artists like you. A woman never leaves her home until she's forced to do so."

"Are you sure that you know what you're talking about? Aren't you an idealist? Look at Emily Mead – " he smiled in spite of his earnestness. "If she had a rag of a chance, she'd fly off to-morrow. It wouldn't take force."

Jane remained carefully grave. "That's more her mother's fault than hers. Her mother has taught her that girls only live to marry."

"And quite right, too. Don't you believe it?"

"It used to be true, but it isn't now. A girl can't marry without a man, and the world's all disjointed. It's a part of that strange new leaven which causes civilization to drive men and women both to become homeless by separating them widely on earth."

"Of course it's a governmental crime to send men by the hundreds of thousands to fight it out alone in Canada and leave their sisters to be old maids in England, but governments are pretty stupid, nowadays."

"We are all pretty stupid. We build all our difficulties and then hang to them and their consequences for dear life. It's too bad in us."

"Do you mean woman?"

"No, I mean everybody."

"It's depressing, isn't it?"

"I don't think so. I think it's grand."

"Grand!"

"Yes, because I like to struggle in a big way. And then, too, if I'm a woman forced to work because I'm one part of the problem, I'm also gloriously happy in being part of the new upburst of comprehension that's balancing and will soon overbalance such a lot of the troubles."

"You mean? Oh, you mean your way of looking at things."

"Of course I do. I'm so blessedly glad of every circumstance in my life, because each one led to my getting hold of just what I have got hold of. I'm perfectly happy and perfectly content. It's so beautiful to be guided by a rule that never fails."

Lorenzo couldn't but laugh. "I tell you what," he said gayly, "I'll let you into a little secret. I've made up my mind to go to work and learn how to work that game of yours myself. I want to be blessedly glad and gloriously happy, too."

"You've got to be in earnest, you know," Jane said. "It's handling live wires to amuse oneself with any force of God, and will-power is more of a force than electricity."

"Oh, I'm in earnest," said the artist. "I've made my picture – as you say – and I hang to it for grim death. Only I can't see, if you feel as you do about home and marriage, and all that, why you don't make one, too."

"I'm making ever so many homes," said Jane. "I'm teaching home-making. That's a Sunshine Nurse's business, and it would be selfish in me to desert my task. Besides – " she paused.

CHAPTER XVI
THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED

SHE stopped and hesitated.

"Yes," he said impatiently, "besides – ?"

"I wonder if it would be right to be quite frank with you?"

"Nothing sincere is ever wrong. Of course you ought to be quite frank with me, – aren't you that with every one?"

Still she considered.

"What stops you?" he asked. "Go on. Tell me everything. It's my right."

"Why is it your right?"

"Because I love you, and you know it."

She started violently, then turned very white. "Don't say that. I've always thought of you as engaged to Madeleine. She was talking to me, and I thought – I – " She stopped, quite shaken.

"You misunderstand her. She's always been in love with one fellow – the one that her parents are against. He's even poorer than I am."

Then Jane pressed her lips together and interlocked her fingers. "I can never marry. I never think of it. There's money to be paid, nobody to pay it but me, and no way to get it except to earn it."

Lorenzo looked almost sternly at her. "What about the book you lent me; it would say that that was setting limits. It says that we've not to concern ourselves with ways and means. I've only to concern myself with loving you. The rest will come along of its own accord."

She shook her head. "No, it won't. This world is all learning, and it's part of my lesson not to be able to apply it in absolute faith to myself. So many teachers have wisdom to give away which they can't quite take unto themselves, you know." She smiled a little tremulously.

"But you ought to take it unto yourself. It ought to be easy and simple for you to realize that if conditions are false, they don't exist; that if you want a home, it's because you are going to have one; that if I love you, it's because it's right that you should be loved."

She put her hands down helplessly on each side of the chair-seat. "I never even think of such things," she said, almost in a whisper.

"But why not?"

"I've always been so necessary to others. I've no rights in my own life."

"But if life is a thing to guide, why not guide your beneficence as well from a basis of home as from one of homelessness?"

"Nothing has ever seemed to be for me, myself. Everything has always pointed to me for others."

Lorenzo paced back and forth. "But it is the women like you who should show the way out of the wilderness and back to the right, instead of attempting to order the chaos while sweeping on with it. If there be a real truth in this new teaching which lays hold of all those who are in earnest so easily and so quickly, its first care should be to demonstrate happiness in the lives of its believers, – not the negative happiness of wide-spread devotion to others, but the positive lessons of joy in the center from which springs – must spring – the next generation of better, wiser men and women, those among whom I expect to live as an old man."

Jane turned her face away, her eyes filled with tears. "You make me feel very small and petty," she said; "you show me a way beyond what I had guessed. But I can't grasp at it; I'm too used to asking nothing for myself. I'm always so sure that God is managing for me. And I have so much to do."

"Perhaps realization that God is managing is all that you need to set right. Perhaps that confidence will bring you all things. Even me." He laughed a little.

"It has brought me all that I needed. Daily bread, daily possibilities of helpfulness, – I don't ask more, except 'more light.'"

"It sounds a little presumptuous coming from me, but perhaps I can help you towards your end, even as to 'more light.' At any rate, I'll try if you'll let me."

She sat quite still. Finally she lifted up her eyes – and they were beautiful eyes, big and true – and said, the words coming softly forth: "It would be so wonderful."

Lorenzo didn't speak. He felt choked and gasping. To him it was also "so wonderful," as wonderful as if he hadn't lived with it night and day ever since the first minute of knowing her. "I think I'd better go," he said very gently, realizing keenly that he must not press her in this first blush of the new spring-time. "I've 'made my picture' you know, and I won't let it fade, you may be sure. And you must believe in happiness for yourself, – you tell us that the first step is all that counts. Get the seed into the ground then. I'll do the rest."

She sat quite still. "If I could only try," she whispered. He turned quickly away and was gone.

After a dizzy little while she rose and went into the kitchen. Susan was moving briskly about.

"Two cups flour, four teaspoonfuls baking powder, one of sugar, one of salt, two of butter, two of lard, cup half water, half milk, pour in pan greased and bake in hot oven. Scotch scone-bread for lunch," she said, almost suiting the deed to the word. "Is Mr. Rath still here?"

"No, he's gone."

"You know, Jane, he's caught your religion. I never heard anything like it. He's got the whole thing pat. I'd be almost scared to go round teaching a thing like that. Why, folks'll be doing anything they please soon. I've been wondering if I could get strong enough to kind of dispose of Matilda, in some perfectly right way, you know. I wouldn't think of anything that wasn't perfectly right, you know."

Jane seemed a little numb and stood watching the buttering of the scone-pan without speaking.

"I keep saying: 'Matilda doesn't want to come back. Matilda's disposed of in a perfectly pleasant way.' I've been saying it ever since I began on those scones. I guess I've said it twenty times, and I'm beginning to make a real impression on myself. I'm beginning to feel sure God is fixing things up. It's too beautiful to feel God taking an interest in your affairs. Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda is completely disposed of in a perfectly pleasant way." Susan's accents were very emphatic.

"Auntie," said Jane, turning her eyes towards her and rallying her attention by a strong effort, "you know your perfect faith is because Aunt Matilda really isn't anxious to come home. It's only if you're doubting that there's any doubt about it. One doesn't alter Destiny, one only apprehends it. Oh, dear," she said though, sitting down suddenly, and hiding her face in her hands, "the thing about light is that it always keeps bursting over you with a new light, and my own teaching has suddenly come to me as if I'd never known what any of it meant before. I'm too stunned at seeing how I've limited myself. I'm really too stupid."

Susan glanced at her as she poured the batter into the pan, and then kept glancing. Her face grew softened, "I wouldn't worry, dear," she said finally, "don't you bother over anything. God's taking care of everything and everybody. It's every bit of it all right. You must know that yourself, or you never could have taught it to me."

"Yes, I do know it, – but in spite of myself I can't see – I can't dare think – "

"You told me not to worry over old Mrs. Croft," said Susan, coming around by her side and putting her arm about her; "you said worry spoiled everything. And I did try so hard."

"Yes, I know, I'll try. I really will – But – " suddenly she turned deep crimson, "it seems too awful for me to take one minute to work on myself or my life. I need all my time for others."

"But you don't have to," said Susan, "all you've got to do is to know things are right. You know they're right because they are right. Everything's coming along fine, and you just feel it coming; that's your part. My goodness, Jane, isn't this funny? There isn't a blessed thing you've preached to me that I ain't having to preach back to you now. You don't seem to have sensed hardly any of your own meaning. Talk about being a channel; you'd better choke up a little and hold back some for yourself."

Jane threw her arms around her and kissed her. "Auntie, you're right, you're right. I won't doubt a mite more. I'll try to know as much as I seem to have taught."

"Just be yourself, you Sunshine Jane, you," Susan was clinging close to the girl she loved so well, "just be yourself. Nothing else is needed."

"Yes," Jane whispered, "I will."

"That's the thing," said Susan; "'cause you've certainly taught us a lot. I'll lay the table now," she moved towards the door, "Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda wants to stay away in some perfectly pleasant way," she added with heavy emphasis, passed through, and let the door close.

Jane was left alone in the kitchen.

"He said he loved me!" she thought over and over. "It seems so wonderful – the most wonderful thing that has ever happened since the world was made. He said he loved me!"

She went up-stairs to her own room and shut the door softly. "Of course I can never marry him," she whispered aloud, "but he did say he loved me. Oh, I know that nothing so wonderful ever was in this world before!"

CHAPTER XVII
WHY JANE SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED

THE Sunshine Nurse was long in seeking sleep that night and early to rise the next morning. She found herself suddenly metamorphosed – facing a new world – two worlds in fact. There was the world of Lorenzo's actually loving her, which was a dream from which she would surely awaken, and then there was that second world of wonder, the world of her own teaching, a world in which she started, big-eyed, at all in which she had trusted, and wondered if it could be possible that what she believed firmly and preached so ardently was really true. "It isn't setting limits to face what must be," she said over and over to herself, "and I must pay poor father's debts, and there is no possible way for me to get the money except to earn it bit by bit." The statement had gone to bed with her, and it rose with her when she rose; it looked indisputable, incontrovertible, as all fixed statements have a way of looking – and yet each time that she made it she felt hot with guilt. "It's setting limits," cried her soul, "it's saying that God can't possibly do what He pleases," and, as she listened to the strong, heaven-sent cry of rebellion against petty earthly laws, she struggled in the meshes of her own old earlier learning, the "old garment" which clings so close about us all, and which we simply must discard before we can don the new robe of Infinite Hope and Radiant Belief in God's law of Only Good for Each and Every One.

Jane always rose an hour before her aunt. The hour was spent in opening windows, brushing up and building the kitchen fire. It was always a pleasant hour, for she usually filled it to the brim with work well done and thoughts sent strongly and happily out over the coming time. But to-day all this was changed; new thoughts rioted forth on every side, and a sort of chaos took the place of her usually sunny calm. This riot and chaos is the common, logical outcome of all who feel sure that they are wiser than God. You cannot possibly set any border to His Kingdom and then be happy in that outer darkness which you have deliberately chosen for your own part. As well ask a cow to shut herself out of her pasture and rest happy in the waste beyond. "I mustn't think, because it is none of it for me – " she repeated over and over, much as if the aforesaid cow declared, "I am barred out – I can never get back – I must starve contentedly." Jane – who would have laughed at my illustration quite as you have laughed yourself – saw only distress in her own, and had to wink away so many tears that finally in maddest self-defense she rushed out doors and fled to the little garden that had, through so many years, been Susan's refuge in such a droll way.

And Lorenzo was there!

He looked very blithe and happy. "Well," he said, "have you thought it over and decided that you're right, after all?"

She was panting, and surprise flooded her face with color. "Oh – " she gasped, "oh!" and then: "Right – of course I'm right!"

He approached, his hand extended. "Right in believing, or right in mistrusting?"

She gave him her hand, and he took it. "Don't put it that way," she said; "it isn't that way."

"But, dear Jane, that's the only way to put it. It's the way you've been teaching us. Either we can look up and ahead confidently, or you're all wrong. I can't believe that you're ever even a little bit wrong, so I'm going to believe that it's all true."

"No, no – it isn't – I mean – Oh, in my case, it can't be so. Everything that I said was true, only I myself am meant to – to work – not to – to marry. It's a kind of pledge I've taken to myself. It doesn't change the teaching." Then she dragged her hand free.

Lorenzo smiled. "You can't tell me any of that. I know. I'm the happiest man in the world." Then he went on, taking up the rake and scratching a little here and there: "Like other pupils, I've surpassed my teacher. You've preached, and I practice; you can describe God's thoughts, and I think them. You're sure that He can do anything, and I know what He's going to do. I've been let straight into one of His secrets. It's been revealed to me how the world is run."

Jane stared. "How can you talk so?"

"I talk so because I know so. Everything's coming right for you."

"You're crazy," she tried to laugh.

"I've heard people say that of you. Not that it matters."

She stood watching him and considering his words. "I wouldn't let you give me the money to straighten out my father's affairs, even if you were ever so rich, you know," she said slowly. "I couldn't."

"I know it."

"And I wouldn't let Auntie pay the debts."

"I know. God doesn't require either your aunt's help or mine in this matter."

Jane's eyes moistened slightly. "Please don't make a joke of anything so hard and sad."

"I'm not joking; I'm a veritable apostle of joy. I'm as happy as I can be."

She looked at him with real wonder because his appearance certainly bore out his words. "I wish that I knew what you meant."

He dropped the rake, came to her side, and caught her hand. "Can't you trust God – can't you trust me? – won't you try?"

She looked up into his face. "I wish that I could, but how can I?"

"You ought to know. So deep and big and true a nature. Surely you ought to be able to understand your own teaching!"

"But I can't see any way."

"Your book says that one must not think of ways; one must just look straight to the good end."

"Oh, but there isn't any such end possible for me."

Lorenzo dropped her hand and laughed out loud. And then he caught her in his arms and kissed her.

She screamed. To her it was the greatest shock of her life, for no man had ever kissed her before. "Oh – oh, mercy!"

Matters were not helped much by Susan's looking over the fence just then and crying out abruptly: "Well, I declare!"

"Mrs. Ralston," said Lorenzo, not even blushing, "you're the very person we need this minute. I want to marry Jane, and she won't hear to it because of her father's debts. The debts are all right and everything's all right, only she won't believe it. I wish you'd climb the fence and help me persuade her, for although I know she'll end by marrying me, I've just set my heart on converting her to her own religion first."

Susan swung easily over the fence. "You're just right, Mr. Rath, you ought to marry her. She's the nicest person to have around the house that I ever saw; she's far too good to be a nurse. How much did your father owe, you Sunshine Jane, you? Maybe I can pay it. I will if I can."

"There," said Lorenzo; "see how easy it is to evolve money if you'd only trust a little?"

Jane looked at him and then at Susan. "I couldn't take your money, Auntie," said she, quite gently, but quite firmly. "And then, too," she added, with her roguish smile, "you've left it to Aunt Matilda."

"Yes, but dear," Susan's face became suddenly radiant, "you know I've been working your religion on her; maybe she isn't coming back at all; maybe something will happen; maybe she's going to be drowned or something like that in some perfectly right way."

"No," said Lorenzo soberly. "It isn't necessary to plan as to God's business at all. He knows. I don't think that Jane ought to take anybody's money; she ought to pay the debts with her own money, but I can't see why she can't trust and know it's coming."

"Because there's no place for it to come from," said Jane firmly.

"Unless Matilda – " Susan interposed.

"I believe I'm better at her religion than she is herself," said Lorenzo. "I declare, I believe that there's nothing that I can't get now. I wanted a house, and I worked just as the book said! I saw myself living cosily alone, and in less than a week I was living cosily alone. Now I want Jane with me in the house, and I mean to have her, and I shall have her, and there's no doubt about that; but I do wish – with all my heart – that she could rise to a higher plane."

"If that's all, I know how to manage that easily enough," said Susan. "We could get old Mr. Cattermole in for a week and raise Jane's plane with him, just like she raised mine with Mrs. Croft."

"Oh, she'll rise," said her lover quietly. "We must give her time and help her, that's all."

Jane stood doubting between them. Her aunt regarded her wistfully. "Dear me," she said, "I wonder if I could screw myself up to believing she'll come in for a fortune. I want to help, but I'm a little like her – I can't for the life of me see where it's to come from."

"But that isn't the question at all," said Lorenzo, "the question isn't how – the question is just the faith. Why, it's the corner-stone of the whole thing! It's the moving into God's world where nothing but good can be, and you know you're there because you see only good coming in all directions! Just good – nothing but good! I don't see why Jane holds back so. I know that she can get that money and get every other thing she wants in life, including me, and I'm one of the nicest fellows alive – "

"That's so – " interposed Susan.

"If she'll only put out her hand with confidence. I've studied that book till I'm full of it, and I know that I'm going to have her for my wife, and I know it absolutely, and I want her to know it, too."

Susan began to get back over the fence. "I'm going in about breakfast," she said; "the trouble with us is we all need hot coffee to brace up our souls."

"Keep on declaring the truth," Lorenzo reminded her, as she walked off upon the other side.

"I will. I'll say 'Jane is going to get some money' and 'Matilda doesn't want to come home to live,' alternately."

When she was out of hearing the two young people remained silent for a few seconds. Then the man spoke.

"Dear," his voice was very gentle, "I want to tell you something. I've had a very great experience in the last twenty-four hours. It isn't loving you – it's that I've been allowed to see a little bit of life from God's standpoint. Don't you want to know the real truth about all this?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm going to tell you, because you'll see the lesson and learn it with me. We don't doubt that God knows all that has been or is to be, do we? – or that in our minutes of fiercest pain or trouble He looks calmly to the end beyond?"

She shook her head. "No, of course not."