An Unwilling Guest (27 page)

And so she met all Evelyn's efforts to bring her any true help, and Evelyn with a sigh concluded she w
ould not do for even a home mis
sionary. She determined to pray for her at least
.
She tried to tell her so as she was taking her leave.

"Thanks, awfully, Evelyn," she said with a stare, "but what good do you think that will do?
Harry's
my husband, and I don't suppose praying will make my life any brighter. Good-bye. You better not waste your
time
so; it will make you gloomy."

J
une and July dragged their horror-laden lengths along and Evelyn grew thinner and whiter. She forced herself to read the papers from beginning to end. She read the names of all missionaries printed. Once she saw Doctor Grey's name among those who were missing, with a hint of hope that he might have been saved; but the next report of those saved did not mention him. From Allison there came anxious letters, telling of their sorrowful hearts, but showing withal a high hope in Him who had power to save. Evel
yn thought as she read her pros
pective sister-in-law's sweet words of trust that she herself was not worthy to be named among those who had faith. She could only lie in God's hand and "let him have his own way" with her and all things that concerned her. But nevertheless she
envied the other girl her free
dom to show her anxiety. How sweet it would be to have a right to ask and wait to be told, even though there was little hope of any joyful message on this side of heaven.

She grew still thinner and whiter in these days and her father took her away to the shore out of the city's heat, and then to the mountains, but she seemed to care as little for the one as for the other. She was sweet and gentle to him and seemed pleased with any proposition he had to make, but he could see there was something the matter with her which was deeper than he knew. He grew worried and proposed a trip abroad, but she laughed away his fears and begged to be taken home again, saying she was only homesick.

She went down to one of the missionary meetings as soon as possible after getting settled once more. Her heart was aching to know what the workers thought or knew, but she listened in vain for any word. They
spoke of the service just past in memory of the dear dead missionaries, her heart crying out against it. His memorial services and only a little while before he had been with them talking and smiling! Oh, it was terrible! She went home feeling too ill to endure it longer, and there she found lying on her dressing table a letter. It was a foreign letter with a queer unfamiliar stamp and on strange, thin paper, but the writing on the outside, though she had seen it but once before, she seemed to know at once as she had known its owner's voice and face long ago.

She calmly took off her wraps, praying the while. She knew not why she went about the little things she had to do with so much attention to detail before reading it. It was as if she were trying to steady her heart for an ordeal through which she had to pass. She did not let herself think. No question of whether he was alive or dead, or why he had written to her, was allowed to form itse
lf in her brain. She held every
thing in abeyance for the reading, well knowing it might
hold much of good or ill. Her door locked she sat down and opened the letter with cold, trembling fingers.

Her full name and address were at the top of the sheet and the letter began abruptly:

I am sitting to
night in the small whitewashed room that serves for a temporary hospital. Near me on an iron cot lies a Chinaman on whom I yesterday performed a severe operation. I am sole nurse, missionary, and doctor. Th
e others were all ordered off to
day. They have gone to Peking for safety from the Boxers, who it is rumored will be here in a few hours. The man on the bed beside me is not a Christian. He will not be in danger from the Boxers. His family think that I have cut his heart out to offer to my God and then to make strange medicine of. I
also was ordered to Pe
king, but if I go away and leave this patient with no one to attend him now in his critical condition the man will die. It is a choice of deaths. I may be able to save him by serving him a few hours longer. Perhaps his people may come to believe in the living God if he recovers. Undoubtedly my life is in danger. In all probability I shall be cut off from any communication with the rest of the missionaries in an hour, if I am not already. There is scarcely any hope that I can be saved. It is for this reason that I am writing this letter. If I thought I should live I would not trouble you with my story. I have arranged with one of the mail couriers whom I know well and who
has great respect for anything bearing the government stamp, to take any letters that he may find in a
certain crack in the wall near
by, known to myself and him, and he will, I feel sure, mail this. If I live I shall not put the letter where he can find it, but destroy it and so no harm will be done. If I stay quietly in this room it may be tw
o or three days before I am dis
covered and by that time the sick man will, I hope, be able to get on with the nursing of the old Chinese cook whom I am instructing.

Therefore, though I feel that deat
h is not far off I am content to
night, and I have decided to let my heart have this much indulgence.

Do you know, Evelyn Rutherford, that I have carried your image in my heart since I left you? That I hear often above all other sounds the music of your piano as you played "Auf
Wiedersehen
." I did not look the fact quite in the face that night though I felt it dimly, but I think it will be "till we meet again" in heaven. I may tell you just this once that I love you, may I not? It has been my joy and my delight when, weary with hard work and lonely, I could sit down a moment, to let the strange foreign city melt away and the Chinese jargon cease to ring in my ears while I walked the autumn-leaf-strewn street with you once
more and saw the sun-light shin
ing on your hair, or watched the shadows glancing from your long lashes when you raised your eyes to mine to answer a question. Sometimes I let myself dwell on the ride we took together that wonderful afternoon. You can never know the joy of the moment when you promised me you would pray for yourself. I think I would like to stand hand in hand with you on the brow of that hill where we stopped to look, and await with you my Lord's coming. There are times also when I go back to our first meeting in New York and to the afternoon we spent in the old castle while the storm roared outside, but they are not so dear, because at those times we had not spoken of
what was nearest to my heart, the love of Jesus, and I had not yet begun to pray for you, that sweet, that blessed privilege which has been my one daily pleasure. I have come
to feel sure, my Evelyn, my dar
ling—you will l
et me call you that for just to
night, will you not?—that you have drawn close to Jesus. Sometimes when I am kneeling at the throne of Mercy I can almost hear the echo of your whispered prayer and feel the wafting of your breath, and I think—I have dared to think—you are praying for me and my work. I have not been so wild as to fancy you could love me. I know you have no such thought. I might have dared to try to win you had I stayed in New York and attained the success which seemed to be mine for the trying. But I could not ask you to love me and leave all the life that to you would be almost necessity to come out here and suffer—nay, what I may have to suffer to-morrow or the next day. I could not be so calm about the coming of those fiends if you were here
beside me. And yet, oh, Evelyn, if you were here! I tremble to think of all it would mean for me if I were to go on living and you, you here beside me. The wild thought has just rushed through my mind that I might have dared after all. I might have asked you. Men have done as selfish things before. Women have loved and dared, and, yes, have set their love upon just as unworthy men as I, perhaps. Thank God that I did not, E
velyn, with the Boxers coming to
morrow!

I have a confession to make. Close to my heart I carry a picture of you as a little girl, with sweet wondering eyes and a cloud of hair about your face. It was left by your brother in his college room after packing and he asked me to take care of it. Since I have known you I cut your face from the card and placed it in a small case which I always carry with me; this is since I knew you in New York, the last whiter of my stay there. I do not think you will grudge me the small comfort of carrying it with me to my grave. No one will ever know who it is.

And of my love for you which has grown during the years and with the few bright glimpses I have had of you, how can I write? It is a thing to be told, not put upon paper. It is something intangible, which only eyes and lips may fully interpret. But I want you to know that your image is in my heart where no woman was ever enshrined before, and that to me you are at once the most beautiful, the most lovab
le, and the sweetest of all wom
ankind. Of your queenly bearing and your many graces it would take the years of a lifetime to speak. It may be that in heaven I may tell you the meaning of it all for me, and that there our
souls may welcome one an
other and understand.

And now, dear one, whatever your life is to be, whether long or short, joyous or sorrowful, I have told you with my last word of my great, great love for you, and I commend you to "Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy."

I shall take every precaution that this may be sent you in case I am killed, as I can hardly escape being. Do not let that part of it trouble you. I do not fear to go to my
Saviour
, and I shall count it all joy if I may suffer a little for his sake. It may be that through it the soul of this poor
heathen on the bed beside me may be brought to Jesus in some way. I have learned to love Christ's way for me, even though it means separation from you whom I love.

Now I shall fold and address this, sealing and stamping it carefully that it may be sure to reach you if it is sent. Then I shall place it in the pocket of my coat next to your picture. If the Boxers come, as they most surely will, it is but the work of a moment to conceal this in the place appointed
between two heavy stones, where even fire will not be likely to reach it I think my courier is trusty. And be assured that I love you too much to allow this ever to reach or disturb your happiness as long as I live. Evelyn, my darling, I love you. And now "Auf
Wiedersehen
."

Go thou thy way, and I go mine;

Apart, yet not afar;

Only a thin veil hangs between

The pathways where we are.

And "God keep watch '
tween
thee and me"

This is my prayer.

He looks thy way, he
looketh
mine,

And keeps us near.

Yet God keeps watch '
tween
thee and me,

Both be his care.

One arm round thee and one round me

Will "keep us near."

The smarting tears dimmed her eyes so that she could not read the name signed clear and bold below as it danced in dazzling characters before her. Her pain and her joy struggled together which might first and hardest strike her. She had read slowly, dazed, and unable at first to comprehend all the love and the
horror and the pity of it. Gradu
ally, as she sat and stared at the closely written pages she seemed to see the Chinese hospital room with its whitewashed walls, the sick man lying near, the quiet figure writing, the whole surrounded by those demoniacal creatures lurking in dark shadows ready to spring when the moment came and the letter was finished.

Gradually the one who was writing became the center of the vision and everything else faded away. Then she began dimly to understand three things: that he loved her—ah, that was wonderful, beyond her understanding how it could have come about; that he was a hero—that she seemed to have known forever, and that he was dead. Slowly, slowly this dreadful fact was forced upon her. It was like having the anxiety of the summer all over aga
in with the gradual growing cer
tainty that there was no hope, only now it fell upon a heart fresh from his words of love and she could not tell whether there was more of joy
or sorrow in being allowed to mourn for him.

There was a sound at the door now. It was repeated several times before she understood that she must answer it She came back to the present world with a start. She had promised to go with her father to a missionary meeting in a large church that evening. She had been very anxious to go and had coaxed him. He had been somewhat surprised, but had yielded, putting aside a very important business engagement to please her. He was standing in the hall below waiting for her now. Marie called to know if she needed any help.

She folded the dear letter into its envelope and hastily put it inside her dress. The force of months of habit made her feel that she must not disappoint her father now. Her mind was not fully working, or she would have known that she could not bear that meeting in her present state, but she felt that she must go and get it done that she might earn the right to be alone in her room and think. She must unders
tand it all before she told any
one a word of the wonderful, awful news, if indeed she could ever trust the precious secret out of her own heart. She called
to Marie that she would come in
a moment and did not need her. Then she moved about gathering the wraps she had but a little while before placed so carefully away. She wondered now at the uselessness of the action. It did not occur to her that she had eaten no dinner and that no one had questioned it. The circumstan
ces that had made this fact pos
sible were unusual. Her father had taken a hasty meal at the club in order to meet some gentlemen and dispatch his business so as to be free for this evening meeting. Marie had been out for the afternoon, not having returned until a few minu
tes before Mr. Rutherford. Rich
ard was away on a business trip, and none of the servants had seen Evelyn come in, as she had a key with her. When no one came down to dinner they supposed that she was in
vited out, and Marie had forgot
ten to mention it, and they did not trouble themselves further.