He heard a clamor of exclamation behind him, partly subdued by the opening and closing and reopening of the apartment door.
“Oh Alice! Alice darling! You got it in the neck that time!” shouted one hilarious feminine voice. “You thought you had someone to pay your gambling debts, didn’t you, darling? But you thought too soon!” And then a perfect avalanche of laughter gurgled after him and echoed down the corridor as he stepped into the elevator and dropped to the level below out of sound of it.
Greg stepped gravely forth from the elevator and out into the night, the hot blood burning in his cheeks.
So that was Alice! His old sweetheart!
And he had almost been caught by her wiles!
If it had not been for her little, brightly painted lips, so like those crude painted lips on the train, if it had not been for the memory of that other girl, so sweet and white and frail against his shoulder, he might have yielded. He recognized suddenly in himself a weakness toward the old Alice, toward what he had thought was her womanhood and beauty. A weakness that was vulnerable to her wiles.
Yet now as he thought of her silly laugh, that had come after she had had a drink or two, of the way she let that cur of a Mortie hover around her with flattery, his heart was hot with anger and shame.
Was there in every man a tendency toward degradation? He had always been doubtful about the story of man’s fall as his mother had taught him from the Bible. He had always felt that Adam was worse than most men, yielding in that easy way to temptation. He had always as a boy felt that if he had been in Adam’s place, and had really seen and talked with God, that he never would have sinned. Adam was just a poor fish, that was all, and not a self-respecting man at all. He had looked upon him as a forefather of whom to be ashamed, and one with whom he had nothing in common. Now he suddenly began to suspect that there were possibilities of sin and weakness in himself, and that somehow, by some power beyond his own, he had been hedged about by thoughts and memories, or by his mother’s prayers, or even by his mother herself as guardian angel, showing him his danger.
Alice! Lovely Alice, with her divorces and her tearful confidences, her delicate, fragile startling beauty! And then Alice with her wine glasses and her men friends and her drinking, smoking women friends! Alice with gambling debts!
So that was what she wanted of him!
Somehow she had learned that he had money? How could she? Well, sooner or later she would. But Alice was not for him.
His business, for the present anyway, was to find that other girl who had been flung across his path when he entered his hometown and now was gone and was perhaps in peril.
So back to the hotel he went.
“A letter in your box, Mr. Sterling,” said the night clerk as Greg passed toward the elevator.
Greg turned with eagerness. A letter? Who could be writing him a letter?
As he went up in the elevator, he studied it. It bore a Virginia postmark. That would be from his friend Steele. What an experience after all these years of loneliness to have a letter! His heart warmed, although he owned to himself that he had hoped just a little that it might be some word from Margaret. But of course that would be absurd. She didn’t know his address, wouldn’t know where to hunt for him unless she went back to the nurse to get it. Of course it was conceivable that she might find the money, suspect that he had put it there, and come back or write back to thank him. But he didn’t remember that she had been told where he stayed. Unless perhaps she had gone back for her things and her landlady had given her the word he left for her. But she was probably gone out of his life forever, he thought sadly, as he fitted his key into the lock and switched on his light. Then he settled down to read his letter.
Dear Brother,
You don’t know how glad I was to get your card bearing your address and to know that we really are to be lasting friends, for now I can find you and write you and perhaps come to see you, and hope to have you visit me sometime. I find I was a bit afraid you would forget the man who traveled with you on the way toward the east, and think of him as a mere passing acquaintance. And to tell you the truth, that would have been a great disappointment, for I found my heart was knit close to yours and I did not want to lose you
But I am especially glad just now that I know where you are, for it happens that I found a letter here when I got home asking me to come to your city and address a Bible conference that is to be held there this very week. They are paying my expenses so that the journey is financially possible for me, and I am as eager as a boy to know if you are to be free and I may hope to see you some of the time while I am there. I expect to arrive Tuesday morning at eight o’clock and am enclosing the address of the Conference where mail will reach me. Perhaps you will let me know what time of day you are at leisure. In any event, I shall call up your hotel as soon as I know where I am to be placed, and find out when we can meet
I have been praying about you every day, and I do long to see you again
Your friend,
Rhoderick Steele
When Greg had read that letter through twice, he sent a telegram to Steele’s train. He had learned that trick on his own trip east, having witnessed the arrival of messages to travelers.
Greatly rejoiced at your coming. Please arrange to be my guest while you stay. i need you and am at your service in any way. Have important matters to talk over with you. Will meet your train. Gregory Sterling.
That night Greg had the first full night’s sleep since Margaret disappeared.
The two young men were like two boys when they met the next morning. Greg had never had a man friend since his high school days, and he was overjoyed to find this man just as thrilling as he had remembered him. So many things and people had been disappointing that he had found himself looking forward to this meeting anxiously, but the anxiety fled in the light of Rhoderick Steele’s smile and strong, warm handclasp.
They went in a taxi to the hotel. Steel called up the committee who had invited him, learned what were his appointments, and then they went down to a late breakfast, for Steele owned up he had only taken a cup of coffee on the train. Greg grinned and said he had wakened too late to eat before he went to the station. So over a good breakfast, the two cemented their friendship again.
“And now,” said Steele as they went back upstairs to the room to talk for a while before he had to go to his appointment, “what is the matter, and why did you need me, brother?”
Greg met his smile with a warm rush of emotion. It was so good to have someone to talk over his problems with, someone who seemed to really care.
“Well, I’ve come to my hometown to find the old house all run down, the neighborhood awful, the surroundings changed utterly; to find my old girl that I used to think I cared for twice divorced and a mess! There isn’t a thing as I hoped it would be, not a thing as it was. Even my enemies over whom I hoped to triumph are bankrupt or dead or moved away, or else so utterly down and out that I wouldn’t have the heart to triumph. And the first night I landed here, I had a wonderful girl flung in my path to care for, saw her from my window over there fall off a bench in the park and lie unconscious. I took her to the hospital and found out ways I could help her, planned to get her a job and put her on her feet again, and then suddenly, through a stupid and very cruel woman who was head nurse, I was misrepresented and she disappeared. I can’t find her anywhere, and I happen to know she is in dreadful need. I’ve got to the place where I don’t know what to do, and I needed to talk it over with someone.”
The eager eyes of the new friend were watching him sympathetically.
“Tell me all about it!” he said, and Greg began at the beginning and told, not omitting his own decision that he must have some legitimate business himself if he were to help the girl, and his own perplexity as to what would help most in this strange state of things that since his return to the world he had found existed everywhere.
The young minister held his peace all through the recital, though his eyes
lighted wonderfully at the suggestion that Greg wanted to be of use in the present world depression in some way that would really help individuals.
But when Greg had finished his story, even through the account of the dinner with Alice Blair and what followed, Rhoderick Steele asked, “Have you prayed about it, brother?”
Greg looked up in surprise, an embarrassed color tinging his cheeks.
“Why no,” he said, looking down at the floor and then lifting his eyes frankly to his new friend’s face. “No, I hadn’t thought of it. To tell the truth, I’m not strong on prayer. I don’t believe I’ve prayed much since my mother died.”
“Let’s pray about it, brother,” said Steele, rising and putting a compelling hand on Greg’s shoulder, and together they knelt while Steele prayed.
“Oh God our Father, we thank Thee that we have such a great Father who knows the end from the beginning, and who loves us enough to hear our faintest cry. And now we come to Thee with a great burden. This matter of the little, lost girl whom Thou has placed upon this my brother’s heart. It is a mystery and a perplexity to us, but we are glad to remember that it is neither a burden nor a mystery nor a perplexity to Thee! Thou hast made her. Thou lovest her. Thou didst die for her, and Thou knowest just where she is now and what she needs. We would lay our burden down at Thy feet and ask Thee to undertake in the matter for us. If she is frightened or troubled, wilt Thou be beside her in an especial way and comfort her. Most of all, wilt Thou relieve his mind about the matter. Help him to trust it all with Thee. It is very plain to me that Thou art for some reason calling to him. Wilt Thou help him to understand that call and see what it is Thou dost want? And this matter of the business he should enter into with the money Thou has just placed in his hands—wilt Thou open that up and make it also very clear to him? Help him to see it from Thy point of view and not the world’s. Help him to understand that it is himself Thou needest, even more than his wealth. Let Thy Spirit draw his spirit to accept Thy Son as his personal Savior, so that he may know he is saved, may understand that he is born again, and has a right to claim Thy resurrection power and life in whatever he shall try to do for Thee.
“And Lord, we would not forget to pray for that poor soul who has seemingly sold herself to the world. Let Thy Spirit go after her also and strive with her if so be that she, too, may see Jesus, accept His cleansing blood, and be saved eternally. But grant, dear Lord, that she may have no power to harm my brother Gregory, nor to deceive him nor lure him into the ways of this world. Establish him upon a Rock, dear Lord, the Rock Christ Jesus, so that he cannot be moved though the powers of hell be turned against him.
“And now about this little, lost girl, again, dear Lord. Help us to rest the matter entirely with Thee, and not be troubled, but if it be Thy will, help Gregory to find her and be the means of relieving her necessity. We ask nothing that is not according to Thy will, but we know that Thou hast put her in Gregory’s path through no action of his own, and therefore we feel that Thou dost mean him to help her in some way. So Lord, we leave it all with Thee, and we ask Thee to guide us through the day in every minutest action, and help us not to go a step of our own without looking to Thee. We ask it in the name of Jesus who died for us and for those for whom we are praying.”
There were tears in Greg’s eyes when he rose from his knees, and it was a minute or two before he could control his voice to speak.
“I wish I knew God like that!” he said at last.
“You may, dear brother! I have no special influence in heavenly courts more than you can have. It is only through my Jesus who took my sins upon Himself that I dare ask that way. He died for you, too. Will you take Him for your Savior, too?”
Greg stood at the window, staring out but seeing nothing, thinking very hard, thinking back to the dying man in the train.
“I don’t know how to go about it,” he said at last in a husky voice.
“Do you believe on Him?”
“My mother brought me up to that belief,” he answered hesitantly. “I accepted it more or less tacitly, but I’ve never done anything about it.”
“Well, then do something. There’s only one thing to do. Definitely accept Christ as your personal Savior. You don’t have to go into questions of intellectual belief and doubts. Just take Him at His word by a deliberate act. Kneel down and tell Him so, and then go out believing that you are saved because He said you were if you believe on Him. The moment you believe, you are born again and have a right to come to God through your Savior, Christ Jesus, and talk to him as we have just been doing. Will you take Him?”
“I will!” said Greg solemnly.
“Then let’s tell Him so,” said Rhoderick Steele, and down they both knelt again. So Rhoderick brought Him to the throne and introduced him as it were, and Greg found feeble voice in a few halting words to confirm the simple, sweet act that made him a new creature in Christ Jesus.
When they rose again, Rhoderick Steele took his hand in a warm grasp, and his own eyes matched Greg’s, full of joyful tears.
“Now we are brothers indeed, Gregory!” said Steele. “I rejoice that I was allowed to see this day, and to be with you when you did this most important act of your whole life. I wouldn’t have missed it for any pleasure I’ve ever known.”
Steele’s face shone as he put his arm around Greg’s shoulders, and Greg told shyly how much this new friendship meant to him.
Suddenly the two discovered that it was getting late and almost time for Steele’s address at the conference hall, and they hurried away, Greg feeling for the first time in years that he had a real part in things worthwhile, a real new interest. He was half afraid to look the fact in the face that he had just taken Christ for his Savior and pledged himself to a new order of things, yet shyly glad, thrilling every time he thought of it.
So Gregory Sterling went to the first Bible Conference of his life and heard his friend speak.
But the first words he uttered so gripped Greg’s attention that he almost forgot their speaker in amazement over what he was saying. For the man was answering authoritatively the question that had puzzled Greg in the wilderness, on his trip east, and increasingly since he had been living in the city.
“What’s wrong with the world?” began Steele. “There are just four things wrong with the world today, four things that are out of place. First, the Jews are out of place. They belong in Palestine according to God’s covenant, and they are scattered over the world because of their sin of unbelief. Second, the church is out of place. She belongs in heaven with her Lord Jesus Christ, and she is settled down comfortably in this world. Third, the devil is out of place. He should be in the lake of fire, and he is the ruling sovereign of this world. Although he is a defeated ruler, he is still in office, ruling politics, economics, religion, every phase of life in the world.
Fourth, the Lord Jesus Christ is out of place. He has defeated Satan as sovereign and should be here, King of the earth, but he is still seated on His Father’s throne, waiting for His inauguration day. It will surely come! And at about the same time, the other three wrongs will be righted.”
With a keen understanding born of eagerness, Greg followed the explanation of Steele’s astounding statements. And as he listened, something within him seemed to relax. The prodding restless questioning of why, why, why? was satisfied at last. The fact of a majestic spirit ruling the world in opposition to God and His righteousness was sufficient reason for all the turmoil in the world. It gave Greg a strange sense of peace to realize that instead of seething with indignation over injustice, one must expect to take it for granted and leave with God the responsibility of doing away with it.
Far into the night they sat and talked, and Greg was so stirred that he could scarcely bear to stop talking and go to bed.
It was a precious experience, followed by brief midnight worship together of the two young men, reading from the Word and praying. How Greg treasured the thought of it after his friend was gone.
And when
Steele was finally sleeping by his side, Greg lay there thinking. Oh, if he had only known all this in his wilderness home! How it would have helped him through hard days and lonely nights and discouragements and disappointments! And then came the thought, would he have stayed there fighting for land and money and a chance to triumph over enemies and win success in the world when there was all this wonderful news to tell the world, and the world didn’t know it? Certainly he would have had to go and tell. He meant to do that now, just as soon as he knew enough about it all to make it clear to others. Just where he would begin he didn’t know, but he was ready to yield his life to God’s guidance.
Then he thought of Margaret and wondered if she knew.
And so, with a prayer for Margaret, he fell asleep.
Chapter 12
Rhoderick Steele had stayed three days, and Gregory Sterling learned much and found out how to learn more. In the bookcase of his hotel room was a row of books that his friend had said would be helpful to him: a big concordance lay on his table beside his Scofield Bible, a commentary simple and clear of construction was at the other end, and several little papers and pamphlets that Greg had acquired at the Bible conference were scatted around the room.
Greg had been introduced to a bookstore where such books could be found, and he had secretly sent down to his friend’s Virginia address every book he heard him speak of wistfully as one he wanted to get someday.
But Rhoderick Steele’s work was done at the conference, and he had to get back to his church.
Greg couldn’t bear to see him go. He begged him to stay another week and teach him, offered to send down a man to take his place, but Steele said there were some sick people in his parish whom he must see, and he knew his duty called him home.
He in turn tried to take Greg home with him, but Greg shook his head gravely.
THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE Page 14