My life at Alliston Hall was a very happy one. Day after day went by without any care or anxiety, and everyone was so kind to me that I could not feel lonely or homeless any longer.
The more I knew of Evelyn Trafford the more I loved her. In spite of her light, careless way of talking, there was a great deal of genuine kind feeling in her, and I am sure she did all in her power to make me happy. I never once remember, the whole time I was with her, feeling uncomfortable on account of my position in the house. Both Sir William and Evelyn treated me as if I were one of the family, and I received nothing but kindness from their numerous visitors and friends. Lady Eldridge was the only exception. She, whenever she made her appearance at Alliston Hall, thought it her duty to keep me fully aware who she, Lady Eldridge, was, and who I, May Lindsay, was, and of the immense and immeasurable distance between us.
The guests at Alliston Hall did not pay very long visits, so I had constant change and variety in my life, and heard and saw a great deal more of the outer world than in our quiet country home.
And yet, although everything around me was so pleasant, and though everyone was so kind to me, I had not been many months at Alliston Hall before I began to feel restless and unhappy. For I felt that I was not walking so closely with God as I had done before. I had become cold and careless, rising late in the morning and hurrying over my prayers, and then going through the day in an idle, careless spirit, hardly ever thinking of my Lord or trying to please Him.
For some time this did not make me at all unhappy. I had so much to think of, and there were so many pleasant visitors staying in the house, and so many books to be read, and there was so much to be done to amuse Evelyn and to make the days pass happily for her, that I gave myself no time to think about the state of my soul. But the visitors left and we were quiet again, and then I felt an empty, dissatisfied feeling in my heart, which I cannot put into words. My conscience was very busy now, and brought to my recollection all my neglect of my best and dearest Friend, all my coldness and indifference to Him. I would have given anything to feel His presence as in times past; but He seemed far away from me, and I felt too cold even to pray to Him. But though I had so terribly forgotten Him, my Lord still remembered me.
It was Sunday afternoon. Evelyn had fallen asleep on the sofa, and I went out into the garden till she awoke. There had been showers all the morning, but now the sun was shining brightly, and the raindrops were sparkling like diamonds on the grass.
I went along one of the grassy terraces, and turned down a quiet path, shut in by evergreens, which led by a gentle descent clown to the sea. This was my favorite walk, and I always chose it when I came out alone. There were several seats on this path, so situated as to catch a peep of the sea through the shrubs and trees, which grew down to its very edge.
As I turned a corner in this winding path, I suddenly came upon Miss Lilla Irvine, sitting upon one of the seats reading her Bible. I apologized for disturbing her, and was going to turn back, when she asked me if I would not stay a little and read with her. “You and I love the same Lord, May,” she said; “I know we do, and I think it would help us to talk together of Him sometimes; at least,” she added, “I am sure it would help me.”
“Oh, Miss Irvine,” I said, as I sat down beside her, “if you only knew—”
“If I only knew what?” she said, gently.
“If you only knew how careless I have been lately; I have hardly thought about Him at all.”
“What has been the matter, May?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered; “I think everything has been too smooth and nice lately; somehow, it is easier to do right when the road is rather rough; don’t you think it is, Miss Irvine?”
“Yes,” she said; “when things go wrong, and all seems against us, we are driven to prayer, May—we feel we must pray then; but we ought not to need driving into our dear Lord’s presence.”
“Oh no,” I said; “I know we ought not.”
“And oh, May,” she said, earnestly, “if we get self-confident, and leave off prayer, we shall soon have a fall; we are not safe for a single moment if we are not strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might. You will be having a fall if you do not come back to Him, May.”
“I wish I could come back, Miss Irvine,” I said, “but it is easier to get wrong than to get right again. I got up this morning rather earlier, and tried to pray, but I could not fix my thoughts on what I was saying; all sorts of things kept coming into my mind, and I gave it up at last.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know what that is; heart answers to heart. I have often found it so when I have left God, and have been pleasing myself, I have lost the power to pray.”
“How is it, Miss Irvine?” I asked.
“I think,” she said, “that the Holy Spirit has been grieved, and without His help we cannot pray.”
“Then what do you think I should do?” I asked.
“I think,” she said, “you should go back to the Lord, just in the same spirit in which you first came to Him, Go to Him, and ask Him to receive you, to take away all the sin which is separating you from Him, and to give you the comfort of His presence again. And then I think you should especially pray that you may once more have the help of the Holy Spirit. I like that old hymn so much:
“Return, O Holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins which made Thee mourn,
And drove Thee from my breast.
So shall my walk be close with God,
Calm and serene my frame;
So purer light shall mark the road
That leads me to the Lamb.”
“Will you not go back to Him at once, May?” she said, laying her hand upon mine.
“Oh, Miss Irvine, I will; indeed I will,” I said.
“Go now, dear,” she said.
So I left her sitting there, and went on, down the winding, shady path to the sea. It was a quiet, solitary place. The only sounds that were to be heard were the splashing of the waves upon the rocks, and the cries of the white seabirds as they flew backwards and forwards on the little rocky islands, which lay about half a mile from the shore.
I knelt down in a sheltered corner, and felt myself alone with God. I do not think that I have ever realized the Lord’s presence more than at that moment. And then I confessed it all to Him, all my coldness, all my carelessness, all my neglect of prayer, all my indifference to Him. I came back to Him, and asked Him to receive me, and to give me the light of His countenance again. And then, as Miss Irvine had advised me, I prayed very earnestly for the Holy Spirit, pleading that promise, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?”
Oh, how thankful I felt that Miss Irvine had spoken to me that afternoon! I am sure that God put it into her heart to do so.
When I went back to the house I found her still sitting in the same place, and she said, as she took hold of my arm to walk home with me: “Is it all right, dear?”
“Yes, Miss Irvine, I hope so. I have asked Him to forgive me, and I think He has.”
“Yes,” she said, “if you have asked Him I am sure He has. He is always ready to forgive us, if we will only go to Him. If we only realized how much He loves us, May, and how much it grieves Him when we are cold and heartless to Him, I think we should be more careful never to leave Him.”
As I look back upon that part of my life which was spent in Alliston Hall, I cannot be too thankful that God gave me the friendship of Miss Lilla Irvine. I found in her a true friend, one in whom I could confide all my troubles and anxieties, and one who was ever ready to sympathize with me, and to advise me. Her visits, to my great joy, were very long ones. At the time of which I am now writing she spent several months at her cousin’s house, so that I had many opportunities of seeing her, and of learning to love her more and more.
As Christmas time drew near the good sisters at Branston Manor House wrote to ask me to spend Christmas with them, and Sir William most kindly gave me a fortnight’s holiday. Evelyn was very loth to part with me, and told me she would be dreadfully dull whilst I was away. But Sir William would not hear of my refusing the invitation, and promised to do his best to make up for my absence.
“Oh dear, oh dear, it will be a long fortnight” Evelyn said, the night before I left. “You shouldn’t be so nice, May; if you were only a little more disagreeable, just the smallest degree more like the brown alpaca, I should not miss you half so much!”
“Very well,” I said, laughing, “I will come back provided with spectacles, and a brown alpaca dress, and be as prim and precise as you please, and the I suppose I shall get plenty of holidays! Not that I want holidays,” I said, in a different tone, as I noticed the troubled expression on her face, “I was only joking, dear Evelyn; my whole life here is a holiday —I am very, very happy, you are all so good to me.”
“Just as if we could help being good to you, May,” she said; “I told you that I loved you at first sight, and always should love you, and I am sure I do. And I do hope you will enjoy being with your little sister, only you must be sure to come back as soon as they can spare you.”
It was six months since I had seen Maggie, and my heart beat very fast as the train drew up at Branston Station, and my little sister came forward to meet me. She had grown very much since I had seen her last, but she was the same dear, simple-minded child as when I had left her, and was just as loving and true.
Old John was waiting for us with the two luxurious horses, and we drove to the Manor House at the usual measured pace.
It was quite touching to see the welcome which the three kind sisters gave me. If I had been their own child they could not have seemed more glad to see me. Miss Jane, especially, took me under her wing from the moment that I entered the house, and it would indeed have been my own fault if I had not spent a pleasant Christmas time at Branston Hall.
But what I enjoyed, perhaps, more than anything else, was hearing Mr. Claremont’s sermons. There was something in his plain, practical way of preaching, which went direct to my heart, and I always came away from hearing one of his sermons feeling thoroughly dissatisfied with myself, which perhaps, after all is the best proof how very useful they were to me.
On the last Sunday of the year, especially, I felt that indeed there was a message for me. In both his sermons that day Mr. Claremont spoke of the year that was past, gone forever, with all its shortcomings and sins, all its neglected opportunities, all its wasted moments. In the evening his sermon was addressed more especially to the unsaved in the congregation, urging such not to let the last moments of the old year pass away until they had been to the fountain, Christ Jesus, the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and had washed their sin-stained souls till they were whiter than snow.
But in the morning Mr. Claremont spoke to Christians, to God’s own children. He spoke of the sins of which we Christians had been guilty during the past year, and above all of our sins of omission. He told us that God had given to each of us a special work to do for Him, and that if we did not do it the work would be left undone. And then he asked us whether all those who lived in the house with us were amongst the saved. Were there any, was there one, with whom we spoke day by day, and whom we loved perhaps very much, and yet whom we knew to be still outside the refuge, still unsaved?
And then Mr. Claremont pleaded with us, if this was the case, to give ourselves no rest until that one was safe in Christ, but to speak to him about his soul, him, and, whenever we had an opportunity, to plead with and to urge him to come to Jesus before it was too late.
“Another year gone, just gone, and your loved ones what if this new year should be still unsaved. Oh, their last! What if next New Year’s Day the opportunity should be over, and they should be gone! Up, children of God, up and be doing, let not their blood be on your heads. Oh, if they should come up to you at the last day, and say, with bitter reproaches, ‘Why did you not warn us? If you really believed, knew that this was before us, why did you not give yourselves no rest, day nor night, until you knew that we were saved from it? Oh, why not?’ What will you say to them then? Friends, be up and doing, for the night cometh when no man can work.”
As Mr. Claremont spoke one face was ever in my mind’s eye, one form was ever before me. It was Evelyn Trafford, my own dear little Evelyn, of whom I thought. I knew she was not safe. Loving and amiable and sweet tempered as she was, I knew that she cared nothing for the Lord I loved. She had been brought up entirely for this world, and she had never been taught to think of things above.
And yet what could I do for her? I had sometimes tried to get a word in, edgewise as it were, for my Master, but it was very difficult, and it never seemed to do any good.
Sometimes I thought it did harm. If she was alone with me she turned the subject so quickly, and called me precise and particular, and did not seem so much at her ease with me afterward. And if anyone else came into the room, she would begin to talk almost scoffingly of all that I loved and reverenced, as if she were determined to show me how little she cared for it all. And so I was beginning to think that it was wiser to be quiet and to say nothing.
Yet this sermon had made me uneasy. If Evelyn, my dear Evelyn, should die unsaved, and I had never once really spoken to her about her soul’s interests, oh, how I should blame myself! And yet, when could I do it? How could I begin the subject?
I met Mr. Claremont the next day, as I was going to see one of Miss Jane’s sick people, and I ventured to tell him how much I had felt his sermon.
“But does it not require very great wisdom in speaking to others?” I asked.
“Undoubtedly,” he said; “there is a time to speak, and a time to keep silence.”
“But with me, Mr. Claremont,” I said, “it always seems the time to keep silence.”
“Have you been looking out for an opportunity?” he said; “ready to speak and longing to speak, whenever and as soon as God shall give you one?”
“Hardly that,” I said; “I have often thought I ought to speak, but have always persuaded myself that it was not the right time to do it.”
“Ah” he said; “perhaps if you look carefully within, Miss Lindsay, you will find that at the bottom of it all there has been a little cowardice, a little unwillingness to be brave for the Master’s sake—please forgive me for saying so—but I have often found it so myself. Often, when I have neglected speaking to others about their souls, I have found that it was not from want of opportunity, but from want of courage to use the opportunities that were given me.”
“Yes,” I said, “I believe you are right.”
“Pray for opportunities to be given you, be on the lookout for opportunities, and use the opportunities as soon as ever they occur, and you will, I am sure, Miss Lindsay, find that there is indeed a time to speak, as well as a time to be silent.”