Sorrow and wrong are pangs of a new birth;All we who suffer bleed for one another;
No life may live alone, but all in all;
We lie within the tomb of our dead selves, Waiting till One command us to arise.Hon.Boden Noel.
Knowing that Erica would have a very anxious afternoon, Charles Osmond gave up his brief midday rest, snatched a hasty lunch at a third-rate restaurant, finished his parish visits sooner than usual, and reached the little house in Guilford Terrace in time to share the worst part of her waiting.He found her hard at work as usual, her table strewn with papers and books of reference.
Raeburn had purposely left her some work to do for him which he knew would fully occupy her; but the mere fact that she knew he had done it on purpose to engross her mind with other matters entirely prevented her from giving it her full attention.She had never felt more thankful to see Charles Osmond than at that moment.
"When your whole heart and mind are in Hyde Park, how are you to drag them back to what some vindictive old early Father said about the eternity of punishment?" she exclaimed, with a smile, which very thinly disguised her consuming anxiety.
They sat down near the open window, Erica taking possession of that side which commanded the view of the entrance of the cul-de-sac.
Charles Osmond did not speak for a minute or two, but sat watching her, trying to realize to himself what such anxiety as hers must be.She was evidently determined to keep outwardly calm, not to let her fears gain undue power over her; but she could not conceal the nervous trembling which beset her at every sound of wheels in the quiet square, nor did she know that in her brave eyes there lurked the most visible manifestation possible of haggard, anxious waiting.She sat with her watch in her hand, the little watch that Eric Haeberlein had given her when she was almost a child, and which, even in the days of their greatest poverty, her father had never allowed her to part with.What strange hours it had often measured for her.Age-long hours of grief, weary days of illness and pain, times of eager expectation, times of sickening anxiety, times of mental conflict, of baffling questions and perplexities.
How the hands seemed to creep on this afternoon, at times almost to stand still.
"Now, I suppose if you were in my case you would pray," said Erica, raising her eyes to Charles Osmond."It must be a relief, but yet, when you come to analyze it, it is most illogical a fearful waste of time.If there is a God who works by fixed laws, and who sees the whole maze of every one's life before hand, then the particular time and manner of my father's death must be already appointed, and no prayer of mine that he may come safely through this afternoon's danger can be of the least avail.Besides, if a God could be turned round from His original purpose by human wills and much speaking, I hardly think He would be worth believing in.""You are taking the lowest view of prayer mere petition; but even that, I think, is set on its right footing as soon as we grasp the true conception of the ideal father.Do you mean to say that, because your father's rules were unwavering and his day's work marked out beforehand, he did not like you to come to him when you were a little child, with all your wishes and longings and requests, even though they were sometimes childish and often impossible to gratify? Would he have been better pleased if you had shut up everything in your own heart, and never of your own accord told him anything about your babyish plans and wants?""Still, prayer seems to me a waste of time," said Erica.
"What! If it brings you a talk with your Father? If it is a relief to you and a pleasure because a sign of trust and love to Him? But in one way I entirely agree with you, unless it is spontaneous it is not only useless but harmful.Imagine a child forced to talk to its father.And this seems to me the truest defense of prayer; to the 'natural man' it always will seem foolishness, to the 'spiritual man' to one who has recognized the All-Father it is the absolute necessity of life.And I think by degrees one passes from eager petition for personal and physical good things into the truer and more Christlike spirit of prayer.
'These are my fears, these are my wishes, but not my will but Thine be done.' Shakespeare had got hold of a grand truth, it seems to me, when he said:
