Story of Chester Lawrence

CHAPTER XXI.

Thomas Strong was a guest at Piney Ridge Cot­tage. It had tak­en him a full year to get over the ef­fects of that dread­ful sea dis­as­ter where­in a son, a daugh­ter, and a dear friend had been lost, and to fi­nal­ly make his way west­ward to the peo­ple to whom both son and daugh­ter had be­longed. He had ar­rived dur­ing ap­ple-​blos­som time, and the white-​haired, sad-​faced man who seemed to have had all mor­tal­ity burned from him by fiery tri­als, was kind­ly re­ceived by Mr. El­ston, his daugh­ter Ju­lia and her hus­band, Bish­op Glen Cur­tis. These lis­tened to his strange sto­ry, and were pro­found­ly moved by its trag­ic end­ing. They urged him to re­main with them, Ju­lia giv­ing him the room on the at­tic floor which pre­vi­ous­ly was hers. He was grate­ful for all these kind­ness­es, say­ing he would be pleased to vis­it with them for a time.

Out un­der the ap­ple trees in the grow­ing or­chard Hugh El­ston made for their guest a seat, where dur­ing the day he would sit as one alone, lis­ten­ing and wait­ing here in this spot away from the noise and traf­fic of the world for a fi­nal mes­sage which the God of the Uni­verse might send him. As far as his strength would al­low, he liked to walk along the coun­try roads, which now ex­tend­ed for many miles from Piney Ridge, and chat with the neigh­bors about the coun­try and its prospects. He al­so made some mi­nor ex­cur­sions up the hill­sides, but in this di­rec­tion he could not go far. Fre­quent­ly he stopped to rest by the en­closed graves, where he sat on the grass, and with hands on cane, looked won­der­ing­ly at the two graves, side by side.

But whis­pered mes­sages from out the blue or storms of heav­en did not come to this man. Nei­ther were there an­gels sent to tell him what to do; but the Lord had one more thing--sim­ple in­deed--to bear up­on the re­luc­tant heart of Thomas Strong.

In the lit­tle at­tic room which Ju­lia had turned over to her guest were many books, pa­pers, and mag­azines. She had told him that ev­ery­thing in the room was at his ser­vice, and so the vis­itor made good use of the kind of­fer. One day he found a small book which had the name An­na Lawrence--Chester's moth­er--writ­ten on the fly-​leaf. Cu­ri­ous­ly turn­ing over the pages of the vol­ume, which was sim­ply a school book of the kind he re­mem­bered in his youth, he found be­tween the leaves an old let­ter. He un­fold­ed the deeply creased sheets, looked at the strange hand­writ­ing, saw that it was dat­ed thir­ty years ago, and ad­dressed to “Miss An­na Lawrence” and signed by a name un­known to him. There could no harm come from read­ing this mes­sage from the past, so he drew his chair up to the win­dow, and read:

"_Dear Friend An­na_:

"It is three months now since I left home for this mis­sion, and not hav­ing heard any­thing yet from you, I thought a few lines from me might help you get start­ed in the let­ter-​writ­ing di­rec­tion. I am en­joy­ing my mis­sion very much, which per­haps you can­not un­der­stand, but it is true, nev­er­the­less. I came to this place yes­ter­day and have al­ready de­liv­ered some tracts. Most of the peo­ple are against us, spe­cial­ly is this the case with preach­ers. They get af­ter us rough­ly. My com­pan­ion isn't as old as I am, and good­ness knows, I'm young and green enough; but we're both study­ing hard, and the Lord is with us, which, af­ter all, is our chief con­cern.

"I hope you are get­ting along at school. Do you re­mem­ber the fun we had last va­ca­tion? I heard that our friend Sue is about to be mar­ried, but I sup­pose you know all about that.

"But I must tell you about some­thing that hap­pened to us be­fore com­ing here. It was in a place not far from Chica­go, and my com­pan­ion and I were tract­ing as usu­al. I took one side of the street and he took the oth­er. Well, along about noon when it was time we should quit, my com­pan­ion didn't make his ap­pear­ance. I wait­ed a long time, then crossed the street to look for him. The weath­er was warm and peo­ple were most­ly out of doors in the shade. I heard what sound­ed like a big dis­cus­sion on a porch be­hind some vines. I went up, and sure enough, there was my com­pan­ion and an­oth­er young fel­low hav­ing it out in great shape. The young man sat in his shirt sleeves on a ta­ble, and the way he was giv­ing it to that poor friend of mine was a cau­tion. I learned that the young fel­low was study­ing for the min­istry, and be­cause of that, he con­sid­ered him­self just the per­son to give it good and hard to a 'Mor­mon' mis­sion­ary.

"Well, the fel­low sat there on the ta­ble, his legs swing­ing as if he didn't care a--rap. There was a Bible and some oth­er books on the ta­ble, but they had got be­yond the use of books. The young fel­low ridiculed the Prophet, poked fun at his rev­ela­tions, and said the 'Mor­mons' were a bad lot al­to­geth­er. Said they de­served to be driv­en from de­cent so­ci­ety in­to the desert as they had been. He kept it up like that, and then he said some­thing odd. 'I wouldn't have your re­li­gion at any price,' he said. 'Get out with you.'

"My com­pan­ion sat there, not say­ing a word. I saw the tears come in­to his eyes. He wiped them away hur­ried­ly. Then his face be­came pale, and it seemed to me that a light ac­tu­al­ly shone from it. As I told you, he is just a boy, and as I looked on him then, I thought of the boy prophet, and what my fa­ther has told me so of­ten about him. Well, when the fel­low got through with his abuse, and jumped from the ta­ble as if we were dis­missed, my com­pan­ion arose and in a voice won­der­ful­ly gen­tle yet vi­brant with pow­er, said:

"'Yes, we will go, but not be­fore I tell you this: You know not what you say, there­fore, you are for­giv­en, as far as I am con­cerned. My par­ents were driv­en from this state. All they had was de­stroyed by mobs. My moth­er died on the plains and her body lies there to this day. All that mor­tal man can suf­fer and live my peo­ple have suf­fered, and all for the sake of the truth, the gospel that I have brought to you this day, and which you so scorn­ful­ly re­ject. And now I tell you in the name of the Lord, some day you will re­ceive this gospel--but not un­til you have paid for it, and paid for it dear­ly. Like the mer­chant­man in the para­ble, _all that you have_ will you pay for this Pearl of Great Price! Good day, sir.'

“We both left him stand­ing some­what dazed, but I tell you--”

The let­ter dropped to Thomas Strong's knee, as he looked up and out at the clos­ing day. He arose, went to the glass door which opened on to the lit­tle porch, stepped out in­to the air that he might breathe eas­ier. What he saw was not Old Thun­der Moun­tain, or the wide ex­tent of the Flat, dim now in the twi­light, but a vine-​en­closed porch and the pale, pe­cu­liar face of a boy telling him the words he had just read. * * * * There had been oth­er boy prophets be­sides the first great one; and yes, oh Great God, one old, bro­ken man had paid the price.

The vines on the up­per porch of Piney Ridge Cot­tage now al­so formed a cov­er, and in their shad­ow Thomas Strong kneeled and prayed as he had nev­er prayed be­fore.

An hour lat­er, Ju­lia, won­der­ing what their guest was do­ing in his room so long with­out a light, called to him soft­ly at the foot of the stairs.

“Yes,” he replied, as if he did not re­al­ize for the mo­ment who was call­ing, “I'm com­ing--I'm com­ing now.”