Ariel Custer (Musaicum Romance Classics). Grace Livingston Hill
if she were a creature from another world. “Do you really believe that, that God is like that? Caring for people in little things?”
“Why, surely,” said Ariel, lifting clear eyes without a shade of doubt to his questioning ones. “Don’t you?”
“If I did, it would make a whole lifetime’s difference with me,” and there was a wistfulness about his tone that struck deep into the girl’s heart.
“I’m sorry you don’t,” said the girl simply. “I don’t know what I’d do without Him. I’ve always known He was that way. It isn’t just that I believe it’s so; I know it’s so. Why, He’s taken care of me!”
The leather doors swung open, and a little woman with hair tinged with gray under a small black hat and wearing a shining silver badge entered, stood an instant taking a keen survey of the room, then came swiftly to their table. Judson Granniss arose with a quick deference and drew back a chair for her.
“Miss Darcy, this is Miss Custer,” he said, and Ariel liked the easy gravity of his speech.
Miss Darcy gave Ariel one swift, searching glance and smiled with a softening of the lines of eyes and mouth. “Judson says you need my help, dear,” she said crisply and sat down.
“Now you’ll take a cup of tea with us,” said Granniss. “Or would you rather have coffee?”
“Just a little tea if you have it there, Jud. I mustn’t stay but a minute. There’s another train coming in shortly now, and I’m due outside. I just wanted to make sure what this girl needed.”
She turned to Ariel and asked a few questions. “Well,” she said when she was satisfied, “I have to meet the eight thirty-five and take a girl to Fifty-Second Street. Suppose you wait and go with me. We’ll take a taxi, and I can leave you at the club and introduce you so you won’t have any more trouble. Jud, you’re going home on the eight five, I suppose? Well, you bring her in to my desk, and she can sit there till I come if I’m away. Sorry I have to keep you waiting, dear. You look as if you needed a good night’s rest, but it won’t be long now. You sure you don’t need to see a doctor? Any bad bruises, do you think? You’ll feel stiff and sore in the morning likely. Better rest late. Meantime, Jud, you say you heard of a position she might be able to get. Suppose you phone me in the morning, and I’ll show her the way before I go out home. Here’s my morning number. Say about eight o’clock if you can find out early in the morning.”
“I may be able to see the man tonight,” said Granniss.
“So much the better. You can reach me here after half past nine.”
Miss Darcy vanished, and the man and girl finished their repast slowly. It did not seem to them that they were new acquaintances, and now that the agent had given a sort of background to their introduction, Ariel felt much better about their irregular meeting.
It was evident that the young man was in no hurry to conclude the little meal. He sat watching Ariel for a minute or two, almost as if he were not hearing the eager thanks she was uttering.
“Do you know,” he said, leaning over a bit toward her and speaking in that low, confidential tone again, “I’m awfully interested in what you said awhile ago. You’re somehow different from any girl I ever met before. I wish you’d tell me what makes you so sure you are being taken care of by God. It’s always seemed to me He didn’t care a hang what became of us all, if there is any God.”
“Oh, please don’t speak that way,” said Ariel, as if his words had hurt her. “It’s just because you don’t know Him. I’m sure it is. You couldn’t be uncertain about it if you did. Why, He’s my best Friend, my Savior, my Guide, my Companion. I’m certain because I know Him, that’s all. It’s just like knowing people, only more so. And there isn’t any other way to find out but just to get to know Him.”
Granniss looked puzzled, hopeless, as if her words meant nothing to him, as if she were a mere child babbling. There was a tinge of disappointment in his eagerness, as if he saw from her words that after all it was just as he expected, a matter of tradition, stock phrases that she had been taught, nothing experimentally practical.
“How could one get to know a God, a Supreme Being away off in His heaven? How could one know?”
“Why, of course it’s a spiritual thing,” said Ariel gravely. “‘God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ It isn’t a material thing. But then so are our earthly friendships: you can’t take hold of what it is that makes us care for one another. It’s something outside the flesh. We can express some of it with a smile, a glance of the eye, but friendship is beyond that; it is deeper, more intangible spiritual. It is how we tell our mother loves us even when she is not near to help us. We are sure because we’ve tried her. We have known her love. We’ve tested it. We’ve been one with her in our daily life. My father used to say there was really only one way to get rid of doubts about God and that was the Bible way. ‘If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God’s just take Him at His word and do His will, you know, and try Him. Put Him to the test.”
The young man looked at her as if she spoke a foreign tongue.
“You mean to say that by doing certain things you come to know an invisible Being?”
“Doing His will. Trying to please Him. Isn’t that the way we get to know other people? Study what they like, be much in their company, do what they want us to do? Isn’t that a test of even an earthly friendship, whether we are willing to do what they want us to do?”
“But how could you possibly know what God wanted you to do? I should say that was beating round the bush. That would be as impossible as knowing Him.”
“Why, it’s all written down in His Book. He’s told us there everything He wants. He told us to search it, to know it by heart, to have it on our tongues that we might observe to do it, because it was the way of eternal life.”
“Do you mean to say that you still believe in the Bible?”
“Oh, of course,” said Ariel. “One has to if he wants to know God. There isn’t any other way to find out His will. Of course I know the world is trying to prove that the Bible is just like any other book, but that is so silly to one who knows it, and has found God through it. It wouldn’t make any difference to me how much people tried to prove scientifically that I had never had a mother who loved me. They might bring all the arguments and theories in the world and it wouldn’t make any difference, because I knew her. I have felt her love. She is mine forever! But I’m talking just like a preacher, and aren’t you going to miss your train, Mr. Granniss? I’ve kept you too long!”
Granniss gave a quick glance at his watch and exclaimed, “Yes, I must go. I had no idea the time had gone by so swiftly. I mustn’t miss that train, for I want to find out about that place for you tonight if I can. But I hope you’ll let me call on you when you get located. I’d like to talk more with you about this. I never heard anybody talk this way before. It sounds like the real thing, only it’s too good to be true.”
He summoned the waiter, gathered up his coat and hat and Ariel’s bundle, and hurried her out to Miss Darcy’s desk. He had only a moment to take his leave, and he found a strange reluctance to go.
“I really want to talk some more about this,” he said as he left her. “May I come and see you?”
“Why, surely, if I stay here,” she said and flashed him a lovely smile.
“I’ll do my best to have you stay here,” he said and, lifting his hat, was gone.
She watched him stride away into the throng of train goers and suddenly felt very much alone. How well acquainted they had become in a few short hours. How strange that he should have stepped out of the crowds to care for her, when it might have been any one of the others who were passing, who would never have taken a thought but to set her on her feet and hurry away. But he, how kind he had been! She had a conviction that he had been on his way home by an earlier train