16. After The Meeting
On the Wednesday evening following Mark's reception of his call to go to Texas and his talk with Lathers, he would fain see Roxy. It was the evening of the prayer meeting, and if he had been prone to neglect it, he would have found Roxy nowhere else. But he had no inclination in his present state of feeling to go away from the meeting.
The brethren had heard of the call to the mission, and most touching prayers were offered for his welfare and success. Mark himself prayed with deep and genuine pathos. Toward the last the minister called on Roxy to pray, and she who had been born full of the missionary spirit, who would have rejoiced to lay down her life for the lost sheep in the wilderness, who had been the source of most of Mark's inspiration, began to pray, not with her accustomed directness and fervor, but with a faltering voice. Twonnet's fortune-telling had awakened in Roxy a sense of the strength of her own feeling for Mark, and with this came a maidenly delicacy. She faltered, hesitated, picked her words, prayed in platitudes, until at last, after mentioning Mark only in the most general way, she proceeded to pray for those to whom he was sent. All the force of her strong nature found utterance in the cry of the lost, and when she ceased everybody was weeping. And when the brethren and sisters rose from their knees, the old school master in the amen corner started to sing :
" From Greenland's icy mountains; "
and as everybody sang it with feeling, Mark felt ashamed that he should ever have thought of any other life than that of a missionary. It were better to die of malarial fever amons; the rowdies and rattlesnakes of the Brazos River, than to live a thousand years in ease and plenfy. And when at the close of the meeting the military notes of " Am I a Soldier of the Cross ? " resounded through the old meeting-house, Mark regretted that so much time would intervene before he could reach the field of battle.
In this state of enthusiasm he walked home with Roxy. And this enthusiasm lifted him almost to the height of Roxy's perpetual exaltation. They talked of that in which they both were interested, and is it strange that they were drawn the one to the other by their community of feeling? Mark did not even now distrust himself; he did not once imagine that there was any difference between his flush of zeal, and the life-long glow of eager unselfishness and devoutness that was the very essence of the character of Roxy. He could not distinguish between himself thin comet that he was, renewing his ever-waning heat, first by the fire of this sun and then by the radiance of that and Roxy, the ever-burning fixed star whose fire of worship and charity was within herself. But taking himself at the estimate she put upon him, he rejoiced in having a friend worthy to sympathize with him, and when he parted with her, he pressed Roxy's hand and said:
"Oh, Roxy! if you were only going with me! You make me brave. I am better when I am with you.
Think of the good we might do together. Some day I shall come back for you if you'll let me."
He held her hand in both of his, and he could feel her trembling.
His voice was full of pleading, and Roxy was in a flutter of mingled admiration, pity, and love. That this brave servant of the Lord, taking his life in hand, casting ambition, friends, and property behind him, should appeal to her ! She dared not speak, and she could not pray. In a moment Bonamy had kissed her ham!. A maidenly recoil seized her, she withdrew her hand, opened the gate, and ran up the walk between the rows of pretty-by-nights and touch-me-nots. It was not until she stood in the door with her hand on the latch-string, that she turned toward her companion and said softly, in a voice suffused with emotion :
"Good-night, Mark!"
And then she went into the house with her soul in chaos. Zeal, duty, and love neither contended nor agreed. The scrupulous girl could understand nothing, see nothing. Pitying thoughts of Whittaker strove with her thoughts of Mark.
And that night she dreamed that she had set out to find the lost sheep that had left the ninety-and-nine and strayed in the wilderness, and Mark had set out with her. But ever they became more and more separated in the thorn-thickets of Texas, until at last Mark left her to travel on alone while he o;ave over the search. And the thickets grew higher and more dense, her feet were pierced with thorns, and her body exhausted with w r eariness. She saw panthers and catamounts and rattlesnakes and alligators and indescribable creatures of terroi about her; they hissed at her and rushed upon her, so that she shuddered as she pushed on and on through the dense brake, wondering whether the poor lost sheep were not already devoured. But at last she came upon the object of her search environed with wild beasts. Trembling with terror she broke through and laid hold on the far-wandering sheep, the monsters fled before her and the impregnable fold all at once inclosed her and the lost one. Then she discovered that the lost whom she had saved, was, by some transformation, Mark himself. And even while the Shepherd was commending her, the trembling girl awoke.