21
January 1931
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
j .. Í I 3-Ceart to 'jHeart clo)ith Ou r G Readers | 5 ^„— B y F lo r e n c e N y e W h ifw e ll «— .>—.—.¡g Green “And there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald” (Rev. 4:3). Í rER’BODY wants to see Mr. W u !” Aunt Mary wiped her hands on the kitchen roller towel once again, and sighed softly. Little Sister stopped cutting out ginger cook ies and regarded her with the round, questioning eyes of complete surprise. Why should they ing and her attendance at Sunday-school accounts for it. This does not explain her triumphant death. I have known an elderly Chinese, and a young Chinese child also, both uneducated and unenlightened, who were brought to Christ only a few hours before death; neither had a Christian background nor any imagination to draw upon; and both saw their Saviour just as vividly and went home to Him with just such joy as did your little one. Be glad for her!”
wot wish to see Mr. Wu? “Now here’s that poor creetür of a widow who’s been his teacher at college this year’s just lost her little one! Mr. Wu she must see—Yes ma’am! And ho one but Mr. Wu! An’ there she sets in th’ front room, just gazin’ out the window at nothin’, and waitin’. Makes my heart ache to peek in at h e r!” Little Sister finished cutting the last row of delectable brown circles. She had found no one at home at Aunt Margot’s when Elise and Pauline had left her there, and so she had run down Violet Vale Drive from the empty house to see if Mr. Wu had come back from college. “No! He ain’t here yet!” Aunt Mary had half whispered through the little grated window in the yellow door. “Come around to the kitchen,” she added. A few moments later, Little Sister had found herself, enveloped in an apron many sizes too large for her, and seated on a high stool at the kitchen table engaged in the very con genial occupation of cutting out cookies while Aunt Mary finished her pies. Mr. Wu was still “house boy” and bore the brunt of the work, but Aunt Mary insisted that the Chinaman never lived who could make pastry and cakes like a “real American woman.” So, in his absence, she bften invaded his domain. Little Sister slipped down from her stool. She, too, wished to “peek” at the woman who was waiting. The lady was sitting yery still. Her eyes were look ing far beyond an imaginary horizon line. Whither had those childish feet climbed! Up whatever heavenly stair they had gone—it was there that she would be! But jvhere was that place? This Chinese boy, this Wu, who had meant so much to her darling in those last bitter days, had seemed very sure about it . . . . And indeed, Caro line had looked up, her face alight in a new and wonder ful way, only an hour before the great change. This was what she had said': “It’s all glory—all bright!” And then, later, just before the glad eyes closed : “ I see Jesus!” In the midst of her grief, the mother’s heart had been soothed by the radiant faith of. Mr. Wu. The shining of his face had sent into her desolate home its one ray of comfort.. She did not reason about it; she only knew that it was so. She kept remembering, too, his intelli gence and the moment when he turned to her, after it was all over, and said calmly: “Your child is at home now with the Lord. Yes! Even though you believe it not! I know you are think ing that she only imagined what she saw; that her back ground of Christian training from her grandfather’s teach
He had said no more. But as her mind began again its old familiar routine in the laboratory at. college, she had wondered! Her heart was unaccustomed to lifting itself to God. She had long since cut loose from her early moorings. The father, who had known Christ and had taught her child to love Him, had been shabbily treated in her own youth by professing Christians. In girlish in dignation, she had declared herself “done with Christians.” Now, in her sorrow, she remembered her early nearness to a Saviour who had never wronged her. There was no comfort anywhere. The new scientific data, and endless reseach work, had lost their flavor. Her mind had been filled, of a sudden, one day, with the recollection of a great painting she had seen long ago. It was a picture that had won a Grand Prix. Its Latin title, Consolatrix Afflictorum, “The Consoler of the Af flicted,” had remained with her. Its representation of a desolate and desolated human being, stripped of all and flung at the feet of Mother Nature for consolation, beck oned her with a whisper of possible comfort for her some where in earth’s solitary places. Mother Nature; in this remembered picture, smiling impersonally, surrounded by the bird and the sun and the shower, was attended by per sonifications of Music and Poetry. She was bowered in a leafy forest that was strangely filled with the golden green light that is found in the heart of the wood, in.those deep places where the sunlight only enters through layfers of green leaves. This green was soothing! It was balm to her tired eyes and rest to her taut nerves as she recalled it. And so the resolve had come: “I will go away where it is green and quiet and perhaps I shall find peace there.” But first she must see Mr. Wu! She longed to hear him tell her again that Caroline was at home with the Lord. * * * Little Sister was standing gravely before the waiting woman. “I know why you wish to see Mr. Wu,” she said soft ly. The woman started and looked at her. She was only a little older than Caroline! “It’s because he think's about Christ all the time,” the child was saying. “Like Uncle Alan! People always come to Uncle Alan, and he says, ‘Do you know what heaven is like?’ And they never do! Then he says, ‘If you really knew, you would rejoice!’ ” “How1 can one rejoice?” the woman cried.
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