MRS. DYER’S TROUBLE by Rose Terry Cooke

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 39.

MRS. DYER’S TROUBLE.

By Rose Terry Cooke

“WELL, Dr. Strong, I don’t think—at least, I don’t know, and that is as bad—I sent for you because”—

Here the words choked her. She had to stop; her eyes ran over on her pale cheeks, and she clasped her thin hands together in a convulsive effort of self-control. Dr. Strong, a white-haired old man, with the gentlest face and kindest manner possible, looked distressed; he could not say anything, for he had no clue to these sobs and tears. Mrs. Dyer had been a member of his church when he lived at Blanford; he remembered her well—a bright, delicate young girl, the only daughter of a well-to-do farmer. She was fairly well educated, had made a profession of religion in early youth, had married at twenty a young lawyer already in good practice, for he was ten years older than she, and had besides a little inherited property. Dr. Strong had heard of her from time to time, and sometimes met her when she came home on a visit. He knew that she was temporarily prosperous, and that she had three children; and at last he himself was called to a church in the city where she lived, and learned then for the first time that she was recently widowed. She had written a note to him, asking that he would come to see her; and, in answer to her request, he was with her now. Poor little thing! She was a pathetic spectacle to her old pastor as she sat there struggling with her tears, thin, pallid, and sad, with a comfortless sorrow, as he could plainly see, for neither hope nor submission lent a gleam to her eye or calmed her forlorn countenance. This was not a case of ordinary consolation he felt at once; but, before she could control herself, in rushed a rosy boy of ten.

“Mother,” he shouted, “can I go over to Denham with Hal Jones?”

Mrs. Dyer held out a hand and drew him to her side. She stopped her tears, and was composed at once.

“Come here, Harry,” she said, in very loving tones. “I want you to shake hands with this gentleman; he used to be my minister when I lived at Blandford.”

Harry was evidently well trained; he obeyed at once, and stood at Dr. Strong’s knee a moment to answer some kindly questions, then reverted to his errand.

“Can I, mother?”

“Is no one else going?” asked his mother.

“No, ma’am; we want to go fishing out in the mill pond for pun’kin seeds.”

“No, Harry, I can’t let you go.”

“Surely, mamma?”

“Surely, dear,” she said with a smile.

Harry’s face flushed, his eyes glistened, and his small fists closed tightly. There was a struggle in his boyish heart, very evident to the doctor; but he said nothing, and, bowing to the minister, left the room much more quietly than he had entered it.

The interruption had helped Mrs. Dyer to recover her own self-control. She could speak now quite calmly.

“I sent for you, Dr. Strong,” she said, “because I am in great need of help. You know I have been a church member many years, but lately I have begun to think I am not a Christian at all.”

“Have you spoken to your own pastor?” asked the doctor, with professional instinct.

“No, I cannot. Mr. King is called a very fine preacher, but his sermons don’t touch or help me; they never have. When Allen died, he came here and talked to me, but he didn’t seem sure of anything; he is always telling us that doubt is a very necessary thing to growth in spirit; that we must try to find the pillars whereon the house standeth, before we can be sure there is a house.”

“He did not really remember the context in that text, I fear. Sampson was blind, my dear, and when the Philistines showed him where to grope for those pillars, he pulled them down and killed those in the heathen temple—and himself too.”

Mrs. Dyer smiled a little; she too had not remembered where the phrase came from.

“But I can find no help in all this, Dr. Strong. I want to be sure of something, to have a place of rest to my soul. ‘Maybe’ is no gospel to me.”

“My dear, cannot you pray?”

“Pray! oh, what use is prayer? When Allen lay speechless with fever, and the doctor told me he was dangerously ill, do you think I did not pray? I groveled before God to save him; I prayed till my heart was dry and my brain weary. What was the good of it? I had no answer. No, I shall never pray again. I don’t believe in it. It is no use. I do not even read the Bible.”

“Now answer a few questions for me.”

Just at this point there was another interruption; two younger children, both girls, came eagerly running into the room; one threw herself into her mother’s lap; the other leaned against her knee; they were flushed with exercise, and held in their hands long trails of graceful vine, with bunches of transparent scarlet berries hanging among the green leaves.

“Look, mamma, what bu’ful berries.”

“Pretty berries; nice? Ally eat berries, mamma?”

Mrs. Dyer’s face stiffened with terror; if she could be paler, one might have said she grew colorless; quickly, without waiting to make her children speak to the guest, she gathered vines and berries out of the little hands and put them away in the nearest place that was high overhead, the upper shelf of a high bookcase. The children whimpered.

“O mamma, don’t take my berries!”

“Pitty berries. Ally’s berries,” chimed in the younger, with a tone of possession and a sense of injustice in the baby voice.

“Dears, you cannot have them. Go to your nurse at once and get your bread and milk.”

“Do you thing they have eaten any?” asked Dr. Strong anxiously.

“Oh, no! I have taught them thoroughly never to taste anything without my leave. I used to put bitter water out of a quassia cup on any fruit they might be tempted to take; it was harmless, but it taught them that what I had forbidden them was not good to eat, and so they learned to ask for what they wanted.”

The children turned away with tears in their eyes, and slowly went out of the door. Ally looking over her shoulder at the “pitty berries” placed out of her reach.

“My dear young friend,” asked Dr. Strong solemnly, “do you love your children?”

“Love them?” she answered, the warm flush of indignation crimsoning her expressive face. “Why, they are all I have got to love, my very life. While Allen lived I had him to care for, to be with, to wait on. Now they are all.”

“Why, then, did you not answer Harry when he asked if he might go to Dedham?”

“I did answer him, Dr. Strong. Did not you hear me tell him he must not go?”

“Yet you said God did not answer your prayers for your husband’s life because he denied it. Is not ‘no’ as much of an answer as ‘yes’?”

Her face changed, but she made no reply. “You admit still, in spite of your doubts, that there is a God?”

“Yes; oh, yes; I cannot disbelieve that; it would be a return to chaos!”

“You will admit, too, perhaps, the old geometric axiom that the whole is greater than its part?”

She looked at him with surprise and inquiry in her eyes.

“Of course I do.”

“Well, then, if God made this world, and made you, is it not probable that he knows more about your needs than you do?”

“I suppose ‘so,’” she said half reluctantly.

“And if he knew enough to create this world and all the myriad worlds we see above and around us, is it not at least possible that you may not be able to understand always what he means in what he does?”

She colored again, and silently bowed her head.

“Why did you refuse to let your boy go to Dedham? He wanted to go so much.”

“Oh, it is not safe for him to go on the water with only another boy; the pond is deep and the boys are so careless! I do want him to be a manly, courageous boy, but I will not let him go into possible danger for no other reason than his own pleasure.”

“Why not, then, have explained all this to him?”

“Well, I have tried to train my children to trust me, to feel that I know best what is good for them. I have thought that to give them a reason for all I did was not so good for them as to learn to trust me. I think they ought to feel that I am their natural head and ruler now Allen has gone. He had the same feeling. He used to say, ‘We’re king and queen in our home, and the children hereditary subjects.’ I want to carry out his ideas.”

“Why not let them guide themselves, and not have to ask you for everything they want?”

“Oh, I love to have them ask, as far as that goes, even if I believed in encouraging anarchy in my little kingdom. I love to give them whatever I can give, and to have them come to me with all their wants and wishes.”

“And yet you have to deny them?”

“Yes, I must; but how it hurts me! I believe I could have cried with the babies this morning when I took away those exquisite, tempting berries; but, Dr. Strong, they were berries of the deadly nightshade—certain death had they eaten them.”

The doctor leaned back in his chair and put the finger tips of his wrinkled old hands together in the argumentative way not uncommon to elderly clergymen. He did not look at Mrs. Dyer, but straight at the ceiling, as he said in a dry, quiet tone:—

“How much better you are than God!”

Mrs. Dyer looked, and felt, shocked.

“Dr. Strong!” she exclaimed.

“My dear, I take you at your own showing. You find fault with God because he denies your request; but you denied Harry’s. You think he had no reason to refuse what you asked; but you gave no reason to Harry. You did not tell your little girls that those berries were poisonous. You knew they would not understand what that meant, to be sure; but then you wish them to trust in your love and wisdom without reasons; yet you refuse to trust God, who is immeasurably wiser than you and imaginably more good than you are, in comparison, to your children. You have ceased to pray because you were denied the answer that you wanted. You said, ‘My will be done,’ and, because it was not done, you refused to speak to Him who made you. What if Harry should come in to-night and not speak to you again for months and years, because he could not go to Dedham? Would it seem to you reasonable, or the petty sulks of a spoiled child? Is not all this want of faith in you an assumption that God is not as good as you are to your children?”

Mrs. Dyer hid her face in her hands while the doctor went on.

“I have for many years found much comfort and strength in observing how the good Lord hath made of human life an ever-present exposition of and witness to his ways. I think it is this in part which the text refers to that says, ‘If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.’ Try, my dear, to know God as your Father; treat your children as your own sense and conscience teach you; these are the voice of God in your soul; then act toward him as you would have your children act toward you. You will find out more religion in that way than you think. But do not try to find a poor human reason for the divine ways. Would you have a God whom you could measure? ‘Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?’ Tell me honestly, could you trust in a God whom you could understand? Would one be a help or defense to you who was less than omniscient or omnipresent?”

“No,” said Mrs. Dyer in a low voice, “but I never thought of that.”

“And for the Bible, why not read that for the stores of help and comfort instead of trying to pick out its faults? Of all books that Bible has most of what we call common sense in it, besides its beautiful gospel record. A life guarded by its precepts is more than merely pious, it is practical and useful. ‘Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.’ Try, my child, to go back to your Father; talk with him in prayer, accept his will as it comes to you daily, and remember that he as well as you can say ‘no’ or ‘yes’ as he sees fit; either is an answer. If you love God as your children love you, would you doubt or turn away from him?”

Mrs. Dyer’s eyes were streaming with tears now.

“I will try,” she said; and years after she thanked Dr. Strong for helping her to escape her trouble. She is now an earnest Christian woman, a mother whom her children rise up and bless; but she has for a long time ceased to attend Mr. King’s church.—The Independent.