Read The Strange Proposal Online
Authors: Grace Livingston Hill
He arose and went back to his section. It would not be comfortable to write there, but at least he would not be annoyed by others talking. He had not spent a large part of his life roughing it for nothing. He could make the best of circumstances. So he disposed of his baggage as best he could, got out his writing materials, folded his length up to as comfortable a position as he could beside the tiny light of his berth, and started to pour out his heart to the girl he had just left. He had promised her a letter at once, and she would have it.
“My dear—” he began. He did not want any names interfering in this first letter. He wanted to tell her all that was in his heart before his thoughts would be entangled with the things of this world, including even a name. As he remembered it, she didn’t have a very pretty name, but what was in a name anyway? So, “My dear—” he wrote and lingered over the writing of it pleasantly.
I want to tell you what you seemed like to me when I first saw you, to tell you all the things I wanted to say going down that aisle and couldn’t because there wasn’t time, to let you know what you seemed to me all the blessed evening while we were together. They are things of course that I should have said on the way to the station when I was tongue-tied with the thought of your nearness and my privilege. Yet the time was not wasted, for I learned that just to be quietly near you was enough to bring great joy and peace and preciousness.
And now, I find there are no words that will express the depth of my thoughts about you—as if I were a painter, and getting out my pigments, I find none of sufficient clearness and depth of color to paint you as you are. I should have to mix the colors from my heart. That’s how I feel about you. As if I were a poet and could find no new phrases not worn dull and shabby by other men’s thoughts about other girls down the ages. You are too lovely to be described by worn-out words.
If I could summon all the lovely descriptions by poets of all ages, all the wonderful portraits ever painted, and select the best and put them together, they could never equal you. There hover in my mind phrases I have read and admired, loved indeed sometimes, one that likens hair to a glossy raven’s wing, but it seems stale when I think of the beautiful crowning of your dark hair and the way it waves away from your white forehead.
There are lines that stand out in literature likening a beloved one’s eyes to stars, and there is a starriness in your eyes, but there is something more. None of the words I find cluttering about in my mind quite satisfy. It must be because my love for you goes deeper than the mere outer look of you. It recognizes a spiritual glow from within, a radiance that does not come just from feature or form or color, though you have those to perfection.
But words, mere words, fail to help me tell you what you are to me. I would have to lay my lips again upon yours, to hold your face close to mine once more, and to fold you close in my arms to make you understand what I mean. And you will readily understand that I could not have done that coming down the church aisle.
When I looked toward the church door and saw you coming with your lifted face and that inner glow lightening your eyes, I cannot express to you what it meant to me. The years will have to tell you that, if in the kindness of God He gives us years together. I only know your face is like a flower, lovely and full of sacredness, and I thought your eyes spoke to my eyes, an understanding look, and told me I might dare.
These things seem hard and cold when written down upon paper, and the thought that you may laugh at them makes me quiver, for although your laugh is very lovely, these feelings I here hand over to you are delicately sensitive, for I love you, love you, love you. And that, after all, is the most satisfying thing I can write, for it is true and deep and will reach out to eternity.
And now there are things I must tell you, though I can tell them better and more in detail when I get to a quiet room and a desk. But they are things you should know at once.
I am just a plain, poor young man with a lot of hard work behind me, and probably a lot still ahead. I finished my course in medicine a year ago and have been working since to get together enough for a special graduate course that I need for what I want to do. This has been arranged for, and it was to meet by appointment the great man with whom I am to study that I had to tear myself away from you tonight. If I had missed the meeting it might not have come my way again. As I look back on the possibilities of the evening, I find that in case I had no opportunity to talk with you, I would certainly have missed my appointment, much as it meant to me, and difficult as it was to arrange, rather than run the risk of losing you. As it was, I found it by far the hardest thing I ever had to do to leave you. And after I was under motion and it was too late to go back, it came to me what I had done, and I was appalled that I had let you bring me to the station, much as I delighted in having you to myself, and that I had left you at that hour of the night to go back alone! Oh, I realize that it was but a short distance in a well-traveled district and that you are probably quite used to being out that way alone. But it is not my idea of the way to take care of a girl, and it is not the way I shall want to take care of you if the precious privilege is ever mine.
I want you to understand that my people, though educated and cultured to a wide degree, are very plain and not well off. I go from my appointment in New York back to our Florida orange grove, where I have duties to that grove that mean hard work and plenty of it if the grove is to bear our fortune’s worth this next season.
Be sure I would be planning to return straight to you, wherever that might be, before going south, but that the simple fact is, I cannot afford to be away from my work another day just now. The wind and the sun and the weather are doing things every day to my grove and my garden that will hopelessly tie my hands for the immediate future if I do not get right back to my work there. Even a day more makes a difference.
But know this, beloved, the moment I am free I shall come to you if you will let me, even if I have to walk to get there.
Now there is just one more thing, and perhaps it should come first instead of last, for after all, it is paramount to everything else in my life. I want you to know that the first, foremost, and highest thought in my life, is of my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, the Savior of my soul. What He says I must do, where He leads, I must follow. To study His Word is my greatest delight, and to witness of Him my highest joy.
Your place in my life, if you grant me your love, will be second only to my Lord.
I have been trusting that these standards are yours also, and surely, if that is so, we should have great joy in living our life together in Him.
Earnestly wishing that I might tell you good night face-to-face instead of on paper, and eagerly awaiting some word from you, at the above address.
Your beloved,
John Saxon
John folded the letter carefully and put it in an envelope. Then he drew the little missive she had given him from his pocket and read it.
Miss Mary Elizabeth Wainwright
He stared at it in dismay! Wainwright! Was she a Wainwright? What could it mean? Had someone played a joke on him? Had she put someone else’s card in the envelope? Hadn’t Jeff said that the maid of honor was named Helen Foster? Surely his memory had not played him false.
Carefully he went back over the time since he had arrived from the south. He recalled distinctly that Jeff had said he would like the maid of honor, that she was his kind, or something of the sort, a great church-worker. He had said that positively. He had certainly conveyed the idea that the girl was a Christian, in sympathy with his own beliefs and standards.
And now he recalled the bride’s words from the back of the caterer’s car. “But you haven’t met her!” It hadn’t meant a thing then but that nobody had introduced him, and he had to perform that function for himself. But now he began to see that something must have happened to the original maid of honor, and that this girl had been substituted.
Wainwright! Now what would that mean? Wealth, honor, sophistication, all that made up a different world from his, and no guarantee whatever about her being a Christian! His heart began to sink.
And he, what had he done? Rushed ahead and committed himself without so much as an upward glance to see what had been his Lord’s will in the matter! He had been so sure that she was all right. Her face had been so wonderful, her whole manner so lovely, so in keeping with what a servant of the Lord should rightly be, that it had never entered his mind to question, to hesitate. And now here she was a
Wainright
, and he knew what the Wainwright tradition would be. He had come close enough to Jeffrey Wainwright before he had been born again, and closer still afterward, to know that the family was utterly worldly. Jeff had mentioned no exception in his family, and he most certainly would have done so if there were one. They had had many a heart-to-heart talk about what Jeff’s new life was to be after he took the Lord for his Savior and Master. Jeff had known that he would meet opposition on every hand. He had said that his family, though nominally connected with church life, had no understanding whatever of the truth of the Gospel, nor of true Christian life. They had only a feeling that it was the respectable thing to do to belong to a church and that it might perhaps pave the steps to heaven by and by. Oh, dear God, could she be like that? And he, pledged to give his life to the service of Christ! There was no turning back for him. There was no possibility of compromise.
Into his mind surged verse after verse of scripture. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers!” “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” If his earthly love and his heavenly service did not agree, his love would have to go. There was no question about that. His Lord came first. He was glad that before he knew who she was he had made that plain in his letter. But oh, what pain this might bring! Certain pain to himself. Would it also perhaps bring pain to her, to whom his soul was bound?
John buried his face in the pillow beside him and began to talk to God, letting God search his heart, owning his own impetuous fault, asking for guidance and strength.
Gradually a number of things became plain as he prayed. For one thing, he realized that a Wainwright was a very different proposition from a quiet, plain, village girl who had been a friend of Camilla’s. He knew that Camilla had worked for her living. Likely her friends were of her status socially. A Wainwright would expect larger things in the way of wealth and position. A Wainwright would laugh at his presumption. He writhed as he thought of these things, as he remembered the mocking light in her eyes sometimes, the twinkle of fun at the corner of her mouth. Could it be that she was not what she seemed to be?
He remembered her lips on his, remembered her hand nestling in his. Was she only playing with him? Did she practice this sort of thing? No! His soul recoiled from the thought. He had given her his love, whether right or wrong, impetuous or wise, it was done, and he must trust her until she had been proven false. That was the first compulsion of such love as his. And yet it must be in obedience to his Lord, or it could never be blessed.
“Lord, Thou canst make her a child of God. Thou canst send thy Holy Spirit to draw her to Thee if she is not already Thine. I do not deserve that Thou shouldst do this for me, but I ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus, for Thy glory, if it be Thy will. Nevertheless, not my will but Thine!”
Somewhat refreshed from contact with his God, John sat up and read over his letter. After due deliberation he decided to send it. It was all true, and it was her due after what had passed. But there was a little more that he should say. So after some thought he wrote again.
The foregoing letter was finished and signed before I opened the envelope you gave me. I find now to my consternation that you are not the girl I was told I was to partner with. She was an utter stranger to me as much as you were. I knew nothing of her family or station in life. Her name, they told me, was Helen Foster, and I was not greatly curious about her, till I saw you coming up the aisle and knew that you must be the maid of honor, and my heart went out to you. I felt I must not run the risk of losing you.
Now, when I see your name, and know you are a Wainwright, my heart is turned to water and my hope sinks low. You come from a family of fabulous wealth and station, and I am a plain man with my way to make. I had no right to presume without knowing all about you. You must have laughed quietly to yourself over my presumption, for doubtless you knew more of me than I did of you. Also, I see another cause for blame in me. What right had I to assume that that other girl, whoever she was, would not be wealthy and socially prominent and resent an impetuous courtship as well as yourself? Oh, the whole thing has made me despise myself. I never knew I was impetuous before. Yet, like any schoolboy, I have confessed my love for you before you had a chance to judge me. It wasn’t fair to you.
And yet, I love you, O I love you, Mary Elizabeth! I write your beautiful name reverently, Mary Elizabeth. How wonderful if I might someday say, my Mary Elizabeth!
I shall love you and pray for you.
John Saxon
Having addressed and sealed this letter, John lay down to sleep. He was more weary than he remembered to have felt ever in his life, and as he sank off to sleep he had the feeling that something so fine and lovely that he was almost willing to give his life for it had touched him and glanced away.
It wasn’t a long night. The porter awakened him before they reached New York. He had time to get himself dressed for the day and pack away his evening clothes for the journey south. He would not be needing them again. At least not till he came back in the fall—
if
he was accepted, and if he came back.