AN ENGAGEMENT AS PLANNED

"Come," came a voice from within and I opened the door and stepped into Harbor Jim's cozy home. Its warmth and cheer were in sharp contrast to the evening without. It was raining hard and everything was saturated with water. Out of the chill and wet, I stepped across the threshold into warmth and dryness.

I thought at once of the Cotter's Saturday night. In the centre of the room at a little table, close to a kerosene lamp, was Harbor Jim reading from the Bible, and sharing the rather uncertain light with him was his wife with a pile of stockings to be mended, in her lap. Beyond them, a small fire-place with rough stone dogs. A spruce fire crackled like pop corn and did its best to dissipate anything of disconsolateness that might have crept in from the night's cold rain. At the right of the fire-place, on a roll of comforters, lay a little girl of perhaps two years, breathing gently in her sleep.

Harbor Jim did not rise to greet me but with a motion of his hand expressed his desire that I should remove my wet coat and take the empty chair. He paused long enough for me to be comfortably seated and resumed his reading. He was in the midst of the Ninety-First Psalm, and he read slowly on, as one none too familiar with print and anxious that no word or meaning be lost.

"He shall cover thee with His wings, and under His feathers shalt thou trust. You understand it, Effie," he said, turning to his wife. "It's the picture you see every day when the mother hen tucks the little ones under her wings.

"You, sir, will remember," he turned now to me, "that our Master used the same thought of the cuddling power of love, when He stood on Olivet and looked down on the sin-blind Jerusalem. I would have gathered you as a hen doth her chicks under her wing.

"His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. This sentence puzzled me for a good while, chiefly because I didn't know what a buckler was. For a long time I couldn't find any Lander who did know. Finally I got an Englishman to look it up in a book he had and he told me it was something that went all around the body. Then I seed it plain. The Lord was to protect us at the one danger point, with the shield; but He doesn't stop there, He protects us at all points with the buckler."

He did not pause again in the reading of the Psalm until he came to the word angels, and then he spoke rather forcibly of his belief in angels.

"Yes, I believe in angels, travelling angels. Why shouldn't He let 'em travel? He let's us go about, then surely He must let them journey considerable more. Naturally they want to be where they are needed most and I reckon this world needs 'em. When we get the listenin' habit, we'll all hear 'em, and when we get to the trustin' habit, we'll obey 'em when they bring us messages. I reckon they've helped me a good deal. Sometimes they guide me to a big haul of fish, but more often they bring me to a passage of Scripture, that's like a draft of cool water on a thirsty day. I don't want you to think I'm looney, sir, but I fancy they walk with me sometimes and most often when no humans are with me."

At the last verse he paused and then read these words twice:

"With long life will I satisfy thee. This promise has troubled me a good deal. It don't seem to be coming true. Good little kids die; and tough, scaly old rascals live on poking fun at the righteous. I have been wondering what the Hebrews meant, for a good many of their prophets have said the same thing.

"Mebbe it's one of the delayed promises. But I imagine it is coming true oftener than we know. There is some connection between holiness and happiness and between contented days and lengthened days. It is natural to expect the man who obeys the law to find the benefit here and now in this life. Well, if the Lord had each one of us alone working out the promises, it would be very easy for Him and for us, but He's seen fit to let us live together and we interfere with one another considerable; but He thinks it best because we've got to get well acquainted with each other before we are really able to know Him. As we get so we can understand the laws for the many as well as the laws for the each, I guess we'll most of us live long, but now the main thing is to live well."

"But does it seem quite fair, Jim?" his wife questioned him, naturally, as though they were alone together.

"I've thought about that a good while, Effie," he replied. "If I had only one day to fish and only caught something on one hook in twenty-eight, it would be a sorry day for me and you 'uns; but since I've many days, it doesn't matter which day I get the fish, so long as I get 'em. Now, I take it, it doesn't make much difference whether the bounty and the blessing He's intended for each of us comes one day or another, so long as it never fails to come. If this earth day was all I couldn't believe in Him as I do, but when I remember that there are days that have no ending, why it seems all right to have some getting a little more this day and others a little more that day. It's all in the life time of the soul. How long we stay in this room of Hisn' and how much He gives us don't matter much in the long years o' eternity. Do you begin to see how it is, Effie?"

Then Jim closed his Bible and was silent. Without the rain came down and beat its loud tattoo upon the roof. The spruce log ceased to crackle and the little kerosene light seemed to relax its effort now that it was no longer necessary to read the print. I had learned in the few weeks that I had known Jim, that silence even more than speech hath her rewards. After a quarter of an hour of quiet, in which we could hear in the occasional let up of the rain the tick-tock of the little clock on the shelf, I ventured a question:

"How long have you been married, Jim?"

"Fourteen years," he answered, "and it was no mistake that we made when we built this home. There's been rain, but the sun came out the quicker because of the together-spirit we had. Would you be interested, sir, in hearing how we started out?"

My face answered him and he began to tell me such parts of his own love story as it pleased him to tell.

"I was not married until after I was converted, that was a good thing! There is a good many reasons why a man should be converted before he is married. If there is anything in this life, more'n another in which the hand of God should be felt it's marriage.

"I'd had friends among the girls before I was converted, but I'd never thought of settling down, until after that morning. Then I come to see that a man needed a home on shore as well as a boat on the sea; that a man would be likely to catch more fish if he had some one waiting on shore and that fish never tasted so well when eaten alone.

"I got to readin' the book of Genesis one night. I never read the Bible much till after I was converted, and then it became a new book to me and I began diggin' in it for treasure and I'm by no manner a means thru diggin' and findin' treasure. I come across the command in Genesis: To be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. I halted there that night for a spell o' thinkin' and I came to the conclusion that I ought to do my part and leave some one else to take my place and fish when I lay down the hooks. The next thing was to find the right one. Now a Bible readin' man is a prayin' man. And I shut the book and I prayed, for if there is anywhere a man needs guidance it is in finding the right one and keepin' offen the rocks o' trouble and despair in such matters.

"The next morning I went fishing the same as usual. I've noted that the Lord never hurries an answer to a man who prays and then stands round idle waitin' for his answer. Seems the Lord loves to surprise a man with his answer while he's in the midst of work.

"So the weeks went by till one late afternoon I was walking along the flakes and I see a young woman splitting cod in the front yard of a house, and the western light rested on her hair and it shimmered and she looked up as I come by and we both smiled. Sir, then, I knew, just as plain as a straight, taut line that she was the one and I had my answer from the Lord, but I had still to get her answer. Some times you have to wait for a woman's answer same as you do for the Lord's.

"The next afternoon, about the same time, I come by her house, and just as I expected she was there splitting cod, and that afternoon we talked. I'd inquired and found her name was Effie Streeter. Now what I said and the walks we had together wouldn't interest you, and anyhow they belonged to us. But perhaps you might like to hear a little of our engagement day. It come out just as I planned only a little better.

"I was pretty sure then and it has been confirmed to me many times since that a woman likes to have her joys come as surprises. Now if I'd a proposed to her on the ordinary walk on an ordinary evening, she might have accepted but it wouldn't have come with the happiness that comes when you're not expecting, then it's like light out of dark cloud or flowers that come quick after a long winter's snow.

"One night I stopped in at her house and told her I had to go on business over beyond Brigus and would like to have her go with me on the train the next morning. It would be a short trip and we would be back at night, on the train.

"A fellow doesn't have much choice of trains here, but some seasons you can go somewhere and get back the same day, but not every season.

"It was the middle of July, but as I started for the station, thinks I, it might be colder up at Brigus and I took along my great coat, so she would be sure to be warm. We made the ride up, without event. It is a lovely ride to Brigus, as you know, sir.

"I don't remember much that we said on the way, do you, Effie?" and he turned to her acquiescing smile. "But I had the place all selected and I never expect to forget that day, either here or in Kingdom Come.

"Under the shadow of a spruce we sat down and before us were acres and acres of sheep laurel. The winter before had been cold and that summer the laurel was redder than ever I have seen it, before or since. Away beyond was Conception Bay with its hills and the wonderful blue water. I don't know, sir, what scenes there are over seas, but I doubt if there's a lovelier view anywhere in the world than that.

"I had rehearsed pretty well what I was going to say and I have never forgotten it to this day, and I am glad I haven't. Some forget what they say before marriage and it brings a black shadow after marriage.

"It was so very beautiful, that we set a spell, a holdin' hands and lookin' with our souls as well as our eyes.

"'Effie,' I said, 'I've brought you here to say a great word and I felt it ought to be said in the fairest place in the world. This is the loveliest place I know and if I knew a fairer one I'd have taken you there. The word I am going to say is the one God said when it was dark and He decided to make it light. It's the word He said when the world was tired and He decided to send His Son and it's the one word the Son spoke that has been changing the world since. That word is, Love!' Then I felt my own unworthiness and I stammered and I lost something out o' my speech and I've never found it, but I added,—'I'm only a fisherman but what I want to give you is as much as I can of the very same love.'

"Sir, that was all I had to say and she understood. Right after that a strange thing happened. It had been clouding up and it began to snow. Yes, we have once in a while a snow storm in summer, and we did that year. Then I took the great coat I had brought and wrapped her tenderly up in it and I said: Love has a good many duties, but I guess one on'em is to keep you warm.

"The snow came down and it covered the earth, but it didn't cover the blossoms and there was a world of white with pink beauty scattered on it, all the spruce and firs standing and looking and worshipping, if trees worship. And I said: I guess it's the Lord's way of saying, He's glad it's all settled. Now, if He had sent the rain we might a doubted, but He's sent the snow so's we wouldn't doubt and we never have.

"Now our trains sometimes take an uncommon long time, and you folks from the States laugh at our railroads, but do you know I never went a journey where the train made such a fast time as that night. We were in St. John's afore we knew it."