2. Slippery Ways in Darkness
CHAPTER TWO
SLIPPERY WAYS IN DARKNESS
Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness: they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord.
Jer. 23:12
AFTER THE STRETCHED MUSCLES of climbing, to find oneself on the level is very relaxing and pleasant. Therefore The Misty Flats are attractive to foot, eye, and palate at the beginning. There is no hint that the pretty mist will gradually close in and bring darkness. There is no suggestion amid the gay chatter of the populous throng that there are slippery places, which are going to bring hurt. In the boasted freedom of drifting whither you will, there is certainly no sign that one is being driven on, as Jeremiah so shrewdly perceived was the reality. And above all, there is never a hint that the end of The Flats is the visitation of the Lord and the judgment of sin. Yet all that is the real truth.
In my senior year there came a day when my college chum, Cora, shook me to the foundations with a sentence or so. “Isobel,” she said, “I think I should tell you something, even though it may hurt. Everybody but you knows that Ben is not loyal to you. He is taking Reba out behind your back.”
I turned a stunned face upon her, and her eyes filled with tears of sympathy, but with true friendship she went on: “You remember when you were ill and could not go to his fraternity dance?”
“Yes,” I replied, “he took Reba in my place that night. He asked me if I would mind, and I said no.”
“Well, that was the beginning of it, I guess. They’ve been seen together a lot. People are talking and I can’t bear that you should not know. I don’t think he’s worth breaking your heart over, Isobel,” she said earnestly.
But it did break my heart. It was difficult to believe and yet I knew he had not been so attentive of late. My father had spoken to me about it. “You have let Ben get too sure of you, Baby,” he had said, using his tender pet name for me, the youngest in the family. “Show a man all the love you have after you are married, but keep it in reserve while you are just engaged. The elemental male likes to fight for a mate. What is the use of chasing a streetcar after you’ve caught it?”
So it was not all Ben’s fault. I had been inexperienced—I was still only in my teens. With the promise to be his wife I had truly given my heart to Ben and love struggled hard with “maybe if I …” and “perhaps I could still win him back.” But it was Ben himself who made it hopeless.
I met him one morning at the entrance of the university. No one else was around, so I charged him with taking Reba out behind my back. I wanted to hear from his own lips that it was true, for love rebelled at believing it. He drew himself up to the full stature of his six feet two inches, and I never forgot the curl of his lip as he said, “Isobel, you’re a softy. You don’t suppose, do you, that after we are married, I’m not going to take other women out sometimes?”
“Then we part,” I had whispered hoarsely, dazed as if stricken. I was on my way home from a class and have never forgotten the dull agony of that walk. I knew I could never marry a man with such standards. That was the trouble. They were just the standards of The Misty Flats. But I had known the Christ and I could not be satisfied with less than the ideals He had set before me.
So I found myself in the slippery places of darkness. Pride wounded me, love wounded me, and sleep departed from me. The English course I was taking entailed more work than a mere passing degree, and I needed rest during sleep hours, but could not sleep.
My mother was distressed that I should break with Ben and kept saying, “If you would only take my advice.” But I could not bear to discuss it with anyone. I discussed it with myself night and day. My father was my greatest comfort. He knew enough to be silent and just love me. He even sensed that I was not sleeping. One night when all the house had been asleep for hours and I was still tossing, I heard him come softly into my room. He knelt down beside my bed and prayed God to help me, but it only irritated me. “Thanks, Dad,” I said wearily. “I know you mean it well, but praying doesn’t go beyond the ceiling, you know.” I never forgot the groan with which he turned away from my agnosticism, and left the room.
The climax came just before Christmas. My birthday is December 17 and I was to be twenty years old, but I do not remember if it was before or after that date. The post office clock on Main Street had just struck two, and I was still tense and tossing. I was desperate. I knew I’d be ill in the morning if I did not get to sleep. Then came the Tempter.
“Of what use is life?” he whispered. “Ben is only an average fellow. Probably all men are just like him. You’ll never find anyone to love you like you want to be loved—your ideal is too high. And you’d never be happy with a lower ideal of marriage. Why go on with life? It has no purpose, only suffering. This would be a good time to slip out. There is that bottle in the bathroom marked Poison. A good long drink and your troubles are over.” A good idea. The only sensible solution. I jumped out of bed and started for the bathroom. Slippery ways in the darkness: they shall be driven on and fall therein.
My hand was on the door knob when a deep groan, twice repeated, broke the silence of the dark. It was my father, moaning in his sleep in the next room. I was not afraid, for I recognized Father’s tones, but I was startled into remembrance of him. I stood with my hand on the knob debating. If I committed suicide, Daddy would think I had gone to Hell. Of course, that would not make a place called Hell, but how terrible for Daddy to think so. He had been such a dear, kind father to me all my life. Dare I make him such a dastardly return? No, I couldn’t be so mean and selfish. In agony I turned and sat down on the edge of my bed and faced the darkest moment of my life. I didn’t want to live and I couldn’t die! Oh the black despair of The Misty Flats! How little did I know of the golden sunshine pouring on the High Way above them! What a lot of heartache I might have been saved if I had only been told that God had already laid His hand on one who was to be a dear husband to me with the same ideals and the same passion for God’s highest purposes! But it was necessary that first I drink to the dregs the emptiness of the promises held out by The Misty Flats: only then could I be freed from their lure and subtle call.
And now a strange thing happened. That day I had been studying Matthew Arnold’s essay on The Study of Poetry. (You remember, it was Sedgewick, a disciple of Arnold, who had first pushed me off the High Way?) In that essay he gives various quotations from the classics as touchstones of perfect poetry. One such was from Dante and ran: In la sua volontade ē nostra pace. From my knowledge of Latin I had guessed the meaning: In His will is our peace. Now that sentence wrote itself across the dark of my bedroom. Dante believed in God. What if there were a God, after all? If so, I certainly had not been in His will. Maybe that was why I had no peace? An idea struck me. No one was watching to see if I were a fool or not. Sitting there on my bed’s edge, I raised both hands heavenward. “God, if there be a God,” I whispered, for I was not going to believe in what did not exist just to get a mental opiate, “if You will prove to me that You are, and if You will give me peace, I will give You my whole life. I’ll do anything You ask me to do, go where You send me, obey You all my days.” Then I climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over me.