MARION.

White Ribbon, Volume 16, Issue 187, 16 January 1911, Page 8

MARION.

By Mrs Jessie Gaurett.) I was travelling' in the express Between Christchurch and Invercargill. We who were in the train were travel-worn and weary. It had seemed such a long monotonous journey, void of incident or interest.

At a little wayside station a young girl hoarded the train. As she entered the carriage she seemed to bring a wealth of sweetness and freshness with her which was not all contained in the basket of beautiful roses she carried. She was so fresh and dainty and sweet, we all involuntarily smiled as we looked at her bright rosy face. She seemed to most of us—accustomed as we were to seeing only town girls, many of whom spent their days shut up in crowded work* rooms—the embodiment of health and purity.

I pointed to a vacant seat beside me, which she accepted, and we fell into a little friendly chat. She lived in the back block s; oh, quite away, in the very backblocks. Father and mother, feeling old age creeping on, had resolved to sell out and live nearer civilisation. The family were scattered over the Colonies. She would be so delighted to live in town ; it was so lonely way out in the backblocks.

Soon afterwards the old people settled in the little inland town where I lived and Marion and I met often. I learnt to know and appreciate her parents — Scotch people of the douce old school. The father much the elder of his wife, although, with the hardships and strenuous life of a pioneer, she looked older than her years. Marion came to my Bible Class; she was bright and intelligent and took a great interest in it.

Bv-and-by I noticed her intimacy w ith a girl I did not like; a girl who carried beneath her stylish clothes and respectable appearance a treacherous and impure heart. Marion was so pure and innocent; she knew so little of the world and its ways. Belle was so full of guile and could masijuerade as an angel of light. “ Every pure soul,” says an eminent writer, “is an offence to every impure ono Therefore those who are themselves impure are constantly endeavouring to drag others down to their own level.”

Gently I tried to warn Marion that her new friend was not a true one, but the influence of a bad friend sometimes seems to be stronger than the influence of a good one. Marion and Belle both attended Bible Class and Endeavour

meetings, but would sit in the back seat and smile and whisper. Gradually she diifted further and further from good influences.

Looking back now, with my larger experience, I can see why I failed to win Marion for the Master—l trusted too much in my own resources, too little to the power of Jesus. I tried in a feehh way to warn Marions parents; i«. vain. Belle’s father was a respectable man, a member of the Church, “ his lass maun he respectable, too.” Alas ! respectability is not hereditary. I made Belle ray enemy by rebuking her for an improper jest in the workroom. She worked out her revenge by draw ing Marion away from my influence. What mattered it if Marion was ruined in the process! Then I came upon Marion reading a book I would shudder to see in the hands of sister or daughter of mine. A book charmingly and cleverly written, with vice paraded as virtue and virtue as ridiculous sentimental folly. A bock full of subtle evil suggestions to lire the imagination and, like a blue mist, permeate the heart and mind of a young girl like Marion, who was full of love for the beautiful, the bright and gay. In her lonely hackblock home she had seen so little of the world and its wavs, and her home life was so monotonous, gradually Marion lost all int< rst in good things. She was more an 1 more w ith her new friend: Belle in odueed her to a young man much ahov her in station.

But why go into details ' It .as the old, old storv! Innocence, tei < rness, and trust, and a man’s supreme, assionate selfishness. Sin had come to Marion disguised with soft words and tii * attire, and she was led to her ruin.

To Belle life meant one long ) and of pleasure. “ Enjoy, enjoy, enj y your life!’’ she counselled. Material enjoyment was to her the only < -s.rable thing in life. Belle was wiev »<i, her conscience was lulled to rest by the opiates of vanity and pleasure.

Marion drank in that most >’ 1 tie of all poisons. She was too inn t at to know she was encircled w ith h nger. To her the Theatre *vhs a pa. d se of brilliant hues, glittering gem s.veet perfumes. She had honeyed w cs and adoring looks from the n an whe a.companied them. The beaten-out Id of the laboratory became more beautiful to her than the gold of the sun-fed dalfodils round her old home. Vice was w reathed in summer flowers, and she danced along the road to ruin to the accompaniment of

joyous music and the perfume of dewy roses.

God and the devil fought for her soul, while we of the Bible (’’ass stood by and wept in despair. The news was brought to me in the workroom one morning, news which was not altogether unexpected, Marion had been driven in disgrace from her home ; her name had been erased from the old Family Bible by her father. I hastened to her mother: she was dazed and incapable of making any elfort to tind Marion. I recoiled before the white heat of the father’s passion. The young man —the real culprit—had gone on a trip to the neighbouring Colonies, leaving bis poor victim to face the results of his sin as best she could.

I turned and sought Belle. She protested she knew nothing, and laughed scornfully when I accused her of loading Marion to her ruin.

“ How was I to know she was going to be such a silly little fool ? I did not mean her to come to ruin. I wanted to be kind to her: show her a little of life. She was so pretty, too pretty to he shut up with those old Furitants; whv she might have married anybody with her good looks.” The sin of impurity was nothing to Belle as long as one was not found out; that was where she thought Marion's folly came in. She went on her way oblivious to Marion's fate, perfectly satisfied and happy, and as mindless as a flower that sways in the breeze; without heart or conscience, remorse touched her not. I looked at her charming but sensual face, and thought of her future with a shudder. Search as I would I could find out nothing about Marion. My time was fully occupied working for my daily bread, aud her own friends simply washed their hands of iier: to them she was worse than dead. I never entered the neighbouring town but I scanned each passing face in the desperate hope of finding her. I never quite despaired. I felt quite sure God would answer our prayers and save her somehow somewhere, we never ceased to pray and sorrow for her.

At last I caught sight of her in a crowded tramcar. But, ah! there was little trace of my once sweet innocent little friend. Her eyes were no longer bright and gleaming with truth and hope, but were wistful and filled with a kind of yearning despair which made my h»*art sad to see. Her hair was still dark and glossy, her complexion clear and her own. There were hard fine lines round her mouth and a half reckless, almost scornful, expression on the

once sweet, tender Ups. ITer companion was a handsome, hold girl, with a reckless, detiant look. Noth were quietly enough dressed, Marion especially so. As soon as Marion s eyes met mine she whispered to her companion, and they immediately left the car. I rose quickly and followed, but thev disappeared amongst the crowd. Months passed before I met h°r again. This time she could not escape me.

“Let me go! lam not fit for you to touch !” was her greeting, as I grasped her tightly by the arm. “ Listen, Marion!” 1 said, holding her firmly; “ I must! I shall speak to you! Tell me when. W here shall it be ? I will not allow you to go until you tell me.”

We were in a public street, under the gaze of curious passers-by. “I will write,” and, wrenching her arm free from my detaining grasp, she

was gone. She wrote : “ I am beyond all your “love and your kindness. Ik) not try “to find me. Nothing matters to me “now ; I can never rise again. Promise “if I ever want you and send for you “ you will come.”

The address she gave was the G.P.O. I wrote to her promising to do as she wished, reminding her “ that no matter “ how low she had fallen. < 'hrist could “iaise lie* and wash her whiter than “snow in His precious blood, if she “ would but come to Him.”

Two years passed. In vain I kept up my search. Marion’s mother died mourning tin* loss of the loved child of her old age. 1 had manied; my time was more my own.

Then the message came from Marion. Oh! such a pitiful message! I went to her at on e and found her in an obscure part of a large town. My first glance into her face told me she was seriously ill, probably dying. Her only companion was the girl I had seen with her in the tramcar. Slie looked subdued and full of tender sympathy for her friend. She was at heart a woman even if she was an outcast. I gazed at the grey worn face, the sunken eyelids, the wasted hands, as she lay before me in a restless sleep induced bv drugs. And a vision of her as I saw her first floated back across the years to me. The bright, innocent, rosy face which always seemed to remind one of the freshness and sweetness of her mountain home. The graceful figure full of life and vigour. All were now gone, gone with the innocence and purity which hud been her greatest glory, gone with her honour, lay like some white flower which Ims been trampled

upor a d bruised by the passers by on the du y highway. Sin woke to cling tv) me with bitter tears id sobbing ci.oS. I found a Chrbti n woman to help me to nurse her. The doctor we called confirmed my opinion that she was beyond medical skill. Never have I forgotten his words as he stood looking down at her unconscious form lulled to momentary rest by opiates* “Her constitution has been completely ruined by the life she has led. A highly strung sensitive temperament like h< *s, soon wears out. To still the cries (i conscience she has resorted to opium in some form. < fii God, to think,” he continued, bowing his grey head in sorrow, “To think a woman like that, who might have been the honoured loved wife of some good man. the happy mother of bright beautiful children, has been stained, body and soul, to gratify the fleeting passion of a civilised, selfish man. <)h the cruelty of the strong to the weak and the defenceless, afterwards the tempted, misled, and in many cases trustful creature is driven to join the army of outcasts. Men and women shut the door of respectability in her face, and virtually say, ‘Go ! there is no place for such as you,’ while the man occupies the highest positions and receives the warmest webonie wherever he chooses to go. God help them when I see them paying the highest penalty for their sins. I bow ray head in shame that I belong to the same sex as those who wrong ihem so vd« lv.

Thank God because in these later days a noble army of strong, true hearted men, who know the real value of the honour and purity of our daughters to the present and future of our Dominion and who are determined to preserve it at whatever cost, have joined hands with the purest and best of our women and are crying aloud all over this our own dear native land for the necessity for an increasing crusade against this evil. Many i me are needed to cry out. Careless ‘ it m*s, deaf mothers, rouse up and come o t strongly on the s de of purity. W . ivish°d upon Marion all the care and eiiderne.**' w<= could 1o smooth her last du s on earth. One evening she said, “ . >o you remember the little poem you vc ■ so fond of repeating, ‘ Beautiful S u one verse always rang in my ears,—

“ Once 1 was pure the beautiful Know Wifi :i heart like it > crystal an eye like its glow

• + * « “ But I il to bo truiophnl like nltl iu the street, Fell t* >e sneered at, sworn a;, and l*»at. Fell . . till all who passed me by Work make a wide sweep lost I’d venture oo nigh, Matin the living, tearing the dead."

“ Ah. it was all so true. I hated all those who led me to my ruin, and I feared my dead mother. She seemed to follow me everywhere with such an awful look in her eyes, such a look of grief and pain. 1 plunged deeper and deeper in sin to get rid of the memories which haunted me. Oh, if I could have known tlie end from the beginning, how 1 would be tossed from one to another like a football and then cast aside like a broken toy. The sunny, happy days of my childhood would keep coining back to me, days when I knew no more of sin than the flowers in the field, and the birds of the air. Those days seemed to mock me with their tender memories.” 1 said, “ But thank God there is another verse of that poem.— “ Helpless and foul as the Trampled snow, Sinner despair not for Christ stoopeth low To rescue the soul lost in tin, And raise it to life and enjoyment again.” She listened, believed, trusted, and, washed in His blood tin t makes whiter than sr.ow, her frail soul found anchorage in the haven of His love who said of old. “ Neither do 1 condemn thee, go in peace, sin no more.” “ We touched her not scornfully. Thought of her mournfully, Gently, humanly. Not of the stains on her All that remained of her, Now was pure womanly.” Her father refusing to allow her to he buried beside her mother, we laid her to rest in an obscure spot in the town cemetery where no stone or cross marks the spot.