The strange house or, A moment's mistake
his mother's now, and pressed it with what little strength he had, and
he drew her towards him.
"Kiss me, mother," he said.
After that, though he took what the nurse gave him, he did not seem
able to speak. His eyes never closed, but were generally fixed on his
mother's face with an expression the nurse did not understand.
The hours crept on; sometimes his mother said a word of tender
endearment, sometimes only her suppressed weeping broke the stillness.
The daylight was beginning to creep in when he spoke once more.
"Mother, you will come to Jesus too?"
"Oh, Johnnie, I'll do what you ask me about the other. But don't make
me promise what I can't do, my dear!"
"Ah, but you can," he panted. "Nurse told me the words—they make it so
plain—'Him that cometh to Me, I will in no wise cast out!' Can't you
come after that, mother?"
CHAPTER XVIII.
SUNRISE.
BUT the poor mother was too bewildered and heart-broken to take any
comfort yet.
Her only child was being snatched from her under circumstances so
pitiful that to her mind no ray of hope or consolation could enter.
She would have given everything she possessed at that moment to pacify
her dying child, and yet the promise he wanted of her was one she
thought she could not give.
Johnnie still held her hand, and all she could do was to bend down and
kiss his little one softly, stilling her passionate longing to clasp
him in her arms by an effort which seemed to her to be almost killing
her.
As her eyes were fixed on his wan little face, she saw his lips move,
and at the same moment the nurse came quickly to his side with her
gentle, untiring, "What is it, dear?"
"You'll be glad by and by—" said Johnnie, tenderly, to his mother.
"Glad? Oh, Johnnie, you do not know—"
"Glad that I am gone to Jesus. Mother—if you will not promise me—still
you'll try?"
"I'll do what I can, Johnnie," she answered at last.
He glanced towards the nurse as if struggling to remember something.
She sat down on the edge of his bed and put her arm under his head.
"Say it again," he whispered.
So she said, slowly and distinctly—
"'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.'"
"Yes; that's it!" he answered, with a sigh of content.
Just then a ray of sunshine broke from a dark cloud in which the sun
had been hidden, and crept along Johnnie's bed, covering his thin
little hands, and shining right up into his wide-open eyes.
"What's that?" he asked with a sudden smile, the only one his mother
had seen on his face, an eager, tender smile which astonished her.
"It's the blessed sunrise," said the nurse soothingly.
But his eyes were still gazing upward, the smile growing and growing
till it became radiant.
"It's—it's 'Jesus!'" he murmured.
The eyes continued to look while the gasping breath grew fainter and
fainter. And then, with one more weary, yet rested sigh, he went away
to the glory which his Saviour has prepared for those who love Him.
Twelve terrible, hopeless hours of heart-rending grief must elapse
before the woman could venture to retrace her steps to her home, or
tell her husband of the blow which had fallen upon them.
The kind nurse did everything in her power to try to comfort the
desolate mother.
But to all her gentle words, the woman only answered, "You do not
know—no one can ever know—it is no use to talk to me. Oh, my Johnnie!
My Johnnie!"
Once during that long day which she spent in the housekeeper's room,
she had asked permission to visit the place where lay all that remained
of her boy. But thither no earthly eye followed her, and her grief,
with its secret sting, was seen only by Him who can unlock the chambers
of every heart, and knows what each one needs to bring it to feel its
need of Himself.
At length the weary day was over, and darkness began to gather.
Directly the woman saw this, she took her bonnet and shawl, and with a
few words of broken thanks to the nurse, she left the house and turned
towards home.
An hour after dark, the woman climbed up those stairs at home, and was
let in to that top room, which looked so like, and so unlike too, the
room she had left less than twenty-four hours ago.
As she threw aside her veil, her husband saw all at a glance.
"Yes—" she said, and then sank down in the chair and laid her head on
her arms on the table.
The man broke into bitter reproaches, walking up and down the room
pouring forth thick words of anguish, in which he laid the blame on his
wife, as if she were not heart-broken enough already.
Presently the woman raised her head, and throwing off her shawl and
bonnet, she went to the corner and lifted from the bed a little child,
wrapping it in a blanket and sitting down by the fire with it on her
lap.
"How's he been?" she asked briefly.
The man, who had been watching her movements and gradually ceasing to
rage, now mumbled something about "very poorly," and without any more
words went down-stairs, and shut himself into the room they occupied
there.
The woman proceeded to feed and wash the little invalid in unbroken
silence. But as she did so, the first tears she had shed since Johnnie
died fell down her cheeks, and dropped on to the soft golden curls of
the little boy.
"Oh, Johnnie, Johnnie!" she whispered at last. "How could I have
promised you what I did? I shall never, never be able to keep it!"
And still, as she tended the little one, her tears dropped down on his
golden hair as she remembered Johnnie's beseeching words—
"'He's' got a mother too!"
CHAPTER XIX.
ROSE GUESSES SOMETHING.
"HERE is a letter from Gertrude," said Otto, walking into his
sister-in-law's pleasant sitting-room one evening.
"That is always welcome. And so are you," answered Rose, looking up
from her work.
Otto smiled slightly. He looked worn, and after the first flush caused
by his brisk walk into Camptown had subsided, he seemed to become paler
than his observant sister had ever seen him.
"Sit down," she said, putting aside her work, and stirring the fire
into a blaze; "have you come to tea?"
"If you will have me."
"Willingly indeed. Have you read Gertrude's letter, or is it private
and particular?"
"It is not private, but all her letters are particular—"
"Yes. So, Otto, we will have her letter together before I ring for the
tea; then we shall not be interrupted."
She settled herself in her chair near the lamp, and opened the sheets,
proceeding to read out what Otto had already heard: all Gertrude's
account of the overturned basket, with its mysterious little pair of
shoes.
Rose drew her breath as she reached that part of it, and when she had
put down the letter, she looked into the fire with an absorbed gaze,
while she seemed to forget Otto's presence altogether.
"Strange!" she murmured. "Otto, did it give you a queer feeling when
you read that?"
"We are apt to fancy every little trifle may bear upon little Lester,"
he said softly, "but this seems too unlikely. Do not build upon it,
dear Rose."
"I know I am too ready to do so," she answered sadly, "but—"
Still she looked into the fire in deep thought.
"Otto," she exclaimed, "I must go and call at that house!"
"They would not admit you."
"Do you think so? At any rate, I should like try. Oh, if I could have
seen those little slippers! I should have known them anywhere."
She rose from her seat, and began pacing to and fro in the little room,
her sweet, calm face looking worried and anxious.
"If—supposing, Otto, that man were afraid of what his basket had
revealed, and were to move away as they did from Blank—"
"But, dear Rose, this may have nothing to do with them at all!"
"But then it may—"
She sat down again, looking troubled, her hands lying listlessly in her
lap, her brow full of lines.
"'God is our Refuge and Strength, a very present help in trouble,'"
said Otto. "Perhaps, Rose, He is leading us along, though we cannot see
the way."
"But it is so hard to trust in the dark—"
"His road will lead to the light," said Otto; "there are no 'blind
thoroughfares' with our Father, Rose!"
She looked up quickly. "'No' blind thoroughfares, Otto!" she answered,
significantly, throwing off her own care as she so often did, in order
to comfort another. "You must remember that, as well as I."
He flushed a deep red, but his eyes looked frankly into hers
nevertheless.
"I do not forget it," he said quietly, "but I have had a long spell in
the dark."
"You have," she answered.
After that there was silence, till, suddenly bethinking herself, she
rang the bell, and began to busy herself in preparation for tea, taking
some cake from the sideboard, and putting the caddy on the table.
When the maid had left the room, and they sat down to their meal, just
those two, Rose began—
"Then you do not advise my going off to see Gertrude?"
"I cannot advise anything," said Otto, "but if you think it likely, it
might be worth trying."
"I feel as if I must, Otto."
Again there was silence. She was planning when she could go, and what
might be the consequences. He was wishing with a great longing that he
could go too, and in his thoughts was almost forgetting little Lester
altogether.
At last, their eyes met, and something in her brother-in-law's made
Rose say gently—
"Otto, I hope it will all come right some day."
She was referring to his thoughts, not to her own.
Again, he coloured vividly, rising to go.
"So soon?" she asked, surprised.
"Yes, I only came over to bring you that letter." Then, as he stood
in the doorway, he added abruptly: "Rose, I see you have guessed my
secret. I never knew till she was gone that I could feel so much—and
with my poverty and all, it is so hopeless."
"Nothing is hopeless when we look above," she said.
And when he was gone, she sat down again and took the lesson home to
her own heart. And her thoughts shaped themselves into these words—
"'With God nothing shall be impossible.'"
CHAPTER XX.
UP THE CHIMNEY.
"LET me look at it!" exclaimed Randall, pushing Hugh aside, and
standing on tiptoe to reach the mantel-piece.
"You mustn't. I ought not to have touched it," said Hugh eagerly. "Let
it alone, I tell you; mother would not like us to touch her letters."
"It isn't a letter, it's a bank-note, and I mean to look at it,
whatever you say—"
Hugh put his hand upon the object of their dispute, to protect it from
further molestation, while Randall, with a sudden movement, caught it
from under his brother's hand, and then in his eagerness dropped it.
It fluttered down, down, down; both boys made a dash at it, but the
draught from the blazing fire was too strong—it eluded their grasp, and
quietly floated into the midst of the flames, where it caught fire, and
went crackling up the chimney.
There was a moment's silence, while both children stood spell-bound.
At length Randall found his voice, though it was choking with anger and
dismay, and he exclaimed—"You did it! It was your fault!"
"Oh, Randall!" said Hugh, turning white.
"You did! I shall tell mother so! It was all your doing—"
He ran from the room, and Hugh could hear his voice explaining and
protesting, and his mother's tone of vexation as she realized her loss.
Then he heard steps approaching, and they both came in.
"I was in the arm-chair," said Randall, "and he was holding it there,
on the hearth-rug, and then he dropped it, and it blew into the fire—"
"Oh, Randall!" began Hugh, in a despairing tone. "It wasn't a bit so,
mother! I was telling Randall not to touch it, and he would try to, and
he snatched it from me, and then—I don't know how—it got burned."