CHAPTER VII.
Jacob Ford’s new home was a little cottage, just on the outskirts of the city; for Lucy said, “maybe the flowers, and the little birds, and the green grass might tempt Mary out of doors, where the wind might fan her pale cheek.” It was beautiful to see Lucy stifling her own sorrow, while she moved about, performing uncomplainingly the household drudgery. Mary would sit at the window, twisting her curls idly over her fingers, or leaning out, as if watching for Percy. Sometimes she would sit on the low door-step, when the stars came out, with her head in Jacob’s lap, while his wrinkled fingers strayed soothingly over her temples. She seldom or never spoke; did mechanically what she was bid, except that she drew shuddering back, when they would have led her across the threshold. Once she wept when Jacob brought her a violet, which he found under the cottage window. Jacob said, “dear heart! why should a little blossom make the poor thing cry?” Lucy’s womanly heart better solved the riddle: it was Percy’s favorite flower.
Their rustic neighbors leaned over each other’s fences, and wondered “who on airth them Fords was,” and why “the old man didn’t take no interest in fixin’ his lot. The trees wanted grafting, the grass wanted mowing, the gooseberries were all over mildew, the strawberries, choked with weeds; and it did really ’pear to them as though the old fellow must be ’ither a consarned fool, or an idiot, to let things run out that way. And the poor sick girl, she looked like a water-lily—so white, so bowed down; why didn’t they put her into a shay, and drive her out, to bring a little color into her waxen cheeks?”
The thrifty housewives said, “it was clear to them that the old lady hadn’t her wits, narry more than the old man, for she left her clothes’-line out all night, when every body knew that dew and rain would rot it; but what could you expect from shiftless city folks?”
For all this the country people were kind-hearted. New neighbors did not grow on every bush. Topics were scarce in Milltown, and every new one was hunted down like a stray plum in a boarding-school pudding. Yes, you might have gone further, and found worse people than the Milltown-ites. The little sun-burnt children learned to loiter on their way to school, “to pick a nosegay for the pretty pale lady.” Widow Ellis, under the hill, picked her biggest strawberries, and put them in a tempting little basket, covered with green leaves, for her curly-pated Tommy to carry to “poor Miss Mary.” Miss Trodchom baked an extra loaf of ’lection-cake, “in hopes the Fords’ daughter might nibble a bit, poor thing.” And farmer Jolly dropped his whip on purpose, over Jacob’s fence, to get a chance to tell the old man “that he had a mare as was as easy as a cradle, and a prettyish side-saddle that the sick girl might have, and welcome, if she took a notion.” And Mr. Parish, the minister, came, but he could not make much of Jacob, who told him “that if it was religion to be willing to see one’s own flesh and blood suffer, he did not want it.”
Poor old Jacob! Every earthly reed had broken beneath him, his unsteady steps were tottering toward the grave, and yet he threw aside the only sure Staff. He did not know, poor old man, so gradually had his heart hardened by contact with the world, “that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Through no rift in the dark cloud which shadowed him, could he see bright Mercy’s sunbeam. One by one the lights had gone out in his sky, and still he groped about, blind to the rays of Bethlehem’s star. Poor old Jacob!
It was Sabbath morning. Jacob stood at his cottage door, gazing out. Each tiny blade of grass bent quivering under its glistening dew-drop. The little ground-birds on the gravel walk were picking up their early breakfast; the robins were singing overhead. The little swallows flew twittering round the cottage eaves. The leaves were rustling with their mysterious music. The silver mist wreathed playfully over the hill-sides, whose summits lay bathed in sunshine. Every thing seemed full of joyous life. Where was the Master hand which regulated all that harmony? The birds sang—the leaves danced—the brooks sparkled—the bee hummed—why did He make man only to suffer? It was all a riddle to poor Jacob. He took his staff, and sauntered away under the drooping lindens. The Sabbath bell was calling the simple villagers to church. Across the meadows, down the grassy lane—the rosy maiden, the bent old man, and the lisping little child. Jacob looked after them as they went. Jacob never had been to church—not since he was a little child. Sunday he always posted his books, squared up his accounts, wrote business letters and the like of that; shortening the day at both ends by getting up later and going to bed earlier. Sunday to him was no different from any other day in the week—except that he transferred his business from his counting-room to his parlor; and yet—here he was, leaning on his staff, before the village church, almost wishing to go in with its humble people. He looked about as if he expected somebody to be astonished that Jacob Ford should be standing so near a church door; but nobody seemed to notice it, or look at all surprised. By-and-by he crept on a little further, and seated himself on a stone bench in the porch, with his chin upon his staff. The butterfly and the bee passed in and out; even the little birds flew in at the church door, and out at the open window; and still old Jacob sat there—he could scarcely have told why. Now he hears the choir sing,
“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave, and follow Thee;
Naked—poor—despised—forsaken—
Thou from hence my all shalt be.
“Though the world despise and leave me,
They have left my Saviour too;
Human hearts and hopes deceive me,
Thou art not like them, untrue.”
As the song died away, old Jacob’s tears flowed down his cheeks; the words soothed his troubled spirit like a mother’s lullaby.
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Who promised that?
How did the minister know how “heavy laden” was Jacob’s spirit?
How did he know that for sixty years he had been drawing water from broken cisterns? Chasing shadows even to the grave’s brink?
How did he know that on that balmy Sabbath morning, his heart was aching for something to lean on that would not pass away?
“Come unto me.”
Old Jacob took his staff, and tottered out into the little church-yard He did not know he was praying, when his soul cried out, “Lord help me;” but still his lips kept murmuring it, as he passed down the grassy road, and under the drooping lindens, for each time he said it, his heart seemed to grow lighter; each time it seemed easier for old Jacob to “come.” And so he entered his low doorway, and as he stooped to kiss his daughter’s cheek, the bitterness seemed to have gone from out his heart, and he felt that he could forgive even Percy, for His sake of whom he had just so recently craved forgiveness.
“What is it?” asked Lucy, awed by the strange expression of Jacob’s face, and laying her hand tenderly upon his arm; “what is it, Jacob?”
“Peace!” whispered the old man, reverently; “God’s peace—here Lucy;” and he laid his hand on his heart.
Lucy took old Jacob’s staff and set it in the corner. Good, kind Lucy! She did not think when she did so, that he would need it no more. She did not know when the sun went down that night, that death’s dark shadow fell across her cottage threshold. She did not know, poor Lucy, when she slumbered away the night hours so peacefully by his side, that, leaning on a surer Staff, old Jacob had passed triumphantly through the dark valley; and when at length the little twittering sparrows woke her with their morning song, and she looked into the old man’s cold, still face, the pale lips, though they moved not, seemed to whisper, “Peace, Lucy—God’s peace.”