Chapter One.
Christie’s childhood.
“I’ve heard folks say it—I’ve seen it in a book myself—and I heard my father read something like it, out of the Bible, last Sunday—‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’ and in another place, ‘In everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God.’ I might try it, anyway.”
But the voice that spoke was by no means a hopeful one, and there was anything but a hopeful look on the face of the little girl who slowly raised herself up from a mossy seat, where she had been quite hidden by the branches of a tall birch-tree, that hung so low as to dip themselves into the waters of the brook at the times when it ran fullest. It was a very pretty place, and a very strange place for any child to look anxious or discontented in. But the little girl looked as if she were both; and there was, besides, a great deal of weariness in her manner, as she leaned for a moment against a branch, and then stooped to let the water flow over a spray of crimson maple that she held in her hand.
“I might try it, anyway,” she repeated, as she left the place.
In some spring or autumn long ago, the swollen waters of the brook had quite washed away the soil from between the roots of the birch-tree; and the roots themselves, and the hollow place which the waters had made, were covered with grass and soft moss now. In this pretty natural seat, after an eager, half-frightened glance around, the little girl placed herself, kneeling. She closed her eyes, and folded her hands with a reverent gesture; but a doubtful, uneasy look passed over her face as she let her head droop, and murmured:
“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come”—and so on to the end.
Then her head was raised; but the doubtful look had not passed away.
“That’s no’ just what I’m needing,” she continued. “I have my daily bread. I’m no’ sure about the other things; and I canna mind another prayer. I would make one, if I knew the way. I need so many things!”
There was a pause, and then she said, softly:
“O Lord, dinna let Aunt Elsie be vexed with me for biding here so long. I’m sure I need that. And, O Lord, mind Effie to bring home the book she promised me. Oh, there are so many things that I need! and I’m no’ sure that I’m asking right. But the Bible says, ‘Whatsoever ye ask in My name, believing, ye shall receive.’”
She slipped from her kneeling posture, and leaned, with her eyes still closed, against the shining bark of the birch-tree. She lay quiet for some time, as if she were thinking of many things; then, kneeling again, with her head bowed down on her clasped hands, she said:
“O Lord, make me a good child, and take me to heaven when I die, for Jesus’ sake!”
Then she opened her eyes, and rose up with a sigh.
“Oh, how long the shadows have grown! I should have been at home a long while ago. But now I’ll see if Aunt Elsie’s no’ vexed. If she doesna scold me, I’ll ken that there is some use in praying. And if Effie brings me a book, such a book as I like, I shall be sure, sure. Then I shall know that God hears people when they pray; and that will be something.”
And, really, the tired, pale little creature looked as though she needed something to make her look more cheerfully on a world which generally seems so happy a place to the young—something to banish the look of discontent which seemed to have settled on her face.
This was little Christie Redfern—just such a plain, common-looking child as one might see anywhere without turning to look again. Her eyes were neither black nor blue, but grey, and dark only when the long lashes shaded them. Her mouth was too wide to be pretty, and her lips were pale and thin. She might naturally have had a fair, soft skin; but it was tanned and freckled by exposure to the air and sun, and looked neither fair nor soft now. Her brow was high and broad, and would have been pretty but that she gathered it together in wrinkles when she looked at anything closely with her short-sighted eyes. She wore a dark cotton frock and checked pinafore, and her feet, without stockings, were slipped into shoes that seemed a world too big for them. She would not have been pretty in any circumstances; but shuffling along in her big shoes and odd dress, she was a very queer-looking little creature indeed.
But there was something about the child more to be deplored than the wide mouth, or the dim eyes, or the drooping figure. There was a look of unhappiness upon her face which, as any one might see, was in consequence of no momentary trouble. It seemed to be habitual. As she plodded along with her eyes cast down on the rough pathway, it never changed. Once, when the sun, which she thought had set, flashed out for a moment through the clouds of purple and crimson, causing her to look up suddenly, the sad expression passed away; but when her eyes fell it was there again, and she sighed wearily, as though her thoughts were always sad. It was a long time before she looked up again.
Indeed, there was not very much in the scene around her to attract the attention of the child, even if her short-sighted eyes could have taken in the view. There were the clouds; but their crimson and purple glories had faded. There was the little grove of birch and maple by the side of the brook—the prettiest place on her father’s farm, Christie thought; and that was all. A bird’s-eye view of the country for many miles around showed no variety of scenery, except the alternation of long, broad fields of grass and wheat, or, rather, fields where grass and wheat had been, with wide, irregular stretches of low-lying forest. There was scarcely a hill deserving of the name to break the monotonous level. It was a very fine country indeed in the estimation of the busy groups who were here and there gathering in the last sheaves of a plentiful harvest. The farmers of Laidlaw were wont to boast, and with reason, too, of their wheat-crops, and their fine roads and fences, declaring that there was not in all Canada a district that would surpass or even equal theirs in respect of these things. But beauty of this sort a child cannot be supposed to appreciate. Christie’s home for the first ten years of her life had been in a lovely Scottish village, within three miles of the sea on one side and less than three miles from the hills on the other; and the dull, unvaried level, the featureless aspect of her present home, might well seem dreary to the child.
But the contrast between the old life and the new was greater still; and here lay the secret of the shadow that seldom left the face of the little girl now. For in the old times, that seemed so long ago, Christie had been the one delicate child in a large and healthy family, and therefore her loving mother’s constant and peculiar care. And her mother was dead now. I need not say more to prove how sad and changed her life had become.
I think that, meeting her on her homeward way that afternoon, one might have almost seen the motherless look in her pale face and drooping figure and in the lingering tread of her weary little feet. It was a look more painful to see than the look of sadness or neglect which motherless children sometimes wear. It was of a wayward temper grown more wayward still for want of a mother’s firm and gentle rule. One could not doubt that peevish words and angry retorts fell very naturally from those pale lips. She looked like one who needed to be treated with patience and loving forbearance, and who failed to meet either. And, indeed, the rule to which Christie was forced to submit was neither firm nor gentle. Sometimes it was firm, when Christie, as she not unfrequently did, ventured to resist it; but gentle—never.
When Christie’s mother died, all their friends said the little Redferns were very fortunate in having an Aunt Elsie to supply her place in the household; and in some respects they were. If a constant and conscientious determination to do her duty to her brother’s motherless children would have made up to them for their loss, they would have been quite happy under Aunt Elsie’s care. She made a great sacrifice of her own ease and comfort when she left her quiet home to devote herself to their interests; and if they had all been wise and good and thoughtful, they would not have needed to be reminded so frequently of her self-denial as Aunt Elsie seemed to think necessary. But few children are so wise, or good, or thoughtful as they ought to be; and there were oftentimes secret murmurings, and once or twice during the first year of her stay there had been open rebellion among them.
It could hardly have been otherwise. No middle-aged woman unaccustomed to the care of a family, whose heart had never been softened by the helpless loveliness of little children of her own, could have filled the place of a mother, wise, firm, and tender, all at once; and so for a time their household was not a happy one. Their father left his children to the care of their aunt, as he had always left them to the care of their mother; and if an appeal from any decision of hers were made to him, it very seldom availed anything.
It was not so bad for the elder ones. They were healthy, good-tempered girls, who had companions and interests out of the home-circle; and they soon learned to yield to or evade what was distasteful in their aunt’s rule. With the little children she was always lenient. It was the sickly, peevish little Christie who suffered most. More than any of the rest, more than all the rest put together, she missed her mother: she missed her patient care and sympathy when she was ill, and her firm yet gentle management amid the wayward fretfulness that illness brought upon her. Night after night did her weary little head slumber on a pillow which her tears had wet. Morning after morning did she wake up to the remembrance of her loss, with a burst of bitter weeping, angry at or indifferent to all her aunt’s attempts to console her or win her love. No wonder that her aunt lost patience at last, calling the child peevish and wilful, and altogether unlovable, and declaring that she had more trouble and unhappiness with her than with all her sisters put together.
And, indeed, so she had. She rather enjoyed the excitement of keeping a firm hand over the elder ones, and she soon learned to have patience with the noise and heedlessness of the little ones. But the peevishness and wayward fancies of a nervous, excitable child, whom weakness made irritable, and an over-active imagination made dreams, she could neither understand nor endure; and so the first year after the mother’s death was a year of great unhappiness to Christie.
After that, there was a great change in the family life. Losses in business, and other circumstances, induced Mr Redfern to give up his home and to remove with his family to Canada. Though this decision was made contrary to the advice of his sister, she would not forsake him and his children: so she had come with them to the backwoods.
A new and changed life opened to them here, and all the changes that came to them were not for the better. Mr Redfern knew nothing about practical farming; and so, though he had means to purchase a sufficient quantity of good land, it was not surprising to his neighbours that his first attempt should be unsuccessful. His children were of the wrong sort, too, his neighbours said; for only one of the eight was a lad, and he was only six when he came to his new home. No pair of hands could gather, from ever so good a farm, food enough to fill so many mouths; and more than one of the kind people who took the affairs of the new-comers into their especial consideration, shook their heads gravely over their prospects. And for a time they were badly off.
Soon after their arrival in their new home, Aunt Elsie was seized with an illness which lingered long, and left her a cripple when it went away; and her temper was not of the kind which suffering and helplessness are said sometimes to improve. It was a trying time to all.
But winter passed over. Spring came, and with it came a measure of health to Aunt Elsie. She could move about on a crutch and give directions in the house, and do many things besides, which a less energetic person would never have attempted. The elder girls, Effie, Sarah, and Annie, proved themselves of the right sort, so far as energy, and strength, and a right good-will were concerned, and worked in the fields with their father as though they had been accustomed to it all their lives. So, when two or three years had passed away, the glances which the neighbours sent into the future of the Redferns revealed by no means so dreary a prospect as formerly.
A change for the better had come over Christie, too. She would never be as hopeful or as healthy as her sisters, her aunt said; but in health and hopefulness, and in temper too, there was a great change for the better in Christie at the end of the first three years of her Canadian life. But Christie was far from being what she ought to be in respect to the latter item even then, as her aunt often told her; and she had good cause to be of her aunt’s opinion many times before the summer was over.
It was, for several reasons, a time of trial to the child. Her eldest sister Effie, whom she loved best of all, was away from home as school-mistress in a neighbouring township, only returning home for the Sunday, and not always able to do that. Her absence made the constant assistance of Sarah and Annie indispensable to their father. So the work of the household, and the care of the dairy during the greater part of the summer, fell to Christie, under the superintendence of Aunt Elsie; and a great deal more strength and patience was needed than Christie had at her disposal. She would gladly have changed with her sisters for their harder places in the fields; but the cold of the spring and autumn mornings chilled her, and the heat of summer exhausted her, and there was no alternative but the work of the house. This would have been wearisome enough under any circumstances to a child not very strong; and it was sometimes rendered more than wearisome by the needless chidings of her aunt.
Not that her aunt meant to be unkind, or that her chidings were always undeserved or her complaints causeless. Her mother could not have been more careful than her aunt was, that Christie should not put her hand to work beyond her strength. But probably her mother would have felt that a child might become weary, even to disgust, of a never-ending, never-changing routine of trifling duties, that brought no pleasant excitement in their train, that could scarcely be named or numbered when the day was done, yet whose performance required time and strength and patience beyond her power to give. But if her aunt ever thought about this, she never told her thoughts to Christie; and to the child the summer days often passed wearily enough. It is to be doubted whether the elder sisters, after a long harvest-day, went to bed more tired and depressed than did Christie, who, in their opinion, had been having an easy time. Not but that Annie and Sarah understood in some measure the troubles that might fall to Christie’s lot under the immediate superintendence of Aunt Elsie; and they were sometimes ready enough to congratulate themselves on their own more free life out of doors. But, strong and healthy as they were, they could not understand how the work which would have seemed like play to them could be such a burden to their little sister; and they sometimes sadly added to her discontent by making light of her troubles, and ascribing to indolence and peevishness the complaints which, too often, fell from her lips.
There had not, during all the summer, been a more uncomfortable day than the one whose close found Christie sitting so disconsolately under the birch-tree by the brook. It had begun badly, as too many of those days did. In looking for something in the garret, Christie had found a book that had been missing for a long time. It was one of her favourites. She had read it often before, but not recently; and in those days new books were rare, and old books proportionably precious.
Sitting down on the floor, amid the scattered contents of the chest she had been rummaging, she forgot, in the charm of “The Family Tryst,” that the dough of her batch of bread was fast approaching that stage of lightness that needed her attention, and that her oven was by no means in a proper state to receive it when that point should be reached. Page after page she turned with a vague feeling that each should be the last, till even this half-consciousness of wrong-doing was lost in the intense enjoyment of the tale; and then—the charm was broken.
Aunt Elsie’s sharp, quick tones, coming suddenly upon her, must have startled the nervous child with a shock of pain quite apart from any thought of the consequences of her fault; and it was with hands that trembled violently that the book was hidden and the scattered contents of the chest were gathered together again. Then she thought of her bread; and her heart failed within her.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she said to herself; but no such word was spoken to her aunt. Indeed, to her she said nothing; and it was not sorrow for her fault, but sullenness or indifference, or something that might easily be mistaken for these, that her aunt saw on her face as
she came down-stairs. It was very provoking. The bread was ready for the oven, but the oven was by no means ready for the bread. And now for the next three days, at least, the children and the hungry harvest-people must content themselves with sour bread, in consequence of Christie’s carelessness. It was Christie’s wilful disobedience, her aunt declared; and, really, the sullen, unrepentant look on the girl’s face was almost enough to excuse her aunt’s bitter words and the sudden blow that fell on her averted cheek. A blow was a very rare thing with Aunt Elsie. It was not repeated now. Indeed, she would hardly have ventured to strike again the white, indignant face that was turned towards her. Surprise and anger kept the girl for one moment silent; then, in a voice she could hardly make audible for the beating of her heart, she gasped:
“I hate you, Aunt Elsie! I wish I were dead!”
“Be quiet, with your wicked words!” cried Aunt Elsie. “You are far from being in a fit state to die, you disobedient, bad child.”
But Aunt Elsie was vexed with herself for the blow she had given, and all the more vexed with Christie on that account. Christie was really sorry for her fault; but, quite forgetting that she had given no sign of sorrow, she called her aunt unjust and cruel, and bitterly resented both word and blow. Anger and pride gave her strength to obey the command to carry the bread to a cool place, and to keep back a rush of tears till her task was done. But it failed her then; and, throwing herself on the ground, out of sight, she wept and sobbed, and uttered words as wicked and passionate as those which her aunt had reproved.
This was the beginning; and after that nothing could be expected to go well. Though her head ached and her hands trembled, the work of the house must be done; and more than her usual share fell to Christie to-day. For Aunt Elsie’s rheumatism was bad again, and much that she usually did was left to Christie. But her aunt did not say she was ill. The added tasks were assigned with a voice and in a manner that seemed to declare them a part of the punishment for the fault of the morning; and we cannot wonder much that they were sullenly performed.
“I don’t care,” repeated Christie to herself, over and over again, that day. “There is no use in trying to please Aunt Elsie. It makes no difference. She’s cross always. I never do anything right, she says; and I don’t care!”
But she did care, for all that. She was very wretched. She avoided her sisters when they came home to dinner, saying she had a headache, and didn’t want any—which, indeed, was true; and her sisters, thinking that she and Aunt Elsie had had a falling-out which would be made up before night, left her to herself. So Christie sat on the garret-floor, too miserable to read, her heart full of angry thoughts against her aunt, her sisters, and all the world.
But into the very midst of her vexed and angry murmurs against them there came the feeling that all the fault was not theirs—that she was herself to be blamed. And by and by the anger passed away; but the misery remained, and oftener, and with more power, came the consciousness that she was a very cross, unamiable child, that she was not like her older sisters or the little ones, that she was a comfort to no one, but a vexation to all. If she only could die! she thought. No! she would be afraid to die! But, oh, if she had never been born! Oh, if her mother had not died!
And yet she might have been a trial to her mother, too, as she was to all the rest. But no! she thought; her mother would have loved her and had patience with her; and Aunt Elsie never had. Amid a rush of angry tears, there fell a few very bitter drops to the memory of her mother.
With a weary pain at her head and heart, she went about the household work of the afternoon. The dinner-dishes were put away, and the room was swept and dusted, in silence. The pans were prepared for the evening milk, and the table was laid for supper; and then she sat down, with a face so woe-begone and miserable, and an air so weary that, even in spite of her anger, her aunt could not but pity her. She pitied herself more, however. She said to herself that she was at her wits’ end with the wilful child. She began to fear that she would never be other than a cross and a trial to her; and it did seem to Aunt Elsie that, with her bad health and her hard work among her brother’s children, she had enough to vex her without Christie’s untowardness. It did seem so perverse in her, when she needed her help so much, to be so heedless and sullen.
“And yet what a poor, pale, unhappy little creature she seems to be!” thought she. “Maybe I haven’t all the patience with her that I ought to have. God knows, I need not a little to bear all my own aches and pains.”
But her relenting thoughts did not take the form of words; and Christie never fancied, when she was bidden go for the cows at once, and not wait for the coming of the children from school, that her aunt sent her because she thought the walk to the pasture would do her good. She believed it was a part of her punishment, still, that she should be required to do what had all the summer been the acknowledged work of Will and her little sisters. So, though she was too weary and miserable to resist, or even to murmur, she went with a lagging step and a momentary rising of her old angry and resentful thoughts.
It was not very far to the pasture through the wheat-field; and she was soon there. But when the cows had passed through the gate she let them go or not, just as they pleased, and turned aside, to think over again, by the side of the brook, the miserable thoughts of the afternoon; and the end of these was the murmured prayer with which my story began.
Her thoughts were not very cheerful as she plodded along. She had no wish to hurry. If she did, she would very likely have to milk Brownie and Blackie and the rest, besides Fleckie, her own peculiar care. She said to herself, there was no reason why she should do her sisters’ work, though it was harvest-time and they would come home tired. She was tired too—though nobody seemed to think she ever did anything to tire her. She could milk all the cows well enough. She had done it many a time. But it was one thing to do it of her own free will, and quite another to do so because her aunt was cross and wanted to punish her for her morning fault. So she loitered on the road, though the sun had set and she knew there was danger of the cows passing the gate and getting in among the wheat, where the fence was insufficient, in the field below.
“I don’t care,” she said to herself. “It winna be my fault. The bairns should have been at home. It’s their work, not mine, to mind the cows. Oh, I wist Effie was at home! There’s nothing quite so bad where she is here. But I’ll see to-night if my prayer is heard; that will be something; and then I’ll begin again, and try to be good, in spite of Aunt Elsie.”