Chapter Ten.
The shadow of death.
It was past midnight when Mrs Lee entered the nursery again. Little Harry was on the bed, and his weary nurse was preparing to lie down beside him.
“He seems to be sleeping quietly,” said his mother, as she bent over him, “Yes, ma’am—much more quietly than he did last night. I think he will have a good night,” said Christie.
Mrs Lee seated herself on the side of the low bed, and listened to his quick, irregular breathing.
“I was beginning to hope that all the others might escape, now that Letty is so well,” she said; “but if Harry gets over it I shall be glad. It is always well that children should have these diseases while they are at home, if they must have them—poor darlings!”
She looked grave, and even sad as she spoke; but her face was not so pale, and she did not look so hopeless as she had done when the doctor was present.
“I feel quite rested and refreshed,” she said, after a few moments. “I have been asleep two or three hours. You had better go up-stairs and lie down awhile, and I will stay with Harry the rest of the night. You look very tired, Christie.”
“I was just going to lie down here,” said Christie. “Do you think you need to sit up, ma’am? He seems sleeping so quietly, and the least movement he can make will wake me. I can keep a light burning, and call you at any moment. I do not think you need to sit up.”
“I am afraid you will not rest much with him, if his least movement will wake you,” said Mrs Lee, doubtfully.
“Oh, I wake and sleep again very easily,” said Christie, cheerfully. “I am used to it now.”
Still Mrs Lee lingered, watching the child with anxious eyes, and now and then sighing deeply Christie sent many a pitying glance towards her wondering if any trouble that she knew nothing of was added to the anxiety with which she regarded her child. She longed to be able to comfort her. Her heart was full of sympathy for her—sympathy which she did not venture to express in words. She did not even let her looks express it, but took up her Bible, that she might not seem to be watching her. Mrs Lee roused herself at last, and turning to Christie, said:
“Mrs Greenly tells me that Mr G., the famous preacher, was in town to-day. And, by the bye, you must have heard him. He preached in — Church this morning. You were there, I suppose?”
“Yes; I was there,” said Christie, with great interest. “There was a strange minister preached; but I didn’t know that he was a great man. That was the reason there was such a crowd of people, I suppose. I wondered why it was.”
“You didn’t like him, then? or you didn’t think him a great man?” said Mrs Lee, smiling.
“Oh, yes,” said she, eagerly; “I liked him. But I wasn’t thinking about him as a great man; I wasn’t thinking of him at all—only of what he said.”
“He told you something new, then?” said Mrs Lee.
“No! Oh, no! Nothing new; nothing that I had not heard many times before. And yet it seemed to come to me as new!” she added, a strange, sweet smile passing over her face.
“What did he say that was new to you?”
“Some things he said that I shall never forget. He was telling us of God’s love to man, shown in many ways, but most and best of all in the work of redemption. It wasn’t new, what he said; and yet—I don’t know how it was—I seemed to see it as I never saw it before.” And again the same bright smile flashed over her countenance.
“The work of redemption?” repeated Mrs Lee; and there was a questioning tone in her voice that made Christie look at her doubtfully before replying.
“Yes; you know, ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have eternal life.’ And ‘All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’ And there are many more verses in the Bible like this. One of them says, ‘When there was no eye to pity, or hand to save, God’s eye pitied, and His own arm brought salvation.’ I’m not sure that these are the exact words, but that is the meaning of the verse.”
“Brought salvation!” repeated Mrs Lee. “That means that God’s people will be saved, and will go to heaven when they die?”
“Yes,” said Christie, hesitatingly. “It means that; but it means something more. We don’t have to wait till we die to get the good of salvation. We shall be saved from the punishment of sin when we die, but we are saved here from its power. We come to hate what we once loved, and to see beauty and worth in things that before were uninteresting to us. What was hard to do and hard to bear becomes easy for Christ’s sake. Somehow or other, everything seems changed. ‘Old things pass away. All things become new.’”
She paused, and letting her cheek rest on the hand that held her Bible, she gazed into the glowing embers with eyes that seemed to see pleasant things far-away. Mrs Lee looked at her with wonder for a time, and then said:
“Has all this happened to you—this change you speak about?”
A sudden flow of tears was the only reply her question received at first. But soon she raised her head, and said:
“Sometimes—now and then—I have hoped so; and to-day, when God’s great love to sinners was set forth, and the way of salvation shown to be so wise, so free, so suitable, it seemed foolish and unreasonable to doubt any more. I had heard all about it many and many a time before, but the words seemed to come home to my heart to-day. It was like the sudden shining out of a light in a dark place. Maybe I’ll go back again to my old doubts and discontent. But I hope not; I believe not. I know He is able to keep me; and I think He will.”
Mrs Lee had laid herself down by Harry, and was listening now, with her eyes shaded by her hand. She lay so long and so quietly that Christie thought she must have fallen asleep, and began softly to turn over the leaves of her Bible again; and she quite started when, in the course of half an hour, she spoke again.
“You said something about God’s love in redemption. What did you mean by it? Tell me more of what the preacher said.”
Christie hesitated a moment, and was at a loss what to say: “I can’t mind all he said. That is, I can’t mind the exact words. But he told us what a blessed thing it is for us that our salvation, from beginning to end, is God’s own work, and how impossible it is that we could be saved if it depended on ourselves.”
“Yes; even if one could begin one’s life again. It would be all the same. We might avoid some errors and keep from falling into some mistakes; but after all, it would come to the same thing in the end, I dare say. There is no use in wishing for another chance.”
Mrs Lee sighed; and Christie hesitated a moment, and then said: “We can do nothing to save ourselves, ma’am, and all else that we have to do grows easy, because of the grace which God gives, and because of a knowledge of Christ’s love to us. It is easy to do the will of One who loves us, and whom we love.”
There was a long pause after this, which Mrs Lee broke by saying: “What was it you said about ‘no eye to pity, and no arm to save’?”
“Here it is,” said Christie; and she eagerly read the words from her Bible, and many more besides—a verse here and a verse there, as her own judgment or Effie’s marginal marks suggested: such as, “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
“He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.
“For when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
“But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
“Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
“If we could be sure that we are among the children of God,” said Mrs Lee, with a sigh. And soon after she added: “There are a great many things in the Bible that are hard to understand.”
“Yes; I suppose so—I am sure of it,” said Christie, gravely. “But the things most necessary for us to know and understand are easy for us; at least, with the help of the Holy Spirit they grow easy, I think. It is very plainly told us we are sinners and need a Saviour, that a Saviour has been provided, and those who come to Him He will in no wise cast out. These are the chief things; and besides these, we are assured of help and guidance and peace, all the way through to the end.”
Christie spoke slowly, striving to put into as few words as possible these precious truths of the Bible.
“You seem to know a great deal about these things, and to take a pleasure in them,” said Mrs Lee.
Christie shook her head. “I take pleasure in them, but I know very little. It is only lately that I have cared to learn. I am very ignorant.”
Ignorant though she was, the child knew more of God’s truth than her mistress; and many a word in season she spoke to her anxious heart during the long watches that they shared together in the sad times that followed that memorable day. They were words very simply and humbly spoken—rarely Christie’s own. They were passages of Scripture, or bits from the catechism, or remembered comments upon them made, in her hearing, by her father, or by Effie and her friends.
Nothing could have been farther from Christie’s thoughts than any intention of teaching. She did not dream how strange and new to her listener were the blessed truths that were beginning to present themselves so vividly to her own mind. She would have shrunk from the thought of presuming to teach, or even to suggest new trains of thought. In ordinary circumstances she might have found it difficult to converse long on any subject with Mrs Lee. But watching and anxiety, shared in the chamber over which hangs the shadow of a great dread, soon break down the barriers of reserve which a difference of age or position raises; and there seemed no inappropriateness in the grave, earnest words that now and then fell from the lips of the little maid. Indeed, weak in body and exhausted in mind as the troubles of the winter and spring had left her, Mrs Lee found positive rest and refreshment in the society which might at another time have seemed unsuitable; and mingled with the gratitude with which she saw Christie’s devotion to the sick child was a feeling of respect and admiration for the character which was gradually developing before her eyes.
How long the days and nights seemed! Little Harry’s robust frame and fine constitution availed him little. The fever raged with great violence; and the close of the week found the doctor still in doubt as to how it might end with him. His mother’s strength and hopefulness had held out wonderfully till this time; but when the baby, the fair and fragile little Ellinor, was stricken down, faith, strength, and courage seemed to fail her. It was not long, however. The child’s need gave the mother strength; and the baby needed nothing long. The other children were sent away to a friend’s house in the country; and silence, broken only by the moans of the little ones or the hushed voices of their anxious nurses, reigned through the house, lately echoing to far other sounds.
Before three silent days had passed, the mother knew that her baby must die. In the presence of her unutterable sorrow Christie was mute. The awe which fell upon her in the dread presence left her no words with which to comfort the stricken mother. But in her heart she never ceased through all that last long night to pray, “God comfort her.”
And she was comforted. Though her tears fell fast on the folded hands of her child as she said the words, they were humbly and reverently spoken:
“‘Thy will be done.’ It would have been harder to leave my child than to let her go!—and now one of my darlings is safe from all sorrow for ever!”
The father came home just in time to lay his little daughter in the grave; and then both father and mother sat down to wait. For what? For the gradual return of the rose to the cheek and the light to the eye of little Harry? Alas, no! It was not to be. A keener pang was to pierce the heart of the stricken mother. For to part with little Harry was a far harder trial to anticipate than even the loss of her baby had been to bear. But day by day it became more apparent to all that Harry’s end was hastening. The fever went away, but there seemed to be no power to rally in the little worn-out frame of the child. His father, for a little while, spoke hopefully of a change of air, and the sea-side; but he could not long so cheat himself with false hopes. The restlessness and irritability, which they had said to one another were hopeful signs, passed away. His smiles were more languid and constrained, and he soon failed to recognise the anxious, loving friends who ministered to his wants.
Before this the mother’s strength had quite failed; and the father, unused to the sight of suffering, shrank from looking on the last agony of his child. Through all his illness the little boy had clung to Christie—never quite at rest, even in the arms of his mother, unless his Christie was near. Her voice had soothed him, her hands had ministered to his comfort, her care had been lavished on him, through all those lingering days and nights. And now it was Christie who met his last smile and listened to his last murmured “Good-night!” Yes, it was Christie who closed his eyes at last, and straightened his limbs in their last repose. She helped to robe him for the grave, and to lay him in his little coffin; and all the time there was coming and going through her mind a verse she had learned long ago—
“Now, like a dew-drop shrined
Within a crystal stone,
Thou’rt safe in heaven, my dove;
Safe in the arms of Jesus,
The everlasting One!”