Chapter Nine.
Mrs Stone.
“That was the poorest summer I ever had as to health. Jim’s sickness had run me down, and then I missed him dreadfully, but what really ailed me was a heavy heart. I had lost my hope. I had been a Christian for a good many years, or thought I had. I had joined the Church when I was young, and had tried to live up to my profession, as far as I knew how. I had enjoyed religion in a way, and got real help in trouble from my Saviour. But that seemed all gone. I didn’t enjoy it that summer, and hadn’t for a great while.
“I had thought all along that I was doing the best I could, and that I did well to be angry with my husband’s ways and to hate them. But Jim had left it to me to help his father; and how was I to help him, when I hated not only his ways but himself, as I began to fear? I hated his greed, and his love of money, and his hardness, which had killed his boys; and I couldn’t separate the man from his sins, and yet I knew I ought. I was all wrong for awhile, and I knew it, but I didn’t know how to put myself right.
“Time went on, and a little help came to me after awhile in a way I never would have thought of. It was one Sunday. They had all gone to meeting, and I was alone in the house; and I got my courage up to look over Jim’s box and the few things that were his very own. Among them I found a little book, such as you’ve seen, that has a Bible verse for every day of the year, and after each verse a few words to explain it, or to send it home to the heart, and maybe a verse of a hymn after that. I knew it the minute I saw it. It was one Myra had had when she was a girl. It lay on her bureau always, and she read in it every night.
“She had given it to Jim. Their two names stood together on the first page, and Jim had kept it safe all this time, as I believe, for my help. For when I turned over the leaves, after awhile I found the text for that day, and it was this: ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion. Behold, thy King cometh unto thee! He is just, and having salvation.’ And then, among the words that came after to enforce the Scripture were these: ‘However strong thine inward enemies, thy corruptions, fear not and be not discouraged. Thy King is bound by His office, by His love, and by His promises, to help thee with strength to overcome.’
“They do not sound much as I say them to you, do they?—but to me they seemed to come like a voice from heaven. I had nothing to say for myself. I had been all wrong for a great while. And I knew I could do nothing now to put myself right. But, according to this, the King Himself was ‘bound to help me with strength to overcome.’ So I said—‘I’ll just let go, and see what He’ll do about it. He may guide me where He will.’ For I had lost my way; and if ever a poor soul knew herself to be ‘helpless, and blind, and naked,’ I did that day.
“I had a long spell of sickness after that I was run down, and needed rest rather than medicine, the doctor said, and I was left pretty much to myself; and, as we had good help at that time, my sickness didn’t make much difference in the house. Mind and body were better for the rest, and I rose in a month or two a happier, and, I hope, a better woman than I was when I lay down. I could not speak about myself or my feelings easily to anybody, and I couldn’t say a word to Ezra. But I think he saw the difference. There never was a day after that, that I did not try to say something pleasant to him; and he got none of the sharp answers of which he used to be afraid.
“Things went on pretty much in the old way for a year or two, but better in some respects. We had a new house built, and everything more comfortable about us. A good many people had come to the neighbourhood—well-to-do people; and Ezra had pride enough to wish to ‘keep up with the times,’ as he said. We had a school too within a reasonable distance, and meetings almost every Sunday; and there was some talk of having a meeting-house built: and, to my surprise, Ezra was the one to offer a lot of land to build it on.
“There was talk of a railroad coming our way, which would bring markets nearer, and increase the value of property; and all this did not make him less eager about making money, but more so. I did try to get on better terms with him these days, and I could see that anything I said had more influence with him, though he would not own it in words. My pride was broken as far as he was concerned; the hard feeling against him had gone out of my heart. I could pray for him, and hope for him, and I had peace in my own soul, which made all the difference. The boys were good boys too, and had an easier time than their brothers had had, and were growing up like other folks’ children—manly little fellows, afraid of nothing—and I did not fret about them as I had done about the others. We might have gone on like this for years if something had not happened.”
Mrs Stone paused, and leaned back against the rock with her face turned away for a little while. Then she said—
“It did seem even to me, for a while, that the Lord was dealing hardly by Ezra, and that his heart was hardening rather than softening under the hand that was laid upon him. The harvest time had come again, and there had been more than the usual trouble about getting men to help with it. The boys had been kept steadily at work, but made no complaint; and their father, as the hired men declared, had done the work of two. He was the first up in the morning and the last to go to rest at night, and sometimes even had his food carried to the field to him, rather than lose the time coming to the house. So one morning it gave me quite a start to see him coming toward the house about ten o’clock, and I laid down my work and waited till he came in; and, whatever I forget before I die, I shall never forget the look on his face as he came near. I saw that he staggered as he walked, and that his right arm hung helpless by his side.
“‘What is it?’ I cried out, running toward him, He put out his left hand as if to keep me off, and I saw that he moved his lips as though he were speaking, but he uttered no sound.
“‘You are hurt!’ I said; and I took his arm, and he stumbled into the house, and fell across the bed in a dead faint. We did what we could for him—Prissy and I—and in the midst of our trouble I heard steps and voices coming towards the house; and, for the first time, the thought that something worse might have happened came to me. I turned round and saw the two hired men bringing something in on a board. My Davie! I had no power to cry out when I saw him—bruised, broken, and bleeding to death! I had just sense enough left to make them carry him into another room, so that the eyes of his father might not fall on him when they opened; and so they laid him down.
“‘It’ll only hurt him to try to do anything for him, Mrs Stone,’ said one of the men, with a break in his voice. ‘Speak to him. He has got something he wants to tell you. All he has said since it happened is—“I must tell mother.”’
“So I knelt down beside him, and put a little water on his face, and rubbed his hands, and whispered—‘Davie dear, tell mother.’
“And then he opened his eyes and said faintly,—‘It doesn’t hurt much; and, mother dear, father wasn’t to blame.’
“‘And you’re not afraid, my Davie?’ I asked; and he said—
“‘No, I needn’t be, need I, mother? Jim’s gone there, and baby—and Jesus died. Pray, mother!’
“And so I did, a few broken words; and then he died with a smile on his face, which hadn’t left it when we covered it for the last time.”
The pause was longer this time. Fidelia rose and moved away, and stood looking over to the hills on the other side of the valley for a little while, and when she came back Mrs Stone’s face was quite calm, though there were traces of tears upon it.
“It wasn’t till after some time that I heard just how it happened. The boy whose business it was to drive the team of the reaping machine hadn’t come, and Davie was only too proud and happy to be just in his place. His father had been loth to let him try at first, but he consented, and all went well for a while. But the horses were young, and took fright—at what no one knew—and they ran away, with my Davie sitting where he never ought to have been. His father met them at a corner of the fence which they had tried to get over, and by sheer strength held them there till the man came to take the child from the wreck. Ezra never knew that he was hurt till he tried to lift his boy. He knew Davie was in a bad case, even before the men got him out from the ruins of the machine. But he did not think he was going to die till they laid him down on an armful of the fallen wheat; and then he came home, and the men followed with the poor little boy.
“Well, we had a sad time after that. The harvest was long over before my husband was able to go to the fields again. Besides his broken arm he was hurt inwardly, and his nerves gave way. It was weeks before he could look out on the sunshiny fields without a shudder. But he gradually got better after awhile. The harvest didn’t suffer. The men worked well, and the neighbours helped, and it was all saved and well sold, and a great deal of money—or what seemed a great deal to me—came in for it, and passed through my hands. It was the first time I had ever had a chance to know anything about Ezra’s money matters; but he was glad of my help now, and didn’t resent my having to do with it, as I was afraid he might. But he saw that the money didn’t mean all to me that it meant to him: it wasn’t much to me just then, for my boy’s death had been a hard blow to me. I was worn out with Ezra too. A man just well enough to be able to be about, and too sick to do as he has been used to, is a dead weight on a woman’s hands, I can tell you.
“I did the best I could for him, and was not so impatient with his fancies, or with the fretfulness and fault-finding that filled the days for a while; for by this time I had come to see some things differently. I had come over some rough places, but the Lord had been leading me, and I didn’t rebel under Davie’s loss as I had when we lost the others. I didn’t make much headway with my husband. It was only once in a great while that I could say or do anything to please him, but I laid it to his state of mind and body; and I took some comfort, in knowing that he was a little less miserable when I was by than when I was away.
“Dan wasn’t just like the other boys. He wasn’t so bright, for one thing. He was the least like his mother of any of them. He was shy, and hadn’t as much to say for himself as Jim had had; but he helped his father a good deal at this time. He took notice of all that was done or that needed to be done on the place, and coaxed his father out to see to things which he couldn’t do himself. And this took the poor man’s thoughts off from himself, and did him good in other ways.
“He had been much hurt, and he knew that he would never be the same man again; and for a while—and that was the worst time of all—he couldn’t but feel that he might be going to die, and he knew he wasn’t ready. I knew what his thoughts were, only by words muttered when he thought I was asleep, or out of the way. I read to him, and I prayed for him every hour of the day; but I hadn’t the faculty of speech on the subject nearest my heart. When I did say a word he never answered me, and there was no one else to say much to him.
“Early in the fall he had a letter from John Martin, who had been a neighbour when he lived at the old place. He wanted Ezra to come home and visit him. He had heard of his troubles and his poor health, and he said how good it would be for him to come home, and see his old friends and relations again. Of course I was included in the invitation, and Dan; and, after a little, Ezra said, if I wanted to go he would go too. But I did not think that would be the best thing to do. We had pretty good help as long as there was any one to do the planning; and I made Ezra see that, though he might be spared for a while, it would be better for me to stay at home while he was away; and he made up his mind to take Dan and go, for a month or two at least.
“As for me, I felt as if the rest and quiet I should have at home all alone would do me more good than anything else. But afterwards I was sorry enough that I had not gone with them, though it might not have made any difference in the end.
“Well, they went, and had a good time, and started for home—and you know the rest. They got safely enough to within fifty miles of home, and then an accident happened to the cars. Many were hurt, and among them was Dan; and I only just got where he was in time to see him alive; and we brought him home in his coffin, and laid him down with the rest. And again did it seem even to me as if the Lord was hard on Ezra, taking his last child in that terrible way.
“Well, I never could tell you just how we got through the next year. Angry and rebellious! That tells all that could be told of Ezra Stone for that year. He stuck closer than ever, if that could be, to his farm work; and, though he could not do so much with his own hands, his eye was never off the work that was going on, and the crops were as good as ever. He boasted a little about his crops, and the prices he got; but he did not take the comfort of his success as he had done in former years. He did not say it to me, but I am sure he said to himself many a time—‘What does it all amount to?’ It did not seem to make much difference—the adding of a thousand, or maybe two, to the dollars he had already, since there were none to come after him.
“Well, his health failed again that winter, and he was in the house a good deal of his time. I made it my whole business to see to him, and to make the time pass as easily as might be. I read the papers to him—he had always liked that—and after a while I read other things; and once a day, and sometimes twice, I read the Bible to him. I had promised Jim I would do that whenever I could, and I guess he had promised Jim to let me; and sometimes he took pleasure in it; and I have thought since, if I had been different—if I could have showed him the longing I had to do him good, if I could have spoken to him oftener of the Saviour and His love, that which I had longed for and prayed for all these years since Jim died might have come sooner. It came at last.
“‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven!’ The Lord Himself said that. And it was just that which happened to my husband. The man who for so many years had seemed to me to have the hardest heart and the narrowest mind that mortal could have, was just made over anew. He became a little child. There is no other way of putting it. He was gentle and teachable—yes, and lovable; and that last year with him seemed to more than make up to us both for all the suffering of our married life. Yes, I did come to love my husband; and, what seemed stranger to me, he came to love me those last years, and if I had been different he might have loved me from the first. My mistake was—but there, I do not need to tell you that, seeing I have told you so much—more than I have ever told even Eunice, I declare. And you needn’t be too sorry for me.”
There had been tears in Fidelia’s eyes many times while the story went on, and there were tears still as she stooped to kiss her.
“I am more glad for you than sorry. It all ended well, Aunt Ruby.”
“Yes; as well as well could be for them, and well for me too. I don’t feel as if I ever could be faithless or afraid again—but there’s no telling. And now, dear, had you not better sing something again? It seems as though they must have missed us before now; and some of them will likely be looking for us.”
So Fidelia kissed her old friend again; and, going a short distance up the steep side of the mountain, she placed herself on a high rock near the ascending path, and sung with a voice both strong and clear:—
“How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word!”
till she came to the last line, which she repeated over and over:—
“I’ll never—no, never—no, never forsake!” Before she had ended a hand was laid on hers, and she turned to see the moved face of Dr Justin. “Faithful,” he said—“Faithful!” He was pale, and his lips trembled, and so did the hand that touched hers.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” said Fidelia; and then she drew back a little, startled by his pale face, and added—“Were you afraid about us? Did you think we might be lost?”
“Not afraid—there was no danger of your being lost very long,” said Dr Justin, pulling himself together and trying to speak quietly. “You have not been afraid?”
“No; and I think I could have found my way to the Peak; but Mrs Stone would not let us separate, and she grew very tired. So we sat down and waited, and I have been singing every now and then, hoping that some one might hear. Mrs Stone is a few steps below us.”
He took her hand to help her down from the rock, and held it firmly till they came to the place where Mrs Stone was waiting. She greeted him joyfully.
“Well, there! I am glad to see you, Dr Justin. Who would have thought that we two were not able to take care of ourselves?”
“And I am afraid we have spoiled the pleasure of all the rest,” said Fidelia. “Are they all scattered over the mountain looking for us? I am ashamed of myself.”
“No; only Jabez and I were despatched in search of you. And you have not been missed long. In going up the mountain the company got separated into different parties, and you were not missed till all came together at the top. Then Jabez and I undertook to find you.”
“And have you been searching long?”
“No, not long—though it seemed long. Are you too tired to go up the Peak? Because if you are we can send Jabez up to say so.”
“Tired? No. But is there time? I should hate to have to go home and own that I had not been up the mountain after all,” said Mrs Stone. “I do hate to be beat when I set out for anything.”
“There is plenty of time, and they will all be disappointed if you do not go. I must signal to Jabez first, however. He must be somewhere within sight or hearing, I should think.”
So he was, and came rushing down through bushes and over rocks and stones, at a headlong pace.
“Well, I declare! I knew pretty likely somebody would get into a scrape in the course of the day. But I didn’t think of its being either of you.”
“You were to make us your special care, you remember, Jabez,” said Mrs Stone.
“Yes, you promised Eunice,” said Fidelia, laughing. “What became of you? Did you think about us at all?”
“Why, yes! I thought about you more than once. But there were other folks missing too, and I expected you’d all turn up together,” said Jabez, giving a glance toward Dr Justin.
“If we are going up the Peak, the sooner we start the better,” said Dr Justin.
“Well, yes; but Dr Everett told me that if I came across the strayed ones, I must give them this the first thing,” said Jabez, presenting a little basket to Mrs Stone. “He said you’d got to eat something before you start, and take plenty of time. It takes Dr Everett himself to think of everything.”
“Which cannot be said of all the doctors,” said Dr Justin, laughing. “So you must sit down and enjoy your lunch before you go farther;” and he unfolded a snowy napkin and presented a sandwich to each.
They were soon on their way, however. Jabez privately promised Fidelia that he would take her to the Peak by a short cut, which was also a little the steepest, he acknowledged. So they set off together, and Dr Justin, with Mrs Stone, followed a more circuitous path.
But the shortest way proved the longest this time also, for Mrs Stone had time to tell Dr Everett and the girls the history of the morning, and their wanderings here and there in search of the path, before Fidelia, panting and breathless after her scramble over rocks and through thickets of bramble and berry bushes of various sorts, made her appearance.
It was not so late as they supposed. The lunch was the first thing to be considered, and this was done thoroughly by all.
Then, when that was over, they had the measure of enjoyment which is usually to be had on such occasions. They went here and there separately or in groups, and examined, and wondered, and wished, and, above all, determined and declared that it would not be long before they came up there again. They stayed a little longer than was quite wise, perhaps, to watch the lengthening of the western shadows, and the bright reflections which a wonderful sunset sent over to the eastern hills. And then it was full time to go home.
Dr Everett undertook the marshalling of the company, and this time he arranged that they should divide into parties of three or four, each member of a party being responsible for the safe home-getting and general well-being of each in that party, and of no one else.
“And as Mrs Stone and Fidelia seem to be the difficult case this time, we must see to them especially. So, Dr Justin, you take charge of Mrs Stone and one of the little girls, with Susie to help you, and I will take the other little girl with Fidelia, Nellie Austin being my helper. Yes, that is quite the best way to arrange,” said he, nodding to his brother, who did not seem so sure of it.
They got safely to the foot of the mountain, and safely home—tired enough, but cheerful, already eagerly discussing what was to be done on the doctor’s next day of leisure, which, however, was not likely to come very soon.