CHAPTER XIV
A "WITLESS, WORTHLESS LAMB"
The air at Silverguile Lake did not altogether agree with Mrs. Gray. Rheumatic damps rose from the water, and the mornings were chilly and uncomfortable. The inane round of dressing, eating, appearing in the veranda, taking the daily drive, and other mild etcetera, grew irksome; and, beyond all, the faces of the dear ones at home were longed for. Winifred came for a few days, and then the place brightened like a cloudy day that surprises the world with sunshine at its close.
Mrs. Gray was far from well when the home journey was undertaken, and Winifred looked at her with apprehension. But they traveled comfortably and reached home in the evening where welcome waited. But an alarming chill overtook the mother before she had retired that night, and the doctor was hastily summoned. The chill was a harbinger of serious illness, and the cheerful house became shrouded in dread of coming sorrow. Winifred devoted herself eagerly to her mother, but professional skill was needed also. The telephone rang frequent calls from the office during the anxious days to inquire for the loved patient, and life for the time was enveloped in the one painful query: Will mother live?
The doctor gave sparing reports, but careful directions. Winifred moved about the house with a pale face and frightened eyes, until the doctor told her that she evidently needed his services also, and that she must not let her mother see her with that face. Then she fled to her room and poured out her pitiful need to God, and begged His grace for calm and cheerfulness. With unfailing faithfulness He gave her what she asked, and she went back to minister with Him at hand to help.
"Winnie, dear, is that you?" said a faint voice from the bed.
"Yes, mother."
"Come here, dear, let me look at you."
Winifred went and sat beside her where they could look into each other's faces.
"Dear, do you think I am very ill? Does the doctor say so?"
"He has not said much, mother. But he is taking every care."
"Yes, I see. What do you think, child?"
"I do not know, mother. But we hope you are getting on as well as possible."
"Winnie," said she again, and her voice came with difficulty, "I think I am very ill. I have had sickness before, but not like this. Things seem slipping away."
Winifred's eyes filled with tears, but she forced them back. "Do not think that, mother," she pleaded.
"They are all slipping away," insisted the sick woman. "Every one—father, Hubert, you—everyone—everything I know—all slipping away."
Winifred looked to her invisible Companion in an agony of entreaty for her mother. Presently Mrs. Gray's voice again arose plaintively from the pillow:
"I am afraid—I am afraid, Winnie. I don't know—the things ahead! These,"—and her poor hands closed themselves over the counterpane as though they would try to hold the tangible, known things—"are slipping away, and I—am afraid."
"God never slips away," whispered Winifred.
"No?" queried the mother. "But I—can't—see Him! I don't—know Him."
So the secret, before unconfessed and unrealized, came out at last. She did not know Him. The church, the service, the minister,—the external routine of a nominally Christian life, all was slipping away into a mist of past that could not be retained. And now the soul stood, a terror-stricken stranger, before the things not known.
"I am afraid," repeated the faint voice.
Winifred longed for words of comfort, but they did not seem at hand.
The white-robed nurse came into the room with a little air of professional authority. "I think our patient should not talk any more just now," she said, and Winifred retired.
She met Hubert in the hall and drew him to her own little sitting-room, where they pleaded with God together for the eternal comfort of the beloved sufferer.
Evening came and Winifred was again by her mother's side.
"Winifred," said the gentle voice, stronger to-night for the increased fever.
"Yes, dear mother?"
"Winnie, dear, would you be afraid if—if you were ill—like me?—if you were going to—"
"To die," she was about to say, but she could not speak the word. She shivered instead, as though a cold wind had struck her.
Winifred did not wait for the unwelcome word.
"No—I think not, mother," she said simply.
"Why not? Is it not dark—what we do not know?"
"But I know God," said Winifred earnestly, "and Jesus Christ. And they are there—in the things we cannot see. The Apostle Paul said, 'For me to live is Christ; to die is gain.'"
The words brought no comfort. "'To live is Christ,'" repeated the sick one musingly. "If that were so—?" she was silent for a few moments, and then broke out hopelessly: "No, no! To live has not been Christ! It has been myself, and you all, and these things! It is not gain to die! It is loss!—loss!—loss of everything I know!"
Her voice rose excitedly, and her glistening fevered eyes looked about restlessly. Winifred feared that the nurse would come, and finding her worse, end the interview. So she prayed that God would calm the dear patient and give them both His needed grace for the hour. And He heard.
"Let me straighten your pillow, mother dear," she said, and suited the action to the word. Her mother clasped the deft hands that arranged things so comfortably, and looked long with yearning fondness into her daughter's face.
"Winnie," she said finally, "could you sing just a little for me?"
Winifred choked back a sob that tried to escape. "I will try," she said.
She brought a little stringed instrument that her mother loved, with which she sometimes accompanied her songs.
"What shall I sing?" she asked, seating herself beside the bed.
"I don't know," hesitated her mother.
"Would you like that little Scotch song from Sankey's book?"
"Oh, yes. That is very sweet."
So Winifred began the plaintive words:
"I am far frae my hame, an' I'm weary aftenwhiles
For the langed-for hame bringin' an' my Faither's welcome
smiles."
She began with a stern watch upon her own emotions. But, as she proceeded, from the sadness of the hour rose a longing in her soul for the "ain countrie" where no blight of death and tears are known, and it poured itself out in the song. She sang two of the long stanzas.
"I've His guid word o' promise that some gladsome day the King
To His ain royal palace His banished hame will bring.
Wi' heart and wi' een rinnin' ower we shall see
The King in a' His beauty in oor ain countrie.
Like a bairn to its mither, a wee birdie to its nest,
I wad fain be agangin' noo unto my Saviour's breast;
For He gathers in His bosom witless, worthless lambs like me,
An' carries them Himself to His ain countrie."
Mrs. Gray had been lying with closed eyes through which the tears forced their way. Now she interrupted:
"What does it say, Winifred? 'He gathers in His bosom?' Please sing those lines again."
So Winifred repeated:
"'For He gathers in His bosom witless, worthless lambs like me,
And carries them Himsel' to His ain countrie.'"
"Thank you!" murmured the invalid with a sigh. "Is it true, Winnie?"
"Yes, mother, it is quite true."
"That is what—I have been." She was speaking again with difficulty, and her voice was very low, so that Winifred leaned forward to listen. "I've been—a 'witless, worthless lamb!' Will He—gather—me?"
"I know He will—if you trust Him!"
"How do you know, Winnie?"
"There is the Scripture, mother. There is the parable of the lost sheep, and then there is another word; 'All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.'"
After a moment the weak voice spoke again:
"Winnie, you know Him; will you pray? Tell Him—I've taken—my own way,—a 'witless, worthless lamb!'"
Winifred slipped to her knees beside the bed and prayed; prayed with the greatest thankfulness she had ever known because she knew God, and prayed for the dearest object for which she had made request. She reminded God with great simplicity that He had laid the iniquity of us all who have wandered on His Anointed One, and begged Him to make good the virtue of that act to her poor mother. And the dying lady listened, and believed.
"Dear mother," said Winifred fondly, "do you not see that He will gather you?"
Mrs. Gray's head had sunk back contentedly in the pillows. She smiled faintly.
"Yes, I see it now," she said. "It is very true."
In a few moments she was asleep, and the nurse resumed her watch. But later in the night a quiet alarm summoned the little household to her chamber, and they watched for the moment of parting between the spirit and its fair tenement. Before it came she opened her eyes, and looked at them placidly. Her lips moved, and Winifred bent forward eagerly to catch their words.
"I—am—not—afraid'" they pronounced, and then closed their witness for this world forever.
The death of Mrs. Gray brought the first great sorrow to the house of Robert Gray. It did its work in the heart of each who remained. It smote the husband with a conviction of misspent years, of a united fellowship in the things that perish so miserably instead of in those things which remain when all else is shaken. Had he but led his gentle wife, as was his opportunity, in ways of the Spirit, how different might have been their record together. And now the end had come for one, with no "abundant entrance," no glad prospect of long-anticipated joys,
"Where the eye at last beholdeth
What the heart has loved so long,"
but with the negative testimony of a fear relieved—of wrath averted, through the grace of a longsuffering God. They had been guilty together of the capital sin of an earth-centered life; and now the iron merchant, elder of the church though he was, awoke from his long dream of money getting and of earthly comfort to the reality of God, and of his obligation as a redeemed soul to Him. There crept an unfamiliar note of yearning sincerity into the prayers wherewith he took his heretofore formal part in the church prayer meeting, and it almost perceptibly thinned the frozen crust of the "icily regular" service. The men in his business noticed a new softness in his manner, and sometimes it emboldened them to speak to him of their own cares and sorrows, and they found sympathy.
Hubert grieved for his mother with the strength of an intense, reticent nature. But, as did also his sister, he found solace in God.
Winifred felt very keenly her mother's loss, missing the vanished hand from every part of the house where she now assumed her place, seeing everywhere reminders of her dainty touch and quiet taste, and longing for her voice yet more and more as the days went by. This great bereavement came so closely on the separation from one whom she never mentioned now, but who was far from forgotten, that often her heart seemed torn between the two sorrows. Sometimes waves of disheartenment came on cloudy days of testing, when the sun was hidden and life looked cheerless and hard. But anon the face of Jesus Christ broke through the clouds, and with the vision came always joy.
The three who were left drew more closely to each other, and despite their sorrow found a sweetness of comfort together never known before.