Sunday morning! Such a happy day generally! for my parents contrived to make it really, and not nominally, the best of all the seven; but now, how dreary was the awakening to a Sunday which I expected to be only the melancholy repetition of the preceding days, if not far sadder!
The weather had turned chilly, and the servants, to make things look a little brighter, made this the excuse for a fire in the dining-room, by which I crouched down on the rug, after breakfast, with a Sunday story-book in my hand, wondering whether I should go to church, or what would happen in a state of things so different from what was usual; and why it was I was told I need not prepare my repetition lesson from the Bible, according to custom. By-and-by my father came in and told me to get ready to go with him to church; he thought he might safely leave Aleck for a little while, and would like to have me walk with him.
We had not far to go, for the church stood but a quarter of a mile from our house, and there was a direct pathway to it through the woods. I thought perhaps I should muster courage to open my heart to my father as we went along. But first we met one person and then another, anxious to know the last report from the sick-room, so that we had no time alone, and I had to reserve my confession until we should come home after church. Aleck was to be prayed for in church, my father told me; and he added that I was to think of Uncle and Aunt Gordon too, in the Litany, for it would be a sore trouble to them to have been away from their only child in such a time as this. And then he spoke to me of childish fears about death, and said that, for those who were safe in Jesus, death was a friend, and not an enemy; and that I must pray that, if it pleased God Aleck should never get well, he might go to the beautiful home prepared for all the children of God: and the firm grasp of my father's hand, and his clear, unhesitating voice, conveyed to my timorous, troubled heart, a sort of belief in a calm, sheltered haven, that might succeed in time to the outside tossings on stormy waters, and I felt comforted, though I scarcely knew how.
Mr. Morton, our clergyman, was away for a month's holidays, and it was a stranger who performed the service. When I heard the prayers of the congregation requested for "Alexander Ringwall Gordon, who was dangerously ill," it seemed almost more than I could bear, the long formal enunciation of his name sounding so terribly like a death-warrant.
If ever I tried to pray the Church prayers, and not merely say them, it was that morning; and it seemed to me quite wonderful how much of them agreed with my own feelings, how many things there were in the service that were exactly what I wanted. Hitherto the singing had appeared the only attractive portion of divine worship; but now that, for the first time in my life, I knew what it was to have a really sin-burdened conscience, the sweetest music seemed as nothing in comparison with the assurance that a broken and contrite spirit would not be despised of God, or to the comfort of ranking myself unreservedly amongst the miserable sinners in the Litany—concerning whom I had hitherto only wondered, Were they so miserable after all?—and pleading alike with voice and heart for God's mercy, of which I felt myself to stand so sorely in need.
The Commandments were being read when the little door leading into our large family-pew was opened, and Rickson softly came in and whispered to my father, who in his turn leant over and whispered to me. A message had come from the house, he said, and he must go back at once; he knew I could be trusted to stay by myself and walk home afterwards. He and Rickson quietly slipped out, and I was left sole tenant of the large square pew, with its high partition, and ponderous chairs, and fire-place, and table, just like a small room, as is the custom in old-fashioned churches.
Very lonely indeed I felt, as I stood up by myself, and tried to join in the hymn, and wished that I were not so small or the pew not so lofty; it seemed so strange to be joining in singing with people of whom no single individual could be seen—it had never struck me before, with my own dear parents always at my side. Presently the clerk appeared opening the door of the pulpit—that at all events I could see—to the strange clergyman, who seemed to me to look with a searching glance of inquiry straight down into my solitary domain, as if he meant to call me to account for being there all alone.
Having nobody to look at as an example, I sat myself timidly upon a corner of one of the chairs after the hymn was over, and then, suddenly remembering I had made a mistake, knelt down with the colour mounting to the very roots of my hair, and a terrible sense of the congregation all looking at me and taking notes of my behaviour.
We smile at our childish embarrassments as we look back upon them, but they are very serious and real troubles whilst they last.
When I rose from my knees, I was far too shy to place myself comfortably, but sat, as before, upon a little corner of a chair, and hoped the congregation wouldn't take any notice, whilst mentally I prepared myself for unrestrained meditation on the all-engrossing subject of my thoughts, in place of the many speculations with which I was wont to beguile sermon-time in general.