David Fleming's Forgiveness

by Margaret M. Robertson

“It is grandfather I’m thinking about,” said she one day when she burst out crying in Miss Betsey’s sight. “I am afraid I shall never be able to keep from thinking that God has been hard on grandfather, if anything should happen to Davie.”

“But God is not hard on your grandfather and there is nothing going to happen to Davie,” said Betsey, too honest to reprove the girl for the expression of thoughts which she had not been able to keep out of her own mind. It was the plunge into the Black Pool and the going about afterward in his wet clothes that had brought on this illness, and that it should be God’s will that David Fleming’s grandson, his hope and stay, should lose his health, perhaps his life, in saving the son of Jacob Holt, looked to Miss Betsey a terrible mystery. She did not say that God was hard on him, as poor Katie was afraid of doing; but when, now and then, there came a half hour when it seemed doubtful whether Davie would get through, the thought that God would not afflict His servant to the uttermost helped her to still hope for the lad. As far as words and deeds went, she showed herself always hopeful for him, and did more than even the doctor himself in helping him to pull through.

In country places like Gershom, where professional nurses were not often to be found, when severe sickness comes into a family necessitating constant attention by night as well as by day, the neighbours, far and near, might be relied upon for help, as far as it could be given by persons coming and going for a night or a day. The Flemings had had severe sickness among them more than once, but they had never called on their neighbours for help, and they could not bring themselves to do so now, even for night-watching. That she should trust Davie to any of the kind young fellows who night after night offered, their services, was to grannie impossible. She did not doubt their good-will, but she doubted their wisdom and their power to keep awake after their long day’s work. “And it is no’ our way,” said Mrs Fleming, and that ended the discussions, as it had ended them on former occasions.

“But they never can get through it alone this time,” said Miss Betsey, “and I don’t know but it is my duty to see about it, as much as anybody.”

It was just in the hot days in the beginning of August when Betsey was wont to give up butter-making and set to the making of cheese, the very worst time of the year for her to get away from home. But she saw no help for it.

“You must do the best you can, mother, you and Cynthy, and Ben will give what help you need with the lifting. If I should never make another cheese as long as I live, I can’t let Mrs Fleming wear herself out, and maybe lose her boy after all.”

So Miss Betsey went over one morning “to inquire,” she said, and some trifling help being needed for a minute, she took off her bonnet, and “concluded to stay a spell,” and that night Ben brought her bag over which she had packed in the morning, and she stayed as long as she was needed, to the help and comfort of them all.

As for the grandfather, it went hard with him these days. He was outwardly silent and grave as usual, giving no voice to the anxiety that devoured him. But at night when his wife slumbered, worn out with the day’s watching, or when she seemed to slumber, and in Pine-tree Hollow, which in the time of his former troubles had become to him a refuge and a sanctuary, his cry ascended to God in an agony of confession and entreaty. He, too, wondered that it should be God’s will that the child of his enemy should be saved, and his child’s life made the sacrifice; but he did not consciously rebel against that will. It was God’s doing; Davie had not even known whose child it was whom he tried to save. This was God’s doing from beginning to end.

Far be it from him to rebel against God, he said to his wife when, fearing for him and all that he might be thinking, she spoke to him about it. It was a terrible trouble, but it did not embitter him as former trouble had done, and his enemy had fewer of his thoughts at this time than might have been supposed.

But he had not forgiven him. He knew in his heart that he had not forgiven him. When Jacob came with his wife, grateful and sorry, and eager to do something to express it, he kept quiet in a corner of Davie’s room, into which they were not permitted to enter. Mrs Fleming said all that was needful on the occasion, and when Jacob broke down and could not speak of his boy who had been given back to them almost from the dead, she laid her hand gently upon his arm and said, “Let God’s goodness make a better man of you,” and even Mrs Jacob did not feel like resenting the words. But there was no one who could help them in their present trouble, she repeated, as they went sorrowfully away.