“Arthur will think I am foolish. He will think that I have lost confidence in Harry, which is not true. I wish I were more hopeful. I wish I did not take fright at the very first shadow. Janet aye said that the first gloom of the cloud, troubled me more than the falling of the shower should do. Such folly to suppose that anything could happen to our Harry! I won’t think about it. And even if Harry has to go away, I will believe with Arthur, that will be for the best. He will be near Norman, at any rate, and that will be a great deal. Norman will be glad. And I will not fear changes. Why should I? They cannot come to us unsent. I will trust in God.”
But quite apart from the thought of Harry’s temptation or prospects, there was in Graeme’s heart a sense of pain. She was not quite satisfied in looking back over these pleasant years. She feared she had been beginning to settle down content with their pleasant life, forgetting higher things. Except the thought about Harry, which had come and gone, and come again a good many times within the last few months, there had scarcely been a trouble in their life daring these two years and more. She had almost forgotten how it would seem, to waken each morning to the knowledge that painful, self-denying duties lay before her. Even household care, Nelly’s skill and will had put far from her.
And now as she thought about all of this, it came into her mind how her father and Janet had always spoken of life as a warfare—a struggle, and the Bible so spoke of it, too. She thought of Janet’s long years of self-denial, her toils, her disappointments; and how she had always accepted her lot as no uncommon one, but as appointed to her by God. She thought of her father—how, even in the most tranquil times of his life—the time she could remember best, the peaceful years in Merleville, he had given himself no rest, but watched for souls as one who must give account. Yes, life was a warfare. Not always with outward foes. The struggle need not be one that a looker-on could measure or see, but the warfare must be maintained—the struggle must only cease with life. It had been so with her father, she knew; and through his experience, Graeme caught a glimpse of that wonderful paradox of the life that is hid with Christ in God,—constant warfare—and peace that is abiding; and could the true peace be without the warfare? she asked herself. And what was awaiting them after all these tranquil days?
It was not the fear that this might be the lull before the storm that pained her, so much as the doubt whether this quiet time had been turned to the best account. Had she been to her brothers all that father had believed she would be? Had her influence always been decidedly on the side where her father’s and her mother’s would have been? They had been very happy together, but were her brothers really better and stronger Christian men, because of her? And if, as she had sometimes feared, Harry were to go astray, could she be altogether free from blame?
The friends that had gathered around them during these years, were not just the kind of friends they would have made, had her father instead of her brother been at the head of the household; and the remembrance of the pleasure they had taken in the society of some who did not think as their father had done on the most important of all matters, came back to her now like a sin. And yet if this had worked for evil among them, it was indirectly; for it was the influence of no one whom they called their friend that she feared for Harry. She always came back to Harry in her thoughts.
“But I will not fear for him,” she repeated often. “I will trust God’s care for Harry and us all. Surely I need not fear, I think I have been beginning at the wrong end of my tangled thoughts to-night. Outward circumstances cannot make much difference, surely. If we are humble and trustful God will guide us.”
And busy still with thoughts from which renewed trust had taken the sting, Graeme sat still in the moonlight, till the sound of approaching footsteps recalled her to the present.