Janet's Love and Service

by Margaret M. Robertson

“Hush, Harry,” whispered she, and he felt her tears dropping on his hands. “And Lilias?”

“Graeme, I do not know. I never spoke to her, but I hoped—I believed till lately—.”

He laid his head down on his sister’s shoulder. In a little he roused himself and said,—

“But it is all past now—all past; and it won’t bear talking about, even with you, Graeme, who are the dearest and best sister that ever unworthy brother had. It was only a dream, and it is past. But I cannot stay here—at least it would be very much better—”

Graeme sighed.

“Yes, I can understand how it should seem impossible to you, and yet—but you are right. It won’t bear talking about. I have nothing to say to comfort you, dear, except to wait, and the pain may grow less.”

No, there was nothing that Graeme could say, even if Harry would have listened to her. Her own heart was too heavy to allow her to think of comfort for him; and so they sat in silence. It seemed to Graeme that she had never been quite miserable until now. Yesterday she had thought herself wretched, and now her burden of care for Harry was pressing with tenfold weight. Why had this new misery come upon her? She had been unhappy about him before, and now it was worse with him than all her fears.

In her misery she forgot many things that might have comforted her with regard to her brother. She judged him by herself, forgetting the difference between the woman and the man—between the mature woman, who having loved vainly, could never hope to dream the sweet dream again, and the youth, hardly yet a man, sitting in the gloom of a first sorrow, with, it might well be, a long bright future stretching before him.

Sharp as the pain at her own heart was, she knew she should not die of it. She took no such consolation to herself as that. She knew she must live the old common life, hiding first the fresh wound and then the scar, only hoping that as the years went on the pain might grow less. She accepted the lot. She thought if the darkness of her life never cast a shadow on the lives of those she loved, she would strive, with God’s help, to be contented.

But Harry—poor Harry! hitherto so careless and light-hearted, how was he to bear the sorrow that had fallen upon him? Perhaps it was as well that in her love and pity for her brother, Graeme failed to see how different it might be with him. Harry would hardly have borne to be told even by her that his sorrow would pass away. The commonplaces supposed to be appropriate about time and change and patience, would have been unwelcome and irritating, even from his sister’s lips, and it was all the better that Graeme should sit there, thinking her own dreary thoughts in silence. After the momentary pain and shame which the betrayal of his secret had caused him, there was a certain consolation in the knowledge that he had his sister’s sympathy, and I am afraid, if the truth must be told, that Graeme that night suffered more for Harry than Harry suffered for himself. If she looked back with bitter regret on the vanished dream of the last six months, it was that night at least less for her own sake than for his. If from the future that lay before them she shrank appalled, it was not because the dreariness that must henceforth be on her life, but because of something worse than dreariness that might be on the life of her brother, unsettled, almost reckless, as he seemed to be to-night. She could not but see the danger that awaited him, should he persist in leaving home, to cast himself among strangers. How gladly would she have borne his trouble for him. She felt that going away now, he would have no shield against the temptation that had of late proved too strong for him; and yet would it be really better for him, could she prevail upon him to stay at home? Remembering her own impulse to be away—anywhere—to escape from the past and its associations, she could not wonder at his wish to go. That the bitterness of the pain would pass away, she hoped and believed, but would he wait with patience the coming of content. Alas! her fears were stronger than her hopes. Best give him into God’s keeping and let him go, she thought.