Chapter Three.
Home Trials.
We could never tell you all that the poor mother suffered as she lay there day after day helpless among her children. Her own illness and helplessness was the last drop, which made her cup overflow. Gradually, as she lay there listening to the roaring of the storm, it became clear, to her how little she had come to trust to her husband’s promises of reformation. It was to her own efforts she must trust for the support of herself and her children; her faith in him quite failed after so many hopes and disappointments; and now what was to become of them all?
She was angry and bitter against herself, poor woman, because her hope of better days had quite perished. She called herself faithless, and said to herself that she did not deserve that it should go well with her husband, since she had ceased to believe in him and trust him; but, sick in body and sick at heart, she had no power, for the time at least, to rally. She prayed in her misery often and long, but it was to a God who seemed far away—a God who had apparently hidden His face from her.
The third day was drawing to a close. Sophy gathered the children to their daily reading near their mother’s bed, and, with great pains and patience, found and kept the place for them. John was ten, and a good reader—quite equal to Sophy herself, he thought; but Ned and little Will were only just beginning to be able to read with the rest, and their sister took all the pains in the world to improve them and to make them really care for the reading; and almost always, this hour was a very pleasant time. The lesson to-day was the fifth of Mark.
“Now, boys, you must attend carefully,” said Sophy, when they were seated; “because there are many wonderful things in the chapter. I read it last night by the firelight after you were all in bed; and I want each of you to tell me which part you think most wonderful. You must begin, Will, and then Ned; and then I’ll read your verses over after you, so that you may understand them.”
For the two little lads could make but little of anything they read themselves as yet, though they listened with pleasure to the reading of their sister. And, besides, the double reading would help to pass the time and make her brothers contented in the house.
Mrs Morely was beguiled from the indulgence of her own sad thoughts, first as she watched the little girl’s grave, motherly ways with her brothers, and then by listening to the words they were reading. First, there was the story of the man who had his dwelling in the tombs. They read on slowly and gravely, Sophy reading each verse again, except when it was John’s turn, till they came to the eighth, “For He said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.”
“And of course he came out of him,” exclaimed Sophy. “For Jesus can do anything—yes, anything. Think of the most difficult thing in the world—Jesus could do it, as easy as I can do this.” And she stooped and touched her lips to little Will’s brow. The children paused to think about it, and so did the mother.
“Come out of him, thou unclean spirit.”