With a half shudder, Maddy drew a stool to her grandfather’s feet, and resting her head upon his knee, listened while he talked to her of the future; told her all her grandmother had done; told of his own helplessness; of the trial it was to care for Uncle Joseph, and then in faltering tones asked who was going to look after them now. “We can’t live here alone, Maddy. We can’t. We’re old and weak, and want some one to lean on. Oh, why didn’t God take us with her, Joseph and me, and that would leave you free, to go back to the school and the life which I know is pleasanter than to stay here with us. Oh, Maddy! it comforts me to look at you—to hear your voice, to know that though I don’t see you every minute, you are somewhere, and by and by you’ll come in. I shan’t live long, and maybe Joseph won’t. God’s promise is to them who honor father and mother. It’ll be hard for you to stay, harder than it was once; but, Maddy, oh, Maddy! stay with me, stay with me!—stay with your old grandpa!”
In his earnestness he grasped her arm, as if he thus would hold her, while the tears rained over his wrinkled face. For a moment Maddy made no response. She had no intention of leaving him, but the burden was pressing heavily and her tongue refused to move. Maddy was then a stranger to the religion which was sustaining her grandfather in his great trouble, but the teachings of her childhood had not been in vain. She was God’s covenant child. His protecting presence was over and around her, moving her to the right. New York, with its gay sights, her school, where in another year she was to graduate, the trip to the Catskills which Guy had promised Mrs. Agnes, Jessie and herself, Aikenside with its luxurious ease—all these must be given up, while, worse than all the rest, Guy, too, must be given up. He would not come there often; the place was not to his taste, and in time he would cease to care for her as he cared for her now. “Oh, that would be dreadful!” she groaned aloud, while here thoughts went backward to that night ride in the snowstorm, and the numberless attentions he had paid her then. She would never ride with him again—never; and Maddy moaned bitterly, as she began to realize for the first time how much she liked Guy Remington, and how the giving him up and his society was the hardest part of all. But Maddy had a brave young heart, and at last, winding her arms around her grandfather’s neck, she whispered: “I will not leave you, grandpa. I’ll stay in grandmother’s place.”
Surely Heaven would answer the blessings whispered over Maddy by the delighted old man, and the young girl taking so cheerfully the burden from which many would have shrunk, should be blessed by God.
With her grandfather’s hand upon her head, Maddy could almost feel that the blessing was descending; but when, in her own room, the one where she had lain sick for so many weary weeks, her courage began to give way, and the burden, magnified tenfold by her nervous weakness, looked heavier than she could bear. How could she stay there, going through each day with the same routine of literal drudgery—drudgery which would not end until the two for whom she made the sacrifice were dead.
“Oh, is there no way of escape, no help?” she moaned, as she tossed from side to side, “Must my life be wasted here. Surely—-”
Maddy did not finish the sentence, for something checked the words of repining, and she seemed to hear again her grandfather’s voice as it repeated the promise to those who keep with their whole souls the fifth commandment.
“I will, I will,” she cried, while into her heart there crept an intense longing for the love of him who alone could make her task a light one. “If I were good like grandma, I could bear everything,” she thought, and turning upon her pillow, Maddy prayed an earnest, childlike prayer, that God would help her do night, that He would take from her the proud spirit which rebelled against her lot because of its loneliness, that pride and love of her own ease and advancement in preference to others’ good might all be subdued; in short that she might be God’s child, walking where He appointed her to walk without a murmur, and doing cheerfully His will.
Aikenside, and school, and the Catskill Mountains were easier to abandon after that contrite prayer; but when she thought of Guy, the fiercest, sharpest pang she had ever felt shot through her heart, making her cry out so quickly that the little hired girl who shared her bed moved as if about to waken, but Maddy lay very quiet until all was still again, when turning a second time to God she tried to pray, tried to give up what to her was the dearest idol, but she could not say the words, and ere she knew what she was doing she found herself asking that Guy should not forsake her. “Let him come,” she sobbed, “let Guy come some time to see me”.
Once the tempter whispered to her, that had she accepted Dr. Holbrook she would have been spared all this, but Maddy turned a deaf ear to that suggestion. Dr. Holbrook was too noble a man to have an unloving wife, and not for a moment did she repent of her decision with regard to him. She almost knew he would say now that she was right in refusing him, and right in staying there, as she must. Thoughts of the doctor quieted her, she believed, not knowing that Heaven was already owning its submissive child, and breathing upon it a soothing benediction. The moan of the winter wind and the sound of the snow beating against her little window ceased to annoy her. Heaven, happiness, Aikenside and Guy, all seem blended into one great good just within her reach, and when the long clock below the stairs struck three, she did not hear it, but with the tear stains upon her face she lay nestled among her pillows, dreaming that her grandmother had come back from the bright world of glory to bless her darling child.
It was broad noon ere Maddy awoke, and starting up she looked about her in bewilderment, wondering where she was and what agency had been at work in her room, transforming it from the cold, comfortless apartment she had entered the previous night into the cheery-looking chamber, with a warm fire blazing in the tiny fireplace, a rug spread down upon the hearth, a rocking-chair drawn up before it, and all traces of the little hired girl as completely obliterated as if she had never been. In her grief Maddy seemed to have forgotten how to make things cozy, and as, during her grandmother’s illness, her own room had been left to the care of the hired girl, Nettie, it wore a neglected, rude aspect, which had grated on Maddy’s finer feelings, and made everything so uninviting. But this morning all was changed. Some skillful hand had been busy there while she slept, and Maddy was wondering who it could be, when the door opened cautiously and Flora’s good-humored face looked in—Flora from Aikenside. Maddy knew now to whom she was indebted for all this comfort, and with a cry of joy she welcomed the girl, whose very presence brought back something of the life with which she had parted forever.