My heart is sore as I write it, that “wee Davie” got ill. He began to refuse his food, and nothing would please him; then to get peevish and cross, so that he would hardly go to his father, except to kiss him with tearful cheeks, and then stretch out his hands with a cry for his mother. His mother nursed him on her knee, and rocked him, and walked with him, and sang to him her own household lullabies; and put him to bed, and lifted him up, and laid him down, and “fought” with him day and night, caring for neither food nor sleep, but only for her child’s ease and comfort. What lessons of self-sacrificing love was she thus unconsciously taught by her little sufferer! The physician was at last called in, who pronounced it “a bad case—a very serious case.” I forget the specific nature of the illness. The idea of danger to Davie had never entered the minds of his parents. The day on which William realized it, he was, as his fellow-workmen expressed it, “clean stupid.” They saw him make mistakes he had never made before, and knew it could not be from drink, but could not guess the cause. “I maun gang hame!” was his only explanation, when, at three o’clock, he put on his coat and stalked out of the smithy, like one utterly indifferent as to what the consequences might be to ploughs or harrows, wheels or horse-shoes. Yet taking an old fellow-workman aside, he whispered to him, “For auld friendship sake, Tam, tak’ charge this day o’ my wark.”
“What ails Willie?” was the only question put by him and others, to which no reply could be given.
It was on the afternoon of next day that “the minister” called. It must here be confessed that William was a rare attender of any church. The fact was, he had been hitherto rather sceptical in his tendencies; not that his doubts had ever assumed a systematic form, or had ever been expressed in any determined or dogmatic manner. But he had read Tom Paine, associated the political rights of man with rebellion against all old authorities, all of whom seemed to him to have denied them, and he had imbibed the idea at the old “philosophical” club, that ministers, especially those of the Established Church, were the enemies of all progress, had no sympathy with the working classes, were slaves to the aristocracy, preached as a mere profession and only for their pay, and had, moreover, a large share of hypocrisy and humbug in them. The visit of Dr. M‘Gavin was, therefore, very unexpected.
When the Doctor entered the house, after a courteous request to be allowed to do so, as it was always his principle that the poorest man was entitled to the same respect as the man of rank or riches, he said, “I have just heard from some of your neighbours, whom I have been visiting, that your child is seriously unwell, and I thought you would excuse me intruding upon you to inquire for him.”
William made him welcome and begged him to be seated. The call was specially acceptable to Jeanie. Old David, I should have mentioned, was an “elder” in a most worthy dissenting congregation, and his strong religious convictions and church views formed in his mind a chief objection to the marriage of his daughter with a man “who was not,” as he said, “even a member of any kirk.” Jeanie had often wished her husband to be more decided in what she felt herself to be a duty and a privilege. The visit of the Doctor, whose character was well known and much esteemed, was therefore peculiarly welcome to her. In a little while the Doctor was standing beside the little bed of the sufferer, who was asleep, and gently touching “wee Davie’s” hand, he said, in a quiet voice, to the smith, “My brother, I sincerely feel for you! I am myself a father, and have suffered losses in my family.”
At the word losses, William winced, and moved from his place as if he felt uneasy.
The Doctor quickly perceived it, and said, “I do not, of course, mean to express so rash and unkind an opinion as that you are to lose this very beautiful and interesting boy, but only to show you how I am enabled, from experience, to understand your anxiety, and to sympathize with you and your wife.” And noiselessly walking to the arm-chair near the fire, he there sat down, while William and Jeanie sat near him. After hearing with patience and attention the account from Jeanie of the beginning and progress of the child’s disease, he said, “Whatever happens, it is a comfort to know that God our Father is acquainted with all that you suffer, all you fear, and all you wish; and that Jesus Christ, our Brother, has a fellow-feeling with us in all our infirmities and trials.”
“The Deity must know all,” said William, with a softened voice; “He is infinitely great and incomprehensible.”
“Yes,” replied the Doctor; “and so great, that He can attend to our smallest concerns; yet not so incomprehensible but that a father’s heart can truly feel after Him, so as at least to find Him through His Son. Ah! my brother,” continued the Doctor, “what a comfort and strength the thought is to all men, and ought to be to you working men, and to you parents, especially with your dear child in sickness, that He who marks a sparrow fall, smitten by winter’s cold, and who feeds the wild beasts, is acquainted with us, with our most secret affairs, so that even, as it were, the hairs of our heads are numbered; that He who is the Father, Almighty Maker of the heavens and the earth, knows the things which we need; that He has in us, individually, an interest which is incomprehensible, only because His love to us is so in its depth; that He considers each of us, and weighs all His dealings towards us with a carefulness as great as if we alone existed in His universe; so that, as a father pitieth his children, He pitieth us, knowing our frames, and remembering we are dust.”
William bent his head and was silent, while Jeanie listened with her whole soul.