These were sad things to Theodore in another way. Despite all Mr. Hastings' coldness to him, he had never been able to lose sight of the memory of those days, now long gone by, in which the rich man had in a sense been his protector and friend. He could not forget that it was through him that his first step upward had been taken. Aside from his mother, Mr. Hastings was perhaps the first person for whom he felt a touch of love. He could not forget him—could not cease to mourn for him.
There was, only a week after this, another funeral. There was no long line of coaches, and no display of magnificence this time—only a quiet, slow-moving procession following the unplumed hearse. Only one store in the city was closed, and not a hundred people knew for whom the bell tolled that day; but did ever truer mourners or more bleeding hearts follow a coffin to its final resting-place than were those who gathered around that open grave, and saw the body of Grandma McPherson laid to rest for awhile, awaiting the call of the great Maker, when he should bid it come up to meet its glorified spirit, and dwell in that wonderful Forever!
The messenger came suddenly to her, in the quiet of a moonlight night, when all the household were asleep; and none who saw her in the morning, with that blessed look upon her face, that told of earth receding and heaven coming in, could doubt but that when in the silent night she heard the Master whisper, "Come up higher," she made answer, "Even so, Lord Jesus."
So they laid her in the silent city on the hill, very near the spot where, by and by, there towered and blazed Mr. Hastings' monument; but when they set up her white headstone they marked on it the blessed words: "So he giveth his beloved sleep."
But oh, that home left without a mother—the dear, loving, toiling, patient, self-sacrificing mother!
"Dear old lady," were the words in which Theodore had most often thought of her, and I find on thinking back that I have constantly spoken of her thus, but in reality she was not old at all; her early life of toil and privation and sorrow had whitened her hair and marked heavy lines as of age on her face. Her quaint dress gave added strength to this impression, and Theodore when he first met her was at that age when all women in caps and spectacles are old, so "Grandma" she had always been to him, but they only wrote "sixty-three" on her coffin.
They were sitting together, Theodore and Pliny, the first evening they had spent alone since the changes had come to them. They were in their pleasant room which must soon be vacated, for the guiding presence that had made of them a family was wanting now. They had not been talking, only the quietest common-places—neither of them seemed to have words that they chose to utter. They were sitting in listless attitudes, each occupying a great arm-chair, which they called "study-chairs." Theodore with his hands clasped at the back of his head, and Pliny with his face half hidden in his hands. The latter was the first to break the silence.
"Mallery, you are such a wonderment to me! What is there about me that makes you cling so? I thought it was all over during that awful time. I don't know how you can help despising me, but you don't know how it was. Oh, Theodore, I tried, I struggled, I meant to keep my promise, and even at such a time as that the sight of my enemy conquered me. Now, what am I to do? There is no hope for me at all. I have no trust, no confidence in myself."
"That at least would be hopeful if it were strictly true," Theodore answered, earnestly. "But, Pliny, it is not quite true. If you utterly distrusted yourself, so utterly that you would stop trying to save yourself alone, and accept the All-powerful Helper's aid, I should be at rest about you forever."
Contrary to his usual custom, Pliny had no answer ready, seemed not in the least inclined to argue, and so Theodore only dropped a little sigh and waited. It was not despair with him during these days—his faith had reached high ground. "Ask, and ye shall receive," had come home to him with wonderful force just lately, while he waited on his knees; he felt that he should never let go again for a moment. Still there seemed nothing now for him to do, nothing but that constant watching and constant praying; and he had only lately come to realize how much these two things meant. Presently, sitting there in the silence, he bethought himself of Winny in her desolation.