The Wide, Wide World

by Susan Warner

"My little girl," said he, very gravely, though not without a tone of kindness, too "are you coming here to cheer my loneliness?"

Ellen in vain struggled to speak an articulate word; it was impossible; she suddenly stooped down and touched her lips to the hand that lay on the arm of the chair. He put the hand tenderly upon her head.

"God bless you," said he, "abundantly, for all the love you showed her. Come if you will and be, as far as a withered heart will let you, all that she wished. All is yours except what will be buried with her."

Ellen was awed and pained very much. Not because the words and manner were sad and solemn; it was the tone that distressed her. There was no tearfulness in it; it trembled a little; it seemed to come indeed from a withered heart. She shook with the effort she made to control herself. John asked her presently what she had come for.

"A gentleman," said Ellen "there's a gentleman, a stranger."

He went immediately out to see him, leaving her standing there. Ellen did not know whether to go too, or stay; she thought, from his not taking her with him, he wished her to stay; she stood doubtfully. Presently she heard steps coming back along the hall steps of two persons the door opened, and the strange gentleman came in. No stranger to Ellen! she knew him in a moment it was her old friend, her friend of the boat Mr. George Marshman.

Mr. Humphreys rose up to meet him, and the two gentlemen shook hands in silence. Ellen at first had shrunk out of the way, to the other side of the room, and now, when she saw her opportunity, she was going to make her escape; but John gently detained her; and she stood still by his side, though with a kind of feeling that it was not there the best place or time for her old friend to recognise her. He was sitting by Mr. Humphreys, and for the present quite occupied with him. Ellen thought nothing of what they were saying; with her eyes eagerly fixed upon Mr. Marshman, she was reading memory's long story over again. The same pleasant look and kind tone that she remembered so well came to comfort her in her first sorrow the old way of speaking, and even of moving an arm or hand the familiar figure and face; how they took Ellen's thoughts back to the deck of that steamboat, the hymns, the talks! the love and kindness that led and persuaded her so faithfully and eventually to do her duty it was all present again; and Ellen gazed at him as at a picture of the past, forgetting for the moment everything else. The same love and kindness were endeavouring now to say something for Mr. Humphreys' relief; it was a hard task. The old gentleman heard and answered, for the most part briefly, but so as to show that his friend laboured in vain; the bitterness and hardness of grief were unallayed yet. It was not till John made some slight remark, that Mr. Marshman turned his head that way; he looked for a moment in some surprise, and then said, his countenance lightening, "Is that Ellen Montgomery?"

Ellen sprang across at that word to take his outstretched hand. But as she felt the well-remembered grasp of it, and met the old look, the thought of which she had treasured up for years it was too much. Back as in a flood to her heart seemed to come at once all the thoughts and feelings of the time since then; the difference of this meeting from the joyful one she had so often pictured to herself; the sorrow of that time mixed with the sorrow now; and the sense that the very hand that had wiped those first tears away, was the one now laid in the dust by death. All thronged on her heart at once; and it was too much. She had scarce touched Mr. Marshman's hand when she hastily withdrew her own, and gave way to an overwhelming burst of sorrow. It was infectious. There was such an utter absence of all bitterness or hardness in the tone of this grief; there was so touching an expression of submission mingled with it, that even Mr. Humphreys was overcome. Ellen was not the only subdued weeper there not the only one whose tears came from a broken-up heart. For a few minutes the silence of stifled sobs was in the room, till Ellen recovered enough to make her escape, and then the colour of sorrow was lightened, in one breast at least.

"Brother," said Mr. Humphreys, "I can hear you now better than I could a little while ago. I had almost forgotten that God is good. 'Light in the darkness,' I see it now. That child has given me a lesson."

Ellen did not know what had passed around her, nor what had followed her quitting the room. But she thought when John came to the tea-table he looked relieved. If his general kindness and tenderness of manner towards herself could have been greater than usual, she might have thought it was that night; but she only thought he felt better.