In the pleasant parlor, not luxurious, but a home-room, the mother sat with her baby on her knee. Van remembered her when she came a bride to the parish, and he was only a child of five years old. It was one of his earliest memories—that being taken to church with the promise of seeing the new young minister’s new young wife, if he would be very good. That was twenty years ago, and there were lines of gray in Mrs. Charles’ hair, but her face wore the same kindly smile that had marked it then in the freshness of her nineteen years, and at the piano a girl of nineteen might have been taken for the bride brought back again in her youthful bloom. She was playing some familiar melody; five or six brothers and sisters clustered about her, sang blithely with her; a toddling child at the mother’s knee beat time with its chubby fingers on the younger baby’s chubby hand. Presently an inner door opened, and the pastor entered. There was a cry of “Father! father!” a general rush to meet him, frantic, merry embraces from the children, while the mother smiled contented, and the father stood tender and strong in the midst of his happy flock.
The picture lasted for a brief space only; with a pretty gesture of horror the eldest daughter sprang toward the window and drew down the shades, lest somebody should see, and Van stood alone outside in the gathering night.
He plodded on dreamily to the church-yard, and sat down near the new grave among many, many older graves where the men and women of his race lay buried.
“Wife and child,” said Van, with a long, hard, envious sigh, “father and mother, and happy home. And I—”
“Wife and child—father and mother.” The words repeated themselves in that curious, echo-like fashion which words have when they come to the mind as a part of a familiar saying, whose whole cannot be at once recalled, and which for a time we vainly strive to place.
“Wife and child—father and mother.” Ah! something else comes: “Houses and lands.” What is it? What is Van striving to get?
“Houses and lands.”
He has it.
“No man who hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands for my sake and for the Gospel, who shall not receive an hundred times as much, now in this time: and in the world to come life everlasting.”
He does not see with his bodily eyes at all now, but the eyes of his soul are wide awake, and they see clear and true.