Mr Falconer did not die. Kitty asked him to live for her sake, and I dare say he was glad to do so. Dick and the doctor were out of hearing at the time, so that I don’t know whether I ought to repeat it.
She often, as she sat by his side, spoke very seriously to him, and used to read the Bible. One day she asked whether he truly believed it to be God’s word, and to contain His commands to man. He said he did with all his heart, and that he had always done so.
“Then,” she asked, “how is it that you have not always lived according to its rules?”
“First, because I did not read the book,” he answered; “and, secondly, because I liked to follow my own will.”
“And preferred darkness to light, because your deeds were evil? That is what the Bible says, Edward, and you believe that it is God’s word,” said Kitty, in a firm voice. “But can you now truly say, ‘I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son?’”
She gazed with her bright blue eyes full upon him as she spoke, so innocent and free from guile.
“Indeed, I truly can,” he said.
“Hear these words,” she continued, turning rapidly over the leaves of the Bible she held before her. “‘God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’”
“The faith, the belief, must be living, active, not a dead faith, and then how glorious the assurance, if we remember what everlasting life means—a certainty of eternal happiness, which no man can take away, and which makes the pains, and sufferings, and anxieties of this life as nothing. I always think of those promises, Edward, whenever I am in trouble, and you know I very often am, and I remember that God says, ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.’ That, and that alone, has enabled me to endure the dreadful life I have had to lead on board this ship, until I knew that you loved me. But the being possessed of that knowledge, though it affords me unspeakable happiness, does not, I confess, make me more free from anxiety than I was before. Then I knew that nothing could take away what I possessed, because it was treasured in my own heart; but now I cannot help feeling anxious on your account—exposed to numberless dangers as you are, and must be, in the horrid work such as I understand this ship is to be engaged in. When that dreadful woman insisted on my accompanying her, I understood that the ship was to make an ordinary voyage, visiting interesting lands, trading with the natives, and catching whales. Had I known the truth I would have resisted her authority, and gone out as a governess or into service as a nursery-maid, or done anything rather than have come on board. But left an orphan and penniless, and under her guardianship, so she asserted, I thought it my duty to obey her. I do not regret it now,” she added, quickly; “but I felt that you must have been surprised at finding me dependent on such a person as Mrs Podgers. I have never told you my history—I will do so. When, about ten years ago, my dear mother was dying, just as I was six years old, this woman was her nurse, and pretended to be warmly attached to her. My father, Lieutenant Raglan, having married against the wishes of his family, they, considering that my mother, though highly educated and attractive, was inferior to him in birth and fortune, cast him off, and refused to hold any further communication with him. Just before the time I speak of, he sailed for the East India station, and my dear mother being left at a distance from her own friends, who resided in the West Indies, she had no one of her own station, when her fatal illness attacked her, to whom she could confide me. When, therefore, her nurse promised to watch over me with the tenderest care, and to see that I was educated in a way suitable to my father’s position in society, and to restore me to him as soon as he returned, she thankfully left me and all the property she possessed under her charge. Such is what her nurse, now Mrs Podgers, has always asserted. Providentially, my mother had written to a lady, Mrs Henley, at whose school she herself had been educated, saying, that it was her express wish that I should be under her charge until I was sixteen, although I was to spend my holidays with nurse till my father’s return. I suspect, that at the last, my poor mother had some doubts about leaving so much in the power of a woman of inferior education; and I remember seeing her write a paper, which she got the respectable old landlord of the house and his son to witness, and it was to be sent, on her death, to my kind friend, Mrs Henley. That paper, or one very like it, I afterwards saw my nurse destroy.
“On my mother’s death, I was sent to Mrs Henley, my nurse insisting that I should spend the holidays with her. For the first year or two she was very kind, and I had nothing to complain of; but after she married Captain Podgers, her conduct changed very much, I suspect in consequence of her having taken to drinking. I did not find this out at the time, though I thought her occasionally very odd. She insisted that she was my guardian, and showed me my mother’s handwriting to prove her authority; and I felt that it was my duty to obey her, though I lived in hopes that by my father’s return I should be freed from her control.