A SONG.
AT last, the evening came to an end. Daisy departed to bed, Randall
came in and looked at her, and sauntered out again, leaving the door
open, and Mollie finally came for a few minutes, bringing a message
from Mrs. Shaddock to the effect that Miss Ashlyn could retire whenever
she felt inclined.
"We generally have friends in the evening, or she goes out, but mother
will not let me sit up late because she says I should lose my colour,"
said Mollie, glancing at herself in the glass over the mantel-piece and
shaking out her hair.
"She is very wise," answered Gertrude.
"But all the same, I do as I like," pursued Mollie. "I read in bed as
often as not, or talk to nurse. She does not encourage that, I can tell
you. But all the same, I do not get to bed as early as mother thinks."
"Do you feel happy in doing so?" asked Gertrude, looking up with a
bright little smile.
"Oh dear, yes! 'What the eye doesn't see,' you know."
Gertrude shook her head, smiling.
"Are you awfully strict?" asked Mollie.
Gertrude paused for an instant. She felt this might be a momentous
conversation.
She prayed in her heart one of those three-word prayers that she often
pondered over, "Lord, help me!" And then, strengthened and calmed, she
looked up at her questioner and answered—
"When I have found out what your mother's wishes are in things, I shall
be 'awfully strict' in carrying them out."
"Shall you go telling tales, and asking her if I am to read in bed and
do this and that?"
"You will see," said Gertrude with a smile.
"I should hate you if you did," said Mollie, also smiling.
"I hope you will not hate me," answered Gertrude, "but whether you do
or not, I ought to do my duty, ought I not?"
"We shall see," said Mollie, looking at her somewhat curiously. "Now I
must say good-night. I hope you will sleep well, Miss Ashlyn."
"Thank you, dear, for trying to make me at home," said Gertrude.
Then Mollie put out her cheek to be kissed, and Gertrude was at last
alone.
But though she looked round on her cosy study, she did not feel it
enough her own, as yet, to indulge herself in even a thought towards
home.
She was just considering whether she should go to her own room, when
Susan appeared with a little tray with biscuits and lemonade, asking if
Miss Ashlyn would please to take some milk or anything more that she
could bring her.
"I am to be well cared for, at any rate in this way," said Gertrude to
herself. But she did not feel inclined to eat.
She cleared up her work, put the room straight, lowered the gas, and
ascended to her own room and shut herself in.
The moonlight streamed over the floor, making the little jet of gas
which was already lighted quite tiny in comparison. She went to her
window and looked out. How still it all was!—except for the occasional
sounds of music coming up from the neighbouring drawing-rooms.
Gertrude leant her head against the sash and buried her face in her
hands, for some one near was singing a song which Otto had sung only
last night—"When the mists have rolled in splendour." And after it was
over, they had stepped outside to look at the harvest moon rising over
the sea.
While they had stood there, he had asked her whether she had any
desires for things to be different from what they were, or whether she
were quite satisfied to do the will of God, just as she found it every
day?
And she had thought about it, watching the slow red moon rise and rise
out of the mist and enter a little cloud, till, after a few minutes'
eclipse, she had suddenly shone out triumphantly above it in the clear
deep blue.
And she had answered thoughtfully—
"I think my life feels something like that moon in the mist just now—"
"Uncertain as to its true duty and position?"
"Well, perhaps, Otto, but I don't know," she had answered.
"And then?" he had asked.
"I feel as if to-morrow were like that bit of dark cloud, which, after
all, in the wonderful fashioning of our Father's hand, may only serve
to brighten the light when it does shine out!"
"Yes," he said consideringly, "only it is so hard to wait so long in
the mist and in the cloud, Gertrude!"
"If that is our appointed path?" she had asked.
"It might all be clear sky if the mists did not come from earth," said
Otto.
"I see—self-made. Well, Otto, I don't know; all I can do is to ask God
to work in me what He wills. I can't see the way myself, or tell how to
act, sometimes."
"Nor I," he had answered in a low tone.
Then Phyllis's clear voice had called out from the front door, "Come,
you two, it is ever so late, and we have to be early to-morrow!"
Gertrude remembered it all, while still some beautiful tenor voice sang
over and over again—
"We shall know each other better
When the mists have rolled away!"
"Ah, but that is in heaven," she murmured. "It is not a song of earthly
things at all! To do our Father's will every day is our portion, and it
shall be mine to do it willingly, if He will help me!"
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