FOR WAT’S SAKE.
“As the stars for ever and ever.”
“Jack,” Ruby says very soberly, “I want you to do something for me.”
Crowning joy has come at last to Ruby. Mrs. Kirke’s expected letter,
backed by another from her son, has come, inviting the Thornes to spend
the first week of the New Year with them. And now Ruby’s parents have
departed to pay some flying visits farther north, leaving their little
girl, at Mrs. Kirke’s urgent request, to await their return in Greenock.
“For Jack’s sake I should be so glad if you could allow her,” Jack’s
mother had said. “It makes everything so bright to have a child’s
presence in the house, and Jack and I have been sad enough since Walter
died.”
Sad enough! Ay, in all truth so they had. Few but Jack could have told
how sad.
“Fire away, little Ruby red,” is Jack’s rejoinder.
They are in the smoking-room, Jack stretched in one easy chair, Ruby
curled up in another. Jack has been away in dreamland, following with
his eyes the blue wreaths of smoke floating upwards from his pipe to
the roof; but now he comes back to real life--and Ruby.
“This is it,” Ruby explains. “You know the day we went down to
Inverkip, dad and I? Well, we went to see mamma’s grave--my own mamma,
I mean. Dad gave me a shilling before he went away, and I thought
I should like to buy some flowers and put them there. It looked so
lonely, and as if everybody had forgotten all about her being buried
there. And she was my own mamma,” adds the little girl, a world of
pathos in her young voice. “So there’s nobody but me to do it. So,
Jack, would you mind?”
“Taking you?” exclaims the young man. “Of course I will, old lady.
It’ll be a jolly little excursion, just you and I together. No, not
exactly jolly,” remembering the intent of their journey, “but very
nice. We’ll go to-morrow, Ruby. Luckily the yard’s having holidays just
now, so I can do as I like. As for the flowers, don’t you bother about
them. I’ll get plenty for you to do as you like with.”
“Oh, you are good!” cries the little girl, rising and throwing her arms
round the young man’s neck. “I wish you weren’t so old, Jack, and I’d
marry you when I grew up.”
“But I’m desperately old,” says Jack, showing all his pretty, even,
white teeth in a smile. “Twenty-six if I’m a day. I shall be quite an
old fogey when you’re a nice young lady, Ruby red. Thank you all the
same for the honour,” says Jack, twirling his moustache and smiling to
himself a little. “But you’ll find some nice young squatter in the days
to come who’ll have two words to say to such an arrangement.”
“I won’t ever like anybody so well as you, anyway,” decides Ruby,
resolutely. In the days to come Jack often laughingly recalls this
asseveration to her. “And I don’t think I’ll ever get married. I
wouldn’t like to leave dad.”
The following day sees a young man and a child passing through the
quaint little village of Inverkip, lying about six miles away from the
busy seaport of Greenock, on their way to the quiet churchyard which
encircles the little parish kirk. As Ruby has said, it looks painfully
lonely this winter afternoon, none the less so that the rain and thaw
have come and swept before them the snow, save where it lies in
discoloured patches here and there about the churchyard wall.
“I know it by the tombstone,” observes Ruby, cheerfully, as they close
the gates behind them. “It’s a grey tombstone, and mamma’s name below
a lot of others. This is it, I think,” adds the child, pausing before
a rather desolate-looking grey slab. “Yes, there’s her name at the
foot, ‘Janet Stuart,’ and dad says that was her favourite text that’s
underneath--‘Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.’
I’ll put down the flowers. I wonder,” says Ruby, looking up into Jack’s
face with a sudden glad wonder on her own, “if mamma can look down from
heaven, and see you and me here, and be glad that somebody’s putting
flowers on her grave at last.”
“She will have other things to be glad about, I think, little Ruby,”
Jack Kirke says very gently. “But she will be glad, I am sure, if she
sees us--and I think she does,” the young man adds reverently--“that
through all those years her little girl has not forgotten her.”
“But I don’t remember her,” says Ruby, looking up with puzzled eyes.
“Only dad says that before she died she said that he was to tell me
that she would be waiting for me, and that she had prayed the Lord
Jesus that I might be one of His jewels. And I’m not! I’m not!” cries
Ruby, with a little choke in her voice. “And if I’m not, the Lord Jesus
will never gather me, and I’ll never see my mamma again. Even up in
heaven she might p’raps feel sorry if some day I wasn’t there too.”
“I know,” Jack says quickly. He puts his arm about the little girl’s
shoulders, and his own heart goes out in a great leap to this child who
is wondering, as he himself not so very long ago, in a strange mazed
way, wondered too, if even ’midst heaven’s glories another will “feel
sorry” because those left behind will not one far day join them there.
“I felt that too,” the young man goes on quietly. “But it’s all right
now, dear little Ruby red. Everything seemed so dark when Wat died,
and I cried out in my misery that the God who could let such things be
was no God for me. But bit by bit, after a terrible time of doubt, the
mists lifted, and God seemed to let me know that He had done the very
best possible for Wat in taking him away, though I couldn’t understand
just yet why. The one thing left for me to do now was to make quite
sure that one day I should meet Wat again, and I couldn’t rest till
I made sure of that. It’s so simple, Ruby, just to believe in the
dear Lord Jesus, so simple, that when at last I found out about it, I
wondered how I could have doubted so long. I can’t speak about such
things,” the young fellow adds huskily, “but I felt that if you feel
about your mother as I did about Wat, that I must help you. Don’t you
see, dear, just to trust in Christ with all your heart that He is able
to save you, and He _will_. It was only for Wat’s sake that I tried to
love Him first; but now I love Him for His own.”
It has cost Ruby’s friend more than the child knows to make even this
simple confession of his faith. But I think that in heaven’s morning
Jack’s crown will be all the brighter for the words he spoke to a
doubting little girl on a never-to-be-forgotten winter’s day. For it is
said that even those who but give to drink of a cup of cold water for
the dear Christ’s sake shall in no wise lose their reward.
“I love you, Jack,” is all Ruby says, with a squeeze of her friend’s
hand. “And if I do see mamma in heaven some day, I’ll tell her how
good you’ve been to me. Oh! Jack, won’t it be nice if we’re all there
together, Wat and you, and dad and mamma and me?”
Jack does not answer just for a moment. The young fellow’s heart has
gone out with one of those sudden agonizing rushes of longing to the
brother whom he has loved, ay, and still loves, more than life itself.
It _must_ be better for Wat--of that Jack with all his loyal heart
feels sure; but oh, how desolately empty is the world to the brother
Jack left behind! One far day God will let they two meet again;
that too Jack knows; but oh, for one hour of the dear old here and
now! In the golden streets of the new Jerusalem Jack will look into
the sorrowless eyes of one whom God has placed for ever above all
trouble, sorrow, and pain; but the lad’s heart cries out with a fierce
yearning for no glorified spirit with crown-decked brow, but the dear
old Wat with the leal home love shining out of his eyes, and the warm
hand-clasp of brotherly affection. Fairer than all earthly music the
song of the redeemed may ring throughout the courts of heaven; but
sweeter far in those fond ears will sound the well-loved tones which
Jack Kirke has known since he was a child.
“Yes, dear,” Jack says, with a swift, sudden smile for the eager little
face uplifted to his, “it _will_ be nice. So we must make sure that we
won’t disappoint them, mustn’t we?”
Another face than Ruby’s uprises before the young man’s eyes as he
speaks, the face of the brother whose going had made all the difference
to Jack’s life; but who, up in heaven, had brought him nearer to God
than he ever could have done on earth. Not a dead face, as Jack had
looked his last upon it, but bright and loving as in the dear old days
when the world seemed made for those two, who dreamed such great things
of the wonderful “may be” to come. But now God has raised Wat higher
than even his airy castles have ever reached--to heaven itself, and
brought Jack, by the agony of loss, very near unto Himself. No, Jack
determines, he must make sure that he will never disappoint Wat.
The red sun, like a ball of fire, is setting behind the dark, leafless
tree-tops when at last they turn to go, and everything is very still,
save for the faint ripple of the burn through the long flats of field
as it flows out to meet the sea. Fast clasped in Jack’s is Ruby’s
little hand; but a stronger arm than his is guiding both Jack and
Ruby onward. In the dawning, neither Wat nor Ruby’s mother need fear
disappointment now.
“I’m glad I came,” says Ruby in a very quiet little voice as the train
goes whizzing home. “There was nobody to come but me, you see, me and
dad, for dad says that mamma had no relations when he married her. They
were all dead, and she had to be a governess to keep herself. Dad says
that he never saw any one so brave as my own mamma was.”
“See and grow up like her, then, little Ruby,” Jack says with one of
his bright, kindly smiles. “It’s the best sight in the world to see a
brave woman; at least _I_ think so,” adds the young man, smiling down
into the big brown eyes looking up into his.
He can hardly help marvelling, even to himself, at the situation in
which he now finds himself. How Wat would have laughed in the old
days at the idea of Jack ever troubling himself with a child, Jack,
who had been best known, if not exactly as a child-hater, at least as
a child-avoider. What has come over him nowadays? Is it Wat’s mantle
dropped from the skies, the memory of that elder brother’s kindly
heart, which has softened the younger’s, and made him “kind,” as Ruby
one long gone day had tried to be, to all whom he comes in contact
with? For Wat’s sake Jack had first tried to do right; ay, but now it
is for a greater than that dear brother’s, even for Christ’s. Like Mr.
Valiant-for-Truth of old renown, Wat has left as sword the legacy of
his great and beautiful charity to the young brother who is to succeed
him in the pilgrimage.
“Jack,” Ruby whispers that evening as she kisses her friend good night,
“I’m going to try--you know. I don’t want to disappoint mamma.”
Up in heaven I wonder if the angels were glad that night. God was, I
know. And Jack. There is an old, old verse ringing in my ears, none the
less true that he who spoke it in the far away days has long since gone
home to God: “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of
the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars
for ever and ever.”
Surely, in the dawning of that “summer morn” Jack’s crown will not be a
starless one.
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