THE GIFT
"I am afraid Fay is very ill: Dr. Jeffson is most anxious about her,"
said Annabel to me, as I came in rather late for luncheon one foggy
November day. I had been busy all morning looking after various
matters on the estate, as I had spent the three preceding days in
London, and work at home had accumulated in my absence.
My heart stood still for a second, as hearts have a habit of doing at
the sudden announcement of bad news, and a cold wave of sick misery
seemed to engulf me. Then out of the engulfing wave I heard my voice
saying: "What is the matter with her? I saw her just before I went to
town, and then she had nothing but a slight cold."
"It wasn't slight at all, Reggie; it was a very heavy cold, and she,
being young and foolish, didn't take proper care of it, with the
consequence that it went from her chest down to her lungs, and now she
is in for a sharp attack of pneumonia."
I sat down at the luncheon-table, but I could not eat anything.
Noonday had turned to darkness because Fay was ill. "She didn't seem
ill a few days ago, when she went for a walk with me," I persisted;
"she had only a little cough."
"It was a nasty cough, Reggie, a very nasty cough. I wonder that you
took her for a walk with it."
An agony of remorse overwhelmed my soul. What a fool I had been! What
a fool I always was! Whatever I did invariably turned out to be wrong.
"I shall never forgive myself for doing so," I groaned; "I deserve to
be shot for such crazy idiocy and selfishness. But she said she was
all right, and I was ass enough to believe her."
Annabel, as usual, stood between me and the consequences of my folly.
"It wasn't your fault, Reggie: the girl is old enough to take care of
herself. I really don't see how a bachelor of forty-two can be
expected to watch all the symptoms of a young girl's cold. You aren't
a nurse."
But I refused to be comforted. "I was a fool--as I am always, a
selfish, incompetent fool! I wanted her to go for a walk with me, and
it never occurred to me to doubt that she wanted it too. But Fay is so
unselfish, she would never think of herself where anybody else's
pleasure was concerned."
"I don't think it was unselfishness on her part, Reggie; it was simply
youthful recklessness. Young people are always so careless about their
health, and if you try to consider them it only makes them worse. I
remember once, years ago, going for a round of calls and ringing all
the bells myself, because the footman had such a bad cold I didn't
think he ought to ride on the box of the carriage, and when I got home
I found he'd spent the afternoon at a football match!"
"Why didn't you tell me as soon as I got home last night?"
"Because I didn't know. I went to the Rectory this morning about some
parish affairs, and then Arthur told me. He has sent for Frank to come
from Oxford, and they are both in a terrible state about Fay. It was
really sad to see Frank. What an affectionate nature that boy has! I
do feel for him. It is wretched for him to have his sister so ill."
"It is far more wretched for her," I said shortly.
"I don't know about that," replied Annabel, as if in a way she blamed
Fay for causing Frank this mental discomfort. My sister was one of
those women who would always sacrifice a woman to a man. Her
philosophy of life consisted in the theory that women must work, and
men must never on any account be allowed to weep. If they were, the
women were in some way to blame.
I got up from the table, pushing my untasted plate away from me. "I am
going across to the Rectory to see how she is now."
"Now, Reggie, don't be silly and make yourself ill by eating no lunch.
If you make yourself ill it won't make Fay any better, as two blacks
never make a white."
"It is all my fault that she is ill. If I hadn't been such an arrant
fool her cold wouldn't have got to this pitch," I said savagely.
Annabel looked at me with the placidity which had soothed me all my
life. "You needn't blame yourself, Reggie, you really needn't. I wish
to goodness I'd never mentioned that walk! It might have been wiser it
you had taken Frank instead of Fay, perhaps, and would have been
equally cheerful for you; but if Fay herself didn't suggest it, I don't
see that you were called upon to think of it. When I was Fay's age I
was quite capable of taking care of my own colds, and so ought she to
be. Though I must say in my young days young people had more stamina
than they have now, and wouldn't have thought of letting a cold fly to
their lungs in this hurried fashion. In my time a cold began in the
head and went down to the throat, and then on to the chest, and only
got to the lungs as a last resort--and not that, unless it was
neglected. The ordinary cold never went to the lungs at all."
Again I felt that Annabel was blaming Fay for allowing herself to have
been so rapidly overrun by the invading enemy; so, as I could not bear
to hear my darling blamed without standing up for her, and as I
likewise couldn't bear to stand up against Annabel for anybody, I went
out of the room, banging the door behind me.
Then followed an unspeakable time of heart-rending anxiety. The
pneumonia spread, and all the efforts of Jeffson and of a consultant
from London to stop it proved unavailing. I found myself face to face
with the crushing and incredible blow of the death of a dear one who
was younger than myself. The passing onwards of our beloved must
always be a sorrow to us; but if they are older than ourselves, the
sorrow seems more or less a natural one. But when they are our
juniors--and especially when they are considerably our juniors--the
agony becomes unnatural, even monstrous. It is against nature for the
young ones to be taken and the old ones to be left: an anguish
unbearable save to those blessed souls who have grasped the great truth
that death, after all, is only a semicolon--not a full stop.
To me, during those dreadful days of Fay's illness, the sun seemed to
be turned into darkness and the moon into blood; there was no light
anywhere, and I realised that if her sun went down while it was yet
day, there would be nothing henceforth for me but dreary twilight until
the dawn of the resurrection morning. Of course I prayed, but the
heavens were as brass above me: none answered, nor were there any that
regarded, and my soul went down into the darkness and the shadow of
death.
"Let us send for Mr. Henderson," I said to Arthur, as soon as I knew
how ill my darling was. "If he saved Frank, he could save her."
But Arthur shook his head. "I thought of that, and telephoned for him
to come. But I find he has gone on a trip to the Holy Land, and will
not be back for weeks and weeks. If he started back at once, he would
not be here in time to do anything for Fay, and besides, they do not
know exactly where to find him."
So that hope was extinguished.
On the eighth day--to me it seemed the eighth century--of Fay's
illness, I awoke in the morning (if one can call it waking when one
hardly sleeps) with certain words of Mr. Henderson's ringing in my
ears; words to which I had attached no importance at the time, which I
had never thought of since, but which suddenly came back to me now with
an emphasis they had not borne at first. The materialist, with his
deeper credulity and more unreasoning faith, would put this phenomenon
down to some strange and inexplicable vagary on the part of my
subconscious self; but my simpler and less complex mind was satisfied
with the more obvious explanation that God had, after all, heard my
prayer, and had let my cry come unto Him.
"I do not know, but I think you have the gift of healing," Henderson
had said to me just as he was leaving the Rectory, "utterly
uncultivated and undeveloped, but ready for Christ's use should He need
it."
And when I woke from my restless dozing on that particular morning,
those words of Mr. Henderson's were ringing in my ears as plainly as if
he had just uttered them.
I dressed hurriedly, and without waiting for any breakfast went
straight to the Rectory to remind Blathwayte of what Henderson had
said. It was too early as yet for the doctor's visit, and the
night-nurse was still upon duty; but she had nothing good to report, as
Fay's temperature kept up and her strength was failing.
"Come and see," said Blathwayte, when I had recalled Henderson's words
to his mind. "If he was right, and you have the gift, you may save
Fay's life even yet."
And he took me into the sick-room, where the shadow of my darling lay
fighting for breath.
Then followed another of those experiences which sound incredible in
the telling, but which was so natural--so inevitable--at the time, that
it would have been impossible for anything else to have happened.
I knelt down by Fay's bed and laid my hand on her burning forehead, and
I lifted up my soul to God in prayer, as I had never lifted it before.
As I prayed I became conscious--as I had been when Frank seemed
dying--of a Presence in the room, the Presence of a living Christ who
was standing by my side so near that I could almost feel His Touch--so
real that I felt if I opened my eyes I should see His Face. And with
His coming all the sorrow and anxiety and misery disappeared, and I
knew that nothing could ever really harm her or pluck her out of His
Hand. Fear vanished, because with Him beside me there was nothing to
fear: sorrow disappeared, because He brought with Him fulness of joy:
death stood at bay, because He had conquered death. There was nothing
any longer except Him, because in Him and through Him and of Him are
all things. And I was conscious not only of a profound peace in this
Ineffable Presence: I was conscious also of an inexhaustible power. I
felt flowing into me, and through me into Fay, a sort of wonderful
electric current--a very elixir of life itself--which I can describe as
nothing but "the Power from on High." At that moment I felt that I had
the wings of eagles, and the strength of the angels that excel.
How long I knelt I know not. It was a moment snatched from eternity,
and therefore beyond the measurements of time. I realised that in His
glorious Presence there is neither past nor future, but only one
glorious, unending Now.
Gradually the Presence withdrew Itself, and the rush of Power flowing
through me subsided, and I opened my eyes and looked at Fay. The fever
flush in her cheeks was already fading, and the brow under my hand grew
cool and moist. I rose from my knees and told the nurse to take the
temperature: she did so, and found it rapidly subsiding. The pulse,
too, was slower, and the breathing much easier. By the time that the
doctor came he was able to say that the crisis was past, and that the
patient was on the way to recovery.
Of course, both the doctor and the nurses were amazed beyond words:
they could not account for such a sudden and unexpected turn for the
better. But I was not surprised. I had been too recently in the
Presence of Christ to wonder at any manifestation of His Power. The
wonder to me would have been if Fay had not recovered.