The breakfast was prepared and eaten, such as it was. Sophy made all
things neat, and kept the baby while her mother dressed herself, and
then she prepared for her walk to the village. But she was not to
struggle through the snow that day. Just as she was bidding her
good-bye, they were startled by the sound of voices quite near, and the
boys rushed out in time to see a yoke of oxen plunging through the drift
that rose like a wall before the door. The voice of Stephen Grattan
fell like music on their ears. The things were come at last, and plenty
of them. There were bags and bundles manifold, and a great round basket
of Dolly Grattan's, well known to the little Morelys as capable of
holding a great many good things, for it had been in their house before.
"I don't know as you would speak to me, if you knew all, mother," said
Stephen at last, approaching Mrs Morely, who was sitting by the fire
with her baby in her arms. "You are all alive, I see,--at least the
boys are. How is baby, and my little Sophy? Why, what ails the child?"
He might well ask; for Sophy was lying limp and white across the baby's
cot. Poor little Sophy! The reaction from those terrible fears--the
doubt that her father had forgotten them, and the fear of what might
become of them all--was too much for her, weakened as she was by anxiety
and want of food. She had borne her burden well, but her strength
failed her when it was lifted off. It was only for a moment. As
Stephen lifted her on the bed, she opened her eyes, and smiled.
"Mother, dear, it is nothing,--only I'm so glad." Her eyes closed again
wearily.
"That ain't just the way my folks show how glad they be," said Stephen,
as she turned her face on her pillow to hide her happy tears.
"She's hungry," said Ned, gravely. "There wasn't much; and she didn't
eat any dinner yesterday--nor much supper."
"Now I know you'll have nothing to say to me," said Stephen. "These
things--the most of them, at least--might have been here, as well as
not, the night your husband went away, if I had done my duty, as I
promised."
"Thank God!" she murmured as she grasped Stephen's hand. "He did not
forget us. The rest is as nothing."
"And," continued Stephen with a face which ought to have been radiant,
but which was very far from that, "the very last word he said to me that
night, when I bade him good-bye, was, `I'll hold on to the end.'"
And, having said this, Stephen seemed to have nothing more to say. He
betook himself to the preparation of dinner with a zeal and skill that
put all Sophy's attempts to help him quite out of the question. How the
dinner was enjoyed need not be told. Breakfast the boys called it, in
scornful remembrance of the gruel. There were very bright faces round
the table. The only face that had a shadow on it was Stephen's; and
that only came when he thought no one was looking at him. He was in a
great hurry to get away, too, it seemed.
"For the roads are awful; and you may be thankful, little Sophy, that
you hadn't to go to Littleton to-night. I started to bring the things
on a hand-sled, but would never have got through the drifts if it hadn't
a' been for Farmer Jackson and his oxen. Don't you try it yet a while.
I'll be along again with Dolly one of these days."
Stephen Grattan's face might have been brighter, as he turned to nod to
the group of happy children watching his departure at the door of the
log cottage. The "good-byes" and the "come agains" sent after him did
make him smile a little, but only for a moment. The shadow fell darker
and darker on his face, as he made his way through the scarcely-open
road in the direction of the village. For Stephen's heart was very
heavy, and with good cause. Sad as had been his first sight of the
sorrowful mother and her children, he had seen a sadder sight that day.
In the dim grey of the bitter morning he had caught a glimpse of a
crouching, squalid figure hurrying with uncertain yet eager steps--
whither? His heart stood still as he asked himself the question, "To
the foot-bridge over Deering Brook? To the gaping hole beyond?"
Stephen Grattan had not what is called "a rapid mind." He was not bold
to dare, nor strong to do. But in the single minute that passed before
he found himself on Deering Bridge he realised all the miserable
circumstances of Morely's fall, balanced the chances of life and death
for the poor wretch, and took his own life in his hand for his sake. He
knew that one more wicked deed had been added to the tavern-keeper's
catalogue of sins,--that the children's bread had been stolen, and the
father brutalised and then cast forth in the bitter cold, to live or
die, it mattered little which.
"To live, it must be," said Stephen; "at least for repentance--perhaps
for a better life. He must be saved. But how?"
Stephen could have touched him with his hand as he asked the question.
Could he win him by persuasion and gentle words, or must he master him
by force, and save him from the death on which he was rushing? Must he
wrestle with the madman's temporary strength?--perhaps yield to it, and
share his fate?
If these two men knew just what happened, when, by a sudden movement of
Stephen, they were brought face to face, they never spoke of it, even to
each other. Dolly's brief "Thank God!" as she opened the door to let
them in, was like heavenly music to Stephen's ear, he told her
afterwards; but never, even to Dolly, would he go beyond the opening of
the door in speaking of that day.
After three terrible hours, Stephen left Morely in a troubled sleep, and
set out for the log-house on the hill with the help so much needed. All
the way there he had been going over the question in his mind whether or
not he should tell Mrs Morely of her husband's situation. His first
thought had been that she must not know it; but, seeing Morely as he had
seen him for the last few hours, he feared to take upon himself the
responsibility of concealment. Should his troubled sleep grow calm and
continue, a few days' rest and care would suffice to place him where he
was when he left home; but, otherwise, none could tell what the end
might be. Weakened by illness, by want of food, and by his late excess,
Stephen well knew the chances were against his recovery; and ought not
his wife to be made aware of his situation? The first glance at Mrs
Morely's pale face decided him. She must not know of this new misery
that had befallen her husband, at least not now.
So it was no wonder that Stephen turned towards home with a sad face and
a heavy heart, knowing all this. He had not been so downcast for a long
time. It broke his heart to think of poor Morely. Even the misery and
destitution that seemed to lie before the poor wife and children were
nothing to this; and, as he dragged himself through the heavy snow,
panting and breathless, he was praying, as even good men cannot always
pray, with an urgency that would take no denial, that this poor soul
might have space for repentance,--that he might not be suffered to go
down into endless death. He did not use many words. "Save him, Lord,
for Thy Name's sake--for Thine own Name's sake, Lord!" These were
nearly all. But his hand was on the hem of the Lord's garment.
Hundreds of times the cry arose. Sometimes he spoke aloud in his agony,
never knowing it, never seeing the wondering looks that followed him
over the bridge and up the street to his own door.
"Well, Dolly!" he said, faintly, going in.
Dolly was never a woman of many words; she nodded her head towards the
closed door and said, "A leetle quieter, if anything."
"Thank God!" said Stephen, and the tears ran down his brown old face
with a rush that he could not restrain. Dolly did not try to comfort
him. She did better than that; she took from the stove a vessel
containing soup, and having poured some into a basin and broken some
bread into it, she set it before him, saying, "It's no wonder you feel
miserable. Eat this."
"Can I, do you suppose?" said Stephen.
"You've got to!" said Dolly, taking such an attitude as a hen-sparrow
might be supposed to assume should she see fit to threaten a barn-yard
fowl. And he did eat it, every drop.
"I feel better," he said, with a grateful sigh.
"I expect so," said Dolly, briefly, as she removed the basin. It was
Mrs Grattan's acknowledged "object in life," her recognised "mission,"
to provide her husband with "something good to eat." In the old days,
when Stephen's reformation was new, she had many a time satisfied
herself with a crust, that he might have food to strengthen him to
resist the old fierce craving for stimulants, and thus doing, she
helped, more than she knew, God's work of grace in him.
"Did you tell the poor creetur?" she asked.
Stephen shook his head, and told her of poor Mrs Morely's illness, and
of all that had been happening at the little log-house during the days
of the storm. "It seemed as though it was more than she could bear to
hear: so I told her what he said to me the other night, and nothing at
all of to-day."
They were both silent for a while, thinking. It was a great
responsibility for them to take thus to conceal Morely's situation from
his wife, for it might be that he was in real danger. But it was not of
this they were thinking. Even if he were not in danger--if, after a few
days' nursing, they were able to send him to Montreal as though nothing
had happened--their troubles would not be at an end.
For they were very poor people. By the utmost economy they had been
able, during the last five years, to buy and pay for the little house in
which they lived; but they had nothing laid up for the future; and now
that Littleton was growing to be a place of some importance, as the new
railway was nearly completed to it, there were new shops of all kinds to
be opened in it, and Stephen's business would be interfered with; for he
could not make good boots and shoes as cheaply as other people could buy
and sell poor ones, and his custom was dropping off. It would all come
right in the end, he told Dolly; but in the meantime a hard winter might
lie before them.