The twenty-fourth of May came on Saturday that year. It was to be a
double holiday to the children in the little log-house on the hill; for
their father had written a letter to say that, if it could possibly be
managed, he should pass it with them. It need not be told what joyful
news this was to them all. It was not unmingled joy to them all,
however. Sophy had some anxieties, which she did her best to hide; but
they showed in the wistful watching of her mother's looks, and in her
gentle efforts to chase all clouds from her face. As for Mrs Morely,
she had suffered so many disappointments that she hardly dared to hope
now. And yet her hopes were stronger than her fears this time, and she
and her little daughter helped and encouraged one another without ever
speaking a word.
The father was to come in the night-train of Friday, and go away in the
night-train again, so that he might have two whole days at least at
home; and early as the sun rises on the twenty-fourth of May, the little
Morelys were up before him. The father came early, but not too early
for the expectant children. The little lads met him far down the hill.
They would have gone all the way to Littleton, only the bridge had been
carried away by the sudden rise of the river when the ice broke up, and
the mother would not trust so many of them to go over in the ferry-boat.
Sophy waited at the garden-gate, with the baby in her arms, and her
mother sat on the doorstep, pale and trembling, till the voices drew
near and they all came in sight.
"`Clothed, and in his right mind,'" she murmured, as her husband came
with Will on his shoulder and little Harry in his arms,--oh! so
different from him whose going away she had watched with such
misgivings! It was the husband of her youth come back to her again; and
she had much ado to keep back a great flood of joyful tears as she
welcomed him home. As for Sophy, she never thought of keeping back her
tears--she could not if she had tried ever so much--but clung sobbing to
her father's neck in a way that startled him not a little.
"What is it, Sophy? Are you not glad to see me?" he asked, after a
time, when she grew quiet.
"Oh, yes; she's glad," said Johnny. "That is her way of showing that
she's glad. Don't you mind, mother, how she cried that day when Mr
Grattan brought the things, just after father went away?"
"She cried then because she was hungry," said the matter-of-fact Eddy.
Sophy laughed, and kissed her father over and over again. Morely looked
at his wife. There was something to be told, but not now. That must
wait.
Nor can all the pleasure of that day be told. The little log-house was
like a palace in the eyes of Morely. Indeed, it would have been very
nice in any one's eyes. The beds had been moved into the inner room,
now that no fire was needed; and the large room, which was parlour and
kitchen all in one, was as neat and clean as it could be made. It was
bright, too, with flowers and evergreens and branches of cherry-blossom;
and there were many comfortable and pretty things in it that Morely had
never seen there before.
They did not stay much in the house, however. Mr and Mrs Grattan came
up in the afternoon, and with them one whom John Morely presented to his
wife as the best friend she had in the world, after Grattan and his
wife--his friend Samuel Muir. Knowing a little of what he had been to
her husband all these months past, Mrs Morely welcomed him with
smiles--and tears, too--and many a silent blessing: and if he had been
the head of the firm--Steel and Ironside in one--he could not have been
a more honoured guest.
They sat out on the hill during most of the afternoon. The day was
perfect. It was warm in the sun, but cool in the shadow of the
evergreens. The maples and elms did not throw deep shadows yet, and the
air was sweet and fresh and still.
It was a very happy day to them all. To Samuel Muir it was a day never
to be forgotten. Montreal is not a very great city. An hour's walk
from the heart of it, in any direction, will bring one either to the
river or to fields where wild flowers grow. But his life had been town
life--and a very busy one; and to sit in the mild air, amid the sweet
sounds and sweeter silence of the spring time, among all these happy
children, was something wonderful to him. His constant anxious care for
Morely all the winter had done much to make a man of him. His little
weaknesses and vanities had fallen from him in the midst of his real
work; and seeing the happy mother and her children, his heart filled
with humble thankfulness to God, who had permitted him to help the
husband and father to stand against his enemy.
As for Stephen Grattan, the sight of his face was good that day. He did
not say much, but sat looking out over the river, and the village, and
the hills beyond, as though he was not seeing _them_, but something
infinitely fairer. Now and then, as he gazed, his thoughts overflowed
in words not his own: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so
the Lord is round about His people." "Ask and receive, that your joy
may be full." And sometimes he sang Dolly's favourite chorus, repeating
in queer, old, trembling strains,--
"His loving-kindness, oh, how good!"
But he said little besides. Even Dolly spoke more than he that day, and
with great pains drew out John Morely to tell how his prospects were
brightening, and how since the first of May he had been foreman among
his fellow-workmen, and how if things went moderately well with him he
should have a better home than the little log-house for his wife and
children before many months were over.
"Not just yet, however," he said, looking with pleased eyes at the
brown, healthy faces of the little lads. "No place I could put them in
could make up to them for these open fields and this pure air. I think,
Alice, they will be better here for a time."
As for Alice, it did not seem to her that there was anything left for
her to desire. Her heart was rejoicing over her husband with more than
bridal joy,--her husband who had been "lost, and was found." On this
first day of his coming home she suffered no trembling to mingle with
it. She would not distrust the love which had "set her foot upon a
rock, and put a new song in her mouth." "Mighty to save" should His
name be to her and hers henceforth. The clouds might return again, but
there were none in her sky to-day.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Things went well with the Morelys after this. How it all came about,
cannot be told here; but when the grand cut-stone piers of the new
bridge were completed, it was John Morely who built the bridge itself,--
that is, he had the charge of building it, under the contractor to whom
the work had been committed,--and it was built so quickly and so well
that he never needed to go away from Littleton to seek employment again.
The little Morelys have come to think of the days before that pleasant
May-time as of a troubled dream. The first fall of the snow-flakes
brings a shadow to Sophy's face still; but even Sophy has come to have
only a vague belief in the troubles of that time. The little ones are
never weary of hearing the story of that terrible winter storm: but
Sophy never tells them--hardly acknowledges to herself, indeed--that
there was something in those days harder to bear than hunger, or cold,
or even the dread of the drifting snow.
If after that first bright day of her husband's home-coming there
mingled trembling with the joy of Mrs Morely, she is at rest now. Day
by day, as the years have passed on, she has come to know that with him,
as well as with herself, "Old things have passed away, and all things
have become new;" and, in the blessed renewal of strength assured to
those who wait upon the Lord, she knows that he is safe for evermore.
As for Stephen Grattan, he has had a good many years of hard work since
then, making strong, serviceable boots and shoes, and serving the Lord
in other ways besides. He is ungrammatical still, and queer, and some
people smile at him, and pretend to think lightly of him, even when he
is most in earnest,--people who, in point of moral worth or heavenly
power, are not worthy to tie his shoes. But many a "tempted poor soul"
in Littleton and elsewhere has his feet upon a rock and a new song in
his mouth because of Stephen's labours in his behalf; and if ever a man
had the apostle's prayer for the Ephesians answered in his experience,
he has; for he is "strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might."
He is an old man now, whose "work of faith and labour of love" is almost
over; and I never see him coming up the street, with his leather apron
on, a little bowed and tottering, but always cheerful and bright, but I
seem to hear the welcome, which cannot be very far before him
now,--"Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of
thy Lord."