THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
The room they entered was much more neat and clean than Johnny had
expected to find it, and there was even some attempt at decoration,
in the way of picture cards and show bills tacked upon the dingy
walls. A stove, whose old age and infirmities were concealed by much
stove-blacking, held a cheerful little fire, and the panes of the one
window were bright and clear. The bed, which looked unpleasantly hard,
and was scantily furnished, had been pulled to a place between the fire
and the window, and Taffy, sitting up against a skilfully arranged
chair-back and two thin pillows, looked eagerly towards the door as it
opened. The sharp, thin little face brightened with a smile, as he saw
Jim, but he did not speak.
[Illustration]
“Taffy,” said Jim, gently, “here’s Johnny Leslie. He’s come to see you,
and read to you a little bit. He’s Miss Tiny’s brother, you know, and
Mrs. Leslie’s son. Won’t you shake hands with him?”
Taffy held out his hand, nodding to Johnny with much friendliness.
“Oh, yes,” he said, in a voice so low and hoarse that Johnny bent nearer
to catch his meaning. “I’ll shake hands with him; I thought it was some
strange boy, but that’s different.”
[Illustration]
“And see,” continued Jim, opening the basket, and setting out the things
upon a rough pine table, which held a pitcher of water and a tumbler,
two or three medicine bottles, a very small orange, and a big red apple,
which Johnny recognized; he had given it to Jim a day or two ago. The
little fellow’s eyes sparkled as he saw the pretty eatables come out of
the basket, one after another, and he stroked the glass which held the
bright-colored jelly, saying hoarsely,—
“That’s pretty, that is. His folks must be rich,” and he nodded toward
Johnny.
“I must go now,” Jim said, not noticing this last remark of Taffy’s, “but
Johnny will stay awhile, and after that it won’t be long till I’m home.
Be a good boy, and don’t bother Johnny; he’s not used to you like I am.”
Jim went, with a very friendly goodbye; and Johnny was left alone with
Taffy, who eyed him shyly, but did not speak.
“Wouldn’t you like some of this jelly?” asked Johnny, hastily; “I can put
some in this empty tumbler for you, you know, so as not to muss it all up
at once.”
Taffy shook his head.
“Well, then, an orange?” went on Johnny. “I know a first-rate way to fix
an orange, the way they do ’em in Havana, where they grow. Papa showed
me, the winter he went there. Shall I do one for you? I don’t believe you
ever ate one that way.”
Taffy nodded eagerly, opening his parched lips, but still not speaking.
So Johnny hunted up a fork, and then, with Taffy’s knife, cut a round,
thick slice of skin, about the size of a half-dollar, off the stem and
blossom ends of the orange. These pieces of skin he put together, and
stuck the fork through them. Then he peeled half the orange, cutting off
all the white skin, as well as the yellow, then he stuck it on the fork,
at the peeled end, finished peeling it, and handed it to Taffy, who had
been looking on with breathless interest.
“There!” said Johnny, “you just hold on to the fork, and bite, and you’ll
get all the good part of the orange, and none of the bad.”
“Now wasn’t that first-rate?” he asked, as Taffy handed him back the
fork, with the “bad” of the orange on it.
Taffy laughed delightedly. His shyness was quite gone, but Johnny saw
that his breath came with difficulty, and that it cost him an effort to
speak.
“When I get well, and go sellin’ papers again,” he said, “I’ll fix up
oranges that way on sticks. Folks would buy ’em, hot days; now don’t you
think they would?”
“Why, yes,” said Johnny, seeing he was expected to answer, “I daresay
they would.”
“The old woman down there,” and Taffy pointed to the floor, “_she_ says
I’m dyin’. Don’t you think she’s just tryin’ to scare me? Now _don’t_
you, Johnny Leslie?”
Johnny was dismayed. What should he say? He sent up a swift, silent
prayer for help, then he spoke, very gently.
“Taffy, you’ve heard Jim tell about my mother, haven’t you?”
Taffy silently nodded.
“Well, suppose, while I’m here, my sister Tiny was to come, to say mother
wanted me to go home; do you think I’d be afraid to go—home, to mother
and father, you know?”
Taffy shook his head.
“Then, don’t you see,” pursued Johnny, and in his earnestness he took the
little hot hands, and held them fast. “That when our Father in Heaven
says He wants us, we needn’t be afraid to go? Mother says we oughtn’t to
be—not if we love Him.”
Johnny was afraid that Taffy would not understand, but he did. Since Jim
had taken charge of him, he had begun to go to Sunday-school, and having
quick ears and a good memory, he had learned fast.
“But s’pos’n we ain’t minded him?” and the feverish grasp on Johnny’s
hands grew tighter.
“We _haven’t_ minded Him, any of us,” said Johnny, softly, “and that’s
why our Saviour died for us. Now see here, Taffy; if a big boy was going
to whip you, because you’d taken something of his, and Jim stepped up,
and said, ‘Here, I’ll take the whipping, if you’ll let him go,’ then you
wouldn’t be whipped at all. Don’t you see?”
“I didn’t know it meant just that,” said Taffy, “what made Him do it,
anyhow, if He didn’t have to?”
“Because He loved us—because He was so sorry for us!” Johnny’s voice
trembled as he said this; it seemed to him that he had never before fully
realized what the Saviour had done for the world. “He wanted to have us
all safe and happy with Him in Heaven, after we die, and it’ll be only
our own fault, if we don’t get there—just the same as if a wonderful
doctor was to come in, right now, and tell you to take his medicine, and
he’d make you well, and then you wouldn’t take the medicine.”
“But I would, though!” said Taffy, eagerly, and as if he half believed
it would happen. “I’d take it, if it was ever so nasty, but the doctor
Jim fetched, he said he couldn’t do nothing for me, only make me a little
easier. Do you s’pose he knew?”
“Yes,” said Johnny, gravely, “I’m afraid he did, Taffy; but we needn’t be
afraid, either of us. The Saviour is stronger, and cares more about us,
than all the doctors in the world.”
Taffy did not answer; he lay back, looking up through the window at the
little patch of blue sky that showed between the tops of the tall houses.
Johnny could not tell whether or not his words had given any comfort. He
read a little story from a paper Tiny had sent, and Taffy listened with
eager interest; then a distant clock struck four, and Johnny rose to go.
Taffy made no objection to being left alone, but when Johnny took his
hand for goodbye, he said,—
“Come to-morrow. I want to hear more about Him.”
“I will if I can,” said Johnny, “but I go to school, you know. To-day was
a half holiday.”
Taffy made no answer to this, but he nodded and smiled, as Johnny backed
out of the door.
Mrs. Leslie went the next day to see the poor little boy, and many times
after that; Tiny was allowed to go once or twice, but she was not so
strong as Johnny was, and felt everything more keenly, so her mother did
not think it best to let her go often.
And now Johnny had a full chance to test his desire for self-denial.
Taffy could not himself have told why he preferred Johnny to every one
else, but so it was, and many were the hidden battles which Johnny fought
with self-love, not always coming off conqueror, but struggling up again,
after each defeat, with a fresh sense of his own helplessness, and a
stronger dependence on the “One who is mighty.”
It was hard to tell just when Taffy passed out from under the cloud of
fear into the full sunshine of the “knowledge and love of God,” but, as
his poor little body grew weaker, the eager soul seemed to strengthen,
and be filled with love and joy. Then he began to express his wish that
“everybody” might be told about the Saviour, and he lost no chance of
telling, himself, when kind-hearted neighbors came in to help Jim with
him.
The words “obedient unto death” having once been read and explained to
him, seemed constantly in his mind, and once, after lying still for a
long while, he said,—
“They killed Him—cruel! cruel!—and He never stopped ’em, and now see how
nice and easy He lets me lie here and die in my bed!”
It was the evening before Easter Sunday, that lovely festival which is
finding its way into all hearts and churches; the last bell was ringing
for evening service, and Johnny had just taken his seat, with his mother
and Tiny, in the church which they attended, when, to his great surprise,
Jim stepped quietly in, and sat down beside him. Jim was very neatly
dressed in his Sunday suit, but the flaming necktie which he usually wore
was replaced by a small bow of black ribbon. His face had a gentle and
subdued expression quite unusual to it, and Johnny felt sure, at once,
that Taffy was gone.
[Illustration]
As the boys knelt side by side in the closing prayer, their hands met in
a warm, close grasp, and a smothered sob from Jim told how deeply his
heart was touched.
Taffy had died that evening, very peacefully, in his sleep, a few minutes
after Jim came home from his work.
“And I somehow felt as if, maybe, I’d get a little nearer to him, if I
was to come to church,” said Jim, in a subdued voice, as he walked part
of the way home with Mrs. Leslie, “and I thought, maybe, you wouldn’t
mind if I came to your pew, it seemed sort of lonesome everywhere.”
Mrs. Leslie made him very sure that she did not “mind,” and would not, no
matter how often he came there.
And he came regularly, after that. At first he sat with his friends; then
he chose a sitting among the free seats in the church, and sat there,
but he found that, in this way, he was apt to have a different place
every Sunday, and this he did not like. It made him feel as if he did not
“belong anywhere,” he told Johnny; so, as soon as he could command the
money, he rented half a pew for himself, and after that he nearly always
brought some one with him. Once or twice it was the old woman who kept
the eating-stand where he usually bought his lunch; sometimes it was a
wild, rather frightened-looking street Arab, sometimes a fellow bootblack.
He evidently enjoyed doing the honors of his half pew, but there was a
deeper and better motive under that; the soul that has heard its own
“call” is eager that other souls should hear, too.