GLADNESS.
Scarcely had she reached it, however, when the voices of the children
came shouting along some corridor, on their way to find their breakfast:
she must go and minister, postponing meditation on the large and distant
for action in the small and present. But the sight of the exuberance,
the foaming overflow of life and gladness in Saffy, and of the quieter,
deeper joy of Mark, were an immediate reward. They could hardly be
prevented from bolting their breakfast like puppies, in their eagerness
to rush into the new creation, the garden of Eden around them. But
Hester thought of the river flowing turbid and swift at the foot of the
lawn: she must not let them go loose! She told them they must not go
without her. Their faces fell, and even Mark began a gentle
expostulation.
A conscientious elder sister has to bear a good many hard thoughts from
the younger ones on whom, without a parent's authority and reverence,
she has to exercise a parent's restraint. Well for her if she come out
of the trial without having gathered some needless severity, some
seeming hardness, some tendency to peevishness! These weak evils are so
apt to gather around a sense at once of the need and of the lack of
power!
"No, Mark," she said, "I cannot let you go alone. You are like two
kittens, and might be in mischief or danger before you knew. But I won't
keep you waiting; I will get my parasol at once."
I will attempt no description of the beauties that met them at every
turn. But the joy of those three may well have a word or two. I doubt if
some of the children in heaven are always happier than Saffy and Mark
were that day. Hester had thoughts which kept her from being so happy as
they, but she was more blessed. Glorious as is the child's delight, the
child-heart in the grown woman is capable of tenfold the bliss. Saffy
pounced on a flower like a wild beast on its prey; she never stood and
gazed at one, like Mark. Hester would gaze till the tears came in her
eyes;
There are consciousnesses of lack which carry more bliss than any
possession.
Mark was in many things an exception--a curious mixture of child and
youth. He had never been strong, and had always been thoughtful. When
very small he used to have a sacred rite of his own--I would not have
called it a rite but that he made a temple for it. Many children like to
play at church, but I doubt if that be good: Mark's rite was neither
play nor church. He would set two chairs in the recess of a window--"one
for Mark and one for God"--then draw the window-curtains around and sit
in silence for a space.
When a little child sets a chair for God, does God take the chair or
does he not? God is the God of little children, and is at home with
them.
For Saffy, she was a thing of smiles and of tears just as they chose to
come. She had not a suspicion yet that the exercise of any operative
power on herself was possible to her--not to say required of her. Many
men and women are in the same condition who have grown cold and hard in
it; she was soft and warm, on the way to awake and distinguish and act.
Even now when a good thought came she would give it a stranger's
welcome; but the first appeal to her senses would drive it out of doors
again.
Before their ramble was over, what with the sweet twilight gladness of
Mark, the merry noonday brightness of Saffy, and the loveliness all
around, the heart of Hester was quiet and hopeful as a still mere that
waits in the blue night the rising of the moon. She had some things to
trouble her, but none of them had touched the quick of her being.
Thoughtful, therefore in a measure troubled, by nature, she did not know
what heart-sickness was. Nor would she ever know it as many must, for
her heart went up to the heart of her heart, and there unconsciously
laid up store against the evil hours that might be on their way to her.
And this day her thoughts kept rising to Him whose thought was the
meaning of all she saw, the center and citadel of its loveliness.
For if once the suspicion wake that God never meant the things that go
to and fro in us as we gaze on the world, that moment is the universe
worthless as a doll to a childless mother. If God be not, then
steam-engine and flower are in the same category. No; the steam-engine
is the better thing, for it has the soul of a man in it, and the flower
has no soul at all. It cannot mean if it is not meant. It is God that
means everything as we read it, however poor or mingled with mistake our
reading may be. And the soothing of his presence in what we call nature,
was beginning to work on Hester, helping her toward that quietness of
spirit without which the will of God can scarce be perceived.