A
Little Child
BY
MARY HORNIBROOK CUMMINS
AUTHOR OF
THE MIGHTY GUEST
THE AWAKENING
[Illustration]
DAVIS & BOND
BOSTON
Copyright 1913 by
DAVIS & BOND
INDEX
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ARTIST 9
II. THE SORROW SEA 22
III. THE BIG WAVE 32
A
LITTLE CHILD
CHAPTER I
THE ARTIST
He stood with bare feet planted well apart in the sand, working his
toes down comfortably into its moist warmth and regarding Graham as
though he were a poor riddle. His cotton blouse, open at the throat,
showed a strong, shapely little neck. One brown hand grasped a battered
tin pail, the other a wooden spade.
Gilbert Graham drew out pad and pencil and made a rapid sketch. The
child’s clear gaze remained fixed on his face while he worked. When the
drawing was finished, the artist thrust it carelessly into his coat
pocket and resumed his gloomy inspection of the ocean.
“What did you do then?” demanded seven-year-old curiosity.
“Earned another slice of bread and butter; though why I should earn it,
or eat it when it is earned, is more than I know.”
The boy seemed to ponder on this for a while and then, evidently
finding it beyond him, gave it up.
“Let me see it,” he suggested.
“What?”
“What you drawed with that pencil.”
“What I drew with this pencil?” Gilbert parried, for the sake of
hearing him talk.
“Yes.”
“Oh, I guess not!”
The child drew nearer and stood leaning against his knee as he sat
on a low slab of rock. They looked steadily into each other’s eyes.
There was something irresistibly winning in the little fellow’s
fearlessness and sociable intent. Graham lifted his hand and brushed
the close-cropped head with gentle touch.
“Poor little chap!” he said, huskily.
“Why’d you say that?” the boy asked curiously.
“Oh, because some day you’ll grow up and--well, I hope you won’t make a
mess of it, as I have!”
“What’s make-a-mess-of-it?”
“Look here,” Graham demanded, “are you a walking interrogation point?”
“I’m Gerald Hammond Fitzgerald,” the boy answered with dignity.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Gerald Hammond Fitzgerald.” If Graham
smiled inwardly, no shade of amusement crossed his face.
“’Me see it!” the little fellow pleaded.
“Say, you’ve got a fair share of persistence of your own, haven’t you?”
The artist drew the sketch from his pocket. He liked this small boy who
leaned so confidently against his knee. Gerald glanced at the outline
of himself and his full, childish laugh of pleasure rang out.
“Draw me some more with that pencil,” he pleaded, as though he thought
the lead possessed some wonderful charm of its own.
“Tickles your vanity, does it? Well, here goes! Put down that pail. Now
take your spade in both hands and stoop over as if you were digging.”
The boy obeyed at once, striking a perfectly natural attitude. Graham
made a more elaborate drawing this time, throwing in a background
of sea and sky with quick, masterful strokes. It occurred to him to
put the suggestion of a storm-cloud rising in the distance, but he
refrained. Somehow, he did not want to connect storm-clouds with the
child.
“That will do for the front cover of _Prescott’s Weekly_,” he thought
as he finished it.
Gerald was plainly delighted with the result.
“When I grow up,” he announced, “I’ll do what you do.”
“God forbid!”
The words escaped Gilbert Graham’s lips, in a low breath, ere he was
aware.
Gerald regarded him wonderingly.
“Isn’t--isn’t that _good_?” he questioned, pointing to the drawing.
“That? Oh, yes, that’s good enough.”
“Then God wouldn’t forbid it!” the child declared triumphantly.
“I didn’t mean--that kind of thing,” the man said. He looked more
intently at the boy. “How do you know, at your age, what God would or
would not forbid?”
The child seemed to turn this question over in his mind for a moment
and, evidently finding it too much for his comprehension, fell back on
something of which he felt quite sure.
“‘God is love’--‘unfailing, quick,’” he said, looking off over the
sea, and unconsciously mixing up two things which he had learned at
different times.
Suddenly he turned and faced his companion fully.
“Don’t you know about ‘a very present help’?” he asked.
“Can’t say that I do, though it sounds familiar. Do you know about it?”
“Oh, yes! I’ve always known about it.”
He inspected Gilbert Graham gravely, as though he were an entirely new
type of being--as indeed he was to Gerald.
“If you don’t know about ‘a very present help,’” he began, “what would
you do if--if--” he looked around, and finally took his illustration
from the thing closest at hand--“if a big, oh, a big, _big_ wave--”
extending his arms to their utmost limit to express vastness--“was to
come and sweep you away?”
“Drown, I suppose, seeing that I’m no great swimmer. What would you do?”
“I’d just _know_ ‘God is love’--‘unfailing, quick.’”
“And you think that would save you?”
The child nodded confidently.
“It saved my mamma, right here. And it saved my daddy, too. Only the
wave that swept my daddy out was on a diff’rent kind of sea from this
sea.”
“A different kind of sea?”
“Yes. It was a sea called sin.”
The man started and looked quickly away from the child. It was some
moments before he spoke.
“Did the wave sweep your daddy very far out?” he asked then, in a low
voice.
“Oh, yes! I know, for I heard my daddy telling a man about it just a
few days ago--I think a big wave must have swept him out, too--and he
said he was like a boat that had slipped its--its--”
“Moorings?”
Gerald nodded.
“And drifted ’way out to sea,” he went on, “and ’twas black and cold
and rough and daddy began to think of the shore and that gran’ma was
there--’twas before he had mamma and me--and he cried out to the ‘very
present help.’ I don’t think daddy knew, ‘God is love’--‘unfailing,
quick’ then, or he’d have said it out loud like I do.”
“And was he--saved?”
“Sure.”
Gilbert Graham sat silent, one hand shading his eyes. Gerald watched
him for a few minutes, then, with a child’s curiosity, reached up and
drew away one of the strong, supple fingers. He was surprised to find
that it was wet.
“Little chap--” the man’s voice caught in his throat as he put one arm
round the boy--“I don’t mind telling _you_ that I’m out on that same
sea--far out, farther out than your daddy ever was, and it’s dark and
cold and rough and--” his forehead fell back upon his hand--“I think
that I’m going to sink!”
Gerald laid one moist, warm palm against his cheek.
“But you can’t sink!” he declared. “The ‘very present help’ won’t let
you sink, if--if you catch hold of it.”
“I don’t know how,” the man groaned, “I’ve lost my grip.”
“It isn’t _your_ grip,” the boy urged, “the water’d loosen that,
anyhow. I know, for I’ve tried holding on to a rock and when a wave
comes it always makes you let go. But the ‘very present help’ never
lets go. It’s God, you know. And if God let go the sun would fall down
and the stars would fall down and we’d all fall down, mamma says. But
He never does, and so there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“Nothing to be afraid of!” Graham repeated.
Oh, the blessedness of childhood! Some words came back to the man as
he sat there--“a great gulf fixed.” It seemed to him that there was,
indeed, a great gulf fixed, a well-nigh impassable flood, between the
fearless thought of this child and the dark clamor and confusion of his
own consciousness.
“Mamma was telling me more about the sea last night,” Gerald went
on. “She says there’s lots of diff’rent kinds of seas. Some of them
have very big names. There’s one that begins with ‘Dif--’ but I don’t
remember the rest.”
“Difficulty?” Graham suggested. In spite of himself the boy kept
dragging him out of his slough of despair.
Gerald nodded.
“Do you know about that sea?” he asked.
“I ought to; I’ve been tossed about on it often enough.”
“And there’s one that ends in ‘row.’ I remember that because row made
me think of a boat.”
“Sorrow?” Graham asked.
“Yes. Do you know about that one, too?”
“I’m beginning to know about that one.”
“I know about the sick sea, myself!” Gerald declared.
“So do I,” Graham admitted.
“And then there’s the one daddy was nearly drowned in, the one you said
you were far out on. But mamma says it doesn’t matter a bit what the
name is, or how rough it is, or how far from shore you are, Love can
walk over any sea and come and get you!”
Gilbert Graham was looking at the boy with an intent, earnest gaze. Was
the gulf so fixed, so impassable, after all? Suppose there was a Power
which could cross it and come to a man in his extremity?
“When I was out on the sick sea,” Gerald went on, “and my head was so
wobbly that I didn’t know daddy or mamma, Love came and got me, right
away. Oh, but ’twas fine when my head didn’t feel wobbly any more!”
“How are you going to get it all started?” Graham asked.
The child evidently did not grasp his meaning, so he put it in another
way.
“Supposing I wanted this ‘very present help’--wanted it now--wanted it
badly--what would I have to do to get it started toward me?”
“Just _know_ that you want it. My mamma says another word for ‘know,’
but ’tis a long one and I misremember it.”
“Believe?”
Gerald shook his head.
“Realize?”
“That’s it!”
“Realize that I need ‘a very present help,’” Gilbert Graham said
slowly, as he gazed out to sea, “well, I do need it; and if ever a man
realized his need I think I do at this moment!”
“Then it’s coming--it’s coming oh, so quick! First thing you know
the ‘very present help’ will have hold of you, just like that!” and
Gerald’s brown fingers closed firmly on the collar of Graham’s coat.
Gilbert Graham patted the small hand and then held it for some time
between both his own. When he rose, something that had been in his
face before he began to talk to the child--marring its beauty and
manhood--was gone. He was not, as yet, aware that his declaration, “If
ever a man realized his need I think I do at this moment,” was the
opened door through which Love had entered, issuing as it came the
wondrous command, “Loose him and let him go.”
He released the boy’s hand regretfully.
“You going away?” Gerald looked up wistfully into the dark,
clean-shaven face.
“Yes.”
“For always?”
“No, I’ll come back. That is--I’ll come back if what you’ve been
telling me is true and I reach shore.”
He had gone a little distance along the beach when a childish voice
reached him.
“When you come back will you draw me some more with that pencil?”
The artist turned to nod assent. At sight of the small figure, so
sturdy, such a living embodiment of the Love in which he so firmly
trusted, his vision clouded.
“He’s near enough to--” Gilbert Graham hesitated before mentally
pronouncing the next word--“God to reclaim even me!”