THE SORROW SEA
“I don’t know why I came!”
There was a low throb of pain in the younger woman’s voice. For answer
the elder pressed her hand more closely.
“When I think of that summer two years ago,” the speaker went on, “and
how Gilbert and the child and I used to romp on this very strip of
sand, I marvel that I can be here, alone, and still live!”
The soft, elderly palm, which covered her own, quivered.
“Oh, Mother Graham, forgive me!” she said, turning quickly. “I am
selfish in my sorrow--I know it. And I keep forgetting that _he_ was
once your little boy, even as the baby was mine.”
“He is my little boy still--and always will be,” Gilbert Graham’s
mother answered steadily.
“Do not think, Judith,” she added, “that I condone the past, or make
light of what you have suffered. I am sure you know, my dear, that my
chief object in life, just now, is to help you.”
“I do know it. I could not have endured these past months if you had
not let me come to you.”
They sat for some time in silence.
“Our little man was just two years old the summer that we spent here
at Snug Harbor Beach,” Judith Graham said, presently. “I remember how
Gilbert used to carry him out on his shoulder and how he would shriek
with delight when the water swept in round his father’s knees. It seems
to me now that those weeks were my very last gleam of sunshine. To
think that in less than two months from that time my baby was dead!”
The older woman made no attempt to stem this outburst of grief. Youth
must make its plaint, she thought pitifully; and the girl--she was
little more--at her side was one of those who are capable of receiving
death-wounds through the very completeness of their love.
“Of late,” she said, after a while, speaking in a low tone, “it has
seemed to me that this cannot be the end, Judith, either for you or
Gilbert. I have been thinking much of God’s all-loving, all-wise plan
for each one of us, and how we seem to draw back from it, even to dread
it; whereas, in reality, it can hold nothing but happiness for every
creature. I wish--oh, I wish with all my heart that I had thought of
these things earlier in life, while Gilbert was still a boy! But then
I was so proud of his good looks, of his popularity, of his talent for
drawing, that I unconsciously made the turning aside into easier paths
his rule of living. It has been the old story--no restraining father’s
hand, an over-fond mother and an impressionable boy.”
“Oh, Mother Graham, _don’t_,” Judith said quickly. “If you blame
yourself, what about me? He never touched--it--” she stopped,
shuddering--“until after baby went. I shut myself up then, alone with
my grief. I spent hours just looking at his little clothes. I accused
Gilbert of not caring. It seemed to me that all the world should
have stood still and mourned with me. I was mad, I think. Too late
I realized that misery and loneliness are open doors through which
temptation may freely enter. To me the indulgence of grief was a
luxury. To Gilbert the sight of a small shoe or toy was agony. Men are
so different! Little by little he began to drift away from the cold,
empty, silent place that had once been home.”
The older woman did not reply. Hers was the blame, her heart cried
out, hers alone! Had she ever taught her son that problems are not
solved by shirking them? Had she fitted him to face the world’s woe
unflinchingly and do a man’s share toward lifting it? Ah, that “line
of least resistance” which she had made so natural for him! She
realized now that it is swimming against the current which develops
moral muscle--the muscle which can resist temptation in after years.
The mother bowed her head with an inarticulate cry, “Oh, God, I have
failed, but Thy resources are infinite!”
She put her own sorrow, her own sense of failure, bravely aside in
order to help her companion.
“It is hard, I know, to believe--when the sky is as dark as yours seems
to be now, Judith, that it will ever be any brighter, but every day it
becomes clearer to me that God’s law is a law of annihilation to every
discordant condition. It does make the crooked straight and the rough
places plain. It will, if we rely wholly upon it, bring harmony and
order out of seeming chaos. God did not create us, His children, to be
driven by every wind and wave of disaster. When we begin to discern
this great truth it is, indeed, the coming of the kingdom of heaven to
our consciousness. I have thought so often, of late, of those beautiful
lines--
‘I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air,
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.’”
Tears had risen so full in Judith’s dark eyes as Mother Graham finished
speaking that she was not at first aware of a small figure which had
halted directly in front of her, or of a childish gaze fixed intently
upon her face. Gerald, realizing that here was need of some kind, drew
nearer.
“You can’t know about it either, or you wouldn’t cry,” he began.
“Know about what, dear?”
Judith had taken one small, brown hand and drawn him closer to her. He
was three years older than her own little son would have been, had he
lived, but her heart yearned over him as it did over all children now.
“About ‘God is love’--‘unfailing, quick.’”
Coming so closely upon what Mother Graham had said the child’s words
were almost a shock.
“_He_ didn’t know about it until I told him,” Gerald volunteered.
“Who?” Both women put the question together.
“The man that drawed me with a pencil.”
They turned and looked at each other involuntarily. Each had a mental
picture of a strong, supple hand and its quick, masterful work when
anything appealed to the artistic sense controlling it.
“Do you mean a man who drew a picture of you?” Mother Graham asked.
Gerald nodded.
“Here?”
“Over near that rock.” He pointed with an extended forefinger.
“Did he tell you his name?”
A vigorous shake of the head answered this.
“Do you think you could tell us what he looked like?”
“He looked sorry, until I told him about the ‘very present help’ and
‘God is love’--‘unfailing, quick.’”
Judith’s breath was coming with difficulty.
“It couldn’t be--it couldn’t,” she whispered. “And, yet, he might have
been drawn back to this place, even as I was!”
“I think that it was Gilbert,” Mother Graham answered steadily. “‘_All_
things work together for good,’ Judith; remember that, dear, and take
courage.”
“He’s coming back,” Gerald announced.
Judith started and looked around.
“When?” she breathed.
“He said if what I told him about ‘a very present help’ was true he’d
come back; and _’tis_ true. Was he”--turning to Mother Graham--“was he
your little boy?”
“I hope so--I believe so.”
“If he was your little boy you’d know about the big wave that swept him
out.”
“I don’t think that he could have been my boy”--a shade of
disappointment had crossed the elder woman’s sweet, patient face--“for
I never knew of his being swept away by a wave.”
“Oh, it wasn’t that kind of sea”--motioning to the water behind
him--“it was a sea called sin and he said the wave had carried him
’way, ’way out. He knew about ’most every kind of sea. But I told him
my mamma said it didn’t matter a bit what the sea was called, Love
could walk over it.”
Judith had covered her eyes with her hand. Gerald touched her cheek
with one finger.
“Are you out on the sorry--sor-_row_”--correcting himself
carefully--“are you out on that sea?”
“God knows I am!”
“Well, if I was you, I’d just _know_ ‘God is love’--‘unfailing, quick,’
right now.”
“Where did you learn all this?” Mother Graham asked, for the child was
voicing thoughts which had been struggling for recognition in her own
consciousness of late.
“My mamma told it to me. She tells me something more about ‘a very
present help’ every day. And she says that the ‘very present help’
was always here, but that a long, long time ago people forgot how
much of a help it was; and then a good woman found out how much of a
help it was and she put it in a book so that other people might know,
and that’s how my mamma knows. Is this”--he touched Judith’s face
again--“your little girl?”
“Yes,” Mother Graham answered promptly.
“Then you can tell her about it, just like mamma tells me!”
“I am only beginning to learn about it myself, dear, in the same way
that your mamma learned; but I thank God that I have even begun, and
I think”--Mother Graham laid one hand on Judith’s shoulder--“that my
little girl is ready to learn also.”
“Yes, and”--he nodded confidently--“you know Love can walk over the
sor-row sea just as easy as any other!”
Judith raised her wet face and drew the boy into her arms.
“I believe,” she said slowly “that you are God’s messenger to me.”