_THE DAYSPRING FROM ON HIGH_
It matters not how parched and bare the plain of life may be, one
living spring of joy can enrich and beautify it all. One master
gladness can make the heart strong against all the ills of life; it
matters not how fierce and angry be the winds, if the heart have
shelter. If God be for us who can be against us?
Gordon and I had certainly had our share of the ills of life; and the
winds of trouble had found us out. Of course, it doesn't seem so hard
to bear, now that it's past; but I reckon few young married couples
ever encountered more head wind or sailed more troubled seas. I know
everybody thinks their own troubles are the worst; if we could trade
with other people for a week, we'd probably be glad to trade back when
the time was up. Yet it cannot be denied, so far as we were concerned,
that we had a good deal to sadden us.
To begin with, we were far from home and kindred. Gordon's
relatives--he seldom spoke of any but his father--were far across the
sea. Mine were a thousand miles away, in the sunny Southland,
separated from me now by the unhappy storm that had gathered about my
husband's head. We never spoke of going home; for Gordon, I knew,
would not consider it, and I would not go without him.
Then, too, there was little now to take me there. My mother had passed
away. It was a couple of years after we came to Canada that the end
had come. Suddenly stricken with the hand of death while summering in
the remote mountains of Western Virginia, the dear spirit had found its
rest. I could not be notified till it was too late to go, even for the
last sad offices; so I went not at all. The heavenly tenderness of my
husband through all those days of sorrow lingers with me as a precious
memory. Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes wrote me once or twice, and always
sympathetically enough. But it was evident that they recognized
through it all how wide was the gulf that divided me from the days and
scenes of girlhood. And they sent their "respects" to Gordon, which is
about the politest form of epitaph that can be graven on the tomb of
friendship.
It was in the very midst of this parched and dreary plain (to quote the
words with which I began the chapter) that a spring of living joy
suddenly flung forth its waters; amid the troublous winds, our hearts
found the dearest of all earthly havens.
It seems hard to realize it now--but I don't believe Gordon and I were
unhappy before baby came. Unhappy, I mean, because there wasn't any.
I don't think we ever felt that life was poor and skimped and silent; I
don't believe we looked and longed at all. No, we didn't--and that's
the strangest part of it. The troubles that people with children
had--the imprisonment by day--and the marches by night--and the
plaintive serenades of the early dawn; the care and responsibility and
disappointment, and often heartbreak, of later years--these were so
frequently mentioned between us that I fear we came to indulge a kind
of blasphemous complacency because we were immune. Then, too, we
sometimes whispered the old sophistry that we had each other, in
devotion undivided with another--which is nothing but a honeyed perjury.
Anyhow I know this, that in those pre-parental days I would ask people
whom I had just met--and with no misgivings--as to whether or not they
had any children. But I never dared to do it after the new love-birds
began singing in my mother-heart. It seemed cruel, lest they should be
compelled with shame to acknowledge they had none; even in my most
inconsiderate years I would never ask a homely spinster if her dance
card were full--if I may pluck an illustration from the giddy days of
old.
It was with trembling joy that we drew near, never so near together, to
this great gladness of our lives. Then came my great darkness; then
the holy dawn. I swiftly forgot all about the darkness--for joy that a
man was born into the world.
Gordon was beside me when I realized it all, showering little timid
words of endearment down upon me as though he feared I were hardly able
to stand them. His lip was quivering when I looked up; and I saw his
glance turn from me to something that lay beside me on a pillow. A low
gurgling kind of sound came from the little bundle on the top of it.
"Isn't that sweet?" I murmured--for I knew--my eyes fallen shut again.
Gordon looked at me with overflowing eyes--then he turned and went
softly out of the room.
I was faint and weak when he came back; but I held his hand, lest he
should go away again.
"Say a little prayer for the baby," I whispered; "say it out loud," and
Gordon knelt low beside the bed and prayed. But I noticed that all his
prayer was for me, that I might be given back to him--and I told him,
before he had time to get up, that he had forgotten about the baby. So
he prayed again, for us both this time; and I don't think I ever before
felt what a true priest of God was this man of mine, and I rejoiced
that the new life which lay beside me was breath of his breath and soul
of his soul. And I think we both forgot, in those blessed days, all
the sorrows of the past, the turmoil of the present, the portent of the
future.
What a new world it all turned out to me! A new heaven, indeed; and a
new earth--which was more to us just then--as the Bible says.
Everything was wonderful. I can remember yet the foolish delight with
which one day I counted all the baby's toes--and found he had exactly
ten. I knew, of course, that this had happened often enough before,
but still it struck me as beautiful that they should have come out so
even; a miscalculation, considering how many have to be outfitted for
the journey, would have seemed pardonable in anybody's baby but my own.
And I had never known before how intelligent a baby could be in its
very early dawn. For instance, mine had a strange habit of lifting his
little hand high above his head, then slowly letting it drop.
"I can't make out what that gesture means," his father (those words
were a new strain of music) said to me one day as we bended over the
babe together; "you don't suppose he sees that fly, do you?" referring
to a winged intruder that was hovering, like ourselves, above our
treasure.
"Oh, no," I answered; then suddenly, "Gordon, do you know, I believe I
can tell what baby's trying to do. He's trying to pronounce the
benediction, just as sure as anything. That's you in him, Gordon; he's
going to be a minister."
"I believe that's just what he's doing," said Gordon, enchanted;
"look--there he's doing it again."
"He does it just like you, Gordon," I repeated. "Nobody need ever tell
me there's nothing in heredity. Isn't it wonderful?"
"It's mysterious," said Gordon, fascinated as he watched the little
cleric; "we'll have to call him some name suitable for a minister."
"We'll call him Gordon," I said decisively--"that's a good Presbyterian
name. I called him that this morning, all alone, and he looked up and
cooed like as if he understood."
"We'll call him Harold, for your father, if you like," my husband
proposed magnanimously.
"No, no," I said, "his name shall be Gordon. But we'll call it--I
mean--we'll give mother's name to her--if he ever has a little sister."
"Mercy!" said Gordon, drawing his breath in fast.
"I always think just one's so lonely," I explained, my eyes fastened on
the isolated posterity beside me. "I was just one--the only one in our
family, you know."
"The only one in the world--for me," said Gordon, and he kissed me.
"Look, your son's trying to sneeze: isn't it wonderful how soon they
pick things up?"
"_Our_ son, dear," I corrected reproachfully, after I had helped baby
through.
Gordon laughed. "We're a pair of idiots," he said. "We'll have to
straighten up, Helen, or we'll spoil the youngster. I can see you're
going to idolize him already."
"Love never spoiled anybody," I protested, "and it won't spoil him
either."
"No," conceded Gordon, "but he mustn't be indulged too much. I believe
in making them obey--and not giving in to them; that old adage about
sparing the rod, you know."
"He shan't ever be touched," I exclaimed; "nobody shall ever lay a
finger on my baby."
"_Our_ baby," corrected Gordon, smiling.
"But about what you said about the rod," I resumed. "You don't surely
mean----"
"Don't let us get excited, dear," and Gordon smiled down at me; "but of
course children, and especially boys, must be taught to obey. That's
one of the great advantages of a public school."
"He shan't ever go to a public school," I declared warmly. "No child
of mine will ever be sent with a lot of common children--in one of
those big schools."
"What will you do with them?" said Gordon, intensely interested.
"I'll teach them myself," said I. "I'll teach them together; I'll keep
them together all the time. There's no influence on a boy like his
little sister."
By this time Gordon was just as absorbed in them both as I was. "You
can train the girl the way you like," he said, stroking my hair while
he spoke; "that's a mother's privilege--but I'll have to take a hand
with the boy. And I'm a firm believer in punishing them, when they
need punishment."
"Gordon," I pleaded, as my eyes filled with tears, "do you mean to say
you'd whip him?"
"Yes," said Gordon, very solemn; "yes, if he needs it."
"Oh, Gordon," I cried, for it was all very real to me, "you'll make him
afraid of you; he'll learn to dislike you, Gordon--and that would break
my heart," the words quivering as they came.
"There, there, dear," he said, gently caressing me, "don't let us say
any more about it--perhaps I won't have to whip him much. All I mean
is, that I don't believe in children getting their own way; we mustn't
indulge him, I mean. And you know, dear," this coming with a very
winning smile, "you know, I'm older--and I've had more experience than
you, dear."
"No, you haven't, Gordon," I cried triumphantly; "you shouldn't say
that. I've had just as many as you, Gordon--and I know them better;
I've studied him more, right here with him all the time."
But just then our solitary descendant broke out with an imperious cry
that indicated he wanted something. Gordon leaped to duty. "It's his
bottle," he exclaimed excitedly, beginning a wild search on the table,
under the pillow, beneath the bed, the quest continued in the bathroom
and an adjoining chamber. "Yes, yes, baby," he kept saying as he
searched; "yes, father'll get him his 'ittle bottle; he's hungy, is he,
the tootsy wootsy? Yes, father'll bing it in a minute." The much
desired article was finally discovered in the cradle beside the bed;
and Gordon, in full canonicals, knelt lowly on the floor as he pacified
the clamorous lips.
"I thought you didn't believe in giving them their own way?" said I.
"He's too little to know the difference yet," said the bending one, his
back to me as he adjusted the mechanism anew.
"Oh, Gordon," I said, "you're very young, as a father--very young."