FAREWELLS.
That was the last time that Seppi and Squib sat together upon the knoll
beside the fir trees, looking out across the valley at the great range
of snow-peaks opposite.
When next Squib found his way there, no Seppi was to be seen. Three days
had passed since they had held their talk together about leaving the
green valley they both loved, and those three days had been full of
interest to the little boy.
For Mr. Lorimer and his father had been making inquiries about the
Ernsthausen family, and had established the identity of Seppi’s father
with the guide who had served them so faithfully, and had saved Colonel
Rutland’s life at the risk of his own. Squib’s story of little Seppi and
his patience and goodness touched the heart of his mother very much.
Lady Mary had heard much of Seppi during the past weeks; and ever since
the storm, when she had been so alarmed for a couple of hours about her
son, she had felt great gratitude to the little goat-herd who had so
promptly taken him into shelter, and to the whole household in the
humble home who had cared for him, and had sent to relieve her anxiety.
She entered with much sympathy into Squib’s eager desire to help the
family to set up for themselves in the way the father had long desired;
and she told Squib that since his father had taken up the matter she was
very sure it would all come right in the end.
“May I tell Seppi so?” asked Squib eagerly, and his mother said she
thought he might, if Seppi could be trusted to keep the secret for a
little while till things were more settled.
“Thank you,” said Squib, “I should like Seppi to have the pleasure of
knowing about it and thinking about it beforehand. Mother dear, don’t
you think a clever doctor might make Seppi well again? Uncle Ronald was
soon made quite well when he came home ill.”
Lady Mary shook her head sorrowfully.
“I am afraid, my darling, from what I hear that poor little Seppi’s days
are numbered. But you know that his crippled life here could not be such
a very happy one. He would feel his lameness more and more as he grew
older, and the Loving Shepherd knows what is best and happiest for His
lambs.”
The tears sprang to Squib’s eyes as he heard those words, and he pressed
up to his mother’s side.
“Did you feel like that, mother,” he whispered, “about _my_ little
brother when he died?”
For that little brother whom he could not remember had always seemed to
Squib to belong especially to himself, and his mother’s arms pressed him
very close as she answered,—
“That is how I try to think of it now, darling. It was very hard to give
him up at the time, but I am quite willing to believe that the Lord
knows best, and by-and-by we shall understand all those things which
seem so hard to bear now.”
“Yes,” answered Squib quickly and earnestly, “when the Lord comes to
make all things new, and His Kingdom begins to come. Oh, how I wish it
would come quickly!”
The mother looked earnestly into her child’s face and saw that the boy’s
eyes were fixed intently upon the blue distance before them. Some new
thought was struggling in his mind.
“Mother,” he said, “do you know that there is a little bit of this earth
in glory now? I don’t quite know how to say it, but that’s just what it
is. One little bit has been glorified and has its resurrection life
already. Did you know?”
Lady Mary slightly shook her head.
“I do not quite know what you mean, dear child. I suppose it is
something Herr Adler told you?”
[Illustration:
_“Seppi drew Squib’s hand down upon the head of Moor.”_
Page 254.
]
“Yes,” answered Squib; “it’s so beautiful and so interesting. Mother,
it’s the Lord Himself who has been glorified. You know He rose out of
the grave with the same body as He had on earth, which was made of the
earth—only in resurrection it was different. But it _was_ the same body,
for there were the marks of the nails and the spear; and that body has
been taken up to heaven and glorified, so that just a little bit of our
earth is glorified in Heaven now. Mother, Herr Adler says that when the
Lord has begun a promised work, it is a sure and certain pledge that He
will finish it when the right time has come. And so we know that
by-and-by we shall have resurrection bodies given us, and shall be
glorified too. He says that that is what David meant when he said: ‘When
I awake after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.’ You see _he_
knew about it somehow, even though Jesus hadn’t come then.”
Lady Mary kissed her child lovingly.
“I am glad you had so many beautiful talks with Herr Adler,” she said.
“Always try to remember what he taught you, dear.”
“I will,” answered Squib earnestly; “I think he is the _goodest_ man I
have ever seen.”
And having kissed his mother, Squib went off to find Seppi, but the
knoll was not occupied to-day.
“He will be nearer home,” said Squib, preparing to descend, and sure
enough he came upon his companion lower down the valley, but on the far
side of the bridge.
The face raised to greet him was bright, although it looked very sharp
and worn; and there was creeping over it, under the brown, a curious
grey look.
“Little Herr, I thought you would come to me. I tried to get to our
knoll, but I couldn’t.”
“Why couldn’t you?” asked Squib with solicitude.
“I felt so queer, and all my breath went away. I had to sit down; but I
thought if you came you would come down. I don’t seem to have any room
to breathe if I go uphill.”
“Poor Seppi!” said Squib pitifully; “does it hurt much?”
“Oh no! I don’t have any pain. And I’m used to it at night. Generally I
am pretty comfortable by day. Little Herr, we had a visit yesterday from
a friend of father’s.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, and he says father is rather disturbed, because he has heard that
somebody has been talking about buying the piece of ground he wants so
much for the hotel he has been thinking of so long. He has heard that a
gentleman has been inquiring about it.”
Squib’s face beamed all over.
“That’s my father,” he said in an important whisper. “My father has
_such_ good ideas. He set somebody to ask about the land before he came
back here. I suppose that is what your father has heard of. But he need
not really mind; for if my father buys the bit of land, he will give it
to your father, I know.”
“O little Herr! It seems too good to be true!”
“Oh no; only one of those nice things that grown-up people can do.
That’s what I should like to be grown-up for—I should have so many nice
plans.”
The boys sat thinking each his own thoughts, and then Squib said,—
“I suppose your mother told you about it, then, because you didn’t know
much the other day.”
“Yes, she told me in the night, when I couldn’t go to sleep. We had a
nice long talk about lots of things. She talked about father’s plan; but
I didn’t tell her what you had told me. I thought it was a secret.”
“I think it is just now, till something has been settled. O Seppi! I
wish you and I could go together to see the valley, and make plans about
your new home there.”
Seppi looked all round him, up and down his own valley, and away towards
the Silent Watchers guarding it on either hand, and said,—
“I think I like this one best. I don’t think I want to go to the other,
though I like to think of them there. Little Herr, will you ever go to
see it some day, when you are a man?”
“Oh yes!” cried Squib eagerly. “When I’m a man I shall do lots and lots
of things. I mean to be a mountaineer for one thing, like Mr. Lorimer,
and climb all the mountains that can be climbed, and I shall have your
father for my guide, and I shall stay at his hotel, and we shall be
great friends. You know he was very brave, and saved my father’s life. I
shall never forget that. It’s not the sort of thing one ever does
forget.”
Seppi looked very pleased and happy.
“I think father is a very brave man,” he said, “though he never talks
about the brave things he does.”
“I don’t think really brave men do,” answered Squib, with decision. “The
boys at school say that it’s always the cowards and the bullies who do
the bragging and the boasting; the really brave boys don’t have to be
always telling of themselves.”
Seppi quite agreed in this, and told a few stories he had heard from
others of his father’s prowess, and they drew many happy fancy pictures
of the days to come when Squib should become a great mountain climber,
and Ernsthausen should go with him right up into the land of cloud and
snow, across the blue mysterious glaciers, and ever upwards and onwards
to the soaring peaks beyond. Squib’s face flushed with delighted
anticipation as he lifted it towards the eternal snows and thought of
all the triumphs that lay before him; but presently his expression
changed, and putting out his hand he took Seppi’s gently in it, and
said,—
“I wish you could go too!”
Seppi smiled without any sadness.
“But, little Herr, I never could climb, you know,” and he looked at his
poor, little, shrunken limb.
“I know,” answered Squib quickly, “but I mean I wish that _that_ hadn’t
happened to you.”
The little goat-herd looked thoughtfully out before him.
“I’m not sure that I do,” he said.
“O Seppi! what do you mean?”
“I was thinking,” answered Seppi dreamily, “that if I had been strong
and active like Peter, perhaps I should not have had the goats to mind.
I think Ann-Katherin would have taken them, and I should have worked at
home with mother and Peter; and then, you see, I should not have had all
those talks with Herr Adler, and I should not have had my drawing; and I
should not have had _you_, little Herr!”
“O Seppi! but to have been strong and well would have made up for that,”
said Squib, whose active spirit could not imagine a more terrible loss
than that of the power of locomotion.
“I don’t know,” answered Seppi. “I think I am happier than Peter, who is
strong and big. I don’t think I want to be anybody else. It’s just as
Herr Adler said it would be.”
“What did he say?” asked Squib, with interest.
“It was the first time he came; at least, the first time I can remember
about. I was out with the goats. I had not been lame long, and I was
often unhappy. I missed the things I had been used to do, and I wanted
to do them again. I was crying about it one day, and he saw me, and came
and sat down by me and talked. He said such beautiful things.”
“Tell me what they were.”
“Yes; but I can’t make them sound as he does, you know. He first told me
about how God had taken care of me down in the ice, and had helped
father to get me up safe again; and he said I must not think any more
about its being the ice-maidens, because that was nothing but the fancy
of people who lived amongst mountains, and that God would never let His
children be subject to such beings, even if they had any existence; but
when I cried again about being lame, he was kinder still, and told me
that it was perhaps because the Lord loved me that He had laid His hand
upon me, because it says somewhere that whom He loveth He chasteneth—it
is in the Bible.”
Squib nodded his head.
“Yes, I know. I came upon it reading once with mother. I said it seemed
like you.”
Seppi’s face flushed with pleasure and gratitude.
“Did you? How kind to think of me, little Herr! Well, I won’t tell you
the things of that sort which he said. I expect you know them all
yourself; but he told me other things that I had never thought about
before. He said that if God took away from us one of our powers, He was
always ready to make it up to us by giving us more of another; and that,
if we could learn to be submissive, and to take everything He sent us as
His gift, we should soon find that we were not the worse, but the better
for it!”
“O Seppi—how?”
“Well, I didn’t understand then, but I do now. He told me I must use my
eyes if I could not use my legs, and that I should see as many wonderful
things going on around me as if I could scour the woods after them; and
indeed it’s true. Just sitting still anywhere, and listening and
watching is _so_ interesting; and then watching the shapes and the
colours of things put it into my head to carve and draw; and that _has_
made me so happy. And then the farmer down in the big _thal_ gave me
Moor for my very own, which he never would have done if I hadn’t been
lame; and so you see how many, many things I have got by it. And I often
think I’ve been happier than Peter, though he is so strong and can go
anywhere.”
“Do you think you are?” asked Squib.
“I often think so. Peter doesn’t care a bit to watch the mountains, and
he doesn’t know how beautiful they can be. He never listens to what the
water says, and he doesn’t know a bit how happy it makes one to see
beautiful things and think about how they come to be there. Herr Adler
says that if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear, everything in
the beautiful world tells us about God and His Kingdom, and I’m sure it
does. It has made up for everything to me. I don’t think I want anything
different now.”
Squib heaved a little sigh as he said,—
“Well, if you don’t want it different, I’ll try not to want it either.
But I can’t help thinking how nice it would be if you could have been my
guide some day when we were both men, and I came to stay in your
father’s hotel.”
The talk about that hotel was a great amusement and pleasure to the boys
in the days to come. Seppi was failing rapidly. He was still able to be
out near home with the goats, and Squib would join him almost daily,
often with some interesting piece of information about the negotiation
of the land purchase, which was going on still. Colonel Rutland was
buying the site, Squib presently informed Seppi, and he would then make
it over to Ernsthausen as his own. Then, after the sale of the present
plot of ground and chalet, the man would have enough with his savings to
ask the needful loan from government, and commence the building. It
would not take long to run up the modest building he required, and by
the following spring he would be able to open it for the use of
mountaineers, for whose resort it was mainly to be put up. The children
were never tired of talking about it, and by this time the whole family
knew what was on foot, and were in a state of excitement and pleasure.
Peter was going to realize his dream, and live a wider and more exciting
life, not quite so much shut in as now by the limits of the narrow
valley. The mother would not be separated from her husband during the
summer, and would have congenial occupation at his side; and as for
Ann-Katherin, she caught the prevailing excitement without exactly
knowing what it was all about, and thought that everything would be
delightful, though she could not at all imagine living anywhere but in
her own beautiful valley.
Moor was the only member of the household that seemed unhappy at this
juncture. Was it that the sensible fellow had a premonition of coming
change? or did some instinct tell him that all was not well with his
little master? The boys could not tell. All they knew was that the dog
was restless and unhappy; that he followed their movements with his eyes
in a wistful and imploring manner; that he whined a good deal at night,
and was only quieted by being put to sleep upon the foot of Seppi’s bed;
and that on the days when Squib failed to appear, he had been known to
set off to meet him and hasten him, and not finding him, had come home
very dejected, and had been restless and uneasy all day.
“He is so very fond of you,” Seppi often said when telling Squib of
this. “I think he likes you next best to me of anybody. He only seems
really happy when we are together. Poor Moor! he is such a faithful
friend. I do love him so! I think he understands everything I say!”
Squib had been detained at home one whole day, first by a rainy morning,
and then by a walk with his father, which had kept him away from the
valley where Seppi was half-expecting him. He did not always go, but
since his time had begun to get short (for they were to leave the chalet
soon), he tried hard to see his friend daily, for he knew that his
visits were eagerly looked for, and he sometimes had some interesting
bits of news to communicate.
He had planned to start off for the valley next day as soon as ever his
early breakfast had been dispatched; but before he was up in the
morning—when, in fact, the day was only beginning to brighten in the
east—he was awakened by a strange sound of snorting and scuffling just
outside the little door-window which opened on his balcony, and he sat
up listening with a beating heart and a strange feeling creeping over
him, for it was just that sort of noise that Czar used to make when he
came up sometimes to suggest that they should have an early walk
together. But poor Czar lay in his grave on the hillside. What could
this noise mean?
Squib sprang out of bed and pattered across the bare floor in his little
night-shirt. He unfastened the bolts and opened the window, when in ran
Moor, his coat wet with dew, his eyes full of that unspeakable
wistfulness seldom seen in any eyes save those of a dog, and his whole
manner full of such an eager intensity of purpose that Squib knew in a
moment that something unwonted had happened or was happening.
“What is it, Moor? What is it, good dog?” he asked. “And oh, Moor, how
did you find your way here?” for Squib suddenly remembered that Moor had
never been to the chalet before, and had never accompanied him further
than to the ridge just above the knoll with the fir-trees, where he had
first seen Seppi and his goats.
Moor could not answer, but he whined round the child, putting up his
paws and seeming to try as hard as he could to tell him something.
Squib understood dog-ways and dog-talk almost as well as dogs understood
him, and he quickly comprehended that Moor wanted him to go with him
somewhere.
“I’ll come! I’ll come!” he answered, and began hurrying on his clothes.
Moor was satisfied the moment he saw this, and ran to a water-jug to
slake his own thirst, for he had plainly run fast and hard. Squib was
not many minutes in getting into his clothes, and as soon as he was
dressed he paused for nothing save to get a few biscuits out of a
cupboard, some for himself and some for Moor, as they ran down the
staircase and through the dewy grass together.
“Is it Seppi?” asked Squib anxiously; and at the sound of the familiar
name the dog looked backwards over his shoulder and uttered a little,
low whine.
“Did he send you for me?” said Squib again, still running onwards along
the familiar track, with Moor always a few yards in advance. But Moor
only wagged his tail that time and said nothing, and the pair sped on in
silence.
“Something is the matter,” said Squib to himself, “and Moor will show me
what it is. Can Seppi have fallen, or be in danger? But then Moor would
have run home for help. Besides, Seppi could not be out so early. He is
not well enough.”
Down the side of the valley plunged Squib in the wake of the faithful
Moor, looking keenly to right and left as he did so, but seeing nothing
to attract his attention or account for the eagerness of the dog.
At last they reached the bridge, and were quite near the chalet. Squib
suddenly began to wonder what they would think there of his appearing at
such an hour, and, for a moment, he paused, as though in doubt; but Moor
uttered a quick, sharp bark, either of joy or command, and out from the
chalet darted a little bare-headed figure, and Squib heard
Ann-Katherin’s voice raised in sudden excitement and relief.
“Mother, he has come! He is here! Mother—Seppi—the little Herr has
come!”
The next moment Frau Ernsthausen herself had come running out, and she
met Squib a few paces from her door. Her face was pale and stained with
weeping. Her voice shook as she held out her hands.
“Ah, the good God must surely have sent His angel to tell you! Oh, how
my poor little Seppi has been calling for you!”
“Moor came for me,” answered Squib, rather bewildered and awed. “What
does Seppi want?”
“Ah, don’t ask! don’t ask! My child is dying!” cried the poor mother,
her tears gushing forth again. “Peter is away for the doctor. I could
not let Ann-Katherin go, nor did she know the way. But all the night
through he has been asking for you. Oh, thank God that you have come in
time!”
Very full of awe, but without any sense of fear, Squib entered the low
door, and found himself in the familiar room. A shaft of sunlight
entered with him, and Seppi, who was lying in his bed propped up high
with pillows, stretched out his arms to him with such a smile of
welcome.
“The angel _has_ brought him, mother!” he cried, in a quick succession
of panting breaths. “I see the shining of his wings. How good God is!”
Squib went straight up and took Seppi’s two hands.
“I have come,” he said simply. “Moor came for me; he said you wanted me,
Seppi!”
The eyes, so wonderfully bright and full of the intense light which is
not of this world, suddenly drew off, as it were, from looking out into
space and fastened themselves on Squib’s face. Seppi smiled a different
kind of smile now, but it was a very happy one.
“I am so glad you have come,” he said; “I did so want to see you again.
I have something to give you, little Herr. Will you let me?”
“O Seppi, yes. Is it anything I can do for you?”
“Yes; I want you to have Moor,” said Seppi, still panting out his words
in the same quick, breathless way. “I want you to have him for your very
own. He loves you next best. He would be happy with you. Will you have
him?”
“O Seppi, don’t give him away yet; you may want him again,” sobbed
Squib, overcome for a moment by the sense of near parting which this
request brought home to him.
A quick, strange smile flashed over Seppi’s face, over which a grey
shadow was falling.
“No,” he whispered, “I shan’t want him any more; but I love him. He
brought you. He will miss me most. Please have him and keep him for me,”
and possessing himself of Squib’s hand, Seppi drew it down upon the head
of Moor, who had stretched himself upon the bed beside his little
master, and who now licked the joined hands of both children, with his
eyes full of tears.
“I’ll keep him,” answered Squib, steadying his voice. “He shall come
home and live with me. I will make him happy.”
Seppi smiled. It seemed the last little cloud upon his mind. Now that he
was satisfied he lay back on his pillows and put out one hand to his
mother, the other lying still in Squib’s close clasp upon the head of
the dog.
“Tell me about 'He shall give His angels charge,’” he whispered the next
moment. Seppi looked at the mother, and the woman looked back at him,
and then Squib, suddenly thinking of Herr Adler and some of the things
he had said, answered with one of his own bursts of subdued vehemence,—
“Seppi, I daresay the angels are here. I daresay it was they who helped
Moor to find me and bring me; but that doesn’t matter. The Lord Jesus is
here Himself, and I think you will see Him soon. Never mind anything
else. He is coming.”
Seppi’s eyes filled suddenly with strange light, and then the lids
closed, and the quick panting breathing grew very slow—and then stopped.
“Jesus has come!” said Squib in his heart, and he turned by a sudden
impulse and put his arms round the neck of the weeping woman on her
knees beside him.
“Seppi is not lame any more,” said Squib softly.