“But if you go to-night, Miss Lane, we cannot finish Evangeline.”
“Why not, Jennie? _You_ can read aloud to the rest.”
“But I don’t like reading aloud.”
“Neither do I like reading aloud. I do a great many things I don’t like
to do.”
“I’ll read it to myself—then the rest can do the same.”
“I don’t _like_ to read aloud a thing that I have read again and again.
I don’t _like_ to play games that you little ones like. I don’t care to
play for you, when each one can do it for himself.”
Miss Lane looked at Jennie gravely. The little girl’s lip began to
quiver, her eyes filled.
“Oh, Miss Lane!” she faltered.
“Suppose I were never willing to do anything for your pleasure, Jennie,
just because I did not fancy it, wouldn’t you think me a little
selfish?”
The tears were rolling over Jennie’s cheeks now, and Miss Lane sat in
silence, wishing the child’s sensitiveness were not so exquisite. The
gentlest chiding touched the quick—it was almost a cruelty to rebuke,
even when rebuke was needed. That word “selfish” had set Jennie’s
heart-strings to quivering; and thoughtlessness, as much as anything
else, had prompted her first speech; so she sat downcast, bearing her
pain in silence, while her teacher was almost as much grieved as she.
“I think it would not be quite kind to sit alone and read to yourself
all the evening, when the rest are so anxious to finish the story, and
you know but one can have the book at a time.”
There was no answer; but Jennie had forgotten her great repugnance to
reading aloud in remembering that only the day before, Miss Lane had
left her book for an hour, to tell baby stories and read Mother Goose
to Rosie, when she was lying peevish and sick in bed.
“She could not have liked it,” pondered the child, and the first dim
consciousness of duty rose in her mind to puzzle her. Sorely troubled
was Jennie; she did not fancy giving up her own will in anything. She
had an instinctive dislike to law and order, to getting up early,
setting things to right, and losing her own pleasure.
A little flash of light seemed let into her soul, and all her daily
wrong-doing lay clear before her. She read selfishness on all, or at
the best, thoughtlessness for others’ pleasure. Before her like a
picture, she saw her dear mother stretched on her patient bed of pain,
smiling ever to keep sadness out of the hearts of her little ones, and
fading slowly day by day out of their beautiful bright world into what
seemed loneliness, chilliness, darkness to Jennie in her fresh youth.
Now and then the sweet weak voice had begged her daughter to read the
Word of Life to her as she went through the valley of the Shadow
of Death; and many times this seemed a wearisome task. How glad the
child would have been to remember having volunteered _once_ to cheer
her mother’s waiting-time with the words of Jesus! Such anguish as it
was then to know that many times the mild request for a Psalm or the
lessons of the day had been met by a frowning, fretful compliance. Too
late, too late, thought Jennie with anguish and yearning for
“The touch of the vanished hand,
And the sound of the voice that was still.”
And almost the last words that dear mother had uttered were:
“Jennie, be good to the little ones, dear—patient, loving. They will
have no mother, and the world is dreary without love, my child; give it
to them, all that you can, and fill my place.”
It had been long ago in her child life, when time is counted by hours
and days, and we think a year so long, since her mother went to rest,
but it was not till that hour that the meaning of her mother’s words
came to her. There had never seemed to be much need for the exercise
of her care over the little ones; so she thought. It seemed as if
there were nothing she could do—at least nothing that she _liked_ to
do—teaching the Catechism, reading aloud, telling stories and such
things were so disagreeable, and she could not have patience with the
little ones.
While Jennie was sitting at the window, looking out on the winter scene
and thinking, with the tears drying on her cheek, Miss Lane had gone to
the piano, and was playing softly—she was singing too, in a low voice,
and the silent darkness was creeping over the lawn under the trees and
into the room, gathering shadows on the walls and settling stilly over
the fields and sky.
“Broken-hearted, lone and tearful,
By that cross of anguish fearful,
Stood the Mother by her Son.”
Deep and touching was the voice, as were the words, and a feeling of
awe, pain, and strange longing love filled the heart of the child, and
her soul went out in prayer to the Saviour who died for her, to keep
her in his ways and make her spirit white.
That same evening, after Miss Lane had gone to stay with poor dying
Phœbe Birch, Jennie finished the story to her little brother and
sisters; played her papa’s favorite songs, and went to bed infinitely
rewarded for her sacrifice in the “peace of mind which passeth
understanding.”
The dreaded messenger who walks among us unseen at all hours had called
for the lonely child in her comfortless home, and Phœbe’s soul was
passing to the land of rest, where many saints had gone before.
The morning before, Phœbe had gone down stairs to make the fire and
prepare breakfast. It was a chilly morning, and the child’s garments
were very thin, but she was very happy. She had a friend. In all the
wide world, a few weeks before, there had been no one to greet her
pleasantly, no one to care whether she lived or died, and her poor
heart was aching, aching all the time for that love which every child
claims as its right.
All day long it was toil, and wearying at fault-finding, sometimes
weeping at blows from her drunken father or her cruel stepmother, till
there seemed neither rest nor brightness for her on earth.
At last, one Sunday, as she stood wistfully watching the children going
into Sunday-school, an impulse to follow them seized her. So, trembling
and with flushed cheeks, she glided through the door and sat down on
the first vacant seat.
How beautiful it all was! The children were singing; and into the
sensitive, wounded spirit of the child crept a strange, soothing peace,
as if the great world of pain and sin were shut out from her forever.
Heaven must be like that, she thought, and her eyes rested on a fair
face near her with a sort of reverent admiration. It was a face patient
and calm, with a touch of sadness in it though the eyes looked ever
upward, and the lips smiled. The brow was clear and broad and white,
the hair bright and smooth, and children’s faces turned lovingly to
meet the gentle glances cast upon them from those unclouded blue eyes.
For one moment, this lady with her grace and exceeding refinement,
passing her delicate fingers over the organ keys, seemed as far off
from the child as the angels in heaven; but when her soft voice had
inquired Phœbe’s name, when those lily hands held her own brown hand,
some of Phœbe’s awe vanished, and a warm, grateful love sprang up in
its place.
And after that the working, suffering days never seemed so long.
Somehow, the thought of Sunday brightened all the week, and Phœbe
lifted up her heart. Sometimes, indeed many times, Miss Lane came to
see her and gave her books. Once or twice the child had spent an hour
in her kind friend’s own dainty room. And when at last she became “a
member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of
heaven,” Miss Lane stood near to encourage, and ever since had been
pointing out the way in which she should walk.
No one could dream then, how inexpressibly sweet and strong was this
tie that bound her to her benefactress. No one knew how the thought
of this earnest love warmed and lighted that cold room in the gloomy
December morning. And but little could the outer world of those more
fortunate than she, guess how exquisitely beautiful were the thoughts
and feelings of this poor, untaught child, whose one joy had changed
the earth into a Paradise.
So she lighted the fire and sat fanning it into a blaze with her apron,
thinking, with a thrill of delight, that to-day Miss Lane was to begin
teaching her to knit fancy knitting. She had promised to find sale
for any articles that Phœbe might make; and such a bright vision rose
before her fancy that she clapped her hands and laughed aloud—such a
picture of a winter cloak, a hood, and a little offering to the Sunday
School, which it burned her cheek to think she had never been able to
give. And on Christmas morning she would go herself to Lyle’s to buy a
bouquet for Miss Lane, one made up of delicate, pure flowers like the
lady herself, with heliotrope and geranium leaves.
Inside of her Prayer-book was a withered, faded blossom, which Miss
Lane had given her weeks ago, and told her it meant, “I love you,” and
Phœbe kissed it night and morning, and many times in the day, if hard
words brought tears to her eyes or tempted her to lose her trust and
hopefulness. It all came back when she touched this talisman, or read,
“Let not your heart be troubled.”
She used to think a great many strange thoughts, these lonely days,
when sometimes, for many hours, there was no human friend to whom she
could speak, and only the wide, blank snow, with the leafless trees
waving over it, for her to look out upon.
She liked to look at the sky, and watch the clouds at sunset, for
God seemed just beyond them, and her loneliness left her when she
remembered that He was her Father, and a beautiful hope was in her
heart, that she, the believing child, might save that erring, earthly
parent.
So, when the blaze sprang up, Phœbe, under the influence of its warmth,
grew drowsy and fell asleep, and dreamed. While she dreamed, the
messenger came; slowly the flame crept towards her, and a spark rested
on her cotton dress; it glowed and spread and crackled, then burst into
a flame and bathed her in a stream of fire. Her father and mother were
asleep up stairs, but her dreadful, agonized screams soon reached their
ears.
When they burst into the room, the panting, trembling, shrieking child
was rolling on the floor, blackened, burnt, a pitiful sight for human
eyes. She had wrapped a piece of carpet about her, and so put out the
dreadful fire; but the agony of those few seconds who can tell?
She bore it all, the dreadful, sickening dressing of the burns, her
faintness, and the coarse words of the step-mother, who reproached her
even then; she bore it because Miss Lane held her hand, whispered her
words of Jesus, and cooled her brow, praying God to help her bear it.
He did help her, and a wonderful patience and sweetness came into her
soul, so that heaven seemed to lie not far off.
She could not bear, at first, that her comforter should leave her, but
one word on the duty of resignation dried her tears, and she waited in
calmness till her dear friend came to her again.
Every moment that she could spare from her duties, Miss Lane devoted to
the sufferer. Her soft fingers soothed when none others had the power,
and when the pain was torture she sang the young girl into quietness,
lifting her soul to God in prayer, and cheering her when the fear of
death was strong. So two days passed, and a second night of watching
came.