So they all went to bed, Harold on a little landing at the top of the stairs; but-whether it was from the pounds of merry-stones he had swallowed, or the talk he had had with his sister-he could not go to sleep, and lay tossing and tumbling about, thinking it very odd he had not heeded more what Ellen had said when he first came in, and the notion dawning on him more and more, that day after day would come and make Alfred worse, and that by the time summer came again he should be alone. Who could have said it? Why had not he asked? What could he have been thinking about? It should not be true! A sort of frenzy to speak to some one, and hear the real meaning of those words, so as to make sure they were only Ellen's nonsense, came over him in the silent darkness. Presently he heard Alfred moving on his pillow, for the door was open for the heat; and that long long sigh made him call in a whisper, 'Alf, are you awake?'
In another moment Harold was by his brother's side. 'Alf! Alf! are you worse?' he asked, whispering.
'No.'
'Then what's all this? What did they say? It's all stuff; I'm sure it is, and you're getting better. But what did Ellen mean?'
'No, Harold,' said Alfred, getting his brother's hand in his, 'it's not stuff; I shan't get well; I'm going after poor Charlie; and don't you be a bad lad, Harold, and run away from your church, for you don't know-how bad it feels to-' and Alfred turned his face down, for the tears were coming thick.
'But you aren't going to die, Alf. Charlie never was like you, I know he wasn't; he was always coughing. It is all Ellen. Who said it? I won't let them.'
'The doctor said it to Betsey Hardman,' said Alfred; and his cough was only too like his brother's.
Harold would have said a great deal in contempt of Betsey Hardman, but Alfred did not let him.
'You'll wake Mother,' he said. 'Hush, Harold, don't go stamping about; I can't bear it! No, I don't want any one to tell me now; I've been getting worse ever since I was taken, and-oh! be quiet, Harold.'
'I can't be quiet,' sobbed Harold, coming nearer to him. 'O Alf! I can't spare you! There hasn't been no proper downright fun without you, and-'
Harold had lain down by him and clung to his hand, trying not to sob aloud.
'O Harold!' sighed Alfred, 'I don't think I should mind-at least not so much-if I hadn't been such a bad boy.'
'You, Alfy! Who was ever a good boy if you was not?'
'Hush! You forget all about when I was up at my Lady's, and all that. Oh! and how bad I behaved at church, and when I was so saucy to Master about the marbles; and so often I've not minded Mother. O Harold! and God judges one for everything!'
What a sad terrified voice it was!
'Oh! don't go on so, Alf! I can't bear it! Why, we are but boys; and those things were so long ago! God will not be hard on little boys. He is merciful, don't you know?'
'But when I knew it was wrong, I did the worst I could!' said Alfred. 'Oh, if I could only begin all over again, now I do care! Only, Harold, Harold, you are well; you can be good now when there's time.'
'I'll be ever so good if you'll only get well,' said Harold. 'I wouldn't have gone to that there place to-night; but 'tis so terribly dull, and one must do something.'
'But in church-time, and on Sunday!'
'Well, I'll never do it again; but it was so sunshiny, and they were all making such fun, you see, and it did seem so stuffy, and so long and tiresome, I couldn't help it, you see.'
Alfred did not think of asking how, if Harold could not help it this time, he could be sure of never doing so again. He was more inclined to dwell on himself, and went back to that one sentence, 'God judges us for everything.' Harold thought he meant it for him, and exclaimed,
'Yes, yes, I know, but-oh, Alf, you shouldn't frighten one so; I never meant no harm.'
'I wasn't thinking about that,' sighed Alfred. 'I was wishing I'd been a better lad; but I've been worse, and crosser, and more unkind, ever since I was ill. O Harold! what shall I do?'
'Don't go on that way,' said Harold, crying bitterly. 'Say your prayers, and maybe you will get well; and then in the morning I'll ask Mr. Cope to come down, and he'll tell you not to mind.'
'I wouldn't listen to Mr. Cope when he told me to be sorry for my sins; and oh, Harold, if we are not sorry, you know they will not be taken away.'
'Well, but you are sorry now.'
'I have heard tell that there are two ways of being sorry, and I don't know if mine is the right.'
'I tell you I'll fetch Mr. Cope in the morning; and when the doctor comes he'll be sure to say it is all a pack of stuff, and you need not be fretting yourself.'
When Harold awoke in the morning, he found himself lying wrapped in his coverlet on Alfred's bed, and then he remembered all about it, and looked in haste, as though he expected to see some sudden and terrible change in his brother.
But Alfred was looking cheerful, he had awakened without discomfort; and with some amusement, was watching the starts and movements, the grunts and groans, of Harold's waking. The morning air and the ordinary look of things, had driven away the gloomy thoughts of evening, and he chiefly thought of them as something strange and dreadful, and yet not quite a dream.
'Don't tell Mother,' whispered Harold, recollecting himself, and starting up quietly.
'But you'll fetch Mr. Cope,' said Alfred earnestly.
Harold had begun not to like the notion of meeting Mr. Cope, lest he should hear something of yesterday's doings, and he did not like Alfred or himself to think of last night's alarm, so he said, 'Oh, very well, I'll see about it.'
He had not made up his mind. Very likely, if chance had brought him face to face with Mr. Cope, he would have spoken about Alfred as the best way to hinder the Curate from reproving himself; but he had not that right sort of boldness which would have made him go to meet the reproof he so richly deserved, and he was trying to persuade himself either that when Alfred was amused and cheery, he would forget all about 'that there Betsey's nonsense,' or else that Mr. Cope might come that way of himself.
But Alfred was not likely to forget. What he had heard hung on him through all the little occupations of the morning, and made him meek and gentle under them, and he was reckoning constantly upon Mr. Cope's coming, fastening on the notion as if he were able to save him.
Still the Curate came not, and Alfred became grieved, feeling as if he was neglected.
Mr. Blunt, however, came, and at any rate he would have it out with him; so he asked at once very straightforwardly, 'Am I going to die, Sir?'
'Why, what's put that in your head?' said the doctor.
'There was a person here talking last night, Sir,' said Mrs. King.
'Well, but am I?' said Alfred impatiently.
'Not just yet, I hope,' said Mr. Blunt cheerfully. 'You are weak, but you'll pick up again.'
'But of this?' persisted Alfred, who was not to be trifled with.
Mr. Blunt saw he must be in earnest.
'My boy,' he said, 'I'm afraid it is not a thing to be got over. I'll do the best I can for you, by God's blessing; and if you get through the winter, and it is a mild spring, you might do; but you'd better settle your mind that you can't be many years for this world.'
Many years! that sounded like a reprieve, and sent gladness into Ellen's heart; but somehow it did not seem in the same light to Alfred; he felt that if he were slowly going down hill and wasting away, so as to have no more health or strength in which to live differently from ever before, the length of time was not much to him, and in his sickly impatience he would almost have preferred that it should not be what Betsey kindly called 'a lingering job.'
There he lay after Mr. Blunt was gone, not giving Ellen any trouble, except by the sad thoughtfulness of his face, as he lay dwelling on all that he wanted to say to Mr. Cope, and the terror of his sin and of judgment sweeping over him every now and then.
Still Mr. Cope came not. Alfred at last began to wonder aloud, and asked if Harold had said anything about it when he came in to dinner; but he heard that Harold had o
nly rushed in for a moment, snatched up a lump of bread and cheese, and made off to the river with some of the lads who meant to spend the noon-tide rest in bathing.
When he came for the evening letters he was caught, and Mr. Cope was asked for; and then it came out that Harold had never given the message at all.
Alfred, greatly hurt, and sadly worn by his day of expectation, had no self-restraint left, and flew out into a regular passion, calling his brother angry names. Harold, just as passionate, went into a rage too, and scolded his brother for his fancies. Mrs. King, in great displeasure, turned him out, and he rushed off to ride like one mad to Elbury; and poor Alfred remained so much shocked at his own outbreak, just when he meant to have been good ever after, and sobbing so miserably, that no one could calm him at all; and Ellen, as the only hope, put on her bonnet to fetch Mr. Cope.
At that moment Paul was come for his bit of bread. She found him looking dismayed at the sounds of violent weeping from above, and he asked what it was.
'Oh, Alfred is so low and so bad, and he wants Mr. Cope! Here's your bread, don't keep me!'
'Let me go! I'll be quicker!' cried Paul; and before she could thank him, he was down the garden and right across the first field.
Alfred had had time to cry himself exhausted, and to be lying very still, almost faint, before Mr. Cope came in in the summer twilight. Good Paul! He had found that Mr. Cope was dining at Ragglesford and had run all the way thither; and here was the kind young Curate, quite breathless with his haste, and never regretting the cheerful party whence he had been called away. All Alfred could say was, 'O Sir, I shall die; and I'm a bad boy, and wouldn't heed you when you said so.'
'And God has made you see your sins, my poor boy,' said Mr. Cope. 'That is a great blessing.'
'But if I can't do anything to make up for them, what's the use? And I never shall be well again.'
'You can't make up for them; but there is One Who has made up for them, if you will only truly repent.'
'I wasn't sorry till I knew I should die,' said Alfred.
'No, your sins did not come home to you! Now, do you know what they are?'
'Oh yes; I've been a bad boy to Mother, and at church; and I've been cross to Ellen, and quarrelled with Harold; and I was so audacious at my Lady's, they couldn't keep me. I never did want really to be good. Oh! I know I shall go to the bad place!'
'No, Alfred, not if you so repent, that you can hold to our Blessed Saviour's promise. There is a fountain open for sin and all uncleanness.'
'It is very good of Him,' said Alfred, a little more tranquilly, not in the half-sob in which he had before spoken.
'Most merciful!' said Mr. Cope.
'But does it mean me?' continued Alfred.
'You were baptized, Alfred, you have a right to all His promises of pardon.' And he repeated the blessed sentences:
'Come unto Me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.'
'God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'
'But how ought I to believe, Sir?'
'You say you feel what your sins are; think of them all as you lie, each one as you remember it; say it out in your heart to our Saviour, and pray God to forgive it for His sake, and then think that it cost some of the pain He bore on the Cross, some of the drops of His agony in the Garden. Each sin of ours was indeed of that burden!'
'Oh, that will make them seem so bad!'
'Indeed it does; but how it will make you love Him, and feel thankful to Him, and anxious not to waste the sufferings borne for your sake, and glad, perhaps, that you are bearing some small thing yourself. But you are spent, and I had better not talk more now. Let me read you a few prayers to help you, and then I will leave you, and come again to-morrow.'
How differently those Prayers and Psalms sounded to Alfred now that he had really a heart grieved and wearied with the burthen of sin! The point was to make his not a frightened heart, but a contrite heart.
CHAPTER VII-HAROLD TAKES A WRONG TURN
Mrs. King was very anxious about Alfred for many hours after this visit from the Curate, for he was continually crying, not violently, but the tears flowing quietly from his eyes as he lay, thinking. Sometimes it was the badness of the faults as he saw them now, looking so very different from what they did when they were committed in the carelessness of fun and high spirits, or viewed afterwards in the hardening light of self-justification. Now they did look so wantonly hard and rude-unkind to his sister, ruinous to Harold, regardless of his widowed mother, reckless of his God-that each one seemed to cut into him with a sense of its own badness, and he was quite as much grieved as afraid; he hated the fault, and hated himself for it.
Indeed, he was growing less afraid, for the sorrow seemed to swallow that up; the grief at having offended One so loving was putting out the terror of being punished; or rather, when he thought that this illness was punishment, he was almost glad to have some of what he deserved; just as when he was a little boy, he really used to be happier afterwards for having been whipped and put in the corner, because that was like making it up. Though he knew very well that if he had ten thousand times worse than this to bear, it would not be making up for his faults, and he felt now that one of them had been his 'despising the chastening of the Lord.' And then the thought of what had made up for it would come: and though he had known of it all his life, and heeded it all too little, now that his heart was tender, and he had felt some of the horror and pain of sin, he took it all home now, and clung to it. He recollected the verses about that One kneeling-nay, falling on the ground, in the cold dewy night, with the chosen friends who could not watch with Him, and the agony and misery that every one in all the world deserved to feel, gathering on Him, Who had done no wrong, and making His brow stream with great drops of Blood.
And the tortures, the shame, the slow Death-circumstance after circumstance came to his mind, and 'for me,' 'this fault of mine helped,' would rise with it, and the tears trickled down at the thought of the suffering and of the Love that had caused it to be undergone.
Once he raised up his head, and saw through the window the deep dark- blue sky, and the stars, twinkling and sparkling away; that pale band of light, the Milky Way, which they say is made of countless stars too far off to be distinguished, and looking like a cloud, and on it the larger, brighter burnished stars, differing from one another in glory. He thought of some lines in a book Miss Jane once gave Ellen, which said of the stars:
'The Lord resigned them all to gain The bliss of pardoning thee.'
And when he thought that it was the King of those stars Who was scourged and spit on, and for the sake of HIS faults, the loving tears came again, and he turned to another hymn of Ellen's:
'Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee!'
And going on with this, he fell into a more quiet sleep than he had had for many nights.
Alfred had worked up his mind to a point where it could not long remain; and when he awoke in the morning, the common affairs of the day occupied him in a way that was not hurtful to him, as the one chief thought was ever present, only laid away for a time, and helping him when he might have been fretful or impatient.
He was anxious for Mr. Cope, and grateful when he saw him coming early in the day. Mr. Cope did not, however, say anything very new. He chiefly wished to shew Alfred that he must not think all his struggle with sin over, and that he had nothing to do but to lie still and be pardoned. There was much more work, as he would find, when the present strong feeling should grow a little blunt; he would have to keep his will bent to bear what was sent by God, and to prove his repentance by curing himself of all his bad habits of peevishness and exacting; to learn, in fact, to take up his cross.
Alfred feebly promised to try, and it did not seem so difficult just then. The days were becoming cooler, and he did not feel quite so ill; and though he did not know how much this helped h
im, it made it much easier to act on his good resolutions. Miss Selby came to see him, and was quite delighted to see him looking so much less uncomfortable and dismal.
'Why, Alfred,' said she, 'you must be much better.'
Ellen looked mournful at this, and shook her head so that Miss Jane turned her bright face to her in alarm.
'No, Ma'am,' said Alfred. 'Dr. Blunt says I can never get over it.'
'And does that make you glad?' almost gasped Miss Jane.
'No, Ma'am,' said Alfred; 'but Mr. Cope has been talking to me, and made it all so-'
He could not get out the words; and, besides, he saw Miss Jane's eyes winking very fast to check the tears, and Ellen's had begun to rain down fast.
'I didn't mean to be silly,' said little Jane, in rather a trembling voice; 'but I'm sorry-no-I'm glad you are happy and good, Alfred.'
'Not good, Miss Jane,' cried Alfred; 'I'm such a bad boy, but there are such good things as I never minded before-'
'Well then, I think you'll like what I've brought you,' said Jane eagerly.
It was a little framed picture of our Blessed Lord on His Cross, all darkness round, and the Inscription above His Head; and Miss Jane had painted, in tall Old English red letters, under it the two words, 'For me.'
Alfred looked at it as if indeed it would be a great comfort to him to be always reminded by the eye, of how 'He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities.'
He thanked Miss Jane with all his heart, and she and Ellen soon found a place to hang it up well in his sight. It was a pretty bright sight to see her insisting on holding the nail for it, and then playfully pretending to shrink and fancy that Ellen would hammer her fingers.
Alfred could enjoy the sunshine of his sick-room again; and Ellen and his mother down-stairs told Miss Selby, with many tears, of the happy change that had come over him ever since he had resigned himself to give up hopes of life. Mrs. King looked so peaceful and thankful, that little Jane could hardly understand what it was that made her so much more at rest.
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