Hills of the Shatemuc Part 7

"Mamma," he said, "you have left out the hardest difficulty of all. -- How can I go and leave you and papa without me?"

"How can you? My child, I can bear to do without you in this world, if it is to be for your good or happiness. There is only one thing, Winthrop, I cannot bear."

He was silent.

"I could bear anything -- it would make my life a garden of roses -- if I were sure of having you with me in the next world."

"Mamma -- you know I would --"

"I know you would, I believe, give your life to serve me, my boy. But till you love G.o.d as well as that, -- you may be my child, but you are not his."

He was silent still; and heaving a sigh, a weary one, that came from very far down in her heart, she turned away again and sat looking towards the fireplace. But not at it, nor at anything else that mortal eyes could see. It was a look that left the things around her, and pa.s.sing present wants and future contingencies, went beyond, to the issues, and to the secret springs that move them. An earnest and painful look; a look of patient care and meek reliance; so earnest, so intent, so distant in its gaze, that told well it was a path the mind often travelled and often in such wise, and with the self-same burden. Winthrop watched the gentle grave face, so very grave then in its gentleness, until he could not bear it; her cheek was growing pale, and whether with cold or with thinking he did not care to know.

He came forward and gently touched his cheek to the pale one.

"Mamma, do not look so for me!" he whispered.

She pulled him down beside her on the hearth, and nestled her face on his shoulder and wrapped her arms round him. And they strained him close, but he could not speak to her then.

"For whom should I look? or for what do I live? My boy! I would die to know that you loved Christ; -- that my dear Master was yours too!"

The gently-spoken words tied his tongue. He was mute; till she had unloosed her arms from about him and sat with her face in her hands. Then his head sought her shoulder.

"Mamma, I know you are right. I will do anything to please you -- anything that I can," he said with a great force upon himself.

"What _can_ you do, Winthrop?"

He did not answer again, and she looked up and looked into his face.

"Can you take G.o.d for your G.o.d? and give your heart and your life, -- all the knowledge you will ever get and all the power it will ever give you, -- to be used for him?"

"For him, mamma? --"

"In doing his work -- in doing his pleasure?"

"Mamma -- I am not a Christian," he said hesitatingly and his eye falling.

"And now you know what a Christian is. Till you can do this, you do nothing. Till you are Christ's after this whole-hearted fas.h.i.+on you are not mine as I wish to see you, -- you are not mine for ever, -- my boy -- my dear Winthrop --" she said, again putting her arm round him and bowing her face to his breast.

Did he ever forget the moment her head lay there? the moment when his arms held the dearest earthly thing life ever had for him? It was a quiet moment; she was not crying; no tears had been dropped at all throughout their conversation; and when she raised her face it was to kiss him quietly, -- but twice, on his lips and on his cheek, -- and bid him good night. But his soul was full of one meaning, as he shut his little bedroom door, -- that that face should never be paler or more care-worn for anything of his doing; -- that he would give up anything, he would never go from home, sooner than grieve her heart in a feather's weight; nay, that rather than grieve her, he would _become a Christian_.

CHAPTER IV.

A lonely dwelling, where the sh.o.r.e Is shadowed with rocks, and cypresses Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies, And with their shadows the clear depths below.

Sh.e.l.lEY.

The winter was a long one to the separated family. Quietly won through, and busily. The father in the distant legislature; the brother away at his studies; and the two or three lonely people at home; -- each in his place was earnestly and constantly at work. No doubt Mr. Landholm had more time to play than the rest of them, and his business cares did not press quite so heavily; for he wrote home of gay dinings-out, and familiar intercourse with this and that member of the Senate and a.s.sembly, and hospitable houses that were open to him in Vanta.s.sel, where he had pleasant friends and pleasant times. But the home cares were upon him even then; he told how he longed for the Session to be over, that he might be with his family; he sent dear love to little Winifred and Asahel, and postscripts of fatherly charges to Winthrop, recommending to him particularly the care of the young cattle and to go on dressing the flax. And Winthrop, through the long winter, had taken care of the cattle and dressed the flax in the same spirit with which he shut his bedroom door that night; a little calmer, not a whit the less strong.

He filled father's and brother's place -- his mother knew how well. Sam Doolittle knew, for he declared "there wa'n't a stake in the fences that wa'n't looked after, as smart as if the old chap was to hum." The grain was threshed as duly as ever, though a boy of sixteen had to stand in the shoes of a man of forty. Perhaps Sam and Anderese wrought better than their wont, in shame or in admiration. Karen never had so good a woodpile, Mrs. Landholm's meal bags were never better looked after; and little Winifred and Asahel never wanted their rides in the snow, nor had more nuts cracked o' nights; though they had only one tired brother at home instead of two fresh ones.

Truth to tell, however, one ride from Winthrop would at any time content them better than two rides from Will. Winthrop never allowed that he was tired, and never seemed so; but his mother and Karen were resolved that tired he must be.

"He had pretty strength to begin with," Karen said; "that was a good thing; and he seemed to keep it up too; he was shootin'

over everything."

If Winthrop kept his old plans of self-aggrandizement, it was at the bottom of his heart; he looked and acted nothing but the farmer, all those months. There was a little visit from Rufus too, at mid-winter, which must have wakened the spirit of other things, if it had been at all laid to sleep. But if it waked it kept still. It did not so much as shew itself.

Unless indirectly.

"What have you been doing all to-day, Governor?" said his little sister, meeting him with joyful arms as he came in one dark February evening.

"What have _you_ been about all day?" said her brother, taking her up to his shoulder. "Cold isn't it? Have you got some supper for me?"

"No, _I_ hav'n't, --" said the little girl. "Mamma! -- Governor wants his supper!"

"Hush, hush. Governor's not in a hurry."

"Where have you been all day?" she repeated, putting her little hand upon his cold face with a sort of tender consideration.

"In the snow, and out of it."

"What were you doing in the snow?"

"Walking."

"Was it cold?"

"Stinging."

"_What_ was stinging?"

"Why, the cold!"

She laughed a little, and went on stroking his face.

"What were you doing when you wa'n't in the snow?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Tell me!"

"I was scutching flax."

"What is that?"

"Why, don't you know? -- didn't you see me beating flax in the barn the other day? -- beating it upon a board, with a bat? -- that was scutching."

"That day when mamma said, -- mamma said, you were working too hard?"