Stepping Heavenward Part 32

Is not this the true, the natural way of linking every little daily act of a child's life with that Divine Love, that Divine Life which gives meaning to all things?

But what do I mean by the vain boast that I have always trained my children thus? Alas! I have done it only at times; for while my theory was sound, my temper of mind was but too often unsound. I was often and often impatient with my dear little boy; often my tone was a worldly one; I often full of eager interest in mere outside things, and forgot that I was living or that my children were living save for the present moment.

It seems now that I have a child in heaven, and am bound to the invisible world by such a tie that I can never again be entirely absorbed by this.

I fancy my ardent, eager little boy as having some such employments in his new and happy home as he had here. I see him loving Him who took children in His arms and blessed them, with all the warmth of which his nature is capable, and as perhaps employed as one of those messengers whom G.o.d sends forth as His ministers. For I cannot think of those active feet, those busy hands as always quiet. Ah, my darling, that I could look in upon you for a moment, a single moment, and catch one of your radiant smiles; just one!

AUGUST 4.-How full are David's Psalms of the cry of the sufferer! He must have experienced every kind of bodily and mental torture. He gives most vivid ill.u.s.trations of the wasting, wearing process of disease-for instance, what a contrast is the picture we have of him when he was "ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to," and the one he paints of himself in after years, when he says, "I may tell all my bones. they look and stare upon me; my days are like a, shadow that declineth, and I am withered like gra.s.s. I am weary with groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. For my soul is full of troubles; and my life draweth near unto the grave,"

And then what wails of anguish are these!

"I am afflicted, and ready to die from my youth up, while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. All thy waves and thy billows have gone over me. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into utter dark ness."

Yet through it all what grateful joy in G.o.d, what expressions of living faith and devotion! During my long illness and confinement to my room, the Bible has been almost a new book to me, and I see that G.o.d has always dealt with His children as He deals with them now, and that no new thing has befallen me. All these weary days so full of languor, these nights so full of unrest, have had their appointed mission to my soul. And perhaps I have had no discipline so salutary as this forced inaction and uselessness, at a time when youth and natural energy continually cried out for room and work.

AUGUST 15.-I dragged out my drawing materials in a listless way this morning, and began to sketch the beautiful scene from my window. At first I could not feel interested. It seemed as if my hand was crippled and lost its cunning when it unloosed its grasp of little Ernest, and let him go. But I prayed, as I worked, that I might not yield to the inclination to despise and throw away the gift with which G.o.d has Himself endowed me. Mother was gratified, and said it rested her to see me act like myself once more. Ah, I have been very selfish, and have been far too much absorbed with my sorrow and my illness and my own petty struggles.

AUGUST 19.-I met to-day an old friend, Maria Kelly, who is married, it seems, and settled down in this pretty village. She asked so many questions about my little Ernest that I had to tell her the whole story of his precious life, sickness and death. I forced myself to do this quietly, and without any great demand on her sympathies. My reward for the constraint I thus put upon myself was the abrupt question:

"Haven't you grown stoical?"

I felt the angry blood rush' through my veins as it has not done in a long time. My pride was wounded to the quick, and those cruel, unjust words still rankle in my heart. This is not as it should be. I am constantly praying that my pride may be humbled, and then when it is attacked, I shrink from the pain the blow causes, and am angry with the hand that inflicts it. It is just so with two or three unkind things Martha has said to me. I can't help brooding over them and feeling stung with their injustice, even while making the most desperate struggle to rise above and forget them. It is well for our fellow-creatures that G.o.d forgives and excuses them, when we fail to do it, and I can easily fancy that poor Maria Kelly is at this moment dearer in His sight than I am who have taken fire at a chance word And I can see now, what I wonder I did not see at the time, that G.o.d was dealing very kindly and wisely with me when He made Martha overlook my good qualities, of which I suppose I have some, as everybody else has, and call out all my bad ones, since the axe was thus laid at the root of self-love. And it is plain that self-love cannot die without a fearful struggle.

MAY 26, 1846.-How long it is since I have written in my journal! We have had a winter full of cares, perplexities and sicknesses. Mother began it by such a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism as I could not have supposed she could live through. Her sufferings were dreadful, and I might almost say her patience was, for I often thought it would be less painful to hear her groan and complain, than to witness such heroic fort.i.tude, such sweet docility under G.o.d's hand. I hope I shall never forget the lessons I have learned in her sick-room. Ernest says he never shall cease to rejoice that she lives with us, and that he can watch over her health. He, has indeed been like a son to her, and this has been a great solace amid all her sufferings. Before she was able to leave the room, poor little Una was prostrated by one of her ill turns, and is still very feeble. The only way in which she can be diverted is by reading to her, and I have done little else these two months but hold her in my arms, singing little songs and hymns, telling stories and reading what few books I can find that are unexciting, simple, yet entertaining. My precious little darling! She bears the yoke in her youth without a frown, but it is agonizing to see her suffer so. How much easier it would be to bear all her physical infirmities myself! I suppose to those who look on from the outside, we must appear like a most unhappy family, since we hardly get free from one trouble before another steps in. But I see more and more that happiness is not dependent on health or any other outside prosperity. We are at peace with each other and at peace with G.o.d; His dealings with us do not perplex or puzzle us, though we do not pretend to understand them. On the other hand, Martha with absolutely perfect health, with a husband entirely devoted to her, and with every wish gratified, yet seems always careworn and dissatisfied. Her servants worry her very life out; she misses the homely household duties to which she has been accustomed; and her conscience stumbles at little things, and overlooks greater ones. It is very interesting, I think, to study different homes, as well as the different characters that form them.

Amelia's little girls are quiet, good children, to whom their father writes what Mr. Underhill and Martha p.r.o.nounce "beautiful" letters, wherein he always styles himself their "broken-hearted but devoted father." "Devotion," to my mind, involves self-sacrifice, and I cannot reconcile its use, in this case, with the life of ease he leads, while all the care of his children is thrown upon others. But some people, by means of a few such phrases, not only impose upon themselves but upon their friends, and pa.s.s for persons of great sensibility.

As I have been confined to the house nearly the whole winter, I have had to derive my spiritual support from books, and as mother gradually recovered, she enjoyed Leighton with me, as I knew she would. Dr. Cabot comes to see us very often, but, I do not now find it possible to get the instruction from him I used to do. I see that the Christian life must be individual, as the natural character is-and that I cannot be exactly like Dr. Cabot, or exactly like Mrs.

Campbell, or exactly like mother, though they all three stimulate and re an inspiration to me. But I see, too, that the great points of similarity in Christ's disciples have always been the same. This is the testimony of all the good books, sermons, hymns, and, memoirs I read-that G.o.d's ways are infinitely perfect; that we are to love Him for what He is, and therefore equally as much when He afflicts as when He prospers us; that there is no real happiness but in doing and suffering His will, and that this life is but a scene of probation through which we pa.s.s to the real life above.

Chapter 21

XXI.

MAY 30.

ERNEST asked me to go with him to see one of his patients, as he often does when there is a lull in the tempest at home. We both feel that as we have so little money of our own to give away, it is a privilege to give what services and what cheering words we can. As I took it for granted that we were going to see some poor old woman, I put up several little packages of tea and sugar, with which Susan Green always keeps me supplied, and added a bottle of my own raspberry vinegar, which never comes amiss, I find, to old people.

Ernest drove to the door of an aristocratic-looking house, and helped me to alight in his usual silence.

"It is probably one of the servants we are going to visit," I thought, within myself; "but I am surprised at his bringing me. The family may not approve it."

The next thing I knew I found myself being introduced to a beautiful, brilliant young lady, who sat in a wheel-chair like a queen on a throne in a room full of tasteful ornaments, flowers and birds. Now, I had come away just as I was, when Ernest called me, and that "was"

means a very plain gingham dress wherein I had been darning stockings all the morning. I suppose a saint wouldn't have cared for that, but I did, and for a moment stood the picture of confusion, my hands full of oddly shaped parcels and my face all in a flame.

My wife, Miss Clifford," I heard Ernest say, and then I caught the curious, puzzled look in her eyes, which said as plainly as words could do:

"What has the creature brought me?"

I ask your pardon, Miss Clifford," I said, thinking it best to speak out just the honest truth, "but I supposed the doctor was taking me to see some of his old women, and so I have brought you a 1ittle tea, and a little sugar, and a bottle of raspberry vinegar!"

"How delicious!'. cried she. "It really rests me to meet with a genuine human being at last! Why didn't you make some stiff, prim speech, instead of telling the truth out and out? I declare I mean to keep all you have brought me, just for the fun of the thing."

This put me at ease, and I forgot all about my dress in a moment.

"I see you are just what the doctor boasted you were," she went on.

"But he never would bring you to see me before. I suppose he has told you why I could not go to see you?"

"To tell the truth, he never speaks to me of his patients unless he thinks I can be of use to them."

"I dare say I do not look much like an invalid," said she; "but here I am, tied to this chair. It is six months since I could bear my own weight upon my feet."

I saw then that though her face was so bright and full of color, her hand was thin and transparent. But what a picture she made as she sat there in magnificent beauty, relieved by such a back-ground of foliage, flowers, and artistic objects!

"I told the doctor the other day that life was nothing but a humbug, and he said he should bring me a remedy against that false notion the next time he came, and you, I suppose, are that remedy," she continued. "Come, begin; I am ready to take any number of doses."

I could only laugh and try to look daggers at Ernest, who sat looking over a magazine, apparently absorbed in its contents.

"Ah!" she cried, nodding her head sagaciously, "I knew you would agree with me."

"Agree with you in calling life a humbug!" I cried, now fairly aroused. "Death itself is not more a reality!"

"I have not tried death yet," she said, more seriously; "but I have tried life twenty-five years and I know all about it. It is eat, drink, sleep yawn and be bored. It is what shall I wear, where shall I go, how shall I get rid of the time; it says, 'How do you do? how is your husband? How are your children? '-it means, 'Now I have asked all the conventional questions, and I don't care a fig what their answer may be.'"

"This may be its meaning to some persons," I replied, "for instance, to mere pleasure-seekers. But of course it is interpreted quite differently by others. To some it means nothing but a dull, hopeless struggle with poverty and hards.h.i.+p- and its whole aspect might be changed to them, should those who do not know what to do to get rid of the time, spend their surplus leisure in making this struggle less brutalizing."

"Yes, I have heard such doctrine, and at one time I tried charity myself. I picked up a dozen or so of dirty little wretches out of the streets, and undertook to clothe and teach them. I might as well have tried to instruct the chairs in my room. Besides the whole house had to be aired after they had gone, and mamma missed two teaspoons and a fork and was perfectly disgusted with the whole thing. Then I fell to knitting socks for babies, but they only occupied my hands, and my head felt as empty as ever. Mamma took me off on a journey, as she always did when I took to moping, and that diverted me for a while.

But after that everything went on in the old way. I got rid of part of the day by changing my dress, and putting on my pretty things-it is a great thing to have a habit of wearing one's ornaments, for instance; and then in the evening one could go to the opera or the theater, or some other place of amus.e.m.e.nt, after which one could sleep all through the next morning, and so get rid of that. But I had been used to such things all my life, and they had got to be about as flat as flat can be. If I had been born a little earlier in the history of the world, I would have gone into a convent; but that sort of thing is out of fas.h.i.+on now."

"The best convent," I said, "for a woman is the seclusion of her own home. There she may find vocation and fight her battles, and there she may learn the reality and the earnestness of life."

"Pshaw!"' cried she. "Excuse me, however, saying that; but some of the most brilliant girls I know have settled down into mere married women and spend their whole time in nursing babies! Think how belittling!"

"Is it more so than spending it in dressing, driving, dancing, and the like?"

"Of course it is. I had a friend once who shone like a star in society. She married, and children as fast as she could. Well! what consequence? She lost her beauty, lost her spirit and animation, lost her youth, and lost her health. The only earthly things she can talk about are teething, dieting, and the measles!"

I laughed at this exaggeration, and looked round to see what Ernest thought of such talk. But he had disappeared.

"As you have spoken plainly to me, knowing, me, to be a wife and a mother, you must allow me to 'speak plainly in return," I began.

"Oh, speak plainly, by all means! I am quite sick and tired of having truth served up in pink cotton, and scented with lavender."

"Then you will permit me to say that when you speak contemptuously of the vocation of maternity, you dishonor, not only the mother who bore you, but the Lord Jesus Himself, who chose to be born of woman, and to be ministered unto by her through a helpless infancy."

Miss Clifford was a little startled.