Chapter 6 Sorrow at Night, Joy in the Morning
Chapter 6
Sorrow at Night, Joy in the Morning
Arthur had a restless night and could not sleep. He had exaggerated in his mind the trouble his injury was making for the family at a time when everybody already had so much to do. He had thought about it until it now seemed like a mountain too high to climb. When his father opened the door and looked in at daybreak, he was tossing about from side to side, and it didn’t take a doctor to see that he was becoming seriously ill. After exchanging a few words with the young man, Mr. Grant thanked him and relieved him of his charge at the bedside.
“His mind wanders at times,” whispered the stranger who had run over Arthur. “He seems to think you are going to be dragged to jail for debt.”
A flush as dark as that on Arthur’s face passed over the unhappy father. The young man noticed without seeming to and tactfully departed. Immediately afterward, Lucy tiptoed in. Her disappointed look as she approached the bed showed her father that she read the case as he had.
“Is anyone else up?” he asked.
“Hatty is. She’ll be down soon. How is Mother?”
“She had a good night and is still asleep. When Hatty comes, let her sit here. I want to speak to you.”
He went out, and when Lucy joined him, he asked abruptly, “Who told Arthur I was going to jail for debt?”
“Nobody, Father, that I know of. I don’t know who told him there was any debt.”
“But you’re sure he knew there was one?”
“Yes, he knew, but he hasn’t known long.”
“I thought I knew what trouble meant,” said her father, “but it seems I did not know the first thing about it. He told you, you say?”
“I knew it before,” replied Lucy. “I’ve known it a good while now. And oh, dear Father, I did want to tell you how sorry Arthur and I were for you, and how willing we felt to work, or do anything that would relieve you!”
He folded her in his arms and laid his hand solemnly on her head as if calling down blessings on it. At this moment Lucy heard the voice of Joseph.
“I must go, or Joseph will wake Mother,” she said. So began another day of domestic care and duty.
As she went from task to task, she felt, as never before, the difference between earthly and heavenly love. These cares kept her from Arthur’s side where she longed to be, but they could not separate her from God. Doing everything for His sake and in His fear, she could continually look up and commune with Him. And with the deep sorrow, there was peace in her heart.
Arthur became worse from hour to hour, and Dr. White attended him with almost parental devotion. Kind neighbors came to lighten and share the household labors, and the young men of the village came at day’s end to watch all night by the sick boy. Even those stranger gentlemen refused to go home until they could be assured of his safety.
With so many coming and going, it became impossible to keep Arthur’s mother ignorant of his illness. From that hour she ceased improving, and the poor baby pined and moaned in concert with her. Those were hard, hard days. They never knew how they lived through them. They did not see the Hand that was underneath them, or they would not have wondered at passing safely through seas of fire. But Arthur was not yet to be snatched away. After many weeks of severe illness, he began to improve slowly, and the anxiety was lifted from their hearts. However, they still had a difficult task before them. The little wasted body seemed lifeless as soon as the fever left him, and to an inexperienced eye, he looked more alarmingly ill than when in the height of his disease. Lucy proved a good nurse. She understood Arthur’s wishes before they were spoken, and nobody could feed him as well, sing as soothingly, or read to him the little he could bear to hear.
“Well!” said Hatty one day, “I thought you would get well. I never believed you would go and die and leave all of us.”
“There are worse things,” said Arthur.
“Worse things than dying!” cried Hatty. “Oh, Arthur!”
“I thought when I was knocked down that day that I was hurt very badly. I only had a minute to think. But I wasn’t frightened.”
“No, you were always so good,” said Hatty.
“It wasn’t that,” said Arthur. “It was because Christ is so good,” he added, after a pause.
Hatty colored and made some trifling answer; and when they missed her awhile later, she was crying upstairs. But soon after, she came down in as lively a mood as ever, for only the surface of her cheery heart had yet been touched.
Arthur’s sickness had rearranged all household business. Taking care of the baby and weeks’ worth of sewing occupied them all incessantly. Rebecca left school “for good,” as she called it. But as usual, Lucy stood foremost in the ranks, and made herself useful at every point. At the same time, the old thirst for knowledge had received an impulse. Arthur’s illness had left him fragile, and she felt sure he could not be a farmer, for lack of physical strength. He must have an education. She tried to rise earlier and sit up later, but little was accomplished in these fragments of time. Her health began to suffer.
“Lucy, was that you coughing all last night?” her mother asked one morning.
“I coughed some,” said Lucy.
“She coughs every night,” said Arthur. The father and mother exchanged anxious glances. His said, “Just as my sister did, who died at her age.” Hers said, “I know,” and there was silence for a time.
“Have you paid Dr. White’s bill yet?” asked Lucy at last.
“No,” said her father, “not yet. He hasn’t sent it.”
“It will come tomorrow,” said Lucy. “It always does on New Year’s Day.”
She had a vague hope that the mention of a bill would deter her father from calling in Dr. White for her cough, as his face said he intended on doing, but she was mistaken. The next day the doctor came, and she found herself under his care. He prepared a medicine for her with directions for its use. Then turning to Mrs. Grant, he said, “And here’s medicine for you too.”
“For me? Why, I’m not sick,” she said, looking at the paper he placed in her hand. It was a check for fifty dollars. “Are you done joking yet?” she said smiling and offering to return it.
“It’s no joke, I assure you,” he returned. “Let me explain. One of those youngsters who ran over Arthur wrote to me not long ago, that he has come of age and received his inheritance and asked what the damage was. I wrote him, fifty dollars, and back it comes, with his compliments and regrets. He is sure it ought to be more, and wishes I had said a hundred, and so on and so on.”
“I won’t keep it,” said Mrs. Grant.
“Yes, you will keep it. What else would you do with it?”
“Return it to Mr. what did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t say his name was ‘Mr.’ anything. And you don’t know where he lives, either.”
“I can find out.”
“No you can’t, and you shouldn’t if you could. I tell you it’s no use,” he said, rising and seizing his hat. “The fellow has gone abroad. Besides, what is fifty dollars to him? If you were not both so proud, I would have made it a hundred. It would have been poor payment for all you have suffered. And now, I wash my hands of it.” He was hurrying off, but came back again, “As for this child,” he said, laying his hand on Lucy’s head and making the sweet face look up into his own, “she must go away somewhere and rest a while. The cough’s not so bad now. I’ve cured worse, but I can’t promise that it won’t get worse if she goes on working as she has been. And tell your father, my dear, that he needn’t look very sharp for my bill this year. It won’t come. I don’t need money.” And this time he practically ran.
“He does need it,” said Mrs. Grant, and she thought with tears how long his wife had worn that shawl, that hardly looked as if it would hold together another week.
“It’s dreadful to be poor!” Lucy burst out, thinking the same thing. “I don’t mind it for myself, but when it comes to not paying Dr. White!”
“He’ll get his due from the great Paymaster,” said her mother, wiping away her tears. “He gives full measure, pressed down, and running over.”
“Fifty dollars!” said Tom, who had sat all this time in amazement too profound for words. “Why, we’re as rich as kings!” His mother smiled and sighed too.
“Lucy leave home! To go where?” she thought. “This will take you somewhere, dear,” she said.
“No, it won’t, Mother,” said Lucy, kissing the faded cheek, now flushed with both joy and sorrow. “Let it be Arthur’s nest egg. It will help him in college. Please, dear Mother!”
“I’m not going to college,” said Arthur.
“I hope something happens to make you change your mind about that, dear boy,” said his mother, looking at him anxiously.
“At any rate, Lucy has to go away,” said Arthur. “She’s very thin.”
“So are you,” said Lucy, smiling. “And what a foolish idea to send me off, nobody knows where, and all alone! I wouldn’t get well in a hundred years at that rate.”
While they talked, their mother sat silent and thoughtful, and was thoughtful all day. She knew of no spot this side of heaven where her child could find rest. “She’ll find it there if anybody does,” she said to herself.
“Don’t be troubled, Mother,” whispered Lucy. “There’ll be a way provided.”
It was provided even then. It was standing at the window of the little post office, in the shape of a letter that, ignorant of its worth and importance, let itself be placed in a row with other letters of “no use to anybody but the owner.” It had remained two or three days, quiet, modest, and unobserved. Many nobodies on its right and left had been carried off in triumph, while it, poor soul, had stood neglected.
As John Grant was returning home to tea that night, he happened to pass the office, where he saw the letter and eagerly pounced on it—letters being rare in those regions. It was for his father, and although he turned it in every direction, he could not guess who it was from.
“Here’s a letter for you, Father!” he cried, as he rushed like a tempest into the house.
His father put on his glasses and examined the letter with deliberation. He studied the postmark, pored over the handwriting, and reflected on the seal. People always do so, especially when a host of eager children are standing around, saying in their secret minds, “Dear me! Will he never open it?” At last, the seal was broken, and with deliberation, it was read and reread, and folded and tucked into the big family bible. It was certainly no mere business letter. Mr. Grant would have thought the quaint old volume, that he could trace back nearly to the Mayflower, would be profaned by contact with a worldly document. Nobody dared to ask a question, but everybody felt sure something had happened.
“I shouldn’t wonder if somebody had sent Father fifty dollars too,” said Hatty to Lucy, confidently skipping upstairs, two at a time. “And fifty and fifty make a hundred.”
“Do they really?” asked Lucy, laughing.
“You needn’t laugh,” said Hatty, “I’m sure we need it badly.”
“We need many things,” said Lucy, “things that can’t be bought or sold.”
“Oh, yes,” said Hatty yawning. “Sleep, for instance,” and she hurried off to bed for fear Lucy would “moralize,” as she called it.
As soon as the children had all retired for the night, Mr. Grant placed the letter in their mother’s hands. She read it hastily and half aloud.
My Dear Brother:
The year is about to end, and I’ve been very busy settling up accounts.
“He’s going to require us to pay that money,” sighed Mrs. Grant.
But I can no longer delay settling with you the greatest of them all. I owe you and have owed you for many years. God forgive me for it, my hearty acknowledgment of great and grievous wrong to you and yours. Now that I look at my life in a new light—the light of God’s countenance—I feel unworthy of the pardon that I am imploring. My dear brother! My dear sister! Can you forgive my hasty words, my unkind deeds?
I would have come to ask in person, but my dear and only daughter lies very ill. I have been prosperous in my business—I am rich and increased with goods. Never, until God placed his hand on this precious child, did I feel my need for anything better than this world had given me. Pray for me, and for this child. She is my only daughter, a most lovely and beloved one. I can write no more, though my heart is full!
Affectionately your brother,
Arthur Whittier
Mrs. Grant drew a long, relieved sigh as she closed this letter, as if parting with the great sorrow and burden of her life.
“I can bear anything now,” she said.
“It comes too late,” returned her husband. “You have suffered too long. When I think of it, my blood boils!”
“Let us look at our mercies, and forget the rest,” said Mrs. Grant. “My poor brother! We should pity rather than reproach him!” The heart of her husband melted for the moment as he looked at the pale, worn face, now lighted with such pure joy.
“I do forgive him!” he cried. “Let us thank God that this feud is swept away!” Falling on their knees, they presented their thank-offering to the Lord. Then, sitting closely together over the fading fire on the hearth, they talked long of past times and the days of their youth and love.
“It seems but yesterday that I held brother Arthur in my arms, as I do this child,” said Mrs. Grant, as she took the baby from the cradle, and prepared for bed.
“It is not easy for us men to forget wrongs,” said Mr. Grant, who felt irritated, he hardly knew why, at the caresses she was lavishing on the child.
“It is not as a man you are called on to forgive them,” she said, “but as a Christian.”
“I don’t feel right yet,” he answered. “Go to bed, Sarah, and leave me awhile.”
She looked troubled, and standing behind his chair, waited for a parting word of cheer. But none came and she left him. He rose as the door closed behind her, and walked back and forth in the long, dark room, with clasped hands and a contracted brow, wrestling with God.
“It was a grievous wrong!” he said. “It has blighted my whole life! Yet I thought I had forgiven it. Oh my God, help me to do it now!”
“The wrong was great,” whispered a still, small voice. “But did not prejudice and passion aggravate it? Were you blameless and undefiled in this thing?”
“His sin against me is nothing compared to mine against God!” he cried at last. And now he stopped pacing that dark room, and falling on his knees, he prayed long and tearfully and without passion or excitement. The night watches looked upon the conflict, and the morning dawned upon the victory.
“You have not been to bed at all,” said his wife, opening the door of their room, and looking anxiously out.
“I have had a good night,’’ he answered, and as she looked into his face, she, who knew its every light and shade, saw that it had been a good night, one that should have come years ago.
“Now my cup runs over,” she said.