Part 53 (1/2)
Now whether it was from an impulse of honesty towards her, or of justification of himself, I cannot tell, but he instantly returned:
”Do you know that his money is stolen?”
”If he stole it,” she replied, ”he will never steal again.”
”He will never get another chance. He cannot get a situation now.”
”I will work for both. It will only be me instead of him, and that's no difference; he belongs to me as much as I do to him. If he had only kept nothing from me, nothing of this would have happened.--Do come, Corney, while I am able to walk; I feel as if I were going to die.”
”And this is the woman I was such a savage to last night!” said Mr.
Raymount to himself.
”Forgive me, Amy!” he cried, stretching out his arms to her. ”I have behaved like a brute! To strike my son's wife! I deserve to be hanged for it! I shall never forgive myself! But you must forgive me for Christ's sake.”
Long ere he had ended Amy was in his arms, clinging to him--he holding her fast to his bosom.
The strong man was now the weaker; the father and not the daughter wept.
She drew back her head.
”Come, Corney,” she cried; ”come directly! Out of your bed and down on your knees to your own blessed father, and confess your sins. Tell him you're sorry for them, and you'll never do them again.”
Corney obeyed: in some strange, lovely way she had got the mistresss.h.i.+p of his conscience as well as his heart. He got out of bed at once, went straight down on his knees as she told him, and though he did not speak, was presently weeping like a child. It was a strange group in the gray of the new morning--ah, indeed, a new morning for them!--the girl in the arms of the elderly man, and the youth kneeling at their feet, both men weeping and the girl radiant.
Gerald Raymount closed the door on his son and his son's wife, and hastened to his own to tell her all.
”Then surely will the forgiveness of G.o.d and his father take away Corney's disgrace!” said the mother.
The arrival of this state of things was much favoured by the severe illness into which Amy fell immediately the strain was off her. She was brought almost to death's door. Corney in his turn became nurse, and improved not a little from his own anxiety, her sweetness, and the sympathy of every one, his father included, with both of them. But such was her const.i.tution that when she began to recover she recovered rapidly, and was soon ready for the share lovingly allotted her in the duties of the house.
CHAPTER LIX.
THE MESSAGE.
But the precious little Mark did not get better; and it soon became very clear to the major that, although months might elapse ere he left them, go he must before long. It was the sole cloud that now hung over the family. But the parting drew nigh so softly and with so little increase of suffering, also with such a changeless continuance of sweet, loving ways, and mild but genuine enjoyment of existence, that of those who would most feel the loss of him, he only was thoroughly aware that death was at the door. The rest said the summer would certainly restore him; but the major expected him to die in the first of the warm weather. The child himself believed he was going soon. His patience, resting upon entire satisfaction with what G.o.d pleased, was wonderful.
”Isn't it nice, majie,” he said more than once, in differing forms, ”that I have nothing to do with anything--that there is no preparation, no examination wanted for dying? It's all done for you! You have just to be lifted and taken--and that's so nice! I don't know what it will feel like, but when G.o.d is with you, you don't mind anything.”
Another time he said,
”I was trying, while you were resting, majie, to tell Saffy a dream I had; and when I had told her she said, 'But it's all nonsense, you know, Mark! It's only a dream!'--What do you think, majie?”
”Was it a dream, Mark?” asked the major.
”Yes, it was a dream, but do you think a dream is nothing at all? I think, if it is a good dream, it must be G.o.d's. For you know every good as well as every perfect gift is from the father of lights! He made the thing that dreams and the things that set it dreaming; so he must be the master of the dreams--at least when he pleases--and surely always of those who mind him!--The father of lights!” he repeated; ”what a beautiful name! The father of all the bright things in the world!
Hester's eyes, and your teeth, majie! and all the s.h.i.+nes of the fire on the things in the room! and the sun and the far-away stars that I shall know more about by and by! and all the glad things that come and go in my mind, as I lie here and you are sitting quiet in your chair, majie!--and sometimes at night, oh, so many! when you think I am sleeping! Oh, I will love him, and be afraid of nothing! I know he is in it all, and the dark is only the box he keeps his bright things in!
”Oh, he is such a good father of lights! Do you know, majie, I used to think he came and talked to me in the window-seat when I was a child!
What if he really did, and I should be going to be made sure that he did--up there, I mean, you know--I don't know where, but it's where Jesus went when he went back to his papa! Oh, how happy Jesus must have been when he got back to his papa!”