Chapter IV: A Child’s Love

It is an olden story,
Yet, yet ’tis ever new,
And whensoe’er it happens,
It breaks the heart in two.
—FROM THE GERMAN OF UNGER.

The late Mrs. Chief Justice Lyon had been a notable manager. She had looked well to her household, utterly scorning the idea of entrusting her domestic affairs to the hands of any hired housekeeper, until the infirmities of age came upon her, and she could no longer rise early and sit up late, or go up and down stairs a dozen times a day, as she had been accustomed to do.

Then she advertised for a housekeeper, who was required to be the nonpareil of matrons and managers, and to furnish the most unquestionable of references.

She received, in reply, just thirty-three letters from applicants for the place. Thirty-two were read, and cast into the waste paper basket, without even the honor of an answer.

The thirty-third was read and considered.

It came from a highly respectable woman, the widow of a poor Baptist minister. Her age, her character, her competency and her references were all unexceptionable—so much so that old Mrs. Lyon seemed to think that the Lord had created the Baptist minister’s widow for the especial purpose of providing her with a housekeeper.

But there was a drawback.

The widow, Mrs. Sterling, had an “encumbrance,” as a child is cruelly called—a little girl, aged six years, from whom she was unwilling to part. In mentioning this “item,” Mrs. Sterling had said that, if allowed to bring her child, she would consent to come at half the salary offered by Mrs. Lyon.

The old lady pondered over the letter. She was very anxious to have the housekeeper, but she did not want the “encumbrance.”

Finally, as she could not come to any decision unaided, she took up the letter and waddled off to the old judge’s “study,” where he kept his law books and documents, and where he read the newspapers, and smoked or dozed the greater part of the day, but where he never “studied” for an hour.

She sat down and read the letter to him, and then said:

“You see she is just exactly the sort of woman that I want—and a clergyman’s widow, too—so respectable. If I were to advertise, and keep on advertising for a year, I might not meet with another so suitable.”

“Well, then, engage her at once,” said the Chief Justice with more promptness of decision than he had often brought to bear upon his law cases.

“Yes, but there’s a difficulty.”

“In what? Doesn’t she like the terms?—Give her her own; you can afford it, if she suits you.”

“She likes the terms well enough. Don’t you see she offers to come at half what I give, if permitted to bring her child.”

“Then where on earth is the difficulty? _I_ don’t see it.”

“Why, about the child, Judge.”

“Oh, the little girl. Well, let the woman bring her child; what possible objection can there be to that?”

“Yes, but she would be an encumbrance.”

“On whom, I would like to know? Not on you, not on me, and certainly not on her mother. Nonsense, my dear, let the child come; never make a difficulty about that.”

“But children are so troublesome—”

“Especially when they are not our own. Tut, tut, if you don’t want the woman, don’t take her; but if you do want her, take her, and let her bring her little one. Bless my soul alive, haven’t we got five or six dogs, and seven or eight cats, and half a score of birds? and if one child can make a hundredth part of the noise that they do, I’m greatly mistaken.”

“Yes, but children are not like them; children are always eating cake, or sucking toffy, and toddling about with nasty, sticky hands, laying hold of your skirts—”

“My dear, don’t say mine; I don’t wear any. Nonsense, Sukey, take the woman and risk the child. Or stay—I see light at last. Take her on trial with the child, and then, if it should prove a nuisance, get rid of it, or of both.”

“That’s just what I _can_ do. Thank you, Judge, you were always a wise counsellor,” said Mrs. Lyon, turning to leave the room.

“Don’t know. But hark ye, Sukey, my dear. No cutting down of the poor woman’s salary on account of her ‘encumbrance.’ That is a reason for raising it, not for reducing it,” called the judge after his retreating wife.

“Oh, I never intended to give her less than full pay,” replied Mrs. Lyon, as she went to her room to answer her letter.

The result was the engagement of Mrs. Sterling, with her “encumbrance.”

The widow and her child arrived one cold day in December, soon after the family were settled in their town house for the winter. She was the least in the world like the “poor widow” of poetry and fiction.

She was a little, wiry, muscular looking body, with no encumbrance of flesh, whatever she might have of family, for she was rather thin in form and face. She had a high color, black hair and black eyes. She was cheerful, active and enterprising. She wore no widow’s weeds, because, she explained, it had been three years since she had lost her husband, and black was a bore, always catching dirt and showing all it caught, and making everybody gloomy. She wore serviceable browns and grays, or dark crimsons.

She entered upon her duties with great energy, and soon had the house in perfect order, and the domestic machinery moving like magic. It is needless to say that she gave great satisfaction to her employers.

“I do not know how I ever got along without her. I know I could not now,” said Mrs. Lyon, adding, “I would rather have her, even with two children instead of one, than any body else without any. And indeed the child is _not_ a nuisance, after all.”

No, the child was not a nuisance. And neither did she bear the slightest resemblance to her mother. She was a delicate little creature, with a pure, pale face; large, soft, gray eyes, and bright, silky, brown hair. She was very quiet, thoughtful and industrious for such a mere infant. Her mother ruled her with the same rigid discipline with which she governed all the servants of the household committed to her charge.

The little one was never allowed to go out of doors except on Sunday, when she was taken by her mother to church, or sent by herself to Sunday school. On all other days she was confined strictly to the housekeeper’s room, where, after learning one lesson, doing one sum, and writing one copy, she was kept stitching patch-work quilts from morning till night.

The Chief Justice, who was an awful myth to the little girl, had never once set eyes on her.

But old Mrs. Lyon, coming occasionally to the housekeeper’s room to give some orders, would see the demure little creature sitting on her low stool in the corner of the hearth, and stitching soberly at her patch-work, and she would say to the mother:

“Mrs. Sterling, why don’t you let that child run out into the garden and play in this fine, clear, frosty weather? The air would do her good.”

“Well, I don’t know, madam. You see how delicate she is; she might take cold.”

“Delicate, and no wonder, Mrs. Sterling; kept mewed up in this close room at needle-work all the time, as if she was sewing for her living—a babe of six years old! If you are afraid to let her go into the garden, let her run about the house; don’t keep her here always.”

“Thank you, madam; but I cannot let her do so. She might grow troublesome; and, besides, she _will_ have to sew for a living some day or other if she doesn’t do it now. She can’t have me always to look to; she will have to take care of herself, and so she must learn to be patient and industrious by times.”

“Poor little thing,” murmured the old lady.

“Don’t pity her, if you please, madam, or put into her head that she is ill-used, for she isn’t. I do everything for her good, and it’s not likely that I would do any thing else, for I am her own mother,” said the housekeeper, respectfully but firmly.

“I don’t believe you know what is for her good, and if you are her own mother you treat her worse than any stepmother would,” the old lady thought and would have said, only that she was a little afraid of Mrs. Sterling.

“She isn’t the least like you. Who is she like?” inquired Miss Lyon.

“Her father. See, here is his miniature,” said the widow, drawing from her pocket a morocco case, and handing it to the old lady.

“Yes, she is like her father. What a very interesting face he has. Has he been dead long?”

“Three years last March; he died of consumption. I suppose she will go the same way,” said the widow, indicating her child.

“You should not let her hear you say so; if she gets the impression that she is to die of consumption because her father did she will probably do so,” whispered Mrs. Lyon. Then aloud she spoke this truth: “Nobody need die of consumption or of anything else except old age, unless they have a mind to. Plenty of good food and proper clothing, and out-door exercise will prevent consumption.”

And with a parting glance of pity at the pale child, the old lady left the room.

“You mustn’t mind what Mrs. Lyon says; she is not like us. She is a great lady, and thinks of nothing but taking her ease and indulging herself, and she fancies that _we_ can do the same; but you know we can’t,” said the widow, applying the antidote to what she considered the poison that had been dropped into the child’s mind. “We must deny ourselves, and bear our burden, and after all it is easy enough to do.”

“Yes,” said the mite in the corner, repeating her Sunday school Scripture text, for our Saviour said, ‘Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.’

“Yes, and if you don’t do it you know you will be eternally lost,” said the clergyman’s widow.

“Oh, but our Saviour will never let me be lost, no never; I know that much.”

“How do you know that? If you disobey him you will be lost.”

“Oh, no! He will not let me be—no, never, not even if I was to steal away from my work and go and play in the garden. He would forgive me like he did Peter; and then I should feel sorry, and cry, and then he would make it all right again,” said the quaint little infant Theologian with an air of positive conviction.

“Child! where did you learn such bad doctrines? Not at Sunday school, I know,” said the widow, in dismay.

“Yes, I did, in the Sunday school, in the Bible texts, and they are good. Our Saviour was good and all that he did was good. Don’t he say that he was sent to seek and to save them that were _lost_? And I know he will never let me be lost, no nor the old lady neither, even if she does take her ease, because she is so good-hearted.”

“Miss! don’t you know it is wrong to contradict your mother? And you have contradicted me several times.”

“Yes, I know—but—I must say what is true about Our Saviour when we talk of him.”

“Well, you shall sew one hour longer this evening, as a punishment for your disrespect to me.”

“Well, mamma, I will sew all day and all night, if that will do you any good, so you will let me say what is true about Our Saviour. Sewing is easy enough, the dear knows—easier than being scourged and stoned, and all that, like some of his poor friends were for his sake,” said the child, as she carefully fitted the little squares of her patch-work together.

“Only six years old and to talk like that! She is one of the children who are doomed to die early,” thought Mrs. Sterling.

And indeed any one looking at that child, with her delicate frame, large brain and active intellect, must have come to the same conclusion. But they would every one have been mistaken. There was a wonderful vitality and power of endurance in that little slight nervous frame. No one is faultless. And if this little atom had a fault, it was that of being just a “wee bit” self-opinionated. She was a very promising pupil in a very orthodox Sunday school; yet from the very texts they had taught her she had received impressions that the teachers certainly never had intended to give her, and these impressions had become convictions in defence of which she was willing at six years to suffer the baby martyrdom of—“sewing all day and all night.”

Meanwhile the Christmas Holidays were approaching, and the young son of the house was coming home to spend them. And his uncle and cousin were invited to meet him. Great preparations were made to entertain the party. Old Mrs. Lyon’s visits to the housekeeper’s room became more and more frequent as the time for the arrival of the visitors drew near.

And whenever the old lady came, she inevitably found the quiet child sitting on her stool in the corner of the hearth sewing for dear life.

But old Mrs. Lyon took no farther notice of the infant. Partly because she was too full of her own affairs and partly because she was displeased by the housekeeper’s disregard of her advice.

But the demure child, listening to every word that passed, with the interest only a recluse could feel, heard a great deal about “Mr. Alexander.” Whoever else might be coming, it was for this darling only son that his mother planned. It was of his comfort and pleasure only that she thought and talked.

And the little listening child grew to look upon “Mr. Alexander” as some young king of Israel—some splendid and magnificent Saul, or Solomon, who was to be the glory of the house. And because hero-worshipping was a necessity of her deep, earnest, reverent soul, she began to worship him.

At length, two or three days before Christmas, the expected visitors began to arrive.

First came General Lyon, the fine, martial-looking old man with his commanding form and snow white hair and beard; and his grand-daughter, the beautiful Anna Lyon, then a fair, blooming, blue-eyed and golden-haired hoyden of twelve years of age; both attended by their servants. And next came Mr. Alexander, then a rollicking young man of eighteen.

The whole party was assembled in the drawing-room, and Mrs. Sterling happened to be with them when Mr. Alexander was announced and entered, in a great noisy bustle of joy.

He shook hands heartily with his father and then with his uncle; and he embraced his mother and his cousin, and then, before he knew what he was about, he threw his arms around the housekeeper and hugged and kissed her.

“Oh, see here! you know I didn’t mean it, I didn’t indeed, ma’am; I beg ten thousand pardons! but I am so much in the habit of kissing everybody I meet here that—that—I kissed you by mistake. But if you don’t mind it, _I_ don’t; or if you feel aggrieved, why, you may kiss and hug _me_, and that will make it all square between us,” laughed the boy, when he discovered his error.

The clergyman’s widow curtsied very stiffly without moving a muscle of her face.

“This is Mrs. Sterling, who manages our house, Alick,” said his mother, gravely.

“Mrs. Sterling, I am very happy to have the honor of knowing you, and I am persuaded that the house is managed to perfection,” said the young man, bowing.

The widow curtsied more stiffly than before, and then withdrew from the room.

“I say, Anna, I wouldn’t kiss her again for the best hunter in your father’s stables; my lips got frost-bitten by that first encounter,” whispered the young man, with a smile, to his cousin.

“Served you right, Alick. You should look before you leap,” laughed Anna.

“That mightn’t always prevent my leaping, especially if the feat seemed a dangerous one, though it would have done so in this case, I admit.”

They were interrupted by the arrival of another guest—an uninvited and unexpected, if not an unwelcome one.

The door was opened by a servant, who grimly announced:

“Mr. Richard Hammond.”

And “Poor Dick,” the black sheep of the flock, entered the room, looking rather sheepish, it must be confessed.

And yet he was a very handsome and gentlemanly youth, tall, slender, with a fine Grecian profile, with a clear brown complexion, black curling hair and dark changing eyes—with a frank countenance and an engaging smile that few, or none, could resist.

But well he might look sheepish, poor outlawed fellow, for his entrance cast an instantaneous chill over the family circle.

General Lyon drew himself up haughtily. The chief justice looked grave, his wife sad, and their son angry. Only Anna seemed pleased. And not only pleased, but delighted. For the instant she saw him she bounced up, overturning two or three chairs in her hurry and rushed to meet him, exclaiming:

“Cousin Dick! Oh, dear Cousin Dick, I am so glad you’ve come! It would have been such a dull Christmas, indeed no Christmas at all, without you!”

And she gave him both her hands and pressed and shook his, and drew him towards the group, and first instinctively presented him to the kind-hearted old lady:

“Aunt Lyon, here is Cousin Dick. Are you not very glad to see him?”

“How do you do, Richard?” said the old lady, offering her hand.

And the black sheep stooped and kissed her.

“Uncle, here’s Dick. Isn’t it a pleasant surprise?” asked Anna.

And uncle had to come and shake the scape-grace by the hand.

“Grandpa, look here; you don’t see Dick. Here’s Dick waiting to speak to you!” she persisted.

And General Lyon had to turn and meet the engaging smile of the handsome boy.

“Alick,” said Anna, in a low whisper, giving her betrothed a sharp dig in the ribs with her elbow, and a very vicious look from her angry blue eyes, “if you don’t stop glowering, and come and speak to Dick, I’ll never speak to _you_ again.”

“Anything to keep peace in the family,” laughed Mr. Alexander, as he cleared up his brow, and went and welcomed the new comer.

And in two minutes more Dick was seated in the circle around the fire, the life of the little company talking and laughing, telling jokes and singing songs, and keeping everybody pleased and amused, so that they forgot they did not want him, and almost fancied that they could not do without him.

There was nothing very wrong about Dick Hammond. It is true that he was a very unpromising law student, being rather idle and extravagant—fonder of play than of work, and loving his “friends” better than himself. You know the sort of man—one of that sort of whom it is always said that he is “nobody’s enemy but his own.”

Dick had a neat little patrimony, but his relations said that he was in a fair way of making “ducks and drakes” of it, and they discountenanced and disapproved of him accordingly.

His one fast friend was his cousin Anna, and every year she was growing to be a stronger and more important one.

At ten o’clock that night, Mr. Richard Hammond made a motion to go, but the chief justice said:

“Stay all night, Dick.” And old Mrs. Lyon added:

“Stay and spend the Christmas holidays with us, Dick.”

So Mr. Richard stayed, and sent for his portmanteau from the hotel where he had stopped on his first coming to the city.

And having the freedom of the house, he took more liberties in it than any one else would dare to do—going into any part of it, and at any hour he pleased; popping in and out of the chief justice’s secluded study, and breaking up his naps; popping in and out of the old lady’s sacred dressing-room, and startling her in the midst of the mysterious rites of the toilet; and bouncing in and out of the housekeeper’s room, the pantry or the kitchen, to the serious discomfiture of the manager, the butler and the cook.

Yet everybody loved Dick, so long as the influence of his frank manners, sunny smile, and sweet voice was upon them. But when that was withdrawn, and they were left to their sober reason, they strongly disapproved of him.

“Little pitchers have long ears and wide mouths,” says the proverb. And the little pitcher in Mrs. Sterling’s private apartment was no exception to the general rule. Sitting stitching at her patch-work, she often heard Mr. Richard’s shortcomings discussed, and she pitied him, for she thought that he had wandered away very far from the fold, and was in a very bad way indeed.

One day when poor Dick popped into the housekeeper’s room, to ask for some brandy and salt to dip the wick of his candles in, to make “corpse lights” for ghosts to carry, and scare the maids with, he found no one there but the child, sitting in the corner and stitching patch-work as usual.

She looked up at him solemnly, and nearly annihilated him with the following appalling question:

“Young man, are you one of the lost sheep of the House of Israel?”

“EH?” exclaimed Dick, starting.

“I ask you, are you a lost sheep? They say you are a black sheep, and I believe it is the black sheep that go astray,” she said, gravely, and folding her hands and contemplating him.

Dick burst out laughing, but when he recovered himself he answered very gravely:

“Indeed, I fear I am a lost sheep, little girl.”

“Well, that is bad, but don’t be frightened. Our Saviour knows where you are, and He will be sure to find you, and fetch you into the fold. Because, you know, He came to seek and to save those that are lost. And what he came to do He _will_ do, and nothing in this world can prevent him.”

“I’ll be shot if that isn’t an encouraging doctrine if it is a true one, little girl. I sometimes wish somebody _would_ find me and fetch me into a place of safety; but I fear I shouldn’t be worth keeping when found, for I am a sad, foolish, naughty sheep, child,” said the young man, with a self-mocking laugh.

“Never mind, don’t make game of yourself. If our Saviour thinks you worth looking for you are too good to be laughed at; and when He does find you and fetch you into the fold, He will make as good a sheep of you as—as—as—” The child seemed at a loss for a comparison, until her face suddenly lighted up, and she said: “As Mr. Alexander himself!”

“As Mr. Alexander himself! Oh, my eye! catch me, somebody! Only there’s nobody to do it!” said Dick, rolling up against the wall and holding his sides.

“What’s the matter? Have you got the stomach-ache? There’s some rum and molasses in the cupboard,” said the child.

“No, oh no!” cried Dick, bursting into vociferous laughter. “You are the solemnest little quiz! To hold up Mr. Alexander as a model for me! Well! I’m bad enough, goodness knows, but—! Why, little one, Mr. Alexander isn’t a sheep at all, either good or bad! He’s a goat, a rank black goat, and never has been in the fold, and never would be let into it!”

“Sir, it is very wrong in you to speak ill of a gentleman so in his absence,” gravely asserted the little monitor.

“So it is; you are right there, little girl,” admitted the scape-grace.

And the timely entrance of Mrs. Sterling put an end to this strange interview, and possibly saved the young man a serious lecture from the little child.

Dick got his candles, brandy and salt, and whatever else he wanted of the housekeeper; for that strong-minded woman, no more than her weaker sisters and brethren, could resist Dick’s irresistible smile.