A Little Child

BY

MARY HORNIBROOK CUMMINS

AUTHOR OF

THE MIGHTY GUEST THE AWAKENING

DAVIS & BOND

BOSTON

Copyright 1913 by

DAVIS & BOND

INDEX

[Pg 9]

A LITTLE CHILD

Chapter I

THE ARTIST

He stood with bare feet planted well apart in the sand, working his toes down comfortably into its moist warmth and regarding Graham as though he were a poor riddle. His cotton blouse, open at the throat, showed a strong, shapely little neck. One brown hand grasped a battered tin pail, the other a wooden spade.

Gilbert Graham drew out pad and pencil and made a rapid sketch. The child’s clear gaze remained fixed on his face while he worked. When the drawing was finished, the artist thrust it carelessly into his coat pocket and resumed his gloomy inspection of the ocean.

[Pg 10]

“What did you do then?” demanded seven-year-old curiosity.

“Earned another slice of bread and butter; though why I should earn it, or eat it when it is earned, is more than I know.”

The boy seemed to ponder on this for a while and then, evidently finding it beyond him, gave it up.

“Let me see it,” he suggested.

“What?”

“What you drawed with that pencil.”

“What I drew with this pencil?” Gilbert parried, for the sake of hearing him talk.

“Yes.”

“Oh, I guess not!”

The child drew nearer and stood leaning against his knee as he sat on a low slab of rock. They looked steadily into each other’s eyes. There was something irresistibly winning in the little fellow’s fearlessness and sociable intent. Graham lifted his hand and brushed the close-cropped head with gentle touch.

[Pg 11]

“Poor little chap!” he said, huskily.

“Why’d you say that?” the boy asked curiously.

“Oh, because some day you’ll grow up and—well, I hope you won’t make a mess of it, as I have!”

“What’s make-a-mess-of-it?”

“Look here,” Graham demanded, “are you a walking interrogation point?”

“I’m Gerald Hammond Fitzgerald,” the boy answered with dignity.

“Glad to make your acquaintance, Gerald Hammond Fitzgerald.” If Graham smiled inwardly, no shade of amusement crossed his face.

“’Me see it!” the little fellow pleaded.

“Say, you’ve got a fair share of persistence of your own, haven’t you?”

The artist drew the sketch from his pocket. He liked this small boy who leaned so confidently against his knee. Gerald glanced at the outline of himself and his full, childish laugh of pleasure rang out.

“Draw me some more with that pencil,”[Pg 12] he pleaded, as though he thought the lead possessed some wonderful charm of its own.

“Tickles your vanity, does it? Well, here goes! Put down that pail. Now take your spade in both hands and stoop over as if you were digging.”

The boy obeyed at once, striking a perfectly natural attitude. Graham made a more elaborate drawing this time, throwing in a background of sea and sky with quick, masterful strokes. It occurred to him to put the suggestion of a storm-cloud rising in the distance, but he refrained. Somehow, he did not want to connect storm-clouds with the child.

“That will do for the front cover of Prescott’s Weekly,” he thought as he finished it.

Gerald was plainly delighted with the result.

“When I grow up,” he announced, “I’ll do what you do.”

“God forbid!”

[Pg 13]

The words escaped Gilbert Graham’s lips, in a low breath, ere he was aware.

Gerald regarded him wonderingly.

“Isn’t—isn’t that good?” he questioned, pointing to the drawing.

“That? Oh, yes, that’s good enough.”

“Then God wouldn’t forbid it!” the child declared triumphantly.

“I didn’t mean—that kind of thing,” the man said. He looked more intently at the boy. “How do you know, at your age, what God would or would not forbid?”

The child seemed to turn this question over in his mind for a moment and, evidently finding it too much for his comprehension, fell back on something of which he felt quite sure.

“‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick,’” he said, looking off over the sea, and unconsciously mixing up two things which he had learned at different times.

Suddenly he turned and faced his companion fully.

“Don’t you know about ‘a very present help’?” he asked.

[Pg 14]

“Can’t say that I do, though it sounds familiar. Do you know about it?”

“Oh, yes! I’ve always known about it.”

He inspected Gilbert Graham gravely, as though he were an entirely new type of being—as indeed he was to Gerald.

“If you don’t know about ‘a very present help,’” he began, “what would you do if—if—” he looked around, and finally took his illustration from the thing closest at hand—“if a big, oh, a big, big wave—” extending his arms to their utmost limit to express vastness—“was to come and sweep you away?”

“Drown, I suppose, seeing that I’m no great swimmer. What would you do?”

“I’d just know ‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick.’”

“And you think that would save you?”

The child nodded confidently.

“It saved my mamma, right here. And it saved my daddy, too. Only the[Pg 15] wave that swept my daddy out was on a diff’rent kind of sea from this sea.”

“A different kind of sea?”

“Yes. It was a sea called sin.”

The man started and looked quickly away from the child. It was some moments before he spoke.

“Did the wave sweep your daddy very far out?” he asked then, in a low voice.

“Oh, yes! I know, for I heard my daddy telling a man about it just a few days ago—I think a big wave must have swept him out, too—and he said he was like a boat that had slipped its—its—”

“Moorings?”

Gerald nodded.

“And drifted ’way out to sea,” he went on, “and ’twas black and cold and rough and daddy began to think of the shore and that gran’ma was there—’twas before he had mamma and me—and he cried out to the ‘very present help.’ I don’t think daddy knew, ‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick’ then, or he’d have said it out loud like I do.”

[Pg 16]

“And was he—saved?”

“Sure.”

Gilbert Graham sat silent, one hand shading his eyes. Gerald watched him for a few minutes, then, with a child’s curiosity, reached up and drew away one of the strong, supple fingers. He was surprised to find that it was wet.

“Little chap—” the man’s voice caught in his throat as he put one arm round the boy—“I don’t mind telling you that I’m out on that same sea—far out, farther out than your daddy ever was, and it’s dark and cold and rough and—” his forehead fell back upon his hand—“I think that I’m going to sink!”

Gerald laid one moist, warm palm against his cheek.

“But you can’t sink!” he declared. “The ‘very present help’ won’t let you sink, if—if you catch hold of it.”

“I don’t know how,” the man groaned, “I’ve lost my grip.”

“It isn’t your grip,” the boy urged, “the water’d loosen that, anyhow. I[Pg 17] know, for I’ve tried holding on to a rock and when a wave comes it always makes you let go. But the ‘very present help’ never lets go. It’s God, you know. And if God let go the sun would fall down and the stars would fall down and we’d all fall down, mamma says. But He never does, and so there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Nothing to be afraid of!” Graham repeated.

Oh, the blessedness of childhood! Some words came back to the man as he sat there—“a great gulf fixed.” It seemed to him that there was, indeed, a great gulf fixed, a well-nigh impassable flood, between the fearless thought of this child and the dark clamor and confusion of his own consciousness.

“Mamma was telling me more about the sea last night,” Gerald went on. “She says there’s lots of diff’rent kinds of seas. Some of them have very big names. There’s one that begins with ‘Dif—’ but I don’t remember the rest.”

[Pg 18]

“Difficulty?” Graham suggested. In spite of himself the boy kept dragging him out of his slough of despair.

Gerald nodded.

“Do you know about that sea?” he asked.

“I ought to; I’ve been tossed about on it often enough.”

“And there’s one that ends in ‘row.’ I remember that because row made me think of a boat.”

“Sorrow?” Graham asked.

“Yes. Do you know about that one, too?”

“I’m beginning to know about that one.”

“I know about the sick sea, myself!” Gerald declared.

“So do I,” Graham admitted.

“And then there’s the one daddy was nearly drowned in, the one you said you were far out on. But mamma says it doesn’t matter a bit what the name is, or how rough it is, or how far from shore you are, Love can walk over any sea and come and get you!”

[Pg 19]

Gilbert Graham was looking at the boy with an intent, earnest gaze. Was the gulf so fixed, so impassable, after all? Suppose there was a Power which could cross it and come to a man in his extremity?

“When I was out on the sick sea,” Gerald went on, “and my head was so wobbly that I didn’t know daddy or mamma, Love came and got me, right away. Oh, but ’twas fine when my head didn’t feel wobbly any more!”

“How are you going to get it all started?” Graham asked.

The child evidently did not grasp his meaning, so he put it in another way.

“Supposing I wanted this ‘very present help’—wanted it now—wanted it badly—what would I have to do to get it started toward me?”

“Just know that you want it. My mamma says another word for ‘know,’ but ’tis a long one and I misremember it.”

“Believe?”

[Pg 20]

Gerald shook his head.

“Realize?”

“That’s it!”

“Realize that I need ‘a very present help,’” Gilbert Graham said slowly, as he gazed out to sea, “well, I do need it; and if ever a man realized his need I think I do at this moment!”

“Then it’s coming—it’s coming oh, so quick! First thing you know the ‘very present help’ will have hold of you, just like that!” and Gerald’s brown fingers closed firmly on the collar of Graham’s coat.

Gilbert Graham patted the small hand and then held it for some time between both his own. When he rose, something that had been in his face before he began to talk to the child—marring its beauty and manhood—was gone. He was not, as yet, aware that his declaration, “If ever a man realized his need I think I do at this moment,” was the opened door through which Love had entered, issuing as it came the wondrous command, “Loose him and let him go.”

[Pg 21]

He released the boy’s hand regretfully.

“You going away?” Gerald looked up wistfully into the dark, clean-shaven face.

“Yes.”

“For always?”

“No, I’ll come back. That is—I’ll come back if what you’ve been telling me is true and I reach shore.”

He had gone a little distance along the beach when a childish voice reached him.

“When you come back will you draw me some more with that pencil?”

The artist turned to nod assent. At sight of the small figure, so sturdy, such a living embodiment of the Love in which he so firmly trusted, his vision clouded.

“He’s near enough to—” Gilbert Graham hesitated before mentally pronouncing the next word—“God to reclaim even me!”

[Pg 22]

Chapter II

THE SORROW SEA

“I don’t know why I came!”

There was a low throb of pain in the younger woman’s voice. For answer the elder pressed her hand more closely.

“When I think of that summer two years ago,” the speaker went on, “and how Gilbert and the child and I used to romp on this very strip of sand, I marvel that I can be here, alone, and still live!”

The soft, elderly palm, which covered her own, quivered.

“Oh, Mother Graham, forgive me!” she said, turning quickly. “I am selfish in my sorrow—I know it. And I keep forgetting that he was once your little boy, even as the baby was mine.”

“He is my little boy still—and always will be,” Gilbert Graham’s mother answered steadily.

“Do not think, Judith,” she added,[Pg 23] “that I condone the past, or make light of what you have suffered. I am sure you know, my dear, that my chief object in life, just now, is to help you.”

“I do know it. I could not have endured these past months if you had not let me come to you.”

They sat for some time in silence.

“Our little man was just two years old the summer that we spent here at Snug Harbor Beach,” Judith Graham said, presently. “I remember how Gilbert used to carry him out on his shoulder and how he would shriek with delight when the water swept in round his father’s knees. It seems to me now that those weeks were my very last gleam of sunshine. To think that in less than two months from that time my baby was dead!”

The older woman made no attempt to stem this outburst of grief. Youth must make its plaint, she thought pitifully; and the girl—she was little more—at her side was one of those who are capable of[Pg 24] receiving death-wounds through the very completeness of their love.

“Of late,” she said, after a while, speaking in a low tone, “it has seemed to me that this cannot be the end, Judith, either for you or Gilbert. I have been thinking much of God’s all-loving, all-wise plan for each one of us, and how we seem to draw back from it, even to dread it; whereas, in reality, it can hold nothing but happiness for every creature. I wish—oh, I wish with all my heart that I had thought of these things earlier in life, while Gilbert was still a boy! But then I was so proud of his good looks, of his popularity, of his talent for drawing, that I unconsciously made the turning aside into easier paths his rule of living. It has been the old story—no restraining father’s hand, an over-fond mother and an impressionable boy.”

“Oh, Mother Graham, don’t,” Judith said quickly. “If you blame yourself, what about me? He never touched—it—”[Pg 25] she stopped, shuddering—“until after baby went. I shut myself up then, alone with my grief. I spent hours just looking at his little clothes. I accused Gilbert of not caring. It seemed to me that all the world should have stood still and mourned with me. I was mad, I think. Too late I realized that misery and loneliness are open doors through which temptation may freely enter. To me the indulgence of grief was a luxury. To Gilbert the sight of a small shoe or toy was agony. Men are so different! Little by little he began to drift away from the cold, empty, silent place that had once been home.”

The older woman did not reply. Hers was the blame, her heart cried out, hers alone! Had she ever taught her son that problems are not solved by shirking them? Had she fitted him to face the world’s woe unflinchingly and do a man’s share toward lifting it? Ah, that “line of least resistance” which she had made so natural for him! She realized now[Pg 26] that it is swimming against the current which develops moral muscle—the muscle which can resist temptation in after years. The mother bowed her head with an inarticulate cry, “Oh, God, I have failed, but Thy resources are infinite!”

She put her own sorrow, her own sense of failure, bravely aside in order to help her companion.

“It is hard, I know, to believe—when the sky is as dark as yours seems to be now, Judith, that it will ever be any brighter, but every day it becomes clearer to me that God’s law is a law of annihilation to every discordant condition. It does make the crooked straight and the rough places plain. It will, if we rely wholly upon it, bring harmony and order out of seeming chaos. God did not create us, His children, to be driven by every wind and wave of disaster. When we begin to discern this great truth it is, indeed, the coming of the kingdom of heaven to our consciousness. I have thought so often, of late, of those beautiful lines—

[Pg 27]

Tears had risen so full in Judith’s dark eyes as Mother Graham finished speaking that she was not at first aware of a small figure which had halted directly in front of her, or of a childish gaze fixed intently upon her face. Gerald, realizing that here was need of some kind, drew nearer.

“You can’t know about it either, or you wouldn’t cry,” he began.

“Know about what, dear?”

Judith had taken one small, brown hand and drawn him closer to her. He was three years older than her own little son would have been, had he lived, but her heart yearned over him as it did over all children now.

“About ‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick.’”

Coming so closely upon what Mother Graham had said the child’s words were almost a shock.

[Pg 28]

“He didn’t know about it until I told him,” Gerald volunteered.

“Who?” Both women put the question together.

“The man that drawed me with a pencil.”

They turned and looked at each other involuntarily. Each had a mental picture of a strong, supple hand and its quick, masterful work when anything appealed to the artistic sense controlling it.

“Do you mean a man who drew a picture of you?” Mother Graham asked.

Gerald nodded.

“Here?”

“Over near that rock.” He pointed with an extended forefinger.

“Did he tell you his name?”

A vigorous shake of the head answered this.

“Do you think you could tell us what he looked like?”

“He looked sorry, until I told him about the ‘very present help’ and ‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick.’”

[Pg 29]

Judith’s breath was coming with difficulty.

“It couldn’t be—it couldn’t,” she whispered. “And, yet, he might have been drawn back to this place, even as I was!”

“I think that it was Gilbert,” Mother Graham answered steadily. “‘All things work together for good,’ Judith; remember that, dear, and take courage.”

“He’s coming back,” Gerald announced.

Judith started and looked around.

“When?” she breathed.

“He said if what I told him about ‘a very present help’ was true he’d come back; and ’tis true. Was he”—turning to Mother Graham—“was he your little boy?”

“I hope so—I believe so.”

“If he was your little boy you’d know about the big wave that swept him out.”

“I don’t think that he could have been my boy”—a shade of disappointment had crossed the elder woman’s sweet, patient face—“for I never knew of his being swept away by a wave.”

[Pg 30]

“Oh, it wasn’t that kind of sea”—motioning to the water behind him—“it was a sea called sin and he said the wave had carried him ’way, ’way out. He knew about ’most every kind of sea. But I told him my mamma said it didn’t matter a bit what the sea was called, Love could walk over it.”

Judith had covered her eyes with her hand. Gerald touched her cheek with one finger.

“Are you out on the sorry—sor-row”—correcting himself carefully—“are you out on that sea?”

“God knows I am!”

“Well, if I was you, I’d just know ‘God is love’—‘unfailing, quick,’ right now.”

“Where did you learn all this?” Mother Graham asked, for the child was voicing thoughts which had been struggling for recognition in her own consciousness of late.

“My mamma told it to me. She tells me something more about ‘a very present help’ every day. And she says that the ‘very present help’ was always here,[Pg 31] but that a long, long time ago people forgot how much of a help it was; and then a good woman found out how much of a help it was and she put it in a book so that other people might know, and that’s how my mamma knows. Is this”—he touched Judith’s face again—“your little girl?”

“Yes,” Mother Graham answered promptly.

“Then you can tell her about it, just like mamma tells me!”

“I am only beginning to learn about it myself, dear, in the same way that your mamma learned; but I thank God that I have even begun, and I think”—Mother Graham laid one hand on Judith’s shoulder—“that my little girl is ready to learn also.”

“Yes, and”—he nodded confidently—“you know Love can walk over the sor-row sea just as easy as any other!”

Judith raised her wet face and drew the boy into her arms.

“I believe,” she said slowly “that you are God’s messenger to me.”

[Pg 32]