The Wide, Wide World

"Christ pleased not Himself, and went about doing good; and He said, 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.' Remember that. Perhaps your aunt is unreasonable and unkind; see with how much patience and perfect sweetness of temper you can bear and forbear; see if you cannot win her over by untiring gentleness, obedience, and meekness. Is there no improvement to be made here?"

"Oh me, yes!" answered Ellen, with a sigh.

"Then your old grandmother. Can you do nothing to cheer her life in her old age and helplessness? Can't you find some way of giving her pleasure? some way of amusing a long tedious hour now and then?"

Ellen looked very grave; in her inmost heart she knew this was a duty she shrank from.

"He 'went about doing good.' Keep that in mind. A kind word spoken – a little thing done to smooth the way of one, or lighten the load of another – teaching those who need teaching – entreating those who are walking in the wrong way. Oh, my child, there is work enough! —

'To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfil;
O may it all my powers engage
To do my Maker's will.

Arm me with jealous care,
As in Thy sight to live;
And oh! thy servant, Lord, prepare
A strict account to give.'"

"An account of what?" said Ellen.

"You know what an account is. If I give Thomas a dollar to spend for me at Carra-carra, I expect he will give me an exact account when he comes back, what he has done with every shilling of it. So must we give an account of what we have done with everything our Lord has committed to our care – our hands, our tongue, our time, our minds, our influence; how much we have honoured Him, how much good we have done to others, how fast and how far we have grown holy and fit for heaven."

"It almost frightens me to hear you talk, Miss Alice."

"Not frighten, dear Ellen – that is not the word; sober we ought to be, mindful to do nothing we shall not wish to remember in the great day of account. Do you recollect how that day is described? Where is your Bible?"

She opened at the twentieth chapter of the Revelation.

"'And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven flew away; and there was found no place for them.

"'And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

"'And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.'"

Ellen shivered. "That is dreadful!" she said.

"It will be a dreadful day to all but those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life; not dreadful to them, dear Ellen."

"But how shall I be sure, dear Alice, that my name is written there? and I can't be happy if I am not sure."

"My dear child," said Alice tenderly, as Ellen's anxious face and glistening eyes were raised to hers, "if you love Jesus Christ you may know you are His child, and none shall pluck you out of His hand."

"But how can I tell whether I do love him really? sometimes I think I do, and then again sometimes I am afraid I don't at all."

Alice answered in the words of Christ: "'He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me.'"

"Oh, I don't keep His commandments!" said Ellen, the tears running down her cheeks.

"Perfectly, none of us do. But, dear Ellen, that is not the question. Is it your heart's desire and effort to keep them? Are you grieved when you fail? There is the point. You cannot love Christ without loving to please Him."

Ellen rose, and putting both arms round Alice's neck, laid her head there, as her manner sometimes was, tears flowing fast.

"I sometimes think I do love Him a little," she said, "but I do so many wrong things. But He will teach me to love Him if I ask Him, won't He, dear Alice?"

"Indeed He will, dear Ellen," said Alice, folding her arms round her little adopted sister, "indeed He will. He has promised that. Remember what He told somebody who was almost in despair: 'Fear not; only believe.'"

Alice's neck was wet with Ellen's tears; and after they had ceased to flow, her arms kept their hold and her head its resting-place on Alice's shoulder for some time. It was necessary at last for Alice to leave her.

Ellen waited till the sound of her horse's footsteps died away on the road; and then, sinking on her knees beside her rocking-chair, she poured forth her whole heart in prayers and tears. She confessed many a fault and shortcoming that none knew but herself, and most earnestly besought help that "her little rushlight might shine bright." Prayer was to little Ellen what it is to all that know it – the satisfying of doubt, the soothing of care, the quieting of trouble. She had knelt down very uneasy; but she knew that God has promised to be the hearer of prayer, and she rose up very comforted, her mind fixing on those most sweet words Alice had brought to her memory: "Fear not; only believe." When Miss Fortune returned Ellen was quietly asleep again in her rocking-chair, with her face very pale, but calm as an evening sunbeam.

"Well, I declare if that child ain't sleeping her life away!" said Miss Fortune. "She's slept this whole blessed forenoon; I suppose she'll want to be alive and dancing the whole night to pay for it."

"I can tell you what she'll want a sight more," said Mr. Van Brunt, who had followed her in; it must have been to see about Ellen, for he was never known to do such a thing before or since; "I'll tell you what she'll want, and that's a right hot supper. She eat as nigh as possible nothing at all this noon. There ain't much danger of her dancing a hole in your floor this some time."

CHAPTER XXIV

Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed, cobwebs swept?

    – Taming of the Shrew.

Great preparations were making all Saturday and Monday for the expected gathering. From morning till night Miss Fortune was in a perpetual bustle. The great oven was heated no less than three several times on Saturday alone. Ellen could hear the breaking of eggs in the buttery, and the sound of beating or whisking for a long time together; and then Miss Fortune would come out with floury hands, and plates of empty egg shells made their appearance. But Ellen saw no more. Whenever the coals were swept out of the oven, and Miss Fortune had made sure that the heat was just right for her purposes, Ellen was sent out of the way, and when she got back there was nothing to be seen but the fast shut oven door. It was just the same when the dishes, in all their perfection, were to come out of the oven again. The utmost Ellen was permitted to see was the napkin covering some stray cake or pie that by chance had to pass through the kitchen where she was.

As she could neither help nor look on, the day passed rather wearily. She tried studying; a very little she found was enough to satisfy both mind and body in their present state. She longed to go out again and see how the snow looked, but a fierce wind all the fore part of the day made it unfit for her. Towards the middle of the afternoon she saw with joy that it had lulled, and though very cold, was so bright and calm that she might venture. She had eagerly opened the kitchen door to go up and get ready, when a long weary yawn from her old grandmother made her look back. The old lady had laid her knitting in her lap and bent her face down to her hand, which she was rubbing across her brow, as if to clear away the tired feeling that had settled there. Ellen's conscience instantly brought up Alice's words, "Can't you do something to pass away a tedious hour now and then?" The first feeling was of vexed regret that they should have come into her head at that moment; then conscience said that was very selfish. There was a struggle. Ellen stood with the door in her hand, unable to go out or come in. But not long. As the words came back upon her memory, "A charge to keep I have," her mind was made up; after one moment's prayer for help and forgiveness she shut the door, came back to the fireplace, and spoke in a cheerful tone.

"Grandma, wouldn't you like to have me read something to you?"

"Read!" answered the old lady. "Laws a me! I don't read nothing, deary."

"But wouldn't you like to have me read to you, grandma?"

The old lady in answer to this laid down her knitting, folded both arms round Ellen, and kissing her a great many times, declared she should like anything that came out of that sweet little mouth. As soon as she was set free Ellen brought her Bible, sat down close beside her, and read chapter after chapter; rewarded even then by seeing that, though her grandmother said nothing, she was listening with fixed attention, bending down over her knitting as if in earnest care to catch every word. And when at last she stopped, warned by certain noises downstairs that her aunt would presently be bustling in, the old lady again hugged her close to her bosom, kissing her forehead and cheeks and lips, and declaring that she was "a great deal sweeter than any sugar-plums;" and Ellen was very much surprised to feel her face wet with a tear from her grandmother's cheek. Hastily kissing her again (for the first time in her life), she ran out of the room, her own tears starting and her heart swelling big. "Oh! how much pleasure," she thought, "I might have given my poor grandma, and how I have let her alone all this while! How wrong I have been! But it shan't be so in future."

It was not quite sundown, and Ellen thought she might yet have two or three minutes in the open air; so she wrapped up very warm and went out to the chip-yard.

Ellen's heart was very light; she had just been fulfilling a duty that cost her a little self-denial, and the reward had already come. And now it seemed to her that she had never seen anything so perfectly beautiful as the scene before her – the brilliant snow that lay in a thick carpet over all the fields and hills, and the pale streaks of sunlight stretching across it between the long shadows that reached now from the barn to the house. One moment the light tinted the snow-capped fences and whitened barn-roofs: then the lights and the shadows vanished together, and it was all one cold, dazzling white. Oh, how glorious! Ellen almost shouted to herself. It was too cold to stand still; she ran to the barn-yard to see the cows milked. There they were, all her old friends – Streaky and Dolly and Jane and Sukey and Betty Flynn – sleek and contented; winter and summer were all the same to them. And Mr. Van Brunt was very glad to see her there again, and Sam Larkens and Johnny Low looked as if they were too, and Ellen told them with great truth she was very glad indeed to be there; and then she went in to supper with Mr. Van Brunt and an amazing appetite.

That was Saturday. Sunday passed quietly, though Ellen could not help suspecting it was not entirely a day of rest to her aunt; there was a savoury smell of cooking in the morning which nothing that came on the table by any means accounted for, and Miss Fortune was scarcely to be seen the whole day.

With Monday morning began a grand bustle, and Ellen was well enough now to come in for her share. The kitchen, parlour, hall, shed, and lower kitchen must all be thoroughly swept and dusted; this was given to her, and a morning's work pretty near she found it. Then she had to rub bright all the brass handles of the doors, and the big brass andirons in the parlour, and the brass candlesticks on the parlour mantelpiece. When at last she got through and came to the fire to warm herself, she found her grandmother lamenting that her snuff-box was empty, and asking her daughter to fill it for her.

"Oh! I can't be bothered to be running upstairs to fill snuffboxes," answered that lady; "you'll have to wait."

"I'll get it, grandma," said Ellen, "if you'll tell me where."

"Sit down and be quiet!" said Miss Fortune. "You go into my room just when I bid you, and not till then."

Ellen sat down; but no sooner was Miss Fortune hid in the buttery than the old lady beckoned her to her side, and nodding her head a great many times, gave her the box, saying softly —