“Well, the time went by till
our children were two years old not, to
be sure, without some trouble, but still we got along,
and I was never without the hope that better days
were coming. About that time we got some new
neighbours; but it was a dark day for us, the
day that Sam Healy came and took a place near us.
They were kind folks enough, and I don’t think
the man began by wishing to do my Stephen harm.
He could drink and stop when he wanted to at
least, so he said; but Stephen couldn’t, and
I was never sure of him after the Healys came.
“They came in the fall and a
dreary winter followed their coming; but when spring
opened things began to mend with us. I did what
I could to help Stephen, and kept by him in the field.
There wasn’t much to do within doors.
There was only one room in the house, and a bed and
table and a bench or two was all the furniture we
had; but we might have been well and happy there till
now, if we had been let alone.
“So, having but little to do
in the house, as I said, I helped what I could in
the field. I used to take my boys out and let
them play about on the warm ground while I planted
or hoed; and in this way I got Stephen home many a
time when he would have gone over to Healy’s,
or some of the neighbours, if it hadn’t been
for carrying the babies home. Not that they needed
carrying, for they were strong, hearty lads; but they
were fond of their father, and a ride on his shoulders
was their great pleasure. And he was always
good to them when he was himself; and I kept them
out of the way as much as I could at other times.
“We got along somehow, on into
the summer. Healy’s wife was a kind woman
enough, but she had been brought up different to me;
and it worried me so to have Stephen hanging round
there that I hadn’t much to say to her any way.
I suppose this vexed her, for she was lonesome, and
didn’t know what to do with herself; and I used
to think she put her husband up to being more friendly
with Stephen on that account: I mean, partly
because she was lonesome, and partly because she saw
his being there worried me. I suffered everything,
that summer, in my mind. It was the old Weston
days over again, only worse. It was so lonesome.
I had no one to look to, nowhere to turn. It
wouldn’t have been so if Stephen had been all
right. With him and my boys well, I would have
asked for nothing more.
“Sunday was worst. I used
to think I was a Christian then; but I didn’t
take all the comfort in my religion that I might have
done; and Sunday was a long day. There was no
meeting to go to. We had been too well brought
up to think of working in the fields, as the Healys
and others of the neighbours did; and the day was
long longer to Stephen than to me.
I used to read and sing to him and the babies; and
if we got through the day without his straying off
to Healy’s or some of the neighbours, I was
happy. He might by chance come home sober on
other nights, but on Sunday never; and
it was like death to me to see him go.
“Well, one Sunday afternoon
Healy sent for him. Some folks had come from
a settlement farther up the lake, and they wanted Stephen
for some reason or other I can’t
tell what, now and me too, if I would come,
the boy said who brought the message. But I wouldn’t
go, and did my best to keep Stephen at home, till
he got vexed, and went away, at last, without a pleasant
word.
“Oh! what a long day that was!
The children played about very quietly by themselves,
and I sat with my head upon my hands, thinking some,
praying a little, and murmuring a great deal.
I can shut my eyes now, and see myself sitting there
so miserable, and the little boys playing about, so
hushed and quiet. I can see the little green
patch of vegetables, and the cornfield, and the roof
of Healy’s house beyond, and the blue smoke
rising up so straight and still, and on the other side
the prairie, and the gleam of the lake-water far away.
I never hear the crickets on a summer afternoon but
I think of that day, so bright and warm and still.
Oh, how long it seemed to me!
“The children grew tired, and
I put them to bed when I could keep them up no longer;
and then I went and waited on the doorstep till I grew
chilly and sick in the dew; and then I went in.
I did not mean to go to sleep, though I sat down
on the floor and laid my head on the pillow of my
boys’ low bed; but I was tired with the week’s
work, and more tired with the day’s waiting,
and I did drop off. I could not have slept very
long. I woke in a fright from a dream I had,
and the room was filled with smoke; and when I made
my way to the door and opened it the flames burst
out, and I saw my husband lying on the bed. He
had come in, though I had not heard him. God
alone knows how the fire happened. I don’t
know, and Stephen don’t know, to this day.
“I tried my best to wake him;
but I could not. What with liquor, and what
with the smoke, he was stupefied. I dragged him
out and dashed water on him, and then went back for
my boys. I don’t know what happened then.
I have a dream, sometimes, of holding a little body,
and being held back when the blazing roof fell in;
and then, they say, I went mad.
“I don’t know how long
the time was after that before I saw my husband.
I have a remembrance of long nights, troubled by dreams
of fire and the crying out of little children; and
then of seeing kind faces about me, and of long, quiet
days; and then they took me to my husband. He
was ill, and cried out for me in his fever; and they
took me to him, fearing for us both.
“He did not know me at first.
I had been a young woman when we lived together on
the prairie; but when I went back to him my hair was
as white as it is to-day. He was changed too oh,
how changed and broken! He needed me, and I stayed
and nursed him till he got well. I was weak
in mind, and couldn’t remember everything that
had happened for a while; but I grew stronger, and
it all came back; and then, oh, how I pitied him!
There was no room in my heart for blame when I saw
how he blamed himself; and we did the best we could
to comfort one another.
“Then we said we’d begin
again. We came away here to Canada, because we
thought it was almost the end of the earth, and nobody
would be likely to find us who had known us before.
“And here the Lord met us and
cared for us and comforted us. And I’m
not afraid now. Stephen’s safe now in His
keeping and His loving-kindness oh, how
good!”
The last words were uttered brokenly
and with an effort, and Mrs Grattan leaned back in
her chair pale and faint. Mrs Morely leaned
over her, and her tears fell fast on the hands which
she clasped in hers.
“It shakes me to go back to
those old days,” said Mrs Grattan, faintly.
“You must let me lie down, so as I shall get
over it before my husband comes along. It worries
him dreadfully to see me bad. It won’t
last long. I shall be better soon.”
She was but a little creature, thin
and light, and, though Mrs Morely was not strong;
she lifted her in her arms and laid her on the bed;
and as the poor little woman covered her face and
turned it to the wall, she sat down beside her to
take the lesson of her story to herself. Surely
the grace that had changed Stephen Grattan and given
him rest from his enemy could avail for her husband
too. “`I will trust, and not be afraid!’”
she murmured; and, with her hand clasping the hand
of this woman who had suffered so much and was healed
now, Mrs Morely had faith given her to touch the hem
of the Great Healer’s garment; and in the silence,
broken only by the prayer-laden sighs of the two women,
she seemed to hear a voice saying to her, “Go
in peace.”
There were no sorrowful faces waiting
the coming of Stephen in the little log-house that
night. The little lads met him with shouts of
welcome halfway down the hill, and when he came into
the house there was Sophy busy with her tea-cakes,
and Mrs Morely sewing her never-failing white seam,
and Dolly was dancing the baby on her lap, and singing
a song which brought the prairie, and their home there,
and the long summer Sabbaths to his mind, and a sudden
shadow to his face. Mrs Morely’s face
showed that her heart was lightened.
“You look bright to-night, sister,”
said Stephen, greeting her in his quaint way; “have
you heard good news?”
“I am waiting for good news,”
said Mrs Morely, with a quiver in her voice.
“They never wait in vain who
wait for Him,” said Stephen, looking a little
wistfully from one to the other, as though he would
fain hear more. But there was no time.
Little Sophy’s face was growing anxious; for
her tea-cakes were in danger of being spoiled by the
delay, and there was time to think of nothing else
when they appeared.
“Have you had a good time, Dolly?”
asked Stephen, as they went down the hill together
in the moonlight, when the evening’s frost had
made the roads fit to walk on again.
“A good time, Stephen a
very good time,” said Dolly, brightly.
“I think that poor soul has renewed her strength;
and, indeed I think so have I. Yes, dear, I’ve
had a very good time to-day.”