Bessie's Fortune. Mary Jane Holmes
watching it with a feeling of such utter desolation as she had never felt before.
"Oh, baby, baby! come back to me!" she moaned piteously. "What shall I do without you?"
"God will comfort you, my daughter. He can be more to you than baby was," the old father said to her, and she replied:
"I know that. Yes, but just now I cannot pray, and I am so desolate."
The burden was pressing more heavily than ever, and Hannah's face grew whiter, and her eyes larger, and sadder, and brighter as the days went by, and there was nothing left of baby but a rattle-box with which he had played, and the cradle in which he had slept. This last she carried to her room up stairs and made it the shrine over which her prayers were said, not twice or thrice, but many times a day, for Hannah had early learned to take every care, great and small, to God, knowing that peace would come at last, though it might tarry long.
Geraldine sent her a black silk dress, and a white Paisley shawl in token of her gratitude for all she had done for the baby. She also wrote her a letter telling of the grand christening they had had, and of the handsome robe from Paris which baby had worn at the ceremony.
"We have called him Grey," Geraldine wrote, "and perhaps, he will visit you again next summer," but it was not until Grey was two years old, that he went once more to the farm-house and staid for several months, while his parents were in Europe.
What a summer that was for Hannah, and how swiftly the days went by, while the burden pressed so lightly that sometimes she forgot it for hours at a time, and only remembered it when she saw how persistently her father shrank from the advances of the little boy, who, utterly ignoring his apparent indifference, pursued him constantly, plying him with questions, and sometimes regarding him curiously, as if wondering at his silence.
One day, when the old man was sitting in his arm-chair under the apple trees in the yard, Grey came up to him, with his straw hat hanging down his back, his blue eyes shining like stars, and all over his face that sweet smile which made him so beautiful. Folding his little white hands together upon his grandfather's knee, he stood a moment gazing fixedly into the sad face, which never relaxed a muscle, though every nerve of the wretched man was strung to its utmost tension and quivering with pain. The searching blue eyes of the boy troubled him, for it seemed as if they pierced to the depths of his soul and saw what was there.
"Da-da," Grey said at last. "Take me, peese; I'se tired."
Oh, how the old man longed to snatch the child to his bosom and cover his face with the kisses he had so hungered to give him, but in his morbid state of mind he dared not, lest he should contaminate him, so he restrained himself with a mighty effort, and replied:
"No, Grey, no; I cannot take you. I am tired, too."
"Is you sick?" was Grey's next question, to which his grandfather replied:
"No, I am not sick," while he clasped both his hands tightly over his head out of reach of the baby fingers, which sometimes tried to touch them.
"Is you sorry, then?" Grey continued, and the grandfather replied:
"Yes, child, very, very sorry."
There was the sound of a sob in the old man's voice, and Grey's blue eyes opened wider as they looked wistfully at the lips trembling with emotion.
"Has you been a naughty boy?" he said; and, with a sound like a moan, Grandpa Jerrold replied:
"Yes, yes, very, very naughty. God grant you may never know how naughty."
"Then why don't Auntie Hannah sut oo up in 'e bed'oom?" Grey asked, with the utmost gravity, for, in his mind, naughtiness and being shut up in his aunt's bedroom, the only punishment ever inflicted upon him, were closely connected with each other.
Almost any one would have smiled at this remark, but Grandpa Jerrold did not. On the contrary there came into his eyes a look of horror as he exclaimed:
"Shut me in the bedroom! That would be dreadful indeed."
Then, springing up, he hurried away into the field and disappeared behind a ledge of rocks, where, unseen by any eye save that of God, he wept more bitterly than he had ever done before.
"Why, oh, why," he cried, "must this innocent baby's questions torture me so? and why can I never take him in my arms or lay my hands upon him lest they should leave a stain?"
Then holding up before him his hard, toil-worn hands, he tried to recall what it was he had heard or read of another than himself who tried to rid his hands of the foul spot and could not.
"Only the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," he whispered to himself, while his lips moved spasmodically with the prayer habitual to them; four words only, "Forgive me, Lord, forgive."
It had always been a strong desire with Grey to be led around the premises by his grandfather, who had steadily resisted all advances of that kind, until with a child's quick intuition, Grey seemed to understand that his grandfather's hands were something he must not touch.
That afternoon, however, as Mr. Jerrold was walking on the green sward by the kitchen door, with his head bent down and his hands clasped behind him, Grey stole noiselessly up to him, and grasping the right hand in both his own, held it fast, while he jumped up and down as he called out to Hannah, who was standing near:
"I'se dot it, I'se dot it—dada's han', an' I sal keep it, too, and tiss it hard, like dat," and the baby's lips were pressed upon the rough hand, which lay helpless and subdued in the two small palms holding it so tight.
It was like the casting out of an evil spirit, and Granpa Jerrold felt half his burden rolling away beneath that caress. There was a healing power in the touch of Grey's lips, and the stain, if stain there were upon the wrinkled hand, was kissed away, and the pain and remorse were not so great after that.
Grey had conquered and was free to do what he pleased with the old man, who became his very slave, going wherever Grey liked, whether up the steep hill-side in the rear of the house or down upon the pond near by, where the white lilies grew and where there was a little boat in which the old man and the child spent hours together, during the long summer afternoons.
In the large woodshed opposite the well, and very near the window of Granpa Jerrold's bedroom, a rude bench had been placed for the use of pails and washbasins, but Grey had early appropriated this to himself and persisted in keeping his playthings there, in spite of all his grandfather's remonstrances to the contrary. If his toys were removed twenty times a day to some other locality, twenty times a day he brought them back, and arranging them upon the bench sat down by them defiantly, kicking vigorously against the side of the house in token of his victory, and wholly unconscious that every thud of his little heels sent a stab to his grandfather's heart.
What if he should kick through the clapboards? What if the floor should cave in? Such were the questions which tortured the half crazed man, as he wiped the perspiration from his face and wondered at the perversity of the boy in selecting that spot of all others, where he must play and sit and kick as only a healthy, active child can do.
But after the day when Grey succeeded in capturing his hands, Granpa Jerrold ceased to interfere with the play-house, and the boy was left in peace upon the bench, though his grandfather often sat near and watched him anxiously, and always seemed relieved when the child tired of that particular spot and wandered elsewhere in quest of amusement.
There was, however, one place in the house which Grey never sought to penetrate, and that was his grandfather's bedroom. It is true he had never been allowed to enter it, for one of Hannah's first lessons was that her father did not like children in his room. Ordinarily this would have made no difference with Grey, who had a way of going where he pleased; but the gloomy appearance of the room where the curtains were always down did not attract him, and he would only go as far as the door and look in, saying to his aunt:
"Bears in there! Grey not go."
And Hannah let him believe in the bears, and breathed more freely when he came away from the door, though she frequently