CHAPTER VIII.
“It is well!”God’s ways are always right,And love is o’er them all,Tho’ far above our sight.
“It is well!”God’s ways are always right,And love is o’er them all,Tho’ far above our sight.
“It is well!”
God’s ways are always right,
And love is o’er them all,
Tho’ far above our sight.
FIVE weeks afterward, at the window of the south room in the mansion of the Sutherland plantation, in a deep easy-chair, propped up with pillows, sat or rather reclined, Tom Alson. His hands, grown slender and delicate by long illness, were resting upon an open letter which lay upon his knee, and his eyes were wandering out over the glorious country, with a little wistfulness in them that had of late been at home there.
The landscape upon which the sickeyes rested was truly a beautiful one. The rich lands of the plantation stretched out and away off to the banks of the Tennessee, the waters of which were hidden by the cliff-like shores. Beyond this the mountains rose, and the eye followed the bends of the river by their ever-changing curves. A few of the trees on these densely-wooded slopes were changing color, and the scarlet and yellow among so much green made each color more intense. The fields which lay nearer home were truly “white unto the harvest.” The cotton-buds had burst everywhere, and over the Southern hills the fresh breezes of September were blowing. The hands were busy in the fields, and Tom counted many dark forms among the white cotton, hard at work.
Somehow this first sight of the fields led Tom’s mind back to the letter he had received, telling of other fields, just as “white.” That, and the letter just received from home, had sent his thoughts out after his Sunday-school, of which he had not been able to hear for so many weeks. He hardly dared ask after its welfare even now. But he brought his eyes in from the window, and they rested upon Lillie, sitting in a low chair near him, busily employed in some little manufacture with cotton and needle. He watched the white fingers move to and fro in silence for a few minutes, and then he said,
“Miss Lillie, I have not been able to think of my Sunday-school in a very long time.”
“I have been waiting for you tospeak of it all the afternoon,” said Lillie, rousing herself and stopping her work.
“Well?” said Tom, not daring yet to ask the question.
“Well,” echoed Lillie, “we consider ourselves something wonderful, I can tell you. We have met every Sunday in the cabin, and Jimmy Harrison—you know him—reads to us from one of the new books and the Bible. He says he cannot pray, so old Uncle Ben prays, and when it comes the time you used to speak to us, I tell them how you are, and what you have been talking about, and then we all try and remember what you have told us and to repeat verses. I did not know there were so many of the people learning to love Jesus, Tom. Then, one Sunday, father came down—it wasthat Sunday after you and he were talking so long in the morning—and he talked to the people a long time, and they were all so pleased.”
There was a great sob which prevented Tom’s reply. He did not know even then—only God knew—what had been accomplished during the summer months on the Sutherland Plantation.
“Have the books been distributed, Miss Lillie?” asked Tom when he could find voice.
“No, only two or three were taken by Jimmy to read. Then our illuminated text—that one you said was prettier than all the rest, ‘We would see Jesus’—we had put up first over your chair. We have a little table that papa sent down, and my velvet chair stays there now, and last Sundaythe back was covered with a beautiful wreath of flowers.”
Tom looked out again through dim eyes over the white fields, and thought of the promise: “He that goeth forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” Tom thought he had a harvest.
Just then Mr. Sutherland opened the door and came in, and coming up to Tom’s chair, asked him “how he was.”
“Very happy indeed, sir,” replied Tom with a quiet smile.
“What would you like most in the world just at this minute?” asked Mr. Sutherland, whose heart always went out warmly toward the boy who had saved his child.
Tom’s eyes grew a little wistful. “I should like most of all to see mysister Martha,” said he; “but next to that,” he added, smiling, “I would like to have you read to me, Mr. Sutherland.”
So Mr. Sutherland sat down by the sick boy and read to Tom until the sunlight faded.
“That was the next best thing to seeing Martha, sir,” said Tom gratefully as he finished. “I am very much obliged to you.”
“Not at all,” replied Mr. Sutherland, heartily. “Now I am going away, and I shall send Aunt Dinah to see that you have what you want for supper. Come, pet.”
So he went away, taking Lillie with him, and left happy Tom, sitting in the twilight, grateful and content, with the words of the Psalmist making sweet music in his heart:
“Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee.”
After this first day of pleasure Tom could not be kept away from the window, and so, day after day, his chair was moved up to it, and himself put into it, all wrapped about with shawls and supported by pillows, and left to spend the day by the window. He had numerous visitors—not too many—but just enough to make him feel that he was not alone.
One morning, after he had been up about a week, he was sitting by the open window as usual, watching the cotton-pickers in the distance, when he heard steps coming up the stairs. “Somebody is coming to see me,” he thought, so he listened, still looking out of the window. Something attracted his attention there, so thatwhen the door opened he did not immediately turn his head. There were quick steps across the floor and some one came kneeling by his chair, and then he turned and looked down into the eager face of his sister Martha.
“Oh, Martha! Martha!” he cried, seizing her hand and bending down to her face, “has God sent me this joy too? My dear sister, I have wanted to see you more than anything on earth.”
“And I am here, Tom,” she replied joyfully—“come to take good care of you. Mr. Sutherland wrote me that you would not send for me for fear I could not come, but that you wanted me very much. How are you, dear Tom?”
“I believe, Martha,” he said, stillholding her hand and looking down into her face, “I believe I am perfectly happy.”
“And how is the Sunday-school?” his sister asked. “Oh, you can’t think how Miss Mason and I have enjoyed that school!”
“It’s perfectly wonderful, Martha,” he replied with glowing eyes. “It seems to me that for the past few days, when the thought of it came, those four grand words, ‘What hath God wrought?’ have been the only ones which could anyway rest me. Listen while I tell.”
Thereupon followed a long conversation in questions and answers about the summer’s doings, with pleased eagerness on one side and loving sympathy on the other, until they knew all those little thingswhich pen and paper never tell, and which therefore the letters which had passed between them had not contained.
“And now, Tom,” said Martha, when home and plantation news seemed to be exhausted, “I believe I’ve something to tell you. Mr. Sutherland said to me, as we rode up this morning, that he would like to keep you all winter if you were pleased to stay. He said that you understood his business, and did it well, and that you had wound yourself round the hearts of the people; although,” she added, “I did not need for him to tell me that, after Jimmy’s letter.”
“Jimmy?” asked Tom, in amaze.
“Yes,” laughed Martha. “Jimmy wrote Miss Mason and me a jointletter of confession of his own sins and praise of you. It was funny, but it was good. I will show it to you some day.”
Tom gave her a bright smile in answer, and asked her if there was anything more.
“Yes,” returned Martha. “Mr. Sutherland wants me to stay here too, to be a sort of waiting-maid for Miss Lillie. How do you like that?”
“My dear Martha, that is glorious,” said Tom, bringing his hands together with sudden joy. “There will be no discouragements if you are here.”
“But, Tom dear,” said Martha, “I would not stay, and I should not want to leave you, but in the fall the good people who sent Miss Mason to us in Huntsville are going to send a teacher to this plantation, and Mr. Sutherlandis perfectly willing. So we may study yet, Tom.”
“There is no truer word in the world than that which God spake, Martha,” replied Tom, looking into her gentle, earnest face with glistening eyes: “‘All things work together for good to them that love God.’
‘Who trusts in God’s unchanging love,Builds on a rock which naught can move.’”
‘Who trusts in God’s unchanging love,Builds on a rock which naught can move.’”
‘Who trusts in God’s unchanging love,
Builds on a rock which naught can move.’”
And now, dear reader, I had meant to leave you here, and let the story of Tom’s summer work leave its own impress on your minds and hearts, but when I think of the joy, and love, and reward of working for Jesus, and the faintness with which I have tried to show them to you, I am longing for power to carry home the truth to your hearts. But God who giveth the increase will bring it topass when human hands fall powerless.
Do you remember how John finished his gospel? He says: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” So I believe, with him, that if the beauty and joy of the lives spent in work for the Lord were given to mankind, “even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”
THE END.