The Channings. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ VII. – MR. KETCH

      Mrs. Channing sat with her children. Breakfast was over, and she had the Bible open before her. Never, since their earliest years of understanding, had she failed to assemble them together for a few minutes’ reading, morning and evening. Not for too long at once; she knew the value of not tiring young children, when she was leading them to feel an interest in sacred things. She would take Hamish, a little fellow of three years old, upon her knee, read to him a short Bible story, suited to his age, and then talk to him. Talk to him in a soft, loving, gentle tone, of God, of Jesus, of heaven; of his duties in this world; of what he must do to attain to everlasting peace in the next. Day by day, step by step, untiringly, unceasingly, had she thus laboured, to awaken good in the child’s heart, to train it to holiness, to fill it with love of God. As the other children came on in years, she, in like manner, took them. From simple Bible stories to more advanced Bible stories, and thence to the Bible itself; with other books at times and seasons: a little reading, a little conversation, Gospel truths impressed upon them from her earnest lips. Be you very sure that where this great duty of all duties is left unfulfilled by a mother, a child is not brought up as it ought to be. Win your child towards heaven in his early years, and he will not forget it when he is old.

      It will be as a very shield, compassing him about through life. He may wander astray—there is no telling—in the heyday of his hot-blooded youth, for the world’s temptations are as a running fire, scorching all that venture into its heat; but the good foundation has been laid, and the earnest, incessant prayers have gone up, and he will find his way home again.

      Mrs. Channing closed the Bible, and spoke, as usual. It was all that teaching should be. Good lessons as to this world; loving pictures of that to come. She had contrived to impress them, not with the too popular notion that heaven was a far-off place up in the skies some vague, millions of miles away, and to which we might be millions of years off; but that it was very near to them: that God was ever present with them; and that Death, when he came, should be looked upon as a friend, not an enemy. Hamish was three and twenty years old now, and he loved those minutes of instruction as he had done when a child. They had borne their fruit for him, and for all: though not, perhaps, in an equal degree.

      The reading over, and the conversation over, she gave the book to Constance to put away, and the boys rose, and prepared to enter upon their several occupations. It was not the beginning of the day for Tom and Charles, for they had been already to early school.

      “Is papa so very much worse to-day, mamma?” asked Tom.

      “I did not say he was worse, Tom,” replied Mrs. Channing. “I said he had passed a restless night, and felt tired and weak.”

      “Thinking over that confounded lawsuit,” cried hot, thoughtless Tom.

      “Thomas!” reproved Mrs. Channing.

      “I beg your pardon, mamma. Unorthodox words are the fashion in school, and one catches them up. I forget myself when I repeat them before you.”

      “To repeat them before me is no worse than repeating them behind me, Tom.”

      Tom laughed. “Very true, mamma. It was not a logical excuse. But I am sure the news, brought to us by the mail on Wednesday night, is enough to put a saint out of temper. Had there been anything unjust in it, had the money not been rightly ours, it would have been different; but to be deprived of what is legally our own—”

      “Not legally—as it turns out,” struck in Hamish.

      “Justly, then,” said Tom. “It’s too bad—especially as we don’t know what we shall do without it.”

      “Tom, you are not to look at the dark side of things,” cried Constance, in a pretty, wilful, commanding manner. “We shall do very well without it: it remains to be proved whether we shall not do better than with it.”

      “Children, I wish to say a word to you upon this subject,” said Mrs. Channing. “When the news arrived, I was, you know, almost overwhelmed by it; not seeing, as Tom says, what we were to do without the money. In the full shock of the disappointment, it wore for me its worst aspect; a far more sombre one than the case really merited. But, now that I have had time to see it in its true light, my disappointment has subsided. I consider that we took a completely wrong view of it. Had the decision deprived us of the income we enjoy, then indeed it would have been grievous; but in reality it deprives us of nothing. Not one single privilege that we possessed before, does it take from us; not a single outlay will it cost us. We looked to this money to do many things with; but its not coming renders us no worse off than we were. Expecting it has caused us to get behindhand with our bills, which we must gradually pay off in the best way we can; it takes from us the power to article Arthur, and it straitens us in many ways, for, as you grow up, you grow more expensive. This is the extent of the ill, except—”

      “Oh, mamma, you forget! The worst ill of all is, that papa cannot now go to Germany.”

      “I was about to say that, Arthur. But other means for his going thither may be found. Understand me, my dears: I do not see any means, or chance of means, at present: you must not fancy that; but it is possible that they may arise with the time of need. One service, at any rate, the decision has rendered me.”

      “Service?” echoed Tom.

      “Yes,” smiled Mrs. Channing. “It has proved to me that my children are loving and dutiful. Instead of repining, as some might, they are already seeking how they may make up, themselves, for the money that has not come. And Constance begins it.”

      “Don’t fear us, mother,” cried Hamish, with his sunny smile. “We will be of more use to you yet than the money would have been.”

      They dispersed—Hamish to his office, Arthur to Mr. Galloway’s, Tom and Charles to the cloisters, that famous playground of the college school. Stolen pleasures, it is said, are sweetest; and, just because there had been a stir lately amongst the cathedral clergy, touching the desirability of forbidding the cloisters to the boys for play, so much the more eager were they to frequent them.

      As Arthur was going down Close Street, he encountered Mr. Williams, the cathedral organist, striding along with a roll of music in his hand. He was Arthur’s music-master. When Arthur Channing was in the choir, a college schoolboy, he had displayed considerable taste for music; and it was decided that he should learn the organ. He had continued to take lessons after he left the choir, and did so still.

      “I was thinking of coming round to speak to you to-day, Mr. Williams.”

      “What about?” asked the organist. “Anything pressing?”

      “Well, you have heard, of course, that that suit is given against us, so I don’t mean to continue the organ. They have said nothing to me at home; but it is of no use spending money that might be saved. But I see you are in too great a hurry, to stay to talk now.”

      “Hurry! I am hurried off my legs,” cried the organist. “If a dozen or two of my pupils would give up learning, as you talk of doing, I should only be obliged to them. I have more work than I can attend to. And now Jupp must go and lay himself up, and I have the services to attend myself, morning and afternoon!”

      Mr. Jupp was assistant-organist. An apprentice to Mr. Williams, but just out of his time.

      “What’s the matter with Jupp?” asked Arthur.

      “A little bit of fever, and a great deal of laziness,” responded Mr. Williams. “He is the laziest fellow alive. Since his uncle died, and that money came to him, he doesn’t care a straw how things go. He was copyist to the cathedral, СКАЧАТЬ