A Doubting Heart

Chapter I. The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death

Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren, Dag ist der ewige Gesang. Emmie behaved, according to Sir Francis's views of companionship, unexceptionably on the journey. She answered in a soft little voice, whenever he spoke to her, looked after her own travelling bag and rug when they changed carriages, and when tears came, shed them quietly and unostentatiously in a corner of the carriage with her face turned, so as to let him see as little of them as possible. " Poor child, poor child ! " he thought, giving her all the more attention because she exacted so little. " How sensibly she behaves, that old donkey of a father of hers was not worth such nice quiet tears; she shan't miss him, I vow. Something must and shall be thought of for VOL. III. B her." And when it grew too dark to read the news paper, Sir Francis, who had worked out all the legal problems requiring his immediate attention on his previous night's journey, actually allowed his thoughts to stray to his own family affairs, and elaborated a whole midsummer night's dream of speculative fancies, while the train carried them on, through the early hours of the soft southern night.

" What was that hint about a marriage for Emmie in one of his wife's late letters — Wynyard Anstice ? But was not he the man in whom Alma had once appeared to be interested, who had once spoken about Alma to him, in a way that he liked. Would it be well for Alma's happiness, under present circumstances, that he should connect himself with the family; might it not give rise to unfavourable com parisons ? Alma, Emmie, Horace Kirkman, Wynyard Anstice, the four figures rose before his mental vision, and, as a suspicion of drowsiness came on, kept ckanoino places towards each other as capriciously as if Puck might be expected to operate upon them. Some one in the family evidently must marry Horace Kirkman, Sir Francis thought. Now that all these hungry young Wests had to be provided for, some one must marry Horace Kirkman and act as conductor into family channels of the Kirkman wealth, and the vast patronage that bullet-headed rogue of an old Kirkman had got hold of ; but what a pity that the notion of securing the prize for quiet little Emmie had not occurred to anyone.

It would have been great promotion for her, poor little soul, and she would have made a capital httle conductor. Such quiet tears as those, and the sweet little wistful smiles that came when she tried to rouse herself out of them, would draw anything from any man, and she might have built up her brothers' and even her cousins' for tunes with perfect comfort to herself, without any of those qualms and disgusts that he feared would assail Alma. His Alma he began to think was almost worthy of the promotion of being reserved as the chosen com panion of the years when he should have withdrawn altogether from public life, and taken to cultivating his literary tastes again. She might as well, with that object before her, marry Wynyard Anstice as not. Sir Francis thought that in those leisure days he should care a good deal for seeing Alma happy, and his heart quite warmed towards Wynyard, as he pictured him dropping in of evenings with Alma, and discussing points in that History of the Law of Inheritance he designed for the work of his old age, with such understanding and b interest as could only be expected from a man of Wynyard's intelligence and culture.

Alma married to Horace Kirkman, would be another thing. There could be no rational conversation with husband and wife there, and undoubtedly intellects were dulled in the course of time by constant companionship with fools. What a pity that those pairs of lovers could not change places once more. And with half recollections of a recent visit to a theatre where " The Midsummer Night's Dream " had been acted, and con fused visions of playhouse fairies pressing Love in Idleness on Horace Kirkman's eyes, Sir Francis dropped comfortably into a deep sleep. Emmie felt herself really alone for the first time since the news came, for the first time since she had left the bench under the magnolia-tree where she sat welcorninor such a beautiful hope to her heart. Sir Francis would have been very much surprised if he had known the storm of feeling which raged within his apparently calm little companion (careful all the time not to disturb his repose by any restless movement) during the long night while he slept, and the train rushed through the darkness.

It was not despair, or any keen sense of loss that made that night a never-to-be-forgotten passage through the valley of the shadow of death to Emmie. It was one of those mental struggles, such as only comes to natures capable of very deep love, from which, if the battle ends in victory, the soul rises up new born, dead to self and self-love, alive to all the higher kinds of devotion for evermore. A temple of God which, having known the horror and darkness of a sudden emptying, keeps the eternal light burning for ever after wards on its altar. It was a struggle for surrender of the will only ; for Emmie knew that there was no action possible for her, though at times for a few moments she let herself imagine impossible things, such as making an appeal to Wynyard not to desert her for Alma. She did not know why she felt so sure that his heart would turn back to Alma.

Sometimes a pale hope lifted up its head and whispered that she too was young, she too was beautiful. She had loved with her whole soul, why should not she be chosen even with Alma by ; but after listening to the voice for a minute, she told it to be still. Its sayings seemed to her beside the question after all, for what she wanted to think about was what would be best for him, what would make his life most complete. Had she not once seen him suffer, and felt then that she could give all the happiness and joy that might ever be coming to her, to buy for him what he wanted ? It was strange to feel so for an almost stranger ; perhaps it was wrong, or perhaps that was only what one ought to feel for everybody. That white heat of love in which all sacrifice seemed joyful might be what we were meant to live and walk in, towards the common people of our lives ; and then Emmie's heart bled to think that she had called her mother a common person, and doubted the possibility of joyful sacrifice for her and for the others.

Saville Street life, with all its little anxious details and privations and ugliness came before her, looking darker than it had ever looked before, from contrast with the freer life she had tasted. She asked herself if she was ready [to take up its burden again, on bruised shoulders too, for she fancied just then that in bidding good-bye to the love-dream which had come to her on that golden afternoon, she was shutting out all joy and strength from her life, shutting herself into prison. Emmie put up her hand to feel for the little branch of quince-blossom that was still pinned by the Cairn gorm brooch out of sight under her shawl, and a great cry seemed to go out from her heart towards the giver of it. The moment in which his eyes met hers seemed a supreme moment whose claims outweighed all the obligations of life, and was an existence in itself.

She could not let go her hold on it. She could not come down from that height of satisfied emotion to the common path of duty again, could not resign herself to make or be made such a sacrifice, or submit to God's will, if that was indeed His will for her. A hush of awe and compunction followed. The highest wave of passionate pain had flooded her struggling soul with that thought, and as it ebbed away, the dutiful instincts and habits that had always governed her reasserted themselves and proclaimed their mastery over passion. What was best for the others, not what would please herself, had always been her rule since very early days when she had first begun to take part in the cares of the straitened household, and gradually, through the surging of grief and pain, the old rule made itself heard again.

It would be best for the others, if she came back with undivided interests, and gave herself wholly to share the struggle that was before them. He could not come into it — it would not be well for him to come into it because, Emmie decided sorrowfully, with keen remembrance of looks and words, he did not love her enough for that. She had pleased him for a moment at La Roquette, in the sunshine and among the flowers ; but at home, with all the Saville Street household about her, and the work of the household pressing upon her, she could not be what he wanted. No ; it was Alma he had preferred first. Alma was his real choice, and now that she had come back to him, as Emmie's instinct told her she had, there was nothing for her to do but to step aside out of the sunshine of their lives. She would not be even a remorse to him, not so much shadow as that upon their path.

She would let him know somehow or other that she understood him rightly, and that those words, that look exchanged on the hill-side, meant for her no more than he would wish them to mean, after seeing Alma again. She would do that, and whatever pain there might be in her heart, there should be no anger or grudging, and she need never feel humbled in her own eyes or before her mother, who would never dream of a woman loving more than she was loved. The night had worn away by the time Emmie had come to this resolution, and a cold dawn was creeping into the sky. Cold, for they were nearing Paris now, and had left the golden sunshine, and warmth, and flowers of the South far behind them. Magic land and glamour and dreams of love had vanished, and the long darknio-ht had brought her up into the pale familiar world of worka-day life again.

She hid her eyes from the faint yellow light, and the pale spring flowers that threatened to look hateful, and prayed, as she had never prayed before, for strength to make that sacrifice on which she had resolved, and to walk bravely henceforth in the thorny ways she knew. Sir Francis, who woke up just as the prayer ended, hardly knew what to make of the countenance she turned towards him in answer to his sleepy exclamations. The gentle patience and sweetness on such a fair young face actually brought tears into his eyes, he found them so pathetic, and he patted her head affectionately after he had given her a morning kiss. "That's right," he said, trying hard to find a pleasant topic to begin upon. "You have had a nice t little sleep, I make no doubt, and so have I. It has done us both good, and here we are getting to the end of our night journey, and a cheerful sunny morning, which is always a comfort for the crossing, and for — hem — for the getting home and everything."

" For papa's funeral," said Emmie. " To-day, yes I remember you said it was to be to-day ; we are hurrying home for that," and she turned her head towards the window again, compunctious that she had been thinking so little of her father, and yet unable for all her good resolutions to help a little grudge against the feeble yellow sunshine, which her uncle called cheerful, and which to her seemed a mere mockery and pretence, light without glow, awakening her to days from which joy would be always wanting. They stopped for two hours' rest in passing through Paris, and Emmie vindicated her right to be called woman in her uncle's opinion, by giving some unnecessary trouble on this last opportunity and risking the loss of the train to Calais. When Sir Francis came to the door of the bedroom where he had sent her to lie down, he found her seated before a writing-table scattered over with sheets of paper, and busy sealing an envelope, which the waiter, to whom he had entrusted his letters, was waiting to take.

" My dear," he said, impatient for the first time, " we shall miss our train, and you are delaying my letters. Why did you trouble yourself to write ? I had said all that was necessary." " I am sorry," Emmie answered humbly ; " but this " (holding up an envelope) " has a ring in it which I took away from La Roquette by mistake. It is a present intended for a girl in the village who is married to-day, and I thought I ought to send it back at once." " Well, put on your wraps, there is not a minute to spare, and tell me meanwhile how to direct these other letters you are leaving on the table here." "Never mind them, uncle; they are not intended to go anywhere, only sheets that I spoilt before I had finished." Some of these stray sheets had only a few words scrawled on them, but the uppermost was signed, and had apparently been rejected only on account of two large tear blisters which disfigured the postscript.

As Sir Francis stood waiting till Emmie had repacked her writing-case and tied her hat, his eye ran over it, and he took in its contents without finding any other interest in what he read, than a faint surprise that Emmie should occupy herself in writing such a commonplace little note at such a time. "Dear Mr. Anstice, " I brought away Madelon's ring by mistake yesterday, and I have just remembered that this is her wedding-morning. I am sorry she will not have it to wear at the marriage, and, as I think I remember that she was to leave La Roquette for a few days directly afterwards, I send the ring back to yon that you may give it her when you see her again. Please don't say anything about me in giving it. She knows I wish her well, but it is not really my present, and I am thinking that it is not at all likely I should ever see her or La Roquette again.

" Emmie West. "P.S. — I took the branch of quince-blossom with me yesterday morning, but it died on the road." The yellow sunshine did not continue to vex Emmie's eyes through the journey. About noon the sky clouded over, and when they entered London a soft drizzle of rain was falling, making the wet flags and sooty trees of the squares they drove through, dismally familiar. It might as well have been a November as a May afternoon for anything they saw, except when a basket of dank primroses, poised on the drenched bonnet of a flower-girl, was obtruded into the cab window. Yet the sense of familiarity was lost in a growing awe as the distance from Saville Street lessened. Dr. Urquhart had met them at the station, and his black dress and the little sentences he let fall during the drive brought the facts of her father's death and that this was his funeral day, home to Emmie in a way they had hardly come before.

She began to realise fully that there would be a face and figure less in the familiar house she was approaching, a face she had been used to see there all her life, on which her eyes would never fall again ; and it shocked her to hear Dr. Urquhart speaking of this absence as of something to which everyone at home had already grown accustomed. " Aubrey," he said, " had come from school and was to have a fortnight's holiday before he went back again, and Mrs. West had promised to take tea downstairs that evening. Miss Moore, too, was returning from Zurich and might arrive to-morrow. Mildred had written on her own responsibility to beg her to come home ; nobody quite knew why, since she certainly would not be wanted now. The worst time was over, Dr. Urquhart said he ventured to hope. It had been a very sad time, but the house would brighten up, and everyone feel better when once Miss West was in her right place among them all j; again.

Emmie turned her head away rather petulantly when Dr. Urquhart said this. She meant, oh yes, she meant to get back into her old place, her right place, and do the best she could for them all, but he need not have said it with that smile of satisfaction lurking under his grave manner. It was not his place, she thought, with a little unreasonable anger, to hold up before her all the efforts she would have to make, and must begin to make, in another quarter of an hour. He need not have told her, at this overwhelming moment, that they all expected so much from her. The hearse and the two carriages that were to follow it, were already standing before the door in Saville Street when the cab drove up, and the house was pervaded by the dreary bustle and solemn fuss that houses of mourning (even humble ones) cannot escape at such times.

Sir Francis felt greatly shocked when he perceived that the coffin was actually on its way downstairs as they entered the hall. It could not be helped. The after noon was wearing away, and the undertaker's men were in a hurry and did not see why more time than was absolutely necessary should be given to such a poor show as this. Sir Francis would have drawn Emmie hastily into the dining-room to save her as much of the sad encounter as possible, but she gently resisted his intention. " Let me," she pleaded, " let me go to meet it at the foot of the stairs. You know it is all of him I shall have seen, and I should like to say good-bye. I will not hinder the men more than a minute." Casabianca and the Gentle Lamb had been out that morning and spent the last sixpence of Mr. Anstice's magnificent tip in buying at a little shop near, a dusty wreath of immortelles with " Requiescat in Pace " worked in black among the yellow flowers, to put upon the coffin.

Emmie took two or three faded blossoms out of her bosom, and laid them in the centre of the wreath. " Papa," she whispered, leaning her forehead against the black pall as if she were whispering to the still form inside, " I will give them to you. I will not keep them to look at and cry over. I never gave you anything I cared about very much before ; but with these to take away with you, you will understand that I am glad you are resting, and that I w;H try to think of nothing but comforting mamma and working for the younger ones, now you are gone — of nothing else." Mildred was waiting on the landing to seize upon Emmie as she came up, and she carried her straight to her mother's room. Mrs. West gave a cry of joy and held out her arms, and, for a little while at least, Emmie did succeed in forgetting everything else in the caresses and tender talk that followed.

Certainly no one wanted her so much as these, no one else needed her greatly. The thought had a stingos pain in it just now, but that would pass, and by-and-by she should find in it the comfort and rest it surely ought to give her. "Mother," Dr. Urquhart said that evening when all the bustle was over, and they were shut up in the drawing room together ; " well, mother, how do you think she is looking ?" "Very tired and out of heart, poor child." " Yes, yes, that one expects ; but, mother, did you see that she was wearing the cairngorm brooch to-day ? I caught a glimpse of it when we were driving in the cab ; and when she came in to say good-night to you I made sure you must have seen it." " Yes, I saw it." "Well" (a little impatiently), "well, mother?" " Oh, I understand what you are wanting me to say, Graham, but you shall not frighten me.

I don't see how there can be a doubt about it, after such a journey; she is very much changed." " Sweeter than ever — that's all." " No, it is not all ; you had better let me say out my thought. Yes, she struck me as very much changed. She went away a child, and she has come back a woman; and, Graham, my dear son, that does not happen in four months of a girl's life for nothing. Something has happened to alter her, to make her grow up all at once, and you have had nothing to do with it." " How do you know that, mother ? You are more observing than I in most cases, I allow, but perhaps in this one, my own experience of the past four months may teach me something. Are absence and suspense nothing to change one and make one grow rapidly older ? Do you suppose that I have not been suffering ? No, I am not imagining that she cares as I do ; but even a little of what I have gone through lately would be enough to change any one.

May it not be that ? " Mrs. Urquhart shook her head. " If you ask me I must tell you the truth, and I don't think it is that. I don't beheve she wears my brooch to day because I gave it her, or because it has anything to vol. in. c do with you. She had forgotten that she had it on while she was talking to us." " And you think someone else " " Nay, I did not say so ; and now I wish I had held my tongue for to-night. We shall have time enough to judge before anything need be changed. You have quite decided that we take on the house for ourselves, and when it is ours they can fix a time for removal at their leisure ; we shall be in no hurry to turn them out." " Turn them out, mother ! " " Don't glare at me, Graham, as if I had said some thing preposterous. You can't imagine that I, who have gone through it all myself, would be hard on a widow and orphans !

Mrs. West, poor thing, would be welcome to live in this house all the rest of her life as far as I am concerned, but she and her children must have their choice. The hardest thing of all sometimes is to force on helpless people obligations that they are perhaps wanting to escape from. You would not like Emmie to be driven into a corner and be obliged to take you whether she is ready for it or not, to put a roof over her mother's and brothers' and sister's heads ? " " Mother, you drive me wild with such a suggestion." " It is a very obvious one, however, my dear Graham, and must occur to every one directly you begin to talk of the whole family living on here permanently in your house. I only made it to show you the folly of rushing upon rash acts of generosity. If you want to be of real service, and to win Emmie round, you must let things take their natural course for a wliile, and wait patiently."

" Wait, and let the someone else you hint at win her from me. I had no idea you could be so unreasonable, mother; and all the while I am certain you are mis judging her, and that she put on the brooch to show " but his voice grew shaky and he stopped. "I wish we had not begun to talk to-night," said Mrs. Urquhart, penitently. " It has been a trying day, and we are both over-excited, and, I'm sorry to say, Graham, quite a pile of notes and letters have accumulated on your desk since morning. You had better go and look them over and calm yourself. As I said before, we have plenty of time. The question of moving will hardly suggest itself till the end of the quarter ; we can let everything stand over till then, at all events." Stand over ! Dr. Urquhart walked off to his writing table and his letters, convinced, as he had never felt before, that his mother was indeed getting old, and losing the power of estimating the great events of life reasonably.

She could plunge such a sword as that in his heart, could hint that Emmie's heart was preoccupied, and that at best she might be won round to take him as a pis oiler, and she could then take up her knitting and advise him to go away and calm himself. " Evidently," he thought bitterly, " it was not a matter of life or death to her ; it would not make her world come to an end, if Emmie West slipped out of their lives altogether. She had even forgotten that such things ever were matters of life or death, on which all the world worth living for, hung." As Dr. Urquhart broke open his notes, and read complaints and summonses from his patients to come and cure them, he doubted, for the first time in his life, of the dignity of a profession whose aim was to enable human creatures to live long enough to arrive at such a miserable state of apathy.

The effort of writing answers and planning the next day's work did him good, however, and so far mollified his feehngs towards his mother, that when he came out from behind his curtain, he was glad to see her still sitting by the fire. His confidence had all died out now, and given place to a burning indignation against the individual, a worthless idler, no doubt, who had been playing with Emmie's heart, and spoiling it for him, while he had been working so hard to deserve her, and he wanted to have his faith in himself and her, restored by another argument. Mrs. Urquhart had waited for a last word, but her conscience would not let it be a concession to hope about Emmie. " My dear Graham," she began, pointing to a page of her open Bible, " will you just look and see if the date written against that verse is in your father's handwriting ?

Ah yes, I thought so. We were reading here on the day of the last of those funerals before you were born, which emptied our house of all our little ones, and he marked it that I might remember. It's the answer of the Father in the parable to the eldest son : ' All that I have is thine.' I was in a very rebellious mood that night, not so much on my own account as on his, for he, I thought, deserved blessings if anyone did. He had been always diligent in the Father's service, and was he to have nothing of his own while other people, mere squanderers, had presents every day, calves and kids, and mirth with their friends? I broke out with this to him, and he just pointed to that 'all,' and p VOL. asked me if I did not think that all was better than a part. Gifts, something for oneself, are all very well for a time, he said, but still they are only a portion of the Father's wealth, and we do not give portions to those who are nearest us.

The higher lot is surely to be let into possession of the sall,' and have it, as the Father has it, in all. Not single gifts, but the root of joy, as it dwells in the Father, and so to be ' always with Him,' whatever happens. Yes, Graham, I know it is difficult to see things that way. One does not get into the first class in the school of the kingdom all at once, and for a long time the single gifts seem far the sweetest. Even the eldest son here, you see, did not understand what it was his Father had given him, but he was the eldest son, and he could not be robbed of his birthright, and allowed to be satisfied with a little, instead of all. I don't say one can help grudginc sometimes, but if we could get rightly into our minds that success in getting what one wants is not always a mark of the highest favour — that there is something we can enter into beyond gifts — we should be less tempted to be angry when things go against our will.

Don't you think so ? " Graham did not answer; his mother did not expect him to speak. It was not his way to let himself be drawn into talk of this kind. She was quite content that he stood behind her in silence for a few minutes, and that when she got up to go to bed, he took the book from her and said : " I think I will look at that date in my father's handwriting once more, if you don't mind leaving it with me for to-night." d