University of Virginia Library

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE CHILD AND THE PORTRAIT.

The great clock at the Hall has just struck ten; and those
echoes, which seem to wake as mortals go to sleep, answer
it through the shadowy apartments.

Mr. Effingham and Kate are seated in the library reading;
a few twigs in the great fireplace crackle and sing as
they crumble into white ashes; the burning embers slowly
donning those snowy hoods which shroud them when they
are about to die. A faint blue smoke occasionally curls upward,
and the old grotesque brass handirons cast shadows.

For a time, nothing is heard but the singing of the
fire, which has not yet mastered one or two sappy twigs.

At last Mr. Effingham lays down his book, and utters a
sigh which attracts Kate's attention.

The child raises her head from the Sunday-school volume
she has been reading.

Their eyes meet: she gazes at him wistfully—at the
pale brow, the sad lips, the weary eyes: his head droops.

The child closes her book, softly approaches him, and
lays her hand upon his shoulder. Mr. Effingham smiles
sadly, and passes his hand slowly over the bright locks of
the child.

“What is the matter, cousin?” asked Kate, “I don't
like to hear you sighing so.”

“Nothing,” he says.

“I am afraid you are not happy,” Kate says, wistfully,
“and I cannot feel happy if you are not.”

Mr. Effingham only presses the little form more closely
with his encircling arm.

Kate continues, laying her cheek on his shoulder, and
looking up softly into his shadowy eyes:

“I don't think you are well, dear cousin, and it grieves
me. Indeed, indeed it does.”

“I am not sick—no, not sick,” he murmurs, “but—”

And his hand unconsciously seeks his heart and rests
there.

The child understands at once, with the marvellous instinct
of affection.

“That is the worst kind of sickness,” she says, in a low,
tender voice, “heart-sickness.”

“Do you think my heart is sick?” he says with a wistful
smile, his head drooping more and more.

“I don't know,” the child answers, turning aside her
face.

“I should be very unhappy were that so,” he continued.

“Yes,” murmurs Kate.

“And still more unhappy, if you, dear, ever felt what—”

He does not finish—the form of the child is agitated
slightly.

“Men can bear having their hopes all disappointed,—
their affections chilled,—their lives rendered dark and
gloomy by those afflicting trials, which they must pass
through in existence,” he goes on thoughtfully, “but children
should not feel them;—were you to be distressed,
Katy, I think I should find it harder to bear than all.”

The child's face turns away still.

“I pray you may never feel the afflictions I have gone
through—formerly,” he says.

The head nestles closer and the tender form shakes.

“What is the matter, dear?” he asks, observing this.

Kate makes no reply.

“Have I made you feel badly? See how thoughtless I
am! Why, Kate—crying?”

She leans upon his shoulder, sobbing; her eyes are full
of tears.

“I can't help it, cousin,” she murmurs; “I know it is
very foolish; I am only a child—don't mind me.”

“Only a child, Katy? Ah! if I could go back to the

time when I was only a child. I am a man now—but don't
cry, dear?”

“I won't,” says Kate, sobbing and wiping her eyes; “it
is not right to cry, but you know I can't bear to see you
distressed.”

“I have got over it—if I was so,” he replies, caressing
the child's hair; “come, now, Kate—don't cry.”

“I will not,” says the child, and she dries her tears, and
slowly becomes calm again.

“I am very foolish,” she murmurs, “but I won't give
way any more. It is not right for us to give way to all our
feelings, and I didn't think I should. But I was thinking
of what you had suffered, and I couldn't help it. I'm done
now, and don't mind me, cousin Champ. It is all over.”

The low words die away in the quiet room, and there is
a silence, the man's hand still thoughtfully caressing the
child's hair.

“Kate,” he says at last, “I think I would like to hear
you read a little from your Bible; I did not listen in church
to-day.”

“Oh! yes,” says Kate, “I will get it presently.”

And in a moment she has returned, and is seated in his
lap, with the book open.

“Will you hear this?” she says, with a soft look of her
dewy eyes, and pointing as she speaks to a passage on the
page.

“Any thing, Kate,” he says.

And the child, leaning her head on his breast, commences
reading in a low, earnest voice, slowly and feelingly:

“`But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace
was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

“`All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

“`He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened
not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter;
and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened
not his mouth.

“`He was taken from prison and from judgment; and

who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of
the land of the living: for the transgression of my people
was he stricken.'”

The soft low voice paused, and the child seems to be absorbed
in thought: her eyes go back, and she reads lowly:

“`He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief; and we hid, as it were, our
faces from him: he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

“`Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.

“`He was wounded for our transgressions; he was
bruised for our iniquities;'” repeated the child, closing the
book and fixing her eyes thoughtfully upon the fire;
“`bruised for our iniquities.'”

The low, earnest voice dies away into a whisper, and she
is silent.

He looks at the thoughtful little face for some moments,
and says:

“Katy, I wish you could make me good.”

“I? I, cousin Champ?” she says.

“Yes, indeed; like yourself.”

Kate shakes her head sadly.

“I am not good,” she replies.

“If you are bad, what am I? The idea is not agreeable,”
he murmurs.

“What did you say, cousin?”

“That is just what I wished to hear you read,” he says,
sighing; “and now, Kate, remember what I asked you once
upon a time!”

“What, cousin?” says the child, thoughtfully.

“I asked you to tell me what heaven was—what you
thought it was.”

“Did you?—but I don't know.”

“What do you think?”

“I think it is a place where every body loves God.”

“Yes,” he says.

“And that's why I think it must be happier than this
world, where we don't love him enough. Oh! cousin
Champ,” she goes on, thoughtfully, “what a happy place
heaven must be. I think of it in this way. I think of the

people and things I love best in the world, and of all the
happiest things we have. And then, when I feel so calm
and grateful, I say to myself: `all this is nothing to heaven!'
For in heaven, you know, nothing can ever hurt us: here
we have to suffer, and sometimes the people we love do not
love us, you know, and we are afflicted and distressed; or
they change, you know, from loving us, and don't care for
us any more: or they grow sick and die; and all this interferes
with our happiness. It is not so in heaven, the Bible
says. There we love God, and you know God does not
change if we obey and love him: he will always love us
dearly if we love and fear him. There is no sickness in
heaven, and no affliction—and then, again, think of eternity!
Eternity! I don't know how to think about it, but the
thought of eternal happiness seems very plain to me. In
this world, we can't live very long, you know, and no matter
how happy we are, we must soon die and give all up.
In heaven, we won't die ever, you know, and we will not
suffer, but be happy and love every body for ever and
ever.”

Kate is silent; she is thinking.

“I try to be good,” she continues, thoughtfully, “and I
pray mamma to look down on me and keep me good if she
can; but I'm afraid I'm very bad. I don't think about God
enough and the Saviour, and I am too thoughtless, as we
were in the woods yesterday, you know—when we had our
picnic. But I can't help laughing when I feel like it easily;
but I mustn't be too thoughtless. I try and think about
heaven, and how happy mamma and papa are, you know; and
how good Jesus was to us, to be `bruised for our iniquities.'
Oh! think,” repeats the calm, low voice, “he was bruised,
cousin Champ—`bruised for our iniquities.'”

And the child is silent again.

He looks at the tender, thoughtful face, and from it to the
portrait over the fireplace.

“Strikingly alike!” he murmurs, and then adds aloud:

“Yes, dear, we are very bad to forget it—as I do always:
well, well, you have made me feel much happier, and now you
had better go to bed.”

Kate raises her head, kisses him according to the Virginia

custom, and after leaning her face affectionately on his
shoulder for a moment, slowly retires.

He looks after her for some minutes: raises his eyes
again to the portrait: looks at the little Bible: hesitates,
buried in thought. Then he rises suddenly, goes to the
table, opens his portfolio, and taking a pen and a sheet of
paper, writes:

Then folding up this note, he directed it to Mr. Hamilton,
placed it on the mantel-piece, and with a long, gloomy,
sorrowful look, regarded the portrait of his mother. That
portrait seemed to smile on him—the mild eyes to bless him:
those eyes seemed living once again, and the lips almost
moved.

A profound sigh shook his bosom, and his head drooped:
but when he retired his heart was not so heavy, and that
sombre bitterness of mood had passed away. The old, sad
look came back again, and the moon lit up the pale countenance
with its light, and smiled.

The weary heart slept tranquilly.