Probable Sons
Copyright© 2024 by Amy Le Feuvre
Chapter 9: A Little Child Shall Lead Them
When Sir Edward retired to his room that night, he paced up and down for some time in front of his little niece’s picture that she had given him. His brow was knitted, and he was thinking deeply.
“I am longing to have peace,” he muttered. “Why cannot I make up my mind to seek it! ‘I will arise’—ay, easy to say; it’s a hard and bitter thing for a backslider to retrace his steps. How the child stabs me sometimes, and how little she knows my past!”
He stopped and gazed at the picture. “And the Lord Himself used this as an illustration. I could not want anything stronger.”
A deep-drawn sigh followed, then a heartfelt cry rose to heaven.
“May God have mercy on me, and bring me back, for I can’t bring myself!”
The next morning Sir Edward had an interview with his keeper, who brought his son up with him, and as the tall, broad-shouldered young fellow stood before the squire, and in earnest, humble tones asked if he could be given a chance of redeeming his character by being employed on the estate, Sir Edward’s severity relaxed, and after a long conversation with him he promised he would give him a trial.
He smiled grimly to himself as father and son left him with warm expressions of gratitude.
“So that is the child’s hero! One whose example I might well follow. He has had the courage at last to take the step from which I am still shrinking. Why should I fear that my welcome home would be less full of love and forgiveness than his?”
It was Christmas eve, a wild and stormy day. The wind raged ceaselessly round the old house, howling down the chimneys, and beating the branches of the trees outside against the window panes.
Milly had been very busy for some hours helping Ford to decorate the hall and rooms with holly and evergreen, though Ford would every now and then pause in his work, saying:
“There, Miss Milly, I’m sure we’re overdoing it. If the house was full of company now, I would take a pride in it, but I don’t believe the master will notice whether it’s done or not. It seems to me as he is getting more and more shut up into hisself lately. Christmas is a dull time with us.”
All was finished at last, and Milly went up to the nursery and stood at the window, her bright brown eyes eagerly scanning and taking note of every object out of doors.
“It’s a perfect hurricane,” said nurse, presently, as she sat with her work in a comfortable chair by the fire. “If we feel it inland like this, what must it be at sea!”
“I should like to be on the sea,” said Milly. “I love the wind, but I think it is getting a little bit too rough this afternoon. I’m rather afraid it will hurt the little trees. Ford said if I went out I should be blown away. Do you think, nurse, if the wind was very, very strong it would ever be able to blow me up to heaven?”
“I am afraid not,” said nurse, gravely, “and I don’t think we could spare you, my dear. You would not like to leave this world yet awhile.”
“Sometimes I think I should, and sometimes I think I shouldn’t. I think I should like to be blown up to spend a day there, and then come back again. Oh, nurse, Goliath is screaming and cracking so! I wish the wind would knock him over, he is a horrid old tree. I always think he is making faces at me when I run past him. Wouldn’t it be nice to see him blown down?”
“You mustn’t wish that,” said nurse, getting up from her chair and moving towards the door; “it’s a dangerous thing for an old tree to be blown down. Now I am going downstairs for a short time, so be a good child and don’t get into mischief while I am away.”
Milly remained at the window for some minutes after nurse’s departure, then her quick eyes noticed a poor wretched little kitten mewing pitifully as she vainly tried to shelter herself from the violent blasts by crouching close to a tree.
In an instant, without thought of consequences, the child darted to the nursery door and down the broad oak staircase.
“Poor pussy, I will run and fetch her in. I expect she has run away from the kitchen.”
Sir Edward was writing at his study table, when an unusually violent gust of wind caused him to raise his eyes and glance out of the window. There, to his amazement, he saw, under the old oak tree on the lawn, his little niece, her golden brown curls flying as she battled with the elements, and struggled vainly to stoop and take the kitten in her arms.
He started up from his seat, but as he did so a blast that shook the house swept by; there was an awful cracking, then a crash, and, to his horror, a huge limb of the old oak came with an awful thud upon the very spot where his little niece was standing.
“My God, save her!” was his agonized cry, as he saw at the same moment the little figure stagger and fall. Then, forgetting his weakness and lack of physical strength, he dashed out of the house, and in another instant was standing over her.
His first feeling was one of intense thankfulness to find that the branch in falling could have only slightly grazed her, as she was lying on the ground untouched by it; but as he raised the motionless figure, and noted a red mark on her forehead which was swelling rapidly, his heart sank within him. It did not take him long to carry her into her house, and he was met at the door by nurse, who wisely wasted no time in useless lamentation, but set to work at once to restore animation to her little charge. Her efforts were successful. Milly was only slightly stunned, but it had been a miraculous escape, and had the blow been an inch nearer her temple it might have been fatal. As it was, the child was more frightened than hurt, and when a little time after her uncle took her in his arms with unwonted tenderness, she clung to him and burst into passionate sobs.
“Take care of me, uncle! That nasty old Goliath! He tried to kill me, he did! I saw him coming on the top of me. God only just saved me in time, didn’t He?”
When the bruise had been bathed and dressed by nurse, Sir Edward still kept her on his knee, and after nurse had left the room, and the child rested her little head on his shoulder in a very subdued frame of mind, he did, what he had never done yet—stooped over her and kissed her, saying:
“You have been very near death this afternoon, little one, and I could ill have spared you.”
Milly raised her large dark eyes to his.
“If I had died I should have gone straight up to God, shouldn’t I?”
“Yes, you would.”
“I should have liked that. I suppose He doesn’t want me yet, or He would have sent for me.”
When she came down to her uncle that evening she raised a very sad little face to his from the opposite side of the table.
“Uncle Edward, have you heard who Goliath really did kill?”
“Do you mean the tree that came on you? No one else was hurt, I hope?” and Sir Edward’s tone was a little anxious.
“She was killed dead—quite dead and mangled, nurse said. It was the poor little kitten, uncle, that I ran out to fetch.”
The brown eyes were swimming with tears, and Milly could not understand the smile that came to Sir Edward’s lips.
“Only a kitten. Well, it was sad, I daresay, but there are plenty of kittens about the place.”