Chapter XVIII: The Dayspring From on High

It matters not how parched and bare the plain of life may be, one living spring of joy can enrich and beautify it all. One master gladness can make the heart strong against all the ills of life; it matters not how fierce and angry be the winds, if the heart have shelter. If God be for us who can be against us?

Gordon and I had certainly had our share of the ills of life; and the winds of trouble had found us out. Of course, it doesn't seem so hard to bear, now that it's past; but I reckon few young married couples ever encountered more head wind or sailed more troubled seas. I know everybody thinks their own troubles are the worst; if we could trade with other people for a week, we'd probably be glad to trade back when the time was up. Yet it cannot be denied, so far as we were concerned, that we had a good deal to sadden us.

To begin with, we were far from home and kindred. Gordon's relatives--he seldom spoke of any but his father--were far across the sea. Mine were a thousand miles away, in the sunny Southland, separated from me now by the unhappy storm that had gathered about my husband's head. We never spoke of going home; for Gordon, I knew, would not consider it, and I would not go without him.

Then, too, there was little now to take me there. My mother had passed away. It was a couple of years after we came to Canada that the end had come. Suddenly stricken with the hand of death while summering in the remote mountains of Western Virginia, the dear spirit had found its rest. I could not be notified till it was too late to go, even for the last sad offices; so I went not at all. The heavenly tenderness of my husband through all those days of sorrow lingers with me as a precious memory. Uncle Henry and Aunt Agnes wrote me once or twice, and always sympathetically enough. But it was evident that they recognized through it all how wide was the gulf that divided me from the days and scenes of girlhood. And they sent their "respects" to Gordon, which is about the politest form of epitaph that can be graven on the tomb of friendship.

It was in the very midst of this parched and dreary plain (to quote the words with which I began the chapter) that a spring of living joy suddenly flung forth its waters; amid the troublous winds, our hearts found the dearest of all earthly havens.

It seems hard to realize it now--but I don't believe Gordon and I were unhappy before baby came. Unhappy, I mean, because there wasn't any. I don't think we ever felt that life was poor and skimped and silent; I don't believe we looked and longed at all. No, we didn't--and that's the strangest part of it. The troubles that people with children had--the imprisonment by day--and the marches by night--and the plaintive serenades of the early dawn; the care and responsibility and disappointment, and often heartbreak, of later years--these were so frequently mentioned between us that I fear we came to indulge a kind of blasphemous complacency because we were immune. Then, too, we sometimes whispered the old sophistry that we had each other, in devotion undivided with another--which is nothing but a honeyed perjury.

Anyhow I know this, that in those pre-parental days I would ask people whom I had just met--and with no misgivings--as to whether or not they had any children. But I never dared to do it after the new love-birds began singing in my mother-heart. It seemed cruel, lest they should be compelled with shame to acknowledge they had none; even in my most inconsiderate years I would never ask a homely spinster if her dance card were full--if I may pluck an illustration from the giddy days of old.

It was with trembling joy that we drew near, never so near together, to this great gladness of our lives. Then came my great darkness; then the holy dawn. I swiftly forgot all about the darkness--for joy that a man was born into the world.

Gordon was beside me when I realized it all, showering little timid words of endearment down upon me as though he feared I were hardly able to stand them. His lip was quivering when I looked up; and I saw his glance turn from me to something that lay beside me on a pillow. A low gurgling kind of sound came from the little bundle on the top of it.

"Isn't that sweet?" I murmured--for I knew--my eyes fallen shut again. Gordon looked at me with overflowing eyes--then he turned and went softly out of the room.

I was faint and weak when he came back; but I held his hand, lest he should go away again.

"Say a little prayer for the baby," I whispered; "say it out loud," and Gordon knelt low beside the bed and prayed. But I noticed that all his prayer was for me, that I might be given back to him--and I told him, before he had time to get up, that he had forgotten about the baby. So he prayed again, for us both this time; and I don't think I ever before felt what a true priest of God was this man of mine, and I rejoiced that the new life which lay beside me was breath of his breath and soul of his soul. And I think we both forgot, in those blessed days, all the sorrows of the past, the turmoil of the present, the portent of the future.

What a new world it all turned out to me! A new heaven, indeed; and a new earth--which was more to us just then--as the Bible says. Everything was wonderful. I can remember yet the foolish delight with which one day I counted all the baby's toes--and found he had exactly ten. I knew, of course, that this had happened often enough before, but still it struck me as beautiful that they should have come out so even; a miscalculation, considering how many have to be outfitted for the journey, would have seemed pardonable in anybody's baby but my own. And I had never known before how intelligent a baby could be in its very early dawn. For instance, mine had a strange habit of lifting his little hand high above his head, then slowly letting it drop.

"I can't make out what that gesture means," his father (those words were a new strain of music) said to me one day as we bended over the babe together; "you don't suppose he sees that fly, do you?" referring to a winged intruder that was hovering, like ourselves, above our treasure.

"Oh, no," I answered; then suddenly, "Gordon, do you know, I believe I can tell what baby's trying to do. He's trying to pronounce the benediction, just as sure as anything. That's you in him, Gordon; he's going to be a minister."

"I believe that's just what he's doing," said Gordon, enchanted; "look--there he's doing it again."

"He does it just like you, Gordon," I repeated. "Nobody need ever tell me there's nothing in heredity. Isn't it wonderful?"

"It's mysterious," said Gordon, fascinated as he watched the little cleric; "we'll have to call him some name suitable for a minister."

"We'll call him Gordon," I said decisively--"that's a good Presbyterian name. I called him that this morning, all alone, and he looked up and cooed like as if he understood."

"We'll call him Harold, for your father, if you like," my husband proposed magnanimously.

"No, no," I said, "his name shall be Gordon. But we'll call it--I mean--we'll give mother's name to her--if he ever has a little sister."

"Mercy!" said Gordon, drawing his breath in fast.

"I always think just one's so lonely," I explained, my eyes fastened on the isolated posterity beside me. "I was just one--the only one in our family, you know."

"The only one in the world--for me," said Gordon, and he kissed me. "Look, your son's trying to sneeze: isn't it wonderful how soon they pick things up?"

"_Our_ son, dear," I corrected reproachfully, after I had helped baby through.

Gordon laughed. "We're a pair of idiots," he said. "We'll have to straighten up, Helen, or we'll spoil the youngster. I can see you're going to idolize him already."

"Love never spoiled anybody," I protested, "and it won't spoil him either."

"No," conceded Gordon, "but he mustn't be indulged too much. I believe in making them obey--and not giving in to them; that old adage about sparing the rod, you know."

"He shan't ever be touched," I exclaimed; "nobody shall ever lay a finger on my baby."

"_Our_ baby," corrected Gordon, smiling.

"But about what you said about the rod," I resumed. "You don't surely mean----"

"Don't let us get excited, dear," and Gordon smiled down at me; "but of course children, and especially boys, must be taught to obey. That's one of the great advantages of a public school."

"He shan't ever go to a public school," I declared warmly. "No child of mine will ever be sent with a lot of common children--in one of those big schools."

"What will you do with them?" said Gordon, intensely interested.

"I'll teach them myself," said I. "I'll teach them together; I'll keep them together all the time. There's no influence on a boy like his little sister."

By this time Gordon was just as absorbed in them both as I was. "You can train the girl the way you like," he said, stroking my hair while he spoke; "that's a mother's privilege--but I'll have to take a hand with the boy. And I'm a firm believer in punishing them, when they need punishment."

"Gordon," I pleaded, as my eyes filled with tears, "do you mean to say you'd whip him?"

"Yes," said Gordon, very solemn; "yes, if he needs it."

"Oh, Gordon," I cried, for it was all very real to me, "you'll make him afraid of you; he'll learn to dislike you, Gordon--and that would break my heart," the words quivering as they came.

"There, there, dear," he said, gently caressing me, "don't let us say any more about it--perhaps I won't have to whip him much. All I mean is, that I don't believe in children getting their own way; we mustn't indulge him, I mean. And you know, dear," this coming with a very winning smile, "you know, I'm older--and I've had more experience than you, dear."

"No, you haven't, Gordon," I cried triumphantly; "you shouldn't say that. I've had just as many as you, Gordon--and I know them better; I've studied him more, right here with him all the time."

But just then our solitary descendant broke out with an imperious cry that indicated he wanted something. Gordon leaped to duty. "It's his bottle," he exclaimed excitedly, beginning a wild search on the table, under the pillow, beneath the bed, the quest continued in the bathroom and an adjoining chamber. "Yes, yes, baby," he kept saying as he searched; "yes, father'll get him his 'ittle bottle; he's hungy, is he, the tootsy wootsy? Yes, father'll bing it in a minute." The much desired article was finally discovered in the cradle beside the bed; and Gordon, in full canonicals, knelt lowly on the floor as he pacified the clamorous lips.

"I thought you didn't believe in giving them their own way?" said I.

"He's too little to know the difference yet," said the bending one, his back to me as he adjusted the mechanism anew.

"Oh, Gordon," I said, "you're very young, as a father--very young."