Chapter Thirteenth The New Home
Let us pass by twelve months, and see how the law of kindness is working then. Mrs. Parker is certainly happier, less troubled than she was two years ago; Edith is a better and more dutiful child, and the sisters are far more sociable with her than formerly. The dove of peace has taken up its abode in the Parker family. How is it in High Street? Emilie and aunt Agnes are not there, but Miss Webster is still going on with her straw bonnet trade and her lodging letting, and she is really as good tempered as we can expect of a person whose temper has been bad so very long, and who has for so many years been accustomed to view her fellow creatures suspiciously and unkindly.
But Emilie is gone, and are you not curious to know where? I will tell you; she is gone back to Germany—she and her aunt Agnes are both gone to Frankfort to live. The fact is, that Emilie is married. She was engaged to a young Professor of languages, at the very time when the Christmas tree was raised last year in Mr. Parker’s drawing room. He formed one of the party, indeed, and, but that I am such a very bad hand at describing love affairs, I might have mentioned it then; besides, this is not a love story exactly, though there is a great deal about love in it.
Lewes Franks had come over to England with letters of recommendation from one or two respectable English families at Frankfort, and was anxious to return with two or three English pupils, and commence a school in that town. His name was well known to Mr. Parker, who gladly promised to consign his two sons, John and Fred to his care, but recommended young Franks to get married. This Franks was not loth to do when he saw Emilie Schomberg, and after rather a short courtship, and quite a matter of fact one, they married and went over to Germany, accompanied by John, Fred, and Joe White. Mr. Barton, after the sad accident in the plantation, had so little relish for school keeping, that he very gladly resigned his pupils to young Franks, who, if he had little experience in tuition, was admirably qualified to train the young by a natural gentleness and kindness of disposition, and sincere and stedfast christian principle.
Edith longed to accompany them, but that was not to be thought of, and so she consoled herself by writing long letters to Emilie, which contained plenty of L—— news. I will transcribe one for you.
The following was dated a few months after the departure of the party, not the first though, you may be sure.
L——, Dec, 18—
DEAREST EMILIE,
I am thinking so much of you to-night that I must write to tell you so. I wish letters only cost one penny to Frankfort, and I would write to you every day. I want so to know how you are spending your Christmas at Frankfort. We shall have no Christmas tree this year. We all agreed that it would be a melancholy attempt at mirth now you are gone, and dear Fred and John and poor Joe. I fancy you will have one though, and oh, I wish I was with you to see it, but mamma is often very poorly now, and likes me to be with her, and I know I am in the right place, so I won’t wish to be elsewhere. Papa is very much from home now, he has so many patients at a distance, and sometimes he takes me long rides with him, which is a great pleasure. One of his patients is just dead, you will be sorry to hear who I mean—Poor old Joe
Murray! He took cold in November, going out with his Life Boat, one very stormy night, to a ship in distress off L—— sands, the wind and rain were very violent, and he was too long in his wet clothes, but he saved with his own arm two of the crew; two boys about the age of his own poor Bob. Every one says it was a noble act; they were just ready to sink, and the boat in another moment would have gone off without them. His own life was in great danger, but be said he remembered your, or rather the Saviour’s, “Golden Rule,” and could not hesitate. Think of remembering that in a November storm in the raging sea! He plunged in and dragged first one and then another into the boat. These boys were brothers, and it was their first voyage. They told
Joe that they had gone to sea out of opposition to their father, who contradicted their desires in every thing, but that now they had had quite enough of it, and should return; but I must not tell you all their story, or my letter will he too long. Joe, as I told you, caught cold, and though he was kindly nursed and Sarah waited on him beautifully, he got worse and worse. I often went to see him, and he was very fond of my reading in the Bible to him; but one day last week he was taken with inflammation of the chest, and died in a few hours. Papa says he might have lived years, but for that cold, he was such a healthy man. I feel very sorry he is gone.
I can’t help crying when I think of it, for I remember he was very useful to me that May evening when we were primrose gathering. Do you recollect that evening,
Emilie? Ah, I have much to thank you for. What a selfish, wilful, irritable girl I was! So I am now at times, my evil thoughts and feelings cling so close to me, and
I have no longer you, dear Emilie, to warn and to encourage me, but I have Jesus still. He Is a good Friend to me, a better even than you have been.
I owe you a great deal Emilie; you taught me to love, you showed me the sin of temper, and the beauty of peace and love. I go and see Miss Webster sometimes, as you wish; she is getting very much more sociable than she was, and does not give quite such short answers. She often speaks of you, and says you were a good friend to her; that is a great deal for her to say, is it not? How happy you must be to have every one love you! I am glad to say that Fred’s canaries are well, but they don’t agree at all times. There is no teaching canaries to love one another, so all I can do is to separate the fighters; but
I love those birds, I love them for Fred’s sake, and I love them for the remembrances they awaken of our first days of peace and union.
My love to Joe, poor Joe! Do write and tell me how he goes on, does he walk at all? Ever dear Emilie,
Your affectionate
EDITH.
There were letters to John and Fred in the same packet, and I think you will like to hear one of Fred’s to his sister, giving an account of the Christmas festivities at Frankfort.
DEAR EDITH,
I am very busy to-day, but I must give you a few lines to tell you how delighted your letters made us. We are very happy here, but home is the place after all, and it is one of our good Master’s most constant themes. He is always talking to us about home, and encouraging us to talk of and think of it. Emilie seems like a sister to us, and she enters into all our feelings as well us you could do yourself.
Well, you will want to know something about our Christmas doings at school. They have been glorious I can tell you—such a Christmas tree! Such a lot of presents in our shoes on Christmas morning; such dinings and suppings, and musical parties! You must know every one sings here, the servants go singing about the house like nightingales, or sweeter than nightingales to my mind, like our dear “Kanarien Vogel.”
You ask for Joe, he is very patient, and kind and good to us all, he and John are capital friends; and oh, Edith, it would do your heart good to see how John devotes himself to the poor fellow. He waits upon him like a servant, but it is all love service. Joe can scarcely bear him out of his sight. Herr Franks was asked the other day, by a gentleman who came to sup with us, if they were brothers.
John watches all Joe’s looks, and is so careful that nothing may be said to wound him, or to remind him of his great affliction more than needs be. It was a beautiful sight on New Year’s Eve to see Joe’s boxes that he has carved. He has become very clever at that work, and there was an article of his carving for every one, but the best was for Emilie, and she deserted it.
Oh, how he loves Emilie! If he is beginning to feel in one of his old cross moods, he says that Emilie’s face, or Emilie’s voice disperses it all, and well it may; Emilie has sweetened sourer tempers than Joe White’s.
But now comes a sorrowful part of my letter. Joe is very unwell, he has a cough, (he was never strong you know,) and the doctor says he is very much afraid his lungs are diseased. He certainly gets thinner and weaker, and he said to me to-day what I must tell you.
He spoke of his longings to travel (to go to Australia was always his fancy.) “And now, Fred,” he said, “I never think of going there, I am thinking of a longer journey still.” “A longer journey, Joe!” I said, “Well, you have got the travelling mania on you yet, I see.” He looked so sad, that I said, “What do you mean Joe?” He replied, “Fred, I think nothing of journeys and voyages in this world now. I am thinking of a pilgrimage to the land where all our wandering’s will have an end. I longed, oh Fred, you know how I longed to go to foreign lands, but I long now as I never longed before to go to Heaven.” I begged him not to talk of dying, but he said it did not make him low spirited. Emilie and he talked of it often. Ah Edith! that boy is more fit for heaven than any of us who a year or two ago thought him scarcely fit to be our companion, but as Emilie said the other day, God often causes the very afflictions that he sends to become his choicest mercies. So it has been with poor White, I am sure. I find I have nearly filled my letter about Joe, but we all think a great deal of him.
Don’t you remember Emilie’s saying, “I would try to make him lovable.” He is lovable now, I assure you.
I am sorry our canaries quarrel, but that is no fault of yours. We have only two school-fellows at present, but
Herr Franks does not wish for a large school; he says he likes to be always with us, and to be our companion, which if there were more of us he could not so well manage. We have one trouble, and that is in the temper of this newly arrived German boy, but we are going to try and make him lovable. He is a good way off it yet.
I must leave John to tell you about the many things I have forgotten, and I will write soon. We have a cat here whom we call Muff, after your old pet. Her name often reminds me of your sacrifice for me. Ah! my dear little sister, you heaped coals of fire on my head that day.
Truly you were not overcome of evil, you overcame evil with good. Dear love to all at home. Your ever affectionate brother,
FRED PARKER.