The One Moss-Rose Part 2

"I know the meaning of that dream," said James Courtenay to his nurse.

"I do not want any one to explain it to me; I can tell all about it. The meaning is, that I must become a changed boy, or I shall never go to heaven when I die; and all the good things which I have here are not to be compared with those which are to be had there. What Jacob said was, that all these things are fading, and I must seek for what is better than anything here.

"Aggie," said James Courtenay, "you often think I am asleep when I am not; and you think I scarcely have my mind about me yet, when I lie so long quite still, looking away into the blue sky: but I am thinking; I am always thinking, and very often I am praying--asking forgiveness for the past, and hoping that I shall be changed for the future."

"But we can't do much by hoping," said Aggie, "and we can't do anything by ourselves."

"I mean to do more than _hope_," said James Courtenay; "I mean to _try_."

"And you mean, I trust, to ask G.o.d's Spirit to help you?" said Aggie.

"Yes, every day," said James. "He helped Jacob, and he'll help me; and I hope to be yet where Jacob is now."

"Ay, he helps the poor," said Aggie, "and he'll help the rich. Jacob had his trials, and you'll have yours; and perhaps yours are the hardest, so far as going to heaven is concerned; for the rich have a temptation in every acre of land and in every guinea they have. Our Lord says that ''tis hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.'"

For many days James Courtenay thus pondered and prayed, with Aggie as his chief companion and instructor, and at length he was able to leave his room. But he was a different James Courtenay from the one who had entered that room some months before. The young squire was still pale and thin; but this was not the chief change observable in him,--he was silent and thoughtful in his manner, and gentle and kind to every one around. The loud voice which once rang so imperiously and impatiently through the corridors was now heard no more; the hand was not lifted to strike, and often grat.i.tude was expressed for any attention that was shown. The servants looked at each other and wondered; they could scarcely hope that such a change would last; and when their young master returned to full health and strength, they quite expected the old state of things to return again. But they were mistaken. The change in James Courtenay was a real one; it was founded on something more substantial than the transient feelings of illness,--he was changed _in his heart_.

And very soon he learnt by experience the happiness which true religion brings with it. Instead of being served unwillingly by the servants around, every one was anxious to please him; and he almost wondered at times whether these could be the servants with whom he had lived all his life. They now, indeed, gave a service of love; and a service of love is as different from a service of mere duty as day is from night.

Wherever the young squire had most displayed his pa.s.sionate temper, there he made a point of going, for the sake of speaking kindly, and undoing so far as he could the evil he had already done. He kept ever in mind what he had heard from Jacob Dobbin in his dream,--that there was not only a Saviour by whom alone he could be saved from his sins, but also that there was a road on which it was necessary to walk; a road which ran through daily life; a road on which loving deeds were to be done, and loving words spoken;--the road of obedience to the mind of Christ. James Courtenay well knew that obedience could not save him; but he well knew also that obedience was required from such as were saved by pure grace.

Altered as James Courtenay undoubtedly was, and earnest as he felt to become different to what he had been in olden time, he could not shake off from his mind the sad memory of the past. His mind was continually brooding upon poor little Dobbin's death, and upon the share which he had in it. For now he knew all the truth. He had seen old Leonard, and sat with him for many hours; and at his earnest request the old man had told him all the truth. "Keep nothing back from me," said the young squire, as he sat by old Leonard's humble fire-place, with his face covered with his hands; and over and over again had the old man to repeat the same story, and to call to mind every word that his departed son had said.

"What shall I do, Leonard, to show my sorrow?" asked James Courtenay one day. "Will you go and live in a new house, if I get papa to build one for you?"

"Thank you, young squire," said Leonard; "it was here that Jacob was born and died, and this will do for me well enough as long as I'm here.

And it don't distress me much, Master James, about its being a poor kind of a place, for I'm only here for a while, and I've a better house up yonder."

"Ay," said James Courtenay, "and Jacob is up yonder; but I fear, with all my striving, I shall never get there; and what good will all my fine property do me for ever so many years, if at the end of all I am shut out of the happy land?"

"Master James, you need not be shut out," said old Dobbin; and he pulled down the worn Bible from the shelf; "no, no; you need not be shut out.

Here is the verse that secured poor Jacob's inheritance, and here is the verse that by G.o.d's grace secures mine, and it may secure yours too;"

and the old man read out the pa.s.sage in 1 John i. 7, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from _all_ sin." "All, all!" cried old Dobbin, his voice rising as he proceeded, for his heart was on fire; "from murder, theft, lying, stealing,--everything, everything! Oh, what sinners are now in glory!--sinners no longer, but saints, washed in the precious blood! Oh, how many are there now on earth waiting to be taken away and be for ever with the Lord! I am bad, Master James; my heart is full of sin in itself; but the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin;--and whatever you have done may be all washed out; only cast yourself, body and soul, on Christ."

"But how could I ever meet Jacob in heaven?" murmured the young squire from between his hands, in which he had buried his face; "when I saw him, must not I feel I murdered him? ay, I was the cause of his misery and death, all for the sake of one fading, worthless flower!"

"Don't call it worthless, Master James; 'twas G.o.d's creature, and very beautiful while it lasted; and you can't call a thing worthless that gave a human being as much pleasure as that rose gave poor Jacob. But whatever it was, it will make no hindrance to Jacob meeting you in heaven,--ay, and welcoming you there, too. If you reach that happy place, I'll be bound Jacob will meet you with a smile, and will welcome you with a song into the happy land."

"Well, 'tis hard to understand," said James Courtenay.

"Yes, yes, Master James, hard to our poor natures, but easy to those who are quite like their Saviour, as Jacob is now. When He was upon earth he taught his followers to forgive, and to love their enemies, and to do good to such as used them despitefully; and we may be sure that, now they are with him, and are made like him, they carry out all he would have them do, and they are all he would have them be. I don't believe that there is one in heaven that would be more glad to see you, Master James, than my poor boy,--if I may call him my poor boy, seeing he's now in glory."

Many were the conversations of this kind which pa.s.sed between old Leonard and the young squire, and gradually the latter obtained more peace in his mind. True, he could never divest himself of the awful thought that he had been the immediate cause of his humble neighbour's death; but he dwelt very much upon that word "all," and Aggie repeated old Leonard's lessons, and by degrees he was able to lay even his great trouble upon his Saviour.

But all that James Courtenay had gone through had told fearfully upon his health. His long and severe illness, followed by so much mental anxiety and trouble, laid in him the seeds of consumption. His friends, who watched him anxiously, saw that as weeks rolled on he gained no strength, and at length it was solemnly announced by the physician that he was in consumption. There were symptoms which made it likely that the disease would a.s.sume a very rapid form. And so it did. The young squire began to waste almost visibly before the eyes of those around, and it soon became evident, not only that his days were numbered, but that they must be very few. And so they were. Three weeks saw the little invalid laid upon his bed, with no prospect of rising from it again. At his own earnest request he was told what his condition really was; and when he heard it, not a tear started in his eye, not a murmur escaped his lips.

One request, and one only, did the dying boy prefer; and that was, that Leonard Dobbin should be admitted to his room as often as he wished to see him. And this was very often; as James had only intervals of wakefulness, it became necessary that the old man should be always at hand, so as to be ready at any hour of the day or night, and at length he slept in a closet off the sick boy's room. And with Leonard came the old worn Bible. The good old labourer was afraid, with his rough hands, to touch the richly bound and gilt volume that was brought up from the library; he knew every page in his own well-thumbed old book, and in that he read, and from that he discoursed. The minister of the parish came now and again; but when he heard of what use old Leonard had been to the young squire, he said that G.o.d could use the uneducated man as well as the one that was well-learned, and he rejoiced that by any instrumentality, however humble, G.o.d had in grace and mercy wrought upon the soul of this wayward boy.

At length the period of the young squire's life came to be numbered, not by days, but hours, and his father sat by his dying bed.

"Papa," said the dying boy, "I shall soon be gone, and when I am dying I shall want to think of Christ and of holy things alone;--you will do, I know, what I want when I am gone."

Squire Courtenay pressed his son's hand, and told him he would do anything, everything he wished.

"You remember that grandmamma left me some money when she died; give Leonard Dobbin as much every year as will support him; and give him my gray pony that he may be carried about, for he is getting too old to work; and"--and it seemed as though the dying boy had to summon up all his strength to say it--"bury me, not in our own grand vault, but by Jacob Dobbin's grave; and put up a monument in our church to Jacob, and cut upon it a broken rose; and let the rose bush be planted close to where poor Jacob lies--"

The young squire could say no more, and it was a long time before he spoke again; when he did, it was evident that he was fast departing to another world. With the little strength at his command, the dying boy muttered old Leonard's name; and in a moment the aged Christian, with his Bible in his hand, stood by the bedside.

"Read, read," whispered Aggie the nurse; "he is pointing to your Bible,--he wants you to read; and read quickly, Leonard, for he soon won't be able to hear."

And Leonard, opening his Bible at the well-known place, read aloud, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

"_All, all_," whispered the dying boy.

"_All, all_," responded the old man.

"_All, all_," faintly echoed the dying boy, and in a few moments no sound was heard in the sick-room--James Courtenay had departed to realize the truth of the words, that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from _all_ sin."

Next to the chief mourners at the funeral walked old Leonard Dobbin; and close by the poor crippled Jacob's grave they buried James Courtenay--so close that the two graves seemed almost one. And when a little time had elapsed, the squire had a handsome tomb placed over his son, which covered in the remains of poor Jacob too, and at the head of it was planted the moss-rose tree. And he put up a tablet to poor Jacob's memory in the church, and a broken rose was sculptured in a little round ornament at the bottom of it.

And now the old Hall is without an heir, and the squire without a son.

But there is good hope that the squire thinks of a better world, and that he would rather have his boy safe in heaven than here amid the temptations of riches again.

Oh, what a wonder that there is mercy for the greatest sinners! but oh, what misery comes of sin! "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of G.o.d is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

[Ill.u.s.tration]