"In France!" repeated Christie, with a bewildered air.
"Yes," said the old woman, "they"ve all gone abroad for the summer;" and then she shut the window in a decided manner, as much as to say, "And that"s all I shall tell you about it."
Christie stood for a few minutes in the pretty garden before he moved away. He was very disappointed; he had so hoped to have seen his little friends, and now they were gone. They were far away in France. That was a long way off, Christie felt sure, and perhaps he would never see them again.
He walked slowly down the dusty road. He felt very lonely this afternoon, very lonely and forsaken. His mother was gone; old Treffy was gone! the lady was gone! and now the children were gone also! He had no one to cheer him or to comfort him; so he dragged the old organ wearily down the hot streets. He had not heart enough to play, he was very tired and worn out; yet he knew not where to go to rest. He had not even the old attic to call his home. But the pavement was so hot to his feet, and the sun was so scorching, that Christie determined to return to the dismal court, and to try to find a quiet corner in the great lodging-room.
But when he opened the door he was greeted by a cloud of dust; and the landlady called out to him to take himself off, she could not do with him loitering about at that time of day. So Christie turned out again, very heart-sore and disconsolate; and, going into a quiet street, he sheltered for some time from the hot sun under a high wall which made a little shadow across the pavement.
Christie was almost too hot and tired even to be unhappy, and yet every now and then he shivered, and crept into the sunshine to be warmed again. He had a strange, sharp pain in his head, which made him feel very bewildered and uncomfortable. He did not know what was the matter with him, and sometimes he got up and tried to play for a little time, but he was so sick and dizzy that he was obliged to give it up, and to lie quite still under the wall, with the organ beside him, till the sun began to set. Then he dragged himself and his organ back to the large lodging-room. The landlady had finished her cleaning, and was preparing the supper for her lodgers. She threw Christie a crust of bread as he came in, but he was not able to eat it. He crawled to a bench in the far corner of the room, and putting his old organ against the wall beside him, he fell asleep.
When he awoke, the room was full of men; they were eating their supper, and talking and laughing noisily. They took little notice of Christie, as he lay very still in the corner of the room. He could not sleep again, for the noise in the place was so great, and now and again he shuddered at the wicked words and coa.r.s.e jests which fell on his ear almost every minute.
Christie"s head was aching terribly, and he felt very, very ill; he had never been so ill in his life before. What would he not have given for a quiet little corner, in which he might have lain, out of the reach of the oaths and wickedness of the men in the great lodging-room! And then his thoughts wandered to old Treffy in "Home, sweet Home." What a different place his dear old master was in!
"There"s no place like home, no place like home," said Christie to himself. "Oh, what a long way I am from "Home, sweet Home!""
CHAPTER XII.
CHRISTIE WELL CARED FOR.
"What"s the matter with that little lad?" said one of the men to the landlady, as she was preparing their breakfast the next morning. "He"s got a fever, or something of the sort. He"s been talking about one thing or another all night. I"ve had toothache, and scarcely closed my eyes, and he"s never ceased chatting the night through."
"What did he talk about?" asked another man.
"Oh! all sorts of rubbish," said the man with the toothache, "bright cities, and funerals, and snowdrops; and once he got up, and began to sing; I wonder you didn"t hear him."
"It would have taken a great deal to make _me_ hear him," said the other, "tired out as I was last night; what did he sing, though?"
"Oh! one of the tunes on his old organ. I expect he gets them in his head so that he can"t get them out. I think it was "Home, sweet Home,"
he was trying at last night;" and the man went to his work.
"Well, Mrs. White," said another man, "if the boy"s in a fever, the sooner you get him out of this the better; we don"t want all of us to take it."
When the men were gone, the landlady went up to Christie to see if he were really ill. She tried to wake him, but he looked wildly in her face, and did not seem to know her. So she lifted him by main force into a little dark room under the stairs, which was filled with boxes and rubbish. She was not an unkind woman; she would not turn the poor child into the street in his present condition; so she made him up a little bed on the floor, and giving him a drink of water, she left him, to continue her work. That evening she fetched the parish doctor to see him, and he told her that Christie was in a fever.
For many days little Christie hung between life and death. He was quite unconscious of all that went on; he never heard the landlady come into the room; he never saw her go out. She was the only person who came near him, and she could give him very little attention, for she had so much to do. But she used to wonder why Christie talked so often of "Home, sweet Home;" through all his wanderings of mind this one idea seemed to run. Even in his delirium, little Christie was longing for "the city bright."
But, after a time, Christie began to recover; he regained his consciousness, and slowly, very slowly, the fever left him. But he was so weak that he could not even turn in bed; and he could scarcely speak above a whisper. Oh, how long and dreary the days were to him! Mrs.
White had begun to grow tired of waiting on him, and so Christie was for many a long hour without seeing any one to whom he could speak.
It was a very dark little chamber, only lighted from the pa.s.sage, and Christie could not even see a bit of blue sky. He felt very much alone in the world. All day long there was no sound but the distant shouts of the children in the court, and in the evening he could hear the noise of the men in the great lodging-room. Often he was awake the greater part of the night, and lay listening to the ticking of the clock on the stairs, and counting the strokes hour after hour. And then he would watch the faint gray light creeping into the dark room, and listen to the footsteps of the men going out to their daily work.
No one came to see Christie. He wondered that Mr. Wilton did not ask after him, when he missed him from the mission-room. Oh, how glad Christie would have been to see him! But the days pa.s.sed slowly by, and he never came, and Christie wondered more and more. Once he asked Mrs.
White to fetch him to see him, but she said she could not trouble to go so far.
If little Christie had not had a friend in Jesus, his little heart would almost have broken, in the loneliness and desolation of those days of weakness. But though his faith was sometimes feeble, and he was then very downcast in spirit, yet at other times little Christie would talk with Jesus, as with a dear friend, and in this way he was comforted. And the words which the clergyman had read to his old master were ever ringing in his ears, "Let not your heart be troubled."
Still, those weeks did seem very long and tedious. At last, he was able to sit up in bed, but he felt faint and dizzy whenever he moved. For he had had a very severe attack of fever, and he needed all manner of nourishing things to bring back his strength. But there was no one to attend to the wants of the poor motherless boy. No one, except the dear Lord; He had not forgotten him.
It was a close, tiring afternoon. Christie was lying upon his bed, panting with the heat, and longing for a breath of air. He was faint and weary, and felt very cast down and dispirited. "Please, dear Lord," he said aloud, "send some one to see me."
And even as he spoke the door opened, and the clergyman came in. It was too much for little Christie! He held out his arms to him in joy, and then burst into tears.
"Why, Christie," said the clergyman, "are you not glad to see me?"
"Oh," said little Christie, "I thought you were never coming, and I felt such a long way from home! Oh, I am so glad to see you."
Then Mr. Wilton told Christie that he had been away from home, and that another clergyman had been taking his duty. But the night before he had preached for the first time since his return in the little mission-room, and he had missed Christie from the front bench. He had asked the woman who cleaned the room about him, and she had told him that Christie had never been there since he went away. The clergyman had wondered what was the matter, and had come as soon as he could to hear.
"And now, Christie," he said, "tell me all about these long, weary weeks."
But Christie was so glad and so happy now, that the past seemed like a long, troubled dream. He had waked up now, and had forgotten his sorrow and his loneliness.
The clergyman and Christie had much pleasant talk together, and then Mr.
Wilton said,--
"Christie, I have had a letter about you, which I will read to you."
The letter was from little Mabel"s papa, who was a friend of the clergyman.
"MY DEAR MR. WILTON,--There is a poor boy of the name of Christie (what his surname is I do not know) living in a lodging-house in Ivy Court, Percy Street. He lived formerly with an old organ-grinder, but I believe the old man was thought to be dying some weeks ago. My dear wife took a great fancy to the boy, and my little Mabel frequently talks of him. I imagine he must be left in a very dest.i.tute condition; and I should be much obliged if you could find him out and provide for him some comfortable home with any respectable person who will act as a mother to him.
"I enclose a check which will pay his expenses for the present. I should like him to go to school for a year or two and then I intend, if the boy desires to serve Christ, to bring him up to work as a Scripture-reader amongst the lowest cla.s.s of the people in your neighborhood.
"I think I could not perpetuate my dear wife"s memory in any better way than by carrying out what I know were her wishes with regard to little Christie. No money or pains will I spare to do for him what she herself would have done, had her life been spared.
"Kindly excuse me for troubling you with this matter; but I do not wish to defer it until our return, lest I lose sight of the boy.
The dismal attic where Christie and his old master lived was the last place my dear wife visited before her illness; and I feel that the charge of this boy is a sacred duty which I must perform for her dear sake, and also for the sake of Him who has said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
"Believe me, dear Mr. Wilton,
"Yours very sincerely,
"GERALD LINDESAY."
"Christie," said the clergyman, "the dear Lord has been very good to you."
"Yes," said little Christie, "old Treffy was right; wasn"t he, sir?"
"What did old Treffy say?" asked the clergyman.
"He said the Lord had some work for me to do for Him," said Christie, "and I didn"t think there was any thing I could do; but He"s going to let me, after all."
"Yes," said the clergyman, smiling; "shall we thank Him, Christie?"