CHAPTER XII

WHAT LIFE LOOKED LIKE TO MILDRED

MILDRED PATTISON came out of Periwinkle Cottage with a slow step, and stood gazing up the village street. She wanted to go to the Churchyard, but she rather mistrusted her own powers. Miss Perkins was gone out and Jessie was not within sight, and a wish had come over Millie to find her way to the little mound of earth, already turning green, where slept the remains of Louey, washed up the day after the wreck. The Captain's body had never been recovered. Like his wife, he had found his grave below ocean waters.

Mildred had not yet been out alone for any distance. Her strength was tardy in its return, and she had only once been toward the Churchyard, just near enough to see the little mound in a quiet corner some way off under a walnut-tree. Then she had felt weak, and had turned homeward again. That day Jessie had been her companion: and this was her first attempt at a solitary ramble.

A heavy sense of being alone in the world weighed her down. She began to wonder whether she had done wisely in settling at Old Maxham, even for a time, where she belonged to nobody and where nobody belonged to her. Work was long in appearing, and time hung on her hands.

Jessie seemed very fond of Mildred, but during some days past Jessie had been absent in mind and apparently much wrapped up in some trouble or worry of her own; and this afforded the one little additional touch which was required to make Millie's state of isolation almost more than she knew how to bear.

What did it matter to anybody whether she stayed or did not stay? What did it matter to anybody whether she lived or died? If she were called away that very night, no one in Old Maxham would do more than drop a passing tear, with a half careless "Dear me, how sad!"

"If only somebody belonged to me," sighed Millie as she went languidly along the street, with Hero close behind. "If only I did not feel myself so alone."

A small girl in pink sunbonnet and pinafore, with clustering fair hair and blue eyes, smiled up in her face, and Millie had no spirit to return the smile. So the small child grew quickly grave again, and looked as if she had received a slight sprinkle of cold water. Mildred went wearily onward in her mood of sadness till she reached the old Church in its old churchyard. Then, feeling spent, she made her way to the tiny mound under the walnut-tree, and sat down upon a flat tombstone.

The little mound was just in front. Mildred meant soon to have a simple stone put there to the memory of her dear ones. Sitting here she seemed to be nearer to them than in Periwinkle Cottage, and it brought back the past vividly, that past which was seldom out of her mind.

"Not that they are in the graveyard," she murmured. "Louey herself—her dear little self—is not here under the soil. Phil is not under the sea. They are all together, at Home, as Phil said they might be that very night. Why was I the only one spared when no one wants me? Not a single being in all the world who really needs me, not one who would really care if I died to-night."

"Are you quite sure nobody needs you?" asked a voice close by.

Mildred looked up, hardly able at first to see through a mist of tears. She had not known herself to be speaking aloud. The mist cleared, and she found an elderly man to be standing beside the mound, his hands planted on a stick with a knob handle, his eyes bent pityingly on herself. He had long grey hair which curled naturally and fell almost to his shoulders.

"I wouldn't cry if I were you. Not so much at least. You look as if you had nearly cried your eyes out in the last few weeks. It would make your friends sorry if they knew; don't you think so?"

Mildred could scarcely reply, "I don't know."

"You were saved in the wreck lately, were you not? Ah, I felt sure it was so. And this is the grave of the pretty little one who was drowned? Your niece? Yes, yes! And you miss her very much? Yes, of course, that has to be so. But still I wouldn't cry too much. After all, they are happy; it isn't half so bad, don't you see, as if you were happy and they were unhappy. Don't you think I'm right?"

It was a new view of the question to Mildred. She did not quite know what to say.

"And if I were you, I wouldn't be too sure that nobody wanted me. How can you tell that?"

"Nobody is left who belongs to me. I am alone in the world." Mildred spoke rather coldly. She did not know who the stranger might be, and she could not even recall having seen him pass Periwinkle Cottage. Yet his face was full of goodness.

"You can't be alone. Look at all the people in Old Maxham."

"They don't care for me."

"Then you can care for them."

"None of them belong to me."

"But you belong to them."

Mildred was silent. She wished he would go, and leave her alone with her sorrow.

"Such a number of them as there are," he went on musingly. "And some of them need such a lot of looking after, and get so little."

A faint smile came to Mildred's lips. "If I could be useful to any one, I would be," she said.

"That's right. I thought you must be that sort from your face. Well, well, you won't wait long for somebody or other to be useful to. Can't do much here, can you?" And he glanced from one headstone to another. "They've gone through it all, poor dears, and they are free now.

"'Marianne Morris, aged seventy-three.' I dare say she had plenty to bear, off and on, in her life, and I dare say it doesn't seem very much to her now where she is gone. And 'Susan Willis, aged ninety'; she had long enough of it. But it's all over with them. You can't give them a helping hand in the land where they are now. It's to be hoped they don't need it.

"If all those nice texts are not put out of politeness, Old Maxham has had a lot of uncommonly good people. And here's a nice little grave, just like that of yours. 'Posie, aged three.' Little dear, she had no long fight. But there are thousands of children, like Posie and your little niece, who are in the battle still, and in danger of going down under water, just for want of a helping hand to keep them up. Thousands of little ones who want looking after. Little ones that our dear Lord would like you to help take care of for Him. Don't you see?"

Mildred's eyes were wet with soft tears. "Are there—here?" she asked. "Not in Old Maxham."

"Not thousands in Maxham, not even hundreds, I suppose. It isn't a big place. But I'm certain there must be some. Old Maxham isn't Heaven, by any manner of means."

"I don't know the people, and they don't know me."

"That's easily cured."

"And I don't belong to them, or they to me."

"You've told me that three times in these few minutes, do you know? And I think you are wrong, if you'll forgive such plain speaking. Lots of people belong to you, and you can't get out of it. 'All children of one Father.' Doesn't that make us all brothers and sisters? You know the lines—

"'No distance breaks the tie of blood, Brothers are brothers evermore.'

"If I were you, I would begin to look upon other folks as brothers and sisters, and to treat them so. Never you mind if some of them are cantankerous. Perhaps they have had a good deal to make them cantankerous. Anyway, it doesn't un-brother or un-sister them. It only makes them a trouble and worry instead of a pleasure, and we all have troubles and worries of some sort to bear. You can do them good just the same, even if you can't exactly enjoy being with them. He who died for you died for them too, and He is their Brother just as He is yours. That makes a very close tie, eh?"

"I think I see," murmured Mildred. "Thank you. I—I'll try to remember."

He lifted his hat, uncovering the long grey hair, and moved quietly away, passing out of sight. Mildred stayed where she was, pondering his words. The feeling of utter isolation had vanished. She looked round upon the graves, meditating on the finished earthly lives of those who had been laid to rest; and then she gazed towards the village, trying to feel that in very truth she had many brothers and sisters living there, whose particular needs it was her duty to search out, perhaps even to supply.

Even she, Mildred Pattison, weak in body, and poor in money, she might supply some of those needs. For the most crying want of all, belonging to every heart of man, is the want of sympathy, and no man or woman ought to be so poor as to have no sympathy to bestow. That would be the worst and direst form of poverty, because it would be poverty, not merely of body, but of spirit.

The fact began to dawn upon Mildred, that the happiness of Old Maxham people was to some extent dependent upon herself. She might make some among them more happy or less happy. She had to take her choice which of the two it should be; but she could not refuse both alternatives. Each person in the world is always making those around either happier or unhappier than such individuals would otherwise be; and Mildred could be no exception to this rule. Every smile, every frown, every hasty utterance, every kind word, adds to the weight of the scale, one way or the other way, with respect to somebody.

And the happiness of each person in the world is the particular concern of all other persons who have to do with that one person. If all are brothers and sisters in the sight of our Heavenly Father, then each brother and each sister has some portion of the happiness of the rest in his keeping; and if one member of the family is in need or suffering, then it is everybody's business to help him.

Mildred did not say all this to herself in so many words; but a faint vision of the truth dawned upon her, and it was followed by a resolve. If something was due from her to others, even in Old Maxham, where nobody in a certain sense could be said to "belong to her," then she would endeavour to do that something. If she might not attempt much, she would be content to attempt little, but she would not remain idle and indifferent.

Rather curiously, the first suggestion which came to her mind was of the little girl who had smiled at her, and had had no smile in return. Mildred woke up to the fact of the child's disappointment, and was sorry for it. Looking back to her own childish days, she knew how small a matter could make a little one feel sad.

When she rose to go home, it was a positive relief outside the Churchyard to come across the very same child again, in her pink sunbonnet and apron. This time the blue eyes glanced up soberly, with the least possible edging of the tiny person away to a wider distance; but Mildred smiled her kindest, and the rosy lips parted instantly in response.

"What is your name, dear?" asked Mildred.

"I'm Posie. Posie Number Two. And they call me Pet, 'cause there was the other Posie, you know."

"And where is the other Posie?" Hardly a necessary question, for Mildred remembered the tiny headstone. Posie Number Two pointed with one small finger towards the churchyard.

"She's gone to bed there. Mother says Posie was so tired. And she don't never get up, you know, 'cause she's resting. I think I'd rather get up sometimes, it I was that Posie."

[Illustration: "What is your name, dear?" asked Mildred.]

"Have you any other sisters or brothers?"

Posie Number Two shook her head. "I haven't got none," she said sedately.

"And where do you live?"

Posie thrust her hand confidingly into Mildred's. "I'll show you," she said.

Mildred offered no objection, though wondering where she might be led, and whether her strength would hold out.

She found herself guided along the road which led homewards; and the clasp of those warm little fingers seemed to put new life into her. Posie chattered fast as they went, and presently they reached a trim little cottage, nearly opposite Groates' Store, and next door to the Miss Coxens. At the gate stood a woman, with a pleasant but rather careworn face.

"Posie!" she exclaimed, and the child sprang into her arms.

"Posie and I have been making friends," observed Mildred.

"Posie's a dear," said the other. "She's all I have,—me and Joe,—and sometimes I don't hardly know how to bear to let her go out of my sight. I don't know whatever we'd do if anything was to happen to her, that I don't."

"One never does know—till it comes," murmured Mildred. "I have just been to the grave of my little one,—no, not my own, but my brother's child. They were drowned in the wreck."

"Yes, I know—I was sure!" and the woman looked with kind full eyes at Mildred. "It must be so dreadful to lose anybody that way. I've lost a little one of my own; not by drowning, but she died of fever. I almost thought at first I must have died too."

"The other little Posie, you mean. I saw her grave."

"Some folks didn't like us naming Posie after her. They said maybe Posie 'ud die too. But I didn't see it, nor I don't. Posie's all we've got left,—me and Joe,—and God won't take her from us. Surely He won't."

"Not unless it was needful for Posie's own good. If it was better for Posie to go, He wouldn't leave her on earth for anybody's sake, I suppose—it wouldn't be kind to do it; and if you love her, you couldn't really wish it either. But it wouldn't be because her name is Posie—that's certain."

"Then you don't mind—you don't think it was wrong of us to call her Posie?" The woman looked anxiously for an answer.

Mildred considered, leaning on the gate. "No, I don't know that I should call it wrong," she said. "I wouldn't do it myself, though."

"You wouldn't?"

"No. I mean, if little Louey had died before her mother's death, and if another little one had come, and I'd had a choice of the name given me, I wouldn't have called the second 'Louey.' There aren't commonly two of one name in one family, you know. And Louey isn't dead; nor Posie either. They are only gone to another home. I wouldn't name a second child after the first, who had just gone to another home. Would you?"

"I didn't see it that way before." The woman looked thoughtful. "It's true, though. I think I'll take to calling her 'Pet' mostly, instead of Posie, and keep 'Posie' for the other."

"Yes, I would! Keep thinking of her as your own little Posie still—only safe at home, safe in the Good Shepherd's arms, and being taken care of for you till you can go to her. You can go by-and-by, you know—if you will."

The words of quiet confidence passing Mildred's lips cheered her own heart strangely. She had hardly known before how very sure she felt as to Louey and Louey's father and mother being in that other Home, guarded and kept till she should be allowed to join them again. What she said had sprung unbidden to her lips; and when she had so spoken, her whole being cried out in eager assent. It was true; all true. They were only parted for a little while. A restful gladness came over her. She could at last be glad for their sakes.

The woman's eyes filled, and she put out a hand.

"Come again, won't you, some day? Come and see me indoors. I like to hear you talk. We live here—me, and Joe, and Pet. My name's Emma—Emma Stokes. Come and see me any time, only not just as late as this, because Joe 'll be back directly, and I've got to see to him."

"Yes, I will. I'll be sure to come. I won't forget."

Mildred was turning away, but she paused and asked, "Do you know who the elderly gentleman is that I saw just now in the churchyard? It's a kind face, with longish grey hair, quite curly."

"It'll be one of the doctor's patients. He's got a fresh one, come only two or three days ago, and Joe saw him. Joe said he was exactly like that. I hope he isn't very ill, poor gentleman."

"What is the matter with his patients generally?"

"Different sorts of things," Mrs. Stokes replied. "Sometimes it's what the doctor calls 'a mental case.' But I shouldn't think it was that this time. Joe said the gentleman looked as if he was all right in his head. Sometimes they only want change and rest, and a bit of extra looking after."

"No, I shouldn't think it could be that with him," remarked Mildred. "Well, good-bye. I'll come again some day before very long."