“High in the heart of heaven above,
Before the great eternal throne,
Christ hears thy half-unspoken prayer
As though thou went His only one.”
“What think you, Greta? Is the nest too full already, have your hands too much to do, or could we make room for one more?”
Greta looked up with startled eyes, then, rising from her seat, went over to her father, and gazed questioningly into his face.
“What do you mean, father?" she asked.
“Just this, dear. My French patient who has just died, has left a little daughter. He will be buried this afternoon, and I would be loth to let her go back again to the inn, where he died. He was a stranger here, passing through on a journey; it will take time to send word to her friends, and arrange for her future.”
The doctor's lean, dark face looked a deeper shade of thought in the firelight. "Eventually they will seek her. It is not money she needs, but a home—and love. His last troubled thoughts were for his little one, and I were fain to do for her as I would someone would do for my little maid in such an hour of need. What think you, Greta, shall we e'en make room for her in our noisy brood?”
He looked down into her face with a smile. Greta's answering smile was a little rueful.
Dr. Jules Morand was a familiar figure in Geneva, and his keen, clear cut face was a welcome sight in many a Genevan household, but nowhere was he so welcome, so dearly loved as in his own home.
He was a widower, with a family of five lively, bonny boys and girls, of whom Greta was the eldest and her father's little housekeeper and right hand.
She was a dark-eyed girl of fifteen, with a frank, laughing face, that always kept a cheery smile for her father when he came in late and weary. Her post of housekeeper, nurse governess, and mender in general was no sinecure; but though she sometimes openly wondered if such hungry, noisy, mischievous, and destructive children were to be found anywhere else, she was secretly very proud of her bonny brown charges, and however tired she might be, the nightly chat with father, when the others were in bed, made up for all the trials of the day.
She forgot then how hard it was sometimes to make both ends meet—for Dr. Morand's patients were not all of the most profitable kind—or how quickly clothes wore out and furniture grew shabby, and crockery would break, and how rapidly meals vanished before the onslaught of hungry boys; but if the memory of these things came back to her clearly enough as she stood silent before her father in the firelight that November afternoon, it was not that that made her hesitate.
'"I will do my best, father," she faltered, at length.
No one knew what the little simple sentence cost her, though the physician guessed a little as he kissed her.
“My brave girl," he said, gently. "I knew you would.”
The words went some way towards comforting her, but not very far. He went out as he spoke; he was going to the burial of his patient as Greta guessed, and when he returned the stranger girl—this foreigner—would be with him.
Greta fled upstairs, stormy tears in her eyes, to a dimly-lighted garret high up in the roof. It was a favorite resort of the Morand children; here they spent long, glorious hours on wet days, playing games of their own invention. Here they imparted secrets to each other of breathless importance, and planned new and delightful mischief.
But the window was the dearest spot of all. From it one could look out over the gabled roofs right away to the blue waters of the lake and the mountains beyond, even sometimes to the white and distant outline of Mont Blanc, grandest of all.
Greta loved that window; often when her burdens grew too heavy, when the children teased, and things in general went wrong—such days as will come to even the best of little housekeepers of fifteen— she would steal up thither, and the majestic beauty of it all would somehow calm her fretted spirit.
But to-day she had no eyes for the beauty around.
“I have promised and I will do my best," she whispered, clenching her little brown hands. "But oh, father, father, dear, why did you ever ask me? We have been so happy together, and now she will come and spoil it all! And not even a Swiss girl, but a fine French demoiselle, who will look down on our plain, simple ways and despise and mock us. And when the little ones are in bed, she will still be there, and I shall never have father to myself, and our lovely long talks will be over. Oh, it is cruel, and I hate her!”
She leaned her elbows on to the window ledge, and rested her chin on her hands, keeping her eyes obstinately away from her much-loved lake, and to the courts below.
There she remained, lost in gloomy thoughts, till a clatter of little feet on the wooden staircase brought her back to home and duty matters.
“Greta! Greta; where are you?" clamored two little voices, then as the door flew open, "Look, Greta, what I have got.”
The two tiny figures were falling over each other in their eagerness, as they waved triumphantly a tiny book. "Look, Greta, do look.”
Greta came forward, and held out her hand. Books were still something of a rarity in 1532, and such a book as this she had never seen. She turned the pages over curiously. The New Testament in French, printed at Lyons; what could it mean?
“Where gat ye this, children?" she demanded.
“Master Froment gave it to us," came both together. "He had promised it to the first who could read a verse therein, and Irene was first of all.”
Greta looked down encouragingly at the third little figure that had followed the others into the room.
“Bravo, Irene," she said. "Now see if thou canst read one to me.”
She opened the book at random, and Irene began to read very slowly and deliberately, and with a little help from her elder sister: "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Greta started a little. What words ere these that went home to the very heart with such strange power? Love God, she did try to love Him, she did try to do her very best to appease His anger, but this said: "Not that we loved God, but that He loved us.”
This was passing strange. He loved us—loved us—God who was so holy, so terrible in His anger, so unapproachable in His Majesty. Could this be true? It was not what the priests taught, it was not what she had learned in her own schooldays at the convent. But she had heard strange stories of Master Anthony Froment, who had appeared so mysteriously in Geneva at the end of October, and had opened a school for children at the Golden Cross.
Many of their friends were surprised, not to say scandalized, she knew, at her father's allowing the children to go, but he did in common with many others who were dissatisfied with the rule of the priests. The children themselves were perfectly enchanted with the new teacher and his school, and it would have been a task beyond Greta's powers to keep them away, even if she had not been too loyal to her father to desire to do so.
But Irene read on: “Beloved if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
Greta shut the book hastily. These words also had gone home. They conjured up the image of the coming unwelcome guest. They recalled too clearly her own words, "I hate her, I must hate her.”
“We must wait and see what father says," she interrupted, firmly. "It may be he will not approve that ye should have this book to read from. Ye must wait till I shall ask him.”
And she led the way downstairs. The little ones were inclined to resent being bereft of their treasure so soon, so, to divert their minds, Greta unfolded the news of the newcomer, which was received with acclamation, and as she moved about, making the necessary preparations for the additional member of the household, three eager little helpers accompanied her everywhere, plying her with innumerable questions and hindering much in their well-meant efforts to help.
But a hush fell on the little chattering tongues when, in the dusk of the November evening, Dr. Morand came back.
He came in so quietly that no one heard him till he was actually in the room, and one of the little group gathered round Greta, who was telling them a story, turned and saw him, Dr. Morand drew forward the little, clinging figure beside him, and the firelight revealed a slip of a girl, with small, clear-cut features, a pale olive skin, a wealth of brown hair, and dark eyes so full of pain, of courage, and resolve, that Greta forgot suddenly all the anger and prejudice of the last few hours, and came quickly towards them with outstretched hands.
“This is my eldest girl, Béril," the physician said, "Greta, my right hand and comforter, who takes care of us all. I want you two to love each other well. And here are my two boys, Ulric"—as a tall boy of twelve picked himself up from the hearthrug and came forward—"and Peter, and then our two youngest, Irene, who is going to be the scholar of the family, and little Aimee, our baby. Why, Aimee, you are not afraid, are you?”
For Aimee had paused in her run, at the sight of a huge dog that had suddenly plunged unceremoniously into their midst, and made its way with a threatening growl to Béril's side. He altogether upset the two little ones in his onslaught, and was now leaping up upon the girl in a paroxysm of delight and satisfaction.
Béril threw her arms round the dog's neck with a cry of rapture.
“Oh, Bruno! dear faithful old Bruno, you have found me after all," she sobbed. "I thought I had lost you. Oh, I am so glad!”
“Mind, mademoiselle," Greta said quickly, "he is bleeding. The blood is on your sleeve. Take care.”
“Oh, he has been bitten!" Béril exclaimed. "We left him tied up at the inn while we went to—to—to," her quivering lips refused to utter the word and she left it unsaid, "and when we got back he had gone. The landlord said he was like a thing demented, and when at length he broke loose no one dared stop him. But how has he found us? I know not, nor where he has been, though it is clear he has been attacked and has fought.”
“It was Gerard who brought him—Bruyere's Gerard," supplemented Ulric, who, boy-like, had been outside to investigate. "He found the dog with the broken rope round his neck and guessed he had broken loose. That dog of Brevet's was fighting him, and the guard would have killed him as a stray dog, only Gerard said he knew the owner. The dog recognized him, too, so the guard let him be taken away.”
“It is strange he would come with a stranger," Béril said, and whispered a shy little request to the doctor, who nodded with a smile.
“Bid the lad come in, Ulric," he said.
Ulric's task was no easy one, but he succeeded at last, and came back followed by a figure familiar to all the young Morands—so familiar that it had lost its pathos—a tall, awkward boy, overgrown and shabbily dressed in thin pitifully insufficient clothing. There was a stoop in his broad shoulders, his lips were set firmly, with a rather bitter expression, his really fine eyes had a gloomy look, as if he had found the world—as indeed he had—a very dark and bitter place, and resented it. Pinched with hunger, blue with cold, worn with work beyond his strength and age, he looked strangely out of keeping with Béril's dainty little figure, and the cozy, picturesque room.
But Béril held out her hand. "Thank you so much," she said. "You do not know what you have done. Bruno is my only old friend, and I had lost him but for you. I remember you now, and I know why Bruno let you touch him. It was you who found us in all our trouble, and who brought Dr. Morand to—my father. Oh, I will be happy to-night since Bruno is found. You will let me keep him, Dr. Morand, Greta will not mind?”
But Greta was already making friends with the dog herself, and smiled her answer.
Béril slipped something into the boy's thin, hard hand. "I cannot thank you enough," she said, softly. "But we shall remember—Bruno and I.”
The boy turned away with a silent gesture of thanks, and Greta, at a hint from her father, led Béril to her own room, a huge apartment, where the little white bed, newly put up, made no perceptible difference in the space.
“Father thought you would rather be with us," Greta explained.
The girl stole up to her and kissed her almost timidly.
“You are all so kind to me," she said, wistfully, "and your father—I think he is the best man I have ever known. I will try not to—not to spoil your home, but you will forgive me if at first I cannot be so brave and gay as the rest of you, won't you?”
She crept away to bed almost directly the evening meal was over, and when, an hour or two later, Greta followed, the little white bed was so silent that she concluded Béril was asleep.
It was hours after that she was awakened by the sound of sobs—slow, smothered, long-drawn sobs.
Greta crept in the moonlight to the little French girl's side.
“Béril," she pleaded, “don't cry. It was all a mistake. We will love you, we will be glad to have you with us.”
Béril put her arm round the girl's neck and hid her face on her shoulder.
The sobs grew less at length.
“Greta, do you always keep your promises?" she demanded, suddenly.
“Always," said Greta, promptly.
Béril was sitting up in bed now, her hands clasped round her knees, and the moonlight falling on her small, white face, and the wealth of hair that fell about her.
“Because I have given a promise," she went on. "A promise to one who is dead—and I know not how I can keep it.”
“Tell father about it," Greta said, awed by something that trembled in the girlish voice and face, beyond her ken. "He will help you.”
But Béril shook her head.
“That is the worst of it all," she said. “I cannot tell anyone— no, not even your father. There is no one to help me, and I am only fifteen—and I know so little. What can one do, Greta, when one has given a solemn promise, when one has undertaken—oh, such a great task—and one does not even know how to begin?”
“The Saints," faltered Greta, in a less confident tone than that in which her last suggestion had been made. “The Holy Mother.”
“I have prayed to them, oh, again and again," Béril said, piteously. "I begged them not to let my father die, oh, and I gave such presents and promises. But what good was it? He is dead, and they did not hear. Nobody cares.”
A memory came back to Greta, and she spoke almost involuntarily.
“Béril, I think perhaps Somebody cares," she whispered. "I think perhaps God cares—God Himself.”
Béril looked at her speechless with amazement.
“At least the Bible says so," she went on, desperately. “Irene read it to me out of her Testament. I thought, perhaps, father would be angry, as the priests forbid us to read it. But father says, perhaps the Bible will tell us more about God than the priests. He says, may be it is the priests who have been wrong all this while, and the Book will put us right. It said this, I remember quite well: 'Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.' So you see it must be true, and there is Someone who cares.”