Partners (17 page)

Then the nurse came in asking Noel to go across the hall and see the old lady again, who had a little basket she wanted to give him; so Noel with a shy little smile followed her, and then Reuben and Gillian were able to talk again about the business in hand without fear of worrying the sensitive child.

Soon after Noel and the nurse returned, the doctor arrived, looked critically at the invalid, touched her pulse, smiled.

"So, little lady, you're sitting up! How long have you been sitting up?"

"The time is almost up, Doctor," said the nurse. "Five minutes yet."

"Well, well, you're standing it pretty well? How do you feel?"

After the doctor was gone, the nurse said it was time to get her patient back into bed.

"And if you want to leave the boy here awhile, he can take a nap over on the cot."

Noel looked up at Reuben with a smile of hesitation.

"But we have to have Sunday school yet," he said in a low tone to his sister.

"That will be all right, Noel," said Reuben reassuringly. "I'll be back in plenty of time for that."

"But really, Mr. Remington, you mustn't feel yourself burdened with everything Noel asks you to do," said Gillian quickly. "Mr. Remington has other things to do, darling," she added, turning to the child.

"He said he would like to," explained the little boy with disappointment in his eyes.

"Why, certainly I would like to," said Reuben. "I'll be back in an hour and a half at the longest. Will that be too long, Nurse? All right, Noel. Here! Can you tell time by the clock?"

"Oh, yes," said Noel.

"Very well, then, when the hands on that clock over there on the bureau point to half past three, you can watch for the sound of my footsteps. Will that be in time for your Sunday school? It may be later than some Sunday schools, of course, but since it's
our
school we can have it when we like, can't we?"

"Oh, yes! That will be nice. And then I can stay with my sister all that time?" asked Noel.

"Yes, if the nurse says so. She will tell you if she wants you to go into the little reception room for a few minutes, but you'll be all right."

"Yes, I will be all right!" And he waved his small hand in parting.

So Reuben went out to his rooming house to get a few things that he needed, and Noel retired to the cot in the corner and obediently closed his eyes.

And about that time in a distant city, an elderly man with a lothario air about him, an uncanny eye, boarded a through train for the East. He gave a quick keen look about him as he swung up the steps, to make sure no one was especially watching him.

The reason for this hasty journey was that when he had gone to the trust company where he had been for several years cashing coupons for a supposedly "invalid" sister, they had mentioned that the sister had a daughter who would come of age in a few weeks now, and that it would be necessary for her to appear in person and go through certain formalities before she could be entitled to receive funds to which she would fall heir. They had asked the uncle to bring her in at once and get the matter settled, but he had told them she was away on a long visit in the far West. He had looked in vain for her in regions round about and to the west, and now the time was getting short. The date of her coming of age was near at hand. He must do something about it.

They had tried to find out her address and had said they would write her themselves, but he had narrowed his sly eyes and given his disarming smile and said she was traveling and he didn't know just where she was going next. He had promised to try and get in touch with her at once and perhaps bring her with him when he came again, and then he had gone his nonchalant way with the booty he had acquired again so easily. If that girl didn't turn up pretty soon, he wouldn't dare to go back, not unless he could think of another good story to tell. Was there some way he could work it out to say that she had been killed in an automobile smashup? Or might he say she went abroad as a Red Cross nurse in the war and was reported missing. Oh, there would surely be a way if he got busy and really thought about it. But of course, the best way was to find her and extract from her somehow a letter to the trust company, or maybe force her to go with him and get the first payment on her own money. Then he could forge a note from her perhaps, ordering them to pay her money to him. Somehow he could work it, he was sure. But he must know where she was. Just last night a boy who used to bring milk to the house when he was living with the Guthries, before Mrs. Guthrie died, had told him in answer to his questioning that he had seen Gillian and the boy boarding a midnight train for the East soon after Mrs. Guthrie had died. Careful inquiry at the railroad station had given him an idea about how far that fifty dollars would have carried the two. So he decided to go east and hunt for her. He really didn't want to get in with the police again and have them inquiring into his affairs. He didn't care to go to jail again. He was getting on well now, had a nice home and a smart wife. No use in risking any trouble. He'd better find the girl and scare her so badly she wouldn't ever dare to bother him again. And if he could work it to get her share of the money her father had left, so much the better. She was young and strong and could work, and he was getting on now in years and it was fair that he should have a little comfort in life.

So he crawled into his comfortable berth in the sleeper, lay down to his crooked plans, and was carried on toward the two young things who were haunted day and night by his memory.

 

 

 

Reuben made a quick trip to his room, got a suitcase full of the things he would need for the trip down to the shore with the Guthries, packed another bag with things he would likely need if he went to Glindenwold for that play, and got still a third group of necessities he would want to have ready to be picked up when he came through the city on his way to that wedding.

After all, it didn't take long, and his mind could be at rest that he could easily prepare in a few minutes for any of the trips he contemplated.

He felt strangely averse to bringing Noel into the picture here at his rooming house for the present, to set gossips' tongues wagging. All sorts of stories could grow up in a place like this from a very small nucleus, and he didn't want Gillian the subject of any such surmises, nor did he care to be talked about himself. Gillian would hate to have it bandied about in the office that she had been under the special supervision of one high in the graces of the firm. So he went in a taxi, and left in a taxi, and saw no one but his landlady, who handed him some mail and asked if he was having a pleasant vacation. He assured her that he was and said he would probably be back in a few days and stop to leave laundry and to get another suitcase.

He arrived back at the hospital a little before the hour he had set for Noel to watch for him and was rewarded by a radiant smile.

"He did come back, Gillian!" he said jubilantly. "He always does what he says he will!"

"That's a pretty big contract for me to live up to, young man!" said Reuben with a grin. "How about yourself? Did you take a nap?"

"Yes, sir, I did!" said the little boy. "
Didn't
I been, Gillian?"

"Yes, he had a good nap, and so did I," responded the sister. "It was so good to have him back and know just where he was!"

"Poor child!" said Reuben sympathetically. "This must all have been very hard for you. But I hope things are going to be better now. I'm sorry I have to take him away from you tonight. But you'll have to remember that your loss is my gain. I'm really getting a great deal from the companionship of your small brother, and I shall always be thankful that it fell to my lot to take you to the hospital."

"Well, so shall I," said Gillian shyly. "I don't believe there are many young men who would have been good enough to take over a small boy and do for him as you have done. It's been wonderful!"

"Now don't start throwing bouquets, or I shall have to say a lot of things about what I think you've been, to do what you have done, for a good deal longer than I have served."

"Yes, but he was my own. All I had left in the world, and he was just nothing to you but a little stranger who hadn't a claim in the world on you!"

"Oh, you're mistaken there!" said Reuben, suddenly serious. "You forget that he is one of God's children. I'll own I had very nearly forgotten God's claim on me, but he promptly made the presence of God in my life very much more real to me than it was before."

His tone was very solemn as he said it and brought tears to the eyes of the sister.

"Oh, I'm glad you told me that," she said shyly, "because I know from my own experience that that is the only worthwhile thing there is in life, when the ordinary joys are taken away."

"Yes, I guess you're right," said Reuben diffidently. This kind of talk was entirely new to him, and he felt very shy about it.

"Come, come, come!" said the nurse, breezing in suddenly. "It's high time this little lady was tucked up in her beddy-bye. Time for you two good people to be going home. And don't come too early in the morning, either. She needs to have a longer rest after all this excitement."

So they went back to the hotel and had Sunday school.

Noel's knowledge of music was a strange combination of sweet old hymns and stirring choruses, and many of them were out of Reuben's knowledge. He had heard the old hymns in his childhood and could remember several verses of some of them, while the tunes seemed in-wrought in his early life. But the modern choruses he had scarcely heard, and Noel had the pleasure of teaching some of them to him. It was remarkable how truly interesting it was to hear the sweet boy-soprano piping out solemn words joyously, as if he meant them.

 

"There is a song in my heart today,

Something I never had;

Jesus has taken my sins away,

O! say, but I'm glad.

 

"O! say, but I'm glad, I'm glad,

O! say, but I'm glad,

Jesus has come and my cup's overrun;

O! say, but I'm glad."

 

"Now you sing it," said Noel.

So Reuben tried it several times, and at last they succeeded in singing it together to Noel's satisfaction.

"Don't you like that song?" asked the boy with a bright look.

"Yes, it's a nice song," said Reuben, "but I was wondering if you understand what it all means."

"Oh, yes, I understand it. My Gillian always tells me all about a new song before we learn it. Don't you know what it means?"

"Why, yes, I think I do, but I'd like to hear you explain it. What do you think that means, 'Something I never had'?"

"Oh, why, that means you've just found out that Jesus loves you and is your Savior, and you're glad because Jesus has forgiven your sins. He took all our sins on Himself, you know, just as if He had sinned them, only He never did sin, you know. And He took them just as if they were His, and then He bore the punishment that ought to have been mine because I'd done the sinning."

Reuben smiled amusedly.

"But what do you know about sinning?" he said. "A child like you! You have no sin in you."

"Oh, yes, I have," said the child earnestly. "Don't you know the Bible says 'all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God'? That's one of the first verses I ever learned, and Gillian told me all about Adam and Eve in the garden and how they broke the only command God had given them, and He had told them if they did, that death would come into the world, to them and to their children, and everybody has had sin in them since then because their fathers and mothers were sinners, and
everybody
had to be punished."

"But what do you call sin? I don't believe you've ever stolen or killed anybody, or even told lies."

"Oh, those things aren't all He meant by sin. The very worst thing of all, the thing that makes people sin, is that they do not believe God."

"Believe God?" queried Reuben, perplexed. These great truths from the mouth of a mere babe were perplexing!

"Why, yes, believe that Jesus is God and that He died in your place, and believe that He's your own Savior. Because it wouldn't make any difference how much Jesus died for us, if we didn't
take
Him. It wouldn't do us any good, you know, like as if when you bought that picture book for me and gave it to me, then I had laid it down on the counter as if I didn't care anything about it and went off and left it. It wouldn't do me any good."

"I see," said Reuben, his eyes suddenly sober, startled that even a child could teach a great truth like that.

Then Noel suddenly looked at him with a troubled gaze.

"Don't you believe that?" he asked in a worried voice. "Aren't you saved? Didn't you take Him for your Savior the way Gillian and I did?"

Reuben was suddenly embarrassed.

"Oh, why, yes, I
think
I did; I'm sure I did when I was a little boy, only I haven't been walking very close to Him lately. But yes, I
believe
."

Noel gave a sigh of relief.

"That's nice," he said happily. "I'm glad you're saved. I wouldn't like to think that perhaps you wouldn't be in heaven when we get there. Now, let's sing another song. Let's sing 'Step by Step.' "

So Noel said over the words, and Reuben jotted them down in shorthand, and then together they sang, Noel's voice leading.

 

"Step by step I'll follow Jesus,

Hour by hour I'm in His care,

Day by day He walks beside me,

Through the years I'll know He's there.

 

"He can still the mighty tempest,

He can calm the troubled sea,

He the waters trod, He's the Son of God,

He's the one who always walks with me."

 

They had a brief closing prayer time, and then the session was declared over for the day. Reuben lifted up his head and found a mistiness in his eyes. He felt God had been there in the room and stood beside that little boy who was leading him in a new-old way that his mother had taught him years ago, and his heart went out to the child with a thrill of real love. He felt like thanking God that He had sent this little child to abide with him for a few days and call his thoughts back to a way that had been his in the past. Surely it must be that God had arranged things this way, that his vacation that had been planned in such a different way had gone all awry, just that he might get into close touch with God once more. Was that it?