Squib and His Friends

Seppi’s face looked very grave and rather sad.

“Ann-Katherin does not know,” he answered very softly. “I couldn’t tell her; she would cry so. I don’t speak about it to any one: but I am sure mother knows. She cries often, but she doesn’t talk about it.”

Squib felt a little puzzled.

“But isn’t she rather glad too? Doesn’t she like to think of having your father always there, and his not going so much up the dangerous mountains?”

It was Seppi’s turn to look puzzled now.

“I don’t quite understand you, little Herr.”

Squib turned a bright look upon him.

“Why, about the hotel, you know, which your father wants to have down in that other valley where there isn’t one. Weren’t you talking of that all the time? I thought he had told you all about it, only it was a secret.”

Seppi’s bewildered face astonished Squib not a little.

“I don’t know what you mean, little Herr.”

“Didn’t he ever tell you about it, then? – or your mother?”

Seppi shook his head.

“I’ve never heard anything about it.”

“Then what did you mean about going away?”

The children looked into each other’s eyes, and Squib felt a sudden stab of pain somewhere which he did not understand.

“Tell me what you meant,” said Seppi after a pause. “Why did you think I was going away? And what do you mean about a hotel?”

Squib looked eager, yet doubtful.

“I’m not quite sure if I ought to tell. If I do, it must be a great secret, Seppi.”

“Oh, I won’t tell; but I should like to know. It would be something to think about when I am thinking of them all. Will you please tell me, little Herr?”

“Do you know what a hotel is, Seppi?”

“Yes, father talks about them sometimes. People stop there and have their food and beds. Father once said that he should like to keep one himself. It paid very well when it was well managed, and he should like the life. But mother said it was no use thinking of it, because they should never have the money.”

“Oh, then you do know!” cried Squib eagerly. “I’m so glad; because I think perhaps your father will have the money quite soon; and then he’ll begin to build, and perhaps by next spring you will all go and live there. It would not be your own valley, of course, but Uncle Ronald says it’s one of the most beautiful valleys in all Switzerland.”

Seppi’s eyes were shining now with excitement.

“Oh, how wonderful! Would they really! Oh, how do you know about it? Mother doesn’t know, I’m sure; I should know if she did. How can father get the money? – and how do you know, little Herr?”

Squib nodded his head sagely. He wasn’t going to be betrayed into any premature disclosures, nor did he quite know how people were going to manage matters; but he knew that what his father took in hand always was carried through somehow, and so he had no doubts at all.

“My father told me,” he answered proudly. “My father is a very good man, and he knows a great deal. Your father was his guide, and he saved his life; and mother and they all think that you saved me from being hurt in the storm. That’s what makes them all so interested in it. When my father means a thing to be done, it always is done,” concluded Squib rather grandly, though without any assumption. “He has been a soldier, you know, and has always had people obeying him. Things always come right when he takes them in hand. Everybody says that.”

The lame boy’s eyes were shining brightly.

“Oh, I am so glad! I am so glad!” he whispered. “I didn’t know how to think of leaving mother and Ann-Katherin before; but if they go away somewhere else, and if they have a different home and a different valley, they will not miss me the same way. How good God is to us!” added the boy with sudden vehemence. “Just as Herr Adler says. He does everything we ask Him, and ever so much that we should never have thought of asking. He is good and kind!”

Squib was looking rather disturbed.

“I don’t quite understand you, Seppi. Why do you talk about going away, except to the new home?”

Seppi turned his eyes over towards the mountains, and Squib saw how pinched and thin his face had grown. He began to apprehend the meaning of the words, though he did not fully comprehend them.

“I think I shan’t be here in the spring to go with them,” said the lame boy quietly. “The doctor said last time that another cold would make an end of me. There’s been something wrong here,” touching his chest, “ever since I was all those hours in the ice-cave. Every winter they think it will be then; but I’m sure it’s coming now.”

Squib looked very much awed, but not afraid. The thought of death is not in itself terrible to children. Their hold upon life is not very strong, and their simple faith carries them over all perplexities and misgivings.

“Do you mean you will not get better?” he asked softly.

“I don’t think I can. I feel so very weak, and at night I can’t breathe, and I have to sit up and pant. I am best out on the mountains; but soon I can’t be there any longer. If it were not for mother and Ann-Katherin I think I should be glad. It isn’t good being weak and lame, and not able to do anything like other boys and men. In God’s garden it will not matter. I shall be like the others there.”

“God’s garden!” repeated Squib quickly.

“Yes; I once had a dream about being in God’s garden. I can’t explain how it was; but there was a beautiful garden with mountains all round it, and flowers growing everywhere. And I was one of them; and I knew that the others had been live people once, and had died and been taken there to rest and sleep until the resurrection. And we were all so happy. And presently a whisper ran through that the Lord was coming, and that we were to be ready for Him; and that made me so glad and happy that I awoke before He had come. But I always remember my dream; and once I told it to Herr Adler, and he told me that he knew many good men who had dreamed something very much the same. So when I think of being dead, I never feel as if I should be in a narrow grave in the cold and the dark, but be a flower in God’s garden, just waiting for the Lord to come.”

Squib’s eyes were bright with interest and sympathy.

“That was a nice dream,” he said. “I shall think about that often. I am glad you told it me.”

“I’m glad I’ve talked to you,” said Seppi. “I was feeling rather unhappy before you came, and now I am quite happy again. I think mother and Ann-Katherin would have missed me so if they had stayed always here; but if they go to another place, it will be quite different. They will have a lot of nice things to think of, and that will keep them happy.”

“Will Ann-Katherin mind leaving the valley?”

“I don’t think so if I’m not there. I think she will be glad to go. Ann-Katherin loves the mountains and the goats and everything here, but she likes change too. If there are mountains and pretty things where she is going, I think she would like it better. She would like to see a lot of people; and Peter will be very happy.”

Seppi had so much to talk of and think about that his face quite beamed, and lost its pinched, wistful expression.

“Perhaps he will get better,” thought Squib to himself, as at last he rose and made his way home.

CHAPTER XII.

FAREWELLS

That was the last time that Seppi and Squib sat together upon the knoll beside the fir trees, looking out across the valley at the great range of snow-peaks opposite.

When next Squib found his way there, no Seppi was to be seen. Three days had passed since they had held their talk together about leaving the green valley they both loved, and those three days had been full of interest to the little boy.

For Mr. Lorimer and his father had been making inquiries about the Ernsthausen family, and had established the identity of Seppi’s father with the guide who had served them so faithfully, and had saved Colonel Rutland’s life at the risk of his own. Squib’s story of little Seppi and his patience and goodness touched the heart of his mother very much. Lady Mary had heard much of Seppi during the past weeks; and ever since the storm, when she had been so alarmed for a couple of hours about her son, she had felt great gratitude to the little goat-herd who had so promptly taken him into shelter, and to the whole household in the humble home who had cared for him, and had sent to relieve her anxiety. She entered with much sympathy into Squib’s eager desire to help the family to set up for themselves in the way the father had long desired; and she told Squib that since his father had taken up the matter she was very sure it would all come right in the end.

“May I tell Seppi so?” asked Squib eagerly, and his mother said she thought he might, if Seppi could be trusted to keep the secret for a little while till things were more settled.

“Thank you,” said Squib, “I should like Seppi to have the pleasure of knowing about it and thinking about it beforehand. Mother dear, don’t you think a clever doctor might make Seppi well again? Uncle Ronald was soon made quite well when he came home ill.”

Lady Mary shook her head sorrowfully.

“I am afraid, my darling, from what I hear that poor little Seppi’s days are numbered. But you know that his crippled life here could not be such a very happy one. He would feel his lameness more and more as he grew older, and the Loving Shepherd knows what is best and happiest for His lambs.”

The tears sprang to Squib’s eyes as he heard those words, and he pressed up to his mother’s side.

“Did you feel like that, mother,” he whispered, “about my little brother when he died?”

For that little brother whom he could not remember had always seemed to Squib to belong especially to himself, and his mother’s arms pressed him very close as she answered, —

“That is how I try to think of it now, darling. It was very hard to give him up at the time, but I am quite willing to believe that the Lord knows best, and by-and-by we shall understand all those things which seem so hard to bear now.”

“Yes,” answered Squib quickly and earnestly, “when the Lord comes to make all things new, and His Kingdom begins to come. Oh, how I wish it would come quickly!”

The mother looked earnestly into her child’s face and saw that the boy’s eyes were fixed intently upon the blue distance before them. Some new thought was struggling in his mind.

“Mother,” he said, “do you know that there is a little bit of this earth in glory now? I don’t quite know how to say it, but that’s just what it is. One little bit has been glorified and has its resurrection life already. Did you know?”

Lady Mary slightly shook her head.

“I do not quite know what you mean, dear child. I suppose it is something Herr Adler told you?”

“Yes,” answered Squib; “it’s so beautiful and so interesting. Mother, it’s the Lord Himself who has been glorified. You know He rose out of the grave with the same body as He had on earth, which was made of the earth – only in resurrection it was different. But it was the same body, for there were the marks of the nails and the spear; and that body has been taken up to heaven and glorified, so that just a little bit of our earth is glorified in Heaven now. Mother, Herr Adler says that when the Lord has begun a promised work, it is a sure and certain pledge that He will finish it when the right time has come. And so we know that by-and-by we shall have resurrection bodies given us, and shall be glorified too. He says that that is what David meant when he said: ‘When I awake after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.’ You see he knew about it somehow, even though Jesus hadn’t come then.”

Lady Mary kissed her child lovingly.

“I am glad you had so many beautiful talks with Herr Adler,” she said. “Always try to remember what he taught you, dear.”

“I will,” answered Squib earnestly; “I think he is the goodest man I have ever seen.”

And having kissed his mother, Squib went off to find Seppi, but the knoll was not occupied to-day.

“He will be nearer home,” said Squib, preparing to descend, and sure enough he came upon his companion lower down the valley, but on the far side of the bridge.

The face raised to greet him was bright, although it looked very sharp and worn; and there was creeping over it, under the brown, a curious grey look.

“Little Herr, I thought you would come to me. I tried to get to our knoll, but I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?” asked Squib with solicitude.

“I felt so queer, and all my breath went away. I had to sit down; but I thought if you came you would come down. I don’t seem to have any room to breathe if I go uphill.”

“Poor Seppi!” said Squib pitifully; “does it hurt much?”

“Oh no! I don’t have any pain. And I’m used to it at night. Generally I am pretty comfortable by day. Little Herr, we had a visit yesterday from a friend of father’s.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, and he says father is rather disturbed, because he has heard that somebody has been talking about buying the piece of ground he wants so much for the hotel he has been thinking of so long. He has heard that a gentleman has been inquiring about it.”

Squib’s face beamed all over.

“That’s my father,” he said in an important whisper. “My father has such good ideas. He set somebody to ask about the land before he came back here. I suppose that is what your father has heard of. But he need not really mind; for if my father buys the bit of land, he will give it to your father, I know.”

“O little Herr! It seems too good to be true!”

“Oh no; only one of those nice things that grown-up people can do. That’s what I should like to be grown-up for – I should have so many nice plans.”

The boys sat thinking each his own thoughts, and then Squib said, —

“I suppose your mother told you about it, then, because you didn’t know much the other day.”

“Yes, she told me in the night, when I couldn’t go to sleep. We had a nice long talk about lots of things. She talked about father’s plan; but I didn’t tell her what you had told me. I thought it was a secret.”

“I think it is just now, till something has been settled. O Seppi! I wish you and I could go together to see the valley, and make plans about your new home there.”

Seppi looked all round him, up and down his own valley, and away towards the Silent Watchers guarding it on either hand, and said, —

“I think I like this one best. I don’t think I want to go to the other, though I like to think of them there. Little Herr, will you ever go to see it some day, when you are a man?”

“Oh yes!” cried Squib eagerly. “When I’m a man I shall do lots and lots of things. I mean to be a mountaineer for one thing, like Mr. Lorimer, and climb all the mountains that can be climbed, and I shall have your father for my guide, and I shall stay at his hotel, and we shall be great friends. You know he was very brave, and saved my father’s life. I shall never forget that. It’s not the sort of thing one ever does forget.”

Seppi looked very pleased and happy.

“I think father is a very brave man,” he said, “though he never talks about the brave things he does.”

“I don’t think really brave men do,” answered Squib, with decision. “The boys at school say that it’s always the cowards and the bullies who do the bragging and the boasting; the really brave boys don’t have to be always telling of themselves.”

Seppi quite agreed in this, and told a few stories he had heard from others of his father’s prowess, and they drew many happy fancy pictures of the days to come when Squib should become a great mountain climber, and Ernsthausen should go with him right up into the land of cloud and snow, across the blue mysterious glaciers, and ever upwards and onwards to the soaring peaks beyond. Squib’s face flushed with delighted anticipation as he lifted it towards the eternal snows and thought of all the triumphs that lay before him; but presently his expression changed, and putting out his hand he took Seppi’s gently in it, and said, —

“I wish you could go too!”

Seppi smiled without any sadness.

“But, little Herr, I never could climb, you know,” and he looked at his poor, little, shrunken limb.

“I know,” answered Squib quickly, “but I mean I wish that that hadn’t happened to you.”

The little goat-herd looked thoughtfully out before him.

“I’m not sure that I do,” he said.

“O Seppi! what do you mean?”

“I was thinking,” answered Seppi dreamily, “that if I had been strong and active like Peter, perhaps I should not have had the goats to mind. I think Ann-Katherin would have taken them, and I should have worked at home with mother and Peter; and then, you see, I should not have had all those talks with Herr Adler, and I should not have had my drawing; and I should not have had you, little Herr!”

“O Seppi! but to have been strong and well would have made up for that,” said Squib, whose active spirit could not imagine a more terrible loss than that of the power of locomotion.

“I don’t know,” answered Seppi. “I think I am happier than Peter, who is strong and big. I don’t think I want to be anybody else. It’s just as Herr Adler said it would be.”

“What did he say?” asked Squib, with interest.

“It was the first time he came; at least, the first time I can remember about. I was out with the goats. I had not been lame long, and I was often unhappy. I missed the things I had been used to do, and I wanted to do them again. I was crying about it one day, and he saw me, and came and sat down by me and talked. He said such beautiful things.”

“Tell me what they were.”

“Yes; but I can’t make them sound as he does, you know. He first told me about how God had taken care of me down in the ice, and had helped father to get me up safe again; and he said I must not think any more about its being the ice-maidens, because that was nothing but the fancy of people who lived amongst mountains, and that God would never let His children be subject to such beings, even if they had any existence; but when I cried again about being lame, he was kinder still, and told me that it was perhaps because the Lord loved me that He had laid His hand upon me, because it says somewhere that whom He loveth He chasteneth – it is in the Bible.”

Squib nodded his head.

“Yes, I know. I came upon it reading once with mother. I said it seemed like you.”

Seppi’s face flushed with pleasure and gratitude.

“Did you? How kind to think of me, little Herr! Well, I won’t tell you the things of that sort which he said. I expect you know them all yourself; but he told me other things that I had never thought about before. He said that if God took away from us one of our powers, He was always ready to make it up to us by giving us more of another; and that, if we could learn to be submissive, and to take everything He sent us as His gift, we should soon find that we were not the worse, but the better for it!”

“O Seppi – how?”

“Well, I didn’t understand then, but I do now. He told me I must use my eyes if I could not use my legs, and that I should see as many wonderful things going on around me as if I could scour the woods after them; and indeed it’s true. Just sitting still anywhere, and listening and watching is so interesting; and then watching the shapes and the colours of things put it into my head to carve and draw; and that has made me so happy. And then the farmer down in the big thal gave me Moor for my very own, which he never would have done if I hadn’t been lame; and so you see how many, many things I have got by it. And I often think I’ve been happier than Peter, though he is so strong and can go anywhere.”

“Do you think you are?” asked Squib.

“I often think so. Peter doesn’t care a bit to watch the mountains, and he doesn’t know how beautiful they can be. He never listens to what the water says, and he doesn’t know a bit how happy it makes one to see beautiful things and think about how they come to be there. Herr Adler says that if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear, everything in the beautiful world tells us about God and His Kingdom, and I’m sure it does. It has made up for everything to me. I don’t think I want anything different now.”

Squib heaved a little sigh as he said, —

“Well, if you don’t want it different, I’ll try not to want it either. But I can’t help thinking how nice it would be if you could have been my guide some day when we were both men, and I came to stay in your father’s hotel.”

The talk about that hotel was a great amusement and pleasure to the boys in the days to come. Seppi was failing rapidly. He was still able to be out near home with the goats, and Squib would join him almost daily, often with some interesting piece of information about the negotiation of the land purchase, which was going on still. Colonel Rutland was buying the site, Squib presently informed Seppi, and he would then make it over to Ernsthausen as his own. Then, after the sale of the present plot of ground and chalet, the man would have enough with his savings to ask the needful loan from government, and commence the building. It would not take long to run up the modest building he required, and by the following spring he would be able to open it for the use of mountaineers, for whose resort it was mainly to be put up. The children were never tired of talking about it, and by this time the whole family knew what was on foot, and were in a state of excitement and pleasure. Peter was going to realize his dream, and live a wider and more exciting life, not quite so much shut in as now by the limits of the narrow valley. The mother would not be separated from her husband during the summer, and would have congenial occupation at his side; and as for Ann-Katherin, she caught the prevailing excitement without exactly knowing what it was all about, and thought that everything would be delightful, though she could not at all imagine living anywhere but in her own beautiful valley.

Moor was the only member of the household that seemed unhappy at this juncture. Was it that the sensible fellow had a premonition of coming change? or did some instinct tell him that all was not well with his little master? The boys could not tell. All they knew was that the dog was restless and unhappy; that he followed their movements with his eyes in a wistful and imploring manner; that he whined a good deal at night, and was only quieted by being put to sleep upon the foot of Seppi’s bed; and that on the days when Squib failed to appear, he had been known to set off to meet him and hasten him, and not finding him, had come home very dejected, and had been restless and uneasy all day.

“He is so very fond of you,” Seppi often said when telling Squib of this. “I think he likes you next best to me of anybody. He only seems really happy when we are together. Poor Moor! he is such a faithful friend. I do love him so! I think he understands everything I say!”

Squib had been detained at home one whole day, first by a rainy morning, and then by a walk with his father, which had kept him away from the valley where Seppi was half-expecting him. He did not always go, but since his time had begun to get short (for they were to leave the chalet soon), he tried hard to see his friend daily, for he knew that his visits were eagerly looked for, and he sometimes had some interesting bits of news to communicate.

He had planned to start off for the valley next day as soon as ever his early breakfast had been dispatched; but before he was up in the morning – when, in fact, the day was only beginning to brighten in the east – he was awakened by a strange sound of snorting and scuffling just outside the little door-window which opened on his balcony, and he sat up listening with a beating heart and a strange feeling creeping over him, for it was just that sort of noise that Czar used to make when he came up sometimes to suggest that they should have an early walk together. But poor Czar lay in his grave on the hillside. What could this noise mean?

Squib sprang out of bed and pattered across the bare floor in his little night-shirt. He unfastened the bolts and opened the window, when in ran Moor, his coat wet with dew, his eyes full of that unspeakable wistfulness seldom seen in any eyes save those of a dog, and his whole manner full of such an eager intensity of purpose that Squib knew in a moment that something unwonted had happened or was happening.