Over the Line
I was at my painting early the next morning, for the sun was shining brightly, and the air was wonderfully clear. My portrait of little Jack sitting in the boat promised to be a great success. As I was hard at work upon it that day, I heard a voice behind me.
“I never thought my little lad would figure in the Royal Academy,” said the voice.
It was the voice of Jack’s father, Mr. Christie—the voice which had moved me so deeply, the voice which had made me tremble, only the day before. Even as he spoke I felt inclined to run away, lest he should ask me again that terrible question which had been ringing in my ears ever since. Even as I talked to him about my picture, and even as he answered in pleasant and friendly tones, through them all and above them all came the words which were burnt in upon my memory: “What are the depths, the fearful depths, to which you are being drawn?”
“I hope my children are not troublesome to you,” he said.
“Oh, no,” I answered; “I love to have them here, and Jack and I are great friends. Do you know,” I went on, “he took me into your study the other day? I am afraid I was taking a great liberty; but the little man would hear of no refusal—he wanted me to see the old barrel-organ.”
“What, my dear old organ!” he answered. “Yes, Jack is nearly as fond of it as his father is.”
“His father?” I replied, for it seemed strange to me that a man of his years should care for what appeared to me scarcely better than a broken toy.
“That organ has a history,” he said, as he noticed my surprise. “If you knew the history, you would not wonder that I love it. I owe all I am in this world, all I hope to be in the world to come, to that poor old organ. Someday, when you have time to listen, perhaps you may like to hear the story of the organ.”
“Thank you,” I said. “The sooner the better.”
“Then come and have supper with us tonight. Nellie will be very pleased to see you, and the children will be in bed, and we shall have plenty of time and quiet for story-telling.”
I accepted his invitation gratefully, for September had come, and the evenings were growing dark, and my time hung somewhat heavily on my hands. Polly, I think, was not sorry when she heard I was going out, for Duncan was away in the boat fishing, and little John was so feverish and restless that she could not put him down even for a moment.
The cottage looked very bright and pretty when I arrived, and they gave me a most kind welcome. A small fire was burning in the grate, for the evenings were becoming chilly. The bay window was hung with India-muslin curtains, tied up with amber ribbon, the walls were adorned with photographs framed in oak, the supper table was covered with a snowy cloth, and a dainty little meal was laid out with the greatest taste and care, while in the center was a china bowl, containing the leaves of the creeper which covered the house, interspersed with yellow bracken and other beautiful leaves, in every varied shade of their autumn glory. Jack’s mother was evidently a woman of taste. She had a quiet, gentle face, almost sad at times when it was at rest. But she had Jack’s eyes and Jack’s bright smile, which lighted up her face, as a burst of brilliant sunshine will stream suddenly down a dark valley, and make it a perfect avenue of light.
I enjoyed the company of both husband and wife exceedingly, and as we sat round the table and chatted over our supper all feeling of constraint passed away, and I no longer heard the words of that question which had so troubled me all day long. He did not mention the object for which I had come while the meal was going on. We talked of Runswick Bay and its surroundings, of the fishermen and their life of danger; we spoke of the children, and of my picture, of my hopes with regard to the Royal Academy, and of many other interesting topics.
Then the cloth was removed, and we drew near the fire. I had just said to him, “Now for your story,” and he was just beginning to tell it, when, as I sat down in an armchair which Nellie had placed for me by the fire, my eye fell upon a photograph which was hanging in a frame close to the fireplace. I started from my seat and looked at it. Surely I could not be mistaken! Surely I knew every feature of it, every fold of the dress, every tiny detail in the face and figure. It was the counterpart of a picture which hung opposite my bed in my London home.
“However on earth did you get that?” I cried. “Why, it’s my mother’s picture!”
I think I have never felt more startled than I did at that moment. After all the thoughts of yesterday, after my dream of last night, after all my recollection of my mother’s words to me, and her prayers for me—after all this, to see her dear eyes looking at me from the wall of the house of this unknown man, in this remote, out-of-the-world spot, almost frightened me.
I did not realize at first that my host was almost as much startled as I was.
“Your mother!” he repeated. “Your mother! Surely not! Do you mean to tell me,” he said, laying his hand on my arm, “that your name is Villiers?”
“Of course it is,” I said. “Jack Villiers.”
“Nellie, Nellie,” he cried, for she had gone upstairs to the children, “come down at once. Who do you think this is, Nellie? You will never guess. It is Jack Villiers, the little Jack you and I used to know so well. Why, do you know,” he said, “our own little Jack was named after you. He was indeed, and we haven’t heard of you for years—never since your dear mother died.”
I was too much astonished at first to ask him any questions, and he was too much delighted to explain where and how he had known me. But after a time, when we had recovered ourselves a little, we drew our chairs round the fire, and he began his story.
“I was a poor little street urchin once,” he said. “A forlorn boy with no one to love him or to care for him. But I made friends with an old man in the attic of the lodging-house who had a barrel-organ.”
“That barrel-organ?” I asked.
“The very same,” he said, “and he loved it as if it was a child. When he was too ill to take it out himself, I took it for him, and that was how I first saw your mother.”
“Was she married then?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a smile. “She was quite a little girl, about the age of our Marjorie. She used to run to her nursery window as soon as she heard me begin to play. I let her turn the organ one day, and she said she liked all the tunes, but she liked ‘Home, Sweet Home’ the best of all.”
“Did she?” I said. “Yes, I have often heard her sing it; she sang me to sleep with it many a time.”
“As I played it,” he went on, “she would speak to me of the Home, Sweet Home above. Child as she was, she knew the way to that home, and she soon found out that I knew nothing about it. ‘You can’t go to heaven if you don’t love Jesus, organ boy,’ she said, and the tears ran down from her dear little eyes as she said it.
“I could not forget those words, and I was determined to find out the way to the home of which she spoke.
“My old master was dying; he had only another month to live, and for his sake I must learn quickly the way to be saved. I attended a mission service, and I learned first that no sin can enter the gates of the Heavenly City. But I learned more. I learned that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth from all sin.
“Your mother taught me a prayer one day when I went to see her. I have said that prayer, morning and evening, ever since. She gave me a bunch of snowdrops, tied up with dark green leaves, and she told me to say as I looked at them, ‘Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’ (Psalm 51:7)”
He stopped for a minute or two after this, and gazed into the fire; the memory of those old days had stirred him deeply.
“Please go on,” I said, for I longed to hear more.
“She came to our attic after that with her mother; they came to see my old master, and she was pleased to see the snowdrops. She told me that day, that if I would only say her prayer I should be sure to go to Home, Sweet Home.
“Very soon after this my old master died, and on the very day that I was following him to the grave I saw my poor little friend—your mother, Jack—in a funeral coach, following her mother to the same place. Then after that she went abroad, but she did not forget the poor organ boy. She told her father about me, and he sent money for my education, and had me trained to be a city missionary in the east of London, to work among the very people among whom I had lived. All I am now I owe to your grandfather.
“I did not meet your mother after this for many years, not until she was married to the clergyman in whose parish I worked.
“Strange to say, we met one day in my old attic, the very attic where my poor old master had died. She had gone there to visit a sick woman, and as I went in she was reading to her from the very Testament out of which her mother had read to my old master, when she had come to see him in that place, fifteen years before.
“Soon after this we were married, Nellie and I, and it was your dear mother who made our little home bright and pretty for us, and who was there to welcome us to it. How we loved her then, how we love her still!
“When you were quite a tiny child, she would bring you to see us, and Nellie used often to say you were the dearest, prettiest child she had ever known!”
“I don’t remember it,” I said.
“No, you would be too young to remember it. You were only three years old when your father left London for a parish in the country, and soon after came the news of his death, and only a year or so later we heard your mother was gone, too. It was a sorrowful day, Jack, when that news came.
“We often wondered about you. We heard that you had gone to live with an aunt, but we did not even know her name. We tried to find out more, but we knew no one in the place where you lived, and we never heard what had become of you.”
“How strange that I should have been brought here to meet you!” I said.
“No, not strange,” he said reverently; “it is the hand of God.”
And then—I could not help it—I laid my head on my arm as I stood against the mantelpiece, and I sobbed like a child.
He did not speak for some minutes, and then he put his arm round me as tenderly as my mother could have done, and said, “What is it, Jack? Is it talking of your mother that has upset you so?”
“No,” I said, “it isn’t that—I love to talk of her; I love to hear of her; everything she said is precious to me. It isn’t that.”
“What then?” he said. “What troubles you, Jack?”
“It’s the thought that I shall never see her again,” I said. “I know I shall not. She went one way and I am going another.”
“Why not turn round and go her way, Jack?” he said cheerily.
“Oh, I can’t,” I said. “It’s no use—I can’t turn. There are too many hands on the wrong end of the rope. I’ve been miserable ever since I heard you talk of it. I could not sleep last night for thinking of it. ‘What are the depths, the fearful depths, to which you are being drawn?’ Those words have never left me, night or day, since you uttered them. I have tried to shake them off, but I can’t.”
“Don’t attempt to shake them off,” he said. “Oh, Jack, don’t try to do it, for they are the voice of the Spirit of God. But listen tonight to the One who is calling you. ‘Come over the line, it is only a step—I’m waiting, My child, for thee.’* ”
“I wish I could,” I said.
“You can do it, and you must do it, Jack,” he said firmly, “before you leave this room.”
“Before I leave this room?”
“Yes, this very instant,” he said.
“But how can I do it? I don’t know how to cross,” I said.
“You are no dead, lifeless weight on the rope, like a boat or a handkerchief. You have a will of your own, and it remains with you to decide which way you want to be drawn—God-ward, Christ-ward, heaven-ward, or to the fearful depths of which I spoke. God is drawing you very strongly now, but He never forces a man against his will. He puts in your hands the power to decide on which side of the line you will be. Which is it to be, Jack?”
“Well,” I said, “I will think it over.”
“So many have said, and their desire to cross the line has cooled down, and they have been lost.”
“I’ll come and have a talk with you another day, later on in the week, if we can make it convenient.”
“So Felix said, ‘When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee,’ (Acts 24:25) but Felix never did send. He never crossed the line, but he was drawn over to the fearful depths.”
“Well, suppose we say tomorrow. It’s late now, and you’re tired, I know, and—”
“God says today. ‘To day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.’ (Hebrews 3:15) ‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’ (2 Corinthians 6:2)”
“Tell me how I can come,” I said.
“ ‘Come over the line, it is only a step.’ There you have it,” he answered. “The Lord calls you, and you have not far to go. It is only a step. He stands in this room close to you. He holds out His arms to you. He does not compel you. He does not force you forward. He calls, and He waits to receive you. Jack, will you come?”
“Yes, I will,” I said earnestly. “I will come.”
We knelt down together, and I cannot remember the words he said, but I know that whenever I read in the Gospels those words in the first chapter of St. John, “He brought him to Jesus,” (John 1:42) I think of that night. I do not think that Peter and Andrew felt the Lord Jesus more near them in the booth by the side of the Jordan than we felt Him in that little room in Runswick Bay.
I know He was there, and I know something more—I know that I came to Him. And I know that that night, before we rose from our knees, I crossed the line, and I was able henceforth to take my place among the glad, thankful people who can say, humbly and yet confidently, “We know that we have passed from death unto life.” (1 John 3:14)