Jeff Benson, or the Young Coastguardsman, R. M. Ballantyne [best fiction novels .txt] 📗

by the use of his talents, or inherits it from his father, or has it sent to him unexpected, like mine—he holds it all in trust, to be used for the glory of God and the good of men. Now, cut along, secretary.”

“This,” said Jeff, “is the plan of the People’s Free Library. The purchase of the site was effected last week, and the building is to be commenced next month.”

“Ay, and the Prince of Wales is coming to lay the foundation stone,” cried the captain; “leastwise I’ve asked him to do it, and no doubt he’ll come if he’s got time. But look here, Molly,” he added, becoming impatient and opening out all the plans at once—“here you’ve got the lecture-hall an’ the gymnasium, an’ the church, an’ the ragged school—all ship-shape—an’ what d’ye think this is? Explain it, secretary.”

“This is a plan of two cottages exactly the shape and size of this one in which we sit, but with a few more rooms and out-houses behind. The empty space between them represents the site of this cottage. The one on the right is intended for Captain Millet. That on the left for—”

“For the secretary and his wife,” cried the captain again, taking up the discourse. “An’ look here, what d’ye think the double lines in pencil ’tween your cottage an’ mine means?”

“A wash-house, perhaps.”

“A wash’us,” repeated the captain, with contempt. “No; that’s a passage from one house to the other, so as you an’ I can visit comfortably in wet weather. There’s a door in the middle with two locks, one on each side; so that if either of us should chance to be in the dumps, we’ve got only to turn the key on our own side. But the passage ain’t in the plan, you see. It’s only a suggestion. Then, Rosebud, what d’ye think that thing is atop of my cottage?”

“It—it looks like a—a pepper-box,” replied Rose, with some hesitation.

“Pepper-box!” repeated the captain, in disgust; “why, it’s a plate-glass outlook, where I can sweep the horizon with my glass all round, an’ smoke my pipe in peace and comfort, and sometimes have you up, my girl, to have a chat about old times. But that’s not all, Molly. Here’s a letter which you can put in your pocket an’ read at your leisure. It says that the tin mine in which you have shares has become so prosperous that you could sell at ten or twenty times the price of your original shares; so,—you see, you are independent of me altogether as to your livelihood. Now, old girl, what d’ye think of all that?”

The captain threw himself back in his chair, wiped his brow and looked at his sister with an air of thorough satisfaction.

“I think,” returned Miss Millet slowly, “that God has been very good to us all.”

“He has, sister, He has; and yet the beginning of it all did not seem very promising.”

The captain cast a glance at Jeff as he spoke. The youth met the glance with a candid smile.

“I know what you think, father,” he said. “You and I are agreed on that point now. I admit that what appears to be evil may be made to work for good.”

“True, Jeff,” returned the captain; “but I have lived long enough to see, also, that the opposite holds good—that things which are questionably good in themselves sometimes work out what appears to be evil. For instance, I have known a poor, respectable man become suddenly and unexpectedly rich, and the result was that he went in for extravagant expenditure and dissipation which ended in his ruin.”

“But that,” said Miss Millet quickly, “was because he did not accept the gift as from God to be used in His service, but misused it.”

“True, Molly, true; and such will be my fate if I am not kept by the Holy Spirit from misusing what has been given to me.”

The Rosebud opened not her lips, only her ears, while this conversation was going on; but the next day, seated on a stool at Jeff’s feet, with her fair little hands clasped on his knee and looking up in his kind, manly face, she said—

“I wonder, Jeff, what auntie would say if, instead of working out such pleasant consequences to us, all these things had ended only in what we term disaster, and bad luck, and poverty, and death—as happens so often to many people.”

“I wonder, too, my Rosebud,” returned Jeff. “Suppose we go and put the question to her.”

Accordingly they went, and found the quiet old lady busy, as usual, knitting socks for the poor.

“Now, auntie,” said Jeff, after stating the question, “if everything had turned out apparently ill for us—according to what men usually call ill—would you still hold that everything had really turned out well?”

“Certainly I would, Jeff, on the simple ground that God is good and cannot err, though He has many and strange methods of bringing about His ends. You can prove it by taking an extreme case. Go to one of the early martyrs, who lost not only property, and health, and friends, and liberty, but finally his life at the stake. The unbeliever’s view would be that everything had gone against him; his own view, that God had put on him great honour in counting him worthy to suffer and die for Jesus; and you could not doubt his sincerity when you heard his hymns of praise on the way to the stake—ay, even in the fire.”

“Then, whatever happens—good or bad—auntie,” said Rose, “you would say, ‘All is well.’”

“I would believe it, dear, whether I had courage to say it or not. If strength were given, I would certainly acquiesce, and say, ‘Thy will be done.’”

“Amen! Long may we live to say that, Molly,” said Captain Millet, entering the cottage at that moment. And the captain’s prayer was granted; for he and Molly—and the ex-coastguardsman with his Rosebud lived many a year after that to see the completion of the swimming-bath, and the people’s’ library, and the gymnasium, and the evening classes, and the model houses, etcetera, and to experience the truth of that blessed Word which tells us that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”

The End.