SAVED
The gale off the Cape of Good Hope was weathered at last, and the vessel
sailed into smoother seas. The bitterness of the cold was over, and only
fresh invigorating breezes swept across the water. Nothing could have
been more helpful toward Mr. Chantrey's recovery, except his new freedom
from sorrow. His trouble had passed away like the storm. He could not
but trust that the same strength which had been given to his wife in her
hour of fiercest temptation would be still granted to her in ordinary
trials, from which he could not always shield her. Sophy herself was
full of hope. She felt her will, so long enslaved, regaining its former
freedom, and her brain recovering its old clearness. The pleasures and
duties of life had once more a charm for her. It was as though some
madness and delusion had passed away, and she was once more in her right
mind.
The voyage between Australia and New Zealand, taken in a crowded and
comfortless steamer, was a severe testing time for her. It lasted for
several days, and she could not be kept from the influence of the
drinking customs of those on board. But she never quitted the side
either of her husband or Ann Holland. In New Zealand, where no one knew
the story of her past life, except Mr. Warden, it was more easy to face
the future, and to carry out the reformation begun in her. They were
poor, far poorer than she had ever expected to be, and she had harder
work than she had been accustomed to do; but such exertions were
beneficial to her. Ann Holland, as a matter of course, lived with them
in their little home, from which Mr. Chantrey was often absent while
visiting the distant portions of his large parish, which extended over
many miles. But Ann was not left to do all the drudgery of the household
unaided. Sophy Chantrey would take her share in her every duty, and
seldom sat down to sew or write unless Ann was ready to rest also. The
old want of something to do could never revisit her; the old sense of
loneliness could not come back. There was her boy to teach, and her
simple, homely neighbors to associate with. The customs and
conventionalities of English life had no force here, and she was free to
act as she pleased. As the years passed by, David Chantrey lost forever
a secret lurking dread lest his wife's sin should be only biding its
time. He could go away in peace, and return home gladly, having almost
forgotten the reason of his exchanging the pleasant rectory of Upton for
the hard work of a colonial living.
From time to time letters reached them from Mrs. Bolton, complaining
bitterly of the changes introduced by the new rector, whose customs and
opinions constantly clashed with her own. She found herself put on one
side, and quietly neglected in all questions concerning the parish;
while her influence gradually died away. Again and again she urged her
nephew to return to England, promising that she would make him her heir,
and procure for him a living as valuable as the one he had resigned. She
could not understand that to a man like David Chantrey the calm happy
consciousness of days well spent, and the grateful remembrance of a
terrible sorrow having been removed, were better than anything earth
could give. The old pride he had once felt in his social position and
personal popularity could never lift up its crest again. He had gone
down to the Valley of Humiliation, and there, to his surprise, he found
"that the air was pleasant, and that here a man shall be free from the
noise and hurryings of this life, and shall not be let and hindered in
his contemplation, as in other places he is apt to be." His laborious
simple life suited him, and no entreaties or promises of Mrs. Bolton
could recall him to England.
Eight tranquil years had passed by when Sophy Chantrey detected in her
husband a degree of preoccupation and reticence that had long been
unusual to him. For a few days he kept the secret; but at last, just as
she began to feel she could bear his reserve no longer he spoke out.
"Sophy," he said, "I have had some letters from England."
"From Aunt Bolton?" she asked, with a faint undertone of vexation in her
voice, for Mrs. Bolton's letters always revived bitter memories in her
mind.
"No," he answered, holding out to her a large bulky packet; "they are
from the bishop--our English bishop, you know--just a few lines; and
from the Upton people. It seems that the living is about to be vacant
again, for Seymour has had a very good one presented to him in the
north; and the parishioners have petitioned the bishop, and petitioned
me to accept the charge again. See, here are hundreds of signatures, and
the churchwardens tell me every man and woman in the parish would have
signed if there had been room. The bishop speaks very kindly about it,
too, and they want my answer by the mail going out next week."
"And what will you say?" asked Sophy breathlessly.
"It is for you to say," he answered; "you must decide. Could you go back
happily, Sophy? As for me, I never loved, or shall love, any place like
Upton. I dream of it often. Yet I could not return to it at any great
cost to you, be sure of that. You must answer the question. We have been
very happy together here, all of us; and you and I have been truer
Christians than perhaps we could ever have been if we had stayed at
home. If you decide to settle here, I for one will never regret it."
"Would it be safe for me to go back?" she faltered.
"As safe for you as for me," he answered emphatically; "do not be afraid
of that. A sin conquered and uprooted, as yours has been, is less likely
to overcome us than some new temptation. I have no fear of that."
For the next few days Sophy Chantrey went through her daily work as in a
dream. There were many things to weigh and consider, and her husband
left her to herself, acting as if he had dismissed the subject
altogether from his mind. For herself she shrank from returning among
the people who had known her in her worst days, and whose curious
suspicious eyes would be always watching her, and bringing to her mind
sad recollections. She knew well that all her life long there would be
the memory of her sin kept alive in the hearts of her husband's
parishioners if he went back as rector of Upton. Yet she could not
resolve to banish him from the place he loved so well, and the people
who were so eager to have him with them again as their pastor. There was
nothing to be dreaded on account of his health, which was fully
reestablished. There was her boy, too, who was growing old enough to
require better teaching than they could secure for him in the colony.
Ann Holland would be overjoyed to think of seeing Upton again, and to
return to her old friends and townsfolk. No; they must not be doomed to
continual exile for her sake. She must take up the cross that lay before
her, from which she had so long escaped, and be willing to bear the
penalty of her transgressions, learning that no sins, though forgiven,
can be blotted out as far as their consequences are concerned--can never
be, through endless years, as though they had never been.
"We must go home to Upton," she said to her husband the evening before
the mail left for England. "I have considered everything, and we must
go."
"Willingly, Sophy? Gladly?" he asked, looking keenly into her face, so
changed from when he had seen it first. What lines there were upon it
which ought not to have been there so early, he knew well. How different
it was from the fair fresh face of his young wife when they first went
home to Upton Rectory. Yet he loved her better now than then.
"Willingly, though not gladly yet," she answered; "but do not argue with
me. Do not try to persuade me against my own decision. You all came out
for my sake, and I am bent upon returning for yours. In time I shall be
as glad that I returned as you are that you came out, though I am not
glad now. I shall be a standing lesson to the people of Upton."
"But I do not wish my wife to be a lesson," he said fondly. Yet he could
not urge her to alter her decision. The old home and the old church,
which he had diligently tried to forget, thrust themselves as freshly
and imperiously upon his memory as if he had left them but yesterday. He
had not known how great his sacrifice had been when he had given them up
in his misery. Ann Holland and his boy shared his delight, and before
they sailed for home Sophy herself found that she could take very real
pleasure in their new prospects.
Mrs. Bolton did not live to welcome them back to Upton. The last few
years had been years of vexation and loneliness to her, and there had
been no one to care for her and to help her to bear her troubles. She
had been ailing for some time, and the trying changes of the spring
hastened her death before her favorite nephew could reach England. The
hired nurses who attended her through her last illness heard her often
muttering to herself, as if her enfeebled brain was possessed by one
idea, "If any will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross daily, and follow Me." The words haunted her, and once she said,
in an awed voice and with a look of pain, "He that taketh not up his
cross and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me." "Not worthy of me!"
she repeated, mournfully, "not worthy of me!"
The rector of Upton and his wife have dwelt among their own people again
for some years. Though the story is still sometimes told of Mrs.
Chantrey's sin, the life she leads among them is a better lesson than
perhaps it could have been had she never fallen. They see in her one who
has not merely been tempted, but who has conquered and escaped from the
tyranny of a vice shamefully common among us. There is hope for the
feeblest and the most degraded when they hear of her, or when they learn
the story from her own lips. For if by the sorrowful confession she can
help any one, she does not shrink from making it, with tears often, but
with a profound thankfulness for the deliverance wrought out for her by
those who made themselves "fellow-workers with God."
Ann Holland found her shop and pleasant kitchen transformed into a
fashionable draper's establishment, with plate glass windows down to the
pavement. But she did not need a home. David and Sophy Chantrey would
not have parted from her if the old house had not been gone. A few of
her old-fashioned goods she managed to gather together again, to furnish
her own room at the rectory, and among them was the screen containing
the newspaper records of events at Upton. One long column gives a
high-flown description of the rector's return to his old parish, and Ann
feels a glow of pleasant pride at seeing her own name there in print.