In which Benny makes a Discovery.
All unseen the Master walketh
By the toiling servant's side;
Comfortable words He speaketh,
While His hands uphold and guide.
--Baynes.
Christmas Day this year came upon a Wednesday, and, during the two days
preceding it, Benny did what he characterized as a "roaring bizness."
There were so many people leaving and arriving by all the ferry-boats
and at all the stations, that our hero was kept on the trot nearly all
the time. His frank open face seemed to most people, who had a bag or a
bundle to carry, a sufficient guarantee of his honesty, and they hoisted
their bag upon the little fellow's shoulder without any fear that he
would attempt to pry into its contents, or make off with it round some
sharp corner.
For a time the "match business" was turned over entirely to Nelly's
management; and though the modest little girl never pushed her
wares--she was too shy for that--yet Benny declared she did "stunnin'."
Many a gentleman, catching just a glimpse of the pale sweet face as he
hurried past, would turn to have another look at the child, and, without
taking any of her fusees, would put a penny, and sometimes more, into
the little thin hand. And Nelly would courtesy her thanks, unable to
utter a word.
Benny declared "he liked Christmas-time 'mazin' well, and wondered why
folks didn't have Christmas a sight oftener than once a year." How it
was that coppers were so much more plentiful at this time of the year
than at any other time was to him a mystery. Poor little fellow! the
thought never seemed to enter into his small head that it might be that
people's hearts were more open at this festive season than at some
other times. However, Benny was not one that speculated long on such
questions; he only wished that people were always as ready to have their
bags carried, and always gave their pence as ungrudgingly. Once or
twice he felt a bit sad, and brushed away a hasty tear, when he saw boys
no bigger than himself wrapped up in great warm overcoats, and beautiful
little girls with fur-trimmed jackets and high-heeled dainty boots,
clasped in the arms of their parents as soon as they stepped from the
ferry, and then hurried away to a cab or to a carriage in waiting--and
then thought of his own cheerless life. "I specks they's mighty 'appy,"
he said reflectively, and then hurried away to the other end of the
stage, where he thought he saw the chance of employment.
On Christmas Eve Benny took his sister through St. John's Market, and
highly delighted they were with what they saw. The thousands of geese,
turkeys, and pheasants, the loads of vegetables, the heaps of oranges
and apples, the pyramids of every other conceivable kind of fruit, the
stalls of sweetmeats, the tons of toffee, and the crowds of well-dressed
people all bent upon buying something, were sources of infinite pleasure
to the children. There was only one drawback to their happiness, and
that was they did not know how to lay out the sixpence they had brought
with them to spend. If there had been less variety there would have been
less difficulty; but, as it was, Benny felt as if he would never be able
to decide what to buy. However, they agreed at last to lay out twopence
in two slices of bread and ham, for they were both rather hungry; and
then they speculated the other fourpence in apples, oranges, and
toffee, and, on the whole, felt very well satisfied with the results of
their outlay.
It was rather later than usual when they got home, but old Betty knew
where they had gone, and, as it was Christmas Eve, she had got a bigger
fire in than usual, and had also got them a cup of hot cocoa each, and
some bun loaf to eat with it.
"By golly!" said Benny, as he munched the cake, "I do wish folks 'ud
'ave Christmas ev'ry week."
"You are a cur'us boy," said the old woman, looking up with a smile on
her wrinkled face.
"Is I, granny? I specks it's in my blood, as the chap said o' his timber
leg."
The old woman had told them on the first evening of their arrival, when
they seemed at a loss what name to give her, to call her granny; and no
name could have been more appropriate, or have come more readily to the
children's lips.
"But could folks have Christmas any oftener if they wished to?" asked
little Nell.
"In course they could, Nell," burst out Benny. "You dunna seem to know
what folks make Christmas for."
"An I thinks as you dunno either, Benny."
"Don't I, though?" he said, putting on an air of importance. "It's made
to give folks the chance of doing a lot o' feeding; didn't yer see all
the gooses an' other nice things in the market that the folks is going
to polish off to-morrow?"
"I dunna think it was made purpose for that. Wur it, now, granny?"
Thus appealed to, the old woman, who had listened with an amused smile
on her face, answered,
"No, my child. It's called Christmas 'cause it is the birthday of
Christ."
"Who's He?" said Benny, looking up; and Nelly's eyes echoed the inquiry.
"Don't you know--ain't you never heerd?" said the old woman, in a tone
of surprise.
"Nay," said Benny; "nothin' sense. Some o' the chaps says 'by Christ' as
I says 'by golly'; but I never knowed He was somebody."
"Poor little dears! I didn't know as how you was so ignorant, or I
should have told you before." And the old woman looked as if she did not
know where or how to begin to tell the children the wonderful story, and
for a considerable time remained silent. At length she said, "I'll read
it to 'e out o' the Book; mebbe you'll understand it better that way nor
any way else."
And, taking down from her shelf her big and much-worn Bible, she opened
it at the second of St. Matthew, and began to read in a tremulous
voice,--
"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judæa in the days of Herod the
king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying,
Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in
the east, and are come to worship Him."
And slowly the old woman read on until she reached the end of the
chapter, while the children listened with wide-open and wondering eyes.
To Nelly the words seemed to come like a revelation, responding to the
deepest feeling of her nature, and awakening thoughts within her that
were too big for utterance. Benny, however, on the contrary, could see
nothing particularly interesting in the narrative itself. But the art of
reading was to him a mystery past all comprehension. How granny could
see that story upon the page of her Bible was altogether beyond his
grasp. At length, after scratching his head vigorously for some time, he
burst out,--
"By jabbers! I's got it at last!--Jimmy Jones squeeze me if I ain't!
It's the specks that does it."
"Does what?" said Nelly.
"Why, the story bizness, to be sure. Let me look at the book through
your specks, shall I, granny?"
"Ay, if you like, Benny." And the next minute he was looking at the
Bible with granny's spectacles upon his nose, with a look of blank
disappointment upon his face.
"Golly! I's sold!" was his exclamation. "But this are a poser, and no
mistake."
"What's such a poser?" said granny.
"Why, how yer find the story in the book; for I can see nowt." And Benny
looked as disappointed as if he had earned nothing for a week.
By much explaining, however, granny enabled him to comprehend in some
vague way how the mystery was accomplished; and then arose within the
heart of the child an unutterable longing to understand this mysterious
art fully, and be able to read for himself--a longing that grew in
intensity as evening after evening he tried, by granny's help, to master
the alphabet. In fact, it became a passion with the lad, and many an
hour in the weeks and months that followed he spent gazing at the
placards on the walls, and in trying to explain to the other Arabs that
gathered around him the meaning of the mysterious characters.
Benny was naturally a sharp lad, and hence, though his opportunities
were few, his progress was by no means slow. Sometimes he startled Joe
Wrag by spelling out a long word that he had carried in his head the
whole of the day, and asking its meaning. Long words had an especial
fascination for him, and the way he brought them out in all sorts of
connections was truly amusing.
Nelly manifested no desire to learn to read. If ever she thought about
it, it was only to regard it as something infinitely beyond her
capabilities; and she seemed content to remain as she was. But if she
could get granny to read to her a chapter out of St. John's Gospel,
she seemed to desire no higher pleasure. She would sit with a dreamy
far-away look in her half-closed eyes, and the smiles that old Joe Wrag
loved to see would come and go upon her face like patches of spring
sunshine chasing each other across a plain. She never said very much,
but perhaps she thought all the more. To honest Joe Wrag she seemed as
if ripening for a fairer country, and for a purer and nobler life. Not
that she ailed anything. True, she had a little hacking cough now and
then, and when she lay asleep a pink spot would glow on either cheek;
but nothing more than that.
"Speretual things," mused Joe Wrag one night, as he sat in the door of
his hut looking into the fire, "are speretually discerned, an' I b'lieve
that child 'as rale speretual discernment: she looks a mighty sight
deeper than we thinks she do, that's my opinion. I should like to get
howld o' all that passes through her purty little noddle, the little
hangel--bless her! As for the boy, 'e's a little hanimal. I reckon
the passons would call him a materialist. I don't b'lieve 'e b'lieves
nothing but what 'e sees. No speretual insight in 'im--not a bit. P'raps
he's like me, don't belong to the elect. Ah, me! I wonder what the likes
o' us was born for?"
And Joe went out, and heaped more fuel on the fire by way of diverting
his thoughts from a subject that was always painful to him. But when he
came back and sat down again, and the fire before him blazed up with
fiercer glow, the thoughts returned, and would not be driven away.
"Bless her!" he said. "She sees in the fire only woods, an' meadows,
an' mountains, an' streams; an' I only see the yawning caverns o' hell.
An' to think I must burn in a fire a thousan' times bigger an' hotter
than that for ever and ever without a single moment's ease; scorching
on every side, standin' up or lyin' down, always burnin'! No water, no
light, no mercy, no hope. An' when a million million years are past,
still burning, an' no nearer the end than at the beginnin'. Oh, how
shall I bear it--how shall I bear it?"
And big drops of perspiration oozed from his forehead and rolled down
his face, testifying to the anguish of his soul.
"I canna understand it--I canna understand it," he went on. "All this
pain and suffering for His glory. What kind o' glory can it be, to bring
folks into the world doomed aforehand to eternal misery? to give 'em
no chance o' repentance, an' then damn them for ever 'cause they don't
repent! O Lord a mercy, excuse me, but I canna see no justice in it
anywhere."
And once more Joe got up and began to pace up and down in front of the
fire; but the thoughts would not leave him. "'Whom He did foreknow,'" he
went on, "'them also He did predestinate.' Mighty queer, that a Father
should love a part o' His fam'ly an' hate the rest. Create 'em only to
burn 'em for ever an' ever! An' what's the use o' the burnin'? That
bangs me complete. If 't was to burn away the dross an' leave the metal,
I could understand it. I think sometimes there's jist a bit o' the right
stuff in me; an' if hell would burn up the bad an' leave the good, an'
give it a chance of some'at better, there 'ud be more justice in it,
seems to me. But what am I a-saying? It shows as how I'm none o' the
elect, to be talking to myself in this way. What a wicked old sinner I
be!"
And once more Joe sat down with a jerk, as if he meant to say, "I'm not
going to be bothered with such thoughts any more to-night." But alas! he
found that thoughts would come, whether he would or no.
"Pr'aps," he said, "we don't know nowt about it, none o' us. Mebbe God
is more marcyfuller than we think. An' I'm sadly banged about that
'makin' an end o' sin;' I don't see as how He can make an end o' sin
without making an end o' the sinner; an' whiles there is millions sich
as me in hell, there'll be no end to neither on 'em. I'm sadly out in my
reck'nin' somewheres, but 'pears to me if there was no sinners there 'ud
be no sin; an' the way to rid the univarse of sinners is to get 'em all
saved or kill 'em outright."
Much more to the same effect Joe Wrag turned over in his mind that
night, but we must not weary the reader with his speculations. Like many
other of God's children, he was crying in the darkness and longing for
light. He had found that human creeds, instead of being a ladder leading
up into the temple of truth, were rather a house of bondage. Men had
spread a veil before the face of God, and he had not courage to pull it
aside. Now and then through the rents he caught a ray of light, but it
dazzled him so that he was afraid there was something wrong about it,
and he turned away his face and looked again into the darkness. And yet
the night was surely passing away. It wanted but a hand to take down the
shutters from the windows of his soul, and let the light--ay, and the
love of God that surrounded him, like a mighty ocean--rush in. But whose
hand should take down the shutters? Through what agency should the light
come in? Let us wait and see.