"There is really little use in my continuing to call," said the doctor;
"it will only be running you into useless expense. I may go on
prescribing and prescribing till I get through the whole pharmacopoeia,
but I can do him no good; what he needs is not drugs but air--a bracing
air. Get him away out of this, and let him run wild in the country,
or--if your engagements won't let you get to the country--remove to some
open suburb north or south."
[Illustration: THE DOCTOR'S VISIT.]
The doctor sat in a little parlour, in a shabby-genteel street of
close-packed middle London. Opposite him was the patient, a child of
three or four, on his mother's knee and clasped about with his mother's
arms, while his father, the Rev. James Murray, stood anxiously
listening. The boy--the first-born, and the only child of his
parents--had a month or two before been stricken down with an infant's
ailment, and though that had passed, he continued so weak that the
doctor had tested the soundness of heart and lungs, and the outcome of
his examination was that the only hope for the child was change of air.
"I only wish," said the father, "that I could take him away. I must try,
though I don't see at present how I am to do it."
He turned away to the window to hide the emotion that would rise to
choke him when he met the large, weary blue eyes of his boy bent on him,
as if in appeal that he might not be allowed to fade and wither and die,
like a flower before it has fairly bloomed.
"Can't you at least send the boy away with his mother?" asked the
doctor.
"I must try," said the father without turning round. "I must see what
can be done."
"In the meantime," said the doctor, rising, "go on with the cod-liver
oil and malt extract."
The doctor went, and still the Rev. James Murray stood by the window,
striving to keep down the emotion that demanded to have its way. The
wife rose with the child in her arms and went close to her husband.
"James, my dear," said she in a low voice (and she took his hand),
"don't, my dear!"
James turned with the impulse of all his passionate love for his wife
and child, and drew them together to his breast and bent his head over
them. And one great sob of anguish broke from him, and one tear of
bitter agony sprang in his eye, and fell hot upon his wife's hand.
"Oh, James, my darling!" she cried, clinging to him. "Don't! God _will_
be good to us!"
They stood thus for some seconds, while no sound was heard but the loud
ticking of the cheap lodging-house clock on the mantelpiece. The wife
sobbed a little in sympathy with her husband; not that she considered at
all how her own heart was wrung, but that she felt how his was. Seeing
and hearing her, he recovered himself.
"Come, my dear," said he, "this does no good. Let us sit down, and see
what can be arranged."
He led her back to her seat. He sat down beside her, transferred the boy
to his own lap, and held her hand.
"Come now, Jim," said he to his boy, "how am I going to get you and your
mammy to the country? Eh?"
"Daddy come, too," said the child, putting his arm about his father's
neck.
"I would, Jim, I would," said he, with the faintest suspicion of a
painful catch in his voice still; "but I have no money. And I don't know
how mammy and you are to go, unless some kind friend offers to take you
in."
"Oh, James dear!" exclaimed the wife, impulsively, catching her
husband's hand to her cheek. "It's I who have taken you from kind
friends! I am a burden to you, and nothing but a burden!"
"My dear wife," said he, bending to her, "you are the sweetest burden
that man could bear, and I'd rather have you than all else the world
could give."
"It's beautiful, my dear," said she, "to hear you say so. It's like
sweet music to me; but it's not true. If you had married another--if you
had married differently, and as you were expected to have married--you
would not be here now; and if you had a sick boy, like our dear, poor
Jim, there would have been no difficulty in getting to the country, or
in getting anything that was needed for him! But you married me, and--my
poor, dear love!--you bear the penalty!"
"Mary," said he, with a certain touch of solemnity in his voice, "I have
not for one instant regretted that we loved each other, and married each
other, and, whatever may come, I shall not regret it. The complete love
of a woman like you is more precious than rubies. Your love, my
darling,"--and he caressed the head crowned with a glory of bright
hair--"is the joy of my life--God forgive me!"
She drew again his hand to her cheek, and pressed it there, and said no
word more. And so they sat for a few seconds longer, while the vulgar,
intrusive clock, with a kind of limp in its noisy tick, seemed to say,
"_It's time! It's time!_"
Let us take the opportunity of this pause to explain how the Reverend
James Murray got into the anxious position in which we find him. He was
a minister of a well-known denomination of Nonconformists. When he left
college he had been reckoned a young man of great promise and of
considerable powers of persuasive eloquence, and he was expected to
become a famous preacher. He was invited to be the minister of a large
and wealthy congregation in a northern manufacturing town. He accepted
the invitation, and for two or three years he was a great favourite with
his people; never, they declared, had they heard so fine a preacher
(though he was sometimes so "fine" that they did not understand him),
and never had they known a better man. His praise was in everybody's
mouth; the men admired him and the women adored him. But he was a
bachelor, and there was not an unmarried lady in the congregation who
did not aspire to be his wife, which put him in the awkward and
invidious position of having to prefer one out of many. He astonished
and offended all the well-to-do ladies, by falling in love with and
marrying the pretty, shy governess of one of the wealthiest families--a
girl who had not been regarded as having the smallest chance of
occupying the proud position of minister's wife. His marriage alienated
the women, and through them cooled the ardour of the men. The situation
was strained; but it might have gradually returned to its former easy
condition, had not the minister soon after his marriage become what is
termed "broad" in his religious views and uncompromising in his
expression of them. His people grew alarmed, and his deacons
remonstrated--(with less friendliness of feeling, probably, than if he
had not offended them by his marriage)--but the minister declared he
could not do otherwise than preach what he believed to be the truth.
Then some people left him, and others would not speak to him, and his
position became so difficult and finally so unbearable that he could do
nothing but send in his resignation. He shook the dust and the grime of
that northern town off his feet, and with sore heart and slender purse
journeyed to London. He was resolved to labour among "the masses"; if
the arrogant and wealthy people of the north would not hear him, he was
sure the poor of London, bending beneath the weary burden of life, would
hear him gladly. He had not been in London long when he became minister
of a venerable, half-deserted chapel in one of those curiously quiet
corners made by the rushing currents and the swirling eddies of the life
of our huge metropolis. It was close to the heart of London, and yet no
one knew it was there but the handful of small shop-keepers and their
families and the few devout and destitute old women who made up its
congregation. These poor people were fluttered with pride when they got
so clever and beautiful a preacher for their own; they looked to see ere
long the old chapel crowded with an attentive congregation as it had
been in other days; and the chapel-keeper (who was also a painter) had
put all the magnificent hopes of himself and his friends in the fresh
inscription he made on the faded notice-board in the fore-court:
"MINISTER, THE REV. JAMES MURRAY, M.A.," in letters of gold.
[Illustration: "THE PRETTY GOVERNESS."]
A year had passed since then, and the minister's heart was sad. He had
spent himself for the benefit of the poor that sweltered round that old
chapel, and the poor did not seem to want him or his ministrations any
more than the wealthy: they would gather round him if he spread a tea
for them, but they would not come to hear him preach; so the chapel
remained as empty as when he first ascended its pulpit. Most harassing
and wearing anxiety of all, he was desperately poor. How he and his wife
and child had lived during the year it would be difficult to tell; from
the treasurer of the chapel funds he had received less than sixty
pounds, and he was in debt for his lodgings, in debt to the doctor, his
and his wife's clothes were become painfully shabby, and his child was
sick unto death.
What now was to be done?
"If I had only two or three pounds in hand," said he, "or if I could
raise them, I could send you and Jim away to some quiet seaside place;
but everything is gone--everything!"
"Don't be cast down, my dear," said his wife, raising her head, and
bravely smiling. "It is always darkest and coldest before the dawn.
Something may come to us just when we least expect it."
"I am angry with myself," said he, "for being so cast down; but I can't
help it. I care nothing for myself--nothing at all, you know, Mary: I
have good health, and I can live on little. It's seeing you, my dear,
and poor little Jim, going without things you ought to have, that goes
to my heart; and to know now that the boy's life would be saved if I
could do something which I have no hope of doing!--oh! it maddens me! I
ask myself over and over again if I've done wrong to anyone that we
should be at this desperate pass!"
"My dear, dear husband!" exclaimed his wife, again caressing his hand.
"You done wrong to anyone? You could not hurt a fly! We must be patient
and brave, my dear, and bear it. And Jim, poor boy, may really be
improving: doctors sometimes make mistakes."
But it needed only to look at the child's thin, limp figure, his
transparent skin, and his large, sad, lustreless eyes, to be convinced
that there the doctor had made no mistake. The boy would die unless he
could be taken into the fresh, stimulating air of the seaside or the
country. The parents glanced at the boy, and then looked involuntarily
each into the sad face of the other, and turned their heads away.
At that moment there came a loud, double "rat-tat" at the street door,
which made them both jump. Their sitting-room was on the ground-floor.
The minister rose, pale and expectant. He heard no one coming to answer
the summons.
"I wonder if it's for me?" he said.
"Go and see," said his wife.
He went into the passage and opened the door.
"Murray?" said the telegraph-boy, and, on being answered "Yes," handed a
reply-paid telegram.
The minister's fingers trembled so, he could scarcely tear the envelope
open. He took the telegram in to his wife and read it aloud:--
"_Can you supply Upton Chapel on Sunday next? Letter to follow._"
That was all, with the name and address of the sender appended. Both the
minister and his wife knew the Upton Chapel, and perceived at once that
that was the most hopeful thing that had happened to them for more than
a year.
"_Yes_," wrote the minister on the reply-form, which he handed to the
telegraph-boy.
"Thank God for that, Mary," said he, when he returned to her. "Now I can
send you and Jim away for at least a week! Thank God, my dear!"
He kissed her, and then set himself in his agitation to walk up and down
the little room.
"That will mean five pounds for us, I believe; I don't want to count the
fee I shall get, but I can't help it now. It's a rich congregation, and
I think I must get that. And, Mary," he went on, "what if they should
ask me to be their minister? You know they are without one. Perhaps the
'letter to follow' will say something. Upton is a beautiful, bracing
suburb, and Jim--our own little Jim!"--and he raised him in his
arms--"would get strong there!"
"Ah, my dear," said his wife, "it is too tempting. I am afraid to hope.
But I am sure when once they hear you they will like you. Now let us
think: what sermons will you take?"