had taken her by surprise, so that she had left her things in
confusion,--such was the silent reflection of her son's wife, as Ben
went slowly over the contents of the box. They were a strange medley.
There were two gilt lockets, a nutmeg-grater, an old tooth-brush and
silver thimble, a collar, an unfinished bit of embroidery, a sampler,
several skeins of silk and cotton of various colors in a tangled mass
together, fragments of gimp and tape, a red leather pocket-book much
the worse for wear, a prayer-book without a cover, and a padlock
without a key. There were also heaps of papers, recipes for cures, and
recipes for dishes, old patterns, old letters, old bills, a jumble of
all sorts of things which it was scarcely matter of wonder that no one
had cared to reduce into order.
"You may use all these receipted bills to light the fire with, my
dear," said Ben Stone; "they at least can be useful to nobody. But I'll
keep this old bit of an Almanac,--1815! Well, well; how time passes! It
seems strange to look back to the days when this Almanac was a new one!"
"I think that this may go into the fire too," said Mrs. Stone, who had
been vainly trying to unravel a silken tangle.
"Ah! here's something curious," observed Ben, as he drew out an old
letter, written on very coarse paper, in a very round, childish hand, a
letter which had been fastened with a big red wafer pressed down with a
button, and which was soiled with many a blot.
"Here is, I suppose, the very first letter as ever I wrote. I didn't
remember that I had ever written to my mother. She died--poor, dear
soul!--the week after I first went to school."
Mrs. Stone was of course interested, as any good wife would have been,
in the first specimen of her husband's handwriting. She pushed the
candle nearer to him, and read over his shoulder, as she might have
done at the distance of half the length of the room, the school-boy's
big, blotted scrawl.
"Dear Mother, I hope your well. I am ill my head is so bad pleas get me
home _quick_ QUICK your dutiful son B. S."
Mrs. Stone smiled, but her husband looked grave. Strange old
recollections, and those by no means of a pleasing nature, were brought
back to his mind by the sight of that--till now--forgotten letter to
his mother. Ben put up his hand to his forehead, and pushed up the
nightcap from his temples.
"Yes, yes," he muttered to himself, "I remember writing that letter
as if it were but yesterday; I remember the very button which I
used to press down the wafer. I was very wretched on first going to
school,--the boys bullied me, and I could not bear regular work; so to
get my poor mother to take me home, I wrote that letter with a big
falsehood in it. It was the first,--the only note as ever I sent her,
and it was full of lies! Strange that that should turn up now!"
"There's nothing to take to heart in such an old matter as that,"
observed Mrs. Stone, struck by the unusual gravity of her husband, who
generally turned everything into a jest. "Nobody thinks of raking up
what they've done wrong forty or fifty years back."
"Tut, I should not care a toss of a straw about it," replied Stone,
"had I told the falsehood to any one but my mother, and that just a few
days before I lost her. I'd never an opportunity of telling her that
I'd deceived her, or of asking her to forgive me, for I did not go home
till she lay in her coffin. To think of that vile bit of paper turning
up against me now!" Ben doubled the note, and, tearing it into pieces,
threw the fragments on the floor.
It may be a matter of surprise that a sin of childhood should have in
the slightest degree ruffled the easy conscience of such a man as Ben
Stone. He had thought very little indeed of sinning against God, but
his natural affections made him feel pain at having sinned against
a sick mother. Perhaps the words of Franks had not been so utterly
unheeded as they had seemed at first to be, and had served to rouse a
suspicion, confirmed by the school-boy's letter, that there might be
many a forgotten fault of the highly respectable man that would "turn
up against him" some day; faults for which forgiveness had never been
granted or asked. Be that as it may, Stone suddenly found out that
he was tired and sleepy, and bade his wife shut up the box and take
it away. The evening was getting on; it was time for him to take his
night-draught, and go quietly to rest.
Though the night-draught was taken and the pillows carefully beaten
up and sleep soon closed the invalid's eyes, it was not quiet rest. A
confused medley of thoughts shaped themselves into dreams, which took
their color from what had occurred during the day. Ben Stone in his
sleep was still looking over and examining things of the past; his
whole room appeared to be filled up with boxes, one piled on another,
and there seemed to be a necessity for him to open and put them all
into order. This was in itself an oppressive feeling to the dreamer;
but the oppression became much greater when he found that each box
was filled to overflowing with bills,--old, forgotten bills,--and that
not one of them was receipted; not one had ever been paid. Stone had a
dim idea that all these debts were connected with unforgiven sin, from
that falsehood contained in his first letter to the last "idle word"
which had fallen from his lips. As box after box was emptied, and every
unpaid bill thrown down in despair, the white paper seemed to turn into
foam, a sea was rising around him, and it appeared to Stone as if his
numberless debts would drown him at last. Ned Franks was by the side
of the dreamer, helping him to look over his boxes, and saying, every
now and then, in an earnest, anxious tone, "Ben Stone, if you don't
pay, you are a ruined man!--if you don't pay, you are ruined forever!"
So strong was the impression left on the dreamer's mind, that he awoke
with the words on his lips, "If you don't pay, you are ruined forever!"
Very still was the room when Stone opened his eyes with a start,
relieved to find that he had, after all, been but dreaming. One feeble
night-light was making "darkness visible" in the chamber, where no
other object could distinctly be seen. Even so faint a light had
Stone's conscience hitherto thrown upon spiritual things, as different
from the clear radiance of Truth as the night-light from the sun. The
sinner had not known his sinfulness because his light had been too dim
to enable him to see it.
As Ben Stone lay silent and still on his pillow, the breeze bore to
him, more distinctly than he ever before had heard it in his cottage,
the sound of the church clock striking ONE. For once Stone felt
something solemn in the sound; he felt that time was being meted out
to him, that his remaining hours might be few, and that he _was not
prepared_ for eternity.
Then Stone thought of Ned Franks. The sailor was not afraid of death,
but his reason for not fearing it was something utterly different from
the easy reliance on his own goodness which the carpenter knew to
have been his own. Ned Franks had shrunk from the idea of his safety
depending on his merits. On what then _did_ it depend? The invalid,
with a dawning perception that he himself might not be quite as secure
as he had lately thought himself to be, felt desirous to know more
clearly what was Franks's hope of salvation; and when, in the morning,
Mrs. Stone was preparing her husband's breakfast, he asked her to stop
the sailor when next he should pass their door, and ask him to step in
and see him.
XXII.
Peace from Above.
"You went off in such haste yesterday that we'd not time to have out
half our say," said Ben Stone to Ned Franks, as, called in by the
carpenter's wife, he walked up to the patient's bedside.
Franks smiled, agreeably surprised to find that Stone wished to renew
such a conversation.
"Take a chair, my good friend, and sit down. Bell, you needn't stop in
for me. I know Franks won't grudge me a half-hour for once, even on a
week day."
Mrs. Stone soon quitted the cottage, but not till she had warned her
visitor with raised finger and shake of the head, "Don't you bother my
husband about anything to make his mind uneasy."
When she had closed the door behind her, Ben Stone turned to Franks,
and said, "I was looking over old papers, yesterday, which reminded me
of my boyhood, and I suppose it's that which has brought back to me a
bit of rhyme which I learned from my mother, and which has been running
in my brain all this day, though it had gone clean out of my memory for
years,--
"'There's not a sin that I commit,
Or wicked word I say,
But in Thy dreadful book 'tis writ
Against the judgment-day.'
"Now, do you suppose," said Stone, with an effort to speak in his usual
careless tone, "that God keeps an account like that, as a creditor with
his debtors, and that when folks die there are all the old bills, as it
were, brought up, even debts that they'd clean forgotten?"
"Yes, assuredly, _unless all those debts have been paid_."
"That's the very nail that I want you to hit," cried the carpenter.
"How are we to make sure that the debts _are_ all paid,--I mean, that
God has forgiven us outright? Are you sure that _your_ debts are all
paid?"
"Yes, thank God!" cried the sailor; "my debts were paid, every one
of them, when my Saviour died on Calvary. Does not St. Paul say that
Christ blotted out _the handwriting of ordinances that was against us,
which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his
cross_?"
"Were every one's sins blotted out then?" asked Stone.
"The sins of all who have living _faith_ in the Lord."
"Ah! _faith_; that's what you're always talking about, and I can never
quite make out what it means."
"It simply means that we believe from the heart that the Son of God
_died for us_," said Ned Franks.
"Is that all?" exclaimed Stone, in surprise. "Why, a poor wretch like
Nancy Sands might believe that as well as yourself!"
"And if poor Nancy does believe that _from the heart_, her sins, be
they few or many, _are_ forgiven her for the sake of Him who bore the
punishment for them all."
"That's a dangerous doctrine, a very dangerous doctrine," said the
carpenter, shaking his head; "you wouldn't put Nancy, I hope, on the
same footing as yourself or as me?"
"The ark of Salvation is as open to Nancy as to us," replied Franks;
"and if any of us reach God's heaven, it can only be in that ark."
"I don't understand what you mean," said Ben Stone. "Would you put bad
and good all together?"
"Perhaps I can explain myself best by referring to Noah's ark," replied
Franks. "God made known that a deluge was coming on the earth, and
that the only way of escaping it was by going into an ark which Noah
was commanded to prepare. It is clear that those who were _saved_ were
those who _believed_. It was _faith_ in God's word that made Noah and
his family enter the ark; they were saved because they were _in it_,
and not, as I tried to explain yesterday, because of their merits as
sailors or swimmers. It is clear, also, that they could not be _half_
saved by the ark, and _half_ by their own boats or rafts. So, if we
trust our souls to Christ, we must do so _entirely_; we must give up
all notion of saving ourselves, and own that our hopes of forgiveness
and heaven rest on _nothing but his mercy and merits_. We own
ourselves, indeed, to be miserable sinners, but we are able to take our
firm stand on the Gospel doctrine that _Christ died for sinners_,--for
that is our ark."
"I'm afraid that people who make sure of being saved by faith will lead
very careless lives," said the carpenter, who could not get over his
repugnance to being classed with Nancy Sands.
"They can only be saved by living, true faith," replied Franks. "Merely
to say that we believe is nothing; nay, a cold conviction that the
Bible is true, is nothing,--_the devils also believe and tremble_."
"How are you to know true faith from false faith?" asked Ben, with
rather a sarcastic smile, as if he thought he had driven Ned Franks
into a corner.
"How do you know a real fire from a painted one?" asked Ned.
"Well, it does not need much wit to tell the one from the other, if the
painting were ever so clear," replied Stone; "the real fire warms us,
of course; it aint a thing only to be looked at."
"And so real faith warms the heart, fills it with a glow of grateful
love towards Him who gave himself for us. And that love makes us loathe
and detest sin, because it is displeasing to our Lord,--the one thing
which he hates. True faith and sin are just as much opposed to each
other as fire and water. You said just now that you were afraid that
people would live very careless lives if they hoped to be saved by
faith. Do you find it to be so in your experience of men, Ben Stone?
Those who are the most active in good works, the most steady in
conduct, the best husbands, parents, neighbors, are they not the very
people who have no hope of heaven but in the great Sacrifice for sin?"
"I can't deny that," answered Ben Stone, who knew that Ned Franks
himself had a standard of duty that made his own appear but a low one.
"But I can't see how that should be."
"Because every man _that hath that hope_ in Christ, _purifieth himself
even as he is pure_;[J] because true faith is a gift of God's Holy
Spirit, and it must be followed by two others,--the love of Christ and
that _holiness without which no man shall see the Lord_.[K] As a good
man once said, 'We come to Christ just as we are, but not to remain
as we have been.' When we are once in the ark, Stone, it will lift us
above the waters of wilful sin, as well as the waves of destruction;
none serve God like those who have received the assurance,--'Go in
peace; thy sins are forgiven thee.'"
The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of Mr. Leyton.
Franks respectfully rose, and gave up his chair to the young clergyman,
and, at his request, brought the large Bible, which always occupied
a conspicuous place in Ben's home. Very few words were exchanged,
but Franks felt that the portion of Scripture selected by the curate
was peculiarly well suited to deepen any impression which the late
conversation might have left. It was the fifty-first psalm which Mr.
Leyton read, almost without comment, by the sick-bed of one just
beginning to have his eyes opened to the truth that he, too, had need
to cry, _Have mercy upon me, O Lord! Create in me a clean heart, and
renew a right spirit within me!_
The eyes of Ben Stone were never again to be utterly closed to that
truth; as life's day waned, a better light dawned on the invalid's soul.
[J] 1 John iii. 3.
[K] Hebrews xii. 10.
XXIII.
The Wife's Resolve.
On, on flowed the stream, round and round went the mill-wheel; and
even so flows the current of time, and the circle of daily occupation
goes round and round. Little Bessy, the miller's child, used every
afternoon to watch Ned and his little band of workers going cheerfully
to their toil; for the short cut to Wild Rose Hollow was through the
wooded glen. Whistling and singing, laughing and shouting, the boys
came along, and often a nosegay from a cottage garden, or a garland of
flowers from the hedge, was left on the way for Bessy. The almshouses
she always called _her_ cottages, and the boys who labored to repair
them _her_ workmen; and the child's day-dream, as she sported by the
stream, was to build a whole village of cottages, the prettiest that
ever were seen, so that every poor old woman in England might have one
with a garden all brilliant with flowers.
Before Ned and his "jovial crew," as he called the school-boys, had
left off working in Wild Rose Hollow, just at the hour of six they
always saw John Sands return from visiting the hospital of B----.
The Hollow, though a little apart from the high road, yet commanded
a view of it, and, punctual as the clock, with his black coat, white
neck-cloth, and a narrow-brimmed hat surmounting his close-cropped
black hair, the lean, stiff figure of the clerk was seen passing a
certain thorn-tree which grew by the dusty highway. The boys were so
much accustomed to this sight of the poor husband pursuing his silent,
joyless way back to his solitary home, that he would certainly have
been missed by them, had he on any day failed to appear. It was as
natural to catch that glimpse of him passing the thorn-tree, as it was
on Sundays to see him in his place under the reading-desk in church;
whatever John Sands did, there seemed to be a kind of necessity that
he should go on doing it forever.
It caused no small surprise, then, amongst the boys, when, on one
evening in the latter part of May, as the clerk appeared at his usual
hour, instead of passing the thorn-tree as usual, he turned off to the
left from the high road, and, at the same pace, descended the narrow
path which led down into Wild Rose Hollow. Any deviation from John
Sands's daily course appeared as strange as if the mill-stream had
suddenly taken to flowing in some new channel. The attention of the
boys was even distracted from old Matthews, the cake and biscuit-man,
who, with his well-known basket, had come that evening down into the
Hollow to tempt the "jovial crew" to spend some of their half-pence
and farthings in buying its sweet contents. Persis, who had brought
her baby on that bright, warm afternoon to the Hollow, partly that
she might visit old Sarah Mason, and partly that she might watch her
husband and his crew at their work, looked up with an inquiring glance
from the low wall on which she was seated, as John Sands came, with his
long strides, towards the party.
"Why, here comes the old raven himself! What can be a-bringing him
here?" cried one of the boys; "sure he's not a-going to work!" The idea
of John Sands shouldering a pick-axe seemed so funny, that it set the
auditors laughing.
"He's a bit red in the face,--I never seed him look like that
afore,--as if he was going to smile; I fear he's been drinking like his
wife!" exclaimed another boy; for anything resembling either a color
or a smile on the sallow face of John Sands had never been seen in the
memory of the oldest of Franks's "jovial crew."
"He's a-walking right up to old Matthews. Oh, if he ben't a-going to
buy lollypops!" almost screamed a little urchin, in the excitement of
surprise.
Every young eye was watching with curiosity the movements of the clerk,
who went up straight to the cake and biscuit seller.
"Will you take half-a-crown for all these?" asked John Sands, pointing
to the contents of the basket.
The wondering boys gathered around, while old Matthews, after a short
mental calculation of the value of his sweeties and cakes, signified
assent by a nod of the head.
John Sands pulled out an old black leather purse, opened it with
fingers that seemed to tremble as he did so, and drew forth a half
crown. He gave it into the old man's hand, and then, turning with a
kind of nervous little giggle to the boys, he said,--
"There, you may have a scatter if you like it!"
So much amazement was excited by such an unaccountable act of
generosity on the part of the stiff and usually melancholy man, that
the boys stood staring and gaping at him for one or two seconds before
they gave the donor of the sweets the loud, joyous cheer, which was
instantly succeeded by a scatter and a scramble.
Meantime, John Sands strode up to Franks, who was standing by the wall
with a measuring-line; the clerk took hold of Ned's one hand with both
his own, and wrung it hard without uttering a word; then, to complete
the astonishment of the beholders, went up to Persis, stooped down, and
actually kissed the baby,--a thing which he had never been known before
to do to any neighbor's child, and which he could only have done, all
were persuaded, under the pressure of most unusual excitement. John
Sands then turned on his heel and departed as he had come, anxious to
escape from the noisy gratitude of the boys, whom he had treated for
the first and last time in his life.
Had one of the jackdaws that haunted the old church-tower taken to
soaring and singing like a lark, or had the ancient yew-tree been found
on some morning bursting out into rose-colored blossom, it would hardly
have excited more amazement than this strange conduct of John Sands,
the clerk. Franks looked anxiously at his wife, and unconsciously
touched his own forehead with his finger. The same thought was passing
through the mind of each: "Grief has turned the poor fellow crazy." But
grief had nothing to do with the matter; Sands was as sane and as sober
as he had ever been in the course of his life. If his conduct appeared
odd to those who had never known him but gloomy, solemn, and stiff, it
was because such a (to him) strange guest had come to the poor man's
heart in the shape of _joy_, that it had overturned everything before
it; and Sands, in the excitement of receiving such a guest, scarcely
knew what he was doing.
To explain the cause of this strange new sensation of joy to one dried
up, as it were, by care and sorrow, we must relate what had occurred
not an hour before, when John Sands had stood in the hospital-ward by
the bedside of his suffering wife.
Interviews between them had taken place regularly on every week-day.
It had seemed as if poor Sands could find little comfort in his visits
to Nancy. After his long walk from Colme he would sit, silent and sad,
listening to his wife's complainings and moans, or enduring her gloomy
silence, which was almost harder to bear. Sands was not a man of many
words, at least, words of his own,--well as his voice was known in the
responses in church. He never attempted to comfort, but he felt for his
suffering Nancy; and--little as he guessed that such was the case--very
dear was his sympathy to her who was proving, week after week, the
strength of his patient, much-enduring affection. On this particular
afternoon Nancy had been more silent than usual, and Sands was thinking
of rising and taking his leave at his accustomed time of departure,
when his wife broke out suddenly with the exclamation,--
"I'll do it! I've made up my mind she shan't never throw that at me
again!"
"Throw what, my dear?" mildly inquired the clerk.
"Bell Stone was here last Saturday," said Nancy, speaking with strong
but restrained emotion. "She threw out a hint,--she did,--that it is
no great thing for you that I'm getting over my accident, for that a
_dead_ wife is a deal better for a man to have than a _drunken_ one!"
"My dear!" exclaimed Sands, much shocked.
"She did say it!" repeated Nancy, vehemently, "and she thought it,
and all the world thinks it, and _I_ think it, too, for it's the
fact, though I could have torn out her eyes when she said it!" The
woman of fiery passions, weakened by illness and pain, lost all her
self-command, and burst into a torrent of tears.
John Sands knew not how to soothe her passion of grief, and could only
repeat, "My dear, my dear!" in a deprecating tone of distress.
"I'm not angry with her now!" cried Nancy, suddenly stopping in her
weeping and drying her eyes. "The young curate came just after Stone's
wife had left. I did not think much of the lad at first, but he, too,
spoke what was truth, though in a different way from Bell. What he was
a-saying I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Twill be hard
work, but I'll do it. Then I've been thinking, oh, many and many's
the time, of that evening I spent with the Frankses just afore I fell
into the stream! I've been saying to myself, 'What a different home
Persis gives her husband from what I've given to mine!' She has a good
husband,--I'll not deny it,--but he don't deserve better of her than
you do of me, John Sands, let any one deny that as can!"
"My dear!" repeated the poor clerk, in a softened tone. It was a new
thing to him to have a kind word from his wife.
"Now," continued Nancy, who did not care to be interrupted, "I've lost
an arm, and my right one, and it's not much as I can do now. But I'd
do what I can, John Sands, and I'll _not do_ what I've done," she went
on, more vehemently. "I'll _not_ go a-disgracing you, spending your
money, and breaking your heart. I'll take the pledge to-morrow, and,
God helping me, I'll keep it; never a drop of the poison shall pass my
lips again!"
And this was the piece of good news which had sent the poor clerk on
his homeward way almost dizzy with joy, so glad that he could not rest
until he had got others to share it, though only by the very simple
means of a scatter of sugar-plums and cakes!
But Nancy's conversation with her husband had not closed with her
promise to take the pledge. There was something else on the woman's
mind.