GOOD SAMARITANS.
In this hour of domestic desertion, Miss Latimer, remembering Mrs.
Grant’s injunction, allowed Lucy to do most of the necessary housework,
while she herself undertook the outdoor errands and the function of
“answering” the door bell.
A letter duly arrived from Clementina’s relatives at Hull. It said
little more than the telegram, save that she had come there very “worn
out and ill,” having found her place “too trying” for her. She would
have to take “a long rest.” It was requested that her box should be
packed up and forwarded “along with the month’s wage due to her.”
Clementina had taken her departure when only twenty days of that
“month” had elapsed. But Lucy resolved to take no notice of that fact,
but to send the full sum. She herself packed the box and despatched it.
She found therein about half a packet of mourning envelopes of such
singular width of border that she showed them to Miss Latimer and Mr.
Somerset, who, however, kept their own counsel on this head. Lucy did
not accept Mr. Somerset’s advice about the letter in which she enclosed
her postal order. He wished her to ignore all that had been discovered
since Clementina’s departure and to let the whole matter drop. Lucy
could not accept this as her duty. As soon as she knew of Clementina’s
safety and whereabouts, she had telegraphed to Mrs. Bray’s Rachel, that
her mind too might be set at ease about her old acquaintance. In return
she had received a very simple, straightforward letter from Rachel,
expressing sincere regret that all this trouble had been caused to
Mrs. Challoner through one whom she had introduced. She reiterated the
perfect respectability of the Gillespies and the high esteem in which
they had been held in their own neighbourhood. Rachel was naturally
deeply concerned about Clementina herself. “People can’t help going out
of their mind,” she wrote, “but then it ought to be somebody’s duty to
keep them from troubling others or disgracing themselves.”
The same point impressed Lucy. She felt herself bound to tell the plain
truth to those who were now harbouring Clementina, and whose actions
might decide that unhappy woman’s future course. Tom was inclined to
say, “Let them find her out for themselves, as we had to do”—a blunt
egotism which didn’t influence Lucy for a moment. Mr. Somerset gave
counsels of reticence, but did not support them by any moral reasons.
In fact he candidly admitted, “I am thinking chiefly of you, Mrs.
Challoner, and advising you for your own sake. I don’t want you to have
any more trouble. I know how—in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred—such
a warning as you wish to give will be received.”
That decided Lucy. If something was right to do, then she was not to be
withheld by any self-consideration from doing it.
“How should I feel,” she asked, “if some morning I open the newspaper
and find that Clementina has taken another situation and has perhaps
killed a baby or set a house on fire? It would be bad enough if she
only made others suffer as we have done; but of merely that, of course,
we should never hear.”
“‘To care for others that they may not suffer
As we have suffered is divine well-doing,
The noblest vote of thanks for all our sorrows,’”
quoted Miss Latimer, “and I’ve often seen that work in many ways which
shallow sentimentalists do not recognise.”
“I know that few lunatics who eventually fall into terrible crime
have not given forewarnings which, if heeded, might have spared them
and their victims,” Mr. Somerset conceded. “But still, under all
the circumstances, I feel as if it is our first duty to consider
Mrs. Challoner and to save her from the abuse and insult which her
interference on this score may probably bring.”
But Lucy determined on her course, and she wrote a brief account of
what had happened during Clementina’s stay and had been discovered
since her departure.
“At best there will be no answer,” remarked Mr. Somerset.
“That will be very rude,” said Miss Latimer.
“I shall be quite satisfied with that,” returned the gentleman
significantly.
They were still awaiting developments when, a morning or two
afterwards, the door bell summoned Miss Latimer to receive a
bright-faced, pleasant-voiced woman, who inquired for “Mrs. Challoner,”
and asked to be announced as “‘Mrs. May from Deal—Jarvist May’s widow.’
Mrs. Challoner will recollect me.”
No announcement was needed. Lucy, who, according to her new nervous
habit, had been listening on the stairs, was instantly sobbing in the
arms of this woman, who had gone through all the worst which Lucy had
to fear. The blessed tears had come!
To “Jarvist May’s widow” Lucy found it easy to confide the fears—nay,
the absolute despair—which now filled her concerning Charlie’s fate. To
none of the others had she done this. They had tendered their hopes
to her, and she, little knowing how faint they felt them, had made as
though she could at least entertain these. In that way they had sought
to comfort her, and she had accepted their kind intention, even as
gentle hearts accept the little useless gifts of childish good-will.
But this widowed woman brought consolation up from great depths lying
calm beneath whatever wind might rise.
“God has got you, and God has got your husband, wherever he is. How can
you be apart, my dear? Why, dear, if God has taken him to Himself, he
may be nearer to you now than in the days when he was living here and
had to go out to his business, leaving you at home. And if he’s still
somewhere on earth, dear, don’t you hope he’s taking care of himself
and keeping bright and cheery in the faith that you are doing the same?
If he is living and can’t send word to you, that must feel as bad for
him as for you to get no word. Don’t you hope that he trusts you are
keeping up? And as he is certainly all right—SOMEWHERE—you’ve just got
to keep up for his sake. Yes, my dear, cry, cry”—as Lucy looked up with
a piteous attempt to smile. “He wouldn’t mind that so long as it does
you good and washes the clouds out of your heart. That’s what tears are
meant for—to make us smile the sweeter afterwards.”
Mrs. May’s visit rose out of her having seen the newspaper paragraph
concerning the safety of the _Slains Castle_.
“I came away to see you just as soon as I could,” she narrated simply.
“Thought I, poor dear, she’s got to go through for months the waiting
and the watching that I had only for a few hours. All I can say to her
is, that I know what those few hours were, and that none but God could
have helped me through them, and none but God can help her through
her longer trial. But that’s enough, for God is over everything, and
under everything, and in everything; and if He upholds you, so does
everything else.”
She joined with Mrs. Grant’s counsel, in whispering to Miss Latimer
that nothing would be so good for Lucy as to proceed with her “regular
work,” to keep her life on in a straight line from where her husband
left her, and not to have to face any “beginning again.” She was
actually glad to find that Lucy’s present absence from her classes
arose from a sheer practical necessity, and not from any yielding to
grief.
Then Mrs. May had a most unexpected proposal to make. It appeared that
she had let her house furnished for a whole year to people who were to
provide their own service. She had not quite relished doing this, as it
deprived her of her “work,” but she had felt she ought not to refuse a
good offer, since her last season had been as a whole but a poor one,
while her strength had somewhat failed under a great rush of summer
visitors for a few short weeks.
“So I thought I would go into rooms in Deal, and make myself as useful
as I could among my neighbours,” she said. “I thought to myself it
might even be a bit of training against old age. I do pray I may be of
use to somebody till my dying day. But it’s in God’s hands, and when
I’ve seen old folks kept alive so long and so helpless that others talk
about ‘a happy release,’ it has come into my mind that, after all,
maybe God is giving them their rest on this side of the grave instead
of the other, and that they’ll be off and up and about their Master’s
business, while some who have been working to the end here will be
getting their bit of sleep in Paradise.”
When Mrs. May heard of Lucy’s household predicament, a fresh thought
had come into her head; and so her suggestion was that she herself
should take up her abode in the little house with the verandah, and by
“keeping it going” lift a weight of care from its young mistress’s mind.
“I won’t take any wages,” she said. “No, please, I’d rather not.
There’s a good income for me for this year at least from my furnished
house. After that we might speak of the matter again, when we see how
things go—but not before—no, I’ll not hear of it. For, you see, dear
Mrs. Challoner, work may be a little harder in this London house than
by the sunny sea-shore, and I may need a little help from the outside,
and there will be that for you to pay for. I feel you may well look a
little downcast at the thought of outside help, for I know the trouble
it often gives even in a quiet town, to say nothing of London. But you
see I shall be always to the fore, as you could not be yourself; and I
am different from young servants, who are often corrupted by charwomen.
When a body works with another, one soon finds out what that other is,
and how far one’s confidence may go. And we won’t be in any hurry to
engage anybody. Maybe we shall just come across the right person.”
As a matter of fact, “the right person” was actually preparing to cross
London even while Mrs. May was speaking. Only a hour or two afterwards
she presented herself at Mrs. Challoner’s door in the person of her old
servant, Pollie!
Pollie did not look quite so blooming as in the days of her service.
She had a little baby in her arms. She was candidly crying. She too had
seen the sad news of the _Slains Castle_ in the newspaper—her husband
had read it to her at breakfast time, and with the rashness of youth
and ignorance she had thought the very worst was inevitable. Miss
Latimer called Mrs. May to talk to her for awhile before Lucy was told
of her arrival. A little talk with the sailor’s widow restored Pollie
to calmness and to some modified hope.
“I often wondered why I never heard from you,” said Lucy to her old
servant. “If I had known you were again in London, I should have come
to see you.”
“Would you really, ma’am?” cried Pollie, delighted. “I thought you were
so angry with me for leaving you.”
“No, Pollie,” Lucy answered, “I was not angry, and I am very sorry
indeed if I seemed so. I was bitterly disappointed and vexed because I
had not dreamed of your leaving, and it meant taking everything up in
a different way from what I had thought. I was under a terrible strain
too at that time, so that any added pressure made me cry out, and it
may have seemed like anger when it was only pain.”
“I know that what I did didn’t look pretty,” Pollie admitted. “I’ve
seen that since. But I was in a fine taking. I’d got it into my head
there would be changes and that I’d be turned loose of a sudden, and
I knew that it wasn’t every place that would suit me after I’d been
so long with you and the master. And husband, after he knew more, he
didn’t comfort me nor speak no smooth things. I said you were huffed at
my marrying, and he thought that was unreasonable——”
“As it would have been,” interjected Lucy.
“But when it came out how you had been situated with the master going
away, and how good you’d been to my sisters, when they were so weakly,
then husband sang another tune. ‘Them that considers our families,’
says he, ‘we ought to consider theirs, leastways unless we’re such poor
stuff that we must be always a-getting and never a-giving.’ And I’m
sure I needn’t have been in such a hurry; he’d have waited a bit if I’d
promised him, ’twasn’t his own changing he was feared of but mine! And
we’ve never got rightly settled, and the poor baby’s suffered a good
deal with the moving about, and me getting so tired and worried.”
“But it is a dear little baby,” Lucy said, stroking the grave little
white face. “I am so glad to see it, Pollie. It is so kind of you to
bring it.”
Pollie was tearful again.
“I’ve got a favour to ask, ma’am,” she said. “We’ve never hit on a
name for him yet, and says husband to me, after he read that bit of
troublesome news in the paper—‘I wonder if your mistress would let us
call him after your master. It would show her that we did know who
is good folks, though we didn’t always act like it.’ That’s the best
of husband,” Pollie explained, wiping away her tears. “When there’s
anything he thinks a bit wrong, he never puts it on ‘you,’ he always
says ‘we.’ And says I to him, ‘I’ll go straight off and ask her, and if
she thinks it’s too much of a liberty, I’ll ask if she’d like better
that we named the boy after her son, little Master Hugh, God bless
him!’”
Lucy’s own eyes were full of tears. She had taken the baby and was
pressing it to her bosom.
“Call him after Charlie,” she sobbed. “Call him—Charlie. Charlie had
Hugh named after my father—and now if Charlie—if——” she could not
complete her sentence, but added with a great effort—“there will never
be a Charlie Challoner of my own.”
“Oh, Pollie,” she went on presently, “the terrible part of your leaving
was that I felt Charlie must not know about it. I do believe he would
not have gone for this voyage if he had not firmly believed that you
and I could go on happily and safely while he was away. I hated to keep
the secret, Pollie, but I had to do it, if Charlie was to have what
seemed to be such a chance for his life. And now, after all——” she
could say no more.
“And I daresay the master thought pretty hardly of me when he did
hear,” said Pollie woefully.
“He never heard,” answered Lucy. “I meant to tell him so soon as I got
comfortably settled down with somebody else. But that day never came
while he was in reach of letters. Once I thought all was so right that
I began my letter, telling the whole story, but before it was finished
there was disappointment, and that letter never went. To Charlie it
must always seem as if Pollie is taking care of Hugh and me.”
“I only wish it could be true!” cried Pollie. “I only wish I could
afford to come over twice a week and help that nice person who tells me
she is going to look after your house. I could bring the baby with me,
for he is as good as gold.”
Lucy looked up; a bright thought struck her.
“The question is, Pollie,” she said, “could you afford the time? A
married woman owes all her time to her husband’s home, except under
peculiar circumstances or at a pinch. And I’m sure it is wisest and
best so, Pollie, for if a wife’s earnings are not simply an ‘extra,’
evoked to meet some special visitation of God, they don’t add to the
household prosperity and comfort. I’m sure I’ve seen enough this year
to prove that.”
“Ay, I know it’s true, ma’am,” said Pollie, “but what you say is just
our case. Husband had an accident last spring and was out of work three
months, and on only half work for a while after, and what with him
bringing in nothing, and wanting dainty food, and with a doctor’s bill
to pay, we got into debt, and before we left the place we had to pay
off, and that meant ‘putting away’ a lot of our things. We’re only in
one room now, ma’am, and that does not suit the ways of either of us,
and that room is bare enough and does not take long to keep clean. And
while I might be helping to get things right again, there I sit with
a heavy heart and empty hands. That’s when women take to mischief—to
gossiping and drinking. Tom’s out from seven in the morning till six at
night. But, of course, I can’t do anything that would take me away from
my baby. I wouldn’t do that, and Tom wouldn’t hear of it, not while we
have a crust of bread to eat.”
“But, Pollie,” said Lucy, “if you can really afford the time, I can
afford to pay you—I really can,” she assured her former servant, seeing
that she looked pitifully at her. “First of all, I earn a good deal by
my work, if I can get a trustworthy person to work for me in turn; and
secondly, my good friend Mrs. May, whom you have seen, refuses to take
any wages, because she says she knows she will want outside help. I
could afford, Pollie, to give you six shillings a week if you will come
here for two days weekly from eight till four, and of course you would
dine here.”
“Why, that would pay our rent!” cried Pollie joyfully. “And I know what
working in a nice house like this is, with a proper sitting down to
good food. Husband, he said to me, ‘If you go charing, it’ll just be
cleaning up after slovenly hussies and getting meals o’ broken meat.’
Won’t he be pleased! And, oh, Mrs. Challoner, this makes me quite sure
you are friends with me again. I only wish I’d been reasonable, and
had treated you friendly, and taken counsel with you, and not been so
sudden-like. Yet there’s some ladies make a servant believe she’s of no
account, and girls are too ready to listen to ’em,” added Pollie, with
a side glance of memory at that conversation with Mrs. Brand which had
so disturbed and unsettled her. “But now I’m sure we’re friends again,
ma’am.”
“I’m sorry to have ever led you to think otherwise,” said Lucy. “I was
sad and sore myself, and it hurt me to think that, after all the time
we had been together——”
“And all you’d done for me and my folks,” murmured Pollie.
“You should act so suddenly in such an important matter, with no
reference to me or my trying position,” Mrs. Challoner went on.
“Perhaps, in my turn, I was not considerate enough of your standpoint.
Anyhow, Pollie, as you say, now we know we are friends again.”
That was a pleasant interlude. Better even than its immediate comfort
and security was the mystic hint that it seemed to convey not only of
a far-off greater “restitution of all things,” but also of a present
protecting power—that Fatherly love which takes us up when, in the ways
of life or of death, parents and spouses and friends forsake or fail
us. “Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life.” We
have to walk forward in that faith, and only by such walking forward
can faith be transformed into sacred, secret knowledge.
It was well, indeed, that there was something pleasant. For, alas for
human nature, it is by foreseeing evil as to its doings that one can
most easily establish reputation as a far-seeing prophet!
Some days passed before the arrival of Clementina’s box and the receipt
of the postal order were acknowledged from Hull. Then a little parcel
came.
“I should not wonder but the poor soul, if she has come a little to
her senses, has sent some bit of her needlework as a peace-offering,”
observed Mrs. Challoner as she unfastened the string.
Far from it! The parcel contained only the half-used packet of mourning
envelopes and a letter. It was a comfort to see that the epistle was by
another and an apparently saner hand.
The letter was not very long. It began—
“MRS. CHALLONER,—The trunk has come to hand. We had to pay
a man sixpence extra for bringing it up. Your letter and
post-office order have come. We see you pay only for the
current month. Considering our niece was wore out at your place
and had to leave through illness caused there, we think you
might have done a little more. Our niece says these envelopes
don’t belong to her, and she doesn’t want to take away anything
that isn’t hers. She says she never knew such goings on as
there were at your place, and if the pore dear had gone out of
her mind it wouldn’t have been no wonder. Maybe it is someone
else as is out of their mind. Our niece has got a little means
of her own, and needn’t go to service except where she is
valued. She won’t go anywhere till she’s got back the strength
she lost in your place, and she won’t come back to you on no
account.
“Yours,
“SARAH ANN MICKLEWRATH.”
At another time the falseness, the selfishness, the greed, the utter
injustice of that letter would have pained Lucy. It scarcely hurt her
now. She showed it to Miss Latimer, and Mr. Somerset, and Mrs. May,
and they were all indignant; but as for Lucy, she only smiled dimly.
“We have done all we can,” she said. “We can’t do any more. And we
must not judge these Micklewraths too harshly. We do not know how sane
and reasonable Clementina may appear to them, just as she did to us. I
should not have been readily incredulous of any story Clementina might
have told me about any of our tradespeople or neighbours.”
It was a suspicious circumstance that Clementina’s nearest relations
at Inverslain preserved a dead silence so far as the little house with
the verandah was concerned. It appeared, however, that they wrote to
Mrs. Bray’s Rachel. She forwarded their letter to Mrs. Challoner. It,
too, was brief and guarded, but was quite different in its tone. It was
written by Clementina’s brother, who deplored the trouble his sister
had given everybody—“precisely as she did when she left the Highlands
without telling us where she was going or what she meant to do. She is
an excitable woman,” he added, “who dwells on things too much and takes
violent fancies.” His conclusion was that, “as her aunt and uncle at
Hull had taken her in—which was more than he and his wife would dare
do, owing to Clementina’s temper—he hoped they would look after her,
and she might quiet down after a bit.”
Poor Rachel was quite self-accusatory at the sad failure of her
“introduction,” though really it was hard to see how she could blame
herself, since her recommendation had not gone one whit beyond very
good and reasonable grounds, known to herself. She ended her letter by
saying—
“I fear my dear mistress is very ill indeed. I don’t think she believes
it of herself. At least, she doesn’t wish us to know she believes it. I
don’t imagine she will live to return to her old house. I don’t think
she could be moved from here. I shouldn’t be surprised myself if the
end came at any moment. Mr. and Mrs. Brand have been most kind. My
mistress quite looks forward to see them at almost every week’s end.”
(_To be continued._)
HOUSEHOLD HINTS.
TO BOIL AN EGG.
_Method._—Have ready a saucepan of boiling water and put in the egg
carefully with a spoon, taking care not to break the shell. Boil three
minutes and a half for a soft-boiled egg, six minutes for a moderately
hard one, and ten minutes for a hard-boiled egg.
TO POACH AN EGG.
_Method._—Break the egg into a cup, take away the tread, slip the egg
quickly and carefully into a pan containing boiling water, holding the
cup near to the side of the pan as you put it in; see that the egg is
well covered with the boiling water; as soon as the white begins to
set, raise the egg on a fish-slice, let the water drain away and slip
it on to a small piece of hot buttered toast.
BROWN THICKENING.
_Method._—Melt a pound of dripping slowly in a large frying-pan and
stir in by degrees a pound of flour; let this cook very gently over a
slow fire until it is a good dark brown; stir well from time to time
and do not let it burn. This will take about an hour to make. It will
keep a very long time.
BROWNING.
_Method._—Put half a pound of brown sugar in an old tin or saucepan and
let it burn nearly black over a fire, stir in a gill of boiling water,
let it cool, and bottle for use.
TO BLANCH BARLEY.
_Method._—Put it in a saucepan of cold water, bring to the boil, and
throw the water away.
TO BOIL RICE.
_Method._—Wash the rice well, and cook it in fast boiling water with
the lid off for twelve minutes. Pour some cold water into the saucepan,
and then drain the rice off on to a sieve. Return to the saucepan, and
let it dry well on or near the stove. Shake the saucepan well, and take
care that the rice does not burn or stick together.
TO MAKE TEA.
_Method._—Warm the teapot by pouring in a little boiling water; empty
it out and put in the tea, allowing about two teaspoonfuls to every
three people, if the number requiring tea be more than three. For two
allow three teaspoonfuls. Pour on the boiling water, and let it stand
three minutes.
[Illustration]
“UPS AND DOWNS.”
A TRUE STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.
BY N. O. LORIMER.