HOW LUCY SPENT THE NIGHT.
When Lucy left the room, with her lover--if lover he could be
called--alone in it, her throat felt as if it would burst with the
swelling of something like bodily grief. She did not know what it was,
for she had never felt anything like it before. She thought she was
going to die. Her grandmother could have told her that she would be a
happy woman if she did not have such a swelling in her throat a good
many times without dying of it; but Lucy strove desperately to hide it
from her. She went to her own room and threw herself on her bed, but
started up again when she heard the door bang, flew to the window, and
saw all that passed between Molken and Thomas till they left the court
together. She had never seen Molken so full in the face before; and
whether it was from this full view, or that his face wore more of the
spider expression upon this occasion, I do not know--I incline to the
latter, for I think that an on-looker can read the expression of two
countenances better, sometimes, than those engaged in conversation can
read each other's--however it was, she felt a dreadful repugnance to
Molken from that moment, and became certain that he was trying in some
way or other to make his own out of Thomas. With this new distress was
mingled the kind but mistaken self-reproach that she had driven him to
it. Why should she not have borne with the poor boy, who was worried
to death between his father and mother and Mr. Stopper and that demon
down there? He would be all right if they would only leave him alone.
He was but a poor boy, and, alas! she had driven him away from his only
friend--for such she was sure she was. She threw herself on her bed,
but she could not rest. All the things in the room seemed pressing upon
her, as if they had staring eyes in their heads; and there was no heart
anywhere.
Her grandmother heard the door bang, and came in search of her.
"What's the matter, my pet?" she asked, as she entered the room and
found her lying on the bed.
"Oh, nothing, grannie," answered Lucy, hardly knowing what she said.
"You've quarrelled with that shilly-shally beau of yours, I suppose.
Well, let him go--_he's_ not much."
Lucy made no reply, but turned her face toward the wall, as mourners
did ages before the birth of King Hezekiah. Grannie had learned a
little wisdom in her long life, and left her. She would get a cup of
tea ready, for she had great faith in bodily cures for mental aches.
But before the tea was well in the tea-pot Lucy came down in her bonnet
and shawl.
She could not rest. She tossed and turned. What could Thomas be about
with that man? What mischief might he not take him into? Good women,
in their supposed ignorance of men's wickedness, are not unfrequently
like the angels, in that they understand it perfectly, without the
knowledge soiling one feather of their wings. They see it clearly--even
from afar. Now, although Lucy could not know so much of it as many are
compelled to know, she had some acquaintance with the lowest castes of
humanity, and the vice of the highest is much the same as the vice of
the lowest, only in general worse--more refined, and more detestable.
So, by a natural process, without knowing how, she understood something
of the kind of gulf into which a man like Molken might lead Thomas, and
she could not bear the thoughts that sprung out of this understanding.
Hardly knowing what she did, she got up and put on her bonnet and
shawl, and went down stairs.
"Where on earth are you going, Lucy?" asked her grandmother, in some
alarm.
Lucy did not know in the least what she meant to do. She had had a
vague notion of setting out to find Thomas somewhere, and rescue him
from the grasp of Moloch, but, save for the restlessness with which
her misery filled her, she could never have entertained the fancy.
The moment her grandmother asked her the question, she saw how absurd
it would be. Still she could not rest. So she invented an answer, and
ordered her way according to her word.
"I'm going to see little Mattie," she said. "The child is lonely, and
so am I. I will take her out for a walk."
"Do then, my dear. It will do you both good," said the grandmother.
"Only you must have a cup of tea first."
Lucy drank her cup of tea, then rose, and went to the book-shop. Mr.
Kitely was there alone.
"How's Mattie to-night, Mr. Kitely? Is she any better, do you think?"
she asked.
"She's in the back room there. I'll call her," said the bookseller,
without answering either of Lucy's questions.
"Oh! I'll just go in to her. You wouldn't mind me taking her out for a
little walk, would you?"
"Much obliged to you, miss," returned the bookseller, heartily. "It's
not much amusement the poor child has. I'm always meaning to do better
for her, but I'm so tied with the shop that--_I_ don't know hardly how
it is, but somehow we go on the same old way. She'll be delighted."
Lucy went into the back parlor, and there sat Mattie, with her legs
curled up beneath her on the window-sill, reading a little book,
thumbed and worn at the edges, and brown with dust and use.
"Well, Miss Burton," she cried, before Lucy had time to speak, "I've
found something here. I think it's what people call poetry. I'm not
sure; but I'm sure it's good, whatever it is. Only I can't read it very
well. Will you read it to me, please, miss? I do like to be read to."
"I want you to come out for a walk with me, Mattie," said Lucy, who was
in no humor for reading.
Wise Mattie glanced up in her face. She had recognized the sadness in
her tone.
"Read this first, please, Miss Burton," she said. "I think it will do
you good. Things _will_ go wrong. I'm sure it's very sad. And I don't
know what's to be done with the world. It's always going wrong. It's
just like father's watch. He's always saying there's something out of
order in its inside, and he's always a-taking of it to the doctor, as
he calls the watchmaker to amuse me. Only I'm not very easy to amuse,"
reflected Mattie, with a sigh. "But," she resumed, "I wish I knew the
doctor to set the world right. The clock o' St. Jacob's goes all right,
but I'm sure Mr. Potter ain't the doctor to set the world right, any
more than Mr. Deny is for Mr. Kitely's watch."
The associations in Mattie's mind were not always very clear either to
herself or other people; they were generally just, notwithstanding.
"But you have never been to Mr. Potter's church to know, Mattie."
"Oh! haven't I, just? Times and times. Mr. Spelt has been a-taking of
me. I do believe mother thinks I am going to die, and wants to get me
ready. I wonder what it all means?"
"Nonsense, Mattie!" said Lucy, already tamed a little aside from her
own sorrow by the words of the child. "You must put on your hat and
come out with me."
"My bonnet, miss. Hats are only fit for very little girls. And I won't
go till you read this poetry to me--if it be poetry."
Lucy took the book, and read. The verses were as follows:
As Christ went into Jericho town,
'Twas darkness all, from toe to crown,
About blind Bartimeus.
He said, Our eyes are more than dim,
And so, of course, we don't see Him,
But David's Son can see us.
Cry out, cry out, blind brother, cry;
Let not salvation dear go by;
Have mercy, Son of David.
Though they were blind, they both could hear--
They heard, and cried, and he drew near;
And so the blind were saved.
O Jesus Christ! I'm deaf and blind,
Nothing comes through into my mind,
I only am not dumb.
Although I see thee not, nor hear,
I cry because thou may'st be near;
O Son of David, come.
A finger comes into my ear;
A voice comes through the deafness drear;
Poor eyes, no more be dim.
A hand is laid upon mine eyes;
I hear, I feel, I see, I rise--
'Tis He, I follow Him.
Before Lucy had finished reading the not very poetic lines, they had
somehow or other reached her heart. For they had one quality belonging
to most good poetry--that of directness or simplicity; and never does a
mind like hers--like hers, I mean, in truthfulness--turn more readily
toward the unseen, the region out of which even that which is seen
comes, than when a rain-cloud enwraps and hides the world around it,
leaving thus, as it were, only the passage upward open. She closed the
little book gently, laid it down, got Mattie's bonnet, and, heedless of
the remarks of the child upon the poem, put it on her, and led her out.
Her heart was too full to speak. As they went through the shop--
"A pleasant walk to you, ladies," said the bookseller.
"Thank you, Mr. Kitely," returned his daughter, for Lucy could not yet
speak.
They had left Bagot Street, and were in one of the principal
thoroughfares, before Lucy had got the lump in her throat sufficiently
swallowed to be able to speak. She had not yet begun to consider where
they should go. When they came out into the wider street, the sun,
now near the going down, was shining golden through a rosy fog. Long
shadows lay or flitted about over the level street. Lucy had never
before taken any notice of the long shadows of evening. Although she
was a town girl, and had therefore had comparatively few chances,
yet in such wide streets as she had sometimes to traverse they were
not a rare sight. In the city, to be sure, they are much rarer. But
the reason she saw them now was that her sorrowful heart saw the
sorrowfulness of the long shadows out of the rosy mist, and made her
mind observe them. The sight brought the tears again into her eyes, and
yet soothed her. They looked so strange upon that wood-paved street,
that they seemed to have wandered from some heathy moor and lost
themselves in the labyrinth of the city. Even more than the scent of
the hay in the early morning, floating into the silent streets from the
fields round London, are these long shadows to the lover of nature,
convincing him that what seems the unnatural Babylon of artifice and
untruth, is yet at least within the region of nature, contained in her
bosom and subjected to her lovely laws; is on the earth as truly as the
grassy field upon which the child sees with delighted awe his very own
shadow stretch out to such important, yea, portentous, length. Even
hither come the marvels of Nature's magic. Not all the commonplaces of
ugly dwellings, and cheating shops that look churches in the face and
are not ashamed, can shut out that which gives mystery to the glen far
withdrawn, and loveliness to the mountain-side. From this moment Lucy
began to see and feel things as she had never seen or felt them before.
Her weeping had made way for a deeper spring in her nature to flow--a
gain far more than sufficient to repay the loss of such a lover as
Thomas, if indeed she must lose him.
But Mattie saw the shadows too.
"Well, miss, who'd have thought of such a place as this! I declare it
bewilders my poor head. I feel every time a horse puts his foot on my
shadow as if I must cry out. Isn't it silly? It's all my big head--it's
not me; you know, miss."
Lucy could not yet make the remark, and therefore I make it for
her--how often we cry out when something steps on our shadow, passing
yards away from ourselves! There is not a phenomenon of disease--not
even of insanity--that has not its counterpart in our moral miseries,
all springing from want of faith in God. At least, so it seems to me.
That will account for it all, or looks as if it would; and nothing else
does.
It seems to me, too, that in thinking of the miseries and wretchedness
in the world we seldom think of the other side. We hear of an event in
association with some certain individual, and we say--"How dreadful!
How miserable!" And perhaps we say--"Is there--can there be a God in
the earth when such a thing can take place?" But we do not see into
the region of actual suffering or conflict. We do not see the heart
where the shock falls. We neither see the proud bracing of energies
to meet the ruin that threatens, nor the gracious faint in which the
weak escape from writhing. We do not see the abatement of pain which
is Paradise to the tortured; we do not see the gentle upholding in
sorrow that comes even from the ministrations of nature--not to speak
of human nature--to delicate souls. In a word, we do not see, and the
sufferer himself does not understand, how God is present every moment,
comforting, upholding, heeding that the pain shall not be more than can
be borne, making the thing possible and not hideous. I say nothing of
the peaceable fruits that are to spring therefrom; and who shall dare
to say where they shall not follow upon such tearing up of the soil?
Even those long shadows gave Lucy some unknown comfort, flowing from
Nature's recognition of the loss of her lover; and she clasped the
little hand more tenderly, as if she would thus return her thanks to
Nature for the kindness received.
To get out of the crowd on the pavement Lucy turned aside into a
lane. She had got half way down it before she discovered that it was
one of those through which she had passed the night before, when she
went with Thomas to the river. She turned at once to leave it. As she
turned, right before her stood an open church door. It was one of those
sepulchral city churches, where the voice of the clergyman sounds
ghostly, and it seems as if the dead below were more real in their
presence than the half dozen worshipers scattered among the pews.
On this occasion, however, there were seven present when Lucy and
Mattie entered and changed the mystical number to the magical.
It was a church named outlandishly after a Scandinavian saint. Some
worthy had endowed a week-evening sermon there after better fashion
than another had endowed the poor of the parish. The name of the latter
was recorded in golden letters upon a black tablet in the vestibule, as
the donor of £200, with the addition in letters equally golden, _None
of which was ever paid by his trustees_.
I will tell you who the worshipers were. There was the housekeeper in
a neighboring warehouse, who had been in a tumult all the day, and at
night-fall thought of the kine-browsed fields of her childhood, and
went to church. There was an old man who had once been manager of a
bank, and had managed it ill both for himself and his company; and
having been dismissed in consequence, had first got weak in the brain,
and then begun to lay up treasure in heaven. Then came a brother and
two sisters, none of them under seventy. The former kept shifting his
brown wig and taking snuff the whole of the service, and the latter
two wiping, with yellow silk handkerchiefs, brown faces inlaid with
coal-dust. They could not agree well enough to live together, for
their fathers will was the subject of constant quarrel. They therefore
lived in three lodgings at considerable distances apart. But every
night in the week they met at this or that church similarly endowed,
sat or knelt or stood in holy silence or sacred speech for an hour and
a half, walked together to the end of the lane discussing the sermon,
and then separated till the following evening. Thus the better parts
in them made a refuge of the house of God, where they came near to
each other, and the destroyer kept a little aloof for the season.
These, with the beadle and his wife, and Lucy and Mattie, made up the
congregation.
Now, when they left the lane there was no sun to be seen; but when they
entered the church, there he was--his last rays pouring in through a
richly stained window, the only beauty of the building. This window--a
memorial one--was placed in the northern side of the chancel, whence
a passage through houses, chimneys, and churches led straight to the
sunset, down which the last rays I speak of came speeding for one brief
moment ere all was gone, and the memorial as faded and gray as the
memory of the man to whom it was dedicated.
This change from the dark lane to the sun-lighted church laid hold of
Lucy's feelings. She did not know what it made her feel, but it aroused
her with some vague sense of that sphere of glory which enwraps all
our lower spheres, and she bowed her knees and her head, and her being
worshiped, if her thoughts were too troubled to go upward. The prayers
had commenced, and she kneeled, the words "He pardoneth and absolveth,"
were the first that found luminous entrance into her soul; and with
them came the picture of Thomas as he left the court with the man of
the bad countenance. Of him, and what he might be about, her mind was
full; but every now and then a flash of light, in the shape of words,
broke through the mist of her troubled thoughts, and testified of the
glory-sphere beyond; till at length her mind was so far calmed that she
became capable of listening a little to the discourse of the preacher.
He was not a man of the type of Mr. Potter of St. Jacob's, who
considered himself possessed of worldly privileges in virtue of a
heavenly office not one of whose duties he fulfilled in a heavenly
fashion. Some people considered Mr. Fuller very silly for believing
that he might do good in a church like this, with a congregation like
this, by speaking that which he knew, and testifying that which he
had seen. But he did actually believe it. Somehow or other--I think
because he was so much in the habit of looking up to the Father--the
prayers took a hold of him once more every time he read them; and he so
delighted in the truths he saw that he rejoiced to set them forth--was
actually glad to _talk_ about them to any one who would listen. When he
confessed his feeling about congregations, he said that he preferred
twelve people to a thousand. This he considered a weakness, however;
except that he could more easily let his heart out to the twelve.
He took for his text the words of our Lord, "Come unto me, all ye that
labor and are heavy laden." He could not see the strangers, for they
sat behind a pillar, and therefore he had no means for discovering that
each of them had a heavy-laden heart; Lucy was not alone in trouble,
for Syne had been hard upon Mattie that day. He addressed himself
especially to the two old women before him, of whose story he knew
nothing, though their faces were as well known to him as the pillars of
the church. But the basin into which the fountain of his speech flowed
was the heart of those girls.
No doubt presented itself as to the truth of what the preacher was
saying; nor could either of them have given a single argument from
history or criticism for the reality of the message upon which the
preacher founded his exhortation. The truth is not dependent upon proof
for its working. Its relation to the human being is essential, is in
the nature of things; so that if it be but received in faith--that
is, acted upon--it works its own work, and needs the buttressing of
no arguments any more than the true operation of a healing plant
is dependent upon a knowledge of Dioscorides. My reader must not,
therefore, suppose that I consider doubt an unholy thing; on the
contrary, I consider spiritual doubt a far more precious thing than
intellectual conviction, for it springs from the awaking of a deeper
necessity than any that can be satisfied from the region of logic. But
when the truth has begun to work its own influence in any heart, that
heart has begun to rise out of the region of doubt.
When they came from the church, Lucy and Mattie walked hand in hand
after the sisters and brother, and heard them talk.
"He's a young one, that!" said the old man. "He'll know a little better
by the time he's as old as I am."
"Well, I did think he went a little too far when he said a body might
be as happy in the work'us as with thousands of pounds in the Bank of
England."
"I don't know," interposed the other sister. "He said it depended on
what you'd got inside you. Now, if you've got a bad temper inside you,
all you've got won't make you happy."
"Thank you, sister. You're very polite, _as usual_. But, after all,
where should we have been but for the trifle we've got in the bank?"
"You two might ha' been living together like sisters, instead of
quarreling like two cats, if the money had gone as it ought to," said
the old man, who considered that the whole property belonged of right
to him.
By this time they had reached the end of the lane, and, without a word
to each other, they separated.
"Syne," said Mattie, significantly. Syne was evidently her evil
incarnation. Lucy did not reply, but hastened home with her, anxious to
be alone. She did not leave the child, however, before she had put her
to bed, and read again the hymn that had taken her fancy before they
went out.
I will now show my reader how much of the sermon remained upon Lucy's
mind. She sat a few minutes with her grandmother, and then told her
that she felt better, but would like to go to bed. So she took her
candle and went. As soon as she had closed the door, she knelt down by
her bedside, and said something like this--more broken, and with long
pauses between--but like this:
"O Jesus Christ, I come. I don't know any other way to come. I speak to
thee. Oh, hear me. I am weary and heavy laden. Give me rest. Help me to
put on the yoke of thy meekness and thy lowliness of heart, which thou
sayest will give rest to our souls. I cannot do it without thy help.
Thou couldst do it without help. I cannot. Teach me. Give me thy rest.
How am I to begin? How am I to take thy yoke on me? I must be meek. I
am very troubled and vexed. Am I angry? Am I unforgiving? Poor Thomas!
Lord Jesus, have mercy upon Thomas. He does not know what he is doing.
I will be very patient. I will sit with my hands folded, and bear all
my sorrow, and not vex Grannie with it; and I won't say an angry word
to Thomas. But, O Lord, have mercy upon him, and make him meek and
lowly of heart. I have not been sitting at thy feet and learning of
thee. Thou canst take all my trouble away by making Thomas good. I
ought to have tried hard to keep him in the way his mother taught him,
and I have been idle and self-indulgent, and taken up with my music and
dresses. I have not looked to my heart to see whether it was meek and
lowly like thine. O Lord, thou hast given me everything, and I have
not thought about thee. I thank thee that thou hast made me miserable,
for now I shall be thy child. Thou canst bring Thomas home again to
thee. Thou canst make him meek and lowly of heart, and give rest to his
soul. Amen."
Is it any wonder that she should have risen from her knees comforted?
I think not. She was already--gentle and good as she had always
been--more meek and lowly. She had begun to regard this meekness as the
yoke of Jesus, and therefore to will it. Already, in a measure, she was
a partaker of his peace.
Worn out by her suffering, and soothed by her prayer, she fell asleep
the moment she laid her head upon the pillow. And thus Lucy passed the
night.