MR. FULLER.
One evening Lucy was sitting as usual with Mattie, for the child had
no friends but her and grannie; her only near relative was a widowed
sister of her father, whom she did not like. She was scarcely so well
as she had been for the last few days, and had therefore gone early
to bed, and Lucy sat beside her to comfort her. By this time she had
got the room quite transformed in appearance--all the books out of
it, a nice clean paper up on the walls, a few colored prints from the
_Illustrated London News_ here and there, and, in fact, the whole made
fit for the abode of a delicate and sensitive child.
"What shall I read to-night, Mattie?" she asked. For Mattie must always
have something read to her out of the New Testament before she went to
sleep; Mr. Spelt had inaugurated the custom.
"Oh, read about the man that sat in his Sunday clothes," said Mattie.
"I don't know that story," returned Lucy.
"I wish dear mother was here," said Mattie, with the pettishness of an
invalid. "He would know what story I mean--that he would."
"Would you like to see Mr. Spelt?" suggested Lucy. "He was asking about
you not an hour ago."
"Why didn't he come up, then? I wonder he never comes to see me."
"I was afraid you weren't strong enough for it, Mattie. But I will run
and fetch him now, if he's not gone."
"Oh, yes; do, please. I know he's not gone, for I have not heard his
step yet. I always watch him out of the court when I'm in bed. He goes
right under me."
Lucy went, and Mr. Spelt came gladly.
"Well, mother," said Mattie, holding out a worn little cloud of a hand,
"how do you do?"
Mr. Spelt could hardly answer for emotion. He took the little hand in
his, and it seemed to melt away in his grasp, till he could hardly feel
it.
"Don't cry, mother. I am very happy. I do believe I've seen the last
of old Syne. I feel just like the man that had got his Sunday clothes
on, you know. You see what a pretty room Miss Burton has made, instead
of all those ugly books that Syne was so fond of: well, my poor head
feels just like this room, and I'm ready to listen to anything about
Somebody. Read about the man in his Sunday clothes."
But Mr. Spelt, no less than Lucy, was puzzled as to what the child
meant.
"I wish that good clergyman that talked about Somebody's burden being
easy to carry, would come and see me," she said. "I know he would tell
me the story. He knows all about Somebody."
"Shall I ask Mr. Potter to come and see you?" said Spelt, who had never
heard of Mr. Fuller by name, or indeed anything about him, but what
Mattie had told him before she was taken ill.
"I don't mean Mr. Potter--you know well enough. He's always pottering,"
said the child, with a laugh.
She had not yet learned to give honor where honor is not due; or,
rather, she had never been young enough to take seeming for being,
or place for character. The consequence was that her manners and her
modesty had suffered--not her reverence or her heart.
[Illustration: "THE LITTLE TAILOR WAS VERY SHY OF READING BEFORE LUCY."]
"I want to see the gentleman that really thinks it's all about
something," she resumed. "Do you know where he lives, Miss Burton?"
"No," answered Lucy, "but I will find out to-morrow, and ask him to
come and see you."
"Well, that will be nice," returned Mattie. "Read to me, Mr.
Spelt--anything you like."
The little tailor was very shy of reading before Lucy, but Mattie would
hear of nothing else, for she would neither allow Lucy to read, nor yet
to go away.
"Don't mind me, Mr. Spelt," said Lucy, beseechingly. "We are all
friends, you know. If we belong to the Somebody Mattie speaks about we
needn't be shy of each other."
Thus encouraged, Mr. Spelt could refuse no longer. He read about the
daughter of Jairus being made alive again.
"Oh, dear me!" said Mattie. "And if I had gone dead when Syne was
tormenting of me, He could have come into the room, and taken me by
the hand and said, 'Daughter, get up.' How strange it would be if He
said, 'Daughter' to me, for then He would be my father, you know.
And they say He's a king. I wonder if that's why Mr. Kitely calls me
_princess_. To have Mr. Kitely and Somebody," she went on musingly,
"both for fathers is more than I can understand. There's something
about godfathers and godmothers in the Catechism, ain't there, Miss
Burton?" Then, without, waiting for a reply, she went on, "I wish my
father would go and hear what that nice gentleman--not Mr. Potter--has
got to say about it. Miss Burton, read the hymn about blind Bartimeus,
and that'll do mother good, and then I'll go to sleep."
The next day, after she came from the Morgensterns', Lucy went to
find Mr. Fuller. She had been to the week-evening service twice since
Mattie began to recover, but she had no idea where Mr. Fuller lived,
and the only way she could think of for finding him was to ask at the
warehouses about the church. She tried one after another, but nobody
even knew that there was any service there--not to say where the
evening preacher lived. With its closed, tomb-like doors, and the utter
ignorance of its concerns manifested by the people of the neighborhood,
the great ugly building stood like some mausoleum built in honor of a
custom buried beneath it, a monument of the time when men could buy and
sell and worship God. So Lucy put off further inquiry till the next
week-evening service, for she had found already that Mr. Fuller had
nothing to do with the Sunday services in that church.
How she wished that she could take Thomas with her the next time she
went to receive Mr. Fuller's teaching! She had seen very little of
Thomas, as I have said, and had been so much occupied with Mattie,
that she did not even know whether he had fulfilled his promise about
telling his father. I suspect, however, that she had been afraid to ask
him, foreboding the truth that he had in fact let his promise lapse in
time, and was yet no nearer toward its half redemption in act, which
was all that remained possible now. And, alas! what likelihood was
there of the good seed taking good root in a heart where there was so
little earth?
Finding Mr. Kitely in his shop door, Lucy stopped to ask after Mattie,
for she had not seen her that morning. And then she told him what she
had been about, and her want of success.
"What does the child want a clergyman for?" asked Mr. Kitely, with some
tone of dissatisfaction. "I'm sure you're better than the whole lot of
them, miss. Now I could listen to you--"
"How do you know that?" retorted Lucy, smiling; for she wanted to stop
the eulogium upon herself.
"Because I've listened to you outside the door, Miss Burton, when you
was a-talking to Mattie inside."
"That wasn't fair, Mr. Kitely."
"No more it wasn't, but it's done me no harm, nor you neither. But for
them parsons!--they're neither men nor women. I beg their pardons--they
_are_ old wives."
"But are you sure that you know quite what you are talking about? I
think there must be all sorts of them as well as of other people. I
wish you would come and hear Mr. Fuller some evening with Mattie and me
when she's better. You would allow that he talks sense, anyhow."
"I ain't over hopeful, miss. And to tell the truth, I don't much care.
I don't think there can be much in it. It's all an affair of the
priests. To get the upper hand of people they work on their fears and
their superstitions. But I don't doubt some of them may succeed in
taking themselves in, and so go on like the fox that had lost his tail,
trying to make others cut off theirs too."
Lucy, did not reply, because she had nothing at hand to say. The
bookseller feared he had hurt her.
"And so you couldn't find this Mr. Fuller? Well, you leave it to me.
I'll find him, and let you know in the afternoon."
"Thank you, Mr. Kitely. Just tell Mattie, will you? I must run home
now, but I'll come in in the afternoon to hear how you have succeeded."
About six o'clock, Lucy reëntered Mr. Kitely's shop, received the
necessary directions to find the "parson," ran up to tell Mattie that
she was going, for the child had not come down stairs, and then set out.
To succeed she had to attend to Mr. Kitely's rather minute
instructions; for although the parsonage lay upon the bank of one of
the main torrents of city traffic, it was withdrawn and hidden behind
shops and among offices, taverns, and warehouses. After missing the
most direct way, she arrived at last, through lanes and courts, much
to her surprise, at the border of a green lawn on the opposite side of
which rose a tree that spread fair branches across a blue sky filled
with pearly light, and blotted here and there with spongy clouds that
had filled themselves as full of light as they could hold. The other
half of the branches of the same tree spread themselves across the
inside of a gable, all that remained of a tavern that was being pulled
down. The gable was variegated with the incongruous papers of many
small rooms, and marked with the courses of stairs and the holes for
the joints of the floors; and this dreariness was the background for
the leaves of the solitary tree. On the same side was the parsonage,
a long, rather low, and country-looking house, from the door of which
Lucy would not have been surprised to see a troop of children burst
with shouts and laughter, to tumble each other about upon the lawn, as
smooth, at least, if not as green, as any of the most velvety of its
kind. One side of the square was formed by a vague, commonplace mass of
dirty and expressionless London houses--what they might be used for no
one could tell--one of them, probably, an eating-house--mere walls with
holes to let in the little light that was to be had. The other side was
of much the same character, only a little better; and the remaining
side was formed by the long barn-like wall of the church, broken at
regular intervals by the ugly windows, with their straight sides
filled with parallelograms, and their half-circle heads filled with
trapeziums--the ugliest window that can be made, except it be redeemed
with stained glass, the window that makes the whole grand stretch of
St. Paul's absolutely a pain. The church was built of brick, nearly
black below, but retaining in the upper part of the square tower
something of its original red. All this Lucy took in at a glance as she
went up to the door of the parsonage.
She was shown into a small study, where Mr. Fuller sat. She told him
her name, that she had been to his week-evening service with Mattie,
and that the child was ill and wanted to see him.
"Thank you very much," said Mr. Fuller. "Some of the city clergymen
have so little opportunity of being useful! I am truly grateful to you
for coming to me. A child in my parish is quite a godsend to me--I do
not use the word irreverently--I mean it. You lighten my labor by the
news. Perhaps I ought to say I am sorry she is ill. I dare say I shall
be sorry when I see her. But meantime, I am very glad to be useful."
He promised to call the next day; and, after a little more talk, Lucy
took her leave.
Mr. Fuller was a middle-aged man, who all his conscious years had been
trying to get nearer to his brethren, moved thereto by the love he bore
to the Father. The more anxious he was to come near to God, the more
he felt that the high-road to God lay through the forest of humanity.
And he had learned that love is not a feeling to be called up at will
in the heart, but the reward as the result of an active exercise of the
privileges of a neighbor.
Like the poor parson loved of Chaucer, "he waited after no pomp ne
reverence;" and there was no chance of preferment coming in search of
him. He was only a curate still. But the incumbent of St. Amos, an
old man, with a grown-up family, almost unfit for duty, and greatly
preferring his little estate in Kent to the city parsonage, left
everything to him, with much the same confidence he would have had
if Mr. Fuller had been exactly the opposite of what he was, paying
him enough to live upon--indeed, paying him well for a curate. It was
not enough to marry upon, as the phrase is, but Mr. Fuller did not
mind that, for the only lady he had loved, or ever would love in that
way, was dead; and all his thoughts for this life were bent upon such
realizing of divine theory about human beings, and their relation to
God and to each other, as might make life a truth and a gladness.
It was therefore painful to him to think that he was but a _city_
curate, a being whose thirst after the relations of his calling among
his fellows reminded himself of that of the becalmed mariner, with
"water, water everywhere, but water none to drink." He seemed to have
nothing to do with them, nor they with him. Perhaps not one individual
of the crowds that passed his church every hour in the week would be
within miles of it on the Sunday; for even of those few who resided
near it, most forsook the place on the day of rest, especially in the
summer; and few indeed were the souls to whom he could offer the bread
of life. He seemed to himself to be greatly overpaid for the work he
had it in his power to do--in his own parish, that is. He had not even
any poor to minister to. He made up for this by doing his best to help
the clergyman of a neighboring parish, who had none but poor; but his
heart at times burned within him to speak the words he loved best to
speak to such as he could hope had the ears to hear them; for among
the twelve people--a congregation he did not always have--that he said
he preferred to the thousand, he could sometimes hardly believe that
there was one who heard and understood. More of his reflections and
resolutions, in regard to this state of affairs, we shall fall in with
by and by. Meantime, my reader will believe that this visit of Lucy
gave him pleasure and hope of usefulness. The next morning he was in
Mr. Kitely's shop as early as he thought the little invalid would be
able to see him.
"Good-morning, sir," said Mr. Kitely, brusquely. "What can I do for you
this morning?"
If Mr. Fuller had begun looking at his books, Kitely would have taken
no notice of him. He might have stayed hours, and the bookseller would
never have even put a book in his way; but he looked as if he wanted
something in particular, and therefore Mr. Kitely spoke.
"You have a little girl that's not well, haven't you?" returned Mr.
Fuller.
"Oh! you're the gentleman she wanted to see. She's been asking ever so
often whether you wasn't come yet. She's quite impatient to see you,
poor lamb!"
While he spoke, Kitely had drawn nearer to the curate, regarding him
with projecting and slightly flushed face, and eyes that had even
something of eagerness in them.
"I would have come earlier, only I thought it would be better not,"
said Mr. Fuller.
Mr. Kitely drew yet a step nearer, with the same expression on his face.
"You won't put any nonsense into her head, will you, sir?" he said,
almost pleadingly.
"Not if I know it," answered Mr. Fuller, with a smile of kind humor. "I
would rather take some out of it."
"For you see," Kitely went on, "that child never committed a sin in her
life. It's all nonsense; and I won't have her talked to as if she was a
little hell-cat."
"But you see we must go partly by what she thinks herself; and I
suspect she won't say she never did anything wrong. I don't think I
ever knew a child that would. But, after all, suppose you are right,
and she never did anything, wrong--"
"I don't exactly say that, you know," interposed Mr. Kitely, in a tone
of mingled candor and defense. "I only said she hadn't committed any
sins."
"And where's the difference?" asked Mr. Fuller, quietly.
"Oh! you know quite well. Doing wrong, you know--why, we all do wrong
sometimes. But to commit a sin, you know--I suppose that's something
serious. That comes in the way of the Ten Commandments."
"I don't think your little girl would know the difference."
"But what's the use of referring to her always?"
"Just because I think she's very likely to know best. Children are wise
in the affairs of their own kingdom."
"Well, I believe you're right; for she is the strangest child I ever
saw. She knows more than any one would think for. Walk this way, sir.
You'll find her in the back room."
"Won't you come, too, and see that I don't put any nonsense into her
head?"
"I must mind the shop, sir," objected Kitely, seeming a little ashamed
of what he had said.
Mr. Fuller nodded content, and was passing on, when he bethought
himself, and stopped.
"Oh, Mr. Kitely," he said, "there was just one thing I was going to
say, but omitted. It was only this: that suppose you were right about
your little girl, or suppose even that she had never done anything
wrong at all, she would want God all the same. And we must help each
other to find Him."
If Mr. Kitely had any reply ready for this remark, which I doubt, Mr.
Fuller did not give him time to make it, for he walked at once into
the room, and found Mattie sitting alone in a half twilight, for the
day was cloudy. Even the birds were oppressed, for not one of them was
singing. A thrush hopped drearily about under his load of speckles, and
a rose-ringed paroquet, with a very red nose, looked ashamed of the
quantity of port-wine he had drunk. The child was reading the same
little old book mentioned before. She laid it down, and rose from the
window-sill to meet Mr. Fuller.
"Well, how do you do, sir?" she said. "I am glad you are come."
Any other child of her age Mr. Fuller would have kissed, but there was
something about Mattie that made him feel it an unfit proceeding. He
shook hands with her and offered her a white camellia.
"Thank you, sir," said Mattie, and laid the little transfiguration upon
the table.
"Don't you like flowers?" asked Mr. Fuller, somewhat disappointed.
"Isn't it beautiful now?"
"Well, where's the good?" answered and asked Mattie, as if she had been
a Scotchwoman. "It will be ugly before to-morrow."
"Oh, no; not if you put it in water directly."
"Will it live forever, then?" asked Mattie.
"No, only a few days."
"Well, where's the odds, then? To-morrow or next week--where's the
difference? It _looks_ dead now when you know it's dying."
"Ah!" thought Mr. Fuller, "I've got something here worth looking into."
What he said was, "You dear child!"
"You don't know me yet," returned Mattie. "I'm not dear at all. I'm
cross and ill-natured. And I won't be petted."
"You like the birds, though, don't you?" said Mr. Fuller.
"Well, yes. Mr. Kitely likes them, and I always like what he likes. But
they are not quite comfortable, you know. They won't last forever, you
know. One of them is dead since I was taken ill. And father meant it
for Miss Burton."
"Do you like Miss Burton, then?"
"Yes, I _do_. But she'll live forever, you know. I'll tell you
something else I like."
"What is that, my child?"
"Oh, I'm no such a child! But I'll tell you what I like. There."
And she held out the aged little volume, open at the hymn about blind
Bartimeus.
"Will this live forever, then?" he asked, turning the volume over in
his hand, so that its withered condition suggested itself at once to
Mattie.
"Now you puzzle me," answered Mattie. "But let me think. You know it's
not the book I mean; it's the poem. Now I have it. If I know that poem
by heart, and I live forever, then the poem will live forever. There!"
"Then the book's the body, and the poem the soul," said Mr. Fuller.
"One of the souls; for some things have many souls. I have two, at
least."
Mr. Fuller felt instinctively, with the big forehead and the tiny body
of the child before him, that they were getting on rather dangerous
ground. But he must answer.
"Two souls! That must be something like what King David felt, when he
asked God to join his heart into one. But do you like this poem?" he
hastened to add. "May I read it to you?"
"Oh, yes; please do. I am never tired of hearing it. It will sound
quite new if you read it."
So Mr. Fuller read slowly--"As Jesus went into Jericho town." And from
the way Mattie listened, he knew what he must bring her next--not a
camellia, but a poem. Still, how sad it was that a little child should
not love flowers!
"When were you in the country last, Miss Kitely?"
"I never was in the country that I know of. My name is Mattie."
"Wouldn't you like to go, Mattie?"
"No I shouldn't--not at all."
"Why?"
"Well, because--because it's not in my way, you see."
"But surely you have some reason for not liking the country."
"Well, now, I will tell you. The country, by all I can hear, is full
of things that die, and I don't like that. And I think people can't be
nice that like the country."
Mr. Fuller resolved in his heart that he would make Mattie like the
country before he had done with her. But he would say no more now,
because he was not sure whether Mattie as yet regarded him with a
friendly eye; and he must be a friend before he could speak about
religion. He rose, therefore, and held out his hand.
Mattie looked at him with dismay.
"But I wanted you to tell me about the man that sat at Somebody's feet
in his Sunday clothes."
Happily for his further influence with her, Mr. Fuller guessed at once
whom she meant, and taking a New Testament from his pocket, read to her
about the demoniac, who sat at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his
right mind. He had not known her long before he discovered that all
these stories of possession had an especial attraction for Mattie--she
evidently associated them with her own visions of Syne and his men.
"Well, I was wrong. It wasn't his Sunday clothes," she said. "Or,
perhaps, it was, and he had torn the rest all to pieces."
"Yes; I think that's very likely," responded Mr. Fuller.
"I know--it was Syne that told him, and he did it. But he wouldn't do
it any more, would he, after he saw Somebody?"
"I don't think he would," answered Mr. Fuller, understanding her just
enough to know the right answer to make. "But I will come and see you
again to-morrow," he added, "and try whether I can't bring something
with me that you will like."
"Thank you," answered the old-fashioned creature. "But don't be putting
yourself to any expense about it, for I am not easy to please." And
she lifted her hand to her head and gave a deep sigh, as if it was a
very sad fact indeed. "I wish I was easier to please," she added, to
herself; but Mr. Fuller heard her as he left the room.
"She's a very remarkable child that, Mr. Kitely--too much so, I fear,"
he said, reëntering the shop.
"I know that," returned the bookseller, curtly, almost angrily. "I wish
she wasn't."
"I beg your pardon. I only wanted--"
"No occasion at all," interrupted Mr. Kitely.
"I only wanted," Mr. Fuller persisted, "to ask you whether you do not
think she had better go out of town for a while."
"I dare say. But how am I to send her? The child has not a relation but
me--and an aunt that she can't a-bear; and that wouldn't do--would it,
sir? She would fret herself to death without someone she cared about."
"Certainly it wouldn't do. But mightn't Miss--I forget her name--"
"Miss Burton, I dare say you mean."
"I mean Miss Burton. Couldn't she help you? Is she any relation of
yours?"
"None whatever. Nor she's not like it. I believe she's a stray, myself."
"What _do_ you mean, Mr. Kitely?" asked Mr. Fuller, quite bewildered
now.
"Well, sir, I mean that she's a stray angel," answered Mr. Kitely,
smiling; "for she ain't like anyone else I know of but that child's
mother, and she's gone back to where she came from--many's the long
year."
"I don't wonder at your thinking that of her if she's as good as she
looks," returned Mr. Fuller. And bidding the bookseller good-morning,
he left the shop and walked home, cogitating how the child could be got
into the country.
Next morning he called--earlier, and saw Lucy leaving the court just as
he was going into the shop. He turned and spoke to her.
"Fancy a child, Miss Burton," he said, "that does not care about
flowers--and her heart full of religion too! How is she to consider the
lilies of the field? She knows only birds in cages; she has no idea of
the birds of the air. The poor child has to lift everything out of that
deep soul of hers, and the buckets of her brain can't stand such hard
work."
"I know, I know," answered Lucy. "But what can I do?"
"Besides," Mr. Fuller continued, "what notion of the simple grandeur of
God can she have when she never had more than a peep of the sky from
between these wretched houses? How can the heavens declare the glory
of God to her? You don't suppose David understood astronomy, and that
it was from a scientific point of view that he spoke, when he said
that the firmament showed his handiwork? That was all he could say
about it, for the Jewish nation was not yet able to produce a Ruskin.
But it was, nevertheless, the spiritual power of the sky upon his
soul--not the stars in their courses, but the stars up there in their
reposeful depth of blue, their 'shining nest'--which, whatever theory
of their construction he might have, yet impressed him with an awe, an
infinitude, a shrinking and yet aspiring--made his heart swell within
him, and sent him down on his knees. This little darling knows nothing
of such an experience. We must get her into the open. She must love
the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and the clouds that change and
pass. She can't even like anything that does not last forever; and the
mind needs a perishing bread sometimes as well as the body--though it
never perishes when once made use of, as Mattie told me yesterday. But
I beg your pardon; I am preaching a sermon, I think. What a thing it is
to have the faults of a profession in addition to those of humanity! It
all comes to this--you must get that child, with her big head and her
big conscience, out of London, and give her heart a chance."
"Indeed, I wish I could," answered Lucy. "I will do what I can, and
let you know. Are you going to see her now, Mr. Fuller?"
"Yes, I am. I took her a flower yesterday, but I have brought her a
poem to-day. I am afraid, however, that it is not quite the thing for
her. I thought I could easily find her one till I began to try, and
then I found it very difficult indeed."
They parted--Lucy to Mrs. Morgenstern's, Mr. Fuller to Mattie.
I will give the hymn--for the sake, in part, of what Mattie said, and
then I will close the chapter.
"Come unto me," the Master says.
But how? I am not good;
No thankful song my heart will raise,
Nor even wish it could.
I am not sorry for the past,
Nor able not to sin;
The weary strife would ever last
If once I should begin.
Hast thou no burden then to bear?
No action to repent?
Is all around so very fair?
Is thy heart quite content?
Hast thou no sickness in thy soul?
No labor to endure?
Then go in peace, for thou art whole,
Thou needest not His cure.
Ah! mock me not. Sometimes I sigh;
I have a nameless grief,
A faint, sad pain--but such that I
Can look for no relief.
Come then to Him who made thy heart;
Come in thyself distrest;
To come to Jesus is thy part,
His part to give thee rest.
New grief, new hope He will bestow,
Thy grief and pain to quell;
Into thy heart Himself will go,
And that will make thee well.
When Mr. Fuller had finished the hymn, he closed the book and looked
toward Mattie. She responded--with a sigh--
"Well, I think I know what it means. You see I have such a big head,
and so many things come and go just as they please, that if it weren't
for Somebody I don't know what I should do with them all. But as soon
as I think about Him, they grow quieter and behave better. But I don't
know all that it means. Will you lend me the book, Mr. Fuller?"
All the child's thoughts took shapes, and so she talked like a lunatic.
Still, as all the forms to which she gave an objective existence were
the embodiments of spiritual realities, she could not be said to have
yet passed the narrow line that divides the poet from the maniac. But
it was high time that the subjects of her thoughts should be supplied
from without, and that the generating power should lie dormant for a
while. And the opportunity for this arrived sooner than her friends had
expected.