THE COMMON-PLACE.
It was evening, and the air was still warm. Pine Street was almost
empty, save of the red sun, which blinded him so that wherever he
looked he could only see great sunblots. All but a few of the shops were
closed, but amongst the few he was surprised to find that of his friend
the linendraper, who had always been a strong advocate of early closing.
The shutters were up, however, though the door stood wide open. He
peeped in. To his sun-blinded eyes the shop looked very dark, but he
thought he saw Mr. Drew talking to some one, and entered. He was right;
it was the draper himself, and a poor woman with a child on one arm,
and a print dress she had just bought on the other. The curate leaned
against the counter, and waited until business should be over to address
his friend.
“Is Mr. Drew an embryonic angel?” he half felt, half thought within
himself. “Is this shop the chrysalis of a great psyche? Will the draper,
with his round good-humoured face and puckering smile, ever spread
thunderous wings and cleave the air up to the throne of God?”
“I cannot tell you how it goes against me to take that woman’s money,”
said the voice of the draper.
The curate woke up in the presence of the unwinged, and saw that the
woman had left the shop.
“I did let her have the print at cost-price,” Mr. Drew went on, laughing
merrily. “That was all I could venture on.”
“Where was the danger?”
“Ah, you don’t know so well as I do the good of having some difficulty
in getting what you need! To ease the struggles of the poor, unless it
be in sickness or absolute want, I have repeatedly proved to be a cruel
kindness.”
“Then you don’t sell to the poor women at cost-price always?”
“No--only to the soldiers’ wives. They have a very hard life of it, poor
things!”
“That is your custom, then?”
“For the last ten years, but I don’t let them know it.”
“Is it for the soldiers’ wives you keep your shop open so late? I
thought you were the great supporter of early closing in Glaston,” said
the curate.
“I will tell you how it happened to-night,” answered the draper, and as
he spoke he turned round, not his long left ear upon the pivot of his
skull, but his whole person upon the pivot of the counter--to misuse the
word pivot with Wordsworth--and bolted the shop-door.
“After the young men had put up the shutters and were gone,” he said,
returning to the counter, “leaving me as usual to bolt the door, I fell
a-thinking. Outside, the street was full of sunlight, but only enough
came in to show how gloomy the place was without more of it, and the
back of the shop was nearly dark. It was very still too--so still that
the silence seemed to have taken the shape of gloom. Pardon me for
talking in this unbusiness-like way: a man can’t be a draper always; he
must be foolish sometimes. Thirty years ago I used to read Tennyson. I
believe I was amongst the earliest of his admirers.”
“Foolish!” echoed Wingfold, thoughtfully.
“You see,” the draper went on, “there IS something solemn in the quiet
after business is over. Sometimes it’s more so, sometimes less; but this
night it came upon me that the shop felt like a chapel--had the very air
of one somehow, and so I fell a thinking, and forgot to shut the
door. How it began I don’t know, but my past life came up to me, and I
remembered how, when I was a young man, I used to despise my father’s
business, to which he was bringing me up, and feed my fancy with things
belonging to higher walks in life. Then I saw that must have been partly
how I fell into the mistake of marrying Mrs. Drew. She was the daughter
of a doctor in our town, a widower. He was in poor health, and unable to
make much of his practice, so that when he died she was left destitute,
and for that reason alone, I do believe, accepted me. What followed you
know: she went away with a man who used to travel for a large Manchester
house. I have never heard of her since.
“After she left me, a sort of something which I think I may call the
disease of self-preservation, laid hold upon me. I must acknowledge that
the loss of my wife was not altogether a misery. She despised my trade,
which drove me to defend it--and the more bitterly that I also despised
it. There was therefore a good deal of strife between us. I did not make
allowance enough for the descent she had made from a professional father
to a trade-husband. I forgot that, if she was to blame for marrying me
for bread, I was to blame for marrying her to enlarge myself with her
superiority. After she was gone, I was aware of a not unwelcome calm
in the house, and in the emptiness of that calm came the demon of
selfishness sevenfold into my heart, and took up his abode with me. From
that time I busied myself only about two things--the safety of my soul,
and a good provision for my body. I joined the church I had occasion
to mention to you before, sir, grew a little harder in my business
dealings, and began to lay by money. And so, ever since, have I been
going on till I heard your sermon the other day, which I hope has
waked me up to something better.--All this long story is but to let you
understand how I was feeling when that woman came into the shop. I told
you how, in the dusk and the silence, it was as if I were in the chapel.
I found myself half-listening for the organ. Then the verse of a hymn
came into my mind--I can’t tell where or when I had met with it, but it
had stuck to me:
Let me stand ever at the door,
And keep it from the entering sin,
That so thy temple, walls and floor,
Be pure for thee to enter in.
“Now that, you see, is said of the temple of the heart; but somehow
things went rather cross-cut that evening--they got muddled in my head.
It seemed as if I was the door-keeper of my shop, and at the same time
as if my shop, spreading out and dimly vanishing in the sacred gloom,
was the temple of the Holy Ghost, out of which I had to keep the sin.
And with the thought, a great awe fell upon me: could it be--might it
not be that God was actually in the place?--that in the silence he was
thinking--in the gloom he was knowing? I laid myself over the counter,
with my face in my hands, and went on half thinking, half praying. All
at once the desire arose burning in my heart: Would to God my house were
in truth a holy place, haunted by his presence! ‘And wherefore not?’
rejoined something within me--heart or brain or something deeper than
either. ‘Is thy work unholy? Are thy deeds base? Is thy buying or
selling dishonest? Is it all for thyself and nothing for thy fellows? Is
it not a lawful calling? Is it, or is it not, of God? If it be of God,
and yet he be not present, then surely thy lawful calling thou followest
unlawfully.” “So there I was--brought back to the old story. And I said
to myself, ‘God knows I want to follow it lawfully. Am I not even now
seeking how to do so? But this, though true, did not satisfy me. To
follow it lawfully--even in his sight--no longer seemed enough.--Was
there then no possibility of raising it to dignity? Did the business of
Zacchaeus remain, after the visit of Jesus, a contemptible one still?
Could not mine be made Christian? Was there no corner in the temple
where a man might buy and sell and not be driven out by the whip of
small cords?--I heard a step in the shop, and lifting my head, saw a
poor woman with a child in her arms. Annoyed at being found in that
posture, like one drunk or in despair; annoyed also with myself for not
having shut the door, with my usual first tendency to injustice a harsh
word was trembling on my very lips, when suddenly something made me
look round in a kind of maze on the dusky back shop. A moment more and
I understood: God was waiting to see what truth was in my words. That is
just how I felt it, and I hope I am not irreverent in saying so. Then
I saw that the poor woman looked frightened--I suppose at my looks
and gestures--perhaps she thought me out of my mind. I made haste
and received her, and listened to her errand as if she had been a
duchess--say rather an angel of God, for such I felt her in my heart to
be. She wanted a bit of dark print with a particular kind of spot in it,
which she had seen in the shop some months before, but had not been able
to buy. I turned over everything we had, and was nearly in despair. At
last, however, I found the very piece which had ever since haunted her
fancy--just enough of it left for a dress! But all the time I sought it,
I felt as if I were doing God service--or at least doing something he
wanted me to do. It sounds almost ludicrous now, but--”
“God forbid!” said Wingfold.
“I’m glad you don’t think so, sir. I was afraid you would.”
“Had the thing been a trifle, I should still have said the same,”
returned the curate. “But who with any heart would call it--a trifle to
please the fancy of a poor woman, one who is probably far oftener vexed
than pleased? She had been brooding over this dress--you took trouble to
content her with her desire. Who knows what it may do for the growth of
the woman? I know what you’ve done for me by the story of it.”
“She did walk out pleased-like,” said the draper, “--and left me more
pleased than she,--and so grateful to her for coming--you can’t think!”
“I begin to suspect,” said the curate, after a pause, “that the common
transactions of life are the most sacred channels for the spread of the
heavenly leaven. There was ten times more of the divine in selling her
that gown as you did, in the name of God, than in taking her into your
pew and singing out of the same hymn-book with her.”
“I should be glad to do that next though, if I had the chance,” said Mr.
Drew. “You must not think, because he has done me so little good, that
our minister is not a faithful preacher; and, owing you more than heart
can tell, sir, I like chapel better than church, and consider it nearer
the right way. I don’t mean to be a turncoat, and leave Drake for
you, sir; I must give up my deaconship, but I won’t my pew or my
subscription.”
“Quite right, Mr. Drew,” said Wingfold; “that could do nothing but harm.
I have just been reading what our Lord says about proselytizing. Good
night.”