Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration]
OF NO ACCOUNT
BY
RUTH LAMB
Author of "Only a Girl Wife," "Her Own Choice,"
"Holiday Stories," etc. etc.
London
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
56, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD
BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME, AND LONDON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. HOW MRS. LIVESEY "GAVE UP"
II. "FOR BETTER FOR WORSE"
III. AT RUTHERFORD'S
IV. MR. DRUMMOND IN HARNESS
V. THE NEW MANAGER TAKES ADAM UNAWARES
VI. "THE THIN END OF THE WEDGE"
VII. MAGGIE, HER BEST SIDE OUT
VIII. CALLER AND COGITATIONS
IX. FARTHER APART, YET NEARER
X. IN THE MISSION ROOM
XI. "THE GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST"
XII. NEW LESSONS
XIII. THE LIGHT BEGINS TO SHINE ON ADAM
XIV. THE LETTER AND ITS ANSWER
XV. CONSCIENCE AT WORK
XVI. STEPPING HEAVENWARD
XVII. HOW MRS. ALLISON MADE AMENDS
XVIII. RE-UNITED YET SEPARATE
XIX. STUMBLING-BLOCKS
XX. BY THE PATH OF SUFFERING
XXI. A GLEAM OF HOPE
XXII. FRIENDS IN NEED
XXIII. SUNSHINE AT LAST
[Illustration]
OF NO ACCOUNT
CHAPTER I.
HOW MRS. LIVESEY "GAVE UP."
"I DON'T know why you should trouble yourself to come after me. I'm o'
no account. What matter does it make whether a poor chap like me spends
his Sundays at home or in the streets, at church or in a church with a
chimney?"
The speaker, Adam Livesey, was a man whose appearance suggested that
the world had dealt hardly with him, and that he had found life,
regarded as a journey, very rough travelling.
He was spare of form, rugged of feature, not given to much talking, but
usually civil spoken, and not unpleasant in manner. There was, however,
one exception. Adam Livesey was deemed surly by those who ventured to
interfere with what he considered his strictly private affairs. He
might not say in so many words, "Mind your own business, and let mine
alone. It's a hard case that a quiet fellow cannot be left to himself
by folk that are nothing to him. I wasn't meddling with you." But he
looked all this and more.
If Adam could have been induced to open his mind to anybody, he would
have summed up his experience by saying that, all through life, he had
received "more kicks than ha'pence."
A clever lad, he would have done credit to good schooling, but could
not get it. Just as he was beginning to understand the value of
learning, his father died, and Adam had to go to work. The years that
followed were marked by scanty fare, rough treatment, and small wages,
which went to the support of those at home, who were younger and more
helpless than himself.
In after days, Adam seldom spoke of his mother, but the neighbours
described her as being "of a sour sort."
Mrs. Livesey was always engaged in a struggle for bare bread, so had
little time, even if she felt the inclination, to indulge in acts of
motherly tenderness. The house was cheerless, for she went out washing
and cleaning. There was no girl to attend to it and the younger boys,
so the place looked desolate to the weary lad when he returned from
work before his mother's arrival.
It had been different when the father was living, but then Mrs. Livesey
had only to stay with her children and use for the common benefit good
wages, regularly placed in her hands.
With a husband to lean on and look up to, she stood firmly enough.
Without him, she was like a climbing plant from which the prop has been
withdrawn. She became limp and comparatively lifeless.
But the plant which has lost its first support often stretches out new
shoots in search of a fresh one, and throws its clinging tendrils round
some new source of strength, which will lift it from the ground.
Not so Mrs. Livesey. To use her own words, "When my husband died, I
just gave up. I've never had a bit of spirit for anything since. I drag
on somehow, and that's all I can say."
It was the giving up and the "dragging on somehow" which was so
terrible to the young ones, especially Adam, who had a great capacity
for tenderness, but was shy at showing his affection. He fairly
hungered for love and sympathy, and the one of all others, his
mother—who should have shown both—gave neither.
The sweetness had been taken out of one portion of Mrs. Livesey's daily
life, and she sought none elsewhere. She toiled hard enough to secure
bread and shelter for their bodies, but these children's hearts were
famished for want of what she might have bestowed if only she had not
"given up." Home was brightest when the mother was out of it; for,
though the children were neither beaten nor ill-treated—though she gave
them the best she could, the presence of the grave, silent woman was
like a wet blanket to them all.
Dear mothers, if you could only understand how much it is in your power
to brighten your children's lives, you would surely do it. If Adam
Livesey's mother had met him with a smile when he came in, and told
him that she thanked God for having left her such a helper in her boy!
If she had put her arms round his neck and given him a loving kiss, as
she took his hardly-won wages, or said she was sorry he had so heavy a
weight to carry while still so young! If she had gone with him and her
other children to the throne of grace, and there and with them made
her requests known unto God, and taught them that, though this may be
a world of toil and trial, there is something better beyond! If she
had put into their young hearts the precious, cheering thought that,
though the earthly father had been taken, they had a Father in heaven,
who had given sweet and precious promises to cheer the widow and the
orphan! If she had done these things, toil would have been lightened,
her children's lives made happier, their yearning for a mother's love
satisfied, and within them would have been planted good seeds which,
by God's grace, would have doubtless brought forth good fruit in their
lives.
She did none of these things, and she reaped fruit of another kind. As
the younger boys grew old enough, they went to work, and as soon as
they could severed the tie between themselves and the home that had no
brightness in it.
All went but Adam. Perhaps he had suffered most, because he was the
only one who was old enough to remember the better days during his
father's life. He, too, had a trial which the younger boys were spared,
for the cup of learning had been snatched from his lips as he was
beginning to taste its sweetness. Often was he sorely vexed, when he
saw lads with no yearnings after knowledge waste the opportunities he
would have prized. But there seemed no help for it.
Years passed, and Adam's boyhood was gone. "Too old to learn now, if I
had the chance," he murmured. "I'm o' no account in the world, and I
never shall be. I've got nothing to do, but to hammer away until I have
struck my last stroke, and then—"
Adam often said these words, but he never finished his sentence. He
stopped with "and then," seeming unable to look beyond the moment when,
his last day's work on earth being done, some one else would have to
lift the tool which his arm could raise no longer.
Adam's work was that of "striker" in a foundry. He had never been
apprenticed to any mechanical trade, and his calling was one which
required little beyond strength and adroitness. Though wiry, he was
very strong, and, happily for him, his depressing surroundings had
never driven him to drink.
His mother's last days were free from toil, for, when the other two
lads had crossed the ocean and found homes in far-away lands, Adam
stayed by her and worked for her. Before Mrs. Livesey died, she seemed
to realize that she might have made her children happier, and that she
herself might have found a good deal of sweetness towards the bottom
of life's cup, if she had not closed her lips against what was left,
because of the one bitter draught she had been compelled to drink.
"You'll do better without me, Adam," she said. "I've been nothing but
a clog to you all your days. I wish I'd been a bit brighter, but after
father died I had hard lines, and I gave up."
Adam would have liked to say something cheerful if he could, but he
could not at the moment think of anything to say, because his mother's
words were true. Before an answer came from him she had given up her
last breath, and the young man, always lonely enough, felt a little
more lonely than before.
It was some comfort to think of those last words of his mother, and to
know that the grave, unsympathetic woman had in her heart recognised
his devotion.
She had owned, after her fashion, that if she had done her part towards
Adam as faithfully as he had performed his to herself, both their lives
might have been happier. This was a crumb of comfort to feed upon, and
threw just a ray of light across that death-bed, not for the departing
soul, but for the watcher beside it; and Adam rejoiced that he had
"stuck by mother to the last."
"Poor soul! I reckon she couldn't help feeling so down-hearted and
dull. Dulness is catching, and I've got a good deal into mother's ways
with being so much along with her. However, I'm glad I haven't got to
look back and think that I left her to shift for herself, as Ned and
Tom did."
Adam, you see, had done his duty according to his light, and this
thought was the best comforter he had, as he sat by his solitary hearth
that night, thinking of the past, and wondering how he should shape his
future. Often and often had he rebelled in spirit against the monotony
of his work and its hopeless character. He asked himself—Would it be
possible for him to make a fresh start, now he had only himself to work
for?