A SUMMONS.
One hot Saturday afternoon, in the sleepiest time of the day, when
nothing was doing; and nobody in the shop, except a poor boy who had
come begging for some string to help him fly his kite, though for the
last month wind had been more scarce than string, Jemima came in from
Durnmelling, and, greeting Mary with the warmth of the friendship that
had always been true between them, gave her a letter.
"Whom is this from?" asked Mary, with the usual human waste of inquiry,
seeing she held the surest answer in her hand.
"Mr. Mewks gave it me," said Jemima. "He didn't say whom it was from."
Mary made haste to open it: she had an instinctive distrust of
everything that passed through Mewks's hands, and greatly feared that,
much as his master trusted him, he was not true to him. She found the
following note from Mr. Redmain:
"DEAR MISS MARSTON: Come and see me as soon as you can; I have
something to talk to you about. Send word by the bearer when I may look
for you. I am not well.
"Yours truly,
"F. G. REDMAIN."
Mary went to her desk and wrote a reply, saying she would be with him
the next morning about eleven o'clock. She would have gone that same
night, she said, but, as it was Saturday, she could not, because of
country customers, close in time to go so far.
"Give it into Mr. Redmain's own hand, if you can, Jemima," she said.
"I will try; but I doubt if I can, miss," answered the girl.
"Between ourselves, Jemima," said Mary, "I do not trust that man Mewks."
"Nobody does, miss, except the master and Miss Yolland."
"Then," thought Mary, "the thing is worse than I had supposed."
"I'll do what I can, miss," Jemima went on. "But he's so sharp!--Mr.
Mewks, I mean."
After she was gone, Mary wished she had given her a verbal message;
that she might have insisted on delivering in person.
Jemima, with circumspection, managed to reach Mr. Redmain's room
unencountered, but just as she knocked at the door, Mewks came behind
her from somewhere, and snatching the letter out of her hand, for she
carried it ready to justify her entrance to the first glance of her
irritable master, pushed her rudely away, and immediately went in. But
as he did so he put the letter in his pocket.
"Who took the note?" asked his master.
"The girl at the lodge, sir."
"Is she not come back yet?"
"No, sir, not yet. She'll be in a minute, though. I saw her coming up
the avenue."
"Go and bring her here."
"Yes, sir."
Mewks went, and in two minutes returned with the letter, and the
message that Miss Marston hadn't time to direct it.
"You damned rascal! I told you to bring the messenger here."
"She ran the whole way, sir, and not being very strong, was that tired,
that, the moment she got in, the poor thing dropped in a dead faint.
They ain't got her to yet."
His master gave him one look straight in the eyes, then opened the
letter, and read it.
"Miss Marston will call here tomorrow morning," he said; "see that
_she_ is shown up at once--here, to my sitting-room. I hope I am
explicit."
When the man was gone, Mr. Redmain nodded his head three times, and
grinned the skin tight as a drum-head over his cheek-bones.
"There isn't a damned soul of them to be trusted!" he said to himself,
and sat silently thoughtful.
Perhaps he was thinking how often he had come short of the hope placed
in him; times of reflection arrive to most men; and a threatened attack
of the illness he believed must one day carry him off, might well have
disposed him to think.
In the evening he was worse.
By midnight he was in agony, and Lady Margaret was up with him all
night. In the morning came a lull, and Lady Margaret went to bed. His
wife had not come near him. But Sepia might have been seen, more than
once or twice, hovering about his door.
Both she and Mewks thought, after such a night, he must have forgotten
his appointment with Mary.
When he had had some chocolate, he fell into a doze. But his sleep was
far from profound. Often he woke and again dozed off.
The clock in the dressing-room struck eleven.
"Show Miss Marston up the moment she arrives," he said--and his voice
was almost like that of a man in health.
"Yes, sir," replied the startled Mewks, and felt he must obey.
So Mary was at once shown to the chamber of the sick man.
To her surprise (for Mewks had given her no warning), he was in bed,
and looking as ill as ever she had seen him. His small head was like a
skull covered with parchment. He made the slightest of signs to her to
come nearer--and again. She went close to the bed. Mewks sat down at
the foot of it, out of sight. It was a great four-post-bed, with
curtains.
"I'm glad you're come," he said, with a feeble grin, all he had for a
smile. "I want to have a little talk with you. But I can't while that
brute is sitting there. I have been suffering horribly. Look at me, and
tell me if you think I am going to die--not that I take your opinion
for worth anything. That's not what I wanted you for, though. I wasn't
so ill then. But I want you the more to talk to now. _You_ have a bit
of a heart, even for people that don't deserve it--at least I'm going
to believe you have; and, if I am wrong, I almost think I would rather
not know it till I'm dead and gone!--Good God! where shall I be then?"
I have already said that, whether in consequence of remnants of
mother-teaching or from the movements of a conscience that had more
vitality than any of his so-called friends would have credited it with,
Mr. Redmain, as often as his sufferings reached a certain point, was
subject to fits of terror--horrible anguish it sometimes amounted
to--at the thought of hell. This, of course, was silly, seeing hell is
out of fashion in far wider circles than that of Mayfair; but denial
does not alter fact, and not always fear. Mr. Redmain laughed when he
was well, and shook when he was suffering. In vain he argued with
himself that what he held by when in health was much more likely to be
true than a dread which might be but the suggestion of the disease that
was slowly gnawing him to death: as often as the sickness returned, he
received the suggestion afresh, whatever might be its source, and
trembled as before. In vain he accused himself of cowardice--the thing
was there--_in him_--nothing could drive it out. And, verily, even a
madman may be wiser than the prudent of this world; and the courage of
not a few would forsake them if they dared but look the danger in the
face. I pity the poor ostrich, and must I admire the man of whose kind
he is the type, or take him in any sense for a man of courage? Wait
till the thing stares you in the face, and then, whether you be brave
man or coward, you will at all events care little about courage or
cowardice. The nearer a man is to being a true man, the sooner will
conscience of wrong make a coward of him; and herein Redmain had a
far-off kindred with the just. After the night he had passed, he was
now in one of his terror-fits; and this much may be said for his good
sense--that, if there was anywhere a hell for the use of anybody, he
was justified in anticipating a free entrance.
"Mewks!" he called, suddenly, and his tone was loud and angry.
Mewks was by his bedside instantly.
"Get out with you! If I find you in this room again, without having
been called, I will kill you! I am strong enough for that, even without
this pain. They won't hang a dying man, and where I am going they will
rather like it."
Mewks vanished.
"You need not mind, my girl," he went on, to Mary. "Everybody knows I
am ill--very ill. Sit down there, on the foot of the bed, only take
care you don't shake it, and let me talk to you. People, you know, say
nowadays there ain't any hell--or perhaps none to speak of?"
"I should think the former more likely than the latter," said Mary.
"You don't believe there is any? I _am_ glad of that! for you are a
good girl, and ought to know."
"You mistake me, sir. How can I imagine there is no hell, when _he_
said there was?"
"Who's _he_?"
"The man who knows all about it, and means to put a stop to it some
day."
"Oh, yes; I see! Hm!--But I don't for the life of me see what a fellow
is to make of it all--don't you know? Those parsons! They will have it
there's no way out of it but theirs, and I never could see a handle
anywhere to that door!"
"_I_ don't see what the parsons have got to do with it, or, at least,
what you have got to do with the parsons. If a thing is true, you have
as much to do with it as any parson in England; if it is not true,
neither you nor they have anything to do with it."
"But, I tell you, if it be all as true as--as--that we are all sinners,
I don't know what to do with it!"
"It seems to me a simple thing. _That_ man as much as said he knew all
about it, and came to find men that were lost, and take them home."
"He can't well find one more lost than I am! But how am I to believe
it? How can it be true? It's ages since he was here, if ever he was at
all, and there hasn't been a sign of him ever since, all the time!"
"There you may be quite wrong. I think I could find you some who
believe him just as near them now as ever he was to his own
brothers--believe that he hears them when they speak to him, and heeds
what they say."
"That's bosh. You would have me believe against the evidence of my
senses!"
"You must have strange senses, Mr. Redmain, that give you evidence
where they can't possibly know anything! If that man spoke the truth
when he was in the world, he is near us now; if he is not near us,
there is an end of it all."
"The nearer he is, the worse for me!" sighed Mr. Redmain.
"The nearer he is, the better for the worst man that ever breathed."
"That's queer doctrine! Mind you, I don't say it mayn't be all right.
But it does seem a cowardly thing to go asking him to save you, after
you've been all your life doing what ought to damn you--if there be a
hell, mind you, that is."
"But think," said Mary, "if that should be your only chance of being
able to make up for the mischief you have done? No punishment you can
have will do anything for that. No suffering of yours will do anything
for those you have made suffer. But it is so much harder to leave the
old way than to go on and let things take their chance!"
"There may be something in what you say; but still I can't see it
anything better than sneaking, to do a world of mischief, and then
slink away into heaven, leaving all the poor wretches to look after
themselves."
"I don't think Jesus Christ is worse pleased with you for feeling like
that," said Mary.
"Eh? What? What's that you say?--Jesus Christ worse pleased with me?
That's a good one! As if he ever thought about a fellow like me!"
"If he did not, you would not be thinking about him just this minute, I
suspect. There's no sense in it, if he does not think about you. He
said himself he didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."
"I wish I could repent."
"You can, if you will."
"I can't make myself sorry for what's gone and done with."
"No; it wants him to do that. But you can turn from your old ways, and
ask him to take you for a pupil. Aren't you willing to learn, if he be
willing to teach you?"
"I don't know. It's all so dull and stupid! I never could bear going to
church."
"It's not one bit like that! It's like going to your mother, and saying
you're going to try to be a good boy, and not vex her any more."
"I see. It's all right, I dare say! But I've had as much of it as I can
stand! You see, I'm not used to such things. You go away, and send
Mewks. Don't be far off, though, and mind you don't go home without
letting me know. There! Go along."
She had just reached the door, when he called her again.
"I say! Mind whom you trust in this house. There's no harm in Mrs.
Redmain; she only grows stupid directly she don't like a thing. But
that Miss Yolland!--that woman's the devil. I know more about her than
you or any one else. I can't bear her to be about Hesper; but, if I
told her the half I know, she would not believe the half of that. I
shall find a way, though. But I am forgetting! you know her as well as
I do--that is, you would, if you were wicked enough to understand. I
will tell you one of these days what, I am going to do. There! don't
say a word. I want no advice on _such_ things. Go along, and send
Mewks."
With all his suspicion of the man, Mr. Redmain did not suspect _how_
false Mewks was: he did not know that Miss Yolland had bewitched him
for the sake of having an ally in the enemy's camp. All he could
hear--and the dressing-room door was handy--the fellow duly reported to
her. Already, instructed by her fears, she had almost divined what Mr.
Redmain meant to do.
Mary went and sat on the lowest step of the stair just outside the room.
"What are you doing there?" said Lady Margaret, coming from the
corridor.
"Mr. Redmain will not have me go yet, my lady," answered Mary, rising.
"I must wait first till he sends for me."
Lady Margaret swept past her, murmuring, "Most peculiar!" Mary sat down
again.
In about an hour, Mewks came and said his master wanted her.
He was very ill, and could not talk, but he would not let her go. He
made her sit where he could see her, and now and then stretched out his
hand to her. Even in his pain he showed a quieter spirit. "Something
may be working--who can tell!" thought Mary.
It was late in the afternoon when at length he sought further
conversation.
"I have been thinking, Mary," he said, "that if I do wake up in hell
when I die, no matter how much I deserve it, nobody will be the better
for it, and I shall be all the worse."
He spoke with coolness, but it was by a powerful effort: he had waked
from a frightful dream, drenched from head to foot. Coward? No. He had
reason to fear.
"Whereas," rejoined Mary, taking up his clew, "everybody will be the
better if you keep out of it--everybody," she repeated, "--God, and
Jesus Christ, and all their people."
"How do you make that out?" he asked. "God has more to do than look
after such as me."
"You think he has so many worlds to look to--thousands of them only
making? But why does he care about his worlds? Is it not because they
are the schools of his souls? And why should he care for the souls? Is
it not because he is making them children--his own children to
understand him and be happy with his happiness?"
"I can't say I care for his happiness. I want my own. And yet I don't
know any that's worth the worry of it. No; I would rather be put out
like a candle."
"That's because you have been a disobedient child, taking your own way,
and turning God's good things to evil. You don't know what a splendid
thing life is. You actually and truly don't know, never experienced in
your being the very thing you were made for."
"My father had no business to leave me so much money."
"You had no business to misuse it."
"I didn't _quite_ know what _I_ was doing."
"You do now."
Then came a pause.
"You think God hears prayer--do you?"
"I do."
"Then I wish you would ask him to let me off--I mean, to let me die
right out when I do die. What's the good of making a body miserable?"
"That, I am sure it would be of no use to pray for. He certainly will
not throw away a thing he has made, because that thing may be foolish
enough to prefer the dust-hole to a cabinet."
"Wouldn't you do it now, if I asked you?"
"I would not. I would leave you in God's hands rather than inside the
gate of heaven."
"I don't understand you. And you wouldn't say so if you cared for me!
Only, why should you care for me?"
"I would give my life for you."
"Come, now! I don't believe that."
"Why, I couldn't be a Christian if I wouldn't!"
"You are getting absurd!" he cried. But he did not look exactly as if
he thought it.
"Absurd!" repeated Mary. "Isn't that what makes _him_ our Saviour? How
could I be his disciple, if I wouldn't do as he did?"
"You are saying a good deal!"
"Can't you see that I have no choice?"
"_I_ wouldn't do that for anybody under the sun!"
"You are not his disciple. You have not been going about with him."
"And you have?"
"Yes--for many years. Besides, I can not help thinking there is one for
whom you would do it."
"If you mean my wife, you never were more mistaken. I would do nothing
of the sort."
"I did not mean your wife. I mean Jesus Christ."
"Oh, I dare say! Well, perhaps; if I knew him as you do, and if I were
quite sure he wanted it done for him."
"He does want it done for him--always and every day--not for his own
sake, though it does make him very glad. To give up your way for his is
to die for him; and, when any one will do that, then he is able to do
everything for him; for then, and not till then, he gets such a hold of
him that he can lift him up, and set him down beside himself. That's
how my father used to teach me, and now I see it for myself to be true."
"It's all very grand, no doubt; but it ain't nowhere, you know. It's
all in your own head, and nowhere else. You don't, you _can't_
positively believe all that!"
"So much, at least, that I live in the strength and hope it gives me,
and order my ways according to it."
"Why didn't you teach my wife so?"
"I tried, but she didn't care to think. I could not get any further
with her. She has had no trouble yet to make her listen."
"By Jove! I should have thought marrying a fellow like me might have
been trouble enough to make a saint of her."
It was impossible to fix him to any line of thought, and Mary did not
attempt it. To move the child in him was more than all argument.
A pause followed. "I don't love God," he said.
"I dare say not," replied Mary. "How should you, when you don't know
him?"
"Then what's to be done? I can't very well show myself where I hate the
master of the house!"
"If you knew him, you would love him."
"You are judging by yourself. But there is as much difference between
you and me as between light and darkness."
"Not quite that," replied Mary, with one of those smiles that used to
make her father feel as if she were that moment come fresh from God to
him. "If you knew Jesus Christ, you could not help loving him, and to
love him is to love God."
"You wear me out! Will you never come to the point? _Know Jesus
Christ!_ How am I to go back two thousand years?"
"What he was then he is now," answered Mary. "And you may even know him
better than they did at the time who saw him; for it was not until they
understood him better, by his being taken from them, that they wrote
down his life."
"I suppose you mean I must read the New Testament?" said Mr. Redmain,
pettishly.
"Of course!" answered Mary, a little surprised; for she was unaware how
few have a notion what the New Testament is, or is meant for.
"Then why didn't you say so at first? There I have you! That's just
where I learn that I must be damned for ever!"
"I don't mean the Epistles. Those you can't understand--yet."
"I'm glad you don't mean _them._ I hate them."
"I don't wonder. You have never seen a single shine of what they are;
and what most people think them is hardly the least like them. What I
want you to read is the life and death of the son of man, the master of
men."
"I can't read. I should only make myself twice as ill. I won't try."
"But I will read to you, if you will let me."
"How comes it you are such a theologian? A woman is not expected to
know about that sort of thing."
"I am no theologian. There just comes one of the cases in which those
who call themselves his followers do not believe what the Master said:
he said God hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed
them to babes. I had a father who was child enough to know them, and I
was child enough to believe him, and so grew able to understand them
for myself. The whole secret is to do the thing the Master tells you:
then you will understand what he tells you. The opinion of the wisest
man, if he does not do the things he reads, is not worth a rush. He may
be partly right, but you have no reason to trust him."
"Well, you shall be my chaplain. To-morrow, if I'm able to listen, you
shall see what you can make of the old sinner."
Mary did not waste words: where would have been the use of pulling up
the poor spiritual clodpole at every lumbering step, at any word
inconsistent with the holy manners of the high countries? Once get him
to court, and the power of the presence would subdue him, and make him
over again from the beginning, without which absolute renewal the best
observance of religious etiquette is worse than worthless. Many good
people are such sticklers for the proprieties! For myself, I take
joyous refuge with the grand, simple, every-day humanity of the man I
find in the story--the man with the heart like that of my father and my
mother and my brothers and sisters. If I may but see and help to show
him a little as he lived to show himself, and not as church talk and
church ways and church ceremonies and church theories and church plans
of salvation and church worldliness generally have obscured him for
hundreds of years, and will yet obscure him for hundreds more!
Toward evening, when she had just rendered him one of the many
attentions he required, and which there was no one that day but herself
to render, for he would scarcely allow Mewks to enter the room, he said
to her:
"Thank you; you are very good to me. I shall remember you. Not that I
think I'm going to die just yet; I've often been as bad as this, and
got quite well again. Besides, I want to show that I have turned over a
new leaf. Don't you think God will give me one more chance, now that I
really mean it? I never did before."
"God can tell whether you mean it without that," she answered, not
daring to encourage him where she knew nothing. "But you said you would
remember me, Mr. Redmain: I hope you didn't mean in your will."
"I did mean in my will," he answered, but in a tone of displeasure. "I
must say, however, I should have preferred you had not _shown_ quite
such an anxiety about it. I sha'n't be in my coffin to-morrow; and I'm
not in the way of forgetting things."
"I _beg_ you," returned Mary, flushing, "to do nothing of the sort. I
have plenty of money, and don't care about more. I would much rather
not have any from you."
"But think how much good you might do with it!" said Mr. Redmain,
satirically. "--It was come by honestly--so far as I know."
"Money can't do half the good people think. It is stubborn stuff to
turn to any good. And in this case it would be directly against good."
"Nobody has a right to refuse what comes honestly in his way. There's
no end to the good that may be done with money--to judge, at least, by
the harm I've done with mine," said Mr. Redmain, this time with
seriousness.
"It is not in it," persisted Mary. "If it had been, our Lord would have
used it, and he never did."
"Oh, but he was all an exception!"
"On the contrary, he is the only man who is no exception. We are the
exceptions. Every one but him is more or less out of the straight. Do
you not see?--he is the very one we must all come to be the same as, or
perish! No, Mr. Redmain! don't leave me any money, or I shall be
altogether bewildered what to do with it. Mrs. Redmain would not take
it from me. Miss Yolland might, but I dared not give it to her. And for
societies, I have small faith in them."
"Well, well! I'll think about it," said Mr. Redmain, who had now got so
far on the way of life as to be capable of believing that when Mary
said a thing she meant it, though he was quite incapable of
understanding the true relations of money. Few indeed are the
Christians capable of that! The most of them are just where Peter was,
when, the moment after the Lord had honored him as the first to
recognize him as the Messiah, he took upon him to object altogether to
his Master's way of working salvation in the earth. The Roman emperors
took up Peter's plan, and the devil has been in the church ever
since--Peter's Satan, whom the Master told to get behind him. They are
poor prophets, and no martyrs, who honor money as an element of any
importance in the salvation of the world. Hunger itself does
incomparably more to make Christ's kingdom come than ever money did, or
ever will do while time lasts. Of course money has its part, for
everything has; and whoever has money is bound to use it as best he
knows; but his best is generally an attempt to do saint-work by
devil-proxy.
"I can't think where on earth-you got such a sackful of extravagant
notions!" Mr. Redmain added.
"I told you before, sir, I had a father who set me thinking!" answered
Mary.
"I wish I had had a father like yours," he rejoined.
"There are not many such to be had."
"I fear mine wasn't just what he ought to be, though he can't have been
such a rascal as his son: he hadn't time; he had his money to make."
"He had the temptation to make it, and you have the temptation to spend
it: which is the more dangerous, I don't know. Each has led to many
crimes."
"Oh, as to crimes--I don't know about that! It depends on what you call
crimes."
"It doesn't matter whether men call a deed a crime or a fault; the
thing is how God regards it, for that is the only truth about it. What
the world thinks, goes for nothing, because it is never right. It would
be worse in me to do some things the world counts perfectly honorable,
than it would be for this man to commit a burglary, or that a murder. I
mean my guilt might be greater in committing a respectable sin, than
theirs in committing a disreputable one."
Had Mary known anything of science, she might have said that, in morals
as in chemistry, the qualitative analysis is easy, but the quantitative
another affair.
The latter part of this conversation, Sepia listening heard, and
misunderstood utterly.
All the rest of the day Mary was with Mr. Redmain, mostly by his
bedside, sitting in silent watchfulness when he was unable to talk with
her. Nobody entered the room except Mewks, who, when he did, seemed to
watch everything, and try to hear everything, and once Lady Margaret.
When she saw Mary seated by the bed, though she must have known well
enough she was there, she drew herself up with grand English
repellence, and looked scandalized. Mary rose, and was about to retire.
But Mr. Redmain motioned her to sit still.
"This is my spiritual adviser, Lady Margaret," he said.
Her ladyship cast a second look on Mary, such as few but her could
cast, and left the room.
On into the gloom of the evening Mary sat. No one brought her anything
to eat or drink, and Mr. Redmain was too much taken up with himself,
soul and body, to think of her. She was now past hunger, and growing
faint, when, through the settled darkness, the words came to her from
the bed:
"I should like to have you near me when I am dying, Mary."
The voice was a softer than she had yet heard from Mr. Redmain, and its
tone went to her heart.
"I will certainly be with you, if God please," she answered.
"There is no fear of God," returned Mr. Redmain; "it's the devil will
try to keep you away. But never you heed what any one may do or say to
prevent you. Do your very best to be with me. By that time I may not be
having my own way any more. Be sure, the first moment they can get the
better of me, they will. And you mustn't place confidence in a single
soul in this house. I don't say my wife would play me false so long as
I was able to swear at her, but I wouldn't trust her one moment longer.
You come and be with me in spite of the whole posse of them."
"I will try, Mr. Redmain," she answered, faintly. "But indeed you must
let me go now, else I may be unable to come to-morrow."
"What's the matter?" he asked hurriedly, half lifting his head with a
look of alarm. "There's no knowing," he went on, muttering to himself,
"what may happen in this cursed house."
"Nothing," replied Mary, "but that I have not had anything to eat since
I left home. I feel rather faint."
"They've given you nothing to eat!" cried Mr. Redmain, but in a tone
that seemed rather of satisfaction than displeasure. "Ring--no, don't."
"Indeed, I would rather not have anything now till I get home," said
Mary. "I don't feel inclined to eat where I am not welcome."
"Right! right! right!" said Mr. Redmain. "Stick to that. Never eat
where you are not welcome. Go home directly. Only say when you will
come to-morrow."
"I can't very well during the day," answered Mary. "There is so much to
be done, and I have so little help. But, if you should want me, I would
rather shut up the shop than not come."
"There is no need for that! Indeed, I would much rather have you in the
evening. The first of the night is worst of all. It's then the devils
are out.--Look here," he added, after a short pause, during which Mary,
for as unfit as she felt, hesitated to leave him, "--being in business,
you've got a lawyer, I suppose?"
"Yes," she answered.
"Then you go to him to-night the first thing, and tell him to come to
me to-morrow, about noon. Tell him I am ill, and in bed, and
particularly want to see him; and he mustn't let anything they say keep
him from me, not even if they tell him I am dead."
"I will," said Mary, and, stroking the thin hand that lay outside the
counterpane, turned and left him.
"Don't tell any one you are gone," he called after her, with a voice
far from feeble. "I don't want any of their damned company."