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"I will take Frank on directly, if he will come,"said Walter.
At length his health failed so much that the medical men recommended him to return to his native country, and, if possible, to his native village. Frank wrote to Mr. King, who had, at that time, recently given up his business to Walter.
"Read this, Walter," said Mr. King, without further comment, "and tell me what you think of it, and what had better be done."
Walter read it through, and did not take a moment to consider.
"I will take Frank on directly, if he will come to me," he said.
Mr. King sent money out for his passage home, and Frank returned to Springcliffe.
He was greatly changed, and he found great changes in his native village. His father was dead, and his mother had removed to a distant part of the county. Walter alone seemed unchanged. He received his former companion with real kindness, and shielded him, so far as lay in his power, from any unkindness on the part of his fellow-workmen. He gave him constant employment, and, by degrees, Frank's health improved considerably; but he never was himself again; and the want of a little more education when he was a lad prevented his ever rising above the rank of a common workman.
If not a very skilful, he proved, at least, a very trustworthy servant towards his master, towards whom his gratitude knew no bounds.
"It has all come true!" he would say to himself, with a sigh, as he contrasted his inferior position with that of Mr. Walter White, now one of the most prosperous men in Springcliffe.
Frank did not forget the promise he had made Walter in prison, that if God spared his life he would be a better son to his parents than he had been. His mother, now his only remaining one, was very badly off, and was glad to return to Springcliffe, where Frank took her to live with him, and was able to make her old age comfortable.
Affliction had been blessed to Mrs. Hardy. She and her son Frank became regular worshippers in God's house; and they both felt how much they had to be grateful for; and in humble thankfulness they blessed God, who had called them out of darkness into His marvellous light.
THE END.
THE EIGHT BELLSAnd Their Voices——————
IT was on a winter's evening, in Henry Ekworth's early childhood, that the first voice of the Eight Bells fell upon his ear. He was seated by a comfortable fireside at home, close to his mother's knee, when a neighbour entered the room with a tale of horror which thrilled through his young heart, though its full import was imperfectly comprehended then.
It was a tale of death. An unhappy lady had that day been found lifeless in a neighbouring river, and report spoke of self-destruction.
Henry had seen that lady, had heard her speak, had received trifling gifts from her hand. Terrible it was to him to think of that hand as cold in death—and such a death!
"The Eight Bells caused it!" said Henry's gentle mother, as she broke out into sorrowful lamentations. "If it had not been for the Eight Bells, this might never have happened."
Henry did not understand the connection between the Eight Bells and the lady's violent and sad death.
The next day the child walked by his mother's side, and with her entered a house of mourning. He clung closer to her hand when the threshold was passed, for a painful scene was before them.
He saw a group of children gathered round a small smouldering fire—a fire, it seemed, without heat. The little ones looked scared and awed; traces of tears were on their faces; but the first outburst of grief had ceased. Only one, the eldest, sobbed as though her heart would break when Henry's mother spoke kindly and compassionately to her, in subdued whispering. She was a fair and lovely girl, but thin and sorrow-worn.
Henry's mother had a basket in her hand, and from it she took food, and offered it to the children; and oh, how eagerly they clutched it!
"How hungry they must be!" thought the wondering child.
The unhappy children were thinly clad, and the room bore the look of abject poverty. The uncarpeted floor, the worn-out rusher of the chairs, the small and cracked looking-glass hung against the wall—if it had not been cracked, it would not have been there—everything spoke of destitution.
As Henry's mother spoke comforting words to the poor children, an inner door slowly opened, and a woman mysteriously beckoned to the visitor, who, rising to the summons, would have left her boy behind, but that he clung still closer to her—terrified, he knew not why.
After a moment's thought, the mother moved slowly on, gently leading her boy. They ascended to an upper room, and there, on a bed, lay the lifeless body of the drowned lady, clothed in its coffin dress. Oh, how sharped and pinched the features! How deep and hollow the eyes! How thin and sharp the lips! Henry's mother was weeping bitterly; and the boy, wondering what it all could mean, wept too.
They retired from the chamber silently; and when they re-entered the room below, a man was there with a soiled and rusty coat. He was dirty and unshaven, and his watery eyes glared restlessly on all around him. He was seated by the fire, with his hands on his knees; and his children—for he was the father of the children there—had dispersed themselves, hither and thither.
Henry looked at the unhappy man, and dimly recognised in him a gentleman whom he had sometimes met when he was walking with his mother; but surely it could not be the same!
Yes, the same gentleman, for his mother spoke to him by name; and Henry remembered the name; and it was the name of the lady, too, who now lay pale and dead in the room above. The man groaned deeply when Henry's mother spoke, and tears fell fast down his cheeks; but he answered not a word.
Oh, how glad the child was to escape from that wretched dwelling!
They passed, on their way homeward, a house in the street, in front of which was suspended a large sign-board, gaily painted. Henry looked up at the sign, and his mother looked up too, and sighed deeply. It was the sign of the Eight Bells.
There were sounds of laughter and music within, as they hurried by its open door, and Henry wondered what his mother had meant last evening when she said, "If it had not been for the Eight Bells, this might never have happened!" What had the Eight Bells to do with the poor lady's fearful death?
That evening Henry's father called him to his side, and pointing to a passage in the Bible which lay open before him, he said, "Read, my son."
And Henry read, "'Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.'"
Henry's father then guided his son's eye to another passage on the same page, and the boy read, "'Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty:—'"
Henry's father then turned over the pages of the Bible till he came to a part of the New Testament; and once more, he pointed to a verse.
And Henry went on reading, "'Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God.'"
The father took the child on his knee, and said, "The man whom you saw to-day in that sorrowful house is a drunkard. By this he has brought himself to poverty and shame, and the poor unhappy mother to death; and except God should bring him to repentance, he cannot, when he dies, inherit the kingdom of God; for God's Word says so. There is no room for drunkards in heaven. Let us pray that God will forgive that unhappy man; and that you, my dear boy, may always be kept, by God's grace, from being a drunkard."
Henry heard in after years the history of that miserable man; how he had sunk from a favourable position in society by becoming a sot; had become a daily visitor at the Eight Bells, first at evening, and then in broad daylight also; had forfeited a lucrative situation; had sold his furniture and his garments, and, at length, even his wife's and children's, to satisfy his appetites, till, driven to insanity by ill-usage and destitution and despair, the poor lady had committed self-destruction.
This was the first voice of the Eight Bells; and Henry never forgot its awful warning tone.
———————
A few years passed away, and the boy heard a second voice, which seemed an echo of that which he had heard as a child.
It was on a bright summer's day, as Henry, returned from school, that he met a crowd in the street, slowly moving onward, while from open doors and windows gazed men and women as it passed. And one said to another, "This is what is got by going to the Eight Bells."
Henry looked on, and as the crowd partially opened, he saw a young man, pale, and agitated with fear or remorse, led on—and he staggered as he went—by other men whom he knew to be the peace officers of the town.
Henry felt a cold chill creep over him as he saw marks of blood on the garments of the prisoner, and was told that he had grievously and treacherously wounded a man in a fierce drunken quarrel at the Eight Bells.
Henry passed on; and the next day it was told that the wounded man was dead, and the manslayer was in prison. The tragical deed had been wrought under the excitement of intoxication. There was a trifling dispute; thence had arisen taunting words, then a blow was struck, and then a stab with a knife was returned. The wives and children of the slayer and the slain were plunged at once into the deepest woe. The men had, until the fatal quarrel, been close companions and friends.
The slain man was buried, and, a few weeks later, the manslayer had received sentence of transportation; and when Henry heard this, the words once more came into his mind which he had first read as a child: "'Look not upon the wine when it is red: at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.'"
And he prayed in his soul, "'Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.'"
———————
Other years passed away, and a third voice sounded in the ears of the youth, like those which he had heard as a boy and a child; it told of shame and guilt, and a prison's walls.
A prison for debtors! Henry went there as a visitor, and in company with a messenger of mercy. Long before, in the days of his boyhood, Henry had one playfellow whom above all others he loved. Frank, open-hearted, and affectionate was Albert; and Henry loved him.
Albert's father was in business, and he was deemed to be a prosperous man; but there had been one drawback to his prosperity—a worm in the bud; and, at length, after many years of downward progress, his business was closed, his family scattered, and himself an imprisoned debtor.
The prisoner was moodily pacing the narrow yard of the debtor's court, over the high spiked walls of which gleamed some doubtful rays of autumnal sunshine, when Henry and his father approached him. Henry drew back while his father spoke to the ruined man, and did not seek to know the subject of their conference; but he perceived that tears glistened in the prisoner's eyes, which told of thankfulness, and it might be also of expressed contrition.
"Ah, Mr. Henry," said the imprisoned debtor, when the conference was ended, and he held out his trembling hand to the youth as he spoke, "your father is noble and generous. I shall never forget his kindness, though I shall never have it in my power to return it. And Mr. Henry," he added, in a low, agitated tone, "look at me now, and think of what you knew me to be in appearance and character once, and take warning; it is the Eight Bells—ah, you know what I mean, I see—it is the Eight Bells that brought me to be what I am."
And saying this, the unhappy man wrung the hand of his young visitor, and then turning away, he wept.
———————
It was not many months after this that Henry accompanied his father to London; and as they passed through one of the streets, Mr. Ekworth's eye fell upon a countenance with which, as it seemed, he had once been familiar; for he suddenly stopped, and spoke to the man by name. The man was ragged and filthy; long straggling grey hair hung over his haggard face; his eyes were red, his lips purple, and a bright red spot on his cheek, while it contrasted with the death-like pallor of his forehead, told of disease. His voice was broken by a short and continued cough, and his hand trembled as he leaned it for support against the buttress of a wall, as he stood.
"You seem ill, Hallet," said Mr. Ekworth, compassionately, after he had expressed surprise at the unexpected meeting.
"Yes, sir, I am ill," said the ragged man.
"Have you been ill long?" inquired Henry's father.
"A long while, off and on, sir," said the man; "I have not been able to work more than a day or so at a time for a good many weeks, or you would not see me as I am now, sir," he added, looking down with confusion on his tattered garb.
"You are in distress, I am afraid, Hallet," said Mr. Ekworth.
"Indeed I am, sir," said the poor man, with a deep-drawn sigh. "I am indeed."
"And yet," rejoined Mr. Ekworth, slowly and sadly, "you have not forsaken your old destructive habit. Your breath betrays you. And I fear you are going on in the Eight Bells' fashion, bringing ruin on your body and soul."
"It was only a drop, sir," said the man, hastily interrupting his monitor, and speaking deprecatingly; "if you will believe me, sir, it was only a drop that I had just now, to keep me from sinking in the street. I was so faint, sir; and it was the last penny I had got. Ah, sir," he went on, "I cannot do as I used to do, if I wished it ever so much. I haven't the money, and I haven't the strength."
"I see you have not, my poor friend," said Mr. Ekworth, sorrowfully; "and you are finding by terrible experience, 'the end of these things is death.'"
The man did not reply in words; the muscles of his countenance moved convulsively.
"Oh, Hallet," Mr. Ekworth continued, "if I could but hope that you had seen the sinfulness of your past course, as you must have felt its wretchedness."
"I know its sinfulness, and I feel its wretchedness, sir," said the convicted man, in a tone of self-abandonment, as he looked down upon the pavement; "and I see you have got the measure of me, Mr. Ekworth, just as you used to have; but where is the use of talking? I am like them that said, 'There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go.'"
"Alas! And you can quote Scripture thus to your own condemnation! But, my poor friend, far gone as you are in misery and sin, there is One who can subdue your iniquities, and who says, 'Return unto Me, and I will return unto you.' Think of Him, Hallet; and go to Him, even now, at the eleventh hour."
The poor man shook his head despondingly and helplessly, and tears ran down his cheeks.
"I dare not relieve you now and here," said Mr. Ekworth, after a moment's painful hesitation; "for if you should promise not to misuse the gift, I could not trust to your strength of mind to resist temptation. But is your wife living?"
"She is, poor thing—she is," said the wretched man.
"Tell me where you live, then, Hallet."
"It is not a fit place for you to go to, sir, it is not indeed," said Hallet, eagerly.
"I am sorry for it, for it is only through her that I can assist you."
The man's eager countenance fell. "I will tell you where we live, then, sir," said he, reluctantly; "but you will find what I say is true; it is not a fit place for a human creature to live in."
"I will call on you and your wife this afternoon," said Mr. Ekworth, when he had obtained the information he sought. "Stay; you say you have expended your last penny, and it may be you are hungry; or if you are not, your wife may be. Will you carry home a loaf?"
"Oh yes, if you will trust me with it, sir," said Hallet, earnestly; and the loaf having been obtained at a baker's shop close by, the poor, wretched man hastened away, and Mr. Ekworth and his son went on.
"You do not remember that man, Henry," said Mr. Ekworth, after a short silence. "He lived in our town when you were a child. He was a thriving mechanic then. Poor Hallet!"
"The old story, I am afraid," said Henry; "the Eight Bells."
"Yes, my dear boy; this is another voice from the Eight Bells."
"Hallet," repeated Henry to himself; "I think I must have heard the name."
"You have heard it, no doubt, Henry. Poor Hallet used to work for us; he was a carpenter, and, as I have said, a prosperous man till he became a sot. He had joined the church too. You may judge what he is now, for you heard what he said. Poor Hallet! He came to London, as he said, to better his circumstances; but I fear it was that he might sin with less restraint. His character was already gone, and he had apostatised. Poor Hallet!" Mr. Ekworth repeated with a sigh.
———————
It was early on a spring evening that Henry Ekworth and his father took their way towards one of the eastern outskirts of London, and striking out of the main and thronged thoroughfare of the busier streets, they found themselves, after many windings and turnings, and some inquiries, at the place they sought.
This place was a wretched, dirty court, containing about a score of dilapidated dwellings, and hemmed in on all sides by higher buildings, which shut out both light and air.
A thick, murky gloom hung over the court, and the broken ground beneath their feet was covered with black, slimy mud. The sight was depressing, and the odour was sickening.
There was life in that court. Half-naked children, many of them bare-foot and bare-headed, with dishevelled hair, and coated with filth, were playing, screaming, quarrelling, and fighting in the road-way and on the pavements; and men and women, some fierce in aspect, some moody, some dejected, but all dirty and miserably clad, were moving to and fro, or lounging at the open doors and windows of the houses.
The men were, most of them, smoking short black pipes; and at the entrance of the court was a gin-palace, which, in its gay, flaunting exterior, presented a strong contrast to the neighbouring dwellings. Mr. Ekworth and his son noticed, as they passed by the half-open, swinging double doors of the "palace," that it was thronged with just such looking men and women as seemed to compose the population of the court.
They passed on, and, after some difficulty, found the house.
"Does a person named Hallet live here, my little fellow?" asked Mr. Ekworth of a boy who was sitting on the door-sill.
The child was probably eight or nine years of age, but from the precocious cunning of his looks, he might have been an old man. He was disgustingly dirty also, and pale and sallow.
"What will you give me for telling?" he asked, with a sly leer.
"Here is a penny, my poor child," said Mr. Ekworth, compassionately, taking the coin from his pocket. "Now, will you tell me what I want to know?"
The child's eyes glistened at the sight of the penny; and telling the visitors that if they went "right up the stairs, as far as they could go," they would find the person for whom they inquired, he ran off with his prize, and Mr. Ekworth, with his son, slowly and cautiously ascended the dark and broken stairs.
A violent fit of coughing from an apartment just beneath the roof of the house guided Mr. Ekworth to the home of the Hallets; and on gently knocking at the door, it was opened by the wife.
The chamber told of destitution. It was neat, however, and tolerably clean, so was the poor woman, who wept when Mr. Ekworth spoke to her.
"I could not have thought, twenty years ago, sir," said she, when her visitors had entered, and had with difficulty been accommodated with seats, "that you would ever come to see my poor husband and me in a place like this."
"What is the use of talking in that way, Susan?" interposed Hallet, before Mr. Ekworth could reply. "We are born, but we are not buried yet; and nobody can tell what they may come to before they die."
"We will not speak of what is past, and cannot be recalled," said Mr. Ekworth. "Your husband appears to be very ill, Mrs. Hallet," he added; it seemed the best way of opening a conversation with the unhappy pair.
"Yes, he was very ill," said the poor woman, "and had been failing in health a long time." He had never, since they came to live in London, been the man he was before; and now he was fit for nothing. It was a bad thing for them that they ever came to London, she added.
The man again interrupted his wife, by asking, in a querulous tone, "what occasion there was to talk about that?" He came to London, he said, to better his circumstances; and if things had not turned out as he expected, he did not want to be told of it.
Mr. Ekworth once more soothed the evidently perturbed feelings of the irritable invalid, and led the poor wife to speak of their present circumstances and means of support.
They were very poorly off, she replied to his inquiries, and often had not enough to eat. They should long since have been starved, she added, only that she was able to go out to work, and had got into regular employment in some few families as a charwoman.
"You had two sons and a daughter before you came to London. Are they not living; and is it not in their power to help you?" asked the visitor.
The poor woman shook her head despondingly. Their children were all living, she said; but, she did not know how it was, the boys, as they grew up to be men, got into bad ways, and were often worse off than themselves. The girl had married respectably, but she seldom came near her parents. The poor woman spoke this with evident reluctance.
"She is an unnatural child," said Hallet, impatiently; "and I hope she may find out some day what it is to have one of the same sort herself."
"Don't, John, don't!" remonstrated the wife in a low voice. "You know there is a reason why she does not come here."
Mr. Ekworth hastened to change the subject. He did not wish to learn more of the family history of his old workman.
It was not difficult to guess it. The boys, misguided by their father's example, had probably followed in the course which had brought ruin on him and them. And the daughter, he afterwards discovered, after having borne much suffering, and privation, and degradation also, the consequences of her father's evil habits, left home for service, and eventually married.
It is true that she did not often visit her parents' miserable home; but she often, though unknown to her father, relieved their pressing necessities.
It was some little time before Mr. Ekworth could approach the subject on which he had lightly touched when, earlier in the day, he had unexpectedly fallen in with poor Hallet.
It was plain that his had been a downward course, that intemperance had ruined him in his circumstances, had ruined his sons too, by evil example, had alienated his daughter, and even the wife of his bosom, from his affections, and was hastening him to the grave.
Cautiously, at length, the visitor endeavoured to rouse the conscience of the wretched man, by speaking of his present position and prospects for eternity.
In a low, but earnest voice, as he drew himself to the invalid's side, he reminded Hallet of the days when he professed to know something of the love of the Saviour, and the power of divine grace.
"It was all a delusion, all a delusion!" exclaimed the poor man, impatiently.
"I fear it was, indeed," said Mr. Ekworth, sadly; "but the gracious and omnipotent Saviour—"
"Don't talk about it, Mr. Ekworth," exclaimed the agitated man; "I told you this morning what my state is; and there's a voice that says about me, 'He is joined to idols; let him alone.' I know what the end will be; you need not tell me about that. Don't talk about religion, sir; anything but that."
"I must talk about it, my poor friend," said Mr. Ekworth, in some distress of mind. "I came on purpose to tell you that Jesus is willing, and waiting, and seeking to save the lost, and is able to save to the very uttermost. Think of Him, my friend; and the more you think of Him, the less reason will you find for despairing of His mercy."
The man wept. "I tell you what it is, Mr. Ekworth," said he, "I have thought about it all, again and again. And I have made resolutions, I cannot tell how often; but it has been of no use. I am like those whom the apostle describes, 'Clouds without water; . . . trees whose fruit withereth, . . . twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars—' you know what follows, Mr. Ekworth." And the man rocked himself in his chair, and groaned deeply.
Once more did the pious visitor speak. "You cannot," he said, "surely you dare not give up everything as lost! Think of eternity—of the blackness of darkness for ever! and then flee to the strong for strength. You have made resolutions in your own strength—you have not sought the help of His Holy Spirit. You know you have not. I reminded you this morning, I tell you again, that there is One who can subdue your iniquities, and can cast all your sins into the depths of the sea. Go to Him."
"It is of no use," said Hallet, impatiently. "There is nothing you can say, sir, that I do not already know; but you do not know how hard my heart is. I know as well as you can tell me, that I have brought ruin on myself and my poor wife and family, and am killing myself by inches; and you know well how it began, Mr. Ekworth, for you warned me twenty years ago, when you first knew of my goings on at the Eight Bells; but it is of no use. I am just what I have made myself; and know where it is said, 'He which is filthy, let him be filthy still.'"
It seemed useless to urge with one who, while he knew what the consequences of his sins had been—what the eternal consequences would be, yet loved them too well to relinquish them; and at length Mr. Ekworth gave up the contest.
"I cannot say more to you, Hallet," he said, "but I must pray for you and with you."
And kneeling down, he poured out earnest supplications for the unhappy slave of sin, and then he rose to depart.
He did not take leave, however, till he had, unobserved by the infatuated sinner, placed a small sum in the hands of the poor wife as she accompanied him to the door.
Henry Ekworth seemed to breathe a freer air when he emerged into the dismal court below.
"I told you, Henry," said Mr. Ekworth to his son, as they walked on towards their lodgings, "that poor Hallet's history is another of the voices of the Eight Bells."
———————
Henry Ekworth had been a year or two in a solicitor's office. His duties sometimes compelled his attendance at criminal courts.
One day, when he entered, a young man stood in the prisoner's dock on trial for robbing his employer. Such trials, alas, are fearfully common; and Henry would have paid little attention to the proceedings, if, in the youthful prisoner, he had not recognised his old playfellow, Albert.
With a heavy heart, he listened then. The trial was short, for the witnesses were few, but the evidence was conclusive; and, without leaving the box, the jury pronounced the prisoner guilty.
Henry Ekworth left the court in great distress of mind; and on the following day he visited the young convict in prison.
"Ah, Henry!" said the unhappy youth. "If I had been brought up as you were, I should not be here now. It is all the fault of my father."
"Do not say that, Albert," said Henry; "it is not, cannot be, right to indulge in such thoughts."
"You would say, I suppose," returned Albert, "that the Bible tells us to honour our fathers and mothers. Well, I have nothing to say about my mother. She is dead; and if she had not been, this would have killed her. But as to honouring my father, I cannot, and will not. And I say that it is his fault that I am here."
Henry was much shocked, and he said so.
"I dare say you are, Henry," replied the young man, "but you need not be so much surprised. I don't say that my father taught me to steal; but you know how he came to ruin himself, and all of us. And if he did not teach me to steal, he taught me to drink, and I say it is all his fault; and now I do not care what becomes of me."
Yes, it was true enough, said the convicted prisoner, he had robbed his employer.
He had pleaded "not guilty" at the bar, because he was advised to do so, and it was a matter of course to do it; but he was guilty notwithstanding. As to why he did it, it was infatuation, he supposed. He had learned to like strong drink from his father's example, and had stolen to obtain the means of buying it.
This was Albert's story; and as Henry Ekworth heard it, he thought of the Eight Bells and their mournful voices, and this, not the least mournful of them all.
Again and again did Henry visit his unhappy former companion, and in kindly, affectionate tones did he strive to lead him to penitence and prayer; to rouse him to hope; and to gird him—not in his own strength—to strong resolutions for time to come.
Such are some of the voices of the Eight Bells; and many more were heard, of which no record has been kept on earth; but which, in other and more enduring records, will tell of shame, poverty sorrow, guilt, death, and after that the judgment.