So the lie went up in the face of heavenAnd melted in the sun.
When Hester had sung these, she rose at once, her face white, her mouth set and her eyes gleaming. Vavasor feltalmostas if he were no longer master of himself,almostas if he would have fallen down to kiss the hem of her garment, had he but dared to go near her. But she walked from the room vexed with the emotion she was unable to control, and did not again appear.
The best thing in Vavasor was his love of music. He had cultivated not a little what gift he had, but it was only a small power, not of production, but of mere reproduction like that of Cornelius, though both finer and stronger in quality. He did not really believe in music—he did not really believe in anything except himself. He professed to adore it, and imagined he did, because his greatest pleasure lay in hearing his own verses well sung by a pretty girl who would now and then steal, or try to steal, a glance at the poet from under her eyelids as she sang. On his way home he brooded over the delight of having his best songs sung by such a singer as Hester; and from that night fancied he had received a new revelation of what music was and could do, confessing to himself that a similar experience within the next fortnight would send him over head and ears in love with Hester—which must not be! Cornelius went half way with him, and to his questions arising from what Miss Raymount had said about the professional, assured him, 'pon honor, that that was all Hester's nonsense!
"Shein training for a public singer!—But there's nothing she likes better than taking a rise out of a fellow," said Cornelius. "She would as soon think of singing in public as of taking a bar-maid's place in a public-house!"
"But why did you never tell me your sister was such an awful swell of a singer?" asked Vavasor.
"Do you think so? She ought to feel very much flattered! Why I didn't tell you?—Oh, I don't know! I never heard her sing like that before. Upon my word I never did. I suppose it was because you were there. A brother's nobody, don't you know?"
This flattered Vavasor, as how should it not? and without the least idea of whither the spirit in the feet of his spirit was leading him, he went as often to the Raymounts' lodging as for very shame of intrusion he dared—that is, all but every night. But having, as he thought, discovered and learned thoroughly to understand her special vein, as he called it, he was careful not to bring any of his own slight windy things of leaf-blowing songs under Hester's notice—not, alas! that he thought them such, but that he judged it prudent to postpone the pleasure: she would require no small amount of training before she could quite enter into the spirit and special merit of them!
In the meantime as he knew a good song sometimes when he saw it, always when he heard her sing it, never actually displeased her with any he did bring under her notice, had himself a very tolerable voice, and was capable of managing it with taste and judgment, also of climbing upon the note itself to its summit, and of setting right with facility any fault explained to him, it came about by a scale of very natural degrees, that he found himself by and by, not a little to his satisfaction, in the relation to her of a pupil to a teacher. Hester in truth gave herself a good deal of trouble with him, in the endeavor, by no means an unsuccessful one, to improve the quality of his singing—his style, his expression, and even his way of modeling his tones. The relation between them became therefore one which, had it then lasted, might have soon led to something like genuine intimacy—at least to some truer notion on the part of each of the kind of being the other was. But the day of separation arrived first; and it was only on his way back to London that Vavasor began to discover what a hold the sister of his fellow-clerk had taken of his thoughts and indeed of his heart—of the existence of which organ he had never before had any very convincing proof.
All the time he had not once brought his aunt and the Raymounts together.
Hester did not miss Vavasor quite so much as he hoped she might, or as perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly because she found him both receptive and capable of development in the matter of music—ready to understand, that is, and willing to be taught. To have such a man listen with respect to every word she said, never denying, defending or justifying what she might point out as a fault, but setting himself at once to the correction of the same, and in general with some measure of immediate success, could not fail to be not merely pleasant but flattering to her. Brothers, I suspect, have a good deal to answer for in the estimation of men by their sisters; their behavior at home leads them to prize the civilities of other men more highly than they deserve; brothers, I imagine, have therefore more to do than they will like to learn, with the making of those inferior men acceptable to their sisters, whose very presence is to themselves an annoyance. Women so seldom see a noble style of behavior at home!—so few are capable of distinguishing between ceremony and courtesy between familiarity and rudeness—of dismissing ceremony and retaining courtesy, of using familiarity and banishing rudeness! The nearer persons come to each other, the greater is the room and the more are the occasions for courtesy; but just in proportion to their approach the gentleness of most men diminishes. Some will make the poor defense that it is unmanly to show one's feelings: it is unmanly, because conceited and cowardly to hide them, if, indeed, such persons have anything precious to hide. Other some will say, "Must I weigh my words with my familiar friend as if I had been but that moment presented to him?" I answer, It were small labor well spent to see that your coarse-grained evil self, doomed to perdition, shall not come between your friend and your true, noble, humble self, fore-ordained to eternal life. The Father cannot bear rudeness in his children any more than wrong:—my comparison is unfit, for rudeness is a great and profound wrong, and that to the noblest part of the human being, while a mere show of indifference is sometimes almost as bad as the rudest words. And these are of those faults of which the more guilty a man is, the less is he conscious of the same.
Vavasor did not move the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence of the depths profound whence they rise, while she was already a discoverer in the abysses of the nature gradually yet swiftly unfolding in her—every discovery attended with fresh light for the will, and a new sense of power in the consciousness. When Vavasor was gone she turned with greater diligence to her musical studies.
Amy Amber continued devoted to her, and when she was practicing would hover about her as often and as long as she could. Her singing especially seemed to enchant and fascinate the girl. But a change had already begun to show itself in her. The shadow of an unseen cloud was occasionally visible on her forehead, and unmistakable pools were left in her eyes by the ebb-tide of tears. In her service, notwithstanding, she was nowise less willing, scarcely less cheerful. The signs of her discomfort grew deeper, and showed themselves oftener as the days went on. She moved about her work with less elasticity, and her smile did not come so quickly. Both Hester and her mother saw the change, and marked even an occasional frown. In the morning, when she was always the first up, she was generally cheerful, but as the day passed the clouds came. Happily, however, her diligence did not relax. Sound in health, and by nature as active as cheerful, she took a positive delight in work. Doing was to her as natural as singing to the birds. In a household with truth at the heart of it she would have been invaluable, and happy as the day was long. As it was, she was growing daily less and less happy.
One night she appeared in Hester's room as usual before going to bed. The small, neat face had lost for the time a great part of its beauty, and was dark as a little thunder-cloud. Its black, shadowy brows were drawn together over its luminous black eyes; its red lips were large and pouting, and their likeness to a rosebud gone.
Its cheeks were swollen, and its whole aspect revealed the spirit of wrath roused at last, and the fire alight in the furnace of the bosom. She tried to smile, but what came was the smile of a wound rather than a mouth.
"My poor Amy! what is the matter?" cried Hester, sorry, but hardly surprised; for plainly things had been going from bad to worse.
The girl burst into a passionate fit of weeping. She threw herself in wild abandonment on the floor, and sobbed; then, as if to keep herself from screaming aloud, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, kicked with her little feet, and beat her little hands on the floor. She was like a child in a paroxysm of rage—only that with her its extravagance came of the effort to overcome it.
"Amy, dear, you mustn't be naughty!" said Hester, kneeling down beside her and taking hold of her arm.
"I'm not naughty, miss—at least I am doing all I can to get over it," she sobbed.
Thereupon she ceased suddenly, and sitting up on the floor, her legs doubled under her in eastern fashion, looked straight at Hester, and said thoughtfully, as if the question had just come, with force to make her forget the suffering she was in—
"Ishouldlike to know how you would do in my place—that I should, miss!"
The words spoken, her eyes fell, and she sat still as a statue, seeming steadfastly to regard her own lap.
"I am afraid, if I were in your place, I should do nothing so well as you, Amy," said Hester. "But come, tell me what is the matter. What puts you in such a misery?"
"Oh, it's not one thing nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy, looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "Whatwouldmy mother say to see me served so!Sheused to trust me everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying suspicious old maidscanbemymother's sisters!"
She spoke slowly and sadly, without raising her eyes.
"Don't they behave well to you, my poor child?" said Hester.
"It's not," returned Amy, "that they watch every bit I put in my mouth—I don't complain of that, for they're poor—at least they're always saying so, and of course they want to make the most of me; but not to be trusted one moment out of their sight except they know exactly where I am—to be always suspected, and followed and watched, and me working my hardest—that's what drives me wild, Miss Raymount. I'm afraid they'll make me hate them out and out—and them my own flesh and blood, too, which can't but be wicked! I bore it very well for a while, for at first it only amused me. I said to myself, 'They'll soon know me better!' But when I found they only got worse, I got tired of it altogether; and when I got tired of it I got cross, and grew more and more cross, till now I can'tbearit. I'm not used to be cross, and my own crossness is much harder to bear than theirs. If I could have kept the good temper people used to praise me for to my mother, I shouldn't mind; but itishard to lose it this way! I don't know how to get on without it! If there don't come a change somehow soon, I shall run away—I shall indeed, Miss Raymount. There are many would be glad enough to have me for the work I can get through."
She jumped to her feet, gave a little laugh, merry-sad, and before Hester could answer her, said—
"You're going away so soon, miss! Let me do your hair to-night. I want to brush it every night till you go."
"But you are tired, my poor child!" said Hester compassionately.
"Not too tired for that: it will rest me, and bring back my good temper, It will come to me again through your hair, miss."
"No, no, Amy," said Hester, a little conscience-stricken, "you can't have any of mine. I have none to spare. You will rather brush some into me, Amy. But do what you like with my hair."
As Amy lovingly combed and brushed the long, wavy overflow of Hester's beauty, Hester tried to make her understand that she must not think of good-temper and crossness merely as things that could be put into her and taken out of her. She tried to make her see that nothing really our own can ever be taken from us by any will or behavior of another; that Amy had had a large supply of good-temper laid ready to her hand, but that it was not hers until she had made it her own by choosing and willing to be good-tempered when she was disinclined—holding it fast with the hand of determination when the hand of wrong would snatch it from her.
"Because I have a book on my shelves," she said, "it is not therefore mine; when I have read and understood it, then it is a little mine; when I love it and do what it tells me, then it is altogether mine: it is like that with a good temper: if you have it sometimes, and other times not, then it is not yours; it lies in you like that book on my table—a thing priceless were it your own, but as it is, a thing you can't keep even against your poor weak old aunts."
As she said all this, Hester felt like a hypocrite, remembering her own sins. Amy Amber listened quietly, brushing steadily all the time, but scarcely a shadow of Hester's meaning crossed her mind. If she was in a good temper, she was in a good temper; if she was in a bad temper, why there she was, she and her temper! She had not a notion of the possibility of having a hand in the making of her own temper—not a notion that she was in any manner or measure accountable in regard to the temper she might find herself in. Could she have been persuaded to attempt to overcome it, the moment she failed, as of course every one will many times, Amy would have concluded the thing required an impossibility. Yet the effort she made, and with success, to restrain the show of her anger, was far from slight. But for this, there would, long ere now, have been rain and wind, thunder and lightning between her and her aunts. She was alive without the law, not knowing what mental conflict was; the moment she recognized that she was bound to conquer herself, she would die in conscious helplessness, until strength and hope were given her from the well of the one pure will.
Hester kissed her, and though she had not understood, she went to bed a little comforted. When the Raymounts departed, two or three days after, they left her at the top of the cliff-stair, weeping bitterly.
When the Raymounts reached London, hardly taking time to unpack her box, Hester went to see her music-mistress, and make arrangement for re-commencing study with her.
Miss Dasomma was one of God's angels; for if he makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flaming fire, much more are those live fountains which carry his gifts to their thirsting fellows his angels. Meeting not very rarely with vulgar behavior in such as regarded her from the heights of rank or money, she was the more devoted to a pupil who looked up to her as she deserved, recognizing in her a power of creation. Of Italian descent, of English birth, and of German training, she had lived in intimacy with some of the greatest composers of her day, but the enthusiasm for her art which possessed her was mainly the outcome of her own genius. Hence it was natural that she should exercise a forming influence on every pupil at all worthy of her, and without her Hester could never have become what she was. For not merely had she opened her eyes to a vision of Music in something of her essential glory, but, herself capable of the hardest and truest work, had taught her the absolute necessity of labor to one who would genuinely enjoy, not to say cause others to enjoy, what the masters in the art had brought out of the infinite. Hester had doubtless heard and accepted the commonplaces so common concerning the dignity and duty of labor—as if labor mere were anything irrespective of its character, its object and end! but without Miss Dasomma she would not have learned that Labor is grand officer in the palace of Art; that at the root of all ease lies slow, and, for long, profitless-seeming labor, as at the root of all grace lies strength; that ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil, sunk into the spirit, and making it strong and ready; that never worthy improvisation flowed from brain of poet or musician unused to perfect his work with honest labor; that the very disappearance of toil is by the immolating hand of toil itself. He only who bears his own burden can bear the burden of another; he only who has labored shall dwell at ease, or help others from the mire to the rock.
Miss Dasomma was ready to begin at once, and Hester gradually increased her hours of practice, till her mother interfered lest she should injure her health. But there was in truth little danger, for Hester was forcing nothing—only indulging to the full her inclination, eager to perfect her own delight, and the more eager that she was preparing delight for others.
They had not been home more than a week, when one Sunday morning, that is at four o'clock in the afternoon, Mr. Vavasor called—which was not quite agreeable to Mrs. Raymount, who liked their Sundays kept quiet. He was shown to Mr. Raymount's study.
"I am sorry," he said, "to call on a Sunday, but I am not so enviably situated as you, Mr. Raymount; I have not my time at my command. When other people make their calls. I am a prisoner."
He spoke as if his were an exceptional case, and the whole happy world beside reveled in morning calls.
Mr. Raymount was pleased with him afresh, for he spoke modestly, with implicit acknowledgment of the superior position of the elder man. They fell to talking of the prominent question of the day, and Mr. Raymount was yet more pleased when he found the young aristocrat ready to receive enlightenment upon it. But the fact was that Vavasor cared very little about the matter, and had a facility for following where he was led; and, always preferring to make himself agreeable where there was no restraining reason, why should he not gratify the writer of articles by falling in with what he advanced? He had a light, easy way of touching on things, as if all his concessions, conclusions, and concurrences were merest matter of course; and thus making himself appear master of the situation over which he merely skimmed on insect-wing. Mr. Raymount took him not merely for a man of thought but one of some originality even—capable at least of forming an opinion of his own, as is, he was in the habit of averring, not one in ten thousand.
In relation to the wider circle of the country, Mr. Vavasor was so entirely a nobody, that the acquaintance of a writer even so partially known as Mr. Raymount was something to him. There is a tinselly halo about the writer of books that affects many minds the mostpractical, so called; they take it to indicate power, which, with most, means ability in the direction of one's own way, or his party's, and so his own in the end. Since his return he had instituted inquiries concerning Mr. Raymount, and finding both him and his family in good repute, complained of indeed as exclusive, he had told his aunt as much concerning them as he judged prudent, hinting it would give him pleasure if she should see fit to call upon Mrs. Raymount. Miss Vavasor being, however, naturally jealous of the judgment of young men, pledged herself to nothing, and made inquiries for herself. Learning thereby at length, after much resultless questioning—for her world but just touched in its course the orbit of that of the Raymounts—that there was rather a distinguished-looking girl in the family, and having her own ideas for the nephew whose interests she had, for the sake of the impending title made her own, she delayed and put off and talked the thing over, and at last let it rest; while he went the oftener to see the people she thus declined calling upon.
On this his first visit he stayed the evening, and was afresh installed as a friend of the family. Although it was Sunday, and her ideas also a little strict as to religious proprieties, Hester received him cordially where her mother received him but kindly; and falling into the old ways, he took his part in the hymns, anthems, and what other forms of sacred music followed the family-tea: and so the evening passed without irksomeness—nor the less enjoyably that Cornelius was spending it with a friend.
The tone, expression, and power of Hester's voice astonished Vavasor afresh. He was convinced, and told her so, that even in the short time since he heard it last, it had improved in all directions. And when, after they had had enough of singing, she sat down and extemporized in a sacred strain, turning the piano almost into an organ with the sympathy of her touch, and weaving holy airs without end into the unrolling web of her own thought, Vavasor was so moved as to feel more kindly disposed toward religion—by which he meant "going to church, and all that sort of thing, don't you know? "—than ever in his life before. He did not call the next Sunday, but came on the Saturday; and the only one present who was not pleased with him was Miss Dasomma, who happened also to spend the evening there.
I have already represented Hester's indebtedness to her teacher as such that therein she would be making discoveries all her life. Devout as well as enthusiastic, human as well as artistic, she was not an angel of music only, but had for many years been a power in the family for good—as indeed in every family in which she counted herself doing anything worth doing. Much too generous and helpful to have saved money, she was now, in middle age, working as hard as she had ever worked in her youth. Not a little experienced in the ways of the world, and possessing a high ideal in the memories of a precious friendship, against which to compare the ways of smaller mortals, she did not find her atmosphere gladdened by the presence of Mr. Vavasor's. With tact enough to take his cue from the family, he treated her with studious politeness; but Miss Dasomma did not like Mr. Vavasor. She had to think before she could tell why, for there is a spiritual instinct also, which often takes the lead of the understanding, and has to search and analyze itself for its own explanation. But the question once roused, she prosecuted it, and in the shadow of a curtain, while Hester was playing, watched his countenance, trying to read it—to read, that is, what the owner of that face never meant to write, but could no more help writing there than he could help having a face. What a man is lies as certainly upon his countenance as in his heart, though none of his acquaintance may be able to read it. Their very intercourse with him may have rendered it more difficult.
Miss Dasomma's conclusion was, that Vavasor was a man of good instincts—as perhaps who is not?—but without moral development, pleased with himself, and not undesirous of pleasing others consistently with his idea of dignity—at present more than moderately desirous of pleasing Hester Raymount, therefore showing to the best possible advantage. "But," thought Miss Dasomma, "if this be his best, what may not his worst be?" That he had no small capacity for music was plain, but if, as she judged, the faculty was unassociated in him with truth of nature, that was so much to the other side of his account, inasmuch as it rendered him the more dangerous. For, at Hester's feet in the rare atmosphere and faint twilight of music, how could he fail to impress her with an opinion of himself more favorable than just? To interfere, however, where was no solid ground, would be to waste the power that might be of use; but she was confident that if for a moment Hester saw him as she did, she could no more look on him with favor. At the same time she did not think he could be meaning more than the mere passing of his time agreeably; she knew well the character of his aunt, and the relation in which he stood to her. In any case she could for the present only keep a gentle watch over the mind of her pupil. But that pupil had a better protection in the sacred ambition stirring in her. Concerning that she had not as yet held communication even with the one best able to understand it. For Hester had already had sufficient experience to know that it is a killing thing to talk about what you mean to do. It is to let the wind in upon a delicate plant, requiring a long childhood under glass, open to sun and air, closed to wind and frost.
The Raymounts lived in no fashionable or pseudo-fashionable part of London, but in a somewhat peculiar house, though by no means such outwardly, in an old square in the dingy, smoky, convenient, healthy district of Bloomsbury. One of the advantages of this position to a family with soul in it, that strange essence whichwillgo out after its kind, was, that on two sides at least it was closely pressed by poor neighbors. Artisans, small tradespeople, out-door servants, poor actors and actresses lived in the narrow streets thickly branching away in certain directions. Hence, most happily for her, Hester had grown up with none of that uncomfortable feeling so many have when brought even into such mere contact with the poor as comes of passing through their streets on foot—a feeling often in part composed of fear, often in part of a false sense of natural superiority, engendered of being better dressed, better housed, and better educated. It was in a measure owing to her having been from childhood used to the sight of such, that her sympathies were so soon and so thoroughly waked on the side of suffering humanity. With parents like hers she had never been in danger of having her feelings or her insight blunted by the assumption of such a relation to the poor as that of spiritual police-agent, one who arrogates the right of walking into their houses without introduction, and with at best but faint apology: to show respect if you have it, is the quickest way to teach reverence; if you do not show respect, do not at least complain should the recoil of your own behavior be more powerful than pleasant: if you will shout on the mountain side in spring, look out for avalanches.
Those who would do good to the poor must attempt it in the way in which best they could do good to people of their own standing. They must make their acquaintance first. They must know something of the kind of the person they would help, to learn if help be possible from their hands. Only man can help man; money without man can do little or nothing, most likely less than nothing. As our Lord redeemed the world by being a man, the true Son of the true Father, so the only way for a man to help men is to be a true man to this neighbor and that. But to seek acquaintance with design is a perilous thing, nor unlikely to result in disappointment, and the widening of the gulf both between the individuals, and the classes to which they belong. It seems to me that, in humble acceptance of common ways, we must follow the leadings of providence, and make acquaintance in the so-called lower classes by the natural working of the social laws that bring men together. What is the divine intent in the many needs of humanity, and the consequent dependence of the rich on the poor, even greater than that of the poor on the rich, but to bring men together, that in far-off ways at first they may be compelled to know each other? The man who treats his fellow as a mere mean for the supply of his wants, and not as a human being with whom he has to do, is an obstructing clot in the human circulation.
Does any one ask for rules of procedure? I answer, there are none to be had; such must be discovered by each for himself. The only way to learn the rules of any thing practical is to begin to do the thing. We have enough of knowledge in us—call it insight, call it instinct, call it inspiration, call it natural law, to begin any thing required of us. The sole way to deal with the profoundest mystery that is yet not too profound to draw us, is to begin to do some duty revealed by the light from the golden fringe of its cloudy vast. If it reveal nothing to be done, there is nothing there for us. No man can turn his attention in the mere direction of a thing, without already knowing enough of that thing to carry him further in the knowledge of it by the performance of what it involves of natural action. Let every simplest relation towards human being, if it be embodied but in the act of buying a reel of cotton or a knife, be recognized as a relation with, a meeting of that human soul. In its poor degree let its outcome be in truth and friendliness. Allow nature her course, and next time let the relation go farther. To follow such a path is the way to find both the persons to help and the real modes of helping them. In fact, to be true to a man in any way is to help him. He who goes out of common paths to look for opportunity, leaves his own door and misses that of his neighbor. It is by following the path we are in that we shall first reach somewhere. He who does as I say will find his acquaintance widen and widen with growing rapidity; his heart will fill with the care of humanity, and his hands with its help. Such care will be death to one's own cares, such help balm to one's own wounds. In a word, he must cultivate, after a simple human manner, the acquaintance of his neighbors, who would be a neighbor where a neighbor may be wanted. So shall he fulfil the part left behind of the work of the Master, which He desires to finish through him.
Of course I do not imagine that Hester understood this. She had no theory of carriage towards the poor, neither confined her hope of helping to them. There are as many in every other class needing help as among the poor, and the need, although it wear different dresses, is essentially the same in all. To make the light go up in the heart of a rich man, if a more difficult task, is just as good a deed as to make it go up in the heart of a poor man. But with her strong desire to carry help where it was needed, with her genuine feeling of the blood relationship of all human beings, with her instinctive sense that one could never begin too soon to do that which had to be done, she was in the right position to begin; and from such a one opportunity will not be withheld.
She went one morning into a small shop in Steevens's Road, to buy a few sheets of music-paper. The woman who kept it had been an acquaintance almost from the first day of their abode in the neighborhood. In the course of their talk Mrs. Baldwin mentioned that she was in some anxiety about a woman in the house who was far from well, and in whom she thought Mrs. Raymount would be interested.
"Mamma is always ready," said Hester, "to help where she can. Tell me about her."
"Well, you see, miss," replied Mrs. Baldwin, "we're not in the way of having to do with such people, for my husband's rather particular about who he lets the top rooms to; only let them we must to one or another, for times is hard an' children is many, an' it's all as we can do to pay our way an' nothing over; only thank God we've done it up to this present; an' the man looked so decent, as well as the woman, an' that pitiful-like—more than she did—that I couldn't have the heart to send them away such a night as it was, bein' a sort o' drizzly an' as cold as charity, an' the poor woman plainly not in a state to go wanderin' about seekin' a place to lay her head; though to be sure there's plenty o' places for such like, only as the poor man said himself, they did want to get into a decent place, which it wasn't easy to get e'er a one as would take them in. They had three children with them, the smallest o' them pickaback on the biggest; an' it's strange, miss—I never could compass it, though I atten' chapel reg'lar—how it goes to yer heart I mean, to see one human bein' lookin' arter another! But my husban', as was natural, he bein' a householder, an' so many of his own, was shy o' children; for children, you know, miss, 'cep' they be yer own, ain't nice things about a house; an' them poor things wouldn't be a credit nowheres, for they're ragged enough—an' a good deal more than enough—only they were pretty clean, as poor children go, an' there was nothing, as I said to him, in the top-rooms, as they could do much harm to. The man said theirs weren't like other children, for they had been brought up to do the thing as they were told, an' to remember that things that belonged to other people was to be handled as sich; an', said he, they were always too busy earnin' their bread to be up to tricks, an' in fact were always too tired to have much spare powder to let off; so the long an' short on it was, we took 'em in, an' they've turned out as quiet an' well-behaved a family as you could desire; an' if they ain't got jest the most respectable way o' earnin' their livelihood, that may be as much their misfortin as their fault, as my husband he said. An' I'm sure it's not lettin' lodgin's to sich I ever thought I should come to—though, for the matter o' that, I never could rightly understand what made one thing respectable an' another not."
"What is their employment then?" asked Hester.
"Something or other in the circus-way, as far as I can make out from what they tell me. Anyway they didn't seem to have no engagement when they come to the door, but they paid the first week down afore they entered. You see, miss, the poor woman she give me a kind of a look up into the face that reminded me of my Susie, as I lost, you know, miss, a year ago—it was that as made me feel to hate the thought of sending her away. Oh, miss, ain't it a mercy everybody ain't so like your own! We'd have to ruin ourselves for them—we couldn't help it!"
"It will come to that one day, though," said Hester to herself, "and then we sha'n't he ruined either."
"So then!" Mrs. Baldwin went on, "the very next day as was, the doctor had to be sent for, an' there was a babby! The doctor he come from the 'ospital, as nice a gentleman as you'd wish to see, miss, an' waited on her as if she'd been the first duchess in the land. 'I'm sure,' said my good husban' to me, 'it's a lesson to all of us to see how he do look after her as'll never pay him a penny for the care as he's takin' of her!' But my husban' he's that soft hearted, miss, where anything i' the baby-line's a goin' on! an' now the poor thing's not at all strong, an' ain't a-gettin' back of her stren'th though we do what we can with her, an' send her up what we can spare. You see they pay for their house-room, an' then ain't got much over!" added the good woman in excuse of her goodness. "But I fancy it's more from anxiety as to what's to come to them, than that anything's gone wrong with her. They're not out o' money yet quite, I'm glad to say, though he don't seem to ha' got nothing to do yet, so far as I can make out; they're rather close like. That sort o' trade, ye see, miss, the demand's not steady in it. It's not like skilled labor, as my husban' says; though to see what them young ones has to go through, it's labor enough an' to spare; an' if it ain't just what they call skilled, it's what no one out o' the trade can make a mark at. Would you mind goin' up an' havin' a look at her, miss?"
Hester begged Mrs. Baldwin to lead the way, and followed her up the stairs.
The top-rooms were two poor enough garret ones, nowise too good, it seemed to Hester, for the poorest of human kind. In the largest, the ceiling sloped to the floor till there was but just height enough left for the small chest of drawers of painted deal to stand back to the wall. A similar washstand and a low bed completed the furniture. The last was immediately behind the door, and there lay the woman, with a bolster heightened by a thin petticoat and threadbare cloak under her head. Hester saw a pale, patient, worn face, with eyes large, thoughtful, and troubled.
"Here's a kind lady come to see you, Mrs.!" said her landlady.
This speech annoyed Hester. She hated to be called kind, and perhaps spoke the more kindly to the poor woman that she was displeased with Mrs. Baldwin's patronizing of her.
"It's dreary for you to lie here alone, I'm afraid," she said, and stroked the thin hand on the coverlid. "May I sit a few minutes beside you? I was once in bed for a whole month, and found it very wearisome. I was at school then. I don't mind being ill when I have my mother."
The woman gazed up at her with eyes that looked like the dry wells of tears.
"It's very kind of you, miss!" she said. "It's a long stair to come up."
She lay and gazed, and said nothing more. Her life was of a negative sort just at present. Her child lay asleep on her arm, a poor little washed-out rag of humanity, but evidently dear from the way she now and then tried to look at it, which was not easy to her.
Hester sat down and tried to talk, but partly from the fear of tiring one too weak to answer more than a word now and then, she found it hard to get on. Religion she could not talk off-hand. Once in her life she had, from a notion of duty, made the attempt, with the consequence of feeling like a hypocrite. For she found herself speaking so of the things she fed on in her heart as to make them look to herself the merest commonplaces in the world! Could she believe in them, and speak of them, with such dull dogmatic stupidity? She came to the conclusion that she had spoken without a message, and since then she had taken care not to commit the offence again.
A dead silence came.
"What can be the good of a common creature like me going to visit people?" she said to herself. "I have nothing to say—feel nothing in me—but a dull love that would bless if it could! And what would words be if I had them?"
For a few moments she sat thus silent, growing more and more uncomfortable. But just ere the silent became unendurable, a thought appeared in the void.
"What a fool I am!" she said again to herself. "I am like little Mark when he cried because he had only a shilling and saw a boy spend a penny on a lovely spotted horse! Here have I been all my life wanting to give my fellow-creatures a large share of my big cake, and the first time I have an opportunity, I forget all about it! Here it lies locked in my chest, like a dead bird in its cage!"
A few more moments she sat silent but no longer embarrassed thinking how to begin. The baby woke and began to whimper. The mother, who rarely let him off her arm, because then she was not able to take him till help came, drew him to her, and began to nurse him; and the heart of the young, strong woman was pierced to the quick at sight of how ill fitted was the mother for what she had to do. "Can God be love?" she said to herself. "If I could help her! It will go on like this for weeks and months, I suppose!"
She had yet to learn that the love of God is so deep he can be satisfied with nothing less than getting as near as it is possible for the Father to draw nigh to his children—and that is into absolute contact of heart with heart, love with love, being with being. And as that must be wrought out from the deepest inside, divine law working itself up through our nature into our consciousness and will, and claiming us as divine, who can tell by what slow certainties of approach God is drawing nigh to the most suffering of his creatures? Only, if we so comfort ourselves with such thoughts as to do nothing, we, when God and they meet, shall find ourselves out in the cold—cold infinitely worse than any trouble this world has to show. The baby made no complaint against the slow fountain of his life, but made the best he could of it, while his mother every now and then peered down on him as lovingly as ever happy mother on her first-born. The same God is at the heart of all mothers, and all sins against children are against the one Father of children, against the Life itself.
A few moments only, and Hester began to sing—low and soft. Having no song sought out for the occasion, she took a common hymn, sung in all churches and chapels, with little thought or feeling in it, the only one she could think of. I need not say she put into it as much of sweetness and smoothing strength as she could make the sounds hold, and so perhaps made up a little for its lack. It is a curious question why sacred song should so often be dull and commonplace. With a trembling voice she sang, and with more anxiety and shyness than she remembered having ever felt. It was neither a well-instructed nor critically disposed audience she had, but the reason was that never before had she been so anxious for some measure of success. Not daring to look up, she sat like one rebuked, with the music flowing over her lips like the slow water from the urn of some naiad of stone fountain. She had her reward; for when the hymn was done, and she at length ventured to raise her eyes, she saw both mother and babe fast asleep. Her heart ascended on a wave of thanks to the giver of song. She rose softly, crept from the house, and hastened home to tell her mother what she had heard and seen. The same afternoon a basket of nice things arrived at the shop for the poor lodger in the top-room.
The care of the Raymounts did not relax till she was fairly on her feet again; neither till then did a day pass on which Hester did not see her, and scarcely one on which she did not sing to her and her baby. Several times she dressed the child, singing to him all the time. It was generally in the morning she went, because then she was almost sure to find them alone. Of the father she had seen next to nothing. On the few occasions when he happened to be at home, the moment she entered he crept out, with a shy, humble salutation, as if ashamed of himself. All she had ever had time to see was that he was a man of middle height, with a strong face and frame, dressed like a workman. The moment he rose to go, his three boys rose also, and following him from the room seemed to imitate his salutation as they passed her—all but the youngest, who made her a profound bow accompanied by a wonderful smile. The eldest was about the age of twelve, the youngest about seven. They were rather sickly looking, but had intelligent faces and inoffensive expressions.
Mrs. Baldwin continued to bear the family good witness. She confessed they never seemed to have much to eat, but said they paid their lodgings regularly, and she had nothing to complain of. The place had indeed been untidy, not to say dirty, at first, but as soon as the mother was about again, it began to amend, and now, really, for people in their position, it was wonderfully well.