The stirring of anger at Richard Burton's callousness gave way almost at once to a feeling of fatigue and defeat as she started on her return home, and a persistent image of Jane, a little girl playing skipping-ropes in red stockings, kept coming before her eyes. One or two gigs passed her, splashing among the pools of the road. The birds began to sing with a clarity as sweet as that of the purified air. There was still a tinkling of running water from every side, but the clouds were in shreds, and patches of blue sky were uncovered here and there.
Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage, in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard footsteps and looked over the gate.
"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had. Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the chair she offered her.
It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must have been long ago settled in its position. No one could mistake the room for that of young people. There was something in the multitude of worn objects, their solidity, their position in the room, each accommodating the other so that one could think of no other place for any of them, in the polish which had worn into the heart of the wood by constant rubbing which betrayed the presence and passage of many people through the room for many years; a used, comfortable, taken-care-of appearance, very pleasant to feel around one, a room from which one would not easily take oneself away at night and which seemed to Anne Hilton to set around her the company of many cheerful people.
Mrs Crowther was too much occupied with her own affairs, and too eager to talk to enquire what had brought Anne Hilton that way. She was a tall, spare, robust woman, the mother of nine children, all grown up and well placed. She was a "worker." She had considered the bearing and rearing of her children as a piece of work to be done, in the same way in which she looked upon the spring-cleaning of her house. It had been done to her satisfaction, and done well. She had had little time for sentiment in her married life, but now, still active, strong, and with only the work of her house and garden, the meals for her four sons who still lived at home, and their mending and washing, she had leisure to express her opinions, and always having been obliged to hold her imagination within the visible realities of life and death, with which all her life had been concerned, she had arrived at a definiteness of judgment, and an honesty of speech which one frequently finds among women of her class out of reach of poverty, but not beyond the necessity of work. Her husband was not a country man, but had come from a town florist's to work with a nurseryman about two miles distant. She began to tell Anne Hilton how they had first come to the country.
"There wasmymother first and thenhis, both at us. Firstonesaid, 'You don't know what it is to live in the country, you that have been used to going about under the gas-lamps at night'; and then theother, 'You don't know what it is to be shut in to the lamp at night and have no one but your two selves to look at.' It was always the same. 'You don't know what it is,' or 'You'll be lonely.' And Thomas and I always said the same thing back. 'Well,' we said, 'we can but try.' Well, wedidtry, and we found that cottage up Somer's Lane, and when I came with him the first day I began to think, what if my mother was right. It was so silent as if something was going to happen. I kept looking out of the window to see if it was, but nothing did, and the next morning his mother came down with the bedding and the five children we had then, and I've never felt lonely since. Nine children, all living, keep you on your feet."
"Be thankful they've all turned out well," said Anne, with a sigh, thinking of the house she had left.
"Trust 'em! that's whatIsay," returned Mrs Crowther. "Plenty of good, plain food, and plenty of good, warm, woollen underclothing, and there'll not go much wrong with their bodies, and trust 'em for their characters. I was talking to Mrs Hankworth the other day—she's done better than me, she's had twelve—'I never was one for much whipping,' she said. 'I never found you did much good by it. You can break the spirit of a horse by whipping, but you can't change its character. Give 'em all plenty of occupation at home, and they'll not want to go out in the evenings.' I was glad to hear her say so, for I've always felt like that myself. There was Ted had his fret-saw, and William was always one for making collections of butterflies or birds' eggs, and John was always one for politics. He'd sit reading any newspaper he could get hold of, and arguing with his father. I always knew he'd not stop in the country. He was always for the things that was doing in the town at meetings and unions, and he took no interest in farming or country work. It was always railways or politics with him. He was the first to go," said Mrs Crowther, her face taking that fixed serious expression, betraying the inward attitude which in another woman would have meant tears. "You've a lot of work to do when they're little, but you can shut the door at night and know they're all inside with you; but there's a day comes to gentle as well as simple, when you shut the door at night and some of them's outside. Sometimes you wake in the night and you wonder if there's anything more you could have done for 'em, and you vex yourself a lot more over them when they've gone from you than you ever do when they're with you. You have a feeling when they're at home, that if they want you you're there. But it's another matter when they can't get at you for all their wanting or yours either for that matter."
"Be thankful you've been spared the sorrow of one going astray," saidAnne. "It's a proud thing to have a lot of sons all honest, good men."
As if she had divined Anne's thoughts, or something in her words had suggested it to her, Mrs Crowther said suddenly—
"You've heard about that Burton getting hold of Jane Evans, have you?"
"I've just come back from there now," said Anne. "I only heard of it the other day, and I went to see if I could get her away. I blame myself sadly for its having happened."
"He's a bad effect in the country, that Burton, with his horses and money," said Mrs Crowther decidedly. "It's bad for young men to see money got so easily. He doesn't drink, I fancy. At least I said to Matthew, 'What's wrong with that Burton, does he drink?' 'No,' he says. 'At least, I don't think so,' he says; 'but he takes it out in eating. He's an easy liver,' he says. And what a foolish girl that is to give away her character for a man like him. If she was in trouble she might have come to any of us, and we'd have done anything in reason."
"I suppose that was just it," said Anne. "He was there before we were ready, and the poor girl thought he was her only friend."
"Well! she's a foolish girl," repeated Mrs Crowther, in the tone of one who having young people to protect could take no part in excuses. "Why, there's that young Wilkinson, that's booking-clerk at the station, said to our John, 'I was a bit sweet on that girl myself,' he said, 'but if that's the sort she is, I'm not having any.' He's a bit conceited, and thinks a lot of his clothes, but he's steady enough. Had she the face to come and see you when you went?" she added with curiosity.
"I saw them both," said Anne, sadly. "She's quite under his influence. I can't do much for her now. Perhaps she'll come of her own accord if we show her we're her friends."
"Well, I don't know as you can ever do much for people that will have their own way."
"If she isn't driven any further—" began Anne.
"I don't know," said Mrs Crowther, with emphasis; "youmustmake a difference. There's plenty of girls kept themselves decent who were just as poor, and if everybody's to be treated the same, no matter how they behave, it's very hard onthem. I don't believe in that sort o' thing. If you do wrong you must bear the consequences, or what's the good of keeping honest. It's confusing to young people to get such ideas, and it does a lot of harm, Miss Hilton. You never had any young people to bring up. It'sthatthat alters your mind about those things. There's our William. He's not one for saying much. He's one of the old-fashioned kind. He's a kind of serious way of talking. Many a time we laugh at him, and say, 'For goodness sake, do stir up and laugh a bit.' I says to him privately, 'What do you think of it, William?' 'I've no respect for her whatever,' he says. 'If a sister of mine was to go that way, she'd have seen the last of her brother.' That's how they think you see, Miss Hilton, and you can't say they shouldn't."
"I suppose not," replied Anne, wearily. "Nobody seems to get any nearer not judging their neighbours after all this time."
"Well, you can't make the world over again, however you try," said Mrs Crowther. "You've to take things as you find 'em, and make the best of 'em. It's hard enough for them that's kept straight without petting them that's weak and foolish enough to go wrong. You'll never be able to alter it, Miss Hilton, so you better take it so."
"I can't do anything more at present," said Anne; "but I must be getting home again. The pony'll be wondering what's become of me. I'm very much obliged to you for the rest, Mrs Crowther. You don't think it's raining now, do you?"
"No! I don't think so!" said Mrs Crowther. "How's Mary, Miss Hilton? She'll have been sadly hindered with all this rain. They put off two cricket-matches this week. They're not playing football yet, or else the weather wouldn't matter so much. They say the wet weather keeps their joints supple. It's the dry weather and frost that's so hard to play in. Ted's always one for a lot of sport, specially football. Such a mess as he comes home sometimes. 'You must clean your own clothes,' I always says to him. We have a joke at him, that when he wins one of these competitions (he's always one for going in for these guessing competitions that promises such a lot of money if you put in an odd word somewhere). He's always bound to win every time he goes in, and we tell him that when he wins it, he can keep a servant to clean his trousers after every football match. 'I shan't let any of you have any of it you don't take care,' he says; 'I'll be laughing at you before long, see if I'm not. Wait till you all come asking for rides on my motor-bike; what'll you say then?' he says. 'Eh!' says his father, 'I shall say there's more fools in the world than one!' Well Miss Hilton, good morning; I'm very glad to see you any time. I'm alone a good lot now, you know. It's not like it was once with children all round the kitchen. I'm glad of a bit of company now sometimes. Why, it's beautiful now!" she concluded, opening the door and stepping out in front of Anne, looking round the sky with eyes which blinked a little under the strong light.
Next day at daybreak the country was whitened by a light mist. The birds sang incessantly with long ecstatic calling from throats which had drunk the air of the dawn and retained something of its quality. Coolness refreshed the day and strengthened the eyes, and one's ears were opened to hear from every side the chorus which in a more varied landscape one took as a part of the glittering moving world outside the house.
Anne unbolted the house-door. The dog rose from the hearth and stretched itself slowly, yawning and shutting its mouth with a snap. Then it walked to the door, waiting until it was dragged open grating on the sand of the floor. The cool morning air came in like a visitor. The old dog pushed against Anne as she stepped outside, sneezed, yawned again, and lay down in the sunshine to finish his nap.
"Haven't you had enough sleep yet, Lion?" said Anne. "Look, what a beautiful day it is! Why, there's Mary on the road already," she added, looking over the low gate.
Mary was coming straight down the middle of the road, her black-and-white terrier sniffing on all sides and pulling the cord by which she held him. When he perceived the presence of the other dog he began to advance by leaps, uttering little yelps between each like a child's jumping toy. Lion, with the superiority of a larger dog, raised himself without hurry and advanced to meet the terrier, who excitedly whined and sniffed about him.
"Good morning," said Anne, "you're out early."
"Yes," replied Mary, standing quite still in the position in which she had halted. "I came over the fields. The grass is very wet though. There's a mist, surely."
"Yes, a thick one," said Anne, "but the sun's coming through. Listen to the birds. Did you ever hear anything like them?"
"I was out collecting the eggs at five o'clock this morning," returned Mary, "and I think I never heard them so busy. The earth was all a-hum with them. They seemed as though theymustbe listened to, whatever happened."
Both women stood listening.
"I came this way because I was going to leave my shilling for LordAxton's wedding present," said Mary, after a moment's silence.
"Did they come and askyoufor one?" said Anne. "I think they ought to be ashamed of themselves."
"There's been some grumbling about it," said Mary. "I think myself the agent should have left it to those who wanted. I suppose we could have said No, but nobody likes to. It isn't as if people like them want any wedding presents we can give them, and a shilling means a lot to some people."
"It's the agent that wants to make a show," said Anne. "I think sometimes that if those rich people knew how their wedding presents were procured," she went on in the stilted manner habitual to her when wishing to express a formal thought, "they would find little pleasure in them."
"Mr Burton's given £10," said Mary. "They'll have a good sum." She paused, distrustful.
Mary, who was known to all the country side, and who could do nothing secretly, seldom spoke of the affairs of her neighbours. Whether she was by nature a little taciturn, or whether her blindness, before which so much passed unobserved, which cut her off from the possibility of forming a judgment, had increased her natural modesty and diffidence, she drew back into silence where others were discussed. But the actual difficulties of living, which she daily and silently surmounted, brought her so closely into touch with reality that she invariably saw, not the fault or its circumstances, but the practical difficulties issuing from it. But she had unthinkingly stumbled upon the scandal, and she went on, "I was sorry to hear of Jane Evans forgetting herself like she has."
"Poor girl," said Anne; "she seems so certain that it'll last. What was so sad to me, was that a girl brought up as she was by her grandmother should have so little sense of her position."
"She's happy, I suppose," said Mary, "and there's no need to look further. She'll find it hard to earn a living if he gets tired of her."
"He's not an ill-natured man," said Anne. "You feel as though if he'd been brought up to have a respect for good behaviour he wouldn't have got loose so easily. He thinks he's doing a generous thing, and giving Jane a good time, without thinking what the result must be to her good character. He doesn't like to see people unhappy, as he calls unhappiness. He hasn't learnt the results of sin in his own experience, and won't look at them in others. He kept on telling me she'd got a servant of her own, and needn't do anything but fancy-work. They'd neither of them hear anything I could say. I can't understand how they came to know one another at the beginning. It seems to have come about without anyone's knowing till it was too late."
"He seems a joking sort of man," said Mary. "Once he came up to buy a paper, and gave me half a sovereign instead of sixpence to change, and when I told him he'd made a mistake he laughed a lot, and said he wanted to know if I could tell the difference. He never sees me now without speaking of it and laughing."
"Yes," said Anne; "he's fond of rough jokes of his own making, and thinks that giving people material things makes them happy," she continued in her bookish manner. "I remember just such another man as him, a boisterous sort of man, whose old father was dying, who took the old man out to look at a new grand-stand they were making. Poor old man! It was pitiful to see him in the presence of eternity, looking at a new grand-stand."
"I suppose, being as I am," said Mary, "there's a lot of temptations been spared to me."
"I wish we were all as kind and charitable as you," said Anne. "I never heard you say a hard thing of anybody all the years I've known you."
Winter hastens his pace when the harvest is gathered, and it was one of those serene winter days on which, if one sat in a sheltered place full of sunshine, one might believe that the spring had begun; as if winter, secure in his domination of the frozen earth, could afford to relax his vigour and admit the approaches of the sun, like a playful child whom one could banish at will. A line of white clouds, with purple bases, were drawn about the horizon, standing like anger, as it were, within call. The sky on every side was of that deep transparency seen after many days of rain. The colours of the earth and grass were deepened and intense from the same cause. In many places in the fields, sheets of water showed above the grass, vivid as a wet rock just washed by the sea and colour hidden at other times glowed from the steeped ground. Villages and houses showed from a great distance as if some obscuring medium had been removed, and the remote country lay a deep band of indigo beneath the horizon, like a distant sea escaping under a light and infinite heaven.
Anne Hilton set off after the evening milking to visit a bed-ridden woman of her acquaintance who lived in a cottage in one of the numerous by-lanes intersecting the now bared fields. She was a woman who had lain many years in the kitchen, whose narrow, hot space was all she saw of the world. She was not a cheerful invalid, but peevish and querulous. The irritation with which she always lived, waking from sleep to be at once aware of it, and to know no pause during her waking hours, had worn away a temperament which might almost have been gay. At very rare intervals Anne had heard her laugh, and the laugh had such a note of gaiety in it that she surmised the nature that had been, as it were, knawed thin by this never-sleeping worm. It was pity for something imprisoned and smothered which made Anne a steadfast friend to the unhappy woman, whose other friends had long tired of her incessant complaints and down-cast mind.
Elizabeth Richardson had never any hesitation in expressing her opinions, and Anne had scarcely seated herself by the bed of the unfortunate woman, whose harrowed face told of the torment within, than she began to ask questions of the disgrace of Jane Evans, whom, she had heard, was to have a child to crown all. But contrary to Anne's expectations the bed-ridden woman was friendly to the girl. The habit of neglect and scarcely-veiled impatience with which she had for many years been treated, and of which she had been fully and silently aware, had produced in her tortured mind an exasperated rebellion against the opinions of her neighbours, who were unable to see anything beyond their own comfort. She knew that she had so much the worst of it; that even attending perfunctorily to another's human necessity was not so hard a task as to be there day after day in the company of a pain which never ceased, and beneath whose increasing shadow the world had slowly darkened.
"They're all afraid of the trouble to themselves about the girl," she said, with her bitter intonation. "They're afraid they'll be called on to do something for her sooner or later."
She turned over with a groan, lying still and worried.
"Have you tried a bag of hot salt?" asked Anne, after a few minutes' silence.
"Yes! I tried once or twice," replied the woman, "but you know it's a bit of extra trouble, and no one likes that."
"If you could tell me where to get a bit of red flannel I'll make one for you now," said Anne.
"The bag's here," said the woman, her face drawn and her mouth gasping.She tried to feel under the pillow.
"Lie you still. I'll get it," said Anne. She drew out a bag of red flannel, evidently the remnant of an old flannel petticoat, for the tuck still remained like a grotesque attempt at ornament across the middle of the bag. The salt slid heavily to one end as Anne drew it out.
"The oven's still warm," she said opening the door and putting her hand inside. "I'll just slip it in for a few minutes."
"Well," said the woman, "there's not many cares about a bad-tempered, bed-ridden woman, but you're one of them that's been kind. I don'tsaymuch, but Iknow."
"You make me nearly cry," said Anne, drawing the bag out of the oven and feeling its temperature. Holding it against her chest, as if to keep in its heat, she drew back the bed-clothes and unbuttoned the flannelette night-gown of the invalid, laying the poultice against her wasted side. The woman gave a sob and lay still for a minute.
"It's a lot better," she said.
"Perhaps you could sleep a bit," suggested Anne.
"I'd like a cup o' tea," said the woman, "but it's a lot of trouble. Can't you look where you're going!" she broke out impatiently, as Anne, turning quickly, caught her foot in the chair, overturning it with a crash. "You made me jump so."
"Well, I am sorry," said Anne, humbly.
"Never mind," said the bed-ridden woman, her impatience exhausted. At that moment the door opened with a bang and a stout, middle-aged woman entered noisily.
"What a noise you make!" said the bed-ridden woman peevishly. "You're getting too fat."
"Fat people's better-tempered than thin ones," retorted the other carelessly. "Good evening, Miss Hilton! Has she been telling you all she's got to put up with more than other people?"
"Well now," returned Anne with decisive heartiness, "I don't think we've been speaking about herself at all, except to express gratitude for a very little service that I did her. We've spent a pleasant hour together."
"I'm glad to hear it," said the woman, going to the fire and rattling the irons noisily between the bars.
"You noisy thing. Can't you make a less din!" said the bed-ridden woman, biting her lip.
"Other people's got to live in the house besides you," said the woman."If you want so much attention, you know where you can get it."
The bed-ridden woman shut her eyes and lay still at this threat of the workhouse, that confession of failure, in a world where ability to work becomes a kind of morality, and lack of physical strength to procure the means of subsistence a moral downfall. She was a burden, but a burden against her will, and her pride, the only luxury of the poor and the one most often wrested from them, rose in a futile resistance. It must come to that she knew. She knew that she could not be less comfortable or more neglected, but her shelter would be gone, and she would be acknowledged publicly a failure.
When this last pride is taken away, there sometimes appears a kind of patience which is not really that of despair, but which is nearer to that attained by great saints after long effort and discipline—the mental equilibrium which is the result of desire quenched, of expectation for further good for oneself at an end. What the saints attain by a painful and mortifying life, the poor receive as a gift from the tender mercies of the world, receiving also the passionate pity of Jesus, "Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven."
"If she could only work as she used, and be 'beholden' to nobody." She sighed and lay still, her mind an abyss of bitterness.
The stout newcomer, step-daughter to the unfortunate woman, turned to Anne, jerking her head backwards to indicate the other woman in bed with an expression of satisfaction which said quite plainly, "That's the way to settleher." Then she ignored her totally, except that she moved as noisily, and spoke as loudly as she could.
She was a rather pre-possessing woman, with bold eyes and an obstinate mouth. There was, so to speak, "no nonsense about her." She was one of those women of coarse fibre, whose chief diversion consists in annoying the sensibilities of others. They exist more frequently in the middleclass than among the poor, whose common dependence teaches them forebearance if not pity, but they exist also among the poor, more terrible if not more merciless. Such women almost always find material to torment close at hand. Sometimes in the form of a dependent relative, sometimes a servant-girl, sometimes a weakly daughter, and this constant wreaking of a contemptuous spite upon one object produces a self-satisfaction which is mistaken for cheerfulness, an inward pleasure in hatred, which appears outwardly as good-humour.
The indignation which always awoke in Anne at the sight and expression of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman, who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its wooden legs upon the stone, she said:
"How canyou, a strong, active woman, take pleasure in worrying a sick and ailing fellow-creature. Suppose you were in her place. How can you expect to find mercy from God in the day of judgment if you have no mercy on others?"
The woman stared incredulously, and then broke into a loud laugh.
"And I thought you was such a quiet piece. Fancy spitting out like that." Then her brutality of temper asserted itself.
"I'venothing to do with the day of judgment. I don't see why I should be called to look after a woman with the temper of a vixen that wants to be a spoiled darling. The Union's made for such as her and she ought to be in it. It's just her spite that keeps her out."
"Have you no pity?" said Anne. "Youmay not always be strong and able-bodied. The day may come whenyouneed help and comfort, and how will you deserve it from God, if you torment your unfortunate sister in this way!"
The woman's answer was a laugh.
"You're as queer as they make 'em," she said, with a slow, impudent stare from Anne's out-of-date immense bonnet to her elastic-sided boots, as if looking for a point at which she might begin to torment a new victim. But Anne's sensibilities lay far beyond her understanding.
"Have you wore out all your grandmother's clothes yet?" she demanded with her contemptuous, impudent look, "you're a proper figure of fun in that bonnet!"
"Be quiet and be done with it, you coarse lump!" interrupted the bed-ridden woman in so loud and authoritative a tone that the woman turned slowly and stupidly round to look at her. "This time next week I'll be in the Union and you'll have no one to torment. You can make arrangements when you like, the sooner the better."
"All right! it can't be too soon for me," retorted the woman with her incessant, stupid laugh, which this time did not hide the fact that she had received a shock at this taking of affairs out of her hands. "But perhaps you'd rather I didn't do it since you've so many friends."
"No, you needn't bother yourself about me," said the bed-ridden woman."I'll have done with you soon."
"Couldn'tyou?" said Anne, turning to face the woman and speaking with great earnestness, and as always, when moved, with great preciseness. "Couldn'tyou for this last week do your best to be considerate and kind? A week is not a very long portion of eternity. It is so painful to think of two people separating for ever in hatred. Youhaveone week left. Could you not make the most of it?"
"It's a week too much!" said the woman, with careless brutality. "Are you always so fond of making long calls?" she added, staring at Anne.
Anne turned to the bed-ridden woman, saying, "On Thursday I shall be going in to market and I'll call at the Union Infirmary and see the Matron. I think you'll be better looked after there and have peace and quietness."
"It couldn't be worse than this," said the woman. "I think perhaps I've been foolish to stay here so long."
"I'll see the Matron for you on Thursday," said Anne. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye, and thank you," returned the sick woman, turning wearily away from her fellow-lodger and settling down to the silence and endurance in which she habitually lived.
"Good afternoon, Mrs Wright," said Anne to the other woman as she opened the door. The woman stared in a way meant to put Anne out of countenance, making no reply, while Anne, going outside, shut the door gently behind her.
For three months Anne had prayed constantly for Jane. Living alone in an orderly and quiet house with one window open towards her Invisible Friend, she had spoken with Him of her desire for Jane's recovery, until it appeared to her that He too must yearn as she did for this definite thing. Elizabeth Richardson had been removed to the Infirmary and was at peace, so that Anne's thoughts were of little else than Jane and her re-instatement in the country. It was not the chagrin of the failure of her visit to Burton's house which troubled her, but her helplessness. If she went again she could do no more than plead as she had done before. But it might be that the girl had by this time felt her need of outside friends. It was fully three months ago. As Anne was returning from the nearest village one afternoon in the solemn winter sunshine, she determined suddenly to pay a second visit to Jane. And she would try to be less hard on Burton, which would perhaps draw Jane to her. It might be that she needed a friend by now. Half a mile from her own cottage she came to a three-cornered patch of the way where several roads met. By one side was a pond with two posts painted white as a mark for drivers at night-time. The sloping edge of the pond was trodden into mud by the feet of horses stopping to drink, and as Anne, crossing the road to avoid the mud, arrived opposite one of the posts, she saw a bill posted upon it announcing a sale.
"I must see what it is," she said. "Perhaps it's something for Mary."She read the heading. "Sale of Bankrupt Stock."
"It seems to be nothing but horses," she said as she read the list. Two men carrying forks on their shoulders came at that moment from the Ashley Road and joined her, looking over her shoulder at the bill.
"I heard about it this morning," said one. "I thought he couldn't last long at that rate. It was always spending and making a show."
"There was someone else in it," said the other. "They say Burton's done a moonlight flitting and gone to America."
Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary, became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.
"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness of a countryman to spread news.
"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job forsomebody, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.
"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.
"Not she!" answered the former.
"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man."She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.It's a good eight miles of a walk."
"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list and quality of the horses for sale.
Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for. Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.
"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson," said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.
In the afternoon of the following day Anne entered the common room of the Infirmary. In this large room, with high windows spotlessly clean, a fireplace at one end in which a sufficiently generous fire was burning, and before which were two wicker cradles; women for the most part in extreme old age of body rather than years were sitting in every possible attitude on the wooden seat which ran round the wall on three sides of the room. At the far end, near the fire, a blind woman was knitting men's stockings. Two very old women sat with their chins in their hands and heads bent, motionless, neither hearing nor seeing anything outward. Three others, their white pleated caps nodding at different angles, were making aprons. A young woman with a healthy but sullen face was nursing a large baby. Another, younger, but early-developed, as girls are in the country, sat nearest the fire, a shawl half off her shoulders, her foot rocking one of the cradles. There seemed no trace of coarseness in her face, refined now by illness and days indoors; only an infinite ignorance and bewilderment. She seemed not more than seventeen. The tone of the Matron in speaking to her was not unkind, but had in it the mixture of impatience and contempt, which sensible middle-aged women have for foolish girls who can't look after themselves. There was, too, unknown to herself, for she would have looked upon herself as a kind woman, a slight feeling of satisfaction that, though the silly girl was sheltered in this place and everyone was kind to her, she'd find out what it meant to get herself in that state when she went outside. In the meantime, being really kind, if sensible, she said.
"Keep your shawl over your shoulders, Maggie. You mustn't catch cold your first day out of bed!"
"She doesn't look fit for much does she?" said the other young mother contemptuously. "Ten days and then to be as washed out as that."
One of the old women, who had remained motionless, got up slowly and stretched out her hand, pointing at the girl vindictively.
"That girl's next the fire! That wasmyplace before she come."
"Oh, you're all right, mother," said the Matron cheerfully, pushing her gently back to her seat. The old woman mumbled to herself as she sank back into the same stupor, in the midst of which she brooded on her grievance. The other old woman began in a hard, high voice without raising her head:
"That's the way they do in this place. Push out the old ones."
"Now you two don't begin talking and grumbling," interrupted the Matron decidedly. "You're as well treated as anyone else."
At this moment Anne made a movement in the corner where she had stood unnoticed. From every bench withered hands were thrust at her, some grasping her arm, some her mantle, some were held open at her face.
"Give me a ha'penny—just a ha'penny!" screamed a dozen old voices. "A ha'penny! Spare a ha'penny!"
"Now then," interrupted the Matron, taking two of the women and leading them back to their places. "What good would a ha'penny do toanyof you?" She touched two other women, and they retired grumbling to their seats, all except one tall, bony old creature, with a frightful palsy, who kept hold of Anne by the arm, repeating in a voice which was more like an angry scream than the whisper which her deaf ears imagined it to be.
"Those other women'll all beg from you. They'd take the bread out of anybody's mouth. Give me a ha'penny Missis, only a ha'penny," and her avaricious, bony hand pinched Anne's arm tightly as though she already clutched the coin. The Matron, using both her own hands, unfastened her hands as she might have done a knot. The old woman shook with rage and palsy, and fell rather than sat down on her seat under the flowering geraniums in the window.
"Now, Iknewthere was somebody strange in the room," said the blind woman. "Just let me have a look at her."
She tucked her knitting needles into her apron-string. She had been for many years in the workhouse infirmary, where she knitted and repaired the thick stockings worn by the inmates. She had become a kind of pride of the ward. Beyond the misfortune of her blindness she had no defect, and her mind was alert and cheerful.
"She calls it 'looking,'" said the Matron with a laugh. "Just you see her knitting, Miss Hilton. She's re-footing those stockings. See if you can tell where she's patched them." She took up a bright blue stocking from the bench. The blind woman took the other end and felt it carefully.
"That's notmywork," she said with amused contempt. "It's too like patchwork. Here's mine."
Anne took the stocking and looked. "It's beautiful," she said. "I could never have told there was a join." The blind woman's hand touched her arm and wandered slowly upwards, over her face and neck and head.
"I've not seen you before, have I?" she said. "No, I don't think I have."
The Matron had already turned to leave the room. Anne, held by the blind woman, looked again round the big room with its clean floor and battered inmates. The uneventful peace broken by the bickering of the old women, the babies bringing a double burden to their mothers, the blind woman, to whom all days were alike, seemed to be imprisoned for ever.
She followed the Matron into the courtyard. Several men in bottle-green corduroys loitered there, and a tiny old woman shrivelled and imbecile, who ran to Anne the moment she appeared, holding her skirts high to her knees, skipping on one foot and then on the other.
"I'll dance for a ha'penny! I'll dance for a ha'penny!" she whined.
"Go on! dance, old lady," said one of the men who was carrying an empty drawer, which had just been scrubbed, to dry in the sunshine of the yard. He set it down, end upwards, and stood expectantly. The two other men paused also.
"Go on! Aren't you going to begin?" said one of them.
"She's a funny old thing, this one," said the Matron to Anne, stopping to watch, as the old woman, holding her skirts to her knees, her clogs clacking, and with a smile of imbecility fixed on her face, began to hop from one thin leg to the other, stamping slowly round on her heels in the artless manner of a child. All at once she stopped, and, pulling up her apron, put a corner of it in her mouth, hanging her head and giggling.
"They're all looking at me, all them men," she giggled. "Fancy me dancing with all them men looking." One of the men broke into a laugh, which was changed immediately into an attack of asthma.
"Dance again, old lady!" called a younger man, with the effects of hard drinking visible in his face.
The shrunken and pitiful figure revolved several times, stamping on her heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry.
"She's a funny old thing, isn't she?" said the Matron to Anne. "She gives us many a laugh."
"It's too humbling to look at. I cannot laugh," said Anne. "Poor old thing, to have come to that."
"She doesn't know, you know," said the Matron. "You're wasting your pity. They're most of them better off in the infirmary here than they were outside. You've no idea what a dirty stateshewas found in for one."
"It's the painfulness of such a sight—age without honour," repeatedAnne.
"I've no time to think of that sort of thing," replied the Matron, as they began to ascend the wide stairs to the bed rooms, a woman, who was scrubbing the steps with sand, standing aside to let them pass.
Several women were sitting up in bed, with starched night-caps nodding at different angles. Over the fireplace was a lithograph of Queen Victoria giving the Bible as the source of England's greatness to an Indian potentate, and beneath it, sitting very still in a large armchair, was Jane Evans staring into the fire. She was very quiet, broken, and helplessly docile. Her stillness was alarming. She seemed to be already dead in spirit. Even the child soon to be separated from her scarcely concerned her. She was quite neat. Thin and fatigued as her face was, she did not appear to have suffered greatly in health.
"Jane, my dear, I've not come to blame you," began Anne, "I've come to see if there's anything I can do to make it easier for you to face the future and what's coming. I only heard of you coming here by accident or you shouldn't have been left alone. You mustn't think everybody's forsaken you and you've no friend left to you. It's often the case that you know your true friends in trouble," she continued sententiously. "And if only you could find the best Friend of all now when you need Him most." Her prim phrasing changed to earnestness. "There was a woman once that they dragged out in front of everybody for evil-doing. But He wouldn't have it. He put them to silence, and then when she was all alone with Him He showed her how tender He was to them that do wrong. If you only knew Him and His kindness, and how He can understand any kind of trouble. There's a good deal you think none of us can understand, butHecan if you tell Him." She wiped her eyes. Jane did not seem to have heard.
"I don't want to worry you," continued Anne; "you've got a good deal to bear and to think of, and you've got to keep up for the sake of the child. He'll need you to be father and mother both. Matron thinks you'll be better here for the present, but you mustn't give up and think you're to stay in the Union all your life. But try to think of the child, and how God'll help you if you try to do the right."
It was like speaking to a person a very long way off, and Anne desisted.
"She's very quiet, isn't she?" said the Matron. "That'll have to break down soon. The doctor thinks she'll be all right when the child comes. The labour'll give her a shock and rouse her. She comes of a better class than the usual ones. It's the disgrace she can't get over. She'll do anything she's told to do. I sometimes get tired of making the other women do as they're told, but I wish sometimes she'd be a bit more like them. You'll be ready for your tea soon, won't you, Jane?" she added in the cheerful professional tone intended to deceive the sick.
"Yes, please," said Jane, without looking round.
"Here's Miss Hilton come all this way to see you," said the Matron a little more sharply. "Can't you say anything to her? you may not have so many friends come to see you as you expect, you know."
There was no echo from the abyss of misery in which Jane was sunken. She neither replied nor stirred. With the flight of Burton all hope had been killed within her; and without hope she had fallen like a bird with one wing broken. She was defenceless, and her misery laid open to all. She could only keep still, lest it should be tortured by being handled.
"You must think of the child, you know," said the Matron. "He'll depend on you altogether, and you mustn't give in like this. She doesn't care," she added to Anne as Jane still sat without a tremor of understanding. "It's a bad sign. I can't even rouse her with speaking of Burton. She's given up hope of him. It's like as if something's dead inside her. Doctor says it's shock."
"I should say it's temper," said a voice from one of the beds. "Petting and spoiling all day long." The voice came from an old woman, with a soft, withered face and infantile blue eyes.
"Now then, where did you hide that thermometer?" said the Matron, with a good-natured laugh. "You know, Miss Hilton, this old lady's a famous hand at taking anything that's about, and keeping it for herself. She doesn't call it stealing, don't you see. Why, the other day she was having her temperature taken, and when the nurse turned her head away there was no thermometer to be seen. 'What have you done with it?' she says. 'Why, I declare, I must have etten it,' says this old lady. What do you think of that?"
The old woman turned over in bed, and her innocent eyes closed with a patient expression.
"I don't know what people are allowed to come talking here for when it isn't visiting day," she said. "Nobody can go to sleep for such talking."
Anne sat down beside Jane and began to sing—
"I was a wandering sheep;I did not love the fold."
The Matron watched with an air of curiosity. Jane did not cease staring into the fire.
"It's no use, Miss Hilton. I daresay the old lady's a bit right. There's a slice of temper in it too. But we can't waste all day over her."
Anne took Jane's hand. "I'll come and see you again in a little while," she said. "And remember, there's always One that'll hear all that you can't tell to any one else. He's with you here waiting to hear and help you." She lingered. There was no response. The Matron walked briskly towards the door.
"Well, the old ones are easier to manage," she said. She led the way downstairs and left Anne on the doorstep of the big front door. The porter shut it with a clang.
The pony was pawing the gravel outside the gate and pulling hard with his head. He backed the cart vigorously into the road as Anne untied his head, and set off at a good pace towards the town.
"I'll go up to-morrow and see Mrs Hankworth," said Anne. "She'll perhaps be able to say something to help."
Mrs Hankworth lived at one of the largest farms in the country, some three miles away from Anne Hilton's cottage. The farmstead was, contrary to the usual custom, not placed near the high road for convenience, but on an eminence in the midst of its own lands. A road had been cut to it between cornfields, so that in the time of springing corn a man walking on this road seemed to be wading to the knees in a green undulating sea, which had risen and submerged the hill. The farm itself was large, with a garden unusually well kept, a sign that the mistress counted in the establishment. Old rose trees grew almost to the roof of the wide building, and the thick turf bore token to the richness of the soil.
Inside, the passage, the stairs, the rooms, were all spacious, and, in spite of the rattling of cans and the sound of voices in the kitchen, the place retained an atmosphere of quiet and tranquillity, not of isolation or desertion, but of that comfortable restfulness which one recalls as a child, when, having been ill, one is left at home when the others have gone to school, and remains in a quiet house, watching contentedly the leisurely cheerful movements of one's mother.
Mrs Hankworth, the mistress of the best farm in the country, was an enormously stout but very active woman. Her husband, a man half her size and an excellent farmer, exhibited only one trait of nervousness, and that on her account. If she went to market without him he was uneasy until she came back lest something should have happened to her. In all the fifteen years of their married life they had never slept out of their own bed, and they had had no honeymoon.
With the contentment of a woman of sound health and of active useful life, who was fully aware that her good sense and management were as necessary to the farm, her husband and twelve children, as his own knowledge of farming, she looked upon this as a just sense of her own value, as indeed it was, and the reward of the confidence which she so completely deserved from her husband. She was generous to her poorer neighbours even when they cheated her. Not taking it very deeply to heart nor expecting much otherwise, she was yet able to remember that her lot was an affluent one compared with theirs, and was ready to excuse even while being perfectly aware of human fraility. Who, when she had sent to an old woman of the village who lived discontentedly on such pickings as she could induce her neighbours to leave her, and who had constantly profited by the liberality of this well-established mistress, a ticket for a large tea, and was informed by some officious person that the husband also had procured a ticket at her expense, said, "He's a poor old crab-stick. It'll do him no harm to have a good tea for once."
She was a contented woman, entirely satisfied with the position which life had allotted to her, a position in which all her faculties had full scope, and were to the full appreciated by those with whom she had most to do, and being of a really kind heart she was a good friend to the poor. When Anne arrived at the door of the dairy, she found its mistress seated before a tin pail containing a mass of butter which she was dividing into prints. With white sleeves and apron, a bucket of scalding water on one side of her and a pail of cold on the other, her ample knees spread apart for balance as she sat on a low chair, her bulky and capable hands moved with decision and practice about her work. She looked up as Anne appeared in the doorway, but her hands did not cease working.
"It's not often we have to do this," she said, "but they sent down word that there was no milk wanted yesterday, so we had to set to."
"It looks nice butter," said Anne, with the judgment of a connoisseur.
"Youought to know what good butter is," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I've just been having a laugh over that Peter Molesworth. He wrote on his account, "17 pints." Did you ever hear such a thing! It took me quite a long time to know what 17 pints was. Him and his 17 pints!"
"He's not very clever, Peter," said Anne, "but I don't know what his poor mother would do without him."
"No," returned Mrs Hankworth, "he's hard-working if he's stupid, and that's better than the other way round."
"Mrs Hankworth," began Anne, "I know what a good friend you've always been to those that have got into trouble, and I came to ask your advice about that poor Jane Evans."
"I just heard of it the other day," replied Mrs Hankworth, letting the butter-prints sink on her lap. "I don't know how it was I came to know of it so late. I'd no idea till the other day that she'd ever gone to live with that Burton. I wonder how she got acquainted with him. There's no men goes about their house. What's she doing now?"
"She's in the Union," said Anne, "and she sits there without speaking, staring into the fire. Nobody can rouse her. She seems to have no life left in her. It's pitiful to see her, and to think of what's coming to her."
"She's been foolish," said Mrs Hankworth, "and I expect she'll find plenty to make her pay for her foolishness. But I see no reason why she shouldn't do all the better for a lesson. She'll have to work though. There'll be no sitting round in silk blouses doing fancy-work. You needn't be troubled about her moping when she's got the baby. They don't leave you much time for that," she added with a laugh of retrospection. "But your first baby's as much trouble as ten. If she can earn a living when she comes out she'll be better without that Burton. He's no better than a child's balloon. He's up, and you prick him with a pin and he's down! She's provided in the Union, I suppose?"
"I think so, since they never asked anything about it," said Anne.
"What sort of a place is it, Miss Hilton?" asked Mrs Hankworth in the tone of one who might be enquiring after a prison or worse.
"They'd a nice big fire," said Anne, "and until you came to look at the people, it looked quite comfortable. But when you came to look at those poor things, and thought that that was all they had to expect, it made your heart ache."
"She's a good matron I've heard," said Mrs Hankworth.
"She's a kind woman," returned Anne, heartily, "and I suppose it's a good thing they've got such a place to shelter them. But it seems a poor end somehow, and not a place for young people. There seems to be no hope in it, and yet it's clean, and they've got good food."
"Other people's bread doesn't taste like your own to them that's been used to having any," returned Mrs Hankworth. "I expect, if you've never had any of your own, you're glad to get anything. I suppose Burton's out of the country."
"Nobody seems to know rightly," said Anne. "Jane says not a word. I don't suppose she really knows anything."
"She'll come to see that she's better without him," said Mrs Hankworth, taking up the prints and working the butter emphatically. "But she must work like the rest of us. It's generally the long clothes that gets left over," she added, "the short ones get worn out by some of them, but I'll look and see what I can find. It'll be rather nice to be looking out baby-things again. There's nothing you miss more than a baby, when you've had one or other about for a good many years. But she'd never do any good with that Burton about."
It seemed not so much the fact that a girl would give up her reputation for a man, that impressed Mrs Hankworth unpleasantly, but that she would give it into the keeping ofsucha man. She did not expect impossible things of anybody. No one belonging to her had ever made a slip, and such a happening seemed to be so remote a possibility for anyone "connected," that she could spare great charity for the rest of the world. Nor did she believe in "driving people." If a girl had made a mistake, that was no reason why everyone else should make another, and her good sense revolted against a perpetually drawn-out punishment for any fault. Her disgust at this fault, not very deep, being submerged almost as it arose, by the immediate necessity for doing something, and a reminiscent understanding of the timidity and dread with which the first child-bearing might be regarded by an ignorant and forsaken girl. Her position as the reputable and capable mother of a family being unassailable, no one could consider that kindness to the girl implied any countenancing of her offence. Anne, puzzled and baffled by the things which she had seen, felt herself in a larger sphere which could consider the fact of birth as a small matter for everyday occurrence and preparation, happen however it might.
"You can't do anything by worrying, Miss Hilton, you know," said Mrs Hankworth. "You've got to wait. There's nothinganybodycan do but wait. There's our John. I think he gets more nervous every child we have. I always say to him that he can't help anything by worrying, and in any caseI'mthe person who's got to go through it; but it makes no difference. He can't be satisfied till he sees me walking about again. The girl'll be quite right when she's got the baby to work for. She's nothing to do now but wait and think about it and herself. You'll see when she's up and about again she'll be another thing. I hope the baby's a boy. It'll be sooner forgotten about if he is."
"I'm afraid," said Anne, growing expansive beneath the good sense which attacked every practical side of the matter, and dissolved difficulties as soon as they arose, "that she'll get little work to do when she comes out. People talk unkindly, and say that you must make a difference between her and other girls."
"Oh! there'll always be some clever folk like that," said Mrs Hankworth, drily. "The difference that anyone can see if they use their eyes is, thatshe'llhave a child to keep andtheywon't. She's no idea where she'll go, I suppose?"
"She doesn't seem to know where she is now," replied Anne. "It's terrible to see anybody drinking such bitter waters as that poor girl. She thinks we're all against her, and I'm a religious old maid. So she shuts herself up, and doesn't say a word."
"Don't you worry, Miss Hilton," said Mrs Hankworth; "she'll look for friends when the baby comes. She'll stir herself for his sake, if she won't for her own. We're going to have Mr Charter to stop to-morrow night. You'll be going to the Home Missions, won't you?" she said, as if all had been said that could be.
"It'll be a great treat to hear Mr Charter," said Anne. "He's such a kind way of talking about everybody. It's a season of grace and sweet delight when he comes."
"He's got such a way with children and young people," said Mrs Hankworth, steering away from "experiences." "There's my big lad William! He'll follow him round from place to place till he's out of walking distance. 'What do you do it for, William?' I says to him, and he stands on one leg and then on the other, and says 'I don't know,' he says. 'I like hearing him,' he says. He's a great attraction for him."
"I hope there'll be a good meeting," said Anne, rising to go. "Don't you get up. It's been a great relief to me to have a chat with you."
"I'll go down myself and have a look at Jane," said Mrs Hankworth. "Perhaps in a week or so she'll have got a bit used to her position, and see that she can't go on like that long."
"It'll be a real work of charity," said Anne earnestly. "Young people think a lot of married women. She thinks, you know, that I'm an old maid and don't know anything about it."
"Well, I'll go," said Mrs Hankworth, gratified. "Good morning, then. We shall see you at the meeting."
"God willing," replied Anne, and turned to go, comforted by the confidence and ample views of this well-to-do woman.
The little grey chapel at the corner of two roads was lighted and already hot with steam on the windows. The wooden pews, set on steps which rose evenly to the window-sill at the back of the tiny building, seemed to precipitate themselves upon the mean wooden pulpit. Three benches set endwise to the platform served for the choir, and there was a small harmonium. The girl (a daughter of a prosperous farmer) who played it was already in her place, and a group of children had taken possession of the front pew. These were playing under the book-rest and frequent giggles burst from their number. At last one of them threw a hat so much too high that it dropped into the next pew, and a preter-natural silence fell upon the group, who all wriggled themselves erect on their seats and looked apprehensively round. The girl at the harmonium bent back to look at the clock and then pulled out her stops and began to play. The door clicked, and burst open to admit a cold breeze and a big farm boy in his Sunday clothes, whose head and shoulders came in before the rest of him was ready to follow, and who held on to the door as he entered as if for protection. Every child turned its head and watched him while he ducked his head on to the book-board for a second, and then sat upright, adjusting his neck into his collar. The farmer, whose daughter played the organ, came next with his wife, who made her way with an air of ownership to her seat, and having covered her face with her hand for a moment, untied her bonnet-strings and fanned her hot face. Every other moment now the door burst open, and admitted someone from the dark blue outside—a group of clumsy youths who flung themselves upon the pew doors as if they had formed the deliberate purpose of keeping them out, some girls in their finery nodding to acquaintances as they entered, some labourers in unaccustomed clothes, and last Mary Colton who walked with her calculating step to the nearest choir bench. Then a larger group hesitated at the door and the evangelist entered, mounting the pulpit with a confident tread, the minister taking a seat in the choir benches and the stewards sitting behind him. There was some whispering between the evangelist and the minister, then the evangelist remained seated and the minister rose and gave out a hymn—
"Rescue the perishing, care for the dying."
Those who did not know the words knew and shouted the chorus. It was a rousing beginning. As the hymn came to a final shout, Anne Hilton in a black bonnet and old-fashioned mantle with a bead fringe at the shoulders, with one black cotton glove half on and the other wholly off, entered the chapel and sat just within the door.
The evangelist glanced round his congregation and found himself able to believe the report that the country districts were apathetic. He was an ugly little man with straggling brown whiskers and unruly hair, and had no great appearance of illumination, yet he was a true evangelist, labouring hard to pull souls from the pit of social and moral corruption. That was why he had been sent to the task of addressing the country congregations. He was not working with an eye to romance, nor for the glory which comes to those who work in the slums. He thought with the thoughts of those among whom he worked. He had known what it was to be hungry. He had known the crucifixion of standing idle when every limb ached to be working. He knew that pregnant women are sometimes beaten and kicked by the clogs of their husbands. He knew what little children felt like when they cried from cold. His heart was incessantly burning, but he had worked now for fifteen years and it was no longer burning with indignation. He had found others, not Christians, as he thought, who would be indignant, who would plan with pity and sympathy and with more efficiency and foresight that he could ever control, build up and organise ways of escape for much that he saw. He could meet them too. But his work was to understand, and from his understanding to attract and heal. The others had nothing to say to a woman whose husband died, or whose son became crippled at work, to a man who lost his right hand, or a girl whose sweetheart was drowned two days before the wedding, and these things were always happening.
He looked round. He thought of his various speeches. It was no use telling these people how many more women were arrested for drunkenness in the streets this year than last, nor how many families lived in cellars, nor how many men were without work. Their imaginations, never straying into large numbers, would be blank. He would tell them stories of men and women like themselves, and of howtheymanaged when calamity came. He had sheaves of such stories and a ready tongue. He might strike a spark of understanding. His voice, as he began to speak, belied his appearance. It was sonorous and beautiful and it immediately controlled his audience.
"My dear friends! Just round the corner from the house where I live, there's a street called 'Paradise Street,' but I can tell you as I came along here this morning in the lanes by the chapel, it seemed to me a good deal more like Paradise than that street. It was a treat to smell hawthorn hedges again, and to see some clear sky again, after the foundries of stone-work, and I don't know what it is that makes people give names like Angel Meadow, Paradise Row, Greenfield Street to the dirtiest and smelliest streets in all the town. But I've got some very good friends in this particular Paradise Street I was talking of, and if they don't get an abundant entrance into the Paradise of our Saviour when their time comes, I've mistaken His loving-kindness very sadly.
"Now, you'd hardly think that an old woman could be very happy living in a cellar, without even a proper window to put a plant in, and six steps to come up and down every time she went out and in, and drunken men cursing and blaspheming up above in the street! Well! I'm going to tell you a tale of one of the happiest old women I know, but I'm afraid it's got to be about a day on which she wasn't happy at all.
"Her name's Jane Clark, and she lives in that cellar I'm speaking of on 2s. 6d. a week she has from the parish. She's a widow, and some of you women know what that means. She pays 1s. 3d. for her share of the cellar, for you know in towns such as I come from, we're building so many factories, and railway sheds, and what not, that we've no room left to live in, so Mrs Clark had to share even her cellar. Many a time when I passed down that dreadful street and hadn't time to go in, I'd just shout down the cellar and she'd have an answer back in no time. I used to go down for a few minutes, just to cheer myself up a bit, for there's a lot of discouraging things happen in our sort of work, and she always made me ashamed. She was so content, never wanting more and always thankful for what she had.
"Well! one day I was in Paradise Street. It was wet and cold, and the beer-shops were full of drunken men and women, and even the children were shouting foul language.
"'O God,' I said, ready to cry out in the street, 'How long will the power of the devil last in this town?' However, I thought of Mrs Clark down there, and how she had to live in it all, so I went down the steps, and there she was, but I could see that even she had been crying.
"'Now, Mrs Clark!' I said, 'you don't mean to tell me that it's your turn to be cheered up?'
"'No!' she said, 'not now! I've got it done already!'
"'Well, now!' I said, 'it's so unusual to see you with those red eyes that you make me quite curious. That is, if it's nothing that'll hurt you to tell,' I said.
"'No!' she said, 'it'll not hurt me. I'm a silly old woman,' she said.She didn't speak for a minute, and then she went on:
"'You know it's my birthday to-day, Mr Charter. I'm sixty this very Friday. Well, you know, I always say to myself, "Short commons on Friday," I says, "because 1s. 6d. won't last for ever." But somehow, with its being my birthday I suppose, and me being sixty, I got it into my head that the Lord would perhaps remember me. I've gone on loving Him for over forty years, and it did seem hard that on my birthday and me sixty, He should have left me with only a crust of bread to my tea. However, I sat down to eat my crust, but when I began to say a blessing over it, I just began to cry like a silly child. Well, what do you think! I'd just taken the first bite, when a child, whose mother I know, came running in and put a little newspaper parcel on the table. "Mrs Clark," she says, "my mother was out working to-day, and the lady gave her a big pot of dripping, so she sent a bit round for your tea!" She run straight away, and when that child had gone, I cried a good bit more, and then I laughed and laughed, and says over and over again to myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."'"
The evangelist looked at his watch, and took a drink of water. One or two men shifted their attitude from one side to the other, and all waited as children do for an absorbing story. A momentary look of satisfaction came over the face of the evangelist, and he began again with zest.
"I'm afraid the next tale I've got to tell you will take a good deal of time." ("We're here to listen," interrupted the minister.)
"Thank you! but you don't know me when I begin to talk! I can hardly tell this tale in a public meeting, it comes so near home. It's about a friend of mine, we'll call him Joe, and whenever I think about him there always comes into my mind the verse we put up over him, 'Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me,' for Joe hadn't an easy lot. I'll tell you what his trade was, though it may make you laugh to hear he was a sweep! Now, I don't know what there is about a sweep that makes little rascals of boys throw stones at him, and call names after him, but that's the curious fact. As soon as ever a sweep begins to call out in the street, there's a crowd of little rascals round him at once. I've seen Joe sometimes, a little crooked man with a lame leg and a black face, and a tail of little ragamuffins shouting ''Weep, 'weep!' behind him, going about his earthly business in the dirty streets round about where he lived. 'Eh! never mind 'em, Mr Charter,' he used to say. 'It pleases the children, and it doesn't hurt me.' That was the sort of man he was, you see, humble and content.
"He was married, was Joe, to a good, hard-working little wife, and they'd had one daughter. She married a young plumber who got work at Peterhead, and she had three little boys that their grandfather had never seen. He had a photograph of them on the mantleshelf with their mother, that she'd sent him one Christmas. Now one day, an idea came into his head, that if he put by threepence a week, after a good long time, he and his wife could go by a cheap excursion to see those little grandchildren and their mother, just once before they died. He prayed about it, and then week by week, they began saving up, and the nearer they came to having £3, the more real those little grandchildren of theirs became. The daughter, you see, wasn't to be told till all was ready, and then there was going to be a grand surprise. Well, you know, I got as interested in that saving-up as though it was me that was going the excursion!