A Story for All.
Originally published in The Leisure Hour (Religious Tract Society) vol.1 #3 (15 Jan 1852).
In an upper chamber of a large, dreary, old-fashioned house, in one of our ancient cities—a house once occupied by the rich and noble, but now so far fallen into decay, as to be let off in separate apartments to the working classes; in an upper room of this same old house, a sad and lonely woman sate thoughtfully at her evening meal. And, as is often the custom of these lonely ones, she thought aloud; and her reflections were very much after this fashion.
"Well, the day's work is over, and Saturday will be here presently; let me see—" And she turned out of an old canvas bag all her worldly wealth. There were several halfpence, amounting to tenpence in all, a sixpence, a shilling, and a halfcrown piece. This was her bank.
There was part of a quartern loaf in her closet, and perhaps an ounce of tea in her caddy, a little dripping in a broken basin, a herring on a plate, and some liquor in which beef had been boiled, given to her with the dripping at a house where she had worked that day. This was her provision-store.
There was a very little handful of fire in the grate, and about a moderate-sized coal-shoot of coals in her cellar or coal-close, with a few sticks that a little girl had given her. This was her provision of firing.
There was a bed in a corner of the room, a small tent bedstead without hangings, and covered with a very thin hard mattress, an old but clean and well-mended blanket, and a blue coverlet. These were her sleeping quarters. An old rush-bottomed chair, and a little round mahogany table—a relic of better days, a tea tray, a crazy chest of drawers, and a looking-glass without a frame, about four inches square, a very tattered rug, a high-backed old-fashioned chair, the bequest of the widow's grandmother, and a stool, constituted the remainder of her scanty possessions.
She might well sigh, then, as she turned out the money into her lap, remembering the three shillings due for a fortnight's rent, the dearness of provisions (for it was a time of scarcity), the slackness of work, and her own friendless condition.
She sipped her weak tea, and spread a morsel of her stale loaf with the welcome dripping, and murmured, "But it wont do to doubt; I must think of the promise, that my bread will be given me and my water will be sure, if I trust in my Father. Yet it is close work to come, as I shall do to-morrow, almost to my last shilling; and it is difficult just at the right time to think of the good words which Briant read to me last night—'Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and all things needful shall be added unto you.' Good Briant! I wonder he is not come yet; but it is a cheery evening, and may-be he is strolled into the country for a breath of pure air after his hard day's work; and if I were not so dead tired, that's what I should have done myself; but standing all day to wash is not the way to be able to take country walks. But who's that coming up? I should not wonder now if that was Briant, after all;" and she peeped out.
No, it was only the surly porter from the wool-staplers, who always came home very dirty; often, she feared, tipsy, and not often so early as he did to-night. He was a solitary man; but he never took any notice of her, often as she met him on the stairs; and on the present occasion, when she could scarcely refrain from bidding him "good night," he replied by a growl; so she shut the door and resolved to give up Briant. "If it were not for my bad eyes, how I should love to read that best of books to-night," said she, as she looked on the Bible; "but He who has afflicted me with weak and failing sight, has perhaps better blessings for me than the indulgence even of this wish."
So saying, she began to put away her cup and saucer and the little black tea-pot, and ascertaining from the nature of the last cup of tea that no more flavour was to be extracted from the leaves, she put them aside for their last service, that of sweeping her chamber on the morrow, and sate down by the little high window to catch the rays of the bright setting sun.
A step was heard again, and this time she was not disappointed; it was Briant.
Briant was a pale, thin, over-worked, underfed-looking youth of eighteen years, the journeyman of a painter in the town; and he gave evidence, as most journeymen painters do, of the unhealthiness of his daily employment. To have employment at all, however, was no light mercy at a time of great pressure and poverty, and Briant did not complain.
"I scarcely expected you to-night," said Mrs. Warner, looking a grateful welcome into his face; "I thought the first evening after all the wet weather we have had would have tempted you beyond the city walls."
"Oh no, no, my pleasure and my duty are within the city walls, and I have a whole hour to spare to read with you and poor old Susan Clarke, before I must turn homewards."
The book was opened accordingly, a little well-worn plainly-bound Bible, which the young man drew out of his pocket; and with unaffected solemnity he began to read the parable of the Talents. He did not comment much upon it, for, as he truly said, "The Gospel was its own interpreter, and the lesson to be derived from that simple and beautiful story was too obvious to need much explanation."
But the widow did not look satisfied, and lifting up her hands, and then in a hopeless and desponding attitude, letting them fall on the lap, she said: "But what—what can I do? Surely, Briant, I have not even the one talent."
Briant smiled. "You don't think, Mrs. Warnes, that the talent means simply money, do you?"
"No, oh no."
"Nor simply intellect or education?"
"Well, I don't know, but I feel I have not much of either."
"Not much; well, then you are the possessor of the one talent—the half talent, if you will; but still you have something committed to you. To one, God gives great riches in charge; to another, little money, but great power of mind; to another, great activity and strength of body; to another, very little of anything. Now it matters little the amount that we have. He will ask of us the amount that we use."
"Ah well, well, but still, Briant, you would be puzzled to find my talent. It is not in my purse, I know," said she, taking out the little canvas bag, and shaking it at him. "Not in my head, I am sure; and my poor body, that is not very strong, alack! No, no, my dear lad, I am a poor lone woman, of no use to anybody, and it often is passing strange to me, when I see the father taken from the family, the mother from the helpless babe, the child from the fond parent—all followed to the grave by weeping mourners, that a poor disconsolate, lonely, unloved creature like me should be left, for whom they would have to beg mock-mourners to follow to the grave."
"This is not quite as it should be, is it, Mrs. Warnes? You must have hid your talent somewhere. Every being in God's universe has a part to perform—a work to do. But, I am very sorry to find my time is up; we cannot pursue this subject any further now. I leave you to think over it. Good night."
Mrs. Warnes was a widow, and, as she said, a very lone and disconsolate widow. She was one of that class of poor people who rather pique themselves on 'neighbouring,' as they call it, with no one. She had known better days, and could not stoop, as she said, to become the companion of the very poor and ignorant creatures amongst whom her lot was cast. She just existed in the world, but the pleasures of friendly association, she never tasted. Yet she was by no means a cold or hardhearted woman. But she was very poor, and poverty is a crushing, deadening thing. She had lost heart for everything, and so long as she could earn enough by washing and charing to get daily bread, she was content. When she could earn no more, and that hour was even threatened, she must go to the workhouse, she said, and that was all.
Still she had long known the truth, and she loved it in a measure. She thought she had loved it better in by-gone days, when her heart was less sore and aching, and her path less difficult; but she loved it still. Yet she was not a happy Christian, and every one who looked at poor widow Warnes marked her as a woman of a sorrowful spirit; and she was not a happy Christian just because she was not an active one; she occupied no place in the great human family which a mere animal might not have filled as well. She hid her Lord's money.
The pale thoughtful visitor who had just passed from her threshold had little cause to be happier than widow Warnes. He had an idle, heartless father, a careful but cross-tempered step-mother, little brother and sisters of the second family, and one only sister of the first; and she was his earthly all. There was something beautiful in their love; it was the love "born of sorrow," which, as the poet says, like sorrow is true. The poor girl gained her living by the use of her needle at home, where she also made herself useful by tending the younger children.
Briant's acquaintance with Mrs. Warnes began at a house where she was in the habit of washing, and where she was lamenting, in his hearing, her inability to read as she used to do. Briant accompanied her home that night, and when arrived at the foot of the staircase of her lodgings, he said:—"Mrs. Warnes, if you would like me to come in and read to you now and then, only say so, and I shall indeed be very glad."
She turned round in surprise. "I have lived here some years," she said, "and yours is the first friendly voice that has fallen on my ear. You must mean well; you can have no interest in it, I am sure. I am very, very poor, I cannot even pay you by a mouthful of food; but I should be glad. The Bible is my greatest comfort, but I cannot see to read mine, as its print is so bad."
So, after a little more talk, it was agreed that Briant should call after work was over the next night; and from that hour his visit was accounted the happiest and brightest hour of the day.
Mrs. Warnes did not as usual, on the occasion to which we have referred, put out her candle and go to bed after her visitor's departure. She felt almost offended with him; she should have felt so to any one else at least; but Briant was a great favourite, and he had been very kind to her. But then he was very young. "What could he mean? She have a talent indeed! Why she had none; and if she had, where was the use of it? Who knew, who cared for her? The bluff old porter opposite—why he never gave her a civil answer when she did speak. The woman with the host of children, on the next floor—why she scarcely knew her name, and such dirty people they were, it was not to be expected she could mix up with them, and what good would it do if she did? The dress-maker's girl, with her flaunting flighty airs, and tawdry dress—no; she was not come to that; she could not associate with such people. And thus soliloquizing, she prepared to lie down on her solitary pillow; but she did not feel at all happy, as she could not rest for the question which lay on her heart almost like a nightmare—"What can I do?" To which Conscience, being fairly awake, replied most unhesitatingly, "Something."
She was going forth to her work at seven the next morning, with a growing suspicion in her mind that her talent must be somewhere, though maybe a little rusty and stiff for want of use; when a girl stood in the doorway—a little dirty slipshod creature—Mrs. Warnes' particular aversion—with her hair in papers, and her dress disordered as usual, but nevertheless, with her blue glass bead necklace tied with dirty tape round her dirtier neck.
"Will you let me pass?" asked the widow, somewhat shortly.
The child turned her face piteously up to the speaker, and said imploringly, "Oh, mother's so bad; she's been bad all night; and father's gone for the doctor, and I'm so frightened that I've come away."
"And have you left your mother alone?"
"Yes, except the children."
The widow turned round:—"May I come in?" she said, knocking at the door, which stood ajar.
She was answered by a female voice; and now she saw that her work, even with an empty purse and very little scholarship, was plain before her.
The poor woman whom she had put down in her list, as one of the impossible associates, had risen from her bed, and was sitting by the fire half-dressed, shivering with cold, and almost unable to support herself in her chair. The little unwashed tribe of children, some dressed, some undressed, all wretchedly dirty, were crouching in a corner, with the exception of the youngest child, a baby of six months' old, at the breast, who cried piteously for the nourishment that its fainting mother could no longer afford. The cause of the little girl's terror was apparent enough. The mother in a fit of coughing had raised a large quantity of blood, and the sight of blood drove the little ones crying away. The husband, for the first time, took alarm at a cough which had gone through and through Mr. Warnes' head many a time, she said, and now ran for the doctor; and this was the sphere of the useless widow's first labour for others.
"But I shall lose my day's work," thought she with regret; and it was a natural thought. "I shall lose my day's work, and perhaps, if I don't go, it will not be to-day's alone, but other days."
The poor sufferer might have guessed what was passing in the widow's mind, for at this very moment she said in a trembling and agitated voice: "Do not leave me just yet; the doctor can't be very long, and I am so frightened."
"So the widow despatched the little slip-shod girl to the house of her employer, with the necessary explanation and apologies for her non-appearance, and then sate by her neighbour's chair, trying to soothe her fears and the baby's cries.
The simple performance of an act of humanity, or charity; the mere turning of the heart towards the distress of another, is sure to beget something like love. It is an old saying, that "pity is akin to love;" but it is a question if true pity, benevolent Christian compassion, be not love itself. Mrs. Warnes had not sate many minutes beside the poor invalid before she took her hand in hers, and felt her heart glow with interest and compassion in a manner very unusual to her. Indeed so absorbed was she in consideration of the forlorn state of the room and the air of disorder that met her eye, that she forgot the loss of her day's work, and consequently of her daily bread. She had just succeeded in getting the patient on to her uncomfortable bed, in wrapping the baby up in a shawl, and committing it to the care of the little nurse, its sister, for an hour's airing, when the husband and the doctor entered, the former of whom looked more surprised than pleased at the presence of Mrs. Warnes.
She had always carried herself so distantly towards her neighbours that this was not astonishing. But on this occasion there was a tenderness in her voice and a humility in her manner, as she told the man that she was prepared to stay with his wife that day if he desired it, that conciliated his goodwill at once. And oh how happy she felt when he acquiesced! how lightened her heart was when she recalled the conversation of the preceding night, and it struck her that she had brought to the light of day her hidden and long-neglected talent. Yet those who have never tried to make such a sacrifice can have no idea of its extent. Whilst she sate by that sick bed, when the children were gone out, and the sufferer, by the aid of a narcotic, had falled into a short sleep, she had time to think; and when she remembered her rent, her lost day's work, and maybe her lost place, she asked herself this question, "Can God require this of me, so poor and needy as I am?"
It was a sharp struggle, and when Mrs. Parnell awoke, she said very kindly, "I have put your room as comfortable as I can, and I will stay with you all day and welcome, if you know of no one else; but have you no mother, nor any relative or friend, who could come in and nurse you? I would gladly do it myself, but as I have a hard living to earn, you wont wonder that I am a little anxious to get to work."
The poor woman thus addressed, raised herself on her elbow, and, after a fit of coughing, said:—"My mother! bless you, she lives in London. I have no one here about that I can think of just now; but oh, don't leave me to-day, and I'll ask John. Perhaps one of his sisters would come, or old Mrs. Grant; but, dear me! she is so fidgety with the children. Oh, dear, dear," she cried, petulantly, "and can't you stop?"
When Mrs. Warnes saw the feverish excitement of the patient's manner, she regretted having referred to the subject, and could now only soothe her like a wayward child, with the promise that she would not neglect her until some one else could be procured.
It was a harder task than even she had calculated on to perform her promise. It was an ill-ordered household; the children were unruly and fretful; the chimney smoked, the patient coughed, the baby screamed incessantly, and by the time the husband came in from work at the dinner hour her patience was almost gone.
Whilst the husband and children were at dinner, she went to the door to watch for Briant passing to his noon-day meal, and glad enough was she to see him to tell him her perplexity, and to ask—grey-haired woman as she was—the counsel of this youthful man.
"I will consider of it," he said; "and when I call in the evening I will tell you whether I can find any one to help you in the nursing of the poor woman. And do you think she would see me, for I fear she has sadly neglected the 'one thing needful?'"
"I don't know, indeed, her heart seems set on this world, poor thing. I will ask her; but some one, Briant, must be got to nurse her; I can't lose my living, you know."
"'Sufficient unto the day is the' duty 'thereof,' Mrs. Warnes, and surely you cannot leave her to-day."
Mrs. Warnes thought Briant rather cool on the subject. When he was gone she went up into her solitary chamber (and how dear its solitude and neatness were, after the confusion below), to consider what she should do.
At present her conduct to the poor woman had been merely the charity of impulse; now the time was come for her to be charitable from principle. So she lifted up her heart to God, asking Him to help her in her difficult path of self-denial, putting up the humble petition that He who clothed the grass and careth for the sparrow, would not forget her, a poor, needy, dependent creature. And so, having dried her tears, she went out of her little room, comforted and strengthened.
The work was not easy now; but it was easier. She was acting from principle, not from mere impulsive compassion; and, leaving the morrow's cares for the morrow, she began heartily and systematically to do the day's duty and work. The children being much in the way, she resolved, though at a great sacrifice of inclination and feeling, to turn them into her neat little upper chamber, only first requiring of them that they should not make havoc of her household treasures, and giving Jenny especial directions to make free use of some soap and water while there.
It is beautiful to observe how the poor help one another in cases of sickness and affliction. The patient very justly observed to her husband, that she did not know she had such friends as she discovered that day. For besides the attentions of Mrs. Warnes, one poor woman who lived on the opposite side of the street brought in a little broth; she had gone without her dinner for the sake of that offering. A second, who could scarcely walk from age and infirmity, came to offer her services to watch at night; and a third, the most welcome of all, and perhaps the most self-denying, volunteered to take the crying, wailing baby, to tend and to wean, that its mother might enjoy better rest.
Ah, you who have never studied the character of the poorer classes—poorer in worldly wealth than ourselves, but richer, maybe, in pure disinterested benevolence—is there not a page in their simple annals that it may profit you to read? For a friend you may be willing to perform the offices of affection in times of sorrow and affliction. You might perhaps offer to sit up a night to watch or to nurse, and you might even take the burden of a crying child on you to secure that friend rest and sleep; but do we often see in the middle and upper classes of society that self-forgetfulness, that noble expansive charity, that love end pity even to a stranger that is in sorrow, which we meet in real life—not in fiction only—amongst the poor?
Briant came in the evening, and the poor woman who was a little relieved from severe suffering, listened with great attention to the voice of the young man as he read out of the Book of which she knew so little, words of warning, peace, and reconciliation.
Briant's sister came too, She could not stay that night, she said, because she had a little sick sister at home, and this was her turn to nurse and tend her; but she would try and come in the morning that Mrs. Warnes might get a little rest. It would be Sunday, and she had no work to do then, and her mother had promised to spare her.
Briant looked at Mrs. Warnes to see how she bore the prospect of a lost night's rest. There was a quiet smile upon her face, such as he had scarcely ever seen there before.
"You were quite right, Briant, last evening," said she, comprehending the meaning of that soul-reading glance; "I have been all wrong for many years past, and have forgotten the Saviour's example. I have been content to live for myself, and thought that because I had neither money nor learning, I had no part in life at all, but just to go on alone to the grave."
Night came on; the children were in her little upper chamber asleep; the lodgers were all asleep, and the patient slept too. The widow sate and watched. Though very tired in body, she was not weary in well-doing. In fact, it is a question whether any heart in that old city was more at rest at the dawn of that sabbath morning than hers. She was not hiding her talent now; and who could tell, she thought, but that her one talent, if properly traded with and used, would bring forth five talents more.
True to her promise, Briant's sister came the next day, and Mrs. Warnes was able to take some rest. The children's faces having been made cleaner than usual, the father took the youngest to his sister's house in a neighbouring village, leaving Jenny to be of as much use as she could at home.
Poor Mrs. Warnes! "If it were not Sunday morning, and if I were not so tired, I could not sleep in this littered, dirty room," said she, when she entered the apartment the little Parnells had just vacated; but it was Sunday, so she smoothed the bed, and reserving a lecture for Jenny on her untidiness till she had rested, she lay down to rest.
"Ah!" thought she, before she dropped off to sleep, "I should not wonder if that verse of Dr. Watts' holds good for the mind as well as the body—that
"Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do."
I have been useless and idle too, and he has harassed me with doubts and fears all my Christian life long. Useless Christians can't be happy, as Briant has often said. I have sate idle in a corner long enough to be miserable; I must now see if there is not something for me to do in the world, out of gratitude to Him who has paid the mighty debt that I owed to God."
Whilst thinking on these things she fell asleep.