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Weighed and Wanting, a novel by George MacDonald |
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Chapter 12. A Beginning |
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_ CHAPTER XII. A BEGINNING The Raymounts lived in no fashionable or pseudo-fashionable part of London, but in a somewhat peculiar house, though by no means such outwardly, in an old square in the dingy, smoky, convenient, healthy district of Bloomsbury. One of the advantages of this position to a family with soul in it, that strange essence which _will_ go out after its kind, was, that on two sides at least it was closely pressed by poor neighbors. Artisans, small tradespeople, out-door servants, poor actors and actresses lived in the narrow streets thickly branching away in certain directions. Hence, most happily for her, Hester had grown up with none of that uncomfortable feeling so many have when brought even into such mere contact with the poor as comes of passing through their streets on foot--a feeling often in part composed of fear, often in part of a false sense of natural superiority, engendered of being better dressed, better housed, and better educated. It was in a measure owing to her having been from childhood used to the sight of such, that her sympathies were so soon and so thoroughly waked on the side of suffering humanity. With parents like hers she had never been in danger of having her feelings or her insight blunted by the assumption of such a relation to the poor as that of spiritual police-agent, one who arrogates the right of walking into their houses without introduction, and with at best but faint apology: to show respect if you have it, is the quickest way to teach reverence; if you do not show respect, do not at least complain should the recoil of your own behavior be more powerful than pleasant: if you will shout on the mountain side in spring, look out for avalanches. Those who would do good to the poor must attempt it in the way in which best they could do good to people of their own standing. They must make their acquaintance first. They must know something of the kind of the person they would help, to learn if help be possible from their hands. Only man can help man; money without man can do little or nothing, most likely less than nothing. As our Lord redeemed the world by being a man, the true Son of the true Father, so the only way for a man to help men is to be a true man to this neighbor and that. But to seek acquaintance with design is a perilous thing, nor unlikely to result in disappointment, and the widening of the gulf both between the individuals, and the classes to which they belong. It seems to me that, in humble acceptance of common ways, we must follow the leadings of providence, and make acquaintance in the so-called lower classes by the natural working of the social laws that bring men together. What is the divine intent in the many needs of humanity, and the consequent dependence of the rich on the poor, even greater than that of the poor on the rich, but to bring men together, that in far-off ways at first they may be compelled to know each other? The man who treats his fellow as a mere mean for the supply of his wants, and not as a human being with whom he has to do, is an obstructing clot in the human circulation. Does any one ask for rules of procedure? I answer, there are none to be had; such must be discovered by each for himself. The only way to learn the rules of any thing practical is to begin to do the thing. We have enough of knowledge in us--call it insight, call it instinct, call it inspiration, call it natural law, to begin any thing required of us. The sole way to deal with the profoundest mystery that is yet not too profound to draw us, is to begin to do some duty revealed by the light from the golden fringe of its cloudy vast. If it reveal nothing to be done, there is nothing there for us. No man can turn his attention in the mere direction of a thing, without already knowing enough of that thing to carry him further in the knowledge of it by the performance of what it involves of natural action. Let every simplest relation towards human being, if it be embodied but in the act of buying a reel of cotton or a knife, be recognized as a relation with, a meeting of that human soul. In its poor degree let its outcome be in truth and friendliness. Allow nature her course, and next time let the relation go farther. To follow such a path is the way to find both the persons to help and the real modes of helping them. In fact, to be true to a man in any way is to help him. He who goes out of common paths to look for opportunity, leaves his own door and misses that of his neighbor. It is by following the path we are in that we shall first reach somewhere. He who does as I say will find his acquaintance widen and widen with growing rapidity; his heart will fill with the care of humanity, and his hands with its help. Such care will be death to one's own cares, such help balm to one's own wounds. In a word, he must cultivate, after a simple human manner, the acquaintance of his neighbors, who would be a neighbor where a neighbor may be wanted. So shall he fulfil the part left behind of the work of the Master, which He desires to finish through him. Of course I do not imagine that Hester understood this. She had no theory of carriage towards the poor, neither confined her hope of helping to them. There are as many in every other class needing help as among the poor, and the need, although it wear different dresses, is essentially the same in all. To make the light go up in the heart of a rich man, if a more difficult task, is just as good a deed as to make it go up in the heart of a poor man. But with her strong desire to carry help where it was needed, with her genuine feeling of the blood relationship of all human beings, with her instinctive sense that one could never begin too soon to do that which had to be done, she was in the right position to begin; and from such a one opportunity will not be withheld. She went one morning into a small shop in Steevens's Road, to buy a few sheets of music-paper. The woman who kept it had been an acquaintance almost from the first day of their abode in the neighborhood. In the course of their talk Mrs. Baldwin mentioned that she was in some anxiety about a woman in the house who was far from well, and in whom she thought Mrs. Raymount would be interested, "Mamma is always ready," said Hester, "to help where she can. Tell me about her." "Well, you see, miss," replied Mrs. Baldwin, "we're not in the way of having to do with such people, for my husband's rather particular about who he lets the top rooms to; only let them we must to one or another, for times is hard an' children is many, an' it's all as we can do to pay our way an' nothing over; only thank God we've done it up to this present; an' the man looked so decent, as well as the woman, an' that pitiful-like--more than she did--that I couldn't have the heart to send them away such a night as it was, bein' a sort o' drizzly an' as cold as charity, an' the poor woman plainly not in a state to go wanderin' about seekin' a place to lay her head; though to be sure there's plenty o' places for such like, only as the poor man said himself, they did want to get into a decent place, which it wasn't easy to get e'er a one as would take them in. They had three children with them, the smallest o' them pickaback on the biggest; an' it's strange, miss--I never could compass it, though I atten' chapel reg'lar--how it goes to yer heart I mean, to see one human bein' lookin' arter another! But my husban', as was natural, he bein' a householder, an' so many of his own, was shy o' children; for children, you know, miss, 'cep' they be yer own, ain't nice things about a house; an' them poor things wouldn't be a credit nowheres, for they're ragged enough--an' a good deal more than enough --only they were pretty clean, as poor children go, an' there was nothing, as I said to him, in the top-rooms, as they could do much harm to. The man said theirs weren't like other children, for they had been brought up to do the thing as they were told, an' to remember that things that belonged to other people was to be handled as sich; an', said he, they were always too busy earnin' their bread to be up to tricks, an' in fact were always too tired to have much spare powder to let off; so the long an' short on it was, we took 'em in, an' they've turned out as quiet an' well-behaved a family as you could desire; an' if they ain't got jest the most respectable way o' earnin' their livelihood, that may be as much their misfortin as their fault, as my husband he said. An' I'm sure it's not lettin' lodgin's to sich I ever thought I should come to--though, for the matter o' that, I never could rightly understand what made one thing respectable an' another not." "What is their employment then?" asked Hester. "Something or other in the circus-way, as far as I can make out from what they tell me. Anyway they didn't seem to have no engagement when they come to the door, but they paid the first week down afore they entered. You see, miss, the poor woman she give me a kind of a look up into the face that reminded me of my Susie, as I lost, you know, miss, a year ago--it was that as made me feel to hate the thought of sending her away. Oh, miss, ain't it a mercy everybody ain't so like your own! We'd have to ruin ourselves for them--we couldn't help it!" "It will come to that one day, though," said Hester to herself, "and then we sha'n't he ruined either." "So then!" Mrs. Baldwin went on, "the very next day as was, the doctor had to be sent for, an' there was a babby! The doctor he come from the 'ospital, as nice a gentleman as you'd wish to see, miss, an' waited on her as if she'd been the first duchess in the land. 'I'm sure,' said my good husban' to me, 'it's a lesson to all of us to see how he do look after her as'll never pay him a penny for the care as he's takin' of her!' But my husban' he's that soft hearted, miss, where anything i' the baby-line's a goin' on! an' now the poor thing's not at all strong, an' ain't a-gettin' back of her stren'th though we do what we can with her, an' send her up what we can spare. You see they pay for their house-room, an' then ain't got much over!" added the good woman in excuse of her goodness. "But I fancy it's more from anxiety as to what's to come to them, than that anything's gone wrong with her. They're not out o' money yet quite, I'm glad to say, though he don't seem to ha' got nothing to do yet, so far as I can make out; they're rather close like. That sort o' trade, ye see, miss, the demand's not steady in it. It's not like skilled labor, as my husban' says; though to see what them young ones has to go through, it's labor enough an' to spare; an' if it ain't just what they call skilled, it's what no one out o' the trade can make a mark at. Would you mind goin' up an' havin' a look at her, miss?" Hester begged Mrs. Baldwin to lead the way, and followed her up the stairs. The top-rooms were two poor enough garret ones, nowise too good, it seemed to Hester, for the poorest of human kind. In the largest, the ceiling sloped to the floor till there was but just height enough left for the small chest of drawers of painted deal to stand back to the wall. A similar washstand and a low bed completed the furniture. The last was immediately behind the door, and there lay the woman, with a bolster heightened by a thin petticoat and threadbare cloak under her head. Hester saw a pale, patient, worn face, with eyes large, thoughtful, and troubled. "Here's a kind lady come to see you, Mrs.!" said her landlady. This speech annoyed Hester. She hated to be called kind, and perhaps spoke the more kindly to the poor woman that she was displeased with Mrs. Baldwin's patronizing of her. "It's dreary for you to lie here alone, I'm afraid," she said, and stroked the thin hand on the coverlid. "May I sit a few minutes beside you? I was once in bed for a whole month, and found it very wearisome. I was at school then. I don't mind being ill when I have my mother." The woman gazed up at her with eyes that looked like the dry wells of tears. "It's very kind of you, miss!" she said. "It's a long stair to come up." She lay and gazed, and said nothing more. Her life was of a negative sort just at present. Her child lay asleep on her arm, a poor little washed-out rag of humanity, but evidently dear from the way she now and then tried to look at it, which was not easy to her. Hester sat down and tried to talk, but partly from the fear of tiring one too weak to answer more than a word now and then, she found it hard to get on. Religion she could not talk off-hand. Once in her life she had, from a notion of duty, made the attempt, with the consequence of feeling like a hypocrite. For she found herself speaking so of the things she fed on in her heart as to make them look to herself the merest commonplaces in the world! Could she believe in them, and speak of them, with such dull dogmatic stupidity? She came to the conclusion that she had spoken without a message, and since then she had taken care not to commit the offence again. A dead silence came. "What can be the good of a common creature like me going to visit people?" she said to herself. "I have nothing to say--feel nothing in me--but a dull love that would bless if it could! And what would words be if I had them?" For a few moments she sat thus silent, growing more and more uncomfortable. But just ere the silent became unendurable, a thought appeared in the void. "What a fool I am!" she said again to herself. "I am like little Mark when he cried because he had only a shilling and saw a boy spend a penny on a lovely spotted horse! Here have I been all my life wanting to give my fellow-creatures a large share of my big cake, and the first time I have an opportunity, I forget all about it! Here it lies locked in my chest, like a dead bird in its cage!" A few more moments she sat silent but no longer embarrassed thinking how to begin. The baby woke and began to whimper. The mother, who rarely let him off her arm, because then she was not able to take him till help came, drew him to her, and began to nurse him; and the heart of the young, strong woman was pierced to the quick at sight of how ill fitted was the mother for what she had to do. "Can God be love?" she said to herself. "If I could help her! It will go on like this for weeks and months, I suppose!" She had yet to learn that the love of God is so deep he can be satisfied with nothing less than getting as near as it is possible for the Father to draw nigh to his children--and that is into absolute contact of heart with heart, love with love, being with being. And as that must be wrought out from the deepest inside, divine law working itself up through our nature into our consciousness and will, and claiming us as divine, who can tell by what slow certainties of approach God is drawing nigh to the most suffering of his creatures? Only, if we so comfort ourselves with such thoughts as to do nothing, we, when God and they meet, shall find ourselves out in the cold--cold infinitely worse than any trouble this world has to show. The baby made no complaint against the slow fountain of his life, but made the best he could of it, while his mother every now and then peered down on him as lovingly as ever happy mother on her first-born. The same God is at the heart of all mothers, and all sins against children are against the one Father of children, against the Life itself. A few moments only, and Hester began to sing--low and soft. Having no song sought out for the occasion, she took a common hymn, sung in all churches and chapels, with little thought or feeling in it, the only one she could think of. I need not say she put into it as much of sweetness and smoothing strength as she could make the sounds hold, and so perhaps made up a little for its lack. It is a curious question why sacred song should so often be dull and commonplace. With a trembling voice she sang, and with more anxiety and shyness than she remembered having ever felt. It was neither a well-instructed nor critically disposed audience she had, but the reason was that never before had she been so anxious for some measure of success. Not daring to look up, she sat like one rebuked, with the music flowing over her lips like the slow water from the urn of some naiad of stone fountain. She had her reward; for when the hymn was done, and she at length ventured to raise her eyes, she saw both mother and babe fast asleep. Her heart ascended on a wave of thanks to the giver of song. She rose softly, crept from the house, and hastened home to tell her mother what she had heard and seen. The same afternoon a basket of nice things arrived at the shop for the poor lodger in the top-room. The care of the Raymounts did not relax till she was fairly on her feet again; neither till then did a day pass on which Hester did not see her, and scarcely one on which she did not sing to her and her baby. Several times she dressed the child, singing to him all the time. It was generally in the morning she went, because then she was almost sure to find them alone. Of the father she had seen next to nothing. On the few occasions when he happened to be at home, the moment she entered he crept out, with a shy, humble salutation, as if ashamed of himself. All she had ever had time to see was that he was a man of middle height, with a strong face and frame, dressed like a workman. The moment he rose to go, his three boys rose also, and following him from the room seemed to imitate his salutation as they passed her--all but the youngest, who made her a profound bow accompanied by a wonderful smile. The eldest was about the age of twelve, the youngest about seven. They were rather sickly looking, but had intelligent faces and inoffensive expressions. Mrs. Baldwin continued to bear the family good witness. She confessed they never seemed to have much to eat, but said they paid their lodgings regularly, and she had nothing to complain of. The place had indeed been untidy, not to say dirty, at first, but as soon as the mother was about again, it began to amend, and now, really, for people in their position, it was wonderfully well. _ |
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