"Good-morning, sir," said Mr. Kitely, brusquely. "What can I do for you this morning?"
If Mr. Fuller had begun looking at his books, Kitely would have taken no notice of him. He might have stayed hours, and the bookseller would never have even put a book in his way; but he looked as if he wanted something in particular, and therefore Mr. Kitely spoke.
"You have a little girl that's not well, haven't you?" returned Mr. Fuller.
"Oh! you're the gentleman she wanted to see. She's been asking ever so often whether you wasn't come yet. She's quite impatient to see you, poor lamb!"
While he spoke, Kitely had drawn nearer to the curate, regarding him with projecting and slightly flushed face, and eyes that had even something of eagerness in them.
"I would have come earlier, only I thought it would be better not," said Mr. Fuller.
Mr. Kitely drew yet a step nearer, with the same expression on his face.
"You won't put any nonsense into her head, will you, sir?" he said, almost pleadingly.
"Not if I know it," answered Mr. Fuller, with a smile of kind humor. "I would rather take some out of it."
"For you see," Kitely went on, "that child never committed a sin in her life. It's all nonsense; and I won't have her talked to as if she was a little hell-cat."
"But you see we must go partly by what she thinks herself; and I suspect she won't say she never did anything wrong. I don't think I ever knew a child that would. But, after all, suppose you are right, and she never did anything, wrong—"
"I don't exactly say that, you know," interposed Mr. Kitely, in a tone of mingled candor and defense. "I only said she hadn't committed any sins."
"And where's the difference?" asked Mr. Fuller, quietly.
"Oh! you know quite well. Doing wrong, you know—why, we all do wrong sometimes. But to commit a sin, you know—I suppose that's something serious. That comes in the way of the Ten Commandments."
"I don't think your little girl would know the difference."
"But what's the use of referring to her always?"
"Just because I think she's very likely to know best. Children are wise in the affairs of their own kingdom."
"Well, I believe you're right; for she is the strangest child I ever saw. She knows more than any one would think for. Walk this way, sir. You'll find her in the back room."
"Won't you come, too, and see that I don't put any nonsense into her head?"
"I must mind the shop, sir," objected Kitely, seeming a little ashamed of what he had said.
Mr. Fuller nodded content, and was passing on, when he bethought himself, and stopped.
"Oh, Mr. Kitely," he said, "there was just one thing I was going to say, but omitted. It was only this: that suppose you were right about your little girl, or suppose even that she had never done anything wrong at all, she would want God all the same. And we must help each other to find Him."
If Mr. Kitely had any reply ready for this remark, which I doubt, Mr. Fuller did not give him time to make it, for he walked at once into the room, and found Mattie sitting alone in a half twilight, for the day was cloudy. Even the birds were oppressed, for not one of them was singing. A thrush hopped drearily about under his load of speckles, and a rose-ringed paroquet, with a very red nose, looked ashamed of the quantity of port-wine he had drunk. The child was reading the same little old book mentioned before. She laid it down, and rose from the window-sill to meet Mr. Fuller.
"Well, how do you do, sir?" she said. "I am glad you are come."
Any other child of her age Mr. Fuller would have kissed, but there was something about Mattie that made him feel it an unfit proceeding. He shook hands with her and offered her a white camellia.
"Thank you, sir," said Mattie, and laid the little transfiguration upon the table.
"Don't you like flowers?" asked Mr. Fuller, somewhat disappointed. "Isn't it beautiful now?"
"Well, where's the good?" answered and asked Mattie, as if she had been a Scotchwoman. "It will be ugly before to-morrow."
"Oh, no; not if you put it in water directly."
"Will it live forever, then?" asked Mattie.
"No, only a few days."
"Well, where's the odds, then? To-morrow or next week—where's the difference? It looks dead now when you know it's dying."
"Ah!" thought Mr. Fuller, "I've got something here worth looking into." What he said was, "You dear child!"
"You don't know me yet," returned Mattie. "I'm not dear at all. I'm cross and ill-natured. And I won't be petted."
"You like the birds, though, don't you?" said Mr. Fuller.
"Well, yes. Mr. Kitely likes them, and I always like what he likes. But they are not quite comfortable, you know. They won't last forever, you know. One of them is dead since I was taken ill. And father meant it for Miss Burton."
"Do you like Miss Burton, then?"
"Yes, I do. But she'll live forever, you know. I'll tell you something else I like."
"What is that, my child?"
"Oh, I'm no such a child! But I'll tell you what I like. There."
And she held out the aged little volume, open at the hymn about blind Bartimeus.
"Will this live forever, then?" he asked, turning the volume over in his hand, so that its withered condition suggested itself at once to Mattie.
"Now you puzzle me," answered Mattie. "But let me think. You know it's not the book I mean; it's the poem. Now I have it. If I know that poem by heart, and I live forever, then the poem will live forever. There!"
"Then the book's the body, and the poem the soul," said Mr. Fuller.
"One of the souls; for some things have many souls. I have two, at least."
Mr. Fuller felt instinctively, with the big forehead and the tiny body of the child before him, that they were getting on rather dangerous ground. But he must answer.
"Two souls! That must be something like what King David felt, when he asked God to join his heart into one. But do you like this poem?" he hastened to add. "May I read it to you?"
"Oh, yes; please do. I am never tired of hearing it. It will sound quite new if you read it."
So Mr. Fuller read slowly—"As Jesus went into Jericho town." And from the way Mattie listened, he knew what he must bring her next—not a camellia, but a poem. Still, how sad it was that a little child should not love flowers!
"When were you in the country last, Miss Kitely?"
"I never was in the country that I know of. My name is Mattie."
"Wouldn't you like to go, Mattie?"
"No I shouldn't—not at all."
"Why?"
"Well, because—because it's not in my way, you see."
"But surely you have some reason for not liking the country."
"Well, now, I will tell you. The country, by all I can hear, is full of things that die, and I don't like that. And I think people can't be nice that like the country."
Mr. Fuller resolved in his heart that he would make Mattie like the country before he had done with her. But he would say no more now, because he was not sure whether Mattie as yet regarded him with a friendly eye; and he must be a friend before he could speak about religion. He rose, therefore, and held out his hand.
Mattie looked at him with dismay.
"But I wanted you to tell me about the man that sat at Somebody's feet in his Sunday clothes."
Happily for his further influence with her, Mr. Fuller guessed at once whom she meant, and taking a New Testament from his pocket, read to her about the demoniac, who sat at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. He had not known her long before he discovered that all these stories of possession had an especial attraction for Mattie—she evidently associated them with her own visions of Syne and his men.
"Well, I was wrong. It wasn't his Sunday clothes," she said. "Or, perhaps, it was, and he had torn the rest all to pieces."
"Yes; I think that's very likely," responded Mr. Fuller.
"I know—it was Syne that told him, and he did it. But he wouldn't do it any more, would he, after he saw Somebody?"
"I don't think he would," answered Mr. Fuller, understanding her just enough to know the right answer to make. "But I will come and see you again to-morrow," he added, "and try whether I can't bring something with me that you will like."
"Thank you," answered the old-fashioned creature. "But don't be putting yourself to any expense about it, for I am not easy to please." And she lifted her hand to her head and gave a deep sigh, as if it was a very sad fact indeed. "I wish I was easier to please," she added, to herself; but Mr. Fuller heard her as he left the room.
"She's a very remarkable child that, Mr. Kitely—too much so, I fear," he said, reëntering the shop.
"I know that," returned the bookseller, curtly, almost angrily. "I wish she wasn't."
"I beg your pardon. I only wanted—"
"No occasion at all," interrupted Mr. Kitely.
"I only wanted," Mr. Fuller persisted, "to ask you whether you do not think she had better go out of town for a while."
"I dare say. But how am I to send her? The child has not a relation but me—and an aunt that she can't a-bear; and that wouldn't do—would it, sir? She would fret herself to death without someone she cared about."
"Certainly it wouldn't do. But mightn't Miss—I forget her name—"
"Miss Burton, I dare say you mean."
"I mean Miss Burton. Couldn't she help you? Is she any relation of yours?"
"None whatever. Nor she's not like it. I believe she's a stray, myself."
"What do you mean, Mr. Kitely?" asked Mr. Fuller, quite bewildered now.
"Well, sir, I mean that she's a stray angel," answered Mr. Kitely, smiling; "for she ain't like anyone else I know of but that child's mother, and she's gone back to where she came from—many's the long year."
"I don't wonder at your thinking that of her if she's as good as she looks," returned Mr. Fuller. And bidding the bookseller good-morning, he left the shop and walked home, cogitating how the child could be got into the country.
Next morning he called—earlier, and saw Lucy leaving the court just as he was going into the shop. He turned and spoke to her.
"Fancy a child, Miss Burton," he said, "that does not care about flowers—and her heart full of religion too! How is she to consider the lilies of the field? She knows only birds in cages; she has no idea of the birds of the air. The poor child has to lift everything out of that deep soul of hers, and the buckets of her brain can't stand such hard work."
"I know, I know," answered Lucy. "But what can I do?"
"Besides," Mr. Fuller continued, "what notion of the simple grandeur of God can she have when she never had more than a peep of the sky from between these wretched houses? How can the heavens declare the glory of God to her? You don't suppose David understood astronomy, and that it was from a scientific point of view that he spoke, when he said that the firmament showed his handiwork? That was all he could say about it, for the Jewish nation was not yet able to produce a Ruskin. But it was, nevertheless, the spiritual power of the sky upon his soul—not the stars in their courses, but the stars up there in their reposeful depth of blue, their 'shining nest'—which, whatever theory of their construction he might have, yet impressed him with an awe, an infinitude, a shrinking and yet aspiring—made his heart swell within him, and sent him down on his knees. This little darling knows nothing of such an experience. We must get her into the open. She must love the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and the clouds that change and pass. She can't even like anything that does not last forever; and the mind needs a perishing bread sometimes as well as the body—though it never perishes when once made use of, as Mattie told me yesterday. But I beg your pardon; I am preaching a sermon, I think. What a thing it is to have the faults of a profession in addition to those of humanity! It all comes to this—you must get that child, with her big head and her big conscience, out of London, and give her heart a chance."
"Indeed, I wish I could," answered Lucy. "I will do what I can, and let you know. Are you going to see her now, Mr. Fuller?"
"Yes, I am. I took her a flower yesterday, but I have brought her a poem to-day. I am afraid, however, that it is not quite the thing for her. I thought I could easily find her one till I began to try, and then I found it very difficult indeed."
They parted—Lucy to Mrs. Morgenstern's, Mr. Fuller to Mattie.
I will give the hymn—for the sake, in part, of what Mattie said, and then I will close the chapter.
"Come unto me," the Master says.
But how? I am not good;
No thankful song my heart will raise,
Nor even wish it could.
I am not sorry for the past,
Nor able not to sin;
The weary strife would ever last
If once I should begin.
Hast thou no burden then to bear?
No action to repent?
Is all around so very fair?
Is thy heart quite content?
Hast thou no sickness in thy soul?
No labor to endure?
Then go in peace, for thou art whole,
Thou needest not His cure.
Ah! mock me not. Sometimes I sigh;
I have a nameless grief,
A faint, sad pain—but such that I
Can look for no relief.
Come then to Him who made thy heart;
Come in thyself distrest;
To come to Jesus is thy part,
His part to give thee rest.
New grief, new hope He will bestow,
Thy grief and pain to quell;
Into thy heart Himself will go,
And that will make thee well.
When Mr. Fuller had finished the hymn, he closed the book and looked toward Mattie. She responded—with a sigh—
"Well, I think I know what it means. You see I have such a big head, and so many things come and go just as they please, that if it weren't for Somebody I don't know what I should do with them all. But as soon as I think about Him, they grow quieter and behave better. But I don't know all that it means. Will you lend me the book, Mr. Fuller?"
All the child's thoughts took shapes, and so she talked like a lunatic. Still, as all the forms to which she gave an objective existence were the embodiments of spiritual realities, she could not be said to have yet passed the narrow line that divides the poet from the maniac. But it was high time that the subjects of her thoughts should be supplied from without, and that the generating power should lie dormant for a while. And the opportunity for this arrived sooner than her friends had expected.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NINGPO IS LOST.
Lucy was so full of Mattie and what Mr. Fuller had said that she told Mrs. Morgenstern all about it before Miriam had her lesson. After the lesson was over, Mrs. Morgenstern, who had, contrary to her custom, remained in the room all the time, said:
"Well, Lucy, I have been thinking about it, and I think I have arranged it all very nicely. It's clear to me that the child will go out of her mind if she goes on as she's doing. Now, I don't think Miriam has been quite so well as usual, and she has not been out of London since last August. Couldn't you take her down to St. Leonard's—or I dare say you would like Hastings better? You can go on with your lessons there all the same, and take little Mattie with you."
"But what will become of my grandmother?" said Lucy.
"She can go with you, can't she? I could ask her to go and take care of you. It would be much better for you to have her, and it makes very little difference to me, you know."
"Thank you very much," returned Lucy, "but I fear my grandmother will not consent to it. I will try her, however, and see what can be done. Thank you a thousand times, dear Mrs. Morgenstern. Wouldn't you like to go to Hastings, Miriam?"
Miriam was delighted at the thought of it, and Lucy was not without hopes that if her grandmother would not consent to go herself, she would at least wish her to go. Leaving Mattie out of view, she would be glad to be away from Thomas for a while, for, until he had done as he ought, she could not feel happy in his presence; and she made up her mind that she would write to him very plainly when she was away—perhaps tell him positively that if he would not end it, she must. I say perhaps, for ever as she approached the resolution, the idea of the poor lad's helpless desertion arose before her, and she recoiled from abandoning him. Nothing more could be determined, however, until she saw her grandmother.
But as she was going out she met Mr. Sargent in the hall. He had come to see her.
This very morning the last breath of the crew and passengers of the Ningpo had bubbled up in the newspapers; and all the world who cared to know it knew the fact, that the vessel had been dashed to pieces upon a rock of the Cape Verde Islands; all hands and passengers supposed to be lost. This the underwriters knew but a few hours before. Now it was known to Mr. Stopper and Mr. Worboise, both of whom it concerned even more than the underwriters. Mr. Stopper's first feeling was one of dismay, for the articles of partnership had not been completed before Mr. Boxall sailed. Still, as he was the only person who understood the business, he trusted in any case to make his position good, especially if he was right in imagining that old Mrs. Boxall must now be heir-at-law—a supposition which he scarcely allowed himself to doubt. Here, however, occurred the thought of Thomas. He had influence there, and that influence would be against him, for had he not insulted him? This he could not help yet. He would wait for what might turn up.
What Mr. Worboise's feelings were when first he read the paragraph in the paper I do not know, nor whether he had not an emotion of justice, and an inclination to share the property with Mrs. Boxall. But I doubt whether he very clearly recognized the existence of his friend's mother. In his mind, probably, her subjective being was thinned by age, little regard, and dependence, into a thing of no account—a shadow of the non-Elysian sort, living only in the waste places of human disregard. He certainly knew nothing of her right to any property in the possession of her son. Of one of his feelings only am I sure: he became more ambitious for his son, in whom he had a considerable amount of the pride of paternity.
Mrs. Boxall was the last to hear anything of the matter. She did not read the newspapers, and, accustomed to have sons at sea, had not even begun to look for news of the Ningpo.
"Ah, Miss Burton," said Mr. Sargent, "I am just in time. I thought perhaps you would not be gone yet. Will you come into the garden with me for a few minutes? I won't keep you long."
Lucy hesitated. Mr. Sargent had of late, on several occasions, been more confidential in his manner than was quite pleasant to her, because, with the keenest dislike to raise appearances, she yet could not take his attentions for granted, and tell him she was engaged to Thomas. He saw her hesitation, and hastened to remove it.
"I only want to ask you about a matter of business," he said. "I assure you I won't detain you."
Mr. Sargent knew something of Mr. Wither, who had very "good connections," and was indeed a favorite in several professional circles; and from him he had learned all about Lucy's relations, without even alluding to Lucy herself, and that her uncle and whole family had sailed in the Ningpo. Anxious to do what he could for her, and fearful lest, in their unprotected condition, some advantage should be taken of the two women, he had made haste to offer his services to Lucy, not without a vague feeling that he ran great risk of putting himself in the false position of a fortune-hunter by doing so, and heartily abusing himself for not having made more definite advances before there was any danger of her becoming an heiress; for although a fortune was a most desirable thing in Mr. Sargent's position, especially if he wished to marry, he was above marrying for money alone, and, in the case of Lucy, with whom he had fallen in love—just within his depth, it must be confessed—while she was as poor as himself, he was especially jealous of being unjustly supposed to be in pursuit of her prospects. Possibly the consciousness of what a help the fortune would be to him made him even more sensitive than he would otherwise have been. Still he would not omit the opportunity of being useful to the girl, trusting that his honesty would, despite of appearances, manifest itself sufficiently to be believed in by so honest a nature as Lucy Burton.
"Have you heard the sad news?" he said, as soon as they were in the garden.
"No," answered Lucy, without much concern; for she did not expect to hear anything about Thomas.
"I thought not. It is very sad. The Ningpo is lost."
Lucy was perplexed. She knew the name of her uncle's vessel; but for a moment she did not associate the thing. In a moment, however, something of the horror of the fact reached her. She did not cry, for her affections had no great part in anyone on board of the vessel, but she turned very pale. And not a thought of the possible interest she might have in the matter crossed her mind. She had never associated good to herself with her uncle or any of his family.
"How dreadful!" she murmured. "My poor cousins! What they must all have gone through! Are they come home?"
"They are gone home," said Mr. Sargent, significantly. "There can be but little doubt of that, I fear."
"You don't mean they're drowned?" she said, turning her white face on him, and opening her eyes wide.
"It is not absolutely certain; but there can be little doubt about it."
He did not show her the paragraph in the Times, though the paper was in his pocket: the particulars were too dreadful.
"Are there any other relations but your grandmother and yourself?" he asked, for Lucy remained silent.
"I don't know of any," she answered.
"Then you must come in for the property."
"Oh, no. He would never leave it to us. He didn't like me, for one thing. But that was my fault, perhaps. He was not over-kind to my mother, and so I never liked him."
And here at length she burst into tears. She wept very quietly, however, and Mr. Sargent went on.
"But you must be his heirs-at-law. Will you allow me to make inquiry—to do anything that may be necessary, for you? Don't misunderstand me," he added, pleadingly. "It is only as a friend—what I have been for a long time now, Lucy."
Lucy scarcely hesitated before she answered, with a restraint that appeared like coldness:
"Thank you, Mr. Sargent. The business cannot in any case be mine. It is my grandmother's, and I can, and will, take no hand in it."
"Will you say to your grandmother that I am at her service?"
"If it were a business matter, there is no one I would more willingly—ask to help us; but as you say it is a matter of friendship, I must refuse your kindness."
Mr. Sargent was vexed with himself, and disappointed with her. He supposed that she misinterpreted his motives. Between the two, he was driven to a sudden, unresolved action of appeal.
"Miss Burton," he said, "for God's sake, do not misunderstand me, and attribute to mercenary motives the offer I make only in the confidence that you will not do me such an injustice."
Lucy was greatly distressed. Her color went and came for a few moments, and then she spoke.
"Mr. Sargent, I am just as anxious that you should understand me; but I am in a great difficulty and have to throw myself on your generosity."
She paused again, astonished to find herself making a speech. But she did not pause long.
"I refuse your kindness," she said, "only because I am not free to lay myself under such obligation to you. Do not ask me to say more," she added, finding that he made no reply.
But if she had looked in his face, she would have seen that he understood her perfectly. Honest disappointment and manly suffering were visible enough on his countenance. But he did not grow ashy pale, as some lovers would at such an utterance. He would never have made, under any circumstances, a passionate lover, though an honest and true one; for he was one of those balanced natures which are never all in one thing at once. Hence the very moment he received a shock, was the moment in which he began to struggle for victory. Something called to him, as Una to the Red-Cross Knight when face to face with the serpent Error:
"Strangle her, else she sure will strangle thee."
Before Lucy's eyes and his met, he had mastered his countenance at last.
"I understand you, Miss Burton," he said, in a calm voice, which only trembled a little—and it was then that Lucy ventured to look at him—"and I thank you. Please to remember that if ever you need a friend, I am at your service."
Without another word, he lifted his hat and went away.
Lucy hastened home full of distress at the thought of her grandmother's grief, and thinking all the way how she could convey the news with least of a shock; but when she entered the room, she found her already in tears, and Mr. Stopper seated by her side comforting her with commonplaces.
CHAPTER XXVII.
OF USEFUL ODDS AND ENDS.
During all this time, when his visits to Lucy were so much interrupted by her attendance upon Mattie, Thomas had not been doing well. In fact, he had been doing gradually worse. His mother had, of course, been at home for a long time now, and Mr. Simon's visits had been resumed. But neither of these circumstances tended to draw him homeward.
Mrs. Worboise's health was so much improved by her sojourn at Folkestone, that she now meditated more energetic measures for the conversion of her son. What these measures should be, however, she could not for some time determine. At length she resolved that, as he had been a good scholar when at school—proved in her eyes by his having brought home prizes every year—she would ask him to bring his Greek Testament to her room, and help her to read through St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans with the fresh light which his scholarship would cast upon the page. It was not that she was in the least difficulty about the Apostle's meaning. She knew that as well at least as the Apostle himself; but she would invent an innocent trap to catch a soul with, and, if so it might be, put it in a safe cage, whose strong wires of exclusion should be wadded with the pleasant cotton of safety. Alas for St. Paul, his mighty soul, and his laboring speech, in the hands of two such! The very idea of such to read him, might have scared him from his epistle—if such readers there could have been in a time when the wild beasts of the amphitheatre kept the Christianity pure.
"Thomas," she said, one evening, "I want you to bring your Greek Testament, and help me out with something."
"O, mother, I can't. I have forgotten all about Greek. What is it you want to know?"
"I want you to read the Romans with me."
"Oh! really, mother, I can't. It's such bad Greek, you know."
"Thomas!" said his mother, sepulchrally, as if his hasty assertion with regard to St. Paul's scholarship had been a sin against the truth St. Paul spoke.
"Well, really, mother, you must excuse me. I can't. Why don't you ask Mr. Simon? He's an Oxford man."
To this Mrs. Worboise had no answer immediately at hand. From the way in which Thomas met her request my reader will see that he was breaking loose from her authority—whether for the better or the worse does not at this point seem doubtful, and yet perhaps it was doubtful. Still he was not prepared to brave her and his father with a confession, for such it appeared to him to be, of his attachment to Lucy.
Since he could see so little of her, he had spent almost all the time that used to be devoted to her with Molken. In consequence, he seldom reached home in anything like what he had been accustomed to consider decent time. When his mother spoke to him on the subject he shoved it aside with an "Ah! you were in bed, mother," prefacing some story, part true, part false, arranged for the occasion. So long as his father took no notice of the matter he did not much mind. He was afraid of him still; but so long as he was out of bed early enough in the morning, his father did not much care at what hour he went to it: he had had his own wild oats to sow in his time. The purity of his boy's mind and body did not trouble him much, provided that, when he came to take his position in the machine of things, he turned out a steady, respectable pinion, whose cogs did not miss, but held—the one till the other caught. He had, however, grown ambitious for him within the last few days—more of which by and by.
In the vacancy of mind occasioned by the loss of his visits to Lucy—for he had never entered heartily into any healthy pursuits in literature, art, or even amusement—Thomas had, as it were, gradually sauntered more and more into the power of Mr. Molken; and although he had vowed to himself, after his first experience, that he would, never play again, himself not being to himself a very awe-inspiring authority, he had easily broken that vow. It was not that he had any very strong inclination to play—the demon of play had not quite entered into him: it was only that whatever lord asserted dominion over Thomas, to him Thomas was ready to yield that which he claimed. Molken said, "Come along," and Thomas went along. Nor was it always to the gambling-house that he followed Molken; but although there was one most degrading species of vice from which his love to Lucy—for he loved Lucy with a real though not great love—did preserve him, there were several places to which his friend took him from which he could scarcely emerge as pure as he entered them. I suspect—thanks to what influence Lucy had with him, to what conscience he had left in him, to what good his mother and Mr. Simon had taught him, in a word, to the care of God over him—Mr. Molken found him rather harder to corrupt than, from his shilly-shally ways, he had expected. Above all, the love of woman, next to the love of God, is the power of God to a young man's salvation; for all is of God, everything, from first to last—nature, providence, and grace—it is all of our Father in Heaven; and what God hath joined let not man put asunder.
His gambling was a very trifle as far as money went: an affair of all but life and death as far as principle was concerned. There is nothing like the amount of in-door gambling that there used to be; but there is no great improvement in taking it to the downs and the open air, and making it librate on the muscles of horses instead of on the spinning power of a top or the turning up of cards. And whoever gambles, whether at rouge-et-noir or at Fly-away versus Staywell, will find that the laws of gambling are, like those of the universe, unalterable. The laws of gambling are discontent, confusion, and loss upon everyone who seeks to make money without giving moneys worth. It will matter little to the grumbler whether the retribution comes in this world, he thinking, like Macbeth, to "skip the life to come," or in the next. He will find that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
But for Thomas, the worst thing in the gambling, besides the bad company it led him into, was that the whole affair fell in so with his natural weakness. Gambling is the employment fitted for the man without principles and without will, for his whole being is but, as far as he is concerned, the roulette-ball of chance. The wise, on the contrary, do not believe in Fortune, yield nothing to her sway, go on their own fixed path regardless "of her that turneth as a ball," as Chaucer says. They at least will be steady, come to them what may. Thomas got gradually weaker and weaker, and, had it not been for Lucy, would soon have fallen utterly. But she, like the lady of an absent lord, still kept one fortress for him in a yielded and devastated country.
There was no newspaper taken in at Mr. Worboise's, for he always left home for his office as soon as possible. So, when Thomas reached the counting-house, he had heard nothing of the sad news about his late master and his family. But the moment he entered the place he felt that the atmosphere was clouded. Mr. Wither, whose face was pale as death, rose from the desk where he had been sitting, caught up his hat, and went out. Thomas could not help suspecting that his entrance was the cause of Mr. Wither's departure, and his thoughts went back to last night, and he wondered whether his fellow-clerks would cut him because of the company he had been in. His conscience could be more easily pricked by the apprehension of overt disapprobation than by any other goad. None of them took any particular notice of him; only a gloom as of a funeral hung about all their faces, and radiated from them so as to make the whole place look sepulchral. Mr. Stopper was sitting within the glass partition, whence he called for Mr. Worboise, who obeyed with a bad grace, as anticipating something disagreeable.
"There!" said Mr. Stopper, handing him the newspaper, and watching him as he read.
Thomas read, returned the paper, murmured something, and went back with scared face to the outer room. There a conversation arose in a low voice, as if it had been in the presence of the dead. Various questions were asked and conjectures hazarded, but nobody knew anything. Thomas's place was opposite the glass, and before he had been long seated he saw Mr. Stopper rake the key of the door of communication from a drawer, unlock the door, and with the Times in his hand walk into Mrs. Boxall's house, closing the door behind him. This movement was easy to understand, and set Thomas thinking. Then first the thought struck him that Lucy and her grandmother would come in for all the property. This sent a glow of pleasure through him, and he had enough ado to keep the funeral look which belonged to the occasion. Now he need not fear to tell his father the fact of his engagement—indeed, he might delay the news as long as he liked, sure that it would be welcome when it came. If his father were pleased, he did not care so much for his mother. But had he known how much she loved him, he could not have got so far away from her as he was now. If, on the other hand, he had fallen in with her way of things, she would have poured out upon him so much repressed affection that he would have known it. But till he saw as she saw, felt as she felt, and could talk as she talked, her motherhood saw an impervious barrier between her and him—a barrier she labored hard to remove, but with tools that could make no passage through an ever-closing mist.
I cannot help thinking that if he had told all now, the knowledge of his relation to Lucy would have been welcomed by his father, and would have set everything right. I cannot but believe that Mr. Worboise's mind was troubled about the property. With perfect law on his side, there was yet that against him which all his worldliness did not quite enable him to meet with coolness. But the longer the idea of the property rested upon his mind, the more, as if it had been the red-hot coin of the devil's gift, it burned and burrowed out a nest for itself, till it lay there stone-cold and immovably fixed, and not to be got rid of. Before many weeks had passed he not only knew that it was his by law, but felt that it was his by right—his own by right of possession, and the clinging of his heart-strings around it—his own because it was so good that he could not part with it. Still it was possible that something adverse might turn up, and there was no good in incurring odium until he was absolutely sure that the fortune as well as the odium would be his; therefore he was in no haste to propound the will.
But, as I have said, he began to be more ambitious for his son, and the more he thought about the property, the more he desired to increase it by the advantageous alliance which he had now no doubt he could command. This persuasion was increased by the satisfaction which his son's handsome person and pleasing manners afforded him; and a confidence of manner which had of late shown itself, chiefly, it must be confessed, from the experience of the world he had had in the company he of late frequented, had raised in his father's mind a certain regard for him which he had not felt before. Therefore he began to look about him and speculate. He had not the slightest suspicion of Thomas being in love; and, indeed, there was nothing in his conduct or appearance that could have aroused such a suspicion in his mind. Mr. Worboise believed, on the contrary, that his son was leading a rather wild life.
It may seem strange that Thomas should not by this time have sunk far deeper into the abyss of misery; but Molken had been careful in not trying to hook him while he was only nibbling; and, besides, until he happened to be able to lose something worth winning, he rather avoided running him into any scrape that might disgust him without bringing any considerable advantage to himself.
There was one adverse intelligence, of whom Mr. Worboise knew nothing, and who knew nothing of Mr. Worboise, ready to pounce upon him the moment he showed his game. This was Mr. Sargent. Smarting, not under Lucy's refusal so much as from the lingering suspicion that she had altogether misinterpreted his motives, he watched for an opportunity of proving his disinterestedness; this was his only hope; for he saw that Lucy was lost to him. He well knew that in the position of her and her grandmother, it would not be surprising if something with a forked tongue or a cloven foot should put its head out of a hole before very long, and begin to creep toward them; and therefore, as I say, he kept an indefinite but wide watch, in the hope which I have mentioned. He had no great difficulty in discovering that Mr. Worboise had been Mr. Boxall's man of business, but he had no right to communicate with him on the subject. This indeed Mr. Stopper, who had taken the place of adviser in general to Mrs. Boxall, had already done, asking him whether Mr. Boxall had left no will, to which he had received a reply only to the effect that it was early days, that there was no proof of his death, and that he was prepared to give what evidence he possessed at the proper time—an answer Mrs. Boxall naturally enough, with her fiery disposition, considered less than courteous. Of this Mr. Sargent of course was not aware, but, as the only thing he could do at present, he entered a caveat in the Court of Probate.
Mr. Stopper did his best for the business in the hope of one day having not only the entire management as now, but an unquestionable as unquestioned right to the same. If he ever thought of anything further since he had now a free entrance to Mrs. Boxall's region, he could not think an inch in that direction without encountering the idea of Thomas.
It was very disagreeable to Thomas that Mr. Stopper, whom he detested, should have this free admission to what he had been accustomed to regard as his peculium. He felt as if the place were defiled by his presence, and to sit as he had sometimes to sit, knowing that Mr. Stopper was overhead, was absolutely hateful. But, as I shall have to set forth in the next chapter, Lucy was not at home; and that mitigated the matter very considerably. For the rest, Mr. Stopper was on the whole more civil to Thomas than he had hitherto been, and appeared even to put a little more confidence in him than formerly. The fact was, that the insecurity of his position made him conscious of vulnerability, and he wished to be friendly on all sides, with a vague general feeling of strengthening his outworks.
Mr. Wither never opened his mouth to Thomas upon any occasion or necessity, and from several symptoms it appeared that his grief, or rather perhaps the antidotes to it, were dragging him down hill.
Amy Worboise was not at home. The mother had seen symptoms; and much as she valued Mr. Simon's ghostly ministrations, the old Adam in her rebelled too strongly against having a curate for her son-in-law. So Amy disappeared for a season, upon a convenient invitation. But if she had been at home, she could have influenced events in nothing; for, as often happens in families, there was no real communication between mother and sister.
CHAPTER XXVIII
MATTIE IN THE COUNTRY.
I now return to resume the regular thread of my story.
I do not know if my reader is half as much interested in Mattie as I am. I doubt it very much. He will, most probably, like Poppie better. But big-headed, strange, and conceited as Mattie was, she was altogether a higher being than Poppie. She thought; Poppie only received impressions. If she had more serious faults than Poppie, they were faults that belonged to a more advanced stage of growth; diseased, my reader may say, but diseased with a disease that fell in with, almost belonged to, the untimely development. All Poppie's thoughts, to speak roughly, came from without; all Mattie's from within. To complete Mattie, she had to go back a little, and learn to receive impressions too; to complete Poppie; she had to work upon the impressions she received, and, so to speak, generate thoughts of her own. Mattie led the life of a human being; Poppie of a human animal. Mattie lived; Poppie was there. Poppie was the type of most people; Mattie of the elect.
Lucy did not intend, in the sad circumstances in which she now was, to say a word to her grandmother about Mrs. Morgenstern's proposal. But it was brought about very naturally. As she entered the court she met Mattie. The child had been once more to visit Mr. Spelt, but had found the little nest so oppressive that she had begged to be put down again, that she might go to her own room. Mr. Spelt was leaning over his door and his crossed legs, for he could not stand up, looking anxiously after her; and the child's face was so pale and sad, and she held her little hand so pitifully to her big head, that Lucy could not help feeling that the first necessity among her duties was to get Mattie away.
After the fresh burst of her grandmother's grief at sight of her was over, after Mr. Stopper had gone back to the counting-house, and she had fallen into a silent rocking to and fro, Lucy ventured to speak.
"They're gone home, dear grannie," she said.
"And I shan't stay long behind them, my dear," grannie moaned.
"That's some comfort, isn't it, grannie?" said Lucy, for her own heart was heavy, not for the dead, but for the living; heavy for her own troubles, heavy for Thomas, about whom she felt very despondent, almost despairing.
"Ah! you young people would be glad enough to have the old ones out of the way," returned Mrs. Boxall, in the petulance of grief. "Have patience, Lucy, have patience, child; it won't be long, and then you can do as you like."
"Oh, grannie, grannie!" cried Lucy, bursting into tears. "I do everything I like now. I only wanted to comfort you," she sobbed. "I thought you would like to go too. I wish I was dead."
"You, child!" exclaimed Mrs. Boxall; "why should you wish you was dead? You don't know enough of life to wish for death." Then, as Lucy went on sobbing, her tone changed—for she began to be concerned at her distress. "What is the matter with my darling?" she said. "Are you ill, Lucy?"
Then Lucy went to her and kissed her, and knelt down, and laid her head in the old woman's lap. And her grannie stroked her hair, and spoke to her as if she had been one of her own babies, and, in seeking to comfort her, forgot her own troubles for the moment.
"You've been doing too much for other people, Lucy," she said. "We must think of you now. You must go to the sea-side for awhile. You shan't go about giving lessons any more, my lamb. There is no need for that any more, for they say all the money will be ours now."
And the old woman wept again at the thought of the source of their coming prosperity.
"I should like to go to the country very much, if you would go too, grannie."
"No, no, child, I don't want to go. I don't want any doing good to."
"But I don't like to leave you, grannie," objected Lucy.
"Never mind me, my dear. I shall be better alone for awhile. And I dare say there will be some business to attend to."
And so they went on talking, till Lucy told her all about Mrs. Morgenstern's plan, and how ill poor Mattie looked, and that she would be glad to go away for a little while herself. Mrs. Boxall would not consent to go, but she even urged Lucy to accept the proposed arrangement, and proceeded at once to inquire into her wardrobe, and talk about mourning.
Two days after, Lucy and Mattie met Mrs. Morgenstern and Miriam at the London Bridge railway station. Mattie looked quite dazed, almost stupid, with the noise and bustle; but when they were once in motion, she heaved a deep sigh, and looked comforted. She said nothing, however, for some time, and her countenance revealed no surprise. Whatever was out of the usual way always oppressed Mattie—not excited her; and, therefore, the more surprising anything was, the less did it occasion any outward shape of surprise. But as they flashed into the first tunnel, Lucy saw her start and shudder ere they vanished from each other in the darkness. She put out her hand and took hold of the child's. It was cold and trembling; but as she held it gently and warmly in her own, it grew quite still. By the time the light began to grow again, her face was peaceful, and when they emerged in the cutting beyond, she was calm enough to speak the thought that had come to her in the dark. With another sigh—
"I knew the country wasn't nice," she said.
"But you don't know what the country is yet," answered Lucy.
"I know quite enough of it," returned Mattie. "I like London best. I wish I could see some shops."
Lucy did not proceed to argue the matter with her. She did not tell her how unfair she was to judge the country by what lay between her and it. As well might she have argued with Thomas that the bitterness of the repentance from which he shrank was not the religion to which she wanted to lead him; that religion itself was to him inconceivable; and could but be known when he was in it. She had tried this plan with him in their last interview before she left. She had herself, under the earnest teaching of Mr. Fuller, and in the illumination of that Spirit for which she prayed, learned many a spiritual lesson, had sought eagerly, and therefore gained rapidly. For hers was one of the good soils, well prepared beforehand for the seed of the redeeming truth of God's love, and the Sonship of Christ, and his present power in the human soul. And she had tried, I say, to make Thomas believe in the blessedness of the man whoso iniquities are pardoned, whose sins are covered, to whom the Lord imputeth not his transgressions; but Thomas had replied only with some of the stock phrases of assent. A nature such as his could not think of law and obedience save as restraint. While he would be glad enough to have the weight of conscious wrong-doing lifted off him, he could not see that in yielding his own way and taking God's lay the only freedom of which the human being, made in the image of God, is capable.
Presently Mattie found another argument upon her side, that is, the town-side of the question. She had been sitting for half an hour watching the breath of the snorting engine, as it rushed out for a stormy flight over the meek fields, faltered, lingered, faded, melted, was gone.
"I told you so," said Mattie: "nothing lasts in the country."
"What are you looking at now?" asked Lucy, bending forward to see.
"Those white clouds," answered Mattie. "I've been expecting them to do something for ever so long. And they never do anything, though they begin in such a hurry. The green gets the better of them somehow. They melt away into it, and are all gone."
"But they do the grass some good, I dare say," returned Lucy—"in hot weather like this especially."
"Well, that's not what they set out for, anyhow," said Mattie. "They look always as if they were just going to take grand shapes, and make themselves up into an army, and go out and conquer the world."
"And then," suggested Lucy, yielding to the fancy of the child, "they think better of it, and give themselves up, and die into the world to do it good, instead of trampling it under their feet and hurting it."
"But how do they come to change their minds so soon?" asked Mattie, beginning to smile; for this was the sort of intellectual duel in which her little soul delighted.
"Oh, I don't think they do change their minds. I don't think they ever meant to trample down the world. That was your notion, you know, Mattie."
"Well, what do you think they set out for? Why do they rush out so fiercely all at once?"
"I will tell you what I think," answered Lucy, without perceiving more than the faintest glimmering of the human reality of what she said, "I think they rush out of the hot place in which they are got ready to do the fields good, in so much pain, that they toss themselves about in strange ways, and people think they are fierce and angry when they are only suffering—shot out into the air from a boiling kettle, you know, Mattie."
"Ah! yes; I see," answered Mattie. "That's it, is it? Yes, I dare say. Out of a kettle?"
Miriam had drawn near, and was listening, but she could make little of all this, for her hour was not yet come to ask, or to understand such questions.
"Yes, that great round thing in front of us is just a great kettle," said Lucy.
"Well, I will look at it when we get out. I thought there wasn't much in the country. I suppose we shall get out again, though. This isn't all the country, is it?"
Before they reached Hastings, Mattie was fast asleep. It was the evening. She scarcely woke when they stopped for the last time. Lucy carried her from the carriage to a cab, and when they arrived at the lodgings where they were expected, made all haste to get her to bed and asleep.
But she woke the earlier in the morning, and the first thing she was aware of was the crowing of a very clear-throated cock, such a cock as Henry Vaughan must have listened to in the morning of the day when he wrote
"Father of lights! what sunnie seed,
What glance of day hast thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busie Ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnetisme works all night,
And dreams of Paradise and light."
She could not collect her thoughts for some time. She was aware that a change had taken place, but what was it? Was she somebody else? What did they use to call her? Then she remembered Mr. Spelt's shop, and knew that she was Mattie Kitely. What then had happened to her? Something certainly had happened, else how could the cock crow like that? She was now aware that her eyes were open, but she did not know that Lucy was in another bed in the same room watching her—whence afterward, when she put Mattie's words and actions together, she was able to give this interpretation of her thoughts. The room was so different from anything she had been used to, that she could not understand it. She crept out of bed and went to the window. There was no blind to it, only curtains drawn close in front.
Now my reader must remember that when Mattie went to the window of her own room at home she saw into Guild Court. The house in which they now were was half way up one of the hills on the sides of which great part of Hastings is built. The sun was not shining upon the window at this hour of the morning, and therefore did not obstruct the view. Hence when Mattie went between the curtains she saw nothing but that loveliest of English seas—the Hastings sea—lying away out into the sky, or rather, as it appeared to her unaccustomed gaze, piled up like a hill against the sky, which domed it over, vast and blue, and triumphant in sunlight—just a few white sails below and a few white clouds above, to show how blue the sea and sky were in this glory of an autumn morning. She saw nothing of the earth on which she was upheld; only the sea and the sky. She started back with a feeling that she could never describe; there was terror, and loneliness, and helplessness in it. She turned and flew to her bed, but instead of getting into it, fell down on her knees by the side of it, clutched the bed-clothes, and sobbed and wept aloud. Lucy was by her side in a moment, took her in her arms, carried her into her own bed, and comforted her in her bosom.
Mattie had been all her life sitting in the camera-obscura of her own microcosm, watching the shadows that went and came, and now first she looked up and out upon the world beyond and above her. All her doings had gone on in the world of her own imaginings; and although that big brain of hers contained—no, I cannot say contained, but what else am I to say?—a being greater than all that is seen, heard, or handled, yet the outward show of divine imagination which now met her eyes might well overpower that world within her. I fancy that, like the blind to whom sight is given, she did not at first recognize the difference between herself and it, but felt as if it was all inside her and she did not know what to do with it. She would not have cried at the sight of a rose, as Poppie did. I doubt whether Mattie's was altogether such a refined nature as Poppie's—to begin with: she would have rather patronized the rose-tree, and looked down upon it as a presuming and rather unpleasant thing because it bore dying children; and she needed, some time or other, and that was now, just such a sight as this to take the conceit out of her. Less of a vision of the eternal would not have been sufficient. Was it worth while? Yes. The whole show of the universe was well spent to take an atom of the self out of a child. God is at much trouble with us, but he never weighs material expense against spiritual gain to one of his creatures. The whole universe existed for Mattie. There is more than that that the Father has not spared. And no human fault, the smallest, is overcome, save by the bringing in of true, grand things. A sense of the infinite and the near, the far yet impending, rebuked the conceit of Mattie to the very core, and without her knowing why or how. She clung to Lucy as a child would cling, and as, all through her illness, she had never clung before.
"What is the matter with you, Mattie, dear?" asked Lucy, but asked in vain. Mattie only clung to her the closer, and began a fresh utterance of sobs. Lucy therefore held her peace for some time and waited. And in the silence of that waiting she became aware that a lark was singing somewhere out in the great blue vault.
"Listen to the lark singing so sweetly," she said at length. And Mattie moved her head enough to show that she would listen, and lay still a long while listening. At length she said, with a sob:
"What is a lark? I never saw one, Miss Burton."
"A bird like a sparrow. You know what a sparrow is, don't you, dear?"
"Yes. I have seen sparrows often in the court. They pick up dirt."
"Well, a lark is like a sparrow; only it doesn't pick up dirt, and sings as you hear it. And it flies so far up into the sky that you can't see it—you can only hear the song it scatters down upon the earth."
"Oh, how dreadful!" said Mattie, burying her head again as if she would shut out hearing and sight and all.
"What is it that is dreadful? I don't understand you, Mattie."
"To fly up into that awful place up there. Shall we have to do that when we die?"
"It is not an awful place, dear. God is there, you know."
"But I am frightened. And if God is up there, I shall be frightened at him too. It is so dreadful! I used to think that God could see me when I was in London. But how he is to see me in this great place, with so many things about, cocks and larks, and all, I can't think. I'm so little! I'm hardly worth taking care of."
"But you remember, Mattie, what Somebody says—that God takes care of every sparrow."
"Yes, but that's the sparrows, and they're in the town, you know," said Mattie, with an access of her old fantastic perversity, flying for succor, as it always does, to false logic.
Lucy saw that it was time to stop. The child's fear was gone for the present, or she could not have talked such nonsense. It was just as good, however, as the logic of most of those who worship the letter and call it the word.
"Why don't you speak, Miss Burton?" asked Mattie at length, no doubt conscience-stricken by her silence.
"Because you are talking nonsense now, Mattie."
"I thought that was it. But why should that make you not speak? for I need the more to hear sense."
"No, Mattie. Mr. Fuller says that when people begin to talk falsely, it is better to be quite silent, and let them say what they please, till the sound of their own nonsense makes them ashamed."
"As it did me, Miss Burton, as soon as you wouldn't speak any more."
"He says it does no good to contradict them then, for they are not only unworthy to hear the truth—that's not it—if they would hear it—but they are not fit to hear it. They are not in a mood to get any good from it; for they are holding the door open for the devil to come in, and truth can't get in at the same door with the devil."
"Oh, how dreadful! To think of me talking like Syne!" said Mattie. "I won't do it again, Miss Burton. Do tell me what Somebody said about God and the sparrows. Didn't he say something about counting their feathers? I think I remember Mr. Spelt reading that to me one night."
"He said something about counting your hairs, Mattie."
"Mine?"
"Well, he said it to all the people that would listen to him. I dare say there were some that could not believe it because they did not care to be told it."
"That's me, Miss Burton. But I won't do it again. Well—what more?"
"Only this, Mattie: that if God knows how many hairs you have got on your head—"
"My big head," interrupted Mattie. "Well?"
"Yes, on your big head—if God knows that, you can't think you're too small for him to look after you."
"I will try not to be frightened at the big sky any more, dear Miss Burton; I will try."
In a few minutes she was fast asleep again.
Lucy's heart was none the less trustful that she had tried to increase Mattie's faith. He who cared for the sparrows would surely hear her cry for Thomas, nay, would surely look after Thomas himself. The father did not forget the prodigal son all the time that he was away; did not think of him only when he came back again, worn and sorrowful. In teaching Mattie she had taught herself. She had been awake long before her, turning over and over her troubled thoughts till they were all in a raveled sleeve of care. Now she too fell fast asleep in her hope, and when she awoke, her thoughts were all knit up again in an even resolve to go on and do her duty, casting her care upon Him that cared for her.
And now Mattie's childhood commenced. She had had none as yet. Her disputatiousness began to vanish. She could not indulge it in the presence of the great sky, which grew upon her till she felt, as many children and some conscience-stricken men have felt—that it was the great eye of God looking at her; and although this feeling was chiefly associated with awe at first, she soon began to love the sky, and to be sorry and oppressed upon cloudy days when she could no longer look up into it.
The next day they went down to the beach, in a quiet place, among great stones, under the east cliff. Lucy sat down on one of them, and began to read a book Mr. Fuller had lent her. Miriam was at a little distance, picking up shells, and Mattie on another stone nearer the sea. The tide was rising. Suddenly Mattie came scrambling in great haste over all that lay between her and Lucy. Her face was pale, scared, and eager.
"I'm so frightened again!" she said; "and I can't help it. The sea! What does it mean?"
"What do you mean, Mattie?" returned Lucy, smiling.
"Well, it's roaring at me, and coming nearer and nearer, as if it wanted to swallow me up. I don't like it."
"You must not be afraid of it. God made it, you know."
"Why does he let it roar at me, then?"
"I don't know. Perhaps to teach you not to be afraid."
Mattie said no more, stood a little while by Lucy, and then scrambled back to her former place.
The next day, they managed with some difficulty to get up on the East Hill; Mattie was very easily worn out, especially with climbing. She gazed at the sea below her, the sky over her head, the smooth grass under her feet, and gave one of her great sighs. Then she looked troubled.
"I feel as if I hadn't any clothes on," she said.
"How is that, Mattie?"
"Well, I don't know. I feel as if I couldn't stand steady—as if I hadn't anything to keep me up. In London, you know, the houses were always beside to hold a body up, and keep them steady. But here, if it weren't for Somebody, I should be so frightened for falling down—I don't know where!"
Lucy smiled. She did not see then how exactly the child symbolized those who think they have faith in God, and yet when one of the swaddling bands of system or dogma to which they have been accustomed is removed, or even only slackened, immediately feel as if there were no God, as if the earth under their feet were a cloud, and the sky over them a color, and nothing to trust in anywhere. They rest in their swaddling bands, not in God. The loosening of these is God's gift to them that they may grow. But first they are much afraid.
Still Mattie looked contemptuously on the flowers. Wandering along the cliff, they came to a patch that was full of daisies. Miriam's familiarity with the gorgeous productions of green-house and hot-house had not injured her capacity for enjoying these peasants of flowers. She rushed among them with a cry of pleasure, and began gathering them eagerly. Mattie stood by with a look of condescending contempt upon her pale face.
"Wouldn't you like to gather some daisies too, Mattie?" suggested Lucy.
"Where's the use?" said Mattie. "The poor things'll be withered in no time. It's almost a shame to gather them, I do think."
"Well, you needn't gather them if you don't want to have them," returned Lucy. "But I wonder you don't like them, they are so pretty."
"But they don't last. I don't like things that die. I had a little talk with Mr. Fuller about that."
Now Mr. Fuller had told Lucy what the child had said, and this had resulted in a good deal of talk. Mr. Fuller was a great lover of Wordsworth, and the book Lucy was now reading, the one he had lent her, was Wordsworth's Poems. She had not found what she now answered, either in Wordsworth's poems or in Mr. Fuller's conversation, but it came from them both, mingling with her love to God, and her knowledge of the Saviour's words, with the question of the child to set her mind working with them all at once. She thought for a moment, and then said:
"Listen, Mattie. You don't dislike to hear me talk, do you?"
"No, indeed," answered Mattie.
"You like the words I say to you, then?"
"Yes, indeed," said Mattie, wondering what would come next.
"But my words die as soon as they are out of my mouth."
Mattie began to see a glimmering of something coming, and held her peace and listened. Lucy went on.
"Well, the flowers are some of God's words, and they last longer than mine."
"But I understand your words. I know what you want to say to me. And I don't know the meaning of them."
"That's because you haven't looked at them long enough. You must suppose them words in God's book, and try to read them and understand them."
"I will try," said Mattie, and walked soberly toward Miriam.
But she did not begin to gather the daisies as Miriam was doing. She lay down in the grass just as Chaucer tells us he used to do in the mornings of May for the same purpose—to look at the daisy—"leaning on my elbow and my side"; and thus she continued for some time. Then she rose and came slowly back to Lucy.
"I can't tell what they mean," she said. "I have been trying very hard, too."
"I don't know whether I understand them or not, myself. But I fancy we get some good from what God shows us even when we don't understand it much."
"They are such little things!" said Mattie. "I can hardly fancy them worth making."
"God thinks them worth making, though, or he would not make them. He wouldn't do anything that he did not care about doing. There's the lark again. Listen to him, how glad he is. He is so happy that he can't bear it without singing. If he couldn't sing it would break his heart, I fancy. Do you think God would have made his heart so glad if he did not care for his gladness, or given him such a song to sing—for he must have made the song and taught it to the lark—the song is just the lark's heart coming out in sounds—would he have made all the lark if he did not care for it? And he would not have made the daisies so pretty if their prettiness was not worth something in his eyes. And if God cares for them, surely it is worth our while to care for them too."