Part 20 (2/2)
”Once--once,” cried Clara, with a gush of tears. ”Where is He now?”
”Here with us. I know it, for we need Him. Our need is our strongest claim--one that He never refused. I have entreated Him in your behalf and your mother's, and do you ask Him also to put heaven at the end of this dark and often th.o.r.n.y path which most of us must tread in this world.”
”Oh, Millie, Millie, I'm ignorant as a heathen. I did have a Bible, but I sold even that to buy wine to save mother's life. I might better have been thinking of saving her soul. She's too sick to be talked to now, but surely she ought to find at least a heaven of rest. You could never understand the life she's led. She hasn't lived--she's just been dragged through the world. She was born in a tenement-house. The little play she ever had was on sidewalks and in the gutters; she's scarcely ever seen the country. Almost before she knew how to play she began to work. When she was only seventeen a coa.r.s.e, bad man married her. How it ever came about I never could understand. I don't believe he knew anything more of love than a pig; for he lived like one and died like one, only he didn't die soon enough. It seems horrible that I should speak in this way of my father, and yet why should I not, when he was a horror to me ever since I can remember? Instead of taking care of mother, she had to take care of him. He'd take the pittance she had wrung from the washtub for drink, and then come back to repay her for it with blows and curses. I guess we must have lived in fifty tenements, for we were always behind with the rent and so had to move here and there, wherever we could get a place to put our heads in. Queer places some of them were, I can tell you--mere rat-holes. They served one purpose, though--they finished off the children. To all mother's miseries and endless work was added the anguish of child-bearing. They were miserable, puny, fretful little imps, that were poisoned off by the bad air in which we lived, and our bad food--that is, when we had any--after they had made all the trouble they could. I had the care of most of them, and my life became a burden before I was seven years old. I used to get so tired and faint that I was half glad when they died. At last, when mother became so used up that she really couldn't work any more, father did for us the one good act that I know anything about--he went off on a big spree that finished him. Mother and I have clung together ever since. We've often been hungry, but we've never been separated a night. What a long night is coming now, in which the doctor says we shall be parted!” and the poor girl crouched on the floor where her mother could not see her should she open her eyes, and sobbed convulsively.
Mildred did not try to comfort her with words, but only with caresses.
Christ proved centuries ago that the sympathetic touch is healing.
”Oh, Millie, I seem to feel the gentle stroke of your hand on my heart as well as on my brow, and it makes the pain easier to bear.
It makes me feel as if the coa.r.s.e, brutal life through which I've come did not separate me from one so good and different as you are; for though you may be poor, you are as much of a lady as any I've ever waited on at the store. And then to look at your father and to think of mine. I learned to hate men even when a child, for nearly all I ever knew either abused me or tempted me; but, Millie, you need not fear to touch me. I never sold myself, though I've been faint with hunger. I'm ignorant, and my heart's been full of bitterness, but I'm an honest girl.”
”Poor, poor Clara!” said Mildred brokenly, ”my heart aches for you as I think of all you've suffered.”
The girl sprang up, seized the candle, and held it to Mildred's face. ”My G.o.d,” she whispered, ”you are crying over my troubles.”
Then she looked steadfastly into the tearful blue eyes and beautiful face of her new friend for a moment, and said, ”Millie, I'll believe any faith YOU'LL teach me, for _I_ BELIEVE IN YOU.”
CHAPTER XIX
BELLE JARS THE ”SYSTEM”
Some orthodox divines would have given Clara a version of the story of life quite different from that which she received from Mildred.
Many divines, not orthodox, would have made the divergence much wider. The poor girl, so bruised in spirit and broken in heart, was not ready for a system of theology or for the doctrine of evolution; and if any one had begun to teach the inherent n.o.bleness and self-correcting power of humanity, she would have shown him the door, feeble as she was. But when Mildred a.s.sured her that if Christ were in the city, as He had been in Capernaum, He would climb the steep, dark stairs to her attic room and say to her, ”Daughter, be of good comfort”--when she was told that Holy Writ declared that He was the ”same yesterday, to-day, and forever”--her heart became tender and contrite, and therefore ready for a Presence that is still ”seeking that which was lost.”
Men may create philosophies, they may turn the Gospel itself into a cold abstraction, but the practical truth remains that the Christ who saves, comforts, and lifts the intolerable burden of sorrow or of sin, comes now as of old--comes as a living, loving, personal presence, human in sympathy, divine in power. As Mildred had said, our need and our consciousness of it form our strongest claim upon Him and the best preparation for Him.
Clara was proving the truth of her words. Life could never be to her again merely a bitter, sullen struggle for bread. A great hope was dawning, and though but a few rays yet quivered through the darkness, they were the earnest of a fuller light.
Before midnight Mr. Jocelyn joined the watchers, and seated himself un.o.btrusively in a dusky corner of the room. Clara crouched on the floor beside her mother, her head resting on the bed, and her hand clasping the thin fingers of the dying woman. She insisted on doing everything the poor creature required, which was but little, for it seemed that life would waver out almost imperceptibly. Mildred sat at the foot of the bed, where her father could see her pure profile in the gloom. To his opium-kindled imagination it seemed to have a radiance of its own, and to grow more and more luminous until, in its beauty and light, it became like the countenance of an accusing angel; then it began to recede until it appeared infinitely far away. ”Millie,” he called, in deep apprehension.
”What is it, papa?” she asked, springing to his side and putting her hand on his shoulder.
”Oh!” he said, shudderingly. ”I had such a bad dream! You seemed fading away from me, till I could no longer see your face. It was so horribly real!”
She came and sat beside him, and held his hand in both of hers.
”That's right,” he remarked; ”now my dreams will be pleasant.”
”You didn't seem to be asleep, papa,” said the girl, in some surprise; ”indeed, you seemed looking at me fixedly.”
”Then I must have been asleep with my eyes open,” he answered with a trace of embarra.s.sment.
”Poor papa, you are tired, and it's very, very kind of you to come and stay with me, but I wasn't afraid. Clara says it's a respectable house, and the people, though very poor, are quiet and well behaved.
Now that you have seen that we are safe, please go home and rest,”
and she coaxed until he complied, more from fear that he would betray himself than from any other motive.
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