Chapter Thirty Three.
What they could.
A month had passed since the burning of the Canterbury martyrs. The Bishop of Dover had gone on a visit to London, and the land had rest in his absence. It may be noted here, since we shall see no more of him, that he did not long survive the event. He was stricken suddenly with palsy, as he stood watching a game at bowls on a Sunday afternoon, and was borne to his bed to die. The occupation wherein the “inevitable angel” found him, clearly shows what manner of man he was.
In Roger Hall’s parlour a little conclave was gathered for discussion of various subjects, consisting of the handful of Gospellers yet left in Staplehurst. Various questions had been considered, and dismissed as settled, and the conversation flagged for a few seconds, when Tabitha suddenly flung a new topic into the arena.
“Now, what’s to be done for that shiftless creature, Collet Pardue? Six lads and two lasses, and two babes of Sens Bradbridge’s, and fewer wits than lads, and not so many pence as lasses. Won’t serve to find ’em all dead in the gutter. So what’s to be done? Speak up, will you, and let’s hear.”
“I can’t speak on those lines, Tabitha,” replied her brother-in-law. “Collet is no wise shiftless, for she hath brought up her children in a good and godly fashion, the which a woman with fewer brains than lads should ne’er have done. But I verily assent with you that we should do something to help her. And first—who will take to Sens Bradbridge’s maids?”
“I will, if none else wants ’em. But they’ll not be pampered and stuffed with cates, and lie on down beds, and do nought, if they dwell with me. I shall learn ’em to fare hard and be useful, I can tell you.”
“Whether of the twain call you them syllabubs and custard pies as you set afore us when we supped last with you, Mistress Hall?” quietly asked Ursula Final. “Seemed to me I could put up with hard fare o’ that sort metely well.”
“Don’t be a goose, Ursula. They’ve got to keep their hands in, a-cooking, haven’t they? and when things be made, you can’t waste ’em nor give ’em the pigs. They’ve got to be ate, haven’t they?” demanded Mrs Tabitha, in tones of battle; and Ursula subsided without attempting a defence.
“What say you, Tom?” asked Roger, looking at his brother.
Mr Thomas Hall, apparently, did not dare to say anything. He glanced deprecatingly at his domestic tyrant, and murmured a few words, half swallowed in the utterance, of which “all agree” were the only distinguishable syllables.
“Oh, he’ll say as I say,” responded Tabitha unblushingly. “There’s no man in the Weald knows his duty better than Thomas Hall; it’d be a mercy if he’d sometimes do it.”
Mr Thomas Hall’s look of meek appeal said “Don’t I?” in a manner which was quite pathetic.
“Seems to me,” said Ralph Final, the young landlord of the White Hart, “that if we were all to put of a hat or a bowl such moneys as we could one and another of us afford by the year, for Mistress Pardue and the childre—such as could give money, look you—and them that couldn’t should say what they would give, it’d be as plain a way as any.”
“Well said, Ralph!” pronounced Mrs Tabitha, who took the lead as usual. “I’ll give my maids’ cast-off clothes for the childre, the elder, I mean, such as ’ll fit ’em; the younger must go for Patience and Charity. And I’ll let ’em have a quart of skim milk by the day, as oft as I have it to spare; and eggs if I have ’em. And Thomas ’ll give ’em ten shillings by the year. And I shouldn’t marvel if I can make up a kirtle or a hood for Collet by nows and thens, out of some gear of my own.”
Mr Thomas Hall being looked at by the Synod to see if he assented, confirmed the statement of his arbitrary Tabitha by a submissive nod.
“I’ll give two nobles by the year,” said Ralph, “and a peck of barley by the quarter, and a cask of beer at Christmas.”
“I will give them a sovereign by the year,” said Roger Hall, “and half a bale of cloth from the works, that Master suffers me to buy at cost price.”
“I can’t do so much as you,” said Eleanor White, the ironmonger’s widow; “but I’ll give Collet the worth of an angel in goods by the year, and the produce of one of the pear-trees in my garden.”
“I can’t do much neither,” added Emmet Wilson’s husband, the baker; “but I’ll give them a penn’orth of bread by the week, and a peck of meal at Easter.”
“And I’ll chop all the wood they burn,” said his quiet, studious son Titus, “and learn the lads to read.”
“Why, Titus, you are offering the most of us all in time and labour!” exclaimed Roger Hall.
“You’ve got your work cut and measured, Titus Wilson,” snapped Tabitha. “If one of them lads’ll bide quiet while you can drum ABC into his head that it’ll tarry there a week, ’tis more than I dare look for, I can tell you.”
“There’s no telling what you can do without you try,” was the pithy answer of Titus.
“I’ve been marvelling what I could do,” said John Banks modestly, “and I was a bit beat out of heart by your sovereigns and nobles; for I couldn’t scarce make up a crown by the year. But Titus has showed me the way. I’ll learn one of the lads my trade, if Collet ’ll agree.”
“Well, then, that is all we can do, it seems—” began Roger, but he was stopped by a plaintive voice from the couch.
“Mightn’t I do something, Father? I haven’t only a sixpence in money; but couldn’t I learn Beatrice to embroider, if her mother would spare her?”
“My dear heart, it were to try thy strength too much, I fear,” said Roger tenderly.
“But you’re all doing something,” said Christie earnestly, “and wasn’t our blessed Lord weary when He sat on the well? I might give Him a little weariness, mightn’t I—when I’ve got nothing better?”
To the surprise of everybody, Thomas had replied.
“We’re not doing much, measured by that ell-wand,” said the silent man; “but Titus and Banks and Christie, they’re doing the most.”
Poor Collet Pardue broke down in a confused mixture of thanks and tears, when she heard the propositions of her friends. She was gratefully willing to accept all the offers. Three of her boys were already employed at the cloth-works; one of the younger trio should go to Banks to be brought up a mason. Which would he choose?
Banks looked at the three lads offered him—the noisy Noah, the ungovernable Silas, and the lazy Valentine.
“I’ll have Silas,” he said quietly.
“The worst pickle of the lot!” commented Mrs Tabitha, who made one of the deputation.
“Maybe,” said Banks calmly; “but I see wits there, and I’ll hope for a heart, and with them and the grace of God, which Collet and I shall pray for, we’ll make a man of Silas Pardue yet.”
And if John Banks ever regretted his decision, it was not on a certain winter evening, well into the reign of Elizabeth, when a fine, manly-looking fellow, with a grand forehead wherein “his soul lodged well,” and bright intellectual eyes, came to tell him, the humble mason, that he had been chosen from a dozen candidates for the high post of architect of a new church.
“’Tis your doing,” said the architect, as he wrung the hard hand of the mason. “You made a man of me by your teaching and praying, and never despairing that I should one day be worth the cost.”
But we must return for a few minutes to Roger Hall’s parlour, where he and his little invalid girl were alone on that night when the conference had been held.
“Father,” said Christie, “please tell me what is a cross? and say it little, so as I can conceive the same.”
“What manner of cross, sweet heart?”
“You know what our Lord saith, Father—‘He that taketh not his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me.’ I’ve been thinking a deal on it of late. I wouldn’t like not to be worthy of Him. But I can’t take my cross till I know what it is. I asked Cousin Friswith, and she said it meant doing all manner of hard disagreeable things, like the monks and nuns do—eating dry bread and sleeping of a board, and such like. But when I talked with Pen Pardue, she said she reckoned it signified not that at all. That was making crosses, and our Lord did not mention that. So please, Father, what is it?”
“Methinks, my child, Pen hath the right. ‘Take’ is not ‘make.’ We be to take the cross God layeth on our backs. He makes the crosses; we have but to take them and bear them. Folks make terrible messes by times when they essay to make their own crosses. But thou wouldest know what is a cross? Well, for thee, methinks, anything that cometh across thee and makes thee cross. None wist so well as thyself what so doth.”
“But, Father!” said Christie in a tone of alarm.
“Well, sweet heart?”
“There must be such a lot of them!”
“For some folks, Christie, methinks the Lord carveth out one great heavy cross; but for others He hath, as it were, an handful of little light ones, that do but weigh a little, and prick a little, each one. And he knoweth which to give.”
“I think,” said Christie, with an air of profound meditation, “I must have the little handful. But then, must I carry them all at once?”
“One at once, little Christie—the one which thy Father giveth thee; let Him choose which, and how, and when. By times he may give thee more than one, but methinks mostly ’tis one at once, though they may change oft and swiftly. Take thy cross, and follow the Lord Jesus.”
“There’s banging doors,” pursued Christie with the same thoughtful air; “that’s one. And when my back aches, that’s another, and when my head is so, so tired; and when I feel all strings that somebody’s pulling, as if I couldn’t keep still a minute. That last’s one of the biggest, I reckon. And when—”
The little voice stopped suddenly for a moment.
“Father, can folks be crosses?”
“I fear they can, dear heart,” replied her father, smiling; “and very sharp ones too.”
Christie kept her next thoughts to herself. Aunt Tabitha and Cousin Friswith certainly must be crosses, she mentally decided, and Uncle Edward must have been dear Aunt Alice’s cross, and a dreadful one. Then she came back to the point in hand.
“How must I ‘take up’ my cross, Father? Doth it mean I must not grumble at it, and feel as if I wanted to get rid of it as fast as ever I could?”
Roger smiled and sighed. “That is hard work, Christie, is it not? But it would be no cross if it were not hard and heavy. Thou canst not but feel that it will be a glad thing to lay it down; but now, while God layeth it on thee, be willing to bear it for His sake. He giveth it for thy sake, that thou mayest be made partaker of His holiness; be thou ready to carry it for His. ‘The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’”
“There’ll be no crosses and cups in heaven, will there, Father?”
“Not one, Christabel.”
“Only crowns and harps?” the child went on thoughtfully. “Aunt Alice has both, Father. I think she must make right sweet music. I hope I sha’n’t be far from her. Perhaps it won’t be very long before I hear her. Think you it will, Father?”
Little Christabel had no idea what a sharp cross she had laid on her father’s heart by asking him that question. Roger Hall had to fight with himself before he answered it, and it was scarcely to her that his reply was addressed.
“‘Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.’ ‘He knoweth the way that I take.’ ‘I will not fail thee, neither forsake thee.’”
“Oh, Father, what pretty verses! Were you thinking perhaps you’d miss me if I went soon, poor Father? But maybe, I sha’n’t, look you. ’Tis only when I ache so, and feel all over strings, sometimes I think— But we don’t know, Father, do we? And we shall both be there, you know. It won’t signify much, will it, which of us goes first?”
“It will only signify,” said Roger huskily, “to the one that tarrieth.”
“Well,” answered Christie brightly, “and it won’t do that long. I reckon we scarce need mind.”