Chapter Thirty Eight.
Filling the ranks.
As Mr Ewring stood looking out, he saw somebody coming up from the gate towards the mill—a girl, who walked slowly, as if she felt very hot or very tired. The day was warm, but not oppressively so; and he watched her coming languidly up the road, till he saw that it was Amy Clere. What could she want at the mill? Mr Ewring waited to see.
“Good den, Mistress Amy,” said he, as she came nearer.
Amy looked up as if it startled her to be addressed.
“Good den, Master Ewring. Father’s sending some corn to be ground, and he desired you to know the last was ground a bit too fine for his liking: would you take the pains to have it coarser ground, an’ it please you?”
“I will see to it, Mistress Amy. A fine even, methinks?”
“Ay, right fair,” replied Amy in that manner which shows that the speaker’s thoughts are away elsewhere. But she did not offer to go; she lingered about the mill-door, in the style of one who has something to say which she is puzzled or unwilling to bring out.
“You seem weary,” said Mr Ewring, kindly; “pray you, sit and rest you a space in the porch.”
Amy took the seat suggested at once.
“Master Clere is well, I trust?—and Mistress Clere likewise?”
“They are well, I thank you.”
Mr Ewring noticed suddenly that Amy’s eyes were full of tears.
“Mistress Amy,” said he, “I would not by my good-will be meddlesome in matters that concern me not, but it seemeth me all is scarce well with you. If so be that I can serve you any way, I trust you will say so much.”
“Master Ewring, I am the unhappiest maid in all Colchester.”
“Truly, I am right sorry to hear it.”
“I lack one to help me, and I know not to whom to turn. You could, if—”
“Then in very deed I will. Pray give me to wit how?”
Amy looked up at him. “Master Ewring, I set out for Heaven, and I have lost the way.”
“Why, Mistress Amy! surely you know well enough—”
“No, I don’t,” she said, cutting him short. “Lack-a-day! I never took no heed when I might have learned it: and now have I no chance to learn, and everything to hinder. I don’t know a soul I could ask about it.”
“The priest,” suggested Mr Ewring a little constrainedly. This language astonished him from Nicholas Clere’s daughter.
“I don’t want the priest’s way. He isn’t going himself; or if he is, it’s back foremost. Master Ewring, help me! I mean it. I never wist a soul going that way save Bessy Foulkes: and she’s got there, and I want to go her way. What am I to do?”
Mr Ewring did not speak for a moment. He was thinking, in the first place, how true it was that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”; and in the second, what very unlikely subjects God sometimes chooses as the recipients of His grace. One of the last people in Colchester whom he would have expected to fill Elizabeth Foulkes’ vacant place in the ranks was the girl who sat in the porch, looking up at him with those anxious, earnest eyes.
“Mistress Amy,” he said, “you surely know there is peril in this path? It were well you should count the cost afore you enter on it.”
“Where is there not peril?” was the answer. “I may be slain of lightning to-morrow, or die of some sudden malady this next month. Can you say surely that there is more peril of burning than of that? If not, come to mine help. I must find the way somehow. Master Ewring, I want to be safe! I want to feel that it will not matter how or when I go, because I know whither it shall be. And I have lost the way. I thought I had but to do well and be as good as I could, and I should sure come out safe. And I have tried that way awhile, and it serves not. First, I can’t be good when I would: and again, the better I am—as folks commonly reckon goodness—the worser I feel. There’s somewhat inside me that won’t do right; and there’s somewhat else that isn’t satisfied when I have done right; it wants something more, and I don’t know what it is. Master Ewring, you do. Tell me!”
“Mistress Amy, what think you religion to be?”
“Nay, I always thought it were being good. If it’s not that, I know not what it is.”
“But being good must spring out of something. That is the flower. What is the seed—that which is to make you ‘be good,’ and find it easy and pleasant?”
“Tell me!” said Amy’s eyes more than her words.
“My dear maid, religion is fellowship; living fellowship with the living Lord. It is neither being good nor doing good, though both will spring out of it. It is an exchange made between you and the Lord Christ: His righteousness for your iniquity; His strength for your weakness; His rich grace for your bankrupt poverty of all goodness. Mistress Amy, you want Christ our Lord, and the Holy Ghost, which He shall give you—the new heart and the right spirit which be His gift, and which He died to purchase for you.”
“That’s it!” said Amy, with a light in her eyes. “But how come you by them?”
“You may have them for the asking—if you do truly wish it. ‘Whosoever will, let him take the water of life.’ Know you what Saint Austin saith? ‘Thou would’st not now be setting forth to find God, if He had not first set forth to find thee.’ ‘For by grace ye are saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.’ Keep fast hold of that, Mistress Amy.”
“That ’ll do!” said Amy, under her breath. “I’ve got what I want now—if He’ll hearken to me. But, O Master Ewring, I’m not fit to keep fellowship with Him!”
“Dear maid, you are that which the best and the worst man in the world are—a sinner that needeth pardon, a sinner that can be saved only through grace. Have you the chance to get hold of a Bible, or no?”
“No! Father gave up his to the priest, months agone. I never cared nought about it while I had it, and now I’ve lost the chance.”
“Trust the Lord to care for you. He shall send you, be sure, either the quails or the manna. He’ll not let you starve. He has bound Himself to bring all safe that trust in Him. And—it looks not like it, verily, yet it may be that times of liberty shall come again.”
“Master Ewring, I’ve given you a deal of trouble,” said Amy, rising suddenly, “and taken ever so much time. But I’m not unthankful, trust me.”
“My dear maid, how can Christian men spend time better than in helping a fellow soul on his way towards Heaven? It’s not time wasted, be sure.”
“No, it’s not time wasted!” said Amy, with more feeling than Mr Ewring had ever seen her show before.
“Farewell, dear maid,” said he. “One thing I pray you to remember: what you lack is the Holy Ghost, for He only can show Christ unto you. I or others can talk of Him, but the Spirit alone can reveal Him to your own soul. And the Spirit is promised to them that ask Him.”
“I’ll not forget, Master. Good even, and God bless you!”
Mr Ewring stood a moment longer to watch Amy as she ran down the road, with a step tenfold more light and elastic than the weary, languid one with which she had come up.
“God bless the maid!” he said half aloud, “and may He ‘stablish, strengthen, settle’ her! ‘He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy.’ But we on whom He has had it aforetime, how unbelieving and hopeless we are apt to be! Verily, the last recruit that I looked to see join Christ’s standard was Nicholas Clere’s daughter.”