Chapter Five.
Gatty’s troubles.
“And I come down no more to chilling praise,
To sneers, to wearing out of empty days,
But rest, rejoicing in the power I’ve won,
To go on learning, though my crying’s done.”
Isabella Fyvie Mayo.
As the two girls turned into the little garden of Number Three, the latch of the door was lifted, and Mrs Jane came out.
“Good evening!” said she. “Come to see my sister, are you? I and my Deb are doing for her to-day, for her Nell has got a holiday—gone to see her mother—lazy slut!”
“Which is the lazy slut, Mrs Jane?” asked Rhoda, laughing.
“Heyday! they’re all a parcel together,” answered Mrs Jane. “Nell and her mother, and her grandmother before them. And Marcella, too, she’s no better. Go in, if you want a string of complaints. You can come out when you’ve had plenty.”
“How many complaints are plenty, Mrs Jane?”
“One,” said Mrs Jane, marching off. “Plenty for me.”
Rhoda lifted the latch, and walked in, Phoebe following her. She tapped at the inner door.
“Oh, come in, whoever it is,” said a querulous, plaintive voice. “Well, Mrs Rhoda, I thought you would have been to see me before. A poor lonely creature, that nobody cares for, and never has any comfort nor pleasure! And who have you with you? I’m sure she’s in a deep consumption from the looks of her. Coltsfoot, my dear, and horehound, with plenty of sugar, boiled together; and a little mallow won’t hurt. But they’ll not do you much good, I should say; you’re too far gone: still, ’tis a duty to do all one can, and some strange things do happen: like Betty Collins—the doctors all gave her up, and there she is, walking about, as well as anybody. And so may you, my dear, though you don’t look like it. Still, you are young—there’s no telling: and coltsfoot is a very good thing, and makes wonderful cures. Oh, that careless Jane, to leave me all alone, just when I wanted my pillows shaking! And so inconsiderate of Nell to go home just to-day, of all days, when she knew I was sure to be worse; I always am after a fast-day. Fast-days don’t suit me at all; they are very bad for sick people. They make one’s spirits so low, and are sure to give me the vapours. Oh dear, that Jane!”
“What’s the matter with that Jane?” demanded the bearer of the name, stalking in, as Phoebe was trying to brace up her courage to the point of offering to shake the pillows. “Want another dose of castor oil? I’ve got it.”
A faint shriek of deprecation was the answer.
“Oh dear! And you know how I hate it! Jane, do shake up my pillows. They feel as if there were stones instead of flocks in them, or—”
“Nutmegs, no doubt,” suggested Mrs Jane. “Shake them up? Oh yes, and you too—do you both good.”
“Oh, don’t, Jane! Have you an orange for me?”
“Sit down, my dears,” said Mrs Jane, parenthetically. “Can’t afford them, Marcella. Plenty of black currant tea. Better for you.”
“I don’t like it!” said Mrs Marcella, plaintively.
“Oranges are eightpence a-piece, and currants may be had for the gathering,” observed Mrs Jane, sententiously.
“They give me a pain in my side!” moaned the invalid.
“Well, the oranges would give you a pain in your purse. I’d rather have one in my side, if I were you.”
“You don’t know what it is to be ill!” said Mrs Marcella, closing her eyes.
“Don’t I? I’ve had both small-pox and spotted fever.”
“So long ago!”
“Bless you, child! I’m not Methuselah!” said Mrs Jane.
“Well, I think you might be, Jane, for really, the way in which you can sit up all night, and look as fresh as a daisy in the morning, when you have not had a wink of sleep, and I am perfectly worn-out with suffering—just skin and bone, and no more—”
“There’s a little tongue left, I reckon!” said Mrs Jane.
“The way she will get up and go to market, my dears, after such a night as that,” pursued Mrs Marcella, who always ran on her own line of rails, and never shunted to avoid collision; “you never saw anything like her—the amount she can bear! She’s as tough as a rhinoceros, and as strong as an elephant, and as wanting in feeling as—as—”
“A sensitive plant,” popped in Mrs Jane. “Now, Marcella, open your mouth and shut your eyes, and take this.”
“Is it castor oil?” faintly screamed the invalid, endeavouring to protect herself.
“Stuff! ’Tis good Tent wine. Take it and be thankful.”
“Where did you get it, Jane?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” said Mrs Jane. “It was honestly come by.”
“Well, I think we must be going, Mrs Marcella,” said Rhoda, rising.
“Oh, my dear! Must you, really? And so seldom as you come to see a poor thing like me, who hasn’t a living creature to care for her—except Jane, of course, and she doesn’t, not one bit! Dear! And to think that I was once a pretty young maid, with a little fortune of my own; and there was many a young gentleman, my dear, that would have given his right hand for no more than a smile from me—”
“Heyday! how this world is given to lying!” interpolated Mrs Jane.
“And we were a large family then—eight of us, my dear; and now they are all dead, and I am left quite alone, except Jane, you know. Oh dear, dear, but to think of it! But there is no thankfulness in the world, nor kindness neither. The people I have been good to! and now that I have come down a little, to see how they treat me! Jane doesn’t mind it; she has no tender feelings at all; she can stand all things, and never say a word, I am sure I don’t know how she does it. I am all feeling! These things touch me so keenly. But Jane’s just like a stone. Well, good evening, my dear, if you must go. I think you might have come a little sooner, and you might come oftener, if you would. But that is always my lot, to be neglected and despised—a poor, lonely, ugly old maid, that nobody cares for. And it wasn’t my fault, I am sure; I never chose such a fate. I cannot think why such afflictions have been sent me. I am sure I am no worse than other people. Clarissa is a great deal vainer than I am; and Jane is ever so much harder; and as to Dorothy, why, ’tis misery to see her—she is so cheerful and full of mirth, and she has not a thing to be content with—it quite hurts me to see anyone like that. But people are so wanting in feeling! I am sure—”
“Go, if you want,” said Mrs Jane, shortly, holding the door open.
“Oh, yes, go! Of course you want to go!” lamented Mrs Marcella. “What pleasure can there be to a bright young maid like you, to sit with a poor, sick, miserable creature like me? Dear, dear! And only to think—”
Rhoda escaped. Phoebe followed, more slowly. Mrs Jane came out after them, and shut the door behind them.
“She’s in pain, this evening,” said the last-named person in her usual blunt style. “Some folks can bear pain, and some can’t. And those that can must beat with those that can’t. She’ll be better of letting it out a bit. Good evening.”
“Oh, isn’t it dreadful!” said Rhoda, when they were out of the gate. “I just hate going to see Mrs Marcella, especially when she takes one of her complaining fits. If I were Mrs Jane, I should let her have it out by herself. But she is hard, rather—she doesn’t care as I should.”
But Phoebe thought that a mistake. She had noticed the drawn brow of the silent sister, while the sufferer was detailing her string of troubles, and the sudden quiver of the under lip, when allusion was made to the eight of whom the family had once consisted: and Phoebe’s deduction was, not that Jane Talbot bore no burden, but that she kept it out of sight. Perhaps that very characteristic bluntness of her manner denoted a tight curb kept upon her spirit.
Rhoda had noticed nothing of all this. Herself a surface character, she could not see below the surface in another.
The Wednesday evening came, and with it Sir Richard Delawarr’s coach, conveying his two younger daughters. They were extremely unlike in person. Gatty was tall, calm, and deliberate; Molly was rather diminutive for her years, and exceedingly lively. While Gatty came forward in a stately, courteous manner, courtesying to Madam, and kindly answering her inquiries after Betty, Molly linked her arm in Rhoda’s, with—
“How goes it, old jade?”
And when Mr Onslow, who happened to be crossing the hall, stopped and inquired in a rather timid manner if Mrs Betty’s health were improving, Molly at once favoured him with a slap on the back, and the counter query,—
“What’s that to you, you old thief?” Phoebe was horrified. If these were aristocratic manners, she preferred those of inferior quality. But noticing that Gatty’s manners were quiet and correct, Phoebe concluded that Molly must be an exceptional eccentricity. She contemplated the prospect of a month in that young lady’s company with unmitigated repugnance.
“Well, Mrs Molly, my dear,—as smart as ever!” remarked Madam, turning to Molly with a smile. “All right, old witch!” said Molly. And to Phoebe’s astonishment, Madam smiled on, and did not resent the impertinence.
“Well!—how do you like Gatty and Molly?” said Rhoda to Phoebe, when they were safe in their own room.
“Pretty well, Mrs Gatty,” replied Phoebe, leaving the question of Molly undecided.
“Don’t you like Molly?” demanded Rhoda, laughing. “Ah! I see. She’s rather too clever to please you.”
“I ask your pardon, but I don’t see any cleverness in downright rudeness,” timidly suggested Phoebe.
“Oh, nobody cares what Molly says,” answered Rhoda. “They put up with all that,—she’s so smart. You see, she’s very, very ingenious, and everybody thinks so, and she knows people think so. She’s a rep., you see, and she has to keep it up.”
“I ask your pardon,” said Phoebe again; “a what, if you please?”
“A rep., child,” answered Rhoda, in her patronising style. “A reputation,—a character for smartness, you know. Don’t you see?”
“Well, I would rather have a character for something better,” said Phoebe.
“You may make yourself easy; you’ll never get a character for smartness,” responded her cousin with an unpleasant laugh. “Well, I say, Phoebe, while they are here I shall have Molly in my room, and you must sleep with Gatty. You can come in and dress me of a morning, you know, and help me into bed at night; but we can’t do with three in one room.”
Phoebe was inwardly thankful for it. What little she had seen of Gatty was rather negative than positive; but at least it had not, as in the case of Molly revealed anything actively disagreeable. Rhoda was heartily welcome to Molly’s society so far as Phoebe was concerned. But it surprised and rather perplexed Phoebe to find that Rhoda actually liked this very objectionable maiden.
“Panem?” asked Molly, the next morning at breakfast. Her Latin, such as it was, was entirely unburdened with cases and declensions. “Thank you, I will take kakos.”
“Fiddle-de-dee! what’s that?” said Molly. Rhoda had completely forgotten what the word meant.
“Oh, ’tis the Greek for biscuit,” said she, daringly.
Phoebe contrived to hide a portion of her face in her teacup, but Gatty saw her eyes, and read their meaning.
“The Greek!” cried Molly. “Who has taught you Greek, Ne’er-do-well?”
“A very learned person,” said Rhoda, to whom it was delight to mystify Molly.
“Old Onslow?” demanded irreverent Molly, quite undeterred by the consideration that the chaplain sat at the table with her.
“You can ask him,” said Rhoda.
“Did you, old cassock?” inquired Molly, who appeared to apply that adjective in a most impartial manner.
“Indeed, Mrs Molly, I did not—I never knew—” stammered the startled chaplain, quite shaken out of his propriety.
“Never knew any Greek? I thought so,” responded audacious Molly, thereby evoking laughter all round the table, in which even Madam joined.
Phoebe, who had recovered herself, sat lost in wonder where the cleverness of all this was to be found. It simply disgusted her. Rhoda was not always pleasant to put up with, but Rhoda was sweetness and grace, compared with Molly. Gatty sat quietly, neither rebuking her sister’s sallies, nor apparently amused by them. And Rhoda liked this girl! It was a mystery to Phoebe.
When night came Phoebe found her belongings transferred to Gatty’s room. She assisted Rhoda to undress, herself silent, but a perpetual chatter being kept up between Rhoda and Molly on subjects not by any means interesting to Phoebe.
The latter was at length dismissed, and, with a sense of relief, she went slowly along the passage to the room in which she and Gatty were to sleep.
Though it was getting very late, the clock being on the stroke of ten, yet Gatty was not in bed. She seemed to have half undressed herself, and then to have thrown a scarf over her shoulders and sat down by the window. It was a beautiful night, and a flood of silvery moonlight threw the trees into deep shadow and lit up the open spaces almost like day. Phoebe came and stood at the window beside Gatty. Perhaps each was a little shy of the other; for some seconds passed in silence, and Phoebe was the first to speak.
“You like it,” she said timidly.
“Oh, yes. ’Tis so quiet,” was Gatty’s answer.
Phoebe was thinking what she should say next, when Gatty rose, took off her scarf, which she folded neatly and put away in the wardrobe, finished her undressing, and got into bed, without another word beyond “Good-night.”
For three weeks of the month which the visit was to last this proved to be the usual state of matters. Gatty and Phoebe regularly exchanged greetings, night and morning; but beyond this their conversation was limited to remarks upon the weather, and an occasional request that Phoebe would inspect the neat and proper condition of some part of Gatty’s dress which she could not conveniently see. And Phoebe began to come to the conclusion that Rhoda had judged rightly,—Gatty had nothing in her.
But one evening, when Molly had been surpassingly “clever,” keeping Rhoda in peals of laughter, and Phoebe in a state of annoyed disgust,—on reaching their bedroom, Phoebe found Gatty, still dressed, and sitting by the bed, with her face bowed upon her hands.
“I ask your pardon, but are you not well?” said Phoebe, in a sympathising tone.
“Oh, yes. Quite well,” was Gatty’s reply, in a constrained voice; but as she rose and moved her hands from her face, Phoebe saw that she had been crying.
“You are in trouble,” said Phoebe, gently. “Don’t tell me anything, unless you like; but I know what trouble is; and if I could help you—”
“You can’t,” said Gatty, shortly.
Phoebe was silent. Her sympathy had been repulsed—it was not wanted. The undressing was, as usual, without a word.
But when the girls had lain down in bed, Phoebe was a little surprised to hear Gatty say suddenly,—
“Phoebe Latrobe!—does anybody love you?”
“God loves me,” said Phoebe, simply. “I am not sure that any one else does.”
“I like you,” said Gatty. “You let me be. That’s what nobody ever does.”
“I am not sure that I understand you,” responded Phoebe.
“I’ll tell you,” replied Gatty, “for I think you can hold your tongue, and not be always chatter, chatter, chatter, like—like some people. You think there’s only one Gatty Delawarr; and I’ll be bound you think her a very dull, stupid creature. Well, you’re about right there. But there are two: there’s me, and there’s the thing people want to make me. Now, you haven’t seen me,—you’ve only seen the woman into whom I am being pinched and pulled. This is me that talks to you to-night, and perhaps you’ll never see me again,—only that other girl,—so you had better make the most of me now that you have me. I’m sure, if you dislike her as much as I do—! You see, Phoebe, there are three of us—Betty, and me, and Molly: and Mother’s set her heart on our all making a noise in the world. Well, perhaps we could have managed better if we might have made our own noise; but we have to make it to order, and we don’t do it well at all. Betty’s the best off, because Mother hit on something that went with her nature,—she’s the notable housewife. So she plays her play well. But when she set up Molly for a wit, and me for a beauty, she made a great blunder. Molly hasn’t a bit of wit, so she falls back on rude speeches, and they go through me just as if she ran a knife into me. You did not think so, did you?”
“No,” said Phoebe, wonderingly; “I thought you did not seem to care.”
“That’s the other Gatty. She does not care. She’s been told,—oh, a hundred times over!—to compose herself and keep her features calm, and not let her voice be ruffled; and move slowly, so that her elbows are not square, and all on in that way; and she has about learned it by this time. I know how to sit still and look unconcerned, if my heart be breaking. And it is breaking, Phoebe.”
“Dear Mrs Gatty, what can I do for you?”
“You can’t do anything but listen to me. Let me pour it out this once, and don’t scold me. I don’t mean anything wrong, Phoebe. I don’t wish to complain of Mother, or Molly, or any one. I only want to tell somebody what I have to bear, and then I’ll compose myself again to my part in the world’s big theatre, and go away and bear it, like other girls do. And you are the only person I have acquaintance with, that I feel as if I could tell.”
“Pray go on, Mrs Gatty; I can feel sorry, if I can do nothing else.”
“Well,—at home somebody is at me from morning to night. There’s a posture-master comes once a week; and Mother’s maid looks to my carriage at all times, ’tis an endless round of—‘Gatty, hold your head up,’—‘Gatty, put that plate down, and take it up with your arm rounded,’—‘Gatty, you must not laugh,’—‘Gatty, you must not sneeze,’—‘Gatty, walk slower,’—come, that’s enough. Then there’s Molly on the top of it. And there’s Betty on the top of Molly,—who can’t conceive why anybody should ruffle her mind about anything. And there’s Mother above all, for ever telling me she looks to have me cut a dash, and make a good match; and if I had played my cards rightly I ought to have caught a husband ere I was seventeen,—’tis disgraceful that I should thus throw away my advantages. And, Phoebe, I want nothing but to creep into some little, far-away corner, and be me, and throw away my patches and love-locks, and powder and pomatum, and never see that other Gatty any more. That’s how it was up to last month.”
Gatty paused a moment, and drew a long sigh.
“And then, there came another on the scene, and I suppose the play grew more entertaining to Mother, and Betty, and Molly, in the boxes. People don’t think, you know, when they look down at the prima donna, painted, and smiling, and decked with flowers,—they don’t think if she has a husband who ill-uses her, or a child dying at home. She has come there to make them sport. Well, there came an old lord,—a man of sixty or seventy,—who has led a wild rakish life all these years, and now he thinks ’tis time to settle down, and he wants me to help him to make people think he’s become respectable. And they say I shall marry him. Phoebe, they say I must,—there is to be no help for it. And I can’t bear him to look at me. If he touches my glove, I want to fling it into the fire when it comes off. And this one month, here, at White-Ladies, is my last quiet time. When I go home—if Betty be recovered of her distemper—I am to be married to this old man in a week’s time. I am tied hand and foot, like a captive or a slave; and I have not even the poor relief of tears. They make my eyes red, and I must not make, my eyes red, if it would save my life. But nothing will save me. The lambs that used to be led to the altar are not more helpless than I. The rope is round my neck; and I must trot on beside the executioner, and find what comfort I can in the garland of roses on my head.”
There was a silence of a few seconds after Gatty finished her miserable tale. And then Phoebe’s voice asked softly,—
“Dear Mrs Gatty, have you asked God to save you?”
“What’s the use?” answered Gatty, in a hopeless tone.
“Because He would do it,” said Phoebe. “I don’t know how. It might be by changing my Lady Delawarr’s mind, or the old lord’s, or yours; or many another way; I don’t know how. But I do know that He has promised to bring no temptation on those that fear Him, beyond what they shall be able to bear.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Gatty, in that tone which makes the word sound like a cry of pain.
“Have you tried entreating my Lady Delawarr?”
“Tried! I should think so. And what do you think I get by it? ‘Gatty, my dear, ’tis so unmodish to be thus warm over anything! Compose yourself, and control your feelings. Love!—no, of course you do not love my Lord Polesworth, while you are yet a maid; ’twould be highly indecorous for you to do any such thing. But when you are his wife, you’ll be perfectly content; and that is all you can expect. My dear, do compose yourself, or your face will be quite wrinkled; and let me hear no more of this nonsense, I beg of you. Maids cannot look to choose for themselves, ’tis not reasonable.’ That is what I get, Phoebe.”
“And your father, Mrs Gatty?”
“My father? Oh! ‘Really, Gatty, I can’t interfere,—’tis your mother’s affair; you must make up your mind to it. We can’t have always what we like,’—and then he whistles to his hounds, and goes out a-hunting.”
“Well, Mrs Gatty, suppose you try God?”
“Suppose I have done, Phoebe, and got no answer at all?”
“Forgive me, I cannot suppose it.”
“Is He so good to you, Phoebe?”
The question was asked in a very, very mournful tone.
“Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe, softly, “He has given me Himself. I do not think He has given me anything else of what my heart longs for. But that is enough. In Him I have all things.”
“What do you mean?” came in accents of perplexity from the bed in the opposite corner.
“I am afraid,” said Phoebe, “I cannot tell you. I mean, I could not make you understand it.”
“‘Given you Himself!’” repeated Gatty. “I can fancy how He could reward you or make you happy; but, ‘give you Himself!’”
“Well, I cannot explain it,” said Phoebe. “Yes, it means giving happiness; but it means a great deal more. I can feel it, but I cannot put it in words.”
“I don’t understand you the least bit!”
“Will you talk awhile with Mrs Dolly Jennings, and see if she can explain it to you? I do not think any one can, in words; but I guess she would come nearer to it than I could.”
“I like Mrs Dolly,” said Gatty, thoughtfully; “she is very kind.”
“Very,” assented Phoebe.
“I think I should not mind talking to her,” said Gatty. “We will walk down there to-morrow, if we can get leave.”
“And now, had we not better go to sleep?” suggested Phoebe.
“Well, we can try,” sighed Gatty. “But, Phoebe, ’tis no good telling me to pray, because I have done it. I said over every collect in the Prayer-book—ten a day; and the very morning after I had finished them, that horrid man came, and Mother made—I had to go down and sit half an hour listening to him. Praying does no good.”
“I am not sure that you have tried it,” said Phoebe.
“Didn’t I tell you, this minute, I said every—”
“I ask your pardon for interrupting you, but saying is not praying. Did you really pray them?”
“Phoebe, I do not understand you! How could I pray them and not say them?”
“Well, I did not quite mean that,” said Phoebe; “but please, Mrs Gatty, did you feel them? Did you really ask God all the collects say, or did you only repeat the words over? You see, if I felt cold in bed, I might ask Mrs Betty to give me leave to have another blanket; but if I only kept saying that I was cold, to myself, over and over, and did not tell Mrs Betty, I should be long enough before I got the blanket. Did you say the collects to yourself, Mrs Gatty, or did you say them to the Lord?”
There was a pause before Gatty said, in rather an awed voice, “Phoebe, when you pray, is God there?”
“Yes,” said Phoebe, readily.
“He is not, with me,” replied Gatty. “He feels a long, long way off; and I feel as if my collects might drop and be lost before they can get up to Him. Don’t you?”
“Never,” answered Phoebe. “But I don’t send my prayers up by themselves; I give them to Jesus Christ to carry. He never drops one, Mrs Gatty.”
“’Tis all something I don’t understand one bit,” said Gatty, wearily. “Go to sleep, Phoebe; I won’t keep you awake. But we’ll go and see Mrs Dolly.”
The next afternoon, when Rhoda and Molly had disappeared on their private affairs, Gatty dropped a courtesy to Madam, and requested her permission to visit Mrs Dolly Jennings.
“By all means, my dear,” answered Madam, affably. “If Rhoda has no occasion for her, let Phoebe wait on you.”
The second request which had been on Gatty’s lips being thus forestalled, the girls set forth—without consulting Rhoda, which Gatty was disinclined to do, and which Phoebe fancied that she had done—and reached the Maidens’ Lodge without falling in with any disturbing element, such as either Rhoda or Molly would unquestionably have been. Mrs Dorothy received them in her usual kindly manner, and gave them tea before they entered on the subject of which both the young minds were full. Then Gatty told her story, if very much the same terms as she had given it to Phoebe.
“And I can’t understand Phoebe, Mrs Dolly,” she ended. “She says God has given her Himself; and I cannot make it out. And she says she gives her prayers to Jesus Christ to carry. I don’t know what she means. It sounds good. But I don’t understand it—not one bit.”
Mrs Dorothy came up to where Gatty was sitting, and took the girl’s head between her small, thin hands. It was not a beautiful face; but it was pleasant enough to look on, and would have been more so, but for the discipline which had crushed out of it all natural interest and youthful anticipation, and had left that strange, strained look of care and forced calm upon the white brow.
“Dear child,” she said, gently, “you want rest, don’t you?”
Gatty’s grey eyes filled with tears.
“That is just what I do want, Mrs Dolly,” she said, “somewhere where I could be quiet, and be let alone, and just be myself and not somebody else.”
“Ah, my dear!” said Mrs Dorothy, shaking her head, “you never get let alone in this world. Satan won’t let you alone, if men do. But to be yourself—that is what God wants of you. At least ’tis one half of what He would have; the other half is that you should give yourself to Him.”
“’Tis no good praying,” said Gatty, as before.
“Did the Lord tell you that, my dear?”
“No!” said Gatty, looking up in surprise.
“Well, I would not say it till He does, child. But what did you pray for?”
“I said all the collects over.”
“Very good things, my dear; but were they what you wanted? I thought you had a special trouble at this time.”
“But what could I do?” asked Gatty, apparently rather bewildered.
“Dear child, thou couldst sure ask thy Father to help thee, without more ado. But ‘bide a wee,’ as my old friend, Scots Davie, was wont to say. There is a great deal about prayer in the Word of God. Let us look at a little of it.” Little Mrs Dorothy trotted to her small work-table, which generally stood at her side, and came back with a well-worn brown Bible. Gatty watched her with a rather frightened look, as if she thought that something was going to be done to her, and was not sure whether it might hurt her.
“Now hearken: ‘Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.’ Again: ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, that will I do.’ These are grand words, my dear.”
“But they can’t mean that Mrs Dorothy! Why, only think—if I were to ask for a fortune, should I get it?”
“I must have two questions answered, my dear, ere I can tell that. Who are the you in these verses?”
“I thought it meant everybody.”
“Not so. Listen again: ‘If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ ’Tis not everybody doth that.”
“But I don’t know what that means, Mrs Dorothy.”
“Then, my dear, you have answered my second question—Are you one of these? For if you know not even what the thing is, ’tis but reasonable to conclude you have never known it in your own person.”
“I suppose not,” said Gatty, sorrowfully.
“You see, my dear, ’tis to certain persons these words are said. If you are not one of these persons, then they are not said to you.”
“I am not.” And Gatty shook her head sadly. “But, Mrs Dorothy, what does it mean?”
“Dear,” said the old lady, “when we do truly abide in Christ, we desire first of all that His will be done. We wish for this or that; but we wish more than all that He choose all things for us—that He have His own way. Our wills are become His will. It follows as a certainty, that they shall be done. We must have what we wish, when it is what He wishes who rules all things. ‘Ye shall ask what ye will.’ He guides us what to ask, if we beg Him to do so.”
“Is any one thus much perfect?” inquired Gatty, doubtfully.
“Many are trying for it,” said Mrs Dolly. “There may be but few that have fully reached it.”
“But that makes us like machines, Mrs Dolly, moved about at another’s will.”
“What, my dear! Love makes us machines? Never! The very last thing that could be, child.”
“I don’t know much about love,” said Gatty, drearily.
“About love, or about being loved?” responded Mrs Dolly.
“Both,” answered the girl, in the same tone.
“Will you try it, my dear? ’Tis the sweetener of all human life.”
Gatty looked up with a surprised expression.
“I can’t make people love me,” she said.
“Nor can you make yourself love others,” added Mrs Dorothy. “But you can ask the Lord for that fairest of all His gifts, saving Jesus Christ.”
“Ask God for a beau! O Mrs Dorothy!” exclaimed Gatty in a shocked tone.
“My dear, I never so much as named one,” responded Mrs Dorothy, with a little laugh. “Sure, you are not one of those foolish maids that think they must be loveless and forlorn without they have a husband?”
Gatty had always been taught to think so; and she looked bewildered and mystified. A more eligible husband than old Lord Polesworth was the only idea that associated itself in her mind with the word love.
“But what else did you mean?” she asked.
“Ay me!” said Mrs Dorothy, as if to herself. “How do men misunderstand God! Child, wert thou never taught the first and great commandment? ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength?’”
“Oh, of course,” said Gatty, as if she were listening to some scientific formula about a matter wherein she was not at all concerned.
“Have you done that, my dear?”
“Done what?” demanded Gatty in a startled tone.
“Have you loved God with all your heart?”
Gatty looked as if she had been suddenly roused from sleep, and was unable to take in the circumstances.
“I don’t know! I—I suppose, so.”
“You suppose so! Dear child, how can you love any, and not know it?”
“But that is quite another sort of love!” cried Gatty.
“There is no sort but one, my dear. Love is love.”
“Oh, but we can’t love God!” said Gatty, as if the idea quite shocked her. “That means—it means reverence, you know, and duty, and so on. It can’t mean anything else, Mrs Dorothy.”
Mrs Dorothy knitted very fast for a moment. Phoebe saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
“Poor lost sheep!” she said, in a grieved voice. “Poor straying lamb, whom the wolf hath taught to be frightened of the Shepherd! You did not find that in the Bible, my dear.”
“Oh, but words don’t mean the same in the Bible!” urged Gatty. “Surely, Mrs Dorothy, ’twould be quite unreverent to think so.”
“Surely, my dear, it were more unreverent to think that God does not mean what He saith. When He saith, ‘I will punish you seven times for your sins,’ He means it, Mrs Gatty. And when He saith, ‘I will be a Father unto you,’ shall we say He doth not mean it? O my dear, don’t do Him such an injury as that!”
“Do God an injury!” said Gatty in an awed whisper.
“Ay, a cruel injury!” was the answer. “Men are always injuring God. Either they try to persuade themselves that He means not what He says when He threatens: or else they shut their hearts up close, and then fancy that His heart is shut up too. My dear, He did not tarry to offer to be your Father, until you came and asked Him for it. ‘He first loved you.’ Child, what dost thou know of the Lord Jesus Christ?”
Ah, what did she know? For Gatty lived in a dreary time, when religion was at one of its lowest ebb-tides, and had sunk almost to the level of heathen morality. If Gatty had been required to give definitions of the greatest words in the language, and had really done it from the bottom of her heart, according to her own honest belief, the list would have run much in this way:—
“God.—The Great First Cause of all things, who has nothing to do with anything now, but will, at some remote period, punish murderers, thieves, and very wicked people.
“Christ.—A supernaturally good man, who was crucified seventeen hundred years ago.
“Heaven.—A delightful place, where everybody is happy, to which all respectable people will go, when they can’t help it any longer.
“Bible.—A good book read in church; intensely dry, as good books always are no concern of mine.
“Salvation, peace, holiness, and the like.—Words in the Prayer-Book.
“Faith, hope, love, etcetera.—Duties, which of course we all perform, and therefore don’t need to trouble ourselves about them.
“Prayer.—An incantation, to be repeated morning and evening, if you wish to avert ill luck during the day.”
These were Gatty’s views—if she could be said to have any. How different from those of Mrs Dorothy Jennings! To her, God was the Creator, from whom, and by whom, and to whom, were all things: the Fountain of Mercy, who had so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son for its salvation: the Father who, having loved her before the world was, cared for everything, however insignificant, which concerned her welfare. Christ was the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother—the Lamb who had been slain for her, the High Priest who was touched with every feeling of human infirmity. Heaven was the home which her Father had prepared for her. The Bible was the means whereby her Father talked with her; and prayer the means whereby she talked with Him. Salvation was her condition; holiness, her aim; faith, love, peace, the very breath she drew. While, in Gatty’s eyes, all this was unknown and unreal, to Mrs Dorothy it was the most real thing in all the world.
Gatty answered her friend’s query by a puzzled look.
“It comes in church,” she said. “He is in the Creed, and at the end of the prayers. I don’t know!”
“Child,” replied Mrs Dorothy, “you don’t know Him. And, Mrs Gatty, my dear, you must know Him, if you are ever to be a happy woman. O poor child, poor child! To think that the Man who loved you and gave His life for you is no more to you than one of a row of figures, a name set to the end of a prayer!”
Gatty was taken by surprise. She looked up with both unwonted emotion and astonishment in her eyes.
“Mrs Dolly,” she said, with feeling, “I cannot tell, but I think ’twould be pleasant to feel like you. It sounds all real, as if you had a live friend.”
“That is just what it is, my dear Mrs Gatty. A Friend that loves me enough to count the very hairs of my head,—to whom nothing is a little matter that can concern me. And He is just as ready to be your Friend too.”
“What makes you think so, Mrs Dolly?”
“My dear, He died on purpose to save you.”
“The world, not me!” said Gatty.
“If there had been no world but you,” was the answer, “He would have thought it worth while.”
Gatty’s answer was not immediate. When it came, it was—
“What does He want me to do?”
“He wants you to give Him your heart,” said the old lady. “Do that first, and you will very soon find out how to give Him your hands and your head.”
“And will He keep away my Lord Polesworth?” asked the girl, earnestly.
“He will keep away everything that can hurt you. Not, maybe, everything you don’t like. Sometimes ’tis just the contrary. The sweet cake that you like might harm you, and the physic you hate might heal you. If so, He will give you the physic. But, child, if you are His own, He will put the cup into your had with a smite which will make it easy to take.”
“I should like that,” said Gatty, wistfully. “But could it be right to wed with my Lord Polesworth, when I could not love nor honour him in my heart at all?”
“It can never be right to lie. Ask God to make you a way of escape, if so it be.”
“What way?”
“Leave that to Him.”
Mrs Dorothy’s little clock struck four.
“I think, if you please, Mrs Gatty,” said Phoebe’s hitherto silent voice, “that Madam will be looking for us.”
“Yes, I guess she will,” answered Gatty, rising, and courtesying. “I thank you, Mrs Dolly. You have given me a ray of hope—if ’twill not die away.”
Mrs Dorothy drew the girl to her, and kissed her cheek.
“Christ cannot die, my child,” she replied. “And Christ’s love is deathless as Himself. ‘Death hath no more dominion over Him.’ And He saith to His own, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’”
“It should be a better life than this,” said Gatty, with a sigh.
“This is not the Christian’s life, my dear. ‘His life is hid with Christ in God.’ ’Tis not left in his own hands to keep; he would soon lose it, if it were. Farewell, dear child; and may the Lord keep thee!”
Gatty looked up suddenly. “Tell me what to say to Him.”
Mrs Dorothy scarcely hesitated a moment.
“‘Teach me to do Thy will,’” she answered. “That holds everything. You cannot do His will unless you are one of His redeemed. He must save you, and hold you up, and guide you to glory, if you do His will—not because you do it, for the salvation cometh first; but without the one, there cannot be the other. And he that doeth the will of God soon learns to love it, better than any mortal thing. ‘Oh, how love I Thy law!’ saith David. ‘There is nothing on earth that I desire in comparison of Thee.’”
She kissed both the girls again, and they went away.