Chapter Thirteen.
The Bed God Lent to Flo.
Yes, there was a God for Flo—a God and a Father.
For some wise and loving reason, all of which she should know some day, He had tested her very sorely, but in her hour of extremest and darkest need He sent her great and unexpected succour, and that night Flo left the gloomy and wretched cellar in Duncan Street, never to return to it. She was unconscious of this herself, and consequently gave the miserable place no farewell looks.
From that long swoon into which she sank she awoke with reason quite gone, so was unaware of anything that happened to her.
She knew nothing of that drive in the cab, her head pillowed on Mrs Jenks’ breast; nothing of that snowy little bed in Mrs Jenks’ room where they laid her; nothing of the kind face of the doctor as he bent over her; nothing of anything but the hard battle with fever and pain, the hard and fierce conflict with death she had got to fight. For a week the doctor and Mrs Jenks both thought that she must die, and during all that time she had never one gleam of reason, never one instant’s interval from severe pain. At the end of that time the crisis came, as it always does, in sleep. She fell asleep one evening moaning with all the exhaustion caused by fever and suffering, but the faithful little woman who sat by her side marked how by degrees her moans grew less, then ceased; her breathing came slower, deeper, calmer.
She was sleeping a refreshing, healing sleep.
Late that night Flo awoke.
Very slowly her eyes, the light of consciousness once more in them, travelled round the apartment. The last thing she remembered was lying very ill and very hungry on the damp cellar floor, the dog’s faithful face close to her, and a loaf of bread within reach of her starving lips. Where was she now?
In a pure, white, delicious bed, in a room that might have been a little room out of heaven, so lovely did it look in her eyes. Perhaps she was dead and was in heaven, and God had made her lie down and go to sleep and get rested before she did anything else.
Well, she had not had enough sleep yet, she was dreadfully, dreadfully tired still. She turned her weary head a very little—a dog was lying on the hearth-rug; a dog with the head, and back, and eyes of Scamp, and those eyes were watching her now lazily, but still intently. And seated farther away was Mrs Jenks, darning a boy’s sock, while a boy’s jacket lay on her lap.
The sight of the little woman’s pale face brought back further and older memories to Flo, and she knew that this little room was not part of heaven, but was just Mrs Jenks’ beautiful little earthly room.
How had she got here? however had she got here from that cellar where she had lain so ill and unable to move?
Perhaps after eating that bread that Scamp had brought her she had got much stronger, and had remembered, as in a kind of dream, her appointment with Mrs Jenks, and still in a dream, had got up and gone to her, and perhaps when she reached her room she had got very faint again and tired, and Mrs Jenks had put her into her little bed, to rest for a bit. But how long she must have stayed, and how at home Scamp looked! It was night now, quite night, and Mrs Jenks must want to lie down in her own nice pleasant bed; tired and weak as she was, she must go away.
“Please, mum,” she said faintly, and her voice sounded to herself thin, and weak, and miles off. In an instant the little pale woman was bending over her. “Did you speak to me, darling?”
“Please, mum,” said Flo, “ef you was to ’old me werry tight fur a bit, I’ll get up, mum.”
“Not a bit of you,” said Mrs Jenks, smiling at her, “you’ll not get up to-night, nor to-morrow neither. But you’re better, ain’t you, dearie?”
“Yes, mum, but we mustn’t stay no later, we must be orf, Scamp and me. ’Tis werry late indeed, mum.”
“Well, so it be,” said Mrs Jenks, “’tis near twelve o’clock, and wot you ’as got to do is not to stir, but to drink this, and then go to sleep.”
“Ain’t this yer bed, mum?” asked Flo, when she had taken something very refreshing out of a china mug which Mrs Jenks held to her lips; “ain’t this yer bed as I’m a lyin’ in, mum?”
“It is, and it isn’t,” replied Mrs Jenks. “It ain’t just that exactly now, fur God wanted the loan of it from me, fur a few nights, fur one of His sick little ones.”
“And am I keepin’ the little ’un out o’ it, mum?”
“Why no, Flo Darrell, you can hardly be doing that, for you are the very child God wants it fur. He has given me the nursing of you for a bit, and now you have got to speak no more, but to go to sleep.” Flo did not sleep at once, but she asked no further questions; she lay very still, a delicious languor of body stealing over her, a sense of protection and repose wrapping her soul in an elysium of joy. There was a God after all, and this God had heard her cry. While she was lying in such deep despair, doubting Him so sorely, He was busy about her, not fetching Janey, who could do so little, but going for Mrs Jenks, who was capable, and kind, and clever. He had given Mrs Jenks full directions about her, had desired her to nurse and take care of her.
She need have no longer any compunction in lying in that soft bed, in receiving all that tender and novel treatment. God meant her to have it—it was all right. When to-morrow, or the day after, she was quite well and rested again she would try and find out more about God, and thank Him in person, if she could, for His great kindness to her, and ever after the memory of that kindness would be something to cheer and help her in her cellar-life.
How much she should like to see God! She felt that God must be beautiful.
Before her confused and dreamy eyes the angels in their white dresses kept moving up and down, and as they moved they sang “Glory, glory, glory.”
And Flo knew they were surrounding God, and she tried to catch a glimpse of God Himself through their shining wings. She was half asleep when she saw them, she was soon wholly asleep; she lay in a dreamless, unbroken slumber all night. And this was the beginning of her recovery, and of her knowledge of God. When the doctor came the next day he said she was better, but though the fever had left her, she had still very much pain to suffer. In her fall she had given her foot a most severe sprain, and though the swelling and first agony were gone, yet it often ached, without a moment’s intermission, all day and all night. Then her fever had turned to rheumatic, and those little thin bones would feel for many a day the long lie they had had on the damp cellar floor. But Flo’s soul was so happy that her body was very brave to bear this severe pain; such a flood of love and gratitude was lighting up her heart, that had the ceaseless aching been worse she would have borne it with patient smiles and unmurmuring lips. For day after day, by little and little, as she was able to bear it, Mrs Jenks told her what she herself called the Story of God.
She began with Adam and Eve, and explained to her what God had done for them; she described that lovely Garden of Eden until Flo with her vivid imagination saw the whole scene; she told how the devil came and tempted Eve, and how Eve fell, and in her fall, dishonesty, and sin, and misery, all came into the world. And because sin was in the world—and sin could not remain unpunished—Adam and Eve must die, and their children must die, and all men must die. And then she further explained to the listening child how, though they were sinners, the good God still cared for them, and for their children, and for all the people that should come after them; and because He so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son into the world, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
And because little Mrs Jenks loved God and Christ with all the strength of her nature in return, she told the story of the birth of Jesus, of His life, of His death, so tenderly and so solemnly, that the child wept, and only the knowledge that His sufferings were now over, that He was happy now, and that He loved her, could stay her tears. What could she give Him in return? Why, all He asked for, all He needed.
Lying there on Mrs Jenks’ little white bed which God had lent her, she offered up to the Father, to the Son, and to the Spirit, the love and obedience of her whole heart and life for time and for eternity.