Chapter Sixteen.
Confession and Explanation.
When Edward Taylor’s accident and its cause were known in Crossbourne, the consternation caused among the enemies of religion and of the temperance cause was indescribable. Thomas Bradly made no secret of what had happened, and of how Foster’s persecutors had been outwitted: not in any revengeful spirit, but partly because he thought it better that the plain truth should be known, and so the mouths of the marvel-mongers be stopped; and partly because he felt sure that the enemy would keep pretty still when they knew that their late proceedings were blazed abroad. So he just quietly told one or two of his fellow-workmen all the particulars, without note or comment, and left the account to do its own work.
Nor could there be any doubt as to the result. Never had there been such “a heavy blow and great discouragement” to the infidel party as this. Not only was there a storm of indignation poured out upon the heads of the conspirators by the more sober-minded working-men,—for it took no very shrewd guessing to find out who had been Ned Taylor’s companions in the heartless and cruel outrage,—but even those who might have secretly applauded had the plot been successful, were eager to join in the general expressions of disgust and reprobation now that it had failed; for nothing meets with such universal and remorseless execration as unsuccessful villainy. There were also those who never lost an opportunity of chaffing the unfortunate delinquents; while, to complete their mortification and discomfiture, a rude copy of satirical verses, headed, “A Simple Lay in Praise of Tar, by one of the Feathered Tribe,” was printed and widely circulated through the town and neighbourhood. Nor was there much sympathy, under their ignominious defeat, between the members and friends of the Free-thought Club. After a few nights, spent chiefly in personalities and mutual recriminations, which well-nigh terminated in a general stand-up fight, the meetings of the club were adjourned sine die, and the institution itself fell to pieces in a few weeks, and its existence was speedily forgotten.
The heaviest weight of trouble, however, had fallen upon poor Ned Taylor. He had suffered very serious injuries by his fall into the old well, and, having utterly ruined his constitution by intemperance, was unable to rally from the shock and the wounds and bruises he had received. So he lay a miserable, groaning wreck of humanity on his wretched bed, in the comfortless kitchen of his bare and desolate home.
His old companions soon came to see him; not from any real care for himself or his sufferings, but partly to coax and partly to threaten him into silence, so that he might not reveal the names of his companions in the attempt on Foster. But Ned’s wife soon gave them to understand that her husband had already had more than enough of their company; that they needn’t trouble themselves to call again; and that she hoped, if he was spared, that he would have nothing more to say to any of them as long as he lived. So his old companions in evil, taking this “broad hint” as it was meant, left him in peace, and he had leisure to look a little into the past, and to ponder his sin and folly.
He was a man, like many others of his class, not without kindly feelings and occasional good intentions; but these last had ever been as “the morning cloud and the early dew,” and like all good resolutions repeatedly broken, had only added fresh rivets to the chains of his evil habits. And so he had plunged deeper and deeper into the mire of intemperance and ungodliness, till scarce the faintest trace of the divine image could be discerned in him.
But now his conscience woke up, and he was not left without helpers. Thomas Bradly visited him on the day after his accident, and saw that he was properly cared for. William Foster also called on him in a day or two, and assured him of his hearty forgiveness. The poor unhappy man was deeply touched at this, and, hiding his face in his hands, sobbed bitterly. He was indeed a pitiable object as he lay back on his ragged bed, partly propped up with pillows, his head bound round with a cloth, his left eye half closed, and one arm lying powerless by his side.
“William,” he said, when he could manage to get the words out, “I don’t deserve this, kindness from you of all men in the world; it cuts me to the heart, it does, for sure. I think I heard the parson say once, when he were preaching in the open-air at the market-cross one summer’s evening, summat about heaping coals of fire on a man’s head as has wronged you, by returning him good for evil. I’m sure, William, you’ve been and heaped a whole scuttleful of big coals on my head, and they’re red-hot every one on ’em.”
“Well, well,” said Foster, much touched by this confession, “it will be all right, Ned, as far as I’m concerned, and I hope you’ll soon be better.—I’ve come to learn,” he added in an undertone, and with strong emotion, “my own need of forgiveness for all I’ve done against my Saviour in days gone by, and it would be strange and wrong indeed if I couldn’t heartily forgive a fellow-sinner.”
“The Lord bless you for that word,” said the other; “and let me tell you, William, bad as I’ve been agen you and poor Jim Barnes, I’ve never liked this job; and as for that Sharples, I knew as he was the meanest rascal to treat you as he did, and I only wish as I’d had the sense and courage to keep out of the business altogether.”
“Well, you’ve learnt a lesson, Ned; and if it should please God to bring you round, you must keep clear of the old set.”
“You may depend upon that, William,” said the sick man; “I’ve had enough and to spare of them and their ways.—I’ll tell you how it all began, William, and who it was as set the thing a-going.”
“Nay, Ned,” interposed Foster hastily, “I don’t want to know; I’d rather not know. I can guess pretty well, though I saw none of their faces distinctly. They don’t want any punishment from me if I wished to give it them, for they’re getting it hot and strong from all sides already; and as for Sharples, poor wretched man, he’s got caught in his own trap as neatly as if he’d set it on purpose to catch himself.”
“Just as you please, William; I’m sure it’s very good of you to take it as you do.”
“No, Ned, don’t say so; there’s no goodness anywhere in the matter, except in that merciful God who so wonderfully watched over and protected me. I’m sure it has been worth all I’ve gone through a thousand times over, to have learnt what he has taught me in this trouble,—a lesson of trust and love. But I will come and see you again, Ned; you have had talking enough for one time.”
The vicar also called on the sufferer frequently, and was glad to find him humble, patient, and willing to receive instruction. But it was to Thomas Bradly that the poor man seemed specially drawn, and to him he felt that he could open all his heart.
“I’ve summat on my mind, Thomas, as I wants to talk to you about,” he said to Bradly one day when they were left quite alone; it was about a week after the return home of Dr and Mrs Prosser. The sick man was able to sit up in a chair by the fire, though the doctor gave no hope of any real or lasting improvement. Through the kindness of his friends his cottage had partly lost its comfortless appearance, and himself, his wife, and children had been provided with sufficient food and clothing. Yet the stamp of death was on the poor patient’s wasted features, and a racking cough tried him terribly at times. But his mind was quite clear, and he had begun to see his way to pardon and peace, though it was with but a trembling hand that his faith laid hold of the offered salvation.
“What is it that you want to tell me?” asked Bradly cheerfully.
“I’ll tell you, Thomas: I know I’m a dying man, and it’s all right it should be so; I’ve brought it upon myself, more’s the sin, and more’s the pity.”
“Nay, Ned, take heart, man; you’ll come round yet, and be spared to set a good example.”
The sick man shook his head, and then broke out into a violent fit of coughing. “It’s pulling me to pieces,” he said, when he could recover himself; “but I shall be happier if I can just tell you, Thomas, what’s on my mind. It ain’t about any of the wicked things as I’ve done, but I shall be better content when I’ve told you all about it. You remember the night as poor Joe Wright met his death on the line last December? Well, I’d summat to do with that.”
“You, Ned!”
“Nay, Thomas, I don’t mean as I’d any hand in killing him—it were his own doing; but I were mixed up with the matter in a way, and I thought I’d tell you all about it, as you’re a prudent man as won’t go talking about it; and I shall get it off my mind, for it’s been a-troubling me for months past.”
“Go on, Ned.”
“Well, then, it were that same evening, two days afore Christmas-day, I were coming home from my work; and just as I were passing the Railway Inn I sees a bag lying on the step just outside the front door of the public.”
“A what?” exclaimed Bradly, half rising from his seat. “But go on—all right,” he added, noticing the sick man’s surprise at his sudden question.
“A bag,” continued the other. “It were a shabby sort of bag, and I thought it most likely belonged to Ebenezer Potts, for I’d often seen him carrying a bag like it: you know Ebenezer’s a joiner, and he used to carry his tools with him in just such a bag. So I says to myself, ‘I’ll have a bit of fun with Ebenezer. I’ll carry off his bag, and leave it by-and-by on his own door-step when it’s dark; won’t he just be in a fuss when he comes out of the public and misses it! I shall hear such a story about it next day.’ For you know, Thomas, Eben’s a fussy sort of chap, and he’d be roaring like a town-crier after his bag. It were a foolish thing to do, but I only meant to have a bit of a game. So I carries off the bag, and turns into the Green Dragon on my way home to have a pint of ale.
“There was two or three of our set there, and one says to me, ‘What have you got there, Ned?’—‘It’s Eben Potts’s bag of tools,’ says I; ‘I found it lying on the step of the Railway Inn while he went in to get a pint. I shall leave it at his own door in a bit; but won’t he just make a fine to-do when he misses it!’—‘It’ll be grand,’ said one of them, and they all set up a laugh.—‘Let me look at the bag,’ said poor Joe Wright, who’d been staring at it. I hands it to him. ‘Why,’ says he, ‘’tain’t Eben’s bag after all.’—‘Not his bag!’ cries I, in a fright.—‘Nothing of the sort,’ says he; ‘I knows his bag quite well. Besides, just feel the weight of it; there’s no tools in this bag.’—‘Well, it did strike me,’ says I, ‘as it were very light. What’s to be done now? They’ll be after me for stealing a bag. I wonder what’s in it? Not much, I’m sure; just a few shirts and pocket-handkerchers, or some other gents’ things, I dessay.’
“‘Well,’ says another, ‘there’ll be no harm looking, and it’ll be easily done—it’s only a common padlock. Has any one got a key as’ll unlock it?’ No one of us had; so we says to the landlady’s daughter, Miss Philips, who’d been peeping in, and had got her eyes and ears open, ‘Have you got ever a bunch of keys, miss, as you could lend us?’ She takes a bunch out of her pocket, and comes in to see what we should find. ‘There’s a lump of summat in it, I can feel,’ says I, as I was trying to open the padlock. Well, one key wouldn’t do, but another would, and we opens the bag. ‘Nothing but bits of paper arter all,’ says one.—‘You stop a bit,’ says I, and I turns the bag bottom up. Two things fell out: one were a book, I think, and it must have tumbled under the table, I fancy, for none on us noticed it; we was all crowding to see what the other thing was, which were wrapped up in soft paper, and fell on the table with a hard thump. ‘Just you open it, Miss Philips,’ says Joe Wright; ‘it’s better for your lovely soft hands to do it than our rough ’uns.’—‘Go along with your nonsense, Joe,’ says she; but she takes up the little parcel and opens it; and what do you think there were in it, Thomas?” He paused; but Bradly made no answer. “Ah! You’d never guess. Why, it were a beautiful gold thing full of precious stones, such as ladies wear round their wrists.
“Well, we all stared at it as if we was stuck. ‘What’s to be done now?’ says I; ‘this’ll be getting us into trouble.’—‘Put it back, lock up the bag, and take it back to where you fetched it from.’—‘Nay,’ says I, ‘that won’t pay; they’ll lock me up for a thief.’—‘Well, what do you say yourself? I wish we’d never meddled with it, any of us; it’ll be getting us all into a scrape,’ says another of my mates.—‘Shall we bury it?’ says one.—‘Shall we drop it into a pond?’ says another.—‘Nay, it’s sure to turn up agen us if we do,’ says I. So we sat and talked about it for some time, and had one pint after another, till we was all pretty fresh. Then says I, all of a sudden, ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do, if you’ll help me, and I’ll pay for another pint all round,’ (there was just four of us altogether). ‘The express train from the north’ll be passing under the wooden bridge in the cutting a little after ten; let’s put the bracelet, as Miss Philips calls it, back into the bag, and lock it up safe, and then let’s take the bag, and one of us clamber down among the timbers of the bridge, and drop the bag plump on the top of the train. It don’t stop, don’t that train, till it gets to London; so when they finds the bag at the other end, nobody’ll know wherever it came from, ’cos it’s got no direction to it, and we shall get fairly quit of it.’
“It were a wild sort of scheme, and I should never have thought of such a thing if I hadn’t had more ale than brains in me at the time. But they all cried out as they’d join me, so we had t’other pint; and then we put back the bracelet, and stuffed in a lot of papers with it, and locked up the bag as it was afore.”
“And the book?” asked Bradly, eagerly.
“Oh, we never thought about the book; it’s never crossed my mind from that day to this. I suppose we forgot all about it, we was so taken up with the other thing. I daresay the landlady’s daughter found it under the table; and if she did, she’d be sure to keep it snug and not say anything about it, as it might have told tales.”
“Perhaps so, Ned. And what did you do next?”
“Why, we went our ways home; and Joe Wright took charge of the bag, as his house was nearest the road as leads to the cutting. We all met at poor Joe’s at half-past nine, and walked together to the wooden bridge. It were a rainy night, and the timbers of the bridge was very slippy. It was proposed for Joe to drop the bag, and he were quite willing. I was in a bit of a fright about him all the time, for he’d drunk more than any of us, and his legs and hands wasn’t over steady. Howsomever, we’d no time to lose, so Joe got over the side of the bridge, and down among the timbers, and the train came rushing on, and, as we stooped over the side, we could see as the bag fell plump on to the top of the carriage. We knowed afterwards as that were all right; for if the bag had dropped on one side, or been shook off, the police would have been sure to have found it. And then poor Joe—eh! It were awful; I can’t bear to think of it. The Lord forgive me for having had aught to do with it!—he tried to climb back, poor chap; but the great big beams was wide to grasp, and very slippy with the rain, and he weren’t used to that sort of thing, and so he lost his hold, and down he fell on to the rails, quite stunned; and, afore any on us could get at him, the stopping train were on him, and he were a dead man.”
The sick man, having thus finished his story, sank back exhausted; but, recovering himself after a while, he said, “Well, Thomas, I’ve eased my mind: you know all. If it hadn’t been for me, poor Joe’d never have come to that shocking end. I hope the Lord’ll forgive me. But you may be sure neither me nor my mates meant any harm to poor Joe.”
“That’s quite clear, Ned,” replied Bradly, gravely; “it was indeed a wild and foolish thing to do, but when the liquor’s in the wit’s out. No doubt you’ve much to repent of, but certainly you aren’t answerable as if you’d killed poor Joe. Only, see how one thing leads to another. If you’d only loved the inside of your home as much as you loved the inside of the public, you’d have kept out of the way of temptation, and have escaped a deal of misery. Well, Ned, cast this burden on the Lord. Tell him all about it, as you’ve told me; and ask him to wash away all your sins in his precious blood, and he’ll do it.”
“I will, I will, Thomas,” said the poor sufferer.
When Bradly left Ned Taylor’s house, he walked home very slowly, revolving many thoughts in his mind, and, according to his fashion, giving them expression in a talk, half out loud, to himself, as follows:— “Well, now, we’ve got another step on the road to set poor Jane straight; and yet it looks like a step, and a good long step too, back’ards. It’s all explained now what’s become of the bag and the bracelet, but we’re further off from getting them than ever. I don’t know; p’raps it’s lying at the left-luggage office in London. I’ll send up and see. But I mustn’t say anything about it at present to Jane. But, suppose it shouldn’t be there—what then? Why, we’ve lost all clue to it; we’re quite in the dark. Stop, stop, Thomas Bradly! What are you about? What are you stumbling on in that fashion for, without your two walking-sticks—‘Do the next thing,’ ‘One step at a time’? Ay, that’s it, to be sure. And the next thing’s to send to the left-luggage office in London; and the rest’s to be left with the Lord.”
So that evening Bradly spoke to one of the guards, a fellow-abstainer, and a man with whom he was on intimate terms, telling him as much of the story of the losing of the bag as was necessary, without mentioning his sister’s name, and asked him to make full inquiries in London. His friend accordingly did so without delay, but brought back the sorrowful tidings that nothing answering to the bag described was lying at the left-luggage office, or had been seen or heard of by any of the officials.
Poor Thomas! He could not help feeling a little disheartened. He had hoped, as Ned Taylor proceeded with his confession, that something was coming that would lead to the discovery of the long-lost and earnestly-desired evidence of Jane’s innocence; and now that confession only showed that the bag had been carried hopelessly out of their reach. Had it been hidden away somewhere in Crossbourne, there would have been a good hope of hunting it out; but now that it had been conveyed away to the great metropolis, and had been carried off from the railway terminus, further search and inquiry seemed absolutely useless. Of course, if an honest man had accidentally got hold of it, and found out his mistake, it was possible he might have found some clue to the rightful owner in Hollands’ letter, if he discovered that letter in the bag; but as nearly half a year had now gone by since the loss, there was no reason to suppose that the bag had fallen into the hands of any one willing, or, if willing, able to restore it. If, on the other hand, a dishonest person had got hold of it, of course the bracelet would have been broken up, or hopelessly sold away, and the bag destroyed.
It was now the beginning of June, when one evening Bradly was sitting in his arm-chair at home, with a shadow on his face, as he meditated on these things. Jane, whose quick eye marked every change in her brother’s countenance, was persuaded that there was something more than usually amiss, for the light on Bradly’s habitually cheerful face to be clouded, and gently asked the cause.
“To tell you the truth, dear Jane,” he replied, “I am troubled, spite of myself, about your matter.”
“What, Thomas! Have you heard anything fresh?”
“Yes, I have; but I wasn’t meaning to say anything about it at present to you, as I wouldn’t trouble you to no purpose, and I thought I’d wait for more light.”
“Oh, tell me, Thomas, tell me! What is it?”
“Why, the simple truth is that the bag’s been found; and yet it’s lost, and worse lost than ever.”
“O Thomas!”
“Well, Jane dear, don’t fret; I’ll tell you all about it.” He then proceeded to give her the full particulars of Ned Taylor’s story, and of the endeavour he had made, but without success, to trace the bag in London. Jane listened patiently, and did not speak when her brother had finished, but her lips moved in silent prayer.
“Thomas,” she said, quietly and sadly, “it is a sore trial of faith, but let us still trust in the Lord, and follow your favourite maxim, ‘Do the next thing.’”
“The Lord bless you, dear Jane, for your patience. You’re right; only I don’t clearly see what is the next thing.”
“Will it not be of any use to advertise?” she asked.
“I’m afraid it’s too late now,” he said; “but, while we trust the Lord, we must use all the means he puts within our reach. It is possible, of course, that an advertisement in the London papers may meet the eye of the person who has got the bag, supposing, that is to say, that an honest man took it by mistake and has kept it.” So the following advertisement was inserted for a week in the principal London papers:—
Five Pounds Reward.—A small, shabby-looking carpet-bag, was lost or stolen from the Northern Express on its arrival in London at the Saint Pancras Station, at 3 a.m. December 24th last year. Whoever will bring this bag to the clerk at the Left-Luggage Office, Saint Pancras Station, with the contents as he found them, shall receive the above reward.
Not much to the surprise, though still somewhat to the disappointment, of brother and sister, no application was made for the reward by the middle of June, and Bradly was obliged to confess to his sister that, every effort having now been made, without success, to recover the bag, he could do no more.
To his great surprise and relief, Jane heard him with a cheerful smile. “Thomas,” she said, “remember the good old saying, ‘Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ You told me a while since you were convinced God was about to clear up this trouble for us, and that you could trace his guiding hand. Now, somehow or other, my faith, instead of failing, is daily growing stronger. I’m persuaded, though I can’t tell you why, that we shall have full daylight on this matter, and perhaps before long.”
“The Lord be praised for this,” exclaimed her brother. “O my dear Jane, I’ve been wrong to doubt him. Yes, when old Jacob gave up all for lost, and said, ‘All these things are against me,’ it were just the other way; the road was being made plain and straight for him—he was soon to see once more his long-lost Joseph. And so it will be now. You believe it, and I’ll believe it, and we’ll be looking out in faith and trust.”