CHAPTER THE THIRD.
What is five thousand a year, when a man spends six? Make it ten, and he will spend twelve. There is an old story I have heard my mother tell:—
A man had a legacy left him, so large, that upon the strength of it he was enabled to change his plan of life. He sat down and calculated the style in which it would henceforward become him to live. His arrangement of income and expenditure would have been perfect, only that the income fell short a certain, not very large, sum. This was a sad business. A few hundreds more, and he would have been quite at ease—he had them not—he began to feel rather poor. A letter arrives from his man of business. There has been a mistake; the legacy is of twice the amount it had been at first stated at. How will it become him to live now? That is easily settled—he has only to double all his expenses. Alas! And he remains twice as poor as he was before.
There is no limit to extravagance—it is a bottomless chasm which is not to be filled.
The income does not exactly suffice—and no man ought to exceed his income. True, but there are unexpected expenses—things that perhaps may never recur. The prudent man economizes something else; the imprudent man goes to his capital. He unlocks that sacred door of which he holds the enchanted key in his hand—and ruin rushes out upon him as a flood.
Julian soon began to touch upon his capital. It was but in small sums at first, and yet it is astonishing how rich and easy (for the time) it made him feel. A thousand or two thus added to a man's income makes all mighty smooth, and the consequent diminution of his future revenue is a trifle, not felt, and not worth thinking of. Desires increase with the means to gratify them. He who takes a thousand or two from his capital, soon finds it necessary to take more. Income diminishes as desires gain strength; the habit of indulgence grows as the means to gratify it decline.
What with borrowing, and giving bills, and drawing larger bills to pay the former bills when they became due, Julian and his wife had, by the nineteenth year of their marriage, eaten out the whole core and marrow of their fortunes. The edifice now stood, to all appearance, as splendid as ever—but it had become a house of cards over a bottomless pit.
And yet they had children; they had not wanted those best incentives to a better course. Their possessions in this way were not very numerous; people of this description have seldom overflowing nurseries; the mother is usually too fine a lady to look after her children herself. She is contented with hiring some head nurse, taking her on trust from some other young woman as heedless and negligent of her duties as herself; and to her tender mercies she leaves her babies.
Such a nurse had lorded it in Mrs. Winstanley's family; an ill-governed family in every respect, where each servant, from the highest to the lowest, measured his or her consequence by the money which was spent or wasted. Under this nurse's care two lovely boys had died in their infancy. One little girl had tumbled somewhere or in some way—or had been made to stand too long in the corner when she was naughty, or to walk too far when she was tired, or what. I know not. All I know, is, there was some internal injury, the cause of which no medical man who was consulted could detect. The other, and only remaining child, was a fine, handsome, spirited girl, of whom Mrs. Nurse thought proper to be excessively proud and fond. And how were these little children educated? Educated is an inappropriate word. There was no capacity for education on the part of Nurse; but Mr. and Mrs. Winstanley, though their dinners were just as numerous and profuse as ever, saw not the slightest necessity, whilst the little girls were young, for the additional expense of any better governess; and Mrs. Nurse was left to give all the elementary instruction that was thought needful—a task which she undertook with alacrity; having become somewhat apprehensive, now the two little boys were dead and the two young ladies getting bigger, that she might be superseded.
Her teaching consisted, first in shaking and scolding Miss Clementina, and keeping her, with her poor aching hip, prisoner in her chair till she had learned, a lesson—which, for want of comprehending the absurdly long words of which it seemed purposely composed, it was almost impossible she should learn; and secondly, in laughing at Miss Ella's odd blunders as she read, and telling her every word as it occurred, before she had time to pronounce it.
As for religion, morality, or knowledge of right and wrong, Mrs. Nurse thought too little about such things herself to impart them to others. I suppose she taught the children to say their prayers; but I am sure I know no more than the mother did, whether it was so or no. Sometimes the children were taken to stare about them in church; but not often, for Mrs. Winstanley was in the habit of fulfilling the commandment very literally, and making Sunday a day of rest. Commonly she spent the forenoon in bed; only getting up in time to dress for a dinner party which Mr. Winstanley made an especial point of having on that day. He, as yet, paid this trifling respect to it; he abstained from going on Sunday evening to a certain club which he frequented, to play cards, or roulette, for unknown sums.
The elder of these children grew up, suffering, and spiritless; the younger was proud, insolent, overbearing, and tyrannical—as much so as such a little creature could be. They were fast growing up into all this, and would have been confirmed in it, had not an accident arrested the fearful progress.
Spoiled, flattered, allowed to indulge every evil temper with impunity, Ella's faults were numberless; more especially to her helpless sister, whose languid health and feeble spirits excited little sympathy, and whose complaints seemed to irritate her.
"I declare you are the most tiresome, tormenting thing, sitting there looking as miserable as ever you can, and with that whining voice of yours, enough to drive one mad. Why can't you brighten up a little, and come and play? You really shall come and play, I want to play! Nurse! O! she's not there! Do make Clementina come and play."
"Don't, Ella! don't tease me so; pray don't! My hip hurts me; I can't. Do let me alone, pray."
"Nonsense. You make such a fuss about your hip! I don't believe any thing's the matter with it; only you're so ill-natured, you never will do any thing I ask. Nurse, I say," as the door opened, "do make her.—O, it's only Matty! Matty, where's Nurse?"
"She's just stepped out, Miss, and told me to come, and stay in the day-room with you till she was back."
And Matty, the new maid, hired but a day or two before, came in with her sewing in her hand, and sat down quietly to her work at the window.
"Matty!" cried Ella, imperiously, "don't sit there, looking so stupid; but come and make this tiresome girl play with me. There she sits, mooning over the fire. If Nurse were here, she'd soon have her up."
"Don't, pray, Matty," as Matty was rising from her chair. "Pray, don't. I'll go and play; but indeed, indeed, it hurts me very much to move to-day."
"Nonsense! Make her get up, Matty, You must mind me, Matty; you came here to mind me; so do as you are bid, you ugly thing."
Matty indeed merited the title of ugly. She was rather tall, but of a most ungainly figure, with long bony limbs, ill put together. It was difficult to say what the features of her face might have been: they were so crumpled, and scarred, and seamed. Not a feature had been left uninjured, except her eyes: and they were remarkable both for intelligence and softness.
She put down her work and went up to Clementina, saying, "What ails you, Miss? I hope it isn't true that you feign sickness not to play with your sister?"
The poor girl looked up, and her eyes were filled with tears. "Feign! I wish I did!"
"Then your hip does hurt you?"
"To be sure it does. So badly! At night, sometimes, when I'm in bed—so, so badly."
"And do you know that, Miss Ella?"
"Know it! Why, who does not know it? She's always talking of it; but, for my part, I don't believe it's half so bad as she pretends."
"I don't pretend, Ella; you are always saying that. How cruel you are to set Nurse against me, by always saying I pretend."
Thus it went on for a minute or two, whilst Matty stood silently by, her eyes wandering from one sister to the other.
At last she sighed, and said, "If it had pleased God to spare me my sister, I wouldn't have served her so."
Ella turned at this, and lifting up her eyes, measured Matty from head to foot with indignant contempt. It would seem as if she thought it almost too great a presumption in one so humble to have more care for a sister than she had.
"Who cares how such as you serve their sisters?"
"There is One who cares!" said Matty.
Clementina looked at Matty with puzzled wonder as she spoke. Ella haughtily turned away, saying, "I should like, for my part, to hear who this important one is, that you mention with such a strange emphasis. Some mighty fine personage, no doubt."
"Miss Clementina! Miss Clementina! only hear how shocking your sister talks. Do stop her!"
"Stop me! I should like to see her, or any one, attempting to stop me. And why, pray—and what, pray, am I saying so mighty bad, Mrs. Matty? You? A charity girl? I heard Nurse say, but yesterday, that she wondered her mistress would put up with such rubbish, and that she loathed the very look of you, for you put her in mind of the Blue Coat."
"I thank God," returned Matty, mildly, "that he raised up that great charity for me, and many perishing like me, and saved us from wickedness, and taught us to know His holy name. For He looks alike on rich and poor, and will judge both you and me, young lady."
Both girls were a little awe-stricken at this speech.
But Ella soon recovered herself, and said, "she hated to hear people talk like Methodists."
"What are you talking about, Matty?" asked Clementina, gently; "I don't quite understand."
"Not understand!—why, sure—heart alive!—it can't be as you are ignorant of who made and keeps you and all of us! Sure! Sure!" Matty kept repeating in a tone of much distress, "I can't believe my own ears."
"I suppose we know about all that," said Ella, haughtily.
She to teach her!—the child of charity to presume to insinuate a want in her! The idea was intolerable.
She went and sat down at a table at some little distance, and pretended to be busy playing with her bird, whose golden cage stood upon it; but, as she did so, she listened in spite of herself to the following conversation, passing between Clementina and Matty.
"I am so uncomfortable," the young girl was saying, rather fretfully; "I don't know what to do with myself. I try this thing and try that thing, and nothing gives me any ease or amusement; and I think it very hard—I can't help thinking it hard—that I should have to suffer every thing, and Ella, there, nothing; and then, Nurse makes such a favorite of her, and nobody in the wide world cares for me. Oh, I am so miserable, sometimes!"
"I used to be like you, once, Miss," said Matty.
At which Ella gave a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders.
But Matty did not regard it; and she went on and said, "Look at my face, Miss Clementina; it's very horrid and ugly, I know, and I don't wonder as Nurse calls me rubbish, and hates to see me in her nice nursery. Many can't help feeling like that. Do you know how this was done?"
"No. I suppose small-pox; but it's not like that, for your face is all cut to pieces. I don't know how it was done."
"It was done by the dreadful agony of fire. When I was but a little creature, living, O Miss! in such a place—five families of there were in one low, dark, nasty room, and, O Miss! it was like the bad place, indeed it was—such swearing and blasphemy when the men come home drunk, and worse, worse, when the women did so too! Such quarrelling, and fighting, and cursing, and abusing—and the poor children, knocked about at such times anyhow. But my mother never got drunk. She was a poor feeble creature, and mostly sat at home all day crooning, as they call it, by the fire—for they kept a good big fire in winter in the room. And then, when father come home he was generally very bad in liquor, and seeking a quarrel with anything—for something he must have to quarrel with. Well! One evening—O! I shall never forget it—a cold, sleety, winter day it was, and the wind rushing up our court, and the snow falling thick, and the blackened drops, and great lumps of snow coming splashing down, and the foul water oozing in under the doorsill, and all such a mess; and the poor, tired, or half-drunk creatures coming in splashed and dripping, and quarrelling for the nighest places to the fire, and swearing all the time to make one's hair stand on end; and father coming in, all wet and bedabbled, and his hat stuck at the top of his head, and his cheeks red, and his eyes staring, though he was chattering with the cold. Mother was at her place by the fire, and he comes up in a rage, like, to turn her out; and she sitting sulky and wouldn't move; and then there was a quarrel; and he begun to beat her, and she begun to shriek out and cry, and the women to scream and screech. O Miss! in the scuffle—I was but a little thing—somebody knocks me right into the fire, and my frock was all in a blaze. It was but a moment, but it seemed to me such a time!—all in a blaze of fire! And I remember nothing more of it, hardly, but a great noise, and pouring water over me, and running this way and that. When I come to myself, where was I?"
Ella turned from her bird, and her attention seemed riveted upon the story. She forgot her pride and her insolence in the pleasure of listening. Clementina seemed hardly to breathe.
"It was very bad being burned," she said, at last.
"Horrible, Miss!"
"Go on," cried Ella, impatiently; "what became of you?"
"When I got out of my daze—for I believe it was some time before I came to myself—I was lying on father's knee, and he had made a cradle for me, like, of his great strong arms: and his head was bent down, and he was a looking at me, and great big hot scalding tears were dropping fast upon my poor face.
"'My poor—poor little woman,' I heard him say."
"Then—for my eyes had escaped—I was aware that there was a beautiful young lady—at least, I thought her more beautiful than the angels of heaven—standing on the other side of me, right opposite my father, and doing something to my poor arms."
"The lady was very young—seemed scarcely more than a child herself, though she was a young married lady. She was beautiful dressed, all in snow-white muslin, with white satin sash, and bows to her sleeves, and a white rose in her hair. She had thrown a large bonnet over it—but now it was tossed off, and lay with her shawl upon the floor. Bad as I was—O! in such horrid pain—the sight of that beautiful dear angel was like a charm to me; it seemed to chase away the pain. And then she touched me so delicately, and spoke so soft and kind! It was music; heaven's own music was her voice."
"Who was she? who could she be?" cried Ella.
"Why, Miss, who should she be, but Mr. Stringer, the apothecary's young bride, as he had just brought home, and all ready dressed to go out to her first dinner."
Ella turned away contemptuously, with a gesture that expressed "was that all?"
Clementina said,—
"How nice of her to come to a poor little burnt child like you! and into such a dreadful place too! But I wonder she came in her best gown!"
"As I heard afterwards, it happened that Mr. Stringer had been sent for out, and was not come back; and when they ran screeching and screaming to the shop, crying a child was burnt in the court hard by, and Mr. Stringer was wanted, as there was no one to go but a little mite of a shop-boy—for Mr. Stringer had but just begun business—what does she do, but catches up a bottle of stuff for burns, claps her bonnet over her pretty white rose, throws her shawl on, and, dressed in her beautiful new wedding-gown, comes to this horrid den of dirt and wickedness. She did me up as best she could, and then seeing my poor father crying too, and all the people standing round, and yet not a word to comfort him, she said, very gently and kindly, to him,—
"'Pray don't grieve so: she will be better by-and-by, poor dear. Don't groan so badly, poor child! You are very sorry for her, poor man—but don't take on so.'
"But the more she spoke in this kind way, all the more he cried, till at last he seemed as if he could contain himself no longer, and he groaned, and almost roared out.
"'Are you the father?' said the young lady. 'Where is the mother?'
"'Oh! here—here—here—my precious child, my sweet baby!' cried my poor mother—and then went on, 'It was all of you—you big brute—you—you pushed your own baby into the red-hot flames, as you were atrying to get at me!—yes, my baby—my poor—'
"'Don't speak so loud, good woman,' said the young lady, gently. 'Lay the child upon the bed,' turning round—'Bless me!—why, there is not a bed!'
"'We are very poor people, ma'am,' a woman began; 'not a penny to bless ourselves with. If you'd please to—'
"I remember my father's voice to this day—
"'Silence!' he called out, in such a passion, 'would you beg money from the lady to spend in more gin? Give 'em nothing, ma'am—give none of us nothing—only tell me what's to be done to save the poor little thing's life.'
"She hesitated, turned, and looked round the miserable apartment. Too true, there was not an apology for a bed; there was not even clean straw.
"'Take her up in your arms,' said she to my father, 'and follow me.' And she stooped and picked up her bonnet, and gathered her great shawl around her, and stepped out into the rainy, sleety, windy night; and my father—for some poor creature had lent an old shawl to throw over me—took me and carried me after her: and a turn of the alley which led into the court, brought us out into the street, where the apothecary's shop stood. I was carried through, and up two pair of stairs, and into a little mite of a room—but all so clean and nice—and laid, oh! in such a delicious bed—and oh! it felt so comfortable—it soothed me, like—and I fell fast asleep."
The two girls were silent for some time. Ella spoke first.
"What a good woman!" was the remark she made; "but was she only an apothecary's wife," she went on; "and was her name Stringer? What a horrid ugly name! Are you sure it was Stringer?"
"Yes, Miss—Stringer and Bullem—that was the name over the shop-door."
"What! did they keep a shop?"
"To be sure they did."
"How long did you stay there?"
"I never went away no more, Miss. When I got better, the lady began to talk to me. I was a little mite of a thing, but I was quick enough. She found what bad ways I was bringing up in; that I had never once heard of Our Saviour—not even of my Maker—far from ever hearing of the Bible—or having it read, or being taught to pray, or—"
The two young girls looked at each other, but said nothing. Matty, in broken and interrupted sentences, went on:
"So she kept me; for she could not bear to send me back to that pit of iniquity in which she had found me. And as I lay in my bed, one day, and they thought I was asleep, I heard her arguing the point with her young husband—
"'Why, child, you cannot pretend to adopt all the poor neglected children in this bad town?' he said.
"'Oh no! I know one can do little—little enough: it is but one drop of water in the vast ocean—only one little, little drop; but the oyster took it into its shell, and it became a pearl. Let me keep this poor little one. I don't mean to be foolish—indeed I don't—I will only clothe her, and feed her, and send her to the charity school: indeed, they will half clothe her there. Do—do, dear John—she is such a miserable object! What is she to do? Let her be taught her duty—let her not be a poor ruined wretch, body and soul at once.'"
"The young lady would have moved a stone with her talking. Her husband was not very persuadable; he was not like her. He was rather a cold-hearted, selfish young man, but he couldn't refuse her; and so, when I got better, I was sent to one of the great charity schools in the city, where I learned a deal; but my sweet Mrs. Stringer took a pleasure in teaching me herself, and so I learned a deal more."
Enough of Matty's tale.
Mrs. Stringer, when she devoted such means as she could command to the rescue of one poor child from the misery in which she was living, and raised her from deplorable ignorance, as regarded all higher things, to a knowledge of the supreme and only real good, little thought how extensive her good deed would prove; and that in providing for the religious and moral education of this wretched child, she was preparing the means of a religious education—imperfect, yet still in some sort a sound religious education—for two children of wealth and luxury, as to such things, most entirely destitute. But so it proved—and this was the only religious education they either of them could be said ever to receive; so utterly, so entirely, were all relations of this nature forgotten and neglected in this house of profusion, where not one single thing, but the one thing needful could be said to be wanting.
The story first beguiled the attention, and then awakened the deep interest of the two girls. From this day, a sort of acquaintance arose with Matty, which ripened into true affection; for Matty was, in fact, a woman of no common order.
She gradually awakened their sympathies with regard to subjects to her the most deeply interesting. She led them, not unwilling, in those paths which are indeed paths of pleasantness and peace. She read the Bible with them, and to them, and she taught them the vital principle of effectual religion—the need and the faith to pray.
I want space to follow the course of these influences upon the soul. Imperfect they were. Such a teacher could not lead them very far; but she brought them on Our Saviour's way. And though much remained of wrong, inexperienced and unconverted—the change was as from darkness to light.