And while they talked, and Marian felt the worse For having missed the worst of all their wrongs, A visitor was ushered through the wards And paused among the talkers. ‘When he looked, It was as if he spoke, and when he spoke He sang perhaps,’ said Marian; ‘could she tell? She only knew’ (so much she had chronicled, As seraphs might, the making of the sun) ‘That he who came and spake, was Romney Leigh, And then, and there, she saw and heard him first.’ And when it was her turn to have the face Upon her,—all those buzzing pallid lips Being satisfied with comfort—when he changed To Marian, saying ‘And you? you’re going, where?’— She, moveless as a worm beneath a stone Which some one’s stumbling foot has spurned aside, Writhed suddenly, astonished with the light, And breaking into sobs cried, ‘Where I go? None asked me till this moment. Can I say Where I go? when it has not seemed worth while To God himself, who thinks of every one, To think of me, and fix where I shall go?’
‘So young,’ he gently asked her, ‘you have lost Your father and your mother?’ ‘Both,’ she said, ‘Both lost! my father was burnt up with gin Or ever I sucked milk, and so is lost. My mother sold me to a man last month, And so my mother’s lost, ’tis manifest. And I, who fled from her for miles and miles, As if I had caught sight of the fires of hell Through some wild gap, (she was my mother, sir) It seems I shall be lost too, presently, And so we end, all three of us.’ ‘Poor child!’ He said,—with such a pity in his voice, It soothed her more than her own tears,—‘poor child! ’Tis simple that betrayal by mother’s love Should bring despair of God’s too. Yet be taught; He’s better to us than many mothers are, And children cannot wander beyond reach Of the sweep of his white raiment. Touch and hold! And if you weep still, weep where John was laid While Jesus loved him.’ ‘She could say the words,’ She told me, ‘exactly as he uttered them A year back, ... since, in any doubt or dark, They came out like the stars, and shone on her With just their comfort. Common words, perhaps; The ministers in church might say the same; But he, he made the church with what he spoke,— The difference was the miracle,’ said she.
Then catching up her smile to ravishment, She added quickly, ‘I repeat his words, But not his tones: can any one repeat The music of an organ, out of church? And when he said ‘poor child,’ I shut my eyes To feel how tenderly his voice broke through, As the ointment-box broke on the Holy feet To let out the rich medicative nard.’
She told me how he had raised and rescued her With reverent pity, as, in touching grief, He touched the wounds of Christ,—and made her feel More self-respecting. Hope, he called, belief In God,—work, worship ... therefore let us pray! And thus, to snatch her soul from atheism, And keep it stainless from her mother’s face, He sent her to a famous sempstress-house Far off in London, there to work and hope.
With that, they parted. She kept sight of Heaven, But not of Romney. He had good to do To others: through the days and through the nights, She sewed and sewed and sewed. She drooped sometimes, And wondered, while, along the tawny light, She struck the new thread into her needle’s eye, How people, without mothers on the hills, Could choose the town to live in!—then she drew The stitch, and mused how Romney’s face would look, And if ’twere likely he’d remember hers, When they two had their meeting after death.
FOURTH BOOK.
They met still sooner. ’Twas a year from thence When Lucy Gresham, the sick sempstress girl, Who sewed by Marian’s chair so still and quick, And leant her head upon the back to cough More freely when, the mistress turning round, The others took occasion to laugh out,— Gave up at last. Among the workers, spoke A bold girl with black eyebrows and red lips,— ‘You know the news? Who’s dying, do you think? Our Lucy Gresham. I expected it As little as Nell Hart’s wedding. Blush not, Nell, Thy curls be red enough without thy cheeks; And, some day, there’ll be found a man to dote On red curls.—Lucy Gresham swooned last night, Dropped sudden in the street while going home; And now the baker says, who took her up And laid her by her grandmother in bed, He’ll give her a week to die in. Pass the silk. Let’s hope he gave her a loaf too, within reach, For otherwise they’ll starve before they die, That funny pair of bedfellows! Miss Bell, I’ll thank you for the scissors. The old crone Is paralytic—that’s the reason why Our Lucy’s thread went faster than her breath, Which went too quick, we all know. Marian Erle! Why, Marian Erle, you’re not the fool to cry? Your tears spoil Lady Waldemar’s new dress, You piece of pity!’ Marian rose up straight, And, breaking through the talk and through the work, Went outward, in the face of their surprise, To Lucy’s home, to nurse her back to life Or down to death. She knew, by such an act, All place and grace were forfeit in the house, Whose mistress would supply the missing hand With necessary, not inhuman haste, And take no blame. But pity, too, had dues: She could not leave a solitary soul To founder in the dark, while she sate still And lavished stitches on a lady’s hem As if no other work were paramount. ‘Why, God,’ thought Marian, ‘has a missing hand This moment; Lucy wants a drink, perhaps. Let others miss me! never miss me, God!’
So Marian sate by Lucy’s bed, content With duty, and was strong, for recompense, To hold the lamp of human love arm-high To catch the death-strained eyes and comfort them, Until the angels, on the luminous side Of death, had got theirs ready. And she said, When Lucy thanked her sometimes, called her kind, It touched her strangely. ‘Marian Erle, called kind! What, Marian, beaten and sold, who could not die! ’Tis verily good fortune to be kind. Ah, you,’ she said, ‘who are born to such a grace, Be sorry for the unlicensed class, the poor, Reduced to think the best good fortune means That others, simply, should be kind to them.’