She was put out by Fortune’s hint that the dress was considered a fiction; and she was thoroughly annoyed by the story about Featherstone’s cowardly conduct. Bravery was one of the qualities that Jenny particularly admired; and she could not help feeling angry with Featherstone for thus lowering himself in her esteem. She thought of it many times during the week, when she was altering the flowered tabby to fit herself, and by the time that the dress was finished, Jenny’s regard for Robin Featherstone was about finished also. Love she had never had for him; but he had flattered her vanity, and she liked it.
The next Sunday morning came, and Jenny dressed herself in the flowered tabby, with a pink bow on her muslin tippet. With a gratified sense of pride, she passed Fortune and Dolly Campion on her way up the churchyard; not less gratified to hear their respective whispers.
“Well, it wasn’t a make-up, then!” said Dolly, in a rather disappointed tone.
“Dear heart! isn’t she fine?” responded Fortune.
Little did Jenny Lavender think, as she passed up the aisle to her father’s pew, that the Jenny who entered that church was never to leave it again. There was a stranger in the pulpit that day—a man of a very different sort from the usual preacher. He was an old man, and the style of his sermon was old-fashioned. Instead of being a learned and closely-reasoned discourse, seasoned with scraps of Latin, or a political essay on the events of the day, it was a sermon such as had been more common in the beginning of the century—simple, almost conversational, striking, and full of Gospel truth. Such a sermon Jenny Lavender had never heard before.
The text was Genesis, chapter 32, verse 26: “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.” The preacher told his hearers in a plain fashion, without any learned disquisitions or flowery phrases, what blessing meant; that for God to bless a man was to give him, not what he wished, but what he really needed for his soul’s welfare; that many things which men thought blessings, were really evils, and that all which did not help a man towards God, only hurried him faster on the road to perdition. He told them that Christ was God’s greatest blessing, His unspeakable gift; and that he who received Him was in truth possessed of all things. When he came near the end of his sermon, he bent forward over the pulpit cushion, and spoke with affectionate earnestness to his hearers.
“Now, brethren, how many here this day,” he said, “are ready to speak these words unto the Lord? How many of you earnestly desire His blessing? What, canst thou not get so far, poor soul? Be thine hands so weak that thou canst not hold Him? Be thy feet so feeble that thou canst not creep thus far up the ladder at the top whereof He standeth? Well, then, let us see if thou canst reach the step beneath—‘Lord, I most earnestly desire Thy salvation.’ Or is this too far for thy foot to stretch? Canst thou say but, ‘Lord, I desire Thy salvation,’ however feeble and faint thy desire be? Poor sinful soul, art thou so chained and weak, that thou canst not come even so far? Then see if thy trembling foot will not reach the lowest step of all: ‘Lord, make me to desire Thy salvation.’ Surely, howsoever sunk in the mire, and howsoever blind thou be, thou canst ask to be lifted forth, and to have sight given thee. Brethren, will ye not so do? When ye fall to your prayers this even, ere ye sleep, will ye not say so much as this? Yea, will ye not go further, and run up the ladder, and cry with a mighty voice, ‘I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me’?”
When Jenny Lavender came out of church, she stood on the second step of the ladder. She scarcely heard Abigail Walker’s taunt of “Well, if Mrs Jane did give her the gown, I’ll go bail she stole that pink ribbon.” Such things were far beneath one who had set foot on that ladder. And Jenny did not stay at the bottom; she ran up fast. By the time that she knelt down at her bedside for her evening prayers, she had come to the fourth step—“I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me.”
The last atom of Jenny’s old admiration for Robin Featherstone, which had been already shaken, vanished that day. The Spirit of God, who had touched her heart through the preacher, led her to see that folly, vanity, and frivolity were utterly out of concord with Him. And then came a feeling of regret for the unkind flippancy with which she had treated Tom Fenton. Jenny knew that Tom was a Christian man; it had been one reason why she despised him, so long as she was not herself a Christian woman. There was a gulf between them now, and of her own digging. Tom had given over coming to the farm except on business; he gave her a kindly “Good morrow!” when they met, but it was no more than he gave to Kate, or any other girl of his acquaintance; and Jenny saw nothing of him beyond that. On every side she heard his praises, as a doer of brave and kindly actions. She knew that, apart from the mere outside, there was not a man to be compared to Tom Fenton in the whole neighbourhood. It was bitter to reflect that the time had been when Tom was ready to put himself and all he had at her feet, and she had only her own folly to thank that it was over. No wonder Jenny grew graver, and looked older than she used to be. Her father was uneasy about her; he feared she was either ill or unhappy, and consulted his sensible old mother.
“Nay,” said Mrs Lavender, “Jenny’s not took bad; and as for her sadness, it’s just womanhood coming to her. Don’t you spoil it, Joe. The furnace burns up the dross, and let it go! It won’t hurt the good gold.”