This direct appeal broke Nell down. No one had given her such sympathy as this before.
‘Oh, yes, Hugh, yes, I have,’ she cried. ‘I try so hard to forget, but it seems impossible. I longed so much to come back to Panty-cuckoo. I thought the beautiful, quiet, peaceful country would heal my sore wound, and help me to forget. But it seems worse than the town. There, the rattle and the noise might have shut out other sounds. But here, in the peaceful silence, I hear voices and see faces that I want to shut out from my mind for ever. Oh, it is very hard that, when one tries and wishes to be good and do no wrong, God should let the devil have such dominion over us. Why is it, Hugh? Why doesn’t He hear our prayers and let us forget? Sometimes I feel as if I should go mad in Panty-cuckoo, when I remember the time when I was a little girl and went black-berrying or nutting with you and the other children, and remember those happy, innocent days can never, never come over again. Oh, Hugh, I feel as if I had been in possession of untold wealth, and I had deliberately thrown it away. Will it always be so? Shall I never be any better? Am I to go on suffering like this to my life’s end?’
‘I hope not, Nell,’ replied the young man. ‘You are not strong enough for dairy and farm work, and it leaves your brain too little to do, so it broods incessantly upon the past. The work you want, Nell, is head work—something by which you will feel you are benefiting others. That is the employment to bring peace and forgetfulness in its train. You should be a missionary, as I am.’
‘A missionary—I? Ah, now, Hugh, you are laughing at me. A preacher should have no sins to look back upon.’
‘Then there would be no preachers in the world, Nell. I say, on the contrary, that no one can teach others till he himself has been taught of God. He cannot relieve suffering, unless he, too, has suffered. He cannot know the enormity of sin, nor the trouble it brings in its train, till he himself has sinned as we all have, and if any man says he has not, he lies before the God who made him.’
‘But not like I have,’ said poor Nell, with her face hidden in her hands.
‘Don’t you think, Nell,’ said Hugh, ‘when you remember all the suffering and shame and remorse that your sin has brought you, that you could speak very forcibly to any girl whom you saw in danger of running the same risk? Would not you, out of the kindness of your woman’s heart, warn her not to do as you have done, and point out to her the pain that must succeed it?’
‘Oh, yes, of course I could and would, Hugh. It would be very cruel not to do so.’
‘Then, you see, you are fit for a missionary. You said just now that, if your father had a son to accompany him to a new country, emigration would be a different thing for him. Well, if he elects to go, I am willing to accompany him, and to be, as far as in me lies, as a son to him—aiding him all I can with my strong young arm and head—on one condition.’
‘What is the condition, Hugh?’ asked Nell.