"Nonsense, Mattie!" said Lucy, already tamed a little aside from her own sorrow by the words of the child. "You must put on your hat and come out with me."
"My bonnet, miss. Hats are only fit for very little girls. And I won't go till you read this poetry to me—if it be poetry."
Lucy took the book, and read. The verses were as follows:
As Christ went into Jericho town,
'Twas darkness all, from toe to crown,
About blind Bartimeus.
He said, Our eyes are more than dim,
And so, of course, we don't see Him,
But David's Son can see us.
Cry out, cry out, blind brother, cry;
Let not salvation dear go by;
Have mercy, Son of David.
Though they were blind, they both could hear—
They heard, and cried, and he drew near;
And so the blind were saved.
O Jesus Christ! I'm deaf and blind,
Nothing comes through into my mind,
I only am not dumb.
Although I see thee not, nor hear,
I cry because thou may'st be near;
O Son of David, come.
A finger comes into my ear;
A voice comes through the deafness drear;
Poor eyes, no more be dim.
A hand is laid upon mine eyes;
I hear, I feel, I see, I rise—
'Tis He, I follow Him.
Before Lucy had finished reading the not very poetic lines, they had somehow or other reached her heart. For they had one quality belonging to most good poetry—that of directness or simplicity; and never does a mind like hers—like hers, I mean, in truthfulness—turn more readily toward the unseen, the region out of which even that which is seen comes, than when a rain-cloud enwraps and hides the world around it, leaving thus, as it were, only the passage upward open. She closed the little book gently, laid it down, got Mattie's bonnet, and, heedless of the remarks of the child upon the poem, put it on her, and led her out. Her heart was too full to speak. As they went through the shop—
"A pleasant walk to you, ladies," said the bookseller.
"Thank you, Mr. Kitely," returned his daughter, for Lucy could not yet speak.
They had left Bagot Street, and were in one of the principal thoroughfares, before Lucy had got the lump in her throat sufficiently swallowed to be able to speak. She had not yet begun to consider where they should go. When they came out into the wider street, the sun, now near the going down, was shining golden through a rosy fog. Long shadows lay or flitted about over the level street. Lucy had never before taken any notice of the long shadows of evening. Although she was a town girl, and had therefore had comparatively few chances, yet in such wide streets as she had sometimes to traverse they were not a rare sight. In the city, to be sure, they are much rarer. But the reason she saw them now was that her sorrowful heart saw the sorrowfulness of the long shadows out of the rosy mist, and made her mind observe them. The sight brought the tears again into her eyes, and yet soothed her. They looked so strange upon that wood-paved street, that they seemed to have wandered from some heathy moor and lost themselves in the labyrinth of the city. Even more than the scent of the hay in the early morning, floating into the silent streets from the fields round London, are these long shadows to the lover of nature, convincing him that what seems the unnatural Babylon of artifice and untruth, is yet at least within the region of nature, contained in her bosom and subjected to her lovely laws; is on the earth as truly as the grassy field upon which the child sees with delighted awe his very own shadow stretch out to such important, yea, portentous, length. Even hither come the marvels of Nature's magic. Not all the commonplaces of ugly dwellings, and cheating shops that look churches in the face and are not ashamed, can shut out that which gives mystery to the glen far withdrawn, and loveliness to the mountain-side. From this moment Lucy began to see and feel things as she had never seen or felt them before. Her weeping had made way for a deeper spring in her nature to flow—a gain far more than sufficient to repay the loss of such a lover as Thomas, if indeed she must lose him.
But Mattie saw the shadows too.
"Well, miss, who'd have thought of such a place as this! I declare it bewilders my poor head. I feel every time a horse puts his foot on my shadow as if I must cry out. Isn't it silly? It's all my big head—it's not me; you know, miss."