"No, no," cried Lucy. "I do not."
"Facts are certainly stubborn things, as people say. But it is equally certain that they are the most slippery things to get a hold of. And even when you have got a hold of them, they can be used with such different designs—after such varying fashions, that no more unlike buildings can be constructed of the same bricks or hewn stones, than conclusions arrived at from precisely the same facts. And this because all the facts round about the known facts, and which keep those facts in their places, compelling them to combine after a certain fashion, are not known, or perhaps are all unknown. For instance, your correspondent does not know—at least he does not give you to understand that he knows—how his informant arrived at the knowledge of the facts upon which he lays such stress. When I recall Thomas's whole bearing and conduct I cannot for a moment accept the conclusions arrived at by him, whatever may be the present appearance of the facts he goes upon. Facts are like faces—capable of a thousand expressions and meanings. Were you satisfied entirely with Thomas's behavior in the talk you had with him?"
"Entirely. It left nothing to wish more, or different."
"Then you have far deeper ground to build upon than any of those facts. They can no more overturn your foundation than the thickest fog can remove the sun from the heavens. You cannot prove that the sun is there. But neither can you have the smallest real doubt that he is there. You must wait with patience, believing all things, hoping all things."
"That is just what I have been saying to myself. Only I wanted to hear you say it too. I wanted it to come in at my ears as well as out of my heart."
When a month had passed away, however, bringing no news of Thomas; when another month had passed, and still he neither came nor wrote, hope deferred began to work its own work and make Lucy's heart sick. But she kept up bravely, through the help of her daily labor. Those that think it hard to have to work hard as well as endure other sore trials, little know how much those other trials are rendered endurable by the work that accompanies them. They regard the work as an additional burden, instead of as the prop which keeps their burdens from crushing them to the earth. The same is true of pain—sometimes of grief, sometimes of fear. And all of these are of the supports that keep the weight of evil within us, of selfishness, and the worship of false gods, from sinking us into Tophet. They keep us in some measure from putting our trust in that which is weak and bad, even when they do but little to make us trust in God.
Nor did this season of trial to Lucy pass by without bringing some little measure of good to the poor, disappointed, fretful soul of her grandmother. How much Widdles had to do with it—and my reader must not despise Widdles; many a poor captive has been comforted by a mouse, a spider, a rat even; and I know a lady who, leading a hard life while yet a child, but possessing one little garret-room as her own, with a window that opened on the leads, cultivated green things there enough to feed a few pet snails, to each of which she gave the name of one of her best friends, great names, too, and living names, so that I will not, as she most innocently and lovingly did, associate them with snails, though even thus they were comforters to her brave heart;—how much Widdles had to do with it, I say, and how much the divine help of time, and a sacred deprivation of that hope in chance which keeps man sometimes from hoping in God, I cannot tell; it was the work of the all-working Spirit, operating in and on her mind mediately or immediately. She grew calmer, and began to turn her thoughts a little away from what she fancied might have been if things had not gone wrong so perversely, and to reflect on the fact, which she had often expressed in words, but never really thought about before—that it would be all the same a hundred years after—a saying which, however far from true—although, in fact, taken logically as it stands, absolutely false—yet has, wrapt up in it, after a clumsy fashion, a very great and important truth. By slow degrees her former cheerfulness began to show a little light over her hitherto gloomy horizon; her eyes became less turbid; she would smile occasionally, and her communications with Widdles grew more airy. I do most potently believe that Widdles was, not only in the similarity, but in the infinitesimality (I am sorry to have to coin a word) of his influence, homeopathically operative in working a degree of cure in the troubled nature of the old woman.
"Ah, Widdles, Widdles!" she would say, as she rubbed the unavailing Balm of Columbia on his blue back, "you and I know what trouble is! Don't we, old bird?"
She began to have a respect for her own misfortunes, which indicated that they had begun to recede a little from the point of her vision. To have had misfortunes is the only distinction some can claim. How much that can distinguish one man from another, judge, oh Humanity. But the heart that knows its own bitterness, too often forgets that there is more bitterness in the world than that.
Widdles would cock his magnificent head and whiskers on one side, and wink with one eye, as much as to say, "I believe you, old girl." Then he would turn his denuded, featherless back upon her, as much as to add, with more solemnity: "Contemplate my condition, madam. Behold me. Imagine what I once was, that you may understand the spite of fortune which has reduced me to my present bareness. Am I not a spectacle to men and angels? And am I not therefore distinguished above my fellows?" Perhaps, however, I am all wrong in giving this interpretation to the actions of the bird. Perhaps the influence that flowed from him into the heart of Mrs. Boxall was really such as, put in words, would amount to this: "Here I am without a feather to hide my somewhat skinny proportions; but what the worse am I? Who cares? So long as you don't, I don't. Let's turn about once more. My dancing days are over; but life is life, even without feathers."