Jessica's First Prayer; and, Jessica's Mother

by Hesba Stretton

Daniel had a good way to go, for the minister’s house was in an opposite direction to his own from the chapel. The November fogs still hung about London, and the lamps gave only a dim light through the gloom. Those who were yet walking about the streets marched quickly, as if anxious to reach whatever shelter they called their own.

Daniel himself was making his way as fast as he could along the muddy pavement, when he came to a part of the streets where the drainage was being repaired, and where charcoal fires were burning in braziers here and there, at once to give warning to the passers-by and to afford warmth to the watchmen who stayed beside them all night. One of the watchmen had brought an old door and reared it up against a rude wall of stone and bricks so as to form some protection from the rain, which now and then fell in short showers.

He had quitted his shed, for some reason or other, and as Daniel drew near his steps were arrested; for crouching underneath it, and stretching out her shrivelled arms over the brazier full of charcoal, was Jessica’s mother. The fitful light was shining strongly upon her face, and showed the deep lines which misery and degradation had ploughed upon it and the sullenness and stupidity which were stamped upon her features.

He stood still, gazing at her with disgust; but very soon a feeling of profound pity took its place. He had been wondering what had become of her since Friday morning, and had even felt a kind of anxiety about her; and now, as he thought of the room with its comfortable bed which was waiting for her, instead of the brief shelter of the shed, he climbed over the heaps of rubbish which lay between them, calling to her, for he did not know her name, “Jessica’s mother!”

The woman started to her feet at the sound of his voice, and looked him full in the face with an expression of utter wretchedness. Her eyes were inflamed and swollen with tears, and every feature was quivering as if she had no control over them. She was so miserable a creature that Daniel did not know in what words to speak to her; but his heart was moved with an unutterable compassion, unknown to him till now.

He even felt a sympathy for her, as if he had once been in the same depths of degradation, as he looked down shudderingly into the deep abyss where she had fallen by her sins; and the sense of her misery touched him so closely that he would have given his life for her salvation. He stretched out his hand towards her, but she pushed it away, and with a groan of despair she fled from the light, and sought to hide herself in the darkness of the foggy streets.

But Daniel was not easily turned aside from his desire to bring some help to Jessica’s mother, even if it were no more than to rescue her from the chilliness of the November night. He followed her with steps as rapid as her own, and only that she had the first start he would have been quickly at her side. She fled swiftly along the streets to escape from him, and he pursued her, hoping that she would soon weary and would turn to speak to him.

But she kept on until Daniel found himself at the entrance of one of the old bridges of the city which span the wide waters of the river. Side by side with it a new bridge was being constructed with massive beams of timber, and huge blocks of stone, and vast girders of iron, lying like some giant skeleton enveloped in the fog, yet showing dimly through it by the glare of red lights and blazing torches, which were kindled here and there, and cast flickering gleams upon the black waters beneath, into which Daniel looked down with a shiver, as he paused for a moment in his pursuit.

But he had lost sight of the woman when he lifted up his eyes again, unless the strange dark figure on one of the great beams stretching over the river was the form of Jessica’s mother. He pressed towards it, quitting the safety of the old bridge; but, as a wild and very mournful cry smote upon his ear, he missed his footing, and fell heavily upon a pile of masonry at some distance below him.

It could only have been a minute that he was unconscious, for the deep-toned clock of St. Paul’s had chimed the first stroke of midnight as he lost footing, and the boom of the last stroke was still ringing through the air when he tried to raise himself and look again for the dark figure which he had seen hanging over the river; but he could not move, and he lay quietly, without making a second effort, and thinking clearly over what had happened.