The Christian: A Story

by Sir Hall Caine

They had reached the last verse but one, when he saw a young girl crushing her way toward him with a letter. She was smiling, and seemed proud to render him this service. He was about to lay the letter aside when he glanced at it, and then he could not put it down. It was marked “Urgent,” and the address was in Glory's handwriting. The champing waves were in his ears again. They were coming on and on.

A presentiment of evil crept over him and he opened the letter and read it. Then his life fell to wreck in a moment. Its nullity, its hopelessness, its futility, its folly, the world with its elusive joys, love with its deceptions so cruel and so sweet-all, all came sweeping up on him like the sea-wrack out of a storm. In an instant the truth appeared to him, and he understood himself at last. For Glory's sake he had sacrificed everything and deceived himself before God and man. And yet she had failed him and forsaken him, and slipped out of his hands in the end. The tide had overtaken and surrounded him, and the voices of the girls and the children were like the roar of the waters in his ears.

But what was this? Why had they stopped singing? All at once he became aware that everybody else was seated, and that he was standing alone on the edge of the platform with Glory's letter in his hand.

“Hush! hush!” There was a strained silence, and he tried to recollect what it was that he was expected to do. Every eye was on his face. Some of the strangers opened note-books and sat ready to write. Then, coming to himself, he understood what was before him, and tried to control his voice and begin.

“Girls,” he said, but he was hardly able to speak or breathe. “Girls,” he said again, but his strong voice shook, and he tried in vain to go on.

One of the girls began to sob. Then another and another. It was said afterward that nobody could look on his drawn face, so hopeless, so full of the traces of suffering and bitter sadness, without wanting to cry aloud. But he controlled himself at length.

“My good friends all, you came to-night to bid me Godspeed on a long journey and I came to bid you farewell. But there is a higher power that rules our actions, and it is little we know of our own future, or our fate or ourselves. God bids me tell you that my leper island is to be London, and that my work among you is not done yet.”

After saying this he stood a moment as if intending to say more, but he said nothing. The letter crinkled in his fingers, he looked at it, an expression of helplessness came into his face, and he sat down. And then the Father came up to him and sat beside him, and took his hand and comforted it as if he had been a little child.

There was another attempt to sing, but the hymn made no headway this time, for some of the girls were crying, they hardly knew why, and others were whispering, and the strangers were leaving the room. Two ladies were going down the stairs.

“I felt sure he wouldn't go,” said one.