“Light has begun to dawn on your trouble, Jane,” said the vicar; “and be sure brighter light will follow. We must do our best, and leave it to the Lord to carry out his own purposes in his own wise and gracious way. Sure I am of this, that you will find the fuller light come in due time; and, more than that, that you will see that good has all the while been working out, through this trial, to others as well as to yourself.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir,” said Bradly; “she’ll have cause in the end even to bless the Lord for this affliction. And, after all, I don’t see why we shouldn’t try and find out Hollands’ whereabouts through some of his old companions, when he’s been a little while in foreign parts; and if we write and tell him about the loss of the bag, I don’t doubt, if he’s truly sorry for what he’s done to Jane,—and it seems likely as he is,—he’ll write her back such a letter as will clear up all with Lady Morville. But the next step is just to leave all in the Lord’s hands for the present.”
And so it was left.
Chapter Nine.
Crossbourne Annual Temperance Meeting.
Week after week rolled by, and James Barnes continued firm to the pledge which he had signed in Thomas Bradly’s “Surgery.” And now the usual time for holding the annual meeting of the “Crossbourne Temperance Society” had come round, and a meeting was accordingly advertised to be held in the Town Hall. But mischief was apparently brewing; for all the bills announcing the meeting which were posted on the walls were either torn down or defaced the same night that they were put up,—a thing which had never happened before. So it would seem that the enemies of the temperance cause were prepared to offer more than ordinary opposition, and that very possibly they might try to spoil or interrupt the meeting itself.
And the friends of the temperance movement in Crossbourne had not to look far to find the cause. There had been mutterings of a coming storm for some time past. The lovers of strong drink, supported by those who made capital out of their unnatural and ruinous thirst, had been laying plans and concocting schemes for thwarting the steady advance which temperance was making in the town. And now the sudden and shocking death of poor Joseph Wright, so far from teaching any of his old associates the lesson which God, who can bring good even out of man’s evil, would have had them learn from that frightful disaster, had only made them plunge more deeply into the slough of drunkenness; and so total abstainers and their principles got more abuse and hatred from them than ever. Conscience would be heard for a little while, roused into utterance as it was by the death of their miserable companion; but they hated that inward voice—it exasperated them. Drink they would have, and cordially would they hate more and more all who would try, however gently and lovingly, to draw them away from the intoxicating cup. And now the desertion of James Barnes, as they considered it, to the enemy, made the fire of their wrath and indignation burn with a tenfold intensity.
“We’re like to have hot work to-night, sir,” said Bradly to the vicar, as he sat in the vicarage study on the morning of the meeting talking over the arrangements for the evening.