How long it was that she spoke no word—wrapped for the last time in her passion of intercession—Reuben did not notice; he only knelt on beside her, living upon every breath she drew. But, at the turn of the night, she looked full at him, clasped both his hands in hers, spoke so that the voice and the words rang in his heart through all his after-life—spoke not to him, but for him, and her words were those of the Memorare. Then, like one who has laid down for ever in most safe and tender keeping a heavy burden borne long and painfully, she crossed her hands upon her heart, but not now as if in pain; a look of glad surprise came upon her face.
“Hark!” she said. “He is coming again. My Lord and my God!”
When the Doctor entered Reuben’s cabin next morning, he found it in perfect order—the baby asleep in its cradle beside the hearth; Esther lying in a sort of funeral state, all done for her that could be done; and beside her knelt Reuben, whom the Doctor scarcely recognized at
first for the change upon him. In that night he had become an old man, and his friend believed that but for the baby’s sake he would have died; yet, two days later, the baby died, and still Reuben lived.
* * * * *
“A poor fool!” people called him. He had lost all interest in temporal matters, seemed hardly to know the use of money, and barely supported himself by the odd bits of work which he did for the idle women from house to house. Soon, however, they discovered that he had one talent, and that was for managing children. A woman one day suggested to him that he should “bide at home, and mind some babies for ’em, to keep ’em out of harm’s way; and he might teach the five-year-olds their letters, too—being fit for naught else,” she added in a tone as clear as that she used for the other words; but Reuben did not mind.
The proposal met with general favor; the women promised to supply him with meals from their own poor tables, “better than he’d get hisself, anyhow,” they said; and that was all he needed to keep him through the winter.
It seemed at first sight a very forlorn life. Where others less careless and simple could have lived in comfort, he lived in cold and hunger; one by one everything which he had brought from his distant home disappeared—given away to people in distress, or yielded without question to exorbitant and unfounded demands. Yet that bare, poverty-stricken room grew to be the one fair place in Gomorrah. There, for long hours of the winter days, might be seen a cluster of children gathered about a man who seemed in some respects as much a child as any of them, and who
taught them to be tidy and affectionate and good. A few learned their letters, but many learned their prayers, and the babies often said for their first word the name of Jesus, and all came to gaze lovingly upon the crucifix, and touch with pitying reverence the wounded hands and feet. Often the parents heard from childish lips the story of the Infant Saviour. No home now with a child in it where Sunday was not known. Men and women, large boys and girls, swore and fought in the streets still, but it soon became a rare sight to see a little child so forget itself; it would make Master Reuben sorry, and he said that it made the Heart of Jesus bleed. No one stopped him at such work; he was too poor a fool for them to mind him.
But he had another work with which they meddled much. The promise which the Doctor had made by Esther’s death-bed was not forgotten by him who made it, but it was broken again and again. His own lower nature which had ruled him all his life would have been enough, and more than enough, for such a man to struggle against; but, besides that, the fiends in human shape who peopled Gomorrah seemed leagued with invisible evil ones to work his utter ruin. They scoffed at his feeble efforts to do right; they lured him or they maddened him—it was all one to them—into the old haunts of temptation; and the very efforts which he made to escape, the very memory of Esther’s words and holy looks, the very thought of purity and self-control, seemed to make the evil deadlier and grosser, when, after sore struggle, he gave way.