The World Before Them Volume Ii Part 15

Gerard took it, and pressed it reverentially.

"We are friends then?"

"Yes. I hope for ever."

"Amen!" said her companion heartily; "and now, little one, no more sentimentality, but let us go to work."

Shouldering the carpet-bag across his stick, the vicar led the way over the lawn, and on to the heath.

"Where are we going?" asked Dorothy, not a little amused at the decided manner in which her companion took to the road.

"Do you know a place called Hog Lane, at the bottom of the heath, on the east side, where it slopes down to the salt flats?"

"Yes, I have been there looking for the cows with Gilbert."

"And who is Gilbert?"

Mr. Fitzmorris suddenly faced about. He was walking still ahead, and cast such a sharp penetrating glance at Dorothy, that she felt her face crimson, and her knees tremble with agitation.

"Is he your brother, or your sweetheart?"

"Neither, Mr. Fitzmorris. He is the son of the kind people who brought me up."

"And you never took a fancy to each other. Eh, Dorothy?"

"Oh, yes, we did," returned Dorothy, with great simplicity. "But that is all off now, and he is going to marry somebody else. I did love him with my whole heart and soul, and it caused me the greatest anguish of mind I ever experienced, to try and forget him. It's all for the best, Mr.

Fitzmorris, but it was hard to realize the dreadful truth that he had ceased to love me."

She turned aside to hide her tears.

Gerard was shocked that his careless speech had given her so much pain, for of this part of her history Mrs. Martin had not spoken. Perhaps she was afraid by so doing that she might lessen the interest which she perceived that Mr. Fitzmorris felt in Dorothy.

"Forgive me, Dorothy, I spoke at random. How little we understand the might of words, their power of conferring pleasure, or giving intense pain. Do dry these tears; the sight of them quite unmans me. By-and-by, when we are better friends, you will tell me all about it, and we can sympathize with each other."

"And you have known that great heart sorrow?" sobbed Dorothy.

"In its deepest, fullest sense, Dorothy Chance. But the loss of my earthly love gave birth to one of a higher and n.o.bler character--the love of Christ--which has made me happy, indeed. May the same blessed balm, my poor girl, be poured into your wounds."

"They are closing," returned Dorothy. "It is only now and then, when some casual observation brings it to my mind, that they open afresh."

"Oh, the might of words," again sighed her companion. "But let us banish all such melancholy reminiscences. See, yonder is the entrance to Hog Lane, a very dirty unromantic spot;" and he pointed out the location with his stick. A row of low dilapidated cottages, fronting the marsh.

"Who owns this property?"

"It belongs to Miss Watling. The people who live in these hovels are her tenants."

"It well deserves the name of Hog Lane. I must have some talk with that woman, and try and persuade her to repair the houses. They are not fit habitations for pigs."

"She is so fond of money, you will scarcely get her to do anything to make them more comfortable," said Dorothy.

"Well, if she steadily refuses, I must do something to them myself. The house just before us, and to which we are going, has such a broken roof, that the rain falls upon my poor dying old friend, as he lies in his bed. I will call upon her, and take her out to see him, which cannot fail to win her compa.s.sion."

Mr. Fitzmorris rapped at the half-open door of the first house in the row. A feeble voice bade him "come in," and Dorothy followed her conductor into a small dark room, dimly lighted by a few broken panes of gla.s.s.

An old man was lying on a flock bed that stood in a corner of the room, beside which a little girl was seated knitting. The furniture of the room consisted of the aforesaid bed, a ricketty table and the three-legged stool which the small individual occupied. Various discoloured pieces of crockery, and a few old cooking utensils were ranged on a worm-eaten shelf. The old man's face wore an expression of patient endurance. It was much wasted and deadly pale. His dim eyes brightened, however, as Mr. Fitzmorris approached his bed. "Well, my dear old friend," he said, in his deep tender voice, and taking one of the thin hands that lay upon the ragged patchwork coverlid, in his own.

"How is the Lord dealing with you to-day?"

"Graciously," was the gentle reply. "I have not suffered such acute pain in my limbs, and my mind has had a season of rest. I feel nearer to Him, and my heart is refreshed and comforted. I know that the Lord is good, 'that His mercy endureth for ever,' thanks be to your reverence, for the care you have taken of my soul. If you had not been sent to me like a good angel, I should have died in my sins, and never come to a knowledge of the truth."

"Ah, you will forget all the bodily suffering when the glorious day of your release comes, you will then own with trembling joy, that it was good for you to have been thus afflicted. But where is Rachel, Jones?"

he continued, looking round the room. "In your helpless state, you cannot well be left alone."

"Please, sir, mother is gone to s...o...b.. to buy bread," said the little girl. "She left me to take care of neighbour Francis, during her absence."

"How long has she been away?"

"Since the morning."

"And my poor old friend has not been turned in his bed all day?"

"Ah, it's very weary lying in the one position for so many hours,"

sighed the paralyzed man. "But I have borne it as patiently as I could."

Stepping up to the bed, Mr. Fitzmorris raised the sufferer in his strong arms, adjusted his pillows comfortably, and turned him gently on his side, with his face to the open door, that he might be refreshed with a view of the country beyond. Then taking a little flask from his carpet-bag, he gave him a gla.s.s of wine, and handing another bottle to Dorothy, he told her to go into the next house, and warm the broth it contained at Martha Brown's fire. When Dorothy returned with a bowl of rich broth, she found the vicar sitting on the bed, reading to the old man from a small pocket Bible. The rapt look of devotion in the sick man's face, and the heavenly expression which played like a glory round the calm brow of the vicar would have made a study for a painter.

Dorothy paused in the door-way to contemplate it. To her it was a living picture of beauty--and when, after the chapter was concluded, and in his sweet solemn manner, Mr. Fitzmorris said, "Let us pray," she knelt down by the humble bed, and upon the broken floor, and prayed with all her heart.

What a simple touching prayer it was that flowed from those gracious lips; it seemed to embody the spiritual wants of all present--but when, on rising from his knees, Mr. Fitzmorris proceeded to feed the old man, who was utterly incapable of helping himself, she could not restrain her tears.

"Oh, let me do that," she said.

He answered her with his quiet smile.

"Not to-day, Dorothy. To me it is a blessed privilege to administer to the wants of a suffering servant of Christ. When you have experienced the happiness it imparts, you will go and do likewise."

On leaving the impotent man, he paid a visit to the three other dwellings, which were all comprised under the one roof.

To Martha Brown, a widow with six young children, he gave a Bible and a tract. For she had been a mechanic's wife, had seen better days, and could read and write. After speaking words of comfort and cheering, he slipped into her hand money to buy shoes, and a new suit for her eldest boy, whom he had recommended into a gentleman's service, but the lad wanted decent clothing before he could accept the offer. This the good Samaritan generously supplied. "The Lord bless you, sir," said the woman, putting her ap.r.o.n to her eyes. "I hope Jim will never disgrace the good character your reverence has given him."

Rachel Jones, the occupant of the third cottage, a farm labourer's wife, was out. She was regularly paid by Mr. Fitzmorris for attending upon Thomas Francis, whom his benevolence had saved from the workhouse--a fate which the poor old man greatly dreaded.

The last cabin they entered was more dirty and dilapidated than the three other dwellings; its tenant, a poor shoemaker, who patched and re-soled the coa.r.s.e high-lows used by the farm servants. He was a middle-aged man, with a large, half-grown-up family of squalid, bare-footed, rude girls and boys. His wife had been dead for several years, and his mother, an aged crone, bent double with the rheumatism, though unable to leave her chair, ruled the whole family with her venomous tongue. "She is a very uninteresting person," said Mr.

Fitzmorris, in a whisper to Dorothy, as he rapped at the door, "but the poor creature has a soul to be saved, and the greater her need, the more imperative the duty to attempt her conversion."

Before the least movement was made to admit the visitors, a shrill, harsh voice screamed out,

"Ben! Who be that at the door?"

"New parson, and Farmer Rushmere's gal."