CHAPTER XVIII.

_LIGHT IN DARKNESS._

Oh, trust me, never fell By love a spirit or earthly or of heaven: Rather by love they are regenerate. Love is the happy privilege of mind-- Love is the reason of all living things.

Margaret's work was not over. In that transcendent moment when death was staring her in the face she had made a certain resolution, and the security that followed the danger did not make her shrink from carrying it out. Strange but true; the words in which she had striven with the desperate spirit of evil that had taken possession of Jane Rodgers actually represented her state of mind at the time. Margaret had thrown herself out of herself. With the renovating power of the intensest pity she had looked into the troubled spirit which was revealing itself in all its unutterable depths of misery, and she had resolved to save it even from itself. Hence it was that instead of the abject cries self-pity would have drawn from the proudest heart at this supreme crisis, her words had been calm, self-contained, spoken with an authority which to the half-crazed brain of the desperate woman was so strange as to seem mysterious and supernatural.

This it was that had saved Margaret at least from severe bodily harm. In sheer astonishment the woman's hand had been stayed, and before the wicked impulse could return help was at the door. The help had come so strangely that Jane's superstitious fears were confirmed. She began to think her mistress possessed some secret power. The idea cowed her. She became abject in her dread. She looked upon the woman she had injured as one surrounded by invisible protectors, ready at a moment's notice to come to her assistance.

Even on that first evening Margaret had read a part at least of this in her landlady's face. The sullen frown did not leave Jane's brow, but the defiance had gone. It was a change for the better, yet Margaret was not satisfied; she wanted more than this. She had felt on that night like one in actual contact with the wild powers of darkness, struggling at the very mouth of the bottomless pit for a lost soul; and the impression continued. With the perseverance of a dominant idea that haunts the mind it followed her through her sleep. She seemed to hear the despairing cries of a dying soul; she seemed to see the mocking smiles of fiends who were waiting, like the vultures of the sandy wastes, till the last convulsive throes should be over to claim the lost thing for their own; she seemed to feel the last speechless agony, the outer darkness of despair.

Once she awoke, for the oppression was choking her, and when the waking reality of the dream came back in all its fulness she rose and knelt by her bed. "Thou hast saved _me_, my God," she prayed; "give _me_ the power of saving, of helping to salvation, this wandering spirit." After that she was calmer; she was able to lie and watch, as she scarcely cared to sleep again, for the breaking of the morning, and to think and plan about the best method of carrying out her noble work.

"Love is the antidote of hatred," thought Margaret; "I will teach this woman to love, and perhaps love may be a ladder of life to her soul."

The morning broke slowly. She threw open her window and watched how it spread itself over sea and sky. Then there was a stir in the village. Windows and doors were opened, carts began to move heavily in the streets, and the steps of passing laborers could be distinctly heard.

Margaret bowed her head upon her hand. "They come from homes," she murmured; "they will go back to them to-night. My home is not."

But a rosy light spread itself over the sea; the waves that were rolling steadily in to the shore caught on their rebound a glow as of sapphire. It was the sun, and the sun brought hope. Then came movement in the house; it showed that Jane was astir. Margaret's mind went back to its planning. After a few moments' thought she wrapped her dressing-gown round her and crept on tip-toe to the door of the room where Martha Foster slept. The old woman was sleeping the sleep of the righteous. Margaret closed the door of communication; and then she rang the bell. Before her landlady could harden her heart against her Margaret wished to make some impression. While the scene of the past night was still fresh in her mind she might be more ready to hear the words of love and forgiveness Margaret had prepared herself to utter.

Some minutes passed before Jane appeared. She was at a loss to imagine what the object of her mistress could be. Jane had awoke that morning like one who has been under the power of a fearful nightmare. She could scarcely believe at first that she _was_ herself, and that she was actually free from crime. But when she did, she felt for the first time in her life an emotion of earnest thankfulness to the Power, visible or invisible, which had withheld her hand.

For Jane had always been a prudent woman. As a general rule her passions had been kept in check by some stronger motive-power. Cupidity, self-love, interest, a strong desire for that paradise of a certain class, respectability and independence, keen common sense that showed the folly of a momentary gratification of passion, followed by a life-long repentance,--these had hitherto kept her from all the grosser forms of sin.

But this time they had all been too weak. The hatred had been nourished in her heart till it had grown into a master-passion; fear of her treachery being discovered, indignation and disgust at the new happiness that seemed to be opening out before the object of her hatred, had added their fearful impulse to her heated soul, and then came the storm, the darkness, the opportunity.

In the cool clear morning Jane shuddered. If she had carried out her dark purpose, what would she have been that morning? In all probability a hunted criminal. She was thankful for her escape, but not yet truly penitent for the sin. The soul from which one baffled demon has been banished is ready for the seven if it be not occupied and filled with some better guest.

Jane obeyed Margaret's call after a few moments' delay. She knocked at the bedroom door, opened it and stood on the threshold, a quiet, respectable-looking person, but there was a sullen frown on her brow. "Did you please to want anything, ma'am?" she asked. Her broom was in her hand--a hint, as it were, that she was in no mood to be delayed.

"Only to speak to you, Jane," said Margaret. "Come here; Mrs. Foster seems to be fast asleep and I have shut the door, or if you like I can speak to you in the next room, but we may not have so good an opportunity again."

Jane looked down: "What might you wish to say to me, ma'am?"

There was a forced unconcern in her manner that was not particularly encouraging, but Margaret would not despair. She held out her hand with a smile: "I fear you distrust me, Jane. Why," she continued in a tone of such deep sadness that the landlady's heart, in spite of herself, was touched--"why will you persist in being my enemy? God is my witness that I would do you good."

"You ain't got nothing to do with me," said Jane, in a stifled voice. "If I choose to go to the bad, what's that to you or anybody else? I won't try to hurt _you_ again, if that's what you want to know, and only that I was mad I wouldn't have done it last night."

"I know you were mad--I felt it then; and then I resolved that I would save you from yourself. You are mistaken, my poor woman; it is much, very much, to me, whether, as you express it, you go to the bad. Jane, I believe it has been given to me to save you, and, God helping me, I will do it."

She spoke with a quiet determination that had marvellous power. Her dream was with her once more. She seemed to see the wild, unholy tumult; she seemed to be holding, clinging to the wretched life that death in death was swallowing up.

And Jane watched her with a curious emotion, very strange and utterly incomprehensible to herself.

The hard, selfish side of life had chiefly presented itself to the landlady, both as regarded her own nature and the nature of those with whom she had come into contact. This divine self-forgetfulness, this pure love of the erring even because of its miserable errors, was something so new as to be a kind of revelation to her soul. A good she had conceived impossible seemed to be opening itself out as not only possible, but real. And the revelation had a renovating power. There came over her a remembrance of the time when she had been "joyful and free from blame."

It brought a sudden softness to her heart. But she would not give way to it. She seized her broom and half turned, so as to hide her face from Margaret's gaze. "What's the use of talking?" she said in a stifled voice; "talking won't make me no better. I hated you; why can't you hate me and be done with it?"

"Because I do _not_ hate you, Jane; because, on the contrary, my soul is filled with earnest longing for your good. It came to me here in last night's darkness as I thought of your words that perhaps I had given some cause for these feelings of yours. I have wrapped myself up in my own sorrows and have neglected to enter with a woman's sympathy into your troubles and joys. For--I know it--we must not and cannot live to ourselves. Selfishness brings its own punishment."

Jane looked down: "I have no troubles in particular, not to interest anybody but--"

It had come over her in an irresistible flood, the remembrance of her _one_ happy time. Ah! it is a great fact, mysterious but true--misery and hopeless wretchedness make half the criminals that fill our jails, that prowl undetected about our streets. To the happy goodness is easy.

Jane broke down suddenly, and throwing herself on her knees buried her face in the bed-clothes: "If _he_ had been true to me I'd have been another woman. Oh! God was cruel. I was getting soft when he was coming and going with his pleasant ways: it was too short--" Her voice was choked with sobs. "I've been bad--bad from that day. I'm getting worse, and God has left me. What'll I do? what'll I do?"

Margaret's eyes filled with tears. She stooped down and drawing one of the woman's reluctant hands from the hidden face, held it in her own.

"I thought so," she said gently, as if speaking to herself: "there is always a background." Then to the weeping woman: "Think of it--you and I, my poor Jane, living here together, and shutting up our troubles in our own hearts. No wonder we grew hard and selfish. But it is over, is it not? You will help me to bear, and I will teach you to love. This is what you want to take you out of yourself. Look up, Jane; be of good courage."

But she only wept the more bitterly. "I can't," she said; "my heart is like stone."

Margaret touched the heated face with cool, soft fingers.

"What do these tears mean?" she said gently. "They come from a heart that is becoming soft, if it is not soft already. Yes, I feel it too. We ought to be drawn out of ourselves. It is necessary to our happiness, to the healthy life of our souls. We grow morbid here in our solitude, with our thoughts toward inward. Since my darling little one was taken from me I too have been getting hard, Jane, or perhaps you and I might have understood each other better. But I thank God there is still time before us. You must let me into the secrets of your life. I will tell you what my sufferings have been, that there may be a true sympathy between us; then we must look out from our own sorrows to the great world of suffering around us, and whether the future bring happiness or grief, it need not be altogether bereft of the treasures of love and sympathy."

Jane listened, and her tears ceased. The words of Margaret were like oil on the troubled waters. They brought hope, they suggested possible comfort in a future that but a few moments before had been black with the utter blackness of despair.

For humanity is not ever entirely bad. I think no living, breathing creature can be said to be hopelessly depraved. Sin, it is said, brings its own punishment, but the heaviest punishment sin can bring is the agonizing suffering it inflicts upon the soul. To be without hope of that beautiful attribute we call goodness would be misery unimaginable.

Yet this was what Jane had been feeling that morning, and Margaret's words were like rays of light pointing to a possible redemption. "If I'd aught in the whole world to care about," she said, "I'd try and be better, but--"

And then she stopped suddenly, for Jane was eminently practical, and an idea had flashed in upon her brain.

"Have you no friends?" asked Margaret.

"I was thinking of the child," she said.

"What child?"

"He married my young sister," she answered, speaking slowly and with apparent difficulty, "and I hated him and her too; but afterward I was glad, for he treated her bad. She died of a broken heart, they say. I never went nigh her, though she sent to beg me hard. That's three years agone next Whitsuntide. They had three or four children; all died but one, a boy two years old when sister died. The father, he went off, no one knows where, and Willie--that's his name, they say--was put in the workhouse. I seen him once"--her voice grew broken again--"a fine little chap, like his father, and for a bit I felt inclined to bring him home, but that look of his made me hard and I came away."

Margaret smiled a brooding, motherly smile: "God is good to you, Jane. He has not left you, as you said. He has given you little Willie. You must find him, and I think he will soon teach you to love."

Jane had almost forgotten, in the new sweetness of speaking about her own feelings, to whom she had been addressing herself. Margaret's words reminded her, and she was struck with a sudden sense of wonder, almost of awe.

"Why do you care for me?" she said in a low tone. "I've insulted you, I've acted wrong by you, I've tried to do you a mischief, and you listen to me, you take an interest that nobody ever did before, and you're not afraid of me, either," she continued confusedly. "There's them, I believe, as won't allow a hair of your head to fall. There must be a reason for it."

"Only the reason that I told you, Jane. I want to save you from yourself; but Mrs. Foster is moving, and I don't wish our conversation to be overheard. I must hear more about little Willie at another time." She held out her hand: "We are friends, are we not?"

Jane took it in an awkward, bewildered kind of way. Then, as she looked into her mistress's face and read nothing but forgiveness there, her feelings became quite too much for her. Throwing her apron over her head, she rushed out of the room crying like a little child. For the spirit of a little child had come into the hard heart.

Her night had been dark as pitch, but already the fair dawning had gleamed out of the east.