Part 9

"Don't you see I've a kind of credit in the village for hanging out my colors boldly, and trying at least to sail by the chart? When I go Sunday after Sunday and sit with a sick, I fear a dying man, and join with him in cheerful talk, as if I'd never an object but to make the time pass pleasantly, I only cause him to think, 'There's Ned Franks, a dreadfully strict and precise old tar; he must be sure that I'm steering all right, for if he saw danger he'd be certain to bid me _sheer off_.'"

"But I have no doubt that your conversation often takes a religious turn," observed Persis.

"A religious turn!" repeated Franks, in a rather sarcastic tone; "ay, a kind of sop to my conscience, and, perhaps, poor fellow, to his. We talk, maybe, of the sermon, and the way in which busy hands are getting on with repairing the almshouses, and what a good minister the vicar is, and how glad we shall be if the Lord lets him fill the pulpit again. There's a text put in here and there, and Stone says something about being thankful for having no pain, and having been given a good wife and a comfortable home, and such peace in his mind. But I know that such conversations as these held with one who, in a few months, will probably suffer that great change for which I cannot in charity think him prepared, is but a kind of idle beating and tacking about; it is not going to the heart of the matter; it never makes him ask himself when I leave him, 'Am I in the right course? Is this peace of which I talk the peace of a converted or of a dead soul? What shall I plead when I stand, as I soon must, in the immediate presence of a heart-searching God?'" Franks rose from his seat, and paced up and down his little room, as he was wont to do when anything disturbed or perplexed him.

"Do you intend then," asked Persis, laying down her work, "to speak faithfully to our poor friend when you visit him to-morrow?"

Ned passed his hand through his curly hair; he looked perplexed and undecided. "I wish I were fit for such speaking," said he. "If Mr. Curtis were able to get about, he'd go right to the point with Stone at once; but I don't think there's anything in life so hard as to convince a self-righteous man that he's a sinner in need of a Saviour."

"Surely," said Persis, very softly, "it is the Holy Spirit alone that can convince of sin; it is only God himself who can open the eyes of the blind."

"Then to God we must turn for the blessing, wife, but we must not neglect the means. I'll try to drop in a word of warning to-morrow, though it's just such an office as I'd gladly make over to any one else if I could; but I really care for poor Ben, and I can't help thinking of the lines,--

"'Who speaks not needed truth lest he offend, Hath spared himself--but sacrificed his friend.'

I hope that my visit to Stone to-morrow may not be as utterly profitless as I fear that the three last have been."

XIX.

The Test.

While Persis and Ned Franks are conversing together in their little parlor, we will turn for a short time to Norah, whom we shall find in their little garden, with a full glow of the setting sun around her, as she is stooping over a flower-bed busily engaged in weeding.

Even in the bright season of spring, even in the cheerful home of the Frankses, since her return from London, the time had passed wearily and anxiously to Norah. She shrank from notice, she dreaded questions, and, though nothing was said to make her feel that it was so, she knew that her maintenance must be a burden on the slender income of her uncle. The accommodation in the school-house was small. Persis, at some inconvenience, had given up her only store-closet to serve as a sleeping-room for Norah; and if the good housewife cheerily laughed over her own little difficulties in finding a place where she might stow away jams and bacon, and Franks declared that the closer people were packed together, the less danger there was of their chafing one another, Norah felt that the little domestic circle had been complete without her, and that her pale, sad face could not add to the cheerfulness of a married pair. Even the food of which the orphan guest was so kindly pressed to partake freely must make a sensible difference in the household expenses of those who had so little to spare. Norah longed for the means of earning her own bread; but employment in needle-work, even had she been clever at sewing, could scarcely be procured in the retired neighborhood of Colme. The young girl would gladly have gone again into service; but to whom could she apply for a character? How often, with bitter regret for the past, did Norah ask herself that question? Her only resource was prayer. She entreated him whose mercy, as she trusted and believed, had forgiven her sin, to open for her some door of usefulness, to give her some means of honestly earning a livelihood. Norah was ready to take the lowest place, the hardest work, the smallest wages, if she might but struggle back to a position in which she could again maintain herself by her labor.

As Norah rose from her stooping posture, she saw Mrs. Curtis, the vicar's wife, approaching towards her. The lady, who was the general counsellor and friend of the villagers of Colme, had always shown kindness to Norah, and to be spoken to by her would, in former times, have called up a beaming smile in the face of the girl; but Norah now met the vicar's wife with a feeling of shame and fear.

"Good-evening to you, Norah Peele; I am glad to find you alone, for I wish a little quiet talk with you," said Mrs. Curtis. "Let us go to yon arbor at the end of the garden, where we shall be undisturbed."

Norah followed the lady along the narrow gravel path which Franks had bordered with box. The poor girl dreaded the interview before her, but silently prayed, as she walked along, that she might be enabled to answer truthfully whatever painful questions might be asked her.

When the arbor was reached, Mrs. Curtis seated herself on the rustic bench, which was the handiwork of the one-armed sailor. No one could approach the spot unseen; the lady had chosen it in order that the conversation between herself and Norah might not be interrupted or overheard.

"Norah," said Mrs. Curtis, "my housemaid is about to leave me to be married to Rob Gates, the nephew of the miller. I am therefore looking out for a trustworthy girl to take her place. Knowing both you and your family for so long as I have done, it is natural that my thoughts should turn towards you."

The girl's heart throbbed fast with a newly awakened hope which she yet scarcely dared to indulge.

"But," continued the lady, (what a terrible word was that _but_!) "I cannot offer you a situation without a clear knowledge of the cause of your leaving your last one. The information which has reached me may or may not be correct. Many innocent persons are hardly judged; some are the victims of a slander. A mistress may be injudicious, or she may be unjust to her servants."

"Oh, no, Mrs. Lowndes was not unjust, at least not in sending me away," said Norah, the large tears gathering in her downcast eyes. "She was kind and generous, and good to me, till--till"--a smothered sob closed the sentence.

"Norah, you must feel that no idle curiosity leads me to question you thus. I would give no needless pain. But will you tell me, as a friend who has your best interests much at heart, the simple truth regarding the circumstances which led to your leaving London? I cannot know how to serve you, I cannot know how to advise, without that full information which can only really satisfy me when given by yourself."

"Have I not suffered enough yet?" was the silent thought of poor Norah. "Must I tell to her, whose good opinion I prize so much, that which will make me lose that good opinion forever, and prevent her from thinking of taking such a deceitful girl into her service?" And then came the strong temptation to soften and gloss over her own fault, to lay the chief blame upon Milly, or to avoid telling of any direct falsehood, or long-carried-on scheme of deceit. Again the bark was in danger of striking against the iceberg. Again rose the silent prayer, followed by the brave resolve to be honest and truthful now, at however painful a cost.

The happy bees were humming amongst the blossoming limes, but Norah did not hear them; she did not notice how richly perfumed came the breeze from the hawthorn full in flower; there was that on her mind which shut out surrounding objects. Briefly, but as clearly and truthfully as she had told her tale to Ned Franks, she now confessed all to Mrs. Curtis, without attempting to make the slightest excuse for her fault. Norah closed her account with a deep sigh, and stood as if awaiting with humble submission the rebuke which she knew must follow.

But Mrs. Curtis uttered no word of reproach; her voice when she spoke was more kindly and cheering than it had been when she had first addressed Norah Peele on that bright evening in May.

"I am very thankful, my child, that you have made a statement so frank and truthful, one which so perfectly accords with what your last mistress has written." Mrs. Curtis drew a note from her pocket, and Norah at once recognized the familiar handwriting of Mrs. Lowndes. "Before speaking to you of the situation in my household, I thought it well to write to London, to ascertain facts from the lady whom you had served. Her reply, I own, startled me a little; I thought at first that I must give up all idea of engaging you in my service. But I consulted the vicar, and he took a different view of the question. 'The young girl,' he said, 'has no doubt committed a serious fault, but she may at this moment be sincerely repenting it; if so, let us give her an opportunity of retrieving her character here.'"

"Kind, merciful!" murmured Norah.

"'But how,' I asked, 'can we know whether she sincerely regrets her fault?' 'The surest sign of true repentance,' replied my husband, 'is _amendment_. Go and question Norah Peele; see if she now makes any fresh attempt to deceive. If she be candid and open with you, we may take it as a proof that no habits of falsehood are formed, and that, warned by the past, she is likely to become as truthful and trustworthy as her sailor uncle himself.' I have done as the vicar advised; I have tried you, Norah Peele, and you have well stood the trial. I am quite willing, if you wish to come to me, to engage you from this day week."

Then, indeed, Norah could hear how merrily the bees were humming, and feel how delicious was the scented breath of May on her cheek, and admire the glorious glow of the sinking sun! All nature seemed to brighten around her, and she thought that life might be to her again a peaceful and happy thing. Eagerly she closed with the offer of Mrs. Curtis. With a heart and a step how much lighter than what they had been an hour before, Norah retraced that gravel walk along which she had passed so sadly, and, after showing her new mistress to the gate, ran into the house to carry to her uncle and aunt her good tidings, sure of their ready sympathy in her joy as well as in her sorrow!

XX.

The Momentous Question.

"Ah! glad to see ye, Ned Franks, always glad to see ye!" cried Ben Stone, holding out both his hands to the school-master of Colme. "I sent my Bell off to afternoon church, for I said, says I, there will be Ned Franks sure to drop in and give me a bit of the news. There, take a chair, my good fellow, you're always heartily welcome."

Stone himself was reclining on a bed, and well propped up with soft cushions; a flannel dressing-gown wrapped round his large form, and a scarlet shawl over that, with a red nightcap on his head. There was an air of comfort and of neatness visible in the partly darkened room. Stone liked, as he said, "to have things look respectable-like" about him. The appearance of the sick man would have conveyed to none but a practised eye the idea of serious illness. There was no wasted cheek, no hollow eye, to tell the insidious fatal disease within. Even the voice of Ben Stone, though not perhaps as strong, sounded as jovial as ever. Franks could hardly realize, as he drew his chair near to the bed, that he who rested upon it was actually dying by inches. Ned made inquiries how the patient was feeling that afternoon.

"Not just up to felling an oak-tree, or splitting it up into planks," said the carpenter, gayly; "the doctor says I can't last till winter; but who knows? 'the greatest clerks are not always the wisest men,' as good Queen Bess once said."

"No one can indeed know whether you or I will be taken first," observed Ned; "but it's well to be prepared for the end, whether it comes sooner or later than we have been led to expect."

"Yes, yes, I'm not one of those as is afraid of hearing the worst," said Stone, still in the same easy manner. "Death must come one day or another to all, and it's no such great odds when we go."

"The question is certainly not _when_, but _whither_ we go," remarked Franks.

"There's the comfort of religion," said the carpenter, complacently folding his hands. "Don't we all hope to go to heaven when we die?"

"Yes, heaven's the port we all hope to land in," replied Ned Franks; "but I should just like, neighbor, for us to talk the matter over a little together; to see if you and I have embarked in the same boat, since we wish our cruise to end in the same harbor. Would you mind now telling an old friend what reason you have for thinking that you're bound for heaven?"

Ben Stone looked half perplexed, half amused, at the question. "It's not for a man to speak up for himself," he said good-humoredly; "but you and all the village know that I've not wandered far astray. I don't pretend to be such an out-and-out saint as you are," he added with a smile; "but I'm not worse than my neighbors, and I don't doubt but that we'll both land in heaven at last."

"And do you suppose that _I_ dare start in the voyage to eternity in such a cockle-shell as my own merits, all leaky and worthless!" exclaimed Ned Franks. "No, no, neighbor; I know too well that if I did so, I must go to the bottom. As when the flood was coming upon the world, there was but _one_ safe vessel, and that was the ark, so there is now but _one_ means of salvation, which God himself has provided,--_faith in the Lord Jesus Christ_. Can we fancy that in those old days of the flood there were no boats and no sailors,--that none could row, and none could swim? It's likely that there were men who had vessels, and trusted in them, and were proud of them, too,--who believed that these vessels could ride through the fiercest storm that ever blew; and that may have been the very reason why, despite of warning, these men would not fly to the ark; and so, when the flood came, they perished. _My_ only hope of heaven is in the merits and death of my Lord. I don't fear death, because I know that I've already taken refuge in the ark of salvation, which is faith in Christ, the Saviour of sinners."

"These things are too deep for me," said the carpenter. "I'm a simple, plain man, and don't puzzle my head with matters of doctrine. I never can make out what you thorough-going people consider yourselves to be. There are saints and sinners in the world, that's clear. Nancy Sands is a sinner, and you are a saint,--nay, don't stop me, I must have out my say. Now, I don't count myself much either of a saint or a sinner; I'm a plain, honest man, who don't like extremes, and I dare say that I shall do just as well as others in the end. But what puzzles me," continued the carpenter, "is that the saints will insist upon it that they are the sinners; they flare up, as you did now, at the very notion of being taken to heaven because they are good, and seem to think that they can't be safe unless they declare that they are sinful!" The invalid would have laughed aloud, had there not been a grave earnestness in the face of Franks, which checked any such unseemly mirth.

"And is not the prayer in the Litany, Have mercy upon us miserable sinners, put into every mouth?" observed Franks, who had a clear recollection of the very audible tone in which Ben had joined in that prayer when attending church-service.

"Yes, to be sure. I could say half the Litany by heart."

"What a wide difference there is," thought Ned Franks, "between saying it _by_ heart, or _from_ the heart! Do you think," he asked aloud, "that that prayer is suited for _every one_ who repeats it?"

Ben Stone hummed a little before he replied. "Well, I should say, suited better for some than for others; but there's no harm in any one saying it."

"There would be harm in any one calling himself a sinner before God if he did not _believe_ himself to be one," observed Franks. "But I've no doubt, neighbor, that if St. Paul and St. Peter had lived in these days, they'd have been able to cry from the bottom of the heart, 'Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.'"

Ben Stone gave a look which seemed to say that he neither understood nor cared to understand how that could be. Ned Franks's feelings were much like what Mr. Curtis had described as his own. It seemed a hopeless matter to try to make any real impression upon that mass of quiet, self-complacent, good-humored insensibility. Ned had to repeat to himself, "He's a dying man, and dying without looking to the Saviour," in order to overcome his own strong inclination to give up in despair all attempt to convince or to move.

"I suppose that you'll agree," said the school-master aloud, "that Job was a saint if there ever lived one in this world; God himself declared that there was none upon earth like him; and yet, what were the words of Job? _I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes._"

"I never can make out why Job should feel that," observed Stone; "there was nothing in what the Almighty had said to him to bring him to such a confession."

"I believe that it was not so much what God had _said_, as what he had found God to _be_, that so humbled Job as to make him confess himself to be a miserable sinner. The truth is, neighbor, we think so little of our own sinfulness, because we think so little of God's holiness. The clear light of his purity does not stream into our souls, and therefore we don't mark the spots and the stains in those souls. We think sins small and trifling which in the Lord's eyes are hateful and deadly. Eve plucks a forbidden fruit, Moses loses his temper, a man of God lets himself be drawn into what we might deem a small excusable act of disobedience: it is clear enough from the punishments which followed, that a holy God did not regard these things as _trifles_, though man in his blindness might do so."

"Ah! all these examples are from the Old Testament," said Ben Stone; "as for me, I hold by the New. There's none of that terrible strictness now."

"The God of the New Testament is the God of the Old," observed Franks; "the same just and holy Being who hath declared, _The soul that sinneth, it shall die_."

"You talk like a Jew," said Stone; "yet you know as well, and better than I do, that we've the gospel to look to now, and that's all mercy and love."

"The New Testament rests on the Old; it has grown out of it; it forms with it a complete whole. We cannot really accept the one without the other," replied Franks, with an animation of manner which strongly contrasted with the carpenter's stolid composure.

Ben Stone shook his tasselled cap, and half smiling observed, "The New is enough for me."

Ned Franks glanced around for something that might serve to illustrate the important truth which his companion could not, or would not, understand. He took up a cut flower which had been placed in a glass of water on the table.

"The Old Testament is the bud of the New; or rather as the green sheath enclosed the bud, so in the Old-Testament Scriptures is the precious gospel held and enclosed," he said, looking down on the flower.

"Granted, if you wish it," said the carpenter; "but now we've done with the sheath, and only the flower is left."

"Not so," cried the school-master eagerly; "look here, this is the green sheath of the bud, the green cup or calyx, as they call it, still holding and supporting the flower; less noticed, certainly, under the bright petals, but keeping them all together. What would happen, Ben Stone, were we to tear that green part away?"

"Why, the flower would of course fall to pieces."

"And if it were possible to separate New-Testament truth entirely from that contained in the Old Testament,--but it is _not_ possible," exclaimed Franks, interrupting himself in the midst of his sentence. "_The word of the Lord endureth forever!_ The Old Testament is the very support and foundation of the gospel. If we would know _who_ the Lord Jesus is, we learn, from the Old Testament, that he is _the mighty God_,[C] _whose goings forth have been from everlasting_;[D] _the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord God of Hosts_.[E] If we should know _why_ he died, again we find the gospel enclosed in the ancient Scriptures, like the bud in the sheath: _He was wounded for our transgressions; the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all_."[F]

"Still, there's ever so much in the Old Testament that does not concern us Christians at all," said the carpenter; "and though I don't pretend to have the Bible at my finger-ends, as you have, I can show you that in a moment. We have no concern whatever with all those endless sacrifices of bullocks and lambs, which the Jews were perpetually making; you might cut out of the Bible every chapter about them, and we should never miss them at all."

Franks's expressive face showed surprise at the utter ignorance betrayed by such a remark. "Why, the very _keystone_ of Gospel truth rests on the doctrine taught by those very sacrifices!" he exclaimed, bending forward in his eager earnestness. "There were two mighty lessons taught by those sacrifices, which were ordained by God himself; these lessons were, that _without shedding of blood there is no remission_,[G] and that justice would accept of one life as given _instead_ of another. No Israelite, no, not even the holy Moses, could be forgiven and accepted without a _sacrifice_ for sin, the sprinkled blood of atonement; no Christian, not even a St. Paul, can be forgiven and accepted, without a sacrifice for sin; and ours, in One of which all the burnt-offerings made by the Jews was but a type, the sacrifice, once and forever, made on the cross by Him who is _the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world_! O Ben Stone, my friend," continued the sailor, with emotion, "I believe, from my soul I believe, that _there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved_,[H] but the name of Him who died for sinners; that there is nothing that can make the soul pure, but _the blood of Christ which cleanseth from all sin_.[I] Faith in that name is the ark in which alone I dare hope for salvation, and through that blood shed for me, I have the blessed assurance of being received after death into that heaven which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him!"

Ned Franks rose hastily from his seat as he concluded the last sentence; for, after what had been uttered on a subject so solemn, he could enter on no common theme. He pressed the hand of the sick man, and, with no other form of taking leave, quitted the carpenter's cottage. The sailor sighed heavily as he passed from the darkened sick-room into the glowing sunshine without.