The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 1014, June 3, 1899

Jessie appeared. It was marvellous to note how the traces of her recent outbreak had nearly disappeared. She looked almost her old decorous self, save for a slight tearfulness and quivering of the lips, the result of some conversation which had been passing between her and Miss Latimer downstairs.

She and her cousin looked at each other. Jessie’s eyes might fall, shamed, before Lucy, but they met the other woman’s boldly, almost with a scowl.

“Come, Jessie,” said the woman, in a wheedling tone, “I’m sorry to hear what’s happened; and she says you’re to come away with me at once.”

Jessie took no notice of her, but turned to Mrs. Challoner.

“Well, m’m,” she said, “I beg your pardon for anything that’s happened. I’ve often wondered what you thought o’ me speaking so much o’ the master, an’ me never set eyes on him. But ’twas because I was a-thinkin’ o’ you, an’ a-prayin’ you may never know what it is to be a widow-woman. I’d have kep’ all right if I’d got into such a place as this when Alick was took—that I do believe—but there I was, set down with those grumpy old people, with never a pleasant word; and there wasn’t any comfort to be had but just a sip of what they was always a-sippin’ themselves. An’ it was worse when the old lady was left alone.”

“And yet the minister and the lawyer thought so well of you, Jessie,” said Lucy, with grave reproach.

“I was all right so far as the lawyer ever knew,” Jessie answered. “An’ as for the minister, he sipped his drappie too, an’ he never saw me the waur o’ mine, which is mair than I can say o’ him.”

“Hush, Jessie,” said Mrs. Challoner. “But how could you do your duty to your aged mistress if you got into such a state as you were yesterday?”

“I never did that till I went to live with that woman there,” she answered, turning on the cousin with ill-repressed fury. “When they asked me up to London they knew I’d got my nice little legacy. She wouldn’t have let her husband invite me but for that!” she interpolated bitterly. “And they didn’t want me to go till it was all spent, at least she didn’t!” she said, with an acrimonious emphasis on the feminine pronoun. “And she used to treat me plentiful, an’ me just pinin’ with loneliness and homesickness; and then when my money was gone there I was, an’ she run me into debt, and turned up here and bullied my first month’s wages out of me, an’ when you came down on Christmas Eve, like an angel, and put my next month’s wages into my hand, thinks I to myself, somebody’ll turn up to-morrow and get it all away, an’ I thought I’d just run out and buy myself something in case I got a cold, or was too low to get well through my cooking, and then somehow that picture that hangs on the kitchen wall (‘The Empty Chair,’ m’m, it’s called) was just too much for my spirits, and I took a drop and lost my reckoning, and there it was! Oh, m’m, may you never know what it is to be a poor widow-woman!”

How much was merely maudlin, or how much was the incoherent cry of a weak soul that had lost itself in loneliness and neglect, Lucy could not decide. It was possibly less the woman’s words than the chord of Lucy’s own life which they reached, that brought tears to Lucy’s eyes.

“I’m not asking you to give me another trial, m’m,” went on the miserable creature, in a tone which yet had something of a forlorn hope in it.

Lucy could not answer, but her head gave a half-involuntary shake.

“I’m not asking you to give me another trial, m’m,” she repeated. “It’s not for the likes o’ you. I see well enough what your life’s got to be, and you’ve quite enough to do for yourself and the dear little master.”

“Oh, Mrs. Morison,” cried Lucy earnestly, “won’t you make an effort to put this evil thing away? Though you must go out of this house, I will do all I can to help you. I will try to get you into a Home, where they will take care of you and help you to do right.”

Mrs. Morison did not answer at once. Perhaps a good impulse and an evil habit contended within her. The habit conquered, as alas! a habit generally does.

“I don’t need to go into a Home,” she said, with a soft stubbornness. “I’ve just got to make up my mind to keep right. I don’t believe in Homes. I’ve been, in a way, my own mistress all my life, being so much trusted. If I take myself in hand, that’ll do.”

But what a big “if” that was! And what weakened will can ever raise itself effectually, save by its first effort placing it in the good grasp of a stronger will? Yet Lucy could urge no more. She could only remind Mrs. Morison that if she really meant to keep her word and to struggle on in honest sobriety, Lucy would stand her friend, so far as she could, in truth and uprightness, would even recommend her as a worker to any whose circumstances and sense of duty might incline them to extend another chance to her, after hearing of her failing and its possible recurrence.

Mrs. Morison thanked Lucy for so much “kindness.” But, even as she did so, Lucy felt sadly sure that it would never be claimed. Then Mrs. Morison said “good-bye,” and she and her cousin went away together. It had been arranged that her boxes should be sent after her by a carrier. Despite the acerbity the widow had shown towards her relative, and despite the fact that one or the other of the pair had been telling grievous untruths of the other, Lucy saw that they went down the street laying their heads together in mutual confidences as if nothing had come between them.

She turned from the window, so weary and disheartened that she felt as if she had been beaten, body and soul. It was her first close experience of the baffling contest with natures lacking all bottom of truth and principle—natures like bogs, greened over with sentiment and seeming, luring us to trust our foot upon them only to plunge us in depression and defilement. It seemed to Lucy as if the fruitless arguments and pleas of the last hour had taken more energy out of her than even the long strain of yesterday. She did not yet realise that where the nerves are concerned the whole of the back bill is always added on to each fresh item.

As Lucy turned from the window she felt something at her feet. Stooping in the twilight, she picked up the bright little ball, which Jessie Morison had brought in for Hugh on Christmas Eve!

It was but a trifle, yet it finally overcame the weary lady. Oh, the pity of it! Oh, the waste of poor human nature that still had so many good qualities in it! Oh, the awful mixture of good and evil, of selfishness and kindliness. Talk of the good in evil, and the evil in good—as if there was some compensation in that weird mingling—why, it is this very mingling which tries our fortitude and faith more than anything else, and God sees more of this mingling than any human eye can see. And God can bear it because He is God and is all goodness, and knows the end. We can but lean our staggering strength against His everlasting arm, assured that it can gather up what mortal powers must drop.

Miss Latimer came into the parlour presently and found Lucy sitting in the gathering darkness. The old governess was a wise little woman, and instead of lighting the gas, she stirred the fire into a ruddy, dancing blaze. Then she called Hugh, and sent him in “to talk to mamma.” By-and-by she reappeared again, with the tea-tray and a delicious smell of toast.

That recalled Lucy to her duties. She sprang up, protesting against Miss Latimer having gone to work by herself, and she lit the gas and closed the curtains. They had a cosy little meal, at which, for Hugh’s sake, not a word was said of the recent domestic catastrophe.

When his mother took him off to bed, and heard him—though not without a significant pondering pause—join “Mrs. Morison’s” name in his prayer “for papa and mamma,” she remembered all Charlie had said to her, and felt that the child’s simple affection in its ignorance and blindness may reflect the heart of God more clearly than ours, blurred with inevitable criticisms and repulsions.

When she had kissed him and was leaving the room, he called her back.

“Mamma!”

She turned at once, but he paused a moment. The child’s sensitive nature had realised the moral atmosphere about him sufficiently to feel that storms were there.

“Mamma!” again. Then in a whisper, “Will Mrs. Morison come back to-morrow?”

“No, my dear.”

“Mamma, will she ever come back?”

“I do not know, dear. I fear not. If she gets better I think she will.”

“Is she ill, mamma?”

“Yes, dear; her soul is very ill. We must be very sorry for her.”

When she returned to the parlour Miss Latimer was sitting there. She had taken a sock from Lucy’s work-basket and was darning it.

“Can you stay with me to-night, dear friend?” asked Mrs. Challoner.

“Yes,” she said; “to-night and to-morrow night. Then I shall have to go home.”

There was no need for inquiry why. Miss Latimer was virtually retired as a governess; but her tiny income sorely needed a supplement. She secured this by reading aloud for two hours every morning to a blind lady, whose house was not far from her lodgings, though a long way from the Challoners’. The Christmas holidays, which had brought relatives to visit her blind patroness, had set her free for three days.

“It is terribly hard that the few holidays of your industrious life should be wasted as these have been,” remarked Lucy.

Miss Latimer laughed. She was a quaint little body, with a flashing of energy about her which imparted something youthful to her sixty years.

“As it was bound to happen at all, my dear,” she said, “I am glad it happened in my holidays, so that I have been free to be a little helpful. Make the most of me while you have me. What step are you going to take next?”