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The Story Behind a Shop

It was a small grocer's shop in a dingy street; what, in those days, was called, I think, 'a chandler's shop,' since brooms and brushes, string, tin pans, and many other things not strictly groceries, were sold there; and Miss Martin had lived behind or over it all her life long.

She had never known full health, and scarcely youth. She was the eldest of the family, and all through her sickly childhood had toiled like a little, motherly, careful woman for the many brothers and sisters that came after her. Her back, never strong, grew rounder and rounder, from constant holding of the baby; her childish page 173days were one long ache; but she only loved the babies better for the pain she bore for them, and shed bitter tears when the eighth child proved too heavy a burden for her weary arms, and she could nurse no more. 'Curvature of the spine,' the doctor said, and at fourteen she was doomed to lie for years—perhaps for life—on her couch in the little parlour behind the shop—one care more to the care-laden parents—and see the little ones get into mischief for want of her, when her mother could not be everywhere at once.

That was the turning-point of Hannah Martin's life, when the deep waters rolled over her head, and no human eye could tell whether it was for baptism or for burial.

Her mother was a woman of great strength of character, who ruled the household well and wisely, and toiled early and late for her children, but was slow in giving outward tokens of affection. It was to Hannah and the father that they all had turned for sympathy and caresses. There were elements of softness and poetry in Mr. Martin's nature which gave him no assistance whatever in selling tallow candles, but made him a captivating father. His children were the joy of his life, the one treasure of beauty which the Heavenly Father` drops into little dark rooms page 174behind dingy shops as freely as into kings' palaces. Nay, I was wrong about the tallow candles, for even these, and 'The Very Best Green Treacle,' were hallowed in his eyes by the consciousness that he weighed them out in order to gain things needful for the children. He had endless devices for amusing the little ones, and it was not until they grew old enough to enter into his cares, that they learned that their best play-fellow was himself a man of a sorrowful spirit, and would have sunk long ago, but for the strength that comes of pure love, and the unfailing energy and courage of his wife.

Hannah had made that discovery early, and when she found herself stricken down, a burden on the struggling family, and her father's heart half broken for her, her chief sorrow was for him. Then a spark of her mother's dauntless spirit fired up in the girl's heart, and she thought, 'Why must I be only a care? There must be something left for me to do.'

This was long before the days of Board Schools and compulsory education, and 'schooling' was a very difficult question to small shopkeepers, since the schools philanthropists had opened would not hold nearly as many children as should have been in them from households of the Poor with a capital page 175P; and it was thought a little shabby, as well as undignified, for 'the tradespeople' to take advantage of them. And yet even the cheapest private schools were dear to people like the Martins, and gave a very poor sixpennyworth for the sixpence. Hannah had been sent to one for a few months, where she was expected to learn grammar by standing up with the other girls, saying what they did. 'Nouns have number and person, gender and case,' they repeated; and 'Verbs have number and person, mood and tense.' Hannah informed her mother that 'Nouns have a number of persons in a general case,' and 'Verbs have a number of persons moving tents,' and asked what that meant.

By dint of home explanations, however, she had managed to pick up some acquaintance with moods and tenses, and other branches of 'English' as then taught. She had her old school-books—her father's Lindley Murray and Blair's Catechism, a spelling-book, and a First Reader, with really pretty readings in it—the Enfield Speaker, an old geography, and an aged atlas, in which Australia was called New Holland, and almost the only place marked on it was Botany Bay. And she had the large old family Bible, inherited from her great-grandparents, with wonderful pictures in it, which Mr. Martin showed to the children on Sunday page 176afternoons. With such a school library, and four slates in the family, Hannah thought she might set up a family school.

The two boys, Matthew and Mark, who came next to her in age, went out to school. Then came Martha, a bright little girl of nine, who had to be taken from school when Hannah broke down, to help her mother. But now, in the long waking hours of Hannah's painful nights, instead of crying, she planned quite a system for dividing her own former tasks among her brothers and sisters, so as to leave time for home lessons. The scheme was discussed and passed, with amendments, in full conclave; it was then sent up to the Lords (i.e. the parents) and ratified; and with the greatest possible importance each child took up his or her own share. Of course all the little new brooms did not go on sweeping with unabated vigour, but gradually a sense of individual responsibility for the general good grew into the family religion, and whatever each one could do or learn was cast into the family treasury, 'as unto the Lord, and not as unto men.'

Hannah gave the younger children all the schooling they ever had; and gave them withal a love of knowledge, and of all things high and noble, which they never lost; and this in spite of page 177incessant suffering, and the wear and tear of nerve caused by lying all day in the same dull room, which could never be kept quiet, since the children were always in it. But a great deal of hero-worship went on in that back parlour. The stories of brave deeds, brought home in books from the Sunday school library, were Hannah's change of air; and the children sat and ate up the stories with their eager eyes while she told them again and again.

After the first twelve months, Hannah began to improve. She was able to sew again, and would soon have made herself as ill as ever by working incessantly, had not her mother interfered.

'But, mother, it's all I can do, and I want to help you,' she pleaded.

'Never mind, child. You are worth more to me than your work, any day.'

Those were precious words from Hannah's mother, and the daughter never forgot them. And as she grew stronger she could sew more, besides teaching her little sisters to sew beautifully. Every one of those boys and girls turned out well, and handed down to the next generation the refinement, the love of beauty and of literature, which the deformed elder sister had taught them.

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So passed the years. One more little sister was added to the flock, and four years afterwards there came a day when Hannah had to leave the shelter of the back parlour, and steal shrinking out, with her bent back and uneven shoulders, into the broad light of day. It was a terrible day for her; but all the family made a gala of it. Her father left the shop to go with her himself on her first walk out, and neighbours high and low came up to congratulate, and welcome her back to the outer world; and so the fear and the bitterness passed away, and Hannah went back to normal life, with a keenness of pleasure in its little changes such as only ex-prisoners know.

'The children' were growing up by that time, and the turn-out of the family attracted attention, and led to Hannah's being offered the post of mistress in a small infant school which was opened in Queen's Road, where the shop was. School-teaching in those days was looked upon rather as the perquisite of lame or deformed people, who could not earn their bread by muscular exertion. This time, the appointment made scope for a veritable teacher's genius. The little school overflowed its bounds. Large new schoolrooms were built, and as Government had nothing to do with them, in those peacefully page 179benighted days, Hannah—Miss Martin now—was able to govern the infants without a certificate. 'More were the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife,' for every little scholar was taken home to her motherly heart; and many were the queer little love-letters, with extraordinary writing and spelling, which she received from them. Her own brothers and sisters grew up and scattered; then her parents died, and Matthew took the shop; but she still lived on, in her old room above the back parlour, 'passing rich' on her forty pounds a year, with her room rent free, and her family treasures crowded into it.

There, one sunny Saturday afternoon in April, she sat with her window open to the double row of back yards below, sewing away at a dress she was turning, and thinking over the story of her own life, ever since the lilacs bloomed that spring when first she walked abroad after her captivity. Old memories seemed to come floating in with the smell of lilacs. Sorrow was in them, and yet the serene light upon her face was hardly shadowed, only softened, by those pensive thoughts.

There was much more of cloud, just then, on the young face of one whose story was all to come, and who felt so very much afraid of what it might be, that she decided to walk down and call page 180on Miss Martin, by way of encouragement to herself.

Queen's Road was at the bottom of a hill, in an outlying London district. Along the sides of the hill, and at the top, stood rows of pleasant houses, their common gardens lying between.

On that Saturday afternooon, some thirty years ago, while Miss Martin was conning memories and turning her brown merino, Gertrude Hope stood at the window of her little bedroom, high up in one of the terrace houses at the top of the hill, and looked down on the young green and the opening blossoms in the garden below, without any pleasure in them. She was thinking how soon this fresh beauty would be all gone, and the slightly dingy look that belongs to London gardens in summer would be stealing on.

'People place youth and age opposite to each other as the light and shade of life. But has not every day, every age, its own youth—its own new, attractive life, if one only sets about rightly to enjoy them? Yes, the aged man who has collected together pure recollections for his evening companions, is manifold happier than the youth who, with a restless heart, stands only at the beginning of his journey.'¹

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At least his happiness is more assured. The young have their bounding springtides and their corresponding ebbs; and when the ebb comes they are apt to feel as if it would stay for ever, with long flat mud-banks showing. It seemed to Gertrude on this afternoon as if life always was at ebb, and always would be; and yet this was her May-time! That was the worst of it. She appeared to have everything which ought to make a young person happy and contented—a home with every comfort, kind parents, sisters and brother, fair average health and abilities, pleasures found for her, and approval when she tried to do anything useful, such as teaching in the Sunday school. To be dissatisfied was monstrous; but satisfied she was not, and it did not mend matters to feel that it must be all her own fault. Poor Gertrude felt herself already a failure, and predestined to be one for life. It sounds absurd; and yet, while so many lives are failures, it would be hard to prove that there is nothing reasonable in the kind of shrinking dejection which so easily besets the young, as they look forward to life, with its fairylands and howling wildernesses, and fear to miss the track.

Just now, Gertrude had two particular grounds for discouragement. One was chronic. Nature had left her a full share of those small deficiencies page 182and inefficiencies which good mothers repair by constant correction—a process remembered with infinite thankfulness after the cure is accomplished, but terribly depressing while it lasts.

The other—it was not very sensible, but one must tell the truth—was that both her elder sisters were engaged to be married—the second within the last few days; and Gertrude, at the mature age of nineteen, had never had an offer, nor the smallest reason to suppose that she had even been admired. Neither her glass nor her memory had one flattering tale to tell Life stretched out before her, such as it was to single women thirty years ago, when they were only just beginning to think of having careers, and the pioneers in that direction had a hard time of it. Gertrude never dreamed of anything so strong-minded. The life she contemplated was that of an orthodox old maid of the olden time—the somewhat aimless existence of a young lady at home prolonged into middle age; and then the inevitable break-up, and the choice, if choice there were, between utter loneness or hanging on to somebody else's home: valued (if she were good enough) for what she might do in the family, but not for what she could be. And one would have to be very good indeed,—yea, a saint, like the old maids in books!—to be valued page 183at all, not to mention being happy, under such conditions.

There were the Poor, to be sure, and Gertrude cared for them intensely in the abstract; but to visit them personally was a terror to her shyness and inexperience, and she dreaded her class of unruly children in the Sunday school all the week long. Surely it must be a higher as well as a brighter vocation to have power to make one fellow-creature utterly happy by a smile. And those whose hearts were stirred to the depths by that strong human love must learn, too, how to love God better. 'To him that hath shall be given.' Gertrude felt that very acutely, and wondered how it could be fair that natural disadvantages should cut one off from so much of goodness and usefulness as well as pleasure.

She was religiously going out this afternoon, while her sisters were delightfully walking abroad with their lovers, to accomplish the penance of hunting up an absentee Sunday scholar—a very naughty child with an effusive and plaintive mother, whom, for her own pleasure, Gertrude would have been thankful never to see again. She always left that house feeling that whatever she had said and done was all wrong. It occurred to her that Miss Martin must know this family, page 184and would be able to advise her. Ah! Talk of drawbacks! If ever a woman had had to face the limits of an adverse, cramped, distorted life, it was Hannah Martin; and she had wrought out a beautiful success. That was a triumph; and a strong desire sprang up in Gertrude's mind to know how it was won, and whether Miss Martin had ever had a stage of hopelessness and expecting to be a failure.

The Sunday scholar would make an excuse for a visit; so it befell that while Miss Martin was basting her skirt-lining a tap came at her door, and Miss Gertrude Hope entered, and insisted on helping to overcast the seams while they discussed Jane Fellows and her parents. And from the difficulties of doing good it was natural to pass on to the difficulties of everything in general; and Gertrude found herself drawn on, as she rarely was, to speak of just what was uppermost in her mind.

She had first made acquaintance with Miss Martin during the previous winter, when the schoolmistress had some ailment affecting the eyes which made it a kindness to go and read to her. Gertrude had gone several times, and felt the charm of 'the poems in that soul'; but their conversation had never become intimate, and she had not page 185ventured to repeat her visits after the eyes were well. To-day, however, her inner things seemed to flow out spontaneously,—even to the confession (which followed naturally after telling of her sister's engagement) that she did not believe 'her turn,' as people called it, would ever come, and feared lest life should be shallow and useless, without the house-mother's definite duties and strong affections.

'Of course yours is not,' she added hastily. 'But then you have your school, and such a gift for it. And I hate teaching!'

'Ah, but it's not the school that made my life,' said Miss Martin. 'It is a great thing for a single woman to have a work—a trade, as one may say; and I know teachers who say their work is everything and all the world to them; but that's not me, Miss Gertrude. The school goes a long way down, but not to the bottom.'

'Does anything?' exclaimed Gertrude, with interest. 'I mean—is it—can anyone feel life down to the bottom without being married?'

'Well, my dear, as I never was married, I can't say,' answered Miss Martin laughingly. 'I know by my own father and mother that there is that in belonging to one another in that way that's like nothing else. But as to feeling'— She page 186paused, and her grey eyes turned and rested with a lingering look on a pot of lilies of the valley in full bloom which stood on the window-sill, just out of the line of sunlight which slanted in.

'I can't say, of course,' she said slowly, 'but I could hardly think that even mother felt some things more than I did; and as far as eyes can see, there's many a wife and mother has never felt anything so much. I believe it comes, sooner or later, to everyone that has got a heart to feel it—something that breaks up the deeps, and there they are!'

'Then it came to you?' Gertrude ventured timidly.

'Yes, Miss Gertrude. They say every old maid has a history, and I've had mine; though it wasn't a love-story, as they are called. There was love enough in it.'

Something in her wistful look seemed to give Gertrude leave to say, 'And does anyone know about it?'

'My brothers and sisters know the outside,' said Miss Martin. 'And just a few besides know bits of what was behind. But it's curious how it has all been coming back to me this afternoon, before you came in. I suppose it was the lilies,—and the page 187lilacs smelling so sweet. Look at them, down in the yard.'

'Are they in the story?' asked Gertrude shyly, colouring as she spoke.

'Only because I've smelt them every year as it all happened,' said Miss Martin. 'It's a long story and a sad one.'

'Oh, do tell it to me!' cried Gertrude; and the lonely woman's heart felt a strong fibre vibrate to her young sympathy.

'Then I must begin at the beginning, if it won't tire you out,' she answered. She put her work from her, and sat for a moment, gazing out of the open window, as though her eyes saw far beyond the house - backs which shut in the prospect there.

'It began and ended in this house,' she said. 'There have been six love-stories here behind the shop, Miss Gertrude, besides my father and mother's, that was a sweet story from beginning to end; and I used to think I got the cream of them all—and the skim too, for I heard all about them, good and bad. I believe there came a time with every one of my brothers and sisters when I was first. I don't mean that they loved me more than father and mother, but I was more to them, for the time. And then it went by; one after another page 188got to stand on their own feet, as was right. But then another would come on; and as sure as the courting began, every one of them came back to me. Hannah was wanted then—until the course of true love got settled quite smooth, and then—I wasn't anyone so very particular.'

'And didn't you mind?' asked Gertrude.

'Not as much as I should now, I believe,' said Miss Martin. 'There was always another to come on, and I belonged to them all. Only, when I began to see that Effie's time was coming, my heart did fail me, at first.

'My little Effie! She came when I was sixteen, two years after I was laid on my back, so I never nursed her, and I was afraid she wouldn't love me as much as the other little ones did; but, instead, she loved me best of them all. She was the flower of us,—pretty, and with such winning ways! and clever too. She was five years old when I got my first school, and she would trot along by my side to school with me. We called her our "summer child," for by that time the worst of the struggle with the family was over. The boys and girls began to work for themselves, and all did so well; and we felt we had come to a pleasant place in our lives. Father and mother got to look quite young again, to what they had been, when the strain was page 189off them; and whatever partings came, there was always Effie, the little sunbeam, left at home—Effie and me.

'She was away for one year, though, at a training-school, and came back to be second teacher of the girls where I had the infants; and it was all planned out so nicely for her to rise to be first teacher in a new school one of these days, when Matthew must needs bring home a very fine young man from Underwood Brothers, where he worked—Harold Hunter—Hal, he was always called—and you can guess what happened next. He was an orphan, with no one belonging to him but one brother out in America, and no home to go to; so Matthew thought it would be kind to give him a Sunday out (they were in the house, both of them, at Underwoods'), and I believe he loved Effie from the first minute he set eyes on her. She was just eighteen then; and before her next birthday they were engaged.'

'And you lost your last one!' said Gertrude.

'Ah, but it wasn't as I expected,' said Miss Martin. 'He loved me. All the rest of those that loved my girls and boys were very good to me, always, and are to this day; but Hal Hunter loved me. He always said I came next to Effie, and I believe it was true. You see, Miss Gertrude, page 190having nobody of his own, this was like his home; and our two boys next above Effie went out to his brother in America (which turned out a very good thing for them), so Hal was all the boy we had left, for Mark was married before then, and Matthew had been thinking about it for nine years, and it wasn't long before he did it.

'Well, he got to be more and more to us all—Hal, I mean. He was a lad you couldn't help loving—nobody could; and yet I wasn't satisfied. Father was; and mother never let me know till afterwards that she was not. Hal went to church, and had been confirmed; he had as much religion, outside, as our own two younger boys, and Under-woods gave him the highest character; but I just felt, with him and Effie both, they hadn't the joy that no man taketh from you. And if I tried to say anything of that, Hal would put his arm round my old round back and say, "But, Hannah dear, if we were all such crack Christians, who would there be left for you to do good to?" And Effie would say, "You dear old thing, I shall never be as good as you;" and I minded that more than anything. How I prayed for them! I couldn't rest till they had the best, the very best that God could give them. Nights and nights, when my darling lay in her happy sleep on that little bed in page 191the corner there, I lay and prayed for my children—my dearest children of them all.

'Well, the time went on. They had been engaged going on for two years, when one night, when Effie was out, Matthew came with a grave face. He knew she would be out, and he'd come to tell us he had reason to fear that Hal was in danger of going wrong through drink. Mat had been moved up, in a different department from Hal, before he married; and of course afterwards he wasn't in the house, so that he didn't see much of him; and when he was gone, little by little Hal got more with a set that he had kept him out of; and one night he came in so much the worse for drink that he got a caution for it, and the manager told Mat, knowing the cause he had to be interested in him. So then Mat asked questions, and found it had been so before, and not been known. Everybody liked Hal, and tried to shield him, but they couldn't deny it; and Barton, a very good young man who first asked Mat to take notice of Hal, confessed he had done it then because he was afraid for him about the drink.

'So Mat spoke to Hal most plainly, and offered to sign the pledge with him; but Hal wouldn't. There was always beer for the young men with their dinner, and he said he couldn't be different page 192from the rest. No doubt he felt it would be like owning his weakness. But he promised and vowed he would never slip again, and would break with the old set, if Mat wouldn't tell father; and Mat gave him a trial; he took that responsibility, because he knew how Hal loved Effie. But ah, my dear, drink is stronger than love. He went wrong again—not so badly—it wasn't known—but Mat heard of it, and then he felt that father and mother must be told. There had been time already for Hal to have told us himself, if he had meant to.

'When mother heard it all, she said he must do one thing or the other—give up the drink out and out, or give up Effie. She would never risk her child being a drunkard's wife. You may think it sounds hard, but down here we see what comes of drink, and how the little slip goes on to the great ruin; and neither father nor I could say a word different.

'Then we had to tell Effie, and she cried, and wouldn't half believe it; and then she said, "Let me speak to Hal!" And mother said, "Right, my child, you shall;" for Hal had a hot temper, and we thought he would take it best from her. But my mind misgave me.

'He was coming Saturday night that week. I page 193came up here, and mother went into the shop with father, as we'd done so many times before, to leave them alone together. Then, by and by, I heard mother go through into the parlour; and very soon after poor Effie came running up to me and cried out, "Oh, Hannah, go down. Do something—do!"

'I asked her how he had taken it, and she said, "Oh, he was so angry, and said it was all that sneak Barton who had been making up stories to Mat; and I couldn't go on. How could I?"

'Then my heart went like a stone, for I felt that mother was right; if Effie daren't say a word to Hal when he was her lover, she would never guide him when he was her husband.

'"He said if I thought such things of him, he would go away," she said, and sobbed again. "And then mother came in, and oh"—She sobbed too much to speak, and that minute the parlour door burst open; there was a heavy step, and the street door banged; and Effie gave one cry,—I hear it now, I shall hear it to my grave,—for Hal was gone.

'I ran for my life downstairs and into the street, and called "Hal! Hal!" but he was gone. Father called me in to mind the shop, and went out himself to look for him, but he couldn't find him.page 194Ah, my dear, the tea and sugar I weighed out that night were heavier than lead to my fingers; and yet, when I saw the drunkards' wives and drunkards' children come in to get their little two and three pen'orths, I felt that mother was right.

'She had spoken out to Hal, but he told me himself afterwards she couldn't have done it more kindly. What stung him was, he knew it was true; drink was his snare. He was in a passion and went off; but oh, I know he would have come back again,—but directly he got outside, there were the public-houses everywhere. He couldn't go back to Underwood's before his usual time, for fear of the other lads asking questions. And he'd had a guilty conscience that made him uneasy about coming here that night. He knew Mat had been asking for him, because Mat meant to have spoken first to him; but Hal would not give him a chance; he slipped out of the way, and Mat couldn't put off telling us any longer. Hal thought he might have been telling, and drank on his way over, to get up his courage; so that was working in him, and he went in somewhere, and drank till he had to be brought home by a policeman. Of course on Sunday he woke up desperate, and with all the craving on him; he slipped out and drank again, and Monday morning he was dismissed. page 195It was the third time, you see; they couldn't overlook it.

Matthew never knew it till the end of the day, and he went up and pleaded and begged for him, till they said, for once, for Matthew's sake, they'd take him on again at the bottom of the list, in a fortnight; but when Mat went to tell him that, he was gone, and all his things, and nobody knew where he had gone to.'

'But Effie—did he not tell her?' exclaimed Gertrude.

'Never a word,' said Miss Martin. 'You see, he was ashamed. Day by day we watched and listened, and our hearts jumped into our mouths at every man's footstep that came into the shop; and he never came nor wrote. If my child had known from the first that he would not come back, she might have borne it and lived: the watching killed her. I saw her get thinner and whiter, and her sad eyes deeper, and I knew she'd had a death-blow. Ah, my dear, I knew then what love and sorrow mean! Day and night I prayed for Hal—for Hal, and for my poor, poor lamb that I saw a widow indeed and desolate. I went to my day's work, and moved and spoke, as one has to; but down underneath was a sighing and crying to God that never ceased—"Lord, save Hal. Lord, help page 196my darling." It seems to me I scarcely breathed without praying for them, all those two long years we never heard of him. But long before the end the bright light in the cloud had begun to show. When my child was torn away from every hope on earth, she looked to God. The prayers I had prayed for her ever since she lay a little baby in my arms, on my pillow, were heard in the day of her anguish. Instead of thinking hard thoughts of God, she came to see there was only One who cared for Hal more than she did, and would go after the lost sheep until He found him.

'And then—oh, it broke my heart to see her, more than if she had rebelled and murmured. She went about her work, my patient lamb!—behaved and quieted herself like a child that is weaned of its mother, and waited on us all; but most of all on mother, for she knew that mother felt it so, because it was she that did it. She has been called a hard woman, sometimes, mother has, but those who thought that of her never saw the way she watched our Effie then, and planned and schemed for anything she thought would give her a minute's pleasure. Everyone expected that Effie would have an illness, but instead it was mother who took ill, and was ill a long time, and Effie nursed her.

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'It was in the autumn that poor Hal went off. When the next autumn came, mother was better; but in January there came a hard frost, and Effie began to get a cough. We feared for her all that winter, but she kept on somehow, up to the summer holidays; she gave up then, and never taught again. Winter came soon, that year. We had hard frost again in November, and thick fog, when there came a letter—a letter from Hal to me!

'He had been going on badly, off and on, all those two years—mending, and thinking he would get on a little and then write, and then going back again, till at last he met with an accident, and was taken to the hospital; it was from there he wrote to me. There was something to be done to him in a day or two that would be dangerous, in the bad state he was, and he couldn't face it till he had written to beg me to give his dearest love to Effie, and if I could forgive him, to go and see him once more.

'I did but just look to see what the letter was, and gave it to Effie to read. Poor lamb! All the life came back into her face. She stood up and said, "I'll go to him, Hannah. I'll go to-day." Miss Gertrude, I was in a sore strait, when I looked at my child, with her short, hard breathing page 198and her burning cheeks, and then at the cold, thick fog that lay between her and the man she loved.

'I went for mother. She was never one to show her feelings much; but it seemed as if all the love she had kept to herself for twenty-three years came out in her face that minute. She put her arm round Effie, and said, "Child, if we knew that Hal would die, you should go to him this morning; but it mayn't be so bad. Let Hannah go first and see, for if he lives you must live too, for his sake."

'That was a Wednesday—a half-holiday. How thankful I was! So I went off directly after school in the morning. Ah! I can't tell you about the meeting with Hal; he was so broken down, poor fellow. But I left him with a happy heart, for I thought he had come to the turning-point at last. And I saw the house doctor. He had given orders that if I came I was to be let see Hal at any time, and he told me, now the load was off the poor lad's mind, he was likely to do well, and go out again as hearty as anybody.

'There was bright news for me to take back to my darling! Though when I saw her face as I went in, I was afraid it came too late to save her. But she began to get a little better directly, and when page 199the frost went she got on more. The wish to live had come back.

'Hal went on as well as possible for two or three weeks. I used to go and inquire, and so did Matthew, but we mightn't see him for a fortnight. After that, I saw him several times, and I felt it was a real change that had come to him. That was our Indian summer, those two or three weeks when we had hope for Hal, and for our summer child. Then he took a chill, and the doctor shook his head, and told me it was one of the things they dreaded with patients that had been hard drinkers. "If the lungs are touched, they burn away like match-wood," he said; and so it was. The cold had come back again by that time, and when I went again they all knew that poor Hal had caught his death.

'I had to tell Effie. She listened, and only said, "Do they give no hope of his getting well?"

'"None," I said. She lay back in her chair, and a sweet smile came into her face. Then I knew that she felt it was the same with her; and my soul consented. It was best they should go together. God was very good.

'Hal lingered on into the new year, and the hospital people were very kind, and let me see him whenever I could go; and while the holidays page 200lasted I went every day. And there came a spell of milder weather, and then Effie asked us to let her go, just once, to see him again. "I would live for you all if I could, Hannah dear," she said. "It would be a happy life, now. But it's no use. I get weaker and weaker, and I do want to see him once more on earth."

'So I went to father and mother, and begged of them to let her go. Poor father, it was hard for him, for he clung to hope, and always thought Effie would get better in the spring. But mother said, "Let's never have to think that the child wanted a comfort that she might have had, but for our will;" and he gave way. We settled for her to go with me the next day, if it was fine, and I wrote to the sister of his ward, to say we were coming. I was going to get a cab, but that evening Mat came in, and said no, he should order a carriage for her. "It's the least I can do, Hannah," he said, and the tears were in his eyes. Poor Mat!

'He went over to the livery stables. We knew the man that kept them, and Mat was telling him he wanted a very easy carriage, and why, when a gentleman that happened to be in the yard, giving some orders, touched his arm. "Mr. Smith will excuse my taking this job away from him," he said. "Name your time, and my carriage shall be page 201at your door, to take your sisters to the hospital and bring them back. I know Miss Martin."

'Mat asked Mr. Smith his name afterwards, and it was one of our school committee. And next day the most beautiful carriage and pair came round to the door, and a foot-warmer in it, and fur rug and cushions, all for my darling to go as easy as it could be made. It was so good. I'll never forget how happy we were, that ride. And when we got to the hospital the porters brought a chair and carried her all up those long stairs and galleries into the ward. The sister had put a screen round Hal's bed. It was the same as if "there stood no man near" when those two met again.

'I stayed in the ward and tried to talk to the other patients; but all the while my heart was beating time to the minutes—the last minutes of joy my darling would ever have on earth, as it seemed; and they slipped on and on, till I was obliged to go and look round the screen and call her.

'She was sitting with her hand in his, and there was a light on both their faces that made me stand still. I had never seen the like before.' Softly Miss Martin added,' I think I must know a little how they look in heaven now.

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'And instead of clouding, poor Hal's face lit up with a smile to see me—as it always did—and he drew me down and held me for such a kiss! Then they parted, without a tear, and Effie was carried down again to the carriage. She looked up at me as we drove off, like a child that has had a happy holiday, and said, "It has been so nice!"

'I don't know what I answered, but I must have said something about their parting, for she said, "It's only for such a little while, you know." And when I didn't speak, she said, "You will be glad, for my sake, won't you, Hannah?"

'I looked at her dear face, and knew the life of my heart would go with her; but I said I would. And I was. Father, I am glad!—I am!'

Miss Martin's head went down upon her hands, and Gertrude waited reverently before trying to falter out such poor words of sympathy as she could find—poor indeed, but they brought a gentle answering look to the kind face lifted from the hands.

'It was all right, my dear,' said Miss Martin. 'Right for me too. The Lord fulfilled my best desire for them both. How could I murmur at anything He took away?

'It was that same day, when we had got home, page 203and Effie was in bed, she said to me, "We never had such a happy time together before, Hannah."

'She was very tired then, and her breath was short, but I couldn't stop her. "Do you remember," she said, "how you used to tell us there was something better than all we had? And we used to think—what could you know about it? Now—I know. I have known this long time what Jesus can be in sorrow—and for sin. Now I know that He is altogether lovely; and His presence—and nothing else—can make even our joy in one another altogether lovely too."

'And then, with a look that is painted on my heart so that I can never lose it,—to all eternity, I hope,—she put her dear hand on mine, and said, "And now—dear Hannah—it's my turn to say to you—for yourself—He is enough."

'"Yes," I said, "He is." And I felt it. It was given me, then,—a sight of my lot and my inheritance such as carried me through all the days to come. All my life rose before me, and I saw how rich I had been in being loved and trusted; but I was like Ruth with her six measures that Boaz gave her; it wasn't a perfect number, because he had settled to give himself to her, and that would make the seventh. I'd had my six measures, as perhaps not many ever have; and yet they were page 204all short measure for the can; but all the time there was One more, and that made up the seven. Before I was laid upon my back, when I was just a little tired child drudging about the shop, the Lord began to give Himself to me; and the seventh measure flowed over and filled up all the rest,—good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over. And when Effie had what I never had, nor look to have—You say you don't, either, my dear,' said Miss Martin, her rapt face suddenly changing to its wonted kindly look. 'Well, that will be as He pleases. But Effie had it; and she learned that was only six measures; it wasn't perfect till God gave the seventh.'

'Thank you. I shall remember that always,' said Gertrude softly. Then, fearing lest Miss Martin should be drawn away from her own story, she hastened to add, 'But tell me—did they ever see each other again?'

'Never, on earth,' said Miss Martin. 'It was the last time. But that did not matter. It had been enough. The change there was in poor Hal when I saw him again! I told you he had had the turn before. I knew he had found the Saviour, and been found of Him; but sins like his leave a black shadow. Poor lad, he fretted so to think of the sorrow he had brought on all of us. To the last, page 205he could never get reconciled to that; but from the day he saw Effie he was able to give it up, and trust the Lord to give us double for all his sins. Father and mother both went to see him, and Mat and Mark: but he clung most to me. I dreaded the end of the holidays; and, after all, he died the Sunday of the very week that school began, and father was with him.'

'He never lived to miss you,' said Gertrude.

'No. I thank God for that,' said Miss Martin.

'And then there was nothing left but to see my darling fade away. Ah me, we talk of fading, as if human creatures died like flowers; but it's through pain and lowness and struggle of body that we sink down into our rest. I watched her suffer till I prayed and longed for the hour that should part me from her. It was so hard to leave her every day for my school; but we had prayed so much to be together at the last, I felt the Lord would grant it; and He did. She died on a Sunday morning, just as Hal did. The day he always used to come to her was the day she went to him, to begin the long, long Sabbath together.'

'And you were nearest, to the end,' said Gertrude.

'No,' said Miss Martin. 'It was father held her up in his arms, all her last hours—father and Mat. page 206And mother had her hand at the last. I've always been so glad of that. But my name was her last word. It just happened so. She lay on father's shoulder, and we thought she was gently sleeping herself away, when her eyes opened again a minute, and she said, "Don't stand, Hannah."'

Suddenly the speaker's tears welled up, and she and Gertrude cried together.

'I oughtn't to be crying now,' said Miss Martin, smiling a quivering smile through her tears. 'I could weep my eyes out for what went before, but it's her marriage day that I have to tell of now. She was beautiful in her life; but after, she was altogether lovely. I looked at her, my love, that had shed such tears and borne such pain in life, and longed with such sore longing for things she never had; and something in her face said, "I have it all now. He has satiated the weary soul." She lay, like a bride adorned for her husband, with white flowers all about her, and a plant of lilies blooming by her side. The flowers were left at our door. I never knew who sent them, but I think it must have been the same kind friend who sent the carriage. I wish he could know the joy it gave me to have flowers for Effie's bridal.

Those days were as days of heaven to me. I couldn't weep for her—only once, when Mat came page 207up; and how he cried! I never saw a man cry like that—and he was like mother, never one to show what he felt. "Oh, Hannah," he said, "to think if we'd clone at the first what we did at the last, none of this need have been!"'

'But God brought good out of the evil,' said Gertrude.

'Yes, but not the good that would have been,' said Miss Martin. 'My dear, it would be a sin to say that everything is for the best. You may bring the blackest thing that ever was to God, and He will do with it the best that even He can; but by the laws that He Himself has made, there are fruits of sin that never can be anything but bitter on this earth. He may put things right in heaven, but not here. He could take my Effie and her love to glory; but what went off the earth with them, that might have been! That was what Mat said. And, dear lad,' his sister added in a trembling voice, 'he said, "It's worse for you than anyone, Hannah, for the old folks will go to her." And it was true. I could see they felt, like Effie with Hal, it was only for such a little time.'

'And you might have half a lifetime left to live without her,' said Gertrude.

'Yes; but I didn't feel it at first,' said Miss Martin. 'I was so happy to think, when I went page 208out to school, I left her in glory, instead of suffering here. Then I got a strange feeling of wanting to have letters from her, like we did from the other girls when they were married and settled away. It seemed to give me a pang when the postman went by; and it grew and grew, till I couldn't tell how to bear it, to know she was gone, and never a word or token could come back from her to me. I searched my Bible through for every word about the life she had gone to—and it ought to have been enough for me, but it wasn't. I longed so to go and see her, and know how she was getting on; and there was no voice, nor any that answered. I saw father and mother setting their faces heavenward, and waiting, cheerful, for the call to come for them—when the posts go out, as Bunyan said; but what long years I might have to wait, before that great silence broke for me.

'The spring came, and the sunshine, but my sunbeam was gone. The young leaves came out, but there was no Effie to see them. Mother would try to get me out, sometimes. I had no heart for anything that wasn't a duty; but one beautiful Saturday afternoon in May—just such a day as this, only the trees more forward,—to please her, I went for a walk to Kensington Gardens. I went listless down the paths, thinking of the times I page 209used to go there with Effie, before her troubles began, when every little thing was such a treat to her. I thought I couldn't enjoy anything; but when I sat down to rest, all among the May trees, red and white, and dark fir trees showing through the young green of the elms beyond—it was so beautiful. And I looked up at the blue sky, and the white clouds piled up like snowy mountains behind the trees, and thought, "This must be a little, just a little, like what Effie sees now."

'Then came the thought, "But she hasn't got to the new heavens and the new earth yet. You don't know that there are trees and flowers where she is." Oh, the cold, thick cloud between us! I felt it again. Then, on a sudden, I seemed to hear her dear voice, saying that little hymn I used to teach her—

"All things bright and beautiful,
  All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
  The Lord God made them all."

Just in her childish voice! as plain as if the Lord had sent her out of heaven to point with her own dear little hand to the pretty things she used to love, and say, "These are God's thoughts. Every pretty blossom, and leaf, and colour in the sky, was in His mind before ever it was made for eyes page 210to see. And that's the mind of Him I've gone to live with, Hannah dear, and I'm looking into it—Hal and I are—with our heavenly eyes, while you are seeing as much of it as poor earthly eyes can see, down below."

'And so the silence broke. I hadn't so long to wait, had I?' said Miss Martin, with a tearful smile.

'That was your letter,' said Gertrude softly.

'Yes, my letter in Effie's little writing that I taught her,' said the elder sister, brushing away a tear, 'to remind me that the same Lord made heaven and earth. He is Master of the house where Effie is, and my dear Master too. And ever since, whether it's flowers, or stars, or the light on the clouds—"All things bright and beautiful,"—and things wise and wonderful too, that people do—all seem as if they came to say that the posts go out from Above, and these are the letters to tell us what is in the heart of Him with whom our loved ones dwell.'

There was a long silence. Gertrude broke it by asking, 'But when the dark days come—when you have only the backs of those houses to look at, and a rainy sky, and nobody does anything nice—do you feel as if you had no letters then?'

Ah, the dark days and the rough times never page 211make it sad to think of her,' said Miss Martin. 'From the beginning, they made me glad for her. My little tender lamb, that I couldn't shield from sorrow with all my trying! The Good Shepherd has her now, where the cold winds will never blow on her again. No, the snare, to me, would have been to sit and think and dream about the past, and the meeting to come, and not put my heart into what was going on about me. But I got a word for that too. God sent it.'

She paused a moment, as if girding herself to tell what would be hard to utter.

'It was a good while after,' she said, 'I don't remember exactly when—I read a story of a poor laundress, a widow, who lost her only daughter; and the day after the funeral she brought her minister twenty pounds for the missionaries. At first he would not take it, he said it was too much for her to give; but she begged him—and when still he would not, at last she said, "When my child was born, I thought, 'She will be married some day, and she will want a portion. I must begin to save up for it.' So I began that day with sixpence, and it went on to what you see here. You know what happened last week. The Lord Jesus has taken the bride; and it's only fair that He should have the dowry."

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'Oh, when I read that, I thought, if Effie's wedding had been coming, how I would have sewed my fingers to the bone to get her things ready, and planned day and night how to get everything good and pretty I could think of, for her home; and how all my spare time would have gone to her, and her little ones, if she had had them! And I knelt down by her little empty bed, and asked the Lord, would He take the dowry? All the love and thought and care, and bits of money savings too,—would He send, by the hand of whom He chose, and take it all; never let the love dry up and wither in my heart, but from that night to my life's end send me them who should want it every bit, and let me give it, whether they were pleasing to me or not, for His sake.'

'And the answer came?' said Gertrude.

'It did,' said Miss Martin. 'As I lay awake that night, I thought of things that were wanted for one and another: quite little things, for the big ones were beyond me; but I thought, "I'll begin to-morrow with sixpence." And from that day forward, one by one, things came to do, and people to be done for. Mostly the sort of things I had done before, only I put more heart into them; but some were new, for loving poor Hal made us page 213all love sinners as never before—father and mother, as well as me. There have been some laid on that bed that I couldn't tell you of, my dear; be thankful it is not for you to know of some things yet. And they were saved. Thank God!'

Gertrude looked with a kind of reverence at the little patchwork - quilted bed; but the utter self-negation of such a life oppressed her.

It was very beautiful,' she said; 'but could it be the same as doing things for Effie and Hal?'

'No, it could not,' said Miss Martin. 'Not the same. I felt that, when father and mother were gone, and I longed to have my own flesh and blood to work for. I had always been used to it. Home had been first always, and my work second. But it was just that I had offered to the Lord, when I asked Him to take Effie's dowry. All the world is His flesh and blood, since He has taken upon Himself our nature; and now He has got all my treasures safe, it's only fair that all that belonged to them should go to Him and His. And you mustn't think it's all giving out. Good measure comes back, while it lasts: only of course it can't go on, as one's own folks do.'

'Do you mean that people go away and forget you?' exclaimed Gertrude indignantly.

'No, my dear, far from it; but mostly they page 214outgrow you, just as my own brothers and sisters did. You are all the world to them for a bit, and then they go off; and with this difference from your own kith and kin—they owe you no duty, except for love's sake, so that when they get to stand on their own feet and make ties of their own, every tie that brings a duty comes before yours. They don't forget, but they could no more hold on to you with the old clinging, than anybody in a boat that's set going could cling to the tree it was moored to when it came in out of a storm.'

'But how dreadful for you! You can't unlove them again, just because they don't want you,' said Gertrude.

'No, my dear, no more than they unlove me,' answered Miss Martin; 'but I have to learn to get them off my mind, and turn to those that want me next.'

'I couldn't bear it. I should be afraid to love anybody,' said Gertrude.

'You couldn't help it if it was ever so,' said Miss Martin. 'I thought once I ought to try, and love only with the love that doesn't care for being loved again, and can't be pleased, nor suffer; but that wasn't Effie's dowry. And then the word came to me, "Go thy way, eat the fat and drink the sweet page 215(and the bitter); and when the change steals on, and you are left as one for whom only a little piece is prepared—not enough to live on—then you shall sit down under My shadow with great delight, and My fruit be sweet to your taste." Oh, we couldn't bear it!—to love so, and yet be ready to let go whenever our part is done, if there wasn't One nearer and dearer than all to turn back to. It's just as it was with the children. I hadn't to take care of them alone, only to help mother; and now, it's the Lord who is out seeking the lost and the broken-hearted, and when He wants me, He calls me to help Him. And when my work is over, and the poor lamb is either put in good pasture or away beyond where I can reach, the place is ready for me to sit down and rest with Him. Just as after the weddings and winnings, when one and another got a new start in life and left us, and father and mother and I sat down together, they were nearer of kin to me than all that went away, and I was satisfied. And still it's the same. I sit up here alone with Him who is nearest; and He is enough.'

Gertrude was silent, awed. This back room was indeed the presence-chamber of the King.

'But you mustn't think that everybody goes, my dear,' Miss Martin went on brightly. 'I've never page 216been really left alone altogether. Only it will happen, sometimes, that those you cling to most are the ones to go, and perhaps to change the most. But that's no fault of theirs. It's the Lord's will that those who would have taken us up too much should go on, and we be ready for the next. That's our little perquisite—we that have got no husbands or children to take up our time year in, year out—we can make room for anyone that comes along. They're all Mr. Rights to us, and Mrs. Rights.'

'And all the little Rights for you,' exclaimed Gertrude. 'That is one thing that stayed, Miss Martin—your school.'

'And a fortune it has been to me, You must have been a lone woman with an infant school yourself, to know what it's worth to have the little things to run to you and cling about you,' said Miss Martin, her eyes kindling with a mother-light. 'You wouldn't believe what it is to me. Our family were always like mother about showing love, all but Effie and Hal. My dear Mat, I know how he loves me; but I think he'd expect the ceiling to fall down if I ever put my arms round his neck, as his own girls do. Ah, I miss my Effie's loving ways. It's a foolish thing, but sometimes, to this day, I cry for her to come and kiss me. There's many to love and trust me, but few, besides page 217the little children, that care to cling round my neck and get hold of my hands—my empty hands—now.'

'Oh!' With a little cry Gertrude was kneeling beside her, her head on the lonely woman's shoulder, the hard brown hands fast in hers; and Miss Martin laid her cheek against the young head, and loosed a hand to stroke it tenderly; but all the while she knew that this love was not like Effie's, and never could be. There are loves that can spring up anywhere—blossom in an hour and bloom for the rest of life; but the love of brothers and sisters flows through tendrils that clasped when they were young and soft, and grew old and hard together. Rend them, and no other plant will ever twine into the same embrace. Fresh leaves and sprays may hide the rent, but behind them the old, twisted wood is found, 'the scars remaining,'—never to gain its complement again until the day of Restitution comes. This young life had its own links clasped already, more than it was aware.

Still, the love of the young is very precious to those whose youth is past. Gertrude was dropping sweet drops into that wounded heart.

'I may come again, mayn't I?' she asked, raising her head.

'That you may, my dear, whenever you want to.'

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'I shall always want to,' said Gertrude; and fancying she saw a doubt even in the tenderness of Miss Martin's smile, she added quickly, 'I have no one else to go to.'

Again the lone woman's tender smile covered her hidden thought. She was used to being sought by those who had no one else to go to.

'Your life ought to be full, my dear,' she said, gently stroking back the girl's brown hair.

'It isn't,' said Gertrude.

'Then something must be wrong,' said Miss Martin. 'Do you think, because you can't be clerk of the kitchen for anybody, and rule the roast, that you've been neglecting to go off with those little perquisites that belong to you?'

'I'm afraid I have. I have been turning up my nose at broken victuals,' said Gertrude, somewhat ruefully; 'so I suppose it will serve me right if I come to want them some day.'

'There are two ways of looking at everything in this world, my dear,' said Miss Martin. 'You may call the same thing broken victuals or nice bits, according to how you take it. I had to learn that,' she added, smiling, 'after being mistress in this house, next to mother, all my life, and mistress altogether the two years after dear mother was gone—when father was taken too, and Mat page 219and Laura and their children came. This room is mine; father left it me in his will, and all the things in it. They could spare it, for they kept the two top rooms that we used to let off; and all their wish was to make me happy here. But it was a great change for me, and it took some prayer and fasting—"fasting from thoughts of self"—to settle my mind that the best they had to give me wasn't broken victuals at all; it was a very worthy portion for a crooked old maid to have.'

'I should have thought they would love you so much,' said Gertrude.

'They do, I'm sure,' said Miss Martin; 'but they are all so much to each other, there was no great want for me, except in times of trouble; and I had been used to be the right hand and right arm. However, we all shook down together very lovingly; and if I am sick, or want anything, they all want to do for me. Only, one's own flesh and blood are not always the easiest to give the dowry to, if they happen to want the very bit you'd like to keep; and what you long to give, and other people would jump at, they mayn't care for.'

Gertrude looked thoughtful. 'I see,' she said, 'it is just as important to know how to take as page 220how to give. I will try to be more pleased when the others do anything to please me. I can do that, even if I am too stupid to please them.'

'The Lord won't leave you stupid, my dear,' said Miss Martin. 'Trust in Him, and He will give you knowledge of witty inventions to make happiness for them you love.'

'And for my school - children. Oh! Jane Fellows!' exclaimed Gertrude, starting up. 'The time is all gone.'

On this, Miss Martin insisted upon taking the visit to Jane Fellows on herself, for which Gertrude was infinitely beholden.

She walked homewards up the hill again, past the square gardens, where the late afternoon sunlight slanted low across the white and purple lilacs, and felt that life was changed for her, almost as much as it had been for her sister this very week, on the day of betrothal. A new love is a very wonderful possession, but a new truth may be greater still, for it means a further look into the mind of Him, 'in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life.' Nor is it only through great upheavals, when the rocks are rent, that eras can be made in the spiritual life; the glance of a sunbeam on treasure hidden by the wayside may enrich it just as much. Such a glance had shone page 221for Gertrude, and shown her the way into new treasuries filled with the unsearchable riches of Christ. And at the same time a sweet new human love had sprung up, and shed new fragrance on her way.

At the gate she met the new pair of lovers, looking very felicitous.

'Here has Gertrude been going, so good, to look up her Sunday school children, while we have been out pleasuring,' said the kind-hearted sister Fanny.

'No, I have not seen one of my children,' said Gertrude. 'I have been out pleasuring too.'

That was thirty years ago. Gertrude is very nearly as old now, as Miss Martin was then. She has neither married nor had a 'career.' Her life has been spent very much after the manner of an old-fashioned old maid's, but greatly advantaged by the higher estimate and position won for single women through the careers of some among them, and the wider choice of work and interest for the 'half-timers' which these leaders have opened out. She has had no such vicarious love and sorrow compressed into one page as came to Hannah Martin; but passages in her life have come very near it, and made her heart grow tender and deep. page 222God has greatly blessed her in her chosen friends, not one of whom has been false to her through life; and, what is better still, her own sisters and brother and their families have become close friends as well as kindred to her, through the mutual practice of those sweet fine arts of considerate affection which bind families together in love. She has had her share of disappointment, but less than many; having set out in life with modest personal expectations, she has wholly escaped that 'melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all excessive claim,' And that 'little perquisite' of the unmarried has grown so dear,—if, at this late period of life, any opportunity should come for entering on a different vocation, it would have to be very tempting indeed to make her willing to exchange it for her own. Nevertheless, she would say with Miss Martin that these good things would have been 'all short measure for the can,' but for the Seventh Measure; that has 'overflowed and filled up all the rest—good measure, pressed down and running over.'

Miss Martin is altogether lovely now. She has dropped the burden of mortality, and the beauty of the Lord is upon her, unveiled. She worked on in her old place till superseded by a great Board School; then, pensioned and honoured, she went page 223to live with her sister Martha in a sweet country village, helped in the school there as long as she was able, and there lived out her bright remaining years, sharing the love of her sister's children and grandchildren, and delighting in the beauty of woods and wild flowers with more than childhood's joy. She is buried in the churchyard there; and though the young are drifting away from that village, as from all the rest, I think it will be long before no lover is left to put fresh flowers on her grave.

Morrison and Gibb, Printers, Edinburgh

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