In the days of his childhood and youth, Mr. Carson had been accustomed to poverty; but it was honest, decent poverty; not the grinding squalid misery he had remarked in every part of John Barton’s house, and which contrasted strangely with the pompous sumptuousness of the room in which he now sat. Unaccustomed wonder filled his mind at the reflection of the different lots of the brethren of mankind.
Then he roused himself from his reverie, and turned to the object of his search—the Gospel, where he half expected to find the tender pleading: “They know not what they do.”
It was murk midnight by this time, and the house was still and quiet. There was nothing to interrupt the old man in his unwonted study.
Years ago, the Gospel had been his task-book in learning to read. So many years ago, that he had become familiar with the events before he could comprehend the Spirit that made the Life.
He fell to the narrative now afresh, with all the interest of a little child. He began at the beginning, and read on almost greedily, understanding for the first time the full meaning of the story. He came to the end; the awful End. And there were the haunting words of pleading.
He shut the book, and thought deeply.
All night long, the Archangel combated with the Demon.
All night long, others watched by the bed of Death. John Barton had revived to fitful intelligence. He spoke at times with even something of his former energy; and in the racy Lancashire dialect he had always used when speaking freely.
“You see I’ve so often been hankering after the right way; and it’s a hard one for a poor man to find. At least it’s been so to me. No one learned me, and no one telled me. When I was a little chap they taught me to read, and then they never gave no books; only I heard say the Bible was a good book. So when I grew thoughtful, and puzzled, I took to it. But you’d never believe black was black, or night was night, when you saw all about you acting as if black was white, and night was day. It’s not much I can say for myself in t’other world. God forgive me; but I can say this, I would fain have gone after the Bible rules if I’d seen folk credit it; they all spoke up for it, and went and did clean contrary. In those days I would ha’ gone about wi’ my Bible, like a little child, my finger in th’ place, and asking the meaning of this or that text, and no one told me. Then I took out two or three texts as clear as glass, and I tried to do what they bid me do. But I don’t know how it was, masters and men, all alike cared no more for minding those texts, than I did for th’ Lord Mayor of London; so I grew to think it must be a sham put upon poor ignorant folk, women, and such like.
“It was not long I tried to live Gospel-wise, but it was liker heaven than any other bit of earth has been. I’d old Alice to strengthen me; but every one else said, ‘Stand up for thy rights, or thou’lt never get ‘em’; and wife and children never spoke, but their helplessness cried aloud, and I was driven to do as others did—and then Tom died. You know all about that—I’m getting scant o’ breath, and blind-like.”
Then again he spoke, after some minutes of hushed silence.
“All along it came natural to love folk, though now I am what I am. I think one time I could e’en have loved the masters if they’d ha’ letten me; that was in my Gospel-days, afore my child died o’ hunger. I was tore in two oftentimes, between my sorrow for poor suffering folk, and my trying to love them as caused their sufferings (to my mind).
“At last I gave it up in despair, trying to make folks’ actions square wi’ th’ Bible; and I thought I’d no longer labour at following th’ Bible mysel. I’ve said all this afore, maybe. But from that time I’ve dropped down, down—down.”
After that he only spoke in broken sentences.
“I did not think he’d been such an old man,—oh! that he had but forgiven me,”—and then came earnest, passionate, broken words of prayer.
Job Legh had gone home like one struck down with the unexpected shock.
Mary and Jem together waited the approach of death; but as the final struggle drew on, and morning dawned, Jem suggested some alleviation to the gasping breath, to purchase which he left the house in search of a druggist’s shop, which should be open at that early hour.
During his absence, Barton grew worse; he had fallen across the bed, and his breathing seemed almost stopped; in vain did Mary strive to raise him, her sorrow and exhaustion had rendered her too weak.
So, on hearing some one enter the house-place below, she cried out for Jem to come to her assistance.
A step, which was not Jem’s, came up the stairs.
Mr. Carson stood in the doorway. In one instant he comprehended the case.
He raised up the powerless frame; and the departing soul looked out of the eyes with gratitude. He held the dying man propped in his arms.
John Barton folded his hands as if in prayer.
“Pray for us,” said Mary, sinking on her knees, and forgetting in that solemn hour all that had divided her father and Mr. Carson.
No other words would suggest themselves than some of those he had read only a few hours before—
“God be merciful to us sinners.—Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us!”
And when the words were said, John Barton lay a corpse in Mr. Carson’s arms.
So ended the tragedy of a poor man’s life.
Mary knew nothing more for many minutes. When she recovered consciousness, she found herself supported by Jem on the “settle” in the house-place. Job and Mr. Carson were there, talking together lowly and solemnly. Then Mr. Carson bade farewell and left the house; and Job said aloud, but as if speaking to himself—
“God has heard that man’s prayer. He has comforted him.”
XXXVI. JEM’S INTERVIEW WITH MR. DUNCOMBE.
“The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress.” —BYRON.
Although Mary had hardly been conscious of her thoughts, and it had been more like a secret instinct informing her soul, than the result of any process of reasoning, she had felt for some time (ever since her return from Liverpool, in fact), that for her father there was but one thing to be desired and anticipated, and that was death!
She had seen that Conscience had given the mortal wound to his earthly frame; she did not dare to question of the infinite mercy of God, what the Future Life would be to him.
Though at first desolate and stunned by the blow which had fallen on herself, she was resigned and submissive as soon as she recovered strength enough to ponder and consider a little; and you may be sure that no tenderness or love was wanting on Jem’s part, and no consideration and sympathy on that of Job and Margaret to soothe and comfort the girl who now stood alone in the world as far as blood relations were concerned.
She did not ask or care to know what arrangements they were making in whispered tones with regard to the funeral. She put herself into their hands with the trust of a little child; glad to be undisturbed in the reveries and remembrances which filled her eyes with tears, and caused them to fall quietly, down her pale cheeks.
It was the longest day she had ever known in her life; every change and every occupation was taken away from her: but perhaps the length of quiet time thus afforded was really good, although its duration weighed upon her; for by this means she contemplated her situation in every light, and fully understood that the morning’s event had left her an orphan; and thus she was spared the pangs caused to us by the occurrence of death in the evening, just before we should naturally, in the usual course of events, lie down to slumber. For in such case, worn out by anxiety, and it may be by much watching, our very excess of grief rocks itself to sleep, before we have had time to realise its cause; and we waken, with a start of agony like a fresh stab, to the consciousness of the one awful vacancy, which shall never, while the world endures, be filled again.