Her Benny: A Story of Street Life. Hocking Silas Kitto
however, on the contrary, could see nothing particularly interesting in the narrative itself. But the art of reading was to him a mystery past all comprehension. How granny could see that story upon the page of her Bible was altogether beyond his grasp. At length, after scratching his head vigorously for some time, he burst out, —
"By jabbers! I's got it at last! – Jimmy Jones squeeze me if I ain't! It's the specks that does it."
"Does what?" said Nelly.
"Why, the story bizness, to be sure. Let me look at the book through your specks, shall I, granny?"
"Ay, if you like, Benny." And the next minute he was looking at the Bible with granny's spectacles upon his nose, with a look of blank disappointment upon his face.
"Golly! I's sold!" was his exclamation. "But this are a poser, and no mistake."
"What's such a poser?" said granny.
"Why, how yer find the story in the book; for I can see nowt." And Benny looked as disappointed as if he had earned nothing for a week.
By much explaining, however, granny enabled him to comprehend in some vague way how the mystery was accomplished; and then arose within the heart of the child an unutterable longing to understand this mysterious art fully, and be able to read for himself – a longing that grew in intensity as evening after evening he tried, by granny's help, to master the alphabet. In fact, it became a passion with the lad, and many an hour in the weeks and months that followed he spent gazing at the placards on the walls, and in trying to explain to the other Arabs that gathered around him the meaning of the mysterious characters.
Benny was naturally a sharp lad, and hence, though his opportunities were few, his progress was by no means slow. Sometimes he startled Joe Wrag by spelling out a long word that he had carried in his head the whole of the day, and asking its meaning. Long words had an especial fascination for him, and the way he brought them out in all sorts of connections was truly amusing.
Nelly manifested no desire to learn to read. If ever she thought about it, it was only to regard it as something infinitely beyond her capabilities; and she seemed content to remain as she was. But if she could get granny to read to her a chapter out of St. John's Gospel, she seemed to desire no higher pleasure. She would sit with a dreamy far-away look in her half-closed eyes, and the smiles that old Joe Wrag loved to see would come and go upon her face like patches of spring sunshine chasing each other across a plain. She never said very much, but perhaps she thought all the more. To honest Joe Wrag she seemed as if ripening for a fairer country, and for a purer and nobler life. Not that she ailed anything. True, she had a little hacking cough now and then, and when she lay asleep a pink spot would glow on either cheek; but nothing more than that.
"Speretual things," mused Joe Wrag one night, as he sat in the door of his hut looking into the fire, "are speretually discerned, an' I b'lieve that child 'as rale speretual discernment: she looks a mighty sight deeper than we thinks she do, that's my opinion. I should like to get howld o' all that passes through her purty little noddle, the little hangel – bless her! As for the boy, 'e's a little hanimal. I reckon the passons would call him a materialist. I don't b'lieve 'e b'lieves nothing but what 'e sees. No speretual insight in 'im – not a bit. P'raps he's like me, don't belong to the elect. Ah, me! I wonder what the likes o' us was born for?"
And Joe went out, and heaped more fuel on the fire by way of diverting his thoughts from a subject that was always painful to him. But when he came back and sat down again, and the fire before him blazed up with fiercer glow, the thoughts returned, and would not be driven away.
"Bless her!" he said. "She sees in the fire only woods, an' meadows, an' mountains, an' streams; an' I only see the yawning caverns o' hell. An' to think I must burn in a fire a thousan' times bigger an' hotter than that for ever and ever without a single moment's ease; scorching on every side, standin' up or lyin' down, always burnin'! No water, no light, no mercy, no hope. An' when a million million years are past, still burning, an' no nearer the end than at the beginnin'. Oh, how shall I bear it – how shall I bear it?"
And big drops of perspiration oozed from his forehead and rolled down his face, testifying to the anguish of his soul.
"I canna understand it – I canna understand it," he went on. "All this pain and suffering for His glory. What kind o' glory can it be, to bring folks into the world doomed aforehand to eternal misery? to give 'em no chance o' repentance, an' then damn them for ever 'cause they don't repent! O Lord a mercy, excuse me, but I canna see no justice in it anywhere."
And once more Joe got up and began to pace up and down in front of the fire; but the thoughts would not leave him. "'Whom He did foreknow,'" he went on, "'them also He did predestinate.' Mighty queer, that a Father should love a part o' His fam'ly an' hate the rest. Create 'em only to burn 'em for ever an' ever! An' what's the use o' the burnin'? That bangs me complete. If 't was to burn away the dross an' leave the metal, I could understand it. I think sometimes there's jist a bit o' the right stuff in me; an' if hell would burn up the bad an' leave the good, an' give it a chance of some'at better, there 'ud be more justice in it, seems to me. But what am I a-saying? It shows as how I'm none o' the elect, to be talking to myself in this way. What a wicked old sinner I be!"
And once more Joe sat down with a jerk, as if he meant to say, "I'm not going to be bothered with such thoughts any more to-night." But alas! he found that thoughts would come, whether he would or no.
"Pr'aps," he said, "we don't know nowt about it, none o' us. Mebbe God is more marcyfuller than we think. An' I'm sadly banged about that 'makin' an end o' sin;' I don't see as how He can make an end o' sin without making an end o' the sinner; an' whiles there is millions sich as me in hell, there'll be no end to neither on 'em. I'm sadly out in my reck'nin' somewheres, but 'pears to me if there was no sinners there 'ud be no sin; an' the way to rid the univarse of sinners is to get 'em all saved or kill 'em outright."
Much more to the same effect Joe Wrag turned over in his mind that night, but we must not weary the reader with his speculations. Like many other of God's children, he was crying in the darkness and longing for light. He had found that human creeds, instead of being a ladder leading up into the temple of truth, were rather a house of bondage. Men had spread a veil before the face of God, and he had not courage to pull it aside. Now and then through the rents he caught a ray of light, but it dazzled him so that he was afraid there was something wrong about it, and he turned away his face and looked again into the darkness. And yet the night was surely passing away. It wanted but a hand to take down the shutters from the windows of his soul, and let the light – ay, and the love of God that surrounded him, like a mighty ocean – rush in. But whose hand should take down the shutters? Through what agency should the light come in? Let us wait and see.
CHAPTER VII.
Two Visits
Tell me the story slowly,
That I may take it in;
That wonderful redemption,
God's remedy for sin.
Tell me the story simply,
As to a little child;
For I am weak and weary,
And helpless and defiled.
One clear frosty evening early in the new year two little figures might have been seen threading their way along Old Hall Street, in the opposite direction to the Exchange. It had not long gone five, and numbers of clerks and warehousemen were crowding into the street and hurrying in the direction of their several homes. But the little figures dodged their way with great skill through the crowded street, still holding each other by the hand and keeping up most of the time a sharp trot.
After pursuing a straight course for a considerable time, they turned off suddenly to the right into a less frequented street. Then they took a turn to the left, and then again to the right. It was very evident they knew the streets well, for they wound in and out, now right, now left, without the least hesitation.
At length they reached a street where all was darkness, save where here and there the flickering rays of a candle struggled through the dirt-begrimed window. This was Bowker's Row, and Benny and his sister paused