London's Heart. B. L. Farjeon
is honourable and good for you may be engulfed, they will not be told in vain! I spare you the pain of a long recital; I simply tell you that step by step your father sank, and dragged your mother with him. He would not work, and constant appeals were made to my purse to supply the means of living. I gave and gave; spoke to your father again and again; appealed to his self respect, to his feelings of honour; and received in return--promises of amendment, promises of amendment, promises forgotten as soon as each temporary want was provided for. Shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you that, so low did drink and gambling bring him, he raised his hand against his wife—"
"No, no, sir!" cried Alfred, with a beating heart.
"It is true," said the old man sternly; "it is true, and it must be told. He raised his hand against the wife who had loved him and been faithful to him. And yet there was a time when he would have been as shocked as you are now, had such an accusation been made against him; but he was weak and easily misled; unstable as water, as Reuben was; selfish in his desires and pleasures; with no gratitude for love; with no thought that life has solemn duties, and that there is in it something purer, brighter, sweeter, than the false glitter that attracts weak minds; therefore he wrecked his life and broke your mother's heart--your mother, whose sufferings you can imagine when I tell you that she was once as trustful as Lily, as tender as Lily! You were born; Lily was born. The downward course went on, and he and all of you sank into deeper misery, deeper shame, until I thought the worst had been reached. But I was mistaken."
The old man paused, reluctant to proceed; but Alfred said,
"Go on, sir; I must hear all now."
"It is right that you should. You will understand how, under these miserable influences, your mother's nature changed; how gradually, from a light-hearted trustful girl, she became a hopeless despairing woman. I gave up my house, and came to live with her. Your father was away sometimes for days together, and your mother had no dependence but me. One night late, long after we had retired, your father came home without warning. He stole into my room stealthily, and roused me. He had been in hiding for weeks; the police were after him, and were hunting him down; a warrant was out for him. He told me the shameful tale. I knew that he was a drunkard and a gambler, but I did not know before that night that he was a thief!"
Alfred sank on his knees in uncontrollable agitation, and hid his face in his hands.
"Circumstances had unfortunately placed it in his power to embezzle a large sum of money; he obtained possession of it, and drank and gambled it away. What was to be done? The name that I bore had never had a stain upon it. I and mine had lived honourable lives. I loved your mother, loved you and Lily. I had no others belonging to me--you were my all. If I made no attempt to save him, we should in the eyes of the world be sharers of his crime and his disgrace. His shame would have clung to you all your lives. He gave me the name of the man whom he had robbed. By daylight I was in the wronged man's house, by his bedside. This man loved money better than justice. I represented to him that he could not have both. He chose the first. I made terms with him, and sacrificed all but a bare pittance. Between us we compounded a felony. But I had not sufficient to pay the whole of his claim. I promised, however, to pay the rest as I could, and he took my word. Alfred, little by little I have been all my life since that time wiping off the debt of disgrace. One hundred pounds only remained to be paid, and very nearly that sum has been stolen from this iron box. Whoever stole that money stole the honour of our family!"
A long pause ensued. A new day was dawning, and the faint light rested upon the solemn face of the dead woman, to whom peace had come at last. Alfred turned his eyes towards it, and shuddered. Then he turned to the old man, and said in a low voice,
"And my father, sir?"
"In this iron box are two papers," said the old man; "one from him, promising never to trouble his wife and children more, and one from the man he wronged, giving quittance of what is set down as a debt. Your father kept his word. I have never seen him since that time."
Alfred kissed his mother's face, and covered it. Then he held out his hand to his grandfather, who took it in silence, and looked at him wistfully. But Alfred only said, humbly,
"I am tired, sir. You have been very good to us, and I will try to deserve it."
They went to the door, and the old man opened it, and saw Lily lying on the ground.
"Lily!" he cried, in alarm.
The girl slowly rose and stood before him. Her eyes were closed; she was asleep.
"Lily, my darling!" he said, tenderly placing his arm round her, "Why have you been sleeping here?"
The girl did not answer, but nestled in his arms as if she found comfort there. He led her into the room, and she accompanied him unresistingly.
"She has been overwrought, poor child," said the old man in a troubled voice.
They stood in silence for a few moments, almost fearing to speak; she still sleeping, with her sweet face turned towards the morning light, which, gradually growing brighter, illumined the strange group.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE REVEREND EMANUEL CREAMWELL STOPS THE WAY.
The parish of Stapleton, of which the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell was pastor, was situated a very few miles from London, and contained, it is to be presumed (and not to do violence to the science of divine things), an equal number of human bodies and souls. The number--reckoning the two as one--was not large, and the tithes were small, a circumstance which it is waste of time to mention, for what minister loves his emoluments better than his church? And yet in common minds a mean suspicion is sometimes engendered as to the comparative value of one and the other in the eyes of the clergy. Without indorsing this suspicion--rejecting it, indeed, as the vilest of calumnies--it is curious to observe that, when a minister has a "call," the summons from heaven generally holds out the promise of an increased earthly income. It is a proof of the base depths of which the mind is capable, and the fact of the divine summons being very generally joyfully responded to, should engender a tittle of suspicion. But unfortunately there are in the world men to whose moral perception purity of motive is a human impossibility; to such men the flesh-pots of Egypt contain the most powerful argument it is possible to conceive.
Stapleton was a tumble-down little parish, and bore unmistakable signs of being badly off. Everything in it and about it had been crumbling away for many generations. Magnates there were in it of course--most of them elderly gentlemen, with puffy faces and big stomachs, at whom the poor children of the parish, in dirty pinafores, their large eyes staring upwards, and their hands behind them, would gaze in worship. The predecessors of these great men were crumbling away in the picturesque old churchyard, making the soil rich for buttercups and daisies, with which the dirty children played and pelted one another. There were many picturesque bits of scenery about Stapleton; notwithstanding its poverty, it was not an undesirable living for a clergyman, and the patching-up and medicining of souls--which, according to doctrinal teaching, are always lame and diseased, coming into the world so, and so remaining--went on pretty much in the same way and quite as unsuccessfully as in most other parishes. Doctors for bodies and doctors for souls are so abundant, and increase and multiply so amazingly, that the human machine on two legs which walks the earth, and which Leigh Hunt's fish so very properly laughed at, may be said to be in a very bad state indeed.
Such, at all events, the preaching of the Reverend Emanuel Creamwell went to prove. According to his pulpit-doctrine, corruption was the normal state of man--and woman also, of course. This condition was bad enough in all conscience, but it was a miserable thing to be compelled to believe that it could never be bettered. The conviction was forced upon them by their pastor; his utterings were destructive of hope. He had preached