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THE MINISTER'S BEDROOM.
The next day, in the afternoon, old Lisbeth appeared at the rectory,
with a hurried note, in which Dorothy begged Mr. Wingfold to come and
see her father. The curate rose at once and went. When he reached the
house, Dorothy, who had evidently been watching for his arrival, herself
opened the door.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Nothing alarming, I hope?"
"I hope not," she answered. There was a strange light on her face, like
that of a sunless sky on a deep, shadowed well. "But I am a little
alarmed about him. He has suffered much of late. Ah, Mr. Wingfold, you
don't know how good he is! Of course, being no friend to the church--"
"I don't wonder at that, the church is so little of a friend to
herself," interrupted the curate, relieved to find her so composed, for
as he came along he had dreaded something terrible.
"He wants very much to see you. He thinks perhaps you may be able to
help him. I am sure if you can't nobody can. But please don't heed much
what he says about himself. He is feverish and excited. There is such a
thing--is there not?--as a morbid humility? I don't mean a false
humility, but one that passes over into a kind of self disgust."
"I know what you mean," answered the curate, laying down his hat: he
never took his hat into a sick-room.
Dorothy led the way up the narrow creaking stairs.
It was a lowly little chamber in which the once popular preacher
lay--not so good as that he had occupied when a boy, two stories above
his father's shop. That shop had been a thorn in his spirit in the days
of his worldly success, but again and again this morning he had been
remembering it as a very haven of comfort and peace. He almost forgot
himself into a dream of it once; for one blessed moment, through the
upper half of the window he saw the snow falling in the street, while he
sat inside and half under the counter, reading Robinson Crusoe! Could
any thing short of heaven be so comfortable?
As the curate stepped in, a grizzled head turned toward him a haggard
face with dry, bloodshot eyes, and a long hand came from the bed to
greet him.
"Ah, Mr. Wingfold!" cried the minister, "God has forsaken me. If He had
only forgotten me, I could have borne that, I think; for, as Job says,
the time would have come when He would have had a desire to the work of
His hands. But He has turned His back upon me, and taken His free Spirit
from me. He has ceased to take His own way, to do His will with me, and
has given me my way and my will. Sit down, Mr. Wingfold. You can not
comfort me, but you are a true servant of God, and I will tell you my
sorrow. I am no friend to the church, as you know, but--"
"So long as you are a friend of its Head, that goes for little with me,"
said the curate. "But if you will allow me, I should like to say just
one word on the matter."
He wished to try what a diversion of thought might do; not that he
foolishly desired to make him forget his trouble, but that he knew from
experience any gap might let in comfort.
"Say on, Mr. Wingfold. I am a worm and no man."
"It seems, then, to me a mistake for any community to spend precious
energy upon even a just finding of fault with another. The thing is, to
trim the lamp and clean the glass of our own, that it may be a light to
the world. It is just the same with communities as with individuals. The
community which casts if it be but the mote out of its own eye, does the
best thing it can for the beam in its neighbor's. For my part, I confess
that, so far as the clergy form and represent the Church of England, it
is and has for a long time been doing its best--not its worst, thank
God--to serve God and Mammon."
"Ah! that's my beam!" cried the minister. "I have been serving Mammon
assiduously. I served him not a little in the time of my prosperity,
with confidence and show, and then in my adversity with fears and
complaints. Our Lord tells us expressly that we are to take no thought
for the morrow, because we can not serve God and Mammon. I have been
taking thought for a hundred morrows, and that not patiently, but
grumbling in my heart at His dealings with me. Therefore now He has cast
me off."
"How do you know that He has cast you off?" asked the curate.
"Because He has given me my own way with such a vengeance. I have been
pulling, pulling my hand out of His, and He has let me go, and I lie in
the dirt."
"But you have not told me your grounds for concluding so."
"Suppose a child had been crying and fretting after his mother for a
spoonful of jam," said the minister, quite gravely, "and at last she set
him down to a whole pot--what would you say to that?"
"I should say she meant to give him a sharp lesson, perhaps a reproof as
well--certainly not that she meant to cast him off," answered Wingfold,
laughing. "But still I do not understand."
"Have you not heard then? Didn't Dorothy tell you?"
"She has told me nothing."
"Not that my old uncle has left me a hundred thousand pounds and more?"
The curate was on the point of saying, "I am very glad to hear it,"
when the warning Dorothy had given him returned to his mind, and with it
the fear that the pastor was under a delusion--that, as a rich man is
sometimes not unnaturally seized with the mania of imagined poverty, so
this poor man's mental barometer had, from excess of poverty, turned its
index right round again to riches.
"Oh!" he returned, lightly and soothingly, "perhaps it is not so bad as
that. You may have been misinformed. There may be some mistake."
"No, no!" returned the minister; "it is true, every word of it. You
shall see the lawyers' letter. Dorothy has it, I think. My uncle was an
ironmonger in a country town, got on, and bought a little bit of land in
which he found iron. I knew he was flourishing, but he was a churchman
and a terrible Tory, and I never dreamed he would remember me. There had
been no communication between our family and his for many years. He must
have fancied me still a flourishing London minister, with a rich wife!
If he had had a suspicion of how sorely I needed a few pounds, I can not
believe he would have left me a farthing. He did not save his money to
waste it on bread and cheese, I can fancy him saying."
Although a look almost of despair kept coming and going upon his face,
he lay so still, and spoke so quietly and collectedly, that Wingfold
began to wonder whether there might not be some fact in his statement.
He did not well know what to say.
"When I heard the news from Dorothy--she read the letter first," Mr.
Drake went on, "--old fool that I was I was filled with such delight
that, although I could not have said whether I believed or not, the very
idea of the thing made me weep. Alas! Mr. Wingfold, I have had visions
of God in which the whole world would not have seemed worth a salt tear!
And now!--I jumped out of bed, and hurried on my clothes, but by the
time I came to kneel at my bedside, God was away. I could not speak a
word to Him! I had lost all the trouble that kept me crying after Him
like a little child at his mother's heels, the bond was broken and He
was out of sight. I tried to be thankful, but my heart was so full of
the money, it lay like a stuffed bag. But I dared not go even to my
study till I had prayed. I tramped up and down this little room,
thinking more about paying my butcher's bill than any thing else. I
would give him a silver snuff-box; but as to God and His goodness my
heart felt like a stone; I could not lift it up. All at once I saw how
it was: He had heard my prayers in anger! Mr. Wingfold, the Lord has
sent me this money as He sent the quails to the Israelites: while it was
yet, as it were, between my teeth, He smote me with hardness of heart. O
my God! how shall I live in the world with a hundred thousand pounds
instead of my Father in heaven! If it were only that He had hidden His
face, I should be able to pray somehow! He has given me over to the
Mammon I was worshiping! Hypocrite that I am! how often have I not
pointed out to my people, while yet I dwelt in the land of Goshen, that
to fear poverty was the same thing as to love money, for that both came
of lack of faith in the living God! Therefore has He taken from me the
light of His countenance, which yet, Mr. Wingfold, with all my sins and
shortcomings, yea, and my hypocrisy, is the all in all to me!"
He looked the curate in the face with such wild eyes as convinced him
that, even if perfectly sane at present, he was in no small danger of
losing his reason.
"Then you would willingly give up this large fortune," he said, "and
return to your former condition?"
"Rather than not be able to pray--I would! I would!" he cried; then
paused and added, "--if only He would give me enough to pay my debts and
not have to beg of other people."
Then, with a tone suddenly changed to one of agonized effort, with
clenched hands, and eyes shut tight, he cried vehemently, as if in the
face of a lingering unwillingness to encounter again the miseries
through which he had been passing.
"No, no, Lord! Forgive me. I will not think of conditions. Thy will be
done! Take the money and let me be a debtor and a beggar if Thou wilt,
only let me pray to Thee; and do Thou make it up to my creditors."
Wingfold's spirit was greatly moved. Here was victory! Whether the
fortune was a fact or fancy, made no feature of difference. He thanked
God and took courage. The same instant the door opened, and Dorothy came
in hesitating, and looking strangely anxious. He threw her a
face-question. She gently bowed her head, and gave him a letter with a
broad black border which she held in her hand.
He read it. No room for rational doubt was left. He folded it softly,
gave it back to her, and rising, kneeled down by the bedside, near the
foot, and said--
"Father, whose is the fullness of the earth, I thank Thee that Thou hast
set my brother's heel on the neck of his enemy. But the suddenness of
Thy relief from holy poverty and evil care, has so shaken his heart and
brain, or rather, perhaps, has made him think so keenly of his lack of
faith in his Father in heaven, that he fears Thou hast thrown him the
gift in disdain, as to a dog under the table, though never didst Thou
disdain a dog, and not given it as to a child, from Thy hand into his.
Father, let Thy spirit come with the gift, or take it again, and make
him poor and able to pray."--Here came an amen, groaned out as from
the bottom of a dungeon.--"Pardon him, Father," the curate prayed on,
"all his past discontent and the smallness of his faith. Thou art our
Father, and Thou knowest us tenfold better than we know ourselves; we
pray Thee not only to pardon us, but to make all righteous excuse for
us, when we dare not make any for ourselves, for Thou art the truth. We
will try to be better children. We will go on climbing the mount of God
through all the cloudy darkness that swaths it, yea, even in the face of
the worst terrors--that when we reach the top, we shall find no one
there."--Here Dorothy burst into sobs.--"Father!" thus the curate ended
his prayer, "take pity on Thy children. Thou wilt not give them a piece
of bread, in place of a stone--to poison them! The egg Thou givest will
not be a serpent's. We are Thine, and Thou art ours: in us be Thy will
done! Amen."
As he rose from his knees, he saw that the minister had turned his face
to the wall, and lay perfectly still. Rightly judging that he was
renewing the vain effort to rouse, by force of the will, feelings which
had been stunned by the strange shock, he ventured to try a more
authoritative mode of address.
"And now, Mr. Drake, you have got to spend this money," he said, "and
the sooner you set about it the better. Whatever may be your ideas about
the principal, you are bound to spend at least every penny of the
income."
The sad-hearted man stared at the curate.
"How is a man to do any thing whom God has forsaken?" he said.
"If He had forsaken you, for as dreary work as it would be, you would
have to try to do your duty notwithstanding. But He has not forsaken
you. He has given you a very sharp lesson, I grant, and as such you must
take it, but that is the very opposite of forsaking you. He has let you
know what it is not to trust in Him, and what it would be to have money
that did not come from His hand. You did not conquer in the fight with
Mammon when you were poor, and God has given you another chance: He
expects you to get the better of him now you are rich. If God had
forsaken you, I should have found you strutting about and glorying over
imagined enemies."
"Do you really think that is the mind of God toward me?" cried the poor
man, starting half up in bed. "_Do_ you think so?" he repeated, staring
at the curate almost as wildly as at first, but with a different
expression.
"I do," said Wingfold; "and it will be a bad job indeed if you fail in
both trials. But that I am sure you will not. It is your business now to
get this money into your hands as soon as possible, and proceed to spend
it."
"Would there be any harm in ordering a few things from the
tradespeople?" asked Dorothy.
"How should there be?" returned Wingfold.
"Because, you see," answered Dorothy, "we can't be sure of a bird in the
bush."
"Can you be sure of it in your hands? It may spread its wings when you
least expect it. But Helen will be delighted to take the risk--up to a
few hundreds," he added laughing.
"Somebody may dispute the will: they do sometimes," said Dorothy.
"They do very often," answered Wingfold. "It does not look likely in the
present case; but our trust must be neither in the will nor in the
fortune, but in the living God. You have to get all the good out of
this money you can. If you will walk over to the rectory with me now,
while your father gets up, we will carry the good news to my wife, and
she will lend you what money you like, so that you need order nothing
without paying for it."
"Please ask her not to tell any body," said Mr. Drake. "I shouldn't like
it talked about before I understand it myself."
"You are quite right. If I were you I would tell nobody yet but Mr.
Drew. He is a right man, and will help you to bear your good fortune. I
have always found good fortune harder to bear than bad."
Dorothy ran to put her bonnet on. The curate went back to the bedside.
Mr. Drake had again turned his face to the wall.
"Sixty years of age!" he was murmuring to himself.
"Mr. Drake," said Wingfold, "so long as you bury yourself with the
centipedes in your own cellar, instead of going out into God's world,
you are tempting Satan and Mammon together to come and tempt you.
Worship the God who made the heaven and the earth, and the sea and the
mines of iron and gold, by doing His will in the heart of them. Don't
worship the poor picture of Him you have got hanging up in your
closet;--worship the living power beyond your ken. Be strong in Him
whose is your strength, and all strength. Help Him in His work with His
own. Give life to His gold. Rub the canker off it, by sending it from
hand to hand. You must rise and bestir yourself. I will come and see you
again to-morrow. Good-by for the present."
He turned away and walked from the room. But his hand had scarcely left
the lock, when he heard the minister alight from his bed upon the floor.
"He'll do!" said the curate to himself, and walked down the stair.
When he got home, he left Dorothy with his wife, and going to his study,
wrote the following verses, which had grown in his mind as he walked
silent beside her:--
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