Chapter XXI: A Sorrowful Surprise

ROBERT TAYLOR shook hands with Matthew Hill at the door of a railway carriage as soon as the doctor would hear of the journey. Messrs. Carver and Davis sent a special message to say that if he would return after settling his affairs at home, they would gladly give him regular work. Everybody had been kind; and poor Matthew, with a heart now aching for home, found himself speeding on the way thither.

Humbled and chastened in spirit, he was going to prove how true was his penitence—how sincere his desire to be ruled henceforth by the precepts of that gospel which had brought light and salvation to his soul.

Twilight was already shading the landscape ere he reached the station nearest to his home, and with his bundle on a stick over his shoulder, he took the shortest cut, with a beating heart, across the fields. He hesitated for a little whether to call on his faithful friend Benjamin Field before going home, and so learn from him all that happened. But no, the first face he would see must be Jane's: she was the proper person to tell him anything he needed to know.

He drew his hat over his eyes to screen himself from notice, but no one recognised him. And with rapid step, he approached his own door.

No lights were visible. Could he wonder? Was it not almost a widowed home? Would he wish to see things going on as usual, in total indifference to his absence or presence? Certainly not.

He knocked gently, and finding no notice taken, opened the door, and stood once more on his own threshold. There was no fire. The fading light was not sufficient to show all the desolation at once, but things looked strange. Was this really home? Excited and anxious, he sought a seat. His own chair was missing; but still there was evidence that the house was inhabited. He feared to call lest he might disturb the children. And after standing irresolute for a while, he began to mount the stairs.

"Who is it?" murmured a timid little voice from the room above.

"Hush! It's not mother; it's perhaps Mr. Field," was the answer of the braver boy, who was playing by Daisy's side.

The figure advanced towards the bed, and the little girl's true instinct, combined with her simple faith in the good God whom she had prayed to bring back her father, told her instantly who it was.

"Oh, Josy! I know who it is; dear daddy's come back, he's come back. I knew he would."

And the truant father, sitting down by the bed, clasped his two children in his arms, with a burst of agitation that almost frightened them. But he was "father:" he loved them, he had not forgotten them; and they kissed his face, and dried his tears, and felt very safe and happy in his arms.

"Baby is asleep?" he said, inquiringly, when more composed.

The little girl nestled closer to his bosom, and Josy looked up in his face.

"Oh, father! Don't you know? Poor baby went to sleep one night, and she never woke any more. They put her in the churchyard to sleep, Mrs. Field said, till Jesus comes to call up everybody, and then we'll see her again."

Poor Matthew groaned heavily. How proud he had been of that beautiful baby! How she had sprung and crowed at the sight of him, when she would get the tossing and the fun that his strong arms could give her! And she was taken away, and he not there to soothe her with a father's love, or to share the poor mother's grief with a husband's tenderness. Oh! It was a bitter drop of remorse and shame, but the cup was not emptied yet.

"Daisy did so want you," said the little one, caressingly; "p'raps I go to sleep soon too, but daddy's a good man now. Daisy prayed to God; oh, so much!"

"My darling, my precious ones," sobbed Matthew; "God has forgiven father's wickedness, and will make him good now."

"And he'll take care of us now. Oh, I'm so glad! Oh, if mother will be good too!"

Matthew started. "Where is your mother, dear children?" he asked.

"We don't know," said the boy; "she didn't come in. Daisy hasn't been downstairs this long while, she is too sick; but I take care of her, and Mrs. Field brings her nice things."

"When will your mother come in?" again asked Matthew, with a horrible dread upon him.

"We don't know, we never know; but that woman came again this afternoon, and we're so afraid of her. Mother was angry, and they both went out; and I think she hurt mother, for there was a great noise in the street."

"I must go and find her," said Matthew, hoarsely, and he disengaged himself from his children's arms. "You won't mind being left for a little while?"

"Oh, no; we often are; and we shan't be afraid of anything now," they said.

Matthew kissed them again and again, smoothed the pillory and the coverlet tenderly, and for a moment knelt and asked God's help and guidance in his terrible extremity, and then went downstairs.

"Daisy, Daisy, did you hear?" whispered Josy. "It will be all right now, for father was speaking to God; and nobody dares do that, you know, Mr. Field says, when they want to be naughty."

Daisy's restlessness for the time passed away, and she slept a sweeter sleep than she had known for many a night.

Meanwhile Matthew went out into the street; sick, exhausted, and anxious, he knew not which way to turn until it again occurred to him to go and hear all from Mr. Field. And the kind-hearted Ellen, he knew, would give him a cup of tea.

"Can it be," thought he, "that Jane has forsaken the house, and the children, as I did, and has taken service somewhere? If she has, I have no right to complain."

To reach Mr. Field's house, he must pass up a back street, which was dimly lighted from a few door-lamps and shop-windows, and then turn off by a smaller street towards the road in which Benjamin Field resided in a pretty, neat house of his own.

As Matthew passed quickly along, his painful meditations were disturbed by an angry noise at the door of a small beer-shop; and he crossed over to the other side to avoid it, but he heard the master of the house exclaim,—

"I tell you she's not here; and I won't have a row at my door, so get along, else I'll give you in charge."

Then some one seemed to stagger for a little, until another person half-running, half-rolling along, rushed up against her, striking a smart blow on the face. This was returned with fury; shrieks followed.

Wandering children, dirty women, men from the public-house gathered quickly round the spot, and the two women fell together in the kennel.

Disgusted, yet in spite of his errand drawn to the shocking scene, Matthew helped to raise one of the struggling women. Blood was streaming from her face, her bonnet had fallen off, and her long dark hair hung about her shoulders.

Matthew looked upon her as a light streamed from a house door, which people had opened to ask what was the matter; and aghast with surprise and horror, found himself supporting the tottering form of his own wife. The shock was too great; he shrank from her involuntarily, and again she fell to the ground.

"What's all this?" said a policeman, coming hastily up, and looking into the group. "Oh, get her home, can't some of you? Else I must take her to Bridewell; and she was a respectable woman once, till she took to this accursed drink. Why on earth doesn't her husband come and look after her?"

"He did not know," said poor Matthew, in a low hollow voice; "but he will do it now, please God."

The policeman turned and guessed the miserable truth; the husband of the wretched woman stood before him.

"I'll help you in a minute," he said, kindly; "but I must see to this abominable vixen, who they say struck her first; she has no home that I know of, and to Bridewell she must go. I hope the magistrate will give her three months at least."

A comrade having by this time made his appearance, Mrs. Swinden was dragged away and deposited in the strong room at the police-station, notwithstanding her violent protestations that she never was soberer in all her life.

Then, with her husband on one side and the policeman on the other, the disgraced Jane was half-carried, half-dragged home. Unable to get her upstairs at once, they laid her down on the floor in the very spot where, many months before, she had left her husband to sleep off the effect of his visit to "The Crown."

"Thank you heartily for this kindness," said Matthew. "Has not that woman got children? Can we do anything for them to-night?"

"Two of them are dead, and the other is in the union," replied the man. "She has only herself to look after, and you have seen how she does it; she is almost done for, though, and will most likely finish out in a prison."

The policeman looked round the desolate room by the light of his lantern. "It's miserable enough," he said. "Can I send any friend to you?"

"If you would do that," said Hill, eagerly.

"For sure I will, who is it?"

"I've been ill, and have had a long journey, and scarce know where to find anything," said Matthew.

"Seems as if there ain't much to find," said the policeman, bluntly; "anyways, we might get up a bit of fire before I go."

And lighting his way along through the back kitchen, he stumbled over Matthew's broken chair, then righted a baby's cradle which lay upside down, and disclosed a quantity of broken china.

"Hey, what a smash there's been," he exclaimed; "and no firewood, that I can see. Poor chap! I'm sorry for him; and he don't look any great shakes himself, by what I can see of his pale face. Well, I'll send somebody to him, at any rate."

And with a message for Benjamin Field, and Matthew's grateful thanks for his kind feeling and help, he left the unhappy husband alone in the dark, with the stupefied form of his "once neat, pretty, industrious Jane," lying like a log at his feet.

He wished for a few minutes alone: the last hour had tried him mightily, and he wanted to steady his bewildered brain, and reassure his almost broken heart, and find that the gracious loving God who had pardoned his sins had also a refuge for him in this tempest of trouble. Would He in pity through this dark cloud bid the sun of righteousness arise and shine with healing in his wings?

The true Teacher from on high does not say that pardoned sinners shall escape all temporal consequences of guilt, and pass over a smooth and tranquil scene to "the rest that remaineth for the people of God." It is not likely that a long seed-time of rebellion, selfishness, and pride, should have had no harvest of sorrow, and that weeds, and thorns, and thistles should not have sprung up to worry and distract. If we sow to the wind, we must expect to "reap the whirlwind" in some way; though, by God's mercy, it is a way that shall discipline us for duty, and keep us humble in heart for the rest of our lives, as well as pitiful and tender to others who have similarly transgressed.

The heart and conscience of Matthew Hill were now actively awake to a sense of his sin. He felt that, let Jane's temper be what it might, his own conduct was inexcusable, and though God had forgiven him, he had not forgiven himself. So he meekly knelt by the side of the woman, forgetting that he had ever wished to see her proud spirit humbled, not loathing her, as she well deserved, but in earnest prayer for help for himself and for her. He waited until a ray of hope and comfort stole into his bosom and he felt strengthened for present endurance and duty.

As soon as possible, the friendly hand of Benjamin Field silently grasped his cold one, and a light revealed the gentle face of Ellen, and the provisions they had brought to meet immediate need, of which the kind-hearted officer had told them. So there was soon a fire, and sundry other arrangements, and then they bent over the prostrate form of the drunken woman.

We paused awhile ago over the degradation of "a man" in such a condition—man created in the image of God, reducing himself by vile appetite to a lower stage than the beasts that perish; but what words can adequately describe the infinite disgust, the utter loathing, with which one contemplates the abominable sight of a drunken woman, a wife, a mother?

Mrs. Hill was scarcely recognisable until Ellen had washed the blood from her face, and smoothed the silken hair of which her husband had once been proud, and straightened the convulsed limbs. And then Matthew carried her, still unconscious, up to her own room, and laid her on the bed, and there gazing for a moment, burst into tears and sank on his knees by her side.

Ellen set down the candle, and left him while she made some tea and toast and set out the little things she had brought, and Benjamin straightened the untidy room. And then she returned and gently roused him from his grief, and made him come down and take the refreshment of which he stood in so much need.

Then came the tale he had to tell of his own career during those months of absence. And his way of telling it proved to his friends that he had learned the lesson which was to be his joy throughout eternity.

Mrs. Field promised to come as early as possible in the morning, and the kind pair took their leave about midnight. Benjamin turned back for a moment.

"Matthew," he whispered, "she will need all your patience when she comes to herself. I know what it is. I may well ask you to bear pitifully with her yet awhile, for it was that, under God's mercy, that saved me."

"May God help me to do right," said Matthew, wringing his friend's hand gratefully. "Only, both of you pray for us."

Then he saw that the children slept, and a painful feeling oppressed him as he gazed at his little girl by the light shaded with his hand. Her face was so very thin and white, and her little fingers looked so bony, and her lips so hot and parched. But she slept sweetly, and that was some comfort.

His boy looked much older, as if care had touched the young brow with a heavy hand, and his curly hair was long and unkept, and neglect seemed written too plainly on everything around them, notwithstanding the effort the dear little ones had made.

Soon, however, his thoughts were called in another direction. Mrs. Hill was trying to rouse herself, and sank back again with a groan. Then she tore away the soft lint which Ellen had laid upon her wounded face, and called out for a doctor, for drink, for anything that would take the burning out of her brain.

Matthew, after endeavouring to soothe her, and judging that she did not know who it was that bent tenderly over her, decided to go at once and find a doctor, for she might now be suffering from bodily injury as well as from the effects of what she had drunk.

The doctor he went to was not at home; he had stayed at the house of a patient who was supposed to be dying, and thither Matthew followed him.

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