Chapter III: Somebody Rescued Nobody's Neighbour

Robin put the penny into his mouth for safety. Then he sat for a long time listlessly on the doorstep. Something between snow and drizzle was falling steadily from the sky, but the street Arab hardly noticed it: he could not well be colder than he was, and he wanted to rest, and to ponder an idea.

Never had the life within him ebbed so low; he wanted sorely a little comfort, and a little love. He had heard, for his companion thieves had told him so, that prisoners were sometimes allowed to see their friends. More than anything in the world, he now longed to see Helen. With his weakness and pain, the desire once more to behold the face that had always looked at him with kindness, became so strong as to be almost unbearable. He knew now, for he was older and wiser, that going to prison for punishment would get him no sight of Helen; but surely if he found his way to the prison doors, and asked to see his old friend, the prison authorities would grant his request This he thought; this he hoped; and if he really saw Helen once more, life might again become bearable to him. She might show him how to get strong; she might tell him some way of getting rid of that terrible cough, of earning at least money enough to keep him from starving. He had never in the least forgotten how loving, how tender, how true Helen had been to him; how she had soothed his baby ailments, and kissed away his small troubles. Yes, he would go to Helen now; he had heard that she was somewhere in the country; he would set off at once to the country to find Helen. He did not know the name of the prison where she was serving out her time; still he would start off, for some one could be found who would show him the way, and when once in the country he must surely find Helen.

Rising from his cold seat, rather brightened and comforted by this thought, he set off, fortifying himself for his journey by buying a piece of bread out of Molly's penny. He was wonderfully little hungry to-day; indeed he rather disliked food; but he might need it by-and-by, and people had told him that there were very few shops in the country.

Down Piccadilly, past the place where he had seen Dolly last night, he wandered. He asked several people the way to the country, for his last expedition in the waggon, when he had slept all the way, had given him no clue: one and all stared when the ragged child made this request, smiled, pointed westward. So westward, with the setting sun, went Robin.

After what seemed to him hours and hours of walking,--for he was so weak, and his cough so painful, he could only creep along,--he found himself in West Brompton. Houses were still to the right and left of him; houses seemed to surround him everywhere. Should he ever get rid of these houses, and find the country? He paused to eat a piece of his bread, for his strength was going; but he disliked it--it almost made him sick. Well, he must soon come to the country. Suddenly he uttered a joyful cry; he had reached a gateway--a gateway with the gate thrown back. Through the gateway he saw trees and grass. Yes, this must lead to the country, if this was not the country itself.

He went in through the gateway; he had entered the West Brompton Cemetery.

Cold, nearly as white as the snow, gleamed the marble of the many monuments.

Robin had not an idea what place he was in. He wandered on until he came to the part set aside for the very poor: here he threw himself down on a low grave to rest. He did not know it was a grave he was lying upon. There was no inscription or writing of any sort on the grave, nothing but the raised mound of grass. After a time, worn out with weakness, fatigue, and cold, he fell asleep. It was late when he awoke: the winter's sun had set, and the winter's night had come on. His limbs felt strangely numb and stiff; he tottered to his feet, and began feebly to grope his way forward. In half an hour he came to a gate; he recognised it as the gate he had come in by: it was fastened, locked. He wandered on and on; after what seemed to him an age of walking, he came to another gate: it also was locked. He perceived then that he could not get out of this place for the night.

He had still not the faintest idea what place it really was, but the monuments in the white light, and the cold gleam of the snow on the grass, frightened him in spite of himself. Wandering round and round, he came back in time to the same grave on whose mound he had already slept; he sat down on it again, regarding it, in this strange and awful place, as something like an old friend.

The sleet and snow had for the last couple of hours ceased to fall, the clouds had cleared away, the stars dotted the dark blue of the sky, and the moon, in grand, cold, calm majesty, shed an awful white light on the graves.

The rich, in their warm luxurious houses, noticed what a severe frost there was that night; the poor were less saving than usual with their handfuls of coal. What then must have been the sensations of this poor little lost child seated alone upon a grave?

He felt the cold terribly, intensely: he was too weary to walk, he was simply incapable of moving another step; and for a time the freezing process going on in his poor little body gave him such agony he could with difficulty keep himself from screaming aloud.

The dead in the graves under his feet could hardly be colder than he was fast becoming. After a time, however, he grew more comfortable, the pain became less, until it ceased. He stretched himself on the grave, closed his eyes, and tried to go to sleep. He hoped he might soon drop off to sleep, and then, when the gates were open in the morning, he might continue his journey in search of Helen. But strange as it may seem, he could not sleep; his body was numb, half dead, but his mind was active. He thought of Helen, his loving, faithful friend: he thought of his life with her; of the attic with the dirty prints. He felt Helen's arms about him, as they had so often, so often been; he thought of the little girl whose purse he had returned, and who had clasped his dirty hand in hers; he thought of the kind-looking woman who to-day had dropped a penny into his lap; most of all, he thought of the beautiful child, who last night had laid her golden head on his ragged breast, and who had kissed him. Many, many had been unkind to Robin, but these four had been good to him: all the unkind faces faded from his memory, but these four remained; and of the four, the brightest, sweetest, best, was the little child's face.

What did she mean when she said "Our Father" last night? He remembered perfectly how she knelt, how she looked, then how quietly and peacefully she went to sleep.

"Our Father"--well, he had no father: he had never known anything about a father; but the words, _whatever_, whatever they meant, must be good, or Dolly would not have looked so peaceful after saying them.

The look on Dolly's face, after saying these two words, was simply the look one wears after speaking to the best and most loving friend.

Well! he too would say the words; they might mean nothing, or they might mean much. They might bring him, too, the peace they brought to Dolly, and afterwards he might go quietly to sleep.

He struggled painfully on to his half-frozen knees, clasped his hands as Dolly had clasped hers, looked earnestly up at the clear frosty sky, and whispered, in a strange stifled tone of supplication, agony, longing, "Our Father." Nothing more, after these two words he lay down, and closed his eyes. Once he opened them again, those beautiful eyes that were surely meant to reflect God's image; he opened them and smiled. Yes, the words were good words; he felt peaceful, painless, happy. He was going to sleep really now. Never since Helen left him had he gone to sleep so restfully.

The four faces seemed to surround him, to shut him in, to soothe him with loving care; then they faded into the faces of Helen and Dolly, then into Dolly's face alone, then that too vanished into air, and I think the little ragged child was left with _Our Father_.

* * * * * *

Yes, with Our Father! for by the look seen half an hour later on his pale and death-like face it was very plain that the Great Succourer, shocked with man's neglect, was coming Himself to the rescue of His little one. Christ, who had died for just such neglected, sinful, sorrowful creatures, was touched with the feeling of his infirmities, and the child who was nobody's neighbour, was to be saved by God Himself.

Schools, reformatories, charitable institutions, had all failed to reach this one little waif and stray. Without any man being directly to blame, every man had passed him by. God saw that the time had come when He Himself must save. He Himself must do the work that men and women had failed to do. God Himself saved the child: this He did by putting a thought into the head of one of His humblest children. By this thought, put into the mind of one young girl, God had pity on us also, saving us from the guilt which must ever have rested on our souls had Robin died. For had our brother passed away, while we, with our riches, our comforts, our blessings, sat by and held out no hand of succour, for ever and ever it would have been to us one of those things which we had left undone, which we ought to have done: and this one sin of omission would have cried loudly to Heaven for vengeance.

God saw this, and had compassion on us as well as Robin, when He put a thought into a heart that night.

For just at the moment when Robin was looking up to the sky, and crying in pitiful supplications to One whom he knew not of, a girl was kneeling in a poorly furnished room, and earnestly praying.

This was the subject of her prayer--

"My Father in Heaven, help me this year to forget my own sorrow in helping others."

This, clothed in many words, but with intense feeling and earnest desire, was her prayer.

When she had risen from her knees, and had wiped away some tears, she went downstairs. She was the daughter of the porter who kept the gate by which Robin had entered the cemetery.

Smoking a long pipe, and gazing into the blaze of a cheerful fire, sat the porter himself.

"Come and make yourself warm, Nell; the night is most bitter," he said to his daughter.

"Are the cemetery gates locked, father?" she asked of him.

"Yes, yes, child; the best part of an hour ago."

"And it is not snowing; the night is fine."

"There is no snow, but the night is enough to freeze any one who ventured out into it."

To this remark the daughter made no answer. She stood close to the ruddy flames, and they, leaping up, revealed a mourning dress and sad face.

"Well, Nell, what are you thinking of?" asked the old porter, not unkindly.

"To-morrow will be Sunday, father."

"Ay, ay, child, of course. Sunday follows Saturday as sure as fate."

"And it will be a year to-morrow since mother died."

"Yes, my poor child. I have not forgotten."

"Father, I want to put a wreath of Christmas roses round mother's grave. You know how she loved them. I have saved three-and-sixpence, and the florist round the corner has promised me a nice bunch for that."

"Very well, my dear."

"But I want to measure the grave to-night, so that the wreath may be just the right size."

Grumbling, expostulating, at last yielding, the old porter accompanied his daughter. On the grave where the Christmas roses were meant to hang, they found Robin.

"Not dead yet," said the old porter as he placed his hand on the boy's cold breast.

"An answer to my prayer," thought Nell.

And as they carried him back to their comfortable home, the music of a grand old saying was ringing in both their hearts--

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

And so closed the sorrow of want. The hunger of the body and the hunger of the heart at length found their needed food--bread and love.

There were no Christmas roses placed that year on the humble grave of the porter's wife; but Robin was saved.

* * * * * *

This is my brother's story; it has to do with his pain more than his joy. The dark clouds now having dispersed, and the sun shining on his path, there is little more to tell of him. He stayed with the kind porter and his daughter until his health was nearly restored, and was finally admitted into the Westminster Memorial Refuge at Streatham. Into this Home, but too little known to the general public, he, the supposed son of a criminal, had a right to enter. Here, kind hands were stretched out for such as him; and here he was rescued, morally as well as physically.

* * * * * *

Last January--yes, it was last January--a young man, earnest, noble-looking, might have been seen bending over a grave, a very humble grave, in the West Brompton Cemetery. Placed at the head and foot of this grave now, were two plain marble slabs: on the head slab was carved a wreath of Christmas roses.

"Here I lost myself, to find myself," thought Robin, as he turned away.

THE END.