Chapter XVII: All Things Become New

"Who carry music in their heart,
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart;
Plying their daily task with busier feet
Because their secret souls some holier strain repeat."
KEBLE.

THE meeting of Joseph and his mother and sister at Christmas would have been a very happy one, but for the absence of him whose face and voice they missed. Little Ruth was ready to devour her brother after their long separation, whilst the widow was overjoyed to find him the same good, loving son as ever, and, above all, to gather from his conversation that, far from having become callous through contact with the world, more serious thoughts were beginning to occupy his mind.

But the holiday was short, and the third morning found Joseph, almost before the day was awake, returning once more to London. He had seen nothing of his old companions, nor had he sought to do so—the whole of his time being spent in doing little things about the house and garden, which his father would have done, had he been there. The fowl-house was in terrible need of repair, and there was a fresh lot of wood in the coal-house, which required a pair of strong arms and a well-sharpened axe to reduce to a useable condition. The cabbage bed wanted clearing too, and, in spite of his mother's entreaties that he would enjoy his well-earned respite from labour, he set to work to root up the old stumps and dig it, in order that she might be able to sow the spring crops without incurring the expense of obtaining the otherwise necessary assistance. It is needless to say that he reaped his reward, returning to his work the happier for the full assurance of conscience that he had done his utmost to help her.

But a further pleasure was in store for him. On arriving at his lodgings that evening, he not only found a hearty welcome awaiting him from each member of the family, to whom his two days' absence had seemed an age; but his old friend the schoolmaster, having been over to Canonbury to see Mr. Glover, had called at Ned Vigus', determined not to go back without seeing his old friend.

Joseph could not help noticing how much better in health he looked. But he was not long in accounting for this, on learning that his mother and sister were now living with him, and that thus he was no longer lonely and anxious, as of old. Mr. Girling finished by giving him a hearty invitation from his mother to come and spend the following Sunday afternoon with them.

Accordingly, after dinner, on the day appointed. Joseph set out for Dalston, where Mr. Girling now resided, and after about an hour's pleasant walk, he arrived at the correct address.

Mrs. Girling herself opened the door to his knock. She was very like her son, Joseph saw at a glance; a gentle, mild-faced woman, with the same lines of care on her forehead, but the same smile, which, lighted up not the mouth alone, but the whole face, like a gleam of bright sunshine over a landscape. She seemed to know Joseph at once, and gave him a very cordial welcome.

"My son has not returned yet," she said. "He could not rest until he had found out some good work to do. I was anxious at first to persuade him to be idle on Sunday, as he works so unremittingly all the week. But he says that 'the labour he delights in' is far greater recreation."

Joseph began to apologise for coming so soon, saying that, not knowing exactly how long it would take him to walk the distance, he feared he was too early. But Mrs. Girling would not hear of this.

"It was my invitation," she said; "and I am very glad to have you until Edward comes in."

Joseph thanked her, and they proceeded to the sitting-room.

"I thought you must be so lonely sometimes with no home to go to for your Sundays," she said, on the way; "so Nellie and I decided that you must come to us sometimes."

Nellie was lying on her couch near the window, eagerly watching the door. Her quick ear had caught Joseph's voice, and her face brightened as her mother entered.

"Well, mother!" she exclaimed.

"Well, my child. Here is Joseph."

Nellie looked intently at him as he advanced, with an expression of contentment, which seemed plainly to say that she identified him as the Joseph whom her brother had pictured to her. Then she put out her hand.

"Yes; this is Joseph," she said, welcoming him with the same peculiar smile. "I know you quite well already," she added. "Edward tells me so much about every one he knows; and he has described you very faithfully."

Joseph remembered Mr. Girling's words about poor little Ellen, and as he looked at the frail little figure that had hardly changed during those twelve years of suffering, he too seemed to have known her always. He took her hand very gently, afraid of hurting her. But she clasped his with a firm pressure, which contrasted strongly with the idea of her helpless condition.

"You will not mind being called Joseph?" she said, with frank simplicity. "That is how we always speak of you."

Joseph assuring her that nobody ever called him anything else, and that he should much prefer it, Mrs. Girling placed a chair for him, and he sat down near the couch.

Nellie had evidently been looking forward to this visit, for her face was bright with excitement, and she had numberless questions to ask about his home and native place. Joseph was surprised to find how intimately she was acquainted with all her brother's old surroundings; but he was even more astonished to find her so full of life and fun. He had been accustomed to regard a confirmed invalid as a person who needed cheering and amusing, and had imagined her the perfection of resignation,—full of sweet thoughts about heaven, and meekly bearing her cross until it should be God's will to call her home. But he found her happy and even merry; able to entertain as well as to be entertained, and so frank and good-humoured that it was impossible not to be at home with her.

When Mr. Girling came in, he found them talking as if they had been friends for years.

He looked very much gratified; but Nellie cried out before he could speak.

"Oh! Edward, you ought to have been a painter. Your portraits are so faithful!"

"Are they?" returned her brother, shaking Joseph by the hand, and passing on to give his sister the kiss without which he never entered or left the house; "and you have identified Joseph to your satisfaction."

It was rapidly getting dark by this time, so Mr. Girling wheeled her couch nearer the fire, and taking a seat near its head, completed the circle.

When they were all comfortably seated, Nellie began to ask about his afternoon's work, and Joseph observed again how much she knew about the members of his class. It was quite apparent that they were no mere names, but that her brother had talked of them to her until they had become vivid realities. But her manner changed as she spoke of them. A sweet seriousness came over her, and her eyes grew wistful as he told her how one and another of the wayward ones were becoming more attentive and respectful.

"You will win them all one by one, Edward," she said at last. "You are sure of that, you know."

Her brother only answered her with a look. There was evidently a confidential understanding between them on this point.

But suddenly Nellie's eyes glittered with the mischievous expression which Joseph had noticed when anything struck her as particularly funny.

"How about the 'tea and muffins?'" she asked. "Did they all accept?—Or was Pope Gregory still too much upon his dignity to accept an invitation to take tea with your little sister?"

"No; they are all coming next Saturday," replied her brother, reflecting her laugh; "and Pope Gregory is amongst the most anxious."

Gregory was "senior member" of the class, surnamed "Pope" on account of his sententious ways, and Mr. Girling was constantly "treading upon his corns" by some inadvertency or other. Like most touchy people, he was a frequent subject of ridicule, but of late even he had caught something of his teacher's gentle spirit, and grown more amiable.

"Do you think he is really changing?" asked Nellie, growing serious again.

"I am sure of it," replied her brother; "though he is the last one I should have dared to hope for."

"'Dared,' Edward? 'The wind bloweth where it listeth.'"

"I know. But it seemed so impossible."

"To you, Edward; but 'our sufficiency is of God.'"

"And so Pope Gregory is coming," she said, presently, after some moments' silence. "I quite long to see a real live Pope. Why shouldn't Joseph come too?"

"Ah! Why not? The very thing I was about to propose," said Mrs. Girling.

But Joseph demurred. "I shall feel like an interloper," he objected.

"There is an easy way out of that difficulty," observed Mr. Girling; "let me introduce you as the new member."

"The great attraction of the evening," added Nellie, "sotto voce."

"Just what I was thinking of," returned Joseph, who had not caught Nellie's mischievous remark, whereupon a laugh was raised at his expense. Upon the joke being explained, however, he declared himself perfectly willing to be the "grand attraction," if anything beyond tea and muffins was considered indispensable. And Mrs. Girling having expressed her hearty approval of the arrangement, and added a general invitation to Joseph to take tea with them on Sunday, went downstairs to prepare the meal.

Sunday afternoons at Dalston became the rule rather than the exception after this, and pleasant times they were. The more familiar Joseph became with his new friends, the more happy he was in their society, until their house seemed like a second home to him, and Mr. Girling an elder brother.

But perhaps Nellie's influence over him at this time was stronger then any one's. It filled him so full of wonder that she could be so happy, condemned as she was to pass her life in that one small room, for ever lying on her couch. And he would sit and watch her by the hour as she talked, longing to learn the secret of her cheerful patience.

At last, one evening, all unasked, she told him. Joseph had been alone with her for some time, and having discovered how keenly she enjoyed exercising her faculty for getting to know people from description, he had been endeavouring to outrival her brother in the art of portraiture. The Vigus family happened to be on the canvas.

Nellie was delighted. "You are nearly as clever as Edward," she exclaimed. "I know all about Mr. Vigus now; and as for Nancy, I should feel at home with her at once, for I always like people who have a quiet way of doing more than they pretend to, and never letting others see that they are tired. It must be a great reward to have made people happy without their ever guessing how much it cost you. But I cannot do that, you see, for I never have a chance of getting tired, lying here."

"I should have thought you would be always tired," said Joseph. "Day after day the same; I would a thousand times rather have my limbs ache ever so much."

Nellie smiled.

"It would be so funny for a great strong fellow like you to lie here," she said. "It is different for me, I'm used to it, and then I'm so happy."

"That's just what I can't make out," returned Joseph. "It's what puzzles me about Mr. Vigus too."

"You haven't learned how," said Nellie.

"And I suppose I can't, without being in your place," rejoined Joseph.

Nellie looked up quickly, as if to read his face. She almost fancied he meant that it was not worth learning at such a price. But his eyes were fixed on her with their usual truthful expression; there was no doubting that he intended the words just as he said them.

"Oh, yes! You can," she answered; "because the same Hand that laid me here placed you where you are."

"But I often want to be somewhere else. I'm very discontented sometimes with having to be a carpenter."

"Why?"

Nellie asked the question with such ingenuous eagerness, that Joseph could not repress a smile. After all, how could she understand worldly ambitions from her sofa in the sitting-room?

"Well, you see," he replied, "I might be better off and more of a gentleman, more useful, perhaps—"

"Than where God has placed you?" she interrupted. "Oh! Joseph, you're wrong. He must know best."

"I suppose He must," said Joseph slowly. "I can't quite see it, though."

Nellie lay still, looking at him as he sat leaning forward with his eyes fixed upon the fire.

"It is all so simple to me," she said presently, "that I hardly know if I can explain it to you. But it seems to me like this. If I tried to understand why God had deprived me of so many things that others enjoy, or how it can possibly be better for me, or any one else, that I should never be able to take an active part in life, I should have to confess that His ways are past finding out; but do not I know that He loves me? And if He loves me, will He not give me all that is best? So I have only just to go on trusting Him without ever asking why."

Joseph did not answer. The strong lad, who went so actively to his work every day, and appeared to take such a vivid interest in all that came in his way, was yet hungering after something that would satisfy his higher nature, for, though born a carpenter's son, he was, by Divine right, an heir of the Most High God.

"How do you know?" he said, presently. "I want to do my duty, and I try to believe that God hears my prayers for guidance; but He seems such a long way off; you speak almost as if you could see Him."

Nellie smiled a beautiful, holy, peaceful smile that he never forgot. "That is how it must have appeared to the Jews after they lost God's visible presence," she said; "but it is all different now to us Christians. 'The Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him,' unto us. We know that all things are ours: 'for we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.'"

They did not have much further opportunity for conversation just then, for Mrs. Girling came up with the tea-tray, and her son, who had stayed behind to look up an absent member of his class, returned.

But Joseph went home with these words in his mind, and somehow as they rested there, their meaning grew upon him,—how that the great God, whose purity is such that He cannot look upon sin, whose power and majesty are infinite, whose nature is incomprehensible, is yet revealed to each one of us, His finite children, by the human life of the God-man Christ Jesus, who, though He was "equal with God," took upon Him our nature, in order that He might raise us to our true sonship.

When Joseph retired to his room that evening, he sat far into the night, reading over again many of the passages so familiar to his memory, each of which was full of new meaning. Then, as his candle burned low and flickered in the socket, he extinguished the dying wick, and, with a feeling of perfect peace he had never experienced before, knelt in the darkness in grateful thanksgiving to God for His unspeakable gift, for the conscious and abiding presence of Him "whom to know is life eternal."

Joseph was up betimes next morning and off to work while the light of day was still pale, as he had been every week since Christmas. But somehow everything seemed changed. It was the same world and the same work, but he himself was different. He was consciously a child of God, and all things had become new. There were the same disagreeables and hardships to be encountered, there was the same need of diligence in order to earn a livelihood; but there was no longer any disgrace in his white apron and carpenter's basket. If he was a builder according to his earthly vocation, he was also a citizen of that kingdom "whose builder and maker is God," and honourable so long as he was faithful to his calling. So he went about his work with a light heart and a shining countenance, full of faith and hope.

It was a fresh job they were engaged on, repairing some old houses, which had recently passed into the hands of a more enterprising owner. They had long been falling into decay, and considerable expenditure would be necessary before the inheritance would be made worth much, but Mr. Glover's estimate having proved satisfactory to the mind of the new landlord, orders had been given to proceed at once. The scaffold-poles had already been partially erected on the previous Saturday, and operations were going busily forward.

There were some window and door-frames wanted, and Joseph was to go to work on these; but measurements had yet to be taken, and there would be nothing doing in the workshop until after breakfast, so he had hurried off to the houses to make himself generally useful there, and had at once found scope for his activity in stripping down the rotten plaster from the upper storey, preparatory to putting up new laths.

The third house in the row stood back a little from the corner of that upon which Joseph was engaged, and here the scaffold was still being prepared. The uprights were already planted, and the first cross-poles secured, and two men—one on a ladder, and the other on the platform near Joseph—were fixing the second stage. The cross-pole was already partly raised to its place, the lower end resting temporarily upon the roofing of the doorway, whilst the man at the upper part endeavoured to push it further out, in order to bring it within reach of the ladder. But either from want of proper leverage power, or from lack of management on the workman's part, he seemed unable to effect this, and he was looking round for assistance.

Joseph had paused an instant to watch progress, and perceiving the difficulty, offered his help.

"I'll give you a hand in a moment, Stacey," he called out, preparing to lay his tool down.

But as he said the words, the pole slipped from its resting-place, striking heavily against the ladder and pushing it out of the perpendicular, to the imminent danger of the man upon it.

Joseph saw his peril and sprang forward, shouting to a labourer below, to steady the ladder. But just as he reached Stacey's side, the latter, with a vigorous effort had hauled the pole back again, and the upper end swinging round and catching Joseph in the side, swept him from the stage.

A cry and a thud was all the men heard. The labourer hurried to the spot, the man whose safety had been so dearly purchased hastily descended, and passers-by rapidly began to congregate, whilst Stacey—the unintentional cause of the disaster—stood aloft, unable to stir or to leave hold of the pole.