Robert Falconer

‘Oh! I didn’t know as you meant him.’

‘Of course I meant him. There never was another.’

‘I have heard tell—p’raps it was yourself, sir—as how he didn’t come down upon us over hard after all, bless him!’

Falconer sat down on the side of the bed, and read the story of Simon the Pharisee and the woman that was a sinner. When he ceased, the silence that followed was broken by a sob from somewhere in the room. The sick woman stopped her moaning, and said,

‘Turn down the leaf there, please, sir. Lilywhite will read it to me when you’re gone.’

The some one sobbed again. It was a young slender girl, with a face disfigured by the small-pox, and, save for the tearful look it wore, poor and expressionless. Falconer said something gentle to her.

‘Will he ever come again?’ she sobbed.

‘Who?’ asked Falconer.

‘Him—Jesus Christ. I’ve heard tell, I think, that he was to come again some day.’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because—’ she said, with a fresh burst of tears, which rendered the words that followed unintelligible. But she recovered herself in a few moments, and, as if finishing her sentence, put her hand up to her poor, thin, colourless hair, and said,

‘My hair ain’t long enough to wipe his feet.’

‘Do you know what he would say to you, my girl?’ Falconer asked.

‘No. What would he say to me? He would speak to me, would he?’

‘He would say: Thy sins are forgiven thee.’

‘Would he, though? Would he?’ she cried, starting up. ‘Take me to him—take me to him. Oh! I forgot. He’s dead. But he will come again, won’t he? He was crucified four times, you know, and he must ha’ come four times for that. Would they crucify him again, sir?’

‘No, they wouldn’t crucify him now—in England at least. They would only laugh at him, shake their heads at what he told them, as much as to say it wasn’t true, and sneer and mock at him in some of the newspapers.’

‘Oh dear! I’ve been very wicked.’

‘But you won’t be so any more.’

‘No, no, no. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t.’

She talked hurriedly, almost wildly. The coarse old woman tapped her forehead with her finger. Falconer took the girl’s hand.

‘What is your name?’ he said.

‘Nell.’

‘What more?’

‘Nothing more.’

‘Well, Nelly,’ said Falconer.

‘How kind of you to call me Nelly!’ interrupted the poor girl. ‘They always calls me Nell, just.’

‘Nelly,’ repeated Falconer, ‘I will send a lady here to-morrow to take you away with her, if you like, and tell you how you must do to find Jesus.—People always find him that want to find him.’

The elderly woman with the rough voice, who had not spoken since he whispered to her, now interposed with a kind of cowed fierceness.

‘Don’t go putting humbug into my child’s head now, Mr. Falconer—‘ticing her away from her home. Everybody knows my Nell’s been an idiot since ever she was born. Poor child!’

‘I ain’t your child,’ cried the girl, passionately. ‘I ain’t nobody’s child.’

‘You are God’s child,’ said Falconer, who stood looking on with his eyes shining, but otherwise in a state of absolute composure.

‘Am I? Am I? You won’t forget to send for me, sir?’

‘That I won’t,’ he answered.

She turned instantly towards the woman, and snapped her fingers in her face.

‘I don’t care that for you,’ she cried. ‘You dare to touch me now, and I’ll bite you.’

‘Come, come, Nelly, you mustn’t be rude,’ said Falconer.

‘No, sir, I won’t no more, leastways to nobody but she. It’s she makes me do all the wicked things, it is.’

She snapped her fingers in her face again, and then burst out crying.

‘She will leave you alone now, I think,’ said Falconer. ‘She knows it will be quite as well for her not to cross me.’

This he said very significantly, as he turned to the door, where he bade them a general good-night. When we reached the street, I was too bewildered to offer any remark. Falconer was the first to speak.

‘It always comes back upon me, as if I had never known it before, that women like some of those were of the first to understand our Lord.’

‘Some of them wouldn’t have understood him any more than the Pharisee, though.’

‘I’m not so sure of that. Of course there are great differences. There are good and bad amongst them as in every class. But one thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.’

‘I am afraid you will not get society to agree with you,’ I said, foolishly.

‘I have no wish that society should agree with me; for if it did, it would be sure to do so upon the worst of principles. It is better that society should be cruel, than that it should call the horrible thing a trifle: it would know nothing between.’

Through the city—though it was only when we crossed one of the main thoroughfares that I knew where we were—we came into the region of Bethnal Green. From house to house till it grew very late, Falconer went, and I went with him. I will not linger on this part of our wanderings. Where I saw only dreadful darkness, Falconer always would see some glimmer of light. All the people into whose houses we went knew him. They were all in the depths of poverty. Many of them were respectable. With some of them he had long talks in private, while I waited near. At length he said,

‘I think we had better be going home, Mr. Gordon. You must be tired.’

‘I am, rather,’ I answered. ‘But it doesn’t matter, for I have nothing to do to-morrow.’

‘We shall get a cab, I dare say, before we go far.’