Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 3 of 3

‘If I can.’

‘That makes me feel better.’

‘I am glad of that.’

‘You are kind.’

‘How can I be otherwise? You’re but a woman, and I am no more.’

‘They’re all kind here,’ said the woman, sobbing.

‘It is because they love God.’

‘Ah, so the parson says. Sir Watkin used to tell me the parson told lies.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Yes – I don’t now.’

‘God is our Father, and He loves us all.’

‘What, me?’

‘Yes, you.’

‘What, me, with all my wickedness?’

‘Yes, you and I, with all our guilt and sin. His heart pants with tenderness for all. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he should turn to Him and live. He sent Jesus Christ, His Son, to save us.’

‘Do you believe that?’

‘Yes, with all my heart. I should be wretched indeed if I did not. Daily my prayer is, “God be merciful to me, a sinner.’”

‘Ah, I like to hear you talk. I’ve not heerd such talk since I was a gal, and then I did not believe it. But it does me good now.’

‘Yes, but I must not talk any longer, or you will be excited and get worse. Try and have a little sleep, and I will go home and pray for you.’

‘Thanks, miss,’ said the woman gratefully; ‘you’ll come and see me to-morrow?’

‘Yes, I will,’ said Rose, as she turned to go home.

But that to-morrow never came. At midnight the summons came, and all that was left of ‘our Sally’ was a silent form of clay.

Some of us go out of the world one way and some another.

Happy they who can exclaim, with Cicero, ‘O preclarum diem,’ or with Paul, ‘I know in whom I have believed;’ or with Job, ‘Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’

Unhappy those who with dim eye, as it restlessly sweeps the horizon of the future, can see no beacon to a haven of light, no pole-star pointing to a land of eternal rest —

‘No God, no heaven, no earth in the void world —
The wide, gray, lawless, deep, unpeopled world.’

Rose rushed home as rapidly as the cab she hired could carry her. Wentworth was in.

‘What am I to do?’ she said, as she told him the whole story.

‘Better send for the boy,’ he said.

‘Oh no, not yet. He is comfortable where he is, learning to be a sailor. He’s fond of the sea, and it will be a pity to take him from it.’

The fact is, the young waif, as Rose thought him, was placed, at her expense, on board one of the training-ships lying off Greenhithe. They are noble institutions, these training-ships – saving lads who, if left to themselves, might become tempted by circumstances or bad companions into crime, and at the same time supplying us with what we English emphatically require at the present day – English sailors on whom captains can rely on board our merchant ships and men-of-war. There was no difficulty in getting the actress’s protégé there, and there he was rapidly training into a good sailor and a fine fellow, well-built, obedient to his superiors, handy, and hardy, and sturdy, morally and physically, as all sailors should be.

The next thing was to talk to a lawyer. In this wicked world lawyers are necessary evils. Sometimes, however, they do a great deal of good. The lawyer recommended Wentworth to call on the family lawyer of the deceased Baronet. He came back looking unhappy and uncomfortable, as people often do when they have interviews with lawyers who are supposed to be on the other side. He found him in comfortable quarters on a first floor in Bedford Row, Holborn, looking the very image of respectability – bald, and in black, with an appearance partly suggestive of the fine old clergyman of the port-wine school, with a touch of the thorough man of the world; a lawyer, in short, who would give an air of plausibility and rectitude to any cause in which he was embarked.

To him Wentworth apologized for making an intrusion.

‘No apology at all was needed, my dear sir. Happy to make your acquaintance. I have not only read your books – very clever, too, Mr. Wentworth – but I heard of you more than once through Sir Watkin Strahan.’

‘Perhaps in no complimentary terms?’

‘Well, you know the late Baronet was a man of strong passions, and, when annoyed, I must admit that his language was what we might call a little unparliamentary.’

‘It is about his business I have called. You are aware there is an heir?’

‘Oh yes; Colonel Strahan, the brother.’

‘I don’t mean him. A son.’

‘A son! Impossible. The deceased baronet had only one son, and the fine fellow – ’

‘Is now alive.’

‘Nonsense, my dear sir. He was buried in the family vault, after the doctor and the family were satisfied of his identity, and I was present at the funeral. There was a coroner’s inquest held in order to leave no room for doubt.’

‘I think not,’ said Wentworth, as he proceeded to unfold the details of his case, to which the lawyer listened at first with a severely judicial air, and then with an incredulous smile.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ he asked, when Wentworth had finished his statement.

‘Pretty much so,’ replied Wentworth.

‘Then,’ replied the lawyer, with a triumphant air, ‘we have little to fear. Sergeant B.’ – naming a popular advocate of the day – ‘would laugh the case out of court in a quarter of an hour. You have a quarrel with the deceased. Your good lady has – to put it not too strongly – been insulted and shamefully ill-treated by him. Who would believe that, in promoting this suit – should you be so ill-advised as to do that – you came into court with clean hands? The idea is perfectly preposterous.’

The worst of it was that Wentworth, as he withdrew, was compelled to own that there was not a little truth in what the lawyer had said.

It was not law but equity that was required in his particular case. In England law and equity, alas! have often different meanings.

CHAPTER XXVI.