Scenes of Clerical Life: Chapter 18

Chapter 18

It was dusk, and the candles were lighted before Mr. Tryan knocked at
Mrs. Pettifer's door. Her messenger had brought back word that he was not
at home, and all afternoon Janet had been agitated by the fear that he
would not come; but as soon as that anxiety was removed by the knock at
the door, she felt a sudden rush of doubt and timidity: she trembled and
turned cold.

Mrs. Pettifer went to open the door, and told Mr. Tryan, in as few words
as possible, what had happened in the night. As he laid down his hat and
prepared to enter the parlour, she said, 'I won't go in with you, for I
think perhaps she would rather see you go in alone.'

Janet, wrapped up in a large white shawl which threw her dark face into
startling relief, was seated with her eyes turned anxiously towards the
door when Mr. Tryan entered. He had not seen her since their interview at
Sally Martin's long months ago; and he felt a strong movement of
compassion at the sight of the pain-stricken face which seemed to bear
written on it the signs of all Janet's intervening misery. Her heart gave
a great leap, as her eyes met his once more. No! she had not deceived
herself: there was all the sincerity, all the sadness, all the deep pity
in them her memory had told her of; more than it had told her, for in
proportion as his face had become thinner and more worn, his eyes
appeared to have gathered intensity.

He came forward, and, putting out his hand, said, 'I am so glad you sent
for me--I am so thankful you thought I could be any comfort to you.'
Janet took his hand in silence. She was unable to utter any words of mere
politeness, or even of gratitude; her heart was too full of other words
that had welled up the moment she met his pitying glance, and felt her
doubts fall away.

They sat down opposite each other, and she said in a low voice, while
slow difficult tears gathered in her aching eyes,--'I want to tell you
how unhappy I am--how weak and wicked. I feel no strength to live or die.
I thought you could tell me something that would help me.' She paused.

'Perhaps I can,' Mr. Tryan said, 'for in speaking to me you are speaking
to a fellow-sinner who has needed just the comfort and help you are
needing.'

'And you did find it?'

'Yes; and I trust you will find it.'

'O, I should like to be good and to do right,' Janet burst forth; 'but
indeed, indeed, my lot has been a very hard one. I loved my husband very
dearly when we were married, and I meant to make him happy--I wanted
nothing else. But he began to be angry with me for little things and ...
I don't want to accuse him ... but he drank and got more and more unkind
to me, and then very cruel, and he beat me. And that cut me to the heart.
It made me almost mad sometimes to think all our love had come to that
... I couldn't bear up against it. I had never been used to drink
anything but water. I hated wine and spirits because Robert drank them
so; but one day when I was very wretched, and the wine was standing on
the table, I suddenly ... I can hardly remember how I came to do it ... I
poured some wine into a large glass and drank it. It blunted my feelings.
and made me more indifferent. After that, the temptation was always
coming, and it got stronger and stronger. I was ashamed, and I hated what
I did; but almost while the thought was passing through my mind that I
would never do it again, I did it. It seemed as if there was a demon in
me always making me rush to do what I longed not to do. And I thought all
the more that God was cruel; for if He had not sent me that dreadful
trial, so much worse than other women have to bear, I should not have
done wrong in that way. I suppose it is wicked to think so ... I feel as
if there must be goodness and right above us, but I can't see it, I can't
trust in it. And I have gone on in that way for years and years. At one
time it used to be better now and then, but everything has got worse
lately. I felt sure it must soon end somehow. And last night he turned me
out of doors ... I don't know what to do. I will never go back to that
life again if I can help it; and yet everything else seems so miserable.
I feel sure that demon will always be urging me to satisfy the craving
that comes upon me, and the days will go on as they have done through all
those miserable years. I shall always be doing wrong, and hating myself
after--sinking lower and lower, and knowing that I am sinking. O can you
tell me any way of getting strength? Have you ever known any one like me
that got peace of mind and power to do right? Can you give me any
comfort--any hope?'

While Janet was speaking, she had forgotten everything but her misery and
her yearning for comfort. Her voice had risen from the low tone of timid
distress to an intense pitch of imploring anguish. She clasped her hands
tightly, and looked at Mr. Tryon with eager questioning eyes, with
parted, trembling lips, with the deep horizontal lines of overmastering
pain on her brow. In this artificial life of ours, it is not often we see
a human face with all a heart's agony in it, uncontrolled by
self-consciousness; when we do see it, it startles us as if we had
suddenly waked into the real world of which this everyday one is but a
puppet-show copy. For some moments Mr. Tryan was too deeply moved to
speak.

'Yes, dear Mrs. Dempster,' he said at last, 'there _is_ comfort, there
_is_ hope for you. Believe me there is, for I speak from my own deep and
hard experience.' He paused, as if he had not made up his mind to utter
the words that were urging themselves to his lips. Presently he
continued, 'Ten years ago, I felt as wretched as you do. I think my
wretchedness was even worse than yours, for I had a heavier sin on my
conscience. I had suffered no wrong from others as you have, and I had
injured another irreparably in body and soul. The image of the wrong I
had done pursued me everywhere, and I seemed on the brink of madness. I
hated my life, for I thought, just as you do, that I should go on falling
into temptation and doing more harm in the world; and I dreaded death,
for with that sense of guilt on my soul, I felt that whatever state I
entered on must be one of misery. But a dear friend to whom I opened my
mind showed me it was just such as I--the helpless who feel themselves
helpless--that God specially invites to come to Him, and offers all the
riches of His salvation: not forgiveness only; forgiveness would be worth
little if it left us under the powers of our evil passions; but
strength--that strength which enables us to conquer sin.'

'But,' said Janet, 'I can feel no trust in God. He seems always to have
left me to myself. I have sometimes prayed to Him to help me, and yet
everything has been just the same as before. If you felt like me, how did
you come to have hope and trust?'

'Do not believe that God has left you to yourself. How can you tell but
that the hardest trials you have known have been only the road by which
He was leading you to that complete sense of your own sin and
helplessness, without which you would never have renounced all other
hopes, and trusted in His love alone? I know, dear Mrs. Dempster, I know
it is hard to bear. I would not speak lightly of your sorrows. I feel
that the mystery of our life is great, and at one time it seemed as dark
to me as it does to you.' Mr. Tryan hesitated again. He saw that the
first thing Janet needed was to be assured of sympathy. She must be made
to feel that her anguish was not strange to him; that he entered into the
only half-expressed secrets of her spiritual weakness, before any other
message of consolation could find its way to her heart. The tale of the
Divine Pity was never yet believed from lips that were not felt to be
moved by human pity. And Janet's anguish was not strange to Mr. Tryan. He
had never been in the presence of a sorrow and a self-despair that had
sent so strong a thrill through all the recesses of his saddest
experience; and it is because sympathy is but a living again through our
own past in a new form, that confession often prompts a response of
confession. Mr. Tryan felt this prompting, and his judgement, too, told
him that in obeying it he would be taking the best means of administering
comfort to Janet. Yet he hesitated; as we tremble to let in the daylight
on a chamber of relics which we have never visited except in curtained
silence. But the first impulse triumphed, and he went on. 'I had lived
all my life at a distance from God. My youth was spent in thoughtless
self-indulgence, and all my hopes were of a vain worldly kind. I had no
thought of entering the Church; I looked forward to a political career,
for my father was private secretary to a man high in the Whig Ministry,
and had been promised strong interest in my behalf. At college I lived in
intimacy with the gayest men, even adopting follies and vices for which I
had no taste, out of mere pliancy and the love of standing well with my
companions. You see, I was more guilty even then than you have been, for
I threw away all the rich blessings of untroubled youth and health; I had
no excuse in my outward lot. But while I was at college that event in my
life occurred, which in the end brought on the state of mind I have
mentioned to you--the state of self-reproach and despair, which enables
me to understand to the full what you are suffering; and I tell you the
facts, because I want you to be assured that I am not uttering mere vague
words when I say that I have been raised from as low a depth of sin and
sorrow as that in which you feel yourself to be. At college I had an
attachment to a lovely girl of seventeen; she was very much below my own
station in life, and I never contemplated marrying her; but I induced her
to leave her father's house. I did not mean to forsake her when I left
college, and I quieted all scruples of conscience by promising myself
that I would always take care of poor Lucy. But on my return from a
vacation spent in travelling, I found that Lucy was gone--gone away with
a gentleman, her neighbours said. I was a good deal distressed, but I
tried to persuade myself that no harm would come to her. Soon afterwards
I had an illness which left my health delicate, and made all dissipation
distasteful to me. Life seemed very wearisome and empty, and I looked
with envy on every one who had some great and absorbing object--even on
my cousin who was preparing to go out as a missionary, and whom I had
been used to think a dismal, tedious person, because he was constantly
urging religious subjects upon me. We were living in London then; it was
three years since I had lost sight of Lucy; and one summer evening, about
nine o'clock, as I was walking along Gower Street, I saw a knot of people
on the causeway before me. As I came up to them, I heard one woman say,
"I tell you, she is dead." This awakened my interest, and I pushed my way
within the circle. The body of a woman, dressed in fine clothes, was
lying against a door-step. Her head was bent on one side, and the long
curls had fallen over her cheek. A tremor seized me when I saw the hair:
it was light chestnut--the colour of Lucy's. I knelt down and turned
aside the hair; it was Lucy--dead--with paint on her cheeks. I found out
afterwards that she had taken poison--that she was in the power of a
wicked woman--that the very clothes on her back were not her own. It was
then that my past life burst upon me in all its hideousness. I wished I
had never been born. I couldn't look into the future. Lucy's dead painted
face would follow me there, as it did when I looked back into the
past--as it did when I sat down to table with my friends, when I lay down
in my bed, and when I rose up. There was only one thing that could make
life tolerable to me; that was, to spend all the rest of it in trying to
save others from the ruin I had brought on one. But how was that possible
for me? I had no comfort, no strength, no wisdom in my own soul; how
could I give them to others? My mind was dark, rebellious, at war with
itself and with God.'

Mr. Tryan had been looking away from Janet. His face was towards the
fire, and he was absorbed in the images his memory was recalling. But now
he turned his eyes on her, and they met hers, fixed on him with the look
of rapt expectation, with which one clinging to a slippery summit of a
rock, while the waves are rising higher and higher, watches the boat that
has put from shore to his rescue.

'You see, Mrs. Dempster, how deep my need was. I went on in this way for
months. I was convinced that if I ever got health and comfort, it must be
from religion. I went to hear celebrated preachers, and I read religious
books. But I found nothing that fitted my own need. The faith which puts
the sinner in possession of salvation seemed, as I understood it, to be
quite out of my reach. I had no faith; I only felt utterly wretched,
under the power of habits and dispositions which had wrought hideous
evil. At last, as I told you, I found a friend to whom I opened all my
feelings--to whom I confessed everything. He was a man who had gone
through very deep experience, and could understand the different wants of
different minds. He made it clear to me that the only preparation for
coming to Christ and partaking of his salvation, was that very sense of
guilt and helplessness which was weighing me down. He said, You are weary
and heavy-laden; well, it is you Christ invites to come to him and find
rest. He asks you to cling to him, to lean on him; he does not command
you to walk alone without stumbling. He does not tell you, as your
fellow-men do, that you must first merit his love; he neither condemns
nor reproaches you for the past, he only bids you come to him that you
may have life: he bids you stretch out your hands, and take of the
fulness of his love. You have only to rest on him as a child rests on its
mother's arms, and you will be upborne by his divine strength. That is
what is meant by faith. Your evil habits, you feel, are too strong for
you; you are unable to wrestle with them; you know beforehand you shall
fall. But when once we feel our helplessness in that way, and go to the
Saviour, desiring to be freed from the power as well as the punishment of
sin, we are no longer left to our own strength. As long as we live in
rebellion against God, desiring to have our own will, seeking happiness
in the things of this world, it is as if we shut ourselves up in a
crowded stifling room, where we breathe only poisoned air; but we have
only to walk out under the infinite heavens, and we breathe the pure free
air that gives us health, and strength, and gladness. It is just so with
God's spirit: as soon as we submit ourselves to his will, as soon as we
desire to be united to him, and made pure and holy, it is as if the walls
had fallen down that shut us out from God, and we are fed with his
spirit, which gives us new strength.'

'That is what I want,' said Janet; 'I have left off minding about
pleasure. I think I could be contented in the midst of hardship, if I
felt that God cared for me, and would give me strength to lead a pure
life. But tell me, did you soon find peace and strength?'

'Not perfect peace for a long while, but hope and trust, which is
strength. No sense of pardon for myself could do away with the pain I had
in thinking what I had helped to bring on another. My friend used to urge
upon me that my sin against God was greater than my sin against her;
but--it may be from want of deeper spiritual feeling--that has remained
to this hour the sin which causes me the bitterest pang. I could never
rescue Lucy; but by God's blessing I might rescue other weak and falling
souls; and that was why I entered the Church. I asked for nothing through
the rest of my life but that I might be devoted to God's work, without
swerving in search of pleasure either to the right hand or to the left.
It has been often a hard struggle--but God has been with me--and perhaps
it may not last much longer.'

Mr. Tryan paused. For a moment he had forgotten Janet, and for a moment
she had forgotten her own sorrows. When she recurred to herself, it was
with a new feeling.

'Ah, what a difference between our lives! you have been choosing pain,
and working, and denying yourself; and I have been thinking only of
myself. I was only angry and discontented because I had pain to bear. You
never had that wicked feeling that I have had so often, did you? that God
was cruel to send me trials and temptations worse than others have.'

'Yes, I had; I had very blasphemous thoughts, and I know that spirit of
rebellion must have made the worst part of your lot. You did not feel how
impossible it is for us to judge rightly of God's dealings, and you
opposed yourself to his will. But what do we know? We cannot foretell the
working of the smallest event in our own lot; how can we presume to judge
of things that are so much too high for us? There is nothing that becomes
us but entire submission, perfect resignation. As long as we set up our
own will and our own wisdom against God's, we make that wall between us
and his love which I have spoken of just now. But as soon as we lay
ourselves entirely at his feet, we have enough light given us to guide
our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that
determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough
the word of command which he must himself obey. I know, dear Mrs.
Dempster, I know it is hard--the hardest thing of all, perhaps--to flesh
and blood. But carry that difficulty to the Saviour along with all your
other sins and weaknesses, and ask him to pour into you a spirit of
submission. He enters into your struggles; he has drunk the cup of our
suffering to the dregs; he knows the hard wrestling it costs us to say,
"Not my will, but Thine be done."'

'Pray with me,' said Janet--'pray now that I may have light and
strength.'

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