Chapter IV: Madge and the Doctor

"SO here you be at last," said Amos Ackman, in a discontented growl. "Get back, Nan." It was in the evening, less than a week later.

The sun had just sunk behind West Point, lending a framework of golden light to the dark massive centre, which stood out with its sharply-cut profile against the clear sky. And the sea was all one sparkle of dancing ripples, which broke softly with murmuring splashes among the rocks below.

Amos Ackman sat on a bench in his doorway, looking upon his goodly growth of garden weeds. He made no unfit foreground to the very untidy surroundings. A man, not tall, but formerly an athlete in strength, he had been bent and shrunk and twisted, by long years of acute rheumatism, into a half-helpless querulous invalid. The greater part of his time he spent on his little wooden bench, working laboriously with his swelled yet bony hands at trifling articles or childish knick-knacks for sale, helped by little Nan, as she crouched on the ground at his feet. A sour-spirited and unlovable man was Amos Ackman, yet Nannie loved him, and Madge Hardwicke pitied him and often did him a kindly turn.

For all Amos Ackman's crustiness, he was not without a friend in the world—a real fast personal friend, who held to him through thick and thin, and would not be repelled by any amount of cross-grained speeches. Nat Tyrrell was a carpenter in a small way, living close to the foot of the hill, up which, in common with a goodly number of Alyn folks, he was wont to take his airing on a summer evening. He stood now, leaning in his favourite position against Amos Ackman's crooked crab-tree, looking, in his contrast to Amos, as if the theory of convex and concave friendship were here to receive full proof.

For Amos Ackman was stooping and high-shouldered, with long uncouth arms, and neglected growth of straggling gray hair, and narrow forehead, and sharp deep-set eyes. And Nat Tyrrell was broad and stout in build, with frank straightforward bearing, and plenty of sense and intelligence in his honest face.

A good man too, was Nat Tyrrell, not indeed rising to any great height of Christian experience, and having had his eyes but lately opened to see the worth of things spiritual. He was only groping his way as yet through early dawn, and making many a mistake concerning matters of weighty import in that dim light. No fear that, if he groped on, honestly seeking for more light, it would not be granted. Only the curious thing was, that he hardly realised yet how much he needed clearer sight; and he was therefore not a little disposed to lay down the law upon many matters, which, all unknown to himself, others in brighter daylight could mark in their more just proportions. There are no popes more determined in their would-be infallibility than those good men who utterly mistake their own glimmering light for the blaze of noonday. And with such, the dawn often brightens but slowly, lasting it may be almost through a life-time. Still, Nat Tyrrell was a good man—a man of Christian principle, earnestly desirous to serve God, and needing chiefly to be raised in his knowledge of Christ, and lowered in his estimation of self.

"So here you be at last," was Amos Ackman's surly greeting, as Madge Hardwicke's quiet face, with the little red handkerchief below it, stopped at his gate. "Get back, Nan. Always in the way, yer are."

Nan went down quickly on the ground, but ventured to smile a welcome, as Madge came a step nearer.

"Yes, I'm come back," Madge said. "How have you been all day?"

"Same as always," said Amos shortly. "Where 've yer been?"

"More places than one," said Madge. "I'd a mind to be present at the funeral."

"What the poor lady as was killed in the tunnel?" asked Nat Tyrrell. "The doctor's sister?"

"Joe Whilly telled me there was to be six buried together," said Amos, hitting out at Nan, when she ventured to creep a little nearer to Madge. "Get out o' the way then! Six buried together, says he, all o' them killed on the spot. And a lot more to be buried to-morrow. Well, the gentlefolks has it this time an' no mistake."

"Has what?" demanded Madge.

"Their turn at trouble an' bother," said Amos sourly. "I've enough an' to spare, till I'm 'most sick o' my life. I ain't got no objection to see rich folks bearin' a bit o' the same."

"Come now, don't you go and be spiteful, Amos," interposed Nat Tyrrell good-humouredly. "Rich folks has their plenty of trouble, though it don't always come in the money line."

Amos struck out again savagely, as if little Nan were the impersonation of wealthy ease, and he wanted to demolish it on the spot. "What 're yer after there, a-wastin' all your time? Get into the cottage."

"Nannie's coming along with me into my garden, to help pull weeds," said Madge, as the child cowered silently beneath the blow. "You'd ought to be ashamed of yourself, Amos Ackman, to treat a little girl like that worse than if she was a dog."

Amos scowled, but allowed Nannie to spring past him without a protest.

"Well," Madge said, when they had reached her little garden, leaving the other two just out of ear-shot, "I've scarce had a word with you, Nan, these days past. What's angered your father, child?"

Nannie looked thoughtful. She was spare, and small, and pinched for her age, but there was no lack of intelligence in her little thin face, with the framing of gipsy-black hair. "Madge," she said, under her breath, "d'ye mind what you said the morning of the tunnel accident? 'Twasn't the Resurrection-day, after all."

"No, it's to come yet," said Madge, pulling up a bit of groundsel, and then looking across to the fading rim of golden light which lingered round Lion Point.

"I've prayed a deal that it mayn't be long, and that father 'll be ready," said Nan softly. "But he don't seem like it now. I wanted to say to him my Sunday text this morning, Madge, and it's that has made him be hittin' at me all day since."

"I'd pray on," said Madge, continuing her work. "Maybe 'tisn't the Master's time yet. Only take care your father don't anger ye, Nan."

"I've had to smother it down ever so," said Nannie, with a little sob. "O Madge, it's so hard, you don't know. Look here."

The black bruises on the little arm, covertly bared, told their own tale. "It 'is' hard," said Madge. "I wish I could shield you, child. Maybe if I was to speak to him, and get Nat Tyrrell to speak too—"

"No, no, he's worse after, if he keeps in a bit," said Nannie, speaking cheerfully, as she covered up the poor little discoloured arm. "I'll bear it, Madge, 'cause, if I made a fuss, father 'd maybe think I was angry, and then he'd be longer learning to love God; don't you think so, Madge?"

It seemed to Madge like something of the old martyr-spirit shining in the child's face; but she only said, "Ay, Nannie, you're right, 'on' doubt. Come, and I'll put you something on the bruises."

Amos Ackman's voice, calling imperatively in harsh tones, made Nannie run away the moment they again left the cottage. Madge moved forward a trifle faster herself, for Mr. Chetwynd was standing outside the garden, leaning on the palings.

He looked sad and weary enough, though he greeted her with a half-careless smile. "Good evening, Madge. I have come up here for a breath of fresh air. The town is oppressive to-day."

"How's Miss Mona, sir?" asked Madge.

He shook his head. "I don't know. Never sheds a tear. Never speaks of—of 'it.' I can't begin, or it might be better. I am not sure. But it is hard to see her look like that. It is not the way girls usually meet sorrow. There seems no way of bringing comfort to her, poor little Mona."

His eyes were moist, and his voice was unsteady.

"God can comfort her, sir," Madge said, in her quiet way.

He shook his head again, in dreary dissent this time.

"I tried to get her out, but she will see no one yet, and seems to wish for nothing but to be left alone. Madge, I like Mr. Prior, though he is of your way of thinking. You two would suit marvellously. He knows when not to talk, which most men don't know, particularly your good folks. His shake of the hand to-day said more than any words could have done. If all professors of religion were like him and you, now—"

"Sir, a man's slips oughtn't to make you condemn his religion."

"One naturally judges of a man's profession by his actions. What were you talking about so earnestly to that child, as I came up the hill, before you both disappeared into the cottage?"

Madge thought a moment, and then spoke out steadily, "Prayer to God, for one thing, sir."

"Ha! Quite your subject."

"No,—everybody's," said Madge.

"What are you praying for now, eh?"

He asked the question lightly, not quite contemptuously.

Perhaps there was something in Madge Hardwicke's calm confidence which kept him in check. Also, he had himself no objection to prayer, as a necessary and respectable form. Possibly, he looked upon the said form as something of a concession to the weakness of others; but, at all events, in his opinion, it could do no one harm, if not likely to do any one good. He was regularly to be seen in his pew on Sunday mornings, where his manner, if not reverent, was decorous; and he had never yet broken through the habit of family prayers, however brief and dry in kind. As for anything beyond—as for making a particular request to God, and looking for a particular answer from God—Mr. Chetwynd's feelings were simply those of utter incredulity. He had no objection to the form of prayer, as a habit, as an institution, as an act of worship to a Supreme Being, but he had no faith whatever in the power of prayer as a living working reality. There was the barrier at which he stopped, and there, he well knew, Madge did not stop; whence his question.

Madge hesitated again, not that she did not know what to say, but that it was always an effort to her to speak of her own feelings. But Madge never shrank from showing her colours when occasion called.

"For the Master's coming," she answered reverently.

He was watching the red sunset clouds at that moment, floating in the blue sky, but he turned to look her in the face, in no pretended astonishment.

"Madge, do you literally mean to say—you who believe in the Second Advent, as men understand it in the Bible—do you mean to say you dream of your prayers having any influence in an event of such moment as that, supposing it were really coming upon us?"

"I'd put aside the supposings, sir, and let's take for granted it really is,—as we know to be," Madge could not help adding, in her calm exultant faith, ranking herself with those who know the truth indeed, and were not blind as he was. "I do believe my praying 'll hasten it, sir."

"Then you don't believe it to be a day fixed from all eternity? Madge, Madge, what of your faith in Bible teachings now?" demanded the doctor.

"Maybe 'tis fixed. Any way, God knows the day. What then, sir?" asked Madge simply, in her turn.

"How can your prayers by any possibility affect a fixed event?"

"I don't know, sir. God knows, and that's enough."

"But I tell you, Madge, the two things are incompatible. They can't both be true."

"Maybe you can't explain 'em, sir," said Madge. "They're none the less true for that. You've a deal more of this world's wisdom than I have, and I'm but a poor ignorant woman. But 'the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.' Tisn't wisdom, but faith, that's needed to get a man into the kingdom of heaven."

"Then, if you were to read in the Bible that black was white, you would believe it, Madge?"

He laughed as he spoke.

But Madge answered solemnly,—so solemnly that he too grew grave:—

"Sir, the Bible says nowhere at all that black is white. The Bible don't ask us to believe anything of the kind, and I can't see that I've any call to be fancying how I'd feel if the Bible said things which it doesn't say. But what's put plainly in God's Word, I do believe. And where I can't understand, I know 'tis only because I am but a little child before God; and I just take the truths He gives me, and believe them still."

He looked away again towards the fading light in the west—looked sadly, standing there in his lonely sorrow, smitten by the hand of God in his tenderest affections, and haughtily putting aside the sweet comfort wherewith God would fain, in His pitying love, comfort all who are cast down. Mr. Chetwynd knew nothing of all this—knew not, because he would not know.

"Look here, Madge," he said huskily,—"did none of those passengers the other day pray for a safe journey before their setting out, do you suppose?"

"I've a notion that they did, sir. And wasn't God's hand over them, preserving many a one from death?"

"According to that, all praying travellers should be safe, and only the non-praying ones ever meet with injury or death."

Madge looked up with a sudden shining in her eyes.

"Ay, sir, 'twould be so, surely, 'if' God's wounding isn't often a deal better than to be left whole, and 'if' this life is better than heaven's glory. I'd find it hard to choose about that last, if you was to put it to me."

"You would! You, Madge?"

"I don't wish for death, till it's my Lord's will," said Madge very quietly. "But when He calls, I'd think you right cruel to keep me back—only you couldn't!" added Madge, with genuine thankfulness.

"That's not mere weariness of life," muttered the doctor.

"No, sir," Madge answered. "I'm not weary of life, so long as my Lord wants me to live here for Him. And I'd like to see Neill again, too."

"And you think Neill will come back some day?"

"I do, sir."

"And that his return will be in answer to your prayers?"

Madge's gray eyes were burning with a mother's tears. "I do, sir," she repeated.

"And how if he does not come back, after all your prayers?"

"Then it's because I'm blind, and can't see what's good for him nor me."

"Ha! So you would not call that unanswered prayer! You are a clever woman at twisting things about, Madge."

She turned straight to look him in the face, as he had done to her.

"Sir, true prayer is never unanswered, though sure enough God don't always give us the very things we pray for. My Bible tells me, 'If we ask anything "according to His will" He heareth us.' If 'tis not according to His will, He keeps it back, and well for us He does. Seems to me oftentimes that He don't give me just the thing I ask for, only because He has something else a deal better in store. But any way, I wouldn't dare wish aught, save what He wills to grant me.

"I'm right sure that no prayer of faith, put up with the 'If it be Thy Will' running all through it, was ever left unanswered, though maybe the answer sent was a different one altogether from what was looked for by him who prayed. And it's like enough to be so with me. I wouldn't wish to shut my eyes to the truth. Maybe Neill will not come home at all, but I'll meet him safe in heaven. I'd sooner have an Eternity with him there, than only a few years with him here, if both couldn't be."

"Isn't that 'couldn't' rather limiting God's power, Madge?"

"No, sir. There's many things which God sees in His wisdom mustn't be, and we don't know the reason now, and won't till we get to heaven. It'll be joy to see the meaning of things then, but it's joy to trust my Lord now."

Mr. Chetwynd was silent. He would have given something for the absolute repose of this woman's faith. He would have given almost anything,—short of laying aside his pride, and his earthly wisdom. But he could not part with these. He could not, and would not, stoop to become a little child. The portals of the Kingdom of Heaven are low, and Mr. Chetwynd, with his lofty crest of self-confidence, could not enter therein.