Chapter XV: Ned Vigus' Secret

"If faith were left untried,
How could the might that lurks within her then
Be shown?"
WORDSWORTH.

JOSEPH found his new quarters very comfortable, and was soon thoroughly at home with his mates in the workshop, at the same time giving ample fulfilment to the expectations which Mr. Glover had been led to entertain concerning him. His new employer was a good, Christian man, who had for many years been an active worker among the young, and had given many a lad a start in life which no thanks could repay. Joseph's frank, honest ways had taken a firm hold on his fancy from the very first; and he had judged Mr. Girling's estimate to be a correct one. The lad's industry and intelligence, coupled with the thorough manner in which all his work was executed, were not long in corroborating his good opinion.

At the same time, Joseph made good progress in knowledge of his trade. At home, his opportunities for improvement had been comparatively small; but in an extensive business like Mr. Glover's, and favoured as he was by his employer's goodwill, he had every chance of making his way. The weekly letter which he never failed to send home, together with as much of his earnings as he could spare, was both cheerful and amusing, lightening the widow's heart with its account of his prosperity and well-being, and always containing some humorous description or anecdote to give little Ruth food for her lively chatter.

All this while, the Vigus family—of which he had by this time quite become one—was not without its influence upon Joseph; and a word as to the members composing it will not be out of place here. It consisted of Ned Vigus, his old father, and his daughter Nancy. Joseph was not the only lodger; indeed, the staple of Mr. Vigus' income appeared to proceed from the rent of his rooms; for he himself was paralysed on the right side, and unable to move from his chair without assistance, whilst his father, though apparently well in health, was long past work.

The first floor of the house was let to a young married couple with two children, whose voices were frequently heard in loud rebellion against the parental discipline. The second had been inhabited for years by a middle-aged tailor and his wife; whilst the family occupied the basement during the day-time, ascending to the third and top floor for the hours of rest.

Miss Vigus took in dressmaking, and went about every day of the week, except Sunday, with the front of her bodice stuck full of pins, whilst Ned himself, whose hand had fortunately recovered part of its use, was perpetually busy over fretwork, for which—through Mr. Glover's kindness—he always found a ready sale.

Joseph was very much interested in this, and finding that Mr. Vigus frequently drew his own patterns, he fetched down his father's box of compasses, and amused himself in the evenings with tracing fresh devices, many of which met with unqualified approbation, and earned the paralysed man's warmest gratitude; for, as he said, variety was the great thing in fancy-work. In return, he taught Joseph how to use the fret-saw, and in this way, a good understanding speedily sprang up between them.

Ned Vigus was by no means dull company either. Having been a tally-man in his active days, he had journeyed about many parts of the country, accumulating a good deal of interesting information and practical knowledge, and Joseph had so many questions to ask that Nancy often declared they greased the wheels of her machine with their animated conversation.

One thing which impressed Joseph particularly about both Ned and his daughter was their perpetual cheerfulness. In spite of the monotony of their lives, they never seemed out of patience, either with their lot or with each other. This had struck him all the more vividly because, from the very first, he had been forcibly reminded of Sandy David by the paralysed man, as he sat bending over his work on his low seat by the fire opposite his little, old father. But what a contrast they formed! Sandy, peevish and morose, because life was hard and work tedious, cynical and crushed by the weight of his many trials; Ned Vigus, with a yet heavier trial—the loss of bodily power, yet cheerful and hopeful, full of courage to do whatever his remaining strength would permit. The comparison was very much in favour of the latter, and the more Joseph knew of him, the more he began to understand the source of his strength.

Mr. Vigus had never referred to his affliction but once, upon the first night of Joseph's sojourn in the house, and then in terms of such unmurmuring faith and resignation, that the lad never forgot his words.

Nancy had already lighted her grandfather up to bed, and Joseph was somewhat astonished to see Ned sit idly looking on, whilst she cleared up his work and put it away for the night. But when all was ready, and the fire raked out, the mystery was solved. Approaching his chair, and putting both arms round him, she helped him to his feet, and then giving him the support of her shoulder prepared to assist him in his toilsome journey to the top of the house.

It was a pitiful sight, and Joseph's countenance must have expressed his thoughts pretty plainly, for half-way across the room, Ned Vigus stopped.

"You didn't know I was like this," he said.

Joseph replied that he had wondered to see him sit so still in his chair. "But you are so full of good spirits," he added, "that I should never have guessed it possible you were so heavily afflicted."

Ned Vigus smiled. "Nancy, here," with an affectionate glance at his daughter, "knows the secret of it; and pray God you may learn it some day. When you can trust your Saviour so entirely as to feel that all your life, good and ill alike, is in the hands of a loving Father, you will find it easy to be 'careful for nothing.' I often think, when I'm talking about the old days, I used to be just like a bird on the wing, free as the air, seeking my meals from place to place, as it were, and returning to the nest at night; and now I'm caught and caged; but I shall be fed, for not a sparrow falleth to the ground without our Father's knowledge.

"I wouldn't have believed it possible at one time," he went on, "but that I should pine and die in this confinement; but, as I say, it makes all the difference to know it's in the Father's hands. He has taken away many things I should have liked to keep,—my dear wife and my only son, my bodily strength and my liberty; but He has left me more—the peace which the world can neither give nor take away."

Joseph was silent.

"Everything that He sends me is for some good end," Mr. Vigus continued, "although I cannot understand it all;—even this nightly journey up my Hill Difficulty," he added, as he prepared to hobble out of the room. "But it's the only bit of hard work I do during the day, and it's harder far for poor Nancy; but she knows my secret, and all things work together for our good."

Joseph thought of these words when he was alone in his room. They seemed to throw a new light upon religion, which until then had only been, as it were, a grand, mysterious fable, grown real by constant telling over. The Bible had been familiar to him from infancy, but only as a wonderful book of adventure. Its battles had delighted him, its terrible denunciations of sin had thrilled him with awe, whilst the New Testament, with its marvellous star of Bethlehem, its miracles, its cross-crowned Calvary, and its day of Pentecost, had filled him with a kind of holy reverence.

But it had not made him realize that the same God who watched over that pilgrim host amid all its journeyings, could make a way through the desert for him, neither had it taught him that the Saviour who suffered death for the sins of the whole world, longed for the trust and obedience of each one for whom His gift of salvation was wrought out. Never having, in his boyish carelessness, felt the need of help and guidance, he had neither coveted nor sought to appropriate those free gifts which alone could impart full satisfaction.

But with his father's death, life had changed its aspect. Was he not like Abraham, journeying away from the land of his birth to a strange country?—Like Jacob, awakening, in his first loneliness, to the sense that God was all about him, though he "knew it not"? Would not trials and difficulties beset his future? And what strength had he with which to meet them?—What certainty that something real and changeless lay beyond the ever-shifting Will-o'-the-Wisps of earth?

A deep hunger had awakened within him a longing for the things which perish not; and when he knelt by his bedside, according to the custom of his childhood, they were no longer empty words that ascended from his lips. In the great book of record, it was written of him that night:

"Behold, he prayeth."

From this time forward, Joseph's life was different. He was more in earnest than ever; but ambition was no longer simply the struggle to achieve greatness; it was sanctified by the longing to glorify God,—so to conform every action to the Divine will that the perfect peace of God might rule his life. He was at length bent upon that search of which Christ said,—

"Seek, and ye shall find."

So time went on, and Christmas drew near, when he was looking forward to a meeting with his mother and Ruth, and two whole days in the old home.