By still Waters. A story for quiet hours. By E. G

Front matter

i'tUHtllpltLL. ' AND THIS IS ALL I HAVE — See page 89. A STORY FOR QUIET HOURS BY EDWARD GARRETT AUTHOR OF 'CROOKED PLACES* 'OCCUPATION S OF A RETIRED LIFE* 'PREMIUMS PAID TO EXPERIENCE* 'frHE CRUST AND THE CAKE* 'SEEN AND HeWrD ' ETC EDINBURGH : OLIPHANT, ANDERSON, & FERRIER. 1884. PRINTED 3V MORRISON AND GJT1». FOR OLIPHANT, ANDERSON, & FERRIER. LONDON, . . . HAMILTON, ADAMS. AND CO. [All Rights reserved.] TO MY FIRST FRIEND, WHO GAVE ME A BLESSING WHICH HAS GROWN SINCE WE PARTED HERE, AND WILL BE STILL GROWING WHEN WE MEET AGAIN THERE. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece ' AND THIS IS ALL I HAVE ' GOING OUT AND TAKING A LOOK ABOUT To face p. 48 MRS. STONE HAD A VERY EERIE FACE 123 IN THE DRAWING-ROOM, BEFORE A HUGE FIRE „ 15S A LONG RAMBLE THROUGH THE WOODS . 251 FREDERICK SPRANG UP AND SAT ERECT . »

Introduction

. A thoughtful love, Through constant watching wise. — Waring. It was so strange to be here, and nobody to know it. It made Sarah Russell feel as if she were out of the flesh altogether. It gave her a little pain to find that almost everybody else on the Atlantic steamer had somebody waiting for them on the Liverpool wharf. But the pain was only for a moment. She, too, could have had somebody waiting for her had she chosen If she had written of her arrival to her solicitor, he miHht have sent one of his clerks to receive O her. Her father's old partner might even have come himself. But it would have given them trouble, and Sarah Russell was far too wise to think that it could have made her arrival much richer. When the realities of love are taken from hearts and lives, she felt that, instead of stuffing them with shams of unsatisfying husks, it is better to keep the empty chambers open till other real things come creeping in.

If she had had some barren acquaintance shaking hands with her, and fussing over her luggage, very likely she would not have noticed that after all she was not the only unwelcomed one there. There was nobody to meet that dark, angry-looking youth who used to sit in the windiest corner on deck till twelve o'clock at night. There was nobody to meet that thin, frightened little woman, whom Miss Russell had met at the shipping-office when she went to en gage her berth, and who had enquired anxiously if there was no ' intermediate passage ' before she could make up her mind to settle down into the steerage. But when she noticed that they three had nobody to look after them, then it occurred to her that they might possibly be intended to look after each other. The lad had no incumbrance except an old battered leathern portmanteau, which he had kept in his own cabin, and now carried out himself.

The poor little woman was hampered with all sorts of brown-paper parcels and burst ing bandboxes. And Miss Russell herself, small and timid, did not feel it very easy to go and struggle in the crowd of passengers recognising and claiming their baggage as it was cleared out of the hold. The lad stood there, holding his possessions (which seemed light enough), and looked round with his haughty, turned-at-bay face, as if he wondered why he lingered where nobody wanted him. The little woman frantically grasped her properties, and dropped one as fast as she picked up another. Sarah Russell did not take more than a minute to make up her mind. She was not a girl, but a middle-aged woman, who was in the habit of saying, with a sweet meaning smile, that people would be very glad to grow old if they realised the superior privileges of years, and that growing old is not growing down, but growing up.

She spoke to the woman first. ' If you will leave your things in my charge I will take care of them till you get them alto gether,' she said ; and then turned to the lad, and asked, « May I hope as a great favour that you will enquire if Miss Sarah Russell's trunks are found for her, and request that they may be carried this way ? ' The youth only turned his grey eyes full upon her, lifted his hat, and went off on her errand without a word. The little woman thanked her eagerly, adding, ' that she was so dazed she did not know what she was doing.' Nevertheless, she was not long in getting through her little business. Glancing over the heap of poor baggage, Miss Russell saw one or two packets marked ' Mrs. Annie Stone,' but she had not needed this to feel sure that this was a married woman. There is a certain expres sion of down-troddenness into which even the unhappiest single life can scarcely sink.

There is a certain misery which, whenever seen in man or woman, means, for the wise observer, that one of the other sex has been at the makine of it. In men, it is generally a hard and defiant recklessness — an empty heart, swept and gar nished and set open, ready for any evil in fluence to enter. In women, it is usually a feeble, peevish poverty of nature — a dry living in the cold, outside their own hearts, which they have shut up, that nobody shall see the utter desolation therein. ' They ought to manage things better,' said Mrs. Stone, in that sort of fretful «tone which reveals a chronic attitude of mind, rather than a temporary irritation. ' They need not make such a noise. My head's just in a whirl. But poor people always are put upon. It's little I once thought I'd travel in steerage.' It was hard to follow her connection of ideas, seeing that the first-class passengers were certainly freely mixed up in the hurly burly of the arrival.

But perhaps she had ruined her logical powers in making excuses for the man who had surely been in her life, and had not made it happy. So Miss Russell only said — ' Never mind. We shall all get out presently. There is no hurry.' ' Well, ma'am, so we shall,' she assented ; 'and I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you for helping me, and I hope you'll get your own things all managed nicely. Our own things is a good deal to us, ain't they, ma'am ? be they much or be they little.' ' Are you going to stay in Liverpool ? ' asked Miss Russell. ' No,' she said, ' I'm going straight on to London. I've got to do the best I can for myself, and I haven't much to live on till I can do it. We've all got our own troubles, and I've had mine, till I'm sure I don't expect anything else. 'Tisn't no use expecting.

I'm sure it's been quite a blessing to be just spoke to kindly by a lady like you, ma'am. I couldn't talk to any of those people in the steerage : I only wanted 'em to leave me alone. I'm not used to their sort.' Poor little woman ! it seemed likely that much of the hardship of her life had been of her own making, and that her troubles had not borne much fruit yet. But Miss Russell only pitied her the more ; for when troubles do bear fruit they cease to be troubles at all, and those who have them are far above pity. ' Are you a widow ? ' she asked. ' Well, ma'am,' she answered, ' I am, and I ain't. He wasn't any good to me, and now I don't know whether he's dead or alive, and ain't ever likely to know. Them that don't get ma; ried is wisest, I reckon. I wish I never had. I shall try to get into some kind of service.

I've got good letters to recommend me, and I can da fine sewing and dress hair. You might know of somebody wanting such an one yourself, ma'am ? ' Now, the fact was, that Miss Russell, being a solitary woman, with an income of four hun dred pounds a-year, needed such an attendant herself. She intended to advertise for one as soon as she reached London. But it struck her that there might be a purpose in this unpreme ditated encounter with one who was seeking to supply just such a need as she had. She looked again at Mrs. Annie Stone. She would not have chosen her. This was not the fulfilment of the idea that had floated in her mind. She had had dreams of some bright fresh young girl, well enough nurtured and educated to be equal to at least an echoing interest in her own little arts and studies — a pretty girl, who would play out some sweet little drama before her eyes, and perhaps make her the good fairy of her future home, and keep up her name among her chil dren.

This Mrs. Annie Stone was middle-aged, and jaded and sharpened. Yet she hesitated. She remembered that when she was a child, putting up puzzles, she had noticed that the right piece to fit in often looked the least likely until it was fairly placed, and the surrounding pieces arranged. It could do no harm to hold this piece of life's puzzle in hand awhile — and wait. So Miss Russell said, ' I want an attendant myself ; but as, of course, I cannot engage you without asking many questions, and as this is no place to ask them, I think the best way will be for me to engage you temporarily, and pay your fare to London, and then we can settle at our leisure ; and any way you will be no loser.' ' I'm sure I'm deeply obliged, ma'am,' Mrs. Stone answered in her wiry, obsequious way. 'It's a long time since I've had anything turn out so lucky for me.

I've often thought, sitting in the steerage, " I wonder if there's any lady sitting at the other end could help me ? " and somehow, when I've seen you walking up and down, ma'am, I've thought what wouldn't I give if she wanted me, and I've been almost ready to go up to you and put it, did you know of such a place ? But of course I'd never have dared. I didn't speak to you till you spoke to me, did I, ma'am ? And even when you spoke I'd never have asked about the situation, if you hadn't led it on like. But if trying '11 do, I'm sure I'll suit you. There's more work in me than there looks. 'Tain't work that's wore me out — it's rather sitting with my hands before me, and my heart worrying round and round in my inside, like a wild beast in a cage.' Just then the youth came back with a porter and the boxes, and a coach was hired to drive Miss Russell and Mrs. Stone and their belong ings to the station.

The lad stood beside them while the luggage was stacked up. I! ' Is coming to England coming " home " to you ? ' Miss Russell asked cheerily. She had never said so much to him before, though day after day they had dined in the same saloon and paced the same quarter-deck. 1 Yes — no,' he answered. This reply was too enigmatical for any direct rejoinder. Miss Russell felt there was a little repulsion in the tone, but it did not repel her. She enquired — ' Are you going to London too ? ' Yes,' he said ; ' I live there. I mean I have lived there. I was born there.' ' And are you to settle there, or are you only on a visit ? ' she asked, having grown accustomed to the etiquette of long voyages, which not only excuses but encourages such questions. ' Neither the one nor the other,' he replied. I am settled nowhere.

I have no home in the world.' ' You are like me,' she said ; ' I am at home all over the world nowadays.' ' That is rather different,' said the lad, with a change of tone, like a softening suddenly checked. ' Perhaps only a different way of putting it,' said she. And then the coach was ready. The young man was lifting his hat and turning away, but she held out her hand to him. They had tra velled together for more than a week, though in silence. And he was young enough to be her son. Yes, the little quiet old maid said to her self that he might have been her son, her own son — who would never be — at least in this world. For she had a tender clinging to that mysterious promise (wide enough to typify God's kingdom, but tender enough to soothe a wo man's sigh) that somewhere else, where the old wastes shall be builded, the barren woman shall keep house and be a joyful mother of children !

And had she no right to that clinging ? God's truth, like sunlight, stretches far and wide and high beyond the words, narrow at best, through which it can but dimly enter these flesh-clad souls of ours. Only the more reason that we should take courage to let in its glory wherever it can find an entrance ; through wide-set gate of highest faith, or glowing casement of creed, or tiny chink whence some human hope escaped us. So they shook hands, and the cab gave a jerk which put him out of sight for a moment ; but he stepped back to the window and said — ' I hope you will have a pleasant journey.' And then they really left him behind. ' His name is Mr. Frederick Broome,' said Mrs. Stone ; ' and I shouldn't wonder but he has come back where he isn't wanted.' Then they flew through the country in the train.

It struck Miss Russell that she had never noticed the orderliness of England when she had never been anywhere else. All the land seemed to stand in the same relation to the great new coun try she had come from as does the prim enclosed parterre of an old mansion to its wider fields. Also she had just come from the glories of In dian summer, from miles upon miles of forest, so bright as to be only comparable to great bunches of geranium and laburnum — from a clear, keen atmosphere where the bright tinned roofs and spires seemed to cut the vision like a knife; from broad silent rivers and blue mountains with names like poems. And here everything was softened in mist, and green, and grey, except the red-roofed houses, whose rich growth of lichens were older than many of the cities she had left behind.

All the while she had been away she had thought that she remembered England perfectly ; but now she found the reality was different from the memory, and that as she received it again the very memory she had had seemed to slip from her grasp. She had not come back to the England she had left behind twenty years be fore. It had all those twenty years in it, and all that she had learned and grown into during their lapse. It was as if one got a letter in the morning and learned it by heart, and thought about it all the day, and took it out in the gloam ing, to find it interlined with a new meaning, written in secret ink that only shows by the firelight. It is always so with nature, because nature is of God, and, like Him, is full of open secrets. As she sat and gazed at the swiftly changing fields and villages Miss Russell remembered how restful had been the first eighteen years of her life, twenty years ago.

But she remembered, too, that just towards the close of them she had began to weary and to wish that things would happen. Often since she had looked back longingly on those old days, and had blamed her girlish discontent ; but now she felt that if things had not ' happened ' that restfulness would have grown into dreariest unrest. God does not keep his children in their cradle when they are grown, and strong, and wanting to rise ! There will be no more rest possible for them, till they have been through the burden and heat of the day. There is a time for nestling helpless on our mother's knee, and there is a time for lying peaceful in the everlasting arms. There is a time when we are below struggle, too weak for it — and there is a time when we rise above it, when nothing can be struggle any more, because we are strong with a strength above our own ; and can hold even our weakness from our hearts, knowing that it is no more part of our selves than a casual disease is part of our physical frame.

But between these two stages there must be something else. There is a long road between the two homes of life : the safe cradle of the child and the spiritual mansion ot the soul. Some of us are carried over it, borne aloft on eagles' wings, in our sleep, as it were. Others of us have to face the whole long way, and perhaps leave some of our own blood on some of the stones against which we stumble. Never mind. Nor need we ask which way is most blessed. For there is a life which will bear us com pany and keep us safe on either — that Life which is the Light from above and the Way from below, the revelation of the love and character of God, his Father and ours; the life of Him who was born in a manger and tempted in the wilderness, who wept and was indignant, who loved and was lonely, who was applauded and outlawed, who gave himself up to God's Will in Gethsemane, that He might be given away on Calvary ! 'God forgive me, if I am daring,' thought Sarah Russell ; ' but I almost think that those who tread the longer way home may gain some secrets of sweet and sacred companion ship which they would not give up for the swifter journey.

The two disciples did not know Jesus till the walk to Emmaus was over ; but when He was revealed did they wish the way had been shorter ? And yet for those who miss the gems that lurk in the dark waters of deep ex perience, and who miss the glimpses gained from Pisgah heights of mental triumph, there remain the unreckoned mysteries of that espe cial beatitude : " Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed." But after all, that blessing remains for every one of us, and for one as much as another, for, in the vastness of the truth and love of God, the little differences in our developments of faith and grasps of law dwindle as do the differing mountains of the earth as it hangs in boundless ether ! He who knows most and believes most is he who, climb ing height after height in the spiritual life, is clear-eyed enough to see height after height rising above him, and pausing to look up on the unknown hills beyond, as well as to survey the conquered land that lies behind, is honest-hearted enough to own that he knows nothing, except that it is his duty to go forward in the name of God!' Their journey ended in London.

They took up their quarters in an old hotel in an old square in the heart of the City, in a quarter which Miss Russell had never entered during her early life in London. It was Mrs. Stone who recom mended the place ; she had known the neigh bourhood in her youth, and described it as ' an easy place to get about from.' The square was very quiet, but it was near great thoroughfares which would be very busy in the daytime, though they were almost empty when they drove through them in the dark. There was a merry sound of bells from a great church standing among trees not very far from the hotel. It was wonderful how this pleased Mrs. Stone. ' They could'nt have done more if they had expected us,' she said. ' Well-a-day, things do work round queer. Many a time when I was a gal have I looked up at the Rood Hotel, and said to myself that I'd like to be a stranger just to go and stay there.

And I'm sure nothing seemed less likely this morning. And yet here I am. But it wouldn't have been if it had not all happened just so.' Miss Russell did not like that they two lonely women should part for the night amid the poverties of their unwelcome arrival, with out any recognition of that Divine Life in which poverty becomes wealth. But she knew that Mrs. Stone was tired in a deeper sense than she was, and their lives had not yet that something in common which wins a special promise for a mutual prayer. So she said — ' We are both tired to-night, and we don't know much of each other yet. But there is a psalm which is meant for tired people who are beginning to rest, so we will read that, and then we will kneel down together, and silently open our hearts to God.' So they read that unfailing source of soothing, ' The Lord is my shepherd,' and then they knelt down without a spoken word ; but just as they both made a movement to rise somethings prompted Sarah Russell to lift her voice in some of the sweet phrases of the Book of Common Prayer : "'0 Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to re ceive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee, and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.

Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent. According to thy promises declared unto man kind in Christ Jesu, our Lord. Amen." ' Amen,' said Mrs. Stone, so fervently that she must surely have been really praying, what ever her prayer might be. After she was gone Miss Russell drew up her chair to the dying fire, and read through the twenty-third psalm again. Then she lay back with closed eyes, and thought to herself that she had come at last into the place of 'Still Waters.' But oh ! she knew it was not without passing through storms and many storms. And the storms were still going on somewhere. She was not likely to forget that, for over the lake of her life, when most hushed, there would still come a ripple blown by a tempest raging afar off. And in her day of sunniest experience she would always catch herself listening for a distant roar of thunder.

She felt that she would give up all her peace if she might go into that storm and bid it be still. But only One mightier than her could do that. And it seemed His will to set her wholly aside from any share in that work of His. The wild Atlantic was rolling now between her and her life. For life is only love. But the roar of its waves did not interrupt love's speech, it only pained silence, and made love stir and sigh in its sleep. For this love of hers had been a silent and sleeping love for many a long year. But now it seemed as if it had been a last lingering tie to fancy that her feet trod the same sod with the loved one, albeit it might be at the far end of a great con tinent. Yet at the same instant that the pain of a widening separation shot across her human heart a higher hope set it aside. ' Distance is nothing to God, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, and one day as a thousand years.

And it is only in God that we can ever meet.' Others might be doing, or neglecting, loving duties towards which her heart and hands were yearning. Never mind. She braced up her soul not to feel it hard — and that not by vainly trying to stifle the longing love that seemed only an useless pain, but rather by being thankful for it, and setting it to work in the quiet new life whose daily experiences could be seldom richer — often poorer — than this first day, when she had spoken kindly to a stranger, and found work for a needy woman. ' If it helps to make me watchful and tender and kind and hopeful,' she said to herself, 'then the love which was such a misery at first will be a real blessing to my life. I shall like to get a blessing that way. And if it helps me to help anybody, then it will be a blessing to them too !

And some day, somewhere, the blessing may return to its source. If anybody had lost a treasure, what a beautiful happiness it would be to be able to go to him and say, " See, it is not lost. I found it, and put it out to interest." Fancy what it would be to have that to say to one who was bewailing a lost life ! 'Also, if I am doing, in ever such small ways, what seems to be others' work, it helps my faith that others will be raised up to do the work I cannot do ! ' Friend of mine, whom I may never name, except to God, you have wrought bitter wrongs, and you must have bitter sufferings, but you shall never have to feel that you have really wronged me. You have given me my nobler self. It will be one good work that you have wrought under the sun ! ' And just then the bells, which had ceased their pealing, began to chime gently forth — ' If some poor wandering child of thine Have spurned to-day the voice divine, Now Lord, the gracious work begin, Let him ne more lie down in sin.' Os course the bells could only chime forth thc air to which Keble's beautiful hymn is usually sung. But Sarah Russell always heard those words in that air \

Chapter I

New men, strange faces, other minds. — TENNYSON. Next morning Sarah Russell was her usual quiet, unremarkable self. She was in no haste to come to any con clusion with Mrs. Stone. A few days' actual experience would be worth all that good woman's letters of recommendation. Not that Miss Russell undervalued these things. She knew they are a most necessary and useful con dition of the ordinary workings of this life of ours. But while she knew that many valued acquaintances had come to her by letters of introduction, and that one excellent servant had brought her a twenty years' character, she knew also that she had found most of her dearest friends in less direct ways, and that the most faithful domestic she had ever known had been a stranger, whose husband — an emigrant tramper — had died in his wanderings, and who had been received into the farm in the first in stance just to keep her from starving.

We are searching for the fittest friends and helps to sweeten and surround our existence, and these details may often give us a means of wider choice. Their only possible danger is when we let them grow into fetters — becoming paralysed in our little go-carts, till we cannot read God's recommendation in face and voice and circumstances. So she found Mrs. Stone some sewing wherewith to employ her time, while she her self went out alone. Sarah Russell had at least two relations living in London. These were her cousins, two sisters, of about her own age, Jane and Isabella Russell. They had been very intimate as girls are, twenty years ago, but they had never kept up any correspondence, though they had constantly heard of each other, as people almost always do who have once been in close connection.

Anybody who wants to escape c from all ties must find this world an incon veniently small and complicated place. Sarah Russell knew her cousin Jane's ad dress, but she was not quite sure whether the sisters lived together. Jane had been her fa vourite, and she wondered as she walked through the streets whether she would be her favourite still. The other sister, Isabella, familiarly known as ' Tibbie,' had seemed to her a sharp, hard, 'queer' girl. Yet since those days Sarah had known times and moods when she had felt she would like a little talk with her cousin Tibbie. Miss Russell found the journey between her hotel and her cousin's house rather too long, and she finished it in a cab. Miss Jane's abode was in a south-western suburb, very near the river. It was a small double house, behind a high clipped hedge, which shut out intruding eyes and shut in the inmates.