a comfortable home for him. I used to think he might take to Eliza Pratt; she’s a good girl, and very pretty; but I see no likelihood of it now.’
‘No, indeed.’ said Rebecca, with some emphasis: ‘Mr. Tryan’s heart is not for any woman to win; it is all given to his work; and I could never wish to see him with a young inexperienced wife who would be a drag on him instead of a help-mate.’
‘He’d need have somebody, young or old,’ observed Mrs. Linnet, ‘to see as he wears a flannel wescoat, an’ changes his stockins when he comes in. It’s my opinion he’s got that cough wi’ sittin i’ wet shoes and stockins; an’ that Mrs. Wagstaff’s a poor addle-headed thing; she doesn’t half tek care on him.’
‘O mother!’ said Rebecca, ‘she’s a very pious woman. And I’m sure she thinks it too great a privilege to have Mr. Tryan with her, not to do the best she can to make him comfortable. She can’t help her rooms being shabby.’
‘I’ve nothing to say again’ her piety, my dear; but I know very well I shouldn’t like her to cook my victual. When a man comes in hungry an’ tired, piety won’t feed him, I reckon. Hard carrots ’ull lie heavy on his stomach, piety or no piety. I called in one day when she was dishin’ up Mr. Tryan’s dinner, an’ I could see the potatoes was as watery as watery. It’s right enough to be speritial—I’m no enemy to that; but I like my potatoes mealy. I don’t see as anybody ’ull go to heaven the sooner for not digestin’ their dinner—providin’ they don’t die sooner, as mayhap Mr. Tryan will, poor dear man!’
‘It will be a heavy day for us all when that comes to pass,’ said Mrs. Pettifer. ‘We shall never get anybody to fill up that gap. There’s the new clergyman that’s just come to Shepperton—Mr. Parry; I saw him the other day at Mrs. Bond’s. He may be a very good man, and a fine preacher; they say he is; but I thought to myself, What a difference between him and Mr. Tryan! He’s a sharp-sort-of-looking man, and hasn’t that feeling way with him that Mr. Tryan has. What is so wonderful to me in Mr. Tryan is the way he puts himself on a level with one, and talks to one like a brother. I’m never afraid of telling him anything. He never seems to look down on anybody. He knows how to lift up those that are cast down, if ever man did.’
‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘And when I see all the faces turned up to him in Paddiford Church. I often think how hard it would be for any clergyman who had to come after him; he has made the people love him so.’
Chapter XII.
In her occasional visits to her near neighbour Mrs. Pettifer, too old a friend to be shunned because she was a Tryanite, Janet was obliged sometimes to hear allusions to Mr. Tryan, and even to listen to his praises, which she usually met with playful incredulity.
‘Ah, well,’ she answered one day, ‘I like dear old Mr. Crewe and his pipes a great deal better than your Mr. Tryan and his Gospel. When I was a little toddle, Mr. and Mrs. Crewe used to let me play about in their garden, and have a swing between the great elm-trees, because mother had no garden. I like people who are kind; kindness is my religion; and that’s the reason I like you, dear Mrs. Pettifer, though you are a Tryanite.’
‘But that’s Mr. Tryan’s religion too—at least partly. There’s nobody can give himself up more to doing good amongst the poor; and he thinks of their bodies too, as well as their souls.’
‘O yes, yes; but then he talks about faith, and grace, and all that, making people believe they are better than others, and that God loves them more than He does the rest of the world. I know he has put a great deal of that into Sally Martin’s head, and it has done her no good at all. She was as nice, honest, patient a girl as need be before; and now she fancies she has new light and new wisdom. I don’t like those notions.’
‘You mistake him, indeed you do, my dear Mrs. Dempster; I wish you’d go and hear him preach.’
‘Hear him preach! Why, you wicked woman, you would persuade me to disobey my husband, would you? O, shocking! I shall run away from you. Good-bye.’
A few days after this conversation, however, Janet went to Sally Martin’s about three o’clock in the afternoon. The pudding that had been sent in for herself and ‘Mammy,’ struck her as just the sort of delicate morsel the poor consumptive girl would be likely to fancy, and in her usual impulsive way she had started up from the dinner table at once, put on her bonnet, and set off with a covered plateful to the neighbouring street. When she entered the house there was no one to be seen; but in the little sideroom where Sally lay, Janet heard a voice. It was one she had not heard before, but she immediately guessed it to be Mr. Tryan’s. Her first impulse was to set down her plate and go away, but Mrs. Martin might not be in, and then there would be no one to give Sally that delicious bit of pudding. So she stood still, and was obliged to hear what Mr. Tryan was saying. He was interrupted by one of the invalid’s violent fits of coughing.
‘It is very hard to bear, is it not?’ he said when she was still again. ‘Yet God seems to support you under it wonderfully. Pray for me, Sally, that I may have strength too when the hour of great suffering comes. It is one of my worst weaknesses to shrink from bodily pain, and I think the time is perhaps not far off when I shall have to bear what you are bearing. But now I have tired you. We have talked enough. Good-bye.’
Janet was surprised, and forgot her wish not to encounter Mr. Tryan: the tone and the words were so unlike what she had expected to hear. There was none of the self-satisfied unction of the teacher, quoting, or exhorting, or expounding, for the benefit of the hearer, but a simple appeal for help, a confession of weakness. Mr. Tryan had his deeply-felt troubles, then? Mr. Tryan, too, like herself, knew what it was to tremble at a foreseen trial—to shudder at an impending burthen, heavier than he felt able to bear?
The most brilliant deed of virtue could not have inclined Janet’s good-will towards Mr. Tryan so much as this fellowship in suffering, and the softening thought was in her eyes when he appeared in the doorway, pale, weary, and depressed. The sight of Janet standing there with the entire absence of self-consciousness which belongs to a new and vivid impression, made him start and pause a little. Their eyes met, and they looked at each other gravely for a few moments. Then they bowed, and Mr. Tryan passed out.
There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere and loving human soul, which will do more to dissipate prejudice and kindle charity than the most elaborate arguments. The fullest exposition of Mr. Tryan’s doctrine might not have sufficed to convince Janet that he had not an odious self-complacency in believing himself a peculiar child of God; but one direct, pathetic look of his had dissociated him with that conception for ever.
This happened late in the autumn, not long before Sally Martin died. Janet mentioned her new impression to no one, for she was afraid of arriving at a still more complete contradiction of her former ideas. We have all of us considerable regard for our past self, and are not fond of casting reflections on that respected individual by a total negation of his opinions. Janet could no longer think of Mr. Tryan without sympathy. but she still shrank from the idea of becoming his hearer and admirer. That was a reversal of the past which was as little accordant with her inclination as her circumstances.
And indeed this interview with Mr. Tryan was soon thrust into the background of poor Janet’s memory by the daily thickening miseries of her life.
Chapter XIII.
The loss of Mr. Jerome as a client proved only the beginning of annoyances to Dempster. That old gentleman had in him the vigorous remnant of an energy and perseverance which had created his own fortune; and being, as I have hinted, given to chewing the cud of a righteous indignation with considerable relish, he was determined to carry on his retributive war against the persecuting attorney. Having some influence