Working in the Shade Part 3

CHAPTER SIX.

DUTY.

Mary Stansfield and Grace Willerly were sitting together, about three weeks after the above conversation, in an arbour in the garden attached to Lady Willerly's house. Miss Stansfield had come to spend a day or two by special invitation, by way of getting a little change, which she much needed; her aunt having spared her without a murmur, and having accepted the services of a former domestic in her place.

"How very kind of your aunt to spare you!" said Grace to her friend; "I hardly expected it, knowing how much she depends upon you."

"Oh yes!" was the reply: "you cannot tell, dear Grace, what a wonderful change has come over my dear aunt. And it is all owing, under G.o.d, to the loving faithfulness of our kind friend Colonel Dawson. I scarcely ever get a harsh word or a hard look now; and when I do, my aunt at once calls me to her, and asks me to forgive her. Oh, is it not wonderful?

I am sure I blush with shame to think how little I deserve it."

"Yes, it is very wonderful, dear Mary. Certainly our new neighbour is a most earnest and useful man; and he has shown his discernment, too, in getting hold of yourself to work for him in Bridgepath. But I am afraid you will find it very up-hill work; you'll want the strength of a horse, the patience of Job, and the zeal of an apostle in such a place as that."

"Certainly, I shall want the grace of an apostle," said the other quietly; "but the work is very delightful, and is more than repaying me already for any little trouble or self-denial it may cost me."

"It is very good of you to say so, Mary; I am afraid the work wouldn't suit me. I don't mind making sacrifices--indeed, I think I can truly say it is one of my chief pleasures to make them; but there must be something very depressing in the jog-trot sort of work you are called on to do. I don't mind anything, so long as it has a little bit of dash in it; but I am afraid I should soon grow weary of a regular grind like yours."

"Oh, but you are quite mistaken about my work at Bridgepath," said the other, laughing. "There is nothing dull or monotonous about it; and it is such a happiness to see the light of G.o.d's truth beginning to dawn on dark and troubled hearts. And there is one particularly interesting family--I mean John Price's. You have heard, I dare say, that he was steward to the squire, and that he lost almost everything by his poor master's extravagance. Poor man, he is bed-ridden now, and I fear had little comfort even from his Bible, for he seemed to have learned little from it but patience. But, oh! How he has brightened up, and his wife and daughter, too, now that they have been led to see that it is their privilege to work and suffer _from_ salvation instead of _for_ salvation."

"I don't understand you," interrupted Miss Willerly.

"Don't you? Oh, it makes all the difference. Poor John Price has been reading his Bible, and bearing his troubles patiently, in the hope that at the end he may be accepted and saved through his Saviour's merits.

That is what I mean by working _for_ salvation."

"And what else, dear Mary, would you have him do?"

"O Grace! This is poor work indeed, working in view of a merely possible salvation. No! What he has learned now is to see that his Saviour, in whom he humbly and truly believes, has given him a present salvation; so that he, and his wife and daughter too, can now say, 'We love him, because he first loved us.' And so they work and suffer cheerfully, and even thankfully, from love to that Saviour who has already received them as his own. This is what I mean by working _from_ salvation. Surely we shall work more heartily for one of whom we know that he _has_ saved us, than for one of whom we know only that he has saved others, and may perhaps save us also in the end."

"I see what you mean, dear Mary, but I never saw it so before. Such a view of G.o.d's love to us personally must take the selfishness out of our good works, because what we do will be done just simply from love to Christ. It is a beautiful way of looking at G.o.d's dealings with us."

"Yes, Grace; and as true and scriptural as it is beautiful. It is just what G.o.d sees that we need, and furnishes us with the most constraining motive to serve him, and to deny self in his service."

"I see it," said Miss Willerly sadly and thoughtfully, after a pause.

"I very much fear, dear Mary, that I have been greatly deceiving myself.

I have been just simply building up a monument to my own honour and glory out of my heap of little daily crosses."

"Nay, dear Grace, you are dealing too severely with yourself."

"No, I think not. At any rate, I am sadly aware that not the love of Christ, but the love of human applause, has been the constraining motive in my acts of self-denial. I have made such a parade of my willingness to thwart my own will that I might please others, so that while I should have been startled to see a full-grown trumpeter at my side proclaiming my unselfishness, I have all the while been keeping in my service a little dwarf page, who has been sounding out my praises on his shrill whistle."

"You judge yourself hardly, dear Grace; and yet, no doubt, self does enter largely even into our unselfishness. I am sure I have felt it, oh, how deeply! And specially just lately, since I have undertaken this work at Bridgepath."

"You, dear Mary!"

"Yes, indeed. And I see now how wisely our heavenly Father ordered his discipline in my case. There was indeed a 'needs-be' in my dear aunt's former harshness and irritability to me; but for that, and for her disparaging remarks on my conduct, I might have been more self-seeking than I am. But the discipline has been changed now, and I trust that the chastis.e.m.e.nt has not been wholly in vain. What we all want, I am sure, if we are to be true workers for G.o.d, is to lift our eyes from self, and keep them steadily fixed on Him who has done so much for us."

"I am sure you are right," said the other. "I know I wish to do right, and I feel a pleasure in crossing my own inclination when it will gratify others; but then my inmost look has been to the world and its approbation. 'What will people say? What will people think?' or, at any rate, 'What will good people say and think?' this has been the prominent thought in my heart, I fear."

"Well, dear Grace, I suppose this is so, more or less, with us all.

What we want, I think, and comparatively seldom find in these showy and surface days, is a high sense of duty, so that we just act as duty calls, let the world, or good people even, judge of us or speak of us as they please."

"And yet, dear Mary, I think I see a little crevice through which self may creep in even there. I have met some of your 'duty' people who have flung themselves so violently against the prejudices of society, or, at any rate, of good people, crying out all the time, 'Duty, duty! It don't matter to us what the world thinks,' that they have given great offence where they might have avoided giving any, and have set up people's backs against what is good and true."

"I dare say you have met such, dear Grace, and I think you may be talking to one of the cla.s.s now," said Miss Stansfield, laughing; "at least, my character and principles would naturally lead me in that direction, for, of course, we are all disposed to carry out our own views to an extreme, if we do not let common sense, enlightened by grace, preserve a proper balance. But, spite of this, I still feel that a high sense of duty in those who love our Saviour is the surest preservative against being carried away by a subtle selfishness, and is the making of the finest and most truly self-denying characters. If I am manifestly in the path of duty, what matters it what is said of me, or who says it? I may then go forward, not, indeed, arrogantly or defiantly--that would be unlike the great Master--but yet firmly and confidently, and G.o.d will set me right with the world and with his people in his own good time."

"Ah! I believe you are right," said her friend, with a sigh. "I wish there were more of such true unselfishness amongst us; I wish I were such a character myself."

"And so you are, dear Grace, in the main. No one can possibly doubt your genuineness and sincerity. You have only just to step up on to the higher platform, and, as your heart's gaze becomes more fixed on a Saviour known and loved, you will cease to think about how your self- denial looks in the eyes of others, and will feel the cross which you carry after Christ in the path of duty to be easy and his burden light."

"I shall not forget our conversation on this subject," said Miss Willerly with tears in her eyes. "I always thought that I hated selfishness, but now I see that I have been blinded to my own. I suppose it is very difficult for us to see it in ourselves as it really is, especially in these days when there are so many attractive forms of self-denial. It occurred to me the other day what an odd thing it would be to see how a number of utterly selfish people would get on if thrown together for some weeks, with not a single unselfish person amongst them, and unable to get rid of one another's company. I feel sure the result would teach an admirable lesson on the misery of a thoroughly selfish disposition."

"I think so too, Grace," said her companion, much amused. "What do you say to putting a story or allegory together on the subject."

"Capital!" cried Miss Willerly; "it will be something quite in my line I will set about it at once. I shall be able to give myself some very seasonable raps on the knuckles as I go on, and perhaps I may be of use to some of my acquaintance, who might be induced to look through my performance in a friendly way."

"You must let me be the first to see it," said her friend.

"Oh, certainly; and you must give me your free and candid criticisms."

"Yes, I will do so; and I don't doubt I shall find profit in the reading of it, and a little bit of myself in more than one of your characters."

A fortnight after this conversation Miss Stansfield received from her friend the promised story, which we give in the following chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE SELFISH ISLANDS.

A certain Eastern despot, whose attention had been painfully drawn to the odious character of selfishness, by finding it exhibited in a very marked manner towards himself by some who had, in looking after their own interests, ventured to thwart the royal will, was resolved to get rid of all the most selfish people out of his capital. To that end he made proclamation that on a certain day he would give a grand banquet to all the _un_selfish people in the metropolis, nothing being needed for admittance to the feast but the personal application of any one laying claim to unselfishness to the lord chancellor for a ticket.

The king took this course under the firm conviction that all the most selfish people, being utterly blinded by self-esteem to their own failing, would be the very persons most ready to claim admittance to the banquet; and in this expectation he was not disappointed. But he was a little staggered to find that about a thousand persons, of both s.e.xes and of nearly all ages, applied at the office for tickets of admission and many of them such as had not made their appearance in public for many long years past. Thus, when the feast-day came, bed-ridden men and women arrived at the palace dressed out in silks and satins; gouty men hobbled in without their crutches; and mult.i.tudes who had long been incapacitated from doing anything but try the patience of their friends and indulge their own whims, made no difficulty of appearing among the guests. And it was strange, too, to see at the king's table delicate ladies and chronic invalids, who were never met with at places of wors.h.i.+p or benevolent meetings, because the cold or the heat, or their nerves or their lungs made it a duty for them to be keepers at home.

There were also present about two hundred spoilt children, whose mothers considered them to be "dear unselfish little darlings," and about an equal number of young ladies and young gentlemen, whose chief delight had consisted in spending their fathers' money, and studying their own sweet persons in the looking-gla.s.s.

Of course, the company behaved with due decorum at the banquet, especially as the king did them the honour of sitting down to table with them, the only exception being on the part of the spoilt children, whom not even the presence of royalty itself could restrain from personal encounters over the more attractive-looking dishes.

The banquet over, the king rose and thus addressed his astonished guests:--

"I have ascertained from my lord chancellor, whose secretary took down the names and addresses of you all when you applied for your tickets, that he has made careful inquiry into your several characters, and finds that you all belong to a cla.s.s of persons who greatly trouble our city.

You have accepted my invitation professedly as unselfish people, but your estimate of yourselves is the very reverse of that which is held by those who know you best. I have therefore resolved, for the good of the community generally, to transport the whole of you, for a period of six months, to the uninhabited island of Comoro, situate in the midst of the great lake, where you will find ample means for living in health, peace, and comfort, provided you are all and each willing to lay aside your selfishness, and to find your happiness in living for the good of others. And I trust that at the end of the six months, when steamers shall call for you at Comoro, you may all be spared to return to your homes improved in character, more useful members of society, and more fitted to contribute to the real prosperity of this kingdom."

Without waiting for a reply, which was not indeed attempted by any of the guests--for they remained for some moments speechless with amazement--the king retired from the banqueting hall; and the lord chancellor, motioning with his hand for attention, proceeded to state that each of the guests would be expected to be at the station on a day and at an hour specified on a ticket which each would receive; and that every one would be allowed to take with him or her a reasonable but limited amount of personal luggage, but no furniture or heavy and bulky articles. Steamers would be in readiness, at the Lakeside Terminus, to convey the pa.s.sengers and their goods to the island; and, as no one would be permitted to decline the journey--for all knew that the king's will was law--the guests would best consult their own interests and comfort by preparing for the removal with as little delay as possible.

Having made this statement, the lord chancellor withdrew, leaving the company staring one at another in blank dismay. What was to be done?

Nothing but to make the best of it; as for resistance, all knew that it would be useless, and remonstrance equally so. Even the infirm and sickly could hope for no exemption; for as their maladies had not hindered their attendance at the banquet, these could not be now admitted as a plea for excusing them from the removal. Many, indeed, of the young people were highly delighted with the prospect before them, especially the children, who were anxious to be off for Comoro there and then. As for their elders, they retired from the palace with varied feelings; some indignant, some conscience-stricken, and most prepared to lay the blame on some one or more of their neighbours. Indeed, two old gentlemen, who had been lodgers on different floors in the same house for years, but, in consequence of an old quarrel, had never spoken to one another for the greater part of that time, now blocked up one of the exits from the palace, as they stood face to face, furiously charging each other with being the guilty cause of the terrible calamity which had now fallen on themselves and on so many of their fellow-citizens.

And now the day of departure had arrived, and the trains for the lake were duly filled with pa.s.sengers; not, however, till many heartrending scenes had occurred in connection with the luggage. Two young ladies, bosom friends, having hired a van to convey their joint wardrobe and other ornamental effects to the station, were informed, to their tearful despair, that only about one-tenth of the goods could be conveyed to the island. Similarly, three or four fast young men entered the train in a state of desperation bordering on collapse, because the officials had peremptorily turned back a stud of hunters and half-a-dozen sporting dogs. But the most exciting scene of all occurred in the case of an old maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence, and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was at liberty to take an unlimited quant.i.ty of goods; nor could any explanation convince her of her mistake. Let them say what they pleased, she had heard the word _un_limited with her own ears: and hearing was believing. The last case which caused any serious difficulty, and which really excited the pity of the porters, was that of an elderly gentleman unfortunate enough to be troubled with a liver, who changed various colours when informed that he must leave behind him an iron-bound box containing some four or five hundredweight of patent and other medicines.