Chapter Three.

Making Progress.

“I care not how lone in this world I may be,
So long as the Master remembereth me.”
 
Helen Monro.

“So sure as our sweet Lady, Saint Mary, worketh miracles at Walsingham, never was poor woman so be-plagued as I, with an ill, ne’er-do-well, good-for-nought, thankless hussy, picked up out of the mire in the gutter! Where be thy wits, thou gadabout? Didst leave them at the Cross yester-morrow? Go thither and seek for them! for ne’er a barley crust shalt thou break this even in this house, or my name is not Martha Winter!”

And, snatching up a broom, Mistress Winter hunted Agnes out of doors, and slammed the door behind her.

It was not altogether a new thing for Agnes to be turned out into the street for the night, and Mistress Winter reserved it as her most tremendous penalty. Perhaps, had she known how Agnes regarded it, she might have invented a new one. These occasions were her times of recreation, when she usually took refuge with good-natured Mistress Flint, who was always ready to give Agnes a supper and a share of her girls’ bed. A few hours in the cheerful company of the Flints was a real refreshment to the hard-worked and ever-abused drudge. But this time she did not at once seek Mistress Flint. She walked, as Mistress Winter had amiably suggested, straight to the now deserted Cross, and sat down on one of its stone steps. It would not be dark yet for another hour, and until the gathering dusk warned her to return, Agnes meant to stay there. She was feeling very sad and perplexed. The glory in which the world had been steeped only yesterday had grown pale and grey. The cares of the world had come in. Poor Agnes had set out that morning with a firm determination to serve God throughout the day. Her idea of service consisted in the ceaseless mental repetition of forms of prayer. Busy with her Aves and Paternosters, she had forgotten to shut the oven door, and a baking of bread had been spoiled. She sat now mournfully wondering how any one in her position could serve God. If such mischances as this were always to happen, she could never get through her work. And the work must be done. Mistress Winter was one of the last people in the world to permit religion to take precedence of housewifery. How then was poor Agnes ever to “make her salvation” at all?

The mistake was natural enough. All her life she had walked in the mist of self-righteousness; her teachers had carefully led her into it. Starting from the idea that man had to merit God’s favour, was it any wonder that, when told that God loved her already, she still fancied that, in order to retain that love, she must do something to deserve it? The new piece was sewn on the old garment, and the rent was made worse.

But now, must she give up the glad thought of being loved? If serving God, as she understood that service, made her neglect her every-day duties, what then? How was she ever to serve God? It was a misfortune for Agnes that she had heard only half of the Friar’s sermon. The other half would have removed her difficulties.

She had reached this point in her perplexed thoughts, when she was startled by a voice inquiring—

“What aileth thee, my daughter?”

Agnes looked up, and beheld the same dark shining eyes which had flashed down upon her from the Cross yesterday morning.

“I scantly can tell,” she said, speaking out her thoughts. “It seemeth not worth the while.”

“What seemeth thus?” asked the Friar.

“Living,” said the girl quietly. There was no bitterness in her tone, hardly even weariness; it was simply hopeless.

The Friar remained silent for a moment, and Agnes spoke again.

“Father,” she faltered, in a low, shy voice, “I heard you preach here yester-morrow.”

“I brought thee glad tidings,” was the significant answer.

The tears sprang to her eyes. “O Father!” she said, “I thought them so glad—that God loved me, and would have me for to love Him; but now ’tis all to no good. I cannot serve God.”

“What letteth?”

“That I am in the world, and must needs there abide.”

“What for no? Serve God in the world.”

“Good Father, if you did but know, you should not say the same!” said Agnes in the same hopeless tone in which she had spoken before.

“If I knew but what?”

In answer, Agnes told him her simple story; unavoidably revealing in it the hardships of her lot. “You must needs see, good Father,” she concluded, “that I cannot serve God and do Mistress Winter’s bidding.”

“I see no such a thing, good daughter,” replied the Friar. “Dost think the serving of God to lie in the saying of Paternosters? It is thine heart that He would have. Put thine heart in thy labour, and give Him both together.”

“But how so, Father?” inquired Agnes in an astonished tone. “I pray you tell me how I shall give to God the baking of bread?”

“Who giveth thee thy daily bread?”

“That, no doubt, our Lord doth.”

“Yet He giveth the same by means. He giveth it through the farmer, the miller, and the baker. It falleth not straight down from Heaven. When thou art the bakester, art not thou God’s servant to give daily bread? Then thy work should be good and perfect, for He is perfect. By the servant do men judge of the master; and if thy work is to be offered unto God, it must be the best thou canst do. Think of this the next time thou art at work, and I warrant thee not to forget the oven door. But again: Who hath set thee thy work? When this hard mistress of thine betook thee to her house, did not God see it? did not He order it? If so be, then every her order to thee (that is not sinful, understand thou) is God’s order. Seek then, in the doing thereof, not to please her, but Him.”

“O Father, if I could do that thing!”

“Child, when the Master went home for a season, and left His lodging here below, He appointed ‘to every man his work.’ Some of us have hard work: let us press on with it cheerfully. If we be His, it is His work. He knoweth every burden that we bear, and how hard it presseth, and how sore weary are His child’s shoulders. Did He bear no burdens Himself in the carpenter’s workshop at Nazareth; yea, and up the steep of Calvary? Let Him have thy best work. He hath given thee His best.”

Never before, nor in so short a time, had so many new ideas been suggested to the mind of Agnes Stone. The very notion of Christ’s sympathy with men was something strange to her. She had been taught to regard Mary as the tender human sympathiser, and to look upon Christ in one of two lights—either as the helpless Infant in the arms of the mother, or as the stern Judge who required to be softened by Mary’s merciful intercession. But the one gush of confidence over, she was doubly shy. She shrank from clothing her vague thoughts with precise and distinct language.

“I would I might alway confess unto you, Father,” she said gratefully, rising from her hard seat “I would have thee confess unto a better than I, my daughter,” was the priest’s answer. “There is no confessor like to the great Confessor of God. Christ shall make never a blunder; and He beareth no tales. Thine innermost heart’s secrets be as safe with Him as with thyself.”

“But must I not confess to a priest?” demanded Agnes in a surprised tone.

“There is one Priest, my daughter,” said the Friar. “And ‘because He continueth ever, unchangeable hath He the priesthood.’ There can be none other.”

This was another new idea to Agnes—if possible, more