'"We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world."'
So read the Reverend Frank Milvey in a not untroubled voice, for his heart misgave him that all was not quite right between us and our sister--or say our sister in Law--Poor Law--and that we sometimes read these words in an awful manner, over our Sister and our Brother too.
And Sloppy--on whom the brave deceased had never turned her back until she ran away from him, knowing that otherwise he would not be separated from her--Sloppy could not in his conscience as yet find the hearty thanks required of it. Selfish in Sloppy, and yet excusable, it may be humbly hoped, because our sister had been more than his mother.
The words were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common charge; so that a new generation might know which was which: so that the soldier, sailor, emigrant, coming home, should be able to identify the resting-place of father, mother, playmate, or betrothed. For, we turn up our eyes and say that we are all alike in death, and we might turn them down and work the saying out in this world, so far. It would be sentimental, perhaps? But how say ye, my lords and gentleman and honourable boards, shall we not find good standing-room left for a little sentiment, if we look into our crowds?
Near unto the Reverend Frank Milvey as he read, stood his little wife, John Rokesmith the Secretary, and Bella Wilfer. These, over and above Sloppy, were the mourners at the lowly grave. Not a penny had been added to the money sewn in her dress: what her honest spirit had so long projected, was fulfilled.
'I've took it in my head,' said Sloppy, laying it, inconsolable, against the church door, when all was done: I've took it in my wretched head that I might have sometimes turned a little harder for her, and it cuts me deep to think so now.'
The Reverend Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective Mangles--some of us very much so--and how we were all a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew.
'SHE warn't, sir,' said Sloppy, taking this ghostly counsel rather ill, in behalf of his late benefactress. 'Let us speak for ourselves, sir.
She went through with whatever duty she had to do. She went through with me, she went through with the Minders, she went through with herself, she went through with everythink. O Mrs Higden, Mrs Higden, you was a woman and a mother and a mangler in a million million!'
With those heartfelt words, Sloppy removed his dejected head from the church door, and took it back to the grave in the comer, and laid it down there, and wept alone. 'Not a very poor grave,' said the Reverend Frank Milvey, brushing his hand across his eyes, 'when it has that homely figure on it. Richer, I think, than it could be made by most of the sculpture in Westminster Abbey!'
They left him undisturbed, and passed out at the wicket-gate. The water-wheel of the paper-mill was audible there, and seemed to have a softening influence on the bright wintry scene. They had arrived but a little while before, and Lizzie Hexam now told them the little she could add to the letter in which she had enclosed Mr Rokesmith's letter and had asked for their instructions. This was merely how she had heard the groan, and what had afterwards passed, and how she had obtained leave for the remains to be placed in that sweet, fresh, empty store-room of the mill from which they had just accompanied them to the churchyard, and how the last requests had been religiously observed.
'I could not have done it all, or nearly all, of myself,' said Lizzie. 'Ishould not have wanted the will; but I should not have had the power, without our managing partner.'
'Surely not the Jew who received us?' said Mrs Milvey.
('My dear,' observed her husband in parenthesis, 'why not?')'The gentleman certainly is a Jew,' said Lizzie, 'and the lady, his wife, is a Jewess, and I was first brought to their notice by a Jew.
But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.'
'But suppose they try to convert you!' suggested Mrs Milvey, bristling in her good little way, as a clergyman's wife.
'To do what, ma'am?' asked Lizzie, with a modest smile.
'To make you change your religion,' said Mrs Milvey.
Lizzie shook her head, still smiling. 'They have never asked me what my religion is. They asked me what my story was, and I told them. They asked me to be industrious and faithful, and Ipromised to be so. They most willingly and cheerfully do their duty to all of us who are employed here, and we try to do ours to them. Indeed they do much more than their duty to us, for they are wonderfully mindful of us in many ways.
'It is easy to see you're a favourite, my dear,' said little Mrs Milvey, not quite pleased.
'It would be very ungrateful in me to say I am not,' returned Lizzie, 'for I have been already raised to a place of confidence here. But that makes no difference in their following their own religion and leaving all of us to ours. They never talk of theirs to us, and they never talk of ours to us. If I was the last in the mill, it would be just the same. They never asked me what religion that poor thing had followed.'
'My dear,' said Mrs Milvey, aside to the Reverend Frank, 'I wish you would talk to her.'
'My dear,' said the Reverend Frank aside to his good little wife, 'Ithink I will leave it to somebody else. The circumstances are hardly favourable. There are plenty of talkers going about, my love, and she will soon find one.'
