A Day’s Time-Table by E. S. Elliott
Chapter 4
“The weary and the sad,
As messengers from Thee,
Bid me discern, and lowly learn
In them the Christ to see!
On possible emprise,
In many a secret call
Of silent need, oh, let me read
Thine own sign-manuel!”
The cashmere commission was not, after all, found to be difficult of execution. Outside the first shop to which she wended her way a rapid consultation of the precious calendar disclosed words of immediate direction, which, for Lois, invested with grave interest the minutely careful comparison of patterns and the final purchase:
“As ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye unto them.”
“How beautiful to find that this little matter actually belongs to my plan from heaven!” she thought. “Why, I may be grateful to Emma for letting me take her place. – Yes, this will do, thank you, and you will be very careful in sending it to the address by the country post?”
“The very first, madam,” was the reply. And Lois took the homeward path, well pleased that so much of the morning would remain to her, and that the early expedition had proved less costly in the way of effort than she had imagined.
It was one of those warm days in early May, which, coming after a long spell of east wind, seemed as if in some sort a day-in-possession, officially sent forth to assert the claims of the coming summer. In the country such a change is welcomed with a sense of fresh life. In town it brings, full often, a feeling of airlessness and exhaustion, with a secret longing for cuckoo and primroses. Lois had felt the street oppressive. Entering the hall with her latch-key, she found that it was occupied by a stranger – a fragile girl in deep mourning – concerning whom Bingham was engaged in close counsel with her mother’s maid.
“This young person has brought a note for master, ma’am,” said the latter, who – a representative of the all but extinct race of old-fashioned family servants- retained the two nearly obsolete appellations of “master” and “mistress” with faithful conservatism. “We was wondering, Bingham and me, what was to be done about it, as she says she was to wait, and wouldn’t go till she saw himself. Now you will see what’s right.” And as, taking the note, Lois passed into the dining-room, Duncan followed with a low-voiced caution: “It’s one of the London tricks, Miss Emerson, that’s so common – getting in, and then waiting for someone or something. I says to Bingham directly, ‘Where’s your breakfast silver?’ And I’ve put away the umbrellas while her back was turned. There isn’t nothing she could get at.”
“She doesn’t look like a thief, Duncan,” replied Lois, seating herself in the arm-chair. “However, Mr. Emerson asked me, before he went out, to open any notes which might come for him, and this will make it all plain.”
But the note, instead of making matters plain, presented Lois with a problem for the moment so insoluble that she at first hardly knew what course to take.
“Bedford Row, W. C., May 7th.
“Dear Sir: I have thought it best to send you the Black Borderer in person, with instructions to answer all Inquiries, and to wait, should you be out, until your Return.
“Yours very truly,
“J. Meersom.”
“’ The Black Borderer!’” exclaimed Lois to herself, a vision of mailed knights and of border highwaymen of fierce northern foray presenting itself to her imagination. “What an extraordinary note! Can it be the cipher-name of an evil-doer in some law case – a nom de guerre, or, rather, de larron, which Mr. Meersom knew father would understand? And are Duncan’s suspicions right after all? In that case the note applies to some man who has got off and has made this girl his messenger.
“However, something must be done.” And, summoning up her common sense to her aid, she passed rapidly into the hall, Duncan meantime rehearsing to herself biographical instances of apparently innocent strangers who had found access under false pretenses to London houses – narrations ending in dark tragedies, which, produced later for her audience downstairs, rendered the dinner in the servants’ room a very lively function indeed.
“There is some mistake,” said Lois, with dignity, as the Black Borderer rose respectfully; “this note ought to have been taken to Mr. Emerson at the Temple, as directed.”
“I have been to the Temple with it, ma’am,” was the reply, in so low and tired a voice that Lois directed a penetrating glance into the girl’s face to see whether she was shamming faintness. The dark rings round her eyes, and the deep mourning, which contrasted sharply with her extreme pallor, might, she thought, in one sense, at all events, have justified her title. “They told me at Mr. Emerson’s chambers that he wasn’t there today, and a gentleman said his clerk was out with him, and I had better come on here.”
Then Lois remembered that, incidentally, her father had mentioned that he was engaged that morning to meet legal friends at a distance, and would not be back in chambers until after midday. So far the young woman was right; but the statement that she had been sent on to his private house still seemed suspicious.
“Mr. Meersom said it was so important about the papers that Mr. Emerson should see me today,” continued the girl, “that I asked them to tell me where he was most likely to be found. One of the gentlemen looked in the Directory and said here. I hope I haven’t intruded. I didn’t mean to,” she concluded, timidly.
“And you are-?” Lois resumed, waiting to consider what she should do next.
“A Black Borderer, ma’am,” was the reply, “Mary Adams.”
“What a mysterious title!” her interviewer inwardly soliloquized. “She keeps to her role, however, and if she be an impostor she acts innocence with genius. The girl, however, looks to me true – out and out.”
“It’s in McGarth’s firm that I am employed,” explained the young woman, quietly. “I’ve worked there only a few months. I was at De la Rue’s before, and then away in the country. I’m at the City house now.”
“McGarth’s,” repeated Lois, considering; “why, those are the great stationers.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m in the envelope department- the black bordering. It’s a trade by itself. Some years ago I was called in with someone else to witness a will – to write my name as seeing that the signature was true. It was for an old friend of my father’s. Afterward a great sum of money came to him; and there was a dispute among his children when he died, a little while ago. There’s been a deal of law about the will. The other witness was dead, and they couldn’t tell where I was, as I had dropped out of the old parts. It was a gentleman from Mr. Meersom’s who found me out, and said Mr. Emerson wished to see me.”
Then the whole matter flashed in its completeness before Lois. The girl was right throughout. Though absolutely reticent as to his professional engagements, Lois remembered that her father, in answer to an inquiry, the evening before, as to whither his thoughts were traveling, had replied:
“In search of a missing witness to an important will signature. She seems to have been swallowed up in some stationer’s employ; but Meersom hopes to unearth her before long.”
“You will have to return to Mr. Emerson’s chambers,” said Lois. “He will be there in an hour and a half. Meantime, what would you prefer to do? Would you like to wait until it is time for you to go? You can rest here if you like.”
“I am free to stay as I may be wanted,” said the girl, respectfully. “Mr. Meersom made it all right with our foreman, and I was to be off work today, and to hold myself at the gentleman’s bidding till all was made clear about the will.”
“Then you had better stay here,” said Lois, kindly, “and Mrs. Duncan will see you off when it is time for you to go. Here,” she added, taking up a number of the Graphic, as the girl followed her guide into the back room, “this may amuse you while you are waiting.”
“And now – now for my next direction!” she said to herself. “Will it be to that half-mastered verb? What will it not mean of delight when I can read the Greek Testament enough for real exploring! Or – that paper for teachers?” and an MS., nearly completed, in which recent archaeological discoveries were popularly collated as material for Scripture lessons, was lovingly produced from its hiding-place.
To neither pursuit, however, had the words which appeared to her eyes on the breaking of the next seal the slightest reference: “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the disciple, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.”
“What can it mean,” she mused, perplexedly- “the ‘word in season to him that is weary’?” And then the tired face of the Black Borderer in the room below flashed to her thoughts. Her hat and mantle were quickly thrown off, and in a few minutes she was once more downstairs; a question or two as to the girl’s acquaintance with the nearest way to the Temple preluding more personal advances.
To fellow-graduates in the science of sympathy it will be needless to indicate the further progress of the intercourse – the cautious inquiries as to home and health, followed by a return confession as to growing weakness resulting from efforts to combine the night-nursing of a mother, only a fortnight before called away, with the daily breadwinning. Then was disclosed a dread present anxiety concerning a sister threatened with loss of sight by reason of her vocation as a worker on officers’ gold epaulets, and the further depression resulting from the doctor’s verdict concerning herself, that, unless she could relinquish her present occupation and get off to the sea at once, radical recovery would be well-nigh impossible.
The story – oh, how familiar! -came out by slow degrees as the result of questions delicately put by one herself under training in the school of physical weakness and frequent suffering. It was given with no apparent desire to elicit sympathy. “It’s the stuff we do the bordering with which seems to have disagreed with me,” she said, quietly; “it gets to my chest. But I had to go on while mother was alive, and now I have to try and keep the home together.” Once, only, as she spoke of her mother, a tear fell on the page of the Graphic. Otherwise all expression of feeling was resolutely withheld; and when Lois, who had ascertained that she had not taken food for many hours, left the room, to return with a glass of milk and a slice of cake, the shy reserve only for a moment gave way to a modest “Thank you, ma’am; you are too kind!”
One young person imbibing cake and milk, as she turned over the illustrated pages in the back room. The other young person pondering the problem of help, and consulting the directions of her time-table in the front room.
“Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”
Lois had her marching orders. Yes, of course there must be previous verification of the girl’s story, reference to clergyman or district visitor, and inquiry from employers. Then, should all prove satisfactory, to the sea Mary Adams, and, if possible, Grace Adams also, must go. “Money?” -money should be forthcoming. Her birthday and birthday presents were near, to say nothing of what she called a “crapeless legacy” from an aunt, who, advanced in years, had bethought her of partially anticipating the future by the unexpected gift of a pleasant little check as current pocket-money to each of her nieces.
“Correspondence about convalescent homes?” -at that date rare institutions. Yes, of course there would be correspondence. One would be full. Another would be impracticable. There would, she foresaw, be a good deal of writing and arranging; but, then, other writing must wait. And as for difficulties, she felt that she was, with new and unbounded confidence, trading with unlimited capital. Between the lines of her precious time-table she seemed to read the “All Christ’s biddings are enablings,” represented by, “Who goeth a warfare at his own charges?” And, with her plan in view, she broke the next seal of the precious scroll, and met the words, “Commit thy way unto the Lord, and He shall bring it to pass.”
From that day of Lois Emerson’s history dated a course of effort which, little by little – for God’s plans are most frequently worked out from small beginnings – resulted in the convalescent work destined to become for her a vocation of lifelong blessedness. As time went by, and as the felt need of that hour took shape, first in a slowly developed invalid organization, and later in a seaside home, in lives brightened, in health restorations and hearts won for Christ, one reason, at least, for the training in sympathy which can alone be gathered in the school of personal suffering became evident to her who had been willing to take its gracious designedness on trust.
And a deeper chord was touched than, from outside, could ever be guessed at when, in her own family circle, the correspondence and other departments of effort belonging to that organization were designated as “Lois’s feudal forays,” or when her father, going forth to his day’s work, would advise her to be prepared for possible encounter with no less startling an intruder than a Black Borderer in full mail.
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