A Day’s Time-Table by E. S. Elliott
Chapter 5
“Grant me in hourly charge
Thine ordinance to trace!
Obeyed by love, its task shall prove
A sacrament of grace.
Let me on toilsome steep
But mark with vision sure
Thy guiding clue, and gladness new
Shall quicken to endure.”
“’A Cinderella day!’ Why, this – this is life!” exclaimed Lois to herself, as, for each consultation of the morning, a broken seal revealed a fresh and definite word of guidance.
The flowers, as predicted by her mother, were carried in. Possibly, not twenty-four hours before, her inward ejaculation would have been, “Lovely! But why should all the trouble of arranging fall to me, especially when it takes so much standing about?” Now “Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,” stamped the daughter-task as Kingdom work; and when, in the evening, she heard a passing remark addressed to Mrs. Emerson as to the taste displayed in her floral decorations, a feeling of keen pleasure, not on her own account, but because of a glad sense of direction thus vindicated, followed the observation.
Even concerning the settlement of a bill, brought in with a new dress, she found herself, with growing and reverent curiosity, inquiring as to whether definite orders awaited her. The words were on her lips, “Give the box to Duncan, and say, please, that one of the ladies will call and settle the account in a day or two.” The thought of her heart was, “My purse is upstairs, and the business of payment and receipt will once more hinder my writing. Miss Bloxham seems so well to do that she can be in no hurry for her money.” But “Say not unto thy neighbor, Go, and come again, and tomorrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee,” was the response to the concealed reference to her sacred directorium, and the matter was settled. Lois did not know that the owner of the establishment so successfully keeping up its appearances was positively quivering with anxiety lest the payment of that account – one among many fruitlessly sent out – should be deferred, and that on its defrayal she was depending to meet the tax-gatherer’s call that very day. Nor did she guess that the kindly inquiry as to whether he was serving the King, and the bright leaflet given in the hall to the boy messenger, sent him away with the exclamation, “If that’s real Christians, it seems as if they was of the happy sort! I wouldn’t mind going in for that line myself!”
Letters were brought in. The list of “subscribers to the Incurables,” accompanied by an earnest request that Miss Emerson would endeavor to enlist votes at a near election for a case urgently needing relief, would, a week before, have been laid down with a sense of molestation. A cursory glance through the pages of names would, in all probability, have been followed by the perfunctory retention of a few of the accompanying cards, and a polite return of the list; while a promise, should opportunity occur, of bringing the case before one or two subscribers, would have concluded the transaction. Now, as Lois looked through the columns, she descried name after name to which, through different channels, she might make appeal. The work, however, was of the sort she least liked. Need she burden herself with somebody else’s case? The votes were certain to be engaged – everybody’s always were. And her magazine article was becoming so fascinating! She had finished the “Rock of Behistun,” and had read up Tahpanhes and Flinders Petrie, and-
“If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? And He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? And shall not He render to every man according to his works?” The words came upon her with such a solemnity of guidance, as touching, not this case only, but every story of suffering, need, poverty, which might come before her, every cause which, not knowing, she might search out, that it was with a positive remorse concerning former indifference that she sent off the promise to do all she could in aid of the widowed paralytic, with a request for a supply of application cards. “Tahpanhes must wait,” she soliloquized. “I have inscriptions of my own to decipher! The time for that work will be appointed, and the help will then be given in full measure. It is clear that this takes precedence even of the Pharaohs, and in a very short time Miss Marx will take precedence of everything else.”
“Now a rest-time has come!” she said to herself, as she retreated to the sofa after a brief audience of wondering privilege following on the secret summons, “At noon will I pray: and He shall hear my voice.” “What possibilities come before one – everything in a new light – when one learns to look upon prayer-intercourse with heaven as, so to speak, a trading reality! Intercession for others, for missions, for God’s own people Israel, which I am beginning to regard as an integral part of a true spiritual life – all shine out as actual business transactions! Chalmer’s petition, ‘Make me sensible of real answers to actual requests, as evidence of an interchange between myself on earth and my Saviour in heaven,’ can only belong – I never saw this before – to the guided life, the life in waiting, which today has revealed to me. Yes, the morning has flown! Yesterday I should have said that I had nothing to show for it; but now – now there is no responsibility of that sort resting on me. ‘Doe ye nexte thynge,’ is enough. ‘Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it,’ is guidance absolute. Is there not a new meaning in the words, ‘I delayed not, but hasted to keep Thy commandments’?
“I almost feel as if to take up a daily paper now – on such a wonderful day as this – would be like reading the newspaper on Sunday,” she continued; “and yet – yet it would surely not be God’s plan to shut us off from present-day history. Would it not rather be to tune the mind to regard it from His own point of view? Can it be that even for this I have calendar guidance?” And, as a fresh seal gave way to her pressure, the words were disclosed: “The children of Issachar were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” “The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever.”
“Glorious!” ejaculated Lois, enthusiastically; for she was a keen politician, and, with well-stored memory, delighted, as reader in ordinary to her father, to discuss with him the topics of the day. “I see it all! The newspaper and the Bible have a real relationship. The kingdoms of this world’s history are to be studied – searched out, even – with reference to that last Kingdom – that true Fifth Monarchy – now in the hearts of His people, but soon – so soon! – to be manifested at their Lord’s appearing. Why, the daily journal, bringing its confirmation to the sure Word of Prophecy, is a present-day commentary, and lends itself to the duty incumbent on each believer of tracing out in their true accord – now, as in past centuries – the history of an overcoming church in view of a coming King. The world’s unfolding Crown-story in connection with the solemn ‘I will overturn, overturn, overturn, until He come whose right it is, and I will give it to Him,’ is the only true aspect of history. Oh the grandeur of the point of sight! Oh the individual expectancy as we look for ‘that blessed Hope and that glorious Appearing’! So even this reading becomes to me a means of grace. Let me ever seek Spirit illumination, so as to understand the signs of the times, so as to gather fresh material for the strengthening of faith, for the quickening of hope, and for the outliving of that ‘what manner of persons ought ye to be?’ which should mark the stranger and pilgrim life of those who love His appearing!”
Miss Marx was behind her time, and Lois, after a quiet hour, was consulting her watch as to the probability of her coming at all, when the sound of a cab stopping at the door roused her to hostess duty, and “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers;” “To this people He said, This is the rest: give ye the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing,” shone out immediate direction.
“Full commission!” she exclaimed. “Why, this unknown Miss Marx may be as really sent for me to show her ‘the kindness of God’ as if the King Himself were coming in her person. She, too, must be one of the weary ones! I never thought of those words before. I am a trustee for ‘the refreshing’, as well as for the rest. Not soul-saving only, but soul-comforting – never omitting a touch of helpfulness or sympathy which it may be in one’s power to give – is the present commission of each one of the family of God, as formerly, it was Israel’s national trust. I suppose when Jonathan ‘went to David in the wood, and strengthened his hand in God,’ he was acting it out.”
At first sight, and as curiously inspected from the window, Miss Marx, arrayed in brown and mauve, and anxiously making her exit from the cab, did not precisely represent the ideal visitor. A cage with a loudly vociferating parrot was handed to the servant, who was evidently embarrassed by the endeavor to combine due attendance with at least some regard to the safety of his fingers.
“Two boxes and all those loose baggages!” exclaimed Lois, as she descended to the hall. “It cannot be that a mistake has been made, and that she means to stay!”
When she greeted her visitor she found her endeavoring to console Bingham concerning the results of a vicious attack on his finger, by the assurance that the bird, at that moment screaming “The compliments of the season!” at the top of its voice, “didn’t mean any harm, but was unaccustomed to traveling;” while the cabman, requesting his fare, asked whether “all them boxes was to be took upstairs.”
“I am afraid it is rather awkward,” murmured Miss Marx, nervously, as Lois introduced herself- “I see now that the people were right, and that I had better have left my luggage at the cloak-room, and taken it up again at St. Pancras; but I don’t know much about the London stations, and was afraid it might not be safe.”
“Everything will be quite safe here,” said Lois, reassuringly. “We always say that this recess in the hall was meant for a left-luggage office. – Here, Bingham, let the man help to bring them in, and settle everything for Miss Marx. The parrot may come into this room.
“I am afraid that you will not have the family greeting which we should have planned for you,” she continued, gently, as she conducted her visitor upstairs; “but every arrangement for the day had been made, and your letter only arrived this morning.”
“I am so sorry about my letter,” replied her visitor, uneasily. “I wrote it two or three days ago; but it got mislaid, and I was so puzzled about how to arrange the journey. Mrs. Emerson had been so good that I did not like to give it up. You see, Miss Emerson, living so much alone, coming to London seems such a step to take – and yet, after such a kind invitation – I thought I might – I might take advantage-”
But Miss Marx’s nervousness soon vanished before the respectful kindliness with which she was made to feel herself at home.
“You must look upon me as all the members of the family bound up in one volume,” said Lois, brightly. “We all of us thought it so kind of you to take the pains you did on our mother’s behalf. She would have liked to welcome you herself, and so would my father, but I must be deputy spokeswoman.”
And after luncheon, by no means restricted to the “limited liability” supply sketched out by Mrs. Emerson, and as the result of the thoughtful courtesy with which she found herself entertained, Miss Marx brightened rapidly. Seated in a low chair beside Lois’s sofa, a stream of quiet confidences found continuous vent in response to the unwonted sympathy with which they were received.
Her hostess meanwhile wondered to herself at the dreariness of the life-living which, as quite a new picture, presented itself to her view.
“Why, last night I thought my own life a gray one; but it was before this” – and a secret touch, as of fresh recognition, seemed to indicate the presence of an irradiating personality. “But hers – hers is slate-color in comparison!”
“Yes, my dear, it is a comfort to meet with some one – though you, in this elegant home, and with parents and sisters, and so much younger, might have been so different – I mean, you seem to understand,” continued Miss Marx, untying her bonnet-strings, and extricating herself from the sentence which refused to complete itself symmetrically.
And Lois was soon conversant with the uneventful loneliness of a kindly life – a life with neither incident nor friendship to brighten it – a living to grow old marked less by salient trouble than by the absence of salient interests, by increasing rheumatism, and by a gradual dimming of sight, “which,” as the little lady apologetically put it, “make no difference to other people, but are real trials, dear, to one’s self, when you come to look at them that way.
“I notice every spring cleaning that I grow less clever in looking after moth, and Barbara, our old servant, tells me so plainly. ‘You’re less and less good at it,’ she said last time; and though I felt it from her, I knew she was right.”
Of new bereavements, unless, as Miss Marx said, “anything were to happen to Barbara,” there seemed, so far as she was concerned, little possibility; all near relations, save the mother, still tenderly remembered, having died in a long-past period of her career. A latent craving for the recognition of family relationship found expression, indeed, in an habitual scanning of the births, deaths, and marriages in the newspaper columns, for notices of scattered connections, however distant, and in her donning, on occasions of decease, thus announced, the suit of black loyally kept on hand for national mournings, and, with a vague sense of its being a personal protest against anarchy, invariably worn to the full limit of such mourning. The added observance represented by the lowering of the front shades “with intention,” and over and above its ordinary reference to the carpets, was, further, with some impressiveness, accorded for cousins of the second, and for cousins by marriage of the first degree, in spite of a significant and well-known vocal comment, just falling short of words, on the part of her elderly attendant, which Miss Marx silently and sensitively interpreted into a somewhat sarcastic “Who cares!”
For truly, there were, even at church, few in whose minds the appearance of the sable garments of successful associations would have inspired the most languid inquiry. “Everyone is gone, my dear,” she continued, after conducting Lois through a network of connection which established her as blood-relation to the Marxes of Marse- “every one that knew us – my mother and me. To live is to outlive. Sometimes I fancy I would like to go away somewhere, and begin again, or make a change somehow; but, when I come to think of it, I do not see that it would be different anywhere else, and Barbara wouldn’t like it. She would do anything for me; but she is getting old now,” continued Miss Marx, meditatively, “and, you see, it makes things a little hard for me. She doesn’t like my having any one in to help. But the things must be done, as I sometimes say to her. Before I came away – and you see I went to that cottage in Buxton early in the year, to get my baths done before the expensive time – well, before I went away, I spoke more strongly than ever before. ‘Barbara,’ I said, ‘you must see as well as I do that the dinner has to be cooked, even if it’s little, and the place has to be kept clean; and, you see, if we can’t do it between us’ – I put it that way, my dear, so that it might seem less hard to her, though of course I can’t forget my own position- ‘if we can’t do it between us,’ I said, ‘fresh help must be got in. And it isn’t quite kind to throw it out to the young woman that she’s one too many, or that no one, nowadays, knows anything about polishing. After all these years together, Barbara, I am sorry to say this, but I feel that it is my duty to be determined.’ Do you think that it was too strong, dear, my speaking like that? I wrote it out before to make quite sure of not going too far.”
And as Lois intimated that, in her opinion, the force of the remonstrance was more than justified, her visitor, who, in the unwonted enjoyment of a sympathetic auditor, was tempted to run up branch lines of discourse, oblivious of any call to return to the main issue, found herself detailing the difficulties attendant even on a carrying out of her charitable undertakings, from the simple reason that the old people had died out, and that the new ones, so to speak, knew not Joseph, or were looked after by others. “Even old Joan Brunt,” she gently murmured- “she is the only one left that my mother used to send to. And now she’s got it into her head that I stint her in her Sunday dinner, and has it against me as a grievance. Whenever I go to see her – and I do go for the sake of old times – she mutters the same thing: ‘When the missus was there it was something like – gravy enough to swim the taters in!’ You know, my dear, I would rather go without any myself, even on Sunday,” exclaimed, earnestly, the narrator of Joan’s unfounded remonstrances, “than that the poor old thing should miss my mother in that sort of way!”
“This is the refreshing!” If, in the intercourse that followed, it was intended that those words should have their translation in a reverent recognition of, and feeling for, trials possibly little noteworthy in narration, but vividly real in the every-day mosaic work of a lonely life, that ordering was fulfilled. As Miss Marx rippled on, unconsciously betraying a gentle kindliness and self-denial for others, mingled with a humble thankfulness “for all my mercies,” which her hearer was not slow to discern, Lois found herself recalling Amelia Sieveking’s words: “I fear less a great sorrow than that all life should become uninteresting to me.”
“And yet,” she mused, at the point where a salient exercise of despotism on Barbara’s part with relation to furniture-polish implied a remarkable course of forbearance on the part of Barbara’s mistress, “and yet I suppose that just as in the commonest pebble gathered from the beach there would be developed by the lapidary’s hand an individual beauty of veining and fashioning, so, if we truly honor all men, it will be our own fault if we fail to discover in the homeliest life, if a Christian life, features commanding love and reverence.”
And so Miss Marx’s flow of confidence met with realizing response from her hostess, who, having found out her train, and having promised to send for a cab, was, when the time drew near, met by the hesitating suggestion, “Perhaps, my dear, if I am not tiring you, I might stay for that next train. You said there was one an hour later. It is such a comfort to be able to tell out things to some one like you! I feel as if I had known you all my life!”
“Then you must have some coffee before you go!” rejoined Lois, leaving the room to give the order. – “Another hour! Visitors will be calling, and my leisure for writing will be at an end! Poor little woman! Poor little weary woman! I feel as if I had said everything I can think of to help her on and up – and she, unknown to herself, has been teaching me lessons of thankfulness and contentment such as I most need. Yes, I seem to know Barmford and Barbara, and old Joan and the gravy question, in their entirety by this time. But another hour!”
“Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers; whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a Godly sort, thou shalt do well.”
“Ah, even this extra hour is prevised and arranged for! Yes, she shall be set forward on her journey ‘after a Godly sort’! I have already shown her that it would not do to start off for Newington Causeway to find out that very dubious cousin in Stoke Newington; and now we will have coffee and a little bit of brightness – and perhaps some little plan for meeting again. She must be made to feel that her visit has been welcome.”
“Good-by, dear, good-by!” was little Miss Marx’s farewell, when that codicil hour drew to a close. “I cannot tell you how different everything feels since my talk with you. A fresh mercy to give thanks for! You will thank Mrs. Emerson for me. So kind of you to alter my luggage labels yourself, and to promise to write to me and to be my friend! And this provision for the rest of my journey – really, it is too kind!
“O Polly, you ungrateful bird! – I had to bring her with me, my dear, as Barbara is with her friends, and wouldn’t undertake her, and we shut up the house.- You should say something else – not ‘Take me away directly!’”
And as Bingham, with bandaged finger, carried out the direction with a vindictiveness only thinly veiled by decorum, Lois warmly returned the embrace which was not without a touch of tremulousness, as the words came gratefully, “I think, dear, that your cup of cold water will not lose its reward.”
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