The hour vanished in a slow mist
of abject misery and shame. But had he not learned to rejoice over
all dead hopes, and write Te Deums on their coffin lids? And now he
stood in dim light, in the vapour from damp garments, in dinginess
and ugliness, with a sense of spiritual squalor and destitution in
his very soul. He had tried to pray his own prayer while the deacon
prayed his; but there had come to him no reviving--no message
for this handful of dull souls--there were nine of them in all
--and his own soul crouched hard and dull within his bosom. How
to give them one deeper breath? How to make them know they were
alive? Whence was his aid to come?
His aid was nearer than he knew. There were no hills to which he
could lift his eyes, but help may hide in the valley as well as
come down from the mountain, and he found his under the coal scuttle
bonnet of the woman that swept out and dusted the chapel. She was
no interesting young widow. A life of labour and vanished children
lay behind as well as before her. She was sixty years of age, seamed
with the smallpox, and in every seam the dust and smoke of London
had left a stain. She had a troubled eye, and a gaze that seemed
to ask of the universe why it had given birth to her. But it was
only her face that asked the question; her mind was too busy with
the ever recurring enigma, which, answered this week, was still an
enigma for the next--how she was to pay her rent--too busy to
have any other question to ask.
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