Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories
“You perhaps know that Mrs. Trevor allowed me to spend an hour with her
of an evening, when I felt downhearted or had any trouble, but no one
will ever know how much she did for me. When I came up to London
my faith began to go, and I saw that in a short time I would be an
Agnostic. This did not trouble me so much on my own account as my
mother's, who is dead, and made me promise something on her death-bed.
So I bought books and heard sermons on unbelief till I was quite sick of
the whole business. Mrs. Trevor took me to hear your own clergyman,
who did not help me one bit, for he was too clever and logical; but you
remember I came home with you, and after you had gone to your study I
told Mrs. Trevor my difficulties, and she did me more good than all the
books. She never argued nor preached, but when I was with her one felt
that religion was a reality, and that she knew more about it than any
one I had met since I lost my mother. It is a shame to trouble you with
my story when you are in such sorrow, and no one need tell you how noble
a woman Mrs. Trevor was; but I could not help letting you know that her
goodness has saved one young fellow at least from infidelity and worse.
“You will not mind my having sent a cross to put on the coffin; it was
all I could do.
“Yours gratefully,
“George Benson.”
There was neither beginning nor end to the fourth letter, but it was
written in a lady's hand.
“I am a clergyman's daughter, who left her father's house, and went
astray. I have been in the Inferno, and have seen what I read in _Dante_
while I was innocent One day the old rectory rose up before my eyes--the
roses hanging over my bedroom window; the birds flying in and out
the ivy; my father on the lawn, aged and broken through my sin--and I
resolved that my womanhood should no longer be dragged in the mire. My
home was closed years ago, I had no friends, so I went in my desperation
to a certain Institute, and told my case to a matron. She was not
unkindly, but the committee were awful, without either sympathy or
manners; and when an unmarried woman wished to pry into the details of
my degradation--but I can't tell a man the shame they would have put
upon me--my heart turned to flint, and I left the place. I would have
gone back to my life and perished had it not been for one woman who
followed me out, and asked me to go home with her for afternoon tea. Had
she said one word about my past, I had flung myself away; but because
she spoke to me as if I were still in the rectory, I could not refuse.
Mrs. Trevor never once mentioned my sin, and she saved my soul. I am now
a nurse in one of the hospitals, and full of peace. As long as I live
I shall lay white flowers on her grave, who surely was the wisest and
tenderest of women.” Trevor's fortitude was failing fast before this
weight of unconscious condemnation, and he was only able to read one
more--an amazing production, that had cost the writer great pains.
“Honoured Sir,--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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