Mark Rutherford’s Deliverance · Chapter 9 (2/2)

I sent at once for the doctor, who would give no opinion for a day or two, but meanwhile directed that she was to remain where she was, and take nothing but the lightest food. Tuesday night passed, and the fever still increased. I had become very anxious, but I dared not stay with her, for I knew not what might happen if I were absent from my work. I was obliged to try and think of somebody who would come and help us. Our friend Taylor, who once was the coal-porter at Somerset House, came into my mind. He, as I have said when talking about him, was married, but had no children. To him accordingly I went. I never shall forget the alacrity with which he prompted his wife to go, and with which she consented. I was shut up in my own sufferings, but I remember a flash of joy that all our efforts in our room had not been in vain. I was delighted that I had secured assistance, but I do believe the uppermost thought was delight that we had been able to develop gratitude and affection. Mrs. Taylor was an “ordinary woman.” She was about fifty, rather stout, and entirely uneducated. But when she took charge at our house, all her best qualities found expression. It is true enough, omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset, but it is equally true that under the pressure of trial and responsibility we are often stronger than when there is no pressure. Many a man will acknowledge that in difficulty he has surprised himself by a resource and coolness which he never suspected before. Mrs. Taylor I always thought to be rather weak and untrustworthy, but I found that when weight was placed upon her, she was steady as a rock, a systematic and a perfect manager. There was no doubt in a very short time as to the nature of the disease. It was typhoid fever, the cause probably being the impure water drunk as we were coming home. I have no mind to describe what Ellen suffered. Suffice it to say, that her treatment was soon reduced to watching her every minute night and day, and administering small quantities of milk. Her prostration and emaciation were excessive, and without the most constant attention she might at any moment have slipped out of our hands. I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in a polar country, whose existence depends upon one spark of fire, which he tries to cherish, left glimmering in a handful of ashes. Oh those days, prolonged to weeks, during which that dreadful struggle lasted⁠—days swallowed up with one sole, intense, hungry desire that her life might be spared!⁠—days filled with a forecast of the blackness and despair before me if she should depart. I tried to obtain release from the office. The answer was that nobody could of course prevent my being away, but that it was not usual for a clerk to be absent merely because his wife was not well. The brute added with a sneer that a wife was “a luxury” which he should have thought I could hardly afford. We divided between us, however, at home the twenty-four hours during which we stood sentinels against death, and occasionally we were relieved by one or two friends. I went on duty from about eight in the evening till one in the morning, and was then relieved by Mrs. Taylor, who remained till ten or eleven. She then went to bed, and was replaced by little Marie. What a change came over that child! I was amazed at her. All at once she seemed to have found what she was born to do. The key had been discovered, which unlocked and revealed what there was in her, of which hitherto I had been altogether unaware. Although she was so little, she became a perfect nurse. Her levity disappeared; she was grave as a matron, moved about as if shod in felt, never forgot a single direction, and gave proper and womanly answers to strangers who called. Faculties unsuspected grew almost to full height in a single day. Never did she relax during the whole of that dreadful time, or show the slightest sign of discontent. She sat by her mother’s side, intent, vigilant; and she had her little dinner prepared and taken up into the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed. I remember once going to her cot in the night, as she lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her with remorse and thankfulness⁠—remorse, that I, with blundering stupidity, had judged her so superficially; and thankfulness, that it had pleased God to present to me so much of His own divinest grace. Fool that I was, not to be aware that messages from Him are not to be read through the envelope in which they are enclosed. I never should have believed, if it had not been for Marie, that any grown-up man could so love a child. Such love, I should have said, was only possible between man and woman, or, perhaps, between man and man. But now I doubt whether a love of that particular kind could be felt towards any grown-up human being, love so pure, so imperious, so awful. My love to Marie was love of God Himself as He is⁠—an unrestrained adoration of an efflux from Him, adoration transfigured into love, because the revelation had clothed itself with a child’s form. It was, as I say, the love of God as He is. It was not necessary, as it so often is necessary, to qualify, to subtract, to consider the other side, to deplore the obscurity or the earthly contamination with which the Word is delivered to us. This was the Word itself, without even consciousness on the part of the instrument selected for its vocalisation. I may appear extravagant, but I can only put down what I felt and still feel. I appeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself for justification. I had seen the kingdom of God through a little child. I, in fact, have done nothing more than beat out over a page in my own words what passed through His mind when He called a little child and set him in the midst of His disciples. How I see the meaning of those words now! and so it is that a text will be with us for half a lifetime, recognised as great and good, but not penetrated till the experience comes round to us in which it was born.

Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of light which flickered on the wick began to turn white and show some strength. At last, however, day by day, we marked a slight accession of vitality which increased with change of diet. Every evening when I came home I was gladdened by the tidings which showed advance, and Ellen, I believe, was as much pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery as she was pleased for her own sake. She, too, was one of those creatures who always generously admit improvement. For my own part, I have often noticed that when I have been ill, and have been getting better, I have refused to acknowledge it, and that it has been an effort to me to say that things were not at their worst. She, however, had none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only for the sake of her friends, took the cheerful side. Mrs. Taylor now left us. She left us a friend whose friendship will last, I hope, as long as life lasts. She had seen all our troubles and our poverty: we knew that she knew all about us: she had helped us with the most precious help⁠—what more was there necessary to knit her to us?⁠—and it is worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and her noble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in her opinion, in her debt, only seemed to her a reason why she should be more deeply attached to us.

It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly recovered, but at last we said that she was as strong as she was before, and we determined to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday before the cold weather came. It was again Sunday⁠—a perfectly still, warm, autumnal day, with a high barometer and the gentlest of airs from the west. The morning in London was foggy, so much so that we doubted at first whether we should go; but my long experience of London fog told me that we should escape from it with that wind if we got to the chalk downs away out by Letherhead and Guildford. We took the early train to a point at the base of the hills, and wound our way up into the woods at the top. We were beyond the smoke, which rested like a low black cloud over the city in the northeast, reaching a third of the way up to the zenith. The beech had changed colour, and glowed with reddish-brown fire. We sat down on a floor made of the leaves of last year. At midday the stillness was profound, broken only by the softest of whispers descending from the great trees which spread over us their protecting arms. Every now and then it died down almost to nothing, and then slowly swelled and died again, as if the Gods of the place were engaged in divine and harmonious talk. By moving a little towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld the plain all spread out before us, bounded by the heights of Sussex and Hampshire. It was veiled with the most tender blue, and above it was spread a sky which was white on the horizon and deepened by degrees into azure over our heads. The exhilaration of the air satisfied Marie, although she had no playmate, and there was nothing special with which she could amuse herself. She wandered about looking for flowers and ferns, and was content. We were all completely happy. We strained our eyes to see the furthest point before us, and we tried to find it on the map we had brought with us. The season of the year, which is usually supposed to make men pensive, had no such effect upon us. Everything in the future, even the winter in London, was painted by Hope, and the death of the summer brought no sadness. Rather did summer dying in such fashion fill our hearts with repose, and even more than repose⁠—with actual joy.

Here ends the autobiography. A month after this last holiday my friend was dead and buried. He had unsuspected disease of the heart, and one day his master, of whom we have heard something, was more than usually violent. Mark, as his custom was, was silent, but evidently greatly excited. His tyrant left the room; and in a few minutes afterwards Mark was seen to turn white and fall forward in his chair. It was all over! His body was taken to a hospital and thence sent home. The next morning his salary up to the day of his death came in an envelope to his widow, without a single word from his employers save a request for acknowledgment. Towards midday, his office coat, and a book found in his drawer, arrived in a brown paper parcel, carriage unpaid.

On looking over his papers, I found the sketch of his life and a mass of odds and ends, some apparently written for publication. Many of these had evidently been in envelopes, and had most likely, therefore, been offered to editors or publishers, but all, I am sure, had been refused. I add one or two by way of appendix, and hope they will be thought worth saving.