The Helmet of Hope.

BY

A. L. O. E.

AUTHORESS OF THE CLAREMONT TALES, THE YOUNG PILGRIM,

THE COTTAGE BY THE STREAM, HARRY DANGERFIELD,

GLIMPSES OF THE UNSEEN, ETC. ETC.

GALL & INGLIS.

London: Edinburgh:

30 PATERNOSTER ROW. 6 GEORGE STREET.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I. NORAH'S DIFFICULTY

II. CONSULTATION

III. THE COTTAGE IN THE DELL

IV. THE WORKHOUSE

V. SOPHY'S TALE

VI. HOPE

VII. THE RETURN

VIII. SUCCESS

The Convict's Child;

OR,

CHAPTER I.

NORAH'S DIFFICULTY.

"ANY one of this name live here?" asked the postman, as he held out a letter to Norah, the little maid-of-all-work, who was on her knees cleaning the door-step on a wintry morning at the close of the year.

"'Miss Peele,' why, that must mean me!" cried the young girl, with naive surprise. It was the first time in her life that Norah had ever received a letter, and it was with feelings of wonder and curiosity that she took from the postman the note so strangely addressed to herself. She looked at every part of the envelope, post-mark, address, fancy-wafer and all, to prolong the novel pleasure by guessing who could have sent it, and what the contents could be.

"It can't be from mother,—she never writes but her name at the bottom of the washing bills; and as for Dan—he's not out of round text. Could it be from Uncle Ned? It is not like a man's handwriting, and I'm sure he would, never put 'Miss' for a little servant like me. I must just peep in and see, I was never so curious in all my life!"

Norah wiped her wet cold hands on her apron, and then, taking care to save the pretty wafer, opened the envelope, and took out the note. She raised her eyebrows with surprise at the first word, "Madam," and almost burst out laughing at the notion of being thus addressed; but Norah's mirth changed to grave perplexity, as she turned hastily over to the signature at the end.

"'E. Cupper, Matron of the B— Workhouse.' It must be some mistake,—I am sure there is some mistake—this letter can never be meant for me." Norah examined the envelope again, but the address was perfectly clear. Rather awed by receiving a letter from that great prison-like building which she had passed when on a little journey with her mistress, a letter that looked so formal and neat, and actually began with "Madam," Norah set herself to read, from beginning to end, the contents, which were as follows;—

"Madam,—I have been requested by an inmate of this house of the name of Sophy Puller to inform you of her being here, and to beg that you will come as soon as possible to see her. Visitors are admitted on Fridays from two till four. The girl is almost blind from the effects of rheumatic fever, and is in great distress of mind." Here followed name and date.

The letter dropped from the little maid's hand. It might have been a study to have watched the changes in her soft round face as she read it slowly, tracing each line with her finger. At the name "Sophy Puller," an expression of interest, first mixed with pleasure, then with pain, flitted over her features—succeeded by one of shocked surprise at the terrible words "almost blind." This was the first time for almost four months that Norah had heard of one who had once been her favourite companion and friend. Norah knew that Sophy's father had been taken up for uttering false money, that he had been tried, condemned, and transported; Norah knew that on the day of his arrest Sophy had disappeared from the county town in which she had been working as a milliner's girl,—but here her information ended. Often had Norah longed and prayed to find out what had become of her hapless companion, bereft of an only parent by what was far worse than death. The name of Sophy had never been forgotten in the prayers of the little maid. But to hear

of her thus,—sick, blind, and unhappy, in a parish Union, such news were more sad than ignorance; and as Norah read the note once again, the tears gushed fast from her eyes.

"Oh, Sophy, my poor, poor Sophy! You who were so lightsome and gay, so full of frolic and fun, to think of your coming to this!" And as Norah's tears dropped on the note, whose contents she could hardly believe, her mind recurred to the first day of her meeting with the milliner's girl, and a hundred little circumstances connected with their acquaintance. Norah could not help remembering how the society of Sophy Puller had been her own greatest temptation; how her companion had tried to make her think lightly of sin, had fostered the love of fine dress, had laughed at her scruples, had lent her bad books, had almost persuaded her to go out at night without the knowledge of her mistress! Norah tried to forget all this; she would gladly have felt nothing but pity and love for the afflicted Sophy, but such painful recollections would force themselves on her mind. Norah could not help thinking, "Oh! how doubly dreadful sickness and blindness must be to one who has such things to look back on! When all that Sophy once delighted in is shut out from her thus, what can she have to comfort

her, and keep her poor heart from breaking?"

But young general servants have little time to give to reading letters or crying over them. The step must be cleaned, the breakfast prepared, before the clock should strike nine. Norah thrust her letter into her pocket, dried her eyes, and went on with her work. But while she was scrubbing the stone with her red little hands, she was painfully turning over in her mind the contents of the note.

"I must go and see my poor Sophy, but oh how shall I ever manage to get to the workhouse! Mistress is so much put about to let me pay my visits to my mother, who lives only three miles off while the workhouse must be full ten; and even if I get leave—how could I ever dare to go alone to that great gloomy place?"

Norah had led a very quiet life; she had never ventured by herself farther than Colme, her native village, and her longest journey had been a twenty miles' drive in a stage-coach with her mistress. Besides the difficulty of travelling so far, Norah Peele had formed a terrible idea of a workhouse. Instead of looking on it as a refuge mercifully provided for the homeless and helpless, she fancied it to be a huge prison, where miserable creatures were shut up, the doors guarded by terrible porters, whom the timid young girl felt that she would never have courage to face by herself. Norah scrubbed her step very hard indeed, clenching her teeth as she did so, as if she were trying to rub down the many difficulties which had suddenly risen in her path. The reader may smile at the fears and perplexities of the poor little maid; but let it be remembered that Norah was still little more than a child, was of a tender, timid nature, and utterly ignorant of the world. To go ten miles to visit an inmate of a workhouse seemed to her as formidable

a task, as it would appear to some to push their way into the Queen's own presence, through her surrounding guards.

"Sophy can never have told the matron that I am nothing but a poor little servant; Mrs. Cupper takes me for some grand lady who will drive to the door in her carriage, or else she would never have called me 'Madam.'" So said Norah to herself as she rose from her knees and went into the house, more chilled by her fears than by the weather. "And yet I must go—oh, I will go—if I have to walk the whole way there and back! I cannot desert poor Sophy now that she is in such terrible trouble. It is a dreadful difficulty to me, but God will help me through it. I will tell all to my dear kind mistress, who is always ready to give me advice and help."

CHAPTER II.

CONSULTATION.

ON the evening of that day, Ned Franks, the one-armed sailor, came, as he often did after his work of teaching was over at the school, to take tea with his sister, Bessy Peele, and her son.

A blazing fire threw its red glow round the cottage kitchen, and the kettle sang merrily on the hob.

"Any news, Bessy?" asked the sailor in a cheerful tone, as he hung up his straw hat on a peg on the wall.

"News, why yes," answered Bessy, tossing a note to her brother across the deal-table at which she was cutting the loaf. "The carrier brought this to-day from the town. There's Norah all agog to go to the workhouse!"

"To the workhouse," repeated Ned, with a merry laugh. "She's not likely to go there, I hope, while she has two hands and I have one that can work to keep her out of it."

"Just read her note—oh! that's not the one—but you'd better read both; the matron's will show you the whole matter. It's the most ridiculous notion as ever I heard of in all my born days." And with an angry toss of the head, Bessy went off to the kettle to fill her black tea-pot, while Ned read to himself Norah's note.

"Dear Mother,—Mistress says I may have the time, and she will pay herself for my coach, if you, or some other respectable woman, will go to the workhouse with me on Friday, but I must not go by miself. Do, do agree, dear mother. I cannot be happy till I have seen poor Sophy. Your dutiful child, Norah." And there was added, on a blotted line below, "if you can't go with me, p'raps my dear teacher wood."

"Well, Bessy, are you going?" quietly asked Ned Franks as he laid down the note.

"Going!" repeated Bessy, in her shrillest tone. "I must come to a pretty pass indeed afore I darken the door of a workhouse. I think the girl's gone crazed. As if I could give up half-a-day to go dancing over the country, and in middle of winter too. If it had been for a summer treat, a pic-nic, or fair, or something like that, 'twould have been a different matter. But to visit a pauper in a workhouse!" Bessy banged down the kettle on the hob, and carried the steaming tea-pot to the table.

"Now to my mind," said Ned, "'tis better to visit a messmate in trouble, whether in palace or poorhouse, whether weather be fair or foul, than to go on any mere pleasure cruise. She's a true-hearted lass, little Norah, not to turn her back on a friend."

"Why, uncle," exclaimed Dan, speaking with his mouth full, and that twinkle in his small black eyes, which gave a weasel-like slyness to his face, "to think of you, of all men living, standing up for Sophy Puller. Why the very first thing that you said when you heard of her doings was, that she was no true friend to our Norah."

"A sly, deceitful, dishonest, good-for-nothing minx," exclaimed Bessy, "who would have got my girl into all sorts of mischief. A workhouse is too good for the like of her, a great deal too good say I;" and Mrs. Peele poured out the tea with an air of virtuous indignation.

Ned Franks could not help thinking of the proverb, "they who live in glass-houses should not throw stones." His half-sister's own notions of truth and honesty were little more strict than those of poor Sophy, while she had not had the excuse of having been brought up by a worthless parent. How far more easy it is to condemn sin in others, than to subdue it in ourselves! Ned Franks was very silent during the meal. The idea of a young, misguided creature, suffering and blind in a workhouse, filled his kindly heart with such compassion as the good Samaritan felt for the wounded man by the way-side. Franks wished with all his soul that he could carry comfort to the poor girl, but felt that the task was not a suitable one for a young man like himself.

"Uncle Ned, what are you thinking of? you're as dumb as a fish," cried Dan at last, missing the usual lively flow of the sailor's conversation.

Ned took no notice of the remark, but said, turning towards Bessy Peele; "who is the teacher whom Norah mentions in her note?"

"Oh! don't you know?" cried Dan; "'tis Persis Meade, who goes every Sunday to teach the Bible-class of girls."

"I know her by name and sight," said the sailor, "but I do not know where she lives."

"In the little dell, near the mill-stream," cried Dan, "taking care of her silly old grand-dad, the old man who goes tottering to church with a crutch, and who has lived so long that he's lost all his hair, his teeth, and his wits." Dan laughed, as if the infirmities of age were any subject for laughter, till silenced by the stern glance of his uncle's reproving eye.

"Persis Meade was nursery governess at Mrs. Lane's," said Bessy, "and a deal they thought of her there; I wonder she ever left them to slave away as sick-nurse to a doited old man, as had never been partic'lar kind to her. But when her aunt Lizzy married, and old Meade was left all alone, Persis came to his cottage, and set up as needlewoman, though I don't know as how she had any special turn that way. The gentry about here employ her. She makes all the dresses for the Lanes; but if I'd been she, I'd have stayed where I was, and let the silly old man go to the workhouse. He needs as much looking after as a baby, and his childish babble is worse than the clack of a mill. Persis Meade was a deal better off at the Lanes; I say 'twas folly to leave them."

"Maybe 'twill not prove so in the end," observed Franks; "there's a blessing in the wake of the command, honour thy father and mother. Do you think," he added, "that Miss Meade would take care of our Norah on Friday?"

"I'll not ask her," cried Bessy, with something like a snort.

"If you don't mind it, I will," said the sailor. "I'll walk over early before school opens, and send Norah a line by post; she'll get it on Friday morning in time to walk over and join Miss Meade at the end of the lane, where the coach would pick them both up."

"'Tis not very likely that a woman as has two mouths to feed with her needle will give up half-a-day, and take a coach to B— to go hunting out a blind pauper."

"I'll make the coach easy for the matter of that," observed Franks, with a smile. "Norah shall have enough of ready rhino to pay for both."

"I'm sure that you might do something better with your money," exclaimed Bessy, who always thought that she had first claim to whatever her brother could spare.

"I hope you remember, uncle, that to-morrow is New-year's day," cried Dan, with a knowing wink of the eye.

"That there awkward boy broke my clothes' horse yesterday," sighed Bessy, "and I'm sure I don't know which way to turn for money to buy a new one."

"If Dan broke it yesterday, let him mend it to-day," laughed Ned, who understood the hint well, but did not choose to take it, "He and I, we can muster three hands between us. No need of money when a little labour will serve the turn. I'll give you a lesson, Dan, in the carpentering line; take that as a New-year's gift if you will."

CHAPTER III.

THE COTTAGE IN THE DELL.

THE sun had scarcely shown his red globe over the hill when Ned Franks, whistling as he went, walked down the path into the little wooded dell where Persis Meade resided. The January air was keen and sharp, the snow felt crisp under the sailor's tread. Every branch in the trees, every twig in the hedges, was cased in silvery frost; the prickly leaves of the holly, the withered fern by the path, every blade of grass was edged, as if by fairy art, with glittering crystals. Franks looked around with admiring eyes, doubting whether winter, in such a garb, were not as fair as the spring.

"How strange it is to look back on one year," reflected Ned, "when we're just stepping on board another, and the old hulk, with all the hopes and fears that freighted it, is sinking down into the ocean of the past! Last New-year's day I spent on the blue waters, amongst my jovial messmates, little dreaming then what a twelvemonth's cruise was before me. 'Twould not have mended my mirth to have known that I should have a terrible fall, smash my arm, have it taken off by the surgeon, lie for weeks in my hammock, and then leave the service maimed and disabled, come to a comfortless home, and find Bessy—well, I won't be hard on her, but she was not just what I had expected her to be. Here was a cargo of troubles indeed. And yet at the end of that year's cruise I can say, 'surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life!' God has given me a home of my own, pleasant work in the school, kind friends to help me on; He has restored my health, and made me again able to enjoy the blessings of life. And better things

are behind. What are earthly comforts compared to 'the means of grace and the hope of glory'?"

"Ay," said the sailor half aloud, as he gazed on the red rising sun, "as we look for each day now to be longer and brighter, till we bask in the full beams of summer, so is it with the Christian! With him the best is ever to come; he has heavenly hope to crown every earthly joy. This is the 'helmet, the hope of salvation,'* which the Christian soldier is to wear. A glittering helmet it is," pursued Franks, whose fancy delighted in following out the Scriptural image, "and the crest upon it is joy! In life's hard struggle that plume may be reft away, even the faithful in this world cannot always rejoice; but the helmet of hope remains, never to be parted with but with life, and only put off in death to make way for the conqueror's crown! Hope, glorious hope, will be changed for happiness then!"

* I Thess. v. 8.

Such thoughts as these made the heart of Ned Franks bound with a sense of enjoyment such as monarchs might have envied. And yet he was a poor man, a maimed man, one who had been cut off in his prime from a profession that he loved! Save his niece, little Norah, of whom he was very fond, there was not one of his family living who sympathised with Ned Franks, or gave him any real pleasure. Many would have said that the teacher at Colme had not much to render him happy; and yet no stranger could have looked on that buoyant step and beaming eye without seeing that something within was throwing a charm over life, like the hoar frost encrusting with beauty the dull twig and the leafless tree!

The cottage of Persis Meade looked very pretty, with its gable-end overhung with frosted ivy, and sparkling icicles drooping from the eaves. It was so retired in its little dell, that to the sailor it suggested the idea of a bird's nest hidden in a bush. The door stood open, for Persis had just been fetching water from the well, so Franks could see into the cottage as he strode up the narrow path. An old man, very feeble and almost bent double, clad in a thick white flannel wrapper, was tottering towards an arm-chair placed for him by the fire, tenderly supported by a young woman of very pleasing appearance. Persis was so intent on her dutiful office, that she did not hear Ned's tap at the door, and was a little surprised at seeing him enter. The teacher was no stranger to her, however, as Franks' name and character were known through the village; and though somewhat wondering at so early a visit, Persis received the maimed sailor kindly.

"Who's he? What has he done with his hand?" said the old man in a feeble, quavering voice, pointing with his trembling finger to the book which appeared from under the sailor's almost empty sleeve.

"It is Mr. Franks, the teacher at the school, dear grandfather," said Persis, raising her voice and bending towards the deaf man's ear.

"What has he done with his hand?" repeated old Meade.

"I lost it in a lubberly way—had a tumble in the dark," replied Ned, who never liked the question, both because it reminded him of what he was tempted to think a provoking accident, and because he knew that slander had reported that he must have been drunk at the time.

"Will you not take a seat, Sir?" said Persis.

Franks had taken off his hat on coming in, with the same respect that he would have shown on entering a lady's drawing-room. Before he sat down he assisted Persis in arranging pillows behind her grandfather's head, and in changing the position of his chair, for old Meade was fidgety and restless, and it did not seem easy to please him.

"What have you done with your hand?" he asked again, as Ned Franks at last took a seat.