Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV

So the work began. So earnest, so humble; yet, like other earnest, humble efforts, with a blessing of prosperity upon it. In this way, during the last fourteen years, by this one man, working in the leisure of a twelve hours' daily toil, hundreds have been restored to peace. He has sent husbands repentant to their wives; he has restored fathers to the fatherless. Without incurring debt, supporting a large family on little gains, he has contrived to spare out of his little; contenting himself with a bare existence, that he might have clothes to give and bits of money, where they were required to reinstate an outcast in society.

Mr. Wright is a dissenter – free, of course, from bigotry; for bigotry can never co-exist with charity so genuine. Although a dissenter working spiritually in the prison, he never comes into jarring contact with the chaplain. He makes a point of kindling in his outcast friends a religious feeling; but that is not sectarian; he speaks only the largest sentiments of Christianity, and asks only that they attend, once every week, a place of worship, leaving them to choose what church or chapel it may be. And, in the chapel he himself attends, wherever his eye turns, he can see decent families who stand by his means there; men whom he has rescued from the vilest courses, kneeling modestly beside their children and their wives. Are not these families substantial prayers?

Very humbly all this has been done. In behalf of each outcast in turn, Mr. Wright has pleaded with his own employer, or with others, in a plain, manly way. Many now work under himself, in his own place of occupation; his word and guarantees having been sufficient recommendation. Elsewhere, he has, when rebuffed, persevered from place to place, offering and laying down his own earnings as guarantee; clothing and assisting the repentant unemployed convict out of his own means, as far as possible; speaking words, or writing letters, with a patient zeal, to reconcile to him his honest relatives, or to restore lost friends. Bare sustenance for his own body by day, that he might screw out of himself little funds in aid of his good deeds – and four hours' sleep at night, after his hard work, that he might screw out of his bed more time for his devoted labor – these tell their tale upon the body of the man, who still works daily twelve hours for his family, and six or eight hours for his race. He is now sixty-three years old, and working forward on his course worn, but unwearied.

No plaudits have been in his ear, and he has sought none. Of his labor, the success was the reward. Some ladies joined; and working quietly, as he does, in an under-current of society, after a while, he had from them the aid of a small charitable fund, to draw upon occasionally in the interest of the poor friends for whom he struggled. Prison Inspectors found him out, and praised him in reports. At first there were a few words, and a note told of "this benevolent individual. His simple, unostentatious, but earnest and successful labors on behalf of discharged prisoners are above all praise." After a few years, the reports grew in their enthusiasm, and strung together illustrations of the work that has been done so quietly. Let us quote from this source one or two examples:

"Five years ago I was," owns a certain G.J., "in the New Bailey, convicted of felony, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment. When I was discharged from prison, I could get no employment. I went to my old employer, to ask him to take me again. He said, I need not apply to him, for if he could get me transported he would; so I could get no work until I met with Mr. Wright, who got me employed in a place, where I remained some time, and have been in employment ever since. I am now engaged as a screw-cutter – a business I was obliged to learn – and am earning nineteen shillings and twopence a week. I have a wife and four children, and but for Mr. Wright, I should have been a lost man."

Others tell how they were saved by the timely supplies of Mr. Wright's money, which "kept their heads above water" till they obtained the trust of an employer. Another, after telling his career, adds: "I am now, consequently, in very comfortable circumstances; I am more comfortable now than ever I was in my life; I wish every poor man was as comfortable as I am. I am free from tippling, and cursing, and swearing; have peace of mind, and no quarreling at home as there used to be. I dare say I was as wicked a man as any in Manchester. I thought if I could once get settled under such a gentleman as Mr. Wright, I would not abuse my opportunity, and all I expected I have received. I have got Bibles, hymn-book, prayer-book, and tracts; and those things I never had in my house since I have been married before. My wife is delighted. My boy goes to school, and my girl also."

Were the spirit of Mr. Wright diffused more generally through society, the number of fallen men – who, being restored with all due prudence to a generous confidence, "would not abuse their opportunity" – would tell decidedly on the statistics of our criminal courts and prisons. To labor as Mr. Wright has done, must be the prerogative of few, though all the indolent may note, by way of spur, how much a man, even like Thomas Wright, poor, humble, scantily instructed, may beget of good out of an earnest will.

THE NIGHT TRAIN

The curate and his daughter sat before the fire. Both had been for some time silent, for the father had fallen into that listless dreaminess to which nothing is so conducive as gazing on the glowing caverns in the coals, and pretty little Faith cared not to disturb a rest that he was not likely to be long suffered to enjoy unmolested. And so the flamelets rose and sank, lighting their thoughtful faces, and glittering on the gold-embossed backs of the treasured volumes on the shelves – the curate's most constant friends. Twilight saddened into night. Up from behind the gray church tower came the moon. But still not a word broke the silence in the parsonage parlor. The gaunt arms of the trees waved drearily without. A streak of white moonshine crept across the carpet like a silver snake. Still he gazed fixedly on the bright pagoda 'mid the flame: it totters, but before it falls we will track his wandering musings for a moment. All men, he thinks, have as children gazed on the burning coals, and fashioned castles, figures, mountains in them, but though the elements are all the same, no two men ever have presented to them exactly the same position or difficulty in life, and so only general rules of conduct can be laid down; but yet – the minaret crumbles to nothing, and changes to a strange fantastic face, then into something like a funeral plume; his dreams are all dispersed; the pensive damsel looks up hurriedly, for high above the muttering wind, fierce as the summons at the gates of Cawdor, he hears a knocking loud and long.

It was a farmer's boy from the village. His message was soon told. A poor man had been seized with sudden illness at the wayside public-house, and the clergyman's presence was required immediately. He lingered to tell Faith not to wait up for him, then rose without a murmur, and prepared for his long dreary walk. A moment after he was crossing the neatly-kept garden, where the hydrangeas showed like piles of skulls in the pale moonshine, and the chestnut leaves were falling thick and fast. Then out into the deep-rutted road, through miry lanes, across stark scraps of common, and paths covered with fern and marsh-mallow, till at last the glimmering candle in the hostelry window came in sight, and he stood under the creaking signboard of the White Horse. The inn was of the humblest description, and the room into which he was shown very wretched indeed. The plaster had peeled off the walls in great odd shapes, like the countries on a map; the shutters had as many cracks as an ill-fitting dissecting puzzle; the flooring was damp and broken, there was a tracery of spiders' webs about the bed-furniture, and the only sounds were the groans of the occupant of the bed, and the drowsy ticking of the death-watch. Thinking he was asleep, the curate prepared to sit down and wait for him to wake of himself, but the noise of a drinking-song, shouted by some laborers in the bar, startled him from his uneasy slumber, and when Mr. F. next looked up, the ghastly face of the sick man confronted his own – an eery nightmare face, such as meets one in the outlines of Retzsch, or peering out of the goblin scenes and witches' caves of Peter Breughel. But if the face was terrible, the voice that asked him "Why he came!" and bade him take away the light that glared and hurt his eyes, was more unearthly still. But when he recognized him as the clergyman, his manner altered. In a comparatively tranquil state he listened to the minister's earnest warnings and blessed consolations; then suddenly the pain seized him; he screamed and groaned awhile in wild delirium; a deep calm followed. Raising himself in the bed, he drew a roll of torn and discolored papers from under the pillow, and put it into the curate's hand. His senses never returned. A few more throbbings and struggles – a wandering of the eyes about the room, first to the ceiling, where the death-watch ticked on drearily, then to the Arcadian scene on the tattered patchwork counterpane – a clutching at the bed-clothes – a shuddering – a film – and then – death!

The curate did not sleep that night until he had read the stranger's diary to an end. It began thus:

"August 3d.– Brian Marcliffe came to me again; the same odd, mysterious air that I have noticed so long. What can it mean? He can not have found – But no, it's worse than useless having dark forebodings. I shall soon be able to put the sea between me and this cursed golden inferno, Brazil, and with my darling Bertha forget all these fears in the paradise of full purses – England.

"August 4th.– I met him by chance again, coming from the overseer's. Confound it, how demon-like he looked! I will speak to him myself, rather than be in suspense much longer. I should then know the worst, at least.

"August 5th.– Ruin! The worst has come. He does know all about my being behindhand in my accounts, and hints – I can't write down what. Bertha will never marry him but as the only chance of saving me from exposure. Can he be devil enough to propose it?

"August 20th.– Am I the same man I was a month ago! Farewell forever, land of diamonds, slaves, and late summers. Farewell lust of gold and dread of disgrace. It is over, I hope, forever. My Bertha – my own now – is sleeping like a lily near me, and the only sound is the splashing of the sea that is bearing me every moment further from my fear. But stay; what have I left behind me! What is there in that glen of mimosas? A rotting corpse. What in men's mouths? The name of murderer. Pray God it be not. Let me think.

"On the Monday when I was leaving the office, Brian came again, and asked me to go as far as old Olivenza's coffee plantation. I said I would come, and we set out an hour past sunset. It was a beautiful evening; the skies as pure as the robe of seraphim; the clouds like curls of incense, now hiding, now revealing the dazzling glory of the rising moon – all, save one black streak right across her face, like a spread eagle. Well, we had nearly got to the plantation before Brian spoke; but I saw he was preparing something by the villainous look of his eyes. He began:

"'So, Reuben Darke, you have considered my proposition, and agree, of course?'

"I believe I professed ignorance of it; for, indeed, he had never said any thing definite.

"'The consequences of opposition are as terrible as they are inevitable,' said he, threateningly.

"'You can not stoop to such vileness – to such wrong. You know that I am striving for a great end – that I will make restitution full and ample if I live to reach England.'

"This was the sense of what I said, but his answer was clearly prepared long before he knew what I should urge. It came gnashing through his closed teeth like the hiss of an adder.

"'I must do my duty. It is my place to overlook the accounts of all the clerks. You will show me your books to-morrow.'

"He turned away. I prayed he might not speak again, for his voice stirred up a feeling I had never known before; but my bad angel, I suppose, brought him back. I scarcely recollect what he said. I have a vague notion of hearing him mention Bertha's name with some cursed plan that was to give her up to him forever, and then he would, 'for the sake of old friendship, deal as gently as he possibly could with me.' Those words I remember well, and those were the last he ever spoke to me. I dread to think they were his last on earth. The feeling I had wrestled against mastered me now. I could restrain myself no longer, and struck at him with a knife. He clutched my left hand in his teeth like a tiger-cat. For a second we were grappling together for life or death, but he had no chance against me; and when I had breath to look at him next, he was lying on his back, the hands that he had tried to parry my blows with cut and bleeding, and red stains on the broad mimosa leaves around. Oh, God! what a reproach there was in all the calm and silence of the night! How the deep quiet of the sky spoke to my heart, so troubled, dark, and guilty! As on the first dread day by sin polluted, the voice of God in Eden drove Adam forth abashed, so spoke the still small voice of holy Nature with more than earthquake tones to me, and straight I fled away.

"My Bertha does not know the whole. She only knows that Brian had me in his power, owing to some money transactions. If she did know it, my conscience tells me she would not now be sleeping here. There – all will be well in England. Pray Heaven we get there safe. I will go up on deck a few minutes. Writing it down has brought the whole affair so fresh before me, that it is useless trying to sleep in this fever. But yet I am glad it is written.

"October 15th.– We entered the Channel this afternoon. It is my wife's birthday; she took it as a happy omen, and seemed so pleased with the glitter and joyance of the busy river, that for a whole hour – the first since I left Rio – the dreadful secret hidden 'mid those leaves was absent from my mind.

"October 16th.– The first news that meets me on entering London is, that my uncle has died suddenly, and left all his affairs frightfully embarrassed. My chief dependence was on him. This is a sad beginning; indeed, I feel that 'all these things are against me.'"

Several pages were here torn from the unfortunate Darke's manuscript; and in the succeeding ones the entries were scanty, and with long intervals between each other. They detailed the sufferings of the writer and his wife on their arrival in London; his repeated efforts to obtain employment, and the difficulties he met with, owing to his uncle's death, and his own inability to refer any one to the directors of the mine at Rio. For more than a year (judging from the dates, by no means regularly affixed) he appeared to have struggled on thus, until, when his hopes were fast sinking, and his health rapidly giving way under this succession of disappointments, he obtained a situation on a recently-opened line of railway in the north, through the interest of an old schoolfellow, whom he accidentally met, and who retained in manhood schoolboy heart enough to show gratitude for many kindnesses in olden days. The language was strangely impassioned and earnest in which he expressed his joy at this change of fortune; and the full-hearted thankfulness with which he described telling his wife the good news, seemed to prove that affliction had exerted a calming and blessed influence on his passion-tossed mind. But the clergyman could not help noticing that the spirit pervading the latter part of the diary was strangely different from that which animated the commencement, it being written apparently with the firm conviction of an inevitable destiny hanging over the writer; and this, like the shadow of an unseen cloud in a fair picture, gave a sombre meaning to his self-communings.

After briefly mentioning the fact of his taking up his abode with Bertha and one little child at the cottage provided by the company, and that he had heard by chance that his enemy was still alive, he proceeded:

"I like this new home much. It is a tiny, sheltered cottage, with beehives in the garden, and honeysuckles peeping in at the lattice, nestling innocently among the pine-trees, like a fairy islet. The railway runs for about a mile parallel with the canal, and the two modes of traveling contrast curiously. The former with all its brightness, freshness, and precision; the latter a very sluggard. I often have long talks with Huntly, my assistant here, and try to make him see the change it will work; but he is not over shrewd; or, rather, fate did not give him a bookworm uncle like it did me, and so reasoning is hard work to him; it always is to the untaught. The canal is picturesque certainly. Let me try a description. The surface of the water is overlaid with weeds rank and luxuriant, save where the passage of a boat has preserved a trench, stagnant, and cold, and deep. There is not a human habitation near except ours. Scarcely any paths, the thickets are so tangled. This does not read an inviting account, I know, but there is a charm to me in the leaves of myriad shapes, in fern, and moss, and rush, in every silvan nook and glittering hedgerow – above all, in the dark slumberous pines, those giant sentinels round our dear home. Bertha smiled quite like her old self when she saw it. Oh, how, in all the wreck of this last year, has her love upheld me! always lightening, never adding to our weight of grief. She has, indeed, been faithful, true, and beautiful – like the Indian tree, that has its flower and fragrance best by night. I can not explain why it is that my love seems to grow each hour, but with a kind of tremble in its intensity, as though there were a separation coming. Perhaps it is only the result of the change in my fortunes.

"March 10th.– Two years ago I should have laughed had any one told me that a dream would give me a second thought, much less that I should sit down to write what I remember of one; but I must write down last night's, nevertheless. I thought that it was a clear moonlight night, and that I rose as usual to signal to the latest luggage train. I had got to the accustomed place, and stood waiting a long time. For days, for months; I knew this, because the trees were budding when I began my watch – were bare as winter when, with a roar and quaking all around, the night train came. At first I held a lantern in my hand, to signal all was well. Strange as it may appear, I felt no weariness, for I was fixed as by a wizard's rod. It passed at length; but not, thank God! as it has ever passed before; for from the carriage window, like a mask, glared Marcliffe's vengeful face. I said I held a light; but, as the smoke and iron hurtled by, the lamp was dashed to atoms, and in my outstretched hand I grasped a knife! There was a yell of demons in my ear, with Brian's jeering laugh above it all. I moaned awhile in horror, and woke to find my Bertha's eyes on mine. She has been soothing and kind as mercy to me all the day, and I, alas! wayward, almost cruel. I saw it pained her, but I could not help it. Oh, would that this world had no concealments, no divisions, no estrangement of hearts! I dread the night; there is something tells me it will come again, for when I took the Bible down to read, it opened at the words:

"'I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.'

"A thrill went through me as I read. It sounded like a death-knell.

"The next day.– As I foresaw it came again last night; the same in every terrible particular, and with the same consolation on awaking. But what I have seen to-day gives it a meaning that I tremble at. Huntly returned from D – . He brought a birthday present for little Harry; it happened to be wrapped in an old newspaper. As it was opened, I saw his name, and a moment after read this:

"'Next of Kin. – If any child or children of the late Ehud Marcliffe, Gentleman, of Cranholm Manse, who died September 5, 18 – , be yet surviving, it is desired that he or they will forthwith put themselves in communication with Messrs. Faulk and Lockerby, Solicitors, D – .'

"This leaves me no hope; and knowing, as I do, the unfaltering steadfastness of his hate I feel the days of this security and peace are numbered…

"A whole month has gone since I opened this last. There is no fear now. He is dead. But how? The eye that reads this record alone will know. That fatal Thursday went by, a phantasm of dark thoughts; and then I lay down, as usual, for a couple of hours before going to watch. I did this, for there was a kind of instinct in me (the feeling deserves no higher name) which made me go about my avocations in the accustomed way, and seem as little disturbed as possible. I lay down, and in my dream, as distinct as ever it passed by day, for the third time that awful freight swept like a whirlwind by. I awoke. It wanted only three minutes to the hour when the night-train usually passed. I staggered to the door, but, instead of coming out into the light, an inky shadow lay across the road. It was a car left by Huntly's carelessness on the up-rail. I stood like one of stone, thinking of the tranquil happiness of the last months, of Bertha's smile, and Harry's baby laugh – of all the sun and pleasure of our home, and how this precious fabric, wove by love, was to be rent and torn; and how one word from him would ruin all, and send my wife and child to poverty again. And that man's life was in my hand. Well may we daily pray against temptation.

"A white cloud curled up above the pines.

"There was no delay. I caught up the lantern, and ran down the line. A throbbing, like the workings of a giant's pulse, smote my ear. I reached the signal-post, and laid my hand upon the bell. But there was no time for thought.

"The murmur deepened to a roar. The clouds of steam rose high above the pines, and, girt about with wreathing vapor, the iron outline, with its blood-red lamps and Hecla glow beneath, came on.

"My eyes were strangely keen, for at that distance I could discern a man leaning out of the nearest window. I knew who it must be, and almost expecting to see the last dreadful particular fulfilled, held out my hand —the sign that all was safe. The driver signaled that he understood, and quickened pace. I shut my eyes when it drew near, but, as it passed, distinctly heard my name called thrice.

"There was a moment that seemed never-ending. Then a clatter as of a hundred anvil strokes, a rush of snow-white steam, a shower of red-hot ashes scattered far, the hum of voices, and the clanging of the bell. Then, and not till then, I ventured to look up and hurry to the spot. The train, a series of shapeless wrecks, luggage-vans, trucks, carriages in wild confusion, lay across the road; live coals from the engine-fire were hissing in the black canal stream; the guard was bleeding and crushed beneath a wheel; twining wreaths of white steam, like spirits, melted into air above. Huntly was stooping over a begrimed corpse. The glare of the lantern, as it flashed upon the face, showed every omen true. It was Marcliffe.

"I can bear to chronicle my own temptations, yielding, guilt, but not to write down the separation that I dreaded most, and tried to avert, alas! so fatally. It is indeed a lesson of the nothingness of man's subtlest plans to avoid the penalty his crimes call down. How vain have all my efforts been to preserve our hearth inviolate, to keep our home in blessed security. Indeed, that night God's peace and favor 'departed from the threshold of the house' forever."

The misfortune alluded to was thus briefly mentioned at the end of the newspaper report of the accident, inclosed with the other papers of the dead man:

"We are sorry to say that the wife of the station-keeper, Darke, whose dangerous state we noticed a week ago, expired last night, after giving birth to a child, still-born."

With the sentence given above Darke's diary closed. Here and there the curate read a verse of a psalm, or a heart-broken ejaculation, but no continued narrative of his after-sufferings. From what he could glean, it appeared that he was put on his trial on the charge of manslaughter, and acquitted, but that he had lost his situation in consequence of the want of presence of mind he had evinced; after, it seemed, that he had led a miserable vagrant life, earning just enough by chance-work to support himself and his little Harry, the constant attendant of his wanderings. The boy was at the inn on the night of the father's wretched death, though the landlady's kindness removed him from the sight of the troublous parting. An asylum was soon found for him by my friend's kindness, and when I was at the parsonage last Christmas, as I read the history of his father's fitful life, the unconscious son sat by with little Faith, gazing with his large melancholy eyes at the strange faces in the fire.