FullReads

Meantime, the Sunday after Charley’s appointment, Archer, seated in his pew, searched all the chapel for the fulfilment of Sara’s part of the agreement, namely, her presence. But he could see her nowhere. The fact was, her promise was so easy that she had scarcely thought of it after, not suspecting that Stephen laid any stress upon its fulfilment, and, indeed, not knowing where the chapel was. She had managed to buy a hit of something of the shoddy species, and while Stephen was looking for her in the chapel, she was making a jacket for Charley. Greatly disappointed, and chiefly, I do believe, that she had not kept her word, Stephen went in the afternoon to call upon her.

He found her working away as before, and saving time by taking her dinner while she worked, for a piece of bread lay on the table by her elbow, and beside it a little brown sugar to make the bread go down. The sight went to Stephen’s heart, for he had just made his dinner off baked mutton and potatoes, washed down with his half-pint of stout.

“Sara!” he said solemnly, “you promised to come to our chapel, and you have not kept your word.” He never thought that “our chapel” was not the landmark of the region.

“Oh, Mr. Archer,” she answered, “I didn’t know as you cared about it. But,” she went on, rising and pushing her bread on one side to make room for her work, “I’ll put on my bonnet directly.” Then she checked herself, and added, “Oh! I beg your pardon, sir–I’m so shabby! You couldn’t be seen with the likes of me.”

It touched Stephen’s chivalry–and something deeper than chivalry. He had had no intention of walking with her.

“There’s no chapel in the afternoon,” he said; “but I’ll come and fetch you in the evening.”

Thus it came about that Sara was seated in Stephen’s pew, next to Stephen himself, and Stephen felt a strange pleasure unknown before, like that of the shepherd who having brought the stray back to the fold cares little that its wool is torn by the bushes, and it looks a ragged and disreputable sheep. It was only Sara’s wool that might seem disreputable, for she was a very good-faced sheep. He found the hymns for her, and they shared the same book. He did not know then that Sara could not read a word of them.

The gathered people, the stillness, the gaslights, the solemn ascent of the minister into the pulpit, the hearty singing of the congregation, doubtless had their effect upon Sara, for she had never been to a chapel and hardly to any place of assembly before. From all amusements, the burden of Charley and her own retiring nature had kept her back.

But she could make nothing of the sermon. She confessed afterwards that she did not know she had anything to do with it. Like “the Northern Farmer,” she took it all for the clergyman’s business, which she amongst the rest had to see done. She did not even wonder why Stephen should have wanted to bring her there. She sat when other people sat, pretended to kneel when other people pretended to kneel, and stood up when other people stood up–still brooding upon Charley’s jacket.

But Archer’s feelings were not those he had expected. He had brought her, intending her to be done good to; but before the sermon was over he wished he had not brought her. He resisted the feeling for a long time, but at length yielded to it entirely; the object of his solicitude all the while conscious only of the lighted stillness and the new barrier between Charley and Newgate. The fact with regard to Stephen was that a certain hard pan, occasioned by continual ploughings to the same depth and no deeper, in the soil of his mind, began this night to be broken up from within, and that through the presence of a young woman who did not for herself put together two words of the whole discourse.