CHAPTER LIV.

Otago Witness, Issue 1865, 19 August 1887, Page 10

CHAPTER LIV.

IN THE BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS. While editors were inquiring, Mrs Langworthy had to live. How? She had lodgings in Fitzroy" square, for which she paid 30s a week. The last 30s she had borrowed. Where to get the next she did not know.

Someone suggested that the Charity Organisation Society might take up her case. Her pride revolted at the idea. She renewed the quest for work ; any kind of work — copying, shopwork, anything to enable her to live ; but no opening in the overcrowded market could be found. Openings, no doubt, there were of a sort, and. in particular the one great gate that stands ever open as wide as the portals of hell. That was not to be thought of ; but ifwaa there, always there, night and day ; nor are there ever wanting those who are eager to help across the fatal threshold-

At last, in sheer despair, Mrs Langworthy went down Buckingham street and called at the central office of the Charity Organisation Society. Her one dread was publicity. •* Tell me," she said to the clerk, " is there any means whereby a case can be attended to without submitting names to a great number of people, and dragging everything before the public ?"

They told her, as they tell everyone, that the right course to pursue is to apply at the local branch of the Society, and, as she lived in South St. Pancras, they gave her the address of the Charity Office there, 17 Woburn Buildings, Euston square. Thither Mrs Langworthy made her way, and after much hesitation and with many misgivings she entered the office. The clerk, she imagined, eyed her suspiciously, as if he was afraid she was going to steal whatever was lying within reach. She repeated to him the inquiry she had made at the central office. After some parleying she was admitted to see the secretary. She was polite, and listened attentively, but she did not imagine that Mrs Langworthy was stating her own case. Mrs Langworthy briefly stated that the case was one in which a lady had married a rich man who, before the birth of her child, denied the validity of the marriage and cast her adrift. L 1,200, 200 a-year alimony had been awarded by the Court, not one penny of which would he pay, and so the lady was destitute.

" Send in a written statement," said the secretary, " and it will go before the Committee."

" But," pleaded Mrs Langworthy, " need I give names ? I have known members of your committees, and they spend the evening in talking over the tales of misery they have laid before them in the day. Can that not be avoided ?"

The secretary feared not. Names must be given, and references.

Mrs Langworthy left the room. "Anything but this," she said to herself, " anything but this." To expose her relatives to the disgrace of the publicity of this appeal for charity — it was like going upon the parish. Her pride revolted against it. She went away.

Where to go and what to do she knew not. It was her habit when in great trouble to walk rapidly through the streets, hardly knowing where she went. She began to walk, but as she went she saw the open door of St. Pancras Church. She stopped, and then went in. Some service, baptismal or other, was going on. She went into a dark corner of the sacred edifice, and, sitting down in the solitude and obscurity, burst into a flood of tears.

There is in all London hardly any more un-Christian and inhuman sight than the locked door of a Christian church. All the week long, from Monday morning till

Saturday night, these hallowed oases dedicated to the worship of God and the service of man stand locked and barred against the children of men. Quiet resting-places they are in the midst of the city's din, retreats where — if London had still been Catholic — the sorely wounded and heavy laden might have crept at all hours for a moment's seclu-. sion from the turmoil of the, world, but which — London being Protestant — are locked up more closely than the gaol, so that no human foot may wake the silence of their consecrated aisles. The comfortable and prosperous never think what a godless waste of opportunities for the silent ministrations is represented by every locked-up church.

Mrs Langworthy was neither comfortable nor prosperous, and the Church supplied her with a great want. For it was a place to weep in, and sometimes, so desolate is this wilderness of bricks and mortar, a harddriven wretch cannot even find a place to indulge in the silent luxury . of tears. Mrs Langworthy sat unnoticed, and her head bowed in her hands, unconscious of all around. > One by one, with the vivid distinctness of a nightmare, all the scenes in the last four years passed in succession before her. She felt as if her mind were beginning to reel- It seemed as if she passed once more through all the troubles and scenes of the past. She heard again the jeers of the counsel in the Court. She saw the hard, cold features of her mother-in-law, and heard the mocking laughter of her foes. Step by step she retraced every foot of the long and dreary way along which she had waged undaunted so brave a losing fight — and all in vain.

The exultation of her enemies over her discomfiture stung her more than the grievous disappointment which she had to endure, and ever as she brooded ever the incidents of the unequal contest the darkness seemed to deepen, till all hope seemed extinct. Her whole being rebelled against the injustice ot it all. He heart swelled with fierce anger against the God who had cursed her with the fatal gift of a life for which she never craved, but which seemed predestined to misery and shame. It was a dark moment.- To believe in no God is bad, but to believe in an unjust God is even worse. It is as if the river of the water of life had suddenly been transformed into an effluent from the lake of eternal fire.

For two hours, nursing the bitterest of thoughts, she crouched there, forsaken of all men and pursued by a relentless fate. At last, with eyes swollen and red with weeping, she left the quiet church and went out into the street. She walked restlessly on and on until at last, weary and exhausted, she had no strength to go further. She entered a shop and nerved herself to write out a statement of her case to the Committee.