26 
Unexpected Origins

You remember, I am sure,” Sister Hope began, “my telling you about going to the mission office in London, thinking I would be sent off immediately to some foreign land?”

Again Amanda nodded.

“After being, as I thought, rejected by the mission, I was so despondent,” Hope said. “I didn’t know what was to become of me. Although it was kind of the woman to offer, especially to a stray who had just walked in her door, I couldn’t imagine working at the mission office. I had no place to go, no place to stay, no friends in London. Well, there was one place I probably could have stayed, but I would sooner have slept on the streets than go back there.”

“Why didn’t you just go home?” Amanda asked.

A sad smile followed.

“Home,” repeated Hope. “You speak as one who has a home. But what does one such as myself do, alone in London, her hopes of the mission field dashed . . . if she has no home to return to?”

“I don’t understand,” said Amanda, confused.

“Amanda dear,” said Sister Hope, “I was an orphan.”

————

When the baby was brought to the Wigham Street Orphanage in London, not a soul was able to offer the slightest clue as to her origins. Nothing was known but that a child had been left on the doorstep of the parish church of Bromley, whose vicar contacted the administrators of the institution and arranged for them to take her.

Inquiries were made, of course. All of Bromley heard of it, and many were the theories that circulated, some even attributing the child to wayward royal stock.

Eventually word began to spread that there was nothing either so mysterious or sinister about the affair. The rumor had it that the child’s father had long since left England for wars in unknown parts and was presumed dead, and that the mother herself had not survived the night of birth. The baby’s aunt, who already had more mouths to feed than she could afford, took the child to the church. A note was pinned to the dirty blanket in which she was wrapped with four words scrawled in a nearly illegible hand, no doubt the final dying request from one who had none: Her name is Hope.

Certain facts of the case corroborated the evidence. The vicar himself allowed that it was the most credible of all the stories that had been put forward, though nothing more was ever learned of the unknown aunt, or where the story had originated.

That she was an orphan was all but certain. No additional facts ever came to light. The vicar himself, an elderly gentleman, was gone to his final reward before the youngster was old enough to make inquiries herself. The aunt never surfaced. Eventually the incident was all but forgotten in Bromley.

The life of an orphan in 1870s London was neither an easy nor a pleasant one. But the fortunes of those girls who chanced to reside at Wigham Street were especially bitter. There was scarcely enough gruel provided to keep them alive, their labor was arduous, the bottom of a glass could not be seen through the drinking water, rats swarmed the place, which in winter was hardly warm enough to keep the insects in the walls alive, and no adult supervision prevented cruelties innumerable from being meted out on the young and helpless. Many were the nights its more pitiful inhabitants wept and shivered themselves to sleep. They lived not merely without hope, but without hope of ever having hope.

No worse hell could have been imagined for its inmates, and no socialist idealism of forward-thinking liberal politicians in Whitehall could ameliorate its multifold agonies.

In afteryears, Hope’s only specific memory, because it recurred with such terrifying regularity, was that of lying awake at night, long after dark when everyone else was asleep, hearing scratching sounds in the walls. Gradually the noises came closer. As night deepened, the rats became bolder and bolder. Presently their busy feet could be heard scurrying all about the floor searching for crumbs of food. It sounded like an army of rats, even under her own bed.

Wide awake, she shivered under a thin blanket, hiding her head under it and drawing her feet up inside at the bottom of her sparse nightgown as best she could for fear the creatures would climb up the endposts and nibble on her toes.

She did not think to pray, like Annie in Bruce’s garret, for pussy to come. The only cat little Hope was acquainted with was a mean and mangy alley tom who hated little girls as much as he did rats, and had left far more claw marks on the arms of the unsuspecting girls of the place than ever had the rats’ teeth on their toes. So as she lay praying against the rats, she prayed just as desperately against Tom’s appearance.

There was no salvation from the terror other than the long, slow approach of dawn, which usually resulted in the rats’ disappearance and her own drifting off to sleep—a sleep rudely interrupted with a vigorous shaking and a volley of gruff orders not to sleep the day away.

It was a wonder she slept at all. Yet she did not get enough sleep upon such occasions to avoid getting drowsy at her afternoon work and sometimes falling asleep altogether. Such an occurrence always resulted in an awakening even more cross than the morning’s, accompanied by a box on the ear by the female warden of the prison.

Hope grew from a baby to a child. Somehow she survived to become a girl of thirteen. She was one of the few who managed not to be completely embittered by the place, survived by keeping to herself, and, miraculously, somehow kept hoping that a better life would come to her when she was older.

How, she couldn’t imagine. But she refused to let the dreams of something better die altogether. Even as a child, her name began to send roots down into the soil of that intrinsic desire toward goodness which has been implanted into every man and woman, but which so many allow to become hard and incapable of sustaining life. Thus did character begin to grow.

Thinking that perhaps her salvation had come, at thirteen she was moved to a girls’ home in Birmingham. And it was indeed in certain ways an improvement over Wigham Street. Fires were warmer during the winter months, food slightly more plentiful, rats thankfully less so. But girls of seventeen are equally adept at inflicting cruelty on timid girls of thirteen as her elders had been in London.

Her misery therefore deepened. Where she had allowed herself to hope she might have friends, she now had none. Compassion, however, is a commodity infused into the human character by suffering. Little did young Hope know that she was being prepared even now for that highest calling of mankind and womankind—the giving of cups of cold water to a thirsty humanity. Caverns of compassion were being carved out within her, even as she cried herself to sleep, praying, after what fashion she was capable, for her tormentors.

But whereas her salvation had not come at thirteen, as she supposed, it did in fact arrive during her nineteenth year. She and several other of the girls were given permission to attend the tent meeting of a renowned revivalist being held within walking distance of the home. None were particularly interested, but any excuse to get away from the place for an evening was seized upon.

Her companions sat snickering at the preaching. But nineteen-year-old Hope’s heart was seized with something the likes of which she had never known. Hope indeed now arose within her breast, hope of new life.

Only a week later she was on her way back to London by train, a place in which she had hoped never to set foot again. But now she had purpose and vision.

She was going to London to be a missionary!

Alas, it was too lofty a dream, and its shattering therefore all the more painful. As she walked the streets after leaving the Baptist Missionary Society, unconsciously her steps took her in the direction of Wigham Street.

An hour later she stood outside the orphanage where she had spent thirteen bleak and dismal years, gazing up at the stark grey stone walls, hearing an occasional shout or shriek or wail of pain from inside, knowing well what misery stalked its floors. She made sure she kept out of sight. The last thing she wanted was to be seen by someone who might recognize her. So many painful memories were hid behind those walls. She hated the place, yet it was one of the only two homes she had ever known.

Full of thoughts and emotions too deep and painful to think about, slowly she turned and began walking away. She had no place to go other than away from the Wigham Street Orphanage. She would sooner sleep in a deserted alley than seek refuge there.

Tears came. She could neither prevent them nor stop their flow. Her thoughts began to return to the lady she had spoken with at the mission board office. Unconsciously her steps turned again in that direction.

“I will try to be willing, Lord,” she prayed. “I will do whatever you want me to . . . but I hate London! Isn’t there someplace you could use me? Anyplace but here!”

It was late in the afternoon when Mrs. Weldon looked up again from her desk and saw the same young woman standing before her from earlier. It was obvious she had been crying.

“Hello, my dear,” she said.

“I . . . I have nowhere to go,” said Hope, her eyes filling with tears. “I have decided to take the job you told me about. I don’t have any training, like you said earlier, for anything—for being a missionary or anything else. But if you’ll show me what to do, I will do my best.”

Mrs. Weldon’s heart smote her with tenderness toward the poor girl. She rose and approached.

“But I’m sorry,” Hope went on, “I have no place to stay. I spent all my money just getting here. I was so sure that I would be able to . . .”

She glanced away.

“I understand, dear,” said Mrs. Weldon, placing her two hands on Hope’s shoulders. Suddenly her heart was strangely warmed to this nineteen-year-old waif who wanted to be a missionary.

“—you will come home with me tonight,” she added.

Hope never forgot that simple gesture of hospitality, nor what a ministry was involved in a simple kind word to a lonely heart, especially when accompanied by a roof overhead, a warm meal, and a bed in which to spend the night.

————

The chalet fell silent.

After a moment or two, Amanda rose, walked around the corner of the table, leaned down, and wrapped her arms about Sister Hope, who opened her arms and returned the embrace.

“I’m so sorry,” said Amanda. “I had no idea. I didn’t mean to hurt you by what I said earlier.”

“Nor I you, Amanda dear. Thank you.”