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+Project Gutenberg of Etext John Halifax, Gentleman by Mrs. Craik
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+John Halifax, Gentleman
+
+by Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik)
+
+October, 2000 [Etext #2351]
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+Project Gutenberg of Etext John Halifax, Gentleman by Mrs. Craik
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+
+JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN
+
+by Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+"Get out o' Mr. Fletcher's road, ye idle, lounging, little--"
+
+"Vagabond," I think the woman (Sally Watkins, once my nurse), was
+going to say, but she changed her mind.
+
+My father and I both glanced round, surprised at her unusual
+reticence of epithets:  but when the lad addressed turned, fixed his
+eyes on each of us for a moment, and made way for us, we ceased to
+wonder.  Ragged, muddy, and miserable as he was, the poor boy looked
+anything but a "vagabond."
+
+"Thee need not go into the wet, my lad.  Keep close to the wall, and
+there will be shelter enough both for us and thee," said my father,
+as he pulled my little hand-carriage into the alley, under cover,
+from the pelting rain.  The lad, with a grateful look, put out a hand
+likewise, and pushed me further in.  A strong hand it was--roughened
+and browned with labour--though he was scarcely as old as I.  What
+would I not have given to have been so stalwart and so tall!
+
+Sally called from her house-door, "Wouldn't Master Phineas come in
+and sit by the fire a bit?"--But it was always a trouble to me to
+move or walk; and I liked staying at the mouth of the alley, watching
+the autumnal shower come sweeping down the street:  besides, I wanted
+to look again at the stranger-lad.
+
+He had scarcely stirred, but remained leaning against the wall--
+either through weariness, or in order to be out of our way.  He took
+little or no notice of us, but kept his eyes fixed on the pavement--
+for we actually boasted pavement in the High Street of our town of
+Norton Bury--watching the eddying rain-drops, which, each as it fell,
+threw up a little mist of spray.  It was a serious, haggard face for
+a boy of only fourteen or so.  Let me call it up before me--I can,
+easily, even after more than fifty years.
+
+Brown eyes, deep-sunken, with strongly-marked brows, a nose like most
+other Saxon noses, nothing particular; lips well-shaped, lying one
+upon the other, firm and close; a square, sharply outlined, resolute
+chin, of that type which gives character and determination to the
+whole physiognomy, and without which in the fairest features, as in
+the best dispositions, one is always conscious of a certain want.
+
+As I have stated, in person the lad was tall and strongly-built; and
+I, poor puny wretch! so reverenced physical strength.  Everything in
+him seemed to indicate that which I had not:  his muscular limbs, his
+square, broad shoulders, his healthy cheek, though it was sharp and
+thin--even to his crisp curls of bright thick hair.
+
+Thus he stood, principal figure in a picture which is even yet as
+clear to me as yesterday--the narrow, dirty alley leading out of the
+High Street, yet showing a glimmer of green field at the further end;
+the open house-doors on either side, through which came the drowsy
+burr of many a stocking-loom, the prattle of children paddling in the
+gutter, and sailing thereon a fleet of potato parings.  In front the
+High Street, with the mayor's house opposite, porticoed and grand:
+and beyond, just where the rain-clouds were breaking, rose up out of
+a nest of trees, the square tower of our ancient abbey--Norton Bury's
+boast and pride.  On it, from a break in the clouds, came a sudden
+stream of light.  The stranger-lad lifted up his head to look at it.
+
+"The rain will be over soon," I said, but doubted if he heard me.
+What could he be thinking of so intently?--a poor working lad, whom
+few would have given credit for thinking at all.
+
+I do not suppose my father cast a second glance or thought on the
+boy, whom, from a sense of common justice, he had made take shelter
+beside us.  In truth, worthy man, he had no lack of matter to occupy
+his mind, being sole architect of a long up-hill but now thriving
+trade.  I saw, by the hardening of his features, and the restless way
+in which he poked his stick into the little water-pools, that he was
+longing to be in his tan-yard close by.
+
+He pulled out his great silver watch--the dread of our house, for it
+was a watch which seemed to imbibe something of its master's
+character; remorseless as justice or fate, it never erred a moment.
+
+"Twenty-three minutes lost by this shower.  Phineas, my son, how am I
+to get thee safe home? unless thee wilt go with me to the tan-yard--"
+
+I shook my head.  It was very hard for Abel Fletcher to have for his
+only child such a sickly creature as I, now, at sixteen, as helpless
+and useless to him as a baby.
+
+"Well, well, I must find some one to go home with thee."  For though
+my father had got me a sort of carriage in which, with a little
+external aid, I could propel myself, so as to be his companion
+occasionally in his walks between our house, the tanyard, and the
+Friends' meeting-house--still he never trusted me anywhere alone.
+"Here, Sally--Sally Watkins! do any o' thy lads want to earn an
+honest penny?"
+
+Sally was out of earshot; but I noticed that as the lad near us heard
+my father's words, the colour rushed over his face, and he started
+forward involuntarily.  I had not before perceived how wasted and
+hungry-looking he was.
+
+"Father!" I whispered.  But here the boy had mustered up his courage
+and voice.
+
+"Sir, I want work; may I earn a penny?"
+
+He spoke in tolerably good English--different from our coarse, broad,
+G---shire drawl; and taking off his tattered old cap, looked right up
+into my father's face, The old man scanned him closely.
+
+"What is thy name, lad?"
+
+"John Halifax."
+
+"Where dost thee come from?"
+
+"Cornwall."
+
+"Hast thee any parents living?"
+
+"No."
+
+I wished my father would not question thus; but possibly he had his
+own motives, which were rarely harsh, though his actions often
+appeared so.
+
+"How old might thee be, John Halifax?"
+
+"Fourteen, sir."
+
+"Thee art used to work?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What sort of work?"
+
+"Anything that I can get to do."
+
+I listened nervously to this catechism, which went on behind my back.
+
+"Well," said my father, after a pause, "thee shall take my son home,
+and I'll give thee a groat.  Let me see; art thee a lad to be
+trusted?"  And holding him at arm's length, regarding him meanwhile
+with eyes that were the terror of all the rogues in Norton Bury, Abel
+Fletcher jingled temptingly the silver money in the pockets of his
+long-flapped brown waistcoat.  "I say, art thee a lad to be trusted?"
+
+John Halifax neither answered nor declined his eyes.  He seemed to
+feel that this was a critical moment, and to have gathered all his
+mental forces into a serried square, to meet the attack.  He met it,
+and conquered in silence.
+
+"Lad, shall I give thee the groat now?"
+
+"Not till I've earned it, sir."
+
+So, drawing his hand back, my father slipped the money into mine, and
+left us.
+
+I followed him with my eyes, as he went sturdily plashing down the
+street; his broad, comfortable back, which owned a coat of true
+Quaker cut, but spotless, warm, and fine; his ribbed hose and
+leathern gaiters, and the wide-brimmed hat set over a fringe of grey
+hairs, that crowned the whole with respectable dignity.  He looked
+precisely what he was--an honest, honourable, prosperous tradesman.
+I watched him down the street--my good father, whom I respected
+perhaps even more than I loved him.  The Cornish lad watched him
+likewise.
+
+It still rained slightly, so we remained under cover.  John Halifax
+leaned in his old place, and did not attempt to talk.  Once only,
+when the draught through the alley made me shiver, he pulled my cloak
+round me carefully.
+
+"You are not very strong, I'm afraid?"
+
+"No."
+
+Then he stood idly looking up at the opposite--the mayor's--house,
+with its steps and portico, and its fourteen windows, one of which
+was open, and a cluster of little heads visible there.
+
+The mayor's children--I knew them all by sight, though nothing more;
+for their father was a lawyer, and mine a tanner; they belonged to
+Abbey folk and orthodoxy, I to the Society of Friends--the mayor's
+rosy children seemed greatly amused by watching us shivering
+shelterers from the rain.  Doubtless our position made their own
+appear all the pleasanter.  For myself it mattered little; but for
+this poor, desolate, homeless, wayfaring lad to stand in sight of
+their merry nursery window, and hear the clatter of voices, and of
+not unwelcome dinner-sounds--I wondered how he felt it.
+
+Just at this minute another head came to the window, a somewhat older
+child; I had met her with the rest; she was only a visitor.  She
+looked at us, then disappeared.  Soon after, we saw the front door
+half opened, and an evident struggle taking place behind it;  we even
+heard loud words across the narrow street.
+
+"I will--I say I will."
+
+"You shan't, Miss Ursula."
+
+"But I will!"
+
+And there stood the little girl, with a loaf in one hand and a
+carving-knife in the other.  She succeeded in cutting off a large
+slice, and holding it out.
+
+"Take it, poor boy!--you look so hungry.  Do take it."  But the
+servant forced her in, and the door was shut upon a sharp cry.
+
+It made John Halifax start, and look up at the nursery window, which
+was likewise closed.  We heard nothing more.  After a minute he
+crossed the street, and picked up the slice of bread.  Now in those
+days bread was precious, exceedingly.  The poor folk rarely got it;
+they lived on rye or meal.  John Halifax had probably not tasted
+wheaten bread like this for months:  it appeared not, he eyed it so
+ravenously;--then, glancing towards the shut door, his mind seemed to
+change.  He was a long time before he ate a morsel; when he did so,
+it was quietly and slowly; looking very thoughtful all the while.
+
+As soon as the rain ceased, we took our way home, down the High
+Street, towards the Abbey church--he guiding my carriage along in
+silence.  I wished he would talk, and let me hear again his pleasant
+Cornish accent.
+
+"How strong you are!" said I, sighing, when, with a sudden pull, he
+had saved me from being overturned by a horseman riding past--young
+Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe House, who never cared where he galloped
+or whom he hurt--"So tall and so strong."
+
+"Am I?  Well, I shall want my strength."
+
+"How?"
+
+"To earn my living."
+
+He drew up his broad shoulders, and planted on the pavement a firmer
+foot, as if he knew he had the world before him--would meet it
+single-handed, and without fear.
+
+"What have you worked at lately?"
+
+"Anything I could get, for I have never learned a trade."
+
+"Would you like to learn one?"
+
+He hesitated a minute, as if weighing his speech.  "Once I thought I
+should like to be what my father was."
+
+"What was he?"
+
+"A scholar and a gentleman."
+
+This was news, though it did not much surprise me.  My father, tanner
+as he was, and pertinaciously jealous of the dignity of trade, yet
+held strongly the common-sense doctrine of the advantages of good
+descent; at least, in degree.  For since it is a law of nature,
+admitting only rare exceptions, that the qualities of the ancestors
+should be transmitted to the race--the fact seems patent enough, that
+even allowing equal advantages, a gentleman's son has more chances of
+growing up a gentleman than the son of a working man.  And though he
+himself, and his father before him, had both been working men, still,
+I think, Abel Fletcher never forgot that we originally came of a good
+stock, and that it pleased him to call me, his only son, after one of
+our forefathers, not unknown--Phineas Fletcher, who wrote the "Purple
+Island."
+
+Thus it seemed to me, and I doubted not it would to my father, much
+more reasonable and natural that a boy like John Halifax--in whom
+from every word he said I detected a mind and breeding above his
+outward condition--should come of gentle than of boorish blood.
+
+"Then, perhaps," I said, resuming the conversation, "you would not
+like to follow a trade?"
+
+"Yes, I should.  What would it matter to me?  My father was a
+gentleman."
+
+"And your mother?"
+
+And he turned suddenly round; his cheeks hot, his lips quivering:
+"She is dead.  I do not like to hear strangers speak about my
+mother."
+
+I asked his pardon.  It was plain he had loved and mourned her; and
+that circumstances had smothered down his quick boyish feelings into
+a man's tenacity of betraying where he had loved and mourned.  I,
+only a few minutes after, said something about wishing we were not
+"strangers."
+
+"Do you?"  The lad's half amazed, half-grateful smile went right to
+my heart.
+
+"Have you been up and down the country much?"
+
+"A great deal--these last three years; doing a hand's turn as best I
+could, in hop-picking, apple-gathering, harvesting; only this summer
+I had typhus fever, and could not work."
+
+"What did you do then?"
+
+"I lay in a barn till I got well--I'm quite well now; you need not be
+afraid."
+
+"No, indeed; I had never thought of that."
+
+We soon became quite sociable together.  He guided me carefully out
+of the town into the Abbey walk, flecked with sunshine through
+overhanging trees.  Once he stopped to pick up for me the large brown
+fan of a horse-chestnut leaf.
+
+"It's pretty, isn't it?--only it shows that autumn is come."
+
+"And how shall you live in the winter, when there is no out-of-door
+work to be had?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+The lad's countenance fell, and that hungry, weary look, which had
+vanished while we talked, returned more painfully than ever.  I
+reproached myself for having, under the influence of his merry talk,
+temporarily forgotten it.
+
+"Ah!" I cried eagerly, when we left the shade of the Abbey trees, and
+crossed the street; "here we are, at home!"
+
+"Are you?"  The homeless lad just glanced at it--the flight of
+spotless stone-steps, guarded by ponderous railings, which led to my
+father's respectable and handsome door.  "Good day, then--which means
+good-bye."
+
+I started.  The word pained me.  On my sad, lonely life--brief
+indeed, though ill health seemed to have doubled and trebled my
+sixteen years into a mournful maturity--this lad's face had come like
+a flash of sunshine; a reflection of the merry boyhood, the youth and
+strength that never were, never could be, mine.  To let it go from me
+was like going back into the dark.
+
+"Not good-bye just yet!" said I, trying painfully to disengage myself
+from my little carriage and mount the steps.  John Halifax came to my
+aid.
+
+"Suppose you let me carry you.  I could--and--and it would be great
+fun, you know."
+
+He tried to turn it into a jest, so as not to hurt me; but the
+tremble in his voice was as tender as any woman's--tenderer than any
+woman's _I_ ever was used to hear.  I put my arms round his neck; he
+lifted me safely and carefully, and set me at my own door.  Then with
+another good-bye he again turned to go.
+
+My heart cried after him with an irrepressible cry.  What I said I do
+not remember, but it caused him to return.
+
+"Is there anything more I can do for you, sir?"
+
+"Don't call me 'sir'; I am only a boy like yourself.  I want you;
+don't go yet.  Ah! here comes my father!"
+
+John Halifax stood aside, and touched his cap with a respectful
+deference, as the old man passed.
+
+"So here thee be--hast thou taken care of my son?  Did he give thee
+thy groat, my lad?"
+
+We had neither of us once thought of the money.
+
+When I acknowledged this my father laughed, called John an honest
+lad, and began searching in his pocket for some larger coin.  I
+ventured to draw his ear down and whispered something--but I got no
+answer; meanwhile, John Halifax for the third time was going away.
+
+"Stop, lad--I forget thy name--here is thy groat, and a shilling
+added, for being kind to my son."
+
+"Thank you, but I don't want payment for kindness."
+
+He kept the groat, and put back the shilling into my father's hand.
+
+"Eh!" said the old man, much astonished, "thee'rt an odd lad; but I
+can't stay talking with thee.  Come in to dinner, Phineas.  I say,"
+turning back to John Halifax with a sudden thought, "art thee
+hungry?"
+
+"Very hungry."  Nature gave way at last, and great tears came into
+the poor lad's eyes.  "Nearly starving."
+
+"Bless me! then get in, and have thy dinner.  But first--" and my
+inexorable father held him by the shoulder; "thee art a decent lad,
+come of decent parents?"
+
+"Yes," almost indignantly.
+
+"Thee works for thy living?"
+
+"I do, whenever I can get it."
+
+"Thee hast never been in gaol?"
+
+"No!" thundered out the lad, with a furious look.  "I don't want your
+dinner, sir; I would have stayed, because your son asked me, and he
+was civil to me, and I liked him.  Now I think I had better go.  Good
+day, sir."
+
+There is a verse in a very old Book--even in its human histories the
+most pathetic of all books--which runs thus:
+
+"And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul,
+that the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David; and
+Jonathan loved him as his own soul."
+
+And this day, I, a poorer and more helpless Jonathan, had found my
+David.
+
+I caught him by the hand, and would not let him go.
+
+"There, get in, lads--make no more ado," said Abel Fletcher, sharply,
+as he disappeared.
+
+So, still holding my David fast, I brought him into my father's
+house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Dinner was over; my father and I took ours in the large parlour,
+where the stiff, high-backed chairs eyed one another in opposite rows
+across the wide oaken floor, shiny and hard as marble, and slippery
+as glass.  Except the table, the sideboard and the cuckoo clock,
+there was no other furniture.
+
+I dared not bring the poor wandering lad into this, my father's
+especial domain; but as soon as he was away in the tan-yard I sent
+for John.
+
+Jael brought him in; Jael, the only womankind we ever had about us,
+and who, save to me when I happened to be very ill, certainly gave no
+indication of her sex in its softness and tenderness.  There had
+evidently been wrath in the kitchen.
+
+"Phineas, the lad ha' got his dinner, and you mustn't keep 'un long.
+I bean't going to let you knock yourself up with looking after a
+beggar-boy."
+
+A beggar-boy!  The idea seemed so ludicrous, that I could not help
+smiling at it as I regarded him.  He had washed his face and combed
+out his fair curls; though his clothes were threadbare, all but
+ragged, they were not unclean; and there was a rosy, healthy
+freshness in his tanned skin, which showed he loved and delighted in
+what poor folk generally abominate--water.  And now the sickness of
+hunger had gone from his face, the lad, if not actually what our
+scriptural Saxon terms "well-favoured," was certainly "well-liking."
+A beggar-boy, indeed!  I hoped he had not heard Jael's remark.  But
+he had.
+
+"Madam," said he, with a bow of perfect good-humour, and even some
+sly drollery, "you mistake:  I never begged in my life:  I'm a person
+of independent property, which consists of my head and my two hands,
+out of which I hope to realise a large capital some day."
+
+I laughed.  Jael retired, abundantly mystified, and rather cross.
+John Halifax came to my easy chair, and in an altered tone asked me
+how I felt, and if he could do anything for me before he went away.
+
+"You'll not go away; not till my father comes home, at least?"  For I
+had been revolving many plans, which had one sole aim and object, to
+keep near me this lad, whose companionship and help seemed to me,
+brotherless, sisterless, and friendless as I was, the very thing that
+would give me an interest in life, or, at least, make it drag on less
+wearily.  To say that what I projected was done out of charity or
+pity would not be true; it was simple selfishness, if that be
+selfishness which makes one leap towards, and cling to, a possible
+strength and good, which I conclude to be the secret of all those
+sudden likings that spring more from instinct than reason.  I do not
+attempt to account for mine:  I know not why "the soul of Jonathan
+clave to the soul of David."  I only know that it was so, and that
+the first day I beheld the lad John Halifax, I, Phineas Fletcher,
+"loved him as my own soul."
+
+Thus, my entreaty, "You'll not go away?" was so earnest, that it
+apparently touched the friendless boy to the core.
+
+"Thank you," he said, in an unsteady voice, as leaning against the
+fire-place he drew his hand backwards and forwards across his face:
+"you are very kind; I'll stay an hour or so, if you wish it."
+
+"Then come and sit down here, and let us have a talk."
+
+What this talk was, I cannot now recall, save that it ranged over
+many and wide themes, such as boys delight in--chiefly of life and
+adventure.  He knew nothing of my only world--books.
+
+"Can you read?" he asked me at last, suddenly.
+
+"I should rather think so."  And I could not help smiling, being
+somewhat proud of my erudition.
+
+"And write?"
+
+"Oh, yes; certainly."
+
+He thought a minute, and then said, in a low tone, "I can't write,
+and I don't know when I shall be able to learn; I wish you would put
+down something in a book for me."
+
+"That I will."
+
+He took out of his pocket a little case of leather, with an under one
+of black silk; within this, again, was a book.  He would not let it
+go out of his hands, but held it so that I could see the leaves.  It
+was a Greek Testament.
+
+"Look here."
+
+He pointed to the fly-leaf, and I read:
+
+"Guy Halifax, his Book.
+
+"Guy Halifax, gentleman, married Muriel Joyce, spinster, May 17, in
+the year of our Lord 1779.
+
+"John Halifax, their son, born June 18, 1780."
+
+There was one more entry, in a feeble, illiterate female hand:  "Guy
+Halifax, died Jannary 4, 1781."
+
+"What shall I write, John?" said I, after a minute or so of silence.
+
+"I'll tell you presently.  Can I get you a pen?"
+
+He leaned on my shoulder with his left hand, but his right never once
+let go of the precious book.
+
+"Write--'Muriel Halifax, died January 1, 1791.'"
+
+"Nothing more?"
+
+"Nothing more."
+
+He looked at the writing for a minute or two, dried it carefully by
+the fire, replaced the book in its two cases, and put it into his
+pocket.  He said no other word but "Thank you," and I asked him no
+questions.
+
+This was all I ever heard of the boy's parentage:  nor do I believe
+he knew more himself.  He was indebted to no forefathers for a family
+history:  the chronicle commenced with himself, and was altogether
+his own making.  No romantic antecedents ever turned up:  his lineage
+remained uninvestigated, and his pedigree began and ended with his
+own honest name--John Halifax.
+
+Jael kept coming in and out of the parlour on divers excuses, eyeing
+very suspiciously John Halifax and me; especially when she heard me
+laughing--a rare and notable fact--for mirth was not the fashion in
+our house, nor the tendency of my own nature.  Now this young lad,
+hardly as the world had knocked him about even already, had an
+overflowing spirit of quiet drollery and healthy humour, which was to
+me an inexpressible relief.  It gave me something I did not possess--
+something entirely new.  I could not look at the dancing brown eyes,
+at the quaint dimples of lurking fun that played hide-and-seek under
+the firm-set mouth, without feeling my heart cheered and delighted,
+like one brought out of a murky chamber into the open day.
+
+But all this was highly objectionable to Jael.
+
+"Phineas!"--and she planted herself before me at the end of the
+table--"it's a fine, sunshiny day:  thee ought to be out."
+
+"I have been out, thank you, Jael."  And John and I went on talking.
+
+"Phineas!"--a second and more determined attack--"too much laughing
+bean't good for thee; and it's time this lad were going about his own
+business."
+
+"Hush!--nonsense, Jael."
+
+"No--she's right," said John Halifax, rising, while that look of
+premature gravity, learned doubtless out of hard experience, chased
+all the boyish fun from his face.  "I've had a merry day--thank you
+kindly for it! and now I'll be gone."
+
+Gone!  It was not to be thought of--at least, not till my father came
+home.  For now, more determinedly than ever, the plan which I had
+just ventured to hint at to my father fixed itself on my mind.
+Surely he would not refuse me--me, his sickly boy, whose life had in
+it so little pleasure.
+
+"Why do you want to go?  You have no work?"
+
+"No; I wish I had.  But I'll get some."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Just by trying everything that comes to hand.  That's the only way.
+I never wanted bread, nor begged it, yet--though I've often been
+rather hungry.  And as for clothes"--he looked down on his own, light
+and threadbare, here and there almost burst into holes by the stout
+muscles of the big growing boy--looked rather disconsolately.  "I'm
+afraid SHE would be sorry--that's all!  She always kept me so tidy."
+
+By the way he spoke, "SHE" must have meant his mother.  There the
+orphan lad had an advantage over me; alas! I did not remember mine.
+
+"Come," I said, for now I had quite made up my mind to take no
+denial, and fear no rebuff from my father; "cheer up.  Who knows what
+may turn up?"
+
+"Oh yes, something always does; I'm not afraid!"  He tossed back his
+curls, and looked smiling out through the window at the blue sky;
+that steady, brave, honest smile, which will meet Fate in every turn,
+and fairly coax the jade into good humour.
+
+"John, do you know you're uncommonly like a childish hero of mine--
+Dick Whittington?  Did you ever hear of him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Come into the garden then"--for I caught another ominous vision of
+Jael in the doorway, and I did not want to vex my good old nurse;
+besides, unlike John, I was anything but brave.  "You'll hear the
+Abbey bells chime presently--not unlike Bow bells, I used to fancy
+sometimes; and we'll lie on the grass, and I'll tell you the whole
+true and particular story of Sir Richard Whittington."
+
+I lifted myself, and began looking for my crutches.  John found and
+put them into my hand, with a grave, pitiful look.
+
+"You don't need those sort of things," I said, making pretence to
+laugh, for I had not grown used to them, and felt often ashamed.
+
+"I hope you will not need them always."
+
+"Perhaps not--Dr. Jessop isn't sure.  But it doesn't matter much;
+most likely I shan't live long."  For this was, God forgive me,
+always the last and greatest comfort I had.
+
+John looked at me--surprised, troubled, compassionate--but he did not
+say a word.  I hobbled past him; he following through the long
+passage to the garden door.  There I paused--tired out.  John Halifax
+took gentle hold of my shoulder.
+
+"I think, if you did not mind, I'm sure I could carry you.  I carried
+a meal-sack once, weighing eight stone."
+
+I burst out laughing, which maybe was what he wanted, and forthwith
+consented to assume the place of the meal-sack.  He took me on his
+back---what a strong fellow  he was!--and fairly trotted with me down
+the garden walk.  We were both very merry; and though I was his
+senior I seemed with him, out of my great weakness and infirmity, to
+feel almost like a child.
+
+"Please to take me to that clematis arbour; it looks over the Avon.
+Now, how do you like our garden?"
+
+"It's a nice place."
+
+He did not go into ecstasies, as I had half expected; but gazed about
+him observantly, while a quiet, intense satisfaction grew and
+diffused itself over his whole countenance.
+
+"It's a VERY nice place."
+
+Certainly it was.  A large square, chiefly grass, level as a
+bowling-green, with borders round.  Beyond, divided by a low hedge,
+was the kitchen and fruit garden--my father's pride, as this
+old-fashioned pleasaunce was mine.  When, years ago, I was too weak
+to walk, I knew, by crawling, every inch of the soft, green, mossy,
+daisy-patterned carpet, bounded by its broad gravel walk; and above
+that, apparently shut in as with an impassable barrier from the outer
+world, by a three-sided fence, the high wall, the yew-hedge, and the
+river.
+
+John Halifax's comprehensive gaze seemed to take in all.
+
+"Have you lived here long?" he asked me.
+
+"Ever since I was born."
+
+"Ah!--well, it's a nice place," he repeated, somewhat sadly.  "This
+grass plot is very even--thirty yards square, I should guess.  I'd
+get up and pace it; only I'm rather tired."
+
+"Are you?  Yet you would carry--"
+
+"Oh--that's nothing.  I've often walked farther than to-day.  But
+still it's a good step across the country since morning."
+
+"How far have you come?"
+
+"From the foot of those hills--I forget what they call them--over
+there.  I have seen bigger ones--but they're steep enough--bleak and
+cold, too, especially when one is lying out among the sheep.  At a
+distance they look pleasant.  This is a very pretty view."
+
+Ay, so I had always thought it; more so than ever now, when I had
+some one to say to how "very pretty" it was.  Let me describe it--
+this first landscape, the sole picture of my boyish days, and vivid
+as all such pictures are.
+
+At the end of the arbour the wall which enclosed us on the riverward
+side was cut down--my father had done it at my asking--so as to make
+a seat, something after the fashion of Queen Mary's seat at Stirling,
+of which I had read.  Thence, one could see a goodly sweep of
+country.  First, close below, flowed the Avon--Shakspeare's Avon--
+here a narrow, sluggish stream, but capable, as we at Norton Bury
+sometimes knew to our cost, of being roused into fierceness and foam.
+Now it slipped on quietly enough, contenting itself with turning a
+flour-mill hard by, the lazy whirr of which made a sleepy, incessant
+monotone which I was fond of hearing.
+
+From the opposite bank stretched a wide green level, called the Ham--
+dotted with pasturing cattle of all sorts.  Beyond it was a second
+river, forming an arch of a circle round the verdant flat.  But the
+stream itself lay so low as to be invisible from where we sat; you
+could only trace the line of its course by the small white sails that
+glided in and out, oddly enough, from behind clumps of trees, and
+across meadow lands.
+
+They attracted John's attention.  "Those can't be boats, surely.  Is
+there water there?"
+
+"To be sure, or you would not see the sails.  It is the Severn;
+though at this distance you can't perceive it; yet it is deep enough
+too, as you may see by the boats it carries.  You would hardly
+believe so, to look at it here--but I believe it gets broader and
+broader, and turns out a noble river by the time it reaches the
+King's Roads, and forms the Bristol Channel."
+
+"I've seen that!" cried John, with a bright look.  "Ah, I like the
+Severn."
+
+He stood gazing at it a good while, a new expression dawning in his
+eyes.  Eyes in which then, for the first time, I watched a thought
+grow, and grow, till out of them was shining a beauty absolutely
+divine.
+
+All of a sudden the Abbey chimes burst out, and made the lad start.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Turn again, Whittington, Lord Mayor of London," I sang to the bells;
+and then it seemed such a commonplace history, and such a very low
+degree of honour to arrive at, that I was really glad I had forgotten
+to tell John the story.  I merely showed him where, beyond our garden
+wall, and in the invisible high road that interposed, rose up the
+grim old Abbey tower.
+
+"Probably this garden belonged to the Abbey in ancient time--our
+orchard is so fine.  The monks may have planted it; they liked fruit,
+those old fellows."
+
+"Oh! did they!"  He evidently did not quite comprehend, but was
+trying, without asking, to find out what I referred to.  I was almost
+ashamed, lest he might think I wanted to show off my superior
+knowledge.
+
+"The monks were parsons, John, you know.  Very good men, I dare say,
+but rather idle."
+
+"Oh, indeed.  Do you think they planted that yew hedge?"  And he went
+to examine it.
+
+Now, far and near, our yew-hedge was noted.  There was not its like
+in the whole country.  It was about fifteen feet high, and as many
+thick.  Century after century of growth, with careful clipping and
+training, had compacted it into a massive green barrier, as close and
+impervious as a wall.
+
+John poked in and about it--peering through every interstice--leaning
+his breast against the solid depth of branches; but their close
+shield resisted all his strength.
+
+At last he came back to me, his face glowing with the vain efforts he
+had made.
+
+"What were you about?  Did you want to get through?"
+
+"I wanted just to see if it were possible."
+
+I shook my head.  "What would you do, John, if you were shut up here,
+and had to get over the yew-hedge?  You could not climb it?"
+
+"I know that, and, therefore, should not waste time in trying."
+
+"Would you give up, then?"
+
+He smiled--there was no "giving up" in that smile of his.  "I'll tell
+you what I'd do--I'd begin and break it, twig by twig, till I forced
+my way through, and got out safe at the other side."
+
+"Well done, lad!--but if it's all the same to thee, I would rather
+thee did not try that experiment upon MY hedge at present."
+
+My father had come behind, and overheard us, unobserved.  We were
+both somewhat confounded, though a grim kindliness of aspect showed
+that he was not displeased--nay, even amused.
+
+"Is that thy usual fashion of getting over a difficulty, friend--
+what's thy name?"
+
+I supplied the answer.  The minute Abel Fletcher appeared, John
+seemed to lose all his boyish fun, and go back to that premature
+gravity and hardness of demeanour which I supposed his harsh
+experience of the world and of men had necessarily taught him; but
+which was very sad to see in a lad so young.
+
+My father sat down beside me on the bench--pushed aside an intrusive
+branch of clematis--finally, because it would come back and tickle
+his bald pate, broke it off, and threw it into the river:  then,
+leaning on his stick with both hands, eyed John Halifax sharply, all
+over, from top to toe.
+
+"Didn't thee say thee wanted work?  It looks rather like it."
+
+His glance upon the shabby clothes made the boy colour violently.
+
+"Oh, thee need'st not be ashamed; better men than thee have been in
+rags.  Hast thee any money?"
+
+"The groat you gave, that is, paid me; I never take what I don't
+earn," said the lad, sticking a hand in either poor empty pocket.
+
+"Don't be afraid--I was not going to give thee anything--except,
+maybe--Would thee like some work?"
+
+"O sir!"
+
+"O father!"
+
+I hardly know which was the most grateful cry.
+
+Abel Fletcher looked surprised, but on the whole not ill-pleased.
+Putting on and pulling down his broad-brimmed hat, he sat
+meditatively for a minute or so; making circles in the gravel walk
+with the end of his stick.  People said--nay, Jael herself, once, in
+a passion, had thrown the fact at me--that the wealthy Friend himself
+had come to Norton Bury without a shilling in his pocket.
+
+"Well, what work canst thee do, lad?"
+
+"Anything," was the eager answer.
+
+"Anything generally means nothing," sharply said my father; "what
+hast thee been at all this year?--The truth, mind!"
+
+John's eyes flashed, but a look from mine seemed to set him right
+again.  He said quietly and respectfully, "Let me think a minute, and
+I'll tell you.  All spring I was at a farmer's, riding the
+plough-horses, hoeing turnips; then I went up the hills with some
+sheep:  in June I tried hay-making, and caught a fever--you needn't
+start, sir, I've been well these six weeks, or I wouldn't have come
+near your son--then--"
+
+"That will do, lad--I'm satisfied."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"Thee need not say 'sir'--it is folly.  I am Abel Fletcher."  For my
+father retained scrupulously the Friend's mode of speech, though he
+was practically but a lax member of the Society, and had married out
+of its pale.  In this announcement of his plain name appeared, I
+fancy, more pride than humility.
+
+"Very well, I will remember," answered the boy fearlessly, though
+with an amused twist of his mouth, speedily restrained.  "And now,
+Abel Fletcher, I shall be willing and thankful for any work you can
+give me."
+
+"We'll see about it."
+
+
+I looked gratefully and hopefully at my father--but his next words
+rather modified my pleasure.
+
+"Phineas, one of my men at the tan-yard has gone and 'listed this
+day--left an honest livelihood to be a paid cut-throat.  Now, if I
+could get a lad--one too young to be caught hold of at every
+pot-house by that man of blood, the recruiting sergeant--Dost thee
+think this lad is fit to take the place?"
+
+"Whose place, father?"
+
+"Bill Watkins'."
+
+I was dumb-foundered!  I had occasionally seen the said Bill Watkins,
+whose business it was to collect the skins which my father had bought
+from the farmers round about.  A distinct vision presented itself to
+me of Bill and his cart, from which dangled the sanguinary exuviae of
+defunct animals, while in front the said Bill sat enthroned,
+dirty-clad, and dirty-handed, with his pipe in his mouth.  The idea
+of John Halifax in such a position was not agreeable.
+
+"But, father--"
+
+He read deprecation in my looks--alas! he knew too well how I
+disliked the tan-yard and all belonging to it.  "Thee'rt a fool, and
+the lad's another.  He may go about his business for me."
+
+"But, father, isn't there anything else?"
+
+"I have nothing else, or if I had I wouldn't give it.  He that will
+not work neither shall he eat."
+
+"I will work," said John, sturdily--he had listened, scarcely
+comprehending, to my father and me.  "I don't care what it is, if
+only it's honest work."
+
+Abel Fletcher was mollified.  He turned his back on me--but that I
+little minded--and addressed himself solely to John Halifax.
+
+"Canst thee drive?"
+
+"That I can!" and his eyes brightened with boyish delight.
+
+"Tut! it's only a cart--the cart with the skins.  Dost thee know
+anything of tanning?"
+
+"No, but I can learn."
+
+"Hey, not so fast! still, better be fast than slow.  In the meantime,
+thee can drive the cart."
+
+"Thank you, sir--Abel Fletcher, I mean--I'll do it well.  That is, as
+well as I can."
+
+"And mind! no stopping on the road.  No drinking, to find the king's
+cursed shilling at the bottom of the glass, like poor Bill, for thy
+mother to come crying and pestering.  Thee hasn't got one, eh?  So
+much the better, all women are born fools, especially mothers."
+
+"Sir!"  The lad's face was all crimson and quivering; his voice
+choked; it was with difficulty he smothered down a burst of tears.
+Perhaps this self-control was more moving than if he had wept--at
+least, it answered better with my father.
+
+After a few minutes more, during which his stick had made a little
+grave in the middle of the walk, and buried something there--I think
+something besides the pebble--Abel Fletcher said, not unkindly:
+
+"Well, I'll take thee; though it isn't often I take a lad without a
+character of some sort--I suppose thee hast none."
+
+"None," was the answer, while the straightforward, steady gaze which
+accompanied it unconsciously contradicted the statement; his own
+honest face was the lad's best witness--at all events I thought so.
+
+"'Tis done then," said my father, concluding the business more
+quickly than I had ever before known his cautious temper settle even
+such a seemingly trifling matter.  I say SEEMINGLY.  How blindly we
+talk when we talk of "trifles."
+
+Carelessly rising, he, from some kindly impulse, or else to mark the
+closing of the bargain, shook the boy's hand, and left in it a
+shilling.
+
+"What is this for?"
+
+"To show I have hired thee as my servant."
+
+"Servant!" John repeated hastily, and rather proudly.  "Oh yes, I
+understand--well, I will try and serve you well."
+
+My father did not notice that manly, self-dependent smile.  He was
+too busy calculating how many more of those said shillings would be a
+fair equivalent for such labour as a lad, ever so much the junior of
+Bill Watkins, could supply.  After some cogitation he hit upon the
+right sum.  I forget how much--be sure it was not over much; for
+money was scarce enough in this war-time; and besides, there was a
+belief afloat, so widely that it tainted even my worthy father, that
+plenty was not good for the working-classes; they required to be kept
+low.
+
+Having settled the question of wages, which John Halifax did not
+debate at all, my father left us, but turned back when half-way
+across the green-turfed square.
+
+"Thee said thee had no money; there's a week in advance, my son being
+witness I pay it thee; and I can pay thee a shilling less every
+Saturday till we get straight."
+
+"Very well, sir; good afternoon, and thank you."
+
+John took off his cap as he spoke--Abel Fletcher, involuntarily
+almost, touched his hat in return of the salutation.  Then he walked
+away, and we had the garden all to ourselves--we, Jonathan and his
+new-found David.
+
+I did not "fall upon his neck," like the princely Hebrew, to whom I
+have likened myself, but whom, alas! I resembled in nothing save my
+loving.  But I grasped his hand, for the first time, and looking up
+at him, as he stood thoughtfully by me, whispered, "that I was very
+glad."
+
+"Thank you--so am I," said he, in a low tone.  Then all his old
+manner returned; he threw his battered cap high up in the air, and
+shouted out, "Hurrah!"--a thorough boy.
+
+And I, in my poor, quavering voice, shouted too.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+When I was young, and long after then, at intervals, I had the very
+useless, sometimes harmful, and invariably foolish habit of keeping a
+diary.  To me, at least, it has been less foolish and harmful than to
+most; and out of it, together with much drawn out of the stores of a
+memory, made preternaturally vivid by a long introverted life, which,
+colourless itself, had nothing to do but to reflect and retain clear
+images of the lives around it--out of these two sources I have
+compiled the present history.
+
+Therein, necessarily, many blank epochs occur.  These I shall not try
+to fill up, but merely resume the thread of narration as recollection
+serves.
+
+Thus, after this first day, many days came and went before I again
+saw John Halifax--almost before I again thought of him.  For it was
+one of my seasons of excessive pain; when I found it difficult to
+think of anything beyond those four grey-painted walls; where
+morning, noon, and night slipped wearily away, marked by no changes,
+save from daylight to candle-light, from candle-light to dawn.
+
+Afterwards, as my pain abated, I began to be haunted by occasional
+memories of something pleasant that had crossed my dreary life;
+visions of a brave, bright young face, ready alike to battle with and
+enjoy the world.  I could hear the voice that, speaking to me, was
+always tender with pity--yet not pity enough to wound:  I could see
+the peculiar smile just creeping round his grave mouth--that
+irrepressible smile, indicating the atmosphere of thorough
+heart-cheerfulness, which ripens all the fruits of a noble nature,
+and without which the very noblest has about it something
+unwholesome, blank, and cold.
+
+I wondered if John had ever asked for me.  At length I put the
+question.
+
+Jael "thought he had--but wasn't sure.  Didn't bother her head about
+such folk."
+
+"If he asked again, might he come up-stairs?"
+
+"No."
+
+I was too weak to combat, and Jael was too strong an adversary; so I
+lay for days and days in my sick room, often thinking, but never
+speaking, about the lad.  Never once asking for him to come to me;
+not though it would have been life to me to see his merry face--I
+longed after him so.
+
+At last I broke the bonds of sickness--which Jael always riveted as
+long and as tightly as she could--and plunged into the outer world
+again.
+
+It was one market-day--Jael being absent--that I came down-stairs.  A
+soft, bright, autumn morning, mild as spring, coaxing a wandering
+robin to come and sing to me, loud as a quire of birds, out of the
+thinned trees of the Abbey yard.  I opened the window to hear him,
+though all the while in mortal fear of Jael.  I listened, but caught
+no tone of her sharp voice, which usually came painfully from the
+back regions of the house; it would ill have harmonised with the
+sweet autumn day and the robin's song.  I sat, idly thinking so, and
+wondering whether it were a necessary and universal fact that human
+beings, unlike the year, should become harsh and unlovely as they
+grow old.
+
+My robin had done singing, and I amused myself with watching a spot
+of scarlet winding down the rural road, our house being on the verge
+where Norton Bury melted into "the country."  It turned out to be the
+cloak of a well-to-do young farmer's wife riding to market in her
+cart beside her jolly-looking spouse.  Very spruce and self-satisfied
+she appeared, and the market-people turned to stare after her, for
+her costume was a novelty then.  Doubtless, many thought as I did,
+how much prettier was scarlet than duffle grey.
+
+Behind the farmer's cart came another, which at first I scarcely
+noticed, being engrossed by the ruddy face under the red cloak.  The
+farmer himself nodded good-humouredly, but Mrs. Scarlet-cloak turned
+up her nose.  "Oh, pride, pride!" I thought, amused, and watched the
+two carts, the second of which was with difficulty passing the
+farmer's, on the opposite side of the narrow road.  At last it
+succeeded in getting in advance, to the young woman's evident
+annoyance, until the driver, turning, lifted his hat to her with such
+a merry, frank, pleasant smile.
+
+Surely, I knew that smile, and the well-set head with its light curly
+hair.  Also, alas! I knew the cart with relics of departed sheep
+dangling out behind.  It was our cart of skins, and John Halifax was
+driving it.
+
+"John! John!" I called out, but he did not hear, for his horse had
+taken fright at the red cloak, and required a steady hand.  Very
+steady the boy's hand was, so that the farmer clapped his two great
+fists, and shouted "Bray-vo!"
+
+But John--my John Halifax--he sat in his cart, and drove.  His
+appearance was much as when I first saw him--shabbier, perhaps, as if
+through repeated drenchings; this had been a wet autumn, Jael had
+told me.  Poor John!--well might he look gratefully up at the clear
+blue sky to-day; ay, and the sky never looked down on a brighter,
+cheerier face, the same face which, whatever rags it surmounted,
+would, I believe, have ennobled them all.
+
+I leaned out, watching him approach our house; watching him with so
+great pleasure that I forgot to wonder whether or no he would notice
+me.  He did not at first, being busy over his horse; until, just as
+the notion flashed across my mind that he was passing by our house--
+also, how keenly his doing so would pain me--the lad looked up.
+
+A beaming smile of surprise and pleasure, a friendly nod, then all at
+once his manner changed; he took off his cap, and bowed ceremoniously
+to his master's son.
+
+For the moment I was hurt; then I could not but respect the honest
+pride which thus intimated that he knew his own position, and wished
+neither to ignore nor to alter it; all advances between us must
+evidently come from my side.  So, having made his salutation, he was
+driving on, when I called after him,
+
+"John!  John!"
+
+"Yes, sir.  I am so glad you're better again."
+
+"Stop one minute till I come out to you."  And I crawled on my
+crutches to the front door, forgetting everything but the pleasure of
+meeting him--forgetting even my terror of Jael.  What could she say?
+even though she held nominally the Friends' doctrine--obeyed in the
+letter at least, 'Call no man your master'--what would Jael say if
+she found me, Phineas Fletcher, talking in front of my father's
+respectable mansion with the vagabond lad who drove my father's cart
+of skins?
+
+But I braved her, and opened the door.  "John, where are you?"
+
+"Here" (he stood at the foot of the steps, with the reins on his
+arm); "did you want me?"
+
+"Yes.  Come up here; never mind the cart."
+
+But that was not John's way.  He led the refractory horse, settled
+him comfortably under a tree, and gave him in charge to a small boy.
+Then he bounded back across the road, and was up the steps to my side
+in a single leap.
+
+"I had no notion of seeing you.  They said you were in bed
+yesterday."  (Then he HAD been inquiring for me!)  "Ought you to be
+standing at the door this cold day?"
+
+"It's quite warm," I said, looking up at the sunshine, and shivering.
+
+"Please go in."
+
+"If you'll come too."
+
+He nodded, then put his arm round mine, and helped me in, as if he
+had been a big elder brother, and I a little ailing child.  Well
+nursed and carefully guarded as I had always been, it was the first
+time in my life I ever knew the meaning of that rare thing,
+tenderness.  A quality different from kindliness, affectionateness,
+or benevolence; a quality which can exist only in strong, deep, and
+undemonstrative natures, and therefore in its perfection is oftenest
+found in men.  John Halifax had it more than any one, woman or man,
+that I ever knew.
+
+"I'm glad you're better," he said, and said no more.  But one look of
+his expressed as much as half-a-dozen sympathetic sentences of other
+people.
+
+"And how have you been, John?  How do you like the tan-yard?  Tell me
+frankly."
+
+He pulled a wry face, though comical withal, and said, cheerily,
+"Everybody must like what brings them their daily bread.  It's a
+grand thing for me not to have been hungry for nearly thirty days."
+
+"Poor John!"  I put my hand on his wrist--his strong, brawny wrist.
+Perhaps the contrast involuntarily struck us both with the truth--
+good for both to learn--that Heaven's ways are not so unequal as we
+sometimes fancy they seem.
+
+"I have so often wanted to see you, John.  Couldn't you come in now?"
+
+He shook his head, and pointed to the cart.  That minute, through the
+open hall-door, I perceived Jael sauntering leisurely home from
+market.
+
+Now, if I was a coward, it was not for myself this time.  The
+avalanche of ill-words I knew must fall--but it should not fall on
+him, if I could help it.
+
+"Jump up on your cart, John.  Let me see how well you can drive.
+There--good-bye, for the present.  Are you going to the tan-yard?"
+
+"Yes--for the rest of the day."  And he made a face as if he did not
+quite revel in that delightful prospect.  No wonder!
+
+"I'll come and see you there this afternoon."
+
+"No?"--with a look of delighted surprise.  "But you must not--you
+ought not."
+
+"But I WILL!"  And I laughed to hear myself actually using that
+phrase.  What would Jael have said?
+
+What--as she arrived just in time to receive a half-malicious,
+half-ceremonious bow from John, as he drove off--what that excellent
+woman did say I have not the slightest recollection.  I only remember
+that it did not frighten and grieve me as such attacks used to do;
+that, in her own vernacular, it all "went in at one ear, and out at
+t'other;" that I persisted in looking out until the last glimmer of
+the bright curls had disappeared down the sunshiny road--then shut
+the front door, and crept in, content.
+
+Between that time and dinner I sat quiet enough even to please Jael.
+I was thinking over the beautiful old Bible story, which latterly had
+so vividly impressed itself on my mind; thinking of Jonathan, as he
+walked "by the stone Ezel," with the shepherd-lad, who was to be king
+of Israel.  I wondered whether he would have loved him, and seen the
+same future perfection in him, had Jonathan, the king's son, met the
+poor David keeping his sheep among the folds of Bethlehem.
+
+When my father came home he found me waiting in my place at table.
+He only said, "Thee art better then, my son?"  But I knew how glad he
+was to see me.  He gave token of this by being remarkably conversible
+over our meal--though, as usual, his conversation had a sternly moral
+tone, adapted to the improvement of what he persisted in considering
+my "infant" mind.  It had reference to an anecdote Dr.  Jessop had
+just been telling him--about a little girl, one of our doctor's
+patients, who in some passionate struggle had hurt herself very much
+with a knife.
+
+"Let this be a warning to thee, my son, not to give way to violent
+passions."  (My good father, thought I, there is little fear.)  "For,
+this child--I remember her father well, for he lived at Kingswell
+here; he was violent too, and much given to evil ways before he went
+abroad--Phineas, this child, this miserable child, will bear the mark
+of the wound all her life."
+
+"Poor thing!" said I, absently.
+
+"No need to pity her; her spirit is not half broken yet.  Thomas
+Jessop said to me, 'That little Ursula--'"
+
+"Is her name Ursula?"  And I called to mind the little girl who had
+tried to give some bread to the hungry John Halifax, and whose cry of
+pain we heard as the door shut upon her.  Poor little lady! how sorry
+I was.  I knew John would be so infinitely sorry too--and all to no
+purpose--that I determined not to tell him anything about it.  The
+next time I saw Dr. Jessop I asked him after the child, and learned
+she had been taken away somewhere, I forgot where; and then the whole
+affair slipped from my memory.
+
+"Father," said I, when he ceased talking--and Jael, who always ate
+her dinner at the same time and table as ourselves, but "below the
+salt," had ceased nodding a respectful running comment on all he
+said--"Father?"
+
+"Well, my son."
+
+"I should like to go with thee to the tan-yard this afternoon."
+
+Here Jael, who had been busy pulling back the table, replacing the
+long row of chairs, and re-sanding the broad centre Sahara of the
+room to its dreary, pristine aridness, stopped, fairly aghast with
+amazement.
+
+"Abel--Abel Fletcher! the lad's just out of his bed; he is no more
+fit to--"
+
+"Pshaw, woman!" was the sharp answer.  "So, Phineas, thee art really
+strong enough to go out?"
+
+"If thou wilt take me, father."
+
+He looked pleased, as he always did when I used the Friends' mode of
+phraseology--for I had not been brought up in the Society; this
+having been the last request of my mother, rigidly observed by her
+husband.  The more so, people said, as while she lived they had not
+been quite happy together.  But whatever he was to her, in their
+brief union, he was a good father to me, and for his sake I have
+always loved and honoured the Society of Friends.
+
+"Phineas," said he (after having stopped a volley of poor Jael's
+indignations, beseechings, threats, and prognostications, by a
+resolute "Get the lad ready to go")--"Phineas, my son, I rejoice to
+see thy mind turning towards business.  I trust, should better health
+be vouchsafed thee, that some day soon--"
+
+"Not just yet, father," said I, sadly--for I knew what he referred
+to, and that it would never be.  Mentally and physically I alike
+revolted from my father's trade.  I held the tan-yard in abhorrence--
+to enter it made me ill for days; sometimes for months and months I
+never went near it.  That I should ever be what was my poor father's
+one desire, his assistant and successor in his business, was, I knew,
+a thing totally impossible.
+
+It hurt me a little that my project of going with him to-day should
+in any way have deceived him; and rather silently and drearily we set
+out together; progressing through Norton Bury streets in our old way,
+my father marching along in his grave fashion, I steering my little
+carriage, and keeping as close as I could beside him.  Many a person
+looked at us as we passed; almost everybody knew us, but few, even of
+our own neighbours, saluted us; we were Nonconformists and Quakers.
+
+I had never been in the town since the day I came through it with
+John Halifax.  The season was much later now, but it was quite warm
+still in the sunshine, and very pleasant looked the streets, even the
+close, narrow streets of Norton Bury.  I beg its pardon; antiquaries
+hold it a most "interesting and remarkable" place:  and I myself have
+sometimes admired its quaint, overhanging, ornamented house-fronts--
+blackened, and wonderfully old.  But one rarely notices what has been
+familiar throughout life; and now I was less struck by the beauty of
+the picturesque old town than by the muddiness of its pathways, and
+the mingled noises of murmuring looms, scolding women, and squabbling
+children, that came up from the alleys which lay between the High
+Street and the Avon.  In those alleys were hundreds of our poor folk
+living, huddled together in misery, rags, and dirt.  Was John Halifax
+living there too?
+
+My father's tan-yard was in an alley a little further on.  Already I
+perceived the familiar odour; sometimes a not unpleasant barky smell;
+at other times borne in horrible wafts, as if from a lately forsaken
+battle-field.  I wondered how anybody could endure it--yet some did;
+and among the workmen, as we entered, I looked round for the lad I
+knew.
+
+He was sitting in a corner in one of the sheds, helping two or three
+women to split bark, very busy at work; yet he found time to stop now
+and then, and administered a wisp of sweet hay to the old blind mare,
+as she went slowly round and round, turning the bark mill.  Nobody
+seemed to notice him, and he did not speak to anybody.
+
+As we passed John did not even see us.  I asked my father, in a
+whisper, how he liked the boy.
+
+"What boy?--eh, him?--Oh, well enough--there's no harm in him that I
+know of.  Dost thee want him to wheel thee about the yard?  Here, I
+say, lad--bless me!  I've forgot thy name."
+
+John Halifax started up at the sharp tone of command; but when he saw
+me he smiled.  My father walked on to some pits where he told me he
+was trying an important experiment, how a hide might be tanned
+completely in five months instead of eight.  I stayed behind.
+
+"John, I want you."
+
+John shook himself free of the bark-heap, and came rather
+hesitatingly at first.
+
+"Anything I can do for you, sir?"
+
+"Don't call me 'sir'; if I say 'John,' why don't you say 'Phineas'?"
+
+And I held out my hand--his was all grimed with bark-dust.
+
+"Are you not ashamed to shake hands with me?"
+
+"Nonsense, John."
+
+So we settled that point entirely.  And though he never failed to
+maintain externally a certain gentle respectfulness of demeanour
+towards me, yet it was more the natural deference of the younger to
+the elder, of the strong to the weak, than the duty paid by a
+serving-lad to his master's son.  And this was how I best liked it to
+be.
+
+He guided me carefully among the tan-pits--those deep fosses of
+abomination, with a slender network of pathways thrown between--until
+we reached the lower end of the yard.  It was bounded by the Avon
+only, and by a great heap of refuse bark.
+
+"This is not a bad place to rest in; if you liked to get out of the
+carriage I'd make you comfortable here in no time."
+
+I was quite willing; so he ran off and fetched an old horserug, which
+he laid upon the soft, dry mass.  Then he helped me thither, and
+covered me with my cloak.  Lying thus, with my hat over my eyes, just
+distinguishing the shiny glimmer of the Avon running below, and
+beyond that the green, level Ham, dotted with cows, my position was
+anything but unpleasant.  In fact, positively agreeable--ay, even
+though the tan-yard was close behind; but here it would offend none
+of my senses.
+
+"Are you comfortable, Phineas?"
+
+"Very, if you would come and sit down too."
+
+"That I will."
+
+And we then began to talk.  I asked him if he often patronised the
+bark-heap, he seemed so very much at home there.
+
+"So I am," he answered, smiling; "it is my castle--my house."
+
+"And not unpleasant to live at, either."
+
+"Except when it rains.  Does it always rain at Norton Bury?"
+
+"For shame, John!" and I pointed to the bluest of autumn skies,
+though in the distance an afternoon mist was slowly creeping on.
+
+"All very fine now, but there's a fog coming over Severn; and it is
+sure to rain at nightfall.  I shall not get my nice little bit of
+October evening."
+
+"You must spend it within doors then."  John shook his head.  "You
+ought; it must be dreadfully cold on this bark-heap after sunset."
+
+"Rather, sometimes.  Are you cold now?  Shall I fetch--but I haven't
+anything fit to wrap you in, except this rug."
+
+He muffled it closer round me; infinitely light and tender was his
+rough-looking boy's hand.
+
+"I never saw anybody so thin as you; thinner much since I saw you.
+Have you been very, very ill, Phineas?  What ailed you?"
+
+His anxiety was so earnest, that I explained to him what I may as
+well explain here, and dismiss, once for all; the useless topic, that
+from my birth I had been puny and diseased; that my life had been a
+succession of sicknesses, and that I could hope for little else until
+the end.
+
+"But don't think I mind it; John;" for I was grieved to see his
+shocked and troubled look.  "I am very content; I have a quiet home,
+a good father, and now I think and believe I have found the one thing
+I wanted--a good friend."
+
+He smiled, but only because I did.  I saw he did not understand me.
+In him, as in most strong and self-contained temperaments, was a
+certain slowness to receive impressions, which, however, being once
+received, are indelible.  Though I, being in so many things his
+opposite, had none of this peculiarity, but felt at once quickly and
+keenly, yet I rather liked the contrary in him, as I think we almost
+always do like in another those peculiarities which are most
+different from our own.  Therefore I was neither vexed nor hurt
+because the lad was slow to perceive all that he had so soon become,
+and all that I meant him to become, to me.  I knew from every tone of
+his voice, every chance expression of his honest eyes, that he was
+one of those characters in which we may be sure that for each feeling
+they express lies a countless wealth of the same, unexpressed, below;
+a character the keystone of which was that whereon is built all
+liking and all love--DEPENDABLENESS.  He was one whom you may be long
+in knowing, but whom the more you know the more you trust; and once
+trusting, you trust for ever.
+
+Perhaps I may be supposed imaginative, or, at least, premature in
+discovering all these characteristics in a boy of fourteen; and
+possibly in thus writing of him I may unwittingly be drawing a little
+from after-experience; however, being the truth, let it stand.
+
+"Come," said I, changing the conversation, "we have had enough of me;
+how goes the world with you?  Have you taken kindly to the tan-yard?
+Answer frankly."
+
+He looked at me hard, put both his hands in his pockets, and began to
+whistle a tune.
+
+"Don't shirk the question, please, John.  I want to know the real
+truth."
+
+"Well, then, I hate the tan-yard."
+
+Having relieved his mind by this ebullition, and by kicking a small
+heap of tan right down into the river, he became composed.
+
+"But, Phineas, don't imagine I intend to hate it always; I intend to
+get used to it, as many a better fellow than I has got used to many a
+worse thing.  It's wicked to hate what wins one's bread, and is the
+only thing one is likely to get on in the world with, merely because
+it's disagreeable."
+
+"You are a wise lad of your age, John."
+
+"Now don't you be laughing at me."  (But I was not, I was in solemn
+earnest).  "And don't think I'm worse than I am; and especially that
+I'm not thankful to your good father for giving me a lift in the
+world--the first I ever really had.  If I get one foot on the ladder,
+perhaps I may climb."
+
+"I should rather believe so," answered I, very confidently.  "But you
+seem to have thought a good deal about these sort of things."
+
+"Oh, yes!  I have plenty of time for thinking, and one's thoughts
+travel fast enough lying on this bark-heap--faster than indoors.  I
+often wish I could read--that is, read easily.  As it is, I have
+nothing to do but to think, and nothing to think of but myself, and
+what I should like to be."
+
+"Suppose, after Dick Whittington's fashion, you succeeded to your
+master's business, should you like to be a tanner?"
+
+He paused--his truthful face betraying him.  Then he said,
+resolutely, "I would like to be anything that was honest and
+honourable.  It's a notion of mine, that whatever a man may be, his
+trade does not make him--he makes his trade.  That is--but I know I
+can't put the subject clear, for I have not got it clear in my own
+head yet--I'm only a lad.  However, it all comes to this--that
+whether I like it or not, I'll stick to the tanning as long as I
+can."
+
+"That's right; I'm so glad.  Nevertheless"--and I watched him as he
+stood, his foot planted firmly, no easy feat on the shifting
+bark-heap, his head erect, and his mouth close, but smiling--
+"Nevertheless, John, it's my opinion that you might be anything you
+liked."
+
+He laughed.  "Questionable that--at least at present.  Whatever I may
+be, I am just now the lad that drives your father's cart, and works
+in your father's tan-yard--John Halifax, and very much at your
+service, Mr. Phineas Fletcher."
+
+Half in fun, half in earnest, he uncovered his fair locks, with a bow
+so contradictory to the rest of his appearance, that I involuntarily
+recalled the Greek Testament and "Guy Halifax, Gentleman."  However,
+that could be no matter to me, or to him either, now.  The lad, like
+many another, owed nothing to his father but his mere existence--
+Heaven knows whether that gift is oftenest a curse or a boon.
+
+The afternoon had waned during our talk; but I was very loth to part
+with my friend.  Suddenly, I thought of asking where his home was.
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Where do you live? where do you take your meals and sleep?"
+
+"Why, as to that, I have not much time for eating and drinking.
+Generally I eat my dinner as I go along the road, where there's lots
+of blackberries by way of pudding--which is grand!  Supper, when I do
+get it, I like best on this bark-heap, after the men are away, and
+the tan-yard's clear.  Your father lets me stay."
+
+"And where is your lodging, then?  Where do you sleep?"
+
+He hesitated--coloured a little.  "To tell the truth--anywhere I can.
+Generally, here."
+
+"What, out-of-doors?"
+
+"Just so."
+
+I was much shocked.  To sleep out-of-doors seemed to me the very
+lowest ebb of human misery:  so degrading, too--like a common tramp
+or vagabond, instead of a decent lad.
+
+"John, how can you--why do you--do such a thing?"
+
+"I'll tell you," said he, sitting down beside me in a dogged way, as
+if he had read my thoughts, guessed at my suspicions, and was
+determined to show that he feared neither--that he would use his own
+judgment, and follow his own will, in spite of anybody.  "Look here.
+I get three shillings a week, which is about fivepence a day; out of
+that I eat threepence--I'm a big, growing lad, and it's hard to be
+hungry.  There's twopence left to pay for lodging.  I tried it once--
+twice--at the decentest place I could find, but--" here an expression
+of intolerable disgust came over the boy's face--"I don't intend to
+try that again.  I was never used to it.  Better keep my own company
+and the open air.  Now you see."
+
+"Oh, John!"
+
+"Nay--there's no need to be sorry.  You don't know how comfortable it
+is to sleep out of doors; and so nice to wake in the middle of the
+night and see the stars shining over your head."
+
+"But isn't it very cold?"
+
+"No--not often.  I scoop out a snug little nest in the bark and curl
+up in it like a dormouse, wrapped in this rug, which one of the men
+gave me.  Besides, every morning early I take a plunge and a swim in
+the stream, and that makes me warm all day."
+
+I shivered--I who feared the touch of cold water.  Yet there with all
+his hardships, he stood before me, the model of healthy boyhood.
+Alas! I envied him.
+
+But this trying life, which he made so light of, could not go on.
+"What shall you do when winter comes?"
+
+John looked grave.  "I don't know:  I suppose I shall manage somehow-
+-like the sparrows," he answered, perceiving not how apposite his
+illustration was.  For truly he seemed as destitute as the birds of
+the air, whom ONE feedeth, when they cry to Him.
+
+My question had evidently made him thoughtful; he remained silent a
+good while.
+
+At last I said:  "John, do you remember the woman who spoke so
+sharply to you in the alley that day?"
+
+"Yes.  I shall never forget anything which happened that day," he
+answered, softly.
+
+"She was my nurse once.  She is not such a bad woman, though trouble
+has sharpened her temper.  Her biggest boy Bill, who is gone off for
+a soldier, used to drive your cart, you know."
+
+"Yes?" said John, interrogatively; for I was slow in putting forth my
+plans--that is, as much of them as it was needful he should know.
+
+"Sally is poor--not so very poor, though.  Your twopence a night
+would help her; and I dare say, if you'll let me speak to her, you
+might have Bill's attic all to yourself.  She has but one other lad
+at home:  it's worth trying for."
+
+"It is indeed.  You are very kind, Phineas."  He said no more words
+than these--but their tone spoke volumes.
+
+I got into my little carriage again, for I was most anxious not to
+lose a day in this matter.  I persuaded John to go at once with me to
+Sally Watkins.  My father was not to be seen; but I ventured to leave
+word for him that I was gone home, and had taken John Halifax with
+me:  it was astonishing how bold I felt myself growing, now that
+there was another beside myself to think and act for.
+
+We reached Widow Watkins' door.  It was a poor place--poorer than I
+had imagined;  but I remembered what agonies of cleanliness had been
+inflicted on me in nursery days; and took hope for John.
+
+Sally sat in her kitchen, tidy and subdued, mending an old jacket
+that had once been Bill's, until, being supplanted by the grand red
+coat, it descended upon Jem, the second lad.  But Bill still
+engrossed the poor mother's heart--she could do nothing but weep over
+him, and curse "Bonyparty."  Her mind was so full of this that she
+apparently failed to recognise in the decent young workman, John
+Halifax, the half-starved lad she had belaboured with her tongue in
+the alley.  She consented at once to his lodging with her--though she
+looked up with an odd stare when I said he was "a friend" of mine.
+
+So we settled our business, first all together, then Sally and I
+alone, while John went up to look at his room.  I knew I could trust
+Sally, whom I was glad enough to help, poor woman!  She promised to
+make him extra-comfortable, and keep my secret too.  When John came
+down she was quite civil to him--even friendly.
+
+She said it would really be a comfort to her, that another fine,
+strapping lad should sleep in Bill's bed, and be coming in and out of
+her house just like her poor dear boy.
+
+I felt rather doubtful of the resemblance, and indeed half-angry, but
+John only smiled.
+
+"And if, maybe, he'd do a hand's turn now and then about the kitchen-
+-I s'pose he bean't above it?"
+
+"Not a bit!" said John Halifax, pleasantly.
+
+Before we left I wanted to see his room; he carried me up, and we
+both sat down on the bed that had been poor Bill's.  It was nothing
+to boast of, being a mere sacking stuffed with hay--a blanket below,
+and another at top; I had to beg from Jael the only pair of sheets
+John owned for a long time.  The attic was very low and small, hardly
+big enough "to whip a cat round," or even a kitten--yet John gazed
+about it with an air of proud possession.
+
+"I declare I shall be as happy as a king.  Only look out of the
+window!"
+
+Ay, the window was the grand advantage; out of it one could crawl on
+to the roof, and from the roof was the finest view in all Norton
+Bury.  On one side, the town, the Abbey, and beyond it a wide stretch
+of meadow and woodland as far as you could see; on the other, the
+broad Ham, the glittering curve of Severn, and the distant country,
+sloping up into "the blue bills far away."  A picture, which in its
+incessant variety, its quiet beauty, and its inexpressibly soothing
+charm, was likely to make the simple, everyday act of "looking out o'
+window," unconsciously influence the mind as much as a world of
+books.
+
+"Do you like your 'castle,' John?" said I, when I had silently
+watched his beaming face; "will it suit you?"
+
+"I rather think it will!" be cried in hearty delight.  And my heart
+likewise was very glad.
+
+Dear little attic room! close against the sky--so close, that many a
+time the rain came pattering in, or the sun beating down upon the
+roof made it like a furnace, or the snow on the leads drifted so high
+as to obscure the window--yet how merry, how happy, we have been
+there!  How often have we both looked back upon it in after days!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Winter came early and sudden that year.
+
+It was to me a long, dreary season, worse even than my winters
+inevitably were.  I never stirred from my room, and never saw anybody
+but my father, Dr. Jessop, and Jael.  At last I took courage to say
+to the former that I wished he would send John Halifax up some day.
+
+"What does thee want the lad for?"
+
+"Only to see him."
+
+"Pshaw! a lad out o' the tan-yard is not fit company for thee.  Let
+him alone; he'll do well enough if thee doesn't try to lift him out
+of his place."
+
+Lift John Halifax out of his "place"!  I agreed with my father that
+that was impossible; but then we evidently differed widely in our
+definition of what the "place" might be.  So, afraid of doing him
+harm, and feeling how much his future depended on his favour with his
+master, I did not discuss the matter.  Only at every possible
+opportunity--and they were rare--I managed to send John a little
+note, written carefully in printed letters, for I knew he could read
+that; also a book or two, out of which he might teach himself a
+little more.
+
+Then I waited, eagerly but patiently, until spring came, when,
+without making any more fruitless efforts, I should be sure to see
+him.  I knew enough of himself, and was too jealous over his dignity,
+to wish either to force him by entreaties, or bring him by stratagem,
+into a house where he was not welcome, even though it were the house
+of my own father.
+
+One February day, when the frost had at last broken up, and soft,
+plentiful rain had half melted the great snow-drifts, which, Jael
+told me, lay about the country everywhere, I thought I would just put
+my head out of doors, to see how long the blessed spring would be in
+coming.  So I crawled down into the parlour, and out of the parlour
+into the garden; Jael scolding, my father roughly encouraging.  My
+poor father! he always had the belief that people need not be ill
+unless they chose, and that I could do a great deal if I would.
+
+I felt very strong to-day.  It was delicious to see again the green
+grass, which had been hidden for weeks; delicious to walk up and down
+in the sunshine, under the shelter of the yew hedge.  I amused myself
+by watching a pale line of snowdrops which had come up one by one,
+like prisoners of war to their execution.
+
+But the next minute I felt ashamed of the heartless simile, for it
+reminded me of poor Bill Watkins, who, taken after the battle of
+Mentz, last December, had been shot by the French as a spy.  Poor,
+rosy, burly Bill! better had he still been ingloriously driving our
+cart of skins.
+
+"Have you been to see Sally lately?" said I, to Jael, who was cutting
+winter cabbages hard by; "is she getting over her trouble?"
+
+"She bean't rich, to afford fretting.  There's Jem and three little
+'uns yet to feed, to say nought of another big lad as lives there,
+and eats a deal more than he pays, I'm sure."
+
+I took the insinuation quietly, for I knew that my father had lately
+raised John's wages, and he his rent to Sally.  This, together with a
+few other facts which lay between Sally and me, made me quite easy in
+the mind as to his being no burthen, but rather a help to the widow--
+so I let Jael have her say; it did no harm to me nor anybody.
+
+"What bold little things snowdrops are--stop, Jael, you are setting
+your foot on them."
+
+But I was too late; she had crushed them under the high-heeled shoe.
+She was even near pulling me down, as she stepped back in great hurry
+and consternation.
+
+"Look at that young gentleman coming down the garden; and here I be
+in my dirty gown, and my apron full o' cabbages."
+
+And she dropped the vegetables all over the path as the "gentleman"
+came towards us.
+
+I smiled--for, in spite of his transformation, I, at least, had no
+difficulty in recognising John Halifax.
+
+He had on new clothes--let me give the credit due to that wonderful
+civiliser, the tailor--clothes neat, decent, and plain, such as any
+'prentice lad might wear.  They fitted well his figure, which had
+increased both in height, compactness, and grace.  Round his neck was
+a coarse but white shirt frill; and over it fell, carefully arranged,
+the bright curls of his bonny hair.  Easily might Jael or any one
+else have "mistaken" him, as she cuttingly said, for a young
+gentleman.
+
+She looked very indignant, though, when she found out the aforesaid
+"mistake."
+
+"What may be thy business here?" she said, roughly.
+
+"Abel Fletcher sent me on a message."
+
+"Out with it then--don't be stopping with Phineas here.  Thee bean't
+company for him, and his father don't choose it."
+
+"Jael!" I cried, indignantly.  John never spoke, but his cheek burnt
+furiously.
+
+I took his hand, and told him how glad I was to see him--but, for a
+minute, I doubt if he heard me.
+
+"Abel Fletcher sent me here," he repeated, in a well-controlled
+voice, "that I might go out with Phineas; if HE objects to my
+company, it's easy to say so."
+
+And he turned to me.  I think he must have been satisfied then.
+
+Jael retired discomfited, and in her wrath again dropped half of her
+cabbages.  John picked them up and restored them; but got for thanks
+only a parting thrust.
+
+"Thee art mighty civil in thy new clothes.  Be off, and be back again
+sharp; and, I say, don't thee be leaving the cart o' skins again
+under the parlour windows."
+
+"I don't drive the cart now," was all he replied.
+
+"Not drive the cart?" I asked, eagerly, when Jael had disappeared,
+for I was afraid some ill chance had happened.
+
+"Only, that this winter I've managed to teach myself to read and add
+up, out of your books, you know; and your father found it out, and he
+says I shall go round collecting money instead of skins, and it's
+much better wages, and--I like it better--that's all."
+
+But, little as he said, his whole face beamed with pride and
+pleasure.  It was, in truth, a great step forward.
+
+"He must trust you very much, John," said I, at last, knowing how
+exceedingly particular my father was in his collectors.
+
+"That's it--that's what pleases me so.  He is very good to me,
+Phineas, and he gave me a special holiday, that I might go out with
+you.  Isn't that grand?"
+
+"Grand, indeed.  What fun we'll have!  I almost think I could take a
+walk myself."
+
+For the lad's company invariably gave me new life, and strength, and
+hope.  The very sight of him was as good as the coming of spring.
+
+"Where shall we go?" said he, when we were fairly off, and he was
+guiding my carriage down Norton Bury streets.
+
+"I think to the Mythe."  The Mythe was a little hill on the outskirts
+of the town, breezy and fresh, where Squire Brithwood had built
+himself a fine house ten years ago.
+
+"Ay, that will do; and as we go, you will see the floods out--a
+wonderful sight, isn't it?  The river is rising still, I hear; at the
+tan-yard they are busy making a dam against it.  How high are the
+floods here, generally, Phineas?"
+
+"I'm sure I can't remember.  But don't look so serious.  Let us enjoy
+ourselves."
+
+And I did enjoy, intensely, that pleasant stroll.  The mere sunshine
+was delicious; delicious, too, to pause on the bridge at the other
+end of the town, and feel the breeze brought in by the rising waters,
+and hear the loud sound of them, as they poured in a cataract over
+the flood-gates hard by.
+
+"Your lazy, muddy Avon looks splendid now.  What masses of white foam
+it makes, and what wreaths of spray; and see! ever so much of the Ham
+is under water.  How it sparkles in the sun."
+
+"John, you like looking at anything pretty."
+
+"Ah! don't I!" cried he, with his whole heart.  My heart leaped too,
+to see him so happy.
+
+"You can't think how fine this is from my window; I have watched it
+for a week.  Every morning the water seems to have made itself a
+fresh channel.  Look at that one, by the willow-tree--how savagely it
+pours!"
+
+"Oh, we at Norton Bury are used to floods."
+
+"Are they ever very serious?"
+
+"Have been--but not in my time.  Now, John, tell me what you have
+been doing all winter."
+
+It was a brief and simple chronicle--of hard work, all day over, and
+from the Monday to the Saturday--too hard work to do anything of
+nights, save to drop into the sound, dreamless sleep of youth and
+labour.
+
+"But how did you teach yourself to read and add up, then?"
+
+"Generally at odd minutes going along the road.  It's astonishing
+what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really
+sets about it.  And then I had Sunday afternoons besides.  I did not
+think it wrong--"
+
+"No," said I; decisively.  "What books have you got through?"
+
+"All you sent--Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, and the Arabian
+Nights.  That's fine, isn't it?" and his eyes sparkled.
+
+"Any more?"
+
+"Also the one you gave me at Christmas.  I have read it a good deal."
+
+I liked the tone of quiet reverence in which he spoke.  I liked to
+hear him own, nor be ashamed to own--that he read "a good deal" in
+that rare book for a boy to read--the Bible.
+
+But on this subject I did not ask him any more questions; indeed, it
+seemed to me, and seems still, that no more were needed.
+
+"And you can read quite easily now, John?"
+
+"Pretty well, considering."  Then, turning suddenly to me:  "You read
+a great deal, don't you?  I overheard your father say you were very
+clever.  How much do you know?"
+
+"Oh--nonsense!"  But he pressed me, and I told him.  The list was
+short enough; I almost wished it were shorter when I saw John's face.
+
+"For me--I can only just read, and I shall be fifteen directly!"
+
+The accent of shame, despondency, even despair, went to my very
+heart.
+
+"Don't mind," I said, laying my feeble, useless hand upon that which
+guided me on so steady and so strong; "how could you have had time,
+working as hard as you do?"
+
+"But I ought to learn; I must learn."
+
+"You shall.  It's little I can teach; but, if you like, I'll teach
+you all I know."
+
+"O Phineas!"  One flash of those bright, moist eyes, and he walked
+hastily across the road.  Thence he came back, in a minute or two,
+armed with the tallest, straightest of briar-rose shoots.
+
+"You like a rose-switch, don't you?  I do.  Nay, stop till I've cut
+off the thorns."  And he walked on beside me, working at it with his
+knife, in silence.
+
+I was silent, too, but I stole a glance at his mouth, as seen in
+profile.  I could almost always guess at his thoughts by that mouth,
+so flexible, sensitive, and, at times, so infinitely sweet.  It wore
+that expression now.  I was satisfied, for I knew the lad was happy.
+
+We reached the Mythe.  "David," I said (I had got into a habit of
+calling him "David;" and now he had read a certain history in that
+Book I supposed he had guessed why, for he liked the name), "I don't
+think I can go any further up the hill."
+
+"Oh! but you shall!  I'll push behind; and when we come to the stile
+I'll carry you.  It's lovely on the top of the Mythe--look at the
+sunset.  You cannot have seen a sunset for ever so long."
+
+No--that was true.  I let John do as he would with me--he who brought
+into my pale life the only brightness it had ever known.
+
+Ere long we stood on the top of the steep mound.  I know not if it be
+a natural hill, or one of those old Roman or British remains,
+plentiful enough hereabouts, but it was always called the Mythe.
+Close below it, at the foot of a precipitous slope, ran the Severn,
+there broad and deep enough, gradually growing broader and deeper as
+it flowed on, through a wide plain of level country, towards the line
+of hills that bounded the horizon.  Severn looked beautiful here;
+neither grand nor striking, but certainly beautiful; a calm,
+gracious, generous river, bearing strength in its tide and plenty in
+its bosom, rolling on through the land slowly and surely, like a good
+man's life, and fertilising wherever it flows.
+
+"Do you like Severn still, John?"
+
+"I love it."
+
+I wondered if his thoughts had been anything like mine.
+
+"What is that?" he cried, suddenly, pointing to a new sight, which
+even I had not often seen on our river.  It was a mass of water,
+three or four feet high, which came surging along the midstream,
+upright as a wall.
+
+"It is the eger; I've often seen it on Severn, where the swift
+seaward current meets the spring-tide.  Look what a crest of foam it
+has, like a wild boar's mane.  We often call it the river-boar."
+
+"But it is only a big wave."
+
+"Big enough to swamp a boat, though."
+
+And while I spoke I saw, to my horror, that there actually was a
+boat, with two men in it, trying to get out of the way of the eger.
+
+"They never can! they'll assuredly be drowned!  O John!"
+
+But he had already slipped from my side and swung himself by
+furze-bushes and grass down the steep slope to the water's edge.
+
+It was a breathless moment.  The eger travelled slowly in its
+passage, changing the smooth, sparkling river to a whirl of
+conflicting currents, in which no boat could live--least of all that
+light pleasure-boat, with its toppling sail.  In it was a youth I
+knew by sight, Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe House, and another
+gentleman.
+
+They both pulled hard--they got out of the mid-stream, but not close
+enough to land; and already there was but two oars' length between
+them and the "boar."
+
+"Swim for it!" I heard one cry to the other:  but swimming would not
+have saved them.
+
+"Hold there!" shouted John at the top of his voice; "throw that rope
+out and I will pull you in!"
+
+It was a hard tug:  I shuddered to see him wade knee-deep in the
+stream--but he succeeded.  Both gentlemen leaped safe on shore.  The
+younger tried desperately to save his boat, but it was too late.
+Already the "water-boar" had clutched it--the rope broke like a
+gossamer-thread--the trim, white sail was dragged down--rose up once,
+broken and torn, like a butterfly caught in a mill-stream--then
+disappeared.
+
+"So it's all over with her, poor thing!"
+
+"Who cares?--We might have lost our lives," sharply said the other,
+an older and sickly-looking gentleman, dressed in mourning, to whom
+life did not seem a particularly pleasant thing, though he appeared
+to value it so highly.
+
+They both scrambled up the Mythe, without noticing John Halifax:
+then the elder turned.
+
+"But who pulled us ashore?  Was it you, my young friend?"
+
+John Halifax, emptying his soaked boots, answered, "I suppose so."
+
+"Indeed, we owe you much."
+
+"Not more than a crown will pay," said young Brithwood, gruffly; "I
+know him, Cousin March.  He works in Fletcher the Quaker's tan-yard."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Mr. March, who had stood looking at the boy with a
+kindly, even half-sad air.  "Impossible!  Young man, will you tell me
+to whom I am so much obliged?"
+
+"My name is John Halifax."
+
+"Yes; but WHAT are you?"
+
+"What he said.  Mr. Brithwood knows me well enough:  I work in the
+tan-yard."
+
+"Oh!"  Mr. March turned away with a resumption of dignity, though
+evidently both surprised and disappointed.  Young Brithwood laughed.
+
+"I told you so, cousin.  Hey, lad!" eyeing John over, "you've been
+out at grass, and changed your coat for the better:  but you're
+certainly the same lad that my curricle nearly ran over one day; you
+were driving a cart of skins--pah! I remember."
+
+"So do I," said John, fiercely; but when the youth's insolent
+laughter broke out again he controlled himself.  The laughter ceased.
+
+"Well, you've done me a good turn for an ill one, young--
+what's-your-name, so here's a guinea for you."  He threw it towards
+him; it fell on the ground, and lay there.
+
+"Nay, nay, Richard," expostulated the sickly gentleman, who, after
+all, WAS a gentleman.  He stood apparently struggling with
+conflicting intentions, and not very easy in his mind.  "My good
+fellow," he said at last, in a constrained voice, "I won't forget
+your bravery.  If I could do anything for you--and meanwhile if a
+trifle like this"--and he slipped something into John's hand.
+
+John returned it with a bow, merely saying "that he would rather not
+take any money."
+
+The gentleman looked very much astonished.  There was a little more
+of persistence on one side and resistance on the other; and then Mr.
+March put the guineas irresolutely back into his pocket, looking the
+while lingeringly at the boy--at his tall figure, and flushed, proud
+face.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Fifteen, nearly."
+
+"Ah!" it was almost a sigh.  He turned away, and turned back again.
+"My name is March--Henry March; if you should ever--"
+
+"Thank you, sir.  Good-day."
+
+"Good-day."  I fancied he was half inclined to shake hands--but John
+did not, or would not, see it.  Mr. March walked on, following young
+Brithwood; but at the stile he turned round once more and glanced at
+John.  Then they disappeared.
+
+"I'm glad they're gone:  now we can be comfortable."  He flung
+himself down, wrung out his wet stockings, laughed at me for being so
+afraid he would take cold, and so angry at young Brithwood's insults.
+I sat wrapped in my cloak, and watched him making idle circles in the
+sandy path with the rose-switch he had cut.
+
+A thought struck me.  "John, hand me the stick and I'll give you your
+first writing lesson."
+
+So there, on the smooth gravel, and with the rose-stem for a pen, I
+taught him how to form the letters of the alphabet and join them
+together.  He learned them very quickly--so quickly, that in a little
+while the simple copy-book that Mother Earth obliged us with was
+covered in all directions with "J O H N--John."
+
+"Bravo!" he cried, as we turned homeward, he flourishing his gigantic
+pen, which had done such good service; "bravo! I have gained
+something to-day!"
+
+Crossing the bridge over the Avon, we stood once more to look at the
+waters that were "out."  They had risen considerably, even in that
+short time, and were now pouring in several new channels, one of
+which was alongside of the high road; we stopped a good while
+watching it.  The current was harmless enough, merely flooding a part
+of the Ham; but it awed us to see the fierce power of waters let
+loose.  An old willow-tree, about whose roots I had often watched the
+king-cups growing, was now in the centre of a stream as broad as the
+Avon by our tan-yard, and thrice as rapid.  The torrent rushed round
+it--impatient of the divisions its great roots caused--eager to
+undermine and tear it up.  Inevitably, if the flood did not abate,
+within a few hours more there would be nothing left of the fine old
+tree.
+
+"I don't quite like this," said John, meditatively, as his quick eye
+swept down the course of the river, with the houses and wharves that
+abutted on it, all along one bank.  "Did you ever see the waters thus
+high before?"
+
+"Yes, I believe I have; nobody minds it at Norton Bury; it is only
+the sudden thaw, my father says, and he ought to know, for he has had
+plenty of experience, the tan-yard being so close to the river."
+
+"I was thinking of that; but come, it's getting cold."
+
+He took me safe home, and we parted cordially--nay, affectionately--
+at my own door.
+
+"When will you come again, David?"
+
+"When your father sends me."
+
+And I felt that HE felt that our intercourse was always to be limited
+to this.  Nothing clandestine, nothing obtrusive, was possible, even
+for friendship's sake, to John Halifax.
+
+My father came in late that evening; he looked tired and uneasy, and
+instead of going to bed, though it was after nine o'clock, sat down
+to his pipe in the chimney-corner.
+
+"Is the river rising still, father?  Will it do any harm to the
+tan-yard?"
+
+"What dost thee know about the tan-yard!"
+
+"Only John Halifax was saying--"
+
+"John Halifax had better hold his tongue."
+
+I held mine.
+
+My father puffed away in silence till I came to bid him good-night.
+I think the sound of my crutches on the floor stirred him out of a
+long meditation, in which his ill-humour had ebbed away.
+
+"Where didst thee go out to-day, Phineas?--thee and the lad I sent."
+
+"To the Mythe:"  and I told him the incident that had happened there.
+He listened without reply.
+
+"Wasn't it a brave thing to do, father?"
+
+"Um!"--and a few meditative puffs.  "Phineas, the lad thee hast such
+a hankering after is a good lad--a very decent lad--if thee doesn't
+make too much of him.  Remember; he is but my servant; thee'rt my
+son--my only son."
+
+Alas! my poor father, it was hard enough for him to have such an
+"only son" as I.
+
+In the middle of the night--or else to me, lying awake, it seemed so-
+-there was a knocking at our hall door.  I slept on the ground flat,
+in a little room opposite the parlour.  Ere I could well collect my
+thoughts, I saw my father pass, fully dressed, with a light in his
+hand.  And, man of peace though he was, I was very sure I saw in the
+other--something which always lay near his strong box, at his bed's
+head at night.  Because ten years ago a large sum had been stolen
+from him, and the burglar had gone free of punishment.  The law
+refused to receive Abel Fletcher's testimony--he was "only a Quaker."
+
+The knocking grew louder, as if the person had no time to hesitate at
+making a noise.  "Who's there?" called out my father; and at the
+answer he opened the front door, first shutting mine.
+
+A minute afterwards I heard some one in my room.  "Phineas, are you
+here?--don't be frightened."
+
+I was not--as soon as his voice reached me, John's own familiar
+voice.  "It's something about the tan-yard?"
+
+"Yes; the waters are rising, and I have come to fetch your father; he
+may save a good deal yet.  I am ready, sir"--in answer to a loud
+call.  "Now, Phineas, lie you down again, the night's bitter cold.
+Don't stir--you'll promise?--I'll see after your father."
+
+They went out of the house together, and did not return the whole
+night.
+
+That night, February 5, 1795, was one long remembered at Norton Bury.
+Bridges were destroyed--boats carried away--houses inundated, or
+sapped at their foundations.  The loss of life was small, but that of
+property was very great.  Six hours did the work of ruin, and then
+the flood began to turn.
+
+It was a long waiting until they came home--my father and John.  At
+daybreak I saw them standing on the doorstep.  A blessed sight!
+
+"O father! my dear father!" and I drew him in, holding fast his
+hands--faster and closer than I had done since I was a child.  He did
+not repel me.
+
+"Thee'rt up early, and it's a cold morning for thee, my son.  Go back
+to the fire."
+
+His voice was gentle; his ruddy countenance pale; two strange things
+in Abel Fletcher.
+
+"Father, tell me what has befallen thee?"
+
+"Nothing, my son, save that the Giver of all worldly goods has seen
+fit to take back a portion of mine.  I, like many another in this
+town, am poorer by some thousands than I went to bed last night."
+
+He sat down.  I knew he loved his money, for it had been hardly
+earned.  I had not thought he would have borne its loss so quietly.
+
+"Father, never mind; it might have been worse."
+
+"Of a surety.  I should have lost everything I had in the world--save
+for--Where is the lad?  What art thee standing outside for?  Come in,
+John, and shut the door."
+
+John obeyed, though without advancing.  He was cold and wet.  I
+wanted him to sit down by the fireside.
+
+"Ay! do, lad," said my father, kindly.
+
+John came.
+
+I stood between the two--afraid to ask what they had undergone; but
+sure, from the old man's grave face, and the lad's bright one--
+flushed all over with that excitement of danger so delicious to the
+young--that the peril had not been small.
+
+"Jael," cried my father, rousing himself, "give us some breakfast;
+the lad and me--we have had a hard night's work together."
+
+Jael brought the mug of ale and the bread and cheese; but either did
+not or could not notice that the meal had been ordered for more than
+one.
+
+"Another plate," said my father, sharply.
+
+"The lad can go into the kitchen, Abel Fletcher:  his breakfast is
+waiting there."
+
+My father winced--even her master was sometimes rather afraid of
+Jael.  But conscience or his will conquered.
+
+"Woman, do as I desired.  Bring another plate, and another mug of
+ale."
+
+And so, to Jael's great wrath, and to my great joy, John Halifax was
+bidden, and sat down to the same board as his master.  The fact made
+an ineffaceable impression on our household.
+
+After breakfast, as we sat by the fire, in the pale haze of that
+February morning, my father, contrary to his wont, explained to me
+all his losses; and how, but for the timely warning he had received,
+the flood might have nearly ruined him.
+
+"So it was well John came," I said, half afraid to say more.
+
+"Ay, and the lad has been useful, too:  it is an old head on young
+shoulders."
+
+John looked very proud of this praise, though it was grimly given.
+But directly after it some ill or suspicious thought seemed to come
+into Abel Fletcher's mind.
+
+"Lad," suddenly turning round on John Halifax, "thee told me thee saw
+the river rising by the light of the moon.  What wast THEE doing
+then, out o' thy honest bed and thy quiet sleep, at eleven o'clock at
+night?"
+
+John coloured violently; the quick young blood was always ready
+enough to rise in his face.  It spoke ill for him with my father.
+
+"Answer.  I will not be hard upon thee--to-night, at least."
+
+"As you like, Abel Fletcher," answered the boy, sturdily.  "I was
+doing no harm.  I was in the tan-yard."
+
+"Thy business there?"
+
+"None at all.  I was with the men--they were watching, and had a
+candle; and I wanted to sit up, and had no light."
+
+"What didst thee want to sit up for?" pursued my father, keen and
+sharp as a ferret at a field-rat's hole, or a barrister hunting a
+witness in those courts of law that were never used by, though often
+used against, us Quakers.
+
+John hesitated, and again his painful, falsely-accusing blushes tried
+him sore.  "Sir, I'll tell you; it's no disgrace.  Though I'm such a
+big fellow I can't write; and your son was good enough to try and
+teach me.  I was afraid of forgetting the letters; so I tried to make
+them all over again, with a bit of chalk, on the bark-shed wall.  It
+did nobody any harm that I know of."
+
+The boy's tone, even though it was rather quick and angry, won no
+reproof.  At last my father said gently enough--
+
+"Is that all, lad?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Again Abel Fletcher fell into a brown study.  We two lads talked
+softly to each other--afraid to interrupt.  He smoked through a whole
+pipe--his great and almost his only luxury, and then again called
+out--
+
+"John Halifax."
+
+"I'm here."
+
+"It's time thee went away to thy work."
+
+"I'm going this minute.  Good-bye, Phineas.  Good day, sir.  Is there
+anything you want done?"
+
+He stood before his master, cap in hand, with an honest manliness
+pleasant to see.  Any master might have been proud of such a servant-
+-any father of such a son.  My poor father--no, he did not once look
+from John Halifax to me.  He would not have owned for the world that
+half-smothered sigh, or murmured because Heaven had kept back from
+him--as, Heaven knows why, it often does from us all!--the one desire
+of the heart.
+
+"John Halifax, thee hast been of great service to me this night.
+What reward shall I give thee?"
+
+And instinctively his hand dived down into his pocket.  John turned
+away.
+
+"Thank you--I'd rather not.  It is quite enough reward that I have
+been useful to my master, and that he acknowledges it."
+
+My father thought a minute, and then offered his hand.  "Thee'rt in
+the right, lad.  I am very much obliged to thee, and I will not
+forget it."
+
+And John--blushing brightly once more--went away, looking as proud as
+an emperor, and as happy as a poor man with a bag of gold.
+
+"Is there nothing thou canst think of, Phineas, that would pleasure
+the lad?" said my father, after we had been talking some time--though
+not about John.
+
+I had thought of something--something I had long desired, but which
+seemed then all but an impossibility.  Even now it was with some
+doubt and hesitation that I made the suggestion that he should spend
+every Sunday at our house.
+
+"Nonsense!--thee know'st nought of Norton Bury lads.  He would not
+care.  He had rather lounge about all First-day at street corners
+with his acquaintance."
+
+"John has none, father.  He knows nobody--cares for nobody--but me.
+Do let him come."
+
+"We'll see about it."
+
+My father never broke or retracted his word.  So after that John
+Halifax came to us every Sunday; and for one day of the week, at
+least, was received in his master's household as our equal and my
+friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Summers and winters slipped by lazily enough, as the years seemed
+always to crawl round at Norton Bury.  How things went in the outside
+world I little knew or cared.  My father lived his life, mechanical
+and steady as clock-work, and we two, John Halifax and Phineas
+Fletcher, lived our lives--the one so active and busy, the other so
+useless and dull.  Neither of us counted the days, nor looked
+backwards or forwards.
+
+One June morning I woke to the consciousness that I was twenty years
+old, and that John Halifax was--a man:  the difference between us
+being precisely as I have expressed it.
+
+Our birthdays fell within a week of each other, and it was in
+remembering his--the one which advanced him to the dignity of
+eighteen--that I called to mind my own.  I say, "advanced him to the
+dignity"--but in truth that is an idle speech; for any dignity which
+the maturity of eighteen may be supposed to confer he had already in
+possession.  Manhood had come to him, both in character and
+demeanour, not as it comes to most young lads, an eagerly-desired and
+presumptuously-asserted claim, but as a rightful inheritance, to be
+received humbly, and worn simply and naturally.  So naturally, that I
+never seemed to think of him as anything but a boy, until this one
+June Sunday, when, as before stated, I myself became twenty years
+old.
+
+I was talking over that last fact, in a rather dreamy mood, as he and
+I sat in our long-familiar summer seat, the clematis arbour by the
+garden wall.
+
+"It seems very strange, John, but so it is--I am actually twenty."
+
+"Well, and what of that?"
+
+I sat looking down into the river, which flowed on, as my years were
+flowing, monotonous, dark, and slow,--as they must flow on for ever.
+John asked me what I was thinking of.
+
+"Of myself:  what a fine specimen of the noble genus homo I am."
+
+I spoke bitterly, but John knew how to meet that mood.  Very patient
+he was with it and with every ill mood of mine.  And I was grateful,
+with that deep gratitude we feel to those who bear with us, and
+forgive us, and laugh at us, and correct us,--all alike for love.
+
+"Self-investigation is good on birthdays.  Phineas, here goes for a
+catalogue of your qualities, internal and external."
+
+"John, don't be foolish."
+
+"I will, if I like; though perhaps not quite so foolish as some other
+people; so listen:--'Imprimis,' as saith Shakspeare--Imprimis,
+height, full five feet four; a stature historically appertaining to
+great men, including Alexander of Macedon and the First Consul."
+
+"Oh, oh!" said I, reproachfully; for this was our chief bone of
+contention--I hating, he rather admiring, the great ogre of the day,
+Napoleon Bonaparte.
+
+"Imprimis, of a slight, delicate person, but not lame as once was."
+
+"No, thank God!"
+
+"Thin, rather-"
+
+"Very--a mere skeleton!"
+
+"Face elongated and pale-"
+
+"Sallow, John, decidedly sallow."
+
+"Be it so, sallow.  Big eyes, much given to observation, which means
+hard staring.  Take them off me, Phineas, or I'll not lie on the
+grass a minute longer.  Thank you.  To return:  Imprimis and finis
+(I'm grand at Latin now, you see)--long hair, which, since the powder
+tax, has resumed its original blackness, and is--any young damsel
+would say, only we count not a single one among our acquaintance--
+exceedingly bewitching."
+
+I smiled, feeling myself colour a little too, weak invalid as I was.
+I was, nevertheless, twenty years old; and although Jael and Sally
+were the only specimens of the other sex which had risen on my
+horizon, yet once or twice, since I had read Shakspeare, I had had a
+boy's lovely dreams of the divinity of womanhood.  They began, and
+ended--mere dreams.  Soon dawned the bare, hard truth, that my
+character was too feeble and womanish to be likely to win any woman's
+reverence or love.  Or, even had this been possible, one sickly as I
+was, stricken with hereditary disease, ought never to seek to
+perpetuate it by marriage.  I therefore put from me, at once and for
+ever, every feeling of that kind; and during my whole life--I thank
+God!--have never faltered in my resolution.  Friendship was given me
+for love--duty for happiness.  So best, and I was satisfied.
+
+This conviction, and the struggle succeeding it--for, though brief,
+it was but natural that it should have been a hard struggle--was the
+only secret that I had kept from John.  It had happened some months
+now, and was quite over and gone, so that I could smile at his fun,
+and shake at him my "bewitching" black locks, calling him a foolish
+boy.  And while I said it, the notion slowly dawning during the long
+gaze he had complained of, forced itself upon me, clear as daylight,
+that he was not a "boy" any longer.
+
+"Now let me turn the tables.  How old are YOU, John?"
+
+"You know.  Eighteen next week."
+
+"And how tall?"
+
+"Five feet eleven inches and a half."  And, rising, he exhibited to
+its full advantage that very creditable altitude, more tall perhaps
+than graceful, at present; since, like most youths, he did not as yet
+quite know what to do with his legs and arms.  But he was--
+
+I cannot describe what he was.  I could not then.  I only remember
+that when I looked at him, and began jocularly "Imprimis," my heart
+came up into my throat and choked me.
+
+It was almost with sadness that I said, "Ah! David, you are quite a
+young man now."
+
+He smiled, of course only with pleasure, looking forward to the new
+world into which he was going forth; the world into which, as I knew
+well, I could never follow him.
+
+"I am glad I look rather old for my years," said he, when, after a
+pause, he had again flung himself down on the grass.  "It tells well
+in the tan-yard.  People would be slow to trust a clerk who looked a
+mere boy.  Still, your father trusts me."
+
+"He does, indeed.  You need never have any doubt of that.  It was
+only yesterday he said to me that now he was no longer dissatisfied
+with your working at all sorts of studies, in leisure hours, since it
+made you none the worse man of business."
+
+"No, I hope not, or I should be much ashamed.  It would not be doing
+my duty to myself any more than to my master, if I shirked his work
+for my own.  I am glad he does not complain now, Phineas."
+
+"On the contrary; I think he intends to give you a rise this
+Midsummer.  But oh!" I cried, recurring to a thought which would
+often come when I looked at the lad, though he always combated it so
+strongly, that I often owned my prejudices were unjust:  "how I wish
+you were something better than a clerk in a tan-yard.  I have a plan,
+John."
+
+But what that plan was, was fated to remain unrevealed.  Jael came to
+us in the garden, looking very serious.  She had been summoned, I
+knew, to a long conference with her master the day before--the
+subject of which she would not tell me, though she acknowledged it
+concerned myself.  Ever since she had followed me about, very softly,
+for her, and called me more than once, as when I was a child, "my
+dear."  She now came with half-dolorous, half-angry looks, to summon
+me to an interview with my father and Doctor Jessop.
+
+I caught her parting mutterings, as she marched behind me:  "Kill or
+cure, indeed,"--"No more fit than a baby,"--"Abel Fletcher be clean
+mad,"--"Hope Thomas Jessop will speak out plain, and tell him so,"
+and the like.  From these, and from her strange fit of tenderness, I
+guessed what was looming in the distance--a future which my father
+constantly held in terrorem over me, though successive illness had
+kept it in abeyance.  Alas! I knew that my poor father's hopes and
+plans were vain!  I went into his presence with a heavy heart.
+
+There is no need to detail that interview.  Enough, that after it he
+set aside for ever his last lingering hope of having a son able to
+assist, and finally succeed him in his business, and that I set aside
+every dream of growing up to be a help and comfort to my father.  It
+cost something on both our parts; but after that day's discussion we
+tacitly covered over the pain, and referred to it no more.
+
+I came back into the garden, and told John Halifax all.  He listened
+with his hand on my shoulder, and his grave, sweet look--dearer
+sympathy than any words!  Though he added thereto a few, in his own
+wise way; then he and I, also, drew the curtain over an inevitable
+grief, and laid it in the peaceful chamber of silence.
+
+When my father, Dr. Jessop, John Halifax, and I, met at dinner, the
+subject had passed into seeming oblivion, and was never afterwards
+revived.
+
+But dinner being over, and the chatty little doctor gone, while Abel
+Fletcher sat mutely smoking his pipe, and we two at the window
+maintained that respectful and decorous silence which in my young
+days was rigidly exacted by elders and superiors, I noticed my
+father's eyes frequently resting, with keen observance, upon John
+Halifax.  Could it be that there had recurred to him a hint of mine,
+given faintly that morning, as faintly as if it had only just entered
+my mind, instead of having for months continually dwelt there, until
+a fitting moment should arrive?--Could it be that this hint, which he
+had indignantly scouted at the time, was germinating in his acute
+brain, and might bear fruit in future days?  I hoped so--I earnestly
+prayed so.  And to that end I took no notice, but let it silently
+grow.
+
+The June evening came and went.  The service-bell rang out and
+ceased.  First, deep shadows, and then a bright star, appeared over
+the Abbey-tower.  We watched it from the garden, where, Sunday after
+Sunday, in fine weather, we used to lounge, and talk over all manner
+of things in heaven and in earth, chiefly ending with the former, as
+on Sunday nights, with stars over our head, was natural and fit we
+should do.
+
+"Phineas," said John, sitting on the grass with his hands upon his
+knees, and the one star, I think it was Jupiter, shining down into
+his eyes, deepening them into that peculiar look, worth any so-called
+"handsome eyes;"--"Phineas, I wonder how soon we shall have to rise
+up from this quiet, easy life, and fight our battles in the world?
+Also, I wonder if we are ready for it?"
+
+"I think you are."
+
+"I don't know.  I'm not clear how far I could resist doing anything
+wrong, if it were pleasant.  So many wrong things are pleasant--just
+now, instead of rising to-morrow, and going into the little dark
+counting-house, and scratching paper from eight till six, shouldn't I
+like to break away!--dash out into the world, take to all sorts of
+wild freaks, do all sorts of grand things, and perhaps never come
+back to the tanning any more."
+
+"Never any more?"
+
+"No! no! I spoke hastily.  I did not mean I ever should do such a
+wrong thing; but merely that I sometimes feel the wish to do it.  I
+can't help it; it's my Apollyon that I have to fight with--everybody
+keeps a private Apollyon, I fancy.  Now, Phineas, be content;
+Apollyon is beaten down."
+
+He rose up, but I thought that, in the red glow of the twilight, he
+looked rather pale.  He stretched his hand to help me up from the
+grass.  We went into the house together, silently.
+
+After supper, when the chimes struck half-past nine, John prepared to
+leave as usual.  He went to bid good-night to my father, who was
+sitting meditatively over the fireless hearth-place, sometimes poking
+the great bow-pot of fennel and asparagus, as in winter he did the
+coals:  an instance of obliviousness, which, in my sensible and acute
+father, argued very deep cogitation on some subject or other.
+
+"Good-night," said John, twice over, before his master heard him.
+
+"Eh?--Oh, good-night, good-night, lad!  Stay!  Halifax, what hast
+thee got to do to-morrow?"
+
+"Not much, unless the Russian hides should come in; I cleared off the
+week's accounts last night, as usual."
+
+"Ay, to-morrow I shall look over all thy books and see how thee
+stand'st, and what further work thou art fit for.  Therefore, take a
+day's holiday, if thee likes."
+
+We thanked him warmly.  "There, John," whispered I, "you may have
+your wish, and run wild to-morrow."
+
+He said, "the wish had gone out of him."  So we planned a sweet lazy
+day under the Midsummer sky, in some fields about a mile off, called
+the Vineyards.
+
+The morning came, and we took our way thither, under the Abbey walls,
+and along a lane, shaded on one side by the "willows in the
+water-courses."  We came out in those quiet hay-fields, which,
+tradition says, had once grown wine for the rosy monks close by, and
+history avers, were afterwards watered by a darker stream than the
+blood of grapes.  The Vineyards had been a battle-field; and under
+the long wavy grass, and the roots of the wild apple trees, slept
+many a Yorkist and Lancastrian.  Sometimes an unusually deep furrow
+turned out a white bone--but more often the relics were undisturbed,
+and the meadows used as pastures or hay-fields.
+
+John and I lay down on some wind-rows, and sunned ourselves in the
+warm and delicious air.  How beautiful everything was! so very still!
+with the Abbey-tower--always the most picturesque point in our Norton
+Bury views--showing so near, that it almost seemed to rise up out of
+the fields and hedge-rows.
+
+"Well, David," and I turned to the long, lazy figure beside me, which
+had considerably flattened the hay, "are you satisfied?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+Thus we lounged out all the summer morning, recurring to a few of the
+infinitude of subjects we used to compare notes upon; though we were
+neither of us given to wordiness, and never talked but when we had
+something to say.  Often--as on this day--we sat for hours in a
+pleasant dreaminess, scarcely exchanging a word; nevertheless, I
+could generally track John's thoughts, as they went wandering on, ay,
+as clearly as one might track a stream through a wood; sometimes--
+like to-day--I failed.
+
+In the afternoon, when we had finished our bread and cheese--eaten
+slowly and with graceful dignity, in order to make dinner a more
+important and lengthy affair--he said abruptly--
+
+"Phineas, don't you think this field is rather dull?  Shall we go
+somewhere else? not if it tires you, though."
+
+I protested the contrary, my health being much above the average this
+summer.  But just as we were quitting the field we met two rather
+odd-looking persons entering it, young-old persons they seemed, who
+might own to any age or any occupation.  Their dress, especially that
+of the younger, amused us by its queer mixture of fashionableness and
+homeliness, such as grey ribbed stockings and shining paste shoe-
+buckles, rusty velvet small-clothes and a coatee of blue cloth.  But
+the wearer carried off this anomalous costume with an easy,
+condescending air, full of pleasantness, humour, and grace.
+
+"Sir," said he, approaching John Halifax with a bow that I feel sure
+the "first gentleman of his day," as loyal folk then entitled the
+Prince Regent, could not have surpassed--"Sir, will you favour me by
+informing us how far it is to Coltham?"
+
+"Ten miles, and the stage will pass here in three hours."
+
+"Thank you; at present I have little to do with the--at least with
+THAT stage.  Young gentlemen, excuse our continuing our dessert, in
+fact, I may say our dinner.  Are you connoisseurs in turnips?"
+
+He offered us--with a polite gesture--one of the "swedes" he was
+munching.  I declined; but John, out of a deeper delicacy than I
+could boast, accepted it.
+
+"One might dine worse," he said; "I have done, sometimes."
+
+"It was a whim of mine, sir.  But I am not the first remarkable
+person who has eaten turnips in your Norton Bury fields--ay, and
+turned field-preacher afterwards--the celebrated John Philip--"
+
+Here the elder and less agreeable of the two wayfarers interposed
+with a nudge, indicating silence.
+
+"My companion is right, sir," he continued.  "I will not betray our
+illustrious friend by mentioning his surname; he is a great man now,
+and might not wish it generally known that he had dined off turnips.
+May I give you instead my own humble name?"
+
+He gave it me; but I, Phineas Fletcher, shall copy his reticence, and
+not indulge the world therewith.  It was a name wholly out of my
+sphere, both then and now; but I know it has since risen into note
+among the people of the world.  I believe, too, its owner has carried
+up to the topmost height of celebrity always the gay, gentlemanly
+spirit and kindly heart which he showed when sitting with us and
+eating swedes.  Still, I will not mention his surname--I will only
+call him "Mr. Charles."
+
+"Now, having satisfactorily 'munched, and munched, and munched,' like
+the sailor's wife who had chestnuts in her lap--are you acquainted
+with my friend, Mr. William Shakspeare, young gentleman?--I must try
+to fulfil the other duties of existence.  You said the Coltham mail
+passed here in three hours?  Very well.  I have the honour of wishing
+you a very good day, Mr.--"
+
+"Halifax."
+
+"And yours?"
+
+"Fletcher."
+
+"Any connection with him who went partnership with the worthy
+Beaumont?"
+
+"My father has no partner, sir," said I.  But John, whose reading had
+lately surpassed mine, and whom nothing ever puzzled, explained that
+I came from the same old stock as the brothers Phineas and Giles
+Fletcher.  Upon which Mr. Charles, who till now had somewhat
+overlooked me, took off his hat, and congratulated me on my
+illustrious descent.
+
+"That man has evidently seen a good deal of the world," said John,
+smiling; "I wonder what the world is like!"
+
+"Did you not see something of it as a child?"
+
+"Only the worst and lowest side; not the one I want to see now.  What
+business do you think that Mr. Charles is?  A clever man, anyhow; I
+should like to see him again."
+
+"So should I."
+
+Thus talking at intervals and speculating upon our new acquaintance,
+we strolled along till we came to a spot called by the country
+people, "The Bloody Meadow," from being, like several other places in
+the neighbourhood, the scene of one of those terrible slaughters
+chronicled in the wars of the Roses.  It was a sloping field, through
+the middle of which ran a little stream down to the meadow's end,
+where, fringed and hidden by a plantation of trees, the Avon flowed.
+Here, too, in all directions, the hay-fields lay, either in green
+swathes, or tedded, or in the luxuriously-scented quiles.  The lane
+was quite populous with waggons and hay-makers--the men in their
+corduroys and blue hose--the women in their trim jackets and bright
+calamanco petticoats.  There were more women than men, by far, for
+the flower of the peasant youth of England had been drafted off to
+fight against "Bonyparty."  Still hay-time was a glorious season,
+when half our little town turned out and made holiday in the
+sunshine.
+
+"I think we will go to a quieter place, John.  There seems a crowd
+down in the meadow; and who is that man standing on the hay-cart, on
+the other side the stream?"
+
+"Don't you remember the bright blue coat?  'Tis Mr. Charles.  How
+he's talking and gesticulating!  What can he be at?"
+
+Without more ado John leaped the low hedge, and ran down the slope of
+the Bloody Meadow.  I followed less quickly.
+
+There, of a surety, stood our new friend, on one of the simple-
+fashioned hay-carts that we used about Norton Bury, a low framework
+on wheels, with a pole stuck at either of the four corners.  He was
+bare-headed, and his hair hung in graceful curls, well powdered.  I
+only hope he had honestly paid the tax, which we were all then
+exclaiming against--so fondly does custom cling to deformity.
+Despite the powder, the blue coat, and the shabby velvet breeches,
+Mr. Charles was a very handsome and striking-looking man.  No wonder
+the poor hay-makers had collected from all parts to hear him
+harangue.
+
+What was he haranguing upon?  Could it be, that like his friend,
+"John Philip," whoever that personage might be, his vocation was that
+of a field preacher?  It seemed like it, especially judging from the
+sanctified demeanour of the elder and inferior person who accompanied
+him; and who sat in the front of the cart, and folded his hands and
+groaned, after the most approved fashion of a methodistical
+"revival."
+
+We listened, expecting every minute to be disgusted and shocked:  but
+no! I must say this for Mr. Charles, that in no way did he trespass
+the bounds of reverence and decorum.  His harangue, though given as a
+sermon, was strictly and simply a moral essay, such as might have
+emanated from any professor's chair.  In fact, as I afterwards
+learnt, he had given for his text one which the simple rustics
+received in all respect, as coming from a higher and holier volume
+than Shakspeare--
+
+          "Mercy is twice blessed:
+      It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
+      'Tis mightiest in the mightiest."
+
+And on that text did he dilate; gradually warming with his subject,
+till his gestures--which at first had seemed burthened with a queer
+constraint, that now and then resulted in an irrepressible twitch of
+the corners of his flexible mouth--became those of a man beguiled
+into real earnestness.  We of Norton Bury had never heard such
+eloquence.
+
+"Who CAN he be, John?  Isn't it wonderful?"
+
+But John never heard me.  His whole attention was riveted on the
+speaker.  Such oratory--a compound of graceful action, polished
+language, and brilliant imagination, came to him as a positive
+revelation, a revelation from the world of intellect, the world which
+he longed after with all the ardour of youth.
+
+What that harangue would have seemed like, could we have heard it
+with maturer ears, I know not; but at eighteen and twenty it
+literally dazzled us.  No wonder it affected the rest of the
+audience.  Feeble men, leaning on forks and rakes, shook their old
+heads sagely, as if they understood it all.  And when the speaker
+alluded to the horrors of war--a subject which then came so bitterly
+home to every heart in Britain--many women melted into sobs and
+tears.  At last, when the orator himself, moved by the pictures he
+had conjured up, paused suddenly, quite exhausted, and asked for a
+slight contribution "to help a deed of charity," there was a general
+rush towards him.
+
+"No--no, my good people," said Mr. Charles, recovering his natural
+manner, though a little clouded, I thought, by a faint shade of
+remorse; "no, I will not take from any one more than a penny; and
+then only if they are quite sure they can spare it.  Thank you, my
+worthy man.  Thanks, my bonny young lass--I hope your sweetheart will
+soon be back from the wars.  Thank you all, my 'very worthy and
+approved good masters,' and a fair harvest to you!"
+
+He bowed them away, in a dignified and graceful manner, still
+standing on the hay-cart.  The honest folk trooped off, having no
+more time to waste, and left the field in possession of Mr. Charles,
+his co-mate, and ourselves; whom I do not think he had as yet
+noticed.
+
+He descended from the cart.  His companion burst into roars of
+laughter; but Charles looked grave.
+
+"Poor, honest souls!" said he, wiping his brows--I am not sure that
+it was only his brows--"Hang me if I'll be at this trick again,
+Yates."
+
+"It was a trick then, sir," said John, advancing.  "I am sorry for
+it."
+
+"So am I, young man," returned the other, no way disconcerted;
+indeed, he seemed a person whose frank temper nothing could
+disconcert.  "But starvation is--excuse me,--unpleasant; and
+necessity has no law.  It is of vital consequence that I should reach
+Coltham to-night; and after walking twenty miles one cannot easily
+walk ten more, and afterwards appear as Macbeth to an admiring
+audience."
+
+"You are an actor?"
+
+"I am, please your worship--
+
+            'A poor player,
+      That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
+      And then is seen no more.'"
+
+There was inexpressible pathos in his tone, and his fine face looked
+thin and worn--it did not take much to soften both John's feelings
+and mine towards the "poor player."  Besides, we had lately been
+studying Shakspeare, who for the first time of reading generally
+sends all young people tragedy-mad.
+
+"You acted well to-day," said John; "all the folk here took you for a
+methodist preacher."
+
+"Yet I never meddled with theology--only common morality.  You cannot
+say I did."
+
+John thought a moment, and then answered--
+
+"No.  But what put the scheme into your head?"
+
+"The fact that, under a like necessity, the same amusing play was
+played out here years ago, as I told you, by John Philip--no, I will
+not conceal his name, the greatest actor and the truest gentleman our
+English stage has ever seen--John Philip Kemble."
+
+And he raised his hat with sincere reverence.  We too had heard--at
+least John had--of this wonderful man.
+
+I saw the fascination of Mr. Charles's society was strongly upon him.
+It was no wonder.  More brilliant, more versatile talent I never saw.
+He turned "from grave to gay, from lively to severe"--appearing in
+all phases like the gentleman, the scholar, and the man of the world.
+And neither John nor I had ever met any one of these characters, all
+so irresistibly alluring at our age.
+
+I say OUR, because though I followed where he led, I always did it of
+my own will likewise.
+
+The afternoon began to wane, while we, with our two companions, yet
+sat talking by the brook-side.  Mr. Charles had washed his face, and
+his travel-sore, blistered feet, and we had induced him, and the man
+he called Yates, to share our remnants of bread and cheese.
+
+"Now," he said, starting up, "I am ready to do battle again, even
+with the Thane of Fife--who, to-night, is one Johnson, a fellow of
+six feet and twelve stone.  What is the hour, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"Mr. Halifax"--(I felt pleased to hear him for the first time so
+entitled)--had, unfortunately, no watch among his worldly
+possessions, and candidly owned the fact.  But he made a near guess
+by calculating the position of his unfailing time-piece, the sun.--It
+was four o'clock.
+
+"Then I must go.  Will you not retract, young gentlemen?  Surely you
+would not lose such a rare treat as 'Macbeth,' with--I will not say
+my humble self--but with that divine Siddons.  Such a woman!
+Shakspeare himself might lean out of Elysium to watch her.  You will
+join us?"
+
+John made a silent, dolorous negative; as he had done once or twice
+before, when the actor urged us to accompany him to Coltham for a few
+hours only--we might be back by midnight, easily.
+
+"What do you think, Phineas?" said John, when we stood in the
+high-road, waiting for the coach; "I have money--and--we have so
+little pleasure--we would send word to your father.  Do you think it
+would be wrong?"
+
+I could not say; and to this minute, viewing the question nakedly in
+a strict and moral sense, I cannot say either whether or no it was an
+absolute crime; therefore, being accustomed to read my wrong or right
+in "David's" eyes, I remained perfectly passive.
+
+We waited by the hedge-side for several minutes--Mr. Charles ceased
+his urging, half in dudgeon, save that he was too pleasant a man
+really to take offence at anything.  His conversation was chiefly
+directed to me.  John took no part therein, but strolled about
+plucking at the hedge.
+
+When the stage appeared down the winding of the road I was utterly
+ignorant of what he meant us to do, or if he had any definite purpose
+at all.
+
+It came--the coachman was hailed.  Mr. Charles shook hands with us
+and mounted--paying his own fare and that of Yates with their handful
+of charity-pennies, which caused a few minutes' delay in counting,
+and a great deal of good-humoured joking, as good-humouredly borne.
+
+Meanwhile, John put his two hands on my shoulders, and looked hard
+into my face--his was slightly flushed and excited, I thought.
+
+"Phineas, are you tired?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Do you feel strong enough to go to Coltham?  Would it do you no
+harm?  Would you LIKE to go?"
+
+To all these hurried questions I answered with as hurried an
+affirmative.  It was sufficient to me that he evidently liked to go.
+
+"It is only for once--your father would not grudge us the pleasure,
+and he is too busy to be out of the tan-yard before midnight.  We
+will be home soon after then, if I carry you on my back all the ten
+miles.  Come, mount, we'll go."
+
+"Bravo!" cried Mr. Charles, and leaned over to help me up the coach's
+side.  John followed, and the crisis was past.
+
+But I noticed that for several miles he hardly spoke one word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Near as we lived to Coltham, I had only been there once in my life;
+but John Halifax knew the town pretty well, having latterly in
+addition to his clerkship been employed by my father in going about
+the neighbourhood buying bark.  I was amused when the coach stopped
+at an inn, which bore the ominous sign of the "Fleece," to see how
+well accustomed he seemed to be to the ways of the place.  He
+deported himself with perfect self-possession; the waiter served him
+respectfully.  He had evidently taken his position in the world--at
+least, our little world--he was no longer a boy, but a man.  I was
+glad to see it; leaving everything in his hands, I lay down where he
+placed me in the inn parlour, and watched him giving his orders and
+walking about.  Sometimes I thought his eyes were restless and
+unquiet, but his manner was as composed as usual.
+
+Mr. Charles had left us, appointing a meeting at Coffee-house Yard,
+where the theatre then was.
+
+"A poor barn-like place, I believe," said John, stopping in his walk
+up and down the room to place my cushions more easy; "they should
+build a new one, now Coltham is growing up into such a fashionable
+town.  I wish I could take you to see the "Well-walk," with all the
+fine people promenading.  But you must rest, Phineas."
+
+I consented, being indeed rather weary.
+
+"You will like to see Mrs. Siddons, whom we have so often talked
+about?  She is not young now, Mr. Charles says, but magnificent
+still.  She first came out in this same theatre more than twenty
+years ago.  Yates saw her.  I wonder, Phineas, if your father ever
+did."
+
+"Oh, no my father would not enter a play-house for the world."
+
+"What!"
+
+"Nay, John, you need not look so troubled.  You know he did not bring
+me up in the Society, and its restrictions are not binding upon me."
+
+"True, true."  And he resumed his walk, but not his cheerfulness.
+"If it were myself alone, now, of course what I myself hold to be a
+lawful pleasure I have a right to enjoy; or, if not, being yet a lad
+and under a master--well, I will bear the consequences," added he,
+rather proudly; "but to share them--Phineas," turning suddenly to me,
+"would you like to go home?--I'll take you."
+
+I protested earnestly against any such thing; told him I was sure we
+were doing nothing wrong--which was, indeed, my belief; entreated him
+to be merry and enjoy himself, and succeeded so well, that in a few
+minutes we had started in a flutter of gaiety and excitement for
+Coffee-house Yard.
+
+It was a poor place--little better than a barn, as Mr. Charles had
+said--built in a lane leading out of the principal street.  This lane
+was almost blocked up with play-goers of all ranks and in all sorts
+of equipages, from the coach-and-six to the sedan-chair, mingled with
+a motley crowd on foot, all jostling, fighting, and screaming, till
+the place became a complete bear-garden.
+
+"Oh, John! take care!" and I clung to his arm.
+
+"Never mind!  I'm big enough and strong enough for any crowd.  Hold
+on, Phineas."  If I had been a woman, and the woman that he loved, he
+could not have been more tender over my weakness.  The physical
+weakness--which, however humiliating to myself, and doubtless
+contemptible in most men's eyes--was yet dealt by the hand of Heaven,
+and, as such, regarded by John only with compassion.
+
+The crowd grew denser and more formidable.  I looked beyond it, up
+towards the low hills that rose in various directions round the town;
+how green and quiet they were, in the still June evening!  I only
+wished we were safe back again at Norton Bury.
+
+But now there came a slight swaying in the crowd, as a sedan-chair
+was borne through--or attempted to be--for the effort failed.  There
+was a scuffle, one of the bearers was knocked down and hurt.  Some
+cried "shame!" others seemed to think this incident only added to the
+frolic.  At last, in the midst of the confusion, a lady put her head
+out of the sedan and gazed around her.
+
+It was a remarkable countenance; once seen, you could never forget
+it.  Pale, rather large and hard in outline, an aquiline nose--full,
+passionate, yet sensitive lips--and very dark eyes.  She spoke, and
+the voice belonged naturally to such a face.  "Good people, let me
+pass--I am Sarah Siddons."
+
+The crowd divided instantaneously, and in moving set up a cheer that
+must have rang through all the town.  There was a minute's pause,
+while she bowed and smiled--such a smile!--and then the sedan curtain
+closed.
+
+"Now's the time--only hold fast to me!" whispered John, as he sprang
+forward, dragging me after him.  In another second he had caught up
+the pole dropped by the man who was hurt; and before I well knew what
+we were about we both stood safe inside the entrance of the theatre.
+
+Mrs. Siddons stepped out, and turned to pay her bearers--a most
+simple action--but so elevated in the doing that even it, I thought,
+could not bring her to the level of common humanity.  The tall,
+cloaked, and hooded figure, and the tones that issued thence, made
+her, even in that narrow passage, under the one flaring
+tallow-candle, a veritable Queen of tragedy--at least so she seemed
+to us two.
+
+The one man was paid--over-paid, apparently, from his thankfulness--
+and she turned to John Halifax.
+
+"I regret, young man, that you should have had so much trouble.  Here
+is some requital."
+
+He took the money, selected from it one silver coin, and returned the
+rest.
+
+"I will keep this, madam, if you please, as a memento that I once had
+the honour of being useful to Mrs. Siddons."
+
+She looked at him keenly, out of her wonderful dark eyes, then
+curtsied with grave dignity--"I thank you, sir," she said, and passed
+on.
+
+A few minutes after some underling of the theatre found us out and
+brought us, "by Mrs. Siddons' desire," to the best places the house
+could afford.
+
+It was a glorious night.  At this distance of time, when I look back
+upon it my old blood leaps and burns.  I repeat, it was a glorious
+night!
+
+Before the curtain rose we had time to glance about us on that scene,
+to both entirely new--the inside of a theatre.  Shabby and small as
+the place was, it was filled with all the beau monde of Coltham,
+which then, patronized by royalty, rivalled even Bath in its fashion
+and folly.  Such a dazzle of diamonds and spangled turbans and
+Prince-of-Wales' plumes.  Such an odd mingling of costume, which was
+then in a transition state, the old ladies clinging tenaciously to
+the stately silken petticoats and long bodices, surmounted by the
+prim and decent bouffantes, while the younger belles had begun to
+flaunt in the French fashions of flimsy muslins, shortwaisted--
+narrow-skirted.  These we had already heard Jael furiously inveighing
+against:  for Jael, Quakeress as she was, could not quite smother her
+original propensity towards the decoration of "the flesh," and
+betrayed a suppressed but profound interest in the same.
+
+John and I quite agreed with her, that it was painful to see gentle
+English girls clad, or rather un-clad, after the fashion of our
+enemies across the Channel; now, unhappy nation! sunk to zero in
+politics, religion, and morals--where high-bred ladies went about
+dressed as heathen goddesses, with bare arms and bare sandalled feet,
+gaining none of the pure simplicity of the ancient world, and losing
+all the decorous dignity of our modern times.
+
+We two--who had all a boy's mysterious reverence for womanhood in its
+most ideal, most beautiful form, and who, I believe, were, in our
+ignorance, expecting to behold in every woman an Imogen, a Juliet, or
+a Desdemona--felt no particular attraction towards the ungracefully
+attired, flaunting, simpering belles of Coltham.
+
+But--the play began.
+
+I am not going to follow it:  all the world has heard of the Lady
+Macbeth of Mrs. Siddons.  This, the first and last play I ever
+witnessed, stands out to my memory, after more than half a century,
+as clear as on that night.  Still I can see her in her first scene,
+"reading a letter"--that wondrous woman, who, in spite of her modern
+black velvet and point lace, did not act, but WAS, Lady Macbeth:
+still I hear the awe-struck, questioning, weird-like tone, that sent
+an involuntary shudder through the house, as if supernatural things
+were abroad--"THEY MADE THEMSELVES--AIR!"  And still there quivers
+through the silence that piteous cry of a strong heart broken--"ALL
+THE PERFUMES OF ARABIA WILL NEVER SWEETEN THIS LITTLE HAND!"
+
+Well, she is gone, like the brief three hours when we hung on her
+every breath, as if it could stay even the wheels of time.  But they
+have whirled on--whirled her away with them into the infinite, and
+into earthly oblivion!  People tell me that a new generation only
+smiles at the traditional glory of Sarah Siddons.  They never saw
+her.  For me, I shall go down to the grave worshipping her still.
+
+Of him whom I call Mr. Charles I have little to say.  John and I both
+smiled when we saw his fine, frank face and manly bearing subdued
+into that poor, whining, sentimental craven, the stage Macbeth.  Yet
+I believe he acted it well.  But we irresistibly associated his idea
+with that of turnip munching and hay-cart oratory.  And when, during
+the first colloquy of Banquo with the witches, Macbeth took the
+opportunity of winking privately at us over the foot-lights, all the
+paraphernalia of the stage failed to make the murderous Thane of
+Cawdor aught else than our humorous and good-natured Mr. Charles.  I
+never saw him after that night.  He is still living--may his old age
+have been as peaceful as his youth was kind and gay!
+
+The play ended.  There was some buffoonery still to come, but we
+would not stay for that.  We staggered, half-blind and dazzled, both
+in eyes and brain, out into the dark streets, John almost carrying
+me.  Then we paused, and leaning against a post which was surmounted
+by one of the half-dozen oil lamps which illumined the town, tried to
+regain our mental equilibrium.
+
+John was the first to do it.  Passing his hand over his brow he bared
+it to the fresh night-air, and drew a deep, hard breath.  He was very
+pale, I saw.
+
+"John?"
+
+He turned, and laid a hand on my shoulder.  "What did you say?  Are
+you cold?"
+
+"No."  He put his arm so as to shield the wind from me, nevertheless.
+
+"Well," said he, after a pause, "we have had our pleasure, and it is
+over.  Now we must go back to the old ways again.  I wonder what
+o'clock it is?"
+
+He was answered by a church clock striking, heard clearly over the
+silent town.  I counted the strokes--ELEVEN!
+
+Horrified, we looked at one another by the light of the lamp.  Until
+this minute we had taken no note of time.  Eleven o'clock!  How
+should we get home to Norton Bury that night?
+
+For, now the excitement was over, I turned sick and faint; my limbs
+almost sank under me.
+
+"What must we do, John?"
+
+"Do! oh! 'tis quite easy.  You cannot walk--you shall not walk--we
+must hire a gig and drive home.  I have enough money--all my month's
+wages--see!"  He felt in his pockets one after the other; his
+countenance grew blank.  "Why! where is my money gone to?"
+
+Where, indeed! But that it was gone, and irretrievably--most likely
+stolen when we were so wedged in the crowd--there could be no manner
+of doubt.  And I had not a groat.  I had little use for money, and
+rarely carried any.
+
+"Would not somebody trust us?" suggested I.
+
+"I never asked anybody for credit in my life--and for a horse and
+gig--they'd laugh at me.  Still--yes--stay here a minute, and I'll
+try."
+
+He came back, though not immediately, and took my arm with a reckless
+laugh.
+
+"It's of no use, Phineas--I'm not so respectable as I thought.
+What's to be done?"
+
+Ay! what indeed!  Here we were, two friendless youths, with not a
+penny in our pockets, and ten miles away from home.  How to get
+there, and at midnight too, was a very serious question.  We
+consulted a minute, and then John said firmly:
+
+"We must make the best of it and start.  Every instant is precious.
+Your father will think we have fallen into some harm.  Come, Phineas,
+I'll help you on."
+
+His strong, cheery voice, added to the necessity of the
+circumstances, braced up my nerves.  I took hold of his arm, and we
+marched on bravely through the shut-up town, and for a mile or two
+along the high-road leading to Norton Bury.  There was a cool fresh
+breeze:  and I often think one can walk so much further by night than
+by day.  For some time, listening to John's talk about the stars--he
+had lately added astronomy to the many things he tried to learn--and
+recalling with him all that we had heard and seen this day, I hardly
+felt my weariness.
+
+But gradually it grew upon me; my pace lagged slower and slower--even
+the scented air of the midsummer-night imparted no freshness.  John
+wound his young arm, strong and firm as iron, round my waist, and we
+got on awhile in that way.
+
+"Keep up, Phineas.  There's a hayrick near.  I'll wrap you in my
+coat, and you shall rest there:  an hour or two will not matter now--
+we shall get home by daybreak."
+
+I feebly assented; but it seemed to me that we never should get home-
+-at least I never should.  For a short way more, I dragged myself--or
+rather, was dragged--along; then the stars, the shadowy fields, and
+the winding, white high-road mingled and faded from me.  I lost all
+consciousness.
+
+When I came to myself I was lying by a tiny brook at the roadside, my
+head resting on John's knees.  He was bathing my forehead:  I could
+not see him, but I heard his smothered moan.
+
+"David, don't mind.  I shall be well directly."
+
+"Oh! Phineas--Phineas; I thought I had killed you."
+
+He said no more; but I fancied that under cover of the night he
+yielded to what his manhood might have been ashamed of--yet need not-
+-a few tears.
+
+I tried to rise.  There was a faint streak in the east.  "Why, it is
+daybreak!  How far are we from Norton Bury?"
+
+"Not very far.  Don't stir a step.  I shall carry you."
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Nonsense; I have done it for half-a-mile already.  Come, mount!  I
+am not going to have Jonathan's death laid at David's door."
+
+And so, masking command with a jest, he had his way.  What strength
+supported him I cannot tell, but he certainly carried me--with many
+rests between, and pauses, during which I walked a quarter of a mile
+or so--the whole way to Norton Bury.
+
+The light broadened and broadened.  When we reached my father's door,
+haggard and miserable, it was in the pale sunshine of a summer
+morning.
+
+"Thank God!" murmured John, as he set me down at the foot of the
+steps.  "You are safe at home."
+
+"And you.  You will come in--you would not leave me now?"
+
+He thought a moment--then said, "No!"
+
+We looked up doubtfully at the house; there were no watchers there.
+All the windows were closed, as if the whole peaceful establishment
+were taking its sleep, prior to the early stirring of Norton Bury
+households.  Even John's loud knocking was some time before it was
+answered.
+
+I was too exhausted to feel much; but I know those five awful minutes
+seemed interminable.  I could not have borne them, save for John's
+voice in my ear.
+
+"Courage!  I'll bear all the blame.  We have committed no absolute
+sin, and have paid dearly for any folly.  Courage!"
+
+At the five minutes' end my father opened the door.  He was dressed
+as usual, looked as usual.  Whether he had sat up watching, or had
+suffered any anxiety, I never found out.
+
+He said nothing; merely opened the door, admitted us, and closed it
+behind us.  But we were certain, from his face, that he knew all.  It
+was so; some neighbour driving home from Coltham had taken pains to
+tell Abel Fletcher where he had seen his son--at the very last place
+a Friend's son ought to be seen--the play-house.  We knew that it was
+by no means to learn the truth, but to confront us with it, that my
+father--reaching the parlour, and opening the shutters that the hard
+daylight should shame us more and more--asked the stern question--
+
+"Phineas, where hast thee been?"
+
+John answered for me.  "At the theatre at Coltham.  It was my fault.
+He went because I wished to go."
+
+"And wherefore didst thee wish to go?"
+
+"Wherefore?" the answer seemed hard to find.  "Oh! Mr Fletcher, were
+you never young like me?"
+
+My father made no reply; John gathered courage.
+
+"It was, as I say, all my fault.  It might have been wrong--I think
+now that it was--but the temptation was hard.  My life here is dull;
+I long sometimes for a little amusement--a little change."
+
+"Thee shall have it."
+
+That voice, slow and quiet as it was, struck us both dumb.
+
+"And how long hast thee planned this, John Halifax?"
+
+"Not a day--not an hour! it was a sudden freak of mine."  (My father
+shook his head with contemptuous incredulity.)  "Sir!--Abel Fletcher-
+-did I ever tell you a lie?  If you will not believe me, believe your
+own son.  Ask Phineas--No, no, ask him nothing!"  And he came in
+great distress to the sofa where I had fallen.  "Oh, Phineas! how
+cruel I have been to you!"
+
+I tried to smile at him, being past speaking--but my father put John
+aside.
+
+"Young man, _I_ can take care of my son.  Thee shalt not lead him
+into harm's way any more.  Go--I have been mistaken in thee!"
+
+If my father had gone into a passion, had accused us, reproached us,
+and stormed at us with all the ill-language that men of the world
+use! but that quiet, cold, irrevocable, "I have been mistaken in
+thee!" was ten times worse.
+
+John lifted to him a mute look, from which all pride had ebbed away.
+
+"I repeat, I have been mistaken in thee!  Thee seemed a lad to my
+mind; I trusted thee.  This day, by my son's wish, I meant to have
+bound thee 'prentice to me, and in good time to have taken thee into
+the business.  Now--"
+
+There was silence.  At last John muttered, in a low broken-hearted
+voice, "I deserve it all.  I can go away.  I might perhaps earn my
+living elsewhere; shall I?"
+
+Abel Fletcher hesitated, looked at the poor lad before him (oh,
+David! how unlike to thee), then said, "No--I do not wish that.  At
+least, not at present."
+
+I cried out in the joy and relief of my heart.  John came over to me,
+and we clasped hands.
+
+"John, you will not go?"
+
+"No, I will stay to redeem my character with your father.  Be
+content, Phineas--I won't part with you."
+
+"Young man, thou must," said my father, turning round.
+
+"But--"
+
+"I have said it, Phineas.  I accuse him of no dishonesty, no crime,
+but of weakly yielding, and selfishly causing another to yield, to
+the temptation of the world.  Therefore, as my clerk I retain him; as
+my son's companion--never!"
+
+We felt that "never" was irrevocable.
+
+Yet I tried, blindly and despairingly, to wrestle with it; I might as
+well have flung myself against a stone wall.
+
+John stood perfectly silent.
+
+"Don't, Phineas," he whispered at last; "never mind me.  Your father
+is right--at least so far as he sees.  Let me go--perhaps I may come
+back to you some time.  If not--"
+
+I moaned out bitter words--I hardly knew what I was saying.  My
+father took no notice of them, only went to the door and called Jael.
+
+Then, before the woman came, I had strength enough to bid John go.
+
+"Good-bye--don't forget me, don't!"
+
+"I will not," he said; "and if I live we shall be friends again.
+Good-bye, Phineas."  He was gone.
+
+After that day, though he kept his word, and remained in the
+tan-yard, and though from time to time I heard of him--always
+accidentally,--after that day for two long years I never once saw the
+face of John Halifax.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+It was the year 1800, long known in English households as "the dear
+year."  The present generation can have no conception of what a
+terrible time that was--War, Famine, and Tumult stalking
+hand-in-hand, and no one to stay them.  For between the upper and
+lower classes there was a great gulf fixed; the rich ground the faces
+of the poor, the poor hated, yet meanly succumbed to, the rich.
+Neither had Christianity enough boldly to cross the line of
+demarcation, and prove, the humbler, that they were men,--the higher
+and wiser, that they were gentlemen.
+
+These troubles, which were everywhere abroad, reached us even in our
+quiet town of Norton Bury.  For myself, personally, they touched me
+not, or, at least, only kept fluttering like evil birds outside the
+dear home-tabernacle, where I and Patience sat, keeping our solemn
+counsel together--for these two years had with me been very hard.
+
+Though I had to bear so much bodily suffering that I was seldom told
+of any worldly cares, still I often fancied things were going ill
+both within and without our doors.  Jael complained in an under-key
+of stinted housekeeping, or boasted aloud of her own ingenuity in
+making ends meet:  and my father's brow grew continually heavier,
+graver, sterner; sometimes so stern that I dared not wage, what was,
+openly or secretly, the quiet but incessant crusade of my existence--
+the bringing back of John Halifax.
+
+He still remained my father's clerk--nay, I sometimes thought he was
+even advancing in duties and trusts, for I heard of his being sent
+long journeys up and down England to buy grain--Abel Fletcher having
+added to his tanning business the flour-mill hard by, whose lazy
+whirr was so familiar to John and me in our boyhood.  But of these
+journeys my father never spoke; indeed, he rarely mentioned John at
+all.  However he might employ and even trust him in business
+relations, I knew that in every other way he was inexorable.
+
+And John Halifax was as inexorable as he.  No under-hand or
+clandestine friendship would he admit--no, not even for my sake.  I
+knew quite well, that until he could walk in openly, honourably,
+proudly, he never would re-enter my father's doors.  Twice only he
+had written to me--on my two birthdays--my father himself giving me
+in silence the unsealed letters.  They told me what I already was
+sure of--that I held, and always should hold, my steadfast place in
+his friendship.  Nothing more.
+
+One other fact I noticed:  that a little lad, afterward discovered to
+be Jem Watkins, to whom had fallen the hard-working lot of the lost
+Bill, had somehow crept into our household as errand-boy, or
+gardener's boy; and being "cute," and a "scholard," was greatly
+patronized by Jael.  I noticed, too, that the said Jem, whenever he
+came in my way, in house or garden, was the most capital "little
+foot-page" that ever invalid had; knowing intuitively all my needs,
+and serving me with an unfailing devotion, which quite surprised and
+puzzled me at the time.  It did not afterwards.
+
+Summer was passing.  People began to watch with anxious looks the
+thin harvest-fields--as Jael often told me, when she came home from
+her afternoon walks.  "It was piteous to see them," she said; "only
+July, and the quartern loaf nearly three shillings, and meal four
+shillings a peck."
+
+And then she would glance at our flour-mill, where for several days a
+week the water-wheel was as quiet as on Sundays; for my father kept
+his grain locked up, waiting for what, he wisely judged, might be a
+worse harvest than the last.  But Jael, though she said nothing,
+often looked at the flour-mill and shook her head.  And after one
+market-day--when she came in rather "flustered," saying there had
+been a mob outside the mill, until "that young man Halifax" had gone
+out and spoken to them--she never once allowed me to take my rare
+walk under the trees in the Abbey-yard; nor, if she could help it,
+would she even let me sit watching the lazy Avon from the
+garden-wall.
+
+One Sunday--it was the 1st of August, for my father had just come
+back from meeting, very much later than usual, and Jael said he had
+gone, as was his annual custom on that his wedding-day, to the
+Friends' burial ground in St. Mary's Lane, where, far away from her
+own kindred and people, my poor young mother had been laid,--on this
+one Sunday I began to see that things were going wrong.  Abel
+Fletcher sat at dinner wearing the heavy, hard look which had grown
+upon his face not unmingled with the wrinkles planted by physical
+pain.  For, with all his temperance, he could not quite keep down his
+hereditary enemy, gout; and this week it had clutched him pretty
+hard.
+
+Dr. Jessop came in, and I stole away gladly enough, and sat for an
+hour in my old place in the garden, idly watching the stretch of
+meadow, pasture, and harvest land.  Noticing, too, more as a pretty
+bit in the landscape than as a fact of vital importance, in how many
+places the half-ripe corn was already cut, and piled in
+thinly-scattered sheaves over the fields.
+
+After the doctor left, my father sent for me and all his household:
+in the which, creeping humbly after the woman-kind, was now numbered
+the lad Jem.  That Abel Fletcher was not quite himself was proved by
+the fact that his unlighted pipe lay on the table, and his afternoon
+tankard of ale sank from foam to flatness untouched.
+
+He first addressed Jael.  "Woman, was it thee who cooked the dinner
+to-day?"
+
+She gave a dignified affirmative.
+
+"Thee must give us no more such dinners.  No cakes, no pastry
+kickshaws, and only wheaten bread enough for absolute necessity.  Our
+neighbours shall not say that Abel Fletcher has flour in his mill,
+and plenty in his house, while there is famine abroad in the land.
+So take heed."
+
+"I do take heed," answered Jael, staunchly.  "Thee canst not say I
+waste a penny of thine.  And for myself, do I not pity the poor?  On
+First-day a woman cried after me about wasting good flour in starch--
+to-day, behold."
+
+And with a spasmodic bridling-up, she pointed to the bouffante which
+used to stand up stiffly round her withered old throat, and stick out
+in front like a pouter pigeon.  Alas! its glory and starch were alike
+departed; it now appeared nothing but a heap of crumpled and
+yellowish muslin.  Poor Jael!  I knew this was the most heroic
+personal sacrifice she could have made, yet I could not help smiling;
+even my father did the same.
+
+"Dost thee mock me, Abel Fletcher?" cried she angrily.  "Preach not
+to others while the sin lies on thy own head."
+
+And I am sure poor Jael was innocent of any jocular intention, as
+advancing sternly she pointed to her master's pate, where his
+long-worn powder was scarcely distinguishable from the snows of age.
+He bore the assault gravely and unshrinkingly, merely saying, "Woman,
+peace!"
+
+"Nor while"--pursued Jael, driven apparently to the last and most
+poisoned arrow in her quiver of wrath--"while the poor folk be
+starving in scores about Norton Bury, and the rich folk there will
+not sell their wheat under famine price.  Take heed to thyself, Abel
+Fletcher."
+
+My father winced, either from a twinge of gout or conscience; and
+then Jael suddenly ceased the attack, sent the other servants out of
+the room, and tended her master as carefully as if she had not
+insulted him.  In his fits of gout my father, unlike most men, became
+the quieter and easier to manage the more he suffered.  He had a long
+fit of pain which left him considerably exhausted.  When, being at
+last relieved, he and I were sitting in the room alone, he said to
+me--
+
+"Phineas, the tan-yard has thriven ill of late, and I thought the
+mill would make up for it.  But if it will not it will not.  Wouldst
+thee mind, my son, being left a little poor when I am gone?"
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Well, then, in a few days I will begin selling my wheat, as that lad
+has advised and begged me to do these weeks past.  He is a sharp lad,
+and I am getting old.  Perhaps he is right."
+
+"Who, father?" I asked, rather hypocritically.
+
+"Thee knowest well enough--John Halifax."
+
+I thought it best to say no more; but I never let go one thread of
+hope which could draw me nearer to my heart's desire.
+
+On the Monday morning my father went to the tan-yard as usual.  I
+spent the day in my bed-room, which looked over the garden, where I
+saw nothing but the waving of the trees and the birds hopping over
+the smooth grass; heard nothing but the soft chime, hour after hour,
+of the Abbey bells.  What was passing in the world, in the town, or
+even in the next street, was to me faint as dreams.
+
+At dinner-time I rose, went down-stairs, and waited for my father;
+waited one, two, three hours.  It was very strange.  He never by any
+chance overstayed his time, without sending a message home.  So after
+some consideration as to whether I dared encroach upon his formal
+habits so much, and after much advice from Jael, who betrayed more
+anxiety than was at all warranted by the cause she assigned, viz. the
+spoiled dinner, I despatched Jem Watkins to the tan-yard to see after
+his master.
+
+He came back with ill news.  The lane leading to the tan-yard was
+blocked up with a wild mob.  Even the stolid, starved patience of our
+Norton Bury poor had come to an end at last--they had followed the
+example of many others.  There was a bread-riot in the town.
+
+God only knows how terrible those "riots" were; when the people rose
+in desperation, not from some delusion of crazy, blood-thirsty
+"patriotism," but to get food for themselves, their wives, and
+children.  God only knows what madness was in each individual heart
+of that concourse of poor wretches, styled "the mob," when every man
+took up arms, certain that there were before him but two
+alternatives, starving or--hanging.
+
+The riot here was scarcely universal.  Norton Bury was not a large
+place, and had always abundance of small-pox and fevers to keep the
+poor down numerically.  Jem said it was chiefly about our mill and
+our tan-yard that the disturbance lay.
+
+"And where is my father?"
+
+Jem "didn't know," and looked very much as if he didn't care.
+
+"Jael, somebody must go at once, and find my father."
+
+"I am going," said Jael, who had already put on her cloak and hood.
+Of course, despite all her opposition, I went too.
+
+The tan-yard was deserted; the mob had divided, and gone, one half to
+our mill, the rest to another that was lower down the river.  I asked
+of a poor frightened bark-cutter if she knew where my father was?
+She thought he was gone for the "millingtary;" but Mr. Halifax was at
+the mill now--she hoped no harm would come to Mr. Halifax.
+
+Even in that moment of alarm I felt a sense of pleasure.  I had not
+been in the tan-yard for nearly three years.  I did not know John had
+come already to be called "Mr. Halifax."
+
+There was nothing for me but to wait here till my father returned.
+He could not surely be so insane as to go to the mill--and John was
+there.  Terribly was my heart divided, but my duty lay with my
+father.
+
+Jael sat down in the shed, or marched restlessly between the
+tan-pits.  I went to the end of the yard, and looked down towards the
+mill.  What a half-hour it was!
+
+At last, exhausted, I sat down on the bark heap where John and I had
+once sat as lads.  He must now be more than twenty; I wondered if he
+were altered.
+
+"Oh, David! David!" I thought, as I listened eagerly for any sounds
+abroad in the town; "what should I do if any harm came to thee?"
+
+This minute I heard a footstep crossing the yard.  No, it was not my
+father's--it was firmer, quicker, younger.  I sprang from the
+barkheap.
+
+"Phineas!"
+
+"John!"
+
+What a grasp that was--both hands! and how fondly and proudly I
+looked up in his face--the still boyish face.  But the figure was
+quite that of a man now.
+
+For a minute we forgot ourselves in our joy, and then he let go my
+hands, saying hurriedly--
+
+"Where is your father?"
+
+"I wish I knew!--Gone for the soldiers, they say."
+
+"No, not that--he would never do that.  I must go and look for him.
+Good-bye."
+
+"Nay, dear John!"
+
+"Can't--can't," said he, firmly, "not while your father forbids.  I
+must go."  And he was gone.
+
+Though my heart rebelled, my conscience defended him; marvelling how
+it was that he who had never known his father should uphold so
+sternly the duty of filial obedience.  I think it ought to act as a
+solemn warning to those who exact so much from the mere fact and name
+of parenthood, without having in any way fulfilled its duties, that
+orphans from birth often revere the ideal of that bond far more than
+those who have known it in reality.  Always excepting those children
+to whose blessed lot it has fallen to have the ideal realized.
+
+In a few minutes I saw him and my father enter the tan-yard together.
+He was talking earnestly, and my father was listening--ay, listening-
+-and to John Halifax!  But whatever the argument was, it failed to
+move him.  Greatly troubled, but staunch as a rock, my old father
+stood, resting his lame foot on a heap of hides.  I went to meet him.
+
+"Phineas," said John, anxiously, "come and help me.  No, Abel
+Fletcher," he added, rather proudly, in reply to a sharp, suspicious
+glance at us both; "your son and I only met ten minutes ago, and have
+scarcely exchanged a word.  But we cannot waste time over that matter
+now.  Phineas, help me to persuade your father to save his property.
+He will not call for the aid of the law, because he is a Friend.
+Besides, for the same reason, it might be useless asking."
+
+"Verily!" said my father, with a bitter and meaning smile.
+
+"But he might get his own men to defend his property, and need not do
+what he is bent on doing--go to the mill himself."
+
+"Surely," was all Abel Fletcher said, planting his oaken stick
+firmly, as firmly as his will, and taking his way to the river-side,
+in the direction of the mill.
+
+I caught his arm--"Father, don't go."
+
+"My son," said he, turning on me one of his "iron looks," as I used
+to call them--tokens of a nature that might have ran molten once, and
+had settled into a hard, moulded mass, of which nothing could
+afterwards alter one form, or erase one line--"My son, no opposition.
+Any who try that with me fail.  If those fellows had waited two days
+more I would have sold all my wheat at a hundred shillings the
+quarter; now they shall have nothing.  It will teach them wisdom
+another time.  Get thee safe home, Phineas, my son; Jael, go thou
+likewise."
+
+But neither went.  John held me back as I was following my father.
+
+"He will do it, Phineas, and I suppose he must.  Please God, I'll
+take care no harm touches him--but you go home."
+
+That was not to be thought of.  Fortunately, the time was too brief
+for argument, so the discussion soon ended.  He followed my father
+and I followed him.  For Jael, she disappeared.
+
+There was a private path from the tan-yard to the mill, along the
+river-side; by this we went, in silence.  When we reached the spot it
+was deserted; but further down the river we heard a scuffling, and
+saw a number of men breaking down our garden wall.
+
+"They think he is gone home," whispered John; "we'll get in here the
+safer.  Quick, Phineas."
+
+We crossed the little bridge; John took a key out of his pocket, and
+let us into the mill by a small door--the only entrance, and that was
+barred and trebly barred within.  It had good need to be in such
+times.
+
+The mill was a queer, musty, silent place, especially the machinery
+room, the sole flooring of which was the dark, dangerous stream.  We
+stood there a good while--it was the safest place, having no windows.
+Then we followed my father to the top story, where he kept his bags
+of grain.  There were very many; enough, in these times, to make a
+large fortune by--a cursed fortune wrung out of human lives.
+
+"Oh! how could my father--"
+
+"Hush!" whispered John, "it was for his son's sake, you know."
+
+But while we stood, and with a meaning but rather grim smile Abel
+Fletcher counted his bags, worth almost as much as bags of gold--we
+heard a hammering at the door below.  The rioters were come.
+
+Miserable "rioters!"--A handful of weak, starved men--pelting us with
+stones and words.  One pistol-shot might have routed them all--but my
+father's doctrine of non-resistance forbade.  Small as their force
+seemed, there was something at once formidable and pitiful in the low
+howl that reached us at times.
+
+"Bring out the bags!--Us mun have bread!"
+
+"Throw down thy corn, Abel Fletcher!"
+
+"Abel Fletcher WILL throw it down to ye, ye knaves," said my father,
+leaning out of the upper window; while a sound, half curses, half
+cheers of triumph, answered him from below.
+
+"That is well," exclaimed John, eagerly.  "Thank you--thank you, Mr.
+Fletcher--I knew you would yield at last."
+
+"Didst thee, lad?" said my father, stopping short.
+
+"Not because they forced you--not to save your life--but because it
+was right."
+
+"Help me with this bag," was all the reply.
+
+It was a great weight, but not too great for John's young arm,
+nervous and strong.  He hauled it up.
+
+"Now, open the window--dash the panes through--it matters not.  On to
+the window, I tell thee."
+
+"But if I do, the bag will fall into the river.  You cannot--oh, no!-
+-you cannot mean that!"
+
+"Haul it up to the window, John Halifax."
+
+But John remained immovable.
+
+"I must do it myself, then;" and, in the desperate effort he made,
+somehow the bag of grain fell, and fell on his lame foot.  Tortured
+into frenzy with the pain--or else, I will still believe, my old
+father would not have done such a deed--his failing strength seemed
+doubled and trebled.  In an instant more he had got the bag half
+through the window, and the next sound we heard was its heavy splash
+in the river below.
+
+Flung into the river, the precious wheat, and in the very sight of
+the famished rioters!  A howl of fury and despair arose.  Some
+plunged into the water, ere the eddies left by the falling mass had
+ceased--but it was too late.  A sharp substance in the river's bed
+had cut the bag, and we saw thrown up to the surface, and whirled
+down the Avon, thousands of dancing grains.  A few of the men swam,
+or waded after them, clutching a handful here or there--but by the
+mill-pool the river ran swift, and the wheat had all soon
+disappeared, except what remained in the bag when it was drawn on
+shore.  Over even that they fought like demons.
+
+We could not look at them--John and I.  He put his hand over his
+eyes, muttering the Name that, young man as he was, I had never yet
+heard irreverently and thoughtlessly on his lips.  It was a sight
+that would move any one to cry for pity unto the Great Father of the
+human family.
+
+Abel Fletcher sat on his remaining bags, in an exhaustion that I
+think was not all physical pain.  The paroxysm of anger past, he,
+ever a just man, could not fail to be struck with what he had done.
+He seemed subdued, even to something like remorse.
+
+John looked at him, and looked away.  For a minute he listened in
+silence to the shouting outside, and then turned to my father.
+
+"Sir, you must come now.  Not a second to lose--they will fire the
+mill next."
+
+"Let them."
+
+"Let them?--and Phineas is here!"
+
+My poor father!  He rose at once.
+
+We got him down-stairs--he was very lame--his ruddy face all drawn
+and white with pain; but he did not speak one word of opposition, or
+utter a groan of complaint.
+
+The flour-mill was built on piles, in the centre of the narrow river.
+It was only a few steps of bridge-work to either bank.  The little
+door was on the Norton Bury side, and was hid from the opposite
+shore, where the rioters had now collected.  In a minute we had crept
+forth, and dashed out of sight, in the narrow path which had been
+made from the mill to the tan-yard.
+
+"Will you take my arm? we must get on fast."
+
+"Home?" said my father, as John led him passively along.
+
+"No, sir, not home:  they are there before you.  Your life's not safe
+an hour--unless, indeed, you get soldiers to guard it."
+
+Abel Fletcher gave a decided negative.  The stern old Quaker held to
+his principles still.
+
+"Then you must hide for a time--both of you.  Come to my room.  You
+will be secure there.  Urge him, Phineas--for your sake and his own."
+
+But my poor broken-down father needed no urging.  Grasping more
+tightly both John's arm and mine, which, for the first time in his
+life, he leaned upon, he submitted to be led whither we chose.  So,
+after this long interval of time, I once more stood in Sally Watkins'
+small attic; where, ever since I first brought him there, John
+Halifax had lived.
+
+Sally knew not of our entrance; she was out, watching the rioters.
+No one saw us but Jem, and Jem's honour was safe as a rock.  I knew
+that in the smile with which he pulled off his cap to "Mr. Halifax."
+
+"Now," said John, hastily smoothing his bed, so that my father might
+lie down, and wrapping his cloak round me--"you must both be very
+still.  You will likely have to spend the night here.  Jem shall
+bring you a light and supper.  You will make yourself easy, Abel
+Fletcher?"
+
+"Ay."  It was strange to see how decidedly, yet respectfully, John
+spoke, and how quietly my father answered.
+
+"And, Phineas"--he put his arm round my shoulder in his old way--"you
+will take care of yourself.  Are you any stronger than you used to
+be?"
+
+I clasped his hand without reply.  My heart melted to hear that
+tender accent, so familiar once.  All was happening for the best, if
+it only gave me back David.
+
+"Now good-bye--I must be off."
+
+"Whither?" said my father, rousing himself.
+
+"To try and save the house and the tan-yard--I fear we must give up
+the mill.  No, don't hold me, Phineas.  I run no risk:  everybody
+knows me.  Besides, I am young.  There! see after your father.  I
+shall come back in good time."
+
+He grasped my hands warmly--then unloosed them; and I heard his step
+descending the staircase.  The room seemed to darken when he went
+away.
+
+The evening passed very slowly.  My father, exhausted with pain, lay
+on the bed and dozed.  I sat watching the sky over the housetops,
+which met in the old angles, with the same blue peeps between.  I
+half forgot all the day's events--it seemed but two weeks, instead of
+two years ago, that John and I had sat in this attic-window, conning
+our Shakspeare for the first time.
+
+Ere twilight I examined John's room.  It was a good deal changed; the
+furniture was improved; a score of ingenious little contrivances made
+the tiny attic into a cosy bed-chamber.  One corner was full of
+shelves, laden with books, chiefly of a scientific and practical
+nature.  John's taste did not lead him into the current literature of
+the day:  Cowper, Akenside, and Peter Pindar were alike indifferent
+to him.  I found among his books no poet but Shakspeare.
+
+He evidently still practised his old mechanical arts.  There was
+lying in the window a telescope--the cylinder made of pasteboard--
+into which the lenses were ingeniously fitted.  A rough
+telescope-stand, of common deal, stood on the ledge of the roof, from
+which the field of view must have been satisfactory enough to the
+young astronomer.  Other fragments of skilful handiwork, chiefly
+meant for machinery on a Lilliputian scale, were strewn about the
+floor; and on a chair, just as he had left it that morning, stood a
+loom, very small in size, but perfect in its neat workmanship, with a
+few threads already woven, making some fabric not so very unlike
+cloth.
+
+I had gone over all these things without noticing that my father was
+awake, and that his sharp eye had observed them likewise.
+
+"The lad works hard," said he, half to himself.  "He has useful hands
+and a clear head."  I smiled, but took no notice whatever.
+
+Evening began to close in--less peacefully than usual--over Norton
+Bury; for, whenever I ventured to open the window, we heard unusual
+and ominous sounds abroad in the town.  I trembled inwardly.  But
+John was prudent, as well as brave:  besides, "everybody knew him."
+Surely he was safe.
+
+Faithfully, at supper-time, Jem entered.  But he could tell us no
+news; he had kept watch all the time on the staircase by desire of
+"Mr. Halifax"--so he informed me.  My father asked no questions--not
+even about his mill.  From his look, sometimes, I fancied he yet
+beheld in fancy these starving men fighting over the precious food,
+destroyed so wilfully--nay, wickedly.  Heaven forgive me, his son, if
+I too harshly use the word; for I think, till the day of his death,
+that cruel sight never wholly vanished from the eyes of my poor
+father.
+
+Jem seemed talkatively inclined.  He observed that "master was
+looking sprack agin; and warn't this a tidy room, like?"
+
+I praised it; and supposed his mother was better off now?
+
+"Ay, she be.  Mr. Halifax pays her a good rent; and she sees 'un made
+comfortable.  Not that he wants much, being out pretty much all day."
+
+"What is he busy about of nights?"
+
+"Larning," said Jem, with an awed look.  "He's terrible wise.  But
+for all that, sometimes he'll teach Charley and me a bit o' the
+Readamadeasy."  (Reading-made-easy, I suppose, John's hopeful pupil
+meant.)  "He's very kind to we, and to mother too.  Her says, that
+her do, Mr. Halifax--"
+
+"Send the fellow away, Phineas," muttered my father, turning his face
+to the wall.
+
+I obeyed.  But first I asked, in a whisper, if Jem had any idea when
+"Mr. Halifax" would be back?
+
+"He said, maybe not till morning.  Them's bad folk about.  He was
+going to stop all night, either at your house or at the tan-yard, for
+fear of a BLAZE."
+
+The word made my father start; for in these times well we knew what
+poor folk meant by "a blaze."
+
+"My house--my tan-yard--I must get up this instant--help me.  He
+ought to come back--that lad Halifax.  There's a score of my men at
+hand--Wilkes, and Johnson, and Jacob Baines--I say, Phineas--but thee
+know'st nothing."
+
+He tried to dress, and to drag on his heavy shoes; but fell back,
+sick with exhaustion and pain.  I made him lie down again on the bed.
+
+"Phineas, lad," said he, brokenly, "thy old father is getting as
+helpless as thee."
+
+So we kept watch together, all the night through; sometimes dozing,
+sometimes waking up at some slight noise below, or at the flicker of
+the long-wicked candle, which fear converted into the glare of some
+incendiary fire--doubtless our own home.  Now and then I heard my
+father mutter something about "the lad being safe."  I said nothing.
+I only prayed.
+
+Thus the night wore away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+After Midnight--I know not how long, for I lost count of the hours by
+the Abbey chimes, and our light had gone out--after midnight I heard
+by my father's breathing that he was asleep.  I was thankful to see
+it for his sake, and also for another reason.
+
+I could not sleep--all my faculties were preternaturally alive; my
+weak body and timid mind became strong and active, able to compass
+anything.  For that one night, at least, I felt myself a man.
+
+My father was a very sound sleeper.  I knew nothing would disturb him
+till daylight; therefore my divided duty was at an end.  I left him,
+and crept down-stairs into Sally Watkins' kitchen.  It was silent,
+only the faithful warder, Jem, dozed over the dull fire.  I touched
+him on the shoulder--at which he collared me and nearly knocked me
+down.
+
+"Beg pardon, Mr. Phineas--hope I didn't hurt 'ee, sir?" cried he, all
+but whimpering; for Jem, a big lad of fifteen, was the most
+tender-hearted fellow imaginable.  "I thought it were some of them
+folk that Mr. Halifax ha' gone among."
+
+"Where is Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"Doan't know, sir--wish I did! wouldn't be long a finding out,
+though--on'y he says:  'Jem, you stop 'ere wi' they'" (pointing his
+thumb up the staircase).  "So, Master Phineas, I stop."
+
+And Jem settled himself with a doggedly obedient, but most
+dissatisfied air down by the fire-place.  It was evident nothing
+would move him thence:  so he was as safe a guard over my poor old
+father's slumber as the mastiff in the tan-yard, who was as brave as
+a lion and as docile as a child.  My last lingering hesitation ended.
+
+"Jem, lend me your coat and hat--I'm going out into the town."
+
+Jem was so astonished, that he stood with open mouth while I took the
+said garments from him, and unbolted the door.  At last it seemed to
+occur to him that he ought to intercept me.
+
+"But, sir, Mr. Halifax said--"
+
+"I am going to look for Mr. Halifax."
+
+And I escaped outside.  Anything beyond his literal duty did not
+strike the faithful Jem.  He stood on the door-sill, and gazed after
+me with a hopeless expression.
+
+"I s'pose you mun have your way, sir; but Mr. Halifax said, 'Jem, you
+stop y'ere,'--and y'ere I stop."
+
+He went in, and I heard him bolting the door, with a sullen
+determination, as if he would have kept guard against it--waiting for
+John--until doomsday.
+
+I stole along the dark alley into the street.  It was very silent--I
+need not have borrowed Jem's exterior, in order to creep through a
+throng of maddened rioters.  There was no sign of any such, except
+that under one of the three oil-lamps that lit the night-darkness at
+Norton Bury lay a few smouldering hanks of hemp, well resined.  They,
+then, had thought of that dreadful engine of destruction--fire.  Had
+my terrors been true?  Our house--and perhaps John within it!
+
+On I ran, speeded by a dull murmur, which I fancied I heard; but
+still there was no one in the street--no one except the
+Abbey-watchman lounging in his box.  I roused him, and asked if all
+was safe?--where were the rioters?
+
+"What rioters?"
+
+"At Abel Fletcher's mill; they may be at his house now--"
+
+"Ay, I think they be."
+
+"And will not one man in the town help him; no constables--no law?"
+
+"Oh! he's a Quaker; the law don't help Quakers."
+
+That was the truth--the hard, grinding truth--in those days.
+Liberty, justice, were idle names to Nonconformists of every kind;
+and all they knew of the glorious constitution of English law was
+when its iron hand was turned against them.
+
+I had forgotten this; bitterly I remembered it now.  So wasting no
+more words, I flew along the church-yard, until I saw, shining
+against the boles of the chestnut-trees, a red light.  It was one of
+the hempen torches.  Now, at last, I had got in the midst of that
+small body of men, "the rioters."
+
+They were a mere handful--not above two score--apparently the relics
+of the band which had attacked the mill, joined with a few plough-
+lads from the country around.  But they were desperate; they had come
+up the Coltham road so quietly, that, except this faint murmur,
+neither I nor any one in the town could have told they were near.
+Wherever they had been ransacking, as yet they had not attacked my
+father's house; it stood up on the other side the road--barred,
+black, silent.
+
+I heard a muttering--"Th' old man bean't there."--"Nobody knows where
+he be."  No, thank God!
+
+"Be us all y'ere?" said the man with the torch, holding it up so as
+to see round him.  It was well then that I appeared as Jem Watkins.
+But no one noticed me, except one man, who skulked behind a tree, and
+of whom I was rather afraid, as he was apparently intent on watching.
+
+"Ready, lads?  Now for the rosin!  Blaze 'un out."
+
+But, in the eager scuffle, the torch, the only one alight, was
+knocked down and trodden out.  A volley of oaths arose, though whose
+fault it was no one seemed to know; but I missed my man from behind
+the tree--nor found him till after the angry throng had rushed on to
+the nearest lamp.  One of them was left behind, standing close to our
+own railings.  He looked round to see if none were by, and then
+sprang over the gate.  Dark as it was I thought I recognized him.
+
+"John?"
+
+"Phineas?"  He was beside me in a bound.  "How could you do--"
+
+"I could do anything to-night.  But you are safe; no one has harmed
+you.  Oh, thank God, you are not hurt!"
+
+And I clung to his arm--my friend, whom I had missed so long, so
+sorely.
+
+He held me tight--his heart felt as mine, only more silently.
+
+"Now, Phineas, we have a minute's time.  I must have you safe--we
+must get into the house."
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"Jael; she is as good as a host of constables; she has braved the
+fellows once to-night, but they're back again, or will be directly."
+
+"And the mill?"
+
+"Safe, as yet; I have had three of the tan-yard men there since
+yesterday morning, though your father did not know.  I have been
+going to and fro all night, between there and here, waiting till the
+rioters should come back from the Severn mills.  Hist!--here they
+are--I say, Jael?"
+
+He tapped at the window.  In a few seconds Jael had unbarred the
+door, let us in, and closed it again securely, mounting guard behind
+it with something that looked very like my father's pistols, though I
+would not discredit her among our peaceful society by positively
+stating the fact.
+
+"Bravo!" said John, when we stood all together in the barricaded
+house, and heard the threatening murmur of voices and feet outside.
+"Bravo, Jael!  The wife of Heber the Kenite was no braver woman than
+you."
+
+She looked gratified, and followed John obediently from room to room.
+
+"I have done all as thee bade me--thee art a sensible lad, John
+Halifax.  We are secure, I think."
+
+Secure? bolts and bars secure against fire?  For that was threatening
+us now.
+
+"They can't mean it--surely they can't mean it," repeated John, as
+the cry of "Burn 'un out!" rose louder and louder.
+
+But they did mean it.  From the attic window we watched them light
+torch after torch, sometimes throwing one at the house,--but it fell
+harmless against the staunch oaken door, and blazed itself out on our
+stone steps.  All it did was to show more plainly than even daylight
+had shown, the gaunt, ragged forms and pinched faces, furious with
+famine.
+
+John, as well as I, recoiled at that miserable sight.
+
+"I'll speak to them," he said.  "Unbar the window, Jael;" and before
+I could hinder, he was leaning right out.  "Holloa, there!"
+
+At his loud and commanding voice a wave of up-turned faces surged
+forward, expectant.
+
+"My men, do you know what you are about?  To burn down a gentleman's
+house is--hanging."
+
+There was a hush, and then a shout of derision.
+
+"Not a Quaker's! nobody'll get hanged for burning out a Quaker!"
+
+"That be true enough," muttered Jael between her teeth.  "We must
+e'en fight, as Mordecai's people fought, hand to hand, until they
+slew their enemies."
+
+"Fight!" repeated John, half to himself, as he stood at the now-
+closed window, against which more than one blazing torch began to
+rattle.  "Fight--with these?--What are you doing, Jael?"
+
+For she had taken down a large Book--the last Book in the house she
+would have taken under less critical circumstances, and with it was
+trying to stop up a broken pane.
+
+"No, my good Jael, not this;" and he carefully replaced the volume;
+that volume, in which he might have read, as day after day, and year
+after year, we Christians generally do read, such plain words as
+these--"Love your enemies;" "bless them that curse you;" "pray for
+them that despitefully use you and persecute you."
+
+A minute or two John stood with his hand on the Book, thinking.  Then
+he touched me on the shoulder.
+
+"Phineas, I'm going to try a new plan--at least, one so old, that
+it's almost new.  Whether it succeeds or no, you'll bear me witness
+to your father that I did it for the best, and did it because I
+thought it right.  Now for it."
+
+To my horror, he threw up the window wide, and leant out.
+
+"My men, I want to speak to you."
+
+He might as well have spoken to the roaring sea.  The only answer was
+a shower of missiles, which missed their aim.  The rioters were too
+far off--our spiked iron railings, eight feet high or more, being a
+barrier which none had yet ventured to climb.  But at length one
+random stone hit John on the chest.
+
+I pulled him in, but he declared he was not hurt.  Terrified, I
+implored him not to risk his life.
+
+"Life is not always the first thing to be thought of," said he,
+gently.  "Don't be afraid--I shall come to no harm.  But I MUST do
+what I think right, if it is to be done."
+
+While he spoke, I could hardly hear him for the bellowings outside.
+More savage still grew the cry--
+
+"Burn 'em out! burn 'em out!  They be only Quakers!"
+
+"There's not a minute to lose--stop--let me think--Jael, is that a
+pistol?"
+
+"Loaded," she said, handing it over to him with a kind of stern
+delight.  Certainly, Jael was not meant to be a Friend.
+
+John ran down-stairs, and before I guessed his purpose, had unbolted
+the hall-door, and stood on the flight of steps, in full view of the
+mob.
+
+There was no bringing him back, so of course I followed.  A pillar
+sheltered me--I do not think he saw me, though I stood close behind
+him.
+
+So sudden had been his act, that even the rioters did not seem to
+have noticed, or clearly understood it, till the next lighted torch
+showed them the young man standing there, with his back to the door--
+OUTSIDE the door.
+
+The sight fairly confounded them.  Even I felt that for the moment he
+was safe.  They were awed--nay, paralyzed, by his daring.
+
+But the storm raged too fiercely to be lulled, except for one brief
+minute.  A confusion of voices burst out afresh--
+
+"Who be thee?"--"It's one o' the Quakers."--"No, he bean't."--"Burn
+'un, anyhow."--"Touch 'un, if ye dare."
+
+There was evidently a division arising.  One big man, who had made
+himself very prominent all along, seemed trying to calm the tumult.
+
+John stood his ground.  Once a torch was flung at him--he stooped and
+picked it up.  I thought he was going to hurl it back again, but he
+did not; he only threw it down, and stamped it out safely with his
+foot.  This simple action had a wonderful effect on the crowd.
+
+The big fellow advanced to the gate and called John by his name.
+
+"Is that you, Jacob Baines?  I am sorry to see you here."
+
+"Be ye, sir."
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"Nought wi' thee.  We wants Abel Fletcher.  Where is 'um?"
+
+"I shall certainly not tell you."
+
+As John said this again the noise arose, and again Jacob Baines
+seemed to have power to quiet the rest.
+
+John Halifax never stirred.  Evidently he was pretty well known.  I
+caught many a stray sentence, such as "Don't hurt the lad."--"He were
+kind to my lad, he were."--"No, he be a real gentleman."--"No, he
+comed here as poor as us," and the like.  At length one voice, sharp
+and shrill, was heard above the rest.
+
+"I zay, young man, didst ever know what it was to be pretty nigh
+vamished?"
+
+"Ay, many a time."
+
+The answer, so brief, so unexpected, struck a great hush into the
+throng.  Then the same voice cried--
+
+"Speak up, man! we won't hurt 'ee!  You be one o' we!"
+
+"No, I am not one of you.  I'd be ashamed to come in the night and
+burn my master's house down."
+
+I expected an outbreak, but none came.  They listened, as it were by
+compulsion, to the clear, manly voice that had not in it one shade of
+fear.
+
+"What do you do it for?" John continued.  "All because he would not
+sell you, or give you, his wheat.  Even so--it was HIS wheat, not
+yours.  May not a man do what he likes with his own?"
+
+The argument seemed to strike home.  There is always a lurking sense
+of rude justice in a mob--at least a British mob.
+
+"Don't you see how foolish you were?--You tried threats, too.  Now
+you all know Mr. Fletcher; you are his men--some of you.  He is not a
+man to be threatened."
+
+This seemed to be taken rather angrily; but John went on speaking, as
+if he did not observe the fact.
+
+"Nor am I one to be threatened, neither.  Look here--the first one of
+you who attempted to break into Mr. Fletcher's house I should most
+certainly have shot.  But I'd rather not shoot you, poor, starving
+fellows!  I know what it is to be hungry.  I'm sorry for you--sorry
+from the bottom of my heart."
+
+There was no mistaking that compassionate accent, nor the murmur
+which followed it.
+
+"But what must us do, Mr. Halifax?" cried Jacob Baines: "us be
+starved a'most.  What's the good o' talking to we?"
+
+John's countenance relaxed.  I saw him lift his head and shake his
+hair back, with that pleased gesture I remember so well of old.  He
+went down to the locked gate.
+
+"Suppose I gave you something to eat, would you listen to me
+afterwards?"
+
+There arose up a frenzied shout of assent.  Poor wretches! they were
+fighting for no principle, true or false, only for bare life.  They
+would have bartered their very souls for a mouthful of bread.
+
+"You must promise to be peaceable," said John again, very resolutely,
+as soon as he could obtain a hearing.  "You are Norton Bury folk, I
+know you.  I could get every one of you hanged, even though Abel
+Fletcher is a Quaker.  Mind, you'll be peaceable?"
+
+"Ay--ay!  Some'at to eat; give us some'at to eat."
+
+John Halifax called out to Jael; bade her bring all the food of every
+kind that there was in the house, and give it to him out of the
+parlour-window.  She obeyed--I marvel now to think of it--but she
+implicitly obeyed.  Only I heard her fix the bar to the closed front
+door, and go back, with a strange, sharp sob, to her station at the
+hall-window.
+
+"Now, my lads, come in!" and he unlocked the gate.
+
+They came thronging up the steps, not more than two score, I
+imagined, in spite of the noise they had made.  But two score of such
+famished, desperate men, God grant I may never again see!
+
+John divided the food as well as he could among them; they fell to it
+like wild beasts.  Meat, cooked or raw, loaves, vegetables, meal; all
+came alike, and were clutched, gnawed, and scrambled for, in the
+fierce selfishness of hunger.  Afterwards there was a call for drink.
+
+"Water, Jael; bring them water."
+
+"Beer!" shouted some.
+
+"Water," repeated John.  "Nothing but water.  I'll have no drunkards
+rioting at my master's door."
+
+And, either by chance or design, he let them hear the click of his
+pistol.  But it was hardly needed.  They were all cowed by a mightier
+weapon still--the best weapon a man can use--his own firm indomitable
+will.
+
+At length all the food we had in the house was consumed.  John told
+them so; and they believed him.  Little enough, indeed, was
+sufficient for some of them; wasted with long famine, they turned
+sick and faint, and dropped down even with bread in their mouths,
+unable to swallow it.  Others gorged themselves to the full, and then
+lay along the steps, supine as satisfied brutes.  Only a few sat and
+ate like rational human beings; and there was but one, the little,
+shrill-voiced man, who asked me if he might "tak a bit o' bread to
+the old wench at home?"
+
+John, hearing, turned, and for the first time noticed me.
+
+"Phineas, it was very wrong of you; but there is no danger now."
+
+No, there was none--not even for Abel Fletcher's son.  I stood safe
+by John's side, very happy, very proud.
+
+"Well, my men," he said, looking round with a smile, "have you had
+enough to eat?"
+
+"Oh, ay!" they all cried.
+
+And one man added--"Thank the Lord!"
+
+"That's right, Jacob Baines:  and, another time, trust the Lord.  You
+wouldn't then have been abroad this summer morning"--and he pointed
+to the dawn just reddening in the sky--"this quiet, blessed summer
+morning, burning and rioting, bringing yourselves to the gallows, and
+your children to starvation."
+
+"They be nigh that a'ready," said Jacob, sullenly.  "Us men ha'
+gotten a meal, thankee for it; but what'll become o' the little 'uns
+at home?  I say, Mr. Halifax," and he seemed waxing desperate again,
+"we must get some food somehow."
+
+John turned away, his countenance very sad.  Another of the men
+plucked at him from behind.
+
+"Sir, when thee was a poor lad I lent thee a rug to sleep on; I
+doan't grudge'ee getting on; you was born for a gentleman, sure-ly.
+But Master Fletcher be a hard man."
+
+"And a just one," persisted John.  "You that work for him, did he
+ever stint you of a halfpenny?  If you had come to him and said,
+'Master, times are hard, we can't live upon our wages,' he might--I
+don't say that he would--but he MIGHT even have given you the food
+you tried to steal."
+
+"D'ye think he'd give it us now?"  And Jacob Baines, the big, gaunt,
+savage fellow, who had been the ringleader--the same, too, who had
+spoken of his "little 'uns"--came and looked steadily in John's face.
+
+"I knew thee as a lad; thee'rt a young man now, as will be a father
+some o' these days.  Oh! Mr. Halifax, may'ee ne'er want a meal o'
+good meat for the missus and the babbies at home, if ee'll get a bit
+o' bread for our'n this day."
+
+"My man, I'll try."
+
+He called me aside, explained to me, and asked my advice and consent,
+as Abel Fletcher's son, to a plan that had come into his mind.  It
+was to write orders, which each man presenting at our mill, should
+receive a certain amount of flour.
+
+"Do you think your father would agree?"
+
+"I think he would."
+
+"Yes," John added, pondering--"I am sure he would.  And besides, if
+he does not give some, he may lose all.  But he would not do it for
+fear of that.  No, he is a just man--I am not afraid.  Give me some
+paper, Jael."
+
+He sat down as composedly as if he had been alone in the
+counting-house, and wrote.  I looked over his shoulder, admiring his
+clear, firm hand-writing; the precision, concentrativeness, and
+quickness, with which he first seemed to arrange and then execute his
+ideas.  He possessed to the full that "business" faculty, so
+frequently despised, but which, out of very ordinary material, often
+makes a clever man; and without which the cleverest man alive can
+never be altogether a great man.
+
+When about to sign the orders, John suddenly stopped.  "No; I had
+better not."
+
+"Why so?"
+
+"I have no right; your father might think it presumption."
+
+"Presumption? after to-night!"
+
+"Oh, that's nothing!  Take the pen.  It is your part to sign them,
+Phineas."
+
+I obeyed.
+
+"Isn't this better than hanging?" said John to the men, when he had
+distributed the little bits of paper--precious as pound-notes--and
+made them all fully understand the same.  "Why, there isn't another
+gentleman in Norton Bury, who, if you had come to burn HIS house
+down, would not have had the constables or the soldiers, have shot
+down one-half of you like mad dogs, and sent the other half to the
+county gaol.  Now, for all your misdoings, we let you go quietly
+home, well fed, and with food for children, too.  WHY, think you?"
+
+"I don't know," said Jacob Baines, humbly.
+
+"I'll tell you.  Because Abel Fletcher is a Quaker and a Christian."
+
+"Hurrah for Abel Fletcher! hurrah for the Quakers!" shouted they,
+waking up the echoes down Norton Bury streets; which, of a surety,
+had never echoed to THAT shout before.  And so the riot was over.
+
+John Halifax closed the hall-door and came in--unsteadily--
+staggering.  Jael placed a chair for him--worthy soul! she was wiping
+her old eyes.  He sat down, shivering, speechless.  I put my hand on
+his shoulder; he took it and pressed it hard.
+
+"Oh! Phineas, lad, I'm glad; glad it's safe over."
+
+"Yes, thank God!"
+
+"Ay, indeed; thank God!"
+
+He covered his eyes for a minute or two, then rose up pale, but quite
+himself again.
+
+"Now let us go and fetch your father home."
+
+We found him on John's bed, still asleep.  But as we entered he woke.
+The daylight shone on his face--it looked ten years older since
+yesterday--he stared, bewildered and angry, at John Halifax.
+
+"Eh, young man--oh! I remember.  Where is my son--where's my
+Phineas?"
+
+I fell on his neck as if I had been a child.  And almost as if it had
+been a child's feeble head, mechanically he smoothed and patted mine.
+
+"Thee art not hurt?  Nor any one?"
+
+"No," John answered; "nor is either the house or the tan-yard
+injured."
+
+He looked amazed.  "How has that been?"
+
+"Phineas will tell you.  Or, stay--better wait till you are at home."
+
+But my father insisted on hearing.  I told the whole, without any
+comments on John's behaviour; he would not have liked it; and,
+besides, the facts spoke for themselves.  I told the simple, plain
+story--nothing more.
+
+Abel Fletcher listened at first in silence.  As I proceeded he felt
+about for his hat, put it on, and drew its broad brim close down over
+his eyes.  Not even when I told him of the flour we had promised in
+his name, the giving of which would, as we had calculated, cost him
+considerable loss, did he utter a word or move a muscle.
+
+John at length asked him if he were satisfied.
+
+"Quite satisfied "
+
+But, having said this, he sat so long, his hands locked together on
+his knees, and his hat drawn down, hiding all the face except the
+rigid mouth and chin--sat so long, so motionless, that we became
+uneasy.
+
+John spoke to him gently, almost as a son would have spoken.
+
+"Are you very lame still?  Could I help you to walk home?"
+
+My father looked up, and slowly held out his hand.
+
+"Thee hast been a good lad, and a kind lad to us; I thank thee."
+
+There was no answer, none.  But all the words in the world could not
+match that happy silence.
+
+By degrees we got my father home.  It was just such another summer
+morning as the one, two years back, when we two had stood, exhausted
+and trembling, before that sternly-bolted door.  We both thought of
+that day:  I knew not if my father did also.
+
+He entered, leaning heavily on John.  He sat down in the very seat,
+in the very room, where he had so harshly judged us--judged him.
+
+Something, perhaps, of that bitterness rankled in the young man's
+spirit now, for he stopped on the threshold.
+
+"Come in," said my father, looking up.
+
+"If I am welcome; not otherwise."
+
+"Thee art welcome."
+
+He came in--I drew him in--and sat down with us.  But his manner was
+irresolute, his fingers closed and unclosed nervously.  My father,
+too, sat leaning his head on his two hands, not unmoved.  I stole up
+to him, and thanked him softly for the welcome he had given.
+
+"There is nothing to thank me for," said he, with something of his
+old hardness.  "What I once did, was only justice--or I then believed
+so.  What I have done, and am about to do, is still mere justice.
+John, how old art thee now?"
+
+"Twenty."
+
+"Then, for one year from this time I will take thee as my 'prentice,
+though thee knowest already nearly as much of the business as I do.
+At twenty-one thee wilt be able to set up for thyself, or I may take
+thee into partnership--we'll see.  But"--and he looked at me, then
+sternly, nay, fiercely, into John's steadfast eyes--"remember, thee
+hast in some measure taken that lad's place.  May God deal with thee
+as thou dealest with my son Phineas--my only son!"
+
+"Amen!" was the solemn answer.
+
+And God, who sees us both now--ay, NOW! and, perhaps, not so far
+apart as some may deem--He knows whether or no John Halifax kept that
+vow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"Well done, Phineas--to walk round the garden without once resting!
+now I call that grand, after an individual has been ill a month.
+However, you must calm your superabundant energies, and be quiet."
+
+I was not unwilling, for I still felt very weak.  But sickness did
+not now take that heavy, overpowering grip of me, mind and body, that
+it once used to do.  It never did when John was by.  He gave me
+strength, mentally and physically.  He was life and health to me,
+with his brave cheerfulness--his way of turning all minor troubles
+into pleasantries, till they seemed to break and vanish away,
+sparkling, like the foam on the top of the wave.  Yet, all the while
+one knew well that he could meet any great evil as gallantly as a
+good ship meets a heavy sea--breasting it, plunging through it, or
+riding over it, as only a good ship can.
+
+When I recovered--just a month after the bread-riot, and that month
+was a great triumph to John's kind care--I felt that if I always had
+him beside me I should never be ill any more; I said as much, in a
+laughing sort of way.
+
+"Very well; I shall keep you to that bargain.  Now, sit down; listen
+to the newspaper, and improve your mind as to what the world is
+doing.  It ought to be doing something, with the new century it began
+this year.  Did it not seem very odd at first to have to write
+'1800'?"
+
+"John, what a capital hand you write now!"
+
+"Do I!  That's somebody's credit.  Do you remember my first lesson on
+the top of the Mythe?"
+
+"I wonder what has become of those two gentlemen?"
+
+"Oh! did you never hear?  Young Mr. Brithwood is the 'squire now.  He
+married, last month, Lady Somebody Something, a fine lady from
+abroad."
+
+"And Mr. March--what of him?"
+
+"I haven't the least idea.  Come now, shall I read the paper?"
+
+He read well, and I liked to listen to him.  It was, I remember,
+something about "the spacious new quadrangles, to be called Russell
+and Tavistock Squares, with elegantly laid out nursery-grounds
+adjoining."
+
+"It must be a fine place, London."
+
+"Ay; I should like to see it.  Your father says, perhaps he shall
+have to send me, this winter, on business--won't that be fine?  If
+only you would go too."
+
+I shook my head.  I had the strongest disinclination to stir from my
+quiet home, which now held within it, or about it, all I wished for
+and all I loved.  It seemed as if any change must be to something
+worse.
+
+"Nevertheless, you must have a change.  Doctor Jessop insists upon
+it.  Here have I been beating up and down the country for a week
+past--'Adventures in Search of a Country Residence'--and, do you
+know, I think I've found one at last.  Shouldn't you like to hear
+about it?"
+
+I assented, to please him.
+
+"Such a nice, nice place, on the slope of Enderley Hill.  A cottage--
+Rose Cottage--for it's all in a bush of cluster-roses, up to the very
+roof."
+
+"Where is Enderley?"
+
+"Did you never hear of Enderley Flat, the highest tableland in
+England?  Such a fresh, free, breezy spot--how the wind sweeps over
+it!  I can feel it in my face still."
+
+And even the description was refreshing, this heavy, sultry day, with
+not a breath of air moving across the level valley.
+
+"Shouldn't you like to live on a hill-side, to be at the top of
+everything, overlooking everything?  Well, that's Enderley:  the
+village lies just under the brow of the Flat."
+
+"Is there a village?"
+
+"A dozen cottages or so, at each door of which half-a-dozen white
+little heads and a dozen round eyes appeared staring at me.  But oh,
+the blessed quiet and solitude of the place!  No fights in filthy
+alleys! no tan-yards--I mean"--he added, correcting himself--"it's a
+thorough country spot; and I like the country better than the town."
+
+"Do you, still?  Would you really like to take to the 'shepherd's
+life and state,' upon which my namesake here is so eloquent?  Let us
+see what he says."
+
+And from the handful of books that usually lay strewn about wherever
+we two sat, I took up one he had lately got, with no small pains I
+was sure, and had had bound in its own proper colour, and presented
+it to me--"The Purple Island," and "Sicelides," of Phineas Fletcher.
+People seldom read this wise, tender, and sweet-voiced old fellow
+now; so I will even copy the verses I found for John to read.
+
+"Here is the place.  Thyrsis is just ending his 'broken lay.'
+
+     'Lest that the stealing night his later song might stay--'"
+
+"Stop a minute," interrupted John.  "Apropos of 'stealing night,' the
+sun is already down below the yew-hedge.  Are you cold?"
+
+"Not a bit of it."
+
+"Then we'll begin:--
+
+     'Thrice, oh, thrice happy, shepherd's life and state:
+      When courts are happiness, unhappy pawns!'
+
+That's not clear," said John, laying down the book.  "Now I do like
+poetry to be intelligible.  A poet ought to see things more widely,
+and express them more vividly, than ordinary folk."
+
+"Don't you perceive--he means the pawns on the chess-board--the
+common people."
+
+"Phineas, don't say the common people--I'm a common person myself.
+But to continue:--
+
+        'His cottage low, and safely humble gate,
+      Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns:
+         No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep.
+         Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep,
+      Himself as innocent as are his quiet sheep.'
+
+(Not many sheep at Enderley, I fancy; the Flat chiefly abounds in
+donkeys.  Well--)
+
+        'No Serian worms he knows, that with their thread,
+      Drew out their silken lives--nor silken pride--'
+
+Which reminds me that--"
+
+"David, how can you make me laugh at our reverend ancestor in this
+way?  I'm ashamed of you."
+
+"Only let me tell you this one fact--very interesting, you'll allow--
+that I saw a silken gown hanging up in the kitchen at Rose Cottage.
+Now, though Mrs. Tod is a decent, comely woman, I don't think it
+belonged to her."
+
+"She may have lodgers."
+
+"I think she said she had--an old gentleman--but HE wouldn't wear a
+silken gown."
+
+"His wife might.  Now, do go on reading."
+
+"Certainly; I only wish to draw a parallel between Thyrsis and
+ourselves in our future summer life at Enderley.  So the old
+gentleman's wife may appropriate the 'silken pride,' while we emulate
+the shepherd.
+
+     'His lambs' warm fleece well fits his little need--'
+
+I wear a tolerably good coat now, don't I, Phineas?"
+
+"You are incorrigible."
+
+Yet, through all his fun, I detected a certain under-tone of
+seriousness, observable in him ever since my father's declaration of
+his intentions concerning him, had, so to speak, settled John's
+future career.  He seemed aware of some crisis in his life, arrived
+or impending, which disturbed the generally even balance of his
+temperament.
+
+"Nay, I'll be serious;" and passing over the unfinished verse, with
+another or two following, he began afresh, in a new place, and in an
+altogether changed tone.
+
+        "'His certain life, that never can deceive him,
+      Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
+          The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
+      With coolest shades till noon-tide's rage is spent;
+          His life is neither tost on boisterous seas
+          Of troublous worlds, nor lost in slothful ease.
+      Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.
+
+         'His bed of wool yields safe and quiet sleeps,
+      While by his side his faithful spouse hath place;
+          His little son into his bosom creeps,
+      The lively image of his father's face;
+          Never his humble house or state torment him,
+          Less he could like, if less his God had sent him;
+      And when he dies, green turfs with grassy tomb content him.'"
+
+John ceased.  He was a good reader--but I had never heard him read
+like this before.  Ending, one missed it like the breaking of music,
+or like the inner voice of one's own heart talking when nobody is by.
+
+"David," I said, after a pause, "what are you thinking about?"
+
+He started, with his old quick blush--"Oh, nothing--No, that's not
+quite true.  I was thinking that, so far as happiness goes, this
+'shepherd's' is my ideal of a happy life--ay, down to the 'grassy
+tomb.'"
+
+"Your fancy leaps at once to the grassy tomb; but the shepherd
+enjoyed a few intermediate stages of felicity before that."
+
+"I was thinking of those likewise."
+
+"Then you do intend some day to have a 'faithful spouse and a little
+son'?"
+
+"I hope so--God willing."
+
+It may seem strange, but this was the first time our conversation had
+ever wandered in a similar direction.  Though he was twenty and I
+twenty-two--to us both--and I thank Heaven that we could both look up
+in the face of Heaven and say so!--to us both, the follies and
+wickednesses of youth were, if not equally unknown, equally and alike
+hateful.  Many may doubt, or smile at the fact; but I state it now,
+in my old age, with honour and pride, that we two young men that day
+trembled on the subject of love as shyly, as reverently, as
+delicately, as any two young maidens of innocent sixteen.
+
+After John's serious "God willing," there was a good long silence.
+Afterwards, I said--
+
+"Then you propose to marry?"
+
+"Certainly! as soon as I can."
+
+"Have you ever--" and, while speaking, I watched him narrowly, for a
+sudden possibility flashed across my mind--"Have you ever seen any
+one whom you would like for your wife?"
+
+"No."
+
+I was satisfied.  John's single "No" was as conclusive as a score of
+asseverations.
+
+We said no more; but after one of those pauses of conversation which
+were habitual to us--John used to say, that the true test of
+friendship was to be able to sit or walk together for a whole hour in
+perfect silence, without wearying of one another's company--we again
+began talking about Enderley.
+
+I soon found, that in this plan, my part was simply acquiescence; my
+father and John had already arranged it all.  I was to be in charge
+of the latter; nothing could induce Abel Fletcher to leave, even for
+a day, his house, his garden, and his tan-yard.  We two young men
+were to set up for a month or two our bachelor establishment at Mrs.
+Tod's:  John riding thrice a-week over to Norton Bury to bring news
+of me, and to fulfil his duties at the tan-yard.  One could see plain
+enough--and very grateful to me was the sight--that whether or no
+Abel Fletcher acknowledged it, his right hand in all his business
+affairs was the lad John Halifax.
+
+On a lovely August day we started for Enderley.  It was about eight
+miles off, on a hilly, cross-country road.  We lumbered slowly along
+in our post-chaise; I leaning back, enjoying the fresh air, the
+changing views, and chiefly to see how intensely John enjoyed them
+too.
+
+He looked extremely well to-day--handsome, I was about to write; but
+John was never, even in his youth, "handsome."  Nay, I have heard
+people call him "plain"; but that was not true.  His face had that
+charm, perhaps the greatest, certainly the most lasting, either in
+women or men--of infinite variety.  You were always finding out
+something--an expression strange as tender, or the track of a swift,
+brilliant thought, or an indication of feeling different from,
+perhaps deeper than, anything which appeared before.  When you
+believed you had learnt it line by line it would startle you by a
+phase quite new, and beautiful as new.  For it was not one of your
+impassive faces, whose owners count it pride to harden into a mass of
+stone those lineaments which nature made as the flesh and blood
+representation of the man's soul.  True, it had its reticences, its
+sacred disguises, its noble powers of silence and self-control.  It
+was a fair-written, open book; only, to read it clearly, you must
+come from its own country, and understand the same language.
+
+For the rest, John was decidedly like the "David" whose name I still
+gave him now and then--"a goodly person;" tall, well-built, and
+strong.  "The glory of a young man is his strength;" and so I used
+often to think, when I looked at him.  He always dressed with extreme
+simplicity; generally in grey, he was fond of grey; and in something
+of our Quaker fashion.  On this day, I remember, I noticed an
+especial carefulness of attire, at his age neither unnatural nor
+unbecoming.  His well-fitting coat and long-flapped vest, garnished
+with the snowiest of lawn frills and ruffles; his knee-breeches,
+black silk hose, and shoes adorned with the largest and brightest of
+steel buckles, made up a costume, which, quaint as it would now
+appear, still is, to my mind, the most suitable and graceful that a
+young man can wear.  I never see any young men now who come at all
+near the picture which still remains in my mind's eye of John Halifax
+as he looked that day.
+
+Once, with the natural sensitiveness of youth, especially of youth
+that has struggled up through so many opposing circumstances as his
+had done, he noticed my glance.
+
+"Anything amiss about me, Phineas?  You see I am not much used to
+holidays and holiday clothes."
+
+"I have nothing to say against either you or your clothes," replied
+I, smiling.
+
+"That's all right; I beg to state, it is entirely in honour of you
+and of Enderley that I have slipped off my tan-yard husk, and put on
+the gentleman."
+
+"You couldn't do that, John.  You couldn't put on what you were born
+with."
+
+He laughed--but I think he was pleased.
+
+We had now come into a hilly region.  John leaped out and gained the
+top of the steep road long before the post-chaise did.  I watched him
+standing, balancing in his hands the riding-whip which had replaced
+the everlasting rose-switch, or willow-wand, of his boyhood.  His
+figure was outlined sharply against the sky, his head thrown backward
+a little, as he gazed, evidently with the keenest zest, on the breezy
+flat before him.  His hair--a little darker than it used to be, but
+of the true Saxon colour still, and curly as ever--was blown about by
+the wind, under his broad hat.  His whole appearance was full of
+life, health, energy, and enjoyment.
+
+I thought any father might have been proud of such a son, any sister
+of such a brother, any young girl of such a lover.  Ay, that last
+tie, the only one of the three that was possible to him--I wondered
+how long it would be before times changed, and I ceased to be the
+only one who was proud of him.
+
+We drove on a little further, and came to the chief landmark of the
+high moorland--a quaint hostelry, called the "Bear."  Bruin swung
+aloft pole in hand, brown and fierce, on an old-fashioned sign, as he
+and his progenitors had probably swung for two centuries or more.
+
+"Is this Enderley?" I asked.
+
+"Not quite, but near it.  You never saw the sea?  Well, from this
+point I can show you something very like it.  Do you see that
+gleaming bit in the landscape far away?  That's water--that's our
+very own Severn, swelled to an estuary.  But you must imagine the
+estuary--you can only get that tiny peep of water, glittering like a
+great diamond that some young Titaness has flung out of her necklace
+down among the hills."
+
+"David, you are actually growing poetical."
+
+"Am I?  Well, I do feel rather strange to-day--crazy like; a high
+wind always sends me half crazy with delight.  Did you ever feel such
+a breeze?  And there's something so gloriously free in this high
+level common--as flat as if my Titaness had found a little Mont
+Blanc, and amused herself with patting it down like a dough-cake."
+
+"A very culinary goddess."
+
+"Yes! but a goddess after all.  And her dough-cake, her mushroom, her
+flattened Mont Blanc, is very fine.  What a broad green sweep--
+nothing but sky and common, common and sky.  This is Enderley Flat.
+We shall come to its edge soon, where it drops abruptly into such a
+pretty valley.  There, look down--that's the church.  We are on a
+level with the top of its tower.  Take care, my lad,"--to the
+post-boy, who was crossing with difficulty the literally "pathless
+waste."--"Don't lurch us into the quarry-pits, or topple us at once
+down the slope, where we shall roll over and over--facilis descensus
+Averni--and lodge in Mrs. Tod's garden hedge."
+
+"Mrs. Tod would feel flattered if she knew Latin.  You don't look
+upon our future habitation as a sort of Avernus?"
+
+John laughed merrily.  "No, as I told you before, I like Enderley
+Hill.  I can't tell why, but I like it.  It seems as if I had known
+the place before.  I feel as if we were going to have great happiness
+here."
+
+And as he spoke, his unwonted buoyancy softened into a quietness of
+manner more befitting that word "happiness."  Strange word! hardly in
+my vocabulary.  Yet, when he uttered it, I seemed to understand it
+and to be content.
+
+We wound a little way down the slope, and came in front of Rose
+Cottage.  It was well named.  I never in my life had seen such a bush
+of bloom.  They hung in clusters--those roses--a dozen in a group;
+pressing their pinky cheeks together in a mass of family fragrance,
+pushing in at the parlour window, climbing up even to the very attic.
+There was a yellow jasmine over the porch at one front door, and a
+woodbine at the other; the cottage had two entrances, each distinct.
+But the general impression it gave, both as to sight and scent, was
+of roses--nothing but roses.
+
+"How are you, Mrs. Tod?" as a comely, middle-aged body appeared at
+the right-hand doorway, dressed sprucely in one of those things Jael
+called a "coat and jacket," likewise a red calamanco petticoat tucked
+up at the pocket-holes.
+
+"I be pretty fair, sir--be you the same?  The children ha' not
+forgotten you--you see, Mr. Halifax."
+
+"So much the better!" and he patted two or three little white heads,
+and tossed the youngest high up in the air.  It looked very strange
+to see John with a child in his arms.
+
+"Don't 'ee make more noise than 'ee can help, my lad," the good woman
+said to our post-boy, "because, sir, the sick gentleman bean't so
+well again to-day."
+
+"I am sorry for it.  We would not have driven up to the door had we
+known.  Which is his room?"
+
+Mrs. Tod pointed to a window--not on our side of the house, but the
+other.  A hand was just closing the casement and pulling down the
+blind--a hand which, in the momentary glimpse we had of it, seemed
+less like a man's than a woman's.
+
+When we were settled in the parlour John noticed this fact.
+
+"It was the wife, most likely.  Poor thing! how hard to be shut up
+in-doors on such a summer evening as this!"
+
+It did seem a sad sight--that closed window, outside which was the
+fresh, balmy air, the sunset, and the roses.
+
+"And how do you like Enderley?" asked John, when, tea being over, I
+lay and rested, while he sat leaning his elbow on the window-sill,
+and his cheek against a bunch of those ever-intruding, inquisitive
+roses.
+
+"It is very, very pretty, and so comfortable--almost like home."
+
+"I feel as if it were home," John said, half to himself.  "Do you
+know, I can hardly believe that I have only seen this place once
+before; it is so familiar.  I seem to know quite well that slope of
+common before the door, with its black dots of furze-bushes.  And
+that wood below; what a clear line its top makes against the yellow
+sky!  There, that high ground to the right; it's all dusky now, but
+it is such a view by daylight.  And between it and Enderley is the
+prettiest valley, where the road slopes down just under those
+chestnut-trees."
+
+"How well you seem to know the place already."
+
+"As I tell you, I like it.  I hardly ever felt so content before.  We
+will have a happy time, Phineas."
+
+"Oh, yes!"  How--even if I had felt differently--could I say anything
+but "yes" to him then?
+
+I lay until it grew quite dark, and I could only see a dim shape
+sitting at the window, instead of John's known face; then I bade him
+good-night, and retired.  Directly afterwards, I heard him, as I knew
+he would, dash out of the house, and away up the Flat.  In the deep
+quiet of this lonely spot I could distinguish, for several minutes,
+the diminishing sound of his footsteps along the loose, stony road;
+and the notes, clear and shrill, of his whistling.  I think it was
+"Sally in our Alley," or some such pleasant old tune.  At last it
+faded far off, and I fell into sleep and dreams.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+"That Mrs. Tod is an extraordinary woman.  I  repeat it--a most
+extraordinary woman."
+
+And leaning his elbows on the table, from which the said
+extraordinary woman had just removed breakfast, John looked over to
+me with his own merry brown eyes.
+
+"Wherefore, David?"
+
+"She has a house full of children, yet manages to keep it quiet and
+her own temper likewise.  Astonishing patience!  However people
+attain it who have to do with brats, _I_ can't imagine."
+
+"John! that's mean hypocrisy.  I saw you myself half-an-hour ago
+holding the eldest Tod boy on a refractory donkey, and laughing till
+you could hardly stand."
+
+"Did I?" said he, half-ashamed.  "Well, it was only to keep the
+little scamp from making a noise under the windows.  And that reminds
+me of another remarkable virtue in Mrs. Tod--she can hold her
+tongue."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"In two whole days she has not communicated to us a single fact
+concerning our neighbours on the other half of Rose Cottage."
+
+"Did you want to know?"
+
+John laughingly denied; then allowed that he always had a certain
+pleasure in eliciting information on men and things.
+
+"The wife being indicated, I suppose, by that very complimentary word
+'thing.'  But what possible interest can you have in either the old
+gentleman or the old lady?"
+
+"Stop, Phineas:  you have a bad habit of jumping at conclusions.  And
+in our great dearth of occupation here, I think it might be all the
+better for you to take a little interest in your neighbours.  So I've
+a great mind to indulge you with an important idea, suggestion,
+discovery.  Harkee, friend!"--and he put on an air of sentimental
+mystery, not a bad copy of our old acquaintance, Mr. Charles--"what
+if the--the individual should not be an old lady at all?"
+
+"What!  The old gentleman's wife?"
+
+"Wife?  Ahem! more jumping at conclusions.  No; let us keep on the
+safe side, and call her the--individual.  In short; the owner of that
+grey silk gown I saw hanging up in the kitchen.  I've seen it again."
+
+"The grey gown! when and where?"
+
+"This morning, early.  I walked after it across the Flat, a good way
+behind, though; for I thought that it--well, let me say SHE--might
+not like to be watched or followed.  She was trotting along very
+fast, and she carried a little basket--I fancy a basket of eggs."
+
+"Capital housekeeper! excellent wife!"
+
+"Once more--I have my doubts on that latter fact.  She walked a great
+deal quicker and merrier than any wife ought to walk when her husband
+is ill!"
+
+I could not help laughing at John's original notions of conjugal
+duty.
+
+"Besides, Mrs. Tod always calls her invalid 'the old gentleman!' and
+I don't believe this was an elderly lady."
+
+"Nay, old men do sometimes marry young women."
+
+"Yes, but it is always a pity; and sometimes not quite right.  No,"--
+and I was amused to see how gravely and doggedly John kept to his
+point--"though this lady did not look like a sylph or a wood-nymph--
+being neither very small nor very slight, and having a comfortable
+woollen cloak and hood over the grey silk gown--still, I don't
+believe she's an old woman, or married either."
+
+"How can you possibly tell?  Did you see her face?"
+
+"Of course not," he answered, rather indignantly.  "I should not
+think it manly to chase a lady as a schoolboy does a butterfly, for
+the mere gratification of staring at her.  I stayed on the top of the
+Flat till she had gone indoors."
+
+"Into Rose Cottage?"
+
+"Why--yes."
+
+"She had, doubtless, gone to fetch new-laid eggs for her--I mean for
+the sick gentleman's breakfast.  Kind soul!"
+
+"You may jest, Phineas, but I think she is a kind soul.  On her way
+home I saw her stop twice; once to speak to an old woman who was
+gathering sticks; and again, to scold a lad for thrashing a donkey."
+
+"Did you hear her?"
+
+"No; but I judge from the lad's penitent face as I passed him.  I am
+sure she had been scolding him."
+
+"Then she's not young, depend upon it.  Your beautiful young
+creatures never scold."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," said John, meditatively.  "For my part, I
+should rather not cheat myself, or be cheated after that manner.
+Perfection is impossible.  Better see the young woman as she really
+is, bad and good together."
+
+"The young woman! The fair divinity, you mean!"
+
+"No;" shutting his mouth over the negative in his firm way--"I
+strongly object to divinities.  How unpleasant it would be to woo an
+angel of perfection, and find her out at last to be only--only Mrs.--
+"
+
+"Halifax," suggested I; at which he laughed, slightly colouring.
+
+"But how woeful must be our dearth of subjects, when we talk such
+nonsense as this!  What suggested it?"
+
+"Your friend in the grey gown, I suppose."
+
+"Requiescat in Pace!  May she enjoy her eggs!  And now I must go
+saddle the brown mare, and be off to Norton Bury.  A lovely day for a
+ride.  How I shall dash along!"
+
+He rose up cheerily.  It was like morning sunshine only to see his
+face.  No morbid follies had ever tainted his healthy nature,
+whatsoever romance was there--and never was there a thoroughly noble
+nature without some romance in it.  But it lay deep down, calm and
+unawakened.  His heart was as light and free as air.
+
+Stooping over my easy chair, he wheeled it to the window, in sight of
+the pleasant view.
+
+"Now, Phineas, what more books do you want?  You'll take a walk
+before dinner?  You'll not be moping?"
+
+No; why should I, who knew I had always, whether absent or present,
+the blessing, the infinite blessing, of being first in his thoughts
+and cares?  Who, whether he expressed it or not--the best things
+never are expressed or expressible--knew by a thousand little daily
+acts like these, the depth and tenderness of his friendship, his
+brotherly love for me.  As yet, I had it all.  And God, who knows how
+little else I had, will pardon, if in my unspeakable thankfulness
+lurked a taint of selfish joy in my sole possession of such a
+priceless boon.
+
+He lingered about, making me "all right," as he called it, and
+planning out my solitary day.  With much merriment, too, for we were
+the gayest couple of young bachelors, when, as John said, "the duties
+of our responsible position" would allow.
+
+"Responsible position!  It's our good landlady who ought to talk
+about that.  With two sets of lodgers, a husband, and an indefinite
+number of children.  There's one of them got into mischief at last.
+Hark!"
+
+"It's Jack, my namesake.  Bless my life!  I knew he would come to
+grief with that donkey.  Hey, lad! never mind.  Get up again."
+
+But soon he perceived that the accident was more serious; and
+disappeared like a shot, leaping out through the open window.  The
+next minute I saw him carrying in the unlucky Jack, who was bleeding
+from a cut in the forehead, and screaming vociferously.
+
+"Don't be frightened, Mrs. Tod; it is very slight--I saw it done.
+Jack, my lad!--be a man, and never mind it.  Don't scream so; you
+alarm your mother."
+
+But as soon as the good woman was satisfied that there was no real
+cause for terror, hers changed into hearty wrath against Jack for his
+carelessness, and for giving so much trouble to the gentleman.
+
+"But he be always getting into mischief, sir--that boy.  Three months
+back, the very day Mr. March came, he got playing with the
+carriage-horse, and it kicked him and broke his arm.  A deal he
+cares:  he be just as sprack as ever.  As I say to Tod--it bean't no
+use fretting over that boy."
+
+"Have patience," answered John, who had again carried the unfortunate
+young scapegrace from our parlour into Mrs. Tod's kitchen--the centre
+room of the cottage; and was trying to divert the torrent of maternal
+indignation, while he helped her to plaster up the still ugly looking
+wound.  "Come, forgive the lad.  He will be more sorry afterwards
+than if you had punished him."
+
+"Do'ee think so?" said the woman, as, struck either by the words, the
+manner, or the tone, she looked up straight at him.  "Do'ee really
+think so, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"I am sure of it.  Nothing makes one so good as being forgiven when
+one has been naughty.  Isn't it so, Jack, my namesake?"
+
+"Jack ought to be proud o' that, sir," said the mother, respectfully;
+"and there's some sense in what you say, too.  You talk like my man
+does, o' Sundays.  Tod be a Scotchman, Mr. Halifax; and they're good
+folks, the Scotch, and read their Bibles hard.  There's a deal about
+forgiving in the Bible; isn't there, sir?"
+
+"Exactly," John answered, smiling.  "And so, Jack, you're safe this
+time; only you must not disobey your mother again, for the sake of
+donkeys or anything else."
+
+"No, sir--thank'ee, sir," sobbed Jack, humbly.  "You be a gentleman--
+Mr. March bean't--he said it served me right for getting under his
+horses."
+
+"Hold thy tongue!" said Jack's mother, sharply; for the latch of the
+opposite door was just then lifted, and a lady stood there.
+
+"Mrs. Tod; my father says--"
+
+Seeing strangers, the lady paused.  At the sound of her voice--a
+pleasant voice, though somewhat quick and decided in tone--John and I
+both involuntarily turned.  We felt awkward! doubtful whether to stay
+or retire abruptly.  She saved us the choice.
+
+"Mrs. Tod, my father will take his soup at eleven.  You will
+remember?"
+
+"Yes, Miss March."
+
+Upon which, Miss March shut the door at once, and vanished.
+
+She wore a grey silken gown.  I glanced at John, but he did not see
+me, his eyes were fixed on the door, which had disclosed and
+concealed the momentary picture.  Its momentariness impressed it the
+more vividly on my memory--I have it there still.
+
+A girl, in early but not precocious maturity, rather tall, of a
+figure built more for activity and energy than the mere fragility of
+sylph-like grace:  dark-complexioned, dark-eyed, dark-haired--the
+whole colouring being of that soft darkness of tone which gives a
+sense of something at once warm and tender, strong and womanly.
+Thorough woman she seemed--not a bit of the angel about her.
+Scarcely beautiful; and "pretty" would have been the very last word
+to have applied to her; but there was around her an atmosphere of
+freshness, health, and youth, pleasant as a breeze in spring.
+
+For her attire, it was that notable grey silk gown--very simply made,
+with no fripperies or fandangos of any sort--reaching up to her
+throat and down to her wrists, where it had some kind of trimming of
+white fur, which made the skin beneath show exquisitely delicate.
+
+"That is Miss March," said our landlady, when she had disappeared.
+
+"Is it?" said John, removing his eyes from the shut door.
+
+"She be very sensible-like, for a young body of seventeen; more
+sensible and pleasanter than her father, who is always ailing, and
+always grumbling.  Poor gentleman!--most like he can't help it.  But
+it be terrible hard for the daughter--bean't it, sir?"
+
+"Very," said John.  His laconism was extraordinary.
+
+Still he kept standing by the kitchen-table, waiting till the last
+bandage had been sewn on Jack's cut forehead, and even some minutes
+after his protege had begun playing about as usual.  It was I who had
+to suggest that we should not intrude in Mrs. Tod's kitchen any
+longer.
+
+"No--certainly not.  Come, Phineas.  Mrs. Tod, I hope our presence
+did not inconvenience--the young lady?"
+
+"Bless your heart, sir! nothing ever inconveniences she.  There
+bean't a pleasanter young body alive.  She'll often come into this
+kitchen--just as you did, gentlemen, and very happy to see you
+always," added Mrs. Tod, curtseying.  "When Mr. March is asleep
+she'll come and sit for half an hour, talking to Tod and me; and
+playing with the baby--"
+
+Here, probably at sound of its name, the individual alluded to set
+up, from its cradle in the corner, such a terrific squall, that we
+young men beat a precipitate retreat.
+
+"So, John, your grey gown is discovered at last.  She's young,
+certainly--but not exactly a beauty."
+
+"I never said she was."
+
+"A pleasant person, though; hearty, cheerful-looking, and strong.  I
+can easily imagine her trotting over the common with her basket of
+eggs--chatting to the old woman, and scolding the naughty boy."
+
+"Don't make fun of her.  She must have a hard life with her old
+father."
+
+Of course, seeing him take it up so seriously, I jested no more.
+
+"By-the-by, did not the father's name strike you?  MARCH--suppose it
+should turn out to be the very Mr. March you pulled out of Severn
+five years ago.  What a romantic conjuncture of circumstances?"
+
+"Nonsense," said John, quickly--more quickly than he usually spoke to
+me; then came back to wish me a kind goodbye.  "Take care of
+yourself, old fellow.  It will be nightfall before I am back from
+Norton Bury."
+
+I watched him mount, and ride slowly down the bit of common--turning
+once to look back at Rose Cottage, ere he finally disappeared between
+the chestnut trees:  a goodly sight--for he was an admirable
+horseman.
+
+When he was gone, I, glancing lazily up at Mr. March's window, saw a
+hand, and I fancied a white-furred wrist, pulling down the blind.  It
+amused me to think Miss March might possibly have been watching him
+likewise.
+
+I spent the whole long day alone in the cottage parlour, chiefly
+meditating; though more than once friendly Mrs. Tod broke in upon my
+solitude.  She treated me in a motherly, free-and-easy way:  not half
+so deferentially as she treated John Halifax.
+
+The sun had gone down over Nunnely Hill, behind the four tall Italian
+poplars, which stood on the border of our bit of wilderness--three
+together and one apart.  They were our landmarks--and skymarks too--
+for the first sunbeam coming across the common struck their tops of a
+morning, and the broad western glimmer showed their forms distinctly
+until far in the night.  They were just near enough for me to hear
+their faint rustling in windy weather; on calm days they stood up
+straight against the sky, like memorial columns.  They were friends
+of mine--those four poplars; sometimes they almost seemed alive.  We
+made acquaintance on this first night, when I sat watching for John;
+and we kept up the friendship ever afterwards.
+
+It was nine o'clock before I heard the old mare's hoofs clattering up
+the road:  joyfully I ran out.
+
+David was not quite his youthful, gay self that night; not quite, as
+he expressed it, "the David of the sheep-folds."  He was very tired,
+and had what he called "the tan-yard feeling," the oppression of
+business cares.
+
+"Times are hard," said he, when we had finally shut out the
+starlight, and Mrs. Tod had lit candles, bade us good-night in her
+free, independent way, and "hoped Mr. Halifax had everything he
+wanted."  She always seemed to consider him the head of our little
+menage.
+
+"The times are very hard," repeated John, thoughtfully.  "I don't see
+how your father can rightly be left with so many anxieties on his
+shoulders.  I must manage to get to Norton Bury at least five days a
+week.  You will have enough of solitude, I fear."
+
+"And you will have little enough of the pleasant country life you
+planned, and which you seem so to delight in."
+
+"Never mind--perhaps it's good for me.  I have a life of hard work
+before me, and can't afford to get used to too much pleasure.  But
+we'll make the most of every bit of time we have.  How have you felt
+to-day?  Strong?"
+
+"Very strong.  Now what would you like us to do tomorrow?"
+
+"I want to show you the common in early morning--the view there is so
+lovely."
+
+"Of Nature, or human nature?"
+
+He half smiled, though only at my mischievousness.  I could see it
+did not affect him in the least.  "Nay, I know what you mean; but I
+had forgotten her, or, if not absolutely forgotten, she was not in my
+mind just then.  We will go another way, as indeed I had intended:
+it might annoy the young lady, our meeting her again."
+
+His grave, easy manner of treating and dismissing the subject was a
+tacit reproach to me.  I let the matter drop; we had much more
+serious topics afloat than gossip about our neighbours.
+
+At seven next morning we were out on the Flat.
+
+"I'm not going to let you stand here in the dews, Phineas.  Come a
+little farther on, to my terrace, as I call it.  There's a panorama!"
+
+It was indeed.  All around the high flat a valley lay, like a moat,
+or as if some broad river had been dried up in its course, and,
+century after century, gradually converted into meadow, woodland, and
+town.  For a little white town sat demurely at the bottom of the
+hollow, and a score or two of white cottages scattered themselves
+from this small nucleus of civilisation over the opposite bank of
+this imaginary river, which was now a lovely hill-side.  Gorges,
+purple with shadow, yellow corn-fields, and dark clumps of woodland
+dressed this broad hill-side in many colours; its highest point,
+Nunnely Hill, forming the horizon where last night I had seen the sun
+go down, and which now was tinted with the tenderest western morning
+grey.
+
+"Do you like this, Phineas?  I do, very much.  A dear, smiling,
+English valley, holding many a little nest of an English home.  Fancy
+being patriarch over such a region, having the whole valley in one's
+hand, to do good to, or ill.  You can't think what primitive people
+they are hereabouts--descendants from an old colony of Flemish
+cloth-weavers:  they keep to the trade.  Down in the valley--if one
+could see through the beech wood--is the grand support of the
+neighbourhood, a large cloth mill!"
+
+"That's quite in your line, John;" and I saw his face brighten up as
+it had done when, as a boy, he had talked to me about his machinery.
+"What has become of that wonderful little loom you made?"
+
+"Oh! I have it still.  But this is such a fine cloth-mill!--I have
+been all over it.  If the owner would put aside his old Flemish
+stolidity!  I do believe he and his ancestors have gone on in the
+same way, and with almost the same machinery, ever since Queen
+Elizabeth's time.  Now, just one or two of our modern improvements,
+such as--but I forget, you never could understand mechanics."
+
+"You can, though.  Explain clearly, and I'll try my best."
+
+He did so, and so did I.  I think he even managed to knock something
+of the matter into my stupid head, where it remained--for ten
+minutes!  Much longer remained the impression of his energetic talk--
+his clear-headed way of putting before another what he understood so
+well himself.  I marvelled how he had gained all his information.
+
+"Oh! it's easy enough, when one has a natural propensity for catching
+hold of facts; and then, you know, I always had a weakness for
+machinery; I could stand for an hour watching a mill at work,
+especially if it's worked by a great water-wheel."
+
+"Would you like to be a mill-owner?"
+
+"Shouldn't I!"--with a sunshiny flash, which soon clouded over.
+"However, 'tis idle talking; one cannot choose one's calling--at
+least, very few can.  After all, it isn't the trade that signifies--
+it's the man.  I'm a tanner, and a capital tanner I intend to be.
+By-the-by, I wonder if Mrs. Tod, who talks so much about
+'gentlefolk,' knows that latter fact about you and me?"
+
+"I think not; I hope not.  Oh, David! this one month at least let us
+get rid of the tan-yard."
+
+For I hated it more than ever now, in our quiet, free, Arcadian life;
+the very thought of it was insupportable, not only for myself, but
+for John.
+
+He gently blamed me, yet, I think, he involuntarily felt much as I
+did, if he would have allowed himself so to feel.
+
+"Who would guess now that I who stand here, delighting myself in this
+fresh air and pleasant view, this dewy common, all thick with
+flowers--what a pretty blue cluster that is at your foot, Phineas!--
+who would guess that all yesterday I had been stirring up tan-pits,
+handling raw hides?  Faugh! I wonder the little harebells don't
+sicken in these, my hands--such ugly hands, too!"
+
+"Nonsense, John! they're not so bad, indeed; and if they were, what
+does it matter?"
+
+"You are right; lad; it does not matter.  They have done me good
+service, and will yet, though they were not made for carrying
+nosegays."
+
+"There is somebody besides yourself plucking posies on the Flat.
+See, how large the figure looks against the sky.  It might be your
+Titaness, John--
+
+          'Like Proserpina gathering flowers,
+      Herself the fairest--'
+
+-- no, not fairest; for I declare she looks very like your friend
+Grey-gown--I beg her pardon--Miss March."
+
+"It is she," said John, so indifferently that I suspect that fact had
+presented itself to him for at least two minutes before I found it
+out.
+
+"There's certainly a fatality about your meeting her."
+
+"Not the least.  She has this morning taken her walk in a different
+direction, as I did; and we both chanced again to hit upon the same,"
+answered John, gravely and explanatorily.  "Come away down the slope.
+We must not intrude upon a lady's enjoyments."
+
+He carried me off, much against my will, for I had a great wish to
+see again that fresh young face, so earnest, cheerful, and good.
+Also, as I laboured in vain to convince my companion, the said face
+indicated an independent dignity which would doubtless make its owner
+perfectly indifferent whether her solitary walk were crossed by two
+gentlemen or two hundred.
+
+John agreed to this; nevertheless, he was inexorable.  And, since he
+was "a man of the world"--having, in his journeys up and down the
+country for my father, occasionally fallen into "polite" society--I
+yielded the point to him and submitted to his larger experience of
+good breeding.
+
+However, Fate, kinder than he, took the knot of etiquette into her
+own hands, and broke it.
+
+Close to the cottage door, our two paths converging, and probably our
+breakfast-hours likewise, brought us suddenly face to face with Miss
+March.
+
+She saw us, and we had a distinct sight of her.
+
+I was right:  we and our contiguity were not of the smallest
+importance to Miss March.  Her fresh morning roses did not deepen,
+nor her eyes droop, as she looked for a moment at us both--a quiet,
+maidenly look of mere observation.  Of course no recognition passed;
+but there was a merry dimple beside her mouth, as if she quite well
+knew who we were, and owned to a little harmless feminine curiosity
+in observing us.
+
+She had to pass our door, where stood Mrs. Tod and the baby.  It
+stretched out its little arms to come to her, with that pretty,
+babyish gesture which I suppose no woman can resist.  Miss March
+could not.  She stopped, and began tossing up the child.
+
+Truly, they made a pleasant picture, the two--she with her hooded
+cloak dropping off, showing her graceful shape, and her dark-brown
+hair, all gathered up in a mass of curls at the top of her head, as
+the fashion then was.  As she stood, with her eyes sparkling, and the
+young blood flushing through her clear brunette cheeks, I was not
+sure whether I had not judged too hastily in calling her "no beauty."
+
+Probably, by his look, John thought the same.
+
+She stood right before our wicket-gate; but she had evidently quite
+forgotten us, so happy was she with Mrs. Tod's bonny boy, until the
+landlady made some remark about "letting the gentlemen by."  Then,
+with a slight start, drawing her hood back over her head, the young
+lady stepped aside.
+
+In passing her, John raised his eyes, as was natural enough.  For me,
+I could hardly take mine from her, such a pleasant creature was she
+to behold.  She half smiled--he bowed, which she returned,
+courteously, and we both went in-doors.  I told him this was a good
+beginning of acquaintance with our neighbour.
+
+"Not at all, no acqaintance; a mere civility between two people
+living under the same roof.  It will never be more."
+
+"Probably not."
+
+I am afraid John was disappointed at my "probably."  I am afraid that
+when he stood at our window, contemplating the little group which
+filled up our wicket-gate, he missed some one out of the three--
+which, I suspect, was neither Mrs. Tod nor yet the baby.
+
+"I like her face very much better now, David.  Do you?"
+
+It was a very curious fact, which I never noticed till afterwards,
+that though there had been some lapse of time before I hazarded this
+remark, we both intuitively supplied the noun to that indefinite
+personal pronoun.
+
+"A good--nay, a noble face; though still, with those irregular
+features, I can't--really I can't--call her beautiful."
+
+"Nor I."
+
+"She bowed with remarkable grace, too.  I think, John, for the first
+time in our lives, we may say we have seen a LADY."
+
+"Most certainly a lady."
+
+"Nay, I only meant that, girl as she is, she is evidently accustomed
+to what is called 'society.'  Which makes it the more likely that her
+father is the Mr. March who was cousin to the Brithwoods.  An odd
+coincidence."
+
+"A very odd coincidence."
+
+After which brief reply John relapsed into taciturnity.
+
+More than once that morning we recurred to the subject of our
+neighbours--that is, I did--but John was rather saturnine and
+uncommunicative.  Nay, when, as Mrs. Tod was removing the breakfast,
+I ventured to ask her a harmless question or two--who Mr. March was,
+and where he came from?--I was abruptly reproved, the very minute our
+good landlady had shut the door, for my tendency to "gossip."
+
+At which I only laughed, and reminded him that he had ingeniously
+scolded me after, not before, I had gained the desired information--
+namely, that Mr. March was a gentleman of independent property--that
+he had no friends hereabouts, and that he usually lived in Wales.
+
+"He cannot be our Mr. March, then."
+
+"No," said John, with an air of great relief.
+
+I was amused to see how seriously he took such a trifle; ay, many a
+time that day I laughed at him for evincing such great sympathy over
+our neighbours, and especially--which was plain enough to see, though
+he doubtless believed he entirely disguised it--for that interest
+which a young man of twenty would naturally take in a very charming
+and personable young woman.  Ay, naturally, as I said to myself, for
+I admired her too, extremely.
+
+It seems strange now to call to mind that morning, and our
+light-hearted jests about Miss March.  Strange that Destiny should
+often come thus, creeping like a child to our very doors; we hardly
+notice it, or send it away with a laugh; it comes so naturally, so
+simply, so accidentally, as it were, that we recognise it not.  We
+cannot believe that the baby intruder is in reality the king of our
+fortunes; the ruler of our lives.  But so it is continually; and
+since IT IS, it must be right.
+
+We finished the morning by reading Shakspeare--Romeo and Juliet--at
+which the old folio seemed naturally to open.  There is a time--a
+sweet time, too, though it does not last--when to every young mind
+the play of plays, the poem of poems, is Romeo and Juliet.  We were
+at that phase now.
+
+John read it all through to me--not for the first time either; and
+then, thinking I had fallen asleep, he sat with the book on his knee,
+gazing out of the open window.
+
+It was a warm summer day--breathless, soundless--a day for quietness
+and dreams.  Sometimes a bee came buzzing among the roses, in and
+away again, like a happy thought.  Nothing else was stirring; not a
+single bird was to be seen or heard, except that now and then came a
+coo of the wood-pigeons among the beech-trees--a low, tender voice--
+reminding one of a mother's crooning over a cradled child; or of two
+true lovers standing clasped heart to heart, in the first embrace,
+which finds not, and needs not, a single word.
+
+John sat listening.  What was he thinking about?  Why that strange
+quiver about his mouth?--why that wonderful new glow, that infinite
+depth of softness in his eyes?
+
+I closed mine.  He never knew I saw him.  He thought I slept placidly
+through that half-hour; which seemed to him as brief as a minute.  To
+me it was long--ah, so long! as I lay pondering with an intensity
+that was actual pain, on what must come some time, and, for all I
+knew, might even now be coming.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A week slipped by.  We had grown familiar with Enderley Hill--at
+least I had.  As for John, he had little enough enjoyment of the
+pretty spot he had taken such a fancy to, being absent five days out
+of the seven; riding away when the morning sun had slid down to the
+boles of my four poplars, and never coming home till Venus peeped out
+over their heads at night.  It was hard for him; but he bore the
+disappointment well.
+
+With me one day went by just like another.  In the mornings I crept
+out, climbed the hill behind Rose Cottage garden, and there lay a
+little under the verge of the Flat, in a sunny shelter, watching the
+ants running in and out of the numerous ant-hills there; or else I
+turned my observation to the short velvet herbage that grew
+everywhere hereabouts; for the common, so far from being barren, was
+a perfect sheet of greenest, softest turf, sowed with minute and rare
+flowers.  Often a square foot of ground presented me with enough of
+beauty and variety in colour and form to criticise and contemplate
+for a full hour.
+
+My human interests were not extensive.  Sometimes the Enderley
+villagers, or the Tod children, who were a grade above these, and
+decidedly "respectable," would appear and have a game of play at the
+foot of the slope, their laughter rising up to where I lay.  Or some
+old woman would come with her pails to the spring below, a curious
+and very old stone well, to which the cattle from the common often
+rushed down past me in bevies, and stood knee-deep, their mouths
+making glancing circles in the water as they drank.
+
+Being out of doors almost all day, I saw very little of the
+inhabitants of our cottage.  Once or twice a lady and gentleman
+passed, creeping at the foot of the slope so slowly, that I felt sure
+it must be Mr. March and his daughter.  He was tall, with grey hair;
+I was not near enough to distinguish his features.  She walked on the
+further side, supporting him with her arm.  Her comfortable morning
+hood was put off, and she had on her head that ugly, stiff thing
+which ladies had lately taken to wearing, and which, Jael said, was
+called a "bonnet."
+
+Except on these two occasions, I had no opportunity of making any
+observations on the manners and customs of our neighbours.
+Occasionally Mrs. Tod mentioned them in her social chatter, while
+laying the cloth; but it was always in the most cursory and trivial
+way, such as "Miss March having begged that the children might be
+kept quiet--Mrs. Tod hoped their noise didn't disturb ME? but Mr.
+March was such a very fidgety gentleman--so particular in his dress,
+too--Why, Miss March had to iron his cravats with her own hands.
+Besides, if there was a pin awry in her dress he did make such a
+fuss--and, really, such an active, busy young lady couldn't look
+always as if she came trim out of a band-box.  Mr. March wanted so
+much waiting on, he seemed to fancy he still had his big house in
+Wales, and his seven servants."
+
+Mrs. Tod conversed as if she took it for granted I was fully
+acquainted with all the prior history of her inmates, or any others
+that she mentioned--a habit peculiar to Enderley folk with strangers.
+It was generally rather convenient, and it saved much listening; but
+in this case, I would rather have had it broken through.  Sometimes I
+felt strongly inclined to question her; but on consulting John, he
+gave his veto so decidedly against seeking out people's private
+affairs in such an illicit manner that I felt quite guilty, and began
+to doubt whether my sickly, useless, dreaming life, was not inclining
+me to curiosity, gossip, and other small vices which we are
+accustomed--I know not why--to insult the other sex by describing as
+"womanish."
+
+As I have said, the two cottages were built distinct, so that we
+could have neither sound nor sight of our neighbours, save upon the
+neutral ground of Mrs. Tod's kitchen; where, however I might have
+felt inclined to venture, John's prohibition stopped me entirely.
+
+Thus--save the two days when he was at home, when he put me on his
+mare's back, and led me far away, over common, and valley, and hill,
+for miles, only coming back at twilight--save those two blithe days,
+I spent the week in dignified solitude, and was very thankful for
+Sunday.
+
+We determined to make it a long, lovely, country Sunday; so we began
+it at six a.m.  John took me a new walk across the common, where--he
+said, in answer to my question--we were quite certain NOT to meet
+Miss March.
+
+"Do you experimentalize on the subject, that you calculate her paths
+with such nicety?  Pray, have you ever met her again, for I know you
+have been out most mornings?"
+
+"Morning is the only time I have for walking, you know, Phineas."
+
+"Ah, true!  You have little pleasure at Enderley.  I almost wish we
+could go home."
+
+"Don't think of such a thing.  It is doing you a world of good.
+Indeed, we must not, on any account, go home."
+
+I know, and knew then, that his anxiety was in earnest; that whatever
+other thoughts might lie underneath, the sincere thought of me was
+the one uppermost in his mind.
+
+"Well, we'll stay--that is, if you are happy, John."
+
+"Thoroughly happy; I like the dashing rides to Norton Bury.  Above
+all, I like coming back.  The minute I begin to climb Enderley Hill,
+the tan-yard, and all belonging to it, drops off like an incubus, and
+I wake into free, beautiful life.  Now, Phineas, confess; is not this
+common a lovely place, especially of a morning?"
+
+"Ay," said I, smiling at his energy.  "But you did not tell me
+whether you had met Miss March again."
+
+"She has never once seen me."
+
+"But you have seen her?  Answer honestly."
+
+"Why should I not?--Yes, I have seen her--once or twice or so--but
+never in any way that could annoy her."
+
+"That explains why you have become so well acquainted with the
+direction of her walks?"
+
+He coloured deeply.  "I hope, Phineas, you do not think that--that in
+any way I should intrude on or offend a lady?"
+
+"Nay, don't take it so seriously--indeed, I meant nothing of the
+kind.  It would be quite natural if a young man like you did use some
+pains to look at such a 'cunning piece of Nature's handiwork' as that
+apple-cheeked girl of seventeen."
+
+"Russet apple.  She is brown, you know--a real 'nut-brown mayde,'"
+said John, recovering his gay humour.  "Certainly, I like to look at
+her.  I have seen many a face that was more good-looking--never one
+that looked half so good."
+
+"Sententious that;" yet I could not smile--he spoke with such
+earnestness.  Besides, it was the truth.  I myself would have walked
+half-way across the common any day for a glance at Miss March.  Why
+not he?
+
+"But, John, you never told me that you had seen her again!"
+
+"Because you never asked me."
+
+We were silent.  Silent until we had walked along the whole length of
+a Roman encampment, the most perfect of the various fosses that
+seamed the flat--tokens of many a battle fought on such capital
+battleground, and which John had this morning especially brought me
+to look at.
+
+"Yes," I said at last, putting the ending affirmative to a long train
+of thought, which was certainly not about Roman encampments; "yes, it
+is quite natural that you should admire her.  It would even be quite
+natural, and not unlikely either, if she--"
+
+"Pshaw!" interrupted he.  "What nonsense you are talking!
+Impossible!" and setting his foot sharply upon a loose stone, he
+kicked it down into the ditch, where probably many a dead Roman had
+fallen before it in ages gone by.
+
+The impetuous gesture--the energetic "impossible," struck me less
+than the quickness with which his mind had worked out my unexpressed
+thought--carrying it to a greater length than I myself had ever
+contemplated.
+
+"Truly, no possibilities or impossibilities of THAT sort ever entered
+my head.  I only thought you might admire her, and be unsettled
+thereby as young men are when they take fancies.  That would grieve
+me very much, John."
+
+"Don't let it then?  Why, I have only seen her five times; I never
+spoke to her in my life, and most probably never shall do.  Could any
+one be in a safer position?  Besides," and his tone changed to
+extreme gravity, "I have too many worldly cares to think of; I can't
+afford the harmless little amusement of falling in love--so be easy,
+Phineas."
+
+I smiled; and we began a discussion on camps and fosses, vallum and
+praetorium; the Danes, Saxons, and Normans; which, doubtless, we
+carried on to a most learned length:  but at this distance of time,
+and indeed the very day after, I plead guilty to having forgotten all
+about it.
+
+That long, quiet Sunday, when, I remember, the sun never came out all
+day, but the whole earth and sky melted together in a soft, grey
+haze; when we lay on the common and heard church-bells ringing, some
+distant, some near; and, after all was quiet, talked our own old
+sabbath talks, of this world and the world to come; when, towards
+twilight, we went down into the beech-wood below the house, and sat
+idly there among the pleasant-smelling ferns; when, from the morning
+to the evening, he devoted himself altogether to my comfort and
+amusement--to perfect which required of him no harder duty than to be
+near me always;--that Sunday was the last I ever had David altogether
+for my own--my very own.
+
+It was natural, it was just, it was right.  God forbid that in any
+way I should have murmured.
+
+About ten o'clock--just as he was luring me out to see how grand the
+common looked under the black night, and we were wondering whether or
+no the household were in bed--Mrs. Tod came mysteriously into the
+parlour and shut the door after her.  Her round, fresh face looked
+somewhat troubled.
+
+"Mr. Halifax, might I speak a word to 'ee, sir?"
+
+"With pleasure.  Sit down, Mrs. Tod.  There's nothing wrong with your
+children?"
+
+"No, I thank'ee.  You are very kind, sir.  No, it be about that poor
+Miss March."
+
+I could see John's fingers twitch over the chair he was leaning on.
+"I hope--" he began, and stopped.
+
+"Her father is dreadful bad to-night, and it's a good seven-mile walk
+to the doctor's at S----; and Miss March says--that is, she don't,
+for I bean't going to tell her a word about it--but I think, Mr.
+Halifax, if I might make so bold, it would be a great kindness in a
+young gentleman like you to lend Tod your mare to ride over and fetch
+the doctor."
+
+"I will, gladly.  At once?"
+
+"Tod bean't come in yet."
+
+"He shall have the mare with pleasure.  Tell Miss March so--I mean,
+do not tell her, of course.  It was very right of you to come to us
+in this way, Mrs. Tod.  Really, it would be almost a treat to be ill
+in your house--you are so kind."
+
+"Thank'ee, Mr. Halifax," said the honest landlady, greatly delighted.
+"But a body couldn't help doing anything for Miss March.  You would
+think so yourself, if you only knew her."
+
+"No doubt," returned John, more politely than warmly, I fancied, as
+he closed the door after the retreating figure of Mrs. Tod.  But when
+he came and sat down again I saw he was rather thoughtful.  He turned
+the books restlessly, one after the other, and could not settle to
+anything.  To all my speculations about our sick neighbour, and our
+pearl of kind-hearted landladies, he only replied in monosyllables;
+at last he started up and said,--
+
+"Phineas, I think I'll go myself."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To fetch Doctor Brown.  If Tod is not come in it would be but a
+common charity.  And I know the way."
+
+"But the dark night?"
+
+"Oh, no matter; the mare will be safer under me than a stranger.  And
+though I have taken good care that the three horses in the tan-yard
+shall have the journey, turn and turn about; still it's a good pull
+from here to Norton Bury, and the mare's my favourite.  I would
+rather take her myself."
+
+I smiled at his numerous good reasons for doing such a very simple
+thing; and agreed that it was right and best he should do it.
+
+"Then shall I call Mrs. Tod and inquire?  Or perhaps it might make
+less fuss just to go and speak to her in the kitchen.  Will you,
+Phineas, or shall I?"
+
+Scarcely waiting my answer, we walked from our parlour into what I
+called the Debateable Land.
+
+No one was there.  We remained several minutes all alone, listening
+to the groaning overhead.
+
+"That must be Mr. March, John."
+
+"I hear.  Good heavens! how hard for her.  And she such a young
+thing, and alone," muttered he, as he stood gazing into the dull wood
+embers of the kitchen fire.  I saw he was moved; but the expression
+on his face was one of pure and holy compassion.  That at this moment
+no less unselfish feeling mingled with it I am sure.
+
+Mrs. Tod appeared at the door leading to the other half of the
+cottage; she was apparently speaking to Miss March on the staircase.
+We heard again those clear, quick, decided tones, but subdued to a
+half-whisper.
+
+"No, Mrs. Tod, I am not sorry you did it--on my father's account,
+'tis best.  Tell Mr.--the young gentleman--I forget his name--that I
+am very much obliged to him."
+
+"I will, Miss March--stay, he is just here.--Bless us! she has shut
+the door already.--Won't you take a seat, Mr. Halifax?  I'll stir up
+the fire in a minute, Mr. Fletcher.  You are always welcome in my
+kitchen, young gentlemen."  And Mrs. Tod bustled about, well aware
+what a cosy and cheerful old-fashioned kitchen it was, especially of
+evenings.
+
+But when John explained the reason of our intrusion there was no end
+to her pleasure and gratitude.  He was the kindest young gentleman
+that ever lived.--She would tell Miss March so; as, indeed, she had
+done many a time.
+
+"'Miss,' said I to her the very first day I set eyes on you, when I
+had told her how you came hunting for lodgings--(she often has a chat
+with me quite freely, being so lonesome-like, and knowing I to be too
+proud to forget that she's a born lady)--'Miss,' said I, 'who Mr.
+Halifax may be I don't know, but depend upon it he's a real
+gentleman.'"
+
+I was the sole amused auditor of this speech, for John had vanished.
+In a few minutes more he had brought the mare round, and after a word
+or two with me was clattering down the road.
+
+I wondered whether this time any white-furred wrist stirred the blind
+to watch him.
+
+John was away a wonderfully short time, and the doctor rode back with
+him.  They parted at the gate, and he came into our parlour, his
+cheeks all glowing with the ride.  He only remarked, "that the autumn
+nights were getting chill," and sat down.  The kitchen clock struck
+one.
+
+"You ought to have been in bed hours ago, Phineas.  Will you not go?
+I shall sit up just a little while, to hear how Mr. March is."
+
+"I should like to hear, too.  It is curious the interest that one
+learns to take in people that are absolute strangers, when shut up
+together in a lonely place like this, especially when they are in
+trouble."
+
+"Ay, that's it," said he, quickly.  "It's the solitude, and their
+being in trouble.  Did you hear anything more while I was away?"
+
+"Only that Mr. March was rather better, and everybody had gone to bed
+except his daughter and Mrs. Tod."
+
+"Hark! I think that's the doctor going away.  I wonder if one might
+ask--No! they would think it intrusive.  He must be better.  But Dr.
+Brown told me that in one of these paroxysms he might--Oh, that poor
+young thing!"
+
+"Has she no relatives, no brothers or sisters?  Doctor Brown surely
+knows."
+
+"I did not like to ask, but I fancy not.  However, that's not my
+business:  my business is to get you off to bed, Phineas Fletcher, as
+quickly as possible."
+
+"Wait one minute, John.  Let us go and see if we can do anything
+more."
+
+"Ay--if we can do anything more," repeated he, as we again recrossed
+the boundary-line, and entered the Tod country.
+
+All was quiet there.  The kitchen fire burnt brightly, and a cricket
+sang in merry solitude on the hearth; the groans overhead were
+stilled, but we heard low talking, and presently stealthy footsteps
+crept down-stairs.  It was Mrs. Tod and Miss March.
+
+We ought to have left the kitchen:  I think John muttered something
+to that effect, and even made a slight movement towards the door;
+but--I don't know how it was--we stayed.
+
+She came and stood by the fire, scarcely noticing us.  Her fresh
+cheeks were faded, and she had the weary look of one who has watched
+for many hours.  Some sort of white dimity gown that she wore added
+to this paleness.
+
+"I think he is better, Mrs. Tod--decidedly better," said she,
+speaking quickly.  "You ought to go to bed now.  Let all the house be
+quiet.  I hope you told Mr.--Oh--"
+
+She saw us, stopped, and for the moment the faintest tinge of her
+roses returned.  Presently she acknowledged us, with a slight bend.
+
+John came forward.  I had expected some awkwardness on his part; but
+no--he was thinking too little of himself for that.  His demeanour--
+earnest, gentle, kind--was the sublimation of all manly courtesy.
+
+"I hope, madam"--young men used the deferential word in those days
+always--"I do hope that Mr. March is better.  We were unwilling to
+retire until we had heard."
+
+"Thank you!  My father is much better.  You are very kind," said Miss
+March, with a maidenly dropping of the eyes.
+
+"Indeed he is kind," broke in the warm-hearted Mrs. Tod.  "He rode
+all the way to S----, his own self, to fetch the doctor."
+
+"Did you, sir? I thought you only lent your horse."
+
+"Oh! I like a night-ride.  And you are sure, madam, that your father
+is better?  Is there nothing else I can do for you?"
+
+His sweet, grave manner, so much graver and older than his years,
+softened too with that quiet deference which marked at once the man
+who reverenced all women, simply for their womanhood--seemed entirely
+to reassure the young lady.  This, and her own frankness of
+character, made her forget, as she apparently did, the fact that she
+was a young lady and he a young gentleman, meeting on unacknowledged
+neutral ground, perfect strangers, or knowing no more of one another
+than the mere surname.
+
+Nature, sincerity, and simplicity conquered all trammels of formal
+custom.  She held out her hand to him.
+
+"I thank you very much, Mr. Halifax.  If I wanted help I would ask
+you; indeed I would."
+
+"Thank YOU.  Good-night."
+
+He pressed the hand with reverence--and was gone.  I saw Miss March
+look after him:  then she turned to speak and smiled with me.  A
+light word, an easy smile, as to a poor invalid whom she had often
+pitied out of the fulness of her womanly heart.
+
+Soon I followed John into the parlour.  He asked me no questions,
+made no remarks, only took his candle and went up-stairs.
+
+But, years afterwards, he confessed to me that the touch of that
+hand--it was a rather peculiar hand in the "feel" of it, as the
+children say, with a very soft palm, and fingers that had a habit of
+perpetually fluttering, like a little bird's wing--the touch of that
+hand was to the young man like the revelation of a new world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+The next day John rode away earlier even than was his wont, I
+thought.  He stayed but a little while talking with me.  While Mrs.
+Tod was bustling over our breakfast he asked her, in a grave and
+unconcerned manner, "How Mr. March was this morning?" which was the
+only allusion he made to the previous night's occurrences.
+
+I had a long, quiet day alone in the beech-wood, close below our
+cottage, sitting by the little runnel, now worn to a thread with the
+summer weather, but singing still.  It talked to me like a living
+thing.
+
+When I came home in the evening Miss March stood in front of the
+cottage, with--strange to say--her father.  But I had heard that his
+paroxysms were often of brief continuance, and that, like most
+confirmed valetudinarians, when real danger stared him in the face he
+put it from him, and was glad to be well.
+
+Seeing me coming, Miss March whispered to him; he turned upon me a
+listless gaze from over his fur collar, and bowed languidly, without
+rising from his easy chair.  Yes, it was Mr. March--the very Mr.
+March we had met!  I knew him, changed though he was; but he did not
+know me in the least, as, indeed, was not likely.
+
+His daughter came a step or two to meet me.  "You are better, I see,
+Mr. Fletcher.  Enderley is a most healthy place, as I try to persuade
+my father.  This is Mr. Fletcher, sir, the gentleman who--"
+
+"Was so obliging as to ride to S----, last night, for me?  Allow me
+to thank him myself."
+
+I began to disclaim, and Miss March to explain; but we must both have
+been slightly incoherent, for I think the poor gentleman was never
+quite clear as to who it was that went for Dr. Brown.  However, that
+mattered little, as his acknowledgments were evidently dictated more
+by a natural habit of courtesy than by any strong sense of service
+rendered.
+
+"I am a very great invalid, sir; my dear, will you explain to the
+gentleman?"  And he leaned his head back wearily.
+
+"My father has never recovered his ten years' residence in the West
+Indies."
+
+"'Residence?'  Pardon me, my dear, you forget I was governor of--"
+
+"Oh, yes!--The climate is very trying there, Mr. Fletcher.  But since
+he has been in England--five years only--he has been very much
+better.  I hope he will be quite well in time."
+
+Mr. March shook his head drearily.  Poor man! the world of existence
+to him seemed to have melted lazily down into a mere nebula, of which
+the forlorn nucleus was--himself.  What a life for any young
+creature--even his own daughter, to be bound to continually!
+
+I could not help remarking the strong contrast between them.  He,
+with his sallow, delicately-shaped features--the thin mouth and long
+straight nose, of that form I have heard called the "melancholy
+nose," which usually indicates a feeble, pensive, and hypochondriac
+temperament; while his daughter--But I have described her already.
+
+"Mr. Fletcher is an invalid too, father," she said; so gently, that I
+could feel no pain in her noticing my infirmity; and took gratefully
+a seat she gave me, beside that of Mr. March.  She seemed inclined to
+talk to me; and her manner was perfectly easy, friendly, and kind.
+
+We spoke of commonplace subjects, near at hand, and of the West
+Indian island, which its late "governor" was apparently by no means
+inclined to forget.  I asked Miss March whether she had liked it?
+
+"I was never there.  Papa was obliged to leave me behind, in Wales--
+poor mamma's country.  Were you ever in Wales?  I like it so!
+Indeed, I feel as if I belonged altogether to the mountains."
+
+And saying this, she looked the very incarnation of the free mountain
+spirit--a little rugged, perhaps, and sharply outlined; but that
+would soften with time, and was better and wholesomer than any tame
+green level of soft perfection.  At least, one inclined to think so,
+looking at her.
+
+I liked Miss March very much, and was glad of it.
+
+In retiring, with her father leaning on her arm, to which he hung
+trustingly and feebly as a child, she turned abruptly, and asked if
+she could lend me any books to read?  I must find the days long and
+dull without my friend.
+
+I assented with thanks; and shortly afterwards she brought me an
+armful of literature--enough to have caused any young damsel to have
+been dubbed a "blue," in those matter-of-fact days.
+
+"I have no time to study much myself," said she, in answer to my
+questions; "but I like those who do.  Now, good evening, for I must
+run.  You and your friend can have any books of ours.  You must not
+think"--and she turned back to tell me this--"that because my father
+said little he and I are not deeply grateful for the kindness Mr.
+Halifax showed us last night."
+
+"It was a pleasure to John--it always is--to do a kind office for any
+one."
+
+"I well believe that, Mr. Fletcher."  And she left me.
+
+When John came home I informed him of what had passed.  He listened,
+though he made no comment whatever.  But all the evening he sat
+turning over Miss March's books, and reading either aloud or to
+himself fragments out of one--which I had expected he would have
+scouted, inasmuch as it was modern not classical poetry: in fact, a
+collection of Lyrical Ballads, brought out that year by a young man
+named Mr. William Wordsworth, and some anonymous friend, conjointly.
+I had opened it, and found therein great nonsense; but John had
+better luck--he hit upon a short poem called "Love," by the Anonymous
+Friend, which he read, and I listened to, almost as if it had been
+Shakspeare.  It was about a girl named Genevieve--a little simple
+story--everybody knows it now; but it was like a strange, low, mystic
+music, luring the very heart out of one's bosom, to us young
+visionaries then.
+
+I wonder if Miss March knew the harm she did, and the mischief that
+has been done among young people in all ages (since Caxton's days),
+by the lending books, especially books of poetry.
+
+The next day John was in a curious mood.  Dreamy, lazy, mild; he sat
+poring in-doors, instead of roaming abroad--in truth, was a changed
+lad.  I told him so, and laid it all to the blame of the Anonymous
+Friend:  who held him in such fascinated thrall that he only looked
+up once all the morning,--which was when Mr. and Miss March went by.
+In the afternoon he submitted, lamb-like, to be led down to the
+beech-wood--that the wonderful talking stream might hold forth to him
+as it did to me.  But it could not--ah, no! it could not.  Our lives,
+though so close, were yet as distinct as the musical living water and
+the motionless grey rock beside which it ran.  The one swept joyfully
+on to its appointed course:  the other--was what Heaven made it,
+abode where Heaven placed it, and likewise fulfilled its end.
+
+Coming back out of the little wood, I took John a new way I had
+discovered, through the prettiest undulating meadow, half-field,
+half-orchard, where trees loaded with ripening cider apples and green
+crabs made a variety among the natural foresters.  Under one of
+these, as we climbed the slope--for field, beech-wood, and common
+formed a gradual ascent--we saw a vacant table laid.
+
+"A pretty piece of rusticity--domestic Arcadia on a small scale,"
+said John; "I should like to invite myself to tea with them.  Who can
+they be?"
+
+"Probably visitors.  Resident country-folks like their meals best
+under a decent roof-tree.  I should not wonder if this were not one
+of Mr. March's vagaries."
+
+"Don't say vagaries--he is an old man."
+
+"Don't be reproachful--I shall say nought against him.  Indeed, I
+have no opportunity, for there they both are coming hither from the
+house."
+
+Sure enough they were--Miss March helping her father across the
+uneven bit of common to the gate which led to the field.  Precisely
+at that gate we all four met.
+
+"'Tis useless to escape them," whispered I to John.
+
+"I do not wish--why should I?" he answered, and held the gate open
+for the father and daughter to go through.  She looked up and
+acknowledged him, smiling.  I thought that smile and his courteous,
+but far less frank, response to it, would have been all the greeting;
+but no! Mr. March's dull perceptions had somehow been brightened up.
+He stopped.
+
+"Mr. Halifax, I believe?"
+
+John bowed.
+
+They stood a moment looking at one another; the tall, stalwart young
+man, so graceful and free in bearing, and the old man, languid,
+sickly, prematurely broken down.
+
+"Sir," said the elder, and in his fixed gaze I fancied I detected
+something more than curiosity--something of the lingering pensiveness
+with which, years ago, he had turned back to look at John--as if the
+lad reminded him of some one he knew.  "Sir, I have to thank you--"
+
+"Indeed, no thanks are needed.  I sincerely hope you are better
+to-day?"
+
+Mr. March assented:  but John's countenance apparently interested him
+so much that he forgot his usual complainings.  "My daughter tells me
+you are our neighbours--I am happy to have such friendly ones.  My
+dear," in a half audible, pensive whisper to her, "I think your poor
+brother Walter would have grown up extremely like Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"Mr. Halifax, papa."
+
+"Mr. Halifax, we are going to take tea under the trees there--my
+daughter's suggestion--she is so fond of rurality.  Will you give us
+the pleasure of your company?  You and"--here, I must confess, the
+second invitation came in reply to a glance of Miss March's--"your
+friend."
+
+Of course we assented:  I considerably amused, and not ill-pleased,
+to see how naturally it fell out that when John appeared in the
+scene, I, Phineas, subsided into the secondary character of John's
+"friend."
+
+Very soon--so soon that our novel position seemed like an adventure
+out of the Arabian Nights--we found ourselves established under the
+apple-tree, between whose branches the low sun stole in, kissing into
+red chestnut colour the hair of the "nut-browne mayde," as she sat,
+bareheaded, pouring into small white china cups that dainty luxury,
+tea.  She had on--not the grey gown, but a white one, worked in
+delicate muslin.  A bunch of those small pinky-white roses that grew
+in such clusters about our parlour window nestled, almost as if they
+were still growing, in her fair maiden bosom.
+
+She apologized for little Jack's having "stolen" them from our
+domains for her--lucky Jack! and received some brief and rather
+incoherent answer from John about being "quite welcome."
+
+He sat opposite her--I by her side--she had placed me there.  It
+struck me as strange, that though her manner to us both was
+thoroughly frank and kind, it was a shade more frank, more kind, to
+me than to him.  Also, I noted, that while she chatted gaily with me,
+John almost entirely confined his talk to her father.
+
+But the young lady listened--ay, undoubtedly she listened--to every
+word that was said.  I did not wonder at it:  when his tongue was
+once unloosed few people could talk better than John Halifax.  Not
+that he was one of your showy conversationalists; language was with
+him neither a science, an art, nor an accomplishment, but a mere
+vehicle for thought; the garb, always chosen as simplest and fittest,
+in which his ideas were clothed.  His conversation was never
+wearisome, since he only spoke when he had something to say; and
+having said it, in the most concise and appropriate manner that
+suggested itself at the time, he was silent; and silence is a great
+and rare virtue at twenty years of age.
+
+We talked a good deal about Wales; John had been there more than once
+in his journeyings; and this fact seemed to warm Miss March's manner,
+rather shy and reserved though it was, at least to him.  She told us
+many an innocent tale of her life there--of her childish days, and of
+her dear old governess, whose name, I remember, was Cardigan.  She
+seemed to have grown up solely under that lady's charge.  It was not
+difficult to guess--though I forget whether she distinctly told us
+so--that "poor mamma" had died so early as to become a mere name to
+her orphan daughter.  She evidently owed everything she was to this
+good governess.
+
+"My dear," at last said Mr. March, rather testily, "you make rather
+too much of our excellent Jane Cardigan.  She is going to be married,
+and she will not care for you now."
+
+"Hush! papa, that is a secret at present.  Pray, Mr. Halifax, do you
+know Norton Bury?"
+
+The abruptness of the question startled John, so that he only
+answered in a hurried affirmative.  Indeed, Mr. March left him no
+time for further explanation.
+
+"I hate the place.  My late wife's cousins, the Brithwoods of the
+Mythe, with whom I have had--ahem!--strong political differences--
+live there.  And I was once nearly drowned in the Severn, close by."
+
+"Papa, don't speak of that, please," said Miss March, hurriedly; so
+hurriedly that I am sure she did not notice what would otherwise have
+been plain enough--John's sudden and violent colour.  But the flush
+died down again--he never spoke a word.  And, of course, acting on
+his evident desire, neither did I.
+
+"For my part," continued the young lady, "I have no dislike to Norton
+Bury.  Indeed, I rather admired the place, if I remember right."
+
+"You have been there?"  Though it was the simplest question, John's
+sudden look at her, and the soft inflection of his voice, struck me
+as peculiar.
+
+"Once, when I was about twelve years old.  But we will talk of
+something papa likes better.  I am sure papa enjoys this lovely
+evening.  Hark! how the doves are cooing in the beech-wood."
+
+I asked her if she had ever been in the beech-wood.
+
+No; she was quite unacquainted with its mysteries--the fern-glades,
+the woodbine tangles, and the stream, that, if you listened
+attentively, you could hear faintly gurgling even where we sat.
+
+"I did not know there was a stream so near.  I have generally taken
+my walks across the Flat," said Miss March, smiling, and then
+blushing at having done so, though it was the faintest blush
+imaginable.
+
+Neither of us made any reply.
+
+Mr. March settled himself to laziness and his arm-chair; the
+conversation fell to the three younger persons--I may say the two--
+for I also seceded, and left John master of the field.  It was enough
+for me to sit listening to him and Miss March, as they gradually
+became more friendly; a circumstance natural enough, under the
+influence of that simple, solitary place, where all the pretences of
+etiquette seemed naturally to drop away, leaving nothing but the
+forms dictated and preserved by true manliness and true womanliness.
+
+How young both looked, how happy in their frank, free youth, with the
+sun-rays slanting down upon them, making a glory round either head,
+and--as glory often does--dazzling painfully.
+
+"Will you change seats with me, Miss March?--The sun will not reach
+your eyes here."
+
+She declined, refusing to punish any one for her convenience.
+
+"It would not be punishment," said John, so gravely that one did not
+recognize it for a "pretty speech" till it had passed--and went on
+with their conversation.  In the course of it he managed so
+carefully, and at the same time so carelessly, to interpose his broad
+hat between the sun and her, that the fiery old king went down in
+splendour before she noticed that she had been thus guarded and
+sheltered.  Though she did not speak--why should she? of such a
+little thing,--yet it was one of those "little things" which often
+touch a woman more than any words.
+
+Miss March rose.  "I should greatly like to hear your stream and its
+wonderful singing."  (John Halifax had been telling how it held forth
+to me during my long, lonely days)--"I wonder what it would say to
+me?  Can we hear it from the bottom of this field?"
+
+"Not clearly; we had better go into the wood."  For I knew John would
+like that, though he was too great a hypocrite to second my proposal
+by a single word.
+
+Miss March was more single-minded, or else had no reason for being
+the contrary.  She agreed to my plan with childish eagerness.  "Papa,
+you wouldn't miss me--I shall not be away five minutes.  Then, Mr.
+Fletcher, will you go with me?"
+
+"And I will stay beside Mr. March, so that he will not be left
+alone," said John, reseating himself.
+
+What did the lad do that for?--why did he sit watching us so
+intently, as I led Miss March down the meadow, and into the wood?  It
+passed my comprehension.
+
+The young girl walked with me, as she talked with me, in perfect
+simplicity and frankness, free from the smallest hesitation.  Even as
+the women I have known have treated me all my life--showing me that
+sisterly trust and sisterly kindness which have compensated in a
+measure for the solitary fate which it pleased Heaven to lay upon me;
+which, in any case, conscience would have forced me to lay upon
+myself--that no woman should ever be more to me than a sister.
+
+Yet I watched her with pleasure--this young girl, as she tripped on
+before me, noticing everything, enjoying everything.  She talked to
+me a good deal too about myself, in her kindly way, asking what I did
+all day?--and if I were not rather dull sometimes, in this solitary
+country lodging?
+
+"I am dull occasionally myself, or should be, if I had time to think
+about it.  It is hard to be an only child."
+
+I told her I had never found it so.
+
+"But then you have your friend.  Has Mr. Halifax any brothers or
+sisters?"
+
+"None.  No relatives living."
+
+"Ah!" a compassionate ejaculation, as she pulled a woodbine spray,
+and began twisting it with those never-quiet fingers of hers.  "You
+and he seem to be great friends."
+
+"John is a brother, friend, everything in the world to me."
+
+"Is he?  He must be very good.  Indeed, he looks so," observed Miss
+March, thoughtfully.  "And I believe--at least I have often heard--
+that good men are rare."
+
+I had no time to enter into that momentous question, when the origin
+of it himself appeared, breaking through the bushes to join us.
+
+He apologized for so doing, saying Mr. March had sent him.
+
+"You surely do not mean that you come upon compulsion?  What an ill
+compliment to this lovely wood."
+
+And the eyes of the "nut-browne mayde" were a little mischievous.
+John looked preternaturally grave, as he said, "I trust you do not
+object to my coming?"
+
+She smiled--so merrily, that his slight haughtiness evaporated like
+mist before the sunbeams.
+
+"I was obliged to startle you by jumping through the bushes; for I
+heard my own name.  What terrible revelations has this friend of mine
+been making to you, Miss March?"
+
+He spoke gaily; but I fancied he looked uneasy.  The young lady only
+laughed.
+
+"I have a great mind not to tell you, Mr. Halifax."
+
+"Not when I ask you?"
+
+He spoke so seriously that she could choose but reply.
+
+"Mr. Fletcher was telling me three simple facts:--First, that you
+were an orphan, without relatives.  Secondly, that you were his
+dearest friend.  Thirdly--well, I never compromise truth--that you
+were good."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"The first I was ignorant of; the second I had already guessed; the
+third--"
+
+He gazed at her intently.
+
+"The third I had likewise--not doubted."
+
+John made some hurried acknowledgment.  He looked greatly pleased--
+nay, more than pleased--happy.  He walked forward by Miss March's
+side, taking his natural place in the conversation, while I as
+naturally as willingly fell behind.  But I heard all they said, and
+joined in it now and then.
+
+Thus, sometimes spoken to, and sometimes left silent, watching their
+two figures, and idly noting their comparative heights--her head came
+just above John's shoulder--I followed these young people through the
+quiet wood.
+
+Let me say a word about that wood---dear and familiar as it was.  Its
+like I have never since seen.  It was small--so small that in its
+darkest depths you might catch the sunshine lighting up the branches
+of its outside trees.  A young wood, too--composed wholly of smooth-
+barked beeches and sturdy Scotch firs, growing up side by side--the
+Adam and Eve in this forest Eden.  No old folk were there--no gnarled
+and withered foresters--every tree rose up, upright in its youth, and
+perfect after its kind.  There was as yet no choking under-growth of
+vegetation; nothing but mosses, woodbine, and ferns; and between the
+boles of the trees you could trace vista after vista, as between the
+slender pillars of a cathedral aisle.
+
+John pointed out all this to Miss March, especially noticing the
+peculiar character of the two species of trees--the masculine and
+feminine--fir and beech.  She smiled at the fancy; and much graceful
+badinage went on between them.  I had never before seen John in the
+company of women, and I marvelled to perceive the refinement of his
+language, and the poetic ideas it clothed.  I forgot the truth--of
+whose saying was it?--"that once in his life every man becomes a
+poet."
+
+They stood by the little rivulet, and he showed her how the water
+came from the spring above; the old well-head where the cattle drank;
+how it took its course merrily through the woods, till at the bottom
+of the valley below it grew into a wide stream.
+
+"Small beginnings make great endings," observed Miss March,
+sententiously.
+
+John answered her with the happiest smile!  He dipped his hollowed
+palm into the water and drank:  she did the same.  Then, in her
+free-hearted girlish fun, she formed a cup out of a broad leaf,
+which, by the greatest ingenuity, she managed to make contain about
+two teaspoonfuls of water for the space of half a minute, and held it
+to my mouth.
+
+"I am like Rebecca at the well.  Drink, Eleazer," she cried, gaily.
+
+John looked on.  "I am very thirsty, too," said he, in a low voice.
+
+The young girl hesitated a moment; then filled and offered to him the
+Arcadian cup.  I fear he drank out of it a deeper and more subtle
+draught than that innocent water.
+
+Both became somewhat grave, and stood, one on either side the stream,
+looking down upon it, letting its bubbling murmur have all the talk.
+What it said I know not:  I only know that it did not, could not, say
+to those two what it said to me.
+
+When we took leave of our acquaintances Mr. March was extremely
+courteous, and declared our society would always be a pleasure to
+himself and his daughter.
+
+"He always says so formally, 'my daughter,'" I observed, breaking the
+silence in which they had left us.  "I wonder what her Christian name
+is."
+
+"I believe it is Ursula."
+
+"How did you find that out?"
+
+"It is written in one of her books."
+
+"Ursula!" I repeated, wondering where I had heard it before.  "A
+pretty name."
+
+"A very pretty name."
+
+When John fell into this echo mood I always found it best to fall
+into taciturnity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Next day, the rain poured down incessantly, sweeping blindingly
+across the hills as I have rarely seen it sweep except at Enderley.
+The weather had apparently broken up, even thus early in the autumn;
+and for that day, and several days following, we had nothing but
+wind, rain, and storm.  The sky was as dusky as Miss March's grey
+gown; broken sometimes in the evening by a rift of misty gold,
+gleaming over Nunnely Hill, as if to show us what September sunsets
+might have been.
+
+John went every day to Norton Bury that week.  His mind seemed
+restless--he was doubly kind and attentive to me; but every night I
+heard him go out in all the storm to walk upon the common.  I longed
+to follow him, but it was best not.
+
+On the Saturday morning, coming to breakfast, I heard him ask Mrs.
+Tod how Mr. March was?  We knew the invalid had been ailing all the
+week, nor had we seen him or his daughter once.
+
+Mrs. Tod shook her head ominously.  "He is very bad, sir; badder than
+ever, I do think.  She sits up wi' him best part of every night."
+
+"I imagined so.  I have seen her light burning."
+
+"Law, Mr. Halifax! you don't be walking abroad of nights on the Flat?
+It's terrible bad for your health," cried the honest soul, who never
+disguised the fact that Mr. Halifax was her favourite of all her
+lodgers, save and except Miss March.
+
+"Thank you for considering my health," he replied, smiling.  "Only
+tell me, Mrs. Tod, can anything be done--can we do anything for that
+poor gentleman?"
+
+"Nothing, sir--thank'ee all the same."
+
+"If he should grow worse let me go for Doctor Brown.  I shall be at
+home all day."
+
+"I'll tell Miss March of your kindness, sir," said Mrs. Tod, as with
+a troubled countenance she disappeared.
+
+"Were you not going to Norton Bury to-day, John?"
+
+"I was--but--as it is a matter of no moment, I have changed my mind.
+You have been left so much alone lately.  Nay--I'll not disguise the
+truth; I had another reason."
+
+"May I know it?"
+
+"Of course you may.  It is about our fellow-lodgers.  Doctor Brown--I
+met him on the road this morning--told me that her father cannot live
+more than a few days--perhaps a few hours.  And she does not know
+it."
+
+He leaned on the mantelpiece.  I could see he was very much affected.
+
+So was I.
+
+"Her relatives--surely they ought to be sent for?"
+
+"She has none.  Doctor Brown said she once told him so:  none nearer
+than the Brithwoods of the Mythe--and we know what the Brithwoods
+are."
+
+A young gentleman and his young wife--proverbially the gayest,
+proudest, most light-hearted of all our country families.
+
+"Nay, Phineas, I will not have you trouble yourself.  And after all,
+they are mere strangers--mere strangers.  Come, sit down to
+breakfast."
+
+But he could not eat.  He could not talk of ordinary things.  Every
+minute he fell into abstractions.  At length he said, suddenly:
+
+"Phineas, I do think it is wicked, downright wicked, for a doctor to
+be afraid of telling a patient he is going to die--more wicked,
+perhaps, to keep the friends in ignorance until the last stunning
+blow falls.  She ought to be told:  she must be told:  she may have
+many things to say to her poor father.  And God help her! for such a
+stroke she ought to be a little prepared.  It might kill her else!"
+
+He rose up and walked about the room.  The seal once taken from his
+reserve, he expressed himself to me freely, as he had used to do--
+perhaps because at this time his feelings required no disguise.  The
+dreams which might have peopled that beautiful sunset wood
+necessarily faded in an atmosphere like this--filled with the solemn
+gloom of impending death.
+
+At last he paused in his hurried walk, quieted, perhaps, by what he
+might have read in my ever-following eyes.
+
+"I know you are as grieved as I am, Phineas.  What can we do?  Let us
+forget that they are strangers, and act as one Christian ought to
+another.  Do YOU not think she ought to be told?"
+
+"Most decidedly.  They might get further advice."
+
+"That would be vain.  Dr. Brown says it is a hopeless case, has been
+so for long; but he would not believe it, nor have his daughter told.
+He clings to life desperately.  How horrible for her!"
+
+"You think most of her."
+
+"I do," said he, firmly.  "He is reaping what he sowed, poor man!
+God knows I pity him.  But she is as good as an angel of heaven."
+
+It was evident that, somehow or other, John had learnt a great deal
+about the father and daughter.  However, now was not the time to
+question him.  For at this moment, through the opened doors, we heard
+faint moans that pierced the whole house, and too surely came from
+the sick--possibly, the dying--man.  Mrs. Tod, who had been seeing
+Dr. Brown to his horse, now entered our parlour--pale, with swollen
+eyes.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Halifax!" and the kind soul burst out into crying afresh.
+John made her sit down, and gave her a glass of wine.
+
+"I've been with them since four this morning, and it makes me weakly
+like," said she.  "That poor Mr. March!--I didn't like him very much
+alive, but I do feel so sorry now he's a-dying."
+
+Then he WAS dying.
+
+"Does his daughter know?" I asked.
+
+"No--no--I dare not tell her.  Nobody dare."
+
+"Does she not guess it?"
+
+"Not a bit.  Poor young body! she's never seen anybody so.  She
+fancies him no worse than he has been, and has got over it.  She
+WOULDN'T think else.  She be a good daughter to him--that she be!"
+
+We all sat silent; and then John said, in a low voice--"Mrs. Tod, she
+ought to be told--and you would be the best person to tell her."
+
+But the soft-hearted landlady recoiled from the task.  "If Tod were
+at home now--he that is so full o' wisdom learnt in 'the kirk'--"
+
+"I think," said John, hastily interrupting, "that a woman would be
+the best.  But if you object, and as Doctor Brown will not be here
+till to-morrow--and as there is no one else to perform such a trying
+duty--it seems--that is, I believe"--here his rather formal speech
+failed.  He ended it abruptly--"If you like I will tell her myself."
+
+Mrs. Tod overwhelmed him with thankfulness.
+
+"How shall I meet her, then?  If it were done by chance it would be
+best."
+
+"I'll manage it somehow.  The house is very quiet:  I've sent all the
+children away, except the baby.  The baby'll comfort her, poor dear!
+afterwards."  And, again drying her honest eyes, Mrs. Tod ran out of
+the room.
+
+We could do nothing at all that morning.  The impending sorrow might
+have been our own, instead of that of people who three weeks ago were
+perfect strangers.  We sat and talked--less, perhaps, of them
+individually, than of the dark Angel, whom face to face I at least
+had never yet known--who even now stood at the door of our little
+habitation, making its various inmates feel as one family, in the
+presence of the great leveller of all things--Death.
+
+Hour by hour of that long day the rain fell down--pouring, pouring--
+shutting us up, as it were, from the world without, and obliterating
+every thought, save of what was happening under our one roof--that
+awful change which was taking place in the upper room, in the other
+half of the house, whence the moans descended, and whence Mrs. Tod
+came out from time to time, hurrying mournfully to inform "Mr.
+Halifax" how things went on.
+
+It was nearly dusk before she told us Mr. March was asleep, that his
+daughter had at last been persuaded to come down-stairs, and was
+standing drinking "a cup o' tea" by the kitchen fire.
+
+"You must go now, sir; she'll not stop five minutes.  Please go."
+
+"I will," he answered; but he turned frightfully pale.  "Phineas--
+don't let her see us both.  Stay without the door.  If there were
+anybody to tell her this but me!"
+
+"Do you hesitate?"
+
+"No--No."
+
+And he went out.  I did not follow him; but I heard afterwards, both
+from himself and Mrs. Tod, what transpired.
+
+She was standing so absorbed that she did not notice his entrance.
+She looked years older and sadder than the young girl who had stood
+by the stream-side less than a week ago.  When she turned and spoke
+to John it was with a manner also changed.  No hesitation, no
+shyness; trouble had put aside both.
+
+"Thank you, my father is indeed seriously ill.  I am in great
+trouble, you see, though Mrs. Tod is very, very kind.  Don't cry so,
+good Mrs. Tod; I can't cry, I dare not.  If I once began I should
+never stop, and then how could I help my poor father?  There now,
+there!"
+
+She laid her hand, with its soft, fluttering motions, on the good
+woman's shoulder, and looked up at John.  He said afterwards that
+those dry, tearless eyes smote him to the heart.
+
+"Why does she sob so, Mr Halifax?  Papa will be better tomorrow, I am
+sure."
+
+"I HOPE so," he answered, dwelling on the word; "we should always
+hope to the very last."
+
+"The last?" with a quick, startled glance.
+
+"And then we can only trust."
+
+Something more than the MERE words struck her.  She examined him
+closely for a minute.
+
+"You mean--yes--I understand what you mean.  But you are mistaken.
+The doctor would have told me--if--if--" she shivered, and left the
+sentence unfinished.
+
+"Dr. Brown was afraid--we were all afraid," broke in Mrs. Tod,
+sobbing.  "Only Mr. Halifax, he said--"
+
+Miss March turned abruptly to John.  That woeful gaze of hers could
+be answered by no words.  I believe he took her hand, but I cannot
+tell.  One thing I can tell, for she said it to me herself
+afterwards, that he seemed to look down upon her like a strong,
+pitiful, comforting angel; a messenger sent by God.
+
+Then she broke away, and flew up-stairs.  John came in again to me,
+and sat down.  He did not speak for many minutes.
+
+After an interval--I know not how long--we heard Mrs. Tod calling
+loudly for "Mr. Halifax."  We both ran through the empty kitchen to
+the foot of the stairs that led to Mr. March's room.
+
+Mr. March's room!  Alas, he owned nothing now on this fleeting,
+perishable earth of ours.  He had gone from it:  the spirit stealing
+quietly away in sleep.  He belonged now to the world everlasting.
+
+Peace be to him! whatever his life had been, he was HER father.
+
+Mrs. Tod sat half-way down the stair-case, holding Ursula March
+across her knees.  The poor creature was insensible, or nearly so.
+She--we learnt--had been composed under the terrible discovery made
+when she returned to his room; and when all restorative means failed,
+the fact of death became certain, she had herself closed her father's
+eyes, and kissed him, then tried to walk from the room--but at the
+third step she dropped quietly down.
+
+There she lay; physical weakness conquering the strong heart:  she
+lay, overcome at last.  There was no more to bear.  Had there been, I
+think she would have been able to have borne it still.
+
+John took her in his arms; I know not if he took her, or Mrs. Tod
+gave her to him--but there she was.  He carried her across the
+kitchen into our own little parlour, and laid her down on my sofa.
+
+"Shut the door, Phineas.  Mrs. Tod, keep everybody out.  She is
+waking now."
+
+She did, indeed, open her eyes, with a long sigh, but closed them
+again.  Then with an effort she sat upright, and looked at us all
+around.
+
+"Oh, my dear! my dear!" moaned Mrs. Tod, clasping her, and sobbing
+over her like a child.  "Cry, do cry!"
+
+"I CAN'T," she said, and lay down again.
+
+We stood awed, watching that poor, pale face, on every line of which
+was written stunned, motionless, impassive grief.  For John--two
+minutes of such a gaze as his might in a man's heart do the work of
+years.
+
+"She must be roused," he said at last.  "She MUST cry.  Mrs. Tod,
+take her up-stairs.  Let her look at her father."
+
+The word effected what he desired; what almost her life demanded.
+She clung round Mrs. Tod's neck in torrents of weeping.
+
+"Now, Phineas, let us go away."
+
+And he went, walking almost like one blindfold, straight out of the
+house, I following him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+"I am quite certain, Mrs. Tod, that it would be much better for her;
+and, if she consents, it shall be so," said John, decisively.
+
+We three were consulting, the morning after the death, on a plan
+which he and I had already settled between ourselves, namely, that we
+should leave our portion of the cottage entirely at Miss March's
+disposal, while we inhabited hers--save that locked and silent
+chamber wherein there was no complaining, no suffering now.
+
+Either John's decision, or Mrs. Tod's reasoning, was successful; we
+received a message to the effect that Miss March would not refuse our
+"kindness."  So we vacated; and all that long Sunday we sat in the
+parlour lately our neighbour's, heard the rain come down, and the
+church bells ring; the wind blowing autumn gales, and shaking all the
+windows, even that of the room overhead.  It sounded awful THERE.  We
+were very glad the poor young orphan was away.
+
+On the Monday morning we heard going up-stairs the heavy footsteps
+that every one at some time or other has shuddered at; then the
+hammering.  Mrs. Tod came in, and told us that no one--not even his
+daughter--could be allowed to look at what had been "poor Mr. March,"
+any more.  All with him was ended.
+
+"The funeral is to be soon.  I wonder what she will do then, poor
+thing!"
+
+John made me no answer.
+
+"Is she left well provided for, do you think?"
+
+"It is impossible to say."
+
+His answers were terse and brief enough, but I could not help talking
+about the poor young creature, and wondering if she had any relative
+or friend to come to her in this sad time.
+
+"She said--do you remember, when she was crying--that she had not a
+friend in the wide world?"
+
+And this fact, which he expressed with a sort of triumph, seemed to
+afford the greatest possible comfort to John.
+
+But all our speculations were set at rest by a request brought this
+moment by Mrs. Tod--that Mr. Halifax would go with her to speak to
+Miss March.
+
+"I! only I?" said John, starting.
+
+"Only you, sir.  She wants somebody to speak to about the funeral--
+and I said, 'There be Mr. Halifax, Miss March, the kindest
+gentleman'; and she said, 'if it wouldn't trouble him to come--'"
+
+"Tell her I am coming."
+
+When, after some time, he returned, he was very serious.
+
+"Wait a minute, Phineas, and you shall hear; I feel confused, rather.
+It is so strange, her trusting me thus.  I wish I could help her
+more."
+
+Then he told me all that had passed--how he and Mrs. Tod had
+conjointly arranged the hasty funeral--how brave and composed she had
+been--that poor child, all alone!
+
+"Has she indeed no one to help her?"
+
+"No one.  She might send for Mr. Brithwood, but he was not friendly
+with her father; she said she had rather ask this 'kindness' of me,
+because her father had liked me, and thought I resembled their
+Walter, who died."
+
+"Poor Mr. March!--perhaps he is with Walter, now.  But, John, can you
+do all that is necessary for her?  You are very young."
+
+"She does not seem to feel that.  She treats me as if I were a man of
+forty.  Do I look so old and grave, Phineas?"
+
+"Sometimes.  And about the funeral?"
+
+"It will be very simple.  She is determined to go herself.  She
+wishes to have no one besides Mrs. Tod, you, and me."
+
+"Where is he to be buried?"
+
+"In the little churchyard close by, which you and I have looked at
+many a time.  Ah, Phineas, we did not think how soon we should be
+laying our dead there."
+
+"Not OUR dead, thank God!"
+
+But the next minute I understood.  "OUR dead"--the involuntary
+admission of that sole feeling, which makes one, erewhile a stranger,
+say to, or think of another--"All thine are mine, and mine are thine,
+henceforward and for ever."
+
+I watched John as he stood by the fire; his thoughtful brow and
+firm-set lips contradicting the youthfulness of his looks.  Few as
+were his years, he had learnt much in them.  He was at heart a man,
+ready and able to design and carry out a man's work in the world.
+And in his whole aspect was such grave purity, such honest truth,
+that no wonder, young as they both were, and little as she knew of
+him, this poor orphan should not have feared to trust him entirely.
+And there is nothing that binds heart to heart, of lovers or friends,
+so quickly and so safely, as to trust and be trusted in time of
+trouble.
+
+"Did she tell you any more, John?  Anything of her circumstances?"
+
+"No.  But from something Mrs. Tod let fall, I fear"--and he vainly
+tried to disguise his extreme satisfaction--"that she will be left
+with little or nothing."
+
+"Poor Miss March!"
+
+"Why call her poor?  She is not a woman to be pitied, but to be
+honoured.  You would have thought so, had you seen her this morning.
+So gentle--so wise--so brave.  Phineas,"--and I could see his lips
+tremble--"that was the kind of woman Solomon meant, when he said,
+'Her price was above rubies.'"
+
+"I think so too.  I doubt not that when she marries Ursula March will
+be 'a crown to her husband.'"
+
+My words, or the half sigh that accompanied them--I could not help
+it--seemed to startle John, but he made no remark.  Nor did we recur
+to the subject again that day.
+
+Two days after, our little company followed the coffin out of the
+woodbine porch--where we had last said good-bye to poor Mr. March--
+across the few yards of common, to the churchyard, scarcely larger
+than a cottage garden, where, at long intervals, the few Enderley
+dead were laid.
+
+A small procession--the daughter first, supported by good Mrs. Tod,
+then John Halifax and I.  So we buried him--the stranger who, at this
+time, and henceforth, seemed even, as John had expressed it, "our
+dead," our own.
+
+We followed the orphan home.  She had walked firmly, and stood by the
+grave-side motionless, her hood drawn over her face.  But when we
+came back to Rose Cottage door, and she gave a quick, startled
+glance up at the familiar window, we saw Mrs. Tod take her,
+unresisting, into her motherly arms--then we knew how it would be.
+
+"Come away," said John, in a smothered voice--and we came away.
+
+All that day we sat in our parlour--Mr. March's parlour that had
+been--where, through the no longer darkened casement, the unwonted
+sun poured in.  We tried to settle to our ordinary ways, and feel as
+if this were like all other days--our old sunshiny days at Enderley.
+But it would not do.  Some imperceptible but great change had taken
+place.  It seemed a year since that Saturday afternoon, when we were
+drinking tea so merrily under the apple-tree in the field.
+
+We heard no more from Miss March that day.  The next, we received a
+message of thanks for our "kindness."  She had given way at last,
+Mrs. Tod said, and kept her chamber, not seriously ill, but in spirit
+thoroughly broken down.  For three days more, when I went to meet
+John returning from Norton Bury, I could see that his first glance,
+as he rode up between the chestnut trees, was to the window of the
+room that had been mine.  I always told him, without his asking,
+whatever Mrs. Tod had told me about her state; he used to listen,
+generally in silence, and then speak of something else.  He hardly
+ever mentioned Miss March's name.
+
+On the fourth morning, I happened to ask him if he had told my father
+what had occurred here?
+
+"No."
+
+I looked surprised.
+
+"Did you wish me to tell him?  I will, if you like, Phineas."
+
+"Oh, no.  He takes little interest in strangers."
+
+Soon after, as he lingered about the parlour, John said:
+
+"Probably I may be late to-night.  After business hours I want to
+have a little talk with your father."
+
+He stood irresolutely by the fire.  I knew by his countenance that
+there was something on his mind.
+
+"David."
+
+"Ay, lad."
+
+"Will you not tell me first what you want to say to my father?"
+
+"I can't stay now.  To-night, perhaps.  But, pshaw! what is there to
+be told?  'Nothing.'"
+
+"Anything that concerns you can never be to me quite 'nothing.'"
+
+"I know that," he said, affectionately, and went out of the room.
+
+When he came in he looked much more cheerful--stood switching his
+riding-whip after the old habit, and called upon me to admire his
+favourite brown mare.
+
+"I do; and her master likewise.  John, when you're on horseback you
+look like a young knight of the Middle Ages.  Maybe, some of the old
+Norman blood was in 'Guy Halifax, gentleman.'"
+
+It was a dangerous allusion.  He changed colour so rapidly and
+violently that I thought I had angered him.
+
+"No--that would not matter--cannot--cannot--never shall.  I am what
+God made me, and what, with His blessing, I will make myself."
+
+He said no more, and very soon afterwards he rode away.  But not
+before, as every day, I had noticed that wistful wandering glance up
+at the darkened window of the room, where sad and alone, save for
+kindly Mrs. Tod, the young orphan lay.
+
+In the evening, just before bed-time, he said to me with a rather sad
+smile, "Phineas, you wanted to know what it was that I wished to
+speak about to your father?"
+
+"Ay, do tell me."
+
+"It is hardly worth telling.  Only to ask him how he set up in
+business for himself.  He was, I believe, little older than I am
+now."
+
+"Just twenty-one."
+
+"And I shall be twenty-one next June."
+
+"Are you thinking of setting up for yourself?"
+
+"A likely matter!" and he laughed, rather bitterly, I thought--"when
+every trade requires capital, and the only trade I thoroughly
+understand, a very large one.  No, no, Phineas; you'll not see me
+setting up a rival tan-yard next year.  My capital is NIL."
+
+"Except youth, health, courage, honour, honesty, and a few other such
+trifles."
+
+"None of which I can coin into money, however.  And your father has
+expressly told me that without money a tanner can do nothing."
+
+"Unless, as was his own case, he was taken into some partnership
+where his services were so valuable as to be received instead of
+capital.  True, my father earned little at first, scarcely more than
+you earn now; but he managed to live respectably, and, in course of
+time, to marry."
+
+I avoided looking at John as I said the last word.  He made no
+answer, but in a little time he came and leaned over my chair.
+
+"Phineas, you are a wise counsellor--'a brother born for adversity.'
+I have been vexing myself a good deal about my future, but now I will
+take heart.  Perhaps, some day, neither you nor any one else will be
+ashamed of me."
+
+"No one could, even now, seeing you as you really are."
+
+"As John Halifax, not as the tanner's 'prentice boy?  Oh! lad--there
+the goad sticks.  Here I forget everything unpleasant; I am my own
+free natural self; but the minute I get back to Norton Bury--however,
+it is a wrong, a wicked feeling, and must be kept down.  Let us talk
+of something else."
+
+"Of Miss March?  She has been greatly better all day."
+
+"She?  No, not her to-night!" he said, hurriedly.  "Pah! I could
+almost fancy the odour of these hides on my hands still.  Give me a
+candle."
+
+He went up-stairs, and only came down a few minutes before bed-time.
+
+Next morning was Sunday.  After the bells had done ringing we saw a
+black-veiled figure pass our window.  Poor girl!--going to church
+alone.  We followed--taking care that she should not see us, either
+during service or afterwards.  We did not see anything more of her
+that day.
+
+On Monday a message came, saying that Miss March would be glad to
+speak with us both.  Of course we went.
+
+She was sitting quite alone, in our old parlour, very grave and pale,
+but perfectly composed.  A little more womanly-looking in the dignity
+of her great grief, which, girl as she was, and young men as we were,
+seemed to be to her a shield transcending all worldly "proprieties."
+
+As she rose, and we shook hands, in a silence only broken by the
+rustle of her black dress, not one of us thought--surely the most
+evil-minded gossip could not have dared to think--that there was
+anything strange in her receiving us here.  We began to talk of
+common things--not THE thing.  She seemed to have fought through the
+worst of her trouble, and to have put it back into those deep quiet
+chambers where all griefs go; never forgotten, never removed, but
+sealed up in silence, as it should be.  Perhaps, too--for let us not
+exact more from Nature than Nature grants--the wide, wide difference
+in character, temperament, and sympathies between Miss March and her
+father unconsciously made his loss less a heart-loss, total and
+irremediable, than one of mere habit and instinctive feeling, which,
+the first shock over, would insensibly heal.  Besides, she was young-
+-young in life, in hope, in body, and soul; and youth, though it
+grieves passionately, cannot for ever grieve.
+
+I saw, and rejoiced to see, that Miss March was in some degree
+herself again; at least, so much of her old self as was right,
+natural, and good for her to be.
+
+She and John conversed a good deal.  Her manner to him was easy and
+natural, as to a friend who deserved and possessed her warm
+gratitude:  his was more constrained.  Gradually, however, this wore
+away; there was something in her which, piercing all disguises, went
+at once to the heart of things.  She seemed to hold in her hand the
+touchstone of truth.
+
+He asked--no, I believe _I_ asked her, how long she intended staying
+at Enderley?
+
+"I can hardly tell.  Once I understood that my cousin Richard
+Brithwood was left my guardian.  This my fa--this was to have been
+altered, I believe.  I wish it had been.  You know Norton Bury, Mr.
+Halifax?"
+
+"I live there."
+
+"Indeed!"--with some surprise.  "Then you are probably acquainted
+with my cousin and his wife?"
+
+"No; but I have seen them."
+
+John gave these answers without lifting his eyes.
+
+"Will you tell me candidly--for I know nothing of her, and it is
+rather important that I should learn--what sort of person is Lady
+Caroline?"
+
+This frank question, put directly, and guarded by the battery of
+those innocent, girlish eyes, was a very hard question to be
+answered; for Norton Bury had said many ill-natured things of our
+young 'squire's wife, whom he married at Naples, from the house of
+the well-known Lady Hamilton.
+
+"She was, you are aware, Lady Caroline Ravenel, the Earl of Luxmore's
+daughter."
+
+"Yes, yes; but that does not signify.  I know nothing of Lord
+Luxmore--I want to know what she is herself."
+
+John hesitated, then answered, as he could with truth, "She is said
+to be very charitable to the poor, pleasant and kind-hearted.  But,
+if I may venture to hint as much, not exactly the friend whom I think
+Miss March would choose, or to whom she would like to be indebted for
+anything but courtesy."
+
+"That was not my meaning.  I need not be indebted to any one.  Only,
+if she were a good woman, Lady Caroline would have been a great
+comfort and a useful adviser to one who is scarcely eighteen, and, I
+believe, an heiress."
+
+"An heiress!"  The colour flashed in a torrent over John's whole
+face, then left him pale.  "I--pardon me--I thought it was otherwise.
+Allow me to--to express my pleasure--"
+
+"It does not add to mine," said she, half-sighing.  "Jane Cardigan
+always told me riches brought many cares.  Poor Jane! I wish I could
+go back to her--but that is impossible!"
+
+A silence here intervened, which it was necessary some one should
+break.
+
+"So much good can be done with a large fortune," I said.
+
+"Yes.  I know not if mine is very large; indeed, I never understood
+money matters, but have merely believed what--what I was told.
+However, be my fortune much or little, I will try to use it well."
+
+"I am sure you will."
+
+John said nothing; but his eyes, sad indeed, yet lit with a proud
+tenderness, rested upon her as she spoke.  Soon after, he rose up to
+take leave.
+
+"Do not go yet; I want to ask about Norton Bury.  I had no idea you
+lived there.  And Mr. Fletcher too?"
+
+I replied in the affirmative.
+
+"In what part of the town?"
+
+"On the Coltham Road, near the Abbey."
+
+"Ah, those Abbey chimes!--how I used to listen to them, night after
+night, when the pain kept me awake!"
+
+"What pain?" asked John, suddenly, alive to any suffering of hers.
+
+Miss March smiled almost like her old smile.  "Oh! I had nearly
+forgotten it, though it was very bad at the time; only that I cut my
+wrist rather dangerously with a bread knife, in a struggle with my
+nurse."
+
+"When was that?" eagerly inquired John.
+
+For me, I said nothing.  Already I guessed all.  Alas! the tide of
+fate was running strong against my poor David.  What could I do but
+stand aside and watch?
+
+"When was it?  Let me see--five, six years ago.  But, indeed, 'tis
+nothing."
+
+"Not exactly 'nothing.'  Do tell me!"
+
+And John stood, listening for her words, counting them even, as one
+would count, drop by drop, a vial of joy which is nearly empty, yet
+Time's remorseless hand still keeps on, pouring, pouring.
+
+"Well, if you must know it, it was one of my naughtinesses--I was
+very naughty as a child.  They would not let me have a piece of bread
+that I wanted to give away to a poor lad."
+
+"Who stood opposite--under an alley--in the rain?--was it not so?"
+
+"How could you know?  But he looked so hungry; I was so sorry for
+him."
+
+"Were you?"--in a tone almost inaudible.
+
+"I have often thought of him since, when I chanced to look at this
+mark."
+
+"Let me look at it--may I?"
+
+Taking her hand, he softly put back the sleeve, discovering, just
+above the wrist, a deep, discoloured seam.  He gazed at it, his
+features all quivering, then, without a word either of adieu or
+apology, he quitted the room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+I was left with Miss March alone.  She sat looking at the door where
+John had disappeared, in extreme surprise, not unmingled with a
+certain embarrassment.
+
+"What does he mean, Mr. Fletcher?  Can I have offended him in any
+way?"
+
+"Indeed, no."
+
+"Why did he go away?"
+
+But that question, simple as it was in itself, and most simply put,
+involved so much, that I felt I had no right to answer it; while, at
+the same time, I had no possible right to use any of those disguises
+or prevarications which are always foolish and perilous, and very
+frequently wrong.  Nor, even had I desired, was Miss March the woman
+to whom one dared offer the like; therefore I said to her plainly:
+
+"I know the reason.  I would tell you, but I think John would prefer
+telling you himself."
+
+"As he pleases," returned Miss March, a slight reserve tempering her
+frank manner; but it soon vanished, and she began talking to me in
+her usual friendly way, asking me many questions about the Brithwoods
+and about Norton Bury.  I answered them freely--my only reservation
+being, that I took care not to give any information concerning
+ourselves.
+
+Soon afterwards, as John did not return, I took leave of her, and
+went to our own parlour.
+
+He was not there.  He had left word with little Jack, who met him on
+the common, that he was gone a long walk, and should not return till
+dinner-time.  Dinner-time came, but I had to dine alone.  It was the
+first time I ever knew him break even such a trivial promise.  My
+heart misgave me--I spent a miserable day.  I was afraid to go in
+search of him, lest he should return to a dreary, empty parlour.
+Better, when he did come in, that he should find a cheerful hearth
+and--me.
+
+Me, his friend and brother, who had loved him these six years better
+than anything else in the whole world.  Yet what could I do now?
+Fate had taken the sceptre out of my hands--I was utterly powerless;
+I could neither give him comfort nor save him pain any more.
+
+What I felt then, in those long, still hours, many a one has felt
+likewise; many a parent over a child, many a sister over a brother,
+many a friend over a friend.  A feeling natural and universal.  Let
+those who suffer take it patiently, as the common lot; let those who
+win hold the former ties in tenderest reverence, nor dare to flaunt
+the new bond cruelly in the face of the old.
+
+Having said this, which, being the truth, it struck me as right to
+say, I will no more allude to the subject.
+
+In the afternoon there occurred an incident.  A coach-and-four,
+resplendent in liveries, stopped at the door; I knew it well, and so
+did all Norton Bury.  It was empty; but Lady Caroline's own maid--so
+I heard afterwards--sat in the rumble, and Lady Caroline's own black-
+eyed Neapolitan page leaped down, bearing a large letter, which I
+concluded was for Miss March.
+
+I was glad that John was not at home; glad that the coach, with all
+its fine paraphernalia, was away, empty as it had arrived, before
+John came in.
+
+He did not come till it was nearly dusk.  I was at the window,
+looking at my four poplar-trees, as they pointed skywards like long
+fingers stretching up out of the gloom, when I saw him crossing the
+common.  At first I was going to meet him at the gate, but on second
+thoughts I remained within, and only stirred up the fire, which could
+be seen shining ever so far.
+
+"What a bright blaze!--Nay, you have not waited dinner, I hope?--Tea-
+-yes, that's far better; I have had such a long walk, and am so tired
+"
+
+The words were cheerful, so was the tone.  TOO cheerful--oh, by far!
+The sort of cheerfulness that strikes to a friend's heart, like the
+piping of soldiers as they go away back from a newly-filled grave.
+
+"Where have you been, John?"
+
+"All over Nunnely Hill.  I must take you there--such expansive views.
+As Mrs. Tod informed me, quoting some local ballad, which she said
+was written by an uncle of hers:
+
+                    "'There you may spy
+      Twenty-three churches with the glass and the eye.'
+
+Remarkable fact, isn't it?"
+
+Thus he kept on talking all tea-time, incessantly, rapidly talking.
+It was enough to make one weep.
+
+After tea I insisted on his taking my arm-chair; saying, that after
+such a walk, in that raw day, he must be very cold.
+
+"Not the least--quite the contrary--feel my hand."  It was burning.
+"But I am tired--thoroughly tired."
+
+He leaned back and shut his eyes.  Oh, the utter weariness of body
+and soul that was written on his face!
+
+"Why did you go out alone?  John, you know that you have always me."
+
+He looked up, smiling.  But the momentary brightness passed.  Alas! I
+was not enough to make him happy now.
+
+We sat silent.  I knew he would speak to me in time; but the gates of
+his heart were close locked.  It seemed as if he dared not open them,
+lest the flood should burst forth and overwhelm us.
+
+At nine o'clock Mrs. Tod came in with supper.  She had always
+something or other to say, especially since the late events had drawn
+the whole household of Rose Cottage so closely together; now, she was
+brim-full of news.
+
+She had been all that evening packing up for poor dear Miss March;
+though why she should call her "poor," truly, she didn't know.  Who
+would have thought Mr. March had such grand relations?  Had we seen
+Lady Caroline Brithwood's coach that came that day?  Such a beautiful
+coach it was!--sent on purpose for Miss March--only she wouldn't go.
+"But now she has made up her mind, poor dear.  She is leaving
+to-morrow."
+
+When John heard this he was helping Mrs. Tod, as usual, to fasten the
+heavy shutters.  He stood, with his hand on the bolt, motionless,
+till the good woman was gone.  Then he staggered to the mantelpiece,
+and leaned on it with both his elbows, his hands covering his face.
+
+But there was no disguise now--no attempt to make it.  A young man's
+first love--not first fancy, but first love--in all its passion,
+desperation, and pain--had come to him, as it comes to all.  I saw
+him writhing under it--saw, and could not help him.  The next few
+silent minutes were very bitter to us both.
+
+Then I said gently, "David!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I thought things were so."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Suppose you were to talk to me a little--it might do you good."
+
+"Another time.  Let me go out--out into the air; I'm choking."
+
+Snatching up his hat, he rushed from me.  I did not dare to follow.
+
+After waiting some time, and listening till all was quiet in the
+house, I could bear the suspense no longer and went out.
+
+I thought I should find him on the Flat--probably in his favourite
+walk, his "terrace," as he called it, where he had first seen, and
+must have seen many a day after, that girlish figure tripping lightly
+along through the morning sunshine and morning dew.  I had a sort of
+instinct that he would be there now; so I climbed up the shortest
+way, often losing my footing; for it was a pitch-dark night, and the
+common looked as wide, and black, and still, as a midnight sea.
+
+John was not there; indeed, if he had been I could scarcely have seen
+him; I could see nothing but the void expanse of the Flat, or,
+looking down, the broad river of mist that rolled through the valley,
+on the other side of which twinkled a few cottage lights, like
+unearthly beacons from the farthest shore of an impassable flood.
+
+Suddenly I remembered hearing Mrs. Tod say that, on account of its
+pits and quarries, the common was extremely dangerous after dark,
+except to those who knew it well.  In a horrible dread I called out
+John's name--but nothing answered.  I went on blindly, desperately
+shouting as I went.  At length, in one of the Roman fosses, I
+stumbled and fell.  Some one came, darting with great leaps through
+the mist, and lifted me up.
+
+"Oh! David--David!"
+
+"Phineas--is that you?  You have come out this bitter night--why did
+you?"
+
+His tenderness over me, even then, made me break down.  I forgot my
+manhood, or else it slipped from me unawares.  In the old Bible
+language, "I fell on his neck and wept."
+
+Afterwards I was not sorry for this, because I think my weakness gave
+him strength.  I think, amidst the whirl of passion that racked him
+it was good for him to feel that the one crowning cup of life is not
+inevitably life's sole sustenance; that it was something to have a
+friend and brother who loved him with a love--like Jonathan's--
+"passing the love of women."
+
+"I have been very wrong," he kept repeating, in a broken voice; "but
+I was not myself.  I am better now.  Come--let us go home."
+
+He put his arm round me to keep me warm, and brought me safely into
+the house.  He even sat down by the fire to talk with me.  Whatever
+struggle there had been, I saw it was over, he looked his own self--
+only so very, very pale--and spoke in his natural voice; ay, even
+when mentioning HER, which he was the first to do.
+
+"She goes to-morrow, you are sure, Phineas?"
+
+"I believe so.  Shall you see her again?"
+
+"If she desires it."
+
+"Shall you say anything to her?"
+
+"Nothing.  If for a little while--not knowing or not thinking of all
+the truth--I felt I had strength to remove all impediments, I now see
+that even to dream of such things makes me a fool, or possibly worse-
+-a knave.  I will be neither--I will be a man."
+
+I replied not:  how could one answer such words?--calmly uttered,
+though each syllable must have been torn out like a piece of his
+heart.
+
+"Did she say anything to you?  Did she ask why I left her so abruptly
+this morning?"
+
+"She did; I said you would probably tell her the reason yourself."
+
+"I will.  She must no longer be kept in ignorance about me or my
+position.  I shall tell her the whole truth--save one thing.  She
+need never know that."
+
+I guessed by his broken voice what the "one thing" was;--which he
+counted as nothing; but which, I think, any true woman would have
+counted worth everything--the priceless gift of a good man's love.
+Love, that in such a nature as his, if once conceived, would last a
+lifetime.  And she was not to know it!  I felt sorry--ay, even sorry
+for Ursula March.
+
+"Do you not think I am right, Phineas?"
+
+"Perhaps.  I cannot say.  You are the best judge."
+
+"It is right," said he, firmly.  "There can be no possible hope for
+me; nothing remains but silence."
+
+I did not quite agree with him.  I could not see that to any young
+man, only twenty years old, with the world all before him, any love
+could be absolutely hopeless; especially to a young man like John
+Halifax.  But as things now stood I deemed it best to leave him
+altogether to himself, offering neither advice nor opinion.  What
+Providence willed, through HIS will, would happen:  for me to
+interfere either way would be at once idle and perilous; nay, in some
+sense, exceedingly wrong.
+
+So I kept my thoughts to myself, and preserved a total silence.
+
+John broke it--talking to himself as if he had forgotten I was by.
+
+"To think it was she who did it--that first kindness to a poor
+friendless boy.  I never forgot it--never.  It did me more good than
+I can tell.  And that scar on her poor arm--her dear little tender
+arm;--how this morning I would have given all the world to--"
+
+He broke off--instinctively, as it were--with the sort of feeling
+every good man has, that the sacred passion, the inmost tenderness of
+his love, should be kept wholly between himself and the woman he has
+chosen.
+
+I knew that too; knew that in his heart had grown up a secret, a
+necessity, a desire, stronger than any friendship--closer than the
+closest bond of brotherly love.  Perhaps--I hardly know why--I
+sighed.
+
+John turned round--"Phineas, you must not think--because of this--
+which you will understand for yourself, I hope, one day; you must not
+think I could ever think less, or feel less, about my brother."
+
+He spoke earnestly, with a full heart.  We clasped hands warmly and
+silently.  Thus was healed my last lingering pain--I was
+thenceforward entirely satisfied.
+
+I think we parted that night as we had never parted before; feeling
+that the trial of our friendship--the great trial, perhaps, of any
+friendship--had come and passed, safely:  that whatever new ties
+might gather round each, our two hearts would cleave together until
+death.
+
+The next morning rose, as I have seen many a morning rise at
+Enderley--misty and grey; but oh, so heavenly fair! with a pearly
+network of dewy gossamer under foot, and overhead countless thistle
+downs flying about, like fairy chariots hurrying out of sight of the
+sun, which had only mounted high enough above the Flat to touch the
+horizon of hills opposite, and the tops of my four poplars, leaving
+Rose Cottage and the valley below it all in morning shadow.  John
+called me to go with him on the common; his voice sounded so cheerful
+outside my door that it was with a glad heart I rose and went.
+
+He chose his old walk--his "terrace."  No chance now of meeting the
+light figure coming tripping along the level hill.  All that dream
+was now over.  He did not speak of it--nor I.  He seemed contented--
+or, at least, thoroughly calmed down; except that the sweet composure
+of his mien had settled into the harder gravity of manhood.  The
+crisis and climax of youth had been gone through--he never could be a
+boy again.
+
+We came to that part of John's terrace which overhung the churchyard.
+Both of us glanced instinctively down to the heap of loose red earth-
+-the as yet nameless grave.  Some one stood beside it--the only one
+who was likely to be there.
+
+Even had I not recognized her, John's manner would have told me who
+it was.  A deadly paleness overspread his face--its quietness was
+gone--every feature trembled.  It almost broke my heart to see how
+deeply this love had struck its roots down to the very core of his;
+twisting them with every fibre of his being.  A love which, though it
+had sprung up so early, and come to maturity so fast, might yet be
+the curse of his whole existence.  Save that no love conceived
+virtuously, for a good woman, be it ever so hopeless, can be rightly
+considered as a curse.
+
+"Shall we go away?" I whispered--"a long walk--to the other side of
+the Flat?  She will have left Rose Cottage soon."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Before noon, I heard.  Come, David."
+
+He suffered me to put my arm in his, and draw him away for a step or
+two, then turned.
+
+"I can't, Phineas, I can't!  I MUST look at her again--only for one
+minute--one little minute."
+
+But he stayed--we were standing where she could not see us--till she
+had slowly left the grave.  We heard the click of the churchyard
+gate:  where she went afterward we could not discern.
+
+John moved away.  I asked him if we should take our walk now?  But he
+did not seem to hear me; so I let him follow his own way--perhaps it
+might be for good--who could tell?
+
+He descended from the Flat, and came quickly round the corner of the
+cottage.  Miss March stood there, trying to find one fresh rose among
+the fast-withering clusters about what had been our parlour window
+and now was hers.
+
+She saw us, acknowledged us, but hurriedly, and not without some
+momentary signs of agitation.
+
+"The roses are all gone," she said rather sadly.
+
+"Perhaps, higher up, I can reach one--shall I try?"
+
+I marvelled to see that John's manner as he addressed her was just
+like his manner always with her.
+
+"Thank you--that will do.  I wanted to take some away with me--I am
+leaving Rose Cottage to-day, Mr. Halifax."
+
+"So I have heard."
+
+He did not say "sorry to hear."  I wondered did the omission strike
+her?  But no--she evidently regarded us both as mere acquaintances,
+inevitably, perhaps even tenderly, bound up with this time; and as
+such, claiming a more than ordinary place in her regard and
+remembrance.  No man with common sense or common feeling could for a
+moment dare to misinterpret the emotion she showed.
+
+Re-entering the house, she asked us if we would come in with her; she
+had a few things to say to us.  And then she again referred
+gratefully to our "kindness."
+
+We all went once more--for the last time--into the little parlour.
+"Yes--I am going away," said she, mournfully.
+
+"We hope all good will go with you--always and everywhere."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Fletcher."
+
+It was strange, the grave tone our intercourse now invariably
+assumed.  We might have been three old people, who had long fought
+with and endured the crosses of the world, instead of two young men
+and a young woman, in the very dawn of life.
+
+"Circumstances have fixed my plans since I saw you yesterday.  I am
+going to reside for a time with my cousins, the Brithwoods.  It seems
+best for me.  Lady Caroline is very kind, and I am so lonely."
+
+She said this not in any complaint, but as if accepting the fact, and
+making up her mind to endure it.  A little more fragmentary
+conversation passed, chiefly between herself and me--John uttered
+scarcely a word.  He sat by the window, half shading his face with
+his hand.  Under that covert, the gaze which incessantly followed and
+dwelt on her face--oh, had she seen it!
+
+The moments narrowed.  Would he say what he had intended, concerning
+his position in the world?  Had she guessed or learned anything, or
+were we to her simply Mr. Halifax and Mr. Fletcher--two "gentlemen"
+of Norton Bury?  It appeared so.
+
+"This is not a very long good-bye, I trust?" said she to me, with
+something more than courtesy.  "I shall remain at the Mythe House
+some weeks, I believe.  How long do you purpose staying at Enderley?"
+
+I was uncertain.
+
+"But your home is in Norton Bury?  I hope--I trust, you will allow my
+cousin to express in his own house his thanks and mine for your great
+kindness during my trouble?"
+
+Neither of us answered.  Miss March looked surprised--hurt--nay,
+displeased; then her eye, resting on John, lost its haughtiness, and
+became humble and sweet.
+
+"Mr. Halifax, I know nothing of my cousin, and I do know you.  Will
+you tell me--candidly, as I know you will--whether there is anything
+in Mr. Brithwood which you think unworthy of your acquaintance?"
+
+"He would think me unworthy of his," was the low, firm answer.
+
+Miss March smiled incredulously.  "Because you are not very rich?
+What can that signify?  It is enough for me that my friends are
+gentlemen."
+
+"Mr. Brithwood, and many others, would not allow my claim to that
+title."
+
+Astonished--nay, somewhat more than astonished--the young gentlewoman
+drew back a little.  "I do not quite understand you."
+
+"Let me explain, then;" and her involuntary gesture seeming to have
+brought back all honest dignity and manly pride, he faced her, once
+more himself.  "It is right, Miss March, that you should know who and
+what I am, to whom you are giving the honour of your kindness.
+Perhaps you ought to have known before; but here at Enderley we
+seemed to be equals--friends."
+
+"I have indeed felt it so."
+
+"Then you will the sooner pardon my not telling you--what you never
+asked, and I was only too ready to forget--that we are not equals--
+that is, society would not regard us as such--and I doubt if even you
+yourself would wish us to be friends."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you are a gentlewoman and I am a tradesman."
+
+The news was evidently a shock to her--it could not but be, reared as
+she had been.  She sat--the eye-lashes dropping over her flushed
+cheeks--perfectly silent.
+
+John's voice grew firmer--prouder--no hesitation now.
+
+"My calling is, as you will soon hear at Norton Bury, that of a
+tanner.  I am apprentice to Abel Fletcher--Phineas's father."
+
+"Mr. Fletcher!"  She looked up at me--a mingled look of kindliness
+and pain.
+
+"Ay, Phineas is a little less beneath your notice than I am.  He is
+rich--he has been well educated; I have had to educate myself.  I
+came to Norton Bury six years ago--a beggar-boy.  No, not quite that-
+-for I never begged!  I either worked or starved."
+
+The earnestness, the passion of his tone, made Miss March lift her
+eyes, but they fell again.
+
+"Yes, Phineas found me in an alley--starving.  We stood in the rain,
+opposite the mayor's house.  A little girl--you know her, Miss March-
+-came to the door, and threw out to me a bit of bread."
+
+Now indeed she started.  "You--was that you?"
+
+"It was I."
+
+John paused, and his whole manner changed into softness, as he
+resumed.  "I never forgot that little girl.  Many a time, when I was
+inclined to do wrong, she kept me right--the remembrance of her sweet
+face and her kindness."
+
+That face was pressed down against the sofa where she sat.  I think
+Miss March was all but weeping.
+
+John continued.
+
+"I am glad to have met her again--glad to have been able to do her
+some small good in return for the infinite good she once did me.  I
+shall bid her farewell now--at once and altogether."
+
+A quick, involuntary turn of the hidden face asked him "Why?"
+
+"Because," John answered, "the world says we are not equals, and it
+would neither be for Miss March's honour nor mine did I try to force
+upon it the truth--which I may prove openly one day--that we ARE
+equals."
+
+Miss March looked up at him--it were hard to say with what
+expression, of pleasure, or pride, or simple astonishment; perhaps a
+mingling of all--then her eyelids fell.  She silently offered her
+hand, first to me and then to John.  Whether she meant it as
+friendliness, or as a mere ceremony of adieu, I cannot tell.  John
+took it as the latter, and rose.
+
+His hand was on the door--but he could not go.
+
+"Miss March," he said, "perhaps I may never see you again--at least,
+never as now.  Let me look once more at that wrist which was hurt."
+
+Her left arm was hanging over the sofa--the scar being visible
+enough.  John took the hand, and held it firmly.
+
+"Poor little hand--blessed little hand!  May God bless it evermore."
+
+Suddenly he pressed his lips to the place where the wound had been--a
+kiss long and close, such as only a lover's kiss could be.  Surely
+she must have felt it--known it.
+
+A moment afterward, he was gone.
+
+That day Miss March departed, and we remained at Enderley alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+It was winter-time.  All the summer-days at Enderley were gone, "like
+a dream when one awaketh."  Of her who had been the beautiful centre
+of the dream we had never heard nor spoken since.
+
+John and I were walking together along the road towards the Mythe; we
+could just see the frosty sunset reflected on the windows of the
+Mythe House, now closed for months, the family being away.  The
+meadows alongside, where the Avon had overflowed and frozen, were a
+popular skating-ground:  and the road was alive with lookers-on of
+every class.  All Norton Bury seemed abroad; and half Norton Bury
+exchanged salutations with my companion, till I was amused to notice
+how large John's acquaintance had grown.
+
+Among the rest there overtook us a little elderly lady, as prim and
+neat as an old maid, and as bright-looking as a happy matron.  I saw
+at once who it was--Mrs. Jessop, our good doctor's new wife, and old
+love:  whom he had lately brought home, to the great amazement and
+curiosity of Norton Bury.
+
+"She seems to like you very much," I said; as, after a cordial
+greeting, which John returned rather formally, she trotted on.
+
+"They were both very kind to me in London, last month, as I think I
+told you."
+
+"Ay!"  It was one of the few things he had mentioned about that same
+London journey, for he had grown into a painful habit of silence now.
+Yet I dreaded to break it, lest any wounds rankling beneath might
+thereby be caused to smart once more.  And our love to one another
+was too faithful for a little reserve to have power to influence it
+in any way.
+
+We came once more upon the old lady, watching the skaters.  She again
+spoke to John, and looked at me with her keen, kind, blue eyes.
+
+"I think I know who your friend is, though you do not introduce him."
+(John hastily performed that ceremony.)  "Tom, and I" (how funny to
+hear her call our old bachelor doctor, "Tom!") "were wondering what
+had become of you, Mr. Halifax.  Are you stronger than you were in
+London?"
+
+"Was he ill in London, madam?"
+
+"No, indeed, Phineas!  Or only enough to win for me Dr. and Mrs.
+Jessop's great kindness."
+
+"Which you have never come to thank us for.  Never crossed our
+door-sill since we returned home!  Does not your conscience sting you
+for your ingratitude?"
+
+He coloured deeply.
+
+"Indeed, Mrs. Jessop, it was not ingratitude."
+
+"I know it; I believe it," she answered, with much kindness.  "Tell
+me what it was?"
+
+He hesitated.
+
+"You ought to believe the warm interest we both take in you.  Tell me
+the plain truth."
+
+"I will.  It is that your kindness to me in London was no reason for
+my intruding on you at Norton Bury.  It might not be agreeable for
+you and Dr. Jessop to have my acquaintance here.  I am a tradesman."
+
+The little old lady's eyes brightened into something beyond mere
+kindness as she looked at him.
+
+"Mr. Halifax, I thank you for that 'plain truth.'  Truth is always
+best.  Now for mine.  I had heard you were a tradesman; I found out
+for myself that you were a gentleman.  I do not think the two facts
+incompatible, nor does my husband.  We shall be happy to see you at
+our house at all times and under all circumstances."
+
+She offered him her hand.  John bowed over it in silence, but it was
+long since I had seen him look more pleased.
+
+"Well, then, suppose you come this evening, both of you?"
+
+We assented; and on her further invitation John and I and the little
+old lady walked on together.
+
+I could not help watching Mrs. Jessop with some amusement.  Norton
+Bury said she had been a poor governess all her days; but that hard
+life had left no shadow on the cheerful sunset of her existence now.
+It was a frank, bright, happy face, in spite of its wrinkles, and its
+somewhat hard Welsh features.  And it was pleasant to hear her talk,
+even though she talked a good deal, and in a decidedly Welsh accent.
+Sometimes a tone or two reminded me slightly of--Ay, it was easy to
+guess why John evidently liked the old lady.
+
+"I know this road well, Mr. Halifax.  Once I spent a summer here,
+with an old pupil, now grown up.  I am going to-day to inquire about
+her at the Mythe House.  The Brithwoods came home yesterday."
+
+I was afraid to look at John.  Even to me the news was startling.
+How I blessed Mrs. Jessop's innocent garrulousness.
+
+"I hope they will remain here some time.  I have a special interest
+in their stay.  Not on Lady Caroline's account, though.  She
+patronizes me very kindly; but I doubt if she ever forgets--what Tom
+says I am rather too proud of remembering--that I was the poor
+governess, Jane Cardigan."
+
+"Jane Cardigan!" I exclaimed.
+
+"What, Mr. Fletcher, you know my name!  And really, now I think of
+it, I believe I have heard yours.  Not from Tom, either.  It couldn't
+possibly be--Yes! it certainly was--How strange!  Did you ever hear
+tell of a Miss Ursula March?"
+
+The live crimson rushed madly over John's face.  Mrs. Jessop saw it;
+she could not but see.  At first she looked astounded, then
+exceedingly grave.
+
+I replied, "that we had had the honour of meeting Miss March last
+summer at Enderley."
+
+"Yes," the old lady continued, somewhat formally.  "Now I recollect,
+Miss March told me of the circumstance; of two gentlemen there, who
+were very kind to her when her father died; a Mr. Fletcher and his
+friend--was that Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"It was," I answered:  for John was speechless.  Alas! I saw at once
+that all my hopes for him, all the design of my long silence on this
+subject, had been in vain.  No, he had not forgotten her.  It was not
+in his nature to forget.
+
+Mrs. Jessop went on, still addressing herself to me.
+
+"I am sure I ought, on behalf of my dear pupil, to offer you both my
+warmest thanks.  Hers was a most trying position.  She never told me
+of it till afterwards, poor child!  I am thankful her trouble was
+softened to her by finding that STRANGERS" (was it only my fancy that
+detected a slight stress on the word?) "mere strangers could be at
+once so thoughtful and so kind."
+
+"No one could be otherwise to Miss March.  Is she well?  Has she
+recovered from her trial?"
+
+"I hope so.  Happily, few sorrows, few feelings of any kind, take
+lasting hold at eighteen.  She is a noble girl.  She did her duty,
+and it was no light one, to him who is gone; now her life begins
+anew.  It is sure to be prosperous--I trust it may be very happy.--
+Now I must bid you both good-bye."
+
+She stopped at the gates of the Mythe House; great iron gates, a
+barrier as proud and impassable as that which in these times the rich
+shut against the poor, the aristocrat against the plebeian.  John,
+glancing once up at them, hurriedly moved on.
+
+"Stay; you will come and see us, Mr. Halifax?  Promise!"
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"And promise, too, that under all circumstances you will tell me, as
+you did this morning, the 'plain truth'?  Yes, I see you will.
+Good-bye."
+
+The iron gates closed upon her, and against us.  We took our silent
+way up to the Mythe to our favourite stile.  There we leaned--still
+in silence, for many minutes.
+
+"The wind is keen, Phineas; you must be cold."
+
+Now I could speak to him--could ask him to tell me of his pain.
+
+"It is so long since you have told me anything.  It might do you
+good."
+
+"Nothing can do me good.  Nothing but bearing it.  My God! what have
+I not borne!  Five whole months to be dying of thirst, and not a drop
+of water to cool my tongue."
+
+He bared his head and throat to the cutting wind--his chest heaved,
+his eyes seemed in a flame.
+
+"God forgive me!--but I sometimes think I would give myself body and
+soul to the devil for one glimpse of her face, one touch of her
+little hand."
+
+I made no answer.  What answer could be made to such words as these?
+I waited--all I could do--till the paroxysm had gone by.  Then I
+hinted--as indeed seemed not unlikely--that he might see her soon.
+
+"Yes, a great way off, like that cloud up there.  But I want her
+near--close--in my home--at my heart;--Phineas," he gasped, "talk to
+me--about something else--anything.  Don't let me think, or I shall
+go clean mad."
+
+And indeed he looked so.  I was terrified.  So quiet as I had always
+seen him when we met, so steadily as he had pursued his daily duties;
+and with all this underneath--this torment, conflict, despair, of a
+young man's love.  It must come out--better it should.
+
+"And you have gone on working all this while?"
+
+"I was obliged.  Nothing but work kept me in my senses.  Besides"--
+and he laughed hoarsely--"I was safest in the tan-yard.  The thought
+of her could not come there.  I was glad of it.  I tried to be solely
+and altogether what I am--a 'prentice lad--a mere clown."
+
+"Nay, that was wrong."
+
+"Was it?  Well, at last it struck me so.  I thought I would be a
+gentleman again--just for a pretence, you know--a dream--a bit of the
+old dream back again.  So I went to London."
+
+"And met the Jessops there?"
+
+"Yes; though I did not know she was Jane Cardigan.  But I liked her--
+I liked my life with them.  It was like breathing a higher air, the
+same air that--Oh, Phineas, it was horrible to come back to my life
+here--to that accursed tan-yard!"
+
+I said nothing.
+
+"You see, now"--and that hard laugh smote me to the heart again--"you
+see, Phineas, how wicked I am growing.  You will have to cut my
+acquaintance presently."
+
+"Tell me the rest--I mean, the rest of your life in London," I said,
+after a pause.  "Did you ever hear of her?"
+
+"Of course not; though I knew she was there.  I saw it in the Court
+Circular.  Fancy a lady, whose name was in the Court Circular, being
+inquired after by a tanner's lad!  But I wanted to look at her--any
+beggar might do that, you know--so I watched in streets and parks, by
+theatre-doors at night, and by church-doors on Sunday mornings; yet I
+never saw her once.  Only think, not once for five whole months."
+
+"John, how could you tell me you were happy?"
+
+"I don't know.  Perhaps because of my pride; perhaps because--Ah,
+don't look so wretched!  Why did you let me say all this?  You are
+too good for such as I."
+
+Of course I took no heed of idle words like these.  I let him stand
+there, leaning against the stile, now and then grasping it with his
+nervous, muscular hands, as if he would tear it down; then I said
+quietly:
+
+"What do you intend to do?"
+
+"Do?  Nothing!  What can I do?  Though sometimes a score of wild
+plans rush into my mind, such as to run away to the Indies, like that
+young Warren Hastings we were talking of, come back twenty years
+hence a nabob, and--marry her."
+
+"Marry her," I repeated, mournfully.
+
+"Ay, I could.  That is what maddens me.  If now she and I were to
+meet and stand together, equal man and woman, I could make her love
+me; I feel I could.  Instead of crawling after her thus I would go
+boldly in at those very gates--do you think she is there?"
+
+He trembled, actually trembled, at the mere thought of her being so
+near.
+
+"Oh, it's hard, hard!  I could despise myself.  Why cannot I trust my
+manhood, my honest manhood that I was born with, go straight to her
+and tell her that I love her; that God meant her for me and me for
+her--true husband and true wife?  Phineas, mark my words"--and, wild
+as his manner was, it had a certain force which sounded almost like
+prophecy--"if ever Ursula March marries she will be my wife--MY
+wife!"
+
+I could only murmur--"Heaven grant it!"
+
+"But we shall never marry, neither one nor the other of us; we shall
+go on apart and alone till the next world.  Perhaps she will come to
+me then:  I may have her in my heart there."
+
+John looked upward:  there was in the west a broad, red frosty cloud,
+and just beyond it, nay, all but resting on it, the new moon--a
+little, wintry, soft new moon.  A sight that might well have hushed
+the maddest storm of passion:  it hushed his.  He stood, still
+looking up, for many minutes, then his eyes closed, the lashes all
+wet.
+
+"We'll never speak of this again, Phineas; I'll not grieve thee any
+more; I'll try and be a better brother to thee for the future.  Come
+along!"
+
+He drew my arm in his, and we went home.
+
+Passing the tan-yard John proposed that we should call for my father.
+My poor father; now daily growing more sour and old, and daily
+leaning more and more upon John, who never ceased to respect, and
+make every one else respect, his master.  Though still ostensibly a
+'prentice, he had now the business almost entirely in his hands.  It
+was pleasant to see how my father brightened up at his coming--how
+readily, when he turned homeward, he leaned upon John's strong arm,
+now the support of both him and me.  Thus we walked through Norton
+Bury streets, where everybody knew us, and indeed, as it seemed to me
+this morning, nearly everybody greeted us--at least, one of us; but
+my father walked along soberly and sternly, frowning at almost every
+salutation John Halifax received.
+
+"Thee art making far too many friends, John.  I warn thee!"
+
+"Not FRIENDS--only friendly acquaintance," was the gentle answer:  he
+was well used to turn away, daily and hourly, Abel Fletcher's wrath.
+But it was roused beyond control when Dr. Jessop's neat little
+carriage, and neatest of little wives, stopped at the curb-stone and
+summoned John.
+
+"I want you and Mr. Fletcher to come to us to-morrow instead of this
+evening.  Lady Caroline Brithwood wishes to see you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you," smiled the old lady; "you, John Halifax, the hero of the
+people, who quelled the bread riots, and gave evidence thereupon to
+Mr. Pitt, in London.  Nay! why didn't you tell me the wonderful
+story?  Her Ladyship is full of it.  She will torment me till she
+sees you--I know her ways.  For my sake, you MUST come."
+
+Waiting no refusal, Mrs. Jessop drove on.
+
+"What's that?" said my father, sharply.  "John, where art thee
+going?"
+
+I knew this was the first warning-gun of a battle which broke out
+afresh every time John appeared in any livelier garb than his
+favourite grey, or was suspected of any more worldly associates than
+our quiet selves.  He always took my father's attacks patiently--this
+time peculiarly so.  He made no answer, but passed his hand once or
+twice over his brow, as if he could not see clearly.
+
+Abel Fletcher repeated the question.
+
+"Yes; that was Mrs. Jessop, sir."
+
+"I know," grumbled my father.  "The doctor is a fool in his old age.
+Who did she want thee to meet?"
+
+"She!--Oh, Lady Caroline, you mean?"
+
+"Lady Caroline wishes particularly to see John."
+
+Abel Fletcher stopped, planted his stick in the ground, released his
+arm from John's, and eyed him from top to toe.
+
+"Thee?--a woman of quality wanting to see THEE?  Young man, thee art
+a hypocrite."
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"I knew it!  I foresaw how thy fine ways would end!  Going to London-
+--crawling at the heels of grand folk--despising thy honest trade--
+trying to make thyself appear a gentleman!"
+
+"I hope I am a gentleman."
+
+Words could not describe my father's horrified astonishment.  "Oh,
+lad!" he cried; "poor, misguided lad!--the Lord have mercy upon
+thee!"
+
+John smiled--his mind evidently full of other things.  Abel
+Fletcher's anger grew.
+
+"And thee wants to hang on to the tail of other 'gentlemen,' such as
+Richard Brithwood, forsooth!--a fox-hunting, drinking, dicing fool!"
+
+I was shocked; I had not believed him so bad as that--the young
+'squire--Miss March's cousin.
+
+"Or," pursued my father, waxing hotter and hotter, "or a 'lady' such
+as his wife is, the Jezebel daughter of an Ahab father!--brought up
+in the impious atrocities of France, and the debaucheries of Naples,
+where, though she keeps it close here, she abode with that vile woman
+whom they call Lady Hamilton."
+
+John started.  Well he might, for even to our quiet town had come,
+all this winter, foul newspaper tales about Nelson and Lady Hamilton.
+
+"Take care," he said, in much agitation.  "Any taint upon a woman's
+fame harms not her alone but all connected with her.  For God's sake,
+sir, whether it be true or not, do not whisper in Norton Bury that
+Lady Caroline Brithwood is a friend of Lady Hamilton."
+
+"Pshaw!  What is either woman to us?"
+
+And my father climbed the steps to his own door, John following.
+
+"Nay, young gentleman, my poor house is hardly good enough for such
+as thee."
+
+John turned, cruelly galled, but recovered himself.
+
+"You are unjust to me, Abel Fletcher; and you yourself will think so
+soon.  May I come in?"
+
+My father made no answer, and I brought John in as usual.  In truth,
+we had both more to think of than Abel Fletcher's temporary
+displeasure.  This strange chance--what might it imply?--to what
+might it not lead?  But no:  if I judged Mrs. Jessop aright, it
+neither implied, nor would lead to, what I saw John's fancy had at
+once sprang toward, and revelled in, madly.  A lover's fancy--a
+lover's hope.  Even I could see what will-o'-the-wisps they were.
+
+But the doctor's good wife, Ursula March's wise governess, would
+never lure a young man with such phantoms as these.  I felt sure--
+certain--that if we met the Brithwoods we should meet no one else.
+Certain, even when, as we sat at our dish of tea, there came in two
+little dainty notes--the first invitations to worldly festivity that
+had ever tempted our Quaker household, and which Jael flung out of
+her fingers as if they had been coals from Gehenna.  Notes, bidding
+us to a "little supper" at Dr. Jessop's, with Mr. and Lady Caroline
+Brithwood, of the Mythe House.
+
+"Give them to your father, Phineas."  And John vainly tried to hide
+the flash of his eye--the smiles that came and went like summer
+lightning--"To-morrow--you see, it is to-morrow."
+
+Poor lad! he had forgotten every worldly thing in the hope of that
+to-morrow.
+
+My father's sharp voice roused him.  "Phineas, thee'lt stay at home.
+Tell the woman I say so."
+
+"And John, father?"
+
+"John may go to ruin if he chooses.  He is his own master."
+
+"I have been always."  And the answer came less in pride than
+sadness.  "I might have gone to ruin years ago, but for the mercy of
+Heaven and your kindness.  Do not let us be at warfare now."
+
+"All thy own fault, lad.  Why cannot thee keep in thy own rank?
+Respect thyself.  Be an honest tradesman, as I have been."
+
+"And as I trust always to be.  But that is only my calling, not me.
+I--John Halifax--am just the same, whether in the tan-yard or Dr.
+Jessop's drawing-room.  The one position cannot degrade, nor the
+other elevate, me.  I should not 'respect myself' if I believed
+otherwise."
+
+"Eh?"--my father absolutely dropped his pipe in amazement.  "Then,
+thee thinkest thyself already quite a gentleman?"
+
+"As I told you before, sir--I hope I am."
+
+"Fit to associate with the finest folk in the land?"
+
+"If they desire it, and I choose it, certainly."
+
+Now, Abel Fletcher, like all honest men, liked honesty; and something
+in John's bold spirit, and free bright eye, seemed to-day to strike
+him more than ordinarily.
+
+"Lad, lad, thee art young.  But it won't last--no, it won't last."
+
+He knocked the white ashes out of his pipe--it had been curling in
+brave wreaths to the very ceiling two minutes before--and sat musing.
+
+"But about to-morrow?" persisted John, after watching him some little
+time.  "I could go--I could have gone, without either your knowledge
+or permission; but I had rather deal openly with you.  You know I
+always do.  You have been the kindest master--the truest friend to
+me; I hope, as long as I live, rarely to oppose, and never to deceive
+you."
+
+His manner---earnest, yet most respectful--his candid looks, under
+which lurked an evident anxiety and pain, might have mollified a
+harder man than Abel Fletcher.
+
+"John, why dost thee want to go among those grand folk?"
+
+"Not because they are grand folk.  I have other reasons--strong
+reasons."
+
+"Be honest.  Tell me thy strong reasons."
+
+Here was a strait.
+
+"Why dost thee blush, young man?  Is it aught thee art ashamed of?"
+
+"Ashamed!  No!"
+
+"Is it a secret, then, the telling of which would be to thee, or to
+any else, dishonour?"
+
+"Dishonour!"  And the bright eye shot an indignant gleam.
+
+"Then, tell the truth."
+
+"I will.  I wish first to find out, for myself, whether Lady Caroline
+Brithwood is fitted to have under her charge one who is young--
+innocent--good."
+
+"Has she such an one?  One thee knows?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Man or woman?"
+
+"Woman."
+
+My father turned, and looked John full in the eyes.  Stern as that
+look was, I traced in it a strange compassion.
+
+"Lad, I thought so.  Thee hast found the curse of man's life--woman."
+
+To my amazement, John replied not a syllable.  He seemed even as if
+he had forgotten himself and his own secret--thus, for what end I
+knew not, voluntarily betrayed--so absorbed was he in contemplating
+the old man.  And truly, in all my life I had never seen such a
+convulsion pass over my father's face.  It was like as if some one
+had touched and revived the torment of a long-hidden, but
+never-to-be-healed wound.  Not till years after did I understand the
+full meaning of John's gaze, or why he was so patient with my father.
+
+The torment passed--ended in violent anger.
+
+"Out with it.  Who is deluding thee?  Is it a matter of wedlock, or
+only--"
+
+"Stop!" John cried; his face all on fire.  "The lady--"
+
+"It is a 'lady'!  Now I see why thee would fain be a gentleman."
+
+"Oh, father--how can you?"
+
+"So thee knowest it too--I see it in thy face--Wouldst thee be led
+away by him a second time!  But thee shall not.  I'll put thee under
+lock and key before thee shalt ruin thyself and disgrace thy father."
+
+This was hard to bear; but I believe--it was John's teaching--that
+one ought to bear anything, however hard, from a just and worthy
+parent.  And it was John himself who now grasped my hand, and
+whispered patience.  John--who knew, what I myself, as I have said,
+did not learn for years, concerning my father's former history.
+
+"Sir, you mistake; Phineas has nothing whatever to do with this
+matter.  He is altogether blameless.  So am I too, if you heard all."
+
+"Tell me all; honour is bold--shame only is silent."
+
+"I feel no shame--an honest love is no disgrace to any man.  And my
+confessing it harms no one.  She neither knows of it nor returns it."
+
+As he said this, slowly, gravely, John moved a step back and sat
+down.  His face was in shadow; but the fire shone on his hands,
+tightly locked together, motionless as stone.
+
+My father was deeply moved.  Heaven knows what ghosts of former days
+came and knocked at the old man's heart.  We all three sat silent for
+a long time, then my father said:
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"I had rather not tell you.  She is above me in worldly station."
+
+"Ah!" a fierce exclamation.  "But thee wouldst not humble thyself--
+ruin thy peace for life?  Thee wouldst not marry her?"
+
+"I would--if she had loved me.  Even yet, if by any honourable means
+I can rise to her level, so as to be able to win her love, marry her
+I will."
+
+That brave "I will"--it seemed to carry its own fulfilment.  Its
+indomitable resolution struck my father with wonder--nay, with a sort
+of awe.
+
+"Do as thee thinks best, and God help thee," he said, kindly.  "Mayst
+thee never find thy desire a curse.  Fear not, lad--I will keep thy
+counsel."
+
+"I knew you would."
+
+The subject ceased:  my father's manner indicated that he wished it
+to cease.  He re-lit his pipe, and puffed away, silently and sadly.
+
+Years afterwards, when all that remained of Abel Fletcher was a green
+mound beside that other mound, in the Friends' burying-ground in St.
+Mary's Lane, I learnt--what all Norton Bury, except myself, had long
+known--that my poor mother, the young, thoughtless creature, whose
+married life had been so unhappy and so brief, was by birth a
+"gentlewoman."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Mrs. Jessop's drawing-room, ruddy with fire-light, glittering with
+delicate wax candle-light; a few women in pale-coloured gauzy
+dresses, a few men, sublime in blue coats, gold buttons, yellow
+waistcoats, and smiles--this was all I noticed of the scene, which
+was quite a novel scene to me.
+
+The doctor's wife had introduced us formally to all her guests, as
+the custom then was, especially in these small cosy supper-parties.
+How they greeted us I do not now remember; no doubt, with a kind of
+well-bred formal surprise; but society was generally formal then.  My
+chief recollection is of Mrs. Jessop's saying pointedly and aloud,
+though with a smile playing under the corners of her good little
+mouth:
+
+"Mr. Halifax, it is kind of you to come; Lady Caroline Brithwood will
+be delighted.  She longs to make your acquaintance."
+
+After that everybody began to talk with extraordinary civility to Mr.
+Halifax.
+
+For John, he soon took his place among them, with that modest self-
+possession which best becomes youth.  Society's dangerous waters
+accordingly became smooth to him, as to a good swimmer who knows his
+own strength, trusts it, and struggles not.
+
+"Mr. Brithwood and Lady Caroline will be late," I overheard the
+hostess say.  "I think I told you that Miss March--"
+
+But here the door was flung open, and the missing guests announced.
+John and I were in the alcove of the window; I heard his breathing
+behind me, but I dared not look at or speak to him.  In truth, I was
+scarcely calmer than he.  For though it must be clearly understood I
+never was "in love" with any woman, still the reflected glamour of
+those Enderley days had fallen on me.  It often seems now as if I too
+had passed the golden gate, and looked far enough into youth's Eden
+to be able ever after to weep with those that wept without the doors.
+
+No--she was not there.
+
+We both sat down.  I know not if I was thankful or sorry.
+
+I had seldom seen the 'squire or Lady Caroline.  He was a portly
+young man, pinched in by tight light-coloured garments.  She was a
+lady rather past her first youth, but very handsome still, who
+floated about, leaving a general impression of pseudo-Greek
+draperies, gleaming arms and shoulders, sparkling jewellery, and
+equally sparkling smiles.  These smiles seemed to fall just as
+redundantly upon the family physician, whom by a rare favour--for so,
+I suppose, it must have been--she was honouring with a visit, as if
+worthy Dr. Jessop were the noblest in the land.  He, poor man, was
+all bows and scrapes and pretty speeches, in the which came more than
+the usual amount of references to the time which had made his
+fortune, the day when Her Majesty Queen Charlotte had done him the
+honour to be graciously taken ill in passing through Norton Bury.
+Mrs. Jessop seemed to wear her honours as hostess to an earl's
+daughter very calmly indeed.  She performed the ordinary courtesies,
+and then went over to talk with Mr. Brithwood.  In their conversation
+I sought in vain the name of Ursula.
+
+So it ended--the sickening expectation which I had read in the lad's
+face all day.  He would not see her--perhaps it was best.  Yet my
+heart bled when I looked at him.  But such thoughts could not be
+indulged in now, especially as Mrs. Jessop's quick eyes seemed often
+upon him or me, with an expression that I could not make out at all,
+save that in such a good woman, whom Miss March so well loved, could
+lurk nothing evil or unkindly.
+
+So I tried to turn my attention to the Brithwoods.  One could not
+choose but look at her, this handsome Lady Caroline, whom half Norton
+Bury adored, the other half pursed up their lips at the mention of--
+but these were of the number she declined to "know."  All that she
+did know--all that came within her influence, were irresistibly
+attracted, for to please seemed a part of her nature.  To-night
+nearly every one present stole gradually into the circle round her;
+men and women alike charmed by the fascination of her ripe beauty,
+her lively manner, her exquisite smile and laugh.
+
+I wondered what John thought of Lady Caroline Brithwood.  She could
+not easily see him, even though her acute glance seemed to take in
+everything and everybody in the room.  But on her entrance John had
+drawn back a little, and our half-dozen of fellow-guests, who had
+been conversing with him, crept shyly out of his way; as if, now the
+visible reality appeared, they were aghast at the great gulf that lay
+between John Halifax the tanner and the Brithwoods of the Mythe.  A
+few even looked askance at our hostess, as though some terrible
+judgment must fall upon poor ignorant Mrs. Jessop, who had dared to
+amalgamate such opposite ranks.
+
+So it came to pass, that while everybody gathered round the
+Brithwoods John and I stood alone, and half concealed by the window.
+
+Very soon I heard Lady Caroline's loud whisper;
+
+"Mrs. Jessop, my good friend, one moment.  Where is your 'jeune
+heros,' 'l'homme du peuple?'  I do not see him.  Does he wear clouted
+shoes and woollen stockings?  Has he a broad face and turned-up nose,
+like your 'paysans Anglais'?"
+
+"Judge for yourself, my lady--he stands at your elbow.  Mr. Halifax,
+let me present you to Lady Caroline Brithwood."
+
+If Lord Luxmore's fair daughter ever looked confounded in her life
+she certainly did at this minute.
+
+"Lui?  Mon dieu!  Lui!"  And her shrug of amazement was stopped, her
+half-extended hand drawn back.  No, it was quite impossible to
+patronise John Halifax.
+
+He bowed gravely, she made a gracious curtsey; they met on equal
+terms, a lady and gentleman.
+
+Soon her lively manner returned.  She buckled on her spurs for a new
+conquest, and left the already vanquished gentilities of Norton Bury
+to amuse themselves as they best might.
+
+"I am enchanted to meet you, Mr. Halifax; I adore 'le peuple.'
+Especially"--with a sly glance at her husband, who, with Tory Dr.
+Jessop, was vehemently exalting Mr. Pitt and abusing the First
+Consul, Bonaparte--"especially le peuple Francais.  Me comprenez
+vous?"
+
+"Madame, je vous comprends."
+
+Her ladyship looked surprised.  French was not very common among the
+honest trading class, or indeed any but the higher classes in
+England.
+
+"But," John continued, "I must dissent from Lady Caroline Brithwood,
+if she mingles the English people with 'le peuple Francais.'  They
+are a very different class of beings."
+
+"Ah, ca ira, ca ira"--she laughed, humming beneath her breath a few
+notes out of that terrible song.  "But you know French--let us talk
+in that language; we shall horrify no one then."
+
+"I cannot speak it readily; I am chiefly self-taught."
+
+"The best teaching.  Mon dieu!  Truly you are made to be 'un hero'--
+just the last touch of grace that a woman's hand gives--had you ever
+a woman for your friend?--and you would be complete.  But I cannot
+flatter--plain, blunt honesty for me.  You must--you shall be--
+'l'homme du peuple.'  Were you born such?--Who were your parents?"
+
+I saw John hesitate; I knew how rarely he ever uttered those names
+written in the old Bible--how infinitely sacred they were to him.
+Could he blazon them out now, to gratify this woman's idle curiosity?
+
+"Madam," he said, gravely, "I was introduced to you simply as John
+Halifax.  It seems to me that, so long as I do no discredit to it,
+the name suffices to the world."
+
+"Ah--I see! I see!"  But he, with his downcast eyes, did not detect
+the meaning smile that just flashed in hers was changed into a tone
+of soft sympathy.  "You are right; rank is nothing--a cold,
+glittering marble, with no soul under.  Give me the rich
+flesh-and-blood life of the people.  Liberte--fraternite--egalite.  I
+would rather be a gamin in Paris streets than my brother William at
+Luxmore Hall."
+
+Thus talked she, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, the young
+man answering little.  She only threw her shining arts abroad the
+more; she seemed determined to please.  And Nature fitted her for it.
+Even if not born an earl's daughter, Lady Caroline would have been
+everywhere the magic centre of any society wherein she chose to move.
+Not that her conversation was brilliant or deep, but she said the
+most frivolous things in a way that made them appear witty; and the
+grand art, to charm by appearing charmed, was hers in perfection.
+She seemed to float altogether upon and among the pleasantnesses of
+life; pain, either endured or inflicted, was to her an impossibility.
+
+Thus her character struck me on this first meeting, and thus, after
+many years, it strikes me still.  I look back upon what she appeared
+that evening--lovely, gay, attractive--in the zenith of her rich
+maturity.  What her old age was the world knows, or thinks it knows.
+But Heaven may be more merciful--I cannot tell.  Whatever is now said
+of her, I can only say, "Poor Lady Caroline!"
+
+It must have indicated a grain of pure gold at the bottom of the
+gold-seeming dross, that, from the first moment she saw him, she
+liked John Halifax.
+
+They talked a long time.  She drew him out, as a well-bred woman
+always can draw out a young man of sense.  He looked pleased; he
+conversed well.  Had he forgotten?  No; the restless wandering of his
+eyes at the slightest sound in the room told how impossible it was he
+should forget.  Yet he comported himself bravely, and I was proud
+that Ursula's kindred should see him as he was.
+
+"Lady Caroline" (her ladyship turned, with a slightly bored
+expression, to her intrusive hostess), "I fear we must give up all
+expectation of our young friend to-night."
+
+"I told you so.  Post-travelling is very uncertain, and the Bath
+roads are not good.  Have you ever visited Bath, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"But she is surely long on the road," pursued Mrs. Jessop, rather
+anxiously.  "What attendants had she?"
+
+"Her own maid, and our man Laplace.  Nay, don't be alarmed, excellent
+and faithful gouvernante!  I assure you your fair ex-pupil is quite
+safe.  The furore about her has considerably abated since the
+heiress-hunters at Bath discovered the melancholy fact that Miss
+March--"
+
+"Pardon me," interrupted the other; "we are among strangers.  I
+assure you I am quite satisfied about my dear child."
+
+"What a charming thing is affectionate fidelity," observed her
+ladyship, turning once more to John, with a sweet, lazy dropping of
+the eyelids.
+
+The young man only bowed.  They resumed their conversation--at least,
+she did, talking volubly; satisfied with monosyllabic answers.
+
+It was now almost supper-time--held a glorious hour at Norton Bury
+parties.  People began to look anxiously to the door.
+
+"Before we adjourn," said Lady Caroline, "I must do what it will be
+difficult to accomplish after supper;" and for the first time a
+sharp, sarcastic tone jarred in her smooth voice.  "I must introduce
+you especially to my husband.  Mr. Brithwood?"
+
+"Madam."  He lounged up to her.  They were a diverse pair.  She, in
+her well-preserved beauty, and Gallic artificial grace--he, in his
+coarse, bloated youth, coarser and worse than the sensualism of
+middle age.
+
+"Mr. Brithwood, let me introduce you to a new friend of mine."
+
+The 'squire bowed, rather awkwardly; proving the truth of what Norton
+Bury often whispered, that Richard Brithwood was more at home with
+grooms than gentlemen.
+
+"He belongs to this your town--you must have heard of him, perhaps
+met him."
+
+"I have more than had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Brithwood, but he
+has doubtless forgotten it."
+
+"By Jove!  I have.  What might your name be, sir?"
+
+"John Halifax."
+
+"What, Halifax the tanner?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Phew!"--He began a low whistle, and turned on his heel.
+
+John changed colour a little.  Lady Caroline laughed--a thoughtless,
+amused laugh, with a pleasant murmur of "Bete!"--"Anglais!"--
+Nevertheless, she whispered to her husband--
+
+"Mon ami--you forget; I have introduced you to this gentleman."
+
+"Gentleman indeed!  Pooh! rubbish!  Lady Caroline--I'm busy talking."
+
+"And so are we, most pleasantly.  I only called you as a matter of
+form, to ratify my invitation.  Mr. Halifax will, I hope, dine with
+us next Sunday?"
+
+"The devil he will!"
+
+"Richard--you hurt me!"--with a little scream, as she pushed his
+rough fingers from her arm, so soft, and round, and fair.
+
+"Madam, you must be crazy.  The young man is a tradesman--a tanner.
+Not fit for MY society."
+
+"Precisely; I invite him for my own."
+
+But the whispers and responses were alike unheeded by their object.
+For, at the doorway, entering with Mrs. Jessop, was a tall girl in
+deep mourning.  We knew her--we both knew her--our dream at Enderley-
+-our Nut-browne Mayde.
+
+John was near to the door--their eyes met.  She bowed--he returned
+it.  He was very pale.  For Miss March, her face and neck were all in
+a glow.  Neither spoke, nor offered more than this passing
+acknowledgment, and she moved on.
+
+She came and sat down beside me, accidentally, I believe; but when
+she saw me she held out her hand.  We exchanged a word or two--her
+manner was unaltered; but she spoke hurriedly, and her fingers had
+their old nervous twitch.  She said this meeting was to her
+"unexpected," but "she was very glad to see me."
+
+So she sat, and I looked sideways at her dropped eyes--her forehead
+with its coronet of chestnut curls.  How would he bear the sight--he
+of whose heart mine was the mere faint echo?  Yet truly an echo,
+repeating with cruel faithfulness every throb.
+
+He kept his position, a little aloof from the Brithwoods, who were
+holding a slight altercation--though more of looks than words.  John
+heeded them not.  I was sure, though he had never looked directly
+towards us, that he had heard every syllable Miss March said to me.
+
+The 'squire called across the room, in a patronising tone:  "My good
+fellow--that is, ahem!  I say, young Halifax?"
+
+"Were you addressing me, Mr. Brithwood?"
+
+"I was.  I want a quiet word or two--between ourselves."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+They stood face to face.  The one seemed uncomfortable, the other was
+his natural self--a little graver, perhaps, as if he felt what was
+coming, and prepared to meet it, knowing in whose presence he had to
+prove himself--what Richard Brithwood, with all his broad acres,
+could never be--a gentleman.
+
+Few could doubt that fact, who looked at the two young men, as all
+were looking now.
+
+"On my soul, it's awkward--I'll call at the tan-yard and explain."
+
+"I had rather you would explain here."
+
+"Well then, though it's a confounded unpleasant thing to say--and I
+really wish I had not been brought into such a position--you'll not
+heed my wife's nonsense?"
+
+"I do not understand you."
+
+"Come, it's no use running to cover in that way.  Let's be open and
+plain.  I mean no offence.  You may be a very respectable young man
+for aught I know, still rank is rank.  Of course Doctor Jessop asks
+whom he likes to his house--and, by George! I'm always civil to
+everybody--but really, in spite of my lady's likings, I can't well
+invite you to my table!"
+
+"Nor could I humiliate myself by accepting any such invitation."
+
+He said the words distinctly, so that the whole circle might have
+heard, and was turning away, when Mr. Brithwood fired up--as an angry
+man does in a losing game.
+
+"Humiliate yourself!  What do you mean, sir?  Wouldn't you be only
+too thankful to crawl into the houses of your betters, any how, by
+hook or by crook?  Ha! ha!  I know you would.  It's always the way
+with you common folk, you rioters, you revolutionists.  By the Lord!
+I wish you were all hanged."
+
+The young blood rose fiercely in John's cheek, but he restrained
+himself.  "Sir, I am neither a rioter nor a revolutionist."
+
+"But you are a tradesman?  You used to drive Fletcher's cart of
+skins."
+
+"I did."
+
+"And are you not--I remember you now--the very lad, the tanner's lad,
+that once pulled us ashore from the eger--Cousin March and me?"
+
+I heard a quick exclamation beside me, and saw Ursula listening
+intently--I had not noticed how intently till now.  Her eyes were
+fixed on John, waiting for his answer.  It came.
+
+"Your memory is correct; I was that lad."
+
+"Thank'ee for it too.  Lord! what a jolly life I should have missed!
+You got no reward, though.  You threw away the guinea I offered you;
+come, I'll make it twenty guineas to-morrow."
+
+The insult was too much.  "Sir, you forget that whatever we may have
+been, to-night we meet as equals."
+
+"Equals!"
+
+"As guests in the same house--most certainly for the time being,
+equals."
+
+Richard Brithwood stared, literally dumb with fury.  The standers-by
+were dumb too, though such fracas were then not uncommon even in
+drawing-rooms, and in women's presence, especially with men of Mr.
+Brithwood's stamp.  His wife seemed quite used to it.  She merely
+shrugged her shoulders and hummed a note or two of "Ca ira."  It
+irritated the husband beyond all bounds.
+
+"Hold your tongue, my lady.  What, because a 'prentice-lad once saved
+my life, and you choose to patronise him as you do many another
+vagabond, with your cursed liberty and equality, am I to have him at
+my table, and treat him as a gentleman?  By  ---, madam, never!"
+
+He spoke savagely, and loud.  John was silent; he had locked his
+hands together convulsively; but it was easy to see that his blood
+was at boiling heat, and that, did he once slip the leash of his
+passions, it would go hard with Richard Brithwood.
+
+The latter came up to him with clenched fist.  "Now mark me, you--you
+vagabond!"
+
+Ursula March crossed the room, and caught his arm, her eyes gleaming
+fire.
+
+"Cousin, in my presence this gentleman shall be treated as a
+gentleman.  He was kind to my father."
+
+"Curse your father!"
+
+John's right hand burst free; he clutched the savage by the shoulder.
+
+"Be silent.  You had better."
+
+Brithwood shook off the grasp, turned and struck him; that last fatal
+insult, which offered from man to man, in those days, could only be
+wiped out with blood.
+
+John staggered.  For a moment he seemed as if he would have sprung on
+his adversary and felled him to the ground--but--he did it not.
+
+Some one whispered,--"He won't fight.  He is a Quaker."
+
+"No!" he said, and stood erect; though he was ghastly pale, and his
+voice sounded hoarse and strange--"But I am a Christian.  I shall not
+return blow for blow."
+
+It was a new doctrine; foreign to the practice, if familiar to the
+ear, of Christian Norton Bury.  No one answered him; all stared at
+him; one or two sheered off from him with contemptuous smiles.  Then
+Ursula March stretched out her friendly hand.  John took it, and grew
+calm in a moment.
+
+There arose a murmur of "Mr. Brithwood is going."
+
+"Let him go!" Miss March cried, anger still glowing in her eyes.
+
+"Not so--it is not right.  I will speak to him.  May I?"  John softly
+unclosed her detaining hand, and went up to Mr. Brithwood.  "Sir,
+there is no need for you to leave this house--I am leaving it.  You
+and I shall not meet again if I can help it."
+
+His proud courtesy, his absolute dignity and calmness, completely
+overwhelmed his blustering adversary; who gazed open-mouthed, while
+John made his adieu to his host and to those he knew.  The women
+gathered round him--woman's instinct is usually true.  Even Lady
+Caroline, amid a flutter of regrets, declared she did not believe
+there was a man in the universe who would have borne so charmingly
+such a "degradation."
+
+At the word Miss March fired up.  "Madam," she said, in her impetuous
+young voice, "no insult offered to a man can ever degrade him; the
+only real degradation is when he degrades himself."
+
+John, passing out at the doorway, caught her words.  As he quitted
+the room no crowned victor ever wore a look more joyful, more proud.
+
+After a minute we followed him; the Doctor's wife and I.  But now the
+pride and joy had both faded.
+
+"Mrs. Jessop, you see I am right," he murmured.  "I ought not to have
+come here.  It is a hard world for such as I.  I shall never conquer
+it--never."
+
+"Yes--you will."  And Ursula stood by him, with crimsoned cheek, and
+eyes no longer flashing, but fearless still.
+
+Mrs. Jessop put her arm round the young girl.  "I also think you need
+not dread the world, Mr. Halifax, if you always act as you did
+tonight; though I grieve that things should have happened thus, if
+only for the sake of this, my child."
+
+"Have I done any harm? oh! tell me, have I done any harm?"
+
+"No!" cried Ursula, with the old impetuosity kindling anew in every
+feature of her noble face.  "You have but showed me what I shall
+remember all my life--that a Christian only can be a true gentleman."
+
+She understood him--he felt she did; understood him as, if a man be
+understood by one woman in the world, he--and she too--is strong,
+safe, and happy.  They grasped hands once more, and gazed
+unhesitatingly into each other's eyes.  All human passion for the
+time being set aside, these two recognized each in the other one aim,
+one purpose, one faith; something higher than love, something better
+than happiness.  It must have been a blessed moment for both.
+
+Mrs. Jessop did not interfere.  She had herself known what true love
+was, if, as gossips said, she had kept constant to our worthy doctor
+for thirty years.  But still she was a prudent woman, not unused to
+the world.
+
+"You must go now," she said, laying her hand gently on John's arm.
+
+"I am going.  But she--what will she do?"
+
+"Never mind me.  Jane will take care of me," said Ursula, winding her
+arms round her old governess, and leaning her cheek down on Mrs.
+Jessop's shoulder.
+
+We had never seen Miss March show fondness, that is, caressing
+fondness, to any one before.  It revealed her in a new light;
+betraying the depths there were in her nature; infinite depths of
+softness and of love.
+
+John watched her for a minute; a long, wild, greedy minute, then
+whispered hoarsely to me, "I must go."
+
+We made a hasty adieu, and went out together into the night--the
+cold, bleak night, all blast and storm.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+For weeks after then, we went on in our usual way; Ursula March
+living within a stone's throw of us.  She had left her cousin's, and
+come to reside with Dr.  Jessop and his wife.
+
+It was a very hard trial for John.
+
+Neither of us were again invited by Mrs. Jessop.  We could not blame
+her; she held a precious charge, and Norton Bury was a horrible place
+for gossip.  Already tale after tale had gone abroad about Miss
+March's "ingratitude" to her relations.  Already tongue after tongue
+had repeated, in every possible form of lying, the anecdote of "young
+Halifax and the 'squire."  Had it been "young Halifax and Miss
+March," I truly believe John could not have borne it.
+
+As it was, though he saw her constantly, it was always by chance--a
+momentary glimpse at the window, or a passing acknowledgment in the
+street.  I knew quite well when he had thus met her, whether he
+mentioned it or not--knew by the wild, troubled look, which did not
+wear off for hours.
+
+I watched him closely, day by day, in an agony of doubt and pain.
+
+For, though he said nothing, a great change was creeping over "the
+lad," as I still fondly called him.  His strength, the glory of a
+young man, was going from him--he was becoming thin, weak,
+restless-eyed.  That healthy energy and gentle composure, which had
+been so beautiful in him all his life through, were utterly lost.
+
+"What am I to do with thee, David?" said I to him one evening, when
+he had come in, looking worse than usual--I knew why; for Ursula and
+her friend had just passed our house taking their pleasant walk in
+the spring twilight.  "Thou art very ill, I fear?"
+
+"Not at all.  There is not the least thing the matter with me.  Do
+let me alone."
+
+Two minutes afterwards he begged my pardon for those sharp-spoken
+words.  "It was not THEE that spoke, John," I said.
+
+"No, you are right, it was not I.  It was a sort of devil that lodges
+here:" he touched his breast.  "The chamber he lives in is at times a
+burning hell."
+
+He spoke in a low tone of great anguish.  What could I answer?
+Nothing.
+
+We stood at the window, looking idly out.  The chestnut trees in the
+Abbey-yard were budding green:  there came that faint, sweet sound of
+children at play, which one hears as the days begin to lengthen.
+
+"It's a lovely evening," he said.
+
+"John!"  I looked him in the face.  He could not palm off that kind
+deceit upon me.  "You have heard something about her?"
+
+"I have," he groaned.  "She is leaving Norton Bury."
+
+"Thank God!" I muttered.
+
+John turned fiercely upon me--but only for a moment.  "Perhaps I too
+ought to say, 'Thank God.'  This could not have lasted long, or it
+would have made me--what I pray His mercy to save me from, or to let
+me die.  Oh, lad, if I could only die."
+
+He bent down over the window-sill, crushing his forehead on his
+hands.
+
+"John," I said, in this depth of despair snatching at an equally
+desperate hope, "what if, instead of keeping this silence, you were
+to go to her and tell her all?"
+
+"I have thought of that:  a noble thought, worthy of a poor 'prentice
+lad!  Why, two several evenings I have been insane enough to walk to
+Dr. Jessop's door, which I have never entered, and--mark you well!
+they have never asked me to enter since that night.  But each time
+ere I knocked my senses came back, and I went home--luckily having
+made myself neither a fool nor a knave."
+
+There was no answer to this either.  Alas! I knew as well as he did,
+that in the eye of the world's common sense, for a young man not
+twenty-one, a tradesman's apprentice, to ask the hand of a young
+gentlewoman, uncertain if she loved him, was most utter folly.  Also,
+for a penniless youth to sue a lady with a fortune, even though it
+was (the Brithwoods took care to publish the fact) smaller than was
+at first supposed--would, in the eye of the world's honour, be not
+very much unlike knavery.  There was no help--none!
+
+"David," I groaned, "I would you had never seen her."
+
+"Hush!--not a word like that.  If you heard all I hear of her--daily-
+-hourly--her unselfishness, her energy, her generous, warm heart!  It
+is blessedness even to have known her.  She is an angel--no, better
+than that, a woman!  I did not want her for a saint in a shrine--I
+wanted her as a help-meet, to walk with me in my daily life, to
+comfort me, strengthen me, make me pure and good.  I could be a good
+man if I had her for my wife.  Now--"
+
+He rose, and walked rapidly up and down.  His looks were becoming
+altogether wild.
+
+"Come, Phineas, suppose we go to meet her up the road--as I meet her
+almost every day.  Sometimes she merely bends and smiles, sometimes
+she holds out her little hand, and 'hopes I am quite well!'  And then
+they pass on, and I stand gaping and staring after them like an
+idiot.  There--look--there they are now."
+
+Ay! walking leisurely along the other side of the road--talking and
+smiling to one another, in their own merry, familiar way, were Mrs.
+Jessop and Miss March.
+
+They were not thinking of us, not the least.  Only just ere they
+passed our house Ursula turned slightly round, and looked behind; a
+quiet, maidenly look, with the smile still lingering on her mouth.
+She saw nothing, and no one; for John had pulled me from the window,
+and placed himself out of sight.  So, turning back again, she went on
+her way.  They both disappeared.
+
+"Now, Phineas, it is all ended."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I have looked on her for the last time."
+
+"Nay--she is not going yet."
+
+"But I am--fleeing from the devil and his angels.  Hurrah, Phineas,
+lad!  We'll have a merry night.  To-morrow I am away to Bristol, to
+set sail for America."
+
+He wrung my hands with a long, loud, half-mad laugh; and then dropped
+heavily on a chair.
+
+A few hours after, he was lying on my bed, struck down by the first
+real sickness he had ever known.  It was apparently a low agueish
+fever, which had been much about Norton Bury since the famine of last
+year.  At least, so Jael said; and she was a wise doctoress, and had
+cured many.  He would have no one else to attend him--seemed
+terrified at the mere mention of Dr. Jessop.  I opposed him not at
+first, for well I knew, whatever the proximate cause of his sickness
+might be, its root was in that mental pang which no doctors could
+cure.  So I trusted to the blessed quiet of a sick-room--often so
+healing to misery--to Jael's nursing, and his brother's love.
+
+After a few days we called in a physician--a stranger from Coltham--
+who pronounced it to be this Norton Bury fever, caught through
+living, as he still persisted in doing, in his old attic, in that
+unhealthy alley where was Sally Watkins's house.  It must have been
+coming on, the doctor said, for a long time; but it had no doubt now
+reached its crisis.  He would be better soon.
+
+But he did not get better.  Days slid into weeks, and still he lay
+there, never complaining, scarcely appearing to suffer, except from
+the wasting of the fever; yet when I spoke of recovery he "turned his
+face unto the wall"--weary of living.
+
+Once, when he had lain thus a whole morning, hardly speaking a word,
+I began to feel growing palpable the truth which day by day I had
+thrust behind me as some intangible, impossible dread--that ere now
+people had died of mere soul-sickness, without any bodily disease.  I
+took up his poor hand that lay on the counterpane;--once, at
+Enderley, he had regretted its somewhat coarse strength:  now
+Ursula's own was not thinner or whiter.  He drew it back.
+
+"Oh, Phineas, lad, don't touch me--only let me rest."
+
+The weak, querulous voice--that awful longing for rest!  What if,
+despite all the physician's assurances, he might be sinking, sinking-
+-my friend, my hope, my pride, all my comfort in this life--passing
+from it and from me into another, where, let me call never so wildly,
+he could not answer me any more, nor come back to me any more.
+
+Oh, God of mercy! if I were to be left in this world without my
+brother!
+
+I had many a time thought over the leaving him, going quietly away
+when it should please the Giver of all breath to recall mine, falling
+asleep, encompassed and sustained by his love until the last; then, a
+burden no longer, leaving him to work out a glorious life, whose rich
+web should include and bring to beautiful perfection all the poor
+broken threads in mine.  But now, if this should be all vain, if he
+should go from me, not I from him--I slid down to the ground, to my
+knees, and the dumb cry of my agony went up on high.
+
+How could I save him?
+
+There seemed but one way; I sprung at it; stayed not to think if it
+were right or wrong, honourable or dishonourable.  His life hung in
+the balance, and there was but one way; besides, had I not cried unto
+God for help?
+
+I put aside the blind, and looked out of doors.  For weeks I had not
+crossed the threshold; I almost started to find that it was spring.
+Everything looked lovely in the coloured twilight; a blackbird was
+singing loudly in the Abbey trees across the way; all things were
+fresh and glowing, laden with the hope of the advancing year.  And
+there he lay on his sick-bed, dying!
+
+All he said, as I drew the curtain back, was a faint moan--"No light!
+I can't bear the light!  Do let me rest!"
+
+In half-an-hour, without saying a word to human being, I was on my
+way to Ursula March.
+
+She sat knitting in the summer-parlour alone.  The doctor was out;
+Mrs. Jessop I saw down the long garden, bonnetted and shawled, busy
+among her gooseberry-bushes--so we were safe.
+
+As I have said, Ursula sat knitting, but her eyes had a soft
+dreaminess.  My entrance had evidently startled her, and driven some
+sweet, shy thought away.
+
+But she met me cordially--said she was glad to see me--that she had
+not seen either of us lately; and the knitting pins began to move
+quickly again.
+
+Those dainty fingers--that soft, tremulous smile--I could have hated
+her!
+
+"No wonder you did not see us, Miss March; John has been very ill, is
+ill now--almost dying."
+
+I hurled the words at her, sharp as javelins, and watched to see them
+strike.
+
+They struck--they wounded; I could see her shiver.
+
+"Ill!--and no one ever told me!"
+
+"You?  How could it affect you?  To me, now"--and my savage words,
+for they were savage, broke down in a burst of misery--"nothing in
+this world to me is worth a straw in comparison with John.  If he
+dies--"
+
+I let loose the flood of my misery.  I dashed it over her, that she
+might see it--feel it; that it might enter all the fair and sightly
+chambers of her happy life, and make them desolate as mine.  For was
+she not the cause?
+
+Forgive me!  I was cruel to thee, Ursula; and thou wert so good--so
+kind!
+
+She rose, came to me, and took my hand.  Hers was very cold, and her
+voice trembled much.
+
+"Be comforted.  He is young, and God is very merciful."
+
+She could say no more, but sat down, nervously twisting and
+untwisting her fingers.  There was in her looks a wild sorrow--a
+longing to escape from notice; but mine held her fast, mercilessly,
+as a snake holds a little bird.  She sat cowering, almost like a
+bird, a poor, broken-winged, helpless little bird--whom the storm has
+overtaken.
+
+Rising, she made an attempt to quit the room.
+
+"I will call Mrs. Jessop:  she may be of use--"
+
+"She cannot.  Stay!"
+
+"Further advice, perhaps?  Doctor Jessop--you must want help--"
+
+"None save that which will never come.  His bodily sickness is
+conquered--it is his mind.  Oh, Miss March!" and I looked up at her
+like a wretch begging for life--"Do YOU not know of what my brother
+is dying?"
+
+"Dying!"  A long shudder passed over her, from head to foot--but I
+relented not.
+
+"Think--a life like his, that might be made a blessing to all he
+loves--to all the world--is it to be sacrificed thus?  It may be--I
+do not say it will--but it may be.  While in health he could fight
+against this--this which I must not speak of; but now his health is
+gone.  He cannot rally.  Without some change, I see clearly, even I,
+who love him better than any one can love him--"
+
+She stirred a little here.
+
+"Far better," I repeated; "for while John does NOT love me best, he
+to me is more than any one else in the world.  Yet even I have given
+up hope, unless--But I have no right to say more."
+
+There was no need.  She began to understand.  A deep, soft red,
+sun-rise colour, dawned all over her face and neck, nay, tinged her
+very arms--her delicate, bare arms.  She looked at me once--just
+once--with a mute but keen inquiry.
+
+"It is the truth, Miss March--ay, ever since last year.  You will
+respect it?  You will, you shall respect it?"
+
+She bent her head in acquiescence--that was all.  She had not uttered
+a single syllable.  Her silence almost drove me wild.
+
+"What! not one word? not one ordinary message from a friend to a
+friend?--one who is lying ill, too!"
+
+Still silence.
+
+"Better so!" I cried, made desperate at last.  "Better, if it must
+be, that he should die and go to the God who made him--ay, made him,
+as you shall yet see, too noble a man to die for any woman's love."
+
+I left her--left her where she sat, and went my way.
+
+Of the hours that followed the less I say the better.  My mind was in
+a tumult of pain, in which right and wrong were strangely confused.
+I could not decide--I can scarcely decide now--whether what I had
+done ought to have been done; I only know that I did it--did it under
+an impulse so sudden and impetuous that it seemed to me like the
+guidance of Providence.  All I could do afterwards was to trust the
+result where we say we trust all things, and yet are for ever
+disquieting ourselves in vain--we of little faith!
+
+I have said, and I say again, that I believe every true marriage--of
+which there is probably one in every five thousand of conjugal
+unions--is brought about by heaven, and heaven only; and that all
+human influence is powerless either to make or to mar that happy end.
+Therefore, to heaven I left this marriage, if such it was destined to
+be.  And so, after a season, I calmed myself enough to dare entering
+that quiet sick-chamber, where no one ever entered but Jael and me.
+
+The old woman met me at the door.
+
+"Come in gently, Phineas; I do think there is a change."
+
+A change!--that awful word!  I staggered rather than walked to John's
+bed-side.
+
+Ay, there was a change, but not THAT one--which made my blood run
+cold in my veins even to think of.  Thank God for evermore for His
+great mercies--not THAT change!
+
+John was sitting up in bed.  New life shone in his eyes, in his whole
+aspect.  Life and--no, not hope, but something far better, diviner.
+
+"Phineas, how tired you look; it is time you were in bed."
+
+The old way of speaking--the old, natural voice, as I had not heard
+it for weeks.  I flung myself by the bed-side--perhaps I wept
+outright--God knows!  It is thought a shame for a man to weep; yet
+One Man wept, and that too was over His friend--His brother.
+
+"You must not grieve over me any more, dear lad; to-morrow, please
+God! I mean to be quite well again."
+
+Amidst all my joy I marvelled over what could be the cause of so
+miraculous a change.
+
+"You would smile if I told you--only a dream."
+
+No, I did not smile; for I believed in the Ruler of all our spirits,
+sleeping or waking.
+
+"A dream so curious, that I have scarcely lost the impression of it
+yet.  Do you know, Phineas, she has been sitting by me, just where
+you sit now."
+
+"She?"
+
+"Ursula."
+
+If I could express the tone in which he uttered the word, which had
+never fallen from his lips before--it was always either "Miss March,"
+or the impersonal form used by all lovers to disguise the beloved
+name--"URSULA," spoken as no man speaks any woman's name save the one
+which is the music of his heart, which he foresees shall be the one
+fireside tune of his life, ever familiar, yet ever sweet.
+
+"Yes, she sat there, talking.  She told me she knew I loved her--
+loved her so much that I was dying for her; that it was very wrong;
+that I must rise up and do my work in the world--do it for heaven's
+sake, not for hers; that a true man should live, and live nobly for
+the woman he loves--it is only a coward who dies for her."
+
+I listened, wonder-struck--for these were the very words that Ursula
+March might have uttered; the very spirit that seemed to shine in her
+eyes that night--the last night she and John spoke to one another.  I
+asked him if there was any more of the dream?
+
+"Nothing clear.  I thought we were on the Flat at Enderley, and I was
+following her; whether I reached her or not I cannot tell.  And
+whether I ever shall reach her I cannot tell.  But this I know,
+Phineas, I will do as she bade me; I will arise and walk."
+
+And so he did.  He slept quietly as an infant all that night.  Next
+morning I found him up and dressed.  Looking like a spectre, indeed;
+but with health, courage, and hope in his eyes.  Even my father
+noticed it, when at dinner-time, with Jael's help--poor old Jael! how
+proud she was--John crawled downstairs.
+
+"Why, thee art picking up, lad!  Thee'lt be a man again in no time."
+
+"I hope so.  And a better man than ever I was before."
+
+"Thee might be better, and thee might be worse.  Anyhow, we couldn't
+do without thee, John.  Hey, Phineas! who's been meddling with my
+spectacles?"
+
+The old man turned his back upon us, and busily read his newspaper
+upside down.
+
+We never had a happier meal in our house than that dinner.
+
+In the afternoon my father stayed at home--a rare thing for him to
+do; nay, more, he went and smoked his peaceful pipe in the garden.
+John lay on an extempore sofa, made of three of our high-backed
+chairs and the window-sill.  I read to him--trying to keep his
+attention, and mine too, solely to the Great Plague of London and
+Daniel Defoe.  When, just as I was stealthily glancing at his face,
+fancying it looked whiter and more sunken, that his smile was fading,
+and his thoughts were wandering--Jael burst in.
+
+"John Halifax, there be a woman asking for thee."
+
+No, John--no need for that start--that rush of impetuous blood to thy
+poor thin cheek, as if there were but one woman in all the world.
+No, it was only Mrs. Jessop.
+
+At sight of him, standing up, tall, and gaunt, and pale, the good
+lady's eyes brimmed over.
+
+"You have been very ill, my poor boy!  Forgive me--but I am an old
+woman, you know.  Lie down again."
+
+With gentle force she compelled him, and sat down by his side.
+
+"I had no idea--why did you not let us know--the doctor and me?  How
+long have you been ill?"
+
+"I am quite well now--I am indeed.  I shall be about again tomorrow,
+shall I not, Phineas?" and he looked eagerly to me for confirmation.
+
+I gave it, firmly and proudly.  I was glad she should know it--glad
+she should see that the priceless jewel of his heart would not lie
+tossing in the mire because a haughty girl scorned to wear it.  Glad
+that she might one day find out there lived not the woman of whom
+John Halifax was not worthy.
+
+"But you must be very careful--very careful of yourself, indeed."
+
+"He will, Mrs. Jessop.  Or, if not, he has many to take care of him.
+Many to whom his life is most precious and most dear."
+
+I spoke--perhaps more abruptly than I ought to have spoken to that
+good old lady--but her gentle answer seemed at once to understand and
+forgive me.
+
+"I well believe that, Mr. Fletcher.  And I think Mr. Halifax hardly
+knows how much we--we all--esteem him."  And with a kind motherly
+gesture she took John's hand.  "You must make haste and get well now.
+My husband will come and see you to-morrow.  For Ursula--" here she
+carefully busied herself in the depths of her pocket--"my dear child
+sends you this."
+
+It was a little note--unsealed.  The superscription was simply his
+name, in her clear, round, fair hand-writing--"John Halifax."
+
+His fingers closed over it convulsively.  "I--she is--very kind."
+The words died away--the hand which grasped, ay, for more than a
+minute, the unopened letter, trembled like an aspen leaf.
+
+"Yes, hers is a grateful nature," observed Mrs. Jessop, sedulously
+looking at and speaking to me.  "I would not wish it otherwise--I
+would not wish her to forget those whose worth she proved in her
+season of trouble."
+
+I was silent.  The old lady's tongue likewise failed her.  She took
+off her glove, wiped a finger across each eyelash, and sat still.
+
+"Have you read your little note, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"I will take your message back.  She told me what she had said to
+you."
+
+Ay, all the world might have read those simple lines:
+
+"MY DEAR FRIEND,
+     "I did not know till yesterday that you had been ill.  I have
+not forgotten how kind you were to my poor father.  I should like to
+come and see you if you would allow me.
+     "Yours sincerely,
+          "URSULA MARCH."
+
+This was all the note.  I saw it, more than thirty years afterwards,
+yellow and faded, in the corner of his pocket-book.
+
+"Well, what shall I say to my child?"
+
+"Say"--he half rose, struggling to speak--"ask her to come."
+
+He turned his head towards the window, and the sunshine glittered on
+two great drops, large as a child's tear.
+
+Mrs. Jessop went away.  And now for a long hour we waited--scarcely
+moving.  John lay, his eyes sometimes closed, sometimes fixed
+dreamily on the bit of blue sky that shone out above the iron
+railings between the Abbey trees.  More than once they wandered to
+the little letter, which lay buried in his hands.  He felt it there--
+that was enough.
+
+My father came in from the garden, and settled to his afternoon doze;
+but I think John hardly noticed him--nor I.  My poor old father!  Yet
+we were all young once--let youth enjoy its day!
+
+At length Ursula came.  She stood at the parlour door, rosy with
+walking--a vision of youth and candid innocence, which blushed not,
+nor had need to blush, at any intent or act that was sanctified by
+the law of God, and by her own heart.
+
+John rose to meet her.  They did not speak, but only clasped hands.
+
+He was not strong enough for disguises now--in his first look she
+might have seen, have felt, that I had told her the truth.  For hers-
+-but it dropped down, down, as Ursula March's clear glance had never
+dropped before.  Then I knew how all would end.
+
+Jael's voice broke in sharply.  "Abel Fletcher, the doctor's wife is
+wanting thee down in the kitchen-garden, and she says her green
+gooseberries bean't half as big as our'n."
+
+My father awoke--rubbed his eyes--became aware of a lady's presence--
+rubbed them again, and sat staring.
+
+John led Ursula to the old man's chair.
+
+"Mr. Fletcher, this is Miss March, a friend of mine, who, hearing I
+was ill, out of her great kindness--"
+
+His voice faltered.  Miss March added, in a low tone, with downcast
+eyelids:
+
+"I am an orphan, and he was kind to my dear father."
+
+Abel Fletcher nodded--adjusted his spectacles--eyed her all over--and
+nodded again; slowly, gravely, with a satisfied inspection.  His hard
+gaze lingered, and softened while it lingered, on that young face,
+whereon was written simplicity, dignity, truth.
+
+"If thee be a friend of John's, welcome to my house.  Wilt thee sit
+down?"
+
+Offering his hand, with a mixture of kindness and ceremonious grace
+that I had never before seen in my Quaker father, he placed her in
+his own arm-chair.  How well I remember her sitting there, in her
+black silk pelisse, trimmed with the white fur she was so fond of
+wearing, and her riding-hat, the soft feathers of which drooped on
+her shoulder, trembling as she trembled.  For she did tremble very
+much.
+
+Gradually the old man's perception opened to the facts before him.
+He ceased his sharp scrutiny, and half smiled.
+
+"Wilt thee stay, and have a dish of tea with us?"
+
+So it came to pass, I hardly remember how, that in an hour's space
+our parlour beheld the strangest sight it had beheld since--Ah, no
+wonder that when she took her place at the table's foot, and gave him
+his dish of tea with her own hand--her pretty ringed lady's hand--my
+old father started, as if it had been another than Miss March who was
+sitting there.  No wonder that, more than once, catching the sound of
+her low, quiet, gentlewomanlike speech, different from any female
+voices here, he turned round suddenly with a glance, half-scared,
+half-eager, as if she had been a ghost from the grave.
+
+But Mrs. Jessop engaged him in talk, and, woman-hater as he was, he
+could not resist the pleasantness of the doctor's little wife.  The
+doctor, too, came in after tea, and the old folk all settled
+themselves for a cosy chat, taking very little notice of us three.
+
+Miss March sat at a little table near the window, admiring some
+hyacinths that Mrs. Jessop had brought us.  A wise present:  for all
+Norton Bury knew that if Abel Fletcher had a soft place in his heart
+it was for his garden and his flowers.  These were very lovely; in
+colour and scent delicious to one who had been long ill.  John lay
+looking at them and at her, as if, oblivious of past and future, his
+whole life were absorbed into that one exquisite hour.
+
+For me--where I sat I do not clearly know, nor probably did any one
+else.
+
+"There," said Miss March to herself, in a tone of almost childish
+satisfaction, as she arranged the last hyacinth to her liking.
+
+"They are very beautiful," I heard John's voice answer, with a
+strange trembling in it.  "It is growing too dark to judge of
+colours; but the scent is delicious, even here."
+
+"I could move the table closer to you."
+
+"Thank you--let me do it--will you sit down?"
+
+She did so, after a very slight hesitation, by John's side.  Neither
+spoke--but sat quietly there, with the sunset light on their two
+heads, softly touching them both, and then as softly melting away.
+
+"There is a new moon to-night," Miss March remarked, appositely and
+gravely.
+
+"Is there?  Then I have been ill a whole month.  For I remember
+noticing it through the trees the night when--"
+
+He did not say what night, and she did not ask.  To such a very
+unimportant conversation as they were apparently holding my
+involuntary listening could do no harm.
+
+"You will be able to walk out soon, I hope," said Miss March again.
+"Norton Bury is a pretty town."
+
+John asked, suddenly--"Are you going to leave it?"
+
+"Not yet--I do not know for certain--perhaps not at all.  I mean,"
+she added, hurriedly, "that being independent, and having entirely
+separated from, and been given up by, my cousins, I prefer residing
+with Mrs. Jessop altogether."
+
+"Of course--most natural."  The words were formally spoken, and John
+did not speak again for some time.
+
+"I hope,"--said Ursula, breaking the pause, and then stopping, as if
+her own voice frightened her.
+
+"What do you hope?"
+
+"That long before this moon has grown old you will be quite strong
+again."
+
+"Thank you!  I hope so too.  I have need for strength, God knows!"
+He sighed heavily.
+
+"And you will have what you need, so as to do your work in the world.
+You must not be afraid."
+
+"I am not afraid.  I shall bear my burthen like other men.  Every one
+has some inevitable burthen to bear."
+
+"So I believe."
+
+And now the room darkened so fast that I could not see them; but
+their voices seemed a great way off, as the children's voices playing
+at the old well-head used to sound to me when I lay under the brow of
+the Flat--in the dim twilights at Enderley.
+
+"I intend," John said, "as soon as I am able, to leave Norton Bury,
+and go abroad for some time."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To America.  It is the best country for a young man who has neither
+money, nor kindred, nor position--nothing, in fact, but his own right
+hand with which to carve out his own fortunes--as I will, if I can."
+
+She murmured something about this being "quite right."
+
+"I am glad you think so."  But his voice had resumed that formal tone
+which ever and anon mingled strangely with its low, deep tenderness.
+"In any case, I must quit England.  I have reasons for so doing."
+
+"What reasons?"
+
+The question seemed to startle John--he did not reply at once.
+
+"If you wish I will tell you; in order that, should I ever come back-
+-or if I should not come back at all, you who were kind enough to be
+my friend will know I did not go away from mere youthful
+recklessness, or love of change."
+
+He waited, apparently for some answer--but it came not, and he
+continued:
+
+"I am going because there has befallen me a great trouble, which,
+while I stay here, I cannot get free from or overcome.  I do not wish
+to sink under it--I had rather, as you said, 'Do my work in the
+world' as a man ought.  No man has a right to say unto his Maker, 'My
+burthen is heavier than I can bear.'  Do you not think so?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Do you not think I am right in thus meeting, and trying to conquer,
+an inevitable ill?"
+
+"IS it inevitable?"
+
+"Hush!" John answered, wildly.  "Don't reason with me--you cannot
+judge--you do not know.  It is enough that I must go.  If I stay I
+shall become unworthy of myself, unworthy of--Forgive me, I have no
+right to talk thus; but you called me 'friend,' and I would like you
+to think kindly of me always.  Because--because--" and his voice
+shook--broke down utterly.  "God love thee and take care of thee,
+wherever I may go!"
+
+"John, stay!"
+
+It was but a low, faint cry, like that of a little bird.  But he
+heard it--felt it.  In the silence of the dark she crept up to him,
+like a young bird to its mate, and he took her into the shelter of
+his love for evermore.  At once all was made clear between them; for
+whatever the world might say, they were in the sight of heaven equal,
+and she received as much as she gave.
+
+          *          *          *          *          *
+
+When Jael brought in lights the room seemed to me, at first, all in a
+wild dazzle.  Then I saw John rise, and Miss March with him.  Holding
+her hand, he led her across the room.  His head was erect, his eyes
+shining--his whole aspect that of a man who declares before all the
+world, "This is MY OWN."
+
+"Eh?" said my father, gazing at them from over his spectacles.
+
+John spoke brokenly, "We have no parents, neither she nor I.  Bless
+her--for she has promised to be my wife."
+
+And the old man blessed her with tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+"I hardly like taking thee out this wet day, Phineas--but it is a
+comfort to have thee."
+
+Perhaps it was, for John was bent on a trying errand.  He was going
+to communicate to Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe, Ursula's legal guardian
+and trustee, the fact that she had promised him her hand--him, John
+Halifax, the tanner.  He did it--nay, insisted upon doing it--the day
+after he came of age, and just one week after they had been
+betrothed--this nineteenth of June, one thousand eight hundred and
+one.
+
+We reached the iron gate of the Mythe House;--John hesitated a
+minute, and then pulled the bell with a resolute hand.
+
+"Do you remember the last time we stood here, John?  I do, well!"
+
+But soon the happy smile faded from his lips, and left them pressed
+together in a firm, almost painful gravity.  He was not only a lover
+but a man.  And no man could go to meet what he knew he must meet in
+this house, and on this errand, altogether unmoved.  One might
+foresee a good deal--even in the knowing side-glance of the servant,
+whom he startled with his name, "Mr. Halifax."
+
+"Mr. Brithwood's busy, sir--better come to-morrow," suggested the
+man--evidently knowing enough upon his master's affairs.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble him--but I must see Mr. Brithwood to-day."
+
+And John determinedly followed the man into the grand empty
+dining-room, where, on crimson velvet chairs, we sat and contemplated
+the great stag's head with its branching horns, the silver flagons
+and tankards, and the throstles hopping outside across the rainy
+lawn:  at our full leisure, too, for the space of fifteen minutes.
+
+"This will not do," said John--quietly enough, though this time it
+was with a less steady hand that he pulled the bell.
+
+"Did you tell your master I was here?"
+
+"Yes, sir."  And the grin with which the footman came in somehow slid
+away from his mouth's corners.
+
+"How soon may I have the honour of seeing him?"
+
+"He says, sir, you must send up your business by me."
+
+John paused, evidently subduing something within him--something
+unworthy of Ursula's lover--of Ursula's husband that was to be.
+
+"Tell your master my business is solely with himself, and I must
+request to see him.  It is important, say, or I would not thus
+intrude upon his time."
+
+"Very well, sir."
+
+Ere long, the man brought word that Mr. Brithwood would be at
+liberty, for five minutes only, in the justice-room.  We were led
+out, crossing the court-yard once more--where, just riding out, I saw
+two ladies, one of whom kissed her hand gaily to John Halifax--to the
+magistrate's office.  There, safely separated from his own noble
+mansion, Mr. Brithwood administered justice.  In the outer room a
+stout young fellow--a poacher, probably--sat heavily ironed, sullen
+and fierce; and by the door a girl with a child in her arms, and--God
+pity her!--no ring on her finger, stood crying; another ill-looking
+fellow, maudlin drunk, with a constable by him, called out to us as
+we passed for "a drop o' beer."
+
+These were the people whom Richard Brithwood, Esquire, magistrate for
+the county of ----, had to judge and punish, according to his own
+sense of equity and his knowledge of his country's law.
+
+He sat behind his office-table, thoroughly magisterial, dictating so
+energetically to his clerk behind him, that we had both entered, and
+John had crossed the room, before he saw us, or seemed to see.
+
+"Mr. Brithwood."
+
+"Oh--Mr. Halifax.  Good-morning."
+
+John returned the salutation, which was evidently meant to show that
+the giver bore no grudge; that, indeed, it was impossible so
+dignified a personage as Richard Brithwood, Esquire, in his public
+capacity, too, could bear a grudge against so inferior an individual
+as John Halifax.
+
+"I should be glad, sir, of a few minutes' speech with you."
+
+"Certainly--certainly; speak on;" and he lent a magisterial ear.
+
+"Excuse me, my business is private," said John, looking at the clerk.
+
+"No business is private here," returned the 'squire, haughtily.
+
+"Then shall I speak with you elsewhere?  But I must have the honour
+of an interview with you, and immediately."
+
+Whether Mr. Brithwood was seized with some indefinite alarm, he
+himself best knew why, or whether John's manner irresistibly
+compelled him to civility, as the stronger always compels the weaker,
+I cannot tell--but he signed to the clerk to leave the room.
+
+"And, Jones, send back all the others to the lock-up house till
+tomorrow.  Bless my life! it's near three o'clock.  They can't expect
+to keep a gentleman's dinner waiting--these low fellows."
+
+I suppose this referred only to the culprits outside; at all events,
+we chose to take it so.
+
+"Now--you, sir--perhaps you'll despatch your business; the sooner the
+better."
+
+"It will not take long.  It is a mere matter of form, which
+nevertheless I felt it my duty to be the first to inform you.  Mr.
+Brithwood, I have the honour of bearing a message to you from your
+cousin--Miss Ursula March."
+
+"She's nothing to me--I never wish to see her face again, the--the
+vixen!"
+
+"You will be kind enough, if you please, to avoid all such epithets;
+at least, in my hearing."
+
+"Your hearing!  And pray who are you, sir?"
+
+"You know quite well who I am."
+
+"Oh, yes!  And how goes the tanning?  Any offers in the horseflesh
+line?  Always happy to meet you in the way of business.  But what can
+you possibly have to do with me, or with any member of my family?"
+
+John bit his lip; the 'squire's manner was extremely galling; more
+so, perhaps, in its outside civility than any gross rudeness.
+
+"Mr. Brithwood, I was not speaking of myself, but of the lady whose
+message I have the honour to bring you."
+
+"That lady, sir, has chosen to put herself away from her family, and
+her family can hold no further intercourse with her," said the
+'squire, loftily.
+
+"I am aware of that," was the reply, with at least equal hauteur.
+
+"Are you?  And pray what right may you have to be acquainted with
+Miss March's private concerns?"
+
+"The right--which, indeed, was the purport of her message to you--
+that in a few months I shall become her husband."
+
+John said this very quietly--so quietly that, at first, the 'squire
+seemed hardly to credit his senses.  At last, he burst into a hoarse
+laugh.
+
+"Well, that is the best joke I ever did hear."
+
+"Pardon me; I am perfectly serious."
+
+"Bah! how much money do you want, fellow?  A pretty tale! you'll not
+get me to believe it--ha! ha!  She wouldn't be so mad.  To be sure,
+women have their fancies, as we know, and you're a likely young
+fellow enough; but to marry you--"
+
+John sprang up--his whole frame quivering with fury.  "Take care,
+sir; take care how you insult my WIFE!"
+
+He stood over the wretch--the cowardly shrinking wretch--he did not
+touch him, but he stood over him till, terrified out of his life,
+Richard Brithwood gasped out some apology.
+
+"Sit down--pray sit down again.  Let us proceed in our business."
+
+John Halifax sat down.
+
+"So--my cousin is your wife, I think you were saying?"
+
+"She will be, some months hence.  We were engaged a week ago, with
+the full knowledge and consent of Doctor and Mrs. Jessop, her nearest
+friends."
+
+"And of yours?" asked Mr. Brithwood, with as much sarcasm as his
+blunt wits could furnish him.
+
+"I have no relatives."
+
+"So I always understood.  And that being the case, may I ask the
+meaning of the visit?  Where are your lawyers, your marriage
+settlements, hey?  I say, young man--ha! ha!  I should like to know
+what you can possibly want with me, Miss March's trustee?"
+
+"Nothing whatever.  Miss March, as you are aware, is by her father's
+will left perfectly free in her choice of marriage; and she has
+chosen.  But since, under certain circumstances, I wish to act with
+perfect openness, I came to tell you, as her cousin and the executor
+of this will, that she is about to become my wife."
+
+And he lingered over that name, as if its very utterance strengthened
+and calmed him.
+
+"May I inquire into those 'certain circumstances'?" asked the other,
+still derisively.
+
+"You know them already.  Miss March has a fortune and I have none;
+and though I wish that difference were on the other side--though it
+might and did hinder me from seeking her--yet now she is sought and
+won, it shall not hinder my marrying her."
+
+"Likely not," sneered Mr. Brithwood.
+
+John's passion was rising again.
+
+"I repeat, it shall not hinder me.  The world may say what it
+chooses; we follow a higher law than the world--she and I.  She knows
+me, she is not afraid to trust her whole life with me; am I to be
+afraid to trust her?  Am I to be such a coward as not to dare to
+marry the woman I love, because the world might say I married her for
+her money?"
+
+He stood, his clenched hand resting on the table, looking full into
+Richard Brithwood's face.  The 'squire sat dumfoundered at the young
+man's vehemence.
+
+"Your pardon," John added, more calmly.  "Perhaps I owe her some
+pardon too, for bringing her name thus into discussion; but I wished
+to have everything clear between myself and you, her nearest
+relative.  You now know exactly how the matter stands.  I will detain
+you no longer--I have nothing more to say."
+
+"But I have," roared out the 'squire, at length recovering himself,
+seeing his opponent had quitted the field.  "Stop a minute."
+
+John paused at the door.
+
+"Tell Ursula March she may marry you, or any other vagabond she
+pleases--it's no business of mine.  But her fortune is my business,
+and it's in my hands too.  Might's right, and possession's
+nine-tenths of the law.  Not one penny shall she get out of my
+fingers as long as I can keep hold of it."
+
+John bowed, his hand still on the door.  "As you please, Mr.
+Brithwood.  That was not the subject of our interview.
+Good-morning."
+
+And we were away.
+
+Re-crossing the iron gates, and out into the open road, John breathed
+freely.
+
+"That's over--all is well."
+
+"Do you think what he threatened is true?  Can he do it?"
+
+"Very likely; don't let us talk about that."  And he walked on
+lightly, as if a load were taken off his mind, and body and soul
+leaped up to meet the glory of the summer sunshine, the freshness of
+the summer air.
+
+"Oh! what a day is this!--after the rain, too!  How she will enjoy
+it!"
+
+And coming home through Norton Bury, we met her, walking with Mrs.
+Jessop.  No need to dread that meeting now.
+
+Yet she looked up, questioning, through her blushes.  Of course he
+had told her where we were going to-day; her who had a right to know
+every one of his concerns now.
+
+"Yes, dear, all is quite right.  Do not be afraid."
+
+Afraid, indeed!  Not the least fear was in those clear eyes.  Nothing
+but perfect content--perfect trust.
+
+John drew her arm through his.  "Come, we need not mind Norton Bury
+now," he said, smiling.
+
+So they two walked forward, talking, as we could see, earnestly and
+rather seriously to one another; while Mrs. Jessop and I followed
+behind.
+
+"Bless their dear hearts!" said the old lady, as she sat resting on
+the stile of a bean-field.  "Well, we have all been young once."
+
+Not all, good Mrs. Jessop, thought I; not all.
+
+Yet, surely it was most pleasant to see them, as it is to see all
+true lovers--young lovers, too, in the morning of their days.
+Pleasant to see written on every line of their happy faces the
+blessedness of Nature's law of love--love began in youth-time,
+sincere and pure, free from all sentimental shams, or follies, or
+shames--love mutually plighted, the next strongest bond to that in
+which it will end, and is meant to end, God's holy ordinance of
+marriage.
+
+We came back across the fields to tea at Mrs. Jessop's.  It was
+John's custom to go there almost every evening; though certainly he
+could not be said to "go a-courting."  Nothing could be more unlike
+it than his demeanour, or indeed the demeanour of both.  They were
+very quiet lovers, never making much of one another "before folk."
+No whispering in corners, or stealing away down garden walks.  No
+public show of caresses--caresses whose very sweetness must consist
+in their entire sacredness; at least, _I_ should think so.  No
+coquettish exactions, no testing of either's power over the other, in
+those perilous small quarrels which may be the renewal of passion,
+but are the death of true love.
+
+No, our young couple were well-behaved always.  She sat at her work,
+and he made himself generally pleasant, falling in kindly to the
+Jessop's household ways.  But whatever he was about, at Ursula's
+lightest movement, at the least sound of her voice, I could see him
+lift a quiet glance, as if always conscious of her presence; her who
+was the delight of his eyes.
+
+To-night, more than ever before, this soft, invisible link seemed to
+be drawn closer between them, though they spoke little together, and
+even sat at opposite sides of the table; but whenever their looks
+met, one could trace a soft, smiling interchange, full of trust, and
+peace, and joy.  He had evidently told her all that had happened
+to-day, and she was satisfied.
+
+More, perhaps, than I was; for I knew how little John would have to
+live upon besides what means his wife brought him; but that was their
+own affair, and I had no business to make public my doubts or fears.
+
+We all sat round the tea-table, talking gaily together, and then John
+left us, reluctantly enough; but he always made a point of going to
+the tan-yard for an hour or two, in my father's stead, every evening.
+Ursula let him out at the front door; this was her right, silently
+claimed, which nobody either jested at or interfered with.
+
+When she returned, and perhaps she had been away a minute or two
+longer than was absolutely necessary, there was a wonderful
+brightness on her young face; though she listened with a degree of
+attention, most creditable in its gravity, to a long dissertation of
+Mrs. Jessop's on the best and cheapest way of making jam and pickles.
+
+"You know, my dear, you ought to begin and learn all about such
+things now."
+
+"Yes," said Miss March, with a little droop of the head.
+
+"I assure you"--turning to me--"she comes every day into the kitchen-
+-never mind, my dear, one can say anything to Mr. Fletcher.  And what
+lady need be ashamed of knowing how a dinner is cooked and a
+household kept in order?"
+
+"Nay, she should rather be proud; I know John thinks so."
+
+At this answer of mine Ursula half smiled:  but there was a colour in
+her cheek, and a thoughtfulness in her eyes, deeper than any that our
+conversation warranted or occasioned.  I was planning how to divert
+Mrs. Jessop from the subject, when it was broken at once by a sudden
+entrance, which startled us all like a flash of lightning.
+
+"Stole away! stole away! as my husband would say.  Here have I come
+in the dusk, all through the streets to Dr. Jessop's very door.  How
+is she? where is she, ma petite!"
+
+"Caroline!"
+
+"Ah! come forward.  I haven't seen you for an age."
+
+And Lady Caroline kissed her on both cheeks in her lively French
+fashion, which Ursula received patiently, and returned--no, I will
+not be certain whether she returned it or not.
+
+"Pardon--how do you do, Mrs. Jessop, my dear woman?  What trouble I
+have had in coming!  Are you not glad to see me, Ursula?"
+
+"Yes, very."  In that sincere voice which never either falsified or
+exaggerated a syllable.
+
+"Did you ever expect to see me again?"
+
+"No, certainly I did not.  And I would almost rather not see you now,
+if--"
+
+"If Richard Brithwood did not approve of it?  Bah! what notions you
+always had of marital supremacy.  So, ma chere, you are going to be
+married yourself, I hear?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, how quietly you seem to take it!  The news perfectly
+electrified me this morning.  I always said that young man was 'un
+heros de romans!'  Ma foi! this is the prettiest little episode I
+ever heard of.  Just King Cophetua and the beggar-maid--only
+reversed.  How do you feel, my Queen Cophetua?"
+
+"I do not quite understand you, Caroline."
+
+"Neither should I you, for the tale seems incredible.  Only you gave
+me such an honest 'yes,' and I know you never tell even white lies.
+But it can't be true; at least, not certain.  A little affaire de
+coeur, maybe--ah! I had several before I was twenty--very pleasant,
+chivalrous, romantic, and all that; and such a brave young fellow,
+too!  Helas! love is sweet at your age!"--with a little sigh--"but
+marriage!  My dear child, you are not surely promised to this youth?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"How sharply you say it!  Nay, don't be angry.  I liked him greatly.
+A very pretty fellow.  But then he belongs to the people."
+
+"So do I."
+
+"Naughty child, you will not comprehend me.  I mean the lower orders,
+the bourgeoisie.  My husband says he is a tanner's 'prenticeboy."
+
+"He was apprentice; he is now partner in Mr. Fletcher's tan-yard."
+
+"That is nearly as bad.  And so you are actually going to marry a
+tanner?"
+
+"I am going to marry Mr. Halifax.  We will, if you please, cease to
+discuss him, Lady Caroline."
+
+"La belle sauvage!" laughed the lady; and, in the dusk, I fancied I
+saw her reach over to pat Ursula's hand in her careless, pretty way.
+"Nay, I meant no harm."
+
+"I am sure you did not; but we will change the subject."
+
+"Not at all.  I came to talk about it.  I couldn't sleep till I had.
+Je t'aime bien, tu le sais, ma petite Ursule."
+
+"Thank you," said Ursula, gently.
+
+"And I would like well to see you married.  Truly we women must
+marry, or be nothing at all.  But as to marrying for love, as we used
+to think of, and as charming poets make believe--my dear, now-a-days,
+nous avons change tout cela."
+
+Ursula replied nothing.
+
+"I suppose my friend the young bourgeois is very much in love with
+you?  With 'les beaux yeux de votre cassette,' Richard swears; but I
+know better.  What of that?  All men say they love one--but it will
+not last.  It burns itself out.  It will be over in a year, as we
+wives all know.  Do we not, Mrs. Jessop?  Ah! she is gone away."
+
+Probably they thought I was away too--or else they took no notice of
+me--and went talking on.
+
+"Jane would not have agreed with you, Cousin Caroline; she loved her
+husband very dearly when she was a girl.  They were poor, and he was
+afraid to marry; so he let her go.  That was wrong, I think."
+
+"How wise we are growing in these things now!" laughed Lady Caroline.
+"But come, I am not interested in old turtle-doves.  Say about
+yourself."
+
+"I have nothing more to say."
+
+"Nothing more?  Mon Dieu! are you aware that Richard is furious; that
+he vows he will keep every sou he has of yours--law or no law--for as
+long as ever he can?  He declared so this morning.  Did young Halifax
+tell you?"
+
+"Mr. Halifax has told me."
+
+"'MR. Halifax!' how proudly she says it.  And are you still going to
+be married to him?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What! a bourgeois--a tradesman? with no more money than those sort
+of people usually have, I believe.  You, who have had all sorts of
+comforts, have always lived as a gentlewoman.  Truly, though I adore
+a love-marriage in theory, practically I think you are mad--quite
+mad, my dear."
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"And he, too!  Verily, what men are!  Especially men in love.  All
+selfish together."
+
+"Caroline!"
+
+"Isn't it selfish to drag a pretty creature down, and make her a
+drudge, a slave--a mere poor man's wife?"
+
+"She is proud of being such!" burst in the indignant young voice.
+"Lady Caroline, you may say what you like to me; you were kind
+always, and I was fond of you; but you shall not say a word against
+Mr. Halifax.  You do not know him--how could you?"
+
+"And you do?  Ah! ma petite, we all think that, till we find out to
+the contrary.  And so he urges you to be married at once--rich or
+poor--at all risks, at all costs?  How lover-like--how like a man!  I
+guess it all.  Half beseeches--half persuades--"
+
+"He does not!"  And the girl's voice was sharp with pain.  "I would
+not have told you, but I must--for his sake.  He asked me this
+afternoon if I was afraid of being poor? if I would like to wait, and
+let him work hard alone, till he could give me a home like that I was
+born to?  He did, Caroline."
+
+"And you answered--"
+
+"No--a thousand times, no!  He will have a hard battle to fight--
+would I let him fight it alone? when I can help him--when he says I
+can."
+
+"Ah, child! you that know nothing of poverty, how can you bear it?"
+
+"I will try."
+
+"You that never ruled a house in your life--"
+
+"I can learn."
+
+"Ciel! 'tis wonderful!  And this young man has no friends, no
+connections, no fortune! only himself."
+
+"Only himself," said Ursula, with a proud contempt.
+
+"Will you tell me, my dear, why you marry him?"
+
+"Because"--and Ursula spoke in low tones, that seemed wrung out of
+her almost against her will--"because I honour him, because I trust
+him; and, young as I am, I have seen enough of the world to be
+thankful that there is in it one man whom I can trust, can honour,
+entirely.  Also--though I am often ashamed lest this be selfish--
+because when I was in trouble he helped me; when I was misjudged he
+believed in me; when I was sad and desolate he loved me.  And I am
+proud of his love--I glory in it.  No one shall take it from me--no
+one will--no one can, unless I cease to deserve it."
+
+Lady Caroline was silent.  Despite her will, you might hear a sigh
+breaking from some deep corner of that light, frivolous heart.
+
+"Bien! chacun a son gout!  But you have never stated one trifle--not
+unnecessary, perhaps, though most married folk get on quite well
+without it--'Honour,' 'trust,'--pshaw!  My child--do you LOVE Mr.
+Halifax?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Nay, why be shy?  In England, they say, and among the people--no
+offence, ma petite--one does sometimes happen to care for the man one
+marries.  Tell me, for I must be gone, do you love him? one word,
+whether or no?"
+
+Just then the light coming in showed Ursula's face, beautiful with
+more than happiness, uplifted even with a religious thankfulness, as
+she said simply:
+
+"John knows."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+In the late autumn, John married Ursula March.  He was twenty-one,
+and she eighteen.  It was very young--too young, perhaps, prudent
+folk might say:  and yet sometimes I think a double blessing falls on
+unions like this.  A right and holy marriage, a true love-marriage,
+be it early or late, is--must be--sanctified and happy; yet those
+have the best chance of happiness, who, meeting on the very threshold
+of life, enter upon its duties together; with free, fresh hearts,
+easily moulded the one to the other, rich in all the riches of youth,
+acute to enjoy, brave and hopeful to endure.
+
+Such were these two--God bless them!
+
+They were married quite privately, neither having any near kindred.
+Besides, John held strongly the opinion that so solemn a festival as
+marriage is only desecrated by outward show.  And so, one golden
+autumn morning, Ursula walked quietly up the Abbey aisle in her plain
+white muslin gown; and John and she plighted their faithful vows, no
+one being present except the Jessops and I.  They then went away for
+a brief holiday--went away without either pomp or tears, entirely
+happy--husband and wife together.
+
+When I came home and said what had happened my good father seemed
+little surprised.  He had expressly desired not to be told anything
+of the wedding till all was over--he hated marriages.
+
+"But since it is done, maybe 'tis as well," said he, grimly.  "She
+seems a kindly young thing; wise, even--for a woman."
+
+"And pleasant too, father?"
+
+"Ay, but favour is deceitful, and beauty vain.  So the lad's gone;"
+and he looked round, as if missing John, who had lived in our house
+ever since his illness.  "I thought as much, when he bade me
+goodnight, and asked my leave to take a journey.  So he's married and
+gone!  Come, Phineas, sit thee down by thy old father; I am glad thee
+wilt always remain a bachelor."
+
+We settled ourselves, my father and I; and while the old man smoked
+his meditative pipe I sat thinking of the winter evenings when we two
+lads had read by the fire-side; the summer days when we had lounged
+on the garden wall.  He was a married man now, the head of a
+household; others had a right--the first, best, holiest right--to the
+love that used to be all mine; and though it was a marriage entirely
+happy and hopeful, though all that day and every day I rejoiced both
+with and for my brother, still it was rather sad to miss him from our
+house, to feel that his boyish days were quite over--that his boyish
+place would know him no more.
+
+But of course I had fully overcome, or at least suppressed, this
+feeling when, John having brought his wife home, I went to see them
+in their own house.
+
+I had seen it once before; it was an old dwelling-house, which my
+father bought with the flour-mill, situated in the middle of the
+town, the front windows looking on the street, the desolate garden
+behind shut in by four brick walls.  A most un-bridal-like abode.  I
+feared they would find it so, even though John had been busy there
+the last two months, in early mornings and late evenings, keeping a
+comical secrecy over the matter as if he were jealous that any one
+but himself should lend an eye, or put a finger, to the dear task of
+making ready for his young wife.
+
+They could not be great preparations, I knew, for the third of my
+father's business promised but a small income.  Yet the gloomy
+outside being once passed, the house looked wonderfully bright and
+clean; the walls and doors newly-painted and delicately stencilled:--
+("Master did all that himself," observed the proud little handmaid,
+Jenny--Jem Watkins's sweetheart.  I had begged the place for her
+myself of Mistress Ursula.)  Though only a few rooms were furnished,
+and that very simply, almost poorly, all was done with taste and
+care; the colours well mingled, the wood-work graceful and good.
+
+They were out gardening, John Halifax and his wife.
+
+Ay, his wife; he was a husband now.  They looked so young, both of
+them, he kneeling, planting box-edging, she standing by him with her
+hand on his shoulder--the hand with the ring on it.  He was laughing
+at something she had said, thy very laugh of old, David!  Neither
+heard me come till I stood close by.
+
+"Phineas, welcome, welcome!"  He wrung my hand fervently, many times;
+so did Ursula, blushing rosy red.  They both called me "brother," and
+both were as fond and warm as any brother and sister could be.
+
+A few minutes after, Ursula--"Mrs. Halifax," as I said I ought to
+call her now--slipped away into the house, and John and I were left
+together.  He glanced after his wife till she was out of sight,
+played with the spade, threw it down, placed his two hands on my
+shoulders, and looked hard in my face.  He was trembling with deep
+emotion.
+
+"Art thou happy, David?"
+
+"Ay, lad, almost afraid of my happiness.  God make me worthy of it,
+and of her!"
+
+He lifted his eyes upwards; there was in them a new look, sweet and
+solemn, a look which expressed the satisfied content of a life now
+rounded and completed by that other dear life which it had received
+into and united with its own--making a full and perfect whole, which,
+however kindly and fondly it may look on friends and kindred outside,
+has no absolute need of any, but is complete in and sufficient to
+itself, as true marriage should be.  A look, unconsciously fulfilling
+the law--God's own law--that a man shall leave father and mother,
+brethren and companions, and shall cleave unto his wife, and "they
+two shall become one flesh."
+
+And although I rejoiced in his joy, still I felt half-sadly for a
+moment, the vague, fine line of division which was thus for evermore
+drawn between him and me of no fault on either side, and of which he
+himself was unaware.  It was but the right and natural law of things,
+the difference between the married and unmarried, which only the
+latter feel.  Which, perhaps, the Divine One meant them to feel--that
+out of their great solitude of this world may grow a little inner
+Eden, where they may hear His voice, "walking in the garden in the
+cool of the day."
+
+We went round John's garden; there was nothing Eden-like about it,
+being somewhat of a waste still, divided between ancient cabbage-
+beds, empty flower-beds, and great old orchard-trees, very thinly
+laden with fruit.
+
+"We'll make them bear better next year," said John, hopefully.  "We
+may have a very decent garden here in time."  He looked round his
+little domain with the eye of a master, and put his arm, half
+proudly, half shyly, round his wife's shoulders--she had sidled up to
+him, ostensibly bringing him a letter, though possibly only for an
+excuse, because in those sweet early days they naturally liked to be
+in each other's sight continually.  It was very beautiful to see what
+a demure, soft, meek matronliness had come over the high spirit of
+the "Nut-browne Mayde."
+
+"May I read?" she said, peeping over him.
+
+"Of course you may, little one."  A comical pet name for him to give
+her, who was anything but small.  I could have smiled, remembering
+the time when John Halifax bowed to the stately and dignified young
+gentlewoman who stood at Mrs. Tod's door.  To think he should ever
+have come to call Miss Ursula March "little one!"
+
+But this was not exactly a time for jesting, since, on reading the
+letter, I saw the young wife flush an angry red, and then look grave.
+Until John, crumpling up the paper, and dropping it almost with a
+boyish frolic into the middle of a large rosemary-bush, took his wife
+by both her hands, and gazed down into her troubled face, smiling.
+
+"You surely don't mind this, love?  We knew it all before.  It can
+make no possible difference."
+
+"No!  But it is so wrong--so unjust.  I never believed he dared do
+it--to you."
+
+"Hear her, Phineas!  She thinks nobody dare do anything ill to her
+husband--not even Richard Brithwood."
+
+"He is a--"
+
+"Hush, dear!--we will not talk about him; since, for all his threats,
+he can do us no harm, and, poor man! he never will be half as happy
+as we."
+
+That was true.  So Mr. Brithwood's insulting letter was left to
+moulder harmlessly away in the rosemary-bush, and we all walked up
+and down the garden, talking over a thousand plans for making ends
+meet in that little household.  To their young hopefulness even
+poverty itself became a jest; and was met cheerfully, like an honest,
+hard-featured, hard-handed friend, whose rough face was often kindly,
+and whose harsh grasp made one feel the strength of one's own.
+
+"We mean," John said gaily, "to be two living Essays on the
+Advantages of Poverty.  We are not going to be afraid of it or
+ashamed of it.  We don't care who knows it.  We consider that our
+respectability lies solely in our two selves."
+
+"But your neighbours?"
+
+"Our neighbours may think of us exactly what they like.  Half the
+sting of poverty is gone when one keeps house for one's own comfort,
+and not for the comments of one's neighbours."
+
+"I should think not," Ursula cried, tossing back her head in merry
+defiance.  "Besides, we are young, we have few wants, and we can
+easily reduce our wants to our havings."
+
+"And no more grey silk gowns?" said her husband, half-fondly,
+half-sadly.
+
+"You will not be so rude as to say I shall not look equally well in a
+cotton one?  And as for being as happy in it--why, I know best."
+
+He smiled at her once more,--that tender, manly smile which made all
+soft and lustrous the inmost depths of his brown eyes; truly no woman
+need be afraid, with a smile like that, to be the strength, the
+guidance, the sunshine of her home.
+
+We went in, and the young mistress showed us her new house; we
+investigated and admired all, down to the very scullery; then we
+adjourned to the sitting-room--the only one--and, after tea, Ursula
+arranged her books, some on stained shelves, which she proudly
+informed me were of John's own making, and some on an old spinet,
+which he had picked up, and which, he said, was of no other use than
+to hold books, since she was not an accomplished young lady, and
+could neither sing nor play.
+
+"But you don't dislike the spinet, Ursula?  It caught my fancy.  Do
+you know I have a faint remembrance that once, on such a thing as
+this, my mother used to play?"
+
+He spoke in a low voice; Ursula stole up to him with a fond, awed
+look.
+
+"You never told me anything about your mother?"
+
+"Dear, I had little to tell.  Long ago you knew whom you were going
+to marry--John Halifax, who had no friends, no kindred, whose parents
+left him nothing but his name."
+
+"And you cannot remember them?"
+
+"My father not at all; my mother very little."
+
+"And have you nothing belonging to them?"
+
+"Only one thing.  Should you like to see it?"
+
+"Very much."  She still spoke slowly, and with slight hesitation.
+"It was hard for him not to have known his parents," she added, when
+John had left the room.  "I should like to have known them too.  But
+still--when I know HIM--"
+
+She smiled, tossed back the coronet of curls from her forehead--her
+proud, pure forehead, that would have worn a coronet of jewels more
+meekly than it now wore the unadorned honour of being John Halifax's
+wife.  I wished he could have seen her.
+
+That minute he re-appeared.
+
+"Here, Ursula, is all I have of my parents.  No one has seen it,
+except Phineas there, until now."
+
+He held in his hand the little Greek Testament which he had showed me
+years before.  Carefully, and with the same fond, reverent look as
+when he was a boy, he undid the case, made of silk, with ribbon
+strings--doubtless a woman's work--it must have been his mother's.
+His wife touched it, softly and tenderly.  He showed her the
+fly-leaf; she looked over the inscription, and then repeated it
+aloud.
+
+"'Guy Halifax, gentleman.'  I thought--I thought--"
+
+Her manner betrayed a pleased surprise:  she would not have been a
+woman, especially a woman reared in pride of birth, not to have felt
+and testified the like pleasure for a moment.
+
+"You thought that I was only a labourer's son:  or--nobody's.  Well,
+does it signify?"
+
+"No," she cried, as, clinging round his neck and throwing her head
+back, she looked at him with all her heart in her eyes.  "No, it does
+NOT signify.  Were your father the king on his throne, or the beggar
+in the streets, it would be all the same to me; you would still be
+yourself--MY husband--MY John Halifax."
+
+"God bless thee--my own wife that He has given me!" John murmured,
+through his close embrace.
+
+They had altogether forgotten any one's presence, dear souls! so I
+kept them in that happy oblivion by slipping out to Jenny in the
+kitchen, and planning with her how we could at least spare Jem
+Watkins two days a week to help in the garden, under Mr. Halifax's
+orders.
+
+"Only, Jenny," smiled I, with a warning finger, "no idling and
+chattering.  Young folk must work hard if they want to come to the
+happy ending of your master and mistress."
+
+The little maid grew the colour of her swain's pet peonies, and
+promised obedience.  Conscientious Jem there was no fear of--all the
+rosy-cheeked damsels in Christendom would not have turned him aside
+from one iota of his duty to Mr. Halifax.  Thus there was love in the
+parlour and love in the kitchen.  But, I verily believe, the young
+married couple were served all the better for their kindness and
+sympathy to the humble pair of sweethearts in the rank below them.
+
+John walked home with me--a pleasure I had hardly expected, but which
+was insisted upon both by him and Ursula.  For from the very first of
+her betrothal there had been a thorough brother-and-sisterly bond
+established between her and me.  Her womanly, generous nature would
+have scorned to do what, as I have heard, many young wives do--seek
+to make coldness between her husband and his old friends.  No; secure
+in her riches, in her rightful possession of his whole heart, she
+took into hers everything that belonged to John, every one he cared
+for; to be for ever held sacred and beloved, being his, and therefore
+her own.  Thus we were the very best of friends, my sister Ursula and
+me.
+
+John and I talked a little about her--of her rosy looks, which he
+hoped would not fade in their town dwelling--and of good Mrs. Tod's
+wonderful delight at seeing her, when last week they had stayed two
+days in the dear old cottage at Enderley.  But he seemed slow to
+speak about his wife, or to dilate on a joy so new that it was hardly
+to be breathed on, lest it might melt into air.
+
+Only when, as we were crossing the street, a fine equipage passed, he
+looked after it with a smile.
+
+"Grey ponies! she is so fond of long-tailed grey ponies.  Poor child!
+when shall I be able to give her a carriage?  Perhaps some day--who
+knows!"
+
+He turned the conversation, and began telling me about the cloth
+mill--his old place of resort; which he had been over once again when
+they were at Rose Cottage.
+
+"And do you know, while I was looking at the machinery, a notion came
+into my head that, instead of that great water-wheel--you remember
+it?--it might be worked by steam."
+
+"What sort of steam?"
+
+"Phineas, your memory is no better, I see.  Have you forgotten my
+telling you how, last year, some Scotch engineer tried to move boats
+by steam, on the Forth and Clyde canal?  Why should not the same
+power be turned to account in a cloth-mill?  I know it could--I have
+got the plan of the machinery in my head already.  I made a drawing
+of it last night, and showed it to Ursula; SHE understood it
+directly."
+
+I smiled.
+
+"And I do believe, by common patience and skill, a man might make his
+fortune with it at those Enderley cloth-mills."
+
+"Suppose you try!" I said in half jest, and was surprised to see how
+seriously John took it.
+
+"I wish I could try--if it were only practicable.  Once or twice I
+have thought it might be.  The mill belongs to Lord Luxmore.  His
+steward works it.  Now, if one could get to be a foreman or overseer-
+-"
+
+"Try--you can do anything you try."
+
+"No, I must not think of it--she and I have agreed that I must not,"
+said he, steadily.  "It's my weakness--my hobby, you know.  But--no
+hobbies now.  Above all, I must not, for a mere fancy, give up the
+work that lies under my hand.  What of the tan-yard, Phineas?"
+
+"My father missed you, and grumbled after you a good deal.  He looks
+anxious, I think.  He vexes himself more than he needs about
+business."
+
+"Don't let him.  Keep him as much at home as you can.  I'll manage
+the tan-yard:  you know--and he knows too--that everything which can
+be done for us all I shall do."
+
+I looked up, surprised at the extreme earnestness of his manner.
+
+"Surely, John--"
+
+"Nay, there is nothing to be uneasy about--nothing more than there
+has been for this year past.  All trade is bad just now.  Never fear,
+we'll weather the storm--I'm not afraid."
+
+Cheerfully as he spoke, I began to guess--what he already must have
+known--that our fortunes were as a slowly leaking ship, of which the
+helm had slipped from my old father's feeble hand.  But John had
+taken it--John stood firm at the wheel.  Perhaps, with God's
+blessing, he might guide us safe to land.
+
+I had not time to say more, when, with its pretty grey ponies, the
+curricle once more passed our way.  Two ladies were in it:  one
+leaned out and bowed.  Presently a lacquey came to beg Mr. Halifax
+would come and speak with Lady Caroline Brithwood.
+
+"Shall you go, John?"
+
+"Certainly--why not?"  And he stepped forward to the carriage-side.
+
+"Ah! delighted to see mon beau cousin.  This is he, Emma," turning to
+the lady who sat by her--oh, what a lovely face that lady had! no
+wonder it drove men mad; ay, even that brave man in whose honest life
+can be chronicled only this one sin, of being bewitched by her.
+
+John caught the name--perhaps, too, he recognized the face--it was
+only too public, alas!  His own took a sternness, such as I had never
+before seen, and yet there was a trace of pity in it too.
+
+"You are quite well.  Indeed, he looks so--n'est-ce pas, ma chere?"
+
+John bore gravely the eyes of the two ladies fixed on him, in rather
+too plain admiration--very gravely, too, he bowed.
+
+"And what of our young bride, our treasure that we stole--nay, it was
+quite fair--quite fair.  How is Ursula?"
+
+"I thank you, Mrs. Halifax is well."
+
+Lady Caroline smiled at the manner, courteous through all its
+coldness, which not ill became the young man.  But she would not be
+repelled.
+
+"I am delighted to have met you.  Indeed, we must be friends.  One's
+friends need not always be the same as one's husband's, eh, Emma?
+You will be enchanted with our fair bride.  We must both seize the
+first opportunity, and come as disguised princesses to visit Mrs.
+Halifax."
+
+"Again let me thank you, Lady Caroline.  But--"
+
+"No 'buts.'  I am resolved.  Mr. Brithwood will never find it out.
+And if he does--why, he may.  I like you both; I intend us to be
+excellent friends, whenever I chance to be at Norton Bury.  Don't be
+proud, and reject me, there's good people--the only good people I
+ever knew who were not disagreeable."
+
+And leaning on her large ermine muff, she looked right into John's
+face, with the winning sweetness which Nature, not courts, lent to
+those fair features--already beginning to fade, already trying to
+hide by art their painful, premature decay.
+
+John returned the look, half sorrowfully; it was so hard to give back
+harshness to kindliness.  But a light laugh from the other lady
+caught his ear, and his hesitation--if hesitation he had felt-was
+over.
+
+"No, Lady Caroline, it cannot be.  You will soon see yourself that it
+cannot.  Living, as we do, in the same neighbourhood, we may meet
+occasionally by chance, and always, I hope, with kindly feeling; but,
+under present circumstances--indeed, under any circumstances--
+intimacy between your house and ours would he impossible."
+
+Lady Caroline shrugged her shoulders with a pretty air of pique.  "As
+you will!  I never trouble myself to court the friendship of any one.
+Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle."
+
+"Do not mistake me," John said, earnestly.  "Do not suppose I am
+ungrateful for your former kindness to my wife; but the difference
+between her and you--between your life and hers--is so extreme."
+
+"Vraiment!" with another shrug and smile, rather a bitter one.
+
+"Our two paths lie wide apart--wide as the poles; our house and our
+society would not suit you; and that my wife should ever enter
+yours"--glancing from one to the other of those two faces, painted
+with false roses, lit by false smiles,--"No, Lady Caroline," he
+added, firmly, "it is impossible."
+
+She looked mortified for a moment, and then resumed her gaiety, which
+nothing could ever banish long.
+
+"Hear him, Emma!  So young and so unkindly!  Mais nous verrons.  You
+will change your mind.  Au revoir, mon beau cousin."
+
+They drove off quickly, and were gone.
+
+"John, what will Mrs. Halifax say?"
+
+"My innocent girl! thank God she is safe away from them all--safe in
+a poor man's honest breast."  He spoke with much emotion.
+
+"Yet Lady Caroline--"
+
+"Did you see who sat beside her?"
+
+"That beautiful woman?"
+
+"Poor soul! alas for her beauty!  Phineas, that was Lady Hamilton."
+
+He said no more, nor I.  At my own door he left me, with his old
+merry laugh, his old familiar grasp of my shoulder.
+
+"Lad, take care of thyself, though I'm not by to see.  Remember, I am
+just as much thy tyrant as if I were living here still."
+
+I smiled, and he went his way to his own quiet, blessed, married
+home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The winter and spring passed calmly by.  I had much ill-health, and
+could go out very little; but they came constantly to me, John and
+Ursula, especially the latter.  During this illness, when I learned
+to watch longingly for her kind face, and listen for her cheerful
+voice talking pleasantly and sisterly beside my chair, she taught me
+to give up "Mrs. Halifax," and call her Ursula.  It was only by slow
+degrees I did so, truly; for she was not one of those gentle
+creatures whom, married or single, one calls instinctively by their
+Christian names.  Her manner in girlhood was not exactly either
+"meek" or "gentle"; except towards him, the only one who ever ruled
+her, and to whom she was, through life, the meekest and tenderest of
+women.  To every one else she comported herself, at least in youth,
+with a dignity and decision--a certain stand-offishness--so that, as
+I said, it was not quite easy to speak to or think of her as
+"Ursula."  Afterwards, when seen in the light of a new character, for
+which Heaven destined and especially fitted her, and in which she
+appeared altogether beautiful--I began to give her another name--but
+it will come by and by.
+
+In the long midsummer days, when our house was very quiet and rather
+dreary, I got into the habit of creeping over to John's home, and
+sitting for hours under the apple-trees in his garden.  It was now
+different from the wilderness he found it; the old trees were pruned
+and tended, and young ones planted.  Mrs. Halifax called it proudly
+"our orchard," though the top of the tallest sapling could be reached
+with her hand.  Then, in addition to the indigenous cabbages, came
+long rows of white-blossomed peas, big-headed cauliflowers, and all
+vegetables easy of cultivation.  My father sent contributions from
+his celebrated gooseberry-bushes, and his wall-fruit, the pride of
+Norton Bury; Mrs. Jessop stocked the borders from her great parterres
+of sweet-scented common flowers; so that, walled in as it was, and in
+the midst of a town likewise, it was growing into a very tolerable
+garden.  Just the kind of garden that I love--half trim, half wild--
+fruits, flowers, and vegetables living in comfortable equality and
+fraternity, none being too choice to be harmed by their neighbours,
+none esteemed too mean to be restricted in their natural profusion.
+Oh, dear old-fashioned garden! full of sweet-Williams and
+white-Nancies, and larkspur and London-pride, and yard-wide beds of
+snowy saxifrage, and tall, pale evening primroses, and hollyhocks six
+or seven feet high, many-tinted, from yellow to darkest ruby-colour;
+while for scents, large blushing cabbage-roses, pinks, gilly-flowers,
+with here and there a great bush of southern-wood or rosemary, or a
+border of thyme, or a sweet-briar hedge--a pleasant garden, where all
+colours and perfumes were blended together; ay, even a stray
+dandelion, that stood boldly up in his yellow waistcoat, like a young
+country bumpkin, who feels himself a decent lad in his way--or a
+plant of wild marjoram, that had somehow got in, and kept meekly in a
+corner of the bed, trying to turn into a respectable cultivated herb.
+Dear old garden!--such as one rarely sees now-a-days!--I would give
+the finest modern pleasure-ground for the like of thee!
+
+This was what John's garden became; its every inch and every flower
+still live in more memories than mine, and will for a generation yet;
+but I am speaking of it when it was young, like its gardeners.  These
+were Mrs. Halifax and her husband, Jem and Jenny.  The master could
+not do much; he had long, long hours in his business; but I used to
+watch Ursula, morning after morning, superintending her domain, with
+her faithful attendant Jem--Jem adored his "missis."  Or else, when
+it was hot noon, I used to lie in their cool parlour, and listen to
+her voice and step about the house, teaching Jenny, or learning from
+her--for the young gentlewoman had much to learn, and was not ashamed
+of it either.  She laughed at her own mistakes, and tried again; she
+never was idle or dull for a minute.  She did a great deal in the
+house herself.  Often she would sit chatting with me, having on her
+lap a coarse brown pan, shelling peas, slicing beans, picking
+gooseberries; her fingers--Miss March's fair fingers--looking fairer
+for the contrast with their unaccustomed work.  Or else, in the
+summer evenings, she would be at the window sewing--always sewing--
+but so placed that with one glance she could see down the street
+where John was coming.  Far, far off she always saw him; and at the
+sight her whole face would change and brighten, like a meadow when
+the sun comes out.  Then she ran to open the door, and I could hear
+his low "my darling!" and a long, long pause, in the hall.
+
+They were very, very happy in those early days--those quiet days of
+poverty; when they visited nobody, and nobody visited them; when
+their whole world was bounded by the dark old house and the garden,
+with its four high walls.
+
+One July night, I remember, John and I were walking up and down the
+paths by star-light.  It was very hot weather, inclining one to stay
+without doors half the night.  Ursula had been with us a good while,
+strolling about on her husband's arm; then he had sent her in to
+rest, and we two remained out together.
+
+How soft they were, those faint, misty, summer stars! what a
+mysterious, perfumy haze they let fall over us!--A haze through which
+all around seemed melting away in delicious intangible sweetness, in
+which the very sky above our heads--the shining, world-besprinkled
+sky--was a thing felt rather than seen.
+
+"How strange all seems! how unreal!" said John, in a low voice, when
+he had walked the length of the garden in silence.  "Phineas, how
+very strange it seems!"
+
+"What seems?"
+
+"What?--oh, everything."  He hesitated a minute.  "No, not
+everything--but something which to me seems now to fill and be mixed
+up with all I do, or think, or feel.  Something you do not know--but
+to-night Ursula said I might tell you."
+
+Nevertheless he was several minutes before he told me.
+
+"This pear-tree is full of fruit--is it not?  How thick they hang and
+yet it seems but yesterday that Ursula and I were standing here,
+trying to count the blossoms."
+
+He stopped--touching a branch with his hand.  His voice sank so I
+could hardly hear it.
+
+"Do you know, Phineas, that when this tree is bare--we shall, if with
+God's blessing all goes well--we shall have--a little child."
+
+I wrung his hand in silence.
+
+"You cannot imagine how strange it feels.  A child--hers and mine--
+little feet to go pattering about our house--a little voice to say--
+Think, that by Christmas-time I shall be a FATHER."
+
+He sat down on the garden-bench, and did not speak for a long time.
+
+"I wonder," he said at last, "if, when I was born, MY father was as
+young as I am:  whether he felt as I do now.  You cannot think what
+an awful joy it is to be looking forward to a child; a little soul of
+God's giving, to be made fit for His eternity.  How shall we do it!
+we that are both so ignorant, so young--she will be only just
+nineteen when, please God, her baby is born.  Sometimes, of an
+evening, we sit for hours on this bench, she and I, talking of what
+we ought to do, and how we ought to rear the little thing, until we
+fall into silence, awed at the blessing that is coming to us."
+
+"God will help you both, and make you wise."
+
+"We trust He will; and then we are not afraid."
+
+A little while longer I sat by John's side, catching the dim outline
+of his face, half uplifted, looking towards those myriad worlds,
+which we are taught to believe, and do believe, are not more precious
+in the Almighty sight than one living human soul.
+
+But he said no more of the hope that was coming, or of the thoughts
+which, in the holy hush of that summer night, had risen out of the
+deep of his heart.  And though after this time they never again
+formed themselves into words, yet he knew well that not a hope, or
+joy, or fear of his, whether understood or not, could be unshared by
+me.
+
+In the winter, when the first snow lay on the ground, the little one
+came.
+
+It was a girl--I think they had wished for a son; but they forgot all
+about it when the tiny maiden appeared.  She was a pretty baby--at
+least, all the women-kind said so, from Mrs. Jessop down to Jael, who
+left our poor house to its own devices, and trod stately in Mrs.
+Halifax's, exhibiting to all beholders the mass of white draperies
+with the infinitesimal human morsel inside them, which she vehemently
+declared was the very image of its father.
+
+For that young father--
+
+But I--what can _I_ say?  How should _I_ tell of the joy of a man
+over his first-born?
+
+I did not see John till a day afterwards--when he came into our
+house, calm, happy, smiling.  But Jael told me, that when she first
+placed his baby in his arms he had wept like a child.
+
+The little maiden grew with the snowdrops.  Winter might have dropped
+her out of his very lap, so exceedingly fair, pale, and pure-looking
+was she.  I had never seen, or at least never noticed, any young baby
+before; but she crept into my heart before I was aware.  I seem to
+have a clear remembrance of all the data in her still and quiet
+infancy, from the time her week-old fingers, with their tiny pink
+nails--a ludicrous picture of her father's hand in little--made me
+smile as they closed over mine.
+
+She was named Muriel--after the rather peculiar name of John's
+mother.  Her own mother would have it so; only wishing out of her
+full heart, happy one! that there should be a slight alteration made
+in the second name.  Therefore the baby was called Muriel Joy--Muriel
+Joy Halifax.
+
+That name--beautiful, sacred, and never-to-be-forgotten among us--I
+write it now with tears.
+
+                    *          *          *          *
+
+In December, 1802, she was born--our Muriel.  And on February 9th--
+alas! I have need to remember the date!--she formally received her
+name.  We all dined at John's house--Dr. and Mrs. Jessop, my father
+and I.
+
+It was the first time my father had taken a meal under any roof but
+his own for twenty years.  We had not expected him, since, when asked
+and entreated, he only shook his head; but just when we were all
+sitting down to the table, Ursula at the foot, her cheeks flushed,
+and her lips dimpling with a house-wifely delight that everything was
+so nice and neat, she startled us by a little cry of pleasure.  And
+there, in the doorway, stood my father!
+
+His broad figure, but slightly bent even now, his smooth-shaven face,
+withered, but of a pale brown still, with the hard lines softening
+down, and the keen eyes kinder than they used to be; dressed
+carefully in his First-day clothes, the stainless white kerchief
+supporting his large chin, his Quaker's hat in one hand, his stick in
+the other, looking in at us, a half-amused twitch mingling with the
+gravity of his mouth--thus he stood--thus I see thee, O my dear old
+father!
+
+The young couple seemed as if they never could welcome him enough.
+He only said, "I thank thee, John," "I thank thee, Ursula;" and took
+his place beside the latter, giving no reason why he had changed his
+mind and come.  Simple as the dinner was--simple as befitted those
+who, their guests knew, could not honestly afford luxuries; though
+there were no ornaments, save the centre nosegay of laurustinus and
+white Christmas roses--I do not think King George himself ever sat
+down to a nobler feast.
+
+Afterwards we drew merrily round the fire, or watched outside the
+window the thickly falling snow.
+
+"It has not snowed these two months," said John; "never since the day
+our little girl was born."
+
+And at that moment, as if she heard herself mentioned, and was
+indignant at our having forgotten her so long, the little maid
+up-stairs set up a cry--that unmistakable child's cry, which seems to
+change the whole atmosphere of a household.
+
+My father gave a start--he had never seen or expressed a wish to see
+John's daughter.  We knew he did not like babies.  Again the little
+helpless wail; Ursula rose and stole away--Abel Fletcher looked after
+her with a curious expression, then began to say something about
+going back to the tan-yard.
+
+"Do not, pray do not leave us," John entreated; "Ursula wants to show
+you our little lady."
+
+My father put out his hands in deprecation; or as if desiring to
+thrust from him a host of thronging, battling thoughts.  Still, came
+faintly down at intervals the tiny voice, dropping into a soft coo of
+pleasure, like a wood-dove in its nest--every mother knows the sound.
+And then Mrs. Halifax entered holding in her arms her little winter
+flower, her baby daughter.
+
+Abel Fletcher just looked at it and her--closed his eyes against
+both, and looked no more.
+
+Ursula seemed pained a moment, but soon forgot it in the general
+admiration of her treasure.
+
+"She might well come in a snow-storm," said Mrs. Jessop, taking the
+child.  "She is just like snow, so soft and white."
+
+"And as soundless--she hardly ever cries.  She just lies in this way
+half the day over, cooing quietly, with her eyes shut.  There, she
+has caught your dress fast.  Now, was there ever a two months' old
+baby so quick at noticing things? and she does it all with her
+fingers--she touches everything;--ah! take care, doctor," the mother
+added, reproachfully, at a loud slam of the door, which made the baby
+tremble all over.
+
+"I never knew a child so susceptible of sounds," said John, as he
+began talking to it and soothing it;--how strange it was to see him!
+and yet it seemed quite natural already.  "I think even now she knows
+the difference between her mother's voice and mine; and any sudden
+noise always startles her in this way."
+
+"She must have astonishingly quick hearing," said the doctor,
+slightly annoyed.  Ursula wisely began to talk of something else--
+showed Muriel's eyelashes, very long for such a baby--and descanted
+on the colour of her eyes, that fruitful and never-ending theme of
+mothers and friends.
+
+"I think they are like her father's; yes, certainly like her
+father's.  But we have not many opportunities of judging, for she is
+such a lazy young damsel, she hardly ever opens them--we should often
+fancy her asleep, but for that little soft coo; and then she will
+wake up all of a sudden.  There now! do you see her?  Come to the
+window, my beauty! and show Dr. Jessop your bonny brown eyes."
+
+They were bonny eyes! lovely in shape and colour, delicately fringed;
+but there was something strange in their expression--or rather, in
+their want of it.  Many babies have a round, vacant stare--but this
+was no stare, only a wide, full look--a look of quiet blankness--an
+UNSEEING look.
+
+It caught Dr. Jessop's notice.  I saw his air of vexed dignity change
+into a certain anxiety.
+
+"Well, whose are they like--her father's or mine?  His, I hope--it
+will be the better for her beauty.  Nay, we'll excuse all
+compliments."
+
+"I--I can't exactly tell.  I could judge better by candlelight."
+
+"We'll have candles."
+
+"No--no!  Had we not better put it off altogether, till another day?-
+-I'll call in to-morrow and look at her eyes."
+
+His manner was hesitating and troubled.  John noticed it.
+
+"Love, give her to me.  Go and get us lights, will you?"
+
+When she was gone, John took his baby to the window, gazed long and
+intently into her little face, then at Dr. Jessop.  "Do you think--
+no--it's not possible--that there can be anything the matter with the
+child's eyes?"
+
+Ursula coming in, heard the last words.
+
+"What was that you said about baby's eyes?"
+
+No one answered her.  All were gathered in a group at the window, the
+child being held on her father's lap, while Dr. Jessop was trying to
+open the small white lids, kept so continually closed.  At last the
+baby uttered a little cry of pain--the mother darted forward, and
+clasped it almost savagely to her breast.
+
+"I will not have my baby hurt!  There is nothing wrong with her sweet
+eyes.  Go away; you shall not touch her, John."
+
+"Love!"
+
+She melted at that low, fond word; leaning against his shoulder--
+trying to control her tears.
+
+"It shocked me so--the bare thought of such a thing.  Oh! husband,
+don't let her be looked at again."
+
+"Only once again, my darling.  It is best.  Then we shall be quite
+satisfied.  Phineas, give me the candle."
+
+The words--caressing, and by strong constraint made calm and
+soothing--were yet firm.  Ursula resisted no more, but let him take
+Muriel--little, unconscious, cooing dove!  Lulled by her father's
+voice she once more opened her eyes wide.  Dr. Jessop passed the
+candle before them many times, once so close that it almost touched
+her face; but the full, quiet eyes, never blenched nor closed.  He
+set the light down.
+
+"Doctor!" whispered the father, in a wild appeal against--ay, it was
+against certainty.  He snatched the candle, and tried the experiment
+himself.
+
+"She does not see at all.  Can she be blind?"
+
+"Born blind."
+
+Yes, those pretty baby-eyes were dark--quite dark.  There was nothing
+painful nor unnatural in their look, save, perhaps, the blankness of
+gaze which I have before noticed.  Outwardly, their organization was
+perfect; but in the fine inner mechanism was something wrong--
+something wanting.  She never had seen--never would see--in this
+world.
+
+"BLIND!"  The word was uttered softly, hardly above a breath, yet the
+mother heard it.  She pushed every one aside, and took the child
+herself.  Herself, with a desperate incredulity, she looked into
+those eyes, which never could look back either her agony or her love.
+Poor mother!
+
+"John! John! oh, John!"--the name rising into a cry, as if he could
+surely help her.  He came and took her in his arms--took both, wife
+and babe.  She laid her head on his shoulder in bitter weeping.  "Oh,
+John! it is so hard.  Our pretty one--our own little child!"
+
+John did not speak, but only held her to him--close and fast.  When
+she was a little calmer he whispered to her the comfort--the sole
+comfort even her husband could give her--through whose will it was
+that this affliction came.
+
+"And it is more an affliction to you than it will be to her, poor
+pet!" said Mrs. Jessop, as she wiped her friendly eyes.  "She will
+not miss what she never knew.  She may be a happy little child.
+Look, how she lies and smiles."
+
+But the mother could not take that consolation yet.  She walked to
+and fro, and stood rocking her baby, mute indeed, but with tears
+falling in showers.  Gradually her anguish wept itself away, or was
+smothered down, lest it should disturb the little creature asleep on
+her breast.
+
+Some one came behind her, and placed her in the arm-chair, gently.
+It was my father.  He sat down by her, taking her hand.
+
+"Grieve not, Ursula.  I had a little brother who was blind.  He was
+the happiest creature I ever knew."
+
+My father sighed.  We all marvelled to see the wonderful softness,
+even tenderness, which had come into him.
+
+"Give me thy child for a minute."  Ursula laid it across his knees;
+he put his hand solemnly on the baby-breast.  "God bless this little
+one!  Ay, and she shall be blessed."
+
+These words, spoken with as full assurance as the prophetic
+benediction of the departing patriarchs of old, struck us all.  We
+looked at little Muriel as if the blessing were already upon her; as
+if the mysterious touch which had scaled up her eyes for ever had
+left on her a sanctity like as of one who has been touched by the
+finger of God.
+
+"Now, children, I must go home," said my father.
+
+They did not detain us:  it was indeed best that the poor young
+parents should be left alone.
+
+"You will come again soon?" begged Ursula, tenderly clasping the hand
+which he had laid upon her curls as he rose with another murmured
+"God bless thee!"
+
+"Perhaps.  We never know.  Be a good wife to thy husband, my girl.
+And John, never be thou harsh to her, nor too hard upon her little
+failings.  She is but young--but young."
+
+He sighed again.  It was plain to see he was thinking of another than
+Ursula.
+
+As we walked down the street he spoke to me only once or twice, and
+then of things which startled me by their strangeness--things which
+had happened a long time ago; sayings and doings of mine in my
+childhood, which I had not the least idea he had either known of or
+remembered.
+
+When we got in-doors I asked if I should come and sit with him till
+his bed-time.
+
+"No--no; thee looks tired, and I have a business letter to write.
+Better go to thy bed as usual."
+
+I bade him good-night, and was going, when he called me back.
+
+"How old art thee, Phineas--twenty-four or five?"
+
+"Twenty-five, father."
+
+"Eh! so much?"  He put his hand on my shoulder, and looked down on me
+kindly, even tenderly.  "Thee art but weakly still, but thee must
+pick up, and live to be as old a man as thy father.  Goodnight.  God
+be with thee, my son!"
+
+I left him.  I was happy.  Once I had never expected my old father
+and I would have got on together so well, or loved one another so
+dearly.
+
+In the middle of the night Jael came into my room, and sat down on my
+bed's foot, looking at me.  I had been dreaming strangely, about my
+own childish days, and about my father and mother when we were young.
+
+What Jael told me--by slow degrees, and as tenderly as when she was
+my nurse years ago--seemed at first so unreal as to be like a part of
+the dream.
+
+At ten o'clock, when she had locked up the house, she had come as
+usual to the parlour door, to tell my father it was bed-time.  He did
+not answer, being sitting with his back to the door, apparently busy
+writing.  So she went away.
+
+Half an hour afterwards she came again.  He sat there still--he had
+not moved.  One hand supported his head; the other, the fingers
+stiffly holding the pen, lay on the table.  He seemed intently gazing
+on what he had written.  It ran thus:
+
+"GOOD FRIEND,
+          "To-morrow I shall be--"
+
+But there the hand had stopped--for ever.
+
+O dear father! on that to-morrow thou wert with God.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+It was the year 1812.  I had lived for ten years as a brother in my
+adopted brother's house, whither he had brought me on the day of my
+father's funeral; entreating that I should never leave it again.
+For, as was shortly afterwards made clear, fate--say Providence--was
+now inevitably releasing him from a bond, from which, so long as my
+poor father lived, John would never have released himself.  It was
+discovered that the profits of the tanning trade had long been merely
+nominal--that of necessity, for the support of our two families, the
+tan-yard must be sold, and the business confined entirely to the
+flour-mill.
+
+At this crisis, as if the change of all things broke her stout old
+heart, which never could bend to any new ways--Jael died.  We laid
+her at my father's and mother's feet--poor old Jael! and that
+grave-yard in St. Mary's Lane now covered over all who loved me, all
+who were of my youth day--my very own.
+
+So thought I--or might have thought--but that John and Ursula then
+demanded with one voice, "Brother, come home."
+
+I resisted long:  for it is one of my decided opinions that married
+people ought to have no one, be the tie ever so close and dear,
+living permanently with them, to break the sacred duality--no, let me
+say the unity of their home.
+
+I wished to try and work for my living, if that were possible--if
+not, that out of the wreck of my father's trade might be found enough
+to keep me, in some poor way.  But John Halifax would not hear of
+that.  And Ursula--she was sitting sewing, while the little one lay
+on her lap, cooing softly with shut eyes--Ursula took my hand to play
+with Muriel's.  The baby fingers closed over mine--"See there,
+Phineas; SHE wants you too."  So I stayed.
+
+Perhaps it was on this account that better than all his other
+children, better than anything on earth except himself, I loved
+John's eldest daughter, little blind Muriel.
+
+He had several children now.  The dark old house, and the square town
+garden, were alive with their voices from morning till night.  First,
+and loudest always, was Guy--born the year after Muriel.  He was very
+like his mother, and her darling.  After him came two more, Edwin and
+Walter.  But Muriel still remained as "sister"--the only sister
+either given or desired.
+
+If I could find a name to describe that child it would be not the one
+her happy mother gave her at her birth, but one more sacred, more
+tender.  She was better than Joy--she was an embodied Peace.
+
+Her motions were slow and tranquil--her voice soft--every expression
+of her little face extraordinarily serene.  Whether creeping about
+the house, with a foot-fall silent as snow, or sitting among us,
+either knitting busily at her father's knee, or listening to his talk
+and the children's play, everywhere and always Muriel was the same.
+No one ever saw her angry, restless, or sad.  The soft dark calm in
+which she lived seemed never broken by the troubles of this our
+troublous world.
+
+She was, as I have said, from her very babyhood a living peace.  And
+such she was to us all, during those ten struggling years, when our
+household had much to contend with, much to endure.  If at night her
+father came home jaded and worn, sickened to the soul by the hard
+battle he had to fight daily, hourly, with the outside world, Muriel
+would come softly and creep into his bosom, and he was comforted.
+If, busying herself about, doing faithfully her portion too, that the
+husband when he came in of evenings might find all cheerful and never
+know how heavy had been the household cares during the day--if, at
+times, Ursula's voice took too sharp a tone, at sight of Muriel it
+softened at once.  No one could speak any but soft and sweet words
+when the blind child was by.
+
+Yet, I think either parent would have looked amazed had any one
+pitied them for having a blind child.  The loss--a loss only to them,
+and not to her, the darling!--became familiar, and ceased to wound;
+the blessedness was ever new.  "Ay, and she shall be blessed," had
+said my dear father.  So she was.  From her, or for her, her parents
+never had to endure a single pain.  Even the sicknesses of infancy
+and childhood, of which the three others had their natural share,
+always passed her by, as if in pity.  Nothing ever ailed Muriel.
+
+The spring of 1812 was an era long remembered in our family.  Scarlet
+fever went through the house--safely, but leaving much care behind.
+When at last they all came round, and we were able to gather our pale
+little flock to a garden feast, under the big old pear-tree, it was
+with the trembling thankfulness of those who have gone through great
+perils, hardly dared to be recognized as such till they were over.
+
+"Ay, thank God it is over!" said John, as he put his arm round his
+wife, and looked in her worn face, where still her own smile
+lingered--her bright, brave smile, that nothing could ever drive
+away.  "And now we must try and make a little holiday for you."
+
+"Nonsense!  I am as well as possible.  Did not Dr. Jessop tell me,
+this morning, I was looking younger than ever?  I--a mother of a
+family, thirty years old?  Pray, Uncle Phineas, do I look my age?"
+
+I could not say she did not--especially now.  But she wore it so
+gracefully, so carelessly, that I saw--ay, and truly her husband saw-
+-a sacred beauty about her jaded cheek, more lovely and lovable than
+all the bloom of her youth.  Happy woman! who was not afraid of
+growing old.
+
+"Love"--John usually called her "Love"--putting it at the beginning
+of a sentence, as if it had been her natural Christian name--which,
+as in all infant households, had been gradually dropped or merged
+into the universal title of "Mother."  My name for her was always
+emphatically "The Mother"--the truest type of motherhood I ever knew.
+
+"Love," her husband began again, after a long look in her face--ah,
+John, thine was altered too, but himself was the last thing he
+thought of--"say what you like--I know what we'll do:  for the
+children's sake.  Ah, that's her weak point;--see, Phineas, she is
+yielding now.  We'll go for three months to Longfield."
+
+Now Longfield was the Utopia of our family, old and young.  A very
+simple family we must have been--for this Longfield was only a small
+farm-house, about six miles off, where once we had been to tea, and
+where ever since we had longed to live.  For, pretty as our domain
+had grown, it was still in the middle of a town, and the children,
+like all naturally-reared children, craved after the freedom of the
+country--after corn-fields, hay-fields, nuttings, blackberryings--
+delights hitherto known only at rare intervals, when their father
+could spare a whole long day, and be at once the sun and the shield
+of the happy little band.
+
+"Hearken, children! father says we shall go for three whole months to
+live at Longfield."
+
+The three boys set up a shout of ecstacy.
+
+"I'll swim boats down the stream, and catch and ride every one of the
+horses.  Hurrah!" shouted Guy.
+
+"And I'll see after the ducks and chickens, and watch all the
+threshing and winnowing," said Edwin, the practical and grave.
+
+"And I'll get a 'ittle 'amb to p'ay wid me," lisped Walter--still
+"the baby"---or considered such, and petted accordingly.
+
+"But what does my little daughter say?" said the father, turning--as
+he always turned, at the lightest touch of those soft, blind fingers,
+creeping along his coat sleeve.  "What will Muriel do at Longfield?"
+
+"Muriel will sit all day and hear the birds sing."
+
+"So she shall, my blessing!"  He often called her his "blessing,"
+which in truth she was.  To see her now leaning her cheek against
+his--the small soft face, almost a miniature of his own, the hair, a
+paler shade of the same bright colour, curling in the same elastic
+rings--they looked less like ordinary father and daughter, than like
+a man and his good angel; the visible embodiment of the best half of
+his soul.  So she was ever to him, this child of his youth--his
+first-born and his dearest.
+
+The Longfield plan being once started, father and mother and I began
+to consult together as to ways and means; what should be given up,
+and what increased, of our absolute luxuries, in order that the
+children might this summer--possibly every summer--have the glory of
+"living in the country."  Of these domestic consultations there was
+never any dread, for they were always held in public.  There were no
+secrets in our house.  Father and mother, though sometimes holding
+different opinions, had but one thought, one aim--the family good.
+Thus, even in our lowest estate there had been no bitterness in our
+poverty; we met it, looked it in the face, often even laughed at it.
+For it bound us all together, hand in hand; it taught us endurance,
+self-dependence, and, best of all lessons, self-renunciation.  I
+think, one's whole after-life is made easier and more blessed by
+having known what it was to be very poor when one was young.
+
+Our fortunes were rising now, and any little pleasure did not take
+near so much contrivance.  We found we could manage the Longfield
+visit--ay, and a horse for John to ride to and fro--without any worse
+sacrifice than that of leaving Jenny--now Mrs. Jem Watkins, but our
+cook still--in the house at Norton Bury, and doing with one servant
+instead of two.  Also, though this was not publicly known till
+afterwards, by the mother's renouncing a long-promised silk dress--
+the only one since her marriage, in which she had determined to
+astonish John by choosing the same colour as that identical grey gown
+he had seen hanging up in the kitchen at Enderley.
+
+"But one would give up anything," she said, "that the children might
+have such a treat, and that father might have rides backwards and
+forwards through green lanes all summer.  Oh, how I wish we could
+always live in the country!"
+
+"Do you?"  And John looked--much as he had looked at long-tailed grey
+ponies in his bridegroom days--longing to give her every thing she
+desired.  "Well, perhaps, we may manage it some time."
+
+"When our ship comes in--namely, that money which Richard Brithwood
+will not pay, and John Halifax will not go to law to make him.  Nay,
+father dear, I am not going to quarrel with any one of your
+crotchets."  She spoke with a fond pride, as she did always, even
+when arguing against the too Quixotic carrying out of the said
+crotchets.  "Perhaps, as the reward of forbearance, the money will
+come some day when we least expect it; then John shall have his
+heart's desire, and start the cloth-mills at Enderley."
+
+John smiled, half-sadly.  Every man has a hobby--this was his, and
+had been for fifteen years.  Not merely the making a fortune, as he
+still firmly believed it could be made, but the position of useful
+power, the wide range of influence, the infinite opportunities of
+doing good.
+
+"No, love; I shall never be 'patriarch of the valley,' as Phineas
+used to call it.  The yew-hedge is too thick for me, eh, Phineas?"
+
+"No!" cried Ursula--we had told her this little incident of our
+boyhood--"you have got half through it already.  Everybody in Norton
+Bury knows and respects you.  I am sure, Phineas, you might have
+heard a pin fall at the meeting last night when he spoke against
+hanging the Luddites.  And such a shout as rose when he ended--oh,
+how proud I was!"
+
+"Of the shout, love?"
+
+"Nonsense!--but of the cause of it.  Proud to see my husband
+defending the poor and the oppressed--proud to see him honoured and
+looked up to, more and more every year, till--"
+
+"Till it may come at last to the prophecy in your birthday verse--
+'Her husband is known in the gates; he sitteth among the elders of
+the land.'"
+
+Mrs. Halifax laughed at me for reminding her of this, but allowed
+that she would not dislike its being fulfilled.
+
+"And it will be too.  He is already 'known in the gates'; known far
+and near.  Think how many of our neighbours come to John to settle
+their differences, instead of going to law!  And how many poachers
+has he not persuaded out of their dishonest--"
+
+"Illegal," corrected John.
+
+"Well, their illegal ways, and made decent, respectable men of them!
+Then, see how he is consulted, and his opinion followed, by rich folk
+as well as poor folk, all about the neighbourhood.  I am sure John is
+as popular, and has as much influence, as many a member of
+parliament."
+
+John smiled with an amused twitch about his mouth, but he said
+nothing.  He rarely did say anything about himself--not even in his
+own household.  The glory of his life was its unconsciousness--like
+our own silent Severn, however broad and grand its current might be,
+that course seemed the natural channel into which it flowed.
+
+"There's Muriel," said the father, listening.
+
+Often thus the child slipped away, and suddenly we heard all over the
+house the sweet sounds of "Muriel's voice," as some one had called
+the old harpsichord.  When almost a baby she would feel her way to
+it, and find out first harmonies, then tunes, with that quickness and
+delicacy of ear peculiar to the blind.
+
+"How well she plays!  I wish I could buy her one of those new
+instruments they call 'pianofortes;' I was looking into the mechanism
+of one the other day."
+
+"She would like an organ better.  You should have seen her face in
+the Abbey church this morning."
+
+"Hark! she has stopped playing.  Guy, run and bring your sister
+here," said the father, ever yearning after his darling.
+
+Guy came back with a wonderful story of two gentlemen in the parlour,
+one of whom had patted his head--"Such a grand gentleman, a great
+deal grander than father!"
+
+That was true, as regarded the bright nankeens, the blue coat with
+gold buttons, and the showiest of cambric kerchiefs swathing him up
+to the very chin.  To this "grand" personage John bowed formally, but
+his wife flushed up in surprised recognition.
+
+"It is so long since I had the happiness of meeting Miss March, that
+I conclude Mrs. Halifax has forgotten me?"
+
+"No, Lord Luxmore, allow me to introduce my husband."
+
+And, I fancied, some of Miss March's old hauteur returned to the
+mother's softened and matronly mien;--pride, but not for herself or
+in herself, now.  For, truly, as the two men stood together--though
+Lord Luxmore had been handsome in his youth, and was universally said
+to have as fine manners as the Prince Regent himself--any woman might
+well have held her head loftily, introducing John Halifax as "my
+husband."
+
+Of the two, the nobleman was least at his ease, for the welcome of
+both Mr. and Mrs. Halifax, though courteous, was decidedly cold.
+They did not seem to feel--and, if rumour spoke true, I doubt if any
+honest, virtuous, middle-class fathers and mothers would have felt--
+that their house was greatly honoured or sanctified by the presence
+of the Earl of Luxmore.
+
+But the nobleman was, as I have said, wonderfully fine-mannered.  He
+broke the ice at once.
+
+"Mr. Halifax, I have long wished to know you.  Mrs. Halifax, my
+daughter encouraged me to pay this impromptu visit."
+
+Here ensued polite inquiries after Lady Caroline Brithwood; we
+learned that she was just returned from abroad, and was entertaining,
+at the Mythe House, her father and brother.
+
+"Pardon--I was forgetting my son--Lord Ravenel."
+
+The youth thus presented merely bowed.  He was about eighteen or so,
+tall and spare, with thin features and large soft eyes.  He soon
+retreated to the garden-door, where he stood, watching the boys play,
+and shyly attempting to make friends with Muriel.
+
+"I believe Ravenel has seen you years ago, Mrs. Halifax.  His sister
+made a great pet of him as a child.  He has just completed his
+education--at the College of St. Omer, was it not, William?"
+
+"The Catholic college of St. Omer," repeated the boy.
+
+"Tut--what matters!" said the father, sharply.  "Mr. Halifax, do not
+imagine we are a Catholic family still.  I hope the next Earl of
+Luxmore will be able to take the oaths and his seat, whether or no we
+get Emancipation.  By the by, you uphold the Bill?"
+
+John assented; expressing his conviction, then unhappily a rare one,
+that every one's conscience is free; and that all men of blameless
+life ought to be protected by, and allowed to serve, the state,
+whatever be their religious opinions.
+
+"Mr. Halifax, I entirely agree with you.  A wise man esteems all
+faiths alike worthless."
+
+"Excuse me, my lord, that was the very last thing I meant to say.  I
+hold every man's faith so sacred, that no other man has a right to
+interfere with it, or to question it.  The matter lies solely between
+himself and his Maker."
+
+"Exactly!  What facility of expression your husband has, Mrs.
+Halifax!  He must be--indeed, I have heard he is--a first-rate public
+speaker."
+
+The wife smiled, wife-like; but John said, hurriedly:
+
+"I have no pretention or ambition of the kind.  I merely now and then
+try to put plain truths, or what I believe to be such, before the
+people, in a form they are able to understand."
+
+"Ay, that is it.  My dear sir, the people have no more brains than
+the head of my cane (his Royal Highness's gift, Mrs. Halifax); they
+must be led or driven, like a flock of sheep.  We"--a lordly "we!"--
+"are their proper shepherds.  But, then, we want a middle class--at
+least, an occasional voice from it, a--"
+
+"A shepherd's dog, to give tongue," said John, dryly.  "In short, a
+public orator.  In the House, or out of it?"
+
+"Both."  And the earl tapped his boot with that royal cane, smiling.
+"Yes; I see you apprehend me.  But, before we commence that somewhat
+delicate subject, there was another on which I desired my agent, Mr.
+Brown, to obtain your valuable opinion."
+
+"You mean, when, yesterday, he offered me, by your lordship's express
+desire, the lease, lately fallen in, of your cloth-mills at
+Enderley?"
+
+Now, John had not told us that!--why, his manner too plainly showed.
+
+"And all will be arranged, I trust?  Brown says you have long wished
+to take the mills; I shall be most happy to have you for a tenant."
+
+"My lord, as I told your agent, it is impossible.  We will say no
+more about it."
+
+John crossed over to his wife with a cheerful air.  She sat looking
+grave and sad.
+
+Lord Luxmore had the reputation of being a keen-witted, diplomatic
+personage; undoubtedly he had, or could assume, that winning charm of
+manner which had descended in perfection to his daughter.  Both
+qualities it pleased him to exercise now.  He rose, addressing with
+kindly frankness the husband and wife.
+
+"If I may ask--being a most sincere well-wisher of yours, and a sort
+of connection of Mrs. Halifax's, too--why is it impossible?"
+
+"I have no wish to disguise the reason:  it is because I have no
+capital."
+
+Lord Luxmore looked surprised.  "Surely--excuse me, but I had the
+honour of being well acquainted with the late Mr. March--surely, your
+wife's fortune--"
+
+Ursula rose, in her old impetuous way--"His wife's fortune! (John,
+let me say it!--I will, I must!)--of his wife's fortune, Lord
+Luxmore, he has never received one farthing.  Richard Brithwood keeps
+it back; and my husband would work day and night for me and our
+children rather than go to law."
+
+"Oh! on principle, I suppose?  I have heard of such opinions," said
+the earl, with the slightest perceptible sneer.  "And you agree with
+him?"
+
+"I do, heartily.  I would rather we lived poor all our days than that
+he should wear his life out, trouble his spirit, perhaps even soil
+his conscience, by squabbling with a bad man over money matters."
+
+It was good to see Ursula as she spoke; good to see the look that
+husband and his wife interchanged--husband and wife, different in
+many points, yet so blessedly, so safely ONE!  Then John said, in his
+quiet way,
+
+"Love, perhaps another subject than our own affairs would be more
+interesting to Lord Luxmore."
+
+"Not at all--not at all!"  And the earl was evidently puzzled and
+annoyed.  "Such extraordinary conduct," he muttered:  "so very--
+ahem!--unwise.  If the matter were known--caught up by those
+newspapers--I must really have a little conversation with Brithwood."
+
+The conversation paused, and John changed it entirely by making some
+remarks on the present minister, Mr. Perceval.
+
+"I liked his last speech much.  He seems a clear-headed, honest man,
+for all his dogged opposition to the Bill."
+
+"He will never oppose it more."
+
+"Nay, I think he will, my lord--to the death."
+
+"That may be--and yet--" his lordship smiled.  "Mr. Halifax, I have
+just had news by a carrier pigeon--my birds fly well--most important
+news for us and our party.  Yesterday, in the lobby of the House of
+Commons, Mr. Perceval was shot."
+
+We all started.  An hour ago we had been reading his speech.  Mr.
+Perceval shot!
+
+"Oh, John," cried the mother, her eyes full of tears; "his poor wife-
+-his fatherless children!"
+
+And for many minutes they stood, hearing the lamentable history, and
+looking at their little ones at play in the garden; thinking, as many
+an English father and mother did that day, of the stately house in
+London, where the widow and orphans bewailed their dead.  He might or
+might not be a great statesman, but he was undoubtedly a good man;
+many still remember the shock of his untimely death, and how, whether
+or not they liked him living, all the honest hearts of England
+mourned for Mr. Perceval.
+
+Possibly that number did not include the Earl of Luxmore.
+
+"Requiescat in pace!  I shall propose the canonization of poor
+Bellingham.  For now Perceval is dead there will be an immediate
+election; and on that election depends Catholic Emancipation.  Mr.
+Halifax," turning quickly round to him, "you would be of great use to
+us in parliament."
+
+"Should I?"
+
+"Will you--I like plain speaking--will you enter it?"
+
+Enter parliament!  John Halifax in parliament!  His wife and I were
+both astounded by the suddenness of the possibility; which, however,
+John himself seemed to receive as no novel idea.
+
+Lord Luxmore continued.  "I assure you nothing is more easy; I can
+bring you in at once, for a borough near here--my family borough."
+
+"Which you wish to be held by some convenient person till Lord
+Ravenel comes of age?  So Mr. Brown informed me yesterday."
+
+Lord Luxmore slightly frowned.  Such transactions, as common then in
+the service of the country as they still are in the service of the
+Church, were yet generally glossed over, as if a certain discredit
+attached to them.  The young lord seemed to feel it; at sound of his
+name he turned round to listen, and turned back again, blushing
+scarlet.  Not so the earl, his father.
+
+"Brown is--(may I offer you a pinch, Mr. Halifax?--what, not the
+Prince Regent's own mixture?)--is indeed a worthy fellow, but too
+hasty in his conclusions.  As it happens, my son is yet undecided
+between the Church--that is, the priesthood, and politics.  But to
+our conversation--Mrs. Halifax, may I not enlist you on my side?  We
+could easily remove all difficulties, such as qualification, etc.
+Would you not like to see your husband member for the old and
+honourable borough of Kingswell?"
+
+"Kingswell!"  It was a tumble-down village, where John held and
+managed for me the sole remnant of landed property which my poor
+father had left me.  "Kingswell! why there are not a dozen houses in
+the place."
+
+"The fewer the better, my dear madam.  The election would cost me
+scarcely any--trouble; and the country be vastly the gainer by your
+husband's talents and probity.  Of course he will give up the--I
+forget what is his business now--and live independent.  He is made to
+shine as a politician:  it will be both happiness and honour to
+myself to have in some way contributed to that end.  Mr. Halifax, you
+will accept my borough?"
+
+"Not on any consideration your lordship could offer me."
+
+Lord Luxmore scarcely credited his ears.  "My dear sir--you are the
+most extraordinary--may I again inquire your reasons?"
+
+"I have several; one will suffice.  Though I wish to gain influence--
+power perhaps; still the last thing I should desire would be
+political influence."
+
+"You might possibly escape that unwelcome possession," returned the
+earl.  "Half the House of Commons is made up of harmless dummies, who
+vote as we bid them."
+
+"A character, my lord, for which I am decidedly unfitted.  Until
+political conscience ceases to be a thing of traffic, until the
+people are allowed honestly to choose their own honest
+representatives, I must decline being of that number.  Shall we
+dismiss the subject?"
+
+"With pleasure, sir."
+
+And courtesy being met by courtesy, the question so momentous was
+passed over, and merged into trivialities.  Perhaps the earl, who, as
+his pleasures palled, was understood to be fixing his keen wits upon
+the pet profligacy of old age, politics--saw, clearly enough, that in
+these chaotic days of contending parties, when the maddened outcry of
+the "people" was just being heard and listened to, it might be as
+well not to make an enemy of this young man, who, with a few more,
+stood as it were midway in the gulf, now slowly beginning to narrow,
+between the commonalty and the aristocracy.  He stayed some time
+longer, and then bowed himself away with a gracious condescension
+worthy of the Prince of Wales himself, carrying with him the shy,
+gentle Lord Ravenel, who had spoken scarcely six words the whole
+time.
+
+When he was gone the father and mother seemed both relieved.
+
+"Truly, John, he has gained little by his visit, and I hope it may be
+long before we see an earl in our quiet house again.  Come in to
+dinner, my children."
+
+But his lordship had left an uncomfortable impression behind him.  It
+lasted even until that quiet hour--often the quietest and happiest of
+our day--when, the children being all in bed, we elders closed in
+round the fire.
+
+Ursula and I sat there, longer alone than usual.
+
+"John is late to-night," she said more than once; and I could see her
+start, listening to every foot under the window, every touch at the
+door-bell; not stirring, though:  she knew his foot and his ring
+quite well always.
+
+"There he is!" we both said at once--much relieved; and John came in.
+
+Brightness always came in with him.  Whatever cares he had without--
+and they were heavy enough, God knows--they always seemed to slip off
+the moment he entered his own door; and whatever slight cares we had
+at home, we put them aside; as they could not but be put aside, nay,
+forgotten--at the sight of him.
+
+"Well, Uncle Phineas!  Children all right, my darling?  A fire!  I'm
+glad of it.  Truly to-night is as cold as November."
+
+"John, if you have a weakness, it is for fire.  You're a regular
+salamander."
+
+He laughed--warming his hands at the blaze.  "Yes, I would rather be
+hungry than cold, any day.  Love, our one extravagance is certainly
+coals.  A grand fire this!  I do like it so!"
+
+She called him "foolish;" but smoothed down with a quiet kiss the
+forehead he lifted up to her as she stood beside him, looking as if
+she would any day have converted the whole house into fuel for his
+own private and particular benefit.
+
+"Little ones all in bed, of course?"
+
+"Indeed, they would have lain awake half the night--those naughty
+boys--talking of Longfield.  You never saw children so delighted."
+
+"Are they?"  I thought the tone was rather sad, and that the father
+sat listening with less interest than usual to the pleasant little
+household chronicle, always wonderful and always new, which it was
+his custom to ask for and have, night after night, when he came
+home,--saying it was to him, after his day's toil, like a "babbling
+o' green fields."  Soon it stopped.
+
+"John dear, you are very tired?"
+
+"Rather."
+
+"Have you been very busy all day?"
+
+"Very busy."
+
+I understood, almost as well as his wife did, what those brief
+answers indicated; so, stealing away to the table where Guy's blurred
+copy-book and Edwin's astonishing addition sums were greatly in need
+of Uncle Phineas, I left the fire-side corner to those two.  Soon
+John settled himself in my easy chair, and then one saw how very
+weary he was--weary in body and soul alike--weary as we seldom beheld
+him.  It went to my heart to watch the listless stretch of his large,
+strong frame--the sharp lines about his mouth--lines which ought not
+to have come there in his two-and-thirty years.  And his eyes--they
+hardly looked like John's eyes, as they gazed in a sort of dull
+quietude, too anxious to be dreamy, into the red coals--and nowhere
+else.
+
+At last he roused himself, and took up his wife's work.
+
+"More little coats!  Love, you are always sewing."
+
+"Mothers must--you know.  And I think never did boys outgrow their
+things like our boys.  It is pleasant, too.  If only clothes did not
+wear out so fast."
+
+"Ah!"  A sigh--from the very depths of the father's heart.
+
+"Not a bit too fast for my clever fingers, though," said Ursula,
+quickly.  "Look, John, at this lovely braiding.  But I'm not going to
+do any more of it.  I shall certainly have no time to waste over
+fineries at Longfield."
+
+Her husband took up the fanciful work, admired it, and laid it down
+again.  After a pause he said:
+
+"Should you be very much disappointed if--if we do not go to
+Longfield after all?"
+
+"Not go to Longfield!"  The involuntary exclamation showed how deep
+her longing had been.
+
+"Because I am afraid--it is hard, I know--but I am afraid we cannot
+manage it.  Are you very sorry?"
+
+"Yes," she said frankly and truthfully.  "Not so much for myself,
+but--the children."
+
+"Ay, the poor children."
+
+Ursula stitched away rapidly for some moments, till the grieved look
+faded out of her face; then she turned it, all cheerful once more, to
+her husband.  "Now, John, tell me.  Never mind about the children.
+Tell me."
+
+He told her, as was his habit at all times, of some losses which had
+to-day befallen him--bad debts in his business--which would make it,
+if not impracticable, at least imprudent, to enter on any new
+expenses that year.  Nay, he must, if possible, retrench a little.
+Ursula listened, without question, comment, or complaint.
+
+"Is that all?" she said at last, very gently.
+
+"All."
+
+"Then never mind.  I do not.  We will find some other pleasures for
+the children.  We have so many pleasures, ay, all of us.  Husband, it
+is not so hard to give up this one."
+
+He said, in a whisper, low almost as a lover's, "I could give up
+anything in the world but them and thee."
+
+So, with a brief information to me at supper-time--"Uncle Phineas,
+did you hear? we cannot go to Longfield,"--the renunciation was made,
+and the subject ended.  For this year, at least, our Arcadian dream
+was over.
+
+But John's troubled looks did not pass away.  It seemed as if this
+night his long toil had come to that crisis when the strongest man
+breaks down--or trembles within a hair's breadth of breaking down;
+conscious too, horribly conscious, that if so, himself will be the
+least part of the universal ruin.  His face was haggard, his
+movements irritable and restless; he started nervously at every
+sound.  Sometimes even a hasty word, an uneasiness about trifles,
+showed how strong was the effort he made at self-control.  Ursula,
+usually by far the most quick-tempered of the two, became to-night
+mild and patient.  She neither watched nor questioned him--wise woman
+as she was; she only sat still, busying herself over her work,
+speaking now and then of little things, lest he should notice her
+anxiety about him.  He did at last.
+
+"Nay, I am not ill, do not be afraid.  Only my head aches so--let me
+lay it here as the children do."
+
+His wife made a place for it on her shoulder; there it rested--the
+poor tired head, until gradually the hard and painful expression of
+the features relaxed, and it became John's own natural face--as quiet
+as any of the little faces on their pillows up-stairs, whence,
+doubtless, slumber had long banished all anticipation of Longfield.
+At last he too fell asleep.
+
+Ursula held up her finger, that I might not stir.  The clock in the
+corner, and the soft sobbing of the flame on the hearth, were the
+only sounds in the parlour.  She sewed on quietly, to the end of her
+work; then let it drop on her lap, and sat still.  Her cheek leaned
+itself softly against John's hair, and in her eyes, which seemed so
+intently contemplating the little frock, I saw large bright tears
+gather--fall.  But her look was serene, nay, happy; as if she thought
+of these beloved ones, husband and children--her very own--preserved
+to her in health and peace,--ay, and in that which is better than
+either, the unity of love.  For that priceless blessing, for the
+comfort of being HIS comfort, for the sweetness of bringing up these
+his children in the fear of God and in the honour of their father--
+she, true wife and mother as she was, would not have exchanged the
+wealth of the whole world.
+
+"What's that?"  We all started, as a sudden ring at the bell pealed
+through the house, waking John, and frightening the very children in
+their beds.  All for a mere letter too, brought by a lacquey of Lord
+Luxmore's.  Having--somewhat indignantly--ascertained this fact, the
+mother ran upstairs to quiet her little ones.  When she came down,
+John still stood with the letter in his hand.  He had not told me
+what it was; when I chanced to ask he answered in a low tone--
+"Presently!"  On his wife's entrance he gave her the letter without a
+word.
+
+Well might it startle her into a cry of joy.  Truly the dealings of
+heaven to us were wonderful!
+
+     "Mr. John Halifax.
+     "SIR,
+          "Your wife, Ursula Halifax, having some time since attained
+the age fixed by her late father as her majority, I will, within a
+month after date, pay over to your order all moneys, principal and
+interest, accruing to her, and hitherto left in my hands, as trustee,
+according to the will of the late Henry March, Esquire.
+          "I am, sir,
+              "Yours, etc.,
+                    "RICHARD BRITHWOOD."
+
+"Wonderful--wonderful!"
+
+It was all I could say.  That one bad man, for his own purposes,
+should influence another bad man to an act of justice--and that their
+double evil should be made to work out our good!  Also, that this
+should come just in our time of need--when John's strength seemed
+ready to fail.
+
+"Oh John--John! now you need not work so hard!"
+
+That was his wife's first cry, as she clung to him almost in tears.
+
+He too was a good deal agitated.  This sudden lifting of the burthen
+made him feel how heavy it had been--how terrible the responsibility-
+-how sickening the fear.
+
+"Thank God!  In any case, you are quite safe now--you and the
+children!"
+
+He sat down, very pale.  His wife knelt beside him, and put her arms
+around his neck--I quietly went out of the room.
+
+When I came in again, they were standing by the fire-side--both
+cheerful, as two people to whom had happened such unexpected good
+fortune might naturally be expected to appear.  I offered my
+congratulations in rather a comical vein than otherwise; we all of us
+had caught John's habit of putting things in a comic light whenever
+he felt them keenly.
+
+"Yes, he is a rich man now--mind you treat your brother with extra
+respect, Phineas."
+
+"And your sister too.
+
+    'For she sall walk in silk attire,
+        And siller hae to spare.'
+
+She's quite young and handsome still--isn't she?  How magnificent
+she'll look in that grey silk gown!"
+
+"John, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! you--the father of a
+family! you--that are to be the largest mill-owner at Enderley--"
+
+He looked at her fondly, half deprecatingly.  "Not till I have made
+you and the children all safe--as I said."
+
+"We are safe--quite safe--when we have you.  Oh, Phineas! make him
+see it as I do.  Make him understand that it will be the happiest day
+in his wife's life when she knows him happy in his heart's desire."
+
+We sat a little while longer, talking over the strange change in our
+fortunes--for they wished to make me feel that now, as ever, what was
+theirs was mine; then Ursula took her candle to depart.
+
+"Love!" John cried, calling her back as she shut the door, and
+watching her stand there patient--watching with something of the old
+mischievous twinkle in his eyes.  "Mrs. Halifax, when shall I have
+the honour of ordering your long-tailed grey ponies?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Not many weeks afterwards we went to live at Longfield, which
+henceforth became the family home for many years.
+
+Longfield! happy Longfield! little nest of love, and joy, and peace--
+where the children grew up, and we grew old--where season after
+season brought some new change ripening in us and around us--where
+summer and winter, day and night, the hand of God's providence was
+over our roof, blessing our goings out and our comings in, our basket
+and our store; crowning us with the richest blessing of all, that we
+were made a household where "brethren dwelt together in unity."
+Beloved Longfield! my heart, slow pulsing as befits one near the
+grave, thrills warm and young as I remember thee!
+
+Yet how shall I describe it--the familiar spot; so familiar that it
+seems to need no description at all.
+
+It was but a small place when we first came there.  It led out of the
+high-road by a field-gate--the White Gate; from which a narrow path
+wound down to a stream, thence up a green slope to the house; a mere
+farm-house, nothing more.  It had one parlour, three decent bed-
+rooms, kitchen and out-houses; we built extempore chambers out of the
+barn and cheese-room.  In one of these the boys, Guy and Edwin,
+slept, against the low roof of which the father generally knocked his
+head every morning when he came to call the lads.  Its windows were
+open all summer round, and birds and bats used oftentimes to fly in,
+to the great delight of the youthful inmates.
+
+Another infinite pleasure to the little folk was that for the first
+year, the farm-house kitchen was made our dining-room.  There,
+through the open door, Edwin's pigeons, Muriel's two doves, and
+sometimes a stately hen, walked in and out at pleasure.  Whether our
+live stock, brought up in the law of kindness, were as well-trained
+and well-behaved as our children, I cannot tell; but certain it is
+that we never found any harm from this system, necessitated by our
+early straits at Longfield--this "liberty, fraternity, and equality."
+
+Those words, in themselves true and lovely, but wrested to false
+meaning, whose fatal sound was now dying out of Europe, merged in the
+equally false and fatal shout of "Gloire! gloire!" remind me of an
+event which I believe was the first that broke the delicious monotony
+of our new life.
+
+It was one September morning.  Mrs. Halifax, the children, and I were
+down at the stream, planning a bridge across it, and a sort of
+stable, where John's horse might be put up--the mother had steadily
+resisted the long-tailed grey ponies.  For with all the necessary
+improvements at Longfield, with the large settlement that John
+insisted upon making on his wife and children, before he would use in
+his business any portion of her fortune, we found we were by no means
+so rich as to make any great change in our way of life advisable.
+And, after all, the mother's best luxuries were to see her children
+merry and strong, her husband's face lightened of its care, and to
+know he was now placed beyond doubt in the position he had always
+longed for; for was he not this very day gone to sign the lease of
+Enderley Mills?
+
+Mrs. Halifax had just looked at her watch, and she and I were
+wondering, with quite a childish pleasure, whether he were not now
+signing the important deed, when Guy came running to say a coach-
+and-four was trying to enter the White Gate.
+
+"Who can it be?--But they must be stopped, or they'll spoil John's
+new gravel road that he takes such pride in.  Uncle Phineas, would
+you mind going to see?"
+
+Who should I see, but almost the last person I expected--who had not
+been beheld, hardly spoken of, in our household these ten years--Lady
+Caroline Brithwood, in her travelling-habit of green cloth, her
+velvet riding-hat, with its Prince of Wales' feathers, gayer than
+ever--though her pretty face was withering under the paint, and her
+lively manner growing coarse and bold.
+
+"Is this Longfield?--Does Mr. Halifax--mon Dieu, Mr. Fletcher, is
+that you?"
+
+She held out her hand with the frankest condescension, and in the
+brightest humour in the world.  She insisted on sending on the
+carriage, and accompanying me down to the stream, for a "surprise"--a
+"scene."
+
+Mrs. Halifax, seeing the coach drive on, had evidently forgotten all
+about it.  She stood in the little dell which the stream had made,
+Walter in her arms--her figure thrown back, so as to poise the
+child's weight.  Her right hand kept firm hold of Guy, who was
+paddling barefoot in the stream:  Edwin, the only one of the boys who
+never gave any trouble, was soberly digging away, beside little
+Muriel.
+
+The lady clapped her hands.  "Brava! bravissima! a charming family
+picture, Mrs. Halifax."
+
+"Lady Caroline!"
+
+Ursula left her children, and came to greet her old acquaintance,
+whom she had never once seen since she was Ursula Halifax.  Perhaps
+that fact touched her, and it was with a kind of involuntary
+tenderness that she looked into the sickly face, where all the smiles
+could not hide the wrinkles.
+
+"It is many years since we met; and we are both somewhat altered,
+Cousin Caroline."
+
+"You are, with those three great boys.  The little girl yours also?--
+Oh yes, I remember William told me--poor little thing!"  And with
+uneasy awe she turned from our blind Muriel, our child of peace.
+
+"Will you come up to the house? my husband has only ridden over to
+Enderley; he will be home soon."
+
+"And glad to see me, I wonder?  For I am rather afraid of that
+husband of yours--eh, Ursula?  Yet I should greatly like to stay."
+
+Ursula laughed, and repeated the welcome.  She was so happy herself--
+she longed to distribute her happiness.  They walked, the children
+following, towards the house.
+
+Under the great walnut-tree, by the sunk fence which guarded the
+flower-garden from the sheep and cows, Mrs. Halifax stopped and
+pointed down the green slope of the field, across the valley, to the
+wooded hills opposite.
+
+"Isn't it a pretty view?" said Guy, creeping up and touching the
+stranger's gown; our children had lived too much in an atmosphere of
+love to know either shyness or fear.
+
+"Very pretty, my little friend."
+
+"That's One-tree Hill.  Father is going to take us all a walk there
+this afternoon."
+
+"Do you like going walks with your father?"
+
+"Oh, don't we!"  An electric smile ran through the whole circle.  It
+told enough of the blessed home-tale.
+
+Lady Caroline laughed a sharp laugh.  "Eh, my dear, I see how things
+are.  You don't regret having married John Halifax, the tanner?"
+
+"Regret!"
+
+"Nay, be not impetuous.  I always said he was a noble fellow--so does
+the earl now.  And William--you can't think what a hero your husband
+is to William."
+
+"Lord Ravenel?"
+
+"Ay, my little brother that was--growing a young man now--a frightful
+bigot, wanting to make our house as Catholic as when two or three of
+us lost our heads for King James.  But he is a good boy--poor
+William!  I had rather not talk about him."
+
+Ursula inquired courteously if her Cousin Richard were well.
+
+"Bah!--I suppose he is; he is always well.  His late astonishing
+honesty to Mr. Halifax cost him a fit of gout--mais n'importe.  If
+they meet, I suppose all things will be smooth between them?"
+
+"My husband never had any ill-feeling to Mr. Brithwood."
+
+"I should not bear him an undying enmity if he had.  But you see,
+'tis election time, and the earl wishes to put in a gentleman, a
+friend of ours, for Kingswell.  Mr. Halifax owns some cottages there,
+eh?"
+
+"Mr. Fletcher does.  My husband transacts business--"
+
+"Stop! stop!" cried Lady Caroline.  "I don't understand business; I
+only know that they want your husband to be friendly with mine.  Is
+this plain enough?"
+
+"Certainly:  be under no apprehension.  Mr. Halifax never bears
+malice against any one.  Was this the reason of your visit, Lady
+Caroline?"
+
+"Eh--mon Dieu! what would become of us if we were all as
+straightforward as you, Mistress Ursula?  But it sounds charming--in
+the country.  No, my dear; I came--nay, I hardly know why.  Probably,
+because I liked to come--my usual reason for most actions.  Is that
+your salle-a-manger?  Won't you ask me to dinner, ma cousine?"
+
+"Of course," the mother said, though I fancied, afterwards, the
+invitation rather weighed upon her mind, probably from the doubt
+whether or no John would like it.  But in little things, as in great,
+she had always this safe trust in him--that conscientiously to do
+what she felt to be right was the surest way to be right in her
+husband's eyes.
+
+So Lady Caroline was our guest for the day--a novel guest--but she
+made herself at once familiar and pleasant.  Guy, a little gentleman
+from his cradle, installed himself her admiring knight attendant
+everywhere:  Edwin brought her to see his pigeons; Walter, with
+sweet, shy blushes, offered her "a 'ittle f'ower!" and the three, as
+the greatest of all favours, insisted on escorting her to pay a visit
+to the beautiful calf not a week old.
+
+Laughing, she followed the boys; telling them how lately in Sicily
+she had been presented to a week-old prince, son of Louis Philippe
+the young Duke of Orleans and the Princess Marie-Amelie.  "And truly,
+children, he was not half so pretty as your little calf.  Ursula, I
+am sick of courts sometimes.  I would turn shepherdess myself, if we
+could find a tolerable Arcadia."
+
+"Is there any Arcadia like home?"
+
+"Home!"--Her face expressed the utmost loathing, fear, and scorn.  I
+remembered hearing that the 'Squire since his return from abroad had
+grown just like his father; was drunk every day and all day long.
+"Is your husband altered, Ursula?  He must be quite a young man
+still.  Oh, what it is to be young!"
+
+"John looks much older, people say; but I don't see it."
+
+"Arcadia again!  Can such things be? especially in England, that
+paradise of husbands, where the first husband in the realm sets such
+an illustrious example.  How do you stay-at-home British matrons feel
+towards my friend the Princess of Wales?"
+
+"God help her, and make her as good a woman as she is a wronged and
+miserable wife," said Ursula, sadly.
+
+"Query, Can a 'good woman' be made out of a 'wronged and miserable
+wife'?  If so, Mrs. Halifax, you should certainly take out a patent
+for the manufacture."
+
+The subject touched too near home.  Ursula wisely avoided it, by
+inquiring if Lady Caroline meant to remain in England.
+
+"Cela depend."  She turned suddenly grave.  "Your fresh air makes me
+feel weary.  Shall we go in-doors?"
+
+Dinner was ready laid out--a plain meal; since neither the father nor
+any of us cared for table dainties; but I think if we had lived in a
+hut, and fed off wooden platters on potatoes and salt, our repast
+would have been fair and orderly, and our hut the neatest that a hut
+could be.  For the mother of the family had in perfection almost the
+best genius a woman can have--the genius of tidiness.
+
+We were not in the least ashamed of our simple dinner-table, where no
+difference was ever made for anybody.  We had little plate, but
+plenty of snow-white napery and pretty china; and what with the
+scents of the flower-garden on one side, and the green waving of the
+elm-tree on the other, it was as good as dining out-of-doors.
+
+The boys were still gathered round Lady Caroline, in the little
+closet off the dining-room where lessons were learnt; Muriel sat as
+usual on the door-sill, petting one of her doves that used to come
+and perch on her head and her shoulder, of their own accord, when I
+heard the child say to herself:
+
+"Father's coming."
+
+"Where, darling?"
+
+"Up the farm-yard way.  There--he is on the gravel-walk.  He has
+stopped; I dare say it is to pull some of the jessamine that grows
+over the well.  Now, fly away, dove! Father's here."
+
+And the next minute a general shout echoed, "Father's here!"
+
+He stood in the doorway, lifting one after the other up in his arms;
+having a kiss and a merry word for all--this good father!
+
+O solemn name, which Deity Himself claims and owns!  Happy these
+children, who in its fullest sense could understand the word
+"father!" to whom, from the dawn of their little lives, their father
+was what all fathers should be--the truest representative here on
+earth of that Father in heaven, who is at once justice, wisdom, and
+perfect love.
+
+Happy, too--most blessed among women--the woman who gave her children
+such a father!
+
+Ursula came--for his eye was wandering in search of her--and received
+the embrace, without which he never left her, or returned.
+
+"All rightly settled, John?"
+
+"Quite settled."
+
+"I am so glad."  With a second kiss, not often bestowed in public, as
+congratulation.  He was going to tell more, when Ursula said, rather
+hesitatingly, "We have a visitor to-day."
+
+Lady Caroline came out of her corner, laughing.  "You did not expect
+me, I see.  Am I welcome?"
+
+"Any welcome that Mrs. Halifax has given is also mine."
+
+But John's manner, though polite, was somewhat constrained; and he
+felt, as it seemed to my observant eye, more surprise than
+gratification in this incursion on his quiet home.  Also I noticed
+that when Lady Caroline, in the height of her condescension, would
+have Muriel close to her at dinner, he involuntarily drew his little
+daughter to her accustomed place beside himself,
+
+"She always sits here, thank you."
+
+The table-talk was chiefly between the lady and her host; she rarely
+talked to women when a man was to be had.  Conversation veered
+between the Emperor Napoleon and Lord Wellington, Lord William
+Bentinck and Sardinian policy, the conjugal squabbles of Carlton
+House, and the one-absorbing political question of this year--
+Catholic emancipation.
+
+"You are a staunch supporter of the Bill, my father says.  Of course,
+you aid him in the Kingswell election to-morrow?"
+
+"I can scarcely call it an election," returned John.  He had been
+commenting on it to us that morning rather severely.  An election! it
+was merely a talk in the King's Head parlour, a nomination, and show
+of hands by some dozen poor labourers, tenants of Mr. Brithwood and
+Lord Luxmore, who got a few pounds a-piece for their services--and
+the thing was done.
+
+"Who is the nominee, Lady Caroline?"
+
+"A young gentleman of small fortune, but excellent parts, who
+returned with us from Naples."
+
+The lady's manner being rather more formal than she generally used,
+John looked up quickly.
+
+"The election being to-morrow, of course his name is no secret?"
+
+"Oh, no!  Vermilye.  Mr. Gerard Vermilye.  Do you know him?"
+
+"I have heard of him."
+
+As he spoke--either intentionally or no--John looked full at Lady
+Caroline.  She dropped her eyes and began playing with her bracelets.
+Both immediately quitted the subject of Kingswell election.
+
+Soon after we rose from table; and Guy, who had all dinner-time fixed
+his admiring gaze upon the "pretty lady," insisted on taking her down
+the garden and gathering for her a magnificent arum lily, the
+mother's favourite lily.  I suggested gaining permission first; and
+was sent to ask the question.
+
+I found John and his wife in serious, even painful conversation.
+
+"Love," he was saying, "I have known it for very long; but if she had
+not come here, I would never have grieved you by telling it."
+
+"Perhaps it is not true," said Ursula, warmly.  "The world is ready
+enough to invent cruel falsehoods about us women."
+
+"'Us women!'  Don't say that, Ursula.  I will not have my wife named
+in the same breath with HER."
+
+"John!"
+
+"I will not, I say.  You don't know what it cost me even to see her
+touch your hand."
+
+"John!"
+
+The soft tone recalled him to his better self.
+
+"Forgive me! but I would not have the least taint come near this wife
+of mine.  I could not bear to think of her holding intercourse with a
+light woman--a woman false to her husband."
+
+"I do not believe it.  Caroline was foolish, she was never wicked.
+Listen!--If this were true, how could she be laughing with our
+children now?  Oh! John--think--she has no children."
+
+The deep pity passed from Ursula's heart to her husband's.  John
+clasped fondly the two hands that were laid on his shoulders, as,
+looking up in his face, the happy wife pleaded silently for one whom
+all the world knew was so wronged and so unhappy.
+
+"We will wait a little before we judge.  Love, you are a better
+Christian than I."
+
+All afternoon they both showed more than courtesy--kindness, to this
+woman, at whom, as any one out of our retired household would have
+known, and as John did know well--all the world was already pointing
+the finger, on account of Mr. Gerard Vermilye.  She, on her part,
+with her chameleon power of seizing and sunning herself in the
+delight of the moment, was in a state of the highest enjoyment.  She
+turned "shepherdess," fed the poultry with Edwin, pulled off her
+jewelled ornaments, and gave them to Walter for playthings; nay, she
+even washed off her rouge at the spring, and came in with faint
+natural roses upon her faded cheeks.  So happy she seemed, so
+innocently, childishly happy; that more than once I saw John and
+Ursula exchange satisfied looks, rejoicing that they had followed
+after the divine charity which "thinketh no evil."
+
+After tea we all turned out, as was our wont on summer evenings; the
+children playing about; while the father and mother strolled up and
+down the sloping field-path, arm in arm like lovers, or sometimes he
+fondly leaning upon her.  Thus they would walk and talk together in
+the twilight, for hours.
+
+Lady Caroline pointed to them.  "Look! Adam and Eve modernized;
+Baucis and Philemon when they were young.  Bon Dieu! what it is to be
+young!"
+
+She said this in a gasp, as if wild with terror of the days that were
+coming upon her--the dark days.
+
+"People are always young," I answered, "who love one another as these
+do."
+
+"Love! what an old-fashioned word.  I hate it!  It is so--what would
+you say in English?--so dechirant.  I would not cultivate une grande
+passion for the world."
+
+I smiled at the idea of the bond between Mr. and Mrs. Halifax taking
+the Frenchified character of "une grande passion."
+
+"But home-love, married love, love among children and at the
+fire-side;--you believe in that?"
+
+She turned upon me her beautiful eyes; they had a scared look, like a
+bird's driven right into the fowler's net.
+
+"C'est impossible--impossible!"
+
+The word hissed itself out between her shut teeth--"impossible."
+Then she walked quickly on, and was her lively self once more.
+
+When the evening closed, and the younger children were gone to bed,
+she became rather restless about the non-appearance of her coach.  At
+last a lacquey arrived on foot.  She angrily inquired why a carriage
+had not been sent for her?
+
+"Master didn't give orders, my lady," answered the man, somewhat
+rudely.
+
+Lady Caroline turned pale--with anger or fear--perhaps both.
+
+"You have not properly answered your mistress's question," said Mr.
+Halifax.
+
+"Master says, sir--begging my lady's pardon for repeating it--but he
+says, 'My lady went out against his will, and she may come home when
+and how she likes.'"
+
+"My lady" burst out laughing, and laughed violently and long.
+
+"Tell him I will.  Be sure you tell him I will.  It is the last and
+the easiest obedience."
+
+John sent the lacquey out of the room; and Ursula said something
+about "not speaking thus before a servant."
+
+"Before a servant!  Why, my dear, we furnish entertainment for our
+whole establishment, my husband and I.  We are at the Mythe what the
+Prince Regent and the Princess of Wales are to the country at large.
+We divide our people between us; I fascinate--he bribes.  Ha! ha!
+Well done, Richard Brithwood!  I may come home 'when and how I like!'
+Truly, I'll use that kind permission."
+
+Her eyes glittered with an evil fire:  her cheeks were hot and red.
+
+"Mrs. Halifax, I shall be thrown on your hospitality for an hour or
+two longer.  Could you send a letter for me?"
+
+"To your husband?  Certainly."
+
+"My husband?--Never!--Yes, to MY HUSBAND."  The first part of the
+sentence was full of fierce contempt; the latter, smothered, and
+slowly desperate.  "Tell me, Ursula, what constitutes a man one's
+husband?  Brutality, tyranny--the tyranny which the law sanctions?
+Or kindness, sympathy, devotion, everything that makes life
+beautiful--everything that constitutes happiness and--"
+
+"Sin."
+
+The word in her ear was so low, that she started as if conscience
+only had uttered it--conscience, to whom only her intents were known.
+
+John came forward, speaking gravely, but not unkindly.
+
+"Lady Caroline, I am deeply grieved that this should have happened in
+my house, and through your visiting us against your husband's will."
+
+"His will!"
+
+"Pardon me; but I think a wife is bound to the very last to obey in
+all things, not absolutely wrong, her husband's will.  I am glad you
+thought of writing to Mr. Brithwood."
+
+She shook her head, in mocking denial.
+
+"May I ask, then--since I am to have the honour of sending it--to
+whom is this letter?"
+
+"To--"  I think she would have told a falsehood, if John's eyes had
+not been so keenly fixed upon her.  "To--a friend."
+
+"Friends are at all times dangerous to a lady who--"
+
+"Hates her husband--ha! ha!  Especially male friends?"
+
+"Especially male friends."
+
+Here Guy, who had lingered out of his little bed most unlawfully--
+hovering about, ready to do any chivalrous duty to his idol of the
+day--came up to bid her good-night, and held up his rosy mouth,
+eagerly.
+
+"I--kiss a little child!  I!"--and from her violent laughter she
+burst into a passion of tears.
+
+The mother signed me to carry Guy away; she and John took Lady
+Caroline into the parlour, and shut the door.
+
+Of course I did not then learn what passed--but I did afterwards.
+
+Lady Caroline's tears were evanescent, like all her emotions.  Soon
+she became composed--asked again for writing materials--then
+countermanded the request.
+
+"No, I will wait till to-morrow.  Ursula, you will take me in for the
+night?"
+
+Mrs. Halifax looked appealingly to her husband, but he gave no
+assent.
+
+"Lady Caroline, you should willingly stay, were it not, as you must
+know, so fatal a step.  In your position, you should be most careful
+to leave the world and your husband no single handle against you."
+
+"Mr. Halifax, what right have you---"
+
+"None, save that of an honest man, who sees a woman cruelly wronged,
+and desperate with her wrong; who would thankfully save her if he
+could."
+
+"Save me?  From what--or whom?"
+
+"From Mr. Gerard Vermilye, who is now waiting down the road, and
+whom, if Lady Caroline Brithwood once flies to, or even sees, at this
+crisis, she loses her place among honourable English matrons for
+ever."
+
+John said this, with no air of virtuous anger or contempt, but as the
+simple statement of a fact.  The convicted woman dropped her face
+between her hands.
+
+Ursula, greatly shocked, was some time before she spoke.
+
+"Is it true, Caroline?"
+
+"What is true?"
+
+"That which my husband has heard of you?"
+
+"Yes," she cried, springing up, and dashing back her beautiful hair--
+beautiful still, though she must have been five or six and thirty at
+least--"Yes, it is true--it shall be true.  I will break my bonds and
+live the life I was made for.  I would have done it long ago, but
+for--no matter.  Why, Ursula, he adores me; young and handsome as he
+is, he adores me.  He will give me my youth back again, ay, he will."
+
+And she sang out a French chanson, something about "la liberte et ses
+plaisirs, la jeunesse, l'amour."
+
+The mother grew sterner--any such wife and mother would.  Then and
+there, compassion might have died out of even her good heart, had it
+not been for the sudden noise over-head of children's feet--
+children's chattering.  Once more the pitiful thought came--"She has
+no children."
+
+"Caroline," she said, catching her gown as she passed, "when I was
+with you, you had a child which only breathed and died.  It died
+spotless.  When you die, how dare you meet that little baby?"
+
+The singing changed to sobbing.  "I had forgotten.  My little baby!
+Oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"
+
+Mrs. Halifax, taking in earnest those meaningless French
+ejaculations, whispered something about Him who alone can comfort and
+help us all.
+
+"Him!  I never knew Him, if indeed He be.  No, no, there is no
+after-life."
+
+Ursula turned away in horror.  "John, what shall we do with her?  No
+home!--no husband!--no God!"
+
+"He never leaves Himself without a witness.  Look, love."
+
+The wretched woman sat rocking to and fro--weeping and wringing her
+hands.  "It was cruel--cruel!  You should not have spoken about my
+baby.  Now--"
+
+"Tell me--just one word--I will not believe anybody's word except
+your own.  Caroline, are you--still innocent?"
+
+Lady Caroline shrank from her touch.  "Don't hold me so.  You may
+have one standard of virtue, I another."
+
+"Still, tell me."
+
+"And if I did, you, an 'honourable English matron'--was not that your
+husband's word?--would turn from me, most likely."
+
+"She will not," John said.  "She has been happy, and you most
+miserable."
+
+"Oh, most miserable."
+
+That bitter groan went to both their hearts, Ursula leaned over her--
+herself almost in tears.  "Cousin Caroline, John says true--I will
+not turn from you.  I know you have been sinned against--cruelly--
+cruelly.  Only tell me that you yourself have not sinned."
+
+"I HAVE 'sinned,' as you call it."
+
+Ursula started--drew closer to her husband.  Neither spoke.
+
+"Mrs. Halifax, why don't you take away your hand?"
+
+"I?--let me think.  This is terrible.  Oh, John!"
+
+Again Lady Caroline said, in her sharp, bold tone, "Take away your
+hand."
+
+"Husband, shall I?"
+
+"No."
+
+For some minutes they stood together, both silent, with this poor
+woman.  I call her "poor," as did they, knowing, that if a sufferer
+needs pity, how tenfold more does a sinner!
+
+John spoke first.  "Cousin Caroline."  She lifted up her head in
+amazement.  "We are your cousins, and we wish to be your friends, my
+wife and I.  Will you listen to us?"
+
+She sobbed still, but less violently.
+
+"Only, first--you must promise to renounce for ever guilt and
+disgrace."
+
+"I feel it none.  He is an honourable gentleman--he loves me, and I
+love him.  That is the true marriage.  No, I will make you no such
+promise.  Let me go."
+
+"Pardon me--not yet.  I cannot suffer my wife's kinswoman to elope
+from my own house, without trying to prevent it."
+
+"Prevent!--sir!--Mr. Halifax!  You forget who you are, and who I am--
+the daughter of the Earl of Luxmore."
+
+"Were you the King's daughter it would make no difference.  I will
+save you in spite of yourself, if I can.  I have already spoken to
+Mr. Vermilye, and he has gone away."
+
+"Gone away! the only living soul that loves me.  Gone away!  I must
+follow him--quick--quick."
+
+"You cannot.  He is miles distant by this time.  He is afraid lest
+this story should come out to-morrow at Kingswell; and to be an M.P.
+and safe from arrest is better to Mr. Vermilye than even yourself,
+Lady Caroline."
+
+John's wife, unaccustomed to hear him take that cool, worldly, half-
+sarcastic tone, turned to him somewhat reproachfully; but he judged
+best.  For the moment, this tone had more weight with the woman of
+the world than any homilies.  She began to be afraid of Mr. Halifax.
+Impulse, rather than resolution, guided her, and even these impulses
+were feeble and easily governed.  She sat down again, muttering:
+
+"My will is free.  You cannot control me."
+
+"Only so far as my conscience justifies me in preventing a crime."
+
+"A crime?"
+
+"It would be such.  No sophistries of French philosophy on your part,
+no cruelty on your husband's, can abrogate the one law, which if you
+disown it as God's, is still man's--being necessary for the peace,
+honour, and safety of society."
+
+"What law?"
+
+"THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY."
+
+People do not often utter this plain Bible word.  It made Ursula
+start, even when spoken solemnly by her own husband.  It tore from
+the self-convicted woman all the sentimental disguises with which the
+world then hid, and still hides, its corruptions.  Her sin arose and
+stared her blackly in the face--AS SIN.  She cowered before it.
+
+"Am I--THAT?  And William will know it.  Poor William!"  She looked
+up at Ursula--for the first time with the guilty look; hitherto, it
+had been only one of pain or despair.  "Nobody knows it, except you.
+Don't tell William.  I would have gone long ago, but for him.  He is
+a good boy;--don't let him guess his sister was--"
+
+She left the word unspoken.  Shame seemed to crush her down to the
+earth; shame, the precursor of saving penitence--at least, John
+thought so.  He quitted the room, leaving her to the ministry of his
+other self, his wife.  As he sat down with me, and told me in a few
+words what indeed I had already more than half guessed, I could not
+but notice the expression of his own face.  And I recognized how a
+man can be at once righteous to judge, tender to pity, and strong to
+save; a man the principle of whose life is, as John's was--that it
+should be made "conformable to the image" of Him, who was Himself on
+earth the image of God.
+
+Ursula came out and called her husband.  They talked some time
+together.  I guessed, from what I heard, that she wished Lady
+Caroline to stay the night here, but that he with better judgment was
+urging the necessity of her returning to the protection of her
+husband's home without an hour's delay.
+
+"It is her only chance of saving her reputation.  She must do it.
+Tell her so, Ursula."
+
+After a few minutes, Mrs. Halifax came out again.
+
+"I have persuaded her at last.  She says she will do whatever you
+think best.  Only before she goes, she wants to look at the children.
+May she?"
+
+"Poor soul!--yes," John murmured, turning away.
+
+Stepping out of sight, we saw the poor lady pass through the quiet,
+empty house into the children's bed-room.  We heard her smothered
+sob, at times, the whole way.
+
+Then I went down to the stream, and helped John to saddle his horse,
+with Mrs. Halifax's old saddle--in her girlish days, Ursula used to
+be very fond of riding.
+
+"She can ride back again from the Mythe," said John.  "She wishes to
+go, and it is best she should; so that nothing need be said, except
+that Lady Caroline spent a day at Longfield, and that my wife and I
+accompanied her safe home."
+
+While he spoke, the two ladies came down the field-path.  I fancied I
+heard, even now, a faint echo of that peculiarly sweet and careless
+laugh, indicating how light were all impressions on a temperament so
+plastic and weak--so easily remoulded by the very next influence that
+fate might throw across her perilous way.
+
+John Halifax assisted her on horseback, took the bridle under one arm
+and gave the other to his wife.  Thus they passed up the path, and
+out at the White Gate.
+
+I delayed a little while, listening to the wind, and to the prattle
+of the stream, that went singing along in daylight or in darkness, by
+our happy home at Longfield.  And I sighed to myself, "Poor Lady
+Caroline!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+Midnight though it was, I sat up until John and his wife came home.
+They said scarcely anything, but straightway retired.  In the
+morning, all went on in the house as usual, and no one ever knew of
+this night's episode, except us three.
+
+In the morning, Guy looked wistfully around him, asking for the
+"pretty lady;" and being told that she was gone, and that he would
+not be likely to see her again, seemed disappointed for a minute; but
+soon he went down to play at the stream, and forgot all.
+
+Once or twice I fancied the mother's clear voice about the house was
+rarer than its wont; that her quick, active, cheerful presence--
+penetrating every nook, and visiting every creature, as with the
+freshness of an April wind--was this day softer and sadder; but she
+did not say anything to me, nor I to her.
+
+John had ridden off early--to the flour-mill, which he still kept on,
+together with the house at Norton Bury--he always disliked giving up
+any old associations.  At dinner-time he came home, saying he was
+going out again immediately.
+
+Ursula looked uneasy.  A few minutes after, she followed me under the
+walnut-tree, where I was sitting with Muriel, and asked me if I would
+go with John to Kingswell.
+
+"The election takes place to-day, and he thinks it right to be there.
+He will meet Mr. Brithwood and Lord Luxmore; and though there is not
+the slightest need--my husband can do all that he has to do alone--
+still, for my own satisfaction, I would like his brother to be near
+him."
+
+They invariably called me their brother now; and it seemed as if the
+name had been mine by right of blood always.
+
+Of course, I went to Kingswell, riding John's brown mare, he himself
+walking by my side.  It was not often that we were thus alone
+together, and I enjoyed it much.  All the old days seemed to come
+back again as we passed along the quiet roads and green lanes, just
+as when we were boys together, when I had none I cared for but David,
+and David cared only for me.  The natural growth of things had made a
+difference in this, but our affection had changed its outward form
+only, not its essence.  I often think that all loves and friendships
+need a certain three days' burial before we can be quite sure of
+their truth and immortality.  Mine--it happened just after John's
+marriage, and I may confess it now--had likewise its entombment,
+bitter as brief.  Many cruel hours sat I in darkness, weeping at the
+door of its sepulchre, thinking that I should never see it again;
+but, in the dawn of the morning, it rose, and I met it in the
+desolate garden, different, yet the very same.  And after that, it
+walked with me continually, secure and imperishable evermore.
+
+I rode, and John sauntered beside me along the footpath, now and then
+plucking a leaf or branch off the hedge, and playing with it, as was
+his habit when a lad.  Often I caught the old smile--not one of his
+three boys, not even handsome Guy, had their father's smile.
+
+He was telling me about Enderley Mill, and all his plans there, in
+the which he seemed very happy.  At last, his long life of duty was
+merging into the life he loved.  He looked as proud and pleased as a
+boy, in talking of the new inventions he meant to apply in cloth-
+weaving; and how he and his wife had agreed together to live for some
+years to come at little Longfield, strictly within their settled
+income, that all the remainder of his capital might go to the
+improvement of Enderley Mills and mill-people.
+
+"I shall be master of nearly a hundred, men and women.  Think what
+good we may do!  She has half-a-dozen plans on foot already--bless
+her dear heart!"
+
+It was easy to guess whom he referred to--the one who went hand-
+in-hand with him in everything.
+
+"Was the dinner in the barn, next Monday, her plan, too?"
+
+"Partly.  I thought we would begin a sort of yearly festival for the
+old tan-yard people, and those about the flour-mill, and the
+Kingswell tenants--ah, Phineas, wasn't I right about those Kingswell
+folk?"
+
+These were about a dozen poor families, whom, when our mortgage fell
+in, he had lured out of Sally Watkins' miserable alley to these old
+houses, where they had at least fresh country air, and space enough
+to live wholesomely and decently, instead of herding together like
+pigs in a sty.
+
+"You ought to be proud of your tenants, Phineas.  I assure you, they
+form quite a contrast to their neighbours, who are Lord Luxmore's."
+
+"And his voters likewise, I suppose?--the 'free and independent
+burgesses' who are to send Mr. Vermilye to Parliament?"
+
+"If they can," said John, biting his lip with that resolute half-
+combative air which I now saw in him at times, roused by things which
+continually met him in his dealings with the world--things repugnant
+alike to his feelings and his principles, but which he had still to
+endure, not having risen high enough to oppose, single-handed, the
+great mass of social corruption which at this crisis of English
+history kept gathering and gathering, until out of the very horror
+and loathsomeness of it an outcry for purification arose.
+
+"Do you know, Phineas, I might last week have sold your houses for
+double price?  They are valuable, this election year, since your five
+tenants are the only voters in Kingswell who are not likewise tenants
+of Lord Luxmore.  Don't you see how the matter stands?"
+
+It was not difficult, for that sort of game was played all over
+England, connived at, or at least winked at, by those who had
+political influence to sell or obtain, until the Reform Bill opened
+up the election system in all its rottenness and enormity.
+
+"Of course I knew you would not sell your houses; and I shall use
+every possible influence I have to prevent your tenants selling their
+votes.  Whatever may be the consequence, the sort of thing that this
+Kingswell election bids fair to be, is what any honest Englishman
+ought to set his face against, and prevent if he can."
+
+"Can you?"
+
+"I do not feel sure, but I mean to try.  First, for simple right and
+conscience; secondly, because if Mr. Vermilye is not saved from
+arrest by being placed in Parliament, he will be outlawed and driven
+safe out of the country.  You see?"
+
+Ay, I did, only too well.  Though I foresaw that whatever John was
+about to do, it must necessarily be something that would run directly
+counter to Lord Luxmore--and he had only just signed the lease of
+Enderley Mills.  Still, if right to be done, he ought to do it at all
+risks, at all costs; and I knew his wife would say so.
+
+We came to the foot of Kingswell Hill, and saw the little hamlet--
+with its grey old houses, its small, ancient church, guarded by
+enormous yew-trees, and clothed with ivy that indicated centuries of
+growth.
+
+A carriage overtook us here; in it were two gentlemen, one of whom
+bowed in a friendly manner to John.  He returned it.
+
+"This is well; I shall have one honest gentleman to deal with
+to-day."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Sir Ralph Oldtower, from whom I bought Longfield.  An excellent man-
+-I like him--even his fine old Norman face, like one of his knightly
+ancestors on the tomb in Kingswell church.  There's something
+pleasant about his stiff courtesy and his staunch Toryism; for he
+fully believes in it, and acts up to his belief.  A true English
+gentleman, and I respect him."
+
+"Yet, John, Norton Bury calls you a democrat."
+
+"So I am, for I belong to the people.  But I nevertheless uphold a
+true aristocracy--the BEST MEN of the country,--do you remember our
+Greeks of old?  These ought to govern, and will govern, one day,
+whether their patent of nobility be births and titles, or only
+honesty and brains."
+
+Thus he talked on, and I liked to hear him, for talking was rare in
+his busy life of constant action.  I liked to observe how during
+these ten years his mind had brooded over many things; how it had
+grown, strengthened, and settled itself, enlarging both its vision
+and its aspirations; as a man does, who, his heart at rest in a happy
+home, has time and will to look out from thence into the troublous
+world outside, ready to do his work there likewise.  That John was
+able to do it--ay, beyond most men--few would doubt who looked into
+his face; strong with the strength of an intellect which owed all its
+development to himself alone; calm with the wisdom which, if a man is
+ever to be wise, comes to him after he has crossed the line of thirty
+years.  In that face, where day by day Time was writing its fit
+lessons--beautiful, because they were so fit--I ceased to miss the
+boyish grace, and rejoiced in the manhood present, in the old age
+that was to be.
+
+It seemed almost too short a journey, when, putting his hand on the
+mare's bridle--the creature loved him, and turned to lick his arm the
+minute he came near--John stopped me to see the view from across
+Kingswell churchyard.
+
+"Look, what a broad valley, rich in woods, and meadow-land, and corn.
+How quiet and blue lie the Welsh hills far away.  It does one good to
+look at them.  Nay, it brings back a little bit of me which rarely
+comes uppermost now, as it used to come long ago, when we read your
+namesake, and Shakspeare, and that Anonymous Friend who has since
+made such a noise in the world.  I delight in him still.  Think of a
+man of business liking Coleridge."
+
+"I don't see why he should not."
+
+"Nor I.  Well, my poetic tastes may come out more at Enderley.  Or
+perhaps when I am an old man, and have fought the good fight, and--
+holloa, there!  Matthew Hales, have they made you drunk already?"
+
+The man--he was an old workman of ours--touched his hat, and tried to
+walk steadily past "the master," who looked at once both stern and
+sad.
+
+"I thought it would be so!--I doubt if there is a voter in all
+Kingswell who has not got a bribe."
+
+"It is the same everywhere," I said.  "What can one man do against
+it, single-handed?"
+
+"Single-handed or not, every man ought to do what he can.  And no man
+knows how much he can do till he tries."
+
+So saying, he went into the large parlour of the Luxmore Arms, where
+the election was going on.
+
+A very simple thing, that election!  Sir Ralph Oldtower, who was
+sheriff, sat at a table, with his son, the grave-looking young man
+who had been with him in the carriage; near them were Mr. Brithwood
+of the Mythe, and the Earl of Luxmore.
+
+The room was pretty well filled with farmers' labourers and the like.
+We entered, making little noise; but John's head was taller than most
+heads present; the sheriff saw him at once, and bowed courteously.
+So did young Mr. Herbert Oldtower, so did the Earl of Luxmore.
+Richard Brithwood alone took no notice, but turned his back and
+looked another way.
+
+It was now many years since I had seen the 'squire, Lady Caroline's
+husband.  He had fulfilled the promise of his youth, and grown into a
+bloated, coarse-featured, middle-aged man; such a man as one rarely
+meets with now-a-days; for even I, Phineas Fletcher, have lived to
+see so great a change in manners and morals, that intemperance,
+instead of being the usual characteristic of "a gentleman," has
+become a rare failing--a universally-contemned disgrace.
+
+"Less noise there!" growled Mr. Brithwood.  "Silence, you fellows at
+the door!  Now, Sir Ralph, let's get the business over, and be back
+for dinner."
+
+Sir Ralph turned his stately grey head to the light, put on his gold
+spectacles, and began to read the writ of election.  As he finished,
+the small audience set up a feeble cheer.
+
+The sheriff acknowledged it, then leaned over the table talking with
+rather frosty civility to Lord Luxmore.  Their acquaintance seemed
+solely that of business.  People whispered that Sir Ralph never
+forgot that the Oldtowers were Crusaders when the Ravenels were--
+nobody.  Also the baronet, whose ancestors were all honourable men
+and stainless women, found it hard to overlook a certain royal
+bar-sinister, which had originated the Luxmore earldom, together with
+a few other blots which had tarnished that scutcheon since.  So folk
+said; but probably Sir Ralph's high principle was at least as strong
+as his pride, and that the real cause of his dislike was founded on
+the too well-known character of the Earl of Luxmore.
+
+They ceased talking; the sheriff rose, and briefly stated that
+Richard Brithwood, Esquire, of the Mythe, would nominate a candidate.
+
+The candidate was Gerard Vermilye, Esquire; at the mention of whose
+name one Norton Bury man broke into a horse-laugh, which was quenched
+by his immediate ejection from the meeting.
+
+Then, Mr. Thomas Brown, steward of the Earl of Luxmore, seconded the
+nomination.
+
+After a few words between the sheriff, his son, and Lord Luxmore, the
+result of which seemed rather unsatisfactory than otherwise, Sir
+Ralph Oldtower again rose.
+
+"Gentlemen and electors, there being no other candidate proposed,
+nothing is left me but to declare Gerard Vermilye, Esquire--"
+
+John Halifax made his way to the table.  "Sir Ralph, pardon my
+interruption, but may I speak a few words?"
+
+Mr. Brithwood started up with an angry oath.
+
+"My good sir," said the baronet, with a look of reprehension which
+proved him of the minority who thought swearing ungentlemanly.
+
+"By ---, Sir Ralph, you shall not hear that low fellow!"
+
+"Excuse me, I must, if he has a right to be heard.  Mr. Halifax, you
+are a freeman of Kingswell?"
+
+"I am."
+
+This fact surprised none more than myself.
+
+Brithwood furiously exclaimed that it was a falsehood.  "The fellow
+does not belong to this neighbourhood at all.  He was picked up in
+Norton Bury streets--a beggar, a thief, for all I know."
+
+"You do know very well, Mr. Brithwood.  Sir Ralph, I was never either
+a beggar or a thief.  I began life as a working lad--a farm-labourer-
+-until Mr. Fletcher, the tanner, took me into his employ."
+
+"So I have always understood," said Sir Ralph, courteously.  "And
+next to the man who is fortunate enough to boast a noble origin, I
+respect the man who is not ashamed of an ignoble one."
+
+"That is not exactly my position either," said John, with a half
+smile.  "But we are passing from the question in hand, which is
+simply my claim to be a freeman of this borough."
+
+"On what grounds?"
+
+"You will find in the charter a clause, seldom put in force, that the
+daughter of a freeman can confer the freedom on her husband.  My
+wife's late father, Mr. Henry March, was a burgess of Kingswell.  I
+claimed my rights, and registered, this year.  Ask your clerk, Sir
+Ralph, if I have not spoken correctly."
+
+The old white-headed clerk allowed the fact.
+
+Lord Luxmore looked considerably surprised, and politely incredulous
+still.  His son-in-law broke out into loud abuse of this "knavery."
+
+"I will pass over this ugly word, Mr. Brithwood, merely stating that-
+-"
+
+"We are quite satisfied," interrupted Lord Luxmore, blandly.  "My
+dear sir, may I request so useful a vote and so powerful an interest
+as yours, for our friend, Mr. Vermilye?"
+
+"My lord, I should be very sorry for you to misapprehend me for a
+moment.  It is not my intention, except at the last extremity, to
+vote at all.  If I do, it will certainly not be for Mr. Brithwood's
+nominee.  Sir Ralph, I doubt if, under some circumstances, which by
+your permission I am about to state, Mr. Gerard Vermilye can keep his
+seat, even if elected."
+
+A murmur arose from the crowd of mechanics and labourers, who, awed
+by such propinquity to gentry and even nobility, had hitherto hung
+sheepishly back; but now, like all English crowds, were quite ready
+to "follow the leader," especially one they knew.
+
+"Hear him! hear the master!" was distinguishable on all sides.  Mr.
+Brithwood looked too enraged for words; but Lord Luxmore, taking
+snuff with a sarcastic smile, said:
+
+"Honores mutant mores!--I thought, Mr. Halifax, you eschewed
+politics?"
+
+"Mere politics I do, but not honesty, justice, morality; and a few
+facts have reached my knowledge, though possibly not Lord Luxmore's,
+which make me feel that Mr. Vermilye's election would be an insult to
+all three; therefore, I oppose it."
+
+A louder murmur rose.
+
+"Silence, you scoundrels!" shouted Mr. Brithwood; adding his usual
+formula of speech, which a second time extorted the old baronet's
+grave rebuke.
+
+"It seems, Sir Ralph, that democracy is rife in your neighbourhood.
+True, my acquaintance has not lain much among the commonalty, but
+still I was not aware that the people choose the Member of
+Parliament."
+
+"They do not, Lord Luxmore," returned the sheriff, somewhat
+haughtily.  "But we always hear the people.  Mr. Halifax, be brief.
+What have you to allege against Mr. Brithwood's nominee?"
+
+"First, his qualification.  He has not three hundred, nor one hundred
+a-year.  He is deeply in debt, at Norton Bury and elsewhere.
+Warrants are out against him; and only as an M.P. can he be safe from
+outlawry.  Add to this, an offence common as daylight, yet which the
+law dare not wink at when made patent--that he has bribed, with great
+or small sums, every one of the fifteen electors of Kingswell; and I
+think I have said enough to convince any honest Englishman that Mr.
+Gerard Vermilye is not fit to represent them in Parliament."
+
+Here a loud cheer broke from the crowd at the door and under the open
+windows, where, thick as bees, the villagers had now collected.
+They, the un-voting, and consequently unbribable portion of the
+community, began to hiss indignantly at the fifteen unlucky voters.
+For though bribery was, as John had truly said, "as common as
+daylight," still, if brought openly before the public, the said
+virtuous public generally condemned it, if they themselves had not
+been concerned therein.
+
+The sheriff listened uneasily to a sound, very uncommon at elections,
+of the populace expressing an opinion contrary to that of the lord of
+the soil.
+
+"Really, Mr. Brithwood, you must have been as ignorant as I was of
+the character of your nominee, or you would have chosen some one
+else.  Herbert"--he turned to his son, who, until the late
+dissolution, had sat for some years as member for Norton Bury--
+"Herbert, are you acquainted with any of these facts?"
+
+Mr. Herbert Oldtower looked uncomfortable.
+
+"Answer," said his father.  "No hesitation in a matter of right and
+wrong.  Gentlemen, and my worthy friends, will you hear Mr. Oldtower,
+whom you all know?  Herbert, are these accusations true?"
+
+"I am afraid so," said the grave young man, more gravely.
+
+"Mr. Brithwood, I regret extremely that this discovery was not made
+before.  What do you purpose doing?"
+
+"By the Lord that made me, nothing!  The borough is Lord Luxmore's; I
+could nominate Satan himself if I chose.  My man shall stand."
+
+"I think," Lord Luxmore said, with meaning, "it would be better for
+all parties that Mr. Vermilye should stand."
+
+"My lord," said the baronet; and one could see that not only rigid
+justice, but a certain obstinacy, marked his character, especially
+when anything jarred against his personal dignity or prejudices; "you
+forget that, however desirous I am to satisfy the family to whom this
+borough belongs, it is impossible for me to see with satisfaction--
+even though I cannot prevent--the election of any person so unfit to
+serve His Majesty.  If, indeed, there were another candidate, so that
+the popular feeling might decide this very difficult matter--"
+
+"Sir Ralph," said John Halifax, determinedly, "this brings me to the
+purpose for which I spoke.  Being a landholder, and likewise a
+freeman of this borough, I claim the right of nominating a second
+candidate."
+
+Intense, overwhelming astonishment struck all present.  Such a right
+had been so long unclaimed, that everybody had forgotten it was a
+right at all.  Sir Ralph and his clerk laid their venerable heads
+together for some minutes, before they could come to any conclusion
+on the subject.  At last the sheriff rose.
+
+"I am bound to say, that, though very uncommon, this proceeding is
+not illegal."
+
+"Not illegal?" almost screamed Richard Brithwood.
+
+"Not illegal.  I therefore wait to hear Mr. Halifax's nomination.
+Sir, your candidate is, I hope, no democrat?"
+
+"His political opinions differ from mine, but he is the only
+gentleman whom I in this emergency can name; and is one whom myself,
+and I believe all my neighbours, will be heartily glad to see once
+more in Parliament.  I beg to nominate Mr. Herbert Oldtower."
+
+A decided sensation at the upper half of the room.  At the lower half
+an unanimous, involuntary cheer; for among our county families there
+were few so warmly respected as the Oldtowers.
+
+Sir Ralph rose, much perplexed.  "I trust that no one present will
+suppose I was aware of Mr. Halifax's intention.  Nor, I understand,
+was Mr. Oldtower.  My son must speak for himself."
+
+Mr. Oldtower, with his accustomed gravity, accompanied by a not
+unbecoming modesty, said, that in this conjuncture, and being
+personally unacquainted with both Mr. Brithwood and the Earl of
+Luxmore, he felt no hesitation in accepting the honour offered to
+him.
+
+"That being the case," said his father, though evidently annoyed, "I
+have only to fulfil my duty as public officer to the Crown."
+
+Amidst some confusion, a show of hands was called for; and then a cry
+rose of "Go to the poll!"
+
+"Go to the poll!" shouted Mr. Brithwood.  "This is a family borough.
+There has not been a poll here these fifty years.  Sir Ralph, your
+son's mad."
+
+"Sir, insanity is not in the family of the Oldtowers.  My position
+here is simply as sheriff of the county.  If a poll be called for--"
+
+"Excuse me, Sir Ralph, it would be hardly worth while.  May I offer
+you--"
+
+It was--only his snuff-box.  But the Earl's polite and meaning smile
+filled up the remainder of the sentence.
+
+Sir Ralph Oldtower drew himself up haughtily, and the fire of youth
+flashed indignantly from his grand old eyes.
+
+"Lord Luxmore seems not to understand the duties and principles of us
+country gentlemen," he said coldly, and turned away, addressing the
+general meeting.  "Gentlemen, the poll will be held this afternoon,
+according to the suggestion of my neighbour here."
+
+"Sir Ralph Oldtower has convenient neighbours," remarked Lord
+Luxmore.
+
+"Of my neighbour, Mr Halifax," repeated the old baronet, louder, and
+more emphatically.  "A gentleman,"--he paused, as if doubtful whether
+in that title he were awarding a right or bestowing a courtesy,
+looked at John, and decided--"a gentleman for whom, ever since I have
+known him, I have entertained the highest respect."
+
+It was the first public recognition of the position which for some
+time had been tacitly given to John Halifax in his own neighbourhood.
+Coming thus, from this upright and honourable old man, whose least
+merit it was to hold, and worthily, a baronetage centuries old, it
+made John's cheek glow with an honest gratification and a pardonable
+pride.
+
+"Tell her," he said to me, when, the meeting having dispersed, he
+asked me to ride home and explain the reason of his detention at
+Kingswell--"Tell my wife all.  She will be pleased, you know."
+
+Ay, she was.  Her face glowed and brightened as only a wife's can--a
+wife whose dearest pride is in her husband's honour.
+
+Nevertheless, she hurried me back again as quickly as I came.
+
+As I once more rode up Kingswell Hill, it seemed as if the whole
+parish were agog to see the novel sight.  A contested election!
+truly, such a thing had not been known within the memory of the
+oldest inhabitant.  The fifteen voters--I believe that was the
+number--were altogether bewildered by a sense of their own
+importance.  Also, by a new and startling fact--which I found Mr.
+Halifax trying to impress upon a few of them, gathered under the
+great yew-tree in the churchyard--that a man's vote ought to be the
+expression of his own conscientious opinion; and that for him to sell
+it was scarcely less vile than to traffic in the liberty of his son
+or the honour of his daughter.  Among those who listened most
+earnestly, was a man whom I had seen before to-day--Jacob Baines,
+once the ringleader of the bread-riots, who had long worked steadily
+in the tan-yard, and then at the flour-mill.  He was the honestest
+and faithfulest of all John's people--illustrating unconsciously that
+Divine doctrine, that often they love most to whom most has been
+forgiven.
+
+The poll was to be held in the church--a not uncommon usage in
+country boroughs, but which from its rarity struck great awe into the
+Kingswell folk.  The churchwarden was placed in the clerk's desk to
+receive votes.  Not far off, the sheriff sat in his family-pew, bare-
+headed; by his grave and reverent manner imposing due decorum, which
+was carefully observed by all except Lord Luxmore and Mr. Brithwood.
+
+These two, apparently sure of their cause, had recovered their
+spirits, and talked and laughed loudly on the other side of the
+church.  It was a very small building, narrow and cruciform; every
+word said in it was distinctly audible throughout.
+
+"My lord, gentlemen, and my friends all," said Sir Ralph, rising
+gravely, "let me hope that every one will respect the sanctity of
+this place."
+
+Lord Luxmore, who had been going about with his dazzling diamond
+snuff-box and equally dazzling smile, stopped in the middle of the
+aisle, bowed, replied, "With pleasure--certainly!" and walked inside
+the communion rail, as if believing that his presence there conveyed
+the highest compliment he could pay the spot.
+
+The poll began in perfect silence.  One after the other, three
+farmers went up and voted for Mr. Vermilye.  There was snuff under
+their noses--probably something heavier than snuff in their pockets.
+
+Then came up the big, grey-headed fellow I have before mentioned--
+Jacob Baines.  He pulled his fore-lock to Sir Ralph, rather shyly;
+possibly in his youth he had made the sheriff's acquaintance under
+less favourable circumstances.  But he plucked up courage.
+
+"Your honour, might a man say a word to 'ee?"
+
+"Certainly! but be quick, my good fellow," replied the baronet, who
+was noted for his kindly manner to humble folk.
+
+"Sir, I be a poor man.  I lives in one o' my lord's houses.  I hanna
+paid no rent for a year.  Mr. Brown zays to me, he zays--'Jacob, vote
+for Vermilye, and I'll forgive 'ee the rent, and here be two pound
+ten to start again wi'.  So, as I zays to Matthew Hales (he be Mr.
+Halifax's tenant, your honour, and my lord's steward ha' paid 'un
+nigh four pound for his vote), I sure us be poor men, and his
+lordship a lord and all that--it's no harm, I reckon."
+
+"Holloa! cut it short, you rascal; you're stopping the poll.  Vote, I
+say."
+
+"Ay, ay, 'squire;" and the old fellow, who had some humour in him,
+pulled his hair again civilly to Mr. Brithwood.  "Wait till I ha' got
+shut o' these."
+
+And he counted out of his ragged pockets a handful of guineas.  Poor
+fellow! how bright they looked; those guineas, that were food,
+clothing, life.
+
+"Three was paid to I, two to Will Horrocks, and the rest to Matthew
+Hales.  But, sir, we has changed our minds; and please, would 'ee
+give back the money to them as owns it?"
+
+"Still, my honest friend--"
+
+"Thank 'ee, Sir Ralph, that's it:  we be honest; we couldn't look the
+master in the face else.  Twelve year ago, come Michaelmas, he kept
+some on us from starving--may be worse.  We bean't going to turn
+rascals on's hands now.  Now I'll vote, sir,--and it won't be for
+Vermilye."
+
+A smothered murmur of applause greeted old Jacob, as he marched back
+down the aisle, where on the stone benches of the porch was seated a
+rural jury, who discussed not over-favourably the merits of Lord
+Luxmore's candidate.
+
+"He owes a power o' money in Norton Bury--he do."
+
+"Why doesn't he show his face at the 'lection, like a decent
+gen'leman?"
+
+"Fear'd o' bailiffs!" suggested the one constable, old and rheumatic,
+who guarded the peace of Kingswell.  "He's the biggest swindler in
+all England."
+
+"Curse him!" muttered an old woman.  "She was a bonny lass--my Sally!
+Curse him!"
+
+All this while, Lord Luxmore sat in lazy dignity in the communion-
+chair, apparently satisfied that as things always had been so they
+would continue to be; that despite the unheard-of absurdity of a
+contested election, his pocket-borough was quite secure.  It must
+have been, to say the least, a great surprise to his lordship, when,
+the poll being closed, its result was found thus:  Out of the fifteen
+votes, six were for Mr. Vermilye, nine for his opponent.  Mr. Herbert
+Oldtower was therefore duly elected as member for the borough of
+Kingswell.
+
+The earl received the announcement with dignified, incredulous
+silence; but Mr. Brithwood never spared language.
+
+"It's a cheat--an infamous conspiracy!  I will unseat him--by my soul
+I will!"
+
+"You may find it difficult," said John Halifax, counting out the
+guineas deposited by Jacob Baines, and laying them in a heap before
+Mr. Brown, the steward.  "Small as the number is, I believe any
+Committee of the House of Commons will decide that nine honester
+votes were never polled.  But I regret, my lord--I regret deeply, Mr.
+Brithwood,"--and there was a kind of pity in his eye--"that in this
+matter I have been forced, as it were, to become your opponent.  Some
+day, perhaps, you may both do me the justice that I now can only look
+for from my own conscience."
+
+"Very possibly," replied the earl, with a satirical bow.  "I believe,
+gentlemen, our business is ended for to-day, and it is a long drive
+to Norton Bury.  Sir Ralph, might we hope for the honour of your
+company?  No?  Good day, my friends.  Mr. Halifax, your servant."
+
+"One word, my lord.  Those workmen of mine, who are your tenants--I
+am aware what usually results when tenants in arrear vote against
+their landlords--if, without taking any harsher measures, your agent
+will be so kind as to apply to me for the rent--"
+
+"Sir, my agent will use his own discretion."
+
+"Then I rely on your lordship's kindliness--your sense of honour."
+
+"Honour is only spoken of between equals," said the earl, haughtily.
+"But on one thing Mr. Halifax may always rely--my excellent memory."
+
+With a smile and bow as perfect as if he were victoriously quitting
+the field, Lord Luxmore departed.  Soon not one remained of all those
+who had filled the church and churchyard, making there a tumult that
+is chronicled to this very day by some ancient villagers, who still
+think themselves greatly ill-used because the Reform Act has blotted
+out of the list of English boroughs the "loyal and independent"
+borough of Kingswell.
+
+Sir Ralph Oldtower stood a good while talking with John; and finally,
+having sent his carriage on, walked with him down Kingswell Hill
+towards the manor-house.  I, riding alongside, caught fragments of
+their conversation.
+
+"What you say is all true, Mr. Halifax; and you say it well.  But
+what can we do?  Our English constitution is perfect--that is, as
+perfect as anything human can be.  Yet corruptions will arise; we
+regret, we even blame--but we cannot remove them.  It is impossible."
+
+"Do you think, Sir Ralph, that the Maker of this world--which, so far
+as we can see, He means like all other of His creations gradually to
+advance toward perfection--do you think He would justify us in
+pronouncing any good work therein 'impossible'?"
+
+"You talk like a young man," said the baronet, half sadly.  "Coming
+years will show you the world and the ways of it in a clearer light."
+
+"I earnestly hope so."
+
+Sir Ralph glanced sideways at him--perhaps with a sort of envy of the
+very youth which he thus charitably excused as a thing to be allowed
+for till riper wisdom came.  Something might have smote the old man
+with a conviction, that in this youth was strength and life, the
+spirit of the new generation then arising, before which the old worn-
+out generation would crumble into its natural dust.  Dust of the dead
+ages, honourable dust, to be reverently inurned, and never
+parricidally profaned by us the living age, who in our turn must
+follow the same downward path.  Dust, venerable and beloved--but
+still only dust.
+
+The conversation ending, we took our diverse ways; Sir Ralph giving
+Mr. Halifax a hearty invitation to the manor-house, and seeing him
+hesitate, added, that "Lady Oldtower would shortly have the honour of
+calling upon Mrs. Halifax."
+
+John bowed.  "But I ought to tell you, Sir Ralph, that my wife and I
+are very simple people--that we make no mere acquaintances, and only
+desire friends."
+
+"It is fortunate that Lady Oldtower and myself share the same
+peculiarity."  And, shaking hands with a stately cordiality, the old
+man took his leave.
+
+"John, you have made a step in the world to-day."
+
+"Have I?" he said, absently, walking in deep thought, and pulling the
+hedge-leaves as he went along.
+
+"What will your wife say?"
+
+"My wife? bless her!" and he seemed to be only speaking the
+conclusion of his thinking.  "It will make no difference to her--
+though it might to me.  She married me in my low estate--but some
+day, God willing, no lady in the land shall be higher than my
+Ursula."
+
+Thus as in all things each thought most of the other, and both of
+Him--whose will was to them beyond all human love, ay, even such love
+as theirs.
+
+Slowly, slowly, I watched the grey turrets of the manor-house fade
+away in the dusk; the hills grew indistinct, and suddenly we saw the
+little twinkling light that we knew was the lamp in Longfield
+parlour, shine out like a glow-worm across the misty fields.
+
+"I wonder if the children are gone to bed, Phineas?"
+
+And the fatherly eyes turned fondly to that pretty winking light; the
+fatherly heart began to hover over the dear little nest of home.
+
+"Surely there's some one at the white gate.  Ursula!"
+
+"John!  Ah--it is you."
+
+The mother did not express her feelings after the fashion of most
+women; but I knew by her waiting there, and by the nervous tremble of
+her hand, how great her anxiety had been.
+
+"Is all safe, husband?"
+
+"I think so.  Mr. Oldtower is elected--HE must fly the country."
+
+"Then she is saved."
+
+"Let us hope she is.  Come, my darling!" and he wrapped his arm round
+her, for she was shivering.  "We have done all we could and must wait
+the rest.  Come home.  Oh!" with a lifted look and a closer strain,
+"thank God for home!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+We always rose early at Longfield.  It was lovely to see the morning
+sun climbing over One-Tree Hill, catching the larch-wood, and
+creeping down the broad slope of our field; thence up toward Redwood
+and Leckington--until, while the dews yet lay thick on our shadowed
+valley, Leckington Hill was all in a glow of light.  Delicious, too,
+to hear the little ones running in and out, bright and merry as
+children ought to be in the first wholesome hours of the day--to see
+them feeding their chickens and petting their doves--calling every
+minute on father or mother to investigate and enjoy some wonder in
+farm-yard or garden.  And either was ever ready to listen to the
+smallest of these little mysteries, knowing that nothing in childhood
+is too trivial for the notice, too foolish for the sympathy, of those
+on whom the Father of all men has bestowed the holy dignity of
+parenthood.
+
+I could see them now, standing among the flower-beds, out in the
+sunny morning, the father's tall head in the centre of the group--for
+he was always the important person during the brief hour or two that
+he was able to be at home.  The mother close beside him, and both
+knotted round with an interlaced mass of little arms and little eager
+faces, each wanting to hear everything and to look at everything--
+everybody to be first and nobody last.  None rested quiet or mute for
+a second, except the one who kept close as his shadow to her father's
+side, and unwittingly was treated by him less like the other
+children, than like some stray spirit of another world, caught and
+held jealously, but without much outward notice, lest haply it might
+take alarm, and vanish back again unawares.  Whenever he came home
+and did not see her waiting at the door, his first question was
+always--"Where's Muriel?"
+
+Muriel's still face looked very bright this morning--the Monday
+morning after the election--because her father was going to be at
+home the whole day.  It was the annual holiday he had planned for his
+work-people.  This only "dinner-party" we had ever given, was in its
+character not unlike that memorable feast, to which were gathered the
+poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind--all who needed, and all who
+could not return, the kindness.  There were great cooking
+preparations--everything that could make merry the heart of man--tea,
+to comfort the heart of woman, hard-working woman--and lots of bright
+pennies and silver groats to rejoice the very souls of youth.
+
+Mrs. Halifax, Jem Watkins, and his Jenny, were as busy as bees all
+morning.  John did his best to help, but finally the mother pleaded
+how hard it was that the children should miss their holiday-walk with
+him, so we were all dismissed from the scene of action, to spend a
+long, quiet two hours, lying under the great oak on One-Tree Hill.
+The little ones played about till they were tired; then John took out
+the newspaper, and read about Ciudad Rodrigo and Lord Wellington's
+entry into Madrid--the battered eagles and the torn and bloody flags
+of Badajoz, which were on their way home to the Prince Regent.
+
+"I wish the fighting were over, and peace were come," said Muriel.
+
+But the boys wished quite otherwise; they already gloried in the
+accounts of battles, played domestic games of French and English,
+acted garden sieges and blockades.
+
+"How strange and awful it seems, to sit on this green grass, looking
+down on our quiet valley, and then think of the fighting far away in
+Spain--perhaps this very minute, under this very sky.  Boys, I'll
+never let either of you be a soldier."
+
+"Poor little fellows!" said I, "they can remember nothing but war
+time."
+
+"What would peace be like?" asked Muriel.
+
+"A glorious time, my child--rejoicings everywhere, fathers and
+brothers coming home, work thriving, poor men's food made cheap, and
+all things prospering."
+
+"I should like to live to see it.  Shall I be a woman, then, father?"
+
+He started.  Somehow, she seemed so unlike an ordinary child, that
+while all the boys' future was merrily planned out--the mother often
+said, laughing, she knew exactly what sort of a young man Guy would
+be--none of us ever seemed to think of Muriel as a woman.
+
+"Is Muriel anxious to be grown up?  Is she not satisfied with being
+my little daughter always?"
+
+"Always."
+
+Her father drew her to him, and kissed her soft, shut, blind eyes.
+Then, sighing, he rose, and proposed that we should all go home.
+
+This first feast at Longfield was a most merry day.  The men and
+their families came about noon.  Soon after, they all sat down to
+dinner; Jem Watkins' plan of the barn being universally scouted in
+favour of an open-air feast, in the shelter of a hay-rick, under the
+mild blue September sky.  Jem presided with a ponderous dignity which
+throughout the day furnished great private amusement to Ursula, John,
+and me.
+
+In the afternoon, all rambled about as they liked--many under the
+ciceroneship of Master Edwin and Master Guy, who were very popular
+and grand indeed.  Then the mother, with Walter clinging shy-eyed to
+her gown, went among the other poorer mothers there; talked to one,
+comforted another, counselled a third, and invariably listened to
+all.  There was little of patronizing benevolence about her; she
+spoke freely, sometimes even with some sharpness, when reproving
+comment was needed; but her earnest kindness, her active goodness,
+darting at once to the truth and right of things, touched the women's
+hearts.  While a few were a little wholesomely afraid of her--all
+recognized the influence of "the mistress," penetrating deep and
+sure, extending far and wide.
+
+She laughed at me when I told her so--said it was all nonsense--that
+she only followed John's simple recipe for making his work-people
+feel that he was a friend as well as a master.
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"To pay attention and consideration to all they say; and always to
+take care and remember to call them by their right Christian names."
+
+I could not help smiling--it was an answer so like Mrs. Halifax, who
+never indulged in any verbal sentimentalism.  Her part in the world
+was deeds.
+
+It was already evening, when, having each contributed our quota,
+great or small, to the entertainment, we all came and sat on the long
+bench under the walnut-tree.  The sun went down red behind us,
+throwing a last glint on the upland field, where, from top to bottom,
+the young men and women were running in a long "Thread-the-needle."
+Their voices and laughter came fairly down to us.
+
+"I think they have had a happy day, John.  They will work all the
+better to-morrow."
+
+"I am quite sure of it."
+
+"So am I," said Guy, who had been acting the young master all day,
+condescendingly stating his will and giving his opinion on every
+subject, greatly petted and looked up to by all, to the no small
+amusement of us elders.
+
+"Why, my son?" asked the father, smiling.
+
+But here Master Guy was posed, and everybody laughed at him.  He
+coloured up with childish anger, and crept nearer his mother.  She
+made a place for him at her side, looking appealingly at John.
+
+"Guy has got out of his depth--we must help him into safe waters
+again," said the father.  "Look here, my son, this is the reason--and
+it is well not to be 'quite sure' of a thing unless one knows the
+reason.  Our people will work the better, because they will work from
+love.  Not merely doing their duty, and obeying their master in a
+blind way, but feeling an interest in him and all that belongs to
+him; knowing that he feels the same in them.  Knowing, too, that
+although, being their superior in many things, he is their master and
+they his servants, he never forgets that saying, which I read out of
+the Bible, children, this morning:  'ONE IS YOUR MASTER--EVEN CHRIST,
+AND ALL YE ARE BRETHREN.'  Do you understand?"
+
+I think they did, for he was accustomed to talk with them thus--even
+beyond their years.  Not in the way of preachifying--for these little
+ones had in their childish days scarcely any so-called "religious
+instruction," save the daily chapter out of the New Testament, and
+the father and mother's daily life, which was a simple and literal
+carrying out of the same.  To that one test was brought all that was
+thought, or said, or done, in our household, where it often seemed as
+if the Master were as visibly obeyed and followed as in the household
+which He loved at Bethany.
+
+As to what doctrinal creed we held, or what sect we belonged to, I
+can give but the plain answer which John gave to all such inquiries--
+that we were CHRISTIANS.
+
+After these words from the Holy Book (which the children always
+listened to with great reverence, as to the Book which their parents
+most loved and honoured, the reading and learning of which was
+granted as a high reward and favour, and never carelessly allowed,
+or--horrible to think!--inflicted as a punishment), we ceased smiling
+at Guy, who in his turn ceased to frown.  The little storm blew over,
+as our domestic storms usually did, leaving a clear, free heaven.
+Loving one another, of course we quarrelled sometimes; but we always
+made it up again, because we loved one another.
+
+"Father, I hear the click of the gate.  There's somebody coming,"
+said Muriel.
+
+The father paused in a great romp with his sons--paused, as he ever
+did when his little daughter's soft voice was heard.  "'Tis only a
+poor boy--who can he be?"
+
+"One of the folk that come for milk most likely--but we have none to
+give away to-day.  What do you want, my lad?"
+
+The lad, who looked miserable and scared, opened his mouth with a
+stupid "Eh?"
+
+Ursula repeated the question.
+
+"I wants Jacob Baines."
+
+"You'll find him with the rest, in front of that hay-rick, over his
+pipe and ale."
+
+The lad was off like a shot.
+
+"He is from Kingswell, I think.  Can anything be the matter, John?"
+
+"I will go and see.  No, boys, no more games--I will be back
+presently."
+
+He went, apparently rather anxious--as was easy to find out by only a
+glance at the face of Ursula.  Soon she rose and went after him.  I
+followed her.
+
+We saw, close by the hay-rick, a group of men, angrily talking.  The
+gossiping mothers were just joining them.  Far off, in the field, the
+younger folk were still dancing merrily down their long line of
+"Thread-the-needle."
+
+As we approached, we heard sobbing from one or two women, and loud
+curses from the men.
+
+"What's amiss?" said Mr. Halifax, as he came in the midst--and both
+curses and sobbings were silenced.  All began a confused tale of
+wrongs.  "Stop, Jacob--I can't make it out."
+
+"This lad ha' seen it all.  And he bean't a liar in big things--speak
+up, Billy."
+
+Somehow or other, we extracted the news brought by ragged Billy, who
+on this day had been left in charge of the five dwellings rented of
+Lord Luxmore.  During the owners' absence there had been a distraint
+for rent; every bit of the furniture was carried off; two or three
+aged and sick folk were left lying on the bare floor--and the poor
+families here would have to go home to nothing but their four walls.
+
+Again, at repetition of the story, the women wept and the men swore.
+
+"Be quiet," said Mr. Halifax again.  But I saw that his honest
+English blood was boiling within him.  "Jem"--and Jem Watkins
+started, so unusually sharp and commanding was his master's tone--
+"Saddle the mare--quick.  I shall ride to Kingswell, and thence to
+the sheriff's."
+
+"God bless 'ee, sir!" sobbed Jacob Baines' widowed daughter-in-law,
+who had left, as I overheard her telling Mrs. Halifax, a sick child
+to-day at home.
+
+Jacob Baines took up a heavy knobbed stick which happened to be
+leaning against the hay-rick, and eyed it with savage meaning.
+
+"Who be they as has done this, master?"
+
+"Put that bludgeon down, Jacob."
+
+The man hesitated--met his master's determined eye--and obeyed him,
+meek as a lamb.
+
+"But what is us to do, sir?"
+
+"Nothing.  Stay here till I return--you shall come to no harm.  You
+will trust me, my men?"
+
+They gathered round him--those big, fierce-looking fellows, in whom
+was brute force enough to attack or resist anything--yet he made them
+listen to reason.  He explained as much as he could of the injustice
+which had apparently been done them--injustice which had overstepped
+the law, and could only be met by keeping absolutely within the law.
+
+"It is partly my fault, that I did not pay the rent to-day--I will do
+so at once.  I will get your goods back to-night, if I can.  If not,
+you hale fellows can rough it, and we'll take the women and children
+in till morning--can we not, love?"
+
+"Oh, readily!" said the mother.  "Don't cry, my good women.  Mary
+Baines, give me your baby.  Cheer up, the master will set all right!"
+
+John smiled at her in fond thanks--the wife who hindered him by no
+selfishness or weakness, but was his right hand and support in
+everything.  As he mounted, she gave him his whip, whispering--
+
+"Take care of yourself, mind.  Come back as soon as you can."
+
+And lingeringly she watched him gallop down the field.
+
+It was a strange three hours we passed in his absence.  The misty
+night came down, and round about the house crept wailing the loud
+September wind.  We brought the women into the kitchen--the men lit a
+fire in the farm-yard, and sat sullenly round it.  It was as much as
+I could do to persuade Guy and Edwin to go to bed, instead of
+watching that "beautiful blaze."  There, more than once, I saw the
+mother standing, with a shawl over her head, and her white gown
+blowing, trying to reason into patience those poor fellows, savage
+with their wrongs.
+
+"How far have they been wronged, Phineas?  What is the strict law of
+the case?  Will any harm come to John for interfering?"
+
+I told her, no, so far as I knew.  That the cruelty and illegality
+lay in the haste of the distraint, and in the goods having been
+carried off at once, giving no opportunity of redeeming them.  It was
+easy to grind the faces of the poor, who had no helper.
+
+"Never mind; my husband will see them righted--at all risks."
+
+"But Lord Luxmore is his landlord."
+
+She looked troubled.  "I see what you mean.  It is easy to make an
+enemy.  No matter--I fear not.  I fear nothing while John does what
+he feels to be right--as I know he will; the issue is in higher hands
+than ours or Lord Luxmore's.  But where's Muriel?"
+
+For as we sat talking, the little girl--whom nothing could persuade
+to go to bed till her father came home--had slipped from my hand, and
+gone out into the blustering night.  We found her standing all by
+herself under the walnut-tree.
+
+"I wanted to listen for father.  When will he come?"
+
+"Soon, I hope," answered the mother, with a sigh.  "You must not stay
+out in the cold and the dark, my child."
+
+"I am not cold, and I know no dark," said Muriel, softly.
+
+And thus so it was with her always.  In her spirit, as in her outward
+life, so innocent and harmless, she knew no dark.  No cold looks--no
+sorrowful sights--no winter--no age.  The hand laid upon her clear
+eyes pressed eternal peace down on her soul.  I believe she was, if
+ever human being was, purely and entirely happy.  It was always sweet
+for us to know this--it is very sweet still, Muriel, our beloved!
+
+We brought her within the house, but she persisted in sitting in her
+usual place, on the door-sill, "waiting" for her father.  It was she
+who first heard the white gate swing, and told us he was coming.
+
+Ursula ran down to the stream to meet him.
+
+When they came up the path, it was not alone--John was helping a lame
+old woman, and his wife carried in her arms a sick child, on whom,
+when they entered the kitchen, Mary Baines threw herself in a passion
+of crying.
+
+"What have they been doing to 'ee, Tommy?--'ee warn't like this when
+I left 'ee.  Oh, they've been killing my lad, they have!"
+
+"Hush!" said Mrs. Halifax; "we'll get him well again, please God.
+Listen to what the master's saying."
+
+He was telling to the men who gathered round the kitchen-door the
+results of his journey.
+
+It was--as I had expected from his countenance the first minute he
+appeared--fruitless.  He had found all things at Kingswell as stated.
+Then he rode to the sheriff's; but Sir Ralph was absent, sent for to
+Luxmore Hall on very painful business.
+
+"My friends," said the master, stopping abruptly in his narrative,
+"for a few hours you must make up your minds to sit still and bear
+it.  Every man has to learn that lesson at times.  Your landlord has-
+-I would rather be the poorest among you than Lord Luxmore this
+night.  Be patient; we'll lodge you all somehow.  To-morrow I will
+pay your rent--get your goods back--and you shall begin the world
+again, as my tenants, not Lord Luxmore's."
+
+"Hurrah!" shouted the men, easily satisfied; as working people are,
+who have been used all their days to live from hand to mouth, and to
+whom the present is all in all.  They followed the master, who
+settled them in the barn; and then came back to consult with his wife
+as to where the women could be stowed away.  So, in a short time, the
+five homeless families were cheerily disposed of--all but Mary Baines
+and her sick boy.
+
+"What can we do with them?" said John, questioningly to Ursula.
+
+"I see but one course.  We must take him in; his mother says hunger
+is the chief thing that ails the lad.  She fancies that he has had
+the measles; but our children have had it too, so there's no fear.
+Come up-stairs, Mary Baines."
+
+Passing, with a thankful look, the room where her own boys slept, the
+good mother established this forlorn young mother and her two
+children in a little closet outside the nursery door; cheered her
+with comfortable words; helped her ignorance with wise counsels--for
+Ursula was the general doctress of all the poor folk round.  It was
+almost midnight before she came down to the parlour where John and I
+sat, he with little Muriel asleep in his arms.  The child would
+gladly have slumbered away all night there, with the delicate, pale
+profile pressed close into his breast.
+
+"Is all right, love?  How tired you must be!"  John put his left arm
+round his wife as she came and knelt by him, in front of the cheerful
+fire.
+
+"Tired?  Oh, of course; but you can't think how comfortable they are
+up-stairs.  Only poor Mary Baines does nothing but cry, and keep
+telling me that nothing ails her lad but hunger.  Are they so very
+poor?"
+
+John did not immediately answer; I fancied he looked suddenly uneasy,
+and imperceptibly pressed his little girl closer to him.
+
+"The lad seems very ill.  Much worse than our children were with
+measles."
+
+"Yet how they suffered, poor pets! especially Walter.  It was the
+thought of them made me pity her so.  Surely I have not done wrong?"
+
+"No--love; quite right and kind.  Acting so, I think one need not
+fear.  See, mother, how soundly Muriel sleeps.  It's almost a pity to
+waken her--but we must go to bed now."
+
+"Stay one minute," I said.  "Tell us, John--I quite forgot to ask
+till now--what is that 'painful business' you mentioned, which called
+the sheriff to Lord Luxmore's?"
+
+John glanced at his wife, leaning fondly against him, her face full
+of sweet peace, then at his little daughter asleep, then round the
+cheerful fire-lit room, outside which the autumn night-wind went
+howling furiously.
+
+"Love, we that are so happy, we must not, dare not condemn."
+
+She looked at him with a shocked inquiry.  "You don't mean--No; it is
+impossible!"
+
+"It is true.  She has gone away."
+
+Ursula sank down, hiding her face.  "Horrible!  And only two days
+since she was here, kissing our children."
+
+We all three kept a long silence; then I ventured to ask when she
+went away?
+
+"This morning, early.  They took--at least, Mr. Vermilye did--all the
+property of Lord Luxmore's that he could lay his hands upon--family
+jewels and money to a considerable amount.  The earl is pursuing him
+now, not only as his daughter's seducer, but as a swindler and a
+thief."
+
+"And Richard Brithwood?"
+
+"Drinks--and drinks--and drinks.  That is the beginning and the end
+of all."
+
+There was no more to be said.  She had dropped for ever out of her
+old life, as completely as a star out of the sky.  Henceforth, for
+years and years, neither in our home, nor, I believe, in any other,
+was there the slightest mention made of Lady Caroline Brithwood.
+
+                    *          *          *          *
+
+All the next day John was from home, settling the Kingswell affair.
+The ejected tenants--our tenants now--left us at last, giving a
+parting cheer for Mr. Halifax, the best master in all England.
+
+Sitting down to tea, with no small relief that all was over, John
+asked his wife after the sick lad.
+
+"He is very ill still, I think."
+
+"Are you sure it is measles?"
+
+"I imagine so; and I have seen nearly all childish diseases, except--
+no, THAT is quite impossible!" added the mother, hastily.  She cast
+an anxious glance on her little ones; her hand slightly shook as she
+poured out their cups of milk.  "Do you think, John--it was hard to
+do it when the child is so ill--I ought to have sent them away with
+the others?"
+
+"Certainly not.  If it were anything dangerous, of course Mary Baines
+would have told us.  What are the lad's symptoms?"
+
+As Ursula informed him, I thought he looked more and more serious;
+but he did not let her see.
+
+"Make your mind easy, love; a word from Dr. Jessop will decide all.
+I will fetch him after tea.  Cheer up!  Please God, no harm will come
+to our little ones!"
+
+The mother brightened again; with her all the rest; and the tea-table
+clatter went on merry as ever.  Then, it being a wet night, Mrs.
+Halifax gathered her boys round her knee for an evening chat over the
+kitchen-fire; while through the open door, out of the dim parlour
+came "Muriel's voice," as we called the harpsichord.  It seemed
+sweeter than ever this night, like--as her father once said, but
+checked himself, and never said it afterwards--like Muriel talking
+with angels.
+
+He sat listening awhile, then, without any remark, put on his coat
+and went out to fetch the good doctor.  I followed him down to the
+stream.
+
+"Phineas," he said, "will you mind--don't notice it to the mother--
+but mind and keep her and the children down-stairs till I come back?"
+
+I promised.  "Are you uneasy about Mary Baines's lad?"
+
+"No; I have full trust in human means, and above all, in--what I need
+not speak of.  Still, precautions are wise.  Do you remember that day
+when, rather against Ursula's wish, I vaccinated the children?"
+
+I remembered.  Also that the virus had taken effect with all but
+Muriel; and we had lately talked of repeating the much-blamed and
+miraculous experiment upon her.  I hinted this.
+
+"Phineas, you mistake," he answered, rather sharply.  "She is quite
+safe--as safe as the others.  I wrote to Dr. Jenner himself.  But
+don't mention that I spoke about this."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because to-day I heard that they have had the small-pox at
+Kingswell."
+
+I felt a cold shudder.  Though inoculation and vaccination had made
+it less fatal among the upper classes, this frightful scourge still
+decimated the poor, especially children.  Great was the obstinacy in
+refusing relief; and loud the outcry in Norton Bury, when Mr.
+Halifax, who had met and known Dr. Jenner in London--finding no
+practitioner that would do it, persisted in administering the vaccine
+virus himself to his children.  But still, with a natural fear, he
+had kept them out of all risk of taking the small-pox until now.
+
+"John, do you think--"
+
+"No; I will not allow myself to think.  Not a word of this at home,
+mind.  Good-bye!"
+
+He walked away, and I returned up the path heavily, as if a cloud of
+terror and dole were visibly hanging over our happy Longfield.
+
+The doctor appeared; he went up to the sick lad; then he and Mr.
+Halifax were closeted together for a long time.  After he was gone,
+John came into the kitchen, where Ursula sat with Walter on her knee.
+The child was in his little white night-gown, playing with his elder
+brothers, and warming his rosy toes.
+
+The mother had recovered herself entirely:  was content and gay.  I
+saw John's glance at her, and then--and then I feared.
+
+"What does the doctor say?  The child will soon be well?"
+
+"We must hope so."
+
+"John, what do you mean?  I thought the little fellow looked better
+when I went up to see him last.  And there--I hear the poor mother
+up-stairs crying."
+
+"She may cry; she has need," said John, bitterly.  "She knew it all
+the while.  She never thought of our children; but they are safe.  Be
+content, love--please God, they are quite safe.  Very few take it
+after vaccination."
+
+"It--do you mean the small-pox?  Has the lad got small-pox?  Oh, God
+help us!  My children--my children!"
+
+She grew white as death; long shivers came over her from head to
+foot.  The little boys, frightened, crept up to her; she clasped them
+all together in her arms, turning her head with a wild savage look,
+as if some one were stealing behind to take them from her.
+
+Muriel, perceiving the silence, felt her way across the room, and
+touching her mother's face, said, anxiously, "Has anybody been
+naughty?"
+
+"No, my darling; no!"
+
+"Then never mind.  Father says, nothing will harm us, except being
+naughty.  Did you not, father?"
+
+John snatched his little daughter up to his bosom, and called her for
+the hundredth time the name my poor old father had named her--the
+"blessed" child.
+
+We all grew calmer; the mother wept a little, and it did her good:
+we comforted the boys and Muriel, telling them that in truth nothing
+was the matter, only we were afraid of their catching the little
+lad's sickness, and they must not go near him.
+
+"Yes; she shall quit the house this minute--this very minute," said
+the mother, sternly, but with a sort of wildness too.
+
+Her husband made no immediate answer; but as she rose to leave the
+room, he detained her.  "Ursula, do you know the child is all but
+dying?"
+
+"Let him die!  The wicked woman!  She knew it, and she let me bring
+him among my children--my own poor children!"
+
+"I would she had never come.  But what is done, is done.  Love,
+think--if YOU were turned out of doors this bleak, rainy night--with
+a dying child."
+
+"Hush! hush!"--She sank down with a sob.
+
+"My darling!" whispered John, as he made her lean against him--her
+support and comfort in all things:  "do you think my heart is not
+ready to break, like yours?  But I trust in God.  This trouble came
+upon us while we were doing right; let us do right still, and we need
+not fear.  Humanly speaking, our children are safe; it is only our
+own terror which exaggerates the danger.  They may not take the
+disease at all.  Then, how could we answer it to our conscience if we
+turned out this poor soul, and HER child died?"
+
+"No! no!"
+
+"We will use all precautions.  The boys shall be moved to the other
+end of the house."
+
+I proposed that they should occupy my room, as I had had smallpox,
+and was safe.
+
+"Thank you, Phineas; and even should they take it, Dr. Jenner has
+assured me that in every case after vaccination it has been the very
+slightest form of the complaint.  Be patient, love; trust in God, and
+have no fear."
+
+Her husband's voice gradually calmed her.  At last, she turned and
+clung round his neck, silently and long.  Then she rose up and went
+about her usual duties, just as if this horrible dread were not upon
+us.
+
+Mary Baines and her children stayed in the house.  Next day, about
+noon, the little lad died.
+
+It was the first death that had ever happened under our roof.  It
+shocked us all very much, especially the children.  We kept them far
+away on the other side of the house--out of the house, when possible-
+-but still they would be coming back and looking up at the window, at
+which, as Muriel declared, the little sick boy "had turned into an
+angel and flown away."  The mother allowed the fancy to remain; she
+thought it wrong and horrible that a child's first idea should be
+"putting into the pit-hole."  Truer and more beautiful was Muriel's
+instinctive notion of "turning into an angel and flying away."  So we
+arranged that the poor little body should be coffined and removed
+before the children rose next morning.
+
+It was a very quiet tea-time.  A sense of awe was upon the little
+ones, they knew not why.  Many questions they asked about poor Tommy
+Baines, and where he had gone to, which the mother only answered
+after the simple manner of Scripture--he "was not, for God took him."
+But when they saw Mary Baines go crying down the field-path, Muriel
+asked "why she cried? how could she cry, when it was God who had
+taken little Tommy?"
+
+Afterwards she tried to learn of me privately, what sort of place it
+was he had gone to, and how he went; whether he had carried with him
+all his clothes, and especially the great bunch of woodbine she sent
+to him yesterday; and above all, whether he had gone by himself, or
+if some of the "angels," which held so large a place in Muriel's
+thoughts, and of which she was ever talking, had come to fetch him
+and take care of him.  She hoped--indeed, she felt sure--they had.
+She wished she had met them, or heard them about in the house.
+
+And seeing how the child's mind was running on the subject, I thought
+it best to explain to her as simply as I could, the solemn putting
+off of life and putting on of immortality.  I wished that my darling,
+who could never visibly behold death, should understand it as no
+image of terror, but only as a calm sleep and a joyful waking in
+another country, the glories of which eye had not seen nor ear heard.
+
+"Eye has not seen!" repeated Muriel, thoughtfully; "can people SEE
+there, Uncle Phineas?"
+
+"Yes, my child.  There is no darkness at all."
+
+She paused a minute, and said earnestly, "I want to go--I very much
+want to go.  How long do you think it will be before the angels come
+for me?"
+
+"Many, many years, my precious one," said I, shuddering; for truly
+she looked so like them, that I began to fear they were close at
+hand.
+
+But a few minutes afterwards she was playing with her brothers and
+talking to her pet doves, so sweet and humanlike, that the fear
+passed away.
+
+We sent the children early to bed that night, and sat long by the
+fire, consulting how best to remove infection, and almost satisfied
+that in these two days it could not have taken any great hold on the
+house.  John was firm in his belief in Dr. Jenner and vaccination.
+We went to bed greatly comforted, and the household sank into quiet
+slumbers, even though under its roof slept, in deeper sleep, the
+little dead child.
+
+That small closet, which was next to the nursery I occupied, safely
+shut out by it from the rest of the house, seemed very still now.  I
+went to sleep thinking of it, and dreamed of it afterwards.
+
+In the middle of the night a slight noise woke me, and I almost
+fancied I was dreaming still; for there I saw a little white figure
+gliding past my bed's foot; so softly and soundlessly--it might have
+been the ghost of a child--and it went into the dead child's room.
+
+For a moment, that superstitious instinct which I believe we all
+have, paralyzed me.  Then I tried to listen.  There was most
+certainly a sound in the next room--a faint cry, quickly smothered--a
+very human cry.  All the stories I had ever heard of supposed death
+and premature burial rushed horribly into my mind.  Conquering alike
+my superstitious dread or fear of entering the infected room, I
+leaped out of bed, threw on some clothes, got a light, and went in.
+
+There laid the little corpse, all safe and still--for ever.  And like
+its own spirit watching in the night at the head of the forsaken
+clay, sat Muriel.
+
+I snatched her up and ran with her out of the room, in an agony of
+fear.
+
+She hid her face on my shoulder, trembling, "I have not done wrong,
+have I?  I wanted to know what it was like--that which you said was
+left of little Tommy.  I touched it--it was so cold.  Oh! Uncle
+Phineas! THAT isn't poor little Tommy?"
+
+"No, my blessed one--no, my dearest child!  Don't think of it any
+more."
+
+And, hardly knowing what was best to be done, I called John, and told
+him where I had found his little daughter.  He never spoke, but
+snatched her out of my arms into his own, took her in his room, and
+shut the door.
+
+From that time our fears never slumbered.  For one whole week we
+waited, watching the children hour by hour, noting each change in
+each little face; then Muriel sickened.
+
+It was I who had to tell her father, when as he came home in the
+evening I met him by the stream.  It seemed to him almost like the
+stroke of death.
+
+"Oh, my God! not her!  Any but her!"  And by that I knew, what I had
+long guessed, that she was the dearest of all his children.
+
+Edwin and Walter took the disease likewise, though lightly.  No one
+was in absolute danger except Muriel.  But for weeks we had what
+people call "sickness in the house;" that terrible overhanging shadow
+which mothers and fathers well know; under which one must live and
+move, never resting night nor day.  This mother and father bore their
+portion, and bore it well.  When she broke down, which was not often,
+he sustained her.  If I were to tell of all he did--how, after being
+out all day, night after night he would sit up watching by and
+nursing each little fretful sufferer, patient as a woman, and
+pleasant as a child play-mate--perhaps those who talk loftily of "the
+dignity of man" would smile.  I pardon them.
+
+The hardest minute of the twenty-four hours was, I think, that when,
+coming home, he caught sight of me afar off waiting for him, as I
+always did, at the white gate; and many a time, as we walked down to
+the stream, I saw--what no one else saw but God.  After such times I
+used often to ponder over what great love His must be, who, as the
+clearest revelation of it, and of its nature, calls Himself "the
+Father."
+
+And He brought us safe through our time of anguish:  He left us every
+one of our little ones.
+
+One November Sunday, when all the fields were in a mist, and the rain
+came pouring softly and incessantly upon the patient earth which had
+been so torn and dried up by east winds, that she seemed glad enough
+to put aside the mockery of sunshine and melt in quiet tears, we once
+more gathered our flock together in thankfulness and joy.
+
+Muriel came down-stairs triumphantly in her father's arms, and lay on
+the sofa smiling; the firelight dancing on her small white face--
+white and unscarred.  The disease had been kind to the blind child;
+she was, I think, more sweet-looking than ever.  Older, perhaps; the
+round prettiness of childhood gone--but her whole appearance wore
+that inexpressible expression, in which, for want of a suitable word,
+we all embody our vague notions of the unknown world, and call
+"angelic."
+
+"Does Muriel feel quite well--quite strong and well?" the father and
+mother both kept saying every now and then, as they looked at her.
+She always answered, "Quite well."
+
+In the afternoon, when the boys were playing in the kitchen, and John
+and I were standing at the open door, listening to the dropping of
+the rain in the garden, we heard, after its long  silence, Muriel's
+"voice."
+
+"Father, listen!" whispered the mother, linking her arm through his
+as he stood at the door.  Soft and slow came the notes of the old
+harpsichord--she was playing one of the abbey anthems.  Then it
+melted away into melodies we knew not--sweet and strange.  Her
+parents looked at one another--their hearts were full of thankfulness
+and joy.
+
+"And Mary Baines's little lad is in the churchyard."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+"What a comfort! the day-light is lengthening.  I think this has been
+the very dreariest winter I ever knew.  Has it not, my little
+daughter?  Who brought her these violets?"
+
+And John placed himself on a corner of my own particular armchair,
+where, somehow or other, Muriel always lay curled up at tea-time now-
+-(ay, and many hours in the day-time, though we hardly noticed it at
+first).  Taking between his hands the little face, which broke into
+smiles at the merest touch of the father's fingers, be asked her
+"when she intended to go a walk with him?"
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"So we have said for a great many to-morrows, but it is always put
+off.  What do you think, mother--is the little maid strong enough?"
+
+Mrs. Halifax hesitated; said something about "east winds."
+
+"Yet I think it would do her good if she braved east winds, and
+played out of doors as the boys do.  Would you not like it, Muriel?"
+
+The child shrank back with an involuntary "Oh, no."
+
+"That is because she is a little girl, necessarily less strong than
+the lads are.  Is it not so, Uncle Phineas?" continued her father,
+hastily, for I was watching them.
+
+"Muriel will be quite strong when the warm weather comes.  We have
+had such a severe winter.  Every one of the children has suffered,"
+said the mother, in a cheerful tone, as she poured out a cup of cream
+for her daughter, to whom was now given, by common consent, all the
+richest and rarest of the house.
+
+"I think every one has," said John, looking round on his
+apple-cheeked boys; it must have been a sharp eye that detected any
+decrease of health, or increase of suffering, there.  "But my plan
+will set all to rights.  I spoke to Mrs. Tod yesterday.  She will be
+ready to take us all in.  Boys, shall you like going to Enderley?
+You shall go as soon as ever the larch-wood is green."
+
+For, at Longfield, already we began to make a natural almanack and
+chronological table.  "When the may was out"--"When Guy found the
+first robin's nest"--"When the field was all cowslips"--and so on.
+
+"Is it absolutely necessary we should go?" said the mother, who had a
+strong home-clinging, and already began to hold tiny Longfield as the
+apple of her eye.
+
+"I think so, unless you will consent to let me go alone to Enderley."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"What, with those troubles at the mills?  How can you speak so
+lightly?"
+
+"Not lightly, love--only cheerfully.  The troubles must be borne; why
+not bear them with as good heart as possible?  They cannot last--let
+Lord Luxmore do what he will.  If, as I told you, we re-let Longfield
+for this one summer to Sir Ralph, we shall save enough to put the
+mill in thorough repair.  If my landlord will not do it, I will; and
+add a steam-engine, too."
+
+Now the last was a daring scheme, discussed many a winter night by us
+three in Longfield parlour.  At first, Mrs. Halifax had looked grave-
+-most women would, especially wives and mothers, in those days when
+every innovation was regarded with horror, and improvement and ruin
+were held synonymous.  She might have thought so too, had she not
+believed in her husband.  But now, at mention of the steam-engine,
+she looked up and smiled.
+
+"Lady Oldtower asked me about it to-day.  She said, 'she hoped you
+would not ruin yourself, like Mr. Miller of Glasgow!'  I said I was
+not afraid."
+
+Her husband returned a bright look.  "It is easier to make the world
+trust one, when one is trusted by one's own household."
+
+"Ah! never fear; you will make your fortune yet, in spite of Lord
+Luxmore."
+
+For, all winter, John had found out how many cares come with an
+attained wish.  Chiefly, because, as the earl had said, his lordship
+possessed an "excellent memory."  The Kingswell election had worked
+its results in a hundred small ways, wherein the heavy hand of the
+landlord could be laid upon the tenant.  He bore up bravely against
+it; but hard was the struggle between might and right, oppression and
+staunch resistance.  It would have gone harder, but for one whom John
+now began to call his "friend;" at least, one who invariably called
+Mr. Halifax so--our neighbour, Sir Ralph Oldtower.
+
+"How often has Lady Oldtower been here, Ursula?"
+
+"She called first, you remember, after our trouble with the children;
+she has been twice since, I think.  To-day she wanted me to bring
+Muriel and take luncheon at the Manor House.  I shall not go--I told
+her so."
+
+"But gently, I hope?--you are so very outspoken, love.  You made her
+clearly understand that it is not from incivility we decline her
+invitations?--Well--never mind!  Some day we will take our place, and
+so shall our children, with any gentry in the land."
+
+I think--though John rarely betrayed it--he had strongly this
+presentiment of future power, which may often be noticed in men who
+have carved out their own fortunes.  They have in them the instinct
+to rise; and as surely as water regains its own level, so do they,
+from however low a source, ascend to theirs.
+
+Not many weeks after, we removed in a body to Enderley.  Though the
+chief reason was, that John might be constantly on the spot,
+superintending his mills, yet I fancied I could detect a secondary
+reason, which he would not own even to himself; but which peered out
+unconsciously in his anxious looks.  I saw it when he tried to rouse
+Muriel into energy, by telling her how much she would enjoy Enderley
+Hill; how sweet the primroses grew in the beechwood, and how wild and
+fresh the wind swept over the common, morning and night.  His daily
+longing seemed to be to make her love the world, and the things
+therein.  He used to turn away, almost in pain, from her smile, as
+she would listen to all he said, then steal off to the harpsichord,
+and begin that soft, dreamy music, which the children called "talking
+to angels."
+
+We came to Enderley through the valley, where was John's cloth-mill.
+Many a time in our walks he and I had passed it, and stopped to
+listen to the drowsy fall of the miniature Niagara, or watch the
+incessant turning--turning of the great water-wheel.  Little we
+thought he should ever own it, or that John would be pointing it out
+to his own boys, lecturing them on "undershot," and "overshot," as he
+used to lecture me.
+
+It was sweet, though half-melancholy, to see Enderley again; to climb
+the steep meadows and narrow mule-paths, up which he used to help me
+so kindly.  He could not now; he had his little daughter in his arms.
+It had come, alas! to be a regular thing that Muriel should be
+carried up every slight ascent, and along every hard road.  We paused
+half-way up on a low wall, where I had many a time rested, watching
+the sunset over Nunneley Hill--watching for John to come home.  Every
+night--at least after Miss March went away--he usually found me
+sitting there.
+
+He turned to me and smiled.  "Dost remember, lad?" at which
+appellation Guy widely stared.  But, for a minute, how strangely it
+brought back old times, when there were neither wife nor children--
+only he and I!  This seat on the wall, with its small twilight
+picture of the valley below the mill, and Nunneley heights, with that
+sentinel row of sun-set trees--was all mine--mine solely--for
+evermore.
+
+"Enderley is just the same, Phineas.  Twelve years have made no
+change--except in us."  And he looked fondly at his wife, who stood a
+little way off, holding firmly on the wall, in a hazardous group, her
+three boys.  "I think the chorus and comment on all life might be
+included in two brief phrases given by our friend Shakspeare, one to
+Hamlet, the other to Othello:  ''Tis very strange,' and ''Tis better
+as it is.'"
+
+"Ay, ay," said I thoughtfully.  Better as it was; better a thousand
+times.
+
+I went to Mrs. Halifax, and helped her to describe the prospect to
+the inquisitive boys; finally coaxing the refractory Guy up the
+winding road, where, just as if it had been yesterday, stood my old
+friends, my four Lombardy poplars, three together and one apart.
+
+Mrs. Tod descried us afar off and was waiting at the gate; a little
+stouter, a little rosier--that was all.  In her delight, she so
+absolutely forgot herself as to address the mother as Miss March; at
+which long-unspoken name Ursula started, her colour went and came,
+and her eyes turned restlessly towards the church hard by.
+
+"It is all right--Miss--Ma'am, I mean.  Tod bears in mind Mr.
+Halifax's orders, and has planted lots o' flower-roots and
+evergreens."
+
+"Yes, I know."
+
+And when she had put all her little ones to bed--we, wondering where
+the mother was, went out towards the little churchyard, and found her
+quietly sitting there.
+
+We were very happy at Enderley.  Muriel brightened up before she had
+been there many days.  She began to throw off her listlessness, and
+go about with me everywhere.  It was the season she enjoyed most--the
+time of the singing of birds, and the springing of delicate-scented
+flowers.  I myself never loved the beech-wood better than did our
+Muriel.  She used continually to tell us this was the happiest spring
+she had ever had in her life.
+
+John was much occupied now.  He left his Norton Bury business under
+efficient care, and devoted himself almost wholly to the cloth-mill.
+Early and late he was there.  Very often Muriel and I followed him,
+and spent whole mornings in the mill meadows.  Through them the
+stream on which the machinery depended was led by various
+contrivances, checked or increased in its flow, making small ponds,
+or locks, or waterfalls.  We used to stay for hours listening to its
+murmur, to the sharp, strange cry of the swans that were kept there,
+and the twitter of the water-hen to her young among the reeds.  Then
+the father would come to us and remain a few minutes--fondling
+Muriel, and telling me how things went on at the mill.
+
+One morning, as we three sat there, on the brick-work of a little
+bridge, underneath an elm tree, round the roots of which the water
+made a pool so clear, that we could see a large pike lying like a
+black shadow, half-way down; John suddenly said:
+
+"What is the matter with the stream?  Do you notice, Phineas?"
+
+"I have seen it gradually lowering--these two hours.  I thought you
+were drawing off the water."
+
+"Nothing of the kind--I must look after it.  Good-bye, my little
+daughter.  Don't cling so fast; father will be back soon--and isn't
+this a sweet sunny place for a little maid to be lazy in?"
+
+His tone was gay, but he had an anxious look.  He walked rapidly down
+the meadows, and went into his mill.  Then I saw him retracing his
+steps, examining where the stream entered the bounds of his property.
+Finally, he walked off towards the little town at the head of the
+valley--beyond which, buried in woods, lay Luxmore Hall.  It was two
+hours more before we saw him again.
+
+Then he came towards us, narrowly watching the stream.  It had sunk
+more and more--the muddy bottom was showing plainly.
+
+"Yes--that's it--it can be nothing else!  I did not think he would
+have dared to do it."
+
+"Do what, John?  Who?"
+
+"Lord Luxmore."  He spoke in the smothered tones of violent passion.
+"Lord Luxmore has turned out of its course the stream that works my
+mill."
+
+I tried to urge that such an act was improbable; in fact, against the
+law.
+
+"Not against the law of the great against the little.  Besides, he
+gives a decent colouring--says he only wants the use of the stream
+three days a week, to make fountains at Luxmore Hall.  But I see what
+it is--I have seen it coming a whole year.  He is determined to ruin
+me!"
+
+John said this in much excitement.  He hardly felt Muriel's tiny
+creeping hands.
+
+"What does 'ruin' mean?  Is anybody making father angry?"
+
+"No, my sweet--not angry--only very, very miserable!"
+
+He snatched her up, and buried his head in her soft, childish bosom.
+She kissed him and patted his hair.
+
+"Never mind, dear father.  You say nothing signifies, if we are only
+good.  And father is always good."
+
+"I wish I were."
+
+He sat down with her on his knee; the murmur of the elm-leaves, and
+the slow dropping of the stream, soothed him.  By and by, his spirit
+rose, as it always did, the heavier it was pressed down.
+
+"No, Lord Luxmore shall not ruin me!  I have thought of a scheme.
+But first I must speak to my people--I shall have to shorten wages
+for a time."
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"To-night.  If it must be done--better done at once, before winter
+sets in.  Poor fellows! it will go hard with them--they'll be hard
+upon me.  But it is only temporary; I must reason them into patience,
+if I can;--God knows, it is not they alone who want it."
+
+He almost ground his teeth as he saw the sun shining on the far white
+wing of Luxmore Hall.
+
+"Have you no way of righting yourself?  If it is an unlawful act, why
+not go to law?"
+
+"Phineas, you forget my principle--only mine, however; I do not force
+it upon any one else--my firm principle, that I will never go to law.
+Never!  I would not like to have it said, in contradistinction to the
+old saying, 'See how these Christians FIGHT!'"
+
+I urged no more; since, whether abstractedly the question be right or
+wrong, there can be no doubt that what a man believes to be evil, to
+him it is evil.
+
+"Now, Uncle Phineas, go you home with Muriel.  Tell my wife what has
+occurred--say, I will come to tea as soon as I can.  But I may have
+some little trouble with my people here.  She must not alarm
+herself."
+
+No, the mother never did.  She wasted no time in puerile
+apprehensions--it was not her nature; she had the rare feminine
+virtue of never "fidgetting"--at least, externally.  What was to be
+borne--she bore:  what was to be done--she did; but she rarely made
+any "fuss" about either her doings or her sufferings.
+
+To-night, she heard all my explanation; understood it, I think, more
+clearly than I did--probably from being better acquainted with her
+husband's plans and fears.  She saw at once the position in which he
+was placed; a grave one, to judge by her countenance.
+
+"Then you think John is right?"
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+I had not meant it as a question, or even a doubt.  But it was
+pleasant to hear her thus answer.  For, as I have said, Ursula was
+not a woman to be led blindfold, even by her husband.  Sometimes they
+differed on minor points, and talked their differences lovingly out;
+but on any great question she had always this safe trust in him--that
+if one were right and the other wrong, the erring one was much more
+likely to be herself than John.
+
+She said no more; but put the children to bed; then came downstairs
+with her bonnet on.
+
+"Will you come with me, Phineas?  Or are you too tired?  I am going
+down to the mill."
+
+She started, walking quickly--yet not so quick but that on the slope
+of the common she stooped to pick up a crying child, and send it home
+to its mother in Enderley village.
+
+It was almost dark, and we met no one else except a young man, whom I
+had occasionally seen about of evenings.  He was rather odd looking,
+being invariably muffled up in a large cloak and a foreign sort of
+hat.
+
+"Who is that, watching our mills?" said Mrs. Halifax, hastily.
+
+I told her all I had seen of the person.
+
+"A Papist, most likely--I mean a Catholic."  (John objected to the
+opprobrious word "Papist.")  "Mrs. Tod says there are a good many
+hidden hereabouts.  They used to find shelter at Luxmore."
+
+And that name set both our thoughts anxiously wandering; so that not
+until we reached the foot of the hill did I notice that the person
+had followed us almost to the mill-gates.
+
+In his empty mill, standing beside one of its silenced looms, we
+found the master.  He was very much dejected--Ursula touched his arm
+before he even saw her.
+
+"Well, love--you know what has happened?"
+
+"Yes, John.  But never mind."
+
+"I would not--except for my poor people."
+
+"What do you intend doing?  That which you have wished to do all the
+year?"
+
+"Our wishes come as a cross to us sometimes," he said, rather
+bitterly.  "It is the only thing I can do.  The water-power being so
+greatly lessened, I must either stop the mills, or work them by
+steam."
+
+"Do that, then.  Set up your steam-engine."
+
+"And have all the country down upon me for destroying hand-labour?
+Have a new set of Luddites coming to burn my mill, and break my
+machinery?  That is what Lord Luxmore wants.  Did he not say he would
+ruin me?--Worse than this--he is ruining my good name.  If you had
+heard those poor people whom I sent away tonight!  What must they,
+who will have short work these two months, and after that
+machinery-work, which they fancy is taking the very bread out of
+their mouths--what must they think of the master?"
+
+He spoke--as we rarely heard John speak:  as worldly cares and
+worldly injustice cause even the best of men to speak sometimes.
+
+"Poor people!" he added, "how can I blame them?  I was actually dumb
+before them to-night, when they said I must take the cost of what I
+do--they must have bread for their children.  But so must I for mine.
+Lord Luxmore is the cause of all."
+
+Here I heard--or fancied I heard--out of the black shadow behind the
+loom, a heavy sigh.  John and Ursula were too anxious to notice it.
+
+"Could anything be done?" she asked.  "Just to keep things going till
+your steam-engine is ready?  Will it cost much?"
+
+"More than I like to think of.  But it must be;--nothing venture--
+nothing have.  You and the children are secure anyhow, that's one
+comfort.  But oh, my poor people at Enderley!"
+
+Again Ursula asked if nothing could be done.
+
+"Yes--I did think of one plan--but--"
+
+"John, I know what you thought of."
+
+She laid her hand on his arm, and looked straight up at him--eye to
+eye.  Often, it seemed that from long habit they could read one
+another's minds in this way, clearly as a book.  At last John said:
+
+"Would it be too hard a sacrifice, love?"
+
+"How can you talk so!  We could do it easily, by living in a plainer
+way; by giving up one or two trifles.  Only outside things, you know.
+Why need we care for outside things?"
+
+"Why, indeed?" he said, in a low, fond tone.
+
+So I easily found out how they meant to settle the difficulty;
+namely, by setting aside a portion of the annual income which John,
+in his almost morbid anxiety lest his family should take harm by any
+possible non-success in his business, had settled upon his wife.
+Three months of little renunciations--three months of the old narrow
+way of living, as at Norton Bury--and the poor people at Enderley
+might have full wages, whether or no there was full work.  Then in
+our quiet valley there would be no want, no murmurings, and, above
+all, no blaming of the master.
+
+They decided it all--in fewer words than I have taken to write it--it
+was so easy to decide when both were of one mind.
+
+"Now," said John, rising, as if a load were taken off his breast--
+"now, do what he will Lord Luxmore cannot do me any harm."
+
+"Husband, don't let us speak of Lord Luxmore."
+
+Again that sigh--quite ghostly in the darkness.  They heard it
+likewise this time.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+"Only I.  Mr. Halifax---don't be angry with me."
+
+It was the softest, mildest voice--the voice of one long used to
+oppression; and the young man whom Ursula had supposed to be a
+Catholic appeared from behind the loom.
+
+"I do not know you, sir.  How came you to enter my mill?"
+
+"I followed Mrs. Halifax.  I have often watched her and your
+children.  But you don't remember me."
+
+Yes; when he came underneath the light of the one tallow candle, we
+all recognized the face--more wan than ever--with a sadder and more
+hopeless look in the large grey eyes.
+
+"I am surprised to see you here, Lord Ravenel."
+
+"Hush!  I hate the very sound of the name.  I would have renounced it
+long ago.  I would have hid myself away from him and from the world,
+if he would have let me."
+
+"He--do you mean your father?"
+
+The boy--no, he was a young man now, but scarcely looked more than a
+boy--assented silently, as if afraid to utter the name.
+
+"Would not your coming here displease him?" said John, always
+tenacious of trenching a hair's breadth upon any lawful authority.
+
+"It matters not--he is away.  He has left me these six months alone
+at Luxmore."
+
+"Have you offended him?" asked Ursula, who had cast kindly looks on
+the thin face, which perhaps reminded her of another--now for ever
+banished from our sight, and his also.
+
+"He hates me because I am a Catholic, and wish to become a monk."
+
+The youth crossed himself, then started and looked round, in terror
+of observers.  "You will not betray me?  You are a good man, Mr.
+Halifax, and you spoke warmly for us.  Tell me--I will keep your
+secret--are you a Catholic too?"
+
+"No, indeed."
+
+"Ah! I hoped you were.  But you are sure you will not betray me?"
+
+Mr. Halifax smiled at such a possibility.  Yet, in truth, there was
+some reason for the young man's fears; since, even in those days,
+Catholics were hunted down both by law and by public opinion, as
+virulently as Protestant nonconformists.  All who kept out of the
+pale of the national church were denounced as schismatics, deists,
+atheists--it was all one.
+
+"But why do you wish to leave the world?"
+
+"I am sick of it.  There never was but one in it I cared for, or who
+cared for me--and now--Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis."
+
+His lips moved in a paroxysm of prayer--helpless, parrot-learnt,
+Latin prayer; yet, being in earnest, it seemed to do him good.  The
+mother, as if she heard in fancy that pitiful cry, which rose to my
+memory too--"Poor William!--don't tell William!"--turned and spoke to
+him kindly, asking him if he would go home with us.
+
+He looked exceedingly surprised.  "I--you cannot mean it?  After Lord
+Luxmore has done you all this evil?"
+
+"Is that any reason why I should not do good to his son--that is, if
+I could?  Can I?"
+
+The lad lifted up those soft grey eyes, and then I remembered what
+his sister had said of Lord Ravenel's enthusiastic admiration of Mr.
+Halifax.  "Oh, you could--you could."
+
+"But I and mine are heretics, you know!"
+
+"I will pray for you.  Only let me come and see you--you and your
+children."
+
+"Come, and welcome."
+
+"Heartily welcome, Lord--"
+
+"No--not that name, Mrs. Halifax.  Call me as they used to call me at
+St.  Omer--Brother Anselmo."
+
+The mother was half inclined to smile; but John never smiled at any
+one's religious beliefs, howsoever foolish.  He held in universal
+sacredness that one rare thing--sincerity,
+
+So henceforward "Brother Anselmo" was almost domesticated at Rose
+Cottage.  What would the earl have said, had a little bird flown over
+to London and told him that his only son, the heir-apparent to his
+title and political opinions, was in constant and open association--
+for clandestine acquaintance was against all our laws and rules--with
+John Halifax the mill-owner, John Halifax the radical, as he was
+still called sometimes; imbibing principles, modes of life and of
+thought, which, to say the least, were decidedly different from those
+of the house of Luxmore!
+
+Above all, what would that noble parent have said, had he been aware
+that this, his only son, for whom, report whispered, he was already
+planning a splendid marriage--as grand in a financial point of view
+as that he planned for his only daughter--that Lord Ravenel was
+spending all the love of his loving nature in the half paternal, half
+lover-like sentiment which a young man will sometimes lavish on a
+mere child--upon John Halifax's little blind daughter, Muriel!
+
+He said, "She made him good"--our child of peace.  He would sit,
+gazing on her almost as if she were his guardian angel--his patron
+saint.  And the little maid in her quiet way was very fond of him;
+delighting in his company when her father was not by.  But no one
+ever was to her like her father.
+
+The chief bond between her and Lord Ravenel--or "Anselmo," as he
+would have us call him--was music.  He taught her to play on the
+organ, in the empty church close by.  There during the long midsummer
+evenings, they two would sit for hours in the organ-gallery, while I
+listened down below; hardly believing that such heavenly sounds could
+come from those small child-fingers; almost ready to fancy she had
+called down some celestial harmonist to aid her in playing.  Since,
+as we used to say--but by some instinct never said now--Muriel was so
+fond of "talking with the angels."
+
+Just at this time, her father saw somewhat less of her than usual.
+He was oppressed with business cares; daily, hourly vexations.  Only
+twice a week the great water-wheel, the delight of our little Edwin
+as it had once been of his father, might be seen slowly turning; and
+the water-courses along the meadows, with their mechanically-forced
+channels, and their pretty sham cataracts, were almost always low or
+dry.  It ceased to be a pleasure to walk in the green hollow, between
+the two grassy hills, which heretofore Muriel and I had liked even
+better than the Flat.  Now she missed the noise of the water--the cry
+of the water-hens--the stirring of the reeds.  Above all, she missed
+her father, who was too busy to come out of his mill to us, and
+hardly ever had a spare minute, even for his little daughter.
+
+He was setting up that wonderful novelty--a steam-engine.  He had
+already been to Manchester and elsewhere, and seen how the new power
+was applied by Arkwright, Hargreaves, and others; his own ingenuity
+and mechanical knowledge furnished the rest.  He worked early and
+late--often with his own hands--aided by the men he brought with him
+from Manchester.  For it was necessary to keep the secret--especially
+in our primitive valley--until the thing was complete.  So the
+ignorant, simple mill people, when they came for their easy
+Saturday's wages, only stood and gaped at the mass of iron, and the
+curiously-shaped brickwork, and wondered what on earth "the master"
+was about?  But he was so thoroughly "the master," with all his
+kindness, that no one ventured either to question or interfere.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+Summer waned.  Already the beech-wood began to turn red, and the
+little yellow autumn flowers to show themselves all over the common,
+while in the midst of them looked up the large purple eye of the
+ground-thistle.  The mornings grew hazy and dewy.  We ceased to take
+Muriel out with us in our slow walk along John's favourite "terrace"
+before any one else was stirring.  Her father at first missed her
+sorely, but always kept repeating that "early walks were not good for
+children."  At last he gave up the walk altogether, and used to sit
+with her on his knee in front of the cottage till breakfast-time.
+
+After that, saying with a kind of jealousy "that every one of us had
+more of his little daughter than he," he got into a habit of fetching
+her down to the mill every day at noon, and carrying her about in his
+arms, wherever he went, during the rest of his work.
+
+Many a time I have seen the rough, coarse, blue-handed,
+blue-pinafored women of the mill stop and look wistfully after
+"master and little blind miss."  I often think that the quiet way in
+which the Enderley mill people took the introduction of machinery,
+and the peaceableness with which they watched for weeks the setting
+up of the steam-engine, was partly owing to their strong impression
+of Mr. Halifax's goodness as a father, and the vague, almost
+superstitious interest which attached to the pale, sweet face of
+Muriel.
+
+Enderley was growing dreary, and we began to anticipate the cosy
+fireside of Longfield.
+
+"The children will all go home looking better than they came; do you
+not think so, Uncle Phineas?--especially Muriel?"
+
+To that sentence I had to answer with a vague assent; after which I
+was fain to rise and walk away, thinking how blind love was--all love
+save mine, which had a gift for seeing the saddest side of things.
+
+When I came back, I found the mother and daughter talking
+mysteriously apart.  I guessed what it was about, for I had overheard
+Ursula saying they had better tell the child--it would be "something
+for her to look forward to--something to amuse her next winter."
+
+"It is a great secret, mind," the mother whispered, after its
+communication.
+
+"Oh, yes!"  The tiny face, smaller than ever, I thought, flushed
+brightly.  "But I would much rather have a little sister, if you
+please.  Only"--and the child suddenly grew earnest--"will she be
+like me?"
+
+"Possibly; sisters often are alike."
+
+"No, I don't mean that; but--you know?"  And Muriel touched her own
+eyes.
+
+"I cannot tell, my daughter.  In all things else, pray God she may be
+like you, Muriel, my darling--my child of peace!" said Ursula,
+embracing her with tears.
+
+After this confidence, of which Muriel was very proud, and only
+condescended, upon gaining express permission, to re-confide it to
+me, she talked incessantly of the sister that was coming, until
+"little Maud"--the name she chose for her--became an absolute entity
+in the household.
+
+The dignity and glory of being sole depositary of this momentous
+fact, seemed for a time to put new life--bright human life--into this
+little maid of eleven years old.  She grew quite womanly, as it were;
+tried to help her mother in a thousand little ways, and especially by
+her own solitary branch of feminine industry--poor darling!  She set
+on a pair of the daintiest elfin socks that ever were knitted.  I
+found them, years after--one finished, one with the needles (all
+rusty) stuck through the fine worsted ball, just as the child had
+laid it out of her hand.  Ah, Muriel, Muriel!
+
+The father took great delight in this change, in her resuming her
+simple work, and going about constantly with her mother.
+
+"What a comfort she will be to Ursula one day--an eldest daughter
+always is.  So will she:  will she not, Uncle Phineas?"
+
+I smiled assentingly.  Alas! his burthens were heavy enough!  I think
+I did right to smile.
+
+"We must take her down with us to see the steam-engine first worked.
+I wish Ursula would have gone home without waiting for to-morrow.
+But there is no fear--my men are so quiet and good-humoured.  What in
+most mills has been a day of outrage and dread, is with us quite a
+festival.  Boys, shall you like to come?  Edwin, my practical lad, my
+lad that is to carry on the mills--will you promise to hold fast by
+Uncle Phineas, if I let you see the steam-engine work?"
+
+Edwin lifted up from his slate bright, penetrating eyes.  He was
+quite an old man in his ways--wise even from his babyhood, and quiet
+even when Guy snubbed him; but, I noticed, he did not come to "kiss
+and make friends" so soon as Guy.  And though Guy was much the
+naughtiest, we all loved him best.  Poor Guy! he had the frankest,
+warmest, tenderest boy-heart, always struggling to be good, and never
+able to accomplish it.
+
+"Father," cried Guy, "I want to see the steam-engine move, but I'll
+not be a baby like Edwin; I'll not hold Uncle Phineas' hand."
+
+Hereupon ensued one of those summer storms which sometimes swept
+across the family horizon, in the midst of which Muriel and I stole
+out into the empty church, where, almost in the dark--which was no
+dark to her--for a long hour she sat and played.  By and by the moon
+looked in, showing the great gilt pipes of the organ, and the little
+fairy figure sitting below.
+
+Once or twice she stooped from the organ-loft to ask me where was
+Brother Anselmo, who usually met us in the church of evenings, and
+whom to-night--this last night before the general household moved
+back to Longfield--we had fully expected.
+
+At last he came, sat down by me, and listened.  She was playing a
+fragment of one of his Catholic masses.  When it ended, he called
+"Muriel!"
+
+Her soft, glad answer came down from the gallery.
+
+"Child, play the 'Miserere' I taught you."
+
+She obeyed, making the organ wail like a tormented soul.  Truly, no
+tales I ever heard of young Wesley and the infant Mozart ever
+surpassed the wonderful playing of our blind child.
+
+"Now, the 'Dies Irae.'--It will come," he muttered, "to us all."
+
+The child struck a few notes, heavy and dolorous, filling the church
+like a thunder-cloud, then suddenly left off, and opening the
+flute-stop, burst into altogether different music.
+
+"That is Handel--'I know that my Redeemer liveth.'"
+
+Exquisitely she played it, the clear treble notes seemed to utter
+like a human voice the very words:
+
+    "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and He shall stand
+          at the latter day upon the earth.
+     And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh
+          shall I see God."
+
+With that she ceased.
+
+"More, more!" we both cried.
+
+"Not now--no more now."
+
+And we heard her shutting up the stops and closing the organ lid.
+
+"But my little Muriel has not finished her tune?"
+
+"She will, some day," said the child.
+
+So she came down from the organ-loft, feeling her way along the
+aisles; and we all went out together, locking the church-door.
+
+Lord Ravenel was rather sad that night; he was going away from
+Luxmore for some time.  We guessed why--because the earl was coming.
+Bidding us good-bye, he said, mournfully, to his little pet, "I wish
+I were not leaving you.  Will you remember me, Muriel?"
+
+"Stoop down; I want to see you."
+
+This was her phrase for a way she had of passing her extremely
+sensitive fingers over the faces of those she liked.  After which she
+always said she "saw" them.
+
+"Yes; I shall remember you."
+
+"And love me?"
+
+"And love you, Brother Anselmo."
+
+He kissed, not her cheek or mouth, but her little child-hands,
+reverently, as if she had been the saint he worshipped, or, perhaps,
+the woman whom afterwards he would learn to adore.  Then he went
+away.
+
+"Truly," said the mother, in an amused aside to me, as with a kind of
+motherly pride she watched him walk hastily down between those
+chestnut-trees, known of old--"truly, time flies fast.  Things begin
+to look serious--eh, father?  Five years hence we shall have that
+young man falling in love with Muriel."
+
+But John and I looked at the still, soft face, half a child's and
+half an angel's.
+
+"Hush!" he said, as if Ursula's fancy were profanity; then eagerly
+snatched it up and laughed, confessing how angry he should be if
+anybody dared to "fall in love" with Muriel.
+
+Next day was the one fixed for the trial of the new steam-engine;
+which trial being successful, we were to start at once in a
+post-chaise for Longfield; for the mother longed to be at home, and
+so did we all.
+
+There was rather a dolorous good-bye, and much lamenting from good
+Mrs. Tod, who, her own bairns grown up, thought there were no
+children worthy to compare with our children.  And truly, as the
+three boys scampered down the road--their few regrets soon over,
+eager for anything new--three finer lads could not be seen in the
+whole country.
+
+Mrs. Halifax looked after them proudly--mother-like, she gloried in
+her sons; while John, walking slowly, and assuring Mrs. Tod over and
+over again that we should all come back next summer, went down the
+steep hill, carrying, hidden under many wraps and nestled close to
+his warm shoulder, his little frail winter-rose--his only daughter.
+
+In front of the mill we found a considerable crowd; for the time
+being ripe, Mr. Halifax had made public the fact that he meant to
+work his looms by steam, the only way in which he could carry on the
+mill at all.  The announcement had been received with great surprise
+and remarkable quietness, both by his own work-people and all along
+Enderley valley.  Still there was the usual amount of contemptuous
+scepticism, incident on any new experiment.  Men were peering about
+the locked door of the engine-room with a surly curiosity; and one
+village oracle, to prove how impossible it was that such a thing as
+steam could work anything, had taken the trouble to light a fire in
+the yard and set thereon his wife's best tea-kettle, which, as she
+snatched angrily away, scalded him slightly, and caused him to limp
+away swearing, a painful illustration of the adage, that "a little
+knowledge is a dangerous thing."
+
+"Make way, my good people," said Mr. Halifax; and he crossed the
+mill-yard, his wife on his arm, followed by an involuntary murmur of
+respect.
+
+"He be a fine fellow, the master; he sticks at nothing," was the
+comment heard made upon him by one of his people, and probably it
+expressed the feeling of the rest.  There are few things which give a
+man more power over his fellows than the thoroughly English quality
+of daring.
+
+Perhaps this was the secret why John had as yet passed safely through
+the crisis which had been the destruction of so many mill-owners,
+namely, the introduction of a power which the mill-people were
+convinced would ruin hand-labour.  Or else the folk in our valley,
+out of their very primitiveness, had more faith in the master; for
+certainly, as John passed through the small crowd, there was only one
+present who raised the old fatal cry of "Down with machinery!"
+
+"Who said that?"
+
+At the master's voice--at the flash of the master's eye--the little
+knot of work-people drew back, and the malcontent, whoever he was,
+shrunk into silence.
+
+Mr. Halifax walked past them, entered his mill, and unlocked the door
+of the room which he had turned into an engine-room, and where, along
+with the two men he had brought from Manchester, he had been busy
+almost night and day for this week past in setting up his machinery.
+They worked--as the Manchester fellows said they had often been
+obliged to work--under lock and key.
+
+"Your folk be queer 'uns, Mr. Halifax.  They say there's six devils
+inside on her, theer."
+
+And the man pointed to the great boiler which had been built up in an
+out-house adjoining.
+
+"Six devils, say they?--Well, I'll be Maister Michael Scot--eh,
+Phineas?--and make my devils work hard."
+
+He laughed, but he was much excited.  He went over, piece by piece,
+the complicated but delicate machinery; rubbed here and there at the
+brass-work, which shone as bright as a mirror; then stepped back, and
+eyed it with pride, almost with affection.
+
+"Isn't it a pretty thing?--If only I have set it up right--if it will
+but work."
+
+His hands shook--his cheeks were burning--little Edwin came peering
+about at his knee; but he pushed the child hastily away; then he
+found some slight fault with the machinery, and while the workmen
+rectified it stood watching them, breathless with anxiety.  His wife
+came to his side.
+
+"Don't speak to me,--don't, Ursula.  If it fails I am ruined."
+
+"John!"--she just whispered his name, and the soft, firm fold of her
+fingers closed round his, strengthening, cheering.  Her husband
+faintly smiled.
+
+"Here!"--He unlocked the door, and called to the people outside.
+"Come in, two of you fellows, and see how my devils work.  Now then!
+Boys, keep out of the way; my little girl"--his voice softened--"my
+pet will not be frightened?  Now, my men--ready?"
+
+He opened the valve.
+
+With a strange noise, that made the two Enderley men spring back as
+if the six devils were really let loose upon them, the steam came
+rushing into the cylinder.  There was a slight motion of the
+piston-rod.
+
+"All's right! it will work?"
+
+No, it stopped.
+
+John drew a deep breath.
+
+It went on again, beginning to move slowly up and down, like the
+strong right arm of some automaton giant.  Greater and lesser cog-
+wheels caught up the motive power, revolving slowly and majestically,
+and with steady, regular rotation, or whirling round so fast you
+could hardly see that they stirred at all.  Of a sudden a soul had
+been put into that wonderful creature of man's making, that inert
+mass of wood and metal, mysteriously combined.  The monster was
+alive!
+
+Speechless, John stood watching it.  Their trial over, his energies
+collapsed; he sat down by his wife's side, and taking Muriel on his
+knee, bent his head over hers.
+
+"Is all right, father?" the child whispered.
+
+"All quite right, my own."
+
+"You said you could do it, and you have done it," cried his wife, her
+eyes glowing with triumph, her head erect and proud.
+
+John dropped his lower, lower still.  "Yes," he murmured; "yes, thank
+God."
+
+Then he opened the door, and let all the people in to see the
+wondrous sight.
+
+They crowded in by dozens, staring about in blank wonder, gaping
+curiosity, ill-disguised alarm.  John took pains to explain the
+machinery, stage by stage, till some of the more intelligent caught
+up the principle, and made merry at the notion of "devils."  But they
+all looked with great awe at the master, as if he were something more
+than man.  They listened open-mouthed to every word he uttered,
+cramming the small engine-room till it was scarcely possible to
+breathe, but keeping at a respectful distance from the iron-armed
+monster, that went working, working on, as if ready and able to work
+on to everlasting.
+
+John took his wife and children out into the open air.  Muriel, who
+had stood for the last few minutes by her father's side, listening
+with a pleasing look to the monotonous regular sound, like the
+breathing of the demon, was unwilling to go.
+
+"I am very glad I was with you to-day,--very glad, father," she kept
+saying.
+
+He said, as often--twice as often--that next summer, when he came
+back to Enderley, she should be with him at the mills every day, and
+all day over, if she liked.
+
+There was now nothing to be done but to hasten as quickly and as
+merrily as possible to our well-beloved Longfield.
+
+Waiting for the post-chaise, Mrs. Halifax and the boys sat down on
+the bridge over the defunct and silenced water-fall, on the muddy
+steps of which, where the stream used to dash musically over, weeds
+and long grasses, mingled with the drooping water-fern, were already
+beginning to grow.
+
+"It looks desolate, but we need not mind that now," said Mrs.
+Halifax.
+
+"No," her husband answered.  "Steam power once obtained, I can apply
+it in any way I choose.  My people will not hinder; they trust me,
+they like me."
+
+"And, perhaps, are just a little afraid of you.  No matter, it is
+wholesome fear.  I should not like to have married a man whom nobody
+was afraid of."
+
+John smiled; he was looking at the horseman riding towards us along
+the high road.  "I do believe that is Lord Luxmore.  I wonder whether
+he has heard of my steam-engine.  Love, will you go back into the
+mill or not?"
+
+"Certainly not."  The mother seated herself on the bridge, her boys
+around her; John avouched, with an air like the mother of the
+Gracchi, or like the Highland woman who trained one son after another
+to fight and slay their enemy--their father's murderer.
+
+"Don't jest," said Ursula.  She was much more excited than her
+husband.  Two angry spots burnt on her cheeks when Lord Luxmore came
+up, and, in passing, bowed.
+
+Mrs. Halifax returned it, haughtily enough.  But at the moment a loud
+cheer broke out from the mill hard by, and "Hurrah for the master!"
+"Hurrah for Mr. Halifax!" was distinctly heard.  The mother smiled,
+right proudly.
+
+Lord Luxmore turned to his tenant--they might have been on the best
+terms imaginable from his bland air.
+
+"What is that rather harsh noise I hear, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"It is my men cheering me."
+
+"Oh, how charming! so grateful to the feelings.  And WHY do they
+cheer you, may I ask?"
+
+John briefly told him, speaking with perfect courtesy as he was
+addressed.
+
+"And this steam-engine--I have heard of it before--will greatly
+advantage your mills?"
+
+"It will, my lord.  It renders me quite independent of your stream,
+of which the fountains at Luxmore can now have the full monopoly."
+
+It would not have been human nature if a spice of harmless malice--
+even triumph--had not sparkled in John's eye, as he said this.  He
+was walking by the horse's side, as Lord Luxmore had politely
+requested him.
+
+They went a little way up the hill together, out of sight of Mrs.
+Halifax, who was busy putting the two younger boys into the chaise.
+
+"I did not quite understand.  Would you do me the favour to repeat
+your sentence?"
+
+"Merely, my lord, that your cutting off of the water-course has been
+to me one of the greatest advantages I ever had in my life; for
+which, whether meant or not, allow me to thank you."
+
+The earl looked full in John's face, without answering; then spurred
+his horse violently.  The animal started off, full speed.
+
+"The children.  Good God--the children!"
+
+Guy was in the ditch-bank, gathering flowers--but Muriel--For the
+first time in our lives, we had forgotten Muriel.
+
+She stood in the horse's path--the helpless, blind child.  The next
+instant she was knocked down.
+
+I never heard a curse on John Halifax's lips but once--that once.
+Lord Luxmore heard it too.  The image of the frantic father,
+snatching up his darling from under the horse's heels, must have
+haunted the earl's good memory for many a day.
+
+He dismounted, saying, anxiously, "I hope the little girl is not
+injured?  It was accident--you see--pure accident."
+
+But John did not hear; he would scarcely have heard heaven's thunder.
+He knelt with the child in his arms by a little runnel in the
+ditch-bank.  When the water touched her she opened her eyes with that
+wide, momentary stare so painful to behold.
+
+"My little darling!"
+
+Muriel smiled, and nestled to him.  "Indeed, I am not hurt, dear
+father."
+
+Lord Luxmore, standing by, seemed much relieved, and again pressed
+his apologies.
+
+No answer.
+
+"Go away," sobbed out Guy, shaking both his fists in the nobleman's
+face.  "Go away--or I'll kill you--wicked man!  I would have done it
+if you had killed my sister."
+
+Lord Luxmore laughed at the boy's fury--threw him a guinea, which Guy
+threw back at him with all his might, and rode placidly away.
+
+"Guy--Guy--" called the faint, soft voice which had more power over
+him than any other, except his mother's.  "Guy must not be angry.
+Father, don't let him be angry."
+
+But the father was wholly occupied in Muriel--looking in her face,
+and feeling all her little fragile limbs, to make sure that in no way
+she was injured.
+
+It appeared not; though the escape seemed almost miraculous.  John
+recurred, with a kind of trembling tenacity, to the old saying in our
+house, that "nothing ever harmed Muriel."
+
+"Since it is safe over, and she can walk--you are sure you can, my
+pet?--I think we will not say anything about this to the mother; at
+least not till we reach Longfield."
+
+But it was too late.  There was no deceiving the mother.  Every
+change in every face struck her instantaneously.  The minute we
+rejoined her she said:
+
+"John, something has happened to Muriel."
+
+Then he told her, making as light of the accident as he could; as,
+indeed, for the first ten minutes we all believed, until alarmed by
+the extreme pallor and silence of the child.
+
+Mrs. Halifax sat down by the roadside, bathed Muriel's forehead and
+smoothed her hair; but still the little curls lay motionless against
+the mother's breast,--and still to every question she only answered
+"that she was not hurt."
+
+All this while the post-chaise was waiting.
+
+"What must be done?" I inquired of Ursula; for it was no use asking
+John anything.
+
+"We must go back again to Enderley," she said decidedly.
+
+So, giving Muriel into her father's arms, she led the way, and, a
+melancholy procession, we again ascended the hill to Rose Cottage
+door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+Without any discussion, our plans were tacitly changed--no more was
+said about going home to dear Longfield.  Every one felt, though no
+one trusted it to words, that the journey was impossible.  For Muriel
+lay, day after day, on her little bed in an upper chamber, or was
+carried softly down in the middle of the day by her father, never
+complaining, but never attempting to move or talk.  When we asked her
+if she felt ill, she always answered, "Oh, no! only so very tired."
+Nothing more.
+
+"She is dull, for want of the others to play with her.  The boys
+should not run out and leave their sister alone," said John, almost
+sharply, when one bright morning the lads' merry voices came down
+from the Flat, while he and I were sitting by Muriel's sofa in the
+still parlour.
+
+"Father, let the boys play without me, please.  Indeed, I do not
+mind.  I had rather lie quiet here."
+
+"But it is not good for my little girl always to be quiet, and it
+grieves father."
+
+"Does it?"  She roused herself, sat upright, and began to move her
+limbs, but wearily.
+
+"That is right, my darling.  Now let me see how well you can walk."
+
+Muriel slipped to her feet and tried to cross the room, catching at
+table and chairs--now, alas! not only for guidance but actual
+support.  At last she began to stagger, and said, half crying:
+
+"I can't walk, I am so tired.  Oh, do take me in your arms, dear
+father."
+
+Her father took her, looked long in her sightless face, then buried
+his against her shoulder, saying nothing.  But I think in that moment
+he too saw, glittering and bare, the long-veiled Hand which, for this
+year past, _I_ had seen stretched out of the immutable heavens,
+claiming that which was its own.  Ever after there was discernible in
+John's countenance a something which all the cares of his anxious yet
+happy life had never written there--an ineffaceable record, burnt in
+with fire.
+
+He held her in his arms all day.  He invented all sorts of tales and
+little amusements for her; and when she was tired of these he let her
+lie in his bosom and sleep.  After her bed-time he asked me to go out
+with him on the Flat.
+
+It was a misty night.  The very cows and asses stood up large and
+spectral as shadows.  There was not a single star to be seen.
+
+We took our walk along the terrace and came back again, without
+exchanging a single word.  Then John said hastily:
+
+"I am glad her mother was so busy to-day--too busy to notice."
+
+"Yes," I answered; unconnected as his words were.
+
+"Do you understand me, Phineas?  Her mother must not on any account
+be led to imagine, or to fear--anything.  You must not look as you
+looked this morning.  You must not, Phineas."
+
+He spoke almost angrily.  I answered in a few quieting words.  We
+were silent, until over the common we caught sight of the light in
+Muriel's window.  Then I felt rather than heard the father's groan.
+
+"Oh, God! my only daughter--my dearest child!"
+
+Yes, she was the dearest.  I knew it.  Strange mystery, that He
+should so often take, by death or otherwise, the DEAREST--always the
+dearest.  Strange that He should hear us cry--us writhing in the
+dust, "O Father, anything, anything but this!"  But our Father
+answers not; and meanwhile the desire of our eyes--be it a life, a
+love, or a blessing--slowly, slowly goes--is gone.  And yet we have
+to believe in our Father.  Perhaps of all trials to human faith this
+is the sorest.  Thanks be to God if He puts into our hearts such love
+towards Him that even while He slays us we can trust Him still.
+
+This father--this broken-hearted earthly father--could.
+
+When we sat at the supper-table--Ursula, John, and I, the children
+being all in bed--no one could have told that there was any shadow
+over us, more than the sadly-familiar pain of the darling of the
+house being "not so strong as she used to be."
+
+"But I think she will be, John.  We shall have her quite about again,
+before--"
+
+The mother stopped, slightly smiling.  It was, indeed, an especial
+mercy of heaven which put that unaccountable blindness before her
+eyes, and gave her other duties and other cares to intercept the
+thought of Muriel.  While, from morning till night, it was the
+incessant secret care of her husband, myself, and good Mrs. Tod, to
+keep her out of her little daughter's sight, and prevent her mind
+from catching the danger of one single fear.
+
+Thus, within a week or two, the mother lay down cheerfully upon her
+couch of pain, and gave another child to the household--a little
+sister to Muriel.
+
+Muriel was the first to whom the news was told.  Her father told it.
+His natural joy and thankfulness seemed for the moment to efface
+every other thought.
+
+"She is come, darling! little Maud is come.  I am very rich--for I
+have two daughters now."
+
+"Muriel is glad, father."  But she showed her gladness in a strangely
+quiet, meditative way, unlike a child--unlike even her old self.
+
+"What are you thinking of, my pet?"
+
+"That--though father has another daughter, I hope he will remember
+the first one sometimes."
+
+"She is jealous!" cried John, in the curious delight with which he
+always detected in her any weakness, any fault, which brought her
+down to the safe level of humanity.  "See, Uncle Phineas, our Muriel
+is actually jealous."
+
+But Muriel only smiled.
+
+That smile--so serene--so apart from every feeling or passion
+appertaining to us who are "of the earth, earthy," smote the father
+to the heart's core.
+
+He sat down by her, and she crept up into his arms.
+
+"What day is it, father?"
+
+"The first of December."
+
+"I am glad.  Little Maud's birthday will be in the same month as
+mine."
+
+"But you came in the snow, Muriel, and now it is warm and mild."
+
+"There will be snow on my birthday, though.  There always is.  The
+snow is fond of me, father.  It would like me to lie down and be all
+covered over, so that you could not find me anywhere."
+
+I heard John try to echo her weak, soft laugh.
+
+"This month it will be eleven years since I was born, will it not,
+father?"
+
+"Yes, my darling."
+
+"What a long time!  Then, when my little sister is as old as I am, I
+shall be--that is, I should have been--a woman grown.  Fancy me
+twenty years old, as tall as mother, wearing a gown like her, talking
+and ordering, and busy about the house.  How funny!" and she laughed
+again.  "Oh! no, father, I couldn't do it.  I had better remain
+always your little Muriel, weak and small, who liked to creep close
+to you, and go to sleep in this way."
+
+She ceased talking--very soon she was sound asleep.  But--the father!
+
+Muriel faded, though slowly.  Sometimes she was so well for an hour
+or two that the Hand seemed drawn back into the clouds, till of a
+sudden again we discerned it there.
+
+One Sunday--it was ten days or so after Maud's birth, and the weather
+had been so bitterly cold that the mother had herself forbidden our
+bringing Muriel to the other side of the house where she and the baby
+lay--Mrs. Tod was laying the dinner, and John stood at the window
+playing with his three boys.
+
+He turned abruptly, and saw all the chairs placed round the table--
+all save one.
+
+"Where is Muriel's chair, Mrs. Tod?"
+
+"Sir, she says she feels so tired like, she'd rather not come down
+to-day," answered Mrs. Tod, hesitatingly.
+
+"Not come down?"
+
+"Maybe better not, Mr. Halifax.  Look out at the snow.  It'll be
+warmer for the dear child to-morrow."
+
+"You are right.  Yes, I had forgotten the snow.  She shall come down
+to-morrow."
+
+I caught Mrs. Tod's eyes; they were running over.  She was too wise
+to speak of it--but she knew the truth as well as we.
+
+This Sunday--I remember it well--was the first day we sat down to
+dinner with the one place vacant.
+
+For a few days longer, her father, every evening when he came in from
+the mills, persisted in carrying her down, as he had said, holding
+her on his knee during tea, then amusing her and letting the boys
+amuse her for half-an-hour or so before bed-time.  But at the week's
+end even this ceased.
+
+When Mrs. Halifax, quite convalescent, was brought triumphantly to
+her old place at our happy Sunday dinner-table, and all the boys came
+pressing about her, vying which should get most kisses from little
+sister Maud--she looked round, surprised amidst her smiling, and
+asked:
+
+"Where is Muriel?"
+
+"She seems to feel this bitter weather a good deal," John said; "and
+I thought it better she should not come down to dinner."
+
+"No," added Guy, wondering and dolefully, "sister has not been down
+to dinner with us for a great many days."
+
+The mother started; looked first at her husband, and then at me.
+
+"Why did nobody tell me this?"
+
+"Love--there was nothing new to be told."
+
+"Has the child had any illness that I do not know of?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Has Dr. Jessop seen her?"
+
+"Several times."
+
+"Mother," said Guy, eager to comfort--for naughty as he was
+sometimes, he was the most tender-hearted of all the boys, especially
+to Muriel and to his mother,--"sister isn't ill a bit, I know.  She
+was laughing and talking with me just now--saying she knows she could
+carry baby a great deal better than I could.  She is as merry as ever
+she can be."
+
+The mother kissed him in her quick, eager way--the sole indication of
+that maternal love which was in her almost a passion.  She looked
+more satisfied.
+
+Nevertheless, when Mrs. Tod came into the parlour, she rose and put
+little Maud into her arms.
+
+"Take baby, please, while I go up to see Muriel."
+
+"Don't--now don't, please, Mrs. Halifax," cried earnestly the good
+woman.
+
+Ursula turned very pale.  "They ought to have told me," she muttered;
+"John, YOU MUST let me go and see my child."
+
+"Presently--presently--Guy, run up and play with Muriel.  Phineas,
+take the others with you.  You shall go up-stairs in one minute, my
+darling wife!"
+
+He turned us all out of the room, and shut the door.  How he told her
+that which was necessary she should know--that which Dr. Jessop
+himself had told us this very morning--how the father and mother had
+borne this first open revelation of their unutterable grief--for ever
+remained unknown.
+
+I was sitting by Muriel's bed, when they came up-stairs.  The darling
+laid listening to her brother, who was squatted on her pillow, making
+all sorts of funny talk.  There was a smile on her face; she looked
+quite rosy:  I hoped Ursula might not notice, just for the time
+being, the great change the last few weeks had made.
+
+But she did--who could ever blindfold a mother?  For a moment I saw
+her recoil--then turn to her husband with a dumb, piteous, desperate
+look, as though to say, "Help me--my sorrow is more than I can bear!"
+
+But Muriel, hearing the step, cried with a joyful cry, "Mother! it's
+my mother!"
+
+The mother folded her to her breast.
+
+Muriel shed a tear or two there--in a satisfied, peaceful way; the
+mother did not weep at all.  Her self-command, so far as speech went,
+was miraculous.  For her look--but then she knew the child was blind.
+
+"Now," she said, "my pet will be good and not cry?  It would do her
+harm.  We must be very happy to-day."
+
+"Oh, yes."  Then, in a fond whisper, "Please, I do so want to see
+little Maud."
+
+"Who?" with an absent gaze.
+
+"My little sister Maud--Maud that is to take my place, and be
+everybody's darling now."
+
+"Hush, Muriel," said the father, hoarsely.
+
+A strangely soft smile broke over her face--and she was silent.
+
+The new baby was carried up-stairs proudly, by Mrs. Tod, all the boys
+following.  Quite a levee was held round the bed, where, laid close
+beside her, her weak hands being guided over the tiny face and form,
+Muriel first "saw" her little sister.  She was greatly pleased.  With
+a grave elder-sisterly air she felt all over the baby-limbs, and when
+Maud set up an indignant cry, began hushing her with so quaint an
+imitation of motherliness, that we were all amused.
+
+"You'll be a capital nurse in a month or two, my pretty!" said Mrs.
+Tod.
+
+Muriel only smiled.  "How fat she is!--and look, how fast her fingers
+take hold!  And her head is so round, and her hair feels so soft--as
+soft as my dove's neck at Longfield.  What colour is it?  Like mine?"
+
+It was; nearly the same shade.  Maud bore, the mother declared, the
+strongest likeness to Muriel.
+
+"I am so glad.  But these"--touching her eyes anxiously.
+
+"No--my darling.  Not like you there," was the low answer.
+
+"I am VERY glad.  Please, little Maud, don't cry--it's only sister
+touching you.  How wide open your eyes feel!  I wonder,"--with a
+thoughtful pause--"I wonder if you can see me.  Little Maud, I should
+like you to see sister."
+
+"She does see, of course; how she stares!" cried Guy.  And then Edwin
+began to argue to the contrary, protesting that as kittens and
+puppies could not see at first, he believed little babies did not:
+which produced a warm altercation among the children gathered round
+the bed, while Muriel lay back quietly on her pillow, with her little
+sister fondly hugged to her breast.
+
+The father and mother looked on.  It was such a picture--these five
+darlings, these children which God had given them--a group perfect
+and complete in itself, like a root of daisies, or a branch of
+ripening fruit, which not one could be added to, or taken from--
+
+No.  I was sure, from the parents' smile, that, this once, Mercy had
+blinded their eyes, so that they saw nothing beyond the present
+moment.
+
+The children were wildly happy.  All the afternoon they kept up their
+innocent little games by Muriel's bed-side; she sometimes sharing,
+sometimes listening apart.  Only once or twice came that wistful,
+absent look, as if she were listening partly to us, and partly to
+those we heard not; as if through the wide-open orbs the soul were
+straining at sights wonderful and new--sights unto which HER eyes
+were the clear-seeing, and ours the blank and blind.
+
+It seems strange now, to remember that Sunday afternoon, and how
+merry we all were; how we drank tea in the queer bed-room at the top
+of the house; and how afterwards Muriel went to sleep in the
+twilight, with baby Maud in her arms.  Mrs. Halifax sat beside the
+little bed, a sudden blazing up of the fire showing the intentness of
+her watch over these two, her eldest and youngest, fast asleep; their
+breathing so soft, one hardly knew which was frailest, the life
+slowly fading or the life but just begun.  Their breaths seemed to
+mix and mingle, and the two faces, lying close together, to grow into
+a strange likeness each to each.  At least, we all fancied so.
+
+Meanwhile, John kept his boys as still as mice, in the broad window-
+seat, looking across the white snowy sheet, with black bushes peering
+out here and there, to the feathery beech-wood, over the tops of
+which the new moon was going down.  Such a little young moon! and how
+peacefully--nay, smilingly--she set among the snows!
+
+The children watched her till the very last minute, when Guy startled
+the deep quiet of the room by exclaiming--"There--she's gone."
+
+"Hush!"
+
+"No, mother, I am awake," said Muriel.  "Who is gone, Guy?"
+
+"The moon--such a pretty little moon."
+
+"Ah, Maud will see the moon some day."  She dropped her cheek down
+again beside the baby sister, and was silent once more.
+
+This is the only incident I remember of that peaceful, heavenly hour.
+
+Maud broke upon its quietude by her waking and wailing; and Muriel
+very unwillingly let the little sister go.
+
+"I wish she might stay with me--just this one night; and to-morrow is
+my birthday.  Please, mother, may she stay?"
+
+"We will both stay, my darling.  I shall not leave you again."
+
+"I am so glad;" and once more she turned round, as if to go to sleep.
+
+"Are you tired, my pet?" said John, looking intently at her.
+
+"No, father."
+
+"Shall I take your brothers down-stairs?"
+
+"Not yet, dear father."
+
+"What would you like, then?"
+
+"Only to lie here, this Sunday evening, among you all."
+
+He asked her if she would like him to read aloud? as he generally did
+on Sunday evenings.
+
+"Yes, please; and Guy will come and sit quiet on the bed beside me
+and listen.  That will be pleasant.  Guy was always very good to his
+sister--always."
+
+"I don't know that," said Guy, in a conscience-stricken tone.  "But I
+mean to be when I grow a big man--that I do."
+
+No one answered.  John opened the large Book--the Book he had taught
+all his children to long for and to love--and read out of it their
+favourite history of Joseph and his brethren.  The mother sat by him
+at the fireside, rocking Maud softly on her knees.  Edwin and Walter
+settled themselves on the hearth-rug, with great eyes intently fixed
+on their father.  From behind him the candle-light fell softly down
+on the motionless figure in the bed, whose hand he held, and whose
+face he every now and then turned to look at--then, satisfied,
+continued to read.
+
+In the reading his voice had a fatherly, flowing calm--as Jacob's
+might have had, when "the children were tender," and he gathered them
+all round him under the palm-trees of Succoth--years before he cried
+unto the Lord that bitter cry--(which John hurried over as he read)--
+"IF I AM BEREAVED OF MY CHILDREN, I AM BEREAVED."
+
+For an hour, nearly, we all sat thus--with the wind coming up the
+valley, howling in the beech-wood, and shaking the casement as it
+passed outside.  Within, the only sound was the father's voice.  This
+ceased at last; he shut the Bible, and put it aside.  The group--that
+last perfect household picture--was broken up.  It melted away into
+things of the past, and became only a picture, for evermore.
+
+"Now, boys--it is full time to say good-night.  There, go and kiss
+your sister."
+
+"Which?" said Edwin, in his funny way.  "We've got two now; and I
+don't know which is the biggest baby."
+
+"I'll thrash you if you say that again," cried Guy.  "Which, indeed?
+Maud is but the baby.  Muriel will be always 'sister.'"
+
+"Sister" faintly laughed, as she answered his fond kiss--Guy was
+often thought to be her favourite brother.
+
+"Now, off with you, boys; and go down-stairs quietly--mind, I say
+quietly."
+
+They obeyed--that is, as literally as boy-nature can obey such an
+admonition.  But an hour after I heard Guy and Edwin arguing
+vociferously in the dark, on the respective merits and future
+treatment of their two sisters, Muriel and Maud.
+
+John and I sat up late together that night.  He could not rest--even
+though he told me he had left the mother and her two daughters as
+cosy as a nest of wood-pigeons.  We listened to the wild night, till
+it had almost howled itself away; then our fire went out, and we came
+and sat over the last faggot in Mrs. Tod's kitchen--the old
+Debateable Land.  We began talking of the long-ago time, and not of
+this time at all.  The vivid present--never out of either mind for an
+instant--we in our conversation did not touch upon, by at least ten
+years.  Nor did we give expression to a thought which strongly
+oppressed me, and which I once or twice fancied I could detect in
+John likewise--how very like this night seemed to the night when Mr.
+March died; the same silentness in the house--the same windy whirl
+without--the same blaze of the wood-fire on the same kitchen ceiling.
+
+More than once I could almost have deluded myself that I heard the
+faint moans and footsteps over-head--that the staircase door would
+open, and we should see there Miss March, in her white gown, and her
+pale, steadfast look.
+
+"I think the mother seemed very well and calm to-night," I said,
+hesitatingly, as we were retiring.
+
+"She is.  God help her--and us all!"
+
+"He will."
+
+This was all we said.
+
+He went up-stairs the last thing, and brought down word that mother
+and children were all sound asleep.
+
+"I think I may leave them until daylight to-morrow.  And now, Uncle
+Phineas, go you to bed, for you look as tired as tired can be."
+
+I went to bed; but all night long I had disturbed dreams, in which I
+pictured over and over again, first the night when Mr. March died--
+then the night at Longfield, when the little white ghost had crossed
+by my bed's foot, into the room where Mary Baines' dead boy lay.  And
+continually, towards morning, I fancied I heard through my window,
+which faced the church, the faint, distant sound of the organ, as
+when Muriel used to play it.
+
+Long before it was light I rose.  As I passed the boy's room Guy
+called out to me:
+
+"Halloa!  Uncle Phineas, is it a fine morning?--for I want to go down
+into the wood and get a lot of beech-nuts and fir-cones for sister.
+It's her birthday to-day, you know."
+
+It WAS, for her.  But for us--Oh, Muriel, our darling--darling child!
+
+Let me hasten over the story of that morning, for my old heart quails
+before it still.
+
+John went early to the room up-stairs.  It was very still.  Ursula
+lay calmly asleep, with baby Maud in her bosom; on her other side,
+with eyes wide open to the daylight, lay--that which for more than
+ten years we had been used to call "blind Muriel."  She saw, now.
+
+                    *          *          *          *
+
+The same day at evening we three were sitting in the parlour; we
+elders only--it was past the children's bed-time.  Grief had spent
+itself dry; we were all very quiet.  Even Ursula, when she came in
+from fetching the boys' candle, as had always been her custom, and
+though afterwards I thought I had heard her going up-stairs, likewise
+from habit,--where there was no need to bid any mother's good-night
+now--even Ursula sat in the rocking-chair, nursing Maud, and trying
+to still her crying with a little foolish baby-tune that had
+descended as a family lullaby from one to the other of the whole
+five--how sad it sounded!
+
+John--who sat at the table, shading the light from his eyes, an open
+book lying before him, of which he never turned one page--looked up
+at her.
+
+"Love, you must not tire yourself.  Give me the child."
+
+"No, no!  Let me keep my baby--she comforts me so."  And the mother
+burst into uncontrollable weeping.
+
+John shut his book and came to her.  He supported her on his bosom,
+saying a soothing word or two at intervals, or when the paroxysm of
+her anguish was beyond all bounds supporting her silently till it had
+gone by; never once letting her feel that, bitter as her sorrow was,
+his was heavier than hers.
+
+Thus, during the whole of the day, had he been the stay and
+consolation of the household.  For himself--the father's grief was
+altogether dumb.
+
+At last Mrs. Halifax became more composed.  She sat beside her
+husband, her hand in his, neither speaking, but gazing, as it were,
+into the face of this their great sorrow, and from thence up to the
+face of God.  They felt that He could help them to bear it; ay, or
+anything else that it was His will to send--if they might thus bear
+it, together.
+
+We all three sat thus, and there had not been a sound in the parlour
+for ever so long, when Mrs. Tod opened the door and beckoned me.
+
+"He will come in--he's crazy-like, poor fellow!  He has only just
+heard--"
+
+She broke off with a sob.  Lord Ravenel pushed her aside and stood at
+the door.  We had not seen him since the day of that innocent jest
+about his "falling in love" with Muriel.  Seeing us all so quiet, and
+the parlour looking as it always did when he used to come of
+evenings--the young man drew back, amazed.
+
+"It is not true!  No, it could not be true!" he muttered.
+
+"It is true," said the father.  "Come in."
+
+The mother held out her hand to him.  "Yes, come in.  You were very
+fond of--"
+
+Ah! that name!--now nothing but a name!  For a little while we all
+wept sore.
+
+Then we told him--it was Ursula who did it chiefly--all particulars
+about our darling.  She told him, but calmly, as became one on whom
+had fallen the utmost sorrow and crowning consecration of motherhood-
+-that of yielding up her child, a portion of her own being, to the
+corruption of the grave--of resigning the life which out of her own
+life had been created, unto the Creator of all.
+
+Surely, distinct and peculiar from every other grief, every other
+renunciation, must be that of a woman who is thus chosen to give her
+very flesh and blood, the fruit of her own womb, unto the Lord!
+
+This dignity, this sanctity, seemed gradually to fall upon the
+mourning mother, as she talked about her lost one; repeating often--
+"I tell you this, because you were so fond of Muriel."
+
+He listened silently.  At length he said, "I want to see Muriel."
+
+The mother lit a candle, and he followed her up-stairs.
+
+Just the same homely room--half-bedchamber, half-nursery--the same
+little curtainless bed where, for a week past, we had been accustomed
+to see the wasted figure and small pale face lying, in smiling
+quietude, all day long.
+
+It lay there still.  In it, and in the room, was hardly any change.
+One of Walter's playthings was in a corner of the window-sill, and on
+the chest of drawers stood the nosegay of Christmas roses which Guy
+had brought for his sister yesterday morning.  Nay, her shawl--a
+white, soft, furry shawl, that she was fond of wearing--remained
+still hanging up behind the door.  One could almost fancy the little
+maid had just been said "good-night" to, and left to dream the
+childish dreams on her nursery pillow, where the small head rested so
+peacefully, with that pretty babyish nightcap tied over the pretty
+curls.
+
+There she was, the child who had gone out of the number of our
+children--our earthly children--for ever.
+
+Her mother sat down at the side of the bed, her father at its foot,
+looking at her.  Lord Ravenel stood by, motionless; then stooping
+down, he kissed the small marble hand.
+
+"Good-bye, good-bye, my little Muriel!"
+
+And he left the room abruptly, in such an anguish of grief that the
+mother rose and followed him.
+
+John went to the door and locked it, almost with a sort of
+impatience; then came back and stood by his darling, alone.  Me he
+never saw--no, nor anything in the world except that little face,
+even in death so strangely like his own.  The face which had been for
+eleven years the joy of his heart, the very apple of his eye.
+
+For a long time he remained gazing, in a stupor of silence; then,
+sinking on his knee, he stretched out his arms across the bed, with a
+bitter cry:
+
+"Come back to me, my darling, my first-born!  Come back to me,
+Muriel, my little daughter--my own little daughter!"
+
+But thou wert with the angels, Muriel--Muriel!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+We went home, leaving all that was mortal of our darling sleeping at
+Enderley, underneath the snows.
+
+For twelve years after then, we lived at Longfield; in such unbroken,
+uneventful peace, that looking back seems like looking back over a
+level sea, whose leagues of tiny ripples make one smooth glassy
+plain.
+
+Let me recall--as the first wave that rose, ominous of change--a
+certain spring evening, when Mrs. Halifax and I were sitting, as was
+our wont, under the walnut-tree.  The same old walnut-tree, hardly a
+bough altered, though many of its neighbours and kindred had grown
+from saplings into trees--even as some of us had grown from children
+almost into young men.
+
+"Edwin is late home from Norton Bury," said Ursula.
+
+"So is his father."
+
+"No--this is just John's time.  Hark! there are the carriage-wheels!"
+
+For Mr. Halifax, a prosperous man now, drove daily to and from his
+mills, in as tasteful an equipage as any of the country gentry
+between here and Enderley.
+
+His wife went down to the stream to meet him, as usual, and they came
+up the field-path together.
+
+Both were changed from the John and Ursula of whom I last wrote.
+She, active and fresh-looking still, but settling into that fair
+largeness which is not unbecoming a lady of middle-age, he, inclined
+to a slight stoop, with the lines of his face more sharply defined,
+and the hair wearing away off his forehead up to the crown.  Though
+still not a grey thread was discernible in the crisp locks at the
+back, which successively five little ones had pulled, and played
+with, and nestled in; not a sign of age, as yet, in "father's curls."
+
+As soon as he had spoken to me, he looked round as usual for his
+children, and asked if the boys and Maud would be home to tea?
+
+"I think Guy and Walter never do come home in time when they go over
+to the manor-house."
+
+"They're young--let them enjoy themselves," said the father, smiling.
+"And you know, love, of all our 'fine' friends, there are none you so
+heartily approve of as the Oldtowers."
+
+These were not of the former race.  Good old Sir Ralph had gone to
+his rest, and Sir Herbert reigned in his stead; Sir Herbert, who in
+his dignified gratitude never forgot a certain election day, when he
+first made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Halifax.  The manor-house
+family brought several other "county families" to our notice, or us
+to theirs.  These, when John's fortunes grew rapidly--as many another
+fortune grew, in the beginning of the thirty years' peace, when
+unknown, petty manufacturers first rose into merchant princes and
+cotton lords--these gentry made a perceptible distinction, often
+amusing enough to us, between John Halifax, the tanner of Norton
+Bury, and Mr. Halifax, the prosperous owner of Enderley Mills.  Some
+of them, too, were clever enough to discover, what a pleasant and
+altogether "visitable" lady was Mrs. Halifax, daughter of the late
+Mr. March, a governor in the West Indies, and cousin of Mr. Brithwood
+of the Mythe.  But Mrs. Halifax, with quiet tenacity, altogether
+declined being visited as anything but Mrs. Halifax, wife of John
+Halifax, tanner, or mill-owner, or whatever he might be.  All honours
+and all civilities that did not come through him, and with him, were
+utterly valueless to her.
+
+To this her peculiarity was added another of John's own, namely, that
+all his life he had been averse to what is called "society;" had
+eschewed "acquaintances,"--and--but most men might easily count upon
+their fingers the number of those who, during a life-time, are found
+worthy of the sacred name of "friend."  Consequently, our circle of
+associations was far more limited than that of many families holding
+an equal position with us--on which circumstance our neighbours
+commented a good deal.  But little we cared; no more than we had
+cared for the chit-chat of Norton Bury.  Our whole hearts were bound
+up within our own home--our happy Longfield.
+
+"I do think this place is growing prettier than ever," said John,
+when, tea being over--a rather quiet meal, without a single child--we
+elders went out again to the walnut-tree bench.  "Certainly, prettier
+than ever;" and his eye wandered over the quaint, low house, all odds
+and ends--for nearly every year something had been built, or
+something pulled down; then crossing the smooth bit of lawn, Jem
+Watkins's special pride, it rested on the sloping field, yellow with
+tall buttercups, wavy with growing grass.  "Let me see--how long have
+we lived here?  Phineas, you are the one for remembering dates.  What
+year was it we came to Longfield?"
+
+"Eighteen hundred and twelve.  Thirteen years ago."
+
+"Ah, so long!"
+
+"Not too long," said Mrs. Halifax, earnestly.  "I hope we may end our
+days here.  Do not you, John?"
+
+He paused a little before answering.  "Yes, I wish it; but I am not
+sure how far it would be right to do it."
+
+"We will not open that subject again," said the mother, uneasily.  "I
+thought we had all made up our minds that little Longfield was a
+thousand times pleasanter than Beechwood, grand as it is.  But John
+thinks he never can do enough for his people at Enderley."
+
+"Not that alone, love.  Other reasons combined.  Do you know,
+Phineas," he continued, musingly, as he watched the sun set over
+Leckington Hill--"sometimes I fancy my life is too easy--that I am
+not a wise steward of the riches that have multiplied so fast.  By
+fifty, a man so blest as I have been, ought to have done really
+something of use in the world--and I am forty-five.  Once, I hoped to
+have done wonderful things ere I was forty-five.  But somehow the
+desire faded."
+
+His wife and I were silent.  We both knew the truth; that calm as had
+flowed his outer existence, in which was omitted not one actual duty,
+still, for these twelve years, all the high aims which make the glory
+and charm of life as duties make its strength, all the active
+energies and noble ambitions which especially belong to the prime of
+manhood, in him had been, not dead perhaps, but sleeping.  Sleeping,
+beyond the power of any human voice to waken them, under the daisies
+of a child's grave at Enderley.
+
+I know not if this was right--but it was scarcely unnatural.  In that
+heart, which loved as few men love, and remembered as few men
+remember, so deep a wound could never be thoroughly healed.  A
+certain something in him seemed different ever after, as if a portion
+of the father's own life had been taken away with Muriel, and lay
+buried in the little dead bosom of his first-born, his dearest child.
+
+"You forget," said Mrs. Halifax, tenderly--"you forget, John, how
+much you have been doing, and intend to do.  What with your
+improvements at Enderley, and your Catholic Emancipation--your
+Abolition of Slavery and your Parliamentary Reform--why, there is
+hardly any scheme for good, public or private, to which you do not
+lend a helping hand."
+
+"A helping purse, perhaps, which is an easier thing, much."
+
+"I will not have you blaming yourself.  Ask Phineas, there--our
+household Solomon."
+
+"Thank you, Ursula," said I, submitting to the not rare fortune of
+being loved and laughed at.
+
+"Uncle Phineas, what better could John have done in all these years,
+than look after his mills and educate his three sons?"
+
+"Have them educated, rather," corrected he, sensitive over his own
+painfully-gained and limited acquirements.  Yet this feeling had made
+him doubly careful to give his boys every possible advantage of
+study, short of sending them from home, to which he had an invincible
+objection.  And three finer lads, or better educated, there could not
+be found in the whole country.
+
+"I think, John, Guy has quite got over his fancy of going to
+Cambridge with Ralph Oldtower."
+
+"Yes; college life would not have done for Guy," said the father
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Hush! we must not talk about them, for here come the children."
+
+It was now a mere figure of speech to call them so, though in their
+home-taught, loving simplicity, they would neither have been ashamed
+nor annoyed at the epithet--these two tall lads, who in the dusk
+looked as man-like as their father.
+
+"Where is your sister, boys?"
+
+"Maud stopped at the stream with Edwin," answered Guy, rather
+carelessly.  His heart had kept its childish faith; the youngest, pet
+as she was, was never anything to him but "little Maud."  One--whom
+the boys still talked of, softly and tenderly, in fireside evening
+talks, when the winter winds came and the snow was falling--one only
+was ever spoken of by Guy as "sister."
+
+Maud, or Miss Halifax, as from the first she was naturally called--as
+naturally as our lost darling was never called anything else than
+Muriel--came up, hanging on Edwin's arm, which she was fond of doing,
+both because it happened to be the only arm low enough to suit her
+childish stature, and because she was more especially "Edwin's girl,"
+and had been so always.  She had grown out of the likeness that we
+longed for in her cradle days, or else we had grown out of the
+perception of it; for though the external resemblance in hair and
+complexion still remained, nothing could be more unlike in spirit
+than this sprightly elf, at once the plague and pet of the family--to
+our Muriel.
+
+"Edwin's girl" stole away with him, merrily chattering.  Guy sat down
+beside his mother, and slipped his arm round her waist.  They still
+fondled her with a child-like simplicity--these her almost grown-up
+sons; who had never been sent to school for a day, and had never
+learned from other sons of far different mothers, that a young man's
+chief manliness ought to consist in despising the tender charities of
+home.
+
+"Guy, you foolish boy!" as she took his cap off and pushed back his
+hair, trying not to look proud of his handsome face, "what have you
+been doing all day?"
+
+"Making myself agreeable, of course, mother."
+
+"That he has," corroborated Walter, whose great object of hero-
+worship was his eldest brother.  "He talked with Lady Oldtower, and
+he sang with Miss Oldtower and Miss Grace.  Never was there such a
+fellow as our Guy."
+
+"Nonsense!" said his mother, while Guy only laughed, too accustomed
+to this family admiration to be much disconcerted or harmed thereby.
+
+"When does Ralph return to Cambridge?"
+
+"Not at all.  He is going to leave college, and be off to help the
+Greeks.  Father, do you know everybody is joining the Greeks?  Even
+Lord Byron is off with the rest.  I only wish I were."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" muttered the mother.
+
+"Why not?  I should have made a capital soldier, and liked it too,
+better than anything."
+
+"Better than being my right hand at the mills, and your mother's at
+home?--Better than growing up to be our eldest son, our comfort and
+our hope?--I think not, Guy."
+
+"You are right, father," was the answer, with an uneasy look.  For
+this description seemed less what Guy was than what we desired him to
+be.  With his easy, happy temper, generous but uncertain, and his
+showy, brilliant parts, he was not nearly so much to be depended on
+as the grave Edwin, who was already a thorough man of business, and
+plodded between Enderley mills and a smaller one which had taken the
+place of the flour mill at Norton Bury, with indomitable
+perseverance.
+
+Guy fell into a brown study, not unnoticed by those anxious eyes,
+which lingered oftener upon his face than on that of any of her sons.
+Mrs. Halifax said, in her quick, decisive way, that it was "time to
+go in."
+
+So the sunset picture outside changed to the home-group within; the
+mother sitting at her little table, where the tall silver candlestick
+shed a subdued light on her work-basket, that never was empty, and
+her busy fingers, that never were still.  The father sat beside her;
+he kept his old habit of liking to have her close to him; ay, even
+though he was falling into the middle-aged comforts of an arm-chair
+and newspaper.  There he sat, sometimes reading aloud, or talking;
+sometimes lazily watching her, with silent, loving eyes, that saw
+beauty in his old wife still.
+
+The young folk scattered themselves about the room.  Guy and Walter
+at the unshuttered window--we had a habit of never hiding our
+home-light--were looking at the moon, and laying bets, sotto voce,
+upon how many minutes she would be in climbing over the oak on the
+top of One-tree Hill.  Edwin sat, reading hard--his shoulders up to
+his ears, and his fingers stuck through his hair, developing the
+whole of his broad, knobbed, knotted forehead, where, Maud declared,
+the wrinkles had already begun to show.  For Mistress Maud herself,
+she flitted about in all directions, interrupting everything, and
+doing nothing.
+
+"Maud," said her father, at last, "I am afraid you give a great deal
+of trouble to Uncle Phineas."
+
+Uncle Phineas tried to soften the fact, but the little lady was
+certainly the most trying of his pupils.  Her mother she had long
+escaped from, for the advantage of both.  For, to tell the truth,
+while in the invisible atmosphere of moral training the mother's
+influence was invaluable, in the minor branch of lesson-learning
+there might have been found many a better teacher than Ursula
+Halifax.  So the children's education was chiefly left to me; other
+tutors succeeding as was necessary; and it had just begun to be
+considered whether a lady governess ought not to "finish" the
+education of Miss Halifax.  But always at home.  Not for all the
+knowledge and all the accomplishments in the world would these
+parents have suffered either son or daughter--living souls intrusted
+them by the Divine Father--to be brought up anywhere out of their own
+sight, out of the shelter and safeguard of their own natural home.
+
+"Love, when I was waiting to-day in Jessop's bank--"
+
+(Ah! that was another change, to which we were even yet not familiar,
+the passing away of our good doctor and his wife, and his brother and
+heir turning the old dining-room into a "County Bank--open from ten
+till four.")
+
+"While waiting there I heard of a lady who struck me as likely to be
+an excellent governess for Maud."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mrs. Halifax, not over-enthusiastically.  Maud became
+eager to know "what the lady was like?"  I at the same time inquiring
+"who she was?"
+
+"Who?  I really did not ask," John answered, smiling.  "But of what
+she is, Jessop gave me first-rate evidence--a good daughter, who
+teaches in Norton Bury anybody's children for any sort of pay, in
+order to maintain an ailing mother.  Ursula, you would let her teach
+our Maud, I know?"
+
+"Is she an Englishwoman?"--For Mrs. Halifax, prejudiced by a certain
+French lady who had for a few months completely upset the peace of
+the manor-house, and even slightly tainted her own favourite, pretty
+Grace Oldtower, had received coldly this governess plan from the
+beginning.  "Would she have to live with us?"
+
+"I think so, decidedly."
+
+"Then it can't be.  The house will not accommodate her.  It will
+hardly hold even ourselves.  No, we cannot take in anybody else at
+Longfield."
+
+"But--we may have to leave Longfield."
+
+The boys here turned to listen; for this question had already been
+mooted, as all family questions were.  In our house we had no
+secrets:  the young folk, being trusted, were ever trustworthy; and
+the parents, clean-handed and pure-hearted, had nothing that they
+were afraid to tell their children.
+
+"Leave Longfield!" repeated Mrs. Halifax; "surely--surely--"  But
+glancing at her husband, her tone of impatience ceased.
+
+He sat gazing into the fire with an anxious air.
+
+"Don't let us discuss that question--at least, not to-night.  It
+troubles you, John.  Put it off till to-morrow."
+
+No, that was never his habit.  He was one of the very few who, a
+thing being to be done, will not trust it to uncertain "to-morrows."
+His wife saw that he wanted to talk to her, and listened.
+
+"Yes, the question does trouble me a good deal.  Whether, now that
+our children are growing up, and our income is doubling and trebling
+year by year, we ought to widen our circle of usefulness, or close it
+up permanently within the quiet bound of little Longfield.  Love,
+which say you?"
+
+"The latter, the latter--because it is far the happiest."
+
+"I am afraid, NOT the latter, because it IS the happiest."
+
+He spoke gently, laying his hand on his wife's shoulder, and looking
+down on her with that peculiar look which he always had when telling
+her things that he knew were sore to hear.  I never saw that look on
+any living face save John's; but I have seen it once in a picture--of
+two Huguenot lovers.  The woman is trying to fasten round the man's
+neck the white badge that will save him from the massacre (of St.
+Bartholomew)--he, clasping her the while, gently puts it aside--not
+stern, but smiling.  That quiet, tender smile, firmer than any frown,
+will, you feel sure, soon control the woman's anguish, so that she
+will sob out--any faithful woman would--"Go, die!  Dearer to me than
+even thyself are thy honour and thy duty!"
+
+When I saw this noble picture, it touched to the core this old heart
+of mine--for the painter, in that rare expression, might have caught
+John's.  Just as in a few crises of his life I have seen it, and
+especially in this one, when he first told to his wife that
+determination which he had slowly come to--that it was both right and
+expedient for us to quit Longfield, our happy home for so many years,
+of which the mother loved every flower in the garden, every nook and
+stone in the walls.
+
+"Leave Longfield!" she repeated again, with a bitter sigh.
+
+"Leave Longfield!" echoed the children, first the youngest, then the
+eldest, but rather in curiosity than regret.  Edwin's keen, bright
+eyes were just lifted from his book, and fell again; he was not a lad
+of much speech, or much demonstration of any kind.
+
+"Boys, come and let us talk over the matter."
+
+They came at once and joined in the circle; respectfully, yet with
+entire freedom, they looked towards their father--these, the sons of
+his youth, to whom he had been from their birth, not only parent and
+head, but companion, guide, and familiar friend.  They honoured him,
+they trusted him, they loved him; not, perhaps, in the exact way that
+they loved their mother; for it often seems Nature's own ordinance,
+that a mother's influence should be strongest over her sons, while
+the father's is greatest over his daughters.  But even a stranger
+could not glance from each to each of those attentive faces, so
+different, yet with a curious "family look" running through them all,
+without seeing in what deep, reverent affection, such as naturally
+takes the place of childish fondness, these youths held their father.
+
+"Yes, I am afraid, after much serious thought on the matter, and much
+consultation with your mother here,--that we ought to leave
+Longfield."
+
+"So I think," said Mistress Maud, from her footstool; which putting
+forward of her important opinion shook us all from gravity to
+merriment, that compelled even Mrs. Halifax to join.  Then, laying
+aside her work, and with it the saddened air with which she had bent
+over it, she drew her chair closer to her husband, slipping her hand
+in his, and leaning against his shoulder.  Upon which Guy, who had at
+first watched his mother anxiously, doubtful whether or no his
+father's plan had her approval, and therefore ought to be assented
+to,--relapsed into satisfied, undivided attention.
+
+"I have again been over Beechwood Hall.  You all remember Beechwood?"
+
+Yes.  It was the "great house" at Enderley, just on the slope of the
+hill, below Rose Cottage.  The beech-wood itself was part of its
+pleasure ground, and from its gardens honest James Tod, who had them
+in keeping, had brought many a pocketful of pears for the boys, many
+a sweet-scented nosegay for Muriel.
+
+"Beechwood has been empty a great many years, father?  Would it be a
+safe investment to buy it?"
+
+"I think so, Edwin, my practical lad," answered the father, smiling.
+"What say you, children?  Would you like living there?"
+
+Each one made his or her comment.  Guy's countenance brightened at
+the notion of "lots of shooting and fishing" about Enderley,
+especially at Luxmore; and Maud counted on the numerous visitors that
+would come to John Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood Hall.
+
+"Neither of which excellent reasons happen to be your father's," said
+Mrs. Halifax, shortly.  But John, often tenderer over youthful
+frivolities than she, answered:
+
+"I will tell you, boys, what are my reasons.  When I was a young man,
+before your mother and I were married, indeed before I had ever seen
+her, I had strongly impressed on my mind the wish to gain influence
+in the world--riches if I could--but at all events, influence.  I
+thought I could use it well, better than most men; those can best
+help the poor who understand the poor.  And I can; since, you know,
+when Uncle Phineas found me, I was--"
+
+"Father," said Guy, flushing scarlet, "we may as well pass over that
+fact.  We are gentlefolks now."
+
+"We always were, my son."
+
+The rebuke, out of its very mildness, cut the youth to the heart.  He
+dropped his eyes, colouring now with a different and a holier shame.
+
+"I know that.  Please will you go on, father."
+
+"And now," the father continued, speaking as much out of his own
+thoughts as aloud to his children--"now, twenty-five years of labour
+have won for me the position I desired.  That is, I might have it for
+the claiming.  I might take my place among the men who have lately
+risen from the people, to guide and help the people--the Cannings,
+Huskissons, Peels."
+
+"Would you enter parliament?  Sir Herbert asked me to-day if you ever
+intended it.  He said there was nothing you might not attain to if
+you would give yourself up entirely to politics."
+
+"No, Guy, no.  Wisdom, like charity, begins at home.  Let me learn to
+rule in my own valley, among my own people, before I attempt to guide
+the state.  And that brings me back again to the pros and cons about
+Beechwood Hall."
+
+"Tell them, John; tell all out plainly to the children."
+
+The reasons were--first, the advantage of the boys themselves; for
+John Halifax was not one of those philanthropists who would benefit
+all the world except their own household and their own kin.  He
+wished--since the higher a man rises, the wider and nobler grows his
+sphere of usefulness--not only to lift himself, but his sons after
+him; lift them high enough to help on the ever-advancing tide of
+human improvement, among their own people first, and thence extending
+outward in the world whithersoever their talents or circumstances
+might call them.
+
+"I understand," cried the eldest son, his eyes sparkling; "you want
+to found a family.  And so it shall be--we will settle at Beechwood
+Hall; all coming generations shall live to the honour and glory of
+your name--our name--"
+
+"My boy, there is only one Name to whose honour we should all live.
+One Name 'in whom all the generations of the earth are blessed.'  In
+thus far only do I wish to 'found a family,' as you call it, that our
+light may shine before men--that we may be a city set on a hill--that
+we may say plainly unto all that ask us, 'For me and my house, we
+will serve the Lord.'"
+
+It was not often that John Halifax spoke thus; adopting solemnly the
+literal language of the Book--his and our life's guide, no word of
+which was ever used lightly in our family.  We all listened, as in
+his earnestness he rose, and, standing upright in the firelight,
+spoke on.
+
+"I believe, with His blessing, that one may 'serve the Lord' as well
+in wealth as in poverty, in a great house as in a cottage like this.
+I am not doubtful, even though my possessions are increased.  I am
+not afraid of being a rich man.  Nor a great man neither, if I were
+called to such a destiny."
+
+"It may be--who knows?" said Ursula, softly.
+
+John caught his wife's eyes, and smiled.
+
+"Love, you were a true prophet once, with a certain 'Yes, you will,'
+but now--Children, you know when I married your mother I had nothing,
+and she gave up everything for me.  I said I would yet make her as
+high as any lady in the land,--in fortune I then meant, thinking it
+would make her happier; but she and I are wiser now.  We know that we
+never can be happier than we were in the old house at Norton Bury, or
+in this little Longfield.  By making her lady of Beechwood I should
+double her responsibilities and treble her cares; give her an
+infinitude of new duties, and no pleasures half so sweet as those we
+leave behind.  Still, of herself and for herself, my wife shall
+decide."
+
+Ursula looked up at him; tears stood in her eyes, though through them
+shone all the steadfastness of faithful love.  "Thank you, John.  I
+have decided.  If you wish it, if you think it right, we will leave
+Longfield and go to Beechwood."
+
+He stooped and kissed her forehead, saying only:  "We will go."
+
+Guy looked up, half-reproachfully, as if the father were exacting a
+sacrifice; but I question whether the greater sacrifice were not his
+who took rather than hers who gave.
+
+So all was settled--we were to leave beloved Longfield.  It was to be
+let, not sold; let to a person we knew, who would take jealous care
+of all that was ours, and we might come back and see it continually;
+but it would be ours--our own home--no more.
+
+Very sad--sadder even than I had thought--was the leaving all the
+familiar things; the orchard and the flower-garden, the meadow and
+the stream, the woody hills beyond, every line and wave of which was
+pleasant and dear almost as our children's faces.  Ay, almost as that
+face which for a year--one little year, had lived in sight of, but
+never beheld, their beauty; the child who one spring day had gone
+away merrily out of the white gate with her three brothers, and never
+came back to Longfield any more.
+
+Perhaps this circumstance, that her fading away and her departure
+happened away from home, was the cause why her memory--the memory of
+our living Muriel, in her human childhood--afterwards clung more
+especially about the house at Longfield.  The other children altered,
+imperceptibly, yet so swiftly, that from year to year we half forgot
+their old likenesses.  But Muriel's never changed.  Her image, only a
+shade, yet often more real than any of these living children, seemed
+perpetually among us.  It crept through the house at dusk; in winter
+fire-light it sat smiling in dim corners; in spring mornings it moved
+about the garden borders, with tiny soft footsteps neither seen nor
+heard.  The others grew up--would be men and women shortly--but the
+one child that "was not," remained to us always a child.
+
+I thought, even the last evening--the very last evening that John
+returned from Enderley, and his wife went down to the stream to meet
+him, and they came up the field together, as they had done so for
+many, many years;--ay, even then I thought I saw his eyes turn to the
+spot where a little pale figure used to sit on the door-sill,
+listening and waiting for him, with her dove in her bosom.  We never
+kept doves now.
+
+And the same night, when all the household was in bed--even the
+mother, who had gone about with a restless activity, trying to
+persuade herself that there would be at least no possibility of
+accomplishing the flitting to-morrow--the last night, when John went
+as usual to fasten the house-door, he stood a long time outside,
+looking down the valley.
+
+"How quiet everything is.  You can almost hear the tinkle of the
+stream.  Poor old Longfield!"  And I sighed, thinking we should never
+again have such another home.
+
+John did not answer.  He had been mechanically bending aside and
+training into its place a long shoot of wild clematis--virgin's
+bower, which Guy and Muriel had brought in from the fields and
+planted, a tiny root; it covered the whole front of the house now.
+Then he came and leaned beside me over the wicket-gate, looking
+fixedly up into the moon-light blue.
+
+"I wonder if she knows we are leaving Longfield?"
+
+"Who?" said I; for a moment forgetting.
+
+"The child."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Father and son--a goodly sight, as they paced side by side up and
+down the gravel walk--(alas! the pretty field-path belonged to days
+that were!)--up and down the broad, sunshiny walk, in front of the
+breakfast-room windows of Beechwood Hall.
+
+It was early--little past eight o'clock; but we kept Longfield hours
+and Longfield ways still.  And besides, this was a grand day--the day
+of Guy's coming of age.  Curious it seemed to watch him, as he walked
+along by his father, looking every inch "the young heir;" and perhaps
+not unconscious that he did so;--curious enough, remembering how
+meekly the boy had come into the world, at a certain old house at
+Norton Bury, one rainy December morning, twenty-one years ago.
+
+It was a bright day to-day--bright as all our faces were, I think, as
+we gathered round the cosy breakfast-table.  There, as heretofore, it
+was the mother's pride and the father's pleasure that not one face
+should be missing--that, summer and winter, all should assemble for
+an hour of family fun and family chat, before the busy cares of the
+day; and by general consent, which had grown into habit, every one
+tried to keep unclouded this little bit of early sunshine, before the
+father and brothers went away.  No sour or dreary looks, no painful
+topics, were ever brought to the breakfast-table.
+
+Thus it was against all custom when Mr. Halifax, laying down his
+paper with a grave countenance, said:
+
+"This is very ill news.  Ten Bank failures in the Gazette to-day."
+
+"But it will not harm us, father."
+
+"Edwin is always thinking of 'us,' and 'our business,'" remarked Guy,
+rather sharply.  It was one of the slight--the very slight--jars in
+our household, that these two lads, excellent lads both, as they grew
+into manhood did not exactly "pull together."
+
+"Edwin is scarcely wrong in thinking of 'us,' since upon us depend so
+many," observed the father, in that quiet tone with which, when he
+did happen to interfere between his sons, he generally smoothed
+matters down and kept the balance even.  "Yet though we are ourselves
+secure, I trust the losses everywhere around us make it the more
+necessary that we should not parade our good fortune by launching out
+into any of Guy's magnificences--eh, my boy?"
+
+The youth looked down.  It was well known in the family that since we
+came to Beechwood his pleasure-loving temperament had wanted all
+sorts of improvements on our style of living--fox-hounds,
+dinner-parties, balls; that the father's ways, which, though extended
+to liberal hospitalities, forbade outward show, and made our life a
+thorough family life still--were somewhat distasteful to that most
+fascinating young gentleman, Guy Halifax, Esquire, heir of Beechwood
+Hall.
+
+"You may call it 'magnificence,' or what you choose; but I know I
+should like to live a little more as our neighbours do.  And I think
+we ought too--we that are known to be the wealthiest family--"
+
+He stopped abruptly--for the door opened; and Guy had too much good
+taste and good feeling to discuss our riches before Maud's poor
+governess--the tall, grave, sad-looking, sad-clothed Miss Silver; the
+same whom John had seen at Mr. Jessop's bank; and who had been with
+us four months--ever since we came to Beechwood.
+
+One of the boys rose and offered her a chair; for the parents set the
+example of treating her with entire respect--nay, would gladly have
+made her altogether one of the family, had she not been so very
+reserved.
+
+Miss Silver came forward with the daily nosegay which Mrs. Halifax
+had confided to her superintendence.
+
+"They are the best I can find, madam--I believe Watkins keeps all his
+greenhouse flowers for to-night."
+
+"Thank you, my dear.  These will do very well.--Yes, Guy, persuade
+Miss Silver to take your place by the fire.  She looks so cold."
+
+But Miss Silver, declining the kindness, passed on to her own seat
+opposite.
+
+Ursula busied herself over the breakfast equipage rather nervously.
+Though an admirable person, Miss Silver in her extreme and all but
+repellant quietness was one whom the mother found it difficult to get
+on with.  She was scrupulously kind to her; and the governess was as
+scrupulously exact in all courtesy and attention; still that
+impassible, self-contained demeanour, that great reticence--it might
+be shyness, it might be pride--sometimes, Ursula privately admitted,
+"fidgeted" her.
+
+To-day was to be a general holiday for both masters and servants; a
+dinner at the mills; and in the evening something which, though we
+call it a tea-drinking, began to look, I was amused to see,
+exceedingly like "a ball."  But on this occasion both parents had
+yielded to their young people's wishes, and half the neighbourhood
+had been invited, by the universally-popular Mr. Guy Halifax to
+celebrate his coming of age.
+
+"Only once in a way," said the mother, half ashamed of herself for
+thus indulging the boy--as, giving his shoulder a fond shake, she
+called him "a foolish fellow."
+
+Then we all dispersed; Guy and Walter to ride to the manor-house,
+Edwin vanishing with his sister, to whom he was giving daily Latin
+lessons in the school-room.
+
+John asked me to take a walk on the hill with him.
+
+"Go, Phineas," whispered his wife--"it will do him good.  And don't
+let him talk too much of old times.  This is a hard week for him."
+
+The mother's eyes were mournful, for Guy and "the child" had been
+born within a year and three days of each other; but she never
+hinted--it never would have struck her to hint--"this is a hard week
+for ME."
+
+That grief--the one great grief of their life, had come to her more
+wholesomely than to her husband:  either because men, the very best
+of men, can only suffer, while women can endure; or because in the
+mysterious ordinance of nature Maud's baby lips had sucked away the
+bitterness of the pang from the bereaved mother, while her loss was
+yet new.  It had never been left to rankle in that warm heart, which
+had room for every living child, while it cherished, in tenderness
+above all sorrow, the child that was no more.
+
+John and I, in our walk, stood a moment by the low churchyard wall,
+and looked over at that plain white stone, where was inscribed her
+name, "Muriel Joy Halifax,"--a line out of that New Testament
+miracle-story she delighted in, "WHEREAS I WAS BLIND, NOW I SEE,"--
+and the date when SHE SAW.  Nothing more:  it was not needed.
+
+"December 5, 1813," said the father, reading the date.  "She would
+have been quite a woman now.  How strange!  My little Muriel!"
+
+And he walked thoughtfully along, almost in the same footprints where
+he had been used to carry his darling up the hillside to the brow of
+Enderley Flat.  He seemed in fancy to bear her in his arms still--
+this little one, whom, as I have before said, Heaven in its
+compensating mercy, year by year, through all changes, had made the
+one treasure that none could take away--the one child left to be a
+child for ever.
+
+I think, as we rested in the self-same place, the sunshiny nook where
+we used to sit with her for hours together, the father's heart took
+this consolation so closely and surely into itself that memory
+altogether ceased to be pain.  He began talking about the other
+children--especially Maud--and then of Miss Silver, her governess.
+
+"I wish she were more likeable, John.  It vexes me sometimes to see
+how coldly she returns the mother's kindness."
+
+"Poor thing!--she has evidently not been used to kindness.  You
+should have seen how amazed she looked yesterday when we paid her a
+little more than her salary, and my wife gave her a pretty silk dress
+to wear to-night.  I hardly knew whether  she would refuse it, or
+burst out crying--in girlish fashion."
+
+"Is she a girl?  Why, the boys say she looks thirty at least.  Guy
+and Walter laugh amazingly at her dowdy dress and her solemn, haughty
+ways."
+
+"That will not do, Phineas.  I must speak to them.  They ought to
+make allowance for poor Miss Silver, of whom I think most highly."
+
+"I know you do; but do you heartily like her?"
+
+"For most things, yes.  And I sincerely respect her, or, of course,
+she would not be here.  I think people should be as particular over
+choosing their daughter's governess as their son's wife; and having
+chosen, should show her almost equal honour."
+
+"You'll have your sons choosing themselves wives soon, John.  I fancy
+Guy has a soft place in his heart for that pretty Grace Oldtower."
+
+But the father made no answer.  He was always tenacious over the
+slightest approach to such jests as these.  And besides, just at this
+moment Mr. Brown, Lord Luxmore's steward, passed--riding solemnly
+along.  He barely touched his hat to Mr. Halifax.
+
+"Poor Mr. Brown!  He has a grudge against me for those Mexican
+speculations I refused to embark in; he did, and lost everything but
+what he gets from Lord Luxmore.  I do think, Phineas, the country has
+been running mad this year after speculation.  There is sure to come
+a panic afterwards, and indeed it seems already beginning."
+
+"But you are secure?  You have not joined in the mania, the crash
+cannot harm you?  Did I not hear you say that you were not afraid of
+losing a single penny?"
+
+"Yes--unfortunately," with a troubled smile.
+
+"John, what do you mean?"
+
+"I mean, that to stand upright while one's neighbours are falling on
+all sides is a most trying position.  Misfortune makes people unjust.
+The other day at the sessions I got cold looks enough from my brother
+magistrates--looks that would have set my blood boiling twenty years
+ago.  And--you saw in the Norton Bury Mercury that article about
+'grasping plebeian millionaires'--'wool-spinners, spinning out of
+their country's vitals.'  That's meant for me, Phineas.  Don't look
+incredulous.  Yes--for me."
+
+"How disgraceful!"
+
+"Perhaps so--but to them more than to me.  I feel sorry, because of
+the harm it may do me--especially among working people, who know
+nothing but what they hear, and believe everything that is told them.
+They see I thrive and others fail--that my mills are the only cloth
+mills in full work, and I have more hands than I can employ.  Every
+week I am obliged to send new-comers away.  Then they raise the old
+cry--that my machinery has ruined labour.  So, you see, for all that
+Guy says about our prosperity, his father does not sleep exactly upon
+a bed of roses."
+
+"It is wicked--atrocious!"
+
+"Not at all.  Only natural--the penalty one has to pay for success.
+It will die out most likely; meantime, we will mind it as little as
+we can."
+
+"But are you safe?--your life--"  For a sudden fear crossed me--a
+fear not unwarranted by more than one event of this year--this
+terrible 1825.
+
+"Safe?--Yes--" and his eyes were lifted, "I believe my life is safe--
+if I have work to do.  Still, for others' sake, I have carried this
+month past whenever I go to and from the Coltham bank, besides my
+cash-box--this."
+
+He showed me, peering out of his breast-pocket, a small pistol.
+
+I was greatly startled.
+
+"Does your wife know?"
+
+"Of course.  But she knows too that nothing but the last extremity
+would force me to use it:  also that my carrying it, and its being
+noised about that I do so, may prevent my ever having occasion to use
+it.  God grant I never may!  Don't let us talk about this."
+
+He stopped, gazing with a sad abstraction down the sunshiny valley--
+most part of which was already his own property.  For whatever
+capital he could spare from his business he never sunk in
+speculation, but took a patriarchal pleasure in investing it in land,
+chiefly for the benefit of his mills and those concerned therein.
+
+"My poor people--they might have known me better!  But I suppose one
+never attains one's desire without its being leavened with some
+bitterness.  If there was one point I was anxious over in my youth,
+it was to keep up through life a name like the Chevalier Bayard--how
+folk would smile to hear of a tradesman emulating Bayard--'sans peur
+et sans reproche!'  And so things might be--ought to be.  So perhaps
+they shall be yet, in spite of this calumny."
+
+"How shall you meet it?  What shall you do?"
+
+"Nothing.  Live it down."
+
+He stood still, looking across the valley to where the frosty line of
+the hill-tops met the steel-blue, steadfast sky.  Yes, I felt sure he
+WOULD 'live it down.'
+
+We dismissed the subject, and spent an hour more in pleasant chat,
+about many things.  Passing homeward through the beech-wood, where
+through the bare tree-tops a light snow was beginning to fall, John
+said, musingly:
+
+"It will be a hard winter--we shall have to help our poor people a
+great deal.  Christmas dinners will be much in request."
+
+"There's a saying, that the way to an Englishman's heart is through
+his stomach.  So, perhaps, you'll get justice by spring."
+
+"Don't be angry, Phineas.  As I tell my wife, it is not worth while.
+Half the wrongs people do to us are through sheer ignorance.  We must
+be patient.  'IN YOUR PATIENCE POSSESS YE YOUR SOULS.'"
+
+He said this, more to himself than aloud, as if carrying out the
+thread of his own thought.  Mine following it, and observing him,
+involuntarily turned to another passage in our Book of books, about
+the blessedness of some men, even when reviled and persecuted.
+
+Ay, and for all his many cares, John Halifax looked like a man who
+was "blessed."
+
+Blessed, and happy too, throughout that day, especially in the midst
+of the mill-yard dinner--which reminded me forcibly of that feast at
+which guests were gathered out of the highways and hedges--guests
+such as John Halifax liked to have--guests who could not, by any
+possibility, "recompense"' him.  Yet it did one's heart good to hear
+the cheer that greeted the master, ay, and the young master too, who
+was to-day for the first time presented as such:  as the firm
+henceforward was to be, "Halifax and Son."
+
+And full of smiling satisfaction was the father's look, when in the
+evening he stood in the midst of his children waiting for "Guy's
+visitors," as he pertinaciously declared them to be--these fine
+people, for whose entertainment our house had been these three days
+turned upside down; the sober old dining-room converted into a
+glittering ball-room, and the entrance-hall a very "bower of bliss"--
+all green boughs and Chinese lanterns.  John protested he should not
+have known his own study again; and that, if these festive
+transformations were to happen frequently he should soon not even
+know himself!
+
+Yet for all that, and in spite of the comical horror he testified at
+this first bouleversement of our quiet home ways, I think he had a
+real pleasure in his children's delight; in wandering with them
+through the decorated rooms, tapestried with ivy and laurel, and
+arbor vitae; in making them all pass in review before him, and
+admiring their handiwork and themselves.
+
+A goodly group they made--our young folk; there were no "children"
+now--for even Maud, who was tall and womanly for her age, had bloomed
+out in a ball dress, all white muslin and camellias, and appeared
+every inch "Miss Halifax."  Walter, too, had lately eschewed jackets,
+and began to borrow razors; while Edwin, though still small, had a
+keen, old-man-like look, which made him seem--as he was, indeed, in
+character--the eldest of the three.  Altogether, they were "a fine
+family," such as any man might rejoice to see growing, or grown up,
+around him.
+
+But my eyes naturally sought the father as he stood among his boys,
+taller than any of them, and possessing far more than they that
+quality for which John Halifax had always been remarkable--dignity.
+True, Nature had favoured him beyond most men, giving him the
+stately, handsome presence, befitting middle age, throwing a kind of
+apostolic grace over the high, half-bald crown, and touching with a
+softened grey the still curly locks behind.  But these were mere
+accidents; the true dignity lay in himself and his own personal
+character, independent of any exterior.
+
+It was pleasant to watch him, and note how advancing years had given
+rather than taken away from his outward mien.  As ever, he was
+distinguishable from other men, even to his dress--which had
+something of the Quaker about it still, in its sober colour, its
+rarely-changed fashion, and its exceeding neatness.  Mrs. Halifax
+used now and then to laugh at him for being so particular over his
+daintiest of cambric and finest of lawn--but secretly she took the
+greatest pride in his appearance.
+
+"John looks well to-night," she said, coming in and sitting down by
+me, her eyes following mine.  One would not have guessed from her
+quiet gaze that she knew--what John had told me she knew, this
+morning.  But these two in their perfect union had a wonderful
+strength--a wonderful fearlessness.  And she had learned from him--
+what perhaps originally was foreign to her impressible and somewhat
+anxious mind--that steadfast faith, which, while ready to meet every
+ill when the time comes, until the time waits cheerfully, and will
+not disquiet itself in vain.
+
+Thus, for all their cares, her face as well as his, was calm and
+bright.  Bright, even with the prettiest girlish blush, when John
+came up to his wife and admired her--as indeed was not surprising.
+
+She laughed at him, and declared she always intended to grow lovely
+in her old age.  "I thought I ought to dress myself grandly, too, on
+Guy's birthday.  Do you like me, John?"
+
+"Very much:  I like that black velvet gown, substantial, soft, and
+rich, without any show.  And that lace frill round your throat--what
+sort of lace is it?"
+
+"Valenciennes.  When I was a girl, if I had a weakness it was for
+black velvet and Valenciennes."
+
+John smiled, with visible pleasure that she had even a "weakness"
+gratified now.  "And you have put on my brooch at last, I see."
+
+"Yes; but--" and she shook her head--"remember your promise!"
+
+"Phineas, this wife of mine is a vain woman.  She knows her own price
+is 'far above rubies'--or diamonds either.  No, Mrs. Halifax, be not
+afraid; I shall give you no more jewels."
+
+She did not need them.  She stood amidst her three sons with the
+smile of a Cornelia.  She felt her husband's eyes rest on her, with
+that quiet perfectness of love--better than any lover's love--
+
+     "The fulness of a stream that knew no fall"--
+
+the love of a husband who has been married nearly twenty-five years.
+
+Here a troop of company arrived, and John left me to assume his duty
+as host.
+
+No easy duty, as I soon perceived; for times were hard, and men's
+minds troubled.  Every one, except the light-heeled, light-hearted
+youngsters, looked grave.
+
+Many yet alive remember this year--1825--the panic year.  War having
+ceased, commerce, in its worst form, started into sudden and
+unhealthy overgrowth.  Speculations of all kinds sprung up like
+fungi, out of dead wood, flourished a little, and dropped away.  Then
+came ruin, not of hundreds, but thousands, of all ranks and classes.
+This year, and this month in this year, the breaking of many
+established firms, especially bankers, told that the universal crash
+had just begun.
+
+It was felt even in our retired country neighbourhood, and among our
+friendly guests this night, both gentle and simple--and there was a
+mixture of both, as only a man in Mr. Halifax's position could mix
+such heterogeneous elements--towns-people and country-people,
+dissenters and church-folk, professional men and men of business.
+John dared to do it--and did it.  But though through his own personal
+influence many of different ranks whom he liked and respected,
+meeting in his own house, learned to like and respect one another,
+still, even to-night, he could not remove the cloud which seemed to
+hang over all--a cloud so heavy that none present liked referring to
+it.  They hit upon all sorts of extraneous subjects, keeping far
+aloof from the one which evidently pressed upon all minds--the
+universal distress abroad, the fear that was knocking at almost every
+man's door but ours.
+
+Of course the talk fell on our neighbours--country talk always does.
+I sat still, listening to Sir Herbert Oldtower, who was wondering
+that Lord Luxmore suffered the Hall to drop into disgraceful decay,
+and had begun cutting down the pine-woods round it.
+
+"Woods, older than his title by many a century--downright sacrilege!
+And the property being entailed, too--actual robbery of the heir!
+But I understand anybody may do anything with Lord Ravenel--a mere
+selfish, cynical, idle voluptuary!"
+
+"Indeed you are mistaken, Sir Herbert!" cried Mr. Jessop of Norton
+Bury--a very honest fellow was Josiah Jessop.  "He banks with me--
+that is, there are some poor Catholics in this neighbourhood whom I
+pay--but bless me! he told me not to tell.  No, indeed.  Cynical he
+may be; idle, perhaps--most men of fashion are--but Lord Ravenel is
+not the least like his father--is he, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"I have not seen Lord Ravenel for many years."
+
+And as if, even to this day, the mention of the young man's name
+brought back thoughts of the last day we had seen him--a day which,
+its sadness having gone by, still kept its unspoken sacredness,
+distinct from all other days--John moved away and went and talked to
+a girl whom both he and the mother liked above most young girls we
+knew--simple, sunny-faced Grace Oldtower.
+
+Dancing began.  Spite of my Quaker education, or perhaps for that
+very reason, I delighted to see dancing.  Dancing, such as it was
+then, when young folk moved breezily and lightly, as if they loved
+it; skimming like swallows down the long lines of the Triumph--
+gracefully winding in and out through the graceful country dance--
+lively always, but always decorous.  In those days people did not
+think it necessary to the pleasures of dancing that any stranger
+should have liberty to snatch a shy, innocent girl round the waist,
+and whirl her about in mad waltz or awkward polka, till she stops,
+giddy and breathless, with burning cheek and tossed hair, looking,--
+as I would not have liked to see our pretty Maud look.
+
+No; though while watching the little lady to-night, I was inclined to
+say to her:
+
+               "When you do dance, I wish you
+      A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
+      Nothing but that."
+
+And in her unwearied spirits she seemed as if she would readily have
+responded to the wish.
+
+We did not see Guy among the dancers, who were now forming in a
+somewhat confused square, in order to execute a new dance called
+quadrilles, of which Miss Grace Oldtower was to be the instructress.
+
+"Where is Guy?" said the mother, who would have missed him among a
+room full of people.  "Have you seen Guy anywhere, Miss Silver?"
+
+Miss Silver, who sat playing tunes--she had declined dancing--turned,
+colouring visibly.
+
+"Yes, I have seen him; he is in the study."
+
+"Would you be so kind as to fetch him?"
+
+The governess rose and crossed the room, with a stately walk--
+statelier than usual.  Her silk gown, of some rich soft colour,
+fashioned after Mrs. Halifax's taste, and the chaplet of bay-leaves,
+which Maud had insisted upon putting in her dark hair, made an
+astonishing change in Miss Silver.  I could not help noticing it to
+Mrs. Halifax.
+
+"Yes, indeed, she looks well.  John says her features are fine; but
+for my part, I don't care for your statuesque faces; I like colour--
+expression.  See that bright little Grace Oldtower!--a thoroughly
+English rose;--I like HER.  Poor Miss Silver!  I wish--"
+
+What, out of compunction for a certain sharpness with which she had
+spoken, Mrs. Halifax was about to wish, remained undeclared.  For,
+just this minute, Guy entered, and leaning his handsome head and his
+tender petits soins over the "English rose," as his mother called
+her, led her out to the dancing.
+
+We sat down and looked on.
+
+"Guy dances lazily; he is rather pale too, I fancy."
+
+"Tired, probably.  He was out far too long on the ice to-day, with
+Maud and Miss Silver.  What a pretty creature his partner is!" added
+Ursula, thoughtfully.
+
+"The children are growing up fast," I said.
+
+"Ay, indeed.  To think that Guy is actually twenty-one--the age when
+his father was married!"
+
+"Guy will be reminding you of that fact some day soon."
+
+Mrs. Halifax smiled.  "The sooner the better, if only he makes a
+worthy choice--if only he brings me a daughter whom I can love."
+
+And I fancied there was love--motherly love--in the eyes that
+followed through the graceful mazes of her dancing, the bonny English
+rose.
+
+Guy and his partner sat down beside us.  His mother noticed that he
+had turned very pale again, and the lad owned to be in some pain:  he
+had twisted his foot that morning, in helping Maud and Miss Silver
+across the ice; but it was a mere trifle--not worth mentioning.
+
+It passed over, with one or two anxious inquiries on the mother's
+part, and a soft, dewy shadow over the down-dropped cheek of the
+little rose, who evidently did not like to think of any harm coming
+to her old play-fellow.  Then Sir Herbert appeared to lead Mrs.
+Halifax in to supper, Guy limped along with pretty Grace on his arm,
+and all the guests, just enough to fill our longest table in John's
+study, came thronging round in a buzz of mirthfulness.
+
+Either the warm, hospitable atmosphere, or the sight of the merry
+youngsters, or the general influence of social pleasantness, had for
+the time being dispelled the cloud.  But certainly it was dispelled.
+The master of the feast looked down two long lines of happy faces--
+his own as bright as theirs--down to where, at the foot of the table,
+the mother and mistress sat.  She had been slightly nervous at times
+during the evening, but now she appeared thoroughly at ease and glad-
+-glad to see her husband take his place at the head of his own
+hospitable board, in the midst of his own friends and his own people
+honoured and beloved.  It seemed a good omen--an omen that the bitter
+things outside would pass away.
+
+How bitter they had been, and how sore the wife's heart still felt, I
+could see from the jealous way in which, smiling and cheerful as her
+demeanour was, she caught every look, every word of those around her
+which might chance to bear reference to her husband; in her quick
+avoidance of every topic connected with these disastrous times, and,
+above all, in her hurried grasp of a newspaper that some careless
+servant brought in fresh from the night-mail, wet with sleet and
+snow.
+
+"Do you get your country paper regularly?" asked some one at table.
+And then some others appeared to recollect the Norton Bury Mercury,
+and its virulent attacks on their host--for there ensued an awkward
+pause, during which I saw Ursula's face beginning to burn.  But she
+conquered her wrath.
+
+"There is often much interest in our provincial papers, Sir Herbert.
+My husband makes a point of taking them all in--bad and good--of
+every shade of politics.  He believes it is only by hearing all sides
+that you can truly judge of the state of the country."
+
+"Just as a physician must hear all symptoms before he decides on the
+patient's case.  At least, so our good old friend Doctor Jessop used
+to say."
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Jessop the banker, catching his own name, and waking
+up from a brown study, in which he had seemed to see nothing--except,
+perhaps, the newspaper, which, in its printed cover, lay between
+himself and Mrs. Halifax.  "Eh? did any one--Oh, I beg pardon--beg
+pardon--Sir Herbert," hastily added the old man; who was a very meek
+and worthy soul, and had been perhaps more subdued than usual this
+evening.
+
+"I was referring," said Sir Herbert, with his usual ponderous
+civility, "to your excellent brother, who was so much respected among
+us,--for which respect, allow me to say, he did not leave us without
+an inheritor."
+
+The old banker answered the formal bow with a kind of nervous hurry;
+and then Sir Herbert, with a loud premise of his right as the oldest
+friend of our family, tried to obtain silence for the customary
+speech, prefatory to the customary toast of "Health and prosperity to
+the heir of Beechwood."
+
+There was great applause and filling of glasses; great smiling and
+whispering; everybody glancing at poor Guy, who turned red and white,
+and evidently wished himself a hundred miles off.  In the confusion I
+felt my sleeve touched, and saw leaning towards me, hidden by Maud's
+laughing happy face, the old banker.  He held in his hand the
+newspaper which seemed to have so fascinated him.
+
+"It's the London Gazette.  Mr. Halifax gets it three hours before any
+of us.  I may open it?  It is important to me.  Mrs. Halifax would
+excuse, eh?"
+
+Of course she would.  Especially if she had seen the old man's look,
+as his trembling fingers vainly tried to unfold the sheet without a
+single rustle's betraying his surreptitious curiosity.
+
+Sir Herbert rose, cleared his throat, and began:
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, I speak as a father myself, and as son of a
+father whom--whom I will not refer to here, except to say that his
+good heart would have rejoiced to see this day.  The high esteem in
+which Sir Ralph always held Mr. Halifax, has descended, and will
+descend--"
+
+Here some one called out:
+
+"Mr. Jessop!  Look at Mr. Jessop!"
+
+The old man had suddenly sank back, with a sort of choking groan.
+His eyes were staring blankly, his cheek was the colour of ashes.
+But when he saw every one looking at him he tried desperately to
+recover himself.
+
+"'Tis nothing.  Nothing of the slightest moment.  Eh?" clutching
+tightly at the paper which Mrs. Halifax was kindly removing out of
+his hand.  "There's no news in it--none, I assure you."
+
+But from his agitation--from the pitiful effort he made to disguise
+it--it was plain enough that there was news.  Plain also, as in these
+dangerous and critical times men were only too quick to divine, in
+what that news consisted.  Tidings, which now made every newspaper a
+sight of fear,--especially this--the London Gazette.
+
+Edwin caught and read the fatal page--the fatal column--known only
+too well.
+
+"W----'s have stopped payment."
+
+W----'s was a great London house, the favourite banking-house in our
+country, with which many provincial banks, and Jessop's especially,
+were widely connected, and would be no one knew how widely involved.
+
+"W----'s stopped payment!"
+
+A murmur--a hush of momentary suspense, as the Gazette was passed
+hurriedly from hand to hand; and then our guests, one and all, sat
+looking at one another in breathless fear, suspicion, or assured
+dismay.  For, as every one was aware (we knew our neighbours' affairs
+so well about innocent Enderley), there was not a single household of
+that merry little company upon whom, near or remote, the blow would
+not fall--except ours.
+
+No polite disguise could gloss over the general consternation.  Few
+thought of Jessop--only of themselves.  Many a father turned pale;
+many a mother melted into smothered tears.  More than one honest
+countenance that five minutes before had beamed like the rising sun,
+all friendliness and jocularity, I saw shrink into a wizened, worldly
+face with greedy selfishness peering out of the corners of its eyes,
+eager to conceal its own alarms and dive as far as possible into the
+terrors of its neighbours.
+
+"There will be a run on Jessop's bank to-morrow," I heard one person
+saying; glancing to where the poor old banker still sat, with a
+vacant, stupefied smile, assuring all around him that "nothing had
+happened; really, nothing."
+
+"A run?  I suppose so.  Then it will be 'Sauve qui peut,' and the
+devil take the hindmost."
+
+"What say you to all this, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+John still kept his place.  He sat perfectly quiet, and had never
+spoken a syllable.
+
+When Sir Herbert, who was the first to recover from the shock of
+these ill-tidings, called him by his name, Mr. Halifax looked quickly
+up.  It was to see, instead of those two lines of happy faces, faces
+already gathering in troubled groups, faces angry, sullen, or
+miserable, all of which, with a vague distrust, seemed instinctively
+turned upon him.
+
+"Mr. Halifax," said the baronet, and one could see how, in spite of
+his steadfast politeness, he too was not without his anxieties--"this
+is an unpleasant breaking-in upon your kindly hospitalities.  I
+suppose, through this unpropitious event, each of us must make up our
+minds to some loss.  Let me hope yours will be trifling."
+
+John made no answer.
+
+"Or, perhaps--though I can hardly hope anything so fortunate--perhaps
+this failure will not affect you at all?"
+
+He waited--as did many others, for Mr. Halifax's reply; which was
+long in coming.  However, since all seemed to expect it, it did come
+at last; but grave and sad as if it were the announcement of some
+great misfortune.
+
+"No, Sir Herbert; it will not affect me at all."
+
+Sir Herbert, and not he alone--looked surprised--uneasily surprised.
+Some mutters there were of "congratulation."  Then arose a troubled
+murmur of talking, in which the master of the house was forgotten;
+until the baronet said, "My friends, I think we are forgetting our
+courtesy.  Allow me to give you without more delay--the toast I was
+about to propose,--'Health, long life, and happiness to Mr. Guy
+Halifax.'"
+
+And so poor Guy's birthday toast was drunk; almost in silence; and
+the few words he said in acknowledgment were just listened to,
+scarcely heard.  Every one rose from table, and the festivities were
+over.
+
+One by one all our guests began to make excuse.  One by one,
+involuntarily perhaps, yet not the less painfully and plainly, they
+all shrunk away from us, as if in the universal trouble we, who had
+nothing to fear, had no part nor lot.  Formal congratulations, given
+with pale lips and wandering eyes; brusque adieux, as some of the
+more honest or less courteous showed but too obviously how cruelly,
+even resentfully, they felt the inequalities of fortune; hasty
+departures, full of a dismay that rejected angrily every shadow of
+consolation;--all these things John had to meet and to bear.
+
+He met them with composure; scarcely speaking a word, as indeed what
+was there to say?  To all the friendly speeches, real or pretended,
+he listened with a kind of sad gravity:  of all harsher words than
+these--and there were not a few--he took not the least notice, but
+held his place as master of the house; generously deaf and blind to
+everything that it were as well the master of the house should
+neither hear nor see.
+
+At last he was left, a very Pariah of prosperity, by his own hearth,
+quite alone.
+
+The last carriage had rolled away; the tired household had gone to
+bed; there was no one in the study but me.  John came in and stood
+leaning with both his arms against the fireplace, motionless and
+silent.  He leant there so long, that at last I touched him.
+
+"Well, Phineas!"
+
+I saw this night's events had wounded him to the core.
+
+"Are you thinking of these honest, friendly, disinterested guests of
+ours?  Don't!  They are not worth a single thought."
+
+"Not an angry thought, certainly."  And he smiled at my wrath--a sad
+smile.
+
+"Ah, Phineas! now I begin to understand what is meant by the curse of
+prosperity."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+A great, eager, but doggedly-quiet crowd, of which each had his or
+her--for it was half women--individual terror to hide, his or her
+individual interest to fight for, and cared not a straw for that of
+any one else.
+
+It was market-day, and this crowd was collected and collecting every
+minute, before the bank at Norton Bury.  It included all classes,
+from the stout farmer's wife or market-woman, to the pale, frightened
+lady of "limited income," who had never been in such a throng before;
+from the aproned mechanic to the gentleman who sat in his carriage at
+the street corner, confident that whatever poor chance there was, his
+would be the best.
+
+Everybody was, as I have said, extremely quiet.  You heard none of
+the jokes that always rise in and circulate through a crowd; none of
+the loud outcries of a mob.  All were intent on themselves and their
+own business; on that fast-bolted red-baize door, and on the green
+blind of the windows, which informed them that it was "open from ten
+till four."
+
+The Abbey clock struck three quarters.  Then there was a slight
+stirring, a rustling here and there of paper, as some one drew out
+and examined his bank notes; openly, with small fear of theft--they
+were not worth stealing.
+
+John and I, a little way off, stood looking on, where we had once
+watched a far different crowd; for Mr. Jessop owned the doctor's
+former house, and in sight of the green bank blinds were my dear old
+father's known windows.
+
+Guy's birthday had fallen on a Saturday.  This was Monday morning.
+We had driven over to Norton Bury, John and I, at an unusually early
+hour.  He did not exactly tell me why, but it was not difficult to
+guess.  Not difficult to perceive how strongly he was interested,
+even affected--as any man, knowing all the circumstances, could not
+but be affected--by the sight of that crowd, all the sadder for its
+being such a patient, decent, respectable crowd, out of which so
+large a proportion was women.
+
+I noticed this latter fact to John.
+
+"Yes, I was sure it would be so.  Jessop's bank has such a number of
+small depositors and issues so many small notes.  He cannot cash
+above half of them without some notice.  If there comes a run, he may
+have to stop payment this very day; and then, how wide the misery
+would spread among the poor, God knows."
+
+His eye wandered pitifully over the heaving mass of anxious faces
+blue with cold, and growing more and more despondent as every minute
+they turned with a common impulse from the closed bank door to the
+Abbey clock, glittering far up in the sunshiny atmosphere of morning.
+
+Its finger touched the one heel of the great striding X--glided on to
+the other--the ten strokes fell leisurely and regularly upon the
+clear frosty air; then the chimes--Norton Bury was proud of its Abbey
+chimes--burst out in the tune of "Life let us Cherish."
+
+The bells went through all the tune, to the very last note--then
+ensued silence.  The crowd were silent too--almost breathless with
+intent listening--but, alas! not to the merry Abbey chimes.
+
+The bank door remained closed--not a rattle at the bolts, not a
+clerk's face peering out above the blind.  The house was as shut-up
+and desolate as if it were entirely empty.
+
+Five whole minutes--by the Abbey clock--did that poor, patient crowd
+wait on the pavement.  Then a murmur arose.  One or two men hammered
+at the door; some frightened women, jostled in the press, begun to
+scream.
+
+John could bear it no longer.  "Come along with me," he said,
+hurriedly.  "I must see Jessop--we can get in at the garden door."
+
+This was a little gate round the corner of the street, well known to
+us both in those brief "courting days," when we came to tea of
+evenings, and found Mrs. Jessop and Ursula March in the garden
+watering the plants and tying up the roses.  Nay, we passed out of it
+into the same summer parlour, where--I cannot tell if John ever knew
+of the incident, at all events he never mentioned it to me--there had
+been transacted a certain momentous event in Ursula's life and mine.
+Entering by the French window, there rose up to my mental vision, in
+vivid contrast to all present scenes, the picture of a young girl I
+had once seen sitting there, with head drooped, knitting.  Could that
+day be twenty-five years ago?
+
+No summer parlour now--its atmosphere was totally changed.  It was a
+dull, dusty room, of which the only lively object was a large fire,
+the under half of which had burnt itself away unstirred into black
+dingy caverns.  Before it, with breakfast untasted, sat Josiah
+Jessop--his feet on the fender, his elbows on his knees, the picture
+of despair.
+
+"Mr. Jessop, my good friend!"
+
+"No, I haven't a friend in the world, or shall not have an hour
+hence.  Oh! it's you, Mr. Halifax?--You have not an account to close?
+You don't hold any notes of mine, do you?"
+
+John put his hand on the old man's shoulder, and repeated that he
+only came as a friend.
+
+"Not the first 'friend' I have received this morning.  I knew I
+should be early honoured with visitors;" and the banker attempted a
+dreary smile.  "Sir Herbert and half-a-dozen more are waiting for me
+up-stairs.  The biggest fish must have the first bite--eh, you know?"
+
+"I know," said John, gloomily.
+
+"Hark! those people outside will hammer my door down!--Speak to them,
+Mr. Halifax--tell them I'm an old man--that I was always an honest
+man--always.  If only they would give me time--hark--just hark!
+Heaven help me! do they want to tear me in pieces?"
+
+John went out for a few moments, then came back and sat down beside
+Mr. Jessop.
+
+"Compose yourself,"--the old man was shaking like an aspen leaf.
+"Tell me, if you have no objection to give me this confidence,
+exactly how your affairs stand."
+
+With a gasp of helpless thankfulness, looking up in John's face,
+while his own quivered like a frightened child's--the banker obeyed.
+It seemed that great as was his loss by W----'s failure, it was not
+absolute ruin to him.  In effect, he was at this moment perfectly
+solvent, and by calling in mortgages, etc., could meet both the
+accounts of the gentry who banked with him, together with all his own
+notes now afloat in the country, principally among the humbler ranks,
+petty tradespeople, and such like, if only both classes of customers
+would give him time to pay them.
+
+"But they will not.  There will be a run upon the bank and then all's
+over with me.  It's a hard case--solvent as I am--ready and able to
+pay every farthing--if only I had a week's time.  As it is I must
+stop payment to-day.  Hark! they are at the door again!  Mr. Halifax,
+for God's sake quiet them!"
+
+"I will; only tell me first what sum, added to the cash you have
+available, would keep the bank open--just for a day or two."
+
+At once guided and calmed, the old man's business faculties seemed to
+return.  He began to calculate, and soon stated the sum he needed; I
+think it was three or four thousand pounds.
+
+"Very well; I have thought of a plan.  But first--those poor fellows
+outside.  Thank Heaven, I am a rich man, and everybody knows it.
+Phineas, that inkstand, please."
+
+He sat down and wrote:  curiously the attitude and manner reminded me
+of his sitting down and writing at my father's table, after the bread
+riot--years and years ago.  Soon a notice, signed by Josiah Jessop,
+and afterwards by himself, to the effect that the bank would open,
+"without fail," at one o'clock this day,--was given by John to the
+astonished clerk, to be posted in the window.
+
+A responsive cheer outside showed how readily those outside had
+caught at even this gleam of hope.  Also--how implicitly they trusted
+in the mere name of a gentleman who all over the country was known
+for "his word being as good as his bond,"--John Halifax.
+
+The banker breathed freer; but his respite was short:  an imperative
+message came from the gentlemen above-stairs, desiring his presence.
+With a kind of blind dependence he looked towards John.
+
+"Let me go in your stead.  You can trust me to manage matters to the
+best of my power?"
+
+The banker overwhelmed him with gratitude.
+
+"Nay, that ought to be my word, standing in this house, and
+remembering"--His eyes turned to the two portraits--grimly-coloured
+daubs, yet with a certain apology of likeness too, which broadly
+smiled at one another from opposite walls--the only memorials now
+remaining of the good doctor and his cheery little old wife.  "Come,
+Mr. Jessop, leave the matter with me; believe me, it is not only a
+pleasure, but a duty."
+
+The old man melted into senile tears.
+
+I do not know how John managed the provincial magnates, who were
+sitting in council considering how best to save, first themselves,
+then the bank, lastly--If the poor public outside had been made
+acquainted with that ominous "lastly!"  Or if to the respectable
+conclave above-stairs, who would have recoiled indignantly at the
+vulgar word "jobbing," had been hinted a phrase--which ran oddly in
+and out of the nooks of my brain, keeping time to the murmur in the
+street, "Vox populi, vox Dei"--truly, I should have got little credit
+for my Latinity.
+
+John came out in about half an hour, with a cheerful countenance;
+told me he was going over to Coltham for an hour or two--would I wait
+his return?
+
+"And all is settled?" I asked.
+
+"Will be soon, I trust.  I can't stay to tell you more now.
+Goodbye."
+
+I was no man of business, and could assist in nothing.  So I thought
+the best I could do was to pass the time in wandering up and down the
+familiar garden, idly watching the hoar-frost on the arbutus leaves,
+and on the dry stems of what had been dear little Mrs. Jessop's
+favourite roses--the same roses I had seen her among on that
+momentous evening--the evening when Ursula's bent neck flushed more
+crimson than the sunset itself, as I told her John Halifax was "too
+noble to die for any woman's love."
+
+No--he had lived for it--earned it--won it.  And musing over these
+long-ago times, my heart melted--foolish old heart that it was! with
+a trembling joy, to think that Providence had, in some way, used my
+poor useless hand to give to him this blessing, a man's chiefest
+blessing of a virtuous and loving wife--which had crowned his life
+for all these wonderful years.
+
+As it neared one o'clock, I could see my ancient friend the Abbey
+clock with not a wrinkle in his old face, staring at me through the
+bare Abbey trees.  I began to feel rather anxious.  I went into the
+deserted office; and thence, none forbidding, ensconced myself behind
+the sheltering bank blinds.
+
+The crowd had scarcely moved; a very honest, patient, weary crowd
+dense in the centre, thinning towards the edges.  On its extremest
+verge, waiting in a curricle, was a gentleman, who seemed observing
+it with a lazy curiosity.  I, having like himself apparently nothing
+better to do, observed this gentleman.
+
+He was dressed in the height of the mode, combined with a novel and
+eccentric fashion, which had been lately set by that extraordinary
+young nobleman whom everybody talked about--my Lord Byron.  His
+neckcloth was loose, his throat bare, and his hair fell long and
+untidy.  His face, that of a man about thirty--I fancied I had seen
+it before, but could not recall where,--was delicate, thin, with an
+expression at once cynical and melancholy.  He sat in his carriage,
+wrapped in furs, or looked carelessly out on the scene before him, as
+if he had no interest therein--as if there was nothing in life worth
+living for.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said I to myself, recalling the bright, busy, laughing
+faces of our growing up lads, recalling especially their father's--
+full of all that active energy and wise cheerfulness which gives zest
+to existence; God forbid any man should die till he has lived to
+learn it!--"poor fellow!  I wish his moodiness could take a lesson
+from us at home!"
+
+But the gentleman soon retired from my observation under his furs;
+for the sky had gloomed over, and snow began to fall.  Those on the
+pavement shook it drearily off, and kept turning every minute to the
+Abbey clock--I feared it would take the patience of Job to enable
+them to hold out another quarter of an hour.
+
+At length some determined hand again battered at the door.  I fancied
+I heard a clerk speaking out of the first-floor window.
+
+"Gentlemen"--how tremblingly polite the voice was!--"Gentlemen, in
+five minutes--positively five minutes--the bank will--"
+
+The rest of the speech was drowned and lost.  Dashing round the
+street corner, the horses all in a foam, came our Beechwood carriage.
+Mr. Halifax leaped out.
+
+Well might the crowd divide for him--well might they cheer him.  For
+he carried a canvas bag--a great, ugly, grimy-coloured bag--a
+precious, precious bag, with the consolation--perhaps the life--of
+hundreds in it!
+
+I knew, almost by intuition, what he had done--what, in one or two
+instances, was afterwards done by other rich and generous Englishmen,
+during the crisis of this year.
+
+The bank door flew open like magic.  The crowd came pushing in; but
+when John called out to them, "Good people, pray let me pass!" they
+yielded and suffered him to go in first.  He went right up to the
+desk, behind which, flanked by a tolerable array of similar canvas
+bags, full of gold--but nevertheless waiting in mortal fear, and as
+white as his own neck-cloth--the old banker stood.
+
+"Mr. Jessop," John said, in a loud, distinct voice, that all might
+hear him, "I have the pleasure to open an account with you.  I feel
+satisfied that in these dangerous times no credit is more safe than
+yours.  Allow me to pay in to-day the sum of five thousand pounds."
+
+"Five thousand pounds!"
+
+The rumour of it was repeated from mouth to mouth.  In a small
+provincial bank, such a sum seemed unlimited.  It gave universal
+confidence.  Many who had been scrambling, swearing, almost fighting,
+to reach the counter and receive gold for their notes, put them again
+into their pockets, uncashed.  Others, chiefly women, got them cashed
+with a trembling hand--nay, with tears of joy.  A few who had come to
+close accounts, changed their minds, and even paid money in.  All
+were satisfied--the run upon the bank ceased.
+
+Mr. Halifax stood aside, looking on.  After the first murmur of
+surprise and pleasure no one seemed to take any notice of him, or of
+what he had done.  Only one old widow woman, as she slipped three
+bright guineas under the lid of her market-basket, dropped him a
+curtsey in passing by.
+
+"It's your doing, Mr. Halifax.  The Lord reward you, sir."
+
+"Thank you," he said, and shook her by the hand.  I thought to
+myself, watching the many that came and went, unmindful, "ONLY THIS
+SAMARITAN!"
+
+No--one person more, standing by, addressed him by name.  "This is
+indeed your doing, and an act of benevolence which I believe no man
+alive would have done, except Mr. Halifax."
+
+And the gentleman who spoke--the same I had seen outside in his
+curricle--held out a friendly hand.
+
+"I see you do not remember me.  My name is Ravenel."
+
+"Lord Ravenel!"
+
+John uttered this exclamation--and no more.  I saw that this sudden
+meeting had brought back, with a cruel tide of memory, the last time
+they met--by the small nursery bed, in that upper chamber at
+Enderley.
+
+However, this feeling shortly passed away, as must needs be; and we
+all three began to converse together.
+
+While he talked, something of the old "Anselmo" came back into Lord
+Ravenel's face:  especially when John asked him if he would drive
+over with us to Enderley.
+
+"Enderley--how strange the word sounds!--yet I should like to see the
+place again.  Poor old Enderley!"
+
+Irresolutely--all his gestures seemed dreamy and irresolute--he drew
+his hand across his eyes--the same white long-fingered, womanish hand
+which had used to guide Muriel's over the organ keys.
+
+"Yes--I think I will go back with you to Enderley.  But first I must
+speak to Mr. Jessop here."
+
+It was about some poor Catholic families, who, as we had before
+learnt, had long been his pensioners.
+
+"You are a Catholic still then?" I asked.  "We heard the contrary."
+
+"Did you?--Oh, of course.  One hears such wonderful facts about
+oneself.  Probably you heard also that I have been to the Holy Land,
+and turned Jew--called at Constantinople, and come back a
+Mohammedan."
+
+"But are you of your old faith?" John said.  "Still a sincere
+Catholic?"
+
+"If you take Catholic in its original sense, certainly.  I am a
+Universalist.  I believe everything--and nothing.  Let us change the
+subject."  The contemptuous scepticism of his manner altered, as he
+inquired after Mrs. Halifax and the children.  "No longer children
+now, I suppose?"
+
+"Scarcely.  Guy and Walter are as tall as yourself; and my daughter--
+"
+
+"Your daughter?"--with a start--"oh yes, I recollect.  Baby Maud.  Is
+she at all like--like--"
+
+"No."
+
+Neither said more than this; but it seemed as if their hearts warmed
+to one another, knitted by the same tender remembrance.
+
+We drove home.  Lord Ravenel muffled himself up in his furs,
+complaining bitterly of the snow and sleet.
+
+"Yes, the winter is setting in sharply," John replied, as he reined
+in his horses at the turnpike gate.  "This will be a hard Christmas
+for many."
+
+"Ay, indeed, sir," said the gate-keeper, touching his hat.
+
+"And if I might make so bold--it's a dark night and the road's
+lonely--" he added, in a mysterious whisper.
+
+"Thank you, my friend.  I am aware of all that."  But as John drove
+on, he remained for some time very silent.
+
+On, across the bleak country, with the snow pelting in our faces--
+along roads so deserted, that our carriage-wheels made the only sound
+audible, and that might have been heard distinctly for miles.
+
+All of a sudden, the horses were pulled up.  Three or four ill-
+looking figures had started out of a ditch-bank, and caught hold of
+the reins.
+
+"Holloa there!--What do you want?"
+
+"Money."
+
+"Let go my horses!  They're spirited beasts.  You'll get trampled
+on."
+
+"Who cares?"
+
+This brief colloquy passed in less than a minute.  It showed at once
+our position--miles away from any house--on this desolate moor;
+showed plainly our danger--John's danger.
+
+He himself did not seem to recognize it.  He stood upright on the box
+seat, the whip in his hand.
+
+"Get away, you fellows, or I must drive over you!"
+
+"Thee'd better!"  With a yell, one of the men leaped up and clung to
+the neck of the plunging mare--then was dashed to the ground between
+her feet.  The poor wretch uttered one groan and no more.  John
+sprang out of his carriage, caught the mare's head, and  backed her.
+
+"Hold off!--the poor fellow is killed, or may be in a minute.  Hold
+off, I say."
+
+If ever these men, planning perhaps their first ill deed, were struck
+dumb with astonishment, it was to see the gentleman they were
+intending to rob take up their comrade in his arms, drag him towards
+the carriage-lamps, rub snow on his face, and chafe his heavy hands.
+But all in vain.  The blood trickled down from a wound in the
+temples--the head, with its open mouth dropping, fell back upon
+John's knee.
+
+"He is quite dead."
+
+The others gathered round in silence, watching Mr. Halifax, as he
+still knelt, with the dead man's head leaning against him, mournfully
+regarding it.
+
+"I think I know him.  Where does his wife live?"
+
+Some one pointed across the moor, to a light, faint as a glow-worm.
+"Take that rug out of my carriage--wrap him in it."  The order was at
+once obeyed.  "Now carry him home.  I will follow presently."
+
+"Surely not," expostulated Lord Ravenel, who had got out of the
+carriage and stood, shivering and much shocked, beside Mr. Halifax.
+"You would not surely put yourself in the power of these scoundrels?
+What brutes they are--the lower orders!"
+
+"Not altogether--when you know them.  Phineas, will you drive Lord
+Ravenel on to Beechwood?"
+
+"Excuse me--certainly not," said Lord Ravenel, with dignity.  "We
+will stay to see the result of the affair.  What a singular man Mr.
+Halifax is, and always was," he added, thoughtfully, as he muffled
+himself up again in his furs, and relapsed into silence.
+
+Soon, following the track of those black figures across the snow, we
+came to a cluster of peat huts, alongside of the moorland road.  John
+took one of the carriage-lamps in his hand, and went in, without
+saying a word.  To my surprise Lord Ravenel presently dismounted and
+followed him.  I was left with the reins in my hand, and two or three
+of those ill-visaged men hovered about the carriage; but no one
+attempted to do me any harm.  Nay, when John reappeared, after a
+lapse of some minutes, one of them civilly picked up the whip and put
+it into his hand.
+
+"Thank you.  Now, my men, tell me what did you want with me just
+now?"
+
+"Money," cried one.  "Work," shouted another.
+
+"And a likely way you went about to get it!  Stopping me in the dark,
+on a lonely road, just like common robbers.  I did not think any
+Enderley men would have done a thing so cowardly."
+
+"We bean't cowards," was the surly answer.  "Thee carries pistols,
+Mr. Halifax."
+
+"You forced me to do it.  My life is as precious to my wife and
+children, as--as that poor fellow's to his."  John stopped.  "God
+help us, my men! it's a hard world for us all sometimes.  Why did you
+not know me better?  Why not come to my house and ask honestly for a
+dinner and a half-crown?--you should have had both, any day."
+
+"Thank'ee sir," was the general cry.  "And, sir," begged one old man,
+"you'll hush up the 'crowner's 'quest--you and this gentleman here.
+You won't put us in jail, for taking to the road, Mr. Halifax?"
+
+"No;--unless you attack me again.  But I am not afraid--I'll trust
+you.  Look here!"  He took the pistol out of his breast-pocket,
+cocked it, and fired its two barrels harmlessly into the air.  "Now,
+good-night; and if ever I carry fire-arms again, it will be your
+fault, not mine."
+
+So saying, he held the carriage-door open for Lord Ravenel, who took
+his place with a subdued and thoughtful air:  then mounting the
+box-seat, John drove, in somewhat melancholy silence, across the
+snowy, starlit moors to Beechwood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+In the home-light.
+
+It was a scene--glowing almost as those evening pictures at
+Longfield.  Those pictures, photographed on memory by the summer sun
+of our lives, and which no paler after-sun could have power to
+reproduce.  Nothing earthly is ever reproduced in the same form.  I
+suppose Heaven meant it to be so; that in the perpetual progression
+of our existence we should be reconciled to loss, and taught that
+change itself is but another form for aspiration.  Aspiration which
+never can rest, or ought to rest, in anything short of the One
+absolute Perfection--the One all-satisfying Good "IN WHOM IS NO
+VARIABLENESS, NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING."
+
+I say this, to excuse myself for thoughts, which at times made me
+grave--even in the happy home-light of John's study; where, for
+several weeks after the last incident I have recorded, the family
+were in the habit of gathering every evening.  For poor Guy was a
+captive.  The "mere trifle" had turned out to be a sprained foot,
+which happening to a tall and strong young man became serious.  He
+bore his imprisonment restlessly enough at first, but afterwards grew
+more reconciled--took to reading, drawing, and society--and even
+began to interest himself in the pursuits of his sister Maud, who
+every morning had her lessons in the study.
+
+Miss Silver first proposed this.  She had evinced more feeling than
+was usual to her, since Guy's accident; showed him many little
+feminine kindnesses--out of compunction, it seemed; and altogether
+was much improved.  Of evenings, as now, she always made one of the
+"young people," who were generally grouped together round Guy's sofa-
+-Edwin, Walter, and little Maud.  The father and mother sat opposite-
+-as usual, side by side, he with his newspaper, she with her work.
+Or sometimes, falling into pleasant idleness, they would slip hand in
+hand, and sit talking to one another in an under-tone, or silently
+and smilingly watch the humours of their children.
+
+For me, I generally took to my nook in the chimney-corner--it was a
+very ancient fire-place, with settles on each side, and dogs instead
+of a grate, upon which many a faggot hissed and crackled its merry
+brief life away.  Nothing could be more cheery and comfortable than
+this old-fashioned, low-roofed room, three sides of which were
+peopled with books--all the books which John had gathered up during
+the course of his life.  Perhaps it was their long-familiar, friendly
+faces which made this his favourite room, his own especial domain.
+But he did not keep it tabooed from his family; he liked to have them
+about him, even in his studious hours.
+
+So, of evenings, we all sat together as now, each busy, and none
+interrupting the rest.  At intervals, flashes of talk or laughter
+broke out, chiefly from Guy, Walter, or Maud, when Edwin would look
+up from his everlasting book, and even the grave governess relax into
+a smile.  Since she had learnt to smile, it became more and more
+apparent how very handsome Miss Silver was.  "Handsome" is, I think,
+the fittest word for her; that correctness of form and colour which
+attracts the eye chiefly, and perhaps the eye of men rather than of
+women;--at least, Mrs. Halifax could never be brought to see it.  But
+then her peculiar taste was for slender, small brunettes, like Grace
+Oldtower; whereas Miss Silver was large and fair.
+
+Fair, in every sense, most decidedly.  And now that she evidently
+began to pay a little more attention to her dress and her looks, we
+found out that she was also young.
+
+"Only twenty-one to-day, Guy says," I remarked one day to Ursula.
+
+"How did Guy know it?"
+
+"I believe he discovered the wonderful secret from Maud."
+
+"Maud and her brother Guy have grown wonderful friends since his
+illness.  Do you not think so?"
+
+"Yes, I found the two of them--and even Miss Silver--as merry as
+possible, when I came into the study this morning."
+
+"Did you?" said the mother, with an involuntary glance at the group
+opposite.
+
+There was nothing particular to observe.  They all sat in most
+harmless quietude, Edwin reading, Maud at his feet, playing with the
+cat, Miss Silver busy at a piece of that delicate muslin-work with
+which young women then used to ornament their gowns.  Guy had been
+drawing a pattern from it, and now leant back upon his sofa, shading
+off the fire with his hand, and from behind it gazing, as I had often
+seen him gaze lately, with a curious intentness--at the young
+governess.
+
+"Guy," said his mother (and Guy started), "what were you thinking
+about?"
+
+"Oh, nothing; that is--" here, by some accident, Miss Silver quitted
+the room.  "Mother, come over here, I want your opinion.  There, sit
+down--though it's nothing of the least importance."
+
+Nevertheless, it was with some hesitation that he brought out the
+mighty question, namely, that it was Miss Silver's birthday to-day;
+that he thought we ought to remember it, and give her some trifle as
+a present.
+
+"And I was considering this large Flora I ordered from London,--she
+would like it extremely:  she is so fond of botany."
+
+"What do you know about botany?" said Edwin, sharply and rather
+irrelevantly as it seemed, till I remembered how he plumed himself
+upon his knowledge of this science, and how he had persisted in
+taking Maud, and her governess also, long wintry walks across the
+country, "in order to study the cryptogamia."
+
+Guy vouchsafed no answer to his brother; he was too much absorbed in
+turning over the pages of the beautiful Flora on his knee.
+
+"What do you say, all of you?  Father, don't you think she would like
+it?  Then, suppose you give it to her?"
+
+At this inopportune moment Miss Silver returned.
+
+She might have been aware that she was under discussion--at least so
+much of discussion as was implied by Guy's eager words and his
+mother's silence, for she looked around her uneasily, and was about
+to retire.
+
+"Do not go," Guy exclaimed, anxiously.
+
+"Pray do not," his mother added; "we were just talking about you,
+Miss Silver.  My son hopes you will accept this book from him, and
+from us all, with all kind birthday wishes."
+
+And rising, with a little more gravity than was her wont, Mrs.
+Halifax touched the girl's forehead with her lips, and gave her the
+present.
+
+Miss Silver coloured, and drew back.  "You are very good, but indeed
+I would much rather not have it."
+
+"Why so?  Do you dislike gifts, or this gift in particular?"
+
+"Oh, no; certainly not."
+
+"Then," said John, as he too came forward and shook hands with her
+with an air of hearty kindness, "pray take the book.  Do let us show
+how much we respect you; how entirely we regard you as one of the
+family."
+
+Guy turned a look of grateful pleasure to his father; but Miss
+Silver, colouring more than ever, still held back.
+
+"No, I cannot; indeed I cannot."
+
+"Why can you not?"
+
+"For several reasons."
+
+"Give me only one of them--as much as can be expected from a young
+lady," said Mr. Halifax, good-humouredly.
+
+"Mr. Guy ordered the Flora for himself.  I must not allow him to
+renounce his pleasure for me."
+
+"It would not be renouncing it if YOU had it," returned the lad, in a
+low tone, at which once more his younger brother looked up, angrily.
+
+"What folly about nothing! how can one read with such a clatter going
+on?"
+
+"You old book-worm! you care for nothing and nobody but yourself,"
+Guy answered, laughing.  But Edwin, really incensed, rose and settled
+himself in the far corner of the room.
+
+"Edwin is right," said the father, in a tone which indicated his
+determination to end the discussion, a tone which even Miss Silver
+obeyed.  "My dear young lady, I hope you will like your book; Guy,
+write her name in it at once."
+
+Guy willingly obeyed, but was a good while over the task; his mother
+came and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Louisa Eugenie--how did you know that, Guy?  Louisa Eugenie Sil--is
+that your name, my dear?"
+
+The question, simple as it was, seemed to throw the governess into
+much confusion, even agitation.  At last, she drew herself up with
+the old repulsive gesture, which of late had been slowly wearing off.
+
+"No--I will not deceive you any longer.  My right name is Louise
+Eugenie D'Argent."
+
+Mrs. Halifax started.  "Are you a Frenchwoman?"
+
+"On my father's side--yes."
+
+"Why did you not tell me so?"
+
+"Because, if you remember, at our first interview, you said no
+Frenchwoman should educate your daughter.  And I was homeless--
+friendless."
+
+"Better starve than tell a falsehood," cried the mother, indignantly.
+
+"I told no falsehood.  You never asked me of my parentage."
+
+"Nay," said John, interfering, "you must not speak in that manner to
+Mrs. Halifax.  Why did you renounce your father's name?"
+
+"Because English people would have scouted my father's daughter.  You
+knew him--everybody knew him--he was D'Argent the Jacobin--D'Argent
+the Bonnet Rouge."
+
+She threw out these words defiantly, and quitted the room.
+
+"This is a dreadful discovery.  Edwin, you have seen most of her--did
+you ever imagine--"
+
+"I knew it, mother," said Edwin, without lifting his eyes from his
+book.  "After all, French or English, it makes no difference."
+
+"I should think not, indeed!" cried Guy, angrily.  "Whatever her
+father is, if any one dared to think the worse of her--"
+
+"Hush!--till another time," said the father, with a glance at Maud,
+who, with wide-open eyes, in which the tears were just springing, had
+been listening to all these revelations about her governess.
+
+But Maud's tears were soon stopped, as well as this painful
+conversation, by the entrance of our daily, or rather nightly,
+visitor for these six weeks past, Lord Ravenel.  His presence, always
+welcome, was a great relief now.  We never discussed family affairs
+before people.  The boys began to talk to Lord Ravenel:  and Maud
+took her privileged place on a footstool beside him.  From the first
+sight she had been his favourite, he said, because of her resemblance
+to Muriel.  But I think, more than any fancied likeness to that sweet
+lost face, which he never spoke of without tenderness inexpressible,
+there was something in Maud's buoyant youth--just between childhood
+and girlhood, having the charms of one and the immunities of the
+other--which was especially attractive to this man, who, at
+three-and-thirty, found life a weariness and a burthen--at least, he
+said so.
+
+Life was never either weary or burthensome in our house--not even
+to-night, though our friend found us less lively than usual--though
+John maintained more than his usual silence, and Mrs. Halifax fell
+into troubled reveries.  Guy and Edwin, both considerably excited,
+argued and contradicted one another more warmly than even the
+Beechwood liberty of speech allowed.  For Miss Silver, she did not
+appear again.
+
+Lord Ravenel seemed to take these slight desagremens very calmly.  He
+stayed his customary time, smiling languidly as ever at the boys'
+controversies, or listening with a half-pleased, half-melancholy
+laziness to Maud's gay prattle, his eye following her about the room
+with the privileged tenderness that twenty years' seniority allows a
+man to feel and show towards a child.  At his wonted hour he rode
+away, sighingly contrasting pleasant Beechwood with dreary and
+solitary Luxmore.
+
+After his departure we did not again close round the fire.  Maud
+vanished; the younger boys also; Guy settled himself on his sofa,
+having first taken the pains to limp across the room and fetch the
+Flora, which Edwin had carefully stowed away in the book-case.  Then
+making himself comfortable, as the pleasure-loving lad liked well
+enough to do, he lay dreamily gazing at the title-page, where was
+written her name, and "From Guy Halifax, with--"
+
+"What are you going to add, my son?"
+
+He, glancing up at his mother, made her no answer, and hastily closed
+the book.
+
+She looked hurt; but, saying nothing more, began moving about the
+room, putting things in order before retiring.  John sat in the
+arm-chair--meditative.  She asked him what he was thinking about?
+
+"About that man, Jacques D'Argent."
+
+"You have heard of him, then?"
+
+"Few had not, twenty years ago.  He was one of the most 'blatant
+beasts' of the Reign of Terror.  A fellow without honesty,
+conscience, or even common decency."
+
+"And that man's daughter we have had in our house, teaching our
+innocent child!"
+
+Alarm and disgust were written on every feature of the mother's face.
+It was scarcely surprising.  Now that the ferment which had convulsed
+society in our younger days was settling down,--though still we were
+far from that ultimate calm which enables posterity to judge fully
+and fairly such a remarkable historical crisis as the French
+Revolution,--most English people looked back with horror on the
+extreme opinions of that time.  If Mrs. Halifax had a weak point, it
+was her prejudice against anything French or Jacobinical.  Partly,
+from that tendency to moral conservatism which in most persons,
+especially women, strengthens as old age advances; partly, I believe,
+from the terrible warning given by the fate of one--of whom for years
+we had never heard--whose very name was either unknown to, or
+forgotten by, our children.
+
+"John, can't you speak?  Don't you see the frightful danger?"
+
+"Love, try and be calmer."
+
+"How can I?  Remember--remember Caroline."
+
+"Nay, we are not talking of her, but of a girl whom we know, and have
+had good opportunity of knowing.  A girl, who, whatever may have been
+her antecedents, has lived for six months blamelessly in our house."
+
+"Would to Heaven she had never entered it!  But it is not too late.
+She may leave--she shall leave, immediately."
+
+"Mother!" burst out Guy.  Never since she bore him had his mother
+heard her name uttered in such a tone.
+
+She stood petrified.
+
+"Mother, you are unjust, heartless, cruel.  She shall NOT leave; she
+shall NOT, I say!"
+
+"Guy, how dare you speak to your mother in that way?"
+
+"Yes, father, I dare.  I'll dare anything rather than--"
+
+"Stop.  Mind what you are saying--or you may repent it."
+
+And Mr. Halifax, speaking in that low tone to which his voice fell in
+serious displeasure, laid a heavy hand on the lad's shoulder.  Father
+and son exchanged fiery glances.  The mother, terrified, rushed
+between them.
+
+"Don't, John!  Don't be angry with him.  He could not help it,--my
+poor boy!"
+
+At her piteous look Guy and his father both drew back.  John put his
+arm round his wife, and made her sit down.  She was trembling
+exceedingly.
+
+"You see, Guy, how wrong you have been.  How could you wound your
+mother so?"
+
+"I did not mean to wound her," the lad answered.  "I only wished to
+prevent her from being unjust and unkind to one to whom she must show
+all justice and kindness.  One whom I respect, esteem--whom I LOVE."
+
+"Love!"
+
+"Yes, mother!  Yes, father!  I love her.  I intend to marry her."
+
+Guy said this with an air of quiet determination, very different from
+the usual impetuosity of his character.  It was easy to perceive that
+a great change had come over him; that in this passion, the silent
+growth of which no one had suspected, he was most thoroughly in
+earnest.  From the boy he had suddenly started up into the man; and
+his parents saw it.
+
+They looked at him, and then mournfully at one another.  The father
+was the first to speak.
+
+"All this is very sudden.  You should have told us of it before."
+
+"I did not know it myself till--till very lately," the youth answered
+more softly, lowering his head and blushing.
+
+"Is Miss Silver--is the lady aware of it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"That is well," said the father, after a pause.  "In this silence you
+have acted as an honourable lover should towards her; as a dutiful
+son should act towards his parents."
+
+Guy looked pleased.  He stole his hand nearer his mother's, but she
+neither took it nor repelled it; she seemed quite stunned.
+
+At this point I noticed that Maud had crept into the room;--I sent
+her out again as quickly as I could.  Alas! this was the first secret
+that needed to be kept from her; the first painful mystery in our
+happy, happy home!
+
+In any such home the "first falling in love," whether of son or
+daughter, necessarily makes a great change.  Greater if the former
+than the latter.  There is often a pitiful truth--I know not why it
+should be so, but so it is--in the foolish rhyme which the mother had
+laughingly said over to me this morning!
+
+     "My son's my son till he gets him a wife,
+      My daughter's my daughter all her life."
+
+And when, as in this case, the son wishes to marry one whom his
+father may not wholly approve, whom his mother does not heartily
+love, surely the pain is deepened tenfold.
+
+Those who in the dazzled vision of youth see only the beauty and
+splendour of love--first love, who deem it comprises the whole of
+life, beginning, aim, and end--may marvel that I, who have been young
+and now am old, see as I saw that night, not only the lover's but the
+parents' side of the question.  I felt overwhelmed with sadness, as,
+viewing the three, I counted up in all its bearings and consequences,
+near and remote, this attachment of poor Guy's.
+
+"Well, father," he said at last, guessing by intuition that the
+father's heart would best understand his own.
+
+"Well, my son," John answered, sadly.
+
+"YOU were young once."
+
+"So I was;" with a tender glance upon the lad's heated and excited
+countenance.  "Do not suppose I cannot feel with you.  Still, I wish
+you had been less precipitate."
+
+"You were little older than I am when you married?"
+
+"But my marriage was rather different from this projected one of
+yours.  I knew your mother well, and she knew me.  Both of us had
+been tried--by trouble which we shared together, by absence, by many
+and various cares.  We chose one another, not hastily or blindly, but
+with free will and open eyes.  No, Guy," he added, speaking earnestly
+and softly, "mine was no sudden fancy, no frantic passion.  I
+honoured your mother above all women.  I loved her as my own soul."
+
+"So do I love Louise.  I would die for her any day."
+
+At the son's impetuosity the father smiled; not incredulously, only
+sadly.
+
+All this while the mother had sat motionless, never uttering a sound.
+Suddenly, hearing a footstep and a light knock at the door, she
+darted forward and locked it, crying, in a voice that one could
+hardly have recognized as hers--
+
+"No admittance!  Go away."
+
+A note was pushed in under the door.  Mrs. Halifax picked it up--
+opened it, read it mechanically, and sat down again; taking no
+notice, even when Guy, catching sight of the hand-writing, eagerly
+seized the paper.
+
+It was merely a line, stating Miss Silver's wish to leave Beechwood
+immediately; signed, with her full name--her right name--"Louise
+Eugenie D'Argent."
+
+A postscript added:  "Your silence I shall take as permission to
+depart; and shall be gone early to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow!  Gone to-morrow!  And she does not even know that--that I
+love her.  Mother, you have ruined my happiness.  I will never
+forgive you--never!"
+
+Never forgive his mother!  His mother, who had borne him, nursed him,
+reared him; who had loved him with that love--like none other in the
+world--the love of a woman for her firstborn son, all these
+twenty-one years!
+
+It was hard.  I think the most passionate lover, in reasonable
+moments, would allow that it was hard.  No marvel that even her
+husband's clasp could not remove the look of heart-broken, speechless
+suffering which settled stonily down in Ursula's face, as she watched
+her boy--storming about, furious with uncontrollable passion and
+pain.
+
+At last, mother-like, she forgot the passion in pity of the pain.
+
+"He is not strong yet; he will do himself harm.  Let me go to him!
+John, let me!"  Her husband released her.
+
+Faintly, with a weak, uncertain walk, she went up to Guy and touched
+his arm.
+
+"You must keep quiet, or you will be ill.  I cannot have my son ill--
+not for any girl.  Come, sit down--here, beside your mother."
+
+She was obeyed.  Looking into her eyes, and seeing no anger there,
+nothing but grief and love, the young man's right spirit came into
+him again.
+
+"O mother, mother, forgive me!  I am so miserable--so miserable."
+
+He laid his head on her shoulder.  She kissed and clasped him close--
+her boy who never could be wholly hers again, who had learned to love
+some one else dearer than his mother.
+
+After a while she said, "Father, shake hands with Guy.  Tell him that
+we forgive his being angry with us; that perhaps, some day--"
+
+She stopped, uncertain as to the father's mind, or seeking strength
+for her own.
+
+"Some day," John continued, "Guy will find out that we can have
+nothing in the world--except our children's good--so dear to us as
+their happiness."
+
+Guy looked up, beaming with hope and joy.  "O father!  O mother! will
+you, indeed--"
+
+"We will indeed say nothing," the father answered, smiling; "nothing,
+until to-morrow.  Then we will all three talk the matter quietly
+over, and see what can be done."
+
+Of course I knew to a certainty the conclusion they would come to.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Late that night, as I sat up pondering over all that had happened,
+Mrs. Halifax came into my room.
+
+She looked round; asked me, according to her wont, if there was
+anything I wanted before she retired for the night?--(Ursula was as
+good to me as any sister)--then stood by my easy-chair.  I would not
+meet her eyes, but I saw her hands fluttering in their restless way.
+
+I pointed to her accustomed chair.
+
+"No, I can't sit down.  I must say good-night."  Then, coming at once
+to the point--"Phineas, you are always up first in the morning.  Will
+you--John thinks it had better be you--will you give a message from
+us to--Maud's governess?"
+
+"Yes.  What shall I say?"
+
+"Merely, that we request she will not leave Beechwood until we have
+seen her."
+
+If Miss Silver had overheard the manner and tone of that "request," I
+doubt if it would not have hastened rather than delayed her
+departure.  But, God help the poor mother! her wounds were still
+fresh.
+
+"Would it not be better," I suggested, "if you were to write to her?"
+
+"I can't; no, I can't,"--spoken with the sharpness of exceeding pain.
+Soon after, as in faint apology, she added, "I am so tired; we are
+very late to-night."
+
+"Yes; it is almost morning.  I thought you were both in bed."
+
+"No; we have been sitting talking in Guy's room.  His father thought
+it would be better."
+
+"And is all settled?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Having told me this, and having as it were by such a conclusion
+confessed it was right the question should be thus "settled," Guy's
+mother seemed more herself.
+
+"Yes," she repeated; "John thinks it ought to be.  At least, that she
+should know Guy's--the feeling with which Guy regards her.  If, after
+the probation of a year, it still remains, and he is content to begin
+life on a small income, we have given our consent to our son's
+marriage."
+
+It struck me how the mother's mind entirely dwelt on the one party in
+this matter--"Guy's feelings"--"Our son's marriage"--and so on.  The
+other side of the question, or the possibility of any hindrance
+there, never seemed to enter her imagination.  Perhaps it would not,
+even into mine, for I shared the family faith in its best-beloved
+Guy; but for Mrs. Halifax's so entirely ignoring the idea that any
+consent except her son's and his parents' was necessary to this
+marriage.
+
+"It will not part him from us so very much, you see, Phineas," she
+said, evidently trying to view the bright side--"and she has no
+relatives living--not one.  For income--Guy will have the entire
+profit of the Norton Bury mills; and they might begin, as we did, in
+the old Norton Bury house--the dear old house."
+
+The thought of her own young days seemed to come, soothingly and
+sweet, taking the sting out of her pain, showing her how it was but
+right and justice that Nature's holy law should be fulfilled--that
+children, in their turn, should love, and marry, and be happy, like
+their parents.
+
+"Yes," she answered, as I gently hinted this; "I know you are right;
+all is quite right, and as it should be, though it was a shock at
+first.  No matter:  John esteems her--John likes her.  For me--oh, I
+shall make a capital--what is it?--a capital MOTHER-IN-LAW--in time!"
+
+With that smile, which was almost cheerful, she bade me good-night--
+rather hastily, perhaps, as if she wished to leave me while her
+cheerfulness lasted.  Then I heard her step along the passage,
+pausing once--most likely at Guy's room door; her own closed, and the
+house was in silence.
+
+I rose early in the morning;--not one whit too early, for I met Miss
+Silver in the hall, bonneted and shawled, carrying down with her own
+hands a portion of her chattels.  She evidently contemplated an
+immediate departure.  It was with the greatest difficulty that,
+without betraying my reasons, which, of course, was impossible, I
+could persuade her to change her determination.
+
+Poor girl! last night's events had apparently shaken her from that
+indifference which she seemed to think the best armour of a helpless,
+proud governess against the world.  She would scarcely listen to a
+word.  She was in extreme agitation; half-a-dozen times she insisted
+on leaving, and then sat down again.
+
+I had not given her credit for so much wholesome irresolution--so
+much genuine feeling.  Her manner almost convinced me of a fact which
+every one else seemed to hold as certain, but which I myself should
+have liked to see proved; namely, that Guy, in asking her love, would
+have--what in every right and happy marriage a man ought to have--the
+knowledge that the love was his before he asked for it.
+
+Seeing this, my heart warmed to the girl.  I respected her brave
+departure--I rejoiced that it was needless.  Willingly I would have
+quieted her distress with some hopeful, ambiguous word, but that
+would have been trenching, as no one ever ought to trench, on the
+lover's sole right.  So I held my tongue, watching with an amused
+pleasure the colour hovering to and fro over that usually impassive
+face.  At last, at the opening of the study-door--we stood in the
+hall still--those blushes rose up to her forehead in one involuntary
+tide.
+
+But it was only Edwin, who had lately taken to a habit of getting up
+very early,--to study mathematics.  He looked surprised at seeing me
+with Miss Silver.
+
+"What is that box?  She is not going?"
+
+"No; I have been entreating her not.  Add your persuasions, Edwin."
+
+For Edwin, with all his quietness, was a lad of much wisdom, great
+influence, and no little penetration.  I felt inclined to believe
+that though as yet he had not been let into the secret of last night,
+he guessed it pretty well already.
+
+He might have done, by the peculiar manner in which he went up to the
+governess and took her hand.
+
+"Pray stay; I beg of you."
+
+She made no more ado, but stayed.
+
+I left her with Edwin, and took my usual morning walk, up and down
+the garden, till breakfast-time.
+
+A strange and painful breakfast it was, even though the most
+important element in its painfulness, Guy, was happily absent.  The
+rest of us kept up a fragmentary, awkward conversation, every one
+round the table looking as indeed one might have expected they would
+look--with one exception.
+
+Miss Silver, who, from her behaviour last night, and her demeanour to
+me this morning, I had supposed would now have gathered up all her
+haughtiness to resist Guy's parents--as, ignorant both of his
+feelings and their intentions towards her, a young lady of her proud
+spirit might well resist--was, to my astonishment, as mild and meek
+as this soft spring morning.  Nay, like it, seemed often on the very
+verge of the melting mood.  More than once her drooping eyelashes
+were gemmed with tears.  And when, the breakfast-table being quickly
+deserted--Edwin, indeed, had left it almost immediately--she, sitting
+absently in her place, was gently touched by Mrs. Halifax, she
+started up, with the same vivid rush of colour that I had before
+noticed.  It completely altered the expression of her face; made her
+look ten years younger--ten years happier, and, being happier, ten
+times more amiable.
+
+This expression--I was not the only one to notice it--was, by some
+intuition, reflected on the mother's.  It made softer than any speech
+of hers to Miss Silver--the few words--
+
+"My dear, will you come with me into the study?"
+
+"To lessons?  Yes.  I beg your pardon!  Maud--where is Maud?"
+
+"Never mind lessons just yet.  We will have a little chat with my
+son.  Uncle Phineas, you'll come?  Will you come, too, my dear?"
+
+"If you wish it."  And with an air of unwonted obedience, she
+followed Mrs. Halifax.
+
+Poor Guy!--confused young lover!--meeting for the first time after
+his confession the acknowledged object of his preference--I really
+felt sorry for him!  And, except that women have generally twice as
+much self-control in such cases as men--and Miss Silver proved it--I
+might even have been sorry for her.  But then her uncertainties would
+soon be over.  She had not to make--all her family being aware she
+was then and there making it--that terrible "offer of marriage,"
+which, I am given to understand, is, even under the most favourable
+circumstances, as formidable as going up to the cannon's mouth.
+
+I speak of it jestingly, as we all jested uneasily that morning, save
+Mrs. Halifax, who scarcely spoke a word.  At length, when Miss
+Silver, growing painfully restless, again referred to "lessons," she
+said:
+
+"Not yet.  I want Maud for half an hour.  Will you be so kind as to
+take my place, and sit with my son the while?"
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+I was vexed with her--really vexed--for that ready assent; but then,
+who knows the ins and outs of women's ways?  At any rate, for Guy's
+sake this must be got over--the quicker the better.  His mother rose.
+
+"My son, my dear boy!"  She leant over him, whispering--I think she
+kissed him--then slowly, quietly, she walked out of the study.  I
+followed.  Outside the door we parted, and I heard her go up-stairs
+to her own room.
+
+It might have been half an hour afterwards, when Maud and I, coming
+in from the garden, met her standing in the hall.  No one was with
+her, and she was doing nothing; two very remarkable facts in the
+daily life of the mother of the family.
+
+Maud ran up to her with some primroses.
+
+"Very pretty, very pretty, my child."
+
+"But you don't look at them--you don't care for them--I'll go and
+show them to Miss Silver."
+
+"No," was the hasty answer.  "Come back, Maud--Miss Silver is
+occupied."
+
+Making some excuse, I sent the child away, for I saw that even Maud's
+presence was intolerable to her mother.  That poor mother, whose
+suspense was growing into positive agony.
+
+She waited--standing at the dining-room window--listening--going in
+and out of the hall,--for another ten minutes.
+
+"It is very strange--very strange indeed.  He promised to come and
+tell me; surely at least he ought to come and tell me first--me, his
+mother--"
+
+She stopped at the word, oppressed by exceeding pain.
+
+"Hark! was that the study door?"
+
+"I think so; one minute more and you will be quite certain."
+
+Ay! one minute more, and we WERE quite certain.  The young lover
+entered--his bitter tidings written on his face.
+
+"She has refused me, mother.  I never shall be happy more."
+
+Poor Guy!--I slipped out of his sight and left the lad alone with his
+mother.
+
+Another hour passed of this strange, strange day.  The house seemed
+painfully quiet.  Maud, disconsolate and cross, had taken herself
+away to the beech-wood with Walter; the father and Edwin were busy at
+the mills, and had sent word that neither would return to dinner.  I
+wandered from room to room, always excepting that shut-up room where,
+as I took care, no one should disturb the mother and son.
+
+At last I heard them both going up-stairs--Guy was still too lame to
+walk without assistance.  I heard the poor lad's fretful tones, and
+the soothing, cheerful voice that answered them.  "Verily," thought
+I, "if, since he must fall in love, Guy had only fixed his ideal
+standard of womanhood a little nearer home--if he had only chosen for
+his wife a woman a little more like his mother!"  But I suppose that
+would have been expecting impossibilities.
+
+Well, he had been refused!--our Guy, whom we all would have imagined
+irresistible--our Guy, "whom to look on was to love."  Some harsh
+folk might say this might be a good lesson for the lad--nay, for most
+lads; but I deny it.--I doubt if any young man, meeting at the outset
+of life a rejection like this, which either ignorance or heedlessness
+on the woman's part had made totally unexpected, ever is the better
+for it:  perhaps, for many years, cruelly the worse.  For, most women
+being quick-sighted about love, and most men--especially young men--
+blind enough in its betrayal,--any woman who wilfully allows an offer
+only to refuse it, lowers not only herself but her whole sex, for a
+long, long time after, in the lover's eyes.  At least, I think so;--
+as I was thinking, in the way old bachelors are prone to moralize
+over such things, when, coming out of Guy's room, I met Mrs. Halifax.
+
+She crossed the passage, hastily but noiselessly, to a small
+ante-room which Miss Silver had for her own private study--out of
+which half-a-dozen stairs led to the chamber where she and her pupil
+slept.  The ante-room was open, the bed-chamber door closed.
+
+"She is in there?"
+
+"I believe she is."
+
+Guy's mother stood irresolute.  Her knit brow and nervous manner
+betrayed some determination she had come to, which had cost her hard:
+suddenly she turned to me.
+
+"Keep the children out of the way, will you, Phineas?  Don't let them
+know--don't let anybody know--about Guy."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"There is some mistake--there MUST be some mistake.  Perhaps she is
+not sure of our consent--his father's and mine; very right of her--
+very right!  I honour her for her indecision.  But she must be
+assured to the contrary--my boy's peace must not be sacrificed.  You
+understand, Phineas?"
+
+Ay, perhaps better than she did herself, poor mother!
+
+Yet, when in answer to the hasty knock, I caught a glimpse of Miss
+Silver opening the door--Miss Silver, with hair all falling down
+dishevelled, and features swollen with crying,--I went away
+completely at fault, as the standers-by seemed doomed to be in all
+love affairs.  I began to hope that this would settle itself somehow-
+-in all parties understanding one another after the good old romantic
+fashion, and "living very happy to the end of their lives."
+
+I saw nothing more of any one until tea-time; when Mrs. Halifax and
+the governess came in together.  Something in their manner struck me-
+-one being subdued and gentle, the other tender and kind.  Both,
+however, were exceedingly grave--nay, sad, but it appeared to be that
+sadness which is received as inevitable, and is quite distinct from
+either anger or resentment.
+
+Neither Guy nor Edwin, nor the father were present.  When John's
+voice was heard in the hall, Miss Silver had just risen to retire
+with Maud.
+
+"Good-night, for I shall not come down-stairs again," she said
+hastily.
+
+"Good-night," the mother answered in the same whisper--rose, kissed
+her kindly, and let her go.
+
+When Edwin and his father appeared, they too looked remarkably grave-
+-as grave as if they had known by intuition all the trouble in the
+house.  Of course, no one referred to it.  The mother merely noticed
+how late they were, and how tired they both looked.  Supper passed in
+silence, and then Edwin took up his candle to go to bed.
+
+His father called him back.  "Edwin, you will remember?"
+
+"I will, father."
+
+"Something is amiss with Edwin," said his mother, when the two
+younger boys had closed the door behind them.  "What did you wish him
+to remember?"
+
+Her husband's sole reply was to draw her to him with that peculiarly
+tender gaze, which she knew well to be the forewarning of trouble;
+trouble he could not save her from--could only help her to bear.
+Ursula laid her head on his shoulder with one deep sob of long-
+smothered pain.
+
+"I suppose you know all.  I thought you would soon guess.  Oh, John,
+our happy days are over!  Our children are children no more."
+
+"But ours still, love--always will be ours."
+
+"What of that when we can no longer make them happy?  When they look
+for happiness to others and not to us?  My own poor boy!  To think
+that his mother can neither give him comfort, nor save him pain, any
+more."
+
+She wept bitterly.
+
+When she was somewhat soothed, John, making her sit down by him, but
+turning a little from her, bade her tell him all that had happened
+to-day.  A few words explained the history of Guy's rejection and its
+cause.
+
+"She loves some one else.  When I--as his mother--went and asked her
+the question she confessed this."
+
+"And what did you say?"
+
+"What could I say?  I could not blame her.  I was even sorry for her.
+She cried so bitterly, and begged me to forgive her.  I said I did
+freely, and hoped she would be happy."
+
+"That was right.  I am glad you said so.  Did she tell you who he--
+this lover, was?"
+
+"No.  She said she could not, until he gave her permission.  That
+whether they would ever be married she did not know.  She knew
+nothing, save that he was good and kind, and the only creature in the
+world who had ever cared for her."
+
+"Poor girl!"
+
+"John,"--startled by his manner--"you have something to tell me?  You
+know who this is--this man who has stood between my son and his
+happiness?"
+
+"Yes, I do know."
+
+I cannot say how far the mother saw--what, as if by a flash of
+lightning, _I_ did; but she looked up in her husband's face, with a
+sudden speechless dread.
+
+"Love, it is a great misfortune, but it is no one's blame--neither
+ours, nor theirs--they never thought of Guy's loving her.  He says
+so--Edwin himself."
+
+"Is it Edwin?"--in a cry as if her heart was breaking.  "His own
+brother--his very own brother!  Oh, my poor Guy!"
+
+Well might the mother mourn!  Well might the father look as if years
+of care had been added to his life that day!  For a disaster like
+this happening in any household--especially a household where love is
+recognized as a tangible truth, neither to be laughed at, passed
+carelessly over, nor lectured down--makes the family cease to be a
+family, in many things, from henceforward.  The two strongest
+feelings of life clash; the bond of brotherly unity, in its
+perfectness, is broken for ever.
+
+For some minutes we sat, bewildered as it were, thinking of the tale
+as if it had been told of some other family than ours.  Mechanically
+the mother raised her eyes; the first object they chanced to meet was
+a rude water-colour drawing, kept, coarse daub as it was, because it
+was the only reminder we had of what never could be recalled--one
+red-cheeked child with a hoop, staring at another red-cheeked child
+with a nosegay--supposed to represent little Edwin and little Guy.
+
+"Guy taught Edwin to walk.  Edwin made Guy learn his letters.  How
+fond they were of one another--those two boys.  Now--brother will be
+set against brother!  They will never feel like brothers--never
+again."
+
+"Love--"
+
+"Don't, John! don't speak to me just yet.  It is so terrible to think
+of.  Both my boys--both my two noble boys! to be made miserable for
+that girl's sake.  Oh! that she had never darkened our doors.  Oh!
+that she had never been born."
+
+"Nay, you must not speak thus.  Remember--Edwin loves her--she will
+be Edwin's wife."
+
+"Never!" cried the mother, desperately; "I will not allow it.  Guy is
+the eldest.  His brother has acted meanly.  So has she.  No, John, I
+will NOT allow it."
+
+"You will not allow what has already happened--what Providence has
+permitted to happen?  Ursula, you forget--they love one another."
+
+This one fact--this solemn upholding of the pre-eminent right and law
+of love,--which law John believed in, they both believed in, so
+sacredly and firmly--appeared to force itself upon Mrs. Halifax's
+mind.  Her passion subsided.
+
+"I cannot judge clearly.  You can--always.  Husband, help me!"
+
+"Poor wife!--poor mother!" he muttered, caressing her, and in that
+caress himself all but giving way--"Alas! that I should have brought
+thee into such a sea of trouble."
+
+Perhaps he referred to the circumstance of his bringing Miss Silver
+into our house; perhaps to his own blindness, or want of parental
+caution, in throwing the young people continually together.  However,
+John was not one to lament over things inevitable; or by overweening
+blame of his own want of foresight, to imply a doubt of the
+foreseeing of Providence.
+
+"Love," he said, "I fear we have been too anxious to play Deus ex
+machina with our children, forgetting in whose Hands are marrying and
+giving in marriage--life's crosses and life's crowns.  Trouble has
+come when we looked not for it.  We can but try to see the right
+course, and seeing it, to act upon it."
+
+Ursula assented--with a bursting heart it seemed--but still she
+assented, believing, even as in her young days, that her husband's
+will was wisest, best.
+
+He told her, in few words, all that Edwin had that day confessed to
+his father; how these two, being much together, had become attached
+to one another, as young folks will--couples whom no one would ever
+think suited each for each, except Nature, and the instinct of their
+own hearts.  Absorbed in this love--which, Edwin solemnly declared,
+was never openly declared till this morning--they neither of them
+thought of Guy.  And thus things had befallen--things which no
+earthly power could remove or obliterate--things in which, whatever
+way we looked, all seemed darkness.  We could but walk blindly on, a
+step at a time, trusting to that Faith, of which all our lives past
+had borne confirmation--the firm faith that evil itself is to the
+simple and God-fearing but the disguised messenger of good.
+
+Something like this John said, talking as his wife loved to hear him
+talk--every quiet, low word dropping like balm upon her grieved
+heart; not trying to deceive her into the notion that pain is not
+pain, but showing her how best to bear it.  At length she looked up,
+as if with God's help--and her husband's comforting--she could bear
+it.
+
+"Only one thing--Guy does not know.  He need not know just yet--not
+till he is stronger.  Surely, Edwin will not tell him?"
+
+"No; he promised me he would not.  Do not start so.  Indeed, there is
+no fear."
+
+But that very assurance seemed to rouse it.  She began straining her
+ears to catch the least noise in the rooms overhead--the boys' rooms.
+Guy and Walter shared one; Edwin had his to himself,
+
+"They surely will not meet.  Yet Guy sometimes likes sitting over
+Edwin's fire.  Hark!--was not that the creaking of Guy's room-door?"
+
+"Love--" detaining her.
+
+"I know, John.  I am not thinking of going.  Guy might suspect
+something.  No, indeed I am not afraid.  They were always fond of one
+another--my boys."
+
+She sat down, violently forcing herself not to listen, not to fear.
+But the truth was too strong for her.
+
+"Hark!  I am sure they are talking.  John, you said Edwin promised?"
+
+"Faithfully promised."
+
+"But if, by some accident, Guy found out the truth?  Hark! they are
+talking very loud.  That is a chair fallen.  Oh, John--don't keep me!
+My boys--my boys."  And she ran up-stairs in an agony.
+
+What a sight for a mother's eyes.  Two brothers of whom it had been
+our boast that from babyhood they had never been known to lift a hand
+against each other--now struggling together like Cain and Abel.  And
+from the fury in their faces, the quarrel might have had a similar
+ending.
+
+"Guy!--Edwin!"  But the mother might as well have shrieked to the
+winds.
+
+The father came and parted them.  "Boys, are you gone mad? fighting
+like brutes in this way.  Shame, Guy!  Edwin, I trusted you."
+
+"I could not help it, father.  He had no right to steal into my room;
+no right to snatch her letter from me."
+
+"It was her letter, then?" cried Guy, furiously.  "She writes to you?
+You were writing back to her?"
+
+Edwin made no answer; but held out his hand for the letter, with that
+look of white passion in him so rarely seen--perhaps not thrice since
+his infancy.  Guy took no heed.
+
+"Give it me back, Guy; I warn you."
+
+"Not till I have read it.  I have a right."
+
+"You have none.  She is mine."
+
+"Yours?"  Guy laughed in his face.
+
+"Yes, mine.  Ask my father--ask my mother.  They know."
+
+"Mother!"--the letter fell from the poor lad's hand.  "Mother, YOU
+would not deceive me.  He only says it to vex me.  I was in a
+passion, I know.  Mother, it isn't true?"
+
+His piteous tone--the almost childish way in which he caught at her
+sleeve, as she turned from him--ah, poor Guy!
+
+"Edwin, is it my brother Edwin?  Who would have thought it?"
+Half-bewildered, he looked from one to the other of us all; but no
+one spoke, no one contradicted him.
+
+Edwin, his passion quite gone, stooped in a sorrowful and humble way
+to pick up his betrothed's letter.  Then Guy flew at him, and caught
+him by the collar.
+
+"You coward!--how dared you?--No, I won't hurt him; she is fond of
+him.  Go away, every one of you.  Oh, mother, mother, mother!"
+
+He fell on her neck, sobbing.  She gathered him in her arms, as she
+had used to do in his childhood; and so we left them.
+
+"AS ONE WHOM HIS MOTHER COMFORTETH."
+
+Ay, Prophet of Israel, thou wert wise.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+John and I sat over the study fire till long after midnight.
+
+Many an anxious watch I had kept with him, but none sadder than this.
+Because now, for the first time, our house was divided against
+itself.  A sorrow had entered it, not from without but from within--a
+sorrow which we could not meet and bear, as a family.  Alas! darker
+and darker had the bitter truth forced itself upon us, that neither
+joy nor affliction would ever find us as a family again.
+
+I think all parents must feel cruelly a pang like this--the first
+trouble in which they cannot help their children--the first time when
+those children must learn to stand alone, each for himself, compelled
+to carry his own burthen and work out, well or ill, his individual
+life.  When the utmost the wisest or tenderest father can do, is to
+keep near with outstretched hand that the child may cling to, assured
+of finding sympathy, counsel, and love.
+
+If this father had stood aloof all his life, on some pinnacle of
+paternal "pride," paternal "dignity"--if he had not made himself his
+boys' companion, counsellor, and friend, how great would have been
+his terrors now!
+
+For, as we both knew well--too well to trust ourselves to say it--if
+there was one thing in the world that ruins a lad, drives him to
+desperation, shuts the door of home upon him, and opens many another
+door, of which the entrance is the very gate of hell--it is such a
+disappointment as this which had happened to our Guy.
+
+His father saw it all.  Saw it clearer, crueller, than even his
+mother could see.  Yet when, very late, almost at dawn, she came in,
+with the tidings that Guy was himself again now--sleeping as quietly
+as a  child--her husband was able to join in her deep thankfulness,
+and give her hope for the days to come.
+
+"But what is to be done with Guy?"
+
+"God knows," John answered.  But his tone expressed a meaning
+different from that generally conveyed in the words:  a meaning which
+the mother caught at once, and rested on.
+
+"Ay--you are right.  He knows!"--And so they went away together,
+almost content.
+
+Next morning, I woke late; the sunshine falling across my bed, and
+the sparrows chattering loud in the ivy.  I had been dreaming, with a
+curious pertinacity, of the old days at Rose Cottage, the days when
+John first fell in love with Ursula.
+
+"Uncle Phineas."  I heard myself called.
+
+It was John's son, who sat opposite, with wan, wild eyes, and a
+settled anguish on his mouth--that merry, handsome mouth--the only
+really handsome mouth in the family.
+
+"You are up early, my boy."
+
+"What was the good of lying in bed?  I am not ill.  Besides, I wish
+to go about as usual.  I don't wish anybody to think that--that I
+care."
+
+He stopped--evidently fighting hard against himself.  A new lesson,
+alas! for our Guy.
+
+"Was I too violent last night?  I did not mean it.  I mean to be a
+man.  Not the first man whom a lady has refused--eh?"  And braving it
+out, he began to whistle; but the lips fell--the frank brow grew
+knotted with pain.  The lad broke into a passion of misery.
+
+The chief bitterness was that he had been deceived.  Unwittingly, we
+well believed--but still deceived.  Many little things he told me--
+Guy's was a nature that at once spent and soothed itself by talking--
+of Miss Silver's extreme gentleness and kindness towards him; a
+kindness which seemed so like, so cruelly like love.
+
+"Love!--Oh, she loved me.  She told me so.  Of course!--I was Edwin's
+brother."
+
+Ay, there was the sting, which never could be removed; which might
+rankle in the boy's heart for life.  He had not only lost his love,
+but what is more precious than love--faith in womankind.  He began to
+make light of his losings--to think the prize was not so great after
+all.  He sat on my bed, singing--Guy had a fine voice and ear--
+singing out of mockery, songs which I had an especial aversion to--
+light songs written by an Irishman, Mr. Thomas Moore, about girls and
+wine, and being "far from the lips we love," but always ready enough
+"to make love to the lips we are near."  Then, laughing at me, he
+threw up the window and looked out.
+
+I think it was wrong of those two, wrong and selfish, as all lovers
+are--young lovers in the flush of their happiness; I think it was
+cruel of Edwin and Louise to walk up and down there in the elder
+brother's very eyes.
+
+For a moment he struggled against his passion.
+
+"Uncle Phineas, just look here.  How charming!  Ha, ha!  Did you ever
+see such a couple of fools?"
+
+Fools, maybe, but happy; happy to the very core--thoroughly engrossed
+in their happiness.  The elder brother was almost maddened by it.
+
+"He must mind what he does--tell him so, Uncle Phineas--it would be
+safer.  He MUST mind, or I will not answer for myself.  I was fond of
+Edwin--I was indeed--but now it seems sometimes as if I HATED him."
+
+"Guy!"
+
+"Oh, if it had been a stranger, and not he!  If it had been any one
+in the world except my brother!"
+
+And in that bitter cry the lad's heart melted again; it was such a
+tender heart--his mother's heart.
+
+After a time he recovered himself, and came down with me to
+breakfast, as he had insisted upon doing; met them all, even Miss
+Silver--and Edwin, who had placed himself by her side with an air of
+right.  These lovers, however deeply grieved they looked--and, to do
+justice, it was really so--needed not to be grieved over by any of
+us.
+
+Nor, looking at the father and mother, would we have dared to grieve
+over THEM.  In the silent watches of the night, heart to heart,
+husband and wife had taken council together; together had carried
+their sorrow to the only Lightener of burthens.  It seemed that
+theirs was lightened; that even in this strange entanglement of fate
+they were able to wait patiently--trusting unto the Almighty Mercy
+not only themselves but the children He had given them.
+
+When, breakfast being over, John according to his custom read the
+chapter and the prayer--no one rose up or went out; no one refused,
+even in this anguish of strife, jealousy, and disunion--to repeat
+after him the "Our Father" of their childhood.
+
+I believe every one of us remembered for years, with an awe that was
+not altogether pain, this morning's chapter and prayer.
+
+When it was ended, worldly troubles closed round us again.
+
+Nothing seemed natural.  We hung about in twos and threes, uncertain
+what to do.  Guy walked up and down, alone.  His mother asked him if,
+seeing his foot was so well, he would like to go down to the mills as
+usual; but he declined.  Miss Silver made some suggestion about
+"lessons," which Edwin jealously negatived immediately, and proposed
+that she and Maud should take a drive somewhere.
+
+Mrs. Halifax eagerly assented.  "Lady Oldtower has been wanting them
+both for some time.  You would like to go, would you not, for a day
+or two?" said she, addressing the governess.
+
+Guy caught at this.  "Going away, are you?  When?"
+
+He put the question to Miss Silver direct--his eyes blazing right
+into her own.  She made some confused reply, about "leaving
+immediately."
+
+"In the carriage, of course?  Shall I have the honour of driving
+you?"
+
+"No," said Edwin, decisively.
+
+A fierce, vindictive look passed between the brothers--a look
+terrible in itself--more terrible in its warning of days to come.  No
+wonder the mother shuddered--no wonder the young betrothed, pale and
+alarmed, slipped out of the room.  Edwin followed her.  Then Guy,
+snatching up his sister, lifted her roughly on his knee.
+
+"Come along, Maud.  You'll be my girl now.  Nobody else wants you.
+Kiss me, child."
+
+But the little lady drew back.
+
+"So, you hate me too?  Edwin has been teaching you?  Very well.  Get
+away, you cheat!"
+
+He pushed her violently aside.  Maud began to cry.
+
+Her father looked up from his book--the book he had not been reading-
+-though he had seemingly thought it best to take no notice of what
+was passing around him.
+
+"Come here, Maud, my child.  Guy, you should not be unkind to your
+little sister.  Try and command yourself, my dear boy!"
+
+The words, though spoken gently, almost in a whisper, were more than
+the lad's chafed spirit could brook.
+
+"Father, you insult me.  I will not bear it.  I will quit the room."
+
+He went out, shutting the door passionately after him.  His mother
+rose up to follow him--then sat down again.  The eyes that she lifted
+to her husband were deprecating, beseeching, heavy with a speechless
+pain.
+
+For John--he said nothing.  Not though, as was plain to see, this,
+the first angry or disrespectful word he had ever received from any
+one of his children, struck him like an arrow; for a moment stirred
+him even to wrath--holy wrath--the just displeasure of a father who
+feels that the least portion of his child's sin is the sin against
+him.  Perhaps this very feeling, distinct from, and far beyond, all
+personal indignation, all sense of offended dignity, made the anger
+strangely brief--so brief, that when the other children, awed and
+startled, looked for some ebullition of it--lo! it was all gone.  In
+its stead was something at which the children, more awed still, crept
+out of the room.
+
+Ursula even, alarmed, looked in his face as if for the first time she
+could not comprehend her husband.
+
+"John, you should forgive poor Guy! he did not intend any harm."
+
+"No--no."
+
+"And he is so very miserable.  Never before did he fail in his duty
+to you."
+
+"But what if I have failed in mine to him?--What if--you used to say
+I could not understand Guy--what if I have come short towards him?
+I, that am accountable to God for every one of my children."
+
+"John--John"--she knelt down and put her arms round his neck.
+"Husband, do not look unhappy.  I did not mean to blame you--we may
+be wrong, both of us--all of us.  But we will not be afraid.  We know
+Who pities us, even as we pity our children."
+
+Thus she spoke, and more to the same purport; but it was a long time
+before her words brought any consolation.  Then the parents talked
+together, trying to arrange some plan whereby Guy's mind might be
+occupied and soothed, or else Edwin removed out of his sight for a
+little while.  Once I hinted at the advantage of Guy's leaving home;
+but Mrs. Halifax seemed to shrink from this project as though it were
+a foreboding of perpetual exile.
+
+"No, no; anything but that.  Beside, Guy would not wish it.  He has
+never left me in his life.  His going would seem like the general
+breaking up of the family."
+
+Alas! she did not, would not see that the family was already
+"broken."  Broken, more than either absence, marriage, or death
+itself could have effected.
+
+One thing more we had to consider--a thing at once natural and right
+in any family, namely, how to hide its wounds from the chattering,
+scandalous world.  And so, when by a happy chance there came over
+that morning our good friend Lady Oldtower and her carriage full of
+daughters, Mrs. Halifax communicated, with a simple dignity that
+quelled all comment, the fact of "my son Edwin's engagement," and
+accepted the invitation for Maud and Miss Silver, which was willingly
+repeated and pressed.
+
+One thing I noticed, that in speaking of or to the girl who in a
+single day from merely the governess had become, and was sedulously
+treated as, our own, Mrs. Halifax invariably called her, as
+heretofore, "Miss Silver," or "my dear;" never by any chance
+"Louise," or "Mademoiselle D'Argent."
+
+Before she left Beechwood, Edwin came in and hurriedly spoke to his
+mother.  What he said was evidently painful to both.
+
+"I am not aware of it, Edwin; I had not the slightest intention of
+offending her.  Is she already made your judge and referee as to the
+actions of your mother?"
+
+Edwin was a good lad, though perhaps a little less loving than the
+rest of the boys.  His self-restraint, his exceeding patience, lulled
+the threatened storm.
+
+"But you will be kind to her, mother?--I know you will."
+
+"Did I not say so?"
+
+"And may I bring her to you here?"
+
+"If you choose."
+
+It was the first open recognition between the mother and her son's
+betrothed.  Their other meeting had been in public, when, with a
+sedulous dread, both had behaved exactly as usual, and no word or
+manner had betrayed their altered relations.  Now, when for the first
+time it was needful for Miss Silver to be received as a daughter
+elect, with all the natural sympathy due from one woman to another
+under similar circumstances, all the warmth of kindness due from a
+mother to her son's chosen wife--then the want, the mournful want,
+made itself felt.
+
+Mrs. Halifax stood at the dining-room window, trying vainly to regain
+self-control.
+
+"If I could only love her!  If only she had made me love her!" she
+muttered, over and over again.
+
+I hoped, from the bottom of my soul, that Edwin had not heard her--
+had not seen her involuntarily recoil, as he led to his mother his
+handsome girl that he seemed so proud of, his happy, affianced wife.
+Happiness melts some natures, like spring and sunshine.  Louise
+looked up with swimming eyes.
+
+"Oh! be kind to me!  Nobody was ever kind to me till I came here!"
+
+The good heart gave way:  Mrs. Halifax opened her arms.
+
+"Be true to Edwin--love Edwin, and I shall love you--I am sure I
+shall."
+
+Kissing her once or twice, the mother let fall a few tears; then sat
+down, still keeping the girl's hand, and busying herself with various
+little kindnesses about her.
+
+"Are you sure you are well wrapped up?  Edwin, see that she has my
+fur cloak in the carriage.  What cold fingers!  Have some wine before
+you start, my dear."
+
+Miss Silver altogether melted; sobbing, she murmured something about
+forgiveness.
+
+"Nay, did I say a word about forgiveness?  Then, do not you.  Let us
+be patient--we shall all be happy in time."
+
+"And--Guy?"
+
+"Guy will be himself soon," returned the mother, rather proudly.  "We
+will not mention him, if you please, my dear."
+
+At this moment, Guy must have heard the carriage-wheels and guessed
+Miss Silver was going, for he appeared at the parlour door.  He found
+his mother toying with Miss Silver's hand; Edwin standing by, proud
+and glad, with his arm clasped round Louise.
+
+He did not remove it.  In his brother's very face--perhaps because of
+the expression of that face--the lover held fast his own.
+
+Mrs. Halifax rose up, alarmed.  "She is just going, Guy.  Shake
+hands, and bid her good-bye."
+
+The girl's hand, which was sorrowfully and kindly extended, Guy
+snatched and held fast.
+
+"Let her pass," cried Edwin, angrily.
+
+"Most certainly.  I have not the least wish to detain her.  Good-bye!
+A pleasant journey!"  And, still keeping her hand, he gazed with
+burning eyes on the features he had so loved--as boys do love--with a
+wild imaginative passion, kindled by beauty alone.  "I shall claim my
+right--just for once--may I, sister Louise?"
+
+With a glance of defiance at Edwin, Guy caught his brother's
+betrothed round the waist and kissed her--once--twice--savagely.
+
+It was done so suddenly and under such an ingenious disguise of
+"right," that open vengeance was impossible.  But as Edwin hurried
+Louise away, the look that passed between the two young men was
+enough to blot out henceforward all friendship, all brotherhood.
+That insult would never be forgotten.
+
+She was gone--the house was free of her and Edwin too.  Guy was left
+alone with me and his mother.
+
+Mrs. Halifax sat sewing.  She seemed to take no note of his comings
+and goings--his restless starts--his fits of dark musing, when his
+face grew like the face of some stranger, some one whom he would have
+shrunk from--any one but our own merry Guy.
+
+"Mother,"--the voice startled me, such irritable, intolerable
+bitterness marred its once pleasant tones--"when do they come back?"
+
+"Do you mean--"
+
+"I mean those people."
+
+"In a week or so.  Your brother returns to-night, of course."
+
+"My BROTHER, eh?  Better not say it--it's an ugly word."
+
+Mrs. Halifax attempted no reproof; she knew that it would have been
+useless--worse than useless--then.
+
+"Mother," Guy said at last, coming up and leaning against her chair,
+"you must let me go."
+
+"Where, my son?"
+
+"Anywhere--out of their sight--those two.  You see, I cannot bear it.
+It maddens me--makes me wicked--makes me not myself.  Or rather makes
+me truly MYSELF, which is altogether wicked."
+
+"No, Guy--no, my own boy.  Have patience--all this will pass away."
+
+"It might, if I had anything to do.  Mother," kneeling down by her
+with a piteous gaze--"mother, you need not look so wretched.  I
+wouldn't harm Edwin--would not take from him his happiness; but to
+live in sight of it day after day, hour after hour--I can't do it!
+Do not ask me--let me get away."
+
+"But where?"
+
+"Anywhere, as I said; only let me go far away from them, where no
+possible news of them can reach me.  In some place, oh, mother
+darling! where I can trouble no one and make no one miserable."
+
+The mother feebly shook her head.  As if such a spot could be found
+on earth, while SHE lived.
+
+But she saw that Guy was right.  To expect him to remain at home was
+cruelty.  As he had said, he could not bear it--few could.  Few even
+among women--of men much fewer.  One great renunciation is possible,
+sometimes easy, as death may be; but to "die daily?"  In youth, too,
+with all the passions vehement, the self-knowledge and self-control
+small?  No; Nature herself, in that universal desire to escape, which
+comes with such a trial, hints at the unnaturalness of the ordeal; in
+which, soon or late, the weak become paralysed or callous; the
+strong--God help them!--are apt to turn wicked.
+
+Guy's instinct of flight was, his mother felt, wisest, safest, best.
+
+"My boy, you shall have your desire; you shall go."
+
+I had not expected it of her--at least, not so immediately.  I had
+thought, bound up in him as she was, accustomed to his daily sight,
+his daily fondness--for he was more with her, and "petted" her more
+than any other of the children--I had thought to have seen some
+reluctance, some grieved entreaty--but no!  Not even when, gaining
+her consent, the boy looked up as if her allowing him to quit her was
+the greatest kindness she had ever in his life bestowed.
+
+"And when shall I go?"
+
+"Whenever you choose."
+
+"To-day; perhaps I might get away to-day?"
+
+"You can, if you wish, my dear boy."
+
+But no sooner had she said it, than the full force and meaning of the
+renunciation seemed to burst upon her.  Her fingers, which had been
+smoothing Guy's hand as it lay on her lap, tightly closed round it;
+with the other hand she put back his hair, gazing--gazing, as if it
+were impossible to part with him.
+
+"Guy--oh, Guy, my heart is breaking!  Promise that you will try to be
+yourself again--that you will never be anything other than my own
+good boy, if I agree to let you go?"  What he answered, or what
+further passed between them, was not for me either to hear or to
+know.  I left the room immediately.
+
+When, some time after John's hour for returning from the mills, I
+also returned to the house, I found that everything was settled for
+Guy's immediate departure.
+
+There was some business in Spain--something about Andalusian wool--
+which his father made the ostensible reason for the journey.  It
+would occupy him and distract his mind, besides giving him constant
+necessity of change.  And, they say, travel is the best cure for the
+heart-ache.  We hoped it might prove so.
+
+Perhaps the sorest point, and one that had been left undecided till
+both parents saw that in Guy's present mood any opposition was
+hurtful, even dangerous, was the lad's obstinate determination to
+depart alone.  He refused his mother's companionship to London, even
+his father's across the country to the nearest point where one of
+those new and dangerous things called railways tempted travellers to
+their destruction.  But Guy would go by it--the maddest and strangest
+way of locomotion pleased him best.  So it was settled he should go,
+as he pleaded, this very day.
+
+A strange day it seemed--long and yet how short!  Mrs. Halifax was
+incessantly busy.  I caught sight of her now and then, flitting from
+room to room, with Guy's books in her hand--Guy's linen thrown across
+her arm.  Sometimes she stood a few minutes by the window, doing a
+few stitches of necessary work, which, when even nurse Watkins
+offered to do--Jenny, who had been a rosy lass when Guy was born--she
+refused abruptly, and went stitching on.
+
+There were no regular meals that day; better not, perhaps.  I saw
+John come up to his wife as she stood sewing, and bring her a piece
+of bread and a glass of wine--but she could not touch either.
+
+"Mother, try," whispered Guy, mournfully.  "What will become of me if
+I have made you ill?"
+
+"Oh, no fear, no fear!"  She smiled, took the wine and swallowed it--
+broke off a bit of the bread,--and went on with her work.
+
+The last hour or two passed so confusedly that I do not well remember
+them.  I can only call to mind seeing Guy and his mother everywhere
+side by side, doing everything together, as if grudging each instant
+remaining till the final instant came.  I have also a vivid
+impression of her astonishing composure, of her calm voice when
+talking to Guy about indefinite trifles, or, though that was seldom,
+to any other of us.  It never faltered--never lost its rich, round,
+cheerfulness of tone; as if she wished him to carry it as such, and
+no other--the familiar mother's voice--in his memory across the seas.
+
+Once only it grew sharp, when Walter, who hovered about
+disconsolately, knelt down to fasten his brother's portmanteau.
+
+"No!  Let go!  I can do everything myself."
+
+And now the time was fast flying--her boy must depart.
+
+All the household collected in the hall to bid Mr. Guy good-bye--Mr.
+Guy whom everybody was so fond of.  They believed--which was all that
+any one, save ourselves, ever knew--that sudden business had called
+him away on a long and anxious journey.  They lingered about him,
+respectfully, with eager, honest blessings, such as it was good the
+lad should have--good that he should bear away with him from England
+and from home.
+
+Finally, Guy, his father, and his mother went into the study by
+themselves.  Soon even his father came out and shut the door, that
+there should be not a single witness to the last few words between
+mother and son.  These being over, they both came into the hall
+together, brave and calm--which calmness was maintained even to the
+last good-bye.
+
+Thus we sent our Guy away, cheerfully and with blessings--away into
+the wide, dangerous world; alone, with no guard or restraint, except
+(and in that EXCEPT lay the whole mystery of our cheerfulness)--the
+fear of God, his father's counsels, and his mother's prayers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Two years rolled over Beechwood--two uneventful years.  The last of
+the children ceased to be a child; and we prepared for that great era
+in all household history, the first marriage in the family.  It was
+to be celebrated very quietly, as Edwin and Louise both desired.
+Time had healed over many a pang, and taught many a soothing lesson;
+still it could not be supposed that this marriage was without its
+painfulness.
+
+Guy still remained abroad; his going had produced the happy result
+intended.  Month after month his letters came, each more hopeful than
+the last, each bringing balm to the mother's heart.  Then he wrote to
+others beside his mother:  Maud and Walter replied to him in long
+home-histories; and began to talk without hesitation--nay, with great
+pride and pleasure--"of my brother who is abroad."
+
+The family wound was closing, the family peace about to be restored;
+Maud even fancied Guy ought to come home to "our wedding;"--but then
+she had never been told the whole of past circumstances; and,
+besides, she was still too young to understand love matters.  Yet so
+mercifully had time smoothed down all things, that it sometimes
+appeared even to us elders as if those three days of bitterness were
+a mere dream--as if the year we dreaded had passed as calmly as any
+other year.  Save that in this interval Ursula's hair had begun to
+turn from brown to grey; and John first mentioned, so cursorily that
+I cannot even now remember when or where, that slight pain, almost
+too slight to complain of, which he said warned him in climbing
+Enderley Hill that he could not climb so fast as when he was young.
+And I returned his smile, telling him we were evidently growing old
+men; and must soon set our faces to descend the hill of life.  Easy
+enough I was in saying this, thinking, as I often did, with great
+content, that there was not the faintest doubt which of us would
+reach the bottom first.
+
+Yet I was glad to have safely passed my half century of life--glad to
+have seen many of John's cares laid to rest, more especially those
+external troubles which I have not lately referred to--for, indeed,
+they were absorbed and forgotten in the home-troubles that came
+after.  He had lived down all slanders, as he said he would.  Far and
+near travelled the story of the day when Jessop's bank was near
+breaking; far and near, though secretly--for we found it out chiefly
+by its results--poor people whispered the tale of a gentleman who had
+been attacked on the high roads, and whose only attempt at bringing
+the robbers to justice was to help the widow of one and send the
+others safe out of the country, at his own expense, not Government's.
+None of these were notable or showy deeds--scarcely one of them got,
+even under the disguise of asterisks, into the newspaper; the Norton
+Bury Mercury, for its last dying sting, still complained (and very
+justly) that there was not a gentleman in the county whose name so
+seldom headed a charity subscription as that of John Halifax,
+Esquire, of Beechwood.  But the right made its way, as, soon or late,
+the right always does; he believed his good name was able to defend
+itself, and it did defend itself; he had faith in the only victory
+worth having--the universal victory of Truth; and Truth conquered at
+last.
+
+To drive with him across the country--he never carried pistols now,--
+or to walk with him, as one day before Edwin's wedding we walked, a
+goodly procession, through the familiar streets of Norton Bury, was a
+perpetual pleasure to the rest of the family.  Everybody knew him,
+everybody greeted him, everybody smiled as he passed--as though his
+presence and his recognition were good things to have and to win.
+His wife often laughed, and said she doubted whether even Mr.
+O'Connell of Derrynane, who was just now making a commotion in
+Ireland, lighting the fire of religious and political discord from
+one end to the other of County Clare;--she doubted if even Daniel
+O'Connell had more popularity among his own people than John Halifax
+had in the primitive neighbourhood where he had lived so long.
+
+Mrs. Halifax herself was remarkably gay this morning.  She had had
+letters from Guy; together with a lovely present, for which he said
+he had ransacked all the magazins des modes in Paris--a white
+embroidered China shawl.  It had arrived this morning--Lord Ravenel
+being the bearer.  This was not the first time by many that he had
+brought us news of our Guy, and thereby made himself welcome at
+Beechwood.  More welcome than he might have been otherwise; for his
+manner of life was so different from ours.  Not that Lord Ravenel
+could be accused of any likeness to his father; but blood is blood,
+and education and habits are not to be easily overcome.  The boys
+laughed at him for his aristocratic, languid ways; Maud teased him
+for his mild cynicism and the little interest he seemed to take in
+anything; while the mother herself was somewhat restless about his
+coming, wondering what possible good his acquaintance could do to us,
+or ours to him, seeing we moved in totally different spheres.  But
+John himself was invariably kind, nay, tender over him--we all
+guessed why.  And perhaps even had not the young man had so many good
+points, while his faults were more negations than positive ill
+qualities, we likewise should have been tender over him--for Muriel's
+sake.
+
+He had arrived at Beechwood this morning, and falling as usual into
+our family routine, had come with us to Norton Bury.  He looked up
+with more interest than usual in his pensive eyes, as he crossed the
+threshold of our old house, and told Maud how he had come there many
+years ago with his father.
+
+"That was the first time I ever met your father," I overheard him say
+to Maud--not without feeling; as if he thought he owed fate some
+gratitude for the meeting.
+
+Mrs. Halifax, in the casual civil inquiry which was all the old earl
+ever won in our house, asked after the health of Lord Luxmore.
+
+"He is still at Compiegne.  Does not Guy mention him?  Lord Luxmore
+takes the greatest pleasure in Guy's society."
+
+By her start, this was evidently new and not welcome tidings to Guy's
+mother.  No wonder.  Any mother in England would have shrank from the
+thought that her best-beloved son--especially a young man of Guy's
+temperament, and under Guy's present circumstances--was thrown into
+the society which now surrounded the debauched dotage of the
+too-notorious Earl of Luxmore.
+
+"My son did not mention it.  He has been too much occupied in
+business matters to write home frequently, since he reached Paris.
+However his stay there is limited;" and this seemed to relieve her.
+"I doubt if he will have much time left to visit Compiegne."
+
+She said no more than this, of course, to Lord Luxmore's son; but her
+disquiet was sufficiently apparent.
+
+"It was I who brought your son to Compiegne--where he is a universal
+favourite, from his wit and liveliness.  I know no one who is a more
+pleasant companion than Guy."
+
+Guy's mother bowed--but coldly.
+
+"I think, Mrs. Halifax, you are aware that the earl's tastes and mine
+differ widely--have always differed.  But he is an old man, and I am
+his only son.  He likes to see me sometimes, and I go:--though, I
+must confess, I take little pleasure in the circle he has around
+him."
+
+"In which circle, as I understand, my son is constantly included?"
+
+"Why not?  It is a very brilliant circle.  The whole court of Charles
+Dix can afford none more amusing.  For the rest, what matters?  One
+learns to take things as they seem, without peering below the
+surface.  One wearies of impotent Quixotism against unconquerable
+evils."
+
+"That is not our creed at Beechwood," said Mrs. Halifax, abruptly, as
+she ceased the conversation.  But ever and anon it seemed to recur to
+her mind--ay, through all the mirth of the young people, all the
+graver pleasure which the father took in the happiness of his son
+Edwin; his good son, who had never given him a single care.  He
+declared this settling of Edwin had been to him almost like the days
+when he himself used to come of evenings, hammer in hand, to put up
+shelves in the house, or nail the currant-bushes against the wall,
+doing everything con amore, and with the utmost care, knowing it
+would come under the quick observant eyes of Ursula March.
+
+"That is, of Ursula Halifax--for I don't think I let her see a single
+one of my wonderful doings until she was Ursula Halifax.  Do you
+remember, Phineas, when you came to visit us the first time, and
+found us gardening?"
+
+"And she had on a white gown and a straw hat with blue ribbons.  What
+a young thing she looked!--hardly older than Mistress Maud here."
+
+John put his arm round his wife's waist--not so slender as it had
+been, but comely and graceful still, repeating--with something of the
+musical cadence of his boyish readings of poetry--a line or two from
+the sweet old English song:
+
+     "And when with envy Time transported
+        Shall think to rob us of our joys,
+      You'll in your girls again be courted,
+        And I'll go wooing with my boys."
+
+Ursula laughed, and for the time being the shadow passed from her
+countenance.  Her husband had happily not noticed it:  and
+apparently, she did not wish to tell him her trouble.  She let him
+spend a happy day, even grew happy herself in response to his care to
+make her so, by the resolute putting away of all painful present
+thoughts, and calling back of sweet and soothing memories belonging
+to this their old married home.  John seemed determined that, if
+possible, the marriage that was to be should be as sacred and as
+hopeful as their own.
+
+So full of it were we all, that not until the day after, when Lord
+Ravenel had left us,--longing apparently to be asked to stay for the
+wedding, but John did not ask him,--I remembered what he had said
+about Guy's association with Lord Luxmore's set.  It was recalled to
+me by the mother's anxious face, as she gave me a foreign letter to
+post.
+
+"Post it yourself, will you, Phineas?  I would not have it miscarry,
+or be late in its arrival, on any account."
+
+No, for I saw it was to her son, at Paris.
+
+"It will be the last letter I shall need to write," she added, again
+lingering over it, to be certain that all was correct--the address
+being somewhat illegible for that free, firm hand of hers.  "My boy
+is coming home."
+
+"Guy coming home!  To the marriage?"
+
+"No; but immediately after.  He is quite himself now.  He longs to
+come home."
+
+"And his mother?"
+
+His mother could not speak.  Like light to her eyes, like life to her
+heart, was the thought of Guy's coming home.  All that week she
+looked ten years younger.  With a step buoyant as any girl's she went
+about the marriage preparations; together with other preparations,
+perhaps dearer still to the motherly heart, where, if any preference
+did lurk, it was for the one for whom--possibly from whom--she had
+suffered most, of all her children.
+
+John, too, though the father's joy was graver and not unmixed with
+some anxiety--anxiety which he always put aside in his wife's
+presence--seemed eager to have his son at home.
+
+"He is the eldest son," he repeated more than once, when talking to
+me of his hope that Guy would now settle permanently at Beechwood.
+"After myself, the head of the family."
+
+After John!  It was almost ridiculous to peer so far into the future
+as that.
+
+Of all the happy faces I saw the day before the marriage, I think the
+happiest was Mrs. Halifax's, as I met her coming out of Guy's room,
+which ever since he left had been locked up, unoccupied.  Now his
+mother threw open the door with a cheerful air.
+
+"You may go in if you like, Uncle Phineas.  Does it not look nice?"
+
+It did indeed, with the fresh white curtains; the bed laid all in
+order; the book-shelves arranged, and even the fowling-piece and
+fishing-rod put in the right places.
+
+The room looked very neat, I said, with an amused doubt as to how
+long it was to remain so.
+
+"That is true, indeed.  How he used to throw his things about!  A sad
+untidy boy!"  And his mother laughed; but I saw all her features were
+trembling with emotion.
+
+"He will not be exactly a boy now.  I wonder if we shall find him
+much changed."
+
+"Very likely.  Brown, with a great beard; he said so in one of his
+letters.  I shall hardly know my boy again."--With a lighting-up of
+the eye that furnished a flat contradiction to the mother's
+statement.
+
+"Here are some of Mrs. Tod's roses, I see."
+
+"She made me take them.  She said Master Guy always used to stop and
+pick a bunch as he rode past.  She hopes she shall see him ride past
+on Sunday next.  Guy must pay her one of his very first visits; the
+good old soul!"
+
+I hinted that Guy would have to pay visits half over the country, to
+judge by the number of invitations I had heard of.
+
+"Yes.  Everybody wants to steal my boy.  Everybody has a welcome for
+him.--How bright old Watkins has polished that gun!--Sir Herbert
+says, Guy must come over to the shooting next week.  He used to be
+exceedingly fond of going to the manor-house."
+
+I smiled to see the innocent smile of this good mother, who would
+have recoiled at the accusation of match-making.  Yet I knew she was
+thinking of her great favourite, pretty Grace Oldtower; who was Grace
+Oldtower still, and had refused, gossip said, half the brilliant
+matches in the county, to the amazement and strong disapprobation of
+all her friends--excepting Mrs. Halifax.
+
+"Come away, Phineas!" slightly sighing, as if her joy weighed her
+down, or as if conscious that she was letting fancy carry her too far
+into the unknown future.  "His room is quite ready now, whatever time
+the boy arrives.  Come away."
+
+She shut and locked the door.  To be opened--when?
+
+Morning broke, and none could have desired a brighter marriage-
+morning.  Sunshine out of doors--sunshine on all the faces within;
+only family faces,--for no other guests had been invited, and we had
+kept the day as secret as we could; there was nothing John disliked
+more than a show-wedding.  Therefore it was with some surprise that
+while they were all up-stairs adorning themselves for church, Maud
+and I, standing at the hall-door, saw Lord Ravenel's travelling
+carriage drive up to it, and Lord Ravenel himself, with a quicker and
+more decided gesture than was natural to him, spring out.
+
+Maud ran into the porch; startling him much, apparently; for indeed
+she was a sweet vision of youth, happiness, and grace, in her pretty
+bridesmaid's dress.
+
+"Is this the wedding-morning?  I did not know--I will come again
+to-morrow;" and he seemed eager to escape back to his carriage.
+
+This action relieved me from a vague apprehension of ill tidings, and
+made less painful the first question which rose to my lips, "Had he
+seen Guy?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We thought for the moment it might be Guy come home," Maud cried.
+"We are expecting him.  Have you heard of him since we saw you?  Is
+he quite well?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+I thought the answer brief; but then he was looking intently upon
+Guy's sister, who held his hands in her childish, affectionate way;
+she had not yet relinquished her privilege of being Lord Ravenel's
+"pet."  When, hesitatingly, he proposed returning to Luxmore,
+unwilling to intrude upon the marriage, the little lady would not
+hear of it for a moment.  She took the unexpected guest to the study,
+left him there with her father, explained to her mother all about his
+arrival and his having missed seeing Guy--appearing entirely
+delighted.
+
+I came into the drawing-room, and sat watching the sun shining on
+marriage-garments and marriage-faces, all as bright as bright could
+be,--including the mother's.  It had clouded over for a few moments
+when the postman's ring was heard; but she said at once that it was
+most unlikely Guy would write--she had told him there was no need to
+write.  So she stood content, smoothing down the soft folds of her
+beautiful shawl, which Guy meant her to wear to-day.  This, together
+with his fond remembrance of her, seemed almost as comfortable as the
+visible presence of her boy.  Her boy, who was sure to come
+to-morrow.
+
+"John, is that you?  How softly you came in.  And Lord Ravenel!  He
+knows we are glad to see him.  Shall we make him one of our own
+family for the time being, and take him with us to see Edwin
+married?"
+
+Lord Ravenel bowed.
+
+"Maud tells us you have not seen Guy.  I doubt if he will be able to
+arrive to-day; but we fully expect him tomorrow."
+
+Lord Ravenel bowed again.  Mrs. Halifax said something about this
+unexpected arrival of his.
+
+"He came on business," John answered quickly, and Ursula made no more
+inquiries.
+
+She stood, talking with Lord Ravenel--as I could see her stand now,
+playing with the deep fringe of her shawl; the sun glancing on that
+rich silk dress, of her favourite silver-grey; a picture of matronly
+grace and calm content, as charming as even the handsome, happy
+bride.
+
+I was still looking at her, when John called me aside.  I followed
+him to the study.
+
+"Shut the door."
+
+By his tone and look I knew in a moment that something had happened.
+
+"Yes.  I'll tell you presently--if there's time."
+
+While he was speaking some violent pain--physical or mental, or both-
+-seemed to seize him.  I had my hand on the door to call Ursula, but
+he held me fast with a kind of terror.
+
+"Call no one.  I am used to it.  Water!"
+
+He drank a glassful, which stood by, breathed once or twice heavily,
+and gradually recovered himself.  The colour had scarcely come back
+into his face when he heard Maud run laughing through the hall.
+
+"Father, where are you?  We are waiting for you."
+
+"I will come in two minutes, my child."
+
+Having said this, in his own natural voice, he closed the door again,
+and spoke to me rapidly.
+
+"Phineas, I want you to stay away from church; make some excuse, or I
+will for you.  Write a letter for me to this address in Paris.  Say--
+Guy Halifax's father will be there, without fail, within a week, to
+answer all demands."
+
+"All demands!" I echoed, bewildered.
+
+He repeated the sentence word for word.  "Can you remember it?
+Literally, mind!  And post it at once, before we return from church."
+
+Here the mother's call was heard.  "John, are you coming?"
+
+"In a moment, love," for her hand was on the door outside; but her
+husband held the other handle fast.  He then went on, breathlessly,
+"You understand, Phineas?  And you will be careful, very careful?
+SHE MUST NOT KNOW--not till tonight."
+
+"One word.  Guy is alive and well?"
+
+"Yes--yes."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+But Guy's father was gone while I spoke.  Heavy as the news might be-
+-this ill news which had struck me with apprehension the moment I saw
+Lord Ravenel--it was still endurable.  I could not conjure up any
+grief so bitter as the boy's dying.
+
+Therefore, with a quietness that came naturally under the compulsion
+of such a necessity as the present, I rejoined the rest, made my
+excuses, and answered all objections.  I watched the marriage-party
+leave the house.  A simple procession--the mother first, leaning on
+Edwin; then Maud, Walter, and Lord Ravenel; John walked last, with
+Louise upon his arm.  Thus I saw them move up the garden, and through
+the beech-wood, to the little church on the hill.
+
+I then wrote the letter and sent it off.  That done, I went back into
+the study.  Knowing nothing--able to guess nothing--a dull patience
+came over me, the patience with which we often wait for unknown,
+inevitable misfortunes.  Sometimes I almost forgot Guy in my startled
+remembrance of his father's look as he called me away, and sat down--
+or rather dropped down--into his chair.  Was it illness? yet he had
+not complained; he hardly ever complained, and scarcely had a day's
+sickness from year to year.  And as I watched him and Louise up the
+garden, I had noticed his free, firm gait, without the least sign of
+unsteadiness or weakness.  Besides, he was not one to keep any but a
+necessary secret from those who loved him.  He could not be seriously
+ill, or we should have known it.
+
+Thus I pondered, until I heard the church bells ring out merrily.
+The marriage was over.
+
+I was just in time to meet them at the front gates, which they
+entered--our Edwin and his wife--through a living line of smiling
+faces, treading upon a carpet of strewn flowers.  Enderley would not
+be defrauded of its welcome--all the village escorted the young
+couple in triumph home.  I have a misty recollection of how happy
+everybody looked, how the sun was shining, and the bells ringing, and
+the people cheering--a mingled phantasmagoria of sights and sounds,
+in which I only saw one person distinctly,--John.
+
+He waited while the young folk passed in--stood on the hall-steps--in
+a few words thanked his people, and bade them to the general
+rejoicing.  They, uproarious, answered in loud hurrahs, and one
+energetic voice cried out:
+
+"One cheer more for Master Guy!"
+
+Guy's mother turned delighted--her eyes shining with proud tears.
+
+"John--thank them; tell them that Guy will thank them himself
+to-morrow."
+
+The master thanked them, but either he did not explain--or the honest
+rude voices drowned all mention of the latter fact--that Guy would be
+home to-morrow.
+
+All this while, and at the marriage-breakfast likewise, Mr. Halifax
+kept the same calm demeanour.  Once only, when the rest were all
+gathered round the bride and bridegroom, he said to me:
+
+"Phineas, is it done?"
+
+"What is done?" asked Ursula, suddenly passing.
+
+"A letter I asked him to write for me this morning."
+
+Now I had all my life been proud of John's face--that it was a safe
+face to trust in--that it could not, or if it could, it would not,
+boast that stony calm under which some men are so proud of disguising
+themselves and their emotions from those nearest and dearest to them.
+If he were sad, we knew it; if he were happy, we knew it too.  It was
+his principle, that nothing but the strongest motive should make a
+man stoop to even the smallest hypocrisy.
+
+Therefore, hearing him thus speak to his wife, I was struck with
+great alarm.  Mrs. Halifax herself seemed uneasy.
+
+"A business letter, I suppose?"
+
+"Partly on business.  I will tell you all about it this evening."
+
+She looked re-assured.  "Just as you like; you know I am not
+curious."  But passing on, she turned back.  "John, if it was
+anything important to be done--anything that I ought to know at once,
+you would not keep me in ignorance?"
+
+"No--my dearest!  No!"
+
+Then what had happened must be something in which no help availed;
+something altogether past and irremediable; something which he
+rightly wished to keep concealed, for a few hours at least, from his
+other children, so as not to mar the happiness of this day, of which
+there could be no second, this crowning day of their lives--this
+wedding-day of Edwin and Louise.
+
+So, he sat at the marriage-table; he drank the marriage-health; he
+gave them both a marriage-blessing.  Finally, he sent them away,
+smiling and sorrowful--as is the bounden duty of young married
+couples to depart--Edwin pausing even on the carriage-step to embrace
+his mother with especial tenderness, and whisper her to "give his
+love to Guy."
+
+"It reminds one of Guy's leaving," said the mother, hastily brushing
+back the tears that would spring and roll down her smiling face.  She
+had never, until this moment, reverted to that miserable day.  "John,
+do you think it possible the boy can be at home to-night?"
+
+John answered emphatically, but very softly, "No."
+
+"Why not?  My letter would reach him in full time.  Lord Ravenel has
+been to Paris and back since then.  But--" turning full upon the
+young nobleman--"I think you said you had not seen Guy?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Did you hear anything of him?"
+
+"I--Mrs. Halifax--"
+
+Exceedingly distressed, almost beyond his power of self-restraint,
+the young man looked appealingly to John, who replied for him:
+
+"Lord Ravenel brought me a letter from Guy this morning."
+
+"A letter from Guy--and you never told me.  How very strange!"
+
+Still, she seemed only to think it "strange."  Some difficulty or
+folly  perhaps--you could see by the sudden flushing of her cheek,
+and her quick, distrustful glance at Lord Ravenel, what she imagined
+it was--that the boy had confessed to his father.  With an instinct
+of concealment--the mother's instinct--for the moment she asked no
+questions.
+
+We were all still standing at the hall-door.  Unresisting, she
+suffered her husband to take her arm in his and bring her into the
+study.
+
+"Now--the letter, please!  Children, go away; I want to speak to your
+father.  The letter, John?"
+
+Her hand, which she held out, shook much.  She tried to unfold the
+paper--stopped, and looked up piteously.
+
+"It is not to tell me he is not coming home?  I can bear anything,
+you know--but he MUST come."
+
+John only answered, "Read,"--and took firm hold of her hand while she
+read--as we hold the hand of one undergoing great torture,--which
+must be undergone, and which no human love can either prepare for, or
+remove, or alleviate.
+
+The letter, which I saw afterwards, was thus;
+
+"DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,
+     "I have disgraced you all.  I have been drunk--in a gaming-
+house.  A man insulted me--it was about my father--but you will hear-
+-all the world will hear presently.  I struck him--there was
+something in my hand, and--the man was hurt.
+
+     "He may be dead by this time.  I don't know.
+
+     "I am away to America to-night.  I shall never come home any
+more.  God bless you all.
+
+     "GUY HALIFAX.
+
+"P.S.  I got my mother's letter to-day.  Mother--I was not in my
+right senses, or I should not have done it.  Mother, darling! forget
+me.  Don't let me have broken your heart."
+
+Alas, he had broken it!
+
+"Never come home any more!--Never come home any more!"
+
+She repeated this over and over again, vacantly:  nothing but these
+five words.
+
+Nature refused to bear it; or rather, Nature mercifully helped her to
+bear it.  When John took his wife in his arms she was insensible; and
+remained so, with intervals, for hours.
+
+This was the end of Edwin's wedding-day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Lord Ravenel knew--as all Paris did by this time--the whole story.
+Though, as he truly said, he had not seen Guy.  The lad was hurried
+off immediately, for fear of justice:  but he had written from
+shipboard to Lord Ravenel, begging him himself to take the letter and
+break the news to us at Beechwood.
+
+The man he had struck was not one of Lord Luxmore's set--though it
+was through some of his "noble" friends Guy had fallen into his
+company.  He was an Englishman, lately succeeded to a baronetcy and
+estate; his name--how we started to hear it, though by Lord Ravenel
+and by us, for his sake, it was both pronounced and listened to, as
+if none of us had ever heard it before--Sir Gerard Vermilye.
+
+As soon as Ursula recovered, Mr. Halifax and Lord Ravenel went to
+Paris together.  This was necessary, not only to meet justice, but to
+track the boy--to whose destination we had no clue but the wide
+world, America.  Guy's mother hurried them away--his mother, who rose
+from her bed, and moved about the house like a ghost--up-stairs and
+down-stairs--everywhere--excepting in that room, which was now once
+more locked, and the outer blind drawn down, as if Death himself had
+taken possession there.
+
+Alas! we learned now that there may be sorrows bitterer even than
+death.
+
+Mr. Halifax went away.  Then followed a long season of torpid gloom--
+days or weeks, I hardly remember--during which we, living shut up at
+Beechwood, knew that our name--John's stainless, honourable name--was
+in everybody's mouth--parrotted abroad in every society--canvassed in
+every newspaper.  We tried, Walter and I, to stop them at first,
+dreading lest the mother might read in some foul print or other
+scurrilous tales about her boy; or, as long remained doubtful, learn
+that he was proclaimed through France and England as a homicide--an
+assassin.  But concealments were idle--she would read everything--
+hear everything--meet everything--even those neighbours who out of
+curiosity or sympathy called at Beechwood.  Not many times, though;
+they said they could not understand Mrs. Halifax.  So, after a while,
+they all left her alone, except good little Grace Oldtower.
+
+"Come often," I heard her say to this girl, whom she was fond of:
+they had sat talking a whole morning--idly and pensively; of little
+things around them, never once referring to things outside.  "Come
+often, though the house is dull.  Does it not feel strange, with Mr.
+Halifax away?"
+
+Ay, this was the change--stranger at first than what had befallen
+Guy--for that long seemed a thing we could not realise; like a story
+told of some other family than ours.  The present tangible blank was
+the house with its head and master away.
+
+Curiously enough, but from his domestic habits easily accountable, he
+had scarcely ever been more than a few days absent from home before.
+We missed him continually; in his place at the head of the table; in
+his chair by the fire; his quick ring at the hall bell, when he came
+up from the mills--his step--his voice--his laugh.  The life and soul
+of the house seemed to have gone out of it from the hour the father
+went away.
+
+I think in the wonderful workings of things--as we know all things do
+work together for good--this fact was good for Ursula.  It taught her
+that, in losing Guy, she had not lost all her blessings.  It showed
+her what in the passion of her mother-love she might have been
+tempted to forget--many mothers do--that beyond all maternal duty, is
+the duty that a woman owes to her husband:  beyond all loves, is the
+love that was hers before any of them were born.
+
+So, gradually, as every day John's letters came,--and she used to
+watch for them and seize them as if they had been love-letters; as
+every day she seemed to miss him more, and count more upon his
+return; referring all decisions, and all little pleasures planned for
+her, to the time "when your father comes home;"--hope and comfort
+began to dawn in the heart of the mourning mother.
+
+And when at last John fixed the day of his coming back, I saw Ursula
+tying up the small bundle of his letters--his letters, of which in
+all her happy life she had had so few--his tender, comforting,
+comfortable letters.
+
+"I hope I shall never need to have any more," she said, half-smiling-
+-the faint smile which began to dawn in her poor face, as if she must
+accustom it to look bright again in time for her husband's coming.
+
+And when the day arrived, she put all the house in trim order,
+dressed herself in her prettiest gown, sat patient while Maud brushed
+and curled her hair--how white it had turned of late!--and then
+waited, with a flush on her cheek--like that of a young girl waiting
+for her lover--for the sound of carriage-wheels.
+
+All that had to be told about Guy--and it was better news than any
+one of us had hoped for--John had already told in his letters.  When
+he came back, therefore, he was burthened with no trouble
+undisclosed--greeted with no anguish of fear or bitter remembrance.
+As he sprang out of the post-chaise, it was to find his wife standing
+at the door, and his home smiling for him its brightest welcome.  No
+blessing on earth could be like the blessing of the father's return.
+
+John looked pale, but not paler than might have been expected.
+Grave, too--but it was a soft seriousness altogether free from the
+restlessness of keen anxiety.  The first shock of this heavy
+misfortune was over.  He had paid all his son's debts; he had, as far
+as was possible, saved his good name; he had made a safe home for the
+lad, and heard of his safely reaching it, in the New World.  Nothing
+more was left but to cover over the inevitable grief, and hope that
+time would blot out the intolerable shame.  That since Guy's hand was
+clear of blood--and, since his recovery, Sir Gerard Vermilye had
+risen into a positive hero of society--men's minds would gradually
+lose the impression of a deed committed in heat of youth, and
+repented of with such bitter atonement.
+
+So the father took his old place, and looked round on the remnant of
+his children, grave indeed, but not weighed down by incurable
+suffering.  Something, deeper even than the hard time he had recently
+passed through, seemed to have made his home more than ever dear to
+him.  He sat in his arm-chair, never weary of noticing everything
+pleasant about him, of saying how pretty Beechwood looked, and how
+delicious it was to be at home.  And perpetually, if any chance
+unlinked it, his hand would return to its clasp of  Ursula's; the
+minute she left her place by his side, his restless "Love, where are
+you going?" would call her back again.  And once, when the children
+were out of the room, and I, sitting in a dark corner, was probably
+thought absent likewise, I saw John take his wife's face between his
+two hands, and look in it--the fondest, most lingering, saddest
+look!--then fold her tightly to his breast.
+
+"I must never be away from her again.  Mine--for as long as I live,
+mine--MY wife, MY Ursula!"
+
+She took it all naturally, as she had taken every expression of his
+love these nine-and-twenty years.  I left them, standing eye to eye,
+heart to heart, as if nothing in this world could ever part them.
+
+Next morning was as gay as any of our mornings used to be, for,
+before breakfast, came Edwin and Louise.  And after breakfast, the
+father and mother and I walked up and down the garden for an hour,
+talking over the prospects of the young couple.  Then the post came--
+but we had no need to watch for it now.  It only brought a letter
+from Lord Ravenel.
+
+John read it, somewhat more seriously than he had been used to read
+these letters--which for the last year or so had come often enough--
+the boys usually quizzing, and Mistress Maud vehemently defending,
+the delicate small hand-writing, the exquisite paper, the coronetted
+seal, and the frank in the corner.  John liked to have them, and his
+wife also--she being not indifferent to the fact, confirmed by many
+other facts, that if there was one man in the world whom Lord Ravenel
+honoured and admired, it was John Halifax of Beechwood.  But this
+time her pleasure was apparently damped; and when Maud, claiming the
+letter as usual, spread abroad, delightedly, the news that "her" Lord
+Ravenel was coming shortly, I imagined this visit was not so welcome
+as usual to the parents.
+
+Yet still, as many a time before, when Mr. Halifax closed the letter,
+he sighed, looked sorrowful, saying only, "Poor Lord Ravenel!"
+
+"John," asked his wife, speaking in a whisper, for by tacit consent
+all public allusion to his doings at Paris was avoided in the family-
+-"did you, by any chance, hear anything of--You know whom I mean?"
+
+"Not one syllable."
+
+"You inquired?"  He assented.  "I knew you would.  She must be almost
+an old woman now, or perhaps she is dead.  Poor Caroline!"
+
+It was the first time for years and years that this name had been
+breathed in our household.  Involuntarily it carried me back--perhaps
+others besides me--to the day at Longfield when little Guy had
+devoted himself to his "pretty lady;" when we first heard that other
+name, which by a curious conjuncture of circumstances had since
+become so fatally familiar, and which would henceforward be like the
+sound of a death-bell in our family--Gerard Vermilye.
+
+On Lord Ravenel's re-appearance at Beechwood--and he seemed eager and
+glad to come--I was tempted to wish him away.  He never crossed the
+threshold but his presence brought a shadow over the parents' looks--
+and no wonder.  The young people were gay and friendly as ever; made
+him always welcome with us; and he rode over daily from desolate,
+long-uninhabited Luxmore, where, in all its desolation, he appeared
+so fond of abiding.
+
+He wanted to take Maud and Walter over there one day, to see some
+magnificent firs that were being cut down in a wholesale massacre,
+leaving the grand old Hall as bare as a workhouse front.  But the
+father objected; he was clearly determined that all the hospitalities
+between Luxmore and Beechwood should be on the Beechwood side.
+
+Lord Ravenel apparently perceived this.  "Luxmore is not Compiegne,"
+he said to me, with his dreary smile, half-sad, half-cynical.  "Mr.
+Halifax might indulge me with the society of his children."
+
+And as he lay on the grass--it was full summer now--watching Maud's
+white dress flit about under the trees, I saw, or fancied I saw,
+something different to any former expression that had ever lighted up
+the soft languid mien of William Lord Ravenel.
+
+"How tall that child has grown lately!  She is about nineteen, I
+think?"
+
+"Not seventeen till December."
+
+"Ah, so young?--Well, it is pleasant to be young!--Dear little Maud!"
+
+He turned on one side, hiding the sun from his eyes with those
+delicate ringed hands--which many a time our boys had laughed at,
+saying they were mere lady's hands, fit for no work at all.
+
+Perhaps Lord Ravenel felt the cloud that had come over our
+intercourse with him; a cloud which, considering late events, was
+scarcely unnatural:  for when evening came, his leave-taking, always
+a regret, seemed now as painful as his blase indifference to all
+emotions, pleasant or unpleasant, could allow.  He lingered--he
+hesitated--he repeated many times how glad he should be to see
+Beechwood again; how all the world was to him "flat, stale, and
+unprofitable," except Beechwood.
+
+John made no special answer; except that frank smile not without a
+certain kindly satire, under which the young nobleman's Byronic
+affectations generally melted away like mists in the morning.  He
+kindled up into warmth and manliness.
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Halifax--I thank you heartily for all you and your
+household have been to me.  I trust I shall enjoy your friendship for
+many years.  And if, in any way, I might offer mine, or any small
+influence in the world--"
+
+"Your influence is not small," John returned earnestly.  "I have
+often told you so.  I know no man who has wider opportunities than
+you have."
+
+"But I have let them slip--for ever."
+
+"No, not for ever.  You are young still; you have half a lifetime
+before you."
+
+"Have I?"  And for the moment one would hardly have recognized the
+sallow, spiritless face, that with all the delicacy of boyhood still,
+at times looked so exceedingly old.  "No, no, Mr. Halifax, who ever
+heard of a man beginning life at seven-and-thirty?"
+
+"Are you really seven-and-thirty?" asked Maud.
+
+"Yes--yes, my girl.  Is it so very old?"
+
+He patted her on the shoulder, took her hand, gazed at it--the round,
+rosy, girlish hand--with a melancholy tenderness; then bade
+"Good-bye" to us all generally, and rode off.
+
+It struck me then, though I hurried the thought away--it struck me
+afterwards, and does now with renewed surprise--how strange it was
+that the mother never noticed or took into account certain
+possibilities that would have occurred naturally to any worldly
+mother.  I can only explain it by remembering the unworldliness of
+our lives at Beechwood, the heavy cares which now pressed upon us
+from without, and the notable fact--which our own family experience
+ought to have taught us, yet did not--that in cases like this, often
+those whom one would have expected to be most quick-sighted, are the
+most strangely, irretrievably, mournfully blind.
+
+When, the very next day, Lord Ravenel, not on horse-back but in his
+rarely-used luxurious coronetted carriage, drove up to Beechwood,
+every one in the house except myself was inconceivably astonished to
+see him back again.
+
+He said that he had delayed his journey to Paris, and gave no
+explanation of that delay.  He joined as usual in our midday dinner;
+and after dinner, still as usual, took a walk with me and Maud.  It
+happened to be through the beech-wood, almost the identical path that
+I remembered taking, years and years ago, with John and Ursula.  I
+was surprised to hear Lord Ravenel allude to the fact, a well-known
+fact in our family; for I think all fathers and mothers like to
+relate, and all children to hear, the slightest incidents of the
+parents' courting days.
+
+"You did not know father and mother when they were young?" said Maud,
+catching our conversation and flashing back her innocent, merry face
+upon us.
+
+"No, scarcely likely."  And he smiled.  "Oh, yes--it might have been-
+-I forget, I am not a young man now.  How old were Mr. and Mrs.
+Halifax when they married?"
+
+"Father was twenty-one and mother was eighteen--only a year older
+than I."  And Maud, half ashamed of this suggestive remark, ran away.
+Her gay candour proved to me--perhaps to others besides me--the
+girl's entire free-heartedness.  The frank innocence of childhood was
+still hers.
+
+Lord Ravenel looked after her and sighed.  "It is good to marry
+early; do you not think so, Mr. Fletcher?"
+
+I told him--(I was rather sorry after I had said it, if one ought to
+be sorry for having, when questioned, given one's honest opinion)--I
+told him that I thought those happiest who found their happiness
+early, but that I did not see why happiness should be rejected
+because it was the will of Providence that it should not be found
+till late.
+
+"I wonder," he said, dreamily, "I wonder whether I shall ever find
+it."
+
+I asked him--it was by an impulse irresistible--why he had never
+married?
+
+"Because I never found any woman either to love or to believe in.
+Worse," he added, bitterly, "I did not think there lived the woman
+who could be believed in."
+
+We had come out of the beech-wood and were standing by the low
+churchyard wall; the sun glittered on the white marble head-stone on
+which was inscribed, "Muriel Joy Halifax."
+
+Lord Ravenel leaned over the wall, his eyes fixed upon that little
+grave.  After a while, he said, sighing:
+
+"Do you know, I have thought sometimes that, had she lived, I could
+have loved--I might have married--that child!"
+
+Here Maud sprang towards us.  In her playful tyranny, which she loved
+to exercise and he to submit to, she insisted on knowing what Lord
+Ravenel was talking about.
+
+"I was saying," he answered, taking both her hands and looking down
+into her bright, unshrinking eyes, "I was saying, how dearly I loved
+your sister Muriel."
+
+"I know that," and Maud became grave at once.  "I know you care for
+me because I am like my sister Muriel."
+
+"If it were so, would you be sorry or glad?"
+
+"Glad, and proud too.  But you said, or you were going to say,
+something more.  What was it?"
+
+He hesitated long, then answered:
+
+"I will tell you another time."
+
+Maud went away, rather cross and dissatisfied, but evidently
+suspecting nothing.  For me, I began to be seriously uneasy about her
+and Lord Ravenel.
+
+Of all kinds of love, there is one which common sense and romance
+have often combined to hold obnoxious, improbable, or ridiculous, but
+which has always seemed to me the most real and pathetic form that
+the passion ever takes--I mean, love in spite of great disparity of
+age.  Even when this is on the woman's side, I can imagine
+circumstances that would make it far less ludicrous and pitiful; and
+there are few things to me more touching, more full of sad earnest,
+than to see an old man in love with a young girl.
+
+Lord Ravenel's case would hardly come under this category; yet the
+difference between seventeen and thirty-seven was sufficient to
+warrant in him a trembling uncertainty, and eager catching at the
+skirts of that vanishing youth whose preciousness he never seemed to
+have recognized till now.  It was with a mournful interest that all
+day I watched him follow the child about, gather her posies, help her
+to water her flowers, and accommodate himself to those whims and
+fancies, of which, as the pet and the youngest, Mistress Maud had her
+full share.
+
+When, at her usual hour of half-past nine, the little lady was
+summoned away to bed, "to keep up her roses," he looked half
+resentful of the mother's interference.
+
+"Maud is not a child now; and this may be my last night--" he
+stopped, sensitively, at the involuntary foreboding.
+
+"Your last night?  Nonsense! you will come back soon again.  You
+must--you shall!" said Maud, decisively.
+
+"I hope I may--I trust in Heaven I may!"
+
+He spoke low, holding her hand distantly and reverently, not
+attempting to kiss it, as in all his former farewells he had
+invariably done.
+
+"Maud, remember me!  However or whenever I come back, dearest child,
+be faithful, and remember me!"
+
+Maud fled away with a sob of childish pain--partly anger, the mother
+thought--and slightly apologized to the guest for her daughter's
+"naughtiness."
+
+Lord Ravenel sat silent for a long, long time.
+
+Just when we thought he purposed leaving, he said, abruptly, "Mr.
+Halifax, may I have five minutes' speech with you in the study?"
+
+The five minutes extended to half an hour.  Mrs. Halifax wondered
+what on earth they were talking about.  I held my peace.  At last the
+father came in alone.
+
+"John, is Lord Ravenel gone?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"What could he have wanted to say to you?"
+
+John sat down by his wife, picked up the ball of her knitting, rolled
+and unrolled it.  She saw at once that something had grieved and
+perplexed him exceedingly.  Her heart shrunk back--that still sore
+heart!--recoiled with a not unnatural fear.
+
+"Oh, husband, is it any new misfortune?"
+
+"No, love," cheering her with a smile; "nothing that fathers and
+mothers in general would consider as such.  He has asked me for our
+Maud."
+
+"What for?" was the mother's first exceedingly simple question--and
+then she guessed its answer.  "Impossible!  Ridiculous--absolutely
+ridiculous!  She is only a child."
+
+"Nevertheless, Lord Ravenel wishes to marry our little Maud!"
+
+"Lord Ravenel wishes to marry our Maud!"
+
+Mrs. Halifax repeated this to herself more than once before she was
+able to entertain it as a reality.  When she did, the first
+impression it made upon her mind was altogether pain.
+
+"Oh, John!  I hoped we had done with these sort of things; I thought
+we should have been left in peace with the rest of our children."
+
+John smiled again; for, indeed, there was a comical side to her view
+of the subject; but its serious phase soon returned; doubly so, when,
+looking up, they both saw Lord Ravenel standing before them.  Firm
+his attitude was, firmer than usual; and it was with something of his
+father's stately air, mingled with a more chivalric and sincerer
+grace, that he stooped forward and kissed the hand of Maud's mother.
+
+"Mr. Halifax has told you all, I believe?"
+
+"He has."
+
+"May I then, with entire trust in you both, await my answer?"
+
+He waited it, patiently enough, with little apparent doubt as to what
+it would be.  Besides, it was only the prior question of parental
+consent, not the vital point of Maud's preference.  And, with all his
+natural humility, Lord Ravenel might be forgiven if, brought up in
+the world, he was aware of his position therein--nor quite
+unconscious that it was not merely William Ravenel, but the only son
+and heir of the Earl of Luxmore, who came a-wooing.
+
+Not till after a long pause, and even a whispered word or two between
+the husband and wife, who knew each other's minds so well that no
+more consultation was needed--did the suitor again, with a more
+formal air, ask for an answer.
+
+"It is difficult to give.  I find that my wife, like myself, had no
+idea of your feelings.  The extreme suddenness--"
+
+"Pardon me; my intention has not been sudden.  It is the growth of
+many months--years, I might almost say."
+
+"We are the more grieved."
+
+"Grieved?"
+
+Lord Ravenel's extreme surprise startled him from the mere suitor
+into the lover; he glanced from one to the other in undisguised
+alarm.  John hesitated:  the mother said something about the "great
+difference between them."
+
+"In age, do you mean?  I am aware of that," he answered, with some
+sadness.  "But twenty years is not an insuperable bar in marriage."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Halifax, thoughtfully.
+
+"And for any other disparity--in fortune--or rank--"
+
+"I think, Lord Ravenel,"--and the mother spoke with her "dignified"
+air--"you know enough of my husband's character and opinions to be
+assured how lightly he would hold such a disparity--if you allude to
+that supposed to exist between the son of the Earl of Luxmore and the
+daughter of John Halifax."
+
+The young nobleman coloured, as if with ingenuous shame at what he
+had been implying.  "I am glad of it.  Let me assure you there will
+be no impediments on the side of my family.  The earl has long wished
+me to marry.  He knows well enough that I can marry whom I please--
+and shall marry for love only.  Give me your leave to win your little
+Maud."
+
+A dead silence.
+
+"Again pardon me," Lord Ravenel said with some hauteur; "I cannot
+have clearly explained myself.  Let me repeat, Mr. Halifax, that I
+ask your permission to win your daughter's affection, and, in due
+time, her hand."
+
+"I would that you had asked of me anything that it could be less
+impossible to give you."
+
+"Impossible!  What do you mean?--Mrs. Halifax--"  He turned
+instinctively to the woman--the mother.
+
+Ursula's eyes were full of a sad kindness--the kindness any mother
+must feel towards one who worthily woos her daughter--but she replied
+distinctly--
+
+"I feel, with my husband, that such a marriage would be impossible."
+
+Lord Ravenel grew scarlet--sat down--rose again, and stood facing
+them, pale and haughty.
+
+"If I may ask--your reasons?"
+
+"Since you ask--certainly," John replied.  "Though, believe me, I
+give them with the deepest pain.  Lord Ravenel, do you not yourself
+see that our Maud--"
+
+"Wait one moment," he interrupted.  "There is not, there cannot be,
+any previous attachment?"
+
+The supposition made the parents smile.  "Indeed, nothing of the
+kind:  she is a mere child."
+
+"You think her too young for marriage, then?" was the eager answer.
+"Be it so.  I will wait, though my youth, alas! is slipping from me;
+but I will wait--two years, three--any time you choose to name."
+
+John needed not to reply.  The very sorrow of his decision showed how
+inevitable and irrevocable it was.
+
+Lord Ravenel's pride rose against it.
+
+"I fear in this my novel position I am somewhat slow of
+comprehension.  Would it be so great a misfortune to your daughter if
+I made her Viscountess Ravenel, and in course of time Countess of
+Luxmore?"
+
+"I believe it would.  Her mother and I would rather see our little
+Maud lying beside her sister Muriel than see her Countess of
+Luxmore."
+
+These words, hard as they were, John uttered so softly and with such
+infinite grief and pain, that they struck the young man, not with
+anger, but with an indefinite awe, as if a ghost from his youth--his
+wasted youth--had risen up to point out that truth, and show him that
+what seemed insult or vengeance was only a bitter necessity.
+
+All he did was to repeat, in a subdued manner--"Your reasons?"
+
+"Ah, Lord Ravenel!" John answered sadly, "do you not see yourself
+that the distance between us and you is wide as the poles?  Not in
+worldly things, but in things far deeper;--personal things, which
+strike at the root of love, home--nay, honour."
+
+Lord Ravenel started.  "Would you imply that anything in my past
+life, aimless and useless as it may have been, is unworthy of my
+honour--the honour of our house?"
+
+Saying this he stopped--recoiled--as if suddenly made aware by the
+very words himself had uttered, what--contrasted with the unsullied
+dignity of the tradesman's life, the spotless innocence of the
+tradesman's daughter--what a foul tattered rag, fit to be torn down
+by an honest gust, was that flaunting emblazonment, the so-called
+"honour" of Luxmore!
+
+"I understand you now.  'The sins of the fathers shall be visited
+upon the children,' as your Bible says--your Bible, that I had half
+begun to believe in.  Be it so.  Mr. Halifax, I will detain you no
+longer.
+
+John intercepted the young man's departure.
+
+"No, you do NOT understand me.  I hold no man accountable for any
+errors, any shortcomings, except his own."
+
+"I am to conclude, then, that it is to myself you refuse your
+daughter?"
+
+"It is."
+
+Lord Ravenel once more bowed, with sarcastic emphasis.
+
+"I entreat you not to mistake me," John continued, most earnestly.
+"I know nothing of you that the world would condemn, much that it
+would even admire; but your world is not our world, nor your aims our
+aims.  If I gave you my little Maud, it would confer on you no
+lasting happiness, and it would be thrusting my child, my own flesh
+and blood, to the brink of that whirlpool where, soon or late, every
+miserable life must go down."
+
+Lord Ravenel made no answer.  His new-born energy, his pride, his
+sarcasm, had successively vanished; dead, passive melancholy resumed
+its empire over him.  Mr. Halifax regarded him with mournful
+compassion.
+
+"Oh, that I had foreseen this!  I would have placed the breadth of
+all England between you and my child."
+
+"Would you?"
+
+"Understand me.  Not because you do not possess our warm interest,
+our friendship:  both will always be yours.  But these are external
+ties, which may exist through many differences.  In marriage there
+must he perfect unity; one aim, one faith, one love, or the marriage
+is incomplete, unholy--a mere civil contract and no more."
+
+Lord Ravenel looked up amazed at this doctrine, then sat awhile
+pondering drearily.
+
+"Yes, you may be right," at last he said.  "Your Maud is not for me,
+nor those like me.  Between us and you is that 'great gulf fixed;'--
+what did the old fable say?  I forget.--Che sara sara!  I am but as
+others:  I am but what I was born to be."
+
+"Do you recognize what you were born to be?  Not only a nobleman, but
+a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man--man, made in the image
+of God.  How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?"
+
+"What has He given me?  What have I to thank Him for?"
+
+"First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly
+gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to
+spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much
+of youth yet remaining--with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience
+won.  Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you
+feel all that you are--all that you might be!"
+
+A gleam, bright as a boy's hope, wild as a boy's daring, flashed from
+those listless eyes--then faded.
+
+"You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been.  Now it is too late."
+
+"There is no such word as 'too late,' in the wide world--nay, not in
+the universe.  What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment
+out of an ever-present eternity--shall we, so long as we live, or
+even at our life's ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, 'It is
+too late!'"
+
+As John spoke, in much more excitement than was usual to him, a
+sudden flush or rather spasm of colour flushed his face, then faded
+away, leaving him pallid to the very lips.  He sat down hastily, in
+his frequent attitude, with the left arm passed across his breast.
+
+"Lord Ravenel."  His voice was faint, as though speech was painful to
+him.
+
+The other looked up, the old look of reverent attention, which I
+remembered in the boy-lord who came to see us at Norton Bury; in the
+young "Anselmo," whose enthusiastic hero-worship had fixed itself,
+with an almost unreasoning trust, on Muriel's father,
+
+"Lord Ravenel, forgive anything I have said that may have hurt you.
+It would grieve me inexpressibly if we did not part as friends."
+
+"Part?"
+
+"For a time, we must.  I dare not risk further either your happiness
+or my child's."
+
+"No, not hers.  Guard it.  I blame you not.  The lovely, innocent
+child!  God forbid she should ever have a life like mine!"
+
+He sat silent, his clasped hands listlessly dropping, his countenance
+dreamy; yet, it seemed to me, less hopelessly sad:  then with a
+sudden effort he rose.
+
+"I must go now."
+
+Crossing over to Mrs. Halifax, he thanked her, with much emotion, for
+all her kindness.
+
+"For your husband, I owe him more than kindness, as perhaps I may
+prove some day.  If not, try to believe the best of me you can.
+Good-bye."
+
+They both said good-bye, and bade God bless him; with scarcely less
+tenderness than if things had ended as he desired, and, instead of
+this farewell, sad and  indefinite beyond most farewells, they were
+giving the parental welcome to a newly-chosen son.
+
+Ere finally quitting us, Lord Ravenel turned back to speak to John
+once more, hesitatingly and mournfully.
+
+"If she--if the child should ask or wonder about my absence--she
+likes me in her innocent way you know--you will tell her--What shall
+you tell her?"
+
+"Nothing.  It is best not."
+
+"Ay, it is, it is."
+
+He shook hands with us all three, without saying anything else;  then
+the carriage rolled away, and we saw his face--that pale, gentle,
+melancholy face--no more.
+
+It was years and years before any one beyond ourselves knew what a
+near escape our little Maud had had of becoming Viscountess Ravenel--
+future Countess of Luxmore.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+It was not many weeks after this departure of Lord Ravenel's--the
+pain of which was almost forgotten in the comfort of Guy's first long
+home letter, which came about this time--that John one morning,
+suddenly dropping his newspaper, exclaimed:
+
+"Lord Luxmore is dead."
+
+Yes, he had returned to his dust, this old bad man; so old, that
+people had begun to think he would never die.  He was gone; the man
+who, if we owned an enemy in the world, had certainly proved himself
+that enemy.  Something peculiar is there in a decease like this--of
+one whom, living, we have almost felt ourselves justified in
+condemning, avoiding--perhaps hating.  Until Death, stepping in
+between, removes him to another tribunal than this petty justice of
+ours, and laying a solemn finger on our mouths, forbids us either to
+think or utter a word of hatred against that which is now--what?--a
+disembodied spirit--a handful of corrupting clay.
+
+Lord Luxmore was dead.  He had gone to his account; it was not ours
+to judge him.  We never knew--I believe no one except his son ever
+fully knew--the history of his death-bed.
+
+John sat in silence, the paper before him, long after we had passed
+the news and discussed it, not without awe, all round the breakfast-
+table.
+
+Maud stole up--hesitatingly, and asked to see the announcement of the
+earl's decease.
+
+"No, my child; but you shall hear it read aloud, if you choose."
+
+I guessed the reason of his refusal; when, looking over him as he
+read, I saw, after the long list of titles owned by the new Earl of
+Luxmore, one bitter line; how it must have cut to the heart of him
+whom we first heard of as "poor William!"
+
+"HAD LIKEWISE ISSUE, CAROLINE, MARRIED IN 17--, TO RICHARD BRITHWOOD,
+ESQUIRE, AFTERWARDS DIVORCED."
+
+And by a curious coincidence, about twenty lines further down I read
+among the fashionable marriages:
+
+"AT THE BRITISH EMBASSY, PARIS, SIR GERARD VERMILYE, BART., TO THE
+YOUTHFUL AND BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER OF--"
+
+I forget who.  I only saw that the name was not her name, of whom the
+"youthful and beautiful" bride had most likely never heard.  He had
+not married Lady Caroline.
+
+This morning's intelligence brought the Luxmore family so much to our
+thoughts, that driving out after breakfast, John and I involuntarily
+recurred to the subject.  Nay, talking on, in the solitude of our
+front seat--for Mrs. Halifax, Miss Halifax, and Mrs. Edwin Halifax,
+in the carriage behind, were deep in some other subject--we fell upon
+a topic which by tacit consent had been laid aside, as in our
+household we held it good to lay aside any inevitable regret.
+
+"Poor Maud! how eager she was to hear the news to-day.  She little
+thinks how vitally it might have concerned her."
+
+"No," John answered thoughtfully; then asked me with some abruptness,
+"Why did you say 'poor Maud'?"
+
+I really could not tell; it was a mere accident, the unwitting
+indication of some crotchets of mine, which had often come into my
+mind lately.  Crotchets, perhaps peculiar to one, who, never having
+known a certain possession, found himself rather prone to over-rate
+its value.  But it sometimes struck me as hard, considering how
+little honest and sincere love there is in the world, that Maud
+should never have known of Lord Ravenel's.
+
+Possibly, against my will, my answer implied something of this; for
+John was a long time silent.  Then he began to talk of various
+matters; telling me of many improvements he was planning and
+executing, on his property, and among his people.  In all his plans,
+and in the carrying out of them, I noticed one peculiarity, strong in
+him throughout his life, but latterly grown stronger than ever--
+namely, that whatever he found to do, he did immediately.
+Procrastination had never been one of his faults; now, he seemed to
+have a horror of putting anything off even for a single hour.
+Nothing that could be done did he lay aside until it was done; his
+business affairs were kept in perfect order, each day's work being
+completed with the day.  And in the thousand-and-one little things
+that were constantly arising, from his position as magistrate and
+land-owner, and his general interest in the movements of the time,
+the same system was invariably pursued.  In his relations with the
+world outside, as in his own little valley, he seemed determined to
+"work while it was day."  If he could possibly avoid it, no
+application was ever unattended to; no duty left unfinished; no good
+unacknowledged; no evil unremedied, or at least unforgiven.
+
+"John," I said, as to-day this peculiarity of his struck me more than
+usual, "thou art certainly one of the faithful servants whom the
+Master when He cometh will find watching."
+
+"I hope so.  It ought to be thus with all men--but especially with
+me."
+
+I imagined from his tone that he was thinking of his responsibility
+as father, master, owner of large wealth.  How could I know--how
+could I guess--beyond this!
+
+"Do you think she looks pale, Phineas?" he asked suddenly.
+
+"Who--your wife?"
+
+"No--Maud.  My little Maud."
+
+It was but lately that he called her "his" little Maud; since with
+that extreme tenacity of attachment which was a part of his nature--
+refusing to put any one love in another love's place--his second
+daughter had never been to him like the first.  Now, however, I had
+noticed that he took Maud nearer to his heart, made her more often
+his companion, watching her with a sedulous tenderness--it was easy
+to guess why.
+
+"She may have looked a little paler of late, a little more
+thoughtful.  But I am sure she is not unhappy."
+
+"I believe not--thank God!"
+
+"Surely," I said anxiously, "you have never repented what you did
+about Lord Ravenel?"
+
+"No--not once.  It cost me so much, that I know it was right to be
+done."
+
+"But if things had been otherwise--if you had not been so sure of
+Maud's feelings--"
+
+He started, painfully; then answered--"I think I should have done it
+still."
+
+I was silent.  The paramount right, the high prerogative of love,
+which he held as strongly as I did, seemed attacked in its liberty
+divine.  For the moment, it was as if he too had in his middle-age
+gone over to the cold-blooded ranks of harsh parental prudence,
+despotic paternal rule; as if Ursula March's lover and Maud's father
+were two distinct beings.  One finds it so, often enough, with men.
+
+"John," I said, "could you have done it? could you have broken the
+child's heart?"
+
+"Yes, if it was to save her peace, perhaps her soul, I could have
+broken my child's heart."
+
+He spoke solemnly, with an accent of inexpressible pain, as if this
+were not the first time by many that he had pondered over such a
+possibility.
+
+"I wish, Phineas, to make clear to you, in case of--of any future
+misconceptions--my mind on this matter.  One right alone I hold
+superior to the right of love,--duty.  It is a father's duty, at all
+risks, at all costs, to save his child from anything which he
+believes would peril her duty--so long as she is too young to
+understand fully how beyond the claim of any human being, be it
+father or lover, is God's claim to herself and her immortal soul.
+Anything which would endanger that should be cut off--though it be
+the right hand--the right eye.  But, thank God, it was not thus with
+my little Maud."
+
+"Nor with him either.  He bore his disappointment well."
+
+"Nobly.  It may make a true nobleman of him yet.  But, being what he
+is, and for as long as he remains so, he must not be trusted with my
+little Maud.  I must take care of her while I live:  afterwards--"
+
+His smile faded, or rather was transmuted into that grave
+thoughtfulness which I had lately noticed in him, when, as now, he
+fell into one of his long silences.  There was nothing sad about it;
+rather a serenity which reminded me of that sweet look of his
+boyhood, which had vanished during the manifold cares of his middle
+life.  The expression of the mouth, as I saw it in profile--close and
+calm--almost inclined me to go back to the fanciful follies of our
+youth, and call him "David."
+
+We drove through Norton Bury, and left Mrs. Edwin there.  Then on,
+along the familiar road, towards the manor-house; past the white
+gate, within sight of little Longfield.
+
+"It looks just the same--the tenant takes good care of it."  And
+John's eyes turned fondly to his old home.
+
+"Ay, just the same.  Do you know your wife was saying to me this
+morning, that when Guy comes back, when all the young folk are
+married, and you retire from business and settle into the otium cum
+dignitate, the learned leisure you used to plan--she would like to
+give up Beechwood.  She said, she hopes you and she will end your
+days together at little Longfield."
+
+"Did she?  Yes, I know that has been always her dream."
+
+"Scarcely a dream, or one that is not unlikely to be fulfilled.  I
+like to fancy you both two old people, sitting on either side the
+fire--or on the same side if you like it best; very cheerful--you
+will make such a merry old man, John, with all your children round
+you, and indefinite grandchildren about the house continually.  Or
+else you two will sit alone together, just as in your early married
+days--you and your old wife--the dearest and handsomest old lady that
+ever was seen."
+
+"Phineas--don't--don't."  I was startled by the tone in which he
+answered the lightness of mine.  "I mean--don't be planning out the
+future.  It is foolish--it is almost wrong.  God's will is not as our
+will; and He knows best."
+
+I would have spoken; but just then we reached the manor-house gate,
+and plunged at once into present life, and into the hospitable circle
+of the Oldtowers.
+
+They were all in the excitement of a wonderful piece of gossip;
+gossip so strange, sudden, and unprecedented, that it absorbed all
+lesser matters.  It burst out before we had been in the house five
+minutes.
+
+"Have you heard this extraordinary report about the Luxmore family?"
+
+I could see Maud turn with eager attention--fixing her eyes wistfully
+on Lady Oldtower.
+
+"About the earl's death.  Yes, we saw it in the newspaper."  And John
+passed on to some other point of conversation.  In vain.
+
+"This news relates to the present earl.  I never heard of such a
+thing--never.  In fact, if true, his conduct is something which in
+its self-denial approaches absolute insanity.  Is it possible that,
+being so great a friend of your family, he has not informed you of
+the circumstances?"
+
+These circumstances, with some patience, we extracted from the
+voluble Lady Oldtower.  She had learnt them--I forget how:  but news
+never wants a tongue to carry it.
+
+It seemed that on the earl's death it was discovered, what had
+already been long suspected, that his liabilities, like his
+extravagances, were enormous.  That he was obliged to live abroad to
+escape in some degree the clamorous haunting of the hundreds he had
+ruined:  poor tradespeople, who knew that their only chance of
+payment was during the old man's life-time, for his whole property
+was entailed on the son.
+
+Whether Lord Ravenel had ever been acquainted with the state of
+things, or whether, being in ignorance of it, his own style of living
+had in degree imitated his father's, rumour did not say, nor indeed
+was it of much consequence.  The facts subsequently becoming known
+immediately after Lord Luxmore's death, made all former conjectures
+unnecessary.
+
+Not a week before he died, the late earl and his son--chiefly it was
+believed on the latter's instigation--had cut off the entail, thereby
+making the whole property saleable, and available for the payment of
+creditors.  Thus by his own act, and--as some one had told somebody
+that somebody else had heard Lord Ravenel say:  "for the honour of
+the family," the present earl had succeeded to an empty title, and--
+beggary.
+
+"Or," Lady Oldtower added, "what to a man of rank will be the same as
+beggary--a paltry two hundred a year or so--which he has reserved,
+they say, just to keep him from destitution.  Ah--here comes Mr.
+Jessop; I thought he would.  He can tell us all about it."
+
+Old Mr. Jessop was as much excited as any one present.
+
+"Ay--it's all true--only too true, Mr. Halifax.  He was at my house
+last night."
+
+"Last night!"  I do not think anybody caught the child's exclamation
+but me; I could not help watching little Maud, noticing what strong
+emotion, still perfectly child-like and unguarded in its
+demonstration, was shaking her innocent bosom, and overflowing at her
+eyes.  However, as she sat still in the corner, nobody observed her.
+
+"Yes, he slept at my house--Lord Ravenel, the Earl of Luxmore, I
+mean.  Much good will his title do him!  My head clerk is better off
+than he.  He has stripped himself of every penny, except--bless me, I
+forgot; Mr. Halifax, he gave me a letter for you."
+
+John walked to the window to read it; but having read it, passed it
+openly round the circle; as indeed was best.
+
+  "MY DEAR FRIEND,
+     "You will have heard that my father is no more."
+
+("He used always to say 'the earl,'" whispered Maud, as she looked
+over my shoulder.)
+
+     "I write this merely to say, what I feel sure you will already
+have believed--that anything which you may learn concerning his
+affairs, I was myself unaware of, except in a very slight degree,
+when I last visited Beechwood.
+
+     "Will you likewise believe that in all I have done, or intend
+doing, your interests as my tenant--which I hope you will remain--
+have been, and shall be, sedulously guarded?
+
+     "My grateful remembrance to all your household.
+                           "Faithfully yours and theirs,
+                                             "LUXMORE."
+
+"Give me back the letter, Maud my child."
+
+She had been taking possession of it, as in right of being his "pet"
+she generally did of all Lord Ravenel's letters.  But now, without a
+word of objection, she surrendered it to her father.
+
+"What does he mean, Mr. Jessop, about my interests as his tenant?"
+
+"Bless me--I am so grieved about the matter that everything goes
+astray in my head.  He wished me to explain to you that he has
+reserved one portion of the Luxmore property intact--Enderley Mills.
+The rent you pay will, he says, be a sufficient income for him; and
+then while your lease lasts no other landlord can injure you.  Very
+thoughtful of him--very thoughtful indeed, Mr. Halifax."
+
+John made no answer.
+
+"I never saw a man so altered.  He went over some matters with me--
+private charities, in which I have been his agent, you know--grave,
+clear-headed, business-like; my clerk himself could not have done
+better.  Afterwards we sat and talked, and I tried--foolishly enough,
+when the thing was done!--to show him what a frantic act it was both
+towards himself and his heirs.  But he could not see it.  He said
+cutting off the entail would harm nobody--for that he did not intend
+ever to marry.  Poor fellow!"
+
+"Is he with you still?" John asked in a low tone.
+
+"No; he left this morning for Paris; his father is to be buried
+there.  Afterwards, he said, his movements were quite uncertain.  He
+bade me good-bye--I--I didn't like it, I can assure you."
+
+And the old man, blowing his nose with his yellow
+pocket-handkerchief, and twitching his features into all manner of
+shapes, seemed determined to put aside the melancholy subject, and
+dilated on the earl and his affairs no more.
+
+Nor did any one.  Something in this young nobleman's noble act--it
+has since been not without a parallel among our aristocracy--silenced
+the tongue of gossip itself.  The deed was so new--so unlike anything
+that had been conceived possible, especially in a man like Lord
+Ravenel, who had always borne the character of a harmless, idle
+misanthropic nonentity--that society was really nonplussed concerning
+it.  Of the many loquacious visitors who came that morning to pour
+upon Lady Oldtower all the curiosity of Coltham--fashionable Coltham,
+famous for all the scandal of haut ton--there was none who did not
+speak of Lord Luxmore and his affairs with an uncomfortable,
+wondering awe.  Some suggested he was going mad--others, raking up
+stories current of his early youth, thought he had turned Catholic
+again, and was about to enter a monastery.  One or two honest hearts
+protested that he was a noble fellow, and it was a pity he had
+determined to be the last of the Luxmores.
+
+For ourselves--Mr. and Mrs. Halifax, Maud and I--we never spoke to
+one another on the subject all the morning.  Not until after
+luncheon, when John and I had somehow stolen out of the way of the
+visitors, and were walking to and fro in the garden.  The sunny fruit
+garden--ancient, Dutch, and square--with its barricade of a high
+hedge, a stone wall, and between it and the house a shining fence of
+great laurel trees.
+
+Maud appeared suddenly before us from among these laurels,
+breathless.
+
+"I got away after you, father.  I--I wanted to find some
+strawberries--and--I wanted to speak to you."
+
+"Speak on, little lady."
+
+He linked her arm in his, and she paced between us up and down the
+broad walk--but without diverging to the strawberry-beds.  She was
+grave, and paler than ordinary.  Her father asked if she were tired?
+
+"No, but my head aches.  Those Coltham people do talk so.  Father, I
+want you to explain to me, for I can't well understand all this that
+they have been saying about Lord Ravenel."
+
+John explained, as simply and briefly as he could.
+
+"I understand.  Then, though he is Earl of Luxmore, he is quite poor-
+-poorer than any of us?  And he has made himself poor in order to pay
+his own and his father's debts, and keep other people from suffering
+from any fault of his?  Is it so?"
+
+"Yes, my child."
+
+"Is it not a very noble act, father?"
+
+"Very noble."
+
+"I think it is the noblest act I ever heard of.  I should like to
+tell him so.  When is he coming to Beechwood?"
+
+Maud spoke quickly, with flushed cheeks, in the impetuous manner she
+inherited from her mother.  Her question not being immediately
+answered, she repeated it still more eagerly.
+
+Her father replied--"I do not know."
+
+"How very strange!  I thought he would come at once--to-night,
+probably."
+
+I reminded her that Lord Ravenel had left for Paris, bidding goodbye
+to Mr. Jessop.
+
+"He ought to have come to us instead of to Mr. Jessop.  Write and
+tell him so, father.  Tell him how glad we shall be to see him.  And
+perhaps you can help him:  you who help everybody.  He always said
+you were his best friend."
+
+"Did he?"
+
+"Ah now, do write, father dear--I am sure you will."
+
+John looked down on the little maid who hung on his arm so
+persuasively, then looked sorrowfully away.
+
+"My child--I cannot."
+
+"What, not write to him?  When he is poor and in trouble?  That is
+not like you, father," and Maud half-loosed her arm.
+
+Her father quietly put the little rebellious hand back again to its
+place.  He was evidently debating within himself whether he should
+tell her the whole truth, or how much of it.  Not that the debate was
+new, for he must already have foreseen this possible, nay, certain,
+conjuncture.  Especially as all his dealings with his family had
+hitherto been open as daylight.  He held that to prevaricate, or
+wilfully to give the impression of a falsehood, is almost as mean as
+a direct lie.  When anything occurred that he could not tell his
+children, he always said plainly, "I cannot tell you," and they asked
+no more.
+
+I wondered exceedingly how he would deal with Maud.
+
+She walked with him, submissive yet not satisfied, glancing at him
+from time to time, waiting for him to speak.  At last she could wait
+no longer.
+
+"I am sure there is something wrong.  You do not care for Lord
+Ravenel as much as you used to do."
+
+"More, if possible."
+
+"Then write to him.  Say, we want to see him--I want to see him.  Ask
+him to come and stay a long while at Beechwood."
+
+"I cannot, Maud.  It would be impossible for him to come.  I do not
+think he is likely to visit Beechwood for some time."
+
+"How long?  Six months?  A year, perhaps?"
+
+"It may be several years."
+
+"Then, I was right.  Something HAS happened; you are not friends with
+him any longer.  And he is poor--in trouble--oh, father!"
+
+She snatched her hand away, and flashed upon him reproachful eyes.
+John took her gently by the arm, and made her sit down upon the wall
+of a little stone bridge, under which the moat slipped with a quiet
+murmur.  Maud's tears dropped into it fast and free.
+
+That very outburst, brief and thundery as a child's passion, gave
+consolation both to her father and me.  When it lessened, John spoke.
+
+"Now has my little Maud ceased to be angry with her father?"
+
+"I did not mean to be angry--only I was so startled--so grieved.
+Tell me what has happened, please, father?"
+
+"I will tell you--so far as I can.  Lord Ravenel and myself had some
+conversation, of a very painful kind, the last night he was with us.
+After it, we both considered it advisable he should not visit us
+again for the present."
+
+"Why not?  Had you quarrelled? or if you had, I thought my father was
+always the first to forgive everybody."
+
+"No, Maud, we had not quarrelled."
+
+"Then, what was it?"
+
+"My child, you must not ask, for indeed I cannot tell you."
+
+Maud sprang up--the rebellious spirit flashing out again.  "Not tell
+me--me, his pet--me, that cared for him more than any of you did.  I
+think you ought to tell me, father."
+
+"You must allow me to decide that, if you please."
+
+After this answer Maud paused, and said humbly, "Does any one else
+know?"
+
+"Your mother, and your uncle Phineas, who happened to be present at
+the time.  No one else:  and no one else shall know."
+
+John spoke with that slight quivering and blueness of the lips which
+any mental excitement usually produced in him.  He sat down by his
+daughter's side and took her hand.
+
+"I knew this would grieve you, and I kept it from you as long as I
+could.  Now you must only be patient, and like a good child trust
+your father."
+
+Something in his manner quieted her.  She only sighed and said, "she
+could not understand it."
+
+"Neither can I--often times, my poor little Maud.  There are so many
+sad things in life that we have to take upon trust, and bear, and be
+patient with--yet never understand.  I suppose we shall some day."
+
+His eyes wandered upward to the wide-arched blue sky, which in its
+calm beauty makes us fancy that Paradise is there, even though we
+know that "THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS WITHIN US," and that the kingdom
+of spirits may be around us and about us everywhere.
+
+Maud looked at her father, and crept closer to him--into his arms.
+
+"I did not mean to be naughty.  I will try not to mind losing him.
+But I liked Lord Ravenel so much--and he was so fond of me."
+
+"Child"--and her father himself could not help smiling at the
+simplicity of her speech--"it is often easiest to lose those we are
+fond of and who are fond of us, because, in one sense, we never can
+really lose them.  Nothing in this world, nor, I believe, in any
+other, can part those who truly and faithfully love."
+
+I think he was hardly aware how much he was implying, at least not in
+its relation to her, else he would not have said it.  And he would
+surely have noticed, as I did, that the word "love," which had not
+been mentioned before--it was "liking," "fond of," "care for," or
+some such round-about, childish phrase--the word "love" made Maud
+start.  She darted from one to the other of us a keen glance of
+inquiry, and then turned the colour of a July rose.
+
+Her attitude, her blushes, the shy tremble about her mouth, reminded
+me vividly, too vividly, of her mother twenty-eight years ago.
+
+Alarmed, I tried to hasten the end of our conversation, lest,
+voluntarily or involuntarily, it might produce the very results
+which, though they might not have altered John's determination, would
+almost have broken his heart.
+
+So, begging her to "kiss and make friends," which Maud did, timidly,
+and without attempting further questions, I hurried the father and
+daughter into the house; deferring for mature consideration, the
+question whether or not I should trouble John with any too-anxious
+doubts of mine concerning her.
+
+As we drove back through Norton Bury, I saw that while her mother and
+Lady Oldtower conversed, Maud sat opposite rather more silent than
+her wont; but when the ladies dismounted for shopping, she was again
+the lively independent Miss Halifax,
+
+               "Standing with reluctant feet,
+      Where womanhood and childhood meet;"
+
+and assuming at once the prerogatives and immunities of both.
+
+Her girlish ladyship at last got tired of silks and ribbons, and
+stood with me at the shop-door, amusing herself with commenting on
+the passers-by.
+
+These were not so plentiful as I once remembered, though still the
+old town wore its old face--appearing fairer than ever, as I myself
+grew older.  The same Coltham coach stopped at the Lamb Inn, and the
+same group of idle loungers took an interest in its disemboguing of
+its contents.  But railways had done an ill turn to the coach and to
+poor Norton Bury:  where there used to be six inside passengers,
+to-day was turned out only one.
+
+"What a queer-looking little woman!  Uncle Phineas, people shouldn't
+dress so fine as that when they are old."
+
+Maud's criticism was scarcely unjust.  The light-coloured flimsy
+gown, shorter than even Coltham fashionables would have esteemed
+decent, the fluttering bonnet, the abundance of flaunting curls--no
+wonder that the stranger attracted considerable notice in quiet
+Norton Bury.  As she tripped mincingly along, in her silk stockings
+and light shoes, a smothered jeer arose.
+
+"People should not laugh at an old woman, however conceited she may
+be," said Maud, indignantly.
+
+"Is she old?"
+
+"Just look."
+
+And surely when, as she turned from side to side, I caught her full
+face--what a face it was! withered, thin, sallow almost to
+deathliness, with a bright rouge-spot on each cheek, a broad smile on
+the ghastly mouth.
+
+"Is she crazy, Uncle Phineas?"
+
+"Possibly.  Do not look at her."  For I was sure this must be the
+wreck of such a life as womanhood does sometimes sink to--a life, the
+mere knowledge of which had never yet entered our Maud's pure world.
+
+She seemed surprised, but obeyed me and went in.  I stood at the
+shop-door, watching the increasing crowd, and pitying, with that pity
+mixed with shame that every honest man must feel towards a degraded
+woman, the wretched object of their jeers.  Half-frightened, she
+still kept up that set smile, skipping daintily from side to side of
+the pavement, darting at and peering into every carriage that passed.
+Miserable creature as she looked, there was a certain grace and ease
+in her movements, as if she had fallen from some far higher estate.
+
+At that moment, the Mythe carriage, with Mr. Brithwood in it, dozing
+his daily drive away, his gouty foot propped up before him--slowly
+lumbered up the street.  The woman made a dart at it, but was held
+back.
+
+"Canaille!  I always hated your Norton Bury!  Call my carriage.  I
+will go home."
+
+Through its coarse discordance, its insane rage, I thought I knew the
+voice.  Especially when, assuming a tone of command, she addressed
+the old coachman:
+
+"Draw up, Peter; you are very late.  People, give way!  Don't you see
+my carriage?"
+
+There was a roar of laughter, so loud that even Mr. Brithwood opened
+his dull, drunken eyes and stared about him.
+
+"Canaille!"--the scream was more of terror than anger, as she almost
+flung herself under the horses' heads in her eagerness to escape from
+the mob.  "Let me go!  My carriage is waiting.  I am Lady Caroline
+Brithwood!"
+
+The 'squire heard her.  For a single instant they gazed at one
+another--besotted husband, dishonoured, divorced wife--gazed with
+horror and fear, as two sinners who had been each other's undoing,
+might meet in the poetic torments of Dante's "Inferno," or the
+tangible fire and brimstone of many a blind but honest Christian's
+hell.  One single instant,--and then Richard Brithwood made up his
+mind.
+
+"Coachman, drive on!"
+
+But the man--he was an old man--seemed to hesitate at urging his
+horses right over "my lady."  He even looked down on her with a sort
+of compassion--I remembered having heard say that she was always kind
+and affable to her servants.
+
+"Drive on, you fool!  Here"--and Mr. Brithwood threw some coin
+amongst the mob--"Fetch the constable--some of you; take the woman to
+the watch-house!"
+
+And the carriage rolled on, leaving her there, crouched on the
+kerbstone, gazing after it with something between a laugh and a moan.
+
+Nobody touched her.  Perhaps some had heard of her; a few might even
+have seen her--driving through Norton Bury in her pristine state, as
+the young 'squire's handsome wife--the charming Lady Caroline.
+
+I was so absorbed in the sickening sight, that I did not perceive how
+John and Ursula, standing behind me, had seen it likewise--evidently
+seen and understood it all.
+
+"What is to be done?" she whispered to him.
+
+"What ought we to do?"
+
+Here Maud came running out to see what was amiss in the street.
+
+"Go in, child," said Mrs. Halifax, sharply.  "Stay till I fetch you."
+
+Lady Oldtower also advanced to the door; but catching some notion of
+what the disturbance was, shocked and scandalised, retired into the
+shop again.
+
+John looked earnestly at his wife, but for once she did not or would
+not understand his meaning; she drew back uneasily.
+
+"What must be done?--I mean, what do you want me to do?"
+
+"What only a woman can do--a woman like you, and in your position."
+
+"Yes, if it were only myself.  But think of the household--think of
+Maud.  People will talk so.  It is hard to know how to act."
+
+"Nay; how did One act--how would He act now, if He stood in the
+street this day?  If we take care of aught of His, will He not take
+care of us and of our children?"
+
+Mrs. Halifax paused, thought a moment, hesitated--yielded.
+
+"John, you are right; you are always right.  I will do anything you
+please."
+
+And then I saw, through the astonished crowd, in face of scores of
+window-gazers, all of whom knew them, and a great number of whom they
+also knew, Mr. Halifax and his wife walk up to where the miserable
+woman lay.
+
+John touched her lightly on the shoulder--she screamed and cowered
+down.
+
+"Are you the constable?  He said he would send the constable."
+
+"Hush--do not be afraid.  Cousin--Cousin Caroline."
+
+God knows how long it was since any woman had spoken to her in that
+tone.  It seemed to startle back her shattered wits.  She rose to her
+feet, smiling airily.
+
+"Madam, you are very kind.  I believe I have had the pleasure of
+seeing you somewhere.  Your name is--"
+
+"Ursula Halifax.  Do you remember?"--speaking gently as she would
+have done to a child.
+
+Lady Caroline bowed--a ghastly mockery of her former sprightly grace.
+"Not exactly; but I dare say I shall presently--au revoir, madame!"
+
+She was going away, kissing her hand--that yellow, wrinkled, old
+woman's hand,--but John stopped her.
+
+"My wife wants to speak to you, Lady Caroline.  She wishes you to
+come home with us."
+
+"Plait il?--oh yes; I understand.  I shall be happy--most happy."
+
+John offered her his arm with an air of grave deference; Mrs. Halifax
+supported her on the other side.  Without more ado, they put her in
+the carriage and drove home, leaving Maud in my charge, and leaving
+astounded Norton Bury to think and say exactly what it pleased.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+For nearly three years Lady Caroline lived in our house--if that
+miserable existence of hers could be called living--bedridden, fallen
+into second childhood:
+
+     "Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;"
+
+oblivious to both past and present, recognising none of us, and
+taking no notice of anybody, except now and then of Edwin's little
+daughter, baby Louise.
+
+We knew that all our neighbours talked us over, making far more than
+a nine days' wonder of the "very extraordinary conduct" of Mr. and
+Mrs. Halifax.  That even good Lady Oldtower hesitated a little before
+she suffered her tribe of fair daughters to visit under the same roof
+where lay, quite out of the way, that poor wreck of womanhood, which
+would hardly have tainted any woman now.  But in process of time the
+gossip ceased of itself; and when, one summer day, a small decent
+funeral moved out of our garden gate to Enderley churchyard, all the
+comment was:
+
+"Oh! is she dead?--What a relief it must be!  How very kind of Mr.
+and Mrs. Halifax!"
+
+Yes, she was dead, and had "made no sign," either of repentance,
+grief, or gratitude.  Unless one could consider as such a moment's
+lightening before death, which Maud declared she saw in her--Maud,
+who had tended her with a devotedness which neither father nor mother
+forbade, believing that a woman cannot too soon learn womanhood's
+best "mission"--usefulness, tenderness, and charity.  Miss Halifax
+was certain that a few minutes before the last minute, she saw a
+gleam of sense in the filmy eyes, and stooping down, had caught some
+feeble murmur about "William--poor William!"
+
+She did not tell me this; she spoke of it to no one but her mother,
+and to her briefly.  So the wretched life, once beautiful and
+loveful, was now ended, or perhaps born in some new sphere to begin
+again its struggle after the highest beauty, the only perfect love.
+What are we that we should place limits to the infinite mercy of the
+Lord and Giver of Life, unto whom all life returns?
+
+We buried her and left her--poor Lady Caroline!
+
+No one interfered with us, and we appealed to no one.  In truth,
+there was no one unto whom we could appeal.  Lord Luxmore,
+immediately after his father's funeral, had disappeared, whither, no
+one knew except his solicitor; who treated with and entirely
+satisfied the host of creditors, and into whose hands the sole
+debtor, John Halifax, paid his yearly rent.  Therewith, he wrote
+several times to Lord Luxmore; but the letters were simply
+acknowledged through the lawyer:  never answered.  Whether in any of
+them John alluded to Lady Caroline I do not know; but I rather think
+not, as it would have served no purpose and only inflicted pain.  No
+doubt, her brother had long since believed her dead, as we and the
+world had done.
+
+In that same world one man, even a nobleman, is of little account.
+Lord Ravenel sank in its wide waste of waters, and they closed over
+him.  Whether he were drowned or saved was of small moment to any
+one.  He was soon forgotten--everywhere except at Beechwood; and
+sometimes it seemed as if he were even forgotten there.  Save that in
+our family we found it hard to learn this easy, convenient habit--to
+forget.
+
+Hard, though seven years had passed since we saw Guy's merry face, to
+avoid missing it keenly still.  The mother, as her years crept on,
+oftentimes wearied for him with a yearning that could not be told.
+The father, as Edwin became engrossed in his own affairs, and
+Walter's undecided temperament kept him a boy long after boyhood,
+often seemed to look round vaguely for an eldest son's young strength
+to lean upon, often said anxiously, "I wish Guy were at home."
+
+Yet still there was no hint of his coming; better he never came at
+all than came against his will, or came to meet the least pain, the
+shadow of disgrace.  And he was contented and prosperous in the
+western world, leading an active and useful life, earning an
+honourable name.  He had taken a partner, he told us; there was real
+friendship between them, and they were doing well; perhaps might
+make, in a few years, one of those rapid fortunes which clever men of
+business do make in America, and did especially at that time.
+
+He was also eager and earnest upon other and higher cares than mere
+business; entered warmly into his father's sympathy about many
+political measures now occupying men's minds.  A great number of
+comparative facts concerning the factory children in England and
+America; a mass of evidence used by Mr. Fowell Buxton in his
+arguments for the abolition of slavery; and many other things,
+originated in the impulsive activity, now settled into mature manly
+energy, of Mr. Guy Halifax, of Boston, U.S.--"our Guy."
+
+"The lad is making a stir in the world," said his father one day,
+when we had read his last letter.  "I shall not wonder if when he
+comes home a deputation from his native Norton Bury were to appear,
+requesting him to accept the honour of representing them in
+Parliament.  He would suit them--at least, as regards the canvassing
+and the ladies--a great deal better than his old father--eh, love?"
+
+Mrs. Halifax smiled, rather unwillingly, for her husband referred to
+a subject which had cost her some pain at the time.  After the Reform
+Bill passed, many of our neighbours, who had long desired that one of
+John's high character, practical knowledge, and influence in the
+town, should be its M.P., and were aware that his sole objection to
+entering the House was the said question of Reform, urged him very
+earnestly to stand for Norton Bury.
+
+To everybody's surprise, and none more than our own, he refused.
+
+Publicly he assigned no reason for this except his conviction that he
+could not discharge as he ought, and as he would once have done,
+duties which he held so sacred and indispensable.  His letter, brief
+and simple, thanking his "good neighbours," and wishing them "a
+younger and worthier" member, might be found in some old file of the
+Norton Bury Herald still.  Even the Norton Bury Mercury, in
+reprinting it, commented on its touching honesty and brevity, and--
+concluding his political career was ended with it--condescended to
+bestow on Mr. Halifax the usual obituary line--
+
+     "We could have better spared a better man."
+
+When his family, and even his wife, reasoned with him, knowing that
+to enter Parliament had long been his thought, nay, his desire, and
+perhaps herself taking a natural pride in the idea of seeing M.P.--
+M.P. of a new and unbribed House of Commons--after his well-beloved
+name; to us and to her he gave no clearer motive for his refusal than
+to the electors of Norton Bury.
+
+"But you are not old, John," I argued with him one day; "you possess
+to the full the mens sana in corpore sano.  No man can be more fitted
+than yourself to serve his country, as you used to say it might be
+served, and you yourself might serve it, after Reform was gained."
+
+He smiled, and jocularly thanked me for my good opinion.
+
+"Nay, such service is almost your duty; you yourself once thought so
+too.  Why have you changed your mind?"
+
+"I have not changed my mind, but circumstances have changed my
+actions.  As for duty--duty begins at home.  Believe me, I have
+thought well over the subject.  Brother, we will not refer to it
+again."
+
+I saw that something in the matter pained him, and obeyed his wish.
+Even when, a few days after, perhaps as some compensation for the
+mother's disappointment, he gave this hint of Guy's taking his place
+and entering Parliament in his room.
+
+For any one--nay, his own son--to take John's place, to stand in
+John's room, was not a pleasant thought, even in jest; we let it pass
+by unanswered, and John himself did not recur to it.
+
+Thus time went on, placidly enough; the father and mother changed
+into grandfather and grandmother, and little Maud into Auntie Maud.
+She bore her new honours and fulfilled her new duties with great
+delight and success.  She had altered much of late years:  at twenty
+was as old as many a woman of thirty--in all the advantages of age.
+She was sensible, active, resolute, and wise; sometimes thoughtful,
+or troubled with fits of what in any less wholesome temperament would
+have been melancholy; but as it was, her humours only betrayed
+themselves in some slight restlessness or irritability, easily
+soothed by a few tender words or a rush out to Edwin's, and a
+peaceful coming back to that happy home, whose principal happiness
+she knew that she, the only daughter, made.
+
+She more than once had unexceptionable chances of quitting it; for
+Miss Halifax possessed plenty of attractions, both outwardly and
+inwardly, to say nothing of her not inconsiderable fortune.  But she
+refused all offers, and to the best of our knowledge was a
+free-hearted damsel still.  Her father and mother seemed rather glad
+of this than otherwise.  They would not have denied her any happiness
+she wished for; still it was evidently a relief to them that she was
+slow in choosing it; slow in quitting their arms of love to risk a
+love untried.  Sometimes, such is the weakness of parental humanity,
+I verily believe they looked forward with complacency to the
+possibility of her remaining always Miss Halifax.  I remember one
+day, when Lady Oldtower was suggesting--half jest, half earnest--
+"better any marriage than no marriage at all;" Maud's father replied,
+very seriously--
+
+"Better no marriage, than any marriage that is less than the best."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"I believe," he said, smiling, "that somewhere in the world every man
+has his right wife, every woman her right husband.  If my Maud's come
+he shall have her.  If not, I shall be well content to see her a
+happy old maid."
+
+Thus after many storms, came this lull in our lives; a season of busy
+yet monotonous calm,--I have heard say that peace itself, to be
+perfect, ought to be monotonous.  We had enough of it to satisfy our
+daily need; we looked forward to more of it in time to come, when Guy
+should be at home, when we should see safely secured the futures of
+all the children, and for ourselves a green old age,
+
+     "Journeying in long serenity away."
+
+A time of heavenly calm--which as I look back upon it grows
+heavenlier still!  Soft summer days and autumn afternoons, spent
+under the beech-wood, or on the Flat.  Quiet winter evenings, all to
+ourselves--Maud and her mother working, Walter drawing.  The father
+sitting with his back to the lamp--its light making a radiance over
+his brow and white bald crown, and as it thrilled through the curls
+behind, restoring somewhat of the youthful colour to his fading hair.
+Nay, the old youthful ring of his voice I caught at times, when he
+found something funny in his book and read it out loud to us; or
+laying it down, sat talking as he liked to talk about things
+speculative, philosophical, or poetical--things which he had
+necessarily let slip in the hurry and press of his business life, in
+the burthen and heat of the day; but which now, as the cool shadows
+of evening were drawing on, assumed a beauty and a nearness, and were
+again caught up by him--precious as the dreams of his youth.
+
+Happy, happy time--sunshiny summer, peaceful winter--we marked
+neither as they passed; but now we hold both--in a sacredness
+inexpressible--a foretaste of that Land where there is neither summer
+nor winter, neither days nor years.
+
+The first break in our repose came early in the new year.  There had
+been no Christmas letter from Guy, and he never once in all his
+wanderings had missed writing home at Christmas time.  When the usual
+monthly mail came in, and no word from him--a second month, and yet
+nothing, we began to wonder about his omission less openly--to cease
+scolding him for his carelessness.  Though over and over again we
+still eagerly brought up instances of the latter--"Guy is such a
+thoughtless boy about his correspondence."
+
+Gradually, as his mother's cheek grew paler, and his father more
+anxious-eyed, more compulsorily cheerful, we gave up discussing
+publicly the many excellent reasons why no letters should come from
+Guy.  We had written, as usual, by every mail.  By the last--by the
+March mail, I saw that in addition to the usual packet for Mr. Guy
+Halifax--his father, taking another precautionary measure, had
+written in business form to "Messrs. Guy Halifax and Co."  Guy had
+always, "just like his carelessness!" omitted to give the name of his
+partner; but addressed thus, in case of any sudden journey or illness
+of Guy's, the partner, whoever he was, would be sure to write.
+
+In May--nay, it was on May day, I remember, for we were down in the
+mill-meadows with Louise and her little ones going a-maying--there
+came in the American mail.
+
+It brought a large packet--all our letters of this year sent back
+again, directed in a strange hand, to "John Halifax, Esquire,
+Beechwood," with the annotation, "By Mr. Guy Halifax's desire."
+
+Among the rest--though the sickening sight of them had blinded even
+his mother at first, so that her eye did not catch it, was one that
+explained--most satisfactorily explained, we said--the reason they
+were thus returned.  It was a few lines from Guy himself, stating
+that unexpected good fortune had made him determine to come home at
+once.  If circumstances thwarted this intention, he would write
+without fail; otherwise he should most likely sail by an American
+merchantman--the "Stars-and-Stripes."
+
+"Then he is coming home.  On his way home!"
+
+And the mother, as with one shaking hand she held fast the letter,
+with the other steadied herself by the rail of John's desk--I guessed
+now why he had ordered all the letters to be brought first to his
+counting-house.  "When do you think we shall see--Guy?"
+
+At thought of that happy sight, her bravery broke down.  She wept
+heartily and long.
+
+John sat still, leaning over the front of his desk.  By his sigh,
+deep and glad, one could tell what a load was lifted off the father's
+heart at the prospect of his son's return.
+
+"The liners are only a month in sailing; but this is a barque most
+likely, which takes longer time.  Love, show me the date of the boy's
+letter."
+
+She looked for it herself.  It was in JANUARY!
+
+The sudden fall from certainty to uncertainty--the wild clutch at
+that which hardly seemed a real joy until seen fading down to a mere
+hope, a chance, a possibility--who has not known all this?
+
+I remember how we all stood, mute and panic-struck, in the dark
+little counting-house.  I remember seeing Louise, with her children
+in the door-way, trying to hush their laughing, and whispering to
+them something about "poor Uncle Guy."
+
+John was the first to grasp the unspoken dread, and show that it was
+less than at first appeared.
+
+"We ought to have had this letter two months ago; this shows how
+often delays occur--we ought not to be surprised or uneasy at
+anything.  Guy does not say when the ship was to sail--she may be on
+her voyage still.  If he had but given the name of her owners!  But I
+can write to Lloyd's and find out everything.  Cheer up, mother.
+Please God, you shall have that wandering, heedless boy of yours back
+before long."
+
+He replaced the letters in their enclosure--held a general
+consultation, into which he threw a passing gleam of faint gaiety, as
+to whether being ours we had a right to burn them, or whether having
+passed through the post-office they were not the writer's but the
+owner's property, and Guy could claim them, with all their useless
+news, on his arrival in England.  This was finally decided, and the
+mother, with faint smile, declared that nobody should touch them; she
+would put them under lock and key "till Guy came home."
+
+Then she took her husband's arm; and the rest of us followed them as
+they walked slowly up the hill to Beechwood.
+
+But after that day Mrs. Halifax's strength decayed.  Not suddenly,
+scarcely perceptibly; not with any outward complaint, except what she
+jested over as "the natural weakness of old age;" but there was an
+evident change.  Week by week her long walks shortened; she gave up
+her village school to me; and though she went about the house still
+and insisted on keeping the keys, gradually, "just for the sake of
+practice," the domestic surveillance fell into the hands of Maud.
+
+An answer arrived from Lloyd's:  the "Stars-and-Stripes" was an
+American vessel, probably of small tonnage and importance, was the
+under-writers knew nothing of it.
+
+More delay--more suspense.  The summer days came--but not Guy.  No
+news of him--not a word--not a line.
+
+His father wrote to America--pursuing inquiries in all directions.
+At last some tangible clue was caught.  The "Stars-and-Stripes" had
+sailed, had been spoken with about the Windward Isles--and never
+heard of afterwards.
+
+Still, there was a hope.  John told the hope first, before he
+ventured to speak of the missing ship, and even then had to break the
+news gently, for the mother had grown frail and weak, and could not
+bear things as she used to do.  She clung as if they had been words
+of life or death to the ship-owner's postscript--"that they had no
+recollection of the name of Halifax; there might have been such a
+gentleman on board--they could not say.  But it was not probable; for
+the 'Stars-and-Stripes' was a trading vessel, and had not good
+accommodation for passengers."
+
+Then came week after week--I know not how they went by--one never
+does, afterwards.  At the time they were frightfully vivid, hour by
+hour; we rose each morning, sure that some hope would come in the
+course of the day; we went to bed at night, heavily, as if there were
+no such thing as hope in the world.  Gradually, and I think that was
+the worst consciousness of all, our life of suspense became perfectly
+natural; and everything in and about the house went on as usual, just
+as though we knew quite well--what the Almighty Father alone knew!--
+where our poor lad was, and what had become of him.  Or rather, as if
+we had settled in the certainty, which perhaps the end of our own
+lives alone would bring us, that he had slipped out of life
+altogether, and there was no such being as Guy Halifax under this
+pitiless sun.
+
+The mother's heart was breaking.  She made no moan, but we saw it in
+her face.  One morning--it was the morning after John's birthday,
+which we had made a feint of keeping, with Grace Oldtower, the two
+little grandchildren, Edwin and Louise--she was absent at breakfast
+and dinner; she had not slept well, and was too tired to rise.  Many
+days following it happened the same; with the same faint excuse, or
+with no excuse at all.  How we missed her about the house!--ay,
+changed as she had been.  How her husband wandered about, ghost-like,
+from room to room!--could not rest anywhere, or do anything.
+Finally, he left our company altogether, and during the hours that he
+was at home rarely quitted for more than a few minutes the quiet bed-
+chamber, where, every time his foot entered it, the poor pale face
+looked up and smiled.
+
+Ay, smiled; for I noticed, as many another may have done in similar
+cases, that when her physical health definitely gave way, her mental
+health returned.  The heavy burthen was lighter; she grew more
+cheerful, more patient; seemed to submit herself to the Almighty
+will, whatever it might be.  As she lay on her sofa in the study,
+where one or two evenings John carried her down, almost as easily as
+he used to carry little Muriel, his wife would rest content with her
+hand in his, listening to his reading, or quietly looking at him, as
+though her lost son's face, which a few weeks since she said haunted
+her continually, were now forgotten in his father's.  Perhaps she
+thought the one she should soon see--while the other--
+
+"Phineas," she whispered one day, when I was putting a shawl over her
+feet, or doing some other trifle that she thanked me for,--"Phineas,
+if anything happens to me, you will comfort John!"
+
+Then first I began seriously to contemplate a possibility, hitherto
+as impossible and undreamed of as that the moon should drop out of
+the height of heaven--What would the house be without the mother?
+
+Her children never suspected this, I saw; but they were young.  For
+her husband--
+
+I could not understand John.  He, so quick-sighted; he who meeting
+any sorrow looked steadily up at the Hand that smote him, knowing
+neither the coward's dread nor the unbeliever's disguise of pain--
+surely he must see what was impending.  Yet he was as calm as if he
+saw it not.  Calm, as no man could be contemplating the supreme
+parting between two who nearly all their lives had been not two, but
+one flesh.
+
+Yet I had once heard him say that a great love, and only that, makes
+parting easy.  Could it be that this love of his, which had clasped
+his wife so firmly, faithfully, and long, fearlessly clasped her
+still, by its own perfectness assured of its immortality?
+
+But all the while his human love clung about her, showing itself in a
+thousand forms of watchful tenderness.  And hers clung to him,
+closely, dependently; she let herself be taken care of, ruled and
+guided, as if with him she found helplessness restful and submission
+sweet.  Many a little outward fondness, that when people have been
+long married naturally drops into disuse, was revived again; he would
+bring her flowers out of the garden, or new books from the town; and
+many a time, when no one noticed, I have seen him stoop and press his
+lips upon the faded hand, where the wedding-ring hung so loosely;--
+his own for so many years, his own till the dust claimed it, that
+well-beloved hand!
+
+Ay, he was right.  Loss, affliction, death itself, are powerless in
+the presence of such a love as theirs.
+
+It was already the middle of July.  From January to July--six months!
+Our neighbours without--and there were many who felt for us--never
+asked now, "Is there any news of Mr. Guy?"  Even pretty Grace
+Oldtower--pretty still, but youthful no longer--only lifted her eyes
+inquiringly as she crossed our doorway, and dropped them again with a
+hopeless sigh.  She had loved us all, faithfully and well, for a
+great many years.
+
+One night, when Miss Oldtower had just gone home after staying with
+us the whole day--Maud and I sat in the study by ourselves, where we
+generally sat now.  The father spent all his evenings up-stairs.  We
+could hear his step overhead as he crossed the room or opened the
+window, then drew his chair back to its constant place by his wife's
+bedside.  Sometimes there was a faint murmur of reading or talk; then
+long silence.
+
+Maud and I sat in silence too.  She had her own thoughts--I mine.
+Perhaps they were often one and the same:  perhaps--for youth is
+youth after all--they may have diverged widely.  Hers were deep,
+absorbed thoughts, at any rate, travelling fast--fast as her needle
+travelled; for she had imperceptibly fallen into her mother's ways
+and her mother's work.
+
+We had the lamp lit, but the windows were wide open; and through the
+sultry summer night we could hear the trickle of the stream and the
+rustle of the leaves in the beech-wood.  We sat very still, waiting
+for nothing, expecting nothing; in the dull patience which always
+fell upon us about this hour--the hour before bed-time, when nothing
+more was to be looked for but how best to meet another dreary day.
+
+"Maud, was that the click of the front gate swinging?"
+
+"No, I told Walter to lock it before he went to bed.  Last night it
+disturbed my mother."
+
+Again silence.  So deep that the maid's opening the door made us both
+start.
+
+"Miss Halifax--there's a gentleman wanting to see Miss Halifax."
+
+Maud sprung up in her chair, breathless.
+
+"Any one you know, is it?"
+
+"No, Miss."
+
+"Show the gentleman in."
+
+He stood already in the doorway,--tall, brown, bearded.  Maud just
+glanced at him, then rose, bending stiffly, after the manner of Miss
+Halifax of Beechwood.
+
+"Will you be seated?  My father--"
+
+"Maud, don't you know me?  Where's my mother?  I am Guy."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+Guy and his mother were together.  She lay on a sofa in her
+dressing-room; he sat on a stool beside her, so that her arm could
+rest on his neck and she could now and then turn his face towards her
+and look at it--oh, what a look!
+
+She had had him with her for two whole days--two days to be set
+against eight years!  Yet the eight years seemed already to have
+collapsed into a span of time, and the two days to have risen up a
+great mountain of happiness, making a barrier complete against the
+woeful past, as happiness can do--thanks to the All-merciful for His
+mercies.  Most especially for that mercy--true as His truth to the
+experience of all pure hearts--that one bright, brief season of joy
+can outweigh, in reality and even in remembrance, whole years of
+apparently interminable pain.
+
+Two days only since the night Guy came home, and yet it seemed months
+ago!  Already we had grown familiar to the tall, bearded figure; the
+strange step and voice about the house; all except Maud, who was
+rather shy and reserved still.  We had ceased the endeavour to
+reconcile this our Guy--this tall, grave man of nearly thirty,
+looking thirty-five and more--with Guy, the boy that left us, the boy
+that in all our lives we never should find again.  Nevertheless, we
+took him, just as he was, to our hearts, rejoicing in him one and all
+with inexpressible joy.
+
+He was much altered, certainly.  It was natural, nay, right, that he
+should be.  He had suffered much; a great deal more than he ever told
+us--at least, not till long after; had gone through poverty, labour,
+sickness, shipwreck.  He had written home by the "Stars-and-Stripes"-
+-sailed a fortnight later by another vessel--been cast away--picked
+up by an outward-bound ship--and finally landed in England, he and
+his partner, as penniless as they left it.
+
+"Was your partner an Englishman, then?" said Maud, who sat at the
+foot of the sofa, listening.  "You have not told us anything about
+him yet."
+
+Guy half smiled.  "I will by and by.  It's a long story.  Just now I
+don't want to think of anybody or anything except my mother."
+
+He turned, as he did twenty times a day, to press his rough cheek
+upon her hand and look up into her thin face, his eyes overflowing
+with love.
+
+"You must get well now, mother.  Promise!"
+
+Her smile promised--and even began the fulfilment of the same.
+
+"I think she looks stronger already--does she, Maud?  You know her
+looks better than I; I don't ever remember her being ill in old
+times.  Oh, mother, I will never leave you again--never!"
+
+"No, my boy."
+
+"No, Guy, no."--John came in, and stood watching them both
+contentedly.  "No, my son, you must never leave your mother."
+
+"I will not leave either of you, father," said Guy, with a reverent
+affection that must have gladdened the mother's heart to the very
+core.  Resigning his place by her, Guy took Maud's, facing them; and
+father and son began to talk of various matters concerning their home
+and business arrangements; taking counsel together, as father and son
+ought to do.  These eight years of separation seemed to have brought
+them nearer together; the difference between them--in age, far less
+than between most fathers and sons, had narrowed into a
+meeting-point.  Never in all his life had Guy been so deferent, so
+loving, to his father.  And with a peculiar trust and tenderness,
+John's heart turned to his eldest son, the heir of his name, his
+successor at Enderley Mills.  For, in order that Guy might at once
+take his natural place, and feel no longer a waif and stray upon the
+world, already a plan had been started, that the firm of Halifax and
+Sons should become Halifax Brothers.  Perhaps, ere very long--only
+the mother said privately, rather anxiously too, that she did not
+wish this part of the scheme to be mentioned to Guy just now--
+perhaps, ere long it would be "Guy Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood;"
+and "the old people" at happy little Longfield.
+
+As yet Guy had seen nobody but ourselves, and nobody had seen Guy.
+Though his mother gave various good reasons why he should not make
+his public appearance as a "ship-wrecked mariner," costume and all,
+yet it was easy to perceive that she looked forward not without
+apprehension to some meetings which must necessarily soon occur, but
+to which Guy made not the smallest allusion.  He had asked, cursorily
+and generally, after "all my brothers and sisters," and been answered
+in the same tone; but neither he nor we had as yet mentioned the
+names of Edwin or Louise.
+
+They knew he was come home; but how and where the first momentous
+meeting should take place we left entirely to chance, or, more
+rightly speaking, to Providence.
+
+So it happened thus.  Guy was sitting quietly on the sofa at his
+mother's feet, and his father and he were planning together in what
+way could best be celebrated, by our school-children, tenants, and
+work-people, an event which we took a great interest in, though not
+greater than in this year was taken by all classes throughout the
+kingdom--the day fixed for the abolition of Negro Slavery in our
+Colonies--the 1st of August, 1834.  He sat in an attitude that
+reminded me of his boyish lounging ways; the picture of content;
+though a stream of sunshine pouring in upon his head, through the
+closed Venetian blind, showed many a deep line of care on his
+forehead, and more than one silver thread among his brown hair.
+
+In a pause--during which no one exactly liked to ask what we were all
+thinking about--there came a little tap at the door, and a little
+voice outside.
+
+"Please, me want to come in."
+
+Maud jumped up to refuse admission; but Mr. Halifax forbade her, and
+himself went and opened the door.  A little child stood there--a
+little girl of three years old.
+
+Apparently guessing who she was, Guy rose up hastily, and sat down in
+his place again.
+
+"Come in, little maid," said the father; "come in, and tell us what
+you want."
+
+"Me want to see Grannie and Uncle Guy."
+
+Guy started, but still he kept his seat.  The mother took her
+grandchild in her feeble arms, and kissed her, saying softly,
+
+"There--that is Uncle Guy.  Go and speak to him."
+
+And then, touching his knees, Guy felt the tiny, fearless hand.  He
+turned round, and looked at the little thing, reluctantly,
+inquisitively.  Still he did not speak to or touch her.
+
+"Are you Uncle Guy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why don't you kiss me?  Everybody kisses me," said everybody's pet;
+neither frightened nor shy; never dreaming of a repulse.
+
+Nor did she find it.  Her little fingers were suffered to cling round
+the tightly-closed hand.
+
+"What is your name, my dear?"
+
+"Louise--mamma's little Louise."
+
+Guy put back the curls, and gazed long and wistfully into the
+childish face, where the inherited beauty was repeated line for line.
+But softened, spiritualised, as, years after its burial, some ghost
+of a man's old sorrows may rise up and meet him, the very spirit of
+peace shining out of its celestial eyes.
+
+"Little Louise, you are very like--"
+
+He stopped--and bending down, kissed her.  In that kiss vanished for
+ever the last shadow of his boyhood's love.  Not that he forgot it--
+God forbid that any good man should ever either forget or be ashamed
+of his first love!  But it and all its pain fled far away, back into
+the sacred eternities of dreamland.
+
+When, looking up at last, he saw a large, fair, matronly lady sitting
+by his mother's sofa, Guy neither started nor turned pale.  It was
+another, and not his lost Louise.  He rose and offered her his hand.
+
+"You see, your little daughter has made friends with me already.  She
+is very like you; only she has Edwin's hair.  Where is my brother
+Edwin?"
+
+"Here, old fellow.  Welcome home."
+
+The two brothers met warmly, nay, affectionately.  Edwin was not
+given to demonstration; but I saw how his features twitched, and how
+he busied himself over the knots in his little girl's pinafore for a
+minute or more.  When he spoke again it was as if nothing had
+happened and Guy had never been away.
+
+For the mother, she lay with her arms folded, looking from one to the
+other mutely, or closing her eyes with a faint stirring of the lips,
+like prayer.  It seemed as if she dared only THUS to meet her
+exceeding joy.
+
+Soon, Edwin and Louise left us for an hour or two, and Guy went on
+with the history of his life in America and his partner who had come
+home with him, and, like himself, had lost his all.
+
+"Harder for him than for me; he is older than I am.  He knew nothing
+whatever of business when he offered himself as my clerk; since then
+he has worked like a slave.  In a fever I had he nursed me; he has
+been to me these three years the best, truest friend.  He is the
+noblest fellow.  Father, if you only knew--"
+
+"Well, my son, let me know him.  Invite the gentleman to Beechwood;
+or shall I write and ask him?  Maud, fetch me your mother's desk.
+Now then, Guy--you are a very forgetful fellow still; you have never
+yet told us your friend's name."
+
+Guy looked steadily at his father, in his own straightforward way;
+hesitated--then apparently made up his mind.
+
+"I did not tell you because he wished me not; not till you understood
+him as well as I do.  You knew him yourself once--but he has wisely
+dropped his title.  Since he came over to me in America he has been
+only Mr. William Ravenel."
+
+This discovery--natural enough when one began to think over it, but
+incredible at first, astounded us all.  For Maud--well was it that
+the little Louise seated in her lap hid and controlled in some
+measure the violent agitation of poor Auntie Maud.
+
+Ay--Maud loved him.  Perhaps she had guessed the secret cause of his
+departure, and love creates love often times.  Then his brave
+renunciation of rank, fortune, even of herself--women glory in a
+moral hero--one who has strength to lose even love, and bear its
+loss, for the sake of duty or of honour.  His absence, too, might
+have done much:--absence which smothers into decay a rootless fancy,
+but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-
+flowering love.  Ay--Maud loved him.  How, or why, or when, at first
+no one could tell--perhaps not even herself; but so it was, and her
+parents saw it.
+
+Both were deeply moved--her brother likewise.
+
+"Father," he whispered, "have I done wrong?  I did not know--how
+could I guess?"
+
+"No, no--my son.  It is very strange--all things just now seem so
+strange.  Maud, my child,"--and John roused himself out of a long
+silence into which he was falling,--"go, and take Louise to her
+mother."
+
+The girl rose, eager to get away.  As she crossed the room--the
+little creature clinging round her neck, and she clasping it close,
+in the sweet motherliness of character which had come to her so
+early--I thought--I hoped--
+
+"Maud!" said John, catching her hand as she passed him by--"Maud is
+not afraid of her father?"
+
+"No,"--in troubled uncertainty--then with a passionate decision, as
+if ashamed of herself--
+
+"No!"
+
+She leaned over his chair-back and kissed him--then went out.
+
+"Now--Guy."
+
+Guy told, in his own frank way, all the history of himself and
+William Ravenel; how the latter had come to America, determined to
+throw his lot for good or ill, to sink or swim, with Maud's brother--
+chiefly, as Guy had slowly discovered, because he was Maud's brother.
+At last--in the open boat, on the Atlantic, with death the great
+revealer of all things staring them in the face--the whole secret
+came out.  It made them better than friends--brothers.
+
+This was Guy's story, told with a certain spice of determination too,
+as if--let his father's will be what it might, his own, which had now
+also settled into the strong "family" will, was resolute on his
+friend's behalf.  Yet when he saw how grave, nay sad, the father sat,
+he became humble again, and ended his tale even as he had begun, with
+the entreaty--"Father, if you only knew--"
+
+"My knowing and my judging seem to have been of little value, my son.
+Be it so.  There is One wiser than I--One in whose hands are the
+issues of all things."
+
+The sort of contrition with which he spoke--thus retracting, as it
+costs most men so much to retract, a decision given however justly at
+the time, but which fate has afterwards pronounced unjust, affected
+his son deeply.
+
+"Father, your decision was right--William says it was.  He says also,
+that it could not have been otherwise; that whatever he has become
+since, he owes it all to you, and to what passed that day.  Though he
+loves her still, will never love any one else; yet he declares his
+loss of her has proved his salvation."
+
+"He is right," said Mrs. Halifax.  "Love is worth nothing that will
+not stand trial--a fiery trial, if needs be.  And as I have heard
+John say many and many a time--as he said that very night--in this
+world there is not, ought not to be, any such words as 'too late.'"
+
+John made no answer.  He sat, his chin propped on his right hand, the
+other pressed against his bosom--his favourite attitude.  Once or
+twice, with a deep-drawn, painful breath, he sighed.
+
+Guy's eagerness could not rest.  "Father, I told him I would either
+write to or see him to-day."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"At Norton Bury.  Nothing could induce him to come here, unless
+certain that you desired it."
+
+"I do desire it."
+
+Guy started up with great joy.  "Shall I write, then?"
+
+"I will write myself."
+
+But John's hand shook so much, that instead of his customary free,
+bold writing, he left only blots upon the page.  He leant back in his
+chair, and said faintly--
+
+"I am getting an old man, I see.  Guy, it was high time you came
+home."
+
+Mrs. Halifax thought he was tired, and made a place for his head on
+her pillow, where he rested some minutes, "just to please her," he
+said.  Then he rose and declared he would himself drive over to
+Norton Bury for our old friend.
+
+"Nay, let me write, father.  To-morrow will do just as well."
+
+The father shook his head.  "No--it must be to-day."
+
+Bidding good-bye to his wife--he never by any chance quitted her for
+an hour without a special tender leave-taking--John went away.
+
+Guy was, he avouched, "as happy as a king."  His old liveliness
+returned; he declared that in this matter, which had long weighed
+heavily on his mind, he had acted like a great diplomatist, or like
+the gods themselves, whom some unexacting, humble youth calls upon to
+
+         "Annihilate both time and space,
+      And make two lovers happy!"
+
+"And I'm sure I shall be happy too, in seeing them.  They shall be
+married immediately.  And we'll take William into partnership--that
+was a whim of his, mother--we call one another 'Guy' and 'William,'
+just like brothers.  Heigho!  I'm very glad.  Are not you?"
+
+The mother smiled.
+
+"You will soon have nobody left but me.  No matter.  I shall have you
+all to myself, and be at once a spoiled child, and an uncommonly
+merry old bachelor."
+
+Again the mother smiled, without reply.  She, too, doubtless thought
+herself a great diplomatist.
+
+William Ravenel--he was henceforward never anything to us but
+William--came home with Mr. Halifax.  First, the mother saw him; then
+I heard the father go to the maiden bower where Maud had shut herself
+up all day--poor child!--and fetch his daughter down.  Lastly, I
+watched the two--Mr. Ravenel and Miss Halifax--walk together down the
+garden and into the beech-wood, where the leaves were whispering and
+the stock-doves cooing; and where, I suppose, they told and listened
+to the old tale--old as Adam--yet for ever beautiful and new.
+
+That day was a wonderful day.  That night we gathered, as we never
+thought we should gather again in this world, round the family table-
+-Guy, Edwin, Walter, Maud, Louise, and William Ravenel--all changed,
+yet not one lost.  A true love-feast it was:  a renewed celebration
+of the family bond, which had lasted through so much sorrow, now
+knitted up once more, never to be broken.
+
+When we came quietly to examine one another and fall into one
+another's old ways, there was less than one might have expected even
+of outward change.  The table appeared the same; all took
+instinctively their old places, except that the mother lay on her
+sofa and Maud presided at the urn.
+
+It did one's heart good to look at Maud, as she busied herself about,
+in her capacity as vice-reine of the household; perhaps, with a
+natural feeling, liking to show some one present how mature and
+sedate she was--not so very young after all.  You could see she felt
+deeply how much he loved her--how her love was to him like the
+restoring of his youth.  The responsibility, sweet as it was, made
+her womanly, made her grave.  She would be to him at once wife and
+child, plaything and comforter, sustainer and sustained.  Ay, love
+levels all things.  They were not ill-matched, in spite of those
+twenty years.
+
+And so I left them, and went and sat with John and Ursula--we, the
+generation passing away, or ready to pass, in Heaven's good time, to
+make room for these.  We talked but little, our hearts were too full.
+Early, before anybody thought of moving, John carried his wife
+up-stairs again, saying that, well as she looked, she must be
+compelled to economise both her good looks and her happiness.
+
+When he came down again he stood talking for some time with Mr.
+Ravenel.  While he talked I thought he looked wearied--pallid even to
+exhaustion; a minute or two afterwards he silently left the room.
+
+I followed him, and found him leaning against the chimney-piece in
+his study.
+
+"Who's that?"  He spoke feebly; he looked--ghastly!
+
+I called him by his name.
+
+"Come in.  Fetch no one.  Shut the door."
+
+The words were hoarse and abrupt, but I obeyed.
+
+"Phineas," he said, again holding out a hand, as if he thought he had
+grieved me; "don't mind.  I shall be better presently.  I know quite
+well what it is--ah, my God--my God!"
+
+Sharp, horrible pain--such as human nature shrinks from--such as
+makes poor mortal flesh cry out in its agony to its Maker, as if, for
+the time being, life itself were worthless at such a price.  I know
+now what it must have been; I know now what he must have endured.
+
+He held me fast, half unconscious as he was, lest I should summon
+help; and when a step was heard in the passage, as once before--the
+day Edwin was married--how, on a sudden, I remembered all!--he
+tottered forward and locked, double-locked, the door.
+
+After a few minutes the worst suffering abated, and he sat down again
+in his chair.  I got some water; he drank, and let me bathe his face
+with it--his face, grey and death-like--John's face!
+
+But I am telling the bare facts--nothing more.
+
+A few heavy sighs, gasped as it were for life, and he was himself
+again.
+
+"Thank God, it is over now!  Phineas, you must try and forget all you
+have seen.  I wish you had not come to the door."
+
+He said this, not in any tone that could wound me, but tenderly, as
+if he were very sorry for me.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"There is no need for alarm;--no more than that day--you recollect?--
+in this room.  I had an attack once before then--a few times since.
+It is horrible pain while it lasts, you see; I can hardly bear it.
+But it goes away again, as you also see.  It would be a pity to tell
+my wife, or anybody; in fact, I had rather not.  You understand?"
+
+He spoke thus in a matter-of-fact way, as if he thought the
+explanation would satisfy me and prevent my asking further.  He was
+mistaken.
+
+"John, what is it?"
+
+"What is it?  Why, something like what I had then; but it comes
+rarely, and I am well again directly.  I had much rather not talk
+about it.  Pray forget it."
+
+But I could not; nor, I thought, could he.  He took up a book and sat
+still; though often times I caught his eyes fixed on my face with a
+peculiar earnestness, as if he would fain test my strength--fain find
+out how much I loved him; and loving, how much I could bear.
+
+"You are not reading, John; you are thinking--what about?"
+
+He paused a little, as if undetermined whether or not to tell me;
+then said:  "About your father.  Do you remember him?"
+
+I looked surprised at the question.
+
+"I mean, do you remember how he died?"
+
+Somehow--though, God knows, not at that dear and sacred remembrance--
+I shuddered.  "Yes; but why should we talk of it now?"
+
+"Why not?  I have often thought what a happy death it was--painless,
+instantaneous, without any wasting sickness beforehand--his sudden
+passing from life present to life eternal.  Phineas, your father's
+was the happiest death I ever knew."
+
+"It may be--I am not sure.  John," for again something in his look
+and manner struck me--"why do you say this to me?"
+
+"I scarcely know.  Yes, I do know."
+
+"Tell me, then."
+
+He looked at me across the table--steadily, eye to eye, as if he
+would fain impart to my spirit the calmness that was in his own.  "I
+believe, Phineas, that when I die my death will be not unlike your
+father's."
+
+Something came wildly to my lips about "impossibility," the utter
+impossibility, of any man's thus settling the manner of his death, or
+the time.
+
+"I know that.  I know that I may live ten or twenty years, and die of
+another disease after all."
+
+"Disease!"
+
+"Nay--it is nothing to be afraid of.  You see I am not afraid.  I
+have guessed it for many years.  I have known it for a certainty ever
+since I was in Paris."
+
+"Were you ill in Paris?--You never said so."
+
+"No--because--Phineas, do you think you could bear the truth?  You
+know it makes no real difference.  I shall not die an hour sooner for
+being aware of it."
+
+"Aware of--what?  Say quickly."
+
+"Dr. K---- told me--I was determined to be told--that I had the
+disease I suspected; beyond medical power to cure.  It is not
+immediately fatal; he said I might live many years, even to old age;
+and I might die, suddenly, at any moment, just as your father died."
+
+He said this gently and quietly--more quietly than I am writing the
+words down now; and I listened--I listened.
+
+"Phineas!"
+
+I felt the pressure of his warm hand on my shoulder--the hand which
+had led me like a brother's all my life.
+
+"Phineas, we have known one another these forty years.  Is our love,
+our faith, so small, that either of us, for himself or his brother,
+need be afraid of death?--"
+
+"Phineas!"--and the second time he spoke there was some faint
+reproach in the tone; "no one knows this but you.  I see I was right
+to hesitate; I almost wish I had not told you at all."
+
+Then I rose.
+
+At my urgent request, he explained to me fully and clearly the whole
+truth.  It was, as most truths are, less terrible when wholly known.
+It had involved little suffering as yet, the paroxysms being few and
+rare.  They had always occurred when he was alone, or when feeling
+them coming on he could go away and bear them in solitude.
+
+"I have always been able to do so until to-night.  She has not the
+least idea--my wife, I mean."
+
+His voice failed.
+
+"It has been terrible to me at times, the thought of my wife.
+Perhaps I ought to have told her.  Often I resolved I would, and then
+changed my mind.  Latterly, since she has been ill, I have believed,
+almost hoped, that she would not need to be told at all."
+
+"Would you rather, then, that she--"
+
+John calmly took up the word I shrank from uttering.  "Yes; I would
+rather of the two that she went away first.  She would suffer less,
+and it would be such a short parting."
+
+He spoke as one would speak of a new abode, an impending journey.  To
+him the great change, the last terror of humanity, was a thought--
+solemn indeed, but long familiar and altogether without fear.  And,
+as we sat there, something of his spirit passed into mine; I felt how
+narrow is the span between the life mortal and the life immortal--
+how, in truth, both are one with God.
+
+"Ay," he said, "that is exactly what I mean.  To me there is always
+something impious in the 'preparing for death' that people talk
+about; as if we were not continually, whether in the flesh or out of
+it, living in the Father's presence; as if, come when He will, the
+Master should not find all of us watching?  Do you remember saying so
+to me, one day?"
+
+Ah, that day!
+
+"Does it pain you, my talking thus?  Because if so, we will cease."
+
+"No--go on."
+
+"That is right.  I thought, this attack having been somewhat worse
+than my last, some one ought to be told.  It has been a comfort to me
+to tell you--a great comfort, Phineas.  Always remember that."
+
+I have remembered it.
+
+"Now, one thing more, and my mind is at ease.  You see, though I may
+have years of life--I hope I shall--many busy years--I am never sure
+of a day, and I have to take many precautions.  At home I shall be
+quite safe now."  He smiled again, with evident relief.  "And rarely
+I go anywhere without having one of my boys with me.  Still, for
+fear--look here."
+
+He showed me his pocket-book; on a card bearing his name and address
+was written in his own legible hand, "HOME, AND TELL MY WIFE
+CAREFULLY."
+
+I returned the book.  As I did so, there dropped out a little note--
+all yellow and faded--his wife's only "love-letter,"--signed, "Yours
+sincerely, Ursula March."
+
+John picked it up, looked at it, and put it back in its place.
+
+"Poor darling! poor darling!"  He sighed, and was silent for a while.
+"I am very glad Guy has come home; very glad that my little Maud is
+so happily settled.  Hark! how those children are laughing!"
+
+For the moment a natural shade of regret crossed the father's face,
+the father to whom all the delights of home had been so dear.  But it
+soon vanished.
+
+"How merry they are!--how strangely things have come about for us and
+ours!  As Ursula was saying to-night, at this moment we have not a
+single care."
+
+I grasped at that, for Dr. K---- had declared that if John had a
+quiet life--a life without many anxieties--he might, humanly
+speaking, attain a good old age.
+
+"Ay, your father did.  Who knows? we may both be old men yet,
+Phineas."
+
+And as he rose, he looked strong in body and mind, full of health and
+cheer--scarcely even on the verge of that old age of which he spoke.
+And I was older than he.
+
+"Now, will you come with me to say good-night to the children?"
+
+At first I thought I could not--then, I could.  After the rest had
+merrily dispersed, John and I stood for a long time in the empty
+parlour, his hand on my shoulder, as he used to stand when we were
+boys, talking.
+
+What we said I shall not write, but I remember it, every word.  And
+he--I KNOW he remembers it still.
+
+Then we clasped hands.
+
+"Good-night, Phineas."
+
+"Good-night, John."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+Friday, the first of August, 1834.
+
+Many may remember that day; what a soft, grey, summer morning it was,
+and how it broke out into brightness; how everywhere bells were
+ringing, club fraternities walking with bands and banners, school-
+children having feasts and work-people holidays; how, in town and
+country, there was spread abroad a general sense of benevolent
+rejoicing--because honest old England had lifted up her generous
+voice, nay, had paid down cheerfully her twenty millions, and in all
+her colonies the negro was free.
+
+Many may still find, in some forgotten drawer, the medal bought by
+thousands and tens of thousands, of all classes, in copper, silver,
+or gold--distributed in charity-schools, and given by old people to
+their grandchildren.  I saw Mrs. Halifax tying one with a piece of
+blue ribbon round little Louise's neck, in remembrance of this day.
+The pretty medal, with the slave standing upright, stretching out to
+Heaven free hands, from which the fetters are dropping--as I
+overheard John say to his wife, he could fancy the freeman Paul would
+stand in the Roman prison, when he answered to those that loved him,
+"I HAVE FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT.  I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE.  I HAVE
+KEPT THE FAITH."
+
+
+Now, with my quickened ears, I often heard John talking quietly to
+his wife on this wise.
+
+He remained by her side the  whole forenoon--wheeling her about in
+her garden-chair; taking her to see her school-children in their
+glory on our lawn--to hear the shouts rising up from the people at
+the mill-yard below.  For all Enderley, following the master's
+example, took an interest, hearty even among hearty hard-working
+England, in the Emancipation of the Slaves.
+
+We had our own young people round us, and the day was a glorious day,
+they declared one and all.
+
+John was happy too--infinitely happy.  After dinner he carried his
+wife to her chair beside the weeping ash, where she could smell the
+late hay in the meadow, and hear the ripple of the stream in the
+beech-wood--faint, for it was almost dried up now, but pleasant
+still.  Her husband sat on the grass, making her laugh with his
+quaint sayings--admiring her in her new bonnet, and in the lovely
+white shawl--Guy's shawl--which Mr. Guy himself had really no time
+for admiring.  He had gone off to the school tea-drinking, escorting
+his sister and sister-in-law, and another lady, whose eyes brightened
+with most "sisterly" joy whenever she glanced at her old playfellow.
+Guy's "sister" she nevertheless was not, nor was ever likely to be--
+and I questioned whether, in his secret heart, he had not begun
+already to feel particularly thankful for that circumstance.
+
+"Ah, mother," cried the father, smiling, "you'll see how it will end:
+all our young birds will soon be flown--there will be nobody left but
+you and me."
+
+"Never mind, John;" and stooping over him, she gave him one of her
+quiet, soft kisses, precious now she was an old woman as they had
+been in the days of her bloom.  "Never mind.  Once there were only
+our two selves--now there will be only our two selves again.  We
+shall be very happy.  We only need one another."
+
+"Only one another, my darling."
+
+This last word, and the manner of his saying it, I can hear if I
+listen in silence, clear as if yet I heard its sound.  This last
+sight--of them sitting under the ash-tree, the sun making still
+whiter Ursula's white shawl, brightening the marriage ring on her
+bare hand, and throwing, instead of silver, some of their boyish gold
+colour into the edges of John's curls--this picture I see with my
+shut eyes, vivid as yesterday.
+
+I sat for some time in my room--then John came to fetch me for our
+customary walk along his favourite "terrace" on the Flat.  He rarely
+liked to miss it--he said the day hardly seemed complete or perfect
+unless one had seen the sun set.  Thus, almost every evening, we used
+to spend an hour or more, pacing up and down, or sitting in that
+little hollow under the brow of the Flat, where, as from the topmost
+seat of a natural amphitheatre, one could see Rose Cottage and the
+old well-head where the cattle drank; our own green garden-gate, the
+dark mass of the beech-wood, and far away beyond that Nunneley Hill,
+where the sun went down.
+
+There, having walked somewhat less time than usual, for the evening
+was warm and it had been a fatiguing day, John and I sat down
+together.  We talked a little, ramblingly--chiefly of Longfield--how
+I was to have my old room again--and how a new nursery was to be
+planned for the grandchildren.
+
+"We can't get out of the way of children, I see clearly," he said,
+laughing.  "We shall have Longfield just as full as ever it was, all
+summer time.  But in winter we'll be quiet, and sit by the chimney-
+corner, and plunge into my dusty desert of books--eh, Phineas?  You
+shall help me to make notes for those lectures I have intended giving
+at Norton Bury, these ten years past.  And we'll rub up our old
+Latin, and dip into modern poetry--great rubbish, I fear!  Nobody
+like our old friend Will of Avon, or even your namesake, worthy
+Phineas Fletcher."
+
+I reminded him of the "Shepherd's life and fate," which he always
+liked so much, and used to say was his ideal of peaceful happiness.
+
+"Well, and I think so still.  'Keep true to the dreams of thy youth,'
+saith the old German; I have not been false to mine.  I have had a
+happy life, thank God; ay, and what few men can say, it has been the
+very sort of happiness I myself would have chosen.  I think most
+lives, if, while faithfully doing our little best, day by day, we
+were content to leave their thread in wiser hands than ours, would
+thus weave themselves out; until, looked back upon as a whole, they
+would seem as bright a web as mine."
+
+He sat, talking thus, resting his chin on his hands--his eyes, calm
+and sweet, looking out westward--where the sun was about an hour from
+the horizon.
+
+"Do you remember how we used to lie on the grass in your father's
+garden, and how we never could catch the sunset except in fragments
+between the abbey trees!  I wonder if they keep the yew hedge clipped
+as round as ever."
+
+I told him Edwin had said to-day that some strange tenants were going
+to make an inn of the old house, and turn the lawn into a bowling-
+green.
+
+"What a shame!  I wish I could prevent it.  And yet, perhaps not," he
+added, after a silence.  "Ought we not rather to recognise and submit
+to the universal law of change?  How each in his place is fulfilling
+his day, and passing away, just as that sun is passing.  Only we know
+not whither he passes; while whither we go we know, and the Way we
+know--the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."
+
+Almost before he had done speaking--(God grant that in the Kingdom I
+may hear that voice, not a tone altered--I would not wish it altered
+even there)--a whole troop of our young people came out of Mrs. Tod's
+cottage, and nodded to us from below.
+
+There was Mrs. Edwin, standing talking to the good old soul, who
+admired her baby-boy very much, but wouldn't allow there could be any
+children like Mrs. Halifax's children.
+
+There was Edwin, deep in converse with his brother Guy, while beside
+them--prettier and younger-looking than ever--Grace Oldtower was
+making a posy for little Louise.
+
+Further down the slope, walking slowly, side by side, evidently
+seeing nobody but one another, were another couple.
+
+"I think, sometimes, John, that those two, William and Maud, will be
+the happiest of all the children."
+
+He smiled, looked after them for a minute, and then laid himself
+quietly down on his back along the slope, his eyes still directed
+towards the sunset.  When, brightening as it descended, the sun shone
+level upon the place where we were sitting, I saw John pull his broad
+straw hat over his face, and compose himself, with both hands clasped
+upon his breast, in the attitude of sleep.
+
+I knew he was very tired, so I spoke no more, but threw my cloak over
+him.  He looked up, thanked me silently, with his old familiar smile.
+One day--one day I shall know him by that smile!  I sat half an hour
+or more watching the sun, which sank steadily, slowly, round, and
+red, without a single cloud.  Beautiful, as I had never before seen
+it; so clear, that one could note the very instant its disc touched
+the horizon's grey.
+
+Maud and Mr. Ravenel were coming up the slope.  I beckoned them to
+come softly, not to disturb the father.  They and I sat in silence,
+facing the west.  The sun journeyed down to his setting--lower--
+lower; there was a crescent, a line, a dim sparkle of light; then--he
+was gone.  And still we sat--grave, but not sad--looking into the
+brightness he had left behind; believing, yea, knowing, we should see
+his glorious face again to-morrow.
+
+"How cold it has grown," said Maud.  "I think we ought to wake my
+father."
+
+She went up to him, laid her hand upon his, that were folded together
+over the cloak--drew back startled--alarmed.
+
+"Father!"
+
+I put the child aside.  It was I who moved the hat from John's face--
+THE face--for John himself was far, far away.  Gone from us unto Him
+whose faithful servant he was.  While he was sleeping thus the Master
+had called him.
+
+His two sons carried him down the slope.  They laid him in the upper
+room in Mrs. Tod's cottage.  Then I went home to tell his wife.
+
+                    *          *          *
+
+She was at last composed, as we thought, lying on her bed, death-like
+almost, but calm.  It was ten o'clock at night.  I left her with all
+her children watching round her.
+
+I went out, up to Rose Cottage, to sit an hour by myself alone,
+looking at him whom I should not see again for--as he had said--"a
+little while."
+
+"A little while--a little while."  I comforted myself with those
+words.  I fancied I could almost hear John saying them, standing near
+me, with his hand on my shoulder.  John himself, quite distinct from
+that which lay so still before me; beautiful as nothing but death can
+be, younger much than he had looked this very morning--younger by
+twenty years.
+
+Farewell, John!  Farewell, my more than brother!  It is but for a
+little while.
+
+As I sat, thinking how peacefully the hands lay, clasped together
+still, how sweet was the expression of the close mouth, and what a
+strange shadowy likeness the whole face bore to Muriel's little face,
+which I had seen resting in the same deep rest on the same pillow;
+some one touched me.  It was Mrs. Halifax.
+
+How she came I do not know; nor how she had managed to steal out from
+among her children.  Nor how she, who had not walked for weeks, had
+found her way up hither, in the dark, all alone.  Nor what strength,
+almost more than mortal, helped her to stand there, as she did stand,
+upright and calm--gazing--gazing as I had done.
+
+"It is very like him; don't you think so, Phineas?"  The voice low
+and soft, unbroken by any sob.  "He once told me, in case of--this,
+he would rather I did not come and look at him; but I can, you see."
+
+I gave her my place, and she sat down by the bed.  It might have been
+ten minutes or more that she and I remained thus, without exchanging
+a word.
+
+"I think I hear some one at the door.  Brother, will you call in the
+children?"
+
+Guy, altogether overcome, knelt down beside his mother, and besought
+her to let him take her home.
+
+"Presently--presently, my son.  You are very good to me; but--your
+father.  Children, come in and look at your father."
+
+They all gathered round her--weeping; but she spoke without single
+tear.
+
+"I was a girl, younger than any of you, when first I met your father.
+Next month we shall have been married thirty-three years.  Thirty-
+three years."
+
+Her eyes grew dreamy, as if fancy had led her back all that space of
+time; her fingers moved to and fro, mechanically, over her wedding-
+ring.
+
+"Children, we were so happy, you cannot tell.  He was so good; he
+loved me so.  Better than that, he made me good; that was why I loved
+him.  Oh, what his love was to me from the first! strength, hope,
+peace; comfort and help in trouble, sweetness in prosperity.  How my
+life became happy and complete--how I grew worthier to myself because
+he had taken me for his own!  And what HE was--Children, no one but
+me ever knew all his goodness, no one but himself ever knew how
+dearly I loved your father.  We were more precious each to each than
+anything on earth; except His service, who gave us to one another."
+
+Her voice dropped all but inaudible; but she roused herself, and made
+it once more clear and firm, the mother's natural voice.
+
+"Guy, Edwin, all of you, must never forget your father.  You must do
+as he wishes, and live as he lived--in all ways.  You must love him,
+and love one another.  Children, you will never do anything that need
+make you ashamed to meet your father."
+
+As they hung round her she kissed them all--her three sons and her
+daughter, one by one; then, her mind being perhaps led astray by the
+room we were in, looked feebly round for one more child--remembered--
+smiled--
+
+"How glad her father will be to have her again--his own little
+Muriel."
+
+"Mother! mother darling! come home," whispered Guy, almost in a sob.
+
+His mother stooped over him, gave him one kiss more--him her
+favourite of all her children--and repeated the old phrase:
+
+"Presently, presently!  Now go away, all of you; I want to be left
+for a little, alone with my husband."
+
+As we went out, I saw her turn toward the bed--"John, John!"  The
+same tone, almost the same words, with which she had crept up to him
+years before, the day they were betrothed.  Just a low, low murmur,
+like a tired child creeping to fond protecting arms.  "John, John!"
+
+We closed the door.  We all sat on the stairs outside; it might have
+been for minutes, it might have been for hours.  Within or without--
+no one spoke--nothing stirred.
+
+At last Guy softly went in.
+
+She was still in the same place by the bed-side, but half lying on
+the bed, as I had seen her turn when I was shutting the door.  Her
+arm was round her husband's neck; her face, pressed inwards to the
+pillow, was nestled close to his hair.  They might have been asleep--
+both of them.
+
+One of her children called her, but she neither answered nor stirred.
+
+Guy lifted her up, very tenderly; his mother, who had no stay left
+but him--his mother--a widow--
+
+No, thank God! she was not a widow now.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of John Halifax, Gentleman.
+
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