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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Silverman's Explanation, by Charles
+Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: George Silverman's Explanation
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2014  [eBook #810]
+[This file was first posted on February 6, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall “Hard Times and Reprinted
+Pieces” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                      GEORGE SILVERMAN’S EXPLANATION
+
+
+FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+IT happened in this wise—
+
+But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without
+descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into
+my mind that they have an abrupt appearance.  They may serve, however, if
+I let them remain, to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to
+explain my explanation.  An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my way
+to a better.
+
+
+
+
+SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+IT happened in _this_ wise—
+
+But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former opening, I
+find they are the self-same words repeated.  This is the more surprising
+to me, because I employ them in quite a new connection.  For indeed I
+declare that my intention was to discard the commencement I first had in
+my thoughts, and to give the preference to another of an entirely
+different nature, dating my explanation from an anterior period of my
+life.  I will make a third trial, without erasing this second failure,
+protesting that it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities,
+whether they be of head or heart.
+
+
+
+
+THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by
+degrees.  The natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it
+came upon me.
+
+My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was
+a cellar in Preston.  I recollect the sound of father’s Lancashire clogs
+on the street pavement above, as being different in my young hearing from
+the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came
+down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having
+a good or an ill-tempered look,—on her knees,—on her waist,—until finally
+her face came into view, and settled the question.  From this it will be
+seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the
+doorway was very low.
+
+Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
+figure, and not least of all upon her voice.  Her sharp and high-pitched
+words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of bony fingers on
+a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes about and about the
+cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry.  Father, with his
+shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at
+the empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, and bid
+him go bring some money home.  Then he would dismally ascend the steps;
+and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only
+braces), would feint and dodge from mother’s pursuing grasp at my hair.
+
+A worldly little devil was mother’s usual name for me.  Whether I cried
+for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I was
+hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner when there was a
+fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she would still say, ‘O,
+you worldly little devil!’  And the sting of it was, that I quite well
+knew myself to be a worldly little devil.  Worldly as to wanting to be
+housed and warmed, worldly as to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the
+greed with which I inwardly compared how much I got of those good things
+with how much father and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were
+going.
+
+Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be locked up
+in the cellar for a day or two at a time.  I was at my worldliest then.
+Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearning for enough of
+anything (except misery), and for the death of mother’s father, who was a
+machine-maker at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother
+say, she would come into a whole courtful of houses ‘if she had her
+rights.’  Worldly little devil, I would stand about, musingly fitting my
+cold bare feet into cracked bricks and crevices of the damp
+cellar-floor,—walking over my grandfather’s body, so to speak, into the
+courtful of houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to
+wear.
+
+At last a change came down into our cellar.  The universal change came
+down even as low as that,—so will it mount to any height on which a human
+creature can perch,—and brought other changes with it.
+
+We had a heap of I don’t know what foul litter in the darkest corner,
+which we called ‘the bed.’  For three days mother lay upon it without
+getting up, and then began at times to laugh.  If I had ever heard her
+laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me.
+It frightened father too; and we took it by turns to give her water.
+Then she began to move her head from side to side, and sing.  After that,
+she getting no better, father fell a-laughing and a-singing; and then
+there was only I to give them both water, and they both died.
+
+
+
+
+FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+WHEN I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came peeping
+down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I could hardly bear
+the light of the street.  I was sitting in the road-way, blinking at it,
+and at a ring of people collected around me, but not close to me, when,
+true to my character of worldly little devil, I broke silence by saying,
+‘I am hungry and thirsty!’
+
+‘Does he know they are dead?’ asked one of another.
+
+‘Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?’ asked a
+third of me severely.
+
+‘I don’t know what it is to be dead.  I supposed it meant that, when the
+cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over them.  I am
+hungry and thirsty.’  That was all I had to say about it.
+
+The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked around
+me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor, thrown in towards
+where I sat.  Presently some one put a great vessel of smoking vinegar on
+the ground near me; and then they all looked at me in silent horror as I
+ate and drank of what was brought for me.  I knew at the time they had a
+horror of me, but I couldn’t help it.
+
+I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had begun to
+arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I heard a cracked
+voice somewhere in the ring say, ‘My name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity
+Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.’  Then the ring split in one place; and a
+yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in iron-gray to his gaiters,
+pressed forward with a policeman and another official of some sort.  He
+came forward close to the vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he
+sprinkled himself carefully, and me copiously.
+
+‘He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just dead
+too,’ said Mr. Hawkyard.
+
+I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner,
+‘Where’s his houses?’
+
+‘Hah!  Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave,’ said Mr. Hawkyard,
+casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil out of me.  ‘I
+have undertaken a slight—a very slight—trust in behalf of this boy; quite
+a voluntary trust: a matter of mere honour, if not of mere sentiment:
+still I have taken it upon myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!)
+discharged.’
+
+The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much more
+favourable than their opinion of me.
+
+‘He shall be taught,’ said Mr. Hawkyard, ‘(O, yes, he shall be taught!)
+but what is to be done with him for the present?  He may be infected.  He
+may disseminate infection.’  The ring widened considerably.  ‘What is to
+be done with him?’
+
+He held some talk with the two officials.  I could distinguish no word
+save ‘Farm-house.’  There was another sound several times repeated, which
+was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I knew afterwards to be
+‘Hoghton Towers.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Hawkyard.  ‘I think that sounds promising; I think that
+sounds hopeful.  And he can be put by himself in a ward, for a night or
+two, you say?’
+
+It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was he who
+replied, Yes!  It was he, too, who finally took me by the arm, and walked
+me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed room in a bare
+building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to sit at, an iron
+bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug and blanket to cover
+me.  Where I had enough to eat too, and was shown how to clean the tin
+porringer in which it was conveyed to me, until it was as good as a
+looking-glass.  Here, likewise, I was put in a bath, and had new clothes
+brought to me; and my old rags were burnt, and I was camphored and
+vinegared and disinfected in a variety of ways.
+
+When all this was done,—I don’t know in how many days or how few, but it
+matters not,—Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door, remaining close to it,
+and said, ‘Go and stand against the opposite wall, George Silverman.  As
+far off as you can.  That’ll do.  How do you feel?’
+
+I told him that I didn’t feel cold, and didn’t feel hungry, and didn’t
+feel thirsty.  That was the whole round of human feelings, as far as I
+knew, except the pain of being beaten.
+
+‘Well,’ said he, ‘you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to be
+purified.  Keep in the air there as much as you can.  Live an out-of-door
+life there, until you are fetched away.  You had better not say much—in
+fact, you had better be very careful not to say anything—about what your
+parents died of, or they might not like to take you in.  Behave well, and
+I’ll put you to school; O, yes!  I’ll put you to school, though I’m not
+obligated to do it.  I am a servant of the Lord, George; and I have been
+a good servant to him, I have, these five-and-thirty years.  The Lord has
+had a good servant in me, and he knows it.’
+
+What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine.  As little do
+I know when I began to comprehend that he was a prominent member of some
+obscure denomination or congregation, every member of which held forth to
+the rest when so inclined, and among whom he was called Brother Hawkyard.
+It was enough for me to know, on that day in the ward, that the farmer’s
+cart was waiting for me at the street corner.  I was not slow to get into
+it; for it was the first ride I ever had in my life.
+
+It made me sleepy, and I slept.  First, I stared at Preston streets as
+long as they lasted; and, meanwhile, I may have had some small dumb
+wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was; but I doubt it.  Such a
+worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who would bury father
+and mother, or where they would be buried, or when.  The question whether
+the eating and drinking by day, and the covering by night, would be as
+good at the farm-house as at the ward superseded those questions.
+
+The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me; and I found that
+we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-road through
+a field.  And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace, and by some rugged
+outbuildings that had once been fortified, and passing under a ruined
+gateway we came to the old farm-house in the thick stone wall outside the
+old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers: which I looked at like a stupid savage,
+seeing no specially in, seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses
+to resemble it; assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent cause of
+all ruin that I knew,—poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the
+cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the fowls pecking
+about the yard, with a hungry hope that plenty of them might be killed
+for dinner while I stayed there; wondering whether the scrubbed dairy
+vessels, drying in the sunlight, could be goodly porringers out of which
+the master ate his belly-filling food, and which he polished when he had
+done, according to my ward experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the
+shadows, passing over that airy height on the bright spring day, were not
+something in the nature of frowns,—sordid, afraid, unadmiring,—a small
+brute to shudder at.
+
+To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty.  I had had
+no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in this life.  When
+I had occasionally slunk up the cellar-steps into the street, and glared
+in at shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may
+suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf-cub.  It is equally the fact
+that I had never been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse
+with myself.  I had been solitary often enough, but nothing better.
+
+Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the
+kitchen of the old farm-house.  Such was my condition when I lay on my
+bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite the narrow
+mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon, like a young vampire.
+
+
+
+
+FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+WHAT do I know of Hoghton Towers?  Very little; for I have been
+gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions.  A house, centuries
+old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road between Preston
+and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his hurry to make
+money by making baronets, perhaps made some of those remunerative
+dignitaries.  A house, centuries old, deserted and falling to pieces, its
+woods and gardens long since grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble
+and Darwen glancing below it, and a vague haze of smoke, against which
+not even the supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a
+counter-blast, hinting at steam-power, powerful in two distances.
+
+What did I know then of Hoghton Towers?  When I first peeped in at the
+gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the mouldering statue
+becoming visible to me like its guardian ghost; when I stole round by the
+back of the farm-house, and got in among the ancient rooms, many of them
+with their floors and ceilings falling, the beams and rafters hanging
+dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels
+stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered
+a gallery commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades
+upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not what
+dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up with I know
+not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I
+was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where
+the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter weather
+blotched the rotten floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of
+staircase, into which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled,
+butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken
+door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights
+of fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed
+of,—I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as
+my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton Towers?
+
+I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me.  Therein have I
+anticipated the answer.  I knew that all these things looked sorrowfully
+at me; that they seemed to sigh or whisper, not without pity for me,
+‘Alas! poor worldly little devil!’
+
+There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller pits of
+broken staircase when I craned over and looked in.  They were scuffling
+for some prey that was there; and, when they started and hid themselves
+close together in the dark, I thought of the old life (it had grown old
+already) in the cellar.
+
+How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a repugnance
+towards myself as I had towards the rats?  I hid in a corner of one of
+the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and crying (it was the first
+time I had ever cried for any cause not purely physical), and I tried to
+think about it.  One of the farm-ploughs came into my range of view just
+then; and it seemed to help me as it went on with its two horses up and
+down the field so peacefully and quietly.
+
+There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and she
+sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times.  It had come into
+my mind, at our first dinner, that she might take the fever from me.  The
+thought had not disquieted me then.  I had only speculated how she would
+look under the altered circumstances, and whether she would die.  But it
+came into my mind now, that I might try to prevent her taking the fever
+by keeping away from her.  I knew I should have but scrambling board if I
+did; so much the less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I
+thought.
+
+From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret corners of
+the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she went to bed.  At
+first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them calling me; and then my
+resolution weakened.  But I strengthened it again by going farther off
+into the ruin, and getting out of hearing.  I often watched for her at
+the dim windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much
+happier.
+
+Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of myself, I
+suppose some childish love arose within me.  I felt, in some sort,
+dignified by the pride of protecting her,—by the pride of making the
+sacrifice for her.  As my heart swelled with that new feeling, it
+insensibly softened about mother and father.  It seemed to have been
+frozen before, and now to be thawed.  The old ruin and all the lovely
+things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me only, but sorrowful for
+mother and father as well.  Therefore did I cry again, and often too.
+
+The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and were
+very short with me; though they never stinted me in such broken fare as
+was to be got out of regular hours.  One night when I lifted the kitchen
+latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her pretty name) had but just
+gone out of the room.  Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood
+still at the door.  She had heard the clink of the latch, and looked
+round.
+
+‘George,’ she called to me in a pleased voice, ‘to-morrow is my birthday;
+and we are to have a fiddler, and there’s a party of boys and girls
+coming in a cart, and we shall dance.  I invite you.  Be sociable for
+once, George.’
+
+‘I am very sorry, miss,’ I answered; ‘but I—but, no; I can’t come.’
+
+‘You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,’ she returned disdainfully;
+‘and I ought not to have asked you.  I shall never speak to you again.’
+
+As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I felt
+that the farmer bent his brows upon me.
+
+‘Eh, lad!’ said he; ‘Sylvy’s right.  You’re as moody and broody a lad as
+never I set eyes on yet.’
+
+I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said coldly,
+‘Maybe not, maybe not!  There, get thy supper, get thy supper; and then
+thou canst sulk to thy heart’s content again.’
+
+Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for the
+arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could have seen
+me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue, listening to the
+music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching the lighted farm-house
+windows from the quadrangle when all the ruin was dark; if they could
+have read my heart, as I crept up to bed by the back way, comforting
+myself with the reflection, ‘They will take no hurt from me,’—they would
+not have thought mine a morose or an unsocial nature.
+
+It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be of a
+timidly silent character under misconstruction; to have an inexpressible,
+perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or worldly.  It was in these
+ways that my nature came to shape itself to such a mould, even before it
+was affected by the influences of the studious and retired life of a poor
+scholar.
+
+
+
+
+SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to school, and
+told me to work my way.  ‘You are all right, George,’ he said.  ‘I have
+been the best servant the Lord has had in his service for this
+five-and-thirty year (O, I have!); and he knows the value of such a
+servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he does!); and he’ll prosper your
+schooling as a part of my reward.  That’s what _he_’ll do, George.  He’ll
+do it for me.’
+
+From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways of
+the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard’s part.  As I grew
+a little wiser, and still a little wiser, I liked it less and less.  His
+manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,—as if, knowing
+himself, he doubted his own word,—I found distasteful.  I cannot tell how
+much these dislikes cost me; for I had a dread that they were worldly.
+
+As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good foundation, and I
+cost Brother Hawkyard nothing.  When I had worked my way so far, I worked
+yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a presentation to college
+and a fellowship.  My health has never been strong (some vapour from the
+Preston cellar cleaves to me, I think); and what with much work and some
+weakness, I came again to be regarded—that is, by my fellow-students—as
+unsocial.
+
+All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a few miles of
+Brother Hawkyard’s congregation; and whenever I was what we called a
+leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire.  Before the
+knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place of meeting these
+brothers and sisters were no better than the rest of the human family,
+but on the whole were, to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in respect
+of giving short weight in their shops, and not speaking the truth,—I say,
+before this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix addresses,
+their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance, their investment of the
+Supreme Ruler of heaven and earth with their own miserable meannesses and
+littlenesses, greatly shocked me.  Still, as their term for the frame of
+mind that could not perceive them to be in an exalted state of grace was
+the ‘worldly’ state, I did for a time suffer tortures under my inquiries
+of myself whether that young worldly-devilish spirit of mine could
+secretly be lingering at the bottom of my non-appreciation.
+
+Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly, and
+generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a table
+on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon.  He was by
+trade a drysalter.  Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed face,
+a large dog’s-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue neckerchief reaching
+up behind to the crown of his head, was also a drysalter and an
+expounder.  Brother Gimblet professed the greatest admiration for Brother
+Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than once) bore him a jealous grudge.
+
+Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to read
+twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and customs of
+the congregation in question I write scrupulously, literally, exactly,
+from the life and the truth.
+
+On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for, and
+when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother Hawkyard
+concluded a long exhortation thus:
+
+‘Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I began, that I
+didn’t know a word of what I was going to say to you (and no, I did
+not!), but that it was all one to me, because I knew the Lord would put
+into my mouth the words I wanted.’
+
+(‘That’s it!’ from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+‘And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted.’
+
+(‘So he did!’ from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+‘And why?’
+
+(‘Ah, let’s have that!’ from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+‘Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty years, and
+because he knows it.  For five-and-thirty years!  And he knows it, mind
+you!  I got those words that I wanted on account of my wages.  I got ’em
+from the Lord, my fellow-sinners.  Down! I said, “Here’s a heap of wages
+due; let us have something down, on account.”  And I got it down, and I
+paid it over to you; and you won’t wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a
+towel, nor yet pocketankercher, but you’ll put it out at good interest.
+Very well.  Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going
+to conclude with a question, and I’ll make it so plain (with the help of
+the Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather hope!) as that the
+Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your heads,—which he would be
+overjoyed to do.’
+
+(‘Just his way.  Crafty old blackguard!’ from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+‘And the question is this, Are the angels learned?’
+
+(‘Not they.  Not a bit on it!’ from Brother Gimblet, with the greatest
+confidence.)
+
+‘Not they.  And where’s the proof? sent ready-made by the hand of the
+Lord.  Why, there’s one among us here now, that has got all the learning
+that can be crammed into him.  _I_ got him all the learning that could be
+crammed into him.  His grandfather’ (this I had never heard before) ‘was
+a brother of ours.  He was Brother Parksop.  That’s what he was.
+Parksop; Brother Parksop.  His worldly name was Parksop, and he was a
+brother of this brotherhood.  Then wasn’t he Brother Parksop?’
+
+(‘Must be.  Couldn’t help hisself!’ from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+‘Well, he left that one now here present among us to the care of a
+brother-sinner of his (and that brother-sinner, mind you, was a sinner of
+a bigger size in his time than any of you; praise the Lord!), Brother
+Hawkyard.  Me.  _I_ got him without fee or reward,—without a morsel of
+myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, letting alone the honeycomb,—all
+the learning that could be crammed into him.  Has it brought him into our
+temple, in the spirit?  No.  Have we had any ignorant brothers and
+sisters that didn’t know round O from crooked S, come in among us
+meanwhile?  Many.  Then the angels are _not_ learned; then they don’t so
+much as know their alphabet.  And now, my friends and fellow-sinners,
+having brought it to that, perhaps some brother present—perhaps you,
+Brother Gimblet—will pray a bit for us?’
+
+Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having drawn his
+sleeve across his mouth, and muttered, ‘Well!  I don’t know as I see my
+way to hitting any of you quite in the right place neither.’  He said
+this with a dark smile, and then began to bellow.  What we were specially
+to be preserved from, according to his solicitations, was, despoilment of
+the orphan, suppression of testamentary intentions on the part of a
+father or (say) grandfather, appropriation of the orphan’s
+house-property, feigning to give in charity to the wronged one from whom
+we withheld his due; and that class of sins.  He ended with the petition,
+‘Give us peace!’ which, speaking for myself, was very much needed after
+twenty minutes of his bellowing.
+
+Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees, steaming with
+perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even though I had not heard
+Brother Hawkyard’s tone of congratulating him on the vigour with which he
+had roared, I should have detected a malicious application in this
+prayer.  Unformed suspicions to a similar effect had sometimes passed
+through my mind in my earlier school-days, and had always caused me great
+distress; for they were worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of
+the spirit that had drawn me from Sylvia.  They were sordid suspicions,
+without a shadow of proof.  They were worthy to have originated in the
+unwholesome cellar.  They were not only without proof, but against proof;
+for was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard had done?
+and without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look sorrowfully
+down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers?
+
+Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness was
+less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in an
+increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard against any
+tendency to such relapse.  After getting these suspicions under my feet,
+I had been troubled by not being able to like Brother Hawkyard’s manner,
+or his professed religion.  So it came about, that, as I walked back that
+Sunday evening, I thought it would be an act of reparation for any such
+injury my struggling thoughts had unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and
+placed in his hands, before going to college, a full acknowledgment of
+his goodness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks.  It might serve as an
+implied vindication of him against any dark scandal from a rival brother
+and expounder, or from any other quarter.
+
+Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care.  I may add with much
+feeling too; for it affected me as I went on.  Having no set studies to
+pursue, in the brief interval between leaving the Foundation and going to
+Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his place of business, and give it
+into his own hands.
+
+It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door of his little
+counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long, low shop.  As I
+did so (having entered by the back yard, where casks and boxes were taken
+in, and where there was the inscription, ‘Private way to the
+counting-house’), a shopman called to me from the counter that he was
+engaged.
+
+‘Brother Gimblet’ (said the shopman, who was one of the brotherhood) ‘is
+with him.’
+
+I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to tap again.
+They were talking in a low tone, and money was passing; for I heard it
+being counted out.
+
+‘Who is it?’ asked Brother Hawkyard, sharply.
+
+‘George Silverman,’ I answered, holding the door open.  ‘May I come in?’
+
+Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shyer than usual.
+But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and perhaps that
+accidental circumstance exaggerated the expression of their faces.
+
+‘What is the matter?’ asked Brother Hawkyard.
+
+‘Ay! what is the matter?’ asked Brother Gimblet.
+
+‘Nothing at all,’ I said, diffidently producing my document: ‘I am only
+the bearer of a letter from myself.’
+
+‘From yourself, George?’ cried Brother Hawkyard.
+
+‘And to you,’ said I.
+
+‘And to me, George?’
+
+He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking over it, and seeing
+generally what it was, became less hurried, recovered his colour, and
+said, ‘Praise the Lord!’
+
+‘That’s it!’ cried Brother Gimblet.  ‘Well put!  Amen.’
+
+Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain, ‘You must know, George,
+that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make our two businesses one.  We
+are going into partnership.  We are settling it now.  Brother Gimblet is
+to take one clear half of the profits (O, yes! he shall have it; he shall
+have it to the last farthing).’
+
+‘D.V.!’ said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly clinched on his
+right leg.
+
+‘There is no objection,’ pursued Brother Hawkyard, ‘to my reading this
+aloud, George?’
+
+As it was what I expressly desired should be done, after yesterday’s
+prayer, I more than readily begged him to read it aloud.  He did so; and
+Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed smile.
+
+‘It was in a good hour that I came here,’ he said, wrinkling up his eyes.
+‘It was in a good hour, likewise, that I was moved yesterday to depict
+for the terror of evil-doers a character the direct opposite of Brother
+Hawkyard’s.  But it was the Lord that done it: I felt him at it while I
+was perspiring.’
+
+After that it was proposed by both of them that I should attend the
+congregation once more before my final departure.  What my shy reserve
+would undergo, from being expressly preached at and prayed at, I knew
+beforehand.  But I reflected that it would be for the last time, and that
+it might add to the weight of my letter.  It was well known to the
+brothers and sisters that there was no place taken for me in _their_
+paradise; and if I showed this last token of deference to Brother
+Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own sinful inclinations, it might
+go some little way in aid of my statement that he had been good to me,
+and that I was grateful to him.  Merely stipulating, therefore, that no
+express endeavour should be made for my conversion,—which would involve
+the rolling of several brothers and sisters on the floor, declaring that
+they felt all their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many
+pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those repulsive
+mysteries,—I promised.
+
+Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been at intervals
+wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue neckerchief, and grinning
+to himself.  It was, however, a habit that brother had, to grin in an
+ugly manner even when expounding.  I call to mind a delighted snarl with
+which he used to detail from the platform the torments reserved for the
+wicked (meaning all human creation except the brotherhood), as being
+remarkably hideous.
+
+I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and count money;
+and I never saw them again but on the following Sunday.  Brother Hawkyard
+died within two or three years, leaving all he possessed to Brother
+Gimblet, in virtue of a will dated (as I have been told) that very day.
+
+Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, knowing that I
+had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard in the
+jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to that coarse chapel, in
+a less sensitive state than usual.  How could I foresee that the
+delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind, where I winced and
+shrunk when it was touched, or was even approached, would be handled as
+the theme of the whole proceedings?
+
+On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray, and to
+Brother Gimblet to preach.  The prayer was to open the ceremonies; the
+discourse was to come next.  Brothers Hawkyard and Gimblet were both on
+the platform; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at the table, unmusically
+ready to pray; Brother Gimblet sitting against the wall, grinningly ready
+to preach.
+
+‘Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers and sisters and
+fellow-sinners.’  Yes; but it was I who was the sacrifice.  It was our
+poor, sinful, worldly-minded brother here present who was wrestled for.
+The now-opening career of this our unawakened brother might lead to his
+becoming a minister of what was called ‘the church.’  That was what _he_
+looked to.  The church.  Not the chapel, Lord.  The church.  No rectors,
+no vicars, no archdeacons, no bishops, no archbishops, in the chapel,
+but, O Lord! many such in the church.  Protect our sinful brother from
+his love of lucre.  Cleanse from our unawakened brother’s breast his sin
+of worldly-mindedness.  The prayer said infinitely more in words, but
+nothing more to any intelligible effect.
+
+Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he would) the
+text, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’  Ah! but whose was, my
+fellow-sinners?  Whose?  Why, our brother’s here present was.  The only
+kingdom he had an idea of was of this world.  (‘That’s it!’ from several
+of the congregation.)  What did the woman do when she lost the piece of
+money?  Went and looked for it.  What should our brother do when he lost
+his way?  (‘Go and look for it,’ from a sister.)  Go and look for it,
+true.  But must he look for it in the right direction, or in the wrong?
+(‘In the right,’ from a brother.)  There spake the prophets!  He must
+look for it in the right direction, or he couldn’t find it.  But he had
+turned his back upon the right direction, and he wouldn’t find it.  Now,
+my fellow-sinners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-mindedness
+and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this world and kingdoms
+_of_ this world, here was a letter wrote by even our worldly-minded
+brother unto Brother Hawkyard.  Judge, from hearing of it read, whether
+Brother Hawkyard was the faithful steward that the Lord had in his mind
+only t’other day, when, in this very place, he drew you the picter of the
+unfaithful one; for it was him that done it, not me.  Don’t doubt that!
+
+Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed his way through my composition,
+and subsequently through an hour.  The service closed with a hymn, in
+which the brothers unanimously roared, and the sisters unanimously
+shrieked at me, That I by wiles of worldly gain was mocked, and they on
+waters of sweet love were rocked; that I with mammon struggled in the
+dark, while they were floating in a second ark.
+
+I went out from all this with an aching heart and a weary spirit: not
+because I was quite so weak as to consider these narrow creatures
+interpreters of the Divine Majesty and Wisdom, but because I was weak
+enough to feel as though it were my hard fortune to be misrepresented and
+misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue any risings of mere
+worldliness within me, and when I most hoped that, by dint of trying
+earnestly, I had succeeded.
+
+
+
+
+SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+MY timidity and my obscurity occasioned me to live a secluded life at
+college, and to be little known.  No relative ever came to visit me, for
+I had no relative.  No intimate friends broke in upon my studies, for I
+made no intimate friends.  I supported myself on my scholarship, and read
+much.  My college time was otherwise not so very different from my time
+at Hoghton Towers.
+
+Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social existence, but
+believing myself qualified to do my duty in a moderate, though earnest
+way, if I could obtain some small preferment in the Church, I applied my
+mind to the clerical profession.  In due sequence I took orders, was
+ordained, and began to look about me for employment.  I must observe that
+I had taken a good degree, that I had succeeded in winning a good
+fellowship, and that my means were ample for my retired way of life.  By
+this time I had read with several young men; and the occupation increased
+my income, while it was highly interesting to me.  I once accidentally
+overheard our greatest don say, to my boundless joy, ‘That he heard it
+reported of Silverman that his gift of quiet explanation, his patience,
+his amiable temper, and his conscientiousness made him the best of
+coaches.’  May my ‘gift of quiet explanation’ come more seasonably and
+powerfully to my aid in this present explanation than I think it will!
+
+It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation of my college-rooms
+(in a corner where the daylight was sobered), but it is in a much larger
+degree referable to the state of my own mind, that I seem to myself, on
+looking back to this time of my life, to have been always in the peaceful
+shade.  I can see others in the sunlight; I can see our boats’ crews and
+our athletic young men on the glistening water, or speckled with the
+moving lights of sunlit leaves; but I myself am always in the shadow
+looking on.  Not unsympathetically,—God forbid!—but looking on alone,
+much as I looked at Sylvia from the shadows of the ruined house, or
+looked at the red gleam shining through the farmer’s windows, and
+listened to the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that
+night in the quadrangle.
+
+I now come to the reason of my quoting that laudation of myself above
+given.  Without such reason, to repeat it would have been mere
+boastfulness.
+
+Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fareway, second son of Lady
+Fareway, widow of Sir Gaston Fareway, baronet.  This young gentleman’s
+abilities were much above the average; but he came of a rich family, and
+was idle and luxurious.  He presented himself to me too late, and
+afterwards came to me too irregularly, to admit of my being of much
+service to him.  In the end, I considered it my duty to dissuade him from
+going up for an examination which he could never pass; and he left
+college without a degree.  After his departure, Lady Fareway wrote to me,
+representing the justice of my returning half my fee, as I had been of so
+little use to her son.  Within my knowledge a similar demand had not been
+made in any other case; and I most freely admit that the justice of it
+had not occurred to me until it was pointed out.  But I at once perceived
+it, yielded to it, and returned the money—
+
+Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and I had forgotten him,
+when he one day walked into my rooms as I was sitting at my books.
+
+Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, ‘Mr. Silverman, my
+mother is in town here, at the hotel, and wishes me to present you to
+her.’
+
+I was not comfortable with strangers, and I dare say I betrayed that I
+was a little nervous or unwilling.  ‘For,’ said he, without my having
+spoken, ‘I think the interview may tend to the advancement of your
+prospects.’
+
+It put me to the blush to think that I should be tempted by a worldly
+reason, and I rose immediately.
+
+Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, ‘Are you a good hand at business?’
+
+‘I think not,’ said I.
+
+Said Mr. Fareway then, ‘My mother is.’
+
+‘Truly?’ said I.
+
+‘Yes: my mother is what is usually called a managing woman.  Doesn’t make
+a bad thing, for instance, even out of the spendthrift habits of my
+eldest brother abroad.  In short, a managing woman.  This is in
+confidence.’
+
+He had never spoken to me in confidence, and I was surprised by his doing
+so.  I said I should respect his confidence, of course, and said no more
+on the delicate subject.  We had but a little way to walk, and I was soon
+in his mother’s company.  He presented me, shook hands with me, and left
+us two (as he said) to business.
+
+I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well-preserved lady of somewhat
+large stature, with a steady glare in her great round dark eyes that
+embarrassed me.
+
+Said my lady, ‘I have heard from my son, Mr. Silverman, that you would be
+glad of some preferment in the church.’  I gave my lady to understand
+that was so.
+
+‘I don’t know whether you are aware,’ my lady proceeded, ‘that we have a
+presentation to a living?  I say _we_ have; but, in point of fact, _I_
+have.’
+
+I gave my lady to understand that I had not been aware of this.
+
+Said my lady, ‘So it is: indeed I have two presentations,—one to two
+hundred a year, one to six.  Both livings are in our county,—North
+Devonshire,—as you probably know.  The first is vacant.  Would you like
+it?’
+
+What with my lady’s eyes, and what with the suddenness of this proposed
+gift, I was much confused.
+
+‘I am sorry it is not the larger presentation,’ said my lady, rather
+coldly; ‘though I will not, Mr. Silverman, pay you the bad compliment of
+supposing that _you_ are, because that would be mercenary,—and mercenary
+I am persuaded you are not.’
+
+Said I, with my utmost earnestness, ‘Thank you, Lady Fareway, thank you,
+thank you!  I should be deeply hurt if I thought I bore the character.’
+
+‘Naturally,’ said my lady.  ‘Always detestable, but particularly in a
+clergyman.  You have not said whether you will like the living?’
+
+With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I assured my lady
+that I accepted it most readily and gratefully.  I added that I hoped she
+would not estimate my appreciation of the generosity of her choice by my
+flow of words; for I was not a ready man in that respect when taken by
+surprise or touched at heart.
+
+‘The affair is concluded,’ said my lady; ‘concluded.  You will find the
+duties very light, Mr. Silverman.  Charming house; charming little
+garden, orchard, and all that.  You will be able to take pupils.  By the
+bye!  No: I will return to the word afterwards.  What was I going to
+mention, when it put me out?’
+
+My lady stared at me, as if I knew.  And I didn’t know.  And that
+perplexed me afresh.
+
+Said my lady, after some consideration, ‘O, of course, how very dull of
+me!  The last incumbent,—least mercenary man I ever saw,—in consideration
+of the duties being so light and the house so delicious, couldn’t rest,
+he said, unless I permitted him to help me with my correspondence,
+accounts, and various little things of that kind; nothing in themselves,
+but which it worries a lady to cope with.  Would Mr. Silverman also like
+to—?  Or shall I—?’
+
+I hastened to say that my poor help would be always at her ladyship’s
+service.
+
+‘I am absolutely blessed,’ said my lady, casting up her eyes (and so
+taking them off me for one moment), ‘in having to do with gentlemen who
+cannot endure an approach to the idea of being mercenary!’  She shivered
+at the word.  ‘And now as to the pupil.’
+
+‘The—?’ I was quite at a loss.
+
+‘Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is.  She is,’ said my lady,
+laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, ‘I do verily believe, the most
+extraordinary girl in this world.  Already knows more Greek and Latin
+than Lady Jane Grey.  And taught herself!  Has not yet, remember, derived
+a moment’s advantage from Mr. Silverman’s classical acquirements.  To say
+nothing of mathematics, which she is bent upon becoming versed in, and in
+which (as I hear from my son and others) Mr. Silverman’s reputation is so
+deservedly high!’
+
+Under my lady’s eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt persuaded; and yet
+I did not know where I could have dropped it.
+
+‘Adelina,’ said my lady, ‘is my only daughter.  If I did not feel quite
+convinced that I am not blinded by a mother’s partiality; unless I was
+absolutely sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it
+a high and unusual privilege to direct her studies,—I should introduce a
+mercenary element into this conversation, and ask you on what terms—’
+
+I entreated my lady to go no further.  My lady saw that I was troubled,
+and did me the honour to comply with my request.
+
+
+
+
+EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+EVERYTHING in mental acquisition that her brother might have been, if he
+would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirable qualities that
+no one but herself could be,—this was Adelina.
+
+I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her
+intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory, her
+sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced tutor who
+ministered to her wonderful gifts.  I was thirty then; I am over sixty
+now: she is ever present to me in these hours as she was in those, bright
+and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful and good.
+
+When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say?  In the first day? in
+the first week? in the first month?  Impossible to trace.  If I be (as I
+am) unable to represent to myself any previous period of my life as quite
+separable from her attracting power, how can I answer for this one
+detail?
+
+Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on me.  And yet,
+comparing it with the far heavier burden that I afterwards took up, it
+does not seem to me now to have been very hard to bear.  In the knowledge
+that I did love her, and that I should love her while my life lasted, and
+that I was ever to hide my secret deep in my own breast, and she was
+never to find it, there was a kind of sustaining joy or pride, or
+comfort, mingled with my pain.
+
+But later on,—say, a year later on,—when I made another discovery, then
+indeed my suffering and my struggle were strong.  That other discovery
+was—
+
+These words will never see the light, if ever, until my heart is dust;
+until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of which, when
+imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual glimpse of remembrance;
+until all the pulses that ever beat around us shall have long been quiet;
+until all the fruits of all the tiny victories and defeats achieved in
+our little breasts shall have withered away.  That discovery was that she
+loved me.
+
+She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me for that; she may have
+over-valued my discharge of duty to her, and loved me for that; she may
+have refined upon a playful compassion which she would sometimes show for
+what she called my want of wisdom, according to the light of the world’s
+dark lanterns, and loved me for that; she may—she must—have confused the
+borrowed light of what I had only learned, with its brightness in its
+pure, original rays; but she loved me at that time, and she made me know
+it.
+
+Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off from her in my
+lady’s eyes as if I had been some domesticated creature of another kind.
+But they could not put me farther from her than I put myself when I set
+my merits against hers.  More than that.  They could not put me, by
+millions of fathoms, half so low beneath her as I put myself when in
+imagination I took advantage of her noble trustfulness, took the fortune
+that I knew she must possess in her own right, and left her to find
+herself, in the zenith of her beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty,
+plodding me.
+
+No!  Worldliness should not enter here at any cost.  If I had tried to
+keep it out of other ground, how much harder was I bound to try to keep
+it out from this sacred place!
+
+But there was something daring in her broad, generous character, that
+demanded at so delicate a crisis to be delicately and patiently
+addressed.  And many and many a bitter night (O, I found I could cry for
+reasons not purely physical, at this pass of my life!) I took my course.
+
+My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously overstated the
+accommodation of my pretty house.  There was room in it for only one
+pupil.  He was a young gentleman near coming of age, very well connected,
+but what is called a poor relation.  His parents were dead.  The charges
+of his living and reading with me were defrayed by an uncle; and he and I
+were to do our utmost together for three years towards qualifying him to
+make his way.  At this time he had entered into his second year with me.
+He was well-looking, clever, energetic, enthusiastic; bold; in the best
+sense of the term, a thorough young Anglo-Saxon.
+
+I resolved to bring these two together.
+
+
+
+
+NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+SAID I, one night, when I had conquered myself, ‘Mr. Granville,’—Mr.
+Granville Wharton his name was,—‘I doubt if you have ever yet so much as
+seen Miss Fareway.’
+
+‘Well, sir,’ returned he, laughing, ‘you see her so much yourself, that
+you hardly leave another fellow a chance of seeing her.’
+
+‘I am her tutor, you know,’ said I.
+
+And there the subject dropped for that time.  But I so contrived as that
+they should come together shortly afterwards.  I had previously so
+contrived as to keep them asunder; for while I loved her,—I mean before I
+had determined on my sacrifice,—a lurking jealousy of Mr. Granville lay
+within my unworthy breast.
+
+It was quite an ordinary interview in the Fareway Park but they talked
+easily together for some time: like takes to like, and they had many
+points of resemblance.  Said Mr. Granville to me, when he and I sat at
+our supper that night, ‘Miss Fareway is remarkably beautiful, sir,
+remarkably engaging.  Don’t you think so?’  ‘I think so,’ said I.  And I
+stole a glance at him, and saw that he had reddened and was thoughtful.
+I remember it most vividly, because the mixed feeling of grave pleasure
+and acute pain that the slight circumstance caused me was the first of a
+long, long series of such mixed impressions under which my hair turned
+slowly gray.
+
+I had not much need to feign to be subdued; but I counterfeited to be
+older than I was in all respects (Heaven knows! my heart being all too
+young the while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and bookworm than I
+had really become, and gradually set up more and more of a fatherly
+manner towards Adelina.  Likewise I made my tuition less imaginative than
+before; separated myself from my poets and philosophers; was careful to
+present them in their own light, and me, their lowly servant, in my own
+shade.  Moreover, in the matter of apparel I was equally mindful; not
+that I had ever been dapper that way; but that I was slovenly now.
+
+As I depressed myself with one hand, so did I labour to raise Mr.
+Granville with the other; directing his attention to such subjects as I
+too well knew interested her, and fashioning him (do not deride or
+misconstrue the expression, unknown reader of this writing; for I have
+suffered!) into a greater resemblance to myself in my solitary one strong
+aspect.  And gradually, gradually, as I saw him take more and more to
+these thrown-out lures of mine, then did I come to know better and better
+that love was drawing him on, and was drawing her from me.
+
+So passed more than another year; every day a year in its number of my
+mixed impressions of grave pleasure and acute pain; and then these two,
+being of age and free to act legally for themselves, came before me hand
+in hand (my hair being now quite white), and entreated me that I would
+unite them together.  ‘And indeed, dear tutor,’ said Adelina, ‘it is but
+consistent in you that you should do this thing for us, seeing that we
+should never have spoken together that first time but for you, and that
+but for you we could never have met so often afterwards.’  The whole of
+which was literally true; for I had availed myself of my many business
+attendances on, and conferences with, my lady, to take Mr. Granville to
+the house, and leave him in the outer room with Adelina.
+
+ [Picture: And then these two came before me, hand in hand, and entreated
+                       me that I would unite them]
+
+I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage for her daughter, or
+to any marriage that was other than an exchange of her for stipulated
+lands, goods, and moneys.  But looking on the two, and seeing with full
+eyes that they were both young and beautiful; and knowing that they were
+alike in the tastes and acquirements that will outlive youth and beauty;
+and considering that Adelina had a fortune now, in her own keeping; and
+considering further that Mr. Granville, though for the present poor, was
+of a good family that had never lived in a cellar in Preston; and
+believing that their love would endure, neither having any great
+discrepancy to find out in the other,—I told them of my readiness to do
+this thing which Adelina asked of her dear tutor, and to send them forth,
+husband and wife, into the shining world with golden gates that awaited
+them.
+
+It was on a summer morning that I rose before the sun to compose myself
+for the crowning of my work with this end; and my dwelling being near to
+the sea, I walked down to the rocks on the shore, in order that I might
+behold the sun in his majesty.
+
+The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the firmament, the orderly
+withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy
+suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then burst
+forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the night.  Methought
+that all I looked on said to me, and that all I heard in the sea and in
+the air said to me, ‘Be comforted, mortal, that thy life is so short.
+Our preparation for what is to follow has endured, and shall endure, for
+unimaginable ages.’
+
+I married them.  I knew that my hand was cold when I placed it on their
+hands clasped together; but the words with which I had to accompany the
+action I could say without faltering, and I was at peace.
+
+They being well away from my house and from the place after our simple
+breakfast, the time was come when I must do what I had pledged myself to
+them that I would do,—break the intelligence to my lady.
+
+I went up to the house, and found my lady in her ordinary business-room.
+She happened to have an unusual amount of commissions to intrust to me
+that day; and she had filled my hands with papers before I could
+originate a word.
+
+‘My lady,’ I then began, as I stood beside her table.
+
+‘Why, what’s the matter?’ she said quickly, looking up.
+
+‘Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have prepared yourself, and
+considered a little.’
+
+‘Prepared myself; and considered a little!  You appear to have prepared
+_yourself_ but indifferently, anyhow, Mr. Silverman.’  This mighty
+scornfully, as I experienced my usual embarrassment under her stare.
+
+Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, ‘Lady Fareway, I have but to
+say for myself that I have tried to do my duty.’
+
+‘For yourself?’ repeated my lady.  ‘Then there are others concerned, I
+see.  Who are they?’
+
+I was about to answer, when she made towards the bell with a dart that
+stopped me, and said, ‘Why, where is Adelina?’
+
+‘Forbear! be calm, my lady.  I married her this morning to Mr. Granville
+Wharton.’
+
+She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever, raised her right
+hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek.
+
+‘Give me back those papers! give me back those papers!’  She tore them
+out of my hands, and tossed them on her table.  Then seating herself
+defiantly in her great chair, and folding her arms, she stabbed me to the
+heart with the unlooked-for reproach, ‘You worldly wretch!’
+
+‘Worldly?’ I cried.  ‘Worldly?’
+
+‘This, if you please,’—she went on with supreme scorn, pointing me out as
+if there were some one there to see,—‘this, if you please, is the
+disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his books!  This, if you
+please, is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in a bargain!
+This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman!  Not of this world; not he!  He
+has too much simplicity for this world’s cunning.  He has too much
+singleness of purpose to be a match for this world’s double-dealing.
+What did he give you for it?’
+
+‘For what?  And who?’
+
+‘How much,’ she asked, bending forward in her great chair, and
+insultingly tapping the fingers of her right hand on the palm of her
+left,—‘how much does Mr. Granville Wharton pay you for getting him
+Adelina’s money?  What is the amount of your percentage upon Adelina’s
+fortune?  What were the terms of the agreement that you proposed to this
+boy when you, the Rev. George Silverman, licensed to marry, engaged to
+put him in possession of this girl?  You made good terms for yourself,
+whatever they were.  He would stand a poor chance against your keenness.’
+
+Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, I could not
+speak.  But I trust that I looked innocent, being so.
+
+‘Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite,’ said my lady, whose anger increased as
+she gave it utterance; ‘attend to my words, you cunning schemer, who have
+carried this plot through with such a practised double face that I have
+never suspected you.  I had my projects for my daughter; projects for
+family connection; projects for fortune.  You have thwarted them, and
+overreached me; but I am not one to be thwarted and overreached without
+retaliation.  Do you mean to hold this living another month?’
+
+‘Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can hold it another hour,
+under your injurious words?’
+
+‘Is it resigned, then?’
+
+‘It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes ago.’
+
+Don’t equivocate, sir.  _Is_ it resigned?’
+
+‘Unconditionally and entirely; and I would that I had never, never come
+near it!’
+
+‘A cordial response from me to _that_ wish, Mr. Silverman!  But take this
+with you, sir.  If you had not resigned it, I would have had you deprived
+of it.  And though you have resigned it, you will not get quit of me as
+easily as you think for.  I will pursue you with this story.  I will make
+this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for money, known.  You have made
+money by it, but you have at the same time made an enemy by it.  _You_
+will take good care that the money sticks to you; I will take good care
+that the enemy sticks to you.’
+
+Then said I finally, ‘Lady Fareway, I think my heart is broken.  Until I
+came into this room just now, the possibility of such mean wickedness as
+you have imputed to me never dawned upon my thoughts.  Your suspicions—’
+
+‘Suspicions!  Pah!’ said she indignantly.  ‘Certainties.’
+
+‘Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your suspicions as I call
+them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of foundation in fact.  I can
+declare no more; except that I have not acted for my own profit or my own
+pleasure.  I have not in this proceeding considered myself.  Once again,
+I think my heart is broken.  If I have unwittingly done any wrong with a
+righteous motive, that is some penalty to pay.’
+
+She received this with another and more indignant ‘Pah!’ and I made my
+way out of her room (I think I felt my way out with my hands, although my
+eyes were open), almost suspecting that my voice had a repulsive sound,
+and that I was a repulsive object.
+
+There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed to, I received a
+severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped suspension.  For years a cloud
+hung over me, and my name was tarnished.
+
+But my heart did not break, if a broken heart involves death; for I lived
+through it.
+
+They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through it all.  Those who had
+known me at college, and even most of those who had only known me there
+by reputation, stood by me too.  Little by little, the belief widened
+that I was not capable of what was laid to my charge.  At length I was
+presented to a college-living in a sequestered place, and there I now pen
+my explanation.  I pen it at my open window in the summer-time, before
+me, lying in the churchyard, equal resting-place for sound hearts,
+wounded hearts, and broken hearts.  I pen it for the relief of my own
+mind, not foreseeing whether or no it will ever have a reader.
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Silverman's Explanation, by Charles
+Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: George Silverman's Explanation
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 25, 2014  [eBook #810]
+[This file was first posted on February 6, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall &ldquo;Hard Times
+and Reprinted Pieces&rdquo; edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>GEORGE SILVERMAN&rsquo;S EXPLANATION</h1>
+<h2>FIRST CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> happened in this wise&mdash;</p>
+<p>But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words
+again, without descrying any hint in them of the words that
+should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt
+appearance.&nbsp; They may serve, however, if I let them remain,
+to suggest how very difficult I find it to begin to explain my
+explanation.&nbsp; An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not see my way
+to a better.</p>
+<h2>SECOND CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> happened in <i>this</i>
+wise&mdash;</p>
+<p>But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former
+opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated.&nbsp; This
+is the more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a
+new connection.&nbsp; For indeed I declare that my intention was
+to discard the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to
+give the preference to another of an entirely different nature,
+dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life.&nbsp; I
+will make a third trial, without erasing this second failure,
+protesting that it is not my design to conceal any of my
+infirmities, whether they be of head or heart.</p>
+<h2>THIRD CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Not</span> as yet directly aiming at how
+it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees.&nbsp; The
+natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon
+me.</p>
+<p>My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my
+infant home was a cellar in Preston.&nbsp; I recollect the sound
+of father&rsquo;s Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above,
+as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all
+other clogs; and I recollect, that, when mother came down the
+cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet having
+a good or an ill-tempered look,&mdash;on her knees,&mdash;on her
+waist,&mdash;until finally her face came into view, and settled
+the question.&nbsp; From this it will be seen that I was timid,
+and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was
+very low.</p>
+<p>Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon
+her figure, and not least of all upon her voice.&nbsp; Her sharp
+and high-pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the
+compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way
+of rolling her eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded,
+that was gaunt and hungry.&nbsp; Father, with his shoulders
+rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the
+empty grate, until she would pluck the stool from under him, and
+bid him go bring some money home.&nbsp; Then he would dismally
+ascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers
+together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge from
+mother&rsquo;s pursuing grasp at my hair.</p>
+<p>A worldly little devil was mother&rsquo;s usual name for
+me.&nbsp; Whether I cried for that I was in the dark, or for that
+it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed
+myself into a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate
+voraciously when there was food, she would still say, &lsquo;O,
+you worldly little devil!&rsquo;&nbsp; And the sting of it was,
+that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.&nbsp;
+Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
+wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
+compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
+and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.</p>
+<p>Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would
+be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time.&nbsp; I
+was at my worldliest then.&nbsp; Left alone, I yielded myself up
+to a worldly yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and
+for the death of mother&rsquo;s father, who was a machine-maker
+at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother say, she
+would come into a whole courtful of houses &lsquo;if she had her
+rights.&rsquo;&nbsp; Worldly little devil, I would stand about,
+musingly fitting my cold bare feet into cracked bricks and
+crevices of the damp cellar-floor,&mdash;walking over my
+grandfather&rsquo;s body, so to speak, into the courtful of
+houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to
+wear.</p>
+<p>At last a change came down into our cellar.&nbsp; The
+universal change came down even as low as that,&mdash;so will it
+mount to any height on which a human creature can
+perch,&mdash;and brought other changes with it.</p>
+<p>We had a heap of I don&rsquo;t know what foul litter in the
+darkest corner, which we called &lsquo;the bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; For
+three days mother lay upon it without getting up, and then began
+at times to laugh.&nbsp; If I had ever heard her laugh before, it
+had been so seldom that the strange sound frightened me.&nbsp; It
+frightened father too; and we took it by turns to give her
+water.&nbsp; Then she began to move her head from side to side,
+and sing.&nbsp; After that, she getting no better, father fell
+a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
+both water, and they both died.</p>
+<h2>FOURTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> I was lifted out of the cellar
+by two men, of whom one came peeping down alone first, and ran
+away and brought the other, I could hardly bear the light of the
+street.&nbsp; I was sitting in the road-way, blinking at it, and
+at a ring of people collected around me, but not close to me,
+when, true to my character of worldly little devil, I broke
+silence by saying, &lsquo;I am hungry and thirsty!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Does he know they are dead?&rsquo; asked one of
+another.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you know your father and mother are both dead of
+fever?&rsquo; asked a third of me severely.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it is to be dead.&nbsp; I
+supposed it meant that, when the cup rattled against their teeth,
+and the water spilt over them.&nbsp; I am hungry and
+thirsty.&rsquo;&nbsp; That was all I had to say about it.</p>
+<p>The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I
+looked around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be
+camphor, thrown in towards where I sat.&nbsp; Presently some one
+put a great vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me; and
+then they all looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of
+what was brought for me.&nbsp; I knew at the time they had a
+horror of me, but I couldn&rsquo;t help it.</p>
+<p>I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion
+had begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next,
+when I heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, &lsquo;My
+name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West
+Bromwich.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then the ring split in one place; and a
+yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in iron-gray to his
+gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman and another official of
+some sort.&nbsp; He came forward close to the vessel of smoking
+vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself carefully, and me
+copiously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who
+is just dead too,&rsquo; said Mr. Hawkyard.</p>
+<p>I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening
+manner, &lsquo;Where&rsquo;s his houses?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hah!&nbsp; Horrible worldliness on the edge of the
+grave,&rsquo; said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over
+me, as if to get my devil out of me.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have
+undertaken a slight&mdash;a very slight&mdash;trust in behalf of
+this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of mere honour, if
+not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon myself, and it
+shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman
+much more favourable than their opinion of me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He shall be taught,&rsquo; said Mr. Hawkyard,
+&lsquo;(O, yes, he shall be taught!) but what is to be done with
+him for the present?&nbsp; He may be infected.&nbsp; He may
+disseminate infection.&rsquo;&nbsp; The ring widened
+considerably.&nbsp; &lsquo;What is to be done with
+him?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He held some talk with the two officials.&nbsp; I could
+distinguish no word save &lsquo;Farm-house.&rsquo;&nbsp; There
+was another sound several times repeated, which was wholly
+meaningless in my ears then, but which I knew afterwards to be
+&lsquo;Hoghton Towers.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said Mr. Hawkyard.&nbsp; &lsquo;I think
+that sounds promising; I think that sounds hopeful.&nbsp; And he
+can be put by himself in a ward, for a night or two, you
+say?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was
+he who replied, Yes!&nbsp; It was he, too, who finally took me by
+the arm, and walked me before him through the streets, into a
+whitewashed room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit
+in, a table to sit at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie
+upon, and a rug and blanket to cover me.&nbsp; Where I had enough
+to eat too, and was shown how to clean the tin porringer in which
+it was conveyed to me, until it was as good as a
+looking-glass.&nbsp; Here, likewise, I was put in a bath, and had
+new clothes brought to me; and my old rags were burnt, and I was
+camphored and vinegared and disinfected in a variety of ways.</p>
+<p>When all this was done,&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know in how many
+days or how few, but it matters not,&mdash;Mr. Hawkyard stepped
+in at the door, remaining close to it, and said, &lsquo;Go and
+stand against the opposite wall, George Silverman.&nbsp; As far
+off as you can.&nbsp; That&rsquo;ll do.&nbsp; How do you
+feel?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I told him that I didn&rsquo;t feel cold, and didn&rsquo;t
+feel hungry, and didn&rsquo;t feel thirsty.&nbsp; That was the
+whole round of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain
+of being beaten.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;you are going, George, to
+a healthy farm-house to be purified.&nbsp; Keep in the air there
+as much as you can.&nbsp; Live an out-of-door life there, until
+you are fetched away.&nbsp; You had better not say much&mdash;in
+fact, you had better be very careful not to say
+anything&mdash;about what your parents died of, or they might not
+like to take you in.&nbsp; Behave well, and I&rsquo;ll put you to
+school; O, yes!&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll put you to school, though
+I&rsquo;m not obligated to do it.&nbsp; I am a servant of the
+Lord, George; and I have been a good servant to him, I have,
+these five-and-thirty years.&nbsp; The Lord has had a good
+servant in me, and he knows it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot
+imagine.&nbsp; As little do I know when I began to comprehend
+that he was a prominent member of some obscure denomination or
+congregation, every member of which held forth to the rest when
+so inclined, and among whom he was called Brother Hawkyard.&nbsp;
+It was enough for me to know, on that day in the ward, that the
+farmer&rsquo;s cart was waiting for me at the street
+corner.&nbsp; I was not slow to get into it; for it was the first
+ride I ever had in my life.</p>
+<p>It made me sleepy, and I slept.&nbsp; First, I stared at
+Preston streets as long as they lasted; and, meanwhile, I may
+have had some small dumb wondering within me whereabouts our
+cellar was; but I doubt it.&nbsp; Such a worldly little devil was
+I, that I took no thought who would bury father and mother, or
+where they would be buried, or when.&nbsp; The question whether
+the eating and drinking by day, and the covering by night, would
+be as good at the farm-house as at the ward superseded those
+questions.</p>
+<p>The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me; and I
+found that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a
+rutty by-road through a field.&nbsp; And so, by fragments of an
+ancient terrace, and by some rugged outbuildings that had once
+been fortified, and passing under a ruined gateway we came to the
+old farm-house in the thick stone wall outside the old quadrangle
+of Hoghton Towers: which I looked at like a stupid savage, seeing
+no specially in, seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses
+to resemble it; assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent
+cause of all ruin that I knew,&mdash;poverty; eyeing the pigeons
+in their flights, the cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the
+pond, and the fowls pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope
+that plenty of them might be killed for dinner while I stayed
+there; wondering whether the scrubbed dairy vessels, drying in
+the sunlight, could be goodly porringers out of which the master
+ate his belly-filling food, and which he polished when he had
+done, according to my ward experience; shrinkingly doubtful
+whether the shadows, passing over that airy height on the bright
+spring day, were not something in the nature of
+frowns,&mdash;sordid, afraid, unadmiring,&mdash;a small brute to
+shudder at.</p>
+<p>To that time I had never had the faintest impression of
+duty.&nbsp; I had had no knowledge whatever that there was
+anything lovely in this life.&nbsp; When I had occasionally slunk
+up the cellar-steps into the street, and glared in at
+shop-windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may
+suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf-cub.&nbsp; It is
+equally the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense of
+holding unselfish converse with myself.&nbsp; I had been solitary
+often enough, but nothing better.</p>
+<p>Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day,
+in the kitchen of the old farm-house.&nbsp; Such was my condition
+when I lay on my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched
+out opposite the narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of
+the moon, like a young vampire.</p>
+<h2>FIFTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">What</span> do I know of Hoghton
+Towers?&nbsp; Very little; for I have been gratefully unwilling
+to disturb my first impressions.&nbsp; A house, centuries old, on
+high ground a mile or so removed from the road between Preston
+and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in his hurry to
+make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of those
+remunerative dignitaries.&nbsp; A house, centuries old, deserted
+and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since
+grass-land or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing
+below it, and a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the
+supernatural prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a
+counter-blast, hinting at steam-power, powerful in two
+distances.</p>
+<p>What did I know then of Hoghton Towers?&nbsp; When I first
+peeped in at the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started
+from the mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its
+guardian ghost; when I stole round by the back of the farm-house,
+and got in among the ancient rooms, many of them with their
+floors and ceilings falling, the beams and rafters hanging
+dangerously down, the plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken
+panels stripped away, the windows half walled up, half broken;
+when I discovered a gallery commanding the old kitchen, and
+looked down between balustrades upon a massive old table and
+benches, fearing to see I know not what dead-alive creatures come
+in and seat themselves, and look up with I know not what dreadful
+eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when all over the house I was awed
+by gaps and chinks where the sky stared sorrowfully at me, where
+the birds passed, and the ivy rustled, and the stains of winter
+weather blotched the rotten floors; when down at the bottom of
+dark pits of staircase, into which the stairs had sunk, green
+leaves trembled, butterflies fluttered, and bees hummed in and
+out through the broken door-ways; when encircling the whole ruin
+were sweet scents, and sights of fresh green growth, and
+ever-renewing life, that I had never dreamed of,&mdash;I say,
+when I passed into such clouded perception of these things as my
+dark soul could compass, what did I know then of Hoghton
+Towers?</p>
+<p>I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me.&nbsp;
+Therein have I anticipated the answer.&nbsp; I knew that all
+these things looked sorrowfully at me; that they seemed to sigh
+or whisper, not without pity for me, &lsquo;Alas! poor worldly
+little devil!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the
+smaller pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked
+in.&nbsp; They were scuffling for some prey that was there; and,
+when they started and hid themselves close together in the dark,
+I thought of the old life (it had grown old already) in the
+cellar.</p>
+<p>How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a
+repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats?&nbsp; I hid
+in a corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself,
+and crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause
+not purely physical), and I tried to think about it.&nbsp; One of
+the farm-ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it
+seemed to help me as it went on with its two horses up and down
+the field so peacefully and quietly.</p>
+<p>There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family,
+and she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at
+meal-times.&nbsp; It had come into my mind, at our first dinner,
+that she might take the fever from me.&nbsp; The thought had not
+disquieted me then.&nbsp; I had only speculated how she would
+look under the altered circumstances, and whether she would
+die.&nbsp; But it came into my mind now, that I might try to
+prevent her taking the fever by keeping away from her.&nbsp; I
+knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the
+less worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought.</p>
+<p>From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret
+corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she
+went to bed.&nbsp; At first, when meals were ready, I used to
+hear them calling me; and then my resolution weakened.&nbsp; But
+I strengthened it again by going farther off into the ruin, and
+getting out of hearing.&nbsp; I often watched for her at the dim
+windows; and, when I saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much
+happier.</p>
+<p>Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of
+myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me.&nbsp; I
+felt, in some sort, dignified by the pride of protecting
+her,&mdash;by the pride of making the sacrifice for her.&nbsp; As
+my heart swelled with that new feeling, it insensibly softened
+about mother and father.&nbsp; It seemed to have been frozen
+before, and now to be thawed.&nbsp; The old ruin and all the
+lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me only, but
+sorrowful for mother and father as well.&nbsp; Therefore did I
+cry again, and often too.</p>
+<p>The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper,
+and were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such
+broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours.&nbsp; One
+night when I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia
+(that was her pretty name) had but just gone out of the
+room.&nbsp; Seeing her ascending the opposite stairs, I stood
+still at the door.&nbsp; She had heard the clink of the latch,
+and looked round.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;George,&rsquo; she called to me in a pleased voice,
+&lsquo;to-morrow is my birthday; and we are to have a fiddler,
+and there&rsquo;s a party of boys and girls coming in a cart, and
+we shall dance.&nbsp; I invite you.&nbsp; Be sociable for once,
+George.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am very sorry, miss,&rsquo; I answered; &lsquo;but
+I&mdash;but, no; I can&rsquo;t come.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,&rsquo; she
+returned disdainfully; &lsquo;and I ought not to have asked
+you.&nbsp; I shall never speak to you again.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone,
+I felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Eh, lad!&rsquo; said he; &lsquo;Sylvy&rsquo;s
+right.&nbsp; You&rsquo;re as moody and broody a lad as never I
+set eyes on yet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said
+coldly, &lsquo;Maybe not, maybe not!&nbsp; There, get thy supper,
+get thy supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart&rsquo;s
+content again.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching
+for the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they
+could have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly
+statue, listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and
+watching the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when
+all the ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I
+crept up to bed by the back way, comforting myself with the
+reflection, &lsquo;They will take no hurt from
+me,&rsquo;&mdash;they would not have thought mine a morose or an
+unsocial nature.</p>
+<p>It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition;
+to be of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to
+have an inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being
+sordid or worldly.&nbsp; It was in these ways that my nature came
+to shape itself to such a mould, even before it was affected by
+the influences of the studious and retired life of a poor
+scholar.</p>
+<h2>SIXTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Brother Hawkyard</span> (as he insisted on
+my calling him) put me to school, and told me to work my
+way.&nbsp; &lsquo;You are all right, George,&rsquo; he
+said.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have been the best servant the Lord has had
+in his service for this five-and-thirty year (O, I have!); and he
+knows the value of such a servant as I have been to him (O, yes,
+he does!); and he&rsquo;ll prosper your schooling as a part of my
+reward.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what <i>he</i>&rsquo;ll do,
+George.&nbsp; He&rsquo;ll do it for me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the
+ways of the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on Brother
+Hawkyard&rsquo;s part.&nbsp; As I grew a little wiser, and still
+a little wiser, I liked it less and less.&nbsp; His manner, too,
+of confirming himself in a parenthesis,&mdash;as if, knowing
+himself, he doubted his own word,&mdash;I found
+distasteful.&nbsp; I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me;
+for I had a dread that they were worldly.</p>
+<p>As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good
+foundation, and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing.&nbsp; When I had
+worked my way so far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of
+ultimately getting a presentation to college and a
+fellowship.&nbsp; My health has never been strong (some vapour
+from the Preston cellar cleaves to me, I think); and what with
+much work and some weakness, I came again to be
+regarded&mdash;that is, by my fellow-students&mdash;as
+unsocial.</p>
+<p>All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a few
+miles of Brother Hawkyard&rsquo;s congregation; and whenever I
+was what we called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over there at
+his desire.&nbsp; Before the knowledge became forced upon me that
+outside their place of meeting these brothers and sisters were no
+better than the rest of the human family, but on the whole were,
+to put the case mildly, as bad as most, in respect of giving
+short weight in their shops, and not speaking the truth,&mdash;I
+say, before this knowledge became forced upon me, their prolix
+addresses, their inordinate conceit, their daring ignorance,
+their investment of the Supreme Ruler of heaven and earth with
+their own miserable meannesses and littlenesses, greatly shocked
+me.&nbsp; Still, as their term for the frame of mind that could
+not perceive them to be in an exalted state of grace was the
+&lsquo;worldly&rsquo; state, I did for a time suffer tortures
+under my inquiries of myself whether that young worldly-devilish
+spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at the bottom of my
+non-appreciation.</p>
+<p>Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly,
+and generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform
+with a table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday
+afternoon.&nbsp; He was by trade a drysalter.&nbsp; Brother
+Gimblet, an elderly man with a crabbed face, a large
+dog&rsquo;s-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue neckerchief
+reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a drysalter
+and an expounder.&nbsp; Brother Gimblet professed the greatest
+admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than
+once) bore him a jealous grudge.</p>
+<p>Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains
+here to read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the
+language and customs of the congregation in question I write
+scrupulously, literally, exactly, from the life and the
+truth.</p>
+<p>On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried
+for, and when it was certain that I was going up to college,
+Brother Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you
+when I began, that I didn&rsquo;t know a word of what I was going
+to say to you (and no, I did not!), but that it was all one to
+me, because I knew the Lord would put into my mouth the words I
+wanted.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(&lsquo;That&rsquo;s it!&rsquo; from Brother Gimblet.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And he did put into my mouth the words I
+wanted.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(&lsquo;So he did!&rsquo; from Brother Gimblet.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And why?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(&lsquo;Ah, let&rsquo;s have that!&rsquo; from Brother
+Gimblet.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because I have been his faithful servant for
+five-and-thirty years, and because he knows it.&nbsp; For
+five-and-thirty years!&nbsp; And he knows it, mind you!&nbsp; I
+got those words that I wanted on account of my wages.&nbsp; I got
+&rsquo;em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners.&nbsp; Down! I said,
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a heap of wages due; let us have something
+down, on account.&rdquo;&nbsp; And I got it down, and I paid it
+over to you; and you won&rsquo;t wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet
+in a towel, nor yet pocketankercher, but you&rsquo;ll put it out
+at good interest.&nbsp; Very well.&nbsp; Now, my brothers and
+sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going to conclude with a
+question, and I&rsquo;ll make it so plain (with the help of the
+Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather hope!) as that
+the Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your
+heads,&mdash;which he would be overjoyed to do.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(&lsquo;Just his way.&nbsp; Crafty old blackguard!&rsquo; from
+Brother Gimblet.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And the question is this, Are the angels
+learned?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(&lsquo;Not they.&nbsp; Not a bit on it!&rsquo; from Brother
+Gimblet, with the greatest confidence.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not they.&nbsp; And where&rsquo;s the proof? sent
+ready-made by the hand of the Lord.&nbsp; Why, there&rsquo;s one
+among us here now, that has got all the learning that can be
+crammed into him.&nbsp; <i>I</i> got him all the learning that
+could be crammed into him.&nbsp; His grandfather&rsquo; (this I
+had never heard before) &lsquo;was a brother of ours.&nbsp; He
+was Brother Parksop.&nbsp; That&rsquo;s what he was.&nbsp;
+Parksop; Brother Parksop.&nbsp; His worldly name was Parksop, and
+he was a brother of this brotherhood.&nbsp; Then wasn&rsquo;t he
+Brother Parksop?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>(&lsquo;Must be.&nbsp; Couldn&rsquo;t help hisself!&rsquo;
+from Brother Gimblet.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, he left that one now here present among us to the
+care of a brother-sinner of his (and that brother-sinner, mind
+you, was a sinner of a bigger size in his time than any of you;
+praise the Lord!), Brother Hawkyard.&nbsp; Me.&nbsp; <i>I</i> got
+him without fee or reward,&mdash;without a morsel of myrrh, or
+frankincense, nor yet amber, letting alone the
+honeycomb,&mdash;all the learning that could be crammed into
+him.&nbsp; Has it brought him into our temple, in the
+spirit?&nbsp; No.&nbsp; Have we had any ignorant brothers and
+sisters that didn&rsquo;t know round O from crooked S, come in
+among us meanwhile?&nbsp; Many.&nbsp; Then the angels are
+<i>not</i> learned; then they don&rsquo;t so much as know their
+alphabet.&nbsp; And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having
+brought it to that, perhaps some brother present&mdash;perhaps
+you, Brother Gimblet&mdash;will pray a bit for us?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having
+drawn his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered,
+&lsquo;Well!&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know as I see my way to hitting
+any of you quite in the right place neither.&rsquo;&nbsp; He said
+this with a dark smile, and then began to bellow.&nbsp; What we
+were specially to be preserved from, according to his
+solicitations, was, despoilment of the orphan, suppression of
+testamentary intentions on the part of a father or (say)
+grandfather, appropriation of the orphan&rsquo;s house-property,
+feigning to give in charity to the wronged one from whom we
+withheld his due; and that class of sins.&nbsp; He ended with the
+petition, &lsquo;Give us peace!&rsquo; which, speaking for
+myself, was very much needed after twenty minutes of his
+bellowing.</p>
+<p>Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees,
+steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even
+though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard&rsquo;s tone of
+congratulating him on the vigour with which he had roared, I
+should have detected a malicious application in this
+prayer.&nbsp; Unformed suspicions to a similar effect had
+sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier school-days, and
+had always caused me great distress; for they were worldly in
+their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that had drawn
+me from Sylvia.&nbsp; They were sordid suspicions, without a
+shadow of proof.&nbsp; They were worthy to have originated in the
+unwholesome cellar.&nbsp; They were not only without proof, but
+against proof; for was I not myself a living proof of what
+Brother Hawkyard had done? and without him, how should I ever
+have seen the sky look sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at
+Hoghton Towers?</p>
+<p>Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage
+selfishness was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and
+could act in an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on
+my guard against any tendency to such relapse.&nbsp; After
+getting these suspicions under my feet, I had been troubled by
+not being able to like Brother Hawkyard&rsquo;s manner, or his
+professed religion.&nbsp; So it came about, that, as I walked
+back that Sunday evening, I thought it would be an act of
+reparation for any such injury my struggling thoughts had
+unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and placed in his hands, before
+going to college, a full acknowledgment of his goodness to me,
+and an ample tribute of thanks.&nbsp; It might serve as an
+implied vindication of him against any dark scandal from a rival
+brother and expounder, or from any other quarter.</p>
+<p>Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care.&nbsp; I may
+add with much feeling too; for it affected me as I went on.&nbsp;
+Having no set studies to pursue, in the brief interval between
+leaving the Foundation and going to Cambridge, I determined to
+walk out to his place of business, and give it into his own
+hands.</p>
+<p>It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door of his
+little counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long,
+low shop.&nbsp; As I did so (having entered by the back yard,
+where casks and boxes were taken in, and where there was the
+inscription, &lsquo;Private way to the counting-house&rsquo;), a
+shopman called to me from the counter that he was engaged.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Gimblet&rsquo; (said the shopman, who was one
+of the brotherhood) &lsquo;is with him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to
+tap again.&nbsp; They were talking in a low tone, and money was
+passing; for I heard it being counted out.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Who is it?&rsquo; asked Brother Hawkyard, sharply.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;George Silverman,&rsquo; I answered, holding the door
+open.&nbsp; &lsquo;May I come in?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shyer
+than usual.&nbsp; But they looked quite cadaverous in the early
+gaslight, and perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated
+the expression of their faces.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What is the matter?&rsquo; asked Brother Hawkyard.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ay! what is the matter?&rsquo; asked Brother
+Gimblet.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing at all,&rsquo; I said, diffidently producing my
+document: &lsquo;I am only the bearer of a letter from
+myself.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;From yourself, George?&rsquo; cried Brother
+Hawkyard.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And to you,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And to me, George?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking over it,
+and seeing generally what it was, became less hurried, recovered
+his colour, and said, &lsquo;Praise the Lord!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That&rsquo;s it!&rsquo; cried Brother Gimblet.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Well put!&nbsp; Amen.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain, &lsquo;You
+must know, George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make
+our two businesses one.&nbsp; We are going into
+partnership.&nbsp; We are settling it now.&nbsp; Brother Gimblet
+is to take one clear half of the profits (O, yes! he shall have
+it; he shall have it to the last farthing).&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;D.V.!&rsquo; said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist
+firmly clinched on his right leg.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is no objection,&rsquo; pursued Brother Hawkyard,
+&lsquo;to my reading this aloud, George?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As it was what I expressly desired should be done, after
+yesterday&rsquo;s prayer, I more than readily begged him to read
+it aloud.&nbsp; He did so; and Brother Gimblet listened with a
+crabbed smile.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was in a good hour that I came here,&rsquo; he said,
+wrinkling up his eyes.&nbsp; &lsquo;It was in a good hour,
+likewise, that I was moved yesterday to depict for the terror of
+evil-doers a character the direct opposite of Brother
+Hawkyard&rsquo;s.&nbsp; But it was the Lord that done it: I felt
+him at it while I was perspiring.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>After that it was proposed by both of them that I should
+attend the congregation once more before my final
+departure.&nbsp; What my shy reserve would undergo, from being
+expressly preached at and prayed at, I knew beforehand.&nbsp; But
+I reflected that it would be for the last time, and that it might
+add to the weight of my letter.&nbsp; It was well known to the
+brothers and sisters that there was no place taken for me in
+<i>their</i> paradise; and if I showed this last token of
+deference to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own
+sinful inclinations, it might go some little way in aid of my
+statement that he had been good to me, and that I was grateful to
+him.&nbsp; Merely stipulating, therefore, that no express
+endeavour should be made for my conversion,&mdash;which would
+involve the rolling of several brothers and sisters on the floor,
+declaring that they felt all their sins in a heap on their left
+side, weighing so many pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I
+had seen of those repulsive mysteries,&mdash;I promised.</p>
+<p>Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been at
+intervals wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue
+neckerchief, and grinning to himself.&nbsp; It was, however, a
+habit that brother had, to grin in an ugly manner even when
+expounding.&nbsp; I call to mind a delighted snarl with which he
+used to detail from the platform the torments reserved for the
+wicked (meaning all human creation except the brotherhood), as
+being remarkably hideous.</p>
+<p>I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and
+count money; and I never saw them again but on the following
+Sunday.&nbsp; Brother Hawkyard died within two or three years,
+leaving all he possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue of a will
+dated (as I have been told) that very day.</p>
+<p>Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came,
+knowing that I had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother
+Hawkyard in the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to
+that coarse chapel, in a less sensitive state than usual.&nbsp;
+How could I foresee that the delicate, perhaps the diseased,
+corner of my mind, where I winced and shrunk when it was touched,
+or was even approached, would be handled as the theme of the
+whole proceedings?</p>
+<p>On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray,
+and to Brother Gimblet to preach.&nbsp; The prayer was to open
+the ceremonies; the discourse was to come next.&nbsp; Brothers
+Hawkyard and Gimblet were both on the platform; Brother Hawkyard
+on his knees at the table, unmusically ready to pray; Brother
+Gimblet sitting against the wall, grinningly ready to preach.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers
+and sisters and fellow-sinners.&rsquo;&nbsp; Yes; but it was I
+who was the sacrifice.&nbsp; It was our poor, sinful,
+worldly-minded brother here present who was wrestled for.&nbsp;
+The now-opening career of this our unawakened brother might lead
+to his becoming a minister of what was called &lsquo;the
+church.&rsquo;&nbsp; That was what <i>he</i> looked to.&nbsp; The
+church.&nbsp; Not the chapel, Lord.&nbsp; The church.&nbsp; No
+rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons, no bishops, no archbishops,
+in the chapel, but, O Lord! many such in the church.&nbsp;
+Protect our sinful brother from his love of lucre.&nbsp; Cleanse
+from our unawakened brother&rsquo;s breast his sin of
+worldly-mindedness.&nbsp; The prayer said infinitely more in
+words, but nothing more to any intelligible effect.</p>
+<p>Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he
+would) the text, &lsquo;My kingdom is not of this
+world.&rsquo;&nbsp; Ah! but whose was, my fellow-sinners?&nbsp;
+Whose?&nbsp; Why, our brother&rsquo;s here present was.&nbsp; The
+only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world.&nbsp;
+(&lsquo;That&rsquo;s it!&rsquo; from several of the
+congregation.)&nbsp; What did the woman do when she lost the
+piece of money?&nbsp; Went and looked for it.&nbsp; What should
+our brother do when he lost his way?&nbsp; (&lsquo;Go and look
+for it,&rsquo; from a sister.)&nbsp; Go and look for it,
+true.&nbsp; But must he look for it in the right direction, or in
+the wrong?&nbsp; (&lsquo;In the right,&rsquo; from a
+brother.)&nbsp; There spake the prophets!&nbsp; He must look for
+it in the right direction, or he couldn&rsquo;t find it.&nbsp;
+But he had turned his back upon the right direction, and he
+wouldn&rsquo;t find it.&nbsp; Now, my fellow-sinners, to show you
+the difference betwixt worldly-mindedness and
+unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this world and
+kingdoms <i>of</i> this world, here was a letter wrote by even
+our worldly-minded brother unto Brother Hawkyard.&nbsp; Judge,
+from hearing of it read, whether Brother Hawkyard was the
+faithful steward that the Lord had in his mind only t&rsquo;other
+day, when, in this very place, he drew you the picter of the
+unfaithful one; for it was him that done it, not me.&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t doubt that!</p>
+<p>Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed his way through my
+composition, and subsequently through an hour.&nbsp; The service
+closed with a hymn, in which the brothers unanimously roared, and
+the sisters unanimously shrieked at me, That I by wiles of
+worldly gain was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were
+rocked; that I with mammon struggled in the dark, while they were
+floating in a second ark.</p>
+<p>I went out from all this with an aching heart and a weary
+spirit: not because I was quite so weak as to consider these
+narrow creatures interpreters of the Divine Majesty and Wisdom,
+but because I was weak enough to feel as though it were my hard
+fortune to be misrepresented and misunderstood, when I most tried
+to subdue any risings of mere worldliness within me, and when I
+most hoped that, by dint of trying earnestly, I had
+succeeded.</p>
+<h2>SEVENTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p>MY timidity and my obscurity occasioned me to live a secluded
+life at college, and to be little known.&nbsp; No relative ever
+came to visit me, for I had no relative.&nbsp; No intimate
+friends broke in upon my studies, for I made no intimate
+friends.&nbsp; I supported myself on my scholarship, and read
+much.&nbsp; My college time was otherwise not so very different
+from my time at Hoghton Towers.</p>
+<p>Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social
+existence, but believing myself qualified to do my duty in a
+moderate, though earnest way, if I could obtain some small
+preferment in the Church, I applied my mind to the clerical
+profession.&nbsp; In due sequence I took orders, was ordained,
+and began to look about me for employment.&nbsp; I must observe
+that I had taken a good degree, that I had succeeded in winning a
+good fellowship, and that my means were ample for my retired way
+of life.&nbsp; By this time I had read with several young men;
+and the occupation increased my income, while it was highly
+interesting to me.&nbsp; I once accidentally overheard our
+greatest don say, to my boundless joy, &lsquo;That he heard it
+reported of Silverman that his gift of quiet explanation, his
+patience, his amiable temper, and his conscientiousness made him
+the best of coaches.&rsquo;&nbsp; May my &lsquo;gift of quiet
+explanation&rsquo; come more seasonably and powerfully to my aid
+in this present explanation than I think it will!</p>
+<p>It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation of my
+college-rooms (in a corner where the daylight was sobered), but
+it is in a much larger degree referable to the state of my own
+mind, that I seem to myself, on looking back to this time of my
+life, to have been always in the peaceful shade.&nbsp; I can see
+others in the sunlight; I can see our boats&rsquo; crews and our
+athletic young men on the glistening water, or speckled with the
+moving lights of sunlit leaves; but I myself am always in the
+shadow looking on.&nbsp; Not unsympathetically,&mdash;God
+forbid!&mdash;but looking on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia
+from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at the red gleam
+shining through the farmer&rsquo;s windows, and listened to the
+fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in
+the quadrangle.</p>
+<p>I now come to the reason of my quoting that laudation of
+myself above given.&nbsp; Without such reason, to repeat it would
+have been mere boastfulness.</p>
+<p>Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fareway, second son
+of Lady Fareway, widow of Sir Gaston Fareway, baronet.&nbsp; This
+young gentleman&rsquo;s abilities were much above the average;
+but he came of a rich family, and was idle and luxurious.&nbsp;
+He presented himself to me too late, and afterwards came to me
+too irregularly, to admit of my being of much service to
+him.&nbsp; In the end, I considered it my duty to dissuade him
+from going up for an examination which he could never pass; and
+he left college without a degree.&nbsp; After his departure, Lady
+Fareway wrote to me, representing the justice of my returning
+half my fee, as I had been of so little use to her son.&nbsp;
+Within my knowledge a similar demand had not been made in any
+other case; and I most freely admit that the justice of it had
+not occurred to me until it was pointed out.&nbsp; But I at once
+perceived it, yielded to it, and returned the money&mdash;</p>
+<p>Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and I had
+forgotten him, when he one day walked into my rooms as I was
+sitting at my books.</p>
+<p>Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, &lsquo;Mr.
+Silverman, my mother is in town here, at the hotel, and wishes me
+to present you to her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was not comfortable with strangers, and I dare say I
+betrayed that I was a little nervous or unwilling.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;For,&rsquo; said he, without my having spoken, &lsquo;I
+think the interview may tend to the advancement of your
+prospects.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It put me to the blush to think that I should be tempted by a
+worldly reason, and I rose immediately.</p>
+<p>Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, &lsquo;Are you a good hand
+at business?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think not,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>Said Mr. Fareway then, &lsquo;My mother is.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Truly?&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes: my mother is what is usually called a managing
+woman.&nbsp; Doesn&rsquo;t make a bad thing, for instance, even
+out of the spendthrift habits of my eldest brother abroad.&nbsp;
+In short, a managing woman.&nbsp; This is in
+confidence.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He had never spoken to me in confidence, and I was surprised
+by his doing so.&nbsp; I said I should respect his confidence, of
+course, and said no more on the delicate subject.&nbsp; We had
+but a little way to walk, and I was soon in his mother&rsquo;s
+company.&nbsp; He presented me, shook hands with me, and left us
+two (as he said) to business.</p>
+<p>I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well-preserved lady of
+somewhat large stature, with a steady glare in her great round
+dark eyes that embarrassed me.</p>
+<p>Said my lady, &lsquo;I have heard from my son, Mr. Silverman,
+that you would be glad of some preferment in the
+church.&rsquo;&nbsp; I gave my lady to understand that was
+so.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t know whether you are aware,&rsquo; my
+lady proceeded, &lsquo;that we have a presentation to a
+living?&nbsp; I say <i>we</i> have; but, in point of fact,
+<i>I</i> have.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I gave my lady to understand that I had not been aware of
+this.</p>
+<p>Said my lady, &lsquo;So it is: indeed I have two
+presentations,&mdash;one to two hundred a year, one to six.&nbsp;
+Both livings are in our county,&mdash;North Devonshire,&mdash;as
+you probably know.&nbsp; The first is vacant.&nbsp; Would you
+like it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>What with my lady&rsquo;s eyes, and what with the suddenness
+of this proposed gift, I was much confused.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am sorry it is not the larger presentation,&rsquo;
+said my lady, rather coldly; &lsquo;though I will not, Mr.
+Silverman, pay you the bad compliment of supposing that
+<i>you</i> are, because that would be mercenary,&mdash;and
+mercenary I am persuaded you are not.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Said I, with my utmost earnestness, &lsquo;Thank you, Lady
+Fareway, thank you, thank you!&nbsp; I should be deeply hurt if I
+thought I bore the character.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Naturally,&rsquo; said my lady.&nbsp; &lsquo;Always
+detestable, but particularly in a clergyman.&nbsp; You have not
+said whether you will like the living?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I assured
+my lady that I accepted it most readily and gratefully.&nbsp; I
+added that I hoped she would not estimate my appreciation of the
+generosity of her choice by my flow of words; for I was not a
+ready man in that respect when taken by surprise or touched at
+heart.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The affair is concluded,&rsquo; said my lady;
+&lsquo;concluded.&nbsp; You will find the duties very light, Mr.
+Silverman.&nbsp; Charming house; charming little garden, orchard,
+and all that.&nbsp; You will be able to take pupils.&nbsp; By the
+bye!&nbsp; No: I will return to the word afterwards.&nbsp; What
+was I going to mention, when it put me out?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My lady stared at me, as if I knew.&nbsp; And I didn&rsquo;t
+know.&nbsp; And that perplexed me afresh.</p>
+<p>Said my lady, after some consideration, &lsquo;O, of course,
+how very dull of me!&nbsp; The last incumbent,&mdash;least
+mercenary man I ever saw,&mdash;in consideration of the duties
+being so light and the house so delicious, couldn&rsquo;t rest,
+he said, unless I permitted him to help me with my
+correspondence, accounts, and various little things of that kind;
+nothing in themselves, but which it worries a lady to cope
+with.&nbsp; Would Mr. Silverman also like to&mdash;?&nbsp; Or
+shall I&mdash;?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I hastened to say that my poor help would be always at her
+ladyship&rsquo;s service.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am absolutely blessed,&rsquo; said my lady, casting
+up her eyes (and so taking them off me for one moment), &lsquo;in
+having to do with gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to the
+idea of being mercenary!&rsquo;&nbsp; She shivered at the
+word.&nbsp; &lsquo;And now as to the pupil.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The&mdash;?&rsquo; I was quite at a loss.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is.&nbsp; She
+is,&rsquo; said my lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve,
+&lsquo;I do verily believe, the most extraordinary girl in this
+world.&nbsp; Already knows more Greek and Latin than Lady Jane
+Grey.&nbsp; And taught herself!&nbsp; Has not yet, remember,
+derived a moment&rsquo;s advantage from Mr. Silverman&rsquo;s
+classical acquirements.&nbsp; To say nothing of mathematics,
+which she is bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I
+hear from my son and others) Mr. Silverman&rsquo;s reputation is
+so deservedly high!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Under my lady&rsquo;s eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt
+persuaded; and yet I did not know where I could have dropped
+it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Adelina,&rsquo; said my lady, &lsquo;is my only
+daughter.&nbsp; If I did not feel quite convinced that I am not
+blinded by a mother&rsquo;s partiality; unless I was absolutely
+sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman, you will esteem it a
+high and unusual privilege to direct her studies,&mdash;I should
+introduce a mercenary element into this conversation, and ask you
+on what terms&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I entreated my lady to go no further.&nbsp; My lady saw that I
+was troubled, and did me the honour to comply with my
+request.</p>
+<h2>EIGHTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Everything</span> in mental acquisition
+that her brother might have been, if he would, and everything in
+all gracious charms and admirable qualities that no one but
+herself could be,&mdash;this was Adelina.</p>
+<p>I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate
+upon her intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of
+memory, her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the
+slow-paced tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts.&nbsp; I
+was thirty then; I am over sixty now: she is ever present to me
+in these hours as she was in those, bright and beautiful and
+young, wise and fanciful and good.</p>
+<p>When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say?&nbsp; In
+the first day? in the first week? in the first month?&nbsp;
+Impossible to trace.&nbsp; If I be (as I am) unable to represent
+to myself any previous period of my life as quite separable from
+her attracting power, how can I answer for this one detail?</p>
+<p>Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on
+me.&nbsp; And yet, comparing it with the far heavier burden that
+I afterwards took up, it does not seem to me now to have been
+very hard to bear.&nbsp; In the knowledge that I did love her,
+and that I should love her while my life lasted, and that I was
+ever to hide my secret deep in my own breast, and she was never
+to find it, there was a kind of sustaining joy or pride, or
+comfort, mingled with my pain.</p>
+<p>But later on,&mdash;say, a year later on,&mdash;when I made
+another discovery, then indeed my suffering and my struggle were
+strong.&nbsp; That other discovery was&mdash;</p>
+<p>These words will never see the light, if ever, until my heart
+is dust; until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of
+which, when imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual
+glimpse of remembrance; until all the pulses that ever beat
+around us shall have long been quiet; until all the fruits of all
+the tiny victories and defeats achieved in our little breasts
+shall have withered away.&nbsp; That discovery was that she loved
+me.</p>
+<p>She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me for that; she
+may have over-valued my discharge of duty to her, and loved me
+for that; she may have refined upon a playful compassion which
+she would sometimes show for what she called my want of wisdom,
+according to the light of the world&rsquo;s dark lanterns, and
+loved me for that; she may&mdash;she must&mdash;have confused the
+borrowed light of what I had only learned, with its brightness in
+its pure, original rays; but she loved me at that time, and she
+made me know it.</p>
+<p>Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off from her
+in my lady&rsquo;s eyes as if I had been some domesticated
+creature of another kind.&nbsp; But they could not put me farther
+from her than I put myself when I set my merits against
+hers.&nbsp; More than that.&nbsp; They could not put me, by
+millions of fathoms, half so low beneath her as I put myself when
+in imagination I took advantage of her noble trustfulness, took
+the fortune that I knew she must possess in her own right, and
+left her to find herself, in the zenith of her beauty and genius,
+bound to poor rusty, plodding me.</p>
+<p>No!&nbsp; Worldliness should not enter here at any cost.&nbsp;
+If I had tried to keep it out of other ground, how much harder
+was I bound to try to keep it out from this sacred place!</p>
+<p>But there was something daring in her broad, generous
+character, that demanded at so delicate a crisis to be delicately
+and patiently addressed.&nbsp; And many and many a bitter night
+(O, I found I could cry for reasons not purely physical, at this
+pass of my life!) I took my course.</p>
+<p>My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously overstated
+the accommodation of my pretty house.&nbsp; There was room in it
+for only one pupil.&nbsp; He was a young gentleman near coming of
+age, very well connected, but what is called a poor
+relation.&nbsp; His parents were dead.&nbsp; The charges of his
+living and reading with me were defrayed by an uncle; and he and
+I were to do our utmost together for three years towards
+qualifying him to make his way.&nbsp; At this time he had entered
+into his second year with me.&nbsp; He was well-looking, clever,
+energetic, enthusiastic; bold; in the best sense of the term, a
+thorough young Anglo-Saxon.</p>
+<p>I resolved to bring these two together.</p>
+<h2>NINTH CHAPTER</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Said</span> I, one night, when I had
+conquered myself, &lsquo;Mr. Granville,&rsquo;&mdash;Mr.
+Granville Wharton his name was,&mdash;&lsquo;I doubt if you have
+ever yet so much as seen Miss Fareway.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Well, sir,&rsquo; returned he, laughing, &lsquo;you see
+her so much yourself, that you hardly leave another fellow a
+chance of seeing her.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am her tutor, you know,&rsquo; said I.</p>
+<p>And there the subject dropped for that time.&nbsp; But I so
+contrived as that they should come together shortly
+afterwards.&nbsp; I had previously so contrived as to keep them
+asunder; for while I loved her,&mdash;I mean before I had
+determined on my sacrifice,&mdash;a lurking jealousy of Mr.
+Granville lay within my unworthy breast.</p>
+<p>It was quite an ordinary interview in the Fareway Park but
+they talked easily together for some time: like takes to like,
+and they had many points of resemblance.&nbsp; Said Mr. Granville
+to me, when he and I sat at our supper that night, &lsquo;Miss
+Fareway is remarkably beautiful, sir, remarkably engaging.&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;I think so,&rsquo;
+said I.&nbsp; And I stole a glance at him, and saw that he had
+reddened and was thoughtful.&nbsp; I remember it most vividly,
+because the mixed feeling of grave pleasure and acute pain that
+the slight circumstance caused me was the first of a long, long
+series of such mixed impressions under which my hair turned
+slowly gray.</p>
+<p>I had not much need to feign to be subdued; but I
+counterfeited to be older than I was in all respects (Heaven
+knows! my heart being all too young the while), and feigned to be
+more of a recluse and bookworm than I had really become, and
+gradually set up more and more of a fatherly manner towards
+Adelina.&nbsp; Likewise I made my tuition less imaginative than
+before; separated myself from my poets and philosophers; was
+careful to present them in their own light, and me, their lowly
+servant, in my own shade.&nbsp; Moreover, in the matter of
+apparel I was equally mindful; not that I had ever been dapper
+that way; but that I was slovenly now.</p>
+<p>As I depressed myself with one hand, so did I labour to raise
+Mr. Granville with the other; directing his attention to such
+subjects as I too well knew interested her, and fashioning him
+(do not deride or misconstrue the expression, unknown reader of
+this writing; for I have suffered!) into a greater resemblance to
+myself in my solitary one strong aspect.&nbsp; And gradually,
+gradually, as I saw him take more and more to these thrown-out
+lures of mine, then did I come to know better and better that
+love was drawing him on, and was drawing her from me.</p>
+<p>So passed more than another year; every day a year in its
+number of my mixed impressions of grave pleasure and acute pain;
+and then these two, being of age and free to act legally for
+themselves, came before me hand in hand (my hair being now quite
+white), and entreated me that I would unite them together.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And indeed, dear tutor,&rsquo; said Adelina, &lsquo;it is
+but consistent in you that you should do this thing for us,
+seeing that we should never have spoken together that first time
+but for you, and that but for you we could never have met so
+often afterwards.&rsquo;&nbsp; The whole of which was literally
+true; for I had availed myself of my many business attendances
+on, and conferences with, my lady, to take Mr. Granville to the
+house, and leave him in the outer room with Adelina.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p304b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"And then these two came before me, hand in hand, and entreated
+me that I would unite them"
+title=
+"And then these two came before me, hand in hand, and entreated
+me that I would unite them"
+ src="images/p304s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage for her
+daughter, or to any marriage that was other than an exchange of
+her for stipulated lands, goods, and moneys.&nbsp; But looking on
+the two, and seeing with full eyes that they were both young and
+beautiful; and knowing that they were alike in the tastes and
+acquirements that will outlive youth and beauty; and considering
+that Adelina had a fortune now, in her own keeping; and
+considering further that Mr. Granville, though for the present
+poor, was of a good family that had never lived in a cellar in
+Preston; and believing that their love would endure, neither
+having any great discrepancy to find out in the other,&mdash;I
+told them of my readiness to do this thing which Adelina asked of
+her dear tutor, and to send them forth, husband and wife, into
+the shining world with golden gates that awaited them.</p>
+<p>It was on a summer morning that I rose before the sun to
+compose myself for the crowning of my work with this end; and my
+dwelling being near to the sea, I walked down to the rocks on the
+shore, in order that I might behold the sun in his majesty.</p>
+<p>The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the firmament, the
+orderly withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day,
+the rosy suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour
+that then burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords
+of the night.&nbsp; Methought that all I looked on said to me,
+and that all I heard in the sea and in the air said to me,
+&lsquo;Be comforted, mortal, that thy life is so short.&nbsp; Our
+preparation for what is to follow has endured, and shall endure,
+for unimaginable ages.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I married them.&nbsp; I knew that my hand was cold when I
+placed it on their hands clasped together; but the words with
+which I had to accompany the action I could say without
+faltering, and I was at peace.</p>
+<p>They being well away from my house and from the place after
+our simple breakfast, the time was come when I must do what I had
+pledged myself to them that I would do,&mdash;break the
+intelligence to my lady.</p>
+<p>I went up to the house, and found my lady in her ordinary
+business-room.&nbsp; She happened to have an unusual amount of
+commissions to intrust to me that day; and she had filled my
+hands with papers before I could originate a word.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My lady,&rsquo; I then began, as I stood beside her
+table.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter?&rsquo; she said quickly,
+looking up.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have
+prepared yourself, and considered a little.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Prepared myself; and considered a little!&nbsp; You
+appear to have prepared <i>yourself</i> but indifferently,
+anyhow, Mr. Silverman.&rsquo;&nbsp; This mighty scornfully, as I
+experienced my usual embarrassment under her stare.</p>
+<p>Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, &lsquo;Lady Fareway,
+I have but to say for myself that I have tried to do my
+duty.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For yourself?&rsquo; repeated my lady.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Then there are others concerned, I see.&nbsp; Who are
+they?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>I was about to answer, when she made towards the bell with a
+dart that stopped me, and said, &lsquo;Why, where is
+Adelina?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Forbear! be calm, my lady.&nbsp; I married her this
+morning to Mr. Granville Wharton.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever, raised
+her right hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Give me back those papers! give me back those
+papers!&rsquo;&nbsp; She tore them out of my hands, and tossed
+them on her table.&nbsp; Then seating herself defiantly in her
+great chair, and folding her arms, she stabbed me to the heart
+with the unlooked-for reproach, &lsquo;You worldly
+wretch!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Worldly?&rsquo; I cried.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Worldly?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This, if you please,&rsquo;&mdash;she went on with
+supreme scorn, pointing me out as if there were some one there to
+see,&mdash;&lsquo;this, if you please, is the disinterested
+scholar, with not a design beyond his books!&nbsp; This, if you
+please, is the simple creature whom any one could overreach in a
+bargain!&nbsp; This, if you please, is Mr. Silverman!&nbsp; Not
+of this world; not he!&nbsp; He has too much simplicity for this
+world&rsquo;s cunning.&nbsp; He has too much singleness of
+purpose to be a match for this world&rsquo;s
+double-dealing.&nbsp; What did he give you for it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;For what?&nbsp; And who?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How much,&rsquo; she asked, bending forward in her
+great chair, and insultingly tapping the fingers of her right
+hand on the palm of her left,&mdash;&lsquo;how much does Mr.
+Granville Wharton pay you for getting him Adelina&rsquo;s
+money?&nbsp; What is the amount of your percentage upon
+Adelina&rsquo;s fortune?&nbsp; What were the terms of the
+agreement that you proposed to this boy when you, the Rev. George
+Silverman, licensed to marry, engaged to put him in possession of
+this girl?&nbsp; You made good terms for yourself, whatever they
+were.&nbsp; He would stand a poor chance against your
+keenness.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, I
+could not speak.&nbsp; But I trust that I looked innocent, being
+so.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite,&rsquo; said my lady,
+whose anger increased as she gave it utterance; &lsquo;attend to
+my words, you cunning schemer, who have carried this plot through
+with such a practised double face that I have never suspected
+you.&nbsp; I had my projects for my daughter; projects for family
+connection; projects for fortune.&nbsp; You have thwarted them,
+and overreached me; but I am not one to be thwarted and
+overreached without retaliation.&nbsp; Do you mean to hold this
+living another month?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can hold
+it another hour, under your injurious words?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is it resigned, then?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes
+ago.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Don&rsquo;t equivocate, sir.&nbsp; <i>Is</i> it
+resigned?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Unconditionally and entirely; and I would that I had
+never, never come near it!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A cordial response from me to <i>that</i> wish, Mr.
+Silverman!&nbsp; But take this with you, sir.&nbsp; If you had
+not resigned it, I would have had you deprived of it.&nbsp; And
+though you have resigned it, you will not get quit of me as
+easily as you think for.&nbsp; I will pursue you with this
+story.&nbsp; I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for
+money, known.&nbsp; You have made money by it, but you have at
+the same time made an enemy by it.&nbsp; <i>You</i> will take
+good care that the money sticks to you; I will take good care
+that the enemy sticks to you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Then said I finally, &lsquo;Lady Fareway, I think my heart is
+broken.&nbsp; Until I came into this room just now, the
+possibility of such mean wickedness as you have imputed to me
+never dawned upon my thoughts.&nbsp; Your
+suspicions&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Suspicions!&nbsp; Pah!&rsquo; said she
+indignantly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Certainties.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your
+suspicions as I call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of
+foundation in fact.&nbsp; I can declare no more; except that I
+have not acted for my own profit or my own pleasure.&nbsp; I have
+not in this proceeding considered myself.&nbsp; Once again, I
+think my heart is broken.&nbsp; If I have unwittingly done any
+wrong with a righteous motive, that is some penalty to
+pay.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>She received this with another and more indignant
+&lsquo;Pah!&rsquo; and I made my way out of her room (I think I
+felt my way out with my hands, although my eyes were open),
+almost suspecting that my voice had a repulsive sound, and that I
+was a repulsive object.</p>
+<p>There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed to, I
+received a severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped
+suspension.&nbsp; For years a cloud hung over me, and my name was
+tarnished.</p>
+<p>But my heart did not break, if a broken heart involves death;
+for I lived through it.</p>
+<p>They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through it
+all.&nbsp; Those who had known me at college, and even most of
+those who had only known me there by reputation, stood by me
+too.&nbsp; Little by little, the belief widened that I was not
+capable of what was laid to my charge.&nbsp; At length I was
+presented to a college-living in a sequestered place, and there I
+now pen my explanation.&nbsp; I pen it at my open window in the
+summer-time, before me, lying in the churchyard, equal
+resting-place for sound hearts, wounded hearts, and broken
+hearts.&nbsp; I pen it for the relief of my own mind, not
+foreseeing whether or no it will ever have a reader.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION***</p>
+<pre>
+
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+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of George Silverman's Explanation*
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+George Silverman's Explanation by Charles Dickens
+Scanned and proofed by David Price
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION
+
+
+
+
+FIRST CHAPTER
+
+
+
+IT happened in this wise -
+
+But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again,
+without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow,
+it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance.  They
+may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very
+difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation.  An uncouth
+phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better.
+
+
+
+SECOND CHAPTER
+
+
+
+IT happened in THIS wise -
+
+But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former
+opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated.  This is the
+more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new
+connection.  For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard
+the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the
+preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my
+explanation from an anterior period of my life.  I will make a
+third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that
+it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they
+be of head or heart.
+
+
+
+THIRD CHAPTER
+
+
+
+NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon
+it by degrees.  The natural manner, after all, for God knows that
+is how it came upon me.
+
+My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant
+home was a cellar in Preston.  I recollect the sound of father's
+Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different
+in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I
+recollect, that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used
+tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-
+tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
+face came into view, and settled the question.  From this it will
+be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and
+that the doorway was very low.
+
+Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
+figure, and not least of all upon her voice.  Her sharp and high-
+pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of
+bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her
+eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and
+hungry.  Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a
+three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would
+pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money
+home.  Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my
+ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces),
+would feint and dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair.
+
+A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me.  Whether I
+cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for
+that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner
+when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
+would still say, 'O, you worldly little devil!'  And the sting of
+it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.
+Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
+wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
+compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
+and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
+
+Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be
+locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time.  I was at my
+worldliest then.  Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly
+yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death
+of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on
+whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole
+courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.'  Worldly little devil,
+I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into
+cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, - walking
+over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of
+houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.
+
+At last a change came down into our cellar.  The universal change
+came down even as low as that, - so will it mount to any height on
+which a human creature can perch, - and brought other changes with
+it.
+
+We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest
+corner, which we called 'the bed.'  For three days mother lay upon
+it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh.  If I had
+ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange
+sound frightened me.  It frightened father too; and we took it by
+turns to give her water.  Then she began to move her head from side
+to side, and sing.  After that, she getting no better, father fell
+a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
+both water, and they both died.
+
+
+
+FOURTH CHAPTER
+
+
+
+WHEN I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came
+peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I
+could hardly bear the light of the street.  I was sitting in the
+road-way, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around
+me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly
+little devil, I broke silence by saying, 'I am hungry and thirsty!'
+
+'Does he know they are dead?' asked one of another.
+
+'Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?' asked
+a third of me severely.
+
+'I don't know what it is to be dead.  I supposed it meant that,
+when the cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over
+them.  I am hungry and thirsty.'  That was all I had to say about
+it.
+
+The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked
+around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor,
+thrown in towards where I sat.  Presently some one put a great
+vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me; and then they all
+looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was
+brought for me.  I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I
+couldn't help it.
+
+I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had
+begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I
+heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, 'My name is
+Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.'  Then the ring
+split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad
+all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman
+and another official of some sort.  He came forward close to the
+vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself
+carefully, and me copiously.
+
+'He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just
+dead too,' said Mr. Hawkyard.
+
+I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner,
+'Where's his houses?'
+
+'Hah!  Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave,' said Mr.
+Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my
+devil out of me.  'I have undertaken a slight - a very slight -
+trust in behalf of this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of
+mere honour, if not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon
+myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged.'
+
+The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much
+more favourable than their opinion of me.
+
+'He shall be taught,' said Mr. Hawkyard, '(O, yes, he shall be
+taught!) but what is to be done with him for the present?  He may
+be infected.  He may disseminate infection.'  The ring widened
+considerably.  'What is to be done with him?'
+
+He held some talk with the two officials.  I could distinguish no
+word save 'Farm-house.'  There was another sound several times
+repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I
+knew afterwards to be 'Hoghton Towers.'
+
+'Yes,' said Mr. Hawkyard.  'I think that sounds promising; I think
+that sounds hopeful.  And he can be put by himself in a ward, for a
+night or two, you say?'
+
+It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was he
+who replied, Yes!  It was he, too, who finally took me by the arm,
+and walked me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed
+room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to
+sit at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug
+and blanket to cover me.  Where I had enough to eat too, and was
+shown how to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to
+me, until it was as good as a looking-glass.  Here, likewise, I was
+put in a bath, and had new clothes brought to me; and my old rags
+were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared and disinfected in a
+variety of ways.
+
+When all this was done, - I don't know in how many days or how few,
+but it matters not, - Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door,
+remaining close to it, and said, 'Go and stand against the opposite
+wall, George Silverman.  As far off as you can.  That'll do.  How
+do you feel?'
+
+I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't feel hungry, and
+didn't feel thirsty.  That was the whole round of human feelings,
+as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten.
+
+'Well,' said he, 'you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to
+be purified.  Keep in the air there as much as you can.  Live an
+out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away.  You had better
+not say much - in fact, you had better be very careful not to say
+anything - about what your parents died of, or they might not like
+to take you in.  Behave well, and I'll put you to school; O, yes!
+I'll put you to school, though I'm not obligated to do it.  I am a
+servant of the Lord, George; and I have been a good servant to him,
+I have, these five-and-thirty years.  The Lord has had a good
+servant in me, and he knows it.'
+
+What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine.  As
+little do I know when I began to comprehend that he was a prominent
+member of some obscure denomination or congregation, every member
+of which held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom he
+was called Brother Hawkyard.  It was enough for me to know, on that
+day in the ward, that the farmer's cart was waiting for me at the
+street corner.  I was not slow to get into it; for it was the first
+ride I ever had in my life.
+
+It made me sleepy, and I slept.  First, I stared at Preston streets
+as long as they lasted; and, meanwhile, I may have had some small
+dumb wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was; but I doubt
+it.  Such a worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who
+would bury father and mother, or where they would be buried, or
+when.  The question whether the eating and drinking by day, and the
+covering by night, would be as good at the farm-house as at the
+ward superseded those questions.
+
+The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me; and I found
+that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-
+road through a field.  And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace,
+and by some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified, and
+passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old farm-house in the
+thick stone wall outside the old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers:
+which I looked at like a stupid savage, seeing no specially in,
+seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses to resemble it;
+assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin
+that I knew, - poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the
+cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the fowls
+pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope that plenty of them
+might be killed for dinner while I stayed there; wondering whether
+the scrubbed dairy vessels, drying in the sunlight, could be goodly
+porringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling food, and
+which he polished when he had done, according to my ward
+experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the shadows, passing over
+that airy height on the bright spring day, were not something in
+the nature of frowns, - sordid, afraid, unadmiring, - a small brute
+to shudder at.
+
+To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty.  I
+had had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in
+this life.  When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar-steps into
+the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no
+higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or
+wolf-cub.  It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in
+the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself.  I had been
+solitary often enough, but nothing better.
+
+Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the
+kitchen of the old farm-house.  Such was my condition when I lay on
+my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite the
+narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon, like a
+young vampire.
+
+
+
+FIFTH CHAPTER
+
+
+
+WHAT do I know of Hoghton Towers?  Very little; for I have been
+gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions.  A house,
+centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road
+between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in
+his hurry to make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of
+those remunerative dignitaries.  A house, centuries old, deserted
+and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass-land
+or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and
+a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural
+prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a counter-blast,
+hinting at steam-power, powerful in two distances.
+
+What did I know then of Hoghton Towers?  When I first peeped in at
+the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the
+mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its guardian ghost;
+when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among
+the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings
+falling, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the
+plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the
+windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery
+commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades
+upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not
+what dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up
+with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when
+all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky
+stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy
+rustled, and the stains of winter weather blotched the rotten
+floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into
+which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies
+fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken door-ways;
+when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of
+fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never
+dreamed of, - I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of
+these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of
+Hoghton Towers?
+
+I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me.  Therein have
+I anticipated the answer.  I knew that all these things looked
+sorrowfully at me; that they seemed to sigh or whisper, not without
+pity for me, 'Alas! poor worldly little devil!'
+
+There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller
+pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked in.  They
+were scuffling for some prey that was there; and, when they started
+and hid themselves close together in the dark, I thought of the old
+life (it had grown old already) in the cellar.
+
+How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a
+repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats?  I hid in a
+corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and
+crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause not
+purely physical), and I tried to think about it.  One of the farm-
+ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it seemed to help
+me as it went on with its two horses up and down the field so
+peacefully and quietly.
+
+There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and
+she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times.  It had
+come into my mind, at our first dinner, that she might take the
+fever from me.  The thought had not disquieted me then.  I had only
+speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and
+whether she would die.  But it came into my mind now, that I might
+try to prevent her taking the fever by keeping away from her.  I
+knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the less
+worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought.
+
+From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret
+corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she
+went to bed.  At first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them
+calling me; and then my resolution weakened.  But I strengthened it
+again by going farther off into the ruin, and getting out of
+hearing.  I often watched for her at the dim windows; and, when I
+saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier.
+
+Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of
+myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me.  I felt, in
+some sort, dignified by the pride of protecting her, - by the pride
+of making the sacrifice for her.  As my heart swelled with that new
+feeling, it insensibly softened about mother and father.  It seemed
+to have been frozen before, and now to be thawed.  The old ruin and
+all the lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me
+only, but sorrowful for mother and father as well.  Therefore did I
+cry again, and often too.
+
+The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and
+were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such
+broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours.  One night when
+I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her
+pretty name) had but just gone out of the room.  Seeing her
+ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the door.  She had
+heard the clink of the latch, and looked round.
+
+'George,' she called to me in a pleased voice, 'to-morrow is my
+birthday; and we are to have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys
+and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance.  I invite you.  Be
+sociable for once, George.'
+
+'I am very sorry, miss,' I answered; 'but I - but, no; I can't
+come.'
+
+'You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,' she returned
+disdainfully; 'and I ought not to have asked you.  I shall never
+speak to you again.'
+
+As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I
+felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.
+
+'Eh, lad!' said he; 'Sylvy's right.  You're as moody and broody a
+lad as never I set eyes on yet.'
+
+I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said
+coldly, 'Maybe not, maybe not!  There, get thy supper, get thy
+supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart's content again.'
+
+Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for
+the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could
+have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue,
+listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching
+the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the
+ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I crept up to
+bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, 'They
+will take no hurt from me,' - they would not have thought mine a
+morose or an unsocial nature.
+
+It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be
+of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to have an
+inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or
+worldly.  It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself
+to such a mould, even before it was affected by the influences of
+the studious and retired life of a poor scholar.
+
+
+
+SIXTH CHAPTER
+
+
+
+BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to
+school, and told me to work my way.  'You are all right, George,'
+he said.  'I have been the best servant the Lord has had in his
+service for this five-and-thirty year (O, I have!); and he knows
+the value of such a servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he
+does!); and he'll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward.
+That's what HE'll do, George.  He'll do it for me.'
+
+From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways
+of the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard's part.
+As I grew a little wiser, and still a little wiser, I liked it less
+and less.  His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,
+- as if, knowing himself, he doubted his own word, - I found
+distasteful.  I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me; for I
+had a dread that they were worldly.
+
+As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good foundation,
+and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing.  When I had worked my way so
+far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a
+presentation to college and a fellowship.  My health has never been
+strong (some vapour from the Preston cellar cleaves to me, I
+think); and what with much work and some weakness, I came again to
+be regarded - that is, by my fellow-students - as unsocial.
+
+All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a few miles
+of Brother Hawkyard's congregation; and whenever I was what we
+called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire.
+Before the knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place
+of meeting these brothers and sisters were no better than the rest
+of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly,
+as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops,
+and not speaking the truth, - I say, before this knowledge became
+forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit,
+their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of
+heaven and earth with their own miserable meannesses and
+littlenesses, greatly shocked me.  Still, as their term for the
+frame of mind that could not perceive them to be in an exalted
+state of grace was the 'worldly' state, I did for a time suffer
+tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that young worldly-
+devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at the bottom
+of my non-appreciation.
+
+Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly, and
+generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a
+table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon.  He
+was by trade a drysalter.  Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a
+crabbed face, a large dog's-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue
+neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a
+drysalter and an expounder.  Brother Gimblet professed the greatest
+admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than once)
+bore him a jealous grudge.
+
+Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to
+read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and
+customs of the congregation in question I write scrupulously,
+literally, exactly, from the life and the truth.
+
+On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for,
+and when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother
+Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:
+
+'Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I began,
+that I didn't know a word of what I was going to say to you (and
+no, I did not!), but that it was all one to me, because I knew the
+Lord would put into my mouth the words I wanted.'
+
+('That's it!' from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+'And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted.'
+
+('So he did!' from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+'And why?'
+
+('Ah, let's have that!' from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+'Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty
+years, and because he knows it.  For five-and-thirty years!  And he
+knows it, mind you!  I got those words that I wanted on account of
+my wages.  I got 'em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners.  Down! I
+said, "Here's a heap of wages due; let us have something down, on
+account."  And I got it down, and I paid it over to you; and you
+won't wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet
+pocketankercher, but you'll put it out at good interest.  Very
+well.  Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going
+to conclude with a question, and I'll make it so plain (with the
+help of the Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather
+hope!) as that the Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your
+heads, - which he would be overjoyed to do.'
+
+('Just his way.  Crafty old blackguard!' from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+'And the question is this, Are the angels learned?'
+
+('Not they.  Not a bit on it!' from Brother Gimblet, with the
+greatest confidence.)
+
+'Not they.  And where's the proof? sent ready-made by the hand of
+the Lord.  Why, there's one among us here now, that has got all the
+learning that can be crammed into him.  I got him all the learning
+that could be crammed into him.  His grandfather' (this I had never
+heard before) 'was a brother of ours.  He was Brother Parksop.
+That's what he was.  Parksop; Brother Parksop.  His worldly name
+was Parksop, and he was a brother of this brotherhood.  Then wasn't
+he Brother Parksop?'
+
+('Must be.  Couldn't help hisself!' from Brother Gimblet.)
+
+'Well, he left that one now here present among us to the care of a
+brother-sinner of his (and that brother-sinner, mind you, was a
+sinner of a bigger size in his time than any of you; praise the
+Lord!), Brother Hawkyard.  Me.  I got him without fee or reward, -
+without a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, letting
+alone the honeycomb, - all the learning that could be crammed into
+him.  Has it brought him into our temple, in the spirit?  No.  Have
+we had any ignorant brothers and sisters that didn't know round O
+from crooked S, come in among us meanwhile?  Many.  Then the angels
+are NOT learned; then they don't so much as know their alphabet.
+And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to that,
+perhaps some brother present - perhaps you, Brother Gimblet - will
+pray a bit for us?'
+
+Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having drawn
+his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered, 'Well!  I don't know as
+I see my way to hitting any of you quite in the right place
+neither.'  He said this with a dark smile, and then began to
+bellow.  What we were specially to be preserved from, according to
+his solicitations, was, despoilment of the orphan, suppression of
+testamentary intentions on the part of a father or (say)
+grandfather, appropriation of the orphan's house-property, feigning
+to give in charity to the wronged one from whom we withheld his
+due; and that class of sins.  He ended with the petition, 'Give us
+peace!' which, speaking for myself, was very much needed after
+twenty minutes of his bellowing.
+
+Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees,
+steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even
+though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard's tone of congratulating
+him on the vigour with which he had roared, I should have detected
+a malicious application in this prayer.  Unformed suspicions to a
+similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier
+school-days, and had always caused me great distress; for they were
+worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that
+had drawn me from Sylvia.  They were sordid suspicions, without a
+shadow of proof.  They were worthy to have originated in the
+unwholesome cellar.  They were not only without proof, but against
+proof; for was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard
+had done? and without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look
+sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers?
+
+Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness
+was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in
+an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard
+against any tendency to such relapse.  After getting these
+suspicions under my feet, I had been troubled by not being able to
+like Brother Hawkyard's manner, or his professed religion.  So it
+came about, that, as I walked back that Sunday evening, I thought
+it would be an act of reparation for any such injury my struggling
+thoughts had unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and placed in his
+hands, before going to college, a full acknowledgment of his
+goodness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks.  It might serve as
+an implied vindication of him against any dark scandal from a rival
+brother and expounder, or from any other quarter.
+
+Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care.  I may add with
+much feeling too; for it affected me as I went on.  Having no set
+studies to pursue, in the brief interval between leaving the
+Foundation and going to Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his
+place of business, and give it into his own hands.
+
+It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door of his little
+counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long, low shop.
+As I did so (having entered by the back yard, where casks and boxes
+were taken in, and where there was the inscription, 'Private way to
+the counting-house'), a shopman called to me from the counter that
+he was engaged.
+
+'Brother Gimblet' (said the shopman, who was one of the
+brotherhood) 'is with him.'
+
+I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to tap
+again.  They were talking in a low tone, and money was passing; for
+I heard it being counted out.
+
+'Who is it?' asked Brother Hawkyard, sharply.
+
+'George Silverman,' I answered, holding the door open.  'May I come
+in?'
+
+Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shyer than
+usual.  But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and
+perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated the expression of
+their faces.
+
+'What is the matter?' asked Brother Hawkyard.
+
+'Ay! what is the matter?' asked Brother Gimblet.
+
+'Nothing at all,' I said, diffidently producing my document: 'I am
+only the bearer of a letter from myself.'
+
+'From yourself, George?' cried Brother Hawkyard.
+
+'And to you,' said I.
+
+'And to me, George?'
+
+He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking over it, and
+seeing generally what it was, became less hurried, recovered his
+colour, and said, 'Praise the Lord!'
+
+'That's it!' cried Brother Gimblet.  'Well put!  Amen.'
+
+Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain, 'You must know,
+George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make our two
+businesses one.  We are going into partnership.  We are settling it
+now.  Brother Gimblet is to take one clear half of the profits (O,
+yes! he shall have it; he shall have it to the last farthing).'
+
+'D.V.!' said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly clinched
+on his right leg.
+
+'There is no objection,' pursued Brother Hawkyard, 'to my reading
+this aloud, George?'
+
+As it was what I expressly desired should be done, after
+yesterday's prayer, I more than readily begged him to read it
+aloud.  He did so; and Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed
+smile.
+
+'It was in a good hour that I came here,' he said, wrinkling up his
+eyes.  'It was in a good hour, likewise, that I was moved yesterday
+to depict for the terror of evil-doers a character the direct
+opposite of Brother Hawkyard's.  But it was the Lord that done it:
+I felt him at it while I was perspiring.'
+
+After that it was proposed by both of them that I should attend the
+congregation once more before my final departure.  What my shy
+reserve would undergo, from being expressly preached at and prayed
+at, I knew beforehand.  But I reflected that it would be for the
+last time, and that it might add to the weight of my letter.  It
+was well known to the brothers and sisters that there was no place
+taken for me in THEIR paradise; and if I showed this last token of
+deference to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own
+sinful inclinations, it might go some little way in aid of my
+statement that he had been good to me, and that I was grateful to
+him.  Merely stipulating, therefore, that no express endeavour
+should be made for my conversion, - which would involve the rolling
+of several brothers and sisters on the floor, declaring that they
+felt all their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many
+pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those
+repulsive mysteries, - I promised.
+
+Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been at
+intervals wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue
+neckerchief, and grinning to himself.  It was, however, a habit
+that brother had, to grin in an ugly manner even when expounding.
+I call to mind a delighted snarl with which he used to detail from
+the platform the torments reserved for the wicked (meaning all
+human creation except the brotherhood), as being remarkably
+hideous.
+
+I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and count
+money; and I never saw them again but on the following Sunday.
+Brother Hawkyard died within two or three years, leaving all he
+possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue of a will dated (as I have
+been told) that very day.
+
+Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, knowing
+that I had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard
+in the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to that
+coarse chapel, in a less sensitive state than usual.  How could I
+foresee that the delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind,
+where I winced and shrunk when it was touched, or was even
+approached, would be handled as the theme of the whole proceedings?
+
+On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray, and
+to Brother Gimblet to preach.  The prayer was to open the
+ceremonies; the discourse was to come next.  Brothers Hawkyard and
+Gimblet were both on the platform; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at
+the table, unmusically ready to pray; Brother Gimblet sitting
+against the wall, grinningly ready to preach.
+
+'Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers and sisters
+and fellow-sinners.'  Yes; but it was I who was the sacrifice.  It
+was our poor, sinful, worldly-minded brother here present who was
+wrestled for.  The now-opening career of this our unawakened
+brother might lead to his becoming a minister of what was called
+'the church.'  That was what HE looked to.  The church.  Not the
+chapel, Lord.  The church.  No rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons,
+no bishops, no archbishops, in the chapel, but, O Lord! many such
+in the church.  Protect our sinful brother from his love of lucre.
+Cleanse from our unawakened brother's breast his sin of worldly-
+mindedness.  The prayer said infinitely more in words, but nothing
+more to any intelligible effect.
+
+Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he would)
+the text, 'My kingdom is not of this world.'  Ah! but whose was, my
+fellow-sinners?  Whose?  Why, our brother's here present was.  The
+only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world.  ('That's it!'
+from several of the congregation.)  What did the woman do when she
+lost the piece of money?  Went and looked for it.  What should our
+brother do when he lost his way?  ('Go and look for it,' from a
+sister.)  Go and look for it, true.  But must he look for it in the
+right direction, or in the wrong?  ('In the right,' from a
+brother.)  There spake the prophets!  He must look for it in the
+right direction, or he couldn't find it.  But he had turned his
+back upon the right direction, and he wouldn't find it.  Now, my
+fellow-sinners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-
+mindedness and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this
+world and kingdoms OF this world, here was a letter wrote by even
+our worldly-minded brother unto Brother Hawkyard.  Judge, from
+hearing of it read, whether Brother Hawkyard was the faithful
+steward that the Lord had in his mind only t'other day, when, in
+this very place, he drew you the picter of the unfaithful one; for
+it was him that done it, not me.  Don't doubt that!
+
+Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed his way through my
+composition, and subsequently through an hour.  The service closed
+with a hymn, in which the brothers unanimously roared, and the
+sisters unanimously shrieked at me, That I by wiles of worldly gain
+was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were rocked; that I
+with mammon struggled in the dark, while they were floating in a
+second ark.
+
+I went out from all this with an aching heart and a weary spirit:
+not because I was quite so weak as to consider these narrow
+creatures interpreters of the Divine Majesty and Wisdom, but
+because I was weak enough to feel as though it were my hard fortune
+to be misrepresented and misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue
+any risings of mere worldliness within me, and when I most hoped
+that, by dint of trying earnestly, I had succeeded.
+
+
+
+SEVENTH CHAPTER
+
+
+
+MY timidity and my obscurity occasioned me to live a secluded life
+at college, and to be little known.  No relative ever came to visit
+me, for I had no relative.  No intimate friends broke in upon my
+studies, for I made no intimate friends.  I supported myself on my
+scholarship, and read much.  My college time was otherwise not so
+very different from my time at Hoghton Towers.
+
+Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social
+existence, but believing myself qualified to do my duty in a
+moderate, though earnest way, if I could obtain some small
+preferment in the Church, I applied my mind to the clerical
+profession.  In due sequence I took orders, was ordained, and began
+to look about me for employment.  I must observe that I had taken a
+good degree, that I had succeeded in winning a good fellowship, and
+that my means were ample for my retired way of life.  By this time
+I had read with several young men; and the occupation increased my
+income, while it was highly interesting to me.  I once accidentally
+overheard our greatest don say, to my boundless joy, 'That he heard
+it reported of Silverman that his gift of quiet explanation, his
+patience, his amiable temper, and his conscientiousness made him
+the best of coaches.'  May my 'gift of quiet explanation' come more
+seasonably and powerfully to my aid in this present explanation
+than I think it will!
+
+It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation of my college-
+rooms (in a corner where the daylight was sobered), but it is in a
+much larger degree referable to the state of my own mind, that I
+seem to myself, on looking back to this time of my life, to have
+been always in the peaceful shade.  I can see others in the
+sunlight; I can see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on
+the glistening water, or speckled with the moving lights of sunlit
+leaves; but I myself am always in the shadow looking on.  Not
+unsympathetically, - God forbid! - but looking on alone, much as I
+looked at Sylvia from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at
+the red gleam shining through the farmer's windows, and listened to
+the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in
+the quadrangle.
+
+I now come to the reason of my quoting that laudation of myself
+above given.  Without such reason, to repeat it would have been
+mere boastfulness.
+
+Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fareway, second son of
+Lady Fareway, widow of Sir Gaston Fareway, baronet.  This young
+gentleman's abilities were much above the average; but he came of a
+rich family, and was idle and luxurious.  He presented himself to
+me too late, and afterwards came to me too irregularly, to admit of
+my being of much service to him.  In the end, I considered it my
+duty to dissuade him from going up for an examination which he
+could never pass; and he left college without a degree.  After his
+departure, Lady Fareway wrote to me, representing the justice of my
+returning half my fee, as I had been of so little use to her son.
+Within my knowledge a similar demand had not been made in any other
+case; and I most freely admit that the justice of it had not
+occurred to me until it was pointed out.  But I at once perceived
+it, yielded to it, and returned the money -
+
+Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and I had forgotten
+him, when he one day walked into my rooms as I was sitting at my
+books.
+
+Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, 'Mr. Silverman, my
+mother is in town here, at the hotel, and wishes me to present you
+to her.'
+
+I was not comfortable with strangers, and I dare say I betrayed
+that I was a little nervous or unwilling.  'For,' said he, without
+my having spoken, 'I think the interview may tend to the
+advancement of your prospects.'
+
+It put me to the blush to think that I should be tempted by a
+worldly reason, and I rose immediately.
+
+Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, 'Are you a good hand at
+business?'
+
+'I think not,' said I.
+
+Said Mr. Fareway then, 'My mother is.'
+
+'Truly?' said I.
+
+'Yes: my mother is what is usually called a managing woman.
+Doesn't make a bad thing, for instance, even out of the spendthrift
+habits of my eldest brother abroad.  In short, a managing woman.
+This is in confidence.'
+
+He had never spoken to me in confidence, and I was surprised by his
+doing so.  I said I should respect his confidence, of course, and
+said no more on the delicate subject.  We had but a little way to
+walk, and I was soon in his mother's company.  He presented me,
+shook hands with me, and left us two (as he said) to business.
+
+I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well-preserved lady of
+somewhat large stature, with a steady glare in her great round dark
+eyes that embarrassed me.
+
+Said my lady, 'I have heard from my son, Mr. Silverman, that you
+would be glad of some preferment in the church.'  I gave my lady to
+understand that was so.
+
+'I don't know whether you are aware,' my lady proceeded, 'that we
+have a presentation to a living?  I say WE have; but, in point of
+fact, I have.'
+
+I gave my lady to understand that I had not been aware of this.
+
+Said my lady, 'So it is: indeed I have two presentations, - one to
+two hundred a year, one to six.  Both livings are in our county, -
+North Devonshire, - as you probably know.  The first is vacant.
+Would you like it?'
+
+What with my lady's eyes, and what with the suddenness of this
+proposed gift, I was much confused.
+
+'I am sorry it is not the larger presentation,' said my lady,
+rather coldly; 'though I will not, Mr. Silverman, pay you the bad
+compliment of supposing that YOU are, because that would be
+mercenary, - and mercenary I am persuaded you are not.'
+
+Said I, with my utmost earnestness, 'Thank you, Lady Fareway, thank
+you, thank you!  I should be deeply hurt if I thought I bore the
+character.'
+
+'Naturally,' said my lady.  'Always detestable, but particularly in
+a clergyman.  You have not said whether you will like the living?'
+
+With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I assured my
+lady that I accepted it most readily and gratefully.  I added that
+I hoped she would not estimate my appreciation of the generosity of
+her choice by my flow of words; for I was not a ready man in that
+respect when taken by surprise or touched at heart.
+
+'The affair is concluded,' said my lady; 'concluded.  You will find
+the duties very light, Mr. Silverman.  Charming house; charming
+little garden, orchard, and all that.  You will be able to take
+pupils.  By the bye!  No: I will return to the word afterwards.
+What was I going to mention, when it put me out?'
+
+My lady stared at me, as if I knew.  And I didn't know.  And that
+perplexed me afresh.
+
+Said my lady, after some consideration, 'O, of course, how very
+dull of me!  The last incumbent, - least mercenary man I ever saw,
+- in consideration of the duties being so light and the house so
+delicious, couldn't rest, he said, unless I permitted him to help
+me with my correspondence, accounts, and various little things of
+that kind; nothing in themselves, but which it worries a lady to
+cope with.  Would Mr. Silverman also like to -?  Or shall I -?'
+
+I hastened to say that my poor help would be always at her
+ladyship's service.
+
+'I am absolutely blessed,' said my lady, casting up her eyes (and
+so taking them off me for one moment), 'in having to do with
+gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to the idea of being
+mercenary!'  She shivered at the word.  'And now as to the pupil.'
+
+'The -?' I was quite at a loss.
+
+'Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is.  She is,' said my
+lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, 'I do verily believe,
+the most extraordinary girl in this world.  Already knows more
+Greek and Latin than Lady Jane Grey.  And taught herself!  Has not
+yet, remember, derived a moment's advantage from Mr. Silverman's
+classical acquirements.  To say nothing of mathematics, which she
+is bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I hear from my
+son and others) Mr. Silverman's reputation is so deservedly high!'
+
+Under my lady's eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt persuaded;
+and yet I did not know where I could have dropped it.
+
+'Adelina,' said my lady, 'is my only daughter.  If I did not feel
+quite convinced that I am not blinded by a mother's partiality;
+unless I was absolutely sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman,
+you will esteem it a high and unusual privilege to direct her
+studies, - I should introduce a mercenary element into this
+conversation, and ask you on what terms - '
+
+I entreated my lady to go no further.  My lady saw that I was
+troubled, and did me the honour to comply with my request.
+
+
+
+EIGHTH CHAPTER
+
+
+
+EVERYTHING in mental acquisition that her brother might have been,
+if he would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirable
+qualities that no one but herself could be, - this was Adelina.
+
+I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her
+intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory,
+her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced
+tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts.  I was thirty then; I
+am over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours as she
+was in those, bright and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful and
+good.
+
+When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say?  In the first
+day? in the first week? in the first month?  Impossible to trace.
+If I be (as I am) unable to represent to myself any previous period
+of my life as quite separable from her attracting power, how can I
+answer for this one detail?
+
+Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on me.  And
+yet, comparing it with the far heavier burden that I afterwards
+took up, it does not seem to me now to have been very hard to bear.
+In the knowledge that I did love her, and that I should love her
+while my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my secret deep in
+my own breast, and she was never to find it, there was a kind of
+sustaining joy or pride, or comfort, mingled with my pain.
+
+But later on, - say, a year later on, - when I made another
+discovery, then indeed my suffering and my struggle were strong.
+That other discovery was -
+
+These words will never see the light, if ever, until my heart is
+dust; until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of which,
+when imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual glimpse of
+remembrance; until all the pulses that ever beat around us shall
+have long been quiet; until all the fruits of all the tiny
+victories and defeats achieved in our little breasts shall have
+withered away.  That discovery was that she loved me.
+
+She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me for that; she may
+have over-valued my discharge of duty to her, and loved me for
+that; she may have refined upon a playful compassion which she
+would sometimes show for what she called my want of wisdom,
+according to the light of the world's dark lanterns, and loved me
+for that; she may - she must - have confused the borrowed light of
+what I had only learned, with its brightness in its pure, original
+rays; but she loved me at that time, and she made me know it.
+
+Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off from her in
+my lady's eyes as if I had been some domesticated creature of
+another kind.  But they could not put me farther from her than I
+put myself when I set my merits against hers.  More than that.
+They could not put me, by millions of fathoms, half so low beneath
+her as I put myself when in imagination I took advantage of her
+noble trustfulness, took the fortune that I knew she must possess
+in her own right, and left her to find herself, in the zenith of
+her beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty, plodding me.
+
+No!  Worldliness should not enter here at any cost.  If I had tried
+to keep it out of other ground, how much harder was I bound to try
+to keep it out from this sacred place!
+
+But there was something daring in her broad, generous character,
+that demanded at so delicate a crisis to be delicately and
+patiently addressed.  And many and many a bitter night (O, I found
+I could cry for reasons not purely physical, at this pass of my
+life!) I took my course.
+
+My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously overstated the
+accommodation of my pretty house.  There was room in it for only
+one pupil.  He was a young gentleman near coming of age, very well
+connected, but what is called a poor relation.  His parents were
+dead.  The charges of his living and reading with me were defrayed
+by an uncle; and he and I were to do our utmost together for three
+years towards qualifying him to make his way.  At this time he had
+entered into his second year with me.  He was well-looking, clever,
+energetic, enthusiastic; bold; in the best sense of the term, a
+thorough young Anglo-Saxon.
+
+I resolved to bring these two together.
+
+
+
+NINTH CHAPTER
+
+
+
+SAID I, one night, when I had conquered myself, 'Mr. Granville,' -
+Mr. Granville Wharton his name was, - 'I doubt if you have ever yet
+so much as seen Miss Fareway.'
+
+'Well, sir,' returned he, laughing, 'you see her so much yourself,
+that you hardly leave another fellow a chance of seeing her.'
+
+'I am her tutor, you know,' said I.
+
+And there the subject dropped for that time.  But I so contrived as
+that they should come together shortly afterwards.  I had
+previously so contrived as to keep them asunder; for while I loved
+her, - I mean before I had determined on my sacrifice, - a lurking
+jealousy of Mr. Granville lay within my unworthy breast.
+
+It was quite an ordinary interview in the Fareway Park but they
+talked easily together for some time: like takes to like, and they
+had many points of resemblance.  Said Mr. Granville to me, when he
+and I sat at our supper that night, 'Miss Fareway is remarkably
+beautiful, sir, remarkably engaging.  Don't you think so?'  'I
+think so,' said I.  And I stole a glance at him, and saw that he
+had reddened and was thoughtful.  I remember it most vividly,
+because the mixed feeling of grave pleasure and acute pain that the
+slight circumstance caused me was the first of a long, long series
+of such mixed impressions under which my hair turned slowly gray.
+
+I had not much need to feign to be subdued; but I counterfeited to
+be older than I was in all respects (Heaven knows! my heart being
+all too young the while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and
+bookworm than I had really become, and gradually set up more and
+more of a fatherly manner towards Adelina.  Likewise I made my
+tuition less imaginative than before; separated myself from my
+poets and philosophers; was careful to present them in their own
+light, and me, their lowly servant, in my own shade.  Moreover, in
+the matter of apparel I was equally mindful; not that I had ever
+been dapper that way; but that I was slovenly now.
+
+As I depressed myself with one hand, so did I labour to raise Mr.
+Granville with the other; directing his attention to such subjects
+as I too well knew interested her, and fashioning him (do not
+deride or misconstrue the expression, unknown reader of this
+writing; for I have suffered!) into a greater resemblance to myself
+in my solitary one strong aspect.  And gradually, gradually, as I
+saw him take more and more to these thrown-out lures of mine, then
+did I come to know better and better that love was drawing him on,
+and was drawing her from me.
+
+So passed more than another year; every day a year in its number of
+my mixed impressions of grave pleasure and acute pain; and then
+these two, being of age and free to act legally for themselves,
+came before me hand in hand (my hair being now quite white), and
+entreated me that I would unite them together.  'And indeed, dear
+tutor,' said Adelina, 'it is but consistent in you that you should
+do this thing for us, seeing that we should never have spoken
+together that first time but for you, and that but for you we could
+never have met so often afterwards.'  The whole of which was
+literally true; for I had availed myself of my many business
+attendances on, and conferences with, my lady, to take Mr.
+Granville to the house, and leave him in the outer room with
+Adelina.
+
+I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage for her
+daughter, or to any marriage that was other than an exchange of her
+for stipulated lands, goods, and moneys.  But looking on the two,
+and seeing with full eyes that they were both young and beautiful;
+and knowing that they were alike in the tastes and acquirements
+that will outlive youth and beauty; and considering that Adelina
+had a fortune now, in her own keeping; and considering further that
+Mr. Granville, though for the present poor, was of a good family
+that had never lived in a cellar in Preston; and believing that
+their love would endure, neither having any great discrepancy to
+find out in the other, - I told them of my readiness to do this
+thing which Adelina asked of her dear tutor, and to send them
+forth, husband and wife, into the shining world with golden gates
+that awaited them.
+
+It was on a summer morning that I rose before the sun to compose
+myself for the crowning of my work with this end; and my dwelling
+being near to the sea, I walked down to the rocks on the shore, in
+order that I might behold the sun in his majesty.
+
+The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the firmament, the orderly
+withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy
+suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then
+burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the
+night.  Methought that all I looked on said to me, and that all I
+heard in the sea and in the air said to me, 'Be comforted, mortal,
+that thy life is so short.  Our preparation for what is to follow
+has endured, and shall endure, for unimaginable ages.'
+
+I married them.  I knew that my hand was cold when I placed it on
+their hands clasped together; but the words with which I had to
+accompany the action I could say without faltering, and I was at
+peace.
+
+They being well away from my house and from the place after our
+simple breakfast, the time was come when I must do what I had
+pledged myself to them that I would do, - break the intelligence to
+my lady.
+
+I went up to the house, and found my lady in her ordinary business-
+room.  She happened to have an unusual amount of commissions to
+intrust to me that day; and she had filled my hands with papers
+before I could originate a word.
+
+'My lady,' I then began, as I stood beside her table.
+
+'Why, what's the matter?' she said quickly, looking up.
+
+'Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have prepared
+yourself, and considered a little.'
+
+'Prepared myself; and considered a little!  You appear to have
+prepared YOURSELF but indifferently, anyhow, Mr. Silverman.'  This
+mighty scornfully, as I experienced my usual embarrassment under
+her stare.
+
+Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, 'Lady Fareway, I have but
+to say for myself that I have tried to do my duty.'
+
+'For yourself?' repeated my lady.  'Then there are others
+concerned, I see.  Who are they?'
+
+I was about to answer, when she made towards the bell with a dart
+that stopped me, and said, 'Why, where is Adelina?'
+
+'Forbear! be calm, my lady.  I married her this morning to Mr.
+Granville Wharton.'
+
+She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever, raised her
+right hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek.
+
+'Give me back those papers! give me back those papers!'  She tore
+them out of my hands, and tossed them on her table.  Then seating
+herself defiantly in her great chair, and folding her arms, she
+stabbed me to the heart with the unlooked-for reproach, 'You
+worldly wretch!'
+
+'Worldly?' I cried.  'Worldly?'
+
+'This, if you please,' - she went on with supreme scorn, pointing
+me out as if there were some one there to see, - 'this, if you
+please, is the disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his
+books!  This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one
+could overreach in a bargain!  This, if you please, is Mr.
+Silverman!  Not of this world; not he!  He has too much simplicity
+for this world's cunning.  He has too much singleness of purpose to
+be a match for this world's double-dealing.  What did he give you
+for it?'
+
+'For what?  And who?'
+
+'How much,' she asked, bending forward in her great chair, and
+insultingly tapping the fingers of her right hand on the palm of
+her left, - 'how much does Mr. Granville Wharton pay you for
+getting him Adelina's money?  What is the amount of your percentage
+upon Adelina's fortune?  What were the terms of the agreement that
+you proposed to this boy when you, the Rev. George Silverman,
+licensed to marry, engaged to put him in possession of this girl?
+You made good terms for yourself, whatever they were.  He would
+stand a poor chance against your keenness.'
+
+Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, I could
+not speak.  But I trust that I looked innocent, being so.
+
+'Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite,' said my lady, whose anger
+increased as she gave it utterance; 'attend to my words, you
+cunning schemer, who have carried this plot through with such a
+practised double face that I have never suspected you.  I had my
+projects for my daughter; projects for family connection; projects
+for fortune.  You have thwarted them, and overreached me; but I am
+not one to be thwarted and overreached without retaliation.  Do you
+mean to hold this living another month?'
+
+'Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can hold it another
+hour, under your injurious words?'
+
+'Is it resigned, then?'
+
+'It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes ago.'
+
+Don't equivocate, sir.  IS it resigned?'
+
+'Unconditionally and entirely; and I would that I had never, never
+come near it!'
+
+'A cordial response from me to THAT wish, Mr. Silverman!  But take
+this with you, sir.  If you had not resigned it, I would have had
+you deprived of it.  And though you have resigned it, you will not
+get quit of me as easily as you think for.  I will pursue you with
+this story.  I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for
+money, known.  You have made money by it, but you have at the same
+time made an enemy by it.  YOU will take good care that the money
+sticks to you; I will take good care that the enemy sticks to you.'
+
+Then said I finally, 'Lady Fareway, I think my heart is broken.
+Until I came into this room just now, the possibility of such mean
+wickedness as you have imputed to me never dawned upon my thoughts.
+Your suspicions - '
+
+'Suspicions!  Pah!' said she indignantly.  'Certainties.'
+
+'Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your suspicions as I
+call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of foundation in fact.
+I can declare no more; except that I have not acted for my own
+profit or my own pleasure.  I have not in this proceeding
+considered myself.  Once again, I think my heart is broken.  If I
+have unwittingly done any wrong with a righteous motive, that is
+some penalty to pay.'
+
+She received this with another and more indignant 'Pah!' and I made
+my way out of her room (I think I felt my way out with my hands,
+although my eyes were open), almost suspecting that my voice had a
+repulsive sound, and that I was a repulsive object.
+
+There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed to, I received
+a severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped suspension.  For years a
+cloud hung over me, and my name was tarnished.
+
+But my heart did not break, if a broken heart involves death; for I
+lived through it.
+
+They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through it all.  Those
+who had known me at college, and even most of those who had only
+known me there by reputation, stood by me too.  Little by little,
+the belief widened that I was not capable of what was laid to my
+charge.  At length I was presented to a college-living in a
+sequestered place, and there I now pen my explanation.  I pen it at
+my open window in the summer-time, before me, lying in the
+churchyard, equal resting-place for sound hearts, wounded hearts,
+and broken hearts.  I pen it for the relief of my own mind, not
+foreseeing whether or no it will ever have a reader.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of George Silverman's Explanation
+
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