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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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