initial commit of ebook 9471HEADmain

1 files changed, 14440 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/9471-8.txt b/9471-8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c848def
--- /dev/null
+++ b/9471-8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14440 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vicar's Daughter, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: The Vicar's Daughter
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Posting Date: August 8, 2012 [EBook #9471]
+Release Date: December, 2005
+First Posted: October 3, 2003
+[Last updated: July 28, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICAR'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, William Flis, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE VICAR'S DAUGHTER
+
+BY GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+
+
+
+
+
+The Vicar's Daughter was originally published in 1872 by Tinsley Brothers,
+London.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "I've brought you the baby to kiss," I said, unfolding the
+blanket. Page 98.]
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+CHAPTER II.
+I TRY
+
+CHAPTER III.
+MY WEDDING
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+JUDY'S VISIT
+
+CHAPTER V.
+GOOD SOCIETY
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+A REFUGE FROM THE HEAT
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+CONNIE
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+CONNIE'S BABY
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+THE FOUNDLING REFOUND
+
+CHAPTER X.
+WAGTAIL COMES TO HONOR
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+A STUPID CHAPTER
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+AN INTRODUCTION
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+MY FIRST DINNER PARTY.--A NEGATIVED PROPOSAL
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+A PICTURE
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+RUMORS
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+A DISCOVERY
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+MISS CLARE
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+MISS CLARE'S HOME
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+HER STORY
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+A REMARKABLE FACT
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+LADY BERNARD
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+MY SECOND DINNER PARTY
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+THE END OF THE EVENING
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+MY FIRST TERROR
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+ITS SEQUEL
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+TROUBLES
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+MISS CLARE AMONGST HER FRIENDS
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+MR. MORLEY
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+A STRANGE TEXT
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+ABOUT SERVANTS
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+ABOUT PERCIVALE
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+MY SECOND TERROR
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+THE CLOUDS AFTER THE RAIN
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+THE SUNSHINE
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+WHAT LADY BERNARD THOUGHT OF IT
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+RETROSPECTIVE
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+MRS. CROMWELL COMES
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+MRS. CROMWELL GOES
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+ANCESTRAL WISDOM
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+CHILD NONSENSE
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+"DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE"
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+ROGER AND MARION
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ROGER, AND ABOUT MR. BLACKSTONE
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+THE DEA EX
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+I think that is the way my father would begin. My name is Ethelwyn
+Percivale, and used to be Ethelwyn Walton. I always put the Walton in
+between when I write to my father; for I think it is quite enough to have
+to leave father and mother behind for a husband, without leaving their name
+behind you also. I am fond of lumber-rooms, and in some houses consider
+them far the most interesting spots; but I don't choose that my old name
+should lie about in the one at home.
+
+I am much afraid of writing nonsense; but my father tells me that to see
+things in print is a great help to recognizing whether they are nonsense or
+not. And he tells me, too, that his friend the publisher, who,--but I will
+speak of him presently,--his friend the publisher is not like any other
+publisher he ever met with before; for he never grumbles at any alterations
+writers choose to make,--at least he never says any thing, although it
+costs a great deal to shift the types again after they are once set up. The
+other part of my excuse for attempting to write lies simply in telling how
+it came about.
+
+Ten days ago, my father came up from Marshmallows to pay us a visit. He is
+with us now, but we don't see much of him all day; for he is generally out
+with a friend of his in the east end, the parson of one of the poorest
+parishes in London,--who thanks God that he wasn't the nephew of any bishop
+to be put into a good living, for he learns more about the ways of God from
+having to do with plain, yes, vulgar human nature, than the thickness of
+the varnish would ever have permitted him to discover in what are called
+the higher orders of society. Yet I must say, that, amongst those I have
+recognized as nearest, the sacred communism of the early church--a phrase
+of my father's--are two or three people of rank and wealth, whose names are
+written in heaven, and need not be set down in my poor story.
+
+A few days ago, then, my father, coming home to dinner, brought with
+him the publisher of the two books called, "The Annals of a Quiet
+Neighborhood," and "The Seaboard Parish." The first of these had lain
+by him for some years before my father could publish it; and then he
+remodelled it a little for the magazine in which it came out, a portion
+at a time. The second was written at the request of Mr. S., who wanted
+something more of the same sort; and now, after some years, he had begun
+again to represent to my father, at intervals, the necessity for another
+story to complete the _trilogy_, as he called it: insisting, when my father
+objected the difficulties of growing years and failing judgment, that
+indeed he owed it to him; for he had left him in the lurch, as it were,
+with an incomplete story, not to say an uncompleted series. My father still
+objected, and Mr. S. still urged, until, at length, my father said--this
+I learned afterwards, of course--"What would you say if I found you a
+substitute?" "That depends on who the substitute might be, Mr. Walton,"
+said Mr. S. The result of their talk was that my father brought him home
+to dinner that day; and hence it comes, that, with some real fear and much
+metaphorical trembling, I am now writing this. I wonder if anybody will
+ever read it. This my first chapter shall be composed of a little of the
+talk that passed at our dinner-table that day. Mr. Blackstone was the only
+other stranger present; and he certainly was not much of a stranger.
+
+"Do you keep a diary, Mrs. Percivale?" asked Mr. S., with a twinkle in his
+eye, as if he expected an indignant repudiation.
+
+"I would rather keep a rag and bottle shop," I answered: at which Mr.
+Blackstone burst into one of his splendid roars of laughter; for if ever a
+man could laugh like a Christian who believed the world was in a fair way
+after all, that man was Mr. Blackstone; and even my husband, who seldom
+laughs at any thing I say with more than his eyes, was infected by it, and
+laughed heartily.
+
+"That's rather a strong assertion, my love," said my father. "Pray, what do
+you mean by it?"
+
+"I mean, papa," I answered, "that it would be a more profitable employment
+to keep the one than the other."
+
+"I suppose you think," said Mr. Blackstone, "that the lady who keeps a
+diary is in the same danger as the old woman who prided herself in keeping
+a strict account of her personal expenses. And it always was correct; for
+when she could not get it to balance at the end of the week, she brought it
+right by putting down the deficit as _charity_."
+
+"That's just what I mean," I said.
+
+"But," resumed Mr. S., "I did not mean a diary of your feelings, but of the
+events of the day and hour."
+
+"Which are never in themselves worth putting down," I said. "All that is
+worth remembering will find for itself some convenient cranny to go to
+sleep in till it is wanted, without being made a poor mummy of in a diary."
+
+"If you have such a memory, I grant that is better, even for my purpose,
+much better," said Mr. S.
+
+"For your purpose!" I repeated, in surprise. "I beg your pardon; but what
+designs can you have upon my memory?"
+
+"Well, I suppose I had better be as straightforward as I know you would
+like me to be, Mrs. Percivale. I want you to make up the sum your father
+owes me. He owed me three books; he has paid me two. I want the third from
+you."
+
+I laughed; for the very notion of writing a book seemed preposterous.
+
+"I want you, under feigned names of course," he went on, "as are all the
+names in your father's two books, to give me the further history of the
+family, and in particular your own experiences in London. I am confident
+the history of your married life must contain a number of incidents which,
+without the least danger of indiscretion, might be communicated to the
+public to the great advantage of all who read them."
+
+"You forget," I said, hardly believing him to be in earnest, "that I should
+be exposing my story to you and Mr. Blackstone at least. If I were to make
+the absurd attempt,--I mean absurd as regards my ability,--I should be
+always thinking of you two as my public, and whether it would be right for
+me to say this and say that; which you may see at once would render it
+impossible for me to write at all."
+
+"I think I can suggest a way out of that difficulty, Wynnie," said my
+father. "You must write freely, all you feel inclined to write, and then
+let your husband see it. You may be content to let all pass that he
+passes."
+
+"You don't say you really mean it, papa! The thing is perfectly impossible.
+I never wrote a book in my life, and"--
+
+"No more did I, my dear, before I began my first."
+
+"But you grew up to it by degrees, papa!"
+
+"I have no doubt that will make it the easier for you, when you try. I am
+so far, at least, a Darwinian as to believe that."
+
+"But, really, Mr. S. ought to have more sense--I beg your pardon, Mr. S.;
+but it is perfectly absurd to suppose me capable of finishing any thing my
+father has begun. I assure you I don't feel flattered by your proposal. I
+have got a man of more consequence for a father than that would imply."
+
+All this time my tall husband sat silent at the foot of the table, as if
+he had nothing on earth to do with the affair, instead of coming to my
+assistance, when, as I thought, I really needed it, especially seeing
+my own father was of the combination against me; for what can be more
+miserable than to be taken for wiser or better or cleverer than you know
+perfectly well you are. I looked down the table, straight and sharp at him,
+thinking to rouse him by the most powerful of silent appeals; and when he
+opened his mouth very solemnly, staring at me in return down all the length
+of the table, I thought I had succeeded. But I was not a little surprised,
+when I heard him say,--
+
+"I think, Wynnie, as your father and Mr. S. appear to wish it, you might at
+least try."
+
+This almost overcame me, and I was very near,--never mind what. I bit my
+lips, and tried to smile, but felt as if all my friends had forsaken me,
+and were about to turn me out to beg my bread. How on earth could I write a
+book without making a fool of myself?
+
+"You know, Mrs. Percivale," said Mr. S., "you needn't be afraid about the
+composition, and the spelling, and all that. We can easily set those to
+rights at the office."
+
+He couldn't have done any thing better to send the lump out of my throat;
+for this made me angry.
+
+"I am not in the least anxious about the spelling," I answered; "and for
+the rest, pray what is to become of me, if what you print should happen to
+be praised by somebody who likes my husband or my father, and therefore
+wants to say a good word for me? That's what a good deal of reviewing comes
+to, I understand. Am I to receive in silence what doesn't belong to me, or
+am I to send a letter to the papers to say that the whole thing was patched
+and polished at the printing-office, and that I have no right to more than
+perhaps a fourth part of the commendation? How would that do?"
+
+"But you forget it is not to have your name to it," he said; "and so it
+won't matter a bit. There will be nothing dishonest about it."
+
+"You forget, that, although nobody knows my real name, everybody will know
+that I am the daughter of that Mr. Walton who would have thrown his pen in
+the fire if you had meddled with any thing he wrote. They would be praising
+_me_, if they praised at all. The name is nothing. Of all things, to have
+praise you don't deserve, and not to be able to reject it, is the most
+miserable! It is as bad as painting one's face."
+
+"Hardly a case in point," said Mr. Blackstone. "For the artificial
+complexion would be your own work, and the other would not."
+
+"If you come to discuss that question," said my father, "we must all
+confess we have had in our day to pocket a good many more praises than
+we had a right to. I agree with you, however, my child, that we must not
+connive at any thing of the sort. So I will propose this clause in the
+bargain between you and Mr. S.; namely, that, if he finds any fault with
+your work, he shall send it back to yourself to be set right, and, if you
+cannot do so to his mind, you shall be off the bargain."
+
+"But papa,--Percivale,--both of you know well enough that nothing ever
+happened to me worth telling."
+
+"I am sorry your life has been so very uninteresting, wife," said my
+husband grimly; for his fun is always so like earnest!
+
+"You know well enough what I mean, husband. It does _not_ follow that what
+has been interesting enough to you and me will be interesting to people who
+know nothing at all about us to begin with."
+
+"It depends on how it is told," said Mr. S.
+
+"Then, I beg leave to say, that I never had an original thought in my life;
+and that, if I were to attempt to tell my history, the result would be
+as silly a narrative as ever one old woman told another by the workhouse
+fire."
+
+"And I only wish I could hear the one old woman tell her story to the
+other," said my father.
+
+"Ah! but that's because you see ever so much more in it than shows. You
+always see through the words and the things to something lying behind
+them," I said.
+
+"Well, if you told the story rightly, other people would see such things
+behind it too."
+
+"Not enough of people to make it worth while for Mr. S. to print it," I
+said.
+
+"He's not going to print it except he thinks it worth his while; and you
+may safely leave that to him," said my husband.
+
+"And so I'm to write a book as big as 'The Annals;' and, after I've been
+slaving at it for half a century or so, I'm to be told it won't do, and all
+my labor must go for nothing? I must say the proposal is rather a cool one
+to make,--to the mother of a family."
+
+"Not at all; that's not it, I mean," said Mr. S.; "if you will write a
+dozen pages or so, I shall be able to judge by those well enough,--at
+least, I will take all the responsibility on myself after that."
+
+"There's a fair offer!" said my husband. "It seems to me, Wynnie, that
+all that is wanted of you is to tell your tale so that other people can
+recognize the human heart in it,--the heart that is like their own, and
+be able to feel as if they were themselves going through the things you
+recount."
+
+"You describe the work of a genius, and coolly ask me to do it. Besides,
+I don't want to be set thinking about my heart, and all that," I said
+peevishly.
+
+"Now, don't be raising objections where none exist," he returned.
+
+"If you mean I am pretending to object, I have only to say that I feel all
+one great objection to the whole affair, and that I won't touch it."
+
+They were all silent; and I felt as if I had behaved ungraciously. Then
+first I felt as if I might _have_ to do it, after all. But I couldn't see
+my way in the least.
+
+"Now, what is there," I asked, "in all my life that is worth setting
+down,--I mean, as I should be able to set it down?"
+
+"What do you ladies talk about now in your morning calls?" suggested Mr.
+Blackstone, with a humorous glance from his deep black eyes.
+
+"Nothing worth writing about, as I am sure _you_ will readily believe, Mr.
+Blackstone," I answered.
+
+"How comes it to be interesting, then?"
+
+"But it isn't. They--we--only talk about the weather and our children and
+servants, and that sort of thing."
+
+"_Well!_" said Mr. S., "and I wish I could get any thing sensible about the
+weather and children and servants, and that sort of thing, for my magazine.
+I have a weakness in the direction of the sensible."
+
+"But there never is any thing sensible said about any of them,--not that I
+know of."
+
+"Now, Wynnie, I am sure you are wrong," said my father. "There is your
+friend, Mrs. Cromwell: I am certain she, sometimes at least, must say what
+is worth hearing about such matters."
+
+"Well, but she's an exception. Besides, she hasn't any children."
+
+"Then," said my husband, "there's Lady Bernard"--
+
+"Ah! but she was like no one else. Besides, she is almost a public
+character, and any thing said about her would betray my original."
+
+"It would be no matter. She is beyond caring for that now; and not one of
+her friends could object to any thing you who loved her so much would say
+about her."
+
+The mention of this lady seemed to put some strength into me. I felt as if
+I did know something worth telling, and I was silent in my turn.
+
+"Certainly," Mr. S. resumed, "whatever is worth talking about is worth
+writing about,--though not perhaps in the way it is talked about. Besides,
+Mrs. Percivale, my clients want to know more about your sisters, and little
+Theodora, or Dorothea, or--what was her name in the book?"
+
+The end of it was, that I agreed to try to the extent of a dozen pages or
+so.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+I TRY.
+
+
+I hope no one will think I try to write like my father; for that would be
+to go against what he always made a great point of,--that nobody whatever
+should imitate any other person whatever, but in modesty and humility allow
+the seed that God had sown in her to grow. He said all imitation tended to
+dwarf and distort the plant, if it even allowed the seed to germinate at
+all. So, if I do write like him, it will be because I cannot help it.
+
+I will just look how "The Seaboard Parish" ends, and perhaps that will put
+into my head how I ought to begin. I see my father does mention that I had
+then been Mrs. Percivale for many years. Not so very many though,--five or
+six, if I remember rightly, and that is three or four years ago. Yes; I
+have been married nine years. I may as well say a word as to how it came
+about; and, if Percivale doesn't like it, the remedy lies in his pen. I
+shall be far more thankful to have any thing struck out on suspicion than
+remain on sufferance.
+
+After our return home from Kilkhaven, my father and mother had a good many
+talks about me and Percivale, and sometimes they took different sides. I
+will give a shadow of one of these conversations. I think ladies can write
+fully as natural talk as gentlemen can, though the bits between mayn't be
+so good.
+
+_Mother._--I am afraid, my dear husband [This was my mother's most solemn
+mode of addressing my father], "they are too like each other to make a
+suitable match."
+
+_Father_.--I am sorry to learn you consider me so very unlike yourself,
+Ethelwyn. I had hoped there was a very strong resemblance indeed, and that
+the match had not proved altogether unsuitable.
+
+_Mother._--Just think, though, what would have become of me by this time,
+if you had been half as unbelieving a creature as I was. Indeed, I fear
+sometimes I am not much better now.
+
+_Father._--I think I am, then; and I know you've done me nothing but good
+with your unbelief. It was just because I was of the same sort precisely
+that I was able to understand and help you. My circumstances and education
+and superior years--
+
+_Mother._--Now, don't plume yourself on that, Harry; for you know everybody
+says you look much the younger of the two.
+
+_Father._--I had no idea that everybody was so rude. I repeat, that my more
+years, as well as my severer education, had, no doubt, helped me a little
+further on before I came to know you; but it was only in virtue of the
+doubt in me that I was able to understand and appreciate the doubt in you.
+
+_Mother._--But then you had at least begun to leave it behind before I knew
+you, and so had grown able to help me. And Mr. Percivale does not seem, by
+all I can make out, a bit nearer believing in any thing than poor Wynnie
+herself.
+
+_Father._--At least, he doesn't fancy he believes when he does not, as so
+many do, and consider themselves superior persons in consequence. I don't
+know that it would have done you any great harm, Miss Ethelwyn, to have
+made my acquaintance when I was in the worst of my doubts concerning the
+truth of things. Allow me to tell you that I was nearer making shipwreck of
+my faith at a certain period than I ever was before or have been since.
+
+_Mother._--What period was that?
+
+_Father._--Just the little while when I had lost all hope of ever marrying
+you,--unbeliever as you counted yourself.
+
+_Mother._--You don't mean to say you would have ceased to believe in God,
+if he hadn't given you your own way?
+
+_Father._--No, my dear. I firmly believe, that, had I never married you, I
+should have come in the end to say, "_Thy will be done_," and to believe
+that it must be all right, however hard to bear. But, oh, what a terrible
+thing it would have been, and what a frightful valley of the shadow of
+death I should have had to go through first!
+
+[I know my mother _said_ nothing more just then, but let my father have it
+all his own way for a while.]
+
+_Father._--You see, this Percivale is an honest man. I don't exactly know
+how he has been brought up; and it is quite possible he may have had such
+evil instruction in Christianity that he attributes to it doctrines which,
+if I supposed they actually belonged to it, would make me reject it at once
+as ungodlike and bad. I have found this the case sometimes. I remember once
+being astonished to hear a certain noble-minded lady utter some indignant
+words against what I considered a very weighty doctrine of Christianity;
+but, listening, I soon found that what she supposed the doctrine to contain
+was something considered vastly unchristian. This may be the case with
+Percivale, though I never heard him say a word of the kind. I think his
+difficulty comes mainly from seeing so much suffering in the world, that
+he cannot imagine the presence and rule of a good God, and therefore lies
+with religion rather than with Christianity as yet. I am all but certain,
+the only thing that will ever make him able to believe in a God at all is
+meditation on the Christian idea of God,--I mean the idea of God _in_
+Christ reconciling the world to himself,--not that pagan corruption of
+Christ in God reconciling him to the world. He will then see that suffering
+is not either wrath or neglect, but pure-hearted love and tenderness. But
+we must give him time, wife; as God has borne with us, we must believe that
+he bears with others, and so learn to wait in hopeful patience until they,
+too, see as we see.
+
+And as to trusting our Wynnie with Percivale, he seems to be as good as
+she is. I should for my part have more apprehension in giving her to one
+who would be called a thoroughly religious man; for not only would the
+unfitness be greater, but such a man would be more likely to confirm her
+in doubt, if the phrase be permissible. She wants what some would call
+homoeopathic treatment. And how should they be able to love one another, if
+they are not fit to be married to each other? The fitness, seems inherent
+to the fact.
+
+_Mother._--But many a two love each other who would have loved each other a
+good deal more if they hadn't been married.
+
+_Father._--Then it was most desirable they should find out that what they
+thought a grand affection was not worthy of the name. But I don't think
+there is much fear of that between those two.
+
+_Mother._--I don't, however, see how that man is to do her any good, when
+_you_ have tried to make her happy for so long, and all in vain.
+
+_Father._--I don't know that it has been all in vain. But it is quite
+possible she does not understand me. She fancies, I dare say, that I
+believe every thing without any trouble, and therefore cannot enter into
+her difficulties.
+
+_Mother._--But you have told her many and many a time that you do.
+
+_Father._--Yes: and I hope I was right; but the same things look so
+different to different people that the same words won't describe them to
+both; and it may seem to her that I am talking of something not at all
+like what she is feeling or thinking of. But when she sees the troubled
+face of Percivale, she knows that he is suffering; and sympathy being thus
+established between them, the least word of the one will do more to help
+the other than oceans of argument. Love is the one great instructor. And
+each will try to be good, and to find out for the sake of the other.
+
+_Mother._--I don't like her going from home for the help that lay at her
+very door.
+
+_Father._--You know, my dear, you like the Dean's preaching much better
+than mine.
+
+_Mother._--Now, that is unkind of you!
+
+_Father._--And why? [My father went on, taking no heed of my mother's
+expostulation.] Because, in the first place, it _is_ better; because, in
+the second, it comes in a newer form to you, for you have got used to all
+my modes; in the third place, it has more force from the fact that it is
+not subject to the doubt of personal preference; and lastly, because he has
+a large, comprehensive way of asserting things, which pleases you better
+than my more dubitant mode of submitting them,--all very sound and good
+reasons: but still, why be so vexed with Wynnie?
+
+[My mother was now, however, so vexed with my father for saying she
+preferred the Dean's preaching to his,--although I doubt very much whether
+it wasn't true,--that she actually walked out of the octagon room where
+they were, and left him to meditate on his unkindness. Vexed with herself
+the next moment, she returned as if nothing had happened. I am only telling
+what my mother told me; for to her grown daughters she is blessedly
+trusting.]
+
+_Mother._--Then if you will have them married, husband, will you say how on
+earth you expect them to live? He just makes both ends meet now: I suppose
+he doesn't make things out worse than they are; and that is his own account
+of the state of his affairs.
+
+_Father._--Ah, yes! that _is_--a secondary consideration, my dear. But I
+have hardly begun to think about it yet. There will be a difficulty there,
+I can easily imagine; for he is far too independent to let us do any thing
+for him.
+
+_Mother._--And you can't do much, if they would. Really, they oughtn't to
+marry yet.
+
+_Father._--Really, we must leave it to themselves. I don't think you and I
+need trouble our heads about it. When Percivale considers himself prepared
+to marry, and Wynnie thinks he is right, you may be sure they see their way
+to a livelihood without running in hopeless debt to their tradespeople.
+
+_Mother._--Oh, yes! I dare say: in some poky little lodging or other!
+
+_Father._--For my part, Ethelwyn, I think it better to build castles in the
+air than huts in the smoke. But seriously, a little poverty and a little
+struggling would be a most healthy and healing thing for Wynnie. It hasn't
+done Percivale much good yet, I confess; for he is far too indifferent to
+his own comforts to mind it: but it will be quite another thing when he has
+a young wife and perhaps children depending upon him. Then his poverty may
+begin to hurt him, and so do him some good.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may seem odd that my father and mother should now be taking such
+opposite sides to those they took when the question of our engagement was
+first started, as represented by my father in "The Seaboard Parish." But
+it will seem inconsistent to none of the family; for it was no unusual
+thing for them to take opposite sides to those they had previously
+advocated,--each happening at the time, possibly enlightened by the
+foregone arguments of the other, to be impressed with the correlate truth,
+as my father calls the other side of a thing. Besides, engagement and
+marriage are two different things; and although my mother was the first
+to recognize the good of our being engaged, when it came to marriage she
+got frightened, I think. Any how, I have her authority for saying that
+something like this passed between her and my father on the subject.
+
+Discussion between them differed in this from what I have generally heard
+between married people, that it was always founded on a tacit understanding
+of certain unmentioned principles; and no doubt sometimes, if a stranger
+had been present, he would have been bewildered as to the very meaning
+of what they were saying. But we girls generally understood: and I fancy
+we learned more from their differences than from their agreements; for
+of course it was the differences that brought out their minds most, and
+chiefly led us to think that we might understand. In our house there were
+very few of those mysteries which in some houses seem so to abound; and
+I think the openness with which every question, for whose concealment
+there was no special reason, was discussed, did more than even any direct
+instruction we received to develop what thinking faculty might be in us.
+Nor was there much reason to dread that my small brothers might repeat any
+thing. I remember hearing Harry say to Charley once, they being then eight
+and nine years old, "That is mamma's opinion, Charley, not yours; and you
+know we must not repeat what we hear."
+
+They soon came to be of one mind about Mr. Percivale and me: for indeed the
+only _real_ ground for doubt that had ever existed was, whether I was good
+enough for him; and for my part, I knew then and know now, that I was and
+am dreadfully inferior to him. And notwithstanding the tremendous work
+women are now making about their rights (and, in as far as they are their
+rights, I hope to goodness they may get them, if it were only that certain
+who make me feel ashamed of myself because I, too, am a woman, might
+perhaps then drop out of the public regard),--notwithstanding this, I
+venture the sweeping assertion, that every woman is not as good as every
+man, and that it is not necessary to the dignity of a wife that she should
+assert even equality with her husband. Let him assert her equality or
+superiority if he will; but, were it a fact, it would be a poor one for
+her to assert, seeing her glory is in her husband. To seek the chief place
+is especially unfitting the marriage-feast. Whether I be a Christian or
+not,--and I have good reason to doubt it every day of my life,--at least
+I see that in the New Jerusalem one essential of citizenship consists in
+knowing how to set the good in others over against the evil in ourselves.
+
+There, now, my father might have said that! and no doubt has said so twenty
+times in my hearing. It is, however, only since I was married that I have
+come to see it for myself; and, now that I do see it, I have a right to say
+it.
+
+So we were married at last. My mother believes it was my father's good
+advice to Percivale concerning the sort of pictures he painted, that
+brought it about. For certainly soon after we were engaged, he began to
+have what his artist friends called a run of luck: he sold one picture
+after another in a very extraordinary and hopeful manner. But Percivale
+says it was his love for me--indeed he does--which enabled him to see not
+only much deeper into things, but also to see much better the bloom that
+hangs about every thing, and so to paint much better pictures than before.
+He felt, he said, that he had a hold now where before he had only a sight.
+However this may be, he had got on so well for a while that he wrote
+at last, that, if I was willing to share his poverty, it would not, he
+thought, be absolute starvation; and I was, of course, perfectly content.
+I can't put in words--indeed I dare not, for fear of writing what would
+be, if not unladylike, at least uncharitable--my contempt for those women
+who, loving a man, hesitate to run every risk with him. Of course, if
+they cannot trust him, it is a different thing. I am not going to say
+any thing about that; for I should be out of my depth,--not in the least
+understanding how a woman can love a man to whom she cannot look up. I
+believe there are who can; I see some men married whom I don't believe any
+woman ever did or ever could respect; all I say is, I don't understand it.
+
+My father and mother made no objection, and were evidently at last quite
+agreed that it would be the best thing for both of us; and so, I say, we
+were married.
+
+I ought to just mention, that, before the day arrived, my mother went up
+to London at Percivale's request, to help him in getting together the few
+things absolutely needful for the barest commencement of housekeeping. For
+the rest, it had been arranged that we should furnish by degrees, buying
+as we saw what we liked, and could afford it. The greater part of modern
+fashions in furniture, having both been accustomed to the stateliness of
+a more artistic period, we detested for their ugliness, and chiefly,
+therefore, we desired to look about us at our leisure.
+
+My mother came back more satisfied with the little house he had taken than
+I had expected. It was not so easy to get one to suit us; for of course he
+required a large room to paint in, with a good north light. He had however
+succeeded better than he had hoped.
+
+"You will find things very different from what you have been used to,
+Wynnie," said my mother.
+
+"Of course, mamma; I know that," I answered. "I hope I am prepared to meet
+it. If I don't like it, I shall have no one to blame but myself; and I
+don't see what right people have to expect what they have been used to."
+
+"There is just this advantage," said my father, "in having been used to
+nice things, that it ought to be easier to keep from sinking into the
+sordid, however straitened the new circumstances may be, compared with the
+old."
+
+On the evening before the wedding, my father took me into the octagon room,
+and there knelt down with me and my mother, and prayed for me in such a
+wonderful way that I was perfectly astonished and overcome. I had never
+known him to do any thing of the kind before. He was not favorable to
+extempore prayer in public, or even in the family, and indeed had often
+seemed willing to omit prayers for what I could not always count sufficient
+reason: he had a horror at their getting to be a matter of course, and a
+form; for then, he said, they ceased to be worship at all, and were a mere
+pagan rite, better far left alone. I remember also he said, that those,
+however good they might be, who urged attention to the forms of religion,
+such as going to church and saying prayers, were, however innocently, just
+the prophets of Pharisaism; that what men had to be stirred up to was to
+lay hold upon God, and then they would not fail to find out what religious
+forms they ought to cherish. "The spirit first, and then the flesh,"
+he would say. To put the latter before the former was a falsehood, and
+therefore a frightful danger, being at the root of all declensions in
+the Church, and making ever-recurring earthquakes and persecutions and
+repentances and reformations needful. I find what my father used to say
+coming back so often now that I hear so little of it,--especially as he
+talks much less, accusing himself of having always talked too much,--and
+I understand it so much better now, that I shall be always in danger
+of interrupting my narrative to say something that he said. But when I
+commence the next chapter, I shall get on faster, I hope. My story is like
+a vessel I saw once being launched: it would stick on the stocks, instead
+of sliding away into the expectant waters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MY WEDDING.
+
+
+I confess the first thing I did when I knew myself the next morning was
+to have a good cry. To leave the place where I had been born was like
+forsaking the laws and order of the Nature I knew, for some other Nature it
+might be, but not known to me as such. How, for instance, could one who has
+been used to our bright white sun, and our pale modest moon, with our soft
+twilights, and far, mysterious skies of night, be willing to fall in with
+the order of things in a planet, such as I have read of somewhere, with
+three or four suns, one red and another green and another yellow? Only
+perhaps I've taken it all up wrong, and I do like looking at a landscape
+for a minute or so through a colored glass; and if it be so, of course it
+all blends, and all we want is harmony. What I mean is, that I found it
+a great wrench to leave the dear old place, and of course loved it more
+than I had ever loved it. But I would get all my crying about that over
+beforehand. It would be bad enough afterwards to have to part with my
+father and mother and Connie, and the rest of them. Only it wasn't like
+leaving them. You can't leave hearts as you do rooms. You can't leave
+thoughts as you do books. Those you love only come nearer to you when you
+go away from them. The same rules don't hold with _thinks_ and _things_, as
+my eldest boy distinguished them the other day.
+
+But somehow I couldn't get up and dress. I seemed to have got very fond of
+my own bed, and the queer old crows, as I had called them from babyhood, on
+the chintz curtains, and the Chinese paper on the wall with the strangest
+birds and creeping things on it. It was a lovely spring morning, and the
+sun was shining gloriously. I knew that the rain of the last night must be
+glittering on the grass and the young leaves; and I heard the birds singing
+as if they knew far more than mere human beings, and believed a great deal
+more than they knew. Nobody will persuade me that the birds don't mean it;
+that they sing from any thing else than gladness of heart. And if they
+don't think about cats and guns, why should they? Even when they fall on
+the ground, it is not without our Father. How horridly dull and stupid it
+seems to say that "without your Father" means without _his knowing it_. The
+Father's mere _knowledge_ of a thing--if that could be, which my father
+says can't--is not the Father. The Father's tenderness and care and love of
+it all the time, that is the not falling without him. When the cat kills
+the bird, as I have seen happen so often in our poor little London garden,
+God yet saves his bird from his cat. There is nothing so bad as it looks to
+our half-sight, our blinding perceptions. My father used to say we are all
+walking in a spiritual twilight, and are all more or less affected with
+twilight blindness, as some people are physically. Percivale, for one, who
+is as brave as any wife could wish, is far more timid than I am in crossing
+a London street in the twilight; he can't see what is coming, and fancies
+he sees what is not coming. But then he has faith in me, and never starts
+when I am leading him.
+
+Well, the birds were singing, and Dora and the boys were making a great
+chatter, like a whole colony of sparrows, under my window. Still I felt as
+if I had twenty questions to settle before I could get up comfortably, and
+so lay on and on till the breakfast-bell rang: and I was not more than half
+dressed when my mother came to see why I was late; for I had not been late
+forever so long before.
+
+She comforted me as nobody but a mother can comfort. Oh, I do hope I shall
+be to my children what my mother has been to me! It would be such a blessed
+thing to be a well of water whence they may be sure of drawing comfort. And
+all she said to me has come true.
+
+Of course, my father gave me away, and Mr. Weir married us.
+
+It had been before agreed that we should have no wedding journey. We all
+liked the old-fashioned plan of the bride going straight from her father's
+house to her husband's. The other way seemed a poor invention, just for the
+sake of something different. So after the wedding, we spent the time as we
+should have done any other day, wandering about in groups, or sitting and
+reading, only that we were all more smartly dressed; until it was time for
+an early dinner, after which we drove to the station, accompanied only
+by my father and mother. After they left us, or rather we left them, my
+husband did not speak to me for nearly an hour: I knew why, and was very
+grateful. He would not show his new face in the midst of my old loves and
+their sorrows, but would give me time to re-arrange the grouping so as
+myself to bring him in when all was ready for him. I know that was what he
+was thinking, or feeling rather; and I understood him perfectly. At last,
+when I had got things a little tidier inside me, and had got my eyes to
+stop, I held out my hand to him, and then--knew that I was his wife.
+
+This is all I have got to tell, though I have plenty more to keep, till we
+get to London. There, instead of my father's nice carriage, we got into a
+jolting, lumbering, horrid cab, with my five boxes and Percivale's little
+portmanteau on the top of it, and drove away to Camden Town. It _was_
+to a part of it near the Regent's Park; and so our letters were always,
+according to the divisions of the post-office, addressed to Regent's Park,
+but for all practical intents we were in Camden Town. It was indeed a
+change from a fine old house in the country; but the street wasn't much
+uglier than Belgrave Square, or any other of those heaps of uglinesses,
+called squares, in the West End; and, after what I had been told to expect,
+I was surprised at the prettiness of the little house, when I stepped out
+of the cab and looked about me. It was stuck on like a swallow's nest to
+the end of a great row of commonplace houses, nearly a quarter of a mile in
+length, but itself was not the work of one of those wretched builders who
+care no more for beauty in what they build than a scavenger in the heap of
+mud he scrapes from the street. It had been built by a painter for himself,
+in the Tudor style; and though Percivale says the idea is not very well
+carried out, I like it much.
+
+I found it a little dreary when I entered though,--from its emptiness.
+The only sitting-room at all prepared had just a table and two or three
+old-fashioned chairs in it; not even a carpet on the floor. The bedroom and
+dressing-room were also as scantily furnished as they well could be.
+
+"Don't be dismayed, my darling," said my husband.
+
+"Look here,"--showing me a bunch of notes,--"we shall go out to-morrow and
+buy all we want,--as far as this will go,--and then wait for the rest. It
+will be such a pleasure to buy the things with you, and see them come home,
+and have you appoint their places. You and Sarah will make the carpets;
+won't you? And I will put them down, and we shall be like birds building
+their nest."
+
+"We have only to line it; the nest is built already."
+
+"Well, neither do the birds build the tree. I wonder if they ever sit in
+their old summer nests in the winter nights."
+
+"I am afraid not," I answered; "but I'm ashamed to say I can't tell."
+
+"It is the only pretty house I know in all London," he went on, "with a
+studio at the back of it. I have had my eye on it for a long time, but
+there seemed no sign of a migratory disposition in the bird who had
+occupied it for three years past. All at once he spread his wings and flew.
+I count myself very fortunate."
+
+"So do I. But now you must let me see your study," I said. "I hope I may
+sit in it when you've got nobody there."
+
+"As much as ever you like, my love," he answered. "Only I don't want to
+make all my women like you, as I've been doing for the last two years. You
+must get me out of that somehow."
+
+"Easily. I shall be so cross and disagreeable that you will get tired of
+me, and find no more difficulty in keeping me out of your pictures."
+
+But he got me out of his pictures without that; for when he had me always
+before him he didn't want to be always producing me.
+
+He led me into the little hall,--made lovely by a cast of an unfinished
+Madonna of Michael Angelo's let into the wall,--and then to the back of it,
+where he opened a small cloth-covered door, when there yawned before me,
+below me, and above me, a great wide lofty room. Down into it led an almost
+perpendicular stair.
+
+"So you keep a little private precipice here," I said.
+
+"No, my dear," he returned; "you mistake. It is a Jacob's ladder,--or will
+be in one moment more."
+
+He gave me his hand, and led me down.
+
+"This is quite a banqueting-hall, Percivale!" I cried, looking round me.
+
+"It shall be, the first time I get a thousand pounds for a picture," he
+returned.
+
+"How grand you talk!" I said, looking up at him with some wonder; for big
+words rarely came out of his mouth.
+
+"Well," he answered merrily, "I had two hundred and seventy-five for the
+last."
+
+"That's a long way off a thousand," I returned, with a silly sigh.
+
+"Quite right; and, therefore, this study is a long way off a
+banqueting-hall."
+
+There was literally nothing inside the seventeen feet cube except one
+chair, one easel, a horrible thing like a huge doll, with no end of joints,
+called a lay figure, but Percivale called it his bishop; a number of
+pictures leaning their faces against the walls in attitudes of grief that
+their beauty was despised and no man would buy them; a few casts of legs
+and arms and faces, half a dozen murderous-looking weapons, and a couple of
+yards square of the most exquisite tapestry I ever saw.
+
+"Do you like being read to when you are at work?" I asked him.
+
+"Sometimes,--at certain kinds of work, but not by any means always," he
+answered. "Will you shut your eyes for one minute," he went on, "and,
+whatever I do, not open them till I tell you?"
+
+"You mustn't hurt me, then, or I may open them without being able to help
+it, you know," I said, closing my eyes tight.
+
+"Hurt you!" he repeated, with a tone I would not put on paper if I could,
+and the same moment I found myself in his arms, carried like a baby, for
+Percivale is one of the strongest of men.
+
+It was only for a few yards, however. He laid me down somewhere, and told
+me to open my eyes.
+
+I could scarcely believe them when I did. I was lying on a couch in a
+room,--small, indeed, but beyond exception the loveliest I had ever seen.
+At first I was only aware of an exquisite harmony of color, and could not
+have told of what it was composed. The place was lighted by a soft lamp
+that hung in the middle; and when my eyes went up to see where it was
+fastened, I found the ceiling marvellous in deep blue, with a suspicion
+of green, just like some of the shades of a peacock's feathers, with a
+multitude of gold and red stars upon it. What the walls were I could not
+for some time tell, they were so covered with pictures and sketches;
+against one was a lovely little set of book-shelves filled with books, and
+on a little carved table stood a vase of white hot-house flowers, with one
+red camellia. One picture had a curtain of green silk before it, and by its
+side hung the wounded knight whom his friends were carrying home to die.
+
+"O my Percivale!" I cried, and could say no more.
+
+"Do you like it?" he asked quietly, but with shining eyes.
+
+"Like it?" I repeated. "Shall I like Paradise when I get there? But what a
+lot of money it must have cost you!"
+
+"Not much," he answered; "not more than thirty pounds or so. Every spot of
+paint there is from my own brush."
+
+"O Percivale!"
+
+I must make a conversation of it to tell it at all; but what I really did
+say I know no more than the man in the moon.
+
+"The carpet was the only expensive thing. That must be as thick as I could
+get it; for the floor is of stone, and must not come near your pretty feet.
+Guess what the place was before."
+
+"I should say, the flower of a prickly-pear cactus, full of sunlight from
+behind, which a fairy took the fancy to swell into a room."
+
+"It was a shed, in which the sculptor who occupied the place before me used
+to keep his wet clay and blocks of marble."
+
+"Seeing is hardly believing," I said. "Is it to be my room? I know you mean
+it for my room, where I can ask you to come when I please, and where I can
+hide when any one comes you don't want me to see."
+
+"That is just what I meant it for, my Ethelwyn,--and to let you know what I
+_would_ do for you if I could."
+
+"I hate the place, Percivale," I said. "What right has it to come poking
+in between you and me, telling me what I know and have known--for, well, I
+won't say how long--far better than even you can tell me?"
+
+He looked a little troubled.
+
+"Ah, my dear!" I said, "let my foolish words breathe and die."
+
+I wonder sometimes to think how seldom I am in that room now. But there it
+is; and somehow I seem to know it all the time I am busy elsewhere.
+
+He made me shut my eyes again, and carried me into the study.
+
+"Now," he said, "find your way to your own room."
+
+I looked about me, but could see no sign of door. He took up a tall
+stretcher with a canvas on it, and revealed the door, at the same time
+showing a likeness of myself,--at the top of the Jacob's ladder, as he
+called it, with me foot on the first step, and the other half way to the
+second. The light came from the window on my left, which he had turned into
+a western window, in order to get certain effects from a supposed sunset. I
+was represented in a white dress, tinged with the rose of the west; and he
+had managed, attributing the phenomenon to the inequalities of the glass in
+the window, to suggest one rosy wing behind me, with just the shoulder-roof
+of another visible.
+
+"There!" he said. "It is not finished yet, but that is how I saw you one
+evening as I was sitting here all alone in the twilight."
+
+"But you didn't really see me like that!" I said.
+
+"I hardly know," he answered. "I had been forgetting every thing else in
+dreaming about you, and--how it was I cannot tell, but either in the body
+or out of the body there I saw you, standing just so at the top of the
+stair, smiling to me as much as to say, 'Have patience. My foot is on the
+first step. I'm coming.' I turned at once to my easel, and before the
+twilight was gone had sketched the vision. To-morrow, you must sit to me
+for an hour or so; for I will do nothing else till I have finished it, and
+sent it off to your father and mother."
+
+I may just add that I hear it is considered a very fine painting. It hangs
+in the great dining-room at home. I wish I were as good as he has made it
+look.
+
+The next morning, after I had given him the sitting he wanted, we set out
+on our furniture hunt; when, having keen enough eyes, I caught sight of
+this and of that and of twenty different things in the brokers' shops. We
+did not agree about the merits of everything by which one or the other was
+attracted; but an objection by the one always turned the other, a little at
+least, and we bought nothing we were not agreed about. Yet that evening the
+hall was piled with things sent home to line our nest. Percivale, as I have
+said, had saved up some money for the purpose, and I had a hundred pounds
+my father had given me before we started, which, never having had more than
+ten of my own at a time, I was eager enough to spend. So we found plenty
+to do for the fortnight during which time my mother had promised to say
+nothing to her friends in London of our arrival. Percivale also keeping
+out of the way of his friends, everybody thought we were on the Continent,
+or somewhere else, and left us to ourselves. And as he had sent in his
+pictures to the Academy, he was able to take a rest, which rest consisted
+in working hard at all sorts of upholstery, not to mention painters' and
+carpenters' work; so that we soon got the little house made into a very
+warm and very pretty nest. I may mention that Percivale was particularly
+pleased with a cabinet I bought for him on the sly, to stand in his study,
+and hold his paints and brushes and sketches; for there were all sorts of
+drawers in it, and some that it took us a good deal of trouble to find out,
+though he was clever enough to suspect them from the first, when I hadn't a
+thought of such a thing; and I have often fancied since that that cabinet
+was just like himself, for I have been going on finding out things in
+him that I had no idea were there when I married him. I had no idea that
+he was a poet, for instance. I wonder to this day why he never showed me
+any of his verses before we were married. He writes better poetry than
+my father,--at least my father says so. Indeed, I soon came to feel very
+ignorant and stupid beside him; he could tell me so many things, and
+especially in art (for he had thought about all kinds of it), making me
+understand that there is no end to it, any more than to the Nature which
+sets it going, and that the more we see into Nature, and try to represent
+it, the more ignorant and helpless we find ourselves, until at length I
+began to wonder whether God might not have made the world so rich and full
+just to teach his children humility. For a while I felt quite stunned.
+He very much wanted me to draw; but I thought it was no use trying, and,
+indeed, had no heart for it. I spoke to my father about it. He said it was
+indeed of no use, if my object was to be able to think much of myself, for
+no one could ever succeed in that in the long run; but if my object was to
+reap the delight of the truth, it was worth while to spend hours and hours
+on trying to draw a single tree-leaf, or paint the wing of a moth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JUDY'S VISIT.
+
+
+The very first morning after the expiry of the fortnight, when I was in
+the kitchen with Sarah, giving her instructions about a certain dish as
+if I had made it twenty times, whereas I had only just learned how from a
+shilling cookery-book, there came a double knock at the door. I guessed who
+it must be.
+
+"Run, Sarah," I said, "and show Mrs. Morley into the drawing-room."
+
+When I entered, there she was,--Mrs. Morley, _alias_ Cousin Judy.
+
+"Well, little cozzie!" she cried, as she kissed me three or four times,
+"I'm glad to see you gone the way of womankind,--wooed and married and a'!
+Fate, child! inscrutable fate!" and she kissed me again.
+
+She always calls me little coz, though I am a head taller than herself.
+She is as good as ever, quite as brusque, and at the first word apparently
+more overbearing. But she is as ready to listen to reason as ever was woman
+of my acquaintance; and I think the form of her speech is but a somewhat
+distorted reflex of her perfect honesty. After a little trifling talk,
+which is sure to come first when people are more than ordinarily glad to
+meet, I asked after her children. I forget how many there were of them, but
+they were then pretty far into the plural number.
+
+"Growing like ill weeds," she said; "as anxious as ever their grandfathers
+and mothers were to get their heads up and do mischief. For my part I wish
+I was Jove,--to start them full grown at once. Or why shouldn't they be
+made like Eve out of their father's ribs? It would be a great comfort to
+their mother."
+
+My father had always been much pleased with the results of Judy's training,
+as contrasted with those of his sister's. The little ones of my aunt
+Martha's family were always wanting something, and always looking care-worn
+like their mother, while she was always reading them lectures on their
+duty, and never making them mind what she said. She would represent the
+self-same thing to them over and over, until not merely all force, but all
+sense as well, seemed to have forsaken it. Her notion of duty was to tell
+them yet again the duty which they had been told at least a thousand times
+already, without the slightest result. They were dull children, wearisome
+and uninteresting. On the other hand, the little Morleys were full of life
+and eagerness. The fault in them was that they wouldn't take petting; and
+what's the good of a child that won't be petted? They lacked that something
+which makes a woman feel motherly.
+
+"When did you arrive, cozzie?" she asked.
+
+"A fortnight ago yesterday."
+
+"Ah, you sly thing! What have you been doing with yourself all the time?"
+
+"Furnishing."
+
+"What! you came into an empty house?"
+
+"Not quite that, but nearly."
+
+"It is very odd I should never have seen your husband. We have crossed each
+other twenty times."
+
+"Not so _very_ odd, seeing he has been my husband only a fortnight."
+
+"What is he like?"
+
+"Like nothing but himself."
+
+"Is he tall?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is he stout?"
+
+"No."
+
+"An Adonis?"
+
+"No."
+
+"A Hercules?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Very clever, I believe."
+
+"Not at all."
+
+For my father had taught me to look down on that word.
+
+"Why did you marry him then?"
+
+"I didn't. He married me."
+
+"What did you marry him for then?"
+
+"For love."
+
+"What did you love him for?"
+
+"Because he was a philosopher."
+
+"That's the oddest reason I ever heard for marrying a man."
+
+"I said for loving him, Judy."
+
+Her bright eyes were twinkling with fun.
+
+"Come, cozzie," she said, "give me a proper reason for falling in love with
+this husband of yours."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you, then," I said; "only you mustn't tell any other body;
+he's got such a big shaggy head, just like a lion's."
+
+"And such a huge big foot,--just like a bear's?"
+
+"Yes, and such great huge hands! Why, the two of them go quite round my
+waist! And such big eyes, that they look right through me; and such a big
+heart, that if he saw me doing any thing wrong, he would kill me, and bury
+me in it."
+
+"Well, I must say, it is the most extraordinary description of a husband I
+ever heard. It sounds to me very like an ogre."
+
+"Yes; I admit the description is rather ogrish. But then he's poor, and
+that makes up for a good deal."
+
+I was in the humor for talking nonsense, and of course expected of all
+people that Judy would understand my fun.
+
+"How does that make up for any thing?"
+
+"Because if he is a poor man, he isn't a rich man, and therefore not so
+likely to be a stupid."
+
+"How do you make that out?"
+
+"Because, first of all, the rich man doesn't know what to do with his
+money, whereas my ogre knows what to do without it. Then the rich man
+wonders in the morning which waistcoat he shall put on, while my ogre has
+but one, besides his Sunday one. Then supposing the rich man has slept
+well, and has done a fair stroke or two of business, he wants nothing but
+a well-dressed wife, a well-dressed dinner, a few glasses of his favorite
+wine, and the evening paper, well-diluted with a sleep in his easy chair,
+to be perfectly satisfied that this world is the best of all possible
+worlds. Now my ogre, on the other hand"--
+
+I was going on to point out how frightfully different from all this my ogre
+was,--how he would devour a half-cooked chop, and drink a pint of ale from
+the public-house, &c., &c., when she interrupted me, saying with an odd
+expression of voice,--
+
+"You are satirical, cozzie. He's not the worst sort of man you've just
+described. A woman might be very happy with him. If it weren't such early
+days, I should doubt if you were as comfortable as you would have people
+think; for how else should you be so ill-natured?"
+
+It flashed upon me, that, without the least intention, I had been giving a
+very fair portrait of Mr. Morley. I felt my face grow as red as fire.
+
+"I had no intention of being satirical, Judy," I replied.
+
+"I was only describing a man the very opposite of my husband."
+
+"You don't know mine yet," she said. "You may think"--
+
+She actually broke down and cried. I had never in my life seen her cry, and
+I was miserable at what I had done. Here was a nice beginning of social
+relations in my married life!
+
+I knelt down, put my arms round her, and looked up in her face.
+
+"Dear Judy," I said, "you mistake me quite. I never thought of Mr. Morley
+when I said that. How should I have dared to say such things if I had? He
+is a most kind, good man, and papa and every one is glad when he comes to
+see us. I dare say he does like to sleep well,--I know Percivale does; and
+I don't doubt he likes to get on with what he's at: Percivale does, for
+he's ever so much better company when he has got on with his picture; and
+I know he likes to see me well dressed,--at least I haven't tried him with
+any thing else yet, for I have plenty of clothes for a while; and then for
+the dinner, which I believe was one of the points in the description I
+gave, I wish Percivale cared a little more for his, for then it would be
+easier to do something for him. As to the newspaper, there I fear I must
+give him up, for I have never yet seen him with one in his hand. He's _so_
+stupid about some things!"
+
+"Oh, you've found that out! have you? Men _are_ stupid; there's no doubt of
+that. But you don't know my Walter yet."
+
+I looked up, and, behold, Percivale was in the room! His face wore such a
+curious expression that I could hardly help laughing. And no wonder: for
+here was I on my knees, clasping my first visitor, and to all appearance
+pouring out the woes of my wedded life in her lap,--woes so deep that they
+drew tears from her as she listened. All this flashed upon me as I started
+to my feet: but I could give no explanation; I could only make haste to
+introduce my husband to my cousin Judy.
+
+He behaved, of course, as if he had heard nothing. But I fancy Judy caught
+a glimpse of the awkward position, for she plunged into the affair at once.
+
+"Here is my cousin, Mr. Percivale, has been abusing my husband to my face,
+calling him rich and stupid, and I don't know what all. I confess he is so
+stupid as to be very fond of me, but that's all I know against him."
+
+And her handkerchief went once more to her eyes.
+
+"Dear Judy!" I expostulated, "you know I didn't say one word about him."
+
+"Of course I do, you silly coz!" she cried, and burst out laughing. "But I
+won't forgive you except you make amends by dining with us to-morrow."
+
+Thus for the time she carried it off; but I believe, and have since had
+good reason for believing, that she had really mistaken me at first, and
+been much annoyed.
+
+She and Percivale got on very well. He showed her the portrait he was still
+working at,--even accepted one or two trifling hints as to the likeness,
+and they parted the best friends in the world. Glad as I had been to see
+her, how I longed to see the last of her! The moment she was gone, I threw
+myself into his arms, and told him how it came about. He laughed heartily.
+
+"I _was_ a little puzzled," he said, "to hear you informing a lady I had
+never seen that I was so very stupid."
+
+"But I wasn't telling a story, either, for you know you are ve-e-e-ry
+stupid, Percivale. You don't know a leg from a shoulder of mutton, and you
+can't carve a bit. How ever you can draw as you do, is a marvel to me, when
+you know nothing about the shapes of things. It was very wrong to say it,
+even for the sake of covering poor Mrs. Morley's husband; but it was quite
+true you know."
+
+"Perfectly true, my love," he said, with something else where I've only
+put commas; "and I mean to remain so, in order that you may always have
+something to fall back upon when you get yourself into a scrape by
+forgetting that other people have husbands as well as you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+"GOOD SOCIETY."
+
+
+We had agreed, rather against the inclination of both of us, to dine the
+next evening with the Morleys. We should have preferred our own society,
+but we could not refuse.
+
+"They will be talking to me about my pictures," said my husband, "and
+that is just what I hate. People that know nothing of art, that can't
+distinguish purple from black, will yet parade their ignorance, and expect
+me to be pleased."
+
+"Mr. Morley is a well-bred man, Percivale," I said.
+
+"That's the worst of it,--they do it for good manners; I know the kind
+of people perfectly. I hate to have my pictures praised. It is as bad as
+talking to one's face about the nose upon it."
+
+I wonder if all ladies keep their husbands waiting. I did that night, I
+know, and, I am afraid, a good many times after,--not, however, since
+Percivale told me very seriously that being late for dinner was the only
+fault of mine the blame of which he would not take on his own shoulders.
+The fact on this occasion was, that I could not get my hair right. It was
+the first time I missed what I had been used to, and longed for the deft
+fingers of my mother's maid to help me. When I told him the cause, he said
+he would do my hair for me next time, if I would teach him how. But I have
+managed very well since without either him or a lady's-maid.
+
+When we reached Bolivar Square, we found the company waiting; and, as if
+for a rebuke to us, the butler announced dinner the moment we entered. I
+was seated between Mr. Morley and a friend of his who took me down, Mr.
+Baddeley, a portly gentleman, with an expanse of snowy shirt from which
+flashed three diamond studs. A huge gold chain reposed upon his front, and
+on his finger shone a brilliant of great size. Every thing about him seemed
+to say, "Look how real I am! No shoddy about me!" His hands were plump and
+white, and looked as if they did not know what dust was. His talk sounded
+very rich, and yet there was no pretence in it. His wife looked less of
+a lady than he of a gentleman, for she betrayed conscious importance. I
+found afterwards that he was the only son of a railway contractor, who
+had himself handled the spade, but at last died enormously rich. He spoke
+blandly, but with a certain quiet authority which I disliked.
+
+"Are you fond of the opera, Mrs. Percivale?" he asked me in order to make
+talk.
+
+"I have never been to the opera," I answered.
+
+"Never been to the opera? Ain't you fond of music?"
+
+"Did you ever know a lady that wasn't?"
+
+"Then you must go to the opera."
+
+"But it is just because I fancy myself fond of music that I don't think I
+should like the opera."
+
+"You can't hear such music anywhere else."
+
+"But the antics of the singers, pretending to be in such furies of passion,
+yet modulating every note with the cunning of a carver in ivory, seems
+to me so preposterous! For surely song springs from a brooding over past
+feeling,--I do not mean lost feeling; never from present emotion."
+
+"Ah! you would change your mind after having once been. I should strongly
+advise you to go, if only for once. You ought now, really."
+
+"An artist's wife must do without such expensive amusements,--except her
+husband's pictures be very popular indeed. I might as well cry for the
+moon. The cost of a box at the opera for a single night would keep my
+little household for a fortnight."
+
+"Ah, well! but you should see 'The Barber,'" he said.
+
+"Perhaps if I could hear without seeing, I should like it better," I
+answered.
+
+He fell silent, busying himself with his fish, and when he spoke again
+turned to the lady on his left. I went on with my dinner. I knew that
+our host had heard what I said, for I saw him turn rather hastily to his
+butler.
+
+Mr. Morley is a man difficult to describe, stiff in the back, and long and
+loose in the neck, reminding me of those toy-birds that bob head and tail
+up and down alternately. When he agrees with any thing you say, down comes
+his head with a rectangular nod; when he does not agree with you, he is
+so silent and motionless that he leaves you in doubt whether he has heard
+a word of what you have been saying. His face is hard, and was to me then
+inscrutable, while what he said always seemed to have little or nothing to
+do with what he was thinking; and I had not then learned whether he had a
+heart or not. His features were well formed, but they and his head and face
+too small for his body. He seldom smiled except when in doubt. He had, I
+understood, been very successful in business, and always looked full of
+schemes.
+
+"Have you been to the Academy yet?" he asked.
+
+"No; this is only the first day of it."
+
+"Are your husband's pictures well hung?"
+
+"As high as Haman," I answered; "skied, in fact. That is the right word, I
+believe."
+
+"I would advise you to avoid slang, my dear cousin,--_professional_ slang
+especially; and to remember that in London there are no professions after
+six o clock."
+
+"Indeed!" I returned. "As we came along in the carriage,--cabbage, I
+mean,--I saw no end of shops open."
+
+"I mean in society,--at dinner,--amongst friends, you know."
+
+"My dear Mr. Morley, you have just done asking me about my husband's
+pictures; and, if you will listen a moment, you will hear that lady next
+my husband talking to him about Leslie and Turner, and I don't know who
+more,--all in the trade."
+
+"Hush! hush! I beg," he almost whispered, looking agonized. "That's Mrs.
+Baddeley. Her husband, next to you, is a great picture-buyer. That's why I
+asked him to meet you."
+
+"I thought there were no professions in London after six o'clock."
+
+"I am afraid I have not made my meaning quite clear to you."
+
+"Not quite. Yet I think I understand you."
+
+"We'll have a talk about it another time."
+
+"With pleasure."
+
+It irritated me rather that he should talk to me, a married woman, as to a
+little girl who did not know how to behave herself; but his patronage of my
+husband displeased me far more, and I was on the point of committing the
+terrible blunder of asking Mr. Baddeley if he had any poor relations; but
+I checked myself in time, and prayed to know whether he was a member of
+Parliament. He answered that he was not in the house at present, and asked
+in return why I had wished to know. I answered that I wanted a bill brought
+in for the punishment of fraudulent milkmen; for I couldn't get a decent
+pennyworth of milk in all Camden Town. He laughed, and said it would be a
+very desirable measure, only too great an interference with the liberty of
+the subject. I told him that kind of liberty was just what law in general
+owed its existence to, and was there on purpose to interfere with; but he
+did not seem to see it.
+
+The fact is, I was very silly. Proud of being the wife of an artist, I
+resented the social injustice which I thought gave artists no place but one
+of sufferance. Proud also of being poor for Percivale's sake, I made a show
+of my poverty before people whom I supposed, rightly enough in many cases,
+to be proud of their riches. But I knew nothing of what poverty really
+meant, and was as yet only playing at being poor; cherishing a foolish,
+though unacknowledged notion of protecting my husband's poverty with the
+ægis of my position as the daughter of a man of consequence in his county.
+I was thus wronging the dignity of my husband's position, and complimenting
+wealth by making so much of its absence. Poverty or wealth ought to have
+been in my eyes such a trifle that I never thought of publishing whether
+I was rich or poor. I ought to have taken my position without wasting a
+thought on what it might appear in the eyes of those about me, meeting them
+on the mere level of humanity, and leaving them to settle with themselves
+how they were to think of me, and where they were to place me. I suspect
+also, now that I think of it, that I looked down upon my cousin Judy
+because she had a mere man of business for her husband; forgetting that
+our Lord had found a collector of conquered taxes,--a man, I presume, with
+little enough of the artistic about him,--one of the fittest in his nation
+to bear the message of his redemption to the hearts of his countrymen. It
+is his loves and his hopes, not his visions and intentions, by which a man
+is to be judged. My father had taught me all this; but I did not understand
+it then, nor until years after I had left him.
+
+"Is Mrs. Percivale a lady of fortune?" asked Mr. Baddeley of my cousin Judy
+when we were gone, for we were the first to leave.
+
+"Certainly not. Why do you ask?" she returned.
+
+"Because, from her talk, I thought she must be," he answered.
+
+Cousin Judy told me this the next day, and I could see she thought I had
+been bragging of my family. So I recounted all the conversation I had had
+with him, as nearly as I could recollect, and set down the question to an
+impertinent irony. But I have since changed my mind: I now judge that he
+could not believe any poor person would joke about poverty. I never found
+one of those people who go about begging for charities believe me when I
+told him the simple truth that I could not afford to subscribe. None but a
+rich person, they seem to think, would dare such an excuse, and that only
+in the just expectation that its very assertion must render it incredible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A REFUGE FROM THE HEAT.
+
+
+There was a little garden, one side enclosed by the house, another by the
+studio, and the remaining two by walls, evidently built for the nightly
+convenience of promenading cats. There was one pear-tree in the grass-plot
+which occupied the centre, and a few small fruit-trees, which, I may now
+safely say, never bore any thing, upon the walls. But the last occupant had
+cared for his garden; and, when I came to the cottage, it was, although you
+would hardly believe it now that my garden is inside the house, a pretty
+little spot,--only, if you stop thinking about a garden, it begins at once
+to go to the bad. Used although I had been to great wide lawns and park and
+gardens and wilderness, the tiny enclosure soon became to me the type of
+the boundless universe. The streets roared about me with ugly omnibuses and
+uglier cabs, fine carriages, huge earth-shaking drays, and, worse far, with
+the cries of all the tribe, of costermongers,--one especially offensive
+which soon began to haunt me. I almost hated the man who sent it forth to
+fill the summer air with disgust. He always put his hollowed hand to his
+jaw, as if it were loose and he had to hold it in its place, before he
+uttered his hideous howl, which would send me hurrying up the stairs to
+bury my head under all the pillows of my bed until, coming back across the
+wilderness of streets and lanes like the cry of a jackal growing fainter
+and fainter upon the wind, it should pass, and die away in the distance.
+Suburban London, I say, was roaring about me, and I was confined to a few
+square yards of grass and gravel-walk and flower-plot; but above was the
+depth of the sky, and thence at night the hosts of heaven looked in upon
+me with the same calm assured glance with which they shone upon southern
+forests, swarming with great butterflies and creatures that go flaming
+through the tropic darkness; and there the moon would come, and cast her
+lovely shadows; and there was room enough to feel alone and to try to pray.
+And what was strange, the room seemed greater, though the loneliness was
+gone, when my husband walked up and down in it with me. True, the greater
+part of the walk seemed to be the turnings, for they always came just when
+you wanted to go on and on; but, even with the scope of the world for your
+walk, you must turn and come back some time. At first, when he was smoking
+his great brown meerschaum, he and I would walk in opposite directions,
+passing each other in the middle, and so make the space double the size,
+for he had all the garden to himself, and I had it all to myself; and so I
+had his garden and mine too. That is how by degrees I got able to bear the
+smoke of tobacco, for I had never been used to it, and found it a small
+trial at first; but now I have got actually to like it, and greet a stray
+whiff from the study like a message from my husband. I fancy I could tell
+the smoke of that old black and red meerschaum from the smoke of any other
+pipe in creation.
+
+"You _must_ cure him of that bad habit," said cousin Judy to me once.
+
+It made me angry. What right had she to call any thing my husband did a bad
+habit? and to expect me to agree with her was ten times worse. I am saving
+my money now to buy him a grand new pipe; and I may just mention here,
+that once I spent ninepence out of my last shilling to get him a packet of
+Bristol bird's-eye, for he was on the point of giving up smoking altogether
+because of--well, because of what will appear by and by.
+
+England is getting dreadfully crowded with mean, ugly houses. If they were
+those of the poor and struggling, and not of the rich and comfortable, one
+might be consoled. But rich barbarism, in the shape of ugliness, is again
+pushing us to the sea. There, however, its "control stops;" and since I
+lived in London the sea has grown more precious to me than it was even in
+those lovely days at Kilkhaven,--merely because no one can build upon it.
+Ocean and sky remain as God made them. He must love space for us, though
+it be needless for himself; seeing that in all the magnificent notions of
+creation afforded us by astronomers,--shoal upon shoal of suns, each the
+centre of complicated and infinitely varied systems,--the spaces between
+are yet more overwhelming in their vast inconceivableness. I thank God for
+the room he thus gives us, and hence can endure to see the fair face of his
+England disfigured by the mud-pies of his children.
+
+There was in the garden a little summer-house, of which I was fond, chiefly
+because, knowing my passion for the flower, Percivale had surrounded it
+with a multitude of sweet peas, which, as they grew, he had trained over
+the trellis-work of its sides. Through them filtered the sweet airs of the
+summer as through an Æolian harp of unheard harmonies. To sit there in a
+warm evening, when the moth-airs just woke and gave two or three wafts of
+their wings and ceased, was like sitting in the midst of a small gospel.
+
+The summer had come on, and the days were very hot,--so hot and changeless,
+with their unclouded skies and their glowing centre, that they seemed to
+grow stupid with their own heat. It was as if--like a hen brooding over her
+chickens--the day, brooding over its coming harvests, grew dull and sleepy,
+living only in what was to come. Notwithstanding the feelings I have just
+recorded, I began to long for a wider horizon, whence some wind might come
+and blow upon me, and wake me up, not merely to live, but to know that I
+lived.
+
+One afternoon I left my little summer-seat, where I had been sitting at
+work, and went through the house, and down the precipice, into my husband's
+study.
+
+"It is so hot," I said, "I will try my little grotto: it may be cooler."
+
+He opened the door for me, and, with his palette on his thumb, and a brush
+in his hand, sat down for a moment beside me.
+
+"This heat is too much for you, darling," he said.
+
+"I do feel it. I wish I could get from the garden into my nest without
+going up through the house and down the Jacob's ladder," I said. "It is so
+hot! I never felt heat like it before."
+
+He sat silent for a while, and then said,--
+
+"I've been thinking I must get you into the country for a few weeks. It
+would do you no end of good."
+
+"I suppose the wind does blow somewhere," I returned. "But"--
+
+"You don't want to leave me?" he said.
+
+"I don't. And I know with that ugly portrait on hand you can't go with me."
+
+"He happened to be painting the portrait of a plain red-faced lady, in a
+delicate lace cap,--a very unfit subject for art,--much needing to be made
+over again first, it seemed to me. Only there she was, with a right to have
+her portrait painted if she wished it; and there was Percivale, with time
+on his hands, and room in his pockets, and the faith that whatever God had
+thought worth making could not be unworthy of representation. Hence he had
+willingly undertaken a likeness of her, to be finished within a certain
+time, and was now working at it as conscientiously as if it had been the
+portrait of a lovely young duchess or peasant-girl. I was only afraid he
+would make it too like to please the lady herself. His time was now getting
+short, and he could not leave home before fulfilling his engagement.
+
+"But," he returned, "why shouldn't you go to the Hall for a week or two
+without me? I will take you down, and come and fetch you."
+
+"I'm so stupid you want to get rid of me!" I said.
+
+I did not in the least believe it, and yet was on the edge of crying, which
+is not a habit with me.
+
+"You know better than that, my Wynnie," he answered gravely. "You want your
+mother to comfort you. And there must be some air in the country. So tell
+Sarah to put up your things, and I'll take you down to-morrow morning. When
+I get this portrait done, I will come and stay a few days, if they will
+have me, and then take you home."
+
+The thought of seeing my mother and my father, and the old place, came
+over me with a rush. I felt all at once as if I had been absent for years
+instead of weeks. I cried in earnest now,--with delight though,--and there
+is no shame in that. So it was all arranged; and next afternoon I was lying
+on a couch in the yellow drawing-room, with my mother seated beside me,
+and Connie in an easy-chair by the open window, through which came every
+now and then such a sweet wave of air as bathed me with hope, and seemed
+to wash all the noises, even the loose-jawed man's hateful howl, from my
+brain.
+
+Yet, glad as I was to be once more at home, I felt, when Percivale
+left me the next morning to return by a third-class train to his ugly
+portrait,--for the lady was to sit to him that same afternoon,--that the
+idea of home was already leaving Oldcastle Hall, and flitting back to the
+suburban cottage haunted by the bawling voice of the costermonger.
+
+But I soon felt better: for here there was plenty of shadow, and in the
+hottest days my father could always tell where any wind would be stirring;
+for he knew every out and in of the place like his own pockets, as Dora
+said, who took a little after cousin Judy in her way. It will give a notion
+of his tenderness if I set down just one tiniest instance of his attention
+to me. The forenoon was oppressive. I was sitting under a tree, trying to
+read when he came up to me. There was a wooden gate, with open bars near.
+He went and set it wide, saying,--
+
+"There, my love! You will fancy yourself cooler if I leave the gate open."
+
+Will my reader laugh at me for mentioning such a trifle? I think not, for
+it went deep to my heart, and I seemed to know God better for it ever
+after. A father is a great and marvellous truth, and one you can never get
+at the depth of, try how you may.
+
+Then my mother! She was, if possible, yet more to me than my father. I
+could tell her any thing and every thing without fear, while I confess to a
+little dread of my father still. He is too like my own conscience to allow
+of my being quite confident with him. But Connie is just as comfortable
+with him as I am with my mother. If in my childhood I was ever tempted to
+conceal any thing from her, the very thought of it made me miserable until
+I had told her. And now she would watch me with her gentle, dove-like eyes,
+and seemed to know at once, without being told, what was the matter with
+me. She never asked me what I should like, but went and brought something;
+and, if she saw that I didn't care for it, wouldn't press me, or offer any
+thing instead, but chat for a minute or two, carry it away, and return
+with something else. My heart was like to break at times with the swelling
+of the love that was in it. My eldest child, my Ethelwyn,--for my husband
+would have her called the same name as me, only I insisted it should be
+after my mother and not after me,--has her very eyes, and for years has
+been trying to mother me over again to the best of her sweet ability.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+CONNIE.
+
+
+It is high time, though, that I dropped writing about myself for a while. I
+don't find my self so interesting as it used to be.
+
+The worst of some kinds especially of small illnesses is, that they make
+you think a great deal too much about yourself. Connie's, which was a great
+and terrible one, never made her do so. She was always forgetting herself
+in her interest about others. I think I was made more selfish to begin
+with; and yet I have a hope that a too-much-thinking about yourself may not
+_always_ be pure selfishness. It may be something else wrong in you that
+makes you uncomfortable, and keeps drawing your eyes towards the aching
+place. I will hope so till I get rid of the whole business, and then I
+shall not care much how it came or what it was.
+
+Connie was now a thin, pale, delicate-looking--not handsome, but lovely
+girl. Her eyes, some people said, were too big for her face; but that
+seemed to me no more to the discredit of her beauty than it would have been
+a reproach to say that her soul was too big for her body. She had been
+early ripened by the hot sun of suffering, and the self-restraint which
+pain had taught her. Patience had mossed her over and made her warm and
+soft and sweet. She never looked for attention, but accepted all that was
+offered with a smile which seemed to say, "It is more than I need, but you
+are so good I mustn't spoil it." She was not confined to her sofa now,
+though she needed to lie down often, but could walk about pretty well,
+only you must give her time. You could always make her merry by saying she
+walked like an old woman; and it was the only way we could get rid of the
+sadness of seeing it. We betook ourselves to her to laugh _her_ sadness
+away from us.
+
+Once, as I lay on a couch on the lawn, she came towards me carrying a bunch
+of grapes from the greenhouse,--a great bunch, each individual grape ready
+to burst with the sunlight it had bottled up in its swollen purple skin.
+
+"They are too heavy for you, old lady," I cried.
+
+"Yes; I _am_ an old lady," she answered. "Think what good use of my time I
+have made compared with you! I have got ever so far before you: I've nearly
+forgotten how to walk!"
+
+The tears gathered in my eyes as she left me with the bunch; for how could
+one help being sad to think of the time when she used to bound like a fawn
+over the grass, her slender figure borne like a feather on its own slight
+yet firm muscles, which used to knot so much harder than any of ours. She
+turned to say something, and, perceiving my emotion, came slowly back.
+
+"Dear Wynnie," she said, "you wouldn't have me back with my old
+foolishness, would you? Believe me, life is ten times more precious than it
+was before. I feel and enjoy and love so much more! I don't know how often
+I thank God for what befell me."
+
+I could only smile an answer, unable to speak, not now from pity, but from
+shame of my own petulant restlessness and impatient helplessness.
+
+I believe she had a special affection for poor Sprite, the pony which threw
+her,--special, I mean, since the accident,--regarding him as in some sense
+the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever
+he got loose, and Connie was anywhere about, he was sure to find her: he
+was an omnivorous animal, and she had always something he would eat when
+his favorite apples were unattainable. More than once she had been roused
+from her sleep on the lawn by the lips and the breath of Sprite upon her
+face; but, although one painful sign of her weakness was, that she started
+at the least noise or sudden discovery of a presence, she never started at
+the most unexpected intrusion of Sprite, any more than at the voice of my
+father or mother. Need I say there was one more whose voice or presence
+never startled her?
+
+The relation between them was lovely to see. Turner was a fine, healthy,
+broad-shouldered fellow, of bold carriage and frank manners, above the
+middle height, with rather large features, keen black eyes, and great
+personal strength. Yet to such a man, poor little wan-faced, big-eyed
+Connie assumed imperious airs, mostly, but perhaps not entirely, for the
+fun of it; while he looked only enchanted every time she honored him with a
+little tyranny.
+
+"There! I'm tired," she would say, holding out her arms like a baby. "Carry
+me in."
+
+And the great strong man would stoop with a worshipping look in his eyes,
+and, taking her carefully, would carry her in as lightly and gently and
+steadily as if she had been but the baby whose manners she had for the
+moment assumed. This began, of course, when she was unable to walk; but it
+did not stop then, for she would occasionally tell him to carry her after
+she was quite capable of crawling at least. They had now been engaged for
+some months; and before me, as a newly-married woman, they did not mind
+talking a little.
+
+One day she was lying on a rug on the lawn, with him on the grass beside
+her, leaning on his elbow, and looking down into her sky-like eyes. She
+lifted her hand, and stroked his mustache with a forefinger, while he kept
+as still as a statue, or one who fears to scare the bird that is picking up
+the crumbs at his feet.
+
+"Poor, poor man!" she said; and from the tone I knew the tears had begun to
+gather in those eyes.
+
+"Why do you pity me, Connie?" he asked.
+
+"Because you will have such a wretched little creature for a wife some
+day,--or perhaps never,--which would be best after all."
+
+He answered cheerily.
+
+"If you will kindly allow me my choice, I prefer just _such_ a wretched
+little creature to any one else in the world."
+
+"And why, pray? Give a good reason, and I will forgive your bad taste."
+
+"Because she won't be able to hurt me much when she beats me."
+
+"A better reason, or she will."
+
+"Because I can punish her if she isn't good by taking her up in my arms,
+and carrying her about until she gives in."
+
+"A better reason, or I shall be naughty directly."
+
+"Because I shall always know where to find her."
+
+"Ah, yes! she must leave _you_ to find _her_. But that's a silly reason. If
+you don't give me a better, I'll get up and walk into the house."
+
+"Because there won't be any waste of me. Will that do?"
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, with mock imperiousness.
+
+"I mean that I shall be able to lay not only my heart but my brute strength
+at her feet. I shall be allowed to be her beast of burden, to carry her
+whither she would; and so with my body her to worship more than most
+husbands have a chance of worshipping their wives."
+
+"There! take me, take me!" she said, stretching up her arms to him. "How
+good you are! I don't deserve such a great man one bit. But I _will_ love
+him. Take me directly; for there's Wynnie listening to every word we say to
+each other, and laughing at us. She can laugh without looking like it."
+
+The fact is, I was crying, and the creature knew it. Turner brought her to
+me, and held her down for me to kiss; then carried her in to her mother.
+
+I believe the county people round considered our family far gone on the
+inclined plane of degeneracy. First my mother, the heiress, had married
+a clergyman of no high family; then they had given their eldest daughter
+to a poor artist, something of the same standing as--well, I will be rude
+to no order of humanity, and therefore avoid comparisons; and now it was
+generally known that Connie was engaged to a country practitioner, a man
+who made up his own prescriptions. We talked and laughed over certain
+remarks of the kind that reached us, and compared our two with the
+gentlemen about us,--in no way to the advantage of any of the latter, you
+may be sure. It was silly work; but we were only two loving girls, with the
+best possible reasons for being proud of the men who had honored us with
+their love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CONNIE'S BABY.
+
+
+It is time I told my readers something about the little Theodora. She was
+now nearly four years old I think,--a dark-skinned, lithe-limbed, wild
+little creature, very pretty,--at least most people said so, while others
+insisted that she had a common look. I admit she was not like a lady's
+child--only one has seen ladies' children look common enough; neither did
+she look like the child of working people--though amongst such, again,
+one sees sometimes a child the oldest family in England might be proud of.
+The fact is, she had a certain tinge of the savage about her, specially
+manifest in a certain furtive look of her black eyes, with which she seemed
+now and then to be measuring you, and her prospects in relation to you. I
+have seen the child of cultivated parents sit and stare at a stranger from
+her stool in the most persistent manner, never withdrawing her eyes, as
+if she would pierce to his soul, and understand by very force of insight
+whether he was or was not one to be honored with her confidence; and I have
+often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or
+small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen _that_ look of
+self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course,
+like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward,
+often unmanageable creature, but affectionate,--sometimes after an insane,
+or, at least, very ape-like fashion. Every now and then she would take an
+unaccountable preference for some one of the family or household, at one
+time for the old housekeeper, at another for the stable-boy, at another for
+one of us; in which fits of partiality she would always turn a blind and
+deaf side upon every one else, actually seeming to imagine she showed the
+strength of her love to the one by the paraded exclusion of the others. I
+cannot tell how much of this was natural to her, and how much the result
+of the foolish and injurious jealousy of the servants. I say _servants_,
+because I know such an influencing was all but impossible in the
+family itself. If my father heard any one utter such a phrase as "Don't
+you love me best?"--or, "better than" such a one? or, "Ain't I your
+favorite?"--well, you all know my father, and know him really, for he never
+wrote a word he did not believe--but you would have been astonished, I
+venture to think, and perhaps at first bewildered as well, by the look of
+indignation flashed from his eyes. He was not the gentle, all-excusing man
+some readers, I know, fancy him from his writings. He was gentle even to
+tenderness when he had time to think a moment, and in any quiet judgment
+he always took as much the side of the offender as was possible with any
+likelihood of justice; but in the first moments of contact with what he
+thought bad in principle, and that in the smallest trifle, he would speak
+words that made even those who were not included in the condemnation
+tremble with sympathetic fear. "There, Harry, you take it--quick, or
+Charley will have it," said the nurse one day, little thinking who
+overheard her. "Woman!" cried a voice of wrath from the corridor, "do you
+know what you are doing? Would you make him twofold more the child of hell
+than yourself?" An hour after, she was sent for to the study; and when she
+came out her eyes were very red. My father was unusually silent at dinner;
+and, after the younger ones were gone, he turned to my mother, and said,
+"Ethel, I spoke the truth. All _that_ is of the Devil,--horribly bad;
+and yet I am more to blame in my condemnation of them than she for the
+words themselves. The thought of so polluting the mind of a child makes
+me fierce, and the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.
+The old Adam is only too glad to get a word in, if even in behalf of his
+supplanting successor." Then he rose, and, taking my mother by the arm,
+walked away with her. I confess I honored him for his self-condemnation the
+most. I must add that the offending nurse had been ten years in the family,
+and ought to have known better.
+
+But to return to Theodora. She was subject to attacks of the most furious
+passion, especially when any thing occurred to thwart the indulgence of the
+ephemeral partiality I have just described. Then, wherever she was, she
+would throw herself down at once,--on the floor, on the walk or lawn, or,
+as happened on one occasion, in the water,--and kick and scream. At such
+times she cared nothing even for my father, of whom generally she stood
+in considerable awe,--a feeling he rather encouraged. "She has plenty of
+people about her to represent the gospel," he said once. "I will keep the
+department of the law, without which she will never appreciate the gospel.
+My part will, I trust, vanish in due time, and the law turn out to have
+been, after all, only the imperfect gospel, just as the leaf is the
+imperfect flower. But the gospel is no gospel till it gets into the heart,
+and it sometimes wants a torpedo to blow the gates of that open." For no
+torpedo or Krupp gun, however, did Theodora care at such times; and, after
+repeated experience of the inefficacy of coaxing, my father gave orders,
+that, when a fit occurred, every one, without exception, should not merely
+leave her alone, but go out of sight, and if possible out of hearing,--at
+least out of her hearing--that she might know she had driven her friends
+far from her, and be brought to a sense of loneliness and need. I am pretty
+sure that if she had been one of us, that is, one of his own, he would have
+taken sharper measures with her; but he said we must never attempt to treat
+other people's children as our own, for they are not our own. We did not
+love them enough, he said, to make severity safe either for them or for us.
+
+The plan worked so far well, that after a time, varied in length according
+to causes inscrutable, she would always re-appear smiling; but, as to any
+conscience of wrong, she seemed to have no more than Nature herself, who
+looks out with _her_ smiling face after hours of thunder, lightning, and
+rain; and, although this treatment brought her out of them sooner, the fits
+themselves came quite as frequently as before.
+
+But she had another habit, more alarming, and more troublesome as well: she
+would not unfrequently vanish, and have to be long sought, for in such case
+she never reappeared of herself. What made it so alarming was that there
+were dangerous places about our house; but she would generally be found
+seated, perfectly quiet, in some out-of-the-way nook where she had never
+been before, playing, not with any of her toys, but with something she had
+picked up and appropriated, finding in it some shadowy amusement which no
+one understood but herself.
+
+She was very fond of bright colors, especially in dress; and, if she found
+a brilliant or gorgeous fragment of any substance, would be sure to hide
+it away in some hole or corner, perhaps known only to herself. Her love of
+approbation was strong, and her affection demonstrative; but she had not
+yet learned to speak the truth. In a word, she must, we thought, have come
+of wild parentage, so many of her ways were like those of a forest animal.
+
+In our design of training her for a maid to Connie, we seemed already
+likely enough to be frustrated; at all events, there was nothing to
+encourage the attempt, seeing she had some sort of aversion to Connie,
+amounting almost to dread. We could rarely persuade her to go near her.
+Perhaps it was a dislike to her helplessness,--some vague impression that
+her lying all day on the sofa indicated an unnatural condition of being,
+with which she could have no sympathy. Those of us who had the highest
+spirits, the greatest exuberance of animal life, were evidently those whose
+society was most attractive to her. Connie tried all she could to conquer
+her dislike, and entice the wayward thing to her heart; but nothing would
+do. Sometimes she would seem to soften for a moment; but all at once, with
+a wriggle and a backward spasm in the arms of the person who carried her,
+she would manifest such a fresh access of repulsion, that, for fear of an
+outburst of fierce and objurgatory wailing which might upset poor Connie
+altogether, she would be borne off hurriedly,--sometimes, I confess, rather
+ungently as well. I have seen Connie cry because of the child's treatment
+of her.
+
+You could not interest her so much in any story, but that if the buzzing of
+a fly, the flutter of a bird, reached eye or ear, away she would dart on
+the instant, leaving the discomfited narrator in lonely disgrace. External
+nature, and almost nothing else, had free access to her mind: at the
+suddenest sight or sound, she was alive on the instant. She was a most
+amusing and sometimes almost bewitching little companion; but the delight
+in her would be not unfrequently quenched by some altogether unforeseen
+outbreak of heartless petulance or turbulent rebellion. Indeed, her
+resistance to authority grew as she grew older, and occasioned my father
+and mother, and indeed all of us, no little anxiety. Even Charley and Harry
+would stand with open mouths, contemplating aghast the unheard-of atrocity
+of resistance to the will of the unquestioned authorities. It was what they
+could not understand, being to them an impossibility. Such resistance was
+almost always accompanied by storm and tempest; and the treatment which
+carried away the latter, generally carried away the former with it; after
+the passion had come and gone, she would obey. Had it been otherwise,--had
+she been sullen and obstinate as well,--I do not know what would have come
+of it, or how we could have got on at all. Miss Bowdler, I am afraid,
+would have had a very satisfactory crow over papa. I have seen him sit
+for minutes in silent contemplation of the little puzzle, trying, no
+doubt, to fit her into his theories, or, as my mother said, to find her a
+three-legged stool and a corner somewhere in the kingdom of heaven; and we
+were certain something or other would come out of that pondering, though
+whether the same night or a twelvemonth after, no one could tell. I believe
+the main result of his thinking was, that he did less and less with her.
+
+"Why do you take so little notice of the child?" my mother said to him one
+evening. "It is all your doing that she is here, you know. You mustn't cast
+her off now."
+
+"Cast her off!" exclaimed my father: "what _do_ you mean, Ethel?"
+
+"You never speak to her now."
+
+"Oh, yes I do, sometimes!"
+
+"Why only sometimes?"
+
+"Because--I believe because I am a little afraid of her. I don't know
+how to attack the small enemy. She seems to be bomb-proof, and generally
+impregnable."
+
+"But you mustn't therefore make _her_ afraid of _you_."
+
+"I don't know that. I suspect it is my only chance with her. She wants a
+little of Mount Sinai, in order that she may know where the manna comes
+from. But indeed I am laying myself out only to catch the little soul. I am
+but watching and pondering how to reach her. I am biding my time to come in
+with my small stone for the building up of this temple of the Holy Ghost."
+
+At that very moment--in the last fold of the twilight, with the moon rising
+above the wooded brow of Gorman Slope--the nurse came through the darkening
+air, her figure hardly distinguishable from the dusk, saying,--
+
+"Please, ma'am, have you seen Miss Theodora?"
+
+"I don't want you to call her _Miss_," said my father.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said the nurse; "I forgot."
+
+"I have not seen her for an hour or more," said my mother.
+
+"I declare," said my father, "I'll get a retriever pup, and train him to
+find Theodora. He will be capable in a few months, and she will be foolish
+for years."
+
+Upon this occasion the truant was found in the apple-loft, sitting in a
+corner upon a heap of straw, quite in the dark. She was discovered only by
+the munching of her little teeth; for she had found some wizened apples,
+and was busy devouring them. But my father actually did what he had said:
+a favorite spaniel had pups a few days after, and he took one of them in
+hand. In an incredibly short space of time, the long-drawn nose of Wagtail,
+as the children had named him, in which, doubtless, was gathered the
+experience of many thoughtful generations, had learned to track Theodora to
+whatever retreat she might have chosen; and very amusing it was to watch
+the course of the proceedings. Some one would come running to my father
+with the news that Theo was in hiding. Then my father would give a peculiar
+whistle, and Wagtail, who (I must say _who_) very seldom failed to respond,
+would come bounding to his side. It was necessary that my father should
+_lay him on_ (is that the phrase?); for he would heed no directions from
+any one else. It was not necessary to follow him, however, which would have
+involved a tortuous and fatiguing pursuit; but in a little while a joyous
+barking would be heard, always kept up until the ready pursuers were guided
+by the sound to the place. There Theo was certain to be found, hugging
+the animal, without the least notion of the traitorous character of his
+blandishments: it was long before she began to discover that there was
+danger in that dog's nose. Thus Wagtail became a very important member
+of the family,--a bond of union, in fact, between its parts. Theo's
+disappearances, however, became less and less frequent,--not that she made
+fewer attempts to abscond, but that, every one knowing how likely she was
+to vanish, whoever she was with had come to feel the necessity of keeping
+both eyes upon her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE FOUNDLING RE-FOUND.
+
+
+One evening, during this my first visit to my home, we had gone to take tea
+with the widow of an old servant, who lived in a cottage on the outskirts
+of the home farm,--Connie and I in the pony carriage, and my father and
+mother on foot. It was quite dark when we returned, for the moon was late.
+Connie and I got home first, though we had a good round to make, and the
+path across the fields was but a third of the distance; for my father and
+mother were lovers, and sure to be late when left out by themselves. When
+we arrived, there was no one to take the pony; and when I rung the bell, no
+one answered. I could not leave Connie in the carriage to go and look; so
+we waited and waited till we were getting very tired, and glad indeed we
+were to hear the voices of my father and mother as they came through the
+shrubbery. My mother went to the rear to make inquiry, and came back with
+the news that Theo was missing, and that they had been searching for her in
+vain for nearly an hour. My father instantly called Wagtail, and sent him
+after her. We then got Connie in, and laid her on the sofa, where I kept
+her company while the rest went in different directions, listening from
+what quarter would come the welcome voice of the dog. This was so long
+delayed, however, that my father began to get alarmed. At last he whistled
+very loud; and in a little while Wagtail came creeping to his feet,
+with his tail between his legs,--no wag left in it,--clearly ashamed of
+himself. My father was now thoroughly frightened, and began questioning the
+household as to the latest knowledge of the child. It then occurred to one
+of the servants to mention that a strange-looking woman had been seen about
+the place in the morning,--a tall, dark woman, with a gypsy look. She had
+come begging; but my father's orders were so strict concerning such cases,
+that nothing had been given her, and she had gone away in anger. As soon
+as he heard this, my father ordered his horse, and told two of the men to
+get ready to accompany him. In the mean time, he came to us in the little
+drawing-room, trying to look calm, but evidently in much perturbation. He
+said he had little doubt the woman had taken her.
+
+"Could it be her mother?" said my mother.
+
+"Who can tell?" returned my father. "It is the less likely that the deed
+seems to have been prompted by revenge."
+
+"If she be a gypsy's child,"--said my mother.
+
+"The gypsies," interrupted my father, "have always been more given to
+taking other people's children than forsaking their own. But one of them
+might have had reason for being ashamed of her child, and, dreading the
+severity of her family, might have abandoned it, with the intention of
+repossessing herself of it, and passing it off as the child of gentlefolks
+she had picked up. I don't know their habits and ways sufficiently; but,
+from what I have heard, that seems possible. However, it is not so easy as
+it might have been once to succeed in such an attempt. If we should fail in
+finding her to-night, the police all over the country can be apprised of
+the fact in a few hours, and the thief can hardly escape."
+
+"But if she _should_ be the mother?" suggested my mother.
+
+"She will have to _prove_ that."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"What then?" returned my father, and began pacing up and down the room,
+stopping now and then to listen for the horses' hoofs.
+
+"Would you give her up?" persisted my mother.
+
+Still my father made no reply. He was evidently much agitated,--more, I
+fancied, by my mother's question than by the present trouble. He left the
+room, and presently his whistle for Wagtail pierced the still air. A moment
+more, and we heard them all ride out of the paved yard. I had never known
+him leave my mother without an answer before.
+
+We who were left behind were in evil plight. There was not a dry eye
+amongst the women, I am certain; while Harry was in floods of tears, and
+Charley was howling. We could not send them to bed in such a state; so we
+kept them with us in the drawing-room, where they soon fell fast asleep,
+one in an easy-chair, the other on a sheepskin mat. Connie lay quite still,
+and my mother talked so sweetly and gently that she soon made me quiet
+too. But I was haunted with the idea somehow,--I think I must have been
+wandering a little, for I was not well,--that it was a child of my own that
+was lost out in the dark night, and that I could not anyhow reach her. I
+cannot explain the odd kind of feeling it was,--as if a dream had wandered
+out of the region of sleep, and half-possessed my waking brain. Every now
+and then my mother's voice would bring me back to my senses, and I would
+understand it all perfectly; but in a few moments I would be involved
+once more in a mazy search after my child. Perhaps, however, as it was by
+that time late, sleep had, if such a thing be possible, invaded a part
+of my brain, leaving another part able to receive the impressions of the
+external about me. I can recall some of the things my mother said,--one in
+particular.
+
+"It is more absurd," she said, "to trust God by halves, than it is not
+to believe in him at all. Your papa taught me that before one of you was
+born."
+
+When my mother said any thing in the way of teaching us, which was not
+often, she would generally add, "Your papa taught me that," as if she would
+take refuge from the assumption of teaching even her own girls. But we
+set a good deal of such assertion down to her modesty, and the evidently
+inextricable blending of the thought of my father with every movement of
+her mental life.
+
+"I remember quite well," she went on, "how he made that truth dawn upon me
+one night as we sat together beside the old mill. Ah, you don't remember
+the old mill! it was pulled down while Wynnie was a mere baby."
+
+"No, mamma; I remember it perfectly," I said.
+
+"Do you really?--Well, we were sitting beside the mill one Sunday evening
+after service; for we always had a walk before going home from church.
+You would hardly think it now; but after preaching he was then always
+depressed, and the more eloquently he had spoken, the more he felt as if he
+had made an utter failure. At first I thought it came only from fatigue,
+and wanted him to go home and rest; but he would say he liked Nature to
+come before supper, for Nature restored him by telling him that it was not
+of the slightest consequence if he had failed, whereas his supper only made
+him feel that he would do better next time. Well, that night, you will
+easily believe he startled me when he said, after sitting for some time
+silent, 'Ethel, if that yellow-hammer were to drop down dead now, and God
+not care, God would not be God any longer.' Doubtless I showed myself
+something between puzzled and shocked, for he proceeded with some haste to
+explain to me how what he had said was true. 'Whatever belongs to God is
+essential to God,' he said. 'He is one pure, clean essence of being, to use
+our poor words to describe the indescribable. Nothing hangs about him that
+does not belong to him,--that he could part with and be nothing the worse.
+Still less is there any thing he could part with and be the worse. Whatever
+belongs to him is of his own kind, is part of himself, so to speak.
+Therefore there is nothing indifferent to his character to be found in him;
+and therefore when our Lord says not a sparrow falls to the ground without
+our Father, that, being a fact with regard to God, must be an essential
+fact,--one, namely, without which he could be no God.' I understood him, I
+thought; but many a time since, when a fresh light has broken in upon me,
+I have thought I understood him then only for the first time. I told him
+so once; and he said he thought that would be the way forever with all
+truth,--we should never get to the bottom of any truth, because it was a
+vital portion of the all of truth, which is God."
+
+I had never heard so much philosophy from my mother before. I believe she
+was led into it by her fear of the effect our anxiety about the child might
+have upon us: with what had quieted her heart in the old time she sought
+now to quiet ours, helping us to trust in the great love that never ceases
+to watch. And she did make us quiet. But the time glided so slowly past
+that it seemed immovable.
+
+When twelve struck, we heard in the stillness every clock in the house, and
+it seemed as if they would never have done. My mother left the room, and
+came back with three shawls, with which, having first laid Harry on the
+rug, she covered the boys and Dora, who also was by this time fast asleep,
+curled up at Connie's feet.
+
+Still the time went on; and there was no sound of horses or any thing to
+break the silence, except the faint murmur which now and then the trees
+will make in the quietest night, as if they were dreaming, and talked
+in their sleep; for the motion does not seem to pass beyond them, but
+to swell up and die again in the heart of them. This and the occasional
+cry of an owl was all that broke the silent flow of the undivided
+moments,--glacier-like flowing none can tell how. We seldom spoke, and at
+length the house within seemed possessed by the silence from without; but
+we were all ear,--one hungry ear, whose famine was silence,--listening
+intently.
+
+We were not so far from the high road, but that on a night like this the
+penetrating sound of a horse's hoofs might reach us. Hence, when my mother,
+who was keener of hearing than any of her daughters, at length started up,
+saying, "I hear them! They're coming!" the doubt remained whether it might
+not be the sound of some night-traveller hurrying along that high road that
+she had heard. But when _we_ also heard the sound of horses, we knew they
+must belong to our company; for, except the riders were within the gates,
+their noises could not have come nearer to the house. My mother hurried
+down to the hall. I would have staid with Connie; but she begged me to go
+too, and come back as soon as I knew the result; so I followed my mother.
+As I descended the stairs, notwithstanding my anxiety, I could not
+help seeing what a picture lay before me, for I had learned already to
+regard things from the picturesque point of view,--the dim light of the
+low-burning lamp on the forward-bent heads of the listening, anxious group
+of women, my mother at the open door with the housekeeper and her maid, and
+the men-servants visible through the door in the moonlight beyond.
+
+The first news that reached me was my father's shout the moment he rounded
+the sweep that brought him in sight of the house.
+
+"All right! Here she is!" he cried.
+
+And, ere I could reach the stair to run up to Connie, Wagtail was jumping
+upon me and barking furiously. He rushed up before me with the scramble
+of twenty feet, licked Connie's face all over in spite of her efforts at
+self-defence, then rushed at Dora and the boys one after the other, and
+woke them all up. He was satisfied enough with himself now; his tail was
+doing the wagging of forty; there was no tucking of it away now,--no
+drooping of the head in mute confession of conscious worthlessness; he was
+a dog self-satisfied because his master was well pleased with him.
+
+But here I am talking about the dog, and forgetting what was going on
+below.
+
+My father cantered up to the door, followed by the two men. My mother
+hurried to meet him, and then only saw the little lost lamb asleep in his
+bosom. He gave her up, and my mother ran in with her; while he dismounted,
+and walked merrily but wearily up the stair after her. The first thing he
+did was to quiet the dog; the next to sit down beside Connie; the third to
+say, "Thank God!" and the next, "God bless Wagtail!" My mother was already
+undressing the little darling, and her maid was gone to fetch her night
+things. Tumbled hither and thither, she did not wake, but was carried off
+stone-sleeping to her crib.
+
+Then my father,--for whom some supper, of which he was in great need, had
+been brought,--as soon as he had had a glass of wine and a mouthful or two
+of cold chicken, began to tell us the whole story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+WAGTAIL COMES TO HONOR.
+
+
+As they rode out of the gate, one of the men, a trustworthy man, who cared
+for his horses like his children, and knew all their individualities as few
+men know those of their children, rode up along side of my father, and told
+him that there was an encampment of gypsies on the moor about five miles
+away, just over Gorman Slope, remarking, that if the woman had taken the
+child, and belonged to them, she would certainly carry her thither. My
+father thought, in the absence of other indication, they ought to follow
+the suggestion, and told Burton to guide them to the place as rapidly as
+possible. After half an hour's sharp riding, they came in view of the
+camp,--or rather of a rising ground behind which it lay in the hollow. The
+other servant was an old man, who had been whipper-in to a baronet in the
+next county, and knew as much of the ways of wild animals as Burton did
+of those of his horses; it was his turn now to address my father, who had
+halted for a moment to think what ought to be done next.
+
+"She can't well have got here before us, sir, with that child to carry. But
+it's wonderful what the likes of her can do. I think I had better have a
+peep over the brow first. She may be there already, or she may not; but, if
+we find out, we shall know better what to do."
+
+"I'll go with you," said my father.
+
+"No, sir; excuse me; that won't do. You can't creep like a sarpent. I can.
+They'll never know I'm a stalking of them. No more you couldn't show fight
+if need was, you know, sir."
+
+"How did you find that out, Sim?" asked my father, a little amused,
+notwithstanding the weight at his heart.
+
+"Why, sir, they do say a clergyman mustn't show fight."
+
+"Who told you that, Sim?" he persisted.
+
+"Well, I can't say, sir. Only it wouldn't be respectable; would it, sir?"
+
+"There's nothing respectable but what's right, Sim; and what's right always
+_is_ respectable, though it mayn't _look_ so one bit."
+
+"Suppose you was to get a black eye, sir?"
+
+"Did you ever hear of the martyrs, Sim?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I've heerd you talk on 'em in the pulpit, sir."
+
+"Well, they didn't get black eyes only,--they got black all over, you
+know,--burnt black; and what for, do you think, now?"
+
+"Don't know, sir, except it was for doing right."
+
+"That's just it. Was it any disgrace to them?"
+
+"No, sure, sir."
+
+"Well, if I were to get a black eye for the sake of the child, would that
+be any disgrace to me, Sim?"
+
+"None that I knows on, sir. Only it'd _look_ bad."
+
+"Yes, no doubt. People might think I had got into a row at the Griffin.
+And yet I shouldn't be ashamed of it. I should count my black eye the more
+respectable of the two. I should also regard the evil judgment much as
+another black eye, and wait till they both came round again. Lead on, Sim."
+
+They left their horses with Burton, and went toward the camp. But when
+they reached the slope behind which it lay, much to Sim's discomfiture,
+my father, instead of lying down at the foot of it, as he expected, and
+creeping up the side of it, after the doom of the serpent, walked right up
+over the brow, and straight into the camp, followed by Wagtail. There was
+nothing going on,--neither tinkering nor cooking; all seemed asleep; but
+presently out of two or three of the tents, the dingy squalor of which no
+moonshine could silver over, came three or four men, half undressed, who
+demanded of my father, in no gentle tones, what he wanted there.
+
+"I'll tell you all about it," he answered. "I'm the parson of this parish,
+and therefore you're my own people, you see."
+
+"We don't go to _your_ church, parson," said one of them.
+
+"I don't care; you're my own people, for all that, and I want your help."
+
+"Well, what's the matter? Who's cow's dead?" said the same man.
+
+"This evening," returned my father, "one of my children is missing; and a
+woman who might be one of your clan,--mind, I say _might be_; I don't know,
+and I mean no offence,--but such a woman was seen about the place. All
+I want is the child, and if I don't find her, I shall have to raise the
+county. I should be very sorry to disturb you; but I am afraid, in that
+case, whether the woman be one of you or not, the place will be too hot for
+you. I'm no enemy to honest gypsies; but you know there is a set of tramps
+that call themselves gypsies, who are nothing of the sort,--only thieves.
+Tell me what I had better do to find my child. You know all about such
+things."
+
+The men turned to each other, and began talking in undertones, and in a
+language of which what my father heard he could not understand. At length
+the spokesman of the party addressed him again.
+
+"We'll give you our word, sir, if that will satisfy you," he said, more
+respectfully than he had spoken before, "to send the child home directly if
+any one should bring her to our camp. That's all we can say."
+
+My father saw that his best chance lay in accepting the offer.
+
+"Thank you," he said. "Perhaps I may have an opportunity of serving you
+some day."
+
+They in their turn thanked him politely enough, and my father and Sim left
+the camp.
+
+Upon this side the moor was skirted by a plantation which had been
+gradually creeping up the hill from the more sheltered hollow. It was here
+bordered by a deep trench, the bottom of which was full of young firs.
+Through the plantation there was a succession of green rides, by which the
+outskirts of my father's property could be reached. But, the moon being now
+up, my father resolved to cross the trench, and halt for a time, watching
+the moor from the shelter of the firs, on the chance of the woman's making
+her appearance; for, if she belonged to the camp, she would most probably
+approach it from the plantation, and might be overtaken before she could
+cross the moor to reach it.
+
+They had lain ensconced in the firs for about half an hour, when suddenly,
+without any warning, Wagtail rushed into the underwood and vanished. They
+listened with all their ears, and in a few moments heard his joyous bark,
+followed instantly, however, by a howl of pain; and, before they had got
+many yards in pursuit, he came cowering to my father's feet, who, patting
+his side, found it bleeding. He bound his handkerchief round him, and,
+fastening the lash of Sim's whip to his collar that he might not go too
+fast for them, told him to find Theodora. Instantly he pulled away through
+the brushwood, giving a little yelp now and then as the stiff remnant of
+some broken twig or stem hurt his wounded side.
+
+Before we reached the spot for which he was making, however, my father
+heard a rustling, nearer to the outskirts of the wood, and the same moment
+Wagtail turned, and tugged fiercely in that direction. The figure of a
+woman rose up against the sky, and began to run for the open space beyond.
+Wagtail and my father pursued at speed; my father crying out, that, if she
+did not stop, he would loose the dog on her. She paid no heed, but ran on.
+
+"Mount and head her, Sim. Mount, Burton. Ride over every thing," cried my
+father, as he slipped Wagtail, who shot through the underwood like a bird,
+just as she reached the trench, and in an instant had her by the gown. My
+father saw something gleam in the moonlight, and again a howl broke from
+Wagtail, who was evidently once more wounded. But he held on. And now the
+horsemen, having crossed the trench, were approaching her in front, and my
+father was hard upon her behind. She gave a peculiar cry, half a shriek,
+and half a howl, clasped the child to her bosom, and stood rooted like a
+tree, evidently in the hope that her friends, hearing her signal, would
+come to her rescue. But it was too late. My father rushed upon her the
+instant she cried out. The dog was holding her by the poor ragged skirt,
+and the horses were reined snorting on the bank above her. She heaved up
+the child over her head, but whether in appeal to Heaven, or about to dash
+her to the earth in the rage of frustration, she was not allowed time to
+show; for my father caught both her uplifted arms with his, so that she
+could not lower them, and Burton, having flung himself from his horse and
+come behind her, easily took Theodora from them, for from their position
+they were almost powerless. Then my father called off Wagtail; and the
+poor creature sunk down in the bottom of the trench amongst the young firs
+without a sound, and there lay. My father went up to her; but she only
+stared at him with big blank black eyes, and yet such a lost look on her
+young, handsome, yet gaunt face, as almost convinced him she was the mother
+of the child. But, whatever might be her rights, she could not be allowed
+to recover possession, without those who had saved and tended the child
+having a word in the matter of her fate.
+
+As he was thinking what he could say to her, Sim's voice reached his ear.
+
+"They're coming over the brow, sir,--five or six from the camp. We'd better
+be off."
+
+"The child is safe," he said, as he turned to leave her.
+
+"From _me_," she rejoined, in a pitiful tone; and this ambiguous utterance
+was all that fell from her.
+
+My father mounted hurriedly, took the child from Burton, and rode away,
+followed by the two men and Wagtail. Through the green rides they galloped
+in the moonlight, and were soon beyond all danger of pursuit. When they
+slackened pace, my father instructed Sim to find out all he could about the
+gypsies,--if possible to learn their names and to what tribe or community
+they belonged. Sim promised to do what was in his power, but said he did
+not expect much success.
+
+The children had listened to the story wide awake. Wagtail was lying at my
+father's feet, licking his wounds, which were not very serious, and had
+stopped bleeding.
+
+"It is all your doing, Wagtail," said Harry, patting the dog.
+
+"I think he deserves to be called _Mr._ Wagtail," said Charley.
+
+And from that day he was no more called bare Wagtail, but Mr. Wagtail, much
+to the amusement of visitors, who, hearing the name gravely uttered, as it
+soon came to be, saw the owner of it approach on all fours, with a tireless
+pendulum in his rear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A STUPID CHAPTER.
+
+
+Before proceeding with my own story, I must mention that my father took
+every means in his power to find out something about the woman and the gang
+of gypsies to which she appeared to belong. I believe he had no definite
+end in view further than the desire to be able at some future time to enter
+into such relations with her, for her own and her daughter's sake,--if,
+indeed, Theodora were her daughter,--as might be possible. But, the very
+next day, he found that they had already vanished from the place; and all
+the inquiries he set on foot, by means of friends and through the country
+constabulary, were of no avail. I believe he was dissatisfied with himself
+in what had occurred, thinking he ought to have laid himself out at the
+time to discover whether she was indeed the mother, and, in that case, to
+do for her what he could. Probably, had he done so, he would only have
+heaped difficulty upon difficulty; but, as it was, if he was saved from
+trouble, he was not delivered from uneasiness. Clearly, however, the child
+must not be exposed to the danger of the repetition of the attempt; and the
+whole household was now so fully alive to the necessity of not losing sight
+of her for a moment, that her danger was far less than it had been at any
+time before.
+
+I continued at the Hall for six weeks, during which my husband came several
+times to see me; and, at the close of that period, took me back with him
+to my dear little home. The rooms, all but the study, looked very small
+after those I had left; but I felt, notwithstanding, that the place was
+my home. I was at first a little ashamed of the feeling; for why should I
+be anywhere more at home than in the house of such parents as mine? But I
+presume there is a certain amount of the queenly element in every woman, so
+that she cannot feel perfectly at ease without something to govern, however
+small and however troublesome her queendom may be. At my father's, I had
+every ministration possible, and all comforts in profusion; but I had no
+responsibilities, and no rule; so that sometimes I could not help feeling
+as if I was idle, although I knew I was not to blame. Besides, I could not
+be at all sure that my big bear was properly attended to; and the knowledge
+that he was the most independent of comforts of all the men I had ever come
+into any relation with, made me only feel the more anxious that he should
+not be left to his own neglect. For although my father, for instance, was
+ready to part with any thing, even to a favorite volume, if the good reason
+of another's need showed itself, he was not at all indifferent in his own
+person to being comfortable. One with his intense power of enjoying the
+gentleness of the universe could not be so. Hence it was always easy to
+make him a little present; whereas I have still to rack my brains for weeks
+before my bear's birthday comes round, to think of something that will
+in itself have a chance of giving him pleasure. Of course, it would be
+comparatively easy if I had plenty of money to spare, and hadn't "to muddle
+it all away" in paying butchers and bakers, and such like people.
+
+So home I went, to be queen again. Friends came to see me, but I returned
+few of their calls. I liked best to sit in my bedroom. I would have
+preferred sitting in my wonderful little room off the study, and I tried
+that first; but, the same morning, somebody called on Percivale, and
+straightway I felt myself a prisoner. The moment I heard the strange voice
+through the door, I wanted to get out, and could not, of course. Such a
+risk I would not run again. And when Percivale asked me, the next day, if
+I would not go down with him, I told him I could not bear the feeling of
+confinement it gave me.
+
+"I did mean," he said, "to have had a door made into the garden for you,
+and I consulted an architect friend on the subject; but he soon satisfied
+me it would make the room much too cold for you, and so I was compelled to
+give up the thought."
+
+"You dear!" I said. That was all; but it was enough for Percivale, who
+never bothered me, as I have heard of husbands doing, for demonstrations
+either of gratitude or affection. Such must be of the mole-eyed sort, who
+can only read large print. So I betook myself to my chamber, and there sat
+and worked; for I did a good deal of needle-work now, although I had never
+been fond of it as a girl. The constant recurrence of similar motions of
+the fingers, one stitch just the same as another in countless repetition,
+varied only by the bother when the thread grew short and would slip out of
+the eye of the needle, and yet not short enough to be exchanged with still
+more bother for one too long, had been so wearisome to me in former days,
+that I spent half my pocket-money in getting the needle-work done for me
+which my mother and sister did for themselves. For this my father praised
+me, and my mother tried to scold me, and couldn't. But now it was all so
+different! Instead of toiling at plain stitching and hemming and sewing,
+I seemed to be working a bit of lovely tapestry all the time,--so many
+thoughts and so many pictures went weaving themselves into the work; while
+every little bit finished appeared so much of the labor of the universe
+actually done,--accomplished, ended: for the first time in my life, I began
+to feel myself of consequence enough to be taken care of. I remember
+once laying down the little--what I was working at--but I am growing too
+communicative and important.
+
+My father used often to say that the commonest things in the world were
+the loveliest,--sky and water and grass and such; now I found that the
+commonest feelings of humanity--for what feelings could be commoner than
+those which now made me blessed amongst women?--are those that are fullest
+of the divine. Surely this looks as if there were a God of the whole
+earth,--as if the world existed in the very foundations of its history
+and continuance by the immediate thought of a causing thought. For simply
+because the life of the world was moving on towards its unseen goal, and
+I knew it and had a helpless share in it, I felt as if God was with me. I
+do not say I always felt like this,--far from it: there were times when
+life itself seemed vanishing in an abyss of nothingness, when all my
+consciousness consisted in this, that I knew I was _not_, and when I could
+not believe that I should ever be restored to the well-being of existence.
+The worst of it was, that, in such moods, it seemed as if I had hitherto
+been deluding myself with rainbow fancies as often as I had been aware
+of blessedness, as there was, in fact, no wine of life apart from its
+effervescence. But when one day I told Percivale--not while I was thus
+oppressed, for then I could not speak; but in a happier moment whose
+happiness I mistrusted--something of what I felt, he said one thing which
+has comforted me ever since in such circumstances:--
+
+"Don't grumble at the poverty, darling, by which another is made rich."
+
+I confess I did not see all at once what he meant; but I did after thinking
+over it for a while. And if I have learned any valuable lesson in my life,
+it is this, that no one's feelings are a measure of eternal facts.
+
+The winter passed slowly away,--fog, rain, frost, snow, thaw, succeeding
+one another in all the seeming disorder of the season. A good many things
+happened, I believe; but I don't remember any of them. My mother wrote,
+offering me Dora for a companion; but somehow I preferred being without
+her. One great comfort was good news about Connie, who was getting on
+famously. But even this moved me so little that I began to think I was
+turning into a crab, utterly incased in the shell of my own selfishness.
+The thought made me cry. The fact that I could cry consoled me, for how
+could I be heartless so long as I could cry? But then came the thought it
+was for myself, my own hard-heartedness I was crying,--not certainly for
+joy that Connie was getting better. "At least, however," I said to myself,
+"I am not content to be selfish. I am a little troubled that I am not
+good." And then I tried to look up, and get my needlework, which always did
+me good, by helping me to reflect. It is, I can't help thinking, a great
+pity that needlework is going so much out of fashion; for it tends more to
+make a woman--one who thinks, that is--acquainted with herself than all the
+sermons she is ever likely to hear.
+
+My father came to see me several times, and was all himself to me; but
+I could not feel quite comfortable with him,--I don't in the least know
+why. I am afraid, much afraid, it indicates something very wrong in me
+somewhere. But he seemed to understand me; and always, the moment he
+left me, the tide of confidence began to flow afresh in the ocean that
+lay about the little island of my troubles. Then I knew he was my own
+father,--something that even my husband could not be, and would not wish to
+be to me.
+
+In the month of March, my mother came to see me; and that was all pleasure.
+My father did not always see when I was not able to listen to him, though
+he was most considerate when he did; but my mother--why, to be with her was
+like being with one's own--_mother_, I was actually going to write. There
+is nothing better than that when a woman is in such trouble, except it
+be--what my father knows more about than I do: I wish I did know _all_
+about it.
+
+She brought with her a young woman to take the place of cook, or rather
+general servant, in our little household. She had been kitchen-maid in a
+small family of my mother's acquaintance, and had a good character for
+honesty and plain cooking. Percivale's more experienced ear soon discovered
+that she was Irish. This fact had not been represented to my mother; for
+the girl had been in England from childhood, and her mistress seemed
+either not to have known it, or not to have thought of mentioning it.
+Certainly, my mother was far too just to have allowed it to influence her
+choice, notwithstanding the prejudices against Irish women in English
+families,--prejudices not without a general foundation in reason. For my
+part, I should have been perfectly satisfied with my mother's choice, even
+if I had not been so indifferent at the time to all that was going on in
+the lower regions of the house. But while my mother was there, I knew well
+enough that nothing could go wrong; and my housekeeping mind had never been
+so much at ease since we were married. It was very delightful not to
+be accountable; and, for the present, I felt exonerated from all
+responsibilities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+AN INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I woke one morning, after a sound sleep,--not so sound, however, but that
+I had been dreaming, and that, when I awoke, I could recall my dream. It
+was a very odd one. I thought I was a hen, strutting about amongst ricks
+of corn, picking here and scratching there, followed by a whole brood
+of chickens, toward which I felt exceedingly benevolent and attentive.
+Suddenly I heard the scream of a hawk in the air above me, and instantly
+gave the proper cry to fetch the little creatures under my wings. They
+came scurrying to me as fast as their legs could carry them,--all but one,
+which wouldn't mind my cry, although I kept repeating it again and again.
+Meantime the hawk kept screaming; and I felt as if I didn't care for any
+of those that were safe under my wings, but only for the solitary creature
+that kept pecking away as if nothing was the matter. About it I grew so
+terribly anxious, that at length I woke with a cry of misery and terror.
+
+The moment I opened my eyes, there was my mother standing beside me. The
+room was so dark that I thought for a moment what a fog there must be; but
+the next, I forgot every thing at hearing a little cry, which I verily
+believe, in my stupid dream, I had taken for the voice of the hawk; whereas
+it was the cry of my first and only chicken, which I had not yet seen, but
+which my mother now held in her grandmotherly arms, ready to hand her to
+me. I dared not speak; for I felt very weak, and was afraid of crying from
+delight. I looked in my mother's face; and she folded back the clothes, and
+laid the baby down beside me, with its little head resting on my arm.
+
+"Draw back the curtain a little bit, mother dear," I whispered, "and let me
+see what it is like."
+
+I believe I said _it_, for I was not quite a mother yet. My mother did
+as I requested; a ray of clear spring light fell upon the face of the
+little white thing by my side,--for white she was, though most babies are
+red,--and if I dared not speak before, I could not now. My mother went
+away again, and sat down by the fireside, leaving me with my baby. Never
+shall I forget the unutterable content of that hour. It was not gladness,
+nor was it thankfulness, that filled my heart, but a certain absolute
+contentment,--just on the point, but for my want of strength, of blossoming
+into unspeakable gladness and thankfulness. Somehow, too, there was mingled
+with it a sense of dignity, as if I had vindicated for myself a right
+to a part in the creation; for was I not proved at least a link in the
+marvellous chain of existence, in carrying on the designs of the great
+Maker? Not that the thought was there,--only the feeling, which afterwards
+found the thought, in order to account for its own being. Besides, the
+state of perfect repose after what had passed was in itself bliss; the very
+sense of weakness was delightful, for I had earned the right to be weak, to
+rest as much as I pleased, to be important, and to be congratulated.
+
+Somehow I had got through. The trouble lay behind me; and here, for the
+sake of any one who will read my poor words, I record the conviction, that,
+in one way or other, special individual help is given to every creature
+to endure to the end. I think I have heard my father say, and hitherto it
+has been my own experience, that always when suffering, whether mental or
+bodily, approached the point where further endurance appeared impossible,
+the pulse of it began to ebb, and a lull ensued. I do not venture to found
+any general assertion upon this: I only state it as a fact of my own
+experience. He who does not allow any man to be tempted above that he is
+able to bear, doubtless acts in the same way in all kinds of trials.
+
+I was listening to the gentle talk about me in the darkened room--not
+listening, indeed, only aware that loving words were spoken. Whether I was
+dozing, I do not know; but something touched my lips. I did not start. I
+had been dreadfully given to starting for a long time,--so much so that I
+was quite ashamed sometimes, for I would even cry out,--I who had always
+been so sharp on feminine affectations before; but now it seemed as if
+nothing could startle me. I only opened my eyes; and there was my great
+big huge bear looking down on me, with something in his eyes I had never
+seen there before. But even his presence could not ripple the waters of my
+deep rest. I gave him half a smile,--I knew it was but half a smile, but I
+thought it would do,--closed my eyes, and sunk again, not into sleep, but
+into that same blessed repose. I remember wondering if I should feel any
+thing like that for the first hour or two after I was dead. May there not
+one day be such a repose for all,--only the heavenly counterpart, coming of
+perfect activity instead of weary success?
+
+This was all but the beginning of endlessly varied pleasures. I dare say
+the mothers would let me go on for a good while in this direction,--perhaps
+even some of the fathers could stand a little more of it; but I must
+remember, that, if anybody reads this at all, it will have multitudes of
+readers in whom the chord which could alone respond to such experiences
+hangs loose over the sounding-board of their being.
+
+By slow degrees the daylight, the light of work, that is, began to
+penetrate me, or rather to rise in my being from its own hidden sun. First
+I began to wash and dress my baby myself. One who has not tried that
+kind of amusement cannot know what endless pleasure it affords. I do not
+doubt that to the paternal spectator it appears monotonous, unproductive,
+unprogressive; but then he, looking upon it from the outside, and regarding
+the process with a speculative compassion, and not with sympathy, so cannot
+know the communion into which it brings you with the baby. I remember well
+enough what my father has written about it in "The Seaboard Parish;" but he
+is all wrong--I mean him to confess that before this is printed. If things
+were done as he proposes, the tenderness of mothers would be far less
+developed, and the moral training of children would be postponed to an
+indefinite period. There, papa! that's something in your own style!
+
+Next I began to order the dinners; and the very day on which I first
+ordered the dinner, I took my place at the head of the table. A happier
+little party--well, of course, I saw it all through the rose-mists of
+my motherhood, but I am nevertheless bold to assert that my husband was
+happy, and that my mother was happy; and if there was one more guest at
+the table concerning whom I am not prepared to assert that he was happy,
+I can confidently affirm that he was merry and gracious and talkative,
+originating three parts of the laughter of the evening. To watch him with
+the baby was a pleasure even to the heart of a mother, anxious as she must
+be when any one, especially a gentleman, more especially a bachelor, and
+most especially a young bachelor, takes her precious little wax-doll in
+his arms, and pretends to know all about the management of such. It was he
+indeed who introduced her to the dining-room; for, leaving the table during
+dessert, he returned bearing her in his arms, to my astonishment, and even
+mild maternal indignation at the liberty. Resuming his seat, and pouring
+out for his charge, as he pretended, a glass of old port, he said in the
+soberest voice:--
+
+"Charles Percivale, with all the solemnity suitable to the occasion, I,
+the old moon, with the new moon in my arms, propose the health of Miss
+Percivale on her first visit to this boring bullet of a world. By the way,
+what a mercy it is that she carries her atmosphere with her!"
+
+Here I, stupidly thinking he reflected on the atmosphere of baby, rose to
+take her from him with suppressed indignation; for why should a man, who
+assumes a baby unbidden, be so very much nicer than a woman who accepts her
+as given, and makes the best of it? But he declined giving her up.
+
+"I'm not pinching her," he said.
+
+"No; but I am afraid you find her disagreeable."
+
+"On the contrary, she is the nicest of little ladies; for she lets you talk
+all the nonsense you like, and never takes the least offence."
+
+I sat down again directly.
+
+"I propose her health," he repeated, "coupled with that of her mother,
+to whom I, for one, am more obliged than I can explain, for at length
+convincing me that I belong no more to the youth of my country, but am an
+uncle with a homuncle in his arms."
+
+"Wifie, your health! Baby, yours too!" said my husband; and the ladies
+drank the toast in silence.
+
+It is time I explained who this fourth--or should I say fifth?--person in
+our family party was. He was the younger brother of my Percivale, by name
+Roger,--still more unsuccessful than he; of similar trustworthiness, but
+less equanimity; for he was subject to sudden elevations and depressions
+of the inner barometer. I shall have more to tell about him by and by.
+Meantime it is enough to mention that my daughter--how grand I thought it
+when I first said _my daughter_!--now began her acquaintance with him.
+Before long he was her chief favorite next to her mother and--I am sorry
+I cannot conscientiously add _father_; for, at a certain early period of
+her history, the child showed a decided preference for her uncle over her
+father.
+
+But it is time I put a stop to this ooze of maternal memories. Having thus
+introduced my baby and her Uncle Roger, I close the chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MY FIRST DINNER-PARTY. A NEGATIVED PROPOSAL.
+
+
+It may well be believed that we had not yet seen much company in our
+little house. To parties my husband had a great dislike; evening parties
+he eschewed utterly, and never accepted an invitation to dinner, except
+it were to the house of a friend, or to that of one of my few relatives
+in London, whom, for my sake, he would not displease. There were not
+many, even among his artist-acquaintances, whom he cared to visit; and,
+altogether, I fear he passed for an unsociable man. I am certain he would
+have sold more pictures if he had accepted what invitations came in his
+way. But to hint at such a thing would, I knew, crystallize his dislike
+into a resolve.
+
+One day, after I had got quite strong again, as I was sitting by him in the
+study, with my baby on my knee, I proposed that we should ask some friends
+to dinner. Instead of objecting to the procedure upon general principles,
+which I confess I had half anticipated, he only asked me whom I thought of
+inviting. When I mentioned the Morleys, he made no reply, but went on with
+his painting as if he had not heard me; whence I knew, of course, that the
+proposal was disagreeable to him.
+
+"You see, we have been twice to dine with them," I said.
+
+"Well, don't you think that enough for a while?"
+
+"I'm talking of asking them here now."
+
+"Couldn't you go and see your cousin some morning instead?"
+
+"It's not that I want to see my cousin particularly. I want to ask them to
+dinner."
+
+"Oh!" he said, as if he couldn't in the least make out what I was after, "I
+thought people asked people because they desired their company."
+
+"But, you see, we owe them a dinner."
+
+"Owe them a dinner! Did you borrow one, then?"
+
+"Percivale, why will you pretend to be so stupid?"
+
+"Perhaps I'm only pretending to be the other thing."
+
+"Do you consider yourself under no obligation to people who ask you to
+dinner?"
+
+"None in the least--if I accept the invitation. That is the natural
+acknowledgment of their kindness. Surely my company is worth my dinner. It
+is far more trouble to me to put on black clothes and a white choker and go
+to their house, than it is for them to ask me, or, in a house like theirs,
+to have the necessary preparations made for receiving me in a manner
+befitting their dignity. I do violence to my own feelings in going: is not
+that enough? You know how much I prefer a chop with my wife alone to the
+grandest dinner the grandest of her grand relations could give me."
+
+"Now, don't you make game of my grand relations. I'm not sure that you
+haven't far grander relations yourself, only you say so little about them,
+they might all have been transported for housebreaking. Tell me honestly,
+don't you think it natural, if a friend asks you to dinner, that you should
+ask him again?"
+
+"Yes, if it would give him any pleasure. But just imagine your Cousin
+Morley dining at our table. Do you think he would enjoy it?"
+
+"Of course we must have somebody in to help Jemima."
+
+"And somebody to wait, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, of course, Percivale."
+
+"And what Thackeray calls cold balls handed about?"
+
+"Well, I wouldn't have them cold."
+
+"But they would be."
+
+I was by this time so nearly crying, that I said nothing here.
+
+"My love," he resumed, "I object to the whole thing. It's all false
+together. I have not the least disinclination to asking a few friends who
+would enjoy being received in the same style as your father or my brother;
+namely, to one of our better dinners, and perhaps something better to drink
+than I can afford every day; but just think with what uneasy compassion Mr.
+Morley would regard our poor ambitions, even if you had an occasional cook
+and an undertaker's man. And what would he do without his glass of dry
+sherry after his soup, and his hock and champagne later, not to mention his
+fine claret or tawny port afterwards? I don't know how to get these things
+good enough for him without laying in a stock; and, that you know, would be
+as absurd as it is impossible."
+
+"Oh, you gentlemen always think so much of the wine!"
+
+"Believe me, it is as necessary to Mr. Morley's comfort as the dainties you
+would provide him with. Indeed, it would be a cruelty to ask him. He would
+not, could not, enjoy it."
+
+"If he didn't like it, he needn't come again," I said, cross with the
+objections of which I could not but see the justice.
+
+"Well, I must say you have an odd notion of hospitality," said my bear.
+"You may be certain," he resumed, after a moment's pause, "that a man so
+well aware of his own importance will take it far more as a compliment that
+you do not presume to invite him to your house, but are content to enjoy
+his society when he asks you to his."
+
+"I don't choose to take such an inferior position," I said.
+
+"You can't help it, my dear," he returned. "Socially considered, you _are_
+his inferior. You cannot give dinners he would regard with any thing better
+than a friendly contempt, combined with a certain mild indignation at your
+having presumed to ask _him_, used to such different ways. It is far more
+graceful to accept the small fact, and let him have his whim, which is not
+a subversive one or at all dangerous to the community, being of a sort easy
+to cure. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"May I ask what you are laughing at?" I said with severity.
+
+"I was only fancying how such a man must feel,--if what your blessed father
+believes be true,--when he is stripped all at once of every possible source
+of consequence,--stripped of position, funds, house, including cellar,
+clothes, body, including stomach"--
+
+"There, there! don't be vulgar. It is not like you, Percivale."
+
+"My love, there is far greater vulgarity in refusing to acknowledge the
+inevitable, either in society or in physiology. Just ask my brother his
+experience in regard of the word to which you object."
+
+"I will leave that to you."
+
+"Don't be vexed with me, my wife," he said.
+
+"I don't like not to be allowed to pay my debts."
+
+"Back to the starting-point, like a hunted hare! A woman's way," he said
+merrily, hoping to make me laugh; for he could not doubt I should see the
+absurdity of my position with a moment's reflection. But I was out of
+temper, and chose to pounce upon the liberty taken with my sex, and regard
+it as an insult. Without a word I rose, pressed my baby to my bosom as if
+her mother had been left a widow, and swept away. Percivale started to his
+feet. I did not see, but I knew he gazed after me for a moment; then I
+heard him sit down to his painting as if nothing had happened, but, I knew,
+with a sharp pain inside his great chest. For me, I found the precipice,
+or Jacob's ladder, I had to climb, very subversive of my dignity; for when
+a woman has to hold a baby in one arm, and with the hand of the other
+lift the front of her skirt in order to walk up an almost perpendicular
+staircase, it is quite impossible for her to _sweep_ any more.
+
+When I reached the top, I don't know how it was, but the picture he had
+made of me, with the sunset-shine coming through the window, flashed upon
+my memory. All dignity forgotten, I bolted through the door at the top,
+flung my baby into the arms of her nurse, turned, almost tumbled headlong
+down the precipice, and altogether tumbled down at my husband's chair. I
+couldn't speak; I could only lay my head on his knees.
+
+"Darling," he said, "you shall ask the great Pan Jan with his button atop,
+if you like. I'll do my best for him."
+
+Between crying and laughing, I nearly did what I have never really done
+yet,--I nearly _went off_. There! I am sure that phrase is quite as
+objectionable as the word I wrote a little while ago; and there it shall
+stand, as a penance for having called any word my husband used _vulgar_.
+
+"I was very naughty, Percivale," I said. "I will give a dinner-party, and
+it shall be such as you shall enjoy, and I won't ask Mr. Morley."
+
+"Thank you, my love," he said; "and the next time Mr. Morley asks us I will
+go without a grumble, and make myself as agreeable as I can."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It may have seemed, to some of my readers, occasion for surprise that the
+mistress of a household should have got so far in the construction of a
+book without saying a word about her own or other people's servants in
+general. Such occasion shall no longer be afforded them; for now I am
+going to say several things about one of mine, and thereby introduce a
+few results of much experience and some thought. I do not pretend to have
+made a single discovery, but only to have achieved what I count a certain
+measure of success; which, however, I owe largely to my own poverty, and
+the stupidity of my cook.
+
+I have had a good many servants since, but Jemima seems a fixture. How
+this has come about, it would be impossible to say in ever so many words.
+Over and over I have felt, and may feel again before the day is ended, a
+profound sympathy with Sindbad the sailor, when the Old Man of the Sea was
+on his back, and the hope of ever getting him off it had not yet begun to
+dawn. She has by turns every fault under the sun,--I say _fault_ only;
+will struggle with one for a day, and succumb to it for a month; while
+the smallest amount of praise is sufficient to render her incapable of
+deserving a word of commendation for a week. She is intensely stupid, with
+a remarkable genius--yes, genius--for cooking. My father says that all
+stupidity is caused, or at least maintained, by conceit. I cannot quite
+accompany him to his conclusions; but I have seen plainly enough that the
+stupidest people are the most conceited, which in some degree favors them.
+It was long an impossibility to make her see, or at least own, that she was
+to blame for any thing. If the dish she had last time cooked to perfection
+made its appearance the next time uneatable, she would lay it all to the
+_silly_ oven, which was too hot or too cold; or the silly pepper-pot, the
+top of which fell off as she was using it. She had no sense of the value
+of proportion,--would insist, for instance, that she had made the cake
+precisely as she had been told, but suddenly betray that she had not
+weighed the flour, which _could_ be of no consequence, seeing she had
+weighed every thing else.
+
+"Please, 'm, could you eat your dinner now? for it's all ready," she came
+saying an hour before dinner-time, the very first day after my mother
+left. Even now her desire to be punctual is chiefly evidenced by absurd
+precipitancy, to the danger of doing every thing either to a pulp or a
+cinder. Yet here she is, and here she is likely to remain, so far as I see,
+till death, or some other catastrophe, us do part. The reason of it is,
+that, with all her faults--and they are innumerable--she has some heart;
+yes, after deducting all that can be laid to the account of a certain
+cunning perception that she is well off, she has yet a good deal of genuine
+attachment left; and after setting down the half of her possessions to the
+blarney which is the natural weapon of the weak-witted Celt, there seems
+yet left in her of the vanishing clan instinct enough to render her a
+jealous partisan of her master and mistress.
+
+Those who care only for being well-served will of course feel contemptuous
+towards any one who would put up with such a woman for a single moment
+after she could find another; but both I and my husband have a strong
+preference for living in a family, rather than in a hotel. I know many
+houses in which the master and mistress are far more like the lodgers,
+on sufferance of their own servants. I have seen a worthy lady go about
+wringing her hands because she could not get her orders attended to in the
+emergency of a slight accident, not daring to go down to her own kitchen,
+as her love prompted, and expedite the ministration. I am at least mistress
+in my own house; my servants are, if not yet so much members of the family
+as I could wish, gradually becoming more so; there is a circulation of
+common life through the household, rendering us an organization, although
+as yet perhaps a low one; I am sure of being obeyed, and there are no
+underhand out-of-door connections. When I go to the houses of my rich
+relations, and hear what they say concerning their servants, I feel as if
+they were living over a mine, which might any day be sprung, and blow them
+into a state of utter helplessness; and I return to my house blessed in
+the knowledge that my little kingdom is my own, and that, although it is
+not free from internal upheavings and stormy commotions, these are such as
+to be within the control and restraint of the general family influences;
+while the blunders of the cook seem such trifles beside the evil customs
+established in most kitchens of which I know any thing, that they are
+turned even into sources of congratulation as securing her services for
+ourselves. More than once my husband has insisted on raising her wages, on
+the ground of the endless good he gets in his painting from the merriment
+her oddities afford him,--namely, the clear insight, which, he asserts, is
+the invariable consequence. I must in honesty say, however, that I have
+seen him something else than merry with her behavior, many a time.
+
+But I find the things I have to say so crowd upon me, that I must either
+proceed to arrange them under heads,--which would immediately deprive them
+of any right to a place in my story,--or keep them till they are naturally
+swept from the bank of my material by the slow wearing of the current of my
+narrative. I prefer the latter, because I think my readers will.
+
+What with one thing and another, this thing to be done and that thing to
+be avoided, there was nothing more said about the dinner-party, until my
+father came to see us in the month of July. I was to have paid them a visit
+before then; but things had come in the way of that also, and now my father
+was commissioned by my mother to arrange for my going the next month.
+
+As soon as I had shown my father to his little room, I ran down to
+Percivale.
+
+"Papa is come," I said.
+
+"I am delighted to hear it," he answered, laying down his palette and
+brushes. "Where is he?"
+
+"Gone up stairs," I answered. "I wouldn't disturb you till he came down
+again."
+
+He answered with that world-wide English phrase, so suggestive of a hopeful
+disposition, "All right!" And with all its grumbling, and the _tristesse_
+which the French consider its chief characteristic, I think my father is
+right, who says, that, more than any other nation, England has been, is,
+and will be, saved by hope. Resuming his implements, my husband added,--
+
+"I haven't quite finished my pipe,--I will go on till he comes down."
+
+Although he laid it on his pipe, I knew well enough it was just that little
+bit of paint he wanted to finish, and not the residue of tobacco in the
+black and red bowl.
+
+"And now we'll have our dinner party," I said.
+
+I do believe, that, for all the nonsense I had talked about returning
+invitations, the real thing at my heart even then was an impulse towards
+hospitable entertainment, and the desire to see my husband merry with his
+friends, under--shall I say it?--the protecting wing of his wife. For, as
+mother of the family, the wife has to mother her husband also; to consider
+him as her first-born, and look out for what will not only give him
+pleasure but be good for him. And I may just add here, that for a long time
+my bear has fully given in to this.
+
+"And who are you going to ask?" he said. "Mr. and Mrs. Morley to begin
+with, and"--
+
+"No, no," I answered. "We are going to have a jolly evening of it,
+with nobody present who will make you either anxious or annoyed. Mr.
+Blackstone,"--he wasn't married then,--"Miss Clare, I think,--and"--
+
+"What do you ask her for?"
+
+"I won't if you don't like her, but"--
+
+"I haven't had a chance of liking or disliking her yet."
+
+"That is partly why I want to ask her,--I am so sure you would like her if
+you knew her."
+
+"Where did you tell me you had met her?"
+
+"At Cousin Judy's. I must have one lady to keep me in countenance with so
+many gentlemen, you know. I have another reason for asking her, which I
+would rather you should find out than I tell you. Do you mind?"
+
+"Not in the least, if you don't think she will spoil the fun."
+
+"I am sure she won't. Then there's your brother Roger."
+
+"Of course. Who more?"
+
+"I think that will do. There will be six of us then,--quite a large enough
+party for our little dining-room."
+
+"Why shouldn't we dine here? It wouldn't be so hot, and we should have more
+room."
+
+I liked the idea. The night before, Percivale arranged every thing, so
+that not only his paintings, of which he had far too many, and which
+were huddled about the room, but all his _properties_ as well, should be
+accessory to a picturesque effect. And when the table was covered with the
+glass and plate,--of which latter my mother had taken care I should not be
+destitute,--and adorned with the flowers which Roger brought me from Covent
+Garden, assisted by a few of our own, I thought the bird's-eye view from
+the top of Jacob's ladder a very pretty one indeed.
+
+Resolved that Percivale should have no cause of complaint as regarded the
+simplicity of my arrangements, I gave orders that our little Ethel, who at
+that time of the evening was always asleep, should be laid on the couch in
+my room off the study, with the door ajar, so that Sarah, who was now her
+nurse, might wait with an easy mind. The dinner was brought in by the outer
+door of the study, to avoid the awkwardness and possible disaster of the
+private precipice.
+
+The principal dish, a small sirloin of beef, was at the foot of the table,
+and a couple of boiled fowls, as I thought, before me. But when the covers
+were removed, to my surprise I found they were roasted.
+
+"What have you got there, Percivale?" I asked. "Isn't it sirloin?"
+
+"I'm not an adept in such matters," he replied. "I should say it was."
+
+My father gave a glance at the joint. Something seemed to be wrong. I
+rose and went to my husband's side. Powers of cuisine! Jemima had roasted
+the fowls, and boiled the sirloin. My exclamation was the signal for an
+outbreak of laughter, led by my father. I was trembling in the balance
+between mortification on my own account and sympathy with the evident
+amusement of my father and Mr. Blackstone. But the thought that Mr. Morley
+might have been and was not of the party came with such a pang and such a
+relief, that it settled the point, and I burst out laughing.
+
+"I dare say it's all right," said Roger. "Why shouldn't a sirloin be boiled
+as well as roasted? I venture to assert that it is all a whim, and we are
+on the verge of a new discovery to swell the number of those which already
+owe their being to blunders."
+
+"Let us all try a slice, then," said Mr. Blackstone, "and compare results."
+
+This was agreed to; and a solemn silence followed, during which each sought
+acquaintance with the new dish.
+
+"I am sorry to say," remarked my father, speaking first, "that Roger is
+all wrong, and we have only made the discovery that custom is right. It is
+plain enough why sirloin is always roasted."
+
+"I yield myself convinced," said Roger.
+
+"And I am certain," said Mr. Blackstone, "that if the loin set before the
+king, whoever he was, had been boiled, he would never have knighted it."
+
+Thanks to the loin, the last possible touch of constraint had vanished,
+and the party grew a very merry one. The apple-pudding which followed was
+declared perfect, and eaten up. Percivale produced some good wine from
+somewhere, which evidently added to the enjoyment of the gentlemen, my
+father included, who likes a good glass of wine as well as anybody. But
+a tiny little whimper called me away, and Miss Clare accompanied me; the
+gentlemen insisting that we should return as soon as possible, and bring
+the homuncle, as Roger called the baby, with us.
+
+When we returned, the two clergymen were in close conversation, and the
+other two gentlemen were chiefly listening. My father was saying,--
+
+"My dear sir, I don't see how any man can do his duty as a clergyman who
+doesn't visit his parishioners."
+
+"In London it is simply impossible," returned Mr. Blackstone. "In the
+country you are welcome wherever you go; any visit I might pay would most
+likely be regarded either as an intrusion, or as giving the right to
+pecuniary aid, of which evils the latter is the worse. There are portions
+of every London parish which clergymen and their coadjutors have so
+degraded by the practical teaching of beggary, that they have blocked
+up every door to a healthy spiritual relation between them and pastor
+possible."
+
+"Would you not give alms at all, then?"
+
+"One thing, at least, I have made up my mind upon,--that alms from any but
+the hand of personal friendship tend to evil, and will, in the long run,
+increase misery."
+
+"What, then, do you suppose the proper relation between a London clergyman
+and his parishioners?"
+
+"One, I am afraid, which does not at present exist,--one which it is his
+first business perhaps to bring about. I confess I regard with a repulsion
+amounting to horror the idea of walking into a poor man's house, except
+either I have business with him, or desire his personal acquaintance."
+
+"But if our office"--
+
+"Makes it my business to serve--not to assume authority over them
+especially to the degree of forcing service upon them. I will not say
+how far intimacy may not justify you in immediate assault upon a man's
+conscience; but I shrink from any plan that seems to take it for granted
+that the poor are more wicked than the rich. Why don't we send missionaries
+to Belgravia? The outside of the cup and platter may sometimes be dirtier
+than the inside."
+
+"Your missionary could hardly force his way through the servants to the
+boudoir or drawing-room."
+
+"And the poor have no servants to defend them."
+
+I have recorded this much of the conversation chiefly for the sake of
+introducing Miss Clare, who now spoke.
+
+"Don't you think, sir," she asked, addressing my father, "that the help one
+can give to another must always depend on the measure in which one is free
+one's self?"
+
+My father was silent--thinking. We were all silent. I said to myself,
+"There, papa! that is something after your own heart." With marked
+deference and solemnity he answered at length,--
+
+"I have little doubt you are right, Miss Clare. That puts the question
+upon its own eternal foundation. The mode used must be of infinitely less
+importance than the person who uses it."
+
+As he spoke, he looked at her with a far more attentive regard than
+hitherto. Indeed, the eyes of all the company seemed to be scanning
+the small woman; but she bore the scrutiny well, if indeed she was not
+unconscious of it; and my husband began to find out one of my reasons for
+asking her, which was simply that he might see her face. At this moment it
+was in one of its higher phases. It was, at its best, a grand face,--at its
+worst, a suffering face; a little too large, perhaps, for the small body
+which it crowned with a flame of soul; but while you saw her face you never
+thought of the rest of her; and her attire seemed to court an escape from
+all observation.
+
+"But," my father went on, looking at Mr. Blackstone, "I am anxious from the
+clergyman's point of view, to know what my friend here thinks he must try
+to do in his very difficult position."
+
+"I think the best thing I could do," returned Mr. Blackstone, laughing,
+"would be to go to school to Miss Clare."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," my father responded.
+
+"But, in the mean time, I should prefer the chaplaincy of a suburban
+cemetery."
+
+"Certainly your charge would be a less troublesome one. Your congregation
+would be quiet enough, at least," said Roger.
+
+"'Then are they glad because they be quiet,'" said my father, as if
+unconsciously uttering his own reflections. But he was a little cunning,
+and would say things like that when, fearful of irreverence, he wanted to
+turn the current of the conversation.
+
+"But, surely," said Miss Clare, "a more active congregation would be quite
+as desirable."
+
+She had one fault--no, defect: she was slow to enter into the humor of a
+thing. It seemed almost as if the first aspect of any bit of fun presented
+to her was that of something wrong. A moment's reflection, however, almost
+always ended in a sunny laugh, partly at her own stupidity, as she called
+it.
+
+"You mistake my meaning," said Mr. Blackstone. "My chief, almost sole,
+attraction to the regions of the grave is the sexton, and not the placidity
+of the inhabitants; though perhaps Miss Clare might value that more highly
+if she had more experience of how noisy human nature can be."
+
+Miss Clare gave a little smile, which after-knowledge enabled me to
+interpret as meaning, "Perhaps I do know a trifle about it;" but she said
+nothing.
+
+"My first inquiry," he went on, "before accepting such an appointment,
+would be as to the character and mental habits of the sexton. If I found
+him a man capable of regarding human nature from a stand-point of his
+own, I should close with the offer at once. If, on the contrary, he was
+a common-place man, who made faultless responses, and cherished the
+friendship of the undertaker, I should decline. In fact, I should regard
+the sexton as my proposed master; and whether I should accept the place
+or not would depend altogether on whether I liked him or not. Think what
+revelations of human nature a real man in such a position could give me:
+'Hand me the shovel. You stop a bit,--you're out of breath. Sit down on
+that stone there, and light your pipe; here's some tobacco. Now tell me
+the rest of the story. How did the old fellow get on after he had buried
+his termagant wife?' That's how I should treat him; and I should get,
+in return, such a succession of peeps into human life and intent and
+aspirations, as, in the course of a few years, would send me to the next
+vicarage that turned up a sadder and wiser man, Mr. Walton."
+
+"I don't doubt it," said my father; but whether in sympathy with Mr.
+Blackstone, or in latent disapproval of a tone judged unbecoming to a
+clergyman, I cannot tell. Sometimes, I confess, I could not help suspecting
+the source of the deficiency in humor which he often complained of in me;
+but I always came to the conclusion that what seemed such a deficiency in
+him was only occasioned by the presence of a deeper feeling.
+
+Miss Clare was the first to leave.
+
+"What a lovely countenance that is!" said my husband, the moment she was
+out of hearing.
+
+"She is a very remarkable woman," said my father.
+
+"I suspect she knows a good deal more than most of us," said Mr.
+Blackstone. "Did you see how her face lighted up always before she said any
+thing? You can never come nearer to seeing a thought than in her face just
+before she speaks."
+
+"What is she?" asked Roger.
+
+"Can't you see what she is?" returned his brother. "She's a saint,--Saint
+Clare."
+
+"If you had been a Scotchman, now," said Roger "that fine name would have
+sunk to _Sinkler_ in your mouth."
+
+"Not a more vulgar corruption, however, than is common in the mouths
+of English lords and ladies, when they turn _St. John_ into _Singen_,
+reminding one of nothing but the French for an ape," said my father.
+
+"But what does she do?" persisted Roger.
+
+"Why should you think she does any thing?" I asked.
+
+"She looks as if she had to earn her own living."
+
+"She does. She teaches music."
+
+"Why didn't you ask her to play?"
+
+"Because this is the first time she has been to the house."
+
+"Does she go to church, do you suppose?"
+
+"I have no doubt of it; but why do you ask?"
+
+"Because she looks as if she didn't want it. I never saw such an angelic
+expression upon a countenance."
+
+"You must take me to call upon her," said my father.
+
+"I will with pleasure," I answered.
+
+I found, however, that this was easier promised than performed; for I had
+asked her by word of mouth at Cousin Judy's, and had not the slightest
+idea where she lived. Of course I applied to Judy; but she had mislaid her
+address, and, promising to ask her for it, forgot more than once. My father
+had to return home without seeing her again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A PICTURE.
+
+
+Things went on very quietly for some time. Of course I was fully occupied,
+as well I might be, with a life to tend and cultivate which must blossom at
+length into the human flowers of love and obedience and faith. The smallest
+service I did the wonderful thing that lay in my lap seemed a something in
+itself so well worth doing, that it was worth living to do it. As I gazed
+on the new creation, so far beyond my understanding, yet so dependent upon
+me while asserting an absolute and divine right to all I did for her, I
+marvelled that God should intrust me with such a charge, that he did not
+keep the lovely creature in his own arms, and refuse her to any others.
+Then I would bethink myself that in giving her into mine, he had not sent
+her out of his own; for I, too, was a child in his arms, holding and
+tending my live doll, until it should grow something like me, only ever so
+much better. Was she not given to me that she might learn what I had begun
+to learn, namely, that a willing childhood was the flower of life? How can
+any mother sit with her child on her lap and not know that there is a God
+over all,--know it by the rising of her own heart in prayer to him? But so
+few have had parents like mine! If my mother felt thus when I lay in her
+arms, it was no wonder I should feel thus when my child lay in mine.
+
+Before I had children of my own, I did not care about children, and
+therefore did not understand them; but I had read somewhere,--and it clung
+to me although I did not understand it,--that it was in laying hold of the
+heart of his mother that Jesus laid his first hold on the world to redeem
+it; and now at length I began to understand it. What a divine way of saving
+us it was,--to let her bear him, carry him in her bosom, wash him and
+dress him and nurse him and sing him to sleep,--offer him the adoration of
+mother's love, misunderstand him, chide him, forgive him even for fancied
+wrong! Such a love might well save a world in which were mothers enough. It
+was as if he had said, "Ye shall no more offer vain sacrifices to one who
+needs them not, and cannot use them. I will need them, so require them at
+your hands. I will hunger and thirst and be naked and cold, and ye shall
+minister to me. Sacrifice shall be no more a symbol, but a real giving
+unto God; and when I return to the Father, inasmuch as ye do it to one of
+the least of these, ye do it unto me." So all the world is henceforth the
+temple of God; its worship is ministration; the commonest service is divine
+service.
+
+I feared at first that the new strange love I felt in my heart came only of
+the fact that the child was Percivale's and mine; but I soon found it had
+a far deeper source,--that it sprung from the very humanity of the infant
+woman, yea, from her relation in virtue of that humanity to the Father of
+all. The fountain _appeared_ in my heart: it arose from an infinite store
+in the unseen.
+
+Soon, however, came jealousy of my love for my baby. I feared lest it
+should make me--nay, was making me--neglect my husband. The fear first
+arose in me one morning as I sat with her half dressed on my knees. I was
+dawdling over her in my fondness, as I used to dawdle over the dressing of
+my doll, when suddenly I became aware that never once since her arrival
+had I sat with my husband in his study. A pang of dismay shot through
+me. "Is this to be a wife?" I said to myself,--"to play with a live love
+like a dead doll, and forget her husband!" I caught up a blanket from the
+cradle,--I am not going to throw away that good old word for the ugly
+outlandish name they give it now, reminding one only of a helmet,--I caught
+up a blanket from the cradle, I say, wrapped it round the treasure, which
+was shooting its arms and legs in every direction like a polypus feeling
+after its food,--and rushed down stairs, and down the precipice into the
+study. Percivale started up in terror, thinking something fearful had
+happened, and I was bringing him all that was left of the child.
+
+"What--what--what's the matter?" he gasped.
+
+I could not while he was thus frightened explain to him what had driven me
+to him in such alarming haste.
+
+"I've brought you the baby to kiss," I said, unfolding the blanket, and
+holding up the sprawling little goddess towards the face that towered above
+me.
+
+"Was it dying for a kiss then?" he said, taking her, blanket and all, from
+my arms.
+
+The end of the blanket swept across his easel, and smeared the face of the
+baby in a picture of the _Three Kings_, at which he was working.
+
+"O Percivale!" I cried, "you've smeared your baby!"
+
+"But this is a real live baby; she may smear any thing she likes."
+
+"Except her own face and hands, please, then, Percivale."
+
+"Or her blessed frock," said Percivale. "She hasn't got one, though. Why
+hasn't the little angel got her feathers on yet?"
+
+"I was in such a hurry to bring her."
+
+"To be kissed?"
+
+"No, not exactly. It wasn't her I was in a hurry to bring; it was myself."
+
+"Ah! you wanted to be kissed, did you?"
+
+"No, sir. I didn't want to be kissed; but I did so want to kiss you,
+Percivale."
+
+"Isn't it all the same, though, darling?" he said. "It seems so to me."
+
+"Sometimes, Percivale, you are so very stupid! It's not the same at all.
+There's a world of difference between the two; and you ought to know it, or
+be told it, if you don't."
+
+"I shall think it over as soon as you leave me," he said.
+
+"But I'm not going to leave you for a long time. I haven't seen you paint
+for weeks and weeks,--not since this little troublesome thing came poking
+in between us."
+
+"But she's not dressed yet."
+
+"That doesn't signify. She's well wrapped up, and quite warm."
+
+He put me a chair where I could see his picture without catching the shine
+of the paint. I took the baby from him, and he went on with his work.
+
+"You don't think I am going to sacrifice all my privileges to this little
+tyrant, do you?" I said.
+
+"It would be rather hard for me, at least," he rejoined.
+
+"You did think I was neglecting you, then, Percivale?"
+
+"Not for a moment."
+
+"Then you didn't miss me?"
+
+"I did, very much."
+
+"And you didn't grumble?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do I disturb you?" I asked, after a little pause. "Can you paint just as
+well when I am here as when you are alone?"
+
+"Better. I feel warmer to my work somehow."
+
+I was satisfied, and held my peace. When I am best pleased I don't want
+to talk. But Percivale, perhaps not having found this out yet, looked
+anxiously in my face; and, as at the moment my eyes were fixed on his
+picture, I thought he wanted to find out whether I liked the design.
+
+"I see it now!" I cried. "I could not make out where the Magi were."
+
+He had taken for the scene of his picture an old farm kitchen, or yeoman's
+hall, with its rich brown rafters, its fire on the hearth, and its red
+brick floor. A tub half full of bright water, stood on one side; and the
+mother was bending over her baby, which, undressed for the bath, she was
+holding out for the admiration of the Magi. Immediately behind the mother
+stood, in the garb of a shepherd, my father, leaning on the ordinary
+shepherd's crook; my mother, like a peasant-woman in her Sunday-best, with
+a white handkerchief crossed upon her bosom, stood beside him, and both
+were gazing with a chastened yet profound pleasure on the lovely child.
+
+In front stood two boys and a girl,--between the ages of five and
+nine,--gazing each with a peculiar wondering delight on the baby.
+The youngest boy, with a great spotted wooden horse in his hand, was
+approaching to embrace the infant in such fashion as made the toy look
+dangerous, and the left hand of the mother was lifted with a motion of
+warning and defence. The little girl, the next youngest, had, in her
+absorption, dropped her gaudily dressed doll at her feet, and stood sucking
+her thumb, her big blue eyes wide with contemplation. The eldest boy had
+brought his white rabbit to give the baby, but had forgotten all about it,
+so full was his heart of his new brother. An expression of mingled love and
+wonder and perplexity had already begun to dawn upon the face, but it was
+as yet far from finished. He stood behind the other two peeping over their
+heads.
+
+"Were you thinking of that Titian in the Louvre, with the white rabbit in
+it?" I asked Percivale.
+
+"I did not think of it until after I had put in the rabbit," he replied.
+"And it shall remain; for it suits my purpose, and Titian would not claim
+all the white rabbits because of that one."
+
+"Did you think of the black lamb in it, then, when you laid that black
+pussy on the hearth?" I asked.
+
+"Black lamb?" he returned.
+
+"Yes," I insisted; "a black lamb, in the dark background--such a very black
+lamb, and in such a dark background, that it seems you never discovered
+it."
+
+"Are you sure?" he persisted.
+
+"Absolutely certain," I replied. "I pointed it out to papa in the picture
+itself in the Louvre; he had not observed it before either."
+
+"I am very glad to know there is such a thing there. I need not answer your
+question, you see. It is odd enough I should have put in the black puss.
+Upon some grounds I might argue that my puss is better than Titian's lamb."
+
+"What grounds? tell me."
+
+"If the painter wanted a contrast, a lamb, be he as black as ever paint
+could make him, must still be a more Christian animal than a cat as white
+as snow. Under what pretence could a cat be used for a Christian symbol?"
+
+"What do you make of her playfulness?"
+
+"I should count that a virtue, were it not for the fatal objection that it
+is always exercised at the expense of other creatures."
+
+"A ball of string, or a reel, or a bit of paper, is enough for an
+uncorrupted kitten."
+
+"But you must not forget that it serves only in virtue of the creature's
+imagination representing it as alive. If you do not make it move, she will
+herself set it in motion as the initiative of the game. If she cannot do
+that, she will take no notice of it."
+
+"Yes, I see. I give in."
+
+All this time he had been painting diligently. He could now combine talking
+and painting far better than he used. But a knock came to the study door;
+and, remembering baby's unpresentable condition, I huddled her up, climbed
+the stair again, and finished the fledging of my little angel in a very
+happy frame of mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+RUMORS.
+
+
+Hardly was it completed, when Cousin Judy called, and I went down to see
+her, carrying my baby with me. As I went, something put me in mind that I
+must ask her for Miss Clare's address. Lest I should again forget, as soon
+as she had kissed and admired the baby, I said,--
+
+"Have you found out yet where Miss Clare lives, Judy?"
+
+"I don't choose to find out," she answered. "I am sorry to say I have had
+to give her up. It is a disappointment, I confess."
+
+"What do you mean?" I said. "I thought you considered her a very good
+teacher."
+
+"I have no fault to find with her on that score. She was always punctual,
+and I must allow both played well and taught the children delightfully.
+But I have heard such questionable things about her!--very strange things
+indeed!"
+
+"What are they?"
+
+"I can't say I've been able to fix on more than one thing directly against
+her character, but"--
+
+"Against her character!" I exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, indeed. She lives by herself in lodgings, and the house is not at all
+a respectable one."
+
+"But have you made no further inquiry?"
+
+"I consider that quite enough. I had already met more than one person,
+however, who seemed to think it very odd that I should have her to teach
+music in my family."
+
+"Did they give any reason for thinking her unfit?"
+
+"I did not choose to ask them. One was Miss Clarke--you know her. She
+smiled in her usual supercilious manner, but in her case I believe it was
+only because Miss Clare looks so dowdy. But nobody knows any thing about
+her except what I've just told you."
+
+"And who told you that?"
+
+"Mrs. Jeffreson."
+
+"But you once told me that she was a great gossip."
+
+"Else she wouldn't have heard it. But that doesn't make it untrue. In fact,
+she convinced me of its truth, for she knows the place she lives in, and
+assured me it was at great risk of infection to the children that I allowed
+her to enter the house; and so, of course, I felt compelled to let her know
+that I didn't require her services any longer."
+
+"There must be some mistake, surely!" I said.
+
+"Oh, no! not the least, I am sorry to say."
+
+"How did she take it?"
+
+"Very sweetly indeed. She didn't even ask me why, which was just as well,
+seeing I should have found it awkward to tell her. But I suppose she knew
+too many grounds herself to dare the question."
+
+I was dreadfully sorry, but I could not say much more then. I ventured
+only to express my conviction that there could not be any charge to bring
+against Miss Clare herself; for that one who looked and spoke as she did
+could have nothing to be ashamed of. Judy, however, insisted that what she
+had heard was reason enough for at least ending the engagement; indeed,
+that no one was fit for such a situation of whom such things could be said,
+whether they were true or not.
+
+When she left me, I gave baby to her nurse, and went straight to the study,
+peeping in to see if Percivale was alone.
+
+He caught sight of me, and called to me to come down.
+
+"It's only Roger," he said.
+
+I was always pleased to see Roger. He was a strange creature,--one of those
+gifted men who are capable of any thing, if not of every thing, and yet
+carry nothing within sight of proficiency. He whistled like a starling, and
+accompanied his whistling on the piano; but never played. He could copy a
+drawing to a hair's-breadth, but never drew. He could engrave well on wood;
+but although he had often been employed in that way, he had always got
+tired of it after a few weeks. He was forever wanting to do something other
+than what he was at; and the moment he got tired of a thing, he would work
+at it no longer; for he had never learned to _make_ himself. He would
+come every day to the study for a week to paint in backgrounds, or make a
+duplicate; and then, perhaps, we wouldn't see him for a fortnight. At other
+times he would work, say for a month, modelling, or carving marble, for a
+sculptor friend, from whom he might have had constant employment if he had
+pleased. He had given lessons in various branches, for he was an excellent
+scholar, and had the finest ear for verse, as well as the keenest
+appreciation of the loveliness of poetry, that I have ever known. He had
+stuck to this longer than to any thing else, strange to say; for one would
+have thought it the least attractive of employments to one of his volatile
+disposition. For some time indeed he had supported himself comfortably in
+this way; for through friends of his family he had had good introductions,
+and, although he wasted a good deal of money in buying nick-nacks that
+promised to be useful and seldom were, he had no objectionable habits
+except inordinate smoking. But it happened that a pupil--a girl of
+imaginative disposition, I presume--fell so much in love with him that
+she betrayed her feelings to her countess-mother, and the lessons were of
+course put an end to. I suspect he did not escape heart-whole himself; for
+he immediately dropped all his other lessons, and took to writing poetry
+for a new magazine, which proved of ephemeral constitution, and vanished
+after a few months of hectic existence.
+
+It was remarkable that with such instability his moral nature should
+continue uncorrupted; but this I believe he owed chiefly to his love and
+admiration of his brother. For my part, I could not help liking him much.
+There was a half-plaintive playfulness about him, alternated with gloom,
+and occasionally with wild merriment, which made him interesting even when
+one felt most inclined to quarrel with him. The worst of him was that he
+considered himself a generally misunderstood, if not ill-used man, who
+could not only distinguish himself, but render valuable service to society,
+if only society would do him the justice to give him a chance. Were it
+only, however, for his love to my baby, I could not but be ready to take
+up his defence. When I mentioned what I had just heard about Miss Clare,
+Percivale looked both astonished and troubled; but before he could speak,
+Roger, with the air of a man of the world whom experience enabled to come
+at once to a decision, said,--
+
+"Depend upon it, Wynnie, there is falsehood there somewhere. You will
+always be nearer the truth if you believe nothing, than if you believe the
+half of what you hear."
+
+"That's very much what papa says," I answered. "He affirms that he never
+searched into an injurious report in his own parish without finding it so
+nearly false as to deprive it of all right to go about."
+
+"Besides," said Roger, "look at that face! How I should like to model it.
+She's a good woman that, depend upon it."
+
+I was delighted with his enthusiasm.
+
+"I wish you would ask her again, as soon as you can," said Percivale, who
+always tended to embody his conclusions in acts rather than in words. "Your
+cousin Judy is a jolly good creature, but from your father's description
+of her as a girl, she must have grown a good deal more worldly since her
+marriage. Respectability is an awful snare."
+
+"Yes," said Roger; "one ought to be very thankful to be a Bohemian, and
+have nothing expected of him, for respectability is a most fruitful mother
+of stupidity and injustice."
+
+I could not help thinking that _he_ might, however, have a little more and
+be none the worse.
+
+"I should be very glad to do as you desire, husband," I said, "but how can
+I? I haven't learned where she lives. It was asking Judy for her address
+once more that brought it all out. I certainly didn't insist, as I might
+have done, notwithstanding what she told me; but, if she didn't remember it
+before, you may be sure she could not have given it me then."
+
+"It's very odd," said Roger, stroking his long mustache, the sole ornament
+of the kind he wore. "It's very odd," he repeated thoughtfully, and then
+paused again.
+
+"What's so very odd, Roger?" asked Percivale.
+
+"The other evening," answered Roger, after yet a short pause, "happening to
+be in Tottenham Court Road, I walked for some distance behind a young woman
+carrying a brown beer-jug in her hand--for I sometimes amuse myself in the
+street by walking persistently behind some one, devising the unseen face in
+my mind, until the recognition of the same step following causes the person
+to look round at me, and give me the opportunity of comparing the two--I
+mean the one I had devised and the real one. When the young woman at length
+turned her head, it was only my astonishment that kept me from addressing
+her as Miss Clare. My surprise, however, gave me time to see how absurd it
+would have been. Presently she turned down a yard and disappeared."
+
+"Don't tell my cousin Judy," I said. "She would believe it _was_ Miss
+Clare."
+
+"There isn't much danger," he returned. "Even if I knew your cousin, I
+should not be likely to mention such an incident in her hearing."
+
+"Could it have been she?" said Percivale thoughtfully.
+
+"Absurd!" said Roger. "Miss Clare is a lady, wherever she may live."
+
+"I don't know," said his brother thoughtfully; "who can tell? It mightn't
+have been beer she was carrying."
+
+"I didn't say it was beer," returned Roger. "I only said it was a
+beer-jug,--one of those brown, squat, stone jugs,--the best for beer that I
+know, after all,--brown, you know, with a dash of gray."
+
+"Brown jug or not, I wish I could get a few sittings from her. She would
+make a lovely St. Cecilia," said my husband.
+
+"Brown jug and all?" asked Roger.
+
+"If only she were a little taller," I objected.
+
+"And had an aureole," said my husband. "But I might succeed in omitting the
+jug as well as in adding the aureole and another half-foot of stature, if
+only I could get that lovely countenance on the canvas,--so full of life
+and yet of repose."
+
+"Don't you think it a little hard?" I ventured to say.
+
+"I think so," said Roger.
+
+"I don't," said my husband. "I know what in it looks like hardness; but I
+think it comes of the repression of feeling."
+
+"You have studied her well for your opportunities," I said.
+
+"I have; and I am sure, whatever Mrs. Morley may say, that, if there be any
+truth at all in those reports, there is some satisfactory explanation of
+whatever has given rise to them. I wish we knew anybody else that knew her.
+Do try to find some one that does, Wynnie."
+
+"I don't know how to set about it," I said. "I should be only too glad."
+
+"I will try," said Roger. "Does she sing?"
+
+"I have heard Judy say she sang divinely; but the only occasion on which
+I met her--at their house, that time you couldn't go, Percivale--she was
+never asked to sing."
+
+"I suspect," remarked Roger, "it will turn out to be only that she's
+something of a Bohemian, like ourselves."
+
+"Thank you, Roger; but for my part, I don't consider myself a Bohemian at
+all," I said.
+
+"I am afraid you must rank with your husband, wifie," said _mine_, as the
+wives of the working people of London often call their husbands.
+
+"Then you do count yourself a Bohemian: pray, what significance do you
+attach to the epithet?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know, except it signifies our resemblance to the gypsies," he
+answered.
+
+"I don't understand you quite."
+
+"I believe the gypsies used to be considered Bohemians," interposed Roger,
+"though they are doubtless of Indian origin. Their usages being quite
+different from those amongst which they live, the name Bohemian came to be
+applied to painters, musicians, and such like generally, to whom, save by
+courtesy, no position has yet been accorded by society--so called."
+
+"But why have they not yet vindicated for themselves a social position," I
+asked, "and that a high one?"
+
+"Because they are generally poor, I suppose," he answered; "and society is
+generally stupid."
+
+"May it not be because they are so often, like the gypsies, lawless in
+their behavior, as well as peculiar in their habits?" I suggested.
+
+"I understand you perfectly, Mrs. Percivale," rejoined Roger with mock
+offence. "But how would that apply to Charlie?"
+
+"Not so well as to you, I confess," I answered. "But there is ground for it
+with him too."
+
+"I have thought it all over many a time," said Percivale; "and I suppose it
+comes in part from inability to understand the worth of our calling, and in
+part from the difficulty of knowing where to put us."
+
+"I suspect," I said, "one thing is that so many of them are content to be
+received as merely painters, or whatever they may be by profession. Many,
+you have told me, for instance, accept invitations which do not include
+their wives."
+
+"They often go to parties, of course, where there are no ladies," said
+Roger.
+
+"That is not what I mean," I replied. "They go to dinner-parties where
+there are ladies, and evening parties, too, without their wives."
+
+"Whoever does that," said Percivale, "has at least no right to complain
+that he is regarded as a Bohemian; for in accepting such invitations, he
+accepts insult, and himself insults his wife."
+
+Nothing irritated my bear so much as to be asked to dinner without me. He
+would not even offer the shadow of a reason for declining the invitation.
+"For," he would say, "if I give the real reason, namely, that I do not
+choose to go where my wife is excluded, they will set it down to her
+jealous ambition of entering a sphere beyond her reach; I will not give
+a false reason, and indeed have no objection to their seeing that I am
+offended; therefore, I assign none. If they have any chivalry in them, they
+may find out my reason readily enough."
+
+I don't think I ever displeased him so much as once when I entreated him
+to accept an invitation to dine with the Earl of H----. The fact was, I
+had been fancying it my duty to persuade him to get over his offence at
+the omission of my name, for the sake of the advantage it would be to
+him in his profession. I laid it before him as gently and coaxingly as I
+could, representing how expenses increased, and how the children would
+be requiring education by and by,--reminding him that the reputation of
+more than one of the most popular painters had been brought about in some
+measure by their social qualities and the friendships they made.
+
+"Is it likely your children will be ladies and gentlemen," he said, "if you
+prevail on their father to play the part of a sneaking parasite?"
+
+I was frightened. He had never spoken to me in such a tone, but I saw too
+well how deeply he was hurt to take offence at his roughness. I could only
+beg him to forgive me, and promise never to say such a word again, assuring
+him that I believed as strongly as himself that the best heritage of
+children was their father's honor.
+
+Free from any such clogs as the possession of a wife encumbers a husband
+withal, Roger could of course accept what invitations his connection with
+an old and honorable family procured him. One evening he came in late from
+a dinner at Lady Bernard's.
+
+"Whom do you think I took down to dinner?" he asked, almost before he was
+seated.
+
+"Lady Bernard?" I said, flying high.
+
+"Her dowager aunt?" said Percivale.
+
+"No, no; Miss Clare."
+
+"Miss Clare!" we both repeated, with mingled question and exclamation.
+
+"Yes, Miss Clare, incredible as it may appear," he answered.
+
+"Did you ask her if it was she you saw carrying the jug of beer in
+Tottenham Court Road?" said Percivale.
+
+"Did you ask her address?" I said. "That is a question more worthy of an
+answer."
+
+"Yes, I did. I believe I did. I think I did."
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"Upon my word, I haven't the slightest idea."
+
+"So, Mr. Roger! You have had a perfect opportunity, and have let it slip!
+You are a man to be trusted indeed!"
+
+"I don't know how it could have been. I distinctly remember approaching
+the subject more than once or twice; and now first I discover that I never
+asked the question. Or if I did, I am certain I got no answer."
+
+"Bewitched!"
+
+"Yes, I suppose so."
+
+"Or," suggested Percivale, "she did not choose to tell you; saw the
+question coming, and led you away from it; never let you ask it."
+
+"I have heard that ladies can keep one from saying what they don't want to
+hear. But she sha'n't escape me so a second time."
+
+"Indeed, you don't deserve another chance," I said. "You're not half so
+clever as I took you to be, Roger."
+
+"When I think of it, though, it wasn't a question so easy to ask, or one
+you would like to be overheard asking."
+
+"Clearly bewitched," I said. "But for that I forgive you. Did she sing?"
+
+"No. I don't suppose any one there ever thought of asking such a
+dingy-feathered bird to sing."
+
+"You had some music?"
+
+"Oh, yes! Pretty good, and very bad. Miss Clare's forehead was crossed by
+no end of flickering shadows as she listened."
+
+"It wasn't for want of interest in her you forgot to find out where she
+lived! You had better take care, Master Roger."
+
+"Take care of what?"
+
+"Why, you don't know her address."
+
+"What has that to do with taking care?"
+
+"That you won't know where to find your heart if you should happen to want
+it."
+
+"Oh! I am past that kind of thing long ago. You've made an uncle of me."
+
+And so on, with a good deal more nonsense, but no news of Miss Clare's
+retreat.
+
+I had before this remarked to my husband that it was odd she had never
+called since dining with us; but he made little of it, saying that people
+who gained their own livelihood ought to be excused from attending to rules
+which had their origin with another class; and I had thought no more about
+it, save in disappointment that she had not given me that opportunity of
+improving my acquaintance with her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A DISCOVERY.
+
+
+One Saturday night, my husband happening to be out, an event of rare
+occurrence, Roger called; and as there were some things I had not been able
+to get during the day, I asked him to go with me to Tottenham Court Road.
+It was not far from the region where we lived, and I did a great part of my
+small shopping there. The early closing had, if I remember rightly, begun
+to show itself; anyhow, several of the shops were shut, and we walked a
+long way down the street, looking for some place likely to supply what I
+required.
+
+"It was just here I came up with the girl and the brown jug," said Roger,
+as we reached the large dissenting chapel.
+
+"That adventure seems to have taken a great hold of you, Roger," I said.
+
+"She _was_ so like Miss Clare!" he returned. "I can't get the one face
+clear of the other. When I met her at Lady Bernard's, the first thing I
+thought of was the brown jug."
+
+"Were you as much pleased with her conversation as at our house?" I asked.
+
+"Even more," he answered. "I found her ideas of art so wide, as well
+as just and accurate, that I was puzzled to think where she had had
+opportunity of developing them. I questioned her about it, and found
+she was in the habit of going, as often as she could spare time, to the
+National Gallery, where her custom was, she said, not to pass from picture
+to picture, but keep to one until it formed itself in her mind,--that is
+the expression she used, explaining herself to mean, until she seemed to
+know what the painter had set himself to do, and why this was and that was
+which she could not at first understand. Clearly, without ever having taken
+a pencil in her hand, she has educated herself to a keen perception of what
+is demanded of a true picture. Of course the root of it lies in her musical
+development.--There," he cried suddenly, as we came opposite a paved
+passage, "that is the place I saw her go down."
+
+"Then you do think the girl with the beer-jug was Miss Clare, after all?"
+
+"Not in the least. I told you I could not separate them in my mind."
+
+"Well, I must say, it seems odd. A girl like that and Miss Clare! Why, as
+often as you speak of the one, you seem to think of the other."
+
+"In fact," he returned, "I am, as I say, unable to dissociate them. But if
+you had seen the girl, you would not wonder. The likeness was absolutely
+complete."
+
+"I believe you do consider them one and the same; and I am more than half
+inclined to think so myself, remembering what Judy said."
+
+"Isn't it possible some one who knows Miss Clare may have seen this girl,
+and been misled by the likeness?"
+
+"But where, then, does Miss Clare live? Nobody seems to know."
+
+"You have never asked any one but Mrs. Morley."
+
+"You have yourself, however, given me reason to think she avoids the
+subject. If she did live anywhere hereabout, she would have some cause to
+avoid it."
+
+I had stopped to look down the passage.
+
+"Suppose," said Roger, "some one were to come past now and see Mrs.
+Percivale, the wife of the celebrated painter, standing in Tottenham Court
+Road beside the swing-door of a corner public-house, talking to a young
+man."
+
+"Yes; it might have given occasion for scandal," I said. "To avoid it, let
+us go down the court and see what it is like."
+
+"It's not a fit place for you to go into."
+
+"If it were in my father's parish, I should have known everybody in it."
+
+"You haven't the slightest idea what you are saying."
+
+"Come, anyhow, and let us see what the place is like," I insisted.
+
+Without another word he gave me his arm, and down the court we went, past
+the flaring gin-shop, and into the gloom beyond. It was one of those places
+of which, while the general effect remains vivid in one's mind, the salient
+points are so few that it is difficult to say much by way of description.
+The houses had once been occupied by people in better circumstances than
+its present inhabitants; and indeed they looked all decent enough until,
+turning two right angles, we came upon another sort. They were still as
+large, and had plenty of windows; but, in the light of a single lamp at
+the corner, they looked very dirty and wretched and dreary. A little shop,
+with dried herrings and bull's-eyes in the window, was lighted by a tallow
+candle set in a ginger-beer bottle, with a card of "Kinahan's LL Whiskey"
+for a reflector.
+
+"They can't have many customers to the extent of a bottle," said Roger.
+"But no doubt they have some privileges from the public-house at the corner
+for hanging up the card."
+
+The houses had sunk areas, just wide enough for a stair, and the basements
+seemed full of tenants. There was a little wind blowing, so that the
+atmosphere was tolerable, notwithstanding a few stray leaves of cabbage,
+suggestive of others in a more objectionable condition not far off.
+
+A confused noise of loud voices, calling and scolding, hitherto drowned by
+the tumult of the street, now reached our ears. The place took one turn
+more, and then the origin of it became apparent. At the farther end of the
+passage was another lamp, the light of which shone upon a group of men and
+women, in altercation, which had not yet come to blows. It might, including
+children, have numbered twenty, of which some seemed drunk, and all more or
+less excited. Roger turned to go back the moment he caught sight of them;
+but I felt inclined, I hardly knew why, to linger a little. Should any
+danger offer, it would be easy to gain the open thoroughfare.
+
+"It's not at all a fit place for a lady," he said.
+
+"Certainly not," I answered; "it hardly seems a fit place for human beings.
+These are human beings, though. Let us go through it."
+
+He still hesitated; but as I went on, he could but follow me. I wanted to
+see what the attracting centre of the little crowd was; and that it must
+be occupied with some affair of more than ordinary interest, I judged from
+the fact that a good many superterrestrial spectators looked down from
+the windows at various elevations upon the disputants, whose voices now
+and then lulled for a moment only to break out in fresh objurgation and
+dispute.
+
+Drawing a little nearer, a slight parting of the crowd revealed its core to
+us. It was a little woman, without bonnet or shawl, whose back was towards
+us. She turned from side to side, now talking to one, and now to another
+of the surrounding circle. At first I thought she was setting forth her
+grievances, in the hope of sympathy, or perhaps of justice; but I soon
+perceived that her motions were too calm for that. Sometimes the crowd
+would speak altogether, sometimes keep silent for a full minute while she
+went on talking. When she turned her face towards us, Roger and I turned
+ours, and stared at each other. The face was disfigured by a swollen eye,
+evidently from a blow; but clearly enough, if it was not Miss Clare, it was
+the young woman of the beer-jug. Neither of us spoke, but turned once more
+to watch the result of what seemed to have at length settled down into an
+almost amicable conference. After a few more grumbles and protestations,
+the group began to break up into twos and threes. These the young woman
+seemed to set herself to break up again. Here, however, an ill-looking
+fellow like a costermonger, with a broken nose, came up to us, and with a
+strong Irish accent and offensive manner, but still with a touch of Irish
+breeding, requested to know what our business was. Roger asked if the place
+wasn't a thoroughfare.
+
+"Not for the likes o' you," he answered, "as comes pryin' after the likes
+of us. We manage our own affairs down here--_we_ do. You'd better be off,
+my lady."
+
+I have my doubts what sort of reply Roger might have returned if he had
+been alone, but he certainly spoke in a very conciliatory manner, which,
+however, the man did not seem to appreciate, for he called it blarney;
+but the young woman, catching sight of our little group, and supposing,
+I presume, that it also required dispersion, approached us. She had come
+within a yard of us, when suddenly her face brightened, and she exclaimed,
+in a tone of surprise,--
+
+"Mrs. Percivale! You here?"
+
+It was indeed Miss Clare. Without the least embarrassment, she held out
+her hand to me, but I am afraid I did not take it very cordially. Roger,
+however, behaved to her as if they stood in a drawing-room, and this
+brought me to a sense of propriety.
+
+"I don't look very respectable, I fear," she said, putting her hand over
+her eye. "The fact is, I have had a blow, and it will look worse to-morrow.
+Were you coming to find me?"
+
+I forget what lame answer either of us gave.
+
+"Will you come in?" she said.
+
+On the spur of the moment, I declined. For all my fine talk to Roger, I
+shrunk from the idea of entering one of those houses. I can only say, in
+excuse, that my whole mind was in a condition of bewilderment.
+
+"Can I do any thing for you, then?" she asked, in a tone slightly marked
+with disappointment, I thought.
+
+"Thank you, no," I answered, hardly knowing what my words were.
+
+"Then good-night," she said, and, nodding kindly, turned, and entered one
+of the houses.
+
+We also turned in silence, and walked out of the court.
+
+"Why didn't you go with her?" said Roger, as soon as we were in the street.
+
+"I'm sorry I didn't if you wanted to go, Roger; but"--
+
+"I think you might have gone, seeing I was with you," he said.
+
+"I don't think it would have been at all a proper thing to do, without
+knowing more about her," I answered, a little hurt. "You can't tell what
+sort of a place it may be."
+
+"It's a good place, wherever she is, or I am much mistaken," he returned.
+
+"You may be much mistaken, Roger."
+
+"True. I have been mistaken more than once in my life. I am not mistaken
+this time, though."
+
+"I presume you would have gone if I hadn't been with you?"
+
+"Certainly, if she had asked me, which is not very likely."
+
+"And you lay the disappointment of missing a glimpse into the sweet privacy
+of such a home to my charge?"
+
+It was a spiteful speech; and Roger's silence made me feel it was, which,
+with the rather patronizing opinion I had of Roger, I found not a little
+galling. So I, too, kept silence, and nothing beyond a platitude had
+passed between us when I found myself at my own door, my shopping utterly
+forgotten, and something acid on my mind.
+
+"Don't you mean to come in?" I said, for he held out his hand at the top of
+the stairs to bid me good-night. "My husband will be home soon, if he has
+not come already. You needn't be bored with my company--you can sit in the
+study."
+
+"I think I had better not," he answered.
+
+"I am very sorry, Roger, if I was rude to you," I said; "but how could
+you wish me to be hand-and-glove with a woman who visits people who she
+is well aware would not think of inviting her if they had a notion of her
+surroundings. That can't be right, I am certain. I protest I feel just
+as if I had been reading an ill-invented story,--an unnatural fiction. I
+cannot get these things together in my mind at all, do what I will."
+
+"There must be some way of accounting for it," said Roger.
+
+"No doubt," I returned; "but who knows what that way may be?"
+
+"You may be wrong in supposing that the people at whose houses she visits
+know nothing about her habits."
+
+"Is it at all likely they do, Roger? Do you think it is? I know at least
+that my cousin dispensed with her services as soon as she came to the
+knowledge of certain facts concerning these very points."
+
+"Excuse me--certain rumors--very uncertain facts."
+
+When you are cross, the slightest play upon words is an offence. I knocked
+at the door in dudgeon, then turned and said,--
+
+"My cousin Judy, Mr. Roger"--
+
+But here I paused, for I had nothing ready. Anger makes some people
+cleverer for the moment, but when I am angry I am always stupid. Roger
+finished the sentence for me.
+
+--"Your cousin Judy is, you must allow, a very conventional woman," he
+said.
+
+"She is very good-natured, anyhow. And what do you say to Lady Bernard?"
+
+"She hasn't repudiated Miss Clare's acquaintance, so far as I know."
+
+"But, answer me,--do you believe Lady Bernard would invite her to meet her
+friends if she knew all?"
+
+"Depend upon it, Lady Bernard knows what she is about. People of her rank
+can afford to be unconventional."
+
+This irritated me yet more, for it implied that I was influenced by the
+conventionality which both he and my husband despised; and Sarah opening
+the door that instant, I stepped in, without even saying good-night to him.
+Before she closed it, however, I heard my husband's voice, and ran out
+again to welcome him.
+
+He and Roger had already met in the little front garden. They did not shake
+hands--they never did--they always met as if they had parted only an hour
+ago.
+
+"What were you and my wife quarrelling about, Rodge?" I heard Percivale
+ask, and paused on the middle of the stair to hear his answer.
+
+"How do you know we were quarrelling?" returned Roger gloomily.
+
+"I heard you from the very end of the street," said my husband.
+
+"That's not so far," said Roger; for indeed one house, with, I confess,
+a good space of garden on each side of it, and the end of another house,
+finished the street. But notwithstanding the shortness of the distance it
+stung me to the quick. Here had I been regarding, not even with contempt,
+only with disgust, the quarrel in which Miss Clare was mixed up; and half
+an hour after, my own voice was heard in dispute with my husband's brother
+from the end of the street in which we lived! I felt humiliated, and did
+not rush down the remaining half of the steps to implore my husband's
+protection against Roger's crossness.
+
+"Too far to hear a wife and a brother, though," returned Percivale
+jocosely.
+
+"Go on," said Roger; "pray go on. _Let dogs delight_ comes next. I beg
+Mrs. Percivale's pardon. I will amend the quotation: 'Let dogs delight to
+worry'"--
+
+"Cats," I exclaimed; and rushing down the steps, I kissed Roger before I
+kissed my husband.
+
+"I meant--I mean--I was going to say _lambs_."
+
+"Now, Roger, don't add to your vices flattery and"--
+
+"And fibbing," he subjoined.
+
+"I didn't say so."
+
+"You only meant it."
+
+"Don't begin again," interposed Percivale: "Come in, and refer the cause in
+dispute to me."
+
+We did go in, and we did refer the matter to him. By the time we had
+between us told him the facts of the case, however, the point in dispute
+between us appeared to have grown hazy, the fact being that neither of us
+cared to say any thing more about it. Percivale insisted that there was no
+question before the court. At length Roger, turning from me to his brother,
+said,--
+
+"It's not worth mentioning, Charley; but what led to our irreconcilable
+quarrel was this: I thought Wynnie might have accepted Miss Clare's
+invitation to walk in and pay her a visit; and Wynnie thought me, I
+suppose, too ready to sacrifice her dignity to the pleasure of seeing a
+little more of the object of our altercation. There!"
+
+My husband turned to me and said,--
+
+"Mrs. Percivale, do you accept this as a correct representation of your
+difference?"
+
+"Well," I answered, hesitating--"yes, on the whole. All I object to is the
+word _dignity_."
+
+"I retract it," cried Roger, "and accept any substitute you prefer."
+
+"Let it stand," I returned. "It will do as well as a better. I only wish to
+say that it was not exactly my dignity"--
+
+"No, no; your sense of propriety," said my husband; and then sat silent for
+a minute or two, pondering like a judge. At length he spoke:--
+
+"Wife," he said, "you might have gone with your brother, I think; but I
+quite understand your disinclination. At the same time, a more generous
+judgment of Miss Clare might have prevented any difference of feeling in
+the matter."
+
+"But," I said, greatly inclined to cry, "I only postponed my judgment
+concerning her."
+
+And I only postponed my crying, for I was very much ashamed of myself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+MISS CLARE.
+
+
+Of course my husband and I talked a good deal more about what I ought to
+have done; and I saw clearly enough that I ought to have run any risk there
+might be in accepting her invitation. I had been foolishly taking more care
+of myself than was necessary. I told him I would write to Roger, and ask
+him when he could take me there again.
+
+"I will tell you a better plan," he said. "I will go with you myself. And
+that will get rid of half the awkwardness there would be if you went with
+Roger, after having with him refused to go in."
+
+"But would that be fair to Roger? She would think I didn't like going with
+him, and I would go with Roger anywhere. It was I who did not want to go.
+He did."
+
+"My plan, however, will pave the way for a full explanation--or confession
+rather, I suppose it will turn out to be. I know you are burning to make
+it, with your mania for confessing your faults."
+
+I knew he did not like me the worse for that _mania_, though.
+
+"The next time," he added, "you can go with Roger, always supposing you
+should feel inclined to continue the acquaintance, and then you will be
+able to set him right in her eyes."
+
+The plan seemed unobjectionable. But just then Percivale was very busy; and
+I being almost as much occupied with my baby as he was with his, day after
+day and week after week passed, during which our duty to Miss Clare was, I
+will not say either forgotten or neglected, but unfulfilled.
+
+One afternoon I was surprised by a visit from my father. He not
+unfrequently surprised us.
+
+"Why didn't you let us know, papa?" I said. "A surprise is very nice; but
+an expectation is much nicer, and lasts so much longer."
+
+"I might have disappointed you."
+
+"Even if you had, I should have already enjoyed the expectation. That would
+be safe."
+
+"There's a good deal to be said in excuse of surprises," he rejoined; "but
+in the present case, I have a special one to offer. I was taken with a
+sudden desire to see you. It was very foolish no doubt, and you are quite
+right in wishing I weren't here, only going to come to-morrow."
+
+"Don't be so cruel, papa. Scarcely a day passes in which _I_ do not long to
+see _you_. My baby makes me think more about my home than ever."
+
+"Then she's a very healthy baby, if one may judge by her influences. But
+you know, if I had had to give you warning, I could not have been here
+before to-morrow; and surely you will acknowledge, that, however nice
+expectation may be, presence is better."
+
+"Yes, papa. We will make a compromise, if you please. Every time you think
+of coming to me, you must either come at once, or let me know you are
+coming. Do you agree to that?"
+
+"I agree," he said.
+
+So I have the pleasure of a constant expectation. Any day he may walk in
+unheralded; or by any post I may receive a letter with the news that he is
+coming at such a time.
+
+As we sat at dinner that evening, he asked if we had lately seen Miss
+Clare.
+
+"I've seen her only once, and Percivale not at all, since you were here
+last, papa," I answered.
+
+"How's that?" he asked again, a little surprised. "Haven't you got her
+address yet? I want very much to know more of her."
+
+"So do we. I haven't got her address, but I know where she lives."
+
+"What do you mean, Wynnie? Has she taken to dark sayings of late,
+Percivale?"
+
+I told him the whole story of my adventure with Roger, and the reports
+Judy had prejudiced my judgment withal. He heard me through in silence,
+for it was a rule with him never to interrupt a narrator. He used to say,
+"You will generally get at more, and in a better fashion, if you let
+any narrative take its own devious course, without the interruption of
+requested explanations. By the time it is over, you will find the questions
+you wanted to ask mostly vanished."
+
+"Describe the place to me, Wynnie," he said, when I had ended. "I must go
+and see her. I have a suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that she
+is one whose acquaintance ought to be cultivated at any cost. There is some
+grand explanation of all this contradictory strangeness."
+
+"I don't think I could describe the place to you so that you would find
+it. But if Percivale wouldn't mind my going with you instead of with him,
+I should be only too happy to accompany you. May I, Percivale?"
+
+"Certainly. It will do just as well to go with your father as with me. I
+only stipulate, that, if you are both satisfied, you take Roger with you
+next time."
+
+"Of course I will."
+
+"Then we'll go to-morrow morning," said my father.
+
+"I don't think she is likely to be at home in the morning," I said. "She
+goes out giving lessons, you know; and the probability is, that at that
+time we should not find her."
+
+"Then why not to-night?" he rejoined.
+
+"Why not, if you wish it?"
+
+"I do wish it, then."
+
+"If you knew the place, though, I think you would prefer going a little
+earlier than we can to-night."
+
+"Ah, well! we will go to-morrow evening. We could dine early, couldn't we?"
+
+So it was arranged. My father went about some business in the morning. We
+dined early, and set out about six o'clock.
+
+My father was getting an old man, and if any protection had been required,
+he could not have been half so active as Roger; and yet I felt twice as
+safe with him. I am satisfied that the deepest sense of safety, even in
+respect of physical dangers, can spring only from moral causes; neither do
+you half so much fear evil happening to you, as fear evil happening which
+ought not to happen to you. I believe what made me so courageous was the
+undeveloped fore-feeling, that, if any evil should overtake me in my
+father's company, I should not care; it would be all right then, anyhow.
+The repose was in my father himself, and neither in his strength nor his
+wisdom. The former might fail, the latter might mistake; but so long as
+I was with him in what I did, no harm worth counting harm could come to
+me,--only such as I should neither lament nor feel. Scarcely a shadow of
+danger, however, showed itself.
+
+It was a cold evening in the middle of November. The light, which had
+been scanty enough all day, had vanished in a thin penetrating fog. Round
+every lamp in the street was a colored halo; the gay shops gleamed like
+jewel-caverns of Aladdin hollowed out of the darkness; and the people that
+hurried or sauntered along looked inscrutable. Where could they live? Had
+they anybody to love them? Were their hearts quiet under their dingy cloaks
+and shabby coats?
+
+"Yes," returned my father, to whom I had said something to this effect,
+"what would not one give for a peep into the mysteries of all these worlds
+that go crowding past us. If we could but see through the opaque husk of
+them, some would glitter and glow like diamond mines; others perhaps would
+look mere earthy holes; some of them forsaken quarries, with a great pool
+of stagnant water in the bottom; some like vast coal-pits of gloom, into
+which you dared not carry a lighted lamp for fear of explosion. Some would
+be mere lumber-rooms; others ill-arranged libraries, without a poets'
+corner anywhere. But what a wealth of creation they show, and what infinite
+room for hope it affords!"
+
+"But don't you think, papa, there may be something of worth lying even
+in the earth-pit, or at the bottom of the stagnant water in the forsaken
+quarry?"
+
+"Indeed I do; though I _have_ met more than one in my lifetime concerning
+whom I felt compelled to say that it wanted keener eyes than mine to
+discover the hidden jewel. But then there _are_ keener eyes than mine,
+for there are more loving eyes. Myself I have been able to see good very
+clearly where some could see none; and shall I doubt that God can see good
+where my mole-eyes can see none? Be sure of this, that, as he is keen-eyed
+for the evil in his creatures to destroy it, he would, if it were possible,
+be yet keener-eyed for the good to nourish and cherish it. If men would
+only side with the good that is in them,--will that the seed should grow
+and bring forth fruit!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MISS CLARE'S HOME.
+
+
+We had now arrived at the passage. The gin-shop was flaring through the
+fog. A man in a fustian jacket came out of it, and walked slowly down
+before us, with the clay of the brick-field clinging to him as high as the
+leather straps with which his trousers were confined, garter-wise, under
+the knee. The place was quiet. We and the brickmaker seemed the only people
+in it. When we turned the last corner, he was walking in at the very door
+where Miss Clare had disappeared. When I told my father that was the house,
+he called after the man, who came out again, and, standing on the pavement,
+waited until we came up.
+
+"Does Miss Clare live in this house?" my father asked.
+
+"She do," answered the man curtly.
+
+"First floor?"
+
+"No. Nor yet the second, nor the third. She live nearer heaven than 'ere
+another in the house 'cep' myself. I live in the attic, and so do she."
+
+"There is a way of living nearer to heaven than that," said my father,
+laying his hand, "with a right old man's grace," on his shoulder.
+
+"I dunno, 'cep' you was to go up in a belloon," said the man, with a
+twinkle in his eye, which my father took to mean that he understood him
+better than he chose to acknowledge; but he did not pursue the figure.
+
+He was a rough, lumpish young man, with good but dull features--only his
+blue eye was clear. He looked my father full in the face, and I thought I
+saw a dim smile about his mouth.
+
+"You know her, then, I suppose?"
+
+"Everybody in the house knows _her_. There ain't many the likes o' her as
+lives wi' the likes of us. You go right up to the top. I don't know if
+she's in, but a'most any one'll be able to tell you. I ain't been home
+yet."
+
+My father thanked him, and we entered the house, and began to ascend. The
+stair was very much worn and rather dirty, and some of the banisters were
+broken away, but the walls were tolerably clean. Half-way up we met a
+little girl with tangled hair and tattered garments, carrying a bottle.
+
+"Do you know, my dear," said my father to her, "whether Miss Clare is at
+home?"
+
+"I dunno," she answered. "I dunno who you mean. I been mindin' the baby. He
+ain't well. Mother says his head's bad. She's a-going up to tell grannie,
+and see if she can't do suthin' for him. You better ast mother.--Mother!"
+she called out--"here's a lady an' a gen'lem'."
+
+"You go about yer business, and be back direckly," cried a gruff voice from
+somewhere above.
+
+"That's mother," said the child, and ran down the stair.
+
+When we reached the second floor, there stood a big fat woman on the
+landing, with her face red, and her hair looking like that of a doll ill
+stuck on. She did not speak, but stood waiting to see what we wanted.
+
+"I'm told Miss Clare lives here," said my father. "Can you tell me, my good
+woman, whether she's at home?"
+
+"I'm neither good woman nor bad woman," she returned in an insolent tone.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said my father; "but you see I didn't know your name."
+
+"An' ye don't know it yet. You've no call to know my name. I'll ha' nothing
+to do wi' the likes o' you as goes about takin' poor folks's childer from
+'em. There's my poor Glory's been an' took atwixt you an' grannie, and shet
+up in a formatory as you calls it; an' I should like to know what right
+you've got to go about that way arter poor girls as has mothers to help."
+
+"I assure you I had nothing to do with it," said my father. "I'm a country
+clergyman myself, and have no duty in London."
+
+"Well, that's where they've took her--down in the country. I make no doubt
+but you've had your finger in that pie. You don't come here to call upon
+us for the pleasure o' makin' our acquaintance--ha! ha! ha!--You're allus
+arter somethin' troublesome. I'd adwise you, sir and miss, to let well
+alone. Sleepin' dogs won't bite; but you'd better let 'em lie--and that I
+tell you."
+
+"Believe me," said my father quite quietly, "I haven't the least knowledge
+of your daughter. The country's a bigger place than you seem to think,--far
+bigger than London itself. All I wanted to trouble you about was to tell us
+whether Miss Clare was at home or not."
+
+"I don't know no one o' that name. If it's grannie you mean, she's at home,
+I know--though it's not much reason I've got to care whether she's at home
+or not."
+
+"It's a young--woman, I mean," said my father.
+
+"'Tain't a young lady, then?--Well, I don't care what you call her. I dare
+say it'll be all one, come judgment. You'd better go up till you can't go
+no further, an' knocks yer head agin the tiles, and then you may feel about
+for a door, and knock at that, and see if the party as opens it is the
+party you wants."
+
+So saying, she turned in at a door behind her, and shut it. But we could
+hear her still growling and grumbling.
+
+"It's very odd," said my father, with a bewildered smile. "I think we'd
+better do as she says, and go up till we knock our heads against the
+tiles."
+
+We climbed two stairs more,--the last very steep, and so dark that when
+we reached the top we found it necessary to follow the woman's directions
+literally, and feel about for a door. But we had not to feel long or far,
+for there was one close to the top of the stair. My father knocked. There
+was no reply; but we heard the sound of a chair, and presently some one
+opened it. The only light being behind her, I could not see her face, but
+the size and shape were those of Miss Clare.
+
+She did not leave us in doubt, however; for, without a moment's hesitation,
+she held out her hand to me, saying, "This _is_ kind of you, Mrs.
+Percivale;" then to my father, saying, "I'm very glad to see you, Mr.
+Walton. Will you walk in?"
+
+We followed her into the room. It was not very small, for it occupied
+nearly the breadth of the house. On one side the roof sloped so nearly to
+the floor that there was not height enough to stand erect in. On the other
+side the sloping part was partitioned off, evidently for a bedroom. But
+what a change it was from the lower part of the house! By the light of a
+single mould candle, I saw that the floor was as clean as old boards could
+be made, and I wondered whether she scrubbed them herself. I know now that
+she did. The two dormer windows were hung with white dimity curtains. Back
+in the angle of the roof, between the windows, stood an old bureau. There
+was little more than room between the top of it and the ceiling for a
+little plaster statuette with bound hands and a strangely crowned head.
+A few books on hanging shelves were on the opposite side by the door to
+the other room; and the walls, which were whitewashed, were a good deal
+covered with--whether engravings or etchings or lithographs I could not
+then see--none of them framed, only mounted on card-board. There was a
+fire cheerfully burning in the gable, and opposite to that stood a tall
+old-fashioned cabinet piano, in faded red silk. It was open; and on the
+music-rest lay Handel's "Verdi Prati,"--for I managed to glance at it as we
+left. A few wooden chairs, and one very old-fashioned easy-chair, covered
+with striped chintz, from which not glaze only but color almost had
+disappeared, with an oblong table of deal, completed the furniture of the
+room. She made my father sit down in the easy-chair, placed me one in front
+of the fire, and took another at the corner opposite my father. A moment of
+silence followed, which I, having a guilty conscience, felt awkward. But my
+father never allowed awkwardness to accumulate.
+
+"I had hoped to have been able to call upon you long ago, Miss Clare, but
+there was some difficulty in finding out where you lived."
+
+"You are no longer surprised at that difficulty, I presume," she returned
+with a smile.
+
+"But," said my father, "if you will allow an old man to speak freely"--
+
+"Say what you please, Mr. Walton. I promise to answer _any_ question _you_
+think proper to ask me."
+
+"My dear Miss Clare, I had not the slightest intention of catechising you,
+though, of course, I shall be grateful for what confidence you please
+to put in me. What I meant to say might indeed have taken the form of a
+question, but as such could have been intended only for you to answer
+to yourself,--whether, namely, it was wise to place yourself at such a
+disadvantage as living in this quarter must be to you."
+
+"If you were acquainted with my history, you would perhaps hesitate, Mr.
+Walton, before you said I _placed myself_ at such disadvantage."
+
+Here a thought struck me.
+
+"I fancy, papa, it is not for her own sake Miss Clare lives here."
+
+"I hope not," she interposed.
+
+"I believe," I went on, "she has a grandmother, who probably has grown
+accustomed to the place, and is unwilling to leave it."
+
+She looked puzzled for a moment, then burst into a merry laugh.
+
+"I see," she exclaimed. "How stupid I am! You have heard some of the people
+in the house talk about _grannie_: that's me! I am known in the house as
+grannie, and have been for a good many years now--I can hardly, without
+thinking, tell for how many."
+
+Again she laughed heartily, and my father and I shared her merriment.
+
+"How many grandchildren have you then, pray, Miss Clare?"
+
+"Let me see."
+
+She thought for a minute.
+
+"I could easily tell you if it were only the people in this house I had
+to reckon up. They are about five and thirty; but unfortunately the name
+has been caught up in the neighboring houses, and I am very sorry that in
+consequence I cannot with certainty say how many grandchildren I have.
+I think I know them all, however; and I fancy that is more than many an
+English grandmother, with children in America, India, and Australia, can
+say for herself."
+
+Certainly she was not older than I was; and while hearing her merry laugh,
+and seeing her young face overflowed with smiles, which appeared to come
+sparkling out of her eyes as out of two well-springs, one could not help
+feeling puzzled how, even in the farthest-off jest, she could have got the
+name of grannie. But I could at the same time, recall expressions of her
+countenance which would much better agree with the name than that which now
+shone from it.
+
+"Would you like to hear," she said, when our merriment had a little
+subsided, "how I have so easily arrived at the honorable name of
+grannie,--at least all I know about it?"
+
+"I should be delighted," said my father.
+
+"You don't know what you are pledging yourself to when you say so," she
+rejoined, again laughing. "You will have to hear the whole of my story from
+the beginning."
+
+"Again I say I shall be delighted," returned my father, confident that her
+history could be the source of nothing but pleasure to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+HER STORY.
+
+
+Thereupon Miss Clare began. I do not pretend to give her very words, but I
+must tell her story as if she were telling it herself. I shall be as true
+as I can to the facts, and hope to catch something of the tone of the
+narrator as I go on.
+
+"My mother died when I was very young, and I was left alone with my father,
+for I was his only child. He was a studious and thoughtful man. It _may_
+be the partiality of a daughter, I know, but I am not necessarily wrong
+in believing that diffidence in his own powers alone prevented him from
+distinguishing himself. As it was, he supported himself and me by literary
+work of, I presume, a secondary order. He would spend all his mornings for
+many weeks in the library of the British Museum,--reading and making notes;
+after which he would sit writing at home for as long or longer. I should
+have found it very dull during the former of these times, had he not early
+discovered that I had some capacity for music, and provided for me what I
+now know to have been the best instruction to be had. His feeling alone had
+guided him right, for he was without musical knowledge. I believe he could
+not have found me a better teacher in all Europe. Her character was lovely,
+and her music the natural outcome of its harmony. But I must not forget it
+is about myself I have to tell you. I went to her, then, almost every day
+for a time--but how long that was, I can only guess. It must have been
+several years, I think, else I could not have attained what proficiency I
+had when my sorrow came upon me.
+
+"What my father wrote I cannot tell. How gladly would I now read the
+shortest sentence I knew to be his! He never told me for what journals he
+wrote, or even for what publishers. I fancy it was work in which his brain
+was more interested than his heart, and which he was always hoping to
+exchange for something more to his mind. After his death I could discover
+scarcely a scrap of his writings, and not a hint to guide me to what he had
+written.
+
+"I believe we went on living from hand to mouth, my father never getting
+so far ahead of the wolf as to be able to pause and choose his way. But I
+was very happy, and would have been no whit less happy if he had explained
+our circumstances, for that would have conveyed to me no hint of danger.
+Neither has any of the suffering I have had--at least any keen enough to
+be worth dwelling upon--sprung from personal privation, although I am not
+unacquainted with hunger and cold.
+
+"My happiest time was when my father asked me to play to him while he
+wrote, and I sat down to my old cabinet Broadwood,--the one you see there
+is as like it as I could find,--and played any thing and every thing I
+liked,--for somehow I never forgot what I had once learned,--while my
+father sat, as he said, like a mere extension of the instrument, operated
+upon, rather than listening, as he wrote. What I then _thought_, I cannot
+tell. I don't believe I thought at all. I only _musicated_, as a little
+pupil of mine once said to me, when, having found her sitting with her
+hands on her lap before the piano, I asked her what she was doing: 'I am
+only musicating,' she answered. But the enjoyment was none the less that
+there was no conscious thought in it.
+
+"Other branches he taught me himself, and I believe I got on very fairly
+for my age. We lived then in the neighborhood of the Museum, where I was
+well known to all the people of the place, for I used often to go there,
+and would linger about looking at things, sometimes for hours before my
+father came to me but he always came at the very minute he had said, and
+always found me at the appointed spot. I gained a great deal by thus
+haunting the Museum--a great deal more than I supposed at the time. One
+gain was, that I knew perfectly where in the place any given sort of thing
+was to be found, if it were there at all: I had unconsciously learned
+something of classification.
+
+"One afternoon I was waiting as usual, but my father did not come at the
+time appointed. I waited on and on till it grew dark, and the hour for
+closing arrived, by which time I was in great uneasiness; but I was forced
+to go home without him. I must hasten over this part of my history, for
+even yet I can scarcely bear to speak of it. I found that while I was
+waiting, he had been seized with some kind of fit in the reading-room, and
+had been carried home, and that I was alone in the world. The landlady, for
+we only rented rooms in the house, was very kind to me, at least until she
+found that my father had left no money. He had then been only reading for
+a long time; and, when I looked back, I could see that he must have been
+short of money for some weeks at least. A few bills coming in, all our
+little effects--for the furniture was our own--were sold, without bringing
+sufficient to pay them. The things went for less than half their value, in
+consequence, I believe, of that well-known conspiracy of the brokers which
+they call _knocking out_. I was especially miserable at losing my father's
+books, which, although in ignorance, I greatly valued,--more miserable
+even, I honestly think, than at seeing my loved piano carried off.
+
+"When the sale was over, and every thing removed, I sat down on the floor,
+amidst the dust and bits of paper and straw and cord, without a single
+idea in my head as to what was to become of me, or what I was to do next.
+I didn't cry,--that I am sure of; but I doubt if in all London there was
+a more wretched child than myself just then. The twilight was darkening
+down,--the twilight of a November afternoon. Of course there was no fire
+in the grate, and I had eaten nothing that day; for although the landlady
+had offered me some dinner, and I had tried to please her by taking some,
+I found I could not swallow, and had to leave it. While I sat thus on the
+floor, I heard her come into the room, and some one with her; but I did
+not look round, and they, not seeing me, and thinking, I suppose, that I
+was in one of the other rooms, went on talking about me. All I afterwards
+remembered of their conversation was some severe reflections on my father,
+and the announcement of the decree that I must go to the workhouse. Though
+I knew nothing definite as to the import of this doom, it filled me with
+horror. The moment they left me alone, to look for me, as I supposed, I
+got up, and, walking as softly as I could, glided down the stairs, and,
+unbonneted and unwrapped, ran from the house, half-blind with terror.
+
+"I had not gone farther, I fancy, than a few yards, when I ran up against
+some one, who laid hold of me, and asked me gruffly what I meant by it. I
+knew the voice: it was that of an old Irishwoman who did all the little
+charing we wanted,--for I kept the rooms tidy, and the landlady cooked for
+us. As soon as she saw who it was, her tone changed; and then first I broke
+out in sobs, and told her I was running away because they were going to
+send me to the workhouse. She burst into a torrent of Irish indignation,
+and assured me that such should never be my fate while she lived. I must go
+back to the house with her, she said, and get my things; and then I should
+go home with her, until something better should turn up. I told her I would
+go with her anywhere, except into that house again; and she did not insist,
+but afterwards went by herself and got my little wardrobe. In the mean time
+she led me away to a large house in a square, of which she took the key
+from her pocket to open the door. It looked to me such a huge place!--the
+largest house I had ever been in; but it was rather desolate, for, except
+in one little room below, where she had scarcely more than a bed and a
+chair, a slip of carpet and a frying-pan, there was not an article of
+furniture in the whole place. She had been put there when the last tenant
+left, to take care of the place, until another tenant should appear to
+turn her out. She had her houseroom and a trifle a week besides for her
+services, beyond which she depended entirely on what she could make by
+charing. When she had no house to live in on the same terms, she took a
+room somewhere.
+
+"Here I lived for several months, and was able to be of use; for as Mrs.
+Conan was bound to be there at certain times to show any one over the house
+who brought an order from the agent, and this necessarily took up a good
+part of her working time; and as, moreover, I could open the door and walk
+about the place as well as another, she willingly left me in charge as
+often as she had a job elsewhere.
+
+"On such occasions, however, I found it very dreary indeed, for few people
+called, and she would not unfrequently be absent the whole day. If I had
+had my piano, I should have cared little; but I had not a single book,
+except one--and what do you think that was? An odd volume of the Newgate
+Calendar. I need hardly say that it had not the effect on me which it
+is said to have on some of its students: it moved me, indeed, to the
+profoundest sympathy, not with the crimes of the malefactors, only with
+the malefactors themselves, and their mental condition after the deed was
+actually done. But it was with the fascination of a hopeless horror, making
+me feel almost as if I had committed every crime as I perused its tale,
+that I regarded them. They were to me like living crimes. It was not until
+long afterwards that I was able to understand that a man's actions are not
+the man, but may be separated from him; that his character even is not the
+man, but may be changed while he yet holds the same individuality,--is the
+man who was blind though he now sees; whence it comes, that, the deeds
+continuing his, all stain of them may yet be washed out of him. I did not,
+I say, understand all this until afterwards; but I believe, odd as it may
+seem, that volume of the Newgate Calendar threw down the first deposit of
+soil, from which afterwards sprung what grew to be almost a passion in me,
+for getting the people about me clean,--a passion which might have done
+as much harm as good, if its companion, patience, had not been sent me to
+guide and restrain it. In a word, I came at length to understand, in some
+measure, the last prayer of our Lord for those that crucified him, and the
+ground on which he begged from his Father their forgiveness,--that they
+knew not what they did. If the Newgate Calendar was indeed the beginning
+of this course of education, I need not regret having lost my piano, and
+having that volume for a while as my only aid to reflection.
+
+"My father had never talked much to me about religion; but when he did, it
+was with such evident awe in his spirit, and reverence in his demeanor, as
+had more effect on me, I am certain, from the very paucity of the words
+in which his meaning found utterance. Another thing which had still more
+influence upon me was, that, waking one night after I had been asleep for
+some time, I saw him on his knees by my bedside. I did not move or speak,
+for fear of disturbing him; and, indeed, such an awe came over me, that
+it would have required a considerable effort of the will for any bodily
+movement whatever. When he lifted his head, I caught a glimpse of a pale,
+tearful face; and it is no wonder that the virtue of the sight should never
+have passed away.
+
+"On Sundays we went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon, in fine
+weather, went out for a walk; or, if it were raining or cold, I played to
+him till he fell asleep on the sofa. Then in the evening, after tea, we
+had more music, some poetry, which we read alternately, and a chapter of
+the New Testament, which he always read to me. I mention this, to show you
+that I did not come all unprepared to the study of the Newgate Calendar.
+Still, I cannot think, that, under any circumstances, it could have done
+an innocent child harm. Even familiarity with vice is not necessarily
+pollution. There cannot be many women of my age as familiar with it in
+every shape as I am; and I do not find that I grow to regard it with one
+atom less of absolute abhorrence, although I neither shudder at the mention
+of it, nor turn with disgust from the person in whom it dwells. But the
+consolations of religion were not yet consciously mine. I had not yet begun
+to think of God in any relation to myself.
+
+"The house was in an old square, built, I believe, in the reign of Queen
+Anne, which, although many of the houses were occupied by well-to-do
+people, had fallen far from its first high estate. No one would believe,
+to look at it from the outside, what a great place it was. The whole of the
+space behind it, corresponding to the small gardens of the other houses,
+was occupied by a large music-room, under which was a low-pitched room of
+equal extent, while all under that were cellars, connected with the sunk
+story in front by a long vaulted passage, corresponding to a wooden gallery
+above, which formed a communication between the drawing-room floor and the
+music-room. Most girls of my age, knowing these vast empty spaces about
+them, would have been terrified at being left alone there, even in mid-day.
+But I was, I suppose, too miserable to be frightened. Even the horrible
+facts of the Newgate Calendar did not thus affect me, not even when Mrs.
+Conan was later than usual, and the night came down, and I had to sit,
+perhaps for hours, in the dark,--for she would not allow me to have a
+candle for fear of fire. But you will not wonder that I used to cry a good
+deal, although I did my best to hide the traces of it, because I knew
+it would annoy my kind old friend. She showed me a great deal of rough
+tenderness, which would not have been rough had not the natural grace of
+her Irish nature been injured by the contact of many years with the dull
+coarseness of the uneducated Saxon. You may be sure I learned to love her
+dearly. She shared every thing with me in the way of eating, and would have
+shared also the tumbler of gin and water with which she generally ended the
+day, but something, I don't know what, I believe a simple physical dislike,
+made me refuse that altogether.
+
+"One evening I have particular cause to remember, both for itself,
+and because of something that followed many years after. I was in the
+drawing-room on the first floor, a double room with folding doors and a
+small cabinet behind communicating with a back stair; for the stairs were
+double all through the house, adding much to the _eeriness_ of the place
+as I look back upon it in my memory. I fear, in describing the place so
+minutely, I may have been rousing false expectations of an adventure; but
+I have a reason for being rather minute, though it will not appear until
+afterwards. I had been looking out of the window all the afternoon upon
+the silent square, for, as it was no thoroughfare, it was only enlivened by
+the passing and returning now and then of a tradesman's cart; and, as it
+was winter, there were no children playing in the garden. It was a rainy
+afternoon. A gray cloud of fog and soot hung from the whole sky. About a
+score of yellow leaves yet quivered on the trees, and the statue of Queen
+Anne stood bleak and disconsolate among the bare branches. I am afraid I
+am getting long-winded, but somehow that afternoon seems burned into me
+in enamel. I gazed drearily without interest. I brooded over the past;
+I never, at this time, so far as I remember, dreamed of looking forward.
+I had no hope. It never occurred to me that things might grow better. I
+was dull and wretched. I may just say here in passing, that I think this
+experience is in a great measure what has enabled me to understand the
+peculiar misery of the poor in our large towns,--they have no hope, no
+impulse to look forward, nothing to expect; they live but in the present,
+and the dreariness of that soon shapes the whole atmosphere of their
+spirits to its own likeness. Perhaps the first thing one who would help
+them has to do is to aid the birth of some small vital hope in them; that
+is better than a thousand gifts, especially those of the ordinary kind,
+which mostly do harm, tending to keep them what they are,--a prey to
+present and importunate wants.
+
+"It began to grow dark; and, tired of standing, I sat down upon the floor,
+for there was nothing to sit upon besides. There I still sat, long after
+it was quite dark. All at once a surge of self-pity arose in my heart.
+I burst out wailing and sobbing, and cried aloud, 'God has forgotten me
+altogether!' The fact was, I had had no dinner that day, for Mrs. Conan had
+expected to return long before; and the piece of bread she had given me,
+which was all that was in the house, I had eaten many hours ago. But I was
+not thinking of my dinner, though the want of it may have had to do with
+this burst of misery. What I was really thinking of was,--that I could do
+nothing for anybody. My little ambition had always been to be useful. I
+knew I was of some use to my father; for I kept the rooms tidy for him, and
+dusted his pet books--oh, so carefully! for they were like household gods
+to me. I had also played to him, and I knew he enjoyed that: he said so,
+many times. And I had begun, though not long before he left me, to think
+how I should be able to help him better by and by. For I saw that he
+worked very hard,--so hard that it made him silent; and I knew that my
+music-mistress made her livelihood, partly at least, by giving lessons; and
+I thought that I might, by and by, be able to give lessons too, and then
+papa would not require to work so hard, for I too should bring home money
+to pay for what we wanted. But now I was of use to nobody, I said, and not
+likely to become of any. I could not even help poor Mrs. Conan, except by
+doing what a child might do just as well as I, for I did not earn a penny
+of our living; I only gave the poor old thing time to work harder, that I
+might eat up her earnings! What added to the misery was, that I had always
+thought of myself as a lady; for was not papa a gentleman, let him be ever
+so poor? Shillings and sovereigns in his pocket could not determine whether
+a man was a gentleman or not! And if he was a gentleman, his daughter must
+be a lady. But how could I be a lady if I was content to be a burden to a
+poor charwoman, instead of earning my own living, and something besides
+with which to help her? For I had the notion--_how_ it came I cannot tell,
+though I know well enough _whence_ it came--that position depended on how
+much a person was able to help other people; and here I was, useless, worse
+than useless to anybody! Why did not God remember me, if it was only for my
+father's sake? He was worth something, if I was not! And I would be worth
+something, if only I had a chance!--'I am of no use,' I cried, 'and God has
+forgotten me altogether!' And I went on weeping and moaning in my great
+misery, until I fell fast asleep on the floor.
+
+"I have no theory about dreams and visions; and I don't know what you, Mr.
+Walton, may think as to whether these ended with the first ages of the
+church; but surely if one falls fast asleep without an idea in one's head,
+and a whole dismal world of misery in one's heart, and wakes up quiet and
+refreshed, without the misery, and with an idea, there can be no great
+fanaticism in thinking that the change may have come from somewhere near
+where the miracles lie,--in fact, that God may have had something--might
+I not say every thing?--to do with it. For my part, if I were to learn
+that he had no hand in this experience of mine, I couldn't help losing
+all interest in it, and wishing that I had died of the misery which it
+dispelled. Certainly, if it had a physical source, it wasn't that I was
+more comfortable, for I was hungrier than ever, and, you may well fancy,
+cold enough, having slept on the bare floor without any thing to cover me
+on Christmas Eve--for Christmas Eve it was. No doubt my sleep had done me
+good, but I suspect the sleep came to quiet my mind for the reception of
+the new idea.
+
+"The way Mrs. Conan kept Christmas Day, as she told me in the morning,
+was, to comfort her old bones in bed until the afternoon, and then to have
+a good tea with a chop; after which she said she would have me read the
+Newgate Calendar to her. So, as soon as I had washed up the few breakfast
+things, I asked, if, while she lay in bed, I might not go out for a little
+while to look for work. She laughed at the notion of my being able to do
+any thing, but did not object to my trying. So I dressed myself as neatly
+as I could, and set out.
+
+"There were two narrow streets full of small shops, in which those of
+furniture-brokers predominated, leading from the two lower corners of the
+square down into Oxford Street; and in a shop in one of these, I was not
+sure which, I had seen an old piano standing, and a girl of about my own
+age watching. I found the shop at last, although it was shut up; for I knew
+the name, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a stout matron, with a
+not unfriendly expression, who asked me what I wanted. I told her I wanted
+work. She seemed amused at the idea,--for I was very small for my age then
+as well as now,--but, apparently willing to have a chat with me, asked what
+I could do. I told her I could teach her daughter music. She asked me what
+made me come to her, and I told her. Then she asked me how much I should
+charge. I told her that some ladies had a guinea a lesson; at which she
+laughed so heartily, that I had to wait until the first transports of her
+amusement were over before I could finish by saying, that for my part
+I should be glad to give an hour's lesson for threepence, only, if she
+pleased, I should prefer it in silver. But how was she to know, she asked,
+that I could teach her properly. I told her I would let her hear me play;
+whereupon she led me into the shop, through a back room in which her
+husband sat smoking a long pipe, with a tankard at his elbow. Having taken
+down a shutter, she managed with some difficulty to clear me a passage
+through a crowd of furniture to the instrument, and with a struggle I
+squeezed through and reached it; but at the first chord I struck, I gave
+a cry of dismay. In some alarm she asked what was the matter, calling me
+_child_ very kindly. I told her it was so dreadfully out of tune I couldn't
+play upon it at all; but, if she would get it tuned, I should not be long
+in showing her that I could do what I professed. She told me she could not
+afford to have it tuned; and if I could not teach Bertha on it as it was,
+she couldn't help it. This, however, I assured her, was utterly impossible;
+upon which, with some show of offence, she reached over a chest of drawers,
+and shut down the cover. I believe she doubted whether I could play at all,
+and had not been merely amusing myself at her expense. Nothing was left but
+to thank her, bid her good-morning, and walk out of the house, dreadfully
+disappointed.
+
+"Unwilling to go home at once, I wandered about the neighborhood, through
+street after street, until I found myself in another square, with a number
+of business-signs in it,--one of them that of a piano-forte firm, at sight
+of which, a thought came into my head. The next morning I went in, and
+requested to see the master. The man to whom I spoke stared, no doubt;
+but he went, and returning after a little while, during which my heart
+beat very fast, invited me to walk into the counting-house. Mr. Perkins
+was amused with the story of my attempt to procure teaching, and its
+frustration. If I had asked him for money, to which I do not believe hunger
+itself could have driven me, he would probably have got rid of me quickly
+enough,--and small blame to him, as Mrs. Conan would have said; but to my
+request that he would spare a man to tune Mrs. Lampeter's piano, he replied
+at once that he would, provided I could satisfy him as to my efficiency.
+Thereupon he asked me a few questions about music, of which some I could
+answer and some I could not. Next he took me into the shop, set me a stool
+in front of a grand piano, and told me to play. I could not help trembling
+a good deal, but I tried my best. In a few moments, however, the tears were
+dropping on the keys; and, when he asked me what was the matter, I told
+him it was months since I had touched a piano. The answer did not, however,
+satisfy him; he asked very kindly how that was, and I had to tell him my
+whole story. Then he not only promised to have the piano tuned for me at
+once, but told me that I might go and practise there as often as I pleased,
+so long as I was a good girl, and did not take up with bad company. Imagine
+my delight! Then he sent for a tuner, and I suppose told him a little about
+me, for the man spoke very kindly to me as we went to the broker's.
+
+"Mr. Perkins has been a good friend to me ever since.
+
+"For six months I continued to give Bertha Lampeter lessons. They were
+broken off only when she went to a dressmaker to learn her business. But
+her mother had by that time introduced me to several families of her
+acquaintance, amongst whom I found five or six pupils on the same terms. By
+this teaching, if I earned little, I learned much; and every day almost I
+practised at the music-shop.
+
+"When the house was let, Mrs. Conan took a room in the neighborhood, that
+I might keep up my connection, she said. Then first I was introduced to
+scenes and experiences with which I am now familiar. Mrs. Percivale might
+well recoil if I were to tell her half the wretchedness, wickedness, and
+vulgarity I have seen, and often had to encounter. For two years or so we
+changed about, at one time in an empty house, at another in a hired room,
+sometimes better, sometimes worse off, as regarded our neighbors, until,
+Mrs. Conan having come to the conclusion that it would be better for her to
+confine herself to charing, we at last settled down here, where I have now
+lived for many years.
+
+"You may be inclined to ask why I had not kept up my acquaintance with my
+music-mistress. I believe the shock of losing my father, and the misery
+that followed, made me feel as if my former world had vanished; at all
+events, I never thought of going to her until Mr. Perkins one day, after
+listening to something I was playing, asked me who had taught me; and this
+brought her back to my mind so vividly that I resolved to go and see her.
+She welcomed me with more than kindness,--with tenderness,--and told me I
+had caused her much uneasiness by not letting her know what had become of
+me. She looked quite aghast when she learned in what sort of place and with
+whom I lived; but I told her Mrs. Conan had saved me from the workhouse,
+and was as much of a mother to me as it was possible for her to be, that we
+loved each other, and that it would be very wrong of me to leave her now,
+especially that she was not so well as she had been; and I believe she then
+saw the thing as I saw it. She made me play to her, was pleased,--indeed
+surprised, until I told her how I had been supporting myself,--and insisted
+on my resuming my studies with her, which I was only too glad to do. I
+now, of course, got on much faster; and she expressed satisfaction with my
+progress, but continued manifestly uneasy at the kind of thing I had to
+encounter, and become of necessity more and more familiar with.
+
+"When Mrs. Conan fell ill, I had indeed hard work of it. Unlike most of her
+class, she had laid by a trifle of money; but as soon as she ceased to add
+to it, it began to dwindle, and was very soon gone. Do what I could for
+a while, if it had not been for the kindness of the neighbors, I should
+sometimes have been in want of bread; and when I hear hard things said
+of the poor, I often think that surely improvidence is not so bad as
+selfishness. But, of course, there are all sorts amongst them, just as
+there are all sorts in every class. When I went out to teach, now one, now
+another of the women in the house would take charge of my friend; and when
+I came home, except her guardian happened to have got tipsy, I never found
+she had been neglected. Miss Harper said I must raise my terms; but I told
+her that would be the loss of my pupils. Then she said she must see what
+could be done for me, only no one she knew was likely to employ a child
+like me, if I were able to teach ever so well. One morning, however, within
+a week, a note came from Lady Bernard, asking me to go and see her.
+
+"I went, and found--a mother. You do not know her, I think? But you must
+one day. Good people like you must come together. I will not attempt to
+describe her. She awed me at first, and I could hardly speak to her,--I
+was not much more than thirteen then; but with the awe came a certain
+confidence which was far better than ease. The immediate result was, that
+she engaged me to go and play for an hour, five days a week, at a certain
+hospital for sick children in the neighborhood, which she partly supported.
+For she had a strong belief that there was in music a great healing power.
+Her theory was, that all healing energy operates first on the mind, and
+from it passes to the body, and that medicines render aid only by removing
+certain physical obstacles to the healing force. She believes that when
+music operating on the mind has procured the peace of harmony, the peace
+in its turn operates outward, reducing the vital powers also into the
+harmonious action of health. _How much_ there may be in it, I cannot tell;
+but I do think that good has been and is the result of my playing to those
+children; for I go still, though not quite so often, and it is music to
+me to watch my music thrown back in light from some of those sweet, pale,
+suffering faces. She was too wise to pay me much for it at first. She
+inquired, before making me the offer, how much I was already earning, asked
+me upon how much I could support Mrs. Conan and myself comfortably, and
+then made the sum of my weekly earnings up to that amount. At the same
+time, however, she sent many things to warm and feed the old woman, so that
+my mind was set at ease about her. She got a good deal better for a while,
+but continued to suffer so much from rheumatism, that she was quite unfit
+to go out charing any more; and I would not hear of her again exposing
+herself to the damps and draughts of empty houses, so long as I was able to
+provide for her,--of which ability you may be sure I was not a little proud
+at first.
+
+"I have been talking for a long time, and yet may seem to have said nothing
+to account for your finding me where she left me; but I will try to come to
+the point as quickly as possible.
+
+"Before she was entirely laid up, we had removed to this place,--a rough
+shelter, but far less so than some of the houses in which we had been. I
+remember one in which I used to dart up and down like a hunted hare at one
+time; at another to steal along from stair to stair like a well-meaning
+ghost afraid of frightening people; my mode of procedure depending in part
+on the time of day, and which of the inhabitants I had reason to dread
+meeting. It was a good while before the inmates of this house and I began
+to know each other. The landlord had turned out the former tenant of this
+garret after she had been long enough in the house for all the rest to know
+her; and, notwithstanding she had been no great favorite, they all took her
+part against the landlord; and fancying, perhaps because we kept more to
+ourselves, that we were his _protégées_, and that he had turned out Muggy
+Moll, as they called her, to make room for us, regarded us from the first
+with disapprobation. The little girls would make grimaces at me, and the
+bigger girls would pull my hair, slap my face, and even occasionally
+push me down stairs, while the boys made themselves far more terrible in
+my eyes. But some remark happening to be dropped one day, which led the
+landlord to disclaim all previous knowledge of us, things began to grow
+better. And this is not by any means one of the worst parts of London. I
+could take Mr. Walton to houses in the East End, where the manners are
+indescribable. We are all earning our bread here. Some have an occasional
+attack of drunkenness, and idle about; but they are sick of it again after
+a while. I remember asking a woman once if her husband would be present at
+a little entertainment to which Lady Bernard had invited them: she answered
+that he would be there if he was drunk, but if he was sober he couldn't
+spare the time.
+
+"Very soon they began to ask me after Mrs. Conan; and one day I invited one
+of them, who seemed a decent though not very tidy woman, to walk up and see
+her; for I was anxious she should have a visitor now and then when I was
+out, as she complained a good deal of the loneliness. The woman consented,
+and ever after was very kind to her. But my main stay and comfort was an
+old woman who then occupied the room opposite to this. She was such a good
+creature! Nearly blind, she yet kept her room the very pink of neatness. I
+never saw a speck of dust on that chest of drawers, which was hers then,
+and which she valued far more than many a rich man values the house of his
+ancestors,--not only because it had been her mother's, but because it bore
+testimony to the respectability of her family. Her floor and her little
+muslin window-curtain, her bed and every thing about her, were as clean as
+lady could desire. She objected to move into a better room below, which the
+landlord kindly offered her,--for she was a favorite from having been his
+tenant a long time and never having given him any trouble in collecting her
+rent,--on the ground that there were two windows in it, and therefore too
+much light for her bits of furniture. They would, she said, look nothing
+in that room. She was very pleased when I asked her to pay a visit to Mrs.
+Conan; and as she belonged to a far higher intellectual grade than my
+protectress, and as she had a strong practical sense of religion, chiefly
+manifested in a willing acceptance of the decrees of Providence, I think
+she did us both good. I wish I could draw you a picture of her coming in
+at that door, with her all but sightless eyes, the broad borders of her
+white cap waving, and her hands stretched out before her; for she was
+more apprehensive than if she had been quite blind, because she could see
+things without knowing what, or even in what position they were. The most
+remarkable thing to me was the calmness with which she looked forward to
+her approaching death, although without the expectation which so many
+good people seem to have in connection with their departure. I talked to
+her about it more than once,--not with any presumption of teaching her,
+for I felt she was far before me, but just to find out how she felt and
+what she believed. Her answer amounted to this, that she had never known
+beforehand what lay round the next corner, or what was going to happen to
+her, for if Providence had meant her to know, it could not be by going to
+fortune-tellers, as some of the neighbors did; but that she always found
+things turn out right and good for her, and she did not doubt she would
+find it so when she came to the last turn.
+
+"By degrees I knew everybody in the house, and of course I was ready to
+do what I could to help any of them. I had much to lift me into a higher
+region of mental comfort than was open to them; for I had music, and Lady
+Bernard lent me books.
+
+"Of course also I kept my rooms as clean and tidy as I could; and indeed,
+if I had been more carelessly inclined in that way, the sight of the blind
+woman's would have been a constant reminder to me. By degrees also I was
+able to get a few more articles of furniture for it, and a bit of carpet
+to put down before the fire. I whitewashed the walls myself, and after a
+while began to whitewash the walls of the landing as well, and all down
+the stair, which was not of much use to the eye, for there is no light.
+Before long some of the other tenants began to whitewash their rooms also,
+and contrive to keep things a little tidier. Others declared they had no
+opinion of such uppish notions; they weren't for the likes of them. These
+were generally such as would rejoice in wearing finery picked up at the
+rag-shop; but even some of them began by degrees to cultivate a small
+measure of order. Soon this one and that began to apply to me for help in
+various difficulties that arose. But they didn't begin to call me grannie
+for a long time after this. They used then to call the blind woman grannie,
+and the name got associated with the top of the house; and I came to be
+associated with it because I also lived there and we were friends. After
+her death, it was used from habit, at first with a feeling of mistake,
+seeing its immediate owner was gone; but by degrees it settled down upon
+me, and I came to be called grannie by everybody in the house. Even Mrs.
+Conan would not unfrequently address me, and speak of me too, as grannie,
+at first with a laugh, but soon as a matter of course.
+
+"I got by and by a few pupils amongst tradespeople of a class rather
+superior to that in which I had begun to teach, and from whom I could ask
+and obtain double my former fee; so that things grew, with fluctuations,
+gradually better. Lady Bernard continued a true friend to me--but she never
+was other than that to any. Some of her friends ventured on the experiment
+whether I could teach their children; and it is no wonder if they were
+satisfied, seeing I had myself such a teacher.
+
+"Having come once or twice to see Mrs. Conan, she discovered that we were
+gaining a little influence over the people in the house; and it occurred
+to her, as she told me afterwards, that the virtue of music might be tried
+there with a _moral_ end in view. Hence it came that I was beyond measure
+astonished and delighted one evening by the arrival of a piano,--not that
+one, for it got more worn than I liked, and I was able afterwards to
+exchange it for a better. I found it an invaluable aid in the endeavor to
+work out my glowing desire of getting the people about me into a better
+condition. First I asked some of the children to come and listen while I
+played. Everybody knows how fond the least educated children are of music;
+and I feel assured of its elevating power. Whatever the street-organs
+may be to poets and mathematicians, they are certainly a godsend to the
+children of our courts and alleys. The music takes possession of them at
+once, and sets them moving to it with rhythmical grace. I should have been
+very sorry to make it a condition with those I invited, that they should
+sit still: to take from them their personal share in it would have been to
+destroy half the charm of the thing. A far higher development is needful
+before music can be enjoyed in silence and motionlessness. The only
+condition I made was, that they should come with clean hands and faces, and
+with tidy hair. Considerable indignation was at first manifested on the
+part of those parents whose children I refused to admit because they had
+neglected the condition. This necessity, however, did not often occur; and
+the anger passed away, while the condition gathered weight. After a while,
+guided by what some of the children let fall; I began to invite the mothers
+to join them; and at length it came to be understood that, every Saturday
+evening, whoever chose to make herself tidy would be welcome, to an hour or
+two of my music. Some of the husbands next began to come, but there were
+never so many of them present. I may just add, that although the manners
+of some of my audience would be very shocking to cultivated people, and I
+understand perfectly how they must be so, I am very rarely annoyed on such
+occasions.
+
+"I must now glance at another point in my history, one on which I cannot
+dwell. Never since my father's death had I attended public worship. Nothing
+had drawn me thither; and I hardly know what induced me one evening to step
+into a chapel of which I knew nothing. There was not even Sunday to account
+for it. I believe, however, it had to do with this, that all day I had been
+feeling tired. I think people are often ready to suppose that their bodily
+condition is the cause of their spiritual discomfort, when it may be only
+the occasion upon which some inward lack reveals itself. That the spiritual
+nature should be incapable of meeting and sustaining the body in its
+troubles is of itself sufficient to show that it is not in a satisfactory
+condition. For a long time the struggle for mere existence had almost
+absorbed my energies; but things had been easier for some time, and a
+re-action had at length come. It was not that I could lay any thing
+definite to my own charge; I only felt empty all through; I felt that
+something was not right with me, that something was required of me which
+I was not rendering. I could not, however, have told you what it was.
+Possibly the feeling had been for some time growing; but that day, so far
+as I can tell, I was first aware of it; and I presume it was the dim cause
+of my turning at the sound of a few singing voices, and entering that
+chapel. I found about a dozen people present. Something in the air of the
+place, meagre and waste as it looked, yet induced me to remain. An address
+followed from a pale-faced, weak-looking man of middle age, who had no gift
+of person, voice, or utterance, to recommend what he said. But there dwelt
+a more powerful enforcement in him than any of those,--that of earnestness.
+I went again, and again; and slowly, I cannot well explain how, the sense
+of life and its majesty grew upon me. Mr. Walton will, I trust, understand
+me when I say, that to one hungering for bread, it is of little consequence
+in what sort of platter it is handed him. This was a dissenting chapel,--of
+what order, it was long before I knew,--and my predilection was for the
+Church-services, those to which my father had accustomed me; but any
+comparison of the two to the prejudice of either, I should still--although
+a communicant of the Church of England--regard with absolute indifference.
+
+"It will be sufficient for my present purpose to allude to the one
+practical thought which was the main fruit I gathered from this good
+man,--the fruit by which I know that he was good. [Footnote: Something like
+this is the interpretation of the word: "By their fruits ye shall know
+them" given by Mr. Maurice,--an interpretation which opens much.--G.M.D.]
+It was this,--that if all the labor of God, as my teacher said, was to
+bring sons into glory, lifting them out of the abyss of evil bondage up to
+the rock of his pure freedom, the only worthy end of life must be to work
+in the same direction,--to be a fellow-worker with God. Might I not, then,
+do something such, in my small way, and lose no jot of my labor? I thought.
+The urging, the hope, grew in me. But I was not left to feel blindly after
+some new and unknown method of labor. My teacher taught me that the way for
+_me_ to help others was not to tell them their duty, but myself to learn
+of Him who bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. As I learned of him,
+I should be able to help them. I have never had any theory but just to be
+their friend,--to do for them the best I can. When I feel I may, I tell
+them what has done me good, but I never urge any belief of mine upon their
+acceptance.
+
+"It will now seem no more wonderful to you than to me, that I should remain
+where I am. I simply have no choice. I was sixteen when Mrs. Conan died.
+Then my friends, amongst whom Lady Bernard and Miss Harper have ever been
+first, expected me to remove to lodgings in another neighborhood. Indeed,
+Lady Bernard came to see me, and said she knew precisely the place for me.
+When I told her I should remain where I was, she was silent, and soon left
+me?--I thought offended. I wrote to her at once, explaining why I chose
+my part here; saying that I would not hastily alter any thing that had
+been appointed me; that I loved the people; that they called me grannie;
+that they came to me with their troubles; that there were few changes in
+the house now; that the sick looked to me for help, and the children for
+teaching; that they seemed to be steadily rising in the moral scale; that I
+knew some of them were trying hard to be good; and I put it to her whether,
+if I were to leave them, in order merely, as servants say, to better
+myself, I should not be forsaking my post, almost my family; for I knew
+it would not be to better either myself or my friends: if I was at all
+necessary to them, I knew they were yet more necessary to me.
+
+"I have a burning desire to help in the making of the world clean,--if it
+be only by sweeping one little room in it. I want to lead some poor stray
+sheep home--not home to the church, Mr. Walton--I would not be supposed to
+curry favor with you. I never think of what they call the church. I only
+care to lead them home to the bosom of God, where alone man is true man.
+
+"I could talk to you till night about what Lady Bernard has been to me
+since, and what she has done for me and my grandchildren; but I have said
+enough to explain how it is that I am in such a questionable position.
+I fear I have been guilty of much egotism, and have shown my personal
+feelings with too little reserve. But I cast myself on your mercy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+A REMARKABLE FACT.
+
+
+A silence followed. I need hardly say we had listened intently. During the
+story my father had scarcely interrupted the narrator. I had not spoken a
+word. She had throughout maintained a certain matter-of-fact, almost cold
+style, no doubt because she was herself the subject of her story; but we
+could read between the lines, imagine much she did not say, and supply
+color when she gave only outline; and it moved us both deeply. My father
+sat perfectly composed, betraying his emotion in silence alone. For myself,
+I had a great lump in my throat, but in part from the shame which mingled
+with my admiration. The silence had not lasted more than a few seconds,
+when I yielded to a struggling impulse, rose, and kneeling before her, put
+my hands on her knees, said, "Forgive me," and could say no more. She put
+her hand on my shoulder, whispered. "My dear Mrs. Percivale!" bent down her
+face, and kissed me on the forehead.
+
+"How could you help being shy of me?" she said. "Perhaps I ought to have
+come to you and explained it all; but I shrink from self-justification,--at
+least before a fit opportunity makes it comparatively easy."
+
+"That is the way to give it all its force," remarked my father.
+
+"I suppose it may be," she returned. "But I hate talking about myself: it
+is an unpleasant subject."
+
+"Most people do not find it such," said my father. "I could not honestly
+say that I do not enjoy talking of my own experiences of life."
+
+"But there are differences, you see," she rejoined. "My history looks to me
+such a matter of course, such a something I could not help, or have avoided
+if I would, that the telling of it is unpleasant, because it implies an
+importance which does not belong to it."
+
+"St. Paul says something of the same sort,--that a necessity of preaching
+the gospel was laid upon him," remarked my father; but it seemed to make no
+impression on Miss Clare, for she went on as if she had not heard him.
+
+"You see, Mr. Walton, it is not in the least as if, living in comfort, I
+had taken notice of the misery of the poor for the want of such sympathy
+and help as I could give them, and had therefore gone to live amongst them
+that I might so help them: it is quite different from that. If I had done
+so, I might be in danger of magnifying not merely my office but myself. On
+the contrary, I have been trained to it in such slow and necessitous ways,
+that it would be a far greater trial to me to forsake my work than it has
+ever been to continue it."
+
+My father said no more, but I knew he had his own thoughts. I remained
+kneeling, and felt for the first time as if I understood what had led to
+saint-worship.
+
+"Won't you sit, Mrs. Percivale?" she said, as if merely expostulating with
+me for not making myself comfortable.
+
+"Have you forgiven me?" I asked.
+
+"How can I say I have, when I never had any thing to forgive?"
+
+"Well, then, I must go unforgiven, for I cannot forgive myself," I said.
+
+"O Mrs. Percivale! if you think how the world is flooded with forgiveness,
+you will just dip in your cup, and take what you want."
+
+I felt that I was making too much even of my own shame, rose humbled, and
+took my former seat.
+
+Narration being over, and my father's theory now permitting him to ask
+questions, he did so plentifully, bringing out many lights, and elucidating
+several obscurities. The story grew upon me, until the work to which Miss
+Clare had given herself seemed more like that of the Son of God than any
+other I knew. For she was not helping her friends from afar, but as one of
+themselves,--nor with money, but with herself; she was not condescending to
+them, but finding her highest life in companionship with them. It seemed at
+least more like what his life must have been before he was thirty, than any
+thing else I could think of. I held my peace however; for I felt that to
+hint at such a thought would have greatly shocked and pained her.
+
+No doubt the narrative I have given is plainer and more coherent for the
+questions my father put; but it loses much from the omission of one or two
+parts which she gave dramatically, with evident enjoyment of the fun that
+was in them. I have also omitted all the interruptions which came from her
+not unfrequent reference to my father on points that came up. At length I
+ventured to remind her of something she seemed to have forgotten.
+
+"When you were telling us, Miss Clare," I said, "of the help that came to
+you that dreary afternoon in the empty house, I think you mentioned that
+something which happened afterwards made it still more remarkable." "Oh,
+yes!" she answered: "I forgot about that. I did not carry my history far
+enough to be reminded of it again.
+
+"Somewhere about five years ago, Lady Bernard, having several schemes on
+foot for helping such people as I was interested in, asked me if it would
+not be nice to give an entertainment to my friends, and as many of the
+neighbors as I pleased, to the number of about a hundred. She wanted to
+put the thing entirely in my hands, and it should be my entertainment, she
+claiming only the privilege of defraying expenses. I told her I should
+be delighted to convey _her_ invitation, but that the entertainment must
+not pretend to be mine; which, besides that it would be a falsehood, and
+therefore not to be thought of, would perplex my friends, and drive them to
+the conclusion either that it was not mine, or that I lived amongst them
+under false appearances. She confessed the force of my arguments, and let
+me have it my own way.
+
+"She had bought a large house to be a home for young women out of
+employment, and in it she proposed the entertainment should be given: there
+were a good many nice young women inmates at the time, who, she said, would
+be all willing to help us to wait upon our guests. The idea was carried
+out, and the thing succeeded admirably. We had music and games, the latter
+such as the children were mostly acquainted with, only producing more
+merriment and conducted with more propriety than were usual in the court or
+the streets. I may just remark, in passing, that, had these been children
+of the poorest sort, we should have had to teach them; for one of the
+saddest things is that such, in London at least, do not know how to
+play. We had tea and coffee and biscuits in the lower rooms, for any who
+pleased; and they were to have a solid supper afterwards. With none of the
+arrangements, however, had I any thing to do; for my business was to be
+with them, and help them to enjoy themselves. All went on capitally; the
+parents entering into the merriment of their children, and helping to keep
+it up.
+
+"In one of the games, I was seated on the floor with a handkerchief tied
+over my eyes, waiting, I believe, for some gentle trick to be played upon
+me, that I might guess at the name of the person who played it. There
+was a delay--of only a few seconds--long enough, however, for a sudden
+return of that dreary November afternoon in which I sat on the floor too
+miserable even to think that I was cold and hungry. Strange to say, it
+was not the picture of it that came back to me first, but the sound of my
+own voice calling aloud in the ringing echo of the desolate rooms that
+I was of no use to anybody, and that God had forgotten me utterly. With
+the recollection, a doubtful expectation arose which moved me to a scarce
+controllable degree. I jumped to my feet, and tore the bandage from my
+eyes.
+
+"Several times during the evening I had had the odd yet well-known feeling
+of the same thing having happened before; but I was too busy entertaining
+my friends to try to account for it: perhaps what followed may suggest the
+theory, that in not a few of such cases the indistinct remembrance of the
+previous occurrence of some portion of the circumstances may cast the hue
+of memory over the whole. As--my eyes blinded with the light and straining
+to recover themselves--I stared about the room, the presentiment grew
+almost conviction that it was the very room in which I had so sat in
+desolation and despair. Unable to restrain myself, I hurried into the back
+room: there was the cabinet beyond! In a few moments more I was absolutely
+satisfied that this was indeed the house in which I had first found refuge.
+For a time I could take no further share in what was going on, but sat down
+in a corner, and cried for joy. Some one went for Lady Bernard, who was
+superintending the arrangements for supper in the music-room behind. She
+came in alarm. I told her there was nothing the matter but a little too
+much happiness, and, if she would come into the cabinet, I would tell her
+all about it. She did so, and a few words made her a hearty sharer in my
+pleasure. She insisted that I should tell the company all about it; 'for'
+she said, 'you do not know how much it may help some poor creature to
+trust in God.' I promised I would, if I found I could command myself
+sufficiently. She left me alone for a little while, and after that I was
+able to join in the games again.
+
+"At supper I found myself quite composed, and, at Lady Bernard's request,
+stood up, and gave them all a little sketch of grannie's history, of which
+sketch what had happened that evening was made the central point. Many
+of the simpler hearts about me received it, without question, as a divine
+arrangement for my comfort and encouragement,--at least, thus I interpreted
+their looks to each other, and the remarks that reached my ear; but
+presently a man stood up,--one who thought more than the rest of them,
+perhaps because he was blind,--a man at once conceited, honest, and
+sceptical; and silence having been made for him,--'Ladies and gentlemen,'
+he began, as if he had been addressing a public meeting, 'you've all heard
+what grannie has said. It's very kind of her to give us so much of her
+history. It's a very remarkable one, _I_ think, and she deserves to have
+it. As to what upset her this very night as is,--and I must say for
+her, I've knowed her now for six years, and I never knowed _her_ upset
+afore,--and as to what upset her, all I can say is, it may or may not ha'
+been what phylosophers call a coincydence; but at the same time, if it
+wasn't a coincydence, and if the Almighty had a hand in it, it were no more
+than you might expect. He would look at it in this light, you see, that
+maybe she was wrong to fancy herself so down on her luck as all that, but
+she was a good soul, notwithstandin,' and he would let her know he hadn't
+forgotten her. And so he set her down in that room there,--wi' her eyes
+like them here o' mine, as never was no manner o' use to me,--for a minute,
+jest to put her in mind o' what had been, and what she had said there, an'
+how it was all so different now. In my opinion, it were no wonder as she
+broke down, God bless her! I beg leave to propose her health.' So they
+drank my health in lemonade and ginger-beer; for we were afraid to give
+some of them stronger drink than that, and therefore had none. Then we had
+more music and singing; and a clergyman, who knew how to be neighbor to
+them that had fallen among thieves, read a short chapter and a collect or
+two, and said a few words to them. Then grannie and her children went home
+together, all happy, but grannie the happiest of them all."
+
+"Strange and beautiful!" said my father. "But," he added, after a pause,
+"you must have met with many strange and beautiful things in such a life as
+yours; for it seems to me that such a life is open to the entrance of all
+simple wonders. Conventionality and routine and arbitrary law banish their
+very approach."
+
+"I believe," said Miss Clare, "that every life has its own private
+experience of the strange and beautiful. But I have sometimes thought that
+perhaps God took pains to bar out such things of the sort as we should be
+no better for. The reason why Lazarus was not allowed to visit the brothers
+of Dives was, that the repentance he would have urged would not have
+followed, and they would have been only the worse in consequence."
+
+"Admirably said," remarked my father.
+
+Before we took our leave, I had engaged Miss Clare to dine with us while my
+father was in town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+LADY BERNARD.
+
+
+When she came we had no other guest, and so had plenty of talk with her.
+Before dinner I showed her my husband's pictures; and she was especially
+pleased with that which hung in the little room off the study, which I
+called my boudoir,--a very ugly word, by the way, which I am trying to give
+up,--with a curtain before it. My father has described it in "The Seaboard
+Parish:" a pauper lies dead, and they are bringing in his coffin. She said
+it was no wonder it had not been sold, notwithstanding its excellence
+and force; and asked if I would allow her to bring Lady Bernard to see
+it. After dinner Percivale had a long talk with her, and succeeded in
+persuading her to sit to him; not, however, before I had joined my
+entreaties with his, and my father had insisted that her face was not her
+own, but belonged to all her kind.
+
+The very next morning she came with Lady Bernard. The latter said she
+knew my husband well by reputation, and had, before our marriage, asked
+him to her house, but had not been fortunate enough to possess sufficient
+attraction. Percivale was much taken with her, notwithstanding a
+certain coldness, almost sternness of manner, which was considerably
+repellent,--but only for the first few moments, for, when her eyes lighted
+up, the whole thing vanished. She was much pleased with some of his
+pictures, criticising freely, and with evident understanding. The immediate
+result was, that she bought both the pauper picture and that of the dying
+knight.
+
+"But I am sorry to deprive your lovely room of such treasures, Mrs.
+Percivale," she said, with a kind smile.
+
+"Of course I shall miss them," I returned; "but the thought that you have
+them will console me. Besides, it is good to have a change; and there are
+only too many lying in the study, from which he will let me choose to
+supply their place."
+
+"Will you let me come and see which you have chosen?" she asked.
+
+"With the greatest pleasure," I answered.
+
+"And will you come and see me? Do you think you could persuade your husband
+to bring you to dine with me?"
+
+I told her I could promise the one with more than pleasure, and had little
+doubt of being able to do the other, now that my husband had seen her.
+
+A reference to my husband's dislike to fashionable society followed, and I
+had occasion to mention his feeling about being asked without me. Of the
+latter, Lady Bernard expressed the warmest approval; and of the former,
+said that it would have no force in respect of her parties, for they were
+not at all fashionable.
+
+This was the commencement of a friendship for which we have much cause to
+thank God. Nor did we forget that it came through Miss Clare.
+
+I confess I felt glorious over my cousin Judy; but I would bide my time.
+Now that I am wiser, and I hope a little better, I see that I was rather
+spiteful; but I thought then I was only jealous for my new and beautiful
+friend. Perhaps, having wronged her myself, I was the more ready to take
+vengeance on her wrongs from the hands of another; which was just the
+opposite feeling to that I ought to have had.
+
+In the mean time, our intimacy with Miss Clare grew. She interested me in
+many of her schemes for helping the poor; some of which were for providing
+them with work in hard times, but more for giving them an interest in life
+itself, without which, she said, no one would begin to inquire into its
+relations and duties. One of her positive convictions was, that you ought
+not to give them any thing they _ought_ to provide for themselves, such
+as food or clothing or shelter. In such circumstances as rendered it
+impossible for them to do so, the _ought_ was in abeyance. But she heartily
+approved of making them an occasional present of something they could not
+be expected to procure for themselves,--flowers, for instance. "You would
+not imagine," I have heard her say, "how they delight in flowers. All the
+finer instincts of their being are drawn to the surface at the sight of
+them. I am sure they prize and enjoy them far more, not merely than most
+people with gardens and greenhouses do, but far more even than they would
+if they were deprived of them. A gift of that sort can only do them good.
+But I would rather give a workman a gold watch than a leg of mutton. By
+a present you mean a compliment; and none feel more grateful for such an
+acknowledgment of your human relation to them, than those who look up to
+you as their superior."
+
+Once, when she was talking thus, I ventured to object, for the sake of
+hearing her further.
+
+"But," I said, "sometimes the most precious thing you can give a man is
+just that compassion which you seem to think destroys the value of a gift."
+
+"When compassion itself is precious to a man," she answered, "it must be
+because he loves you, and believes you love him. When that is the case, you
+may give him any thing you like, and it will do neither you nor him harm.
+But the man of independent feeling, except he be thus your friend, will not
+unlikely resent your compassion, while the beggar will accept it chiefly as
+a pledge for something more to be got from you; and so it will tend to keep
+him in beggary."
+
+"Would you never, then, give money, or any of the necessaries of life,
+except in extreme, and, on the part of the receiver, unavoidable
+necessity?" I asked.
+
+"I would not," she answered; "but in the case where a man _cannot_ help
+himself, the very suffering makes a way for the love which is more than
+compassion to manifest itself. In every other case, the true way is to
+provide them with work, which is itself a good thing, besides what they
+gain by it. If a man will not work, neither should he eat. It must be work
+with an object in it, however: it must not be mere labor, such as digging
+a hole and filling it up again, of which I have heard. No man could help
+resentment at being set to such work. You ought to let him feel that he is
+giving something of value to you for the money you give to him. But I have
+known a whole district so corrupted and degraded by clerical alms-giving,
+that one of the former recipients of it declared, as spokesman for the
+rest; that threepence given was far more acceptable than five shillings
+earned."
+
+A good part of the little time I could spare from my own family was now
+spent with Miss Clare in her work, through which it was chiefly that we
+became by degrees intimate with Lady Bernard. If ever there was a woman who
+lived this outer life for the sake of others, it was she. Her inner life
+was, as it were, sufficient for herself, and found its natural outward
+expression in blessing others. She was like a fountain of living water that
+could find no vent but into the lives of her fellows. She had suffered
+more than falls to the ordinary lot of women, in those who were related to
+her most nearly, and for many years had looked for no personal blessing
+from without. She said to me once, that she could not think of any thing
+that could happen to herself to make her very happy now, except a loved
+grandson, who was leading a strange, wild life, were to turn out a Harry
+the Fifth,--a consummation which, however devoutly wished, was not granted
+her; for the young man died shortly after. I believe no one, not even
+Miss Clare, knew half the munificent things she did, or what an immense
+proportion of her large income she spent upon other people. But, as she
+said herself, no one understood the worth of money better; and no one
+liked better to have the worth of it: therefore she always administered
+her charity with some view to the value of the probable return,--with some
+regard, that is, to the amount of good likely to result to others from the
+aid given to one. She always took into consideration whether the good was
+likely to be propagated, or to die with the receiver. She confessed to
+frequent mistakes; but such, she said, was the principle upon which she
+sought to regulate that part of her stewardship.
+
+I wish I could give a photograph of her. She was slight, and appeared
+taller than she was, being rather stately than graceful, with a commanding
+forehead and still blue eyes. She gave at first the impression of coldness,
+with a touch of haughtiness. But this was, I think, chiefly the result of
+her inherited physique; for the moment her individuality appeared, when her
+being, that is, came into contact with that of another, all this impression
+vanished in the light that flashed into her eyes, and the smile that
+illumined her face. Never did woman of rank step more triumphantly over
+the barriers which the cumulated custom of ages has built between the
+classes of society. She laid great stress on good manners, little on what
+is called good birth; although to the latter, in its deep and true sense,
+she attributed the greatest _à priori_ value, as the ground of obligation
+in the possessor, and of expectation on the part of others. But I shall
+have an opportunity of showing more of what she thought on this subject
+presently; for I bethink me that it occupied a great part of our
+conversation at a certain little gathering, of which I am now going to give
+an account.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MY SECOND DINNER-PARTY.
+
+
+For I judged that I might now give another little dinner: I thought, that,
+as Percivale had been doing so well lately, he might afford, with his
+knowing brother's help, to provide, for his part of the entertainment,
+what might be good enough to offer even to Mr. Morley; and I now knew Lady
+Bernard sufficiently well to know also that she would willingly accept an
+invitation from me, and would be pleased to meet Miss Clare, or, indeed,
+would more likely bring her with her.
+
+I proposed the dinner, and Percivale consented to it. My main object being
+the glorification of Miss Clare, who had more engagements of one kind and
+another than anybody I knew, I first invited her, asking her to fix her own
+day, at some considerable remove. Next I invited Mr. and Mrs. Morley, and
+next Lady Bernard, who went out very little. Then I invited Mr. Blackstone,
+and last of all Roger--though I was almost as much interested in his
+meeting Miss Clare as in any thing else connected with the gathering. For
+he had been absent from London for some time on a visit to an artist friend
+at the Hague, and had never seen Miss Clare since the evening on which
+he and I quarrelled--or rather, to be honest, I quarrelled with him. All
+accepted, and I looked forward to the day with some triumph.
+
+I had better calm the dread of my wifely reader by at once assuring her
+that I shall not harrow her feelings with any account of culinary blunders.
+The moon was in the beginning of her second quarter, and my cook's brain
+tolerably undisturbed. Lady Bernard offered me her cook for the occasion;
+but I convinced her that my wisdom would be to decline the offer, seeing
+such external influence would probably tend to disintegration. I went over
+with her every item of every dish and every sauce many times,--without any
+resulting sense of security, I confess; but I had found, that, odd as it
+may seem, she always did better the more she had to do. I believe that her
+love of approbation, excited by the difficulty before her, in its turn
+excited her intellect, which then arose to meet the necessities of the
+case.
+
+Roger arrived first, then Mr. Blackstone; Lady Bernard brought Miss Clare;
+and Mr. and Mrs. Morley came last. There were several introductions to be
+gone through,--a ceremony in which Percivale, being awkward, would give me
+no assistance; whence I failed to observe how the presence of Miss Clare
+affected Mr. and Mrs. Morley; but my husband told me that Judy turned red,
+and that Mr. Morley bowed to her with studied politeness. I took care that
+Mr. Blackstone should take her down to dinner, which was served in the
+study as before.
+
+The conversation was broken and desultory at first, as is generally the
+case at a dinner-party--and perhaps ought to be; but one after another
+began to listen to what was passing between Lady Bernard and my husband at
+the foot of the table, until by degrees every one became interested, and
+took a greater or less part in the discussion. The first of it I heard was
+as next follows.
+
+"Then you do believe," my husband was saying, "in the importance of what
+some of the Devonshire people call _havage_?"
+
+"Allow me to ask what they mean by the word," Lady Bernard returned.
+
+"Birth, descent,--the people you come of," he answered.
+
+"Of course I believe that descent involves very important considerations."
+
+"No one," interposed Mr. Morley, "can have a better right than your
+ladyship to believe that."
+
+"One cannot have a better right than another to believe a fact, Mr.
+Morley," she answered with a smile. "It is but a fact that you start better
+or worse according to the position of your starting-point."
+
+"Undeniably," said Mr. Morley. "And for all that is feared from the growth
+of levelling notions in this country, it will be many generations before a
+profound respect for birth is eradicated from the feelings of the English
+people."
+
+He drew in his chin with a jerk, and devoted himself again to his plate,
+with the air of a "Dixi." He was not permitted to eat in peace, however.
+
+"If you allow," said Mr. Blackstone, "that the feeling can wear out, and
+is wearing out, it matters little how long it may take to prove itself of
+a false, because corruptible nature. No growth of notions will blot love,
+honesty, kindness, out of the human heart."
+
+"Then," said Lady Bernard archly, "am I to understand, Mr. Blackstone, that
+you don't believe it of the least importance to come of decent people?"
+
+"Your ladyship puts it well," said Mr. Morley, laughing mildly, "and with
+authority. The longer the descent"--
+
+"The more doubtful," interrupted Lady Bernard, laughing. "One can hardly
+have come of decent people all through, you know. Let us only hope,
+without inquiring too closely, that their number preponderates in our own
+individual cases."
+
+Mr. Morley stared for a moment, and then tried to laugh, but unable to
+determine whereabout he was in respect of the question, betook himself to
+his glass of sherry.
+
+Mr. Blackstone considered it the best policy in general not to explain any
+remark he had made, but to say the right thing better next time instead. I
+suppose he believed, with another friend of mine, that "when explanations
+become necessary, they become impossible," a paradox well worth the
+consideration of those who write letters to newspapers. But Lady Bernard
+understood him well enough, and was only unwinding the clew of her idea.
+
+"On the contrary, it must be a most serious fact," he rejoined, "to any one
+who like myself believes that the sins of the fathers are visited on the
+children."
+
+"Mr. Blackstone," objected Roger, "I can't imagine you believing such a
+manifest injustice."
+
+"It has been believed in all ages by the best of people," he returned.
+
+"To whom possibly the injustice of it never suggested itself. For my part,
+I must either disbelieve that, or disbelieve in a God."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, don't you see it is a fact? Don't you see children
+born with the sins of their parents nestling in their very bodies? You see
+on which horn of your own dilemma you would impale yourself."
+
+"Wouldn't you rather not believe in a God than believe in an unjust one?"
+
+"An unjust god," said Mr. Blackstone, with the honest evasion of one who
+will not answer an awful question hastily, "must be a false god, that is,
+no god. Therefore I presume there is some higher truth involved in every
+fact that appears unjust, the perception of which would nullify the
+appearance."
+
+"I see none in the present case," said Roger.
+
+"I will go farther than assert the mere opposite," returned Mr. Blackstone.
+"I will assert that it is an honor to us to have the sins of our fathers
+laid upon us. For thus it is given into our power to put a stop to them, so
+that they shall descend no farther. If I thought my father had committed
+any sins for which I might suffer, I should be unspeakably glad to suffer
+for them, and so have the privilege of taking a share in his burden, and
+some of the weight of it off his mind. You see the whole idea is that of a
+family, in which we are so grandly bound together, that we must suffer with
+and for each other. Destroy this consequence, and you destroy the lovely
+idea itself, with all its thousand fold results of loveliness."
+
+"You anticipate what I was going to say, Mr. Blackstone," said Lady
+Bernard. "I would differ from you only in one thing. The chain of descent
+is linked after such a complicated pattern, that the non-conducting
+condition of one link, or of many links even, cannot break the transmission
+of qualities. I may inherit from my great-great-grandfather or mother, or
+some one ever so much farther back. That which was active wrong in some
+one or other of my ancestors, may appear in me as an impulse to that same
+wrong, which of course I have to overcome; and if I succeed, then it is
+so far checked. But it may have passed, or may yet pass, to others of his
+descendants, who have, or will have, to do the same--for who knows how many
+generations to come?--before it shall cease. Married people, you see, Mrs.
+Percivale, have an awful responsibility in regard of the future of the
+world. You cannot tell to how many millions you may transmit your failures
+or your victories."
+
+"If I understand you right, Lady Bernard," said Roger, "it is the personal
+character of your ancestors, and not their social position, you regard as
+of importance."
+
+"It was of their personal character alone I was thinking. But of course
+I do not pretend to believe that there are not many valuable gifts more
+likely to show themselves in what is called a long descent; for doubtless a
+continuity of education does much to develop the race."
+
+"But if it is personal character you chiefly regard, we may say we are all
+equally far descended," I remarked; "for we have each had about the same
+number of ancestors with a character of some sort or other, whose faults
+and virtues have to do with ours, and for both of which we are, according
+to Mr. Blackstone, in a most real and important sense accountable."
+
+"Certainly," returned Lady Bernard; "and it is impossible to say in whose
+descent the good or the bad may predominate. I cannot tell, for instance,
+how much of the property I inherit has been honestly come by, or is the
+spoil of rapacity and injustice."
+
+"You are doing the best you can to atone for such a possible fact, then, by
+its redistribution," said my husband.
+
+"I confess," she answered, "the doubt has had some share in determining my
+feeling with regard to the management of my property. I have no right to
+throw up my stewardship, for that was none of my seeking, and I do not know
+any one who has a better claim to it; but I count it only a stewardship. I
+am not at liberty to throw my orchard open, for that would result not only
+in its destruction, but in a renewal of the fight of centuries ago for its
+possession; but I will try to distribute my apples properly. That is, I
+have not the same right to give away foolishly that I have to keep wisely."
+
+"Then," resumed Roger, who had evidently been pondering what Lady Bernard
+had previously said, "you would consider what is called kleptomania as the
+impulse to steal transmitted by a thief-ancestor?"
+
+"Nothing seems to me more likely. I know a nobleman whose servant has to
+search his pockets for spoons or forks every night as soon as he is in
+bed."
+
+"I should find it very hard to define the difference between that and
+stealing," said Miss Clare, now first taking a part in the conversation. "I
+have sometimes wondered whether kleptomania was not merely the fashionable
+name for stealing."
+
+"The distinction is a difficult one, and no doubt the word is occasionally
+misapplied. But I think there is a difference. The nobleman to whom I
+referred makes no objection to being thus deprived of his booty; which,
+for one thing, appears to show that the temptation is intermittent, and
+partakes at least of the character of a disease."
+
+"But are there not diseases which are only so much the worse diseases that
+they are not intermittent?" said Miss Clare. "Is it not hard that the
+privileges of kleptomania should be confined to the rich? You never hear
+the word applied to a poor child, even if his father was, habit and repute,
+a thief. Surely, when hunger and cold aggravate the attacks of inherited
+temptation, they cannot at the same time aggravate the culpability of
+yielding to them?"
+
+"On the contrary," said Roger, "one would naturally suppose they added
+immeasurable excuse."
+
+"Only," said Mr. Blackstone, "there comes in our ignorance, and consequent
+inability to judge. The very fact of the presence of motives of a most
+powerful kind renders it impossible to be certain of the presence of the
+disease; whereas other motives being apparently absent, we presume disease
+as the readiest way of accounting for the propensity; I do not therefore
+think it is the only way. I believe there are cases in which it comes of
+pure greed, and is of the same kind as any other injustice the capability
+of exercising which is more generally distributed. Why should a thief be
+unknown in a class, a proportion of the members of which is capable of
+wrong, chicanery, oppression, indeed any form of absolute selfishness?"
+
+"At all events," said Lady Bernard, "so long as we do our best to help them
+to grow better, we cannot make too much allowance for such as have not only
+been born with evil impulses, but have had every animal necessity to urge
+them in the same direction; while, on the other hand, they have not had one
+of those restraining influences which a good home and education would have
+afforded. Such must, so far as development goes, be but a little above the
+beasts."
+
+"You open a very difficult question," said Mr. Morley: "What are we to do
+with them? Supposing they _are_ wild beasts, we can't shoot them; though
+that would, no doubt, be the readiest way to put an end to the breed."
+
+"Even that would not suffice," said Lady Bernard. "There would always be a
+deposit from the higher classes sufficient to keep up the breed. But, Mr.
+Morley, I did not say _wild_ beasts: I only said _beasts_. There is a great
+difference between a tiger and a sheep-dog."
+
+"There is nearly as much between a Seven-Dialsrough and a sheep-dog."
+
+"In moral attainment, I grant you," said Mr. Blackstone; "but in moral
+capacity, no. Besides, you must remember, both what a descent the sheep-dog
+has, and what pains have been taken with his individual education, as well
+as that of his ancestors."
+
+"Granted all that," said Mr. Morley, "there the fact remains. For my part,
+I confess I don't see what is to be done. The class to which you refer goes
+on increasing. There's this garrotting now. I spent a winter at Algiers
+lately, and found even the suburbs of that city immeasurably safer than any
+part of London is now, to judge from the police-reports. Yet I am accused
+of inhumanity and selfishness if I decline to write a check for every
+shabby fellow who calls upon me pretending to be a clergyman, and to
+represent this or that charity in the East End!"
+
+"Things are bad enough in the West End, within a few hundred yards of
+Portland Place, for instance," murmured Miss Clare.
+
+"It seems to me highly unreasonable," Mr. Morley went on. "Why should I
+spend my money to perpetuate such a condition of things?"
+
+"That would in all likelihood be the tendency of your subscription," said
+Mr. Blackstone.
+
+"Then why should I?" repeated Mr. Morley with a smile of triumph.
+
+"But," said Miss Clare, in an apologetic tone, "it seems to me you make a
+mistake in regarding the poor as if their poverty were the only distinction
+by which they could be classified. The poor are not _all_ thieves and
+garroters, nor even all unthankful and unholy. There are just as strong and
+as delicate distinctions too, in that stratum of social existence as in the
+upper strata. I should imagine Mr. Morley knows a few, belonging to the
+same social grade with himself, with whom, however, he would be sorry to be
+on any terms of intimacy."
+
+"Not a few," responded Mr. Morley with a righteous frown.
+
+"Then I, who know the poor as well at least as you can know the rich,
+having lived amongst them almost from childhood, assert that I am
+acquainted with not a few, who, in all the essentials of human life and
+character, would be an honor to any circle."
+
+"I should be sorry to seem to imply that there may not be very worthy
+people amongst them, Miss Clare; but it is not such who draw our attention
+to the class."
+
+"Not such who force themselves upon your attention certainly," said Miss
+Clare; "but the existence of such may be an additional reason for bestowing
+some attention on the class to which they belong. Is there not such a
+mighty fact as the body of Christ? Is there no connection between the head
+and the feet?"
+
+"I had not the slightest purpose of disputing the matter with you, Miss
+Clare," said Mr. Morley--I thought rudely, for who would use the word
+_disputing_ at a dinner-table? "On the contrary, being a practical man,
+I want to know what is to be done. It is doubtless a great misfortune to
+the community that there should be such sinks in our cities; but who is to
+blame for it?--that is the question."
+
+"Every man who says, Am I my brother's keeper? Why, just consider, Mr.
+Morley: suppose in a family there were one less gifted than the others, and
+that in consequence they all withdrew from him, and took no interest in his
+affairs: what would become of him? Must he not sink?"
+
+"Difference of rank is a divine appointment,--you must allow that. If there
+were not a variety of grades, the social machine would soon come to a
+stand-still."
+
+"A strong argument for taking care of the smallest wheel, for all the parts
+are interdependent. That there should be different classes is undoubtedly a
+divine intention, and not to be turned aside. But suppose the less-gifted
+boy is fit for some manual labor; suppose he takes to carpentering, and
+works well, and keeps the house tidy, and every thing in good repair, while
+his brothers pursue their studies and prepare for professions beyond his
+reach: is the inferior boy degraded by doing the best he can? Is there any
+reason in the nature of things why he should sink? But he will most likely
+sink, sooner or later, if his brothers take no interest in his work, and
+treat him as a being of nature inferior to their own."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Morley, "but is he not on the very
+supposition inferior to them?"
+
+"Intellectually, yes; morally, no; for he is doing his work, possibly
+better than they, and therefore taking a higher place in the eternal scale.
+But granting all kinds of inferiority, his _nature_ remains the same with
+their own; and the question is, whether they treat him as one to be helped
+up, or one to be kept down; as one unworthy of sympathy, or one to be
+honored for filling his part: in a word, as one belonging to them, or one
+whom they put up with only because his work is necessary to them."
+
+"What do you mean by being 'helped up'?" asked Mr. Morley.
+
+"I do not mean helped out of his trade, but helped to make the best of it,
+and of the intellect that finds its development in that way."
+
+"Very good. But yet I don't see how you apply your supposition."
+
+"For an instance of application, then: How many respectable people know or
+care a jot about their servants, except as creatures necessary to their
+comfort?"
+
+"Well, Miss Clare," said Judy, addressing her for the first time, "if you
+had had the half to do with servants I have had, you would alter your
+opinion of them."
+
+"I have expressed no opinion," returned Miss Clare. "I have only said that
+masters and mistresses know and care next to nothing about them."
+
+"They are a very ungrateful class, do what you will for them."
+
+"I am afraid they are at present growing more and more corrupt as a class,"
+rejoined Miss Clare; "but gratitude is a high virtue, therefore in any case
+I don't see how you could look for much of it from the common sort of them.
+And yet while some mistresses do not get so much of it as they deserve, I
+fear most mistresses expect far more of it than they have any right to."
+
+"You _can't_ get them to speak the truth."
+
+"That I am afraid is a fact."
+
+"I have never known one on whose word I could depend," insisted Judy.
+
+"My father says he _has_ known one," I interjected.
+
+"A sad confirmation of Mrs. Morley," said Miss Clare. "But for my part I
+know very few persons in any rank on whose representation of things I could
+absolutely depend. Truth is the highest virtue, and seldom grows wild. It
+is difficult to speak the truth, and those who have tried it longest best
+know how difficult it is. Servants need to be taught that as well as
+everybody else."
+
+"There is nothing they resent so much as being taught," said Judy.
+
+"Perhaps: they are very far from docile; and I believe it is of little use
+to attempt giving them direct lessons."
+
+"How, then, are you to teach them?"
+
+"By making it very plain to them, but without calling their attention to
+it, that _you_ speak the truth. In the course of a few years they may come
+to tell a lie or two the less for that."
+
+"Not a very hopeful prospect," said Judy.
+
+"Not a very rapid improvement," said her husband.
+
+"I look for no rapid improvement, so early in a history as the supposition
+implies," said Miss Clare.
+
+"But would you not tell them how wicked it is?" I asked.
+
+"They know already that it is wicked to tell lies; but they do not feel
+that _they_ are wicked in making the assertions they do. The less said
+about the abstract truth, and the more shown of practical truth, the better
+for those whom any one would teach to forsake lying. So, at least, it
+appears to me. I despair of teaching others, except by learning myself."
+
+"If you do no more than that, you will hardly produce an appreciable effect
+in a lifetime."
+
+"Why should it be appreciated?" rejoined Miss Clare.
+
+"I should have said, on the contrary," interposed Mr. Blackstone,
+addressing Mr. Morley, "if you do less--for more you cannot do--you will
+produce no effect whatever."
+
+"We have no right to make it a condition of our obedience, that we shall
+see its reflex in the obedience of others," said Miss Clare. "We have to
+pull out the beam, not the mote."
+
+"Are you not, then, to pull the mote out of your brother's eye?" said Judy.
+
+"In no case and on no pretence, _until_ you have pulled the beam out of
+your own eye," said Mr. Blackstone; "which I fancy will make the duty of
+finding fault with one's neighbor a rare one; for who will venture to say
+he has qualified himself for the task?"
+
+It was no wonder that a silence followed upon this; for the talk had got to
+be very serious for a dinner-table. Lady Bernard was the first to speak. It
+was easier to take up the dropped thread of the conversation than to begin
+a new reel.
+
+"It cannot be denied," she said, "whoever may be to blame for it, that the
+separation between the rich and the poor has either been greatly widened of
+late, or, which involves the same practical necessity, we have become more
+aware of the breadth and depth of a gulf which, however it may distinguish
+their circumstances, ought not to divide them from each other. Certainly
+the rich withdraw themselves from the poor. Instead, for instance, of
+helping them to bear their burdens, they leave the still struggling poor of
+whole parishes to sink into hopeless want, under the weight of those who
+have already sunk beyond recovery. I am not sure that to shoot them would
+not involve less injustice. At all events, he that hates his brother is a
+murderer."
+
+"But there is no question of hating here," objected Mr. Morley.
+
+"I am not certain that absolute indifference to one's neighbor is not as
+bad. It came pretty nearly to the same thing in the case of the priest and
+the Levite, who passed by on the other side," said Mr. Blackstone.
+
+"Still," said Mr. Morley, in all the self-importance of one who prided
+himself on the practical, "I do not see that Miss Clare has proposed any
+remedy for the state of things concerning the evil of which we are all
+agreed. What is to be _done_? What can _I_ do now? Come, Miss Clare."
+
+Miss Clare was silent.
+
+"Marion, my child," said Lady Bernard, turning to her, "will you answer Mr.
+Morley?"
+
+"Not, certainly, as to what _he_ can do: that question I dare not undertake
+to answer. I can only speak of what principles I may seem to have
+discovered. But until a man begins to behave to those with whom he comes
+into personal contact as partakers of the same nature, to recognize, for
+instance, between himself and his trades-people a bond superior to that of
+supply and demand, I cannot imagine how he is to do any thing towards the
+drawing together of the edges of the gaping wound in the social body."
+
+"But," persisted Mr. Morley, who, I began to think, showed some real desire
+to come at a practical conclusion, "suppose a man finds himself incapable
+of that sort of thing--for it seems to me to want some rare qualification
+or other to be able to converse with an uneducated person"--
+
+"There are many such, especially amongst those who follow handicrafts,"
+interposed Mr. Blackstone, "who think a great deal more than most of the
+so-called educated. There is a truer education to be got in the pursuit of
+a handicraft than in the life of a mere scholar. But I beg your pardon, Mr.
+Morley."
+
+"Suppose," resumed Mr. Morley, accepting the apology without
+disclaimer,--"Suppose I find I can do nothing of that sort; is there
+nothing of any sort I can do?"
+
+"Nothing of the best sort, I firmly believe," answered Miss Clare; "for
+the genuine recognition of the human relationship can alone give value to
+whatever else you may do, and indeed can alone guide you to what ought
+to be done. I had a rather painful illustration of this the other day. A
+gentleman of wealth and position offered me the use of his grounds for some
+of my poor friends, whom I wanted to take out for a half-holiday. In the
+neighborhood of London, that is a great boon. But unfortunately, whether
+from his mistake or mine, I was left with the impression that he would
+provide some little entertainment for them; I am certain that at least
+milk was mentioned. It was a lovely day; every thing looked beautiful; and
+although they were in no great spirits, poor things, no doubt the shade and
+the grass and the green trees wrought some good in them. Unhappily, two of
+the men had got drunk on the way; and, fearful of giving offence, I had to
+take them back to the station.--for their poor helpless wives could only
+cry,--and send them home by train. I should have done better to risk the
+offence, and take them into the grounds, where they might soon have slept
+it off under a tree. I had some distance to go, and some difficulty in
+getting them along; and when I got back I found things in an unhappy
+condition, for nothing had been given them to eat or drink,--indeed, no
+attention, had been paid them whatever. There was company at dinner in the
+house, and I could not find any one with authority. I hurried into the
+neighboring village, and bought the contents of two bakers' shops, with
+which I returned in time to give each a piece of bread before the company
+came out to _look at_ them. A gayly-dressed group, they stood by themselves
+languidly regarding the equally languid but rather indignant groups of
+ill-clad and hungry men and women upon the lawn. They made no attempt to
+mingle with them, or arrive at a notion of what was moving in any of their
+minds. The nearest approach to communion I saw was a poke or two given to a
+child with the point of a parasol. Were my poor friends likely to return to
+their dingy homes with any great feeling of regard for the givers of such
+cold welcome?"
+
+"But that was an exceptional case," said Mr. Morley.
+
+"Chiefly in this," returned Miss Clare, "that it was a case at all--that
+they were thus presented with a little more room on the face of the earth
+for a few hours."
+
+"But you think the fresh air may have done them good?"
+
+"Yes; but we were speaking, I thought, of what might serve towards the
+filling up of the gulf between the classes."
+
+"Well, will not all kindness shown to the poor by persons in a superior
+station tend in that direction?"
+
+"I maintain that you can do nothing for them in the way of kindness that
+shall not result in more harm than good, except you do it from and with
+genuine charity of soul; with some of that love, in short, which is the
+heart of religion. Except what is done for them is so done as to draw
+out their trust and affection, and so raise them consciously in the
+human scale, it can only tend either to hurt their feelings and generate
+indignation, or to encourage fawning and beggary. But"--
+
+"I am entirely of your mind," said Mr. Blackstone. "But do go on."
+
+"I was going to add," said Miss Clare, "that while no other charity than
+this can touch the sore, a good deal might yet be effected by bare justice.
+It seems to me high time that we dropped talking about charity, and took
+up the cry of justice. There, now, is a ground on which a man of your
+influence, Mr. Morley, might do much."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Miss Clare. So long as I pay the market value
+for the labor I employ, I do not see how more can be demanded of me--as a
+right, that is."
+
+"We will not enter on that question, Marion, if you please," said Lady
+Bernard.
+
+Miss Clare nodded, and went on.
+
+"Is it just in the nation," she said, "to abandon those who can do nothing
+to help themselves, to be preyed upon by bad landlords, railway-companies,
+and dishonest trades-people with their false weights, balances, and
+measures, and adulterations to boot,--from all of whom their more wealthy
+brethren are comparatively safe? Does not a nation exist for the protection
+of its parts? Have these no claims on the nation? Would you call it just in
+a family to abandon its less gifted to any moral or physical spoiler who
+might be bred within it? To say a citizen must take care of himself _may_
+be just where he _can_ take care of himself, but cannot be just where
+that is impossible. A thousand causes, originating mainly in the neglect
+of their neighbors, have combined to sink the poor into a state of moral
+paralysis: are we to say the paralyzed may be run over in our streets with
+impunity? _Must_ they take care of themselves? Have we not to awake them to
+the very sense that life is worth caring for? I cannot but feel that the
+bond between such a neglected class, and any nation in which it is to be
+found, is very little stronger than, if indeed as strong as, that between
+slaves and their masters. Who could preach to them their duty to the
+nation, except on grounds which such a nation acknowledges only with the
+lips?"
+
+"You have to prove, Miss Clare," said Mr. Morley, in a tone that seemed
+intended to imply that he was not in the least affected by mistimed
+eloquence, "that the relation is that of a family."
+
+"I believe," she returned, "that it is closer than the mere human relation
+of the parts of any family. But, at all events, until we _are_ their
+friends it is worse than useless to pretend to be such, and until they feel
+that we are their friends it is worse than useless to talk to them about
+God and religion. They will none of it from our lips."
+
+"Will they from any lips? Are they not already too far sunk towards the
+brutes to be capable of receiving any such rousing influence?" suggested
+Mr. Blackstone with a smile, evidently wishing to draw Miss Clare out yet
+further.
+
+"You turn me aside, Mr. Blackstone. I wanted to urge Mr. Morley to go into
+parliament as spiritual member for the poor of our large towns. Besides, I
+know you don't think as your question would imply. As far as my experience
+guides me, I am bound to believe that there is a spot of soil in every
+heart sufficient for the growth of a gospel seed. And I believe, moreover,
+that not only is he a fellow-worker with God who sows that seed, but that
+he also is one who opens a way for that seed to enter the soil. If such
+preparation were not necessary, the Saviour would have come the moment Adam
+and Eve fell, and would have required no Baptist to precede him."
+
+A good deal followed which I would gladly record, enabled as I now am to
+assist my memory by a more thorough acquaintance with the views of Miss
+Clare. But I fear I have already given too much conversation at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE END OF THE EVENING.
+
+
+What specially delighted me during the evening, was the marked attention,
+and the serious look in the eyes, with which Roger listened. It was not
+often that he did look serious. He preferred, if possible, to get a joke
+out of a thing; but when he did enter into an argument, he was always fair.
+Although prone to take the side of objection to any religious remark, he
+yet never said any thing against religion itself. But his principles, and
+indeed his nature, seemed as yet in a state of solution,--uncrystallized,
+as my father would say. Mr. Morley, on the other hand, seemed an insoluble
+mass, incapable of receiving impressions from other minds. Any suggestion
+of his own mind, as to a course of action or a mode of thinking, had a good
+chance of being without question regarded as reasonable and right: he was
+more than ordinarily prejudiced in his own favor. The day after they thus
+met at our house, Miss Clare had a letter from him, in which he took the
+high hand with her, rebuking her solemnly for her presumption in saying,
+as he represented it, that no good could be done except after the fashion
+she laid down, and assuring her that she would thus alienate the most
+valuable assistance from any scheme she might cherish for the amelioration
+of the condition of the lower classes. It ended with the offer of a yearly
+subscription of five pounds to any project of the wisdom of which she
+would take the trouble to convince him. She replied, thanking him both, for
+his advice and his offer, but saying that, as she had no scheme on foot
+requiring such assistance, she could not at present accept the latter;
+should, however, any thing show itself for which that sort of help was
+desirable, she would take the liberty of reminding him of it.
+
+When the ladies rose, Judy took me aside, and said,--
+
+"What does it all mean, Wynnie?"
+
+"Just what you hear," I answered.
+
+"You asked us, to have a triumph over me, you naughty thing!"
+
+"Well--partly--if I am to be honest; but far more to make you do justice to
+Miss Clare. You being my cousin, she had a right to that at my hands."
+
+"Does Lady Bernard know as much about her as she seems?"
+
+"She knows every thing about her, and visits her, too, in her very
+questionable abode. You see, Judy, a report may be a fact, and yet be
+untrue."
+
+"I'm not going to be lectured by a chit like you. But I should like to have
+a little talk with Miss Clare."
+
+"I will make you an opportunity."
+
+I did so, and could not help overhearing a very pretty apology; to which
+Miss Clare replied, that she feared she only was to blame, inasmuch as
+she ought to have explained the peculiarity of her circumstances before
+accepting the engagement. At the time, it had not appeared to her
+necessary, she said; but now she would make a point of explaining before
+she accepted any fresh duty of the kind, for she saw it would be fairer to
+both parties. It was no wonder such an answer should entirely disarm cousin
+Judy, who forthwith begged she would, if she had no objection, resume her
+lessons with the children at the commencement of the next quarter.
+
+"But I understand from Mrs. Percivale," objected Miss Clare, "that the
+office is filled to your thorough satisfaction."
+
+"Yes; the lady I have is an excellent teacher; but the engagement was only
+for a quarter."
+
+"If you have no other reason for parting with her, I could not think of
+stepping into her place. It would be a great disappointment to her, and my
+want of openness with you would be the cause of it. If you should part with
+her for any other reason, I should be very glad to serve you again."
+
+Judy tried to argue with her, but Miss Clare was immovable.
+
+"Will you let me come and see you, then?" said Judy.
+
+"With all my heart," she answered. "You had better come with Mrs.
+Percivale, though, for it would not be easy for you to find the place."
+
+We went up to the drawing-room to tea, passing through the study, and
+taking the gentlemen with us. Miss Clare played to us, and sang several
+songs,--the last a ballad of Schiller's, "The Pilgrim," setting forth the
+constant striving of the soul after something of which it never lays hold.
+The last verse of it I managed to remember. It was this:--
+
+  Thither, ah! no footpath bendeth;
+    Ah! the heaven above, so clear,
+  Never, earth to touch, descendeth;
+    And the There is never Here!"
+
+"That is a beautiful song, and beautifully sung," said Mr. Blackstone; "but
+I am a little surprised at your choosing to sing it, for you cannot call it
+a Christian song."
+
+"Don't you find St. Paul saying something very like it again and again?"
+Miss Clare returned with a smile, as if she perfectly knew what he objected
+to. "You find him striving, journeying, pressing on, reaching out to lay
+hold, but never having attained,--ever conscious of failure."
+
+"That is true; but there is this huge difference,--that St. Paul expects to
+attain,--is confident of one day attaining; while Schiller, in that lyric
+at least, seems--I only say seems--hopeless of any satisfaction: _Das Dort
+ist niemals Hier._"
+
+"It may have been only a mood," said Miss Clare. "St. Paul had his moods
+also, from which he had to rouse himself to fresh faith and hope and
+effort."
+
+"But St. Paul writes only in his hopeful moods. Such alone he counts worthy
+of sharing with his fellows. If there is no hope, why, upon any theory,
+take the trouble to say so? It is pure weakness to desire sympathy in
+hopelessness. Hope alone justifies as well as excites either utterance or
+effort."
+
+"I admit all you say, Mr. Blackstone; and yet I think such a poem
+invaluable; for is not Schiller therein the mouth of the whole creation
+groaning and travailling and inarticulately crying out for the sonship?"
+
+"Unconsciously, then. He does not know what he wants."
+
+"_Apparently_, not. Neither does the creation. Neither do we. We do know
+it is oneness with God we want; but of what that means we have only vague,
+though glowing hints."
+
+I saw Mr. Morley scratch his left ear like a young calf, only more
+impatiently.
+
+"But," Miss Clare went on, "is it not invaluable as the confession of one
+of the noblest of spirits, that he had found neither repose nor sense of
+attainment?"
+
+"But," said Roger, "did you ever know any one of those you call Christians
+who professed to have reached satisfaction; or, if so, whose life would
+justify you in believing him?"
+
+"I have never known a satisfied Christian, I confess," answered Miss Clare.
+"Indeed, I should take satisfaction as a poor voucher for Christianity.
+But I have known several contented Christians. I might, in respect of
+one or two of them, use a stronger word,--certainly not _satisfied_.
+I believe there is a grand, essential unsatisfaction,--I do not mean
+dissatisfaction,--which adds the delight of expectation to the peace of
+attainment; and that, I presume, is the very consciousness of heaven. But
+where faith may not have produced even contentment, it will yet sustain
+hope: which, if we may judge from the ballad, no mere aspiration can. We
+must believe in a living ideal, before we can have a tireless heart; an
+ideal which draws our poor vague ideal to itself, to fill it full and make
+it alive."
+
+I should have been amazed to hear Miss Clare talk like this, had I not
+often heard my father say that aspiration and obedience were the two
+mightiest forces for development. Her own needs and her own deeds had been
+her tutors; and the light by which she had read their lessons was the
+candle of the Lord within her.
+
+When my husband would have put her into Lady Bernard's carriage, as they
+were leaving, she said she should prefer walking home; and, as Lady Bernard
+did not press her to the contrary, Percivale could not remonstrate. "I am
+sorry I cannot walk with you, Miss Clare," he said. "_I_ must not leave my
+duties, but"--
+
+"There's not the slightest occasion," she interrupted. "I know every yard
+of the way. Good-night."
+
+The carriage drove off in one direction, and Miss Clare tripped lightly
+along in the other. Percivale darted into the house, and told Roger, who
+snatched up his hat, and bounded after her. Already she was out of sight;
+but he, following light-footed, overtook her in the crescent. It was,
+however, only after persistent entreaty that he prevailed on her to allow
+him to accompany her.
+
+"You do not know, Mr. Roger," she said pleasantly, "what you may be
+exposing yourself to, in going with me. I may have to do something you
+wouldn't like to have a share in."
+
+"I shall be only too glad to have the humblest share in any thing you draw
+me into," said Roger.
+
+As it fell out, they had not gone far before they came upon a little crowd,
+chiefly of boys, who ought to have been in bed long before, gathered
+about a man and woman. The man was forcing his company on a woman who was
+evidently annoyed that she could not get rid of him.
+
+"Is he your husband?" asked Miss Clare, making her way through the crowd.
+
+"No, miss," the woman answered. "I never saw him afore. I'm only just come
+in from the country."
+
+She looked more angry than frightened. Roger said her black eyes flashed
+dangerously, and she felt about the bosom of her dress--for a knife, he was
+certain.
+
+"You leave her alone," he said to the man, getting between him and her.
+
+"Mind your own business," returned the man, in a voice that showed he was
+drunk.
+
+For a moment Roger was undecided what to do; for he feared involving Miss
+Clare in a _row_, as he called it. But when the fellow, pushing suddenly
+past him, laid his hand on Miss Clare, and shoved her away, he gave
+him a blow that sent him staggering into the street; whereupon, to his
+astonishment, Miss Clare, leaving the woman, followed the man, and as soon
+as he had recovered his equilibrium, laid her hand on his arm and spoke to
+him, but in a voice so low and gentle that Roger, who had followed her,
+could not hear a word she said. For a moment or two the man seemed to try
+to listen, but his condition was too much for him; and, turning from her,
+he began again to follow the woman, who was now walking wearily away. Roger
+again interposed.
+
+"Don't strike him, Mr. Roger," cried Miss Clare: "he's too drunk for that.
+But keep him back if you can, while I take the woman away. If I see a
+policeman, I will send him."
+
+The man heard her last words, and they roused him to fury. He rushed at
+Roger, who, implicitly obedient, only dodged to let him pass, and again
+confronted him, engaging his attention until help arrived. He was, however,
+by this time so fierce and violent, that Roger felt bound to assist the
+policeman.
+
+As soon as the man was locked up, he went to Lime Court. The moon was
+shining, and the narrow passage lay bright beneath her. Along the street,
+people were going and coming, though it was past midnight, but the court
+was very still. He walked into it as far as the spot where we had together
+seen Miss Clare. The door at which she had entered was open; but he knew
+nothing of the house or its people, and feared to compromise her by making
+inquiries. He walked several times up and down, somewhat anxious, but
+gradually persuading himself that in all probability no further annoyance
+had befallen her; until at last he felt able to leave the place.
+
+He came back to our house, where, finding his brother at his final pipe in
+the study, he told him all about their adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MY FIRST TERROR.
+
+
+One of the main discomforts in writing a book is, that there are so many
+ways in which every thing, as it comes up, might be told, and you can't
+tell which is the best. You believe there must be a _best_ way; but
+you might spend your life in trying to satisfy yourself which was that
+best way, and, when you came to the close of it, find you had done
+nothing,--hadn't even found out the way. I have always to remind myself
+that something, even if it be far from the best thing, is better than
+nothing. Perhaps the only way to arrive at the best way is to make plenty
+of blunders, and find them out.
+
+This morning I had been sitting a long time with my pen in my hand,
+thinking what this chapter ought to be about,--that is, what part of my own
+history, or of that of my neighbors interwoven therewith, I ought to take
+up next,--when my third child, my little Cecilia, aged five, came into the
+room, and said,--
+
+"Mamma, there's a poor man at the door, and Jemima won't give him any
+thing."
+
+"Quite right, my dear. We must give what we can to people we know. We are
+sure then that it is not wasted."
+
+"But he's so _very_ poor, mamma!"
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"Poor man! he has _only_ three children. I heard him tell Jemima. He was
+_so_ sorry! And _I_'m very sorry, too."
+
+"But don't you know you mustn't go to the door when any one is talking to
+Jemima?" I said.
+
+"Yes, mamma. I didn't go to the door: I stood in the hall and peeped."
+
+"But you mustn't even stand in the hall," I said. "Mind that."
+
+This was, perhaps, rather an oppressive reading of a proper enough rule;
+but I had a very special reason for it, involving an important event in my
+story, which occurred about two years after what I have last set down.
+
+One morning Percivale took a holiday in order to give me one, and we went
+to spend it at Richmond. It was the anniversary of our marriage; and as
+we wanted to enjoy it thoroughly, and, precious as children are, _every_
+pleasure is not enhanced by their company, we left ours at home,--Ethel and
+her brother Roger (named after Percivale's father), who was now nearly a
+year old, and wanted a good deal of attention. It was a lovely day, with
+just a sufficient number of passing clouds to glorify--that is, to do
+justice to--the sunshine, and a gentle breeze, which itself seemed to
+be taking a holiday, for it blew only just when you wanted it, and then
+only enough to make you think of that wind which, blowing where it lists,
+always blows where it is wanted. We took the train to Hammersmith; for my
+husband, having consulted the tide-table, and found that the river would be
+propitious, wished to row me from there to Richmond. How gay the river-side
+looked, with its fine broad landing stage, and the numberless boats
+ready to push off on the swift water, which kept growing and growing on
+the shingly shore! Percivale, however, would hire his boat at a certain
+builder's shed, that I might see it. That shed alone would have been worth
+coming to see--such a picture of loveliest gloom--as if it had been the
+cave where the twilight abode its time! You could not tell whether to call
+it light or shade,--that diffused presence of a soft elusive brown; but
+is what we call shade any thing but subdued light? All about, above, and
+below, lay the graceful creatures of the water, moveless and dead here on
+the shore, but there--launched into their own elemental world, and blown
+upon by the living wind--endowed at once with life and motion and quick
+response.
+
+Not having been used to boats, I felt nervous as we got into the long,
+sharp-nosed, hollow fish which Percivale made them shoot out on the rising
+tide; but the slight fear vanished almost the moment we were afloat,
+when, ignorant as I was of the art of rowing, I could not help seeing how
+perfectly Percivale was at home in it. The oars in his hands were like
+knitting-needles in mine, so deftly, so swimmingly, so variously, did he
+wield them. Only once my fear returned, when he stood up in the swaying
+thing--a mere length without breadth--to pull off his coat and waistcoat;
+but he stood steady, sat down gently, took his oars quietly, and the same
+instant we were shooting so fast through the rising tide that it seemed as
+if _we_ were pulling the water up to Richmond.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to steer?" said my husband. "It would amuse you."
+
+"I should like to learn," I said,--"not that I want to be amused; I am too
+happy to care for amusement."
+
+"Take those two cords behind you, then, one in each hand, sitting between
+them. That will do. Now, if you want me to go to your right, pull your
+right-hand cord; if you want me to go to your left, pull your left-hand
+one."
+
+I made an experiment or two, and found the predicted consequences follow: I
+ran him aground, first on one bank, then on the other. But when I did so a
+third time,--
+
+"Come! come!" he said: "this won't do, Mrs. Percivale. You're not trying
+your best. There is such a thing as gradation in steering as well as in
+painting, or music, or any thing else that is worth doing."
+
+"I pull the right line, don't I?" I said; for I was now in a mood to tease
+him.
+
+"Yes--to a wrong result," he answered. "You must feel your rudder, as you
+would the mouth of your horse with the bit, and not do any thing violent,
+except in urgent necessity."
+
+I answered by turning the head of the boat right towards the nearer bank.
+
+"I see!" he said, with a twinkle in his eyes. "I have put a dangerous power
+into your hands. But never mind. The queen may decree as she likes; but the
+sinews of war, you know"--
+
+I thought he meant that if I went on with my arbitrary behavior, he would
+drop his oars; and for a little while I behaved better. Soon, however, the
+spirit of mischief prompting me, I began my tricks again: to my surprise I
+found that I had no more command over the boat than over the huge barge,
+which, with its great red-brown sail, was slowly ascending in front of us;
+I couldn't turn its head an inch in the direction I wanted.
+
+"What does it mean, Percivale?" I cried, pulling with all my might, and
+leaning forward that I might pull the harder.
+
+"What does what mean?" he returned coolly.
+
+"That I can't move the boat."
+
+"Oh! It means that I have resumed the reins of government."
+
+"But how? I can't understand it."
+
+"And I am wiser than to make you too wise. Education is _not_ a panacea for
+moral evils. I quote your father, my dear."
+
+And he pulled away as if nothing were the matter.
+
+"Please, I like steering," I said remonstratingly. "And I like rowing."
+
+"I don't see why the two shouldn't go together."
+
+"Nor I. They ought. But not only does the steering depend on the rowing,
+but the rower can steer himself."
+
+"I will be a good girl, and steer properly."
+
+"Very well; steer away."
+
+He looked shorewards as he spoke; and then first I became aware that he had
+been watching my hands all the time. The boat now obeyed my lightest touch.
+
+How merrily the water rippled in the sun and the wind! while so responsive
+were our feelings to the play of light and shade around us, that more than
+once when a cloud crossed us, I saw its shadow turn almost into sadness
+on the countenance of my companion,--to vanish the next moment when the
+one sun above and the thousand mimic suns below shone out in universal
+laughter. When a steamer came in sight, or announced its approach by the
+far-heard sound of its beating paddles, it brought with it a few moments of
+almost awful responsibility; but I found that the presence of danger and
+duty together, instead of making me feel flurried, composed my nerves, and
+enabled me to concentrate my whole attention on getting the head of the
+boat as nearly as possible at right angles with the waves from the paddles;
+for Percivale had told me that if one of any size struck us on the side, it
+would most probably capsize us. But the way to give pleasure to my readers
+can hardly be to let myself grow garrulous in the memory of an ancient
+pleasure of my own. I will say nothing more of the delights of that day.
+They were such a contrast to its close, that twelve months at least elapsed
+before I was able to look back upon them without a shudder; for I could not
+rid myself of the foolish feeling that our enjoyment had been somehow
+to blame for what was happening at home while we were thus revelling in
+blessed carelessness.
+
+When we reached our little nest, rather late in the evening, I found to
+my annoyance that the front door was open. It had been a fault of which
+I thought I had cured the cook,--to leave it thus when she ran out to
+fetch any thing. Percivale went down to the study; and I walked into the
+drawing-room, about to ring the bell in anger. There, to my surprise and
+farther annoyance, I found Sarah, seated on the sofa with her head in her
+hands, and little Roger wide awake on the floor.
+
+"What _does_ this mean?" I cried. "The front door open! Master Roger still
+up! and you seated in the drawing-room!"
+
+"O ma'am!" she almost shrieked, starting up the moment I spoke, and, by the
+time I had put my angry interrogation, just able to gasp out--"Have you
+found her, ma'am?"
+
+"Found whom?" I returned in alarm, both at the question and at the face of
+the girl; for through the dusk I now saw that it was very pale, and that
+her eyes were red with crying.
+
+"Miss Ethel," she answered in a cry choked with a sob; and dropping again
+on the sofa, she hid her face once more between her hands.
+
+I rushed to the study-door, and called Percivale; then returned to question
+the girl. I wonder now that I did nothing outrageous; but fear kept down
+folly, and made me unnaturally calm.
+
+"Sarah," I said, as quietly as I could, while I trembled all over, "tell me
+what has happened. Where is the child?"
+
+"Indeed it's not my fault, ma'am. I was busy with Master Roger, and Miss
+Ethel was down stairs with Jemima."
+
+"Where is she?" I repeated sternly.
+
+"I don't know no more than the man in the moon, ma'am."
+
+"Where's Jemima?"
+
+"Run out to look for her?"
+
+"How long have you missed her?"
+
+"An hour. Or perhaps two hours. I don't know, my head's in such a whirl. I
+can't remember when I saw her last. O ma'am! What _shall_ I do?"
+
+Percivale had come up, and was standing beside me. When I looked round, he
+was as pale as death; and at the sight of his face, I nearly dropped on the
+floor. But he caught hold of me, and said, in a voice so dreadfully still
+that it frightened me more than any thing,--
+
+"Come, my love; do not give way, for we must go to the police at once."
+Then, turning to Sarah, "Have you searched the house and garden?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, sir; every hole and corner. We've looked under every bed, and into
+every cupboard and chest,--the coal-cellar, the boxroom,--everywhere."
+
+"The bathroom?" I cried.
+
+"Oh, yes, ma'am! the bathroom, and everywhere."
+
+"Have there been any tramps about the house since we left?" Percivale
+asked.
+
+"Not that I know of; but the nursery window looks into the garden, you
+know, sir. Jemima didn't mention it."
+
+"Come then, my dear," said my husband.
+
+He compelled me to swallow a glass of wine, and led me away, almost
+unconscious of my bodily movements, to the nearest cab-stand. I wondered
+afterwards, when I recalled the calm gaze with which he glanced along the
+line, and chose the horse whose appearance promised the best speed. In a
+few minutes we were telling the inspector at the police-station in Albany
+Street what had happened. He took a sheet of paper, and asking one question
+after another about her age, appearance, and dress, wrote down our answers.
+He then called a man, to whom he gave the paper, with some words of
+direction.
+
+"The men are now going on their beats for the night," he said, turning
+again to us. "They will all hear the description of the child, and some of
+them have orders to search."
+
+"Thank you," said my husband. "Which station had we better go to next?"
+
+"The news will be at the farthest before you can reach the nearest," he
+answered. "We shall telegraph to the suburbs first."
+
+"Then what more is there we can do?" asked Percivale.
+
+"Nothing," said the inspector,--"except you find out whether any of the
+neighbors saw her, and when and where. It would be something to know in
+what direction she was going. Have you any ground for suspicion? Have you
+ever discharged a servant? Were any tramps seen about the place?"
+
+"I know, who it is!" I cried. "It's the woman that took Theodora! It's
+Theodora's mother! I know it is!"
+
+Percivale explained what I meant.
+
+"That's what people get, you see, when they take on themselves other
+people's business," returned the inspector. "That child ought to have been
+sent to the workhouse."
+
+He laid his head on his hand for a moment.
+
+"It seems likely enough," he added. Then after another pause--"I have your
+address. The child shall be brought back to you the moment she's found. We
+can't mistake her after your description."
+
+"Where are you going now?" I said to my husband, as we left the station to
+re-enter the cab.
+
+"I don't know," he answered, "except we go home and question all the shops
+in the neighborhood."
+
+"Let us go to Miss Clare first," I said.
+
+"By all means," he answered.
+
+We were soon at the entrance of Lime Court.
+
+When we turned the corner in the middle of it, we heard the sound of a
+piano.
+
+"She's at home!" I cried, with a feeble throb of satisfaction. The fear
+that she might be out had for the last few moments been uppermost.
+
+We entered the house, and ascended the stairs in haste. Not a creature
+did we meet, except a wicked-looking cat. The top of her head was black,
+her forehead and face white; and the black and white were shaped so as to
+look like hair parted over a white forehead, which gave her green eyes a
+frightfully human look as she crouched in the corner of a window-sill in
+the light of a gas-lamp outside. But before we reached the top of the first
+stair we heard the sounds of dancing, as well as of music. In a moment
+after, with our load of gnawing fear and helpless eagerness, we stood in
+the midst of a merry assembly of men, women, and children, who filled Miss
+Clare's room to overflowing. It was Saturday night, and they were gathered
+according to custom for their weekly music.
+
+They made a way for us; and Miss Clare left the piano, and came to meet us
+with a smile on her beautiful face. But, when she saw our faces, hers fell.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Mrs. Percivale?" she asked in alarm.
+
+I sunk on the chair from which she had risen.
+
+"We've lost Ethel," said my husband quietly.
+
+"What do you mean? You don't"--
+
+"No, no: she's gone; she's stolen. We don't know where she is," he answered
+with faltering voice. "We've just been to the police."
+
+Miss Clare turned white; but, instead of making any remark, she called
+out to some of her friends whose good manners were making them leave the
+room,--
+
+"Don't go, please; we want you." Then turning to me, she asked, "May I do
+as I think best?"
+
+"Yes, certainly," answered my husband.
+
+"My friend, Mrs. Percivale," she said, addressing the whole assembly, "has
+lost her little girl."
+
+A murmur of dismay and sympathy arose.
+
+"What can we do to find her?" she went on.
+
+They fell to talking among themselves. The next instant, two men came up
+to us, making their way from the neighborhood of the door. The one was a
+keen-faced, elderly man, with iron-gray whiskers and clean-shaved chin; the
+other was my first acquaintance in the neighborhood, the young bricklayer.
+The elder addressed my husband, while the other listened without speaking.
+
+"Tell us what she's like, sir, and how she was dressed--though that ain't
+much use. She'll be all different by this time."
+
+The words shot a keener pang to my heart than it had yet felt. My darling
+stripped of her nice clothes, and covered with dirty, perhaps infected
+garments. But it was no time to give way to feeling.
+
+My husband repeated to the men the description he had given the police,
+loud enough for the whole room to hear; and the women in particular, Miss
+Clare told me afterwards, caught it up with remarkable accuracy. They would
+not have done so, she said, but that their feelings were touched.
+
+"Tell them also, please, Mr. Percivale, about the child Mrs. Percivale's
+father and mother found and brought up. That may have something to do with
+this."
+
+My husband told them all the story; adding that the mother of the child
+might have found out who we were, and taken ours as a pledge for the
+recovery of her own.
+
+Here one of the women spoke.
+
+"That dark woman you took in one night--two years ago, miss--she say
+something. I was astin' of her in the mornin' what her trouble was, for
+that trouble _she_ had on _her_ mind was plain to see, and she come over
+something, half-way like, about losin' of a child; but whether it were
+dead, or strayed, or stolen, or what, I couldn't tell; and no more, I
+believe, she wanted me to."
+
+Here another woman spoke.
+
+"I'm 'most sure I saw her--the same woman--two days ago, and no furrer off
+than Gower Street," she said. "You're too good by half, miss," she went on,
+"to the likes of sich. They ain't none of them respectable."
+
+"Perhaps you'll see some good come out of it before long," said Miss Clare
+in reply.
+
+The words sounded like a rebuke, for all this time I had hardly sent a
+thought upwards for help. The image of my child had so filled my heart,
+that there was no room left for the thought of duty, or even of God.
+
+Miss Clare went on, still addressing the company, and her words had a tone
+of authority.
+
+"I will tell you what you must do," she said. "You must, every one of you,
+run and tell everybody you know, and tell every one to tell everybody else.
+You mustn't stop to talk it over with each other, or let those you tell
+it to stop to talk to you about it; for it is of the greatest consequence
+no time should be lost in making it as quickly and as widely known as
+possible. Go, please."
+
+In a few moments the room was empty of all but ourselves. The rush on the
+stairs was tremendous for a single minute, and then all was still. Even the
+children had rushed out to tell what other children they could find.
+
+"What must we do next?" said my husband.
+
+Miss Clare thought for a moment.
+
+"I would go and tell Mr. Blackstone," she said. "It is a long way from
+here, but whoever has taken the child would not be likely to linger in the
+neighborhood. It is best to try every thing."
+
+"Right," said my husband. "Come, Wynnie."
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to leave Mrs. Percivale with me?" said Miss Clare.
+"It is dreadfully fatiguing to go driving over the stones."
+
+It was very kind of her; but if she had been a mother she would not have
+thought of parting me from my husband; neither would she have fancied that
+I could remain inactive so long as it was possible even to imagine I was
+doing something; but when I told her how I felt, she saw at once that it
+would be better for me to go.
+
+We set off instantly, and drove to Mr. Blackstone's. What a long way it
+was! Down Oxford Street and Holborn we rattled and jolted, and then through
+many narrow ways in which I had never been, emerging at length in a broad
+road, with many poor and a few fine old houses in it; then again plunging
+into still more shabby regions of small houses, which, alas! were new, and
+yet wretched! At length, near an open space, where yet not a blade of grass
+could grow for the trampling of many feet, and for the smoke from tall
+chimneys, close by a gasometer of awful size, we found the parsonage, and
+Mr. Blackstone in his study. The moment he heard our story he went to the
+door and called his servant. "Run, Jabez," he said, "and tell the sexton to
+ring the church-bell. I will come to him directly I hear it."
+
+I may just mention that Jabez and his wife, who formed the whole of Mr.
+Blackstone's household, did not belong to his congregation, but were
+members of a small community in the neighborhood, calling themselves
+Peculiar Baptists.
+
+About ten minutes passed, during which little was said: Mr. Blackstone
+never seemed to have any mode of expressing his feelings except action, and
+where that was impossible they took hardly any recognizable shape. When the
+first boom of the big bell filled the little study in which we sat, I gave
+a cry, and jumped up from my chair: it sounded in my ears like the knell of
+my lost baby, for at the moment I was thinking of her as once when a baby
+she lay for dead in my arms. Mr. Blackstone got up and left the room, and
+my husband rose and would have followed him; but, saying he would be back
+in a few minutes, he shut the door and left us. It was half an hour, a
+dreadful half-hour, before he returned; for to sit doing nothing, not even
+being carried somewhere to do something, was frightful.
+
+"I've told them all about it," he said. "I couldn't do better than follow
+Miss Clare's example. But my impression is, that, if the woman you suspect
+be the culprit, she would make her way out to the open as quickly as
+possible. Such people are most at home on the commons: they are of a less
+gregarious nature than the wild animals of the town. What shall you do
+next?"
+
+"That is just what I want to know," answered my husband.
+
+He never asked advice except when he did not know what to do; and never
+except from one whose advice he meant to follow.
+
+"Well," returned Mr. Blackstone, "I should put an advertisement into every
+one of the morning papers."
+
+"But the offices will all be closed," said Percivale.
+
+"Yes, the publishing, but not the printing offices."
+
+"How am I to find out where they are?"
+
+"I know one or two of them, and the people there will tell us the rest."
+
+"Then you mean to go with us?"
+
+"Of course I do,--that is, if you will have me. You don't think I would
+leave you to go alone? Have you had any supper?"
+
+"No. Would you like something, my dear?" said Percivale turning to me.
+
+"I couldn't swallow a mouthful," I said.
+
+"Nor I either," said Percivale.
+
+"Then I'll just take a hunch of bread with me," said Mr. Blackstone, "for I
+am hungry. I've had nothing since one o'clock."
+
+We neither asked him not to go, nor offered to wait till he had had his
+supper. Before we reached Printing-House Square he had eaten half a loaf.
+
+"Are you sure," said my husband, as we were starting, "that they will take
+an advertisement at the printing-office?"
+
+"I think they will. The circumstances are pressing. They will see that we
+are honest people, and will make a push to help us. But for any thing I
+know it may be quite _en règle_."
+
+"We must pay, though," said Percivale, putting his hand in his pocket,
+and taking out his purse. "There! Just as I feared! No money!--Two--three
+shillings--and sixpence!"
+
+Mr. Blackstone stopped the cab.
+
+"I've not got as much," he said. "But it's of no consequence. I'll run and
+write a check."
+
+"But where can you change it? The little shops about here won't be able."
+
+"There's the Blue Posts."
+
+"Let me take it, then. You won't be seen going into a public-house?" said
+Percivale.
+
+"Pooh! pooh!" said Mr. Blackstone. "Do you think my character won't stand
+that much? Besides, they wouldn't change it for you. But when I think of
+it, I used the last check in my book in the beginning of the week. Never
+mind; they will lend me five pounds."
+
+We drove to the Blue Posts. He got out, and returned in one minute with
+five sovereigns.
+
+"What will people say to your borrowing five pounds at a public-house?"
+said Percivale.
+
+"If they say what is right, it won't hurt me."
+
+"But if they say what is wrong?"
+
+"That they can do any time, and that won't hurt me, either."
+
+"But what will the landlord himself think?"
+
+"I have no doubt he feels grateful to me for being so friendly. You can't
+oblige a man more than by asking a _light_ favor of him."
+
+"Do you think it well in your position to be obliged to a man in his?"
+asked Percivale.
+
+"I do. I am glad of the chance. It will bring me into friendly relations
+with him."
+
+"Do you wish, then, to be in friendly relations with him?"
+
+"Indubitably. In what other relations do you suppose a clergyman ought to
+be with one of his parishioners?"
+
+"You didn't invite _him_ into your parish, I presume."
+
+"No; and he didn't invite me. The thing was settled in higher quarters.
+There we are, anyhow; and I have done quite a stroke of business in
+borrowing that money of him."
+
+Mr. Blackstone laughed, and the laugh sounded frightfully harsh in my ears.
+
+"A man"--my husband went on, who was surprised that a clergyman should
+be so liberal--"a man who sells drink!--in whose house so many of your
+parishioners will to-morrow night get too drunk to be in church the next
+morning!"
+
+"I wish having been drunk were what _would_ keep them from being in church.
+Drunk or sober, it would be all the same. Few of them care to go. They are
+turning out better, however, than when first I came. As for the publican,
+who knows what chance of doing him a good turn it may put in my way?"
+
+"You don't expect to persuade him to shut up shop?"
+
+"No: he must persuade himself to that."
+
+"What good, then, can you expect to do him?"
+
+"Who knows? I say. You can't tell what good may or may not come out of it,
+any more than you can tell which of your efforts, or which of your helpers,
+may this night be the means of restoring your child."
+
+"What do you expect the man to say about it?"
+
+"I shall provide him with something to say. I don't want him to attribute
+it to some foolish charity. He might. In the New Testament, publicans are
+acknowledged to have hearts."
+
+"Yes; but the word has a very different meaning in the New Testament."
+
+"The feeling religious people bear towards them, however, comes very near
+to that with which society regarded the publicans of old."
+
+"They are far more hurtful to society than those tax-gatherers."
+
+"They may be. I dare say they are. Perhaps they are worse than the sinners
+with whom their namesakes of the New Testament are always coupled."
+
+I will not follow the conversation further. I will only give the close of
+it. Percivale told me afterwards that he had gone on talking in the hope of
+diverting my thoughts a little.
+
+"What, then, do you mean to tell him?" asked Percivale.
+
+"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," said Mr.
+Blackstone. "I shall go in to-morrow morning, just at the time when there
+will probably be far too many people at the bar,--a little after noon. I
+shall return him his five sovereigns, ask for a glass of ale, and tell him
+the whole story,--how my friend, the celebrated painter, came with his
+wife,--and the rest of it, adding, I trust, that the child is all right,
+and at the moment probably going out for a walk with her mother, who won't
+let her out of her sight for a moment."
+
+He laughed again, and again I thought him heartless; but I understand him
+better now. I wondered, too, that Percivale _could_ go on talking, and yet
+I found that their talk did make the time go a little quicker. At length we
+reached the printing-office of "The Times,"--near Blackfriars' Bridge, I
+think.
+
+After some delay, we saw an overseer, who, curt enough at first, became
+friendly when he heard our case. If he had not had children of his own, we
+might perhaps have fared worse. He took down the description and address,
+and promised that the advertisement should appear in the morning's paper in
+the best place he could now find for it.
+
+Before we left, we received minute directions as to the whereabouts of the
+next nearest office. We spent the greater part of the night in driving from
+one printing-office to another. Mr. Blackstone declared he would not leave
+us until we had found her.
+
+"You have to preach twice to-morrow," said Percivale: it was then three
+o'clock.
+
+"I shall preach all the better," he returned. "Yes: I feel as if I should
+give them _one_ good sermon to-morrow."
+
+"The man talks as if the child were found already!" I thought, with
+indignation. "It's a pity he hasn't a child of his own! he would be more
+sympathetic." At the same time, if I had been honest, I should have
+confessed to myself that his confidence and hope helped to keep me up.
+
+At last, having been to the printing-office of every daily paper in London,
+we were on our dreary way home.
+
+Oh, how dreary it was!--and the more dreary that the cool, sweet light of a
+spring dawn was growing in every street, no smoke having yet begun to pour
+from the multitudinous chimneys to sully its purity! From misery and want
+of sleep, my soul and body both felt like a gray foggy night. Every now and
+then the thought of my child came with a fresh pang,--not that she was one
+moment absent from me, but that a new thought about her would dart a new
+sting into the ever-burning throb of the wound. If you had asked me the one
+blessed thing in the world, I should have said _sleep_--with my husband
+and children beside me. But I dreaded sleep now, both for its visions and
+for the frightful waking. Now and then I would start violently, thinking I
+heard my Ethel cry; but from the cab-window no child was ever to be seen,
+down all the lonely street. Then I would sink into a succession of efforts
+to picture to myself her little face,--white with terror and misery, and
+smeared with the dirt of the pitiful hands that rubbed the streaming
+eyes. They might have beaten her! she might have cried herself to sleep
+in some wretched hovel; or, worse, in some fever-stricken and crowded
+lodging-house, with horrible sights about her and horrible voices in her
+ears! Or she might at that moment be dragged wearily along a country-road,
+farther and farther from her mother! I could have shrieked, and torn my
+hair. What if I should never see her again? She might be murdered, and I
+never know it! O my darling! my darling!
+
+At the thought a groan escaped me. A hand was laid on my arm. That I knew
+was my husband's. But a voice was in my ear, and that was Mr. Blackstone's.
+
+"Do you think God loves the child less than you do? Or do you think he is
+less able to take care of her than you are? When the disciples thought
+themselves sinking, Jesus rebuked them for being afraid. Be still, and you
+will see the hand of God in this. Good you cannot foresee will come out of
+it."
+
+I could not answer him, but I felt both rebuked and grateful.
+
+All at once I thought of Roger. What would he say when he found that his
+pet was gone, and we had never told him?
+
+"Roger!" I said to my husband. "We've never told him!"
+
+"Let us go now," he returned.
+
+We were at the moment close to North Crescent. After a few thundering raps
+at the door, the landlady came down. Percivale rushed up, and in a few
+minutes returned with Roger. They got into the cab. A great talk followed;
+but I heard hardly any thing, or rather I heeded nothing. I only recollect
+that Roger was very indignant with his brother for having been out all
+night without him to help.
+
+"I never thought of you, Roger," said Percivale.
+
+"So much the worse!" said Roger.
+
+"No," said Mr. Blackstone. "A thousand things make us forget. I dare say
+your brother all but forgot God in the first misery of his loss. To have
+thought of you, and not to have told you, would have been another thing."
+
+A few minutes after, we stopped at our desolate house, and the cabman
+was dismissed with one of the sovereigns from the Blue Posts. I wondered
+afterwards what manner of man or woman had changed it there. A dim light
+was burning in the drawing-room. Percivale took his pass-key, and opened
+the door. I hurried in, and went straight to my own room; for I longed
+to be alone that I might weep--nor weep only. I fell on my knees by the
+bedside, buried my face, and sobbed, and tried to pray. But I could not
+collect my thoughts; and, overwhelmed by a fresh access of despair, I
+started again to my feet.
+
+Could I believe my eyes? What was that in the bed? Trembling as with
+an ague,--in terror lest the vision should by vanishing prove itself
+a vision,--I stooped towards it. I heard a breathing! It was the fair
+hair and the rosy face of my darling--fast asleep--without one trace of
+suffering on her angelic loveliness! I remember no more for a while. They
+tell me I gave a great cry, and fell on the floor. When I came to myself
+I was lying on the bed. My husband was bending over me, and Roger and
+Mr. Blackstone were both in the room. I could not speak, but my husband
+understood my questioning gaze.
+
+"Yes, yes, my love," he said quietly: "she's all right--safe and sound,
+thank God!"
+
+And I did thank God.
+
+Mr. Blackstone came to the bedside, with a look and a smile that seemed to
+my conscience to say, "I told you so." I held out my hand to him, but could
+only weep. Then I remembered how we had vexed Roger, and called him.
+
+"Dear Roger," I said, "forgive me, and go and tell Miss Clare."
+
+I had some reason to think this the best amends I could make him.
+
+"I will go at once," he said. "She will be anxious."
+
+"And I will go to my sermon," said Mr. Blackstone, with the same quiet
+smile.
+
+They shook hands with me, and went away. And my husband and I rejoiced over
+our first-born.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+ITS SEQUEL.
+
+
+My darling was recovered neither through Miss Clare's injunctions nor Mr.
+Blackstone's bell-ringing. A woman was walking steadily westward, carrying
+the child asleep in her arms, when a policeman stopped her at Turnham
+Green. She betrayed no fear, only annoyance, and offered no resistance,
+only begged he would not wake the child, or take her from her. He brought
+them in a cab to the police-station, whence the child was sent home. As
+soon as she arrived, Sarah gave her a warm bath, and put her to bed; but
+she scarcely opened her eyes.
+
+Jemima had run about the streets till midnight, and then fallen asleep on
+the doorstep, where the policeman found her when he brought the child.
+For a week she went about like one dazed; and the blunders she made were
+marvellous. She ordered a brace of cod from the poulterer, and a pound of
+anchovies at the crockery shop. One day at dinner, we could not think how
+the chops were so pulpy, and we got so many bits of bone in our mouth: she
+had powerfully beaten them, as if they had been steaks. She sent up melted
+butter for bread-sauce, and stuffed a hare with sausages.
+
+After breakfast, Percivale walked to the police-station, to thank the
+inspector, pay what expenses had been incurred, and see the woman. I was
+not well enough to go with him. My Marion is a white-faced thing, and her
+eyes look much too big for her small face. I suggested that he should take
+Miss Clare. As it was early, he was fortunate enough to find her at home,
+and she accompanied him willingly, and at once recognized the woman as the
+one she had befriended.
+
+He told the magistrate he did not wish to punish her, but that there were
+certain circumstances which made him desirous of detaining her until
+a gentleman, who, he believed, could identify her, should arrive. The
+magistrate therefore remanded her.
+
+The next day but one my father came. When he saw her, he had little doubt
+she was the same that had carried off Theo; but he could not be absolutely
+certain, because he had seen her only by moonlight. He told the magistrate
+the whole story, saying, that, if she should prove the mother of the
+child, he was most anxious to try what he could do for her. The magistrate
+expressed grave doubts whether he would find it possible to befriend her
+to any effectual degree. My father said he would try, if he could but be
+certain she was the mother.
+
+"If she stole the child merely to compel the restitution of her own," he
+said. "I cannot regard her conduct with any abhorrence. But, if she is not
+the mother of the child, I must leave her to the severity of the law."
+
+"I once discharged a woman," said the magistrate, "who had committed the
+same offence, for I was satisfied she had done so purely from the desire to
+possess the child."
+
+"But might not a thief say he was influenced merely by the desire to add
+another sovereign to his hoard?"
+
+"The greed of the one is a natural affection; that of the other a vice."
+
+"But the injury to the loser is far greater in the one case than in the
+other."
+
+"To set that off, however, the child is more easily discovered. Besides,
+the false appetite grows with indulgence; whereas one child would still the
+natural one."
+
+"Then you would allow her to go on stealing child after child, until she
+succeeded in keeping one," said my father, laughing.
+
+"I dismissed her with the warning, that, if ever she did so again, this
+would be brought up against her, and she would have the severest punishment
+the law could inflict. It may be right to pass a first offence, and wrong
+to pass a second. I tried to make her measure the injury done to the
+mother, by her own sorrow at losing the child; and I think not without
+effect. At all events, it was some years ago, and I have not heard of her
+again."
+
+Now came in the benefit of the kindness Miss Clare had shown the woman. I
+doubt if any one else could have got the truth from her. Even she found it
+difficult; for to tell her that if she was Theo's mother she should not
+be punished, might be only to tempt her to lie. All Miss Clare could do
+was to assure her of the kindness of every one concerned, and to urge her
+to disclose her reasons for doing such a grievous wrong as steal another
+woman's child.
+
+"They stole my child," she blurted out at last, when the cruelty of the
+action was pressed upon her.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Miss Clare: "you left her to die in the cold."
+
+"No, no!" she cried. "I wanted somebody to hear her, and take her in. I
+wasn't far off, and was just going to take her again, when I saw a light,
+and heard them searching for her. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!"
+
+"Then how can you say they stole her? You would have had no child at all,
+but for them. She was nearly dead when they found her. And in return you go
+and steal their grandchild!"
+
+"They took her from me afterwards. They wouldn't let me have my own flesh
+and blood. I wanted to let them know what it was to have _their_ child
+taken from them."
+
+"How could they tell she was your child, when you stole her away like a
+thief? It might, for any thing they knew, be some other woman stealing her,
+as you stole theirs the other day? What would have become of you if it had
+been so?"
+
+To this reasoning she made no answer.
+
+"I want my child; I want my child," she moaned. Then breaking out--"I shall
+kill myself if I don't get my child!" she cried. "Oh, lady, you don't know
+what it is to have a child and not have her! I shall kill myself if they
+don't give me her back. They can't say I did their child any harm. I was as
+good to her as if she had been my own."
+
+"They know that quite well, and don't want to punish you. Would you like to
+see your child?"
+
+She clasped her hands above her head, fell on her knees at Miss Clare's
+feet, and looked up in her face without uttering a word.
+
+"I will speak to Mr. Walton," said Miss Clare; and left her.
+
+The next morning she was discharged, at the request of my husband, who
+brought her home with him.
+
+Sympathy with the mother-passion in her bosom had melted away all my
+resentment. She was a fine young woman, of about five and twenty, though
+her weather-browned complexion made her look at first much older. With the
+help of the servants, I persuaded her to have a bath, during which they
+removed her clothes, and substituted others. She objected to putting them
+on; seemed half-frightened at them, as if they might involve some shape of
+bondage, and begged to have her own again. At last Jemima, who, although so
+sparingly provided with brains, is not without genius, prevailed upon her,
+insisting that her little girl would turn away from her if she wasn't well
+dressed, for she had been used to see ladies about her. With a deep sigh,
+she yielded; begging, however, to have her old garments restored to her.
+
+She had brought with her a small bundle, tied up in a cotton handkerchief;
+and from it she now took a scarf of red silk, and twisted it up with her
+black hair in a fashion I had never seen before. In this head-dress she
+had almost a brilliant look; while her carriage had a certain dignity
+hard of association with poverty--not inconsistent, however, with what
+I have since learned about the gypsies. My husband admired her even more
+than I did, and made a very good sketch of her. Her eyes were large and
+dark--unquestionably fine; and if there was not much of the light of
+thought in them, they had a certain wildness which in a measure made up for
+the want. She had rather a Spanish than an Eastern look, I thought, with an
+air of defiance that prevented me from feeling at ease with her; but in the
+presence of Miss Clare she seemed humbler, and answered her questions more
+readily than ours. If Ethel was in the room, her eyes would be constantly
+wandering after her, with a wistful, troubled, eager look. Surely, the
+mother-passion must have infinite relations and destinies.
+
+As I was unable to leave home, my father persuaded Miss Clare to accompany
+him and help him to take charge of her. I confess it was a relief to me
+when she left the house; for though I wanted to be as kind to her as I
+could, I felt considerable discomfort in her presence.
+
+When Miss Clare returned, the next day but one, I found she had got from
+her the main points of her history, fully justifying previous conjectures
+of my father's, founded on what he knew of the character and customs of the
+gypsies.
+
+She belonged to one of the principal gypsy families in this country. The
+fact that they had no settled habitation, but lived in tents, like Abraham
+and Isaac, had nothing to do with poverty. The silver buttons on her
+father's coat, were, she said, worth nearly twenty pounds; and when a
+friend of any distinction came to tea with them, they spread a table-cloth
+of fine linen on the grass, and set out upon it the best of china, and a
+tea-service of hall-marked silver. She said her friends--as much as any
+gentleman in the land--scorned stealing; and affirmed that no real gypsy
+would "risk his neck for his belly," except he were driven by hunger. All
+her family could read, she said, and carried a big Bible about with them.
+
+One summer they were encamped for several months in the neighborhood of
+Edinburgh, making horn-spoons and baskets, and some of them working in tin.
+There they were visited by a clergyman, who talked and read the Bible to
+them, and prayed with them. But all their visitors were not of the same
+sort with him. One of them was a young fellow of loose character, a clerk
+in the city, who, attracted by her appearance, prevailed upon her to meet
+him often. She was not then eighteen. Any aberration from the paths of
+modesty is exceedingly rare among the gypsies, and regarded with severity;
+and her father, hearing of this, gave her a terrible punishment with the
+whip he used in driving his horses. In terror of what would follow when the
+worst came to be known, she ran away; and, soon forsaken by her so-called
+lover, wandered about, a common vagrant, until her baby was born--under the
+stars, on a summer night, in a field of long grass.
+
+For some time she wandered up and down, longing to join some tribe of her
+own people, but dreading unspeakably the disgrace of her motherhood. At
+length, having found a home for her child, she associated herself with a
+gang of gypsies of inferior character, amongst whom she had many hardships
+to endure. Things, however, bettered a little after one of their number
+was hanged for stabbing a cousin, and her position improved. It was not,
+however, any intention of carrying off her child to share her present lot,
+but the urgings of mere mother-hunger for a sight of her, that drove her
+to the Hall. When she had succeeded in enticing her out of sight of the
+house, however, the longing to possess her grew fierce; and braving all
+consequences, or rather, I presume, unable to weigh them, she did carry her
+away. Foiled in this attempt, and seeing that her chances of future success
+in any similar one were diminished by it, she sought some other plan.
+Learning that one of the family was married, and had removed to London,
+she succeeded, through gypsy acquaintances who lodged occasionally near
+Tottenham Court Road, in finding out where we lived, and carried off Ethel
+with the vague intent, as we had rightly conjectured, of using her as a
+means for the recovery of her own child.
+
+Theodora was now about seven years of age--almost as wild as ever. Although
+tolerably obedient, she was not nearly so much so as the other children had
+been at her age; partly, perhaps, because my father could not bring himself
+to use that severity to the child of other people with which he had judged
+it proper to treat his own.
+
+Miss Clare was present, with my father and the rest of the family, when the
+mother and daughter met. They were all more than curious to see how the
+child would behave, and whether there would be any signs of an instinct
+that drew her to her parent. In this, however, they were disappointed.
+
+It was a fine warm forenoon when she came running on to the lawn where they
+were assembled,--the gypsy mother with them.
+
+"There she is!" said my father to the woman. "Make the best of yourself you
+can."
+
+Miss Clare said the poor creature turned very pale, but her eyes glowed
+with such a fire!
+
+With the cunning of her race, she knew better than bound forward and catch
+up the child in her arms. She walked away from the rest, and stood watching
+the little damsel, romping merrily with Mr. Wagtail. They thought she
+recognized the dog, and was afraid of him. She had put on a few silver
+ornaments which she had either kept or managed to procure, notwithstanding
+her poverty; for both the men and women of her race manifest in a strong
+degree that love for barbaric adornment which, as well as their other
+peculiarities, points to an Eastern origin. The glittering of these in
+the sun, and the glow of her red scarf in her dark hair, along with
+the strangeness of her whole appearance, attracted the child, and she
+approached to look at her nearer. Then the mother took from her pocket a
+large gilded ball, which had probably been one of the ornaments on the top
+of a clock, and rolled it gleaming golden along the grass. Theo and Mr.
+Wagtail bounded after it with a shriek and a bark. Having examined it for a
+moment, the child threw it again along the lawn; and this time the mother,
+lithe as a leopard and fleet as a savage, joined in the chase, caught it
+first, and again sent it spinning away, farther from the assembled group.
+Once more all three followed in swift pursuit; but this time the mother
+took care to allow the child to seize the treasure. After the sport had
+continued a little while, what seemed a general consultation, of mother,
+child, and dog, took place over the bauble; and presently they saw that
+Theo was eating something.
+
+"I trust," said my mother, "she won't hurt the child with any nasty stuff."
+
+"She will not do so wittingly," said my father, "you may be sure. Anyhow,
+we must not interfere."
+
+In a few minutes more the mother approached them with a subdued look of
+triumph, and her eyes overflowing with light, carrying the child in her
+arms. Theo was playing with some foreign coins which adorned her hair, and
+with a string of coral and silver beads round her neck.
+
+For the rest of the day they were left to do much as they pleased; only
+every one kept good watch.
+
+But in the joy of recovering her child, the mother seemed herself to have
+gained a new and childlike spirit. The more than willingness with which she
+hastened to do what, even in respect of her child, was requested of her, as
+if she fully acknowledged the right of authority in those who had been her
+best friends, was charming. Whether this would last when the novelty of the
+new experience had worn off, whether jealousy would not then come in for
+its share in the ordering of her conduct, remained to be shown; but in the
+mean time the good in her was uppermost.
+
+She was allowed to spend a whole fortnight in making friends with her
+daughter, before a word was spoken about the future; the design of my
+father being through the child to win the mother. Certain people considered
+him not eager enough to convert the wicked: whatever apparent indifference
+he showed in that direction arose from his utter belief in the guiding
+of God, and his dread of outrunning his designs. He would _follow_ the
+operations of the Spirit.
+
+"Your forced hot-house fruits," he would say, "are often finer to look at
+than those which have waited for God's wind and weather; but what are they
+worth in respect of all for the sake of which fruit exists?"
+
+Until an opportunity, then, was thrown in his way, he would hold back; but
+when it was clear to him that he had to minister, then was he thoughtful,
+watchful, instant, unswerving. You might have seen him during this time,
+as the letters of Connie informed me, often standing for minutes together
+watching the mother and daughter, and pondering in his heart concerning
+them.
+
+Every advantage being thus afforded her, not without the stirring of some
+natural pangs in those who had hitherto mothered the child, the fortnight
+had not passed, before, to all appearance, the unknown mother was with the
+child the greatest favorite of all. And it was my father's expectation, for
+he was a profound believer in blood, that the natural and generic instincts
+of the child would be developed together; in other words, that as she grew
+in what was common to humanity, she would grow likewise in what belonged to
+her individual origin. This was not an altogether comforting expectation to
+those of us who neither had so much faith as he, nor saw so hopefully the
+good that lay in every evil.
+
+One twilight, he overheard the following talk between them. When they came
+near where he sat, Theodora, carried by her mother, and pulling at her neck
+with her arms, was saying, "Tell me; tell me; tell me," in the tone of one
+who would compel an answer to a question repeatedly asked in vain.
+
+"What do you want me to tell you?" said her mother. "You know well enough.
+Tell me your name."
+
+In reply, she uttered a few words my father did not comprehend, and took to
+be Zingaree. The child shook her petulantly and with violence, crying,--
+
+"That's nonsense. I don't know what you say, and I don't know what to call
+you."
+
+My father had desired the household, if possible, to give no name to the
+woman in the child's hearing.
+
+"Call me mam, if you like."
+
+"But you're not a lady, and I won't say ma'am to you," said Theo, rude as a
+child will sometimes be when least she intends offence.
+
+Her mother set her down, and gave a deep sigh. Was it only that the child's
+restlessness and roughness tired her? My father thought otherwise.
+
+"Tell me; tell me," the child persisted, beating her with her little
+clenched fist. "Take me up again, and tell me, or I will make you."
+
+My father thought it time to interfere. He stepped forward. The mother
+started with a little cry, and caught up the child.
+
+"Theo," said my father, "I cannot allow you to be rude, especially to one
+who loves you more than any one else loves you."
+
+The woman set her down again, dropped on her knees, and caught and kissed
+his hand.
+
+The child stared; but she stood in awe of my father,--perhaps the more that
+she had none for any one else,--and, when her mother lifted her once more,
+was carried away in silence.
+
+The difficulty was got over by the child's being told to call her mother
+_Nurse_.
+
+My father was now sufficiently satisfied with immediate results to carry
+out the remainder of his contingent plan, of which my mother heartily
+approved. The gardener and his wife being elderly people, and having no
+family, therefore not requiring the whole of their cottage, which was
+within a short distance of the house, could spare a room, which my mother
+got arranged for the gypsy; and there she was housed, with free access to
+her child, and the understanding that when Theo liked to sleep with her,
+she was at liberty to do so.
+
+She was always ready to make herself useful; but it was little she could
+do for some time, and it was with difficulty that she settled to any
+occupation at all continuous.
+
+Before long it became evident that her old habits were working in her and
+making her restless. She was pining after the liberty of her old wandering
+life, with sun and wind, space and change, all about her. It was spring;
+and the reviving life of nature was rousing in her the longing for motion
+and room and variety engendered by the roving centuries which had passed
+since first her ancestors were driven from their homes in far Hindostan.
+But my father had foreseen the probability, and had already thought over
+what could be done for her if the wandering passion should revive too
+powerfully. He reasoned that there was nothing bad in such an impulse,--one
+doubtless, which would have been felt in all its force by Abraham himself,
+had he quitted his tents and gone to dwell in a city,--however much its
+indulgence might place her at a disadvantage in the midst of a settled
+social order. He saw, too, that any attempt to coerce it would probably
+result in entire frustration; that the passion for old forms of freedom
+would gather tenfold vigor in consequence. It would be far better to favor
+its indulgence, in the hope that the love of her child would, like an
+elastic but infrangible cord, gradually tame her down to a more settled
+life.
+
+He proposed, therefore, that she should, as a matter of duty, go and visit
+her parents, and let them know of her welfare. She looked alarmed.
+
+"Your father will show you no unkindness, I am certain, after the lapse of
+so many years," he added. "Think it over, and tell me to-morrow how you
+feel about it. You shall go by train to Edinburgh, and once there you will
+soon be able to find them. Of course you couldn't take the child with you;
+but she will be safe with us till you come back."
+
+The result was that she went; and having found her people, and spent a
+fortnight with them, returned in less than a month. The rest of the year
+she remained quietly at home, stilling her desires by frequent and long
+rambles with her child, in which Mr. Wagtail always accompanied them. My
+father thought it better to run the risk of her escaping, than force the
+thought of it upon her by appearing not to trust her. But it came out that
+she had a suspicion that the dog was there to prevent, or at least expose,
+any such imprudence. The following spring she went on a second visit to her
+friends, but was back within a week, and the next year did not go at all.
+
+Meantime my father did what he could to teach her, presenting every truth
+as something it was necessary she should teach her child. With this duty,
+he said, he always baited the hook with which he fished for her; "or, to
+take a figure from the old hawking days, her eyas is the lure with which I
+would reclaim the haggard hawk."
+
+What will be the final result, who dares prophesy? At my old home she
+still resides; grateful, and in some measure useful, idolizing, but not
+altogether spoiling her child, who understands the relation between them,
+and now calls her mother.
+
+Dora teaches Theo, and the mother comes in for what share she inclines
+to appropriate. She does not take much to reading, but she is fond of
+listening; and is a regular and devout attendant at public worship. Above
+all, they have sufficing proof that her conscience is awake, and that she
+gives some heed to what it says.
+
+Mr. Blackstone was right when he told me that good I was unable to foresee
+would result from the loss which then drowned me in despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+TROUBLES.
+
+
+In the beginning of the following year, the lady who filled Miss Clare's
+place was married, and Miss Clare resumed the teaching of Judy's children.
+She was now so handsomely paid for her lessons, that she had reduced the
+number of her engagements very much, and had more time to give to the plans
+in which she labored with Lady Bernard. The latter would willingly have
+settled such an annuity upon her as would have enabled her to devote all
+her time to this object; but Miss Clare felt that the earning of her bread
+was one of the natural ties that bound her in the bundle of social life;
+and that in what she did of a spiritual kind, she must be untrammelled by
+money-relations. If she could not do both,--provide for herself and assist
+others,--it would be a different thing, she said; for then it would be
+clear that Providence intended her to receive the hire of the laborer for
+the necessity laid upon her. But what influenced her chiefly was the dread
+of having anything she did for her friends attributed to professional
+motives, instead of the recognition of eternal relations. Besides, as she
+said, it would both lessen the means at Lady Bernard's disposal, and cause
+herself to feel bound to spend all her energies in that one direction; in
+which case she would be deprived of the recreative influences of change and
+more polished society. In her labor, she would yet feel her freedom, and
+would not serve even Lady Bernard for money, except she saw clearly that
+such was the will of the one Master. In thus refusing her offer, she but
+rose in her friend's estimation.
+
+In the spring, great trouble fell upon the Morleys. One of the children
+was taken with scarlet-fever; and then another and another was seized in
+such rapid succession--until five of them were lying ill together--that
+there was no time to think of removing them. Cousin Judy would accept
+no assistance in nursing them, beyond that of her own maids, until her
+strength gave way, and she took the infection herself in the form of
+diphtheria; when she was compelled to take to her bed, in such agony at the
+thought of handing her children over to hired nurses, that there was great
+ground for fearing her strength would yield.
+
+She lay moaning, with her eyes shut, when a hand was laid on hers, and Miss
+Clare's voice was in her ear. She had come to give her usual lesson to one
+of the girls who had as yet escaped the infection: for, while she took
+every precaution, she never turned aside from her work for any dread of
+consequences; and when she heard that Mrs. Morley had been taken ill, she
+walked straight to her room.
+
+"Go away!" said Judy. "Do you want to die too?"
+
+"Dear Mrs. Morley," said Miss Clare, "I will just run home, and make a few
+arrangements, and then come back and nurse you."
+
+"Never mind me," said Judy. "The children! the children! What _shall_ I
+do?"
+
+"I am quite able to look after you all--if you will allow me to bring a
+young woman to help me."
+
+"You are an angel!" said poor Judy. "But there is no occasion to bring any
+one with you. My servants are quite competent."
+
+"I must have every thing in my own hands," said Miss Clare; "and therefore
+must have some one who will do exactly as I tell her. This girl has been
+with me now for some time, and I can depend upon her. Servants always look
+down upon governesses."
+
+"Do whatever you like, you blessed creature," said Judy. "If any one of my
+servants behaves improperly to you, or neglects your orders, she shall go
+as soon as I am up again."
+
+"I would rather give them as little opportunity as I can of running the
+risk. If I may bring this friend of my own, I shall soon have the house
+under hospital regulations. But I have been talking too much. I might
+almost have returned by this time. It is a bad beginning if I have hurt you
+already by saying more than was necessary."
+
+She had hardly left the room before Judy had fallen asleep, so much was she
+relieved by the offer of her services. Ere she awoke, Marion was in a cab
+on her way back to Bolivar Square, with her friend and two carpet-bags.
+Within an hour, she had intrenched herself in a spare bedroom, had lighted
+a fire, got encumbering finery out of the way, arranged all the medicines
+on a chest of drawers, and set the clock on the mantle-piece going; made
+the round of the patients, who were all in adjoining rooms, and the round
+of the house, to see that the disinfectants were fresh and active, added to
+their number, and then gone to await the arrival of the medical attendant
+in Mrs. Morley's room.
+
+"Dr. Brand might have been a little more gracious," said Judy; "but I
+thought it better not to interrupt him by explaining that you were not the
+professional nurse he took you for."
+
+"Indeed, there was no occasion," answered Miss Clare. "I should have told
+him so myself, had it not been that I did a nurse's regular work in St.
+George's Hospital for two months, and have been there for a week or so,
+several times since, so that I believe I have earned the right to be spoken
+to as such. Anyhow, I understood every word he said."
+
+Meeting Mr. Morley in the hall, the doctor advised him not to go near his
+wife, diphtheria being so infectious; but comforted him with the assurance
+that the nurse appeared an intelligent young person, who would attend to
+all his directions; adding,--
+
+"I could have wished she had been older; but there is a great deal of
+illness about, and experienced nurses are scarce."
+
+Miss Clare was a week in the house before Mr. Morley saw her, or knew she
+was there. One evening she ran down to the dining-room, where he sat over
+his lonely glass of Madeira, to get some brandy, and went straight to the
+sideboard. As she turned to leave the room, he recognized her, and said, in
+some astonishment,--
+
+"You need not trouble yourself, Miss Clare. The nurse can get what she
+wants from Hawkins. Indeed, I don't see"--
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Morley. If you wish to speak to me, I will return in a few
+minutes; but I have a good deal to attend to just at this moment."
+
+She left the room; and, as he had said nothing in reply, did not return.
+
+Two days after, about the same hour, whether suspecting the fact, or for
+some other reason, he requested the butler to send the nurse to him.
+
+"The nurse from the nursery, sir; or the young person as teaches the young
+ladies the piano?" asked Hawkins.
+
+"I mean the sick-nurse," said his master.
+
+In a few minutes Miss Clare entered the dining-room, and approached Mr.
+Morley.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Clare?" he said stiffly; for to any one in his
+employment he was gracious only now and then. "Allow me to say that I
+doubt the propriety of your being here so much. You cannot fail to carry
+the infection. I think your lessons had better be postponed until _all_
+your pupils are able to benefit by them. I have just sent for the nurse;
+and,--if you please"--
+
+"Yes. Hawkins told me you wanted me," said Miss Clare.
+
+"I did not want you. He must have mistaken."
+
+"I am the nurse, Mr. Morley."
+
+"Then I _must_ say it is not with my approval," he returned, rising from
+his chair in anger. "I was given to understand that a properly-qualified
+person was in charge of my wife and family. This is no ordinary case, where
+a little coddling is all that is wanted."
+
+"I am perfectly qualified, Mr. Morley."
+
+He walked up and down the room several times.
+
+"I must speak to Mrs. Morley about this." he said.
+
+"I entreat you will not disturb her. She is not so well this afternoon."
+
+"How _is_ this, Miss Clare? Pray explain to me how it is that you come
+to be taking a part in the affairs of the family so very different from
+that for which Mrs. Morley--which--was arranged between Mrs. Morley and
+yourself."
+
+"It is but an illustration of the law of supply and demand," answered
+Marion. "A nurse was wanted; Mrs. Morley had strong objections to a hired
+nurse, and I was very glad to be able to set her mind at rest."
+
+"It was very obliging in you, no doubt," he returned, forcing the
+admission; "but--but"--
+
+"Let us leave it for the present, if you please; for while I am nurse, I
+must mind my business. Dr. Brand expresses himself quite satisfied with me,
+so far as we have gone; and it is better for the children, not to mention
+Mrs. Morley, to have some one about them they are used to."
+
+She left the room without waiting further parley.
+
+Dr. Brand, however, not only set Mr. Morley's mind at rest as to her
+efficiency, but when a terrible time of anxiety was at length over, during
+which one after another, and especially Judy herself, had been in great
+danger, assured him that, but for the vigilance and intelligence of Miss
+Clare, joined to a certain soothing influence which she exercised over
+every one of her patients, he did not believe he could have brought Mrs.
+Morley through. Then, indeed, he changed his tone to her, in a measure,
+still addressing her as from a height of superiority.
+
+They had recovered so far that they were to set out the next morning for
+Hastings, when he thus addressed her, having sent for her once more to the
+dining-room:--
+
+"I hope you will accompany them, Miss Clare," he said. "By this time you
+must be in no small need of a change yourself."
+
+"The best change for me will be Lime Court," she answered, laughing.
+
+"Now, pray don't drive your goodness to the verge of absurdity," he said
+pleasantly.
+
+"Indeed, I am anxious about my friends there," she returned. "I fear they
+have not been getting on quite so well without me. A Bible-woman and a
+Roman Catholic have been quarrelling dreadfully, I hear."
+
+Mr. Morley compressed his lips. It _was_ annoying to be so much indebted to
+one who, from whatever motives, called such people her friends.
+
+"Oblige me, then," he said loftily, taking an envelope from the
+mantle-piece, and handing it to her, "by opening that at your leisure."
+
+"I will open it now, if you please," she returned.
+
+It contained a bank-note for a hundred pounds. Mr. Morley, though a hard
+man, was not by any means stingy. She replaced it in the envelope, and laid
+it again on the chimney-piece.
+
+"You owe me nothing, Mr. Morley," she said.
+
+"Owe you nothing! I owe you more than I can ever repay."
+
+"Then don't try it, please. You are _very_ generous; but indeed I could not
+accept it."
+
+"You must oblige me. You _might_ take it from _me_," he added, almost
+pathetically, as if the bond was so close that money was nothing between
+them.
+
+"You are the last--one of the last I _could_ take money from, Mr. Morley."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because you think so much of it, and yet would look down on me the more if
+I accepted it."
+
+He bit his lip, rubbed his forehead with his hand, threw back his head, and
+turned away from her.
+
+"I should be very sorry to offend you," she said; "and, believe me, there
+is hardly any thing I value less than money. I have enough, and could have
+plenty more if I liked. I would rather have your friendship than all the
+money you possess. But that cannot be, so long as"--
+
+She stopped: she was on the point of going too far, she thought.
+
+"So long as what?" he returned sternly.
+
+"So long as you are a worshipper of Mammon," she answered; and left the
+room.
+
+She burst out crying when she came to this point. She had narrated the
+whole with the air of one making a confession.
+
+"I am afraid it was very wrong," she said; "and if so, then it was very
+rude as well. But something seemed to force it out of me. Just think: there
+was a generous heart, clogged up with self-importance and wealth! To me, as
+he stood there on the hearth-rug, he was a most pitiable object--with an
+impervious wall betwixt him and the kingdom of heaven! He seemed like a man
+in a terrible dream, from which I _must_ awake him by calling aloud in his
+ear--except that, alas! the dream was not terrible to him, only to me! If
+he had been one of my poor friends, guilty of some plain fault, I should
+have told him so without compunction; and why not, being what he was? There
+he stood,--a man of estimable qualities, of beneficence, if not bounty;
+no miser, nor consciously unjust; yet a man whose heart the moth and rust
+were eating into a sponge!--who went to church every Sunday, and had many
+friends, not one of whom, not even his own wife, would tell him that he was
+a Mammon-worshipper, and losing his life. It may have been useless, it may
+have been wrong; but I felt driven to it by bare human pity for the misery
+I saw before me."
+
+"It looks to me as if you had the message given you to give him," I said.
+
+"But--though I don't know it--what if I was annoyed with him for offering
+me that wretched hundred pounds,--in doing which he was acting up to the
+light that was in him?"
+
+I could not help thinking of the light which is darkness, but I did not
+say so. Strange tableau, in this our would-be grand nineteenth century,--a
+young and poor woman prophet-like rebuking a wealthy London merchant on
+his own hearth-rug, as a worshipper of Mammon! I think she was right; not
+because he was wrong, but because, as I firmly believe, she did it from no
+personal motives whatever, although in her modesty she doubted herself. I
+believe it was from pure regard for the man and for the truth, urging her
+to an irrepressible utterance. If so, should we not say that she spoke by
+the Spirit? Only I shudder to think what utterance might, with an equal
+outward show, be attributed to the same Spirit. Well, to his own master
+every one standeth or falleth; whether an old prophet who, with a lie in
+his right hand, entraps an honorable guest, or a young prophet who, with
+repentance in his heart, walks calmly into the jaws of the waiting lion.
+[Footnote: See the Sermons of the Rev. Henry Whitehead, vicar of St.
+John's, Limehouse; as remarkable for the profundity of their insight us
+for the noble severity of their literary modelling.--G.M.D.]
+
+And no one can tell what effects the words may have had upon him. I do not
+believe he ever mentioned the circumstance to his wife. At all events,
+there was no change in her manner to Miss Clare. Indeed, I could not help
+fancying that a little halo of quiet reverence now encircled the love in
+every look she cast upon her.
+
+She firmly believed that Marion had saved her life, and that of more than
+one of her children. Nothing, she said, could equal the quietness and
+tenderness and tirelessness of her nursing. She was never flurried, never
+impatient, and never frightened. Even when the tears would be flowing
+down her face, the light never left her eyes nor the music her voice; and
+when they were all getting better, and she had the nursery piano brought
+out on the landing in the middle of the sick-rooms, and there played and
+sung to them, it was, she said, like the voice of an angel, come fresh
+to the earth, with the same old news of peace and good-will. When the
+children--this I had from the friend she brought with her--were tossing
+in the fever, and talking of strange and frightful things they saw, one
+word from her would quiet them; and her gentle, firm command was always
+sufficient to make the most fastidious and rebellious take his medicine.
+
+She came out of it very pale, and a good deal worn. But the day they set
+off for Hastings, she returned to Lime Court. The next day she resumed
+her lessons, and soon recovered her usual appearance. A change of work,
+she always said, was the best restorative. But before a month was over
+I succeeded in persuading her to accept my mother's invitation to spend
+a week at the Hall; and from this visit she returned quite invigorated.
+Connie, whom she went to see,--for by this time she was married to Mr.
+Turner,--was especially delighted with her delight in the simplicities
+of nature. Born and bred in the closest town-environment, she had yet a
+sensitiveness to all that made the country so dear to us who were born in
+it, which Connie said surpassed ours, and gave her special satisfaction
+as proving that my oft recurring dread lest such feelings might but be
+the result of childish associations was groundless, and that they were
+essential to the human nature, and so felt by God himself. Driving along
+in the pony-carriage,--for Connie is not able to walk much, although she
+is well enough to enjoy life thoroughly,--Marion would remark upon ten
+things in a morning, that my sister had never observed. The various effects
+of light and shade, and the variety of feeling they caused, especially
+interested her. She would spy out a lurking sunbeam, as another would find
+a hidden flower. It seemed as if not a glitter in its nest of gloom could
+escape her. She would leave the carriage, and make a long round through the
+fields or woods, and, when they met at the appointed spot, would have her
+hands full not of flowers only, but of leaves and grasses and weedy things,
+showing the deepest interest in such lowly forms as few would notice except
+from a scientific knowledge, of which she had none: it was the thing
+itself--its look and its home--that drew her attention. I cannot help
+thinking that this insight was profoundly one with her interest in the
+corresponding regions of human life and circumstance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+MISS CLARE AMONGST HER FRIENDS.
+
+
+I must give an instance of the way in which Marion--I am tired of calling
+her _Miss Clare_, and about this time I began to drop it--exercised her
+influence over her friends. I trust the episode, in a story so fragmentary
+as mine, made up of pieces only of a quiet and ordinary life, will not seem
+unsuitable. How I wish I could give it you as she told it to me! so graphic
+was her narrative, and so true to the forms of speech amongst the London
+poor. I must do what I can, well assured it must come far short of the
+original representation.
+
+One evening, as she was walking up to her attic, she heard a noise in
+one of the rooms, followed by a sound of weeping. It was occupied by a
+journeyman house-painter and his wife, who had been married several years,
+but whose only child had died about six months before, since which loss
+things had not been going on so well between them. Some natures cannot bear
+sorrow: it makes them irritable, and, instead of drawing them closer to
+their own, tends to isolate them. When she entered, she found the woman
+crying, and the man in a lurid sulk.
+
+"What _is_ the matter?" she asked, no doubt in her usual cheerful tone.
+
+"I little thought it would come to this when I married him," sobbed the
+woman, while the man remained motionless and speechless on his chair, with
+his legs stretched out at full length before him.
+
+"Would you mind telling me about it? There may be some mistake, you know."
+
+"There ain't no mistake in _that_," said the woman, removing the apron she
+had been holding to her eyes, and turning a cheek towards Marion, upon
+which the marks of an open-handed blow were visible enough. "I didn't marry
+him to be knocked about like that."
+
+"She calls that knocking about, do she?" growled the husband. "What did she
+go for to throw her cotton gownd in my teeth for, as if it was my blame she
+warn't in silks and satins?"
+
+After a good deal of questioning on her part, and confused and
+recriminative statement on theirs, Marion made out the following as the
+facts of the case:--
+
+For the first time since they were married, the wife had had an invitation
+to spend the evening with some female friends. The party had taken place
+the night before; and although she had returned in ill-humor, it had not
+broken out until just as Marion entered the house. The cause was this:
+none of the guests were in a station much superior to her own, yet she
+found herself the only one who had not a silk dress: hers was a print, and
+shabby. Now, when she was married, she had a silk dress, of which she said
+her husband had been proud enough when they were walking together. But when
+she saw the last of it, she saw the last of its sort, for never another
+had he given her to her back; and she didn't marry him to come down in the
+world--that she didn't!
+
+"Of course not," said Marion. "You married him because you loved him, and
+thought him the finest fellow you knew."
+
+"And so he was then, grannie. But just look at him now!"
+
+The man moved uneasily, but without bending his outstretched legs. The fact
+was, that since the death of the child he had so far taken to drink that
+he was not unfrequently the worse for it; which had been a rare occurrence
+before.
+
+"It ain't my fault," he said, "when work ain't a-goin,' if I don't dress
+her like a duchess. I'm as proud to see my wife rigged out as e'er a man
+on 'em; and that _she_ know! and when she cast the contrairy up to me, I'm
+blowed if I could keep my hands off on her. She ain't the woman I took her
+for, miss. She _'ave_ a temper!"
+
+"I don't doubt it," said Marion. "Temper is a troublesome thing with all of
+us, and makes us do things we're sorry for afterwards. _You_'re sorry for
+striking her--ain't you, now?"
+
+There was no response. Around the sullen heart silence closed again.
+Doubtless he would have given much to obliterate the fact, but he would not
+confess that he had been wrong. We are so stupid, that confession seems to
+us to fix the wrong upon us, instead of throwing it, as it does, into the
+depths of the eternal sea.
+
+"I may have my temper," said the woman, a little mollified at finding, as
+she thought, that Miss Clare took her part; "but here am I, slaving from
+morning to night to make both ends meet, and goin' out every job I can get
+a-washin' or a-charin', and never 'avin' a bit of fun from year's end to
+year's end, and him off to his club, as he calls it!--an' it's a club he's
+like to blow out my brains with some night, when he comes home in a drunken
+fit; for it's worse _and_ worse he'll get, miss, like the rest on 'em, till
+no woman could be proud, as once I was, to call him hers. And when I do go
+out to tea for once in a way, to be jeered at by them as is no better nor
+no worse 'n myself, acause I ain't got a husband as cares enough for me to
+dress me decent!--that do stick i' my gizzard. I do dearly love to have
+neighbors think my husband care a bit about me, let-a-be 'at he don't, one
+hair; and when he send me out like that"--
+
+Here she broke down afresh.
+
+"Why didn't ye stop at home then? I didn't tell ye to go," he said
+fiercely, calling her a coarse name.
+
+"Richard," said Marion, "such words are not fit for _me_ to hear, still
+less for your own wife."
+
+"Oh! never mind me: I'm used to sich," said the woman spitefully.
+
+"It's a lie," roared the man: "I never named sich a word to ye afore. It do
+make me mad to hear ye. I drink the clothes off your back, do I? If I bed
+the money, ye might go in velvet and lace for aught I cared!"
+
+"_She_ would care little to go in gold and diamonds, if _you_ didn't care
+to see her in them," said Marion.
+
+At this the woman burst into fresh tears, and the man put on a face of
+contempt,--the worst sign, Marion said, she had yet seen in him, not
+excepting the blow; for to despise is worse than to strike.
+
+I can't help stopping my story here to put in a reflection that forces
+itself upon me. Many a man would regard with disgust the idea of striking
+his wife, who will yet cherish against her an aversion which is infinitely
+worse. The working-man who strikes his wife, but is sorry for it, and tries
+to make amends by being more tender after it, a result which many a woman
+will consider cheap at the price of a blow endured,--is an immeasurably
+superior husband to the gentleman who shows his wife the most absolute
+politeness, but uses that very politeness as a breastwork to fortify
+himself in his disregard and contempt.
+
+Marion saw that while the tides ran thus high, nothing could be done;
+certainly, at least, in the way of argument. Whether the man had been
+drinking she could not tell, but suspected that must have a share in the
+evil of his mood. She went up to him, laid her hand on his shoulder, and
+said,--
+
+"You're out of sorts, Richard. Come and have a cup of tea, and I will sing
+to you."
+
+"I don't want no tea."
+
+"You're fond of the piano, though. And you like to hear me sing, don't
+you?"
+
+"Well, I do," he muttered, as if the admission were forced from him.
+
+"Come with me, then."
+
+He dragged himself up from his chair, and was about to follow her.
+
+"You ain't going to take him from me, grannie, after he's been and struck
+me?" interposed his wife, in a tone half pathetic, half injured.
+
+"Come after us in a few minutes," said Marion, in a low voice, and led the
+way from the room.
+
+Quiet as a lamb Richard followed her up stairs. She made him sit in the
+easy-chair, and began with a low, plaintive song, which she followed with
+other songs and music of a similar character. He neither heard nor saw his
+wife enter, and both sat for about twenty minutes without a word spoken.
+Then Marion made a pause, and the wife rose and approached her husband. He
+was fast asleep.
+
+"Don't wake him," said Marion; "let him have his sleep out. You go down and
+get the place tidy, and a nice bit of supper for him--if you can."
+
+"Oh, yes! he brought me home his week's wages this very night."
+
+"The whole?"
+
+"Yes, grannie"
+
+"Then weren't you too hard upon him? Just think: he had been trying to
+behave himself, and had got the better of the public-house for once, and
+come home fancying you'd be so pleased to see him; and you"--
+
+"He'd been drinking," interrupted Eliza. "Only he said as how it was but a
+pot of beer he'd won in a wager from a mate of his."
+
+"Well, if, after that beginning, he yet brought you home his money, he
+ought to have had another kind of reception. To think of the wife of a poor
+man making such a fuss about a silk dress! Why, Eliza, I never had a silk
+dress in my life; and I don't think I ever shall."
+
+"Laws, grannie! who'd ha' thought that now!"
+
+"You see I have other uses for my money than buying things for show."
+
+"That you do, grannie! But you see," she added, somewhat inconsequently,
+"we ain't got no child, and Dick he take it ill of me, and don't care to
+save his money; so he never takes me out nowheres, and I do be so tired o'
+stopping indoors, every day and all day long, that it turns me sour, I do
+believe. I didn't use to be cross-grained, miss. But, laws! I feels now as
+if I'd let him knock me about ever so, if only he wouldn't say as how it
+was nothing to him if I was dressed ever so fine."
+
+"You run and get his supper."
+
+Eliza went; and Marion, sitting down again to her instrument, improvised
+for an hour. Next to her New Testament, this was her greatest comfort. She
+sung and prayed both in one then, and nobody but God heard any thing but
+the piano. Nor did it impede the flow of her best thoughts, that in a chair
+beside her slumbered a weary man, the waves of whose evil passions she
+had stilled, and the sting of whose disappointments she had soothed, with
+the sweet airs and concords of her own spirit. Who could say what tender
+influences might not be stealing over him, borne on the fair sounds? for
+even the formless and the void was roused into life and joy by the wind
+that roamed over the face of its deep. No humanity jarred with hers. In
+the presence of the most degraded, she felt God there. A face, even if
+besotted, _was_ a face, only in virtue of being in the image of God. That
+a man was a man at all, must be because he was God's. And this man was
+far indeed from being of the worst. With him beside her, she could pray
+with most of the good of having the door of her closet shut, and some of
+the good of the gathering together as well. Thus was love, as ever, the
+assimilator of the foreign, the harmonizer of the unlike; the builder of
+the temple in the desert, and of the chamber in the market-place.
+
+As she sat and discoursed with herself, she perceived that the woman was as
+certainly suffering from _ennui_ as any fine lady in Mayfair.
+
+"Have you ever been to the National Gallery, Richard?" she asked, without
+turning her head, the moment she heard him move.
+
+"No, grannie," he answered with a yawn. "Don'a' most know what sort of a
+place it be now. Waxwork, ain't it?"
+
+"No. It's a great place full of pictures, many of them hundreds of years
+old. They're taken care of by the Government, just for people to go and
+look at. Wouldn't you like to go and see them some day?"
+
+"Donno as I should much."
+
+"If I were to go with you, now, and explain some of them to you? I want you
+to take your wife and me out for a holiday. You can't think, you who go out
+to your work every day, how tiresome it is to be in the house from morning
+to night, especially at this time of the year, when the sun's shining, and
+the very sparrows trying to sing!"
+
+"She may go out when she please, grannie. I ain't no tyrant."
+
+"But she doesn't care to go without you. You wouldn't have her like one of
+those slatternly women you see standing at the corners, with their fists in
+their sides and their elbows sticking out, ready to talk to anybody that
+comes in the way."
+
+"_My_ wife was never none o' sich, grannie. I knows her as well's e'er a
+one, though she do 'ave a temper of her own."
+
+At this moment Eliza appeared in the door-way, saying,--
+
+"Will ye come to yer supper, Dick? I ha' got a slice o' ham an' a hot tater
+for ye. Come along."
+
+"Well, I don't know as I mind--jest to please _you_, Liza. I believe I ha'
+been asleep in grannie's cheer there, her a playin' an' a singin', I make
+no doubt, like a werry nightingerl, bless her, an' me a snorin' all to
+myself, like a runaway locomotive! Won't _you_ come and have a slice o' the
+'am, an' a tater, grannie? The more you ate, the less we'd grudge it."
+
+"I'm sure o' that," chimed in Eliza. "Do now, grannie; please do."
+
+"I will, with pleasure," said Marion; and they went down together.
+
+Eliza had got the table set out nicely, with a foaming jug of porter beside
+the ham and potatoes. Before they had finished, Marion had persuaded
+Richard to take his wife and her to the National Gallery, the next day but
+one, which, fortunately for her purpose, was Whit Monday, a day whereon
+Richard, who was from the north always took a holiday.
+
+At the National Gallery, the house-painter, in virtue of his craft, claimed
+the exercise of criticism; and his remarks were amusing enough. He had
+more than once painted a sign-board for a country inn, which fact formed a
+bridge between the covering of square yards with color and the painting of
+pictures; and he naturally used the vantage-ground thus gained to enhance
+his importance with his wife and Miss Clare. He was rather a clever fellow
+too, though as little educated in any other direction than that of his
+calling as might well be.
+
+All the woman seemed to care about in the pictures was this or that
+something which reminded her, often remotely enough I dare say, of her
+former life in the country. Towards the close of their visit, they
+approached a picture--one of Hobbima's, I think--which at once riveted her
+attention.
+
+"Look, look, Dick!" she cried. "There's just such a cart as my father used
+to drive to the town in. Farmer White always sent _him_ when the mistress
+wanted any thing and he didn't care to go hisself. And, O Dick! there's the
+very moral of the cottage we lived in! Ain't it a love, now?"
+
+"Nice enough," Dick replied. "But it warn't there I seed you, Liza. It
+wur at the big house where you was housemaid, you know. That'll be it, I
+suppose,--away there like, over the trees."
+
+They turned and looked at each other, and Marion turned away. When she
+looked again, they were once more gazing at the picture, but close
+together, and hand in hand, like two children.
+
+As they went home in the omnibus, the two averred they had never spent a
+happier holiday in their lives; and from that day to this no sign of their
+quarrelling has come to Marion's knowledge. They are not only her regular
+attendants on Saturday evenings, but on Sunday evenings as well, when she
+holds a sort of conversation-sermon with her friends.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MR. MORLEY.
+
+
+As soon as my cousin Judy returned from Hastings, I called to see her, and
+found them all restored, except Amy, a child of between eight and nine.
+There was nothing very definite the matter with her, but she was white and
+thin, and looked wistful; the blue of her eyes had grown pale, and her fair
+locks had nearly lost the curl which had so well suited her rosy cheeks.
+She had been her father's pride for her looks, and her mother's for her
+sayings,--at once odd and simple. Judy that morning reminded me how, one
+night, when she was about three years old, some time after she had gone to
+bed, she had called her nurse, and insisted on her mother's coming. Judy
+went, prepared to find her feverish; for there had been jam-making that
+day, and she feared she had been having more than the portion which on such
+an occasion fell to her share. When she reached the nursery, Amy begged to
+be taken up that she might say her prayers over again. Her mother objected;
+but the child insisting, in that pretty, petulant way which so pleased
+her father, she yielded, thinking she must have omitted some clause in
+her prayers, and be therefore troubled in her conscience. Amy accordingly
+kneeled by the bedside in her night-gown, and, having gone over all her
+petitions from beginning to end, paused a moment before the final word, and
+inserted the following special and peculiar request: "And, p'ease God, give
+me some more jam to-morrow-day, for ever and ever. Amen."
+
+I remember my father being quite troubled when he heard that the child had
+been rebuked for offering what was probably her very first genuine prayer.
+The rebuke, however, had little effect on the equanimity of the petitioner,
+for she was fast asleep a moment after it.
+
+"There is one thing that puzzles and annoys me," said Judy. "I can't think
+what it means. My husband tells me that Miss Clare was so rude to him,
+the day before we left for Hastings, that he would rather not be aware
+of it any time she is in the house. Those were his very words. 'I will
+not interfere with your doing as you think proper,' he said, 'seeing you
+consider yourself under such obligation to her; and I should be sorry to
+deprive her of the advantage of giving lessons in a house like this; but I
+wish you to be careful that the girls do not copy her manners. She has not
+by any means escaped the influence of the company she keeps.' I was utterly
+astonished, you may well think; but I could get no further explanation from
+him. He only said that when I wished to have her society of an evening,
+I must let him know, because he would then dine at his club. Not knowing
+the grounds of his offence, there was little other argument I could use
+than the reiteration of my certainty that he must have misunderstood her.
+'Not in the least,' he said. 'I have no doubt she is to you every thing
+amiable; but she has taken some unaccountable aversion to me, and loses no
+opportunity of showing it. And I _don't_ think I deserve it.' I told him
+I was so sure he did not deserve it, that I must believe there was some
+mistake. But he only shook his head and raised his newspaper. You must help
+me, little coz."
+
+"How am I to help you, Judy dear?" I returned. "I can't interfere between
+husband and wife, you know. If I dared such a thing, he would quarrel with
+me too--and rightly."
+
+"No, no," she returned, laughing: "I don't want your intercession. I only
+want you to find out from Miss Clare whether she knows how she has so
+mortally offended my husband. I believe she knows nothing about it. She
+_has_ a rather abrupt manner sometimes, you know; but then my husband
+is not so silly as to have taken such deep offence at that. Help me,
+now--there's a dear!"
+
+I promised I would, and hence came the story I have already given. But
+Marion was so distressed at the result of her words, and so anxious that
+Judy should not be hurt, that she begged me, if I could manage it without
+a breach of verity, to avoid disclosing the matter; especially seeing Mr.
+Morley himself judged it too heinous to impart to his wife.
+
+How to manage it I could not think. But at length we arranged it between
+us. I told Judy that Marion confessed to having said something which had
+offended Mr. Morley; that she was very sorry, and hoped she need not say
+that such had not been her intention, but that, as Mr. Morley evidently
+preferred what had passed between them to remain unmentioned, to disclose
+it would be merely to swell the mischief. It would be better for them
+all, she requested me to say, that she should give up her lessons for the
+present; and therefore she hoped Mrs. Morley would excuse her. When I gave
+the message, Judy cried, and said nothing. When the children heard that
+Marion was not coming for a while, Amy cried, the other girls looked very
+grave, and the boys protested.
+
+I have already mentioned that the fault I most disliked in those children
+was their incapacity for being petted. Something of it still remains; but
+of late I have remarked a considerable improvement in this respect. They
+have not only grown in kindness, but in the gift of receiving kindness.
+I cannot but attribute this, in chief measure, to their illness and the
+lovely nursing of Marion. They do not yet go to their mother for petting,
+and from myself will only endure it; but they are eager after such crumbs
+as Marion, by no means lavish of it, will vouchsafe them.
+
+Judy insisted that I should let Mr. Morley hear Marion's message.
+
+"But the message is not to Mr. Morley," I said. "Marion would never have
+thought of sending one to him."
+
+"But if I ask you to repeat it in his hearing, you will not refuse?"
+
+To this I consented; but I fear she was disappointed in the result. Her
+husband only smiled sarcastically, drew in his chin, and showed himself a
+little more cheerful than usual.
+
+One morning, about two months after, as I was sitting in the drawing-room,
+with my baby on the floor beside me, I was surprised to see Judy's brougham
+pull up at the little gate--for it was early. When she got out, I perceived
+at once that something was amiss, and ran to open the door. Her eyes were
+red, and her cheeks ashy. The moment we reached the drawing-room, she sunk
+on the couch and burst into tears.
+
+"Judy!" I cried, "what _is_ the matter? Is Amy worse?"
+
+"No, no, cozzy dear; but we are ruined. We haven't a penny in the world.
+The children will be beggars."
+
+And there were the gay little horses champing their bits at the door, and
+the coachman sitting in all his glory, erect and impassive!
+
+I did my best to quiet her, urging no questions. With difficulty I got her
+to swallow a glass of wine, after which, with many interruptions and fresh
+outbursts of misery, she managed to let me understand that her husband
+had been speculating, and had failed. I could hardly believe myself
+awake. Mr. Morley was the last man I should have thought capable either
+of speculating, or of failing in it if he did.
+
+Knowing nothing about business, I shall not attempt to explain the
+particulars. Coincident failures amongst his correspondents had contributed
+to his fall. Judy said he had not been like himself for months; but it was
+only the night before that he had told her they must give up their house in
+Bolivar Square, and take a small one in the suburbs. For any thing he could
+see, he said, he must look out for a situation.
+
+"Still you may be happier than ever, Judy. I can tell you that happiness
+does not depend on riches," I said, though I could not help crying with
+her.
+
+"It's a different thing though, after you've been used to them," she
+answered. "But the question is of bread for my children, not of putting
+down my carriage."
+
+She rose hurriedly.
+
+"Where are you going? Is there any thing I can do for you?" I asked.
+
+"Nothing," she answered. "I left my husband at Mr. Baddeley's. He is as
+rich as Croesus, and could write him a check that would float him."
+
+"He's too rich to be generous, I'm afraid," I said.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" she asked.
+
+"If he be so generous, how does it come that he is so rich?"
+
+"Why, his father made the money."
+
+"Then he most likely takes after his father. Percivale says he does not
+believe a huge fortune was ever made of nothing, without such pinching of
+one's self and such scraping of others, or else such speculation, as is
+essentially dishonorable."
+
+"He stands high," murmured Judy hopelessly.
+
+"Whether what is dishonorable be also disreputable depends on how many
+there are of his own sort in the society in which he moves."
+
+"Now, coz, you know nothing to his discredit, and he's our last hope."
+
+"I will say no more," I answered. "I hope I may be quite wrong. Only I
+should expect nothing of _him_."
+
+When she reached Mr. Baddeley's her husband was gone. Having driven to his
+counting-house, and been shown into his private room, she found him there
+with his head between his hands. The great man had declined doing any thing
+for him, and had even rebuked him for his imprudence, without wasting a
+thought on the fact that every penny he himself possessed was the result
+of the boldest speculation on the part of his father. A very few days only
+would elapse before the falling due of certain bills must at once disclose
+the state of his affairs.
+
+As soon as she had left me, Percivale not being at home, I put on my
+bonnet, and went to find Marion. I must tell _her_ every thing that caused
+me either joy or sorrow; and besides, she had all the right that love could
+give to know of Judy's distress. I knew all her engagements, and therefore
+where to find her; and sent in my card, with the pencilled intimation that
+I would wait the close of her lesson. In a few minutes she came out and got
+into the cab. At once I told her my sad news.
+
+"Could you take me to Cambridge Square to my next engagement?" she said.
+
+I was considerably surprised at the cool way in which she received the
+communication, but of course I gave the necessary directions.
+
+"Is there any thing to be done?" she asked, after a pause.
+
+"I know of nothing," I answered.
+
+Again she sat silent for a few minutes.
+
+"One can't move without knowing all the circumstances and particulars," she
+said at length. "And how to get at them? He wouldn't make a confidante of
+_me_," she said, smiling sadly.
+
+"Ah! you little think what vast sums are concerned in such a failure as
+his!" I remarked, astounded that one with her knowledge of the world should
+talk as she did.
+
+"It will be best," she said, after still another pause, "to go to Mr.
+Blackstone. He has a wonderful acquaintance with business for a clergyman,
+and knows many of the city people."
+
+"What could any clergyman do in such a case?" I returned. "For Mr.
+Blackstone, Mr. Morley would not accept even consolation at his hands."
+
+"The time for that is not come yet," said Marion. "We must try to help him
+some other way first. We will, if we can, make friends with him by means of
+the very Mammon that has all but ruined him."
+
+She spoke of the great merchant just as she might of Richard, or any of the
+bricklayers or mechanics, whose spiritual condition she pondered that she
+might aid it.
+
+"But what could Mr. Blackstone do?" I insisted.
+
+"All I should want of him would be to find out for me what Mr. Morley's
+liabilities are, and how much would serve to tide him over the bar of his
+present difficulties. I suspect he has few friends who would risk any thing
+for him. I understand he is no favorite in the city; and, if friendship do
+not come in, he must be stranded. You believe him an honorable man,--do you
+not?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"It never entered my head to doubt it," I replied.
+
+The moment we reached Cambridge Square she jumped out, ran up the steps,
+and knocked at the door. I waited, wondering if she was going to leave
+me thus without a farewell. When the door was opened, she merely gave a
+message to the man, and the same instant was again in the cab by my side.
+
+"Now I am free!" she said, and told the man to drive to Mile End.
+
+"I fear I can't go with you so far, Marion," I said. "I must go home--I
+have so much to see to, and you can do quite as well without me. I don't
+know what you intend, but _please_ don't let any thing come out. I can
+trust _you_, but"--
+
+"If you can trust me, I can trust Mr. Blackstone. He is the most cautious
+man in the world. Shall I get out, and take another cab?"
+
+"No. You can drop me at Tottenham Court Road, and I will go home by
+omnibus. But you must let me pay the cab."
+
+"No, no; I am richer than you: I have no children. What fun it is to spend
+money for Mr. Morley, and lay him under an obligation he will never know!"
+she said, laughing.
+
+The result of her endeavors was, that Mr. Blackstone, by a circuitous
+succession of introductions, reached Mr. Morley's confidential clerk,
+whom he was able so far to satisfy concerning his object in desiring
+the information, that he made him a full disclosure of the condition of
+affairs, and stated what sum would be sufficient to carry them over their
+difficulties; though, he added, the greatest care, and every possible
+reduction of expenditure for some years, would be indispensable to their
+complete restoration.
+
+Mr. Blackstone carried his discoveries to Miss Clare and she to Lady
+Bernard.
+
+"My dear Marion," said Lady Bernard, "this is a serious matter you suggest.
+The man may be honest, and yet it may be of no use trying to help him. I
+don't want to bolster him up for a few months in order to see my money go
+after his. That's not what I've got to do with it. No doubt I could lose
+as much as you mention, without being crippled by it, for I hope it's no
+disgrace in me to be rich, as it's none in you to be poor; but I hate
+waste, and I will _not_ be guilty of it. If Mr. Morley will convince me and
+any friend or man of business to whom I may refer the matter, that there is
+good probability of his recovering himself by means of it, then, and not
+till then, I shall feel justified in risking the amount. For, as you say,
+it would prevent much misery to many besides that good-hearted creature,
+Mrs. Morley, and her children. It is worth doing if it can be done--not
+worth trying if it can't."
+
+"Shall I write for you, and ask him to come and see you?"
+
+"No, my dear. If I do a kindness, I must do it humbly. It is a great
+liberty to take with a man to offer him a kindness. I must go to him. I
+could not use the same freedom with a man in misfortune as with one in
+prosperity. I would have such a one feel that his money or his poverty made
+no difference to me; and Mr. Morley wants that lesson, if any man does.
+Besides, after all, I may not be able to do it for him, and he would have
+good reason to be hurt if I had made him dance attendance on me."
+
+The same evening Lady Bernard's shabby one-horse-brougham stopped at
+Mr. Morley's door. She asked to see Mrs. Morley, and through her had an
+interview with her husband. Without circumlocution, she told him that if
+he would lay his affairs before her and a certain accountant she named,
+to use their judgment regarding them in the hope of finding it possible to
+serve him, they would wait upon him for that purpose at any time and place
+he pleased. Mr. Morley expressed his obligation,--not very warmly, she
+said,--repudiating, however, the slightest objection to her ladyship's
+knowing now what all the world must know the next day but one.
+
+Early the following morning Lady Bernard and the accountant met Mr. Morley
+at his place in the city, and by three o'clock in the afternoon fifteen
+thousand pounds were handed in to his account at his banker's.
+
+The carriage was put down, the butler, one of the footmen, and the lady's
+maid, were dismissed, and household arrangements fitted to a different
+scale.
+
+One consequence of this chastisement, as of the preceding, was, that the
+whole family drew yet more closely and lovingly together; and I must say
+for Judy, that, after a few weeks of what she called poverty, her spirits
+seemed in no degree the worse for the trial.
+
+At Marion's earnest entreaty no one told either Mr. or Mrs. Morley of the
+share she had had in saving his credit and social position. For some time
+she suffered from doubt as to whether she had had any right to interpose in
+the matter, and might not have injured Mr. Morley by depriving him of the
+discipline of poverty; but she reasoned with herself, that, had it been
+necessary for him, her efforts would have been frustrated; and reminded
+herself, that, although his commercial credit had escaped, it must still be
+a considerable trial to him to live in reduced style.
+
+But that it was not all the trial needful for him, was soon apparent; for
+his favorite Amy began to pine more rapidly, and Judy saw, that, except
+some change speedily took place, they could not have her with them long.
+The father, however, refused to admit the idea that she was in danger. I
+suppose he felt as if, were he once to allow the possibility of losing
+her, from that moment there would be no stay between her and the grave: it
+would be a giving of her over to death. But whatever Dr. Brand suggested
+was eagerly followed. When the chills of autumn drew near, her mother took
+her to Ventnor; but little change followed, and before the new year she
+was gone. It was the first death, beyond that of an infant, they had had
+in their family, and took place at a time when the pressure of business
+obligations rendered it impossible for her father to be out of London: he
+could only go to lay her in the earth, and bring back his wife. Judy had
+never seen him weep before. Certainly I never saw such a change in a man.
+He was literally bowed with grief, as if he bore a material burden on
+his back. The best feelings of his nature, unimpeded by any jar to his
+self-importance or his prejudices, had been able to spend themselves on the
+lovely little creature; and I do not believe any other suffering than the
+loss of such a child could have brought into play that in him which was
+purely human.
+
+He was at home one morning, ill for the first time in his life, when Marion
+called on Judy. While she waited in the drawing-room, he entered. He turned
+the moment he saw her, but had not taken two steps towards the door, when
+he turned again, and approached her. She went to meet him. He held out his
+hand.
+
+"She was very fond of you, Miss Clare," he said. "She was talking about you
+the very last time I saw her. Let by-gones be by-gones between us."
+
+"I was very rough and rude to you, Mr. Morley, and I am very sorry," said
+Marion.
+
+"But you spoke the truth," he rejoined. "I thought I was above being spoken
+to like a sinner, but I don't know now why not."
+
+He sat down on a couch, and leaned his head on his hand. Marion took a
+chair near him, but could not speak.
+
+"It is very hard," he murmured at length.
+
+"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," said Marion.
+
+"That may be true in some cases, but I have no right to believe it applies
+to me. He loved the child, I would fain believe; for I dare not think of
+her either as having ceased to be, or as alone in the world to which she
+has gone. You do think, Miss Clare, do you not, that we shall know our
+friends in another world?"
+
+"I believe," answered Marion, "that God sent you that child for the express
+purpose of enticing you back to himself; and, if I believe any thing at
+all, I believe that the gifts of God are without repentance."
+
+Whether or not he understood her she could not tell, for at this point
+Judy came in. Seeing them together she would have withdrawn again; but her
+husband called her, with more tenderness in his voice than Marion could
+have imagined belonging to it.
+
+"Come, my dear. Miss Clare and I were talking about our little angel. I
+didn't think ever to speak of her again, but I fear I am growing foolish.
+All the strength is out of me; and I feel so tired,--so weary of every
+thing!"
+
+She sat down beside him, and took his hand. Marion crept away to the
+children. An hour after, Judy found her in the nursery, with the youngest
+on her knee, and the rest all about her. She was telling them that we were
+sent into this world to learn to be good, and then go back to God from whom
+we came, like little Amy.
+
+"When I go out to-mowwow," said one little fellow, about four years old,
+"I'll look up into the sky vewy hard, wight up; and then I shall see Amy,
+and God saying to her, 'Hushaby, poo' Amy! You bette' now, Amy?' Sha'n't I,
+Mawion?"
+
+She had taught them to call her Marion.
+
+"No, my pet: you might look and look, all day long, and every day, and
+never see God or Amy."
+
+"Then they _ain't_ there!" he exclaimed indignantly.
+
+"God is there, anyhow," she answered; "only you can't see him that way."
+
+"I don't care about seeing God," said the next elder: "it's Amy I want to
+see. Do tell me, Marion, how we are to see Amy. It's too bad if we're never
+to see her again; and I don't think it's fair."
+
+"I will tell you the only way I know. When Jesus was in the world, he told
+us that all who had clean hearts should see God. That's how Jesus himself
+saw God."
+
+"It's Amy, I tell you, Marion--it's not God I want to see," insisted the
+one who had last spoken.
+
+"Well, my dear, but how can you see Amy if you can't even see God? If Amy
+be in God's arms, the first thing, in order to find her, is to find God.
+To be good is the only way to get near to anybody. When you're naughty,
+Willie, you can't get near your mamma, can you?"
+
+"Yes, I can. I can get close up to her."
+
+"Is that near enough? Would you be quite content with that? Even when she
+turns away her face and won't look at you?"
+
+The little caviller was silent.
+
+"Did you ever see God, Marion?" asked one of the girls.
+
+She thought for a moment before giving an answer. "No," she said. "I've
+seen things just after he had done them; and I think I've heard him speak
+to me; but I've never seen him yet."
+
+"Then you're not good, Marion," said the free-thinker of the group.
+
+"No: that's just it. But I hope to be good some day, and then I _shall_ see
+him."
+
+"How do you grow good, Marion?" asked the girl.
+
+"God is always trying to make me good," she answered; "and I try not to
+interfere with him."
+
+"But sometimes you forget, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, I do."
+
+"And what do you do then?"
+
+"Then I'm sorry and unhappy, and begin to try again."
+
+"And God don't mind much, does he?"
+
+"He minds very much until I mind; but after that he forgets it all,--takes
+all my naughtiness and throws it behind his back, and won't look at it."
+
+"That's very good of God," said the reasoner, but with such a
+self-satisfied air in his approval, that Marion thought it time to stop.
+
+She came straight to me, and told me, with a face perfectly radiant, of
+the alteration in Mr. Morley's behavior to her, and, what was of much more
+consequence, the evident change that had begun to be wrought in him.
+
+I am not prepared to say that he has, as yet, shown a very shining light,
+but that some change has passed is evident in the whole man of him. I think
+the eternal wind must now be able to get in through some chink or other
+which the loss of his child has left behind. And, if the change were not
+going on, surely he would ere now have returned to his wallowing in the
+mire of Mammon; for his former fortune is, I understand, all but restored
+to him.
+
+I fancy his growth in goodness might be known and measured by his progress
+in appreciating Marion. He still regards her as extreme in her notions; but
+it is curious to see how, as they gradually sink into his understanding, he
+comes to adopt them as, and even to mistake them for, his own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+A STRANGE TEXT.
+
+
+For some time after the events last related, things went on pretty smoothly
+with us for several years. Indeed, although I must confess that what I said
+in my haste, when Mr. S. wanted me to write this book, namely, that nothing
+had ever happened to me worth telling, was by no means correct, and that I
+have found out my mistake in the process of writing it; yet, on the other
+hand, it must be granted that my story could never have reached the mere
+bulk required if I had not largely drawn upon the history of my friends to
+supplement my own. And it needs no prophetic gift to foresee that it will
+be the same to the end of the book. The lives of these friends, however,
+have had so much to do with all that is most precious to me in our own
+life, that, if I were to leave out only all that did not immediately touch
+upon the latter, the book, whatever it might appear to others, could not
+possibly then appear to myself any thing like a real representation of my
+actual life and experiences. The drawing might be correct,--but the color?
+
+What with my children, and the increase of social duty resulting from the
+growth of acquaintance,--occasioned in part by my success in persuading
+Percivale to mingle a little more with his fellow-painters,--my heart and
+mind and hands were all pretty fully occupied; but I still managed to see
+Marion two or three times a week, and to spend about so many hours with
+her, sometimes alone, sometimes with her friends as well. Her society did
+much to keep my heart open, and to prevent it from becoming selfishly
+absorbed in its cares for husband and children. For love which is _only_
+concentrating its force, that is, which is not at the same time widening
+its circle, is itself doomed, and for its objects ruinous, be those objects
+ever so sacred. God himself could never be content that his children should
+love him only; nor has he allowed the few to succeed who have tried after
+it: perhaps their divinest success has been their most mortifying failure.
+Indeed, for exclusive love sharp suffering is often sent as the needful
+cure,--needful to break the stony crust, which, in the name of love
+for one's own, gathers about the divinely glowing core; a crust which,
+promising to cherish by keeping in the heat, would yet gradually thicken
+until all was crust; for truly, in things of the heart and spirit, as the
+warmth ceases to spread, the molten mass within ceases to glow, until at
+length, but for the divine care and discipline, there would be no love left
+for even spouse or child, only for self,--which is eternal death.
+
+For some time I had seen a considerable change in Roger. It reached even to
+his dress. Hitherto, when got up for dinner, he was what I was astonished
+to hear my eldest boy, the other day, call "a howling swell;" but at other
+times he did not even escape remark,--not for the oddity merely, but
+the slovenliness of his attire. He had worn, for more years than I dare
+guess, a brown coat, of some rich-looking stuff, whose long pile was stuck
+together in many places with spots and dabs of paint, so that he looked
+like our long-haired Bedlington terrier Fido, towards the end of the week
+in muddy weather. This was now discarded; so far at least, as to be hung up
+in his brother's study, to be at hand when he did any thing for him there,
+and replaced by a more civilized garment of tweed, of which he actually
+showed himself a little careful: while, if his necktie _was_ red, it was of
+a very deep and rich red, and he had seldom worn one at all before; and his
+brigand-looking felt hat was exchanged for one of half the altitude, which
+he did not crush on his head with quite as many indentations as its surface
+could hold. He also began to go to church with us sometimes.
+
+But there was a greater and more significant change than any of these. We
+found that he was sticking more steadily to work. I can hardly say _his_
+work; for he was Jack-of-all-trades, as I have already indicated. He had
+a small income, left him by an old maiden aunt with whom he had been a
+favorite, which had hitherto seemed to do him nothing but harm, enabling
+him to alternate fits of comparative diligence with fits of positive
+idleness. I have said also, I believe, that, although he could do nothing
+thoroughly, application alone was wanted to enable him to distinguish
+himself in more than one thing. His forte was engraving on wood; and my
+husband said, that, if he could do so well with so little practice as
+he had had, he must be capable of becoming an admirable engraver. To
+our delight, then, we discovered, all at once, that he had been working
+steadily for three months for the Messrs. D----, whose place was not far
+from our house. He had said nothing about it to his brother, probably from
+having good reason to fear that he would regard it only as a _spurt_.
+Having now, however, executed a block which greatly pleased himself, he
+had brought a proof impression to show Percivale; who, more pleased with
+it than even Roger himself, gave him a hearty congratulation, and told
+him it would be a shame if he did not bring his execution in that art to
+perfection; from which, judging by the present specimen, he said it could
+not be far off. The words brought into Roger's face an expression of modest
+gratification which it rejoiced me to behold: he accepted Percivale's
+approbation more like a son than a brother, with a humid glow in his eyes
+and hardly a word on his lips. It seemed to me that the child in his heart
+had begun to throw off the swaddling clothes which foolish manhood had
+wrapped around it, and the germ of his being was about to assert itself. I
+have seldom indeed seen Percivale look so pleased.
+
+"Do me a dozen as good as that," he said, "and I'll have the proofs framed
+in silver gilt."
+
+It _has_ been done; but the proofs had to wait longer for the frame than
+Percivale for the proofs.
+
+But he need have held out no such bribe of brotherly love, for there was
+another love already at work in himself more than sufficing to the affair.
+But I check myself: who shall say what love is sufficing for this or for
+that? Who, with the most enduring and most passionate love his heart can
+hold, will venture to say that he could have done without the love of a
+brother? Who will say that he could have done without the love of the dog
+whose bones have lain mouldering in his garden for twenty years? It is
+enough to say that there was a more engrossing, a more marvellous love at
+work.
+
+Roger always, however, took a half-holiday on Saturdays, and now generally
+came to us. On one of these occasions I said to him,--
+
+"Wouldn't you like to come and hear Marion play to her friends this
+evening, Roger?"
+
+"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," he answered; and we went.
+
+It was delightful. In my opinion Marion is a real artist. I do not claim
+for her the higher art of origination, though I could claim for her a much
+higher faculty than the artistic itself. I suspect, for instance, that
+Moses was a greater man than the writer of the Book of Job, notwithstanding
+that the poet moves me so much more than the divine politician. Marion
+combined in a wonderful way the critical faculty with the artistic; which
+two, however much of the one may be found without the other, are mutually
+essential to the perfection of each. While she uttered from herself, she
+heard with her audience; while she played and sung with her own fingers and
+mouth, she at the same time listened with their ears, knowing what they
+must feel, as well as what she meant to utter. And hence it was, I think,
+that she came into such vital contact with them, even through her piano.
+
+As we returned home, Roger said, after some remark of mine of a cognate
+sort,--
+
+"Does she never try to teach them any thing, Ethel?"
+
+"She is constantly teaching them, whether she tries or not," I answered.
+"If you can make any one believe that there is something somewhere to be
+trusted, is not that the best lesson you can give him? That can be taught
+only by being such that people cannot but trust you."
+
+"I didn't need to be told that," he answered. "What I want to know is,
+whether or not she ever teaches them by word of mouth,--an ordinary and
+inferior mode, if you will."
+
+"If you had ever heard her, you would not call hers an ordinary or inferior
+mode," I returned. "Her teaching is the outcome of her life, the blossom of
+her being, and therefore has the whole force of her living truth to back
+it."
+
+"Have I offended you, Ethel?" he asked.
+
+Then I saw, that, in my eagerness to glorify my friend, I had made myself
+unpleasant to Roger,--a fault of which I had been dimly conscious before
+now. Marion would never have fallen into that error. She always made her
+friends feel that she was _with_ them, side by side with them, and turning
+her face in the same direction, before she attempted to lead them farther.
+
+I assured him that he had not offended me, but that I had been foolishly
+backing him from the front, as I once heard an Irishman say,--some of whose
+bulls were very good milch cows.
+
+"She teaches them every Sunday evening," I added.
+
+"Have you ever heard her?"
+
+"More than once. And I never heard any thing like it."
+
+"Could you take me with you some time?" he asked, in an assumed tone of
+ordinary interest, out of which, however, he could not keep a slight
+tremble.
+
+"I don't know. I don't quite see why I shouldn't. And yet"--
+
+"Men do go," urged Roger, as if it were a mere half-indifferent suggestion.
+
+"Oh, yes! you would have plenty to keep you in countenance!" I
+returned,--"men enough--and worth teaching, too--some of them at least!"
+
+"Then, I don't see why she should object to me for another."
+
+"I don't know that she would. You are not exactly of the sort, you
+know--that"--
+
+"I don't see the difference. I see no essential difference, at least. The
+main thing is, that I am in want of teaching, as much as any of them.
+And, if she stands on circumstances, I am a working-man as much as any of
+them--perhaps more than most of them. Few of them work after midnight, I
+should think, as I do, not unfrequently."
+
+"Still, all admitted, I should hardly like"--
+
+"I didn't mean you were to take me without asking her," he said: "I should
+never have dreamed of that."
+
+"And if I were to ask her, I am certain she would refuse. But," I added,
+thinking over the matter a little, "I will take you without asking her.
+Come with me to-morrow night. I don't think she will have the heart to send
+you away."
+
+"I will," he answered, with more gladness in his voice than he intended, I
+think, to manifest itself.
+
+We arranged that he should call for me at a certain hour.
+
+I told Percivale, and he pretended to grumble that I was taking Roger
+instead of him.
+
+"It was Roger, and not you, that made the request," I returned. "I can't
+say I see why you should go because Roger asked. A woman's logic is not
+equal to that."
+
+"I didn't mean he wasn't to go. But why shouldn't I be done good to as well
+as he?"
+
+"If you really want to go," I said, "I don't see why you shouldn't. It's
+ever so much better than going to any church I know of--except one. But we
+must be prudent. I can't take more than one the first time. We must get the
+thin edge of the wedge in first."
+
+"And you count Roger the thin edge?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'll tell him so."
+
+"Do. The thin edge, mind, without which the thicker the rest is the more
+useless! Tell him that if you like. But, seriously, I quite expect to take
+you there, too, the Sunday after."
+
+Roger and I went. Intending to be a little late, we found when we readied
+the house, that, as we had wished, the class was already begun. In going
+up the stairs, we saw very few of the grown inhabitants, but in several of
+the rooms, of which the doors stood open, elder girls taking care of the
+younger children; in one, a boy nursing the baby with as much interest as
+any girl could have shown. We lingered on the way, wishing to give Marion
+time to get so thoroughly into her work that she could take no notice of
+our intrusion. When we reached the last stair we could at length hear her
+voice, of which the first words we could distinguish, as we still ascended,
+were,--
+
+"I will now read to you the chapter of which I spoke."
+
+The door being open, we could hear well enough, although she was sitting
+where we could not see her. We would not show ourselves until the reading
+was ended: so much, at least, we might overhear without offence.
+
+Before she had read many words, Roger and I began to cast strange looks on
+each other. For this was the chapter she read:--
+
+"And Joseph, wheresoever he went in the city, took the Lord Jesus with him,
+where he was sent for to work, to make gates, or milk-pails, or sieves, or
+boxes; the Lord Jesus was with him wheresoever he went. And as often as
+Joseph had any thing in his work to make longer or shorter, or wider or
+narrower, the Lord Jesus would stretch his hand towards it. And presently
+it became as Joseph would have it. So that he had no need to finish any
+thing with his own hands, for he was not very skilful at his carpenter's
+trade.
+
+"On a certain time the king of Jerusalem sent for him, and said, I would
+have thee make me a throne of the same dimensions with that place in which
+I commonly sit. Joseph obeyed, and forthwith began the work, and continued
+two years in the king's palace before he finished. And when he came to fix
+it in its place, he found it wanted two spans on each side of the appointed
+measure. Which, when the king saw, he was very angry with Joseph; and
+Joseph, afraid of the king's anger, went to bed without his supper, taking
+not any thing to eat. Then the Lord Jesus asked him what he was afraid of.
+Joseph replied, Because I have lost my labor in the work which I have been
+about these two years. Jesus said to him, Fear not, neither be cast down;
+do thou lay hold on one side of the throne, and I will the other, and we
+will bring it to its just dimensions. And when Joseph had done as the Lord
+Jesus said, and each of them had with strength drawn his side, the throne
+obeyed, and was brought to the proper dimensions of the place; which
+miracle when they who stood by saw, they were astonished, and praised God.
+The throne was made of the same wood which was in being in Solomon's time,
+namely, wood adorned with various shapes and figures."
+
+Her voice ceased, and a pause followed.
+
+"We must go in now," I whispered.
+
+"She'll be going to say something now; just wait till she's started," said
+Roger.
+
+"Now, what do you think of it?" asked Marion in a meditative tone.
+
+We crept within the scope of her vision, and stood. A voice, which I knew,
+was at the moment replying to her question.
+
+"_I_ don't think it's much of a chapter, that, grannie."
+
+The speaker was the keen-faced, elderly man, with iron-gray whiskers, who
+had come forward to talk to Percivale on that miserable evening when we
+were out searching for little Ethel. He sat near where we stood by the
+door, between two respectable looking women, who had been listening to the
+chapter as devoutly as if it had been of the true gospel.
+
+"Sure, grannie, that ain't out o' the Bible?" said another voice, from
+somewhere farther off.
+
+"We'll talk about that presently," answered Marion.
+
+"I want to hear what Mr. Jarvis has to say to it: he's a carpenter himself,
+you see,--a joiner, that is, you know."
+
+All the faces in the room were now turned towards Jarvis.
+
+"Tell me why you don't think much of it, Mr. Jarvis," said Marion.
+
+"'Tain't a bit likely," he answered.
+
+"What isn't likely?"
+
+"Why, not one single thing in the whole kit of it. And first and foremost,
+'tain't a bit likely the old man 'ud ha' been sich a duffer."
+
+"Why not? There must have been stupid people then as well as now."
+
+"Not _his_ father." said Jarvis decidedly.
+
+"He wasn't but his step-father, like, you know, Mr. Jarvis," remarked the
+woman beside him in a low voice.
+
+"Well, he'd never ha' been _hers_, then. _She_ wouldn't ha' had a word to
+say to _him_."
+
+"I have seen a good--and wise woman too--with a dull husband," said Marion.
+
+"You know you don't believe a word of it yourself, grannie," said still
+another voice.
+
+"Besides," she went on without heeding the interruption, "in those times,
+I suspect, such things were mostly managed by the parents, and the woman
+herself had little to do with them."
+
+A murmur of subdued indignation arose,--chiefly of female voices.
+
+"Well, _they_ wouldn't then," said Jarvis.
+
+"He might have been rich," suggested Marion.
+
+"I'll go bail _he_ never made the money then," said Jarvis. "An old idget!
+I don't believe sich a feller 'ud ha' been _let_ marry a woman like her--I
+_don't_."
+
+"You mean you don't think God would have let him?"
+
+"Well, that's what I _do_ mean, grannie. The thing couldn't ha' been,
+nohow."
+
+"I agree with you quite. And now I want to hear more of what in the story
+you don't consider likely."
+
+"Well, it ain't likely sich a workman 'ud ha' stood so high i' the trade
+that the king of Jerusalem would ha' sent for _him_ of all the tradesmen in
+the town to make his new throne for him. No more it ain't likely--and let
+him be as big a duffer as ever was, to be a jiner at all--that he'd ha'
+been two year at work on that there throne--an' a carvin' of it in figures
+too!--and never found out it was four spans too narrer for the place it had
+to stand in. Do ye 'appen to know now, grannie, how much is a span?"
+
+"I don't know. Do you know, Mrs. Percivale?"
+
+The sudden reference took me very much by surprise; but I had not
+forgotten, happily, the answer I received to the same question, when
+anxious to realize the monstrous height of Goliath.
+
+"I remember my father telling me," I replied, "that it was as much as you
+could stretch between your thumb and little finger."
+
+"There!" cried Jarvis triumphantly, parting the extreme members of his
+right hand against the back of the woman in front of him--"that would be
+seven or eight inches! Four times that? Two foot and a half at least! Think
+of that!"
+
+"I admit the force of both your objections," said Marion. "And now, to turn
+to a more important part of the story, what do you think of the way in
+which according to it he got his father out of his evil plight?"
+
+I saw plainly enough that she was quietly advancing towards some point in
+her view,--guiding the talk thitherward, steadily, without haste or effort.
+
+Before Jarvis had time to make any reply, the blind man, mentioned in a
+former chapter, struck in, with the tone of one who had been watching his
+opportunity.
+
+"_I_ make more o' that pint than the t'other," he said. "A man as is a
+duffer may well make a mull of a thing; but a man as knows what he's up
+to can't. I don't make much o' them miracles, you know, grannie--that is,
+I don't know, and what I don't know, I won't say as I knows; but what I'm
+sure of is this here one thing,--that man or boy as _could_ work a miracle,
+you know, grannie, wouldn't work no miracle as there wasn't no good working
+of."
+
+"It was to help his father," suggested Marion.
+
+Here Jarvis broke in almost with scorn.
+
+"To help him to pass for a clever fellow, when he was as great a duffer as
+ever broke bread!"
+
+"I'm quite o' your opinion, Mr. Jarvis," said the blind man. "It 'ud ha'
+been more like him to tell his father what a duffer he was, and send him
+home to learn his trade."
+
+"He couldn't do that, you know," said Marion gently. "He _couldn't_ use
+such words to his father, if he were ever so stupid."
+
+"His step-father, grannie," suggested the woman who had corrected Jarvis on
+the same point. She spoke very modestly, but was clearly bent on holding
+forth what light she had.
+
+"Certainly, Mrs. Renton; but you know he couldn't be rude to any
+one,--leaving his own mother's husband out of the question."
+
+"True for you, grannie," returned the woman.
+
+"I think, though," said Jarvis, "for as hard as he'd ha' found it, it would
+ha' been more like him to set to work and teach his father, than to scamp
+up his mulls."
+
+"Certainly," acquiesced Marion. "To hide any man's faults, and leave him
+not only stupid, but, in all probability, obstinate and self-satisfied,
+would not be like _him_. Suppose our Lord had had such a father: what do
+you think he would have done?"
+
+"He'd ha' done all he could to make a man of him," answered Jarvis.
+
+"Wouldn't he have set about making him comfortable then, in spite of his
+blunders?" said Marion.
+
+A significant silence followed this question.
+
+"Well, _no_; not first thing, I don't think," returned Jarvis at length.
+"He'd ha' got him o' some good first, and gone in to make him comfortable
+arter."
+
+"Then I suppose you would rather be of some good and uncomfortable, than of
+no good and comfortable?" said Marion.
+
+"I hope so, grannie," answered Jarvis; and "_I_ would;" "Yes;" "That I
+would," came from several voices in the little crowd, showing what an
+influence Marion must have already had upon them.
+
+"Then," she said,--and I saw by the light which rose in her eyes that she
+was now coming to the point,--"Then, surely it must be worth our while to
+bear discomfort in order to grow of some good! Mr. Jarvis has truly said,
+that, if Jesus had had such a father, he would have made him of some good
+before he made him comfortable: that is just the way your Father in heaven
+is acting with you. Not many of you would say you are of much good yet; but
+you would like to be better. And yet,--put it to yourselves,--do you not
+grumble at every thing that comes to you that you don't like, and call it
+bad luck, and worse--yes, even when you know it comes of your own fault,
+and nobody else's? You think if you had only this or that to make you
+comfortable, you would be content; and you call it very hard that So-and-so
+should be getting on well, and saving money, and you down on your luck, as
+you say. Some of you even grumble that your neighbors' children should be
+healthy when yours are pining. You would allow that you are not of much
+good yet; but you forget that to make you comfortable as you are would be
+the same as to pull out Joseph's misfitted thrones and doors, and make his
+misshapen buckets over again for him. That you think so absurd that you
+can't believe the story a bit; but you would be helped out of all _your_
+troubles, even those you bring on yourselves, not thinking what the certain
+consequence would be, namely, that you would grow of less and less value,
+until you were of no good, either to God or man. If you think about it, you
+will see that I am right. When, for instance, are you most willing to do
+right? When are you most ready to hear about good things? When are you most
+inclined to pray to God? When you have plenty of money in your pockets, or
+when you are in want? when you have had a good dinner, or when you have not
+enough to get one? when you are in jolly health, or when the life seems
+ebbing out of you in misery and pain? No matter that you may have brought
+it on yourselves; it is no less God's way of bringing you back to him, for
+he decrees that suffering shall follow sin: it is just then you most need
+it; and, if it drives you to God, that is its end, and there will be an
+end of it. The prodigal was himself to blame for the want that made him a
+beggar at the swine's trough; yet that want was the greatest blessing God
+could give to him, for it drove him home to his father.
+
+"But some of you will say you are no prodigals; nor is it your fault that
+you find yourselves in such difficulties that life seems hard to you. It
+would be very wrong in me to set myself up as your judge, and to tell you
+that it _was_ your fault. If it is, God will let you know it. But if it
+be not your fault, it does not follow that you need the less to be driven
+back to God. It is not only in punishment of our sins that we are made to
+suffer: God's runaway children must be brought back to their home and their
+blessedness,--back to their Father in heaven. It is not always a sign that
+God is displeased with us when he makes us suffer. 'Whom the Lord loveth
+he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure
+chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons.' But instead of talking more
+about it, I must take it to myself; and learn not to grumble when _my_
+plans fail."
+
+"That's what _you_ never goes and does, grannie," growled a voice from
+somewhere.
+
+I learned afterwards it was that of a young tailor, who was constantly
+quarrelling with his mother.
+
+"I think I have given up grumbling at my circumstances," she rejoined; "but
+then I have nothing to grumble at in them. I haven't known hunger or cold
+for a great many years now. But I do feel discontented at times when I see
+some of you not getting better so fast as I should like. I ought to have
+patience, remembering how patient God is with my conceit and stupidity, and
+not expect too much of you. Still, it can't be wrong to wish that you tried
+a good deal more to do what he wants of you. Why should his children not be
+his friends? If you would but give yourselves up to him, you would find his
+yoke so easy, his burden so light! But you do it half only, and some of you
+not at all.
+
+"Now, however, that we have got a lesson from a false gospel, we may as
+well get one from the true."
+
+As she spoke, she turned to her New Testament which lay beside her. But
+Jarvis interrupted her.
+
+"Where did you get that stuff you was a readin' of to us, grannie?" he
+asked.
+
+"The chapter I read to you," she answered, "is part of a pretended gospel,
+called, 'The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ.' I can't tell
+you who wrote it, or how it came to be written. All I can say is, that,
+very early in the history of the church, there were people who indulged
+themselves in inventing things about Jesus, and seemed to have had no idea
+of the importance of keeping to facts, or, in other words, of speaking
+and writing only the truth. All they seemed to have cared about was the
+gratifying of their own feelings of love and veneration; and so they made
+up tales about him, in his honor as they supposed, no doubt, just as if
+he had been a false god of the Greeks or Romans. It is long before some
+people learn to speak the truth, even after they know it is wicked to
+lie. Perhaps, however, they did not expect their stories to be received
+as facts, intending them only as a sort of recognized fiction about
+him,--amazing presumption at the best."
+
+"Did anybody, then, ever believe the likes of that, grannie?" asked Jarvis.
+
+"Yes: what I read to you seems to have been believed within a hundred years
+after the death of the apostles. There are several such writings, with a
+great deal of nonsense in them, which were generally accepted by Christian
+people for many hundreds of years."
+
+"I can't imagine how anybody could go inwentuating such things!" said the
+blind man.
+
+"It is hard for us to imagine. They could not have seen how their
+inventions would, in later times, be judged any thing but honoring to him
+in whose honor they wrote them. Nothing, be it ever so well invented,
+can be so good as the bare truth. Perhaps, however, no one in particular
+invented some of them, but the stories grew, just as a report often does
+amongst yourselves. Although everybody fancies he or she is only telling
+just what was told to him or her, yet, by degrees, the pin's-point of
+a fact is covered over with lies upon lies, almost everybody adding
+something, until the report has grown to be a mighty falsehood. Why, you
+had such a story yourselves, not so very long ago, about one of your best
+friends! One comfort is, such a story is sure not to be consistent with
+itself; it is sure to show its own falsehood to any one who is good enough
+to doubt it, and who will look into it, and examine it well. You don't, for
+instance, want any other proof than the things themselves to show you that
+what I have just read to you can't be true."
+
+"But then it puzzles me to think how anybody could believe them," said the
+blind man.
+
+"Many of the early Christians were so childishly simple that they would
+believe almost any thing that was told them. In a time when such nonsense
+could be written, it is no great wonder there should be many who could
+believe it."
+
+"Then, what was their faith worth," said the blind man, "if they believed
+false and true all the same?"
+
+"Worth no end to them," answered Marion with eagerness; "for all the false
+things they might believe about him could not destroy the true ones, or
+prevent them from believing in Jesus himself, and bettering their ways for
+his sake. And as they grew better and better, by doing what he told them,
+they would gradually come to disbelieve this and that foolish or bad
+thing."
+
+"But wouldn't that make them stop believing in him altogether?"
+
+"On the contrary, it would make them hold the firmer to all that they saw
+to be true about him. There are many people, I presume, in other countries,
+who believe those stories still; but all the Christians I know have cast
+aside every one of those writings, and keep only to those we call the
+Gospels. To throw away what is not true, because it is not true, will
+always help the heart to be truer; will make it the more anxious to cleave
+to what it sees must be true. Jesus remonstrated with the Jews that they
+would not of themselves judge what was right; and the man who lets God
+teach him is made abler to judge what is right a thousand-fold."
+
+"Then don't you think it likely this much is true, grannie,"--said Jarvis,
+probably interested in the question, in part at least, from the fact that
+he was himself a carpenter,--"that he worked with his father, and helped
+him in his trade?"
+
+"I do, indeed," answered Marion. "I believe that is the one germ of truth
+in the whole story. It is possible even that some incidents of that part of
+his life may have been handed down a little way, at length losing all their
+shape, however, and turning into the kind of thing I read to you. Not to
+mention that they called him the carpenter, is it likely he who came down
+for the express purpose of being a true man would see his father toiling to
+feed him and his mother and his brothers and sisters, and go idling about,
+instead of putting to his hand to help him? Would that have been like him?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Mr. Jarvis.
+
+But a doubtful murmur came from the blind man, which speedily took shape in
+the following remark:--
+
+"I can't help thinkin', grannie, of one time--you read it to us not long
+ago--when he laid down in the boat and went fast asleep, takin' no more
+heed o' them a slavin' o' theirselves to death at their oars, than if
+they'd been all comfortable like hisself; that wasn't much like takin' of
+his share--was it now?"
+
+"John Evans," returned Marion with severity, "it is quite right to put
+any number of questions, and express any number of doubts you honestly
+feel; but you have no right to make remarks you would not make if you were
+anxious to be as fair to another as you would have another be to you. Have
+you considered that he had been working hard all day long, and was, in
+fact, worn out? You don't think what hard work it is, and how exhausting,
+to speak for hours to great multitudes, and in the open air too, where
+your voice has no help to make it heard. And that's not all; for he had
+most likely been healing many as well; and I believe every time the power
+went out of him to cure, he suffered in the relief he gave; it left him
+weakened,--with so much the less of strength to support his labors,--so
+that, even in his very body, he took our iniquities and bare our
+infirmities. Would you, then, blame a weary man, whose perfect faith in God
+rendered it impossible for him to fear any thing, that he lay down to rest
+in God's name, and left his friends to do their part for the redemption of
+the world in rowing him to the other side of the lake,--a thing they were
+doing every other day of their lives? You ought to consider before you make
+such remarks, Mr. Evans. And you forget also that the moment they called
+him, he rose to help them."
+
+"And find fault with them," interposed Evans, rather viciously I thought.
+
+"Yes; for they were to blame for their own trouble, and ought to send it
+away."
+
+"What! To blame for the storm? How could they send that away?"
+
+"Was it the storm that troubled them then? It was their own fear of it. The
+storm could not have troubled them if they had had faith in their Father in
+heaven."
+
+"They had good cause to be afraid of it, anyhow."
+
+"He judged they had not, for he was not afraid himself. You judge they had,
+because you would have been afraid."
+
+"He could help himself, you see."
+
+"And they couldn't trust either him or his Father, notwithstanding all he
+had done to manifest himself and his Father to them. Therefore he saw that
+the storm about them was not the thing that most required rebuke."
+
+"I never pretended to much o' the sort," growled Evans. "Quite the
+contrairy."
+
+"And why? Because, like an honest man, you wouldn't pretend to what you
+hadn't got. But, if you carried your honesty far enough, you would have
+taken pains to understand our Lord first. Like his other judges, you
+condemn him beforehand. You will not call that honesty?"
+
+"I don't see what right you've got to badger me like this before a
+congregation o' people," said the blind man, rising in indignation. "If I
+ain't got my heyesight, I ha' got my feelin's."
+
+"And do you think _he_ has no feelings, Mr. Evans? You have spoken evil of
+_him_: I have spoken but the truth of _you_!"
+
+"Come, come, grannie," said the blind man, quailing a little; "don't talk
+squash. I'm a livin' man afore the heyes o' this here company, an' he ain't
+nowheres. Bless you, _he_ don't mind!"
+
+"He minds so much," returned Marion, in a subdued voice, which seemed to
+tremble with coming tears, "that he will never rest until you think fairly
+of him. And he is here now; for he said, 'I am with you alway, to the end
+of the world;' and he has heard every word you have been saying against
+him. He isn't angry like me; but your words may well make him feel sad--for
+your sake, John Evans--that you should be so unfair."
+
+She leaned her forehead on her hand, and was silent. A subdued murmur
+arose. The blind man, having stood irresolute for a moment, began to make
+for the door, saying,--
+
+"I think I'd better go. I ain't wanted here."
+
+"If you _are_ an honest man, Mr. Evans," returned Marion, rising, "you will
+sit down and hear the case out."
+
+With a waving, fin-like motion of both his hands, Evans sank into his seat,
+and spoke no word.
+
+After but a moment's silence, she resumed as if there had been no
+interruption.
+
+"That he should sleep, then, during the storm was a very different thing
+from declining to assist his father in his workshop; just as the rebuking
+of the sea was a very different thing from hiding up his father's bad work
+in miracles. Had that father been in danger, he might perhaps have aided
+him as he did the disciples. But"--
+
+"Why do you say _perhaps_, grannie?" interrupted a bright-eyed boy who sat
+on the hob of the empty grate. "Wouldn't he help his father as soon as his
+disciples?"
+
+"Certainly, if it was good for his father; certainly not, if it was not
+good for him: therefore I say _perhaps_. But now," she went on, turning to
+the joiner, "Mr. Jarvis, will you tell me whether you think the work of the
+carpenter's son would have been in any way distinguishable from that of
+another man?"
+
+"Well, I don't know, grannie. He wouldn't want to be putting of a private
+mark upon it. He wouldn't want to be showing of it off--would he? He'd use
+his tools like another man, anyhow."
+
+"All that we may be certain of. He came to us a man, to live a man's life,
+and do a man's work. But just think a moment. I will put the question
+again: Do you suppose you would have been able to distinguish his work from
+that of any other man?"
+
+A silence followed. Jarvis was thinking. He and the blind man were of the
+few that can think. At last his face brightened.
+
+"Well, grannie," he said, "I think it would be very difficult in any thing
+easy, but very easy in any thing difficult."
+
+He laughed,--for he had not perceived the paradox before uttering it.
+
+"Explain yourself, if you please, Mr. Jarvis. I am not sure that I
+understand you," said Marion.
+
+"I mean, that, in an easy job, which any fair workman could do well enough,
+it would not be easy to tell his work. But, where the job was difficult,
+it would be so much better done, that it would not be difficult to see the
+better hand in it."
+
+"I understand you, then, to indicate, that the chief distinction would lie
+in the quality of the work; that whatever he did, he would do in such a
+thorough manner, that over the whole of what he turned out, as you would
+say, the perfection of the work would be a striking characteristic. Is that
+it?"
+
+"That is what I do mean, grannie."
+
+"And that is just the conclusion I had come to myself."
+
+"_I_ should like to say just one word to it, grannie, so be you won't cut
+up crusty," said the blind man.
+
+"If you are fair, I sha'n't be crusty, Mr. Evans. At least, I hope not,"
+said Marion.
+
+"Well, it's this: Mr. Jarvis he say as how the jiner-work done by Jesus
+Christ would be better done than e'er another man's,--tip-top fashion,--and
+there would lie the differ. Now, it do seem to me as I've got no call to
+come to that 'ere conclusion. You been tellin' on us, grannie, I donno how
+long now, as how Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and that he come to do
+the works of God,--down here like, afore our faces, that we might see God
+at work, by way of. Now, I ha' nothin' to say agin that: it may be, or it
+mayn't be--I can't tell. But if that be the way on it, then I don't see
+how Mr. Jarvis can be right; the two don't curryspond,--not by no means.
+For the works o' God--there ain't one on'em as I can see downright well
+managed--tip-top jiner's work, as I may say; leastways,--Now stop a
+bit, grannie; don't trip a man up, and then say as he fell over his own
+dog,--leastways, I don't say about the moon an' the stars an' that; I
+dessay the sun he do get up the werry moment he's called of a mornin',
+an' the moon when she ought to for her night-work,--I ain't no 'stronomer
+strawnry, and I ain't heerd no complaints about _them_; but I do say as
+how, down here, we ha' got most uncommon bad weather more'n at times; and
+the walnuts they turns out, every now an' then, full o' mere dirt; an' the
+oranges awful. There 'ain't been a good crop o' hay, they tells me, for
+many's the year. An' i' furren parts, what wi' earthquakes an' wolcanies
+an' lions an' tigers, an' savages as eats their wisiters, an' chimley-pots
+blowin' about, an' ships goin' down, an' fathers o' families choked an'
+drownded an' burnt i' coal-pits by the hundred,--it do seem to me that if
+his jinerin' hadn't been tip-top, it would ha' been but like the rest on
+it. There, grannie! Mind, I mean no offence; an' I don't doubt you ha' got
+somethink i' your weskit pocket as 'll turn it all topsy-turvy in a moment.
+Anyhow, I won't purtend to nothink, and that's how it look to me."
+
+"I admit," said Marion, "that the objection is a reasonable one. But why do
+you put it, Mr. Evans, in such a triumphant way, as if you were rejoiced
+to think it admitted of no answer, and believed the world would be ever so
+much better off if the storms and the tigers had it all their own way, and
+there were no God to look after things."
+
+"Now, you ain't fair to _me_, grannie. Not avin' of my heyesight like the
+rest on ye, I may be a bit fond of a harguyment; but I tries to hit fair,
+and when I hears what ain't logic, I can no more help comin' down upon it
+than I can help breathin' the air o' heaven. And why shouldn't I? There
+ain't no law agin a harguyment. An' more an' over, it do seem to me as how
+you and Mr. Jarvis is wrong i' _it is_ harguyment."
+
+"If I was too sharp upon you, Mr. Evans, and I may have been," said Marion,
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+"It's granted, grannie."
+
+"I don't mean, you know, that I give in to what you say,--not one bit."
+
+"I didn't expect it of you. I'm a-waitin' here for you to knock me down."
+
+"I don't think a mere victory is worth the breath spent upon it," said
+Marion. "But we should all be glad to get or give more light upon any
+subject, if it be by losing ever so many arguments. Allow me just to put a
+question or two to Mr. Jarvis, because he's a joiner himself--and that's a
+great comfort to me to-night: What would you say, Mr. Jarvis, of a master
+who planed the timber he used for scaffolding, and tied the crosspieces
+with ropes of silk?"
+
+"I should say he was a fool, grannie,--not only for losin' of his money
+and his labor, but for weakenin' of his scaffoldin',--summat like the old
+throne-maker i' that chapter, I should say."
+
+"What's the object of a scaffold, Mr. Jarvis?"
+
+"To get at something else by means of,--say build a house."
+
+"Then, so long as the house was going up all right, the probability is
+there wouldn't be much amiss with the scaffold?"
+
+"Certainly, provided it stood till it was taken down."
+
+"And now, Mr. Evans," she said next, turning to the blind man, "I am going
+to take the liberty of putting a question or two to you."
+
+"All right, grannie. Fire away."
+
+"Will you tell me, then, what the object of this world is?"
+
+"Well, most people makes it their object to get money, and make theirselves
+comfortable."
+
+"But you don't think that is what the world was made for?"
+
+"Oh! as to that, how should I know, grannie? And not knowin', I won't say."
+
+"If you saw a scaffold," said Marion, turning again to Jarvis, "would you
+be in danger of mistaking it for a permanent erection?"
+
+"Nobody wouldn't be such a fool," he answered. "The look of it would tell
+you that."
+
+"You wouldn't complain, then, if it should be a little out of the square,
+and if there should be no windows in it?"
+
+Jarvis only laughed.
+
+"Mr. Evans," Marion went on, turning again to the blind man, "do you think
+the design of this world was to make men comfortable?"
+
+"If it was, it don't seem to ha' succeeded," answered Evans.
+
+"And you complain of that--don't you?"
+
+"Well, yes, rather,"--said the blind man, adding, no doubt, as he recalled
+the former part of the evening's talk,--"for harguyment, ye know, grannie."
+
+"You think, perhaps, that God, having gone so far to make this world a
+pleasant and comfortable place to live in, might have gone farther and made
+it quite pleasant and comfortable for everybody?"
+
+"Whoever could make it at all could ha' done that, grannie."
+
+"Then, as he hasn't done it, the probability is he didn't mean to do it?"
+
+"Of course. That's what I complain of."
+
+"Then he meant to do something else?"
+
+"It looks like it."
+
+"The whole affair has an unfinished look, you think?"
+
+"I just do."
+
+"What if it were not meant to stand, then? What if it were meant only for
+a temporary assistance in carrying out something finished and lasting, and
+of unspeakably more importance? Suppose God were building a palace for you,
+and had set up a scaffold, upon which he wanted you to help him; would it
+be reasonable in you to complain that you didn't find the scaffold at all
+a comfortable place to live in?--that it was draughty and cold? This World
+is that scaffold; and if you were busy carrying stones and mortar for the
+palace, you would be glad of all the cold to cool the glow of your labor."
+
+"I'm sure I work hard enough when I get a job as my heyesight will enable
+me to do," said Evans, missing the spirit of her figure.
+
+"Yes: I believe you do. But what will all the labor of a workman who does
+not fall in with the design of the builder come to? You may say you don't
+understand the design: will you say also that you are under no obligation
+to put so much faith in the builder, who is said to be your God and Father,
+as to do the thing he tells you? Instead of working away at the palace,
+like men, will you go on tacking bits of matting and old carpet about
+the corners of the scaffold to keep the wind off, while that same wind
+keeps tearing them away and scattering them? You keep trying to live in a
+scaffold, which not all you could do to all eternity would make a house of.
+You see what I mean, Mr. Evans?"
+
+"Well, not ezackly," replied the blind man.
+
+"I mean that God wants to build you a house whereof the walls shall be
+_goodness_: you want a house whereof the walls shall be _comfort_. But God
+knows that such walls cannot be built,--that that kind of stone crumbles
+away in the foolish workman's hands. He would make you comfortable; but
+neither is that his first object, nor can it be gained without the first,
+which is to make you good. He loves you so much that he would infinitely
+rather have you good and uncomfortable, for then he could take you to his
+heart as his own children, than comfortable and not good, for then he
+could not come near you, or give you any thing he counted worth having for
+himself or worth giving to you."
+
+"So," said Jarvis, "you've just brought us round, grannie, to the same
+thing as before."
+
+"I believe so," returned Marion. "It comes to this, that when God would
+build a palace for himself to dwell in with his children, he does not want
+his scaffold so constructed that they shall be able to make a house of it
+for themselves, and live like apes instead of angels."
+
+"But if God can do any thing he please," said Evans, "he might as well
+_make_ us good, and there would be an end of it."
+
+"That is just what he is doing," returned Marion. "Perhaps, by giving them
+perfect health, and every thing they wanted, with absolute good temper,
+and making them very fond of each other besides, God might have provided
+himself a people he would have had no difficulty in governing, and amongst
+whom, in consequence, there would have been no crime and no struggle or
+suffering. But I have known a dog with more goodness than that would come
+to. We cannot be good without having consented to be made good. God shows
+us the good and the bad; urges us to be good; wakes good thoughts and
+desires in us; helps our spirit with his Spirit, our thought with his
+thought: but we must yield; we must turn to him; we must consent, yes, try
+to be made good. If we could grow good without trying, it would be a poor
+goodness: _we_ should not be good, after all; at best, we should only be
+not bad. God wants us to choose to be good, and so be partakers of his
+holiness; he would have us lay hold of him. He who has given his Son to
+suffer for us will make us suffer too, bitterly if needful, that we may
+bethink ourselves, and turn to him. He would make us as good as good can
+be, that is, perfectly good; and therefore will rouse us to take the
+needful hand in the work ourselves,--rouse us by discomforts innumerable.
+
+"You see, then, it is not inconsistent with the apparent imperfections
+of the creation around us, that Jesus should have done the best possible
+carpenter's work; for those very imperfections are actually through their
+imperfection the means of carrying out the higher creation God has in view,
+and at which he is working all the time.
+
+"Now let me read you what King David thought upon this question."
+
+She read the hundred and seventh Psalm. Then they had some singing, in
+which the children took a delightful part. I have seldom heard children
+sing pleasantly. In Sunday schools I have always found their voices
+painfully harsh. But Marion made her children restrain their voices, and
+sing softly; which had, she said, an excellent moral effect on themselves,
+all squalling and screeching, whether in art or morals, being ruinous to
+either.
+
+Toward the close of the singing, Roger and I slipped out. We had all but
+tacitly agreed it would be best to make no apology, but just vanish, and
+come again with Percivale the following Sunday.
+
+The greater part of the way home we walked in silence.
+
+"What did you think of that, Roger?" I asked at length.
+
+"Quite Socratic as to method," he answered, and said no more.
+
+I sent a full report of the evening to my father, who was delighted with
+it, although, of course, much was lost in the reporting of the mere words,
+not to mention the absence of her sweet face and shining eyes, of her
+quiet, earnest, musical voice. My father kept the letter, and that is how I
+am able to give the present report.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+ABOUT SERVANTS.
+
+
+I went to call on Lady Bernard the next day: for there was one subject on
+which I could better talk with her than with Marion; and that subject was
+Marion herself. In the course of our conversation, I said that I had had
+more than usual need of such a lesson as she gave us the night before,--I
+had been, and indeed still was, so vexed with my nurse.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Lady Bernard.
+
+"She has given me warning," I answered.
+
+"She has been with you some time--has she not?"
+
+"Ever since we were married."
+
+"What reason does she give?"
+
+"Oh! she wants _to better herself_, of course," I replied,--in such a tone,
+that Lady Bernard rejoined,--
+
+"And why should she not better herself?"
+
+"But she has such a false notion of bettering herself. I am confident what
+she wants will do any thing but better her, if she gets it."
+
+"What is her notion, then? Are you sure you have got at the real one?"
+
+"I believe I have _now_. When I asked her first, she said she was very
+comfortable, and condescended to inform me that she had nothing against
+either me or her master, but thought it was time she was having more wages;
+for a friend of hers, who had left home a year after herself, was having
+two more pounds than she had."
+
+"It is very natural, and certainly not wrong, that she should wish for more
+wages."
+
+"I told her she need not have taken such a round-about way of asking for an
+advance, and said I would raise her wages with pleasure. But, instead of
+receiving the announcement with any sign of satisfaction, she seemed put
+out by it; and, after some considerable amount of incoherence, blurted out
+that the place was dull, and she wanted a change. At length, however, I got
+at her real reason, which was simply ambition: she wanted to rise in the
+world,--to get a place where men-servants were kept,--a more fashionable
+place, in fact."
+
+"A very mistaken ambition certainly," said Lady Bernard, "but one which
+would be counted natural enough in any other line of life. Had she given
+you ground for imagining higher aims in her?"
+
+"She had been so long with us, that I thought she must have some regard for
+us."
+
+"She has probably a good deal more than she is aware of. But change is as
+needful to some minds, for their education, as an even tenor of life is to
+others. Probably she has got all the good she is capable of receiving from
+you, and there may be some one ready to take her place for whom you will be
+able to do more. However inconvenient it may be for you to change, the more
+young people pass through your house the better."
+
+"If it were really for her good, I hope I shouldn't mind."
+
+"You cannot tell what may be needful to cause the seed you have sown to
+germinate. It may be necessary for her to pass to another class in the
+school of life, before she can realize what she learned in yours."
+
+I was silent, for I was beginning to feel ashamed; and Lady Bernard went
+on,--
+
+"When I hear mistresses lamenting, over some favorite servant, as marrying
+certain misery in exchange for a comfortable home, with plenty to eat
+and drink and wear, I always think of the other side to it, namely, how,
+through the instincts of his own implanting, God is urging her to a path
+in which, by passing through the fires and waters of suffering, she may be
+stung to the life of a true humanity. And such suffering is far more ready
+to work its perfect work on a girl who has passed through a family like
+yours."
+
+"I wouldn't say a word to keep her if she were going to be married," I
+said; "but you will allow there is good reason to fear she will be no
+better for such a change as she desires."
+
+"You have good reason to fear, my child," said Lady Bernard, smiling so
+as to take all sting out of the reproof, "that you have too little faith
+in the God who cares for your maid as for you. It is not indeed likely
+that she will have such help as yours where she goes next; but the loss
+of it may throw her back on herself, and bring out her individuality,
+which is her conscience. Still, I am far from wondering at your fear for
+her,--knowing well what dangers she may fall into. Shall I tell you what
+first began to open my eyes to the evils of a large establishment? Wishing
+to get rid of part of the weight of my affairs, and at the same time to
+assist a relative who was in want of employment, I committed to him, along
+with larger matters, the oversight of my household expenses, and found that
+he saved me the whole of his salary. This will be easily understood from a
+single fact. Soon after his appointment, he called on a tradesman to pay
+him his bill. The man, taking him for a new butler, offered him the same
+discount he had been in the habit of giving his supposed predecessor,
+namely, twenty-five per cent,--a discount, I need not say, never intended
+to reach my knowledge, any more than my purse. The fact was patent: I had
+been living in a hotel, of which I not only paid the rent, but paid the
+landlord for cheating me. With such a head to an establishment, you may
+judge what the members may become."
+
+"I remember an amusing experience my brother-in-law, Roger Percivale, once
+had of your household," I said.
+
+"I also remember it perfectly," she returned. "That was how I came to
+know him. But I knew something of his family long before. I remember his
+grandfather, a great buyer of pictures and marbles."
+
+Lady Bernard here gave me the story from her point of view; but Roger's
+narrative being of necessity the more complete, I tell the tale as he told
+it me.
+
+At the time of the occurrence, he was assisting Mr. F., the well-known
+sculptor, and had taken a share in both the modelling and the carving of a
+bust of Lady Bernard's father. When it was finished, and Mr. F. was about
+to take it home, he asked Roger to accompany him, and help him to get it
+safe into the house and properly placed.
+
+Roger and the butler between them carried it to the drawing-room, where
+were Lady Bernard and a company of her friends, whom she had invited to
+meet Mr. F, at lunch, and see the bust. There being no pedestal yet ready,
+Mr. F. made choice of a certain small table for it to stand upon, and then
+accompanied her ladyship and her other guests to the dining-room, leaving
+Roger to uncover the bust, place it in the proper light, and do whatever
+more might be necessary to its proper effect on the company when they
+should return. As she left the room, Lady Bernard told Roger to ring for
+a servant to clear the table for him, and render what other assistance he
+might want. He did so. A lackey answered the bell, and Roger requested
+him to remove the things from the table. The man left the room, and did
+not return. Roger therefore cleared and moved the table himself, and with
+difficulty got the bust upon it. Finding then several stains upon the pure
+half transparency of the marble, he rang the bell for a basin of water
+and a sponge. Another man appeared, looked into the room, and went away.
+He rang once more, and yet another servant came. This last condescended
+to hear him; and, informing him that he could get what he wanted in the
+scullery, vanished in his turn. By this time Roger confesses to have been
+rather in a rage; but what could he do? Least of all allow Mr. F.'s work,
+and the likeness of her ladyship's father, to make its debut with a spot
+on its nose; therefore, seeing he could not otherwise procure what was
+necessary, he set out in quest of the unknown appurtenances of the kitchen.
+
+It is unpleasant to find one's self astray, even in a moderately sized
+house; and Roger did not at all relish wandering about the huge place, with
+no finger-posts to keep him in its business-thoroughfares, not to speak
+of directing him to the remotest recesses of a house "full," as Chaucer
+says, "of crenkles." At last, however, he found himself at the door of the
+servants' hall. Two men were lying on their backs on benches, with their
+knees above their heads in the air; a third was engaged in emptying a
+pewter pot, between his draughts tossing _facetiæ_ across its mouth to a
+damsel who was removing the remains of some private luncheon; and a fourth
+sat in one of the windows reading "Bell's Life." Roger took it all in at
+a glance, while to one of the giants supine, or rather to a perpendicular
+pair of white stockings, he preferred his request for a basin and a
+sponge. Once more he was informed that he would find what he wanted in
+the scullery. There was no time to waste on unavailing demands, therefore
+he only begged further to be directed how to find it. The fellow, without
+raising his head or lowering his knees, jabbered out such instructions
+as, from the rapidity with which he delivered them, were, if not
+unintelligible, at all events incomprehensible; and Roger had to set out
+again on the quest, only not quite so bewildered as before. He found a
+certain long passage mentioned, however, and happily, before he arrived
+at the end of it, met a maid, who with the utmost civility gave him full
+instructions to find the place. The scullery-maid was equally civil; and
+Roger returned with basin and sponge to the drawing-room, where he speedily
+removed the too troublesome stains from the face of the marble.
+
+When the company re-entered, Mr. F. saw at once, from the expression and
+bearing of Roger, that something had happened to discompose him, and asked
+him what was amiss. Roger having briefly informed him, Mr. F. at once
+recounted the facts to Lady Bernard, who immediately requested a full
+statement from Roger himself, and heard the whole story.
+
+She walked straight to the bell, and ordered up every one of her domestics,
+from the butler to the scullery-maid.
+
+Without one hasty word, or one bodily sign of the anger she was in, except
+the flashing of her eyes, she told them she could not have had a suspicion
+that such insolence was possible in her house; that they had disgraced her
+in her own eyes, as having gathered such people about her; that she would
+not add to Mr. Percivale's annoyance by asking him to point out the guilty
+persons, but that they might assure themselves she would henceforth keep
+both eyes and ears open, and if the slightest thing of the sort happened
+again, she would most assuredly dismiss every one of them at a moment's
+warning. She then turned to Roger and said,--
+
+"Mr. Percivale, I beg your pardon for the insults you have received from my
+servants."
+
+"I did think," she said, as she finished telling me the story, "to dismiss
+them all on the spot, but was deterred by the fear of injustice. The next
+morning, however, four or five of them gave my housekeeper warning: I gave
+orders that they should leave the house at once, and from that day I set
+about reducing my establishment. My principal objects were two: first, that
+my servants might have more work; and second, that I might be able to know
+something of every one of them; for one thing I saw, that, until I ruled
+my own house well, I had no right to go trying to do good out of doors. I
+think I do know a little of the nature and character of every soul under my
+roof now; and I am more and more confident that nothing of real and lasting
+benefit can be done for a class except through personal influence upon the
+individual persons who compose it--such influence, I mean, as at the very
+least sets for Christianity."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+ABOUT PERCIVALE.
+
+
+I should like much, before in my narrative approaching a certain hard
+season we had to encounter, to say a few words concerning my husband, if
+I only knew how. I find women differ much, both in the degree and manner
+in which their feelings will permit them to talk about their husbands. I
+have known women set a whole community against their husbands by the way
+in which they trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set
+everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's
+faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband
+is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject
+to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even
+justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself. How, then,
+am I to discharge a sort of half duty my father has laid upon me by what
+he has said in "The Seaboard Parish," concerning my husband's opinions? My
+father is one of the few really large-minded men I have yet known; but I
+am not certain that he has done Percivale justice. At the same time, if he
+has not, Percivale himself is partly to blame, inasmuch as he never took
+pains to show my father what he was; for, had he done so, my father of all
+men would have understood him. On the other hand, this fault, if such it
+was, could have sprung only from my husband's modesty, and his horror of
+possibly producing an impression on my father's mind more favorable than
+correct. It is all right now, however.
+
+Still, my difficulty remains as to how I am to write about him. I must
+encourage myself with the consideration that none but our own friends, with
+whom, whether they understood us or not, we are safe, will know to whom the
+veiled narrative points.
+
+But some acute reader may say,--
+
+"You describe your husband's picture: he will be known by that."
+
+In this matter I have been cunning--I hope not deceitful, inasmuch as I
+now reveal my cunning. Instead of describing any real picture of his, I
+have always substituted one he has only talked about. The picture actually
+associated with the facts related is not the picture I have described.
+
+Although my husband left the impression on my father's mind, lasting for
+a long time, that he had some definite repugnance to Christianity itself,
+I had been soon satisfied, perhaps from his being more open with me, that
+certain unworthy representations of Christianity, coming to him with
+authority, had cast discredit upon the whole idea of it. In the first year
+or two of our married life, we had many talks on the subject; and I was
+astonished to find what things he imagined to be acknowledged essentials
+of Christianity, which have no place whatever in the New Testament; and I
+think it was in proportion as he came to see his own misconceptions, that,
+although there was little or no outward difference to be perceived in him,
+I could more and more clearly distinguish an under-current of thought and
+feeling setting towards the faith which Christianity preaches. He said
+little or nothing, even when I attempted to draw him out on the matter;
+for he was almost morbidly careful not to seem to know any thing he did
+not know, or to appear what he was not. The most I could get out of him
+was--but I had better give a little talk I had with him on one occasion.
+It was some time before we began to go to Marion's on a Sunday evening,
+and I had asked him to go with me to a certain, little chapel in the
+neighborhood.
+
+"What!" he said merrily, "the daughter of a clergyman be seen going to a
+conventicle?"
+
+"If I did it, I would be seen doing it," I answered.
+
+"Don't you know that the man is no conciliatory, or even mild dissenter,
+but a decided enemy to Church and State and all that?" pursued Percivale.
+
+"I don't care," I returned. "I know nothing about it. What I know is, that
+he's a poet and a prophet both in one. He stirs up my heart within me, and
+makes me long to be good. He is no orator, and yet breaks into bursts of
+eloquence such as none of the studied orators, to whom you profess so great
+an aversion, could ever reach."
+
+"You may well be right there. It is against nature for a speaker to be
+eloquent throughout his discourse, and the false will of course quench the
+true. I don't mind going if you wish it. I suppose he believes what he
+says, at least."
+
+"Not a doubt of it. He could not speak as he does from less than a thorough
+belief."
+
+"Do you mean to say, Wynnie, that he is _sure_ of every thing,--I don't
+want to urge an unreasonable question,--but is he _sure_ that the story of
+the New Testament is, in the main, actual fact? I should be very sorry to
+trouble your faith, but"--
+
+"My father says," I interrupted, "that a true faith is like the Pool of
+Bethesda: it is when troubled that it shows its healing power."
+
+"That depends on where the trouble comes from, perhaps," said Percivale.
+
+"Anyhow," I answered, "it is only that which cannot be shaken that shall
+remain."
+
+"Well, I will tell you what seems to me a very common-sense difficulty.
+How is any one to be _sure_ of the things recorded? I cannot imagine a man
+of our time absolutely certain of them. If you tell me I have testimony,
+I answer, that the testimony itself requires testimony. I never even saw
+the people who bear it; have just as good reason to doubt their existence,
+as that of him concerning whom they bear it; have positively no means of
+verifying it, and indeed, have so little confidence in all that is called
+evidence, knowing how it can be twisted, that I should distrust any
+conclusion I might seem about to come to on the one side or the other. It
+does appear to me, that, if the thing were of God, he would have taken care
+that it should be possible for an honest man to place a hearty confidence
+in its record."
+
+He had never talked to me so openly, and I took it as a sign that he had
+been thinking more of these things than hitherto. I felt it a serious
+matter to have to answer such words, for how could I have any better
+assurance of that external kind than Percivale himself? That I was in the
+same intellectual position, however, enabled me the better to understand
+him. For a short time I was silent, while he regarded me with a look of
+concern,--fearful, I fancied, lest he should have involved me in his own
+perplexity.
+
+"Isn't it possible, Percivale," I said, "that God may not care so much for
+beginning at that end?"
+
+"I don't quite understand you, Wynnie," he returned.
+
+"A man might believe every fact recorded concerning our Lord, and yet not
+have the faith in him that God wishes him to have."
+
+"Yes, certainly. But will you say the converse of that is true?"
+
+"Explain, please."
+
+"Will you say a man may have the faith God cares for without the faith you
+say he does not care for?"
+
+"I didn't say that God does not care about our having assurance of the
+facts; for surely, if every thing depends on those facts, much will depend
+on the degree of our assurance concerning them. I only expressed a doubt
+whether, in the present age, he cares that we should have that assurance
+first. Perhaps he means it to be the result of the higher kind of faith
+which rests in the will."
+
+"I don't, at the moment, see how the higher faith, as you call it, can
+precede the lower."
+
+"It seems to me possible enough. For what is the test of discipleship the
+Lord lays down? Is it not obedience? 'If ye love me, keep my commandments.'
+'If a man love me, he will keep my commandments.' 'I never knew you: depart
+from me, ye workers of iniquity.' Suppose a man feels in himself that he
+must have some saviour or perish; suppose he feels drawn, by conscience,
+by admiration, by early memories, to the form of Jesus, dimly seen through
+the mists of ages; suppose he cannot be sure there ever was such a man, but
+reads about him, and ponders over the words attributed to him, until he
+feels they are the right thing, whether _he_ said them or not, and that if
+he could but be sure there were such a being, he would believe in him with
+heart and soul; suppose also that he comes upon the words, 'If any man is
+willing to do the will of the Father, he shall know whether I speak of
+myself or he sent me;' suppose all these things, might not the man then say
+to himself, 'I cannot tell whether all this is true, but I know nothing
+that seems half so good, and I will try to do the will of the Father in
+the hope of the promised knowledge'? Do you think God would, or would not,
+count that to the man for faith?"
+
+I had no more to say, and a silence followed. After a pause of some
+duration, Percivale said,--
+
+"I will go with you, my dear;" and that was all his answer.
+
+When we came out of the little chapel,--the same into which Marion had
+stepped on that evening so memorable to her,--we walked homeward in
+silence, and reached our own door ere a word was spoken. But, when I went
+to take off my things, Percivale followed me into the room and said,--
+
+"Whether that man is _certain_ of the facts or not, I cannot tell yet;
+but I am perfectly satisfied he believes in the manner of which you were
+speaking,--that of obedience, Wynnie. He must believe with his heart and
+will and life."
+
+"If so, he can well afford to wait for what light God will give him on
+things that belong to the intellect and judgment."
+
+"I would rather think," he returned, "that purity of life must re-act on
+the judgment, so as to make it likewise clear, and enable it to recognize
+the true force of the evidence at command."
+
+"That is how my father came to believe," I said.
+
+"He seems to me to rest his conviction more upon external proof."
+
+"That is only because it is easier to talk about. He told me once that he
+was never able to estimate the force and weight of the external arguments
+until after he had believed for the very love of the eternal truth he saw
+in the story. His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect."
+
+"That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if
+that story should not be true, after all!"
+
+"Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it
+cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us
+try it until it crumbles in our hands,--try it by the touchstone of action
+founded on its requirements."
+
+"There may be no other way," said Percivale, after a thoughtful pause, "of
+becoming capable of recognizing the truth. It may be beyond the grasp of
+all but the mind that has thus yielded to it. There may be no contact for
+it with any but such a mind. Such a conviction, then, could neither be
+forestalled nor communicated. Its very existence must remain doubtful until
+it asserts itself. I see that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+MY SECOND TERROR.
+
+
+"Please, ma'am, is Master Fido to carry Master Zohrab about by the back
+o' the neck?" said Jemima, in indignant appeal, one afternoon late in
+November, bursting into the study where I sat with my husband.
+
+Fido was our Bedlington terrier, which, having been reared by Newcastle
+colliers, and taught to draw a badger,--whatever that may mean,--I am
+hazy about it,--had a passion for burrowing after any thing buried. Swept
+away by the current of the said passion, he had with his strong forepaws
+unearthed poor Zohrab, which, being a tortoise, had ensconced himself, as
+he thought, for the winter, in the earth at the foot of a lilac-tree; but
+now, much to his jeopardy, from the cold and the shock of the surprise more
+than from the teeth of his friend, was being borne about the garden in
+triumph, though whether exactly as Jemima described may be questionable.
+Her indignation at the inroad of the dog upon the personal rights of the
+tortoise had possibly not lessened her general indifference to accuracy.
+
+Alarmed at the danger to the poor animal, of a kind from which his natural
+defences were powerless to protect him, Percivale threw down his palette
+and brushes, and ran to the door.
+
+"Do put on your coat and hat, Percivale!" I cried; but he was gone.
+
+Cold as it was, he had been sitting in the light blouse he had worn at his
+work all the summer. The stove had got red-hot, and the room was like an
+oven, while outside a dank fog filled the air. I hurried after him with his
+coat, and found him pursuing Fido about the garden, the brute declining to
+obey his call, or to drop the tortoise. Percivale was equally deaf to my
+call, and not until he had beaten the dog did he return with the rescued
+tortoise in his hands. The consequences were serious,--first the death of
+Zohrab, and next a terrible illness to my husband. He had caught cold: it
+settled on his lungs, and passed into bronchitis.
+
+It was a terrible time to me; for I had no doubt, for some days, that he
+was dying. The measures taken seemed thoroughly futile.
+
+It is an awful moment when first Death looks in at the door. The positive
+recognition of his presence is so different from any vividest imagination
+of it! For the moment I believed nothing,--felt only the coming blackness
+of absolute loss. I cared neither for my children, nor for my father or
+mother. Nothing appeared of any worth more. I had conscience enough left to
+try to pray, but no prayer would rise from the frozen depths of my spirit.
+I could only move about in mechanical and hopeless ministration to one
+whom it seemed of no use to go on loving any more; for what was nature
+but a soulless machine, the constant clank of whose motion sounded only,
+"Dust to dust; dust to dust," forevermore? But I was roused from this
+horror-stricken mood by a look from my husband, who, catching a glimpse of
+my despair, motioned me to him with a smile as of sunshine upon snow, and
+whispered in my ear,--
+
+"I'm afraid you haven't much more faith than myself, after all, Wynnie."
+
+It stung me into life,--not for the sake of my professions, not even for
+the honor of our heavenly Father, but by waking in me the awful thought of
+my beloved passing through the shadow of death with no one beside him to
+help or comfort him, in absolute loneliness and uncertainty. The thought
+was unendurable. For a moment I wished he might die suddenly, and so escape
+the vacuous despair of a conscious lingering betwixt life and the something
+or the nothing beyond it.
+
+"But I cannot go with you!" I cried; and, forgetting all my duty as a
+nurse, I wept in agony.
+
+"Perhaps another will, my Wynnie,--one who knows the way," he whispered;
+for he could not speak aloud, and closed his eyes.
+
+It was as if an arrow of light had slain the Python coiled about my heart.
+If _he_ believed, _I_ could believe also; if _he_ could encounter the vague
+dark, _I_ could endure the cheerless light. I was myself again, and, with
+one word of endearment, left the bedside to do what had to be done.
+
+At length a faint hope began to glimmer in the depths of my cavernous fear.
+It was long ere it swelled into confidence; but, although I was then in
+somewhat feeble health, my strength never gave way. For a whole week I did
+not once undress, and for weeks I was half-awake all the time I slept. The
+softest whisper would rouse me thoroughly; and it was only when Marion took
+my place that I could sleep at all.
+
+I am afraid I neglected my poor children dreadfully. I seemed for the time
+to have no responsibility, and even, I am ashamed to say, little care for
+them. But then I knew that they were well attended to: friends were very
+kind--especially Judy--in taking them out; and Marion's daily visits were
+like those of a mother. Indeed, she was able to mother any thing human
+except a baby, to whom she felt no attraction,--any more than to the
+inferior animals, for which she had little regard beyond a negative one:
+she would hurt no creature that was not hurtful; but she had scarcely an
+atom of kindness for dog or cat, or any thing that is petted of woman. It
+is the only defect I am aware of in her character.
+
+My husband slowly recovered, but it was months before he was able to do
+any thing he would call work. But, even in labor, success is not only to
+the strong. Working a little at the short best time of the day with him,
+he managed, long before his full recovery, to paint a small picture which
+better critics than I have thought worthy of Angelico, I will attempt to
+describe it.
+
+Through the lighted windows of a great hall, the spectator catches broken
+glimpses of a festive company. At the head of the table, pouring out the
+red wine, he sees one like unto the Son of man, upon whom the eyes of
+all are turned. At the other end of the hall, seated high in a gallery,
+with rapt looks and quaint yet homely angelican instruments, he sees the
+orchestra pouring out their souls through their strings and trumpets. The
+hall is filled with a jewelly glow, as of light suppressed by color, the
+radiating centre of which is the red wine on the table; while mingled
+wings, of all gorgeous splendors, hovering in the dim height, are suffused
+and harmonized by the molten ruby tint that pervades the whole.
+
+Outside, in the drizzly darkness, stands a lonely man. He stoops listening,
+with one ear laid almost against the door. His half-upturned face catches
+a ray of the light reflected from a muddy pool in the road. It discloses
+features wan and wasted with sorrow and sickness, but glorified with the
+joy of the music. He is like one who has been four days dead, to whose
+body the music has recalled the soul. Down by his knee he holds a violin,
+fashioned like those of the orchestra within; which, as he listens, he is
+tuning to their pitch.
+
+To readers acquainted with a poem of Dr. Donne's,--"Hymn to God, my God, in
+my sickness,"--this description of mine will at once suggest the origin of
+the picture. I had read some verses of it to him in his convalescence; and,
+having heard them once, he requested them often again. The first stanza
+runs thus:--
+
+  "Since I am coming to that holy room
+  Where with the choir of saints forevermore
+  I shall be made thy musique, as I come,
+  I tune the instrument here at the door;
+  And what I must do then, think here before."
+
+The painting is almost the only one he has yet refused to let me see before
+it was finished; but, when it was, he hung it up in my own little room off
+the study, and I became thoroughly acquainted with it. I think I love it
+more than any thing else he has done. I got him, without telling him why,
+to put a touch or two to the listening figure, which made it really like
+himself.
+
+During this period of recovery, I often came upon him reading his Greek
+New Testament, which he would shove aside when I entered. At length, one
+morning, I said to him,--
+
+"Are you ashamed of the New Testament, Percivale? One would think it was a
+bad book from the way you try to hide it."
+
+"No, my love," he said: "it is only that I am jealous of appearing to do
+that from suffering and weakness only, which I did not do when I was strong
+and well. But sickness has opened my eyes a good deal I think; and I am
+sure of this much, that, whatever truth there is here, I want it all the
+same whether I am feeling the want or not. I had no idea what there was in
+this book."
+
+"Would you mind telling me," I said, "what made you take to reading it?"
+
+"I will try. When I thought I was dying, a black cloud seemed to fall over
+every thing. It was not so much that I was afraid to die,--although I did
+dread the final conflict,--as that I felt so forsaken and lonely. It was of
+little use saying to myself that I mustn't be a coward, and that it was the
+part of a man to meet his fate, whatever it might be, with composure; for I
+saw nothing worth being brave about: the heart had melted out of me; there
+was nothing to give me joy, nothing for my life to rest up on, no sense
+of love at the heart of things. Didn't you feel something the same that
+terrible day?"
+
+"I did," I answered. "I hope I never believed in Death all the time; and
+yet for one fearful moment the skeleton seemed to swell and grow till
+he blotted out the sun and the stars, and was himself all in all, while
+the life beyond was too shadowy to show behind him. And so Death was
+victorious, until the thought of your loneliness in the dark valley broke
+the spell; and for your sake I hoped in God again."
+
+"And I thought with myself,--Would God set his children down in the dark,
+and leave them to cry aloud in anguish at the terrors of the night? Would
+he not make the very darkness light about them? Or, if they must pass
+through such tortures, would he not at least let them know that he was with
+them? How, then, can there be a God? Then arose in my mind all at once the
+old story, how, in the person of his Son, God himself had passed through
+the darkness now gathering about me; had gone down to the grave, and had
+conquered death by dying. If this was true, this was to be a God indeed.
+Well might he call on us to endure, who had himself borne the far heavier
+share. If there were an Eternal Life who would perfect my life, I could be
+brave; I could endure what he chose to lay upon me; I could go whither he
+led."
+
+"And were you able to think all that when you were so ill, my love?" I
+said.
+
+"Something like it,--practically very like it," he answered. "It kept
+growing in my mind,--coming and going, and gathering clearer shape. I
+thought with myself, that, if there was a God, he certainly knew that I
+would give myself to him if I could; that, if I knew Jesus to be verily and
+really his Son, however it might seem strange to believe in him and hard to
+obey him, I would try to do so; and then a verse about the smoking flax and
+the bruised reed came into my head, and a great hope arose in me. I do not
+know if it was what the good people would call faith; but I had no time and
+no heart to think about words: I wanted God and his Christ. A fresh spring
+of life seemed to burst up in my heart; all the world grew bright again:
+I seemed to love you and the children twice as much as before; a calmness
+came down upon my spirit which seemed to me like nothing but the presence
+of God; and, although I dare say you did not then perceive a change, I am
+certain that the same moment I began to recover."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE CLOUDS AFTER THE RAIN.
+
+
+But the clouds returned after the rain. It will be easily understood
+how the little money we had in hand should have rapidly vanished during
+Percivale's illness. While he was making nothing, the expenses of the
+family went on as usual; and not that only, but many little delicacies had
+to be got for him, and the doctor was yet to pay. Even up to the time when
+he had been taken ill, we had been doing little better than living from
+hand to mouth; for as often as we thought income was about to get a few
+yards ahead in the race with expense, something invariably happened to
+disappoint us.
+
+I am not sorry that I have no _special_ faculty for saving; for I have
+never known any, in whom such was well developed, who would not do things
+they ought to be ashamed of. The savings of such people seem to me to come
+quite as much off other people as off themselves; and, especially in regard
+of small sums, they are in danger of being first mean, and then dishonest.
+Certainly, whoever makes saving _the_ end of her life, must soon grow mean,
+and will probably grow dishonest. But I have never succeeded in drawing the
+line betwixt meanness and dishonesty: what is mean, so far as I can see,
+slides by indistinguishable gradations into what is plainly dishonest. And
+what is more, the savings are commonly made at the cost of the defenceless.
+It is better far to live in constant difficulties than to keep out of them
+by such vile means as must, besides, poison the whole nature, and make
+one's judgments, both of God and her neighbors, mean as her own conduct.
+It is nothing to say that you must be just before you are generous, for
+that is the very point I am insisting on; namely, that one must be just to
+others before she is generous to herself. It will never do to make your
+two ends meet by pulling the other ends from the hands of those who are
+likewise puzzled to make them meet.
+
+But I must now put myself at the bar, and cry _Peccavi_; for I was often
+wrong on the other side, sometimes getting things for the house before it
+was quite clear I could afford them, and sometimes buying the best when an
+inferior thing would have been more suitable, if not to my ideas, yet to my
+purse. It is, however, far more difficult for one with an uncertain income
+to learn to save, or even to be prudent, than for one who knows how much
+exactly every quarter will bring.
+
+My husband, while he left the whole management of money matters to me,
+would yet spend occasionally without consulting me. In fact, he had no
+notion of money, and what it would or would not do. I never knew a man
+spend less upon himself; but he would be extravagant for me, and I dared
+hardly utter a foolish liking lest he should straightway turn it into a
+cause of shame by attempting to gratify it. He had, besides, a weakness for
+over-paying people, of which neither Marion nor I could honestly approve,
+however much we might admire the disposition whence it proceeded.
+
+Now that I have confessed, I shall be more easy in my mind; for, in regard
+of the troubles that followed, I cannot be sure that I was free of blame.
+One word more in self-excuse, and I have done: however imperative, it is
+none the less hard to cultivate two opposing virtues at one and the same
+time.
+
+While my husband was ill, not a picture had been disposed of; and even
+after he was able to work a little, I could not encourage visitors: he
+was not able for the fatigue, and in fact shrunk, with an irritability I
+had never perceived a sign of before, from seeing any one. To my growing
+dismay, I saw my little stock--which was bodily in my hand, for we had no
+banking account--rapidly approaching its final evanishment.
+
+Some may think, that, with parents in the position of mine, a temporary
+difficulty need have caused me no anxiety: I must, therefore, mention one
+or two facts with regard to both my husband and my parents.
+
+In the first place, although he had as complete a confidence in him as I
+had, both in regard to what he said and what he seemed, my husband could
+not feel towards my father as I felt. He had married me as a poor man, who
+yet could keep a wife; and I knew it would be a bitter humiliation to him
+to ask my father for money, on the ground that he had given his daughter.
+I should have felt nothing of the kind; for I should have known that my
+father would do him as well as me perfect justice in the matter, and
+would consider any money spent upon us as used to a divine purpose. For
+he regarded the necessaries of life as noble, its comforts as honorable,
+its luxuries as permissible,--thus reversing altogether the usual judgment
+of rich men, who in general like nothing worse than to leave their hoards
+to those of their relatives who will degrade them to the purchase of mere
+bread and cheese, blankets and clothes and coals. But I had no right to go
+against my husband's feeling. So long as the children had their bread and
+milk, I would endure with him. I am confident I could have starved as well
+as he, and should have enjoyed letting him see it.
+
+But there were reasons because of which even I, in my fullest freedom,
+could not have asked help from my father just at this time. I am ashamed
+to tell the fact, but I must: before the end of his second year at Oxford,
+just over, the elder of my two brothers had, without any vice I firmly
+believe, beyond that of thoughtlessness and folly, got himself so deeply
+mired in debt, both to tradespeople and money-lenders, that my father had
+to pay two thousand pounds for him. Indeed, as I was well assured, although
+he never told me so, he had to borrow part of the money on a fresh mortgage
+in order to clear him. Some lawyer, I believe, told him that he was not
+bound to pay: but my father said, that, although such creditors deserved no
+protection of the law, he was not bound to give them a lesson in honesty
+at the expense of weakening the bond between himself and his son, for
+whose misdeeds he acknowledged a large share of responsibility; while, on
+the other hand, he was bound to give his son the lesson of the suffering
+brought on his family by his selfishness; and therefore would pay the
+money--if not gladly, yet willingly. How the poor boy got through the shame
+and misery of it, I can hardly imagine; but this I can say for him, that
+it was purely of himself that he accepted a situation in Ceylon, instead
+of returning to Oxford. Thither he was now on his way, with the intention
+of saving all he could in order to repay his father; and if at length he
+succeeds in doing so, he will doubtless make a fairer start the second
+time, because of the discipline, than if he had gone out with the money in
+his pocket.
+
+It was natural, then, that in such circumstances a daughter should shrink
+from adding her troubles to those caused by a son. I ought to add, that my
+father had of late been laying out a good deal in building cottages for the
+laborers on his farms, and that the land was not yet entirely freed from
+the mortgages my mother had inherited with it.
+
+Percivale continued so weak, that for some time I could not bring myself to
+say a word to him about money. But to keep them as low as possible did not
+prevent the household debts from accumulating, and the servants' wages were
+on the point of coming due. I had been careful to keep the milkman paid;
+and for the rest of the tradesmen, I consoled myself with the certainty,
+that, if the worst came to the worst, there was plenty of furniture in the
+house to pay every one of them. Still, of all burdens, next to sin, that of
+debt, I think, must be heaviest.
+
+I tried to keep cheerful; but at length, one night, during our supper of
+bread and cheese, which I could not bear to see my poor, pale-faced husband
+eating, I broke down.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, my darling?" asked Percivale.
+
+I took a half-crown from my pocket, and held it out on the palm of my hand.
+
+"That's all I've got, Percivale," I said.
+
+"Oh! that all--is it?" he returned lightly.
+
+"Yes,--isn't that enough?" I said with some indignation.
+
+"Certainly--for to-night," he answered, "seeing the shops are shut. But is
+that all that's troubling you?" he went on.
+
+"It seems to me quite enough," I said again; "and if you had the
+housekeeping to do, and the bills to pay, you would think a solitary
+half-crown quite enough to make you miserable."
+
+"Never mind--so long as it's a good one," he said. "I'll get you more
+to-morrow."
+
+"How can you do that?" I asked.
+
+"Easily," he answered. "You'll see. Don't you trouble your dear heart about
+it for a moment."
+
+I felt relieved, and asked him no more questions.
+
+The next morning, when I went into the study to speak to him, he was not
+there; and I guessed that he had gone to town to get the money, for he had
+not been out before since his illness, at least without me. But I hoped of
+all things he was not going to borrow it of a money-lender, of which I had
+a great and justifiable horror, having heard from himself how a friend of
+his had in such a case fared. I would have sold three-fourths of the things
+in the house rather. But as I turned to leave the study, anxious both about
+himself and his proceedings, I thought something was different, and soon
+discovered that a certain favorite picture was missing from the wall: it
+was clear he had gone either to sell it or raise money upon it.
+
+By our usual early dinner-hour, he returned, and put into my hands, with a
+look of forced cheerfulness, two five-pound notes.
+
+"Is that all you got for that picture?" I said.
+
+"That is all Mr. ---- would advance me upon it," he answered. "I thought
+he had made enough by me to have risked a little more than that; but
+picture-dealers--Well, never mind. That is enough to give time for twenty
+things to happen."
+
+And no doubt twenty things did happen, but none of them of the sort he
+meant. The ten pounds sank through my purse like water through gravel. I
+paid a number of small bills at once, for they pressed the more heavily
+upon me that I knew the money was wanted; and by the end of another
+fortnight we were as badly off as before, with an additional trouble, which
+in the circumstances was any thing but slight.
+
+In conjunction with more than ordinary endowments of stupidity and
+self-conceit, Jemima was possessed of a furious temper, which showed itself
+occasionally in outbursts of unendurable rudeness. She had been again and
+again on the point of leaving me, now she, now I, giving warning; but, ere
+the day arrived, her better nature had always got the upper hand,--she had
+broken down and given in. These outbursts had generally followed a season
+of better behavior than usual, and were all but certain if I ventured the
+least commendation; for she could stand any thing better than praise. At
+the least subsequent rebuke, self would break out in rage, vulgarity, and
+rudeness. On this occasion, however, I cannot tell whence it was that one
+of these cyclones arose in our small atmosphere; but it was Jemima, you
+may well believe, who gave warning, for it was out of my power to pay her
+wages; and there was no sign of her yielding.
+
+My reader may be inclined to ask in what stead the religion I had learned
+of my father now stood me. I will endeavor to be honest in my answer.
+
+Every now and then I tried to pray to God to deliver us; but I was far
+indeed from praying always, and still farther from not fainting. A whole
+day would sometimes pass under a weight of care that amounted often to
+misery; and not until its close would I bethink me that I had been all the
+weary hours without God. Even when more hopeful, I would keep looking and
+looking for the impossibility of something to happen of itself, instead
+of looking for some good and perfect gift to come down from the Father of
+lights; and, when I awoke to the fact, the fog would yet lie so deep on my
+soul, that I could not be sorry for my idolatry and want of faith. It was,
+indeed, a miserable time. There was, besides, one definite thought that
+always choked my prayers: I could not say in my conscience that I had been
+sufficiently careful either in my management or my expenditure. "If," I
+thought, "I could be certain that I had done my best, I should be able to
+trust in God for all that lies beyond my power; but now he may mean to
+punish me for my carelessness." Then why should I not endure it calmly and
+without complaint? Alas! it was not I alone that thus would be punished,
+but my children and my husband as well. Nor could I avoid coming on my poor
+father at last, who, of course, would interfere to prevent a sale; and the
+thought was, from the circumstances I have mentioned, very bitter to me.
+Sometimes, however, in more faithful moods, I would reason with myself that
+God would not be hard upon me, even if I had not been so saving as I ought.
+My father had taken his son's debts on himself, and would not allow him to
+be disgraced more than could be helped; and, if an earthly parent would
+act thus for his child, would our Father in heaven be less tender with us?
+Still, for very love's sake, it might be necessary to lay some disgrace
+upon me, for of late I had been thinking far too little of the best things.
+The cares more than the duties of life had been filling my mind. If it
+brought me nearer to God, I must then say it had been good for me to be
+afflicted; but while my soul was thus oppressed, how could my feelings have
+any scope? Let come what would, however, I must try and bear it,--even
+disgrace, if it was _his_ will. Better people than I had been thus
+disgraced, and it might be my turn next. Meantime, it had not come to that,
+and I must not let the cares of to-morrow burden to-day.
+
+Every day, almost, as it seems in looking back, a train of thought
+something like this would pass through my mind. But things went on,
+and grew no better. With gathering rapidity, we went sliding, to all
+appearance, down the inclined plane of disgrace.
+
+Percivale at length asked Roger if he had any money by him to lend him a
+little; and he gave him at once all he had, amounting to six pounds,--a
+wonderful amount for Roger to have accumulated; with the help of which we
+got on to the end of Jemima's month. The next step I had in view was to
+take my little valuables to the pawnbroker's,--amongst them a watch, whose
+face was encircled with a row of good-sized diamonds. It had belonged to my
+great-grandmother, and my mother had given it me when I was married.
+
+We had had a piece of boiled neck of mutton for dinner, of which we, that
+is my husband and I, had partaken sparingly, in order that there might
+be enough for the servants. Percivale had gone out; and I was sitting in
+the drawing-room, lost in any thing but a blessed reverie, with all the
+children chattering amongst themselves beside me, when Jemima entered,
+looking subdued.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, this is my day," she said.
+
+"Have you got a place, then, Jemima?" I asked; for I had been so much
+occupied with my own affairs that I had thought little of the future of the
+poor girl to whom I could have given but a lukewarm recommendation for any
+thing prized amongst housekeepers.
+
+"No, ma'am. Please, ma'am, mayn't I stop?"
+
+"No, Jemima. I am very sorry, but I can't afford to keep you. I shall have
+to do all the work myself when you are gone."
+
+I thought to pay her wages out of the proceeds of my jewels, but was
+willing to delay the step as long as possible; rather, I believe, from
+repugnance to enter the pawn-shop, than from disinclination to part with
+the trinkets. But, as soon as I had spoken, Jemima burst into an Irish
+wail, mingled with sobs and tears, crying between the convulsions of all
+three,--
+
+I thought there was something wrong, mis'ess. You and master looked so
+scared-like. Please, mis'ess, don't send me away."
+
+"I never wanted to send you away, Jemima. You wanted to go yourself."
+
+"No, ma'am; _that_ I didn't. I only wanted you to ask me to stop. Wirra!
+wirra! It's myself is sorry I was so rude. It's not me; it's my temper,
+mis'ess. I do believe I was born with a devil inside me."
+
+I could not help laughing, partly from amusement, partly from relief.
+
+"But you see I can't ask you to stop," I said. "I've got no money,--not
+even enough to pay you to-day; so I can't keep you."
+
+"I don't want no money, ma'am. Let me stop, and I'll cook for yez, and wash
+and scrub for yez, to the end o' my days. An' I'll eat no more than'll keep
+the life in me. I _must_ eat something, or the smell o' the meat would turn
+me sick, ye see, ma'am; and then I shouldn't be no good to yez. Please 'm,
+I ha' got fifteen pounds in the savings bank: I'll give ye all that, if
+ye'll let me stop wid ye."
+
+When I confess that I burst out crying, my reader will be kind enough to
+take into consideration that I hadn't had much to eat for some time; that I
+was therefore weak in body as well as in mind; and that this was the first
+gleam of sunshine I had had for many weeks.
+
+"Thank you very much, Jemima," I said, as soon as I could speak. "I won't
+take your money, for then you would be as poor as I am. But, if you would
+like to stop with us, you shall; and I won't pay you till I'm able."
+
+The poor girl was profuse in her thanks, and left the room sobbing in her
+apron.
+
+It was a gloomy, drizzly, dreary afternoon. The children were hard to
+amuse, and I was glad when their bedtime arrived. It was getting late
+before Percivale returned. He looked pale, and I found afterwards that he
+had walked home. He had got wet, and had to change some of his clothes.
+When we went in to supper, there was the neck of mutton on the table,
+almost as we had left it. This led me, before asking him any questions, to
+relate what had passed with Jemima; at which news he laughed merrily, and
+was evidently a good deal relieved. Then I asked him where he had been.
+
+"To the city," he answered.
+
+"Have you sold another picture?" I asked, with an inward tribulation, half
+hope, half fear; for, much as we wanted the money, I could ill bear the
+thought of his pictures going for the price of mere pot-boilers.
+
+"No," he replied: "the last is stopping the way. Mr. ---- has been
+advertising it as a bargain for a hundred and fifty. But he hasn't sold it
+yet, and can't, he says, risk ten pounds on another. What's to come of it,
+I don't know," he added. "But meantime it's a comfort that Jemima can wait
+a bit for _her_ money."
+
+As we sat at supper, I thought I saw a look on Percivale's face which I had
+never seen there before. All at once, while I was wondering what it might
+mean, after a long pause, during which we had been both looking into the
+fire, he said,--
+
+"Wynnie, I'm going to paint a better picture than I've ever painted yet. I
+can, and I will."
+
+"But how are we to live in the mean time?" I said.
+
+His face fell, and I saw with shame what a Job's comforter I was. Instead
+of sympathizing with his ardor, I had quenched it. What if my foolish
+remark had ruined a great picture! Anyhow, it had wounded a great heart,
+which had turned to labor as its plainest duty, and would thereby have been
+strengthened to endure and to hope. It was too cruel of me. I knelt by his
+knee, and told him I was both ashamed and sorry I had been so faithless
+and unkind. He made little of it, said I might well ask the question, and
+even tried to be merry over it; but I could see well enough that I had let
+a gust of the foggy night into his soul, and was thoroughly vexed with
+myself. We went to bed gloomy, but slept well, and awoke more cheerful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE SUNSHINE.
+
+
+As we were dressing, it came into my mind that I had forgotten to give him
+a black-bordered letter which had arrived the night before. I commonly
+opened his letters; but I had not opened this one, for it looked like a
+business letter, and I feared it might be a demand for the rent of the
+house, which was over due. Indeed, at this time I dreaded opening any
+letter the writing on which I did not recognize.
+
+"Here is a letter, Percivale," I said. "I'm sorry I forgot to give it you
+last night."
+
+"Who is it from?" he asked, talking through his towel from his
+dressing-room.
+
+"I don't know. I didn't open it. It looks like something disagreeable."
+
+"Open it now, then, and see."
+
+"I can't just at this moment," I answered; for I had my back hair half
+twisted in my hands. "There it is on the chimney-piece."
+
+He came in, took it, and opened it, while I went on with my toilet.
+Suddenly his arms were round me, and I felt his cheek on mine.
+
+"Read that," he said, putting the letter into my hand.
+
+It was from a lawyer in Shrewsbury, informing him that his god-mother, with
+whom he had been a great favorite when a boy, was dead, and had left him
+three hundred pounds.
+
+It was like a reprieve to one about to be executed. I could only weep
+and thank God, once more believing in my Father in heaven. But it was a
+humbling thought, that, if he had not thus helped me, I might have ceased
+to believe in him. I saw plainly, that, let me talk to Percivale as I
+might, my own faith was but a wretched thing. It is all very well to have
+noble theories about God; but where is the good of them except we actually
+trust in him as a real, present, living, loving being, who counts us of
+more value than many sparrows, and will not let one of them fall to the
+ground without him?
+
+"I thought, Wynnie, if there was such a God as you believed in, and with
+you to pray to him, we shouldn't be long without a hearing," said my
+husband.
+
+There was more faith in his heart all the time, though he could not profess
+the belief I thought I had, than there ever was in mine.
+
+But our troubles weren't nearly over yet. Percivale wrote, acknowledging
+the letter, and requesting to know when it would be convenient to let him
+have the money, as he was in immediate want of it. The reply was, that the
+trustees were not bound to pay the legacies for a year, but that possibly
+they might stretch a point in his favor if he applied to them. Percivale
+did so, but received a very curt answer, with little encouragement to
+expect any thing but the extreme of legal delay. He received the money,
+however, about four months after; lightened, to the great disappointment of
+my ignorance, of thirty pounds legacy-duty.
+
+In the mean time, although our minds were much relieved, and Percivale
+was working away at his new picture with great energy and courage, the
+immediate pressure of circumstances was nearly as painful as ever. It was
+a comfort, however, to know that we might borrow on the security of the
+legacy; but, greatly grudging the loss of the interest which that would
+involve, I would have persuaded Percivale to ask a loan of Lady Bernard.
+He objected: on what ground do you think? That it would be disagreeable to
+Lady Bernard to be repaid the sum she had lent us! He would have finally
+consented, however, I have little doubt, had the absolute necessity for
+borrowing arrived.
+
+About a week or ten days after the blessed news, he had a note from Mr.
+----, whom he had authorized to part with the picture for thirty guineas.
+How much this was under its value, it is not easy to say, seeing the
+money-value of pictures is dependent on so many things: but, if the fairy
+godmother's executors had paid her legacy at once, that picture would not
+have been sold for less than five times the amount; and I may mention that
+the last time it changed hands it fetched five hundred and seventy pounds.
+
+Mr. ---- wrote that he had an offer of five and twenty for it, desiring
+to know whether he might sell it for that sum. Percivale at once gave
+his consent, and the next day received a check for eleven pounds, odd
+shillings; the difference being the borrowed amount upon it, its interest,
+the commission charged on the sale, and the price of a small picture-frame.
+
+The next day, Percivale had a visitor at the studio,--no less a person
+than Mr. Baddeley, with his shirt-front in full blossom, and his diamond
+wallowing in light on his fifth finger,--I cannot call it his little
+finger, for his hands were as huge as they were soft and white,--hands
+descended of generations of laborious ones, but which had never themselves
+done any work beyond paddling in money.
+
+He greeted Percivale with a jolly condescension, and told him, that, having
+seen and rather liked a picture of his the other day, he had come to
+inquire whether he had one that would do for a pendant to it; as he should
+like to have it, provided he did not want a fancy price for it.
+
+Percivale felt as if he were setting out his children for sale, as he
+invited him to look about the room, and turned round a few from against the
+wall. The great man flitted hither and thither, spying at one after another
+through the cylinder of his curved hand, Percivale going on with his
+painting as if no one were there.
+
+"How much do you want for this sketch?" asked Mr. Baddeley, at length,
+pointing to one of the most highly finished paintings in the room.
+
+"I put three hundred on it at the Academy Exhibition," answered Percivale.
+"My friends thought it too little; but as it has been on my hands a long
+time now, and pictures don't rise in price in the keeping of the painter, I
+shouldn't mind taking two for it."
+
+"Two tens, I suppose you mean," said Mr. Baddeley.
+
+"I gave him a look," said Percivale, as he described the interview to me;
+and I knew as well as if I had seen it what kind of a phenomenon that look
+must have been.
+
+"Come, now," Mr. Baddeley went on, perhaps misinterpreting the look, for it
+was such as a man of his property was not in the habit of receiving, "you
+mustn't think I'm made of money, or that I'm a green hand in the market.
+I know what your pictures fetch; and I'm a pretty sharp man of business,
+I believe. What do you really mean to say and stick to? Ready money, you
+know."
+
+"Three hundred," said Percivale coolly.
+
+"Why, Mr. Percivale!" cried Mr. Baddeley, drawing himself up, as my husband
+said, with the air of one who knew a trick worth two of that, "I paid
+Mr. ---- fifty pounds, neither more nor less, for a picture of yours
+yesterday--a picture, allow me to say, worth"--
+
+He turned again to the one in question with a critical air, as if about to
+estimate to a fraction its value as compared with the other.
+
+"Worth three of that, some people think," said Percivale.
+
+"The price of this, then, joking aside, is--?"
+
+"Three hundred pounds," answered Percivale,--I know well how quietly.
+
+"I understood you wished to sell it," said Mr. Baddeley, beginning, for all
+his good nature, to look offended, as well he might.
+
+"I do wish to sell it. I happen to be in want of money."
+
+"Then I'll be liberal, and offer you the same I paid for the other. I'll
+send you a check this afternoon for fifty--with pleasure."
+
+"You cannot have that picture under three hundred."
+
+"Why!" said the rich man, puzzled, "you offered it for two hundred, not
+five minutes ago."
+
+"Yes; and you pretended to think I meant two tens."
+
+"Offended you, I fear."
+
+"At all events, betrayed so much ignorance of painting, that I would rather
+not have a picture of mine in your house."
+
+"You're the first man ever presumed to tell me I was ignorant of painting,"
+said Mr. Baddeley, now thoroughly indignant.
+
+"You have heard the truth, then, for the first time," said Percivale, and
+resumed his work.
+
+Mr. Baddeley walked out of the study.
+
+I am not sure that he was so very ignorant. He had been in the way of
+buying popular pictures for some time, paying thousands for certain of
+them. I suspect he had eye enough to see that my husband's would probably
+rise in value, and, with the true huckster spirit, was ambitious of
+boasting how little he had given compared with what they were really worth.
+
+Percivale in this case was doubtless rude. He had an insuperable aversion
+to men of Mr. Baddeley's class,--men who could have no position but for
+their money, and who yet presumed upon it, as if it were gifts and graces,
+genius and learning, judgment and art, all in one. He was in the habit of
+saying that the plutocracy, as he called it, ought to be put down,--that
+is, negatively and honestly,--by showing them no more respect than you
+really entertained for them. Besides, although he had no great favors for
+Cousin Judy's husband, he yet bore Mr. Baddeley a grudge for the way in
+which he had treated one with whom, while things went well with him, he had
+been ready enough to exchange hospitalities.
+
+Before long, through Lady Bernard, he sold a picture at a fair price;
+and soon after, seeing in a shop-window the one Mr. ---- had sold to Mr.
+Baddeley, marked ten pounds, went in and bought it. Within the year he sold
+it for a hundred and fifty.
+
+By working day and night almost, he finished his new picture in time for
+the Academy; and, as he had himself predicted, it proved, at least in the
+opinion of all his artist friends, the best that he had ever painted. It
+was bought at once for three hundred pounds; and never since then have we
+been in want of money.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+WHAT LADY BERNARD THOUGHT OF IT.
+
+
+My reader may wonder, that, in my record of these troubles, I have never
+mentioned Marion. The fact is, I could not bring myself to tell her of
+them; partly because she was in some trouble herself, from strangers
+who had taken rooms in the house, and made mischief between her and her
+grandchildren; and partly because I knew she would insist on going to Lady
+Bernard; and, although I should not have minded it myself, I knew that
+nothing but seeing the children hungry would have driven my husband to
+consent to it.
+
+One evening, after it was all over, I told Lady Bernard the story. She
+allowed me to finish it without saying a word. When I had ended, she still
+sat silent for a few moments; then, laying her hand on my arm, said,--
+
+My dear child, you were very wrong, as well as very unkind. Why did you not
+let me know?"
+
+"Because my husband would never have allowed me," I answered.
+
+"Then I must have a talk with your husband," she said.
+
+"I wish you would," I replied; "for I can't help thinking Percivale too
+severe about such things."
+
+The very next day she called, and did have a talk with him in the study to
+the following effect:--
+
+"I have come to quarrel with you, Mr. Percivale," said Lady Bernard.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it," he returned. "You're the last person I should like
+to quarrel with, for it would imply some unpardonable fault in me."
+
+"It does imply a fault--and a great one," she rejoined; "though I trust not
+an unpardonable one. That depends on whether you can repent of it."
+
+She spoke with such a serious air, that Percivale grew uneasy, and began
+to wonder what he could possibly have done to offend her. I had told him
+nothing of our conversation, wishing her to have her own way with him.
+
+When she saw him troubled, she smiled.
+
+"Is it not a fault, Mr. Percivale, to prevent one from obeying the divine
+law of bearing another's burden?"
+
+"But," said Percivale, "I read as well, that every man shall bear his own
+burden."
+
+"Ah!" returned Lady Bernard; "but I learn from Mr. Conybeare that two
+different Greek words are there used, which we translate only by the
+English _burden_. I cannot tell you what they are: I can only tell you the
+practical result. We are to bear one another's burdens of pain or grief or
+misfortune or doubt,--whatever weighs one down is to be borne by another;
+but the man who is tempted to exalt himself over his neighbor is taught to
+remember that he has his own load of disgrace to bear and answer for. It is
+just a weaker form of the lesson of the mote and the beam. You cannot get
+out at that door, Mr. Percivale. I beg you will read the passage in your
+Greek Testament, and see if you have not misapplied it. You _ought_ to have
+let me bear your burden."
+
+"Well, you see, my dear Lady Bernard," returned Percivale, at a loss to
+reply to such a vigorous assault, "I knew how it would be. You would have
+come here and bought pictures you didn't want; and I, knowing all the time
+you did it only to give me the money, should have had to talk to you as if
+I were taken in by it; and I really could _not_ stand it."
+
+"There you are altogether wrong. Besides depriving me of the opportunity
+of fulfilling a duty, and of the pleasure and the honor of helping you to
+bear your burden, you have deprived me of the opportunity of indulging a
+positive passion for pictures. I am constantly compelled to restrain it
+lest I should spend too much of the money given me for the common good on
+my own private tastes; but here was a chance for me! I might have had some
+of your lovely pictures in my drawing-room now--with a good conscience and
+a happy heart--if you had only been friendly. It was too bad of you, Mr.
+Percivale! I am not pretending in the least when I assert that I am really
+and thoroughly disappointed."
+
+"I haven't a word to say for myself," returned Percivale.
+
+"You couldn't have said a better," rejoined Lady Bernard; "but I hope you
+will never have to say it again."
+
+"That I shall not. If ever I find myself in any difficulty worth speaking
+of, I will let you know at once."
+
+"Thank you. Then we are friends again. And now I do think I am entitled
+to a picture,--at least, I think it will be pardonable if I yield to the
+_very_ strong temptation I am under at this moment to buy one. Let me see:
+what have you in the slave-market, as your wife calls it?"
+
+She bought "The Street Musician," as Percivale had named the picture taken
+from Dr. Donne. I was more miserable than I ought to have been when I found
+he had parted with it, but it was a great consolation to think it was to
+Lady Bernard's it had gone. She was the only one, except my mother or Miss
+Clare, I could have borne to think of as having become its possessor.
+
+He had asked her what I thought a very low price for it; and I judge that
+Lady Bernard thought the same, but, after what had passed between them,
+would not venture to expostulate. With such a man as my husband, I fancy,
+she thought it best to let well alone. Anyhow, one day soon after this, her
+servant brought him a little box, containing a fine brilliant.
+
+"The good lady's kindness is long-sighted," said my husband, as he placed
+it on his finger. "I shall be hard up, though, before I part with this.
+Wynnie, I've actually got a finer diamond than Mr. Baddeley! It _is_ a
+beauty, if ever there was one!"
+
+My husband, with all his carelessness of dress and adornment, has almost a
+passion for stones. It is delightful to hear him talk about them. But he
+had never possessed a single gem before Lady Bernard made him this present.
+I believe he is child enough to be happier for it all his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+RETROSPECTIVE.
+
+
+Suddenly I become aware that I am drawing nigh the close of my monthly
+labors for a long year. Yet the year seems to have passed more rapidly
+because of this addition to my anxieties. Not that I haven't enjoyed the
+labor while I have been actually engaged in it, but the prospect of the
+next month's work would often come in to damp the pleasure of the present;
+making me fancy, as the close of each chapter drew near, that I should not
+have material for another left in my head. I heard a friend once remark
+that it is not the cares of to-day, but the cares of to-morrow, that weigh
+a man down. For the day we have the corresponding strength given, for the
+morrow we are told to trust; it is not ours yet.
+
+When I get my money for my work, I mean to give my husband a long holiday.
+I half think of taking him to Italy,--for of course I can do what I like
+with my own, whether husband or money,--and so have a hand in making him a
+still better painter. Incapable of imitation, the sight of any real work
+is always of great service to him, widening his sense of art, enlarging
+his idea of what can be done, rousing what part of his being is most in
+sympathy with it,--a part possibly as yet only half awake; in a word,
+leading him another step towards that simplicity which is at the root of
+all diversity, being so simple that it needs all diversity to set it forth.
+
+How impossible it seemed to me that I should ever write a book! Well or ill
+done, it is almost finished, for the next month is the twelfth. I must look
+back upon what I have written, to see what loose ends I may have left, and
+whether any allusion has not been followed up with a needful explanation;
+for this way of writing by portions--the only way in which I could have
+been persuaded to attempt the work, however--is unfavorable to artistic
+unity; an unnecessary remark, seeing that to such unity my work makes
+no pretensions. It is but a collection of portions detached from an
+uneventful, ordinary, and perhaps in part _therefore_ very blessed life.
+Hence, perhaps, it was specially fitted for this mode of publication. At
+all events, I can cast upon it none of the blame of what failure I may have
+to confess.
+
+A biography cannot be constructed with the art of a novel, for this reason:
+that a novel is constructed on the artist's scale, with swift-returning
+curves; a biography on the divine scale, whose circles are so large that
+they shoot beyond this world, sometimes even before we are able to detect
+in them the curve by which they will at length round themselves back
+towards completion. Hence, every life must look more or less fragmentary,
+and more or less out of drawing perhaps; not to mention the questionable
+effects in color and tone where the model himself will insist on taking
+palette and brushes, and laying childish, if not passionate, conceited,
+ambitious, or even spiteful hands to the work.
+
+I do not find that I have greatly blundered, or omitted much that I ought
+to have mentioned. One odd thing is, that, in the opening conversation in
+which they urge me to the attempt, I have not mentioned Marion. I do not
+mean that she was present, but that surely some one must have suggested
+her and her history as affording endless material for my record. A thing
+apparently but not really strange is, that I have never said a word about
+the Mrs. Cromwell mentioned in the same conversation. The fact is, that I
+have but just arrived at the part of my story where she first comes in.
+She died about three months ago; and I can therefore with the more freedom
+narrate in the next chapter what I have known of her.
+
+I find also that I have, in the fourth chapter, by some odd
+cerebro-mechanical freak, substituted the name of my Aunt _Martha_ for
+that of my Aunt Millicent, another sister of my father, whom he has not,
+I believe, had occasion to mention in either of his preceding books. My
+Aunt Martha is Mrs. Weir, and has no children; my Aunt Millicent is Mrs.
+Parsons, married to a hard-working attorney, and has twelve children, now
+mostly grown up.
+
+I find also, in the thirteenth chapter, an unexplained allusion. There my
+husband says, "Just ask my brother his experience in regard of the word to
+which you object." The word was _stomach_, at the use of which I had in my
+ill-temper taken umbrage: however disagreeable a word in itself, surely a
+husband might, if need be, use it without offence. It will be proof enough
+that my objection arose from pure ill-temper when I state that I have since
+asked Roger to what Percivale referred. His reply was, that, having been
+requested by a certain person who had a school for young ladies--probably
+she called it a college--to give her pupils a few lectures on physiology,
+he could not go far in the course without finding it necessary to make a
+not unfrequent use of the word, explaining the functions of the organ to
+which the name belonged, as resembling those of a mill. After the lecture
+was over, the school-mistress took him aside, and said she really could not
+allow her young ladies to be made familiar with such words. Roger averred
+that the word was absolutely necessary to the subject upon which she had
+desired his lectures; and that he did not know how any instruction in
+physiology could be given without the free use of it. "No doubt," she
+returned, "you must recognize the existence of the organ in question; but,
+as the name of it is offensive to ears polite, could you not substitute
+another? You have just said that its operations resemble those of a
+mill: could you not, as often as you require to speak of it, refer to it
+in the future as _the mill_?" Roger, with great difficulty repressing
+his laughter, consented; but in his next lecture made far more frequent
+reference to _the mill_ than was necessary, using the word every time--I
+know exactly how--with a certain absurd solemnity that must have been
+irresistible. The girls went into fits of laughter at the first utterance
+of it, and seemed, he said, during the whole lecture, intent only on the
+new term, at every recurrence of which their laughter burst out afresh.
+Doubtless their school-mistress had herself prepared them to fall into
+Roger's trap. The same night he received a note from her, enclosing his fee
+for the lectures given, and informing him that the rest of the course would
+not be required. Roger sent back the money, saying that to accept part
+payment would be to renounce his claim for the whole; and that, besides,
+he had already received an amount of amusement quite sufficient to reward
+him for his labor. I told him I thought he had been rather cruel; but he
+said such a woman wanted a lesson. He said also, that to see the sort of
+women who sometimes had the responsibility of training girls must make the
+angels weep; none but a heartless mortal like himself could laugh where
+conventionality and insincerity were taught in every hint as to posture and
+speech. It was bad enough, he said, to shape yourself into your own ideal;
+but to have to fashion yourself after the ideal of one whose sole object in
+teaching was to make money, was something wretched indeed.
+
+I find, besides, that several intentions I had when I started have fallen
+out of the scheme. Somehow, the subjects would not well come in, or I felt
+that I was in danger of injuring the persons in the attempt to set forth
+their opinions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+MRS. CROMWELL COMES.
+
+
+The moment the legacy was paid, our liabilities being already nearly
+discharged, my husband took us all to Hastings. I had never before been
+to any other seacoast town where the land was worthy of the sea, except
+Kilkhaven. Assuredly, there is no place within easy reach of London to
+be once mentioned with Hastings. Of course we kept clear of the more
+fashionable and commonplace St. Leonard's End, where yet the sea is
+the same,--a sea such that, not even off Cornwall, have I seen so many
+varieties of ocean-aspect. The immediate shore, with its earthy cliffs, is
+vastly inferior to the magnificent rock about Tintagel; but there is no
+outlook on the sea that I know more satisfying than that from the heights
+of Hastings, especially the East Hill; from the west side of which also you
+may, when weary of the ocean, look straight down on the ancient port, with
+its old houses, and fine, multiform red roofs, through the gauze of blue
+smoke which at eve of a summer day fills the narrow valley, softening the
+rough goings-on of life into harmony with the gentleness of sea and shore,
+field and sky. No doubt the suburbs are as unsightly as mere boxes of brick
+and lime can be, with an ugliness mean because pretentious, an altogether
+modern ugliness; but even this cannot touch the essential beauty of the
+place.
+
+On the brow of this East Hill, just where it begins to sink towards
+Ecclesbourne Glen, stands a small, old, rickety house in the midst of the
+sweet grass of the downs. This house my husband was fortunate in finding
+to let, and took for three months. I am not, however, going to give any
+history of how we spent them; my sole reason for mentioning Hastings at all
+being that there I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Cromwell. It was on this
+wise.
+
+One bright day, about noon,--almost all the days of those months were
+gorgeous with sunlight,--a rather fashionable maid ran up our little
+garden, begging for some water for her mistress. Sending her on with the
+water, I followed myself with a glass of sherry.
+
+The door in our garden-hedge opened immediately on a green hollow in the
+hill, sloping towards the glen. As I stepped from the little gate on to the
+grass, I saw, to my surprise, that a white fog was blowing in from the sea.
+The heights on the opposite side of the glen, partially obscured thereby,
+looked more majestic than was their wont, and were mottled with patches of
+duller and brighter color as the drifts of the fog were heaped or parted
+here and there. Far down, at the foot of the cliffs, the waves of the
+rising tide, driven shore-wards with the added force of a south-west
+breeze, caught and threw back what sunlight reached them, and thinned with
+their shine the fog between. It was all so strange and fine, and had come
+on so suddenly,--for when I had looked out a few minutes before, sea and
+sky were purely resplendent,--that I stood a moment or two and gazed,
+almost forgetting why I was there.
+
+When I bethought myself and looked about me, I saw, in the sheltered hollow
+before me, a lady seated in a curiously-shaped chair; so constructed, in
+fact, as to form upon occasion a kind of litter. It was plain she was
+an invalid, from her paleness, and the tension of the skin on her face,
+revealing the outline of the bones beneath. Her features were finely
+formed, but rather small, and her forehead low; a Greek-like face, with
+large, pale-blue eyes, that reminded me of little Amy Morley's. She smiled
+very sweetly when she saw me, and shook her head at the wine.
+
+"I only wanted a little water," she said. "This fog seems to stifle me."
+
+"It has come on very suddenly," I said. "Perhaps it is the cold of it that
+affects your breathing. You don't seem very strong, and any sudden change
+of temperature"--
+
+"I am not one of the most vigorous of mortals," she answered, with a sad
+smile; "but the day seemed of such indubitable character, that, after my
+husband had brought me here in the carriage, he sent it home, and left me
+with my maid, while he went for a long walk across the downs. When he sees
+the change in the weather, though, he will turn directly."
+
+"It won't do to wait him here," I said. "We must get you in at once. Would
+it be wrong to press you to take a little of this wine, just to counteract
+a chill?"
+
+"I daren't touch any thing but water," she replied, "It would make me
+feverish at once."
+
+"Run and tell the cook," I said to the maid, "that I want her here. You and
+she could carry your mistress in, could you not? I will help you."
+
+"There's no occasion for that, ma'am: she's as light as a feather," was the
+whispered answer.
+
+"I am quite ashamed of giving you so much trouble," said the lady, either
+hearing or guessing at our words. "My husband will be very grateful to
+you."
+
+"It is only an act of common humanity," I said.
+
+But, as I spoke, I fancied her fair brow clouded a little, as if she was
+not accustomed to common humanity, and the word sounded harsh in her ear.
+The cloud, however, passed so quickly that I doubted, until I knew her
+better, whether it had really been there.
+
+The two maids were now ready; and, Jemima instructed by the other, they
+lifted her with the utmost ease, and bore her gently towards the house. The
+garden-gate was just wide enough to let the chair through, and in a minute
+more she was upon the sofa. Then a fit of coughing came on which shook her
+dreadfully. When it had passed she lay quiet, with closed eyes, and a smile
+hovering about her sweet, thin-lipped mouth. By and by she opened them, and
+looked at me with a pitiful expression.
+
+"I fear you are far from well," I said.
+
+"I'm dying," she returned quietly.
+
+"I hope not," was all I could answer.
+
+"Why should you hope not?" she returned. "I am in no strait betwixt two. I
+desire to depart. For me to die will be all gain."
+
+"But your friends?" I ventured to suggest, feeling my way, and not quite
+relishing either the form or tone of her utterance.
+
+"I have none but my husband."
+
+"Then your husband?" I persisted.
+
+"Ah!" she said mournfully, "he will miss me, no doubt, for a while. But it
+_must_ be a weight off him, for I have been a sufferer so long!"
+
+At this moment I heard a heavy, hasty step in the passage; the next, the
+room door opened, and in came, in hot haste, wiping his red face, a burly
+man, clumsy and active, with an umbrella in his hand, followed by a great,
+lumbering Newfoundland dog.
+
+"Down, Polyphemus!" he said to the dog, which crept under a chair; while
+he, taking no notice of my presence, hurried up to his wife.
+
+"My love! my little dove!" he said eagerly: "did you think I had forsaken
+you to the cruel elements?"
+
+"No, Alcibiades," she answered, with a sweet little drawl; "but you do not
+observe that I am not the only lady in the room." Then, turning to me,
+"This is my husband, Mr. Cromwell," she said. "I cannot tell him _your_
+name."
+
+"I am Mrs. Percivale," I returned, almost mechanically, for the gentleman's
+two names had run together and were sounding in my head: _Alcibiades
+Cromwell_! How could such a conjunction have taken place without the
+intervention of Charles Dickens?
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am," said Mr. Cromwell, bowing. "Permit my anxiety
+about my poor wife to cover my rudeness. I had climbed the other side
+of the glen before I saw the fog; and it is no such easy matter to get
+up and down these hills of yours. I am greatly obliged to you for your
+hospitality. You have doubtless saved her life; for she is a frail flower,
+shrinking from the least breath of cold."
+
+The lady closed her eyes again, and the gentleman took her hand, and felt
+her pulse. He seemed about twice her age,--she not thirty; he well past
+fifty, the top of his head bald, and his gray hair sticking out fiercely
+over his good-natured red cheeks. He laid her hand gently down, put his hat
+on the table and his umbrella in a corner, wiped his face again, drew a
+chair near the sofa, and took his place by her side. I thought it better to
+leave them.
+
+When I re-entered after a while, I saw from the windows, which looked
+sea-ward, that the wind had risen, and was driving thin drifts no longer,
+but great, thick, white masses of sea-fog landwards. It was the storm-wind
+of that coast, the south-west, which dashes the pebbles over the Parade,
+and the heavy spray against the houses. Mr. Alcibiades Cromwell was sitting
+as I had left him, silent, by the side of his wife, whose blue-veined
+eyelids had apparently never been lifted from her large eyes.
+
+"Is there any thing I could offer Mrs. Cromwell?" I said. "Could she not
+eat something?"
+
+"It is very little she can take," he answered; "but you are very kind. If
+you could let her have a little beef-tea? She generally has a spoonful or
+two about this time of the day."
+
+"I am sorry we have none," I said; "and it would be far too long for her to
+wait. I have a nice chicken, though, ready for cooking: if she could take a
+little chicken-broth, that would be ready in a very little while."
+
+"Thank you a thousand times, ma'am," he said heartily; "nothing could be
+better. She might even be induced to eat a mouthful of the chicken. But
+I am afraid your extreme kindness prevents me from being so thoroughly
+ashamed as I ought to be at putting you to so much trouble for perfect
+strangers."
+
+"It is but a pleasure to be of service to any one in want of it," I said.
+
+Mrs. Cromwell opened her eyes and smiled gratefully. I left the room to
+give orders about the chicken, indeed, to superintend the preparation of
+it myself; for Jemima could not be altogether trusted in such a delicate
+affair as cooking for an invalid.
+
+When I returned, having set the simple operation going, Mr. Cromwell had a
+little hymn-book of mine he had found on the table open in his hand, and
+his wife was saying to him,--
+
+"That is lovely! Thank you, husband. How can it be I never saw it before? I
+am quite astonished."
+
+"She little knows what multitudes of hymns there are!" I thought with
+myself,--my father having made a collection, whence I had some idea of the
+extent of that department of religious literature.
+
+"This is a hymn-book we are not acquainted with," said Mr. Cromwell,
+addressing me.
+
+"It is not much known," I answered. "It was compiled by a friend of my
+father's for his own schools."
+
+"And this," he went on, "is a very beautiful hymn. You may trust my wife's
+judgment, Mrs. Percivale. She lives upon hymns."
+
+He read the first line to show which he meant. I had long thought, and
+still think, it the most beautiful hymn I know. It was taken from the
+German, only much improved in the taking, and given to my father to do
+what he pleased with; and my father had given it to another friend for his
+collection. Before that, however, while still in manuscript, it had fallen
+into the hands of a certain clergyman, by whom it had been published
+without leave asked, or apology made: a rudeness of which neither my father
+nor the author would have complained, for it was a pleasure to think it
+might thus reach many to whom it would be helpful; but they both felt
+aggrieved and indignant that he had taken the dishonest liberty of altering
+certain lines of it to suit his own opinions. As I am anxious to give it
+all the publicity I can, from pure delight in it, and love to all who are
+capable of the same delight, I shall here communicate it, in the full
+confidence of thus establishing a claim on the gratitude of my readers.
+
+  O Lord, how happy is the time
+    When in thy love I rest!
+  When from my weariness I climb
+    Even to thy tender breast!
+  The night of sorrow endeth there:
+    Thou art brighter than the sun;
+  And in thy pardon and thy care
+    The heaven of heaven is won.
+
+  Let the world call herself my foe,
+    Or let the world allure.
+  I care not for the world: I go
+    To this dear Friend and sure.
+  And when life's fiercest storms are sent
+    Upon life's wildest sea,
+  My little bark is confident,
+    Because it holds by thee.
+
+  When the law threatens endless death
+    Upon the awful hill,
+  Straightway from her consuming breath
+    My soul goes higher still,--
+  Goeth to Jesus, wounded, slain,
+    And maketh him her home,
+  Whence she will not go out again,
+    And where death cannot come.
+
+  I do not fear the wilderness
+    Where thou hast been before;
+  Nay, rather will I daily press
+    After thee, near thee, more.
+  Thou art my food; on thee I lean;
+    Thou makest my heart sing;
+  And to thy heavenly pastures green
+    All thy dear flock dost bring.
+
+  And if the gate that opens there
+    Be dark to other men,
+  It is not dark to those who share
+    The heart of Jesus then.
+  That is not losing much of life
+    Which is not losing thee,
+  Who art as present in the strife
+    As in the victory.
+
+  Therefore how happy is the time
+    When in thy love I rest!
+  When from my weariness I climb
+    Even to thy tender breast!
+  The night of sorrow endeth there:
+    Thou are brighter than the sun;
+  And in thy pardon and thy care
+    The heaven of heaven is won.
+
+In telling them a few of the facts connected with the hymn, I presume I had
+manifested my admiration of it with some degree of fervor.
+
+"Ah!" said Mrs. Cromwell, opening her eyes very wide, and letting the
+rising tears fill them: "Ah, Mrs. Percivale! you are--you must be one of
+us!"
+
+"You must tell me first who you are," I said.
+
+She held out her hand; I gave her mine: she drew me towards her, and
+whispered almost in my ear--though why or whence the affectation of secrecy
+I can only imagine--the name of a certain small and exclusive sect. I will
+not indicate it, lest I should be supposed to attribute to it either the
+peculiar faults or virtues of my new acquaintance.
+
+"No," I answered, speaking with the calmness of self-compulsion, for I
+confess I felt repelled: "I am not one of you, except in as far as we all
+belong to the church of Christ."
+
+I have thought since how much better it would have been to say, "Yes: for
+we all belong to the church of Christ."
+
+She gave a little sigh of disappointment, closed her eyes for a moment,
+opened them again with a smile, and said with a pleading tone,--
+
+"But you do believe in personal religion?"
+
+"I don't see," I returned, "how religion can be any thing but personal."
+
+Again she closed her eyes, in a way that made me think how convenient
+bad health must be, conferring not only the privilege of passing into
+retirement at any desirable moment, but of doing so in such a ready and
+easy manner as the mere dropping of the eyelids.
+
+I rose to leave the room once more. Mr. Cromwell, who had made way for me
+to sit beside his wife, stood looking out of the window, against which came
+sweeping the great volumes of mist. I glanced out also. Not only was the
+sea invisible, but even the brow of the cliffs. When he turned towards me,
+as I passed him, I saw that his face had lost much of its rubicund hue, and
+looked troubled and anxious.
+
+"There is nothing for it," I said to myself, "but keep them all night," and
+so gave directions to have a bedroom prepared for them. I did not much like
+it, I confess; for I was not much interested in either of them, while of
+the sect to which she belonged I knew enough already to be aware that it
+was of the narrowest and most sectarian in Christendom. It was a pity she
+had sought to claim me by a would-be closer bond than that of the body of
+Christ. Still I knew I should be myself a sectary if I therefore excluded
+her from my best sympathies. At the same time I did feel some curiosity
+concerning the oddly-yoked couple, and wondered whether the lady was really
+so ill as she would appear. I doubted whether she might not be using her
+illness both as an excuse for self-indulgence, and as a means of keeping
+her husband's interest in her on the stretch. I did not like the wearing of
+her religion on her sleeve, nor the mellifluous drawl in which she spoke.
+
+When the chicken-broth was ready, she partook daintily; but before she
+ended had made a very good meal, including a wing and a bit of the breast;
+after which she fell asleep.
+
+"There seems little chance of the weather clearing," said Mr. Cromwell in a
+whisper, as I approached the window where he once more stood.
+
+"You must make up your mind to remain here for the night," I said.
+
+"My dear madam, I couldn't think of it," he returned,--I thought from
+unwillingness to incommode a strange household. "An invalid like her,
+sweet lamb!" he went on, "requires so many little comforts and peculiar
+contrivances to entice the repose she so greatly needs, that--that--in
+short, I must get her home."
+
+"Where do you live?" I asked, not sorry to find his intention of going so
+fixed.
+
+"We have a house in Warrior Square," he answered. "We live in London, but
+have been here all the past winter. I doubt if she improves, though. I
+doubt--I doubt."
+
+He said the last words in a yet lower and more mournful whisper; then, with
+a shake of his head, turned and gazed again through the window.
+
+A peculiar little cough from the sofa made us both look round. Mrs.
+Cromwell was awake, and searching for her handkerchief. Her husband
+understood her movements, and hurried to her assistance. When she took the
+handkerchief from her mouth, there was a red spot upon it. Mr. Cromwell's
+face turned the color of lead; but his wife looked up at him, and smiled; a
+sweet, consciously pathetic smile.
+
+"He has sent for me," she said. "The messenger has come."
+
+Her husband made no answer. His eyes seemed starting from his head.
+
+"Who is your medical man?" I asked him.
+
+He told me, and I sent off my housemaid to fetch him. It was a long hour
+before he arrived; during which, as often as I peeped in, I saw him sitting
+silent, and holding her hand, until the last time, when I found him reading
+a hymn to her. She was apparently once more asleep. Nothing could be more
+favorable to her recovery than such quietness of both body and mind.
+
+When the doctor came, and had listened to Mr. Cromwell's statement, he
+proceeded to examine her chest with much care. That over, he averred in
+her hearing that he found nothing serious; but told her husband apart that
+there was considerable mischief, and assured me afterwards that her lungs
+were all but gone, and that she could not live beyond a month or two. She
+had better be removed to her own house, he said, as speedily as possible.
+
+"But it would be cruelty to send her out a day like this," I returned.
+
+"Yes, yes: I did not mean that," he said. "But to-morrow, perhaps. You'll
+see what the weather is like. Is Mrs. Cromwell an old friend?"
+
+"I never saw her until to-day," I replied.
+
+"Ah!" he remarked, and said no more.
+
+We got her to bed as soon as possible. I may just mention that I never saw
+any thing to equal the _point-devise_ of her underclothing. There was not
+a stitch of cotton about her, using the word _stitch_ in its metaphorical
+sense. But, indeed, I doubt whether her garments were not all made with
+linen thread. Even her horse-hair petticoat was quilted with rose-colored
+silk inside.
+
+"Surely she has no children!" I said to myself; and was right, as my
+mother-readers will not be surprised to learn.
+
+It was a week before she got up again, and a month before she was carried
+down the hill; during which time her husband sat up with her, or slept on a
+sofa in the room beside her, every night. During the day I took a share in
+the nursing, which was by no means oppressive, for she did not suffer much,
+and required little. Her chief demand was for hymns, the only annoyance
+connected with which worth mentioning was, that she often wished me to
+admire with her such as I could only half like, and occasionally such
+as were thoroughly distasteful to me. Her husband had brought her own
+collection from Warrior Square, volumes of hymns in manuscript, copied by
+her own hand, many of them strange to me, none of those I read altogether
+devoid of literary merit, and some of them lovely both in feeling and
+form. But all, even the best, which to me were unobjectionable, belonged
+to one class,--a class breathing a certain tone difficult to describe;
+one, however, which I find characteristic of all the Roman Catholic hymns
+I have read. I will not indicate any of her selection; neither, lest I
+should be supposed to object to this or that one answering to the general
+description, and yet worthy of all respect, or even sympathy, will I go
+further with a specification of their sort than to say that what pleased me
+in them was their full utterance of personal devotion to the Saviour, and
+that what displeased me was a sort of sentimental regard of self in the
+matter,--an implied special, and thus partially exclusive predilection or
+preference of the Saviour for the individual supposed to be making use of
+them; a certain fundamental want of humility therefore, although the forms
+of speech in which they were cast might be laboriously humble. They also
+not unfrequently manifested a great leaning to the forms of earthly show
+as representative of the glories of that kingdom which the Lord says is
+_within us_.
+
+Likewise the manner in which Mrs. Cromwell talked reminded me much of the
+way in which a nun would represent her individual relation to Christ. I can
+best show what I mean by giving a conversation I had with her one day when
+she was recovering, which she did with wonderful rapidity up to a certain
+point. I confess I shrink a little from reproducing it, because of the
+sacred name which, as it seemed to me, was far too often upon her lips, and
+too easily uttered. But then, she was made so different from me!
+
+The fine weather had returned in all its summer glory, and she was lying
+on a couch in her own room near the window, whence she could gaze on
+the expanse of sea below, this morning streaked with the most delicate
+gradations of distance, sweep beyond sweep, line and band and ribbon of
+softly, often but slightly varied hue, leading the eyes on and on into the
+infinite. There may have been some atmospheric illusion ending off the
+show, for the last reaches mingled so with the air that you saw no horizon
+line, only a great breadth of border; no spot which could you appropriate
+with certainty either to sea or sky; while here and there was a vessel, to
+all appearance, pursuing its path in the sky, and not upon the sea. It was,
+as some of my readers will not require to be told, a still, gray forenoon,
+with a film of cloud over all the heavens, and many horizontal strata of
+deeper but varying density near the horizon.
+
+Mrs. Cromwell had lain for some time with her large eyes fixed on the
+farthest confusion of sea and sky.
+
+"I have been sending out my soul," she said at length, "to travel all
+across those distances, step by step, on to the gates of pearl. Who knows
+but that may be the path I must travel to meet the Bridegroom?"
+
+"The way is wide," I said: "what if you should miss him?"
+
+I spoke almost involuntarily. The style of her talk was very distasteful to
+me; and I had just been thinking of what I had once heard my father say,
+that at no time were people in more danger of being theatrical than when
+upon their death-beds.
+
+"No," she returned, with a smile of gentle superiority; "no: that cannot
+be. Is he not waiting for me? Has he not chosen me, and called me for his
+own? Is not my Jesus mine? I shall _not_ miss him. He waits to give me my
+new name, and clothe me in the garments of righteousness."
+
+As she spoke, she clasped her thin hands, and looked upwards with a radiant
+expression. Far as it was from me to hint, even in my own soul, that the
+Saviour was not hers, tenfold more hers than she was able to think, I could
+not at the same time but doubt whether her heart and soul and mind were as
+close to him as her words would indicate she thought they were. She could
+not be wrong in trusting him; but could she be right in her notion of the
+measure to which her union with him had been perfected? I could not help
+thinking that a little fear, soon to pass into reverence, might be to her
+a salutary thing. The fear, I thought, would heighten and deepen the love,
+and purify it from that self which haunted her whole consciousness, and of
+which she had not yet sickened, as one day she certainly must.
+
+"My lamp is burning," she said; "I feel it burning. I love my Lord. It
+would be false to say otherwise."
+
+"Are you sure you have oil enough in your vessel as well as in your lamp?"
+I said.
+
+"Ah, you are one of the doubting!" she returned kindly. "Don't you know
+that sweet hymn about feeding our lamps from the olive-trees of Gethsemane?
+The idea is taken from the lamp the prophet Zechariah saw in his vision,
+into which two olive-branches, through two golden pipes, emptied the golden
+oil out of themselves. If we are thus one with the olive-tree, the oil
+cannot fail us. It is not as if we had to fill our lamps from a cruse of
+our own. This is the cruse that cannot fail."
+
+"True, true," I said; "but ought we not to examine our own selves whether
+we are in the faith?"
+
+"Let those examine that doubt," she replied; and I could not but yield in
+my heart that she had had the best of the argument.
+
+For I knew that the confidence in Christ which prevents us from thinking of
+ourselves, and makes us eager to obey his word, leaving all the care of our
+feelings to him, is a true and healthy faith. Hence I could not answer her,
+although I doubted whether her peace came from such confidence,--doubted
+for several reasons: one, that, so far from not thinking of herself, she
+seemed full of herself; another, that she seemed to find no difficulty with
+herself in any way; and, surely, she was too young for all struggle to be
+over! I perceived no reference to the will of God in regard of any thing
+she had to do, only in regard of what she had to suffer, and especially
+in regard of that smallest of matters, when she was to go. Here I checked
+myself, for what could she _do_ in such a state of health? But then she
+never spoke as if she had any anxiety about the welfare of other people.
+That, however, might be from her absolute contentment in the will of God.
+But why did she always look to the Saviour through a mist of hymns, and
+never go straight back to the genuine old good news, or to the mighty
+thoughts and exhortations with which the first preachers of that news
+followed them up and unfolded the grandeur of their goodness? After all,
+was I not judging her? On the other hand, ought I not to care for her
+state? Should I not be inhuman, that is, unchristian, if I did not?
+
+In the end I saw clearly enough, that, except it was revealed to me what I
+ought to say, I had no right to say any thing; and that to be uneasy about
+her was to distrust Him whose it was to teach her, and who would perfect
+that which he had certainly begun in her. For her heart, however poor and
+faulty and flimsy its faith might be, was yet certainly drawn towards
+the object of faith. I, therefore, said nothing more in the direction of
+opening her eyes to what I considered her condition: that view of it might,
+after all, be but a phantasm of my own projection. What was plainly my duty
+was to serve her as one of those the least of whom the Saviour sets forth
+as representing himself. I would do it to her as unto him.
+
+My children were out the greater part of every day, and Dora was with me,
+so that I had more leisure than I had had for a long time. I therefore set
+myself to wait upon her as a kind of lady's maid in things spiritual. Her
+own maid, understanding her ways, was sufficient for things temporal. I
+resolved to try to help her after her own fashion, and not after mine; for,
+however strange the nourishment she preferred might seem, it must at least
+be of the _kind_ she could best assimilate. My care should be to give her
+her gruel as good as I might, and her beef-tea strong, with chicken-broth
+instead of barley-water and delusive jelly. But much opportunity of
+ministration was not afforded me; for her husband, whose business in life
+she seemed to regard as the care of her,--for which, in truth, she was
+gently and lovingly grateful,--and who not merely accepted her view of
+the matter, but, I was pretty sure, had had a large share in originating
+it, was even more constant in his attentions than she found altogether
+agreeable, to judge by the way in which she would insist on his going out
+for a second walk, when it was clear, that, besides his desire to be with
+her, he was not inclined to walk any more.
+
+I could set myself, however, as I have indicated, to find fitting pabulum
+for her, and that of her chosen sort. This was possible for me in virtue of
+my father's collection of hymns, and the aid he could give me. I therefore
+sent him a detailed description of what seemed to me her condition, and
+what I thought I might do for her. It was a week before he gave me an
+answer; but it arrived a thorough one, in the shape of a box of books,
+each bristling with paper marks, many of them inscribed with some fact
+concerning, or criticism upon, the hymn indicated. He wrote that he quite
+agreed with my notion of the right mode of serving her; for any other
+would be as if a besieging party were to batter a postern by means of
+boats instead of walking over a lowered drawbridge, and under a raised
+portcullis.
+
+Having taken a survey of the hymns my father thus pointed out to me, and
+arranged them according to their degrees of approximation to the weakest of
+those in Mrs. Cromwell's collection, I judged that in all of them there was
+something she must appreciate, although the main drift of several would be
+entirely beyond her apprehension. Even these, however, it would be well to
+try upon her.
+
+Accordingly, the next time she asked me to read from her collection, I
+made the request that she would listen to some which I believed she did
+not know, but would, I thought, like. She consented with eagerness, was
+astonished to find she knew none of them, expressed much approbation of
+some, and showed herself delighted with others.
+
+That she must have had some literary faculty seems evident from the genuine
+pleasure she took in simple, quaint, sometimes even odd hymns of her own
+peculiar kind. But the very best of another sort she could not appreciate.
+For instance, the following, by John Mason, in my father's opinion one of
+the best hymn-writers, had no attraction for her:--
+
+ "Thou wast, O God, and thou was blest
+    Before the world begun;
+  Of thine eternity possest
+    Before time's glass did run.
+  Thou needest none thy praise to sing,
+    As if thy joy could fade:
+  Couldst thou have needed any thing,
+    Thou couldst have nothing made.
+
+ "Great and good God, it pleaseth thee
+    Thy Godhead to declare;
+  And what thy goodness did decree,
+    Thy greatness did prepare:
+  Thou spak'st, and heaven and earth appeared,
+    And answered to thy call;
+  As if their Maker's voice they Heard,
+    Which is the creature's All.
+
+ "Thou spak'st the word, most mighty Lord;
+    Thy word went forth with speed:
+  Thy will, O Lord, it was thy word;
+    Thy word it was thy deed.
+  Thou brought'st forth Adam from the ground,
+    And Eve out of his side:
+  Thy blessing made the earth abound
+    With these two multiplied.
+
+ "Those three great leaves, heaven, sea, and land,
+    Thy name in figures show;
+  Brutes feel the bounty of thy hand,
+    But I my Maker know.
+  Should not I here thy servant be,
+    Whose creatures serve me here?
+  My Lord, whom should I fear but thee,
+    Who am thy creatures' fear?
+
+ "To whom, Lord, should I sing but thee,
+    The Maker of my tongue?
+  Lo! other lords would seize on me,
+    But I to thee belong.
+  As waters haste unto their sea,
+    And earth unto its earth,
+  So let my soul return to thee,
+    From whom it had its birth.
+
+ "But, ah! I'm fallen in the night,
+    And cannot come to thee:
+  Yet speak the word, '_Let there be light_;'
+    It shall enlighten me.
+  And let thy word, most mighty Lord,
+    Thy fallen creature raise:
+  Oh! make me o'er again, and I
+    Shall sing my Maker's praise."
+
+This and others, I say, she could not relish; but my endeavors were crowned
+with success in so far that she accepted better specimens of the sort she
+liked than any she had; and I think they must have had a good influence
+upon her.
+
+She seemed to have no fear of death, contemplating the change she believed
+at hand, not with equanimity merely, but with expectation. She even wrote
+hymns about it,--sweet, pretty, and weak, always with herself and the love
+of her Saviour for _her_, in the foreground. She had not learned that the
+love which lays hold of that which is human in the individual, that is,
+which is common to the whole race, must be an infinitely deeper, tenderer,
+and more precious thing to the individual than any affection manifesting
+itself in the preference of one over another.
+
+For the sake of revealing her modes of thought, I will give one more
+specimen of my conversations with her, ere I pass on. It took place the
+evening before her departure for her own house. Her husband had gone to
+make some final preparations, of which there had been many. For one who
+expected to be unclothed that she might be clothed upon, she certainly
+made a tolerable to-do about the garment she was so soon to lay aside;
+especially seeing she often spoke of it as an ill-fitting garment--never
+with peevishness or complaint, only, as it seemed to me, with far more
+interest than it was worth. She had even, as afterwards appeared, given her
+husband--good, honest, dog-like man--full instructions as to the ceremonial
+of its interment. Perhaps I should have been considerably less bewildered
+with her conduct had I suspected that she was not half so near death as she
+chose to think, and that she had as yet suffered little.
+
+That evening, the stars just beginning to glimmer through the warm flush
+that lingered from the sunset, we sat together in the drawing-room looking
+out on the sea. My patient appearing, from the light in her eyes, about to
+go off into one of her ecstatic moods, I hastened to forestall it, if I
+might, with whatever came uppermost; for I felt my inability to sympathize
+with her in these more of a pain than my reader will, perhaps, readily
+imagine.
+
+"It seems like turning you out to let you go to-morrow, Mrs. Cromwell," I
+said; "but, you see, our three months are up two days after, and I cannot
+help it."
+
+"You have been very kind," she said, half abstractedly. "And you are really
+much better. Who would have thought three weeks ago to see you so well
+to-day?"
+
+"Ah! you congratulate me, do you?" she rejoined, turning her big eyes full
+upon me; "congratulate me that I am doomed to be still a captive in the
+prison of this vile body? Is it kind? Is it well?"
+
+"At least, you must remember, if you are _doomed_, who dooms you."
+
+"'Oh that I had the wings of a dove!'" she cried, avoiding my remark,
+of which I doubt if she saw the drift. "Think, dear Mrs. Percivale: the
+society of saints and angels!--all brightness and harmony and peace! Is it
+not worth forsaking this world to inherit a kingdom like that? Wouldn't
+_you_ like to go? Don't _you_ wish to fly away and be at rest?"
+
+She spoke as if expostulating and reasoning with one she would persuade to
+some kind of holy emigration.
+
+"Not until I am sent for," I answered.
+
+"I _am_ sent for," she returned.
+
+  "'The wave may be cold, and the tide may be strong;
+  But, hark! on the shore the angels' glad song!'
+
+"Do you know that sweet hymn, Mrs. Percivale? There I shall be able to love
+him aright, to serve him aright!
+
+  "'Here all my labor is so poor!
+    Here all my love so faint!
+  But when I reach the heavenly door,
+    I cease the weary plaint.'"
+
+I couldn't help wishing she would cease it a little sooner.
+
+"But suppose," I ventured to say, "it were the will of God that you should
+live many years yet."
+
+"That cannot be. And why should you wish it for me? Is it not better to
+depart and be with him? What pleasure could it be to a weak, worn creature
+like me to go on living in this isle of banishment?"
+
+"But suppose you were to recover your health: would it not be delightful to
+_do_ something for his sake? If you would think of how much there is to be
+done in the world, perhaps you would wish less to die and leave it."
+
+"Do not tempt me," she returned reproachfully.
+
+And then she quoted a passage the application of which to her own case
+appeared to me so irreverent, that I confess I felt like Abraham with the
+idolater; so far at least as to wish her out of the house, for I could bear
+with her, I thought, no longer.
+
+She did leave it the next day, and I breathed more freely than since she
+had entered it.
+
+My husband came down to fetch me the following day; and a walk with him
+along the cliffs in the gathering twilight, during which I recounted the
+affectations of my late visitor, completely wiped the cobwebs from my
+mental windows, and enabled me to come to the conclusion that Mrs. Cromwell
+was but a spoiled child, who would, somehow or other, be brought to her
+senses before all was over. I was ashamed of my impatience with her, and
+believed if I could have learned her history, of which she had told me
+nothing, it would have explained the rare phenomenon of one apparently able
+to look death in the face with so little of the really spiritual to support
+her, for she seemed to me to know Christ only after the flesh. But had she
+indeed ever looked death in the face?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+MRS. CROMWELL GOES.
+
+
+I heard nothing more of her for about a year. A note or two passed between
+us, and then all communication ceased. This, I am happy to think, was not
+immediately my fault: not that it mattered much, for we were not then
+fitted for much communion; we had too little in common to commune.
+
+"Did you not both believe in one Lord?" I fancy a reader objecting. "How,
+then, can you say you had too little in common to be able to commune?"
+
+I said the same to myself, and tried the question in many ways. The fact
+remained, that we could not commune, that is, with any heartiness; and,
+although I may have done her wrong, it was, I thought, to be accounted
+for something in this way. The Saviour of whom she spoke so often, and
+evidently thought so much, was in a great measure a being of her own fancy;
+so much so, that she manifested no desire to find out what the Christ was
+who had spent three and thirty years in making a revelation of himself to
+the world. The knowledge she had about him was not even at second-hand,
+but at many removes. She did not study his words or his actions to learn
+his thoughts or his meanings; but lived in a kind of dreamland of her own,
+which could be interesting only to the dreamer. Now, if we are to come to
+God through Christ, it must surely be by knowing Christ; it must be through
+the knowledge of Christ that the Spirit of the Father mainly works in the
+members of his body; and it seemed to me she did not take the trouble to
+"know him and the power of his resurrection." Therefore we had scarcely
+enough of common ground, as I say, to meet upon. I could not help
+contrasting her religion with that of Marion Clare.
+
+At length I had a note from her, begging me to go and see her at her house
+at Richmond, and apologizing for her not coming to me, on the score of
+her health. I felt it my duty to go, but sadly grudged the loss of time
+it seemed, for I expected neither pleasure nor profit from the visit.
+Percivale went with me, and left me at the door to have a row on the river,
+and call for me at a certain hour.
+
+The house and grounds were luxurious and lovely both, two often dissociated
+qualities. She could have nothing to desire of this world's gifts, I
+thought. But the moment she entered the room into which I had been shown, I
+was shocked at the change I saw in her. Almost to my horror, she was in a
+widow's cap; and disease and coming death were plain on every feature. Such
+was the contrast, that the face in my memory appeared that of health.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Cromwell!" I gasped out.
+
+"You see," she said, and sitting down, on a straight-backed chair, looked
+at me with lustreless eyes.
+
+Death had been hovering about her windows before, but had entered at last;
+not to take the sickly young woman longing to die, but the hale man, who
+would have clung to the last edge of life.
+
+"He is taken, and I am left," she said abruptly, after a long pause.
+
+Her drawl had vanished: pain and grief had made her simple. "Then," I
+thought with myself, "she did love him!" But I could say nothing. She took
+my silence for the sympathy it was, and smiled a heart-rending smile, so
+different from that little sad smile she used to have; really pathetic
+now, and with hardly a glimmer in it of the old self-pity. I rose, put my
+arms about her, and kissed her on the forehead; she laid her head on my
+shoulder, and wept.
+
+"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," I faltered out, for her sorrow filled
+me with a respect that was new.
+
+"Yes," she returned, as gently as hopelessly; "and whom he does not love as
+well."
+
+"You have no ground for saying so," I answered. "The apostle does not."
+
+"My lamp is gone out," she said; "gone out in darkness, utter darkness. You
+warned me, and I did not heed the warning. I thought I knew better, but I
+was full of self-conceit. And now I am wandering where there is no way and
+no light. My iniquities have found me out."
+
+I did not say what I thought I saw plain enough,--that her lamp was just
+beginning to burn. Neither did I try to persuade her that her iniquities
+were small.
+
+"But the Bridegroom," I said, "is not yet come. There is time to go and get
+some oil."
+
+"Where am I to get it?" she returned, in a tone of despair.
+
+"From the Bridegroom himself," I said.
+
+"No," she answered. "I have talked and talked and talked, and you know he
+says he abhors talkers. I am one of those to whom he will say 'I know you
+not.'"
+
+"And you will answer him that you have eaten and drunk in his presence, and
+cast out devils, and--?"
+
+"No, no: I will say he is right; that it is all my own fault; that I
+thought I was something when I was nothing, but that I know better now."
+
+A dreadful fit of coughing interrupted her. As soon as it was over, I
+said,--
+
+"And what will the Lord say to you, do you think, when you have said so to
+him?"
+
+"Depart from me," she answered in a hollow, forced voice.
+
+"No," I returned. "He will say, 'I know you well. You have told me the
+truth. Come in.'"
+
+"_Do_ you think so?" she cried. "You never used to think well of me."
+
+"Those who were turned away," I said, avoiding her last words, "were trying
+to make themselves out better than they were: they trusted, not in the
+love of Christ, but in what they thought their worth and social standing.
+Perhaps, if their deeds had been as good as they thought them, they would
+have known better than to trust in them. If they had told him the truth;
+if they had said, 'Lord, we are workers of iniquity; Lord, we used to be
+hypocrites, but we speak the truth now: forgive us,'--do you think he would
+then have turned them away? No, surely. If your lamp has gone out, make
+haste and tell him how careless you have been; tell him all, and pray
+him for oil and light; and see whether your lamp will not straightway
+glimmer,--glimmer first and then glow."
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Percivale!" she cried: "I would _do_ something for His sake now
+if I might, but I cannot. If I had but resisted the disease in me for the
+sake of serving him, I might have been able now: but my chance is over; I
+cannot now; I have too much pain. And death looks such a different thing
+now! I used to think of it only as a kind of going to sleep, easy though
+sad--sad, I mean, in the eyes of mourning friends. But, alas! I have no
+friends, now that my husband is gone. I never dreamed of him going first.
+He loved me: indeed he did, though you will hardly believe it; but I always
+took it as a matter of course. I never saw how beautiful and unselfish he
+was till he was gone. I have been selfish and stupid and dull, and my sins
+have found me out. A great darkness has fallen upon me; and although weary
+of life, instead of longing for death, I shrink from it with horror. My
+cough will not let me sleep: there is nothing but weariness in my body, and
+despair in my heart. Oh how black and dreary the nights are! I think of the
+time in your house as of an earthly paradise. But where is the heavenly
+paradise I used to dream of then?" "Would it content you," I asked, "to be
+able to dream of it again?"
+
+"No, no. I want something very different now. Those fancies look so
+uninteresting and stupid now! All I want now is to hear God say, 'I forgive
+you.' And my husband--I must have troubled him sorely. You don't know how
+good he was, Mrs. Percivale. _He_ made no pretences like silly me. Do you
+know," she went on, lowering her voice, and speaking with something like
+horror in its tone, "Do you know, I cannot _bear_ hymns!"
+
+As she said it, she looked up in my face half-terrified with the
+anticipation of the horror she expected to see manifested there. I could
+not help smiling. The case was not one for argument of any kind: I thought
+for a moment, then merely repeated the verse,--
+
+  "When the law threatens endless death,
+  Upon the awful hill,
+  Straightway, from her consuming breath,
+  My soul goes higher still,--
+  Goeth to Jesus, wounded, slain,
+  And maketh him her home,
+  Whence she will not go out again,
+  And where Death cannot come."
+
+"Ah! that is good," she said: "if only I could get to him! But I cannot get
+to him. He is so far off! He seems to be--nowhere."
+
+I think she was going to say _nobody_, but changed the word.
+
+"If you felt for a moment how helpless and wretched I feel, especially in
+the early morning," she went on; "how there seems nothing to look for, and
+no help to be had,--you would pity rather than blame me, though I know I
+deserve blame. I feel as if all the heart and soul and strength and mind,
+with which we are told to love God, had gone out of me; or, rather, as if I
+had never had any. I doubt if I ever had. I tried very hard for a long time
+to get a sight of Jesus, to feel myself in his presence; but it was of no
+use, and I have quite given it up now."
+
+I made her lie on the sofa, and sat down beside her.
+
+"Do you think," I said, "that any one, before he came, could have imagined
+such a visitor to the world as Jesus Christ?"
+
+"I suppose not," she answered listlessly.
+
+"Then, no more can you come near him now by trying to imagine him. You
+cannot represent to yourself the reality, the Being who can comfort you. In
+other words, you cannot take him into your heart. He only knows himself,
+and he only can reveal himself to you. And not until he does so, can you
+find any certainty or any peace."
+
+"But he doesn't--he won't reveal himself to me."
+
+"Suppose you had forgotten what some friend of your childhood was
+like--say, if it were possible, your own mother; suppose you could not
+recall a feature of her face, or the color of her eyes; and suppose, that,
+while you were very miserable about it, you remembered all at once that you
+had a portrait of her in an old desk you had not opened for years: what
+would you do?"
+
+"Go and get it," she answered like a child at the Sunday school.
+
+"Then why shouldn't you do so now? You have such a portrait of Jesus,
+far truer and more complete than any other kind of portrait can be,--the
+portrait his own deeds and words give us of him."
+
+"I see what you mean; but that is all about long ago, and I want him now.
+That is in a book, and I want him in my heart."
+
+"How are you to get him into your heart? How could you have him there,
+except by knowing him? But perhaps you think you do know him?"
+
+"I am certain I do not know him; at least, as I want to know him," she
+said.
+
+"No doubt," I went on, "he can speak to your heart without the record, and,
+I think, is speaking to you now in this very want of him you feel. But how
+could he show himself to you otherwise than by helping you to understand
+the revelation of himself which it cost him such labor to afford? If the
+story were millions of years old, so long as it was true, it would be
+all the same as if it had been ended only yesterday; for, being what he
+represented himself, he never can change. To know what he was then, is to
+know what he is now."
+
+"But, if I knew him so, that wouldn't be to have him with me."
+
+"No; but in that knowledge he might come to you. It is by the door of that
+knowledge that his Spirit, which is himself, comes into the soul. You would
+at least be more able to pray to him: you would know what kind of a being
+you had to cry to. _You_ would thus come nearer to him; and no one ever
+drew nigh to him to whom he did not also draw nigh. If you would but read
+the story as if you had never read it before, as if you were reading the
+history of a man you heard of for the first time"--
+
+"Surely you're not a Unitarian, Mrs. Percivale!" she said, half lifting her
+head, and looking at me with a dim terror in her pale eyes.
+
+"God forbid!" I answered. "But I would that many who think they know
+better believed in him half as much as many Unitarians do. It is only by
+understanding and believing in that humanity of his, which in such pain
+and labor manifested his Godhead, that we can come to know it,--know that
+Godhead, I mean, in virtue of which alone he was a true and perfect man;
+that Godhead which alone can satisfy with peace and hope the poorest human
+soul, for it also is the offspring of God."
+
+I ceased, and for some moments she sat silent. Then she said feebly,--
+
+"There's a Bible somewhere in the room."
+
+I found it, and read the story of the woman who came behind him in terror,
+and touched the hem of his garment. I could hardly read it for the emotion
+it caused in myself; and when I ceased I saw her weeping silently.
+
+A servant entered with the message that Mr. Percivale had called for me.
+
+"I cannot see him to-day," she sobbed.
+
+"Of course not," I replied. "I must leave you now; but I will come
+again,--come often if you like."
+
+"You are as kind as ever!" she returned, with a fresh burst of tears. "Will
+you come and be with me when--when--?"
+
+She could not finish for sobs.
+
+"I will," I said, knowing well what she meant.
+
+This is how I imagined the change to have come about: what had seemed her
+faith had been, in a great measure, but her hope and imagination, occupying
+themselves with the forms of the religion towards which all that was
+highest in her nature dimly urged. The two characteristics of amicability
+and selfishness, not unfrequently combined, rendered it easy for her to
+deceive herself, or rather conspired to prevent her from undeceiving
+herself, as to the quality and worth of her religion. For, if she had been
+other than amiable, the misery following the outbreaks of temper which
+would have been of certain occurrence in the state of her health, would
+have made her aware in some degree of her moral condition; and, if her
+thoughts had not been centred upon herself, she would, in her care for
+others, have learned her own helplessness; and the devotion of her good
+husband, not then accepted merely as a natural homage to her worth, would
+have shown itself as a love beyond her deserts, and would have roused the
+longing to be worthy of it. She saw now that he must have imagined her far
+better than she was: but she had not meant to deceive him; she had but
+followed the impulses of a bright, shallow nature.
+
+But that last epithet bids me pause, and remember that my father has taught
+me, and that I have found the lesson true, that there is no such thing as a
+shallow nature: every nature is infinitely deep, for the works of God are
+everlasting. Also, there is no nature that is not shallow to what it must
+become. I suspect every nature must have the subsoil ploughing of sorrow,
+before it can recognize either its present poverty or its possible wealth.
+
+When her husband died, suddenly, of apoplexy, she was stunned for a time,
+gradually awaking to a miserable sense of unprotected loneliness, so much
+the more painful for her weakly condition, and the overcare to which she
+had been accustomed. She was an only child, and had become an orphan within
+a year or two after her early marriage. Left thus without shelter, like
+a delicate plant whose house of glass has been shattered, she speedily
+recognized her true condition. With no one to heed her whims, and no one
+capable of sympathizing with the genuine misery which supervened, her
+disease gathered strength rapidly, her lamp went out, and she saw no light
+beyond; for the smoke of that lamp had dimmed the windows at which the
+stars would have looked in. When life became dreary, her fancies, despoiled
+of the halo they had cast on the fogs of selfish comfort, ceased to
+interest her; and the future grew a vague darkness, an uncertainty teeming
+with questions to which she had no answer. Henceforth she was conscious
+of life only as a weakness, as the want of a deeper life to hold it up.
+Existence had become a during faint, and self hateful. She saw that she was
+poor and miserable and blind and naked,--that she had never had faith fit
+to support her.
+
+But out of this darkness dawned at least a twilight, so gradual, so slow,
+that I cannot tell when or how the darkness began to melt. She became aware
+of a deeper and simpler need than hitherto she had known,--the need of life
+in herself, the life of the Son of God. I went to see her often. At the
+time when I began this history, I was going every other day,--sometimes
+oftener, for her end seemed to be drawing nigh. Her weakness had greatly
+increased: she could but just walk across the room, and was constantly
+restless. She had no great continuous pain, but oft-returning sharp fits of
+it. She looked genuinely sad, and her spirits never recovered themselves.
+She seldom looked out of the window; the daylight seemed to distress her:
+flowers were the only links between her and the outer world,--wild ones,
+for the scent of greenhouse-flowers, and even that of most garden ones, she
+could not bear. She had been very fond of music, but could no longer endure
+her piano: every note seemed struck on a nerve. But she was generally quiet
+in her mind, and often peaceful. The more her body decayed about her, the
+more her spirit seemed to come alive. It was the calm of a gray evening,
+not so lovely as a golden sunset or a silvery moonlight, but more sweet
+than either. She talked little of her feelings, but evidently longed after
+the words of our Lord. As she listened to some of them, I could see the
+eyes which had now grown dim with suffering, gleam with the light of holy
+longing and humble adoration.
+
+For some time she often referred to her coming departure, and confessed
+that she "feared death; not so much what might be on the other side, as the
+dark way itself,--the struggle, the torture, the fainting; but by degrees
+her allusions to it became rarer, and at length ceased almost entirely.
+Once I said to her,--
+
+"Are you afraid of death still, Eleanor?"
+
+"No--not much," she replied, after a brief pause. "He may do with me
+whatever He likes."
+
+Knowing so well what Marion could do to comfort and support, and therefore
+desirous of bringing them together, I took her one day with me. But certain
+that the thought of seeing a stranger would render my poor Eleanor uneasy,
+and that what discomposure a sudden introduction might cause would speedily
+vanish in Marion's presence, I did not tell her what I was going to do. Nor
+in this did I mistake. Before we left, it was plain that Marion had a far
+more soothing influence upon her than I had myself. She looked eagerly for
+her next visit, and my mind was now more at peace concerning her.
+
+One evening, after listening to some stories from Marion about her friends,
+Mrs. Cromwell said,--
+
+"Ah, Miss Clare! to think I might have done something for _Him_ by doing it
+for _them!_ Alas! I have led a useless life, and am dying out of this world
+without having borne any fruit! Ah, me, me!"
+
+"You are doing a good deal for him now," said Marion, "and hard work too!"
+she added; "harder far than mine."
+
+"I am only dying," she returned--so sadly!
+
+"You are enduring chastisement," said Marion. "The Lord gives one one thing
+to do, and another another. We have no right to wish for other work than he
+gives us. It is rebellious and unchildlike, whatever it may seem. Neither
+have we any right to wish to be better in _our_ way: we must wish to be
+better in _his_."
+
+"But I _should_ like to do something for _him_; bearing is only for myself.
+Surely I may wish that?"
+
+"No: you may not. Bearing is not only for yourself. You are quite wrong in
+thinking you do nothing for him in enduring," returned Marion, with that
+abrupt decision of hers which seemed to some like rudeness. "What is the
+will of God? Is it not your sanctification? And why did he make the Captain
+of our salvation perfect through suffering? Was it not that he might in
+like manner bring many sons into glory? Then, if you are enduring, you are
+working with God,--for the perfection through suffering of one more: you
+are working for God in yourself, that the will of God may be done in you;
+that he may have his very own way with you. It is the only work he requires
+of you now: do it not only willingly, then, but contentedly. To make people
+good is all his labor: be good, and you are a fellow-worker with God in the
+highest region of labor. He does not want you for other people--_yet_."
+
+At the emphasis Marion laid on the last word, Mrs. Cromwell glanced sharply
+up. A light broke over her face: she had understood, and with a smile was
+silent.
+
+One evening, when we were both with her, it had grown very sultry and
+breathless.
+
+"Isn't it very close, dear Mrs. Percivale?" she said.
+
+I rose to get a fan; and Marion, leaving the window as if moved by a sudden
+resolve, went and opened the piano. Mrs. Cromwell made a hasty motion, as
+if she must prevent her. But, such was my faith in my friend's soul as well
+as heart, in her divine taste as well as her human faculty, that I ventured
+to lay my hand on Mrs. Cromwell's. It was enough for sweetness like hers:
+she yielded instantly, and lay still, evidently nerving herself to suffer.
+But the first movement stole so "soft and soullike" on her ear, trembling
+as it were on the border-land between sound and silence, that she missed
+the pain she expected, and found only the pleasure she looked not for.
+Marion's hands made the instrument sigh and sing, not merely as with a
+human voice, but as with a human soul. Her own voice next evolved itself
+from the dim uncertainty, in sweet proportions and delicate modulations,
+stealing its way into the heart, to set first one chord, then another,
+vibrating, until the whole soul was filled with responses. If I add that
+her articulation was as nearly perfect as the act of singing will permit,
+my reader may well believe that a song of hers would do what a song might.
+
+Where she got the song she then sung, she always avoids telling me. I had
+told her all I knew and understood concerning Mrs. Cromwell, and have my
+suspicions. This is the song:--
+
+ "I fancy I hear a whisper
+  As of leaves in a gentle air:
+  Is it wrong, I wonder, to fancy
+  It may be the tree up there?--
+  The tree that heals the nations,
+  Growing amidst the street,
+  And dropping, for who will gather,
+  Its apples at their feet?
+
+ "I fancy I hear a rushing
+  As of waters down a slope:
+  Is it wrong, I wonder, to fancy
+  It may be the river of hope?
+  The river of crystal waters
+  That flows from the very throne,
+  And runs through the street of the city
+  With a softly jubilant tone?
+
+ "I fancy a twilight round me,
+  And a wandering of the breeze,
+  With a hush in that high city,
+  And a going in the trees.
+  But I know there will be no night there,--
+  No coming and going day;
+  For the holy face of the Father
+  Will be perfect light alway.
+
+ "I could do without the darkness,
+  And better without the sun;
+  But, oh, I should like a twilight
+  After the day was done!
+  Would he lay his hand on his forehead,
+  On his hair as white as wool,
+  And shine one hour through his fingers,
+  Till the shadow had made me cool?
+
+ "But the thought is very foolish:
+  If that face I did but see,
+  All else would be all forgotten,--
+  River and twilight and tree;
+  I should seek, I should care, for nothing,
+  Beholding his countenance;
+  And fear only to lose one glimmer
+  By one single sideway glance.
+
+ "'Tis but again a foolish fancy
+  To picture the countenance so.
+  Which is shining in all our spirits,
+  Making them white as snow.
+  Come to me, shine in me, Master,
+  And I care not for river or tree,--
+  Care for no sorrow or crying,
+  If only thou shine in me.
+
+ "I would lie on my bed for ages,
+  Looking out on the dusty street,
+  Where whisper nor leaves nor waters,
+  Nor any thing cool and sweet;
+  At my heart this ghastly fainting,
+  And this burning in my blood,--
+  If only I knew thou wast with me,--
+  Wast with me and making me good."
+
+When she rose from the piano, Mrs. Cromwell stretched out her hand for
+hers, and held it some time, unable to speak. Then she said,--
+
+"That has done me good, I hope. I will try to be more patient, for I think
+He _is_ teaching me."
+
+She died, at length, in my arms. I cannot linger over that last time. She
+suffered a good deal, but dying people are generally patient. She went
+without a struggle. The last words I heard her utter were, "Yes, Lord;"
+after which she breathed but once. A half-smile came over her face, which
+froze upon it, and remained, until the coffin-lid covered it. But I shall
+see it, I trust, a whole smile some day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+ANCESTRAL WISDOM.
+
+
+I did think of having a chapter about children before finishing my book;
+but this is not going to be the kind of chapter I thought of. Like most
+mothers, I suppose, I think myself an authority on the subject; and, which
+is to me more assuring than any judgment of my own, my father says that I
+have been in a measure successful in bringing mine up,--only they're not
+brought up very far yet. Hence arose the temptation to lay down a few
+practical rules I had proved and found answer. But, as soon as I began to
+contemplate the writing of them down, I began to imagine So-and-so and
+So-and-so attempting to carry them out, and saw what a dreadful muddle they
+would make of it, and what mischief would thence lie at my door. Only one
+thing can be worse than the attempt to carry out rules whose principles
+are not understood; and that is the neglect of those which are understood,
+and seen to be right. Suppose, for instance, I were to say that corporal
+punishment was wholesome, involving less suffering than most other
+punishments, more effectual in the result, and leaving no sting or sense
+of unkindness; whereas mental punishment, considered by many to be more
+refined, and therefore less degrading, was often cruel to a sensitive
+child, and deadening to a stubborn one: suppose I said this, and a woman
+like my Aunt Millicent were to take it up: _her_ whippings would have
+no more effect than if her rod were made of butterflies' feathers; they
+would be a mockery to her children, and bring law into contempt; while if
+a certain father I know were to be convinced by my arguments, he would
+fill his children with terror of him now, and with hatred afterwards. Of
+the last-mentioned result of severity, I know at least one instance. At
+present, the father to whom I refer disapproves of whipping even a man who
+has been dancing on his wife with hob-nailed shoes, because it would tend
+to brutalize him. But he taunts and stings, and confines in solitude for
+lengthened periods, high-spirited boys, and that for faults which I should
+consider very venial.
+
+Then, again, if I were to lay down the rule that we must be as tender of
+the feelings of our children as if they were angel-babies who had to learn,
+alas! to understand our rough ways, how would that be taken by a certain
+French couple I know, who, not appearing until after the dinner to which
+they had accepted an invitation was over, gave as the reason, that it had
+been quite out of their power; for darling Désirée, their only child,
+had declared they shouldn't go, and that she would cry if they did; nay,
+went so far as to insist on their going to bed, which they were, however
+reluctant, compelled to do. They had actually undressed, and pretended
+to retire for the night; but, as soon as she was safely asleep, rose and
+joined their friends, calm in the consciousness of abundant excuse.
+
+The marvel to me is that so many children turn out so well.
+
+After all, I think there can be no harm in mentioning a few general
+principles laid down by my father. They are such as to commend themselves
+most to the most practical.
+
+And first for a few negative ones.
+
+1. Never _give in_ to disobedience; and never threaten what you are not
+prepared to carry out.
+
+2. Never lose your temper. I do not say _never be angry_. Anger is
+sometimes indispensable, especially where there has been any thing mean,
+dishonest, or cruel. But anger is very different from loss of temper.
+[Footnote: My Aunt Millicent is always saying, "I am _grieeeved_ with you."
+But the announcement begets no sign of responsive grief on the face of the
+stolid child before her. She never whipped a child in her life. If she had,
+and it had but roused some positive anger in the child, instead of that
+undertone of complaint which is always oozing out of every one of them, I
+think It would have been a gain. But the poor lady is one of the whiny-piny
+people, and must be in preparation for a development of which I have no
+prevision. The only stroke of originality I thought I knew of her was this;
+to the register of her children's births, baptisms, and confirmations,
+entered on a grandly-ornamented fly-leaf of the family Bible, she has
+subjoined the record of every disease each has had, with the year,
+month, and day (and in one case the hour), when each distemper made its
+appearance. After most of the main entries, you may read, "_Cut his_ (or
+her) _first tooth_"--at such a date. But, alas for the originality! she has
+just told me that her maternal grandmother did the same. How strange that
+she and my father should have had the same father I If they had had the
+same mother, too, I should have been utterly bewildered.]
+
+3. Of all things, never sneer at them; and be careful, even, how you rally
+them.
+
+4. Do not try to work on their feelings. Feelings are far too delicate
+things to be used for tools. It is like taking the mainspring out of your
+watch, and notching it for a saw. It may be a wonderful saw, but how fares
+your watch? Especially avoid doing so in connection with religious things,
+for so you will assuredly deaden them to all that is finest. Let your
+feelings, not your efforts on theirs, affect them with a sympathy the more
+powerful that it is not forced upon them; and, in order to do this, avoid
+being too English in the hiding of your feelings. A man's own family has a
+right to share in his _good_ feelings.
+
+5. Never show that you doubt, except you are able to convict. To doubt an
+honest child is to do what you can to make a liar of him; and to believe a
+liar, if he is not altogether shameless, is to shame him.
+
+The common-minded masters in schools, who, unlike the ideal Arnold, are in
+the habit of _disbelieving_ boys, have a large share in making the liars
+they so often are. Certainly the vileness of a lie is not the same in one
+who knows that whatever he says will be regarded with suspicion; and the
+master, who does not know an honest boy after he has been some time in his
+class, gives good reason for doubting whether he be himself an honest man,
+and incapable of the lying he is ready to attribute to all alike.
+
+This last is my own remark, not my father's. I have an honest boy at
+school, and I know how he fares. I say honest; for though, as a mother, I
+can hardly expect to be believed, I have ground for believing that he would
+rather die than lie. I know _I_ would rather he died than lied.
+
+6. Instil no religious doctrine apart from its duty. If it have no duty as
+its necessary embodiment, the doctrine may well be regarded as doubtful.
+
+7. Do not be hard on mere quarrelling, which, like a storm in nature, is
+often helpful in clearing the moral atmosphere. Stop it by a judgment
+between the parties. But be severe as to the _kind_ of quarrelling, and the
+temper shown in it. Especially give no quarter to any unfairness arising
+from greed or spite. Use your strongest language with regard to that.
+
+Now for a few of my father's positive rules:
+
+1. Always let them come to you, and always hear what they have to say. If
+they bring a complaint, always examine into it, and dispense pure justice,
+and nothing but justice.
+
+2. Cultivate a love of _giving_ fair-play. Every one, of course, likes to
+_receive_ fair-play; but no one ought to be left to imagine, therefore,
+that he _loves fair-play_.
+
+3. Teach from the very first, from the infancy capable of sucking a
+sugar-plum, to share with neighbors. Never refuse the offering a child
+brings you, except you have a good reason,--and _give_ it. And never
+_pretend_ to partake: that involves hideous possibilities in its effects on
+the child.
+
+The necessity of giving a reason for refusing a kindness has no relation to
+what is supposed by some to be the necessity of giving a reason with every
+command. There is no such necessity. Of course there ought to be a reason
+in every command. That it _may_ be desirable, sometimes, to explain it, is
+all my father would allow.
+
+4. Allow a great deal of noise,--as much as is fairly endurable; but, the
+moment they seem getting beyond their own control, stop the noise at once.
+Also put a stop at once to all fretting and grumbling.
+
+5. Favor the development of each in the direction of his own bent. Help
+him to develop himself, but do not _push_ development. To do so is most
+dangerous.
+
+6. Mind the moral nature, and it will take care of the intellectual. In
+other words, the best thing for the intellect is the cultivation of the
+conscience, not in casuistry, but in conduct. It may take longer to arrive;
+but the end will be the highest possible health, vigor, and ratio of
+progress.
+
+7. Discourage emulation, and insist on duty,--not often, but strongly.
+
+Having written these out, chiefly from notes I had made of a long talk with
+my father, I gave them to Percivale to read.
+
+"Rather--ponderous, don't you think, for weaving into a narrative?" was his
+remark.
+
+"My narrative is full of things far from light," I returned. "I didn't say
+they were heavy, you know. That is quite another thing."
+
+"I am afraid you mean generally uninteresting. But there are parents who
+might make them useful, and the rest of my readers could skip them."
+
+"I only mean that a narrative, be it ever so serious, must not intrench on
+the moral essay or sermon."
+
+"It is much too late, I fear, to tell me that. But, please, remember I am
+not giving the precepts as of my own discovery, though I _have_ sought to
+verify them by practice, but as what they are,--my father's."
+
+He did not seem to see the bearing of the argument.
+
+"I want my book to be useful," I said. "As a mother, I want to share the
+help I have had myself with other mothers."
+
+"I am only speaking from the point of art," he returned.
+
+"And that's a point I have never thought of; any farther, at least, than
+writing as good English as I might."
+
+"Do you mean to say you have never thought of the shape of the book your
+monthly papers would make?"
+
+"Yes. I don't think I have. Scarcely at all, I believe."
+
+"Then you ought."
+
+"But I know nothing about that kind of thing. I haven't an idea in my head
+concerning the art of book-making. And it is too late, so far at least as
+this book is concerned, to begin to study it now."
+
+"I wonder how my pictures would get on in that way."
+
+"You can see how my book has got on. Well or ill, there it all but is. I
+had to do with facts, and not with art."
+
+"But even a biography, in the ordering of its parts, in the arrangement of
+its light and shade, and in the harmony of the"--
+
+"It's too late, I tell you, husband. The book is all but done. Besides,
+one who would write a biography after the fashion of a picture would
+probably, even without attributing a single virtue that was not present,
+or suppressing a single fault that was, yet produce a false book. The
+principle I have followed has been to try from the first to put as much
+value, that is, as much truth, as I could, into my story. Perhaps, instead
+of those maxims of my father's for the education of children, you would
+have preferred such specimens of your own children's sermons as you made me
+read to you for the twentieth time yesterday?"
+
+Instead of smiling with his own quiet kind smile, as he worked on at his
+picture of St. Athanasius with "no friend but God and Death," he burst into
+a merry laugh, and said,--
+
+"A capital idea! If you give those, word for word, I shall yield the
+precepts."
+
+"Are you out of your five wits, husband?" I exclaimed. "Would you have
+everybody take me for the latest incarnation of the oldest insanity in the
+world,--that of maternity? But I am really an idiot, for you could never
+have meant it!"
+
+"I do most soberly and distinctly mean it. They would amuse your readers
+very much, and, without offending those who may prefer your father's
+maxims to your children's sermons, would incline those who might otherwise
+vote the former a bore, to regard them with the clemency resulting from
+amusement."
+
+"But I desire no such exercise of clemency. The precepts are admirable; and
+those need not take them who do not like them."
+
+"So the others can skip the sermons; but I am sure they will give a few
+mothers, at least, a little amusement. They will prove besides, that you
+follow your own rule of putting a very small quantity of sage into the
+stuffing of your goslings; as also that you have succeeded in making them
+capable of manifesting what nonsense is indigenous in them. I think them
+very funny; that may be paternal prejudice: _you_ think them very silly
+as well; that may be maternal solicitude. I suspect, that, the more of a
+philosopher any one of your readers is, the more suggestive will he find
+these genuine utterances of an age at which the means of expression so much
+exceed the matter to be expressed."
+
+The idea began to look not altogether so absurd as at first; and a little
+more argument sufficed to make me resolve to put the absurdities themselves
+to the test of passing leisurely through my brain while I copied them out,
+possibly for the press.
+
+The result is, that I am going to risk printing them, determined, should I
+find afterwards that I have made a blunder, to throw the whole blame upon
+my husband.
+
+What still makes me shrink the most is the recollection of how often I have
+condemned, as too silly to repeat, things which reporting mothers evidently
+regarded as proofs of a stupendous intellect. But the folly of these
+constitutes the chief part of their merit; and I do not see how I can be
+mistaken for supposing them clever, except it be in regard of a glimmer of
+purpose now and then, and the occasional manifestation of the cunning of
+the stump orator, with his subterfuges to conceal his embarrassment when he
+finds his oil failing him, and his lamp burning low.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+CHILD NONSENSE.
+
+
+One word of introductory explanation.
+
+During my husband's illness, Marion came often, but, until he began to
+recover, would generally spend with the children the whole of the time she
+had to spare, not even permitting me to know that she was in the house. It
+was a great thing for them; for, although they were well enough cared for,
+they were necessarily left to themselves a good deal more than hitherto.
+Hence, perhaps, it came that they betook themselves to an amusement not
+uncommon with children, of which I had as yet seen nothing amongst them.
+
+One evening, when my husband had made a little progress towards recovery,
+Marion came to sit with me in his room for an hour.
+
+"I've brought you something I want to read to you," she said, "if you think
+Mr. Percivale can bear it."
+
+I told her I believed he could, and she proceeded to explain what it was.
+
+"One morning, when I went into the nursery, I found the children playing at
+church, or rather at preaching; for, except a few minutes of singing, the
+preaching occupied the whole time. There were two clergymen, Ernest and
+Charles, alternately incumbent and curate. The chief duty of the curate for
+the time being was to lend his aid to the rescue of his incumbent from any
+difficulty in which the extemporaneous character of his discourse might
+land him."
+
+I interrupt Marion to mention that the respective ages of Ernest and
+Charles were then eight and six.
+
+"The pulpit," she continued, "was on the top of the cupboard under
+the cuckoo-clock, and consisted of a chair and a cushion. There were
+prayer-books in abundance; of which neither of them, I am happy to say,
+made other than a pretended use for reference. Charles, indeed, who
+was preaching when I entered, _can't_ read; but both have far too much
+reverence to use sacred words in their games, as the sermons themselves
+will instance. I took down almost every word they said, frequent
+embarrassments and interruptions enabling me to do so. Ernest was acting as
+clerk, and occasionally prompted the speaker when his eloquence failed him,
+or reproved members of the congregation, which consisted of the two nurses
+and the other children, who were inattentive. Charles spoke with a good
+deal of _unction_, and had quite a professional air when he looked down
+on the big open book, referred to one or other of the smaller ones at his
+side, or directed looks of reprehension at this or that hearer. You would
+have thought he had cultivated the imitation of popular preachers, whereas
+he tells me he has been to church only three times. I am sorry I cannot
+give the opening remarks, for I lost them by being late; but what I did
+hear was this."
+
+She then read from her paper as follows, and lent it me afterwards. I
+merely copy it.
+
+"Once" (_Charles was proceeding when Marion entered_), "there lived an aged
+man, and another who was a _very_ aged man; and the very aged man was going
+to die, and every one but the aged man thought the other, the _very_ aged
+man, wouldn't die. I do this to _explain_ it to you. He, the man who was
+_really_ going to die, was--I will look in the dictionary" (_He looks in
+the book, and gives out with much confidence_), "was two thousand and
+eighty-eight years old. Well, the other man was--well, then, the other man
+'at knew he was going to die, was about four thousand and two; not nearly
+so old, you see." (_Here Charles whispers with Ernest, and then announces
+very loud_),--"This is out of St. James. The _very_ aged man had a wife
+and no children; and the other had no wife, but a _great many_ children.
+The fact was--_this_ was how it was--the wife _died_, and so _he_ had the
+children. Well, the man I spoke of first, well, he died in the middle
+of the night." (_A look as much as to say, "There! what do you think of
+that?_"); "an' nobody but the aged man knew he was going to die. Well, in
+the morning, when his wife got up, she spoke to him, and he was dead!" (_A
+pause._) "Perfectly, sure enough--_dead_!" (_Then, with a change of voice
+and manner_), "He wasn't really dead, because you know" (_abruptly and
+nervously_)--"Shut the door!--you know where he went, because in the
+morning next day" (_He pauses and looks round. Ernest, out of a book,
+prompts_--"The angels take him away"), "came the angels to take him away,
+up to where you know." (_All solemn. He resumes quickly, with a change of
+manner_), "They, all the rest, died of grief. Now, you must expect, as they
+all died of grief, that lots of angels must have come to take _them_ away.
+Freddy _will_ go when the sermon isn't over! That _is_ such a bother!"
+
+At this point Marion paused in her reading, and resumed the narrative form.
+
+"Freddy, however, was too much for them; so Ernest betook himself to the
+organ, which was a chest of drawers, the drawers doing duty as stops, while
+Freddy went up to the pulpit to say 'Good-by,' and shake hands, for which
+he was mildly reproved by both his brothers."
+
+My husband and I were so much amused, that Marion said she had another
+sermon, also preached by Charles, on the same day, after a short interval;
+and at our request she read it. Here it is.
+
+"Once upon a time--a long while ago, in a little--Ready now?--Well, there
+lived in a rather big house, with _quite_ clean windows: it was in winter,
+so nobody noticed them, but they were quite _white_, they were so clean.
+There lived some angels in the house: it was in the air, nobody knew why,
+but it did. No: I don't think it did--I dunno, but there lived in it
+lots of children--two hundred and thirty-two--and they--Oh! I'm gettin'
+distracted! It is too bad!" (_Quiet is restored._) "Their mother and
+father had died, but they were very rich. Now, you see what a heap of
+children,--two hundred and thirty-two! and yet it seemed like _one_ to
+them, they were so rich. _That_ was it! it seemed like _one_ to them
+because they were so rich. Now, the children knew what to get, and I'll
+explain to you now _why_ they knew; and _this_ is how they knew. The angels
+came down on the earth, and told them their mother had sent messages to
+them; and their mother and father--_Don't_ talk! I'm gettin' extracted!"
+(_Puts his hand to his head in a frenzied manner._) "Now, my brother"
+(_This severely to a still inattentive member_), "I'll tell you what the
+angels told them--what to get. What--how--now I will tell you how,--yes,
+_how_ they knew what they were to eat. Well, the fact was, that--Freddy's
+just towards my face, and he's laughing! I'm going to explain. The mother
+and father had the wings on, and so, of course--Ernest, I want you!" (_They
+whisper._)--"they were he and she angels, and they told them what to have.
+Well, one thing was--shall I tell you what it was? Look at two hundred
+and two in another book--one thing was a leg of mutton. Of course, as the
+mother and father were angels, they had to fly up again. Now I'm going to
+explain how they got it done. They had four servants and one cook, so that
+would be five. Well, this cook did them. The eldest girl was sixteen, and
+her name was Snowdrop, because she had snowy arms and cheeks, and was a
+very nice girl. The eldest boy was seventeen, and his name was John. He
+always told the cook what they'd have--no, the girl did that. And the boy
+was now grown up. So they would be mother and father." (_Signs of dissent
+among the audience._) "_Of course_, when they were so old, they would be
+mother and father, and master of the servants. And they were very happy,
+_but_--they didn't quite like it. And--and"--(_with a great burst_) "_you_
+wouldn't like it if _your_ mother were to die! And I'll end it next Sunday.
+Let us sing."
+
+"The congregation then sung 'Curly Locks,'" said Marion, "and dispersed;
+Ernest complaining that Charley gave them such large qualities of numbers,
+and there weren't so many in the whole of his book. After a brief interval
+the sermon was resumed."
+
+"Text is No. 66. I've a good congregation! I got to where the children did
+not like it without their mother and father. Well, you must remember this
+was a long while ago, so what I'm going to speak about _could_ be possible.
+Well, their house was on the top of a high and steep hill; and at the
+bottom, a little from the hill, was a knight's house. There were three
+knights living in it. Next to it was stables with three horses in it.
+Sometimes they went up to this house, and wondered what was in it. 'They
+never knew, but saw the angels come. The knights were out all day, and only
+came home for meals. And they wondered what _on earth_ the angels were
+doin', goin' in the house. They found out _what_--what, and the question
+was--I'll explain what it was. Ernest, come here." (_Ernest remarks to the
+audience_, "I'm curate," _and to Charles_, "Well, but, Charles, you're
+going to explain, you know;" _and Charles resumes_.) "The fact was, that
+this was--if you'd like to explain it more to yourselves, you'd better
+look in your books, No. 1828. Before, the angels didn't speak loud, so the
+knights couldn't hear; _now_ they spoke louder, so that the knights could
+visit them, 'cause they knew their names. They hadn't many visitors, but
+they had the knights in there, and that's all."
+
+I am still very much afraid that all this nonsense will hardly be
+interesting, even to parents. But I may as well suffer for a sheep as a
+lamb; and, as I had an opportunity of hearing two such sermons myself not
+long after, I shall give them, trusting they will occupy far less space in
+print than they do in my foolish heart.
+
+It was Ernest who was in the pulpit and just commencing his discourse when
+I entered the nursery, and sat down with the congregation. Sheltered by a
+clothes-horse, apparently set up for a screen, I took out my pencil, and
+reported on a fly-leaf of the book I had been reading:--
+
+"My brother was goin' to preach about the wicked: I will preach about the
+good. Twenty-sixth day. In the time of Elizabeth there was a very old
+house. It was so old that it was pulled down, and a quite new one was built
+instead. Some people who lived in it did not like it so much now as they
+did when it was old. I take their part, you know, and think they were quite
+right in preferring the old one to the ugly, bare, new one. They left
+it--sold it--and got into another old house instead."
+
+Here, I am sorry to say, his curate interjected the scornful remark,--
+
+"He's not lookin' in the book a bit!"
+
+But the preacher went on, without heeding the attack on his orthodoxy.
+
+"This other old house was still more uncomfortable: it was very draughty;
+the gutters were always leaking; and they wished themselves back in the new
+house. So, you see, if you wish for a better thing, you don't get it so
+good after all."
+
+"Ernest, that _is_ about the bad, after all!" cried Charles.
+
+"Well, it's _silly_," remarked Freddy severely.
+
+"But I wrote it myself," pleaded the preacher from the pulpit; and, in
+consideration of the fact, he was allowed to go on.
+
+"I was reading about them being always uncomfortable. At last they decided
+to go back to their own house, which they had sold. They had to pay so much
+to get it back, that they had hardly any money left; and then they got so
+unhappy, and the husband whipped his wife, and took to drinking. That's a
+lesson." (_Here the preacher's voice became very plaintive_), "that's a
+lesson to show you shouldn't try to get the better thing, for it turns out
+worse, and then you get sadder, and every thing."
+
+He paused, evidently too mournful to proceed. Freddy again remarked that it
+was _silly_; but Charles interposed a word for the preacher.
+
+"It's a good _lesson_, I think. A good _lesson_, I say," he repeated, as if
+he would not be supposed to consider it much of a sermon.
+
+But here the preacher recovered himself and summed up.
+
+"See how it comes: wanting to get every thing, you come to the bad and
+drinking. And I think I'll leave off here. Let us sing."
+
+The song was "Little Robin Redbreast;" during which Charles remarked to
+Freddy, apparently by way of pressing home the lesson upon his younger
+brother,--
+
+"Fancy! floggin' his wife!"
+
+Then he got into the pulpit himself, and commenced an oration.
+
+"Chapter eighty-eight. _The wicked_.--Well, the time when the story was,
+was about Herod. There were some wicked people wanderin' about there, and
+they--not _killed_ them, you know, but--went to the judge. We shall see
+what they did to them. I tell you this to make you understand. Now the
+story begins--but I must think a little. Ernest, let's sing 'Since first I
+saw your face.'
+
+"When the wicked man was taken then to the good judge--there were _some_
+good people: when I said I was going to preach about the wicked, I did
+not mean that there were no good, only a good lot of wicked. There were
+pleacemans about here, and they put him in prison for a few days, and then
+the judge could see about what he is to do with him. At the end of the
+few days, the judge asked him if he would stay in prison for life or be
+hanged."
+
+Here arose some inquiries among the congregation as to what the wicked,
+of whom the prisoner was one, had done that was wrong; to which Charles
+replied,--
+
+"Oh! they murdered and killed; they stealed, and they were very wicked
+altogether. Well," he went on, resuming his discourse, "the morning came,
+and the judge said, 'Get the ropes and my throne, and order the people
+_not_ to come to see the hangin'.' For the man was decided to be hanged.
+Now, the people _would_ come. They were the wicked, and they would
+_persist_ in comin'. They were the wicked; and, if that was the _fact_,
+the judge must do something to them.
+
+"Chapter eighty-nine. _The hangin'_.--We'll have some singin' while I
+think."
+
+"Yankee Doodle" was accordingly sung with much enthusiasm and solemnity.
+Then Charles resumed.
+
+"Well, they had to put the other people, who persisted in coming, in
+prison, till the man who murdered people was hanged. I think my brother
+will go on."
+
+He descended, and gave place to Ernest, who began with vigor.
+
+"We were reading about Herod, weren't we? Then the wicked people _would_
+come, and had to be put to death. They were on the man's side; and they all
+called out that he hadn't had his wish before he died, as they did in those
+days. So of course he wished for his life, and of course the judge wouldn't
+let him have _that_ wish; and so he wished to speak to his friends, and
+they let him. And the nasty wicked people took him away, and he was never
+seen in that country any more. And that's enough to-day, I think. Let us
+sing 'Lord Lovel he stood at his castle-gate, a combing his milk-white
+steed.'"
+
+At the conclusion of this mournful ballad, the congregation was allowed to
+disperse. But, before they had gone far, they were recalled by the offer of
+a more secular entertainment from Charles, who re-ascended the pulpit, and
+delivered himself as follows:--
+
+"Well, the play is called--not a proverb or a charade it isn't--it's a play
+called 'The Birds and the Babies.' Well!
+
+"Once there was a little cottage, and lots of little babies in it. Nobody
+knew who the babies were. They were so happy! Now, I can't explain it to
+you how they came together: they had no father and mother, but they were
+brothers and sisters. They never _grew_, and they didn't like it. Now,
+_you_ wouldn't like _not_ to _grow_, would you? They had a little garden,
+and saw a great many birds in the trees. They _were_ happy, but didn't
+_feel_ happy--that's a funny thing now! The wicked fairies made them
+unhappy, and the good fairies made them happy; they gave them lots of toys.
+But then, how they got their living!
+
+"Chapter second, called 'The Babies at Play.'--The fairies told them what
+to get--_that was it!_--and so they got their living Very nicely. And now I
+must explain what they played with. First was a house. _A house._ Another,
+dolls. They were very happy, and felt as if they had a mother and father;
+but they hadn't, and _couldn't_ make it out. _Couldn't--make--it--out!_
+
+"They had little pumps and trees. Then they had babies' rattles. _Babies'
+rattles._--Oh! I've said hardly any thing about the birds, have I? an' it's
+called '_The Birds and the Babies!_' They had lots of little pretty robins
+and canaries hanging round the ceiling, and--_shall_ I say?"--
+
+Every one listened expectant during the pause that followed.
+
+"_--And--lived--happy--ever--after._"
+
+The puzzle in it all is chiefly what my husband hinted at,--why and how
+both the desire and the means of utterance should so long precede the
+possession of any thing ripe for utterance. I suspect the answer must lie
+pretty deep in some metaphysical gulf or other.
+
+At the same time, the struggle to speak where there is so little to
+utter can hardly fail to suggest the thought of some efforts of a more
+pretentious and imposing character.
+
+But more than enough!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+"DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE."
+
+
+I had for a day or two fancied that Marion was looking less bright than
+usual, as if some little shadow had fallen upon the morning of her life. I
+say _morning_, because, although Marion must now have been seven or eight
+and twenty, her life had always seemed to me lighted by a cool, clear, dewy
+morning sun, over whose face it now seemed as if some film of noonday cloud
+had begun to gather. Unwilling at once to assert the ultimate privilege
+of friendship, I asked her if any thing was amiss with her friends. She
+answered that all was going on well, at least so far that she had no
+special anxiety about any of them. Encouraged by a half-conscious and more
+than half-sad smile, I ventured a little farther.
+
+"I am afraid there is something troubling you," I said.
+
+"There is," she replied, "something troubling me a good deal; but I hope it
+will pass away soon."
+
+The sigh which followed, however, was deep though gentle, and seemed to
+indicate a fear that the trouble might not pass away so very soon.
+
+"I am not to ask you any questions, I suppose," I returned.
+
+"Better not at present," she answered. "I am not quite sure that"--
+
+She paused several moments before finishing her sentence, then added,--
+
+"--that I am at liberty to tell you about it."
+
+"Then don't say another word," I rejoined. "Only when I can be of service
+to you, you _will_ let me, won't you?"
+
+The tears rose to her eyes.
+
+"I'm afraid it may be some fault of mine," she said. "I don't know. I can't
+tell. I don't understand such things."
+
+She sighed again, and held her peace.
+
+It was enigmatical enough. One thing only was clear, that at present I was
+not wanted. So I, too, held my peace, and in a few minutes Marion went,
+with a more affectionate leave-taking than usual, for her friendship was
+far less demonstrative than that of most women.
+
+I pondered, but it was not of much use. Of course the first thing that
+suggested itself was, Could my angel be in love? and with some mortal mere?
+The very idea was a shock, simply from its strangeness. Of course, being
+a woman, she _might_ be in love; but the two ideas, _Marion_ and _love_,
+refused to coalesce. And again, was it likely that such as she, her mind
+occupied with so many other absorbing interests, would fall in love
+unprovoked, unsolicited? That, indeed, was not likely. Then if, solicited,
+she but returned love for love, why was she sad? The new experience might,
+it is true, cause such commotion in a mind like hers as to trouble her
+greatly. She would not know what to do with it, nor where to accommodate
+her new inmate so as to keep him from meddling with affairs he had no right
+to meddle with: it was easy enough to fancy him troublesome in a house
+like hers. But surely of all women _she_ might be able to meet her own
+liabilities. And if this were all, why should she have said she hoped it
+would soon pass? That might, however, mean only that she hoped soon to get
+her guest brought amenable to her existing household economy.
+
+There was yet a conjecture, however, which seemed to suit the case better.
+If Marion knew little of what is commonly called love, that is, "the
+attraction of correlative unlikeness," as I once heard it defined by a
+metaphysical friend of my father's, there was no one who knew more of
+the tenderness of compassion than she; and was it not possible some one
+might be wanting to marry her to whom she could not give herself away?
+This conjecture was at least ample enough to cover the facts in my
+possession--which were scanty indeed, in number hardly dual. But who was
+there to dare offer love to my saint? Roger? Pooh! pooh! Mr. Blackstone?
+Ah! I had seen him once lately looking at her with an expression of more
+than ordinary admiration. But what man that knew any thing of her could
+help looking at her with such an admiration? If it was Mr. Blackstone--why,
+_he_ might dare--yes, why should he not dare to love her?--especially if he
+couldn't help it, as, of course, he couldn't. Was he not one whose love,
+simply because he was a _true_ man from the heart to the hands, would honor
+any woman, even Saint Clare--as she must be when the church has learned to
+do its business without the pope? Only he mustn't blame me, if, after all,
+I should think he offered less than he sought; or her, if, entertaining
+no question of worth whatever, she should yet refuse to listen to him as,
+truly, there was more than a possibility she might.
+
+If it were Mr. Blackstone, certainly I knew no man who could understand her
+better, or whose modes of thinking and working would more thoroughly fall
+in with her own. True, he was peculiar; that is, he had kept the angles of
+his individuality, for all the grinding of the social mill; his manners
+were too abrupt, and drove at the heart of things too directly, seldom
+suggesting a _by-your-leave_ to those whose prejudices he overturned: true,
+also, that his person, though dignified, was somewhat ungainly,--with
+an ungainliness, however, which I could well imagine a wife learning
+absolutely to love; but, on the whole, the thing was reasonable. Only, what
+would become of her friends? There, I could hardly doubt, there lay the
+difficulty! Ay, _there_ was the rub!
+
+Let no one think, when I say we went to Mr. Blackstone's church the next
+Sunday, that it had any thing to do with these speculations. We often went
+on the first Sunday of the month.
+
+"What's the matter with Blackstone?" said my husband as we came home.
+
+"What do _you_ think is the matter with him?" I returned.
+
+"I don't know. He wasn't himself."
+
+"I thought he was more than himself," I rejoined; "for I never heard even
+_him_ read the litany with such fervor."
+
+"In some of the petitions," said Percivale, "it amounted to a suppressed
+agony of supplication. I am certain he is in trouble."
+
+I told him my suspicions.
+
+"Likely--very likely," he answered, and became thoughtful.
+
+"But you don't think she refused him?" he said at length.
+
+"If he ever asked her," I returned, "I fear she did; for she is plainly in
+trouble too."
+
+"She'll never stick to it," he said.
+
+"You mustn't judge Marion by ordinary standards," I replied. "You must
+remember she has not only found her vocation, but for many years proved it.
+I never knew her turned aside from what she had made up her mind to. I can
+hardly imagine her forsaking her friends to keep house for any man, even if
+she loved him with all her heart. She is dedicated as irrevocably as any
+nun, and will, with St. Paul, cling to the right of self-denial."
+
+"Yet what great difficulty would there be in combining the two sets of
+duties, especially with such a man as Blackstone? Of all the men I know,
+he comes the nearest to her in his devotion to the well-being of humanity,
+especially of the poor. Did you ever know a man with such a plentiful lack
+of condescension? His feeling of human equality amounts almost to a fault;
+for surely he ought sometimes to speak as knowing better than they to whom
+he speaks. He forgets that too many will but use his humility for mortar to
+build withal the Shinar-tower of their own superiority."
+
+"That may be; yet it remains impossible for him to assume any thing. He is
+the same all through, and--I had almost said--worthy of Saint Clare. Well,
+they must settle it for themselves. We can do nothing."
+
+"We can do nothing," he assented; and, although we repeatedly reverted to
+the subject on the long way home, we carried no conclusions to a different
+result.
+
+Towards evening of the same Sunday, Roger came to accompany us, as I
+thought, to Marion's gathering, but, as it turned out, only to tell me
+he couldn't go. I expressed my regret, and asked him why. He gave me no
+answer, and his lip trembled. A sudden conviction seized me. I laid my hand
+on his arm, but could only say, "Dear Roger!" He turned his head aside,
+and, sitting down on the sofa, laid his forehead on his hand.
+
+"I'm so sorry!" I said.
+
+"She has told you, then?" he murmured.
+
+"No one has told me any thing."
+
+He was silent. I sat down beside him. It was all I could do. After a moment
+he rose, saying,--
+
+"There's no good whining about it, only she might have made a man of me.
+But she's quite right. It's a comfort to think I'm so unworthy of her.
+That's all the consolation left me, but there's more in that than you would
+think till you try it."
+
+He attempted to laugh, but made a miserable failure of it, then rose and
+caught up his hat to go. I rose also.
+
+"Roger," I said, "I can't go, and leave you miserable. We'll go somewhere
+else,--anywhere you please, only you mustn't leave us."
+
+"I don't want to go somewhere else. I don't know the place," he added, with
+a feeble attempt at his usual gayety.
+
+"Stop at home, then, and tell me all about it. It will do you good to talk.
+You shall have your pipe, and you shall tell me just as much as you like,
+and keep the rest to yourself."
+
+If you want to get hold of a man's deepest confidence, tell him to smoke in
+your drawing-room. I don't know how it is, but there seems no trouble in
+which a man can't smoke. One who scorns extraneous comfort of every other
+sort, will yet, in the profoundest sorrow, take kindly to his pipe. This
+is more wonderful than any thing I know about our kind. But I fear the
+sewing-machines will drive many women to tobacco.
+
+I ran to Percivale, gave him a hint of how it was, and demanded his pipe
+and tobacco-pouch directly, telling him he must content himself with a
+cigar.
+
+Thus armed with the calumet, as Paddy might say, I returned to Roger, who
+took it without a word of thanks, and began to fill it mechanically, but
+not therefore the less carefully. I sat down, laid my hands in my lap, and
+looked at him without a word. When the pipe was filled I rose and got him a
+light, for which also he made me no acknowledgment. The revenge of putting
+it in print is sweet. Having whiffed a good many whiffs in silence, he took
+at length his pipe from his mouth, and, as he pressed the burning tobacco
+with a forefinger, said,--
+
+"I've made a fool of myself, Wynnie."
+
+"Not more than a gentleman had a right to do, I will pledge myself," I
+returned.
+
+"She _has_ told you, then?" he said once more, looking rather disappointed
+than annoyed.
+
+"No one has mentioned your name to me, Roger. I only guessed it from what
+Marion said when I questioned her about her sad looks."
+
+"Her sad looks?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did she say?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"She only confessed she had had something to trouble her, and said she
+hoped it would be over soon."
+
+"I dare say!" returned Roger dryly, looking gratified, however, for a
+moment.
+
+My reader may wonder that I should compromise Marion, even so far as to
+confess that she was troubled; but I could not bear that Roger should think
+she had been telling his story to me. Every generous woman feels that she
+owes the man she refuses at least silence; and a man may well reckon upon
+that much favor. Of all failures, why should this be known to the world?
+
+The relief of finding she had not betrayed him helped him, I think, to open
+his mind: _he_ was under no obligation to silence.
+
+"You see, Wynnie," he said, with pauses, and puffs at his pipe, "I don't
+mean I'm a fool for falling in love with Marion. Not to have fallen in love
+with her would have argued me a beast. Being a man, it was impossible for
+me to help it, after what she's been to me. But I was worse than a fool
+to open my mouth on the subject to an angel like her. Only there again, I
+couldn't, that is, I hadn't the strength to help it. I beg, however, you
+won't think me such a downright idiot as to fancy myself worthy of her. In
+that case, I should have deserved as much scorn as she gave me kindness. If
+you ask me how it was, then, that I dared to speak to her on the subject, I
+can only answer that I yielded to the impulse common to all kinds of love
+to make itself known. If you love God, you are not content with his knowing
+it even, but you must tell him as if he didn't know it. You may think from
+this cool talk of mine that I am very philosophical about it; but there are
+lulls in every storm, and I am in one of those lulls, else I shouldn't be
+sitting here with you."
+
+"Dear Roger!" I said, "I am very sorry for your disappointment. Somehow, I
+can't be sorry you should have loved"--
+
+"_Have loved!_" he murmured.
+
+"_Should love_ Marion, then," I went on. "That can do you nothing but good,
+and in itself must raise you above yourself. And how could I blame you,
+that, loving her, you wanted her to know it? But come, now, if you can
+trust me, tell me all about it, and especially what she said to you. I
+dare not give you any hope, for I am not in her confidence in this matter;
+and it is well that I am not, for then I might not be able to talk to you
+about it with any freedom. To confess the real truth, I do not see much
+likelihood, knowing her as I do, that she will recall her decision."
+
+"It could hardly be called a decision," said Roger. "You would not have
+thought, from the way she took it, there was any thing to decide about. No
+more there was; and I thought I knew it, only I couldn't be quiet. To think
+you know a thing, and to know it, are two very different matters, however.
+But I don't repent having spoken my mind: if I am humbled, I am not
+humiliated. If she _had_ listened to me, I fear I should have been ruined
+by pride. I should never have judged myself justly after it. I wasn't
+humble, though I thought I was. I'm a poor creature, Ethelwyn."
+
+"Not too poor a creature to be dearly loved, Roger. But go on and tell me
+all about it. As your friend and sister, I am anxious to hear the whole."
+
+Notwithstanding what I had said, I was not moved by sympathetic curiosity
+alone, but also by the vague desire of rendering some help beyond comfort.
+What he had now said, greatly heightened my opinion of him, and thereby, in
+my thoughts of the two, lessened the distance between him and Marion. At
+all events, by hearing the whole, I should learn how better to comfort him.
+
+And he did tell me the whole, which, along with what I learned afterwards
+from Marion, I will set down as nearly as I can, throwing it into the form
+of direct narration. I will not pledge myself for the accuracy of every
+trifling particular which that form may render it necessary to introduce;
+neither, I am sure, having thus explained, will my reader demand it of me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+ROGER AND MARION.
+
+
+During an all but sleepless night, Roger had made up his mind to go and
+see Marion: not, certainly, for the first time, for he had again and again
+ventured to call upon her; but hitherto he had always had some pretext
+sufficient to veil his deeper reason, and, happily or unhappily, sufficient
+also to prevent her, in her more than ordinary simplicity with regard to
+such matters, from suspecting one under it.
+
+She was at home, and received him with her usual kindness. Feeling that
+he must not let an awkward silence intervene, lest she should become
+suspicious of his object, and thus the chance be lost of interesting, and
+possibly moving her before she saw his drift, he spoke at once.
+
+"I want to tell you something, Miss Clare," he said as lightly as he could.
+
+"Well?" she returned, with the sweet smile which graced her every approach
+to communication.
+
+"Did my sister--in--law ever tell you what an idle fellow I used to be?"
+
+"Certainly not. I never heard her say a word of you that wasn't kind."
+
+"That I am sure of. But there would have been no unkindness in saying that;
+for an idle fellow I was, and the idler because I was conceited enough to
+believe I could do any thing. I actually thought at one time I could play
+the violin. I actually made an impertinent attempt in your presence one
+evening, years and years ago, I wonder if you remember it."
+
+"I do; but I don't know why you should call it impertinent."
+
+"Anyhow, I caught a look on your face that cured me of that conceit. I have
+never touched the creature since,--a Cremona too!"
+
+"I am very sorry, indeed I am. I don't remember--Do you think you could
+have played a false note?"
+
+"Nothing more likely."
+
+"Then, I dare say I made an ugly face. One can't always help it, you know,
+when something unexpected happens. Do forgive me."
+
+"Forgive _you_, you angel!" cried Roger, but instantly checked himself,
+afraid of reaching his mark before he had gathered sufficient momentum to
+pierce it. "I thought you would see what a good thing it was for me. I
+wanted to thank you for it."
+
+"It's such a pity you didn't go on, though. Progress is the real cure for
+an overestimate of ourselves."
+
+"The fact is, I was beginning to see what small praise there is in doing
+many things ill and nothing well. I wish you would take my Cremona. I could
+teach you the A B C of it well enough. How you would make it talk! That
+_would_ be something to live for, to hear _you_ play the violin! Ladies do,
+nowadays, you know."
+
+"I have no time, Mr. Roger. I should have been delighted to be your pupil;
+but I am sorry to say it is out of the question."
+
+"Of course it is. Only I wish--well, never mind, I only wanted to tell you
+something. I was leading a life then that wasn't worth leading; for where's
+the good of being just what happens,--one time full of right feeling and
+impulse, and the next a prey to all wrong judgments and falsehoods? It was
+you made me see it. I've been trying to get put right for a long time now.
+I'm afraid of seeming to talk goody, but you will know what I mean. You and
+your Sunday evenings have waked me up to know what I am, and what I ought
+to be. I am a little better. I work hard now. I used to work only by fits
+and starts. Ask Wynnie."
+
+"Dear Mr. Roger, I don't need to ask Wynnie about any thing you tell me. I
+can take your word for it just as well as hers. I am very glad if I have
+been of any use to you. It is a great honor to me."
+
+"But the worst of it is, I couldn't be content without letting you know,
+and making myself miserable."
+
+"I don't understand you, I think. Surely there can be no harm in letting me
+know what makes me very happy! How it should make you miserable, I can't
+imagine."
+
+"Because I can't stop there. I'm driven to say what will offend you, if it
+doesn't make you hate me--no, not that; for you don't know how to hate. But
+you must think me the most conceited and presumptuous fellow you ever knew.
+I'm not that, though; I'm not that; it's not me; I can't help it; I can't
+help loving you--dreadfully--and it's such impudence! To think of you and
+me in one thought! And yet I can't help it. O Miss Clare! don't drive me
+away from you."
+
+He fell on his knees as he spoke, and laid his head on her lap, sobbing
+like a child who had offended his mother. He almost cried again as he told
+me this. Marion half started to her feet in confusion, almost in terror,
+for she had never seen such emotion in a man; but the divine compassion of
+her nature conquered: she sat down again, took his head in her hands, and
+began stroking his hair as if she were indeed a mother seeking to soothe
+and comfort her troubled child. She was the first to speak again, for Roger
+could not command himself.
+
+"I'm very sorry, Roger," she said. "I must be to blame somehow."
+
+"To blame!" he cried, lifting up his head. "_You_ to blame for my folly!
+But it's not folly," he added impetuously: "it would be downright stupidity
+not to love you with all my soul."
+
+"Hush! hush!" said Marion, in whose ears his language sounded irreverent.
+"You _couldn't_ love me with all your soul if you would. God only _can_ be
+loved with all the power of the human soul."
+
+"If I love him at all, Marion, it is you who have taught me. Do not drive
+me from you--lest--lest--I should cease to love him, and fall back into my
+old dreary ways."
+
+"It's a poor love to offer God,--love for the sake of another," she said
+very solemnly.
+
+"But if it's all one has got?"
+
+"Then it won't do, Roger. I wish you loved me for God's sake instead. Then
+all would be right. That would be a grand love for me to have."
+
+"Don't drive me from you, Marion," he pleaded. It was all he could say.
+
+"I will not drive you from me. Why should I?"
+
+"Then I may come and see you again?"
+
+"Yes: when you please."
+
+"You _don't_ mean I may come as often as I like?"
+
+"Yes--when I have time to see you."
+
+"Then," cried Roger, starting to his feet with clasped hands,
+"--perhaps--is it possible?--you will--you will let me love you? O my God!"
+
+"Roger," said Marion, pale as death, and rising also; for, alas! the
+sunshine of her kindness had caused hopes to blossom whose buds she had
+taken only for leaves, "I thought you understood me! You spoke as if you
+understood perfectly that that could never be which I must suppose you
+to mean. Of course it cannot. I am not my own to keep or to give away. I
+belong to this people,--my friends. To take personal and private duties
+upon me, would be to abandon them; and how dare I? You don't know what it
+would result in, or you would not dream of it. Were I to do such a thing, I
+should hate and despise and condemn myself with utter reprobation. And then
+what a prize you would have got, my poor Roger!"
+
+But even these were such precious words to hear from her lips! He fell
+again on his knees before her as she stood, caught her hands, and, hiding
+his face in them, poured forth the following words in a torrent,--
+
+"Marion, do not think me so selfish as not to have thought about that. It
+should be only the better for them all. I can earn quite enough for you and
+me too, and so you would have the more time to give to them. I should never
+have dreamed of asking you to leave them. There are things in which a dog
+may help a man, doing what the man can't do: there may be things in which a
+man might help an angel."
+
+Deeply moved by the unselfishness of his love, Marion could not help a
+pressure of her hands against the face which had sought refuge within them.
+Roger fell to kissing them wildly.
+
+But Marion was a woman; and women, I think, though I may be only judging by
+myself and my husband, look forward and round about, more than men do: they
+would need at all events; therefore Marion saw other things. A man-reader
+may say, that, if she loved him, she would not have thus looked about her;
+and that, if she did not love him, there was no occasion for her thus to
+fly in the face of the future. I can only answer that it is allowed on all
+hands women are not amenable to logic: look about her Marion did, and saw,
+that, as a married woman, she might be compelled to forsake her friends
+more or less; for there might arise other and paramount claims on her
+self-devotion. In a word, if she were to have children, she would have no
+choice in respect to whose welfare should constitute the main business of
+her life; and it even became a question whether she would have a right
+to place them in circumstances so unfavorable for growth and education.
+Therefore, to marry might be tantamount to forsaking her friends.
+
+But where was the need of any such mental parley? Of course, she couldn't
+marry Roger. How could she marry a man she couldn't look up to? And look up
+to him she certainly did not, and could not.
+
+"No, Roger," she said, this last thought large in her mind; and, as she
+spoke, she withdrew her hands, "it mustn't be. It is out of the question: I
+can't look up to you," she added, as simply as a child.
+
+"I should think not," he burst out. "That _would_ be a fine thing! If you
+looked up to a fellow like me, I think it would almost cure me of looking
+up to you; and what I want is to look up to you every day and all day long:
+only I can do that whether you let me or not."
+
+"But I don't choose to have a--a--friend to whom I can't look up."
+
+"Then I shall never be even a friend," he returned sadly. "But I would have
+tried hard to be less unworthy of you."
+
+At this precise moment, Marion caught sight of a pair of great round blue
+eyes, wide open under a shock of red hair, about three feet from the floor,
+staring as if they had not winked for the last ten minutes. The child
+looked so comical, that Marion, reading perhaps in her looks the reflex of
+her own position, could not help laughing. Roger started up in dismay, but,
+beholding the apparition, laughed also.
+
+"Please, grannie," said the urchin, "mother's took bad, and want's ye."
+
+"Run and tell your mother I shall be with her directly," answered Marion;
+and the child departed.
+
+"You told me I might come again," pleaded Roger.
+
+"Better not. I didn't know what it would mean to you when I said it."
+
+"Let it mean what you meant by it, only let me come."
+
+"But I see now it can't mean that. No: I will write to you. At all events,
+you must go now, for I can't stop with you when Mrs. Foote"--
+
+"Don't make me wretched, Marion. If you can't love me, don't kill me. Don't
+say I'm not to come and see you. I _will_ come on Sundays, anyhow."
+
+The next day came the following letter:--
+
+Dear Mr. Roger,--I am very sorry, both for your sake and my own, that I did
+not speak more plainly yesterday. I was so distressed for you, and my heart
+was so friendly towards you, that I could hardly think of any thing at
+first but how to comfort you; and I fear I allowed you, after all, to go
+away with the idea that what you wished was not altogether impossible. But
+indeed it is. If even I loved you in the way you love me, I should yet make
+every thing yield to the duties I have undertaken. In listening to you, I
+should be undermining the whole of my past labors; and the very idea of
+becoming less of a friend to my friends is horrible to me.
+
+But much as I esteem you, and much pleasure as your society gives me, the
+idea you brought before me yesterday was absolutely startling; and I think
+I have only to remind you, as I have just done, of the peculiarities of my
+position, to convince you that it could never become a familiar one to me.
+All that friendship can do or yield, you may ever claim of me; and I thank
+God if I have been of the smallest service to you: but I should be quite
+unworthy of that honor, were I for any reason to admit even the thought of
+abandoning the work which has been growing up around me for so many years,
+and is so peculiarly mine that it could be transferred to no one else.
+Believe me yours most truly,
+
+MARION CLARE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ROGER, AND ABOUT MR. BLACKSTONE.
+
+
+After telling me the greater part of what I have just written, Roger handed
+me this letter to read, as we sat together that same Sunday evening.
+
+"It seems final, Roger?" I said with an interrogation, as I returned it to
+him.
+
+"Of course it is," he replied. "How could any honest man urge his suit
+after that,--after she says that to grant it would be to destroy the whole
+of her previous life, and ruin her self-respect? But I'm not so miserable
+as you may think me, Wynnie," he went on; "for don't you see? though I
+couldn't quite bring myself to go to-night, I don't feel cut off from her.
+She's not likely, if I know her, to listen to anybody else so long as the
+same reasons hold for which she wouldn't give me a chance of persuading
+her. She can't help me loving her, and I'm sure she'll let me help her
+when I've the luck to find a chance. You may be sure I shall keep a sharp
+lookout. If I can be her servant, that will be something; yes, much. Though
+she won't give herself to me--and quite right, too!--why should she?--God
+bless her!--she can't prevent me from giving myself to her. So long as
+I may love her, and see her as often as I don't doubt I may, and things
+continue as they are, I sha'n't be down-hearted. I'll have another pipe,
+I think." Here he half-started, and hurriedly pulled out his watch, "I
+declare, there's time yet!" he cried, and sprung to his feet. "Let's go and
+hear what she's got to say to-night."
+
+"Don't you think you had better not? Won't you put her out?" I suggested.
+
+"If I understand her at all," he said, "she will be more put out by my
+absence; for she will fear I am wretched, caring only for herself, and not
+for what she taught me. You may come or stay--_I_'m off. You've done me so
+much good, Wynnie!" he added, looking back in the doorway. "Thank you a
+thousand times. There's no comforter like a sister!"
+
+"And a pipe," I said; at which he laughed, and was gone.
+
+When Percivale and I reached Lime Court, having followed as quickly as we
+could, there was Roger sitting in the midst, as intent on her words as if
+she had been, an old prophet, and Marion speaking with all the composure
+which naturally belonged to her.
+
+When she shook hands with him after the service, a slight flush washed the
+white of her face with a delicate warmth,--nothing more. I said to myself,
+however, as we went home, and afterwards to my husband, that his case was
+not a desperate one.
+
+"But what's to become of Blackstone?" said Percivale.
+
+I will tell my reader how afterwards he seemed to me to have fared; but I
+have no information concerning his supposed connection with this part of my
+story. I cannot even be sure that he ever was in love with Marion. Troubled
+he certainly was, at this time; and Marion continued so for a while,--more
+troubled, I think, than the necessity she felt upon her with regard
+to Roger will quite account for. If, however, she had to make two men
+miserable in one week, that might well cover the case.
+
+Before the week was over, my husband received a note from Mr. Blackstone,
+informing him that he was just about to start for a few weeks on the
+Continent. When he returned I was satisfied from his appearance that a
+notable change had passed upon him: a certain indescribable serenity
+seemed to have taken possession of his whole being; every look and tone
+indicated a mind that knew more than tongue could utter,--a heart that had
+had glimpses into a region of content. I thought of the words, "He that
+dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High," and my heart was at rest
+about him. He had fared, I thought, as the child who has had a hurt, but
+is taken up in his mother's arms and comforted. What hurt would not such
+comforting outweigh to the child? And who but he that has had the worst
+hurt man can receive, and the best comfort God can give, can tell what
+either is?
+
+I was present the first time he met Marion after his return. She was a
+little embarrassed: he showed a tender dignity, a respect as if from above,
+like what one might fancy the embodiment of the love of a wise angel for
+such a woman. The thought of comparing the two had never before occurred to
+me; but now for the moment I felt as if Mr. Blackstone were a step above
+Marion. Plainly, I had no occasion to be troubled about either of them.
+
+On the supposition that Marion had refused him, I argued with myself that
+it could not have been on the ground that she was unable to look up to him.
+And, notwithstanding what she had said to Roger, I was satisfied that any
+one she felt she could help to be a nobler creature; must have a greatly
+better chance of rousing all the woman in her; than one whom she must
+regard as needing no aid from her. All her life had been spent in serving
+and sheltering human beings whose condition she regarded with hopeful
+compassion: could she now help adding Roger to her number of such? and if
+she once looked upon him thus tenderly, was it not at least very possible,
+that, in some softer mood, a feeling hitherto unknown to her might surprise
+her consciousness with its presence,--floating to the surface of her sea
+from its strange depths, and leaning towards him with the outstretched arms
+of embrace?
+
+But I dared not think what might become of Roger should his divine resolves
+fail,--should the frequent society of Marion prove insufficient for the
+solace and quiet of his heart. I had heard how men will seek to drown
+sorrow in the ruin of the sorrowing power,--will slay themselves that they
+may cause their hurt to cease, and I trembled for my husband's brother. But
+the days went on, and I saw no sign of failure or change. He was steady at
+his work, and came to see us as constantly as before; never missed a chance
+of meeting Marion: and at every treat she gave her friends, whether at the
+house of which I have already spoken, or at Lady Bernard's country-place in
+the neighborhood of London, whether she took them on the river, or had some
+one to lecture or read to them, Roger was always at hand for service and
+help. Still, I was uneasy; for might there not come a collapse, especially
+if some new event were to destroy the hope which he still cherished, and
+which I feared was his main support? Would his religion then prove of
+a quality and power sufficient to keep him from drifting away with the
+receding tide of his hopes and imaginations? In this anxiety perhaps I
+regarded too exclusively the faith of Roger, and thought too little about
+the faith of God. However this may be, I could not rest, but thought and
+thought, until at last I made up my mind to go and tell Lady Bernard all
+about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+THE DEA EX.
+
+
+"And you think Marion likes him?" asked Lady Bernard, when she had in
+silence heard my story.
+
+"I am sure she _likes_ him. But you know he is so far inferior to her,--in
+every way."
+
+"How do you know that? Questions are involved there which no one but God
+can determine. You must remember that both are growing. What matter if any
+two are unequal at a given moment, seeing their relative positions may be
+reversed twenty times in a thousand years? Besides, I doubt very much if
+any one who brought his favors with him would have the least chance with
+Marion. Poverty, to turn into wealth, is the one irresistible attraction
+for her; and, however duty may compel her to act, my impression is that she
+will not escape _loving_ Roger."
+
+I need not say I was gratified to find Lady Bernard's conclusion from
+Marion's character run parallel with my own.
+
+"But what can come of it?" I said.
+
+"Why, marriage, I hope."
+
+"But Marion would as soon think of falling down and worshipping Baal and
+Ashtoreth as of forsaking her grandchildren."
+
+"Doubtless. But there would be no occasion for that. Where two things are
+both of God, it is not likely they will be found mutually obstructive."
+
+"Roger does declare himself quite ready to go and live amongst her friends,
+and do his best to help her."
+
+"That is all as it should be, so far as he--as both of them are concerned;
+but there are contingencies; and the question naturally arises, How would
+that do in regard of their children?"
+
+"If I could imagine Marion consenting." I said, "I know what she would
+answer to that question. She would say, Why should her children be better
+off than the children about them? She would say that the children must
+share the life and work of their parents."
+
+"And I think she would be right, though the obvious rejoinder would be,
+'You may waive your own social privileges, and sacrifice yourselves to the
+good of others; but have you a right to sacrifice your children, and heap
+disadvantages on their future?'"
+
+"Now give us the answer on the other side, seeing you think Marion would be
+right after all."
+
+"Marion's answer would, I think, be, that their children would be God's
+children; and he couldn't desire better for them than to be born in lowly
+conditions, and trained from the first to give themselves to the service of
+their fellows, seeing that in so far their history would resemble that of
+his own Son, our Saviour. In sacrificing their earthly future, as men would
+call it, their parents would but be furthering their eternal good."
+
+"That would be enough in regard of such objections. But there would be a
+previous one on Marion's own part. How would her new position affect her
+ministrations?"
+
+"There can be no doubt, I think," Lady Bernard replied, "that what
+her friends would lose thereby--I mean, what amount of her personal
+ministrations would be turned aside from them by the necessities of her
+new position--would be far more than made up to them by the presence among
+them of a whole well-ordered and growing family, instead of a single woman
+only. But all this jet leaves something for her more personal friends to
+consider,--as regards their duty in the matter. It naturally sets them on
+the track of finding out what could be done to secure for the children of
+such parents the possession of early advantages as little lower than those
+their parents had as may be; for the breed of good people ought, as much as
+possible, to be kept up. I will turn the thing over in my mind, and let you
+know what comes of it."
+
+The result of Lady Bernard's cogitations is, in so far, to be seen in the
+rapid rise of a block of houses at no great distance from London, on the
+North-western Railway, planned under the instructions of Marion Clare. The
+design of them is to provide accommodation for all Marion's friends, with
+room to add largely to their number. Lady Bernard has also secured ground
+sufficient for great extension of the present building, should it prove
+desirable. Each family is to have the same amount of accommodation it has
+now, only far better, at the same rent it pays now, with the privilege
+of taking an additional room or rooms at a much lower rate. Marion has
+undertaken to collect the rents, and believes that she will thus in time
+gain an additional hold of the people for their good, although the plan
+may at first expose her to misunderstanding. From thorough calculation she
+is satisfied she can pay Lady Bernard five per cent for her money, lay out
+all that is necessary for keeping the property in thorough repair, and
+accumulate a fund besides to be spent on building more houses, should her
+expectations of these be answered. The removal of so many will also make
+a little room for the accommodation of the multitudes constantly driven
+from their homes by the wickedness of those, who, either for the sake of
+railways or fine streets, pull down crowded houses, and drive into other
+courts and alleys their poor inhabitants, to double the wretchedness
+already there from overcrowding.
+
+In the centre of the building is a house for herself, where she will have
+her own private advantage in the inclusion of large space primarily for the
+entertainment of her friends. I believe Lady Bernard intends to give her
+a hint that a married couple would, in her opinion, be far more useful in
+such a position than a single woman. But although I rejoice in the prospect
+of greater happiness for two dear friends, I must in honesty say that I
+doubt this.
+
+If the scheme should answer, what a strange reversion it will be to
+something like a right reading of the feudal system!
+
+Of course it will be objected, that, should it succeed ever so well, it
+will all go to pieces at Marion's death. To this the answer lies in the
+hope that her influence may extend laterally, as well as downwards; moving
+others to be what she has been; and, in the conviction that such a work as
+hers can never be lost, for the world can never be the same as if she had
+not lived; while in any case there will be more room for her brothers and
+sisters who are now being crowded out of the world by the stronger and
+richer. It would be sufficient answer, however, that the work is worth
+doing for its own sake and its immediate result. Surely it will receive a
+_well-done_ from the Judge of us all; and while his idea of right remains
+above hers, high as the heavens are above the earth, his approbation will
+be all that either Lady Bernard or Marion will seek.
+
+If but a small proportion of those who love the right and have means to
+spare would, like Lady Bernard, use their wealth to make up to the poor for
+the wrongs they receive at the hands of the rich,--let me say, to defend
+the Saviour in their persons from the tyranny of Mammon, how many of the
+poor might they not lead with them into the joy of their Lord!
+
+Should the plan succeed, I say once more, I intend to urge on Marion the
+duty of writing a history of its rise and progress from the first of her
+own attempts. Then there would at least remain a book for all future
+reformers and philanthropists to study, and her influence might renew
+itself in other ages after she was gone.
+
+I have no more to say about myself or my people. We live in hope of the
+glory of God.
+
+Here I was going to write, THE END; but was arrested by the following
+conversation between two of my children,--Ernest, eight, and Freddy, five
+years of age.
+
+_Ernest._--I'd do it for mamma, of course.
+
+_Freddy._--Wouldn't you do it for Harry?
+
+_Ernest._--No: Harry's nobody.
+
+_Freddy._--Yes, he is somebody.
+
+_Ernest._--You're nobody; I'm nobody; we are all nobody, compared to mamma.
+
+_Freddy._ (_stolidly_).--Yes, I am somebody.
+
+_Ernest._--You're nothing; I'm nothing; we are all nothing in mamma's
+presence.
+
+_Freddy._--But, Ernest, _every thing_ is something; so I must be something.
+
+_Ernest._--Yes, Freddy, but you're _no thing_; so you're nothing. You're
+nothing to mamma.
+
+_Freddy._--_But I'm mamma's._
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Vicar's Daughter, by George MacDonald
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VICAR'S DAUGHTER ***
+
+***** This file should be named 9471-8.txt or 9471-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/9/4/7/9471/
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram, William Flis, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
+  www.gutenberg.org/license.
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at 809
+North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887.  Email
+contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
+Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit:  www.gutenberg.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.