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+The Project Gutenberg EBook What Will He Do With It, by Lytton, V5
+#91 in our series by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
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+Title: What Will He Do With It, Book 5.
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 2005  [EBook #7663]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 1, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V5 ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+     Envy will be a science when it learns the use of the microscope.
+
+When leaves fall and flowers fade, great people are found in their
+country-seats.  Look!--that is Montfort Court,--a place of regal
+magnificence, so far as extent of pile and amplitude of domain could
+satisfy the pride of ownership, or inspire the visitor with the respect
+due to wealth and power.  An artist could have made nothing of it.  The
+Sumptuous everywhere; the Picturesque nowhere.  The house was built in
+the reign of George I., when first commenced that horror of the
+beautiful, as something in bad taste, which, agreeably to our natural
+love of progress, progressively advanced through the reigns of succeeding
+Georges.  An enormous fafade, in dull brown brick; two wings and a
+centre, with double flights of steps to the hall-door from the
+carriagesweep.  No trees allowed to grow too near the house; in front, a
+stately flat with stone balustrades.  But wherever the eye turned, there
+was nothing to be seen but park, miles upon miles of park; not a
+cornfield in sight, not a roof-tree, not a spire, only those /lata
+silentia/,--still widths of turf, and, somewhat thinly scattered and
+afar, those groves of giant trees.  The whole prospect so vast and so
+monotonous that it never tempted you to take a walk.  No close-
+neighbouring poetic thicket into which to plunge, uncertain whither you
+would emerge; no devious stream to follow.  The very deer, fat and heavy,
+seemed bored by pastures it would take them a week to traverse.  People
+of moderate wishes and modest fortunes never envied Montfort Court: they
+admired it; they were proud to say they had seen it.  But never did they
+say--
+
+          "Oh, that for me some home like this would smile!"
+
+Not so, very, very great people!--they rather coveted than admired.
+Those oak trees so large, yet so undecayed; that park, eighteen miles at
+least in circumference; that solid palace which, without inconvenience,
+could entertain and stow away a king and his whole court; in short, all
+that evidence of a princely territory and a weighty rent-roll made
+English dukes respectfully envious, and foreign potentates gratifyingly
+jealous.
+
+But turn from the front.  Open the gate in that stone balustrade.  Come
+southward to the garden side of the house.  Lady Montfort's flower-
+garden.  Yes; not so dull!--flowers, even autumnal flowers, enliven any
+sward.  Still, on so large a scale, and so little relief; so little
+mystery about those broad gravel-walks; not a winding alley anywhere.
+Oh, for a vulgar summer-house; for some alcove, all honeysuckle and ivy!
+But the dahlias are splendid!  Very true; only, dahlias, at the best, are
+such uninteresting prosy things.  What poet ever wrote upon a dahlia!
+Surely Lady Montfort might have introduced a little more taste here,
+shown a little more fancy!  Lady Montfort!  I should like to see my
+lord's face if Lady Montfort took any such liberty.  But there is Lady
+Montfort walking slowly along that broad, broad, broad gravel-walk; those
+splendid dahlias, on either side, in their set parterres.  There she
+walks, in full evidence from all those sixty remorseless windows on the
+garden front, each window exactly like the other.  There she walks,
+looking wistfully to the far end ('t is a long way off), where, happily,
+there is a wicket that carries a persevering pedestrian out of sight of
+the sixty windows into shady walks, towards the banks of that immense
+piece of water, two miles from the house.  My lord has not returned from
+his moor in Scotland; my lady is alone.  No company in the house: it is
+like saying, "No acquaintance in a city."  But the retinue is full.
+Though she dined alone she might, had she pleased, have had almost as
+many servants to gaze upon her as there were windows now staring at her
+lonely walk with their glassy spectral eyes.
+
+Just as Lady Montfort gains the wicket she is overtaken by a visitor,
+walking fast from the gravel sweep by the front door, where he has
+dismounted, where he has caught sight of her: any one so dismounting
+might have caught sight of her; could not help it.  Gardens so fine were
+made on purpose for fine persons walking in them to be seen.
+
+"Ah, Lady Montfort," said the visitor, stammering painfully, "I am so
+glad to find you at home."
+
+"At home, George!"  said the lady, extending her hand; "where else is it
+likely that I should be found?  But how pale you are!  What has
+happened?"
+
+She seated herself on a bench, under a cedar-tree, just without the
+wicket; and George Morley, our old friend the Oxonian, seated himself by
+her side familiarly, but with a certain reverence.  Lady Montfort was a
+few years older than himself, his cousin: he had known her from his
+childhood.
+
+"What has happened!"  he repeated; "nothing new.  I have just come from
+visiting the good bishop."
+
+"He does not hesitate to ordain you?"  "No; but I shall never ask him to
+do so."
+
+"My dear cousin, are you not over-scrupulous?  You would be an ornament
+to the Church, sufficient in all else to justify your compulsory omission
+of one duty, which a curate could perform for you."
+
+Morley shook his head sadly.  "One duty omitted!" said he.  "But is it
+not that duty which distinguishes the priest from the layman?  and how
+far extends that duty?  Whereever there needs a voice to speak the word,-
+not in the pulpit only, but at the hearth, by the sick-bed,--there should
+be the Pastor!  No: I cannot, I ought not, I dare not!  Incompetent as
+the labourer, how can I be worthy of the hire?"  It took him long to
+bring out these words: his emotion increased his infirmity.  Lady
+Montfort listened with an exquisite respect visible in her compassion,
+and paused long before she answered.
+
+George Morley was the younger son of a country gentleman, with a good
+estate settled upon the elder son.  George's father had been an intimate
+friend of his kinsman, the Marquess of Montfort (predecessor and
+grandsire of the present lord); and the marquess had, as he thought,
+amply provided for George in undertaking to secure to him, when of
+fitting age, the living of Humberston, the most lucrative preferment in
+his gift.  The living had been held for the last fifteen years by an
+incumbent, now very old, upon the honourable understanding that it was to
+be resigned in favour of George, should George take orders.  The young
+man, from his earliest childhood thus destined to the Church, devoted to
+the prospect of that profession all his studies, all his thoughts.  Not
+till.  he was sixteen did his infirmity of speech make itself seriously
+perceptible: and then elocution masters undertook to cure it; they
+failed.  But George's mind continued in the direction towards which it
+had been so systematically biased.  Entering Oxford, he became absorbed
+in its academical shades.  Amidst his books he almost forgot the
+impediment of his speech.  Shy, taciturn, and solitary, he mixed too
+little with others to have it much brought before his own notice.  He
+carried off prizes; he took high honours.  On leaving the University, a
+profound theologian, an enthusiastic Churchman, filled with the most
+earnest sense of the pastor's solemn calling,--he was thus
+complimentarily accosted by the Archimandrite of his college, "What a
+pity you cannot go into the Church!"
+
+"Cannot; but I am going into the Church."
+
+"You! is it possible?  But, perhaps, you are sure of a living--"
+
+"Yes,--Humberston."
+
+"An immense living, but a very large population.  Certainly it is in the
+bishop's own discretionary power to ordain you, and for all the duties
+you can keep a curate."  But the Don stopped short, and took snuff.
+
+That "but" said as plainly as words could say, "It may be a good thing
+for you; but is it fair for the Church?"
+
+So George Morley at least thought that "but" implied.
+
+His conscience took alarm.  He was a thoroughly noble-hearted man, likely
+to be the more tender of conscience where tempted by worldly interests.
+With that living he was rich, without it very poor.  But to give up a
+calling, to the idea of which he had attached himself with all the force
+of a powerful and zealous nature, was to give up the whole scheme and
+dream of his existence.  He remained irresolute for some time; at last he
+wrote to the present Lord Montfort, intimating his doubts, and relieving
+the Marquess from the engagement which his lordship's predecessor had
+made.  The present Marquess was not a man capable of understanding such
+scruples.  But, luckily perhaps for George and for the Church, the larger
+affairs of the great House of Montfort were not administered by the
+Marquess.  The parliamentary influences, the ecclesiastical preferments,
+together with the practical direction of minor agents to the vast and
+complicated estates attached to the title, were at that time under the
+direction of Mr. Carr Vipont, a powerful member of Parliament, and
+husband to that Lady Selina whose condescension had so disturbed the
+nerves of Frank Vance the artist.  Mr. Carr Vipont governed this vice-
+royalty according to the rules and traditions by which the House of
+Montfort had become great and prosperous.  For not only every state, but
+every great seignorial House has its hereditary maxims of policy,--not
+less the House of Montfort than the House of Hapsburg.  Now the House of
+Montfort made it a rule that all admitted to be members of the family
+should help each other; that the head of the House should never, if it
+could be avoided, suffer any of its branches to decay and wither into
+poverty.  The House of Montfort also held it a duty to foster and make
+the most of every species of talent that could swell the influence or
+adorn the annals of the family.  Having rank, having wealth, it sought
+also to secure intellect, and to knit together into solid union,
+throughout all ramifications of kinship and cousinhood, each variety of
+repute and power that could root the ancient tree more firmly in the
+land.  Agreeably to this traditional policy, Mr. Carr Vipont not only
+desired that a Vipont Morley should not lose a very good thing, but that
+a very good thing should not lose a Vipont Morley of high academical
+distinction,-a Vipont Morley who might be a bishop.  He therefore drew up
+an admirable letter, which the Marquess signed,--that the Marquess should
+take the trouble of copying it was out of the question,--wherein Lord
+Montfort was made to express great admiration of the disinterested
+delicacy of sentiment, which proved George Vipont Morley to be still more
+fitted to the cure of souls; and, placing rooms at Montfort Court at his
+service (the Marquess not being himself there at the moment), suggested
+that George should talk the matter over with the present incumbent of
+Humberston (that town was not many miles distant from Montfort Court),
+who, though he had no impediment in his speech, still never himself
+preached nor read prayers, owing to an affection of the trachea, and who
+was, nevertheless, a most efficient clergy man.  George Morley,
+therefore, had gone down to Montfort Court some months ago, just after
+his interview with Mrs. Crane.  He had then accepted an invitation to
+spend a week or two with the Rev. Mr. Allsop, the Rector of Humberston; a
+clergyman of the old school, a fair scholar, a perfect gentleman, a man
+of the highest honour, good-natured, charitable, but who took pastoral
+duties much more easily than good clergymen of the new school--be they
+high or low-are disposed to do.  Mr. Allsop, who was then in his
+eightieth year, a bachelor with a very good fortune of his own, was
+perfectly willing to fulfil the engagement on which he held his living,
+and render it up to George; but he was touched by the earnestness with
+which George assured him that at all events he would not consent to
+displace the venerable incumbent from a tenure he had so long and
+honourably held, and would wait till the living was vacated in the
+ordinary course of nature.  Mr. Allsop conceived a warm affection for the
+young scholar.  He had a grand-niece staying with him on a visit, who
+less openly, but not less warmly, shared that affection; and with her
+George Morley fell shyly and timorously in love.  With that living he
+would be rich enough to marry; without it, no.  Without it he had nothing
+but a fellowship, which matrimony would forfeit, and the scanty portion
+of a country squire's younger son.  The young lady herself was dowerless,
+for Allsop's fortune was so settled that no share of it would come to his
+grand-niece,--another reason for conscience to gulp down that unhappy
+impediment of speech.  Certainly, during this visit, Morley's scruples
+relaxed; but when he returned home they came back with greater force than
+ever,--with greater force, because he felt that now not only a spiritual
+ambition, but a human love was a casuist in favour of self-interest.  He
+had returned on a visit to Humberston Rectory about a week previous to
+the date of this chapter; the niece was not there.  Sternly he had forced
+himself to examine a little more closely into the condition of the flock
+which (if he accepted the charge) he would have to guide, and the duties
+that devolved upon a chief pastor in a populous trading town.  He became
+appalled.  Humberston, like most towns under the political influence of a
+great House, was rent by parties,--one party, who succeeded in returning
+one of the two members for Parliament, all for the House of Montfort; the
+other party, who returned also their member, all against it.  By one half
+the town, whatever came from Montfort Court was sure to be regarded with
+a most malignant and distorted vision.  Meanwhile, though Mr. Allsop was
+popular with the higher classes and with such of the extreme poor as his
+charity relieved, his pastoral influence generally was a dead letter.
+His curate, who preached for him--a good young man, but extremely dull-
+was not one of those preachers who fill a church.  Tradesmen wanted an
+excuse to stay away or choose another place of worship; and they
+contrived to hear some passages in the sermons--over which, while the
+curate mumbled, they habitually slept--that they declared to be
+"Puseyite."  The church became deserted; and about the same time a very
+eloquent Dissenting minister appeared at Humberston, and even professed
+Church folks went to hear him.  George Morley, alas!  perceived that at
+Humberston, if the Church there were to hold her own, a powerful and
+popular preacher was essentially required.  His mind was now made up.  At
+Carr Vipont's suggestion the bishop of the diocese, being then at his
+palace, had sent to see him; and, while granting the force of his
+scruples, had yet said, "Mine is the main responsibility.  But if you ask
+me to ordain you, I will do so without hesitation; for if the Church
+wants preachers, it also wants deep scholars and virtuous pastors."
+Fresh from this interview, George Morley came to announce to Lady
+Montfort that his resolve was unshaken.  She, I have said, paused long
+before she answered.  "George," she began at last, in a voice so
+touchingly sweet that its very sound was balm to a wounded spirit, "I
+must not argue with you: I bow before the grandeur of your motives, and I
+will not say that you are not right.  One thing I do feel, that if you
+thus sacrifice your inclinations and interests from scruples so pure and
+holy, you will never be to be pitied; you will never know regret.  Poor
+or rich, single or wedded, a soul that so seeks to reflect heaven will be
+serene and blessed."  Thus she continued to address him for some time, he
+all the while inexpressibly soothed and comforted; then gradually she
+insinuated hopes even of a worldly and temporal kind,--literature was
+left to him,--the scholar's pen, if not the preacher's voice.  In
+literature he might make a career that would lead on to fortune.  There
+were places also in the public service to which a defect in speech was no
+obstacle.  She knew his secret, modest attachment; she alluded to it just
+enough to encourage constancy and rebuke despair.  As she ceased, his
+admiring and grateful consciousness of his cousin's rare qualities
+changed the tide of his emotions towards her from himself, and he
+exclaimed with an earnestness that almost wholly subdued his stutter,
+
+"What a counsellor you are! what a soother!  If Montfort were but less
+prosperous or more ambitious, what a treasure, either to console or to
+sustain, in a mind like yours!"
+
+As those words were said, you might have seen at once why Lady Montfort
+was called haughty and reserved.  Her lip seemed suddenly to snatch back
+its sweet smile; her dark eye, before so purely, softly friend-like,
+became coldly distant; the tones of her voice were not the same as she
+answered,--
+
+"Lord Montfort values me, as it is, far beyond my merits: far," she added
+with a different intonation, gravely mournful.
+
+"Forgive me; I have displeased you.  I did not mean it.  Heaven forbid
+that I should presume either to disparage Lord Montfort--or--or to--" he
+stopped short, saving the hiatus by a convenient stammer.  "Only," he
+continued, after a pause, "only forgive me this once.  Recollect I was a
+little boy when you were a young lady, and I have pelted you with
+snowballs, and called you 'Caroline'."  Lady Montfort suppressed a sigh,
+and gave the young scholar back her gracious smile, but not a smile that
+would have permitted him to call her "Caroline" again.  She remained,
+indeed, a little more distant than usual during the rest of their
+interview, which was not much prolonged; for Morley felt annoyed with
+himself that he had so indiscreetly offended her, and seized an excuse to
+escape.  "By the by," said he, "I have a letter from Mr. Carr Vipont,
+asking me to give him a sketch for a Gothic bridge to the water yonder.
+I will, with your leave, walk down and look at the proposed site.  Only
+do say that you forgive me."
+
+"Forgive you, cousin George, oh, yes!  One word only: it is true you were
+a child still when I fancied I was a woman, and you have a right to talk
+to me upon all things, except those that relate to me and Lord Montfort;
+unless, indeed," she added with a bewitching half laugh, "unless you ever
+see cause to scold me, there.  Good-by, my cousin, and in turn forgive
+me, if I was so petulant.  The Caroline you pelted with snowballs was
+always a wayward, impulsive creature, quick to take offence, to
+misunderstand, and--to repent."
+
+Back into the broad, broad gravel-walk, walked, more slowly than before,
+Lady Montfort.  Again the sixty ghastly windows stared at her with all
+their eyes; back from the gravelwalk, through a side-door into the
+pompous solitude of the stately house; across long chambers, where the
+mirrors reflected her form, and the huge chairs, in their flaunting
+damask and flaring gold, stood stiff on desolate floors; into her own
+private room,--neither large nor splendid that; plain chintzes, quiet
+book shelves.  She need not have been the Marchioness of Montfort to
+inhabit a room as pleasant and as luxurious.  And the rooms that she
+could only have owned as marchioness, what were those worth to her
+happiness?  I know not.  "Nothing," fine ladies will perhaps answer.
+Yet those same fine ladies will contrive to dispose their daughters to
+answer, "All."  In her own room Lady Montfort sank on her chair; wearily,
+wearily she looked at the clock; wearily at the books on the shelves, at
+the harp near the window.  Then she leaned her face on her hand, and that
+face was so sad, and so humbly sad, that you would have wondered how any
+one could call Lady Montfort proud.
+
+"Treasure!  I!  I! worthless, fickle, credulous fool!  I!  I!"
+
+The groom of the chambers entered with the letters by the afternoon post.
+That great house contrived to worry itself with two posts a day.  A royal
+command to Windsor--
+
+"I shall be more alone in a court than here," murmured Lady Montfort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+     Truly saith the proverb, "Much corn lies under the straw that is not
+     seen."
+
+Meanwhile George Morley followed the long shady walk,--very handsome
+walk, full of prize roses and rare exotics, artificially winding too,
+--walk so well kept that it took thirty-four men to keep it,--noble walk,
+tiresome walk, till it brought him to the great piece of water, which,
+perhaps, four times in the year was visited by the great folks in the
+Great House.  And being thus out of the immediate patronage of fashion,
+the great piece of water really looked natural, companionable,
+refreshing: you began to breathe; to unbutton your waistcoat, loosen your
+neckeloth, quote Chaucer, if you could recollect him, or Cowper, or
+Shakspeare, or Thomson's "Seasons;" in short, any scraps of verse that
+came into your head,--as your feet grew joyously entangled with fern; as
+the trees grouped forest-like before and round you; trees which there,
+being out of sight, were allowed to grow too old to be worth five
+shillings a piece, moss-grown, hollow-trunked, some pollarded,--trees
+invaluable!  Ha, the hare!  How she scuds!  See, the deer marching down
+to the water side.  What groves of bulrushes! islands of water-lily!  And
+to throw a Gothic bridge there, bring a great gravel road over the
+bridge!  Oh, shame, shame!
+
+So would have said the scholar, for he had a true sentiment for Nature,
+if the bridge had not clean gone out of his head.  Wandering alone, he
+came at last to the most umbrageous and sequestered bank of the wide
+water, closed round on every side by brushwood, or still, patriarchal
+trees.  Suddenly he arrested his steps; an idea struck him,--one of those
+old, whimsical, grotesque ideas which often when we are alone come across
+us, even in our quietest or most anxious moods.  Was his infirmity really
+incurable?  Elocution masters had said certainly not; but they had done
+him no good.  Yet had not the greatest orator the world ever knew a
+defect in utterance?  He, too, Demosthenes, had, no doubt, paid fees to
+elocution masters, the best in Athens, where elocution masters must have
+studied their art ad unguem, and the defect had baffled them.  But did
+Demosthenes despair?  No, he resolved to cure himself,--how?  Was it not
+one of his methods to fill his mouth with pebbles, and practise, manfully
+to the roaring sea?  George Morley had never tried the effect of pebbles.
+Was there any virtue in them?  Why not try?  No sea there, it is true;
+but a sea was only useful as representing the noise of a stormy
+democratic audience.  To represent a peaceful congregation that still
+sheet of water would do as well.  Pebbles there were in plenty just by
+that gravelly cove, near which a young pike lay sunning his green back.
+Half in jest, half in earnest, the scholar picked up a handful of
+pebbles, wiped them from sand and mould, inserted them between his teeth
+cautiously, and, looking round to assure himself that none were by, began
+an extempore discourse.  So interested did he become in that classical
+experiment, that he might have tortured the air and astonished the
+magpies (three of whom from a neighbouring thicket listened perfectly
+spell-bound) for more than half an hour, when seized with shame at the
+ludicrous impotence of his exertions, with despair that so wretched a
+barrier should stand between his mind and its expression, he flung away
+the pebbles, and sinking on the ground, he fairly wept, wept like a
+baffled child.
+
+The fact was, that Morley had really the temperament of an orator;
+he had the orator's gifts in warmth of passion, rush of thought, logical
+arrangement; there was in him the genius of a great preacher.  He felt
+it,--he knew it; and in that despair which only genius knows when some
+pitiful cause obstructs its energies and strikes down its powers, making
+a confidant of Solitude he wept loud and freely.
+
+"Do not despond, sir, I undertake to cure you," said a voice behind.
+
+George started up in confusion; a man, elderly, but fresh and vigorous,
+stood beside him, in a light fustian jacket, a blue apron, and with
+rushes in his hands, which he continued to plait together nimbly and
+deftly as he bowed to the startled scholar.
+
+"I was in the shade of the thicket yonder, sir; pardon me, I could not
+help hearing you."
+
+The Oxonian rubbed his eyes, and stared at the man with a vague
+impression that he had seen him before;--when? where?
+
+"You can cure me," he stuttered out; "what of?--the folly of trying to
+speak in public?  Thank you, I am cured."
+
+"Nay, sir, you see before you a man who can make you a very good speaker.
+Your voice is naturally fine.  I repeat, I can cure a defect which is not
+in the organ, but in the management!"
+
+"You can! you--who and what are you?"
+
+"A basketmaker, sir; I hope for your custom."  "Surely this is not the
+first time I have seen you?"
+
+"True, you once kindly suffered me to borrow a resting-place on your
+father's land.  One good turn deserves another."
+
+At that moment Sir Isaac peered through the brambles, and restored to his
+original whiteness, and relieved from his false, horned ears, marched
+gravely towards the water, sniffed at the scholar, slightly wagged his
+tail, and buried himself amongst the reeds in search of a water-rat he
+had therein disturbed a week before, and always expected to find again.
+
+The sight of the dog immediately cleared up the cloud in the scholar's
+memory; but with recognition came back a keen curiosity and a sharp pang
+of remorse.
+
+"And your little girl?"  he asked, looking down abashed.
+
+"Better than she was when we last met.  Providence is so kind to us."
+
+Poor Waife!  He never guessed that to the person he thus revealed himself
+he owed the grief for Sophy's abduction.  He divined no reason for the
+scholar's flushing cheek and embarrassed manner.
+
+"Yes, sir, we have just settled in this neighbourhood.  I have a pretty
+cottage yonder at the outskirts of the village, and near the park pales.
+I recognized you at once; and as I heard you just now, I called to mind
+that when we met before, you said your calling should be the Church, were
+it not for your difficulty in utterance; and I said to myself, 'No bad
+thing those pebbles, if his utterance were thick, which is it not;' and I
+have not a doubt, sir, that the true fault of Demosthenes, whom I presume
+you are imitating, was that he spoke through his nose."
+
+"Eh!" said the scholar, "through his nose?  I never knew that?--and I--"
+
+"And you are trying to speak without lungs; that is without air in them.
+You don't smoke, I presume?"
+
+"No; certainly not."
+
+"You must learn; speak between each slow puff of your pipe.  All you want
+is time,--time to quiet the nerves, time to think, time to breathe.  The
+moment you begin to stammer, stop, fill the lungs thus, then try again!
+It is only a clever man who can learn to write,--that is, to compose; but
+any fool can be taught to speak.  Courage!"
+
+"If you really can teach me," cried the learned man, forgetting all self-
+reproach for his betrayal of Waife to Mrs. Crane in the absorbing
+interest of the hope that sprang up within him, "if you can teach me; if
+I can but con-con-con--conq--"
+
+"Slowly, slowly, breath and time; take a whiff from my pipe; that's
+right.  Yes, you can conquer the impediment."
+
+"Then I will be the best friend to you that man ever had.  There's my
+hand on it."
+
+"I take it, but I ask leave to change the parties in the contract.  I
+don't want a friend: I don't deserve one.  You'll be a friend to my
+little girl instead; and if ever I ask you to help me in aught for her
+welfare and happiness--"
+
+"I will help, heart and soul!  slight indeed any service to her or to you
+compared with such service to me.  Free this wretched tongue from its
+stammer, and thought and zeal will not stammer whenever you say, 'Keep
+your promise.'  I am so glad your little girl is still with you."
+
+Waife looked surprised, "Is still with me!--why not?"  The scholar bit
+his tongue.  That was not the moment to confess; it might destroy all
+Waife's confidence in.  him.  He would do so later.  "When shall I begin
+my lesson?"
+
+"Now, if you like.  But have you a book in your pocket?"
+
+"I always have."
+
+"Not Greek, I hope, sir?"
+
+"No, a volume of Barrow's Sermons.  Lord Chatham recommended those
+sermons to his great son as a study for eloquence."
+
+"Good!  Will you lend me the volume, sir?  and now for it.  Listen to me;
+one sentence at a time; draw your breath when I do."
+
+The three magpies pricked up their ears again, and, as they listened,
+marvelled much.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+     Could we know by what strange circumstances a man's genius became
+     prepared for practical success, we should discover that the most
+     serviceable items in his education were never entered in the bills
+     which his father paid for it.
+
+At the end of the very first lesson George Morley saw that all the
+elocution masters to whose skill he had been consigned were blunderers in
+comparison with the basketmaker.
+
+Waife did not puzzle him with scientific theories.  All that the great
+comedian required of him was to observe and to imitate.  Observation,
+imitation, lo! the groundwork of all art! the primal elements of all
+genius!  Not there, indeed to halt, but there ever to commence.  What
+remains to carry on the intellect to mastery?  Two steps,--to reflect,
+to reproduce.  Observation, imitation, reflection, reproduction.  In
+these stands a mind complete and consummate, fit to cope with all labour,
+achieve all success.
+
+At the end of the first lesson George Morley felt that his cure was
+possible.  Making an appointment for the next day at the same place, he
+came thither stealthily and so on day by day.  At the end of a week he
+felt that the cure was nearly certain; at the end of a month the cure was
+self-evident.  He should live to preach the Word.  True, that he
+practised incessantly in private.  Not a moment in his waking hours that
+the one thought, one object, was absent from his mind!  True, that with
+all his patience, all his toil, the obstacle was yet serious, might never
+be entirely overcome.  Nervous hurry, rapidity of action, vehemence of
+feeling, brought back, might at unguarded moments always bring back, the
+gasping breath, the emptied lungs, the struggling utterance.  But the
+relapse, rarer and rarer now with each trial, would be at last scarce a
+drawback.  "Nay," quoth Waife, "instead of a drawback, become but an
+orator, and you will convert a defect into a beauty."
+
+Thus justly sanguine of the accomplishment of his life's chosen object,
+the scholar's gratitude to Waife was unspeakable.  And seeing the man
+daily at last in his own cottage,--Sophy's health restored to her cheeks,
+smiles to her lip, and cheered at her light fancy-work beside her
+grandsire's elbow-chair, with fairy legends instilling perhaps golden
+truths,--seeing Waife thus, the scholar mingled with gratitude a strange
+tenderness of respect.  He knew nought of the vagrant's past, his reason
+might admit that in a position of life so at variance with the gifts
+natural and acquired of the singular basketmaker, there was something
+mysterious and suspicious.  But he blushed to think that he had ever
+ascribed to a flawed or wandering intellect the eccentricities of
+glorious Humour,--abetted an attempt to separate an old age so innocent
+and genial from a childhood so fostered and so fostering.  And sure I am
+that if the whole world had risen up to point the finger of scorn at the
+one-eyed cripple, George Morley--the well-born gentleman, the refined
+scholar, the spotless Churchman--would have given him his arm to lean
+upon, and walked by his side unashamed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very
+     small experience, provided he has a very large heart.
+
+Numa Pimpilius did not more conceal from notice the lessons he received
+from Egeria than did George Morley those which he received from the
+basketmaker.  Natural, indeed, must be his wish for secrecy; pretty story
+it would be for Humberston, its future rector learning how to preach a
+sermon from an old basketmaker!  But he had a nobler and more imperious
+motive for discretion: his honour was engaged to it.  Waife exacted a
+promise that he would regard the intercourse between them as strictly
+private and confidential.
+
+"It is for my sake I ask this," said Waife, frankly, "though I might say
+it was for yours;" the Oxonian promised, and was bound.  Fortunately Lady
+Montfort quitted the great house the very day after George had first
+encountered the basketmaker, and writing word that she should not return
+to it for some weeks, George was at liberty to avail himself of her
+lord's general invitation to make use of Montfort Court as his lodgings
+when in the neighbourhood; which the proprieties of the world would not
+have allowed him to do while Lady Montfort was there without either host
+or female guests.  Accordingly, he took up his abode in a corner of the
+vast palace, and was easily enabled, when he pleased, to traverse
+unobserved the solitudes of the park, gain the waterside, or stroll
+thence through the thick copse leading to Waife's cottage, which bordered
+the park pales, solitary, sequestered, beyond sight of the neighbouring
+village.  The great house all to himself, George was brought in contact
+with no one to whom, in unguarded moments, he could even have let out a
+hint of his new acquaintance, except the clergyman of the parish, a
+worthy man, who lived in strict retirement upon a scanty stipend.  For
+the Marquess was the lay impropriator; the living was therefore but a
+very poor vicarage, below the acceptance of a Vipont or a Vipont's
+tutor, sure to go to a worthy man forced to live in strict retirement.
+George saw too little of this clergyman, either to let out secrets or
+pick up information.  From him, however, George did incidentally learn
+that Waife had some months previously visited the village, and proposed
+to the bailiff to take the cottage and osier land, which he now rented;
+that he represented himself as having known an old basketmaker who had
+dwelt there many years ago, and as having learned the basket craft of
+that long deceased operative.  As he offered a higher rent than the
+bailiff could elsewhere obtain, and as the bailiff was desirous to get
+credit with Mr. Carr Vipont for improving the property, by reviving
+thereon an art which had fallen into desuetude, the bargain was struck,
+provided the candidate, being a stranger to the place, could furnish the
+bailiff with any satisfactory reference.  Waife had gone away, saying he
+should shortly return with the requisite testimonial.  In fact, poor man,
+as we know, he was then counting on a good word from Mr. Hartopp.  He had
+not, however, returned for some months.  The cottage, having been
+meanwhile wanted for the temporary occupation of an under-gamekeeper,
+while his own was under repair, fortunately remained unlet.  Waife, on
+returning, accompanied by his little girl, had referred the bailiff to a
+respectable house-agent and collector of street rents in Bloomsbury, who
+wrote word that a lady, then abroad, had authorized him, as the agent
+employed in the management of a house property from which much of her
+income was derived, not only to state that Waife was a very intelligent
+man, likely to do well whatever he undertook, but also to guarantee, if
+required, the punctual payment of the rent for any holding of which he
+became the occupier.  On this the agreement was concluded, the
+basketmaker installed.  In the immediate neighbourhood there was no
+custom for basket-work, but Waife's performances were so neat, and some
+so elegant and fanciful, that he had no difficulty in contracting with a
+large tradesman (not at Humberston, but a more distant and yet more
+thriving town about twenty miles off) for as much of such work as he
+could supply.  Each week the carrier took his goods and brought back the
+payments; the profits amply sufficed for Waife's and Sophy's daily bread,
+with even more than the surplus set aside for the rent.  For the rest,
+the basketmaker's cottage being at the farthest outskirts of the
+straggling village inhabited by a labouring peasantry, his way of life
+was not much known nor much inquired into.  He seemed a harmless, hard-
+working man; never seen at the beer-house; always seen with his neatly-
+dressed little grandchild in his quiet corner at church on Sundays; a
+civil, well-behaved man too; who touched his hat to the bailiff and took
+it off to the vicar.
+
+An idea prevailed that the basketmaker had spent much of his life in
+foreign countries, favoured partly by a sobriety of habits which is not
+altogether national, partly by something in his appearance, which,
+without being above his lowly calling, did not seem quite in keeping with
+it,--outlandish in short,--but principally by the fact that he had
+received since his arrival two letters with a foreign postmark.  The idea
+befriended the old man,--allowing it to be inferred that he had probably
+outlived the friends he had formerly left behind him in England, and, on
+his return, been sufficiently fatigued with his rambles to drop contented
+in any corner of his native soil wherein he could find a quiet home, and
+earn by light toil a decent livelihood.
+
+George, though naturally curious to know what had been the result of his
+communication to Mrs. Crane,--whether it had led to Waife's discovery or
+caused him annoyance,--had hitherto, however, shrunk from touching upon a
+topic which subjected himself to an awkward confession of officious
+intermeddling, and to which any indirect allusion might appear an
+indelicate attempt to pry into painful family affairs.  But one day he
+received a letter from his father which disturbed him greatly, and
+induced him to break ground and speak to his preceptor frankly.  In this
+letter, the elder Mr. Morley mentioned incidentally, amongst other scraps
+of local news, that he had seen Mr. Hartopp, who was rather out of sorts,
+his good heart not having recovered the shock of having been abominably
+"taken in" by an impostor for whom he had conceived a great fancy, and to
+whose discovery George himself had providentially led (the father
+referred here to what George had told him of his first meeting with
+Waife, and his visit to Mrs. Crane); the impostor, it seemed, from what
+Mr. Hartopp let fall, not being a little queer in the head, as George had
+been led to surmise, but a very bad character.  "In fact," added the
+elder Morley, "a character so bad that Mr. Hartopp was too glad to give
+up to her lawful protectors the child, whom the man appears to have
+abducted; and I suspect, from what Hartopp said, though he does not like
+to own that he was taken in to so gross a degree, that he had been
+actually introducing to his fellow-townsfolk and conferring familiarly
+with a regular jail-bird,--perhaps a bur glar.  How lucky for that poor,
+soft-headed, excellent Jos Hartopp, whom it is positively as inhuman to
+take in as it would be to defraud a born natural, that the lady you saw
+arrived in time to expose the snares laid for his benevolent credulity.
+But for that, Jos might have taken the fellow into his own house (just
+like him!), and been robbed by this time, perhaps murdered,--Heaven
+knows!"
+
+Incredulous and indignant, and longing to be empowered to vindicate his
+friend's fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the
+path towards the basketmaker's cottage.  As he gained the water-side,
+he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled
+fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling a
+soft mellow tune,--the tune of an old English border-song.  The deer
+lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes
+towards the opposite bank, whence the note came, listening and wistful.
+As George's step crushed the wild thyme, which the thorn-tree shadowed,
+"Hush!" said Waife, "and mark how the rudest musical sound can affect the
+brute creation."  He resumed the whistle,--a clearer, louder, wilder
+tune,--that of a lively hunting-song.  The deer turned quickly round,--
+uneasy,  restless,  tossed its  antlers,  and bounded through the fern.
+Waife again changed the key of his primitive music,--a melancholy belliny
+note, like the belling itself of a melancholy hart, but more modulated
+into sweetness.  The deer arrested its flight, and, lured by the mimic
+sound, returned towards the water-side, slowly and statelily.
+
+"I don't think the story of Orpheus charming the brutes was a fable; do
+you, sir?"  said Waife.  "The rabbits about here know me already; and, if
+I had but a fiddle, I would undertake to make friends with that reserved
+and unsocial water-rat, on whom Sir Isaac in vain endeavours at present
+to force his acquaintance.  Man commits a great mistake in not
+cultivating more intimate and amicable relations with the other branches
+of earth's great family.  Few of them not more amusing than we are;
+naturally, for they have not our cares.  And such variety of character
+too, where you would least expect it!"
+
+GEORGE MORLEY.--"Very true.  Cowper noticed marked differences of
+character in his favourite hares."
+
+WAIFE.--"Hares!  I am sure that there are not two house-flies on a
+window-pane, two minnows in that water, that would not present to us
+interesting points of contrast as to temper and disposition.  If house-
+flies and minnows could but coin money, or set up a manufacture,--
+contrive something, in short, to buy or sell attractive to Anglo-Saxon
+enterprise and intelligence,--of course we should soon have diplomatic
+relations with them; and our despatches and newspapers would instruct us
+to a T in the characters and propensities of their leading personages.
+But, where man has no pecuniary nor ambitious interests at stake in his
+commerce with any class of his fellow-creatures, his information about
+them is extremely confused and superficial.  The best naturalists are
+mere generalizers, and think they have done a vast deal when they
+classify a species.  What should we know about mankind if we had only
+a naturalist's definition of man?  We only know mankind by knocking
+classification on the head, and studying each man as a class in himself.
+Compare Buffon and Shakspeare!  Alas, sir!  can we never have a
+Shakspeare for house-flies and minnows?"
+
+GEORGE MORLEY.--"With all respect for minnows and house-flies, if we
+found another Shakspeare, he might be better employed, like his
+predecessor, in selecting individualities from the classifications of
+man."
+
+WAIFE.--"Being yourself a man, you think so: a housefly might be of a
+different opinion.  But permit me, at least, to doubt whether such an
+investigator would be better employed in reference to his own happiness,
+though I grant that he would be so in reference to your intellectual
+amusement and social interests.  Poor Shakspeare!  How much he must have
+suffered!"
+
+GEORGE MORLEY.--"You mean that he must have been racked by the passions
+he describes,--bruised by collision with the hearts he dissects.  That is
+not necessary to genius.  The judge on his bench, summing up evidence and
+charging the jury, has no need to have shared the temptations or been
+privy to the acts of the prisoner at the bar.  Yet how consummate may be
+his analysis!"
+
+"No," cried Waife, roughly.  "No!  Your illustration destroys your
+argument.  The judge knows nothing of the prisoner.  There are the
+circumstances; there is the law.  By these he generalizes, by these he
+judges,--right or wrong.  But of the individual at the bar, of the world-
+the tremendous world--within that individual heart, I repeat, he knows
+nothing.  Did he know, law and circumstances might vanish, human justice
+would be paralyzed.  Ho, there! place that swart-visaged, ill-looking
+foreigner in the dock, and let counsel open the case; hear the witnesses
+depose!  Oh, horrible wretch! a murderer! unmanly murderer!--a
+defenceless woman smothered by caitiff hands!  Hang him up! hang him up!
+'Softly,' whispers the POET, and lifts the veil from the assassin's
+heart.  'Lo! it is Othello the Moor!'  What jury now dare find that
+criminal guilty?  what judge now put on the black cap? who now says,
+'Hang him up! hang him up!"
+
+With such lifelike force did the Comedian vent this passionate outburst
+that he thrilled his listener with an awe akin to that which the
+convicted Moor gathers round himself at the close of the sublime drama.
+Even Sir Isaac was startled; and leaving his hopeless pursuit of the
+water-rat, uttered a low bark, came to his master, and looked into his
+face with solemn curiosity.
+
+WAIFE (relapsing into colloquial accents).--"Why do we sympathize with
+those above us more than with those below? why with the sorrows of a king
+rather than those of a beggar? why does Sir Isaac sympathize with me more
+than (let that water-rat vex him ever so much) I can possibly sympathize
+with him?  Whatever be the cause, see at least, Mr. Morley, one reason
+why a poor creature like myself finds it better employment to cultivate
+the intimacy of brutes than to prosecute the study of men.  Among men,
+all are too high to sympathize with me; but I have known two friends who
+never injured nor betrayed.  Sir Isaac is one; Wamba was another.  Wamba,
+sir, the native of a remote district of the globe (two friends civilized
+Europe is not large enough to afford any one man), Wamba, sir, was less
+gifted by nature, less refined by education, than Sir Isaac; but he was a
+safe and trustworthy companion: Wamba, sir, was--an opossum."
+
+GEORGE MORLEY.--"Alas, my dear Mr. Waife, I fear that men must have
+behaved very ill to you."
+
+WAIFE.--"I have no right to complain.  I have behaved very ill to myself.
+When a man is his own enemy, he is very unreasonable if he expect other
+men to be his benefactors."
+
+GEORGE MORLEY (with emotion).--"Listen, I have a confession to make to
+you.  I fear I have done you an injury, where, officiously, I meant to do
+a kindness."  The scholar hurried on to narrate the particulars of his
+visit to Mrs. Crane.  On concluding the recital, he added, "When again I
+met you here, and learned that your Sophy was with you, I felt
+inexpressibly relieved.  It was clear then, I thought, that your
+grandchild had been left to your care unmolested, either that you had
+proved not to be the person of whom the parties were in search, or family
+affairs had been so explained and reconciled that my interference had
+occasioned you no harm.  But to-day I have a letter from my father which
+disquiets me much.  It seems that the persons in question did visit
+Gatesboro', and have maligned you to Mr. Hartopp.  Understand me, I ask
+for no confidence which you may be unwilling to give; but if you will arm
+me with the power to vindicate your character from aspersions which I
+need not your assurance to hold unjust and false, I will not rest till
+that task be triumphantly accomplished."
+
+WAIFE (in a tone calm but dejected).--"I thank you with all my heart.
+But there is nothing to be done.  I am glad that the subject did not
+start up between us until such little service as I could render you, Mr.
+Morley, was pretty well over.  It would have been a pity if you had been
+compelled to drop all communication with a man of attainted character,
+before you had learned how to manage the powers that will enable you
+hereafter to exhort sinners worse than I have been.  Hush, sir!  you feel
+that, at least now, I am an inoffensive old man, labouring for a humble
+livelihood.  You will not repeat here what you may have heard, or yet
+hear, to the discredit of my former life.  You will not send me and my
+grandchild forth from our obscure refuge to confront a world with which
+we have no strength to cope.  And, believing this, it only remains for me
+to say, Fare-you-well, sir."
+
+"I should deserve to lose spe-spe-speech altogether," cried the Oxonian,
+gasping and stammering fearfully as he caught Waife firmly by the arm,
+"if I suffered--suff-suff-suff--"
+
+"One, two! take time, sir!"  said the Comedian, softly.  And with a sweet
+patience he reseated himself on the bank.  The Oxonian threw himself at
+length by the outcast's side; and, with the noble tenderness of a nature
+as chivalrously Christian as Heaven ever gave to priest, he rested his
+folded hands upon Waife's shoulder, and looking him full and close in the
+face, said thus, slowly, deliberately, not a stammer, "You do not guess
+what you have done for me; you have secured to me a home and a career;
+the wife of whom I must otherwise have despaired; the Divine Vocation on
+which all my earthly hopes were set, and which I was on the eve of
+renouncing: do not think these are obligations which can be lightly
+shaken off.  If there are circumstances which forbid me to disabuse
+others of impressions which wrong you, imagine not that their false
+notions will affect my own gratitude,--my own respect for you!"
+
+"Nay, sir! they ought; they must.  Perhaps not your exaggerated gratitude
+for a service which you should not, howover, measure by its effects on
+yourself, but by the slightness of the trouble it gave to me; not perhaps
+your gratitude, but your respect, yes."
+
+"I tell you no!  Do you fancy that I cannot judge of a man's nature
+without calling on him to trust me with all the secrets--all the errors,
+if you will--of his past life?  Will not the calling to which I may now
+hold myself destined give me power and commandment to absolve all those
+who truly repent and unfeignedly believe?  Oh, Mr. Waife!  if in earlier
+days you have sinned, do you not repent? and how often, in many a lovely
+gentle sentence dropped unawares from your lips, have I had cause to know
+that you unfeignedly believe!  Were I now clothed with sacred authority,
+could I not absolve you as a priest?  Think you that, in the meanwhile,
+I dare judge you as a man?  I,--Life's new recruit, guarded hitherto from
+temptation by careful parents and favouring fortune,--I presume to judge,
+and judge harshly, the gray-haired veteran, wearied by the march, wounded
+in the battle!"
+
+"You are a noble-hearted human being," said Waife, greatly affected.
+"And, mark my words, a mantle of charity so large you will live to wear
+as a robe of honour.  But hear me, sir!  Mr. Hartopp also is a man
+infinitely charitable, benevolent, kindly, and, through all his
+simplicity, acutely shrewd; Mr. Hartopp, on hearing what was said against
+me, deemed me unfit to retain my grandchild, resigned the trust I had
+confided to him, and would have given me alms, no doubt, had I asked
+them, but not his hand.  Take your hands, sir, from my shoulder, lest the
+touch sully you."
+
+George did take his hands from the vagrant's shoulder, but it was to
+grasp the hand that waived them off and struggled to escape the pressure.
+"You are innocent! you are innocent! forgive me that I spoke to you of
+repentance as if you had been guilty.  I feel you are innocent,--feel it
+by my own heart.  You turn away.  I defy you to say that you are guilty
+of what has been laid to your charge, of what has darkened your good
+name, of what Mr. Hartopp believed to your prejudice.  Look me in the
+face and say, 'I am not innocent; I have not been belied."'
+
+Waife remained voiceless, motionless.
+
+The young man, in whose nature lay yet unproved all those grand qualities
+of heart, without which never was there a grand orator, a grand
+preacher,--qualities which grasp the results of argument, and arrive at
+the end of elaborate reasoning by sudden impulse,--here released Waife's
+hand, rose to his feet, and, facing Waife, as the old man sat with face
+averted, eyes downcast, breast heaving, said loftily,
+
+"Forget that I may soon be the Christian minister whose duty bows his ear
+to the lips of Shame and Guilt; whose hand, when it points to Heaven, no
+mortal touch can sully; whose sublimest post is by the sinner's side.
+Look on me but as man and gentleman.  See, I now extend this hand to you.
+If, as man and gentleman, you have done that which, could all hearts be
+read, all secrets known, human judgment reversed by Divine omniscience,
+forbids you to take this hand,--then reject it, go hence: we part!  But
+if no such act be on your conscience, however you submit to its
+imputation,--THEN, in the name of Truth, as man and gentleman to man and
+gentleman, I command you to take this right hand, and, in the name of
+that Honour which bears no paltering, I forbid you to disobey."
+
+The vagabond rose, like the Dead at the spell of a Magician,--took, as if
+irresistibly, the hand held out to him.  And the scholar, overjoyed, fell
+on his breast, embracing him as a son.
+
+"You know," said George, in trembling accents, "that the hand you have
+taken will never betray, never desert; but is it--is it really powerless
+to raise and to restore you to your place?"
+
+"Powerless amongst your kind for that indeed," answered Waife, in accents
+still more tremulous.  "All the kings of the earth are not strong enough
+to raise a name that has once been trampled into the mire.  Learn that it
+is not only impossible for me to clear myself, but that it is equally
+impossible for me to confide to mortal being a single plea in defence if
+I am innocent, in extenuation if I am guilty.  And saying this, and
+entreating you to hold it more merciful to condemn than to question me,
+--for question is torture,--I cannot reject your pity; but it would be
+mockery to offer me respect!"
+
+"What! not respect the fortitude which calumny cannot crush?  Would that
+fortitude be possible if you were not calm in the knowledge that no false
+witnesses can mislead the Eternal Judge?  Respect you! yes,--because I
+have seen you happy in despite of men, and therefore I know that the
+cloud around you is not the frown of Heaven."
+
+"Oh," cried Waife, the tears rolling down his cheeks, "and not an hour
+ago I was jesting at human friendship, venting graceless spleen on my
+fellow-men!  And now--now--ah, sir!  Providence is so kind to me!  And,"
+said he, brushing away his tears, as the old arch smile began to play
+round the corner of his mouth, "and kind to me in the very quarter in
+which unkindness had so sorely smitten me.  True, you directed towards me
+the woman who took from me my grandchild, who destroyed me in the esteem
+of good Mr. Hartopp.  Well, you see, I have my sweet Sophy back again; we
+are in the home of all others I most longed for; and that woman, yes, I
+can, at least, thus far, confide to you my secrets, so that you may not
+blame yourself for sending her to Gatesboro',--that very woman knows of
+my shelter; furnished me with the very reference necessary to obtain it;
+has freed my grandchild from a loathsome bondage, which I could not have
+legally resisted; and should new persecutions chase us will watch and
+warn and help us.  And if you ask me how this change in her was effected;
+how, when we had abandoned all hope of green fields, and deemed that only
+in the crowd of a city we could escape those who pursued us when
+discovered there, though I fancied myself an adept in disguise, and the
+child and the dog were never seen out of the four garret walls in which I
+hid them,--if you ask me, I say, to explain how that very woman was
+suddenly converted from a remorseless foe into a saving guardian, I can
+only answer 'By no wit, no device, no persuasive art of mine.  Providence
+softened her heart, and made it kind, just at a moment when no other
+agency on earth could have rescued us from--from--"
+
+"Say no more: I guess! the paper this woman showed me was a legal form
+authorizing your poor little Sophy to be given up to the care of a
+father.  I guess! of that father you would not speak ill to me; yet from
+that father you would save your grandchild.  Say no more.  And yon quiet
+home, your humble employment, really content you?"
+
+"Oh, if such a life can but last!  Sophy is so well, so cheerful, so
+happy.  Did not you bear her singing the other day?  She never used to
+sing!  But we had not been here a week when song broke out from her,--
+untaught, as from a bird.  But if any ill report of me travel hither from
+Gatesboro' or elsewhere, we should be sent away, and the bird would be
+mute in my thorn-tree: Sophy would sing no more."
+
+"Do not fear that slander shall drive you hence.  Lady Montfort, you
+know, is my cousin, but you know not--few do--how thoroughly generous and
+gentle-hearted she is.  I will speak of you to her,--oh! do not look
+alarmed.  She will take my word when I tell her, 'That is a good man;'
+and if she ask more, it will be enough to say, 'Those who have known
+better days are loth to speak to strangers of the past.'"
+
+"I thank you earnestly, sincerely," said Waife, brightening up.  "One
+favour more: if you saw in the formal document shown to you, or retain on
+your memory, the name of--of the person authorized to claim Sophy as his
+child, you will not mention it to Lady Montfort.  I am hot sure if ever
+she heard that name, but she may have done so, and--and--" he paused a
+moment, and seemed to muse; then went on, not concluding his sentence.
+"You are so good to me, Mr. Morley, that I wish to confide in you as far
+as I can.  Now, you see, I am already an old man, and my chief object is
+to raise up a friend for Sophy when I am gone,--a friend in her own sex,
+sir.  Oh, you cannot guess how I long, how I yearn, to view that child
+under the holy fostering eyes of a woman.  Perhaps if Lady Montfort saw
+my pretty Sophy she might take a fancy to her.  Oh, if she did! if she
+did!  And Sophy," added Waife, proudly, "has a right to respect.  She is
+not like me,--any hovel is good enough for me; but for her!  Do you know
+that I conceived that hope, that the hope helped to lead me back here
+when, months ago, I was at Humberston, intent upon rescuing Sophy; and
+saw--though," observed Waife, with a sly twitch of the muscles round his
+mouth, "I had no right at that precise moment to be seeing anything--Lady
+Montfort's humane fear for a blind old impostor, who was trying to save
+his dog--a black dog, sir, who had dyed his hair--from her carriage
+wheels.  And the hope became stronger still, when, the first Sunday I
+attended yon village church, I again saw that fair--wondrously fair--face
+at the far end,--fair as moonlight and as melancholy.  Strange it is,
+sir, that I--naturally a boisterous, mirthful man, and now a shy,
+skulking fugitive--feel more attracted, more allured towards a
+countenance, in proportion as I read there the trace of sadness.  I feel
+less abased by my own nothingness, more emboldened to approach and say,
+'Not so far apart from me: thou too hast suffered.'  Why is this?"
+
+GEORGE MORLEY.--"'The fool hath said in his heart that there is no God;'
+but the fool hath not said in his heart that there is no sorrow,--pithy
+and most profound sentence; intimating the irrefragable claim that binds
+men to the Father.  And when the chain tightens, the children are closer
+drawn together.  But to your wish: I will remember it.  And when my
+cousin returns, she shall see your Sophy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     Mr. Waife, being by nature unlucky, considers that, in proportion as
+     fortune brings him good luck, nature converts it into bad.  He
+     suffers Mr. George Morley to go away in his debt, and Sophy fears
+     that he will be dull in consequence.
+
+George Morley, a few weeks after the conversation last recorded, took his
+departure from Montfort Court, prepared, without a scruple, to present
+himself for ordination to the friendly bishop.  From Waife he derived
+more than the cure of a disabling infirmity; he received those hints
+which, to a man who has the natural temperament of an orator, so rarely
+united with that of the scholar, expedite the mastery of the art that
+makes the fleeting human voice an abiding, imperishable power.  The
+grateful teacher exhausted all his lore upon the pupil whose genius he
+had freed, whose heart had subdued himself.  Before leaving, George was
+much perplexed how to offer to Waife any other remuneration than that
+which, in Waife's estimate, had already overpaid all the benefits he had
+received; namely, unquestioning friendship and pledged protection.  It
+need scarcely be said that George thought the man to whom he owed fortune
+and happiness was entitled to something beyond that moral recompense.
+But he found, at the first delicate hint, that Waife would not hear of
+money, though the ex-Comedian did not affect any very Quixotic notion on
+that practical subject.  "To tell you the truth, sir, I have rather a
+superstition against having more money in my hands than I know what to do
+with.  It has always brought me bad luck.  And what is very hard,--the
+bad luck stays, but the money goes.  There was that splendid sum I made
+at Gatesboro'.  You should have seen me counting it over.  I could not
+have had a prouder or more swelling heart if I had been, that great man
+Mr. Elwes the miser.  And what bad luck it brought me, and how it all
+frittered itself away!  Nothing to show for it but a silk ladder and an
+old hurdy-gurdy, and I sold them at half price.  Then when I had the
+accident, which cost me this eye, the railway people behaved so
+generously, gave me L120,--think of that!  And before three days the
+money was all gone!"
+
+"How was that?" said George, half-amused, half-pained,--"stolen perhaps?"
+
+"Not so," answered Waife, somewhat gloomily, "but restored.  A poor dear
+old man, who thought very ill of me, and I don't wonder at it,--was
+reduced from great wealth to great poverty.  While I was laid up, my
+landlady read a newspaper to me, and in that newspaper was an account of
+his reverse and destitution.  But I was accountable to him for the
+balance of an old debt, and that, with the doctor's bills, quite covered
+my L120.  I hope he does not think quite so ill of ine now.  But the
+money brought good luck to him, rather than to me.  Well, sir, if you
+were now to give me money, I should be on the look-out for some mournful
+calamity.  Gold is not natural to me.  Some day, however, by and by, when
+you are inducted into your living, and have become a renowned preacher,
+and have plenty to spare, with an idea that you will feel more
+comfortable in your mind if you had done something royal for the
+basketmaker, I will ask you to help me to make up a sum, which I am
+trying by degrees to save,--an enormous sum, almost as much as I paid
+away from my railway compensation: I owe it to the lady who lent it to
+release Sophy from an engagement which I--certainly without any remorse
+of conscience--made the child break."
+
+"Oh, yes!  What is the amount?  Let me at least repay that debt."
+
+"Not yet.  The lady can wait; and she would be pleased to wait, because
+she deserves to wait: it would be unkind to her to pay it off at once.
+But in the meanwhile if you could send me a few good books for Sophy,--
+instructive, yet not very, very dry,-and a French dictionary, I can teach
+her French when the winter days close in.  You see I am not above being
+paid, sir.  But, Mr. Morley, there is a great favour you can do me."
+
+"What is it?  Speak."
+
+"Cautiously refrain from doing me a great disservice!  You are going back
+to your friends and relations.  Never speak of me to them.  Never
+describe me and my odd ways.  Name not the lady, nor--nor--nor--the man
+who claimed Sophy.
+
+"Your friends might not hurt me; others might.  Talk travels.  The hare is
+not long in its form when it has a friend in a hound that gives tongue.
+Promise what I ask.  Promise it as 'man and gentleman.'"
+
+"Certainly.  Yet I have one relation to whom I should like, with your
+permission, to speak of you, with whom I could wish you acquainted.  He
+is so thorough a man of the world, that he might suggest some method to
+clear your good name, which you yourself would approve.  My uncle,
+Colonel Morley--"
+
+"On no account!"  cried Waife, almost fiercely, and he evinced so much
+anger and uneasiness that it was long before George could pacify him by
+the most earnest assurances that his secret should be inviolably kept,
+and his injunctions faithfully obeyed.  No men of the world consulted how
+to force him back to the world of men that he fled from!  No colonels to
+scan him with martinet eyes, and hint how to pipeclay a tarnish!  Waife's
+apprehensions gradually allayed and his confidence restored, one fine
+morning George took leave of his eccentric benefactor.
+
+Waife and Sophy stood gazing after him from their garden-gate, the
+cripple leaning lightly on the child's arm.  She looked with anxious
+fondness into the old man's thoughtful face, and clung to him more
+closely as she looked.
+
+"Will you not be dull, poor Grandy? will you not miss him?"
+
+"A little at first," said Waife, rousing himself.  "Education is a great
+thing.  An educated mind, provided that it does us no mischief,--which is
+not always the case,--cannot be withdrawn from our existence without
+leaving a blank behind.  Sophy, we must seriously set to work and educate
+ourselves!"
+
+"We will, Grandy dear," said Sophy, with decision; and a few minutes
+afterwards, "If I can become very, very clever, you will not pine so much
+after that gentleman,--will you, Grandy?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+     Being a chapter that comes to an untimely end.
+
+Winter was far advanced when Montfort Court was again brightened by the
+presence of its lady.  A polite letter from Mr. Carr Vipont had reached
+her before leaving Windsor, suggesting how much it would be for the
+advantage of the Vipont interest if she would consent to visit for a
+month or two the seat in Ireland, which had been too long neglected, and
+at which my lord would join her on his departure from his Highland moors.
+So to Ireland went Lady Montfort.  My lord did not join her there; but
+Mr. Carr Vipont deemed it desirable for the Vipont interest that the
+wedded pair should reunite at Montfort Court, where all the Vipont family
+were invited to witness their felicity or mitigate their ennui.
+
+But before proceeding another stage in this history, it becomes a just
+tribute of respect to the great House of Vipont to pause and place its
+past records and present grandeur in fuller display before the
+reverential reader.  The House of Vipont!--what am I about?  The House of
+Vipont requires a chapter to itself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+     The House of Vipont,--"/Majora canamus/."
+
+The House of Vipont!  Looking back through ages, it seems as if the House
+of Vipont were one continuous living idiosyncrasy, having in its
+progressive development a connected unity of thought and action, so that
+through all the changes of its outward form it had been moved and guided
+by the same single spirit,--"/Le roi est mort; vive le roi!/"--A Vipont
+dies; live the Vipont!  Despite its high-sounding Norman name, the House
+of Vipont was no House at all for some generations after the Conquest.
+The first Vipont who emerged from the obscurity of time was a rude
+soldier of Gascon origin, in the reign of Henry II.,--one of the thousand
+fighting-men who sailed from Milford Haven with the stout Earl of
+Pembroke, on that strange expedition which ended in the conquest of
+Ireland.  This gallant man obtained large grants of land in that fertile
+island; some Mac or some O'----- vanished, and the House of Vipont rose.
+
+During the reign of Richard I., the House of Vipont, though recalled to
+England (leaving its Irish acquisitions in charge of a fierce cadet, who
+served as middleman), excused itself from the Crusade, and, by marriage
+with a rich goldsmith's daughter, was enabled to lend moneys to those who
+indulged in that exciting but costly pilgrimage.  In the reign of John,
+the House of Vipont foreclosed its mortgages on lands thus pledged, and
+became possessed of a very fair property in England, as well as its fiefs
+in the sister isle.
+
+The House of Vipont took no part in the troublesome politics of that day.
+Discreetly obscure, it attended to its own fortunes, and felt small
+interest in Magna Charta.  During the reigns of the Plantagenet Edwards,
+who were great encouragers of mercantile adventure, the House of Vipont,
+shunning Crecy, Bannockburn, and such profitless brawls, intermarried
+with London traders, and got many a good thing out of the Genoese.  In
+the reign of Henry IV.  the House of Vipont reaped the benefit of its
+past forbearance and modesty.  Now, for  the  first  time, the Viponts
+appear as belted knights; they have armorial bearings; they are
+Lancasterian to the backbone; they are exceedingly indignant against
+heretics; they burn the Lollards; they have places in the household of
+Queen Joan, who was called a witch,--but a witch is a very good friend
+when she wields a sceptre instead of a broomstick.  And in proof of its
+growing importance, the House of Vipont marries a daughter of the then
+mighty House of Darrell.  In the reign of Henry V., during the invasion
+of France, the House of Vipont--being afraid of the dysentery which
+carried off more brave fellows than the field of Agincourt--contrived to
+be a minor.  The Wars of the Roses puzzled the House of Vipont sadly.
+But it went through that perilous ordeal with singular tact and success.
+The manner in which it changed sides, each change safe, and most changes
+lucrative, is beyond all praise.
+
+On the whole, it preferred the Yorkists; it was impossible to be actively
+Lancasterian with Henry VI. of Lancaster always in prison.  And thus, at
+the death of Edward IV., the House of Vipont was Baron Vipont of Vipont,
+with twenty manors.  Richard III. counted on the House of Vipont, when he
+left London to meet Richmond at Bosworth: he counted without his host.
+The House of Vipont became again intensely Lancasterian, and was amongst
+the first to crowd round the litter in which Henry VII. entered the
+metropolis.  In that reign it married a relation of Empson's, did the
+great House of Vipont! and as nobles of elder date had become scarce and
+poor, Henry VII. was pleased to make the House of Vipont an Earl,--the
+Earl of Montfort.  In the reign of Henry VIII., instead of burning
+Lollards, the House of Vipont was all for the Reformation: it obtained
+the lands of two priories and one abbey.  Gorged with that spoil, the
+House of Vipont, like an anaconda in the process of digestion, slept
+long.  But no, it slept not.  Though it kept itself still as a mouse
+during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary (only letting it be known at Court
+that the House of Vipont had strong papal leanings); though during the
+reigns of Elizabeth and James it made no noise, the House of Vipont was
+silently inflating its lungs and improving its constitution.  Slept,
+indeed! it was wide awake.  Then it was that it began systematically its
+grand policy of alliances; then was it sedulously grafting its olive
+branches on the stems of those fruitful New Houses that had sprung up
+with the Tudors; then, alive to the spirit of the day, provident of the
+wants of the morrow, over the length and breadth of the land it wove the
+interlacing network of useful cousinhood!  Then, too, it began to build
+palaces, to enclose parks; it travelled, too, a little, did the House of
+Vipont! it visited Italy; it conceived a taste: a very elegant House
+became the House of Vipont!  And in James's reign, for the first time,
+the House of Vipont got the Garter.  The Civil Wars broke out: England
+was rent asunder.  Peer and knight took part with one side or the other.
+The House of Vipont was again perplexed.  Certainly at the commencement
+it, was all for King Charles.  But when King Charles took to fighting,
+the House of Vipont shook its sagacious head, and went about, like Lord
+Falkland, sighing, "Peace, peace!"  Finally, it remembered its neglected
+estates in Ireland: its duties called it thither.  To Ireland it went,
+discreetly sad, and, marrying a kinswoman of Lord Fauconberg,--the
+connection least exposed to Fortune's caprice of all the alliances formed
+by the Lord Protector's family,--it was safe when Cromwell visited
+Ireland; and no less safe when Charles II. was restored to England.
+During the reign of the merry monarch the House of Vipont was a courtier,
+married a beauty, got the Garter again, and, for the first time, became
+the fashion.  Fashion began to be a power.  In the reign of James II.
+the House of Vipont again contrived to be a minor, who came of age just
+in time to take the oaths of fealty to William and Mary.  In case of
+accidents, the House of Vipont kept on friendly terms with the exiled
+Stuarts, but it wrote no letters, and got into no scrapes.  It was not,
+however, till the Government, under Sir Robert Walpole, established the
+constitutional and parliamentary system which characterizes modern
+freedom, that the puissance accumulated through successive centuries by
+the House of Vipont became pre-eminently visible.  By that time its lands
+were vast; its wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as "a Great
+House," was a part of the British Constitution.  At this period, the
+House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand
+divisions,--the peer's branch and the commoner's.  The House of Commons
+had become so important that it was necessary for the House of Vipont to
+be represented there by a great commoner.  Thus arose the family of Carr
+Vipont.  That division, owing to a marriage settlement favouring a
+younger son by the heiress of the Carrs, carried off a good slice from
+the estate of the earldom: /uno averso, non deficit alter/; the earldom
+mourned, but replaced the loss by two wealthy wedlocks of its own; and
+had long since seen cause to rejoice that its power in the Upper Chamber
+was strengthened by such aid in the Lower.  For, thanks to its
+parliamentary influence, and the aid of the great commoner, in the reign
+of George III. the House of Vipont became a Marquess.  From that time to
+the present day, the House of Vipont has gone on prospering and
+progressive.  It was to the aristocracy what the "Times" newspaper is to
+the press.  The same quick sympathy with public feeling, the same unity
+of tone and purpose, the same adaptability, and something of the same
+lofty tone of superiority to the petty interests of party.  It may be
+conceded that the House of Vipont was less brilliant than the "Times"
+newspaper, but eloquence and wit, necessary to the duration of a
+newspaper, were not necessary to that of the House of Vipont.  Had they
+been so, it would have had them.
+
+The head of the House of Vipont rarely condescended to take office.  With
+a rent-roll loosely estimated at about L170,000 a year, it is beneath a
+man to take from the public a paltry five or six thousand a year, and
+undergo all the undignified abuse of popular assemblies, and "a ribald
+press."  But it was a matter of course that the House of Vipont should be
+represented in any Cabinet that a constitutional monarch could be advised
+to form.  Since the time of Walpole, a Vipont was always in the service
+of his country, except in those rare instances when the country was
+infamously misgoverned.  The cadets of the House, or the senior member of
+the great commoner's branch of it, sacrificed their ease to fulfil that
+duty.  The Montfort marquesses in general were contented with situations
+of honour in the household, as of Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlain, or
+Master of the Horse, etc.,--not onerous dignities; and even these they
+only deigned to accept on those special occasions when danger threatened
+the star of Brunswick, and the sense of its exalted station forbade the
+House of Vipont to leave its country in the dark.
+
+Great Houses like that of Vipont assist the work of civilization by the
+law of their existence.  They are sure to have a spirited and wealthy
+tenantry, to whom, if but for the sake of that popular character which
+doubles political influence, they are liberal and kindly landlords.
+Under their sway fens and sands become fertile; agricultural experiments
+are tested on a large scale; cattle and sheep improve in breed; national
+capital augments, and, springing beneath the ploughshare, circulates
+indirectly to speed the ship and animate the loom.  Had there been no
+Woburn, no Holkham, no Montfort Court, England would be the poorer by
+many a million.  Our great Houses tend also to the refinement of national
+taste; they have their show places, their picture galleries, their
+beautiful grounds.  The humblest drawing-rooms owe an elegance or
+comfort, the smallest garden a flower or esculent, to the importations
+which luxury borrowed from abroad, or the inventions it stimulated at
+home, for the original benefits of great Houses.  Having a fair share of
+such merits, in common with other great Houses, the House of Vipont was
+not without good qualities peculiar to itself.  Precisely because it was
+the most egotistical of Houses, filled with the sense of its own
+identity, and guided by the instincts of its own conservation, it was a
+very civil, good-natured House,--courteous, generous, hospitable; a House
+(I mean the head of it, not of course all its subordinate members,
+including even the august Lady Selina) that could bow graciously and
+shake hands with you.  Even if you had no vote yourself, you might have a
+cousin who had a vote.  And once admitted into the family, the House
+adopted you; you had only to marry one of its remotest relations and the
+House sent you a wedding present; and at every general election, invited
+you to rally round your connection,--the Marquess.  Therefore, next only
+to the Established Church, the House of Vipont was that British
+institution the roots of which were the most widely spread.
+
+Now the Viponts had for long generations been an energetic race.
+Whatever their defects, they had exhibited shrewdness and vigour.  The
+late Marquess (grandfather to the present) had been perhaps the ablest
+(that is, done most for the House of Vipont) of them all.  Of a grandiose
+and superb mode of living; of a majestic deportment; of princely manners;
+of a remarkable talent for the management of all business, whether
+private or public; a perfect enthusiast for the House of Vipont, and
+aided by a marchioness in all respects worthy of him,--he might be said
+to be the culminating flower of the venerable stem.  But the present
+lord, succeeding to the title as a mere child, was a melancholy contrast,
+not only to his grandsire, but to the general character of his
+progenitors.  Before his time, every Head of the House had done something
+for it; even the most frivolous had contributed one had collected the
+pictures, another the statues, a third the medals, a fourth had amassed
+the famous Vipont library; while others had at least married heiresses,
+or augmented, through ducal lines, the splendour of the interminable
+cousinhood.  The present Marquess was literally nil.  The pith of the
+Viponts was not in him.  He looked well; he dressed well: if life were
+only the dumb show of a tableau, he would have been a paragon of a
+Marquess.  But he was like the watches we give to little children, with a
+pretty gilt dial-plate, and no works in them.  He was thoroughly inert;
+there was no winding him up: he could not manage his property; he could
+not answer his letters,--very few of them could he even read through.
+Politics did not interest him, nor literature, nor field-sports.  He
+shot, it is true, but mechanically; wondering, perhaps, why he did shoot.
+He attended races, because the House of Vipont kept a racing stud.  He
+bet on his own horses, but if they lost showed no vexation.  Admirers (no
+Marquess of Montfort could be wholly without them) said, "What fine
+temper! what good breeding!" it was nothing but constitutional apathy.
+No one could call him a bad man: he was not a profligate, an oppressor, a
+miser, a spendthrift; he would not have taken the trouble to be a bad man
+on any account.  Those who beheld his character at a distance would have
+called him an exemplary man.  The more conspicuous duties of his station
+--subscriptions, charities, the maintenance of grand establishments, the
+encouragement of the fine arts--were virtues admirably performed for him
+by others.  But the phlegm or nullity of his being was not, after all, so
+complete as I have made it, perhaps, appear.  He had one susceptibility
+which is more common with women than with men,--the susceptibility to
+pique.  His /amour propre/ was unforgiving: pique that, and he could do a
+rash thing, a foolish thing, a spiteful thing; pique that, and,
+prodigious! the watch went!  He had a rooted pique against his
+marchioness.  Apparently he had conceived this pique from the very first.
+He showed it passively by supreme neglect; he showed it actively by
+removing her from all the spheres of power which naturally fall to the
+wife when the husband shuns the details of business.  Evidently he had a
+dread lest any one should say, "Lady Montfort influences my lord."
+Accordingly, not only the management of his estates fell to Carr Vipont,
+but even of his gardens, his household, his domestic arrangements.  It
+was Carr Vipont or Lady Selina who said to Lady Montfort, "Give a ball;"
+"You should ask so and so to dinner;" "Montfort was much hurt to see the
+old lawn at the Twickenham villa broken up by those new bosquets.  True,
+it is settled on you as a jointure-house, but for that very reason
+Montfort is sensitive," etc.  In fact, they were virtually as separated,
+my lord and my lady, as if legally disunited, and as if Carr Vipont and
+Lady Selina were trustees or intermediaries in any polite approach to
+each other.  But, on the other hand, it is fair to say that where Lady
+Montfort's sphere of action did not interfere with her husband's plans,
+habits, likings, dislikings, jealous apprehensions that she should be
+supposed to have any ascendency over what exclusively belonged to himself
+as /Roi faineant/ of the Viponts, she was left free as air.  No attempt
+at masculine control or conjugal advice.  At her disposal was wealth
+without stint, every luxury the soft could desire, every gewgaw the vain
+could covet.  Had her pin-money, which in itself was the revenue of an
+ordinary peeress, failed to satisfy her wants; had she grown tired of
+wearing the family diamonds, and coveted new gems from Golconda,--a
+single word to Carr Vipont or Lady Selina would have been answered by a
+carte blanche on the Bank of England.  But Lady Montfort had the
+misfortune not to be extravagant in her tastes.  Strange to say, in the
+world Lord Montfort's marriage was called a love-match; he had married a
+portionless girl, daughter to one of his poorest and obscurest cousins,
+against the uniform policy of the House of Vipont, which did all it could
+for poor cousins except marrying them to its chief.  But Lady Montfort's
+conduct in these trying circumstances was admirable and rare.  Few
+affronts can humiliate us unless we resent them--and in vain.  Lady
+Montfort had that exquisite dignity which gives to submission the grace
+of cheerful acquiescence.  That in the gay world flatterers should gather
+round a young wife so eminently beautiful, and so wholly left by her
+husband to her own guidance, was inevitable.  But at the very first
+insinuated compliment or pathetic condolence, Lady Montfort, so meek in
+her household, was haughty enough to have daunted Lovelace.  She was thus
+very early felt to be beyond temptation, and the boldest passed on, nor
+presumed to tempt.  She was unpopular; called "proud and freezing;" she
+did not extend the influence of "The House;" she did not confirm its
+fashion,--fashion which necessitates social ease, and which no rank, no
+wealth, no virtue, can of themselves suffice to give.  And this failure
+on her part was a great offence in the eyes of the House of Vipont.  "She
+does absolutely nothing for us," said Lady Selina; but Lady Selina in her
+heart was well pleased that to her in reality thus fell, almost without a
+rival, the female representation, in the great world, of the Vipont
+honours.  Lady Selina was fashion itself.
+
+Lady Montfort's social peculiarity was in the eagerness with which she
+sought the society of persons who enjoyed a reputation for superior
+intellect, whether statesmen, lawyers, authors, philosophers, artists.
+Intellectual intercourse seemed as if it was her native atmosphere, from
+which she was habitually banished, to which she returned with an
+instinctive yearning and a new zest of life; yet was she called, even
+here, nor seemingly without justice, capricious and unsteady in her
+likings.  These clever personages, after a little while, all seemed to
+disappoint her expectations of them; she sought the acquaintance of each
+with cordial earnestness; slid from the acquaintance with weary languor,
+--never, after all, less alone than when alone.
+
+And so wondrous lovely!  Nothing so rare as beauty of the high type:
+genius and beauty, indeed, are both rare; genius, which is the beauty of
+the mind,-beauty, which is the gen ius of the body.  But, of the two,
+beauty is the rarer.  All of us can count on our fingers some forty or
+fifty persons of undoubted and illustrious genius, including those famous
+in action, letters, art.  But can any of us remember to have seen more
+than four or five specimens of first-rate ideal beauty?  Whosoever had
+seen Lady Montfort would have ranked her amongst such four or five in his
+recollection.  There was in her face that lustrous dazzle to which the
+Latin poet, perhaps, refers when he speaks of the--
+
+                                   "Nitor
+               Splendentis Pario marmore purius .  .  .
+               Et voltus, niminm lubricus adspici,"
+
+and which an English poet, with the less sensuous but more spiritual
+imagination of northern genius, has described in lines that an English
+reader may be pleased to see rescued from oblivion,--
+
+              "Her face was like the milky way i' the sky,
+               A meeting of gentle lights without a name."
+                                             (Suckling)
+
+The eyes so purely bright, the exquisite harmony of colouring between the
+dark (not too dark) hair and the ivory of the skin; such sweet radiance
+in the lip when it broke into a smile.  And it was said that in her
+maiden day, before Caroline Lyndsay became Marchioness of Montfort, that
+smile was the most joyous thing imaginable.  Absurd now; you would not
+think it, but that stately lady had been a wild, fanciful girl, with the
+merriest laugh and the quickest tear, filling the air round her with
+April sunshine.  Certainly, no beings ever yet lived the life Nature
+intended them to live, nor had fair play for heart and mind, who
+contrived, by hook or by crook, to marry the wrong person!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+     The interior of the great house.--The British Constitution at home
+     in a family party.
+
+Great was the family gathering that Christmas-tide at Montfort Court.
+Thither flocked the cousins of the House in all degrees and of various
+ranks.  From dukes, who had nothing left to wish for that kings and
+cousinhoods can give, to briefless barristers and aspiring cornets, of
+equally good blood with the dukes,--the superb family united its motley
+scions.  Such reunions were frequent: they belonged to the hereditary
+policy of the House of Vipont.  On this occasion the muster of the clan
+was more significant than usual; there was a "CRISES" in the
+constitutional history of the British empire.  A new Government had been
+suddenly formed within the last six weeks, which certainly portended some
+direful blow on our ancient institutions; for the House of Vipont had not
+been consulted in its arrangements, and was wholly unrepresented in the
+Ministry, even by a lordship of the Treasury.  Carr Vipont had therefore
+summoned the patriotic and resentful kindred.
+
+It is an hour or so after the conclusion of dinner.  The gentlemen have
+joined the ladies in the state suite, a suite which the last Marquess had
+rearranged and redecorated in his old age, during the long illness that
+finally conducted him to his ancestors.  During his earlier years that
+princely Marquess had deserted Montfort Court for a seat nearer to
+London, and therefore much more easily filled with that brilliant society
+of which he had been long the ornament and centre,--railways not then
+existing for the annihilation of time and space, and a journey to a
+northern county four days with posthorses making the invitations even of
+a Marquess of Montfort unalluring to languid beauties and gouty
+ministers.  But nearing the end of his worldly career, this long neglect
+of the dwelling identified with his hereditary titles smote the
+conscience of the illustrious sinner.  And other occupations beginning to
+pall, his lordship, accompanied and cheered by a chaplain, who had a fine
+taste in the decorative arts, came resolutely to Montfort Court; and
+there, surrounded with architects and gilders and upholsterers, redeemed
+his errors; and, soothed by the reflection of the palace provided for his
+successor, added to his vaults--a coffin.
+
+The suite expands before the eye.  You are in the grand drawing-room,
+copied from that of Versailles.  That is the picture, full length, of the
+late Marquess in his robes; its pendant is the late Marchioness, his
+wife.  That table of malachite is a present from the Russian Emperor
+Alexander; that vase of Sevres which rests on it was made for Marie
+Antoinette,--see her  portrait enamelled  in its  centre.  Through the
+open door at the far end your eye loses itself in a vista of other
+pompous chambers,--the music-room, the statue hall, the orangery; other
+rooms there are appertaining to the suite, a ballroom fit for Babylon, a
+library that might have adorned Alexandria,--but they are not lighted,
+nor required, on this occasion; it is strictly a family party, sixty
+guests and no more.
+
+In the drawing-room three whist-tables carry off the more elderly and
+grave.  The piano, in the music-room, attracts a younger group.  Lady
+Selina Vipont's eldest daughter, Honoria, a young lady not yet brought
+out, but about to be brought out the next season, is threading a
+wonderfully intricate German piece,
+
+               "Link'd sweetness, long drawn out,"
+
+with variations.  Her science is consummate.  No pains have been spared
+on her education; elaborately accomplished, she is formed to be the
+sympathizing spouse of a wealthy statesman.  Lady Montfort is seated by
+an elderly duchess, who is good-natured and a great talker; near her are
+seated two middle-aged gentlemen, who had been conversing with her till
+the duchess, having cut in, turned dialogue into monologue.
+
+The elder of these two gentlemen is Mr. Carr Vipont, bald, with clipped
+parliamentary whiskers; values himself on a likeness to Canning, but with
+a portlier presence; looks a large-acred man.  Carr Vipont has about
+L40,000 a year; has often refused office for himself, while taking care
+that other Viponts should have it; is a great authority in committee
+business and the rules of the House of Commons; speaks very seldom, and
+at no great length, never arguing, merely stating his opinion, carries
+great weight with him, and as he votes vote fifteen other members of the
+House of Vipont, besides admiring satellites.  He can therefore turn
+divisions, and has decided the fate of cabinets.  A pleasant man, a
+little consequential, but the reverse of haughty,--unctuously
+overbearing.  The other gentleman, to whom he is listening, is our old
+acquaintance Colonel Alban Vipont Morley, Darrell's friend, George's
+uncle,--a man of importance, not inferior, indeed, to that of his kinsman
+Carr; an authority in clubrooms, an oracle in drawing-rooms, a first-rate
+man of the beau monde.  Alban Morley, a younger brother, had entered the
+Guards young; retired young also from the Guards with the rank of
+Colonel, and on receipt of a legacy from an old aunt, which, with the
+interest derived from the sum at which he sold his commission, allowed
+him a clear income of L1,000 a year.  This modest income sufficed for all
+his wants, fine gentleman though he was.  He had refused to go into
+Parliament,--refused a high place in a public department.  Single
+himself, he showed his respect for wedlock by the interest he took in the
+marriages of other people; just as Earl Warwick, too wise to set up for a
+king, gratified his passion for royalty by becoming the king-maker.  The
+Colonel was exceedingly accomplished, a very fair scholar, knew most
+modern languages.  In painting an amateur, in music a connoisseur; witty
+at times, and with wit of a high quality, but thrifty in the expenditure
+of it; too wise to be known as a wit.  Manly too, a daring rider, who had
+won many a fox's brush; a famous deer-stalker, and one of the few English
+gentlemen who still keep up the noble art of fencing,--twice a week to be
+seen, foil in hand, against all comers in Angelo's rooms.  Thin, well-
+shaped,--not handsome, my dear young lady, far from it, but with an air
+so thoroughbred that, had you seen him in the day when the opera-house
+had a crushroom and a fops' alley,--seen him in either of those resorts,
+surrounded by elaborate dandies and showy beauty-men, dandies and beauty-
+men would have seemed to you secondrate and vulgar; and the eye,
+fascinated by that quiet form,--plain in manner, plain in dress, plain in
+feature,--you would have said, "How very distinguished it is to be so
+plain!"  Knowing the great world from the core to the cuticle, and on
+that knowledge basing authority and position, Colonel Morley was not
+calculating, not cunning, not suspicious,--his sagacity the more quick
+because its movements were straightforward; intimate with the greatest,
+but sought, not seeking; not a flatterer nor a parasite, but when his
+advice was asked (even if advice necessitated reproof) giving it with
+military candour: in fine, a man of such social reputation as rendered
+him an ornament and prop to the House of Vipont; and with unsuspected
+depths of intelligence and feeling, which lay in the lower strata of his
+knowledge of this world to witness of some other one, and justified
+Darrell in commending a boy like Lionel Haughton to the Colonel's
+friendly care and admonitory counsels.  The Colonel, like other men, had
+his weakness, if weakness it can be called: he believed that the House of
+Vipont was not merely the Corinthian capital, but the embattled keep--not
+merely the /dulce decus/, but the /praesidium columenque rerum/--of the
+British monarchy.  He did not boast of his connection with the House; he
+did not provoke your spleen by enlarging on its manifold virtues; he
+would often have his harmless jest against its members, or even against
+its pretensions: but such seeming evidences of forbearance or candour
+were cunning devices to mitigate envy.  His devotion to the House was not
+obtrusive: it was profound.  He loved the House of Vipont for the sake of
+England: he loved England for the sake of the House of Vipont.  Had it
+been possible, by some tremendous reversal of the ordinary laws of
+nature, to dissociate the cause of England from the cause of the House of
+Vipont, the Colonel would have said, "Save at least the Ark of the
+Constitution! and rally round the old House!"
+
+The Colonel had none of Guy Darrell's infirmity of family pride; he cared
+not a rush for mere pedigrees,--much too liberal and enlightened for such
+obsolete prejudices.  No!  He knew the world too well not to be quite
+aware that old family and long pedigrees are of no use to a man if he has
+not some money or some merit.  But it was of use to a man to be a cousin
+of the House of Vipont, though without any money, without any merit at
+all.  It was of use to be part and parcel of a British institution; it
+was of use to have a legitimate indefeasible right to share in the
+administration and patronage of an empire, on which (to use a novel
+illustration) "the sun never sets."  You might want nothing for yourself;
+the Colonel and the Marquess equally wanted nothing for themselves but
+man is not to be a selfish egotist!  Man has cousins: his cousins may
+want something.  Demosthenes denounces, in words that inflame every manly
+breast, the ancient Greek who does not love his POLIS or State, even
+though he take nothing from it but barren honour, and contribute towards
+it--a great many disagreeable taxes.  As the POLIS to the Greek, was the
+House of Vipont to Alban Vipont Morley.  It was the most beautiful,
+touching affection imaginable!  Whenever the House was in difficulties,
+whenever it was threatened by a CRISIS, the Colonel was by its side,
+sparing no pains, neglecting no means, to get the Ark of the Constitution
+back into smooth water.  That duty done, he retired again into private
+life, and scorned all other reward than the still whisper of applauding
+conscience.
+
+"Yes," said Alban Morley, whose voice, though low and subdued in tone,
+was extremely distinct, with a perfect enunciation.  "Yes, it is quite
+true, my nephew has taken orders,--his defect in speech, if not quite
+removed, has ceased to be any obstacle, even to eloquence; an occasional
+stammer may be effective,--it increases interest, and when the right word
+comes, there is the charm of surprise in it.  I do not doubt that George
+will be a very distinguished clergyman."
+
+MR. CARR VIPONT.--"We want one; the House wants a very distinguished
+clergyman: we have none at this moment,--not a bishop, not even a dean!
+all mere parish parsons, and among them not one we could push.  Very odd,
+with more than forty livings too.  But the Viponts seldom take to the
+Church kindly: George must be pushed.  The more I think of it, the more
+we want a bishop: a bishop would be useful in the present CRISIS."
+(Looking round the rooms proudly, and softening his voice), "A numerous
+gathering, Morley!  This demonstration will strike terror in Downing
+Street, eh!  The old House stands firm,--never was a family so united:
+all here, I think,--that is, all worth naming,--all, except Sir James,
+whom Montfort chooses to dislike, and George--and George comes
+to-morrow."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"You forget the most eminent of all our connections,--
+the one who could indeed strike terror into Downing Street, were his
+voice to be heard again!"
+
+CARR VIPONT.--"Whom do you mean?  Ah, I know! Guy Darrell.  His wife was
+a Vipont; and he is not here.  But he has long since ceased to
+communicate with any of us; the only connection that ever fell away from
+the House of Vipont, especially in a CRISIS like the present.  Singular
+man!  For all the use he is to us, he might as well be dead!  But he has
+a fine fortune: what will he do with it?"
+
+THE DUCHESS.--"My dear Lady Montfort, you have hurt yourself with that
+paper cutter."
+
+LADY MONTFORT.--"NO, indeed.  Hush! we are disturbing Mr. Carr Vipont!"
+
+The Duchess, in awe of Carr Vipont, sinks her voice, and gabbles on,
+whisperously.
+
+CARR VIPONT (resuming the subject).--"A very fine fortune:  what will he
+do with it?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"I don't know; but I had a letter from him some months
+ago."
+
+CARR VIPONT.--"You had, and never told me!"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Of no importance to you, my dear Carr.  His letter
+merely introduced to me a charming young fellow,--a kinsman of his own
+(no Vipont),--Lionel Haughton, son of poor Charlie Haughton, whom you may
+remember."
+
+CARR VIPONT.--"Yes, a handsome scamp; went to the dogs.  So Darrell takes
+up Charlie's son: what! as his heir?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"In his letter to me he anticipated that question in the
+negative."
+
+CARR VIPONT.--"Has Darrell any nearer kinsman?"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Not that I know of."
+
+CARR VIPONT.--"Perhaps he will select one of his wife's family for his
+heir,--a Vipont; I should not wonder."
+
+COLONEL MORLEY (dryly).--"I should.  But why may not Darrell marry again?
+I always thought he would; I think so still."
+
+CARR VIPONT (glancing towards his own daughter Honoria).--"Well, a wife
+well chosen might restore him to society, and to us.  Pity, indeed, that
+so great an intellect should be suspended,--a voice so eloquent hushed.
+You are right; in this CRISIS, Guy Darrell once more in the House of
+Commons, we should have all we require,--an orator, a debater!  Very odd,
+but at this moment we have no speakers,--WE the Viponts!"
+
+COLONEL MORLEY.--"Yourself!"
+
+CARR VIPONT.--"You are too kind.  I can speak on occasions; but
+regularly, no.  Too much drudgery; not young enough to take to it now.
+So you think Darrell will marry again?  A remarkably fine-looking fellow
+when I last saw him: not old yet; I dare say well preserved.  I wish I
+had thought of asking him here--Montfort!"  (Lord Montfort, with one or
+two male friends, was passing by towards a billiard-room, opening through
+a side-door from the regular suite) "Montfort!  only think, we forgot to
+invite Guy Darrell.  Is it too late before our party breaks up?"
+
+LORD MONTFORT (sullenly).--"I don't choose Guy Darrell to be invited to
+my house."
+
+Carr Vipont was literally stunned by a reply so contumacious.  Lord
+Montfort demur at what Carr Vipont suggested?  He could not believe his
+senses.
+
+"Not choose, my dear Montfort! you are joking.  A monstrous clever
+fellow, Guy Darrell, and at this CRISIS--"
+
+"I hate clever fellows; no such bores!" said Lord Montfort, breaking from
+the caressing clasp of Carr Vipont, and stalking away.
+
+"Spare your regrets, my dear Carr," said Colonel Morley.  "Darrell is not
+in England: I rather believe he is in Verona."  Therewith the Colonel
+sauntered towards the group gathered round the piano.  A little time
+afterwards Lady Montfort escaped from the Duchess, and, mingling
+courteously with her livelier guests, found herself close to Colonel
+Morley.  "Will you give me my revenge at chess?" she asked, with her rare
+smile.  The Colonel was charmed.  As they sat down and ranged their men,
+Lady Montfort remarked carelessly,
+
+"I overheard you say you had lately received a letter from Mr. Darrell.
+Does he write as if well,--cheerful?  You remember that I was much with
+his daughter, much in his house, when I was a child.  He was ever most
+kind to me."  Lady Montfort's voice here faltered.
+
+"He writes with no reference to himself, his health, or his spirits.  But
+his young kinsman described him to me as in good health,--wonderfully
+young-looking for his years.  But cheerful,--no!  Darrell and I entered
+the world together; we were friends as much as a man so busy and so
+eminent as he could be friends with a man like myself, indolent by habit
+and obscure out of Mayfair.  I know his nature; we both know something of
+his family sorrows.  He cannot be happy!  Impossible!--alone, childless,
+secluded.  Poor Darrell, abroad now; in Verona, too!--the dullest place!
+in mourning still for Romeo and Juliet!  'T is your turn to move.  In his
+letter Darrell talked of going on to Greece, Asia, penetrating into the
+depths of Africa,--the wildest schemes!  Dear County Guy, as we called
+him at Eton! what a career his might have been!  Don't let us talk of
+him, it makes me mournful.  Like Goethe, I avoid painful subjects upon
+principle."
+
+LADY MONTFORT.--"No; we will not talk of him.  No; I take the Queen's
+pawn.  No, we will not talk of him! no!"  The game proceeded; the Colonel
+was within three moves of checkmating his adversary.  Forgetting the
+resolution come to, he said, as she paused, and seemed despondently
+meditating a hopeless defence,
+
+"Pray, my fair cousin, what makes Montfort dislike my old friend
+Darrell?"
+
+"Dislike!  Does he!  I don't know.  Vanquished again, Colonel Morley!"
+She rose; and as he restored the chessmen to their box, she leaned
+thoughtfully over the table.
+
+"This young kinsman, will he not be a comfort to Mr. Darrell?"
+
+"He would be a comfort and a pride to a father; but to Darrell, so
+distant a kinsman,--comfort!--why and how?  Darrell will provide for him,
+that is all.  A very gentlemanlike young man; gone to Paris by my advice;
+wants polish and knowledge of life.  When he comes back he must enter
+society: I have put his name up at White's; may I introduce him to you?"
+
+Lady Montfort hesitated, and, after a pause, said, almost rudely, "No."
+
+She left the Colonel, slightly shrugging his shoulders, and passed into
+the billiard-room with a quick step.  Some ladies were already there
+looking at the players.  Lord Montfort was chalking his cue.  Lady
+Montfort walked straight up to him: her colour was heightened; her lip
+was quivering; she placed her hand on his shoulder with a wife-like
+boldness.  It seemed as if she had come there to seek him from an impulse
+of affection.  She asked with a hurried fluttering kindness of voice, if
+he had been successful, and called him by his Christian name.  Lord
+Montfort's countenance, before merely apathetic, now assumed an
+expression of extreme distaste.  "Come to teach me to make a cannon, I
+suppose!"  he said mutteringly, and turning from her, contemplated the
+balls and missed the cannon.
+
+"Rather in my way, Lady Montfort," said he then, and, retiring to a
+corner, said no more.
+
+Lady Montfort's countenance became still more flushed.  She lingered a
+moment, returned to the drawing-room, and for the rest of the evening was
+unusually animated, gracious, fascinating.  As she retired with her lady
+guests for the night she looked round, saw Colonel Morley, and held out
+her hand to him.
+
+"Your nephew comes here to-morrow," said she, "my old play-fellow;
+impossible quite to forget old friends; good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+                       "Les extremes se touchent."
+
+The next day the gentlemen were dispersed out of doors, a large shooting
+party.  Those who did not shoot, walked forth to inspect the racing stud
+or the model farm.  The ladies had taken their walk; some were in their
+own rooms, some in the reception-rooms, at work, or reading, or listening
+to the piano,--Honoria Carr Vipont again performing.  Lady Montfort was
+absent; Lady Selina kindly supplied the hostess's place.  Lady Selina was
+embroidering, with great skill and taste, a pair of slippers for her
+eldest boy, who was just entered at Oxford, having left Eton with a
+reputation of being the neatest dresser, and not the worst cricketer,
+of that renowned educational institute.  It is a mistake to suppose that
+fine ladies are not sometimes very fond mothers and affectionate wives.
+Lady Selina, beyond her family circle, was trivial, unsympathizing, cold-
+hearted, supercilious by temperament, never kind but through policy,
+artificial as clock work.  But in her own home, to her husband, her
+children, Lady Selina was a very good sort of woman,--devotedly attached
+to Carr Vipont, exaggerating his talents, thinking him the first man in
+England, careful of his honour, zealous for his interest, soothing in his
+cares, tender in his ailments; to her girls prudent and watchful, to her
+boys indulgent and caressing; minutely attentive to the education of the
+first, according to her high-bred ideas of education,--and they really
+were "superior" girls, with much instruction and well-balanced minds,--
+less authoritative with the last, because boys being not under her
+immediate control, her sense of responsibility allowed her to display
+more fondness and less dignity in her intercourse with them than with
+young ladies who must learn from her example, as well as her precepts,
+the patrician decorum which becomes the smooth result of impulse
+restrained and emotion checked: boys might make a noise in the world,
+girls should make none.  Lady Selina, then, was working the slippers for
+her absent son, her heart being full of him at that moment.  She was
+describing his character and expatiating on his promise to two or three
+attentive listeners, all interested, as being themselves of the Vipont
+blood, in the probable destiny of the heir to the Carr Viponts.
+
+"In short," said Lady Selina, winding up, "as soon as Reginald is of age
+we shall get him into Parliament.  Carr has always lamented that he
+himself was not broken into office early; Reginald must be.  Nothing so
+requisite for public men as early training; makes them practical, and not
+too sensitive to what those horrid newspaper men say.  That was Pitt's
+great advantage.  Reginald has ambition; he should have occupation to
+keep him out of mischief.  It is an anxious thing for a mother, when a
+son is good-looking: such danger of his being spoiled by the women.  Yes,
+my dear, it is a small foot, very small,--his father's foot."
+
+"If Lord Montfort should have no family," said a somewhat distant and
+subaltern Vipont, whisperingly and hesitating, "does not the title--"
+
+"No, my dear," interrupted Lady Selina; "no, the title does not come to
+us.  It is a melancholy thought, but the marquisate, in that case, is
+extinct.  No other heir-male from Gilbert, the first marquess.  Carr says
+there is even likely to be some dispute about the earldom.  The Barony,
+of course, is safe; goes with the Irish estates, and most of the English;
+and goes (don't you know?) to Sir James Vipont, the last person who ought
+to have it; the quietest, stupidest creature; not brought up to the sort
+of thing,--a mere gentleman-farmer on a small estate in Devonshire."
+
+"He is not here?"
+
+"No.  Lord Montfort does not like him.  Very natural.  Nobody likes his
+heir, if not his own child; and some people don't even like their own
+eldest sons!  Shocking; but so it is.  Montfort is the kindest, most
+tractable being that ever was, except where he takes a dislike.  He
+dislikes two or three people very much."
+
+"True; how he did dislike poor Mrs. Lyndsay!"  said one of the listeners,
+smiling.
+
+"Mrs. Lyndsay, yes,--dear Lady Montfort's mother.  I can't say I pitied
+her, though I was sorry for Lady Montfort.  How Mrs. Lyndsay ever took in
+Montfort for Caroline I can't conceive!  How she had the face to think of
+it!  He, a mere youth at the time!  Kept secret from all his family, even
+from his grandmother,--the darkest transaction.  I don't wonder that he
+never forgave it."
+
+FIRST LISTENER.--"Caroline has beauty enough to--"
+
+LADY SELINA (interrupting).--"Beauty, of course: no one can deny that.
+But not at all suited to such a position, not brought up to the sort of
+thing.  Poor Montfort!  he should have married a different kind of woman
+altogether,--a woman like his grandmother, the last Lady Montfort.
+Caroline does nothing for the House,--nothing; has not even a child,
+--most unfortunate affair."
+
+SECOND LISTENER.--"Mrs. Lyndsay was very poor, was not she?  Caroline, I
+suppose, had no opportunity of forming those tastes and habits which are
+necessary for--for--"
+
+LADY SELINA (helping the listener).--"For such a position and such a
+fortune.  You are quite right, my dear.  People brought up in one way
+cannot accommodate themselves to another; and it is odd, but I have
+observed that people brought up poor can accommodate themselves less to
+being very rich than people brought up rich can accommodate themselves to
+being very poor.  As Carr says, in his pointed way, 'It is easier to
+stoop than to climb.'  Yes; Mrs. Lyndsay was, you know, a daughter of
+Seymour Vipont, who was for so many years in the Administration, with a
+fair income from his salary, and nothing out of it.  She married one of
+the Scotch Lyndsays,--good family, of course, with a very moderate
+property.  She was left a widow young, with an only child, Caroline.
+Came to town with a small jointure.  The late Lady Montfort was very kind
+to her.  So were we all; took her up; pretty woman; pretty manners;
+worldly,--oh, very!  I don't like worldly people.  Well, but all of a
+sudden a dreadful thing happened.  The heir-at-law disputed the jointure,
+denied that Lyndsay had any right to make settlements on the Scotch
+property; very complicated business.  But, luckily for her, Vipont
+Crooke's daughter, her cousin and intimate friend, had married Darrell,
+the famous Darrell, who was then at the bar.  It is very useful to have
+cousins married to clever people.  He was interested in her case, took
+it up.  I believe it did not come on in the courts in which Darrell
+practised.  But he arranged all the evidence, inspected the briefs, spent
+a great deal of his own money in getting up the case; and in fact he
+gained her cause, though he could not be her counsel.  People did say
+that she was so grateful that after his wife's death she had set her
+heart on becoming Mrs. Darrell the second.  But Darrell was then quite
+wrapped up in politics,--the last man to fall in love, and only looked
+bored when women fell in love with him, which a good many did.  Grand-
+looking creature, my dear, and quite the rage for a year or two.
+However, Mrs. Lyndsay all of a sudden went off to Paris, and there
+Montfort saw Caroline, and was caught.  Mrs. Lyndsay, no doubt,
+calculated on living with her daughter, having the run of Montfort House
+in town and Montfort Court in the country.  But Montfort is deeper than
+people think for.  No, he never forgave her.  She was never asked here;
+took it to heart, went to Rome, and died."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and George Morley, now the Rev. George
+Morley, entered, just arrived to join his cousins.
+
+Some knew him, some did not.  Lady Selina, who made it a point to know
+all the cousins, rose graciously, put aside the slippers, and gave him
+two fingers.  She was astonished to find him not nearly so shy as he used
+to be: wonderfully improved; at his ease, cheerful, animated.  The man
+now was in his right place, and following hope on the bent of
+inclination.  Few men are shy when in their right places.  He asked after
+Lady Montfort.  She was in her own small sitting-room, writing letters,
+--letters that Carr Vipont had entreated her to write,--correspondence
+useful to the House of Vipont.  Before long, however, a servant entered,
+to say that Lady Montfort would be very happy to see Mr. Morley.  George
+followed the servant into that unpretending sitting-room, with its simple
+chintzes and quiet bookshelves,--room that would not have been too fine
+for a cottage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+     In every life, go it fast, go it slow, there are critical pausing-
+     places.  When the journey is renewed the face of the country is
+     changed.
+
+How well she suited that simple room; herself so simply dressed, her
+marvellous beauty so exquisitely subdued!  She looked at home there,
+as if all of home that the house could give were there collected.
+
+She had finished and sealed the momentous letters, and had come, with a
+sense of relief, from the table at the farther end of the room, on which
+those letters, ceremonious and conventional, had been written,--come to
+the window, which, though mid-winter, was open, and the redbreast, with
+whom she had made friends, hopped boldly almost within reach, looking at
+her with bright eyes and head curiously aslant.  By the window a single
+chair, and a small reading-desk, with the book lying open.  The short day
+was not far from its close, but there was ample light still in the skies,
+and a serene if chilly stillness in the air without.
+
+Though expecting the relation she had just summoned to her presence,
+I fear she had half forgotten him.  She was standing by the window deep
+in revery as he entered, so deep that she started when his voice struck
+her ear and he stood before her.  She recovered herself quickly, however,
+and said with even more than her ordinary kindliness of tone and manner
+towards the scholar, "I am so glad to see and congratulate you."
+
+"And I so glad to receive your congratulations," answered the scholar in
+smooth, slow voice, without a stutter.
+
+"But, George, how is this?"  asked Lady Montfort.  "Bring that chair,
+sit down here, and tell me all about it.  You wrote me word you were
+cured,--at least sufficiently to re move your noble scruples.  You did
+not say how.  Your uncle tells me, by patient will and resolute
+practice."
+
+"Under good guidance.  But I am going to confide to you a secret, if you
+will promise to keep it."
+
+"Oh, you may trust me: I have no female friends."
+
+The clergyman smiled, and spoke at once of the lessons he had received
+from the basketmaker.
+
+"I have his permission," he said in conclusion, "to confide the service
+he rendered me, the intimacy that has sprung up between us, but to you
+alone,--not a word to your guests.  When you have once seen him, you will
+understand why an eccentric man, who has known better days, would shrink
+from the impertinent curiosity of idle customers.  Contented with his
+humble livelihood, he asks but liberty and repose."
+
+"That I already comprehend," said Lady Montfort, half sighing, half
+smiling.  "But my curiosity shall not molest him, and when I visit the
+village, I will pass by his cottage."
+
+"Nay, my dear Lady Montfort, that would be to refuse the favour I am
+about to ask, which is that you would come with me to that very cottage.
+It would so please him."
+
+"Please him!  why?"
+
+"Because this poor man has a young female grandchild, and he is so
+anxious that you should see and be kind to her, and because, too, he
+seems most anxious to remain in his present residence.  The cottage, of
+course, belongs to Lord Montfort, and is let to him by the bailiff, and
+if you deign to feel interest in him, his tenure is safe."
+
+Lady Montfort looked down, and coloured.  She thought, perhaps, how false
+a security her protection, and how slight an influence her interest would
+be; but she did not say so.  George went on; and so eloquently, and so
+touchingly did he describe both grandsire and grandchild, so skilfully
+did he intimate the mystery which hung over them, that Lady Montfort
+became much moved by his narrative; and willingly promised to accompany
+him across the park to the basketmaker's cottage the first opportunity.
+But when one has sixty guests in one's house, one has to wait for an
+opportunity to escape from them unremarked.  And the opportunity, in
+fact, did not come for many days; not till the party broke up, save one
+or two dowager she-cousins who "gave no trouble," and one or two bachelor
+he-cousins whom my lord retained to consummate the slaughter of
+pheasants, and play at billiards in the dreary intervals between sunset
+and dinner, dinner and bedtime.
+
+Then one cheerful frosty noon George Morley and his fair cousin walked
+boldly /en evidence/, before the prying ghostly windows, across the broad
+gravel walks; gained the secluded shrubbery, the solitary deeps of park-
+land; skirted the wide sheet of water, and, passing through a private
+wicket in the paling, suddenly came upon the patch of osier-ground and
+humble garden, which were backed by the basketmaker's cottage.
+
+As they entered those lowly precincts a child's laugh was borne to their
+ears,--a child's silvery, musical, mirthful laugh; it was long since the
+great lady had heard a laugh like that,--a happy child's natural laugh.
+She paused and listened with a strange pleasure.  "Yes," whispered George
+Morley, "stop--and hush! there they are."
+
+Waife was seated on the stump of a tree, materials for his handicraft
+lying beside neglected.  Sophy was standing before him,--he raising his
+finger as if in reproof, and striving hard to frown.  As the intruders
+listened, they overheard that he was striving to teach her the rudiments
+of French dialogue, and she was laughing merrily at her own blunders, and
+at the solemn affectation of the shocked schoolmaster.  Lady Montfort
+noted with no unnatural surprise the purity of idiom and of accent with
+which this singular basketmaker was unconsciously displaying his perfect
+knowledge of a language which the best-educated English gentleman of that
+generation, nay, even of this, rarely speaks with accuracy and elegance.
+But her attention was diverted immediately from the teacher to the face
+of the sweet pupil.  Women have a quick appreciation of beauty in their
+own sex; and women who are themselves beautiful, not the least.
+Irresistibly Lady Montfort felt attracted towards that innocent
+countenance so lively in its mirth, and yet so softly gay.  Sir Isaac,
+who had hitherto lain /perdu/, watching the movements of a thrush amidst
+a holly-bush, now started up with a bark.  Waife rose; Sophy turned half
+in flight.  The visitors approached.
+
+Here slowly, lingeringly, let fall the curtain.  In the frank license of
+narrative, years will have rolled away ere the curtain rise again.
+Events that may influence a life often date from moments the most serene,
+from things that appear as trivial and unnoticeable as the great lady's
+visit to the basketmaker's cottage.  Which of those lives will that visit
+influence hereafter,--the woman's, the child's, the vagrant's?  Whose?
+Probably little that passes now would aid conjecture, or be a visible
+link in the chain of destiny.  A few desultory questions; a few guarded
+answers; a look or so, a musical syllable or two, exchanged between the
+lady and the child; a basket bought, or a promise to call again.  Nothing
+worth the telling.  Be it then untold.  View only the scene itself as the
+curtain drops reluctantly.  The rustic cottage, its garden-door open, and
+open its old-fashioned lattice casements.  You can see how neat and
+cleanly, how eloquent of healthful poverty, how remote from squalid
+penury, the whitewashed walls, the homely furniture within.  Creepers
+lately trained around the doorway; Christmas holly, with berries red
+against the window-panes; the bee-hive yonder; a starling, too, outside
+the threshold, in its wicker cage; in the background (all the rest of the
+neighbouring hamlet out of sight), the church spire tapering away into
+the clear blue wintry sky.  All has an air of repose, of safety.  Close
+beside you is the Presence of HOME; that ineffable, sheltering, loving
+Presence, which amidst solitude murmurs "not solitary,"--a Presence
+unvouchsafed to the great lady in the palace she has left.  And the lady
+herself?  She is resting on the rude gnarled root-stump from which the
+vagrant had risen; she has drawn Sophy towards her; she has taken the
+child's hand; she is speaking now, now listening; and on her face
+kindness looks like happiness.  Perhaps she is happy that moment.  And
+Waife? he is turning aside his weatherbeaten mobile countenance with his
+hand anxiously trembling upon the young scholar's arm.  The scholar
+whispers, "Are you satisfied with me?"  and Waife answers in a voice as
+low but more broken, "God reward you!  Oh, joy! if my pretty one has
+found at last a woman friend!"  Poor vagabond, he has now a calm asylum,
+a fixed humble livelihood; more than that, he has just achieved an object
+fondly cherished.  His past life,--alas! what has he done with it?  His
+actual life, broken fragment though it be, is at rest now.  But still the
+everlasting question,--mocking terrible question, with its phrasing of
+farce and its enigmas of tragical sense,--"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"  Do
+with what?  The all that remains to him, the all he holds! the all which
+man himself, betwixt Free-will and Pre-decree, is permitted to do.  Ask
+not the vagrant alone: ask each of the four there assembled on that
+flying bridge called the Moment.  Time before thee,--what wilt thou do
+with it?  Ask thyself! ask the wisest!  Out of effort to answer that
+question, what dream-schools have risen, never wholly to perish,--the
+science of seers on the Chaldee's Pur-Tor, or in the rock-caves of
+Delphi, gasped after and grasped at by horn-handed mechanics to-day in
+their lanes and alleys.  To the heart of the populace sink down the
+blurred relics of what once was the law of the secretest sages,
+hieroglyphical tatters which the credulous vulgar attempt to interpret.
+"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?"  Ask Merle and his Crystal!  But the curtain
+descends!  Yet a moment, there they are,--age and childhood,--poverty,
+wealth, station, vagabondage; the preacher's sacred learning and august
+ambition; fancies of dawning reason; hopes of intellect matured; memories
+of existence wrecked; household sorrows; untold regrets; elegy and epic
+in low, close, human sighs, to which Poetry never yet gave voice: all for
+the moment personified there before you,--a glimpse for the guess, no
+more.  Lower and lower falls the curtain!  All is blank!
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT, V5 ***
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