Initial commit of ebook 78319 filesHEADmain

6 files changed, 8624 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6833f05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+* text=auto
+*.txt text
+*.md text
diff --git a/78319-0.txt b/78319-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df6262a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78319-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4117 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78319 ***
+  Italic represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_.
+  Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS.
+
+
+
+
+                            OLIVER CONSTABLE
+
+                            MILLER AND BAKER
+
+                                   BY
+
+                              SARAH TYTLER
+
+           AUTHOR OF ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ETC.
+
+                           _IN THREE VOLUMES_
+
+                                VOL. III.
+
+                                 LONDON
+                 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
+                                  1880
+
+                         [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+                                   OF
+
+                           THE THIRD VOLUME.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
+
+   XXIII. HARRY STANHOPE’S WANT                                        1
+
+    XXIV. FAN’S TRIUMPH                                               22
+
+    XXV. ‘THE DEVIL SHALL NOT HAVE HARRY’                             59
+
+    XXVI. THE PRICE AT WHICH HARRY STANHOPE
+          WAS RESCUED                                                 96
+
+   XXVII. THE LAST PENNY PAID                                        126
+
+  XXVIII. OLIVER’S RETURN                                            140
+
+    XXIX. FRESH SERVICE                                              175
+
+     XXX. STUMBLED ACROSS, INTERVIEWED, TAKEN
+          AT HIS WORD                                                197
+
+    XXXI. LIFE—AND DEATH                                             214
+
+   XXXII. ‘DO THEY BELIEVE IN ME NOW?’                               240
+
+
+
+
+                           OLIVER CONSTABLE,
+
+                          _MILLER AND BAKER_.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                         HARRY STANHOPE’S WANT.
+
+
+Oliver had liberally allowed Harry Stanhope six months in which to ride
+his hobby and grow sick beyond endurance of his _rôle_ of yeoman.
+
+But whereas Harry had entered on the character, on a fine summer
+afternoon, in the attractive prospect of hay-making, corn-cutting,
+and hop-picking, it was midwinter, with no more agreeable occupations
+in view than thrashing corn, pulling turnips, turning over potatoes
+in the pits, and ploughing a stiff clay soil under the murky sky of a
+short day in muggy weather, still he showed no signs of throwing up the
+part in satiety and disgust.
+
+True, he had sufficient leisure to join the other farmers in presenting
+himself in the hunting field, and enjoying as good mounts and glorious
+runs as the squires or the M.F.H. himself.
+
+It did not come under the head of sport. Harry was persuaded it lay at
+the core of his business, that he should attend—not only the Friarton
+Market, but every market within a day’s journey. He went to them no
+longer in his shirt sleeves, or riding a bare-backed horse as it had
+been taken to the watering, not even in the market cart in which he
+had prefigured Harry and himself crossing country—out of sight, and
+therefore out of danger of wounding the feelings of their aristocratic
+relations. Harry had modified so far his Robinson Crusoe and Vicar of
+Wakefield notions, as to have set up a trap handsome enough to have
+been driven by any of his cousins. The trap was matched by an equally
+well-bred, delicate, costly horse, which Harry candidly admitted was
+not quite ‘the cheese’ for a yeoman. Yet why not, if he rented and
+paid the rent of the paddock in which it ran, afforded the corn for
+its feeds, and took care that it should do his work in running like
+the wind with him and Horry to the innumerable markets and sales which
+the brothers found themselves forced to attend. Harry’s pride ended
+with his equipage. He was not to say guilty of affability; he was every
+man’s man, in the streets, or corn exchanges, or commercial inns where
+the farmers congregated. He was as ready to sit with the last man in
+the bar-parlour, and try return races against his trap, as to compare
+samples of grain in legitimate business. Harry was all things to all
+men—not to gain some for what he fervently believed their good, but
+in sheer sociality—with a vain, light-hearted, light-headed love of
+popularity, which was at this time his ruling passion. Horace never
+thwarted his brother in this or any other inclination. He remained the
+abiding shadow inseparable from Harry’s sunshine, and in some respects
+a relief from its glare.
+
+Harry was also able to derive no small amount of animation and
+amusement from such windfalls in the day’s routine, as brisk bouts of
+ratting when a stack was being pulled down, or in the granary after it
+was left empty; and he waited religiously every evening on the feeding
+of the cattle and horses in the sheds and stables.
+
+Harry was an extremely indulgent, if totally inconsiderate, and
+occasionally capricious, master, whose lavish tolerance was only now
+and then broken, like the abounding calm of tropical seas, by a storm
+violent as it was brief. That Harry spoilt his retainers horribly was
+not an objection which his servants were likely to take into account
+in the first flush of ‘the young squire’s’ popularity. For in spite of
+Harry Stanhope’s well-nigh nettled protests and vigorous acting of his
+part, probably because of his over-acting, the would-be yeoman was the
+young squire to his labourers, who in the middle of their stolidity
+were not altogether without shrewd observation and sound deduction.
+
+Harry not only continued unexpectedly constant to his vocation as he
+believed it, he remained faithful to the earliest friendship he had
+claimed on his arrival at Copley Grange Farm. He went more frequently
+to Friarton Mill than to any other house where he was made welcome,
+which was saying a good deal, seeing that Harry’s life, whether in
+the way of his business requirements, or when he might be supposed
+clear of their urgent obligations, was a constant round of varied
+visiting. Indeed, it struck Oliver that Harry grossly abused his
+privilege, and came intolerably often, and at absurdly unconventional
+seasons, from ‘early morn to dewy eve’—sometimes in the raw air before
+breakfast, sometimes through a setting in snowstorm after supper—to the
+mill-house, during this winter.
+
+But what could Oliver do? not turn out the thoughtless lad for whom
+the elder man had a sneaking kindness, or close the doors against the
+soullessly jolly young face, which, however provocative of censure,
+always brought with it, when it flashed upon the man, a reflection of
+unimpaired freshness, and unburdened lightness of heart.
+
+Since Fan allowed these intrusions, and even seemed to enjoy them, what
+was left for Oliver save to shrug his shoulders, grumble to himself, or
+deliver the silent hint of turning his back, after the first greeting,
+on his visitors? For, of course, Harry dragged over Horry in his
+train. And Oliver often left Fan to entertain the two in one, while he
+read on unceremoniously at the newspaper or book with which he had been
+engaged on their entrance.
+
+Alas! Harry only took the cavalier rudeness for friendliest
+encouragement. ‘Don’t apologise to me, old fellow,’ he would enjoin the
+master of the house, cheerfully. ‘It is not you I have come to see, it
+is Miss Constable,’ Harry would say audaciously. ‘I have come to report
+myself to Miss Constable. She has been so good as to take me in hand.
+She is making a man—that is a veritable yeoman, of me.’
+
+And Fan lent herself to this egregious fiction. Fan, who had never
+interested herself in a single detail of her father and brother’s
+trades, who had not so much as made an exception in favour of the
+chicks, directed a charmed ear to all Harry Stanhope’s chatter of the
+prices in the market, the field which was sown that day, the ox which
+had choked itself and been brought round in its stall the night before,
+the first long-legged, big-headed calf which he had bought for a song.
+
+Sally Pope grinned at Oliver behind the backs of this most practical
+young couple.
+
+Horace Stanhope began to fidget and glance jealously at the master of
+the house in his obliviousness. But not even the phenomena of Harry’s
+coming at last, once or twice, without his brother, and showing some
+slight self-consciousness when the unusual omission was remarked upon,
+roused the suspicions of the too secure and single-minded host.
+
+One fine frosty night Harry had walked in alone, uninvited and
+unannounced. For Fan’s carefully-trained housemaid had become weary
+of announcing the perpetual visitor, and, without any rebuke from
+her mistress, had proceeded to treat the special duty as a work of
+supererogation where Mr. Harry Stanhope was concerned.
+
+Oliver had nodded and sat still in the shade at his father’s desk,
+turning over some papers, keeping his post mainly to preserve the
+liberty of pursuing his own train of reflections; while Harry Stanhope
+and Fan had put their heads together over the lamp on Fan’s little
+table in the chimney-corner, and were, according to Oliver’s conception
+of the situation, going over the best plans for growing corn and
+rearing stock, and—what was adding insult to injury in reference to
+Oliver’s pets, the ducks—the latest contrivances for a high development
+of poultry. Not satisfied with the solution of these momentous problems
+by lamp-light, when the pair went to the window to predict from the
+purple-blue sky and the glitter of the stars hung like lamps of heaven
+in the dark branches of the trees of Copley Grange Park, the weather
+to-morrow—whether skating on the mill-pond would be the order of the
+day, or whether the frost would give way and the scent hold, so that
+Harry might join the hunt ten miles off—it seemed to Oliver as if they
+must have started afresh to answer the whole code of agricultural
+questions over again, by starlight, till his patience was reduced to a
+shred.
+
+At last Harry took his departure somewhat abruptly in the end.
+
+Oliver stretched himself with vicious emphasis, and growled, this was
+insufferable, he did not think he could stand it much longer.
+
+Fan, generally so quick in retort, said nothing, but she appeared to
+have appropriated the observation and taken it to heart; for a moment
+later, when she came to bid Oliver goodnight, she suddenly put her
+hands upon his shoulders and looked wistfully in his face with tears in
+her dark eyes, and her colour wavering—as he remarked with surprise.
+‘You are not angry, Oliver, dear?’ she said, with one of her rare
+caressing gestures and phrases, which coming as they did unlooked for,
+from a high-spirited almost hard little woman like Fan, were apt to sap
+a man’s defences, and melt his heart like wax on the spot. ‘You are
+not angry, Oliver?’ repeated Fan with a slight quaver in the wistful
+earnestness of her voice.
+
+‘Of course I am not angry with _you_, you goose of a Fanchen?’ said
+Oliver with affectionate bluster. ‘How can you help Stanhope’s
+unconscionable coolness, which begins to be rank impudence? But why
+in the name of justice, should I blame you for his faults?’ enquired
+Oliver in all simplicity. ‘You are compelled to listen to his rigmarole
+in your own house, when I turn him over to you. I own I ought not to
+do it, to such an extent,’ admitted Oliver, contritely; ‘but the young
+wretch is so indefatigable in preying on our hospitality, and has
+acquired such a fatal fluency in airing his farming bosh, that I must
+have some relief, or knock him down. I often admire your powers of
+endurance, but don’t give the beggar too much line, Fan, if you love
+me. I am not sure, whether, after all, his class are the finest judges
+of courtesy.’
+
+Fan had flushed crimson at her brother’s words. She knitted her
+delicate brows—black brows at the same time, and then as if she had
+thought better of it, her lips parted in a half-smile. ‘No, no; don’t
+speak treason either of me, or of another,’ she said; and then she
+added, a little incoherently, ‘I believe there is nobody so good and
+kind as you are, yourself, Oliver, in the whole world. Remember I have
+said so, though we quarrelled some time ago, and may quarrel again.
+Remember I have told you that you are always my own dear good boy, whom
+I have loved all through our lives, whom I love with all my heart at
+this moment, whom I could have served, if you would have let me,’ and
+Fan fairly hugged Oliver, who resisted stoutly in his mystification,
+with a dim apprehension that he might otherwise pledge himself to
+something he did not in the least understand.
+
+‘What do you mean?’ cried Oliver. ‘Is Fan also among the wheedlers? For
+what mighty boon can she deign to wheedle?’
+
+‘Never mind, it is too late to ask me now—good night.’
+
+Fan succeeded in making her retreat, and in the act of doing so, Oliver
+might have seen, if he had been quick at reading women’s faces, that
+all the soft relenting and indescribable yearning which had been in
+hers a moment ago, had vanished and was replaced by such unmingled
+exultation that the girl looked radiant.
+
+It was the last loving altercation which passed between the brother and
+sister for many a day.
+
+The next morning, Harry Stanhope wound up his offences against
+domestic privacy by re-appearing at Friarton Mill, as if he had
+slept at the gate, seeking admission to Oliver before the latter had
+completed his toilet. Only the most urgent business could warrant such
+pressing attendance. Harry himself, in his superb self-complacency
+and confidence, betrayed, nevertheless, a shadow of a doubt of his
+reception.
+
+‘You will think I am always here, Constable?’ he said with a confused
+laugh.
+
+‘Well, you are here pretty often,’ the aggrieved Oliver put it mildly.
+‘I am afraid your other engagements must suffer from your paying us the
+compliment of being so much at Friarton Mill; and your brother—he is
+not with you this morning—will miss you.’
+
+‘Oh! hang Horry!’ exclaimed Harry hastily; ‘no, I don’t mean that, of
+course, and old Horry won’t stand in the way. He’s all right. Besides,
+if one’s father and mother, when a fellow possesses them, an’t counted,
+a brother can’t have much to say either way, can he?’
+
+‘I don’t know what you’re after,’ said Oliver in perfect sincerity. ‘If
+I were a supernumerary in an old play, I ought to exclaim, “Anan,” to
+that last enigmatical sentence of yours.’
+
+‘Well, it ain’t easy to come out with it,’ protested Harry, struggling
+with what was, for him, the most extraordinary hesitation. ‘Your
+sister, Constable—you must have seen she has been goodness itself to
+me. I know she will have to furnish the brains and backbone, for my
+head-piece ain’t worth much, and my pluck is of the rough and ready
+sort, but since she graciously consents to do for me and Horry—to make
+a true farmer’s wife, which will be an inestimable advantage to us—I
+may take it that you will not have any great objection to accepting me
+for a brother-in-law?’
+
+‘Stanhope, have you lost your wits?’ burst out Oliver. ‘Come, there
+must be no more of this absurd nonsense. I tell you I will have no such
+foolish jesting where my sister is concerned.’
+
+‘Never was farther from jesting in my life!’ declared poor Harry
+indignantly.
+
+‘Then let me say, once for all, you must get rid of this idiotic
+idea. It won’t do. My sister is not for a fellow like you. I don’t
+want to hurt your feelings, but you have somehow tumbled into the
+hugest blunder, and I must speak out. I can answer for Fan: she did
+not dream of encouraging such a vain delusion, she will be terribly
+vexed and annoyed. This comes of masquerading and making-believe. It
+seems to me you don’t want a wife for twenty years to come: when you
+do, take my advice—if you will excuse me for offering it, after what
+I have said—marry strictly within your own class; you of all fellows
+require such a safeguard, and the more influential your wife’s people,
+the better both for her and you!’ muttered Oliver _sotto voce_. Then
+he resumed aloud, ‘Wait till you can persuade a lady to share your
+lot—if you will cultivate prudence, you may make it not a bad one—as a
+gentleman-farmer.’
+
+Harry was looking at Oliver with such a strong sense of superior
+knowledge and wisdom that it disarmed any rising resentment on the
+lad’s part, at the tone of provoked disdainful repudiation of the
+proposal which Oliver could not help betraying. The contrast between
+the truth as Harry realised it and Oliver’s undoubting convictions,
+brought out the comic element in the affair so dear to Harry’s boyish
+heart, even in the serious mood which had been on him, when he
+‘declared his intentions.’
+
+‘Make-believe, indeed!’ cried Harry, lightly; ‘who plays at being
+miller and baker?’
+
+‘Not I!’ denied Oliver hotly. ‘I have taken up my father’s business,
+which is no unusual thing for a tradesman’s son to do, and I have not
+adopted it as a mere makeshift, or as the last resource for a man who
+would otherwise be idle; I desire to make it the object of my life;
+I do not think any honest trade is unworthy of the dedication of the
+trader’s talents to render it as good in every respect as possible. I
+trust to do no discredit to my father’s business.’
+
+‘At least you need not be so cocky over other people whose fathers had
+not the luck to be in trade,’ remonstrated Harry. ‘As to not wanting
+a wife—I being a farmer, and having no competent young woman with my
+interest at heart,’ went on Harry, his blue eyes twinkling, ‘to look
+after the butter and cheese, the feeding of the calves, the fattening
+of the geese, and the multiplying of the eggs and chickens, when I
+find I have quite enough to do, even with Horry for my _aide_, to
+manage the labourer fellows in the fields and offices, and attend the
+markets—if you think I don’t want a wife dreadfully, it is little
+you know of a yeoman’s difficulties. As to consenting to try for an
+imitation farmer’s wife, why you yourself politely hinted a minute ago
+that there was quite enough of the mock article at Copley Grange Farm
+already. No, thanks. I knew exactly what the position was when Aggie
+spent her holiday weeks at the Farm. The babe could not have told
+barley from oats if they had not been in the ear; and though that did
+not matter much, I am morally certain she was shaky on the important
+question of hens’ nests—whether they were not to be found in bushes,
+if not on tree-tops. She spoilt all the dairy produce while she was
+here, by insisting on dabbling in it in her ignorance, my housekeeper
+complained. And the child was always begging to be amused, and seeking
+to go and look at the horses and cattle when it was not convenient and
+I ought to have been hard at work elsewhere. She would not be put off
+with Horry’s escort; fact was, all my energies were employed in keeping
+the peace between the little girl and the cantankerous old man.’
+
+Oliver was forced to laugh, but he laughed harshly. ‘Stanhope, you’re a
+donkey if you propose to marry my sister, that she may act as your head
+dairymaid and principal hen-wife. That is not her _forte_,’ he said.
+
+‘Do you mean to insult me?’ cried Harry, firing up in spite of his easy
+temper. ‘By Jove, you may thank Fan if I bear it. I may have cracked
+an ill-timed joke, but it was you who tempted me to it. Fan believes
+me; she understands how I love and honour her, and choose her before
+all other women; and if she does me the honour to choose me in return,
+I suppose she is at liberty to make her choice? Not even a Turk of a
+brother, since he is not her father, and she is of age, can prevent
+it,’ ended Harry defiantly.
+
+‘This preposterous stuff must be put an end to. I will see my sister.’
+Oliver flung out of his room, and encountered Fan hovering over the
+breakfast-table, and looking fresh yet pale, like a solitary daisy
+blooming in a sheltered corner.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                             FAN’S TRIUMPH.
+
+
+‘Come along, Fan, to the front door, where the fellow has retreated.
+Here is a fluke, but the sooner you deal with it the better; you must
+spoil your breakfast, and have done with it. Harry Stanhope is as mad
+as a hatter this morning, and nothing will bring him back to soberness
+of mind save your giving him his _congé_ in so many words. This is
+speaking plainly. Are you not amazed? I imagine you never apprehended
+such a desperately moonshiny business from Stanhope, who’s in a general
+way commonplace and matter-of-fact in his greenness. But come along, it
+will not do to keep the young idiot waiting.’
+
+‘But what if there are two of us as mad as hatters?’ said Fan, blushing
+and brightening up like the white daisy when the red tips of its petals
+catch the beams of the sun.
+
+‘Fan, you cannot be so crazy, so weak to imbecility!’ cried Oliver,
+incredulously; and then, as his unbelief began to be shaken by her
+looks, still more than her words, he protested passionately on her
+account: ‘A boy like Harry Stanhope! the merest boy in his fancies, as
+you have had abundant proof; hardly responsible for his actions, not
+fit to know his own mind, as sure to change as the wind.’
+
+‘He is not so much younger a boy than you are, Oliver,’ said Fan, with
+restrained spirit. ‘He is a little older than I am in years, and I
+don’t feel so very youthful in spirit. I should be inclined to think I
+was capable of knowing my own mind, and being held responsible for my
+actions. But, no doubt, women are a great deal older, in proportion,
+than men. You are all boys to us,’ said Fan, with demure motherliness.
+‘I have even ventured to call a sage like you a boy.’
+
+‘Fan,’ said Oliver, ‘don’t drive me beside myself. This is no occasion
+for teasing, and I could not have believed you the woman to begin
+to tease in such circumstances. I have been accustomed to think you
+sensible, capable of self-respect, rather proud than meek. Have you
+considered what sort of beggar Stanhope is, apart from his birth and
+breeding, and the grace which they have given him. He is feather-headed
+and an empty canister—if ever there were one. He has never thought
+of anything save his own pleasure since he was born. He is incapable
+of self-restraint, even if he knew the thing by name. He is the
+incarnation of selfishness—genial and jolly now, I grant you, but
+which will without fail grow coarser and harder with years. At forty
+Harry Stanhope’s stupidity and self-indulgence will be palpable to the
+shallowest intellect, and so may his grossness—even his brutality—if
+his good angel do not interfere.’
+
+‘His good angel will interfere. How dare you accuse and prophecy evil
+of a better man than yourself—if humility and kindliness are better
+than arrogance and harshness, as the Bible teaches?’
+
+Fan stood at bay for her lover. ‘Harry is not a student or a scholar,
+any more than I am by nature,’ she said more quietly; ‘but that
+does not make him and me less of a man and a woman than if we were
+a fantastic theorist and an abstracted visionary. If he thinks of
+his pleasure, why not? when his pleasure has always been manly and
+honest—and is not that to his credit, left to himself, to all intents
+and purposes, as he has been? And it is not true that he cares only for
+himself; he has been a good and true brother, as he will be good and
+true in all the relations of life.’
+
+Oliver groaned. ‘Do you know what the farmers, with whom he classes
+himself, say of his conceited, childish enterprise? They lighten their
+own troubles by guffawing over his muddles and messes. They say, “The
+plough would need to turn up gold for Mr. Stanhope to reap a harvest,
+even if times were as good as they are bad for agriculture.” They
+calculate confidently he will have succeeded in making such a mull of
+the business into which he has rushed, without a particle of knowledge
+or experience, that he will be sold out and polished off in three or
+four years at the farthest.’
+
+‘The more need of the nearest and dearest of his friends to stand by
+him,’ said Fan, with steadfast eyes.
+
+‘His best friend will not be able to stand by him and defend him from
+the ruinous consequences of the new habits he is grafting on the
+old,’ maintained Oliver doggedly. ‘Harry Stanhope was known at Oxford
+as one of the most careless and reckless of the undergraduates who
+were his contemporaries. He was so unboundedly social that he was
+never missing where company of any kind congregated. If he could not
+get good, he could put up with bad. He was a regular frequenter of
+village alehouses, as well as a conspicuous figure at every “wine”
+within his reach. Now—country-town markets and the farmers’ circles in
+commercial inns are his great resorts. To a man of Harry Stanhope’s
+accommodating temperament, every company in which swallowing strong
+drink is inseparably associated with friendly intercourse, must prove
+playing with fire. God forbid that I should say the lad is cursed by a
+fatal taint, but it will be next to a miracle in his case if the demon
+is disappointed in getting possession of his victim.’
+
+‘Oliver,’ said Fan, with bated breath in her anger, as she stood on the
+hearthrug, confronting him, ‘who is it that did not care though he were
+mixed up with the low larks of the shop lads of Friarton, so that even
+respectable people could grow common liars and slanderers, taking it
+upon them to say that he was sentenced to carry about in his person, to
+his dying day, the mark of his degrading excesses?’
+
+‘Let them say it,’ retorted Oliver, raising his head, quickly, and
+without flinching; ‘that is another affair. The end may justify the
+means, if some small love of fair play and poor humanity keep a man
+true to his colours, through evil as well as good report; if his
+conscience clear him, and they who ought to know, are satisfied he
+is falsely accused. But only charity on the brain can regard Harry
+Stanhope as bitten by a rabid regard for his kind, or for anybody save
+himself, and perhaps his second self Horry.’
+
+He tried her on other grounds. ‘How can you take it upon you to be
+a farmer’s wife, Fan? How can you pretend to acquirements which you
+never possessed, which you have never so much as tried to gain? You
+have always had the strongest prejudice against the position of a
+tradesman, and I take it you cannot put a yeoman on a much higher
+level. Your ambition, which you did not conceal, was to lead the life
+of a conventional lady.’
+
+‘I was silly,’ said Fan, composedly. ‘I did not know what a gentleman
+could do, and yet retain his gentle bearing unimpaired. I never met a
+true gentleman—forgive me, Oliver—till I saw Harry Stanhope. I will
+learn all farmhouse work that a farmer’s wife can do, for the sake of
+my farmer, to help him to conquer fortune, more quickly than I learned
+lessons at school to fit me to be your companion. I am not afraid to
+say that I will be a good farmer’s wife—behind none in the country.’
+Fan pledged herself proudly, and Oliver knew the pledge would be
+redeemed, though Fan died for it.
+
+‘Are you willing to enter a family, every member of which will look
+down on you, if one of them own you at all, which I very much doubt?
+Can you not open your wilfully closed eyes enough to see that Horace
+Stanhope has not come here of late with his brother?’
+
+‘Oliver!’ said Fan with flashing eyes, ‘you are seeking to pique me
+by an objection which you must know does not exist in connection with
+Harry. He has no people with claims on him. He has no friends who
+would consider his welfare before any good to themselves, save me and
+his brother—who has not gone against him, and surely the more reason
+we should not forsake him. Did not Harry break off from his uncles
+and aunts when he became a farmer? They allowed him to follow his own
+course, and they must accept the consequences. “If they cut it up
+rough,” as he says, “they have themselves to blame for it,” when they
+consented to what was likely to happen, if he and Horry became yeomen.
+Poor Horry, he would be as jealous as a woman of any other woman’s
+coming between him and Harry!’ said Fan, with a little laugh and blush;
+‘but I will help him to get over it for Harry’s sake: he is waiving
+his objections already. The worst of it is, I am not just such a girl
+as Agneta, with whom the poor dear fellow was always sparring, so that
+Harry had to come in with his sweet temper, and reconcile the two. But
+do you imagine that I find fault with Horace Stanhope because he would
+not count any woman beneath the rank of a duke’s daughter, who was not
+beautiful as the day, and an angel of virtue, deserving of Harry? There
+would have been the old search over again, if the devoted soul had been
+consulted:
+
+  ‘Where is the maiden of mortal strain
+   May match with the Baron of Triermain?
+
+‘It is little you know of things, Oliver, though you are a
+philosopher, if you think that would have made me angry with Horry,
+who will soon forgive me, because of the sympathy between us. Besides
+Horry, there is only Agneta who is really interested,’ said Fan, after
+an instant’s pause, ‘and she is my friend.’
+
+‘It remains to be seen how far the friendship will stand this test!’
+said Oliver with gloomy scepticism. He was so exasperated as to add a
+taunt, for which he was sorry the moment after he had uttered it. ‘Why
+don’t you admit frankly that you are besotted enough to believe the
+whole race of Vere de Vere will open their arms to receive you into
+their castles? That must be the real inducement to form such an insane
+connection—not the cheap merits of a lad like Harry Stanhope.’
+
+‘If you think so badly of me, Oliver, even though I may have given you
+some cause by being foolish and worldly-minded, I cannot help it!’
+said Fan, deeply wounded and offended.
+
+There was no more to be said. Harry Stanhope must not be kept kicking
+his heels in the mill-house court a moment longer. As Harry had calmly
+stated at an early stage of the contest, Oliver could not prevent his
+sister from making her own choice of a husband: she was of age, she
+was mistress of herself in every way, including the disposal of her
+little fortune. With respect to that, Oliver had been more just to
+Harry Stanhope than her brother had shown himself to Fan. Oliver had
+not attributed mercenary motives to the lad, as the person who ought to
+have known her best had fastened upon Fan the all-powerful promptings
+of a vain and small ambition. Oliver was quite aware that men of the
+class to which Harry belonged are often as good arithmeticians as the
+huxterers whom the gentlemen despise. The sons of the most ancient
+and noble families, having the bluest blood in their veins, will
+look out for ‘tin’ with their wives, even though the suitors have to
+descend into mercantile walks and put up with plebeian antecedents,
+in order to secure the indispensable metal, as unblushingly as the
+northern farmer sought ‘prupitty’ with his daughter-in-law. Perhaps the
+young patricians may plead the obligation of necessity in the cases
+of all save the heads of their houses. The eldest son has his future
+secured; but if he has unfortunate younger brothers, it may reasonably
+be said—in spite of the gentlemanly professions provided for them,
+which, when it comes to that, for the most part imply the spending
+rather than the earning of money—they cannot dig, and to beg they are
+ashamed. But Harry was not of this stamp, though he may have used their
+slang in conversation. His mortal enemy could not accuse him of being
+calculating. His defects, however flagrant, were free from mercenary
+meanness.
+
+Oliver looked upon himself as compelled to yield a formal outward
+assent, in contradiction to the inward protest, to Fan’s right in the
+selection of a mate.
+
+Therefore, there was no open rupture in the little family. Harry
+Stanhope, after his momentary spurt of anger, only laughed at his
+future brother-in-law’s manner of receiving his first overtures, and
+at Oliver’s way of conducting himself in the later arrangements. In
+Harry’s eyes, Oliver’s behaviour was in keeping with the grumpiness
+which the young aristocrat had always imputed to his democratic senior.
+It was part of the _rôle_ of a radical, which Harry conceived Oliver to
+be.
+
+Harry could afford to treat the matter lightly; neither did Oliver,
+after the first pang of painful surprise and bitter disappointment,
+wish to quarrel outright with Fan’s bridegroom. Thus the two preserved
+a truce; though they fell off, rather than drew closer, in whatever
+friendship had hitherto existed between them, in the prospect of their
+nearer alliance. Oliver turned over Harry entirely to Fan, as, no
+doubt, he might have done in any circumstances, unless the young fellow
+had been Oliver’s chosen chum and mate as well as Fan’s.
+
+Fan smothered the keen regret called forth by her brother’s unshaken,
+inveterate hostility to the marriage he could not hinder, and to the
+gulf deepening between them, as best she might.
+
+In every other light Fan’s lot was a triumph. For she had never
+been mercenary, any more than Harry had been. She had been aspiring
+in a sense, with a craving for superficial refinement, as somehow
+representing to Fan the far deeper refinement and nobility of nature,
+of which the surface polish—however becoming in itself and pleasant
+to encounter—is by no means the inseparable accompaniment; and for
+pure love of Harry Stanhope, Fan was prepared to crush her individual
+tastes. She was willing to be a poor man’s partner, to drudge as a
+practical housekeeper, to toil after another fashion as the notable
+wife of a lucky farmer, to forget her girlish dreams of bountiful ease,
+culture, and elegance.
+
+Fan had her bright, brief day both in a higher and a lower sense. She
+enjoyed that short interval in which a woman is beside herself and
+counts herself—not merely the happiest of women, but the only happy
+woman in the world deserving of the name, because she has not only won
+a heart in exchange for her own, but because this heart, subdued by
+her power, is the heart of hearts to her, compared to which all other
+hearts are little better than dross.
+
+Fan had also the lower, but what was to her the genuine and natural
+gratification of being conscious that those of her neighbours on
+whose opinions she had been wont to set store, having arrived at the
+unanimous conclusion that Fan Constable had done well for herself,
+became suddenly moved to change their chorus of condemnation to a
+chant of glorification. The Fremantles and Wrights proved themselves
+no more mercenary than Fan and Harry. The magnates of Friarton had not
+worshipped in fear and trembling a big burly image of mammon, but a
+shadowy fetish of gentility. Fan Constable, whom the ladies and the
+professional set now acknowledged to be the most charming ladylike
+girl in the neighbourhood, would not be a farmer’s wife to them.
+She would—since the inferior distinction merged and was lost in the
+superior—be the wife of Harry Stanhope, grandson of Lord St. Ives,
+nephew by marriage of Lord Mount Mallow. Accordingly these authorities
+renewed their withdrawn attentions with an eager lavishness, in
+striking contrast to the donors’ former cautious, stinted dole of
+recognition. They betrayed the knowledge, which Fan shared, that it
+would soon be her turn to pay them attention.
+
+When Fan’s honours were fully fledged, she might have a share of the
+liberty which was vouchsafed to her husband, granted to her. She might
+skim the milk in her dairy, and gather the eggs in her poultry-yard,
+even carry them in the skirt of her gown, as Agneta Stanhope had
+carried them, without challenge. And if Harry had been the son and not
+the grandson of a viscount, and thus only one degree instead of two
+removed from a peerage, or if his father’s father had been a marquis or
+a duke, who knows but that Fan might have been allowed to go on to milk
+her cows and feed her calves—not in frolic?
+
+Mrs. Hilliard was impressed by Fan’s promotion. ‘That girl Fan
+Constable has proved her mettle with perfectly lawful weapons, for she
+is too true a little Philistine to stoop to employ any other.’ Mrs.
+Hilliard ate her leek before her cousin, and it was no small comfort to
+Louisa Hilliard, in her state of mind at the moment, that Catherine was
+next to nobody when eating a leek was in question.
+
+‘Both of these Constables have used me ill, have got the better of
+me—of us all.’ Mrs. Hilliard spoke ruefully for her. ‘Fan, with her
+negative drawing-room and positive attitude, has been and gone and done
+it under our very noses.’
+
+‘Done what?’ enquired the only half-awake Catherine.
+
+‘Distanced her competitors—the Houghtons, the head-master’s nieces; how
+do I know how many? all who had entered for the prize. She has overcome
+and trampled upon her foes, and carried off the chance which might have
+been yours, my dear, only you sat still and missed it.’
+
+‘Was Harry Stanhope my chance in life?’ enquired Catherine, opening
+her weary eyes. ‘Have I missed my all in losing him? Well, I did not
+flatter myself there was any great thing to look forward to in my
+career, if a woman can be said to have a career, but I have been guilty
+of the presumption of dreading (and do you know the dread gave a kind
+of trembling interest to life?) that there might be greater losses to
+encounter than that of Harry Stanhope’s handkerchief—not that there was
+ever the remotest prospect of its being thrown at me.’
+
+‘Catherine!’ and with the exclamation Mrs. Hilliard looked at her
+cousin gravely for once, though her lively mind soon reverted to its
+ordinary track. ‘You frighten me, and that is treating me still worse
+than the Constables have treated me. My cousins, whom I owned, have
+eluded my grasp, and got beyond me, the one floored and the other
+crowned—alike disqualified for serving as food for my entertainment.
+But I never asked you to entertain me’—Mrs. Hilliard assailed
+Catherine, growing serious again—‘only to entertain yourself. And if
+you cannot do it in any other way, I am tempted to wish I could approve
+of a Protestant sisterhood for you. It might afford you a refuge when
+the world makes you so tired that you seem in danger of falling down
+under the load. I can lift it off myself with my little finger, but I
+cannot with my two hands, and all my might, remove the burden from you,
+poor child.’ The clear ring of Mrs. Hilliard’s voice had softened, and
+there was moisture in the eyes usually so dry in their sparkle.
+
+‘Never mind me, Louisa,’ said Catherine, roused to faint surprise and
+reluctance to cause trouble. ‘I am only too well off, you know. I am
+sickening—that is, if I am sickening—“of a vague disease;” I ought to
+have to work for my bread—supposing bread is worth working for—yet
+starvation must really be an unpleasant process to stimulate so
+many people to frantic exertions in order to avert the catastrophe.
+Protestant sisterhoods would not suit me, nor would Catholic nunneries,
+though I think, of the two, I should prefer the last, as possessing a
+respectable antiquity and consistency. But to enter either would be a
+sham in me, since I really believe that the Son of God could help me
+staying with you, as well as with any lady superior or abbess—that we
+are as near heaven living in the world in which He lived, as when we
+try in vain to get out of it. It would only be a change of yoke, and my
+shoulders seem to be slimmer than other women’s,’ remarked Catherine
+with a forlorn smile. ‘Besides, no sisterhood would receive a menagerie
+with me—and whatever else I might be brought to resign, I do not see
+how I could get on without a large small family of beasts and birds.’
+
+‘Thank you for the implied compliment,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, recovering
+herself with a laugh. ‘Catherine, you administer tonics, though you
+won’t swallow them.’
+
+When the time came for Mrs. Hilliard to offer the usual
+congratulations, her hearty admiration of Fan’s prowess so influenced
+the lady, that she presented the tribute cordially, and was entitled to
+complain that Fan had no reason to receive it superciliously.
+
+But Catherine was not merely languid in her felicitations, she stopped
+short in them, and substituted an uncalled-for piece of condolence:
+‘How dull it will be for you with Mr. Stanhope and his brother at
+Copley Grange Farm, when you have been accustomed to solitude with
+your own brother!’ looking at amazed, indignant Fan, with great
+uncomprehending, commiserating eyes. ‘I hope you will not die of
+_ennui_ after the first week. No, I don’t forget that Mr. Stanhope is
+very fond of visiting, and you will have to visit a great deal with
+him, but won’t that also be dreadfully fatiguing?’
+
+The Polleys and Dadds were not behind the others with their ovation;
+but, to Fan’s immense relief, she found she had established by this
+last step such a distance between herself and her early associates
+that they no longer even attempted to bridge it over. Fan Constable
+had succeeded in passing out of their sphere. They wished her joy as
+it were through Harry Stanhope, and they were as respectful in the
+expression of their good wishes, as if the rank which she was so soon
+to borrow from him already belonged to her.
+
+Old Dadd refrained from a single joke, and was almost solemn in
+alluding to the subject.
+
+Mrs. Polley only bristled up to Oliver, and represented to him that he
+would no longer be content to sit down in her back parlour, since he
+might be making the round of all the castles in the kingdom in company
+with his brother-in-law.
+
+Jack Dadd actually called Fan ‘Miss Constable,’ unless in the strictest
+privacy, among his most intimate cronies, or as a means of teasing the
+Polley girls.
+
+’Mily Polley did not propose to call on Mrs. Stanhope. ‘She is a cut
+above us, now, and no mistake, when she’ll be going among his grand
+relations—generals and admirals, and Lady This and Lady That, every
+time he takes her up to town. I dare say the fine people will snub
+her, but Fan Constable won’t mind that, since they can’t close their
+doors against her, and she married to their nephew and first cousin;
+and she’ll give as good as she’ll take, I’ll say that for her. She’s
+never behind. But I tell you what, ’Liza, we’ll put our pride in our
+pockets—what’s the good of letting it stand in our way? and come round
+mother, and go to church instead of to chapel, the first Sunday after
+Mrs. Stanhope has returned from her wedding jaunt. We’ll try if we
+can’t get a wrinkle—as Jack Dadd says—out of her new bonnet. Only Fan
+Constable does not know how to dress herself. Yet she has caught a
+duck of a real gentleman, like Mr. Stanhope is, with her dowdy clothes,
+and her plain sewing, and her whity-brown face,’ cried ’Mily, in
+exasperation at the contradiction.
+
+‘She had been his fate,’ said ’Liza, mysteriously.
+
+‘You shut up, ’Liza, and don’t talk as if you believed in
+fortune-telling—not that I should mind a bit getting my fortune told
+by a right old woman, in a red cloak, with a pack of cards. It would
+be lovely. And, oh my! wouldn’t mother be down on me, if she found me
+out!’ cried ’Mily, in high glee at the bare idea of the servant girl’s
+escapade.
+
+‘It is an instinct of self-preservation on the fellow’s part, and on
+Fan’s it is the old infatuation and the recent reaction working their
+worst together. There is no help for it,’ said Oliver to himself,
+slowly and sadly.
+
+Beyond the area of Copley Grange Farm every voice of every Stanhope
+was dumb on the announcement of Harry’s marriage. The members of the
+Stanhope family certainly agreed with Oliver, that it was useless to
+interpose from any hope of dealing effectually with the consummation
+of Harry’s descent in life, to which his friends had formerly been
+provoked into giving a reluctant consent.
+
+At last Agneta wrote to Fan, very prettily, within certain limits.
+Agneta was glad that her dear old Harry should be happy. She thanked
+Fan for making his happiness. She trusted that she and Fan would always
+remain friends. But there was not a word of Agneta’s coming down to
+Copley Grange Farm to grace the marriage; not a hint of any future
+visit; not a syllable of meeting Fan again in the whole course of their
+respective lives.
+
+Fan read the letter without any remark. As she read she grew still
+more colourless in her olive paleness, which ’Mily Polley called
+‘whity-brownness,’ but there was also a more steadfast set of her
+well-cut mouth, a more indomitable expression in her brown eyes.
+
+She did not give Oliver the letter to read; indeed, the brother and
+sister were no longer on such terms as to volunteer an exchange of
+confidences. She only surrendered the dainty epistle to Harry at his
+special request.
+
+Harry reddened and bit his lip as he took in, at a couple of glances,
+the familiar writing on the page and a half of note-paper. ‘Dash it!
+I did not think Aggie could have been such a cold-hearted chit,’ he
+muttered; ‘I did think she was more of a lady than to be a stuck-up
+snob.’
+
+‘Never mind,’ said Fan, with determined magnanimity; ‘I dare say it is
+hard for her to have you stoop for a wife.’
+
+‘Stoop!’ protested Harry, who was loyal in his attachments, if he was
+anything; ‘it is my first regular attempt at climbing since I got out
+of the garret window at one of our tutors. I nearly broke my neck then,
+but I have fallen on my feet this time. I have done the best stroke of
+business I can ever hope to accomplish, though I should live to head
+all the markets round with my heifers and south downs, and win the
+prizes from the Prince and all the agricultural nobs in the country
+at the show at Islington. Ask your brother who has the best of the
+bargain in our blessed contract. It is all Aunt Julia’s doing. In her
+aping of liberality and angling for popularity she is at heart the most
+time-serving and intolerant old woman under the sun.’
+
+‘Then it will be a victory indeed, if we can force her, and everybody
+else with her, to come round to our side at last,’ said Fan, fired by
+her dauntless courage.
+
+There was not more than a grain of truth in Oliver’s cruel
+accusation of what had led Fan to listen to Harry Stanhope. But
+that fructifying grain, together with the passion of her love for
+Harry, helped the unimaginative, rational young woman to rear an airy
+structure—representing her ultimate relations with the Stanhopes
+and the great world. There was Harry encouraged, aided, ‘kept up to
+the scratch,’ by his wife’s proud and loving support in all manly
+energy and perseverance in his profession. There were his name, fame,
+and fortune established, as the most enterprising and successful
+gentleman-farmer in the country. (Fan paid no heed to the signs of the
+times or to impending agricultural distress, in her dream). There was
+the reappearance of the Hartleys on every rumour of a fresh election,
+with John Hartley, thankful to accept Harry Stanhope as an ally on
+equal terms, with Lady Cicely, who had once demurred at the possibility
+of Fan’s accompanying her brother to dine at Copley Grange, pleased
+to drive over with her husband, and dine herself at Copley Grange
+Farm. Of course, that must be after the old farmhouse was added to and
+improved, so as not to be altogether ill-matched with the manor-house.
+If the _entrée_ to the manor-house were secured during the Hartleys’
+temporary occupation of Copley Grange, it would almost certainly remain
+free to the Stanhopes when Mr. Amyott resumed his permanent reign. The
+example of the Stanhopes’ landlord would be followed by other squires
+whose houses were within visiting distance of the Farm.
+
+Fan, in her chrysalis state, had often looked from the mill side of
+the Brook across to the park and great house, with its dignified blot
+of an Italian façade. She had fancied how bountiful and gracious life
+must be there, contrasted with life in the back shops and parlours
+of the Polleys and Dadds. But she had felt then that if by virtue of
+Oliver’s genius and scholarship she ever rose to cross the threshold
+of such an Eden of refinement and culture, its roses would be full of
+thorns for her, simply because she would not be, like the daughters
+of that privileged region, to the manner born. Innately she was a
+lady, but outwardly she would blunder and flounder in the labyrinths
+of precedence and etiquette, or amidst the appalling topics of sport,
+horses and wines, from all acquaintance with which her sex, alas! did
+not exempt a woman of the higher orders. Fan would cause flippant
+waiting-maids to titter, and staid butlers to frown, at her mistakes.
+
+Now all this was changed. When Fan should procure the ‘Open, Sesame!’
+to the charmed houses by so strange a process as that of becoming a
+yeoman’s wife and doing a yeoman’s wife’s work, all her troubles would
+be at an end. Harry had been born to the purple, and he would always be
+at hand to give involuntarily the cue which she would take as quickly
+as ever King Cophetua’s beggar-maid borrowed lustre from her royal
+husband, and developed without loss of time into a right queenly lady.
+Fan would not wear sparkling diamonds or sumptuous velvet, indeed, but
+she had never cared for jewels or fine clothes or luxury. What she
+had cared for she would attain, the simple elegance of bearing and
+behaviour of a gentlewoman, by art as well as by nature.
+
+In the meantime, while these chickens were unhatched, Friarton took it
+as a matter of course that Harry Stanhope’s kindred should begin by
+looking coldly on the projected alliance between Copley Grange Farm and
+Friarton Mill, and did not think of deposing Fan from her pedestal as a
+bride because she was subjected to this ordeal.
+
+One relative came forward before the knot was tied, and accepted
+Fan—not simply as an inevitable misfortune, but as a member of the
+illustrious family of Stanhope. The next time Harry came to the Mill,
+after Agneta’s note had been received there, he was not only attended
+by his second shadow; a voice, which had been hitherto dumb, spoke.
+
+Horace managed, with his surly awkwardness—which was something
+quite different from Oliver Constable’s awkwardness—and his bilious
+ungraciousness, even in conferring a compliment, which made it seem as
+if a good-natured impulse went entirely against the grain with him, to
+propose himself as Harry’s groomsman. ‘If you don’t mind, if no other
+body will serve Harry’s purpose, and help to turn him off,’ he said to
+Fan in the voice, the tone of which was out of tune and grating, unless
+sometimes when he addressed his brother.
+
+Fan had never smiled so sweetly on Harry in the whole course of his
+wooing, as she now smiled on the grudging, unjoyous groomsman, who,
+sure enough, was to be Harry’s servant, not hers. ‘Oh! I am glad and
+grateful that Harry’s oldest and best friend is to stand by him on his
+marriage day,’ she said audibly to the dull ears. ‘I know you are not
+thinking of me, and I do not wish you to think of me—I only say this to
+express, though you may not care to hear, what an obligation and honour
+you are conferring on me by acting as Harry’s brother still. But it is
+so, Mr. Horace’ (she had not begun to call him by his Christian name,
+just as he had never called her anything save ‘Miss Constable.’ She was
+in some apprehension that ‘Miss Constable’ would not even pass into
+‘Mrs. Stanhope’ with Horace). ‘I will never forget your kindness to
+Harry,’ she finished.
+
+He looked at her for a moment with an impulse of furious displeasure
+added to his ordinary gruff, sardonic mood, as if he questioned her
+right to thank him for Harry, and bade her be wary of taking so
+much upon her. Then her tender tact penetrated the thick skin of his
+jaundiced, warped nature. ‘All right, Fan,’ he said, touching her hand
+and dropping it again, and giving what exacting, fastidious people
+might have classed as a ghastly grin. But from that date Fan was
+happily convinced that though she was a very small person compared to
+Harry in his brother’s eyes, Horace had forgiven her on the spot, and
+taken her, for all time to come, into a humble corner of the chamber of
+his affections, since she had shown herself capable of comprehending,
+in a degree, what the brothers were to each other, and would never seek
+to separate them. Thus Harry Stanhope’s lovers and slaves became sworn
+allies, and not vowed adversaries.
+
+The hard lines were for Oliver. It was all very well for Sally Pope
+to cackle that now Miss Fan had got her will, and she wished the
+young mistress well, neither was it any harm to speed her going, for
+marriage was the best lot that could befall most young women, and she
+would ‘fettle’ Master Oliver—see how comfortable she would make him, in
+all the old homely ways, like a king with his faithful housekeeper.
+
+Oliver had no doubt Sally would make his body comfortable, but what of
+the refreshment of his mind and heart now that his father was dead,
+when his only sister—the little Fan of other days—alienated from him
+already, should have left him in order to make a foolish _mésalliance_
+of which no good could come? Friarton Mill in its sweet domestic beauty
+would be robbed of its chief attraction so soon as Fan was gone.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                   ‘THE DEVIL SHALL NOT HAVE HARRY.’
+
+
+The three years allotted by his brother-farmers for Harry Stanhope to
+run through what small patrimony he had invested in Copley Grange Farm,
+and what credit he had begun upon, did their work more effectually than
+the months given by Oliver Constable for Harry to tire of his part as a
+yeoman.
+
+Fan had held her husband back with a little hand which was like a
+vice for staunchness, but which had, at last, loosened its grip under
+overwhelming pressure.
+
+Horace had thrown his passive dead weight in the way, to impede Harry’s
+swift progress to ruin.
+
+Oliver Constable had not stood aside in sulky neutrality, or hard
+inflexibility flavoured with vindictiveness, to witness the fulfilment
+of his predictions. He would have given much for them to prove false.
+He did all he could to prevent their realisation. He had little in
+common with his brother-in-law, and it was in the characters of the two
+men to grow always more apart instead of nearer to each other. Still
+Oliver, though he was not much in Harry Stanhope’s company, and though
+Harry showed himself constantly more restive, under any influence which
+Oliver had ever possessed over him, tried his best in the thankless
+office of looking after Harry, when he was beyond his wife’s scope, and
+of interposing to save him—not merely from the consequences of his own
+folly, but from falling a victim to his neighbours’ weaknesses. As a
+result of this knight-errantry on Oliver’s part, there was an entire
+rupture between him and Jack Dadd on Harry’s account.
+
+Harry Stanhope’s incapacity for drawing distinctions—moral as well as
+social—his vanity and passion for popularity, had all pointed with
+tolerable clearness to one conclusion from the first. He had no notion
+of what was expedient. He was not particular in his easygoing fashion.
+He was bound to turn soon from his self-imposed obligations, selected
+very much at haphazard, and sitting with the greatest lightness upon
+him. He must have excitement of some kind, at any cost.
+
+The upper, and, to be fair, the more decorous, set in Friarton,
+which had commenced by being delighted with their opposite in Harry
+Stanhope’s _abandon_, matched as it was with his gentle birth and
+breeding, ceased to prize his company when they found it was bestowed
+on their social inferiors with a thousand times the lavishness
+and indiscriminateness which they had severely censured in Oliver
+Constable. And all the time Oliver had claimed a right to act as he
+did, and asserted a principle in it, while he had shown a method in
+his madness. In the course of the last three years, he had brought his
+accusers to acknowledge that, though he had lost himself in the matter
+of his money, talents, and education, with the desirable position which
+they might have commanded, he was not a reprobate, and he had known
+when to stop long before the climax of individual degradation.
+
+As Harry Stanhope ceased to be the idol of the gentlemen and ladies,
+he became also less of the pet and more of the butt of the lower grade
+into which he was increasingly thrown. The young farmers and tradesmen
+with whom he fraternised, not only at market and in cricket-matches and
+games of bowls, but on every occasion, public and private, still looked
+up to him in many things, and copied him—not always to their benefit,
+but a stronger tincture of contempt was getting infused into their
+liking.
+
+This was especially true of Jack Dadd, who, while he continued proud
+of being hand-in-glove with Harry Stanhope, did not scruple to make a
+cat’s-paw of his friend, and rather enjoyed leading him into a scrape
+and leaving him there. This disloyalty and shade of baseness did not
+spring necessarily from Jack’s class or calling, and they had still
+less to do with his natural good temper. They belonged to long-standing
+class feuds and the lingering spite thus engendered. It was almost
+inevitably wreaked on a person who, however ready to forget social
+prejudices, sprang still from the privileged order.
+
+Oliver humbled himself in the room of Harry Stanhope, and through Harry
+in the place of Fan, to remonstrate with Jack Dadd.
+
+‘You are older than Stanhope, Jack,’ Oliver reminded his quondam
+friend, who had bragged earlier of their friendship, ‘and you were not
+brought up in the very odour of thoughtlessness.’
+
+‘So I suppose I ain’t fit to go about with your gentleman
+brother-in-law, unless as his keeper. “Not if I know it;” “Not for
+Joe,”’ interrupted Jack, rudely and flippantly. ‘I ain’t so fond of
+being a fellow’s keeper, as you are, Constable, though you don’t seem
+to like to try it on Harry Stanhope. I thought you had got a lesson and
+rid yourself of such priggishness, long ago. It ain’t a compliment to
+Stanhope to make out he’s not fit to take care of hisself, or to choose
+his company and be on equal terms with them. Lord! it was a funny sort
+of equality last night when I cut my stick, just as he was challenging
+the stableman at the “Wheat Ears” to box with him, Dummy being to hold
+their jackets, I take it. Stanhope ain’t proud; I’ll say that for him,
+neither when he’s as tight as a lord, nor when he’s as sober as a
+judge—which don’t often happen now-a-days. It comes to this, Constable,
+I’ve had enough of your sauce of dictation. There was not so much
+difference between that and your sister’s airs, and a fine pass they’ve
+brought her to: got her a gentleman for a husband, no doubt—and, what
+is more, he’s worth the two of you; but he’s made her work for him so
+as keeping a shop would have been a joke by comparison, and he’ll kick
+the causeway all the same.’
+
+After that conversation there was an end to friendly intercourse
+between Oliver and Jack, and to any fond hope which the former had once
+been so conceited as to entertain, of swaying his brother-tradesman to
+higher aims.
+
+Harry Stanhope’s deterioration in every respect included his inveterate
+idleness in all pursuits which did not take the form of sport or
+frolic, while ploughing, sowing, cattle-feeding, even hay-making
+and reaping, when they ceased to be novelties, ceased also to be
+sport or frolic, lost every element of interest and amusement, and
+became positively repugnant to the man who remained always a boy.
+He neglected his farming utterly, or made wild havoc with it in his
+fitful, reckless operations, forced sales, and consequent desperate
+losses.
+
+With all this wanton waste Fan had nothing to do. She had accomplished
+wonders in the _rôle_ she had undertaken. Her dairy produce and poultry
+were from the first among the best in the neighbourhood. She competed
+successfully with those farmers’ wives who were either nothing save
+dairymaids and henwives, or who employed experienced servants to
+do their mistresses’ work by proxy. Any prizes which agricultural
+societies awarded to the tenants of Copley Grange Farm were for its
+mistress’s butter and cheese, goslings and turkey poults.
+
+And all the time Fan was not a dairymaid alone, she was a gentleman’s
+wife deserving of the name. In order to unite the contrasting
+attributes, she rose up early and lay down late, and ate the bread
+of carefulness. She changed her dress as often as any fine lady who
+has nothing to do, no occupation or pleasure in life save dressing
+herself by the help of a maid. Fan was rewarded when Harry noticed the
+freshness of her calicot morning gown, the daintiness of her afternoon
+piqué, the good taste of her evening grenadine.
+
+Neither Harry nor Horace had an idea of gardening beyond sticking a
+spade into the ground once in the course of the spring and leaving it
+there after a quarter of an hour, or gathering an occasional handful of
+strawberries, while the cook demanded a regular supply of vegetables,
+and the masters missed seasonable fruit when it was not forthcoming,
+appearing to expect cherries, peaches, and pears to drop from the skies
+like manna. Fan read garden chronicles alternately with dairy manuals,
+and spent many a fatiguing hour of her early married life striving to
+direct the labours of an improvised gardener drawn from the ranks of
+the field workers. It was as much out of the question for Harry to keep
+a skilled gardener as it was for Fan to set up a qualified housekeeper
+and an experienced dairymaid, though Harry would have attempted it
+without a doubt if he had been suffered. But Fan stinted herself
+of all other worthy assistants, because a good cook and a trained
+table-boy who could cater for the two young men and wait upon them as
+they had been used to be waited upon, became absolutely necessary to
+the Stanhopes, as soon as their establishment at Copley Grange Farm
+acquired a settled character, and ceased to partake of the nature of
+living for a time _al fresco_, or _in villeggiatura_.
+
+When Fan became painfully conscious that she had not only her own
+arduous double and treble duties to attend to, she must also supply
+deficiencies on Harry’s part, she rose to the occasion gallantly.
+She added agricultural journals, treatises on husbandry, essays on
+farm stock, to her other diligent studies. She crammed herself; she
+sought to coach Harry. She tired herself to death and exposed herself
+to innumerable catarrhs and coughs wandering over the fields in all
+kinds of weather, to win him, by her close sympathetic companionship,
+to go among his men, or else to show them, in his interest, that there
+was the eye of a mistress, if not a master, on their work. She drove
+with Harry and Horace to the markets, and if it had not been to spare
+Harry’s dignity as a yeoman and his credit as a man—since poor Fan had
+a double object and a double terror in accompanying her husband to the
+towns—she would willingly have stood with him in the streets and the
+corn exchanges and sat with him at the inn tables. And if Fan could
+have been ten women instead of one, she might have saved Harry Stanhope
+from worldly destruction, as Mrs. Polley had rescued her husband and
+children. The two women did not resemble each other much in other
+respects, and there was little love lost between them. But they shared
+at least the helpfulness, command of resources, and capacity for brave
+effort and endurance, of the women of the trading classes—the women who
+have not been spoilt, and have not lost the instincts of energy and
+enterprise, and with it the most distant resemblance to the virtuous
+woman in Proverbs. This was part of Fan’s inheritance as a tradesman’s
+daughter, which she had neither guessed nor valued as it deserved.
+
+It is a fact established by experience that many women, both widows
+and spinsters, have made, when the opportunities offered themselves,
+good and successful farmers. Fan was a clever woman apart from
+book-learning; she was a woman of strong resolution, and she was
+stimulated and braced by every motive which she held dear. If a single
+mortal woman could have redeemed Harry Stanhope’s fortunes, she would
+have redeemed them.
+
+But the one woman must certainly have been ten, and Fan could
+not multiply her identity or render herself ubiquitous. She was
+tremendously overweighted—not only by the whole burden and anxiety of
+the farm’s being cast upon her, who ought to have been treated as the
+weaker vessel, but by the unnerving, despairing suspicion—deepening
+every day into hopeless conviction, that an impending wreck of other
+than worldly goods was to be faced and wrestled with. Harry was—in what
+became always more imminent and hideous danger—of being as speedily and
+utterly swamped in tastes, opinions, habits—all that constitute moral
+character, as in income and capital. In the dread and horror of that
+final downfall, all other falls began to look light.
+
+Fan ceased to pay the smallest heed to the fact that still there came
+no recognition of her entrance into the Stanhope family save from
+pretty, temporising, meaningless letters written by Agneta. The other
+members coolly ignored the intruder. Mrs. Harry Stanhope had no concern
+to spare for the consciousness that the little household at Copley
+Grange Farm were not keeping their first footing, which had seemed to
+be their birthright, among the upper ten of Friarton.
+
+She did not even mind that the Polleys and Dadds grew loud in amazed
+pity—in which, at the same time, she believed they revelled, over
+her altered circumstances. Mrs. Harry Stanhope was not only reduced
+to sending butter, cheese and eggs into the town for sale, she came
+herself to the Polleys’ shop and the cheese shop, to square the
+accounts which no one else at the farm could make out. Everybody knew
+Harry Stanhope had turned out a gentle beggar and purely ornamental. He
+could not afford to keep a bailiff to give the orders for which he was
+so little prepared that his men continually laughed in their sleeves
+at the instructions they received. The mistress of Copley Grange Farm
+commanded no more help than she could get from a girl under twenty
+in addition to the dairyman to manage the dairy and poultry-yard, on
+which it was evident the principal dependence of the farmer must rest.
+And did not the old Fan Constable look worn and pulled down, though
+she might be proud and ‘game’ to the last, as Mrs. Harry Stanhope? The
+truth was that when Fan was from home or in society without Harry, her
+eyes had already acquired the fixed, abstracted look of eyes which are
+looking beyond their present surroundings, and seeing in the distance
+things invisible to her companions. Her ears were constantly on the
+alert, strained to catch sounds inaudible to the rest of the party.
+While she was taking her share in the conversation or the business
+going on about her, there was a perpetual undercurrent of thought
+and care in her mind which had no reference to the topics discussed.
+She had great self-command, so that she could preserve a double
+consciousness, but she was never at ease, never without trouble; and
+the unresting worry beneath the calm and smiling surface, showed itself
+in a haggard, aging look which was rapidly robbing Fan of all traces of
+her youth.
+
+One evening in spring, when the thrushes and blackbirds were
+anticipating the nightingales and tuning their ’prentice notes in the
+hedges—which had gained the purplish-red bloom, the herald of a flush
+of green—over the primroses looking pale and cold in the raw wind of
+the March twilight, after the golden shields of the celandines, which
+had kept their neighbours company with quite an exuberance of jollity
+in the morning sunshine, had collapsed, as early as the afternoon, into
+small tightly wrapped-up balls, encased in dim green envelopes, Oliver
+was startled by Fan’s walking like a ghost unexpected, unannounced,
+and all alone, into the mill-house parlour.
+
+It was too early in the season for evening strolls, and lately Fan
+had never been seen abroad without her husband. The same could not be
+said of Harry, who was often enough from home without his wife, and
+not quite so frequently, but still with tolerably constant recurrence
+during the winter, without his brother, whom he had learnt at last
+to shake off imperiously. There had come to be an unnatural divorce
+between light and shade, and day and night, neither faring well in the
+separation. For Harry, all by himself, drove his chariot of the sun,
+like another Phaëton, madly, and if he did not set the world on fire,
+his own eyes grew scorched and bloodshot, his lips parched, his hands
+palsied; the whole goodly springs of his manliness and kindliness were
+dried up and polluted with ashes, because of the burden of consuming
+fire he had laid hold of and would thenceforth try in vain to guide and
+control.
+
+As for Horace, he would slink away like a dog summarily dismissed by
+his master, withdraw into his corner to sit moodily there, and only
+start up on the distant sound of Harry’s clogged instead of winged
+footsteps. Oliver had seen Horace and Fan exchange furtive, miserable
+glances when Horace returned thus alone, and drew back into the
+greatest gloom which the little drawing-room afforded him. Then the
+pair would sedulously pretend to read and work while in reality their
+ears were on the stretch, and their hearts on the rack, till far on
+into the night. These two knew and trusted each other thoroughly by
+this time, though Oliver was certain the looks never passed into words.
+Wife and brother remained too loyal in their allegiance.
+
+As Oliver rose hastily to bid Fan welcome, he saw more plainly than
+he had yet seen it, and with a sharp pang at the sight, the change in
+her looks. A small woman to begin with, she was now little more than
+skin and bone. Her brown eyes appeared a sombre black, set in great
+shadowy hollows in her white face. The straight firm line of her lips
+was drooping and quivering. She put her thin hand in Oliver’s and held
+up her face to be kissed, and spoke without any preamble. ‘I am beaten,
+Oliver. They say an Englishman never knows when he is beaten, but that
+is a man, not a woman. Yet did you ever think I would give in with
+life? and I have given in. I have come to you, not to save me—you tried
+that once and failed. What did it matter if I might have saved another?
+only I have not—there’s the rub. I don’t mind myself, and you need not
+mind me. But you must do something. I tell you, Oliver, you must move
+heaven and earth to save Harry.’ Her voice rose into a little weak cry.
+She was like a creature who had lost all command over herself.
+
+But it was not so much this reversal of natural law in a woman—by
+organisation and courage, self-sufficing, self-restrained, rational
+and resolute—which smote Oliver Constable with dismay and compunction,
+as if he had been the sinner whose sin was at the bottom of this
+spectacle, the most pitiable he had ever beheld. It was some
+comprehension of what Fan must have suffered, of what it had cost
+this woman—ardent and steadfast as women even more than men can prove
+themselves—to own herself beaten, to grovel as it were at his knees,
+and fling herself for help on him of all men, who, though he had been a
+brother in more than name, had interposed with all his might, without
+effect, as both of them were well aware, to turn her from the step
+which had brought her to this pass.
+
+He remembered having, more than once in their lives, angrily accused
+her of being incapable of changing her mind; and—knowing as he had
+seemed to know her high spirit, unquenchable energy, and unswerving
+determination—he had been tempted to believe, against right reason,
+that however mistaken and misplaced her aspirations, or foolish and
+baseless her dreams, Fan could not be baffled, and would not be
+vanquished.
+
+The end of all was, that she was more thoroughly subdued, presenting
+a more deplorable object of contemplation, than if she had been a far
+feebler woman.
+
+‘My God!’ cried Oliver in his heart—moved as he was to its depths when
+a believing man can but appeal to the Father of his spirit; ‘what must
+she not have borne to crush her whole being, lay her pride in the dust,
+extinguish the last spark of hope, and break her heart?’
+
+The next moment Oliver was briskly administering to Fan, as most
+people in his position, at their wits’ end what to do for the best,
+would have administered it, a cold douche—first on the suppliant,
+whom he would fain have taken into his arms and sheltered from every
+farther blast of the stormy wind which had cast her down bleeding and
+powerless, to implore mercy for another and not herself—and next on her
+agonised petition.
+
+‘Nonsense, Fan, you are over-wrought, my dear; your nerves are
+unstrung; you do not know what you are saying.’
+
+But the time for pulling herself together, struggling to her feet, and
+staggering on with the veil drawn decently down again over her torture
+and her faintness, was over for Fan. ‘I do know what I am saying,
+Oliver,’ she insisted with ashy lips, while the hand which clutched his
+arm was trembling like a leaf. ‘You think a wife should not drop the
+slightest hint of the skeleton in her closet. I will agree with you
+here. And I have not breathed a word to any other human being—not to
+Horry, who is his second self—only to you; and do you suppose I could
+have spoken to you unless in the last extremity, which has come?’
+
+‘Then rest satisfied with what you have done, Fan; say no more about
+it,’ Oliver conjured her, as if he would have put his hand upon her
+mouth to keep her from further utterance, or brought down the creeping
+dusk to hide their faces from each other. He got up, took several turns
+up and down the room, so that he might have his back to her when he
+promised solemnly; ‘The devil shall not have Harry, so far as I can
+help it.’
+
+That Fan should have come to her brother with such a prayer on her
+lips, was only less bad for him than for Fan herself.
+
+Oliver Constable had not the most distant thought that Harry Stanhope
+could have grossly ill-treated his wife. Oliver would as soon have
+suspected Harry of lifting up his strong right arm to strike down
+Horace unresisting under the pacific influence of his devotion. It
+is your poor half-brutal coal-heaver who ordinarily adds kicks to
+curses, where his wife is concerned. As a rule, though certainly not
+without exceptions, centuries of refining civilisation and liberal
+education remove Harry’s whole class from committing such outrages.
+Harry Stanhope, with his graciousness in an entirely muddled condition,
+might challenge a muscular ostler to a round in the noble art of
+self-defence. He was known to have taken the law into his own hands and
+knocked down a ruffian who was belabouring a child and insulting an old
+woman. But he had probably hardly ever spoken a rough word to Fan, whom
+he had held in the greatest respect ever since he had known her, though
+she had become powerless to make a man of him, as he had proposed. She
+was not silly, or bumptious, or trying in any way so as to provoke
+the wrath which had originally been a rare experience with Harry. But
+not the less he had slain her faith in him, by his hopeless levity
+and folly, which were tending unmistakably to animal indulgence and
+besotted excess. He had not destroyed one atom of her love—else Fan’s
+heart too might have died within her in its cold emptiness, but, at
+least, it would not have been wrung with the intolerable pang of loving
+him to death and beyond death, yet seeing him go down, in spite of her,
+to the place of dragons.
+
+There are students of humanity who positively state that a good man
+or woman’s love must inevitably perish with the loss of esteem. If
+so, the best human love must be singularly unlike Divine love as it
+is revealed to us. And it is one thing voluntarily to give love to a
+creature whose repulsive moral disease is evident and undeniable, and
+has already penetrated and poisoned the nature through and through—and
+quite another to have loved the same creature in the beauty and glory
+of sound mortal health, with but the seeds of fatal disease, only to be
+detected by the wise physician, lurking in the system, and having once
+loved to turn with loathing abhorrence and absolute rejection, from
+the sick man, when his weakness has found him out, his sore ancestral
+malady has laid fast hold of him, and he is fighting a desperate battle
+for life or death.
+
+Not only did Fan’s love cling to Harry in his social and moral decline
+still more closely than when she had learned to love him in the heyday
+of his natural gifts; even Oliver—who had early taken Harry for what he
+was worth, and condemned him to his destiny, now in the teeth of what
+he had done to Fan, felt the man’s heart within him turn and soften
+with yearning and commiseration for the stripling who was so unequally
+matched, and was standing foot to foot, reeling under the shocks
+inflicted by a giant adversary and ghastly foe.
+
+Oliver needed this compensation of human tenderness revived and called
+forth in the heart of a benevolent man, by human weakness and peril in
+its sorriest guise and direst strait, to help to make up to him for
+the sacrifice he was called on to offer; since the world had not gone
+well with Oliver Constable during these last years, and his own affairs
+required the unremitting attention which he saw himself compelled, and
+had pledged himself to Fan, to give to those of another.
+
+Oliver had started on his mission impressed with the conviction that
+it behoved him especially to make his business prosper, or, if he
+could not do that, to prevent its becoming disastrous, in order to
+remove the slur thrown liberally on Jacks-of-all-trades, geniuses,
+and enthusiasts. He had not the slightest inclination to the modified
+martyrdom of commercial losses for their own sake. He decidedly
+objected to wasting the money which his father had carefully gathered
+that Oliver’s career as a gentleman and scholar might be untrammelled,
+even for a good object, if he could prevent it.
+
+On the contrary, it was part of Oliver Constable’s duty, as he
+conceived it, to vindicate the truth that the best citizenship and the
+best Christianity did not, as a matter of course, conduct a diligent,
+prudent, and self-denying tradesman straight into the Bankruptcy Court.
+
+But Oliver was fated to share the lot of most real reformers and
+pioneers of the highest civilisation—the only civilisation which is
+not merely skin-deep, but which, penetrating to the core, pervades the
+whole man, and by the grace of God never leaves him, only departing
+when he himself departs, to dwell with him in heavenly habitations—and
+of the righteous Gospel which the Lord of Righteousness delivered to be
+worked out—not in church or chapel wholly or even principally, but on
+such fields as the Rialto of Venice or the London Exchange, the shops
+of common tradesmen, the tables where feasts, great and small, are
+held, the hearths round which men and women meet to rest from the work
+of the day, and cheer their souls.
+
+But Oliver had to discover for himself, in more ways than one, the
+pithiness of the proverb that to give a dog an ‘ill name’ is to hang
+him, that to run a-muck against popular prejudices is to suffer injury
+more or less severe, and wait long for any shadow of a reward.
+
+He had no manner of doubt that the reward of disarming distrust and
+establishing a right to success would come in time, if the worker
+could but possess his soul in patience, and exercise sufficient faith,
+endurance, and bountiful liberality, if he could tarry and lay out,
+nothing doubting, fresh materials and pains.
+
+Oliver’s fortitude was not exhausted, but he was sensible he had spent
+some of his funds freely, and would soon be living on the verge of his
+income, if he did not economise every fraction and dedicate it to its
+proper use.
+
+The secession of Jim Hull, with the establishment of his nephew in fine
+new baking premises and a fine new business in the town, had diverted
+a large slice of the public confidence and custom from what were now
+held the _old_ Constable premises and business. The slice was always
+increasing in size, and diminishing the original _pièce de résistance_,
+from which it had been taken by the shrewdness which proved quite
+justified in the anticipation that the public would prefer apparent
+purity and actual adulteration, both in the produce of the mill and the
+bakehouse, to the uncorrupted but unbleached article.
+
+There was the additional stimulus to the withdrawal of patronage
+of a strong spice of malicious satisfaction, not enough to form
+a conspiracy, but existing in sufficient abundance for lending
+countenance and support, whether sly or bold, to a rival business
+conducted on good old-fashioned, rational, give-and-take principles.
+Oliver Constable had come among the Friarton shopkeepers uttering
+high-flown heresy, witnessing in his conduct against time-honoured
+liberties of trade, and stirring up doubts in the bosoms of the very
+tradesmen—not to say of their customers. So the Dadd and Polley part
+of the community had no objection that Oliver should bear in his own
+person the brunt of his Quixotic ideas. Perhaps that would teach him to
+pay greater respect to their superior age and experience.
+
+In short, Oliver’s business profits were diminishing so steadily as
+to threaten to make his mill and bakehouse eat their own heads, if
+he did not diminish in proportion the staffs of millers and bakers—a
+step which he objected to take so long as he could afford to hold
+out, since it would not only be tantamount to an admission that he was
+outmatched, he argued with himself, it would be hard upon the men who
+had submitted to his rules and consented to work on his terms—not that
+he had altogether overcome the workmen’s opposition. His reputation
+had gone abroad as a master full of new-fangled fancies and hobbies,
+therefore he had been exposed to the further disadvantage of possessing
+a succession of restless, suspicious servants, flighty on their own
+account, and inclined to perpetual experiments on, and changes of,
+employers.
+
+Then Oliver had been of a mind to show that he would not neglect any
+lawful means of improving his flour and bread, so he had set about
+introducing expensive new machinery into the mill and bakehouse.
+But being, after all, a green hand, without his father’s practical
+experience in his double trade, the young man committed several
+astounding blunders in the adoption of the machinery, and was much out
+of pocket as a punishment for the errors of his ignorance. The result
+awoke no small amount of jeering, crowing, and laughter at the leading
+tea and supper tables of Friarton.
+
+Oliver’s inner man had not fared better during these three harassing
+years. Fan’s house was not a second home to him. The sole effect, so
+far as he could see, of his striving to fraternise in the true sense
+with the Dadds and the Polleys was that he had succeeded in arousing
+in his father’s old allies a hostile and mocking temper, not pleasant
+to encounter. Since his quarrel with Jack Dadd, the old Dadds, who
+naturally took their son’s part, had fought shy of Oliver Constable;
+and he had also, in some manner, he could not for the life of him tell
+how, given serious offence to the whole Polley family. He supposed they
+were enlisted, with hot, resentful party spirit, or what they mistook
+for party spirit, on Jack Dadd’s side. Oliver was half right, half
+wrong. For he was incapable of perceiving the other and major ground
+of complaint which the Polleys had against him—because, after raising
+false expectations, he had stopped short of seeking to keep company
+either with ’Liza or one of her sisters, in the prospect of matrimony.
+
+Mrs. Hilliard had never gone so far as to shut her door against Oliver
+Constable. Nay, she had been so candid as to admit with pleasure that
+her later prognostications with regard to him had been premature, and
+in the main erroneous. But Oliver’s chief inducement—as he had come to
+acknowledge to himself after there was no further need of crushing it
+down—for availing himself of the privilege of visiting at the Meadows,
+had vanished from the date of the terrible illness which had seized
+on Catherine Hilliard. It was one of the worst of those indefinite,
+incalculable, nervous illnesses, bred of the conditions of modern
+life, which have no beginning and no end, which baffle by their very
+intangibility and paralyse by their unrelaxing clutch, and one of whose
+horrors is that in their abnormal character they may develop symptoms
+piteously fantastic and grotesque, like the antics of madness. Such
+illnesses, dreaded not without cause, are apt, when they spare the
+wasted life, to reduce the patient to a state of unrelieved, permanent
+prostration and chronic invalidism, which is death in life.
+
+Catherine Hilliard had drifted away from her friends on the misty,
+dreary sea of illness which had no shore, till she seemed lost to them
+here, till even to Oliver Constable—who now owned to himself, like the
+_Bursch_ in the famous _Burschenlied_, that he had loved her always and
+would love her throughout eternity—she survived chiefly as the aching,
+melancholy thought of the girl who had been capable of dreaming noble
+things, but who had not been able to grasp the truth that behind the
+commonest, even the most sordid, absolutely repulsive details of human
+life, there exist nobler things still than man or woman ever dreamt of
+in their highest philosophy.
+
+And the brute creation, which Catherine Hilliard had so loved,
+preferring it to the human, drew dumbly and wistfully away from the
+decline of her humanity; while the book world in which she had elected
+to dwell, crumbled into dust around her. She had left books too behind
+her, and the beings that peopled her present existence were more
+visionary than the ghosts she had formerly chosen for her company.
+
+Oliver could only look forward to her deliverance from this last
+bondage to the unreal, by her entrance on unsealed and everlasting
+verities.
+
+Then it was when Oliver was most tempted to regard his enterprise as
+a wretched disappointment, he was called on to take up the burden of
+another man’s failure.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+             THE PRICE AT WHICH HARRY STANHOPE WAS RESCUED.
+
+
+The first thing to be done for Harry Stanhope was to get him out of
+the situation for which he was utterly unfit, into which he had thrust
+himself—to extricate him from the network of idleness, false activity,
+unsuitable companionship, debt, and dissipation in which he was
+entangled. In some respects the feat was not only practicable, it was
+comparatively easy. Harry had proved himself so thoroughly incapable
+a farmer, that it was not likely any sane landlord would be urgent to
+keep this tenant, particularly as his slender funds and a part of his
+wife’s portion were already flung to the winds, or rather sunk in the
+soil, and he had no more left to deposit in the land even if that had
+been his sole mode of spending money.
+
+Old Peter Constable had believed in women’s power of standing alone,
+and had left Fan absolutely mistress of her portion. Oliver had
+braved her indignation by asking her to have it settled on herself
+before her marriage. And certainly Harry Stanhope had not opposed the
+arrangement, for Harry was truly convinced of the treasure Fan was
+in herself, as well as habitually careless of pounds, shillings, and
+pence. Therefore, though he talked the jargon of his set—to Horace and
+others, and professed, as a claim to being a man of the world, not to
+be indifferent to tin—to the degree of counting on a woman’s goods
+to eke out his resources, he did not really put much weight on Fan’s
+bank-book and coupons, or mind whether she kept them in her own hands
+or put them into his.
+
+In the end, Fan, more as a means of vindicating Harry’s
+disinterestedness than as a precaution for her own independence in days
+to come, allowed half of her portion to be tied up for her personal use
+if she should so ordain it. She would gladly have given up to Harry
+every shilling of this reserve, after he had disposed of the rest,
+had it not been that her foresight for him was not to say infinitely
+greater than his for himself or for her, but for any she could have
+exercised on her own account. Harry had become to his wife, in all
+worldly respects, like one of those minors or infants in the eyes of
+the law, with regard to whom it is his protector’s duty to defend him
+from the dangers of his own helplessness and to hedge him round with
+artificial barriers. Still Fan was eminently an upright woman, and she
+would have fought against her despair and nerved herself to strip—not
+herself alone but Harry, of her remaining possessions, in order to
+discharge the debts which he had contrived to incur in spite of her,
+rather than let them fall upon her brother, if she had not known that
+even supposing she could get Oliver to forego what all concerned in it
+called his ‘loans,’ it would only be a form. It could not prevent him
+from being impoverished in the long run, because it must be on Oliver
+the little family at Copley Grange Farm would have to depend, till its
+mistress was strong enough, if she ever were strong again, to struggle
+to secure independence—not merely for herself and Harry, but for Horace
+whose oars were shipped in Harry’s boat.
+
+There was no difficulty on Harry’s side; he had never been overburdened
+with scruples, and he hardly suffered from any in accepting Oliver
+Constable’s interposition to free him—Harry, from his mess at Oliver’s
+cost. For indubitably there were money penalties, the extent of
+which even Fan did not guess, to pay all round, before the volunteer
+yeoman-farmer could be withdrawn from the ranks of the yeomen,
+released from the obligations of his lease, and granted a discharge
+by his creditors, while it was Oliver who, in each instance, paid the
+defalcation.
+
+Oliver did not grudge it so much when he found that Harry, sick of
+the whole concern, readily consented to go abroad at once with his
+wife, brother, and brother-in-law—who appreciated the concession
+and was conscious of a lurking sweetness and graciousness in his
+unstable prodigal’s freedom from resentment at the old sap and grinder
+Constable’s interference and assumption, however carefully masked, or
+however dearly bought, of the reins of government.
+
+Yet, after all, paradoxical as it may sound, dogged resistance would
+most assuredly have promised better than unconditional submission for
+Harry’s ultimate attainment of moral manhood.
+
+‘Charity begins at home,’ Oliver told himself, using the proverb in
+a sense which satisfied him, when he reckoned up the damage to his
+own prospects, of leaving the mill and bakehouse in the charge of a
+dolt like Ned Green, and a foreman thirty years younger and a whole
+century less acute and discreet than Jim Hull. ‘I have always desired
+to be kept from developing into a monster, made up of theories like
+Maximilian Robespierre,’ he assured himself farther, with a faint
+smile; ‘and no doubt it is the finest thing which can happen to
+me—myself, to be forced to skedaddle across the Channel, and potter
+about foreign towns with Fan and her small family. It will knock the
+starch out of me in no time, and take me down ever so many pegs in my
+priggishness.’
+
+The sum of Oliver’s project for the Stanhopes, in the meantime, was
+to cut off Harry from his moorings and their tendencies, to furnish
+him with the substitutes of movement and variety, to afford Fan the
+change, rest, and recruiting of which she was sorely in need, till
+something more effectual should be devised to rebuild the ruined home,
+and replace the lost opportunities. It was a humble enough programme,
+not very interesting and exciting, save for the main thread of the
+drama, on which all the rest hung, and on which the performers were
+shamefacedly silent.
+
+Most people have experienced the peculiar fascination and absorption
+which is caused by dangerous illness in a family, when the whole
+interests of life centre in the sick-room and its bulletins. All
+outside matters, though they might formerly have been regarded as of
+vital moment, dwindle into insignificance, until the wide world with
+its empires and peoples, tottering republics and falling thrones, and
+nations wresting their liberties at the expense of bloody battles in
+which men by thousands perish uncounted, scarcely noticed—are blotted
+out for the time by a few feet of flooring and ceiling, a single bed,
+one figure lying still with half-closed eyes and half-parted lips,
+faintly beating heart and fluttering breath.
+
+Harry Stanhope had acquired, as his companions knew, the taint of a
+grievous disease, half physical, half spiritual, which may rank with
+the plague and cholera among moral maladies. So to watch stealthily
+his symptoms, note the changes in his state, chronicle with trembling
+hope his progress in throwing off the deeply injected poison, or to
+recognise with sinking heart its fresh outbreak and farther spread
+through the system, laid hold upon and monopolised the thoughts of the
+little party of which Harry was the half-unconscious sick man, till
+he engrossed them more and more, as the combat thickened, and final
+victory or defeat drew nearer and nearer.
+
+Sometimes Harry would rise so far above his ailment as to lose the
+worst of the disfiguring traces which it was stamping on his outer
+man. He would be for days and weeks together the easily entertained,
+contented, manly lad of the past. He would be as simple and pleasant as
+an unspoilt schoolboy, as charmed to go or stay with Fan as in the days
+of their courtship, as united to Horry as when the brothers were loving
+children, as satisfied with chaffing Constable, and proving the life of
+his own circle, where animal spirits were in request, as if there did
+not exist for him more highly-flavoured attractions, more enthralling
+society—a coarse and powerful supplementary source of excitement.
+
+In these moods, when Harry was restored to his right mind, he
+was—without a grain of hypocrisy, so frank and free, so irresistibly
+helpful to children and old people, so easily served by servants, that
+he won, without fail, the heart of every stranger with whom he came in
+contact. He was the charming fellow-traveller, at each _table-d’hôte_
+and in every steamboat and railway carriage, of hosts of unknown
+travellers, native and foreign. Harry was the great social conductor
+and bond of union between the whirling world around him and the rest of
+his party, who smiled cheerfully, and accepted with gay grumbling their
+share of the plague of his popularity.
+
+Then such a transformation came over the patient that clear brow and
+eyes, broad shoulders, active hands and feet and tongue grew as if
+they belonged to an entirely different person. Here was a man in the
+toils of raging fever, and possessed by its delusions, with the load
+of a nameless unbearable oppression on his lowering forehead, the
+gleam of a strange fire in his burning eyes, having his head bent, and
+his back slouched with the gait of an incorrigible vagabond, who must
+escape from the most sacred bonds and solemn obligations, and carry
+a distracted spirit ill at ease, and which cannot rest, into kindred
+storm and darkness. Why, the very muscular hands were straining and
+quivering to clutch the deadly foe, bound to overthrow the victim in
+the hateful encounter; the swift feet were stumbling in their frenzied
+haste to reach the goal from which there is seldom a return; the
+tongue spoke winning words no more, but stammered with the language of
+unreasoning fury and aimless invective.
+
+When the demon of his craving for strong drink leaped upon Harry and
+held him, he broke from every other detaining grasp. It was to no
+purpose that Fan, Horace, and Oliver put force on their inclinations
+in order to go with desperate perseverance on the endless round of
+theatres, public gardens, and concerts, as if the travellers had been
+so many schoolboys abroad for their holidays, or as if individual
+tastes and domestic habits were unknown to the party. Harry would not
+suffer Fan by his side; he shook off his brother and Oliver. He quitted
+them, and defied them to follow him, or he fled from them and outsped
+them by the terrible strength and subtlety of his madness. They lost
+him for intervals of hours, increasing to days and even weeks. The
+journeyings of the party came to an abrupt stop; all their previous
+arrangements were upset.
+
+Fan and Horry, with Oliver added as a third to the group, looked at
+each other, on the first sign of the repetition of the miserable
+scenes, as the two had looked in the familiar farmhouse at home.
+
+Sometimes Fan sat alone in the strange hotel room listening to the
+careless coming and going of the other travellers; through the long
+hours from sunset to darkness and the white glimmering dawn, while
+Horace and Oliver, going different ways, hunted through all the
+_places_ and _markets_; the hotels and cafés—conspicuous or obscure—the
+houses of entertainment where questionable hosts received strangers
+more likely to prove thieves than angels taken in unawares—the hunters
+studiously keeping themselves, as far as they might, unseen, till they
+stalked their prey. Thrice happy for all if it had been the beast of
+the field, and not merely a creature made in the image of God, degraded
+into a condition lower than that of the brutes, over which he had
+been ordained lord and king. A horse or a dog would have been wiser
+than Harry Stanhope, and would have guided him with advantage, in the
+circumstances. Or it might be the man-stalkers returned, with reluctant
+feet, empty hands, and hanging heads, to the hapless woman condemned to
+sit and wait in vain.
+
+In these altered times, Harry, who was so fond of his kind, constituted
+the great insurmountable obstacle to any genial fraternisation between
+his family and other travelling parties who were in the wholesome odour
+of unsullied respectability and the vigour and gladness of moral health
+and strength. He condemned his companions—not simply to a tedious and
+irritating quarantine, but to a sad and chilling isolation, as they
+drew away from their neighbours to hide their wound and its humiliating
+cause under a tightly grasped mantle, which must never be thrown open.
+
+The isolation served only to draw the group more closely together, and
+to engage them, with still greater usurpation of their faculties, in
+their deeply human office, till Oliver became well-nigh as wrapped up
+as Fan and Horace were, in that vocation of nurse and brother’s keeper,
+which—whether it be of the body or the soul—passes with practice into
+the most enticing and devouring of pursuits. Witness how it lures its
+recruits from the brightest and most peaceful quarters, and holds its
+brave soldiers fast, resisting all remonstrance, till they drop at
+their posts in dens of squalor and misery.
+
+Time and place ceased largely to exert their power over persons bound
+up in one man’s fortunes in a prolonged and terrible single combat.
+
+What difference did the varying seasons make, when spring stole on
+to summer, and summer glided into autumn, and autumn stiffened and
+froze into winter, if yet there was no sure amendment or certain
+decline in Harry Stanhope’s condition? What did it matter whether the
+battle-ground were the heaths of Brittany, the stony vineyards of
+Burgundy, the fat pastures of Guelderland, the forests of Flanders, the
+olive and orange gardens wet with the spray of the Mediterranean in the
+Riviera; or whether the towns offered to the visitors the picturesque
+gables and roofs of Bruges or Nüremberg, the palaces of Genoa, or the
+churches of Venice, when the question still was Harry and Harry only?
+How long was it since there had been an outbreak of his mania? Was he
+steadier this month than last? Was there any hope left?
+
+It is not merely religious, or what many would call fanatical, people
+who are brought to comprehend the sorrowful wonder of the demand, ‘What
+shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own
+soul?’ For the fate of a soul even here in the light of goodness and
+loyal obedience to God’s laws, or of turbulent rebellion against them,
+with all future honour and happiness, or all future disgrace and misery
+at stake—be it in the case of a not overwise lad like Harry Stanhope—is
+really of greater moment and of more intense interest to kindred
+humanity, than all the natural beauties and all the acted out history
+of the universe. Place a drowning man in juxtaposition with the finest,
+most suggestive landscape in the world, and what spectator—not to speak
+of the unhappy mortal’s familiar friends, would not—conscious of his
+fellow-creature’s strait—turn his back on senseless matter and the dead
+past? Unless, indeed, the looker-on were morally dwarfed, distorted,
+and hardened almost beyond recognition by his kind crying shame on him,
+with honest disgust for his unnatural conduct, he would watch, if he
+could do no more, with a sympathetic agony of eagerness, the hard fight
+for life of his perishing brother—how he clutched desperately each
+bough and every twig in his path,—how he struck out gallantly for a
+space till he was well-nigh beyond the engulphing wave,—how he faltered
+and gave way, and was sucked back into the insatiable jaws of the
+overmastering tide.
+
+The Stanhopes, with Oliver in their company, went on like the wandering
+Jew, as if there were no end to their wandering, no rest for the soles
+of their feet. They lived their own throbbing, high-strung family life,
+till other lives beyond theirs looked distant, pale, and dim, like
+lives in dreams. Tidings from the old home came to the wayfarers, and
+did not move them, or only awoke in them dull or fitful responses. A
+bachelor uncle of Harry and Horace Stanhope’s died, and, with some
+dawning suspicion in his last days that he had left his brother’s
+orphan boys very much to sink or swim as they could, sought to
+anticipate the moment of reckoning by an act of atonement. He chose to
+bequeath the sum of eight thousand pounds—the bulk of his savings in a
+colonial office—to the poor relations whom he had shunned and ignored
+as much as he could, in the course of their previous existence, instead
+of to the well-to-do flesh and blood whom he had hitherto exclusively
+cultivated.
+
+The timely legacy—together with what was left of Fan’s means, would
+form a little competence for the Stanhopes, if they made up their minds
+to settle in some quiet way abroad.
+
+The subject scarcely struck any of the pilgrims in this light. Would
+it not rather deal the death-stroke to Harry by supplying him with
+independent funds, other than his wife’s, for squandering and riot?
+
+‘Poor old uncle Geof!’ said the man on his trial, with an impulse of
+his native kindliness; ‘to think he should be gone, and to cut up
+well for us, after all! For at least this legacy, though it ain’t
+much,’ continued Harry with a mixture of earnestness and candour,
+condescension and defiance peculiar to him, ‘ain’t too little for some
+enjoyment, without Fan and the rest of you looking glum. Come on,
+Horry; we’ll pay all respect to the old boy and his tin, by drinking
+to his memory to begin with, and then we’ll do whatever else enters
+our heads, to drive dull care away. Nobody can reasonably expect two
+fellows who have succeeded to a small fortune—and the smaller it is the
+less self-denial is to be looked for—to abstain from a glorification
+or two. But we’ll save enough to make you a handsome present, Fan,
+never fear. As for Constable, he’s like the man in history, beyond
+being bought.’
+
+Agneta wrote—to her brothers this time, to tell them of her approaching
+marriage, with the full approbation of her guardians, to Mr. Amyott
+of Copley Grange—of all men, the widower approaching middle age, the
+father of two or three girls, the biggest already higher than the
+writer’s elbow.
+
+‘Aggie a stepmother! Why doesn’t she go in for being a grandmother
+at once?’ cried Harry, as his single derisive comment on an incident
+which, since it barely touched him, did not deserve more serious
+consideration.
+
+‘Ah! she was always fond of Copley Grange,’ said Fan, with quick,
+womanly extenuation, as if it had been the manor-house and the squire
+that Agneta had known and prized. ‘But she is taking a great many
+duties and cares upon her at once, which seems a pity, when one thinks
+how many more must come in the course of nature,’ ended Fan in assumed
+matter-of-factness, and in the languor which had replaced her old fire.
+But she began again a moment afterwards. ‘It is not fair to herself and
+to what ought to have been her natural obligations.’ Fan spoke now with
+something of her former suppressed ardour and inextinguishable passion
+for justice; but tears of weakness gathered in her eyes at the same
+time. She was not thinking of Agneta’s future alone, but of the future
+of others with claims on their sister, which Fan, in the days of her
+strength, would have been the last to urge, and which Agneta appeared
+deliberately disqualifying herself from ever fulfilling.
+
+‘Heaven help us! I think we are not very cordial in our
+congratulations,’ exclaimed Oliver impatiently. He was pricked by the
+troubled consciousness that the cares as well as the pleasures of this
+life—the cares which are not of our seeking and which certainly do not
+contribute to our ease and satisfaction, are in danger of choking the
+good seed of generous thoughts and magnanimous judgments. ‘Can’t we
+wish Miss Stanhope and Mr. Amyott joy, without spotting all the real or
+imaginary disadvantages in their connection, and collaring the couple
+with the double chains of fulfilled and neglected requirements?’
+
+A new idea was tickling Harry. ‘Look here, Horry; if we had stayed in
+the Farm we should have been Aggie’s tenants—bound to take off our hats
+to her. We might even have yoked ourselves into the carriage which
+brought her and her blooming bridegroom home from their marriage-tour.
+I wonder if she would have had an extra barrel of beer broached for my
+benefit? She has some small notion of the depth of my thirst. Wouldn’t
+it have been jolly? By Jove! we’ve spoilt an interesting episode for
+the county paper. “Charming tableau of attached relations forgetting
+the accidental diversities of rank and fortune and rushing into each
+other’s arms.” Don’t frown, Fan, my love; you would not have been
+called on to drag Aggie up the drive hooraying for our master and
+mistress. You would have sat at ease, over the way, and witnessed the
+gala from a respectful distance.’
+
+‘If it is any gratification to you to talk nonsense, Harry, why then,
+do it,’ said Fan, with a lingering reflection of her old girlish
+dignity, in the middle of her womanly pain at his want of comprehension
+and feeling, and yet with the pathetic indulgence to every defect in
+the man she loved, which far transcended both dignity and pain.
+
+Oliver knew he was still capable of quite another form of selfishness,
+when a letter from Mrs. Hilliard reached Fan. Mrs. Hilliard would
+not consent to lose sight of her kindred in exile, any more than
+when settled in a mill and bakehouse at her door. She had no further
+occasion, indeed, to acknowledge Fan’s triumph and pay it homage, but
+the eventual defeat of Mrs. Hilliard’s enemy was disarming in another
+way. Mrs. Hilliard was interested to learn what farther reversal of
+parts might occur among her cousins; and whether poor dear Harry
+Stanhope was to prove the reprobate out and out, as she rather feared
+would be the end. But nobody could help it save himself, he was the
+sole person to blame. It was Philistinish of the Constables to throw
+themselves into the breach, and make such a fuss about what was so
+likely to happen. It would have been far better for everybody to
+have hushed it up, to have put poor Harry and his drag of a brother
+quietly out of the way—not by murder, which might have had unpleasant
+consequences, but by banishment for life, while Fan came home to her
+brother. But these cousins of Mrs. Hilliard’s were not like anybody
+else, and would not behave like rational people in the common lot of
+having a prodigal among them.
+
+Mrs. Hilliard’s letter was not purely inquisitive; she was really
+softened by the news she had to tell, though she told it in her own
+manner. Her cousin Catherine was better. She had surmounted the crisis
+of her illness, and she was not only to live and be well again, she
+was about to turn over a new leaf—in short, to go a-head and look
+alive for the rest of her days. Mrs. Hilliard flattered herself
+_that_ would astonish her readers. The miracle had been worked by the
+new order of nurse whom the London physician had brought down just
+in time to their assistance. It had been during the very dismallest
+part of Catherine’s illness, when Mrs. Hilliard’s sole refuge from
+the blues on her own account, had been in the anticipation of the
+inconsistencies and incongruities she was to encounter in the latest
+specimen of nurse—who is no longer a Sairey Gamp but a beneficent
+princess in disguise. Now beneficent princesses are charming to think
+of, but naturally one would suppose they are not the easiest persons to
+accommodate and entertain. Mrs. Hilliard had, therefore, proposed to
+lay all the house under contribution for the Sister’s benefit. She had
+told off her own maid in the stranger’s service. The maid’s mistress
+had even had some idea of converting herself into an abigail, that
+she might more fittingly hold pins for her social superior, who was
+condescending to attend on Catherine. Mrs. Hilliard had arranged levees
+of all the ladies in Friarton to be held in the Meadows’ drawing-room
+in honour of the Sister when she was off duty and open to recreation;
+and sure enough the Sister had turned out to be a daughter of the
+old lord-lieutenant’s, the county belle of ten years ago; but she
+had laughed to scorn the words ‘accommodation,’ ‘entertainment,’ and
+‘homage.’
+
+She had perversely chosen and doggedly stuck to a housemaid’s bedroom,
+because it was nearest to Catherine’s room. She had insisted on putting
+in for herself the few pins which her holland gown required. She was
+so enlivened by her work in the sick-room that she came out of it
+looking as fresh as a daisy and as gay as a lark. When she had an hour
+to spare, or wanted a little variety, she took it in running about the
+town to rout out sickness among the miserable wretches who could not
+afford a nurse of any kind, and then in seeking to trace the mischief
+to its origin and destroy its sheet anchors of poverty and dirt. She
+had caused the two doctors’ hair to stand on end, forced the vicar to
+tear what hair was left on his head, and all but driven the youngest
+and most enthusiastic of the curates to hang himself. In fine, the
+Sister had imparted to Mrs. Hilliard the remarkable information that
+she looked on this apparently lowest department of her profession as
+in fact the highest, and had been guilty of selecting it for herself.
+She had only consented to come down and nurse so swell a patient as
+Catherine because she was in extremity, and because the Sister had some
+special acquaintance with nervous disorders and skill in treating them.
+
+Catherine had opened her eyes at the princess in disguise, of course
+penetrating the disguise, from the first moment she saw her. The sick
+woman had come under the spell of the nurse’s vitality until everybody
+who could make a diagnosis said the one craze would cast out the other,
+the craze of work would expel the craze of lethargy, the craze of
+social regeneration would break the back of individual despondency and
+despair. Thus Mrs. Hilliard wrote, and Oliver was free to think over
+the news.
+
+Catherine alive, in health, awakened from her long unhealthy sleep
+with its haunting nightmares! Catherine loosed from her grave-clothes!
+Catherine informed of the riches of life, stretching out her hands to
+take them for herself and share them with others! If he could but see
+and speak with Catherine now, would she not understand him, and feel
+with him at last, whatever came of it?
+
+But to see Catherine, with whom all was well, Oliver must abandon Fan
+in her tribulation, when, in the light of a fresh trial hanging over
+her, she had more need of his help than ever.
+
+Oliver could not find it in his heart to quit his post under such
+conditions, though it was also in his heart to writhe and fret at
+what might have been, and the possible forfeiture of his own chance
+of human happiness. But he was also capable of feeling thankful that
+it was—as he had every reason to believe—only his own happiness, not
+Catherine’s—above all, not her well-being, which might be at stake.
+He was not put to the torture of having to choose between Fan and
+Catherine in this supreme sense.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                          THE LAST PENNY PAID.
+
+
+The end came, as it often does after long anxiety, when least expected.
+The travelling party had been under the necessity of staying their
+wanderings and pitching their tent for a longer season than usual.
+For many reasons the leaders had chosen one of the loveliest and most
+admired scenes in Europe for their temporary resting place. It was
+early summer again, so that the Stanhopes might resort to a mountain
+and lake district where the air braced every nerve, and which afforded
+opportunity for feats of climbing and boating, to attract and occupy
+that member of the family whose delectation and employment were always
+the first cares, while the weary might rest in preparation for a fresh
+campaign.
+
+The lake of the four cantons lay shimmering in its beauty,
+peacock-green or blue-black in tint as it happened to be in light or in
+shade. Great walnut-trees grew by its margin, and dipped their branches
+in its waters, while the most stunted pines ceased to flourish on the
+bare short grass or the rocky summits of its giant guardians. There
+were lower mountains that would have been well-grown mountains anywhere
+else, which rose sheer from the lake, and were clothed with waving
+wood from the soles of their feet to the crown of their heads; but one
+forgot them in the near presence of the bald Rhigi and the desolate
+Pilatus and the remoter vision of the blue range of the Engelberg
+seamed and tracked with everlasting snows.
+
+The little burgher town, so grandly framed, was not altogether
+smoothed down from its ancient ruggedness and picturesqueness into
+modern commonplace uniformity, or, still worse, smartness. True, its
+great hotels, with bands of music for evening promenaders, were trying
+to the sensitive visitor, and its shops with their staple of carved
+wood, however pretty, and verging here and there on art proper, were
+not without their objections. But there was something to be said for
+the old covered rickety bridges over the pale green water, with the
+rude representations of the grotesque horrors of the Dance of Death;
+the Water Tower; the bold rough rendering on the face of the rock of
+the great sculptor’s idea of the lion of Switzerland, wounded to death,
+its paw still defending the broken lily of France.
+
+Apart from a Babel of tongues, in which English prevailed, and swarms
+of motley tourists with the Rhigi railway as the scientific means to
+the desired end of attaining a region so strange in giddy height and
+width of view, so familiar by the descriptions and raptures of its
+crowds of admirers—and those inevitable attributes of Lucerne, were not
+very conspicuous in the early summer when the Stanhopes occupied their
+quarters—there were two distinct, even discordant, associations sharing
+the ground between them. There were the more vivid and recent traces
+of what all well-instructed, incredulous people now call the myth of
+William Tell—the national hero whose imaginary personality struck the
+first blow in breaking the fetters—doubtless as fabulous as the rest—of
+his country. Certainly, the common representation of him in a stage
+kilt, theatrically administering the oath of allegiance to his equally
+fantastic fellow-conspirators, as it figured in cheap photographs, was
+not calculated to inspire faith in his identity.
+
+There was also the mediæval legend which, in its wild superstition,
+belonged to all Christendom, of the unrighteous judge who falsely
+condemned, not his lord and king alone, but the King of kings and the
+Saviour of men. And there was not found any place for repentance,
+in men’s horrified minds, for this traitor any more than for the
+arch-traitor. Pontius Pilate was doomed for ever to hide his white,
+conscience-stricken face, and wring his accursed, palsied hands with
+a feeble show of washing away the innocent blood from which no holy
+baptism of water could cleanse them.
+
+Constantly as the sun rose or set on the glorious world of mountain
+peaks, wood, and water, these two idealised memories awoke and rose in
+conflict, glimmering through the white mists of morning, or brooding
+under the purple vault of night—the honest, brave Swiss freeman who
+bade all Swiss slaves go free—the falsehearted Roman coward who saw no
+evil in this man, and yet delivered up the Deliverer of the World into
+the hands of his deadly foes to do with Him what they would.
+
+At Lucerne, Fan’s baby was born. To the mother her little daughter came
+as an angel from heaven, promising her a fresh paradise instead of the
+old, which had turned out but a waste howling wilderness with green
+oases here and there.
+
+To the father the child brought the delight of a new toy with which he
+might play joyously for a while, and then, without thinking, break it.
+Harry had none of the trembling reverence, and clumsy awkwardness, in
+the middle of their tenderness, which some inexperienced fathers betray
+on their first introduction to their offspring. Harry took his infant
+daughter in his arms without hesitation and dandled her like an expert
+at once. The nurse and all who saw his performance cried out he was the
+most charmingly fatherly young father who had ever been beheld.
+
+To her Uncle Horace, the last arrival was simply a fresh possession of
+Harry’s, a ‘rum’ and funny possession, with which the bachelor uncle
+was chary in having much to do, and that inflicted on him sundry spasms
+of bashfulness, but of which on the whole he did not disapprove.
+
+As for Oliver, ‘the little woman’ made him more inclined to thank God
+and take courage. She was a tiny, weak weapon which might yet prove
+all-powerful in casting down strongholds and overthrowing a foul god,
+even the jovial Bacchus of Greek worship, which, seen near, was hideous
+as Dagon and cruel as Moloch.
+
+But there came a speedy interruption to Fan’s recovery. Harry, whom her
+danger and weakness, together with the gift she had made him, subdued
+for the moment, was devoted to her in those days. He was sitting by her
+sofa, when she started up, and fixing on him eyes full of the craving
+care of an inappeasable anxiety, amazed and alarmed even Harry, who
+hardly knew what mental apprehension, any more than physical fear,
+meant, by the eager inquiry, ‘Where’s Harry?’
+
+He hastened to soothe her by the assurance of his presence, without
+effect. He cried aloud, as he quailed before the blank non-recognition,
+and impatient denial of the glance which met his imploring looks, for
+Horry—Constable—any witness to convince Fan that here was Harry by her
+side.
+
+The witnesses came quickly, and she knew each of them—down to the nurse
+who had been an utter stranger to her till within the last few weeks;
+but she did not know her husband, and she would not believe what the
+others said of his being himself, and of his standing in the room, the
+nearest of all to her, bending over her, clasping her hand. ‘Where’s
+Harry?’ she continued to demand with terrible, heart-rending insistance.
+
+The long strain had snapped the strings of the fine instrument at last.
+She cried for Harry day and night, in his sight and hearing. As she
+cried she broke the silence which she had only once before stirred in
+order to claim succour for him; she poured forth in full measure her
+incalculable sufferings. She lived over again to one appalled auditor
+the long nights when she had sat listening for a footstep which never
+came, but was replaced by other footsteps, each, in its turn, causing
+her heart to bound with unwarrantable expectation, and sink in the
+sickness—growing always deadlier, of hope deferred; till it seemed as
+if all the footsteps which approached and departed in ignorance and
+indifference, trod, deliberately and mercilessly, over her quivering
+heart, spurning it as they passed. She showed how the truest woman
+in the world had been fain to impose upon herself with miserable
+deceptions, before she had confessed, in the secrecy of her own soul,
+that the fine gold of her idol was only base clay under its lacquer—how
+the most straightforward and sincere of human beings had been driven to
+play at the wretched game of keeping up appearances, of laying herself
+out to hoodwink her neighbors. She had been humbled in the dust as well
+as worn out by ceaseless struggles, and tortured to frenzy. Her sleep
+had gone from her eyes. Peace had been unknown to her—a God-fearing,
+Christ-loving woman.
+
+The revelation was like the opening of those Books before which every
+son of man will smite his breast and call on the mountains to fall upon
+him and the hills to cover him. And Harry Stanhope’s accuser, day and
+night, before God and his brethren, was the woman who loved him best,
+and would sooner have bitten her tongue out than said the lightest word
+to blame him.
+
+Every effort was made to withdraw Harry from the awful, ghastly
+ordeal. The instant Horace guessed instinctively what Fan was speaking
+of incessantly in the monotonous voice as tuneless as his own, which
+he could no longer catch so as to distinguish the words, he started
+forward with fury, as if he were mad himself, to drag Harry away; but
+Harry shook his brother off.
+
+Oliver laid a firm hand on Harry’s shoulder, but from that, too, Harry
+freed himself. ‘Let me alone, Constable,’ he gasped. ‘My place is by my
+wife, and whatever I have done or left undone, I will stay with her and
+hear the last she has to say to me.’
+
+None could dispute his right, and the men drew back; but there were
+still women’s pitiful voices beseeching him to have mercy on himself.
+‘Go away, sir, for Heaven’s sake—for her sake. She does not mean it;
+she does not know what she is saying. Your staying will do no good.’
+
+But Harry would not listen to the entreaties, and in the end he heard
+no voice save Fan’s. He stood there till her tale of martyrdom was
+burnt in and branded on his conscience. Under the operation his face
+did not grow sharp as Fan’s sharpened, neither did his fair hair betray
+patches of grey, as her dark hair betrayed when it was pushed aside
+that the death-sweat might be wiped from her temples. Yet his whole
+aspect underwent such a change as it was hardly possible he could
+entirely lose, so as to become the same that he had been before. He
+grew perceptibly older-looking in those days which could be so easily
+counted, with the sudden stamp of ripening to withering, which rapid,
+mortal illness sometimes impresses even on an infant’s face.
+
+He had never before willingly encountered what was painful either to
+his senses or his sensibility. He had always selected the paths which
+were easiest and most agreeable to himself, without too much regard
+to their going down hill. They had brought him to where the battle
+raged hottest in the Valley of the Shadow of Death; and though it was
+not himself, but another, who was slain—the fumes of the smoke, the
+clatter of the strife, the deep wounds, the flowing life-blood, the
+gloom of that valley of shadows, were not likely to depart utterly from
+his consciousness, and leave him in the light-hearted, light-headed
+carelessness, the hard, untempered blaze of sunshine, of his former
+experience.
+
+Fan had forgotten her baby in that last whirl of the tempest which
+swept her away, but she remembered it in the end. In the pouring out of
+her tribulation without restraint, she had constantly called on Horace
+and Oliver to help Harry, who stood nailed to the ground there by her
+pillow. Then, when her voice was sinking into an indistinguishable
+murmur, and her hands letting go every earthly hold, she felt
+gropingly for her child, and struggled to utter another sentence
+audibly. She did not speak for the child with her passing breath as
+so many mothers have spoken for their children. Fan’s care for Harry
+had swallowed up her care for their child. She spoke to the unheeding,
+unconscious infant who for many a long year would be a helpless human
+being, needing tender fostering and watchful protection, and instead of
+recommending the child to the father, in the bewilderment of poor Fan’s
+unapproachable fidelity to Harry, she recommended the father to the
+child. ‘Baby, take care of Harry,’ she managed to say, and with a few
+more fluttering breaths, died. The words of Fan’s final, fond, foolish
+injunction were still ringing in Harry’s ears when he staggered out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                            OLIVER’S RETURN.
+
+
+Death, and not marriage, wipes out offences, clears scores, and opens
+the bolts and bars of shut hearts a little, for a brief space. Harry
+Stanhope’s relations mostly wrote to condole with the young widower
+on the death of the wife whom they had never countenanced. Lord Mount
+Mallow—after all, only a connection by marriage, who happened to be
+then disporting himself in the playground of Europe, actually offered
+to defer climbing a mountain and come out of his way to grace Fan’s
+funeral.
+
+Agneta Amyott wrote impulsively, instead of penning a letter in which,
+while the proprieties were well preserved, the writer committed herself
+to nothing. She was deeply grieved, not merely for her dear old Harry,
+but for her dear sister, her former kind friend, whom Agneta declared
+she would now give half the world to be able to see, if but once again.
+And what about the darling little baby? What could three young men make
+of such a charge? It was deplorable to think of it. Would Harry let her
+send a trustworthy person to fetch the baby, now that she had a home
+of her own to receive it in? There were the little Amyotts’ nurse and
+nurseries all ready. She had not been able to speak to her husband yet,
+but she felt certain Mr. Amyott would not object. To be sure, the close
+of Agneta’s letter, in which there was the first note of hesitation,
+sounded more natural than the beginning.
+
+Harry rejected each overture not so much bitterly or pettishly, as with
+the first sternness and obduracy which had ever burst up through his
+constitutional softness and irrepressible buoyancy. ‘Nobody shall mourn
+for Fan but the real mourners—you, Horry, and Constable and me.
+
+‘Fan’s baby shall not be taken out of charity into the house of any
+man—or woman either. She shall not be brought up as we were, if I can
+help it.’
+
+Fan’s baby succeeded to what was left of her mother’s little fortune;
+she might also have the reversion of what Harry and Horace could keep
+of their legacy. In the meantime she was not given over to the tender
+mercies of three ignorant men, though, even if she had, she might have
+fared worse. There was not a woman, high or low, in the Swiss hotel in
+which she had been born, who was not interested in the small specimen
+of humanity, and there was one woman—a hard-working clergyman’s
+hard-working wife, loitering and rather pining abroad while doing her
+best to get rid of the lagging, idle weeks of her husband’s necessary
+holiday—who pounced upon the motherless baby as a windfall, or rather,
+as she would have called it, a Godsend.
+
+Oliver had not been greatly attracted previously to these reverent
+Weatherleys, in any chance intercourse which he had held with them. He
+had respected them as very worthy people, but they had seemed to him,
+what they were, somewhat fanatical and narrow in their views. As for
+Harry Stanhope, no two persons could have been more widely removed from
+what he had proved hitherto, or could have possessed less in common
+with his past, than the strongly professional as well as pious couple
+who were taking, but scarcely enjoying, a compulsory breathing space in
+their toiling life.
+
+But from the moment that Mrs. Weatherley’s motherliness appropriated
+the care of Fan’s baby, Harry, as it were, instinctively—with another
+of his instincts of self-preservation probably—took to her and clung
+to her and her husband in his misery, with a pathetic dependence and
+trust, to which they were not slow to respond.
+
+Indeed, Harry’s remorse from an early stage assumed the form of
+contriteness rather than despair, his natural humility and amiability
+standing him in good stead here. Fan had willed his rescue from folly
+and evil with her whole devoted heart, and though he would never now
+have the consolation—the positive gladness, of proving to her that he
+was a rescued man, and so, of more than making up to her, in her love,
+for all the anguish he had cost her, he was still, in his present mood,
+eager to do what Fan had wished, to be as she had chosen for him, in
+his best interests. He trusted brokenly that it might atone—if it were
+only to her memory, that Fan might know he was sorry and was pulling
+himself up, somehow, sometime—that Fan’s God and his would accept and
+confirm the late repentance in the great redemption He has provided for
+sinners.
+
+Poor Harry had never been proud, and he was not afflicted with
+the insane egotism which sees in its possessor an object of such
+consequence in the universe, to his Maker no less than to himself, that
+he must needs interfere with the working of human and divine love.
+Such a one-sided reasoner will hold, against every assurance to the
+contrary, that he has sinned beyond forgiveness, and it is too late
+for him to repent and think better of it. In fact, there is a false
+Mephistopheles dignity and subtle compensation in this conclusion, when
+shame, regret, and grief still take the attitude of resentful defiance.
+
+But it was not so with Harry, not even in his way of regarding his
+baby. He did not turn from it, in the beginning, with the blind
+repugnance and unreasoning, unrighteous grudge, with which some
+widowers are tempted to regard the child that has cost its mother her
+life. Certainly it was not her child, but her husband, who had killed
+Fan. Yet Harry might have been so far dishonest as to have given a sop
+to his conscience, by shifting a part of the responsibility and blame
+on the innocent child. He might have taken a cruel satisfaction in
+revenging Fan, by trampling alike on his own natural affections, and on
+the just claims of his infant daughter.
+
+But Harry never did so. He seemed rather to transfer at once to the
+baby all the fondness for the mother which was thrown back on his
+hands, when she was taken from him. In addition he was ready to lavish
+on the child a double portion of the protecting affection which, so
+long as he was himself, he had shown to Horace.
+
+Watching Harry in the new light of his mournful fatherhood, when he
+was called on, by every generous and manly impulse, to be father
+and mother in one, to the mite whose best friend or worst foe, whose
+nearest natural guardian, he found himself, Oliver Constable arrived
+at a correct conclusion. If any mere human creature could help to make
+a man of Harry Stanhope, could raise him from his soulless levity and
+the vicious craving which was grafted on it, it was—strange yet natural
+to say, not a brave, devoted woman like Fan, who had gone down into
+the breach and held a shield over her husband, and striven vainly to
+be the stay to him which, had their relations to each other been what
+they ought, he should have proved to her—but this merest atom of a
+fellow-mortal, a thousand times weaker than Harry himself, who could
+neither appeal to him nor remonstrate with him, who could simply hang
+heavily upon him in her helplessness, and who was, humanly speaking,
+altogether at his mercy for happiness or wretchedness.
+
+Oliver was inclined to believe that Harry’s self-conviction had gone to
+the root of the matter, and that even his most mercurial temperament
+would never shake it off altogether.
+
+Harry was well-nigh as sacred a trust bequeathed to Oliver by Fan as
+her child could be. Indeed, while there were many humane people to
+interpose and accept the gracious task of befriending the motherless
+babe, who would volunteer to fill the thankless office of standing
+by Harry and backing him in resisting the poison which was coursing
+through his veins, and the familiar demon that beset him? But in the
+meantime Oliver was not frightened to leave Harry Stanhope with his
+brother, his infant, and the Weatherleys. When Oliver recalled the
+last he confessed he had been unjust in asking incredulously who
+would bestow themselves on Harry unless to serve themselves by his
+undoing? So far from a knowledge of his former offences disposing the
+Weatherleys to withdraw from the old offender, it would only attach
+them to him more firmly. For a sinner who had turned or who gave the
+faintest indication of turning from the error of his ways, had, if it
+be possible, an almost morbid fascination for the clergyman and his
+wife. They were not content with fulfilling the divine commission,
+and preaching the grand truth that their Master would have mercy
+and not sacrifice, their zeal ran away with their discretion until
+they would have preferred the dying thief to the Apostle Paul. They
+went the length of selecting for their friends and associates rueful
+transgressors, in preference to men and women who had been kept and had
+kept themselves, with infinite pains, from gross transgression. This
+enthusiastic weakness which caused the Weatherleys to dote on reclaimed
+burglars and pet converted infidels, almost to the cold exclusion
+of people who had refrained from picking and stealing, and who had
+reverently trusted and believed, was apt to be fertile in producing
+wrath and restiveness in the intolerantly honest and loyal sections of
+the community; and, what was still worse, in growing crops of hypocrisy
+and fraud among the hardened and desperately deceitful outcasts from
+society. But at least it rendered the couple safe to care for Harry
+Stanhope and do their best to help him, and Oliver did not think that
+Harry would abuse their kindness.
+
+Oliver Constable did not hurry post haste, though he turned his face in
+the direction of Friarton Mill, when he separated from his companions,
+in the course of a few weeks after Fan’s death. He knew that many
+changes as well as a great blank awaited him, and he sought to fit
+himself to meet them in a spirit of peace, as well as to find healing
+for his recent wound.
+
+It was a soft, grey October afternoon when Oliver, leaving the railway
+at an intermediate station as before, walked through the well-known
+fields in their autumn livery, and arrived at Friarton Mill.
+
+As it chanced—a chance for which she would never forgive herself—Sally
+Pope, who had not been apprised of the exact date when he was likely to
+return, had gone on her yearly holiday to visit her relations. Only a
+strange young housemaid kept house and received Oliver, taking in good
+faith his assertion that he was her master.
+
+The dreary reception had, as a compensation, a certain relief for
+the traveller; but he was not long left to his own thoughts. He had
+hardly eaten the meal which his servant improvised in a state of
+consternation, with regard to a future searching investigation and
+sharp condemnation of all deficiencies by old Sally, when he became
+aware, as he was in the act of strolling half mechanically across the
+court, to his former smoking station in the mill gallery, that he
+was threatened already with visitors from Copley Grange. A lady and
+gentleman were walking across the park, and making straight for the
+picturesque old mill.
+
+Oliver groaned under this ill-timed manifestation of the popular
+admiration shared between show places and show people, and prepared to
+make himself scarce. He stopped short in his retreat, and faced the
+intruders, the moment he recognised that they were Mr. and Mrs. Amyott.
+
+The couple were the most put out by the encounter, for they had clearly
+not expected to meet the miller in his own domain. It might be that
+the squire was but partially informed of his young wife’s former
+familiarity with Friarton Mill as well as with Copley Grange Farm, and
+that he had proposed to take advantage of the fine afternoon by making
+her better acquainted with what was, still more than the artistic
+almshouses, a charming æsthetic advantage belonging to his place.
+
+In that case Mrs. Amyott might have had some difficulty in evading the
+proposal, or she might have been fain, on her side, to get over the
+first visit to Friarton Mill in a new character, as early as possible,
+in the absence of its master.
+
+These explanations were more probable than what had flashed across
+Oliver’s mind, and caused him to contort his figure by one of his
+old excited, awkward movements, in a revulsion from a crying case of
+heartless selfishness. He had thought for an instant, could the Amyotts
+possibly have guessed the half-resolution which he was only turning
+over in his own mind, to let or even sell the mill and mill-house, and
+quit the neighbourhood, where there seemed nothing remaining for him to
+do, where he had tried his utmost to work out his notions of duty and a
+career, and had signally failed? Did the Amyotts know, from Friarton
+gossip, that the Constables’ baking business in the town had diminished
+to such a fraction that, in justice to himself and his coming
+creditors, Oliver must give up the premises from which the business had
+departed? Were his nearest neighbours seizing the first opportunity,
+with indecent haste and mean covetousness, to sound him, in the hope
+of, at the same time, obtaining Naboth’s vineyard and getting rid of
+Mordecai at their gates?
+
+Perhaps Mr. Amyott trusted to an immediate, tempting, and what he might
+imagine a substantially handsome offer of purchase, at a fancy price,
+to induce a man, impoverished and embarrassed by his crotchets, to
+sell his birthright, and so to secure to the owners of Copley Grange
+what one of them had long craved. If that were so, a man might well
+pray to be delivered from the mania for high art, prevailing to the
+extinction of common feeling. For was not the dainty bride, in her
+refinement of bridal finery—sobered down still further by the necessity
+of wearing a black gown, in memory of her brother’s late lowborn wife,
+keenly desirous, under her pretence of mourning, to cut away the last
+link between her and the Constables? And all the while she might have
+guessed, if she had cared to use her woman’s wit, how much of old Peter
+Constable’s honestly and laboriously earned money had gone to fill up
+the gaps left by Mrs. Amyott’s brother’s reckless improvidence.
+
+It was only for a moment that Oliver indulged the suspicion. He saw
+almost immediately that the Amyotts were as much taken by surprise, and
+more put out, than he was, though they recovered themselves with the
+comparative celerity and ease of well-bred people, who were, by their
+nurture and position, master and mistress of social situations, and
+equal to any social difficulty.
+
+For that matter, Agneta did such justice to her training and played
+her part so well, that Oliver felt inclined to think she was lost as
+a simple squire’s wife, and ought to have been a duchess, if not a
+princess of some reigning royal family, or a queen in her own person.
+She exhibited precisely the proper amount of feeling for the occasion,
+without being overcome. She was touched, she was gently courteous and
+even friendly to Oliver, without overstepping the limits which the
+circumstance of her having become Mr. Amyott’s wife imposed upon Harry
+Stanhope’s sister. She alluded simply and sadly to ‘the melancholy
+event’ of Fan’s death. She enquired with interest when he had heard
+from Harry, and expressed her earnest good wishes for the welfare of
+‘the dear little baby.’ She broke off to thank him with grave sincerity
+for all he had done for her brothers—though, with regard to the last
+graciously grateful speech, Oliver could not avoid the impression that
+Agneta considered him in some respects the obliged person, by having
+had it in his power to serve the Stanhopes.
+
+When the conversation strayed to more general topics, Mrs. Amyott
+referred with a blending of judicious candour and tact—while her
+slightly stooping, and slightly grey, but well-preserved husband
+was paying her the lover-like compliment of listening with pleased
+attention to every word she said—to the changes which had taken place
+in the Mill court since she was there last. She displayed thus with
+perfect serenity a considerable acquaintance with the landmarks.
+
+‘Surely, Mr. Constable, there have been some boughs lopped from the
+willow; and, ah! you have had the old seat, which I used to call “the
+Pilgrim’s seat,” removed from under the mulberry-bush!’
+
+Every word was in such unexceptionable taste; Oliver was let down
+so gracefully and gradually from the terms which Agneta Stanhope had
+insisted on establishing between them, during those vanished summer
+days, that he was inclined to acquiesce in the squire’s conviction
+that his last acquired gem was the most finely polished in his whole
+collection of treasures.
+
+In comparison, Mr. Amyott’s _rôle_ required little from the performer,
+but he also acquitted himself admirably, with just the degree of
+admission of Oliver’s claims which became a gentleman who would not
+disallow an obligation, and yet who viewed, with reason, the whole
+connection between Copley Grange Farm and Friarton Mill as a foolish
+mistake. But he, too, did not refuse to recollect the past. He made
+some cursory mention of his wife’s brothers having been his tenants
+in the farm; nay, he said with a smile in reference to his recent
+marriage, that the temporary arrangement had helped in bringing about
+what was for him a most fortunate as well as permanent result. His
+first introduction to his wife had arisen from it. Such trifling causes
+are, in some sort, the motive power in shaping out our destinies.
+
+Listening to her husband’s flattering acknowledgment of the
+fortuitousness—for him—of her brothers’ short tenancy of Copley
+Grange Farm, Agneta smiled sweetly back upon him. Mr. Amyott was
+somewhat worn and still more languid in his middle age; a man to
+whose over-cultivated nature much of the life around him, with which
+his wife’s fresh youth had some instinctive sympathy, was rough,
+rude, boisterous, and oppressive, even when it was not offensive, so
+that the abiding expression of his aristocratic features was wistful
+and pensive, rather than resolute and hopeful: still he was a fine
+patrician-looking man, only a little past the prime of life, and a
+trifle the worse for the wear. He was gentle and elegant—according
+to the old standard of elegance, in his whole tone; a shade
+plaintive and fretful occasionally, but never morose or violent.
+He was deferential, almost to a fault, to the wishes of his wife,
+which he was well able to gratify, since he happened to be in the
+possession of an ample, unencumbered rent-roll, a charming place, so
+well-ordered an establishment that her stepchildren never came in
+their young stepmother’s way, but fell at once into the pleasantest
+and most desirable relations with her, and a position second to few
+in the county. From Agneta’s point of view, she had good cause to be
+satisfied with the marriage which had fulfilled the expectations of
+her guardians. Her education—whatever else it had stifled in her, had
+served to develop largely a reasonable prudence.
+
+The Amyotts managed to make use of the fact of Oliver’s arrival that
+very afternoon, as an excuse for not waiting to receive the invitation
+to enter the Mill-house, which its master was in no haste to give,
+while both recognised that the omission on the first encounter served
+as an index of the extent of their future intercourse.
+
+Left alone, Oliver acknowledged the happy couple were free from
+ulterior designs in invading his privacy. Apart from these, what was
+Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? He had an idea that Harry and Horace
+Stanhope, with their baby, would settle down at a distance from Copley
+Grange, which would still farther simplify matters and smooth down
+awkwardnesses, so that in the future intercourse of the Manor-house and
+the Mill, Fan’s marriage, with its girlish aspirations, would soon be
+as though it had never been—and it was best so.
+
+Oliver reached the carved gallery at last; and leant over the
+balustrade looking down on the water of the Brook and away over the
+woody undulating ground of Copley Grange Park, where the sombre green
+thorns were covered with dark crimson haws, and no note of a bird broke
+the stillness, which was only made alive by the monotonous babbling of
+the Brook. How vividly some of the more significant scenes of his life,
+since he attained manhood, rose before him there! The thorns were red
+and white again in flower, and the thrush was once more singing, as he
+broke to Fan his life-purpose, and combated her objections. How full
+of confidence he had been! With what high hopes and steadfast resolves
+he had entered on his mission, and it had come to nothing! He had been
+foiled on every side, till at last he was allowing himself to drift out
+of the struggle.
+
+He was watching the ducks eating the mulberries, and turning his back,
+in vain, on a stalwart young figure cumbered with a limber attendant,
+belonging, by rights, to Oliver’s gone-by ’Varsity days, and yet
+starting up, stepping out there through the park, and hailing him on
+his threshold, in spite of him.
+
+He was walking with Fan in her garden, listening to her unwonted
+chatter and warm admiration of these new friends.
+
+The master baker was jostled, tripped up, and thrown down afresh by his
+late journeyman in the twilight lane yonder.
+
+Oliver was cut dead anew by Catherine Hilliard in the High Street of
+Friarton.
+
+The frost was on the ground while Harry Stanhope was besieging Oliver’s
+bedroom door to announce his intentions; and presently the brother was
+facing the sister on the hearthrug, holding her back from her fate.
+
+Oliver was grasping Fan’s hands and pledging himself the devil should
+not have Harry. Oliver was binding himself to give up any grain which
+he might have gathered from the crop which had cost him so dear, that
+he might help her to lie on the bed which she had made for herself.
+Yet Harry’s deliverance had proved harder to effect than that of Tam
+Lane in the ballad. It had been beyond the power either of strong man
+or devoted woman, though it was just possible, after Fan’s dead hands
+dropped the task, it might be performed by baby fingers in God’s great
+way of nature.
+
+Would Oliver, with his present knowledge, do all he had done over
+again, if the choice were once more given him? He thought it over
+deliberately and as calmly as he could, in trying to form his plans
+for the future, and he honestly believed he would. He solemnly
+thanked God for the boon of such a belief, to soften the soreness of
+his disappointment and defeat, and still the ache of his heart. The
+consciousness confirmed his faith that there had been some good in
+his aims. They had not owed their origin entirely to presumption and
+self-conceit. However rash and over-confident he might have been,
+however much he had bungled the whole business, he had the assurance
+of his conscience that the fault had not lain largely in his motives.
+Yes, he would if he could begin it all over again—to establish higher
+principles of trade—to make trade honourable, to fill hungry mouths
+with wholesome food; and he would still have granted Fan’s petition
+at all hazards. How did he know that he was to prove the pioneer of
+trade reformation, while he was well assured that he was his sister’s
+natural refuge and stay? He could not have made himself strange to his
+own flesh, with whom his first duty lay. He must have acknowledged the
+obligation for charity to begin at home.
+
+Before the dusk prevented him, Oliver took out and re-read Harry
+Stanhope’s last letter. It was a little longer than the usual brief
+reports, which were hardly higher intellectual efforts than those of
+the young rustics whose vicar has seen that they have profited by a
+night-school. This was the ordinary style of Harry’s letters:—
+
+  ‘Dear Constable,—Here goes. We are all well. Baby is thriving. She
+  has got her frocks shortened, and looks the better for it. It is
+  still awfully hot. We—Harry and me, for Mr. and Mrs. Weatherley don’t
+  try the dodge—took a header, and had a swim in the river for an hour
+  this morning. Woodhurst—that’s the man whose ground lies all about
+  here, is to let us have lots of fishing. I hope you’re all right.
+                                                       ‘Yours, &c.’
+
+That was as nearly as possible the substance of the unclerkly scrawls
+which Harry sent. But to write at all, without compelling cause, was a
+great advance on the writer’s native inconsiderateness and freedom from
+any comprehension of responsibility.
+
+In the letter which Oliver held in his hand, however, Harry, in his
+stumbling jerking manner, had contrived to say a good deal more.
+
+The two Stanhopes had gone back with the Weatherleys, on the return
+of the clergyman and his wife to their country parish, and had found
+lodgings close to the vicarage where Mrs. Weatherley still had the baby
+in her kind care. It was the attraction of the baby—with the fear of
+doing it harm by removing it from the good offices of an experienced
+matron—which in the beginning drew Harry and his brother across the
+Channel, back to England, and down into the rural retirement of a
+remote parish. But it soon became plain that the Weatherleys—coming in
+contact with Harry Stanhope at a turning point in his life, getting him
+into their hands when his heart was wrung with suffering and his whole
+character subdued—had acquired a growing influence over the young man.
+He was rapidly adopting their forms of thought and turns of speech,
+and falling in, to some extent, with their habits and practices. He
+had always possessed in a sense a ductile disposition, apt to take
+the moulding of its surroundings and associations. But a great wrench
+had been required to separate a thoughtless young fellow from his low
+atmosphere—laden with earthly vapours and dense with worldliness,
+and to launch him into the higher, rarer air of altogether loftier
+principles and considerations, breathed by the Weatherleys. Harry had
+suffered such a wrench and received such an impetus as propels many
+men—especially many shallow, impulsive men—to the opposite poles of
+their former opinions and pursuits.
+
+At this epoch of his history—when Harry Stanhope turned inevitably,
+with a sick heart, from his old interests; when all his former sports,
+though he still engaged in them mechanically, were flat and stale to
+him; when what was spiritual in his moral constitution craved spiritual
+consolation and refreshment—something beyond this world, some promise
+of reward and restoration for his lost love and its object, some
+reparation of all wrong, and enduring foundation for all good—Harry
+was carried out of the past in a totally new direction from any he had
+followed hitherto, where his brother would join him sooner or later.
+
+Harry retained his simple cordiality, but the simplicity had got a
+new bias, and the cordiality a fresh outlet. In those letters—the
+occasional writing of which, without the inducement of borrowing money,
+was a marvel in itself—while he expressed himself scantily, there was
+also something of the transparent prattle though not the gush of a girl.
+
+In the more recent prattle Oliver learnt a good deal of church services
+and parish work, in which, to his wonder at first, he found Harry
+was taking part. He had been practising with Mr. Weatherley’s choir,
+and doing a little rudimentary teaching in his schools, as well as
+helping Mrs. Weatherley with her parish children’s annual feast and the
+machinery of her different clubs.
+
+Harry did not dream of making the slightest apology for those
+extraordinary occupations. He was as free from self-consciousness now
+as ever. He mentioned the schools and the festival as naturally and
+unaffectedly as if he had been referring to a cricket-match and the
+dinner which followed. That struck Oliver as the most hopeful symptom
+in the case, and he was as devoutly glad as the Weatherleys could have
+wished.
+
+But Oliver’s gladness received a sudden check when he found Harry
+writing humbly enough, to be sure, of his unfitness for reading for
+orders, as Mr. Weatherley had just been suggesting he might do.
+
+‘Good heavens, I should think not!’ assented Oliver in a great heat.
+‘I am glad Harry retains one iota of common sense, if Weatherley is
+so far out of his mind. Now, even supposing Harry has outlived his
+lamentable propensity—supposing he were to pass muster, I should have
+to interfere and speak to the bishop.’
+
+But poor Harry was not really thinking of anything so far beyond him.
+He was only modestly preluding the statement that he had been with Mr.
+Weatherley when he was delivering some of his cottage addresses, and
+Harry had been moved and helped to say a word of warning from his own
+experience.
+
+Was Harry in the way of being taught to go about and speak at such
+meetings? Had he, too, turned social reformer and preacher—in the last
+particular, as Oliver was free to admit, shrugging his shoulders, far
+outstripping his, Oliver’s, performances? Would Harry’s inveterate
+fancy for joining in whatever was going on, his incorrigible
+good-fellowship, thenceforth, or even for a time, take the shape of
+lay aid in priestly ministrations, pointing Mr. Weatherley’s morals
+by a word in season from a sinner who was a standing commentary on
+the vicar’s text—at once a warning and an example, a young man who
+was ready to proclaim himself an evildoer formerly, one who had known
+both the temptation and the penalty, but had escaped with the skin of
+his teeth? Would Harry, if he continued in well-doing, go on exposing
+his shortcomings, steeling himself in the exposure, till he should
+come to Fan’s wrongs? Would he regard it as an act of expiation, and
+an offering for the good of his fellow-men, to speak out thus, and
+when his little daughter was old enough to listen to his words and
+understand them, would he still tell his piteous tale, and humble
+himself in her hearing—it might be in the hearing of some other
+evangelist’s daughter or sister, who might have replaced Fan and become
+Harry’s second wife, and the mother of his children?
+
+Oliver writhed at the mere notion. He recalled Fan’s strong, proud
+reserve in the middle of her ardour, her delicate reticence, her
+unconquerable shrinking from common speculation and coarse comment.
+Were the sacred secrets of her death-bed to be bruited about and made
+food for vulgar curiosity by this new kind of weak excess in the man
+who had inflicted the agony?
+
+Then Oliver called himself back. Had he any right to sit in stern
+judgment on Harry Stanhope’s weakness, granted that it was weakness
+even to self-indulgence? What if this were the sole refuge for Harry
+Stanhope, the only means by which the man whom Fan had so loved and
+striven to win, could be won to virtue and temperance? What if this
+were the single method by which Harry could serve his fellow-creatures?
+There are dull or besotted scholars who can receive no teaching save
+from homely, broad personalities, and there are primitive teachers
+who if they are not personal are nothing. Such teaching might appear
+little better than foolish and despicable to Oliver Constable, and yet
+what assurance had he, in his arrogance and self-sufficiency, that it
+was not among the foolish things which God has chosen to confound the
+wise? Might not Fan, from her peace among the angels, regard these
+ebullitions—which were at least frank and guileless—that vexed Oliver’s
+soul, in an altogether different light from that in which she would
+have seen them, had she been still living an erring woman on earth?
+
+No; let poor Harry do what seemed good unto him. God forbid that Oliver
+should put hindrances in Harry’s path—the path which was, perhaps, best
+suited for his stumbling feet.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                             FRESH SERVICE.
+
+
+On the night of his return, Oliver had been tempted to say—
+
+  My wound is deep,
+  I fain would sleep,
+  Take thou the vanguard of the three;
+
+but the next day found him again leading the van. Happy the wounded who
+have still strength for the fight, and whose presence is yet wanted in
+the thick of the fray.
+
+Sally Pope arrived at an early hour the following morning, and gave her
+master her greeting. She was so full of self-reproach for her unlucky
+absence the previous evening that it diverted her in some degree from
+the loud condolences which he was only too content to be spared. And
+Sally was a shrewd woman; she knew that ‘men-folk do not care to return
+to the topic of their grief, as poor critters of women will discuss it
+at large, and find comfort in dwelling on their trials;’ so when her
+single heartfelt lamentation for ‘poor Miss Fan as were that nimble and
+clever,’ had been made, Sally set herself to divert Oliver from the
+cold comfort of his lonely home-coming, by retailing to him all the
+latest news of Friarton.
+
+‘Lord, Master Oliver, we’re not singular in our troubles! There’s young
+Dadd down with fever, lying between life and death. Not a critter will
+enter Dadd’s shop—not to say the house, and the old people are nigh
+besides themselves.’
+
+‘Poor Jack! poor souls!’ said Oliver. ‘But what has become of the
+Sister—the wonderful nurse Mrs. Hilliard imported into the town?’
+
+‘Oh! she’s gone these three months, the more reason that Miss Hilliard
+is as spry as any of the rest of the young ladies. But now, Master
+Oliver,’ broke off Sally, putting her head on one side and speaking
+deprecatingly, almost mincingly, ‘I know as great allowance ought
+to be made for idle ladies, and that they mun be left for to direct
+themselves in many ways not open to the commonality, else they’ll
+fall to pieces like a dry wash-tub, or go all over red rust like a
+flat-iron laid aside, and be in danger of slipping through their
+friends’ fingers like Miss Hilliard all but slipped, and gave no end
+of trouble, the silly thing! Still, Master Oliver, do you think it is
+proper for ladies, as are none so old or ill-favoured, to go and get
+rid of their spare time—and all time is to spare with them—a feeling of
+the pulses and looking at the tongues of sick carters and masons and
+their families, ay, and of tramps and their brats, a-treating of them
+to shooken’up pillows and cooling drinks, and as many blisters and
+draughts as they can set their minds to—save us?’
+
+‘Well, Sally, at least you’ll allow it is a good chance for the masons
+and tramps,’ said Oliver with a laugh.
+
+‘I dunno,’ Sally shook her head. ‘I think the world’s turned upside
+down. But leastways better such folly than that Miss ’Mily Polley’s
+been up to.’
+
+‘What has Miss ’Mily been up to?’
+
+‘Gone and lost her good name, which she’ll never pick up again—not
+though she were the queen on the throne, with armies and navies to
+scour the world in search of it, at her word. Now there’s nothing left
+Miss ’Mily save a patched-up marriage, to cover the disgrace as will
+not be covered, to a rolling stone of a ne’er-do-well that will bring
+her to want and misery. Her as was such a pert piece, setting herself
+up, picking holes in the coats of her betters, and giggling in her
+light-headedness at this body and that body, as if she herself were a
+non-such and could go her own road and fear no fall.’ Sally ended with
+the cruel relish with which the old, who ought to be, and who, let us
+be thankful, often are, the most charitable, still sometimes, alas!
+under provocation, contemplate their young neighbours’ receiving their
+deserts.
+
+‘You must be mistaken, Sally,’ remonstrated Oliver, grieved and
+shocked. ‘It cannot be as you say. The Polleys have always been most
+respectable people. Even Polley, though a useless sinner, picked
+himself up, you know. You must have taken some coarse scandal for
+gospel. Mrs. Polley has been a good mother, and has looked well after
+her daughters.’
+
+‘Excuse me, Master Oliver, but it’s much you know of it, sir,’ said
+Sally, half huffily, half scornfully. ‘And it is little thanks Mrs.
+Polley, poor woman, have got for her work in the shop and her rule of
+her family. She were a bit set up, in her own way, and vaunty of what
+she had done for them gals and that silly man of hers. Nobody came near
+herself, and nought that belonged to her was to be sneezed at. Ah!
+her mouth’s shut now, and she won’t hold up her head again, not by a
+long chalk, as she has done in Friarton. I am sorry for her though,’
+reflected Sally, showing some signs of relenting, ‘for she were a
+through-going woman. Her took the whole load upon her own shoulders,
+when it fell off them sloping ones of Polley’s, and asked help from
+nobody. Hard she drudged a dozen years back, never sparing herself, to
+keep her family out of the gutter. It was ill-done of any one of them
+to humble her pride. But it’s the way of children—so it is. It’s a
+comfort to the likes of me, as is a single woman, alone in the world,
+except for a niece and neffy or two—looking after my savings I’ll be
+bound, Master Oliver—to think that I might have had a man and bairns to
+my share, and been no better—rather worse served. But I’ll fault Mrs.
+Polley with this’—Sally returned to the charge—‘she would do everything
+in the shop with her ten fingers. She would keep the management of the
+books and accounts in her own hands. Why, them gals weren’t properly
+brought up to the grocery business or to any other. They were as silly
+as silly could be, if you took them off weighing a pound of sugar, or
+cutting a bar of soap, as a child could do. Our Miss Fan could have
+bought them at the one end of the town and sold them at t’other. They
+went a deal of their time hand-idle, or falalling with their best
+clothes; and was that an up-bringing to keep them out of mischief? I
+have it on good authority, they would lay a-bed in the mornings, and
+they were out at their gadding every blessed evening, though she
+pulled them up tight about minding meals and hours, and shutting up
+to her face. If they were quick, they could get their heads out—most
+of all Miss ’Mily, as was the mother’s favourite—so it seems she had
+been drawing a score under her mother’s nose, and carrying on at a fine
+rate with that scamp of a half gentleman—a pretty gentleman! Mrs. Sam
+Cobbes’ Lon’on brother, though Mrs. Polley had forbidden her gal to
+have anything to say to him.’
+
+‘I should think so,’ said Oliver, with decision. He knew the man—a
+fellow with a specious address, and the glamour of expectations from a
+rich uncle in the Customs, which served him as an apology for losing
+such mongrel situations as he occasionally condescended to fill, and
+for loafing away the greater portion of his days, hanging on to other
+and humbler relations than the autocrat in the Customs, the credulous
+Cobbes for instance, always in a lazy, often in a disreputable
+fashion. He was just the sort of acquaintance, full of false
+pretensions, vulgar smartness, and strongly-flavoured dash, to take the
+fancy of an ignorant, ill-brought-up, wilful girl like ’Mily Polley.
+And on the man’s side, he would not hesitate to amuse himself with her
+openly-expressed admiration, as the best joke going.
+
+But Sally was eager to empty her budget. ‘Mrs. Polley she finds
+out that ’Mily is snapping her fingers in her mother’s face,’ the
+storyteller resumed the thread of her narrative, nothing loth, ‘and
+keeping company with Birt on the sly, continually: so the old woman’s
+temper, as is none of the coolest at the best of times, flies into a
+blaze, and she up and dares the gal to see the fellow again, or she
+will be turned to the door, as not worthy of such a home, and to serve
+as a warning to her sisters. Mrs. Polley, if you please, never lets
+’Mily out of her sight from that moment, except at night, when the
+mother locks the gals’ room door on them, in their hearing.
+
+‘Sure enough, it is no more use than locking the stable-door after the
+horse has got his head out of the halter, and kicked up his heels in
+giving the stable-boy the go-by. And the black affront before the rest
+of the family—certain to leak out too, with the feeling of a gaol,
+after the liberty the gal had snatched, in spite of Mrs. Policy’s
+tantrums, druv Miss ’Mily from bad to worse. She goes and throws dust
+into the eyes of them sillies of sisters, or else she scares them
+into telling no tales; she bribes the poor slavey of a maid. Any how,
+Master Oliver, she manages to give her mother the slip again, gets out
+of the house after it is shut up for the night, and runs and meets
+the scoundrel at the improperest hours. All is up with the foolish,
+wrong-headed lass’s good name then, Master Oliver, I need not go for to
+tell you. Mrs. Polley catches her youngest daughter a stealing in at
+the airy-door, under cloud of night, and thrusts her out with her own
+hand, raging that ’Mily is never to cross her mother’s honest threshold
+again. She will have nought more to say to the gal; she may go back to
+where she came from.
+
+‘Them as told me,’ said Sally, after a pause to recover her breath in
+her unconscious dramatising of the miserable details, ‘maintained that
+Polley did interfere, and try to put in a word for his daughter; but,
+in course, his wife would not hear him, and it do stand to reason that
+he has been so poor a critter, he has lost all title to be listened
+to. The long and the short of it is, the talk was over the whole town
+the next morning. The Cobbes took ’Mily in—they could not do less—with
+Birt, who had got the gal into trouble, their brother; and ’Mily Polley
+is to be married, and go straight off to Lon’on, or Manchester, or
+Glasgow—one of them big towns—with her bargain next week. Folk think
+Sam Cobbe’s that ashamed, he has forked out the money—though he’s none
+so rich, and the coal and potato trade ain’t so flourishing—and has
+used all his influence to over-persuade Birt, by threatening to expose
+him to his uncle in the Customs, to make the gal the amends of marrying
+her against his will—the mean scuff.’
+
+‘I am afraid it is a bad business,’ admitted Oliver sadly, compelled
+as he was to regard this lingering version, in a lower walk of life,
+of the wild, youthful escapades, and the half-brutal parental tyranny
+and violence which met the rebellion half way, that were to be found in
+every rank, before Christian civilisation did its work, a century and
+more ago. Now such evil tales were only possible among the desperately
+vicious of the highest, and the desperately ignorant of the lowest,
+ranks, or in the gross materialism and incapability of self-restraint
+which form the standing reproach and grievous disfigurement, to set
+against the many virtues of that large class of smaller shopkeepers—to
+raise whom in the scale of humanity Oliver Constable had been willing
+to devote his life.
+
+Oliver went immediately to Friarton to look after his own business. It
+did not take him long to despatch what he had to do. He had only to
+receive the last report from the not greatly interested foreman. It
+was quite what Oliver had expected. He went through it in less than an
+hour. It took him no more than ten minutes afterwards to write out, in
+the back shop, his announcement of giving up his father’s and his own
+baking business—he could not pretend to sell the goodwill of what had
+ceased to pay its cost—to be inserted in the next week’s Friarton’s
+newspapers.
+
+Oliver walked along the High Street afterwards, without happening to
+meet any save the most casual acquaintances. He passed the Polleys’
+shop door, having a glimpse of Mrs. Polley with the purplish flush on
+her face to which she was liable, fixed in her cheeks, and a certain
+hard, set turn of the head and jerking activity of movement, as she
+served her customers. He knew that she would stand and do her work
+there, though the force she put on herself might involve the danger
+of her falling behind the counter. But he could not go in then,
+or for some time to come—not till the sough of the scandal in the
+family had so far died out, and the bitter mortification its head was
+experiencing, had partly worn off. Sympathy and condolence were not to
+be thought of here. They would be a positive insult.
+
+But there was nothing to hinder Oliver from repairing to the Dadds’,
+forgetful of the coolness between him and Jack, or rather spurred on by
+it to the quicker exercise of old friendship.
+
+Oliver found the shop much as it had been described by Sally Pope,
+forsaken by customers, abandoned to the disheartened journeymen and
+shop-boys, with the goods either unexposed for sale or lying about
+in a state of confusion and disorder, which marked the absence or
+indifference of the masters. For both the Dadds had taken pride in
+their well-filled, well-kept shop. Friarton was somewhat given to
+panics in case of dangerous infectious diseases. The undaunted Sister
+who had brought light above the horizon had not stayed long enough to
+convert the town to her view of illness.
+
+Oliver had barely time to enquire for the patient, when old Dadd
+hurried out from the back shop and accosted him. It was a relief to
+distinguish the voice of an old friend who had come voluntarily into
+the shop and was standing quietly leaning against the counter, instead
+of fleeing from the place, as if it were a pest-house. It almost
+exhilarated the stout-hearted old man, who was keeping up bravely, to
+crack one of his old jokes.
+
+‘Not come back yet a family man, Mr. Oliver? Not wholly without its
+advantage—I mean the bachelor state. Mind coming in farther? Bless you!
+_don’t_ you mind? It will do Mrs. Dadd a power of good to see a strange
+face—as ain’t really strange—quite the contrary, and ain’t the doctor’s
+or one of them dratted nurses—which they never keep their time nor do
+their dooty properly, as the poor fellow needing them knows to his cost.
+His mother can’t watch day and night for weeks, and I’m but a poor
+hand at the trade,’ said the father wistfully, ‘though I would give a
+deal to take it up off-hand. But, you see, it don’t come natural like
+to a man as it do to a woman, and I wasn’t bred to it, in any sort,
+being come of a healthy family,’ rambled the linen-draper, staving off
+questions, as Oliver suspected, till they were through the back shop,
+up the stair and into the vacant, dreary-looking best parlour, with
+its torn prescriptions cast heedlessly on the carpet and its tray of
+half-empty physic-bottles and slops put down recklessly on the edge
+of the table, where guests had been wont to see more substantial fare
+carefully deposited. Then old Dadd raised his fist and was about to
+bring it down on the table with a bang—which in the very act of being
+dealt, was caught up and so much suppressed that it barely caused
+the physic-bottles to jingle, because Jack’s bedroom lay no farther
+off than the other side of the passage. ‘Yes, sir, my boy Jack is
+swimming for his life, they tell me,’ said the poor man, winking his
+eyes, knitting his brows hard, and speaking as if Oliver were about to
+question the statement.
+
+The door behind them opened, and the unnaturally pitched voice sank
+into silence abruptly, while the late speaker turned eagerly to meet
+the new comer.
+
+Mrs. Dadd had thought Oliver was the doctor, and entered hastily. At
+the sudden sight of her son’s contemporary and old companion standing
+there in the flush of health and strength, she broke down, for a
+moment, more completely than Dadd had done, to his great dismay. For
+Mrs. Dadd was a mannerly woman—so far as she understood manners. She
+prided herself on being at home with sickness, and she was accustomed
+to say, she did not know what a woman was good for, unless it were to
+bear up on these occasions when a man was sure to give way. One gain
+that was got by her sinking into a chair and covering her face, in
+place of greeting Oliver, was that it roused old Dadd to bustle about
+in order to quiet her, and to seek to explain the strange state of
+matters to Oliver.
+
+‘Now, don’t take on so, like a good soul; he ain’t worse since morning.
+No, I knew it. And don’t you go for to think, Mr. Oliver, it’s any ill
+feeling to you that’s sticking in the Missuss’s throat. Nothing of the
+kind, sir. Why, that was all out of head with poor Jack himself—who was
+never a chap to bear malice, months ago. He said to me only the other
+day when this illness was coming on him; “I can’t tell what ails me,
+father; it ain’t my head, or my back, or my legs in petickler—only I
+feel seedy all over. I ain’t fit for the shop, and I’m still less fit
+for a field-day”—you see the autumn manoeuvres was coming on—“if it had
+been a year or two back, I might have gone out to Friarton Mill and had
+a quiet afternoon with Constable, and tried what that would have done
+for me. Yes,” he said, “I remember there was bad blood between us; but
+I’m not so cock sure as I have been, that I had the best of it. Anyhow,
+Constable was the right sort to go to, at a pinch. You could look to be
+borne with, and set on your feet again when you felt you had not a leg
+left to stand on, as it is my bad luck to do to-day.”’
+
+‘That was very good of Jack,’ said Oliver warmly. ‘Then you’ll let me
+sit up with him tonight, since he’ll not mind; perhaps he’ll rather
+like it. I don’t mean to boast of my qualifications as a nurse; but I
+think you and Mrs. Dadd may trust me to see to the doctor’s orders.’
+
+‘I should think so, Mr. Oliver,’ said Dadd with emphasis. ‘You are
+kind, and we are much indebted to you, as we’ll tell you better some
+day, please God. Others has offered, but none so hearty, or whom we
+could put such faith in,’ old Dadd astonished Oliver by saying. ‘And as
+to Jack’s minding or liking, bless you! he don’t know his own mother
+from a stranger, and hasn’t these three days back.’
+
+‘It’s that as has made me useless, Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Dadd, sitting
+up and apologising feebly; ‘so that I haven’t even had the grace to
+thank you for your offer.’
+
+‘Never mind thanks,’ said Oliver. ‘Did my father go out of his way to
+thank you when you stayed at Friarton Mill and brought his little girl
+through her fever?’
+
+‘Ah, that was different; that was all in a woman’s way for a motherless
+little thing, and I ran no risk, having had the scarlet fever myself
+when I was a child. I wish I had been with her at the last, poor soul!
+When her trouble came upon her, in a strange place, and none as she
+knew, save men to look after her, I reckon she would have cared then to
+see the face of an old acquaintance, as was a woman like herself and
+knew her needs. But the Lord will protect you, Mr. Oliver, as He may
+have raised you up, and sent you home, at this time, to save my dear
+Jack. May be it is the greatest mark of respect I could show you or any
+man, after all, to think of leaving my own lad in your care.’
+
+Oliver did not know about having been raised up and sent home to
+save Jack Dadd, but he said ‘Surely,’ with fervour to Mrs. Dadd’s
+passionate amendment on her formal thanks.
+
+So Oliver was regularly installed, with the doctor’s consent,
+night-nurse to Jack Dadd; and in place of calling at the Meadows, he
+went out of the way to avoid the house and any chance of encountering
+Mrs. Hilliard or her cousin, as he passed backwards and forwards
+between the rooms above the shop in the High Street, Friarton, and
+Friarton Mill for a considerable number of mornings and evenings. Such
+fellow-townsmen as he met contented themselves with looking curiously
+after him, whether they stopped him to enquire for the sick man,
+or whether they crossed the street to shun the lightest breath of
+infection. An odd fish, Oliver Constable, not without feeling—strange
+to say—in his queer composition.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXX.
+
+             STUMBLED ACROSS—INTERVIEWED—TAKEN AT HIS WORD.
+
+
+One night, before it was late, as Oliver was stooping over Jack, trying
+to ascertain whether he were really muttering irrelevantly,
+
+  ‘There’s Ruby, and Rover, and Ranter, too,’
+
+or asking for something the sufferer wanted, a man’s figure in
+professional black, which was yet not the doctor’s, appeared on the
+opposite side of the bed. Oliver looked up—it was Mr. Holland, the
+Dadds’ and Oliver’s minister. He had not been there before—partly
+because he had been away on sick leave, partly because he had returned,
+only half recruited, after the anxiously economised weeks at the
+sea-side with his family—difficult for the poor minister to afford in
+more ways than one. And his wife had so implored him not to put his
+shaken health and strength, not fairly reestablished, to the severe
+test of a fever-laden atmosphere, that he had yielded reluctantly,
+and kept away from the unconscious Jack and his burdened father and
+mother, till Mr. Holland could do so no longer. Come what might of it,
+though it should cost him his own life, and his wife should be left
+a widow and his children fatherless, the pastor must be at his post;
+and when he went to it, he found the rebel of his congregation hanging
+over the sick man—indifferent to inhaling the tainted vapours at the
+fountain-head.
+
+Mr. Holland coloured high and hesitated.
+
+Oliver looked up and spoke without the slightest difficulty, rather
+with a roughish freedom, born of the necessity of the moment.
+
+‘Hallo, sir! are you there? Look here, Holland; from the colour of your
+coat, you have seen more sickness than I. Can you feel a pulse? Can you
+pronounce on the state of a tongue? You come as a stranger, you can
+tell how Jack strikes you. What do you think of his chance?’
+
+Mr. Holland stepped forward and did as he was required. Oliver and he
+consulted together and watched and nursed Jack, without a thought of
+anybody besides, for some hours. Then, after the clergyman had taken up
+his hat to go, he hesitated once more, put it down again, and touched
+Oliver’s arm with a hand that shook slightly.
+
+‘Brother,’ said Mr. Holland solemnly, in phraseology adopted both by
+Papists and Puritans in exceptional circumstances and seasons of strong
+feeling, ‘have you any objection to joining with me in prayer, and
+offering up an intercession for our sick brother?’
+
+‘None in the world,’ replied Oliver promptly. And the two men prayed
+aloud by the voice of the one, for Jack Dadd.
+
+The next Sunday, Mr. Holland preached a sermon, which slightly
+bewildered his hearers, on the text, ‘Not they who say “Lord, Lord,”
+but they who do the will of my Father.’
+
+The early October mornings were getting always darker—with a darkness
+which partook of white haze as well as dank wet, dimmer, chiller, when
+Oliver—buttoning up his great coat, as he came out of the Dadds’ house
+into the street, where last night’s lamps were still burning, and which
+had not yet woke up for the day, since not even an early milkman had
+put in an appearance—was startled by a woman in a bonnet and veil,
+hugging a shawl round her, coming out upon him from the nearest alley,
+and accosting him in a gasping, constrained voice.
+
+‘Please, sir, can you tell me how Mr.—how Mr. Jack Dadd is going on
+this morning?’ enquired the speaker, with little pants between the
+broken utterances of the words.
+
+In place of answering the question, Oliver exclaimed in amazement,
+‘Miss ’Liza Polley! What are you doing here at this hour of the
+morning?’
+
+‘Oh, Mr. Oliver, don’t betray me!’ cried poor ’Liza, in her natural
+voice, though it was quivering with distress and terror. ‘I thought you
+would not know me. But never mind that just now; tell me quick, how is
+Jack? Oh! will he die, Mr. Oliver? Will Jack die?’
+
+‘I hope not,’ said Oliver gently; ‘he’s no worse, and every hour gained
+is in his favour. But this is not a time for you to be out. It was not
+six when Mrs. Dadd took my seat. Let me see you home, Miss ’Liza, at
+once.’
+
+‘Oh! no, no, Mr. Oliver,’ refused ’Liza, in a fresh paroxysm of alarm
+and trouble. Mother would be fit to kill me outright, if I came in
+with a man—with a gentleman, at this hour of the morning—though it is
+morning—not night,’ pleaded ’Liza piteously; ‘and old Betty Miles has
+come to wash, and had the door opened for her’—taking further refuge
+in the business of the day’s having really begun—‘or else I should not
+have dared to get up, and slip out at all. Oh dear! You do not know
+how hard mother has grown, how hard everything is, since poor ’Mily
+went wrong,’ protested ’Liza, weeping, not violently, but in a crushed
+manner. ‘It is so dull you cannot think! We dare not lift up our heads
+from our work, or make a joke, or speak of running out to pay a single
+call. Mother says we are all as bad as ’Mily, and have no sense or
+feeling. She is ashamed of us. No respectable people will wish us to
+darken their doors, or dream of returning our visits. But oh! it would
+be nothing, Mr. Oliver,’ broke off ’Liza, returning to the dominant
+cause of her misery, ‘if Jack Dadd were only a little better. Mother
+may do or say what she chooses,’ continued the girl, writhing like any
+other worm trodden on, and turning on its oppressor, ‘I must and will
+hear how Jack is, or I shall go mad. Mother may serve me as she served
+’Mily. I don’t care, there! Anybody may hear me, and go and tell mother
+that likes.’
+
+‘Jack is highly honoured,’ said Oliver, at a loss for any other
+observation. ‘But now, don’t you think, since he is no worse, and will
+soon, I trust, be a great deal better, it would be as well for you to
+take care of yourself, and do what your mother wishes you, for his
+sake, as well as hers, Miss ’Liza?’
+
+‘Oh! hush, hush! Don’t say my name, in case anybody hear you,’ ’Liza
+objected with the greatest inconsistency. ‘You are a kind chap—that is,
+you are very good; but I did not mean you or anybody to see or know me.
+I thought you would not penetrate my disguise,’ said ’Liza with solemn
+simplicity.
+
+‘I was too clever,’ said Oliver, tempted to laugh.
+
+‘But you will not think ill of me?’ besought ’Liza—sinking again, in
+a moment, from the part of the heroine of romance she had formerly
+longed to play, which, even this morning, she had found some faint
+compensation in trying to support, for Jack was not dead, only very
+ill—into the affronted, unhappy, childish young woman. ‘You will not
+tell upon me? You see Jack Dadd and I have known each other all our
+days, and sometimes—well, he has looked and said things—though he was
+not always kind. He was fair angry because I let you talk to me first
+when you came back,’ explained ’Liza, with a little hysterical giggle.
+‘I am sure, Mr. Oliver, we two said nothing which all the world might
+not have heard, and Jack had given himself no right to interfere with
+me for speaking to anybody. Now mother says nobody will ever care
+to come near us again, after the disgrace ’Mily has brought upon the
+family.’ ’Liza began to droop afresh, and to cry without the most
+distant admixture of small triumphant laughter. ‘It would be very hard
+and cruel, if it were true, for how could we—Ann and I, help it? Mother
+was always putting ’Mily before us,’ complained ’Liza resentfully,
+‘and Jack and ’Mily would carry on together, just to plague me, I
+believe. Oh dear! what am I doing?’—stopping short and wringing her
+hands—‘Blaming Jack when he may be dying or dead for aught I know; and
+I may never see or speak to him again in my life. But I should not mind
+that, if God would only let Jack live and get well and be happy, though
+it were all away from me. Oh! Mr. Oliver, will he live? Will Jack live?’
+
+The poor delicate girl was quite spent and shaken. She was forced to
+let Oliver—who was not without some apprehension of arousing the blind
+fury of Mrs. Polley—give her his arm within sight of her mother’s door.
+
+‘So that was the way of it?’ Oliver said to himself softly, as he
+walked away. ‘Poor thing! poor old Jack—who can hardly move a finger at
+this moment! And I came between them and made mischief, did I? without
+the faintest suspicion, in my stupid bungling? But, let us be thankful,
+it may not be too Late to set this right if the beggar will only
+recover.’
+
+Oliver was coming in to Jack, not going from him, when the gas-lights
+in the streets of Friarton looked white and bright and encouraging
+as they look with the night setting in—not yellow and faded and
+dispiriting, after a career of unwarrantable dissipation, according to
+their faithless discomfiting habit with the first streak of dawn.
+
+There were still many people about, largely the promenaders, shoppers,
+and callers belonging to the classes to which day brings work and
+evening recreation, with the recreation consisting mainly of what is
+best expressed by the old-fashioned word ‘gadding’—going abroad and
+foraging for some little excitement in the way of gossip or otherwise.
+This was the season when the Polley girls had been wont to disport
+themselves among their acquaintances, till the striking of a clock sent
+them scampering and scuttling home, like Cinderella minus her glass
+slipper.
+
+And sure enough ’Mily Polley came forward in her conspicuous hat and
+outrageous skirt, bustling along as if all the business of Friarton
+were left for her to do, and meeting Oliver Constable in the face.
+
+At the first glance she appeared perfectly unabashed. The only
+difference in her was that to the girlish pertness and boldness there
+was added a touch of the hard brazenness which defies such a position
+as hers. She was alone—she espied Oliver at once. Her sharp eyes had
+never been known to miss man or woman, and now—far from being cast
+down, they were roving on all sides, challenging every passer-by.
+There was the complete contrast between ’Liza and ’Mily Polley which
+is generally to be found between the sinned against and the sinner.
+’Mily attempted no foolish disguise. She was not seeking to escape from
+Oliver’s recognition. She darted up to him, hailing him loudly—‘Mr.
+Oliver Constable, it is a treat to see you now-a-days.’
+
+Oliver stopped and spoke to ’Mily. She made no enquiry for Jack Dadd,
+or the most distant allusion to Oliver’s recent loss. On the contrary,
+in full view of his mourning, she referred to the changes which had
+occurred lately, with boisterous gaiety. ‘And there are more and
+greater changes coming, I can tell you, Mr. Oliver,’ said ’Mily, in her
+glibest manner. ‘I am turning my back on this dull hole, I’m glad to
+say. I am to be married next Thursday; the day is so near that I need
+not make a mystery of it. I dare say you have heard, though you have
+not wished me joy yet. If you were quicker about it, I might give you
+an invitation to my wedding.’
+
+‘Do,’ said Oliver, on the impulse of the moment; ‘and I’ll be happy to
+come in the character of an old friend.’
+
+‘Will you?’ asked ’Mily, quickly and doubtfully. ‘Will you, indeed, Mr.
+Oliver? Do you mean what you say?’
+
+‘Yes, of course.’
+
+‘That will be awfully good of you. I’ll be as proud as a peacock;
+no’—with a sudden flush—‘not that, but very much obliged and thankful
+to show his friends that all the people I ever knew have not turned
+their backs upon me.’ She finished with bitterness, still her voice
+and face betrayed some shame and regret. ‘Would you mind walking and
+talking with me a bit, Mr. Oliver?’ she asked almost gently. ‘We’ll
+turn down into Jervis’s yard, where there is nobody working at this
+hour. I should like to speak out to you this once. It is not late, and
+though it were, there’s nobody to hinder me from stopping out till
+after ten, now. But, oh! Mr. Oliver’—breaking out passionately—‘it
+was mother herself put the finishing touch to my folly. I had been
+wild and flown in her face, and disobeyed her, but I was not bad,
+when she turned me from my father’s door, and locked it in my face.
+She has herself to thank for what came of it,—no, no, I don’t mean
+that’—cried ’Mily, calling herself back with an accent of terror in
+her despair—‘What is it the Bible says about them as curses father and
+mother? And it is only them as honours father and mother that lives
+long; so that any way I’m booked to die young like Jack Dadd and Fan—I
+beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver—Mrs. Harry Stanhope. Well, I’ve got an
+inkling there are worse fates going. But it was heartless and ill-done
+of me,’ confessed poor ’Mily, with something like real contrition in
+the tears which welled up into her round eyes,—‘to come forward and
+look in your face, and at the band round your hat, and begin with my
+idle nonsense—only it’s such sore nonsense now-a-days—you can’t guess,
+Mr. Oliver. Did you ever think it would come to this—that my banns
+should be put up here, in Friarton, and my marriage day next week, yet
+neither mother, nor ’Liza, nor any of them, should care to come near
+me? That they should not be able to tell what I’m to wear, or seek to
+bid me good-bye before I go?’
+
+‘It will be better when you are gone,’ said Oliver. ‘Forgiveness and
+forgetfulness will come in time. You will try to do your best, ’Mily,
+God helping you, in the future, and when you come back——’
+
+‘I’ll never come back, never,’ said ’Mily, with strong conviction.
+‘I’ll never show my face here again, though I’ve sought to look as if
+I did not care that I had met the disgrace, I deserved, I suppose. But
+you’ll come to my marriage, Mr. Oliver,’ pleaded ’Mily, ‘and wish me
+the best that can happen to me, now? Birt will be pleased, because of
+your college breeding and connections, and will think more of me since
+a gentleman like you does not hold it beneath him to stand by me. And
+you will tell them at home some day, Mr. Oliver, what I wore—you’ll
+take a good stare at my bonnet and gown for the purpose—and how I
+looked, and that I had taken care, as far as I could, out of the little
+bit of money my aunt ’Mily, as was also my godmother, left me, that
+everything about the marriage should be as slap-bang as the Cobbes
+could manage it? No doubt mother’s daughter, considering what mother
+has made of the shop, and what her bank-book comes to, might have been
+entitled to a great deal more. I know I used to fancy I might be
+married in a white satin and go off in a carriage and pair at least,’
+replied ’Mily, half-proudly, half ruefully; ‘still you’ll see there
+will be nothing in the way the marriage is gone about, to affront
+mother and the rest—though none of them has come to look after my
+credit and theirs,’ ended ’Mily, with a considerable flavour of the old
+woman lingering about her still.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                            LIFE—AND DEATH.
+
+
+Jack Dadd was more like a girl than ever—more like even than the
+puniest of pink and white complexioned lads—with whom to associate the
+idea of a bold, rude, fox-hunter or a slashing soldier, or a reckless
+buccaneer, as they had been represented in Jack’s favourite songs,
+would have been the height of absurdity, pathetic in the very wildness
+of the imagination.
+
+He was wasted and worn to skin and bone, and faded to the colour of
+blanched wax, lying with his eyes shut, though he was not sleeping. Yet
+Jack was considered to have got the turn, to be in a fair, though still
+a precarious, way of recovery. Oliver had not altogether resigned his
+functions; he was with Jack this night again, sitting reading at a
+little distance from the bed, when he was startled by hearing a piping
+voice address him, and looking round, he saw Jack’s eyes wide open,
+with reason in their glance, fixed upon him. It was a critical moment,
+for between delirium and sheer feebleness, Jack had not before shown
+any consciousness of Oliver’s identity.
+
+‘Noll,’ said Jack, ‘don’t you remember how I won your taws that time?’
+referring to a famous, far-off, game of marbles in the Friarton
+playground.
+
+Oliver was immensely relieved. ‘Yes, Jack, you beat me to sticks,’ he
+admitted candidly, while Jack emitted the ghost of a chuckle at the
+recollection of his old victory.
+
+But Jack’s next speech was not so reassuring. ‘Constable,’ said Jack,
+‘I’ve often been guilty of rank impudence to you.’
+
+‘Gammon!’ said Oliver; ‘shut up for the rest of the night, old boy; let
+me turn you round, and do you try and get another sleep, which will set
+you on your pins again in no time, and let me finish my book.’
+
+But Jack’s hour for conversation had come, and he would not be
+silenced. ‘I say, Constable, I hope I may get over this bout, and
+be let off this time, to live and make up for some things I’ve done
+unlike—unlike a gentleman.’
+
+Heaven help the lad! who was too shy in the middle of his forwardness
+to say a Christian, the young counter-jumper who had his own standard
+for a man and a gentleman.
+
+‘You may live to behave like a prince, Jack, if you’ll only be careful
+and not exhaust yourself. Here; swallow this stuff, and snooze away.’
+
+But Jack was at his confessions again, more briskly than before,
+the moment he had taken the stimulant. ‘I wonder if anybody but the
+poor old guv’nor, and the mother, and perhaps a good fellow like
+you, Constable, would care whether I hopped the twig or not? I don’t
+deserve it from some people. There’s ’Liza—’Liza Polley—’Liza might
+not have always known her own mind, or rather, her friends went in and
+bamboozled her, and put a lot of nonsense into her head, but I was not
+quite fair to ’Liza. I came down hard upon her, when, as it turned out,
+you were not going after her, and when, if you will believe me,’ said
+Jack, with emphasis, succeeding in raising himself on his elbow, ‘she
+never cared a rap for you, it was me she cared for all the time—poor
+’Liza!’ ended Jack, falling back with a sigh.
+
+The delicious _naïveté_ of the assertion pleased Oliver greatly, while
+he hastened to give it a handsome corroboration. ‘I am profoundly
+convinced of the truth of what you say, Jack; and if it would not bring
+on a fresh attack of fever, I might generously tell you in return that
+Miss ’Liza Polley met me at break of day the other morning, daring the
+wrath of her mother, just to hear the last news of your health.’
+
+‘Did she, though?’ exclaimed Jack, with his poor face brightening into
+a dim glow of satisfaction; ‘and ’Liza is as frightened as a hare while
+her mother has been like a she-bear that has been robbed of her whelps,
+since she sent ’Mily up the spout.’ There was a little pause. Oliver
+hoped Jack was dropping off to sleep. ‘I’ll not forget it of ’Liza
+Polley,’ Jack spoke again, with drowsy, lordly magnanimity; ‘it was
+the best errand she ever ran on. I’ll act on the square to her—on the
+square all round, please God. And as for Mrs. Polley, won’t the guv’nor
+make her squeak to a different tune, when he calls to pop the question
+to the mother for me?’
+
+Yes, Jack was going to recover, to be a man instead of a boy—a good
+man ‘please God,’ as he had said simply. And it would please the Father
+of Lights, the source and the reward of all goodness.
+
+Death and desolation were distanced for once. The strange, sad sights,
+sounds, and memories which the King of Terrors, even though his sceptre
+has been wrested from his grasp, still brings with him, and leaves
+behind him wherever his ‘pale feet’ pass, would be changed for the
+cheery, sweet, common tokens of returning health and life: the fresh,
+open air, everyday work, the familiar faces of friends no longer
+anxious or averted.
+
+Oliver felt it like a great boon to himself. He went to ’Mily Polley’s
+marriage with much better spirit and hope, since there was no longer
+the least probability of his having to attend Jack Dadd’s funeral.
+
+Oliver represented ’Mily’s circle, though Sam Cobbe gave her away. An
+old friend lent her his countenance when she needed it. For she was
+conscience-stricken and shame-smitten through all her defiance. She was
+really smarting keenly under the abandonment of her kindred. She was
+awaking silently—and when had ’Mily ever been silent before?—and sadly,
+already, even before he had made her his wife, to the utter poverty and
+short-lived nature of the passion which had existed between her and the
+man for whom she had—not generously but wilfully, sacrificed all that
+women hold dear. For this reason she was susceptible to the compliment
+of Oliver’s presence even more than to the show of her gaudy blue silk
+gown and desperately smart bonnet and veil. She thanked him with an
+earnestness which struck Oliver in ’Mily, and which he considered far
+out of proportion to the cause of the thanks, in the last words she
+said to him. She went with her husband straight from the church to the
+railway-station, as the Cobbes could not be expected to furnish the
+shabbiest version of a wedding-breakfast, and left immediately for
+Manchester. There was no trace of the couple when Oliver followed them
+to the station in the course of a quarter of an hour, intending to take
+a short journey on his own affairs.
+
+Oliver Constable had his foot on a carriage step when the
+station-master hurried up, white and scared-looking, struggling to
+maintain his composure. He whispered to Oliver, ‘There’s been an
+accident to the 11.30 train north, close to Medlar Bridge. I’ve just
+had word. There’s folk hurt. All that can help is wanted immediately;
+but there’s no use driving the town wild, and bringing out a pack of
+useless, frantic people as long as it can be prevented. Would you mind,
+sir, coming with me and the nearest doctor and the surface-men?’
+
+‘All right,’ consented Oliver, in reference to what was evidently all
+wrong. He, too, was agitated by the suddenness and shock of the message.
+
+It was not till the little party had started and aroused the suspicion
+of a few idlers, though another quarter of an hour would pass before
+the vague alarm took shape, spread abroad and thrilled the town, that
+Oliver recollected the 11.30 train north was the very train by which
+the newly-married pair were to travel. He told himself the next moment
+that amongst the hundreds in the train there was little likelihood that
+the Birts should be the particular victims.
+
+The place where the last portion of the train had run off the line,
+with the usual amount of overthrow and wreck, lay about midway
+between Friarton and the next station, from which assistance had
+already come, before the Friarton station-master and his band of
+helpers arrived. Oliver saw only the _débris_ of broken carriages
+and a throng of excited but uninjured people, when he leapt from the
+engine, on reaching his destination. ‘Not so bad as had been feared
+from the earliest report,’ Oliver heard proclaimed by various voices
+immediately. Two of the smashed carriages were found to have been
+empty. Only one carriage and the guard’s van were occupied. A woman had
+been killed, and five or six persons more or less hurt.’
+
+Oliver Constable passed through the eager speakers, looking on every
+side for the Birts, half expecting to find ’Mily in hysterics if she
+had happened to be in a carriage near those which had broken loose, and
+if she had seen anything of the accident.
+
+Before he was aware he found himself close to the waiting-room into
+which the sufferers had been carried. A railway servant at the door,
+taking it for granted that Oliver was seeking for the room and had a
+right to enter, beckoned him in before he could think where he was
+going, among the doctors and their patients—fainting or groaning, while
+pulses were felt, heads bandaged, and limbs set.
+
+Oliver prepared to retreat, but first he cast a quick glance round.
+Stay! Was not that Birt in the soiled, jaunty new clothes for which
+’Mily had paid, out of her little bit of money?
+
+The man did not look much the worse, in spite of the outcry he was
+making over what a doctor was coolly pooh-poohing as a trifle of a
+broken collar-bone.
+
+But where was ’Mily?
+
+In another moment Oliver learnt the incredible fact that Birt did not
+know. The bridegroom had been smoking with the guard in the van when
+the accident happened, and ever since then—speaking from Birt’s point
+of view—he had been in far too bad a way to enquire after anybody. But
+no doubt she was somewhere outside, gaping and screeching with the
+rest of the women. She ought to be looked up at once—Birt grumbled
+crossly, taking the first word of scolding—to see if she could not make
+a beginning in minding her duty, and trying to do something for him
+when he was in mortal agony and as sick as a dog.
+
+Oliver, with his heart standing still, took one step towards the door
+of another room which was kept closed. An elderly woman turned the key
+in the lock and let him go in. Alas! yes; there lay all that was mortal
+of ’Mily, the poor mangled body decently composed, covered over and
+put away from fascinated, appalled gaze, or rude, gloating scrutiny—in
+the very dress she had so often pictured herself as wearing, that she
+had bidden Oliver notice particularly, which she had, not three hours
+before, gone to church in. The chubby face was little altered, except
+for the closed eyes, since it had been spared, while death must have
+proved instantaneous. With no friend by her side, not missed, though
+she was in her bridal glory, till Oliver sought her out, the disastrous
+end of ’Mily’s foolish young life had indeed come swiftly.
+
+In the grief and oppression with which Oliver set about making the
+necessary arrangements, he could yet believe that, as ’Mily had said of
+Fan’s fate, so her own might have been more miserable still.
+
+It was a wise choice made by the warrior and poet king—rather to fall
+into God’s than into man’s hands. To die in an instant, though it were
+on her marriage morning, in her bridal finery, when her heart was
+softened in the act of quitting Friarton, thinking as she thought in
+all probability—with regretful tenderness of her mother and family, and
+repenting of her misconduct, while, at the same time, all faith and
+hope in her husband had not been crushed out of her, was surely better
+than to live on at the mercy of a man like Birt, to be dragged down by
+him into lower and lower depths, to risk becoming at last as heartless
+and worthless as himself.
+
+Oliver had a worse ordeal to face before night than that of seeking out
+’Mily on her marriage day, as the woman killed in the railway accident.
+
+Mrs. Polley sent over an express to Friarton Mill to bid Mr. Constable
+come into the town and speak to her. In other circumstances it would
+have been an exacting, unreasonable demand; as it was Oliver, like any
+man with a true man’s heart, obeyed it as he would have obeyed the
+behest of the Queen.
+
+He found the Polleys’ shop with the shutters up in the middle of the
+afternoon, for the first time in his recollection. Mrs. Polley was
+not in the back shop; she was in her daughters’ room, to which she
+had gone, with rapid unsteady feet, the moment a rash or stolid
+customer had pushed forward to the counter, and, in place of giving
+an order, had told the tragedy in all its raw anguish and frightful
+force, without waiting to weigh words, or to secure the presence of
+some solemnly commissioned, skilled, and pitying comforter. The mother
+was sitting by the side of the bed in which ’Mily had been wont to
+sleep. Mrs. Polley’s hard-working hand was mechanically smoothing down
+the crochet quilt, which had been one of the few feats of industry
+accomplished by the joint efforts of the sisters while they were still
+at school, and in which ’Mily, though the youngest, had played the
+foremost part. The first married of the three workers was to have
+carried off the quilt, but the bargain had not been kept in spite of
+’Mily’s double title to the prize.
+
+The heavy flush had not grown lighter on Mrs. Polley’s cheeks. She
+continued dry-eyed and silent, while all the eyes around her were dim,
+and the faces swollen with crying, and as Oliver—the last person there
+who had seen and spoken with ’Mily—entered the room, a fresh burst of
+lamentation broke from her sisters, even her father groaned aloud, and
+bowed his face over his shaking hands.
+
+Oliver took Mrs. Polley’s hand reverently. ‘I am very sorry,’ he
+muttered. ‘She could not have suffered. She is in better hands even
+than in those of the friends who loved her best. I have done all that
+was required.’
+
+‘Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Polley, in a loud, harsh voice which startled
+everybody, ‘I have sent for you in case I should not live another
+night. How do I know when them as I’ve seen full of youth and life and
+gladness is took in the twinkling of an eye? I want to thank you before
+I die, and I may never have another chance. Yes, I know all you have
+done for my ’Mily this day. You have stood beside her—both as a bride
+and as a corpse. When every friend she had gave my gal up, and left her
+to be despised and trodden upon, when the mother as bore and had turned
+her adrift, that so her folly might grow into sin, showed no mercy, you
+came to her and let her feel she had one friend left on earth, so that
+she might be able to believe that she had still a Father and Saviour
+in heaven. You have ordered her coffin and undertook, if necessary, to
+pay for it, and are ready to see all that the cruel, grinding, tearing
+wheels left of her, laid in it, and to help to carry her yourself to
+the churchyard. Mr. Oliver, my thanks ain’t worth much; for aught that
+I know, they may be no better than ill wishes and curses, since I was
+the unnatural mother as shut ’Mily out into the street, where she had
+no refuge, save the base villain that had decoyed her from her mother’s
+roof. Hold your tongue, Polley, and you gals, and you, sir, though you
+were thrice my pastor,’ addressing Mr. Holland, as he came softly and
+sorrowfully into the room. She resisted fiercely all attempts of her
+frightened husband and children and the other awed bystanders to stay
+her wild self-accusation. ‘I will speak out. I’ve sung my own praises
+and been my own trumpeter many’s the time. I’ll publish likewise my
+barbarous cruelty. It was I as denounced my own daughter and condemned
+her to destruction and an early grave. So what would it serve you, Mr.
+Oliver, though you were to let me go down on my knees and bless you,
+because you had more pity on my ’Mily—my bright, clever ’Mily, that is
+now as cold and still as a clod of the walley, than her wicked mother
+had on her poor, thoughtless child?’
+
+‘You loved her better than yourself, all the time you blamed her most,’
+Oliver told the miserable woman. ‘It was your very love for her, and
+pride in her, which made you hard. She knew that then; she knows it
+better now.’
+
+Something in the words spoken almost at random, opened the closed
+floodgate of tears which quenched the frenzy blazing into a devouring
+flame, and saved the stout heart from breaking. ‘Yes, I were fond
+and proud of my ’Mily, with good reason,’ protested Mrs. Polley more
+softly, though the softness was expressed by the deep sobs which rent
+her breast, and the torrents of tears that gushed from her eyes. ‘There
+was none of the other gals fit to hold a candle to her. She were that
+smart, my little ’Mily, she could run and speak by the time she was
+eighteen months. I’ve seen her a sitting up rosy and full of roguery,
+playing with the pillows in this here bed, when other children would
+have been lying like so many little logses. Her fingers and her tongue
+alike were that clever! She had finished her piece and begun another of
+this very bed quilt long before Ann or ’Liza had got half through with
+either of theirs—and her the youngest and only in her first quarter at
+the school. “I’ll make them stand about, mother, she would say to me,”
+with one of her merry laughs; “and I’ll wager I’ll be married first, as
+well as first done with my bit of the crochet, and get the quilt all to
+myself.” So she has been married first, and she has died first, leaving
+me and her father behind, as ought by rights to have gone long before
+her. Oh! ’Mily, ’Mily, if I could but have died for you!’
+
+Poor young ’Mily Polley’s death on her marriage morning caused a great
+revulsion in the feelings which had been entertained towards her in
+her native town. Her awful fate wiped out, in human eyes, the sum of
+her transgressions. Her death was regarded—not so much in the light
+of retribution as of atonement. A tender veil of commiseration and
+charity was drawn over her offences till they were in a fair way to
+be forgotten as well as forgiven. Her memory was likely to survive in
+Friarton and appeal to all gentle, romantic hearts for generations to
+come—not as that of the erring girl, but as that of the newly-made wife
+who perished in the first hours of her wifehood.
+
+’Mily’s intimate associates were forced to acknowledge remorsefully the
+little allowance they had made for her temptations, and the unanimity
+with which they had forsaken her in her humiliation.
+
+Even some of the townspeople who had only noticed and inveighed against
+the girl as an exceedingly vulgar, pert, giddy creature, experienced an
+uncomfortable conviction that her opportunities of learning to become
+more civilised, modest, and steady had been limited, and, such as
+they were, might have been a good deal counteracted by the old feuds
+and jealousies between classes. At the same time the blithe ring of
+her voice as it had floated accidentally to them, the light fall of
+her footstep when she had passed them, lingered in the ears of these
+judges, and smote them with the realisation of how young this ’Mily
+Polley must have been, when her detractors had not thought it beneath
+their superior age, rank, and refinement, to enlarge on her sins
+against good taste. ’Mily had her revenge in this fact, that whereas
+she and her set had been heartily despised, sharply ridiculed, and
+religiously shunned by those more gently bred ladies of Friarton, who
+held it as a pious duty to work for, bear with, instruct and assist the
+laziest and most reckless of the poor in the town, very few could now
+afford to scorn ’Mily. All except the smallest and grossest minds saw
+that the solemnity of death, even without its tragedy—as in ’Mily’s
+piteous case—invested the girl with a simple dignity in her grave. But
+it was a pity that not more men and women had possessed the larger,
+gentler eyes to recognise that the sacredness of life had also bestowed
+on her worth and importance—even while she still bounced about her
+mother’s shop, and flounced along the streets.
+
+Remorse, in its slightest manifestation of doubt and discontent with
+one’s self, is not an agreeable sensation, therefore the townspeople of
+Friarton, who, like the rest of the world, greatly preferred to feel at
+ease in their own minds, if not gently titillated with a consciousness
+of having done their best in the matters of justice and mercy, began
+to look around them in order to discover any loophole of escape from
+the painful impression that they had been hard and contemptuous to
+’Mily Polley and perhaps hounded her on—for girls are sensitive as well
+as perverse—to her undoing. They were remarkably successful in their
+search. For one man had, as it were, redeemed the humane character of
+Friarton. Oliver Constable had paid respect to the girl from the first,
+and shown her mercy to the last. He had acted as the representative
+of her neighbours, and so removed, in a great measure, the lurking
+self-reproach from their consciences. And it was the same Oliver who
+had gone in for nursing old Dadd’s son, and pulled him through his
+fever.
+
+It did seem as if Oliver Constable had come home from watching by his
+sister’s death-bed to save the life of Jack Dadd and to speak a parting
+word of forgiveness and God-speed to ’Mily Polley, so as to deliver
+the whole town from the charge of selfish cowardice and intolerant
+persecution. If so, what sort of man could he really be who had
+received such a commission and given himself to its fulfilment?
+
+The reaction which had set in for poor ’Mily extended to Oliver.
+His fellow-townsmen commenced to conceive an altogether different
+impression of him, to exalt and make much of him, to canonise him—not
+merely before a hundred years had elapsed, but in his very lifetime.
+This experience is comparatively rare, still it happens sometimes that
+just as men’s sins occasionally go before them to judgment, so men’s
+patient continuance in well-doing is observed and awakens a response in
+their brethren before death has set its seal to virtue.
+
+In the meantime Oliver was perfectly unaware of the sudden revolution
+in the sentiments of the town towards him, so that in place of being
+unpopular and lightly esteemed—not to say grossly slandered—he had
+sprung at once to the height of popularity and general respect, among
+those who were not particularly ashamed of thus turning their coats,
+after they had so recently decried and abused their champion and hero.
+
+The only thing which struck Oliver as he walked along the streets of
+Friarton, in the drizzle and mud of November, was, that in spite of
+the season and the weather, he was constantly meeting friends and
+acquaintances, and that not merely everybody had something to say to
+him, but that all men and women were in the best humour, overflowing
+with geniality, as if they were reflecting June sunshine rather than
+November fog.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                      ‘DO THEY BELIEVE IN ME NOW?’
+
+
+Oliver Constable’s announcement that he was retiring from the baking
+business had appeared three times in the Friarton weekly newspapers.
+The first time it was received with scoffs and sneers, the next it
+was met by a troubled silence, the last time it was anticipated by an
+urgent protest, though Oliver did not happen to be within hearing. The
+earliest result of his advertisement—so far as Oliver knew—came in the
+shape of a formal call in the back shop from Jim Hull.
+
+Jim had never entered the premises since he and his nephew ’Arry
+set up a rival business. Oliver made no question that Jim came now
+with some proposal from the flourishing firm of which he was one of
+the representatives, while he indulged in an austere satisfaction at
+the realisation of his own prophecies of the certain consequences of
+Oliver’s new-fangled, hair-splitting scruples and crotchets. Anyway,
+Oliver thought, Jim Hull might have saved himself the trouble. It was
+execrable taste in him to come and crow at all, in the circumstances.
+
+‘_Et tu Brute!_’ Oliver said in spirit to his father’s old friend and
+servant, who arrived to speak to Oliver of his acknowledged failure,
+and to suggest Jim’s nephew’s further rise on Oliver Constable’s
+downfall.
+
+Neither did Jim seem to prosper on his heartlessness and
+vindictiveness. He looked much older and greyer, and his fine,
+well-cut face was all creased over with the wrinkles which had been
+just perceptible, here and there, two or three years before. The face
+had always looked compact, but now it had a contracted appearance, as
+if Jim had got into a habit of setting his few teeth and drawing his
+grizzled brows together, by the hour.
+
+‘Master Oliver,’ said Jim hesitatingly, ‘will you not think twice of
+this resolution?’
+
+‘I have no intention, Jim,’ said Oliver shortly, as he drummed on the
+table before him; and then, scorning to make use of a subterfuge, he
+added, ‘It is not in my power.’
+
+‘Not though I bring you the earliest information that my nephew ’Arry
+is also giving up, leastways selling his business here?’ said Jim,
+leaning halfway across the table in his earnestness. ‘He has got word
+of a famous opening in London, which is a field as will suit him
+better,’ said Jim, in a lower tone, sinking back in his chair.
+
+Oliver was taken by surprise. He could only say it would be odd if
+Friarton were left without bakers, except the small fry. But there
+could be no difficulty in finding a purchaser and successor to such
+a _thriving_ business as Jim and his nephew had established. Were
+there no other nephews of Jim’s?—Oliver remembered a whole family of
+sons, cousins of Harry’s—to take the place of the ambitious fellow who
+thought Friarton beneath his further attentions, and would, no doubt,
+die Lord Mayor of London? Oliver had—he could not have told why, unless
+in the underlying sense of bitterness produced by the contrast with his
+own experience—put an emphasis on the epithet ‘thriving’ which he had
+applied to Jim and his nephew’s business.
+
+The stress on the word caused Jim to wince. A dull, faded red suffused
+the old servant’s withered face, and caused positive pain to the
+quondam master. What right had Oliver to taunt Jim with his success?
+Was not the old man at liberty to make his methods, in which he saw no
+harm, succeed to the utmost of his power?
+
+While Oliver took himself to task, Jim was informing him,
+ceremoniously, that the only nephew he had in the baking trade, besides
+’Arry, had gone to Australia, ‘and well for him,’ muttered the speaker.
+‘But I was thinking, Master Oliver,’ resumed Jim, wistfully, ‘that you
+might take ’Arry’s business, of which my share would go far to buy up
+the goodwill, and carry it on instead of the old one here.’
+
+‘What, Jim! because I have half ruined myself with the one, go on to
+wholly ruin myself with the other?’ said Oliver, with a forced laugh to
+hide his perplexity and embarrassment.
+
+‘But things is different,’ insisted Jim eagerly. ‘It were the
+opposition—of which there would be no more, not a scrap—as did for you;
+and I would manage for you again, if you liked to have me. There’s a
+deal more work left in me yet than some folks think for,’ Jim put in
+resentful parenthesis, flicking away the remains of flour from his
+sleeve. ‘I’m not the man as would advise another man, least of all you,
+Master Oliver, if you will believe me, to fling good money after bad;
+but here is the finest chance as ever Providence made—on purpose, I had
+a’most said, for you to retrieve your losses, and build up Constable’s
+business again on a firmer foundation than ever, and carry out your
+schemes to boot,’ cried Jim, waxing enthusiastic, ‘if you’ll not go and
+fling it to the dogs in a pet.’
+
+Oliver was fairly puzzled. He was a man tenacious of his principles
+and projects. So far from being wearied out by disappointment and
+thwarting, and glad of the excuse to throw the baking business over, it
+‘riled’ him thoroughly, tortured and mortified him, to resign it and
+all the hopes he had set upon it, after what they had cost him. He was
+strongly tempted to catch at the most distant prospect, consistent
+with common prudence, of resuming the trade, and waging it thenceforth
+to a triumphant issue, for the benefit of his fellow-men.
+
+But what of the old practical difficulties with Jim? Oliver was
+not disposed to yield an atom of what he looked upon as trade
+righteousness. Sooner sacrifice half-a-dozen businesses, or promises
+of business, than make a holocaust of his trade creed, which was a
+prominent part of his Christian creed. Jim, with the hold on his master
+which the manager’s having largely contributed to buy back the business
+must give him, would be in a position to maintain his opposite views,
+while Oliver would no longer have the power to object to them, far less
+to put them down.
+
+‘I am greatly obliged to you, Jim,’ said Oliver, at last, ‘and not the
+least for this—that, in spite of the mull I have made, you speak as if
+you had some faith in me still. But I am not cured of my hobbies; I am
+as great a fool as ever, you will think, when I tell you that I cannot
+be in business as a baker and suffer artificially-whitened bread, or
+fancy bread which is not weighed, to go out of my shop. Besides, I do
+not know what other eccentricities might occur to me, which I should
+feel bound to see carried out.’
+
+Instead of the half-repressed disgust which Oliver had expected to
+excite, Jim met the declaration with a shame-faced assent. ‘Never mind,
+Master Oliver, them are trifles after all, and it’s erring on the safe
+side. Yes, sir, I’m bound to say to you this much—it’s erring on the
+safe side,’ raising his voice, and speaking sternly, while he fumbled
+nervously with his watch-chain.
+
+With the exception of another abrupt sentence, ‘I’ll swallow all your
+stipulations, and stick to you like a vice, now, Master Oliver, never
+fear,’ it was all the admission Jim Hull ever made to Oliver of having
+found himself the wrong man in the wrong place. But it was enough to
+recall to Oliver’s mind stories he had heard, only half believed and
+never repeated, of the sort of bread which the new business had gone
+on to sell in Friarton. A young doctor, who had taken upon himself
+the office of unpaid analyst in defence of an ungrateful public, had
+pronounced the bread largely and most perniciously adulterated. ’Arry
+had advanced a long way before his sickened and horrified uncle in
+courses which Jim had found himself utterly unable to restrain to mild,
+half-openly-confessed, traditional trade liberties. London was indeed a
+fitter field for ’Arry’s genius.
+
+The day has long gone by when the outbreak of deadly epidemics aroused
+the frantic outcry of poisoned wells and poisoned loaves. But are the
+water and the bread provided for the people really pure and wholesome?
+Has the time not come for the old charge to be revived in more
+measured and reasonable tones, without any thought of vengeance on sins
+which are those of ignorance—however wilful—sloth, and haste to make
+rich, not of deliberate conspiracy and barbarous treachery against
+human health and life?
+
+‘But, Jim, though you consent to bear with my fads, I am afraid the
+Friarton people will still find them insupportable. They will still
+clamour for bread of chalky whiteness, varying in size as well as in
+shape. I have wearied them out with my efforts to be honest and do them
+good against their will.’
+
+‘No, you haven’t,’ said Jim decisively. ‘No one will wag a finger
+against your bread. They have come to know better. Bless you! they are
+ready to swallow wholesale any stuff you may offer them.’
+
+Oliver stared, then thinking Jim was making another covert allusion
+to his nephew’s tolerably extensive experiments on the palates and
+digestive organs of his customers, Oliver delicately waived the point
+in discussion.
+
+Oliver Constable and Jim Hull talked for some time on the
+practicability of Oliver’s stepping into a vigorous business in place
+of laying down an exhausted trade. The longer they talked, the more
+Oliver became satisfied of the possibility and advisability of the
+proceeding—that the career he had proposed for himself might not be cut
+short, and that he might have the chance of rising like a phœnix from
+its ashes.
+
+The last thing which vexed Oliver was that Jim pressed him to go in
+for the new premises—reared by Jim and his nephew—which were in full
+working order, rather than transfer their business to the Constables’
+bakehouse and shop, which had latterly been only half used.
+
+What! Give up the shop Peter Constable had proudly built for his son,
+which Agneta Stanhope had foolishly called ‘the ancestral shop,’ with
+all the kindly associations to which Oliver was so susceptible, and
+remove into these brand-new premises, destitute of any association
+except that they had been raised to knock down the other, which they
+had done!
+
+Yet all was true that Jim argued. Time and tide were sweeping away the
+old traffic from the old channels. The new premises were in a better
+situation than Oliver’s. They had commanded ampler space and secured
+freer ventilation. They were more commodious and convenient. The spot
+on which Peter Constable built his shop had long been looked on with
+a covetous eye by those public-spirited citizens of Friarton who held
+that the town should have a new town-hall worthier of the name than
+that in which Oliver had delivered his lecture on Wordsworth, and
+Lady Cicely Hartley had been a stall-keeper in a bazaar. The town was
+flourishing in funds at the present moment, and the talk about the
+town-hall was actually passing into deed. If Oliver were to sell
+the piece of ground on which his shop and bakehouse stood to the new
+town-hall committee, his exchequer would at once be considerably
+replenished. There was no resemblance between the shop and bakehouse
+and Naboth’s vineyard. The former had seen their day and effected their
+purpose. Peter Constable would have been the first to pat his son on
+the shoulder and enjoin him, ‘Sell, my boy; sell when it is wise and
+right to do it. My memorial, my idea! Never mind them. Would I have had
+them stand in the way of your progress, which is the progress of your
+work? They have taken care of themselves hitherto, they will live again
+like everything which has real vitality in it, in a new mould, shaped
+to the fresh needs of a later day.’
+
+The treaty in hand between Oliver and Jim Hull was still unsuspected in
+Friarton when Oliver found his back shop and his leisure a second time
+invaded—not by delegates from his journeymen bakers; truth to tell,
+they were the last to comprehend intelligently and to give in anything
+like a cordial adherence to their master. It was a deputation from his
+fellow-tradesmen that next waited upon Oliver. The party consisted of
+old Dadd, Polley, who had enough manhood for a deputation in which his
+wife’s bonnet and gown would have looked out of place, and another
+shopkeeper—the saddler, whose bill to Harry Stanhope Oliver had taken
+care should be paid in full.
+
+They were so occupied with the ceremoniousness of their mission that
+Oliver could hardly get them to sit down or put their hats out of their
+hands; and old Dadd, who was the leader, kept saying ‘sir’ to Oliver
+at every other word. They had not come to ask the miller and baker
+to go into the vestry or council as a step to becoming churchwarden
+or mayor. They had no notion of giving him a dinner or a piece of
+plate—solutions to the formal visit which, luckily, never crossed
+Oliver’s mind. They had come to more purpose.
+
+These tradesmen—representing very nearly the whole shopkeepers of
+Friarton—the deputation had furnished themselves with a list of the
+names—were there to beg Oliver to withdraw his announcement of retiring
+from business. ‘We feel, sir, you are an honour to our order,’ said
+old Dadd, with as much spirit as if it were an order of knighthood.
+‘Sir, we mayn’t all see with your eyes, or be prepared to carry out
+your views to a _t_, but we do see they does you great credit. We are
+quite sure, sir, the world and trade in the long run, would be none the
+worse of a few more gents like you in them. So, Mr. Oliver, to retain
+you among us, we, your fellow-shopkeepers in this here town, ’umbly and
+’eartily solicit you to keep on your late worthy father’s business.
+And we are here, sir, in a body, or as the representatives of a body,
+to pledge you our support in such plain reforms and improvements as
+you think fit to introduce. We ask you to excuse us for not being wide
+awake to their crying necessity from the first. Sir, men could not
+speak fairer,’ wound up Dadd, in some elation at his own eloquence.
+
+There was more behind. This flattering petition came from the general
+body of the shopkeepers, stirred up by their leaders, who, in their
+private capacities, had something else to say. It was Dadd, again, who
+acted as their mouthpiece, and, though not quite so fluent, was as
+fervent and ’earty as before. He remarked, abruptly, there were some
+favours no man with a heart in his breast could think of repaying, to
+which sentiment Policy chorussed incoherently, ‘No, nor no woman with a
+heart in her bosom—quite so, quite so, Mr. Dadd.’ Then old Dadd went
+on to press on Oliver, in the friendliest, most considerate manner,
+such an advance in money as these three could afford, to tide him over
+the temporary difficulties which might have induced him to give up the
+baking business.
+
+It was all clear to Oliver at last, while he shrugged his shoulders,
+grimaced fearfully, and stammered out his thanks, assuring the
+gentlemen there was no occasion for their last act of friendship, but
+he would never forget their generous sympathy and confidence, never.
+The truth was it warmed his heart, and he was not at all sure that if
+he had gone on to say this was the proudest moment of his life, there
+would have been the least hypocrisy in the trite hyperbole in his case.
+
+Yes, it was pleasant to have won some appreciation—however little
+deserved—from his fellow-townsmen, who ought to know him best, to be
+assured that they gave him credit, after all, for meaning well.
+
+The nature of the acknowledgment touched and softened Oliver more than
+he could express. He wished his father and Fan might know it. As he
+went out into the streets afterwards, he was sensible of breathing
+another air, of his face being irradiated with a different light.
+He was no longer surprised that he encountered so many friends, and
+that they were all so friendly. Of course they must see he felt that
+everybody was almost intolerably kind, till he could have wished
+they would not come round a beggar so, and demoralise him with their
+kindness. ‘Do they believe in me now?’ Oliver was saying to himself,
+half sadly, in the midst of his gladness, half incredulously still.
+
+Oliver’s feet, like fate, at this crisis, carried him in the direction
+of the Meadows. All danger of infection from Jack Dadd’s fever was
+over, and nothing could be more salutary for the reformer, to prevent
+his losing his head altogether, than the cold douche of Mrs. Hilliard’s
+laughter, and Catherine’s indifference, in contradiction to the absurd
+excitement of the rest of the inhabitants of Friarton.
+
+But the instant he was shown into the Meadows’ drawing-room—cheery even
+on a November day, Oliver discovered that the antidote he was seeking
+was useless, or rather that there was no such corrective. The town’s
+dilatory admiration and gratitude were there before him, in all the
+excess in which they might be expected from women. Mrs. Hilliard’s
+inveterate jests sounded very much as if they were uttered to save
+herself from breaking down, and her jolly voice grew shaky when she
+asked after Fan’s baby.
+
+With regard to Catherine, she might still have been silent and stiff,
+had she not been penetrated, stirred to the depths of her nature, and
+spurred on by a full share of the public feeling. So much so, that
+when they were giving Oliver tea and he had cunningly worked round
+the conversation to a neutral topic—the new orders of nurses and the
+new theories of nursing—Catherine, her pale eager face, and eyes
+alight and aglow, with an expression which had all at once acquired a
+certain likeness to Fan’s, suddenly turned round on him and told him
+barefacedly, with the clearest personal application—Sister Elizabeth’s
+opinion was that her own work was good, but it was a better and nobler
+work to prevent the evils which took such costly sacrifices to cure
+them. When a man stood to his post, laboured to clear away his share of
+the abuses which had crept into all trades, and called nothing common
+and unclean—that was preventing great and widespread evils.
+
+‘Oh, Gemini!’ groaned Oliver, gathering up his long legs in a
+marvellous coil which would have done credit to the brothers Davenport,
+‘don’t you two go in with the others to make a fool and a hero of me!’
+
+‘Who shall prevent us?’ cried Mrs. Hilliard. ‘If the town take it into
+its thick head to give you its freedom on an exquisitely illuminated
+card—the illumination done by the most accomplished young lady in the
+place—or if it think fit to crown you with an olive-wreath covered with
+goldbeater’s leaf, you will have to submit. It would never do for you
+to be ungracious, that would spoil everything.’
+
+‘Then don’t let the town take it into its head. Upon the whole, you had
+better all suffer me to go away in peace, before you recover from your
+delusion.’
+
+‘It is not now we are deluded,’ said Catherine. ‘Our eyes have been
+opened, so that we—some of us, no longer see men and women—not so much
+like trees walking, but as hideous caricatures. We see plain at last,
+and recognise our kind—our kin, God-sib—our gossips, if you will, as
+God made them, through what they have made themselves, or what their
+neighbours have consented to make them. Do you think so lightly of
+us as to imagine we shall ever forget the sight? Do you not know it
+is like life from the dead to recognise brothers and sisters—a great
+multitude which no man could number, wherever we turn? No, you will not
+have the heart to go away from Friarton,’ she finished, in a lower tone
+which was still audible to him, as she played with her spoon, ‘just
+when we are beginning to understand, and when God is going to show you
+the work of your hands, and to establish it.’
+
+Oliver made an excuse to cross the room with his cup. On his return to
+his seat, he paused behind Catherine Hilliard’s chair, and said for her
+ear alone, ‘Take care, Catherine, or else you will be more cruel in the
+end than in the beginning.’
+
+‘Have I been cruel?’ she asked, drawing back shyly. But this was the
+season of settling accounts, and he deserved full payment. ‘No, not to
+you,’ she whispered tremulously, with a soft smile. ‘If I was cruel, it
+was to myself—never to you.’
+
+Mrs. Hilliard entered her protest, later in the evening; for Oliver
+stayed to dinner without troubling to go home to dress, and he was
+still lingering, talking, as he had never talked in his life before,
+after Mrs. Hilliard had reminded him there was such a ceremony as
+locking the doors in most households. Then she suggested, ‘If there are
+to be two enthusiasts, social reformers, muscular Christians—whatever
+you like to call yourselves—instead of one, and I’m sure one was quite
+enough to come to grief, what is to become of me, I should like to
+know? I shall have a bad time of it, for though Catherine is her own
+mistress, there is such a being as an indignant ex-guardian, and I’m
+not her sole cousin. When all trades are held alike, and everybody is
+respected, half of my occupation will be gone, while my ungrateful
+kindred, whom I have suffered to set good, sound long-established
+social distinctions at defiance, will never admit a laughing hyena into
+their menagerie.’
+
+
+                           LONDON: PRINTED BY
+                 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+                          AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+
+
+
+
+                           Transcriber Notes
+
+
+  The following are corrections to the original text.
+  p108 “markts” changed to (the places and markets).
+  p165 added period to end of (Stanhope’s last letter.)
+  p240 “backshop” changed to (back shop from Jim Hull.)
+  p261 added period to end of (in the beginning.’)
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78319 ***
diff --git a/78319-h/78319-h.htm b/78319-h/78319-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee873ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78319-h/78319-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,4491 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+    <meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no,date=no,address=no,email=no,url=no">
+    <title>
+      Oliver Constable, vol. 3 | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: .5em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: .5em;
+}
+
+hr {
+    width: 33%;
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    margin-left: 33.5%;
+    margin-right: 33.5%;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.tb   {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;}
+hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;}
+@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} }
+
+div.chapter {page-break-before: always;}
+h2.nobreak  {page-break-before: avoid;}
+
+table {
+    margin-left: auto;
+    margin-right: auto;
+}
+
+.tdr      {text-align: right;}
+
+.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
+    /*  visibility: hidden;  */
+    position: absolute;
+    left: 92%;
+    font-size: small;
+    text-align: right;
+    font-style: normal;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-variant: normal;
+    text-indent: 0;
+} /* page numbers */
+
+blockquote {
+    margin-top: 0;
+    margin-bottom: 0;
+    margin-left: 5%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+.center   {text-align: center; text-indent: 0;}
+
+.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+
+.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;}
+
+figcaption   {font-weight: bold;}
+figcaption p {margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .2em; text-align: inherit;}
+
+/* Images */
+
+img {
+    max-width: 100%;
+    height: auto;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */
+/* .poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} */
+.poetry-container {text-align: center;}
+.poetry           {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;}
+.poetry .stanza   {margin: 1em auto;}
+.poetry .verse    {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;}
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
+    color: black;
+    font-size:small;
+    padding:0.5em;
+    margin-bottom:5em;
+    font-family:sans-serif, serif;
+}
+
+p  { text-indent: 2em;        }  /* Adds first paragraph indent */
+
+h1 span { font-size: .5em;    }  /* h1 and h2 sub headings */
+h2 span { font-size: .7em;    }
+
+.sub1  { font-size:  .5em; }  /* Preset font-size adjustments */
+.sub2  { font-size:  .8em; }
+
+.flat  { text-indent: 0em; }  /* removes first paragraph indent */
+
+.front {                      /* Matches h2 but w/out chapter marker */
+    font-size: 1.5em;
+    font-weight: bold;
+    margin-top: 20px;
+    margin-bottom: 10px;
+    display: block;
+    text-align: center;
+    text-indent: 0em;
+    }
+
+.hang2 {                       /* adds hanging indent */
+    padding-left: 2em;
+    padding-right: 1em;
+    text-indent: -1em;
+    text-align: left;
+    }
+
+.tdt      { vertical-align: top;    }  /* Custom table adjustments */
+.tdb      { vertical-align: bottom; }
+.tdw      { white-space: nowrap;    }
+
+
+.poetry-container { display: flex;
+           justify-content: center; }
+
+/* Poetry indents */
+.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;}
+.poetry .indent1 {text-indent: -2.5em;}
+
+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78319 ***</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1 class="nobreak">
+OLIVER CONSTABLE<br>
+<br><span>
+MILLER AND BAKER<br>
+</span>
+</h1>
+<br>
+<p class="center">
+BY<br>
+<br>
+SARAH TYTLER<br>
+<br>
+<span class="allsmcap">AUTHOR OF ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ETC.</span><br>
+<br><br>
+<i>IN THREE VOLUMES</i><br>
+<br>
+VOL. III.<br>
+<br>
+LONDON<br>
+SMITH, ELDER, &amp; CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE<br>
+1880<br>
+<br>
+[<i>All rights reserved</i>]
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">
+    CONTENTS
+    <br>
+    <span class="sub1">OF</span>
+    <br>
+    <span>THE THIRD VOLUME.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdw">CHAPTER</td>
+    <td colspan=2 class="tdw">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">Harry Stanhope’s Want</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXIV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">Fan’s Triumph</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">22</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXV.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">‘The Devil shall not have Harry’</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">59</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXVI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">The Price at which Harry Stanhope was Rescued</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">96</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXVII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">The Last Penny paid</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">126</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXVIII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">Oliver’s Return</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">140</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXIX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">Fresh Service</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">175</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXX.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">Stumbled Across, Interviewed, Taken
+                           at his Word</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">197</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXXI.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">Life—and Death</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">214</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdt">XXXII.</td>
+    <td class="smcap hang2">‘Do they believe in me now?’</td>
+    <td class="tdb"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">240</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+
+  <p class="front" id="OLIVER_CONSTABLE">
+    OLIVER CONSTABLE,
+    <br>
+    <span class="sub2"><i>MILLER AND BAKER</i>.</span>
+  </p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">
+    CHAPTER XXIII.
+    <br>
+    <span>HARRY STANHOPE’S WANT.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver</span> had liberally allowed Harry Stanhope six months in which to ride
+his hobby and grow sick beyond endurance of his <i>rôle</i> of yeoman.</p>
+
+<p>But whereas Harry had entered on the character, on a fine summer
+afternoon, in the attractive prospect of hay-making, corn-cutting,
+and hop-picking, it was midwinter, with no more agreeable occupations
+in view than thrashing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span>corn, pulling turnips, turning over potatoes
+in the pits, and ploughing a stiff clay soil under the murky sky of a
+short day in muggy weather, still he showed no signs of throwing up the
+part in satiety and disgust.</p>
+
+<p>True, he had sufficient leisure to join the other farmers in presenting
+himself in the hunting field, and enjoying as good mounts and glorious
+runs as the squires or the M.F.H. himself.</p>
+
+<p>It did not come under the head of sport. Harry was persuaded it lay at
+the core of his business, that he should attend—not only the Friarton
+Market, but every market within a day’s journey. He went to them no
+longer in his shirt sleeves, or riding a bare-backed horse as it had
+been taken to the watering, not even in the market cart in which he
+had prefigured Harry and himself crossing country—out of sight, and
+therefore out of danger of wounding the feelings of their aristocratic
+relations. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>Harry had modified so far his Robinson Crusoe and Vicar of
+Wakefield notions, as to have set up a trap handsome enough to have
+been driven by any of his cousins. The trap was matched by an equally
+well-bred, delicate, costly horse, which Harry candidly admitted was
+not quite ‘the cheese’ for a yeoman. Yet why not, if he rented and
+paid the rent of the paddock in which it ran, afforded the corn for
+its feeds, and took care that it should do his work in running like
+the wind with him and Horry to the innumerable markets and sales which
+the brothers found themselves forced to attend. Harry’s pride ended
+with his equipage. He was not to say guilty of affability; he was every
+man’s man, in the streets, or corn exchanges, or commercial inns where
+the farmers congregated. He was as ready to sit with the last man in
+the bar-parlour, and try return races against his trap, as to compare
+samples of grain in legitimate business. Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>was all things to all
+men—not to gain some for what he fervently believed their good, but
+in sheer sociality—with a vain, light-hearted, light-headed love of
+popularity, which was at this time his ruling passion. Horace never
+thwarted his brother in this or any other inclination. He remained the
+abiding shadow inseparable from Harry’s sunshine, and in some respects
+a relief from its glare.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was also able to derive no small amount of animation and
+amusement from such windfalls in the day’s routine, as brisk bouts of
+ratting when a stack was being pulled down, or in the granary after it
+was left empty; and he waited religiously every evening on the feeding
+of the cattle and horses in the sheds and stables.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was an extremely indulgent, if totally inconsiderate, and
+occasionally capricious, master, whose lavish tolerance was only now
+and then broken, like the abounding calm of tropical seas, by a storm
+violent as it was brief. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>That Harry spoilt his retainers horribly was
+not an objection which his servants were likely to take into account
+in the first flush of ‘the young squire’s’ popularity. For in spite of
+Harry Stanhope’s well-nigh nettled protests and vigorous acting of his
+part, probably because of his over-acting, the would-be yeoman was the
+young squire to his labourers, who in the middle of their stolidity
+were not altogether without shrewd observation and sound deduction.</p>
+
+<p>Harry not only continued unexpectedly constant to his vocation as he
+believed it, he remained faithful to the earliest friendship he had
+claimed on his arrival at Copley Grange Farm. He went more frequently
+to Friarton Mill than to any other house where he was made welcome,
+which was saying a good deal, seeing that Harry’s life, whether in
+the way of his business requirements, or when he might be supposed
+clear of their urgent obligations, was a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>constant round of varied
+visiting. Indeed, it struck Oliver that Harry grossly abused his
+privilege, and came intolerably often, and at absurdly unconventional
+seasons, from ‘early morn to dewy eve’—sometimes in the raw air before
+breakfast, sometimes through a setting in snowstorm after supper—to the
+mill-house, during this winter.</p>
+
+<p>But what could Oliver do? not turn out the thoughtless lad for whom
+the elder man had a sneaking kindness, or close the doors against the
+soullessly jolly young face, which, however provocative of censure,
+always brought with it, when it flashed upon the man, a reflection of
+unimpaired freshness, and unburdened lightness of heart.</p>
+
+<p>Since Fan allowed these intrusions, and even seemed to enjoy them, what
+was left for Oliver save to shrug his shoulders, grumble to himself, or
+deliver the silent hint of turning his back, after the first greeting,
+on his visitors? <span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>For, of course, Harry dragged over Horry in his
+train. And Oliver often left Fan to entertain the two in one, while he
+read on unceremoniously at the newspaper or book with which he had been
+engaged on their entrance.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! Harry only took the cavalier rudeness for friendliest
+encouragement. ‘Don’t apologise to me, old fellow,’ he would enjoin the
+master of the house, cheerfully. ‘It is not you I have come to see, it
+is Miss Constable,’ Harry would say audaciously. ‘I have come to report
+myself to Miss Constable. She has been so good as to take me in hand.
+She is making a man—that is a veritable yeoman, of me.’</p>
+
+<p>And Fan lent herself to this egregious fiction. Fan, who had never
+interested herself in a single detail of her father and brother’s
+trades, who had not so much as made an exception in favour of the
+chicks, directed a charmed ear to all Harry Stanhope’s chatter of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>the
+prices in the market, the field which was sown that day, the ox which
+had choked itself and been brought round in its stall the night before,
+the first long-legged, big-headed calf which he had bought for a song.</p>
+
+<p>Sally Pope grinned at Oliver behind the backs of this most practical
+young couple.</p>
+
+<p>Horace Stanhope began to fidget and glance jealously at the master of
+the house in his obliviousness. But not even the phenomena of Harry’s
+coming at last, once or twice, without his brother, and showing some
+slight self-consciousness when the unusual omission was remarked upon,
+roused the suspicions of the too secure and single-minded host.</p>
+
+<p>One fine frosty night Harry had walked in alone, uninvited and
+unannounced. For Fan’s carefully-trained housemaid had become weary
+of announcing the perpetual visitor, and, without any rebuke from
+her mistress, had proceeded to treat the special duty as a work of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>supererogation where Mr. Harry Stanhope was concerned.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver had nodded and sat still in the shade at his father’s desk,
+turning over some papers, keeping his post mainly to preserve the
+liberty of pursuing his own train of reflections; while Harry Stanhope
+and Fan had put their heads together over the lamp on Fan’s little
+table in the chimney-corner, and were, according to Oliver’s conception
+of the situation, going over the best plans for growing corn and
+rearing stock, and—what was adding insult to injury in reference to
+Oliver’s pets, the ducks—the latest contrivances for a high development
+of poultry. Not satisfied with the solution of these momentous problems
+by lamp-light, when the pair went to the window to predict from the
+purple-blue sky and the glitter of the stars hung like lamps of heaven
+in the dark branches of the trees of Copley Grange Park, the weather
+to-morrow—whether skating on the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>mill-pond would be the order of the
+day, or whether the frost would give way and the scent hold, so that
+Harry might join the hunt ten miles off—it seemed to Oliver as if they
+must have started afresh to answer the whole code of agricultural
+questions over again, by starlight, till his patience was reduced to a
+shred.</p>
+
+<p>At last Harry took his departure somewhat abruptly in the end.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver stretched himself with vicious emphasis, and growled, this was
+insufferable, he did not think he could stand it much longer.</p>
+
+<p>Fan, generally so quick in retort, said nothing, but she appeared to
+have appropriated the observation and taken it to heart; for a moment
+later, when she came to bid Oliver goodnight, she suddenly put her
+hands upon his shoulders and looked wistfully in his face with tears in
+her dark eyes, and her colour wavering—as he remarked with surprise.
+‘You are not <span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>angry, Oliver, dear?’ she said, with one of her rare
+caressing gestures and phrases, which coming as they did unlooked for,
+from a high-spirited almost hard little woman like Fan, were apt to sap
+a man’s defences, and melt his heart like wax on the spot. ‘You are
+not angry, Oliver?’ repeated Fan with a slight quaver in the wistful
+earnestness of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course I am not angry with <i>you</i>, you goose of a Fanchen?’
+said Oliver with affectionate bluster. ‘How can you help Stanhope’s
+unconscionable coolness, which begins to be rank impudence? But why
+in the name of justice, should I blame you for his faults?’ enquired
+Oliver in all simplicity. ‘You are compelled to listen to his rigmarole
+in your own house, when I turn him over to you. I own I ought not to
+do it, to such an extent,’ admitted Oliver, contritely; ‘but the young
+wretch is so indefatigable in preying on our hospitality, and has
+acquired such a fatal <span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>fluency in airing his farming bosh, that I must
+have some relief, or knock him down. I often admire your powers of
+endurance, but don’t give the beggar too much line, Fan, if you love
+me. I am not sure, whether, after all, his class are the finest judges
+of courtesy.’</p>
+
+<p>Fan had flushed crimson at her brother’s words. She knitted her
+delicate brows—black brows at the same time, and then as if she had
+thought better of it, her lips parted in a half-smile. ‘No, no; don’t
+speak treason either of me, or of another,’ she said; and then she
+added, a little incoherently, ‘I believe there is nobody so good and
+kind as you are, yourself, Oliver, in the whole world. Remember I have
+said so, though we quarrelled some time ago, and may quarrel again.
+Remember I have told you that you are always my own dear good boy, whom
+I have loved all through our lives, whom I love with all my heart at
+this moment, whom I could have <span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>served, if you would have let me,’ and
+Fan fairly hugged Oliver, who resisted stoutly in his mystification,
+with a dim apprehension that he might otherwise pledge himself to
+something he did not in the least understand.</p>
+
+<p>‘What do you mean?’ cried Oliver. ‘Is Fan also among the wheedlers? For
+what mighty boon can she deign to wheedle?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind, it is too late to ask me now—good night.’</p>
+
+<p>Fan succeeded in making her retreat, and in the act of doing so, Oliver
+might have seen, if he had been quick at reading women’s faces, that
+all the soft relenting and indescribable yearning which had been in
+hers a moment ago, had vanished and was replaced by such unmingled
+exultation that the girl looked radiant.</p>
+
+<p>It was the last loving altercation which passed between the brother and
+sister for many a day.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span></p>
+
+<p>The next morning, Harry Stanhope wound up his offences against
+domestic privacy by re-appearing at Friarton Mill, as if he had
+slept at the gate, seeking admission to Oliver before the latter had
+completed his toilet. Only the most urgent business could warrant such
+pressing attendance. Harry himself, in his superb self-complacency
+and confidence, betrayed, nevertheless, a shadow of a doubt of his
+reception.</p>
+
+<p>‘You will think I am always here, Constable?’ he said with a confused
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, you are here pretty often,’ the aggrieved Oliver put it mildly.
+‘I am afraid your other engagements must suffer from your paying us the
+compliment of being so much at Friarton Mill; and your brother—he is
+not with you this morning—will miss you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! hang Horry!’ exclaimed Harry hastily; ‘no, I don’t mean that, of
+course, and old Horry won’t stand in the way. He’s all <span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>right. Besides,
+if one’s father and mother, when a fellow possesses them, an’t counted,
+a brother can’t have much to say either way, can he?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know what you’re after,’ said Oliver in perfect sincerity. ‘If
+I were a supernumerary in an old play, I ought to exclaim, “Anan,” to
+that last enigmatical sentence of yours.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, it ain’t easy to come out with it,’ protested Harry, struggling
+with what was, for him, the most extraordinary hesitation. ‘Your
+sister, Constable—you must have seen she has been goodness itself to
+me. I know she will have to furnish the brains and backbone, for my
+head-piece ain’t worth much, and my pluck is of the rough and ready
+sort, but since she graciously consents to do for me and Horry—to make
+a true farmer’s wife, which will be an inestimable advantage to us—I
+may take it that you will not have any great objection to accepting me
+for a brother-in-law?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Stanhope, have you lost your wits?’ burst out Oliver. ‘Come, there
+must be no more of this absurd nonsense. I tell you I will have no such
+foolish jesting where my sister is concerned.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never was farther from jesting in my life!’ declared poor Harry
+indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then let me say, once for all, you must get rid of this idiotic idea.
+It won’t do. My sister is not for a fellow like you. I don’t want
+to hurt your feelings, but you have somehow tumbled into the hugest
+blunder, and I must speak out. I can answer for Fan: she did not dream
+of encouraging such a vain delusion, she will be terribly vexed and
+annoyed. This comes of masquerading and making-believe. It seems to
+me you don’t want a wife for twenty years to come: when you do, take
+my advice—if you will excuse me for offering it, after what I have
+said—marry strictly within your own class; you of all fellows require
+such a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>safeguard, and the more influential your wife’s people, the
+better both for her and you!’ muttered Oliver <i>sotto voce</i>. Then
+he resumed aloud, ‘Wait till you can persuade a lady to share your
+lot—if you will cultivate prudence, you may make it not a bad one—as a
+gentleman-farmer.’</p>
+
+<p>Harry was looking at Oliver with such a strong sense of superior
+knowledge and wisdom that it disarmed any rising resentment on the
+lad’s part, at the tone of provoked disdainful repudiation of the
+proposal which Oliver could not help betraying. The contrast between
+the truth as Harry realised it and Oliver’s undoubting convictions,
+brought out the comic element in the affair so dear to Harry’s boyish
+heart, even in the serious mood which had been on him, when he
+‘declared his intentions.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Make-believe, indeed!’ cried Harry, lightly; ‘who plays at being
+miller and baker?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Not I!’ denied Oliver hotly. ‘I have taken up my father’s business,
+which is no unusual thing for a tradesman’s son to do, and I have not
+adopted it as a mere makeshift, or as the last resource for a man who
+would otherwise be idle; I desire to make it the object of my life;
+I do not think any honest trade is unworthy of the dedication of the
+trader’s talents to render it as good in every respect as possible. I
+trust to do no discredit to my father’s business.’</p>
+
+<p>‘At least you need not be so cocky over other people whose fathers had
+not the luck to be in trade,’ remonstrated Harry. ‘As to not wanting
+a wife—I being a farmer, and having no competent young woman with my
+interest at heart,’ went on Harry, his blue eyes twinkling, ‘to look
+after the butter and cheese, the feeding of the calves, the fattening
+of the geese, and the multiplying of the eggs and chickens, when I
+find I have quite enough to do, even <span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>with Horry for my <i>aide</i>,
+to manage the labourer fellows in the fields and offices, and attend
+the markets—if you think I don’t want a wife dreadfully, it is little
+you know of a yeoman’s difficulties. As to consenting to try for an
+imitation farmer’s wife, why you yourself politely hinted a minute ago
+that there was quite enough of the mock article at Copley Grange Farm
+already. No, thanks. I knew exactly what the position was when Aggie
+spent her holiday weeks at the Farm. The babe could not have told
+barley from oats if they had not been in the ear; and though that did
+not matter much, I am morally certain she was shaky on the important
+question of hens’ nests—whether they were not to be found in bushes,
+if not on tree-tops. She spoilt all the dairy produce while she was
+here, by insisting on dabbling in it in her ignorance, my housekeeper
+complained. And the child was always begging to be amused, and seeking
+to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>go and look at the horses and cattle when it was not convenient and
+I ought to have been hard at work elsewhere. She would not be put off
+with Horry’s escort; fact was, all my energies were employed in keeping
+the peace between the little girl and the cantankerous old man.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was forced to laugh, but he laughed harshly. ‘Stanhope, you’re a
+donkey if you propose to marry my sister, that she may act as your head
+dairymaid and principal hen-wife. That is not her <i>forte</i>,’ he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you mean to insult me?’ cried Harry, firing up in spite of his easy
+temper. ‘By Jove, you may thank Fan if I bear it. I may have cracked
+an ill-timed joke, but it was you who tempted me to it. Fan believes
+me; she understands how I love and honour her, and choose her before
+all other women; and if she does me the honour to choose me in return,
+I suppose she is at liberty to make <span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>her choice? Not even a Turk of a
+brother, since he is not her father, and she is of age, can prevent
+it,’ ended Harry defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>‘This preposterous stuff must be put an end to. I will see my sister.’
+Oliver flung out of his room, and encountered Fan hovering over the
+breakfast-table, and looking fresh yet pale, like a solitary daisy
+blooming in a sheltered corner.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">
+    CHAPTER XXIV.
+    <br>
+    <span>FAN’S TRIUMPH.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">‘Come</span> along, Fan, to the front door, where the fellow has retreated.
+Here is a fluke, but the sooner you deal with it the better; you must
+spoil your breakfast, and have done with it. Harry Stanhope is as mad
+as a hatter this morning, and nothing will bring him back to soberness
+of mind save your giving him his <i>congé</i> in so many words. This is
+speaking plainly. Are you not amazed? I imagine you never apprehended
+such a desperately moonshiny business from Stanhope, who’s in a general
+way commonplace and matter-of-fact in his greenness. But come along, it
+will not do to keep the young idiot waiting.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘But what if there are two of us as mad as hatters?’ said Fan, blushing
+and brightening up like the white daisy when the red tips of its petals
+catch the beams of the sun.</p>
+
+<p>‘Fan, you cannot be so crazy, so weak to imbecility!’ cried Oliver,
+incredulously; and then, as his unbelief began to be shaken by her
+looks, still more than her words, he protested passionately on her
+account: ‘A boy like Harry Stanhope! the merest boy in his fancies, as
+you have had abundant proof; hardly responsible for his actions, not
+fit to know his own mind, as sure to change as the wind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is not so much younger a boy than you are, Oliver,’ said Fan, with
+restrained spirit. ‘He is a little older than I am in years, and I
+don’t feel so very youthful in spirit. I should be inclined to think I
+was capable of knowing my own mind, and being held responsible <span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>for my
+actions. But, no doubt, women are a great deal older, in proportion,
+than men. You are all boys to us,’ said Fan, with demure motherliness.
+‘I have even ventured to call a sage like you a boy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Fan,’ said Oliver, ‘don’t drive me beside myself. This is no occasion
+for teasing, and I could not have believed you the woman to begin
+to tease in such circumstances. I have been accustomed to think you
+sensible, capable of self-respect, rather proud than meek. Have you
+considered what sort of beggar Stanhope is, apart from his birth and
+breeding, and the grace which they have given him. He is feather-headed
+and an empty canister—if ever there were one. He has never thought
+of anything save his own pleasure since he was born. He is incapable
+of self-restraint, even if he knew the thing by name. He is the
+incarnation of selfishness—genial and jolly now, I grant you, but
+which will without fail grow <span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>coarser and harder with years. At forty
+Harry Stanhope’s stupidity and self-indulgence will be palpable to the
+shallowest intellect, and so may his grossness—even his brutality—if
+his good angel do not interfere.’</p>
+
+<p>‘His good angel will interfere. How dare you accuse and prophecy evil
+of a better man than yourself—if humility and kindliness are better
+than arrogance and harshness, as the Bible teaches?’</p>
+
+<p>Fan stood at bay for her lover. ‘Harry is not a student or a scholar,
+any more than I am by nature,’ she said more quietly; ‘but that
+does not make him and me less of a man and a woman than if we were
+a fantastic theorist and an abstracted visionary. If he thinks of
+his pleasure, why not? when his pleasure has always been manly and
+honest—and is not that to his credit, left to himself, to all intents
+and purposes, as he has been? And it is not true that he cares only for
+himself; he has <span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span>been a good and true brother, as he will be good and
+true in all the relations of life.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver groaned. ‘Do you know what the farmers, with whom he classes
+himself, say of his conceited, childish enterprise? They lighten their
+own troubles by guffawing over his muddles and messes. They say, “The
+plough would need to turn up gold for Mr. Stanhope to reap a harvest,
+even if times were as good as they are bad for agriculture.” They
+calculate confidently he will have succeeded in making such a mull of
+the business into which he has rushed, without a particle of knowledge
+or experience, that he will be sold out and polished off in three or
+four years at the farthest.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The more need of the nearest and dearest of his friends to stand by
+him,’ said Fan, with steadfast eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘His best friend will not be able to stand by him and defend him from
+the ruinous consequences <span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>of the new habits he is grafting on the
+old,’ maintained Oliver doggedly. ‘Harry Stanhope was known at Oxford
+as one of the most careless and reckless of the undergraduates who
+were his contemporaries. He was so unboundedly social that he was
+never missing where company of any kind congregated. If he could not
+get good, he could put up with bad. He was a regular frequenter of
+village alehouses, as well as a conspicuous figure at every “wine”
+within his reach. Now—country-town markets and the farmers’ circles in
+commercial inns are his great resorts. To a man of Harry Stanhope’s
+accommodating temperament, every company in which swallowing strong
+drink is inseparably associated with friendly intercourse, must prove
+playing with fire. God forbid that I should say the lad is cursed by a
+fatal taint, but it will be next to a miracle in his case if the demon
+is disappointed in getting possession of his victim.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Oliver,’ said Fan, with bated breath in her anger, as she stood on the
+hearthrug, confronting him, ‘who is it that did not care though he were
+mixed up with the low larks of the shop lads of Friarton, so that even
+respectable people could grow common liars and slanderers, taking it
+upon them to say that he was sentenced to carry about in his person, to
+his dying day, the mark of his degrading excesses?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let them say it,’ retorted Oliver, raising his head, quickly, and
+without flinching; ‘that is another affair. The end may justify the
+means, if some small love of fair play and poor humanity keep a man
+true to his colours, through evil as well as good report; if his
+conscience clear him, and they who ought to know, are satisfied he
+is falsely accused. But only charity on the brain can regard Harry
+Stanhope as bitten by a rabid regard for his kind, or for anybody save
+himself, and perhaps his second self Horry.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span></p>
+
+<p>He tried her on other grounds. ‘How can you take it upon you to be
+a farmer’s wife, Fan? How can you pretend to acquirements which you
+never possessed, which you have never so much as tried to gain? You
+have always had the strongest prejudice against the position of a
+tradesman, and I take it you cannot put a yeoman on a much higher
+level. Your ambition, which you did not conceal, was to lead the life
+of a conventional lady.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I was silly,’ said Fan, composedly. ‘I did not know what a gentleman
+could do, and yet retain his gentle bearing unimpaired. I never met a
+true gentleman—forgive me, Oliver—till I saw Harry Stanhope. I will
+learn all farmhouse work that a farmer’s wife can do, for the sake of
+my farmer, to help him to conquer fortune, more quickly than I learned
+lessons at school to fit me to be your companion. I am not afraid to
+say that I will be a good farmer’s wife—behind none in the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>country.’
+Fan pledged herself proudly, and Oliver knew the pledge would be
+redeemed, though Fan died for it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you willing to enter a family, every member of which will look
+down on you, if one of them own you at all, which I very much doubt?
+Can you not open your wilfully closed eyes enough to see that Horace
+Stanhope has not come here of late with his brother?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oliver!’ said Fan with flashing eyes, ‘you are seeking to pique me
+by an objection which you must know does not exist in connection with
+Harry. He has no people with claims on him. He has no friends who
+would consider his welfare before any good to themselves, save me and
+his brother—who has not gone against him, and surely the more reason
+we should not forsake him. Did not Harry break off from his uncles
+and aunts when he became a farmer? They allowed him to follow his own
+course, and they must accept the consequences. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>“If they cut it up
+rough,” as he says, “they have themselves to blame for it,” when they
+consented to what was likely to happen, if he and Horry became yeomen.
+Poor Horry, he would be as jealous as a woman of any other woman’s
+coming between him and Harry!’ said Fan, with a little laugh and blush;
+‘but I will help him to get over it for Harry’s sake: he is waiving
+his objections already. The worst of it is, I am not just such a girl
+as Agneta, with whom the poor dear fellow was always sparring, so that
+Harry had to come in with his sweet temper, and reconcile the two. But
+do you imagine that I find fault with Horace Stanhope because he would
+not count any woman beneath the rank of a duke’s daughter, who was not
+beautiful as the day, and an angel of virtue, deserving of Harry? There
+would have been the old search over again, if the devoted soul had been
+consulted:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">‘Where is the maiden of mortal strain</div>
+      <div class="verse indent1">May match with the Baron of Triermain?</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>
+<p class="flat">‘It is little you know of things, Oliver, though you are a
+philosopher, if you think that would have made me angry with Horry,
+who will soon forgive me, because of the sympathy between us. Besides
+Horry, there is only Agneta who is really interested,’ said Fan, after
+an instant’s pause, ‘and she is my friend.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It remains to be seen how far the friendship will stand this test!’
+said Oliver with gloomy scepticism. He was so exasperated as to add a
+taunt, for which he was sorry the moment after he had uttered it. ‘Why
+don’t you admit frankly that you are besotted enough to believe the
+whole race of Vere de Vere will open their arms to receive you into
+their castles? That must be the real inducement to form such an insane
+connection—not the cheap merits of a lad like Harry Stanhope.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you think so badly of me, Oliver, even though I may have given you
+some cause by being foolish and worldly-minded, I cannot <span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>help it!’
+said Fan, deeply wounded and offended.</p>
+
+<p>There was no more to be said. Harry Stanhope must not be kept kicking
+his heels in the mill-house court a moment longer. As Harry had calmly
+stated at an early stage of the contest, Oliver could not prevent his
+sister from making her own choice of a husband: she was of age, she
+was mistress of herself in every way, including the disposal of her
+little fortune. With respect to that, Oliver had been more just to
+Harry Stanhope than her brother had shown himself to Fan. Oliver had
+not attributed mercenary motives to the lad, as the person who ought to
+have known her best had fastened upon Fan the all-powerful promptings
+of a vain and small ambition. Oliver was quite aware that men of the
+class to which Harry belonged are often as good arithmeticians as the
+huxterers whom the gentlemen despise. The sons of the most <span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>ancient
+and noble families, having the bluest blood in their veins, will
+look out for ‘tin’ with their wives, even though the suitors have to
+descend into mercantile walks and put up with plebeian antecedents,
+in order to secure the indispensable metal, as unblushingly as the
+northern farmer sought ‘prupitty’ with his daughter-in-law. Perhaps the
+young patricians may plead the obligation of necessity in the cases
+of all save the heads of their houses. The eldest son has his future
+secured; but if he has unfortunate younger brothers, it may reasonably
+be said—in spite of the gentlemanly professions provided for them,
+which, when it comes to that, for the most part imply the spending
+rather than the earning of money—they cannot dig, and to beg they are
+ashamed. But Harry was not of this stamp, though he may have used their
+slang in conversation. His mortal enemy could not accuse him of being
+calculating. His defects, however flagrant, were free from mercenary
+meanness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p>
+
+<p>Oliver looked upon himself as compelled to yield a formal outward
+assent, in contradiction to the inward protest, to Fan’s right in the
+selection of a mate.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, there was no open rupture in the little family. Harry
+Stanhope, after his momentary spurt of anger, only laughed at his
+future brother-in-law’s manner of receiving his first overtures, and
+at Oliver’s way of conducting himself in the later arrangements. In
+Harry’s eyes, Oliver’s behaviour was in keeping with the grumpiness
+which the young aristocrat had always imputed to his democratic senior.
+It was part of the <i>rôle</i> of a radical, which Harry conceived
+Oliver to be.</p>
+
+<p>Harry could afford to treat the matter lightly; neither did Oliver,
+after the first pang of painful surprise and bitter disappointment,
+wish to quarrel outright with Fan’s bridegroom. Thus the two preserved
+a truce; though they fell off, rather than drew closer, in whatever
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>friendship had hitherto existed between them, in the prospect of their
+nearer alliance. Oliver turned over Harry entirely to Fan, as, no
+doubt, he might have done in any circumstances, unless the young fellow
+had been Oliver’s chosen chum and mate as well as Fan’s.</p>
+
+<p>Fan smothered the keen regret called forth by her brother’s unshaken,
+inveterate hostility to the marriage he could not hinder, and to the
+gulf deepening between them, as best she might.</p>
+
+<p>In every other light Fan’s lot was a triumph. For she had never
+been mercenary, any more than Harry had been. She had been aspiring
+in a sense, with a craving for superficial refinement, as somehow
+representing to Fan the far deeper refinement and nobility of nature,
+of which the surface polish—however becoming in itself and pleasant
+to encounter—is by no means the inseparable accompaniment; and for
+pure love of Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>Stanhope, Fan was prepared to crush her individual
+tastes. She was willing to be a poor man’s partner, to drudge as a
+practical housekeeper, to toil after another fashion as the notable
+wife of a lucky farmer, to forget her girlish dreams of bountiful ease,
+culture, and elegance.</p>
+
+<p>Fan had her bright, brief day both in a higher and a lower sense. She
+enjoyed that short interval in which a woman is beside herself and
+counts herself—not merely the happiest of women, but the only happy
+woman in the world deserving of the name, because she has not only won
+a heart in exchange for her own, but because this heart, subdued by
+her power, is the heart of hearts to her, compared to which all other
+hearts are little better than dross.</p>
+
+<p>Fan had also the lower, but what was to her the genuine and natural
+gratification of being conscious that those of her neighbours on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>whose opinions she had been wont to set store, having arrived at the
+unanimous conclusion that Fan Constable had done well for herself,
+became suddenly moved to change their chorus of condemnation to a
+chant of glorification. The Fremantles and Wrights proved themselves
+no more mercenary than Fan and Harry. The magnates of Friarton had not
+worshipped in fear and trembling a big burly image of mammon, but a
+shadowy fetish of gentility. Fan Constable, whom the ladies and the
+professional set now acknowledged to be the most charming ladylike
+girl in the neighbourhood, would not be a farmer’s wife to them.
+She would—since the inferior distinction merged and was lost in the
+superior—be the wife of Harry Stanhope, grandson of Lord St. Ives,
+nephew by marriage of Lord Mount Mallow. Accordingly these authorities
+renewed their withdrawn attentions with an eager lavishness, in
+striking contrast to the donors’ former cautious, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>stinted dole of
+recognition. They betrayed the knowledge, which Fan shared, that it
+would soon be her turn to pay them attention.</p>
+
+<p>When Fan’s honours were fully fledged, she might have a share of the
+liberty which was vouchsafed to her husband, granted to her. She might
+skim the milk in her dairy, and gather the eggs in her poultry-yard,
+even carry them in the skirt of her gown, as Agneta Stanhope had
+carried them, without challenge. And if Harry had been the son and not
+the grandson of a viscount, and thus only one degree instead of two
+removed from a peerage, or if his father’s father had been a marquis or
+a duke, who knows but that Fan might have been allowed to go on to milk
+her cows and feed her calves—not in frolic?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hilliard was impressed by Fan’s promotion. ‘That girl Fan
+Constable has proved her mettle with perfectly lawful weapons, for she
+is too true a little Philistine to stoop to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>employ any other.’ Mrs.
+Hilliard ate her leek before her cousin, and it was no small comfort to
+Louisa Hilliard, in her state of mind at the moment, that Catherine was
+next to nobody when eating a leek was in question.</p>
+
+<p>‘Both of these Constables have used me ill, have got the better of
+me—of us all.’ Mrs. Hilliard spoke ruefully for her. ‘Fan, with her
+negative drawing-room and positive attitude, has been and gone and done
+it under our very noses.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Done what?’ enquired the only half-awake Catherine.</p>
+
+<p>‘Distanced her competitors—the Houghtons, the head-master’s nieces; how
+do I know how many? all who had entered for the prize. She has overcome
+and trampled upon her foes, and carried off the chance which might have
+been yours, my dear, only you sat still and missed it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Was Harry Stanhope my chance in life?’ <span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>enquired Catherine, opening
+her weary eyes. ‘Have I missed my all in losing him? Well, I did not
+flatter myself there was any great thing to look forward to in my
+career, if a woman can be said to have a career, but I have been guilty
+of the presumption of dreading (and do you know the dread gave a kind
+of trembling interest to life?) that there might be greater losses to
+encounter than that of Harry Stanhope’s handkerchief—not that there was
+ever the remotest prospect of its being thrown at me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Catherine!’ and with the exclamation Mrs. Hilliard looked at her
+cousin gravely for once, though her lively mind soon reverted to its
+ordinary track. ‘You frighten me, and that is treating me still worse
+than the Constables have treated me. My cousins, whom I owned, have
+eluded my grasp, and got beyond me, the one floored and the other
+crowned—alike disqualified for serving as food for my entertainment.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>But I never asked you to entertain me’—Mrs. Hilliard assailed
+Catherine, growing serious again—‘only to entertain yourself. And if
+you cannot do it in any other way, I am tempted to wish I could approve
+of a Protestant sisterhood for you. It might afford you a refuge when
+the world makes you so tired that you seem in danger of falling down
+under the load. I can lift it off myself with my little finger, but I
+cannot with my two hands, and all my might, remove the burden from you,
+poor child.’ The clear ring of Mrs. Hilliard’s voice had softened, and
+there was moisture in the eyes usually so dry in their sparkle.</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind me, Louisa,’ said Catherine, roused to faint surprise and
+reluctance to cause trouble. ‘I am only too well off, you know. I am
+sickening—that is, if I am sickening—“of a vague disease;” I ought to
+have to work for my bread—supposing bread is worth working for—yet
+starvation must really be an unpleasant <span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>process to stimulate so
+many people to frantic exertions in order to avert the catastrophe.
+Protestant sisterhoods would not suit me, nor would Catholic nunneries,
+though I think, of the two, I should prefer the last, as possessing a
+respectable antiquity and consistency. But to enter either would be a
+sham in me, since I really believe that the Son of God could help me
+staying with you, as well as with any lady superior or abbess—that we
+are as near heaven living in the world in which He lived, as when we
+try in vain to get out of it. It would only be a change of yoke, and my
+shoulders seem to be slimmer than other women’s,’ remarked Catherine
+with a forlorn smile. ‘Besides, no sisterhood would receive a menagerie
+with me—and whatever else I might be brought to resign, I do not see
+how I could get on without a large small family of beasts and birds.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you for the implied compliment,’ said Mrs. Hilliard, recovering
+herself with a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>laugh. ‘Catherine, you administer tonics, though you
+won’t swallow them.’</p>
+
+<p>When the time came for Mrs. Hilliard to offer the usual
+congratulations, her hearty admiration of Fan’s prowess so influenced
+the lady, that she presented the tribute cordially, and was entitled to
+complain that Fan had no reason to receive it superciliously.</p>
+
+<p>But Catherine was not merely languid in her felicitations, she stopped
+short in them, and substituted an uncalled-for piece of condolence:
+‘How dull it will be for you with Mr. Stanhope and his brother at
+Copley Grange Farm, when you have been accustomed to solitude with
+your own brother!’ looking at amazed, indignant Fan, with great
+uncomprehending, commiserating eyes. ‘I hope you will not die of
+<i>ennui</i> after the first week. No, I don’t forget that Mr. Stanhope
+is very fond of visiting, and you will have to visit a great deal with
+him, but won’t that also be dreadfully fatiguing?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Polleys and Dadds were not behind the others with their ovation;
+but, to Fan’s immense relief, she found she had established by this
+last step such a distance between herself and her early associates
+that they no longer even attempted to bridge it over. Fan Constable
+had succeeded in passing out of their sphere. They wished her joy as
+it were through Harry Stanhope, and they were as respectful in the
+expression of their good wishes, as if the rank which she was so soon
+to borrow from him already belonged to her.</p>
+
+<p>Old Dadd refrained from a single joke, and was almost solemn in
+alluding to the subject.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Polley only bristled up to Oliver, and represented to him that he
+would no longer be content to sit down in her back parlour, since he
+might be making the round of all the castles in the kingdom in company
+with his brother-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Dadd actually called Fan ‘Miss Constable,’ unless in the strictest
+privacy, among <span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>his most intimate cronies, or as a means of teasing the
+Polley girls.</p>
+
+<p>’Mily Polley did not propose to call on Mrs. Stanhope. ‘She is a cut
+above us, now, and no mistake, when she’ll be going among his grand
+relations—generals and admirals, and Lady This and Lady That, every
+time he takes her up to town. I dare say the fine people will snub
+her, but Fan Constable won’t mind that, since they can’t close their
+doors against her, and she married to their nephew and first cousin;
+and she’ll give as good as she’ll take, I’ll say that for her. She’s
+never behind. But I tell you what, ’Liza, we’ll put our pride in our
+pockets—what’s the good of letting it stand in our way? and come round
+mother, and go to church instead of to chapel, the first Sunday after
+Mrs. Stanhope has returned from her wedding jaunt. We’ll try if we
+can’t get a wrinkle—as Jack Dadd says—out of her new bonnet. Only Fan
+Constable <span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>does not know how to dress herself. Yet she has caught a
+duck of a real gentleman, like Mr. Stanhope is, with her dowdy clothes,
+and her plain sewing, and her whity-brown face,’ cried ’Mily, in
+exasperation at the contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>‘She had been his fate,’ said ’Liza, mysteriously.</p>
+
+<p>‘You shut up, ’Liza, and don’t talk as if you believed in
+fortune-telling—not that I should mind a bit getting my fortune told
+by a right old woman, in a red cloak, with a pack of cards. It would
+be lovely. And, oh my! wouldn’t mother be down on me, if she found me
+out!’ cried ’Mily, in high glee at the bare idea of the servant girl’s
+escapade.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is an instinct of self-preservation on the fellow’s part, and on
+Fan’s it is the old infatuation and the recent reaction working their
+worst together. There is no help for it,’ said Oliver to himself,
+slowly and sadly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></p>
+
+<p>Beyond the area of Copley Grange Farm every voice of every Stanhope
+was dumb on the announcement of Harry’s marriage. The members of the
+Stanhope family certainly agreed with Oliver, that it was useless to
+interpose from any hope of dealing effectually with the consummation
+of Harry’s descent in life, to which his friends had formerly been
+provoked into giving a reluctant consent.</p>
+
+<p>At last Agneta wrote to Fan, very prettily, within certain limits.
+Agneta was glad that her dear old Harry should be happy. She thanked
+Fan for making his happiness. She trusted that she and Fan would always
+remain friends. But there was not a word of Agneta’s coming down to
+Copley Grange Farm to grace the marriage; not a hint of any future
+visit; not a syllable of meeting Fan again in the whole course of their
+respective lives.</p>
+
+<p>Fan read the letter without any remark. As she read she grew still
+more colourless in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>her olive paleness, which ’Mily Polley called
+‘whity-brownness,’ but there was also a more steadfast set of her
+well-cut mouth, a more indomitable expression in her brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She did not give Oliver the letter to read; indeed, the brother and
+sister were no longer on such terms as to volunteer an exchange of
+confidences. She only surrendered the dainty epistle to Harry at his
+special request.</p>
+
+<p>Harry reddened and bit his lip as he took in, at a couple of glances,
+the familiar writing on the page and a half of note-paper. ‘Dash it!
+I did not think Aggie could have been such a cold-hearted chit,’ he
+muttered; ‘I did think she was more of a lady than to be a stuck-up
+snob.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind,’ said Fan, with determined magnanimity; ‘I dare say it is
+hard for her to have you stoop for a wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Stoop!’ protested Harry, who was loyal in his attachments, if he was
+anything; ‘it is my <span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>first regular attempt at climbing since I got out
+of the garret window at one of our tutors. I nearly broke my neck then,
+but I have fallen on my feet this time. I have done the best stroke of
+business I can ever hope to accomplish, though I should live to head
+all the markets round with my heifers and south downs, and win the
+prizes from the Prince and all the agricultural nobs in the country
+at the show at Islington. Ask your brother who has the best of the
+bargain in our blessed contract. It is all Aunt Julia’s doing. In her
+aping of liberality and angling for popularity she is at heart the most
+time-serving and intolerant old woman under the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then it will be a victory indeed, if we can force her, and everybody
+else with her, to come round to our side at last,’ said Fan, fired by
+her dauntless courage.</p>
+
+<p>There was not more than a grain of truth in Oliver’s cruel
+accusation of what had led <span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span>Fan to listen to Harry Stanhope. But
+that fructifying grain, together with the passion of her love for
+Harry, helped the unimaginative, rational young woman to rear an airy
+structure—representing her ultimate relations with the Stanhopes
+and the great world. There was Harry encouraged, aided, ‘kept up to
+the scratch,’ by his wife’s proud and loving support in all manly
+energy and perseverance in his profession. There were his name, fame,
+and fortune established, as the most enterprising and successful
+gentleman-farmer in the country. (Fan paid no heed to the signs of
+the times or to impending agricultural distress, in her dream). There
+was the reappearance of the Hartleys on every rumour of a fresh
+election, with John Hartley, thankful to accept Harry Stanhope as
+an ally on equal terms, with Lady Cicely, who had once demurred at
+the possibility of Fan’s accompanying her brother to dine at Copley
+Grange, pleased to drive over with her husband, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>and dine herself at
+Copley Grange Farm. Of course, that must be after the old farmhouse
+was added to and improved, so as not to be altogether ill-matched with
+the manor-house. If the <i>entrée</i> to the manor-house were secured
+during the Hartleys’ temporary occupation of Copley Grange, it would
+almost certainly remain free to the Stanhopes when Mr. Amyott resumed
+his permanent reign. The example of the Stanhopes’ landlord would be
+followed by other squires whose houses were within visiting distance of
+the Farm.</p>
+
+<p>Fan, in her chrysalis state, had often looked from the mill side of
+the Brook across to the park and great house, with its dignified blot
+of an Italian façade. She had fancied how bountiful and gracious life
+must be there, contrasted with life in the back shops and parlours
+of the Polleys and Dadds. But she had felt then that if by virtue of
+Oliver’s genius and scholarship <span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>she ever rose to cross the threshold
+of such an Eden of refinement and culture, its roses would be full of
+thorns for her, simply because she would not be, like the daughters
+of that privileged region, to the manner born. Innately she was a
+lady, but outwardly she would blunder and flounder in the labyrinths
+of precedence and etiquette, or amidst the appalling topics of sport,
+horses and wines, from all acquaintance with which her sex, alas! did
+not exempt a woman of the higher orders. Fan would cause flippant
+waiting-maids to titter, and staid butlers to frown, at her mistakes.</p>
+
+<p>Now all this was changed. When Fan should procure the ‘Open, Sesame!’
+to the charmed houses by so strange a process as that of becoming a
+yeoman’s wife and doing a yeoman’s wife’s work, all her troubles would
+be at an end. Harry had been born to the purple, and he would always be
+at hand to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>give involuntarily the cue which she would take as quickly
+as ever King Cophetua’s beggar-maid borrowed lustre from her royal
+husband, and developed without loss of time into a right queenly lady.
+Fan would not wear sparkling diamonds or sumptuous velvet, indeed, but
+she had never cared for jewels or fine clothes or luxury. What she
+had cared for she would attain, the simple elegance of bearing and
+behaviour of a gentlewoman, by art as well as by nature.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, while these chickens were unhatched, Friarton took it
+as a matter of course that Harry Stanhope’s kindred should begin by
+looking coldly on the projected alliance between Copley Grange Farm and
+Friarton Mill, and did not think of deposing Fan from her pedestal as a
+bride because she was subjected to this ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>One relative came forward before the knot was tied, and accepted
+Fan—not simply as an <span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>inevitable misfortune, but as a member of the
+illustrious family of Stanhope. The next time Harry came to the Mill,
+after Agneta’s note had been received there, he was not only attended
+by his second shadow; a voice, which had been hitherto dumb, spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Horace managed, with his surly awkwardness—which was something
+quite different from Oliver Constable’s awkwardness—and his bilious
+ungraciousness, even in conferring a compliment, which made it seem as
+if a good-natured impulse went entirely against the grain with him, to
+propose himself as Harry’s groomsman. ‘If you don’t mind, if no other
+body will serve Harry’s purpose, and help to turn him off,’ he said to
+Fan in the voice, the tone of which was out of tune and grating, unless
+sometimes when he addressed his brother.</p>
+
+<p>Fan had never smiled so sweetly on Harry in the whole course of his
+wooing, as she now smiled on the grudging, unjoyous groomsman, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>who,
+sure enough, was to be Harry’s servant, not hers. ‘Oh! I am glad and
+grateful that Harry’s oldest and best friend is to stand by him on his
+marriage day,’ she said audibly to the dull ears. ‘I know you are not
+thinking of me, and I do not wish you to think of me—I only say this to
+express, though you may not care to hear, what an obligation and honour
+you are conferring on me by acting as Harry’s brother still. But it is
+so, Mr. Horace’ (she had not begun to call him by his Christian name,
+just as he had never called her anything save ‘Miss Constable.’ She was
+in some apprehension that ‘Miss Constable’ would not even pass into
+‘Mrs. Stanhope’ with Horace). ‘I will never forget your kindness to
+Harry,’ she finished.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her for a moment with an impulse of furious displeasure
+added to his ordinary gruff, sardonic mood, as if he questioned her
+right to thank him for Harry, and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>bade her be wary of taking so
+much upon her. Then her tender tact penetrated the thick skin of his
+jaundiced, warped nature. ‘All right, Fan,’ he said, touching her hand
+and dropping it again, and giving what exacting, fastidious people
+might have classed as a ghastly grin. But from that date Fan was
+happily convinced that though she was a very small person compared to
+Harry in his brother’s eyes, Horace had forgiven her on the spot, and
+taken her, for all time to come, into a humble corner of the chamber of
+his affections, since she had shown herself capable of comprehending,
+in a degree, what the brothers were to each other, and would never seek
+to separate them. Thus Harry Stanhope’s lovers and slaves became sworn
+allies, and not vowed adversaries.</p>
+
+<p>The hard lines were for Oliver. It was all very well for Sally Pope
+to cackle that now Miss Fan had got her will, and she wished the
+young mistress well, neither was it any harm <span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>to speed her going, for
+marriage was the best lot that could befall most young women, and she
+would ‘fettle’ Master Oliver—see how comfortable she would make him, in
+all the old homely ways, like a king with his faithful housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver had no doubt Sally would make his body comfortable, but what
+of the refreshment of his mind and heart now that his father was
+dead, when his only sister—the little Fan of other days—alienated
+from him already, should have left him in order to make a foolish
+<i>mésalliance</i> of which no good could come? Friarton Mill in its
+sweet domestic beauty would be robbed of its chief attraction so soon
+as Fan was gone.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">
+    CHAPTER XXV.
+    <br>
+    <span>‘THE DEVIL SHALL NOT HAVE HARRY.’</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">The</span> three years allotted by his brother-farmers for Harry Stanhope to
+run through what small patrimony he had invested in Copley Grange Farm,
+and what credit he had begun upon, did their work more effectually than
+the months given by Oliver Constable for Harry to tire of his part as a
+yeoman.</p>
+
+<p>Fan had held her husband back with a little hand which was like a
+vice for staunchness, but which had, at last, loosened its grip under
+overwhelming pressure.</p>
+
+<p>Horace had thrown his passive dead weight in the way, to impede Harry’s
+swift progress to ruin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+
+<p>Oliver Constable had not stood aside in sulky neutrality, or hard
+inflexibility flavoured with vindictiveness, to witness the fulfilment
+of his predictions. He would have given much for them to prove false.
+He did all he could to prevent their realisation. He had little in
+common with his brother-in-law, and it was in the characters of the two
+men to grow always more apart instead of nearer to each other. Still
+Oliver, though he was not much in Harry Stanhope’s company, and though
+Harry showed himself constantly more restive, under any influence which
+Oliver had ever possessed over him, tried his best in the thankless
+office of looking after Harry, when he was beyond his wife’s scope, and
+of interposing to save him—not merely from the consequences of his own
+folly, but from falling a victim to his neighbours’ weaknesses. As a
+result of this knight-errantry on Oliver’s part, there was an entire
+rupture between him and Jack Dadd on Harry’s account.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p>
+
+<p>Harry Stanhope’s incapacity for drawing distinctions—moral as well as
+social—his vanity and passion for popularity, had all pointed with
+tolerable clearness to one conclusion from the first. He had no notion
+of what was expedient. He was not particular in his easygoing fashion.
+He was bound to turn soon from his self-imposed obligations, selected
+very much at haphazard, and sitting with the greatest lightness upon
+him. He must have excitement of some kind, at any cost.</p>
+
+<p>The upper, and, to be fair, the more decorous, set in Friarton,
+which had commenced by being delighted with their opposite in Harry
+Stanhope’s <i>abandon</i>, matched as it was with his gentle birth
+and breeding, ceased to prize his company when they found it was
+bestowed on their social inferiors with a thousand times the lavishness
+and indiscriminateness which they had severely censured in Oliver
+Constable. And all the time Oliver had claimed a right to act as he
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>did, and asserted a principle in it, while he had shown a method in
+his madness. In the course of the last three years, he had brought his
+accusers to acknowledge that, though he had lost himself in the matter
+of his money, talents, and education, with the desirable position which
+they might have commanded, he was not a reprobate, and he had known
+when to stop long before the climax of individual degradation.</p>
+
+<p>As Harry Stanhope ceased to be the idol of the gentlemen and ladies,
+he became also less of the pet and more of the butt of the lower grade
+into which he was increasingly thrown. The young farmers and tradesmen
+with whom he fraternised, not only at market and in cricket-matches and
+games of bowls, but on every occasion, public and private, still looked
+up to him in many things, and copied him—not always to their benefit,
+but a stronger tincture of contempt was getting infused into their
+liking.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p>
+
+<p>This was especially true of Jack Dadd, who, while he continued proud
+of being hand-in-glove with Harry Stanhope, did not scruple to make a
+cat’s-paw of his friend, and rather enjoyed leading him into a scrape
+and leaving him there. This disloyalty and shade of baseness did not
+spring necessarily from Jack’s class or calling, and they had still
+less to do with his natural good temper. They belonged to long-standing
+class feuds and the lingering spite thus engendered. It was almost
+inevitably wreaked on a person who, however ready to forget social
+prejudices, sprang still from the privileged order.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver humbled himself in the room of Harry Stanhope, and through Harry
+in the place of Fan, to remonstrate with Jack Dadd.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are older than Stanhope, Jack,’ Oliver reminded his quondam
+friend, who had bragged earlier of their friendship, ‘and you <span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>were not
+brought up in the very odour of thoughtlessness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So I suppose I ain’t fit to go about with your gentleman
+brother-in-law, unless as his keeper. “Not if I know it;” “Not for
+Joe,”’ interrupted Jack, rudely and flippantly. ‘I ain’t so fond of
+being a fellow’s keeper, as you are, Constable, though you don’t seem
+to like to try it on Harry Stanhope. I thought you had got a lesson and
+rid yourself of such priggishness, long ago. It ain’t a compliment to
+Stanhope to make out he’s not fit to take care of hisself, or to choose
+his company and be on equal terms with them. Lord! it was a funny sort
+of equality last night when I cut my stick, just as he was challenging
+the stableman at the “Wheat Ears” to box with him, Dummy being to hold
+their jackets, I take it. Stanhope ain’t proud; I’ll say that for him,
+neither when he’s as tight as a lord, nor when he’s as sober as a
+judge—which don’t often happen now-a-days. It comes to this, Constable,
+I’ve had enough of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>your sauce of dictation. There was not so much
+difference between that and your sister’s airs, and a fine pass they’ve
+brought her to: got her a gentleman for a husband, no doubt—and, what
+is more, he’s worth the two of you; but he’s made her work for him so
+as keeping a shop would have been a joke by comparison, and he’ll kick
+the causeway all the same.’</p>
+
+<p>After that conversation there was an end to friendly intercourse
+between Oliver and Jack, and to any fond hope which the former had once
+been so conceited as to entertain, of swaying his brother-tradesman to
+higher aims.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Stanhope’s deterioration in every respect included his inveterate
+idleness in all pursuits which did not take the form of sport or
+frolic, while ploughing, sowing, cattle-feeding, even hay-making
+and reaping, when they ceased to be novelties, ceased also to be
+sport or frolic, lost every element of interest and amusement, and
+became positively repugnant <span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>to the man who remained always a boy.
+He neglected his farming utterly, or made wild havoc with it in his
+fitful, reckless operations, forced sales, and consequent desperate
+losses.</p>
+
+<p>With all this wanton waste Fan had nothing to do. She had accomplished
+wonders in the <i>rôle</i> she had undertaken. Her dairy produce and
+poultry were from the first among the best in the neighbourhood. She
+competed successfully with those farmers’ wives who were either nothing
+save dairymaids and henwives, or who employed experienced servants
+to do their mistresses’ work by proxy. Any prizes which agricultural
+societies awarded to the tenants of Copley Grange Farm were for its
+mistress’s butter and cheese, goslings and turkey poults.</p>
+
+<p>And all the time Fan was not a dairymaid alone, she was a gentleman’s
+wife deserving of the name. In order to unite the contrasting
+attributes, she rose up early and lay down late, and ate the bread
+of carefulness. She changed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>her dress as often as any fine lady who
+has nothing to do, no occupation or pleasure in life save dressing
+herself by the help of a maid. Fan was rewarded when Harry noticed the
+freshness of her calicot morning gown, the daintiness of her afternoon
+piqué, the good taste of her evening grenadine.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Harry nor Horace had an idea of gardening beyond sticking a
+spade into the ground once in the course of the spring and leaving it
+there after a quarter of an hour, or gathering an occasional handful of
+strawberries, while the cook demanded a regular supply of vegetables,
+and the masters missed seasonable fruit when it was not forthcoming,
+appearing to expect cherries, peaches, and pears to drop from the skies
+like manna. Fan read garden chronicles alternately with dairy manuals,
+and spent many a fatiguing hour of her early married life striving to
+direct the labours of an improvised <span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>gardener drawn from the ranks of
+the field workers. It was as much out of the question for Harry to keep
+a skilled gardener as it was for Fan to set up a qualified housekeeper
+and an experienced dairymaid, though Harry would have attempted it
+without a doubt if he had been suffered. But Fan stinted herself
+of all other worthy assistants, because a good cook and a trained
+table-boy who could cater for the two young men and wait upon them as
+they had been used to be waited upon, became absolutely necessary to
+the Stanhopes, as soon as their establishment at Copley Grange Farm
+acquired a settled character, and ceased to partake of the nature of
+living for a time <i>al fresco</i>, or <i>in villeggiatura</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When Fan became painfully conscious that she had not only her own
+arduous double and treble duties to attend to, she must also supply
+deficiencies on Harry’s part, she rose to the occasion gallantly.
+She added agricultural <span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>journals, treatises on husbandry, essays on
+farm stock, to her other diligent studies. She crammed herself; she
+sought to coach Harry. She tired herself to death and exposed herself
+to innumerable catarrhs and coughs wandering over the fields in all
+kinds of weather, to win him, by her close sympathetic companionship,
+to go among his men, or else to show them, in his interest, that there
+was the eye of a mistress, if not a master, on their work. She drove
+with Harry and Horace to the markets, and if it had not been to spare
+Harry’s dignity as a yeoman and his credit as a man—since poor Fan had
+a double object and a double terror in accompanying her husband to the
+towns—she would willingly have stood with him in the streets and the
+corn exchanges and sat with him at the inn tables. And if Fan could
+have been ten women instead of one, she might have saved Harry Stanhope
+from worldly destruction, as Mrs. Polley had rescued her husband and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>children. The two women did not resemble each other much in other
+respects, and there was little love lost between them. But they shared
+at least the helpfulness, command of resources, and capacity for brave
+effort and endurance, of the women of the trading classes—the women who
+have not been spoilt, and have not lost the instincts of energy and
+enterprise, and with it the most distant resemblance to the virtuous
+woman in Proverbs. This was part of Fan’s inheritance as a tradesman’s
+daughter, which she had neither guessed nor valued as it deserved.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fact established by experience that many women, both widows
+and spinsters, have made, when the opportunities offered themselves,
+good and successful farmers. Fan was a clever woman apart from
+book-learning; she was a woman of strong resolution, and she was
+stimulated and braced by every motive which she held dear. If a single
+mortal woman could <span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>have redeemed Harry Stanhope’s fortunes, she would
+have redeemed them.</p>
+
+<p>But the one woman must certainly have been ten, and Fan could
+not multiply her identity or render herself ubiquitous. She was
+tremendously overweighted—not only by the whole burden and anxiety of
+the farm’s being cast upon her, who ought to have been treated as the
+weaker vessel, but by the unnerving, despairing suspicion—deepening
+every day into hopeless conviction, that an impending wreck of other
+than worldly goods was to be faced and wrestled with. Harry was—in what
+became always more imminent and hideous danger—of being as speedily and
+utterly swamped in tastes, opinions, habits—all that constitute moral
+character, as in income and capital. In the dread and horror of that
+final downfall, all other falls began to look light.</p>
+
+<p>Fan ceased to pay the smallest heed to the fact that still there came
+no recognition of her <span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>entrance into the Stanhope family save from
+pretty, temporising, meaningless letters written by Agneta. The other
+members coolly ignored the intruder. Mrs. Harry Stanhope had no concern
+to spare for the consciousness that the little household at Copley
+Grange Farm were not keeping their first footing, which had seemed to
+be their birthright, among the upper ten of Friarton.</p>
+
+<p>She did not even mind that the Polleys and Dadds grew loud in amazed
+pity—in which, at the same time, she believed they revelled, over
+her altered circumstances. Mrs. Harry Stanhope was not only reduced
+to sending butter, cheese and eggs into the town for sale, she came
+herself to the Polleys’ shop and the cheese shop, to square the
+accounts which no one else at the farm could make out. Everybody knew
+Harry Stanhope had turned out a gentle beggar and purely ornamental. He
+could not afford to keep a bailiff to give the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>orders for which he was
+so little prepared that his men continually laughed in their sleeves
+at the instructions they received. The mistress of Copley Grange Farm
+commanded no more help than she could get from a girl under twenty
+in addition to the dairyman to manage the dairy and poultry-yard, on
+which it was evident the principal dependence of the farmer must rest.
+And did not the old Fan Constable look worn and pulled down, though
+she might be proud and ‘game’ to the last, as Mrs. Harry Stanhope? The
+truth was that when Fan was from home or in society without Harry, her
+eyes had already acquired the fixed, abstracted look of eyes which are
+looking beyond their present surroundings, and seeing in the distance
+things invisible to her companions. Her ears were constantly on the
+alert, strained to catch sounds inaudible to the rest of the party.
+While she was taking her share in the conversation or the business
+going on about her, there was a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>perpetual undercurrent of thought
+and care in her mind which had no reference to the topics discussed.
+She had great self-command, so that she could preserve a double
+consciousness, but she was never at ease, never without trouble; and
+the unresting worry beneath the calm and smiling surface, showed itself
+in a haggard, aging look which was rapidly robbing Fan of all traces of
+her youth.</p>
+
+<p>One evening in spring, when the thrushes and blackbirds were
+anticipating the nightingales and tuning their ’prentice notes in the
+hedges—which had gained the purplish-red bloom, the herald of a flush
+of green—over the primroses looking pale and cold in the raw wind of
+the March twilight, after the golden shields of the celandines, which
+had kept their neighbours company with quite an exuberance of jollity
+in the morning sunshine, had collapsed, as early as the afternoon, into
+small tightly wrapped-up balls, encased in dim green envelopes, Oliver
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>was startled by Fan’s walking like a ghost unexpected, unannounced,
+and all alone, into the mill-house parlour.</p>
+
+<p>It was too early in the season for evening strolls, and lately Fan
+had never been seen abroad without her husband. The same could not be
+said of Harry, who was often enough from home without his wife, and
+not quite so frequently, but still with tolerably constant recurrence
+during the winter, without his brother, whom he had learnt at last
+to shake off imperiously. There had come to be an unnatural divorce
+between light and shade, and day and night, neither faring well in the
+separation. For Harry, all by himself, drove his chariot of the sun,
+like another Phaëton, madly, and if he did not set the world on fire,
+his own eyes grew scorched and bloodshot, his lips parched, his hands
+palsied; the whole goodly springs of his manliness and kindliness were
+dried up and polluted with ashes, because of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>the burden of consuming
+fire he had laid hold of and would thenceforth try in vain to guide and
+control.</p>
+
+<p>As for Horace, he would slink away like a dog summarily dismissed by
+his master, withdraw into his corner to sit moodily there, and only
+start up on the distant sound of Harry’s clogged instead of winged
+footsteps. Oliver had seen Horace and Fan exchange furtive, miserable
+glances when Horace returned thus alone, and drew back into the
+greatest gloom which the little drawing-room afforded him. Then the
+pair would sedulously pretend to read and work while in reality their
+ears were on the stretch, and their hearts on the rack, till far on
+into the night. These two knew and trusted each other thoroughly by
+this time, though Oliver was certain the looks never passed into words.
+Wife and brother remained too loyal in their allegiance.</p>
+
+<p>As Oliver rose hastily to bid Fan welcome, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>he saw more plainly than
+he had yet seen it, and with a sharp pang at the sight, the change in
+her looks. A small woman to begin with, she was now little more than
+skin and bone. Her brown eyes appeared a sombre black, set in great
+shadowy hollows in her white face. The straight firm line of her lips
+was drooping and quivering. She put her thin hand in Oliver’s and held
+up her face to be kissed, and spoke without any preamble. ‘I am beaten,
+Oliver. They say an Englishman never knows when he is beaten, but that
+is a man, not a woman. Yet did you ever think I would give in with
+life? and I have given in. I have come to you, not to save me—you tried
+that once and failed. What did it matter if I might have saved another?
+only I have not—there’s the rub. I don’t mind myself, and you need not
+mind me. But you must do something. I tell you, Oliver, you must move
+heaven and earth to save Harry.’ Her voice rose into a little weak cry.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>She was like a creature who had lost all command over herself.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not so much this reversal of natural law in a woman—by
+organisation and courage, self-sufficing, self-restrained, rational
+and resolute—which smote Oliver Constable with dismay and compunction,
+as if he had been the sinner whose sin was at the bottom of this
+spectacle, the most pitiable he had ever beheld. It was some
+comprehension of what Fan must have suffered, of what it had cost
+this woman—ardent and steadfast as women even more than men can prove
+themselves—to own herself beaten, to grovel as it were at his knees,
+and fling herself for help on him of all men, who, though he had been a
+brother in more than name, had interposed with all his might, without
+effect, as both of them were well aware, to turn her from the step
+which had brought her to this pass.</p>
+
+<p>He remembered having, more than once in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>their lives, angrily accused
+her of being incapable of changing her mind; and—knowing as he had
+seemed to know her high spirit, unquenchable energy, and unswerving
+determination—he had been tempted to believe, against right reason,
+that however mistaken and misplaced her aspirations, or foolish and
+baseless her dreams, Fan could not be baffled, and would not be
+vanquished.</p>
+
+<p>The end of all was, that she was more thoroughly subdued, presenting
+a more deplorable object of contemplation, than if she had been a far
+feebler woman.</p>
+
+<p>‘My God!’ cried Oliver in his heart—moved as he was to its depths when
+a believing man can but appeal to the Father of his spirit; ‘what must
+she not have borne to crush her whole being, lay her pride in the dust,
+extinguish the last spark of hope, and break her heart?’</p>
+
+<p>The next moment Oliver was briskly <span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>administering to Fan, as most
+people in his position, at their wits’ end what to do for the best,
+would have administered it, a cold douche—first on the suppliant,
+whom he would fain have taken into his arms and sheltered from every
+farther blast of the stormy wind which had cast her down bleeding and
+powerless, to implore mercy for another and not herself—and next on her
+agonised petition.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nonsense, Fan, you are over-wrought, my dear; your nerves are
+unstrung; you do not know what you are saying.’</p>
+
+<p>But the time for pulling herself together, struggling to her feet, and
+staggering on with the veil drawn decently down again over her torture
+and her faintness, was over for Fan. ‘I do know what I am saying,
+Oliver,’ she insisted with ashy lips, while the hand which clutched his
+arm was trembling like a leaf. ‘You think a wife should not drop the
+slightest hint of the skeleton in her closet. I will agree <span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>with you
+here. And I have not breathed a word to any other human being—not to
+Horry, who is his second self—only to you; and do you suppose I could
+have spoken to you unless in the last extremity, which has come?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then rest satisfied with what you have done, Fan; say no more about
+it,’ Oliver conjured her, as if he would have put his hand upon her
+mouth to keep her from further utterance, or brought down the creeping
+dusk to hide their faces from each other. He got up, took several turns
+up and down the room, so that he might have his back to her when he
+promised solemnly; ‘The devil shall not have Harry, so far as I can
+help it.’</p>
+
+<p>That Fan should have come to her brother with such a prayer on her
+lips, was only less bad for him than for Fan herself.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Constable had not the most distant thought that Harry Stanhope
+could have grossly ill-treated his wife. Oliver would as <span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>soon have
+suspected Harry of lifting up his strong right arm to strike down
+Horace unresisting under the pacific influence of his devotion. It
+is your poor half-brutal coal-heaver who ordinarily adds kicks to
+curses, where his wife is concerned. As a rule, though certainly not
+without exceptions, centuries of refining civilisation and liberal
+education remove Harry’s whole class from committing such outrages.
+Harry Stanhope, with his graciousness in an entirely muddled condition,
+might challenge a muscular ostler to a round in the noble art of
+self-defence. He was known to have taken the law into his own hands and
+knocked down a ruffian who was belabouring a child and insulting an old
+woman. But he had probably hardly ever spoken a rough word to Fan, whom
+he had held in the greatest respect ever since he had known her, though
+she had become powerless to make a man of him, as he had proposed. She
+was not silly, or bumptious, or trying in any way so as to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>provoke
+the wrath which had originally been a rare experience with Harry. But
+not the less he had slain her faith in him, by his hopeless levity
+and folly, which were tending unmistakably to animal indulgence and
+besotted excess. He had not destroyed one atom of her love—else Fan’s
+heart too might have died within her in its cold emptiness, but, at
+least, it would not have been wrung with the intolerable pang of loving
+him to death and beyond death, yet seeing him go down, in spite of her,
+to the place of dragons.</p>
+
+<p>There are students of humanity who positively state that a good man
+or woman’s love must inevitably perish with the loss of esteem. If
+so, the best human love must be singularly unlike Divine love as it
+is revealed to us. And it is one thing voluntarily to give love to a
+creature whose repulsive moral disease is evident and undeniable, and
+has already penetrated and poisoned the nature through and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>through—and
+quite another to have loved the same creature in the beauty and glory
+of sound mortal health, with but the seeds of fatal disease, only to be
+detected by the wise physician, lurking in the system, and having once
+loved to turn with loathing abhorrence and absolute rejection, from
+the sick man, when his weakness has found him out, his sore ancestral
+malady has laid fast hold of him, and he is fighting a desperate battle
+for life or death.</p>
+
+<p>Not only did Fan’s love cling to Harry in his social and moral decline
+still more closely than when she had learned to love him in the heyday
+of his natural gifts; even Oliver—who had early taken Harry for what he
+was worth, and condemned him to his destiny, now in the teeth of what
+he had done to Fan, felt the man’s heart within him turn and soften
+with yearning and commiseration for the stripling who was so unequally
+matched, and was standing foot to foot, reeling under the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>shocks
+inflicted by a giant adversary and ghastly foe.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver needed this compensation of human tenderness revived and called
+forth in the heart of a benevolent man, by human weakness and peril in
+its sorriest guise and direst strait, to help to make up to him for
+the sacrifice he was called on to offer; since the world had not gone
+well with Oliver Constable during these last years, and his own affairs
+required the unremitting attention which he saw himself compelled, and
+had pledged himself to Fan, to give to those of another.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver had started on his mission impressed with the conviction that
+it behoved him especially to make his business prosper, or, if he
+could not do that, to prevent its becoming disastrous, in order to
+remove the slur thrown liberally on Jacks-of-all-trades, geniuses,
+and enthusiasts. He had not the slightest inclination to the modified
+martyrdom of commercial <span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>losses for their own sake. He decidedly
+objected to wasting the money which his father had carefully gathered
+that Oliver’s career as a gentleman and scholar might be untrammelled,
+even for a good object, if he could prevent it.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, it was part of Oliver Constable’s duty, as he
+conceived it, to vindicate the truth that the best citizenship and the
+best Christianity did not, as a matter of course, conduct a diligent,
+prudent, and self-denying tradesman straight into the Bankruptcy Court.</p>
+
+<p>But Oliver was fated to share the lot of most real reformers and
+pioneers of the highest civilisation—the only civilisation which is
+not merely skin-deep, but which, penetrating to the core, pervades the
+whole man, and by the grace of God never leaves him, only departing
+when he himself departs, to dwell with him in heavenly habitations—and
+of the righteous Gospel which the Lord of Righteousness delivered to be
+worked out—not in church or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span>chapel wholly or even principally, but on
+such fields as the Rialto of Venice or the London Exchange, the shops
+of common tradesmen, the tables where feasts, great and small, are
+held, the hearths round which men and women meet to rest from the work
+of the day, and cheer their souls.</p>
+
+<p>But Oliver had to discover for himself, in more ways than one, the
+pithiness of the proverb that to give a dog an ‘ill name’ is to hang
+him, that to run a-muck against popular prejudices is to suffer injury
+more or less severe, and wait long for any shadow of a reward.</p>
+
+<p>He had no manner of doubt that the reward of disarming distrust and
+establishing a right to success would come in time, if the worker
+could but possess his soul in patience, and exercise sufficient faith,
+endurance, and bountiful liberality, if he could tarry and lay out,
+nothing doubting, fresh materials and pains.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p>
+
+<p>Oliver’s fortitude was not exhausted, but he was sensible he had spent
+some of his funds freely, and would soon be living on the verge of his
+income, if he did not economise every fraction and dedicate it to its
+proper use.</p>
+
+<p>The secession of Jim Hull, with the establishment of his nephew in fine
+new baking premises and a fine new business in the town, had diverted
+a large slice of the public confidence and custom from what were now
+held the <i>old</i> Constable premises and business. The slice was
+always increasing in size, and diminishing the original <i>pièce de
+résistance</i>, from which it had been taken by the shrewdness which
+proved quite justified in the anticipation that the public would prefer
+apparent purity and actual adulteration, both in the produce of the
+mill and the bakehouse, to the uncorrupted but unbleached article.</p>
+
+<p>There was the additional stimulus to the withdrawal of patronage
+of a strong spice of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>malicious satisfaction, not enough to form
+a conspiracy, but existing in sufficient abundance for lending
+countenance and support, whether sly or bold, to a rival business
+conducted on good old-fashioned, rational, give-and-take principles.
+Oliver Constable had come among the Friarton shopkeepers uttering
+high-flown heresy, witnessing in his conduct against time-honoured
+liberties of trade, and stirring up doubts in the bosoms of the very
+tradesmen—not to say of their customers. So the Dadd and Polley part
+of the community had no objection that Oliver should bear in his own
+person the brunt of his Quixotic ideas. Perhaps that would teach him to
+pay greater respect to their superior age and experience.</p>
+
+<p>In short, Oliver’s business profits were diminishing so steadily as
+to threaten to make his mill and bakehouse eat their own heads, if
+he did not diminish in proportion the staffs of millers and bakers—a
+step which he objected <span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>to take so long as he could afford to hold
+out, since it would not only be tantamount to an admission that he was
+outmatched, he argued with himself, it would be hard upon the men who
+had submitted to his rules and consented to work on his terms—not that
+he had altogether overcome the workmen’s opposition. His reputation
+had gone abroad as a master full of new-fangled fancies and hobbies,
+therefore he had been exposed to the further disadvantage of possessing
+a succession of restless, suspicious servants, flighty on their own
+account, and inclined to perpetual experiments on, and changes of,
+employers.</p>
+
+<p>Then Oliver had been of a mind to show that he would not neglect any
+lawful means of improving his flour and bread, so he had set about
+introducing expensive new machinery into the mill and bakehouse.
+But being, after all, a green hand, without his father’s practical
+experience in his double trade, the young man <span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>committed several
+astounding blunders in the adoption of the machinery, and was much out
+of pocket as a punishment for the errors of his ignorance. The result
+awoke no small amount of jeering, crowing, and laughter at the leading
+tea and supper tables of Friarton.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver’s inner man had not fared better during these three harassing
+years. Fan’s house was not a second home to him. The sole effect, so
+far as he could see, of his striving to fraternise in the true sense
+with the Dadds and the Polleys was that he had succeeded in arousing
+in his father’s old allies a hostile and mocking temper, not pleasant
+to encounter. Since his quarrel with Jack Dadd, the old Dadds, who
+naturally took their son’s part, had fought shy of Oliver Constable;
+and he had also, in some manner, he could not for the life of him tell
+how, given serious offence to the whole Polley family. He supposed they
+were enlisted, with hot, resentful party spirit, or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>what they mistook
+for party spirit, on Jack Dadd’s side. Oliver was half right, half
+wrong. For he was incapable of perceiving the other and major ground
+of complaint which the Polleys had against him—because, after raising
+false expectations, he had stopped short of seeking to keep company
+either with ’Liza or one of her sisters, in the prospect of matrimony.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hilliard had never gone so far as to shut her door against Oliver
+Constable. Nay, she had been so candid as to admit with pleasure that
+her later prognostications with regard to him had been premature, and
+in the main erroneous. But Oliver’s chief inducement—as he had come to
+acknowledge to himself after there was no further need of crushing it
+down—for availing himself of the privilege of visiting at the Meadows,
+had vanished from the date of the terrible illness which had seized
+on Catherine Hilliard. It was one of the worst of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>those indefinite,
+incalculable, nervous illnesses, bred of the conditions of modern
+life, which have no beginning and no end, which baffle by their very
+intangibility and paralyse by their unrelaxing clutch, and one of whose
+horrors is that in their abnormal character they may develop symptoms
+piteously fantastic and grotesque, like the antics of madness. Such
+illnesses, dreaded not without cause, are apt, when they spare the
+wasted life, to reduce the patient to a state of unrelieved, permanent
+prostration and chronic invalidism, which is death in life.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine Hilliard had drifted away from her friends on the misty,
+dreary sea of illness which had no shore, till she seemed lost to them
+here, till even to Oliver Constable—who now owned to himself, like the
+<i>Bursch</i> in the famous <i>Burschenlied</i>, that he had loved her
+always and would love her throughout eternity—she survived chiefly as
+the aching, melancholy <span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>thought of the girl who had been capable of
+dreaming noble things, but who had not been able to grasp the truth
+that behind the commonest, even the most sordid, absolutely repulsive
+details of human life, there exist nobler things still than man or
+woman ever dreamt of in their highest philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>And the brute creation, which Catherine Hilliard had so loved,
+preferring it to the human, drew dumbly and wistfully away from the
+decline of her humanity; while the book world in which she had elected
+to dwell, crumbled into dust around her. She had left books too behind
+her, and the beings that peopled her present existence were more
+visionary than the ghosts she had formerly chosen for her company.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver could only look forward to her deliverance from this last
+bondage to the unreal, by her entrance on unsealed and everlasting
+verities.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then it was when Oliver was most tempted to regard his enterprise as
+a wretched disappointment, he was called on to take up the burden of
+another man’s failure.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">
+    CHAPTER XXVI.
+    <br>
+    <span>THE PRICE AT WHICH HARRY STANHOPE WAS RESCUED.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">The</span> first thing to be done for Harry Stanhope was to get him out of
+the situation for which he was utterly unfit, into which he had thrust
+himself—to extricate him from the network of idleness, false activity,
+unsuitable companionship, debt, and dissipation in which he was
+entangled. In some respects the feat was not only practicable, it was
+comparatively easy. Harry had proved himself so thoroughly incapable
+a farmer, that it was not likely any sane landlord would be urgent to
+keep this tenant, particularly as his slender funds and a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>part of his
+wife’s portion were already flung to the winds, or rather sunk in the
+soil, and he had no more left to deposit in the land even if that had
+been his sole mode of spending money.</p>
+
+<p>Old Peter Constable had believed in women’s power of standing alone,
+and had left Fan absolutely mistress of her portion. Oliver had
+braved her indignation by asking her to have it settled on herself
+before her marriage. And certainly Harry Stanhope had not opposed the
+arrangement, for Harry was truly convinced of the treasure Fan was
+in herself, as well as habitually careless of pounds, shillings, and
+pence. Therefore, though he talked the jargon of his set—to Horace and
+others, and professed, as a claim to being a man of the world, not to
+be indifferent to tin—to the degree of counting on a woman’s goods
+to eke out his resources, he did not really put much weight on Fan’s
+bank-book and coupons, or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>mind whether she kept them in her own hands
+or put them into his.</p>
+
+<p>In the end, Fan, more as a means of vindicating Harry’s
+disinterestedness than as a precaution for her own independence in days
+to come, allowed half of her portion to be tied up for her personal use
+if she should so ordain it. She would gladly have given up to Harry
+every shilling of this reserve, after he had disposed of the rest,
+had it not been that her foresight for him was not to say infinitely
+greater than his for himself or for her, but for any she could have
+exercised on her own account. Harry had become to his wife, in all
+worldly respects, like one of those minors or infants in the eyes of
+the law, with regard to whom it is his protector’s duty to defend him
+from the dangers of his own helplessness and to hedge him round with
+artificial barriers. Still Fan was eminently an upright woman, and she
+would have fought against her despair and nerved herself to strip—not
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>herself alone but Harry, of her remaining possessions, in order to
+discharge the debts which he had contrived to incur in spite of her,
+rather than let them fall upon her brother, if she had not known that
+even supposing she could get Oliver to forego what all concerned in it
+called his ‘loans,’ it would only be a form. It could not prevent him
+from being impoverished in the long run, because it must be on Oliver
+the little family at Copley Grange Farm would have to depend, till its
+mistress was strong enough, if she ever were strong again, to struggle
+to secure independence—not merely for herself and Harry, but for Horace
+whose oars were shipped in Harry’s boat.</p>
+
+<p>There was no difficulty on Harry’s side; he had never been overburdened
+with scruples, and he hardly suffered from any in accepting Oliver
+Constable’s interposition to free him—Harry, from his mess at Oliver’s
+cost. For indubitably there were money penalties, the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>extent of
+which even Fan did not guess, to pay all round, before the volunteer
+yeoman-farmer could be withdrawn from the ranks of the yeomen,
+released from the obligations of his lease, and granted a discharge
+by his creditors, while it was Oliver who, in each instance, paid the
+defalcation.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver did not grudge it so much when he found that Harry, sick of
+the whole concern, readily consented to go abroad at once with his
+wife, brother, and brother-in-law—who appreciated the concession
+and was conscious of a lurking sweetness and graciousness in his
+unstable prodigal’s freedom from resentment at the old sap and grinder
+Constable’s interference and assumption, however carefully masked, or
+however dearly bought, of the reins of government.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, after all, paradoxical as it may sound, dogged resistance would
+most assuredly have promised better than unconditional submission <span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>for
+Harry’s ultimate attainment of moral manhood.</p>
+
+<p>‘Charity begins at home,’ Oliver told himself, using the proverb in
+a sense which satisfied him, when he reckoned up the damage to his
+own prospects, of leaving the mill and bakehouse in the charge of a
+dolt like Ned Green, and a foreman thirty years younger and a whole
+century less acute and discreet than Jim Hull. ‘I have always desired
+to be kept from developing into a monster, made up of theories like
+Maximilian Robespierre,’ he assured himself farther, with a faint
+smile; ‘and no doubt it is the finest thing which can happen to
+me—myself, to be forced to skedaddle across the Channel, and potter
+about foreign towns with Fan and her small family. It will knock the
+starch out of me in no time, and take me down ever so many pegs in my
+priggishness.’</p>
+
+<p>The sum of Oliver’s project for the Stanhopes, in the meantime, was
+to cut off Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>from his moorings and their tendencies, to furnish
+him with the substitutes of movement and variety, to afford Fan the
+change, rest, and recruiting of which she was sorely in need, till
+something more effectual should be devised to rebuild the ruined home,
+and replace the lost opportunities. It was a humble enough programme,
+not very interesting and exciting, save for the main thread of the
+drama, on which all the rest hung, and on which the performers were
+shamefacedly silent.</p>
+
+<p>Most people have experienced the peculiar fascination and absorption
+which is caused by dangerous illness in a family, when the whole
+interests of life centre in the sick-room and its bulletins. All
+outside matters, though they might formerly have been regarded as of
+vital moment, dwindle into insignificance, until the wide world with
+its empires and peoples, tottering republics and falling thrones, and
+nations wresting their liberties at the expense of bloody <span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>battles in
+which men by thousands perish uncounted, scarcely noticed—are blotted
+out for the time by a few feet of flooring and ceiling, a single bed,
+one figure lying still with half-closed eyes and half-parted lips,
+faintly beating heart and fluttering breath.</p>
+
+<p>Harry Stanhope had acquired, as his companions knew, the taint of a
+grievous disease, half physical, half spiritual, which may rank with
+the plague and cholera among moral maladies. So to watch stealthily
+his symptoms, note the changes in his state, chronicle with trembling
+hope his progress in throwing off the deeply injected poison, or to
+recognise with sinking heart its fresh outbreak and farther spread
+through the system, laid hold upon and monopolised the thoughts of the
+little party of which Harry was the half-unconscious sick man, till
+he engrossed them more and more, as the combat thickened, and final
+victory or defeat drew nearer and nearer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span></p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Harry would rise so far above his ailment as to lose the
+worst of the disfiguring traces which it was stamping on his outer
+man. He would be for days and weeks together the easily entertained,
+contented, manly lad of the past. He would be as simple and pleasant as
+an unspoilt schoolboy, as charmed to go or stay with Fan as in the days
+of their courtship, as united to Horry as when the brothers were loving
+children, as satisfied with chaffing Constable, and proving the life of
+his own circle, where animal spirits were in request, as if there did
+not exist for him more highly-flavoured attractions, more enthralling
+society—a coarse and powerful supplementary source of excitement.</p>
+
+<p>In these moods, when Harry was restored to his right mind, he
+was—without a grain of hypocrisy, so frank and free, so irresistibly
+helpful to children and old people, so easily served by servants,
+that he won, without fail, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>the heart of every stranger with whom
+he came in contact. He was the charming fellow-traveller, at each
+<i>table-d’hôte</i> and in every steamboat and railway carriage, of
+hosts of unknown travellers, native and foreign. Harry was the great
+social conductor and bond of union between the whirling world around
+him and the rest of his party, who smiled cheerfully, and accepted with
+gay grumbling their share of the plague of his popularity.</p>
+
+<p>Then such a transformation came over the patient that clear brow and
+eyes, broad shoulders, active hands and feet and tongue grew as if
+they belonged to an entirely different person. Here was a man in the
+toils of raging fever, and possessed by its delusions, with the load
+of a nameless unbearable oppression on his lowering forehead, the
+gleam of a strange fire in his burning eyes, having his head bent, and
+his back slouched with the gait of an incorrigible vagabond, who must
+escape from the most <span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>sacred bonds and solemn obligations, and carry
+a distracted spirit ill at ease, and which cannot rest, into kindred
+storm and darkness. Why, the very muscular hands were straining and
+quivering to clutch the deadly foe, bound to overthrow the victim in
+the hateful encounter; the swift feet were stumbling in their frenzied
+haste to reach the goal from which there is seldom a return; the
+tongue spoke winning words no more, but stammered with the language of
+unreasoning fury and aimless invective.</p>
+
+<p>When the demon of his craving for strong drink leaped upon Harry and
+held him, he broke from every other detaining grasp. It was to no
+purpose that Fan, Horace, and Oliver put force on their inclinations
+in order to go with desperate perseverance on the endless round of
+theatres, public gardens, and concerts, as if the travellers had been
+so many schoolboys abroad for their holidays, or as if individual
+tastes and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>domestic habits were unknown to the party. Harry would not
+suffer Fan by his side; he shook off his brother and Oliver. He quitted
+them, and defied them to follow him, or he fled from them and outsped
+them by the terrible strength and subtlety of his madness. They lost
+him for intervals of hours, increasing to days and even weeks. The
+journeyings of the party came to an abrupt stop; all their previous
+arrangements were upset.</p>
+
+<p>Fan and Horry, with Oliver added as a third to the group, looked at
+each other, on the first sign of the repetition of the miserable
+scenes, as the two had looked in the familiar farmhouse at home.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Fan sat alone in the strange hotel room listening to the
+careless coming and going of the other travellers; through the long
+hours from sunset to darkness and the white glimmering dawn, while
+Horace and Oliver, going different ways, hunted through <span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>all the
+<i>places</i> and <span id="cor0"></span><i>markets</i>; the hotels and cafés—conspicuous
+or obscure—the houses of entertainment where questionable hosts
+received strangers more likely to prove thieves than angels taken in
+unawares—the hunters studiously keeping themselves, as far as they
+might, unseen, till they stalked their prey. Thrice happy for all if
+it had been the beast of the field, and not merely a creature made in
+the image of God, degraded into a condition lower than that of the
+brutes, over which he had been ordained lord and king. A horse or a dog
+would have been wiser than Harry Stanhope, and would have guided him
+with advantage, in the circumstances. Or it might be the man-stalkers
+returned, with reluctant feet, empty hands, and hanging heads, to the
+hapless woman condemned to sit and wait in vain.</p>
+
+<p>In these altered times, Harry, who was so fond of his kind, constituted
+the great insurmountable obstacle to any genial fraternisation <span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>between
+his family and other travelling parties who were in the wholesome odour
+of unsullied respectability and the vigour and gladness of moral health
+and strength. He condemned his companions—not simply to a tedious and
+irritating quarantine, but to a sad and chilling isolation, as they
+drew away from their neighbours to hide their wound and its humiliating
+cause under a tightly grasped mantle, which must never be thrown open.</p>
+
+<p>The isolation served only to draw the group more closely together, and
+to engage them, with still greater usurpation of their faculties, in
+their deeply human office, till Oliver became well-nigh as wrapped up
+as Fan and Horace were, in that vocation of nurse and brother’s keeper,
+which—whether it be of the body or the soul—passes with practice into
+the most enticing and devouring of pursuits. Witness how it lures its
+recruits from the brightest and most peaceful quarters, and holds its
+brave soldiers <span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>fast, resisting all remonstrance, till they drop at
+their posts in dens of squalor and misery.</p>
+
+<p>Time and place ceased largely to exert their power over persons bound
+up in one man’s fortunes in a prolonged and terrible single combat.</p>
+
+<p>What difference did the varying seasons make, when spring stole on
+to summer, and summer glided into autumn, and autumn stiffened and
+froze into winter, if yet there was no sure amendment or certain
+decline in Harry Stanhope’s condition? What did it matter whether the
+battle-ground were the heaths of Brittany, the stony vineyards of
+Burgundy, the fat pastures of Guelderland, the forests of Flanders, the
+olive and orange gardens wet with the spray of the Mediterranean in the
+Riviera; or whether the towns offered to the visitors the picturesque
+gables and roofs of Bruges or Nüremberg, the palaces of Genoa, or the
+churches of Venice, when the question still <span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>was Harry and Harry only?
+How long was it since there had been an outbreak of his mania? Was he
+steadier this month than last? Was there any hope left?</p>
+
+<p>It is not merely religious, or what many would call fanatical, people
+who are brought to comprehend the sorrowful wonder of the demand, ‘What
+shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own
+soul?’ For the fate of a soul even here in the light of goodness and
+loyal obedience to God’s laws, or of turbulent rebellion against them,
+with all future honour and happiness, or all future disgrace and misery
+at stake—be it in the case of a not overwise lad like Harry Stanhope—is
+really of greater moment and of more intense interest to kindred
+humanity, than all the natural beauties and all the acted out history
+of the universe. Place a drowning man in juxtaposition with the finest,
+most suggestive landscape in the world, and what spectator—not to speak
+of the unhappy <span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>mortal’s familiar friends, would not—conscious of his
+fellow-creature’s strait—turn his back on senseless matter and the dead
+past? Unless, indeed, the looker-on were morally dwarfed, distorted,
+and hardened almost beyond recognition by his kind crying shame on him,
+with honest disgust for his unnatural conduct, he would watch, if he
+could do no more, with a sympathetic agony of eagerness, the hard fight
+for life of his perishing brother—how he clutched desperately each
+bough and every twig in his path,—how he struck out gallantly for a
+space till he was well-nigh beyond the engulphing wave,—how he faltered
+and gave way, and was sucked back into the insatiable jaws of the
+overmastering tide.</p>
+
+<p>The Stanhopes, with Oliver in their company, went on like the wandering
+Jew, as if there were no end to their wandering, no rest for the soles
+of their feet. They lived their own throbbing, high-strung family life,
+till other lives <span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>beyond theirs looked distant, pale, and dim, like
+lives in dreams. Tidings from the old home came to the wayfarers, and
+did not move them, or only awoke in them dull or fitful responses. A
+bachelor uncle of Harry and Horace Stanhope’s died, and, with some
+dawning suspicion in his last days that he had left his brother’s
+orphan boys very much to sink or swim as they could, sought to
+anticipate the moment of reckoning by an act of atonement. He chose to
+bequeath the sum of eight thousand pounds—the bulk of his savings in a
+colonial office—to the poor relations whom he had shunned and ignored
+as much as he could, in the course of their previous existence, instead
+of to the well-to-do flesh and blood whom he had hitherto exclusively
+cultivated.</p>
+
+<p>The timely legacy—together with what was left of Fan’s means, would
+form a little competence for the Stanhopes, if they made up their minds
+to settle in some quiet way abroad.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p>
+
+<p>The subject scarcely struck any of the pilgrims in this light. Would
+it not rather deal the death-stroke to Harry by supplying him with
+independent funds, other than his wife’s, for squandering and riot?</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor old uncle Geof!’ said the man on his trial, with an impulse of
+his native kindliness; ‘to think he should be gone, and to cut up
+well for us, after all! For at least this legacy, though it ain’t
+much,’ continued Harry with a mixture of earnestness and candour,
+condescension and defiance peculiar to him, ‘ain’t too little for some
+enjoyment, without Fan and the rest of you looking glum. Come on,
+Horry; we’ll pay all respect to the old boy and his tin, by drinking
+to his memory to begin with, and then we’ll do whatever else enters
+our heads, to drive dull care away. Nobody can reasonably expect two
+fellows who have succeeded to a small fortune—and the smaller it is the
+less self-denial is to be looked for—to abstain from <span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>a glorification
+or two. But we’ll save enough to make you a handsome present, Fan,
+never fear. As for Constable, he’s like the man in history, beyond
+being bought.’</p>
+
+<p>Agneta wrote—to her brothers this time, to tell them of her approaching
+marriage, with the full approbation of her guardians, to Mr. Amyott
+of Copley Grange—of all men, the widower approaching middle age, the
+father of two or three girls, the biggest already higher than the
+writer’s elbow.</p>
+
+<p>‘Aggie a stepmother! Why doesn’t she go in for being a grandmother
+at once?’ cried Harry, as his single derisive comment on an incident
+which, since it barely touched him, did not deserve more serious
+consideration.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah! she was always fond of Copley Grange,’ said Fan, with quick,
+womanly extenuation, as if it had been the manor-house and the squire
+that Agneta had known and prized. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>‘But she is taking a great many
+duties and cares upon her at once, which seems a pity, when one thinks
+how many more must come in the course of nature,’ ended Fan in assumed
+matter-of-factness, and in the languor which had replaced her old fire.
+But she began again a moment afterwards. ‘It is not fair to herself and
+to what ought to have been her natural obligations.’ Fan spoke now with
+something of her former suppressed ardour and inextinguishable passion
+for justice; but tears of weakness gathered in her eyes at the same
+time. She was not thinking of Agneta’s future alone, but of the future
+of others with claims on their sister, which Fan, in the days of her
+strength, would have been the last to urge, and which Agneta appeared
+deliberately disqualifying herself from ever fulfilling.</p>
+
+<p>‘Heaven help us! I think we are not very cordial in our
+congratulations,’ exclaimed Oliver impatiently. He was pricked by the
+troubled <span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>consciousness that the cares as well as the pleasures of this
+life—the cares which are not of our seeking and which certainly do not
+contribute to our ease and satisfaction, are in danger of choking the
+good seed of generous thoughts and magnanimous judgments. ‘Can’t we
+wish Miss Stanhope and Mr. Amyott joy, without spotting all the real or
+imaginary disadvantages in their connection, and collaring the couple
+with the double chains of fulfilled and neglected requirements?’</p>
+
+<p>A new idea was tickling Harry. ‘Look here, Horry; if we had stayed in
+the Farm we should have been Aggie’s tenants—bound to take off our hats
+to her. We might even have yoked ourselves into the carriage which
+brought her and her blooming bridegroom home from their marriage-tour.
+I wonder if she would have had an extra barrel of beer broached for my
+benefit? She has some small notion of the depth of my thirst. Wouldn’t
+it have been jolly? <span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>By Jove! we’ve spoilt an interesting episode for
+the county paper. “Charming tableau of attached relations forgetting
+the accidental diversities of rank and fortune and rushing into each
+other’s arms.” Don’t frown, Fan, my love; you would not have been
+called on to drag Aggie up the drive hooraying for our master and
+mistress. You would have sat at ease, over the way, and witnessed the
+gala from a respectful distance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If it is any gratification to you to talk nonsense, Harry, why then,
+do it,’ said Fan, with a lingering reflection of her old girlish
+dignity, in the middle of her womanly pain at his want of comprehension
+and feeling, and yet with the pathetic indulgence to every defect in
+the man she loved, which far transcended both dignity and pain.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver knew he was still capable of quite another form of selfishness,
+when a letter from Mrs. Hilliard reached Fan. Mrs. Hilliard <span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>would
+not consent to lose sight of her kindred in exile, any more than
+when settled in a mill and bakehouse at her door. She had no further
+occasion, indeed, to acknowledge Fan’s triumph and pay it homage, but
+the eventual defeat of Mrs. Hilliard’s enemy was disarming in another
+way. Mrs. Hilliard was interested to learn what farther reversal of
+parts might occur among her cousins; and whether poor dear Harry
+Stanhope was to prove the reprobate out and out, as she rather feared
+would be the end. But nobody could help it save himself, he was the
+sole person to blame. It was Philistinish of the Constables to throw
+themselves into the breach, and make such a fuss about what was so
+likely to happen. It would have been far better for everybody to
+have hushed it up, to have put poor Harry and his drag of a brother
+quietly out of the way—not by murder, which might have had unpleasant
+consequences, but by banishment for life, while <span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>Fan came home to her
+brother. But these cousins of Mrs. Hilliard’s were not like anybody
+else, and would not behave like rational people in the common lot of
+having a prodigal among them.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hilliard’s letter was not purely inquisitive; she was really
+softened by the news she had to tell, though she told it in her own
+manner. Her cousin Catherine was better. She had surmounted the crisis
+of her illness, and she was not only to live and be well again, she was
+about to turn over a new leaf—in short, to go a-head and look alive
+for the rest of her days. Mrs. Hilliard flattered herself <i>that</i>
+would astonish her readers. The miracle had been worked by the new
+order of nurse whom the London physician had brought down just in
+time to their assistance. It had been during the very dismallest
+part of Catherine’s illness, when Mrs. Hilliard’s sole refuge from
+the blues on her own account, had been <span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>in the anticipation of the
+inconsistencies and incongruities she was to encounter in the latest
+specimen of nurse—who is no longer a Sairey Gamp but a beneficent
+princess in disguise. Now beneficent princesses are charming to think
+of, but naturally one would suppose they are not the easiest persons to
+accommodate and entertain. Mrs. Hilliard had, therefore, proposed to
+lay all the house under contribution for the Sister’s benefit. She had
+told off her own maid in the stranger’s service. The maid’s mistress
+had even had some idea of converting herself into an abigail, that
+she might more fittingly hold pins for her social superior, who was
+condescending to attend on Catherine. Mrs. Hilliard had arranged levees
+of all the ladies in Friarton to be held in the Meadows’ drawing-room
+in honour of the Sister when she was off duty and open to recreation;
+and sure enough the Sister had turned out to be a daughter of the
+old lord-lieutenant’s, the county <span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span>belle of ten years ago; but she
+had laughed to scorn the words ‘accommodation,’ ‘entertainment,’ and
+‘homage.’</p>
+
+<p>She had perversely chosen and doggedly stuck to a housemaid’s bedroom,
+because it was nearest to Catherine’s room. She had insisted on putting
+in for herself the few pins which her holland gown required. She was
+so enlivened by her work in the sick-room that she came out of it
+looking as fresh as a daisy and as gay as a lark. When she had an hour
+to spare, or wanted a little variety, she took it in running about the
+town to rout out sickness among the miserable wretches who could not
+afford a nurse of any kind, and then in seeking to trace the mischief
+to its origin and destroy its sheet anchors of poverty and dirt. She
+had caused the two doctors’ hair to stand on end, forced the vicar to
+tear what hair was left on his head, and all but driven the youngest
+and most enthusiastic of the curates <span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>to hang himself. In fine, the
+Sister had imparted to Mrs. Hilliard the remarkable information that
+she looked on this apparently lowest department of her profession as
+in fact the highest, and had been guilty of selecting it for herself.
+She had only consented to come down and nurse so swell a patient as
+Catherine because she was in extremity, and because the Sister had some
+special acquaintance with nervous disorders and skill in treating them.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine had opened her eyes at the princess in disguise, of course
+penetrating the disguise, from the first moment she saw her. The sick
+woman had come under the spell of the nurse’s vitality until everybody
+who could make a diagnosis said the one craze would cast out the other,
+the craze of work would expel the craze of lethargy, the craze of
+social regeneration would break the back of individual despondency and
+despair. Thus Mrs. Hilliard <span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>wrote, and Oliver was free to think over
+the news.</p>
+
+<p>Catherine alive, in health, awakened from her long unhealthy sleep
+with its haunting nightmares! Catherine loosed from her grave-clothes!
+Catherine informed of the riches of life, stretching out her hands to
+take them for herself and share them with others! If he could but see
+and speak with Catherine now, would she not understand him, and feel
+with him at last, whatever came of it?</p>
+
+<p>But to see Catherine, with whom all was well, Oliver must abandon Fan
+in her tribulation, when, in the light of a fresh trial hanging over
+her, she had more need of his help than ever.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver could not find it in his heart to quit his post under such
+conditions, though it was also in his heart to writhe and fret at
+what might have been, and the possible forfeiture of his own chance
+of human happiness. But he <span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>was also capable of feeling thankful that
+it was—as he had every reason to believe—only his own happiness, not
+Catherine’s—above all, not her well-being, which might be at stake.
+He was not put to the torture of having to choose between Fan and
+Catherine in this supreme sense.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">
+    CHAPTER XXVII.
+    <br>
+    <span>THE LAST PENNY PAID.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">The</span> end came, as it often does after long anxiety, when least expected.
+The travelling party had been under the necessity of staying their
+wanderings and pitching their tent for a longer season than usual.
+For many reasons the leaders had chosen one of the loveliest and most
+admired scenes in Europe for their temporary resting place. It was
+early summer again, so that the Stanhopes might resort to a mountain
+and lake district where the air braced every nerve, and which afforded
+opportunity for feats of climbing and boating, to attract and occupy
+that member of the family whose <span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>delectation and employment were always
+the first cares, while the weary might rest in preparation for a fresh
+campaign.</p>
+
+<p>The lake of the four cantons lay shimmering in its beauty,
+peacock-green or blue-black in tint as it happened to be in light or in
+shade. Great walnut-trees grew by its margin, and dipped their branches
+in its waters, while the most stunted pines ceased to flourish on the
+bare short grass or the rocky summits of its giant guardians. There
+were lower mountains that would have been well-grown mountains anywhere
+else, which rose sheer from the lake, and were clothed with waving
+wood from the soles of their feet to the crown of their heads; but one
+forgot them in the near presence of the bald Rhigi and the desolate
+Pilatus and the remoter vision of the blue range of the Engelberg
+seamed and tracked with everlasting snows.</p>
+
+<p>The little burgher town, so grandly framed, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>was not altogether
+smoothed down from its ancient ruggedness and picturesqueness into
+modern commonplace uniformity, or, still worse, smartness. True, its
+great hotels, with bands of music for evening promenaders, were trying
+to the sensitive visitor, and its shops with their staple of carved
+wood, however pretty, and verging here and there on art proper, were
+not without their objections. But there was something to be said for
+the old covered rickety bridges over the pale green water, with the
+rude representations of the grotesque horrors of the Dance of Death;
+the Water Tower; the bold rough rendering on the face of the rock of
+the great sculptor’s idea of the lion of Switzerland, wounded to death,
+its paw still defending the broken lily of France.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from a Babel of tongues, in which English prevailed, and swarms
+of motley tourists with the Rhigi railway as the scientific means to
+the desired end of attaining a region <span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>so strange in giddy height and
+width of view, so familiar by the descriptions and raptures of its
+crowds of admirers—and those inevitable attributes of Lucerne, were not
+very conspicuous in the early summer when the Stanhopes occupied their
+quarters—there were two distinct, even discordant, associations sharing
+the ground between them. There were the more vivid and recent traces
+of what all well-instructed, incredulous people now call the myth of
+William Tell—the national hero whose imaginary personality struck the
+first blow in breaking the fetters—doubtless as fabulous as the rest—of
+his country. Certainly, the common representation of him in a stage
+kilt, theatrically administering the oath of allegiance to his equally
+fantastic fellow-conspirators, as it figured in cheap photographs, was
+not calculated to inspire faith in his identity.</p>
+
+<p>There was also the mediæval legend which, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span>in its wild superstition,
+belonged to all Christendom, of the unrighteous judge who falsely
+condemned, not his lord and king alone, but the King of kings and the
+Saviour of men. And there was not found any place for repentance,
+in men’s horrified minds, for this traitor any more than for the
+arch-traitor. Pontius Pilate was doomed for ever to hide his white,
+conscience-stricken face, and wring his accursed, palsied hands with
+a feeble show of washing away the innocent blood from which no holy
+baptism of water could cleanse them.</p>
+
+<p>Constantly as the sun rose or set on the glorious world of mountain
+peaks, wood, and water, these two idealised memories awoke and rose in
+conflict, glimmering through the white mists of morning, or brooding
+under the purple vault of night—the honest, brave Swiss freeman who
+bade all Swiss slaves go free—the falsehearted Roman coward who saw no
+evil in this man, and yet delivered up the Deliverer of the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>World into
+the hands of his deadly foes to do with Him what they would.</p>
+
+<p>At Lucerne, Fan’s baby was born. To the mother her little daughter came
+as an angel from heaven, promising her a fresh paradise instead of the
+old, which had turned out but a waste howling wilderness with green
+oases here and there.</p>
+
+<p>To the father the child brought the delight of a new toy with which he
+might play joyously for a while, and then, without thinking, break it.
+Harry had none of the trembling reverence, and clumsy awkwardness, in
+the middle of their tenderness, which some inexperienced fathers betray
+on their first introduction to their offspring. Harry took his infant
+daughter in his arms without hesitation and dandled her like an expert
+at once. The nurse and all who saw his performance cried out he was the
+most charmingly fatherly young father who had ever been beheld.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p>
+
+<p>To her Uncle Horace, the last arrival was simply a fresh possession of
+Harry’s, a ‘rum’ and funny possession, with which the bachelor uncle
+was chary in having much to do, and that inflicted on him sundry spasms
+of bashfulness, but of which on the whole he did not disapprove.</p>
+
+<p>As for Oliver, ‘the little woman’ made him more inclined to thank God
+and take courage. She was a tiny, weak weapon which might yet prove
+all-powerful in casting down strongholds and overthrowing a foul god,
+even the jovial Bacchus of Greek worship, which, seen near, was hideous
+as Dagon and cruel as Moloch.</p>
+
+<p>But there came a speedy interruption to Fan’s recovery. Harry, whom her
+danger and weakness, together with the gift she had made him, subdued
+for the moment, was devoted to her in those days. He was sitting by her
+sofa, when she started up, and fixing on him eyes full of the craving
+care of an inappeasable <span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>anxiety, amazed and alarmed even Harry, who
+hardly knew what mental apprehension, any more than physical fear,
+meant, by the eager inquiry, ‘Where’s Harry?’</p>
+
+<p>He hastened to soothe her by the assurance of his presence, without
+effect. He cried aloud, as he quailed before the blank non-recognition,
+and impatient denial of the glance which met his imploring looks, for
+Horry—Constable—any witness to convince Fan that here was Harry by her
+side.</p>
+
+<p>The witnesses came quickly, and she knew each of them—down to the nurse
+who had been an utter stranger to her till within the last few weeks;
+but she did not know her husband, and she would not believe what the
+others said of his being himself, and of his standing in the room, the
+nearest of all to her, bending over her, clasping her hand. ‘Where’s
+Harry?’ she continued to demand with terrible, heart-rending insistance.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p>
+
+<p>The long strain had snapped the strings of the fine instrument at last.
+She cried for Harry day and night, in his sight and hearing. As she
+cried she broke the silence which she had only once before stirred in
+order to claim succour for him; she poured forth in full measure her
+incalculable sufferings. She lived over again to one appalled auditor
+the long nights when she had sat listening for a footstep which never
+came, but was replaced by other footsteps, each, in its turn, causing
+her heart to bound with unwarrantable expectation, and sink in the
+sickness—growing always deadlier, of hope deferred; till it seemed as
+if all the footsteps which approached and departed in ignorance and
+indifference, trod, deliberately and mercilessly, over her quivering
+heart, spurning it as they passed. She showed how the truest woman
+in the world had been fain to impose upon herself with miserable
+deceptions, before she had confessed, in the secrecy of her <span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>own soul,
+that the fine gold of her idol was only base clay under its lacquer—how
+the most straightforward and sincere of human beings had been driven to
+play at the wretched game of keeping up appearances, of laying herself
+out to hoodwink her neighbors. She had been humbled in the dust as well
+as worn out by ceaseless struggles, and tortured to frenzy. Her sleep
+had gone from her eyes. Peace had been unknown to her—a God-fearing,
+Christ-loving woman.</p>
+
+<p>The revelation was like the opening of those Books before which every
+son of man will smite his breast and call on the mountains to fall upon
+him and the hills to cover him. And Harry Stanhope’s accuser, day and
+night, before God and his brethren, was the woman who loved him best,
+and would sooner have bitten her tongue out than said the lightest word
+to blame him.</p>
+
+<p>Every effort was made to withdraw Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>from the awful, ghastly
+ordeal. The instant Horace guessed instinctively what Fan was speaking
+of incessantly in the monotonous voice as tuneless as his own, which
+he could no longer catch so as to distinguish the words, he started
+forward with fury, as if he were mad himself, to drag Harry away; but
+Harry shook his brother off.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver laid a firm hand on Harry’s shoulder, but from that, too, Harry
+freed himself. ‘Let me alone, Constable,’ he gasped. ‘My place is by my
+wife, and whatever I have done or left undone, I will stay with her and
+hear the last she has to say to me.’</p>
+
+<p>None could dispute his right, and the men drew back; but there were
+still women’s pitiful voices beseeching him to have mercy on himself.
+‘Go away, sir, for Heaven’s sake—for her sake. She does not mean it;
+she does not know what she is saying. Your staying will do no good.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span></p>
+
+<p>But Harry would not listen to the entreaties, and in the end he heard
+no voice save Fan’s. He stood there till her tale of martyrdom was
+burnt in and branded on his conscience. Under the operation his face
+did not grow sharp as Fan’s sharpened, neither did his fair hair betray
+patches of grey, as her dark hair betrayed when it was pushed aside
+that the death-sweat might be wiped from her temples. Yet his whole
+aspect underwent such a change as it was hardly possible he could
+entirely lose, so as to become the same that he had been before. He
+grew perceptibly older-looking in those days which could be so easily
+counted, with the sudden stamp of ripening to withering, which rapid,
+mortal illness sometimes impresses even on an infant’s face.</p>
+
+<p>He had never before willingly encountered what was painful either to
+his senses or his sensibility. He had always selected the paths which
+were easiest and most agreeable to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>himself, without too much regard
+to their going down hill. They had brought him to where the battle
+raged hottest in the Valley of the Shadow of Death; and though it was
+not himself, but another, who was slain—the fumes of the smoke, the
+clatter of the strife, the deep wounds, the flowing life-blood, the
+gloom of that valley of shadows, were not likely to depart utterly from
+his consciousness, and leave him in the light-hearted, light-headed
+carelessness, the hard, untempered blaze of sunshine, of his former
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>Fan had forgotten her baby in that last whirl of the tempest which
+swept her away, but she remembered it in the end. In the pouring out of
+her tribulation without restraint, she had constantly called on Horace
+and Oliver to help Harry, who stood nailed to the ground there by her
+pillow. Then, when her voice was sinking into an indistinguishable
+murmur, and her hands letting go every earthly hold, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>she felt
+gropingly for her child, and struggled to utter another sentence
+audibly. She did not speak for the child with her passing breath as
+so many mothers have spoken for their children. Fan’s care for Harry
+had swallowed up her care for their child. She spoke to the unheeding,
+unconscious infant who for many a long year would be a helpless human
+being, needing tender fostering and watchful protection, and instead of
+recommending the child to the father, in the bewilderment of poor Fan’s
+unapproachable fidelity to Harry, she recommended the father to the
+child. ‘Baby, take care of Harry,’ she managed to say, and with a few
+more fluttering breaths, died. The words of Fan’s final, fond, foolish
+injunction were still ringing in Harry’s ears when he staggered out of
+the room.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">
+    CHAPTER XXVIII.
+    <br>
+    <span>OLIVER’S RETURN.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Death,</span> and not marriage, wipes out offences, clears scores, and opens
+the bolts and bars of shut hearts a little, for a brief space. Harry
+Stanhope’s relations mostly wrote to condole with the young widower
+on the death of the wife whom they had never countenanced. Lord Mount
+Mallow—after all, only a connection by marriage, who happened to be
+then disporting himself in the playground of Europe, actually offered
+to defer climbing a mountain and come out of his way to grace Fan’s
+funeral.</p>
+
+<p>Agneta Amyott wrote impulsively, instead <span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span>of penning a letter in which,
+while the proprieties were well preserved, the writer committed herself
+to nothing. She was deeply grieved, not merely for her dear old Harry,
+but for her dear sister, her former kind friend, whom Agneta declared
+she would now give half the world to be able to see, if but once again.
+And what about the darling little baby? What could three young men make
+of such a charge? It was deplorable to think of it. Would Harry let her
+send a trustworthy person to fetch the baby, now that she had a home
+of her own to receive it in? There were the little Amyotts’ nurse and
+nurseries all ready. She had not been able to speak to her husband yet,
+but she felt certain Mr. Amyott would not object. To be sure, the close
+of Agneta’s letter, in which there was the first note of hesitation,
+sounded more natural than the beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Harry rejected each overture not so much bitterly or pettishly, as with
+the first sternness <span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>and obduracy which had ever burst up through his
+constitutional softness and irrepressible buoyancy. ‘Nobody shall mourn
+for Fan but the real mourners—you, Horry, and Constable and me.</p>
+
+<p>‘Fan’s baby shall not be taken out of charity into the house of any
+man—or woman either. She shall not be brought up as we were, if I can
+help it.’</p>
+
+<p>Fan’s baby succeeded to what was left of her mother’s little fortune;
+she might also have the reversion of what Harry and Horace could keep
+of their legacy. In the meantime she was not given over to the tender
+mercies of three ignorant men, though, even if she had, she might have
+fared worse. There was not a woman, high or low, in the Swiss hotel in
+which she had been born, who was not interested in the small specimen
+of humanity, and there was one woman—a hard-working clergyman’s
+hard-working wife, loitering and rather <span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span>pining abroad while doing her
+best to get rid of the lagging, idle weeks of her husband’s necessary
+holiday—who pounced upon the motherless baby as a windfall, or rather,
+as she would have called it, a Godsend.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver had not been greatly attracted previously to these reverent
+Weatherleys, in any chance intercourse which he had held with them. He
+had respected them as very worthy people, but they had seemed to him,
+what they were, somewhat fanatical and narrow in their views. As for
+Harry Stanhope, no two persons could have been more widely removed from
+what he had proved hitherto, or could have possessed less in common
+with his past, than the strongly professional as well as pious couple
+who were taking, but scarcely enjoying, a compulsory breathing space in
+their toiling life.</p>
+
+<p>But from the moment that Mrs. Weatherley’s motherliness appropriated
+the care of Fan’s baby, Harry, as it were, instinctively—with <span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>another
+of his instincts of self-preservation probably—took to her and clung
+to her and her husband in his misery, with a pathetic dependence and
+trust, to which they were not slow to respond.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Harry’s remorse from an early stage assumed the form of
+contriteness rather than despair, his natural humility and amiability
+standing him in good stead here. Fan had willed his rescue from folly
+and evil with her whole devoted heart, and though he would never now
+have the consolation—the positive gladness, of proving to her that he
+was a rescued man, and so, of more than making up to her, in her love,
+for all the anguish he had cost her, he was still, in his present mood,
+eager to do what Fan had wished, to be as she had chosen for him, in
+his best interests. He trusted brokenly that it might atone—if it were
+only to her memory, that Fan might know he was sorry and was pulling
+himself up, somehow, sometime—that Fan’s God <span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>and his would accept and
+confirm the late repentance in the great redemption He has provided for
+sinners.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Harry had never been proud, and he was not afflicted with
+the insane egotism which sees in its possessor an object of such
+consequence in the universe, to his Maker no less than to himself, that
+he must needs interfere with the working of human and divine love.
+Such a one-sided reasoner will hold, against every assurance to the
+contrary, that he has sinned beyond forgiveness, and it is too late
+for him to repent and think better of it. In fact, there is a false
+Mephistopheles dignity and subtle compensation in this conclusion, when
+shame, regret, and grief still take the attitude of resentful defiance.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not so with Harry, not even in his way of regarding his
+baby. He did not turn from it, in the beginning, with the blind
+repugnance and unreasoning, unrighteous <span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>grudge, with which some
+widowers are tempted to regard the child that has cost its mother her
+life. Certainly it was not her child, but her husband, who had killed
+Fan. Yet Harry might have been so far dishonest as to have given a sop
+to his conscience, by shifting a part of the responsibility and blame
+on the innocent child. He might have taken a cruel satisfaction in
+revenging Fan, by trampling alike on his own natural affections, and on
+the just claims of his infant daughter.</p>
+
+<p>But Harry never did so. He seemed rather to transfer at once to the
+baby all the fondness for the mother which was thrown back on his
+hands, when she was taken from him. In addition he was ready to lavish
+on the child a double portion of the protecting affection which, so
+long as he was himself, he had shown to Horace.</p>
+
+<p>Watching Harry in the new light of his mournful fatherhood, when he
+was called on, by <span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>every generous and manly impulse, to be father
+and mother in one, to the mite whose best friend or worst foe, whose
+nearest natural guardian, he found himself, Oliver Constable arrived
+at a correct conclusion. If any mere human creature could help to make
+a man of Harry Stanhope, could raise him from his soulless levity and
+the vicious craving which was grafted on it, it was—strange yet natural
+to say, not a brave, devoted woman like Fan, who had gone down into
+the breach and held a shield over her husband, and striven vainly to
+be the stay to him which, had their relations to each other been what
+they ought, he should have proved to her—but this merest atom of a
+fellow-mortal, a thousand times weaker than Harry himself, who could
+neither appeal to him nor remonstrate with him, who could simply hang
+heavily upon him in her helplessness, and who was, humanly speaking,
+altogether at his mercy for happiness or wretchedness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span></p>
+
+<p>Oliver was inclined to believe that Harry’s self-conviction had gone to
+the root of the matter, and that even his most mercurial temperament
+would never shake it off altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Harry was well-nigh as sacred a trust bequeathed to Oliver by Fan as
+her child could be. Indeed, while there were many humane people to
+interpose and accept the gracious task of befriending the motherless
+babe, who would volunteer to fill the thankless office of standing
+by Harry and backing him in resisting the poison which was coursing
+through his veins, and the familiar demon that beset him? But in the
+meantime Oliver was not frightened to leave Harry Stanhope with his
+brother, his infant, and the Weatherleys. When Oliver recalled the
+last he confessed he had been unjust in asking incredulously who
+would bestow themselves on Harry unless to serve themselves by his
+undoing? So far from a knowledge of his former offences disposing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span>the
+Weatherleys to withdraw from the old offender, it would only attach
+them to him more firmly. For a sinner who had turned or who gave the
+faintest indication of turning from the error of his ways, had, if it
+be possible, an almost morbid fascination for the clergyman and his
+wife. They were not content with fulfilling the divine commission,
+and preaching the grand truth that their Master would have mercy
+and not sacrifice, their zeal ran away with their discretion until
+they would have preferred the dying thief to the Apostle Paul. They
+went the length of selecting for their friends and associates rueful
+transgressors, in preference to men and women who had been kept and had
+kept themselves, with infinite pains, from gross transgression. This
+enthusiastic weakness which caused the Weatherleys to dote on reclaimed
+burglars and pet converted infidels, almost to the cold exclusion
+of people who had refrained from picking and stealing, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>and who had
+reverently trusted and believed, was apt to be fertile in producing
+wrath and restiveness in the intolerantly honest and loyal sections of
+the community; and, what was still worse, in growing crops of hypocrisy
+and fraud among the hardened and desperately deceitful outcasts from
+society. But at least it rendered the couple safe to care for Harry
+Stanhope and do their best to help him, and Oliver did not think that
+Harry would abuse their kindness.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Constable did not hurry post haste, though he turned his face in
+the direction of Friarton Mill, when he separated from his companions,
+in the course of a few weeks after Fan’s death. He knew that many
+changes as well as a great blank awaited him, and he sought to fit
+himself to meet them in a spirit of peace, as well as to find healing
+for his recent wound.</p>
+
+<p>It was a soft, grey October afternoon when <span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>Oliver, leaving the railway
+at an intermediate station as before, walked through the well-known
+fields in their autumn livery, and arrived at Friarton Mill.</p>
+
+<p>As it chanced—a chance for which she would never forgive herself—Sally
+Pope, who had not been apprised of the exact date when he was likely to
+return, had gone on her yearly holiday to visit her relations. Only a
+strange young housemaid kept house and received Oliver, taking in good
+faith his assertion that he was her master.</p>
+
+<p>The dreary reception had, as a compensation, a certain relief for
+the traveller; but he was not long left to his own thoughts. He had
+hardly eaten the meal which his servant improvised in a state of
+consternation, with regard to a future searching investigation and
+sharp condemnation of all deficiencies by old Sally, when he became
+aware, as he was in the act of strolling half mechanically across the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>court, to his former smoking station in the mill gallery, that he
+was threatened already with visitors from Copley Grange. A lady and
+gentleman were walking across the park, and making straight for the
+picturesque old mill.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver groaned under this ill-timed manifestation of the popular
+admiration shared between show places and show people, and prepared to
+make himself scarce. He stopped short in his retreat, and faced the
+intruders, the moment he recognised that they were Mr. and Mrs. Amyott.</p>
+
+<p>The couple were the most put out by the encounter, for they had clearly
+not expected to meet the miller in his own domain. It might be that
+the squire was but partially informed of his young wife’s former
+familiarity with Friarton Mill as well as with Copley Grange Farm, and
+that he had proposed to take advantage of the fine afternoon by making
+her better acquainted with what was, still more than the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>artistic
+almshouses, a charming æsthetic advantage belonging to his place.</p>
+
+<p>In that case Mrs. Amyott might have had some difficulty in evading the
+proposal, or she might have been fain, on her side, to get over the
+first visit to Friarton Mill in a new character, as early as possible,
+in the absence of its master.</p>
+
+<p>These explanations were more probable than what had flashed across
+Oliver’s mind, and caused him to contort his figure by one of his
+old excited, awkward movements, in a revulsion from a crying case of
+heartless selfishness. He had thought for an instant, could the Amyotts
+possibly have guessed the half-resolution which he was only turning
+over in his own mind, to let or even sell the mill and mill-house, and
+quit the neighbourhood, where there seemed nothing remaining for him to
+do, where he had tried his utmost to work out his notions of duty and a
+career, and had signally <span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>failed? Did the Amyotts know, from Friarton
+gossip, that the Constables’ baking business in the town had diminished
+to such a fraction that, in justice to himself and his coming
+creditors, Oliver must give up the premises from which the business had
+departed? Were his nearest neighbours seizing the first opportunity,
+with indecent haste and mean covetousness, to sound him, in the hope
+of, at the same time, obtaining Naboth’s vineyard and getting rid of
+Mordecai at their gates?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Mr. Amyott trusted to an immediate, tempting, and what he might
+imagine a substantially handsome offer of purchase, at a fancy price,
+to induce a man, impoverished and embarrassed by his crotchets, to
+sell his birthright, and so to secure to the owners of Copley Grange
+what one of them had long craved. If that were so, a man might well
+pray to be delivered from the mania for high art, prevailing to the
+extinction of common feeling. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>For was not the dainty bride, in her
+refinement of bridal finery—sobered down still further by the necessity
+of wearing a black gown, in memory of her brother’s late lowborn wife,
+keenly desirous, under her pretence of mourning, to cut away the last
+link between her and the Constables? And all the while she might have
+guessed, if she had cared to use her woman’s wit, how much of old Peter
+Constable’s honestly and laboriously earned money had gone to fill up
+the gaps left by Mrs. Amyott’s brother’s reckless improvidence.</p>
+
+<p>It was only for a moment that Oliver indulged the suspicion. He saw
+almost immediately that the Amyotts were as much taken by surprise, and
+more put out, than he was, though they recovered themselves with the
+comparative celerity and ease of well-bred people, who were, by their
+nurture and position, master and mistress of social situations, and
+equal to any social difficulty.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p>
+
+<p>For that matter, Agneta did such justice to her training and played
+her part so well, that Oliver felt inclined to think she was lost as
+a simple squire’s wife, and ought to have been a duchess, if not a
+princess of some reigning royal family, or a queen in her own person.
+She exhibited precisely the proper amount of feeling for the occasion,
+without being overcome. She was touched, she was gently courteous and
+even friendly to Oliver, without overstepping the limits which the
+circumstance of her having become Mr. Amyott’s wife imposed upon Harry
+Stanhope’s sister. She alluded simply and sadly to ‘the melancholy
+event’ of Fan’s death. She enquired with interest when he had heard
+from Harry, and expressed her earnest good wishes for the welfare of
+‘the dear little baby.’ She broke off to thank him with grave sincerity
+for all he had done for her brothers—though, with regard to the last
+graciously grateful speech, Oliver could <span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span>not avoid the impression that
+Agneta considered him in some respects the obliged person, by having
+had it in his power to serve the Stanhopes.</p>
+
+<p>When the conversation strayed to more general topics, Mrs. Amyott
+referred with a blending of judicious candour and tact—while her
+slightly stooping, and slightly grey, but well-preserved husband
+was paying her the lover-like compliment of listening with pleased
+attention to every word she said—to the changes which had taken place
+in the Mill court since she was there last. She displayed thus with
+perfect serenity a considerable acquaintance with the landmarks.</p>
+
+<p>‘Surely, Mr. Constable, there have been some boughs lopped from the
+willow; and, ah! you have had the old seat, which I used to call “the
+Pilgrim’s seat,” removed from under the mulberry-bush!’</p>
+
+<p>Every word was in such unexceptionable <span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>taste; Oliver was let down
+so gracefully and gradually from the terms which Agneta Stanhope had
+insisted on establishing between them, during those vanished summer
+days, that he was inclined to acquiesce in the squire’s conviction
+that his last acquired gem was the most finely polished in his whole
+collection of treasures.</p>
+
+<p>In comparison, Mr. Amyott’s <i>rôle</i> required little from the
+performer, but he also acquitted himself admirably, with just the
+degree of admission of Oliver’s claims which became a gentleman who
+would not disallow an obligation, and yet who viewed, with reason,
+the whole connection between Copley Grange Farm and Friarton Mill as
+a foolish mistake. But he, too, did not refuse to recollect the past.
+He made some cursory mention of his wife’s brothers having been his
+tenants in the farm; nay, he said with a smile in reference to his
+recent marriage, that the temporary arrangement <span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>had helped in bringing
+about what was for him a most fortunate as well as permanent result.
+His first introduction to his wife had arisen from it. Such trifling
+causes are, in some sort, the motive power in shaping out our destinies.</p>
+
+<p>Listening to her husband’s flattering acknowledgment of the
+fortuitousness—for him—of her brothers’ short tenancy of Copley
+Grange Farm, Agneta smiled sweetly back upon him. Mr. Amyott was
+somewhat worn and still more languid in his middle age; a man to
+whose over-cultivated nature much of the life around him, with which
+his wife’s fresh youth had some instinctive sympathy, was rough,
+rude, boisterous, and oppressive, even when it was not offensive, so
+that the abiding expression of his aristocratic features was wistful
+and pensive, rather than resolute and hopeful: still he was a fine
+patrician-looking man, only a little past the prime of life, and a
+trifle the worse for the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>wear. He was gentle and elegant—according
+to the old standard of elegance, in his whole tone; a shade
+plaintive and fretful occasionally, but never morose or violent.
+He was deferential, almost to a fault, to the wishes of his wife,
+which he was well able to gratify, since he happened to be in the
+possession of an ample, unencumbered rent-roll, a charming place, so
+well-ordered an establishment that her stepchildren never came in
+their young stepmother’s way, but fell at once into the pleasantest
+and most desirable relations with her, and a position second to few
+in the county. From Agneta’s point of view, she had good cause to be
+satisfied with the marriage which had fulfilled the expectations of
+her guardians. Her education—whatever else it had stifled in her, had
+served to develop largely a reasonable prudence.</p>
+
+<p>The Amyotts managed to make use of the fact of Oliver’s arrival that
+very afternoon, as an excuse for not waiting to receive the invitation
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>to enter the Mill-house, which its master was in no haste to give,
+while both recognised that the omission on the first encounter served
+as an index of the extent of their future intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Oliver acknowledged the happy couple were free from
+ulterior designs in invading his privacy. Apart from these, what was
+Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba? He had an idea that Harry and Horace
+Stanhope, with their baby, would settle down at a distance from Copley
+Grange, which would still farther simplify matters and smooth down
+awkwardnesses, so that in the future intercourse of the Manor-house and
+the Mill, Fan’s marriage, with its girlish aspirations, would soon be
+as though it had never been—and it was best so.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver reached the carved gallery at last; and leant over the
+balustrade looking down on the water of the Brook and away over the
+woody undulating ground of Copley Grange <span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>Park, where the sombre green
+thorns were covered with dark crimson haws, and no note of a bird broke
+the stillness, which was only made alive by the monotonous babbling of
+the Brook. How vividly some of the more significant scenes of his life,
+since he attained manhood, rose before him there! The thorns were red
+and white again in flower, and the thrush was once more singing, as he
+broke to Fan his life-purpose, and combated her objections. How full
+of confidence he had been! With what high hopes and steadfast resolves
+he had entered on his mission, and it had come to nothing! He had been
+foiled on every side, till at last he was allowing himself to drift out
+of the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>He was watching the ducks eating the mulberries, and turning his back,
+in vain, on a stalwart young figure cumbered with a limber attendant,
+belonging, by rights, to Oliver’s gone-by ’Varsity days, and yet
+starting up, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>stepping out there through the park, and hailing him on
+his threshold, in spite of him.</p>
+
+<p>He was walking with Fan in her garden, listening to her unwonted
+chatter and warm admiration of these new friends.</p>
+
+<p>The master baker was jostled, tripped up, and thrown down afresh by his
+late journeyman in the twilight lane yonder.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was cut dead anew by Catherine Hilliard in the High Street of
+Friarton.</p>
+
+<p>The frost was on the ground while Harry Stanhope was besieging Oliver’s
+bedroom door to announce his intentions; and presently the brother was
+facing the sister on the hearthrug, holding her back from her fate.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was grasping Fan’s hands and pledging himself the devil should
+not have Harry. Oliver was binding himself to give up any grain which
+he might have gathered from the crop which had cost him so dear, that
+he might help her to lie on the bed which she had <span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>made for herself.
+Yet Harry’s deliverance had proved harder to effect than that of Tam
+Lane in the ballad. It had been beyond the power either of strong man
+or devoted woman, though it was just possible, after Fan’s dead hands
+dropped the task, it might be performed by baby fingers in God’s great
+way of nature.</p>
+
+<p>Would Oliver, with his present knowledge, do all he had done over
+again, if the choice were once more given him? He thought it over
+deliberately and as calmly as he could, in trying to form his plans
+for the future, and he honestly believed he would. He solemnly
+thanked God for the boon of such a belief, to soften the soreness of
+his disappointment and defeat, and still the ache of his heart. The
+consciousness confirmed his faith that there had been some good in
+his aims. They had not owed their origin entirely to presumption and
+self-conceit. However rash and over-confident <span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>he might have been,
+however much he had bungled the whole business, he had the assurance
+of his conscience that the fault had not lain largely in his motives.
+Yes, he would if he could begin it all over again—to establish higher
+principles of trade—to make trade honourable, to fill hungry mouths
+with wholesome food; and he would still have granted Fan’s petition
+at all hazards. How did he know that he was to prove the pioneer of
+trade reformation, while he was well assured that he was his sister’s
+natural refuge and stay? He could not have made himself strange to his
+own flesh, with whom his first duty lay. He must have acknowledged the
+obligation for charity to begin at home.</p>
+
+<p>Before the dusk prevented him, Oliver took out and re-read Harry
+<span id="cor2"></span>Stanhope’s last letter. It was a little longer than the usual brief
+reports, which were hardly higher intellectual efforts than those of
+the young rustics whose <span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>vicar has seen that they have profited by a
+night-school. This was the ordinary style of Harry’s letters:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+<p>‘Dear Constable,—Here goes. We are all well. Baby is thriving. She
+has got her frocks shortened, and looks the better for it. It is
+still awfully hot. We—Harry and me, for Mr. and Mrs. Weatherley don’t
+try the dodge—took a header, and had a swim in the river for an hour
+this morning. Woodhurst—that’s the man whose ground lies all about
+here, is to let us have lots of fishing. I hope you’re all right.</p>
+
+<p class="tdr">‘Yours, &amp;c.’</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>That was as nearly as possible the substance of the unclerkly scrawls
+which Harry sent. But to write at all, without compelling cause, was a
+great advance on the writer’s native inconsiderateness and freedom from
+any comprehension of responsibility.</p>
+
+<p>In the letter which Oliver held in his hand, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>however, Harry, in his
+stumbling jerking manner, had contrived to say a good deal more.</p>
+
+<p>The two Stanhopes had gone back with the Weatherleys, on the return
+of the clergyman and his wife to their country parish, and had found
+lodgings close to the vicarage where Mrs. Weatherley still had the baby
+in her kind care. It was the attraction of the baby—with the fear of
+doing it harm by removing it from the good offices of an experienced
+matron—which in the beginning drew Harry and his brother across the
+Channel, back to England, and down into the rural retirement of a
+remote parish. But it soon became plain that the Weatherleys—coming in
+contact with Harry Stanhope at a turning point in his life, getting him
+into their hands when his heart was wrung with suffering and his whole
+character subdued—had acquired a growing influence over the young man.
+He was rapidly adopting their forms of thought and turns of speech,
+and falling in, to some extent, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>with their habits and practices. He
+had always possessed in a sense a ductile disposition, apt to take
+the moulding of its surroundings and associations. But a great wrench
+had been required to separate a thoughtless young fellow from his low
+atmosphere—laden with earthly vapours and dense with worldliness,
+and to launch him into the higher, rarer air of altogether loftier
+principles and considerations, breathed by the Weatherleys. Harry had
+suffered such a wrench and received such an impetus as propels many
+men—especially many shallow, impulsive men—to the opposite poles of
+their former opinions and pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>At this epoch of his history—when Harry Stanhope turned inevitably,
+with a sick heart, from his old interests; when all his former sports,
+though he still engaged in them mechanically, were flat and stale to
+him; when what was spiritual in his moral constitution craved spiritual
+consolation and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>refreshment—something beyond this world, some promise
+of reward and restoration for his lost love and its object, some
+reparation of all wrong, and enduring foundation for all good—Harry
+was carried out of the past in a totally new direction from any he had
+followed hitherto, where his brother would join him sooner or later.</p>
+
+<p>Harry retained his simple cordiality, but the simplicity had got a
+new bias, and the cordiality a fresh outlet. In those letters—the
+occasional writing of which, without the inducement of borrowing money,
+was a marvel in itself—while he expressed himself scantily, there was
+also something of the transparent prattle though not the gush of a girl.</p>
+
+<p>In the more recent prattle Oliver learnt a good deal of church services
+and parish work, in which, to his wonder at first, he found Harry
+was taking part. He had been practising with Mr. Weatherley’s choir,
+and doing a little rudimentary <span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>teaching in his schools, as well as
+helping Mrs. Weatherley with her parish children’s annual feast and the
+machinery of her different clubs.</p>
+
+<p>Harry did not dream of making the slightest apology for those
+extraordinary occupations. He was as free from self-consciousness now
+as ever. He mentioned the schools and the festival as naturally and
+unaffectedly as if he had been referring to a cricket-match and the
+dinner which followed. That struck Oliver as the most hopeful symptom
+in the case, and he was as devoutly glad as the Weatherleys could have
+wished.</p>
+
+<p>But Oliver’s gladness received a sudden check when he found Harry
+writing humbly enough, to be sure, of his unfitness for reading for
+orders, as Mr. Weatherley had just been suggesting he might do.</p>
+
+<p>‘Good heavens, I should think not!’ assented Oliver in a great heat.
+‘I am glad Harry <span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>retains one iota of common sense, if Weatherley is
+so far out of his mind. Now, even supposing Harry has outlived his
+lamentable propensity—supposing he were to pass muster, I should have
+to interfere and speak to the bishop.’</p>
+
+<p>But poor Harry was not really thinking of anything so far beyond him.
+He was only modestly preluding the statement that he had been with Mr.
+Weatherley when he was delivering some of his cottage addresses, and
+Harry had been moved and helped to say a word of warning from his own
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>Was Harry in the way of being taught to go about and speak at such
+meetings? Had he, too, turned social reformer and preacher—in the last
+particular, as Oliver was free to admit, shrugging his shoulders, far
+outstripping his, Oliver’s, performances? Would Harry’s inveterate
+fancy for joining in whatever was going on, his incorrigible
+good-fellowship, thenceforth, or even for a time, take the shape of
+lay aid in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>priestly ministrations, pointing Mr. Weatherley’s morals
+by a word in season from a sinner who was a standing commentary on
+the vicar’s text—at once a warning and an example, a young man who
+was ready to proclaim himself an evildoer formerly, one who had known
+both the temptation and the penalty, but had escaped with the skin of
+his teeth? Would Harry, if he continued in well-doing, go on exposing
+his shortcomings, steeling himself in the exposure, till he should
+come to Fan’s wrongs? Would he regard it as an act of expiation, and
+an offering for the good of his fellow-men, to speak out thus, and
+when his little daughter was old enough to listen to his words and
+understand them, would he still tell his piteous tale, and humble
+himself in her hearing—it might be in the hearing of some other
+evangelist’s daughter or sister, who might have replaced Fan and become
+Harry’s second wife, and the mother of his children?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p>
+
+<p>Oliver writhed at the mere notion. He recalled Fan’s strong, proud
+reserve in the middle of her ardour, her delicate reticence, her
+unconquerable shrinking from common speculation and coarse comment.
+Were the sacred secrets of her death-bed to be bruited about and made
+food for vulgar curiosity by this new kind of weak excess in the man
+who had inflicted the agony?</p>
+
+<p>Then Oliver called himself back. Had he any right to sit in stern
+judgment on Harry Stanhope’s weakness, granted that it was weakness
+even to self-indulgence? What if this were the sole refuge for Harry
+Stanhope, the only means by which the man whom Fan had so loved and
+striven to win, could be won to virtue and temperance? What if this
+were the single method by which Harry could serve his fellow-creatures?
+There are dull or besotted scholars who can receive no teaching save
+from homely, broad personalities, and there are <span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>primitive teachers
+who if they are not personal are nothing. Such teaching might appear
+little better than foolish and despicable to Oliver Constable, and yet
+what assurance had he, in his arrogance and self-sufficiency, that it
+was not among the foolish things which God has chosen to confound the
+wise? Might not Fan, from her peace among the angels, regard these
+ebullitions—which were at least frank and guileless—that vexed Oliver’s
+soul, in an altogether different light from that in which she would
+have seen them, had she been still living an erring woman on earth?</p>
+
+<p>No; let poor Harry do what seemed good unto him. God forbid that Oliver
+should put hindrances in Harry’s path—the path which was, perhaps, best
+suited for his stumbling feet.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">
+    CHAPTER XXIX.
+    <br>
+    <span>FRESH SERVICE.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">On</span> the night of his return, Oliver had been tempted to say—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">My wound is deep,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">I fain would sleep,</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0">Take thou the vanguard of the three;</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="flat">but the next day found him again leading the van. Happy the wounded who
+have still strength for the fight, and whose presence is yet wanted in
+the thick of the fray.</p>
+
+<p>Sally Pope arrived at an early hour the following morning, and gave her
+master her greeting. She was so full of self-reproach for her unlucky
+absence the previous evening that <span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>it diverted her in some degree from
+the loud condolences which he was only too content to be spared. And
+Sally was a shrewd woman; she knew that ‘men-folk do not care to return
+to the topic of their grief, as poor critters of women will discuss it
+at large, and find comfort in dwelling on their trials;’ so when her
+single heartfelt lamentation for ‘poor Miss Fan as were that nimble and
+clever,’ had been made, Sally set herself to divert Oliver from the
+cold comfort of his lonely home-coming, by retailing to him all the
+latest news of Friarton.</p>
+
+<p>‘Lord, Master Oliver, we’re not singular in our troubles! There’s young
+Dadd down with fever, lying between life and death. Not a critter will
+enter Dadd’s shop—not to say the house, and the old people are nigh
+besides themselves.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor Jack! poor souls!’ said Oliver. ‘But what has become of the
+Sister—the wonderful nurse Mrs. Hilliard imported into the town?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! she’s gone these three months, the more reason that Miss Hilliard
+is as spry as any of the rest of the young ladies. But now, Master
+Oliver,’ broke off Sally, putting her head on one side and speaking
+deprecatingly, almost mincingly, ‘I know as great allowance ought
+to be made for idle ladies, and that they mun be left for to direct
+themselves in many ways not open to the commonality, else they’ll
+fall to pieces like a dry wash-tub, or go all over red rust like a
+flat-iron laid aside, and be in danger of slipping through their
+friends’ fingers like Miss Hilliard all but slipped, and gave no end
+of trouble, the silly thing! Still, Master Oliver, do you think it is
+proper for ladies, as are none so old or ill-favoured, to go and get
+rid of their spare time—and all time is to spare with them—a feeling of
+the pulses and looking at the tongues of sick carters and masons and
+their families, ay, and of tramps and their brats, a-treating of them
+to shooken’up <span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>pillows and cooling drinks, and as many blisters and
+draughts as they can set their minds to—save us?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Sally, at least you’ll allow it is a good chance for the masons
+and tramps,’ said Oliver with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘I dunno,’ Sally shook her head. ‘I think the world’s turned upside
+down. But leastways better such folly than that Miss ’Mily Polley’s
+been up to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What has Miss ’Mily been up to?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Gone and lost her good name, which she’ll never pick up again—not
+though she were the queen on the throne, with armies and navies to
+scour the world in search of it, at her word. Now there’s nothing left
+Miss ’Mily save a patched-up marriage, to cover the disgrace as will
+not be covered, to a rolling stone of a ne’er-do-well that will bring
+her to want and misery. Her as was such a pert piece, setting herself
+up, picking holes in the coats of her <span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span>betters, and giggling in her
+light-headedness at this body and that body, as if she herself were a
+non-such and could go her own road and fear no fall.’ Sally ended with
+the cruel relish with which the old, who ought to be, and who, let us
+be thankful, often are, the most charitable, still sometimes, alas!
+under provocation, contemplate their young neighbours’ receiving their
+deserts.</p>
+
+<p>‘You must be mistaken, Sally,’ remonstrated Oliver, grieved and
+shocked. ‘It cannot be as you say. The Polleys have always been most
+respectable people. Even Polley, though a useless sinner, picked
+himself up, you know. You must have taken some coarse scandal for
+gospel. Mrs. Polley has been a good mother, and has looked well after
+her daughters.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Excuse me, Master Oliver, but it’s much you know of it, sir,’ said
+Sally, half huffily, half scornfully. ‘And it is little thanks Mrs.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>Polley, poor woman, have got for her work in the shop and her rule of
+her family. She were a bit set up, in her own way, and vaunty of what
+she had done for them gals and that silly man of hers. Nobody came near
+herself, and nought that belonged to her was to be sneezed at. Ah!
+her mouth’s shut now, and she won’t hold up her head again, not by a
+long chalk, as she has done in Friarton. I am sorry for her though,’
+reflected Sally, showing some signs of relenting, ‘for she were a
+through-going woman. Her took the whole load upon her own shoulders,
+when it fell off them sloping ones of Polley’s, and asked help from
+nobody. Hard she drudged a dozen years back, never sparing herself, to
+keep her family out of the gutter. It was ill-done of any one of them
+to humble her pride. But it’s the way of children—so it is. It’s a
+comfort to the likes of me, as is a single woman, alone in the world,
+except for a niece and neffy or <span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>two—looking after my savings I’ll be
+bound, Master Oliver—to think that I might have had a man and bairns to
+my share, and been no better—rather worse served. But I’ll fault Mrs.
+Polley with this’—Sally returned to the charge—‘she would do everything
+in the shop with her ten fingers. She would keep the management of the
+books and accounts in her own hands. Why, them gals weren’t properly
+brought up to the grocery business or to any other. They were as silly
+as silly could be, if you took them off weighing a pound of sugar, or
+cutting a bar of soap, as a child could do. Our Miss Fan could have
+bought them at the one end of the town and sold them at t’other. They
+went a deal of their time hand-idle, or falalling with their best
+clothes; and was that an up-bringing to keep them out of mischief? I
+have it on good authority, they would lay a-bed in the mornings, and
+they were out at their gadding every blessed evening, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>though she
+pulled them up tight about minding meals and hours, and shutting up
+to her face. If they were quick, they could get their heads out—most
+of all Miss ’Mily, as was the mother’s favourite—so it seems she had
+been drawing a score under her mother’s nose, and carrying on at a fine
+rate with that scamp of a half gentleman—a pretty gentleman! Mrs. Sam
+Cobbes’ Lon’on brother, though Mrs. Polley had forbidden her gal to
+have anything to say to him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should think so,’ said Oliver, with decision. He knew the man—a
+fellow with a specious address, and the glamour of expectations from a
+rich uncle in the Customs, which served him as an apology for losing
+such mongrel situations as he occasionally condescended to fill, and
+for loafing away the greater portion of his days, hanging on to other
+and humbler relations than the autocrat in the Customs, the credulous
+Cobbes for instance, always in a lazy, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>often in a disreputable
+fashion. He was just the sort of acquaintance, full of false
+pretensions, vulgar smartness, and strongly-flavoured dash, to take the
+fancy of an ignorant, ill-brought-up, wilful girl like ’Mily Polley.
+And on the man’s side, he would not hesitate to amuse himself with her
+openly-expressed admiration, as the best joke going.</p>
+
+<p>But Sally was eager to empty her budget. ‘Mrs. Polley she finds
+out that ’Mily is snapping her fingers in her mother’s face,’ the
+storyteller resumed the thread of her narrative, nothing loth, ‘and
+keeping company with Birt on the sly, continually: so the old woman’s
+temper, as is none of the coolest at the best of times, flies into a
+blaze, and she up and dares the gal to see the fellow again, or she
+will be turned to the door, as not worthy of such a home, and to serve
+as a warning to her sisters. Mrs. Polley, if you please, never lets
+’Mily out of her sight from that moment, except <span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>at night, when the
+mother locks the gals’ room door on them, in their hearing.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sure enough, it is no more use than locking the stable-door after the
+horse has got his head out of the halter, and kicked up his heels in
+giving the stable-boy the go-by. And the black affront before the rest
+of the family—certain to leak out too, with the feeling of a gaol,
+after the liberty the gal had snatched, in spite of Mrs. Policy’s
+tantrums, druv Miss ’Mily from bad to worse. She goes and throws dust
+into the eyes of them sillies of sisters, or else she scares them
+into telling no tales; she bribes the poor slavey of a maid. Any how,
+Master Oliver, she manages to give her mother the slip again, gets out
+of the house after it is shut up for the night, and runs and meets
+the scoundrel at the improperest hours. All is up with the foolish,
+wrong-headed lass’s good name then, Master Oliver, I need not go for to
+tell you. Mrs. Polley catches her youngest daughter a stealing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span>in at
+the airy-door, under cloud of night, and thrusts her out with her own
+hand, raging that ’Mily is never to cross her mother’s honest threshold
+again. She will have nought more to say to the gal; she may go back to
+where she came from.</p>
+
+<p>‘Them as told me,’ said Sally, after a pause to recover her breath in
+her unconscious dramatising of the miserable details, ‘maintained that
+Polley did interfere, and try to put in a word for his daughter; but,
+in course, his wife would not hear him, and it do stand to reason that
+he has been so poor a critter, he has lost all title to be listened
+to. The long and the short of it is, the talk was over the whole town
+the next morning. The Cobbes took ’Mily in—they could not do less—with
+Birt, who had got the gal into trouble, their brother; and ’Mily Polley
+is to be married, and go straight off to Lon’on, or Manchester, or
+Glasgow—one of them big towns—with her bargain next <span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>week. Folk think
+Sam Cobbe’s that ashamed, he has forked out the money—though he’s none
+so rich, and the coal and potato trade ain’t so flourishing—and has
+used all his influence to over-persuade Birt, by threatening to expose
+him to his uncle in the Customs, to make the gal the amends of marrying
+her against his will—the mean scuff.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am afraid it is a bad business,’ admitted Oliver sadly, compelled
+as he was to regard this lingering version, in a lower walk of life,
+of the wild, youthful escapades, and the half-brutal parental tyranny
+and violence which met the rebellion half way, that were to be found in
+every rank, before Christian civilisation did its work, a century and
+more ago. Now such evil tales were only possible among the desperately
+vicious of the highest, and the desperately ignorant of the lowest,
+ranks, or in the gross materialism and incapability of self-restraint
+which form the standing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>reproach and grievous disfigurement, to set
+against the many virtues of that large class of smaller shopkeepers—to
+raise whom in the scale of humanity Oliver Constable had been willing
+to devote his life.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver went immediately to Friarton to look after his own business. It
+did not take him long to despatch what he had to do. He had only to
+receive the last report from the not greatly interested foreman. It
+was quite what Oliver had expected. He went through it in less than an
+hour. It took him no more than ten minutes afterwards to write out, in
+the back shop, his announcement of giving up his father’s and his own
+baking business—he could not pretend to sell the goodwill of what had
+ceased to pay its cost—to be inserted in the next week’s Friarton’s
+newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver walked along the High Street afterwards, without happening to
+meet any save the most casual acquaintances. He passed the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>Polleys’
+shop door, having a glimpse of Mrs. Polley with the purplish flush on
+her face to which she was liable, fixed in her cheeks, and a certain
+hard, set turn of the head and jerking activity of movement, as she
+served her customers. He knew that she would stand and do her work
+there, though the force she put on herself might involve the danger
+of her falling behind the counter. But he could not go in then,
+or for some time to come—not till the sough of the scandal in the
+family had so far died out, and the bitter mortification its head was
+experiencing, had partly worn off. Sympathy and condolence were not to
+be thought of here. They would be a positive insult.</p>
+
+<p>But there was nothing to hinder Oliver from repairing to the Dadds’,
+forgetful of the coolness between him and Jack, or rather spurred on by
+it to the quicker exercise of old friendship.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span></p>
+
+<p>Oliver found the shop much as it had been described by Sally Pope,
+forsaken by customers, abandoned to the disheartened journeymen and
+shop-boys, with the goods either unexposed for sale or lying about
+in a state of confusion and disorder, which marked the absence or
+indifference of the masters. For both the Dadds had taken pride in
+their well-filled, well-kept shop. Friarton was somewhat given to
+panics in case of dangerous infectious diseases. The undaunted Sister
+who had brought light above the horizon had not stayed long enough to
+convert the town to her view of illness.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver had barely time to enquire for the patient, when old Dadd
+hurried out from the back shop and accosted him. It was a relief to
+distinguish the voice of an old friend who had come voluntarily into
+the shop and was standing quietly leaning against the counter, instead
+of fleeing from the place, as if it were a pest-house. It almost
+exhilarated the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>stout-hearted old man, who was keeping up bravely, to
+crack one of his old jokes.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not come back yet a family man, Mr. Oliver? Not wholly without its
+advantage—I mean the bachelor state. Mind coming in farther? Bless you!
+<i>don’t</i> you mind? It will do Mrs. Dadd a power of good to see a
+strange face—as ain’t really strange—quite the contrary, and ain’t the
+doctor’s or one of them dratted nurses—which they never keep their
+time nor do their dooty properly, as the poor fellow needing them knows
+to his cost. His mother can’t watch day and night for weeks, and I’m
+but a poor hand at the trade,’ said the father wistfully, ‘though I
+would give a deal to take it up off-hand. But, you see, it don’t come
+natural like to a man as it do to a woman, and I wasn’t bred to it, in
+any sort, being come of a healthy family,’ rambled the linen-draper,
+staving off questions, as Oliver suspected, till they were through
+the back shop, up the stair <span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>and into the vacant, dreary-looking best
+parlour, with its torn prescriptions cast heedlessly on the carpet and
+its tray of half-empty physic-bottles and slops put down recklessly
+on the edge of the table, where guests had been wont to see more
+substantial fare carefully deposited. Then old Dadd raised his fist and
+was about to bring it down on the table with a bang—which in the very
+act of being dealt, was caught up and so much suppressed that it barely
+caused the physic-bottles to jingle, because Jack’s bedroom lay no
+farther off than the other side of the passage. ‘Yes, sir, my boy Jack
+is swimming for his life, they tell me,’ said the poor man, winking his
+eyes, knitting his brows hard, and speaking as if Oliver were about to
+question the statement.</p>
+
+<p>The door behind them opened, and the unnaturally pitched voice sank
+into silence abruptly, while the late speaker turned eagerly to meet
+the new comer.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Dadd had thought Oliver was the doctor, and entered hastily. At
+the sudden sight of her son’s contemporary and old companion standing
+there in the flush of health and strength, she broke down, for a
+moment, more completely than Dadd had done, to his great dismay. For
+Mrs. Dadd was a mannerly woman—so far as she understood manners. She
+prided herself on being at home with sickness, and she was accustomed
+to say, she did not know what a woman was good for, unless it were to
+bear up on these occasions when a man was sure to give way. One gain
+that was got by her sinking into a chair and covering her face, in
+place of greeting Oliver, was that it roused old Dadd to bustle about
+in order to quiet her, and to seek to explain the strange state of
+matters to Oliver.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, don’t take on so, like a good soul; he ain’t worse since morning.
+No, I knew it. And don’t you go for to think, Mr. Oliver, it’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>any ill
+feeling to you that’s sticking in the Missuss’s throat. Nothing of the
+kind, sir. Why, that was all out of head with poor Jack himself—who was
+never a chap to bear malice, months ago. He said to me only the other
+day when this illness was coming on him; “I can’t tell what ails me,
+father; it ain’t my head, or my back, or my legs in petickler—only I
+feel seedy all over. I ain’t fit for the shop, and I’m still less fit
+for a field-day”—you see the autumn manoeuvres was coming on—“if it had
+been a year or two back, I might have gone out to Friarton Mill and had
+a quiet afternoon with Constable, and tried what that would have done
+for me. Yes,” he said, “I remember there was bad blood between us; but
+I’m not so cock sure as I have been, that I had the best of it. Anyhow,
+Constable was the right sort to go to, at a pinch. You could look to be
+borne with, and set on your feet again <span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>when you felt you had not a leg
+left to stand on, as it is my bad luck to do to-day.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘That was very good of Jack,’ said Oliver warmly. ‘Then you’ll let me
+sit up with him tonight, since he’ll not mind; perhaps he’ll rather
+like it. I don’t mean to boast of my qualifications as a nurse; but I
+think you and Mrs. Dadd may trust me to see to the doctor’s orders.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should think so, Mr. Oliver,’ said Dadd with emphasis. ‘You are
+kind, and we are much indebted to you, as we’ll tell you better some
+day, please God. Others has offered, but none so hearty, or whom we
+could put such faith in,’ old Dadd astonished Oliver by saying. ‘And as
+to Jack’s minding or liking, bless you! he don’t know his own mother
+from a stranger, and hasn’t these three days back.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s that as has made me useless, Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Dadd, sitting
+up and apologising feebly; ‘so that I haven’t even had the grace to
+thank you for your offer.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind thanks,’ said Oliver. ‘Did my father go out of his way to
+thank you when you stayed at Friarton Mill and brought his little girl
+through her fever?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, that was different; that was all in a woman’s way for a motherless
+little thing, and I ran no risk, having had the scarlet fever myself
+when I was a child. I wish I had been with her at the last, poor soul!
+When her trouble came upon her, in a strange place, and none as she
+knew, save men to look after her, I reckon she would have cared then to
+see the face of an old acquaintance, as was a woman like herself and
+knew her needs. But the Lord will protect you, Mr. Oliver, as He may
+have raised you up, and sent you home, at this time, to save my dear
+Jack. May be it is the greatest mark of respect I could show you or any
+man, after all, to think of leaving my own lad in your care.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver did not know about having been raised up and sent home to
+save Jack Dadd, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span>but he said ‘Surely,’ with fervour to Mrs. Dadd’s
+passionate amendment on her formal thanks.</p>
+
+<p>So Oliver was regularly installed, with the doctor’s consent,
+night-nurse to Jack Dadd; and in place of calling at the Meadows, he
+went out of the way to avoid the house and any chance of encountering
+Mrs. Hilliard or her cousin, as he passed backwards and forwards
+between the rooms above the shop in the High Street, Friarton, and
+Friarton Mill for a considerable number of mornings and evenings. Such
+fellow-townsmen as he met contented themselves with looking curiously
+after him, whether they stopped him to enquire for the sick man,
+or whether they crossed the street to shun the lightest breath of
+infection. An odd fish, Oliver Constable, not without feeling—strange
+to say—in his queer composition.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">
+    CHAPTER XXX.
+    <br>
+    <span>STUMBLED ACROSS—INTERVIEWED—TAKEN AT HIS WORD.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">One</span> night, before it was late, as Oliver was stooping over Jack, trying
+to ascertain whether he were really muttering irrelevantly,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">‘There’s Ruby, and Rover, and Ranter, too,’</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="flat">or asking for something the sufferer wanted, a man’s figure in
+professional black, which was yet not the doctor’s, appeared on the
+opposite side of the bed. Oliver looked up—it was Mr. Holland, the
+Dadds’ and Oliver’s minister. He had not been there before—partly
+because he had been away on sick leave, partly because he had returned,
+only half recruited, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span>after the anxiously economised weeks at the
+sea-side with his family—difficult for the poor minister to afford in
+more ways than one. And his wife had so implored him not to put his
+shaken health and strength, not fairly reestablished, to the severe
+test of a fever-laden atmosphere, that he had yielded reluctantly,
+and kept away from the unconscious Jack and his burdened father and
+mother, till Mr. Holland could do so no longer. Come what might of it,
+though it should cost him his own life, and his wife should be left
+a widow and his children fatherless, the pastor must be at his post;
+and when he went to it, he found the rebel of his congregation hanging
+over the sick man—indifferent to inhaling the tainted vapours at the
+fountain-head.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Holland coloured high and hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver looked up and spoke without the slightest difficulty, rather
+with a roughish freedom, born of the necessity of the moment.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Hallo, sir! are you there? Look here, Holland; from the colour of your
+coat, you have seen more sickness than I. Can you feel a pulse? Can you
+pronounce on the state of a tongue? You come as a stranger, you can
+tell how Jack strikes you. What do you think of his chance?’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Holland stepped forward and did as he was required. Oliver and he
+consulted together and watched and nursed Jack, without a thought of
+anybody besides, for some hours. Then, after the clergyman had taken up
+his hat to go, he hesitated once more, put it down again, and touched
+Oliver’s arm with a hand that shook slightly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Brother,’ said Mr. Holland solemnly, in phraseology adopted both by
+Papists and Puritans in exceptional circumstances and seasons of strong
+feeling, ‘have you any objection to joining with me in prayer, and
+offering up an intercession for our sick brother?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘None in the world,’ replied Oliver promptly. And the two men prayed
+aloud by the voice of the one, for Jack Dadd.</p>
+
+<p>The next Sunday, Mr. Holland preached a sermon, which slightly
+bewildered his hearers, on the text, ‘Not they who say “Lord, Lord,”
+but they who do the will of my Father.’</p>
+
+<p>The early October mornings were getting always darker—with a darkness
+which partook of white haze as well as dank wet, dimmer, chiller, when
+Oliver—buttoning up his great coat, as he came out of the Dadds’ house
+into the street, where last night’s lamps were still burning, and which
+had not yet woke up for the day, since not even an early milkman had
+put in an appearance—was startled by a woman in a bonnet and veil,
+hugging a shawl round her, coming out upon him from the nearest alley,
+and accosting him in a gasping, constrained voice.</p>
+
+<p>‘Please, sir, can you tell me how Mr.—how Mr. Jack Dadd is going on
+this morning?’ <span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>enquired the speaker, with little pants between the
+broken utterances of the words.</p>
+
+<p>In place of answering the question, Oliver exclaimed in amazement,
+‘Miss ’Liza Polley! What are you doing here at this hour of the
+morning?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Mr. Oliver, don’t betray me!’ cried poor ’Liza, in her natural
+voice, though it was quivering with distress and terror. ‘I thought you
+would not know me. But never mind that just now; tell me quick, how is
+Jack? Oh! will he die, Mr. Oliver? Will Jack die?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope not,’ said Oliver gently; ‘he’s no worse, and every hour gained
+is in his favour. But this is not a time for you to be out. It was not
+six when Mrs. Dadd took my seat. Let me see you home, Miss ’Liza, at
+once.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! no, no, Mr. Oliver,’ refused ’Liza, in a fresh paroxysm of alarm
+and trouble. Mother would be fit to kill me outright, if I came in
+with a man—with a gentleman, at this hour of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>the morning—though it is
+morning—not night,’ pleaded ’Liza piteously; ‘and old Betty Miles has
+come to wash, and had the door opened for her’—taking further refuge
+in the business of the day’s having really begun—‘or else I should not
+have dared to get up, and slip out at all. Oh dear! You do not know
+how hard mother has grown, how hard everything is, since poor ’Mily
+went wrong,’ protested ’Liza, weeping, not violently, but in a crushed
+manner. ‘It is so dull you cannot think! We dare not lift up our heads
+from our work, or make a joke, or speak of running out to pay a single
+call. Mother says we are all as bad as ’Mily, and have no sense or
+feeling. She is ashamed of us. No respectable people will wish us to
+darken their doors, or dream of returning our visits. But oh! it would
+be nothing, Mr. Oliver,’ broke off ’Liza, returning to the dominant
+cause of her misery, ‘if Jack Dadd were only a little better. Mother
+may do or say <span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>what she chooses,’ continued the girl, writhing like any
+other worm trodden on, and turning on its oppressor, ‘I must and will
+hear how Jack is, or I shall go mad. Mother may serve me as she served
+’Mily. I don’t care, there! Anybody may hear me, and go and tell mother
+that likes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Jack is highly honoured,’ said Oliver, at a loss for any other
+observation. ‘But now, don’t you think, since he is no worse, and will
+soon, I trust, be a great deal better, it would be as well for you to
+take care of yourself, and do what your mother wishes you, for his
+sake, as well as hers, Miss ’Liza?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! hush, hush! Don’t say my name, in case anybody hear you,’ ’Liza
+objected with the greatest inconsistency. ‘You are a kind chap—that is,
+you are very good; but I did not mean you or anybody to see or know me.
+I thought you would not penetrate my disguise,’ said ’Liza with solemn
+simplicity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I was too clever,’ said Oliver, tempted to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘But you will not think ill of me?’ besought ’Liza—sinking again, in
+a moment, from the part of the heroine of romance she had formerly
+longed to play, which, even this morning, she had found some faint
+compensation in trying to support, for Jack was not dead, only very
+ill—into the affronted, unhappy, childish young woman. ‘You will not
+tell upon me? You see Jack Dadd and I have known each other all our
+days, and sometimes—well, he has looked and said things—though he was
+not always kind. He was fair angry because I let you talk to me first
+when you came back,’ explained ’Liza, with a little hysterical giggle.
+‘I am sure, Mr. Oliver, we two said nothing which all the world might
+not have heard, and Jack had given himself no right to interfere with
+me for speaking to anybody. Now mother <span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span>says nobody will ever care
+to come near us again, after the disgrace ’Mily has brought upon the
+family.’ ’Liza began to droop afresh, and to cry without the most
+distant admixture of small triumphant laughter. ‘It would be very hard
+and cruel, if it were true, for how could we—Ann and I, help it? Mother
+was always putting ’Mily before us,’ complained ’Liza resentfully,
+‘and Jack and ’Mily would carry on together, just to plague me, I
+believe. Oh dear! what am I doing?’—stopping short and wringing her
+hands—‘Blaming Jack when he may be dying or dead for aught I know; and
+I may never see or speak to him again in my life. But I should not mind
+that, if God would only let Jack live and get well and be happy, though
+it were all away from me. Oh! Mr. Oliver, will he live? Will Jack live?’</p>
+
+<p>The poor delicate girl was quite spent and shaken. She was forced to
+let Oliver—who <span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span>was not without some apprehension of arousing the blind
+fury of Mrs. Polley—give her his arm within sight of her mother’s door.</p>
+
+<p>‘So that was the way of it?’ Oliver said to himself softly, as he
+walked away. ‘Poor thing! poor old Jack—who can hardly move a finger at
+this moment! And I came between them and made mischief, did I? without
+the faintest suspicion, in my stupid bungling? But, let us be thankful,
+it may not be too Late to set this right if the beggar will only
+recover.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was coming in to Jack, not going from him, when the gas-lights
+in the streets of Friarton looked white and bright and encouraging
+as they look with the night setting in—not yellow and faded and
+dispiriting, after a career of unwarrantable dissipation, according to
+their faithless discomfiting habit with the first streak of dawn.</p>
+
+<p>There were still many people about, largely the promenaders, shoppers,
+and callers belonging <span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>to the classes to which day brings work and
+evening recreation, with the recreation consisting mainly of what is
+best expressed by the old-fashioned word ‘gadding’—going abroad and
+foraging for some little excitement in the way of gossip or otherwise.
+This was the season when the Polley girls had been wont to disport
+themselves among their acquaintances, till the striking of a clock sent
+them scampering and scuttling home, like Cinderella minus her glass
+slipper.</p>
+
+<p>And sure enough ’Mily Polley came forward in her conspicuous hat and
+outrageous skirt, bustling along as if all the business of Friarton
+were left for her to do, and meeting Oliver Constable in the face.</p>
+
+<p>At the first glance she appeared perfectly unabashed. The only
+difference in her was that to the girlish pertness and boldness there
+was added a touch of the hard brazenness which defies such a position
+as hers. She was <span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>alone—she espied Oliver at once. Her sharp eyes had
+never been known to miss man or woman, and now—far from being cast
+down, they were roving on all sides, challenging every passer-by.
+There was the complete contrast between ’Liza and ’Mily Polley which
+is generally to be found between the sinned against and the sinner.
+’Mily attempted no foolish disguise. She was not seeking to escape from
+Oliver’s recognition. She darted up to him, hailing him loudly—‘Mr.
+Oliver Constable, it is a treat to see you now-a-days.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver stopped and spoke to ’Mily. She made no enquiry for Jack Dadd,
+or the most distant allusion to Oliver’s recent loss. On the contrary,
+in full view of his mourning, she referred to the changes which had
+occurred lately, with boisterous gaiety. ‘And there are more and
+greater changes coming, I can tell you, Mr. Oliver,’ said ’Mily, in her
+glibest manner. ‘I am turning my back on this dull <span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>hole, I’m glad to
+say. I am to be married next Thursday; the day is so near that I need
+not make a mystery of it. I dare say you have heard, though you have
+not wished me joy yet. If you were quicker about it, I might give you
+an invitation to my wedding.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do,’ said Oliver, on the impulse of the moment; ‘and I’ll be happy to
+come in the character of an old friend.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Will you?’ asked ’Mily, quickly and doubtfully. ‘Will you, indeed, Mr.
+Oliver? Do you mean what you say?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, of course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That will be awfully good of you. I’ll be as proud as a peacock;
+no’—with a sudden flush—‘not that, but very much obliged and thankful
+to show his friends that all the people I ever knew have not turned
+their backs upon me.’ She finished with bitterness, still her voice
+and face betrayed some shame and regret. ‘Would you mind walking and
+talking with me <span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span>a bit, Mr. Oliver?’ she asked almost gently. ‘We’ll
+turn down into Jervis’s yard, where there is nobody working at this
+hour. I should like to speak out to you this once. It is not late, and
+though it were, there’s nobody to hinder me from stopping out till
+after ten, now. But, oh! Mr. Oliver’—breaking out passionately—‘it
+was mother herself put the finishing touch to my folly. I had been
+wild and flown in her face, and disobeyed her, but I was not bad,
+when she turned me from my father’s door, and locked it in my face.
+She has herself to thank for what came of it,—no, no, I don’t mean
+that’—cried ’Mily, calling herself back with an accent of terror in
+her despair—‘What is it the Bible says about them as curses father and
+mother? And it is only them as honours father and mother that lives
+long; so that any way I’m booked to die young like Jack Dadd and Fan—I
+beg your pardon, Mr. Oliver—Mrs. Harry Stanhope. Well, I’ve <span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span>got an
+inkling there are worse fates going. But it was heartless and ill-done
+of me,’ confessed poor ’Mily, with something like real contrition in
+the tears which welled up into her round eyes,—‘to come forward and
+look in your face, and at the band round your hat, and begin with my
+idle nonsense—only it’s such sore nonsense now-a-days—you can’t guess,
+Mr. Oliver. Did you ever think it would come to this—that my banns
+should be put up here, in Friarton, and my marriage day next week, yet
+neither mother, nor ’Liza, nor any of them, should care to come near
+me? That they should not be able to tell what I’m to wear, or seek to
+bid me good-bye before I go?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It will be better when you are gone,’ said Oliver. ‘Forgiveness and
+forgetfulness will come in time. You will try to do your best, ’Mily,
+God helping you, in the future, and when you come back——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll never come back, never,’ said ’Mily, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span>with strong conviction.
+‘I’ll never show my face here again, though I’ve sought to look as if
+I did not care that I had met the disgrace, I deserved, I suppose. But
+you’ll come to my marriage, Mr. Oliver,’ pleaded ’Mily, ‘and wish me
+the best that can happen to me, now? Birt will be pleased, because of
+your college breeding and connections, and will think more of me since
+a gentleman like you does not hold it beneath him to stand by me. And
+you will tell them at home some day, Mr. Oliver, what I wore—you’ll
+take a good stare at my bonnet and gown for the purpose—and how I
+looked, and that I had taken care, as far as I could, out of the little
+bit of money my aunt ’Mily, as was also my godmother, left me, that
+everything about the marriage should be as slap-bang as the Cobbes
+could manage it? No doubt mother’s daughter, considering what mother
+has made of the shop, and what her bank-book comes to, might have been
+entitled to a great <span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span>deal more. I know I used to fancy I might be
+married in a white satin and go off in a carriage and pair at least,’
+replied ’Mily, half-proudly, half ruefully; ‘still you’ll see there
+will be nothing in the way the marriage is gone about, to affront
+mother and the rest—though none of them has come to look after my
+credit and theirs,’ ended ’Mily, with a considerable flavour of the old
+woman lingering about her still.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">
+    CHAPTER XXXI.
+    <br>
+    <span>LIFE—AND DEATH.</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Jack Dadd</span> was more like a girl than ever—more like even than the
+puniest of pink and white complexioned lads—with whom to associate the
+idea of a bold, rude, fox-hunter or a slashing soldier, or a reckless
+buccaneer, as they had been represented in Jack’s favourite songs,
+would have been the height of absurdity, pathetic in the very wildness
+of the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>He was wasted and worn to skin and bone, and faded to the colour of
+blanched wax, lying with his eyes shut, though he was not sleeping. Yet
+Jack was considered to have got the turn, to be in a fair, though still
+a precarious, way of <span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>recovery. Oliver had not altogether resigned his
+functions; he was with Jack this night again, sitting reading at a
+little distance from the bed, when he was startled by hearing a piping
+voice address him, and looking round, he saw Jack’s eyes wide open,
+with reason in their glance, fixed upon him. It was a critical moment,
+for between delirium and sheer feebleness, Jack had not before shown
+any consciousness of Oliver’s identity.</p>
+
+<p>‘Noll,’ said Jack, ‘don’t you remember how I won your taws that time?’
+referring to a famous, far-off, game of marbles in the Friarton
+playground.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was immensely relieved. ‘Yes, Jack, you beat me to sticks,’ he
+admitted candidly, while Jack emitted the ghost of a chuckle at the
+recollection of his old victory.</p>
+
+<p>But Jack’s next speech was not so reassuring. ‘Constable,’ said Jack,
+‘I’ve often been guilty of rank impudence to you.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Gammon!’ said Oliver; ‘shut up for the rest of the night, old boy; let
+me turn you round, and do you try and get another sleep, which will set
+you on your pins again in no time, and let me finish my book.’</p>
+
+<p>But Jack’s hour for conversation had come, and he would not be
+silenced. ‘I say, Constable, I hope I may get over this bout, and
+be let off this time, to live and make up for some things I’ve done
+unlike—unlike a gentleman.’</p>
+
+<p>Heaven help the lad! who was too shy in the middle of his forwardness
+to say a Christian, the young counter-jumper who had his own standard
+for a man and a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>‘You may live to behave like a prince, Jack, if you’ll only be careful
+and not exhaust yourself. Here; swallow this stuff, and snooze away.’</p>
+
+<p>But Jack was at his confessions again, more briskly than before,
+the moment he had taken the stimulant. ‘I wonder if anybody but the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>poor old guv’nor, and the mother, and perhaps a good fellow like
+you, Constable, would care whether I hopped the twig or not? I don’t
+deserve it from some people. There’s ’Liza—’Liza Polley—’Liza might
+not have always known her own mind, or rather, her friends went in and
+bamboozled her, and put a lot of nonsense into her head, but I was not
+quite fair to ’Liza. I came down hard upon her, when, as it turned out,
+you were not going after her, and when, if you will believe me,’ said
+Jack, with emphasis, succeeding in raising himself on his elbow, ‘she
+never cared a rap for you, it was me she cared for all the time—poor
+’Liza!’ ended Jack, falling back with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>The delicious <i>naïveté</i> of the assertion pleased Oliver greatly,
+while he hastened to give it a handsome corroboration. ‘I am profoundly
+convinced of the truth of what you say, Jack; and if it would not bring
+on a fresh <span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span>attack of fever, I might generously tell you in return that
+Miss ’Liza Polley met me at break of day the other morning, daring the
+wrath of her mother, just to hear the last news of your health.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did she, though?’ exclaimed Jack, with his poor face brightening into
+a dim glow of satisfaction; ‘and ’Liza is as frightened as a hare while
+her mother has been like a she-bear that has been robbed of her whelps,
+since she sent ’Mily up the spout.’ There was a little pause. Oliver
+hoped Jack was dropping off to sleep. ‘I’ll not forget it of ’Liza
+Polley,’ Jack spoke again, with drowsy, lordly magnanimity; ‘it was
+the best errand she ever ran on. I’ll act on the square to her—on the
+square all round, please God. And as for Mrs. Polley, won’t the guv’nor
+make her squeak to a different tune, when he calls to pop the question
+to the mother for me?’</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Jack was going to recover, to be a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>man instead of a boy—a good
+man ‘please God,’ as he had said simply. And it would please the Father
+of Lights, the source and the reward of all goodness.</p>
+
+<p>Death and desolation were distanced for once. The strange, sad sights,
+sounds, and memories which the King of Terrors, even though his sceptre
+has been wrested from his grasp, still brings with him, and leaves
+behind him wherever his ‘pale feet’ pass, would be changed for the
+cheery, sweet, common tokens of returning health and life: the fresh,
+open air, everyday work, the familiar faces of friends no longer
+anxious or averted.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver felt it like a great boon to himself. He went to ’Mily Polley’s
+marriage with much better spirit and hope, since there was no longer
+the least probability of his having to attend Jack Dadd’s funeral.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver represented ’Mily’s circle, though Sam Cobbe gave her away. An
+old friend <span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span>lent her his countenance when she needed it. For she was
+conscience-stricken and shame-smitten through all her defiance. She was
+really smarting keenly under the abandonment of her kindred. She was
+awaking silently—and when had ’Mily ever been silent before?—and sadly,
+already, even before he had made her his wife, to the utter poverty and
+short-lived nature of the passion which had existed between her and the
+man for whom she had—not generously but wilfully, sacrificed all that
+women hold dear. For this reason she was susceptible to the compliment
+of Oliver’s presence even more than to the show of her gaudy blue silk
+gown and desperately smart bonnet and veil. She thanked him with an
+earnestness which struck Oliver in ’Mily, and which he considered far
+out of proportion to the cause of the thanks, in the last words she
+said to him. She went with her husband straight from the church to the
+railway-station, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>as the Cobbes could not be expected to furnish the
+shabbiest version of a wedding-breakfast, and left immediately for
+Manchester. There was no trace of the couple when Oliver followed them
+to the station in the course of a quarter of an hour, intending to take
+a short journey on his own affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Constable had his foot on a carriage step when the
+station-master hurried up, white and scared-looking, struggling to
+maintain his composure. He whispered to Oliver, ‘There’s been an
+accident to the 11.30 train north, close to Medlar Bridge. I’ve just
+had word. There’s folk hurt. All that can help is wanted immediately;
+but there’s no use driving the town wild, and bringing out a pack of
+useless, frantic people as long as it can be prevented. Would you mind,
+sir, coming with me and the nearest doctor and the surface-men?’</p>
+
+<p>‘All right,’ consented Oliver, in reference to <span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>what was evidently all
+wrong. He, too, was agitated by the suddenness and shock of the message.</p>
+
+<p>It was not till the little party had started and aroused the suspicion
+of a few idlers, though another quarter of an hour would pass before
+the vague alarm took shape, spread abroad and thrilled the town, that
+Oliver recollected the 11.30 train north was the very train by which
+the newly-married pair were to travel. He told himself the next moment
+that amongst the hundreds in the train there was little likelihood that
+the Birts should be the particular victims.</p>
+
+<p>The place where the last portion of the train had run off the line,
+with the usual amount of overthrow and wreck, lay about midway between
+Friarton and the next station, from which assistance had already
+come, before the Friarton station-master and his band of helpers
+arrived. Oliver saw only the <i>débris</i> <span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>of broken carriages and
+a throng of excited but uninjured people, when he leapt from the
+engine, on reaching his destination. ‘Not so bad as had been feared
+from the earliest report,’ Oliver heard proclaimed by various voices
+immediately. Two of the smashed carriages were found to have been
+empty. Only one carriage and the guard’s van were occupied. A woman had
+been killed, and five or six persons more or less hurt.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Constable passed through the eager speakers, looking on every
+side for the Birts, half expecting to find ’Mily in hysterics if she
+had happened to be in a carriage near those which had broken loose, and
+if she had seen anything of the accident.</p>
+
+<p>Before he was aware he found himself close to the waiting-room into
+which the sufferers had been carried. A railway servant at the door,
+taking it for granted that Oliver was seeking for the room and had a
+right to enter, beckoned him <span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>in before he could think where he was
+going, among the doctors and their patients—fainting or groaning, while
+pulses were felt, heads bandaged, and limbs set.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver prepared to retreat, but first he cast a quick glance round.
+Stay! Was not that Birt in the soiled, jaunty new clothes for which
+’Mily had paid, out of her little bit of money?</p>
+
+<p>The man did not look much the worse, in spite of the outcry he was
+making over what a doctor was coolly pooh-poohing as a trifle of a
+broken collar-bone.</p>
+
+<p>But where was ’Mily?</p>
+
+<p>In another moment Oliver learnt the incredible fact that Birt did not
+know. The bridegroom had been smoking with the guard in the van when
+the accident happened, and ever since then—speaking from Birt’s point
+of view—he had been in far too bad a way to enquire after anybody. But
+no doubt she was somewhere outside, gaping and screeching <span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>with the
+rest of the women. She ought to be looked up at once—Birt grumbled
+crossly, taking the first word of scolding—to see if she could not make
+a beginning in minding her duty, and trying to do something for him
+when he was in mortal agony and as sick as a dog.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver, with his heart standing still, took one step towards the door
+of another room which was kept closed. An elderly woman turned the key
+in the lock and let him go in. Alas! yes; there lay all that was mortal
+of ’Mily, the poor mangled body decently composed, covered over and
+put away from fascinated, appalled gaze, or rude, gloating scrutiny—in
+the very dress she had so often pictured herself as wearing, that she
+had bidden Oliver notice particularly, which she had, not three hours
+before, gone to church in. The chubby face was little altered, except
+for the closed eyes, since it had been spared, while death must <span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span>have
+proved instantaneous. With no friend by her side, not missed, though
+she was in her bridal glory, till Oliver sought her out, the disastrous
+end of ’Mily’s foolish young life had indeed come swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>In the grief and oppression with which Oliver set about making the
+necessary arrangements, he could yet believe that, as ’Mily had said of
+Fan’s fate, so her own might have been more miserable still.</p>
+
+<p>It was a wise choice made by the warrior and poet king—rather to fall
+into God’s than into man’s hands. To die in an instant, though it were
+on her marriage morning, in her bridal finery, when her heart was
+softened in the act of quitting Friarton, thinking as she thought in
+all probability—with regretful tenderness of her mother and family, and
+repenting of her misconduct, while, at the same time, all faith and
+hope in her husband had not been crushed out of her, was surely better
+than to live on <span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span>at the mercy of a man like Birt, to be dragged down by
+him into lower and lower depths, to risk becoming at last as heartless
+and worthless as himself.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver had a worse ordeal to face before night than that of seeking out
+’Mily on her marriage day, as the woman killed in the railway accident.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Polley sent over an express to Friarton Mill to bid Mr. Constable
+come into the town and speak to her. In other circumstances it would
+have been an exacting, unreasonable demand; as it was Oliver, like any
+man with a true man’s heart, obeyed it as he would have obeyed the
+behest of the Queen.</p>
+
+<p>He found the Polleys’ shop with the shutters up in the middle of the
+afternoon, for the first time in his recollection. Mrs. Polley was
+not in the back shop; she was in her daughters’ room, to which she
+had gone, with rapid unsteady <span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>feet, the moment a rash or stolid
+customer had pushed forward to the counter, and, in place of giving
+an order, had told the tragedy in all its raw anguish and frightful
+force, without waiting to weigh words, or to secure the presence of
+some solemnly commissioned, skilled, and pitying comforter. The mother
+was sitting by the side of the bed in which ’Mily had been wont to
+sleep. Mrs. Polley’s hard-working hand was mechanically smoothing down
+the crochet quilt, which had been one of the few feats of industry
+accomplished by the joint efforts of the sisters while they were still
+at school, and in which ’Mily, though the youngest, had played the
+foremost part. The first married of the three workers was to have
+carried off the quilt, but the bargain had not been kept in spite of
+’Mily’s double title to the prize.</p>
+
+<p>The heavy flush had not grown lighter on Mrs. Polley’s cheeks. She
+continued dry-eyed <span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span>and silent, while all the eyes around her were dim,
+and the faces swollen with crying, and as Oliver—the last person there
+who had seen and spoken with ’Mily—entered the room, a fresh burst of
+lamentation broke from her sisters, even her father groaned aloud, and
+bowed his face over his shaking hands.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver took Mrs. Polley’s hand reverently. ‘I am very sorry,’ he
+muttered. ‘She could not have suffered. She is in better hands even
+than in those of the friends who loved her best. I have done all that
+was required.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Oliver,’ said Mrs. Polley, in a loud, harsh voice which startled
+everybody, ‘I have sent for you in case I should not live another
+night. How do I know when them as I’ve seen full of youth and life and
+gladness is took in the twinkling of an eye? I want to thank you before
+I die, and I may never have another chance. Yes, I know all you have
+done for my ’Mily this day. You have stood beside her—both <span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>as a bride
+and as a corpse. When every friend she had gave my gal up, and left her
+to be despised and trodden upon, when the mother as bore and had turned
+her adrift, that so her folly might grow into sin, showed no mercy, you
+came to her and let her feel she had one friend left on earth, so that
+she might be able to believe that she had still a Father and Saviour
+in heaven. You have ordered her coffin and undertook, if necessary, to
+pay for it, and are ready to see all that the cruel, grinding, tearing
+wheels left of her, laid in it, and to help to carry her yourself to
+the churchyard. Mr. Oliver, my thanks ain’t worth much; for aught that
+I know, they may be no better than ill wishes and curses, since I was
+the unnatural mother as shut ’Mily out into the street, where she had
+no refuge, save the base villain that had decoyed her from her mother’s
+roof. Hold your tongue, Polley, and you gals, and you, sir, though you
+were thrice my pastor,’ addressing <span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>Mr. Holland, as he came softly and
+sorrowfully into the room. She resisted fiercely all attempts of her
+frightened husband and children and the other awed bystanders to stay
+her wild self-accusation. ‘I will speak out. I’ve sung my own praises
+and been my own trumpeter many’s the time. I’ll publish likewise my
+barbarous cruelty. It was I as denounced my own daughter and condemned
+her to destruction and an early grave. So what would it serve you, Mr.
+Oliver, though you were to let me go down on my knees and bless you,
+because you had more pity on my ’Mily—my bright, clever ’Mily, that is
+now as cold and still as a clod of the walley, than her wicked mother
+had on her poor, thoughtless child?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You loved her better than yourself, all the time you blamed her most,’
+Oliver told the miserable woman. ‘It was your very love for her, and
+pride in her, which made you hard. She knew that then; she knows it
+better now.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span></p>
+
+<p>Something in the words spoken almost at random, opened the closed
+floodgate of tears which quenched the frenzy blazing into a devouring
+flame, and saved the stout heart from breaking. ‘Yes, I were fond
+and proud of my ’Mily, with good reason,’ protested Mrs. Polley more
+softly, though the softness was expressed by the deep sobs which rent
+her breast, and the torrents of tears that gushed from her eyes. ‘There
+was none of the other gals fit to hold a candle to her. She were that
+smart, my little ’Mily, she could run and speak by the time she was
+eighteen months. I’ve seen her a sitting up rosy and full of roguery,
+playing with the pillows in this here bed, when other children would
+have been lying like so many little logses. Her fingers and her tongue
+alike were that clever! She had finished her piece and begun another of
+this very bed quilt long before Ann or ’Liza had got half through with
+either of theirs—and her the youngest and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span>only in her first quarter at
+the school. “I’ll make them stand about, mother, she would say to me,”
+with one of her merry laughs; “and I’ll wager I’ll be married first, as
+well as first done with my bit of the crochet, and get the quilt all to
+myself.” So she has been married first, and she has died first, leaving
+me and her father behind, as ought by rights to have gone long before
+her. Oh! ’Mily, ’Mily, if I could but have died for you!’</p>
+
+<p>Poor young ’Mily Polley’s death on her marriage morning caused a great
+revulsion in the feelings which had been entertained towards her in
+her native town. Her awful fate wiped out, in human eyes, the sum of
+her transgressions. Her death was regarded—not so much in the light
+of retribution as of atonement. A tender veil of commiseration and
+charity was drawn over her offences till they were in a fair way to
+be forgotten as well as forgiven. Her memory was likely to survive in
+Friarton and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span>appeal to all gentle, romantic hearts for generations to
+come—not as that of the erring girl, but as that of the newly-made wife
+who perished in the first hours of her wifehood.</p>
+
+<p>’Mily’s intimate associates were forced to acknowledge remorsefully the
+little allowance they had made for her temptations, and the unanimity
+with which they had forsaken her in her humiliation.</p>
+
+<p>Even some of the townspeople who had only noticed and inveighed against
+the girl as an exceedingly vulgar, pert, giddy creature, experienced an
+uncomfortable conviction that her opportunities of learning to become
+more civilised, modest, and steady had been limited, and, such as
+they were, might have been a good deal counteracted by the old feuds
+and jealousies between classes. At the same time the blithe ring of
+her voice as it had floated accidentally to them, the light fall of
+her footstep when she had passed them, lingered in the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span>ears of these
+judges, and smote them with the realisation of how young this ’Mily
+Polley must have been, when her detractors had not thought it beneath
+their superior age, rank, and refinement, to enlarge on her sins
+against good taste. ’Mily had her revenge in this fact, that whereas
+she and her set had been heartily despised, sharply ridiculed, and
+religiously shunned by those more gently bred ladies of Friarton, who
+held it as a pious duty to work for, bear with, instruct and assist the
+laziest and most reckless of the poor in the town, very few could now
+afford to scorn ’Mily. All except the smallest and grossest minds saw
+that the solemnity of death, even without its tragedy—as in ’Mily’s
+piteous case—invested the girl with a simple dignity in her grave. But
+it was a pity that not more men and women had possessed the larger,
+gentler eyes to recognise that the sacredness of life had also bestowed
+on her worth and importance—even <span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span>while she still bounced about her
+mother’s shop, and flounced along the streets.</p>
+
+<p>Remorse, in its slightest manifestation of doubt and discontent with
+one’s self, is not an agreeable sensation, therefore the townspeople of
+Friarton, who, like the rest of the world, greatly preferred to feel at
+ease in their own minds, if not gently titillated with a consciousness
+of having done their best in the matters of justice and mercy, began
+to look around them in order to discover any loophole of escape from
+the painful impression that they had been hard and contemptuous to
+’Mily Polley and perhaps hounded her on—for girls are sensitive as well
+as perverse—to her undoing. They were remarkably successful in their
+search. For one man had, as it were, redeemed the humane character of
+Friarton. Oliver Constable had paid respect to the girl from the first,
+and shown her mercy to the last. He had acted as the representative
+of her neighbours, and so <span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>removed, in a great measure, the lurking
+self-reproach from their consciences. And it was the same Oliver who
+had gone in for nursing old Dadd’s son, and pulled him through his
+fever.</p>
+
+<p>It did seem as if Oliver Constable had come home from watching by his
+sister’s death-bed to save the life of Jack Dadd and to speak a parting
+word of forgiveness and God-speed to ’Mily Polley, so as to deliver
+the whole town from the charge of selfish cowardice and intolerant
+persecution. If so, what sort of man could he really be who had
+received such a commission and given himself to its fulfilment?</p>
+
+<p>The reaction which had set in for poor ’Mily extended to Oliver.
+His fellow-townsmen commenced to conceive an altogether different
+impression of him, to exalt and make much of him, to canonise him—not
+merely before a hundred years had elapsed, but in his very lifetime.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>This experience is comparatively rare, still it happens sometimes that
+just as men’s sins occasionally go before them to judgment, so men’s
+patient continuance in well-doing is observed and awakens a response in
+their brethren before death has set its seal to virtue.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Oliver was perfectly unaware of the sudden revolution
+in the sentiments of the town towards him, so that in place of being
+unpopular and lightly esteemed—not to say grossly slandered—he had
+sprung at once to the height of popularity and general respect, among
+those who were not particularly ashamed of thus turning their coats,
+after they had so recently decried and abused their champion and hero.</p>
+
+<p>The only thing which struck Oliver as he walked along the streets of
+Friarton, in the drizzle and mud of November, was, that in spite of
+the season and the weather, he was constantly <span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>meeting friends and
+acquaintances, and that not merely everybody had something to say to
+him, but that all men and women were in the best humour, overflowing
+with geniality, as if they were reflecting June sunshine rather than
+November fog.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span></p>
+
+
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">
+    CHAPTER XXXII.
+    <br>
+    <span>‘DO THEY BELIEVE IN ME NOW?’</span>
+  </h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="flat"><span class="smcap">Oliver Constable’s</span> announcement that he was retiring from the baking
+business had appeared three times in the Friarton weekly newspapers.
+The first time it was received with scoffs and sneers, the next it
+was met by a troubled silence, the last time it was anticipated by an
+urgent protest, though Oliver did not happen to be within hearing. The
+earliest result of his advertisement—so far as Oliver knew—came in the
+shape of a formal call in the <span id="cor7"></span>back shop from Jim Hull.</p>
+
+<p>Jim had never entered the premises since he and his nephew ’Arry
+set up a rival business. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>Oliver made no question that Jim came now
+with some proposal from the flourishing firm of which he was one of
+the representatives, while he indulged in an austere satisfaction at
+the realisation of his own prophecies of the certain consequences of
+Oliver’s new-fangled, hair-splitting scruples and crotchets. Anyway,
+Oliver thought, Jim Hull might have saved himself the trouble. It was
+execrable taste in him to come and crow at all, in the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i>Et tu Brute!</i>’ Oliver said in spirit to his father’s old friend
+and servant, who arrived to speak to Oliver of his acknowledged
+failure, and to suggest Jim’s nephew’s further rise on Oliver
+Constable’s downfall.</p>
+
+<p>Neither did Jim seem to prosper on his heartlessness and
+vindictiveness. He looked much older and greyer, and his fine,
+well-cut face was all creased over with the wrinkles which had been
+just perceptible, here and <span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>there, two or three years before. The face
+had always looked compact, but now it had a contracted appearance, as
+if Jim had got into a habit of setting his few teeth and drawing his
+grizzled brows together, by the hour.</p>
+
+<p>‘Master Oliver,’ said Jim hesitatingly, ‘will you not think twice of
+this resolution?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have no intention, Jim,’ said Oliver shortly, as he drummed on the
+table before him; and then, scorning to make use of a subterfuge, he
+added, ‘It is not in my power.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not though I bring you the earliest information that my nephew ’Arry
+is also giving up, leastways selling his business here?’ said Jim,
+leaning halfway across the table in his earnestness. ‘He has got word
+of a famous opening in London, which is a field as will suit him
+better,’ said Jim, in a lower tone, sinking back in his chair.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was taken by surprise. He could only say it would be odd if
+Friarton were left <span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>without bakers, except the small fry. But there
+could be no difficulty in finding a purchaser and successor to such a
+<i>thriving</i> business as Jim and his nephew had established. Were
+there no other nephews of Jim’s?—Oliver remembered a whole family of
+sons, cousins of Harry’s—to take the place of the ambitious fellow who
+thought Friarton beneath his further attentions, and would, no doubt,
+die Lord Mayor of London? Oliver had—he could not have told why, unless
+in the underlying sense of bitterness produced by the contrast with his
+own experience—put an emphasis on the epithet ‘thriving’ which he had
+applied to Jim and his nephew’s business.</p>
+
+<p>The stress on the word caused Jim to wince. A dull, faded red suffused
+the old servant’s withered face, and caused positive pain to the
+quondam master. What right had Oliver to taunt Jim with his success?
+Was not the old man at liberty to make his methods, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>in which he saw no
+harm, succeed to the utmost of his power?</p>
+
+<p>While Oliver took himself to task, Jim was informing him,
+ceremoniously, that the only nephew he had in the baking trade, besides
+’Arry, had gone to Australia, ‘and well for him,’ muttered the speaker.
+‘But I was thinking, Master Oliver,’ resumed Jim, wistfully, ‘that you
+might take ’Arry’s business, of which my share would go far to buy up
+the goodwill, and carry it on instead of the old one here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What, Jim! because I have half ruined myself with the one, go on to
+wholly ruin myself with the other?’ said Oliver, with a forced laugh to
+hide his perplexity and embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>‘But things is different,’ insisted Jim eagerly. ‘It were the
+opposition—of which there would be no more, not a scrap—as did for you;
+and I would manage for you again, if you liked to have me. There’s a
+deal more work left in <span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span>me yet than some folks think for,’ Jim put in
+resentful parenthesis, flicking away the remains of flour from his
+sleeve. ‘I’m not the man as would advise another man, least of all you,
+Master Oliver, if you will believe me, to fling good money after bad;
+but here is the finest chance as ever Providence made—on purpose, I had
+a’most said, for you to retrieve your losses, and build up Constable’s
+business again on a firmer foundation than ever, and carry out your
+schemes to boot,’ cried Jim, waxing enthusiastic, ‘if you’ll not go and
+fling it to the dogs in a pet.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver was fairly puzzled. He was a man tenacious of his principles
+and projects. So far from being wearied out by disappointment and
+thwarting, and glad of the excuse to throw the baking business over, it
+‘riled’ him thoroughly, tortured and mortified him, to resign it and
+all the hopes he had set upon it, after what they had cost him. He was
+strongly tempted to catch <span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span>at the most distant prospect, consistent
+with common prudence, of resuming the trade, and waging it thenceforth
+to a triumphant issue, for the benefit of his fellow-men.</p>
+
+<p>But what of the old practical difficulties with Jim? Oliver was
+not disposed to yield an atom of what he looked upon as trade
+righteousness. Sooner sacrifice half-a-dozen businesses, or promises
+of business, than make a holocaust of his trade creed, which was a
+prominent part of his Christian creed. Jim, with the hold on his master
+which the manager’s having largely contributed to buy back the business
+must give him, would be in a position to maintain his opposite views,
+while Oliver would no longer have the power to object to them, far less
+to put them down.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am greatly obliged to you, Jim,’ said Oliver, at last, ‘and not the
+least for this—that, in spite of the mull I have made, you speak as if
+you had some faith in me still. But I am <span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>not cured of my hobbies; I am
+as great a fool as ever, you will think, when I tell you that I cannot
+be in business as a baker and suffer artificially-whitened bread, or
+fancy bread which is not weighed, to go out of my shop. Besides, I do
+not know what other eccentricities might occur to me, which I should
+feel bound to see carried out.’</p>
+
+<p>Instead of the half-repressed disgust which Oliver had expected to
+excite, Jim met the declaration with a shame-faced assent. ‘Never mind,
+Master Oliver, them are trifles after all, and it’s erring on the safe
+side. Yes, sir, I’m bound to say to you this much—it’s erring on the
+safe side,’ raising his voice, and speaking sternly, while he fumbled
+nervously with his watch-chain.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of another abrupt sentence, ‘I’ll swallow all your
+stipulations, and stick to you like a vice, now, Master Oliver, never
+fear,’ it was all the admission Jim Hull <span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>ever made to Oliver of having
+found himself the wrong man in the wrong place. But it was enough to
+recall to Oliver’s mind stories he had heard, only half believed and
+never repeated, of the sort of bread which the new business had gone
+on to sell in Friarton. A young doctor, who had taken upon himself
+the office of unpaid analyst in defence of an ungrateful public, had
+pronounced the bread largely and most perniciously adulterated. ’Arry
+had advanced a long way before his sickened and horrified uncle in
+courses which Jim had found himself utterly unable to restrain to mild,
+half-openly-confessed, traditional trade liberties. London was indeed a
+fitter field for ’Arry’s genius.</p>
+
+<p>The day has long gone by when the outbreak of deadly epidemics aroused
+the frantic outcry of poisoned wells and poisoned loaves. But are the
+water and the bread provided for the people really pure and wholesome?
+Has the time not come for the old charge to be <span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>revived in more
+measured and reasonable tones, without any thought of vengeance on sins
+which are those of ignorance—however wilful—sloth, and haste to make
+rich, not of deliberate conspiracy and barbarous treachery against
+human health and life?</p>
+
+<p>‘But, Jim, though you consent to bear with my fads, I am afraid the
+Friarton people will still find them insupportable. They will still
+clamour for bread of chalky whiteness, varying in size as well as in
+shape. I have wearied them out with my efforts to be honest and do them
+good against their will.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, you haven’t,’ said Jim decisively. ‘No one will wag a finger
+against your bread. They have come to know better. Bless you! they are
+ready to swallow wholesale any stuff you may offer them.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver stared, then thinking Jim was making another covert allusion
+to his nephew’s tolerably extensive experiments on the palates and
+digestive <span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>organs of his customers, Oliver delicately waived the point
+in discussion.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver Constable and Jim Hull talked for some time on the
+practicability of Oliver’s stepping into a vigorous business in place
+of laying down an exhausted trade. The longer they talked, the more
+Oliver became satisfied of the possibility and advisability of the
+proceeding—that the career he had proposed for himself might not be cut
+short, and that he might have the chance of rising like a phœnix from
+its ashes.</p>
+
+<p>The last thing which vexed Oliver was that Jim pressed him to go in
+for the new premises—reared by Jim and his nephew—which were in full
+working order, rather than transfer their business to the Constables’
+bakehouse and shop, which had latterly been only half used.</p>
+
+<p>What! Give up the shop Peter Constable had proudly built for his son,
+which Agneta Stanhope had foolishly called ‘the ancestral <span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>shop,’ with
+all the kindly associations to which Oliver was so susceptible, and
+remove into these brand-new premises, destitute of any association
+except that they had been raised to knock down the other, which they
+had done!</p>
+
+<p>Yet all was true that Jim argued. Time and tide were sweeping away the
+old traffic from the old channels. The new premises were in a better
+situation than Oliver’s. They had commanded ampler space and secured
+freer ventilation. They were more commodious and convenient. The spot
+on which Peter Constable built his shop had long been looked on with
+a covetous eye by those public-spirited citizens of Friarton who held
+that the town should have a new town-hall worthier of the name than
+that in which Oliver had delivered his lecture on Wordsworth, and
+Lady Cicely Hartley had been a stall-keeper in a bazaar. The town was
+flourishing in funds at the present moment, and the talk about the
+town-hall <span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span>was actually passing into deed. If Oliver were to sell
+the piece of ground on which his shop and bakehouse stood to the new
+town-hall committee, his exchequer would at once be considerably
+replenished. There was no resemblance between the shop and bakehouse
+and Naboth’s vineyard. The former had seen their day and effected their
+purpose. Peter Constable would have been the first to pat his son on
+the shoulder and enjoin him, ‘Sell, my boy; sell when it is wise and
+right to do it. My memorial, my idea! Never mind them. Would I have had
+them stand in the way of your progress, which is the progress of your
+work? They have taken care of themselves hitherto, they will live again
+like everything which has real vitality in it, in a new mould, shaped
+to the fresh needs of a later day.’</p>
+
+<p>The treaty in hand between Oliver and Jim Hull was still unsuspected in
+Friarton when <span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span>Oliver found his back shop and his leisure a second time
+invaded—not by delegates from his journeymen bakers; truth to tell,
+they were the last to comprehend intelligently and to give in anything
+like a cordial adherence to their master. It was a deputation from his
+fellow-tradesmen that next waited upon Oliver. The party consisted of
+old Dadd, Polley, who had enough manhood for a deputation in which his
+wife’s bonnet and gown would have looked out of place, and another
+shopkeeper—the saddler, whose bill to Harry Stanhope Oliver had taken
+care should be paid in full.</p>
+
+<p>They were so occupied with the ceremoniousness of their mission that
+Oliver could hardly get them to sit down or put their hats out of their
+hands; and old Dadd, who was the leader, kept saying ‘sir’ to Oliver
+at every other word. They had not come to ask the miller and baker
+to go into the vestry or council as a step to becoming churchwarden
+or mayor. <span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>They had no notion of giving him a dinner or a piece of
+plate—solutions to the formal visit which, luckily, never crossed
+Oliver’s mind. They had come to more purpose.</p>
+
+<p>These tradesmen—representing very nearly the whole shopkeepers of
+Friarton—the deputation had furnished themselves with a list of the
+names—were there to beg Oliver to withdraw his announcement of retiring
+from business. ‘We feel, sir, you are an honour to our order,’ said old
+Dadd, with as much spirit as if it were an order of knighthood. ‘Sir,
+we mayn’t all see with your eyes, or be prepared to carry out your
+views to a <i>t</i>, but we do see they does you great credit. We are
+quite sure, sir, the world and trade in the long run, would be none the
+worse of a few more gents like you in them. So, Mr. Oliver, to retain
+you among us, we, your fellow-shopkeepers in this here town, ’umbly and
+’eartily solicit you to keep on your late worthy father’s <span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>business.
+And we are here, sir, in a body, or as the representatives of a body,
+to pledge you our support in such plain reforms and improvements as
+you think fit to introduce. We ask you to excuse us for not being wide
+awake to their crying necessity from the first. Sir, men could not
+speak fairer,’ wound up Dadd, in some elation at his own eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>There was more behind. This flattering petition came from the general
+body of the shopkeepers, stirred up by their leaders, who, in their
+private capacities, had something else to say. It was Dadd, again, who
+acted as their mouthpiece, and, though not quite so fluent, was as
+fervent and ’earty as before. He remarked, abruptly, there were some
+favours no man with a heart in his breast could think of repaying, to
+which sentiment Policy chorussed incoherently, ‘No, nor no woman with a
+heart in her bosom—quite so, quite so, Mr. Dadd.’ Then old Dadd went
+on <span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>to press on Oliver, in the friendliest, most considerate manner,
+such an advance in money as these three could afford, to tide him over
+the temporary difficulties which might have induced him to give up the
+baking business.</p>
+
+<p>It was all clear to Oliver at last, while he shrugged his shoulders,
+grimaced fearfully, and stammered out his thanks, assuring the
+gentlemen there was no occasion for their last act of friendship, but
+he would never forget their generous sympathy and confidence, never.
+The truth was it warmed his heart, and he was not at all sure that if
+he had gone on to say this was the proudest moment of his life, there
+would have been the least hypocrisy in the trite hyperbole in his case.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was pleasant to have won some appreciation—however little
+deserved—from his fellow-townsmen, who ought to know him best, to be
+assured that they gave him credit, after all, for meaning well.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span></p>
+
+<p>The nature of the acknowledgment touched and softened Oliver more than
+he could express. He wished his father and Fan might know it. As he
+went out into the streets afterwards, he was sensible of breathing
+another air, of his face being irradiated with a different light.
+He was no longer surprised that he encountered so many friends, and
+that they were all so friendly. Of course they must see he felt that
+everybody was almost intolerably kind, till he could have wished
+they would not come round a beggar so, and demoralise him with their
+kindness. ‘Do they believe in me now?’ Oliver was saying to himself,
+half sadly, in the midst of his gladness, half incredulously still.</p>
+
+<p>Oliver’s feet, like fate, at this crisis, carried him in the direction
+of the Meadows. All danger of infection from Jack Dadd’s fever was
+over, and nothing could be more salutary <span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>for the reformer, to prevent
+his losing his head altogether, than the cold douche of Mrs. Hilliard’s
+laughter, and Catherine’s indifference, in contradiction to the absurd
+excitement of the rest of the inhabitants of Friarton.</p>
+
+<p>But the instant he was shown into the Meadows’ drawing-room—cheery even
+on a November day, Oliver discovered that the antidote he was seeking
+was useless, or rather that there was no such corrective. The town’s
+dilatory admiration and gratitude were there before him, in all the
+excess in which they might be expected from women. Mrs. Hilliard’s
+inveterate jests sounded very much as if they were uttered to save
+herself from breaking down, and her jolly voice grew shaky when she
+asked after Fan’s baby.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to Catherine, she might still have been silent and stiff,
+had she not been penetrated, stirred to the depths of her nature, and
+spurred on by a full share of the public <span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>feeling. So much so, that
+when they were giving Oliver tea and he had cunningly worked round
+the conversation to a neutral topic—the new orders of nurses and the
+new theories of nursing—Catherine, her pale eager face, and eyes
+alight and aglow, with an expression which had all at once acquired a
+certain likeness to Fan’s, suddenly turned round on him and told him
+barefacedly, with the clearest personal application—Sister Elizabeth’s
+opinion was that her own work was good, but it was a better and nobler
+work to prevent the evils which took such costly sacrifices to cure
+them. When a man stood to his post, laboured to clear away his share of
+the abuses which had crept into all trades, and called nothing common
+and unclean—that was preventing great and widespread evils.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Gemini!’ groaned Oliver, gathering up his long legs in a
+marvellous coil which would have done credit to the brothers Davenport,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span>‘don’t you two go in with the others to make a fool and a hero of me!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who shall prevent us?’ cried Mrs. Hilliard. ‘If the town take it into
+its thick head to give you its freedom on an exquisitely illuminated
+card—the illumination done by the most accomplished young lady in the
+place—or if it think fit to crown you with an olive-wreath covered with
+goldbeater’s leaf, you will have to submit. It would never do for you
+to be ungracious, that would spoil everything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then don’t let the town take it into its head. Upon the whole, you had
+better all suffer me to go away in peace, before you recover from your
+delusion.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is not now we are deluded,’ said Catherine. ‘Our eyes have been
+opened, so that we—some of us, no longer see men and women—not so much
+like trees walking, but as hideous caricatures. We see plain at last,
+and recognise our kind—our kin, God-sib—our <span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>gossips, if you will, as
+God made them, through what they have made themselves, or what their
+neighbours have consented to make them. Do you think so lightly of
+us as to imagine we shall ever forget the sight? Do you not know it
+is like life from the dead to recognise brothers and sisters—a great
+multitude which no man could number, wherever we turn? No, you will not
+have the heart to go away from Friarton,’ she finished, in a lower tone
+which was still audible to him, as she played with her spoon, ‘just
+when we are beginning to understand, and when God is going to show you
+the work of your hands, and to establish it.’</p>
+
+<p>Oliver made an excuse to cross the room with his cup. On his return to
+his seat, he paused behind Catherine Hilliard’s chair, and said for her
+ear alone, ‘Take care, Catherine, or else you will be more cruel in the
+end than <span id="cor9"></span>in the beginning.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Have I been cruel?’ she asked, drawing back shyly. But this was the
+season of settling accounts, and he deserved full payment. ‘No, not to
+you,’ she whispered tremulously, with a soft smile. ‘If I was cruel, it
+was to myself—never to you.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hilliard entered her protest, later in the evening; for Oliver
+stayed to dinner without troubling to go home to dress, and he was
+still lingering, talking, as he had never talked in his life before,
+after Mrs. Hilliard had reminded him there was such a ceremony as
+locking the doors in most households. Then she suggested, ‘If there are
+to be two enthusiasts, social reformers, muscular Christians—whatever
+you like to call yourselves—instead of one, and I’m sure one was quite
+enough to come to grief, what is to become of me, I should like to
+know? I shall have a bad time of it, for though Catherine is her own
+mistress, there is such a being as an indignant <span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span>ex-guardian, and I’m
+not her sole cousin. When all trades are held alike, and everybody is
+respected, half of my occupation will be gone, while my ungrateful
+kindred, whom I have suffered to set good, sound long-established
+social distinctions at defiance, will never admit a laughing hyena into
+their menagerie.’</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center allsmcap">
+LONDON: PRINTED BY<br>
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br>
+AND PARLIAMENT STREET
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+<div class="transnote">
+  <h2 class="nobreak" id="Transcriber_Notes">
+    Transcriber Notes
+  </h2>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>The following are corrections to the original text.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>p108</td>
+    <td><a href="#cor0">“markts” changed to (the places and markets).</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>p165</td>
+    <td><a href="#cor2">added period to end of (Stanhope’s last letter.)</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>p240</td>
+    <td><a href="#cor7">“backshop” changed to (back shop from Jim Hull.)</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>p261</td>
+    <td><a href="#cor9">added period to end of (in the beginning.’)</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78319 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
diff --git a/78319-h/images/cover.jpg b/78319-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51f8424
--- /dev/null
+++ b/78319-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c72794
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb87953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #78319
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78319)