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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Marston, by George MacDonald
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mary Marston
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Posting Date: August 23, 2010 [EBook #8201]
+Release Date: June, 2005
+First Posted: July 1, 2003
+[Last updated: May 25, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY MARSTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, Juliet
+Sutherland and the DP Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MARY MARSTON
+
+A NOVEL.
+
+BY
+
+GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+AUTHOR OF "ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD," "ROBERT FALCONER," ETC.,
+ETC.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+   I.--THE SHOP
+   II.--CUSTOMERS
+   III.--THE ARBOR AT THORNWICK
+   IV.--GODFREY WARDOUR
+   V.--GODFREY AND LETTY
+   VI.--TOM HELMER
+   VII.--DURNMELLING
+   VIII.--THE OAK
+   IX.--CONFUSION
+   X.--THE HEATH AND THE HUT
+   XI.--WILLIAM MARSTON
+   XII.--MARY'S DREAM
+   XIII.--THE HUMAN SACRIFICE
+   XIV.--UNGENEROUS BENEVOLENCE
+   XV.--THE MOONLIGHT
+   XVI.--THE MORNING
+   XVII.--THE RESULT
+   XVIII.--MARY AND GODFREY
+   XIX.--MARY IN THE SHOP
+   XX.--THE WEDDING-DRESS
+   XXI.--MR. REDMAIN
+   XXII.--MRS. REDMAIN
+   XXIII.--THE MENIAL
+   XXIV.--MRS. REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM
+   XXV.--MARY'S RECEPTION
+   XXVI.--HER POSITION
+   XXVII.--MR. AND MRS. HELMER
+   XXVIII.--MARY AND LETTY
+   XXIX.--THE EVENING STAR
+   XXX.--A SCOLDING
+   XXXI.--SEPIA
+   XXXII.--HONOR
+   XXXIII.--TUB INVITATION
+   XXXIV.--A STRAY SOUND
+   XXXV.--THE MUSICIAN
+   XXXVI.--A CHANGE
+   XXXVII.--LYDGATE STREET
+   XXXVIII.--GODFREY AND LETTY
+   XXXIX.--RELIEF
+   XL.--GODFREY AND SEPIA
+   XLI.--THE HELPER
+   XLII.--THE LEPER
+   XLIII.--MARY AND MR. REDMAIN
+   XLIV.--JOSEPH JASPER
+   XLV.--THE SAPPHIRE
+   XLVI.--REPARATION
+   XLVII.--ANOTHER CHANGE
+   XLVIII.--DISSOLUTION
+   XLIX.--THORNWICK
+   L.--WILLIAM AND MARY MARSTON
+   LI.--A HARD TASK
+   LII.--A SUMMONS
+   LIII.--A FRIEND IN NEED
+   LIV.--THE NEXT NIGHT
+   LV.--DISAPPEARANCE
+   LVI.--A CATASTROPHE
+   LVII.--THE END OF THE BEGINNING
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SHOP
+
+
+It was an evening early in May. The sun was low, and the street was
+mottled with the shadows of its paving-stones--smooth enough, but far
+from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the
+west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among
+them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the
+fragments. The street was almost empty, and the air was chill. The
+spring was busy, and the summer was at hand; but the wind was blowing
+from the north.
+
+The street was not a common one; there was interest, that is feature,
+in the shadowy front of almost each of its old houses. Not a few of
+them wore, indeed, something like a human expression, the look of
+having both known and suffered. From many a porch, and many a latticed
+oriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in
+a wind unfelt of the body--or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and
+flit away, and add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the
+horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled
+by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and
+exercising a charm none of them would ever gain.
+
+Some of the oldest of its houses, most of them with more than one
+projecting story, stood about the middle of the street. The central and
+oldest of these was a draper's shop. The windows of the ground-floor
+encroached a little on the pavement, to which they descended very
+close, for the floor of the shop was lower than the street. But,
+although they had glass on three oriel sides, they were little used for
+the advertising of the stores within. A few ribbons and gay
+handkerchiefs, mostly of cotton, for the eyes of the country people on
+market-days, formed the chief part of their humble show. The door was
+wide and very low, the upper half of it of glass--old, and
+bottle-colored; and its threshold was a deep step down into the shop.
+As a place for purchases it might not to some eyes look promising, but
+both the ladies and the housekeepers of Testbridge knew that rarely
+could they do better in London itself than at the shop of Turnbull and
+Marston, whether variety, quality, or price, was the point in
+consideration. And, whatever the first impression concerning it, the
+moment the eyes of a stranger began to grow accustomed to its gloom,
+the evident size and plenitude of the shop might well suggest a large
+hope. It was low, indeed, and the walls could therefore accommodate few
+shelves; but the ceiling was therefore so near as to be itself
+available for stowage by means of well-contrived slides and shelves
+attached to the great beams crossing it in several directions. During
+the shop-day, many an article, light as lace, and heavy as broadcloth,
+was taken from overhead to lay upon the counter. The shop had a special
+reputation for all kinds of linen goods, from cambric handkerchiefs to
+towels, and from table-napkins to sheets; but almost everything was to
+be found in it, from Manchester moleskins for the navy's trousers, to
+Genoa velvet for the dowager's gown, and from Horrocks's prints to
+Lyons silks. It had been enlarged at the back, by building beyond the
+original plan, and that part of it was a little higher, and a little
+better lighted than the front; but the whole place was still dark
+enough to have awaked the envy of any swindling London shopkeeper. Its
+owners, however, had so long enjoyed the confidence of the
+neighborhood, that faith readily took the place of sight with their
+customers--so far at least as quality was concerned; and seldom, except
+in a question of color or shade, was an article carried to the door to
+be confronted with the day. It had been just such a shop, untouched of
+even legendary change, as far back as the memory of the sexton reached;
+and he, because of his age and his occupation, was the chief authority
+in the local history of the place.
+
+As, on this evening, there were few people in the street, so were there
+few in the shop, and it was on the point of being closed: they were not
+particular there to a good many minutes either way. Behind the counter,
+on the left hand, stood a youth of about twenty, young George Turnbull,
+the son of the principal partner, occupied in leisurely folding and
+putting aside a number of things he had been showing to a farmer's
+wife, who was just gone. He was an ordinary-looking lad, with little
+more than business in his high forehead, fresh-colored, good-humored,
+self-satisfied cheeks, and keen hazel eyes. These last kept wandering
+from his not very pressing occupation to the other side of the shop,
+where stood, behind the opposing counter, a young woman, in attendance
+upon the wants of a well-dressed youth in front of it, who had just
+made choice of a pair of driving-gloves. His air and carriage were
+conventionally those of a gentleman--a gentleman, however, more than
+ordinarily desirous of pleasing a young woman behind a counter. She
+answered him with politeness, and even friendliness, nor seemed aware
+of anything unusual in his attentions.
+
+"They're splendid gloves," he said, making talk; "but don't you think
+it a great price for a pair of gloves, Miss Marston?"
+
+"It is a good deal of money," she answered, in a sweet, quiet voice,
+whose very tone suggested simplicity and straightforwardness; "but they
+will last you a long time. Just look at the work, Mr. Helmer. You see
+how they are made? It is much more difficult to stitch them like that,
+one edge over the other, than to sew the two edges together, as they do
+with ladies' gloves. But I'll just ask my father whether he marked them
+himself."
+
+"He did mark those, I know," said young Turnbull, who had been
+listening to all that went on, "for I heard my father say they ought to
+be sixpence more."
+
+"Ah, then!" she returned, assentingly, and laid the gloves on the box
+before her, the question settled.
+
+Helmer took them, and began to put them on.
+
+"They certainly are the only glove where there is much handling of
+reins," he said.
+
+"That is what Mr. Wardour says of them," rejoined Miss Marston.
+
+"By the by," said Helmer, lowering his voice, "when did you see anybody
+from Thornwick?"
+
+"Their old man was in the town yesterday with the dog-cart."
+
+"Nobody with him?"
+
+"Miss Letty. She came in for just two minutes or so."
+
+"How was she looking?"
+
+"Very well," answered Miss Marston, with what to Helmer seemed
+indifference.
+
+"Ah!" he said, with a look of knowingness, "you girls don't see each
+other with the same eyes as we. I grant Letty is not very tall, and I
+grant she has not much of a complexion; but where did you ever see such
+eyes?"
+
+"You must excuse me, Mr. Helmer," returned Mary, with a smile, "if I
+don't choose to discuss Letty's merits with you; she is my friend."
+
+"Where would be the harm?" rejoined Helmer, looking puzzled. "I am not
+likely to say anything against her. You know perfectly well I admire
+her beyond any woman in the world. I don't care who knows it."
+
+"Your mother?" suggested Mary, in the tone of one who makes a venture.
+
+"Ah, come now, Miss Marston! Don't you turn my mother loose upon me. I
+shall be of age in a few months, and then my mother may--think as she
+pleases. I know, of course, with her notions, she would never consent
+to my making love to Letty--"
+
+"I should think not!" exclaimed Mary. "Who ever thought of such an
+absurdity? Not you, surely, Mr. Helmer? What would your mother say to
+hear you? I mention her in earnest now."
+
+"Let mothers mind their own business!" retorted the youth angrily. "I
+shall mind mine. My mother ought to know that by this time."
+
+Mary said no more. She knew Mrs. Helmer was not a mother to deserve her
+boy's confidence, any more than to gain it; for she treated him as if
+she had made him, and was not satisfied with her work.
+
+"When are you going to see Letty, Miss Marston?" resumed Helmer, after
+a brief pause of angry feeling.
+
+"Next Sunday evening probably."
+
+"Take me with you."
+
+"Take you with me! What are you dreaming of, Mr. Helmer?"
+
+"I would give my bay mare for a good talk with Letty Lovel," he
+returned.
+
+Mary made no reply.
+
+"You won't?" he said petulantly, after a vain pause of expectation.
+
+"Won't what?" rejoined Miss Marston, as if she could not believe him in
+earnest.
+
+"Take me with you on Sunday?"
+
+"No," she answered quietly, but with sober decision.
+
+"Where would be the harm?" pleaded the youth, in a tone mingled of
+expostulation, entreaty, and mortification.
+
+"One is not bound to do everything there would be no harm in doing,"
+answered Miss Marston. "Besides, Mr. Helmer, I don't choose to go out
+walking with you of a Sunday evening."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"For one thing, your mother would not like it. You know she would not."
+
+"Never mind my mother. She's nothing to you. She can't bite you.--Ask
+the dentist. Come, come! that's all nonsense. I shall be at the stile
+beyond the turnpike-gate all the afternoon--waiting till you come."
+
+"The moment I see you--anywhere upon the road--that moment I shall turn
+back.--Do you think," she added with half-amused indignation, "I would
+put up with having all the gossips of Testbridge talk of my going out
+on a Sunday evening with a boy like you?"
+
+Tom Helmer's face flushed. He caught up the gloves, threw the price of
+them on the counter, and walked from the shop, without even a good
+night.
+
+"Hullo!" cried George Turnbull, vaulting over the counter, and taking
+the place Helmer had just left opposite Mary; "what did you say to the
+fellow to send him off like that? If you do hate the business, you
+needn't scare the customers, Mary."
+
+"I don't hate the business, you know quite well, George. And if I did
+scare a customer," she added, laughing, as she dropped the money in the
+till, "it was not before he had done buying."
+
+"That may be; but we must look to to-morrow as well as to-day. When is
+Mr. Helmer likely to come near us again, after such a wipe as you must
+have given him to make him go off like that?"
+
+"Just to-morrow, George, I fancy," answered Mary. "He won't be able to
+bear the thought of having left a bad impression on me, and so he'll
+come again to remove it. After all, there's something about him I can't
+help liking. I said nothing that ought to have put him out of temper
+like that, though; I only called him a boy."
+
+"Let me tell you, Mary, you could not have called him a worse name."
+
+"Why, what else is he?"
+
+"A more offensive word a man could not hear from the lips of a woman,"
+said George loftily.
+
+"A man, I dare say! But Mr. Helmer can't be nineteen yet."
+
+"How can you say so, when he told you himself he would be of age in a
+few months? The fellow is older than I am. You'll be calling me a boy
+next."
+
+"What else are you? You at least are not one-and-twenty."
+
+"And how old do you call yourself, pray, miss?"
+
+"Three-and-twenty last birthday."
+
+"A mighty difference indeed!"
+
+"Not much--only all the difference, it seems, between sense and
+absurdity, George."
+
+"That may be all very true of a fine gentleman, like Helmer, that does
+nothing from morning to night but run away from his mother; but you
+don't think it applies to me, Mary, I hope!"
+
+"That's as you behave yourself, George. If you do not make it apply, it
+won't apply of itself. But if young women had not more sense than most
+of the young men I see in the shop--on both sides of the counter,
+George--things would soon be at a fine pass. Nothing better in your
+head than in a peacock's!--only that a peacock _has_ the fine feathers
+he's so proud of."
+
+"If it were Mr. Wardour now, Mary, that was spreading his tail for you
+to see, you would not complain of that peacock!"
+
+A vivid rose blossomed instantly in Mary's cheek. Mr. Wardour was not
+even an acquaintance of hers. He was cousin and friend to Letty Lovel,
+indeed, but she had never spoken to him, except in the shop.
+
+"It would not be quite out of place if you were to learn a little
+respect for your superiors, George," she returned. "Mr. Wardour is not
+to be thought of in the same moment with the young men that were in my
+mind. Mr. Wardour is not a young man; and he is a gentleman."
+
+She took the glove-box, and turning placed it on a shelf behind her.
+
+"Just so!" remarked George, bitterly. "Any man you don't choose to
+count a gentleman, you look down upon! What have you got to do with
+gentlemen, I should like to know?"
+
+"To admire one when I see him," answered Mary. "Why shouldn't I? It is
+very seldom, and it does me good."
+
+"Oh, yes!" rejoined George, contemptuously. "You _call_ yourself a
+lady, but--"
+
+"I do nothing of the kind," interrupted Mary, sharply. "I should _like_
+to be a lady; and inside of me, please God, I _will_ be a lady; but I
+leave it to other people to call me this or that. It matters little
+what any one is _called_."
+
+"All right," returned George, a little cowed; "I don't mean to
+contradict you. Only just tell me why a well-to-do tradesman shouldn't
+be a gentleman as well as a small yeoman like Wardour."
+
+"Why don't you say--as well as a squire, or an earl, or a duke?" said
+Mary.
+
+"There you are, chaffing me again! It's hard enough to have every fool
+of a lawyer's clerk, or a doctor's boy, looking down upon a fellow, and
+calling him a counter-jumper; but, upon my soul, it's too bad when a
+girl in the same shop hasn't a civil word for him, because he isn't
+what she counts a gentleman! Isn't my father a gentleman? Answer me
+that, Mary."
+
+It was one of George's few good things that he had a great opinion of
+his father, though the grounds of it were hardly such as to enable Mary
+to answer his appeal in a way he would have counted satisfactory. She
+thought of her own father, and was silent.
+
+"Everything depends on what a man is in himself, George," she answered.
+"Mr. Wardour would be a gentleman all the same if he were a shopkeeper
+or a blacksmith."
+
+"And shouldn't I be as good a gentleman as Mr. Wardour, if I had been
+born with an old tumble-down house on my back, and a few acres of land
+I could do with as I liked? Come, answer me that."
+
+"If it be the house and the land that makes the difference, you would,
+of course," answered Mary.
+
+Her tone implied, even to George's rough perceptions, that there was a
+good deal more of a difference between them than therein lay. But
+common people, whether lords or shopkeepers, are slow to understand
+that possession, whether in the shape of birth, or lands, or money, or
+intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.
+
+"I know you don't think me fit to hold a candle to him," he said. "But
+I happen to know, for all he rides such a good horse, he's not above
+doing the work of a wretched menial, for he polishes his own
+stirrup-irons."
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it," rejoined Mary. "He must be more of a
+gentleman yet than I thought him."
+
+"Then why should you count him a better gentleman than me?"
+
+"I'm afraid for one thing, you would go with your stirrup-irons rusty,
+rather than clean them yourself, George. But I will tell you one thing
+Mr. Wardour would not do if he were a shopkeeper: he would not, like
+you, talk one way to the rich, and another way to the poor--all
+submission and politeness to the one, and familiarity, even to
+rudeness, with the other! If you go on like that, you'll never come
+within sight of being a gentleman, George--not if you live to the age
+of Methuselah."
+
+"Thank you, Miss Mary! It's a fine thing to have a lady in the shop!
+Shouldn't I just like my father to hear you! I'm blowed if I know how a
+fellow is to get on with you! Certain sure I am that it ain't _my_
+fault if we're not friends."
+
+Mary made no reply. She could not help understanding what George meant,
+and she flushed, with honest anger, from brow to chin. But, while her
+dark-blue eyes flamed with indignation, her anger was not such as to
+render her face less pleasant to look upon. There are as many kinds of
+anger as there are of the sunsets with which they ought to end: Mary's
+anger had no hate in it.
+
+I must now hope my readers sufficiently interested in my narrative to
+care that I should tell them something of what she was like. Plainly as
+I see her, I can not do more for them than that. I can not give a
+portrait of her; I can but cast her shadow on my page. It was a dainty
+half-length, neither tall nor short, in a plain, well-fitting dress of
+black silk, with linen collar and cuffs, that rose above the counter,
+standing, in spite of displeasure, calm and motionless. Her hair was
+dark, and dressed in the simplest manner, without even a reminder of
+the hideous occipital structure then in favor--especially with shop
+women, who in general choose for imitation and exorbitant development
+whatever is ugliest and least lady-like in the fashion of the hour. It
+had a natural wave in it, which broke the too straight lines it would
+otherwise have made across a forehead of sweet and composing
+proportions. Her features were regular--her nose straight--perhaps a
+little thin; the curve of her upper lip carefully drawn, as if with
+design to express a certain firmness of modesty; and her chin well
+shaped, perhaps a little too sharply defined for her years, and rather
+large. Everything about her suggested the repose of order satisfied, of
+unconstrained obedience to the laws of harmonious relation. The only
+fault honest criticism could have suggested, merely suggested, was the
+presence of just a possible _nuance_ of primness. Her boots, at this
+moment unseen of any, fitted her feet, as her feet fitted her body. Her
+hands were especially good. There are not many ladies, interested in
+their own graces, who would not have envied her such seals to her
+natural patent of ladyhood. Her speech and manners corresponded with
+her person and dress; they were direct and simple, in tone and
+inflection, those of one at peace with herself. Neatness was more
+notable in her than grace, but grace was not absent; good breeding was
+more evident than delicacy, yet delicacy was there; and unity was plain
+throughout.
+
+George went back to his own side of the shop, jumped the counter, put
+the cover on the box he had left open with a bang, and shoved it into
+its place as if it had been the backboard of a cart, shouting as he did
+so to a boy invisible, to make haste and put up the shutters. Mary left
+the shop by a door on the inside of the counter, for she and her father
+lived in the house; and, as soon as the shop was closed, George went
+home to the villa his father had built in the suburbs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CUSTOMERS.
+
+
+The next day was Saturday, a busy one at the shop. From the neighboring
+villages and farms came customers not a few; and ladies, from the
+country-seats around, began to arrive as the hours went on. The whole
+strength of the establishment was early called out. Busiest in serving
+was the senior partner, Mr. Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with
+a bald crown, a heavy watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the
+wide space between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large
+hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his little
+one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had cultivated an
+ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree that, to use the common
+hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By nature he was good-tempered
+and genial; but, having devoted every mental as well as physical
+endowment to the making of money, what few drops of spiritual water
+were in him had to go with the rest to the turning of the mill-wheel
+that ground the universe into coin. In his own eyes he was a strong
+churchman, but the only sign of it visible to others was the strength
+of his contempt for dissenters--which, however, excepting his partner
+and Mary, he showed only to church-people; a dissenter's money being,
+as he often remarked, when once in his till, as good as the best
+churchman's.
+
+To the receptive eye he was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as he
+bent over a piece of goods outspread before a customer, one hand
+resting on the stuff, the other on the yard-measure, his chest as
+nearly touching the counter as the protesting adjacent parts would
+permit, his broad smooth face turned up at right angles, and his mouth,
+eloquent even to solemnity on the merits of the article, now hiding,
+now disclosing a gulf of white teeth. No sooner was anything admitted
+into stock, than he bent his soul to the selling of it, doing
+everything that could be done, saying everything he could think of
+saying, short of plain lying as to its quality: that he was not guilty
+of. To buy well was a care to him, to sell well was a greater, but to
+make money, and that as speedily as possible, was his greatest care,
+and his whole ambition.
+
+John Turnbull in his gig, as he drove along the road to the town, and
+through the street approached his shop-door, showed to the chance
+observer a man who knew himself of importance, a man who might have a
+soul somewhere inside that broad waistcoat; as he drew up, threw the
+reins to his stable-boy, and descended upon the pavement--as he stepped
+down into the shop even, he looked a being in whom son or daughter or
+friend might feel some honest pride; but, the moment he was behind the
+counter and in front of a customer, he changed to a creature whose
+appearance and carriage were painfully contemptible to any beholder who
+loved his kind; he had lost the upright bearing of a man, and cringed
+like an ape. But I fear it was thus he had gained a portion at least of
+his favor with the country-folk, many of whom much preferred his
+ministrations to those of his partner. A glance, indeed, from the one
+to the other, was enough to reveal which must be the better
+salesman--and to some eyes which the better man.
+
+In the narrow walk of his commerce--behind the counter, I mean--Mr.
+Marston stood up tall and straight, lank and lean, seldom bending more
+than his long neck in the direction of the counter, but doing
+everything needful upon it notwithstanding, from the unusual length of
+his arms and his bony hands. His forehead was high and narrow, his face
+pale and thin, his hair long and thin, his nose aquiline and thin, his
+eyes large, his mouth and chin small. He seldom spoke a syllable more
+than was needful, but his words breathed calm respect to every
+customer. His conversation with one was commonly all but over as he
+laid something for approval or rejection on the counter: he had already
+taken every pains to learn the precise nature of the necessity or
+desire; and what he then offered he submitted without comment; if the
+thing was not judged satisfactory, he removed it and brought another.
+Many did not like this mode of service; they would be helped to buy;
+unequal to the task of making up their minds, they welcomed any aid
+toward it; and therefore preferred Mr. Turnbull, who gave them every
+imaginable and unimaginable assistance, groveling before them like a
+man whose many gods came to him one after the other to be worshiped;
+while Mr. Marston, the moment the thing he presented was on the
+counter, shot straight up like a poplar in a sudden calm, his visage
+bearing witness that his thought was already far away--in heavenly
+places with his wife, or hovering like a perplexed bee over some
+difficult passage in the New Testament; Mary could have told which, for
+she knew the meaning of every shadow that passed or lingered on his
+countenance.
+
+His partner and his like-minded son despised him, as a matter of
+course; his unbusiness-like habits, as they counted them, were the
+constantly recurring theme of their scorn; and some of these would
+doubtless have brought him the disapprobation of many a business man of
+a moral development beyond that of Turnbull; but Mary saw nothing in
+them which did not stamp her father the superior of all other men she
+knew.
+
+To mention one thing, which may serve as typical of the man: he not
+unfrequently sold things under the price marked by his partner. Against
+this breach of fealty to the firm Turnbull never ceased to level his
+biggest guns of indignation and remonstrance, though always without
+effect. He even lowered himself in his own eyes so far as to quote
+Scripture like a canting dissenter, and remind his partner of what came
+to a house divided against itself. He did not see that the best thing
+for some houses must be to come to pieces. "Well, but, Mr. Turnbull, I
+thought it was marked too high," was the other's invariable answer.
+"William, you are a fool," his partner would rejoin for the hundredth
+time. "Will you never understand that, if we get a little more than the
+customary profit upon one thing, we get less upon another? You must
+make the thing even, or come to the workhouse." Thereto, for the
+hundredth time also, William Marston would reply: "That might hold, I
+daresay, Mr. Turnbull--I am not sure--if every customer always bought
+an article of each of the two sorts together; but I can't make it
+straight with my conscience that one customer should pay too much
+because I let another pay too little. Besides, I am not at all sure
+that the general scale of profit is not set too high. I fear you and I
+will have to part, Mr. Turnbull." But nothing was further from
+Turnbull's desire than that he and Marston should part; he could not
+keep the business going without his money, not to mention that he never
+doubted Marston would straightway open another shop, and, even if he
+did not undersell him, take from him all his dissenting customers; for
+the junior partner was deacon of a small Baptist church in the town--a
+fact which, although like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of
+John Turnbull in his villa, was invaluable in the eyes of John Turnbull
+behind his counter.
+
+Whether William Marston was right or wrong in his ideas about the rite
+of baptism--probably he was both--he was certainly right in his
+relation to that which alone makes it of any value--that, namely, which
+it signifies; buried with his Master, he had died to selfishness,
+greed, and trust in the secondary; died to evil, and risen to good--a
+new creature. He was just as much a Christian in his shop as in the
+chapel, in his bedroom as at the prayer-meeting.
+
+But the world was not now much temptation to him, and, to tell the
+truth, he was getting a good deal tired of the shop. He had to remind
+himself, oftener and oftener, that in the mean time it was the work
+given him to do, and to take more and more frequently the strengthening
+cordial of a glance across the shop at his daughter. Such a glance
+passed through the dusky place like summer lightning through a heavy
+atmosphere, and came to Mary like a glad prophecy; for it told of a
+world within and beyond the world, a region of love and faith, where
+struggled no antagonistic desires, no counteracting aims, but unity was
+the visible garment of truth.
+
+The question may well suggest itself to my reader--How could such a man
+be so unequally yoked with such another as Turnbull?--To this I reply
+that Marston's greatness had yet a certain repressive power upon the
+man who despised him, so that he never uttered his worst thoughts or
+revealed his worst basenesses in his presence. Marston never thought of
+him as my reader must soon think--flattered himself, indeed, that poor
+John was gradually improving, coming to see things more and more as he
+would have him look on them. Add to this, that they had been in the
+business together almost from boyhood, and much will be explained.
+
+An open carriage, with a pair of showy but ill-matched horses, looking
+unfit for country work on the one hand, as for Hyde Park on the other,
+drew up at the door; and a visible wave of interest ran from end to end
+of the shop, swaying as well those outside as those inside the counter,
+for the carriage was well known in Testbridge. It was that of Lady
+Margaret Mortimer; she did not herself like the _Margaret_, and signed
+only her second name _Alice_ at full length, whence her _friends_
+generally called her to each other Lady Malice. She did not leave the
+carriage, but continued to recline motionless in it, at an angle of
+forty-five degrees, wrapped in furs, for the day was cloudy and cold,
+her pale handsome face looking inexpressibly more indifferent in its
+regard of earth and sky and the goings of men, than that of a corpse
+whose gaze is only on the inside of the coffin-lid. But the two ladies
+who were with her got down. One of them was her daughter, Hesper by
+name, who, from the dull, cloudy atmosphere that filled the doorway,
+entered the shop like a gleam of sunshine, dusky-golden, followed by a
+glowing shadow, in the person of her cousin, Miss Yolland.
+
+Turnbull hurried to meet them, bowing profoundly, and looking very much
+like Issachar between the chairs he carried. But they turned aside to
+where Mary stood, and in a few minutes the counter was covered with
+various stuffs for some of the smaller articles of ladies' attire.
+
+The customers were hard to please, for they wanted the best things at
+the price of inferior ones, and Mary noted that the desires of the
+cousin were farther reaching and more expensive than those of Miss
+Mortimer. But, though in this way hard to please, they were not
+therefore unpleasant to deal with; and from the moment she looked the
+latter in the face, whom she had not seen since she was a girl, Mary
+could hardly take her eyes off her. All at once it struck her how well
+the unusual, fantastic name her mother had given her suited her; and,
+as she gazed, the feeling grew.
+
+Large, and grandly made, Hesper stood "straight, and steady, and tall,"
+dusky-fair, and colorless, with the carriage of a young matron. Her
+brown hair seemed ever scathed and crinkled afresh by the ethereal
+flame that here and there peeped from amid the unwilling volute rolled
+back from her creamy forehead in a rebellious coronet. Her eyes were
+large and hazel; her nose cast gently upward, answering the carriage of
+her head; her mouth decidedly large, but so exquisite in drawing and
+finish that the loss of a centimetre of its length would to a lover
+have been as the loss of a kingdom; her chin a trifle large, and
+grandly lined; for a woman's, her throat was massive, and her arms and
+hands were powerful. Her expression was frank, almost brave, her eyes
+looking full at the person she addressed. As she gazed, a kind of love
+she had never felt before kept swelling in Mary's heart.
+
+Her companion impressed her very differently.
+
+Some men, and most women, counted Miss Yolland _strangely_ ugly. But
+there were men who exceedingly admired her. Not very slight for her
+stature, and above the middle height, she looked small beside Hesper.
+Her skin was very dark, with a considerable touch of sallowness; her
+eyes, which were large and beautifully shaped, were as black as eyes
+could be, with light in the midst of their blackness, and more than a
+touch of hardness in the midst of their liquidity; her eyelashes were
+singularly long and black, and she seemed conscious of them every time
+they rose. She did not _use_ her eyes habitually, but, when she did,
+the thrust was sudden and straight. I heard a man once say that a look
+from her was like a volley of small-arms. Like Hesper's, her mouth was
+large and good, with fine teeth; her chin projected a little too much;
+her hands were finer than Hesper's, but bony. Her name was Septimia;
+Lady Margaret called her Sepia, and the contraction seemed to so many
+suitable that it was ere long generally adopted. She was in mourning,
+with a little crape. To the first glance she seemed as unlike Hesper as
+she could well be; but, as she stood gently regarding the two, Mary,
+gradually, and to her astonishment, became indubitably aware of a
+singular likeness between them. Sepia, being a few years older, and in
+less flourishing condition, had her features sharper and finer, and by
+nature her complexion was darker by shades innumerable; but, if the one
+was the evening, the other was the night: Sepia was a diminished and
+overshadowed Hesper. Their manner, too, was similar, but Sepia's was
+the haughtier, and she had an occasional look of defiance, of which
+there appeared nothing in Hesper. When first she came to Durnmelling,
+Lady Malice had once alluded to the dependence of her position--but
+only once: there came a flash into rather than out of Sepia's eyes that
+made any repetition of the insult impossible and Lady Malice wish that
+she had left her a wanderer on the face of Europe.
+
+Sepia was the daughter of a clergyman, an uncle of Lady Malice, whose
+sons had all gone to the bad, and whose daughters had all vanished from
+society. Shortly before the time at which my narrative begins, one of
+the latter, however, namely Sepia, the youngest, had reappeared, a
+fragment of the family wreck, floating over the gulf of its
+destruction. Nobody knew with any certainty where she had been in the
+interim: nobody at Durnmelling knew anything but what she chose to
+tell, and that was not much. She said she had been a governess in
+Austrian Poland and Russia. Lady Margaret had become reconciled to her
+presence, and Hesper attached to her.
+
+Of the men who, as I have said, admired her, some felt a peculiar
+enchantment in what they called her ugliness; others declared her
+devilish handsome; and some shrank from her as if with an undefined
+dread of perilous entanglement, if she should but catch them looking
+her in the face. Among some of them she was known as Lucifer, in
+antithesis to Hesper: they meant the Lucifer of darkness, not the
+light-bringer of the morning.
+
+The ladies, on their part, especially Hesper, were much pleased with
+Mary. The simplicity of her address and manner, the pains she took to
+find the exact thing she wanted, and the modest decision with which she
+answered any reference to her, made Hesper even like her. The most
+artificially educated of women is yet human, and capable of even more
+than liking a fellow-creature as such. When their purchases were ended,
+she took her leave with a kind smile, which went on glowing in Mary's
+heart long after she had vanished.
+
+"Home, John," said Lady Margaret, the moment the two ladies were
+seated. "I hope you have got _all_ you wanted. We shall be late for
+luncheon, I fear. I would not for worlds keep Mr. Redmain waiting.--A
+little faster, John, please."
+
+Hesper's face darkened. Sepia eyed her fixedly, from under the mingling
+of ascended lashes and descended brows. The coachman pretended to obey,
+but the horses knew very well when he did and when he did not mean them
+to go, and took not a step to the minute more: John had regard to the
+splendid-looking black horse on the near side, which was weak in the
+wind, as well as on one fired pastern, and cared little for the anxiety
+of his mistress. To him, horses were the final peak of creation--or if
+not the horses, the coachman, whose they are--masters and mistresses
+the merest parasitical adjuncts. He got them home in good time for
+luncheon, notwithstanding--more to Lady Margaret's than Hesper's
+satisfaction.
+
+Mr. Redmain was a bachelor of fifty, to whom Lady Margaret was
+endeavoring to make the family agreeable, in the hope he might take
+Hesper off their hands. I need not say he was rich. He was a common
+man, with good cold manners, which he offered you like a handle. He was
+selfish, capable of picking up a lady's handkerchief, but hardly a
+wife's. He was attentive to Hesper; but she scarcely concealed such a
+repugnance to him as some feel at sight of strange fishes--being at the
+same time afraid of him, which was not surprising, as she could hardly
+fail to perceive the fate intended for her.
+
+"Ain't Miss Mortimer a stunner?" said George Turnbull to Mary, when the
+tide of customers had finally ebbed from the shop.
+
+"I don't exactly know what you mean, George," answered Mary.
+
+"Oh, of course, I know it ain't fair to ask any girl to admire
+another," said George. "But there's no offense to you, Mary. One young
+lady can't carry _every_ merit on her back. She'd be too lovely to
+live, you know. Miss Mortimer ain't got your waist, nor she ain't got
+your 'ands, nor your 'air; and you ain't got her size, nor the sort of
+hair she 'as with her."
+
+He looked up from the piece of leno he was smoothing out, and saw he
+was alone in the shop.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE ARBOR AT THORNWICK.
+
+
+The next day was Sunday at last, a day dear to all who do anything like
+their duty in the week, whether they go to church or not. For Mary, she
+went to the Baptist chapel; it was her custom, rendered holy by the
+companionship of her father. But this day it was with more than
+ordinary restlessness and lack of interest that she stood, knelt, and
+sat, through the routine of observance; for old Mr. Duppa was certainly
+duller than usual: how could it be otherwise, when he had been
+preparing to spend a mortal hour in descanting on the reasons which
+necessitated the separation of all true Baptists from all
+brother-believers? The narrow, high-souled little man--for a soul as
+well as a forehead can be both high and narrow--was dull that morning
+because he spoke out of his narrowness, and not out of his height; and
+Mary was better justified in feeling bored than even when George
+Turnbull plagued her with his vulgar attentions. When she got out at
+last, sedate as she was, she could hardly help skipping along the
+street by her father's side. Far better than chapel was their nice
+little cold dinner together, in their only sitting-room, redolent of
+the multifarious goods piled around it on all the rest of the floor.
+Greater yet was the following pleasure--of making her father lie down
+on the sofa, and reading him to sleep, after which she would doze a
+little herself, and dream a little, in the great chair that had been
+her grandmother's. Then they had their tea, and then her father always
+went to see the minister before chapel in the evening.
+
+When he was gone, Mary would put on her pretty straw bonnet, and set
+out to visit Letty Lovel at Thornwick. Some of the church-members
+thought this habit of taking a walk, instead of going again to the
+chapel, very worldly, and did not scruple to let her know their
+opinion; but, so long as her father was satisfied with her, Mary did
+not care a straw for the world besides. She was too much occupied with
+obedience to trouble her head about opinion, either her own or other
+people's. Not until a question comes puzzling and troubling us so as to
+paralyze the energy of our obedience is there any necessity for its
+solution, or any probability of finding a real one. A thousand foolish
+_doctrines_ may lie unquestioned in the mind, and never interfere with
+the growth or bliss of him who lives in active subordination of his
+life to the law of life: obedience will in time exorcise them, like
+many another worse devil.
+
+It had drizzled all the morning from the clouds as well as from the
+pulpit, but, just as Mary stepped out of the kitchen-door, the sun
+stepped out of the last rain-cloud. She walked quickly from the town,
+eager for the fields and the trees, but in some dread of finding Tom
+Helmer at the stile; for he was such a fool, she said to herself, that
+there was no knowing what he might do, for all she had said; but he had
+thought better of it, and she was soon crossing meadows and cornfields
+in peace, by a path which, with many a winding, and many an up and
+down, was the nearest way to Thornwick.
+
+The saints of old did well to pray God to lift on them the light of his
+countenance: has the Christian of the new time learned of his Master
+that the clouds and the sunshine come and go of themselves? If the
+sunshine fills the hearts of old men and babes and birds with gladness
+and praise, and God never meant it, then are they all idolaters, and
+have but a careless Father. Sweet earthy odors rose about Mary from the
+wet ground; the rain-drops glittered on the grass and corn-blades and
+hedgerows; a soft damp wind breathed rather than blew about the gaps
+and gates; with an upward springing, like that of a fountain momently
+gathering strength, the larks kept shooting aloft, there, like
+music-rockets, to explode in showers of glowing and sparkling song;
+while, all the time and over all, the sun as he went down kept shining
+in the might of his peace; and the heart of Mary praised her Father in
+heaven.
+
+Where the narrow path ran westward for a little way, so that she could
+see nothing for the sun in her eyes, in the middle of a plowed field
+she would have run right against a gentleman, had he been as blind as
+she; but, his back being to the sun, he saw her perfectly, and stepped
+out of her way into the midst of a patch of stiff soil, where the rain
+was yet lying between the furrows. She saw him then, and as, lifting
+his hat, he stopped again upon the path, she recognized Mr. Wardour.
+
+"Oh, your nice boots!" she cried, in the childlike distress of a simple
+soul discovering itself the cause of catastrophe, for his boots were
+smeared all over with yellow clay.
+
+"It only serves me right," returned Mr. Wardour, with a laugh of
+amusement. "I oughtn't to have put on such thin ones at the first smile
+of summer."
+
+Again he lifted his hat, and walked on.
+
+Mary also pursued her path, genuinely though gently pained that one
+should have stepped up to the ankles in mud on her account. As I have
+already said, except in the shop she had never before spoken to Mr.
+Wardour, and, although he had so simply responded to her exclamation,
+he did not even know who she was.
+
+The friendship which now drew Mary to Thornwick, Godfrey Wardour's
+place, was not one of long date. She and Letty Lovel had, it is true,
+known each other for years, but only quite of late had their
+acquaintance ripened into something better; and it was not without
+protestation on the part of Mrs. Wardour, Godfrey's mother, that she
+had seen the growth of an intimacy between the two young women. The
+society of a shopwoman, she often remarked, was far from suitable for
+one who, as the daughter of a professional man, might lay claim to the
+position of a gentlewoman. For Letty was the orphan daughter of a
+country surgeon, a cousin of Mrs. Wardour, for whom she had had a great
+liking while yet they were boy and girl together. At the same time,
+however much she would have her consider herself the superior of Mary
+Marston, she by no means treated her as her own equal, and Letty could
+not help being afraid of her aunt, as she called her.
+
+The well-meaning woman was in fact possessed by two devils--the one the
+stiff-necked devil of pride, the other the condescending devil of
+benevolence. She was kind, but she must have credit for it; and Letty,
+although the child of a loved cousin, must not presume upon that, or
+forget that the wife and mother of long-descended proprietors of
+certain acres of land was greatly the superior of any man who lived by
+the exercise of the best-educated and most helpful profession. She
+counted herself a devout Christian, but her ideas of rank, at
+least--therefore certainly not a few others--were absolutely opposed to
+the Master's teaching: they who did least for others were her
+aristocracy.
+
+Now, Letty was a simple, true-hearted girl, rather slow, who honestly
+tried to understand her aunt's position with regard to her friend.
+"Shop-girls," her aunt had said, "are not fitting company for you,
+Letty."
+
+"I do not know any other shop-girls, aunt," Letty replied, with hidden
+trembling; "but, if they are not nice, then they are not like Mary.
+She's downright good; indeed she is, aunt!--a great deal, ever so much,
+better than I am."
+
+"That may well be," answered Mrs. Wardour, "but it does not make a lady
+of her."
+
+"I am sure," returned Letty, bewildered, "on Sundays you could not tell
+the difference between her and any other young lady."
+
+"Any other well-dressed young woman, my dear, you should say. I believe
+shop-girls do call their companions young ladies, but that can not
+justify the application of the word. I am scarcely bound to speak of my
+cook as a lady because letters come addressed to her as Miss Tozer. If
+the word 'lady' should sink at last to common use, as in Italy every
+woman is Donna, we must find some other word to ex-press what _used_ to
+be meant by it."
+
+"Is Mrs. Cropper a lady, aunt?" asked Letty, after a pause, in which
+her brains, which were not half so muddled as she thought them, had
+been busy feeling after firm ground in the morass of social distinction
+thus opened under her.
+
+"She is received as such," replied Mrs. Wardour, but with doubled
+stiffness, through which ran a tone of injury.
+
+"Would you receive her, aunt, if she called upon you?"
+
+"She has horses and servants, and everything a woman of the world can
+desire; but I should feel I was bowing the knee to Mammon were I to ask
+her to my house. Yet such is the respect paid to money in these
+degenerate days that many a one will court the society of a person like
+that, who would think me or your cousin Godfrey unworthy of notice,
+because we have no longer a tithe of the property the family once
+possessed."
+
+The lady forgot there is a Rimmon as well as a Mammon.
+
+"God knows," she went on, "how that woman's husband made his money! But
+that is a small matter nowadays, except to old-fashioned people like
+myself. Not _how_ but _how much_, is all the question now," she
+concluded, flattering herself she had made a good point.
+
+"Don't think me rude, please, aunt: I am really wishing to
+understand--but, if Mrs. Cropper is not a lady, how can Mary Marston
+not be one? She is as different from Mrs. Croppor as one woman can be
+from another."
+
+"Because she has not the position in society," replied Mrs. Wardour,
+enveloping her nothing in flimsy reiteration and self-contradiction.
+
+"And Mrs. Cropper has the position?" ventured Letty, with a little
+palpitation from fear of offending.
+
+"Apparently so," answered Mrs. Wardour. But her inquiring pupil did not
+feel much enlightened. Letty had not the logic necessary to the
+thinking of the thing out; or to the discovery that, like most social
+difficulties, hers was merely one of the upper strata of a question
+whose foundation lies far too deep for what is called Society to
+perceive its very existence. And hence it is no wonder that Society,
+abetted by the Church, should go on from generation to generation
+talking murderous platitudes about it.
+
+But, although such was her reasoning beforehand, heart had so far
+overcome habit and prejudice with Mrs. Wardour, that, convinced on the
+first interview of the high tone and good influence of Mary, she had
+gradually come to put herself in the way of seeing her as often as she
+came, ostensibly to herself that she might prevent any deterioration of
+intercourse; and although she always, on these occasions, played the
+grand lady, with a stateliness that seemed to say, "Because of your
+individual worth, I condescend, and make an exception, but you must not
+imagine I receive your class at Thornwick," she had almost entirely
+ceased making remarks upon the said class in Letty's hearing.
+
+On her part, Letty had by this time grown so intimate with Mary as to
+open with her the question upon which her aunt had given her so little
+satisfaction; and this same Sunday afternoon, as they sat in the arbor
+at the end of the long yew hedge in the old garden, it had come up
+again between them; for, set thinking by Letty's bewilderment, Mary had
+gone on thinking, and had at length laid hold of the matter, at least
+by the end that belonged to _her_.
+
+"I can not consent, Letty," she said, "to trouble my mind about it as
+you do. I can not afford it. Society is neither my master nor my
+servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not
+bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth
+getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have
+no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence,
+and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she,
+constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she
+would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of
+her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me,
+Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says
+_Daughter_ to me? It reminds me of what I heard my father say once to
+Mr. Turnbull, when he had been protesting that none but church people
+ought to be buried in the churchyards. 'I don't care a straw about it,
+Mr. Turnbull,' he said. 'The Master was buried in a garden.'--'Ah, but
+you see things are different now,' said Mr. Turnbull.--'I don't hang by
+things, but by my Master. It is enough for the disciple that he should
+be as his Master,' said my father.--'Besides, you don't think it of any
+real consequence yourself, or you would never want to keep your
+brothers and sisters out of such nice quiet places!'--Mr. Turnbull gave
+his kind of grunt, and said no more."
+
+After passing Mary, Mr. Wardour did not go very far before he began to
+slacken his pace; a moment or two more and he suddenly wheeled round,
+and began to walk back toward Thornwick. Two things had combined to
+produce this change of purpose--the first, the state of his boots,
+which, beginning to dry in the sun and wind as he walked, grew more and
+more hideous at the end of his new gray trousers; the other, the
+occurring suspicion that the girl must be Letty's new shopkeeping
+friend, Miss Marston, on her way to visit her. What a sweet, simple
+young woman she was! he thought; and straightway began to argue with
+himself that, as his boots were in such evil plight, it would be more
+pleasant to spend the evening with Letty and her friend, than to hold
+on his way to his own friend's, and spend the evening smoking and
+lounging about the stable, or hearing his sister play polkas and
+mazurkas all the still Sunday twilight.
+
+Mary had, of course, upon her arrival, narrated her small adventure,
+and the conversation had again turned upon Godfrey just as he was
+nearing the house.
+
+"How handsome your cousin is!" said Mary, with the simplicity natural
+to her.
+
+"Do you think so?" returned Letty.
+
+"Don't _you_ think so?" rejoined Mary.
+
+"I have never thought about it," answered Letty.
+
+"He looks so manly, and has such a straightforward way with him!" said
+Mary.
+
+"What one sees every day, she may feel in a sort of take-for-granted
+way, without thinking about it," said Letty. "But, to tell the truth, I
+should feel it as impertinent of me to criticise Cousin Godfrey's
+person as to pass an opinion on one of the books he reads. I can not
+express the reverence I have for Cousin Godfrey."
+
+"I don't wonder," replied Mary. "There is that about him one could
+trust."
+
+"There is that about him," returned Letty, "makes me afraid of him--I
+can not tell why. And yet, though everybody, even his mother, is as
+anxious to please him as if he were an emperor, he is the easiest
+person to please in the whole house. Not that he tells you he is
+pleased; he only smiles; but that is quite enough."
+
+"But I suppose he talks to you sometimes?" said Mary.
+
+"Oh, yes--now. He used not; but I think he does now more than to
+anybody else. It was a long time before he began, though. Now he is
+always giving me something to read. I wish he wouldn't; it frightens me
+dreadfully. He always questions me, to know whether I understand what I
+read."
+
+Letty ended with a little cry. Through the one narrow gap in the yew
+hedge, near to the arbor, Godfrey had entered the walk, and was coming
+toward them.
+
+He was a well-made man, thirty years of age, rather tall, sun-tanned,
+and bearded, with wavy brown hair, and gentle approach. His features
+were not regular, but that is of little consequence where there is
+unity. His face indicated faculty and feeling, and there was much good
+nature, shadowed with memorial suffering, in the eyes which shone so
+blue out of the brown.
+
+Mary rose respectfully as he drew near.
+
+"What treason were you talking, Letty, that you were so startled at
+sight of me?" he said, with a smile. "You were complaining of me as a
+hard master, were you not?"
+
+"No, indeed, Cousin Godfrey!" answered Letty energetically, not without
+tremor, and coloring as she spoke. "I was only saying I could not help
+being frightened when you asked me questions about what I had been
+reading. I am so stupid, you know!"
+
+"Pardon me, Letty," returned her cousin, "I know nothing of the sort.
+Allow me to say you are very far from stupid. Nobody can understand
+everything at first sight. But you have not introduced me to your
+friend."
+
+Letty bashfully murmured the names of the two.
+
+"I guessed as much," said Wardour. "Pray sit down, Miss Marston. For
+the sake of your dresses, I will go and change my boots. May I come and
+join you after?"
+
+"Please do, Cousin Godfrey; and bring something to read to us," said
+Letty, who wanted her friend to admire her cousin. "It's Sunday, you
+know."
+
+"Why you should be afraid of him, I can't think," said Mary, when his
+retreating steps had ceased to sound on the gravel. "He is delightful!"
+
+"I don't like to look stupid," said Letty.
+
+"I shouldn't mind how stupid I looked so long as I was learning,"
+returned Mary. "I wonder you never told me about him!"
+
+"I couldn't talk about Cousin Godfrey," said Letty; and a pause
+followed.
+
+"How good of him to come to us again!" said Mary. "What will he read to
+us?"
+
+"Most likely something out of a book you never heard of before, and
+can't remember the name of when you have heard it--at least that's the
+way with me. I wonder if he will talk to you, Mary? I should like to
+hear how Cousin Godfrey talks to girls."
+
+"Why, you know how he talks to you," said Mary.
+
+"Oh, but I am only Cousin Letty! He can talk anyhow to me."
+
+"By your own account he talks to you in the best possible way."
+
+"Yes; I dare say; but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I can't help wishing sometimes he would talk a little nonsense. It
+would be such a relief. I am sure I should understand better if he
+would. I shouldn't be so frightened at him then."
+
+"The way I generally hear gentlemen talk to girls makes me
+ashamed--makes me feel as if I must ask, 'Is it that you are a fool, or
+that you take that girl for one?' They never talk so to me."
+
+Letty sat pulling a jonquil to pieces. She looked up. Her eyes were
+full of thought, but she paused a long time before she spoke, and, when
+she did, it was only to say:
+
+"I fear, Mary, I should take any man for a fool who took me for
+anything else."
+
+Letty was a rather small and rather freckled girl, with the daintiest
+of rounded figures, a good forehead, and fine clear brown eyes. Her
+mouth was not pretty, except when she smiled--and she did not smile
+often. When she did, it was not unfrequently with the tears in her
+eyes, and then she looked lovely. In her manner there was an
+indescribably taking charm, of which it is not easy to give an
+impression; but I think it sprang from a constitutional humility,
+partly ruined into a painful and haunting sense of inferiority, for
+which she imagined herself to blame. Hence there dwelt in her eyes an
+appeal which few hearts could resist. When they met another's, they
+seemed to say: "I am nobody; but you need not kill me; I am not
+pretending to be anybody. I will try to do what you want, but I am not
+clever. Only I am sorry for it. Be gentle with me." To Godfrey, at
+least, her eyes spoke thus.
+
+In ten minutes or so he reappeared, far at the other end of the
+yew-walk, approaching slowly, with a book, in which he seemed
+thoughtfully searching as he came. When they saw him the girls
+instinctively moved farther from each other, making large room for him
+between them, and when he came up he silently took the place thus
+silently assigned him.
+
+"I am going to try your brains now, Letty," he said, and tapped the
+book with a finger.
+
+"Oh, please don't!" pleaded Letty, as if he had been threatening her
+with a small amputation, or the loss of a front tooth.
+
+"Yes," he persisted; "and not your brains only, Letty, but your heart,
+and all that is in you."
+
+At this even Mary could not help feeling a little frightened; and she
+was glad there was no occasion for her to speak.
+
+With just a word of introduction, Godfrey read Carlyle's translation of
+that finest of Jean Paul's dreams in which he sets forth the condition
+of a godless universe all at once awakened to the knowledge of the
+causelessness of its own existence. Slowly, with due inflection and
+emphasis--slowly, but without pause for thought or explanation--he read
+to the end, ceased suddenly, and lifted his eyes.
+
+"There, Letty," he said, "what do you think of that? There's a bit of
+Sunday reading for you!"
+
+Letty was looking altogether perplexed, and not a little frightened.
+
+"I don't understand a word of it," she answered, gulping back her
+tears. He glanced at Mary. She was white as death, her lips quivered,
+and from her eyes shot a keen light that seemed to lacerate their blue.
+
+"It is terrible!" she said. "I never read anything like that."
+
+"There _is_ nothing like it," he answered.
+
+"But the author is a Unitarian, is he not?" remarked Mary--for she
+heard plenty of theology, if not much Christianity, in her chapel.
+
+Godfrey looked at her, then at the book for a moment.
+
+"That may merely seem, from the necessity of the supposition," he
+answered; and read again:
+
+"'Now sank from aloft a noble, high Form, with a look of uneffaceable
+sorrow, down to the Altar, and all the Dead cried out, "Christ! is
+there no God?" He answered, "There is none!" The whole Shadow of each
+then shuddered, not the breast alone; and one after the other all, in
+this shuddering, shook into pieces.'--"You see," he went on, "that if
+there be no God, Christ can only be the first of men."
+
+"I understand," said Mary.
+
+"Do you really then, Mary?" said Letty, looking at her with wondering
+admiration.
+
+"I only meant," answered Mary--"but," she went on, interrupting
+herself, "I do think I understand it a little. If Mr. Wardour would be
+kind enough to read it through again!"
+
+"With much pleasure," answered Godfrey, casting on her a glance of
+pleased surprise.
+
+The second reading affected Mary more than the first--because, of
+course, she took in more. And this time a glimmer of meaning broke on
+the slower mind of Letty: as her cousin read the passage, "Oh, then
+came, fearful for the heart, the dead Children who had been awakened in
+the Churchyard, into the temple, and cast themselves before the high
+Form on the Altar, and said, 'Jesus, have we no Father?' And he
+answered, with streaming tears: 'We are all orphans, I and you; we are
+without Father!'"--at this point Letty gave her little cry, then bit
+her lip, as if she had said something wrong.
+
+All the time a great bee kept buzzing in and out of the arbor, and Mary
+vaguely wondered how it could be so careless.
+
+"I can't be dead stupid after all, Cousin Godfrey," said Letty, with
+broken voice, when once more he ceased, and, as she spoke, she pressed
+her hand on her heart, "for something kept going through and through
+me; but I can not say yet I understand it.--If you will lend me the
+book," she continued, "I will read it over again before I go to bed."
+
+He shut the volume, handed it to her, and began to talk about something
+else.
+
+Mary rose to go.
+
+"You will take tea with us, I hope, Miss Marston," said Godfrey.
+
+But Mary would not. What she had heard was working in her mind with a
+powerful fermentation, and she longed to be alone. In the fields, as
+she walked, she would come to an understanding with herself.
+
+She knew almost nothing of the higher literature, and felt like a
+dreamer who, in the midst of a well-known and ordinary landscape, comes
+without warning upon the mighty cone of a mountain, or the breaking
+waters of a boundless ocean.
+
+"If one could but get hold of such things, what a glorious life it
+would be!" she thought. She had looked into a world beyond the present,
+and already in the present all things were new. The sun set as she had
+never seen him set before; it was only in gray and gold, with scarce a
+touch of purple and rose; the wind visited her cheek like a living
+thing, and loved her; the skylarks had more than reason in their
+jubilation. For the first time she heard the full chord of intellectual
+and emotional delight. What a place her chamber would be, if she could
+there read such things! How easy would it be then to bear the troubles
+of the hour, the vulgar humor of Mr. Turnbull, and the tiresome
+attentions of George! Would Mr. Wardour lend her the book? Had he other
+books as good? Were there many books to make one's heart go as that one
+did? She would save every penny to buy such books, if indeed such
+treasures were within her reach! Under the enchantment of her first
+literary joy, she walked home like one intoxicated with opium--a being
+possessed for the time with the awful imagination of a grander soul,
+and reveling in the presence of her loftier kin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GODFREY WARDOUR.
+
+
+The property of which Thornwick once formed a part was then large and
+important; but it had, by not very slow degrees, generation following
+generation of unthrift, dwindled and shrunk and shriveled, until at
+last it threatened to disappear from the family altogether, like a
+spark upon burnt paper. Then came one into possession who had some
+element of salvation in him; Godfrey's father not only held the poor
+remnant together, but, unable to add to it, improved it so greatly that
+at length, in the midst of the large properties around, it resembled
+the diamond that hearts a disk of inferior stones. Doubtless, could he
+have used his wife's money, he would have spent it on land; but it was
+under trustees for herself and her children, and indeed would not have
+gone far in the purchase of English soil.
+
+Considerably advanced in years before he thought of marrying, he died
+while Godfrey, whom he intended bringing up to a profession, was yet a
+child; and his widow, carrying out his intention, had educated the boy
+with a view to the law. Godfrey, however, had positively declined
+entering on the studies special to a career he detested; nor was it
+difficult to reconcile his mother to the enforced change of idea, when
+she found that his sole desire was to settle down with her, and manage
+the two hundred acres his father had left him. He took his place in the
+county, therefore, as a yeoman-farmer--none the less a gentleman by
+descent, character, and education. But while in genuine culture and
+refinement the superior of all the landed proprietors in the
+neighborhood, and knowing it, he was the superior of most of them in
+this also, that he counted it no derogation from the dignity he valued
+to put his hands upon occasion to any piece of work required about the
+place.
+
+His nature was too large, however, and its needs therefore too many, to
+allow of his spending his energies on the property; and he did not
+brood over such things as, so soon as they become cares, become
+despicable. How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is
+merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of
+result! Of this fault, I say, Godfrey was not guilty--more, however, I
+must confess, from healthful drawings in other directions, than from
+philosophy or wisdom: he was _a reader_--not in the sense of a man who
+derives intensest pleasure from the absorption of intellectual
+pabulum--one not necessarily so superior as some imagine to the
+_gourmet_, or even the _gourmand_: in his reading Godfrey nourished
+certain of the higher tendencies of his nature--read with a constant
+reference to his own views of life, and the confirmation, change, or
+enlargement of his theories of the same; but neither did he read with
+the highest aim of all--the enlargement of reverence, obedience, and
+faith; for he had never turned his face full in the direction of
+infinite growth--the primal end of a man's being, who is that he may
+return to the Father, gathering his truth as he goes. Yet by the simple
+instincts of a soul undebased by self-indulgence or low pursuits, he
+was drawn ever toward things lofty and good; and life went calmly on,
+bearing Godfrey Wardour toward middle age, unruffled either by anxiety
+or ambition.
+
+To the forecasting affection of a mother, the hour when she must yield
+the first place both in her son's regards and in the house-affairs
+could not but have often presented itself, in doubt and pain--perhaps
+dread. Only as year after year passed and Godfrey revealed no tendency
+toward marriage, her anxiety changed sides, and she began to fear lest
+with Godfrey the ancient family should come to an end. As yet, however,
+finding no response to covert suggestion, she had not ventured to speak
+openly to him on the subject. All the time, I must add, she had never
+thought of Letty either as thwarting or furthering her desires, for in
+truth she felt toward her as one on whom Godfrey could never condescend
+to look, save with the kindness suitable for one immeasurably below
+him. As to what might pass in Letty's mind, Mrs. Wardour had neither
+curiosity nor care: else she might possibly have been more considerate
+than to fall into the habit of talking to her in such swelling words of
+maternal pride that, even if she had not admired him of herself, Letty
+could hardly escape coming to regard her cousin Godfrey as the very
+first of men.
+
+It added force to the veneration of both mother and cousin--for it was
+nothing less than veneration in either--that there was about Godfrey an
+air of the inexplicable, or at least the unknown, and therefore
+mysterious. This the elder woman, not without many a pang at her
+exclusion from his confidence, attributed, and correctly, to some
+passage in his life at the university; to the younger it appeared only
+as greatness self-veiled from the ordinary world: to such as she, could
+be vouchsafed only an occasional peep into the gulf of his knowledge,
+the grandeur of his intellect, and the imperturbability of his courage.
+
+The passage in Godfrey's life to which I have referred as vaguely
+suspected by his mother, I need not present in more than merest
+outline: it belongs to my history only as a component part of the soil
+whence it springs, and as in some measure necessary to the
+understanding of Godfrey's character. In the last year of his college
+life he had formed an attachment, the precise nature of which I do not
+know. What I do know is, that the bonds of it were rudely broken, and
+of the story nothing remained but disappointment and pain, doubt and
+distrust. Godfrey had most likely cherished an overweening notion of
+the relative value of the love he gave; but being his, I am certain it
+was genuine--by that, I mean a love with no small element of the
+everlasting in it. The woman who can cast such a love from her is not
+likely to meet with such another. But with this one I have nothing to
+do.
+
+It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in
+that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in
+consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger
+could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed
+countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw--below that clear
+blue eye, and that upright easy carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted
+by a sense of wrong: he who is not perfect in forgiveness must be
+haunted thus; he only is free whose love for the human is so strong
+that he can pardon the individual sin; he alone can pray the prayer,
+"Forgive us our trespasses," out of a full heart. Forgiveness is the
+only cure of wrong. And hand in hand with Sense-of-injury walks ever
+the weak sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many--both of
+them the children of Philautos, not of Agape. But there was no hate, no
+revenge, in Godfrey, and, I repeat, his weakness he kept concealed. It
+must have been in his eyes, but eyes are hard to read. For the rest,
+his was a strong poetic nature--a nature which half unconsciously
+turned ever toward the best, away from the mean judgments of common
+men, and with positive loathing from the ways of worldly women. Never
+was peace endangered between his mother and him, except when she
+chanced to make use of some evil maxim which she thought experience had
+taught her, and the look her son cast upon her stung her to the heart,
+making her for a moment feel as if she had sinned what the theologians
+call the unpardonable sin. When he rose and walked from the room
+without a word, she would feel as if abandoned to her wickedness, and
+be miserable until she saw him again. Something like a spring-cleaning
+would begin and go on in her for some time after, and her eyes would
+every now and then steal toward her judge with a glance of awe and
+fearful apology. But, however correct Godfrey might be in his judgment
+of the worldly, that judgment was less inspired by the harmonies of the
+universe than by the discords that had jarred his being and the
+poisonous shocks he had received in the encounter of the noble with the
+ignoble. There was yet in him a profound need of redemption into the
+love of the truth for the truth's sake. He had the fault of thinking
+too well of himself--which who has not who thinks of himself at all,
+apart from his relation to the holy force of life, within yet beyond
+him? It was the almost unconscious, assuredly the undetected,
+self-approbation of the ordinarily righteous man, the defect of whose
+righteousness makes him regard himself as upright, but the virtue of
+whose uprightness will at length disclose to his astonished view how
+immeasurably short of rectitude he comes. At the age of thirty, Godfrey
+Wardour had not yet become so displeased with himself as to turn
+self-roused energy upon betterment; and until then all growth must be
+of doubtful result. The point on which the swift-revolving top of his
+thinking and feeling turned was as yet his present conscious self, as a
+thing that was and would be, not as a thing that had to become.
+Naturally the pivot had worn a socket, and such socket is sure to be a
+sore. His friends notwithstanding gave him credit for great
+imperturbability; but in such willfully undemonstrative men the evil
+burrows the more insidiously that it is masked by a constrained
+exterior.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+GODFREY AND LETTY.
+
+
+Godfrey, being an Englishman, and with land of his own, could not fail
+to be fond of horses. For his own use he kept two--an indulgence
+disproportioned to his establishment; for, although precise in his
+tastes as to equine toilet, he did not feel justified in the keeping of
+a groom for their use only. Hence it came that, now and then, strap and
+steel, as well as hide and hoof, would get partially neglected; and his
+habits in the use of his horses being fitful--sometimes, it would be
+midnight even, when he scoured from his home, seeking the comfort of
+desert as well as solitary places--it is not surprising if at times,
+going to the stable to saddle one, he should find its gear not in the
+spick-and-span condition alone to his mind. It might then well happen
+there was no one near to help him, and there be nothing for it but to
+put his own hands to the work: he was too just to rouse one who might
+be nowise to blame, or send a maid to fetch him from field or barn,
+where he might be more importantly engaged.
+
+One night, meaning to start for a long ride early in the morning, he
+had gone to the stable to see how things were; and, soon after, it
+happened that Letty, attending to some duty before going to bed, caught
+sight of him cleaning his stirrups: from that moment she took upon
+herself the silent and unsuspected supervision of the harness-room,
+where, when she found any part of the riding-equipments neglected, she
+would draw a pair of housemaid's gloves on her pretty hands, and polish
+away like a horse-boy.
+
+Godfrey had begun to remark how long it was since he had found anything
+unfit, and to wonder at the improvement somewhere in the establishment,
+when, going hastily one morning, some months before the date of my
+narrative, into the harness-room to get a saddle, he came upon Letty,
+who had imagined him afield with the men: she was energetic upon a
+stirrup with a chain-polisher. He started back in amazement, but she
+only looked up and smiled.
+
+"I shall have done in a moment, Cousin Godfrey," she said, and polished
+away harder than before.
+
+"But, Letty! I can't allow you to do things like that. What on earth
+put it in your head? Work like that is only for horny hands."
+
+"Your hands ain't horny, Cousin Godfrey. They may be a little harder
+than mine--they wouldn't be much good if they weren't--but they're no
+fitter by nature to clean stirrups. Is it for me to sit with mine in my
+lap, and yours at this? I know better."
+
+"Why shouldn't I clean my own harness, Letty, if I like?" said Godfrey,
+who could not help feeling pleased as well as annoyed; in this one
+moment Letty had come miles nearer him.
+
+"Oh, surely! if you like, Cousin Godfrey," she answered; "but do you
+like?"
+
+"Better than to see you doing it."
+
+"But not better than I like to do it; that I am sure of. It is hands
+that write poetry that are not fit for work like this."
+
+"How do you know I write poetry?" asked Godfrey, displeased, for she
+touched here a sensitive spot.
+
+"Oh, don't be angry with me!" she said, letting the stirrup fall on the
+floor, and clasping her great wash-leather gloves together; "I couldn't
+help seeing it was poetry, for it lay on the table when I went to do
+your room."
+
+"Do my room, Letty! Does my mother--?"
+
+"She doesn't want to make a fine lady of me, and I shouldn't like it if
+she did. I have no head, but I have pretty good hands. Of course,
+Cousin Godfrey, I didn't read a word of the poetry. I daredn't do that,
+however much I might have wished."
+
+A childlike simplicity looked out of the clear eyes and sounded in the
+swift words of the maiden; and, had Godfrey's heart been as hard as the
+stirrup she had dropped, it could not but be touched by her devotion.
+He was at the same time not a little puzzled how to carry himself.
+Letty had picked up the stirrup, and was again hard at work with it; to
+take it from her, and turn her out of the saddle-room, would scarcely
+be a proper way of thanking her, scarcely an adequate mode of revealing
+his estimate of the condescension of her ladyhood. For, although Letty
+did make beds and chose to clean harness, Godfrey was gentleman enough
+not to think her less of a lady--for the moment at least--because of
+such doings: I will not say he had got so far on in the great doctrine
+concerning the washing of hands as to be able to think her _more_ of a
+lady for thus cleaning his stirrups. But he did see that to set the
+fire-engine of indignant respect for womankind playing on the
+individual woman was not the part of the man to whose service she was
+humbling herself. He laid his hand on her bent head, and said:
+
+"I ought to be a knight of the old times, Letty, to have a lady serve
+me so."
+
+"You're just as good, Cousin Godfrey," she rejoined, rubbing away.
+
+He turned from her, and left her at her work.
+
+He had taken no real notice of the girl before--had felt next to no
+interest in her. Neither did he feel much now, save as owing her
+something beyond mere acknowledgment. But was there anything now he
+could do for her--anything in her he could help? He did not know. What
+she really was, he could not tell. She was a fresh, bright girl--that
+he seemed to have just discovered; and, as she sat polishing the
+stirrup, her hair shaken about her shoulders, she looked engaging; but
+whether she was one he could do anything for that was worth doing, was
+hardly the less a question for those discoveries.
+
+"There must be _something_ in the girl!" he said to himself--then
+suddenly reflected that he had never seen a book in her hand, except
+her prayer-book; how _was_ he to do anything for a girl like that? For
+Godfrey knew no way of doing people good without the intervention of
+books. How could he get near one that had no taste for the quintessence
+of humanity? How was he to offer her the only help he had, when she
+desired no such help? "But," he continued, reflecting further, "she may
+have thirsted, may even now be athirst, without knowing that books are
+the bottles of the water of life!" Perhaps, if he could make her drink
+once, she would drink again. The difficulty was, to find out what sort
+of spiritual drink would be most to her taste, and would most entice
+her to more. There must be some seeds lying cold and hard in her
+uncultured garden; what water would soonest make them grow? Not all the
+waters of Damascus will turn mere sand sifted of eternal winds into
+fruitful soil; but Letty's soul could not be such. And then literature
+has seed to sow as well as water for the seed sown. Letty's foolish
+words about the hands that wrote poetry showed a shadow of respect for
+poetry--except, indeed, the girl had been but making game of him, which
+he was far from ready to believe, and for which, he said to himself,
+her face was at the time much too earnest, and her hands much too busy;
+he must find out whether she had any instincts, any predilections, in
+the matter of poetry!
+
+Thus pondering, he forgot all about his projected ride, and, going up
+to the study he had contrived for himself in the rambling roof of the
+ancient house, began looking along the backs of his books, in search of
+some suggestion of how to approach Letty; his glance fell on a
+beautifully bound volume of verse--a selection of English lyrics, made
+with tolerable judgment--which he had bought to give, but the very
+color of which, every time his eye flitting along the book-shelves
+caught it, threw a faint sickness over his heart, preluding the memory
+of old pain and loss:
+
+"It may as well serve some one," he said, and, taking it down, carried
+it with him to the saddle-room.
+
+Letty was not there, and the perfect order of the place somehow made
+him feel she had been gone some time. He went in search of her; she
+might be in the dairy.
+
+That was the very picture of an old-fashioned English
+dairy--green-shadowy, dark, dank, and cool--floored with great
+irregular slabs, mostly of green serpentine, polished into smooth
+hollows by the feet of generations of mistresses and dairy-maids. Its
+only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy,
+which stood open, and let in the scents of bud and blossom, weaving a
+net of sweetness in the gloom, through which, like a silver thread,
+shot the twittering song of a bird, which had inherited the gathered
+carelessness and bliss of a long ancestry in God's aviary.
+
+Godfrey came softly to the door, which he found standing ajar, and
+peeped in. There stood Letty, warm and bright in the middle of the
+dusky coolness. She had changed her dress since he saw her, and now, in
+a pink-rosebud print, with the sleeves tucked above her elbows, was
+skimming the cream in a great red-brown earthen pan. He pushed the door
+a little, and, at its screech along the uneven floor, Letty's head
+turned quickly on her lithe neck, and she saw Godfrey's brown face and
+kind blue eyes where she had never seen them before. In his hand glowed
+the book: some of the stronger light from behind him fell on it, and it
+caught her eyes.
+
+"Letty," he said, "I have just come upon this book in my library: would
+you care to have it?"
+
+"You don't mean to keep for my own, Cousin Godfrey?" cried Letty, in
+sweet, childish fashion, letting the skimmer dive like a coot to the
+bottom of the milk-pool, and hastily wiping her hands in her apron. Her
+face had flushed rosy with pleasure, and grew rosier and brighter still
+as she took the rich morocco-bound thing from Godfrey's hand into her
+own. Daintily she peeped within the boards, and the gilding of the
+leaves responded in light to her smile.
+
+"Poetry!" she cried, in a tone of delight. "Is it really for me, Cousin
+Godfrey? Do you think I shall be able to understand it?"
+
+"You can soon settle that question for yourself," answered Godfrey,
+with a pleased smile--for he augured well from this reception of his
+gift--and turned to leave the dairy.
+
+"But, Cousin Godfrey--please!" she called after him, "you don't give me
+time to thank you."
+
+"That will do when you are certain you care for it," he returned.
+
+"I care for it very _much_!" she replied.
+
+"How can you say that, when you don't know yet whether you will
+understand it or not?" he rejoined, and closed the door.
+
+Letty stood motionless, the book in her hand illuminating the dusk with
+gold, and warming its coolness with its crimson boards and silken
+linings. One poem after another she read, nor knew how the time passed,
+until the voice of her aunt in her ears warned her to finish her
+skimming, and carry the jug to the pantry. But already Letty had taken
+a little cream off the book also, and already, between the time she
+entered and the time she left the dairy, had taken besides a fresh
+start in spiritual growth.
+
+The next day Godfrey took an opportunity of asking her whether she had
+found in the book anything she liked. To his disappointment she
+mentioned one of the few commonplace things the collection contained--a
+last-century production, dull and respectable, which, surely, but for
+the glamour of some pleasant association, the editor would never have
+included. Happily, however, he bethought himself in time not to tell
+her the thing was worthless: such a word, instead of chipping the shell
+in which the girl's faculty lay dormant, would have smashed the whole
+egg into a miserable albuminous mass. And he was well rewarded; for,
+the same day, in the evening, he heard her singing gayly over her work,
+and listening discovered that she was singing verse after verse of one
+of the best ballads in the whole book. She had chosen with the fancy of
+pleasing Godfrey; she sang to please herself. After this discovery he
+set himself in earnest to the task of developing her intellectual life,
+and, daily almost, grew more interested in the endeavor. His main
+object was to make her think; and for the high purpose, chiefly but not
+exclusively, he employed verse.
+
+The main obstacle to success he soon discovered to be Letty's exceeding
+distrust of herself. I would not be mistaken to mean that she had too
+little confidence in herself; of that no one can have too little.
+Self-distrust will only retard, while self-confidence will betray. The
+man ignorant in these things will answer me, "But you must have one or
+the other." "You must have neither," I reply. "You must follow the
+truth, and, in that pursuit, the less one thinks about himself, the
+pursuer, the better. Let him so hunger and thirst after the truth that
+the dim vision of it occupies all his being, and leaves no time to
+think of his hunger and his thirst. Self-forgetfulness in the reaching
+out after that which is essential to us is the healthiest of mental
+conditions. One has to look to his way, to his deeds, to his
+conduct--not to himself. In such losing of the false, or merely
+reflected, we find the true self. There is no harm in being stupid, so
+long as a man does not think himself clever; no good in being clever,
+if a man thinks himself so, for that is a short way to the worst
+stupidity. If you think yourself clever, set yourself to do something;
+then you will have a chance of humiliation."
+
+With good faculties, and fine instincts, Letty was always thinking she
+must be wrong, just because it was she was in it--a lovely fault, no
+doubt, but a fault greatly impeditive to progress, and tormenting to a
+teacher. She got on very fairly in spite of it, however; and her
+devotion to Godfrey, as she felt herself growing in his sight,
+increased almost to a passion. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. If I
+say anything grows to a passion, I mean, of course, the passion of that
+thing, not of something else. Here I no more mean that her devotion
+became what in novels is commonly called love, than, if I said ambition
+or avarice had grown to a passion, I should mean those vices had
+changed to love. Godfrey Wardour was at least ten years older than
+Letty; besides him, she had not a single male relative in this
+world--neither had she mother or sister on whom to let out her heart;
+while of Mrs. Wardour, who was more severe on her than on any one else,
+she was not a little afraid: from these causes it came that Cousin
+Godfrey grew and grew in Letty's imagination, until he was to her
+everything great and good--her idea of him naturally growing as she
+grew herself under his influences. To her he was the heart of wisdom,
+the head of knowledge, the arm of strength.
+
+But her worship was quiet, as the worship of maiden, in whatever kind,
+ought to be. She knew nothing of what is called love except as a word,
+and from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest
+suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have
+resented as the most offensive impertinence--an accusation of
+impossible irreverence.
+
+By degrees Godfrey came to understand, but then only in a measure, with
+what a self-refusing, impressionable nature he was dealing; and, as he
+saw, he became more generous toward her, more gentle and delicate in
+his ministration. Of necessity he grew more and more interested in her,
+especially after he had made the discovery that the moment she laid
+hold of a truth--the moment, that is, when it was no longer another's
+idea but her own perception--it began to sprout in her in all
+directions of practice. By nature she was not intellectually quick;
+but, because such was her character, the ratio of her progress was of
+necessity an increasing one.
+
+If Godfrey had seen in his new relation to Letty a possibility of the
+revival of feelings he had supposed for ever extinguished, such a
+possibility would have borne to him purely the aspect of danger; at the
+mere idea of again falling in love he would have sickened with dismay;
+and whether or not he had any dread of such a catastrophe, certain it
+is that he behaved to her more as a pedagogue than a cousinly tutor,
+insisting on a precision in all she did that might have gone far to
+rouse resentment and recoil in the mind of a less childlike woman. Just
+as surely, notwithstanding all that, however, did the sweet girl grow
+into his heart: it _could_ not be otherwise. The idea of her was making
+a nest for itself in his soul--what kind of a nest for long he did not
+know, and for long did not think to inquire. Living thus, like an elder
+brother with a much younger sister, he was more than satisfied,
+refusing, it may be, to regard the probability of intruding change. But
+how far any man and woman may have been made capable of loving without
+falling in love, can be answered only after question has yielded to
+history. In the mean time, Mrs. Wardour, who would have been indignant
+at the notion of any equal bond between her idolized son and her
+patronized cousin, neither saw, nor heard, nor suspected anything to
+rouse uneasiness.
+
+Things were thus in the old house, when the growing affection of Letty
+for Mary Marston took form one day in the request that she would make
+Thornwick the goal of her Sunday walk. She repented, it is true, the
+moment she had said the words, from dread of her aunt; but they had
+been said, and were accepted. Mary went, and the aunt difficulty had
+been got over. The friendship of Godfrey also had now run into that of
+the girls, and Mary's visits were continued with pleasure to all, and
+certainly with no little profit to herself; for, where the higher
+nature can not communicate the greater benefit, it will reap it. Her
+Sunday visit became to Mary the one foraging expedition of the
+week--that which going to church ought to be, and so seldom can be.
+
+The beginning and main-stay of her spiritual life was, as we have seen,
+her father, in whom she believed absolutely. From books and sermons she
+had got little good; for in neither kind had the best come nigh her.
+She did very nearly her best to obey, but without much perceiving the
+splendor of the thing required, or much feeling its might upon her own
+eternal nature. She was as yet, in relation to the gospel, much as the
+Jews were in relation to their law; they had not yet learned the gospel
+of their law, and she was yet only serving the law of the gospel. But
+she was making progress, in simple and pure virtue of her obedience.
+Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest,
+sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall
+look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of
+its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been
+living a life more obedient than the rest.
+
+And now was sent Godfrey to her aid, a teacher himself far behind his
+pupil, inasmuch as he was more occupied with what he was, than what he
+had to become: the weakest may be sent to give the strongest saving
+help; even the foolish may mediate between the wise and the wiser; and
+Godfrey presented Mary to men greater than himself, whom in a short
+time she would understand even better than he. Book after book he lent
+her--now and then gave her one of the best--introducing her, with no
+special intention, to much in the way of religion that was good in the
+way of literature as well. Only where he delighted mainly in the
+literature, she delighted more in the religion. Some of my readers will
+be able to imagine what it must have been to a capable, clear-thinking,
+warm-hearted, loving soul like Mary, hitherto in absolute ignorance of
+any better religious poetry than the chapel hymn-book afforded her, to
+make acquaintance with George Herbert, with Henry Vaughan, with Giles
+Fletcher, with Richard Crashaw, with old Mason, not to mention Milton,
+and afterward our own Father Newman and Father Faber.
+
+But it was by no means chiefly upon such that Godfrey led the talk on
+the Sunday afternoons. A lover of all truly imaginative literature, his
+knowledge of it was large, nor confined to that of his own country,
+although that alone was at present available for either of his pupils.
+His seclusion from what is called the world had brought him into larger
+and closer contact with what is really the world. The breakers upon
+reef and shore may be the ocean to some, but he who would know the
+ocean indeed must leave them afar, sinking into silence, and sail into
+wider and lonelier spaces. Through Godfrey, Mary came to know of a land
+never promised, yet open--a land of whose nature even she had never
+dreamed--a land of the spirit, flowing with milk and honey--a land of
+which the fashionable world knows little more than the dwellers in the
+back slums, although it imagines it lying, with the kingdoms of the
+earth, at its feet.
+
+As regards her feeling toward her new friend, this opener of unseen
+doors, the greatness of her obligation to him wrought against
+presumption and any possible folly. Besides, Mary was one who possessed
+power over her own spirit--rare gift, given to none but those who do
+something toward the taking of it. She was able in no small measure to
+order her own thoughts. Without any theory of self-rule, she yet ruled
+her Self. She was not one to slip about in the saddle, or let go the
+reins for a kick and a plunge or two. There was the thing that should
+be, and the thing that should not be; the thing that was reasonable,
+and the thing that was absurd. Add to all this, that she believed she
+saw in Mr. Wardour's behavior to his cousin, in the careful gentleness
+evident through all the severity of the schoolmaster, the presence of a
+deeper feeling, that might one day blossom to the bliss of her
+friend--and we need not wonder if Mary's heart remained calm in the
+very floods of its gratitude; while the truth she gathered by aid of
+the intercourse, enlarging her strength, enlarged likewise the
+composure that comes of strength. She did not even trouble herself much
+to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it,
+by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks
+for a good thing.
+
+Nor was Godfrey without payment for what he did: the revival of ancient
+benefits, a new spring-time of old flowers, and the fresh quickening of
+one's own soul, are the spiritual wages of every spiritual service. In
+giving, a man receives more than he gives, and the _more_ is in
+proportion to the worth of the thing given.
+
+Mary did not encourage Letty to call at the shop, because the rudeness
+of the Turnbulls was certain to break out on her departure, as it did
+one day that Godfrey, dismounting at the door, and entering the shop in
+quest of something for his mother, naturally shook hands with Mary over
+the counter. No remark was made so long as her father was in the shop,
+for, with all their professed contempt of him and his ways, the
+Turnbulls stood curiously in awe of him: no one could tell what he
+might or might not do, seeing they did not in the least understand him;
+and there were reasons for avoiding offense.
+
+But the moment he retired, which he always did earlier than the rest,
+the small-arms of the enemy began to go off, causing Mary a burning
+cheek and indignant heart. Yet the great desire of Mr. Turnbull was a
+match between George and Mary, for that would, whatever might happen,
+secure the Marston money to the business. Their evil report Mary did
+not carry to her father. She scorned to trouble his lofty nature with
+her small annoyances; neither could they long keep down the wellspring
+of her own peace, which, deeper than anger could reach, soon began to
+rise again fresh in her spirit, fed from that water of life which
+underlies all care. In a few moments it had cooled her cheek, stilled
+her heart, and washed the wounds of offense.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+TOM HELMER.
+
+
+When Tom Helmer's father died, his mother, who had never been able to
+manage him, sent him to school to get rid of him, lamented his absence
+till he returned, then writhed and fretted under his presence until
+again he went. Never thereafter did those two, mother and son, meet,
+whether from a separation of months or of hours, without at once
+tumbling into an obstinate difference. When the youth was at home,
+their sparring, to call it by a mild name, went on from morning to
+night, and sometimes almost from night to morning. Primarily, of
+course, the fault lay with the mother; and things would have gone far
+worse, had not the youth, along with the self-will of his mother,
+inherited his father's good nature. At school he was a great favorite,
+and mostly had his own way, both with boys and masters, for, although a
+fool, he was a pleasant fool, clever, fond of popularity, and
+complaisant with everybody--except always his mother, the merest word
+from whom would at once rouse all the rebel in his blood. In person he
+was tall and loosely knit, with large joints and extremities. His face
+was handsome and vivacious, expressing far more than was in him to
+express, and giving ground for expectation such as he had never met. He
+was by no means an ill-intentioned fellow, preferred doing well and
+acting fairly, and neither at school nor at college had got into any
+serious scrape. But he had never found it imperative to reach out after
+his own ideal of duty. He had never been worthy the name of student, or
+cared much for anything beyond the amusements the universities provide
+so liberally, except dabbling in literature. Perhaps his only vice was
+self-satisfaction--which few will admit to be a vice; remonstrance
+never reached him; to himself he was ever in the right, judging himself
+only by his sentiments and vague intents, never by his actions; that
+these had little correspondence never struck him; it had never even
+struck him that they ought to correspond. In his own eyes he did well
+enough, and a good deal better. Gifted not only with fluency of speech,
+that crowning glory and ruin of a fool, but with plausibility of tone
+and demeanor, a confidence that imposed both on himself and on others,
+and a certain dropsical impressionableness of surface which made him
+seem and believe himself sympathetic, nobody could well help liking
+him, and it took some time to make one accept the disappointment he
+caused.
+
+He was now in his twenty-first year, at home, pretending that nothing
+should make him go back to Oxford, and enjoying more than ever the
+sport of plaguing his mother. A soul-doctor might have prescribed for
+him a course of small-pox, to be followed by intermittent fever, with
+nobody to wait upon him but Mrs. Gamp: after that, his mother might
+have had a possible chance with him, and he with his mother. But,
+unhappily, he had the best of health--supreme blessing in the eyes of
+the fool whom it enables to be a worse fool still; and was altogether
+the true son of his mother, who consoled herself for her absolute
+failure in his moral education with the reflection that she had reared
+him sound in wind and limb. Plaguing his mother, amusing himself as
+best he could, riding about the country on a good mare, of which he was
+proud, he was living in utter idleness, affording occasion for much
+wonder that he had never yet disgraced himself. He talked to everybody
+who would talk to him, and made acquaintance with anybody on the spur
+of the moment's whim. He would sit on a log with a gypsy, and bamboozle
+him with lies made for the purpose, then thrash him for not believing
+them. He called here and called there, made himself specially agreeable
+everywhere, went to every ball and evening party to which he could get
+admittance in the neighborhood, and flirted with any girl who would let
+him. He meant no harm, neither had done much, and was imagined by most
+incapable of doing any. The strange thing to some was that he staid on
+in the country, and did not go to London and run up bills for his
+mother to pay; but the mare accounted for a good deal; and the fact
+that almost immediately on his late return he had seen Letty and fallen
+in love with her at first sight, accounted for a good deal more. Not
+since then, however, had he yet been able to meet her so as only to
+speak to her; for Thornwick was one of the few houses of the middle
+class in the neighborhood where he was not encouraged to show himself.
+He was constantly, therefore, on the watch for a chance of seeing her,
+and every Sunday went to church in that same hope and no other. But
+Letty knew nothing of the favor in which she stood with him; for,
+although Tom had, as we have heard, confessed to her friend Mary
+Marston his admiration of her, Mary had far too much good sense to make
+herself his ally in the matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DURNMELLING.
+
+
+In the autumn, Mr. Mortimer of Durnmelling resolved to give a
+harvest-home to his tenants, and under the protection of the occasion
+to invite also a good many of his neighbors and of the townsfolk of
+Testbridge, whom he could not well ask to dinner: there happened to be
+a political expediency for something of the sort: America is not the
+only country in which ambition opens the door to mean doings on the
+part of such as count themselves gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady
+Margaret had never called, and whom she would never in any way
+acknowledge again, were invited; nor did the knowledge of what it meant
+cause many of them to decline the questionable honor--which fact
+carried in it the best justification of which the meanness and insult
+were capable. Mrs. Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their
+case Lady Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey
+positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized, he
+said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.
+
+Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had reaped
+both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the strength of the
+latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon began to embody in his
+own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman ought to carry himself;
+whence, from being only a small, he became an objectionable man, and
+failed of being amusing by making himself offensive. He had never
+manifested the least approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although
+their houses were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had
+Wardour been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance
+there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have behaved
+differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely, old family, a
+small, though indeed _very_ small, property of his own, a university
+education, good horses, and the habits and manners of a gentleman--the
+men scarcely even saluted when they met. The Mortimer ladies, indeed,
+had more than once remarked--but it was in solemn silence, each to
+herself only--how well the man sat, and how easily he handled the
+hunter he always rode; but not once until now had so much as a greeting
+passed between them and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful
+that Godfrey should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding,
+however, that his mother was distressed at having to go to the
+gathering without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was
+needful as to what would be thought of his absence, and what excuse it
+would be becoming to make, he resolved to go to London a day or two
+before the event, and pay a long-promised visit to a clerical friend.
+
+The relative situation of the houses--I mean the stone-and-lime
+houses--of Durnmelling and Thornwick, was curious; and that they had at
+one time formed part of the same property might have suggested itself
+to any beholder. Durnmelling was built by an ancestor of Godfrey's,
+who, forsaking the old nest for the new, had allowed Thornwick to sink
+into a mere farmhouse, in which condition it had afterward become the
+sole shelter of the withered fortunes of the Wardours. In the hands of
+Godfrey's father, by a continuity of judicious cares, and a succession
+of partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its
+original modest dignity. Durnmelling, too, had in part sunk into ruin,
+and had been but partially recovered from it; still, it swelled
+important beside its antecedent Thornwick. Nothing but a deep ha-ha
+separated the two houses, of which the older and smaller occupied the
+higher ground. Between it and the ha-ha was nothing but grass--in front
+of the house fine enough and well enough kept to be called lawn, had
+not Godfrey's pride refused the word. On the lower, the Durnmelling
+side of the fence, were trees, shrubbery, and out-houses--the chimney
+of one of which, the laundry, gave great offense to Mrs. Wardour, when,
+as she said, wind and wash came together. But, although they stood so
+near, there was no lawful means of communication between the houses
+except the road; and the mile that implied was seldom indeed passed by
+any of the unneighborly neighbors.
+
+The father of Lady Margaret would at one time have purchased Thornwick
+at twice its value; but the present owner could not have bought it at
+half its worth. He had of late been losing money heavily--whence, in
+part, arose that anxiety of Lady Margaret's not to keep Mr. Redmain
+fretting for his lunch.
+
+The house of Durnmelling, new compared with that of Thornwick, was yet,
+as I have indicated, old enough to have passed also through
+vicissitudes, and a large portion of the original structure had for
+many years been nothing better than a ruin. Only a portion of one side
+of its huge square was occupied by the family, and the rest of that
+side was not habitable. Lady Margaret, of an ancient stock, had
+gathered from it only pride, not reverence; therefore, while she valued
+the old, she neglected it; and what money she and her husband at one
+time spent upon the house, was devoted to addition and ornamentation,
+nowise to preservation or restoration. They had enlarged both
+dining-room and drawing-rooms to twice their former size, when half the
+expense, with a few trees from a certain outlying oak-plantation of
+their own, would have given them a room fit for a regal assembly. For,
+constituting a portion of the same front in which they lived, lay
+roofless, open to every wind that blew, its paved floor now and then in
+winter covered with snow--an ancient hall, whose massy south wall was
+pierced by three lovely windows, narrow and lofty, with simple,
+gracious tracery in their pointed heads. This hall connected the
+habitable portion of the house with another part, less ruinous than
+itself, but containing only a few rooms in occasional use for household
+purposes, or, upon necessity, for quite inferior lodgment. It was a
+glorious ruin, of nearly a hundred feet in length, and about half that
+in width, the walls entire, and broad enough to walk round upon in
+safety. Their top was accessible from a tower, which formed part of the
+less ruinous portion, and contained the stair and some small rooms.
+
+Once, the hall was fair with portraits and armor and arms, with fire
+and lights, and state and merriment; now the sculptured chimney lay
+open to the weather, and the sweeping winds had made its smooth
+hearthstone clean as if fire had never been there. Its floor was
+covered with large flags, a little broken: these, in prospect of the
+coming entertainment, a few workmen were leveling, patching, replacing.
+For the tables were to be set here, and here there was to be dancing
+after the meal.
+
+It was Miss Yolland's idea, and to her was committed the responsibility
+of its preparation and adornment for the occasion, in which Hesper gave
+her active assistance. With colored blankets, with carpets, with a few
+pieces of old tapestry, and a quantity of old curtains, mostly of
+chintz, excellent in hues and design, all cunningly arranged for as
+much of harmony as could be had, they contrived to clothe the walls to
+the height of six or eight feet, and so gave the weather-beaten
+skeleton an air of hospitable preparation and respectful reception.
+
+The day and the hour arrived. It was a hot autumnal afternoon. Borne in
+all sorts of vehicles, from a carriage and pair to a taxed cart, the
+guests kept coming. As they came, they mostly scattered about the
+place. Some loitered on the lawn by the flower-beds and the fountain;
+some visited the stables and the home-farm, with its cow-houses and
+dairy and piggeries; some the neglected greenhouses, and some the
+equally neglected old-fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and
+their moss-grown statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere
+visible to receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them
+to the plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of
+some people has no roof to it," Godfrey said, when he heard of the
+preparations. "Ten people will give you a dinner, for one who will
+offer you a bed and a breakfast:"
+
+Then at last their host made his appearance, and took the head of the
+table: the ladies, he said, were to have the honor of joining the
+company afterward. They were at the time--but this he did not
+say--giving another stratum of society a less ponderous, but yet
+tolerably substantial, refreshment in the dining-room.
+
+By the time the eating and drinking were nearly over, the shades of
+evening had gathered; but even then some few of the farmers, capable
+only of drinking, grumbled at having their potations interrupted for
+the dancers. These were presently joined by the company from the house,
+and the great hall was crowded.
+
+Much to her chagrin, Mrs. Wardour had a severe headache, occasioned by
+her working half the night at her dress, and was compelled to remain at
+home. But she allowed Letty to go without her, which she would not have
+done had she not been so anxious to have news of what she could not
+lift her head to see: she sent her with an old servant--herself one of
+the invited guests--to gather and report. The dancing had begun before
+they reached the hall.
+
+Tom Helmer had arrived among the first, and had joined the tenants in
+their feast, faring well, and making friends, such as he knew how to
+make, with everybody in his vicinity. When the tables were removed, and
+the rest of the company began to come in, he went about searching
+anxiously for Letty's sweet face, but it did not appear; and, when she
+did arrive, she stole in without his seeing her, and stood mingled with
+the crowd about the door.
+
+It was a pleasant sight that met her eyes. The wide space was gayly
+illuminated with colored lamps, disposed on every shelf, and in every
+crevice of the walls, some of them gleaming like glow-worms out of mere
+holes; while candles in sconces, and lamps on the window-sills and
+wherever they could stand, gave a light the more pleasing that it was
+not brilliant. Overhead, the night-sky was spangled with clear pulsing
+stars, afloat in a limpid blue, vast even to awfulness in the eyes of
+such--were any such there?--as say to themselves that to those worlds
+also were they born. Outside, it was dark, save where the light
+streamed from the great windows far into the night. The moon was not
+yet up; she would rise in good time to see the scattering guests to
+their homes.
+
+Tom's heart had been sinking, for he could see Letty nowhere. Now at
+last, he had been saying to himself all the day, had come his chance!
+and his chance seemed but to mock him. More than any girl he had ever
+seen, had Letty moved him--perhaps because she was more unlike his
+mother. He knew nothing, it is true, or next to nothing, of her nature;
+but that was of little consequence to one who knew nothing, and never
+troubled himself to know anything, of his own. Was he doomed never to
+come near his idol?--Ah, there she was! Yes; it was she--all but lost
+in a humble group near the door! His foolish heart--not foolish in
+that--gave a great bound, as if it would leap to her where she stood.
+She was dressed in white muslin, from which her white throat rose warm
+and soft. Her head was bent forward, and a gentle dissolved smile was
+over all her face, as with loveliest eyes she watched eagerly the
+motions of the dance, and her ears drank in the music of the yeomanry
+band. He seized the first opportunity of getting nearer to her. He had
+scarcely spoken to her before, but that did not trouble Tom. Even in a
+more ceremonious assembly, that would never have abashed him; and here
+there was little form, and much freedom. He had, besides, confidence in
+his own carriage and manners--which, indeed, were those of a
+gentleman--and knew himself not likely to repel by his approach.
+
+Mr. Mortimer had opened the dancing by leading out the wife of his
+principal tenant, a handsome matron, whose behavior and expression were
+such as to give a safe, home-like feeling to the shy and doubtful of
+the company. But Tom knew better than injure his chance by
+precipitation: he would wait until the dancing was more general, and
+the impulse to movement stronger, and then offer himself. He stood
+therefore near Letty for some little time, talking to everybody, and
+making himself agreeable, as was his wont, all round; then at last, as
+if he had just caught sight of her, walked up to her where she stood
+flushed and eager, and asked her to favor him with her hand in the next
+dance.
+
+By this time Letty had got familiar with his presence, had recalled her
+former meeting with him, had heard his name spoken by not a few who
+evidently liked him, and was quite pleased when he asked her to dance
+with him.
+
+In the dance, nothing but commonplaces passed between them; but Tom had
+a certain pleasant way of his own in saying the commonest, emptiest
+things--an off-hand, glancing, skimming, swallow-like way of brushing
+and leaving a thing, as if he "could an' if he would," which made it
+seem for the moment as if he had said something: were his companion
+capable of discovering the illusion, there was no time; Tom was
+instantly away, carrying him or her with him to something else. But
+there was better than this--there was poetry, more than one element of
+it, in Tom. In the presence of a girl that pleased him, there would
+rise in him a poetic atmosphere, full of a rainbow kind of glamour,
+which, first possessing himself, passed out from him and called up a
+similar atmosphere, a similar glamour, about many of the girls he
+talked to. This he could no more help than the grass can help smelling
+sweet after the rain.
+
+Tom was a finely projected, well-built, unfinished, barely furnished
+house, with its great central room empty, where the devil, coming and
+going at his pleasure, had not yet begun to make any great racket.
+There might be endless embryonic evil in him, but Letty was aware of no
+repellent atmosphere about him, and did not shrink from his advances.
+He pleased her, and why should she not be pleased with him? Was it a
+fault to be easily pleased? The truer and sweeter any human self, the
+readier is it to be pleased with another self--save, indeed, something
+in it grate on the moral sense: that jars through the whole harmonious
+hypostasy. To Tom, therefore, Letty responded with smiles and pleasant
+words, even grateful to such a fine youth for taking notice of her
+small self.
+
+The sun had set in a bank of cloud, which, as if he had been a lump of
+leaven to it, immediately began to swell and rise, and now hung dark
+and thick over the still, warm night. Even the farmers were unobservant
+of the change: their crops were all in, they had eaten and drunk
+heartily, and were merry, looking on or sharing in the multiform
+movement, their eyes filled with light and color.
+
+Suddenly came a torrent-sound in the air, heard of few and heeded by
+none, and straight into the hall rushed upon the gay company a deluge
+of rain, mingled with large, half-melted hail-stones. In a moment or
+two scarce a light was left burning, except those in the holes and
+recesses of the walls. The merrymakers scattered like flies--into the
+house, into the tower, into the sheds and stables in the court behind,
+under the trees in front--anywhere out of the hall, where shelter was
+none from the perpendicular, abandoned down-pour.
+
+At that moment, Letty was dancing with Tom, and her hand happened to be
+in his. He clasped it tight, and, as quickly as the crowd and the
+confusion of shelter-seeking would permit, led her to the door of the
+tower already mentioned. But many had run in the same direction, and
+already its lower story and stair were crowded with refugees--the elder
+bemoaning the sudden change, and folding tight around them what poor
+wraps they were fortunate enough to have retained; the younger merrier
+than ever, notwithstanding the cold gusts that now poked their
+spirit-arms higher and thither through the openings of the half-ruinous
+building: to them even the destruction of their finery was but added
+cause of laughter. But a few minutes before, its freshness had been a
+keen pleasure to them, brightening their consciousness with a rare
+feeling of perfection; now crushed and rumpled, soiled and wet and
+torn, it was still fuel to the fire of gayety. But Tom did not stay
+among them. He knew the place well; having a turn for scrambling, he
+had been all over it many a time. On through the crowd, he led Letty up
+the stair to the first floor. Even here were a few couples talking and
+laughing in the dark. With a warning, by no means unnecessary, to mind
+where they stepped, for the floors were bad, he passed on to the next
+stair.
+
+"Let us stop here, Mr. Helmer," said Letty. "There is plenty of room
+here."
+
+"I want to show you something," answered Tom. "You need not be
+frightened. I know every nook of the place."
+
+"I am not frightened," said Letty, and made no further objection.
+
+At the top of that stair they entered a straight passage, in the middle
+of which was a faint glimmer of light from an oval aperture in the side
+of it. Thither Tom led Letty, and told her to look through. She did so.
+
+Beneath lay the great gulf, wide and deep, of the hall they had just
+left. This was the little window, high in its gable, through which, in
+far-away times, the lord or lady of the mansion could oversee at will
+whatever went on below.
+
+The rain had ceased as suddenly as it came on, and already lights were
+moving about in the darkness of the abyss--one, and another, and
+another, was searching for something lost in the hurry of the
+scattering. It was a waste and dismal show. Neither of them had read
+Dante; but Letty may have thought of the hall of Belshazzar, the night
+after the hand-haunted revel, when the Medes had had their will; for
+she had but lately read the story. A strange fear came upon her, and
+she drew back with a shudder.
+
+"Are you cold?" said Tom. "Of course you must be, with nothing but that
+thin muslin! Shall I run down and get you a shawl?"
+
+"Oh, no! do not leave me, please. It's not that," answered Letty. "I
+don't mind the wind a bit; it's rather pleasant. It's only that the
+look of the place makes me miserable, I think. It looks as if no one
+had danced there for a hundred years."
+
+"Neither any one has, I suppose, till to-night," said Tom. "What a fine
+place it would be if only it had a roof to it! I can't think how any
+one can live beside it and leave it like that!"
+
+But Tom lived a good deal closer to a worse ruin, and never spent a
+thought on it.
+
+Letty shivered again.
+
+"I'm quite ashamed of myself," she said, trying to speak cheerfully. "I
+can't think why I should feel like this--just as if something dreadful
+were watching me! I'll go home, Mr. Helmer.".
+
+"It will be much the safest thing to do: I fear you have indeed caught
+cold," replied Tom, rejoiced at the chance of accompanying her. "I
+shall be delighted to see you safe."
+
+"There is not the least occasion for that, thank you," answered Letty.
+"I have an old servant of my aunt's with me--somewhere about the place.
+The storm is quite over now: I will go and find her."
+
+Tom made no objection, but helped her down the dark stair, hoping,
+however, the servant might not be found.
+
+As they went, Letty seemed to herself to be walking in some old dream
+of change and desertion. The tower was empty as a monument, not a trace
+of the crowd left, which a few minutes before had thronged it. The wind
+had risen in earnest now, and was rushing about, like a cold wild
+ghost, through every cranny of the desolate place. Had Letty, when she
+reached the bottom of the stairs, found herself on the rocks of the
+seashore, with the waves dashing up against them, she would only have
+said to herself, "I knew I was in a dream!" But the wind having blown
+away the hail-cloud, the stars were again shining down into the hall.
+One or two forlorn-looking searchers were still there; the rest had
+scattered like the gnats. A few were already at home; some were
+harnessing their horses to go, nor would wait for the man in the moon
+to light his lantern; some were already trudging on foot through the
+dark. Hesper and Miss Yolland were talking to two or three friends in
+the drawing-room; Lady Margaret was in her boudoir, and Mr. Mortimer
+smoking a cigar in his study.
+
+Nowhere could Letty find Susan. She was in the farmer's kitchen behind.
+Tom suspected as much, but was far from hinting the possibility. Letty
+found her cloak, which she had left in the hall, soaked with rain, and
+thought it prudent to go home at once, nor prosecute her search for
+Susan further. She accepted, therefore, Tom's renewed offer of his
+company.
+
+They were just leaving the hall, when a thought came to Letty: the moon
+suddenly appearing above the horizon had put it in her head.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "I know quite a short way home!" and, without waiting
+any response from her companion, she turned, and led him in an opposite
+direction, round, namely, by the back of the court, into a field. There
+she made for a huge oak, which gloomed in the moonlight by the sunk
+fence parting the grounds. In the slow strength of its growth, by the
+rounding of its bole, and the spreading of its roots, it had so rent
+and crumbled the wall as to make through it a little ravine, leading to
+the top of the ha-ha. When they reached it, before even Tom saw it,
+Letty turned from him, and was up in a moment. At the top she turned to
+bid him good night, but there he was, close behind her, insisting on
+seeing her safe to the house.
+
+"Is this the way you always come?" asked Tom.
+
+"I never was on Durnmelling land before," answered Letty.
+
+"How did you find the short-cut, then?" he asked. "It certainly does
+not look as if it were much used."
+
+"Of course not," replied Letty. "There is no communication between
+Durnmelling and Thornwick now. It was all ours once, though, Cousin
+Godfrey says. Did you notice how the great oak sends its biggest arm
+over our field?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I often sit there under it, when I want to learn my lesson, and
+can't rest in the house; and that's how I know of the crack in the
+ha-ha."
+
+She said it in absolute innocence, but Tom laid it up in his mind.
+
+"Are you at lessons still?" he said. "Have you a governess?"
+
+"No," she answered, in a tone of amusement. "But Cousin Godfrey teaches
+me many things."
+
+This made Tom thoughtful; and little more had been said, when they
+reached the gate of the yard behind the house, and she would not let
+him go a step farther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE OAK.
+
+
+In the morning, as she narrated the events of the evening, she told her
+aunt of the acquaintance she had made, and that he had seen her home.
+This information did not please the old lady, as, indeed, without
+knowing any reason, Letty had expected. Mrs. Wardour knew all about
+Tom's mother, or thought she did, and knew little good; she knew also
+that, although her son was a general favorite, her own son had a very
+poor opinion of him. On these grounds, and without a thought of
+injustice to Letty, she sharply rebuked the poor girl for allowing such
+a fellow to pay her any attention, and declared that, if ever she
+permitted him so much as to speak to her again, she would do something
+which she left in a cloud of vaguest suggestion.
+
+Letty made no reply. She was hurt. Nor was it any wonder if she judged
+this judgment of Tom by the injustice of the judge to herself. It was
+of no consequence to her, she said to herself, whether she spoke to him
+again or not; but had any one the right to compel another to behave
+rudely? Only what did it matter, since there was so little chance of
+her ever seeing him again! All day she felt weary and disappointed,
+and, after the merrymaking of the night before, the household work was
+irksome. But she would soon have got over both weariness and tedium had
+her aunt been kind. It is true, she did not again refer to Tom, taking
+it for granted that he was done with; but all day she kept driving
+Letty from one thing to another, nor was once satisfied with anything
+she did, called her even an ungrateful girl, and, before evening, had
+rendered her more tired, mortified, and dispirited, than she had ever
+been in her life.
+
+But the tormentor was no demon; she was only doing what all of us have
+often done, and ought to be heartily ashamed of: she was only emptying
+her fountain of bitter water. Oppressed with the dregs of her headache,
+wretched because of her son's absence, who had not been a night from
+home for years, annoyed that she had spent time and money in
+preparation for nothing, she had allowed the said cistern to fill to
+overflowing, and upon Letty it overflowed like a small deluge. Like
+some of the rest of us, she never reflected how balefully her evil mood
+might operate; and that all things work for good in the end, will not
+cover those by whom come the offenses. Another night's rest, it is
+true, sent the evil mood to sleep again for a time, but did not
+exorcise it; for there are demons that go not out without prayer, and a
+bad temper is one of them--a demon as contemptible, mean-spirited, and
+unjust, as any in the peerage of hell--much petted, nevertheless, and
+excused, by us poor lunatics who are possessed by him. Mrs. Wardour was
+a lady, as the ladies of this world go, but a poor lady for the kingdom
+of heaven: I should wonder much if she ranked as more than a very
+common woman there.
+
+The next day all was quiet; and a visit paid Mrs. Wardour by a favorite
+sister whom she had not seen for months, set Letty at such liberty as
+she seldom had. In the afternoon she took the book Godfrey had given
+her, in which he had set her one of Milton's smaller poems to study,
+and sought the shadow of the Durnmelling oak.
+
+It was a lovely autumn day, the sun glorious as ever in the memory of
+Abraham, or the author of Job, or the builder of the scaled pyramid at
+Sakkara. But there was a keenness in the air notwithstanding, which
+made Letty feel a little sad without knowing why, as she seated herself
+to the task Cousin Godfrey had set her. She, as well as his mother,
+heartily wished he were home. She was afraid of him, it is true; but in
+how different a way from that in which she was afraid of his mother!
+His absence did not make her feel free, and to escape from his mother
+was sometimes the whole desire of her day.
+
+She was trying hard, not altogether successfully, to fix her attention
+on her task, when a yellow leaf dropped on the very line she was poring
+over. Thinking how soon the trees would be bare once more, she brushed
+the leaf away, and resumed her lesson.
+
+   "To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,"
+
+she had just read once more, when down fell a second tree-leaf on the
+book-leaf. Again she brushed it away, and read to the end of the sonnet:
+
+"Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure."
+
+What Letty's thoughts about the sonnet were, I can not tell: how fix
+thought indefinite in words defined? But her angel might well have
+thought what a weary road she had to walk before she gained that
+entrance. But for all of us the road _has_ to be walked, every step,
+and the uttermost farthing paid. The gate will open wide to welcome us,
+but it will not come to meet us. Neither is it any use to turn aside;
+it only makes the road longer and harder.
+
+Down on the same spot fell the third leaf. Letty looked up. There was a
+man in the tree over her head. She started to her feet. At the same
+moment, he dropped on the ground beside her, lifting his hat as coolly
+as if he had met her on the road. Her heart seemed to stand still with
+fright. She stood silent, with white lips parted.
+
+"I hope I haven't frightened you," said Tom. "Do forgive me," he added,
+becoming more aware of the perturbation he had caused her. "You were so
+kind to me the other night, I could not help wanting to see you again.
+I had no idea the sight of me would terrify you so."
+
+"You gave me such a start!" gasped Letty, with her hand pressed on her
+heart.
+
+"I was afraid of it," answered Tom; "but what could I do? I was
+certain, if you saw me coming, you would run away."
+
+"Why should you think that?" asked Letty, a faint color rising in her
+cheek.
+
+"Because," answered Tom, "I was sure they would be telling you all
+manner of things against me. But there is no harm in me--really, Miss
+Lovel--nothing, that is, worth mentioning."
+
+"I am sure there isn't," said Letty; and then there was a pause.
+
+"What book are you reading, may I ask?" said Tom.
+
+Letty had now remembered her aunt's injunctions and threats; but,
+partly from a kind of paralysis caused by his coolness, partly from its
+being impossible to her nature to be curt with any one with whom she
+was not angry, partly from mere lack of presence of mind, not knowing
+what to do, yet feeling she ought to run to the house, what should she
+do but drop down again on the very spot whence she had been scared!
+Instantly Tom threw himself on the grass at her feet, and there lay,
+looking up at her with eyes of humble admiration.
+
+Confused and troubled, she began to turn over the leaves of her book.
+She supposed afterward she must have asked him why he stared at her so,
+for the next thing she remembered was hearing him say:
+
+"I can't help it. You are so lovely!"
+
+"Please don't talk such nonsense to me," she rejoined. "I am not
+lovely, and I know it. What is not true can not please anybody."
+
+She spoke a little angrily now.
+
+"I speak the truth," said Tom, quietly and earnestly. "Why should you
+think I do not?"
+
+"Because nobody ever said so before."
+
+"Then it is quite time somebody should say so," returned Tom, changing
+his tone. "It may be a painful fact, but even ladies ought to be told
+the truth, and learn to bear it. To say you are not lovely would be a
+downright lie."
+
+"I wish you wouldn't talk to me about myself!" said Letty, feeling
+confused and improper, but not altogether displeased that it was
+possible for such a mistake to be made. "I don't want to hear about
+myself. It makes me so uncomfortable! I am sure it isn't right: is it,
+now, Mr. Helmer?"
+
+As she ended, the tears rose in her eyes, partly from unanalyzed
+uneasiness at the position in which she found herself and the turn the
+talk had taken, partly from the discomfort of conscious disobedience.
+But still she did not move.
+
+"I am very sorry if I have vexed you," said Tom, seeing her evident
+trouble. "I can't think how I've done it. I know I didn't mean to; and
+I promise you not to say a word of the kind again--if I can help it.
+But tell me, Letty," he went on again, changing in tone and look and
+manner, and calling her by her name with such simplicity that she never
+even noticed it, "do tell me what you are reading, and that will keep
+me from _talking_ about you--not from--the other thing, you know."
+
+"There!" said Letty, almost crossly, handing him her book, and pointing
+to the sonnet, as she rose to go.
+
+Tom took the book, and sprang to his feet. He had never read the poem,
+for Milton had not been one of his masters. He stood devouring it. He
+was doing his best to lay hold of it quickly, for there Letty stood,
+with her hand held out to take the book again, ready upon its
+restoration to go at once. Silent and motionless, to all appearance
+unhasting, he read and reread. Letty was restless, and growing quite
+impatient; but still Tom read, a smile slow-spreading from his eyes
+over his face; he was taking possession of the poem, he would have
+said. But the shades and kinds and degrees of possession are
+innumerable; and not until we downright love a thing, can we _know_ we
+understand it, or rightly call it our own; Tom only admired this one;
+it was all he was capable of in regard to such at present. Had the whim
+for acquainting himself with it seized him in his own study, he would
+have satisfied it with a far more superficial interview; but the
+presence of the girl, with those eyes fixed on him as he read--his
+mind's eye saw them--was for the moment an enlargement of his being,
+whose phase to himself was a consciousness of ignorance.
+
+"It is a beautiful poem," he said at last, quite honestly; and, raising
+his eyes, he looked straight in hers. There is hardly a limit to the
+knowledge and sympathy a man may have in respect of the finest things,
+and yet be a fool. Sympathy is not harmony. A man may be a poet even,
+and speak with the tongue of an angel, and yet be a very bad fool.
+
+"I am sure it must be a beautiful poem," said Letty; "but I have hardly
+got a hold of it yet." And she stretched her hand a little farther, as
+if to proceed with its appropriation.
+
+But Tom was not yet prepared to part with the book. He proceeded
+instead, in fluent speech and not inappropriate language, to set forth,
+not the power of the poem--that he both took and left as a matter of
+course--but the beauty of those phrases, and the turns of those
+expressions, which particularly pleased him--nor failing to remark
+that, according to the strict laws of English verse, there was in it
+one bad rhyme.
+
+That point Letty begged him to explain, thus leading Tom to an
+exposition of the laws of rhyme, in which, as far as English was
+concerned, he happened to be something of an expert, partly from an
+early habit of scribbling in ladies' albums. About these surface
+affairs, Godfrey, understanding them better and valuing them more than
+Tom, had yet taught Letty nothing, judging it premature to teach
+polishing before carving; and hence this little display of knowledge on
+the part of Tom impressed Letty more than was adequate--so much,
+indeed, that she began to regard him as a sage, and a compeer of her
+cousin Godfrey. Question followed question, and answer followed answer,
+Letty feeling all the time she _must_ go, yet standing and standing,
+like one in a dream, who thinks he can not, and certainly does not
+break its spell--for in the act only is the ability and the deed born.
+Besides, was she to go away and leave her beautiful book in his hand?
+What would Godfrey think if she did? Again and again she stretched out
+her own to take it, but, although he saw the motion, he held on to the
+book as to his best anchor, hurriedly turned its leaves by fits and
+searching for something more to his mind than anything of Milton's.
+Suddenly his face brightened.
+
+"Ah!" he said--and remained a moment silent, reading. "I don't wonder,"
+he resumed, "at your admiration of Milton. He's very grand, of course,
+and very musical, too; but one can't be listening to an organ always.
+Not that I prefer merry music; that must be inferior, for the tone of
+all the beauty in the world is sad." Much Tom Helmer knew of beauty or
+sadness either! but ignorance is no reason with a fool for holding his
+tongue. "But there is the violin, now!--that can be as sad as any
+organ, without being so ponderous. Hear this, now! This is the violin
+after the organ--played as only a master can!"
+
+With this preamble, he read a song of Shelley's, and read it well, for
+he had a good ear for rhythm and cadence, and prided himself on his
+reading of poetry.
+
+Now the path to Letty's heart through her intellect was neither open
+nor well trodden; but the song in question was a winged one, and flew
+straight thither; there was something in the tone of it that suited the
+pitch of her spirit-chamber. And, if Letty's heart was not easily
+found, it was the readier to confess itself when found. Her eyes filled
+with tears, and through those tears Tom looked large and injured. "He
+must be a poet himself to read poetry like that!" she said to herself,
+and felt thoroughly assured that her aunt had wronged him greatly.
+"Some people scorn poetry like sin," she said again. "I used myself to
+think it was only for children, until Cousin Godfrey taught me
+differently."
+
+As thus her thoughts went on interweaving themselves with the music,
+all at once the song came to an end. Tom closed the book, handed it to
+her, said, "Good morning, Miss Lovel," and ran down the rent in the
+ha-ha; and, before Letty could come to herself, she heard the soft
+thunder of hoofs on the grass. She ran to the edge, and, looking over,
+saw Tom on his bay mare, at full gallop across the field. She watched
+him as he neared the hedge and ditch that bounded it, saw him go flying
+over, and lost sight of him behind a hazel-copse. Slowly, then, she
+turned, and slowly she went back to the house and up to her room,
+vaguely aware that a wind had begun to blow in her atmosphere, although
+only the sound of it had yet reached her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+CONFUSION.
+
+
+Then first, and from that moment, Letty's troubles began. Up to this
+point neither she herself nor another could array troublous accusation
+or uneasy thought against her; and now she began to feel like a very
+target, which exists but to receive the piercing of arrows. At first
+sight, and if we do not look a long way ahead of what people stupidly
+regard as the end when it is only an horizon, it seems hard that so
+much we call evil, and so much that is evil, should result from that
+unavoidable, blameless, foreordained, preconstituted, and essential
+attraction which is the law of nature, that is the will of God, between
+man and woman. Even if Letty had fallen in love with Tom at first
+sight, who dares have the assurance to blame her? who will dare to say
+that Tom was blameworthy in seeking the society and friendship, even
+the love, of a woman whom in all sincerity he admired, or for using his
+wits to get into her presence, and detain her a little in his company?
+Reasons there are, infinitely deeper than any philosopher has yet
+fathomed, or is likely to fathom, why a youth such as he--foolish,
+indeed, but not foolish in this--and a sweet and blameless girl such as
+Letty, should exchange regards of admiration and wonder. That which
+thus moves them, and goes on to draw them closer and closer, comes with
+them from the very source of their being, and is as reverend as it is
+lovely, rooted in all the gentle potencies and sweet glories of
+creation, and not unworthily watered with all the tears of agony and
+ecstasy shed by lovers since the creation of the world. What it is, I
+can not tell; I only know it is _not_ that which the young fool calls
+it, still less that which the old sinner thinks it. As to Letty's
+disobedience of her aunt's extravagant orders concerning Tom, I must
+leave that to the judgment of the just, reminding them that she was
+taken by surprise, and that, besides, it was next to impossible to obey
+them. But Letty found herself very uncomfortable, because there now was
+that to be known of her, the knowledge of which would highly displease
+her aunt--for which very reason, if for no other, ought she not to tell
+her all? On the other hand, when she recalled how unkindly, how
+unjustly her aunt had spoken, when she confessed her new acquaintance,
+it became to her a question whether in very deed she _must_ tell her
+all that had passed that afternoon. There was no smallest hope of any
+recognition of the act, surely more hard than incumbent, but severity
+and unreason; _must_ she let the thing out of her hands, and yield
+herself a helpless prey--and that for good to none? Concerning Mrs.
+Wardour, she reasoned justly: she who is even once unjust can not
+complain if the like is expected of her again.
+
+But, supposing it remained Letty's duty to acquaint her aunt with what
+had taken place, and not forgetting that, as one of the old people, I
+have to render account of the young that come after me, and must be
+careful over their lovely dignities and fair duties, I yet make haste
+to assert that the old people, who make it hard for the young people to
+do right, may be twice as much to blame as those whom they arraign for
+a concealment whose very heart is the dread of their known selfishness,
+fierceness, and injustice. If children have to obey their parents or
+guardians, those parents and guardians are over them in the name of
+God, and they must look to it: if in the name of God they act the
+devil, that will not prove a light thing for their answer. The causing
+of the little ones to offend hangs a fearful woe about the neck of the
+causer. It were a hard, as well as a needless task, seeing there is One
+who judges, to set forth how far the child is to blame as toward the
+parent, where the parent first of all is utterly wrong, yea out of true
+relation, toward the child. Not, therefore, is the child free;
+obligation remains--modified, it may be, but how difficult, alas, to
+fulfill! And, whether Letty and such as act like her are _excusable_ or
+not in keeping attentions paid them a secret, this sorrow for the good
+ones of them certainly remains, that, next to a crime, a secret is the
+heaviest as well as the most awkward of burdens to carry. It has to be
+carried always, and all about. From morning to night it hurts in
+tenderest parts, and from night to morning hurts everywhere. At any
+expense, let there be openness. Take courage, my child, and speak out.
+Dare to speak, I say, and that will give you strength to resist, should
+disobedience become a duty. Letty's first false step was here: she said
+to herself _I can not_, and did not. She lacked courage--a want in her
+case not much to be wondered at, but much to be deplored, for courage
+of the true sort is just as needful to the character of a woman as of a
+man. Had she spoken, she might have heard true things of Tom,
+sufficient so to alter her opinion of him as, at this early stage of
+their intercourse, to alter the _set_ of her feelings, which now was
+straight for him. It may be such an exercise of courage would have
+rendered the troubles that were now to follow unnecessary to her
+development. For lack of it, she went about from that time with the
+haunting consciousness that she was one who might be found out; that
+she was guilty of what would go a good way to justify the hard words
+she had so resented. Already the secret had begun to work conscious
+woe. She contrived, however, to quiet herself a little with the idea,
+rather than the resolve, that, as soon as Godfrey came home, she would
+tell him all, confessing, too, that she had not the courage to tell his
+mother. She was sure, she said to herself, he would forgive her, would
+set her at peace with herself, and be unfair neither to Mr. Helmer nor
+to her. In the mean time she would take care--and this was a real
+resolve, not a mere act contemplated in the future--not to go where she
+might meet him again. Nor was the resolve the less genuine that, with
+the very making of it, rose the memory of that delightful hour more
+enticing than ever. How beautifully, and with what feeling, he read the
+lovely song! With what appreciation had he not expounded Milton's
+beautiful poem! Not yet was she capable of bethinking herself that it
+was but on this phrase and on that he had dwelt, on this and on that
+line and rhythm, enforcing their loveliness of sound and shape; while
+the poem, the really important thing, the drift of the whole--it was
+her own heart and conscience that revealed that to her, not the
+exposition of one who at best could understand it only with his brain.
+She kept to her resolve, nevertheless; and, although Tom, leaving his
+horse now here now there, to avoid attracting attention, almost every
+day visited the oak, he looked in vain for the light of her approach.
+Disappointment increased his longing: what would he not have given to
+see once more one of those exquisite smiles break out in its perfect
+blossom! He kept going and going--haunted the oak, sure of some blessed
+chance at last. It was the first time in his life he had followed one
+idea for a whole fortnight.
+
+At length Godfrey came. But, although all the time he was away Letty
+had retained and contemplated with tolerable calmness the idea of
+making her confession to him, the moment she saw him she felt such
+confession impossible. It was a sad discovery to her. Hitherto Godfrey,
+and especially of late, had been the chief source of the peace and
+interest of her life, that portion of her life, namely, to which all
+the rest of it looked as its sky, its overhanging betterness--and now
+she felt before him like a culprit: she had done what he might be
+displeased with. Nay, would that were all! for she felt like a
+hypocrite: she had done that which she could not confess. Again and
+again, while Godfrey was away, she had flattered herself that the help
+the objectionable Tom had given her with her task would at once
+recommend him to Godfrey's favorable regard; but now that she looked in
+Godfrey's face, she was aware--she did not know why, but she was aware
+it would not be so. Besides, she plainly saw that the same fact would,
+almost of necessity, lead him to imagine there had been much more
+between them than was the case; and she argued with herself, that, now
+there was nothing, now that everything was over, it would be a pity if,
+because of what she could not help, and what would never be again,
+there should arise anything, however small, of a misunderstanding
+between her cousin Godfrey and her.
+
+The moment Godfrey saw her, he knew that something was the matter; but
+there had been that going on in him which put him on a false track for
+the explanation. Scarcely had he, on his departure for London, turned
+his back on Thornwick, ere he found he was leaving one whom yet he
+could not leave behind him. Every hour of his absence he found his
+thoughts with the sweet face and ministering hands of his humble pupil.
+Therewith, however, it was nowise revealed to him that he was in love
+with her. He thought of her only as his younger sister, loving,
+clinging, obedient. So dear was she to him, he thought, that he would
+rejoice to secure her happiness at any cost to himself. _Any_ cost? he
+asked--and reflected. Yes, he answered himself--even the cost of giving
+her to a better man. The thing was sure to come, he thought--nor
+thought without a keen pang, scarcely eased by the dignity of the
+self-denial that would yield her with a smile. But such a crisis was
+far away, and there was no necessity for now contemplating it. Indeed,
+there was no _certainty_ it would ever arrive; it was only a
+possibility. The child was not beautiful, although to him she was
+lovely, and, being also penniless, was therefore not likely to attract
+attention; while, if her being unfolded under the genial influences he
+was doing his best to make powerful upon her, if she grew aware that by
+them her life was enlarging and being tenfold enriched, it was possible
+she might not be ready to fall in love, and leave Thornwick. He must be
+careful, however, he said to himself, quite plainly now, that his
+behavior should lead her into no error. He was not afraid she might
+fall in love with him; he was not so full of himself as that; but he
+recoiled from the idea, as from a humiliation, that she might imagine
+him in love with her. It was not merely that he had loved once for all,
+and, once deceived and forsaken, would love no more; but it was not for
+him, a man of thirty years, to bow beneath the yoke of a girl of
+eighteen--a child in everything except outward growth. Not for a moment
+would he be imagined by her a courtier for her favor.
+
+Thus, even in the heart of one so far above ordinary men as Godfrey,
+and that in respect of the sweetest of child-maidens, pride had its
+evil place; and no good ever comes of pride, for it is the meanest of
+mean things, and no one but he who is full of it thinks it grand. For
+its sake this wise man was firmly resolved on caution; and so, when at
+last they met, it was no more with that _abandon_ of simple pleasure
+with which he had been wont to receive her when she came knocking at
+the door of his study, bearing clear question or formless perplexity;
+and his restraint would of itself have been enough to make Letty, whose
+heart was now beating in a very thicket of nerves, at once feel it
+impossible to carry out her intent--impossible to confess to him any
+more than to his mother; while Godfrey, on his part, perceiving her
+manifest shyness and unwonted embarrassment, attributed them altogether
+to his own wisely guarded behavior, and, seeing therein no sign of loss
+of influence, continued his caution. Thus the pride, which is of man,
+mingled with the love, which is of God, and polluted it. From that hour
+he began to lord it over the girl; and this change in his behavior
+immediately reacted on himself, in the obscure perception that there
+might be danger to her in continued freedom of intercourse: he must,
+therefore, he concluded, order the way for both; he must take care of
+her as well as of himself. But was it consistent with this resolve that
+he should, for a whole month, spend every leisure moment in working at
+a present for her--a written marvel of neatness and legibility?
+
+Again, by this meeting askance, as it were, another disintegrating
+force was called into operation: the moment Letty knew she could not
+tell Godfrey, and that therefore a wall had arisen between him and her,
+that moment woke in her the desire, as she had never felt it before, to
+see Tom Helmer. She could no longer bear to be shut up in herself; she
+must see somebody, get near to somebody, talk to somebody; her secret
+would choke her otherwise, would swell and break her heart; and who was
+there to think of but Tom--and Mary Marston?
+
+She had never once gone to the oak again, but she had not altogether
+avoided a certain little cobwebbed gable-window in the garret, from
+which it was visible; neither had she withheld her hands from cleaning
+a pane in that window, that through it she might see the oak; and
+there, more than once or twice, now thickening the huge limb, now
+spotting the grass beneath it, she had descried a dark object, which
+could be nothing else than Tom Helmer on the watch for herself. He must
+surely be her friend, she reasoned, or how would he care, day after
+day, to climb a tree to look if she were coming--she who was the
+veriest nobody in all other eyes but his? It was so good of Tom! She
+_would_ call him Tom; everybody else called him Tom, and why shouldn't
+she--to herself, when nobody was near? As to Mary Marston, she treated
+her like a child! When she told her that she had met Tom at
+Durnmelling, and how kind he had been, she looked as grave as if it had
+been wicked to be civil to him; and told her in return how he and his
+mother were always quarreling: that must be his mother's fault, she was
+sure-it could not be Tom's; any one might see that at a glance! His
+mother must be something like her aunt! But, after that, how could she
+tell Mary any more? It would not be fair to Tom, for, like the rest,
+she would certainly begin to abuse him. What harm could come of it?
+and, if harm did, how could she help it! If they had been kind to her,
+she would have told them everything, but they all frightened her so,
+she could not speak. It was not her fault if Tom was the only friend
+she had! She _would_ ask his advice; he was sure to advise her just the
+right thing. He had read that sonnet about the wise virgin with such
+feeling and such force, he _must_ know what a girl ought to do, and how
+she ought to behave to those who were unkind and would not trust her.
+
+Poor Letty! she had no stay, no root in herself yet. Well do I know not
+one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself;
+each of us needs God and every human soul he has made, before he has
+enough; but we ought each to be able, in the hope of what is one day to
+come, to endure for a time, not having enough. Letty was unblamable
+that she desired the comfort of humanity around her soul, but I am not
+sure that she was quite unblamable in not being fit to walk a few steps
+alone, or even to sit still and expect. With all his learning, Godfrey
+had not taught her what William Marston had taught Mary; and now her
+heart was like a child left alone in a great room. She had not yet
+learned that we must each bear his own burden, and so become able to
+bear each the burden of the other. Poor friends we are, if we are
+capable only of leaning, and able never to support.
+
+But the moment Letty's heart had thus cried out against Mary, came a
+shock, and something else cried out against herself, telling her that
+she was not fair to her friend, and that Mary, and no other, was the
+proper person to advise with in this emergency of her affairs. She had
+no right to turn from her because she was a little afraid of her.
+Perhaps Letty was on the point of discovering that to be unable to bear
+disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of
+the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the
+self-depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting.
+Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as
+if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel
+as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not
+yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what
+may. The right will produce more right and be its own reward--in the
+end a reward altogether infinite, for God will meet it with what is
+deeper than all right, namely, perfect love. But the more Letty
+thought, the more she was sure she must tell Mary; and, disapprove as
+she might, Mary was a very different object of alarm from either her
+aunt or her cousin Godfrey.
+
+The first afternoon, therefore, on which she thought her aunt could
+spare her, she begged leave to go and see Mary. Mrs. Wardour yielded
+it, but not very graciously. She had, indeed, granted that Miss Marston
+was not like other shop-girls, but she did not favor the growth of the
+intimacy, and liked Letty's going to her less than Mary's coming to
+Thornwick.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE HEATH AND THE HUT.
+
+
+Letty seldom went into the shop, except to buy, for she knew Mr.
+Turnbull would not like it, and Mary did not encourage it; but now her
+misery made her bold. Mary saw the trouble in her eyes, and without a
+moment's hesitation drew her inside the counter, and thence into the
+house, where she led the way to her own room, up stairs and through
+passages which were indeed lanes through masses of merchandise, like
+those cut through deep-drifted snow. It was shop all over the house,
+till they came to the door of Mary's chamber, which, opening from such
+surroundings, had upon Letty much the effect of a chapel--and rightly,
+for it was a room not unused to having its door shut. It was small, and
+plainly but daintily furnished, with no foolish excess of the small
+refinements on which girls so often set value, spending large time on
+what it would be waste to buy: only they have to kill the weary captive
+they know not how to redeem, for he troubles them with his moans.
+
+"Sit down, Letty dear, and tell me what is the matter," said Mary,
+placing her friend in a chintz-covered straw chair, and seating herself
+beside her.
+
+Letty burst into tears, and sat sobbing.
+
+"Come, dear, tell me all about it," insisted Mary. "If you don't make
+haste, they will be calling me."
+
+Letty could not speak.
+
+"Then I'll tell you what," said Mary; "you must stop with me to-night,
+that we may have time to talk it over. You sit here and amuse yourself
+as well as you can till the shop is shut, and then we shall have such a
+talk! I will send your tea up here. Beenie will be good to you."
+
+"Oh, but, indeed, I can't!" sobbed Letty; "my aunt would never forgive
+me."
+
+"You silly child! I never meant to keep you without sending to your
+aunt to let her know."
+
+"She won't let me stop," persisted Letty.
+
+"We will try her," said Mary, confidently; and, without more ado, left
+Letty, and, going to her desk in the shop, wrote a note to Mrs.
+Wardour. This she gave to Beenie to send by special messenger to
+Thornwick; after which, she told her, she must take up a nice tea to
+Miss Lovel in her bedroom. Mary then resumed her place in the shop,
+under the frowns and side-glances of Turnbull, and the smile of her
+father, pleased at her reappearance from even such a short absence.
+
+But the return, in an hour or so, of the boy-messenger, whom Beenie had
+taken care not to pay beforehand, destroyed the hope of a pleasant
+evening; for he brought a note from Mrs. Wardour, absolutely refusing
+to allow Letty to spend the night from home: she must return
+immediately, so as to get in before dark.
+
+The rare anger flushed Letty's cheek and flashed from her eyes as she
+read; for, in addition to the prime annoyance, her aunt's note was
+addressed to her and not to Mary, to whom it did not even allude. Mary
+only smiled inwardly at this, but Letty felt deeply hurt, and her
+displeasure with her aunt added yet a shade to the dimness of her
+judgment. She rose at once.
+
+"Will you not tell me first what is troubling you, Letty?" said Mary.
+
+"No, dear, not now," replied Letty, caring a good deal less about the
+right ordering of her way than when she entered the house. Why should
+she care, she said to herself--but it was her anger speaking in
+her--how she behaved, when she was treated so abominably?
+
+"Then I will come and see you on Sunday," said Mary; "and then we shall
+manage to have our talk."
+
+They kissed and parted--Letty unaware that she had given her friend a
+less warm kiss than usual. There can hardly be a plainer proof of the
+lowness of our nature, until we have laid hold of the higher nature
+that belongs to us by birthright, than this, that even a just anger
+tends to make us unjust and unkind: Letty was angry with every person
+and thing at Thornwick, and unkind to her best friend, for whose sake
+in part she was angry. With glowing cheeks, tear-filled eyes, and
+indignant heart she set out on her walk home.
+
+It was a still evening, with a great cloud rising in the southwest;
+from which, as the sun drew near the horizon, a thin veil stretched
+over the sky between, and a few drops came scattering. This was in
+harmony with Letty's mood. Her soul was clouded, and her heaven was
+only a place for the rain to fall from. Annoyance, doubt, her new sense
+of constraint, and a wide-reaching, undefined feeling of homelessness,
+all wrought together to make her mind a chaos out of which misshapen
+things might rise, instead of an ordered world in which gracious and
+reasonable shapes appear. For as the place such will be the thoughts
+that spring there; when all in us is peace divine, then, and not till
+then, shall we think the absolutely reasonable. Alas, that by our
+thoughtlessness or unkindness we should so often be the cause of
+monster-births, and those even in the minds of the loved! that we
+should be, if but for a moment, the demons that deform a fair world
+that loves us! Such was Mrs. Wardour, with her worldly wisdom, that day
+to Letty.
+
+About half-way to Thornwick, the path crossed a little heathy common;
+and just as Letty left the hedge-guarded field-side, and through a gate
+stepped, as it were, afresh out of doors on the open common, the wind
+came with a burst, and brought the rain in earnest. It was not yet very
+heavy, but heavy enough, with the wind at its back, and she with no
+defense but her parasol, to wet her thoroughly before she could reach
+any shelter, the nearest being a solitary, decrepit old hawthorn-tree,
+about half-way across the common. She bent her head to the blast, and
+walked on. She had no desire for shelter. She would like to get wet to
+the skin, take a violent cold, go into a consumption, and die in a
+fortnight. The wind whistled about her bonnet, dashed the rain-drops
+clanging on the drum-tight silk of her parasol, and made of her skirts
+fetters and chains. She could hardly get along, and was just going to
+take down her parasol, when suddenly, where was neither house nor hedge
+nor tree, came a lull. For from behind, over head and parasol, had come
+an umbrella, and now came a voice and an audible sigh of pleasure.
+
+"I little thought when I left home this afternoon," said the voice,
+"that I should have such a happiness before night!"
+
+At the sound of the voice Letty gave a cry, which ran through all the
+shapes of alarm, of surprise, of delight; and it was not much of a cry
+either.
+
+"O Tom!" she said, and clasped the arm that held the umbrella. How her
+foolish heart bounded! Here was help when she had sought none, and
+where least she had hoped for any! Her aunt would have her run from
+under the umbrella at once, no doubt, but she would do as she pleased
+this time. Here was Tom getting as wet as a spaniel for her sake, and
+counting it a happiness! Oh, to have a friend like that--all to
+herself! She would not reject such a friend for all the aunts in
+creation. Besides, it was her aunt's own fault; if she had let her stay
+with Mary, she would not have met Tom. It was not her doing; she would
+take what was sent her, and enjoy it! But, at the sound of her own
+voice calling him Tom, the blood rushed to her cheeks, and she felt
+their glow in the heart of the chill-beating rain.
+
+"What a night for you to be out in, Letty," responded Tom, taking
+instant advantage of the right she had given him. "How lucky it was I
+chose the right place to watch in at last! I was sure, if only I
+persevered long enough, I should be rewarded."
+
+"Have you been waiting for me long?" asked Letty, with foolish
+acceptance.
+
+"A fortnight and a day," answered Tom, with a laugh. "But I would wait
+a long year for such another chance as this." And he pressed to his
+side the hand upon his arm. "Fate is indeed kind to-night."
+
+"Hardly in the weather," said Letty, fast recovering her spirits.
+
+"Not?" said Tom, with seeming pretense of indignation. "Let any one but
+yourself dare to say a word against the weather of this night, and he
+will have me to reckon with. It's the sweetest weather I ever walked
+in. I will write a glorious song in praise of showery gusts and bare
+commons."
+
+"Do," said Letty, careful not to say Tom this time, but unwilling to
+revert to Mr. Helmer, "and mind you bring in the umbrella."
+
+"That I will! See if I don't!" answered Tom.
+
+"And make it real poetry too?" asked Letty, looking archly round the
+stick of the umbrella.
+
+"Thou shalt thyself be the lovely critic, fair maiden!" answered Tom.
+
+And thus they were already on the footing of somewhere about a two
+years' acquaintance--thanks to the smart of ill-usage in Letty's bosom,
+the gayety in Tom's, the sudden wild weather, the quiet heath, the
+gathering shades, and the umbrella! The wind blew cold, the air was
+dank and chill, the west was a low gleam of wet yellow, and the rain
+shot stinging in their faces; but Letty cared quite as little for it
+all as Tom did, for her heart, growing warm with the comfort of the
+friendly presence, felt like a banished soul that has found a world;
+and a joy as of endless deliverance pervaded her being. And neither to
+her nor to Tom must we deny our sympathy in the pleasure which, walking
+over a bog, they drew from the flowers that mantled awful deeps; they
+will not sink until they stop, and begin to build their house upon it.
+Within that umbrella, hovered, and glided with them, an atmosphere of
+bliss and peace and rose-odors. In the midst of storm and coming
+darkness, it closed warm and genial around the pair. Tom meditated no
+guile, and Letty had no deceit in her. Yet was Tom no true man, or
+sweet Letty much of a woman. Neither of them was yet _of the truth._
+
+At the other side of the heath, almost upon the path, stood a deserted
+hut; door and window were gone, but the roof remained: just as they
+neared it, the wind fell, and the rain began to come down in earnest.
+
+"Let us go in here for a moment," said Tom, "and get our breath for a
+new fight."
+
+Letty said nothing, but Tom felt she was reluctant.
+
+"Not a soul will pass to-night," he said. "We mustn't get wet to the
+skin."
+
+Letty felt, or fancied, refusal would be more unmaidenly than consent,
+and allowed Tom to lead her in. And there, within those dismal walls,
+the twilight sinking into a cheerless night of rain, encouraged by the
+very dreariness and obscurity of the place, she told Tom the trouble of
+mind their interview at the oak was causing her, saying that now it
+would be worse than ever, for it was altogether impossible to confess
+that she had met him yet again that evening.
+
+So now, indeed, Letty's foot was in the snare: she had a secret with
+Tom. Every time she saw him, liberty had withdrawn a pace. There was no
+room for confession now. If a secret held be a burden, a secret shared
+is a fetter. But Tom's heart rejoiced within him.
+
+"Let me see!--How old are you, Letty?" he asked gayly.
+
+"Eighteen past," she answered.
+
+"Then you are fit to judge for yourself. You ain't a child, and they
+are not your father and mother. What right have they to know everything
+you do? I wouldn't let any such nonsense trouble me."
+
+"But they give me everything, you know--food, and clothes, and all."
+
+"Ah, just so!" returned Tom. "And what do you do for them?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Why! what are you about all day?"
+
+Letty gave him a brief sketch of her day.
+
+"And you call that nothing?" exclaimed Tom. "Ain't that enough to pay
+for your food and your clothes? Does it want your private affairs to
+make up the difference? Or have you to pay for your food and clothes
+with your very thoughts?--What pocket-money do they give you?"
+
+"Pocket-money?" returned Letty, as if she did not quite know what he
+meant.
+
+"Money to do what you like with," explained Tom.
+
+Letty thought for a moment.
+
+"Cousin Godfrey gave me a sovereign last Christmas," she answered. "I
+have got ten shillings of it yet."
+
+Tom burst into a merry laugh.
+
+"Oh, you dear creature!" he cried. "What a sweet slave you make! The
+lowest servant on the farm gets wages, and you get none: yet you think
+yourself bound to tell them everything, because they give you food and
+clothes, and a sovereign last Christmas!"
+
+Here a gentle displeasure arose in the heart of the girl, hitherto so
+contented and grateful. She did not care about money, but she resented
+the claim her conscience made for them upon her confidence. She did not
+reflect that such claim had never been made by them; nor that the fact
+that she felt the claim, proved that she had been treated, in some
+measure at least, like a daughter of the house.
+
+"Why," continued Tom, "it is mere, downright, rank slavery! You are
+walking to the sound of your own chains. Of course, you are not to do
+anything wrong, but you are not bound not to do anything they may
+happen not to like."
+
+In this style he went on, believing he spoke the truth, and was
+teaching her to show a proper spirit. His heart, as well as Godfrey's,
+was uplifted, to think he had this lovely creature to direct and
+superintend: through her sweet confidence, he had to set her free from
+unjust oppression taking advantage of her simplicity. But in very truth
+he was giving her just the instruction that goes to make a slave--the
+slave in heart, who serves without devotion, and serves unworthily. Yet
+in this, and much more such poverty-stricken, swine-husk argument,
+Letty seemed to hear a gospel of liberty, and scarcely needed the
+following injunctions of Tom, to make a firm resolve not to utter a
+word concerning him. To do so would be treacherous to him, and would be
+to forfeit the liberty he had taught her! Thus, from the neglect of a
+real duty, she became the slave of a false one.
+
+"If you do," Tom had said, "I shall never see you again: they will set
+every one about the place to watch you, like so many cats after one
+poor little white mousey, and on the least suspicion, one way or
+another, you will be gobbled up, as sure as fate, before you can get to
+me to take care of you."
+
+Letty looked up at him gratefully.
+
+"But what could you do for me if I did?" she asked. "If my aunt were to
+turn me out of the house, your mother would not take me in!"
+
+Letty was not herself now; she was herself and Tom--by no means a
+healthful combination.
+
+"My mother won't be mistress long," answered Tom. "She will have to do
+as I bid her when I am one-and-twenty, and that will be in a few
+months." Tom did not know the terms of his father's will. "In the mean
+time we must keep quiet, you know. I don't want a row--we have plenty
+of row as it is. You may be sure _I_ shall tell no one how I spent the
+happiest hour of my life. How little circumstance has to do with
+bliss!" he added, with a philosophical sigh. "Here we are in a wretched
+hut, roared and rained upon by an equinoctial tempest, and I am in
+paradise!"
+
+"I must go home," said Letty, recalled to a sense of her situation, yet
+set trembling with pleasure, by his words. "See, it is getting quite
+dark!"
+
+"Don't be afraid, my white bird," said Tom. "I will see you home. But
+surely you are as well here as there anyhow! Who knows when we shall
+meet again? Don't be alarmed; I'm not going to ask you to meet me
+anywhere; I know your sweet innocence would make you fancy it wrong,
+and then you would be unhappy. But that is no reason why I should not
+fall in with you when I have the chance. It is very hard that two
+people who understand each other can not be friends without other
+people shoving in their ugly beaks! Where is the harm to any one if we
+choose to have a few minutes' talk together now and then?"
+
+"Where, indeed?" responded Letty shyly.
+
+A tall shadow--no shadow either, but the very person of Godfrey
+Wardour--passed the opening in the wall of the hut where once had been
+a window, and the gloom it cast into the dusk within was awful and
+ominous. The moment he saw it, Tom threw himself flat on the clay floor
+of the hut. Godfrey stopped at the doorless entrance, and stood on the
+threshold, bending his head to clear the lintel as he looked in.
+Letty's heart seemed to vanish from her body. A strange feeling shook
+her, as if some mysterious transformation were about to pass upon her
+whole frame, and she were about to be changed into some one of the
+lower animals. The question, where was the harm, late so triumphantly
+put, seemed to have no heart in it now. For a moment that had to Letty
+the air of an aeon, Godfrey stood peering.
+
+Not a little to his displeasure, he had heard from his mother of her
+refusal to grant Letty's request, and had set out in the hope of
+meeting and helping her home, for by that time it had begun to rain,
+and looked stormy.
+
+In the darkness he saw something white, and, as he gazed, it grew to
+Letty's face. The strange, scared, ghastly expression of it bewildered
+him.
+
+Letty became aware that Godfrey did not recognize her at first, and the
+hope sprung up in her heart that he might not see Tom at all; but she
+could not utter a word, and stood returning Godfrey's gaze like one
+fascinated with terror. Presently her heart began again to bear witness
+in violent piston-strokes.
+
+"Is it really you, my child?" said Godfrey, in an uncertain voice--for,
+if it was indeed she, why did she not speak, and why did she look so
+scared at the sight of him?
+
+"O Cousin Godfrey!" gasped Letty, then first finding a little voice,
+"you gave me such a start!"
+
+"Why should you be so startled at seeing me, Letty?" he returned. "Am I
+such a monster of the darkness, then?"
+
+"You came all at once," replied Letty, gathering courage from the
+playfulness of his tone, "and blocked up the door with your shoulders,
+so that not a ray of light fell on your face; and how was I to know it
+was you, Cousin Godfrey?"
+
+From a paleness grayer than death, her face was now red as fire; it was
+the burning of the lie inside her. She felt all a lie now: there was
+the good that Tom had brought her! But the gloom was friendly. With a
+resolution new to herself, she went up to Godfrey and said:
+
+"If you are going to the town, let me walk with you, Cousin Godfrey. It
+is getting so dark."
+
+She felt as if an evil necessity--a thing in which man must not
+believe--were driving her. But the poor child was not half so deceitful
+inside as the words seemed to her issuing from her lips. It was such a
+relief to be assured Godfrey had not seen Tom, that she felt as if she
+could forego the sight of Tom for evermore. Her better feelings rushed
+back, her old confidence and reverence; and, in the altogether
+nebulo-chaotic condition of her mind, she felt as if, in his turn,
+Godfrey had just appeared for her deliverance.
+
+"I am not going to the town, Letty," he answered. "I came to meet you,
+and we will go home together. It is no use waiting for the rain to
+stop, and about as little to put up an umbrella, I have brought your
+waterproof, and we must just take it as it comes."
+
+The wind was up again, and the next moment Letty, on Godfrey's arm, was
+struggling with the same storm she had so lately encountered leaning on
+Tom's, while Tom was only too glad to be left alone on the floor of the
+dismal hut, whence he did not venture to rise for some time, lest any
+the most improbable thing should happen, to bring Mr. Wardour back. He
+was as mortally afraid of being discovered as any young thief in a
+farmer's orchard.
+
+He had a dreary walk back to the public house where he had stabled his
+horse; but he trudged it cheerfully, brooding with delight on Letty's
+beauty, and her lovely confidence in Tom Helmer--a personage whom he
+had begun to feel nobody trusted as he deserved.
+
+"Poor child!" he said to himself--he as well as Godfrey patronized
+her--"what a doleful walk home she will have with that stuck-up old
+bachelor fellow!"
+
+Nor, indeed, was it a very comfortable walk home she had, although
+Godfrey talked all the way, as well as a head-wind, full of rain, would
+permit. A few weeks ago she would have thought the walk and the talk
+and everything delightful. But after Tom's airy converse on the same
+level with herself, Godfrey's sounded indeed wise--very wise--but dull,
+so dull! It is true the suspicion, hardly awake enough to be troublous,
+lay somewhere in her, that in Godfrey's talk there was a value of which
+in Tom's there was nothing; but then it was not wisdom Letty was in
+want of, she thought, but somebody to be kind to her--as kind as she
+should like; somebody, though she did not say this even to herself, to
+pet her a little, and humor her, and not require too much of her.
+Physically, Letty was not in the least lazy, but she did not enjoy
+being forced to think much. She could think, and to no very poor
+purpose either, but as yet she had no hunger for the possible results
+of thought, and how then could she care to think? Seated on the edge of
+her bed, weary and wet and self-accused, she recalled, and pondered,
+and, after her faculty, compared the two scarce comparable men, until
+the voice of her aunt, calling to her to make haste and come to tea,
+made her start up, and in haste remove her drenched garments. The old
+lady imagined from her delay she was out of temper because she had sent
+for her home; but, when she appeared, she was so ready, so attentive,
+and so quick to help, that, a little repentant, she said to herself,
+"Really the girl is very good-natured!" as if then first she discovered
+the fact. But Thornwick could never more to Letty feel like a home! Not
+at peace with herself, she could not be in rhythmic relation with her
+surroundings.
+
+The next day, the old manner of life began again; but, alas! it was
+only the old manner, it was not the old life; that was gone for ever,
+like an old sunset, or an old song, and could not be recalled from the
+dead. We may have better, but we can not have the same. God only can
+have the same. God grant our new may inwrap our old! Letty labored more
+than ever to lay hold of the lessons, to his mind so genial, in hers
+bringing forth more labor than fruit, which Godfrey set before her, but
+success seemed further from her than ever. She was now all the time
+aware of a weight, an oppression, which seemed to belong to the task,
+but was in reality her self-dissatisfaction. She was like a poor Hebrew
+set to make brick without straw, but the Egyptian that had brought her
+into bondage was the feebleness of her own will. Now and then would
+come a break--a glow of beauty, a gleam of truth; for a moment she
+would forget herself; for a moment a shining pool would flash on the
+clouded sea of her life; presently her heart would send up a fresh
+mist, the light would fade and vanish, and the sea lie dusky and sad.
+Not seldom reproaching herself with having given Tom cause to think
+unjustly of her guardians, she would try harder than ever to please her
+aunt; and the small personal services she had been in the way of
+rendering to Godfrey were now ministered with the care of a devotee.
+Not once should he miss a button from a shirt or find a sock
+insufficiently darned! But even this conscience of service did not make
+her happy. Duty itself could not, where faith was wanting, where the
+heart was not at one with those to whom the hands were servants. She
+would cry herself to sleep, and rise early to be sad. She resolved at
+last, and seemed to gain strength and some peace from the resolve, to
+do all in her power to avoid Tom; and certainly not once did she try to
+meet him. Not with him, she could resist him.
+
+Thus it went on. Her aunt saw that something was amiss, and watched
+her, without attempt at concealment, which added greatly to Letty's
+discomfort. But the only thing her keenness discovered was, that the
+girl was forwardly eager to please Godfrey, and the conviction began to
+grow that she was indulging the impudent presumption of being in love
+with her peerless cousin. Then maternal indignation misled her into the
+folly of dropping hints that should put Godfrey on his guard: men were
+so easily taken in by designing girls! She did not say much; but she
+said a good deal too much for her own ends, when she caused her fancy
+to present itself to the mind of Godfrey.
+
+He had not failed, no one could have failed, to observe the dejection
+that had for some time ruled every feature and expression of the girl's
+countenance. Again and again he had asked himself whether she might not
+be fancying him displeased with her; for he knew well that, becoming
+more and more aware of what he counted his danger, he had kept of late
+stricter guard than ever over his behavior; but, watching her now with
+the misleading light of his mother's lantern, nor quite unwilling, I am
+bound to confess, that the thing might be as she implied, he became by
+degrees convinced that she was right.
+
+So far as this, perhaps, the man was pardonable--with a mother to cause
+him to err. But, for what followed, punishment was inevitable. He had a
+true and strong affection for the girl, but it was an affection as from
+conscious high to low; an affection, that is, not unmixed with
+patronage--a bad thing--far worse than it can seem to the heart that
+indulges it. He still recoiled, therefore, from the idea of such a
+leveling of himself as he counted it would be to show her anything like
+the love of a lover. All pride is more or less mean, but one pride may
+be grander than another, and Godfrey was not herein proud in any grand
+way. Good fellow as he was, he thought much too much of himself; and,
+unconsciously comparing it with Letty's, altogether overvalued his
+worth. Stranger than any bedfellow misery ever acquainted a man withal,
+are the heart-fellows he carries about with him. Noble as in many ways
+Wardour was, and kind as, to Letty, he thought he always was, he was
+not generous toward her; he was not Prince Arthur, "the Knight of
+Magnificence." Something may perhaps be allowed on the score of the
+early experience because of which he had resolved--pridefully, it is
+true--never again to come under the power of a woman; it was unworthy
+of any man, he said, to place his peace in a hand which could
+thenceforth wring his whole being with agony. But, had he now brought
+himself as severely to task as he ought, he would have discovered that
+he was making no objection to the little girl's loving him, only he
+would not love her in the same way in return; and where was the honor
+in that? Doubtless, had he thus examined himself, he would have thought
+he meant to take care that the child's love for him should not go too
+far--should not endanger her peace; and that, if the thing should give
+her trouble, it should be his business to comfort her in it; but
+descend he would not--would not _yet_--from his pedestal, to meet the
+silly thing on the level ground of humanity, and the relation of the
+man and the woman! Something like this, I say, he would have found in
+his heart, horrid as it reads. That heart's action was not even, was
+not healthy.
+
+When in London he had ransacked Holywell Street for dainty editions of
+so many of his favorite authors as would make quite a little library
+for Letty; and on his return, had commissioned a cabinet-maker in
+Testbridge to put together a small set of book-shelves, after his own
+design, measured and fitted to receive them exactly; these shelves, now
+ready, he fastened to her wall one afternoon when she was out of the
+way, and filled them with the books. He never doubted that, the moment
+she saw them, she would rush to find him; and, when he had done,
+retreated, therefore, to his study, there to sit in readiness to
+receive her and her gratitude with gentle kindness; when he would
+express the hope that she would make real friends of the spirits whose
+quintessence he had thus stored to her hand; and would introduce her to
+what Milton says in his "Areopagitica" concerning good books. There,
+for her sake, then, he sat, in mental state, expectant; but sat in
+vain. When they met at tea, then, in the presence of his mother, with
+embarrassment and broken utterance, she did thank him.
+
+"O Cousin Godfrey!" she said, and ceased; then, "It is so much more
+than I deserve, I dare hardly thank you." After another pause, with a
+shake of her pretty head, as if she would toss aside her hair, or the
+tears out of her eyes, "I don't know--I seem to have no right to thank
+you; I ought not to have such a splendid present. Indeed, I don't
+deserve it. You would not give it me if you knew how naughty I am."
+
+These broken sentences were by both mother and son altogether
+misinterpreted. The mother, now hearing for the first time of Godfrey's
+present, was filled with jealousy, and began to revolve thoughts of
+dire disquietude: was the hussy actually beginning to gain her point,
+and steal from her the heart of her son? Was it in the girl's blood to
+wrong her? The father of her had wronged her: she would take care his
+daughter should not! She had taken a viper to her bosom! Who was _she_,
+to wriggle herself into an old family and property? Had _she_ been born
+to such things? She would teach her who she was! When dependents began
+to presume, it was time they had a lesson.
+
+Letty could not bear the sight of the books and their shelves; the very
+beauty of the bindings was a reproach to her. From the misery of this
+fresh burden, this new stirring of her sense of hypocrisy, she began to
+wish herself anywhere out of the house, and away from Thornwick. It was
+torture to her to think how she had deceived Cousin Godfrey at the hut;
+and throughout the night, across the darkness, she felt, though she
+could not see, the books gazing at her, like an embodied conscience,
+from the wall of her chamber. Twenty times that night she started from
+her sleep, saying, "I will go where they shall never see me"; then rose
+with the dawn, and set herself to the hardest work she could find.
+
+The next day was Sunday, and they all went to church. Letty felt that
+Tom was there, too, but she never raised her eyes to glance at him.
+
+He had been looking out in vain for a sight of her--now from the
+oak-tree, now from his bay mare's back, as he haunted the roads about
+Thornwick, now from the window of the little public-house where the
+path across the fields joined the main road to Testbridge: but not once
+had he caught a glimpse of her.
+
+He had seated himself where he could not fail to see her if she were in
+the Thornwick pew. How ill she looked! His heart swelled with
+indignation.
+
+"They are cruel to her," he said; "that is plain. Poor girl, they will
+kill her! She is a pearl in the oyster-maw of Thornwick. This will
+never do; I _must_ see her somehow!"
+
+If at this crisis Letty had but had a real friend to strengthen and
+advise her, much suffering might have been spared her, for never was
+there a more teachable girl. She was, indeed, only too ready to be
+advised, too ready to accept for true whatever friendship offered
+itself. None but the friend who will strengthen us to stand, is worthy
+of the name. Such a friend Mary would have been, but Letty did not yet
+know what she needed. The unrest of her conscience made her shrink from
+one who was sure to side with that conscience, and help it to trouble
+her. It was sympathy Letty longed for, not strength, and therefore she
+was afraid of Mary. She came to see her, as she had promised, the
+Sunday after that disastrous visit; but the weather was still uncertain
+and gusty, and she found both her and Godfrey in the parlor; nor did
+Letty give her a chance of speaking to her alone. The poor girl had now
+far more on her mind that needed help than then when she went in search
+of it, but she would seek it no more from her! For, the more she
+thought, the surer she felt that Mary would insist on her making a
+disclosure of the whole foolish business to Mrs. Wardour, and would
+admit neither her own fear nor her aunt's harshness as reason
+sufficient to the contrary. "More than that," thought Letty, "I can't
+be sure she wouldn't go, in spite of me, and tell her all about it! and
+what would become of me then? I should be worse off a hundred times
+than if I had told her myself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WILLIAM MARSTON.
+
+
+The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of
+altogether another kind from those that enveloped Letty: no troubles
+are for one moment to be compared with those that come of the
+wrongness, even if it be not wickedness, that is our own. Some clouds
+rise from stagnant bogs and fens; others from the wide, clean, large
+ocean. But either kind, thank God, will serve the angels to come down
+by. In the old stories of celestial visitants the clouds do much; and
+it is oftenest of all down the misty slope of griefs and pains and
+fears, that the most powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and
+women and children. Beautiful are the feet of the men of science on the
+dust-heaps of the world, but the patient heart will yield a myriad
+times greater thanks for the clouds that give foothold to the shining
+angels.
+
+Few people were interested in William Marston. Of those who saw him in
+the shop, most turned from him to his jolly partner. But a few there
+were who, some by instinct, some from experience, did look for him
+behind the counter, and were disappointed if he were absent: most of
+them had a repugnance to the over-complaisant Turnbull. Yet Marston was
+the one whom the wise world of Testbridge called the hypocrite, and
+Turnbull was the plain-spoken, agreeable, honest man of the world,
+pretending to be no better either than himself or than other people.
+The few friends, however, that Marston bad, loved him as not many are
+loved: they knew him, not as he seemed to the careless eye, but as he
+was. Never did man do less either to conceal or to manifest himself. He
+was all taken up with what he loved, and that was neither himself nor
+his business. These friends knew that, when the far-away look was on
+him, when his face was paler, and he seemed unaware of person or thing
+about him, he was not indifferent to their presence, or careless of
+their existence; it was only that his thoughts were out, like heavenly
+bees, foraging; a word of direct address brought him back in a moment,
+and his soul would return to them with a smile. He stood as one on the
+keystone of a bridge, and held communion now with these, now with
+those: on this side the river and on that, both companies were his own.
+
+He was not a man of much education, in the vulgar use of the word; but
+he was a good way on in that education, for the sake of which, and for
+no other without it, we are here in our consciousness--the education
+which, once begun, will, soon or slow, lead knowledge captive, and
+teaches nothing that has to be unlearned again, because every flower of
+it scatters the seed of one better than itself. The main secret of his
+progress, the secret of all wisdom, was, that with him action was the
+beginning and end of thought. He was not one of that cloud of false
+witnesses, who, calling themselves Christians, take no trouble for the
+end for which Christ was born, namely, their salvation from
+unrighteousness--a class that may be divided into the insipid and the
+offensive, both regardless of obedience, the former indifferent to, the
+latter contentious for doctrine.
+
+It may well seem strange that such a man should have gone into business
+with such another as John Turnbull; but the latter had been growing
+more and more common, while Marston had been growing more and more
+refined. Still from the first it was an unequal yoking of believer with
+unbeliever--just as certainly, although not with quite such wretched
+results, as would have been the marriage of Mary Marston and George
+Turnbull. And it had been a great trial: punishment had not been
+spared--with best results in patience and purification; for so are our
+false steps turned back to good by the evil to which they lead us.
+Turnbull was ready to take every safe advantage to be gained from his
+partner's comparative carelessness about money. He drew a larger
+proportion of the profits than belonged to his share in the capital,
+justifying himself on the ground that he had a much larger family, did
+more of the business, and had to keep up the standing of the firm. He
+made him pay more than was reasonable for the small part of the house
+yielded from storage to the accommodation of him, his daughter, and
+their servant, notwithstanding that, if they had not lived there, some
+one must have been paid to do so. Far more than this, careless of his
+partner's rights, and insensible to his interests, he had for some time
+been risking the whole affair by private speculations. After all,
+Marston was the safer man of business, even from the worldly point of
+view. Alone, it is true, he would hardly have made money, but he would
+have got through, and would have left his daughter the means of getting
+through also; for he would have left her in possession of her own peace
+and the confidence of her friends, which will always prove enough for
+those who confess themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on the
+earth--those who regard it as a grand staircase they have to climb, not
+a plain on which to build their houses and plant their vineyards.
+
+As to the peculiar doctrines of the sect to which he had joined
+himself, right or wrong in themselves, Marston, after having complied
+with what seemed to him the letter of the law concerning baptism, gave
+himself no further trouble. He had for a long time known--for, by the
+power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the
+finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and
+little church, gather only the husks and chaff--that the only baptism
+of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by
+that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of
+him a living soul. When a man _knows_ this, potentially he knows all
+things. But, _just therefore_, he did not stand high with his sect any
+more than with his customers, though--a fact which Marston himself
+never suspected--the influence of his position had made them choose him
+for a deacon. One evening George had had leave to go home early,
+because of a party at _the villa_, as the Turnbulls always called their
+house; and, the boy having also for some cause got leave of absence,
+Mr. Marston was left to shut the shop himself, Mary, who was in some
+respects the stronger of the two, assisting him. When he had put up the
+last shutter, he dropped his arms with a weary sigh. Mary, who had been
+fastening the bolts inside, met him in the doorway.
+
+"You look worn out, father," she said. "Come and lie down, and I will
+read to you."
+
+"I will, my dear," he answered. "I don't feel quite myself to-night.
+The seasons tell upon me now. I suppose the stuff of my tabernacle is
+wearing thin."
+
+Mary cast an anxious look at him, for, though never a strong man, he
+seldom complained. But she said nothing, and, hoping a good cup of tea
+would restore him, led the way through the dark shop to the door
+communicating with the house. Often as she had passed through it thus,
+the picture of it as she saw it that night was the only one almost that
+returned to her afterward: a few vague streaks of light, from the
+cracks of the shutters, fed the rich, warm gloom of the place; one of
+them fell upon a piece of orange-colored cotton stuff, which blazed in
+the dark.
+
+Arrived at their little sitting-room at the top of the stair, she
+hastened to shake up the pillows and make the sofa comfortable for him.
+He lay down, and she covered him with a rug; then ran to her room for a
+book, and read to him while Beenie was getting the tea. She chose a
+poem with which Mr. Wardour had made her acquainted almost the last
+tune she was at Thornwick--that was several weeks ago now, for plainly
+Letty was not so glad to see her as she used to be--it was Milton's
+little ode "On Time," written for inscription on a clock--one of the
+grandest of small poems. Her father knew next to nothing of literature;
+having pondered his New Testament, however, for thirty years, he was
+capable of understanding Milton's best--to the childlike mind the best
+is always simplest and easiest-not unfrequently the _only_ kind it can
+lay hold of. When she ended, he made her read it again, and then again;
+not until she had read it six times did he seem content. And every time
+she read it, Mary found herself understanding it better. It was
+gradually growing very precious.
+
+Her father had made no remark; but, when she lifted her eyes from the
+sixth reading, she saw that his face shone, and, as the last words left
+her lips, he took up the line like a refrain, and repeated it after her:
+
+"'Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee, O Time!'
+
+"That will do now, Mary, I thank you," he said. "I have got a good hold
+of it, I think, and shall be able to comfort myself with it when I wake
+in the night. The man must have been very like the apostle Paul."
+
+He said no more. The tea was brought, and he drank a cup of it, but
+could not eat; and, as he could not, neither could Mary.
+
+"I want a long sleep," he said; and the words went to his child's
+heart--she dared not question herself why. When the tea-things were
+removed, he called her.
+
+"Mary," he said, "come here. I want to speak to you."
+
+She kneeled beside him,
+
+"Mary," he said again, taking her little hand in his two long, bony
+ones, "I love you, my child, to that degree I can not say; and I want
+you, I do want you, to be a Christian."
+
+"So do I, father dear," answered Mary simply, the tears rushing into
+her eyes at the thought that perhaps she was not one; "I want me to be
+a Christian."
+
+"Yes, my love," he went on; "but it is not that I do not think you a
+Christian; it is that I want you to be a downright real Christian, not
+one that is but trying to feel as a Christian ought to feel. I have
+lost so much precious time in that way!"
+
+"Tell me--tell me," cried Mary, clasping her other hand over his. "What
+would you have me do?"
+
+"I will tell you. I am just trying how," he responded. "A Christian is
+just one that does what the Lord Jesus tells him. Neither more nor less
+than that makes a Christian. It is not even understanding the Lord
+Jesus that makes one a Christian. That makes one dear to the Father;
+but it is being a Christian, that is, doing what he tells us, that
+makes us understand him. Peter says the Holy Spirit is given to them
+that obey him: what else is that but just actually, really, doing what
+he says--just as if I was to tell you to go and fetch me my Bible, and
+you would get up and go? Did you ever do anything, my child, just
+because Jesus told you to do it?"
+
+Mary did not answer immediately. She thought awhile. Then she spoke.
+
+"Yes, father," she said, "I think so. Two nights ago, George was very
+rude to me--I don't mean anything bad, but you know he is very rough."
+
+"I know it, my child. And you must not think I don't care because I
+think it better not to interfere. I am with you all the time."
+
+"Thank you, father; I know it. Well, when I was going to bed, I was
+angry with him still, so it was no wonder I found I could not say my
+prayers. Then I remembered how Jesus said we must forgive or we should
+not be forgiven. So I forgave him with all my heart, and kindly, too,
+and then I found I could pray."
+
+The father stretched out his arms and drew her to his bosom, murmuring,
+"My child! my Christ's child!" After a little he began to talk again.
+
+"It is a miserable thing to hear those who desire to believe themselves
+Christians, talking and talking about this question and that, the
+discussion of which is all for strife and nowise for unity--not a
+thought among them of the one command of Christ, to love one another. I
+fear some are hardly content with not hating those who differ from
+them."
+
+"I am sure, father, I try--and I think I do love everybody that loves
+him," said Mary.
+
+"Well, that is much--not enough though, my child. We must be like
+Jesus, and you know that it was while we were yet sinners that Christ
+died for us; therefore we must love all men, whether they are
+Christians or not."
+
+"Tell me, then, what you want me to do, father dear. I will do whatever
+you tell me."
+
+"I want you to be just like that to the Lord Christ, Mary. I want you
+to look out for his will, and find it, and do it. I want you not only
+to do it, though that is the main thing, when you think of it, but to
+look for it, that you may do it. I need not say to you that this is not
+a thing to be _talked_ about much, for you don't do that. You may think
+me very silent, my love; but I do not talk always when I am inclined,
+for the fear I might let my feeling out that way, instead of doing
+something he wants of me with it. And how repulsive and full of offense
+those generally are who talk most! Our strength ought to go into
+conduct, not into talk--least of all, into talk about what they call
+the doctrines of the gospel. The man who does what God tells him, sits
+at his Father's feet, and looks up in his Father's face; and men had
+better leave him alone, for he can not greatly mistake his Father, and
+certainly will not displease him. Look for the lovely will, my child,
+that you may be its servant, its priest, its sister, its queen, its
+slave--as Paul calls himself. How that man did glory in his Master!"
+
+"I will try, father," returned Mary, with a burst of tears. "I do want
+to be good. I do want to be one of his slaves, if I may."
+
+"_May!_ my child? You are bound to be. You have no choice but choose
+it. It is what we are made for--freedom, the divine nature, God's life,
+a grand, pure, open-eyed existence! It is what Christ died for. You
+must not talk about _may;_ it is all _must._"
+
+Mary had never heard her father talk like this, and, notwithstanding
+the endless interest of his words, it frightened her. An instinctive
+uneasiness crept up and laid hold of her. The unsealing hand of Death
+was opening the mouth of a dumb prophet.
+
+A pause followed, and he spoke again.
+
+"I will tell you one thing now that Jesus says: he is unchangeable;
+what he says once he says always; and I mention it now, because it may
+not be long before you are specially called to mind it. It is this:
+_'Let not your heart be troubled.'_"
+
+"But he said that on one particular occasion, and to his disciples--did
+he not?" said Mary, willing, in her dread, to give the conversation a
+turn.
+
+"Ah, Mary!" said her father, with a smile, "_will_ you let the
+questioning spirit deafen you to the teaching one? Ask yourself, the
+first time you are alone, what the disciples were not to be troubled
+about, and why they were not to be troubled about it.--I am tired, and
+should like to go to bed."
+
+He rose, and stood for a moment in front of the fire, winding his old
+double-cased silver watch. Mary took from her side the little gold one
+he had given her, and, as was her custom, handed it to him to wind for
+her. The next moment he had dropped it on the fender.
+
+"Ah, my child!" he cried, and, stooping, gathered up a dying thing,
+whose watchfulness was all over. The glass was broken; the case was
+open; it lay in his hand a mangled creature. Mary heard the rush of its
+departing life, as the wheels went whirring, and the hands circled
+rapidly.
+
+They stopped motionless. She looked up in her father's face with a
+smile. He was looking concerned.
+
+"I am very sorry, Mary," he said; "but, if it is past repair, I will
+get you another.--You don't seem to mind it much!" he added, and smiled
+himself.
+
+"Why should I, father dear?" she replied. "When one's father breaks
+one's watch, what is there to say but 'I am very glad it was you did
+it'? I shall like the little thing the better for it."
+
+He kissed her on the forehead.
+
+"My child, say that to your Father in heaven, when he breaks something
+for you. He will do it from love, not from blundering. I don't often
+preach to you, my child--do I? but somehow it comes to me to-night."
+
+"I will remember, father," said Mary; and she did remember.
+
+She went with him to his bedroom, and saw that everything was right for
+him. When she went again, before going to her own, he felt more
+comfortable, he said, and expected to have a good night. Relieved, she
+left him; but her heart would be heavy. A shapeless sadness seemed
+pressing it down; it was being got ready for what it had to bear.
+
+When she went to his room in the middle of the night, she found him
+slumbering peacefully, and went back to her own and slept better. When
+she went again in the morning, he lay white, motionless, and without a
+breath.
+
+It was not in Mary's nature to give sudden vent to her feelings. For a
+time she was stunned. As if her life had rushed to overtake her
+departing parent, and beg a last embrace, she stood gazing motionless.
+The sorrow was too huge for entrance. The thing could not be! Not until
+she stooped and kissed the pale face, did the stone in her bosom break,
+and yield a torrent of grief. But, although she had left her father in
+that very spot the night before, already she not only knew but felt
+that was not he which lay where she had left him. He was gone, and she
+was alone. She tried to pray, but her heart seemed to lie dead in her
+bosom, and no prayer would rise from it. It was the time of all times
+when, if ever, prayer must be the one reasonable thing--and pray she
+could not. In her dull stupor she did not hear Beenie's knock. The old
+woman entered, and found her on her knees, with her forehead on one of
+the dead hands, while the white face of her master lay looking up to
+heaven, as if praying for the living not yet privileged to die. Then
+first was the peace of death broken. Beenie gave a loud cry, and turned
+and ran, as if to warn the neighbors that Death was loose in the town.
+Thereupon, as if Death were a wild beast yet lurking in it, the house
+was filled with noise and tumult; the sanctuary of the dead was invaded
+by unhallowed presence; and the poor girl, hearing behind her voices
+she did not love, raised herself from her knees, and, without lifting
+her eyes, crept from the room and away to her own.
+
+"Follow her, George," said his father, in a loud, eager whisper.
+"You've got to comfort her now. That's your business, George. There's
+your chance!"
+
+The last words he called from the bottom of the stair, as George sped
+up after her. "Mary! Mary, dear," he called as he ran.
+
+But Mary had the instinct--it was hardly more--to quicken her pace, and
+lock the door of her room the moment she entered. As she turned from
+it, her eye fell upon her watch--where it lay, silent and disfigured,
+on her dressing-table; and, with the sight, the last words of her
+father came back to her. She fell again on her knees with a fresh burst
+of weeping, and, while the foolish youth was knocking unheard at her
+door, cried, with a strange mixture of agony and comfort, "O my Father
+in heaven, give me back William Marston!" Never in his life had she
+thought of her father by his name; but death, while it made him dearer
+than ever, set him away from her so, that she began to see him in his
+larger individuality, as a man before the God of men, a son before the
+Father of many sons: Death turns a man's sons and daughters into his
+brothers and sisters. And while she kneeled, and, with exhausted heart,
+let her brain go on working of itself, as it seemed, came a dreamy
+vision of the Saviour with his disciples about him, reasoning with them
+that they should not give way to grief. "Let not your heart be
+troubled," he seemed to be saying, "although I die, and go out of your
+sight. It is all well. Take my word for it."
+
+She rose, wiped her eyes, looked up, said, "I will try, Lord," and,
+going down, called Beenie, and sent her to ask Mr. Turnbull to speak
+with her. She knew her father's ideas, and must do her endeavor to have
+the funeral as simple as possible. It was a relief to have something,
+anything, to do in his name.
+
+Mr. Turnbull came, and the coarse man was kind. It went not a little
+against the grain with him to order what he called a pauper's funeral
+for the junior partner in the firm; but, more desirous than ever to
+conciliate Mary, he promised all that she wished.
+
+"Marston was but a poor-spirited fellow," he said to his wife when he
+told her; "the thing is a disgrace to the shop, but it's fit enough for
+him.--It will be so much money saved," he added in self-consolation,
+while his wife turned up her nose, as she always did at any mention of
+the shop.
+
+Mary returned to her father's room, now silent again with the air of
+that which is not. She took from the table the old silver watch. It
+went on measuring the time by a scale now useless to its owner. She
+placed it lovingly in her bosom, and sat down by the bedside. Already,
+through love, sorrow, and obedience, she began to find herself drawing
+nearer to him than she had ever been before; already she was able to
+recall his last words, and strengthen her resolve to keep them. And,
+sitting thus, holding vague companionship with the merely mortal, the
+presence of that which was not her father, which was like him only to
+remind her that it was not he, and which must so soon cease to resemble
+him, there sprang, as in the very footprint of Death, yet another
+flower of rarest comfort--a strong feeling, namely, of the briefness of
+time, and the certainty of the messenger's return to fetch herself. Her
+soul did not sink into peace, but a strange peace awoke in her spirit.
+She heard the spring of the great clock that measures the years rushing
+rapidly down with a feverous whir, and saw the hands that measure the
+weeks and months careering around its face; while Death, like one of
+the white-robed angels in the tomb of the Lord, sat watching, with
+patient smile, for the hour when he should be wanted to go for her.
+Thus mingled her broken watch, her father's death, and Jean Paul's
+dream; and the fancy might well comfort her.
+
+I will not linger much more over the crumbling time. It is good for
+those who are in it, specially good for those who come out of it
+chastened and resolved; but I doubt if any prolonged contemplation of
+death is desirable for those whose business it now is to live, and
+whose fate it is ere long to die. It is a closing of God's hand upon us
+to squeeze some of the bad blood out of us, and, when it relaxes, we
+must live the more diligently--not to get ready for death, but to get
+more life. I will relate only one thing yet, belonging to this twilight
+time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MARY'S DREAM.
+
+
+That night, and every night until the dust was laid to the dust, Mary
+slept well; and through the days she had great composure; but, when the
+funeral was over, came a collapse and a change. The moment it became
+necessary to look on the world as unchanged, and resume former
+relations with it, then, first, a fuller sense of her lonely desolation
+declared itself. When she said good night to Beenie, and went to her
+chamber, over that where the loved parent and friend would fall asleep
+no more, she felt as if she went walking along to her tomb.
+
+That night was the first herald of the coming winter, and blew a cold
+blast from his horn. All day the wind had been out. Wildly in the
+churchyard it had pulled at the long grass, as if it would tear it from
+its roots in the graves; it had struck vague sounds, as from a hollow
+world, out of the great bell overhead in the huge tower; and it had
+beat loud and fierce against the corner-buttresses which went
+stretching up out of the earth, like arms to hold steady and fast the
+lighthouse of the dead above the sea which held them drowned below;
+despairingly had the gray clouds drifted over the sky; and, like white
+clouds pinioned below, and shadows that could not escape, the surplice
+of the ministering priest and the garments of the mourners had flapped
+and fluttered as in captive terror; the only still things were the
+coffin and the church--and the soul which had risen above the region of
+storms in the might of Him who abolished death. At the time Mary had
+noted nothing of these things; now she saw them all, as for the first
+time, in minute detail, while slowly she went up the stair and through
+the narrowed ways, and heard the same wind that raved alike about the
+new grave and the old house, into which latter, for all the bales
+banked against the walls, it found many a chink of entrance. The smell
+of the linen, of the blue cloth, and of the brown paper--things no
+longer to be handled by those tender, faithful hands--was dismal and
+strange, and haunted her like things that intruded, things which she
+had done with, and which yet would not go away. Everything had gone
+dead, as it seemed, had exhaled the soul of it, and retained but the
+odor of its mortality. If for a moment a thing looked the same as
+before, she wondered vaguely, unconsciously, how it could be. The
+passages through the merchandise, left only wide enough for one, seemed
+like those she had read of in Egyptian tombs and pyramids: a
+sarcophagus ought to be waiting in her chamber. When she opened the
+door of it, the bright fire, which Beenie undesired had kindled there,
+startled her: the room looked unnatural, _uncanny_, because it was
+cheerful. She stood for a moment on the hearth, and in sad, dreamy mood
+listened to the howling swoops of the wind, making the house quiver and
+shake. Now and then would come a greater gust, and rattle the window as
+if in fierce anger at its exclusion, then go shrieking and wailing
+through the dark heaven. Mechanically she took her New Testament, and,
+seating herself in a low chair by the fire, tried to read; but she
+could not fix her thoughts, or get the meaning of a sentence: when she
+had read it, there it lay, looking at her just the same, like an
+unanswered riddle.
+
+The region of the senses is the unbelieving part of the human soul; and
+out of that now began to rise fumes of doubt and question into Mary's
+heart and brain. Death was a fact. The loss, the evanishment, the
+ceasing, were incontrovertible--the only incontrovertible things: she
+was sure of them: could she be sure of anything else? How could she?
+She had not seen Christ rise; she had never looked upon one of the
+dead; never heard a voice from the other bank; had received no certain
+testimony. These were not her thoughts; she was too weary to think;
+they were but the thoughts that steamed up in her, and went floating
+about before her; she looked on them calmly, coldly, as they came, and
+passed, or remained--saw them with indifference--there they were, and
+she could not help it--weariedly, believing none of them, unable to
+cope with and dispel them, hardly affected by their presence, save with
+a sense of dreariness and loneliness and wretched company. At last she
+fell asleep, and in a moment was dreaming diligently. This was her
+dream, as nearly as she could recall it, when she came to herself after
+waking from it with a cry.
+
+She was one of a large company at a house where she had never been
+before--a beautiful house with a large garden behind. It was a summer
+night, and the guests were wandering in and out at will, and through
+house and garden, amid lovely things of all colors and odors. The moon
+was shining, and the roses were in pale bloom. But she knew nobody, and
+wandered alone in the garden, oppressed with something she did not
+understand. Every now and then she came on a little group, or met a
+party of the guests, as she walked, but none spoke to her, or seemed to
+see her, and she spoke to none.
+
+She found herself at length in an avenue of dark trees, the end of
+which was far off. Thither she went walking, the only living thing,
+crossing strange shadows from the moon. At the end of it she was in a
+place of tombs. Terror and a dismay indescribable seized her; she
+turned and fled back to the company of her kind. But for a long time
+she sought the house in vain; she could not reach it; the avenue seemed
+interminable to her feet returning. At last she was again upon the
+lawn, but neither man nor woman was there; and in the house only a
+light here and there was burning. Every guest was gone. She entered,
+and the servants, soft-footed and silent, were busy carrying away the
+vessels of hospitality, and restoring order, as if already they
+prepared for another company on the morrow. No one heeded her. She was
+out of place, and much unwelcome. She hastened to the door of entrance,
+for every moment there was a misery. She reached the hall. A strange,
+shadowy porter opened to her, and she stepped out into a wide street.
+
+That, too, was silent. No carriage rolled along the center, no
+footfarer walked on the side. Not a light shone from window or door,
+save what they gave back of the yellow light of the moon. She was
+lost--lost utterly, with an eternal loss. She knew nothing of the
+place, had nowhere to go, nowhere she wanted to go, had not a thought
+to tell her what question to ask, if she met a living soul. But living
+soul there could be none to meet. She had nor home, nor direction, nor
+desire; she knew of nothing that she had lost, nor of anything she
+wished to gain; she had nothing left but the sense that she was empty,
+that she needed some goal, and had none. She sat down upon a stone
+between the wide street and the wide pavement, and saw the moon shining
+gray upon the stone houses. It was all deadness.
+
+Presently, from somewhere in the moonlight, appeared, walking up to
+her, where she sat in eternal listlessness, the one only brother she
+had ever had. She had lost him years and years before, and now she saw
+him; he was there, and she knew him. But not a throb went through her
+heart. He came to her side, and she gave him no greeting. "Why should I
+heed him?" she said to herself. "He is dead. I am only in a dream. This
+is not he; it is but his pitiful phantom that comes wandering hither--a
+ghost without a heart, made out of the moonlight. It is nothing. I am
+nothing. I am lost. Everything is an empty dream of loss. I know it,
+and there is no waking. If there were, surely the sight of him would
+give me some shimmer of delight. The old time was but a thicker dream,
+and this is truer because more shadowy." And, the form still standing
+by her, she felt it was ages away; she was divided from it by a gulf of
+very nothingness. Her only life was, that she was lost. Her whole
+consciousness was merest, all but abstract, loss.
+
+Then came the form of her mother, and bent over that of her brother
+from behind. "Another ghost of a ghost! another shadow of a phantom!"
+she said to herself. "She is nothing to me. If I speak to her, she is
+not there. Shall I pour out my soul into the ear of a mist, a fume from
+my own brain? Oh, cold creatures, ye are not what ye seem, and I will
+none of you!"
+
+With that, came her father, and stood beside the others, gazing upon
+her with still, cold eyes, expressing only a pale quiet. She bowed her
+face on her hands, and would not regard him. Even if he were alive, her
+heart was past being moved. It was settled into stone. The universe was
+sunk in one of the dreams that haunt the sleep of death; and, if these
+were ghosts at all, they were ghosts walking in their sleep.
+
+But the dead, one of them seized one of her hands, and another the
+other. They raised her to her feet, and led her along, and her brother
+walked before. Thus was she borne away captive of her dead, neither
+willing nor unwilling, of life and death equally careless. Through the
+moonlight they led her from the city, and over fields, and through
+valleys, and across rivers and seas--a long journey; nor did she grow
+weary, for there was not life enough in her to be made weary. The dead
+never spoke to her, and she never spoke to them. Sometimes it seemed as
+if they spoke to each other, but, if it were so, it concerned some
+shadowy matter, no more to her than the talk of grasshoppers in the
+field, or of beetles that weave their much-involved dances on the face
+of the pool. Their voices were even too thin and remote to rouse her to
+listen.
+
+They came at length to a great mountain, and, as they were going up the
+mountain, light began to grow, as if the sun were beginning to rise.
+But she cared as little for the sun that was to light the day as for
+the moon that had lighted the night, and closed her eyes, that she
+might cover her soul with her eyelids.
+
+Of a sudden a great splendor burst upon her, and through her eyelids
+she was struck blind--blind with light and not with darkness, for all
+was radiance about her. She was like a fish in a sea of light. But she
+neither loved the light nor mourned the shadow.
+
+Then were her ears invaded with a confused murmur, as of the mingling
+of all sweet sounds of the earth--of wind and water, of bird and voice,
+of string and metal--all afar and indistinct. Next arose about her a
+whispering, as of winged insects, talking with human voices; but she
+listened to nothing, and heard nothing of what was said: it was all a
+tiresome dream, out of which whether she waked or died it mattered not.
+
+Suddenly she was taken between two hands, and lifted, and seated upon
+knees like a child, and she felt that some one was looking at her. Then
+came a voice, one that she never heard before, yet with which she was
+as familiar as with the sound of the blowing wind. And the voice said,
+"Poor child! something has closed the valve between her heart and
+mine." With that came a pang of intense pain. But it was her own cry of
+speechless delight that woke her from her dream.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE HUMAN SACRIFICE.
+
+
+The same wind that rushed about the funeral of William Marston in the
+old churchyard of Testbridge, howled in the roofless hall and ruined
+tower of Durnmelling, and dashed against the plate-glass windows of the
+dining-room, where the three ladies sat at lunch. Immediately it was
+over, Lady Malice rose, saying:
+
+"Hesper, I want a word with you. Come to my room."
+
+Hesper obeyed, with calmness, but without a doubt that evil awaited her
+there. To that room she had never been summoned for anything she could
+call good. And indeed she knew well enough what evil it was that to-day
+played the Minotaur. When they reached the boudoir, rightly so called,
+for it was more in use for _sulking_ than for anything else, Lady
+Margaret, with back as straight as the door she had just closed, led
+the way to the fire, and, seating herself, motioned Hesper to a chair.
+Hesper again obeyed, looking as unconcerned as if she cared for nothing
+in this world or in any other. Would we were all as strong to suppress
+hate and fear and anxiety as some ladies are to suppress all show of
+them! Such a woman looks to me like an automaton, in which a human
+soul, somewhere concealed, tries to play a good game of life, and makes
+a sad mess of it.
+
+"Well, Hesper, what do you think?" said her mother, with a dull attempt
+at gayety, which could nowise impose upon the experience of her
+daughter.
+
+"I think nothing, mamma," drawled Hesper.
+
+"Mr. Redmain has come to the point at last, my dear child."
+
+"What point, mamma?"
+
+"He had a private interview with your father this morning."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Foolish girl! you think to tease me by pretending indifference!"
+
+"How can a fact be pretended, mamma? Why should I care what passes in
+the study? I was never welcome there. But, if you wish, I will pretend.
+What important matter was settled in the study this morning?"
+
+"Hesper, you provoke me with your affectation!"
+
+Hesper's eyes began to flash. Otherwise she was still--silent--not a
+feature moved. The eyes are more untamable than the tongue. When the
+wild beast can not get out at the door, nothing can keep him from the
+windows. The eyes flash when the will is yet lord even of the lines of
+the mouth. Not a nerve of Hesper's quivered. Though a mere child in the
+knowledge that concerned her own being, even the knowledge of what is
+commonly called the heart, she was yet a mistress of the art of
+self-defense, socially applied, and she would not now put herself at
+the disadvantage of taking anything for granted, or accept the clearest
+hint for a plain statement. She not merely continued silent, but looked
+so utterly void of interest, or desire to speak, that her mother,
+recognizing her own child, and quailing before the evil spirit she had
+herself sent on to the generations to come, yielded and spoke out.
+
+"Mr. Redmain has proposed for your hand, Hesper," she said, in a tone
+as indifferent in her turn as if she were mentioning the appointment of
+a new clergyman to the family living.
+
+For one moment, and one only, the repose of Hesper's faultless upper
+lip gave way; one writhing movement of scorn passed along its curves,
+and left them for a moment straightened out--to return presently to a
+grander bend than before. In a tone that emulated, and more than
+equaled, the indifference of her mother's, she answered:
+
+"And papa?"
+
+"Has referred him to you, of course," replied Lady Margaret.
+
+"Meaning it?"
+
+"What else? Why not? Is he not a _bon parli?_"
+
+"Then papa did not mean it?"
+
+"I do not understand you," elaborated the mother, with a mingled yawn,
+which she was far from attempting to suppress, seeing she simulated it.
+
+"If Mr. Redmain is such a good match in papa's eyes," explained Hesper,
+"why does papa refer him to me?"
+
+"That you may accept him, of course."
+
+"How much has the man promised to pay for me?"
+
+"_Hesper!_"
+
+"I beg your pardon, mamma. I thought you approved of calling things by
+their right names!"
+
+"No girl can do better than follow her mother's example," said Lady
+Margaret, with vague sequence. "If _you_ do, Hesper, you will accept
+Mr. Redmain."
+
+Hesper fixed her eyes on her mother, but hers were too cold and clear
+to quail before them, let them flash and burn as they pleased.
+
+"As you did papa?" said Hesper.
+
+"As I did Mr. Mortimer."
+
+"That explains a good deal, mamma."
+
+"We are _your_ parents, anyhow, Hesper."
+
+"I suppose so. I don't know which to be sorrier for--you or me. Tell
+me, mamma: would _you_ marry Mr. Redmain?"
+
+"That is a foolish question, and ought not to be put. It is one which,
+as a married woman, I could not consider without impropriety. Knowing
+the duty of a daughter, I did not put the question to _you_. You are
+yourself the offspring of duty."
+
+"If you were in my place, mamma," reattempted Hesper, but her mother
+did not allow her to proceed.
+
+"In any place, in every place, I should do my duty," she said.
+
+It was not only born in Lady Malice's blood, but from earliest years,
+had been impressed on her brain, that her first duty was to her family,
+and mainly consisted in getting well out of its way--in going peaceably
+through the fire to Moloch, that the rest might have good places in the
+Temple of Mammon. In her turn, she had trained her children to the
+bewildering conviction that it was duty to do a certain wrong, if it
+should be required. That wrong thing was now required of Hesper--a
+thing she scorned, hated, shuddered at; she must follow the rest; her
+turn to be sacrificed was come; she must henceforth be a living lie.
+She could recompense herself as the daughters who have sinned by
+yielding generally do when they are mothers, with the sin of
+compelling, and thus make the trespass round and full. There is in no
+language yet the word invented to fit the vileness of such mothers;
+but, as time flows and speech grows, it may be found, and, when it is
+found, it will have action retrospective. It is a frightful thing when
+ignorance of evil, so much to be desired where it can contribute to
+safety, is employed to smooth the way to the unholiest doom, in which
+love itself must ruthlessly perish, and those, who on the plea of
+virtue were kept ignorant, be perfected in the image of the mothers who
+gave them over to destruction. Some, doubtless, of the innocents thus
+immolated pass even through hideous fires of marital foulness to come
+out the purer and the sweeter; but whither must the stone about the
+neck of those that cause the little ones to offend sink those mothers?
+What company shall in the end be too low, too foul for them? Like to
+like it must always be.
+
+Hesper was not so ignorant as some girls; she had for some time had one
+at her side capable of casting not a little light of the kind that is
+darkness.
+
+"_Duty_, mamma!" she cried, her eyes flaming, and her cheek flushed
+with the shame of the thing that was but as yet the merest object in
+her thought; "can a woman be born for such things? How _could_
+I--mamma, how could any woman, with an atom of self-respect, consent to
+occupy the same--_room_ with Mr. Redmain?"
+
+"Hesper! I am shocked. _Where_ did you learn to speak, not to say
+_think_, of such things? Have I taken such pains--good God! you strike
+me dumb! Have I watched my child like a very--angel, as anxious to keep
+her mind pure as her body fair, and is _this_ the result?" Upon what
+Lady Margaret founded her claim to a result more satisfactory to her
+maternal designs, it were hard to say. For one thing, she had known
+nothing of what went on in her nursery, positively nothing of the real
+character of the women to whom she gave the charge of it;
+and--although, I dare say, for worldly women, Hesper's schoolmistresses
+were quite respectable--what did her mother, what could she know of the
+governesses or of the flock of sheep--all presumably, but how certainly
+_all_ white?--into which she had sent her?
+
+"Is _this_ the result?" said Lady Margaret.
+
+"Was it your object, then, to keep me innocent, only that I might have
+the necessary lessons in wickedness first from my husband?" said
+Hesper, with a rudeness for which, if an apology be necessary, I leave
+my reader to find it.
+
+"Hesper, you are vulgar!" said Lady Margaret, with cold indignation,
+and an expression of unfeigned disgust. She was, indeed, genuinely
+shocked. That a young lady of Hesper's birth and position should talk
+like this, actually objecting to a man as her husband because she
+recoiled from his wickedness, of which she was not to be supposed to
+know, or to be capable of understanding, anything, was a thing unheard
+of in her world-a thing unmaidenly in the extreme! What innocent girl
+would or could or dared allude to such matters? She had no right to
+know an atom about them!
+
+"You are a married woman, mamma," returned Hesper, "and therefore must
+know a great many things I neither know nor wish to know. For anything
+I know, you may be ever so much a better woman than I, for having
+learned not to mind things that are a horror to me. But there was a
+time when you shrunk from them as I do now. I appeal to you as a woman:
+for God's sake, save me from marrying that wretch!"
+
+She spoke in a tone inconsistently calm.
+
+"Girl! is it possible you dare to call the man, whom your father and I
+have chosen for your husband, a wretch!"
+
+"Is he not a wretch, mamma?"
+
+"If he were, how should I know it? What has any lady got to do with a
+man's secrets?"
+
+"Not if he wants to marry her daughter?"
+
+"Certainly not. If he should not be altogether what he ought to be--and
+which of us is?--then you will have the honor of reclaiming him. But
+men settle down when they marry."
+
+"And what comes of their wives?"
+
+"What comes of women. You have your mother before you, Hesper."
+
+"O mother!" cried Hesper, now at length losing the horrible affectation
+of calm which she had been taught to regard as _de rigueur_, "is it
+possible that you, so beautiful, so dignified, would send me on to meet
+things you dare not tell me--knowing they would turn me sick or mad?
+How dares a man like that even desire in his heart to touch an innocent
+girl?"
+
+"Because he is tired of the other sort," said Lady Malice, half
+unconsciously, to herself. What she said to her daughter was ten times
+worse: the one was merely a fact concerning Redmain; the other revealed
+a horrible truth concerning herself. "He will settle three thousand a
+year on you, Hesper," she said with a sigh; "and you will find yourself
+mistress."
+
+"I don't doubt it," answered Hesper, in bitter scorn. "Such a man is
+incapable of making any woman a wife."
+
+Hesper meant an awful spiritual fact, of which, with all her ignorance
+of human nature, she had yet got a glimpse in her tortured reflections
+of late; but her mother's familiarity with evil misinterpreted her
+innocence, and caused herself utter dismay. What right had a girl to
+think at all for herself in such matters? Those were things that must
+be done, not thought of!
+
+    "These things must not be thought
+  After these ways; so, they will drive us mad."
+
+Yes, these things are hard to think about--harder yet to write about!
+The very persons who would send the white soul into arms whose mere
+touch is a dishonor will be the first to cry out with indignation
+against that writer as shameless who but utters the truth concerning
+the things they mean and do; they fear lest their innocent daughters,
+into whose hands his books might chance, by ill luck, to fall, should
+learn that it is _their_ business to keep themselves pure.--Ah, sweet
+mothers! do not be afraid. You have brought them up so carefully, that
+they suspect you no more than they do the well-bred gentlemen you would
+have them marry. And have they not your blood in them? That will go
+far. Never heed the foolish puritan. Your mothers succeeded with you:
+you will succeed with your daughters.
+
+But it is a shame to speak of those things that are done of you in
+secret, and I will forbear. Thank God, the day will come--it may be
+thousands of years away--when there shall be no such things for a man
+to think of, any more than for a girl to shudder at! There is a
+purification in progress, and the kingdom of heaven _will_ come, thanks
+to the Man who was holy, harmless, undefined, and separate from
+sinners. You have heard a little, probably only a little, about him at
+church sometimes. But, when that day comes, what part will you have had
+in causing evil to cease from the earth?
+
+There had been a time in the mother's life when she herself regarded
+her approaching marriage, with a man she did not love, as a horror to
+which her natural maidenliness--a thing she could not help--had to be
+compelled and subjected: of the true maidenliness--that before which
+the angels make obeisance, and the lion cowers--she never had had any;
+for that must be gained by the pure will yielding itself to the power
+of the highest. Hence she had not merely got used to the horror, but in
+a measure satisfied with it; never suspecting, because never caring
+enough, that she had at the same time, and that not very gradually,
+been assimilating to the horror; had lost much of what purity she had
+once had, and become herself unclean, body and mind, in the contact
+with uncleanness. One thing she did know, and that swallowed up all the
+rest--that her husband's affairs were so involved as to threaten
+absolute poverty; and what woman of the world would not count damnation
+better than that?--while Mr. Redmain was rolling in money. Had she
+known everything bad of her daughter's suitor, short of legal crime,
+for her this would have covered it all.
+
+In Hesper's useless explosion the mother did not fail to recognize the
+presence of Sepia, without whose knowledge of the bad side of the
+world, Hesper, she believed, could not have been awake to so much. But
+she was afraid of Sepia. Besides, the thing was so far done; and she
+did not think she would work to thwart the marriage. On that point she
+would speak to her.
+
+But it was a doubtful service that Sepia had rendered her cousin--to
+rouse her indignation and not her strength; to wake horror without
+hinting at remedy; to give knowledge of impending doom, without poorest
+suggestion of hope, or vaguest shadow of possible escape. It is one
+thing to see things as they are; to be consumed with indignation at the
+wrong; to shiver with aversion to the abominable; and quite another to
+rouse the will to confront the devil, and resist him until he flee. For
+this the whole education of Hesper had tended to unfit her. What she
+had been taught--and that in a world rendered possible only by the
+self-denial of a God--was to drift with the stream, denying herself
+only that divine strength of honest love, which would soonest help her
+to breast it.
+
+For the earth, it is a blessed thing that those who arrogate to
+themselves the holy name of society, and to whom so large a portion of
+the foolish world willingly yields it, are in reality so few and so
+ephemeral. Mere human froth are they, worked up by the churning of the
+world-sea--rainbow-tinted froth, lovely thinned water, weaker than the
+unstable itself out of which it is blown. Great as their ordinance
+seems, it is evanescent as arbitrary: the arbitrary is but the slavish
+puffed up--and is gone with the hour. The life of the people is below;
+it ferments, and the scum is for ever being skimmed off, and cast--God
+knows where. All is scum where will is not. They leave behind them
+influences indeed, but few that keep their vitality in shapes of art or
+literature. There they go--little sparrows of the human world,
+chattering eagerly, darting on every crumb and seed of supposed
+advantage! while from behind the great dustman's cart, the huge
+tiger-cat of an eternal law is creeping upon them. Is it a spirit of
+insult that leads me to such a comparison? Where human beings do not,
+will not _will_, let them be ladies gracious as the graces, the
+comparison is to the disadvantage of the sparrows. Not time, but
+experience will show that, although indeed a simile, this is no
+hyperbole.
+
+"I will leave your father to deal with you, Hesper," said her mother,
+and rose.
+
+Up to this point, Mortimer children had often resisted their mother;
+beyond this point, never more than once.
+
+"No, please, mamma!" returned Hesper, in a tone of expostulation. "I
+have spoken my mind, but that is no treason. As my father has referred
+Mr. Redmain to me, I would rather deal with him."
+
+Lady Malice was herself afraid of her husband. There is many a woman,
+otherwise courageous enough, who will rather endure the worst and most
+degrading, than encounter articulate insult. The mere lack of
+conscience gives the scoundrel advantage incalculable over the honest
+man; the lack of refinement gives a similar advantage to the cad over
+the gentleman; the combination of the two lacks elevates the husband
+and father into an autocrat. Hesper was not one her world would have
+counted weak; she had physical courage enough; she rode well, and
+without fear; she sat calm in the dentist's chair; she would have
+fought with knife and pistol against violence to the death; and yet,
+rather than encounter the brutality of an evil-begotten race
+concentrated in her father, she would yield herself to a defilement
+eternally more defiling than that she would both kill and die to escape.
+
+"Give me a few hours first, mamma," she begged. "Don't let him come to
+me just yet. For all your hardness, you feel a little for me--don't
+you?"
+
+"Duty is always hard, my child," said Lady Margaret. She entirely
+believed it, and looked on herself as a martyr, a pattern of
+self-devotion and womanly virtue. But, had she been certain of escaping
+discovery, she would have slipped the koh-i-noor into her belt-pouch,
+notwithstanding. Never once in her life had she done or abstained from
+doing a thing _because_ that thing was right or was wrong. Such a
+person, be she as old and as hard as the hills, is mere putty in the
+fingers of Beelzebub.
+
+Hesper rose and went to her own room. There, for a long hour, she
+sat--with the skin of her fair face drawn tight over muscles rigid as
+marble--sat without moving, almost without thinking--in a mere hell of
+disgusted anticipation. She neither stormed nor wept; her life went
+smoldering on; she nerved herself to a brave endurance, instead of a
+far braver resistance.
+
+I fancy Hesper would have been a little shocked if one had called her
+an atheist. She went to church most Sundays--when in the country; for,
+in the opinion of Lady Margaret, it was not decorous _there_ to omit
+the ceremony: where you have influence you ought to set a good
+example--of hypocrisy, namely! But, if any one had suggested to Hesper
+a certain old-fashioned use of her chamber-door, she would have
+inwardly laughed at the absurdity. But, then, you see, her chamber was
+no closet, but a large and stately room; and, besides, how, alas!
+_could_ the child of Roger and Lady M. Alice Mortimer know that in the
+silence was hearing--that in the vacancy was a power waiting to be
+sought? Hesper was not much alone, and here was a chance it was a pity
+she should lose; but, when she came to herself with a sigh, it was not
+to pray, and, when she rose, it was to ring the bell.
+
+A good many minutes passed before it was answered. She paced the
+room--swiftly; she could sit, but she could not walk slowly. With her
+hands to her head, she went sweeping up and down. Her maid's knock
+arrested her before her toilet-table, with her back to the door. In a
+voice of perfect composure, she desired the woman to ask Miss Yolland
+to come to her.
+
+Entering with a slight stoop from the waist, Sepia, with a long, rapid,
+yet altogether graceful step, bore down upon Hesper like a fast-sailing
+cutter over broad waves, relaxing her speed as she approached her.
+
+"Here I am, Hesper!" she said.
+
+"Sepia," said Hesper, "I am sold."
+
+Miss Yolland gave a little laugh, showing about the half of her
+splendid teeth--a laugh to which Hesper was accustomed, but the meaning
+of which she did not understand--nor would, without learning a good
+deal that were better left unlearned. "To Mr. Redmain, of course!" she
+said.
+
+Hesper nodded.
+
+"When are you going to be--"--she was about to say "cut up" but there
+was a something occasionally visible in Hesper that now and then
+checked one of her less graceful coarsenesses. "When is the purchase to
+be completed?" she asked, instead.
+
+"Good Heavens, Sepia! don't be so heartless!" cried Hesper. "Things are
+not quite so bad as that! I am not yet in the hell of knowing that. The
+day is not fixed for the great red dragon to make a meal of me."
+
+"I see you were not asleep in church, as I thought, all the time of the
+sermon, last Sunday," said Sepia.
+
+"I did my best, but I could not sleep: every time little Mowbray
+mentioned the beast, I thought of Mr. Redmain; and it made me too
+miserable to sleep."
+
+"Poor Hesper!--Well! let us hope that, like the beast in the
+fairy-tale, he will turn out a man after all."
+
+"My heart will break," cried Hesper, throwing herself into a chair.
+"Pity me, Sepia; _you_ love me a little."
+
+A slight shadow darkened yet more Sepia's shadowy brow.
+
+"Hesper," she said, gravely, "you never told me there was anything of
+that sort! Who is it?"
+
+"Mr. Redmain, of course!--I don't know what you mean, Sepia."
+
+"You said your heart was breaking: who is it for?" asked Sepia, almost
+imperiously, and raising her voice a little.
+
+"Sepia!" cried Hesper, in bewilderment.
+
+"Why should your heart be breaking, except you loved somebody?"
+
+"Because I hate _him_," answered Hesper.
+
+"Pooh! is that all?" returned Miss Yolland. "If there were anybody you
+wanted--then I grant!"
+
+"Sepia!" said Hesper, almost entreatingly, "I can not bear to be teased
+to-day. Do be open with me. You always puzzle me so! I don't understand
+you a bit better than the first day you came to us. I have got used to
+you--that is all. Tell me--are you my friend, or are you in league with
+mamma? I have my doubts. I can't help it, Sepia."
+
+She looked in her face pitifully. Miss Yolland looked at her calmly, as
+if waiting for her to finish.
+
+"I thought you would--not help me," Hesper went on, "--that no one can
+except God--he could strike me dead; but I did think you would feel for
+me a little. I hate Mr. Redmain, and I loathe myself. If _you_ laugh at
+me, I shall take poison."
+
+"I wouldn't do that," returned Miss Yolland, quite gravely, and as if
+she had already contemplated the alternative; "--that is, not so long
+as there was a turn of the game left."
+
+"The game!" echoed Hesper. "--Playing for love with the devil!--I wish
+the game were yours, as you call it!"
+
+"Mine I'd make it, if I had it to play," returned Sepia. "I wish I were
+the other player instead of you, but the man hates me. Some men
+do.--Come," she went on, "I will be open with you, Hesper; you don't
+hang for thoughts in England. I will tell you what I would do with a
+man I hated--that is, if I was compelled to marry him; it would hardly
+be fair otherwise, and I have a weakness for fair play.--I would give
+him absolute fair play."
+
+The last three words she spoke with a strange expression of mingled
+scorn and jest, then paused, and seemed to have said all she meant to
+say.
+
+"Go on," sighed Hesper; "you amuse me." Her tone expressed anything but
+amusement. "What would a woman of your experience do in my place?"
+
+Sepia fixed a momentary look on Hesper; the words seemed to have stung
+her. She knew well enough that, if Lady Malice came to know anything of
+her real history, she would have bare time to pack up her small
+belongings. She wanted Hesper married, that she might go with her into
+the world again; at the same time, she feared her marriage with Mr.
+Redmain would hardly favor her wishes. But she could not with prudence
+do anything expressly to prevent it; while she might even please Mr.
+Redmain a little, if she were supposed to have used influence on his
+side. That, however, must not seem to Hesper. Sepia did not yet know in
+fact upon what ground she had to build.
+
+For some time she had been trying to get nearer to Hesper, but--much
+like Hesper's experience with her--had found herself strangely baffled,
+she could not tell how--the barrier being simply the half innocence,
+half ignorance, of Hesper. When minds are not the same, words do not
+convey between them.
+
+She gave a ringing laugh, throwing back her head, and showing all her
+fine teeth.
+
+"You want to know what I would do with a man I hated, as you _say_ you
+hate Mr. Redmain?--I would send for him at once--not wait for him to
+come to me--and entreat him, _as he loved me_, to deliver me from the
+dire necessity of obeying my father. If he were a gentleman, as I hope
+he may be, he would manage to get me out of it somehow, and wouldn't
+compromise me a hair's breadth. But, that is, _if I were you_. If I
+were _myself_ in your circumstances, and hated him as you do, that
+would not serve my turn. I would ask him all the same to set me free,
+but I would behave myself so that he could not do it. While I begged
+him, I mean, I should make him feel that he could not--should make him
+absolutely determined to marry me, at any price to him, and at whatever
+cost to me. He should say to himself that I did not mean what I
+said--as, indeed, for the sake of my revenge, I should not. For that I
+would give anything--supposing always, don't you know? that I hated him
+as you do Mr. Redmain. He should declare to me it was impossible; that
+he would die rather than give up the most precious desire of his
+life--and all that rot, you know. I would tell him I hated him--only so
+that he should not believe me. I would say to him, 'Release me, Mr.
+Redmain, or I will make you repent it. I have given you fair warning. I
+have told you I hated you.' He should persist, should marry me, and
+then I _would_."
+
+"Would what?"
+
+"Do as I said."
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Make him repent it."
+
+With the words, Miss Yolland broke into a second fit of laughter, and,
+turning from Hesper, went, with a kind of loitering, strolling pace
+toward the door, glancing round more than once, each time with a fresh
+bubble rather than ripple in her laughter. Whether it was all
+nonsensical merriment, or whether the author of laughter without fun,
+Beelzebub himself, was at the moment stirring in her, Hesper could not
+have told; as it was, she sat staring after her, unable even to think.
+Just as she reached the door, however, she turned quickly, and, with
+the smile of a hearty, innocent child, or something very like it, ran
+back to Hesper, threw her arms round her, and said:
+
+"There, now! I've done for you what I could: I have made you forget the
+odious man for a moment. I was curious to know whether I could not make
+a bride forget her bridegroom. The other thing is too easy."
+
+"What other thing?"
+
+"To make a bridegroom forget his bride, of course, you silly
+child!--But there I am, off again! when really it is time to be
+serious, and come to the only important point in the matter.--In what
+shade of purity do you think of ascending the funeral pyre?--In
+absolute white?--or rose-tinged?--or cream-colored!--or
+gold-suspect?--Eh, happy bride?"
+
+As she ceased, she turned her head away, pulled out her handkerchief,
+and whimpered a little.
+
+"Sepia!" said Hesper, annoyed, "you are a worse goose than I thought
+you! What have _you_ got to cry about? _You_ have not got to marry him!"
+
+"No; I wish I had!" returned Sepia, wiping her eyes. "Then I shouldn't
+lose you. I should take care of that."
+
+"And am I likely to gain such a friend in Mr. Redmain as to afford the
+loss of the only _other_ friend I have?" said Hesper, calmly.
+
+"Ah, Hesper! a sad experience has taught me differently, The moment you
+are married to the man--as married you will be--you all are--bluster as
+you may--that moment you will begin to change into a wife--a
+domesticated animal, that is--a tame tabby. Unwilling a woman must be
+to confess herself only the better half of a low-bred brute, with a
+high varnish--or not, as the case may be; and there is nothing left her
+to do but set herself to find out the wretch's virtues, or, as he
+hasn't got any, to invent for him the least unlikely ones. She wants
+for her own sake to believe in him, don't you know? Then she begins to
+repent having said hard words of the poor gentleman. The next thing, of
+course, will be, that you begin to hate the person, to whom you said
+them, and to persuade yourself she drew them out of you; and so you
+break off all communication with the obnoxious person; who being, in
+the present instance, that black-faced sheep, Sepia Yolland, she is
+very sorry beforehand, and hates Mr. Redmain with all her heart; first,
+because Hesper Mortimer hates him, and next, but twice as much, because
+she is going to love him. It is a great pity _you_ should have him,
+Hesper. I wish you would hand him over to me. _I_ shouldn't mind what
+he was. I should soon tame him."
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Hesper, with righteous
+indignation. "_You would not mind what he was!_"
+
+Sepia laughed--this time her curious half-laugh.
+
+"If I did, I wouldn't marry him, Hesper," she said. "Which is
+worse--not to mind, and marry him; or to mind, and marry him all the
+same? Eh, Cousin Hesper Mortimer?"
+
+"I _can't_ make you out, Sepia!" said Hesper. "I believe I never shall."
+
+"Very likely. Give it up?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"The best thing you could do. I can't always make myself out. But,
+then, I always give it up directly, and so it does me no harm. But it's
+ten times worse to worry your poor little heart to rags about such a
+man as that; he's not worth a thought from a grand creature like you.
+Where's the use, besides? Would you stand staring at your medicine a
+whole day before the time for taking it comes? I wouldn't have my right
+leg cut off because that is the side my dog walks on, and dogs go mad!
+Slip, cup, and lip--don't you know? The man may be underground long
+before the wedding-day: he's anything but sound, they tell me. But it
+would be far better soon after it, of course. Think only--a young
+widow, rich, and not a straw the worse!"
+
+"Sepia, I can't for the life of me tell whether you are a Job's
+comforter or the devil's advocate."
+
+"Not the latter, my child; for I want to see you emerge a saint from
+the miseries of matrimony. But, whatever you do, Hesper, don't break
+your heart, for you will find it hard to mend. I broke mine once, and
+have been mad ever since."
+
+"What is the use of saying that to me, when you know I have to marry
+the man?"
+
+"I never said you were not to marry him; I said you were not to break
+your heart. Marriage is nothing so long as you do not make a heart
+affair of it; that hurts; and, as you are not in love, there is no
+occasion for it at all."
+
+"Marriage is nothing, Sepia! Is it nothing to be tied to a man--to
+_any_ man--for all your life?"
+
+"That's as you take it. Nobody makes so much of it nowadays as they
+used. The clergy themselves, who are at the bottom of all the business,
+don't fuss about every trifle in the prayer-book. They sign the
+articles, and have done with it--meaning, of course, to break them, if
+they stand in their way."
+
+Hesper rose in anger.
+
+"How dare you--" she began.
+
+"Good gracious!" cried Sepia, "you don't imagine I meant anything so
+wicked! How could you let such a thing come into your head? I declare
+you are quite dangerous to talk to!"
+
+"It's such a horrible business," said Hesper, "it seems to make one
+capable of anything wicked, only to think about it. I would rather not
+say another word on the subject."
+
+A shudder ran through her, as if at the sight of some hideously
+offensive object.
+
+"That would be the best thing," said Sepia, "if it meant not think more
+about it. Everything is better for not being thought about. I would do
+anything to comfort you, dear. I would marry him for you, if that would
+do; but I fear it would scarcely meet the views of Herr Papa. If I
+could please the beast as well--and I think I should in time--I would
+willingly hand him the purchase-money. But, of course, he would scorn
+to touch it, except as the proceeds of the _bona-fide_ sale of his own
+flesh and blood."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+UNGENEROUS BENEVOLENCE.
+
+
+As the time went on, and Letty saw nothing more of Tom, she began to
+revive a little, and feel as if she were growing safe again. The tide
+of temptation was ebbing away; there would be no more deceit; never
+again would she place herself in circumstances whence might arise any
+necessity for concealment. She began, much too soon, alas! to feel as
+if she were newborn; nothing worthy of being called a new birth can
+take place anywhere but in the will, and poor Letty's will was not yet
+old enough to give birth to anything; it scarcely, indeed, existed. The
+past was rapidly receding, that was all, and had begun to look dead,
+and as if it wanted only to be buried out of her sight. For what is
+done is done, in small faults as well as in murders; and, as nothing
+can recall it, or make it not be, where can be the good in thinking
+about it?--a reasoning worse than dangerous, before one has left off
+being capable of the same thing over again. Still, in the mere absence
+of renewed offense, it is well that some shadow of peace should return;
+else how should men remember the face of innocence? or how should they
+live long enough to learn to repent? But for such breaks, would not
+some grow worse at full gallop?
+
+That the idea of Tom's friendship was very pleasant to her, who can
+blame her? He had never said he loved her; he had only said she was
+lovely: was she therefore bound to persuade herself he meant nothing at
+all? Was it not as much as could be required of her, that, in her
+modesty, she took him for no more than a true, kind friend, who would
+gladly be of service to her? Ah! if Tom had but been that! If he was
+not, he did not know it, which is something to say both for and against
+him. It could not be other than pleasant to Letty to have one, in her
+eyes so superior, who would talk to her as an equal. It was not that
+ever she resented being taught; but she did get tired of lessons only,
+beautiful as they were. A kiss from Mrs. Wardour, or a little teasing
+from Cousin Godfrey, would have done far more than all his intellectual
+labor upon her to lift her feet above such snares as she was now
+walking amid. She needed some play--a thing far more important to life
+than a great deal of what is called business and acquirement. Many a
+matter, over which grown people look important, long-faced, and
+consequential, is folly, compared with the merest child's frolic, in
+relation to the true affairs of existence.
+
+All the time, Letty had not in the least neglected her houseduties;
+and, again, her readings with her cousin Godfrey, since Tom's apparent
+recession, had begun to revive in interest. He grew kinder and kinder
+to her, more and more fatherly.
+
+But the mother, once disquieted, had lost no time in taking measures.
+In every direction, secretly, through friends, she was inquiring after
+some situation suitable for Letty: she owed it to herself, she said, to
+find for the girl the right thing, before sending her from the house.
+In the true spirit of benevolent tyranny, she said not a word to Letty
+of her design. She had the chronic distemper of concealment, where
+Letty had but a feverish attack. Much false surmise might have been
+corrected, and much evil avoided, had she put it in Letty's power to
+show how gladly she would leave Thornwick. In the mean time the old
+lady kept her lynx-eye upon the young people.
+
+But Godfrey, having caught a certain expression in the said eye, came
+to the resolution that thenceforth their schoolroom should be the
+common sitting-room. This would aid him in carrying out his resolve of
+a cautious and staid demeanor toward his pupil. To preserve his
+freedom, he must keep himself thoroughly in hand. Experience had taught
+him that, were he once to give way and show his affection, there would
+from that moment be an end of teaching and learning. And yet so much
+was he drawn to the girl, that, at this very time, he gave her the
+manuscript of his own verses to which I have referred--a volume
+exquisitely written, and containing, certainly, the outcome of the best
+that was in him: he did not tell her that he had copied them all with
+such care and neatness, and had the book so lovelily bound, expressly
+and only for her eyes..
+
+News of something that seemed likely to suit her ideas for Letty at
+length came to Mrs. Wardour's ears, whereupon she thought it time to
+prepare the girl for the impending change. One day, therefore, as she
+herself sat knitting one sock for Godfrey, and Letty darning another,
+she opened the matter.
+
+"I am getting old, Letty," she said, "and you can't be here always. You
+are a thoughtless creature, but I suppose you have the sense to see
+that?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, aunt," answered Letty.
+
+"It is high time you should be thinking," Mrs. Wardour went on, "how
+you are to earn your bread. If you left it till I was gone, you would
+find it very awkward, for you would have to leave Thornwick at once,
+and I don't know who would take you while you were looking out. I must
+see you comfortably settled before I go."
+
+"Yes, aunt."
+
+"There are not many things you could do."
+
+"No, aunt; very few. But I should make a better housemaid than most--I
+do believe that."
+
+"I am glad to find you willing to work; but we shall be able, I trust,
+to do a little better for you than that. A situation as housemaid would
+reflect little credit on my pains for you--would hardly correspond to
+the education you have had."
+
+Mrs. Wardour referred to the fact that Letty was for about a year a
+day--boarder at a ladies' school in Testbridge, where no immortal soul,
+save that of a genius, which can provide its own sauce, could have
+taken the least interest in the chaff and chopped straw that composed
+the provender.
+
+"It is true," her aunt went on, "you might have made a good deal more
+of it, if you had cared to do your best; but, such as you are, I trust
+we shall find you a very tolerable situation as governess."
+
+At the word, Letty's heart ran half-way up her throat. A more dreadful
+proposal she could not have imagined. She felt, and was, utterly
+insufficient for--indeed, incapable of such an office. She felt she
+knew nothing: how was she to teach anything? Her heart seemed to grow
+gray within her. By nature, from lack of variety of experience, yet
+more from daily repression of her natural joyousness, she was
+exceptionally apprehensive where anything was required of her. What she
+understood, she encountered willingly and bravely; but, the simplest
+thing that seemed to involve any element of obscurity, she dreaded like
+a dragon in his den.
+
+"You don't seem to relish the proposal, Letty," said Mrs. Wardour. "I
+hope you had not taken it in your head that I meant to leave you
+independent. What I have done for you, I have done purely for your
+father's sake. I was under no obligation to take the least trouble
+about you. But I have more regard to your welfare than I fear you give
+me credit for."
+
+"O aunt! it's only that I'm not fit for being a governess. I shouldn't
+a bit mind being dairymaid or housemaid. I would go to such a place
+to-morrow, if you liked."
+
+"Letty, your tastes may be vulgar, but you owe it to your family to
+look at least like a lady."
+
+"But I am not scholar enough for a governess, aunt."
+
+"That is not my fault. I sent you to a good school. Now, I will find
+you a good situation, and you must contrive to keep it."
+
+"O aunt! let me stay here--just as I am. Call me your dairymaid or your
+housemaid. It is all one--I do the work now."
+
+"Do you mean to reflect on me that I have required menial offices of
+you? I have been to you in the place of a mother; and it is for me, not
+for you, to make choice of your path in life."
+
+"Do you want me to go at once?" asked Letty, her heart sinking again,
+and her voice trembling with a pathos her aunt quite misunderstood.
+
+"As soon as I have secured for you a desirable situation--not before,"
+answered Mrs. Wardour, in a tone generously protective.
+
+Her affection for the girl had never been deep; and, the moment she
+fancied she and her son were drawing toward each other, she became to
+her the thawed adder: she wished the adder well, but was she bound to
+harbor it after it had begun to bite? There are who never learn to see
+anything except in its relation to themselves, nor that relation except
+as fancied by themselves; and, this being a withering habit of mind,
+they keep growing drier, and older, and smaller, and deader, the longer
+they live--thinking less of other people, and more of themselves and
+their past experience, all the time as they go on withering.
+
+But Mrs. Wardour was in some dread of what her son would say when he
+came to know what she had been doing; for, when we are not at ease with
+ourselves, when conscience keeps moving as if about to speak, then we
+dread the disapproval of the lowliest, and Godfrey was the only one
+before whom his mother felt any kind of awe. Toward him, therefore, she
+kept silence for the present. If she had spoken then, things might have
+gone very differently: it might have brought Godfrey to the point of
+righteous resolve or of passionate utterance. He could not well have
+opposed his mother's design without going further and declaring that,
+if Letty would, she should remain where she was, the mistress of the
+house. If not the feeling of what was due to her, the dread of the
+house without her might well have brought him to this.
+
+Letty, for her part, believed her cousin Godfrey regarded her with
+pity, and showed her kindness from a generous sense of duty; she was a
+poor, dull creature for whom her cousin must do what he could: one word
+of genuine love from him, one word even of such love as was in him,
+would have caused her nature to shoot heavenward and spread out
+earthward with a rapidity that would have astonished him; she would
+thereby have come into her spiritual property at once, and heaven would
+have opened to her--a little way at least--probably to close again for
+a time. Now she felt crushed. The idea of undertaking that for which
+she knew herself so ill fitted was not merely odious but frightful to
+her. She was ready enough to work, but it must be real, not sham work.
+She must see and consult Mary! This was quite another affair from Tom!
+She would take the first opportunity. In the mean time there was
+nothing to be done or said; and with a heavy heart she held her
+peace--only longed for her own room, that she might have a cry. To her
+comfort the clock struck ten, and all that now lay between her and that
+refuge was the usual round of the house with Mrs. Wardour, to see all
+safe for the night. That done, they parted, and Letty went slowly and
+sadly up the stair. It was a dark prospect before her. At best, she had
+to leave the only home she remembered, and go among strangers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE MOONLIGHT.
+
+
+It was a still, frosty night, with a full moon. When she reached her
+chamber, Letty walked mechanically to the window, and there stood, with
+the candle in her hand, looking carelessly out, nor taking any pleasure
+in the great night. The window looked on an open, grassy yard, where
+were a few large ricks of wheat, shining yellow in the cold, far-off
+moon. Between the moon and the earth hung a faint mist, which the thin
+clouds of her breath seemed to mingle with and augment. There lay her
+life--out of doors--dank and dull; all the summer faded from it--all
+its atmosphere a growing fog! She would never see Tom again! It was six
+weeks since she saw him last! He must have ceased to think of her by
+this time! And, if he did think of her again, she would be far off,
+nobody knew where.
+
+Something struck the window with a slight, sharp clang. It was winter,
+and there were no moths or other insects flying, What could it be? She
+put her face close to the pane, and looked out. There was a man in the
+shadow of one of the ricks! He had his hat off, and was beckoning to
+her. It could be nobody but Tom! The thought sent to her heart a pang
+of mingled pleasure and pain. Clearly he wanted to speak to her! How
+gladly she would! but then would come again all the trouble of
+conscious deceit: how was she to bear that all over again! Still, if
+she was going to be turned out of the house so soon, what would it
+matter? If her aunt was going to compel her to be her own mistress,
+where was the harm if she began it a few days sooner? What did it
+matter anyhow what she did? But she dared not speak to him! Mrs.
+Wardour's ears were as sharp as her eyes. The very sound of her own
+voice in the moonlight would terrify her. She opened the lattice
+softly, and gently shaking her head--she dared not shake it
+vigorously--was on the point of closing it again, when, making frantic
+signs of entreaty, the man stepped into the moonlight, and it was
+plainly Tom. It was too dreadful! He might be seen any moment! She
+shook her head again, in a way she meant, and he understood, to mean
+she dared not. He fell on his knees and laid his hands together like
+one praying. Her heart interpreted the gesture as indicating that he
+was in trouble, and that, therefore, he begged her to go to him. With
+sudden resolve she nodded acquiescence, and left the window.
+
+Her room was in a little wing, projecting from the back of the house,
+over the kitchen. The servants' rooms were in another part, but Letty
+forgot a tiny window in one of them, which looked also upon the ricks.
+There was a back stair to the kitchen, and in the kitchen a door to the
+farm-yard. She stole down the stair, and opened the door with absolute
+noiselessness. In a moment more she had stolen on tiptoe round the
+corner, and was creeping like a ghost among the ricks. Not even a
+rustle betrayed her as she came up to Tom from behind. He still knelt
+where she had left him, looking up to her window, which gleamed like a
+dead eye in the moonlight. She stood for a moment, afraid to move, lest
+she should startle him, and he should call out, for the slightest noise
+about the place would bring Godfrey down. The next moment, however,
+Tom, aware of her presence, sprang to his feet, and, turning, bounded
+to her, and took her in his arms. Still possessed by the one terror of
+making a noise, she did not object even by a contrary motion, and, when
+he took her hand to lead her away out of sight of the house, she
+yielded at once.
+
+When they were safe in the field behind the hedge--
+
+"Why did you make me come down, Tom?" she whispered, half choked with
+fear, looking up in his face, which was radiant in the moonshine.
+
+"Because I could not bear it one day longer," he answered. "All this
+time I have been breaking my heart to get a word with you, and never
+seeing you except at church, and there you would never even look at me.
+It is cruel of you, Letty. I know you could manage it, if you liked,
+well enough. Why should you try me so?"
+
+"Do speak a little lower, Tom: sound goes so far at night!--I didn't
+know you would want to see me like that," she answered, looking up in
+his face with a pleased smile.
+
+"Didn't know!" repeated Tom. "I want nothing else, think of nothing
+else, dream of nothing else. Oh, the delight of having you here all
+alone to myself at last! You darling Letty!"
+
+"But I must go directly, Tom. I have no business to be out of the house
+at this time of the night. If you hadn't made me think you were in some
+trouble, I daredn't have come."
+
+"And ain't I in trouble enough--trouble that nothing but your coming
+could get me out of? To love your very shadow, and not be able to get a
+peep even of that, except in church, where all the time of the service
+I'm raging inside like a wild beast in a cage--ain't that trouble
+enough to make you come to me?"
+
+Letty's heart leaped up. He loved her, then! Love, real love, was what
+it meant! It was paradise! Anything might come that would! She would be
+afraid of nothing any more. They might say or do to her what they
+pleased--she did not care a straw, if he loved her--really loved her!
+And he did! he did! She was going to have him all to her own self, and
+nobody was to have any right to meddle with her more!
+
+"I didn't know you loved me, Tom!" she said, simply, with a little gasp.
+
+"And I don't know yet whether you love me," returned Tom.
+
+"Of course, if you love _me_," answered Letty, as if everybody must
+give back love for love.
+
+Tom took her again in his arms, and Letty was in greater bliss than she
+had ever dreamed possible. From being a nobody in the world, she might
+now queen it to the top of her modest bent; from being looked down on
+by everybody, she had the whole earth under her feet; from being
+utterly friendless, she had the heart of Tom Helmer for her own! Yet
+even then, eluding the barriers of Tom's arms, shot to her heart, sharp
+as an arrow, the thought that she was forsaking Cousin Godfrey. She did
+not attempt to explain it to herself; she was in too great confusion,
+even if she had been capable of the necessary analysis. It came,
+probably, of what her aunt had told her concerning her cousin's opinion
+of Tom. Often and often since, she had said to herself that, of course,
+Cousin Godfrey was mistaken and quite wrong in not liking Tom; she was
+sure he would like him if he knew him as she did!--and yet to act
+against his opinion, and that never uttered to herself, cost her this
+sharp pang, and not a few that followed! To soften it for the moment,
+however, came the vaguely, sadly reproachful feeling, that, seeing they
+were about to send her out into the world to earn her bread, they had
+no more any right to make such demands upon her loyalty to them as
+should exclude the closest and only satisfying friend she had--one who
+would not turn her away, but wanted to have her for ever. That Godfrey
+knew nothing of his mother's design, she did not once suspect.
+
+"Now, Tom, you have seen me, and spoken to me, and I must go," said
+Letty.
+
+"O Letty!" cried Tom, reproachfully, "now when we understand each
+other? Would you leave me in the very moment of my supremest bliss?
+That would be mockery, Letty! That is the way my dreams serve me
+always. But, surely, you are no dream! Perhaps I _am_ dreaming, and
+shall wake to find myself alone! I never was so happy in my life, and
+you want to leave me all alone in the midnight, with the moon to
+comfort me! Do as you like, Letty!--I won't leave the place till the
+morning. I will go back to the rick-yard, and lie under your window all
+night."
+
+The idea of Tom, out on the cold ground, while she was warm in bed, was
+too much for Letty's childish heart. Had she known Tom better, she
+would not have been afraid: she would have known that he would indeed
+do as he had said--so far; that he would lie down under her window, and
+there remain, even to the very moment when he began to feel miserable,
+and a moment longer, but not more than two; that then he would get up,
+and, with a last look, start home for bed.
+
+"I will stop a little while, Tom," she offered, "if you will promise to
+go home as soon as I leave you."
+
+Tom promised.
+
+They went wandering along the farm-lanes, and Tom made love to her, as
+the phrase is--in his case, alas! a phrase only too correct. I do not
+say, or wish understood, that he did not love her--with such love as
+lay in the immediate power of his development; but, being a sort of a
+poet, such as a man may be who loves the form of beauty, but not the
+indwelling power of it, that is, the truth, he _made_ love to
+her--fashioned forms of love, and offered them to her; and she accepted
+them, and found the words of them very dear and very lovely. For
+neither had she got far enough, with all Godfrey's endeavors for her
+development, to love aright the ring of the true gold, and therefore
+was not able to distinguish the dull sound of the gilt brass Tom
+offered her. Poor fellow! it was all he had. But compassion itself can
+hardly urge that as a reason for accepting it for genuine. What rubbish
+most girls will take for poetry, and with it heap up impassably their
+door to the garden of delights! what French polish they will take for
+refinement! what merest French gallantry for love! what French
+sentiment for passion! what commonest passion they will take for
+devotion!--passion that has little to do with their beauty even, still
+less with the individuality of it, and nothing at all with their
+loveliness!
+
+In justice to Tom, I must add, however, that he also took not a little
+rubbish for poetry, much sentiment for pathos, and all passion for
+love. He was no intentional deceiver; he was so self-deceived, that,
+being himself a deception, he could be nothing but a deceiver--at once
+the most complete and the most pardonable, and perhaps the most
+dangerous of deceivers.
+
+With all his fine talk of love, to which he now gave full flow, it was
+characteristic of him that, although he saw Letty without hat or cloak,
+just because he was himself warmly clad, he never thought of her being
+cold, until the arm he had thrown round her waist felt her shiver.
+Thereupon he was kind, and would have insisted that she should go in
+and get a shawl, had she not positively refused to go in and come out
+again. Then he would have had her put on his coat, that she might be
+able to stay a little longer; but she prevailed on him to let her go.
+He brought her to the nearest point not within sight of any of the
+windows, and, there leaving her, set out at a rapid pace for the inn
+where he had put up his mare.
+
+When Tom was gone, and the bare night, a diffused conscience, all about
+her, Letty, with a strange fear at her heart, like one in a churchyard,
+with the ghost-hour at hand, and feeling like "a guilty thing
+surprised," although she had done nothing wrong in its mere self, stole
+back to the door of the kitchen, longing for the shelter of her own
+room, as never exile for his fatherland.
+
+She had left the door an inch ajar, that she might run the less risk of
+making a noise in opening it; but ere she reached it, the moon shining
+full upon it, she saw plainly, and her heart turned sick when she saw,
+that it was closed. Between cold and terror she shuddered from head to
+foot, and stood staring.
+
+Recovering a little, she said to herself some draught must have blown
+it to. If so, there was much danger that the noise had been heard; but,
+in any case, there was no time to lose. She glided swiftly to it. She
+lifted the latch softly--but, horror of horrors! in vain. The door was
+locked. She was shut out. She must lie or confess! And what lie would
+serve? Poor Letty! And yet, for all her dismay, her terror, her despair
+that night, in her innocence, she never once thought of the worst
+danger in which she stood!
+
+The least perilous, where no safe way was left, would now have been to
+let the simple truth appear; Letty ought immediately to have knocked at
+the door, and, should that have proved unavailing, to have broken her
+aunt's window even, to gain hearing and admittance. But that was just
+the kind of action of which, truthful as was her nature, poor Letty,
+both by constitution and training, was incapable; human opposition,
+superior anger, condemnation, she dared not encounter. She sank, more
+than half fainting, upon the door-step.
+
+The moment she came to herself, apprehension changed into active dread,
+rushed into uncontrollable terror. She sprang to her feet, and, the
+worst thing she could do, fled like the wind after Tom--now, indeed,
+she imagined, her only refuge! She knew where he had put up his horse,
+and knew he could hardly take any other way than the foot-path to
+Testbridge. He could not be more than a few yards ahead of her, she
+thought. Presently she heard him whistling, she was sure, as he walked
+leisurely along, but she could not see him. The way was mostly between
+hedges until it reached the common: there she would catch sight of him,
+for, notwithstanding the gauzy mist, the moon gave plenty of light. On
+she went swiftly, still fancying at intervals she heard in front of her
+his whistle, and even his step on the hard, frozen path. In her eager
+anxiety to overtake him, she felt neither the chilling air nor the fear
+of the night and the loneliness. Dismay was behind her, and hope before
+her. On and on she ran. But when, with now failing breath, she reached
+the common, and saw it lie so bare and wide in the moonlight, with the
+little hut standing on its edge, like a ghastly lodge to nowhere, with
+gaping black holes for door and window, then, indeed, the horror of her
+deserted condition and the terrors of the night began to crush their
+way into her soul. What might not be lurking in that ruin, ready to
+wake at the lightest rustle, and, at sight of a fleeing girl, start out
+in pursuit, and catch her by the hair that now streamed behind her! And
+there was the hawthorn, so old and grotesquely contorted, always
+bringing to her mind a frightful German print at the head of a poem
+called "The Haunted Heath," in one of her cousin Godfrey's books! It
+was like an old miser, decrepit with age, pursued and unable to run!
+Miserable as was her real condition, it was rendered yet more pitiable
+by these terrors of the imagination. The distant howl of a dog which
+the moon would not let sleep, the muffled low of a cow from a shippen,
+and a certain strange sound, coming again and again, which she could
+not account for, all turned to things unnatural, therefore frightful.
+Faintly, once or twice, she tried to persuade herself that it was only
+a horrible dream, from which she would wake in safety; but it would not
+do; it was, alas! all too real--hard, killing fact! Anyhow, dream or
+fact, there was no turning; on to the end she must go. More frightful
+than all possible dangers, most frightful thing of all, was the old
+house she had left, standing silent in the mist, holding her room
+inside it empty, the candle burning away in the face of the moon!
+Across the common she glided like a swift wraith, and again into the
+shadow of the hedges.
+
+There seems to be a hope as well as a courage born of despair:
+immortal, yet inconstant children of a death-doomed sire, both were now
+departing. If Tom had come this way, she must, she thought, have
+overtaken him long before now! But, perhaps, she had fainted outright,
+and lain longer than she knew at the kitchen-door; and when she started
+to follow him, Tom was already at home! Alas, alas! she was lost
+utterly!
+
+The footpath came to an end, and she was on the high-road. There was
+the inn where Tom generally put up! It was silent as the grave. The
+clang of a horseshoe striking a stone came through the frosty air from
+far along the road. Her heart sank into the depths of the infinite sea
+that encircles the soul, and, for the second time that night, Death
+passing by gave her an alms of comfort, and she lay insensible on the
+border of the same highway along which Tom, on his bay mare, went
+singing home.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE MORNING.
+
+
+At Thornwick, Tom had been descried in the yard, by the spying organs
+of one of the servants--a woman not very young, and not altogether
+innocent of nightly interviews. Through the small window of her closet
+she had seen, and having seen she watched--not without hope she might
+be herself the object of the male presence, which she recognized as
+that of Tom Helmer, whom almost everybody knew. In a few minutes,
+however, Letty appeared behind him, and therewith a throb of evil joy
+shot through her bosom: what a chance! what a good joke! what a thing
+for her to find out Miss Letty; to surprise her naughty secret! to have
+her in her power! She would have no choice but tell her everything--and
+then what privileges would be hers! and what larks they two would have
+together, helping each other! She had not a thought of betraying her:
+there would be no fun in that! not the less would she encourage a
+little the fear that she might, for it would be as a charm in her bosom
+to work her will withal!--To make sure of Letty and her secret, partly
+also in pure delight of mischief, and enjoyment of the power to tease,
+she stole down stairs, and locked the kitchen door--the bolt of which,
+for reasons of her own, she kept well oiled; then sat down in an old
+rocking-chair, and waited--I can not say watched, for she fell fast
+asleep. Letty lifted the latch almost too softly for her to have heard
+had she been awake; but on the door-step Letty, had she been capable of
+listening, might have heard her snoring.
+
+When the young woman awoke in the cold gray of the morning, and came to
+herself, compunction seized her. Opening the door softly, she went out
+and searched everywhere; then, having discovered no trace of Letty,
+left the door unlocked, and went to bed, hoping she might yet find her
+way into the house before Mrs. Wardour was down.
+
+When that lady awoke at the usual hour, and heard no sound of stir, she
+put on her dressing-gown, and went, in the anger of a housekeeper, to
+Letty's room: there, to her amazement and horror, she saw the bed had
+lain all the night expectant. She hurried thence to the room occupied
+by the girl who was the cause of the mischief. Roused suddenly by the
+voice of her mistress, she got up half awake, and sleepy-headed; and,
+assailed by a torrent of questions, answered so, in her confusion, as
+to give the initiative to others: before she was well awake, she had
+told all she had seen from the window, but nothing of what she had
+herself done. Mrs. Wardour hurried to the kitchen, found the door on
+the latch, believed everything and much more, went straight to her
+son's room, and, in a calm rage, woke him up, and poured into his
+unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein floated
+side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she could bring the
+lips of propriety to utter. Before he quite came to himself the news
+had well-nigh driven him mad. There stood his mother, dashing her cold
+hailstorm of contemptuous wrath on the girl he loved, whom he had gone
+to bed believing the sweetest creature in creation, and loving himself
+more than she dared show! He had been dreaming of her with the utmost
+tenderness, when his mother woke him with the news that she had gone in
+the night with Tom Helmer, the poorest creature in the neighborhood.
+
+"For God's sake, mother," he cried, "go away, and let me get up!"
+
+"What can you do, Godfrey? What is there to be done? Let the jade go to
+her ruin!" cried Mrs. Wardour, alarmed in the midst of her wrath. "You
+_can_ do nothing now. As she has made her bed, so she must lie."
+
+Her words were torture to him. He sprang from his bed, and proceeded to
+pull on his clothes. Terrified at the wildness of his looks, his mother
+fled from the room, but only to watch at the door.
+
+Scarcely could Godfrey dress himself for agitation; brain and heart
+seemed to mingle in chaotic confusion. Anger strove with unbelief, and
+indignation at his mother with the sense of bitter wrong from Letty. It
+was all incredible and shameful, yet not the less utterly miserable.
+The girl whose Idea lay in the innermost chamber of his heart like the
+sleeping beauty in her palace! while he loved and ministered to her
+outward dream-shape which flitted before the eyes of his sense, in the
+hope that at last the Idea would awake, and come forth and inform
+it!--he dared not follow the thought! it was madness and suicide! He
+had been silently worshiping an angel with wings not yet matured to the
+spreading of themselves to the winds of truth; those wings were a
+little maimed, and he had been tending them with precious balms, and
+odors, and ointments: all at once she had turned into a bat, a
+skin-winged creature that flies by night, and had disappeared in the
+darkness! Of all possible mockeries, for _her_ to steal out at night to
+the embraces of a fool! a wretched, weak-headed, idle fellow, whom
+every clown called by his Christian name! an ass that did nothing but
+ride the country on a horse too good for him, and quarrel with his
+mother from Sunday to Saturday! For such a man she had left him,
+Godfrey Wardour! a man who would have lifted her to the height of her
+nature! whereas the fool Helmer would sink her to the depth of his own
+merest nothingness! The thing was inconceivable! yet it was! He knew
+it; they were all the same! Never woman worthy of true man! The poorest
+show would take them captive, would draw them from reason!
+
+He knew _now_ that he loved the girl. Gnashing his teeth with fellest
+rage, he caught from the wall his heaviest hunting-whip, rushed
+heedless past his mother where she waited on the landing, and out of
+the house.
+
+In common with many, he thought worse of Tom Helmer than he yet
+deserved. He was a characterless fool, a trifler, a poetic babbler, a
+good-for-nothing good sort of fellow; that was the worst that as yet
+was true of him; and better things might with equal truth have been
+said of him, had there been any one that loved him enough to know them.
+
+Godfrey ran to the stable, and to the stall of his fastest horse. As he
+threw the saddle over his back, he almost wept in the midst of his
+passion at the sight of the bright stirrups. His hands trembled so that
+he failed repeatedly in passing the straps through the buckles of the
+girths. But the moment he felt the horse under him, he was stronger,
+set his head straight for the village of Warrender, where Tom's mother
+lived, and went away over everything. His crow-flight led him across
+the back of the house of Durnmelling. Hesper, who had not slept well,
+and found the early morning even a worse time to live in than the
+evening, saw him from her window, going straight as an arrow. The sight
+arrested her. She called Sepia, who for a few nights had slept in her
+room, to the window.
+
+"There, now!" she said, "there is a man who looks a man! Good Heavens!
+how recklessly he rides! I don't believe Mr. Redmain could keep on a
+horse's back if he tried!" Sepia looked, half asleep. Her eyes grew
+wider. Her sleepiness vanished.
+
+"Something is wrong with the proud yeoman!" she said. "He is either mad
+or in love, probably both! We shall hear more of this morning's ride,
+Hesper, as I hope to die a maid!--That's a man I should like to know
+now," she added, carelessly. "There is some go in him! I have a
+weakness for the kind of man that _could_ shake the life out of me if I
+offended him."
+
+"Are you so anxious, then, to make a good, submissive wife?" said
+Hesper.
+
+"I should take the very first opportunity of offending him--mortally,
+as they call it. It would be worth one's while with a man like that."
+
+"Why? How? For what good?"
+
+"Just to see him look. There is nothing on earth so scrumptious as
+having a grand burst of passion all to yourself." She drew in her
+breath like one in pain. "My God!" she said, "to see it come and go!
+the white and the red! the tugging at the hair! the tears and the
+oaths, and the cries and the curses! To know that you have the man's
+heart-strings stretched on your violin, and that with one dash of your
+bow, one tiniest twist of a peg, you can make him shriek!"
+
+"Sepia!" said Hesper, "I think Darwin must be right, and some of us at
+least are come from--"
+
+"Tiger-cats? or perhaps the Tasmanian devil?" suggested Sepia, with one
+of her scornful half-laughs.
+
+But the same instant she turned white as death, and sat softly down on
+the nearest chair.
+
+"Good Heavens, Sepia! what is the matter? I did not mean it," said
+Hesper, remorsefully, thinking she had wounded her, and that she had
+broken down in the attempt to conceal the pain.
+
+"It's not that, Hesper, dear. Nothing you could say would hurt me,"
+replied Sepia, drawing breath sharply. "It's a pain that comes
+sometimes--a sort of picture drawn in pains--something I saw once."
+
+"A picture?"
+
+"Oh! well!--picture, or what you will!--Where's the difference, once
+it's gone and done with? Yet it will get the better of me now and then
+for a moment! Some day, when you are married, and a little more used to
+men and their ways, I will tell you. My little cousin is much too
+innocent now."
+
+"But you have not been married, Sepia! What should you know about
+disgraceful things?"
+
+"I will tell you when you are married, and not until then, Hesper.
+There's a bribe to make you a good child, and do as you must--that is,
+as your father and mother and Mr. Redmain would have you!"
+
+While they talked, Godfrey, now seen, now vanishing, had become a speck
+in the distance. Crossing a wide field, he was now no longer to be
+distinguished from the grazing cattle, and so was lost to the eyes of
+the ladies.
+
+By this time he had collected his thoughts a little, and it had grown
+plain to him that the last and only thing left for him to do for Letty
+was to compel Tom to marry her at once. "My mother will then have half
+her own way!" he said to himself bitterly. But, instead of reproaching
+himself that he had not drawn the poor girl's heart to his own, and
+saved her by letting her know that he loved her, he tried to
+congratulate himself on the pride and self-important delay which had
+preserved him from yielding his love to one who counted herself of so
+little value. He did not reflect that, if the value a woman places upon
+herself be the true estimate of her worth, the world is tolerably
+provided with utterly inestimable treasures of womankind; yet is it the
+meek who shall inherit it; and they who make least of themselves are
+those who shall be led up to the dais at last.
+
+"But the wretch shall marry her at once!" he swore. "Her character is
+nothing now but a withered flower in the hands of that woman. Even were
+she capable of holding her tongue, by this time a score must have seen
+them together."
+
+Godfrey hardly knew what he was to gain by riding to Warrender, for how
+could he expect to find Tom there? and what could any one do with the
+mother? Only, where else could he go first to learn anything about him?
+Some hint he might there get, suggesting in what direction to seek
+them. And he must be doing something, however useless: inaction at such
+a moment would be hell itself!
+
+Arrived at the house--a well-appointed cottage, with out-houses larger
+than itself--he gave his horse to a boy to lead up and down, while he
+went through the gate and rang the bell in a porch covered with ivy.
+The old woman who opened the door said Master Tom was not up yet, but
+she would take his message. Returning presently, she asked him to walk
+in. He declined the hospitality, and remained in front of the house.
+
+Tom was no coward, in the ordinary sense of the word: there was in him
+a good deal of what goes to the making of a gentleman; but he confessed
+to being "in a bit of a funk" when he heard who was below: there was
+but one thing it could mean, he thought--that Letty had been found out,
+and here was her cousin come to make a row. But what did it matter, so
+long as Letty was true to him? The world should know that Wardour nor
+Platt--his mother's maiden name!--nor any power on earth should keep
+from him the woman of his choice! As soon as he was of age, he would
+marry her, in spite of them all. But he could not help being a little
+afraid of Godfrey Wardour, for he admired him.
+
+For Godfrey, he would have rather liked Tom Helmer, had he ever seen
+down into the best of him; but Tom's carelessness had so often
+misrepresented him, that Godfrey had too huge a contempt for him. And
+now the miserable creature had not merely grown dangerous, but had of a
+sudden done him the greatest possible hurt! It was all Godfrey could do
+to keep his contempt and hate within what he would have called the
+bounds of reason, as he waited for "the miserable mongrel." He kept
+walking up and down the little lawn, which a high shrubbery protected
+from the road, making a futile attempt, as often as he thought of the
+policy of it, to look unconcerned, and the next moment striking fierce,
+objectless blows with his whip. Catching sight of him from a window on
+the stair, Tom was so little reassured by his demeanor, that, crossing
+the hall, he chose from the stand a thick oak stick--poor odds against
+a hunting-whip in the hands of one like Godfrey, with the steel of ten
+years of manhood in him.
+
+Tom's long legs came doubling carelessly down the two steps from the
+door, as, with a gracious wave of the hand, and swinging his cudgel as
+if he were just going out for a stroll, he coolly greeted his visitor.
+But the other, instead of returning the salutation, stepped quickly up
+to him.
+
+"Mr. Helmer, where is Miss Lovel?" he said, in a low voice.
+
+Tom turned pale, for a pang of undefined fear shot through him, and his
+voice betrayed genuine anxiety as he answered:
+
+"I do not know. What has happened?"
+
+Wardour's fingers gripped convulsively his whip-handle, and the word
+_liar_ had almost escaped his lips; but, through the darkness of the
+tempest raging in him, he yes read truth in Tom's scared face and
+trembling words.
+
+"You were with her last night," he said, grinding it out between his
+teeth.
+
+"I was," answered Tom, looking more scared still.
+
+"Where is she now?" demanded Godfrey again.
+
+"I hope to God you know," answered Tom, "for I don't."
+
+"Where did you leave her?" asked Wardour, in the tone of an avenger
+rather than a judge.
+
+Tom, without a moment's hesitation, described the place with
+precision--a spot not more than a hundred yards from the house.
+
+"What right had you to come sneaking about the place?" hissed Godfrey,
+a vain attempt to master an involuntary movement of the muscles of his
+face at once clinching and showing his teeth. At the same moment he
+raised his whip unconsciously.
+
+Tom instinctively stepped back, and raised his stick in attitude of
+defense. Godfrey burst into a scornful laugh.
+
+"You fool!" he said; "you need not be afraid; I can see you are
+speaking the truth. You dare not tell me a lie!"
+
+"It is enough," returned Tom with dignity, "that I do not tell lies. I
+am not afraid of you, Mr. Wardour. What I dare or dare not do, is
+neither for you nor me to say. You are the older and stronger and every
+way better man, but that gives you no right to bully me."
+
+This answer brought Godfrey to a better sense of what became himself,
+if not of what Helmer could claim of him. Using positive violence over
+himself, he spoke next in a tone calm even to iciness.
+
+"Mr. Helmer," he said, "I will gladly address you as a gentleman, if
+you will show me how it can be the part of a gentleman to go prowling
+about his neighbor's property after nightfall."
+
+"Love acknowledges no law but itself, Mr. Wardour," answered Tom,
+inspired by the dignity of his honest affection for Letty. "Miss Lovel
+is not your property. I love her, and she loves me. I would do my best
+to see her, if Thornwick were the castle of Giant Blunderbore."
+
+"Why not walk up to the house, like a man, in the daylight, and say you
+wanted to see her?"
+
+"Should I have been welcome, Mr. Wardour?" said Tom, significantly.
+"You know very well what my reception would have been; and I know
+better than throw difficulties in my own path. To do as you say would
+have been to make it next to impossible to see her."
+
+"Well, we must find her now anyhow; and you must marry her off-hand."
+
+"Must!" echoed Tom, his eyes flashing, at once with anger at the word
+and with pleasure at the proposal. "Must?" he repeated, "when there is
+nothing in the world I desire or care for but to marry her? Tell me
+what it all means, Mr. Wardour; for, by Heaven! I am utterly in the
+dark."
+
+"It means just this--and I don't know but I am making a fool of myself
+to tell you--that the girl was seen in your company late last night,
+and has been neither seen nor heard of since."
+
+"My God!" cried Tom, now first laying hold of the fact; and with the
+word he turned and started for the stable. His run, however, broke
+down, and with a look of scared bewilderment he came back to Godfrey.
+
+"Mr. Wardour," he said, "what am I to do? Please advise me. If we raise
+a hue and cry, it will set people saying all manner of things, pleasant
+neither for you nor for us."
+
+"That is your business, Mr. Helmer," answered Godfrey, bitterly. "It is
+you who have brought this shame on her."
+
+"You are a cold-hearted man," said Tom. "But there is no shame in the
+matter. I will soon make that clear--if only I knew where to go after
+her. The thing is to me utterly mysterious: there are neither robbers
+nor wild beasts about Thornwick. What _can_ have happened to her?"
+
+He turned his back on Godfrey for a moment, then, suddenly wheeling,
+broke out:
+
+"I will tell you what it is; I see it all now; she found out that she
+had been seen, and was too terrified to go into the house again!--Mr.
+Wardour," he continued, with a new look in his eyes, "I have more
+reason to be suspicious of you and your mother than you have to suspect
+me. Your treatment of Letty has not been of the kindest."
+
+So Letty had been accusing him of unkindness! Ready as he now was to
+hear anything to her disadvantage, it was yet a fresh stab to the heart
+of him. Was this the girl for whom, in all honesty and affection, he
+had sought to do so much! How could she say he was unkind to her?--and
+say it to a fellow like this? It was humiliating, indeed! But he would
+not defend himself. Not to Tom, not to his mother, not to any living
+soul, would he utter a word even resembling blame of the girl! He, at
+least, would carry himself generously! Everything, though she had
+plunged his heart in a pitcher of gall, should be done for her sake!
+She should go to her lover, and leave blame behind her with him! His
+sole care should be that the wind-bag should not collapse and slip out
+of it, that he should actually marry her; and, as soon as he had handed
+him over to her in safety, he would have done with her and with all
+women for ever, except his mother! Not once more would he speak to one
+of them in tone of friendship!
+
+He looked at Tom full in the eyes, and made him no answer.
+
+"If I don't find Letty this very morning," said Tom, "I shall apply for
+a warrant to search your house: my uncle Rendall will give me one."
+
+Godfrey smiled a smile of scorn, turned from him as a wise man turns
+from a fool, and went out of the gate.
+
+He had just taken his horse from the boy and sent him off, when he saw
+a young woman coming hurriedly across the road, from the direction of
+Testbridge. Plainly she was on business of pressing import. She came
+nearer, and he saw it was Mary Marston. The moment she recognized
+Godfrey, she began to run to him; but, when she came near enough to
+take notice of his mien, as he stood with his foot in the stirrup, with
+no word of greeting or look of reception, and inquiry only in every
+feature, her haste suddenly dropped, her flushed face turned pale, and
+she stood still, panting. Not a word could she utter, and was but just
+able to force a faint smile, with intent to reassure him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE RESULT.
+
+
+Letty would never perhaps have come to herself in the cold of this
+world, under the shifting tent of the winter night, but for an outcast
+mongrel dog, which, wandering masterless and hungry, but not selfish,
+along the road, came upon her where she lay seemingly lifeless, and,
+recognizing with pity his neighbor in misfortune, began at once to give
+her--it was all he had that was separable--what help and healing might
+lie in a warm, honest tongue. Diligently he set himself to lick her
+face and hands.
+
+By slow degrees her misery returned, and she sat up. Rejoiced at his
+success, the dog kept dodging about her, catching a lick here and a
+lick there, wherever he saw a spot of bare within his reach. By slow
+degrees, next, the knowledge of herself joined on to the knowledge of
+her misery, and she knew who it was that was miserable. She threw her
+arms round the dog, laid her head on his, and wept. This relieved her a
+little: weeping is good, even to such as Alberigo in an ice-pot of
+hell. But she was cold to the very marrow, almost too cold to feel it;
+and, when she rose, could scarcely put one foot before the other.
+
+Not once, for all her misery, did she imagine a return to Thornwick.
+Without a thought of whither, she moved on, unaware even that it was in
+the direction of the town. The dog, delighted to believe that he had
+raised up to himself a mistress, followed humbly at her heel: but
+always when she stopped, as she did every few paces, ran round in front
+of her, and looked up in her face, as much as to say, "Here I am,
+mistress! shall I lick again?" If a dog could create, he would make
+masters and mistresses. Gladly would she then have fondled him, but
+feared the venture; for, it seemed, were she to stoop, she must fall
+flat on the road, and never rise more.
+
+Slowly the two went on, with motion scarce enough to keep the blood
+moving in their veins. Had she not been, for all her late depression,
+in fine health and strength, Letty could hardly have escaped death from
+the cold of that night. For many months after, some portion of every
+night she passed in dreaming over again this dreariest wandering; and
+in her after life people would be puzzled to think why Mrs. Helmer
+looked so angry when any one spoke as if the animals died outright.
+But, although she never forgot this part of the terrible night, she
+never dreamed of any rescue from it; memory could not join it on to the
+next part, for again she lost consciousness, and could recall nothing
+between feeling the dog once more licking her face and finding herself
+in bed.
+
+When Beenie opened her kitchen-door in the morning to let in the fresh
+air, she found seated on the step, and leaning against the wall, what
+she took first for a young woman asleep, and then for the dead body of
+one; for, when she gave her a little shake, she fell sideways off the
+door-step. Beenie's heart smote her; for during the last hours of her
+morning's sleep she had been disturbed by the howling of a dog,
+apparently in their own yard, but had paid no further attention to it
+than that of repeated mental objurgation: there stood the offender,
+looking up at her pitifully--ugly, disreputable, of breed unknown, one
+of the _canaille!_ When the girl fell down, he darted at her, licked
+her cold face for a moment, then stretching out a long, gaunt neck,
+uttered from the depth of his hidebound frame the most melancholy
+appeal, not to Beenie, at whom he would not even look again, but to the
+open door. But, when Beenie, in whom, as in most of us, curiosity had
+the start of service, stooped, and, peering more closely into the face
+of the girl, recognized, though uncertainly, a known face, she too
+uttered a kind of howl, and straightway raising Letty's head drew her
+into the house. It is the mark of an imperfect humanity, that personal
+knowledge should spur the sides of hospitable intent: what difference
+does our knowing or not knowing make to the fact of human need? The
+good Samaritan would never have been mentioned by the mouth of the
+True, had he been even an old acquaintance of the "certain man." But it
+is thus we learn; and, from loving this one and that, we come to love
+all at last, and then is our humanity complete.
+
+Letty moved not one frozen muscle, and Beenie, growing terrified, flew
+up the stair to her mistress. Mary sprang from her bed and hurried
+down. There, on the kitchen-floor, in front of the yet fireless grate,
+lay the body of Letty Lovel. A hideous dog was sitting on his haunches
+at her head. The moment she entered, again the animal stretched out a
+long, bony neck, and sent forth a howl that rang penetrative through
+the house. It sounded in Mary's ears like the cry of the whole animal
+creation over the absence of their Maker. They raised her and carried
+her to Mary's room. There they laid her in the still warm bed, and
+proceeded to use all possible means for the restoration of heat and the
+renewal of circulation.
+
+Here I am sorry to have to mention that Beenie, returning,
+unsuccessful, from their first efforts, to the kitchen, to get hot
+water, and finding the dog sitting there motionless, with his face
+turned toward the door by which they had carried Letty out, peevish
+with disappointment and dread, drove him from the kitchen, and from the
+court, into the street where that same day he was seen wildly running
+with a pan at his tail, and the next was found lying dead in a bit of
+waste ground among stones and shards. God rest all such!
+
+But, as far as Letty was concerned, happily Beenie was not an old woman
+for nothing. With a woman's sympathy, Mary hesitated to run for the
+doctor: who could tell what might be involved in so strange an event?
+If they could but bring her to, first, and learn something to guide
+them! She pushed delay to the very verge of danger. But, soon after,
+thanks to Beenie's persistence, indications of success appeared, and
+Letty began to breathe. It was then resolved between the nurses that,
+for the present, they would keep the affair to themselves, a conclusion
+affording much satisfaction to Beenie, in the consciousness that
+therein she had the better of the Turnbulls, against whom she cherished
+an ever-renewed indignation.
+
+But, when Mary set herself at length to find out from Letty what had
+happened, without which she could not tell what to do next, she found
+her mind so far gone that she understood nothing said to her, or, at
+least, could return no rational response, although occasionally an
+individual word would seem to influence the current of her ideas. She
+kept murmuring almost inarticulately; but, to Mary's uneasiness, every
+now and then plainly uttered the name _Tom_. What was she to make of
+it? In terror lest she should betray her, she must yet do something.
+Matters could not have gone wrong so far that nothing could be done to
+set them at least a little straight! If only she knew what! A single
+false step might do no end of mischief! She must see Tom Helmer:
+without betraying Letty, she might get from him some enlightenment. She
+knew his open nature, had a better opinion of him than many had, and
+was a little nearer the right of him. The doctor must be called; but
+she would, if possible, see Tom first.
+
+It was not more than half an hour's walk to Warrender, and she set out
+in haste. She must get back before George Turnbull came to open the
+shop.
+
+When she got near enough to see Mr. Wardour's face, she read in it at
+once that he was there from the same cause as herself; but there was no
+good omen to be drawn from its expression: she read there not only keen
+anxiety and bitter disappointment, but lowering anger; nor was that
+absent which she felt to be distrust of herself. The sole
+acknowledgment he made of her approach was to withdraw his foot from
+the stirrup and stand waiting.
+
+"You know something," he said, looking cold and hard in her face.
+
+"About what?" returned Mary, recovering herself; she was careful, for
+Letty's sake, to feel her way.
+
+"I hope to goodness," returned Godfrey, almost fiercely, yet with a
+dash of rude indifference, "_you_ are not concerned in
+this--business!"--he was about to use a bad adjective, but suppressed
+it.
+
+"I _am_ concerned in it," said Mary, with perfect quietness.
+
+"You knew what was going on?" cried Wardour. "You knew that fellow
+there came prowling about Thornwick like a fox about a hen-roost? By
+Heaven! if I had but suspected it--"
+
+"No, Mr. Wardour," interrupted Mary, already catching a glimpse of
+light, "I knew nothing of that."
+
+"Then what do you mean by saying you are concerned in the matter?"
+
+Mary thought he was behaving so unlike himself that a shock might be of
+service.
+
+"Only this," she answered, "--that Letty is now lying in my room,
+whether dead or alive I am in doubt. She must have spent the night in
+the open air--and that without cloak or bonnet."
+
+"Good God!" cried Godfrey. "And you could leave her like that!"
+
+"She is attended to," replied Mary, with dignity. "There are worse
+evils to be warded than death, else I should not be here; there are
+hard judgments and evil tongues.--Will you come and see her, Mr.
+Wardour?"
+
+"No," answered Godfrey, gruffly.
+
+"Shall I send a note to Mrs. Wardour, then?"
+
+"I will tell her myself."
+
+"What would you have me do about her?"
+
+"I have no concern in the matter, but I suppose you had better send for
+a doctor. Talk to that fellow there," he added, pointing with his whip
+toward the cottage, and again putting his foot in the stirrup. "Tell
+him he has brought her to disgrace--"
+
+"I don't believe it," interrupted Mary, her face flushing with
+indignant shame. But Godfrey went on without heeding her:
+
+"And get him to marry her off-hand, if you can--for, by God! he _shall_
+marry her, or I will kill him."
+
+He spoke looking round at her over his shoulder, a scowl on his face,
+his foot in the stirrup, one hand twisted in the mane of his horse, and
+the other with the whip stretched out as if threatening the universe.
+Mary stood white but calm, and made no answer. He swung himself into
+the saddle, and rode away. She turned to the gate.
+
+From behind the shrubbery, Tom had heard all that passed between them,
+and, meeting her as she entered, led the way to a side-walk, unseen
+from the house.
+
+"O Miss Marston! what is to be done?" he said. "This is a terrible
+business! But I am so glad you have got her, poor girl! I heard all you
+said to that brute, Wardour. Thank you, thank you a thousand times, for
+taking her part. Indeed, you spoke but the truth for her. Let me tell
+you all I know."
+
+He had not much to tell, however, beyond what Mary knew already.
+
+"She keeps calling out for you, Mr. Helmer," she said, when he had
+ended.
+
+"I will go with you. Come, come," he answered.
+
+"You will leave a message for your mother?"
+
+"Never mind my mother. She's good at finding out for herself."
+
+"She ought to be told," said Mary; "but I can't stop to argue it with
+you. Certainly your first duty is to Letty now. Oh, if people only
+wouldn't hide things!"
+
+"Come along," cried Tom, hurrying before her; "I will soon set
+everything right."
+
+"How shall we manage with the doctor?" said Mary, as they went. "We can
+not do without him, for I am sure she is in danger."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Tom. "She will be all right when she sees me. But we
+will take the doctor on our way, and prepare him."
+
+When they came to the doctor's house, Mary walked on, and Tom told the
+doctor he had met Miss Marston on her way to him, and had come instead:
+she wanted to let him know that Miss Lovel had come to her quite
+unexpected that morning; that she was delirious, and had apparently
+wandered from home under an attack of brain-fever, or something of the
+sort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MARY AND GODFREY.
+
+
+Everything went very tolerably, so far as concerned the world of talk,
+in the matter of Letty's misfortunes. Rumors, it is true--and more than
+one of them strange enough--did for a time go floating about the
+country; but none of them came to the ears of Tom or of Mary, and Letty
+was safe from hearing anything; and the engagement between her and Tom
+soon became generally known.
+
+Mrs. Helmer was very angry, and did all she could to make Tom break it
+off--it was so much below him! But in nothing could the folly of the
+woman have been more apparent than in her fancying, with the experience
+of her life before her, that any opposition of hers could be effectual
+otherwise than to the confirmation of her son's will. So short-sighted
+was she as to originate most of the reports to Letty's disadvantage;
+but Tom's behavior, on the other hand, was strong to put them down; for
+the man is seldom found so faithful where such reports are facts.
+
+Mrs. Wardour took care to say nothing unkind of Letty. She was of her
+own family; and, besides, not only was Tom a better match than she
+could have expected for her, but she was more than satisfied to have
+Godfrey's dangerous toy thus drawn away beyond his reach. As soon as
+ever the doctor gave his permission, she went to see her; but,
+although, dismayed at sight of her suffering face, she did not utter
+one unkind word, her visit was so plainly injurious in its effects,
+that it was long before Mary would consent to a repetition of it.
+
+Letty's recovery was very slow. The spring was close at hand before the
+bloom began to reappear--and then it was but fitfully--in Letty's
+cheek. Neither her gayety nor her usual excess of timorousness
+returned. A certain sad seriousness had taken the place of both, and
+she seemed to look out from deeper eyes. I can not think that Letty had
+begun to perceive that there actually is a Nature shaping us to its own
+ends; but I think she had begun to feel that Mary lived in the
+conscious presence of such a power. To Tom she behaved very sweetly,
+but more like a tender sister than a lover, and Mary began to doubt
+whether her heart was altogether Tom's. From mention of approaching
+marriage, she turned with a nervous, uneasy haste. Had the insight
+which the enforced calmness of suffering sometimes brings opened her
+eyes to anything in Tom? The doubt filled Mary with anxiety. She
+thought and thought, until--delicate matter as it was to meddle with,
+and small encouragement as Godfrey Wardour had given her to expect
+sympathy--she yet made up her mind to speak to him on the subject--and
+the rather that she was troubled at the unworthiness of his behavior to
+Letty: gladly would she have him treat her with the generosity
+essential to the idea she had formed of him.
+
+She went, therefore, one Sunday evening, to Thornwick, and requested to
+see Mr. Wardour.
+
+It was plainly an unwilling interview he granted her, but she was not
+thereby deterred from opening her mind to him.
+
+"I fear, Mr. Wardour," she said, "--I come altogether without
+authority--but I fear Letty has been rather hurried in her engagement
+with Mr. Helmer. I think she dreads being married--at least so soon."
+
+"You would have her break it off?" said Godfrey, with cold restraint.
+
+"No; certainly not," replied Mary; "that would be unjust to Mr. Helmer.
+But the thing was so hastened, indeed, hurried, by that unhappy
+accident, that she had scarcely time to know her own mind."
+
+"Miss Marston," answered Godfrey, severely, "it is her own fault--all
+and entirely her own fault."
+
+"But, surely," said Mary, "it will not do for us to insist upon desert.
+That is not how we are treated ourselves."
+
+"Is it not?" returned Godfrey, angrily. "My experience is different. I
+am sure my faults have come back upon me pretty sharply.--She _must_
+marry the fellow, or her character is gone."
+
+"I am unwilling to grant that, Mr. Wardour. It was wrong in her to have
+anything to say to Mr. Helmer without your knowledge, and a foolish
+thing to meet him as she did; but Letty is a good girl, and you know
+country ways are old-fashioned, and in itself there is nothing wicked
+in having a talk with a young man after dark."
+
+"You speak, I dare say, as such things arc regarded in--certain strata
+of society," returned Godfrey, coldly; "but such views do not hold in
+that to which either of them belongs."
+
+"It seems to me a pity they should not, then," said Mary. "I know
+nothing of such matters, but, surely, young people should have
+opportunities of understanding each other. Anyhow, marriage is a heavy
+penalty to pay for such an indiscretion. A girl might like a young man
+well enough to enjoy a talk with him now and then, and yet find it hard
+to marry him."
+
+"Did you come here to dispute social customs with me, Miss Marston?"
+said Godfrey. "I am not prepared, nor, indeed, sufficiently interested,
+to discuss them with you."
+
+"I will come to the point at once," answered Mary; who, although
+speaking so collectedly, was much frightened at her own boldness:
+Godfrey seemed from his knowledge so far above her, and she owed him so
+much.--"Would it not be possible for Letty to return here? Then the
+thing might take its natural course, and Tom and she know each other
+better before they did what was irrevocable. They are little better
+than children now."
+
+"The thing is absolutely impossible," said Godfrey, and haughtily rose
+from his chair like one in authority ending an interview. "But," he
+added, "you have been put to great expense for the foolish girl, and,
+when she leaves you, I desire you will let me know--"
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Wardour!" said Mary, who had risen also. "As you have
+now given a turn to the conversation which is not in the least
+interesting to me, I wish you a good evening."
+
+With the words, she left the room. He had made her angry at last. She
+trembled so that, the instant she was out of sight of the house, she
+had to sit down for dread of falling.
+
+Godfrey remained in the room where she left him, full of indignation.
+Ever since that frightful waking, he had brooded over the injury--the
+insult, he counted it--which Letty had heaped upon him. A great
+tenderness toward her, to himself unknown, and of his own will
+unbegotten, remained in his spirit. When he passed the door of her
+room, returning from that terrible ride, he locked it, and put the key
+in his pocket, and from that day no one entered the chamber. But, had
+he loved Letty as purely as he had loved her selfishly, he would have
+listened to Mary pleading in her behalf, and would have thought first
+about her well-being, not about her character in the eyes of the world.
+He would have seen also that, while the breath of the world's opinion
+is a mockery in counterpoise with a life of broken interest and the
+society of an unworthy husband, the mere fact of his mother's receiving
+her again at Thornwick would of itself be enough to reestablish her
+position in the face of all gainsayers. But in Godfrey Wardour love and
+pride went hand in hand. Not for a moment would he will to love a girl
+capable of being interested, if nothing more, in Tom Helmer. It must be
+allowed, however, that it would have been a terrible torture to see
+Letty about the place, to pass her on the stair, to come upon her in
+the garden, to sit with her in the room, and know all the time that it
+was the test of Tom's worth and her constancy. Even were she to give up
+Tom, satisfied that she did not love him, she could be nothing more to
+him, even in the relation in which he had allowed her to think she
+stood to him. She had behaved too deceitfully, too heartlessly, too
+ungratefully, too _vulgarly_ for that! Yet was his heart torn every
+time the vision of the gentle girl rose before "that inward eye,"
+which, for long, could no more be to him "the bliss of solitude"; when
+he saw those hazel depths looking half anxious, half sorrowful in his
+face, as, with sadly comic sense of her stupidity, she listened while
+he explained or read something he loved. But no; nothing else would do
+than act the mere honest guardian, compelling them to marry, no matter
+how slight or transient the shadow the man had cast over her reputation!
+
+Mary returned with a sense of utter failure.
+
+But before long she came to the conclusion that all was right between
+Tom and Letty, and that the cause of her anxiety had lain merely in
+Letty's loss of animal spirits.
+
+Now and then Mary tried to turn Tom's attention a little toward the
+duty of religion: Tom received the attempt with gentle amusement and a
+little _badinage_. It was all very well for girls! Indeed, he had made
+the observation that girls who had no religion were "strong-minded,"
+and that he could not endure! Like most men, he was so well satisfied
+with himself, that he saw no occasion to take trouble to be anything
+better than he was. Never suspecting what a noble creature he was meant
+to be, he never saw what a poor creature he was. In his own eyes he was
+a man any girl might be proud to marry. He had not yet, however, sunk
+to the depth of those who, having caught a glimpse of nobility, confess
+wretchedness, excuse it, and decline to allow that the noble they see
+they are bound to be; or, worse still, perhaps, admit the obligation,
+but move no inch to fulfill it. It seems to me that such must one day
+make acquaintance with _essential_ misery--a thing of which they have
+no conception.
+
+Day after day Tom passed through Turnbull and Marston's shop to see
+Letty. Tom cared for nobody, else he would have gone in by the
+kitchen-door, which was the only other entrance to the house; but I do
+not know whether it is a pity or not that he did not hear the remarks
+which rose like the dust of his passage behind him. In the same little
+sitting-room, where for so many years Mary had listened to the slow,
+tender wisdom of her father, a clever young man was now making love to
+an ignorant girl, whom he did not half understand or half appreciate,
+all the time he feeling himself the greater and wiser and more valuable
+of the two. He was unaware, however, that he did feel so, for he had
+never yet become conscious of any _fact_ concerning himself.
+
+The whole Turnbull family, from the beginnings of things
+self-constituted judges of the two Marstons, were not the less critical
+of the daughter, that the father had been taken from her. There was
+grumbling in the shop every time she ran up to see Letty, every one
+regarding her and speaking of her as a servant neglecting her duty. Yet
+all knew well enough that she was co-proprietor of business and stock,
+and the elder Turnbull knew besides that, if the lawyer to whose care
+William Marston had committed his daughter were at that moment to go
+into the affairs of the partnership, he would find that Mary had a much
+larger amount of money actually in the business than he.
+
+Of all matters connected with the business, except those of her own
+department, Mary was ignorant. Her father had never neglected his duty,
+but he had so far neglected what the world calls a man's interests as
+to leave his affairs much too exclusively in the hands of his partner;
+he had been too much interested in life itself to look sharply after
+anything less than life. He acknowledged no _worldly_ interests at all:
+either God cared for his interests or he himself did not. Whether he
+might not have been more attentive to the state of his affairs without
+danger of deeper loss, I do not care to examine or determine; the
+result of his life in the world was a grand success. Now, Mary's
+feeling and judgment in regard to _things_ being identical with her
+father's, Turnbull, instructed by his greed, both natural and acquired,
+argued thus--unconsciously almost, but not the less argued--that what
+Mary valued so little, and he valued so much, must, by necessary
+deduction, be more his than hers--and _logically_ ought to be
+_legally_. So servants begin to steal, arguing that such and such
+things are only lying about, and nobody cares for them.
+
+But Turnbull, knowing that, notwithstanding the reason on his side, it
+was not safe to act on such a conclusion, had for some time felt no
+little anxiety to secure himself from investigation and possible
+disaster by the marriage of Mary to his son George.
+
+Tom Helmer had now to learn that, by his father's will, made doubtless
+under the influence of his mother, he was to have but a small annuity
+so long as she lived. Upon this he determined nevertheless to marry,
+confident in his literary faculty, which, he never doubted, would soon
+raise it to a very sufficient income. Nor did Mary attempt to dissuade
+him; for what could be better for a disposition like his than care for
+the things of this life, occasioned by the needs of others dependent
+upon him! Besides, there seemed to be nothing else now possible for
+Letty. So, in the early summer, they were married, no relative present
+except Mrs. Wardour, Mrs. Helmer and Godfrey having both declined their
+invitation; and no friend, except Mary for bridesmaid, and Mr. Pycroft,
+a school and college friend of Tom's, who was now making a bohemian
+livelihood in London by writing for the weekly press, as he called
+certain journals of no high standing, for groom's man. After the
+ceremony, and a breakfast provided by Mary, the young couple took the
+train for London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MARY IN THE SHOP.
+
+
+More than a year had now passed from the opening of my narrative. It
+was full summer again at Testbridge, and things, to the careless eye,
+were unchanged, and, to the careless mind, would never change,
+although, in fact, nothing was the same, and nothing could continue as
+it now was. For were not the earth and the sun a little colder? Had not
+the moon crumbled a little? And had not the eternal warmth, unperceived
+save of a few, drawn a little nearer--the clock that measures the
+eternal day ticked one tick more to the hour when the Son of Man will
+come? But the greed and the fawning did go on unchanged, save it were
+for the worse, in the shop of Turnbull and Marston, seasoned only with
+the heavenly salt of Mary's good ministration.
+
+She was very lonely. Letty was gone; and the link between Mr. Wardour
+and her not only broken, but a gulf of separation in its place. Not the
+less remained the good he had given her. No good is ever lost. The
+heavenly porter was departed, but had left the door wide. She had seen
+him but once since Letty's marriage, and then his salutation was like
+that of a dead man in a dream; for in his sore heart he still imagined
+her the confidante of Letty's deception.
+
+But the shadow of her father's absence swallowed all the other shadows.
+The air of warmth and peace and conscious safety which had hitherto
+surrounded her was gone, and in its place cold, exposure, and
+annoyance. Between them her father and she had originated a mutually
+protective atmosphere of love; when that failed, the atmosphere of
+earthly relation rushed in and enveloped her. The moment of her
+father's departure, malign influences, inimical to the very springs of
+her life, concentrated themselves upon her: it was the design of John
+Turnbull that she should not be comfortable so long as she did not
+irrevocably cast in her lot with his family; and, the rest in the shop
+being mostly creatures of his own choice, by a sort of implicit
+understanding they proceeded to make her uncomfortable. So long as they
+confined themselves to silence, neglect, and general exclusion, Mary
+heeded little their behavior, for no intercourse with them, beyond that
+of external good offices, could be better than indifferent to her; but,
+when they advanced to positive interference, her position became indeed
+hard to endure. They would, for instance, keep watch on her serving,
+and, as soon as the customer was gone, would find open fault with this
+or that she had said or done. But even this was comparatively
+endurable: when they advanced to the insolence of doing the same in the
+presence of the customer, she found it more than she could bear with
+even a show of equanimity. She did her best, however; and for some time
+things went on without any symptom of approaching crisis. But it was
+impossible this should continue; for, had she been capable of endless
+endurance, her persecutors would only have gone on to worse. But Mary
+was naturally quick-tempered, and the chief trouble they caused her was
+the control of her temper; for, although she had early come to
+recognize the imperative duty of this branch of self-government, she
+was not yet perfect in it. Not every one who can serve unboundedly can
+endure patiently; and the more gentle some natures, the more they
+resent the rudeness which springs from an opposite nature; absolutely
+courteous, they flame at discourtesy, and thus lack of the perfection
+to which patience would and must raise them. When Turnbull, in the
+narrow space behind the counter, would push his way past her without
+other pretense of apology than something like a sneer, she did feel for
+a moment as if evil were about to have the victory over her; and when
+Mrs. Turnbull came in, which happily was but seldom, she felt as if
+from some sepulchre in her mind a very demon sprang to meet her. For
+she behaved to her worst of all. She would heave herself in with the
+air and look of a vulgar duchess; for, from the height of her small
+consciousness, she looked down upon the shop, and never entered it save
+as a customer. The daughter of a small country attorney, who,
+notwithstanding his unneglected opportunities, had not been too
+successful to accept as a husband for his daughter such a tradesman as
+John Turnbull, she arrogated position from her idea of her father's
+position; and, while bitterly cherishing the feeling that she had
+married beneath her, obstinately excluded the fact that therein she had
+descended to her husband's level, regarding herself much in the light
+of a princess whose disguise takes nothing from her rank. She was like
+those ladies who, having set their seal to the death of their first
+husbands by marrying again, yet cling to the title they gave them, and
+continue to call themselves by their name.
+
+Mrs. Turnbull never bought a dress at the shop. No one should say of
+her, it was easy for a snail to live in a castle! She took pains to let
+her precious public know that she went to London to make her purchases.
+If she did not mention also that she made them at the warehouses where
+her husband was a customer, procuring them at the same price he would
+have paid, it was because she saw no occasion. It was indeed only for
+some small occasional necessity she ever crossed the threshold of the
+place whence came all the money she had to spend. When she did, she
+entered it with such airs as she imagined to represent the
+consciousness of the scion of a county family: there is one show of
+breeding vulgarity seldom assumes--simplicity. No sign of recognition
+would pass between her husband and herself: by one stern refusal to
+acknowledge his advances, she had from the first taught him that in the
+shop they were strangers: he saw the rock of ridicule ahead, and
+required no second lesson: when she was present, he never knew it.
+George had learned the lesson before he went into the business, and
+Mary had never required it. The others behaved to her as to any
+customer known to stand upon her dignity, but she made them no return
+in politeness; and the way she would order Mary, now there was no
+father to offend, would have been amusing enough but for the irritation
+its extreme rudeness caused her. She did, however, manage sometimes to
+be at once both a little angry and much amused. Small idea had Mrs.
+Turnbull of the diversion which on such occasions she afforded the
+customers present.
+
+One day, a short time before her marriage, delayed by the illness of
+Mr. Redmain, Miss Mortimer happened to be in the shop, and was being
+served by Mary, when Mrs. Turnbull entered. Careless of the customer,
+she walked straight up to her as if she saw none, and in a tone that
+would be dignified, and was haughty, desired her to bring her a reel of
+marking-cotton. Now it had been a principle with Mary's father, and she
+had thoroughly learned it, that whatever would be counted a rudeness by
+_any_ customer, must be shown to _none_. "If all are equal in the sight
+of God," he would say, "how dare I leave a poor woman to serve a rich?
+Would I leave one countess to serve another? My business is to sell in
+the name of Christ. To respect persons in the shop would be just the
+same as to do it in the chapel, and would be to deny him."
+
+"Excuse me, ma'am," said Mary, "I am waiting on Miss Mortimer," and
+went on with what she was about. Mrs. Turnbull flounced away, a little
+abashed, not by Mary, but by finding who the customer was, and carried
+her commands across the shop. After a moment or two, however,
+imagining, in the blindness of her surging anger, that Miss Mortimer
+was gone, whereas she had only moved a little farther on to look at
+something, she walked up to Mary in a fury.
+
+"Miss Marston," she said, her voice half choked with rage, "I am at a
+loss to understand what you mean by your impertinence."
+
+"I am sorry you should think me impertinent," answered Mary. "You saw
+yourself I was engaged with a customer, and could not attend to you."
+
+"Your tone was insufferable, miss!" cried the grand lady; but what more
+she would have said I can not tell, for just then Miss Mortimer resumed
+her place in front of Mary. She had no idea of her position in the
+shop, neither suspected who her assailant was, and, fearing the woman's
+accusation might do her an injury, felt compelled to interfere.
+
+"Miss Marston," she said--she had just heard Mrs. Turnbull use her
+name--"if you should be called to account by your employer, will you,
+please, refer to me? You were perfectly civil both to me and to this--"
+she hesitated a perceptible moment, but ended with the word "_lady_,"
+peculiarly toned.
+
+"Thank you, ma'am," said Mary, with a smile, "but it is of no
+consequence."
+
+This answer would have almost driven the woman out of her
+reason--already, between annoyance with herself and anger with Mary,
+her hue was purple: something she called her constitution required a
+nightly glass of brandy-and-water--but she was so dumfounded by Miss
+Mortimer's defense of Mary, which she looked upon as an assault on
+herself, so painfully aware that all hands were arrested and all eyes
+fixed on herself, and so mortified with the conviction that her husband
+was enjoying her discomfiture, that, with what haughtiness she could
+extemporize from consuming offense, she made a sudden vertical
+gyration, and walked from the vile place.
+
+Now, George never lost a chance of recommending himself to Mary by
+siding with her--but only after the battle. He came up to her now with
+a mean, unpleasant look, intended to represent sympathy, and,
+approaching his face to hers, said, confidentially:
+
+"What made my mother speak to you like that, Mary?"
+
+"You must ask herself," she answered.
+
+"There you are, as usual, Mary!" he protested; "you will never let a
+fellow take your part!"
+
+"If you wanted to take my part, you should have done so when there
+would have been some good in it."
+
+"How could I, before Miss Mortimer, you know!"
+
+"Then why do it now?"
+
+"Well, you see--it's hard to bear hearing you ill used! What did you
+say to Miss Mortimer that angered my mother?"
+
+His father heard him, and, taking the cue, called out in the rudest
+fashion:
+
+"If you think, Mary, you're going to take liberties with customers
+because you've got no one over you, the sooner you find you're mistaken
+the better."
+
+Mary made him no answer.
+
+On her way to "the villa," Mrs. Turnbull, spurred by spite, had got
+hold of the same idea as George, only that she invented where he had
+but imagined it; and when her husband came home in the evening fell out
+upon him for allowing Mary to be impertinent to his customers, in whom
+for the first time she condescended to show an interest:
+
+"There she was, talking away to that Miss Mortimer as if she was Beenie
+in the kitchen! County people won't stand being treated as if one was
+just as good as another, I can tell you! She'll be the ruin of the
+business, with her fine-lady-airs! Who's she, I should like to know?"
+
+"I shall speak to her," said the husband. "But," he went on, "I fear
+you will no longer approve of marrying her to George, if you think
+she's an injury to the business!"
+
+"You know, as well as I do, that is the readiest way to get her out of
+it. Make her marry George, and she will fall into my hands. If I don't
+make her repent her impudence then, you may call me the fool you think
+me."
+
+Mary knew well enough what they wanted of her; but of the real cause at
+the root of their desire she had no suspicion. Recoiling altogether
+from Mr. Turnbull's theories of business, which were in flat
+repudiation of the laws of Him who alone understands either man or his
+business, she yet had not a doubt of his honesty as the trades and
+professions count honesty. Her father had left the money affairs of the
+firm to Mr. Turnbull, and she did the same. It was for no other reason
+than that her position had become almost intolerable, that she now
+began to wonder if she was bound to this mode of life, and whether it
+might not be possible to forsake it.
+
+Greed is the soul's thieving; where there is greed, there can not be
+honesty. John Turnbull, it is true, was not only proud of his
+reputation for honesty, but prided himself on being an honest man; yet
+not the less was he dishonest--and that with a dishonesty such as few
+of those called thieves have attained to.
+
+Like most of his kind, he had been neither so vulgar nor so dishonest
+from the first. In the prime of youth he had had what the people about
+him called high notions, and counted quixotic fancies. But it was not
+their mockery of his tall talk that turned him aside; opposition
+invariably confirmed Turnbull. He had never set his face in the right
+direction. The seducing influence lay in himself. It was not the truth
+he had loved; it was the show of fine sentiment he had enjoyed. The
+distinction of holding loftier opinions than his neighbors was the
+ground of his advocacy of them. Something of the beauty of the truth he
+must have seen--who does not?--else he could not have been thus moved
+at all; but he had never denied himself even a whim for the carrying
+out of one of his ideas; he had never set himself to be better; and the
+whole mountain-chain, therefore, of his notions sank and sank, until at
+length their loftiest peak was the maxim, _Honesty is the best
+policy_--a maxim which, true enough in fact, will no more make a man
+honest than the economic aphorism, _The supply equals the demand_, will
+teach him the niceties of social duty. Whoever makes policy the ground
+of his honesty will discover more and more exceptions to the rule. The
+career, therefore, of Turnbull of the high notions had been a gradual
+descent to the level of his present dishonesty and vulgarity; nothing
+is so vulgarizing as dishonesty. I do not care to follow the history of
+any man downward. Let him who desires to look on such a panorama,
+faithfully and thoroughly depicted, read Auerbach's "Diethelm von
+Buchenberg."
+
+Things went a little more quietly in the shop after this for a while:
+Turnbull probably was afraid of precipitating matters, and driving Mary
+to seek counsel--from which much injury might arise to his condition
+and prospects. As if to make amends for past rudeness, he even took
+some pains to be polite, putting on something of the manners with which
+he favored his "best customers," of all mankind in his eyes the most to
+be honored. This, of course, rendered him odious in the eyes of Mary,
+and ripened the desire to free herself from circumstances which from
+garments seemed to have grown cerements. She was, however, too much her
+father's daughter to do anything in haste.
+
+She might have been less willing to abandon them, had she had any
+friends like-minded with herself, but, while they were all kindly
+disposed to her, none of the religious associates of her father, who
+knew, or might have known her well, approved of her. They spoke of her
+generally with a shake of the head, and an unquestioned feeling that
+God was not pleased with her. There are few of the so-called religious
+who seem able to trust either God or their neighbor in matters that
+concern those two and no other. Nor had she had opportunity of making
+acquaintance with any who believed and lived like her father, in other
+of the Christian communities of the town. But she had her Bible, and,
+when that troubled her, as it did not a little sometimes, she had the
+Eternal Wisdom to cry to for such wisdom as she could receive; and one
+of the things she learned was, that nowhere in the Bible was she called
+on to believe in the Bible, but in the living God, in whom is no
+darkness, and who alone can give light to understand his own intent.
+All her troubles she carried to him.
+
+It was not always the solitude of her room that Mary sought to get out
+of the wind of the world. Her love of nature had been growing stronger,
+notably, from her father's death. If the world is God's, every true man
+ought to feel at home in it. Something is wrong if the calm of the
+summer night does not sink into the heart, for the peace of God is
+there embodied. Sometime is wrong in the man to whom the sunrise is not
+a divine glory for therein are embodied the truth, the simplicity, the
+might of the Maker. When all is true in us, we shall feel the visible
+presence of the Watchful and Loving; for the thing that he works is its
+sign and symbol, its clothing fact. In the gentle conference of earth
+and sky, in the witnessing colors of the west, in the wind that so
+gently visited her cheek, in the great burst of a new morning, Mary saw
+the sordid affairs of Mammon, to whose worship the shop seemed to
+become more and more of a temple, sink to the bottom of things, as the
+mud, which, during the day, the feet of the drinking cattle have
+stirred, sinks in the silent night to the bottom of the clear pool; and
+she saw that the sordid is all in the soul, and not in the shop. The
+service of Christ is help. The service of Mammon is greed.
+
+Letty was no good correspondent: after one letter in which she declared
+herself perfectly happy, and another in which she said almost nothing,
+her communication ceased. Mrs. Wardour had been in the shop again and
+again, but on each occasion had sought the service of another; and
+once, indeed, when Mary alone was disengaged, had waited until another
+was at liberty. While Letty was in her house, she had been civil, but,
+as soon as she was gone, seemed to show that she held her concerned in
+the scandal that had befallen Thornwick. Once, as I have said, she met
+Godfrey. It was in the fields. He was walking hurriedly, as usual, but
+with his head bent, and a gloomy gaze fixed upon nothing visible. He
+started when he saw her, took his hat off, and, with his eyes seeming
+to look far away beyond her, passed without a word. Yet had she been to
+him a true pupil; for, although neither of them knew it, Mary had
+learned more from Godfrey than Godfrey was capable of teaching. She had
+turned thought and feeling into life, into reality, into creation. They
+speak of the _creations_ of the human intellect, of the human
+imagination! there is nothing man can do comes half so near the making
+of the Maker as the ordering of his way--except one thing: the highest
+creation of which man is capable, is to will the will of the Father.
+That _has_ in it an element of the purely creative, and then is man
+likest God. But simply to do what we ought, is an altogether higher,
+diviner, more potent, more creative thing, than to write the grandest
+poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue,
+build the most worshiping temple, dream out the most enchanting
+commotion of melody and harmony. If Godfrey could have seen the soul of
+the maiden into whose face his discourtesy called the hot blood, he
+would have beheld there simply what God made the earth for; as it was,
+he saw a shop-girl, to whom in happier circumstances he had shown
+kindness, in whom he was now no longer interested. But the sight of his
+troubled face called up all the mother in her; a rush of tenderness,
+born of gratitude, flooded her heart. He was sad, and she could do
+nothing to comfort him! He had been royally good to her, and no return
+was in her power. She could not even let him know how she had profited
+by his gifts! She could come near him with no ministration! The bond
+between them was an eternal one, yet were they separated by a gulf of
+unrelation. Not a mountain-range, but a stayless nothingness parted
+them. She built many a castle, with walls of gratitude and floors of
+service to entertain Godfrey Wardour; but they stood on no foundation
+of imagined possibility.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE WEDDING-DRESS.
+
+
+For all her troubles, however, Mary had her pleasures, even in the
+shop. It was a delight to receive the friendly greetings of such as had
+known and honored her father. She had the pleasure, as real as it was
+simple, of pure service, reaping the fruit of the earth in the joy of
+the work that was given her to do; there is no true work that does not
+carry its reward though there are few that do not drop it and lose it.
+She gathered also the pleasure of seeing and talking with people whose
+manners and speech were of finer grain and tone than those about her.
+When Hesper Mortimer entered the shop, she brought with her delight;
+her carriage was like the gait of an ode; her motions were rhythm; and
+her speech was music. Her smile was light, and her whole presence an
+enchantment to Mary. The reading aloud which Wardour had led her to
+practice had taught her much, not only in respect of the delicacies of
+speech and utterance, but in the deeper matters of motion, relation,
+and harmony. Hesper's clear-cut but not too sharply defined consonants;
+her soft but full-bodied vowels; above all, her slow cadences that
+hovered on the verge of song, as her walk on the verge of a slow aerial
+dance; the carriage of her head, the movements of her lips, her arms,
+her hands; the self-possession that seemed the very embodiment of
+law--these formed together a whole of inexpressible delight,
+inextricably for Mary associated with music and verse: she would hasten
+to serve her as if she had been an angel come to do a little earthly
+shopping, and return with the next heavenward tide. Hesper, in response
+all but unconscious, would be waited on by no other than Mary; and
+always between them passed some sweet, gentle nothings, which afforded
+Hesper more pleasure than she could have accounted for.
+
+Her wedding-day was now for the third time fixed, when one morning she
+entered the shop to make some purchases. Not happy in the prospect
+before her, she was yet inclined to make the best of it so far as
+clothes were concerned--the more so, perhaps, that she had seldom yet
+been dressed to her satisfaction: she was now brooding over a certain
+idea for her wedding-dress, which she had altogether failed in the
+attempt to convey to her London _couturiere_; and it had come into her
+head to try whether Mary might not grasp her idea, and help her to make
+it intelligible. Mary listened and thought, questioned, and desired
+explanations--at length, begged she would allow her to ponder the thing
+a little: she could hardly at once venture to say anything. Hesper
+laughed, and said she was taking a small matter too
+seriously--concluding from Mary's hesitation that she had but perplexed
+her, and that she could be of no use to her in the difficulty.
+
+"A small matter? Your wedding-dress!" exclaimed Mary, in a tone of
+expostulation.
+
+Hesper did not laugh again, but gave a little sigh instead, which
+struck sadly on Mary's sympathetic heart. She cast a quick look in her
+face. Hesper caught the look, and understood it. For one passing moment
+she felt as if, amid the poor pleasure of adorning herself for a hated
+marriage, she had found a precious thing of which she had once or twice
+dreamed, never thought as a possible existence--a friend, namely, to
+love her: the next, she saw the absurdity of imagining a friend in a
+shop-girl.
+
+"But I must make up my mind so soon!" she answered. "Madame Crepine
+gave me her idea, in answer to mine, but nothing like it, two days ago;
+and, as I have not written again, I fear she may be taking her own way
+with the thing. I am certain to hate it."
+
+"I will talk to you about it as early as you please to-morrow, if that
+will do," returned Mary.
+
+She knew nothing about dressmaking beyond what came of a true taste,
+and the experience gained in cutting out and making her own garments,
+which she had never yet found a dressmaker to do to her mind; and,
+indeed, Hesper had been led to ask her advice mainly from observing how
+neat the design of her dresses was, and how faithfully they fitted her.
+Dress is a sort of freemasonry between girls.
+
+"But I can not have the horses to-morrow," said Hesper.
+
+"I might," pondered Mary aloud, after a moment's silence, "walk out to
+Durnmelling this evening after the shop is shut. By that time I shall
+have been able to think; I find it impossible, with you before me."
+
+Hesper acknowledged the compliment with a very pleasant smile. If it be
+true, as I may not doubt, that women, in dressing, have the fear of
+women and not of men before their eyes, then a compliment from some
+women must be more acceptable to some than a compliment from any man
+but the specially favored.
+
+"Thank you a thousand times," she drawled, sweetly. "Then I shall
+expect you. Ask for my maid. She will take you to my room. Good-by for
+the present."
+
+As soon as she was gone, Mary, her mind's eye full of her figure, her
+look, her style, her motion, gave herself to the important question of
+the dress conceived by Hesper; and during her dinner-hour contrived to
+cut out and fit to her own person the pattern of a garment such as she
+supposed intended in the not very lucid description she had given her.
+When she was free, she set out with it for Durnmelling.
+
+It was rather a long walk, the earlier part of it full of sad reminders
+of the pleasure with which, greater than ever accompanied her to
+church, she went to pay her Sunday visit at Thornwick; but the latter
+part, although the places were so near, almost new to her: she had
+never been within the gate of Durnmelling, and felt curious to see the
+house of which she had so often heard.
+
+The butler opened the door to her--an elderly man, of conscious dignity
+rather than pride, who received the "young person" graciously, and,
+leaving her in the entrance-hall, went to find "Miss Mortimer's maid,"
+he said, though there was but one lady's-maid in the establishment.
+
+The few moments she had to wait far more than repaid her for the
+trouble she had taken: through a side-door she looked into the great
+roofless hall, the one grand thing about the house. Its majesty laid
+hold upon her, and the shopkeeper's daughter felt the power of the
+ancient dignity and ineffaceable beauty far more than any of the family
+to which it had for centuries belonged.
+
+She was standing lost in delight, when a rude voice called to her from
+half-way up a stair:
+
+"You're to come this way, miss."
+
+With a start, she turned and went. It was a large room to which she was
+led. There was no one in it, and she walked to an open window, which
+had a wide outlook across the fields. A little to the right, over some
+trees, were the chimneys of Thornwick. She almost started to see
+them--so near, and yet so far--like the memory of a sweet, sad story.
+
+"Do you like my prospect?" asked the voice of Hesper behind her. "It is
+flat."
+
+"I like it much, Miss Mortimer," answered Mary, turning quickly with a
+bright face. "Flatness has its own beauty. I sometimes feel as if room
+was all I wanted; and of that there is so much there! You see over the
+tree-tops, too, and that is good--sometimes--don't you think?"
+
+Miss Mortimer gave no other reply than a gentle stare, which expressed
+no curiosity, although she had a vague feeling that Mary's words meant
+something. Most girls of her class would hardly have got so far.
+
+The summer was backward, but the day had been fine and warm, and the
+evening was dewy and soft, and full of evasive odor. The window looked
+westward, and the setting sun threw long shadows toward the house. A
+gentle wind was moving in the tree-tops. The spirit of the evening had
+laid hold of Mary. The peace of faithfulness filled the air. The day's
+business vanished, molten in the rest of the coming night. Even
+Hesper's wedding-dress was gone from her thoughts. She was in her own
+world, and ready, for very, quietness of spirit, to go to sleep. But
+she had not forgotten the delight of Hesper's presence; it was only
+that all relation between them was gone except such as was purely human.
+
+"This reminds me so of some beautiful verses of Henry Vaughan!" she
+said, half dreamily.
+
+"What do they say?" drawled Hesper.
+
+Mary repeated as follows:
+
+  "'The frosts are past, the storms are gone,
+  And backward life at last comes on.
+  And here in dust and dirt, O here,
+  The Lilies of His love appear!'"
+
+"Whose did you say the lines were?" asked Hesper, with merest automatic
+response.
+
+"Henry Vaughan's," answered Mary, with a little spiritual shiver as of
+one who had dropped a pearl in the miry way.
+
+"I never heard of him," rejoined Hesper, with entire indifference.
+
+For anything she knew, he might be an occasional writer in "The
+Belgrave Magazine," or "The Fireside Herald." Ignorance is one of the
+many things of which a lady of position is never ashamed; wherein she
+is, it may be, more right than most of my readers will be inclined to
+allow; for ignorance is not the thing to be ashamed of, but neglect of
+knowledge. That a young person in Mary's position should know a certain
+thing, was, on the other hand, a reason why a lady in Hesper's position
+should not know it! Was it possible a shop-girl should know anything
+that Hesper ought to know and did not? It was foolish of Mary, perhaps,
+but she had vaguely felt that a beautiful lady like Miss Mortimer, and
+with such a name as Hesper, must know all the lovely things she knew,
+and many more besides.
+
+"He lived in the time of the Charleses," she said, with a tremble in
+her voice, for she was ashamed to show her knowledge against the
+other's ignorance.
+
+"Ah!" drawled Hesper, with a confused feeling that people who kept
+shops read stupid old books that lay about, because they could not
+subscribe to a circulating library.--"Are you fond of poetry?" she
+added; for the slight, shadowy shyness, into which her venture had
+thrown Mary, drew her heart a little, though she hardly knew it, and
+inclined her to say something.
+
+"Yes," answered Mary, who felt like a child questioned by a stranger in
+the road; "--when it is good," she added, hesitatingly.
+
+"What do you mean by good?" asked Hesper--out of her knowledge, Mary
+thought, but it was not even out of her ignorance, only out of her
+indifference. People must say something, lest life should stop.
+
+"That is a question difficult to answer," replied Mary. "I have often
+asked it of myself, but never got any plain answer."
+
+"I do not see why you should find any difficulty in it," returned
+Hesper, with a shadow of interest. "You know what you mean when you say
+to yourself you like this, or you do not like that."
+
+"How clever she is, too!" thought Mary; but she answered: "I don't
+think I ever say anything to myself about the poetry I read--not at the
+time, I mean. If I like it, it drowns me; and, if I don't like it, it
+is as the Dead Sea to me, in which you know you can't sink, if you try
+ever so."
+
+Hesper saw nothing in the words, and began to fear that Mary was so
+stupid as to imagine herself clever; whereupon the fancy she had taken
+to her began to sink like water in sand. The two were still on their
+feet, near the window--Mary, in her bonnet, with her back to it, and
+Hesper, in evening attire, with her face to the sunset, so that the one
+was like a darkling worshiper, the other like the radiant goddess. But
+the truth was, that Hesper was a mere earthly woman, and Mary a
+heavenly messenger to her. Neither of them knew it, but so it was; for
+the angels are essentially humble, and Hesper would have condescended
+to any angel out of her own class.
+
+"I think I know good poetry by what it does to me," resumed Mary,
+thoughtfully, just as Hesper was about to pass to the business of the
+hour.
+
+"Indeed!" rejoined Hesper, not less puzzled than before, if the word
+should be used where there was no effort to understand. Poetry had
+never done anything to her, and Mary's words conveyed no shadow of an
+idea.
+
+The tone of her _indeed_ checked Mary. She hesitated a moment, but went
+on.
+
+"Sometimes," she said, "it makes me feel as if my heart were too big
+for my body; sometimes as if all the grand things in heaven and earth
+were trying to get into me at once; sometimes as if I had discovered
+something nobody else knew; sometimes as if--no, not _as if_, for then
+I _must_ go and pray to God. But I am trying to tell you what I don't
+know how to tell. I am not talking nonsense, I hope, only ashamed of
+myself that I can't talk sense.--I will show you what I have been doing
+about your dress."
+
+Far more to Hesper's surprise and admiration than any of her
+half-foiled attempts at the utterance of her thoughts, Mary, taking
+from her pocket the shape she had prepared, put it on herself, and,
+slowly revolving before Hesper, revealed what in her eyes was a
+masterpiece.
+
+"But how clever of you!" she cried.--Her own fingers had not been quite
+innocent of the labor of the needle, for money had long been scarce at
+Durnmelling, and in the paper shape she recognized the hand of an
+artist.--"Why," she continued, "you are nothing less than an
+accomplished dressmaker!"
+
+"That I dare not think myself," returned Mary, "seeing I never had a
+lesson."
+
+"I wish you would make my wedding-dress," said Hesper.
+
+"I could not venture, even if I had the time," answered Mary. "The
+moment I began to cut into the stuff, I should be terrified, and lose
+my self-possession. I never made a dress for anybody but myself."
+
+"You are a little witch!" said Hesper; while Mary, who had roughly
+prepared a larger shape, proceeded to fit it to her person.
+
+She was busy pinning and unpinning, shifting and pinning again, when
+suddenly Hesper said:
+
+"I suppose you know I am going to marry money?"
+
+"Oh! don't say that. It's too dreadful!" cried Mary, stopping her work,
+and looking up in Hesper's face.
+
+"What! you supposed I was going to marry a man like Mr. Redmain for
+love?" rejoined Hesper, with a hard laugh.
+
+"I can not bear to think of it!" said Mary. "But you do not really mean
+it! You are only--making fun of me! Do say you are."
+
+"Indeed, I am not. I wish I could say I was! It is very horrid, I know,
+but where's the good of mincing matters? If I did not call the thing by
+its name, the thing would be just the same. You know, people in our
+world have to do as they must; they can't pick and choose like you
+happy creatures. I dare say, now, you are engaged to a young man you
+love with all your heart, one you would rather marry than any other in
+the whole universe."
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" returned Mary, with a smile most plainly fancy-free. "I
+am not engaged, nor in the least likely to be."
+
+"And not in love either?" said Hesper--with such coolness that Mary
+looked up in her face to know if she had really said so.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"No more am I," echoed Hesper; "that is the one good thing in the
+business: I sha'n't break my heart, as some girls do. At least, so they
+say--I don't believe it: how could a girl be so indecent? It is bad
+enough to marry a man: that one can't avoid; but to die of a broken
+heart is to be a traitor to your sex. As if women couldn't live without
+men!"
+
+Mary smiled and was silent. She had read a good deal, and thought she
+understood such things better than Miss Mortimer. But she caught
+herself smiling, and she felt as if she had sinned. For that a young
+woman should speak of love and marriage as Miss Mortimer did, was too
+horrible to be understood--and she had smiled! She would have been less
+shocked with Hesper, however, had she known that she forced an
+indifference she could not feel--her last poor rampart of sand against
+the sea of horror rising around her. But from her heart she pitied her,
+almost as one of the lost.
+
+"Don't fix your eyes like that," said Hesper, angrily, "or I shall cry.
+Look the other way, and listen.--I am marrying money, I tell you--and
+for money; therefore, I ought to get the good of it. Mr. Mortimer will
+be father enough to see to that! So I shall be able to do what I
+please. I have fallen in love with you; and why shouldn't I have you
+for my--"
+
+She paused, hesitating: what was it she was about to propose to the
+little lady standing before her? She had been going to say _maid_: what
+was it that checked her? The feeling was to herself shapeless and
+nameless; but, however some of my readers may smile at the notion of a
+girl who served behind a counter being a lady, and however ready Hesper
+Mortimer would have been to join them, it was yet a vague sense of the
+fact that was now embarrassing her, for she was not half lady enough to
+deal with it. In very truth, Mary Marston was already immeasurably more
+of a lady than Hesper Mortimer was ever likely to be in this world.
+What was the stateliness and pride of the one compared to the fact that
+the other would have died in the workhouse or the street rather than
+let a man she did not love embrace her--yes, if all her ancestors in
+hell had required the sacrifice! To be a martyr to a lie is but false
+ladyhood. She only is a lady who witnesses to the truth, come of it
+what may.
+
+"--For my--my companion, or something of the sort," concluded Hesper;
+"and then I should be sure of being always dressed to my mind."
+
+"That _would_ be nice!" responded Mary, thinking only of the kindness
+in the speech.
+
+"Would you really like it?" asked Hesper, in her turn pleased.
+
+"I should like it very much," replied Mary, not imagining the proposal
+had in it a shadow of seriousness. "I wish it were possible."
+
+"Why not, then? Why shouldn't it be possible? I don't suppose you would
+mind using your needle a little?"
+
+"Not in the least," answered Mary, amused. "Only what would they do in
+the shop without me?"
+
+"They could get somebody else, couldn't they?"
+
+"Hardly, to take my place. My father was Mr. Turnbull's partner."
+
+"Oh!" said Hesper, not much instructed. "I thought you had only to give
+warning."
+
+There the matter dropped, and Mary thought no more about it.
+
+"You will let me keep this pattern?" said Hesper.
+
+"It was made for you," answered Mary.
+
+While Hesper was lazily thinking whether that meant she was to pay for
+it, Mary made her a pretty obeisance, and bade her good night. Hesper
+returned her adieu kindly, but neither shook hands with her nor rang
+the bell to have her shown out Mary found her own way, however, and
+presently was breathing the fresh air of the twilight fields on her way
+home to her piano and her books.
+
+For some time after she was gone, Hesper was entirely occupied with the
+excogitation of certain harmonies of the toilet that must minister
+effect to the dress she had now so plainly before her mind's eye; but
+by and by the dress began to melt away, and like a dissolving view
+disappeared, leaving in its place the form of "that singular
+shop-girl." There was nothing striking about her; she made no such
+sharp impression on the mind as compelled one to think of her again;
+yet always, when one had been long enough in her company to feel the
+charm of her individuality, the very quiet of any quiet moment was
+enough to bring back the sweetness of Mary's twilight presence. For
+this girl, who spent her days behind a counter, was one of the
+spiritual forces at work for the conservation and recovery of the
+universe.
+
+Not only had Hesper Mortimer never had a friend worthy of the name, but
+no idea of pure friendship had as yet been generated in her. Sepia was
+the nearest to her intimacy: how far friendship could have place
+between two such I need not inquire; but in her fits of misery Hesper
+had no other to go to. Those fits, alas! grew less and less frequent;
+for Hesper was on the downward incline; but, when the next came, after
+this interview, she found herself haunted, at a little distance, as it
+were, by a strange sense of dumb, invisible tending. It did not once
+come close to her; it did not once offer her the smallest positive
+consolation; the thing was only this, that the essence of Mary's being
+was so purely ministration, that her form could not recur to any memory
+without bringing with it a dreamy sense of help. Most powerful of all
+powers in its holy insinuation is _being_. _To be_ is more powerful
+than even _to do_. Action _may_ be hypocrisy, but being is the thing
+itself, and is the parent of action. Had anything that Mary said
+recurred to Hesper, she would have thought of it only as the poor
+sentimentality of a low education.
+
+But Hesper did not think of Mary's position as low; that would have
+been to measure it; and it did not once suggest itself as having any
+relation to any life in which she was interested. She saw no difference
+of level between Mary and the lawyer who came about her marriage
+settlements: they were together beyond her social horizon. In like
+manner, moral differences--and that in her own class--were almost
+equally beyond recognition. If by neglect of its wings, an eagle should
+sink to a dodo, it would then recognize only the laws of dodo life. For
+the dodos of humanity, did not one believe in a consuming fire and an
+outer darkness, what would be left us but an ever-renewed _alas_! It is
+truth and not imperturbability that a man's nature requires of him; it
+is help, not the leaving of cards at doors, that will be recognized as
+the test; it is love, and no amount of flattery that will prosper;
+differences wide as that between a gentleman and a cad will contract to
+a hair's breadth in that day; the customs of the trade and the picking
+of pockets will go together, with the greater excuse for the greater
+need and the less knowledge; liars the most gentleman-like and the most
+rowdy will go as liars; the first shall be last, and the last first.
+
+Hesper's day drew on. She had many things to think about--things very
+different from any that concerned Mary Marston. She was married; found
+life in London somewhat absorbing; and forgot Mary.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MR. REDMAIN.
+
+
+A life of comparatively innocent gayety could not be attractive to Mr.
+Redmain, but at first he accompanied his wife everywhere. No one knew
+better than he that not an atom of love had mingled with her motives in
+marrying him; but for a time he seemed bent on showing her that she
+needed not have been so averse to him. Whether this was indeed his
+design or not, I imagine he enjoyed the admiration she roused: for why
+should not a man take pride in the possession of a fine woman as well
+as in that of a fine horse? To be sure, Mrs. Redmain was not quite in
+the same way, nor quite so much his, as his horses were, and might one
+day be a good deal less his than she was now; but in the mean time she
+was, I fancy, a pleasant break in the gathering monotony of his
+existence. As he got more accustomed to the sight of her in a crowd,
+however, and at the same time to her not very interesting company in
+private, when she took not the smallest pains to please him, he
+gradually lapsed into his former ways, and soon came to spend his
+evenings in company that made him forget his wife. He had loved her in
+a sort of a way, better left undefined, and had also, almost from the
+first, hated her a little; for, following her cousin's advice, she had
+appealed to him to save her, and, when he evaded her prayer, had
+addressed him in certain terms too appropriate to be agreeable, and too
+forcible to be forgotten. His hatred, however, if that be not much too
+strong a name, was neither virulent nor hot, for it had no inverted
+love to feed and embitter it. It was more a thing of his head than his
+heart, revealing itself mainly in short, acrid speeches, meant to be
+clever, and indubitably disagreeable. Nor did Hesper prove an unworthy
+antagonist in their encounters of polite Billingsgate: what she lacked
+in experience she made up in breeding. The common remark, generally
+false, about no love being lost, was in their case true enough, for
+there never had been any between them to lose. The withered rose-leaves
+have their sweetness yet, but what of the rotted peony? It was
+generally when Redmain had been longer than usual without seeing his
+wife that he said the worst things to her, as if spite had grown in
+absence; but that he should then be capable of saying such things as he
+did say, could be understood only by those who knew the man and his
+history.
+
+Ferdinand Goldberg Redmain--parents with mean surroundings often give
+grand names to their children--was the son of an intellectually gifted
+laborer, who, rising first to be boss of a gang, began to take portions
+of contracts, and arrived at last, through one lucky venture after
+another, at having his estimate accepted and the contract given him for
+a rather large affair. The result was that, through his minute
+knowledge of details, his faculty for getting work out of his laborers,
+a toughness of heart and will that enabled him to screw wages to the
+lowest mark, and the judicious employment of inferior material, the
+contract paid him much too well for any good to come out of it. From
+that time, what he called his life was a continuous course of what he
+called success, and he died one of the richest dirt-beetles of the age,
+bequeathing great wealth to his son, and leaving a reputation for
+substantial worth behind him; hardly leaving it, I fancy, for surely he
+found it waiting him where he went. He had been guilty of a thousand
+meannesses, oppressions, rapacities, and some quiet rogueries, but none
+of them worse than those of many a man whose ultimate failure has been
+the sole cause of his excommunication by the society which all the time
+knew well enough what he was. Often had he been held up by would-be
+teachers as a pattern to aspiring youth of what might be achieved by
+unwavering attention to _the main chance_, combined with unassailable
+honesty: from his experience they would once more prove to a gaping
+world the truth of the maxim, the highest intelligible to a base soul,
+that "honesty is the best policy." With his money he left to his son
+the seeds of a varied meanness, which bore weeds enough, but curiously,
+neither avarice nor, within the bounds of a modest prudence, any
+unwillingness to part with money--a fact which will probably appear the
+stranger when I have told the following anecdote concerning a brother
+of the father, of whom few indeed mentioned in my narrative ever heard.
+
+This man was a joiner, or working cabinet-maker, or something of the
+sort. Having one day been set by his master to repair for an old lady
+an escritoire which had been in her possession for a long time, he came
+to her house in the evening with a five-pound note of a country bank,
+which he had found in a secret drawer of the same, handing it to her
+with the remark that he had always found honesty the best policy. She
+gave him half a sovereign, and he took his leave well satisfied. _He
+had been first to make inquiry, and had learned that the bank stopped
+payment many years ago._ I can not help wondering, curious in the
+statistics of honesty, how many of my readers will be more amused than
+disgusted with the story. It is a great thing to come of decent people,
+and Ferdinand Goldberg Redmain must not be judged like one who, of
+honorable parentage, whether noble or peasant, takes himself across to
+the shady side of the road. Much had been against Redmain. I do not
+know of what sort his mother was, but from certain embryonic virtues in
+him, which could hardly have been his father's, I should think she must
+have been better than her husband. She died, however, while he was a
+mere child; and his father married, some said did not _marry_ again.
+The boy was sent to a certain public school, which at that time,
+whatever it may or may not be now, was simply a hot-bed of the lowest
+vices, and in devil-matters Redmain was an apt pupil. There is fresh
+help for the world every time a youth starts clean upon manhood's race;
+his very being is a hope of cleansing: this one started as foul as
+youth could well be, and had not yet begun to repent. His character was
+well known to his associates, for he was no hypocrite, and Hosper's
+father knew it perfectly, and was therefore worse than he. Had Redmain
+had a daughter, he would never have given her to a man like himself.
+But, then, Mortimer was so poor, and Redmain was so _very_ rich! Alas
+for the man who degrades his poverty by worshiping wealth! there is no
+abyss in hell too deep for him to find its bottom.
+
+Mr. Redmain had no profession, and knew nothing of business beyond what
+was necessary for understanding whether his factor or steward, or
+whatever he called him, was doing well with his money--to that he gave
+heed. Also, wiser than many, he took some little care not to spend at
+full speed what life he had. With this view he laid down and observed
+certain rules in the ordering of his pleasures, which enabled him to
+keep ahead of the vice-constable for some time longer than would
+otherwise have been the case. But he is one who can never finally be
+outrun, and now, as Mr. Redmain was approaching the end of middle age,
+he heard plainly enough the approach of the wool-footed avenger behind
+him. Horrible was the inevitable to him, as horrible as to any; but it
+had not yet looked frightful enough to arrest his downward rush. In his
+better conditions--physical, I mean--whether he had any better moral
+conditions, I can not tell--he would laugh and say, "_Gather the roses
+while you may_"--heaven and earth! what roses!--but, in his worse, he
+maledicted everything, and was horribly afraid of hell. When in
+tolerable health, he laughed at the notion of such an out-of-the-way
+place, repudiating its very existence, and, calling in all the
+arguments urged by good men against the idea of an eternity of aimless
+suffering, used them against the idea of any punishment after death.
+Himself a bad man, he reasoned that God was too good to punish sin;
+himself a proud man, he reasoned that God was too high to take heed of
+him. He forgot the best argument he could have adduced--namely, that
+the punishment he had had in this life had done him no good; from which
+he might have been glad to argue that none would, and therefore none
+would be tried. But I suppose his mother believed there was a hell, for
+at such times, when from weariness he was less of an evil beast than
+usual, the old-fashioned horror would inevitably raise its dinosaurian
+head afresh above the slime of his consciousness; and then even his
+wife, could she have seen how the soul of the man shuddered and
+recoiled, would have let his brutality pass unheeded, though it was
+then at its worst, his temper at such times being altogether furious.
+There was no grace in him when he was ill, nor at any time, beyond a
+certain cold grace of manner, which he kept for ceremony, or where he
+wanted to please.
+
+Happily, Mr. Redmain had one intellectual passion, which, poor thing as
+it was, and in its motive, most of its aspects, and almost all its
+tendencies, evil exceedingly, yet did something to delay that
+corruption of his being which, at the same time, it powerfully aided to
+complete: it was for the understanding and analysis of human evil--not
+in the abstract, but alive and operative. For the appeasement of this
+passion, he must render intelligible to himself, and that on his own
+exclusive theory of human vileness, the aims and workings of every
+fresh specimen of what he called human nature that seemed bad enough,
+or was peculiar enough to interest him. In this region of darkness he
+ranged like a discoverer--prowled rather, like an unclean beast of
+prey--ever and always on the outlook for the false and foul;
+acknowledging, it is true, that he was no better himself, but
+arrogating on that ground a correctness of judgment beyond the reach of
+such as, desiring to be better, were unwilling to believe in the utter
+badness of anything human. Like a lover, he would watch for the
+appearance of the vile motive, the self-interest, that "must be," _he
+knew_, at the heart of this or that deed or proceeding of apparent
+benevolence or generosity. Often, alas! the thing was provable; and,
+where he did not find, he was quick to invent; and, where he failed in
+finding or inventing, he not the less believed the bad motive was
+there, and followed the slightest seeming trail of the cunning demon
+only the more eagerly. What a smile was his when he heard, which truly
+he was not in the way to hear often, the praise of some good deed, or
+an ascription of high end to some endeavor of one of the vile race to
+which he belonged! Do those who abuse their kind actually believe they
+are of it? Do they hold themselves exceptions? Do they never reflect
+that it must be because such is their own nature, whether their
+accusation be true or false, that they know how to attribute such
+motives to their fellows? Or is it that, actually and immediately
+rejoicing in iniquity, they delight in believing it universal?
+
+Quiet as a panther, Redmain was, I say, always in pursuit, if not of
+something sensual for himself, then of something evil in another. He
+would sit at his club, silent and watching, day after day, night after
+night, waiting for the chance that should cast light on some idea of
+detection, on some doubt, bewilderment, or conjecture. He would ask the
+farthest-off questions: who could tell what might send him into the
+track of discovery? He would give to the talk the strangest turns,
+laying trap after trap to ensnare the most miserable of facts, elevated
+into a desirable secret only by his hope to learn through it something
+equally valueless beyond it. Especially he delighted in discovering, or
+flattering himself he had discovered, the hollow full of dead men's
+bones under the flowery lawn of seeming goodness. Nor as yet had he, so
+far as he knew, or at least was prepared to allow, ever failed. And
+this he called the study of human nature, and quoted Pope. Truly, next
+to God, the proper study of mankind is man; but how shall a man that
+knows only the evil in himself, nor sees it hateful, read the
+thousandfold-compounded heart of his neighbor? To rake over the
+contents of an ash-pit, is not to study geology. There were motives in
+Redmain's own being, which he was not merely incapable of
+understanding, but incapable of seeing, incapable of suspecting.
+
+The game had for him all the pleasure of keenest speculation; nor that
+alone, for, in the supposed discovery of the evil of another, he felt
+himself vaguely righteous.
+
+One more point in his character I may not in fairness omit: he had
+naturally a strong sense of justice; and, if he exercised it but little
+in some of the relations of his life, he was none the less keenly alive
+to his own claims on its score; for chiefly he cried out for fair play
+on behalf of those who were wicked in similar fashion to himself. But,
+in truth, no one dealt so hardly with Redmain as his own conscience at
+such times when suffering and fear had awaked it.
+
+So much for a portrait-sketch of the man to whom Mortimer had sold his
+daughter--such was the man whom Hesper, entirely aware that none could
+compel her to marry against her will, had, partly from fear of her
+father, partly from moral laziness, partly from reverence for the
+Moloch of society, whose priestess was her mother, vowed to love,
+honor, and obey! In justice to her, it must be remembered, however,
+that she did not and could not know of him what her father knew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+MRS. REDMAIN.
+
+
+In the autumn the Redmains went to Durnmelling: why they did so, I
+should find it hard to say. If, when a child, Hesper loved either of
+her parents, the experiences of later years had so heaped that filial
+affection with the fallen leaves of dead hopes and vanished dreams,
+that there was now nothing in her heart recognizable to herself as love
+to father or mother. She always behaved to them, of course, with
+perfect propriety; never refused any small request; never showed
+resentment when blamed--never felt any, for she did not care enough to
+be angry or sorry that father or mother should disapprove.
+
+On the other hand, Lady Margaret saw great improvement in her daughter.
+To the maternal eye, jealous for perfection, Hesper's carriage was at
+length satisfactory. It was cold, and the same to her mother as to
+every one else, but the mother did not find it too cold. It was
+haughty, even repellent, but by no means in the mother's eyes
+repulsive. Her voice came from her in well-balanced sentences, sounding
+as if they had been secretly constructed for extempore use, like the
+points of a parliamentary orator. "Marriage has done everything for
+her!" said Lady Malice to herself with a dignified chuckle, and
+dismissed the last shadowy remnant of maternal regret for her part in
+the transaction of her marriage.
+
+She never saw herself in the wrong, and never gave herself the least
+trouble to be in the right. She was in good health, ate, and liked to
+eat; drank her glass of champagne, and would have drunk a second, but
+for her complexion, and that it sometimes made her feel ill, which was
+the only thing, after marrying Mr. Redmain, she ever felt degrading. Of
+her own worth she had never had a doubt, and she had none yet: how was
+she to generate one, courted wherever she went, both for her own beauty
+and her husband's wealth?
+
+To her father she was as stiff and proud as if she had been a maiden
+aunt, bent on destroying what expectations from her he might be
+cherishing. Who will blame her? He had done her all the ill he could,
+and by his own deed she was beyond his reach. Nor can I see that the
+debt she owed him for being her father was of the heaviest.
+
+Her husband was again out of health--certain attacks to which he was
+subject were now coming more frequently. I do not imagine his wife
+offered many prayers for his restoration. Indeed, she never prayed for
+the thing she desired; and, while he and she occupied separate rooms,
+the one solitary thing she now regarded as a privilege, how _could_ she
+pray for his recovery?
+
+Greatly contrary to Mr. Redmain's unexpressed desire, Miss Yolland had
+been installed as Hesper's cousin-companion. After the marriage, she
+ventured to unfold a little, as she had promised, but what there was
+yet of womanhood in Hesper had shrunk from further acquaintance with
+the dimly shadowed mysteries of Sepia's story; and Sepia, than whom
+none more sensitive to change of atmosphere, had instantly closed
+again; and now not unfrequently looked and spoke like one feeling her
+way. The only life-principle she had, so far as I know, was to get from
+the moment the greatest possible enjoyment that would leave the way
+clear for more to follow. She had not been in his house a week before
+Mr. Redmain hated her. He was something given to hating people who came
+near him, and she came much too near. She was by no means so different
+in character as to be repulsive to him; neither was she so much alike
+as to be tiresome; their designs could not well clash, for she was a
+woman and he was a man; if she had not been his wife's friend, they
+might, perhaps, have got on together better than well; but the two were
+such as must either be hand in glove or hate each other. There had not,
+however, been the least approach to rupture between them. Mr. Redmain,
+indeed, took no trouble to avoid such a catastrophe, but Sepia was far
+too wise to allow even the dawn of such a risk. When he was ill, he
+was, if possible, more rude to her than to every one else, but she did
+not seem to mind it a straw. Perhaps she knew something of the ways of
+such _gentlemen_ as lose their manners the moment they are ailing, and
+seem to consider a headache or an attack of indigestion excuse
+sufficient for behaving like the cad they scorn. It was not long,
+however, before he began to take in her a very real interest, though
+not of a sort it would have made her comfortable with him to know.
+
+Every time Mr. Redmain had an attack, the baldness on the top of his
+head widened, and the skin of his face tightened on his small, neat
+features; his long arms looked longer; his formerly flat back rounded
+yet a little; and his temper grew yet more curiously spiteful. Long
+after he had begun to recover, he was by no means an agreeable
+companion. Nevertheless, as if at last, though late in the day, she
+must begin to teach her daughter the duty of a married woman, from the
+moment he arrived, taken ill on the way, Lady Malice, regardless of the
+brusqueness with which he treated her from the first, devoted herself
+to him with an attention she had never shown her husband. She was the
+only one who manifested any appearance of affection for him, and the
+only one of the family for whom, in return, he came to show the least
+consideration. Rough he was, even to her, but never, except when in
+absolute pain, rude as to everybody in the house besides. At times, one
+might have almost thought he stood in some little awe of her. Every
+night, after his man was gone, she would visit him to see that he was
+left comfortable, would tuck him up as his mother might have done, and
+satisfy herself that the night-light was shaded from his eyes. With her
+own hands she always arranged his breakfast on the tray, nor never
+omitted taking him a basin of soup before he got up; and, whatever he
+may have concluded concerning her motives, he gave no sign of imagining
+them other than generous. Perhaps the part in him which had never had
+the opportunity of behaving ill to his mother, and so had not choked up
+its channels with wrong, remained, in middle age and illness, capable
+of receiving kindness.
+
+Hesper saw the relation between them, but without the least pleasure or
+the least curiosity. She seemed to care for nothing--except the keeping
+of her back straight. What could it be, inside that lovely form, that
+gave itself pleasure to be, were a difficult question indeed. The bear
+as he lies in his winter nest, sucking his paw, has no doubt his
+rudimentary theories of life, and those will coincide with a desire for
+its continuance; but whether what either the lady or the bear counts
+the good of life, be really that which makes either desire its
+continuance, is another question. Mere life without suffering seems
+enough for most people, but I do not think it could go on so for ever.
+I can not help fancying that, but for death, utter dreariness would at
+length master the healthiest in whom the true life has not begun to
+shine. But so satisfying is the mere earthly existence to some at
+present, that this remark must sound to them bare insanity.
+
+Partly out of compliment to Mr. Redmain, the Mortimers had scarcely a
+visitor; for he would not come out of his room when he knew there was a
+stranger in the house. Fond of company of a certain kind when he was
+well, he could not endure an unknown face when he was ill. He told Lady
+Malice that at such times a stranger always looked a devil to him.
+Hence the time was dull for everybody--dullest, perhaps, for Sepia,
+who, as well as Redmain, had a few things that required forgetting. It
+was no wonder, then, that Hesper, after a fort-night of it, should
+think once more of the young woman in the draper's shop of Testbridge.
+One morning, in consequence, she ordered her brougham, and drove to the
+town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE MENIAL.
+
+
+Things had been going nowise really better with Mary, though there was
+now more lull and less storm around her. The position was becoming less
+and less endurable to her, and she had as yet no glimmer of a way out
+of it. Breath of genial air never blew in the shop, except when this
+and that customer entered it. But how dear the dull old chapel had
+grown! Not that she heard anything more to her mind, or that she paid
+any more attention to what was said; but the memory of her father
+filled the place, and when the Bible was read, or some favorite hymn
+sung, he seemed to her actually present. And might not love, she
+thought, even love to her, be strong enough to bring him from the
+gracious freedom of the new life, back to the house of bondage, to
+share it for an hour with his daughter?
+
+When Hesper entered, she was disappointed to see Mary so much changed.
+But when, at sight of her, the pale face brightened, and a faint, rosy
+flush overspread it from brow to chin, Mary was herself again as Hesper
+had known her; and the radiance of her own presence, reflected from
+Mary, cast a reflex of sunshine into the February of Hesper's heart:
+had Mary known how long it was since such a smile had lighted the face
+she so much admired, hers would have flushed with a profounder
+pleasure. Hesper was human after all, though her humanity was only
+molluscous as yet, and it is not in the power of humanity in any stage
+of development to hold itself indifferent to the pleasure of being
+loved. Also, poor as is the feeling comparatively, it is yet a reflex
+of love itself--the shine of the sun in a rain-pool.
+
+She walked up to Mary, holding out her hand.
+
+"O ma'am, I am so glad to see you!" exclaimed Mary, forgetting her
+manners in her love.
+
+"I, too, am glad," drawled Hesper, genuinely, though with
+condescension. "I hope you are well. I can not say you look so."
+
+"I am pretty well, thank you, ma'am," answered Mary, flushing afresh:
+not much anxiety was anywhere expressed about her health now, except by
+Beenie, who mourned over the loss of her plumpness, and told her if she
+did not eat she would soon follow her poor father.
+
+"Come and have a drive with me," said Hesper, moved by a sudden
+impulse: through some hidden motion of sympathy, she felt, as she
+looked at her, that the place was stuffy. "It will do you good," she
+went on. "You are too much indoors.--And the ceiling is low," she
+added, looking up.
+
+"It is very kind of you," replied Mary, "but--I don't think I could
+quite manage it to-day."
+
+She looked round as she spoke. There were not many customers; but for
+conscience sake she was trying hard to give as little ground for
+offense as possible.
+
+"Why not?--If I were to ask Mr.--"
+
+"If you really wish it, ma'am, I will venture to go for half an hour.
+There is no occasion to speak to Mr. Turnbull. Besides, it is almost
+dinner-time."
+
+"Do, then. I am sure you will eat a better dinner for having had a
+little fresh air first. It is a lovely morning. We will drive to the
+Roman camp on the top of Clover-down."
+
+"I shall be ready in two minutes," said Mary, and ran from the shop.
+
+As she passed along the outside of his counter coming back, she stopped
+and told Mr. Turnbull where she was going. Instead of answering her, he
+turned himself toward Mrs. Redmain, and went through a series of bows
+and smiles recognizant of favor, which she did not choose to see. She
+turned and walked from the shop, got into the brougham, and made room
+for Mary at her side.
+
+But, although the drive was a lovely one, and the view from either
+window delightful, and to Mary it was like getting out of a tomb to
+leave the shop in the middle of the day, she saw little of the sweet
+country on any side, so much occupied was she with Hesper. Ere they
+stopped again at the shop-door, the two young women were nearer being
+friends than Hesper had ever been with any one. The sleepy heart in her
+was not yet dead, but capable still of the pleasure of showing sweet
+condescension and gentle patronage to one who admired her, and was
+herself agreeable. To herself she justified her kindness to Mary with
+the remark that _the young woman deserved encouragement_--whatever that
+might mean--_because she was so anxious to improve herself!_--a duty
+Hesper could recognize in another.
+
+As they went, Mary told her something of her miserable relations with
+the Turnbulls; and, as they returned, Hesper actually--this time with
+perfect seriousness--proposed that she should give up business, and
+live with her.
+
+Nor was this the ridiculous thing it may at first sight appear to not a
+few of my readers. It arose from what was almost the first movement in
+the direction of genuine friendship Hesper had ever felt. She had been
+familiar in her time with a good many, but familiarity is not
+friendship, and may or may not exist along with it. Some, who would
+scorn the idea of a _friendship_ with such as Mary, will be familiar
+enough with maids as selfish as themselves, and part from
+them--no--part _with_ them, the next day, or the next hour, with never
+a twinge of regret. Of this, Hesper was as capable as any; but
+friendship is its own justification, and she felt no horror at the new
+motion of her heart. At the same time she did not recognize it as
+friendship, and, had she suspected Mary of regarding their possible
+relation in that light, she would have dismissed her pride, perhaps
+contempt. Nevertheless the sorely whelmed divine thing in her had
+uttered a feeble sigh of incipient longing after the real; Mary had
+begun to draw out the love in her; while her conventional judgment
+justified the proposed extraordinary proceeding with the argument of
+the endless advantages to result from having in the house, devoted to
+her wishes, a young woman with an absolute genius for dressmaking; one
+capable not only of originating in that foremost of arts, but, no
+doubt, with a little experience, of carrying out also with her own
+hands the ideas of her mistress. No more would she have to send for the
+dressmaker on every smallest necessity! No more must she postpone
+confidence in her appearance, that was, in herself, until Sepia,
+dressed, should be at leisure to look her over! Never yet had she found
+herself the best dressed in a room: now there would be hope!
+
+Nothing, however, was clear in her mind as to the position she would
+have Mary occupy. She had a vague feeling that one like her ought not
+to be expected to undertake things befitting such women as her maid
+Folter; for between Mary and Folter there was, she saw, less room for
+comparison than between Folter and a naked Hottentot. She was
+incapable, at the same time, of seeing that, in the eyes of certain
+courtiers of a high kingdom, not much known to the world of fashion,
+but not the less judges of the beautiful, there was a far greater
+difference between Mary and herself than between herself and her maid,
+or between her maid and the Hottentot. For, while the said beholders
+could hardly have been astonished at Hesper's marrying Mr. Redmain,
+there would, had Mary done such a thing, have been dismay and a hanging
+of the head before the face of her Father in heaven.
+
+"Come and live with me, Miss Marston," said Hesper; but it was with a
+laugh, and that light touch of the tongue which suggests but a flying
+fancy spoken but for the sake of the preposterous; while Mary, not
+forgetting she had heard the same thing once before, heard it with a
+smile, and had no rejoinder ready; whereupon Hesper, who was, in
+reality, feeling her way, ventured a little more seriousness.
+
+"I should never ask you to do anything you would not like," she said.
+
+"I don't think you could," answered Mary. "There are more things I
+should like to do for you than you would think to ask.--In fact," she
+added, looking round with a loving smile, "I don't know what I
+shouldn't like to do for you."
+
+"My meaning was, that, as a thing of course, I should never ask you to
+do anything menial," explained Hesper, venturing a little further
+still, and now speaking in a tone perfectly matter-of-fact.
+
+"I don't know what you intend by _menial_," returned Mary.
+
+Hesper thought it not unnatural she should not be familiar with the
+word, and proceeded to explain it as well as she could. That seeming
+ignorance may be the consequence of more knowledge, she had yet to
+learn.
+
+"_Menial_, don't you know?" she said, "is what you give servants to do."
+
+But therewith she remembered that Mary's help in certain things wherein
+her maid's incapacity was harrowing, was one of the hopes she mainly
+cherished in making her proposal: that definition of _menial_ would
+hardly do.
+
+"I mean--I mean," she resumed, with a little embarrassment, a rare
+thing with her, "--things like--like--cleaning one's shoes, don't you
+know?--or brushing your hair."
+
+Mary burst out laughing.
+
+"Let me come to you to-morrow morning," she said, "and I will brush
+your hair that you will want me to come again the next day. You
+beautiful creature! whose hands would not be honored to handle such
+stuff as that?"
+
+As she spoke, she took in her fingers a little stray drift from the
+masses of golden twilight that crowned one of the loveliest temples in
+which the Holy Ghost had not yet come to dwell.
+
+"If cleaning your shoes be menial, brushing your hair must be royal,"
+she added.
+
+Hesper's heart was touched; and if at the same time her _self_ was
+flattered, the flattery was mingled with its best antidote--love.
+
+"Do you really mean," she said, "you would not mind doing such things
+for me?--Of course I should not be exacting."
+
+She laughed again, afraid of showing herself too much in earnest before
+she was sure of Mary.
+
+"You would not ask me to do anything _menial_?" said Mary, archly.
+
+"I dare not promise," said Hesper, in tone responsive. "How could I
+help it, if I saw you longing to do what I was longing to have you do?"
+she added, growing more and more natural.
+
+"I would no more mind cleaning your boots than my own," said Mary.
+
+"But I should not like to clean my own boots," rejoined Hesper.
+
+"No more should I, except it had to be done. Even then I would much
+rather not," returned Mary, "for cleaning my own would not interest me.
+To clean yours would. Still I would rather not, for the time might be
+put to better use--except always it were necessary, and then, of
+course, it couldn't. But as to anything degrading in it, I scorn the
+idea. I heard my father once say that, to look down on those who have
+to do such things may be to despise them for just the one honorable
+thing about them.--Shall I tell you what I understand by the word
+_menial_? You know it has come to have a disagreeable taste about it,
+though at first it only meant, as you say, something that fell to the
+duty of attendants."
+
+"Do tell me," answered Hesper, with careless permission.
+
+"I did not find it out myself," said Mary. "My father taught me. He was
+a wise as well as a good man, Mrs. Redmain."
+
+"Oh!" said Hesper, with the ordinary indifference of fashionable people
+to what an inferior may imagine worth telling them.
+
+"He said," persisted Mary, notwithstanding, "that it is menial to
+undertake anything you think beneath you for the sake of money; and
+still more menial, having undertaken it, not to do it as well as
+possible."
+
+"That would make out a good deal more of the menial in the world than
+is commonly supposed," laughed Hesper. "I wonder who would do anything
+for you if you didn't pay them--one way or another!"
+
+"I've taken my father's shoes out of Beenie's hands many a time," said
+Mary, "and finished them myself, just for the pleasure of making them
+shine for _him_."
+
+"Re-a-ally!" drawled Hesper, and set out for the conclusion that after
+all it was no such great compliment the young woman had paid her in
+wanting to brush her hair. Evidently she had a taste for low
+things!--was naturally menial!--would do as much for her own father as
+for a lady like her! But the light in Mary's eyes checked her.
+
+"Any service done without love, whatever it be," resumed Mary, "is
+slavery--neither more nor less. It can not be anything else. So, you
+see, most slaves are made slaves by themselves; and that is what makes
+me doubtful whether I ought to go on serving in the shop; for, as far
+as the Turnbulls are concerned, I have no pleasure in it; I am only
+helping them to make money, not doing them any good."
+
+"Why do you not give it up at once then?" asked Hesper.
+
+"Because I like serving the customers. They were my father's customers;
+and I have learned so much from having to wait on them!"
+
+"Well, now," said Hesper, with a rush for the goal, "if you will come
+to me, I will make you comfortable; and you shall do just as much or as
+little as you please."
+
+"What will your maid think?" suggested Mary. "If I am to do what I
+please, she will soon find me trespassing on her domain."
+
+"I never trouble myself about what my servants think," said Hesper.
+
+"But it might hurt her, you know--to be paid to do a thing and then not
+allowed to do it."
+
+"She may take herself away, then. I had not thought of parting with
+her, but I should not be at all sorry if she went. She would be no loss
+to me."
+
+"Why should you keep her, then?"
+
+"Because one is just as good--and as bad as another. She knows my ways,
+and I prefer not having to break in a new one. It is a bore to have to
+say how you like everything done."
+
+"But you are speaking now as if you meant it," said Mary, waking up to
+the fact that Hesper's tone was of business, and she no longer seemed
+half playing with the proposal. "_Do_ you mean you want me to come and
+live with you?"
+
+"Indeed, I do," answered Hesper, emphatically. "You shall have a room
+close to my bedroom, and there you shall do as you like all day long;
+and, when I want you, I dare say you will come."
+
+"Fast enough," said Mary, cheerily, as if all was settled. In contrast
+with her present surroundings, the prospect was more than attractive.
+"--But would you let me have my piano?" she asked, with sudden
+apprehension.
+
+"You shall have my grand piano always when I am out, which will be
+every night in the season, I dare say. That will give you plenty of
+practice; and you will be able to have the best of lessons. And think
+of the concerts and oratorios you will go to!"
+
+As she spoke, the carriage drew up at the door of the shop, and Mary
+took her leave. Hesper accepted her acknowledgments in the proper style
+of a benefactress, and returned her good-by kindly. But not yet did she
+shake hands with her.
+
+Some of my readers may wonder that Mary should for a moment dream of
+giving up what they would call her independence; for was she not on her
+own ground in the shop of which she was a proprietor? and was the
+change proposed, by whatever name it might be called, anything other
+than _service_? But they are outside it, and Mary was in it, and knew
+how little such an independence was worth the name. Almost everything
+about the shop had altered in its aspect to her. The very air she
+breathed in it seemed slavish. Nor was the change in her. The whole
+thing was growing more and more sordid, for now--save for her part--the
+one spirit ruled it entirely.
+
+The work had therefore more or less grown a drudgery to her. The spirit
+of gain was in full blast, and whoever did not trim his sails to it was
+in danger of finding it rough weather. No longer could she, without
+offense, and consequent disturbance of spirit, arrange her attendance
+as she pleased, or have the same time for reading as before. She could
+encounter black looks, but she could not well live with them; and how
+was she to continue the servant of such ends as were now exclusively
+acknowledged in the place? The proposal of Mrs. Redmain stood in
+advantageous contrast to this treadmill-work. In her house she would be
+called only to the ministrations of love, and would have plenty of time
+for books and music, with a thousand means of growth unapproachable in
+Testbridge. All the slavery lay in the shop, all the freedom in the
+personal service. But she strove hard to suppress anxiety, for she saw
+that, of all poverty-stricken contradictions, a Christian with little
+faith is the worst.
+
+The chief attraction to her, however, was simply Hesper herself. She
+had fallen in love with her--I hardly know how otherwise to describe
+the current with which her being set toward her. Few hearts are capable
+of loving as she loved. It was not merely that she saw in Hesper a
+grand creature, and lovely to look upon, or that one so much her
+superior in position showed such a liking for herself; she saw in her
+one she could help, one at least who sorely needed help, for she seemed
+to know nothing of what made life worth having--one who had done, and
+must yet be capable of doing, things degrading to the humanity of
+womanhood. Without the hope of helping in the highest sense, Mary could
+not have taken up her abode in such a house as Mrs. Redmain's. No
+outward service of any kind, even to the sick, was to her service
+enough to _choose_; were it laid upon her, she would hasten to it; for
+necessity is the push, gentle or strong, as the man is more or less
+obedient, by which God sends him into the path he would have him take.
+But to help to the birth of a beautiful Psyche, enveloped all in the
+gummy cerecloths of its chrysalis, not yet aware, even, that it must
+get out of them, and spread great wings to the sunny wind of God--that
+was a thing for which the holiest of saints might well take a servant's
+place--the thing for which the Lord of life had done it before him. To
+help out such a lovely sister--how Hesper would have drawn herself up
+at the word! it is mine, not Mary's--as she would be when no longer
+holden of death, but her real self, the self God meant her to be when
+he began making her, would indeed be a thing worth having lived for!
+Between the ordinarily benevolent woman and Mary Marston, there was
+about as great a difference as between the fashionable church-goer and
+Catherine of Siena. She would be Hesper's servant that she might gain
+Hesper. I would not have her therefore wondered at as a marvel of
+humility. She was simply a young woman who believed that the man called
+Jesus Christ is a real person, such as those represent him who profess
+to have known him; and she therefore believed the man himself--believed
+that, when he said a thing, he entirely meant it, knowing it to be
+true; believed, therefore, that she had no choice but do as he told
+her. That man was the servant of all; therefore, to regard any honest
+service as degrading would be, she saw, to deny Christ, to call the
+life of creation's hero a disgrace. Nor was he the first servant; he
+did not of himself choose his life; the Father gave it him to
+live--sent him to be a servant, because he, the Father, is the first
+and greatest servant of all. He gives it to one to serve as the rich
+can, to another as the poor must. The only disgrace, whether of the
+counting-house, the shop, or the family, is to think the service
+degrading. If it be such, why not sit down and starve rather than do
+it? No man has a right to disgrace himself. Starve, I say; the world
+will lose nothing in you, for you are its disgrace, who count service
+degrading. You are much too grand people for what your Maker requires
+of you, and does himself, and yet you do it after a fashion, because
+you like to eat and go warm. You would take rank in the kingdom of
+hell, not the kingdom of heaven. But obedient love, learned by the
+meanest Abigail, will make of her an angel of ministration, such a one
+as he who came to Peter in the prison, at whose touch the fetters fell
+from the limbs of the apostle.
+
+"What forced, overdriven, Utopian stuff! A kingdom always coming, and
+never come! I hold by what _is._ This solid, plowable earth will serve
+my turn. My business is what I can find in the oyster."
+
+I hear you, friend. Your answer will come whence you do not look for
+it. For some, their only answer will be the coming of that which they
+deny; and the _Presence_ will be a very different thing to those who
+desire it and those who do not. In the mean time, if we are not yet
+able to serve like God from pure love, let us do it because it is his
+way; so shall we come to do it from pure love also.
+
+The very next morning, as she called it--that is, at four o'clock in
+the afternoon--Hesper again entered the shop, and, to the surprise and
+annoyance of the master of it, was taken by Mary through the counter
+and into the house. "What a false impression," thought the great man,
+"will it give of the way _we_ live, to see the Marstons' shabby parlor
+in a warehouse!" But he would have been more astonished and more
+annoyed still, had the deafening masses of soft goods that filled the
+house permitted him to hear through them what passed between the two.
+Before they came down, Mary had accepted a position in Mrs. Redmain's
+house, if that may be called a position which was so undefined; and
+Hesper had promised that she would not mention the matter. For Mary
+judged Mr. Turnbull would be too glad to get rid of her to mind how
+brief the notice she gave him, and she would rather not undergo the
+remarks that were sure to be made in contempt of her scheme. She
+counted it only fair, however, to let him know that she intended giving
+up her place behind the counter, hinting that, as she meant to leave
+when it suited her without further warning, it would be well to look
+out at once for one to take her place.
+
+As to her money in the business, she scarcely thought of it, and said
+nothing about it, believing it as safe as in the bank. It was in the
+power of a dishonest man who prided himself on his honesty--the worst
+kind of rogue in the creation; but she had not yet learned to think of
+him as a dishonest man--only as a greedy one--and the money had been
+there ever since she had heard of money. Mr. Turnbull was so astonished
+by her communication that, not seeing at once how the change was likely
+to affect him, he held his peace--with the cunning pretense that his
+silence arose from anger. His first feeling was of pleasure, but the
+man of business must take care how he shows himself pleased. On
+reflection, he continued pleased; for, as they did not seem likely to
+succeed in securing Mary in the way they had wished, the next best
+thing certainly would be to get rid of her. Perhaps, indeed, it was the
+very best thing; for it would be easy to get George a wife more
+suitable to the position of his family than a little canting dissenter,
+and her money would be in their hands all the same; while, once clear
+of her haunting cat-eyes, ready to pounce upon whatever her soft-headed
+father had taught her was wicked, he could do twice the business. But,
+while he continued pleased, he continued careful not to show his
+satisfaction, for she would then go smelling about for the cause!
+During three whole days, therefore, he never spoke to her. On the
+fourth, he spoke as if nothing had ever been amiss between them, and
+showed some interest in her further intentions. But Mary, in the
+straightforward manner peculiar to herself, told him she preferred not
+speaking of them at present; whereupon the cunning man concluded that
+she wanted a place in another shop, and was on the outlook--prepared to
+leave the moment one should turn up.
+
+She asked him one day whether he had yet found a person to take her
+place.
+
+"Time enough for that," he answered. "You're not gone yet."
+
+"As you please, Mr. Turnbull," said Mary. "It was merely that I should
+be sorry to leave you without sufficient help in the shop."
+
+"And _I_ should be sorry," rejoined Turnbull, "that Miss Marston should
+fancy herself indispensable to the business she turned her back upon."
+
+From that moment, the restraint he had for the last week or two laid
+upon himself thus broken through, he never spoke to her except with
+such rudeness that she no longer ventured to address him even on
+shop-business; and all the people in the place, George included,
+following the example so plainly set them, she felt, when, at last, in
+the month of November, a letter from Hesper heralded the hour of her
+deliverance, that to take any formal leave would be but to expose
+herself to indignity. She therefore merely told Turnbull, one evening
+as he left the shop, that she would not be there in the morning, and
+was gone from Testbridge before it was opened the next day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MRS. REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM.
+
+
+A few years ago, a London drawing-room was seldom beautiful; but size
+is always something, and, if Mrs. Redmain's had not harmony, it had
+gilding--a regular upholsterer's drawing-room it was, on which about as
+much taste had been expended as on the fattening of a prize-pig.
+Happily there is as little need as temptation to give any description
+of it, with its sheets of glass and steel, its lace curtains,
+crude-colored walls and floor and couches, and glittering chandeliers
+of a thousand prisms. Everybody knows the kind of room--a huddle of the
+chimera ambition wallowing in the chaos of the commonplace--no
+miniature world of harmonious abiding. The only interesting thing in it
+was, that on all sides were doors, which must lead out of it, and might
+lead to a better place.
+
+It was about eleven o'clock of a November morning--more like one in
+March. There might be a thick fog before the evening, but now the sun
+was shining like a brilliant lump of ice--so inimical to heat,
+apparently, that a servant had just dropped the venetian blind of one
+of the windows to shut his basilisk-gaze from the sickening fire, which
+was now rapidly recovering. Betwixt the cold sun and the hard earth, a
+dust-befogged wind, plainly borrowed from March, was sweeping the
+street.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Redmain had returned to town thus early because their
+country-place was in Cornwall, and there Mr. Redmain was too far from
+his physician. He was now considerably better, however, and had begun
+to go about again, for the weather did not yet affect him much. He was
+now in his study, as it was called, where he generally had his
+breakfast alone. Mrs. Redmain always had hers in bed, as often with a
+new novel as she could, of which her maid cut the leaves, and skimmed
+the cream. But now she was descending the stair, straight as a Greek
+goddess, and about as cold as the marble she is made of--mentally
+rigid, morally imperturbable, and vacant of countenance to a degree
+hardly equaled by the most ordinary of goddesses. She entered the
+drawing-room with a slow, careless, yet stately step, which belonged to
+her, I can not say by nature, for it was not natural, but by ancestry.
+She walked to the chimney, seated herself in a low, soft, shiny chair
+almost on the hearth-rug, and gazed listlessly into the fire. In a
+minute she rose and rang the bell.
+
+"Send my maid, and shut the door," she said.
+
+The woman came.
+
+"Has Miss Yolland left her room yet?" she asked.
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Let her know I am in the drawing-room."
+
+This said, she resumed her fire-gazing.
+
+There was not much to see in the fire, for the fire is but a reflector,
+and there was not much behind the eyes that looked into it for that
+fire to reflect. Hesper was no dreamer--the more was the pity, for
+dreams are often the stuff out of which actions are made. Had she been
+a truer woman, she might have been a dreamer, but where was the space
+for dreaming in a life like hers, without heaven, therefore without
+horizon, with so much room for desiring, and so little room for hope?
+The buz that greeted her entrance of a drawing-room, was the chief joy
+she knew; to inhabit her well-dressed body in the presence of other
+well-dressed bodies, her highest notion of existence. And even upon
+these hung ever as an abating fog the consciousness of having a
+husband. I can not say she was tired of marriage, for she had loathed
+her marriage from the first, and had not found it at all better than
+her expectation: she had been too ignorant to forebode half its horrors.
+
+Education she had had but little that was worth the name, for she had
+never been set growing; and now, although well endowed by nature, she
+was gradually becoming stupid. People who have plenty of money, and
+neither hope nor aspiration, must become stupid, except indeed they
+hate, and then for a time the devil in them will make them a sort of
+clever.
+
+Miss Yolland came undulating. No kiss, no greeting whatever passed
+between the ladies. Sepia began at once to rearrange a few hot-house
+flowers on the mantel-piece, looking herself much like some dark flower
+painted in an old missal.
+
+"This day twelve months!" said Hesper.
+
+"I know," returned Sepia.
+
+"If one could die without pain, and there was nothing to come after!"
+said Hesper. "What a tiresome dream it is!"
+
+"Dream, or nightmare, or what you will, you had better get all you can
+out of it before you break it," said Sepia.
+
+"You seem to think it worth keeping!" yawned Hesper.
+
+Sepia smiled, with her face to the glass, in which she saw the face of
+her cousin with her eyes on the fire; but she made no answer. Hesper
+went on.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "your story is not mine. You are free; I am a slave.
+You are alive; I am in my coffin."
+
+"That's marriage," said Sepia, dryly.
+
+"It would not matter much," continued Hesper, "if you could have your
+coffin to yourself; but when you have to share it--ugh!"
+
+"If I were you, then," said Sepia, "I would not lie still; I would get
+up and bite--I mean, be a vampire."
+
+Hesper did not answer. Sepia turned from the mirror, looked at her, and
+burst into a laugh--at least, the sound she made had all the elements
+of a laugh--except the merriment.
+
+"Now really, Hesper, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she cried.
+"You to put on the pelican and the sparrow, with all the world before
+you, and all the men in it at your feet!"
+
+"A pack of fools!" remarked Hesper, with a calmness which in itself was
+scorn. "I don't deny it--but amusing fools--you must allow that!"
+
+"They don't amuse me."
+
+"That's your fault: you won't be amused. The more foolish they are, the
+more amusing I find them."
+
+"I am sick of it all. Nothing amuses me. How can it, when there is
+nothing behind it? You can't live on amusement. It is the froth on
+water an inch deep, and then the mud!"
+
+"I declare, misery makes a poetess of you! But as to the mud, I don't
+mind a little mud. It is only dirt, and has its part in the inevitable
+peck, I hope."
+
+"_I_ don't mind mud so long as you can keep out of it. But when one is
+over head and ears in it, I should like to know what life is worth,"
+said Hesper, heedless that the mud was of her own making. "I declare,
+Sepia," she went on, drawling the declaration, "if I were to be asked
+whether I would go on or not--"
+
+"You would ask a little time to make up your mind, Hesper, I fancy,"
+suggested Sepia, for Hesper had paused. As she did not reply, Sepia
+resumed.
+
+"Which is your favorite poison, Hesper?" she said.
+
+"When I choose, it will be to use," replied Hesper.
+
+"Rhyming, at last!" said Sepia.
+
+But Hesper would not laugh, and her perfect calmness checked the
+laughter which would have been Sepia's natural response: she was
+careful not to go too far.
+
+"Do you know, Hesper," she said, with seriousness, "what is the matter
+with you?"
+
+"Tolerably well," answered Hesper.
+
+"You do not--let me tell you. You are nothing but a baby yet. You have
+no heart."
+
+"If you mean that I have never been in love, you are right. But you
+talk foolishly; for you know that love is no more within my reach than
+if I were the corpse I feel."
+
+Sepia pressed her lips together, and nodded knowingly; then, after a
+moment's pause, said:
+
+"When your hour is come, you will understand. Every woman's hour comes,
+one time or another--whether she will or not."
+
+"Sepia, if you think that, because I hate my husband, I would allow
+another man to make love to me, you do not know me yet."
+
+"I know you very well; you do not know yourself, Hesper; you do not
+know the heart of a woman--because your own has never come awake yet."
+
+"God forbid it ever should, then--so long as--as the man I hate is
+alive!"
+
+Sepia laughed.
+
+"A good prayer," she said; "for who can tell what you might do to him!"
+
+"Sepia, I sometimes think you are a devil."
+
+"And I sometimes think you are a saint."
+
+"What do you take me for the other times?"
+
+"A hypocrite. What do _you_ take _me_ for the other times?"
+
+"No hypocrite," answered Hesper.
+
+With a light, mocking laugh, Sepia turned away, and left the room.
+
+Hesper did not move. If stillness indicates thought, then Hesper was
+thinking; and surely of late she had suffered what might have waked
+something like thought in what would then have been something like a
+mind: all the machinery of thought was there--sorely clogged, and
+rusty; but for a woman to hate her husband is hardly enough to make a
+thinking creature of her. True as it was, there was no little
+affectation in her saying what she did about the worthlessness of her
+life. She was plump and fresh; her eye was clear, her hand firm and
+cool; suffering would have to go a good deal deeper before it touched
+in her the issues of life, or the love of it. What set her talking so,
+was in great part the _ennui_ of endeavor after enjoyment, and the
+reaction from success in the pursuit. Her low moods were, however, far
+more frequent than, even with such fatigue and reaction to explain
+them, belonged to her years, her health, or her temperament.
+
+The fire grew hot. Hesper thought of her complexion, and pushed her
+chair back. Then she rose, and, having taken a hand-screen from the
+chimney-piece, was fanning herself with it, when the door opened, and a
+servant asked if she were at home to Mr. Helmer. She hesitated a
+moment: what an unearthly hour for a caller!
+
+"Show him up," she answered: anything was better than her own company.
+
+Tom Helmer entered--much the same--a little paler and thinner. He made
+his approach with a certain loose grace natural to him, and seated
+himself on the chair, at some distance from her own, to which Mrs.
+Redmain motioned him.
+
+Tom seldom failed of pleasing. He was well dressed, and not too much;
+and, to the natural confidence of his shallow character, added the
+assurance born of a certain small degree of success in his profession,
+which he took for the pledge of approaching supremacy. He carried
+himself better than he used, and his legs therefore did not look so
+long. His hair continued to curl soft and silky about his head, for he
+protested against the fashionable convict-style. His hat was new, and
+he bore it in front of him like a ready apology.
+
+It was to no presentableness of person, however, any more than to
+previous acquaintance, that Tom now owed his admittance. True, he had
+been to Durnmelling not unfrequently, but that was in the other world
+of the country, and even there Hesper had taken no interest in the
+self-satisfied though not ill-bred youth who went galloping about the
+country, showing off to rustic girls. It was merely, as I have said,
+that she could no longer endure a _tete-a-tete_ with one she knew so
+little as herself, and whose acquaintance she was so little desirous of
+cultivating.
+
+Tom had been to a small party at the house a few evenings before,
+brought thither by the well-known leader of a certain literary clique,
+who, in return for homage, not seldom, took younger aspirants under a
+wing destined never to be itself more than half-fledged. It was,
+notwithstanding, broad enough already so to cover Tom with its shadow
+that under it he was able to creep into several houses of a sort of
+distinction, and among them into Mrs. Redmain's.
+
+Nothing of less potency than the presumption attendant on
+self-satisfaction could have emboldened him to call thus early, and
+that in the hope not merely of finding Mrs. Redmain at home, but of
+finding her alone; and, with the not unusual reward of unworthy daring,
+he had succeeded. He was ambitious of making himself acceptable to
+ladies of social influence, and of being known to stand well with such.
+In the case of Mrs. Redmain he was the more anxious, because she had
+not received him on any footing of former acquaintance.
+
+At the gathering to which I have referred, a certain song was sung by a
+lady, not without previous manoeuvre on the part of Tom, with which
+Mrs. Redmain had languidly expressed herself pleased; that song he had
+now brought her--for, concerning words and music both, he might have
+said with Touchstone, "An ill-favored thing, but mine own." He did not
+quote Touchstone because he believed both words and music
+superexcellent, the former being in truth not quite bad, and the latter
+nearly as good. Appreciation was the very hunger of Tom's small life,
+and here was a chance!
+
+"I ought to apologize," he said, airily, "and I will, if you will allow
+me."
+
+Mrs. Redmain said nothing, only waited with her eyes. They were calm,
+reposeful eyes, not fixed, scarcely lying upon Tom. It was chilling,
+but he was not easily chilled when self was in the question--as it
+generally was with Tom. He felt, however, that he must talk or be lost.
+
+"I have taken the liberty," he said, "of bringing you the song I had
+the pleasure--a greater pleasure than you will readily imagine--of
+hearing you admire the other evening."
+
+"I forget," said Hesper.
+
+"I would not have ventured," continued Tom, "had it not happened that
+both air and words were my own."
+
+"Ah!--indeed!--I did not know you were a poet, Mr.--"
+
+She had forgotten his name.
+
+"That or nothing," answered Tom, boldly.
+
+"And a musician, too?"
+
+"At your service, Mrs. Redmain."
+
+"I don't happen to want a poet at present--or a musician either," she
+said, with just enough of a smile to turn the rudeness into what Tom
+accepted as a flattering familiarity.
+
+"Nor am I in want of a place," he replied, with spirit; "a bird can
+sing on any branch. Will you allow me to sing this song on yours? Mrs.
+Downport scarcely gave the expression I could have desired.--May I read
+the voices before I sing them?"
+
+Without either intimacy or encouragement, Tom was capable of offering
+to read his own verses! Such fools self-partisanship makes of us.
+
+Mrs. Redmain was, for her, not a little amused with the young man; he
+was not just like every other that came to the house.
+
+"I should li-i-ike," she said.
+
+Tom laid himself back a little in his chair, with the sheet of music in
+his hand, closed his eyes, and repeated as follows--he knew all his own
+verses by heart:
+
+    "Lovely lady, sweet disdain!
+    Prithee keep thy Love at home;
+    Bind him with a tressed chain;
+    Do not let the mischief roam.
+
+    "In the jewel-cave, thine eye,
+    In the tangles of thy hair,
+    It is well the imp should lie--
+    There his home, his heaven is there.
+
+    "But for pity's sake, forbid
+    Beauty's wasp at me to fly;
+    Sure the child should not be chid,
+    And his mother standing by.
+
+    "For if once the villain came
+    To my house, too well I know
+    He would set it all aflame--
+    To the winds its ashes blow.
+
+    "Prithee keep thy Love at home;
+    Net him up or he will start;
+    And if once the mischief roam,
+    Straight he'll wing him to my heart."
+
+What there might be in verse like this to touch with faintest emotion,
+let him say who cultivates art for art's sake. Doubtless there is that
+in rhythm and rhyme and cadence which will touch the pericardium when
+the heart itself is not to be reached by divinest harmony; but, whether
+such women as Hesper feel this touch or only admire a song as they
+admire the church-prayers and Shakespeare, or whether, imagining in it
+some _tour de force_ of which they are themselves incapable, they
+therefore look upon it as a mighty thing, I am at a loss to determine.
+All I know is that a gleam as from some far-off mirror of admiration
+did certainly, to Tom's great satisfaction, appear on Hesper's
+countenance. As, however, she said nothing, he, to waive aside a
+threatening awkwardness, lightly subjoined:
+
+"Queen Anne is all the rage now, you see."
+
+Mrs. Redmain knew that Queen-Anne houses were in fashion, and was even
+able to recognize one by its flush window-frames, while she had felt
+something odd, which might be old-fashioned, in the song; between the
+two, she was led to the conclusion that the fashion of Queen Anne's
+time had been revived in the making of verses also.
+
+"Can you, then, make a song to any pattern you please?" she asked.
+
+"I fancy so," answered Tom, indifferently, as if it were nothing to him
+to do whatever he chose to attempt. And in fact he could imitate almost
+anything--and well, too--the easier that he had nothing of his own
+pressing for utterance; for he had yet made no response to the first
+demand made on every man, the only demand for originality made on any
+man--that he should order his own way aright.
+
+"How clever you must be!" drawled Hesper; and, notwithstanding the
+tone, the words were pleasant in the ears of goose Tom. He rose, opened
+the piano, and, with not a little cheap facility, began to accompany a
+sweet tenor voice in the song he had just read.
+
+The door opened, and Mr. Redmain came in. He gave a glance at Tom as he
+sang, and went up to his wife where she still sat, with her face to the
+fire, and her back to the piano.
+
+"New singing-master, eh?" he said.
+
+"No," answered his wife.
+
+"Who the deuce is he?"
+
+"I forget his name," replied Hesper, in the tone of one bored by
+question. "He used to come to Durnmelling."
+
+"That is no reason why he should not have a name to him."
+
+Hesper did not reply. Tom went on playing. The moment he struck the
+last chord, she called to him in a clear, soft, cold voice:
+
+"Will you tell Mr. Redmain your name? I happen to have forgotten it."
+
+Tom picked up his hat, rose, came forward, and, mentioning his name,
+held out his hand.
+
+"I don't know you," said Mr. Redmain, touching his palm with two
+fingers that felt like small fishes.
+
+"It is of no consequence," said his wife; "Mr. Aylmer is an old
+acquaintance of our family."
+
+"Only you don't quite remember his name!"
+
+"It is not my _friends'_ names only I have an unhappy trick of
+forgetting. I often forget yours, Mr. Redmain!"
+
+"My _good_ name, you must mean."
+
+"I never heard that."
+
+Neither had raised the voice, or spoken with the least apparent anger.
+
+Mr. Redmain gave a grin instead of a retort. He appreciated her
+sharpness too much to get one ready in time. Turning away, he left the
+room with a quiet, steady step, taking his grin with him: it had drawn
+the clear, scanty skin yet tighter on his face, and remained fixed; so
+that he vanished with something of the look of a hairless tiger.
+
+The moment he disappeared, Tom's gaze, which had been fascinated,
+sought Hesper. Her lips were shaping the word _brute!_--Tom heard it
+with his eyes; her eyes were flashing, and her face was flushed. But
+the same instant, in a voice perfectly calm--
+
+"Is there anything else you would like to sing, Mr. Helmer?" she said.
+"Or--" Here she ceased, with the slightest possible choking--it was
+only of anger--in the throat.
+
+Tom's was a sympathetic nature, especially where a pretty woman was in
+question. He forgot entirely that she had given quite as good, or as
+bad, as she received, and was hastening to say something foolish,
+imagining he had looked upon the sorrows of a lovely and unhappy wife
+and was almost in her confidence, when Sepia entered the room, with a
+dark glow that flashed into dusky radiance at sight of the handsome
+Tom. She had noted him on the night of the party, and remembered having
+seen him at the merrymaking in the old hall of Durnmelling, but he had
+not been introduced to her. A minute more, and they were sitting
+together in a bay-window, blazing away at each other like two
+corvettes, though their cartridges were often blank enough, while
+Hesper, never heeding them, kept her place by the chimney, her gaze
+transferred from the fire to the novel she had sent for from her
+bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MARY'S RECEPTION.
+
+
+In the afternoon of the same day, now dreary enough, with the
+dreariness naturally belonging to the dreariest month of the year, Mary
+arrived in the city preferred to all cities by those who live in it,
+but the most uninviting, I should imagine, to a stranger, of all cities
+on the face of the earth. Cold seemed to have taken to itself a visible
+form in the thin, gray fog that filled the huge station from the
+platform to the glass roof. The latter had vanished, indistinguishable
+from sky invisible, and from the brooding darkness, in which the lamps
+innumerable served only to make spots of thinness. It was a mist, not a
+November fog, properly so called; but every breath breathed by every
+porter, as he ran along by the side of the slowly halting train, was
+adding to its mass, which seemed to Mary to grow in bulk and density as
+she gazed. Her quiet, simple, decided manner at once secured her
+attention, and she was among the first who had their boxes on cabs and
+were driving away.
+
+But the drive seemed interminable, and she had grown anxious and again
+calmed herself many times, before it came to an end. The house at which
+the cab drew up was large, and looked as dreary as large, but scarcely
+drearier than any other house in London on that same night of November.
+The cabman rang the bell, but it was not until they had waited a time
+altogether unreasonable that the door at length opened, and a lofty,
+well-built footman in livery appeared framed in it.
+
+Mary got out, and, going up the steps, said she hoped the driver had
+brought her to the right house: it was Mrs. Redmain's she wanted.
+
+"Mrs. Redmain is not at home, miss," answered the man. "I didn't hear
+as how she was expecting of any one," he added, with a glance at the
+boxes, formlessly visible on the cab, through the now thicker darkness.
+
+"She is expecting me, I know," returned Mary; "but of course she would
+not stay at home to receive me," she remarked, with a smile.
+
+"Oh!" returned the man, in a peculiar tone, and adding, "I'll see,"
+went away, leaving her on the top of the steps, with the cabman behind
+her, at the bottom of them, waiting orders to get her boxes down.
+
+"It don't appear as you was overwelcome, miss!" he remarked: with his
+comrades on the stand he passed for a wit; "--leastways, it don't seem
+as your sheets was quite done hairing."
+
+"It's all right," said Mary, cheerfully.
+
+She was not ready to imagine her dignity in danger, therefore did not
+provoke assault upon it by anxiety for its safety.
+
+"I'm sorry to hear it, miss," the man rejoined.
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"'Cause I should ha' liked to ha' taken _you_ farther."
+
+"But why?" said Mary, the second time, not understanding him, and not
+unwilling to cover the awkwardness of that slow minute of waiting.
+
+"Because it gives a poor man with a whole family o' prowocations
+some'at of a chance, to 'ave a affable young lady like you, miss,
+behind him in his cab, once a year, or thereabouts. It's not by no
+means as I'd have you go farther and fare worse, which it's a sayin' as
+I've heerd said, miss. So, if you're sure o' the place, I may as well
+be a-gettin' down of _your_ boxes."
+
+So saying, he got on the cab, and proceeded to unfasten the chain that
+secured the luggage.
+
+"Wait a bit, cabbie. Don't you be in sech a 'urry as if you was a
+'ansom, now," cried the footman, reappearing at the farther end of the
+hall. "I should be sorry if there was a mistake, and you wasn't man
+enough to put your boxes up again without assistance." Then, turning to
+Mary, "Mrs. Perkin says, miss--that's the housekeeper, miss," he went
+on, "--that, if as you're the young woman from the country--and I'm
+sure I beg your pardon if I make a mistake--it ain't my fault,
+miss--Mrs. Perkin says she did hear Mrs. Redmain make mention of one,
+but she didn't have any instructions concerning her.--But, as there you
+are," he continued more familiarly, gathering courage from Mary's
+nodded assent, "you can put your boxes in the hall, and sit down, she
+says, till Mrs. R. comes 'ome."
+
+"Do you think she will be long?" asked Mary.
+
+"Well, that's what no fellow can't say, seein' its a new play as she's
+gone to. They call it Doomsday, an' there's no tellin' when parties is
+likely to come 'ome from that," said the man, with a grin of
+satisfaction at his own wit.
+
+Was London such a happy place that everybody in it was given to joking,
+thought Mary.
+
+"'Ere, mister! gi' me a 'and wi' this 'ere luggage," cried the cabman,
+finding the box he was getting down too much for him. "Yah wouldn't see
+me break my back, an' my poor 'orse standin' there a lookin' on--would
+ye now?"
+
+"Why don't you bring a man with you?" objected the footman, as he
+descended the steps notwithstanding, to give the required assistance.
+"I ain't paid as a crane.--By Juppiter! what a weight the new party's
+boxes is!"
+
+"Only that one," said Mary, apologetically. "It is full of books. The
+other is not half so heavy."
+
+"Oh, it ain't the weight, miss!" returned the footman, who had not
+intended she should hear the remark. "I believe Mr. Cabman and myself
+will prove equal to the occasion."
+
+With that the book-box came down a great bump on the pavement, and
+presently both were in the hall, the one on the top of the other. Mary
+paid the cabman, who asked not a penny more than his fare; he departed
+with thanks; the facetious footman closed the door, told her to take a
+seat, and went away full of laughter, to report that the young person
+had brought a large library with her to enliven the dullness of her new
+situation.
+
+Mrs. Perkin smiled crookedly, and, in a tone of pleasant reproof,
+desired her laughter-compressing inferior not to forget his manners.
+
+"Please, ma'am, am I to leave the young woman sittin' up there all by
+herself in the cold?" he asked, straightening himself up. "She do look
+a rayther superior sort of young person," he added, "and the 'all-stove
+is dead out."
+
+"For the present, Castle," replied Mrs. Perkin.
+
+She judged it wise to let the young woman have a lesson at once in
+subjection and inferiority.
+
+Mrs. Perkin was a rather tall, rather thin, quite straight, and very
+dark-complexioned woman. She always threw her head back on one side and
+her chin out on the other when she spoke, and had about her a great
+deal of the authoritative, which she mingled with such consideration
+toward her subordinates as to secure their obedience to her, while she
+cultivated antagonism to her mistress. She had had a better education
+than most persons of her class, but was morally not an atom their
+superior in consequence. She never went into a new place but with the
+feeling that she was of more importance by far than her untried
+mistress, and the worthier person of the two. She entered her service,
+therefore, as one whose work it was to take care of herself against a
+woman whose mistress she ought to have been, had Providence but started
+her with her natural rights. At the same time, she would have been
+_almost_ as much offended by a hint that she was not a Christian, as
+she would have been by a doubt whether she was a lady. For, indeed, she
+was both, if a great opinion of herself constituted the latter, and a
+great opinion of going to church constituted the former.
+
+She had not been taken into Hesper's confidence with regard to Mary,
+had discovered that "a young person" was expected, but had learned
+nothing of what her position in the house was to be. She welcomed,
+therefore, this opportunity both of teaching Mrs. Redmain--she never
+called her her _mistress_, while severely she insisted on the other
+servants' speaking of her so--the propriety of taking counsel with her
+housekeeper and of letting the young person know in time that Mrs.
+Perkin was in reality her mistress.
+
+The relation of the upper servants of the house to their employers was
+more like that of the managers of an hotel to their guests. The butler,
+the lady's-maid, and Mr. Redmain's body-servant, who had been with him
+before his marriage, and was supposed to be deep in his master's
+confidence, ate with the housekeeper in her room, waited upon by the
+livery and maid-servants, except the second cook: the first cook only
+came to superintend the cooking of the dinner, and went away after. To
+all these Mrs. Perkin was careful to be just; and, if she was precise
+even to severity with them, she was herself obedient to the system she
+had established--the main feature of which was punctuality. She not
+only regarded punctuality as the foremost of virtues, but, in righteous
+moral sequence, made it the first of her duties; and the benefit
+everybody reaped. For nothing oils the household wheels so well as this
+same punctuality. In a family, love, if it be strong, genuine, and
+patent, will make up for anything; but, where there is no family and no
+love, the loss of punctuality will soon turn a house into the mere
+pouch of a social _inferno_. Here the master and mistress came and
+went, regardless of each other, and of all household polity; but their
+meals were ready for them to the minute, when they chose to be there to
+eat them; the carriage came round like one of the puppets on the
+Strasburg clock; the house was quiet as a hospital; the bells were
+answered--all except the door-bell outside of calling hours--with
+swiftness; you could not soil your fingers anywhere--not even if the
+sweep had been that same morning; the manners of the servants--_when
+serving_--were unexceptionable; but the house was scarcely more of a
+home than one of the huge hotels characteristic of the age.
+
+In the hall of it sat Mary for the space of an hour, not exactly
+learning the lesson Mrs. Perkin had intended to teach her, but learning
+more than one thing Mrs. Perkin was not yet capable of learning. I can
+not say she was comfortable, for she was both cold and hungry; but she
+was far from miserable. She had no small gift of patience, and had
+taught herself to look upon the less troubles of life as on a bad
+dream. There are children, though not yet many, capable, through faith
+in their parents, of learning not a little by their experience, and
+Mary was one of such; from the first she received her father's lessons
+like one whose business it was to learn them, and had thereby come to
+learn where he had himself learned. Hence she was not one to say _our
+Father in heaven_, and act as if there were no such Father, or as if he
+cared but little for his children. She was even foolish enough to
+believe that that Father both knew and cared that she was hungry and
+cold and wearily uncomfortable; and thence she was weak enough to take
+the hunger and cold and discomfort as mere passing trifles, which could
+not last a moment longer than they ought. From her sore-tried endeavors
+after patience, had grown the power of active waiting--and a genuinely
+waiting child is one of the loveliest sights the earth has to show.
+
+This was not the reception she had pictured to herself, as the train
+came rushing from Testbridge to London; she had not, indeed, imagined a
+warm one, but she had not expected to be forgotten--for so she
+interpreted her abandonment in the hall, which seemed to grow colder
+every minute. She saw no means of reminding the household of her
+neglected presence, and indeed would rather have remained where she was
+till the morning than encounter the growing familiarity of the man who
+had admitted her. She did think once--if Mrs. Redmain were to hear of
+her reception, how she would resent it! and would have found it
+difficult to believe how far people like her are from troubling
+themselves about the behavior of their servants to other people; for
+they have no idea of an obligation to rule their own house, neither
+seem to have a notion of being accountable for what goes on in it.
+
+She had grown very weary, and began to long for a floor on which she
+might stretch herself; there was not a sound in the house but the
+ticking of a clock somewhere; and she was now wondering whether
+everybody had gone to bed, when she heard a step approaching, and
+presently Castle, who was the only man at home, stood up before her,
+and, with the ease of perfect self-satisfaction, and as if there was
+nothing in the neglect of her but the custom of the house to cool
+people well in the hall before admitting them to its penetralia, said,
+"Step this way--miss"; the last word added after a pause of pretended
+hesitation, for the man had taken his cue from the housekeeper.
+
+Mary rose, and followed him to the basement story, into a comfortable
+room, where sat Mrs. Perkin, embroidering large sunflowers on a piece
+of coarse stuff. She was _artistic_, and despised the whole style of
+the house.
+
+"You may sit down," she said, and pointed to a chair near the door.
+
+Mary, not a little amused, for all her discomfort, did as she was
+permitted, and awaited what should come next.
+
+"What part of the country are you from?" asked Mrs. Perkin, with her
+usual diagonal upward toss of the chin, but without lifting her eyes
+from her work.
+
+"From Testbridge," answered Mary.
+
+"The servants in this house are in the habit of saying _ma'am_ to their
+superiors: it is required of them," remarked Mrs. Perkin. But, although
+her tone was one of rebuke, she said the words lightly, tossed the last
+of them off, indeed, almost playfully, as if the lesson was meant for
+one who could hardly have been expected to know better. "And what place
+did you apply for in the house?" she went on to ask.
+
+"I can hardly say, ma'am," answered Mary, avoiding both inflection and
+emphasis, and by her compliance satisfying Mrs. Perkin that she had
+been right in requiring the _kotou_. "It is not usual for young persons
+to be engaged without knowing for what purpose."
+
+"I suppose not, ma'am."
+
+"What wages were you to have?" next inquired Mrs. Perkin, gradually
+assuming a more decided drawl as she became more assured of her
+position with the stranger. She would gladly get some light on the
+affair. "You need not object to mentioning them," she went on, for she
+imagined Mary hesitated, whereas she was only a little troubled to keep
+from laughing; "I always pay the wages myself."
+
+"There was nothing said about wages, ma'am," answered Mary.
+
+"Indeed! Neither work nor wages specified? Excuse me if I say it seems
+rather peculiar.--We must be content to wait a little, then--until we
+learn what Mrs. Redmain expected of you, _and whether or not you are
+capable of it_. We can go no further now."
+
+"Certainly not, ma'am," assented Mary.
+
+"Can you use your needle?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Have you done any embroidery?"
+
+"I understand it a little, but I am not particularly fond of it."
+
+"You mistake: I did not ask you whether you were fond of it," said Mrs.
+Perkin; "I asked you if you had ever done any"; and she smiled
+severely, but ludicrously, for a diagonal smile is apt to have a comic
+effect. "Here!--take off your gloves," she continued, "and let me see
+you do one of these loose-worked sunflowers. They are the fashion now,
+though. I dare say, you will not be able to see the beauty of them."
+
+"Please, ma'am," returned Mary, "if you will excuse me, I would rather
+go to my room. I have had a long journey, and am very tired."
+
+"There is no room yours.--I have had no character with you.--Nothing
+can be done til Mrs. Redman comes home, and she and I have had a little
+talk about you. But you can go to the housemaid's--the second
+housemaid's room, I mean--and make yourself tidy. There is a spare bed
+in it, I believe, which you can have for the night; only mind you don't
+keep the girl awake talking to her, or she will be late in the morning,
+and that I never put up with. I think you will do. You seem willing to
+learn, and that is half the battle."
+
+Therewith Mrs. Perkin, believing she had laid in awe the foundation of
+a rightful authority over the young person, gave her a nod of
+dismissal, which she intended to be friendly.
+
+"Please, ma'am," said Mary, "could I have one of my boxes taken up
+stairs?"
+
+"Certainly not. I can not have two movings of them; I must take care of
+my men. And your boxes, I understand, are heavy, quite absurdly so. It
+would _look_ better in a young person not to have so much to carry
+about with her."
+
+"I have but two boxes, ma'am," said Mary.
+
+"Full of _books_, I am told."
+
+"One of them only."
+
+"You must do your best without them to-night. When I have made up my
+mind what is to be done with you, I shall let you have the one with
+your clothes; the other shall be put away in the box-room. I give my
+people what books I think fit. For light reading, the 'Fireside Herald'
+is quite enough for the room.--There--good night!"
+
+Mary courtesied, and left her. At the door she glanced this way and
+that to find some indication to guide her steps. A door was open at the
+end of a passage, and from the odor that met her, it seemed likely to
+be that of the kitchen. She approached, and peeped in.
+
+"Who is that?" cried a voice irate.
+
+It was the voice of the second cook, who was there supreme except when
+the _chef_ was present. Mary stepped in, and the woman advanced to meet
+her.
+
+"May I ask to what I am indebted for the honner of this unexpected
+visit?" said the second cook, whose head its overcharge of
+self-importance jerked hither and thither upon her neck, as she seized
+the opportunity of turning to her own use a sentence she had just read
+in the "Fireside Herald" which had taken her fancy--spoken by Lady
+Blanche Rivington Delaware to a detested lover disinclined to be
+dismissed.
+
+"Would you please tell me where to find the second house-maid," said
+Mary. "Mrs. Perkin has sent me to her room."
+
+"Why don't Mrs. Perkin show you the way, then?" returned the woman.
+"There ain't nobody else in the house as I knows on fit to send to the
+top o' them stairs with you. A nice way Jemim' 'ill be in when _she_
+comes 'ome, to find a stranger in her room!"
+
+The same instant, however, the woman bethought herself that, if what
+she had said in her haste were reported, it would be as much as her
+place was worth; and at once thereupon she assumed a more complaisant
+tone. Casting a look at her saucepans, as if to warn them concerning
+their behavior in her absence, she turned again to Mary, saying:
+
+"I believe I better show you the way myself. It's easier to take you
+than find a girl to do it. Them hussies is never where they oughto be!
+_You_ follow _me_."
+
+She led the way along two passages, and up a back staircase of
+stone--up and up, till Mary, unused to such heights, began to be aware
+of knees. Plainly at last in the regions of the roof, she thought her
+hill Difficulty surmounted, but the cook turned a sharp corner, and
+Mary following found herself once more at the foot of a stair--very
+narrow and steep, leading up to one of those old-fashioned roof-turrets
+which had begun to appear in the new houses of that part of London.
+
+"Are you taking me to the clouds, cook?" she said, willing to be
+cheerful, and to acknowledge her obligation for laborious guidance.
+
+"Not yet a bit, I hope," answered the cook; "we'll get there soon
+enough, anyhow--excep' you belong to them peculiars as wants to be
+saints afore their time. If that's your sort, don't you come here; for
+a wickeder 'ouse, or an 'ouse as you got to work harder in o' Sundays,
+no one won't easily find in this here west end."
+
+With these words she panted up the last few steps, immediately at the
+top of which was the room sought. It was a very small one, scarcely
+more than holding the two beds. Having lighted the gas, the cook left
+her; and Mary, noting that one of the beds was not made up, was glad to
+throw herself upon it. Covering herself with her cloak, her
+traveling-rug, and the woolen counterpane, she was soon fast asleep.
+
+She was roused by a cry, half of terror, half of surprise. There stood
+the second housemaid, who, having been told nothing of her room-fellow,
+stared and gasped.
+
+"I am sorry to have startled you," said Mary, who had half risen,
+leaning on her elbow. "They ought to have told you there was a stranger
+in your room."
+
+The girl was not long from the country, and, in the midst of the worst
+vulgarity in the world, namely, among the servants of the selfish, her
+manners had not yet ceased to be simple. For a moment, however, she
+seemed capable only of panting, and pressing her hand on her heart.
+
+"I am very sorry," said Mary, again; "but you see I won't hurt you! I
+don't look dangerous, do I?"
+
+"No, miss," answered the girl, with an hysterical laugh. "I been to the
+play, and there was a man in it was a thief, you know, miss!" And with
+that she burst out crying.
+
+It was some time before Mary got her quieted, but, when she did, the
+girl was quite reasonable. She deplored that the bed was not made up,
+and would willingly have yielded hers; she was sorry she had not a
+clean night-gown to offer her--"not that it would be fit for the likes
+of _you_, miss!"--and showed herself full of friendly ministration.
+Mary being now without her traveling-cloak, Jemima judged from her
+dress she must be some grand visitor's maid, vastly her superior in the
+social scale: if she had taken her for an inferior, she would
+doubtless, like most, have had some airs handy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+HER POSITION.
+
+
+Mary seemed to have but just got to sleep again, when she was startled
+awake by the violent ringing of a bell, almost at her ear.
+
+"Oh, you needn't trouble yet a long while, miss!" said the girl, who
+was already dressing. "I've got ever so many fires to light, ere
+there'll be a thought of you!"
+
+Mary lay down again, and once more fell fast asleep.
+
+She was waked the third time by the girl telling her that breakfast was
+ready; whereupon she rose, and made herself as tidy as she could, while
+Jemima _cleaned herself up a bit,_ and was not a little improved in the
+process.
+
+"I thought," she said, "as Mrs. Perkin would 'a' as't you to your first
+meal with her; but she told me, when I as't what were to be done with
+you, as how you must go to the room, and eat your breakfast with the
+rest of us."
+
+"As Mrs. Perkin pleases," said Mary.
+
+She had before this come to understand the word of her Master, that not
+what enters into a man defiles him, but only what comes out of him;
+hence, that no man's dignity is affected by what another does to him,
+but only by what he does, or would like to do, himself.
+
+She did, however, feel a little shy on entering "the room," where all
+the livery and most of the women servants were already seated at
+breakfast. Two of the men, with a word to each other, made room for her
+between them, and laughed; but she took no notice, and seated herself
+at the bottom of the table with her companion. Everything was as clean
+and tidy as heart could wish, and Mary was glad enough to make a good
+meal.
+
+For a few minutes there was loud talking--from a general impulse to
+show off before the stranger; then fell a silence, as if some feeling
+of doubt had got among them. The least affected by it was the footman
+who had opened the door to her: he had witnessed her reception by Mrs.
+Perkin. Addressing her boldly, he expressed a hope that she was not too
+much fatigued by her journey. Mary thanked him in her own natural,
+straightforward way, and the consequence was, that, when he spoke to
+her next, he spoke like a gentleman--in the tone natural to him, that
+is, and in the language of the parlor, without any mock-politeness.
+And, although the way they talked among themselves made Mary feel as if
+she were in a strange country, with strange modes, not of living
+merely, but of feeling and of regarding, she received not the smallest
+annoyance during the rest of the meal--which did not last long: Mrs.
+Perkin took care of that.
+
+For an hour or more, after the rest had scattered to their respective
+duties, she was left alone. Then Mrs. Perkin sent for her.
+
+When she entered her room, she found her occupied with the cook, and
+was allowed to stand unnoticed.
+
+"When shall I be able to see Mrs. Redmain, ma'am?" she asked, when the
+cook at length turned to go.
+
+"Wait," rejoined Mrs. Perkin, with a quiet dignity, well copied, "until
+you are addressed, young woman."--Then first casting a glance at her,
+and perhaps perceiving on her countenance a glimmer of the amusement
+Mary felt, she began to gather a more correct suspicion of the sort of
+being she might possibly be, and hastily added, "Pray, take a seat."
+
+The idea of making a blunder was unendurable to Mrs. Perkin, and she
+was most unwilling to believe she had done so; but, even if she had, to
+show that she knew it would only be to render it the more difficult to
+recover her pride of place. An involuntary twinkle about the corners of
+Mary's mouth made her hasten to answer her question.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, "that I can give you no prospect of an
+interview with Mrs. Redmain before three o'clock. She will very likely
+not be out of her room before one.--I suppose you saw her at
+Durnmelling?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am," answered Mary, "--and at Testbridge."
+
+It kept growing on the housekeeper that she had made a mistake--though
+to what extent she sought in vain to determine.
+
+"You will find it rather wearisome waiting," she said next; "--would
+you not like to help me with my work?"
+
+Already she had the sunflowers under her creative hands.
+
+"I should be very glad--if I can do it well enough to please you,
+ma'am," answered Mary. "But," she added, "would you kindly see that
+Mrs. Redmain is told, as soon as she wakes, that I am here?"
+
+"Oblige me by ringing the bell," said Mrs. Perkin.--"Send Mrs. Folter
+here."'
+
+A rather cross-looking, red-faced, thin woman appeared, whom she
+requested to let her mistress know, as soon as was proper, that there
+was a young person in the house who said she had come from Testbridge
+by appointment to see her.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Folter, with a supercilious yet familiar nod to
+Mary; "I'll take care she knows."
+
+Mary passed what would have been a dreary morning to one dependent on
+her company. It was quite three o'clock when she was at length summoned
+to Mrs. Redmain's boudoir. Folter, who was her guide thither, lingered,
+in the soft closing of the door, long enough to learn that her mistress
+received the young person with a kiss--almost as much to Mary's
+surprise as Folter's annoyance, which annoyance partly to relieve,
+partly to pass on to Mrs. Perkin, whose reception of Mary she had
+learned, Folter hastened to report the fact, and succeeded thereby in
+occasioning no small uneasiness in the bosom of the housekeeper, who
+was almost as much afraid of her mistress as the other servants were of
+herself. Some time she spent in expectant trepidation, but gradually,
+as nothing came of it, calmed her fears, and concluded that her
+behavior to Mary had been quite correct, seeing the girl had made it no
+ground of complaint.
+
+But, although Hesper, being at the moment in tolerable spirits, in
+reaction from her depression of the day before, received Mary with a
+kiss, she did not ask her a question about her journey, or as to how
+she had spent the night. She was there, and looking all right, and that
+was enough. On the other hand, she did proceed to have her at once
+properly settled.
+
+The little room appointed her looked upon a small court or yard, and
+was dark, but otherwise very comfortable. As soon as she was left to
+herself, she opened her boxes, put her things away in drawers and
+wardrobe, arranged her books within easy reach of the low chair Hesper
+had sent for from the drawing-room for her, and sat down to read a
+little, brood a little, and build a few castles in the air, more lovely
+than evanescent: no other house is so like its builder as this sort of
+castle.
+
+About eight o'clock, Folter summoned her to go to Mrs. Redmain. By this
+time she was tired: she was accustomed to tea in the afternoon, and
+since her dinner with the housekeeper she had had nothing.
+
+She found Mrs. Redmain dressed for the evening. As soon as Mary
+entered, she dismissed Folter.
+
+"I am going out to dinner," she said. "Are you quite comfortable?"
+
+"I am rather cold, and should like some tea," said Mary.
+
+"My poor girl! have you had no tea?" said Hesper, with some concern,
+and more annoyance. "You are looking quite pale, I see! When did you
+have anything to eat?"
+
+"I had a good dinner at one o'clock," replied Mary, with a rather weary
+smile.
+
+"This is dreadful!" said Hesper. "What can the servants be about!"
+
+"And, please, may I have a little fire?" begged Mary.
+
+"Certainly," replied Hesper, knitting her brows with a look of slight
+anguish. "Is it possible you have been sitting all day without one? Why
+did you not ring the bell?" She took one of her hands. "You are
+frozen!" she said.
+
+"Oh, no!" answered Mary; "I am far from that. You see nobody knows yet
+what to do with me.--You hardly know yourself," she added, with a merry
+look. "But, if you wouldn't mind telling Mrs. Perkin where you wish me
+to have my meals, that would put it all right, I think."
+
+"Very well," said Hesper, in a tone that for her was sharp. "Will you
+ring the bell?"
+
+She sent for the housekeeper, who presently appeared--lank and tall,
+with her head on one side like a lamp-post in distress, but calm and
+prepared--a dumb fortress, with a live garrison.
+
+"I wish you, Mrs. Perkin, to arrange with Miss Marston about her meals."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," answered Mrs. Perkin, with sedatest utterance.
+
+"Mrs. Perkin," said Mary, "I don't want to be troublesome; tell me what
+will suit you best."
+
+But Mrs. Perkin did not even look at her; standing straight as a rush,
+she kept her eyes on her mistress.
+
+"Do you desire, ma'am, that Miss Marston should have her meals in the
+housekeeper's room?" she asked.
+
+"That must be as Miss Marston pleases," answered Hesper. "If she prefer
+them in her own, you will see they are properly sent up."
+
+"Very well, ma'am!--Then I wait Miss Marston's orders," said Mrs.
+Perkin, and turned to leave the room. But, when her mistress spoke
+again, she turned again and stood. It was Mary, however, whom Hesper
+addressed.
+
+"Mary," she said, apparently foreboding worse from the tone of the
+housekeeper's obedience than from her occurred neglect, "when I am
+alone, you shall take your meals with me; and when I have any one with
+me, Mrs. Perkin will see that they are sent to your room. We will
+settle it so."
+
+"Thank you," said Mary.
+
+"Very well, ma'am," said Mrs. Perkin.
+
+"Send Miss Marston some tea directly," said Hesper.
+
+Scarcely was Mrs. Perkin gone when the brougham was announced. Mary
+returned to her room, and in a little while tea, with thin bread and
+butter in limited quantity, was brought her. But it was brought by
+Jemima, whose face wore a cheerful smile over the tray she carried:
+she, at least, did not grudge Mary her superior place in the household.
+
+"Do you think, Jemima," asked Mary, "you could manage to answer my bell
+when I ring?"
+
+"I should only be too glad, miss; it would be nothing but a pleasure to
+me; and I'd jump to it if I was in the way; but if I was up stairs,
+which this house ain't a place to hear bells in, sure I am nobody would
+let me know as you was a-ringin'; and if you was to think as how I was
+giving of myself airs, like some people not far out of this square, I
+should be both sorry and ashamed--an' that's more'n I'd say for my
+place to Mrs. Perkin, miss."
+
+"You needn't be afraid of that, Jemima," returned Mary. "If you don't
+answer when I ring, I shall know, as well as if you told me, that you
+either don't hear or can't come at the moment. I sha'n't be exacting."
+
+"Don't you be afeared to ring, miss; I'll answer your bell as often as
+I hear it."
+
+"Could you bring me a loaf? I have had nothing since Mrs. Perkin's
+dinner; and this bread and butter is rather too delicately cut," said
+Mary.
+
+"Laws, miss, you must be nigh clemmed!" said the girl; and, hastening
+away, she soon returned with a loaf, and butter, and a pot of marmalade
+sent by the cook, who was only too glad to open a safety-valve to her
+pleasure at the discomfiture of Mrs. Perkin.
+
+"When would you like your breakfast, miss?" asked Jemima, as she
+removed the tea-things.
+
+"Any time convenient," replied Mary.
+
+"It's much the same to me, miss, so it's not before there's bilin'
+water. You'll have it in bed, miss?"
+
+"No, thank you. I never do."
+
+"You'd better, miss."
+
+"I could not think of it."
+
+"It makes no more trouble--less, miss, than if I had to get it when the
+room-breakfast was on. I've got to get the things together anyhow; and
+why shouldn't you have it as well as Mrs. Perkin, or that ill-tempered
+cockatoo, Mrs. Folter? You're a lady, and that's more'n can be said for
+either of them--justly, that is."
+
+"You don't mean," said Mary, surprised out of her discretion, "that the
+housekeeper and the lady's-maid have breakfast in bed?"
+
+"It's every blessed mornin' as I've got to take it up to 'em, miss,
+upon my word of honor, with a soft-biled egg, or a box o' sardines,
+new-opened, or a slice o' breakfast bacon, streaky. An' I do _not_
+think as it belongs proper to my place; only you see, miss, the
+kitchen-maid has got to do it for the cook, an' if I don't, who is
+there? It's not them would let the scullery-maid come near them in
+their beds."
+
+"Does Mrs. Perkin know that the cook and the lady's-maid have it as
+well as herself?"
+
+"Not she, miss; she'd soon make their coffee too 'ot! She's the only
+lady down stairs--she is! No more don't Mrs. Folter know as the cook
+has hers, only, if she did, it wouldn't make no differ, for she daren't
+tell. And cook, to be sure, it ain't her breakfast, only a cup o' tea
+an' a bit o' toast, to get her heart up first."
+
+"Well," said Mary, "I certainly shall not add another to the breakfasts
+in bed. But I must trouble you all the same to bring it me here. I will
+make my bed, and do out the room myself, if you will come and finish it
+off for me."
+
+"Oh, no, indeed, miss, you mustn't do that! Think what they'd say of
+you down stairs! They'd despise you downright!"
+
+"I shall do it, Jemima. If they were servants of the right sort, I
+should like to have their good opinion, and they would think all the
+more of me for doing my share; as it is, I should count it a disgrace
+to care a straw, what they thought. We must do our work, and not mind
+what people say."
+
+"Yes, miss, that's what my mother used to say to my father, when he
+wouldn't be reasonable. But I must go, miss, or I shall catch it for
+gossiping with you--that's what _she'll_ call it."
+
+When Jemima was gone, Mary fell a-thinking afresh. It was all very
+well, she said to herself, to talk about doing her work, but here she
+was with scarce a shadow of an idea what her work was! Had _any_ work
+been given her to do in this house? Had she presumed in
+coming--anticipated the guidance of Providence, and was she therefore
+now where she had no right to be? She could not tell; but, anyhow, here
+she was, and no one could be anywhere without the fact involving its
+own duty. Even if she had put herself there, and was to blame for being
+there, that did not free her from the obligations of the position, and
+she was willing to do whatever should _now_ be given her to do. God was
+not a hard master; if she had made a mistake, he would pardon her, and
+either give her work here, where she found herself, or send her
+elsewhere. I need not say that thinking was not all her care; for she
+thought in the presence of Him who, because he is always setting our
+wrong things right, is called God our Saviour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+MR. AND MRS. HELMER
+
+
+The next morning, Mary set out to find Letty, from whom, as I have
+said, she had heard but twice since her marriage. Mary had written
+again about a month ago, but had had no reply. The sad fact was, that,
+ever since she left Testbridge, Letty, for a long time, without knowing
+it, had been going down hill. There have been many whose earnestness
+has vanished with the presence of those whose influence awoke it.
+Letty's better self seemed to have remained behind with Mary; and not
+even if he had been as good as she thought him, could Tom himself have
+made up to her for the loss of such a friend.
+
+But Letty had not found marriage at all the grand thing she had
+expected. With the faithfulness of a woman, however, she attributed her
+disappointment to something inherent in marriage, nowise affecting the
+man whom marriage had made her husband.
+
+That he might be near the center to which what little work he did
+gravitated, Tom had taken a lodging in a noisy street, as unlike all
+that Letty had been accustomed to as anything London, except in its
+viler parts, could afford. Never a green thing was to be looked upon in
+any direction. Not a sweet sound was to be heard.
+
+The sun, at this time of the year, was seldom to be seen in London
+anywhere; and in Lydgate Street, even when there was no fog, it was but
+askance, and for a brief portion of the day, that he shone upon that
+side where stood their dusty windows. And then the noise!--a ceaseless
+torrent of sounds, of stony sounds, of iron sounds, of grinding sounds,
+of clashing sounds, of yells and cries--of all deafening and unpoetic
+discords! Letty had not much poetry in her, and needed what could be
+had from the outside so much the more. It is the people of a land
+without springs that must have cisterns. It is the poetic people
+without poetry that pant and pine for the country. When such get hold
+of a poet, they expect him to talk poetry, or, at least, to talk about
+poetry! I fancy poets do not read much poetry, and except to their
+peers do not often care to talk about it. But to one like Letty,
+however little she may understand or even be aware of the need, the
+poetic is as necessary as rain in summer; while, to one so little
+skilled in the finding of it, there was none visible, audible, or
+perceptible about her--except, indeed, what, of poorest sort for her
+uses, she might discover bottled in some circulating library: there was
+one--blessed proximity!--within ten minutes' walk of her.
+
+Once a week or so, some weeks oftener, Tom would take her to the play,
+and that was, indeed, a happiness--not because of the pleasure of the
+play only or chiefly, though that was great, but in the main because
+she had Tom beside her all the time, and mixed up Tom with the play,
+and the play with Tom.
+
+Alas! Tom was not half so dependent upon her, neither derived half so
+much pleasure from her company. Some of his evenings every week he
+spent at houses where those who received him had not the faintest idea
+whether he had a wife or not, and cared as little, for it would have
+made no difference: they would not have invited her. Small, silly,
+conceited Tom, regarding himself as a somebody, was more than content
+to be asked to such people's houses. He thought he went as a lion,
+whereas it was merely as a jackal: so great is the love of some for
+wild beasts in general, that they even think something of jackals. He
+was aware of no insult to himself in asking him whether as a lion or
+any other wild beast, nor of any to his wife and himself together in
+not asking her with him. While she sat in her dreary lodging, dingily
+clad and lonely, Tom, dressed in the height of the fashion, would be
+strolling about grand rooms, now exchanging a flying shot of
+recognition, now pausing to pay a compliment to this lady on her
+singing, to that on her verses, to a third, where he dared, on her
+dress; for good-natured Tom was profuse of compliments, not without a
+degree and kind of honesty in them; now singing one of his own songs to
+the accompaniment of some gracious goddess, now accompanying the same
+or some other gracious goddess as she sang--for Tom could do that well
+enough for people without a conscience in their music; now in the
+corner of a conservatory, now in a cozy little third room behind a back
+drawing-room, talking nonsense with some lady foolish enough to be
+amused with his folly. Tom meant no harm and did not do much--was only
+a human butterfly, amusing himself with other creatures of a day, who
+have no notion that death can not kill them, or they might perhaps be
+more miserable than they are. They think, if they think at all, that it
+is life, strong in them, that makes them forget death; whereas, in
+truth, it is death, strong in them, that makes them forget life. Like a
+hummingbird, all sparkle and flash, Tom flitted through the tropical
+delights of such society as his "uncommon good luck" had gained him
+admission to, forming many an evanescent friendship, and taking many a
+graceful liberty for which his pleasant looks, confident manners, and
+free carriage were his indemnity--for Tom seemed to have been born to
+show what a nice sort of a person a fool, well put together, may
+be--with his high-bred air, and his ready replies, for he had also a
+little of that social element, once highly valued, now less
+countenanced, and rare--I mean wit.
+
+He had, indeed, plenty of all sorts of brains; but no amount of talent
+could reveal to him the reason or the meaning of the fact that wedded
+life was less interesting than courtship; for the former, the reason
+lay in himself, and of himself proper he knew, as I have said, next to
+nothing; while the latter, the meaning of the fact, is profound as
+eternity. He had no notion that, when he married, his life was thereby,
+in a lofty and blessed sense, forfeit; that, to save his wife's life,
+he must yield his own, she doing the same for him--for God himself can
+save no other way. But the notion of any saving, or the need of it, was
+far from Tom; nor had Letty, for her part, any thought of it either,
+except from the tyranny of her aunt. Not the less, in truth, did they
+both want saving--very much saving--before life could be to either of
+them a good thing. It is only its inborn possibility of and divine
+tendency toward blossoming that constitute life a good thing. Life's
+blossom is its salvation, its redemption, the justification of its
+existence--and is a thing far off with most of us. For Tom, his highest
+notion of life was to be recognized by the world for that which he had
+chosen as his idea of himself--to have the reviews allow him a poet,
+not grudgingly, nor with abatement of any sort, but recognizing him as
+the genius he must contrive to believe himself, or "perish in" his
+"self-contempt." Then would he live and die in the blessed assurance
+that his name would be for over on the lips and in the hearts of that
+idol of fools they call _posterity_-divinity as vague as the old gray
+Fate, and less noble, inasmuch as it is but the supposed concave whence
+is to rebound the man's own opinion of himself.
+
+While jewelly Tom was idling away time which yet could hardly be called
+precious, his little brown wife, as I have said, sat at home--such home
+as a lodging can be for a wife whose husband finds his interest mainly
+outside of it--inquired after by nobody, thought of by nobody, hardly
+even taken up by her own poor, weary self; now trying in vain after
+interest in the feeble trash she was reading; now getting into the
+story for the last half of a chapter, to find herself, when the scene
+changed at the next, as far out and away and lost as ever; now dropping
+the book on her knee, to sit musing--if, indeed, such poor mental
+vagaries as hers can be called even musing!--ignorant what was the
+matter with her, hardly knowing that anything was the matter, and yet
+pining morally, spiritually, and psychically; now wondering when Tom
+would be home; now trying to congratulate herself on his being such a
+favorite, and thinking what an honor it was to a poor country girl like
+her to be the wife of a man so much courted by the best society--for
+she never doubted that the people to whose houses Tom went desired his
+company from admiration of his writings. She had not an idea that never
+a soul of them or of their guests cared a straw about what he
+wrote--except, indeed, here and there, a young lady in her first
+season, who thought it a grand thing to know an author, as poor Letty
+thought it a grand thing to be the wife of one. Hail to the coming time
+when, those who write books outnumbering those who do not, a man will
+be thought no more of because he can write than because he can sit a
+horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither
+an atom the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less
+troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like
+irritating attentions. From that time, also, it may be, the number of
+writers will begin to diminish; for then, it is to be hoped, men will
+begin to see that it is better to do the inferior thing well than the
+superior thing after a middling fashion. The man who would not rather
+be a good shoemaker than a middling author would be no honor to the
+shoemakers, and can hardly be any to the authors. I have the comfort
+that in this all authors will agree with me, for which of us is now
+able to see himself _middling_? Honorable above all honor that
+authorship can give is he who can.
+
+It was through some of his old college friends that Tom had thus easily
+stepped into the literary profession. They were young men with money
+and friends to back them, who, having taken to literature as soon as
+they chipped the university shell, were already in the full swing of
+periodical production, when Tom, to quote two rather contradictory
+utterances of his mother, ruined his own prospects and made Letty's
+fortune by marrying her. I can not say, however, that they had found
+him remunerative employment. The best they had done for him was to
+bring him into such a half sort of connection with a certain weekly
+paper that now and then he got something printed in it, and now and
+then, with the joke of acknowledging an obligation irremunerable, the
+editor would hand him what he called an honorarium, but what in reality
+was a five-pound note. When such an event occurred, Tom would feel his
+bosom swell with the imagined dignity of supporting a family by
+literary labor, and, forgetful of the sparseness of his mother's doles,
+who delighted to make the young couple feel the bitterness of
+dependence, would immediately, on the strength of it, invite his
+friends to supper--not at the lodging where Letty sat lonely, but at
+some tavern frequented by people of the craft. It was at such times,
+and in the company of men certainly not better than himself, that Tom's
+hopes were brightest, and his confidence greatest: therefore such
+seasons were those of his highest bliss. Especially, when his sensitive
+but poor imagination was stimulated from the nerve-side of the brain,
+was Tom in his glory; and it was not the "few glasses of champagne," of
+which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king
+of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many
+other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting
+and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things
+and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and
+relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women
+as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced
+angels of their true selves, made in the image of God, withdrew into
+the dark; until at last, between night and morning, Tom would reel
+gracefully home, using all the power of his will--the best use to which
+it ever was put--to subdue the drunkenness of which, even in its
+embrace, he had the lingering honor to be ashamed, that he might face
+his wife with the appearance of the gentleman he was anxious she should
+continue to consider him.
+
+It was an unhappy thing for Tom that his mother, having persuaded her
+dying husband, "for Tom's sake," to leave the money in her power,
+should not now have carried her tyranny further, and refused him money
+altogether. He would then have been compelled to work harder, and to
+use what he made in procuring the necessaries of life. There might have
+been some hope for him then. As it was, his profession was the mere
+grasping after the honor of a workman without the doing of the work;
+while the little he gained by it was, at the same time, more than
+enough to foster the self-deception that he did something in the world.
+With the money he gave her, which was never more than a part of what
+his mother sent him, Letty had much ado to make both ends meet; and,
+while he ran in debt to his tailor and bootmaker, she never had
+anything new to wear. She did sometimes wish he would take her out with
+him a little oftener of an evening; for sometimes she felt so lonely as
+to be quite unable to amuse herself: her resources were not many in her
+position, and fewer still in herself; but she always reflected that he
+could not afford it, and it was long ere she began to have any doubt or
+uneasiness about him--long before she began even to imagine it might be
+well if he spent his evenings with her, or, at least, in other ways and
+other company than he did. When first such a thought presented itself,
+she banished it as a disgrace to herself and an insult to him. But it
+was no wonder if she found marriage dull, poor child!--after such
+expectations, too, from her Tom!
+
+What a pity it seems to our purblind eyes that so many girls should be
+married before they are women! The woman comes at length, and finds she
+is forestalled--that the prostrate and mutilated Dagon of a girl's
+divinity is all that is left her to do the best with she can! But,
+thank God, in the faithfully accepted and encountered responsibility,
+the woman must at length become aware that she has under her feet an
+ascending stair by which to climb to the woman of the divine ideal.
+
+There was at present, however, nothing to be called thought in the mind
+of Letty. She had even lost much of what faculty of thinking had been
+developed in her by the care of Cousin Godfrey. That had speedily
+followed the decay of the aspiration kindled in her by Mary. Her whole
+life now--as much of it, that is, as was awake--was Tom, and only Tom.
+Her whole day was but the continuous and little varied hope of his
+presence. Most of the time she had a book in her hands, but ever again
+book and hands would sink into her lap, and she would sit staring
+before her at nothing. She was not unhappy, she was only not happy. At
+first it was a speechless delight to have as many novels as she
+pleased, and she thought Tom the very prince of bounty in not merely
+permitting her to read them, but bringing them to her, one after the
+other, sometimes two at once, in spendthrift profusion. The first thing
+that made her aware she was not quite happy was the discovery that
+novels were losing their charm, that they were not sufficient to make
+her day pass, that they were only dessert, and she had no dinner. When
+it came to difficulty in going on with a new one long enough to get
+interested in it, she sighed heavily, and began to think that perhaps
+life was rather a dreary thing--at least considerably diluted with the
+unsatisfactory. How many of my readers feel the same! How few of them
+will recognize that the state of things would indeed be desperate were
+it otherwise! How many would go on and on being only butterflies, but
+for life's dismay! And who would choose to be a butterfly, even if life
+and summer and the flowers were to last for ever!
+
+"I would," I fancy this and that reader saying.
+
+"Then," I answer, "the only argument you are equal to, is the fact that
+life nor summer nor the flowers do last for ever."
+
+"I suppose I am made a butterfly," do you say? "seeing I prefer to be
+one."
+
+"Ah! do you say so, indeed? Then you begin to excuse yourself, and what
+does that mean? It means that you are no butterfly, for a
+butterfly--no, nor an angel in heaven--could never begin excusing the
+law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you."
+
+I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken
+alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do children, nor that
+she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious
+because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.
+
+Tom talked of himself as on the staff of "The Firefly"--such was the
+name of the newspaper whose editor sometimes paid him--a weekly of
+great pretense, which took upon itself the mystery of things, as if it
+were God's spy. It was popular in a way, chiefly in fashionable
+circles. As regarded the opinions it promulgated, I never heard one,
+who understood the particular question at any time handled, say it was
+correct. Its writers were mostly young men, and their passion was to
+say clever things. If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated
+worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard
+for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up
+endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism,
+and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought
+utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men,
+immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way
+acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon
+the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode
+of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the
+reviewer chose to call it. A scandalous rumor of any kind, especially
+from the region styled "high life," often false, and always incorrect,
+was the delight both of the paper and of its readers; and the interest
+it thus awoke, united to the fear it thus caused, was mainly what
+procured for such as were known to be employed upon it the _entree_ of
+houses where, if they had had a private existence only, their faces
+would never have been seen. But, to do Tom justice, he wrote nothing of
+this sort: he was neither ill-natured nor experienced enough for that
+department; what he did write was clever, shallow sketches of that same
+society into whose charmed precincts he was but so lately a comer that
+much was to him interesting which had long ceased to be observed by
+eyes turned horny with the glare of the world's footlights; and, while
+these sketches pleased the young people especially, even their jaded
+elders enjoyed the sparkling reflex of what they called life, as seen
+by an outsider; for they were thereby enabled to feel for a moment a
+slight interest in themselves objectively, along with a galvanized
+sense of existence as the producers of history. These sketches did more
+for the paper than the editor was willing to know or acknowledge.
+
+But "The Firefly" produced also a little art on its own account--not
+always very original, but, at least, not a sucking of life from the
+labor of others, as is most of that parasitic thing miscalled
+criticism. In this branch Tom had a share, in the shape of verse. A
+ready faculty was his, but one seldom roused by immediate interest, and
+never by insight. It was not things themselves, but the reflection of
+things in the art of others, that moved him to produce. Coleridge, I
+think, says of Dryden, that he took fire with the running of his own
+wheels: so did Tom; but it was the running of the wheels of others that
+set his wheels running. He was like some young preachers who spend a
+part of the Saturday in reading this or that author, in order to _get
+up_ the mental condition favorable to preaching on the Sunday. He was
+really fond of poetry; delighted in the study of its external elements
+for the sake of his craft; possessed not only a good but cultivated ear
+for verse, which is a rare thing out of the craft; had true pleasure in
+a fine phrase, in a strong or brilliant word; last and chief, had a
+special faculty for imitation; from which gifts, graces, and
+acquirements, it came, that he could write almost in any style that
+moved him--so far, at least, as to remind one who knew it, of that
+style; and that every now and then appeared verses of his in "The
+Firefly."
+
+As often as this took place, Letty was in the third heaven of delight.
+For was not Tom's poetry unquestionably superior to anything else the
+age could produce? was the poetry Cousin Godfrey made her read once to
+be compared to Tom's? and was not Tom her own husband? Happy woman she!
+
+But, by the time at which my narrative has arrived, the first mist of a
+coming fog had begun to gather faintly dim in her heart. When Tom would
+come home happy, but talk perplexingly; when he would drop asleep in
+the middle of a story she could make nothing of; when he would burst
+out and go on laughing, and refuse to explain the motive--how was she
+to avoid the conclusion forced upon her, that he had taken too much
+strong drink? and, when she noted that this condition reappeared at
+shorter and shorter intervals, might she not well begin to be
+frightened, and to feel, what she dared not allow, that she was being
+gradually left alone--that Tom had struck into a diverging path, and
+they were slowing parting miles from each other?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MARY AND LETTY.
+
+
+When her landlady announced a visitor, Letty, not having yet one friend
+in London, could not think who it should be. When Mary entered, she
+sprang to her feet and stood staring: what with being so much in the
+house, and seeing so few people, the poor girl had, I think, grown a
+little stupid. But, when the fact of Mary's presence cleared itself to
+her, she rushed forward with a cry, fell into her arms, and burst out
+weeping. Mary held her fast until she had a little come to herself,
+then, pushing her gently away to the length of her arms, looked at her.
+
+She was not a sight to make one happy. She was no longer the plump,
+fresh girl that used to go singing about; nor was she merely thin and
+pale, she looked unhealthy. Things could not be going well with her.
+Had her dress been only disordered, that might have been accidental,
+but it looked neglected--was not merely dingy, but plainly shabby, and,
+to Mary's country eyes, appeared on the wrong side of clean. Presently,
+as those eyes got accustomed to the miserable light, they spied in the
+skirt of her gown a perfunctory darn, revealing but too evidently that
+to Letty there no longer seemed occasion for being particular. The
+sadness of it all sunk to Mary's heart: Letty had not found marriage a
+grand affair!
+
+But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be
+sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is
+either not to know or to deny God our Saviour. True, her heart ached
+for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's
+ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army
+of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was
+help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith,
+and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a
+virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor
+Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary
+was not a poor Christian--at least, for the time she had been learning,
+and as Christians go in the present aeon of their history. Her whole
+nature drew itself together, confronting the destroyer, whatever he
+might be, in possession of Letty. How to help she could not yet tell,
+but sympathy was already at its work.
+
+"You are not looking your best, Letty," she said, clasping her again in
+her arms.
+
+With a little choking, Letty assured her she was quite well, only
+rather overcome with the pleasure of seeing her so unexpectedly.
+
+"How is Mr. Helmer?" asked Mary.
+
+"Quite well--and very busy," answered Letty--a little hurriedly, Mary
+thought. "--But," she added, in a tone of disappointment, "you always
+used to call him Tom!"
+
+"Oh!" answered Mary, with a smile, "one must be careful how one takes
+liberties with married people. A certain mysterious change seems to
+pass over some of them; they are not the same somehow, and you have to
+make your acquaintance with them all over again from the beginning."
+
+"I shouldn't think such people's acquaintance worth making over again,"
+said Letty.
+
+"How can you tell what it may be worth?" said Mary, "--they are so
+different from what they were? Their friendship may now be one that
+won't change so easily."
+
+"Ah! don't be hard on me, Mary. I have never ceased to love you."
+
+"I am _so_ glad!" answered Mary. "People don't generally take much to
+me--at least, not to come _near_ me. But you can _be_ friends without
+_having_ friends," she added, with a sententiousness she had inherited.
+
+"I don't quite understand you," said Letty, sadly; "but, then, I never
+could quite, you know. Tom finds me very stupid."
+
+These words strengthened Mary's suspicion, from the first a
+probability, that all was not going well between the two; but she
+shrunk from any approach to confidences with _one_ of a married pair.
+To have such, she felt instinctively, would be a breach of unity,
+except, indeed, that were already, and irreparably, broken. To
+encourage in any married friend the placing of a confidence that
+excludes the other, is to encourage that friend's self-degradation. But
+neither was this a fault to which Letty could have been tempted; she
+loved her Tom too much for it: with all her feebleness, there was in
+Letty not a little of childlike greatness, born of faith.
+
+But, although Mary would make Letty tell nothing, she was not the less
+anxious to discover, that she might, if possible, help. She would
+observe: side-lights often reveal more than direct illumination. It
+might be for Letty, and not for Mrs. Redmain, she had been sent. He who
+made time in time would show.
+
+"Are you going to be long in London, Mary?" asked Letty.
+
+"Oh, a long time!" answered Mary, with a loving glance.
+
+Letty's eyes fell, and she looked troubled.
+
+"I am so sorry, Mary," she said, "that I can not ask you to come here!
+We have only these two rooms, and--and--you see--Mrs. Helmer is not
+very liberal to Tom, and--because they--don't get on together very
+well--as I suppose everybody knows--Tom won't--he won't consent
+to--to--"
+
+"You little goose!" cried Mary; "you don't think I would come down on
+you like a devouring dragon, without even letting you know, and finding
+whether it would suit you!--I have got a situation in London."
+
+"A situation!" echoed Letty. "What can you mean, Mary? You haven't left
+your own shop, and gone into somebody else's?"
+
+"No, not exactly that," replied Mary, laughing; "but I have no doubt
+most people would think that by far the more prudent thing to have
+done."
+
+"Then I don't," said Letty, with a little flash of her old enthusiasm.
+"Whatever you do, Mary, I am sure will always be the best."
+
+"I am glad I have so much of your good opinion, Letty; but I am not
+sure I shall have it still, when I have told you what I have done.
+Indeed, I am not quite sure myself that I have done wisely; but, if I
+have made a mistake, it is from having listened to love more than to
+prudence."
+
+"What!" cried Letty; "you're married, Mary?"
+
+And here a strange thing, yet the commonest in the world, appeared; had
+her own marriage proved to Letty the most blessed of fates, she could
+not have shown more delight at the idea of Mary's. I think men find
+women a little incomprehensible in this matter of their friends'
+marriage: in their largerheartedness, I presume, women are able to hope
+for their friends, even when they have lost all hope for themselves.
+
+"No," replied Mary, amused at having thus misled her. "It is neither so
+bad nor so good as that. But I was far from comfortable in the shop
+without my father, and kept thinking how to find a life, more suitable
+for me. It was not plain to me that my lot was cast there any longer,
+and one has no right to choose difficulty; for, even if difficulty be
+the right thing for you, the difficulty you choose can't be the right
+difficulty. Those that are given to choosing, my father said, are given
+to regretting. Then it happened that I fell in love--not with a
+gentleman--don't look like that, Letty--but with a lady; and, as the
+lady took a small fancy to me at the same time, and wanted to have me
+about her, here I am."
+
+"But, surely, that is not a situation fit for one like you, Mary!"
+cried Letty, almost in consternation; for, notwithstanding her
+opposition to her aunt's judgment in the individual case of her friend,
+Letty's own judgments, where she had any, were mostly of this world. "I
+suppose you are a kind of--of--companion to your lady-friend?"
+
+"Or a kind of lady's-maid, or a kind of dressmaker, or a kind of humble
+friend--something like a dog, perhaps--only not to be quite so much
+loved and petted; In truth, Letty, I do not know what I am, or what I
+am going to be; but I shall find out before long, and where's the use
+of knowing, any more than anything else before it's wanted?"
+
+"You take my breath away, Mary! The thing doesn't seem at all like you!
+It's not consistent!--Mary Marston in a menial position! I can't get a
+hold of it!"
+
+"You remind me," said Mary, laughing, "of what my father said to Mr.
+Turnbull once. They were nearer quarreling then than ever I saw them.
+You remember my father's way, Letty--how he would say a thing too
+quietly even to smile with it? I can't tell you what a delight it is to
+me to talk to anybody that knew him!--Mr. Turnbull imagined he did not
+know what he was about, for the thoughts my father was thinking could
+not have lived a moment in Mr. Turnbull. 'You see, John Turnbull,' my
+father said, 'no man can look so inconsistent as one whose principles
+are not understood; for hardly in anything will that man do as his
+friend must have thought he would.'--I suppose you think, Letty," Mary
+went on, with a merry air, "that, for the sake of consistency, I should
+never do anything but sell behind a counter?"
+
+"In that case," said Letty, "I ought to have married a milkman, for a
+dairy is the only thing I understand. I can't help Tom ever so
+little!--But I suppose it wouldn't be possible for two to write poetry
+together, even if they were husband and wife, and both of them clever!"
+
+"Something like it has been tried, I believe," answered Mary, "but not
+with much success. I suppose, when a man sets himself to make anything,
+he must have it all his own way, or he can't do it."
+
+"I suppose that's it. I know Tom is very angry with the editor when he
+wants to alter anything he has written. I'm sure Tom's right, too. You
+can't think how much better Tom's way always is!--He makes that quite
+clear, even to poor, stupid me. But then, you know, Tom's a genius;
+that's one thing there's _no_ doubt of!--But you haven't told me yet
+where you are."
+
+"You remember Miss Mortimer, of Durnmelling?"
+
+"Quite well, of course."
+
+"She is Mrs. Redmain now: I am with her."
+
+"You don't mean it! Why, Tom knows her very well! He has been several
+times to parties at her house."
+
+"And not you, too?" asked Mary.
+
+"Oh, dear, no!" answered Letty, laughing, superior at Mary's ignorance.
+"It's not the fashion in London, at least for distinguished persons
+like my Tom, to take their wives to parties."
+
+"Are there no ladies at those parties, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" replied Letty, smiling again at Mary's ignorance of the
+world, "the grandest of ladies--duchesses and all. You don't know what
+a favorite Tom is in the highest circles!"
+
+Now Mary could believe almost anything bearing on Tom's being a
+favorite, for she herself liked him a great deal more than she approved
+of him; but she could not see the sense of his going to parties without
+his wife, neither could she see that the _height_ of the circle in
+which he was a favorite made any difference. She had old-fashioned
+notions of a man and his wife being one flesh, and felt a breach of the
+law where they were separated, whatever the custom--reason there could
+be none. But Letty seemed much too satisfied to give her any light on
+the matter. Did it seem to her so natural that she could not understand
+Mary's difficulty? She could not help suspecting, however, that there
+might be something in this recurrence of a separation absolute as
+death--for was it not a passing of one into a region where the other
+could not follow?--to account for the change in her.--The same moment,
+as if Letty divined what was passing in Mary's thought, and were not
+altogether content with the thing herself, but would gladly justify
+what she could not explain, she added, in the tone of an unanswerable
+argument:
+
+"Besides, Mary, how could I get a dress fit to wear at such parties?
+You wouldn't have me go and look like a beggar! That would be to
+disgrace Tom. Everybody in London judges everybody by the clothes she
+wears. You should hear Tom's descriptions of the ladies' dresses when
+he comes home!"
+
+Mary was on the verge of crying out indignantly, "Then, if he can't
+take you, why doesn't he stop at home with you?" but she bethought
+herself in time to hold her peace. She settled it with herself,
+however, that Tom must have less heart or yet more muddled brains than
+she had thought.
+
+"So, then," reverted Letty, as if willing to turn definitively from the
+subject, "you are actually living with the beautiful Mrs. Redmain! What
+a lucky girl you are! You will see no end of grand people! You will see
+my Tom sometimes--when I can't!" she added, with a sigh that went to
+Mary's heart.
+
+"Poor thing!" she said to herself, "it isn't anything much out of the
+way she wants--only a little more of a foolish husband's company!"
+
+It was no wonder that Tom found Letty dull, for he had just as little
+of his own in him as she, and thought he had a great store--which is
+what sends a man most swiftly along the road to that final poverty in
+which even that which he has shall be taken from him.
+
+Mary did not stay so long with Letty as both would have liked, for she
+did not yet know enough of Hesper's ways. When she got home, she
+learned that she had a headache, and had not yet made her appearance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+THE EVENING STAR.
+
+
+Notwithstanding her headache, however, Mrs. Redmain was going in the
+evening to a small fancy-ball, meant for a sort of rehearsal to a great
+one when the season should arrive. The part and costume she had chosen
+were the suggestion of her own name: she would represent the Evening
+Star, clothed in the early twilight; and neither was she unfit for the
+part, nor was the dress she had designed altogether unsuitable either
+to herself or to the part. But she had sufficient confidence neither in
+herself nor her maid to forestall a desire for Mary's opinion. After
+luncheon, therefore, she sent for Miss Marston to her bedroom.
+
+Mary found her half dressed, Folter in attendance, a great heap of pink
+lying on the bed.
+
+"Sit down, Mary," said Hesper, pointing to a chair; "I want your
+advice. But I must first explain. Where I am going this evening, nobody
+is to be herself except me. I am not to be Mrs. Redmain, though, but
+Hesper. You know what Hesper means?"
+
+Mary said she knew, and waited--a little anxious; for sideways in her
+eyes glowed the pink of the chosen Hesperian clouds, and, if she should
+not like it, what could be done at that late hour.
+
+"There is my dress," continued the Evening Star, with a glance of her
+eyes, for Folter was busied with her hair; "I want to know your opinion
+of it." Folter gave a toss of her head that seemed to say, "Have not
+_I_ spoken?" but what it really did mean, how should other mortal know?
+for the main obstructions to understanding are profundity and
+shallowness, and the latter is far the more perplexing of the two.
+
+"I should like to see it on first," said Mary: she was in doubt whether
+the color--bright, to suggest the brightest of sunset-clouds--would
+suit Hesper's complexion. Then, again, she had always associated the
+name _Hesper_ with a later, a solemnly lovely period of twilight,
+having little in common with the color so voluminous in the background.
+
+Hesper had a good deal of appreciative faculty, and knew therefore when
+she liked and when she did not like a thing; but she had very little
+originative faculty--so little that, when anything was wrong, she could
+do next to nothing to set it right. There was small originality in
+taking a suggestion for her part from her name, and less in the idea,
+following by concatenation, of adopting for her costume sunset colors
+upon a flimsy material, which might more than hint at clouds. She had
+herself, with the assistance of Sepia and Folter, made choice of the
+particular pink; but, although it continued altogether delightful in
+the eyes of her maid, it had, upon nearer and pro-longed acquaintance,
+become doubtful in hers; and she now waited, with no little anxiety,
+the judgment of Mary, who sat silently thinking.
+
+"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, at length, impatiently.
+
+"Please, ma'am," replied Mary, "I must think, if I am to be of any use.
+I am doing my best, but you must let me be quiet."
+
+Half annoyed, half pleased, Hesper was silent, and Mary went on
+thinking. All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made, as,
+like a machine, she went on heartlessly brushing her mistress's hair,
+which kept emitting little crackles, as of dissatisfaction with her
+handling. Mary would now take a good gaze at the lovely creature, now
+abstract herself from the visible, and try to call up the vision of her
+as the real Hesper, not a Hesper dressed up--a process which had in it
+hope for the lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last
+Folter had done her part.
+
+"I suppose you _must_ see it on!" said Hesper, and she rose up.
+
+Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on her
+arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head, got down,
+and, having pulled it this way and that for a while, fastened it here,
+undone it there, and fastened it again, several times, exclaimed, in a
+tone whose confidence was meant to forestall the critical impertinence
+she dreaded:
+
+"There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room, I
+shall never trust my eyes again."
+
+Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but added
+to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed and bubbled
+and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so that the form of the
+woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness of the cloud. The whole, if
+whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy
+and fashion, and, in result, an ugly nothing.
+
+"I see you don't like it!" said Hesper, with a mingling of displeasure
+and dismay. "I wish you had come a few days sooner! It is much too late
+to do anything now. I might just as well have gone without showing it
+to you!--Here, Folter!"
+
+With a look almost of disgust, she began to pull off the dress, in
+which, a few hours later, she would yet make the attempt to enchant an
+assembly.
+
+"O ma'am!" cried Mary, "I wish you had told me yesterday. There would
+have been time then.--And I don't know," she added, seeing disgust
+change to mortification on Hesper's countenance, "but something might
+be done yet."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" dropped from Folter's lips with an indescribable
+expression.
+
+"What can be done?" said Hesper, angrily. "There can be no time for
+anything."
+
+"If only we had the stuff!" said Mary. "That shade doesn't suit your
+complexion. It ought to be much, much darker--in fact, a different
+color altogether."
+
+Folter was furious, but restrained herself sufficiently to preserve
+some calmness of tone, although her face turned almost blue with the
+effort, as she said:
+
+"Miss Marston is not long from the country, ma'am, and don't know
+what's suitable to a London drawing-room."
+
+Her mistress was too dejected to snub her impertinence.
+
+"What color were you thinking of, Miss Marston?" Hesper asked, with a
+stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary volunteered the
+opinion she had been asked to give. She was out of temper with Mary
+from feeling certain she was right, and believing there was no remedy.
+
+"I could not describe it," answered Mary. "And, indeed, the color I
+have in my mind may not be to be had. I have seen it somewhere, but,
+whether in a stuff or only in nature, I can not at this moment be
+certain."
+
+"Where's the good of talking like that--excuse me, ma'am--it's more
+than I can bear--when the ball comes off in a few hours?" cried Folter,
+ending with eyes of murder on Mary.
+
+"If you would allow me, ma'am," said Mary, "I should like much to try
+whether I could not find something that would suit you and your idea
+too. However well you might look in that, you would owe it no thanks.
+The worst is, I know nothing of the London shops."
+
+"I should think not!" remarked Folter, with emphasis.
+
+"I would send you in the brougham, if I thought it was of any use,"
+said Hesper. "Folter could take you to the proper places."
+
+"Folter would be of no use to me," said Mary. "If your coachman knows
+the best shops, that will be enough."
+
+"But there's no time to make up anything," objected Hesper,
+despondingly, not the less with a glimmer of hope in her heart.
+
+"Not like that," answered Mary; "but there is much there as unnecessary
+as it is ugly. If Folter is good at her needle--"
+
+"I won't take up a single stitch. It would be mere waste of labor,"
+cried Folter.
+
+"Then, please, ma'am," said Mary, "let Folter have that dress ready,
+and, if I don't succeed, you have something to wear."
+
+"I hate it. I won't go if you don't find me another."
+
+"Some people may like it, though I don't," said Mary.
+
+"Not a doubt of that!" said Folter.
+
+"Ring the bell," said her mistress.
+
+The woman obeyed, and the moment afterward repented she had not given
+warning on the spot, instead. The brougham was ordered immediately, and
+in a few minutes Mary was standing at a counter in a large shop,
+looking at various stuffs, of which the young man waiting on her soon
+perceived she knew the qualities and capabilities better than he.
+
+She had set her heart on carrying out Hesper's idea, but in better
+fashion; and after great pains taken, and no little trouble given, left
+the shop well satisfied with her success. And now for the greater
+difficulty!
+
+She drove straight to Letty's lodging, and, there dismissing the
+brougham, presented herself, with a great parcel in her arms, for the
+second time that day, at the door of her room, as unexpected as the
+first, and even more to the joy of her solitary friend.
+
+She knew that Letty was good at her needle. And Letty was, indeed, even
+now, by fits, fond of using it; and on several occasions, when her
+supply of novels had for a day run short, had asked a dressmaker who
+lived above to let her help her for an hour or two: before Mary had
+finished her story, she was untying the parcel, and preparing to
+receive her instructions. Nor had they been at work many minutes, when
+Letty bethought her of calling in the help of the said dressmaker; so
+that presently there were three of them busy as bees--one with genius,
+one with experience, and all with facility. The notions of the first
+were quickly taken up by the other two, and, the design of the dress
+being simplicity itself, Mary got all done she wanted in shorter time
+than she had thought possible. The landlady sent for a cab, and Mary
+was home with the improbability in more than time for Mrs. Redmain's
+toilet. It was with some triumph, tempered with some trepidation, that
+she carried it to her room.
+
+There Folter was in the act of persuading her mistress of the necessity
+of beginning to dress: Miss Marston, she said, knew nothing of what she
+had undertaken; and, even if she arrived in time, it would be with
+something too ridiculous for any lady to appear in--when Mary entered,
+and was received with a cry of delight from Hesper; in proportion to
+whose increasing disgust for the pink robe, was her pleasure when she
+caught sight of Mary's colors, as she undid the parcel: when she lifted
+the dress on her arm for a first effect, she was enraptured with
+it--aerial in texture, of the hue of a smoky rose, deep, and cloudy
+with overlying folds, yet diaphanous, a darkness dilute with red.
+
+Silent as a torture-maiden, and as grim, Folter approached to try the
+filmy thing, scornfully confident that the first sight of it on would
+prove it unwearable. But Mary judged her scarcely in a mood to be
+trusted with anything so ethereal; and begged therefore that, as the
+dress had, of necessity, been in many places little more than run
+together, and she knew its weak points, she might, for that evening, be
+allowed the privilege of dressing Mrs. Redmain. Hesper gladly
+consented; Folter left the room; Mary, now at her ease, took her place;
+and presently, more to Hesper's pleasure than Mary's surprise, for she
+had made and fixed in her mind the results of minute observation before
+she went, it was found that the dress fitted quite sufficiently well,
+and, having confined it round the waist with a cincture of thin pale
+gold, she advanced to her chief anxiety--the head-dress.
+
+For this she had chosen such a doubtful green as the sky appears
+through yellowish smoke--a sad, lovely color--the fair past clouded
+with the present--youth not forgotten, but filmed with age. They were
+all colors of the evening, as it strives to keep its hold of the
+heavens, with the night pressing upon it from behind. In front, above
+the lunar forehead, among the coronal masses, darkly fair, she fixed a
+diamond star, and over it wound the smoky green like a turbaned vapor,
+wind-ruffled, through which the diamonds gleamed faintly by fits. Not
+once would she, while at her work, allow Hesper to look, and the
+self-willed lady had been submissive in her hands as a child of the
+chosen; but the moment she had succeeded--for her expectations were
+more than realized--she led her to the cheval-glass. Hesper gazed for
+an instant, then, turning, threw her arms about Mary, and kissed her.
+
+"I don't believe you're a human creature at all!" she cried. "You are a
+fairy godmother, come to look after your poor Cinderella, the sport of
+stupid lady's-maids and dressmakers!"
+
+The door opened, and Folter entered.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, I wish to leave this day month," she said,
+quietly.
+
+"Then," answered her mistress, with equal calmness, "oblige me by going
+at once to Mrs. Perkin, and telling her that I desire her to pay you a
+month's wages, and let you leave the house to-morrow morning.--You
+won't mind helping me to dress till I get another maid--will you,
+Mary?" she added; and Folter left the room, chagrined at her inability
+to cause annoyance.
+
+"I do not see why you should have another maid so long as I am with
+you, ma'am," said Mary. "It should not need many days' apprenticeship
+to make one woman able to dress another."
+
+"Not when she is like you, Mary," said Hesper. "It is well the wretch
+has done my hair for to-night, though! That will be the main
+difficulty."
+
+"It will not be a great one," said Mary, "if you will allow me to undo
+it when you come home."
+
+"I begin almost to believe in a special providence," said Hesper. "What
+a blessed thing for me that you came to drive away that woman! She has
+been getting worse and worse."
+
+"If I have driven her away," answered Mary, "I am bound to supply her
+place."
+
+As they talked, she was giving her final touches of arrangement to the
+head-dress--with which she found it least easy to satisfy herself. It
+swept round from behind in a misty cloak, the two colors mingling with
+and gently obscuring each other; while, between them, the palest memory
+of light, in the golden cincture, helped to bring out the somber
+richness, the delicate darkness of the whole.
+
+Searching now again Hesper's jewel-case, Mary found a fine bracelet of
+the true, the Oriental topaz, the old chrysolite--of that clear yellow
+of the sunset-sky that looks like the 'scaped spirit of miser-smothered
+gold: this she clasped upon one arm; and when she had fastened a pair
+of some ancient Mortimer's garnet buckles in her shoes, which she had
+insisted should be black, and taken off all the rings that Hesper had
+just put on, except a certain glorious sapphire, she led her again to
+the mirror; and, if there Hesper was far more pleased with herself than
+was reasonable or lovely, my reader needs not therefore fear a sermon
+from the text, "Beauty is only skin-deep," for that text is out of the
+devil's Bible. No Baal or Astarte is the maker of beauty, but the same
+who made the seven stars and Orion, and His works are past finding out.
+If only the woman herself and her worshipers knew how deep it is! But
+the woman's share in her own beauty may be infinitely less than
+skin-deep; and there is but one greater fool than the man who worships
+that beauty--the woman who prides herself upon it, as if she were the
+fashioner and not the thing fashioned.
+
+But poor Hesper had much excuse, though no justification. She had had
+many of the disadvantages and scarce one of the benefits of poverty.
+She had heard constantly from childhood the most worldly and greedy
+talk, the commonest expression of abject dependence on the favors of
+Mammon, and thus had from the first been in preparation for _marrying
+money_. She had been taught no other way of doing her part to procure
+the things of which the Father knows we have need. She had never earned
+a dinner; had never done or thought of doing a day's work--of offering
+the world anything for the sake of which the world might offer her a
+shilling to do it again; she had never dreamed of being of any use,
+even to herself; she had learned to long for money, but had never been
+hungry, never been cold: she had sometimes felt shabby. Out of it all
+she had brought but the knowledge that this matter of beauty, with
+which, by some blessed chance, she was endowed, was worth much precious
+money in the world's market--worth all the dresses she could ever
+desire, worth jewels and horses and servants, adoration and
+adulation--everything, in fact, the world calls fine, and the devil
+offers to those who, unscared by his inherent ugliness, will fall down
+and worship him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+A SCOLDING.
+
+
+The Evening Star found herself a success--that is, much followed by the
+men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not
+culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song
+"To the Evening Star," which _everybody_ knew to stand for Mrs.
+Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable,
+remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of
+note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so
+deep in his first devotion that he jumbled up his lady-love, Hesper,
+and Aphrodite, in the same poetic bundle--of which he left the
+string-ends hanging a little loose, while, upon the whole, it remained
+a not altogether unsightly bit of prentice-work. Tom had not been at
+the party, but had gathered fire enough from what he heard of Hesper's
+appearance there to write the verses. Here they are, as nearly as I can
+recall them. They are in themselves not worth writing out for the
+printers, but, in their surroundings, they serve to show Tom, and are
+the last with which I shall trouble the readers of this narrative.
+
+"TO THE EVENING STAR.
+
+  "From the buried sunlight springing,
+    Through flame-darkened, rosy loud,
+  Native sea-hues with thee bringing,
+    In the sky thou reignest proud!
+
+  "Who is like thee, lordly lady,
+    Star-choragus of the night!
+  Color worships, fainting fady,
+    Night grows darker with delight!
+
+  "Dusky-radiant, far, and somber,
+    In the coolness of thy state,
+  From my eyelids chasing slumber,
+    Thou dost smile upon my fate;
+
+  "Calmly shinest; not a whisper
+    Of my songs can reach thine ear;
+  What is it to thee, O Hesper,
+    That a heart should long or fear?"
+
+Tom did not care to show Letty this poem--not that there was anything
+more in his mind than an artistic admiration of Hesper, and a desire to
+make himself agreeable in her eyes; but, when Letty, having read it,
+betrayed no shadow of annoyance with its folly, he was a little
+relieved. The fact was, the simple creature took it as a pardon to
+herself.
+
+"I am glad you have forgiven me, Tom," she said.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Tom.
+
+"For working for Mrs. Redmain with _your_ hands," she said, and,
+breaking into a little laugh, caught his cheeks between those same
+hands, and reaching up gave him a kiss that made him ashamed of
+himself--a little, that is, and for the moment, that is: Tom was used
+to being this or that a little for the moment.
+
+For this same dress, which Tom had thus glorified in song, had been the
+cause of bitter tears to Letty. He came home _too late_ the day of
+Mary's visit, but the next morning she told him all about both the
+first and the second surprise she had had--not, however, with much
+success in interesting the lordly youth.
+
+"And then," she went on, "what do you think we were doing all the
+afternoon, Tom?"
+
+"How should I know?" said Tom, indifferently.
+
+"We were working hard at a dress--a dress for a fancy-ball!"
+
+"A fancy-ball, Letty? What do you mean? You going to a fancy-ball!"
+
+"Me!" cried Letty, with merry laugh; "no, not quite me. Who do you
+think it was for?"
+
+"How should I know?" said Tom again, but not quite so indifferently; he
+was prepared to be annoyed.
+
+"For Mrs. Redmain!" said Letty, triumphantly, clapping her hands with
+delight at what she thought the fun of the thing, for was not Mrs.
+Redmain Tom's friend?--then stooping a little--it was an unconscious,
+pretty trick she had--and holding them out, palm pressed to palm, with
+the fingers toward his face.
+
+"Letty," said Tom, frowning--and the frown deepened and deepened; for
+had he not from the first, if in nothing else, taken trouble to
+instruct her in what became the wife of Thomas Helmer, Esq.?--"Letty,
+this won't do!"
+
+Letty was frightened, but tried to think he was only pretending to be
+displeased.
+
+"Ah! don't frighten me, Tom," she said, with her merry hands now
+changed to pleading ones, though their position and attitude remained
+the same.
+
+But he caught them by the wrists in both of his, and held them tight.
+
+"Letty," he said once more, and with increased severity, "this won't
+do. I tell you, it won't do."
+
+"What won't do, Tom?" she returned, growing white. "There's no harm
+done."
+
+"Yes, there is," said Tom, with solemnity; "there _is_ harm done, when
+_my_ wife goes and does like that. What would people say of _me,_ if
+they were to come to know--God forbid they should!--that your husband
+was talking all the evening to ladies at whose dresses his wife had
+been working all the afternoon!--You don't know what you are doing,
+Letty. What do you suppose the ladies would think if they were to hear
+of it?"
+
+Poor, foolish Tom, ignorant in his folly, did not know how little those
+grand ladies would have cared if his wife had been a char-woman: the
+eyes of such are not discerning of fine social distinctions in women
+who are not of their set, neither are the family relations of the
+bohemians they invite of the smallest consequence to them.
+
+"But, Tom," pleaded his wife, "such a grand lady as that! one you go
+and read your poetry to! What harm can there be in your poor little
+wife helping to make a dress for a lady like that?"
+
+"I tell you, Letty, I don't choose _my_ wife to do such a thing for the
+greatest lady in the land! Good Heavens! if it _were_ to come to the
+ears of the staff! It would be the ruin of me! I should never hold up
+my head again!"
+
+By this time Letty's head was hanging low, like a flower half broken
+from its stem, and two big tears were slowly rolling down her cheeks.
+But there was a gleam of satisfaction in her heart notwithstanding. Tom
+thought so much of his little wife that he would not have her work for
+the greatest lady in the land! She did not see that it was not pride in
+her, but pride in himself, that made him indignant at the idea. It was
+not "my _wife,"_ but "_my_ wife" with Tom. She looked again up timidly
+in his face, and said, her voice trembling, and her cheeks wet, for she
+could not wipe away the tears, because Tom still held her hands as one
+might those of a naughty child:
+
+"But, Tom! I don't exactly see how you can make so much of it, when you
+don't think me--when you know I am not fit to go among such people."
+
+To this Tom had no reply at hand: he was not yet far enough down the
+devil's turnpike to be able to tell his wife that he had spoken the
+truth--that he did not think her fit for such company; that he would be
+ashamed of her in it; that she had no style; that, instead of carrying
+herself as if she knew herself somebody--as good as anybody there,
+indeed, being the wife of Tom Helmer--she had the meek look of one who
+knew herself nobody, and did not know her husband to be anybody. He did
+not think how little he had done to give the unassuming creature that
+quiet confidence which a woman ought to gather from the assurance of
+her husband's satisfaction in her, and the consciousness of being, in
+dress and everything else, pleasing in his eyes, therefore of occupying
+the only place in the world she desires to have. But he did think that
+Letty's next question might naturally be, "Why do you not take me with
+you?" No doubt he could have answered, no one had ever asked her; but
+then she might rejoin, had he ever put it in any one's way to ask her?
+It might even occur to her to in-quire whether he had told Mrs. Redmain
+that he had a wife! and he had heart enough left to imagine it might
+mortally hurt her to find he lived a life so utterly apart from
+hers--that she had so little of the relations though all the rights of
+wifehood. It was no wonder, therefore, if he was more than willing to
+change the subject. He let the poor, imprisoned hands drop so abruptly
+that, in their abandonment, they fell straight from her shoulders to
+her sides.
+
+"Well, well, child!" he said; "put on your bonnet, and we shall be in
+time for the first piece at the Lyceum."
+
+Letty flew, and was ready in five minutes. She could dress the more
+quickly that she was delayed by little doubt as to what she had better
+wear: she had scarcely a choice. Tom, looking after his own comforts,
+left her to look after her necessities; and she, having a conscience,
+and not much spirit, went even shabbier than she yet needed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+SEPIA.
+
+
+As naturally as if she had been born to that very duty and no other,
+Mary slid into the office of lady's-maid to Mrs. Redmain, feeling in
+it, although for reasons very different, no more degradation than her
+mistress saw in it. If Hesper was occasionally a little rude to her,
+Mary was not one to _accept_ a rudeness--that is, to wrap it up in
+resentment, and put it away safe in the pocket of memory. She could not
+help feeling things of the kind--sometimes with indignation and anger;
+but she made haste to send them from her, and shut the doors against
+them. She knew herself a far more blessed creature than Hesper, and
+felt the obligation, from the Master himself, of so enduring as to keep
+every channel of service open between Hesper and her. To Hesper, the
+change from the vulgar service of Folter to the ministration of Mary
+was like passing from a shallow purgatory to a gentle paradise. Mary's
+service was full of live and near presence, as that of dew or summer
+wind; Folter handled her as if she were dressing a doll, Mary as if she
+were dressing a baby; her hands were deft as an angel's, her feet as
+noiseless as swift. And to have Mary near was not only to have a
+ministering spirit at hand, but to have a good atmosphere all
+around--an air, a heaven, out of which good things must momently come.
+Few could be closely associated with her and not become aware at least
+of the capacity of being better, if not of the desire to be better.
+
+In the matter of immediate result, it was a transition from decoration
+to dress. If in any sense Hesper was well dressed before, she was in
+every sense well dressed now--dressed so, that is, as to reveal the
+nature, the analogies, and the associations of her beauty: no manner of
+dressing can make a woman look more beautiful than she is, though many
+a mode may make her look less so.
+
+There was one in the house, however, who was not pleased at the change
+from Folter to Mary: Sepia found herself in consequence less necessary
+to Hesper. Hitherto Hesper had never been satisfied without Sepia's
+opinion and final approval in that weightiest of affairs, the matter of
+dress; but she found in Mary such a faculty as rendered appeal to Sepia
+unnecessary; for she not only satisfied her idea of herself, and how
+she would choose to look, but showed her taste as much surer than
+Sepia's as Sepia's was readier than Hesper's own. Sepia was equal to
+the dressing of herself--she never blundered there; but there was
+little dependence to be placed upon her in dressing another. She cared
+for herself, not for another; and to dress another, love is
+needful--love, the only true artist--love, the only opener of eyes. She
+cared nothing to minister to the comfort or beautification of her
+cousin, and her displeasure did not arise from the jealousy that is
+born of affection. So far as Hesper's self was concerned, Sepia did not
+care a straw whether she was well or ill dressed; but, if the link
+between them of dress was severed, what other so strong would be left?
+And to find herself in any way a less object in Hesper's eyes, would be
+to find herself on the inclined plane of loss, and probable ruin.
+
+Another, though a smaller, point was, that hitherto she had generally
+been able so to dress Hesper as to make of her more or less a foil to
+herself. My reader may remember that there was between Hesper and
+Sepia, if not a resemblance, yet a relation of appearance, like,
+vaguely, that between the twilight and the night; seen in certain
+positions and circumstances, the one would recall the other; and it was
+therefore a matter of no small consequence to Sepia that the relation
+of her dress to Hesper's should be such as to give herself any
+advantage to be derived in it from the relation of their looks. This
+was far more difficult, of course, when she had no longer a voice in
+the matter of Hesper's dress, and when the loving skill of the new maid
+presented her rival to her individual best. Mary would have been glad
+to help her as well, but Sepia drew back as from a hostile nature, and
+they made no approximation. This was more loss to Sepia than she knew,
+for Mary would have assisted her in doing the best when she had no
+money, a condition which often made it the more trying that she had now
+so little influence over her cousin's adornment. To dress was a far
+more difficult, though not more important, affair with Sepia than with
+Hesper, for she had nothing of her own, and from, her cousin no fixed
+allowance. Any arrangement of the kind had been impossible at
+Durnmelling, where there was no money; and here, where it would have
+been easy enough, she judged it better to give no hint in its
+direction, although plainly it had never suggested itself to Hesper.
+There was nothing of the money-mean in her, any more than in her
+husband. They were of course, as became people of fashion, regular and
+unwearied attendants of the church of Mammon, ordering all their
+judgments and ways in accordance with the precepts there delivered; but
+they were none of Mammon's priests or pew-openers, money-grubs, or
+accumulators. They gave liberally where they gave, and scraped no
+inferior to spend either on themselves or their charities. They had
+plenty, it is true; but so have many who withhold more than is meet,
+and take the ewe-lamb to add to their flock. For one thing, they had no
+time for that sort of wickedness, and took no interest in it. So
+Hesper, although it had not come into her mind to give her the ease of
+a stated allowance, behaved generously to Sepia--when she thought of
+it; but she did not love her enough to be love-watchful, and seldom
+thought how her money must be going, or questioned whether she might
+not at the moment be in want of more. There are many who will give
+freely, who do not care to understand need and anticipate want. Hence
+at times Sepia's purse would be long empty before the giving-thought
+would wake in the mind of Hesper. When it woke, it was gracious and
+free.
+
+
+Had Sepia ventured to run up bills with the tradespeople, Hesper would
+have taken it as a thing of course, and settled them with her own. But
+Sepia had a certain politic pride in spending only what was given her;
+also she saw or thought she saw serious reason for avoiding all
+appearances of taking liberties; from the first of Mr. Redmain's visits
+to Durnmelling, she had been aware, with an instinct keen in respect of
+its objects, though blind as to its own nature, that he did not like
+her, and soon satisfied herself that any overt attempt to please him
+would but ripen his dislike to repugnance; and her dread was that he
+might make it a condition with Mr. Mortimer that Hesper's intimacy with
+her should cease; whereas, if once they were married, the husband's
+disfavor would, she believed, only strengthen the wife's predilection.
+Having so far gained her end, it remained, however, almost as desirable
+as before that she should do nothing to fix or increase his
+dislike--nay, that, if within the possible, she should become pleasing
+to him. Did not even hate turn sometimes to its mighty opposite? But
+she understood so little of the man with whom she had to deal that her
+calculations were ill-founded.
+
+She was right in believing that Mr. Redmain disliked her, but she was
+wrong in imagining that he had therefore any objection to her being for
+the present in the house. He certainly did not relish the idea of her
+continuing to be his wife's inseparable companion, but there would be
+time enough to get rid of her after he had found her out. For she had
+not long been one of his _family,_ before he knew, with insight
+unerring, that she had to be found out, and was therefore an
+interesting subject for the exercise of his faculty of moral analysis.
+He was certain her history was composed mainly of secrets. As yet,
+however, he had discovered nothing.
+
+I must just remind my reader of the intellectual passion I have already
+mentioned as characterizing Mr. Redmain's mental constitution. His
+faults and vices were by no means peculiar; but the bent to which I
+refer, certainly no virtue, and springing originally from predominant
+evil, was in no small degree peculiar, especially in the degree to
+which, derived as it was from his father, he had in his own being
+developed it. Most men, he judged with himself, were such fools as well
+as rogues, that there was not the least occasion to ask what they were
+after: they did but turn themselves inside out before you! But, on the
+other hand, there were not a few who took pains, more or less
+successful, to conceal their game of life; and such it was the delight
+of his being to lay bare to his own eyes-not to those of other people;
+that, he said, would be to spoil his game! Men were his library, he
+said-his history, his novels, his sermons, his philosophy, his poetry,
+his whole literature--and he did not like to have his books thumbed by
+other people. Human nature, in its countless aspects, was all about
+him, he said, every mask crying to him to take it off. Unhappily, it
+was but the morbid anatomy of human nature he cared to study. For all
+his abuse of it, he did not yet recognize it as morbid, but took it as
+normal, and the best to be had. No doubt, he therein judged and
+condemned himself, but that he never thought of--nor, perceived, would
+it have been a point of any consequence to him.
+
+From the first, he saw through Mr. Mortimer, and all belonging to him,
+except Miss Yolland: she soon began to puzzle--and, so far, to please
+him, though, as I have said, he did not like her. Had he been a younger
+man, she would have captivated him; as it was, she would have repelled
+him entirely, but that she offered him a good subject. He said to
+himself that she was a bad lot, but what sort of a bad lot was not so
+clear as to make her devoid of interest to him; he must discover how
+she played her life-game; she had a history, and he would fain know it.
+As I have said, however, so far it had come to nothing, for, upon the
+surface, Sepia showed herself merely like any other worldly girl who
+knows "on which side her bread is buttered."
+
+The moment he had found, or believed he had found, what there was to
+know about her, he was sure to hate her heartily. For some time after
+his marriage, he appeared at his wife's parties oftener than he
+otherwise would have done, just for the sake of having an eye upon
+Sepia; but had seen nothing, nor the shadow of anything--until one
+night, by the merest chance, happening to enter his wife's
+drawing-room, he caught a peculiar glance between Sepia and a young
+man--not very young--who had just entered, and whom he had not seen
+before.
+
+To not a few it seemed strange that, with her unquestioned powers of
+fascination, she had not yet married; but London is not the only place
+in which poverty is as repellent as beauty is attractive. At the same
+time it must be confessed there was something about her which made not
+a few men shy of her. Some found that, if her eyes drew them within a
+certain distance, there they began to repel them, they could not tell
+why. Others felt strangely uncomfortable in her presence from the
+first. Not only much that a person has done, but much of what a person
+is capable of, is, I suspect, written on the bodily presence; and,
+although no human eye is capable of reading more than here and there a
+scattered hint of the twilight of history, which is the aurora of
+prophecy, the soul may yet shudder with an instinctive foreboding it
+can not explain, and feel the presence, without recognizing the nature,
+of the hostile.
+
+Sepia's eyes were her great power. She knew the laws of mortar-practice
+in that kind as well as any officer of engineers those of projectiles.
+There was something about her engines which it were vain to attempt to
+describe. Their lightest glance was a thing not to be trifled with, and
+their gaze a thing hardly to be withstood. Sustained and without hurt
+defied, it could hardly be by man of woman born. They were large, but
+no fool would be taken with mere size. They were as dark as ever eyes
+of woman, but our older poets delighted in eyes as gray as glass:
+certainly not in their darkness lay their peculiar witchery. They were
+grandly proportioned, neither almond-shaped nor round, neither
+prominent nor deep-set; but even shape by itself is not much. If I go
+on to say they were luminous, plainly there the danger begins. Sepia's
+eyes, I confess, were not lords of the deepest light--for she was not
+true; but neither was theirs a surface light, generated of merely
+physical causes: through them, concentrating her will upon their
+utterance, she could establish a psychical contact with _almost_ any
+man she chose. Their power was an evil, selfish shadow of original,
+universal love. By them she could produce at once, in the man on whom
+she turned their play, a sense as it were of some primordial, fatal
+affinity between her and him--of an aboriginal understanding, the rare
+possession of but a few of the pairs made male and female. Into those
+eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light,
+in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations--not from great, black
+pupils alone--to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna
+lent its aid--but from great, dark irids as well--nay, from eyeballs,
+eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would
+she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as
+irresistible as subtile the soul of the man she chose to assail, who,
+thenceforward, for a season, if he were such as she took him for,
+scarce had choice but be her slave. She seldom exerted their full
+force, however, without some further motive than mere desire to
+captivate. There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little
+birds and all; but Sepia did not so waste herself: her quarry must be
+worth her hunt: she must either love him or need him. _Love!_ did I
+say? Alas! if ever holy word was put to unholy use, _love_ is that
+word! When Diana goes to hell, her name changes to Hecate, but love
+among the devils is called love still!
+
+In more than one other country, whatever might be the cause, Sepia had
+found _the men_ less shy of her than here; and she had almost begun to
+think her style was not generally pleasing to English eyes. Whether
+this had anything to do with the fact that now in London she began to
+amuse herself with Tom Helmer, I can not say with certainty; but almost
+if not quite the first time they met, that morning, namely, when first
+he called, and they sat in the bay-window of the drawing-room in
+Glammis Square, she brought her eyes to play upon him; and, although he
+addressed "The Firefly" poem to Hesper in the hope of pleasing her, it
+was for the sake of Sepia chiefly that he desired the door of her house
+to be an open one to him. Whether at that time she knew he was a
+married man, it is hardly necessary to inquire, seeing it would have
+made no difference whatever to one like her, whose design was only to
+amuse herself with the youth, and possibly to make of him a screen. She
+went so far, however, as to allow him, when there was opportunity, to
+draw her into quiet corners, and even to linger when the other guests
+were gone, and he had had his full share of champagne. Once, indeed,
+they remained together so long in the little conservatory, lighted only
+by an alabaster lamp, pale as the moon in the dawning, that she had to
+unbolt the door to let him out. This did not take place without coming
+to the knowledge of both Mr. and Mrs. Redmain; but the former was only
+afraid there was nothing in it, and was far from any wish to control
+her; and Sepia herself was the in-formant of the latter. To her she
+would make game of her foolish admirer, telling how, on this and that
+occasion, it was all she could do to get rid of him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+HONOR.
+
+
+Having now gained a partial insight into Letty's new position, Mary
+pondered what she could do to make life more of life to her. Not many
+knew better than she that the only true way to help a human heart is to
+lift it up; but she knew also that every kind of loving aid tends more
+or less to that uplifting; and that, if we can not do the great thing,
+we must be ready to do the small: if we do not help in little things,
+how shall we be judged fit to help in greater? We must help where we
+can, that we may help where we can not. The first and the only thing
+she could for a time think of, was, to secure for Letty, if possible, a
+share in her husband's pleasures.
+
+Quietly, yet swiftly, a certain peaceful familiarity had established
+itself between Hesper and Mary, to which the perfect balance of the
+latter and her sense of the only true foundation of her position
+contributed far more than the undefined partiality of the former. The
+possibility of such a conversation as I am now going to set down was
+one of the results.
+
+"Do you like Mr. Helmer, ma'am?" asked Mary one morning, as she was
+brushing her hair.
+
+"Very well. How do you know anything of him?"
+
+"Not many people within ten miles of Testbridge do not know Mr.
+Helmer," answered Mary.
+
+"Yes, yes, I remember," said Hesper. "He used to ride about on a
+long-legged horse, and talked to anybody that would listen to him. But
+there was always something pleasing about him, and he is much improved.
+Do you know, he is considered really very clever?"
+
+"I am not surprised," rejoined Mary. "He used to be rather foolish, and
+that is a sign of cleverness--at least, many clever people are foolish,
+I think."
+
+"You can't have had much opportunity for making the observation, Mary!"
+
+"Clever people think as much of themselves in the country as they do in
+London, and that is what makes them foolish," returned Mary. "But I
+used to think Mr. Helmer had very good points, and was worth doing
+something for--if one only knew what."
+
+"He does not seem to want anything done for him," said Hesper.
+
+"I know one thing _you_ could do for him, and it would be no trouble,"
+said Mary.
+
+"I will do anything for anybody that is no trouble," answered Hesper.
+"I should like to know something that is no trouble."
+
+"It is only, the next time you ask him, to ask his wife," said Mary.
+
+"He is married, then?" returned Hesper with indifference. "Is the woman
+presentable? Some shopkeeper's daughter, I suppose!"
+
+Mary laughed. "You don't imagine the son of a lawyer would be likely to
+marry a shopkeeper's daughter!" she said.
+
+"Why not?" returned Hesper, with a look of non-intelligence.
+
+"Because a professional man is so far above a tradesman."
+
+"Oh!" said Hesper. "--But he should have told me if he wanted to bring
+his wife with him. I don't care who she is, so long as she dresses
+decently and holds her tongue. What are you laughing at, Mary?"
+
+Hesper called it laughing, but Mary was only smiling.
+
+"I can't help being amused," answered Mary, "that you should think it
+such an out-of-the-way thing to be a shopkeeper's daughter, and here am
+I all the time, feeling quite comfortable, and proud of the shopkeeper
+whose daughter I am."
+
+"Oh! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Hesper, growing hot for, I almost
+believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear, showing a
+drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's side of the
+creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the feelings of an
+inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the world aware of the
+least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not only feeling like a woman of
+God's making, but actually showing it!--"How cruel of me!" she went on.
+"But, you see, I never think of you--when I am talking to you--as--as
+one of that class!"
+
+Mary laughed outright this time: she was amused, and thought it better
+to show it, for that would show also she was not hurt. Hesper, however,
+put it down to insensibility.
+
+"Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "you can not think the class to
+which I belong in itself so objectionable that it is rude to refer to
+it in my hearing!"
+
+"I am very sorry," repeated Hesper, but in a tone of some offense: it
+was one thing to confess a fault; another to be regarded as actually
+guilty of the fault. "Nothing was further from my intention than to
+offend you. I have not a doubt that shopkeepers are a most respectable
+class in their way--"
+
+"Excuse me, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary again, "but you quite mistake
+me. I am not in the least offended. I don't care what you think of the
+class. There are a great many shopkeepers who are anything but
+respectable--as bad, indeed, as any of the nobility."
+
+"I was not thinking of morals," answered Hesper. "In that, I dare say,
+all classes are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are
+differences."
+
+"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make respectability
+more a question of the individual than you do in yours."
+
+"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man behaves
+himself, we ask no questions."
+
+"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.
+
+"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the people
+about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."
+
+So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about her
+that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be ruled at
+all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave--the man so
+utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his fetters. Yet,
+perhaps, but for the opinions of those about her, Hesper would have
+been worse than she was.
+
+"Am I right, then, in thinking," began Mary, "that people of your class
+care only that a man should wear the look of a gentleman, and carry
+himself like one?--that, whether his appearance be a reality or a mask,
+you do not care, so long as no mask is removed in your company?--that
+he may be the lowest of men, but, so long as other people receive him,
+you will, too, counting him good enough?"
+
+
+Hesper held her peace. She had by this time learned some facts
+concerning the man she had married which, beside Mary's question, were
+embarrassing.
+
+"It is interesting," she said at length, "to know how the different
+classes in a country regard each other." But she spoke wearily: it was
+interesting in the abstract, not interesting to her.
+
+"The way to try a man," said Mary, "would be to turn him the other way,
+as I saw the gentleman who is taking your portrait do yesterday trying
+a square--change his position quite, I mean, and mark how far he
+continued to look a true man. He would show something of his real self
+then, I think. Make a nobleman a shopkeeper, for instance, and see what
+kind of a shopkeeper he made. If he showed himself just as honorable
+when a shopkeeper as he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good
+reason for counting him an honorable man."
+
+"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.
+
+"I know my father would have been as honorable as a nobleman as he was
+when a shopkeeper," persisted Mary.
+
+"That I can well believe--he was your father," said Hesper, kindly,
+meaning what she said, too, so far as her poor understanding of the
+honorable reached.
+
+"Would you mind telling me," asked Mary, "how you would define the
+difference between a nobleman and a shopkeeper?"
+
+Hesper thought a little. The question to her was a stupid one. She had
+never had interest enough in humanity to care a straw what any
+shopkeeper ever thought or felt. Such people inhabited a region so far
+below her as to be practically out of her sight. They were not of her
+kind. It had never occurred to her that life must look to them much as
+it looked to her; that, like Shylock, they had feelings, and would
+bleed if cut with a knife. But, although she was not interested, she
+peered about sleepily for an answer. Her thoughts, in a lazy fashion,
+tumbled in her, like waves without wind--which, indeed, was all the
+sort of thinking she knew. At last, with the decision of conscious
+superiority, and the judicial air afforded by the precision of
+utterance belonging to her class--a precision so strangely conjoined
+with the lack of truth and logic both--she said, in a tone that gave to
+the merest puerility the consequence of a judgment between contending
+sages:
+
+"The difference is, that the nobleman is born to ease and dignity and
+affluence, and the--shopkeeper to buy and sell for his living."
+
+"Many a nobleman," suggested Mary, "buys and sells without the
+necessity of making a living."
+
+"That is the difference," said Hesper.
+
+"Then the nobleman buys and sells to make money, and the shopkeeper to
+make a living?"
+
+"Yes," granted Hesper, lazily.
+
+"Which is the nobler end--to live, or to make money?" But this question
+was too far beyond Hesper. She did not even choose to hear it.
+
+"And," she said, resuming her definition instead, "the nobleman deals
+with great things, the shopkeeper with small."
+
+"When things are finally settled," said Mary--"Gracious, Mary!" cried
+Hesper, "what do you mean? Are not things settled for good this many a
+century? I am afraid I have been harboring an awful radical!--a--what
+do they call it?--a communist!"
+
+She would have turned the whole matter out of doors, for she was tired
+of it.
+
+"Things hardly look as if they were going to remain just as they are at
+this precise moment," said Mary. "How could they, when, from the very
+making of the world, they have been going on changing and changing,
+hardly ever even seeming to standstill?"
+
+"You frighten me, Mary! You will do something terrible in my house, and
+I shall get the blame of it!" said Hesper, laughing.
+
+But she did in truth feel a little uncomfortable. The shadow of dismay,
+a formless apprehension overclouded her. Mary's words recalled
+sentiments which at home she had heard alluded to with horror; and,
+however little parents may be loved or respected by their children,
+their opinions will yet settle, and, until they are driven out by
+better or worse, will cling.
+
+"When I tell you what I was really thinking of, you will not be alarmed
+at my opinions," said Mary, not laughing now, but smiling a deep, sweet
+smile; "I do not believe there ever will be any settlement of things
+but one; they can not and must not stop changing, until the kingdom of
+heaven is come. Into that they must change, and rest."
+
+"You are leaving politics for religion now, Mary. That is the one fault
+I have to find with you--you won't keep things in their own places! You
+are always mixing them up--like that Mrs.--what's her name?--who will
+mix religion and love in her novels, though everybody tells her they
+have nothing to do with each other! It is so irreverent!"
+
+"Is it irreverent to believe that God rules the world he made, and that
+he is bringing things to his own mind in it?"
+
+"You can't persuade me religion means turning things upside down."
+
+"It means that a good deal more than people think. Did not our Lord say
+that many that are first shall be last, and the last first?"
+
+"What has that to do with this nineteenth century?"
+
+"Perhaps that the honorable shopkeeper and the mean nobleman will one
+day change places."
+
+"Oh," thought Hesper, "that is why the lower classes take so to
+religion!" But what she said was: "Oh, yes, I dare say! But everything
+then will be so different that it won't signify. When we are all
+angels, nobody will care who is first, and who is last. I'm sure, for
+one, it won't be anything to me."
+
+Hesper was a tolerable attendant at church--I will not say whether high
+or low church, because I should be supposed to care.
+
+"In the kingdom of heaven," answered Mary, "things will always look
+what they are. My father used to say people will grow their own dresses
+there, as surely as a leopard his spots. He had to do with dresses, you
+know. There, not only will an honorable man look honorable, but a mean
+or less honorable man must look what he is."
+
+"There will be nobody mean there."
+
+"Then a good many won't be there who are called honorable here."
+
+"I have no doubt there will be a good deal of allowance made for some
+people," said Hesper. "Society makes such demands!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+THE INVITATION.
+
+
+When Letty received Mrs. Redmain's card, inviting her with her husband
+to an evening party, it raised in her a bewildered flutter--of
+pleasure, of fear, of pride, of shyness, of dismay: how dared she show
+her face in such a grand assembly? She would not know a bit how to
+behave herself! But it was impossible, for she had no dress fit to go
+anywhere! What would Tom say if she looked a dowdy? He would be ashamed
+of her, and she dared not think what might come of it!
+
+But close upon the postman came Mary, and a long talk followed. Letty
+was full of trembling delight, but Mary was not a little anxious with
+herself how Tom would take it.
+
+The first matter, however, was Letty's dress. She had no money, and
+seemed afraid to ask for any. The distance between her and her husband
+had been widening.
+
+Their council of ways and means lasted a good while, including many
+digressions. At last, though unwillingly, Letty accepted Mary's
+proposal that a certain dress, her best indeed, though she did not say
+so, which she had scarcely worn, and was not likely to miss, should be
+made to fit Letty. It was a lovely black silk, the best her father had
+been able to choose for her the last time he was in London. A little
+pang did shoot through her heart at the thought of parting with it, but
+she had too much of that father in her not to know that the greatest
+honor that can be shown any _thing_, is to make it serve a _person_;
+that the dearest gift of love, withheld from human necessity, is handed
+over to the moth and the rust. But little idea had Letty, much as she
+appreciated her kindness, what a sacrifice Mary was making for her that
+she might look her own sweet self, and worthy of her renowned Tom!
+
+When Tom came home that night, however, the look of the world and all
+that is in it changed speedily for Letty, and terribly. He arrived in
+great good humor--somebody had been praising his verses, and the joy of
+the praise overflowed on his wife. But when, pleased as any little girl
+with the prospect of a party and a new frock, she told him, with
+gleeful gratitude, of the invitation and the heavenly kindness which
+had rendered it possible for her to accept it, the countenance of the
+great man changed. He rejected the idea of her going with him to any
+gathering of his grand friends--objected most of all to her going to
+Mrs. Redmain's. Alas! he had begun to allow to himself that he had
+married in too great haste--and beneath him. Wherever he went, his wife
+could be no credit to him, and her presence would take from him all
+sense of liberty! Not choosing, however, to acknowledge either of these
+objections, and not willing, besides, to appear selfish in the eyes of
+the woman who had given herself to him, he was only too glad to put all
+upon another, to him equally genuine ground. Controlling his irritation
+for the moment, he set forth with lordly kindness the absolute
+impossibility of accepting such an offer as Mary's. Could she for a
+moment imagine, he said, that he would degrade himself by taking his
+wife out in a dress that was not her own?
+
+Here Letty interrupted him.
+
+"Mary has given me the dress," she sobbed, "--for my very own."
+
+"A second-hand dress! A dress that has been worn!" cried Tom. "How
+could you dream of insulting me so? The thing is absolutely impossible.
+Why, Letty, just think!--There should I be, going about as if the house
+were my own, and there would be my wife in the next room, or perhaps at
+my elbow, dressed in the finery of the lady's-maid of the house! It
+won't bear thinking of! I declare it makes me so ashamed, as I lie
+here, that I feel my face quite hot in the dark! To have to reason
+about such a thing--with my own wife, too!"
+
+"It's not finery," sobbed Letty, laying hold of the one fact within her
+reach; "it's a beautiful black silk."
+
+"It matters not a straw what it is," persisted Tom, adding humbug to
+cruelty. "You would be nothing but a sham!--A live dishonesty! A
+jackdaw in peacock's feathers!--I am sorry, Letty, your own sense of
+truth and uprightness should not prevent even the passing desire to act
+such a lie. Your fine dress would be just a fine fib--yourself would be
+but a walking fib. I have been taking too much for granted with you: I
+must bring you no more novels. A volume or two of Carlyle is what _you_
+want."
+
+This was too much. To lose her novels and her new dress together, and
+be threatened with nasty moral medicine--for she had never read a word
+of Carlyle beyond his translation of that dream of Richter's, and
+imagined him dry as a sand-pit--was bad enough, but to be so reproved
+by her husband was more than she could bear. If she was a silly and
+ignorant creature, she had the heart of a woman-child; and that
+precious thing in the sight of God, wounded and bruised by the husband
+in whom lay all her pride, went on beating laboriously for him only.
+She did not blame him. Anything was better than that. The dear, simple
+soul had a horror of rebuke. It would break hedges and climb stone
+walls to get out of the path of judgment--ten times more eagerly if her
+husband were the judge. She wept and wailed like a sick child, until at
+length the hard heart of selfish Tom was touched, and he sought, after
+the fashion of a foolish mother, to read the inconsolable a lesson of
+wisdom. But the truer a heart, the harder it is to console with the
+false. By and by, however, sleep, the truest of things, did for her
+what even the blandishments of her husband could not.
+
+When she woke in the morning, he was gone: he had thought of an
+emendation in a poem that had been set up the day before, and made
+haste to the office, lest it should be printed without the precious
+betterment.
+
+Mary came before noon, and found sadness where she had left joy. When
+she had heard as much as Letty thought proper to tell her, she was
+filled with indignation, and her first thought was to compass the
+tyrant's own exclusion from the paradise whose gates he closed against
+his wife. But second thoughts are sometimes best, and she saw the next
+moment not only that punishment did not belong to her, but that the
+weight of such would fall on Letty. The sole thing she could think of
+to comfort her was, to ask her to spend the same evening with her in
+her room. The proposal brightened Letty up at once: some time or other
+in the course of the evening she would, she fancied, see, or at least
+catch a glimpse of Tom in his glory!
+
+The evening came, and with beating heart Letty went up the back stairs
+to Mary's room. She was dressing her mistress, but did not keep her
+waiting long. She had provided tea beforehand, and, when Mrs. Redmain
+had gone down, the two friends had a pleasant while together. Mary took
+Letty to Mrs. Redmain's room while she put away her things, and there
+showed her many splendors, which, moving no envy in her simple heart,
+yet made her sad, thinking of Tom. As she passed to the drawing-room,
+Sepia looked in, and saw them together.
+
+But, as the company kept arriving, Letty grew very restless. She could
+not talk of anything for two minutes together, but kept creeping out of
+the room and half-way down the stair, to look over the banister-rail,
+and have a bird's-eye peep of a portion of the great landing, where
+indeed she caught many a glimpse of beauty and state, but never a
+glimpse of her Tom. Alas! she could not even imagine herself near him.
+What she saw made her feel as if her idol were miles away, and she
+could never draw nigh him again. How should the familiar associate of
+such splendid creatures care a pin's point for his humdrum wife?
+
+Worn out at last, and thoroughly disappointed, she wanted to go home.
+It was then past midnight. Mary went with her, and saw her safe in bed
+before she left her.
+
+As she went up to her room on her return, she saw, through the door by
+which the gardener entered the conservatory, Sepia standing there, and
+Tom, with flushed face, talking to her eagerly.
+
+Letty cried herself to sleep, and dreamed that Tom had disowned her
+before a great company of grand ladies, who mocked her from their sight.
+
+Tom came home while she slept, and in the morning was cross and
+miserable--in part, because he had been so abominably selfish to her.
+But the moment that, half frightened, half hopeful, she told him where
+she was the night before, he broke into the worst anger he had ever yet
+shown her. His shameful pride could not brook the idea that, where he
+was a guest, his wife was entertained by one of the domestics!
+
+"How dare you be guilty of such a disgraceful thing!" he cried.
+
+"Oh, don't, Tom--dear Tom!" pleaded Letty in terror. "It was you I
+wanted to see--not the great people, Tom! I don't care if I never see
+one of them again."
+
+"Why should you ever see one of them again, I should like to know! What
+are they to you, or you to them?"
+
+"But you know I was asked to go, Tom!"
+
+"You're not such a fool as to fancy they cared about you! Everybody
+knows they are the most heartless set of people in the world!"
+
+"Then why do you go, Tom?" said Letty, innocently.
+
+"That's quite another thing! A man has to cultivate connections his
+wife need not know anything about. It is one of the necessities laid on
+my position."
+
+Letty supposed it all truer than it was either intelligible or
+pleasant, and said no more, but let poor, self-abused, fine-fellow Tom
+scold and argue and reason away till he was tired. She was not sullen,
+but bewildered and worn out. He got up, and left her without a word.
+
+Even at the risk of hurt to his dignity, of which there was no danger
+from the presence of his sweet, modest little wife in the best of
+company, it had been well for Tom to have allowed Letty the pleasure
+within her reach; for that night Sepia's artillery played on him
+ruthlessly. It may have been merely for her amusement--time, you see,
+moves so slowly with such as have no necessities they must themselves
+supply, and recognize no duties they must perform: without those two
+main pillars of life, necessity and duty, how shall the temple stand,
+when the huge, weary Samson comes tugging at it? The wonder is, there
+is not a great deal more wickedness in the world. For listlessness and
+boredness and nothing-to-do-ness are the best of soils for the breeding
+of the worms that never stop gnawing. Anyhow, Sepia had flashed on Tom,
+the tinder of Tom's heart had responded, and, any day when Sepia chose,
+she might blow up a wicked as well as foolish flame; nor, if it should
+suit her purpose, was Sepia one to hesitate in the use of the fire-fan.
+All the way home, her eyes haunted him, and it is a more dreadful thing
+than most are aware to be haunted by anything, good or bad, except the
+being who is our life. And those eyes, though not good, were beautiful.
+Evil, it is true, has neither part nor lot in beauty; it is absolutely
+hostile to it, and will at last destroy it utterly; but the process is
+a long one, so long that many imagine badness and beauty vitally
+associable. Tom yielded to the haunting, and it was in part the fault
+of those eyes that he used such hard words to his wife in the morning.
+Wives have not seldom to suffer sorely for discomforts and wrongs in
+their husbands of which they know nothing. But the thing will be set
+right one day, and in a better fashion than if all the woman's-rights'
+committees in the world had their will of the matter.
+
+About this time, from the top, left-hand corner of the last page of
+"The Firefly," it appeared that Twilight had given place to Night; for
+the first of many verses began to show themselves, in which Twilight,
+or Hesper, or Vesper, or the Evening Star, was no more once mentioned,
+but only and al-ways Nox, or Hecate, or the dark Diana. _Tenebrious_
+was a great word with Tom about this time. He was very fond, also, of
+the word _interlunar_. I will not trouble my reader with any specimen
+of the outcome of Tom's new inspiration, partly for this reason, that
+the verses not unfrequently came so near being good, nay, sometimes
+were really so good, that I do not choose to set them down where they
+would be treated with a mockery they do not in themselves deserve. He
+did not direct his wife's attention to them, nor did he compose them at
+home or at the office. Mostly he wrote them between acts at the
+theatre, or in any public place where something in which he was not
+interested was going on.
+
+Of all that read them, and here was a Nemesis awful in justice, there
+was not one less moved by them than she who had inspired them. She saw
+in them, it is true, a reflex of her own power--and that pleased, but
+it did not move her. She took the devotion and pocketed it, as a greedy
+boy might an orange or bull's-eye. The verses in which Tom delighted
+were but the merest noise in the ears of the lady to whom of all he
+would have had them acceptable. One momentary revelation as to how she
+regarded them would have been enough to release him from his foolish
+enthrallment. Indignation, chagrin, and mortification would have soon
+been the death of such poor love as Tom's.
+
+Mary and Sepia were on terms of politeness--of readiness to help on the
+one side, and condescension upon the other. Sepia would have
+condescended to the Mother Mary. The pure human was an idea beyond her,
+as beyond most people. They have not enough _religion_ toward God to
+know there is such a thing as religion toward their neighbor. But Sepia
+never made an enemy-if she could help it. She could not afford the
+luxury of hating--openly, at least. But I imagine she would have hated
+Mary heartily could she have seen the way she regarded her--the look of
+pitiful love, of compassionate and waiting helpfulness which her soul
+would now and then cast upon her. Of all things she would have resented
+pity; and she took Mary's readiness to help for servility--and
+naturally, seeing in herself willingness came from nothing else, though
+she called it prudence and necessity, and knew no shame because of it.
+Her children justify the heavenly wisdom, but the worldly wisdom
+justifies her children. Mary could not but feel how Sepia regarded her
+service, but service, to be true, must be divine, that is, to the just
+and the unjust, like the sun and the rain.
+
+Between Sepia and Mr. Redmain continued a distance too great for either
+difference or misunderstanding. They met with a cold good morning, and
+parted without any good night. Their few words were polite, and their
+demeanor was civil. At the breakfast-table, Sepia would silently pass
+things to Mr. Redmain; Mr. Redmain would thank her, but never trouble
+himself to do as much for her. His attentions, indeed, were seldom
+wasted at home; but he was not often rude to anybody save his wife and
+his man, except when he was ill.
+
+It was a long time before he began to feel any interest in Mary. He
+knew nothing of her save as a nice-looking maid his wife had
+got--rather a prim-looking puss, he would have said, had he had
+occasion to describe her. What Mary knew of him was merely the
+reflection of him in the mind of his wife; but, the first time she saw
+him, she felt she would rather not have to speak to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+A STRAY SOUND.
+
+
+Mary went to see Letty as often as she could, and that was not seldom;
+but she had scarcely a chance of seeing Tom; either he was not up, or
+had gone--to the office, Letty supposed: she had no more idea of where
+the office was, or of the other localities haunted by Tom, than he
+himself had of what spirit he was of.
+
+One day, when Mary could not help remarking upon her pale, weary looks,
+Letty burst into tears, and confided to her a secret of which she was
+not the less proud that it caused her anxiety and fear. As soon as she
+began to talk about it, the joy of its hope began to predominate, and
+before Mary left her she might have seemed to a stranger the most
+blessed little creature in the world. The greatness of her delight made
+Mary sad for her. To any thoughtful heart it must be sad to think what
+a little time the joy of so many mothers lasts--not because their
+babies die, but because they live; but Mary's mournfulness was caused
+by the fear that the splendid dawn of mother-hope would soon be
+swallowed in dismal clouds of father-fault. For mothers and for wives
+there is no redemption, no unchaining of love, save by the coming of
+the kingdom--_in themselves_. Oh! why do not mothers, sore-hearted
+mothers at least, if none else on the face of the earth, rush to the
+feet of the Son of Mary?
+
+Yet every birth is but another link in the golden chain by which the
+world shall be lifted to the feet of God. It is only by the birth of
+new children, ever fresh material for the creative Spirit of the Son of
+Man to work upon, that the world can finally be redeemed. Letty had no
+_ideas_ about children, only the usual instincts of appropriation and
+indulgence; Mary had a few, for she recalled with delight some of her
+father's ways with herself. Him she knew as, next to God, the source of
+her life, so well had he fulfilled that first duty of all parents--the
+transmission of life. About such things she tried to talk to Letty, but
+soon perceived that not a particle of her thought found its way into
+Letty's mind: she cared nothing for any duty concerned--only for the
+joy of being a mother.
+
+She grew paler yet and thinner; dark hollows came about her eyes; she
+was parting with life to give it to her child; she lost the girlish
+gayety Tom used to admire, and the something more lovely that was
+taking its place he was not capable of seeing. He gave her less and
+less of his company. His countenance did not shine on her; in her heart
+she grew aware that she feared him, and, ever as she shrunk, he
+withdrew. Had it not now been for Mary, she would likely have died. She
+did all for her that friend could. As often as she seemed able, she
+would take her for a drive, or on the river, that the wind, like a
+sensible presence of God, might blow upon her, and give her fresh life
+to take home with her. So little progress did she make with Hesper,
+that she could not help thinking it must have been for Letty's sake she
+was allowed to go to London.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Redmain went again to Durnmelling, but Mary begged Hesper
+to leave her behind. She told her the reason, without mentioning the
+name of the friend she desired to tend. Hesper shrugged her shoulders,
+as much as to say she wondered at her taste; but she did not believe
+that was in reality the cause of her wish, and, setting herself to find
+another, concluded she did not choose to show herself at Testbridge in
+her new position, and, afraid of losing if she opposed her, let her
+have her way. Nor, indeed, was she so necessary to her at Durnmelling,
+where there were few visitors, and comparatively little dressing was
+required: for the mere routine of such ordinary days, Jemima was
+enough, who, now and then called by Mary to her aid, had proved herself
+handy and capable, and had learned much. So, all through the hottest of
+the late summer and autumn weather, Mary remained in London, where
+every pavement seemed like the floor of a baker's oven, and, for all
+the life with which the city swarmed, the little winds that wandered
+through it seemed to have lost their vitality. How she longed for the
+common and the fields and the woods, where the very essence of life
+seemed to dwell in the atmosphere even when stillest, and the joy that
+came pouring from the throats of the birds seemed to flow first from
+her own soul into them! The very streets and lanes of Testbridge looked
+like paradise to Mary in Lon-don. But she never wished herself in the
+shop again, although almost every night she dreamed of the glad old
+time when her father was in it with her, and when, although they might
+not speak from morning to night, their souls kept talking across crowd
+and counters, and each was always aware of the other's supporting
+presence.
+
+Longing, however, is not necessarily pain--it may, indeed, be intensest
+bliss; and, if Mary longed for the freedom of the country, it was not
+to be miserable that she could not have it. Her mere thought of it was
+to her a greater delight than the presence of all its joys is to many
+who desire them the most. That such things, and the possibility of such
+sensations from them, should be in the world, was enough to make Mary
+jubilant. But, then, she was at peace with her conscience, and had her
+heart full of loving duty. Besides, an active patience is a heavenly
+power. Mary could not only walk along a pavement dry and lifeless as
+the Sahara, enjoying the summer that brooded all about and beyond the
+city, but she bore the re-freshment of blowing winds and running waters
+into Letty's hot room, with the clanging street in front, and the
+little yard behind, where, from a cord stretched across between the
+walls, hung a few pieces of ill-washed linen, motionless in the glare,
+two plump sparrows picking up crumbs in their shadow--into this live
+death Mary would carry a tone of breeze, and sailing cloud, and swaying
+tree-top. In her the life was so concentrated and active that she was
+capable of communicating life--the highest of human endowments.
+
+One evening, as Letty was telling her how the dressmaker up stairs had
+been for some time unwell, and Mary was feeling reproachful that she
+had not told her before, that she might have seen what she could do for
+her, they became aware, it seemed gradually, of one softest, sweetest,
+faintest music-tone coming from somewhere--but not seeming sufficiently
+of this world to disclose whence. Mary went to the window: there was
+nothing capable of music within sight. It came again; and
+intermittingly came and came. For some time they would hear nothing at
+all, and then again the most delicate of tones would creep into their
+ears, bringing with it more, it seemed to Mary in the surprise of its
+sweetness, than she could have believed single tone capable of
+carrying. Once or twice a few consecutive sounds made a division
+strangely sweet; and then again, for a time, nothing would reach them
+but a note here and a note there of what she was fain to imagine a
+wonderful melody. The visitation lasted for about an hour, then ceased.
+Letty went to bed, and all night long dreamed she heard the angels
+calling her. She woke weeping that her time was come so early, while as
+yet she had tasted so little of the pleasure of life. But the truth
+was, she had as yet, poor child, got so little of the _good_ of life,
+that it was not at all time for her to go.
+
+When her hour drew near, Tom condescended--unwillingly, I am sorry to
+say, for he did not take the trouble to understand her feelings--to
+leave word where he might be found if he should be wanted. Even this
+assuagement of her fears Letty had to plead for; Mary's being so much
+with her was to him reason, and he made it excuse, for absence; he had
+begun to dread Mary. Nor, when at length he was sent for, was he in any
+great haste; all was well over ere he arrived. But he was a little
+touched when, drawing his face down to hers, she feebly whispered,
+"He's as like to you, Tom, as ever small thing was to great!" She saw
+the slight emotion, and fell asleep comforted.
+
+It was night when she woke. Mary was sitting by her.
+
+"O Mary!" she cried, "the angels have been calling me again. Did you
+hear them?"
+
+"No," answered Mary, a little coldly, for, if ever she was inclined to
+be hard, it was toward self-sentiment. "Why do you think the angels
+should call you? Do you suppose them very desirous of your company?"
+
+"They do call people," returned Letty, almost crying; "and I don't know
+why they mightn't call me. I'm not such a very wicked person!"
+
+Mary's heart smote her; she was refusing Letty the time God was giving
+her! She could not wake her up, and, while God was waking her, she was
+impatient!
+
+"I heard the call, too, Letty," she said; "but it was not the angels.
+It was the same instrument we heard the other night. Who can there be
+in the house to play like that? It was clearer this time. I thought I
+could listen to it a whole year."
+
+"Why didn't you wake me?" said Letty.
+
+"Because the more you sleep the better. And the doctor says I mustn't
+let you talk. I will get you something, and then you must go to sleep
+again."
+
+Tom did not appear any more that night; and, if they had wanted him
+now, they would not have known where to find him. He was about nothing
+very bad--only supping with some friends--such friends as he did not
+even care to tell that he had a son.
+
+He was ashamed of being in London at this time of the year, and, but
+that he had not money enough to go anywhere except to his mother's, he
+would have gone, and left Letty to shift for herself.
+
+With his child he was pleased, and would not seldom take him for a few
+moments; but, when he cried, he was cross with him, and showed himself
+the unreasonable baby of the two.
+
+The angels did not want Letty just yet, and she slowly recovered.
+
+For Mary it was a peaceful time. She was able to read a good deal, and,
+although there were no books in Mr. Redmain's house, she generally
+succeeded in getting such as she wanted. She was able also to practice
+as much as she pleased, for now the grand piano was entirely at her
+service, and she took the opportunity of having a lesson every day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+THE MUSICIAN.
+
+
+One evening, soon after the baby's arrival, as Mary sat with him in her
+lap, the sweet tones they had heard twice before came creeping into her
+ears so gently that she seemed to be aware of their presence only after
+they had been for some time coming and going: she laid the baby down,
+and, stealing from the room, listened on the landing. Certainly the
+sounds were born in the house, but whether they came from below or
+above she could not tell. Going first down the stair, and then up, she
+soon satisfied herself that they came from above, and thereupon
+ventured a little farther up the stair.
+
+She had already been to see the dressmaker, whom she had come to know
+through the making of Hesper's twilight robe of cloud, had found her
+far from well, and had done what she could for her. But she was in no
+want, and of more than ordinary independence--a Yorkshire woman, about
+forty years of age, delicate, but of great patience and courage; a
+plain, fair, freckled woman, with a belief in religion rather than in
+God. Very strict, therefore, in her observances, she thought a great
+deal more of the Sabbath than of man, a great deal more of the Bible
+than of the truth, and ten times more of her creed than of the will of
+God; and, had she heard any one utter such words as I have just
+written, would have said he was an atheist. She was a worthy creature,
+notwithstanding, only very unpleasant if one happened to step on the
+toes of a pet ignorance. Mary soon discovered that there was no profit
+in talking with her on the subjects she loved most: plainly she knew
+little about them, except at second hand--that is, through the forms of
+other minds than her own. Such people seem intended for the special
+furtherance of the saints in patience; being utterly unassailable by
+reason, they are especially trying to those who desire to stand on
+brotherly terms with all men, and so are the more sensitive to the
+rudeness that always goes with moral stupidity; intellectual stupidity
+may coexist with the loveliness of an angel. It is one of the blessed
+hopes of the world to come, that there will be none such in it. But why
+so many words? I say to myself, Will one of such as I mean recognize
+his portrait in my sketch? Many such have I met in my young days, and
+in my old days I find they swarm still. I could wish that all such had
+to earn their own bread like Ann Byron: had she been rich, she would
+have been unbearable. Women like her, when they are well to do, walk
+with a manly stride, make the tails of their dresses go like the screw
+of a steamer behind them, and are not unfrequently Scotch.
+
+As Mary went up, the music ceased; but, hoping Miss Byrom would be able
+to enlighten her concerning its source, she continued her ascent, and
+knocked at her door. A voice, rather wooden, yet not without character,
+invited her to enter.
+
+Ann sat near the window, for, although it was quite dusk, a little use
+might yet be made of the lingering ghost of the daylight. Almost all
+Mary could see of her was the reflection from the round eyes of a pair
+of horn spectacles.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Byrom?" she said.
+
+"Not at all well," answered Ann, almost in a tone of offense.
+
+"Is there nothing I can do for you?" asked Mary.
+
+"We are to owe no man anything but love, the apostle tells us."
+
+"You must owe a good deal of that, then," said Mary, one part vexed,
+and two parts amused, "for you don't seem to pay much of it."
+
+She was just beginning to be sorry for what she had said when she was
+startled by a sound, very like a little laugh, which seemed to come
+from behind her. She turned quickly, but, before she could see anything
+through the darkness, the softest of violin-tones thrilled the air
+close beside her, and then she saw, seated on the corner of Ann's bed,
+the figure of a man--young or old, she could not tell. How could he
+have kept so still! His bow was wandering slowly about over the strings
+of his violin; but presently, having overcome, as it seemed, with the
+help of his instrument, his inclination to laugh, he ceased, and all
+was still.
+
+"I came," said Mary, turning again to Ann, "hoping you might be able to
+tell me where the sweet sounds came from which we have heard now two or
+three times; but I had no idea there was any one in the room besides
+yourself.--They come at intervals a great deal too long," she added,
+turning toward the figure in the darkness.
+
+"I am afraid my ear is out sometimes," said the man, mistaking her
+remark. "I think it comes of the anvil."
+
+The voice was manly, though gentle, and gave an impression of utter
+directness and simplicity. It was Mary's turn, however, not to
+understand, and she made no answer.
+
+"I am very sorry," the musician went on, "if I annoyed you, miss."
+
+Mary was hastening to assure him that the fact was quite the other way,
+when Ann prevented her.
+
+"I told you so!" she said; "_you_ make an idol of your foolish
+plaything, but other people take it only for the nuisance it is."
+
+"Indeed, you never were more mistaken," said Mary. "Both Mrs. Helmer
+and myself are charmed with the little that reaches us. It is, indeed,
+seldom one hears tones of such purity."
+
+The player responded with a sigh of pleasure.
+
+"Now there you are, miss," cried Ann, "a-flattering of his folly till
+not a word I say will be of the smallest use!"
+
+"If your words are not wise," said Mary, with suppressed indignation,
+"the less he heeds them the better."
+
+"It ain't wise, to my judgment, miss, to make a man think himself
+something when he is nothing. It's quite enough a man should deceive
+his own self, without another to come and help him."
+
+"To speak the truth is not to deceive," replied Mary. "I have some
+knowledge of music, and I say only what is true."
+
+"What good can it be spending his time scraping horsehair athort
+catgut?"
+
+"They must fancy some good in it up in heaven," said Mary, "or they
+wouldn't have so much of it there."
+
+"There ain't no fiddles in heaven," said Ann, with indignation;
+"they've nothing there but harps and trumpets." Mary turned to the man,
+who had not said a word.
+
+"Would you mind coming down with me," she said, "and playing a little,
+very softly, to my friend? She has a little baby, and is not strong. It
+would do her good."
+
+"She'd better read her Bible," said Ann, who, finding she could no
+longer see, was lighting a candle.
+
+"She does read her Bible," returned Mary; "and a little music would,
+perhaps, help her to read it to better purpose."
+
+"There, Ann!" cried the player.
+
+The woman replied with a scornful grunt.
+
+"Two fools don't make a wise man, for all the franchise," she said.
+
+But Mary had once more turned toward the musician, and in the light of
+the candle was met by a pair of black eyes, keen yet soft, looking out
+from tinder an overhanging ridge of forehead. The rest of the face was
+in shadow, but she could see by the whiteness, through a beard that
+clouded all the lower part of it, that he was smiling to himself: Mary
+had said what pleased him, and his eyes sought her face, and seemed to
+rest on it with a kind of trust, and a look as if he was ready to do
+whatever she might ask of him.
+
+"You will come?" said Mary.
+
+"Yes, miss, with all my heart," he replied, and flashed a full smile
+that rested upon Ann, and seemed to say he knew her not so hard as she
+looked.
+
+Rising, he tucked his violin under his arm, and showed himself ready to
+follow.
+
+"Good night, Miss Byrom," said Mary.
+
+"Good night, miss," returned Ann, grimly. "I'm sorry for you both,
+miss. But, until the spirit is poured out from on high, it's nothing
+but a stumbling in the dark."
+
+This last utterance was a reflection rather than a remark.
+
+Mary made no reply. She did not care to have the last word; nor did she
+fancy her cause lost when she had not at hand the answer that befitted
+folly. She ran down the stair, and at the bottom stood waiting her new
+acquaintance, who descended more slowly, careful not to make a noise.
+
+She could now see, by the gaslight that burned on the landing, a little
+more of what the man was. He was powerfully built, rather over middle
+height, and about the age of thirty. His complexion was dark, and the
+hand that held the bow looked grimy. He bore himself well, but a little
+stiffly, with a care over his violin like that of a man carrying a
+baby. He was decidedly handsome, in a rugged way--mouth and chin but
+hinted through a thick beard of darkest brown.
+
+"Come this way," said Mary, leading him into Letty's parlor. "I will
+tell my friend you are come. Her room, you see, opens off this, and she
+will hear you delightfully. Pray, take a seat."
+
+"Thank you, miss," said the man, but remained standing.
+
+"I have caught the bird, Letty," said Mary, loud enough for him to
+hear; "and he is come to sing a little to you--if you feel strong
+enough for it."
+
+"It will do me good," said Letty. "How kind of him!"
+
+The man, having heard, was already tuning his violin when Mary came
+from the bedroom, and sat down on the sofa. The instant he had got it
+to his mind, he turned, and, going to the farthest corner of the room,
+closed his eyes tight, and began to play.
+
+But how shall I describe that playing? how convey an idea of it,
+however remote? I fear it is nothing less than presumption in me, so
+great is my ignorance, to attempt the thing. But would it be right, for
+dread of bringing shame upon me through failure, to leave my readers
+without any notion of it at all? On the other hand, I shall, at least,
+have the merit of daring to fail--a merit of which I could well be
+ambitious.
+
+If, then, my reader will imagine some music-loving sylph attempting to
+guide the wind among the strings of an Aeolian harp, every now and then
+for a moment succeeding, and then again for a while the wind having its
+own way, he will gain, I think, something like a dream-notion of the
+man's playing. Mary tried hard to get hold of some clew to the
+combinations and sequences, but the motive of them she could not find.
+Whatever their source, there was, either in the composition itself or
+in his mode of playing, not a little of the inartistic, that is, the
+lawless. Yet every now and then would come a passage of exquisite
+melody, owing much, however, no doubt, to the marvelous delicacy of the
+player's tones, and the utterly tender expression with which he
+produced them. But ever as she thought to get some insight into the
+movement of the man's mind, still would she be swept away on the storm
+of some change, seeming of mood incongruous.
+
+At length came a little pause. He wiped his forehead with a blue cotton
+handkerchief, and seemed ready to begin again. Mary interrupted him
+with the question:
+
+"Will you please tell me whose music you have been playing?"
+
+He opened his eyes, which had remained closed even while he stood
+motionless, and, with a smile sweeter than any she had ever seen on
+such a strong face, answered:
+
+"It's nobody's, miss."
+
+"Do you mean you have been extemporizing all this time?"
+
+"I don't know exactly what that means."
+
+"You must have learned it from notes?"
+
+"I couldn't read them if I had any to read," he answered.
+
+"Then what an ear and what a memory you must have! How often have you
+heard it?"
+
+"Just as often as I've played it, and no oftener. Not being able to
+read, and seldom hearing any music I care for, I'm forced to be content
+with what runs out at my fingers when I shut my eyes. It all comes of
+shutting my eyes. I couldn't play a thing but for shutting my eyes.
+It's a wonderful deal that comes of shutting your eyes! Did you never
+try it, miss?"
+
+Mary was so astonished both by what he said and the simplicity with
+which he said it, having clearly no notion that he was uttering
+anything strange, that she was silent, and the man, after a moment's
+retuning, began again to play. Then did Mary gather all her listening
+powers, and brace her attention to the tightest--but at first with no
+better success. And, indeed, that was not the way to understand. It
+seems to me, at least, in my great ignorance, that one can not
+understand music unless he is humble toward it, and consents, if need
+be, not to understand. When one is quiescent, submissive, opens the
+ears of the mind, and demands of them nothing more than the
+hearing--when the rising waters of question retire to their bed, and
+individuality is still, then the dews and rains of music, finding the
+way clear for them, soak and sink through the sands of the mind, down,
+far down, below the thinking-place, down to the region of music, which
+is the hidden workshop of the soul, the place where lies ready the
+divine material for man to go making withal.
+
+Weary at last with vain effort, she ceased to endeavor, and in a little
+while was herself being molded by the music unconsciously received to
+the further understanding of it. It wrought in her mind pictures, not
+thoughts. It is possible, however, my later knowledge may affect my
+description of what Mary then saw with her mind's eye.
+
+First there was a crowd in slow, then rapid movement. Arose cries and
+entreaties. Came hurried motions, disruption, and running feet. A pause
+followed. Then woke a lively melody, changing to the prayer of some
+soul too grateful to find words. Next came a bar or two of what seemed
+calm, lovely speech, then a few slowly delivered chords, and all was
+still.
+
+She came to herself, and then first knew that, like sleep, the music
+had seized her unawares, and she had been understanding, or at least
+enjoying, without knowing it. The man was approaching her from his dark
+corner. His face was shining, but plainly he did not intend more music,
+for his violin was already under his arm. He made her a little awkward
+bow--not much more than a nod, and turned to the door. He had it half
+open, and not yet could Mary speak. For Letty, she was fast asleep.
+
+From the top of the stair came the voice of Ann, screaming:
+
+"Here's your hat, Joe. I knew you'd be going when you played that.
+You'd have forgotten it, I know!"
+
+Mary heard the hat come tumbling down the stair.
+
+"Thank you, Ann," returned Joe. "Yes, I'm going. The ladies don't care
+much for my music. Nobody does but myself. But, then, it's good for
+me." The last two sentences were spoken in soliloquy, but Mary heard
+them, for he stood with the handle of the door in his hand. He closed
+it, picked up his hat, and went softly down the stair.
+
+The spell was broken, and Mary darted to the door. But, just as she
+opened it, the outer door closed behind the strange musician, and she
+had not even learned his name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+A CHANGE.
+
+
+As soon as Letty had strength enough to attend to her baby without
+help, Mary, to the surprise of her mistress, and the destruction of her
+theory concerning her stay in London, presented herself at Durnmelling,
+found that she was more welcome than looked for, and the same hour
+resumed her duties about Hesper.
+
+It was with curiously mingled feelings that she gazed from her window
+on the chimneys of Thornwick. How much had come to her since first, in
+the summer-seat at the end of the yew-hedge, Mr. Wardour opened to her
+the door of literature! It was now autumn, and the woods, to get young
+again, were dying their yearly death. For the moment she felt as if
+she, too, had begun to grow old. Ministration had tired her a
+little--but, oh! how different its weariness from that which came of
+labor amid obstruction and insult! Her heart beat a little slower,
+perhaps, but she could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay,
+rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her
+hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She
+believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost;
+that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who
+grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made--in
+other and higher words, after the will of God.
+
+But she did for a moment taste some bitterness in her cup, when, one
+day, on the footpath of Testbridge, near the place where, that
+memorable Sunday, she met Mr. Wardour, she met him again, and, looking
+at her, and plainly recognizing her, he passed without salutation. Like
+a sudden wave the blood rose to her face, and then sank to the deeps of
+her heart; and from somewhere came the conviction that one day the
+destiny of Godfrey Wardour would be in her hands: he had done more for
+her than any but her father; and, when that day was come, he should not
+find her fail him!
+
+She was then on her way to the shop. She did not at all relish entering
+it, but, as she had a large money-interest in the business; she ought
+at least, she said to herself, to pay the place a visit. When she went
+in, Turnbull did not at first recognize her, and, taking her for a
+customer, blossomed into repulsive suavity. The change that came over
+his countenance, when he knew her, was a shadow of such mingled and
+conflicting shades that she felt there was something peculiar in it
+which she must attempt to analyze. It remained hardly a moment to
+encounter question, but was almost immediately replaced with a
+politeness evidently false. Then, first, she began to be aware of
+distrusting the man.
+
+Asking a few questions about the business, to which he gave answers
+most satisfactory, she kept casting her eyes about the shop, unable to
+account for the impression the look of it made upon her. Either her
+eyes had formed for themselves another scale, and could no more rightly
+judge between past and present, or the aspect of the place was
+different, and not so satisfactory. Was there less in it? she asked
+herself--or was it only not so well kept as when she left it? She could
+not tell. Neither could she understand the profound but distant
+consideration with which Mr. Turnbull endeavored to behave to her,
+treating her like a stranger to whom he must, against his inclination,
+manifest all possible respect, while he did not invite her even to call
+at _the villa._ She bought a pair of gloves of the young woman who
+seemed to occupy her place, paid for them, and left the shop without
+speaking to any one else. All the time, George was standing behind the
+opposite counter, staring at her; but, much to her relief, he showed no
+other sign of recognition.
+
+Before she went to find Beenie, who was still at Testbridge, in a
+cottage of her own, she felt she must think over these things, and
+come, if possible, to some conclusion about them. She left the town,
+therefore, and walked homeward.
+
+What did it all mean? She knew very well they must look down on her ten
+times more than ever, because of the _menial_ position in which she had
+placed herself, sinking thereby beyond all pretense to be regarded as
+their equal. But, if that was what the man's behavior meant, why was he
+so studiously--not so much polite as respectful? That did not use to be
+Mr. Turnbull's way where he looked down upon one. And, then, what did
+the shadow preceding this behavior mean? Was there not in it something
+more than annoyance at the sight of her? It was with an effort he
+dismissed it! She had never seen that look upon him!
+
+Then there was the impression the shop made on her! Was there anything
+in that? Somehow it certainly seemed to have a shabby look! Was it
+possible anything was wrong or going wrong with the concern? Her father
+had always spoken with great respect of Mr. Turnbull's business
+faculties, but she knew he had never troubled himself to, look into the
+books or know how they stood with the bank. She knew also that Mr.
+Turnbull was greedy after money, and that his wife was ambitious, and
+hated the business. But, if he wanted to be out of it, would he not
+naturally keep it up to the best, at least in appearance, that he might
+part with his share in it to the better advantage?
+
+She turned, and, walking back to the town, sought Beenie.
+
+The old woman being naturally a gossip, Mary was hardly seated before
+she began to pour out the talk of the town, in which came presently
+certain rumors concerning Mr. Turnbull--mainly hints at speculation and
+loss.
+
+The result was that Mary went from Beenie to the lawyer in whose care
+her father had left his affairs. He was an old man, and had been ill;
+had no suspicion of anything being wrong, but would look into the
+matter at once. She went home, and troubled herself no more.
+
+She had been at Durnmelling but a few days, when Mr. Redmain, wishing
+to see how things were on his estate in Cornwall, and making up his
+mind to run down, carelessly asked his wife if she would accompany him:
+it would be only for a few days, he said; but a breeze or two from the
+Atlantic would improve her complexion. This was gracious; but he was
+always more polite in the company of Lady Margaret, who continued to
+show him the kindness no one else dared or was inclined to do. For some
+years he had suffered increasingly from recurrent attacks of the
+disease to which I have already referred; and, whatever might be the
+motive of his mother-in-law's behavior, certainly, in those attacks, it
+was a comfort to him to be near her. On such occasions in London, his
+sole attendant was his man Mewks.
+
+Mary was delighted to see more of her country. She had traveled very
+little, but was capable of gathering ten times more from a journey to
+Cornwall than most travelers from one through Switzerland itself. The
+place to which they went was lonely and lovely, and Mary, for the first
+few days, enjoyed it unspeakably.
+
+But then, suddenly, as was not unusual, Mr. Redmain was taken ill. For
+some reason or other, he had sent his man to London, and the only other
+they had with them, besides the coachman, was useless in such a need,
+while the housekeeper who lived at the place was nearly decrepit; so
+that of the household Mary alone was capable of fit attendance in the
+sickroom. Hesper shrunk, almost with horror, certainly with disgust,
+from the idea of having anything to do with her husband as an invalid.
+When she had the choice of her company, she said, she would not choose
+his. Mewks was sent for at once, but did not arrive before the patient
+had had some experience of Mary's tendance; nor, after he came, was she
+altogether without opportunity of ministering to him. The attack was a
+long and severe one, delaying for many weeks their return to London,
+where Mr. Redmain declared he must be, at any risk, before the end of
+November.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+LYDGATE STEET.
+
+
+Letty's whole life was now gathered about her boy, and she thought
+little, comparatively, about Tom. And Tom thought so little about her
+that he did not perceive the difference. When he came home, he was
+always in a hurry to be gone again. He had always something important
+to do, but it never showed itself to Letty in the shape of money. He
+gave her a little now and then, of course, and she made it go
+incredibly far, but it was ever with more of a grudge that he gave it.
+The influence over him of Sepia was scarcely less now that she was
+gone; but, if she cared for him at all, it was mainly that, being now
+not a little stale-hearted, his devotion reminded her pleasurably of a
+time when other passions than those of self-preservation were strongest
+in her; and her favor even now tended only to the increase of Tom's
+growing disappointment, for, like Macbeth, he had begun already to
+consider life but a poor affair. Across the cloud of this death
+gleamed, certainly, the flashing of Sepia's eyes, or the softly
+infolding dawn of her smile, but only, the next hour, nay, the next
+moment, to leave all darker than before. Precious is the favor of any
+true, good woman, be she what else she may; but what is the favor of
+one without heart or faith or self-giving? Yet is there testimony only
+too strong and terrible to the demoniacal power, enslaving and
+absorbing as the arms of the kraken, of an evil woman over an
+imaginative youth. Possibly, did he know beforehand her nature, he
+would not love her, but, knowing it only too late, he loves and curses;
+calls her the worst of names, yet can not or will not tear himself
+free; after a fashion he still calls love, he loves the demon, and
+hates her thralldom. Happily Tom had not reached this depth of
+perdition; Sepia was prudent for herself, and knew, none better, what
+she was about, so far as the near future was concerned, therefore held
+him at arm's length, where Tom basked in a light that was of hell--for
+what is a hell, or a woman like Sepia, but an inverted creation? His
+nature, in consequence, was in all directions dissolving. He drank more
+and more strong drink, fitting fuel to such his passion, and Sepia
+liked to see him approach with his eyes blazing. There are not many
+women like her; she is a rare type--but not, therefore, to be passed
+over in silence. It is little consolation that the man-eating tiger is
+a rare animal, if one of them be actually on the path; and to the
+philosopher a possibility is a fact. But the true value of the study of
+abnormal development is that, in the deepest sense, such development is
+not abnormal at all, but the perfected result of the laws that avenge
+law-breach. It is in and through such that we get glimpses, down the
+gulf of a moral volcano, to the infernal possibilities of the
+human--the lawless rot of that which, in its _attainable_ idea, is
+nothing less than divine, imagined, foreseen, cherished, and labored
+for, by the Father of the human. Such inverted possibility, the
+infernal possibility, I mean, lies latent in every one of us, and,
+except we stir ourselves up to the right, will gradually, from a
+possibility, become an energy. The wise man dares not yield to a
+temptation, were it only for the terror that, if he do, he will yield
+the more readily again. The commonplace critic, who recognizes life
+solely upon his own conscious level, mocks equally at the ideal and its
+antipode, incapable of recognizing the art of Shakespeare himself as
+true to the human nature that will not be human.
+
+I have said that Letty did her best with what money Tom gave her; but
+when she came to find that he had not paid the lodging for two months;
+that the payment of various things he had told her to order and he
+would see to had been neglected, and that the tradespeople were getting
+persistent in their applications; that, when she told him anything of
+the sort, he treated it at one time as a matter of no consequence which
+he would speedily set right, at another as behavior of the creditor
+hugely impertinent, which he would punish by making him wait his
+time--her heart at length sank within her, and she felt there was no
+bulwark between her and a sea of troubles; she felt as if she lay
+already in the depths of a debtor's jail. Therefore, sparing as she had
+been from the first, she was more sparing than ever. Not only would she
+buy nothing for which she could not pay down, having often in
+consequence to go without proper food, but, even when she had a little
+in hand, would live like an anchorite. She grew very thin; and,
+in-deed, if she had not been of the healthiest, could not have stood
+her own treatment many weeks.
+
+Her baby soon began to show suffering, but this did not make her alter
+her way, or drive her to appeal to Tom. She was ignorant of the
+simplest things a mother needs to know, and never imagined her
+abstinence could hurt her baby. So long as she went on nursing him, it
+was all the same, she thought. He cried so much, that Tom made it a
+reason with himself, and indeed gave it as one to Letty, for not coming
+home at night: the child would not let him sleep; and how was he to do
+his work if he had not his night's rest? It mattered little with
+semi-mechanical professions like medicine or the law, but how was a man
+to write articles such as he wrote, not to mention poetry, except he
+had the repose necessary to the redintegration of his exhausted brain?
+The baby went on crying, and the mother's heart was torn. The woman of
+the house said he must be already cutting his teeth, and recommended
+some devilish sirup. Letty bought a bottle with the next money she got,
+and thought it did him good-because, lessening his appetite, it
+lessened his crying, and also made him sleep more than he ought.
+
+At last one night Tom came home very much the worse of drink, and in
+maudlin affection insisted on taking the baby from its cradle. The baby
+shrieked. Tom was angry with the weakling, rated him soundly for
+ingratitude to "the author of his being," and shook him roughly to
+teach him the good manners of the world he had come to.
+
+Thereat in Letty sprang up the mother, erect and fierce. She darted to
+Tom, snatched the child from his arms, and turned to carry him to the
+inner room. But, as the mother rose in Letty, the devil rose in Tom. If
+what followed was not the doing of the real Tom, it was the doing of
+the devil to whom the real Tom had opened the door. With one stride he
+overtook his wife, and mother and child lay together on the floor. I
+must say for him that, even in his drunkenness, he did not strike his
+wife as he would have struck a man; it was an open-handed blow he gave
+her, what, in familiar language, is called a box on the ear, but for
+days she carried the record of it on her cheek in five red finger-marks.
+
+When he saw her on the floor, Tom's bedazed mind came to itself; he
+knew what he had done, and was sobered. But, alas! even then he thought
+more of the wrong he had done to himself as a gentleman than of the
+grievous wound he had given his wife's heart. He took the baby, who had
+ceased to cry as soon as he was in his mother's arms, and laid him on
+the rug, then lifted the bitterly weeping Letty, placed her on the
+sofa, and knelt beside her--not humbly to entreat her pardon, but, as
+was his wont, to justify himself by proving that all the blame was
+hers, and that she had wronged him greatly in driving him to do such a
+thing. This for apology poor Letty, never having had from him fuller
+acknowledgment of wrong, was fain to accept. She turned on the sofa,
+threw her arms about his neck, kissed him, and clung to him with an
+utter forgiveness. But all it did for Tom was to restore him his good
+opinion of himself, and enable him to go on feeling as much of a
+gentleman as before.
+
+Reconciled, they turned to the baby. He was pale, his eyes were closed,
+and they could not tell whether he breathed. In a horrible fright, Tom
+ran for the doctor. Before he returned with him, the child had come to,
+and the doctor could discover no injury from the fall they told him he
+had had. At the same time, he said he was not properly nourished, and
+must have better food.
+
+This was a fresh difficulty to Letty; it was a call for more outlay.
+And now their landlady, who had throughout been very kind, was in
+trouble about her own rent, and began to press for part at least of
+theirs. Letty's heart seemed to labor under a stone. She forgot that
+there was a thing called joy. So sad she looked that the good woman,
+full of pity, assured her that, come what might, she should not be
+turned out, but at the worst would only have to go a story higher, to
+inferior rooms. The rent should wait, she said, until better days. But
+this kindness relieved Letty only a little, for the rent past and the
+rent to come hung upon her like a cloak of lead.
+
+Nor was even debt the worst that now oppressed her. For, possibly from
+the fall, but more from the prolonged want of suitable nourishment and
+wise treatment, after that terrible night, the baby grew worse. Many
+were the tears the sleepless mother shed over the sallow face and
+wasted limbs of her slumbering treasure--her one antidote to countless
+sorrows; and many were the foolish means she tried to restore his
+sinking vitality.
+
+Mary had written to her, and she had written to Mary; but she had said
+nothing of the straits to which she was reduced; that would have been
+to bring blame upon Tom. But Mary, with her fine human instinct, felt
+that things must be going worse with her than before; and, when she
+found that her return was indefinitely postponed by Mr. Redmain's
+illness, she ventured at last in her anxiety upon a daring measure: she
+wrote to Mr. Wardour, telling him she had reason to fear things were
+not going well with Letty Helmer, and suggesting, in the gentlest way,
+whether it might not now be time to let bygones be bygones, and make
+some inquiry concerning her.
+
+To this letter Godfrey returned no answer. For all her denial, he had
+never ceased to believe that Mary had been Letty's accomplice
+throughout that miserable affair; and the very name--the Letty and the
+Helmer--stung him to the quick. He took it, therefore, as a piece of
+utter presumption in Mary to write to him about Letty, and that in the
+tone, as he interpreted it, of one reading him a lesson of duty. But,
+while he was thus indignant with Mary, he was also vexed with Letty
+that she should not herself have written to him if she was in any need,
+forgetting that he had never hinted at any door of communication open
+between him and her. His heart quivered at the thought that she might
+be in distress; he had known for certain, he said, the fool would bring
+her to misery! For himself, the thought of Letty was an ever-open
+wound--with an ever-present pain, now dull and aching, now keen and
+stinging. The agony of her desertion, he said, would never cease
+gnawing at his heart until it was laid in the grave; like most heathen
+Christians, he thought of death as the end of all the joys, sorrows,
+and interests generally of this life. But, while thus he brooded, a
+fierce and evil joy awoke in him at the thought that now at last the
+expected hour had come when he would heap coals of fire on her head. He
+was still fool enough to think of her as having forsaken him, although
+he had never given her ground for believing, and she had never had
+conceit enough to imagine, that he cared the least for her person. If
+he could but let her have a glimmer of what she had lost in losing him!
+She knew what she had gained in Tom Helmer.
+
+He passed a troubled night, dreamed painfully, and started awake to
+renewed pain. Before morning he had made up his mind to take the first
+train to London. But he thought far more of being her deliverer than of
+bringing her deliverance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+GODFREY AND LETTY.
+
+
+It was a sad, gloomy, kindless November night, when Godfrey arrived in
+London. The wind was cold, the pavements were cold, the houses seemed
+to be not only cold but feeling it. The very dust that blow in his face
+was cold. Now cold is a powerful ally of the commonplace, and
+imagination therefore was not very busy in the bosom of Godfrey Wardour
+as he went to find Letty Helmer, which was just as well, in the
+circumstances. He was cool to the very heart when he walked up to the
+door indicated by Mary, and rung the bell: Mrs. Helmer was at home:
+would he walk up stairs?
+
+It was not a house of ceremonies; he was shown up and up and into the
+room where she sat, without a word carried before to prepare her for
+his visit. It was so dark that he could see nothing but the figure of
+one at work by a table, on which stood a single candle. There was but a
+spark of fire in the dreary grate, and Letty was colder than any one
+could know, for she was at the moment making down the last woolly
+garment she had, in the vain hope of warming her baby.
+
+She looked up. She had thought it was the landlady, and had waited for
+her to speak. She gazed for a moment in bewilderment, saw who it was,
+and jumped up half frightened, half ready to go wild with joy. All the
+memories of Godfrey rushed in a confused heap upon her, and overwhelmed
+her. She ran to him, and the same moment was in his arms, with her head
+on his shoulder, weeping tears of such gladness as she had not known
+since the first week of her marriage.
+
+Neither spoke for some time; Letty could not because she was crying,
+and Godfrey would not because he did not want to cry. Those few moments
+were pure, simple happiness to both of them; to Letty, because she had
+loved him from childhood, and hoped that all was to be as of old
+between them; to Godfrey, because, for the moment, he had forgotten
+himself, and had neither thought of injury nor hope of love,
+remembering only the old days and the Letty that used to be. It may
+seem strange that, having never once embraced her all the time they
+lived together, he should do so now; but Letty's love would any time
+have responded to the least show of affection, and when, at the sight
+of his face, into which memory had called up all his tenderness, she
+rushed into his arms, how could he help kissing her? The pity was that
+he had not kissed her long before. Or was it a pity? I think not.
+
+But the embrace could not be a long one. Godfrey was the first to relax
+its strain, and Letty responded with an instant collapse; for instantly
+she feared she had done it all, and disgusted Godfrey. But he led her
+gently to the sofa, and sat down beside her on the hard old slippery
+horsehair. Then first he perceived what a change had passed upon her.
+Pale was she, and thin, and sad, with such big eyes, and the bone
+tightening the skin upon her forehead! He felt as if she were a
+spectre-Letty, not the Letty he had loved. Glancing up, she caught his
+troubled gaze.
+
+"I am not ill, Cousin Godfrey," she said. "Do not look at me so, or I
+shall cry again. You know you never liked to see me cry."
+
+"My poor girl!" said Godfrey, in a voice which, if he had not kept it
+lower than natural, would have broken, "you are suffering."
+
+"Oh, no, I'm not," replied Letty, with a pitiful effort at the
+cheerful; "I am only so glad to see you again, Cousin Godfrey."
+
+She sat on the edge of the sofa, and had put her open hands, palm to
+palm, between her knees, in a childish way, looking like one chidden,
+who did not deserve it, but was ready to endure. For a moment Godfrey
+sat gazing at her, with troubled heart and troubled looks, then between
+his teeth muttered, "Damn the rascal!"
+
+Letty sat straight up, and turned upon him eyes of appeal, scared, yet
+ready to defend. Her hands were now clinched, one on each side of her;
+she was poking the little fists into the squab of the sofa.
+
+"Cousin Godfrey!" she cried, "if you mean Tom, you must not, you must
+not. I will go away if you speak a word against him. I will; I will.--I
+_must,_ you know!"
+
+Godfrey made no reply--neither apologized nor sought to cover.
+
+"Why, child!" he said at last, "you are half starved!"
+
+The pity and tenderness of both word and tone were too much for her.
+She had not been at all pitying herself, but such an utterance from the
+man she loved like an elder brother so wrought upon her enfeebled
+condition that she broke into a cry. She strove to suppress her
+emotion; she fought with it; in her agony she would have rushed from
+the room, had not Godfrey caught her, drawn her down beside him, and
+kept her there. "You shall not leave me!" he said, in that voice Letty
+had always been used to obey. "Who has a right to know how things go
+with you, if I have not? Come, you must tell me all about it."
+
+"I have nothing to tell, Cousin Godfrey," she replied with some
+calmness, for Godfrey's decision had enabled her to conquer herself,
+"except that baby is ill, and looks as if he would never get better,
+and it is like to break my heart. Oh, he is such a darling, Cousin
+Godfrey!"
+
+"Let me see him," said Godfrey, in his heart detesting the child--the
+visible sign that another was nearer to Letty than he.
+
+She jumped up, almost ran into the next room, and, coming back with her
+little one, laid him in Godfrey's arms. The moment he felt the weight
+of the little, sad-looking, sleeping thing, he grew human toward him,
+and saw in him Letty and not Tom.
+
+"Good God! the child is starving, too," he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, no, Cousin Godfrey!" cried Letty; "he is not starving. He had a
+fresh-laid egg for breakfast this morning, and some arrowroot for
+dinner, and some bread and milk for tea--"
+
+"London milk!" said Godfrey.
+
+"Well, it is not like the milk in the dairy at Thornwick," admitted
+Letty. "If he had milk like that, he would soon be well!"
+
+But Godfrey dared not say, "Bring him to Thornwick": he knew his mother
+too well for that!
+
+"When were you anywhere in the country?" he asked. In a negative kind
+of way he was still nursing the baby.
+
+"Not since we were married," she answered, sadly. "You see, poor Tom
+can't afford it."
+
+Now Godfrey happened to have heard, "from the best authority," that
+Tom's mother was far from illiberal to him.
+
+"Mrs. Helmer allows him so much a year--does she not?" he said.
+
+"I know he gets money from her, but it can't be much," she answered.
+
+Godfrey's suspicions against Tom increased every moment. He must learn
+the truth. He would have it, if by an even cruel experiment! He sat a
+moment silent--then said, with assumed cheerfulness:
+
+"Well, Letty, I suppose, for the sake of old times, you will give me
+some dinner?"
+
+Then, indeed, her courage gave way. She turned from him, laid her head
+on the end of the sofa, and sobbed so that the room seemed to shake
+with the convulsions of her grief. "Letty," said Godfrey, laying his
+hand on her head, "it is no use any more trying to hide the truth. I
+don't want any dinner; in fact, I dined long ago. But you would not be
+open with me, and I was forced to find out for myself: you have not
+enough to eat, and you know it. I will not say a word about who is to
+blame--for anything I know, it may be no one--I am sure it is not you.
+But this must not go on! See, I have brought you a little pocket-book.
+I will call again tomorrow, and you will tell me then how you like it."
+
+He laid the pocket-book on the table. There was ten times as much in it
+as ever Letty had had at once. But she never knew what was in it. She
+rose with instant resolve. All the woman in her waked at once. She felt
+that a moment was come when she must be resolute, or lose her hold on
+life.
+
+"Cousin Godfrey," she said, in a tone he scarcely recognized as
+hers--it frightened him as if it came from a sepulchre--"if you do not
+take that purse away, I will throw it in the fire without opening it!
+If my husband can not give me enough to eat, I can starve as well as
+another. If you loved Tom, it would be different, but you hate him, and
+I will have nothing from you. Take it away, Cousin Godfrey."
+
+Mortified, hurt, miserable, Godfrey took the purse, and, without a
+word, walked from the room. Somewhere down in his secret heart was
+dawning an idea of Letty beyond anything he used to think of her, but
+in the mean time he was only blindly aware that his heart had been shot
+through and through. Nor was this the time for him to reflect that,
+under his training, Letty, even if he had married her, would never have
+grown to such dignity.
+
+It was, indeed, only in that moment she had become capable of the
+action. She had been growing as none, not Mary, still less herself,
+knew, under the heavy snows of affliction, and this was her first
+blossom. Not many of my readers will mistake me, I trust. Had it been
+in Letty pride that refused help from such an old friend, that pride I
+should count no blossom, but one of the meanest rags that ever
+fluttered to scare the birds. But the dignity of her refusal was in
+this--that she would accept nothing in which her husband had and could
+have no human, that is, no spiritual share. She had married him because
+she loved him, and she would hold by him wherever that might lead her:
+not wittingly would she allow the finest edge, even of ancient
+kindness, to come between her Tom and herself! To accept from her
+cousin Godfrey the help her husband ought to provide her, would be to
+let him, however innocently, step into his place! There was no
+reasoning in her resolve: it was allied to that spiritual insight
+which, in simple natures, and in proportion to their simplicity,
+approaches or amounts to prophecy. As the presence of death will
+sometimes change even an ordinary man to a prophet, in times of sore
+need the childlike nature may well receive a vision sufficing to direct
+the doubtful step. Letty felt that the taking of that money would be
+the opening of a gulf to divide her and Tom for ever.
+
+The moment Godfrey was out of the room she cast herself on the floor,
+and sobbed as if her heart must break. But her sobs were tearless. And,
+oh, agony of agonies! unsought came the conviction, and she could not
+send it away--to this had sunk her lofty idea of her Tom!--that he
+would have had her take the money! More than once or twice, in the
+ill-humors that followed a forced hilarity, he had forgotten his claims
+to being a gentleman so far as--not exactly to reproach her with having
+brought him to poverty--but to remind her that, if she was poor, she
+was no poorer than she had been when dependent on the charity of a
+distant relation!
+
+The baby began to cry. She rose and took him from the sofa where
+Godfrey had laid him when he was getting out the pocket-book, held him
+fast to her bosom, as if by laying their two aching lives together they
+might both be healed, and, rocking him to and fro, said to herself, for
+the first time, that her trouble was greater than she could bear. "O
+baby! baby! baby!" she cried, and her tears streamed on the little wan
+face. But, as she sat with him in her arms, the blessed sleep came, and
+the storm sank to a calm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+RELIEF.
+
+
+It was dark, utterly dark, when she woke. For a minute she could not
+remember where she was. The candle had burned out: it must be late. The
+baby was on her lap--still, very still. One faint gleam of satisfaction
+crossed her "during dark" at the thought that he slept so peacefully,
+hidden from the gloom which, somehow, appeared to be all the same gloom
+outside and inside of her. In that gloom she sat alone.
+
+Suddenly a prayer was in her heart. It was moving there as of itself.
+It had come there by no calling of it thither, by no conscious will of
+hers. "O God," she cried, "I am desolate!--Is there no help for me?"
+And therewith she knew that she had prayed, and knew that never in her
+life had she prayed before.
+
+She started to her feet in an agony: a horrible fear had taken
+possession of her. With one arm she held the child fast to her bosom,
+with the other hand searched in vain to find a match. And still, as she
+searched, the baby seemed to grow heavier upon her arm, and the fear
+sickened more and more at her heart.
+
+At last she had light! and the face of the child came out of the
+darkness. But the child himself had gone away into it. The Unspeakable
+had come while she slept--had come and gone, and taken her child with
+him. What was left of him was no more good to kiss than the last doll
+of her childhood!
+
+When Tom came home, there was his wife on the floor as if dead, and a
+little way from her the child, dead indeed, and cold with death. He
+lifted Letty and carried her to the bed, amazed to find how light she
+was: it was long since he had had her thus in his arms. Then he laid
+her dead baby by her side, and ran to rouse the doctor. He came, and
+pronounced the child quite dead--from lack of nutrition, he said. To
+see Tom, no one could have helped contrasting his dress and appearance
+with the look and surroundings of his wife; but no one would have been
+ready to lay blame on him; and, as for himself, he was not in the least
+awake to the fact of his guilt.
+
+The doctor gave the landlady, who had responded at once to Tom's call,
+full directions for the care of the bereaved mother; Tom handed her the
+little money he had in his pocket, and she promised to do her best. And
+she did it; for she was one of those, not a few, who, knowing nothing
+of religion toward God, are yet full of religion toward their fellows,
+and with the Son of Man that goes a long way. As soon as it was light,
+Tom went to see about the burying of his baby.
+
+He betook himself first to the editor of "The Firefly," but had to wait
+a long time for his arrival at the office. He told him his baby was
+dead, and he wanted money. It was forthcoming at once; for literary
+men, like all other artists, are in general as ready to help each other
+as the very poor themselves. There is less generosity, I think, among
+business-men than in any other class. The more honor to the exceptions!
+
+"But," said the editor, who had noted the dry, burning palm, and saw
+the glazed, fiery eye of Tom, "my dear fellow, you ought to be in bed
+yourself. It's no use taking on about the poor little kid: _you_
+couldn't help it. Go home to your wife, and tell her she's got you to
+nurse; and, if she's in any fix, tell her to come to me."
+
+Tom went home, but did not give his wife the message. She lay all but
+insensible, never asked for anything, or refused anything that was
+offered her, never said a word about her baby, or about Tom, or seemed
+to be more than when she lay in her mother's lap. Her baby was buried,
+and she knew nothing of it. Not until nine days were over did she begin
+to revive.
+
+For the first few days, Tom, moved with undefined remorse, tried to
+take a part in nursing her. She took things from him, as she did from
+the landlady, without heed or recognition. Just once, opening suddenly
+her eyes wide upon him, she uttered a feeble wail of "_Baby!_" and,
+turning her head, did not look at him again. Then, first, Tom's
+conscience gave him a sharp sting.
+
+He was far from well. The careless and in many respects dissolute life
+he had been leading had more than begun to tell on a constitution by no
+means strong, but he had never become aware of his weakness nor had
+ever felt really ill until now.
+
+But that sting, although the first sharp one, was not his first warning
+of a waking conscience. Ever since he took his place at his wife's
+bedside, he had been fighting off the conviction that he was a brute.
+He would not, he could not believe it. What! Tom Helmer, the fine,
+indubitable fellow! such as he had always known himself!--he to cower
+before his own consciousness as a man unworthy, and greatly to be
+despised! The chaos was come again! And, verily, chaos was there, but
+not by any means newly come. And, moreover, when chaos begins to be
+conscious of itself, then is the dawn of an ordered world at hand. Nay,
+the creation of it is already begun, and the pangs of the waking
+conscience are the prophecy of the new birth.
+
+With that pitiful cry of his wife after her lost child, disbelief in
+himself got within the lines of his defense; he could do no more, and
+began to loathe that conscious self which had hitherto been his pride.
+
+Whatever the effect of illness may be upon the temper of some, it is
+most certainly an ally of the conscience. All pains, indeed, and all
+sorrows, all demons, yea, and all sins themselves under the suffering
+care of the highest minister, are but the ministers of truth and
+righteousness. I never came to know the condition of such as seemed
+exceptionally afflicted but I seemed to see reason for their
+affliction, either in exceptional faultiness of character or the
+greatness of the good it was doing them.
+
+But conscience reacts on the body--for sickness until it is obeyed, for
+health thereafter. The moment conscience spoke thus plainly to Tom, the
+little that was left of his physical endurance gave way, his illness
+got the upper hand, and he took to his bed--all he could have for bed,
+that is--namely, the sofa in the sitting-room, widened out with chairs,
+and a mattress over all. There he lay, and their landlady had enough to
+do. Not that either of her patients was exacting; they were both too
+ill and miserable for that. It is the self-pitiful, self-coddling
+invalid that is exacting. Such, I suspect, require something sharper
+still.
+
+Tom groaned and tossed, and cursed himself, and soon passed into
+delirium. Straightway his visions, animate with shame and confusion of
+soul, were more distressing than even his ready tongue could have told.
+Dead babies and ghastly women pursued him everywhere. His fever
+increased. The cries of terror and dismay that he uttered reached the
+ears of his wife, and were the first thing that roused her from her
+lethargy. She rose from her bed, and, just able to crawl, began to do
+what she could for him. If she could but get near enough to him, the
+husband would yet be dearer than any child. She had him carried to the
+bed, and thereafter took on the sofa what rest there was for her. To
+and fro between bed and sofa she crept, let the landlady say what she
+might, gave him all the food he could be got to take, cooled his
+burning hands and head, and cried over him because she could not take
+him on her lap like the baby that was gone. Once or twice, in a quieter
+interval, he looked at her pitifully, and seemed about to speak; but
+the back-surging fever carried far away the word of love for which she
+listened so eagerly. The doctor came daily, but Tom grew worse, and
+Letty could not get well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+GODFREY AND SEPIA.
+
+
+When the Redmains went to Cornwall, Sepia was left at Durnmelling, in
+the expectation of joining them in London within a fortnight at latest.
+The illness of Mr. Redmain, however, caused her stay to be prolonged,
+and she was worn out with _ennui_. The self she was so careful over was
+not by any means good company: not seldom during her life had she found
+herself capable of almost anything to get rid of it, short of suicide
+or repentance. This autumn, at Durnmelling, she would even,
+occasionally, with that object, when the weather was fine, go for a
+solitary walk--a thing, I need not say, she hated in itself, though now
+it was her forlorn hope, in the poor possibility of falling in with
+some distraction. But the hope was not altogether a vague one; for was
+there not a man somewhere underneath those chimneys she saw over the
+roof of the laundry? She had never spoken to him, but Hesper and she
+had often talked about him, and often watched him ride--never man more
+to her mind. In her wanderings she had come upon the breach in the
+ha-ha, and, clambering up, found herself on the forbidden ground of a
+neighbor whom the family did not visit. To no such folly would Sepia be
+a victim.
+
+The analysis of such a nature as hers, with her story to set it forth,
+would require a book to itself, and I must happily content myself with
+but a fact here and there in her history.
+
+In one of her rambles on his ground she had her desire, and met Godfrey
+Wardour. He lifted his hat, and she stopped and addressed him by way of
+apology.
+
+"I am afraid you think me very rude, Mr. Wardour," she said. "I know I
+am trespassing, but this field of yours is higher than the ground about
+Durnmelling, and seems to take pounds off the weight of the atmosphere."
+
+For all he had gone through, Godfrey was not yet less than courteous to
+ladies. He assured Miss Yolland that Thornwick was as much at her
+service as if it were a part of Durnmelling. "Though, indeed," he
+added, with a smile, "it would be more correct to say, 'as if
+Durnmelling were a part of Thornwick'--for that was the real state of
+the case once upon a time."
+
+The statement interested or seemed to interest Miss Yolland, giving
+rise to many questions; and a long conversation ensued. Suddenly she
+woke, or seemed to wake, to the consciousness that she had forgotten
+herself and the proprieties together: hastily, and to all appearance
+with some confusion, she wished him a good morning; but she was not too
+much confused to thank him again for the permission he had given her to
+walk on his ground.
+
+It was not by any intention on the part of Godfrey that they met
+several times after this; but they always had a little conversation
+before they parted; nor did Sepia find any difficulty in getting him
+sufficiently within their range to make him feel the power of her eyes.
+She was too prudent, however, to bring to bear upon any man all at once
+the full play of her mesmeric battery; and things had got no further
+when she went to London--a week or two before the return of the
+Redmains, ostensibly to get things in some special readiness for
+Hesper; but that this may have been a pretense appears possible from
+the fact that Mary came from Cornwall on the same mission a few days
+later.
+
+I have just mentioned an acquaintance of Sepia's, who attracted the
+notice and roused the peculiar interest of Mr. Redmain, because of a
+look he saw pass betwixt them. This man spoke both English and French
+with a foreign accent, and gave himself out as a Georgian--Count
+Galofta, he called himself: I believe he was a prince in Paris. At this
+time he was in London, and, during the ten days that Sepia was alone,
+came to see her several times--called early in the forenoon first, the
+next day in the evening, when they went together to the opera, and once
+came and staid late. Whether from her dark complexion making her look
+older than she was, or from the subduing air which her experience had
+given her, or merely from the fact that she belonged to nobody much,
+Miss Yolland seemed to have _carte blanche_ to do as she pleased, and
+come and go when and where she liked, as one knowing well enough how to
+take care of herself.
+
+Mary, arriving unexpectedly at the house in Glammis Square, met him in
+the hall as she entered: he had just taken leave of Sepia, who was
+going up the stair at the moment. Mary had never seen him before, but
+something about him caused her to look at him again as he passed.
+
+Somehow, Tom also had discovered Sepia's return, and had gone to see
+her more than once.
+
+When Mr. and Mrs. Redmain arrived, there was so much to be done for
+Hesper's wardrobe that, for some days, Mary found it impossible to go
+and see Letty. Her mistress seemed harder to please than usual, and
+more doubtful of humor than ever before. This may have arisen--but I
+doubt it--from the fact that, having gone to church the Sunday before
+they left, she had there heard a different sort of sermon from any she
+had heard in her life before: sermons have something to do with the
+history of the world, however many of them may be no better than a
+withered leaf in the blast.
+
+The morning after her arrival, Hesper, happening to find herself in
+want of Mary's immediate help, instead of calling her as she generally
+did, opened the door between their rooms, and saw Mary on her knees by
+her bedside. Now, Hesper had heard of saying prayers--night and morning
+both--and, when a child, had been expected, and indeed compelled, to
+say her prayers; but to be found on one's knees in the middle of the
+day looked to her a thing exceedingly odd. Mary, in truth, was not much
+in the way of kneeling at such a time: she had to pray much too often
+to kneel always, and God was too near her, wherever she happened to be,
+for the fancy that she must seek him in any particular place; but so it
+happened now. She rose, a little startled rather than troubled, and
+followed her mistress into her room.
+
+"I am sorry to have disturbed you, Mary," said Hesper, herself a little
+annoyed, it is not quite easy to say why; "but people do not generally
+say their prayers in the middle of the day."
+
+"I say mine when I need to say them," answered Mary, a little cross
+that Hesper should take any notice. She would rather the thing had not
+occurred, and it was worse to have to talk about it.
+
+"For my part, I don't see any good in being righteous overmuch," said
+Hesper.
+
+I wonder if there was another saying in the Bible she would have been
+so ready to quote!
+
+"I don't know what that means," returned Mary. "I believe it is
+somewhere in the Bible, but I am sure Jesus never said it, for he tells
+us to be righteous as our Father in heaven is righteous."
+
+"But the thing is impossible," said Hesper. "How is one with such
+claims on her as I have, to attend to these things? Society has claims:
+no one denies that."
+
+"And has God none?" asked Mary.
+
+"Many people think now there is no God at all," returned Hesper, with
+an almost petulant expression.
+
+"If there is no God, that settles the question," answered Mary. "But,
+if there should be one, how then?"
+
+"Then I am sure he would never be hard on one like me. I do just like
+other people. One must do as people do. If there is one thing that must
+be avoided more than another, it is peculiarity. How ridiculous it
+would be of any one to set herself against society!"
+
+"Then you think the Judge will be satisfied if you say, 'Lord, I had so
+many names in my visiting-book, and so many invitations I could not
+refuse, that it was impossible for me to attend to those things'?"
+
+"I don't see that I'm at all worse than other people," persisted
+Hesper. "I can't go and pretend to be sorry for sins I should commit
+again the next time there was a necessity. I don't see what I've got to
+repent of."
+
+Nothing had been said about repentance: here, I imagine, the sermon may
+have come in.
+
+"Then, of course, you can't repent," said Mary.
+
+Hesper recovered herself a little.
+
+"I am glad you see the thing as I do," she said.
+
+"I don't see it at all as you do, ma'am," answered Mary, gently.
+
+"Why!" exclaimed Hesper, taken by surprise, "what have I got to repent
+of?"
+
+"Do you really want me to say what I think?" asked Mary.
+
+"Of course, I do," returned Hesper, getting angry, and at the same time
+uneasy: she knew Mary's freedom of speech upon occasion, but felt that
+to draw back would be to yield the point. "What have I done to be
+ashamed of, pray?"
+
+Some ladies are ready to plume themselves upon not having been guilty
+of certain great crimes. Some thieves, I dare say, console themselves
+that they have never committed murder.
+
+"If I had married a man I did not love," answered Mary, "I should be
+more ashamed of myself than I can tell."
+
+"That is the way of looking at such things in the class you belong to,
+I dare say," rejoined Hesper; "but with us it is quite different. There
+is no necessity laid upon _you. Our_ position obliges us."
+
+"But what if God should not see it as you do?"
+
+"If that is all you have got to bring against me!--" said Hesper, with
+a forced laugh.
+
+"But that is not all," replied Mary. "When you married, you promised
+many things, not one of which you have ever done."
+
+"Really, Mary, this is intolerable!" cried Hesper.
+
+"I am only doing what you asked me, ma'am," said Mary. "And I have said
+nothing that every one about Mr. Redmain does not know as well as I do."
+
+Hesper wished heartily she had never challenged Mary's judgment.
+
+"But," she resumed, more quietly, "how could you, how could any one,
+how could God himself, hard as he is, ask me to fulfill the part of a
+loving wife to a man like Mr. Redmain?--There is no use mincing matters
+with _you,_ Mary."
+
+"But you promised," persisted Mary. "It belongs, besides, to the very
+idea of marriage."
+
+"There are a thousand promises made every day which nobody is expected
+to keep. It is the custom, the way of the world! How many of the
+clergy, now, believe the things they put their names to?"
+
+"They must answer for themselves. We are not clergymen, but women, who
+ought never to say a thing except we mean it, and, when we have said
+it, to stick to it."
+
+"But just look around you, and see how many there are in precisely the
+same position! Will you dare to say they are all going to be lost
+because they do not behave like angels to their brutes of husbands?"
+
+"I say, they have got to repent of behaving to their husbands as their
+husbands behave to them."
+
+"And what if they don't?"
+
+Mary paused a little.
+
+"Do you expect to go to heaven, ma'am?" she asked
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Do you think you will like it?"
+
+"I must say, I think it will be rather dull."
+
+"Then, to use your own word, you must be very like lost anyway. There
+does not seem to be a right place for you anywhere, and that is very
+like being lost--is it not?"
+
+Hesper laughed.
+
+"I am pretty comfortable where I am," she said.
+
+"Husband and all!" thought Mary, but she did not say that. What she did
+say was:
+
+"But you know you can't stay here. God is not going to keep up this way
+of things for you; can you ask it, seeing you don't care a straw what
+he wants of you? But I have sometimes thought, What if hell be just a
+place where God gives everybody everything she wants, and lets
+everybody do whatever she likes, without once coming nigh to interfere!
+What a hell that would be! For God's presence in the very being, and
+nothing else, is bliss. That, then, would be altogether the opposite of
+heaven, and very much the opposite of this world. Such a hell would go
+on, I suppose, till every one had learned to hate every one else in the
+same world with her."
+
+This was beyond Hesper, and she paid no attention to it.
+
+"You can never, in your sober senses, Mary," she said, "mean that God
+requires of me to do things for Mr. Redmain that the servants can do a
+great deal better! That would be ridiculous--not to mention that I
+oughtn't and couldn't and wouldn't do them for any man!"
+
+"Many a woman," said Mary, with a solemnity in her tone which she did
+not intend to appear there, "has done many more trying things for
+persons of whom she knew nothing."
+
+"I dare say! But such women go in for being saints, and that is not my
+line. I was not made for that."
+
+"You were made for that, and far more," said Mary.
+
+"There are such women, I know," persisted Hesper; "but I do not know
+how they find it possible."
+
+"I can tell you how they find it possible. They love every human being
+just because he is human. Your husband might be a demon from the way
+you behave to him."
+
+"I suppose _you_ find it agreeable to wait upon him: he is civil to
+you, I dare say!"
+
+"Not very," replied Mary, with a smile; "but the person who can not
+bear with a sick man or a baby is not fit to be a woman."
+
+"You may go to your own room," said Hesper.
+
+For the first time, a feeling of dislike to Mary awoke in the bosom of
+her mistress--very naturally, _all_ my readers will allow. The next few
+days she scarcely spoke to her, sending directions for her work through
+Sepia, who discharged the office with dignity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+THE HELPER.
+
+
+At length one morning, when she believed Mrs. Redmain would not rise
+before noon, Mary felt she must go and see Letty. She did not find her
+in the quarters where she had left her, but a story higher, in a mean
+room, sitting with her hands in her lap. She did not lift her eyes when
+Mary entered: where hope is dead, curiosity dies. Not until she had
+come quite near did she raise her head, and then she seemed to know
+nothing of her. When she did recognize her, she held out her hand in a
+mechanical way, as if they were two specters met in a miserable dream,
+in which they were nothing to each other, and neither could do, or
+cared to do, anything for the other.
+
+"My poor Letty!" cried Mary, greatly shocked, "what has come to you?
+Are you not glad to see me? Has anything happened to Tom?"
+
+She broke into a low, childish wail, and for a time that was all Mary
+heard. Presently, however, she became aware of a feeble moaning in the
+adjoining chamber, the sound of a human sea in trouble--mixed with a
+wandering babble, which to Letty was but as the voice of her own
+despair, and to Mary was a cry for help. She abandoned the attempt to
+draw anything from Letty, and went into the next room, the door of
+which stood wide. There lay Tom, but so changed that Mary took a moment
+to be certain it was he. Going softly to him, she laid her hand on his
+head. It was burning. He opened his eyes, but she saw their sense was
+gone. She went back to Letty, and, sitting down beside her, put her arm
+about her, and said:
+
+"Why didn't you send for me, Letty? I would have come to you at once. I
+will come now, to-night, and help you to nurse him. Where is the baby?"
+
+Letty gave a shriek, and, starting from her chair, walked wildly about
+the room, wringing her hands. Mary went after her, and taking her in
+her arms, said:
+
+"Letty, dear, has God taken your baby?"
+
+Letty gave her a lack-luster look.
+
+"Then," said Mary, "he is not far away, for we are all in God's arms."
+
+But what is the use of the most sovereign of medicines while they stand
+on the sick man's table? What is the mightiest of truths so long as it
+is not believed? The spiritually sick still mocks at the medicine
+offered; he will not know its cure. Mary saw that, for any comfort to
+Letty, God was nowhere. It went to her very heart. Death and desolation
+and the enemy were in possession. She turned to go, that she might
+return able to begin her contest with ruin. Letty saw that she was
+going, and imagined her offended and abandoning her to her misery. She
+flew to her, stretching out her arms like a child, but was so feeble
+that she tripped and fell. Mary lifted her, and laid her wailing on her
+couch.
+
+"Letty," said Mary, "you didn't think I was going to leave you! But I
+must go for an hour, perhaps two, to make arrangements for staying with
+you till Tom is over the worst."
+
+Then Letty clasped her hands in her old, beseeching way, and looked up
+with a faint show of comfort.
+
+"Be courageous, Letty," said Mary. "I shall be back as soon as ever I
+can. God has sent me to you."
+
+She drove straight home, and heard that Mrs. Redmain was annoyed that
+she had gone out.
+
+"I offered to dress her," said Jemima; "and she knows I can quite well;
+but she would not get up till you came, and made me fetch her a book.
+So there she is, a-waiting for you!"
+
+"I am sorry," said Mary; "but I had to go, and she was fast asleep."
+
+When she entered her room, Hesper gave her a cold glance over the top
+of her novel, and went on with her reading. Mary proceeded to get her
+things ready for dressing. But by this time she had got interested in
+the story.
+
+"I shall not get up yet," she said.
+
+"Then, please, ma'am," replied Mary, "would you mind letting Jemima
+dress you? I want to go out again, and should be glad if you could do
+without me for some days. My friend's baby is dead, and both she and
+her husband are very ill."
+
+Hesper threw down her book, and her eyes flamed.
+
+"What do you mean by using me so, Miss Marston?" she said.
+
+"I am very sorry to put you to inconvenience," answered Mary; "but the
+husband seems dying, and the wife is scarcely able to crawl."
+
+"I have nothing to do with it," interrupted Hesper. "When you made it
+necessary for me to part with my maid, you undertook to perform her
+duties. I did not engage you as a sick-nurse for other people."
+
+"'No, ma'am," replied Mary; "but this is an extreme case, and I can not
+believe you will object to my going."
+
+"I do object. How, pray, is the world to go on, if this kind of thing
+be permitted! I may be going out to dinner, or to the opera to-night,
+for anything you know, and who is there to dress me? No; on principle,
+and for the sake of example, I will not let you go."
+
+"I thought," said Mary, not a little disappointed in Hesper, "I did not
+stand to you quite in the relation of an ordinary servant."
+
+"Certainly you do not: I look for a little more devotion from you than
+from a common, ungrateful creature who thinks only of herself. But you
+are all alike."
+
+More and more distressed to find one she had loved so long show herself
+so selfish, Mary's indignation had almost got the better of her. But a
+little heightening of her color was all the show it made.
+
+"Indeed, it is quite necessary, ma'am," she persisted, "that I should
+go."
+
+"The law has fortunately made provision against such behavior," said
+Hesper. "You can not leave without giving me a month's notice."
+
+"The understanding on which I came to you was very different," said
+Mary, sadly.
+
+"It was; but, since then, you consented to become my maid."
+
+"It is ungenerous to take advantage of that," returned Mary, growing
+angry again.
+
+"I have to protect myself and the world in general from the
+consequences that must follow were such lawless behavior allowed to
+pass."
+
+Hesper spoke with calm severity, and Mary, making up her mind, answered
+now with almost equal calmness.
+
+"The law was made for both sides, ma'am; and, as you bring the law to
+me, I will take refuge in the law. It is, I believe, a month's warning
+or a month's wages; and, as I have never had any wages, I imagine I am
+at liberty to go. Good-by, ma'am."
+
+Hesper made her no answer, and Mary left the room. She went to her own,
+stuffed her immediate necessities into a bag, let herself out of the
+house, called a cab, and, with a great lump in her throat, drove to the
+help of Letty.
+
+First she had a talk with the landlady, and learned all she could tell.
+Then she went up, and began to make things as comfortable as she could:
+all was in sad disorder and neglect.
+
+With the mere inauguration of cleanliness, and the first dawn of coming
+order, the courage of Letty began to revive a little. The impossibility
+of doing all that ought to be done, had, in her miserable weakness, so
+depressed her that she had not done even as much as she could--except
+where Tom was immediately concerned: there she had not failed of her
+utmost.
+
+Mary next went to the doctor to get instructions, and then to buy what
+things were most wanted. And now she almost wished Mrs. Redmain had
+paid her for her services, for she must write to Mr. Turnbull for
+money, and that she disliked. But by the very next post she received,
+inclosed in a business memorandum in George's writing, the check for
+fifty pounds she had requested.
+
+She did not dare write to Tom's mother, because she was certain, were
+she to come up, her presence would only add to the misery, and take
+away half the probability of his recovery and of Letty's, too. In the
+case of both, nourishment was the main thing; and to the fit providing
+and the administering of it she bent her energy.
+
+For a day or two, she felt at times as if she could hardly get through
+what she had undertaken; but she soon learned to drop asleep at any
+moment, and wake immediately when she was wanted; and thereafter her
+strength was by no means so sorely tried.
+
+Under her skillful nursing--skillful, not from experience, but simply
+from her faith, whence came both conscience of and capacity for doing
+what the doctor told her--things went well. It is from their want of
+this faith, and their consequent arrogance and conceit, that the ladies
+who aspire to help in hospitals give the doctors so much trouble: they
+have not yet learned _obedience,_ the only path to any good, the one
+essential to the saving of the world. One who can not obey is the
+merest slave--essentially and in himself a slave. The crisis of Tom's
+fever was at length favorably passed, but the result remained doubtful.
+By late hours and strong drink, he had done not a little to weaken a
+constitution, in itself, as I have said, far from strong; while the
+unrest of what is commonly and foolishly called a bad conscience, with
+misery over the death of his child and the conduct which had disgraced
+him in his own eyes and ruined his wife's happiness, combined to retard
+his recovery.
+
+While he was yet delirious, and grief and shame and consternation
+operated at will on his poetic nature, the things he kept saying over
+and over were very pitiful; but they would have sounded more miserable
+by much in the ears of one who did not look so far ahead as Mary. She,
+trained to regard all things in their true import, was rejoiced to find
+him loathing his former self, and beyond the present suffering saw the
+gladness at hand for the sorrowful man, the repenting sinner. Had she
+been mother or sister to him, she could hardly have waited on him with
+more devotion or tenderness.
+
+One day, as his wife was doing some little thing for him, he took her
+hand in his feeble grasp, and pressing it to his face, wet with the
+tears of reviving manhood, said:
+
+"We might have been happy together, Letty, if I had but known how much
+you were worth, and how little I was worth myself!--Oh me! oh me!"
+
+He burst into an incontrollable wail that tortured Letty with its
+likeness to the crying of her baby.
+
+"Tom! my own darling Tom!" she cried, "when you speak as if I belonged
+to you, it makes me as happy as a queen. When you are better, you will
+be happy, too, dear. Mary says you will."
+
+"O Letty!" he sobbed--"the baby!"
+
+"The baby's all right, Mary says; and, some day, she says, he will run
+into your arms, and know you for his father."
+
+"And I shall be ashamed to look at him!" said Tom.
+
+An hour or so after, he woke from a short sleep, and his eyes sought
+Letty's watching face.
+
+"I have seen baby," he said, "and he has forgiven me. I dare say it was
+only a dream," he added, "but somehow it makes me happier. At least, I
+know how the thing might be."
+
+"It was true, whether it was but a dream or something more," said Mary,
+who happened to be by.
+
+"Thank you, Mary," he returned. "You and Letty have saved me from what
+I dare not think of! I could die happy now--if it weren't for one
+thing."
+
+"What is that?" asked Mary.
+
+"I am ashamed to say," he replied, "but I ought to say it and bear the
+shame, for the man who does shamefully ought to be ashamed. It is that,
+when I am in my grave--or somewhere else, for I know Mary does not like
+people to talk about being in their graves--you say it is heathenish,
+don't you, Mary?--when I am where they can't find me, then, it is
+horrid to think that people up here will have a hold on me and a right
+over me still, because of debts I shall never be able to pay them."
+
+"Don't be too sure of that, Tom," said Mary, cheerfully. "I think you
+will pay them yet.--But I have heard it said," she went on, "that a man
+in debt never tells the truth about his debts--as if he had only the
+face to make them, not to talk about them: can you make a clean breast
+of it, Tom?"
+
+"I don't exactly know what they are; but I always did mean to pay them,
+and I have some idea about them. I don't think they would come to more
+than a hundred pounds."
+
+"Your mother would not hesitate to pay that for you?" said Mary.
+
+"I know she wouldn't; but, then, I'm thinking of Letty."
+
+He paused, and Mary waited.
+
+"You know, when I am gone," he resumed, "there will be nothing for her
+but to go to my mother; and it breaks my heart to think of it. Every
+sin of mine she will lay to her charge; and how am I to lie still in my
+grave--oh, I beg your pardon, Mary."
+
+"I will pay your debts, Tom, and gladly," said Mary, "if they don't
+come to much more than you say--than you think, I mean."
+
+"But, don't you see, Mary, that would be only a shifting of my debt
+from them to you? Except for Letty, it would not make the thing any
+better."
+
+"What!" said Mary, "is there no difference between owing a thing to one
+who loves you and one who does not? to one who would always be wishing
+you had paid him and one who is glad to have even the poor bond of a
+debt between you and her? All of us who are sorry for our sins are
+brothers and sisters."
+
+"O Mary!" said Tom.
+
+"But I will tell you what will be better: let your mother pay your
+debts, and I will look after Letty. I will care for her like my own
+sister, Tom."
+
+"Then I shall die happy," said Tom; and from that day began to recover.
+
+Many who would pay money to keep a man alive or to deliver him from
+pain would pay nothing to take a killing load off the shoulders of his
+mind. Hunger they can pity--not mental misery.
+
+Tom would not hear of his mother being written to.
+
+"I have done Letty wrong enough already," he said, "without subjecting
+her to the cruel tongue of my mother. I have conscience enough left not
+to have anybody else abuse her."
+
+"But, Tom," expostulated Mary, "if you want to be good, one of your
+first duties is to be reconciled to your mother."
+
+"I am very sorry things are all wrong between us, Mary," said Tom.
+"But, if you want her to come here, you don't know what you are talking
+about. She must have everything her own way, or storm from morning to
+night. I would gladly make it up with her, but live with her, or die
+with her, I could _not_. To make either possible, you must convert her,
+too. When you have done that, I will invite her at once."
+
+"Never mind me, Tom," said Letty. "So long as you love me, I don't care
+what even your mother thinks of me. I will do everything I can to make
+her comfortable, and satisfied with me."
+
+"Wait till I am better, anyhow, Letty; for I solemnly assure you I
+haven't a chance if my mother comes. I will tell you what, Mary: I
+promise you, if I get better, I will do what is possible to be a son to
+my mother; and for the present I will dictate a letter, if you will
+write it, bidding her good-by, and asking her pardon for everything I
+have done wrong by her, which you will please send if I should die. I
+can not and I will not promise more."
+
+He was excited and exhausted, and Mary dared not say another word. Nor
+truly did she at the moment see what more could be said. Where all
+relation has been perverted, things can not be set right by force.
+Perhaps all we can do sometimes is to be willing and wait.
+
+The letter was dictated and written--a lovely one, Mary thought--and it
+made her weep as she wrote it. Tom signed it with his own hand. Mary
+folded, sealed, addressed it, and laid it away in her desk.
+
+The same evening Tom said to Letty, putting his thin, long hand in
+hers--
+
+"Mary thinks we shall know each other there, Letty."
+
+"Tom!" interrupted Letty, "don't talk like that; I _can't_ bear it. If
+you do, I shall die before you."
+
+"All I wanted to say," persisted Tom, "was, that I should sit all day
+looking out for you, Letty."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+THE LEPER.
+
+
+The faint, sweet, luminous jar of bow and string, as betwixt them they
+tore the silky air into a dying sound, came hovering--neither could
+have said whether it was in the soul only, or there and in the outer
+world too.
+
+"What _is_ that?" said Tom.
+
+"Mary!" Letty called into the other room, "there is our friend with the
+violin again! Don't you think Tom would like to hear him?"
+
+"Yes, I do," answered Mary.
+
+"Then would you mind asking him to come and play a little to us? It
+would do Tom good, I do think." Mary went up the one stair--all that
+now divided them, and found the musician with his sister--his
+half-sister she was.
+
+"I thought we should have you in upon us!" said Ann. "Joe thinks he can
+play so as nobody can hear him; and I was fool enough to let him try. I
+am sorry."
+
+"I am glad," rejoined Mary, "and am come to ask him down stairs; for
+Mrs. Helmer and I think it will do her husband good to hear him. He is
+very fond of music."
+
+"Much help music will be to him, poor young man!" said Ann, scornfully.
+
+"Wouldn't you give a sick man a flower, even if it only made him a
+little happier for a moment with its scent and its loveliness?" asked
+Mary.
+
+"No, I wouldn't. It would only be to help the deceitful heart to be
+more desperately wicked."
+
+I will not continue the conversation, although they did a little
+longer. Ann's father had been a preacher among the followers of
+Whitefield, and Ann was a follower of her father. She laid hold upon
+the garment of a hard master, a tyrannical God. Happy he who has
+learned the gospel according to Jesus, as reported by John--that God is
+light, and in him is no darkness at all! Happy he who finds God his
+refuge from all the lies that are told for him, and in his name! But it
+is love that saves, and not opinion that damns; and let the Master
+himself deal with the weeds in his garden as with the tares in his
+field.
+
+"I read my Bible a good deal," said Mary, at last, "but I never found
+one of those things you say in it."
+
+"That's because you were never taught to look for them," said Ann.
+
+"Very likely," returned Mary. "In the mean time I prefer the
+violin--that is, with one like your brother to play it."
+
+She turned to the door, and Joseph Jasper, who had not spoken a word,
+rose and followed her. As soon as they were outside, Mary turned to
+him, and begged he would play the same piece with which he had ended on
+the former occasion.
+
+"I thought you did not care for it! I am so glad!" he said.
+
+"I care for it very much," replied Mary, "and have often thought of it
+since. But you left in such haste! before I could find words to thank
+you!"
+
+"You mean the ten lepers, don't you?" he said. "But of course you do. I
+always end off with them."
+
+"Is that how you call it?" returned Mary. "Then you have given me the
+key to it, and I shall understand it much better this time, I hope."
+
+"That is what I call it," said Joseph, "--to myself, I mean, not to
+Ann. She would count it blasphemy. God has made so many things that she
+thinks must not be mentioned in his hearing!"
+
+When they entered the room, Joseph, casting a quick look round it, made
+at once for the darkest corner. Three swift strides took him there;
+and, without more preamble than if he had come upon a public platform
+to play, he closed his eyes and began.
+
+And now at last Mary understood at least this specimen of his strange
+music, and was able to fill up the blanks in the impression it formerly
+made upon her. Alas, that my helpless ignorance should continue to make
+it impossible for me to describe it!
+
+A movement even and rather slow, full of unexpected chords, wonderful
+to Mary, who did not know that such things could be made on the violin,
+brought before her mind's eye the man who knew all about everything,
+and loved a child more than a sage, walking in the hot day upon the
+border be-tween Galilee and Samaria. Sounds arose which she interpreted
+as the stir of village life, the crying and calling of domestic
+animals, and of busy housewives at their duties, carried on half out of
+doors, in the homeliness of country custom. Presently the instrument
+began to tell the gathering of a crowd, with bee-like hum, and the
+crossing of voice with voice--but, at a distance, the sounds confused
+and obscure. Swiftly then they seemed to rush together, to blend and
+lose themselves in the unity of an imploring melody, in which she heard
+the words, uttered afar, with uplifted hands and voices, drawing nearer
+and nearer as often repeated, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." Then
+came a brief pause, and then what, to her now fully roused imagination,
+seemed the voice of the Master, saying, "Go show yourselves unto the
+priests." Then followed the slow, half-unwilling, not hopeful march of
+timeless feet; then a clang as of something broken, then a silence as
+of sunrise, then air and liberty--long-drawn notes divided with quick,
+hurried ones; then the trampling of many feet, going farther and
+farther--merrily, with dance and song; once more a sudden pause--and a
+melody in which she read the awe-struck joyous return of one. Steadily
+yet eagerly the feet drew nigh, the melody growing at once in awe and
+jubilation, as the man came nearer and nearer to him whose word had
+made him clean, until at last she saw him fall on his face before him,
+and heard his soul rushing forth in a strain of adoring thanks, which
+seemed to end only because it was choked in tears.
+
+The violin ceased, but, as if its soul had passed from the instrument
+into his, the musician himself took up the strain, and in a mellow
+tenor voice, with a mingling of air and recitative, and an expression
+which to Mary was entrancing, sang the words, "And he was a Samaritan."
+
+At the sound of his own voice, he seemed to wake up, hung his head for
+a moment, as if ashamed of having shown his emotion, tucked his
+instrument under his arm, and walked from the room, without a word
+spoken on either side. Nor, while he played, had Mary once seen the
+face of the man; her soul sat only in the porch of her ears, and not
+once looked from the windows of her eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+MARY AND MR. REDMAIN.
+
+
+A few rudiments of righteousness lurked, in their original
+undevelopment, but still in a measure active, in the being of Mr.
+Redmain: there had been in the soul of his mother, I suspect, a strain
+of generosity, and she had left a mark of it upon him, and it was the
+best thing about him. But in action these rudiments took an evil shape.
+
+Preferring inferior company, and full of that suspicion which puts the
+last edge upon what the world calls knowledge of human nature, he
+thought no man his equal in penetrating the arena of motive, and
+reading actions in the light of motive; and, that the fundamental
+principle of all motive was self-interest, he assumed to be beyond
+dispute. With this candle, not that of the Lord, he searched the dark
+places of the soul; but, where the soul was light, his candle could
+show him nothing--served only to blind him yet further, if possible, to
+what was there present. And, because he did not seek the good, never
+yet in all his life had he come near enough to a righteous man to
+recognize that in something or other that man was different from
+himself. As for women--there was his wife--of whom he was willing to
+think as well as she would let him! And she, firmly did he believe, was
+an angel beside Sepia!--of whom, bad as she was, it is quite possible
+he thought yet worse than she deserved: alas for the woman who is not
+good, and falls under the judgment of a bad man!--the good woman he can
+no more hurt than the serpent can bite the adamant. He believed he knew
+Sepia's self, although he did not yet know her history; and he scorned
+her the more that he was not a hair better himself. He had regard
+enough for his wife, and what virtue his penetration conceded her, to
+hate their intimacy; and ever since his marriage had been scheming how
+to get rid of Sepia--only, however, through finding her out: he must
+unmask her: there would be no satisfaction in getting rid of her
+without his wife's convinced acquiescence. He had been, therefore,
+almost all the time more or less on the watch to uncover the wickedness
+he felt sure lay at no great depth beneath her surface; and in the mean
+time, and for the sake of this end, he lived on terms of decent
+domiciliation with her. She had no suspicion how thin was the crust
+between her and the lava.
+
+In Cornwall, he began at length to puzzle himself about Mary. Of course
+she was just like the rest! but he did not at once succeed in fitting
+what he saw to what he entirely believed of her. She remained, like
+Sepia, a riddle to be solved. He was not so ignorant as his wife
+concerning the relations of the different classes, and he felt certain
+there must be some reason, of course a discreditable one, for her
+leaving her former, and taking her present, position. The attack he had
+in Cornwall afforded him unexpected opportunity of making her out, as
+he called it.
+
+Upon this occasion it was also that Mary first ventured to expostulate
+with her mistress on her neglect of her husband. She heard her
+patiently; and the same day, going to his room, paid him some small
+attention--handed him his medicine, I believe, but clumsily, because
+ungraciously. The next moment, one of his fits of pain coming on, he
+broke into such a torrent of cursing as swept her in stately dignity
+from the room. She would not go near him again.
+
+"Brought up as you have been, Mary," she said, "you can not enter into
+the feelings of one in my position, to whom the very tone even of
+coarse language is unspeakably odious. It makes me sick with disgust.
+Coarseness is what no lady can endure. I beg you will not mention Mr.
+Redmain to me again."
+
+"Dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "ugly as such language is, there are
+many things worse. It seems to me worse that a wife should not go near
+her husband when he is suffering than that he should in his pain speak
+bad words."
+
+She had been on the point of saying that a thin skin was not purity,
+but bethought herself in time.
+
+"You are scarcely in a position to lay down the law for me, Mary," said
+Hesper. "We will, if you please, drop the subject."
+
+Mary's words were overheard, as was a good deal in the house more than
+was reckoned on, and reached Mr. Redmain, whom they perplexed: what
+could the young woman hope from taking his part?
+
+One morning, after the arrival of Mewks, his man, Mary heard Mr.
+Redmain calling him in a tone which betrayed that he had been calling
+for some time: the house was an old one, and the bells were neither in
+good trim, nor was his in a convenient position. She thought first to
+find Mewks, but pity rose in her heart. She ran to Mr. Redmain's door,
+which stood half open, and showed herself.
+
+"Can _I_ not do something for you, sir?" she said.
+
+"Yes, you can. Go and tell that lumbering idiot to come to me
+instantly. No! here, you!--there's a good girl!--Oh, damn!--Just give
+me your hand, and help me to turn an inch or two."
+
+Change of posture relieved him a little. "Thank you," he said. "That is
+better. Wait a few moments, will you--till the rascal comes?"
+
+Mary stood back, a little behind him, thinking not to annoy him with
+the sight of her.
+
+"What are you doing there?" he cried. "I like to see what people are
+about in my room. Come in front here, and let me look at you."
+
+Mary obeyed, and with a smile took the position he pointed out to her.
+Immediately followed another agony of pain, in which he looked beset
+with demons, whom he not feared but hated. Mary hurried to him, and, in
+the compassion which she inherited long back of Eve, took his hand, the
+fingers of which were twisting themselves into shapes like tree-roots.
+With a hoarse roar, he dashed hers from him, as if it had been a
+serpent. She returned to her place, and stood.
+
+"What did you mean by that?" he said, when he came to himself. "Do you
+want to make a fool of me?"
+
+Mary did not understand him, and made no reply. Another fit came. This
+time she kept her distance.
+
+"Come here," he howled; "take my head in your hands."
+
+She obeyed.
+
+"Damned nice hands you've got!" he gasped; "much nicer than your
+mistress's."
+
+Mary took no notice. Gently she withdrew her hands, for the fit was
+over.
+
+"I see! that's the way of you!" he said, as she stepped back. "But come
+now, tell me how it is that a nice, well-behaved, handsome girl like
+you, should leave a position where, they tell me, you were your own
+mistress, and take a cursed place as lady's maid to my wife."
+
+"It was because I liked Mrs. Redmain so much," answered Mary. "But,
+indeed, I was not very comfortable where I was."
+
+"What the devil did you see to like in her? I never saw anything!"
+
+"She is so beautiful!" said Mary.
+
+"Is she! ho! ho!" he laughed. "What is that to another woman! You are
+new to the trade, my girl, if you think that will go down! One woman
+taking to another because 'she's so beautiful'! Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+He repeated Mary's words with an indescribable contempt, and his laugh
+was insulting to a degree; but it went off in a cry of suffering.
+
+"Hypocrisy mustn't be too barefaced," he resumed, when again his
+torture abated. "I didn't make you stop to amuse me! It's little of
+that this beastly world has got for me! Come, a better reason for
+waiting on my wife?"
+
+"That she was kind to me," said Mary, "may be a better reason, but it
+is not a truer."
+
+"It's more than ever she was to me! What wages does she give you?"
+
+"We have not spoken about that yet, sir."
+
+"You haven't had any?"
+
+"I haven't wanted any yet."
+
+"Then what the deuce ever made you come to this house?"
+
+"I hoped to be of some service to Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, growing
+troubled.
+
+"And you ain't of any? Is that why you don't want wages?"
+
+"No, sir. That is not the reason."
+
+"Then what _is_ the reason? Come! Trust me. I will be much better to
+you than your mistress. Out with it! I knew there was something!"
+
+"I would rather not talk more about it," said Mary, knowing that her
+feeling in relation to Hesper would be altogether incredible, and the
+notion of it ridiculous to him.
+
+"You needn't mind telling _me_! I know all about such things.--Look
+here! Give me that pocket-book on the table."
+
+Mary brought him the pocket-book. He opened it, and, taking from it
+some notes, held them out to her.
+
+"If your mistress won't pay you your wages, I will. There! take that.
+You're quite welcome. What matter which pays you? It all comes out of
+the same stocking-foot."
+
+"I don't know yet," answered Mary, "whether I shall accept wages from
+Mrs. Redmain. Something might happen to make it impossible; or, if I
+had taken money, to make me regret it."
+
+"I like that! There you keep a hold on her!" said Mr. Redmain, in a
+confidential tone, while in his heart he was more puzzled than ever.
+"There's no occasion, though, for all that," he went on, "to go without
+your money when you can have it and she be nothing the wiser.
+There--take it. I will swear you any oath you like not to tell my
+stingy wife."
+
+"She is not stingy," said Mary; "and, if I don't take wages from her, I
+certainly shall not from any one else.--Besides," she added, "it would
+be dishonest."
+
+"Oh! that's the dodge!" said Mr. Redmain to himself; but aloud, "Where
+would be the dishonesty, when the money is mine to do with as I please?"
+
+"Where the dishonesty, sir!" exclaimed Mary, astounded. "To take wages
+from you, and pretend to Mrs. Redmain I was going without!"
+
+"Ha! ha! The first time, no doubt, you ever pretended anything!"
+
+"It would be," said Mary, "so far as I can, at the moment, remember."
+
+"Go along," cried Mr. Redmain, losing, or pretending to lose, patience
+with her; "you are too unscrupulous a liar for me to deal with."
+
+Mary turned and left the room. As she went, his keen glance caught the
+expression of her countenance, and noted the indignant red that flushed
+her cheeks, and the lightning of wronged innocence in her eyes.
+
+"I ought not to have said it," he remarked to himself.
+
+He did not for a moment fancy she had spoken the truth; but the look of
+her went to a deeper place in him than he knew even the existence of.
+
+"Hey! stop," he cried, as she was disappearing. "Come back, will you?"
+
+"I will find Mr. Mewks," she answered, and went.
+
+After this, Mary naturally dreaded conference with Mr. Redmain; and he,
+thinking she must have time to get over the offense he had given her,
+made for the present no fresh attempt to come, by her own aid, at a
+bird's-eye view of her character and scheme of life. His curiosity,
+however, being in no degree assuaged concerning the odd human animal
+whose spoor he had for the moment failed to track, he meditated how
+best to renew the attempt in London. Not small, therefore, was his
+annoyance to find, a few days after his arrival, that she was no longer
+in the house. He questioned his wife as to the cause of her absence,
+and told her she was utterly heartless in refusing her leave to go and
+nurse her friend; whereupon Hesper, neither from desire to do right nor
+from regard to her husband's opinion, but because she either saw or
+fancied she saw that, now Mary did not dress her, she no longer caused
+the same sensation on entering a room, resolved to write to her--as if
+taking it for granted she had meant to return as soon as she was able.
+And to prick the sides of this intent came another spur, as will be
+seen from the letter she wrote:
+
+"Dear Mary, can you tell me what is become of my large sapphire ring? I
+have never seen it since you brought my case up with you from Cornwall.
+I have been looking for it all the morning, but in vain. You _must_
+have it. I shall be lost without it, for you know it has not its equal
+for color and brilliance. I do not believe you intended for a moment to
+keep it, but only to punish me for thinking I could do without you. If
+so, you have your revenge, for I find I can not do without either of
+you--you or the ring--so you will not carry the joke further than I can
+bear. If you can not come at once, write and tell me it is safe, and I
+shall love you more than ever. I am dying to see you again. Yours
+faithfully, H. R."
+
+By this time, Letty was much better, and Tom no longer required such
+continuous attention; Mary, therefore, betook herself at once to Mr.
+Redmain's. Hesper was out shopping, and Mary went to her own room to
+wait for her, where she was glad of the opportunity of getting at some
+of the things she had left behind her.
+
+"While she was looking for what she wanted, Sepia entered, and was, or
+pretended to be, astonished to see her. In a strange, sarcastic tone:
+
+"Ah, you there!" she said. "I hope you will find it."
+
+"If you mean the ring, that is not likely, Miss Yolland," Mary answered.
+
+Sepia was silent a moment or two, then said:
+
+"How is your cousin?"
+
+"I have no cousin," replied Mary.
+
+"The person, I mean, you have been staying with?"
+
+"Better, thank you."
+
+"Almost a pity, is it not--if there should come trouble about this
+ring?"
+
+"I do not understand you. The ring will, of course, be found," returned
+Mary.
+
+"In any case the blame will come on you: it was in your charge."
+
+"The ring was in the case when I left."
+
+"You will have to prove that."
+
+"I remember quite well."
+
+"That no one will question."
+
+Beginning at last to understand her insinuations, Mary was so angry
+that she dared not speak.
+
+"But it will hardly go to clear you," Sepia went on. "Don't imagine I
+mean you have taken it; I am only warning you how the matter will look,
+that you may be prepared. Mr. Redmain is one to believe the worst
+things of the best people."
+
+"I am obliged to you," said Mary, "but I am not anxious."
+
+"It is necessary you should know also," continued Sepia, "that there is
+some suspicion attaching to a female friend of yours as well, a young
+woman who used to visit you--the wife of the other, it is supposed. She
+was here, I remember, one night there was a party; I saw you together
+in my cousin's bedroom. She had just dressed and gone down."
+
+"I remember," said Mary. "It was Mrs. Helmer."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It is very unfortunate, certainly; but the truth must be told: a few
+days before you left, one of the servants, hearing some one in the
+house in the middle of the night, got up and went down, but only in
+time to hear the front door open and shut. In the morning a hat was
+found in the drawing-room, with the name _Thomas Helmer_ in it: that is
+the name of your friend's husband, I believe?"
+
+"I am aware Mr. Helmer was a frequent visitor," said Mary, trying to
+keep cool for what was to come.
+
+This that Sepia told her was true enough, though she was not accurate
+as to the time of its occurrence. I will relate briefly how it came
+about.
+
+Upon a certain evening, a few days before Mary's return from Cornwall,
+Tom would have gone to see Miss Yolland had he not known that she meant
+to go to the play with a Mr. Emmet, a cousin of the Redmains. Before
+the hour arrived, however, Count Galofta called, and Sepia went out
+with him, telling the man who opened the door to ask Mr. Emmet to wait.
+The man was rather deaf, and did not catch with certainty the name she
+gave. Mr. Emmet did not appear, and it was late before Sepia returned.
+
+Tom, jealous even to hatred, spent the greater part of his evening in a
+tavern on the borders of the city--in gloomy solitude, drinking
+brandy-and-water, and building castles of the most foolish type--for
+castles are as different as the men that build them. Through all the
+rooms of them glided the form of Sepia, his evil genius. He grew more
+and more excited as he built, and as he drank. He rose at last, paid
+his bill, and, a little suspicious of his equilibrium, stalked into the
+street. There, almost unconsciously, he turned and walked westward. It
+was getting late; before long the theatres would be emptying: he might
+have a peep of Sepia as she came out!--but where was the good when that
+fellow was with her! "But," thought Tom, growing more and more daring
+as in an adventurous dream, "why should I not go to the house, and see
+her after he has left her at the door?"
+
+He went to the house and rang the bell. The man came, and said
+immediately that Miss Yolland was out, but had desired him to ask Mr.
+Helmer to wait; whereupon Tom walked in, and up the stair to the
+drawing-room, thence into a second and a third drawing-room, and from
+the last into the conservatory. The man went down and finished his
+second, pint of ale. From the conservatory, Tom, finding himself in
+danger of havoc among the flower-pots, turned back into the third room,
+threw himself on a couch, and fell fast asleep.
+
+He woke in the middle of the night in pitch darkness; and it was some
+time before he could remember where he was. When he did, he recognized
+that he was in an awkward predicament. But he knew the house well, and
+would make the attempt to get out undiscovered. It was foolish, but Tom
+was foolish. Feeling his way, he knocked down a small table with a
+great crash of china, and, losing his equanimity, rushed for the stair.
+Happily the hall lamp was still alight, and he found no trouble with
+bolts or lock: the door was not any way secured.
+
+The first breath of the cold night-air brought with it such a gush of
+joy as he had rarely experienced; and he trod the silent streets with
+something of the pleasure of an escaped criminal, until, alas! the
+wind, at the first turning, let him know that he had left his hat
+behind him! He felt as if he had committed a murder, and left his
+card-case with the body. A vague terror grew upon him as he hurried
+along. Justice seemed following on his track. He had found the door on
+the latch: if anything was missing, how should he explain the presence
+of his hat without his own? The devil of the brandy he had drunk was
+gone out of him, and only the gray ashes of its evil fire were left in
+his sick brain, but it had helped first to kindle another fire, which
+was now beginning to glow unsuspected--that of a fever whose fuel had
+been slowly gathering for some time.
+
+He opened the door with his pass-key, and hurried up the stair, his
+long legs taking three steps at a time. Never before had he felt as if
+he were fleeing to a refuge when going home to his wife.
+
+He opened the door of the sitting-room--and there on the floor lay
+Letty and little Tom, as I have already told.
+
+"Why have I heard nothing of this before?" said Mary.
+
+"I am not aware of any right you have to know what happens in this
+house."
+
+"Not from you, of course, Miss Yolland--perhaps not from Mrs. Redmain;
+but the servants talk of most things, and I have not heard a word--"
+
+"How could you," interrupted Sepia, "when you were not in the
+house?--And, so long as nothing was missed, the thing was of no
+consequence," she added. "Now it is different."
+
+This confused Mary a little. She stopped to consider. One thing was
+clear--that, if the ring was not lost till after she left--and of so
+much she was sure--it could not be Tom that had taken it, for he was
+then ill in bed. Something to this effect she managed to say.
+
+"I told you already," returned Sepia, "that I had no suspicion of
+him--at least, I desire to have none, but you may be required to prove
+all you say; and it is as well to let you understand--though there is
+no reason why _I_ should take the trouble--that your going to those
+very people at the time, and their proving to be friends of yours, adds
+to the difficulty."
+
+"How?" asked Mary.
+
+"I am not on the jury," replied Sepia, with indifference.
+
+The scope of her remarks seemed to Mary intended to show that any
+suspicion of her would only be natural. For the moment the idea amused
+her. But Sepia's way of talking about Tom, whatever she meant by it,
+was disgraceful!
+
+"I am astonished you should seem so indifferent," she said, "if the
+character of a gentleman with whom you have been so intimate is so
+seriously threatened as you would imply. I know he has been to see you
+more than once while Mr. and Mrs. Redmain were not yet returned."
+
+Sepia's countenance changed; an evil fire glowed in her eyes, and she
+looked at Mary as if she would search her to the bone. The poorer the
+character, the more precious the repute!
+
+"The foolish fellow," she returned, with a smile of contempt, "chose to
+fall in love with me!--A married man, too!"
+
+"If you understood that, how did he come to be here so often?" asked
+Mary, looking her in the face.
+
+But Sepia knew better than declare war a moment before it was
+unavoidable.
+
+"Have I not just told you," she said, in a haughty tone, "that the man
+was in love with me?"
+
+"And have you not just told me he was a married man? Could he have come
+to the house so often without at least your permission?"
+
+Mary was actually taking the upper hand with her! Sepia felt it with
+scarcely repressive rage.
+
+"He deserved the punishment," she replied, with calmness.
+
+"You do not seem to have thought of his wife!"
+
+"Certainly not. She never gave me offense."
+
+"Is offense the only ground for casting a regard on a fellow-creature?"
+
+"Why should I think of her?"
+
+"Because she was your neighbor, and you were doing her a wrong."
+
+"Once for all, Marston," cried Sepia, overcome at last, "this kind of
+thing will not do with me. I may not be a saint, but I have honesty
+enough to know the genuine thing from humbug. You have thrown dust in a
+good many eyes in this house, but _none_ in mine."
+
+By this time Mary had got her temper quite in hand, taking a lesson
+from the serpent, who will often keep his when the dove loses hers. She
+hardly knew what fear was, for she had in her something a little
+stronger than what generally goes by the name of faith. She was
+therefore able to see that she ought, if possible, to learn Sepia's
+object in talking thus to her.
+
+"Why do you say all this to me?" she asked, quietly. "I can not flatter
+myself it is from friendship."
+
+"Certainly not. But the motive may be worthy, for all that. You are not
+the only one involved. People who would pass for better than their
+neighbors will never believe any good purpose in one who does not
+choose to talk their slang."
+
+Sepia had repressed her rage, and through it looked aggrieved. "She
+confesses to a purpose," said Mary to herself, and waited.
+
+"They are not all villains who are not saints," Sepia went on. "--This
+man's wife is your friend?"
+
+"She is."
+
+"Well, the man himself is my friend--in a sort of a sense." A strange
+shiver went through Mary, and seemed to make her angry. Sepia went on:
+
+"I confess I allowed the poor boy--he is little more--to talk foolishly
+to me. I was amused at first, but perhaps I have not quite escaped
+unhurt; and, as a woman, you must understand that, when a woman has
+once felt in that way, if but for a moment, she would at least
+be--sorry--" Here her voice faltered, and she did not finish the
+sentence, but began afresh: "What I want of you is, through his wife,
+or any way you think best, to let the poor fellow know he had better
+slip away--to France, say--and stop there till the thing blow over."
+
+"But why should you imagine he has had anything to do with the matter?
+The ring will be found, and then the hat will not signify."
+
+"Well," replied Sepia, putting on an air of openness, and for that sake
+an air of familiarity, "I see I must tell you the whole truth. I never
+did for a moment believe Mr. Helmer had anything to do with the
+business, though, when you put me out of temper, I pretended to believe
+it, and that you were in it as well: that was mere irritation. But
+there is sure to be trouble; for my cousin is miserable about her
+sapphire, which she values more than anything she has; and, if it is
+not found, the affair will be put into the hands of the police, and
+then what will become of poor Mr. Helmer, be he as innocent as you and
+I believe him! Even if the judge should declare that he leaves the
+court without a blot on his character, Newgate mud is sure to stick,
+and he will be half looked upon as a thief for the rest of his days:
+the world is so unjust. Nor is that all; for they will put you in the
+witness-box, and make you confess the man an old friend of yours from
+the same part of the country; whereupon the counsel for the prosecution
+will not fail to hint that you ought to be standing beside the accused.
+Believe me, Mary, that, if Mr. Helmer is taken up for this, you will
+not come out of it clean."
+
+"Still you explain nothing," said Mary. "You would not have me believe
+it is for my sake you are giving yourself all this trouble?"
+
+"No. But I thought you would see where I was leading you. For--and now
+for the _whole_ truth--although nothing can touch the character of one
+in my position, it would be worse than awkward for me to be spoken of
+in connection with the poor fellow's visits to the house: _my_ honesty
+would not be called in question as yours would, but what is dear to me
+as my honesty might--nay, it certainly would. You see now why I came to
+you!--You must go to his wife, or, better still, to Mr. Helmer himself,
+and tell him what I have been saying to you. He will at once see the
+necessity of disappearing for a while."
+
+Mary had listened attentively. She could not help fearing that
+something worse than unpleasant might be at hand; but she did not
+believe in Sepia, and in no case could consent that Tom should
+compromise himself. Danger of this kind must be met, not avoided.
+Still, whatever could be done ought to be done to protect him,
+especially in his present critical state. A breath of such a suspicion
+as this reaching him might be the death of him, and of Letty, too.
+
+"I will think over what you have said," she answered; "but I can not
+give him the advice you wish me. What I shall do I can not say--the
+thing has come upon me with such a shock."
+
+"You have no choice that I see," said Sepia. "It is either what I
+propose or ruin. I give you fair warning that I will stick at nothing
+where my reputation is concerned. You and yours shall be trod in the
+dirt before I allow a spot on my character!"
+
+To Mary's relief they were here interrupted by the hurried entrance of
+Mrs. Redmain. She almost ran up to her, and took her by both hands.
+
+"You dear creature! You have brought me my ring!" she cried.
+
+Mary shook her head with a little sigh.
+
+"But you have come to tell me where it is?"
+
+"Alas! no, dear Mrs. Redmain!" said Mary.
+
+"Then you must find it," she said, and turned away with an
+ominous-looking frown. "I will do all I can to help you find it."
+
+"Oh, you _must_ find it! My jewel-case was in your charge."
+
+"But there has been time to lose everything in it, the one after the
+other, since I gave it up. The sapphire ring was there, I know, when I
+went."
+
+"That can not be. You gave me the box, and I put it away myself, and,
+the next time I looked in it, it was not there."
+
+"I wish I had asked you to open it when I gave it you," said Mary.
+
+"I wish you had," said Hesper. "But the ring must be found, or I shall
+send for the police."
+
+"I will not make matters worse, Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, with as much
+calmness as she could assume, and much was needed, "by pointing out
+what your words imply. If you really mean what you say, it is I who
+must insist on the police being sent for."
+
+"I am sure, Mary," said Sepia, speaking for the first time since
+Hesper's entrance, "that your mistress has no intention of accusing
+you."
+
+"Of course not," said Hesper; "only, what am I to do? I must have my
+ring. Why did you come, if you had nothing to tell me about it?"
+
+"How could I stay away when you were in trouble? Have you searched
+everywhere?"
+
+"Everywhere I can think of."
+
+"Would you like me to help you look? I feel certain it will be found."
+
+"No, thank you. I am sick of looking."
+
+"Shall I go, then?--What would you like me to do?"
+
+"Go to your room, and wait till I send for you."
+
+"I must not be long away from my invalids," said Mary, as cheerfully as
+she could.
+
+"Oh, indeed! I thought you had come back to your work!"
+
+"I did not understand from your letter you wished that, ma'am--though,
+indeed, I could not have come just yet in any case."
+
+"Then you mean to go, and leave things just as they are?"
+
+"I am afraid there is no help for it. If I could do anything-. But I
+will call again to-morrow, and every day till the ring is found, if you
+like."
+
+"Thank you," said Hesper, dryly; "I don't think that would be of much
+use."
+
+"I will call anyhow," returned Mary, "and inquire whether you would
+like to see me.--I will go to my room now, and while I wait will get
+some things I want."
+
+"As you please," said Hesper.
+
+Scarcely was Mary in her room, however, when she heard the door, which
+had the trick of falling-to of itself, closed and locked, and knew that
+she was a prisoner. For one moment a frenzy of anger overcame her; the
+next, she remembered where her life was hid, knew that nothing could
+touch her, and was calm. While she took from her drawers the things she
+wanted, and put them in her hand-bag, she heard the door unlocked, but,
+as no one entered, she sat down to wait what would next arrive.
+
+Mrs. Redmain, as soon as she was aware of her loss, had gone in her
+distress to tell her husband, whose gift the ring had been. Unlike his
+usual self, he had showed interest in the affair. She attributed this
+to the value of the jewel, and the fact that he had himself chosen it:
+he was rather, and thought himself very, knowing in stones; and the
+sapphire was in truth a most rare one: but it was for quite other
+reasons that Mr. Redmain cared about its loss: it would, he hoped, like
+the famous carbuncle, cast a light all round it.
+
+He was as yet by no means well, and had not been from the house since
+his return.
+
+The moment Mary was out of the room, Hesper rose.
+
+"I should be a fool to let her leave the house," she said.
+
+"Hesper, you will do nothing but mischief," cried Sepia.
+
+Hesper paid no attention, but, going after Mary, locked the door of her
+room, and, running to her husband's, told him she had made her a
+prisoner.
+
+No sooner was she in her husband's room than Sepia hastened to unlock
+Mary's door; but, just as she did so, she heard some one on the stair
+above, and retreated without going in. She would then have turned the
+key again, but now she heard steps on the stair below, and once more
+withdrew.
+
+Mary heard a knock at her door. Mewks entered. He brought a request
+from his master that she would go to his room.
+
+She rose and went, taking her bag with her.
+
+"You may go now, Mrs. Redmain," said her husband when Mary entered.
+"Get out, Mewks," he added; and both lady and valet disappeared.
+
+"So!" he said, with a grin of pleasure. "Here's a pretty business! You
+may sit down, though. You haven't got the ring in that bag there?"
+
+"Nor anywhere else, sir," answered Mary. "Shall I shake it out on the
+floor?--or on the sofa would be better."
+
+"Nonsense! You don't imagine me such a fool as to suppose, if you had
+it, you would carry it about in your bag!"
+
+"You don't believe I have it, sir--do you?" she returned, in a tone of
+appeal.
+
+"How am I to know what to believe? There is something dubious about
+you--you have yourself all but admitted that: how am I to know that
+robbery mayn't be your little dodge? All that rubbish you talked down
+at Lychford about honesty, and taking no wages, and loving your
+mistress, and all that rot, looks devilish like something off the
+square! That ring, now, the stone of it alone, is worth seven hundred
+pounds: one might let pretty good wages go for a chance like that!"
+
+Mary looked him in the face, and made him no answer. He spied a danger:
+if he irritated her, he would get nothing out of her!
+
+"My girl," he said, changing his tone, "I believe you know nothing
+about the ring; I was only teasing you."
+
+Mary could not help a sigh of relief, and her eyes fell, for she felt
+them beginning to fill. She could not have believed that the judgment
+of such a man would ever be of consequence to her. But the unity of the
+race is a thing that can not be broken.
+
+Now, although Mr. Redmain was by no means so sure of her innocence as
+he had pretended, he did at least wish and hope to find her
+innocent--from no regard for her, but because there was another he
+would be more glad to find concerned in the ugly affair.
+
+"Mrs. Redmain," he went on, "would have me hand you over to the police;
+but I won't. You may go home when you please, and you need fear
+nothing."
+
+He had the house where the Helmers lodged already watched, and knew
+this much, that some one was ill there, and that the doctor came almost
+every day.
+
+"I certainly shall fear nothing," said Mary, not quite trusting him;
+"my fate is in God's hands."
+
+"We know all about that," said Mr. Redmain; "I'm up to most dodges. But
+look here, my girl: it wouldn't be prudent in me, lest there should be
+such a personage as you have just mentioned, to be hard upon any of my
+fellow-creatures: I am one day pretty sure to be in misfortune myself.
+You mightn't think it of me, but I am not quite a heathen, and do
+reflect a little at times. You may be as wicked as myself, or as good
+as Joseph, for anything I know or care, for, as I say, it ain't my
+business to judge you. Tell me now what you are up to, and I will make
+it the better for you."
+
+Mary had been trying hard to get at what he was "up to," but found
+herself quite bewildered.
+
+"I am sorry, sir," she faltered, "but I haven't the slightest idea what
+you mean."
+
+"Then you go home," he said. "I will send for you when I want you."
+
+The moment she was out of the room, he rang his bell violently. Mewks
+appeared.
+
+"Go after that young woman--do you hear? You know her--Miss--damn it,
+what's her name?--Harland or Cranston, or--oh, hang it! you know well
+enough, you rascal!"
+
+"Do you mean Miss Marston, sir?"
+
+"Of course I do! Why didn't you say so before? Go after her, I tell
+you; and make haste. If she goes straight home--you know where--come
+back as soon as she's inside the door."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Damn you, go, or you'll lose sight of her!"
+
+"I'm a-listenin' after the street-door, sir. It ain't gone yet. There
+it is now!"
+
+And with the word he left the room.
+
+Mary was too much absorbed in her own thoughts to note that she was
+followed by a man with the collar of his great-coat up to his eyes, and
+a woolen comforter round his face. She walked on steadily for home,
+scarce seeing the people that passed her. It was clear to Mewks that
+she had not a suspicion of being kept in sight. He saw her in at her
+own door, and went back to his master.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+JOSEPH JASPER.
+
+
+Another fact Mewks carried to his master--namely, that, as Mary came
+near the door of the house, she was met by "a rough-looking man," who
+came walking slowly along, as if he had been going up and down waiting
+for her. He made her an awkward bow as she drew near, and she stopped
+and had a long conversation with him--such at least it seemed to Mewks,
+annoyed that he could hear nothing of it, and fearful of attracting
+their attention--after which the man went away, and Mary went into the
+house. This report made his master grin, for, through the description
+Mewks gave, he suspected a thief disguised as a workman; but, his hopes
+being against the supposition, he dwelt the less upon it.
+
+The man who stopped Mary, and whom, indeed, she would have stopped, was
+Joseph Jasper, the blacksmith. That he was rough in appearance, no one
+who knew him would have wished himself able to deny, and one less like
+a thief would have been hard to find. His hands were very rough and
+ingrained with black; his fingers were long, but chopped off square at
+the points, and had no resemblance to the long, tapering fingers of an
+artist or pickpocket. His clothes were of corduroy, not very grimy,
+because of the huge apron of thick leather he wore at his work, but
+they looked none the better that he had topped them with his tall
+Sunday hat. His complexion was a mixture of brown and browner; his
+black eyebrows hung far over the blackest of eyes, the brightest
+flashing of which was never seen, because all the time he played he
+kept them closed tight. His face wore its natural clothing--a mustache
+thick and well-shaped, and a beard not too large, of a color that
+looked like black burned brown. His hair was black and curled all over
+his head. His whole appearance was that of a workman; a careless glance
+could never have suspected him a poet-musician; as little could even
+such a glance have failed to see in him an honest man. He was
+powerfully built, over the middle height, but not tall. He spoke very
+fair old-fashioned English, with the Yorkshire tone and turn. His walk
+was rather plodding, and his movements slow and stiff; but in communion
+with his violin they were free enough, and the more delicate for the
+strength that was in them; at the anvil they were as supple as
+powerful. On his face dwelt an expression that was not to be read by
+the indifferent--a waiting in the midst of work, as of a man to whom
+the sense of the temporary was always present, but present with the
+constant reminder that, just therefore, work must be as good as work
+can be that things may last their due time.
+
+The following was the conversation concerning the purport of which
+Mewks was left to what conjecture was possible to a serving-man of his
+stamp.
+
+Mary held out her hand to Jasper, and it disappeared in his. He held it
+for a moment with a great but gentle grasp, and, as he let it go, said:
+
+"I took the liberty of watching for you, miss. I wanted to ask a favor
+of you. It seemed to me you would take no offense."
+
+"You might be sure of that," Mary answered. "You have a right to
+anything I can do for you."
+
+He fixed his gaze on her for a moment, as if he did not understand her.
+"That's where it is," he said: "I've _done_ nothing for your people.
+It's all very well to go playing and playing, but that's not doing
+anything; and, if _he_ had done nothing, there would ha' been no
+fiddling. You understand me, miss, I know: work comes before music, and
+makes the soul of it; it's not the music that makes the doing. I'm a
+poor hand at saying without my fiddle, miss: you'll excuse me."
+
+Mary's heart was throbbing. She had not heard a word like this--not
+since her father went to what people call the "long home"--as if a home
+could be too long! What do we want but an endless home?--only it is not
+the grave! She felt as if the spirit of her father had descended on the
+strange workman, and had sent him to her. She looked at him with
+shining eyes, and did not speak. He resumed, as fearing he had not
+conveyed his thought.
+
+"What I think I mean is, miss, that, if the working of miracles in his
+name wouldn't do it, it's not likely playing the fiddle will."
+
+"Oh, I understand you so well!" said Mary, in a voice hardly her own,
+"--so well! It makes me happy to hear you! Tell me what I can do for
+you."
+
+"The poor gentleman in there must want all the help you can give him,
+and more. There must be something left, surely, for a man to do. He
+must want lifting at times, for instance, and that's not fit for either
+of you ladies."
+
+"Thank you," said Mary, heartily. "I will mention it to Mrs. Helmer,
+and I am sure she will be very glad of your help sometimes."
+
+"Couldn't you ask her now, miss? I should like to know at what hour I
+might call. But perhaps the best way would be to walk about here in the
+evening, after my day's work is over, and then you could run down any
+time, and look out: that would be enough; I should be there. Saturday
+nights I could just as well be there all night."
+
+To Tom and Letty it seemed not a little peculiar that a man so much a
+stranger should be ready to walk about the street in order to be at
+hand with help for them; but Mary was only delighted, not surprised,
+for what the man had said to her made the thing not merely
+intelligible, but absolutely reasonable.
+
+Joseph was not, however, allowed to wander the street. The arrangement
+made was, that, as soon as his work was over, he should come and see
+whether there was anything he could do for them. And he never came but
+there was plenty to do. He took a lodging close by, that he might be
+with them earlier, and stay later; and, when nothing else was wanted of
+him, he was always ready to discourse on his violin. Sometimes Tom
+enjoyed his music much, though he found no little fault with his mode
+of playing, for Tom knew something about everything, and could render
+many a reason; at other times, he preferred having Mary read to him.
+
+On one of these latter occasions, Mary, occupied in cooking something
+for the invalid, asked Joseph to read for her. He consented, but read
+very badly--as if he had no understanding of the words, but, on the
+other hand, stopping every few lines, apparently to think and master
+what he had read. This was not good reading anyway, least of all for an
+invalid who required the soothing of half-thought, molten and diluted
+in sweet, even, monotonous sound, and it was long before Mary asked him
+again.
+
+Many things showed that he had had little education, and therefore
+probably the more might be made of him. Mary saw that he must be what
+men call a genius, for his external history had been, by his own
+showing, of an altogether commonplace type.
+
+His father, who was a blacksmith before him, and a local preacher, had
+married a second time, and Joseph was the only child of the second
+marriage. His father had brought him up to his own trade, and, after
+his death, Joseph came to work in London, whither his sister had
+preceded him. He was now thirty, and had from the first been saving
+what he could of his wages in the hope of one day having a smithy of
+his own, and his time more at his ordering.
+
+Mary saw too that in his violin he possessed a grand fundamental
+undeveloped education; he was like a man going about the world with a
+ten-thousand-pound-note in his pocket, and not many sixpences to pay
+his way with. But there was another education working in him far
+deeper, and already more developed, than that which divine music even
+was giving him; this also Mary thoroughly recognized; this it was in
+him that chiefly attracted her; and the man himself knew it as
+underlying all his consciousness.
+
+Though he could ill read aloud, he could read well for his inward
+nourishment; he could write tolerably, and, if he could not spell, that
+mattered a straw, and no more; he had never read a play of
+Shakespeare--had never seen a play; knew nothing of grammar or
+geography--or of history, except the one history comprising all. He
+knew nothing of science; but he could shoe a horse as well as any man
+in the three Ridings, and make his violin talk about things far beyond
+the ken of most men of science.
+
+So much of a change had passed upon Tom in his illness, that Mary saw
+it not unreasonable to try upon him now and then a poem of her favorite
+singer. Occasionally, of course, the feeling was altogether beyond him,
+but even then he would sometimes enter into the literary merit of the
+utterance.
+
+"I had no idea there were such gems in George Herbert, Mary!" he said
+once. "I declare, some of them are even in their structure finer than
+many things that have nothing in them to admire except the structure."
+
+"That is not to be wondered at," replied Mary.
+
+"No," said Joseph; "it is not to be wondered at; for it's clear to me
+the old gentleman plied a good bow. I can see that plain enough."
+
+"Tell us how you see it," said Mary, more interested than she would
+have liked to show.
+
+"Easily," he answered. "There was one poem"--he pronounced it
+_pome_--"you read just now--"
+
+"Which? which?" interrupted Mary, eagerly.
+
+"That I can not tell you; but, all the time you were reading it, I
+heard the gentleman--Mr. George Herbert, you call him--playing the tune
+to it."
+
+"If you heard him so well," ventured Mary, "you could, I fancy, play
+the tune over again to us."
+
+"I think I could," he answered, and, rising, went for his instrument,
+which he always brought, and hung on an old nail in the wall the moment
+he came in.
+
+He played a few bars of a prelude, as if to get himself into harmony
+with the recollection of what he had heard the master play, and then
+began a lively melody, in which he seemed as usual to pour out his
+soul. Long before he reached the end of it, Mary had reached the poem.
+
+"This is the one you mean, is it not?" she said, as soon as he had
+finished--and read it again.
+
+In his turn he did not speak till she had ended.
+
+"That's it, miss," he said then; "I can't mistake it; for, the minute
+you began, there was the old gentleman again with his fiddle."
+
+"And you know now what it says, don't you?" asked Mary.
+
+"I heard nothing but the old gentleman," answered the musician.
+
+Mary turned to Tom.
+
+"Would you mind if I tried to show Mr. Jasper what I see in the poem?
+He can't get a hold of it himself for the master's violin in his ears;
+it won't let him think about it."
+
+"I should like myself to hear what you have got to say about it, Mary!
+Go on," said Tom.
+
+Mary had now for a long time been a student of George Herbert; and
+anything of a similar life-experience goes infinitely further, to make
+one understand another, than any amount of learning or art. Therefore,
+better than many a poet, Mary was able to set forth the scope and
+design of this one. Herself at the heart of the secret from which came
+all his utterance, she could fit herself into most of the convolutions
+of the shell of his expression, and was hence able also to make others
+perceive in his verse not a little of what they were of themselves
+unable to see.
+
+"We shall have you lecturing at the Royal Institution yet, Mary," said
+Tom; "only it will be long before its members care for that sort of
+antique."
+
+Tom's insight had always been ahead of his character, and of late he
+had been growing. People do grow very fast in bed sometimes. Also he
+had in him plenty of material, to which a childlike desire now began to
+give shapes and sequences.
+
+The musician's remark consisted in taking his violin, and once more
+giving his idea of the "old gentleman's" music, but this time with a
+richer expression and fuller harmonies. Mary had every reason to be
+satisfied with her experiment. From that time she talked a good deal
+more about her favorite writers, and interested both the critical taste
+of Tom and the artistic instinct of the blacksmith.
+
+But Joseph's playing had great faults: how could it be otherwise?--and
+to Mary great seemed the pity that genius should not be made perfect in
+faculty, that it should not have that redemption of its body for which
+unwittingly it groaned. And the man was one of those childlike natures
+which may indeed go a long time without discovering this or that
+external fault in themselves, patent to the eye of many an inferior
+onlooker--for the simple soul is the last to see its own outside--but,
+once they become aware of it, begin that moment to set the thing right.
+At the same time he had not enough of knowledge to render it easy to
+show him by words wherein any fault consisted--the nature, the being of
+the fault, that is--what it simply was; but Mary felt confident that,
+the moment he saw a need, he would obey its law.
+
+She had taken for herself the rooms below, formerly occupied by the
+Helmers, with the hope of seeing them before long reinstated in them;
+and there she had a piano, the best she could afford to hire: with its
+aid she hoped to do something toward the breaking of the invisible
+bonds that tied the wings of Jasper's genius.
+
+His great fault lay in his time. Dare I suggest that he contented
+himself with measuring it to his inner ear, and let his fingers, like
+horses which he knew he had safe in hand, play what pranks they
+pleased? A reader may, I think, be measuring verse correctly to
+himself, and yet make of it nothing but rugged prose to his hearers.
+Perhaps this may be how severe masters of quantity in the abstract are
+so careless of it in the concrete--in the audible, namely, where alone
+it is of value. Shall I analogize yet a little further, and suggest the
+many who admire righteousness and work iniquity; who say, "Lord, Lord,"
+and seldom or never obey? Anyhow, a man may have a good enough ear,
+with which he holds all the time a secret understanding, and from
+carelessness offend grievously the ears he ought to please; and it was
+thus with Joseph Jasper.
+
+Mary was too wise to hurry anything. One evening when he came as usual,
+and she knew he was not at the moment wanted, she asked him to take a
+seat while she played something to him. But she was not a little
+disappointed in the reception he gave her offering--a delicate morsel
+from Beethoven. She tried something else, but with no better result. He
+showed little interest: he was not a man capable of showing where
+nothing was, for he never meant to show anything; his expression was
+only the ripple of the unconscious pool to the sway and swirl of the
+fishes below. It seemed as if he had only a narrow entrance for the
+admission of music into his understanding--but a large outlet for the
+spring that rose within him, and was, therefore, a somewhat remarkable
+exception to the common run of mortals: in such, the capacity for
+reception far exceeds the capability of production. His dominant
+thoughts were in musical form, and easily found their expression in
+music; but, mainly no doubt from want of practice in reception, and
+experience of variety in embodiment, the forms in which others gave
+themselves utterance could not with corresponding readiness find their
+way to the sympathetic place in him. But pride or repulsion had no
+share in this defect. The man was open and inspired, and stupid as a
+child.
+
+The next time she made the attempt to open this channel between them,
+something she played did find him, and for a few minutes he seemed lost
+in listening.
+
+"How nice it would be," she said, "if we could play together sometimes!"
+
+"Do you mean both at once, miss?" he asked.
+
+"Yes--you on your violin, and I on the piano."
+
+"That could hardly be, I'm afraid, miss," he answered; "for, you see, I
+don't know always--not exactly--what I'm going to play; and if I don't
+know, and you don't know, how are we to keep together?"
+
+"Nobody can play your own things but yourself, of course--that is,
+until you are able to write them down; but, if you would learn
+something, we could play that together."
+
+"I don't know how to learn. I've heard tell of the notes and all that,
+but I don't know how to work them."
+
+"You have heard the choir in the church--all keeping with the organ,"
+said Mary.
+
+"Scarcely since I was a child--and not very often then--though my
+mother took me sometimes. But I was always wanting to get out again,
+and gave no heed."
+
+"Do you never go to church now?"
+
+"No, miss--not for long. Time's too precious to waste."
+
+"How do you spend it, then?"
+
+"As soon as I've had my breakfast--that's on a Sunday, I mean--I get up
+and lock my door, and set myself to have a day of it. Then I read the
+next thing where I stopped last--whether it be a chapter or a
+verse--till I get the sense of it--if I can't get that, it's no manner
+of use to me; and I generally know when I've got it by finding the bow
+in one hand and the fiddle in the other. Then, with the two together, I
+go stirring and stirring about at the story, and the music keeps coming
+and coming; and when it stops, which it does sometimes all at once,
+then I go back to the book."
+
+"But you don't go on like that all day, do you?" said Mary.
+
+"I generally go on till I'm hungry, and then I go out for something to
+eat. My landlady won't get me any dinner. Then I come back and begin
+again."
+
+"Will you let me teach you to read music?" said Mary, more and more
+delighted with him, and desirous of contributing to his growth--the one
+great service of the universe.
+
+"If you would, miss, perhaps then I might be able to learn. You see, I
+never was like other people. Mother was the only one that didn't take
+me for an innocent. She used to talk big things about me, and the rest
+used to laugh at her. She gave me her large Testament when she was
+dying, but, if it hadn't been for Ann, I should never have been able to
+read it well enough to understand it. And now Ann tells me I'm a
+heathen and worship my fiddle, because I don't go to chapel with her;
+but it do seem such a waste of good time. I'll go to church, though,
+miss, if you tell me it's the right thing to do; only it's hard to work
+all the week, and be weary all the Sunday. I should only be longing for
+my fiddle all the time. You don't think, miss, that a great person like
+God cares whether we pray to him in a room or in a church?"
+
+"No, I don't," answered Mary. "For my own part, I find I can pray best
+at home."
+
+"So can I," said Joseph, with solemn fervor. "Indeed, miss, I can't
+pray at all sometimes till I get my fiddle under my chin, and then it
+says the prayers for me till I grow able to pray myself. And sometimes,
+when I seem to have got to the outside of prayer, and my soul is
+hungrier than ever, only I can't tell what I want, all at once I'm at
+my fiddle again, and it's praying for me. And then sometimes it seems
+as if I lost myself altogether, and God took me, for I'm nowhere and
+everywhere all at once."
+
+Mary thought of the "groanings that can not be uttered." Perhaps that
+is just what music is meant for--to say the things that have no shape,
+therefore can have no words, yet are intensely alive--the unembodied
+children of thought, the eternal child. Certainly the musician can
+groan the better with the aid of his violin. Surely this man's
+instrument was the gift of God to him. All God's gifts are a giving of
+himself. The Spirit can better dwell in a violin than in an ark or in
+the mightiest of temples.
+
+But there was another side to the thing, and Mary felt bound to present
+it.
+
+"But, you know, Mr. Jasper," she said, "when many violins play
+together, each taking a part in relation to all the rest, a much
+grander music is the result than any single instrument could produce."
+
+"I've heard tell of such things, miss, but I've never heard them." He
+had never been to concert or oratorio, any more than the play.
+
+"Then you shall hear them," said Mary, her heart filling with delight
+at the thought. "--But what if there should be some way in which the
+prayers of all souls may blend like many violins? We are all brothers
+and sisters, you know--and what if the gathering together in church be
+one way of making up a concert of souls?--Imagine one mighty prayer,
+made up of all the desires of all the hearts God ever made, breaking
+like a huge wave against the foot of his throne!"
+
+"There would be some force in a wave like that, miss!" said Joseph.
+"But answer me one question: Ain't it Christ that teaches men to pray?"
+
+"Surely," answered Mary. "He taught them with his mouth when he was on
+the earth; and now he teaches them with his mind."
+
+"Then, miss, I will tell you why it seems to me that churches can't be
+the places to tune the fiddles for that kind of consort--and that's
+just why I more than don't care to go into one of them: I never heard a
+sermon that didn't seem to be taking my Christ from me, and burying him
+where I should never find him any more. For the somebody the clergy
+talk about is not only nowise like my Christ, but nowise like a live
+man at all. It always seemed to me more like a guy they had dressed up
+and called by his name than the man I read about in my mother's big
+Testament."
+
+"How my father would have delighted in this man!" said Mary to herself.
+
+"You see, miss," Jasper resumed, "I can't help knowing something about
+these matters, because I was brought up in it all, my father being a
+local preacher, and a very good man. Perhaps, if I had been as clever
+as Sister Ann, I might be thinking now just as she does; but it seems
+to me a man that is born stupid has much to be thankful for: he can't
+take in things before his heart's ready for believing them, and so they
+don't get spoiled, like a child's book before he is able to read it.
+All that I heard when I went with my father to his preachings was to me
+no more than one of the chapters full of names in the Book of
+Chronicles--though I do remember once hearing a Wesleyan clergyman say
+that he had got great spiritual benefit from those chapters. I wasn't
+even frightened at the awful things my father said about hell, and the
+certainty of our going there if we didn't lay hold upon the Saviour;
+for, all the time, he showed but such a ghost or cloud of a man that he
+called the Saviour as it wasn't possible to lay hold upon. Not that I
+reasoned about it that way then; I only felt no interest in the affair;
+and my conscience said nothing about it. But after my father and mother
+were gone, and I was at work away from all my old friends--well, I
+needn't trouble you with what it was that set me a-thinking--it was
+only a great disappointment, such as I suppose most young fellows have
+to go through--I shouldn't wonder," he added with a smile, "if that was
+what you ladies are sent into this world for--to take the conceit out
+of the likes of us, and give us something to think about. What came of
+it was, that I began to read my mother's big Testament in earnest, and
+then my conscience began to speak. Here was a man that said he was
+God's son, and sent by him to look after us, and we must do what he
+told us or we should never be able to see our Father in heaven! That's
+what I made out of it, miss. And my conscience said to me, that I must
+do as he said, seeing he had taken all that trouble, and come down to
+look after us. If he spoke the truth, and nobody could listen to him
+without being sure of that, there was nothing left but just to do the
+thing he said. So I set about getting a hold of anything he did say,
+and trying to do it. And then it was that I first began to be able to
+play on the fiddle, though I had been muddling away at it for a long
+time before. I knew I could play then, because I understood what it
+said to me, and got help out of it. I don't really mean that, you know,
+miss; for I know well enough that the fiddle in itself is nothing, and
+nothing is anything but the way God takes to teach us. And that's how I
+came to know you, miss."
+
+"How do you mean that?" asked Mary.
+
+"I used to be that frightened of Sister Ann that, after I came to
+London, I wouldn't have gone near her, but that I thought Jesus Christ
+would have me go; and, if I hadn't gone to see her, I should never have
+seen you. When I went to see her, I took my fiddle with me to take care
+of me; and, when she would be going on at me, I would just give my
+fiddle a squeeze under my arm, and that gave me patience."
+
+"But we heard you playing to her, you know."
+
+"That was because I always forgot myself while she was talking. The
+first time, I remember, it was from misery--what she was saying sounded
+so wicked, making God out not fit for any honest man to believe in. I
+began to play without knowing it, and it couldn't have been very loud,
+for she went on about the devil picking up the good seed sown in the
+heart. Off I went into that, and there I saw no end of birds with long
+necks and short legs gobbling up the corn. But, a little way off, there
+was the long beautiful stalks growing strong and high, waving in God's
+wind; and the birds did not go near them."
+
+Mary drew a long breath, and said to herself:
+
+"The man is a poet!"--"You're not afraid of your sister now?" she said
+to him.
+
+"Not a bit," he answered. "Since I knew you, I feel as if we had in a
+sort of a way changed places, and she was a little girl that must be
+humored and made the best of. When she scolds, I laugh, and try to make
+a bit of fun with her. But she's always so sure she's right, that you
+wonder how the world got made before she was up."
+
+They parted with the understanding that, when he came next, she should
+give him his first lesson in reading music. With herself Mary made
+merry at the idea of teaching the man of genius his letters.
+
+But, when once, through trying to play with her one of his own pieces
+which she had learned from hearing him play it, he had discovered how
+imperative it was to keep good time, he set himself to the task with a
+determination that would have made anything of him that he was only
+half as fit to become as a musician.
+
+When, however, in a short time, he was able to learn from notes, he
+grew so delighted with some of the music Mary got for him, entering
+into every nicety of severest law, and finding therein a better liberty
+than that of improvisation, that he ceased for long to play anything of
+his own, and Mary became mortally afraid lest, in developing the
+performer, she had ruined the composer.
+
+"How can I go playing such loose, skinny things," he would say, "when
+here are such perfect shapes all ready to my hand!"
+
+But Mary said to herself that, if these were shapes, his were odors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+THE SAPPHIRE.
+
+
+One morning, as Mary sat at her piano, Mewks was shown into the room.
+He brought the request from his master that she would go to him; he
+wanted particularly to see her. She did not much like it, neither did
+she hesitate.
+
+She was shown into the room Mr. Redmain called his study, which
+communicated by a dressing-room with his bedroom. He was seated,
+evidently waiting for her.
+
+"Ah, Miss Marston!" he said; "I have a piece of good news for you--so
+good that I thought I should like to give it you myself."
+
+"You are very kind, sir," Mary answered.
+
+"There!" he went on, holding out what she saw at once was the lost ring.
+
+"I am so glad!" she said, and took it in her hand. "Where was it found?"
+
+"There's the point!" he returned. "That is just why I sent for you! Can
+you suggest any explanation of the fact that it was found, after all,
+in a corner of my wife's jewel-box? Who searched the box last?"
+
+"I do not know, sir."
+
+"Did you search it?"
+
+"No, sir. I offered to help Mrs. Redmain to look for the ring, but she
+said it was no use. Who found it, sir?"
+
+"I will tell you who found it, if you will tell me who put it there."
+
+"I don't know what you mean, sir. It must have been there all the time."
+
+"That's the point again! Mrs. Redmain swears it was not, and could not
+have been, there when she looked for it. It is not like a small thing,
+you see. There is something mysterious about it."
+
+He looked hard at Mary.
+
+Now, Mary had very much admired the ring, as any one must who had an
+eye for stones; and had often looked at it--into the heart of
+it--almost loving it; and while they were talking now, she kept gazing
+at it. When Mr. Redmain ended, she stood silent. In her silence, her
+attention concentrated itself upon the sapphire. She stood long,
+looking closely at it, moving it about a little, and changing the
+direction of the light; and, while her gaze was on the ring, Mr.
+Redmain's gaze was on her, watching her with equal attention. At last,
+with a sigh, as if she waked from a reverie, she laid the ring on the
+table. But Mr. Redmain still stared in her face.
+
+"Now what is it you've got in your head?" he said at last. "I have been
+watching you think for three minutes and a half, I do believe. Come,
+out with it!"
+
+"Hardly _think_, sir," answered Mary. "I was only plaguing myself
+between my recollection of the stone and the actual look of it. It is
+so annoying to find what seemed a clear recollection prove a deceitful
+one! It may appear a presumptuous thing to say, but my recollection
+seems of a finer color."
+
+While she spoke, she had again taken the ring, and was looking at it.
+Mr. Redmain snatched it from her hand.
+
+"The devil!" he cried. "You haven't the face to hint that the stone has
+been changed?"
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+"Such a thing never came into my head, sir; but now that you have put
+it there, I could almost believe it."
+
+"Go along with you!" he cried, casting at her a strange look which she
+could not understand, and the same moment pulling the bell hard.
+
+That done, he began to examine the ring intently, as Mary had been
+doing, and did not speak a word. Mewks came.
+
+"Show Miss Marston out," said his master; "and tell my coachman to
+bring the hansom round directly."
+
+"For Miss Marston?" inquired Mewks, who had learned not a little
+cunning in the service.
+
+"No!" roared Mr. Redmain; and Mewks darted from the room, followed more
+leisurely by Mary.
+
+"I don't know what's come to master!" ventured Mewks, as he led the way
+down the stair.
+
+But Mary took no notice, and left the house.
+
+For about a week she heard nothing.
+
+In the meantime Mr. Redmain had been prosecuting certain inquiries he
+had some time ago begun, and another quite new one besides. He was
+acquainted with many people of many different sorts, and had been to
+jewelers and pawnbrokers, gamblers and lodging-house keepers, and had
+learned some things to his purpose.
+
+Once more Mary received from him a summons, and once more, considerably
+against her liking, obeyed. She was less disinclined to go this time,
+however, for she felt not a little curious about the ring.
+
+"I want you to come back to the house," he said, abruptly, the moment
+she entered his room.
+
+For such a request Mary was not prepared. Even since the ring was
+found, so long a time had passed that she never expected to hear from
+the house again. But Tom was now so much better, and Letty so much like
+her former self, that, if Mrs. Redmain had asked her, she might perhaps
+have consented.
+
+"Mr. Redmain," she answered, "you must see that I can not do so at your
+desire."
+
+"Oh, rubbish! humbug!" he returned, with annoyance. "Don't fancy I am
+asking you to go fiddle-faddling about my wife again: I don't see how
+you _can_ do that, after the way she has used you! But I have reasons
+for wanting to have you within call. Go to Mrs. Perkin. I won't take a
+refusal."
+
+"I can not do it, Mr. Redmain," said Mary; "the thing is impossible."
+And she turned to leave the room.
+
+"Stop, stop!" cried Mr. Redmain, and jumped from his chair to prevent
+her.
+
+He would not have succeeded had not Mewks met her in the doorway full
+in the face. She had to draw back to avoid him, and the man, perceiving
+at once how things were, closed the door the moment he entered, and
+stood with his back against it.
+
+"He's in the drawing-room, sir," said Mewks.
+
+A scarcely perceptible sign of question was made by the master, and
+answered in kind by the man.
+
+"Show him here directly," said Mr. Redmain. Then turning to Mary, "Go
+out that way, Miss Marston, if you will go," he said, and pointed to
+the dressing-room.
+
+Mary, without a suspicion, obeyed; but, just as she discovered that the
+door into the bedroom beyond was locked, she heard the door behind her
+locked also. She turned, and knocked.
+
+"Stay where you are," said Mr. Redmain, in a low but imperative voice.
+"I can not let you out till this gentleman is gone. You must hear what
+passes: I want you for a witness."
+
+Bewildered and annoyed, Mary stood motionless in the middle of the
+room, and presently heard a man, whose voice seemed not quite strange
+to her, greet Mr. Redmain like an old friend. The latter made a slight
+apology for having sent for him to his study--claiming the privilege,
+he said, of an invalid, who could not for a time have the pleasure of
+meeting him either at the club or at his wife's parties. The visitor
+answered agreeably, with a touch of merriment that seemed to indicate a
+soul at ease with itself and with the world.
+
+But here Mary all at once came to herself, and was aware that she was
+in quite a false position. She withdrew therefore to the farthest
+corner, sat down, closed her ears with the palms of her hands, and
+waited.
+
+She had sat thus for a long time, not weary, but occupied with such
+thoughts as could hardly for a century or two cross the horizon line of
+such a soul as Mr. Redmain's, even if he were at once to repent, when
+she heard a loud voice calling her name from a distance. She raised her
+head, and saw the white, skin-drawn face of Mr. Redmain grinning at her
+from the open door. When he spoke again, his words sounded like
+thunder, for she had removed her hands from her ears.
+
+"I fancy you've had a dose of it!" he said.
+
+As he spoke, she rose to her feet, her countenance illumined both with
+righteous anger and the tender shine of prayer. Her look went to what
+he had of a heart, and the slightest possible color rose to his face.
+
+"Gone a step too far, damn it!" he murmured to himself. "There's no
+knowing one woman by another!"
+
+"I see!" he said; "it's been a trifle too much for you, and I don't
+wonder! You needn't believe a word I said about myself. It was all hum
+to make the villain show his game."
+
+"I have not heard a word, Mr. Redmain," she said with indignation.
+
+"Oh, you needn't trouble yourself!" he returned. "I meant you to hear
+it all. What did I put you there for, but to get your oath to what I
+drew from the fellow? A fine thing if your pretended squeamishness ruin
+my plot! What do you think of yourself, hey?--But I don't believe it."
+
+He looked at her keenly, expecting a response, but Mary made him none.
+For some moments he regarded her curiously, then turned away into the
+study, saying:
+
+"Come along. By Jove! I'm ashamed to say it, but I half begin to
+believe in you. I did think I was past being taken in, but it seems
+possible for once again. Of course, you will return to Mrs. Redmain now
+that all is cleared up."
+
+"It is impossible," Mary answered. "I can not live in a house where the
+lady mistrusts and the gentleman insults me."
+
+She left the room, and Mr. Redmain did not try to prevent her. As she
+left the house she burst into tears; and the fact Mewks carried to his
+master.
+
+The man was the more careful to report everything about Mary, that
+there was one in the house of whom he never reported anything, but to
+whom, on the contrary, he told everything he thought she would care to
+know. Till Sepia came, he had been conventionally faithful--faithful
+with the faith of a lackey, that is--but she had found no difficulty in
+making of him, in respect of her, a spy upon his master.
+
+I will now relate what passed while Mary sat deaf in the corner.
+
+Mr. Redmain asked his visitor what he would have, as if, although it
+was quite early, he must, as a matter of course, stand in need of
+refreshment. He made choice of brandy and soda-water, and the bell was
+rung. A good deal of conversation followed about a disputed point in a
+late game of cards at one of the clubs.
+
+The talk then veered in another direction--that of personal adventure,
+so guided by Mr. Redmain. He told extravagant stories about himself and
+his doings, in particular various _ruses_ by which he had contrived to
+lay his hands on money. And whatever he told, his guest capped,
+narrating trick upon trick to which on different occasions he had had
+recourse. At all of them Mr. Redmain laughed heartily, and applauded
+their cleverness extravagantly, though some of them were downright
+swindling.
+
+At last Mr. Redmain told how he had once got money out of a lady. I do
+not believe there was a word of truth in it. But it was capped by the
+other with a narrative that seemed specially pleasing to the listener.
+In the midst of a burst of laughter, he rose and rang the bell. Count
+Galofta thought it was to order something more in the way of
+"refreshment," and was not a little surprised when he heard his host
+desire the man to request the favor of Miss Yolland's presence. But the
+Count had not studied non-expression in vain, and had brought it to a
+degree of perfection not easily disturbed. Casting a glance at him as
+he gave the message, Mr. Redmain could read nothing; but this was in
+itself suspicious to him--and justly, for the man ought to have been
+surprised at such a close to the conversation they had been having.
+
+Sepia had been told that Galofta was in the study, and therefore
+received the summons thither--a thing that had never happened
+before--with the greater alarm. She made, consequently, what
+preparation she could against surprise. Thoroughly capable of managing
+her features, her anxiety was sufficient nevertheless to deprive her of
+power over her complexion, and she entered the room with the pallor
+peculiar to the dark-skinned. Having greeted the Count with the
+greatest composure, she turned to Mr. Redmain with question in her eyes.
+
+"Count Galofta," said Mr. Redmain in reply, "has just been telling me a
+curious story of how a certain rascal got possession of a valuable
+jewel from a lady with whom he pretended to be in love, and I thought
+the opportunity a good one for showing you a strange discovery I have
+made with regard to the sapphire Mrs. Redmain missed for so long. Very
+odd tricks are played with gems--such gems, that is, as are of value
+enough to make it worth a rogue's while."
+
+So saying, he took the ring from one drawer, and from another a bottle,
+from which he poured something into a crystal cup. Then he took a file,
+and, looking at Galofta, in whose well-drilled features he believed he
+read something that was not mere curiosity, said, "I am going to show
+you something very curious," and began to file asunder that part of the
+ring which immediately clasped the sapphire, the setting of which was
+open.
+
+"What a pity!" cried Sepia; "you are destroying the ring! What will
+Cousin Hesper say?"
+
+Mr. Redmain filed away, heedless; then with the help of a pair of
+pincers freed the stone, and held it up in his hand.
+
+"You see this?" he said.
+
+"A splendid sapphire!" answered Count Galofta, taking it in his
+fingers, but, as Mr. Redmain saw, not looking at it closely.
+
+"I have always heard it called a splendid stone," said Sepia, whose
+complexion, though not her features, passed through several changes
+while all this was going on: she was anxious.
+
+Nor did her inquisitor fail to surprise the uneasy glances she threw,
+furtively though involuntarily, in the face of the Count--who never
+once looked in hers: tolerably sure of himself, he was not sure of her.
+
+"That ring, when I bought it--the stone of it," said Mr. Redmain, "was
+a star sapphire, and worth seven hundred pounds; now, the whole affair
+is worth about ten."
+
+As he spoke, he threw the stone into the cup, let it lie a few moments,
+and took it out again; when, almost with a touch, he divided it in two,
+the one a mere scale.
+
+"There!" he said, holding out the thin part on the tip of a finger,
+"that is a slice of sapphire; and there!" holding out the rest of the
+seeming stone, "that is glass."
+
+"What a shame!" cried Sepia.
+
+"Of course," said the Count, "you will prosecute the jeweler."
+
+"I will not prosecute the jeweler," answered Mr. Redmain; "but I have
+taken some trouble to find out who changed the stones."
+
+With that he threw both the bits of blue into a drawer, and the
+contents of the cup into the fire. A great flame flew up the chimney,
+and, as if struck at the sight of it, he stood gazing for a moment
+after it had vanished.
+
+When he turned, the Count was gone, as he had expected, and Sepia stood
+with eyes full of anger and fear. Her face was set and colorless, and
+strange to look upon.
+
+"Very odd--ain't it?" said Mr. Redmain, and, opening the door of his
+dressing-room, called out:
+
+"Miss Marston!"
+
+When he turned, Sepia too was gone.
+
+I would not have my reader take Sepia for an accomplice in the robbery.
+Even Mr. Redmain did not believe that: she was much too prudent! His
+idea was, that she had been wearing the ring--Hesper did not mind what
+she wore of hers--and that (I need not give his conjecture in detail),
+with or without her knowledge, the fellow had got hold of it and
+carried it away, then brought it back, treating the thing as a joke,
+when she was only too glad to restore it to the jewel-case, hoping the
+loss of it would then pass for an oversight on the part of Hesper. If
+he was right in this theory of the affair, then the Count had certainly
+a hold upon her, and she dared not or would not expose him! He had
+before discovered that, about the time when the ring disappeared, the
+Count had had losses, and was supposed unable to meet them, but had
+suddenly showed himself again "flush of money," and from that time had
+had an extraordinary run of luck.
+
+When he went out of the door of Mr. Redmain's study, he vanished from
+the house and from London. Turning the first corner he came to, and the
+next and the next, he stepped into a mews, the court of which seemed
+empty, and slipped behind the gate. He wore a new hat, and was clean
+shaved except his upper lip. Presently a man came out of the mews in a
+Scotch cap and a full beard.
+
+What had become of him Mr. Redmain did not care. He had no desire to
+punish him. It was enough he had found him out, proved his suspicion
+correct, and obtained evidence against Sepia. He did not at once make
+up his mind how he would act on this last; while he lived, it did not
+matter so much; and he had besides a certain pleasure in watching his
+victim. But Hesper, free, rich, and beautiful, and far from wise, with
+Sepia for counselor, was not an idea to be contemplated with
+equanimity. Still he shrank from the outcry and scandal of sending her
+away; for certainly his wife, if it were but to oppose him, would
+refuse to believe a word against her cousin.
+
+For the present, therefore, the thing seemed to blow over. Mr. Redmain,
+who had pleasure in behaving handsomely so far as money was concerned,
+bought his wife the best sapphire he could find, and, for once, really
+pleased her.
+
+But Sepia knew that Mr. Redmain had now to himself justified his
+dislike of her; and, as he said nothing, she was the more certain he
+meant something. She lived, therefore, in constant dread of his sudden
+vengeance, against which she could take no precaution, for she had not
+even a conjecture as to what form it might assume. From that hour she
+was never at peace in his presence, and hardly out of it; from every
+possible _tete-a-tete_ with him she fled as from a judgment.
+
+Nor was it a small addition to her misery that she imagined Mary
+cognizant of Mr. Redmain's opinion and intention with regard to her,
+and holding the worst possible opinion of her. For, whatever had passed
+first between the Count and Mr. Redmain, she did not doubt Mary had
+heard, and was prepared to bring against her when the determined moment
+should arrive. How much the Count might or might not have said, she
+could not tell; but, seeing their common enemy had permitted him to
+escape, she more than dreaded he had sold her secret for his own
+impunity, and had laid upon her a burden of lies as well.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+REPARATION.
+
+
+With all Mr. Redmain's faults, there was a certain love of justice in
+the man; only, as is the case with most of us, it had ten times the
+reference to the action of other people that it had to his own: I mean,
+he made far greater demand for justice upon other people than upon
+himself; and was much more indignant at any shortcoming of theirs which
+crossed any desire or purpose of his than he was anxious in his own
+person to fulfill justice when that fulfillment in its turn would cross
+any wish he cherished. Badly as he had himself behaved to Mary, he was
+now furious with his wife for having treated her so heartlessly that
+she could not return to her service; for he began to think she might be
+one to depend upon, and to desire her alliance in the matter of ousting
+Sepia from the confidence of his wife.
+
+However indifferent a woman may be to the opinion of her husband, he
+can nevertheless in general manage to make her uncomfortable enough if
+he chooses; and Mr. Redmain did choose now, in the event of her
+opposition to his wishes: when he set himself to do a thing, he hated
+defeat even more than he loved success.
+
+The moment Mary was out of the study, he walked into his wife's
+boudoir, and shut the door behind him. His presence there was enough to
+make her angry, but she took no notice of it.
+
+"I understand, Mrs. Redmain," he began, "that you wish to bring the
+fate of Sodom upon the house."
+
+"I do not know what you mean," she answered, scarcely raising her eyes
+from her novel--and spoke the truth, for she knew next to nothing of
+the Bible, while the Old Testament was all the literature Mr. Redmain
+was "up in."
+
+"You have turned out of it the only just person in it, and we shall all
+be in hell soon!"
+
+"How dare you come to my room with such horrid language!"
+
+"You'll hear worse before long, if you keep on at this rate. My
+language is not so bad as your actions. If you don't have that girl
+back, and in double-quick time, too, I shall know how to make you!"
+
+"You have taught me to believe you capable of anything."
+
+"You shall at least find me capable of a good deal. Do you imagine,
+madam, I have found you a hair worse than I expected?"
+
+"I never took the trouble to imagine anything about you."
+
+"Then I need not ask you whether I married you to please you or to
+please myself?"
+
+"You need not. You can best answer that question yourself."
+
+"Then we understand each other."
+
+"We do not, Mr. Redmain; and, if this occurs again, I shall go to
+Durnmelling."
+
+She spoke with a vague idea that he also stood in some awe of the
+father and mother whose dread, however well she hid it, she would
+never, while she lived, succeed in shaking off. But to the husband it
+was a rare delight to speak with conscious rectitude in the moral
+chastisement of his wife. He burst into a loud and almost merry laugh.
+
+"Happy they will be to see you there, madam! Why, you goose, if I send
+a telegram before you, they won't so much as open the door to you! They
+know better which side their bread is buttered."
+
+Hesper started up in a rage. This was too much--and the more too much,
+that she believed it would be as he said.
+
+"Mr. Redmain, if you do not leave the room, I will."
+
+"Oh, don't!" he cried, in a tone of pretended alarm. His pleasure was
+great, for he had succeeded in stinging the impenetrable. "You really
+ought to consider before you utter such an awful threat! I will go
+myself a thousand times rather!--But will you not feel the want of
+pocket-money when you come to pay a rough cabman? The check I gave you
+yesterday will not last you long."
+
+"The money is my own, Mr. Redmain."
+
+"But you have not yet opened a banking-account in your own name."
+
+"I suppose you have a meaning, Mr. Redmain; but I am not in the habit
+of using cabs."
+
+"Then you had better get into the habit; for I swear to you, madam, if
+you don't fetch that girl home within the week, I will, next Monday,
+discharge your coachman, and send every horse in the stable to
+Tattersall's! Good morning."
+
+She had no doubt he would do as he said; she knew Mr. Redmain would
+just enjoy selling her horses. But she could not at once give in. I say
+"_could_ not," because hers was the weak will that can hardly bring
+itself to do what it knows it must, and is continually mistaken for the
+strong will that defies and endures. She had a week to think about it,
+and she would see!
+
+During the interval, he took care not once to refer to his threat, for
+that would but weaken the impression of it, he knew.
+
+On the Sunday, after service, she knocked at his door, and, being
+admitted, bade him good morning, but with no very gracious air--as,
+indeed, he would have been the last to expect.
+
+"We have had a sermon on the forgiveness of injuries, Mr. Redmain," she
+said.
+
+"By Jove!" interrupted her husband, "it would have been more to the
+purpose if I, or poor Mary Marston, had had it; for I swear you put our
+souls in peril!"
+
+"The ring was no common one, Mr. Redmain; and the young woman had, by
+leaving the house, placed herself in a false position: every one
+suspected her as much as I did. Besides, she lost her temper, and
+talked about forgiving _me_, when I was in despair about my ring!"
+
+"And what, pray, was your foolish ring compared to the girl's
+character?"
+
+"A foolish ring, indeed!--Yes, it was foolish to let you ever have the
+right to give it me! But, as to her character, that of persons in her
+position is in constant peril. They have to lay their account with
+that, and must get used to it. How was I to know? We can not read each
+other's hearts."
+
+"Not where there is no heart in the reader."
+
+Hesper's face flushed, but she did her best not to lose her temper. Not
+that it would have been any great loss if she had, for there is as much
+difference in the values of tempers as in those who lose them. She said
+nothing, and her husband resumed:
+
+"So you came to forgive me?" he said.
+
+"And Marston," she answered.
+
+"Well, I will accept the condescension--that is, if the terms of it are
+to my mind."
+
+"I will make no terms. Marston may return when she pleases."
+
+"You must write and ask her."
+
+"Of course, Mr. Redmain. It would hardly be suitable that _you_ should
+ask her."
+
+"You must write so as to make it possible to accept your offer."
+
+"I am not deceitful, Mr. Redmain."
+
+"You are not. A man must be fair, even to his wife."
+
+"I will show you the letter I write."
+
+"If you please."
+
+She had to show him half a score ere he was satisfied, declaring he
+would do it himself, if she could not make a better job of it.
+
+At length one was dispatched, received, and answered: Mary would not
+return. She had lost all hope of being of any true service to Mrs.
+Redmain, and she knew that, with Tom and Letty, she was really of use
+for the present. Mrs. Redmain carried the letter, with ill-concealed
+triumph, to her husband; nor did he conceal his annoyance.
+
+"You must have behaved to her very cruelly," he said. "But you have
+done your best now--short of a Christian apology, which it would be
+folly to demand of you. I fear we have seen the last of her."--"And
+there was I," he said to himself, "for the first time in my life,
+actually beginning to fancy I had perhaps thrown salt upon the tail of
+that rare bird, an honest woman! The devil has had quite as much to do
+with my history as with my character! Perhaps that will be taken into
+the account one day."
+
+But Mary lay awake at night, and thought of many things she might have
+said and done better when she was with Hesper, and would gladly have
+given herself another chance; but she could no longer flatter herself
+she would ever be of any real good to her. She believed there was more
+hope of Mr. Redmain even. For had she not once, for one brief moment,
+seen him look a trifle ashamed of himself? while Hesper was and
+remained, so far as she could judge, altogether satisfied with herself.
+Equal to her own demands upon herself, there was nothing in her to
+begin with--no soil to work upon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+ANOTHER CHANGE.
+
+
+For some time Tom made progress toward health, and was able to read a
+good part of the day. Most evenings he asked Joseph to play to him for
+a while; he was fond of music, and fonder still of criticism--upon
+anything. When he had done with Joseph, or when he did not want him,
+Mary was always ready to give the latter a lesson; and, had he been a
+less gifted man than he was, he could not have failed to make progress
+with such a teacher.
+
+The large-hearted, delicate-souled woman felt nothing strange in the
+presence of the workingman, but, on the contrary, was comfortably aware
+of a being like her own, less privileged but more gifted, whose
+nearness was strength. And no teacher, not to say no woman, could have
+failed to be pleased at the thorough painstaking with which he followed
+the slightest of her hints, and the delight his flushed face would
+reveal when she praised the success he had achieved.
+
+It was not long before he began to write some of the things that came
+into his mind. For the period of quiescence as to production, which
+followed the initiation of more orderly study, was, after all, but of
+short duration, and the return tide of musical utterance was stronger
+than ever. Mary's delight was great when first he brought her one of
+his compositions very fairly written out--after which others followed
+with a rapidity that astonished her. They enabled her also to
+understand the man better and better; for to have a thing to brood over
+which we are capable of understanding must be more to us than even the
+master's playing of it. She could not be sure this or that was correct,
+according to the sweet inexorability of musical ordainment, but the
+more she pondered them, the more she felt that the man was original,
+that the material was there, and the law at hand, that he brought his
+music from the only bottomless well of utterance, the truth, namely, by
+which alone the soul most glorious in gladness, or any other the
+stupidest of souls, can live.
+
+To the first he brought her she contrived to put a poor little faulty
+accompaniment; and when she played his air to him so accompanied, his
+delight was touching, and not a little amusing. Plainly he thought the
+accompaniment a triumph of human faculty, and beyond anything he could
+ever develop. Never pupil was more humble, never pupil more obedient;
+thinking nothing of himself or of anything he had done or could do, his
+path was open to the swiftest and highest growth. It matters little
+where a man may be at this moment; the point is whether he is growing.
+The next point will be, whether he is growing at the ratio given him.
+The key to the whole thing is _obedience_, and nothing else.
+
+What the gift of such an instructor was to Joseph, my reader may be
+requested to imagine. He was like a man seated on the grass outside the
+heavenly gate, from which, slow-opening every evening as the sun went
+down, came an angel to teach, and teach, until he too should be fit to
+enter in: an hour would arrive when she would no longer have to come
+out to him where he sat. Under such an influence all that was gentlest
+and sweetest in his nature might well develop with rapidity, and every
+accidental roughness--and in him there was no other--by swift degrees
+vanish from both speech and manners. The angels do not want tailors to
+make their clothes: their habits come out of themselves. But we are
+often too hard upon our fellows; for many of those in the higher ranks
+of life--no, no, I mean of society--whose insolence wakens ours, as
+growl wakes growl in the forest, are not yet so far removed from the
+savage--I mean in their personal history--as some in the lowest ranks.
+When a nobleman mistakes the love of right in another for a hatred of
+refinement, he can not be far from mistaking insolence for good
+manners. Of such a nobility, good Lord, deliver us from all envy!
+
+As to falling in love with a lady like Mary, such a thing was as far
+from Jasper's consciousness as if she had been a duchess. She belonged
+to another world from his, a world which his world worshiped, waiting.
+He might miss her even to death; her absence might, for him, darken the
+universe as if the sun had withdrawn his brightness; but who thinks of
+falling in love with the sun, or dreams of climbing nearer to his
+radiance?
+
+The day will one day come--or what of the long-promised kingdom of
+heaven?--when a woman, instead of spending anxious thought on the
+adornment of her own outward person, will seek with might the adornment
+of the inward soul of another, and will make that her crown of
+rejoicing. Nay, are there none such even now? The day will come when a
+man, rather than build a great house for the overflow of a mighty
+hospitality, will give himself, in the personal labor of outgoing love,
+to build spiritual houses like St. Paul--a higher art than any of man's
+invention. O my brother, what were it not for thee to have a hand in
+making thy brother beautiful!
+
+Be not indignant, my reader: not for a moment did I imagine thee
+capable of such a mean calling! It is left to a certain school of weak
+enthusiasts, who believe that such growth, such embellishment, such
+creation, is all God cares about; these enthusiasts can not indeed see,
+so blind have they become with their fixed idea, how God could care for
+anything else. They actually believe that the very Son of the
+life-making God lived and died for that, and for nothing else. That
+such men and women are fools, is and has been so widely believed, that,
+to men of the stamp of my indignant reader, it has become a fact! But
+the end alone will reveal the beginning. Such a fool was Prometheus,
+with the vulture at his heart--but greater than Jupiter with his gods
+around him.
+
+There soon came a change, however, and the lessons ceased altogether.
+
+Tom had come down to his old quarters, and, in the arrogance of
+convalescence, had presumed on his imagined strength, and so caught
+cold. An alarming relapse was the consequence, and there was no more
+playing; for now his condition began to draw to a change, of which, for
+some time, none of them had even thought, the patient had seemed so
+certainly recovering. The cold settled on his lungs, and he sank
+rapidly.
+
+Joseph, whose violin was useless now, was not the less in attendance.
+Every evening, when his work was over, he came knocking gently at the
+door of the parlor, and never left until Tom was settled for the night.
+The most silently helpful, undemonstrative being he was, that doctor
+could desire to wait upon patient. When it was his turn to watch, he
+never closed an eye, but at daybreak--for it was now spring--would
+rouse Mary, and go off straight to his work, nor taste food until the
+hour for the mid-day meal arrived.
+
+Tom speedily became aware that his days were numbered--phrase of
+unbelief, for are they not numbered from the beginning? Are our hairs
+numbered, and our days forgotten--till death gives a hint to the
+doctor? He was sorry for his past life, and thoroughly ashamed of much
+of it, saying in all honesty he would rather die than fall for one
+solitary week into the old ways--not that he wished to die, for, with
+the confidence of youth, he did not believe he could fall into the old
+ways again. For my part, I think he was taken away to have a little
+more of that care and nursing which neither his mother nor his wife had
+been woman enough to give the great baby. After all, he had not been
+one of the worst of babies.
+
+Is it strange that one so used to bad company and bad ways should have
+so altered, in so short a time, and without any great struggle? The
+assurance of death at the door, and a wholesome shame of things that
+are past, may, I think, lead up to such a swift change, even in a much
+worse man than Tom. For there is the Life itself, all-surrounding, and
+ever pressing in upon the human soul, wherever that soul will afford a
+chink of entrance; and Tom had not yet sealed up all his doors.
+
+When he lay there dead--for what excuse could we have for foolish
+lamentation, if we did not speak of the loved as _lying dead?_--Letty
+had him already enshrined in her heart as the best of husbands--as her
+own Tom, who had never said a hard word to her--as the cleverest as
+well as kindest of men who had written poetry that would never die
+while the English language was spoken. Nor did "The Firefly" spare its
+dole of homage to the memory of one of its gayest writers. Indeed, all
+about its office had loved him, each after his faculty. Even the boy
+cried when he heard he was gone, for to him too he had always given a
+kind word, coming and going. A certain little runnel of verse flowed no
+more through the pages of "The Firefly," and in a month there was not
+the shadow of Tom upon his age. But the print of him was deep in the
+heart of Letty, and not shallow in the affection of Mary; nor were such
+as these, insignificant records for any one to leave behind him, as
+records go. Happy was he to have left behind him any love, especially
+such a love as Letty bore him! For what is the loudest praise of
+posterity to the quietest love of one's own generation? For his mother,
+her memory was mostly in her temper. She had never understood her
+wayward child, just because she had given him her waywardness, and not
+parted with it herself, so that between them the two made havoc of
+love. But she who gives her child all he desires, in the hope of thus
+binding his love to herself, no less than she who thwarts him in
+everything, may rest assured of the neglect she has richly earned. When
+she heard of his death, she howled and cursed her fate, and the woman,
+meaning poor Letty, who had parted her and her Tom, swearing she would
+never set eyes upon her, never let her touch a farthing of Tom's money.
+She would not hear of paying his debts until Mary told her she then
+would, upon which the fear of public disapprobation wrought for right
+if not righteousness.
+
+But what was Mary to do now with Letty? She was little more than a baby
+yet, not silly from youth, but young from silliness. Children must
+learn to walk, but not by being turned out alone in Cheapside.
+
+She was relieved from some perplexity for the present, however, by the
+arrival of a letter from Mrs. Wardour to Letty, written in a tone of
+stiffly condescendent compassion--not so unpleasant to Letty as to her
+friend, because from childhood she had been used to the nature that
+produced it, and had her mind full of a vast, undefined notion of the
+superiority of the writer. It may be a question whether those who fill
+our inexperienced minds with false notions of their greatness, do us
+thereby more harm or good; certainly when one comes to understand with
+what an arrogance and self-assertion they have done so, putting into us
+as reverence that which in them is conceit, one is ready to be scornful
+more than enough; but, rather than have a child question such claims, I
+would have him respect the meanest soul that ever demanded respect; the
+first shall be last in good time, and the power of revering come forth
+uninjured; whereas a child judging his elders has already withered the
+blossom of his being.
+
+But Mrs. Wardour's letter was kind-perhaps a little repentant; it is
+hard to say, for ten persons will repent of a sin for one who will
+confess it--I do not mean to the priest--that may be an easy matter,
+but to the only one who has a claim to the confession, namely, the
+person wronged. Yet such confession is in truth far more needful to the
+wronger than to the wronged; it is a small thing to be wronged, but a
+horrible thing to wrong.
+
+The letter contained a poverty-stricken expression of sympathy, and an
+invitation to spend the summer months with them at her old home. It
+might, the letter said, prove but a dull place to her after the gayety
+to which she had of late been accustomed, but it might not the less
+suit her present sad situation, and possibly uncertain prospects.
+
+Letty's heart felt one little throb of gladness at the thought of being
+again at Thornwick, and in peace. With all the probable unpleasant
+accompaniments of the visit, nowhere else, she thought, could she feel
+the same sense of shelter as where her childhood had passed. Mary also
+was pleased; for, although Letty might not be comfortable, the visit
+would end, and by that time she might know what could be devised best
+for her comfort and well-being.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+DISSOLUTION.
+
+
+It was now Mary's turn to feel that she was, for the first time in her
+life, about to be cut adrift--adrift, that is, as a world is adrift, on
+the surest of paths, though without eyes to see. For ten days or so,
+she could form no idea of what she was likely or would like to do next.
+But, when we are in such perplexity, may not the fact be accepted as
+showing that decision is not required of us--perhaps just because our
+way is at the moment being made straight for us?
+
+Joseph called once or twice, but, for Letty's sake, they had no music.
+As they met so seldom now, Mary, anxious to serve him as she could,
+offered him the loan of some of her favorite books. He accepted it with
+a gladness that surprised her, for she did not know how much he had of
+late been reading.
+
+One day she received an unexpected visit--from Mr. Brett, her lawyer.
+He had been searching into the affairs of the shop, and had discovered
+enough to make him uneasy, and indeed fill him with self-reproach that
+he had not done so with more thoroughness immediately on her father's
+death. He had come to tell her all he knew, and talk the matter over
+with her, that they might agree what proceedings should be taken.
+
+I will not weary myself or my readers with business detail, for which
+kind of thing I have no great aptitude, and a good deal of
+incapacitating ignorance; but content myself with the briefest
+statement of the condition in which Mr. Brett found the affairs of Mr.
+Turnbull.
+
+He had been speculating in several companies, making haste to be rich,
+and had periled and lost what he had saved of the profits of the
+business, and all of Mary's as well that had not been elsewhere
+secured. He had even trenched on the original capital of the firm, by
+postponing the payment of moneys due, and allowing the stock to run
+down and to deteriorate, and things out of fashion to accumulate, so
+that the business had perceptibly fallen off. But what displeased Mary
+more than anything was, that he had used money of her father's to
+speculate with in more than one public-house; and she knew that, if in
+her father's lifetime he had so used even his own, it would have been
+enough to make him insist on dissolving partnership.
+
+It was impossible to allow her money to remain any longer in the power
+of such a man, and she gave authority to Mr. Brett to make the
+necessary arrangements for putting an end to business relations between
+them.
+
+It was a somewhat complicated, therefore tedious business; and things
+looked worse the further they were searched into. Unable to varnish the
+facts to the experience of a professional eye, Mr. Turnbull wrote Mary
+a letter almost cringing in its tone, begging her to remember the years
+her father and he had been as brothers; how she had grown up in the
+shop, and had been to him, until misunderstandings arose, into the
+causes of which he could not now enter, in the place of a daughter; and
+insisting that her withdrawal from it had had no small share in the
+ruin of the business. For these considerations, and, more than all, for
+the memory of her father, he entreated her to leave things as they
+were, to trust him to see after the interests of the daughter of his
+old friend, and not insist upon measures which must end in a forced
+sale, in the shutting up of the shop of Turnbull and Marston, and the
+disgracing of her father's name along with his.
+
+Mary replied that she was acting by the advice of her father's lawyer,
+and with the regard she owed her father's memory, in severing all
+connection with a man in whom she no longer had confidence; and
+insisted that the business must be wound up as soon as possible.
+
+She instructed Mr. Brett, at the same time, that, if it could be
+managed, she would prefer getting the shop, even at considerable loss,
+into her own hands, with what stock might be in it, when she would
+attempt to conduct the business on principles her father would have
+approved, whereby she did not doubt of soon restoring it to repute.
+While she had no intention, she said, of selling so _well_ as Mr.
+Turnbull would fain have done, she believed she would soon be able to
+buy to just as good advantage as he. It would be necessary, however, to
+keep her desire a secret, else Mr. Turnbull would be certain to
+frustrate it.
+
+Mr. Brett approved of her plan, for he knew she was much respected, and
+had many friends. Mr. Turnbull would be glad, he said, to give up the
+whole to escape prosecution--that at least was how Mary interpreted his
+somewhat technical statement of affairs between them.
+
+The swindler wrote again, begging for an interview--which she declined,
+except in the presence of her lawyer.
+
+She made up her mind that she would not go near Testbridge till
+everything was settled, and the keys of the shop in Mr. Brett's hands;
+and remained, therefore, where she was--with Letty, who to keep her
+company delayed her departure as long as she could without giving
+offense at Thornwick.
+
+A few days before Letty was at last compelled to leave, Jasper called,
+and heard about as much as they knew themselves of their plans. When
+Mary said to him she would miss her pupil, he smiled in a sort of
+abstracted way, as if not quite apprehending what she said, which
+seemed to Mary a little odd, his manners in essentials being those of a
+gentleman, as judged by one a little more than a lady; for there is an
+unnamed degree higher than the ordinary _lady_. So Mary was left
+alone--more alone than she had ever been in her life. But she did not
+feel lonely, for the best of reasons--that she never fancied herself
+alone, but knew that she was not. Also she had books at her command,
+being one of the few who can read; and there were picture-galleries to
+go to, and music-lessons to be had. Of these last she crowded in as
+many as her master could be persuaded to give her--for it would be
+long, she knew, before she was able to have such again.
+
+Joseph Jasper never came near her. She could not imagine why, and was
+disappointed and puzzled. To know that Ann Byrom was in the house was
+not a great comfort to her--she regarded so much that Mary loved as of
+earth and not of heaven. God's world even she despised, because men
+called it nature, and spoke of its influences. But Mary did go up to
+see her now and then. Very different she seemed from the time when
+first they were at work together over Hesper's twilight dress! Ever
+since Mary had made the acquaintance of her brother, she seemed to have
+changed toward her. Perhaps she was jealous; perhaps she believed Mary
+was confirming him in his bad ways. Just where they were all three of
+one mind--just _there_ her rudimentary therefore self-sufficient
+religion shut them out from her sympathy and fellowship.
+
+Alone, and with her time at her command, Mary was more inclined than
+she had ever been, except for her father's company, to go to church.
+The second Sunday after Letty left her, she went to the one nearest,
+and in the congregation thought she saw Joseph. A week before, she
+would have waited for him as he came out, but, now that he seemed to
+avoid her, she would not, and went home neither comforted by the sermon
+nor comfortable with herself. For the parson, instead of recognizing,
+through all defects of the actual, the pattern after which God had made
+man, would fain have him remade after the pattern of the middle-age
+monk--a being far superior, no doubt, to the most of his
+contemporaries, but as far from the beauty of the perfect man as the
+mule is from that of the horse; and she was annoyed with herself that
+she was annoyed with Joseph. It was the middle of summer before the
+affairs of the firm were wound up, and the shop in the hands of the
+London man whom Mr. Brett had employed in the purchase.
+
+Lawyer as he was, however, Mr. Brett had not been sharp enough for
+Turnbull. The very next day, a shop in the same street, that had been
+to let for some time, displayed above its now open door the sign, _John
+Turnbull, late_--then a very small of--_Turnbull and Marston;_
+whereupon Mr. Brett saw the oversight of which he had been guilty.
+There was nothing in the shop when it was opened, but that Turnbull
+utilized for advertisement: he had so arranged, that within an hour the
+goods began to arrive, and kept arriving, by every train, for days and
+days after, while all the time he made public show of himself, fussing
+about, the most triumphant man in the town. It made people talk, and if
+not always as he would have liked to hear them talk, yet it was talk,
+and, in the matter of advertisement, that is the main thing.
+
+When it was told Mary, it gave her not the smallest uneasiness. She
+only saw what had several times seemed on the point of arriving in her
+father's lifetime. She would not have moved a finger to prevent it. Let
+the two principles meet, with what result God pleased!
+
+Whether he had suspected her design, and had determined to challenge
+her before the public, I can not tell; but his wife's aversion to
+shopkeeping was so great, that one who knew what sort of scene passed
+because of it between them, would have expected that, but for some very
+strong reason, he would have been glad enough to retire from that mode
+of gaining a livelihood. As it was, things appeared to go on with them
+just as before. They still inhabited the villa, the wife scornful of
+her surroundings, and the husband driving a good horse to his shop
+every morning. How he managed it all, nobody knew but himself, and
+whether he succeeded or not was a matter of small interest to any
+except his own family and his creditors. He was a man nowise beloved,
+although there was something about him that carried simple people with
+him--for his ends, not theirs. To those who alluded to the change, he
+represented it as entirely his own doing, to be rid of the interference
+of Miss Marston in matters of which she knew nothing. He knew well that
+a confident lie has all the look of truth, and, while fact and
+falsehood were disputing together in men's mouths, he would be selling
+his drapery. The country people were flattered by the confidence he
+seemed to put in them by this explanation, and those who liked him
+before sought the new shop as they had frequented the old one.
+
+Unlike most men, not to say lawyers, Mr. Brett was fully recognizant to
+Mary of his oversight, and was not a little relieved to be assured she
+would not have had the thing otherwise: she would gladly meet Mr.
+Turnbull in a fair field--not that she would in the least acknowledge
+or think of him as a rival; she would simply carry out her own ideas of
+right, without regard to him or any measures he might take; the result
+should be as God willed. Mr. Brett shook his head: he knew her father
+of old, and saw the daughter prepared to go beyond the father. Theirs
+were principles that did not come within the range of his practice! He
+said to himself and his wife that the world could not go on for a
+twelvemonth if such ways were to become universal: whether by the world
+he meant his own profession, I will not inquire. Certainly he did not
+make the reflection that the new ways are intended to throw out the old
+ways; and the worst argument against any way is that the world can not
+go on so; for that is just what is wanted--that the world should not go
+on so. Mr. Brett nevertheless admired not only Mary's pluck, but the
+business faculty which every moment she manifested: there is a holy way
+of doing business, and, little as business men may think it, that is
+the standard by which they must be tried; for their judge in business
+affairs is not their own trade or profession, but the man who came to
+convince the world concerning right and wrong and the choice between
+them; or, in the older speech-to reprove the world of sin, and of
+righteousness, and of judgment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+THORNWICK.
+
+
+It was almost with bewilderment that Mrs. Helmer revisited Thornwick.
+The near past seemed to have vanished like a dream that leaves a sorrow
+behind it, and the far past to take its place. She had never been
+accustomed to reflect on her own feelings; things came, were welcome or
+unwelcome, proved better or worse than she had anticipated, passed
+away, and were mostly forgotten. With plenty of faculty, Letty had not
+yet emerged from the chrysalid condition; she lived much as one in a
+dream, with whose dream mingle sounds and glimmers from the waking
+world. Very few of us are awake, very few even alive in true, availing
+sense. "Pooh! what stuff!" says the sleeper, and will say it until the
+waking begins to come.
+
+On the threshold of her old home, then, Letty found her old self
+awaiting her; she crossed it, and was once more just Letty, a Letty
+wrapped in the garments of sorrow, and with a heaviness at the heart,
+but far from such a miserable Letty as during the last of her former
+life there. Little joy had been hers since the terrible night when she
+fled from its closed doors; and now that she returned, she could take
+up everything where she had left it, except the gladness. But peace is
+better than gladness, and she was on the way to find that.
+
+Mrs. Wardour, who, for all her severity, was not without a good-sized
+heart, and whoso conscience had spoken to her in regard of Letty far
+oftener than any torture would have made her allow, was touched with
+compassion at sight of her worn and sad look; and, granting to herself
+that the poor thing had been punished enough, even for her want of
+respect to the house of Thornwick, broke down a little, though with
+well-preserved dignity, and took the wandering ewe-lamb to her bosom.
+Letty, loving and forgiving always, nestled in it for a moment, and in
+her own room quietly wept a long time. When she came out, Mrs. Wardour
+pleased herself with the fancy that her eyes were red with the tears of
+repentance; but Letty never dreamed of repenting, for that would have
+been to deny Tom, to cut off her married life, throw it from her, and
+never more see Tom.
+
+By degrees, rapid yet easy, she slid into all her old ways; took again
+the charge of the dairy as if she had never left it; attended to the
+linen; darned the stockings; and in everything but her pale, thin face,
+and heavy, exhausted heart, was the young Letty again. She even went to
+the harness-room to look to Cousin Godfrey's stirrups and bits; but
+finding, morning after morning for a whole week, that they had not once
+been neglected, dismissed the care-not without satisfaction.
+
+Mrs. Wardour continued kind to her; but every now and then would allow
+a tone as of remembered naughtiness to be sub-audible in speech or
+request. Letty, even in her own heart, never resented it. She had been
+so used to it in the old days, that it seemed only natural. And then
+her aunt considered her health in the kindest way. Now that Letty had
+known some of the troubles of marriage, she felt more sympathy with
+her, did not look down upon her from quite such a height, and to Letty
+this was strangely delightful. Oh, what a dry, hard, cold world this
+would grow to, but for the blessing of its many sicknesses!
+
+When Godfrey saw her moving about the house as in former days, but
+changed, like one of the ghosts of his saddest dreams, a new love began
+to rise out of the buried seed of the old. In vain he reasoned with
+himself, in vain he resisted. The image of Letty, with its trusting
+eyes fixed on him so "solemn sad," and its watching looks full of
+ministration, haunted him, and was too much for him. She was never the
+sort of woman he could have fancied himself falling in love with; he
+did in fact say to himself that she was only _almost_ a lady-but at the
+word his heart rebuked him for a traitor to love and its holy laws.
+Neither in person was she at all his ideal. A woman like Hesper,
+uplifted and strong, broad-fronted and fearless, large-limbed, and full
+of latent life, was more of the ideal he could have written poetry
+about. But we are deeper than we know. Who is capable of knowing his
+own ideal? The ideal of a man's self is hid in the bosom of God, and
+may lie ages away from his knowledge; and his ideal of woman is the
+ideal belonging to this unknown self: the ideal only can bring forth an
+ideal. He can not, therefore, know his own ideal of woman; it is,
+nevertheless--so I presume--this his own unknown ideal that makes a man
+choose against his choice. Gladly would Godfrey now have taken Letty to
+his arms. It was no longer anything that from boyhood he had vowed
+rather to die unmarried, and let the land go to a stranger, than marry
+a widow. He had to recall every restraining fact of his and her
+position to prevent him from now precipitating that which he had before
+too long delayed. But the gulf of the grave and the jealousy of a
+mother were between them; for, if he were again to rouse her
+suspicions, she would certainly get rid of Letty, as she had before
+intended, so depriving her of a home, and him of opportunity. He kept,
+therefore, out of Letty's way as much as he could, went more about the
+farm, and took long rides.
+
+Nothing was further from Letty than any merest suspicion of the sort of
+regard Godfrey cherished for her. There was in her nothing of the
+self-sentimental. Her poet was gone from her, but she did not therefore
+take to poetry; nay, what poetry she had learned to like was no longer
+anything to her, now her singing bird had flown to the land of song. To
+her, Tom was the greatest, the one poet of the age; he had been
+hers--was hers still, for did he not die telling her that he would go
+on watching till she came to him? He had loved her, she knew; he had
+learned to love her better before he died. She must be patient; the day
+would come when she should be a Psyche, as he had told her, and soar
+aloft in search of her mate. The sense of wifehood had grown one with
+her consciousness. It mingled with all her prayers, both in chamber and
+in church. As she went about the house, she was dreaming of her Tom--an
+angel in heaven, she said to herself, but none the less her husband,
+and waiting for her. If she did not read poetry, she read her New
+Testament; and if she understood it only in a childish fashion, she
+obeyed it in a child-like one, whence the way of all wisdom lay open
+before her. It is not where one is, but in what direction he is going.
+Before her, too, was her little boy--borne in his father's arms, she
+pictured him, and hearing from him of the mother who was coming to them
+by and by, when God had made her good enough to rejoin them!
+
+But, while she continued thus simple, Godfrey could not fail to see how
+much more of a woman she had grown: he was not yet capable of seeing
+that she would--could never hare got so far with him, even if he had
+married her.
+
+Love and marriage are of the Father's most powerful means for the
+making of his foolish little ones into sons and daughters. But so
+unlike in many cases are the immediate consequences to those desired
+and expected, that it is hard for not a few to believe that he is
+anywhere looking after their fate--caring about them at all. And the
+doubt would be a reasonable one, if the end of things was marriage. But
+the end is life--that we become the children of God; after which, all
+things can and will go their grand, natural course; the heart of the
+Father will be content for his children, and the hearts of the children
+will be content in their Father.
+
+Godfrey indulged one great and serious mistake in reference to Letty,
+namely, that, having learned the character of Tom through the saddest
+of personal experience, she must have come to think of him as he did,
+and must have dismissed from her heart every remnant of love for him.
+Of course, he would not hint at such a thing, he said to himself, nor
+would she for a moment allow it, but nothing else could be the state of
+her mind! He did not know that in a woman's love there is more of the
+specially divine element than in a man's--namely, the original, the
+unmediated. The first of God's love is not founded upon any merit,
+rests only on being and need, and the worth that is yet unborn.
+
+The Redmains were again at Durnmelling--had been for some weeks; and
+Sepia had taken care that she and Godfrey should meet--on the footpath
+to Testbridge, in the field accessible by the breach in the ha-ha--here
+and there and anywhere suitable for a little detention and talk that
+should seem accidental, and be out of sight. Nor was Godfrey the man to
+be insensible to the influence of such a woman, brought to bear at
+close quarters. A man less vulnerable--I hate the word, but it is the
+right one with Sepia concerned, for she was, in truth, an enemy--might
+perhaps have yielded room to the suspicion that these meetings were not
+all so accidental as they appeared, and as Sepia treated them; but no
+glimmer of such a thought passed through the mind of Godfrey. He knew
+nothing of all that my readers know to Sepia's disadvantage, and her
+eyes were enough to subdue most men from the first--for a time at
+least. Had it not been for the return of Letty, she would by this time
+have had him her slave: nothing but slavery could it ever be to love a
+woman like her, who gave no love in return, only exercised power. But
+although he was always glad to meet her, and his heart had begun to
+beat a little faster at sight of her approach, the glamour of her
+presence was nearly destroyed by the arrival of Letty; and Sepia was
+more than sharp enough to perceive a difference in the expression of
+his eyes the next time she met him. At the very first glance she
+suspected some hostile influence at work--intentionally hostile, for
+persons with a consciousness like Sepia's are always imagining enemies.
+And as the two worst enemies she could have were the truth and a woman,
+she was alternately jealous and terrified: the truth and a woman
+together, she had not yet begun to fear; that would, indeed, be too
+much!
+
+She soon found there was a young woman at Thornwick, who had but just
+arrived; and ere long she learned who she was--one, indeed, who had
+already a shadowy existence in her life--was it possible the shadow
+should be now taking solidity, and threatening to foil her? Not once
+did it occur to her that, were it so, there would be retribution in it.
+She had heard of Tom's death through "The Firefly," which had a kind,
+extravagant article about him, but she had not once thought of his
+widow--and there she was, a hedge across the path she wanted to go! If
+the house of Durnmelling had but been one story higher, that she might
+see all round Thornwick!
+
+For some time now, as I have already more than hinted, Sepia had been
+fashioning a man to her thrall--Mewks, namely, the body-servant of Mr.
+Redmain. It was a very gradual process she had adopted, and it had been
+the more successful. It had got so far with him that whatever Sepia
+showed the least wish to understand, Mewks would take endless trouble
+to learn for her. The rest of the servants, both at Durnmelling and in
+London, were none of them very friendly with her--least of all Jemima,
+who was now with her mistress as lady's-maid, the accomplished
+attendant whom Hesper had procured in place of Mary being away for a
+holiday.
+
+The more Sepia realized, or thought she realized, the position she was
+in, the more desirous was she to get out of it, and the only feasible
+and safe way, in her eyes, was marriage: there was nothing between that
+and a return to what she counted slavery. Rather than lift again such a
+hideous load of irksomeness, she would find her way out of a world in
+which it was not possible, she said, to be both good and comfortable:
+she had, in truth, tried only the latter. But if she could, she
+thought, secure for a husband this gentleman-yeoman, she might hold up
+her head with the best. Even if Galofta should reappear, she would know
+then how to meet him: with a friend or two, such as she had never had
+yet, she could do what she pleased! It was hard work to get on quite
+alone--or with people who cared only for themselves! She must have some
+love on her side! some one who cared for _her_!
+
+From all she could learn, there was nothing that amounted even to
+ordinary friendship between Mr. Wardour and the young widow. She was in
+the family but as a distant poor relation--"Much as I am myself!"
+thought Sepia, with a bitter laugh that even in her own eyes she should
+be comparable to a poor creature like Letty. The fact, however,
+remained that Godfrey was a little altered toward her: she must have
+been telling him something against her--something she had heard from
+that detestable little hypocrite who was turned away on suspicion of
+theft! Yes--that was how Sepia talked _to herself_ about Mary.
+
+One morning, Letty, finding she had an hour's leisure, for her aunt did
+not pursue her as of old time, wandered out to the oak on the edge of
+the ha-ha, so memorable with the shadowy presence of her Tom. She had
+not been seated under it many minutes before Godfrey caught sight of
+her from his horse's back: knowing his mother was gone to Testbridge,
+he yielded to an urgent longing, took his horse to the stable, and
+crossed the grass to where she sat.
+
+Letty was thinking of Tom--what else was there of her own to
+do?--thinking like a child, looking up into the cloud-flecked sky, and
+thinking Tom was somewhere there, though she could not see him: she
+must be good and patient, that she might go up to him, as he could not
+come down to her--if he could, he would have come long ago! All the
+enchantment of the first days of her love had come back upon the young
+widow; all the ill that had crept in between had failed from out her
+memory, as the false notes in music melt in the air that carries the
+true ones across ravine and river, meadow and grove, to the listening
+ear. Letty lived in a dream of her husband--in heaven, "yet not from
+her"--such a dream of bliss and hope as in itself went far to make up
+for all her sorrows.
+
+She was sitting with her back toward the tree and her face to
+Thornwick, and yet she did not see Godfrey till he was within a few
+yards of her. She smiled, expecting his kind greeting, but was startled
+to hear from behind her instead the voice of a lady greeting him. She
+turned her head involuntarily: there was the head of Sepia rising above
+the breach in the ha-ha, and Godfrey had turned aside and run to give
+her his hand.
+
+Now Letty knew Sepia by sight, from the evening she had spent at the
+old hall; more of her she knew nothing. From the mind of Tom, in his
+illness, her baleful influence had vanished like an evil dream, and
+Mary had not thought it necessary to let him know how falsely,
+contemptuously, and contemptibly, she had behaved toward him. Letty,
+therefore, had no feeling toward Sepia but one of admiration for her
+grace and beauty, which she could appreciate the more that they were so
+different from her own.
+
+"Thank you," said Sepia, holding fast by Godfrey's hand, and coming up
+with a little pant. "What a lovely day it is for your haymaking! How
+can you afford the time to play knight-errant to a distressed damsel?"
+
+"The hay is nearly independent of my presence," replied Godfrey. "Sun
+and wind have done their parts too well for my being of much use."
+
+"Take me with you to see how they are getting on. I am as fond of hay
+as Bottom in his translation."
+
+She had learned Godfrey's love of literature, and knew that one
+quotation may stand for much knowledge.
+
+"I will, with pleasure," said Godfrey, perhaps a little consoled in the
+midst of his disappointment; and they walked away, neither taking
+notice of Letty.
+
+"I did not know," she said to herself, "that the two houses had come
+together at last! What a handsome couple they make!"
+
+What passed between them is scarcely worthy of record. It is enough to
+say that Sepia found her companion distrait, and he felt her a little
+invasive. In a short while they came back together, and Sepia saw Letty
+under the great bough of the Durnmelling oak. Godfrey handed her down
+the rent, careful himself not to invade Durnmelling with a single foot.
+She ran home, and up to a certain window with her opera-glass. But the
+branches and foliage of the huge oak would have concealed pairs and
+pairs of lovers.
+
+Godfrey turned toward Letty. She had not stirred.
+
+"What a beautiful creature Miss Yolland is!" she said, looking up with
+a smile of welcome, and a calmness that prevented the slightest
+suspicion of a flattering jealousy.
+
+"I was coming to _you_," returned Godfrey. "I never saw her till her
+head came up over the ha-ha.--Yes, she is beautiful--at least, she has
+good eyes."
+
+"They are splendid! What a wife she would make for you, Cousin Godfrey!
+I should like to see such a two."
+
+Letty was beyond the faintest suggestion of coquetry. Her words drove a
+sting to the heart of Godfrey. He turned pale. But not a word would he
+have spoken then, had not Letty in her innocence gone on to torture
+him. She sprang from the ground.
+
+"Are you ill, Cousin Godfrey?" she cried in alarm, and with that sweet
+tremor of the voice that shows the heart is near. "You are quite
+white!--Oh, dear! I've said something I oughtn't to have said! What can
+it be? Do forgive me, Cousin Godfrey." In her childlike anxiety she
+would have thrown her arms round his neck, but her hands only reached
+his shoulders. He drew back: such was the nature of the man that every
+sting tasted of offense. But he mastered himself, and in his turn,
+alarmed at the idea of having possibly hurt her, caught her hands in
+his. As they stood regarding each other with troubled eyes, the
+embankment of his prudence gave way, and the stored passion broke out.
+
+"You don't _mean_ you would like to see me married, Letty?" he groaned.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I do, Cousin Godfrey! You would make such a lovely
+husband!"
+
+"Ah! I thought as much! I knew you never cared for me, Letty!"
+
+He dropped her hands, and turned half aside, like a figure warped with
+fire.
+
+"I care for you more than anybody in the world--except, perhaps, Mary,"
+said Letty: truthfulness was a part of her.
+
+"And I care for you more than all the world!--more than very being--it
+is worthless without you. O Letty! your eyes haunt me night and day! I
+love you with my whole soul."
+
+"How kind of you, Cousin Godfrey!" faltered Letty, trembling, and not
+knowing what she said. She was very frightened, but hardly knew why,
+for the idea of Godfrey in love with her was all but inconceivable.
+Nevertheless, its approach was terrible. Like a fascinated bird she
+could not take her eyes off his face. Her knees began to fail her; it
+was all she could do to stand. But Godfrey was full of himself, and had
+not the most shadowy suspicion of how she felt. He took her emotion for
+a favorable sign, and stupidly went on:
+
+"Letty, I can't help it! I know I oughtn't to speak to you like
+this--so soon, but I can't keep quiet any longer. I love you more than
+the universe and its Maker. A thousand times rather would I cease to
+live, than live without you to love me. I have loved you for years and
+years--longer than I know. I was loving you with heart and soul and
+brain and eyes when you went away and left me."
+
+"Cousin Godfrey!" shrieked Letty, "don't you know I belong to Tom?"
+
+And she dropped like one lifeless on the grass at his feet.
+
+Godfrey felt as if suddenly damned; and his hell was death. He stood
+gazing on the white face. The world, heaven, God, and nature were dead,
+and that was the soul of it all, dead before him! But such death is
+never born of love. This agony was but the fog of disappointed
+self-love; and out of it suddenly rose what seemed a new power to live,
+but one from a lower world: it was all a wretched dream, out of which
+he was no more to issue, in which he must go on for ever, dreaming, yet
+acting as one wide awake! Mechanically he stooped and lifted the
+death-defying lover in his arms, and carried her to the house. He felt
+no thrill as he held the treasure to his heart. It was the merest
+material contact. He bore her to the room where his mother sat, laid
+her on the sofa, said he had found her under the oak-tree--and went to
+his study, away in the roof. On a chair in the middle of the floor he
+sat, like a man bereft of all. Nothing came between him and suicide but
+an infinite scorn. A slow rage devoured his heart. Here he was, a man
+who knew his own worth, his faithfulness, his unchangeableness, cast
+over the wall of the universe, into the waste places, among the broken
+shards of ruin! If there was a God--and the rage in his heart declared
+his being--why did he make him? To make him for such a misery was pure
+injustice, was willful cruelty! Henceforward he would live above what
+God or woman could do to him! He rose and went to the hay-field, whence
+he did not return till after midnight.
+
+He did not sleep, but he came to a resolution. In the morning he told
+his mother that he wanted a change; now that the hay was safe, he would
+have a run, he hardly knew where--possibly on the Continent; she must
+not be uneasy if she did not hear from him for a week or two; perhaps
+he would have a look at the pyramids. The old lady was filled with
+dismay; but scarcely had she begun to expostulate when she saw in his
+eyes that something was seriously amiss, and held her peace--she had
+had to learn that with both father and son. Godfrey went, and courted
+distraction. Ten years before, he would have brooded: that he would not
+do now: the thing was not worth it! His pride was strong as ever, and
+both helped him to get over his suffering, and prevented him from
+gaining the good of it. He intrenched himself in his pride. No one
+should say he had not had his will! He was a strong man, and was going
+to prove it to himself afresh!
+
+Thus thought Godfrey; but he is in reality a weak man who must have
+recourse to pride to carry him through. Only, if a man has not love
+enough to make a hero of him, what is he to do?
+
+He was away a month, and came back in seeming health and spirits. But
+it was no small relief to him to find on his arrival that Letty was no
+longer at Thornwick.
+
+She had gone through a sore time. To have made Godfrey unhappy, made
+her miserable; but how was she to help it? She belonged to Tom! Not
+once did she entertain the thought of ceasing to be Tom's. She did not
+even say to herself, what would Tom do if she forgot and forsook
+him--and for what he could not help! for having left her because death
+took him away! But what was she to do? She must not remain where she
+was. No more must she tell his mother why she went.
+
+She wrote to Mary, and told her she could not stay much longer. They
+were very kind, she said, but she must be gone before Godfrey came back.
+
+Mary suspected the truth. The fact that Letty did not give her any
+reason was almost enough. The supposition also rendered intelligible
+the strange mixture of misery and hardness in Godfrey's behavior at the
+time of Letty's old mishap. She answered, begging her to keep her mind
+easy about the future, and her friend informed of whatever concerned
+her.
+
+This much from Mary was enough to set Letty at comparative ease. She
+began to recover strength, and was able to write a letter to Godfrey,
+to leave where he would find it, in his study.
+
+It was a lovely letter--the utterance of a simple, childlike
+spirit--with much in it, too, I confess, that was but prettily
+childish. She poured out on Godfrey the affection of a womanchild. She
+told him what a reverence and love he had been to her always; told him,
+too, that it would change her love into fear, perhaps something worse,
+if he tried to make her forget Tom. She told him he was much too grand
+for her to dare love him in that way, but she could look up to him like
+an angel--only he must not come between her and Tom. Nothing could be
+plainer, simpler, honester, or stronger, than the way the little woman
+wrote her mind to the great man. Had he been worthy of her, he might
+even yet, with her help, have got above his passion in a grand way, and
+been a great man indeed. But, as so many do, he only sat upon himself,
+kept himself down, and sank far below his passion.
+
+When he went to his study the day after his return, he saw the letter.
+His heart leaped like a wild thing in a trap at sight of the
+ill-shaped, childish writing; but--will my lady reader believe it?--the
+first thought that shot through it was--"She shall find it too late! I
+am not one to be left and taken at will!" When he read it, however, it
+was with a curling lip of scorn at the childishness of the creature to
+whom he had offered the heart of Godfrey Wardour. Instead of admiring
+the lovely devotion of the girl-widow to her boy-husband, he scorned
+himself for having dreamed of a creature who could not only love a fool
+like Tom Helmer, but go on loving him after he was dead, and that even
+when Godfrey Wardour had condescended to let her know he loved her. It
+was thus the devil befooled him. Perhaps the worst devil a man can be
+posessed withal, is himself. In mere madness, the man is beside
+himself; but in this case he is inside himself; the presiding,
+indwelling, inspiring sprit of him is himself, and that is the hardest
+of all to cast out. Godfrey rose form the reading of that letter
+_cured,_ as he called it. But it was a cure that left the wound open as
+a door to the entrance of evil things. He tore the letter into a
+thousand pieces, and throw them into the empty grate--not even showed
+it the respect of burning it with fire.
+
+Mary had got her affairs settled, and was again in the old place, the
+hallowed temple of so many holy memories. I do not forget it was a shop
+I call a temple. In that shop God had been worshiped with holiest
+worship--that is, obedience--and would be again. Neither do I forget
+that the devil had been worshiped there too--in what temple is he not?
+He has fallen like lightning from heaven, but has not yet been cast out
+of the earth. In that shop, however, he would be worshiped no more for
+a season.
+
+At once she wrote to Letty, saying the room which had been hers was at
+her service as soon as she pleased to occupy it: she would take her
+father's.
+
+Letty breathed a deep breath of redemption, and made haste to accept
+the offer. But to let Mrs. Wardour know her resolve was a severe strain
+on her courage.
+
+I will not give the conversation that followed her announcement that
+she was going to visit Mary Marston. Her aunt met it with scorn and
+indignation. Ingratitude, laziness, love of low company, all the old
+words of offense she threw afresh in her face. But Letty could not help
+being pleased to find that her aunt's storm no longer swamped her boat.
+When she began, however, to abuse Mary, calling her a low creature, who
+actually gave up an independent position to put herself at the beck and
+call of a fine lady, Letty grew angry.
+
+"I must not sit and hear you call Mary names, aunt," she said. "When
+you cast me out, she stood by me. You do not understand her. She is the
+only friend I ever had-except Tom."
+
+"You dare, you thankless hussy, to say such a thing in the house where
+you've been clothed and fed and sheltered for so many years! You're the
+child of your father with a vengeance! Get out of my sight!"
+
+"Aunt--" said Letty, rising.
+
+"No aunt of yours!" interrupted the wrathful woman.
+
+"Mrs. Wardour," said Letty, with dignity, "you have been my benefactor,
+but hardly my friend: Mary has taught me the difference. I owe you more
+than you will ever give me the chance of repaying you. But what
+friendship could have stood for an hour the hard words you have been in
+the way of giving me, as far back as I can remember! Hard words take
+all the sweetness from shelter. Mary is the only Christian _I_ have
+ever known."
+
+"So we are all pagans, except your low-lived lady's-maid! Upon my word!"
+
+"She makes me feel, often, often," said Letty, bursting into tears, "as
+if I were with Jesus himself--as if he must be in the room somewhere."
+
+So saying, she left her, and went to put up her things. Mrs. Wardour
+locked the door of the room where she sat, and refused to see or speak
+to her again. Letty went away, and walked to Testbridge.
+
+"Godfrey will do something to make her understand," she said to
+herself, weeping as she walked.
+
+Whether Godfrey ever did, I can not tell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+WILLIAM AND MARY MARSTON.
+
+
+The same day on which Turnbull opened his new shop, a man was seen on a
+ladder painting out the sign above the old one. But the paint took time
+to dry.
+
+The same day, also, Mary returned to Testbridge, and, going in by the
+kitchen-door, went up to her father's room, of which and of her own she
+had kept the keys--to the indignation of Turnbull, who declared he did
+not know how to get on without them for storage. But, for all his
+bluster, he was afraid of Mary, and did not dare touch anything she had
+left.
+
+That night she spent alone in the house. But she could not sleep. She
+got up and went down to the shop. It was a bright, moonlit night, and
+all the house, even where the moon could not enter, was full of glimmer
+and gleam, except the shop. There she lighted a candle, sat down on a
+pile of goods, and gave herself up to memories of the past. Back and
+back went her thoughts as far as she could send them. God was
+everywhere in all the story; and the clearer she saw him there the
+surer she was that she would find him as she went on. She was neither
+sad nor fearful. The dead hours of the night came, that valley of the
+shadow of death where faith seems to grow weary and sleep, and all the
+things of the shadow wake up and come out and say, "Here we are, and
+there is nothing but us and our kind in the universe!" They woke up and
+came out upon Mary now, but she fought them off. Either there is
+mighty, triumphant life at the root and apex of all things, or life is
+not--and whence, then, the power of dreaming horrors? It is life
+alone--life imperfect--that can fear; death can not fear. Even the
+terror that walketh by night is a proof that I live, and that it shall
+not prevail against me. And to Mary, besides her heavenly Father, her
+William Marston seemed near all the time. Whereever she turned she saw
+the signs of him, and she pleased herself to think that perhaps he was
+there to welcome her. But it would not have made her the least sad to
+know for certain that he was far off, and would never come near her
+again in this world. She knew that, spite of time and space, she was
+and must be near him so long as she loved and did the truth. She knew
+there is no bond so strong, none so close, none so lasting as the
+truth. In God alone, who is the truth, can creatures meet.
+
+The place was left in sad confusion and dirt, and she did not a little
+that night to restore order at least. But at length she was tired, and
+went up to her room.
+
+On the first landing there was a window to the street. She stopped and
+looked out, candle in hand, but drew back with a start: on the opposite
+side of the way stood a man, looking up, she thought, at the house! She
+hastened to her room, and to bed. If God was not watching, no waking
+was of use; and if God was watching, she might sleep in peace. She did
+sleep, and woke refreshed.
+
+Her first care in the morning was to write to Letty--with the result I
+have set down. The next thing she did was to go and ask Beenie to give
+her some breakfast. The old woman was delighted to see her, and ready
+to lock her door at once and go back to her old quarters. They returned
+together, while Testbridge was yet but half awake.
+
+Many things had to be done before the shop could be opened. Beenie went
+after charwomen, and soon a great bustle of cleaning arose. But the
+door was kept shut, and the front windows.
+
+In the afternoon Letty came fresh from misery into more than
+counterbalancing joy. She took but time to put off her bonnet and
+shawl, and was presently at work helping Mary, cheerful as hope and a
+good conscience could make her.
+
+Mary was in no hurry to open the shop. There was "stock to be taken,"
+many things had to be rearranged, and not a few things to be added,
+before she could begin with comfort; and she must see to it all
+herself, for she was determined to engage no assistant until she could
+give her orders without hesitation.
+
+She was soon satisfied that she could not do better than make a
+proposal to Letty which she had for some time contemplated--namely,
+that she should take up her permanent abode with her, and help her in
+the shop. Letty was charmed, nor ever thought of the annoyance it would
+be to her aunt. Mary had thought of that, but saw that, for Letty to
+allow the prejudices of her aunt to influence her, would be to order
+her life not by the law of that God whose Son was a workingman, but
+after the whim and folly of an ill-educated old woman. A new spring of
+life seemed to bubble up in Letty the moment Mary mentioned the matter;
+and in serving she soon proved herself one after Mary's own heart.
+Letty's day was henceforth without a care, and her rest was sweet to
+her. Many customers were even more pleased with her than with Mary.
+Before long, Mary, besides her salary, gave her a small share in the
+business.
+
+Mrs. Wardour carried her custom to the Turnbulls.
+
+When the paint was dry which obliterated the old sign, people saw the
+now one begin with an _M_., and the sign-writer went on until there
+stood in full, _Mary Marston_. Mr. Brett hinted he would rather have
+seen it without the Christian name; but Mary insisted she would do and
+be nothing she would not hold just that name to; and on the sign her
+own name, neither more nor less, should stand. She would have liked,
+she said, to make it _William and Mary Marston_; for the business was
+to go on exactly as her father had taught her; the spirit of her father
+should never be out of the place; and if she failed, of which she had
+no fear, she would fail trying to carry out his ideas-but people were
+too dull to understand, and she therefore set the sign so in her heart
+only.
+
+Her old friends soon began to come about her again, and it was not many
+weeks before she saw fit to go to London to add to her stock.
+
+The evening of her return, as she and Letty sat over a late tea, a
+silence fell, during which Letty had a brooding fit.
+
+"I wonder how Cousin Godfrey is getting on?" she said at last, and
+smiled sadly.
+
+"How do you mean _getting on_?" asked Mary.
+
+"I was wondering whether Miss Yolland and he--"
+
+Mary started from her seat, white as the table-cloth.
+
+"Letty!" she said, in a voice of utter dismay, "you don't mean that
+woman is--is making friends with _him_?"
+
+"I saw them together more than once, and they seemed--well, on very
+good terms."
+
+"Then it is all over with him!" cried Mary, in despair. "O Letty! what
+_is_ to be done? Why didn't you tell me before? He'll be madly in love
+with her by this time! They always are."
+
+"But where's the harm, Mary? She's a very handsome lady, and of a good
+family."
+
+"We're all of good enough family," said Mary, a little petulantly. "But
+that Miss Yolland--Letty--that Miss Yolland--she's a bad woman, Letty."
+
+"I never heard you say such a hard word of anybody before, Mary! It
+frightens me to hear you."
+
+"It's a true word of her, Letty."
+
+"How can you be so sure?"
+
+Mary was silent. There was that about Letty that made the maiden shrink
+from telling the married woman what she knew. Besides, in so far as Tom
+had been concerned, she could not bring herself, even without
+mentioning his name, to talk of him to his wife: there was no evil to
+be prevented and no good to be done by it. If Letty was ever to know
+those passages in his life, she must hear them first in high places,
+and from the lips of the repentant man himself!
+
+"I can not tell you, Letty," she said. "You know the two bonds of
+friendship are the right of silence and the duty of speech. I dare say
+you have some things which, truly as I know you love me, you neither
+wish nor feel at liberty to tell me."
+
+Letty thought of what had so lately passed between her and her cousin
+Godfrey, and felt almost guilty. She never thought of one of the many
+things Tom had done or said that had cut her to the heart; those had no
+longer any existence. They were swallowed in the gulf of forgetful
+love--dismissed even as God casts the sins of his children behind his
+back: behind God's back is just nowhere. She did not answer, and again
+there was silence for a time, during which Mary kept walking about the
+room, her hands clasped behind her, the fingers interlaced, and twisted
+with a strain almost fierce.
+
+"There's no time! there's no time!" she cried at length. "How are we to
+find out? And if we knew all about it, what could we do? O Letty! what
+_am_ I to do?"
+
+"Anyhow, Mary dear, _you_ can't be to blame! One would think you
+fancied yourself accountable for Cousin Godfrey!"
+
+"I _am_ accountable for him. He has done more for me than any man but
+my father; and I know what he does not know, and what the ignorance of
+will be his ruin. I know that one of the best men in the world"--so in
+her agony she called him--"is in danger of being married by one of the
+worst women; and I can't bear it--I can't bear it!"
+
+"But what can you do, Mary?"
+
+"That's what I want to know," returned Mary, with irritation. "What
+_am_ I to do? What _am_ I to do?"
+
+"If he's in love with her, he wouldn't believe a word any one--even
+you--told him against her."
+
+"That is true, I suppose; but it won't clear me. I must do something."
+
+She threw herself on the couch with a groan.
+
+"It's horrid!" she cried, and buried her face in the pillow.
+
+All this time Letty had been so bewildered by Mary's agitation, and the
+cause of it was to her so vague, that apprehension for her cousin did
+not wake. But when Mary was silent, then came the thought that, if she
+had not so repulsed him--but she could not help it, and would not think
+in that direction.
+
+Mary started from the couch, and began again to pace the room, wringing
+her hands, and walking up and down like a wild beast in its cage. It
+was so unlike her to be thus seriously discomposed, that Letty began to
+be frightened. She sat silent and looked at her. Then spoke the spirit
+of truth in the scholar, for the teacher was too troubled to hear. She
+rose, and going up to Mary from behind, put her arm round her, and
+whispered in her ear:
+
+"Mary, why don't you ask Jesus?"
+
+Mary stopped short, and looked at Letty. But she was not thinking about
+her; she was questioning herself: why had she not done as Letty said?
+Something was wrong with her: that was clear, if nothing else was! She
+threw herself again on the couch, and Letty saw her body heaving with
+her sobs. Then Letty was more frightened, and feared she had done
+wrong. Was it her part to remind Mary of what she knew so much better
+than she?
+
+"But, then, I was only referring her to herself!" she thought.
+
+A few minutes, and Mary rose. Her face was wet and white, but
+perplexity had vanished from it, and resolution had taken its place.
+She threw her arms round Letty, and kissed her, and held her face
+against hers. Letty had never seen in her such an expression of emotion
+and tenderness.
+
+"I have found out, Letty, dear," she said. "Thank you, thank you,
+Letty! You are a true sister."
+
+"What have you found out, Mary?"
+
+"I have found out why I did not go at once to ask Him what I ought to
+do. It was just because I was afraid of what he would tell me to do."
+
+And with that the tears ran down her cheeks afresh.
+
+"Then you know now what to do?" asked Letty.
+
+"Yes," answered Mary, and sat down.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+A HARD TASK.
+
+
+The next morning, leaving the shop to Letty, Mary set out immediately
+after breakfast to go to Thornwick. But the duty she had there to
+perform was so distasteful, that she felt her very limbs refuse the
+office required of them. They trembled so under her that she could
+scarcely walk. She sent, therefore, to the neighboring inn for a fly.
+All the way, as she went, she was hoping she might be spared an
+encounter with Mrs. Wardour; but the old lady heard the fly, saw her
+get out, and, imagining she had brought Letty back in some fresh
+trouble, hastened to prevent either of them from entering the house.
+The door stood open, and they met on the broad step.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Wardour," said Mary, trying to speak without
+betraying emotion.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Marston," returned Mrs. Wardour, grimly.
+
+"Is Mr. Wardour at home?" asked Mary.
+
+"What is your business with _him_?" rejoined the mother.
+
+"Yes; it is with him," returned Mary, as if she had mistaken her
+question, and there had been a point of exclamation after the _What_.
+
+"About that hussy?"
+
+"I do not know whom you call by the name," replied Mary, who would have
+been glad indeed to find a fellow-protector of Godfrey in his mother.
+
+"You know well enough whom I mean. Whom should it be, but Letty Lovel!"
+
+"My business has nothing to do with her," answered Mary.
+
+"Whom has it to do with, then?"
+
+"With Mr. Wardour."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Only Mr. Wardour himself must hear it. It is his business, not mine."
+
+"I will have nothing to do with it."
+
+"I have no desire to give you the least trouble about it," rejoined
+Mary.
+
+"You can't see Mr. Wardour. He's not one to be at the beck and call of
+every silly woman that wants him."
+
+"Then I will write, and tell him I called, but you would not allow me
+to see him."
+
+"I will give him a message, if you like."
+
+"Then tell him what I have just said. I am going home to write to him.
+Good morning."
+
+She was getting into the fly again, when Mrs. Wardour, reflecting that
+it must needs be something of consequence that brought her there so
+early in a fly, and made her show such a determined front to so great a
+personage as herself, spoke again.
+
+"I will tell him you are here; but you must not blame me if he does not
+choose to see you. We don't feel you have behaved well about that girl."
+
+"Letty is my friend. I have behaved to her as if she were my sister."
+
+"You had no business to behave to her as if she were your sister. You
+had no right to tempt her down to your level."
+
+"Is it degradation to earn one's own living?"
+
+"You had nothing to do with her. She would have done very well if you
+had but let her alone."
+
+"Excuse me, ma'am, but I have _some_ right in Letty. I am sorry to have
+to assert it, but she would have been dead long ago if I had behaved to
+her as you would have me."
+
+"That was all her own fault."
+
+"I will not talk with you about it: you do not know the circumstances
+to which I refer. I request to see Mr. Wardour. I have no time to waste
+in useless altercation."
+
+Mary was angry, and it did her good; it made her fitter to face the
+harder task before her.
+
+That moment they heard the step of Godfrey approaching through a long
+passage in the rear. His mother went into the parlor, leaving the door,
+which was close to where Mary stood, ajar. Godfrey, reaching the hall,
+saw Mary, and came up to her with a formal bow, and a face flushed with
+displeasure.
+
+"May I speak to you alone, Mr. Wardour?" said Mary. "Can you not say
+what you have to say here?"
+
+"It is impossible."
+
+"Then I am curious to know--"
+
+"Let your curiosity plead for me, then."
+
+With a sigh of impatience he yielded, and led the way to the
+drawing-room, which was at the other end of the hall. Mary turned and
+shut the door he left open.
+
+"Why all this mystery, Miss Marston?" he said. "I am not aware of
+anything between you and me that can require secrecy."
+
+He spoke with unconcealed scorn.
+
+"When I have made my communication, you will at least allow secrecy to
+have been necessary."
+
+"Some objects may require it!" said Wardour, in a tone itself an insult.
+
+"Mr. Wardour," returned Mary, "I am here for your sake, not my own. May
+I beg you will not render a painful duty yet more difficult?"
+
+"May _I_ beg, then, that you will be as brief as possible? I am more
+than doubtful whether what you have to say will seem to me of so much
+consequence as you suppose."
+
+"I shall be very glad to find it so."
+
+"I can not give you more than ten minutes." Mary looked at her watch.
+
+"You have lately become acquainted with Miss Yolland, I am told," she
+began.
+
+"Whew!" whistled Godfrey, yet hardly as if he were surprised.
+
+"I have been compelled to know a good deal of that lady."
+
+"As lady's-maid in her family, I believe."
+
+"Yes," said Mary--then changing her tone after a slight pause, went on:
+"Mr. Wardour, I owe you more than I can ever thank you for. I strongly
+desire to fulfill the obligation your goodness has laid upon me, though
+I can never discharge it. For the sake of that obligation--for your
+sake, I am risking much--namely, your opinion of me."
+
+He made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I _know_ Miss Yolland to be a woman without principle. I know it by
+the testimony of my own eyes, and from her own confession. She is
+capable of playing a cold-hearted, cruel game for her own ends. Be
+persuaded to consult Mr. Redmain before you commit yourself. Ask him if
+Miss Yolland is fit to be the wife of an honest man."
+
+There was nothing in Godfrey's countenance but growing rage. Turning to
+the door, Mary would have gone without another word.
+
+"Stay!" cried Godfrey, in a voice of suppressed fury. "Do not dare to
+go until I have told you that you are a vile slanderer. I knew
+something of what I had to expect, but you should never have entered
+this room had I known how far your effrontery could carry you. Listen
+to me: if anything more than the character of your statement had been
+necessary to satisfy me of the falsehood of every word of it, you have
+given it me in your reference to Mr. Redmain--a man whose life has
+rendered him unfit for the acquaintance, not to say the confidence of
+any decent woman. This is a plot--for what final object, God
+knows--between you and him! I should be doing my duty were I to expose
+you both to the public scorn you deserve."
+
+"Now I am clear!" said Mary to herself, but aloud, and stood erect,
+with glowing face and eyes of indignation: "Then why not do your duty,
+Mr. Wardour? I should be glad of anything that would open your eyes.
+But Miss Yolland will never give Mr. Redmain such an opportunity. Nor
+does he desire it, for he might have had it long ago, by the criminal
+prosecution of a friend of hers. For my part, I should be sorry to see
+her brought to public shame."
+
+"Leave the house!" said Godfrey through his teeth, and almost under his
+breath.
+
+"I am sorry it is so hard to distinguish between truth and falsehood,"
+said Mary, as she went to the door.
+
+She walked out, got into the fly, and drove home; went into the shop,
+and served the rest of the morning; but in the afternoon was obliged to
+lie down, and did not appear again for three days.
+
+The reception she had met with did not much surprise her: plainly Sepia
+had been before her. She had pretended to make Godfrey her confidant,
+had invented, dressed, and poured out injuries to him, and so blocked
+up the way to all testimony unfavorable to her. Was there ever man in
+more pitiable position?
+
+It added to Godfrey's rage that he had not a doubt Mary knew what had
+passed between Letty and him. That, he reasoned, was at the root of it
+all: she wanted to bring them together yet: it would be a fine thing
+for her to have her bosom-friend mistress of Thornwick! What a cursed
+thing he should ever have been civil to her! And what a cursed fool he
+was ever to have cared a straw for such a low-minded creature as that
+Letty! Thank Heaven, he was cured of that!
+
+Cured?--He had fallen away from love--that was all the cure!
+
+Like the knight of the Red Cross, he was punished for abandoning Una,
+by falling in love with Duessa. His rage against Letty, just because of
+her faithfulness, had cast him an easy prey into the arms of the
+clinging Sepia.
+
+And now what more could Mary do? Just one thing was left: Mr. Redmain
+could satisfy Mr. Wardour of the fact he would not hear from her!--so,
+at least, thought Mary yet. If Mr. Redmain would take the trouble to
+speak to him, Mr. Wardour must be convinced! However true might be what
+Mr. Wardour had said about Mr. Redmain, fact remained fact about Sepia!
+
+She sat down and wrote the following letter:
+
+"Sir: I hardly know how to address you without seeming to take a
+liberty; at the same time I can not help hoping you trust me enough to
+believe that I would not venture such a request as I am about to make,
+without good reason. Should you kindly judge me not to presume, and
+should you be well enough in health, which I fear may not be the case,
+would you mind coming to see me here in my shop? I think you must know
+it--it used to be Turnbull and Marston--the Marston was my father. You
+will see my name over the door. Any hour from morning to night will do
+for me; only please let it be as soon as you can make it convenient.
+
+  "I am, sir,
+  "Your humble and grateful servant,
+  "MARY MARSTON"
+
+"What the deuce is she grateful to me for?" grumbled Mr. Redmain when
+he read it. "I never did anything for her! By Jove, the gypsy herself
+wouldn't let me! I vow she's got more brains of her own than any
+half-dozen women I ever had to do with before!"
+
+The least thing bearing the look of plot, or intrigue, or secret to be
+discovered or heard, was enough for Mr. Redmain. What he had of pride
+was not of the same sort as Wardour's: it made no pretense to dignity,
+and was less antagonistic, so long at least as there was no talk of
+good motive or righteous purpose. Far from being offended with Mary's
+request, he got up at once, though indeed he was rather unwell and
+dreading an attack, ordered his brougham, and drove to Testbridge.
+There, careful of secrecy, he went to several shops, and bought
+something at each, but pretended not to find the thing he wanted.
+
+He then said he would lunch at the inn, told his coachman to put up,
+and, while his meal was getting ready, went to Mary's shop, which was
+but a few doors off. There he asked for a certain outlandish stuff, and
+insisted on looking over a bale not yet unpacked. Mary understood him,
+and, whispering Letty to take him to the parlor, followed a minute
+after.
+
+As soon as she entered--
+
+"Come, now, what's it all about?" he said.
+
+Mary began at once to tell him, as directly as she could, that she was
+under obligation to Mr. Wardour of Thornwick, and that she had reason
+to fear Miss Yolland was trying to get a hold of him--"And you know
+what that would be for any man!" she said.
+
+"No, by Jove! I don't," he answered. "What would it be?"
+
+"Utter ruin," replied Mary. "Then go and tell him so, if you want to
+save him."
+
+"I have told him. But he does not like me, and won't believe me."
+
+"Then let him take his own course, and be ruined."
+
+"But I have just told you, sir, I am under obligation to him--great
+obligation!"
+
+"Oh! I see! you want him yourself!--Well, as you wish it, I would
+rather you should have him than that she-devil. But come, now, you must
+be open with me."
+
+"I am. I will be."
+
+"You say so, of course. Women do.--But you confess you want him
+yourself?"
+
+Mary saw it would be the worst possible policy to be angry with him,
+especially as she had given him the trouble to come to her, and she
+must not lose this her last chance.
+
+"I do not want him," she answered, with a smile; "and, if I did, he
+would never look at one in my position. He would as soon think of
+marrying the daughter of one of his laborers--and quite right, too--for
+the one might just be as good as the other."
+
+"Well, now, that's a pity. I would have done a good deal for _you_--I
+don't know why, for you're a little humbug if ever there was one! But,
+if you don't care about the fellow, I don't see why I should take the
+trouble. Confess--you're a little bit in love with him--ain't you, now?
+Confess to that, and I will do what I can."
+
+"I can't confess to a lie. I owe Mr. Wardour a debt of gratitude--that
+is all--but no light thing, you will allow, sir!"
+
+"I don't know; I never tried its weight. Anyhow, I should make haste to
+be rid of it."
+
+"I have sought to make him this return, but he only fancies me a
+calumniator. Miss Yolland has been beforehand with me."
+
+"Then, by Jove! I don't see but you're quits with him. If he behaves
+like that to you, don't you see, it wipes it all out? Upon my soul! I
+don't see why you should trouble your head about him. Let him take his
+way, and go to--Sepia."
+
+"But, sir, what a dreadful thing it would be, knowing what she is, to
+let a man like him throw himself away on her!"
+
+"I don't see it. I've no doubt he's just as bad as she is. We all are;
+we're all the same. And, if he weren't, it would be the better joke.
+Besides, you oughtn't to keep up a grudge, don't you know; you ought to
+let the--the _woman_ have a chance. If he marries her--and that must be
+her game this time--she'll grow decent, and be respectable ever after,
+you may be sure--go to church, as you would have her, and all
+that--never miss a Sunday, I'll lay you a thousand."
+
+"He's of a good old family!" said Mary, foolishly, thinking that would
+weigh with him.
+
+"Good old fiddlestick! Damned old worn-out broom-end! _She's_ of a good
+old family--quite good enough for his, you may take your oath! Why, my
+girl! the thing's not worth burning your fingers with. You've brought
+me here on a goose-errand. I'll go and have my lunch."
+
+He rose.
+
+"I'm sorry to have vexed you, sir," said Mary, greatly disappointed.
+
+"Never mind.--I'm horribly sold," he said, with a tight grin. "I
+thought you must have some good thing in hand to make it worth your
+while to send for me."
+
+"Then I must try something else," reflected Mary aloud.
+
+"I wouldn't advise you. The man's only the surer to hate you and stick
+to her. Let him alone. If he's a stuck-up fellow like that, it will
+take him down a bit--when the truth comes out, that is, as come out it
+must. There's one good thing in it, my wife'll get rid of her. But I
+don't know! there's an enemy, as the Bible says, that sticketh closer
+than a brother. And they'll be next door when Durnmelling is mine! But
+I can sell it."
+
+"If he _should_ come to you, will you tell him the truth?"
+
+"I don't know that. It might spoil my own little game."
+
+"Will you let him think me a liar and slanderer?"
+
+"No, by Jove! I won't do that. I don't promise to tell him all the
+truth, or even that what I do tell him shall be exactly true; but I
+won't let him think ill of my little puritan; that would spoil _your_
+game. Ta, ta!"
+
+He went out, with his curious grin, amused, and enjoying the idea of a
+proud fellow like that being taken in with Sepia.
+
+"I hope devoutly he'll marry her!" he said to himself as he went to his
+luncheon. "Then I shall hold a rod over them both, and perhaps buy that
+miserable little Thornwick. Mortimer would give the skin off his back
+for it."
+
+The thing that ought to be done had to be done, and Mary had done
+it--alas! to no purpose for the end desired: what was left her to do
+further? She could think of nothing. Sepia, like a moral hyena, must
+range her night. She went to bed, and dreamed she was pursued by a
+crowd, hooting after her, and calling her all the terrible names of
+those who spread evil reports. She woke in misery, and slept no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+A SUMMONS.
+
+
+One hot Saturday afternoon, in the sleepiest time of the day, when
+nothing was doing; and nobody in the shop, except a poor boy who had
+come begging for some string to help him fly his kite, though for the
+last month wind had been more scarce than string, Jemima came in from
+Durnmelling, and, greeting Mary with the warmth of the friendship that
+had always been true between them, gave her a letter.
+
+"Whom is this from?" asked Mary, with the usual human waste of inquiry,
+seeing she held the surest answer in her hand.
+
+"Mr. Mewks gave it me," said Jemima. "He didn't say whom it was from."
+
+Mary made haste to open it: she had an instinctive distrust of
+everything that passed through Mewks's hands, and greatly feared that,
+much as his master trusted him, he was not true to him. She found the
+following note from Mr. Redmain:
+
+"DEAR MISS MARSTON: Come and see me as soon as you can; I have
+something to talk to you about. Send word by the bearer when I may look
+for you. I am not well.
+
+"Yours truly,
+
+"F. G. REDMAIN."
+
+Mary went to her desk and wrote a reply, saying she would be with him
+the next morning about eleven o'clock. She would have gone that same
+night, she said, but, as it was Saturday, she could not, because of
+country customers, close in time to go so far.
+
+"Give it into Mr. Redmain's own hand, if you can, Jemima," she said.
+
+"I will try; but I doubt if I can, miss," answered the girl.
+
+"Between ourselves, Jemima," said Mary, "I do not trust that man Mewks."
+
+"Nobody does, miss, except the master and Miss Yolland."
+
+"Then," thought Mary, "the thing is worse than I had supposed."
+
+"I'll do what I can, miss," Jemima went on. "But he's so sharp!--Mr.
+Mewks, I mean."
+
+After she was gone, Mary wished she had given her a verbal message;
+that she might have insisted on delivering in person.
+
+Jemima, with circumspection, managed to reach Mr. Redmain's room
+unencountered, but just as she knocked at the door, Mewks came behind
+her from somewhere, and snatching the letter out of her hand, for she
+carried it ready to justify her entrance to the first glance of her
+irritable master, pushed her rudely away, and immediately went in. But
+as he did so he put the letter in his pocket.
+
+"Who took the note?" asked his master.
+
+"The girl at the lodge, sir."
+
+"Is she not come back yet?"
+
+"No, sir, not yet. She'll be in a minute, though. I saw her coming up
+the avenue."
+
+"Go and bring her here."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mewks went, and in two minutes returned with the letter, and the
+message that Miss Marston hadn't time to direct it.
+
+"You damned rascal! I told you to bring the messenger here."
+
+"She ran the whole way, sir, and not being very strong, was that tired,
+that, the moment she got in, the poor thing dropped in a dead faint.
+They ain't got her to yet."
+
+His master gave him one look straight in the eyes, then opened the
+letter, and read it.
+
+"Miss Marston will call here tomorrow morning," he said; "see that
+_she_ is shown up at once--here, to my sitting-room. I hope I am
+explicit."
+
+When the man was gone, Mr. Redmain nodded his head three times, and
+grinned the skin tight as a drum-head over his cheek-bones.
+
+"There isn't a damned soul of them to be trusted!" he said to himself,
+and sat silently thoughtful.
+
+Perhaps he was thinking how often he had come short of the hope placed
+in him; times of reflection arrive to most men; and a threatened attack
+of the illness he believed must one day carry him off, might well have
+disposed him to think.
+
+In the evening he was worse.
+
+By midnight he was in agony, and Lady Margaret was up with him all
+night. In the morning came a lull, and Lady Margaret went to bed. His
+wife had not come near him. But Sepia might have been seen, more than
+once or twice, hovering about his door.
+
+Both she and Mewks thought, after such a night, he must have forgotten
+his appointment with Mary.
+
+When he had had some chocolate, he fell into a doze. But his sleep was
+far from profound. Often he woke and again dozed off.
+
+The clock in the dressing-room struck eleven.
+
+"Show Miss Marston up the moment she arrives," he said--and his voice
+was almost like that of a man in health.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the startled Mewks, and felt he must obey.
+
+So Mary was at once shown to the chamber of the sick man.
+
+To her surprise (for Mewks had given her no warning), he was in bed,
+and looking as ill as ever she had seen him. His small head was like a
+skull covered with parchment. He made the slightest of signs to her to
+come nearer--and again. She went close to the bed. Mewks sat down at
+the foot of it, out of sight. It was a great four-post-bed, with
+curtains.
+
+"I'm glad you're come," he said, with a feeble grin, all he had for a
+smile. "I want to have a little talk with you. But I can't while that
+brute is sitting there. I have been suffering horribly. Look at me, and
+tell me if you think I am going to die--not that I take your opinion
+for worth anything. That's not what I wanted you for, though. I wasn't
+so ill then. But I want you the more to talk to now. _You_ have a bit
+of a heart, even for people that don't deserve it--at least I'm going
+to believe you have; and, if I am wrong, I almost think I would rather
+not know it till I'm dead and gone!--Good God! where shall I be then?"
+
+I have already said that, whether in consequence of remnants of
+mother-teaching or from the movements of a conscience that had more
+vitality than any of his so-called friends would have credited it with,
+Mr. Redmain, as often as his sufferings reached a certain point, was
+subject to fits of terror--horrible anguish it sometimes amounted
+to--at the thought of hell. This, of course, was silly, seeing hell is
+out of fashion in far wider circles than that of Mayfair; but denial
+does not alter fact, and not always fear. Mr. Redmain laughed when he
+was well, and shook when he was suffering. In vain he argued with
+himself that what he held by when in health was much more likely to be
+true than a dread which might be but the suggestion of the disease that
+was slowly gnawing him to death: as often as the sickness returned, he
+received the suggestion afresh, whatever might be its source, and
+trembled as before. In vain he accused himself of cowardice--the thing
+was there--_in him_--nothing could drive it out. And, verily, even a
+madman may be wiser than the prudent of this world; and the courage of
+not a few would forsake them if they dared but look the danger in the
+face. I pity the poor ostrich, and must I admire the man of whose kind
+he is the type, or take him in any sense for a man of courage? Wait
+till the thing stares you in the face, and then, whether you be brave
+man or coward, you will at all events care little about courage or
+cowardice. The nearer a man is to being a true man, the sooner will
+conscience of wrong make a coward of him; and herein Redmain had a
+far-off kindred with the just. After the night he had passed, he was
+now in one of his terror-fits; and this much may be said for his good
+sense--that, if there was anywhere a hell for the use of anybody, he
+was justified in anticipating a free entrance.
+
+"Mewks!" he called, suddenly, and his tone was loud and angry.
+
+Mewks was by his bedside instantly.
+
+"Get out with you! If I find you in this room again, without having
+been called, I will kill you! I am strong enough for that, even without
+this pain. They won't hang a dying man, and where I am going they will
+rather like it."
+
+Mewks vanished.
+
+"You need not mind, my girl," he went on, to Mary. "Everybody knows I
+am ill--very ill. Sit down there, on the foot of the bed, only take
+care you don't shake it, and let me talk to you. People, you know, say
+nowadays there ain't any hell--or perhaps none to speak of?"
+
+"I should think the former more likely than the latter," said Mary.
+
+"You don't believe there is any? I _am_ glad of that! for you are a
+good girl, and ought to know."
+
+"You mistake me, sir. How can I imagine there is no hell, when _he_
+said there was?"
+
+"Who's _he_?"
+
+"The man who knows all about it, and means to put a stop to it some
+day."
+
+"Oh, yes; I see! Hm!--But I don't for the life of me see what a fellow
+is to make of it all--don't you know? Those parsons! They will have it
+there's no way out of it but theirs, and I never could see a handle
+anywhere to that door!"
+
+"_I_ don't see what the parsons have got to do with it, or, at least,
+what you have got to do with the parsons. If a thing is true, you have
+as much to do with it as any parson in England; if it is not true,
+neither you nor they have anything to do with it."
+
+"But, I tell you, if it be all as true as--as--that we are all sinners,
+I don't know what to do with it!"
+
+"It seems to me a simple thing. _That_ man as much as said he knew all
+about it, and came to find men that were lost, and take them home."
+
+"He can't well find one more lost than I am! But how am I to believe
+it? How can it be true? It's ages since he was here, if ever he was at
+all, and there hasn't been a sign of him ever since, all the time!"
+
+"There you may be quite wrong. I think I could find you some who
+believe him just as near them now as ever he was to his own
+brothers--believe that he hears them when they speak to him, and heeds
+what they say."
+
+"That's bosh. You would have me believe against the evidence of my
+senses!"
+
+"You must have strange senses, Mr. Redmain, that give you evidence
+where they can't possibly know anything! If that man spoke the truth
+when he was in the world, he is near us now; if he is not near us,
+there is an end of it all."
+
+"The nearer he is, the worse for me!" sighed Mr. Redmain.
+
+"The nearer he is, the better for the worst man that ever breathed."
+
+"That's queer doctrine! Mind you, I don't say it mayn't be all right.
+But it does seem a cowardly thing to go asking him to save you, after
+you've been all your life doing what ought to damn you--if there be a
+hell, mind you, that is."
+
+"But think," said Mary, "if that should be your only chance of being
+able to make up for the mischief you have done? No punishment you can
+have will do anything for that. No suffering of yours will do anything
+for those you have made suffer. But it is so much harder to leave the
+old way than to go on and let things take their chance!"
+
+"There may be something in what you say; but still I can't see it
+anything better than sneaking, to do a world of mischief, and then
+slink away into heaven, leaving all the poor wretches to look after
+themselves."
+
+"I don't think Jesus Christ is worse pleased with you for feeling like
+that," said Mary.
+
+"Eh? What? What's that you say?--Jesus Christ worse pleased with me?
+That's a good one! As if he ever thought about a fellow like me!"
+
+"If he did not, you would not be thinking about him just this minute, I
+suspect. There's no sense in it, if he does not think about you. He
+said himself he didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to
+repentance."
+
+"I wish I could repent."
+
+"You can, if you will."
+
+"I can't make myself sorry for what's gone and done with."
+
+"No; it wants him to do that. But you can turn from your old ways, and
+ask him to take you for a pupil. Aren't you willing to learn, if he be
+willing to teach you?"
+
+"I don't know. It's all so dull and stupid! I never could bear going to
+church."
+
+"It's not one bit like that! It's like going to your mother, and saying
+you're going to try to be a good boy, and not vex her any more."
+
+"I see. It's all right, I dare say! But I've had as much of it as I can
+stand! You see, I'm not used to such things. You go away, and send
+Mewks. Don't be far off, though, and mind you don't go home without
+letting me know. There! Go along."
+
+She had just reached the door, when he called her again.
+
+"I say! Mind whom you trust in this house. There's no harm in Mrs.
+Redmain; she only grows stupid directly she don't like a thing. But
+that Miss Yolland!--that woman's the devil. I know more about her than
+you or any one else. I can't bear her to be about Hesper; but, if I
+told her the half I know, she would not believe the half of that. I
+shall find a way, though. But I am forgetting! you know her as well as
+I do--that is, you would, if you were wicked enough to understand. I
+will tell you one of these days what, I am going to do. There! don't
+say a word. I want no advice on _such_ things. Go along, and send
+Mewks."
+
+With all his suspicion of the man, Mr. Redmain did not suspect _how_
+false Mewks was: he did not know that Miss Yolland had bewitched him
+for the sake of having an ally in the enemy's camp. All he could
+hear--and the dressing-room door was handy--the fellow duly reported to
+her. Already, instructed by her fears, she had almost divined what Mr.
+Redmain meant to do.
+
+Mary went and sat on the lowest step of the stair just outside the room.
+
+"What are you doing there?" said Lady Margaret, coming from the
+corridor.
+
+"Mr. Redmain will not have me go yet, my lady," answered Mary, rising.
+"I must wait first till he sends for me."
+
+Lady Margaret swept past her, murmuring, "Most peculiar!" Mary sat down
+again.
+
+In about an hour, Mewks came and said his master wanted her.
+
+He was very ill, and could not talk, but he would not let her go. He
+made her sit where he could see her, and now and then stretched out his
+hand to her. Even in his pain he showed a quieter spirit. "Something
+may be working--who can tell!" thought Mary.
+
+It was late in the afternoon when at length he sought further
+conversation.
+
+"I have been thinking, Mary," he said, "that if I do wake up in hell
+when I die, no matter how much I deserve it, nobody will be the better
+for it, and I shall be all the worse."
+
+He spoke with coolness, but it was by a powerful effort: he had waked
+from a frightful dream, drenched from head to foot. Coward? No. He had
+reason to fear.
+
+"Whereas," rejoined Mary, taking up his clew, "everybody will be the
+better if you keep out of it--everybody," she repeated, "--God, and
+Jesus Christ, and all their people."
+
+"How do you make that out?" he asked. "God has more to do than look
+after such as me."
+
+"You think he has so many worlds to look to--thousands of them only
+making? But why does he care about his worlds? Is it not because they
+are the schools of his souls? And why should he care for the souls? Is
+it not because he is making them children--his own children to
+understand him and be happy with his happiness?"
+
+"I can't say I care for his happiness. I want my own. And yet I don't
+know any that's worth the worry of it. No; I would rather be put out
+like a candle."
+
+"That's because you have been a disobedient child, taking your own way,
+and turning God's good things to evil. You don't know what a splendid
+thing life is. You actually and truly don't know, never experienced in
+your being the very thing you were made for."
+
+"My father had no business to leave me so much money."
+
+"You had no business to misuse it."
+
+"I didn't _quite_ know what _I_ was doing."
+
+"You do now."
+
+Then came a pause.
+
+"You think God hears prayer--do you?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then I wish you would ask him to let me off--I mean, to let me die
+right out when I do die. What's the good of making a body miserable?"
+
+"That, I am sure it would be of no use to pray for. He certainly will
+not throw away a thing he has made, because that thing may be foolish
+enough to prefer the dust-hole to a cabinet."
+
+"Wouldn't you do it now, if I asked you?"
+
+"I would not. I would leave you in God's hands rather than inside the
+gate of heaven."
+
+"I don't understand you. And you wouldn't say so if you cared for me!
+Only, why should you care for me?"
+
+"I would give my life for you."
+
+"Come, now! I don't believe that."
+
+"Why, I couldn't be a Christian if I wouldn't!"
+
+"You are getting absurd!" he cried. But he did not look exactly as if
+he thought it.
+
+"Absurd!" repeated Mary. "Isn't that what makes _him_ our Saviour? How
+could I be his disciple, if I wouldn't do as he did?"
+
+"You are saying a good deal!"
+
+"Can't you see that I have no choice?"
+
+"_I_ wouldn't do that for anybody under the sun!"
+
+"You are not his disciple. You have not been going about with him."
+
+"And you have?"
+
+"Yes--for many years. Besides, I can not help thinking there is one for
+whom you would do it."
+
+"If you mean my wife, you never were more mistaken. I would do nothing
+of the sort."
+
+"I did not mean your wife. I mean Jesus Christ."
+
+"Oh, I dare say! Well, perhaps; if I knew him as you do, and if I were
+quite sure he wanted it done for him."
+
+"He does want it done for him--always and every day--not for his own
+sake, though it does make him very glad. To give up your way for his is
+to die for him; and, when any one will do that, then he is able to do
+everything for him; for then, and not till then, he gets such a hold of
+him that he can lift him up, and set him down beside himself. That's
+how my father used to teach me, and now I see it for myself to be true."
+
+"It's all very grand, no doubt; but it ain't nowhere, you know. It's
+all in your own head, and nowhere else. You don't, you _can't_
+positively believe all that!"
+
+"So much, at least, that I live in the strength and hope it gives me,
+and order my ways according to it."
+
+"Why didn't you teach my wife so?"
+
+"I tried, but she didn't care to think. I could not get any further
+with her. She has had no trouble yet to make her listen."
+
+"By Jove! I should have thought marrying a fellow like me might have
+been trouble enough to make a saint of her."
+
+It was impossible to fix him to any line of thought, and Mary did not
+attempt it. To move the child in him was more than all argument.
+
+A pause followed. "I don't love God," he said.
+
+"I dare say not," replied Mary. "How should you, when you don't know
+him?"
+
+"Then what's to be done? I can't very well show myself where I hate the
+master of the house!"
+
+"If you knew him, you would love him."
+
+"You are judging by yourself. But there is as much difference between
+you and me as between light and darkness."
+
+"Not quite that," replied Mary, with one of those smiles that used to
+make her father feel as if she were that moment come fresh from God to
+him. "If you knew Jesus Christ, you could not help loving him, and to
+love him is to love God."
+
+"You wear me out! Will you never come to the point? _Know Jesus
+Christ!_ How am I to go back two thousand years?"
+
+"What he was then he is now," answered Mary. "And you may even know him
+better than they did at the time who saw him; for it was not until they
+understood him better, by his being taken from them, that they wrote
+down his life."
+
+"I suppose you mean I must read the New Testament?" said Mr. Redmain,
+pettishly.
+
+"Of course!" answered Mary, a little surprised; for she was unaware how
+few have a notion what the New Testament is, or is meant for.
+
+"Then why didn't you say so at first? There I have you! That's just
+where I learn that I must be damned for ever!"
+
+"I don't mean the Epistles. Those you can't understand--yet."
+
+"I'm glad you don't mean _them._ I hate them."
+
+"I don't wonder. You have never seen a single shine of what they are;
+and what most people think them is hardly the least like them. What I
+want you to read is the life and death of the son of man, the master of
+men."
+
+"I can't read. I should only make myself twice as ill. I won't try."
+
+"But I will read to you, if you will let me."
+
+"How comes it you are such a theologian? A woman is not expected to
+know about that sort of thing."
+
+"I am no theologian. There just comes one of the cases in which those
+who call themselves his followers do not believe what the Master said:
+he said God hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed
+them to babes. I had a father who was child enough to know them, and I
+was child enough to believe him, and so grew able to understand them
+for myself. The whole secret is to do the thing the Master tells you:
+then you will understand what he tells you. The opinion of the wisest
+man, if he does not do the things he reads, is not worth a rush. He may
+be partly right, but you have no reason to trust him."
+
+"Well, you shall be my chaplain. To-morrow, if I'm able to listen, you
+shall see what you can make of the old sinner."
+
+Mary did not waste words: where would have been the use of pulling up
+the poor spiritual clodpole at every lumbering step, at any word
+inconsistent with the holy manners of the high countries? Once get him
+to court, and the power of the presence would subdue him, and make him
+over again from the beginning, without which absolute renewal the best
+observance of religious etiquette is worse than worthless. Many good
+people are such sticklers for the proprieties! For myself, I take
+joyous refuge with the grand, simple, every-day humanity of the man I
+find in the story--the man with the heart like that of my father and my
+mother and my brothers and sisters. If I may but see and help to show
+him a little as he lived to show himself, and not as church talk and
+church ways and church ceremonies and church theories and church plans
+of salvation and church worldliness generally have obscured him for
+hundreds of years, and will yet obscure him for hundreds more!
+
+Toward evening, when she had just rendered him one of the many
+attentions he required, and which there was no one that day but herself
+to render, for he would scarcely allow Mewks to enter the room, he said
+to her:
+
+"Thank you; you are very good to me. I shall remember you. Not that I
+think I'm going to die just yet; I've often been as bad as this, and
+got quite well again. Besides, I want to show that I have turned over a
+new leaf. Don't you think God will give me one more chance, now that I
+really mean it? I never did before."
+
+"God can tell whether you mean it without that," she answered, not
+daring to encourage him where she knew nothing. "But you said you would
+remember me, Mr. Redmain: I hope you didn't mean in your will."
+
+"I did mean in my will," he answered, but in a tone of displeasure. "I
+must say, however, I should have preferred you had not _shown_ quite
+such an anxiety about it. I sha'n't be in my coffin to-morrow; and I'm
+not in the way of forgetting things."
+
+"I _beg_ you," returned Mary, flushing, "to do nothing of the sort. I
+have plenty of money, and don't care about more. I would much rather
+not have any from you."
+
+"But think how much good you might do with it!" said Mr. Redmain,
+satirically. "--It was come by honestly--so far as I know."
+
+"Money can't do half the good people think. It is stubborn stuff to
+turn to any good. And in this case it would be directly against good."
+
+"Nobody has a right to refuse what comes honestly in his way. There's
+no end to the good that may be done with money--to judge, at least, by
+the harm I've done with mine," said Mr. Redmain, this time with
+seriousness.
+
+"It is not in it," persisted Mary. "If it had been, our Lord would have
+used it, and he never did."
+
+"Oh, but he was all an exception!"
+
+"On the contrary, he is the only man who is no exception. We are the
+exceptions. Every one but him is more or less out of the straight. Do
+you not see?--he is the very one we must all come to be the same as, or
+perish! No, Mr. Redmain! don't leave me any money, or I shall be
+altogether bewildered what to do with it. Mrs. Redmain would not take
+it from me. Miss Yolland might, but I dared not give it to her. And for
+societies, I have small faith in them."
+
+"Well, well! I'll think about it," said Mr. Redmain, who had now got so
+far on the way of life as to be capable of believing that when Mary
+said a thing she meant it, though he was quite incapable of
+understanding the true relations of money. Few indeed are the
+Christians capable of that! The most of them are just where Peter was,
+when, the moment after the Lord had honored him as the first to
+recognize him as the Messiah, he took upon him to object altogether to
+his Master's way of working salvation in the earth. The Roman emperors
+took up Peter's plan, and the devil has been in the church ever
+since--Peter's Satan, whom the Master told to get behind him. They are
+poor prophets, and no martyrs, who honor money as an element of any
+importance in the salvation of the world. Hunger itself does
+incomparably more to make Christ's kingdom come than ever money did, or
+ever will do while time lasts. Of course money has its part, for
+everything has; and whoever has money is bound to use it as best he
+knows; but his best is generally an attempt to do saint-work by
+devil-proxy.
+
+"I can't think where on earth-you got such a sackful of extravagant
+notions!" Mr. Redmain added.
+
+"I told you before, sir, I had a father who set me thinking!" answered
+Mary.
+
+"I wish I had had a father like yours," he rejoined.
+
+"There are not many such to be had."
+
+"I fear mine wasn't just what he ought to be, though he can't have been
+such a rascal as his son: he hadn't time; he had his money to make."
+
+"He had the temptation to make it, and you have the temptation to spend
+it: which is the more dangerous, I don't know. Each has led to many
+crimes."
+
+"Oh, as to crimes--I don't know about that! It depends on what you call
+crimes."
+
+"It doesn't matter whether men call a deed a crime or a fault; the
+thing is how God regards it, for that is the only truth about it. What
+the world thinks, goes for nothing, because it is never right. It would
+be worse in me to do some things the world counts perfectly honorable,
+than it would be for this man to commit a burglary, or that a murder. I
+mean my guilt might be greater in committing a respectable sin, than
+theirs in committing a disreputable one."
+
+Had Mary known anything of science, she might have said that, in morals
+as in chemistry, the qualitative analysis is easy, but the quantitative
+another affair.
+
+The latter part of this conversation, Sepia listening heard, and
+misunderstood utterly.
+
+All the rest of the day Mary was with Mr. Redmain, mostly by his
+bedside, sitting in silent watchfulness when he was unable to talk with
+her. Nobody entered the room except Mewks, who, when he did, seemed to
+watch everything, and try to hear everything, and once Lady Margaret.
+When she saw Mary seated by the bed, though she must have known well
+enough she was there, she drew herself up with grand English
+repellence, and looked scandalized. Mary rose, and was about to retire.
+But Mr. Redmain motioned her to sit still.
+
+"This is my spiritual adviser, Lady Margaret," he said.
+
+Her ladyship cast a second look on Mary, such as few but her could
+cast, and left the room.
+
+On into the gloom of the evening Mary sat. No one brought her anything
+to eat or drink, and Mr. Redmain was too much taken up with himself,
+soul and body, to think of her. She was now past hunger, and growing
+faint, when, through the settled darkness, the words came to her from
+the bed:
+
+"I should like to have you near me when I am dying, Mary."
+
+The voice was a softer than she had yet heard from Mr. Redmain, and its
+tone went to her heart.
+
+"I will certainly be with you, if God please," she answered.
+
+"There is no fear of God," returned Mr. Redmain; "it's the devil will
+try to keep you away. But never you heed what any one may do or say to
+prevent you. Do your very best to be with me. By that time I may not be
+having my own way any more. Be sure, the first moment they can get the
+better of me, they will. And you mustn't place confidence in a single
+soul in this house. I don't say my wife would play me false so long as
+I was able to swear at her, but I wouldn't trust her one moment longer.
+You come and be with me in spite of the whole posse of them."
+
+"I will try, Mr. Redmain," she answered, faintly. "But indeed you must
+let me go now, else I may be unable to come to-morrow."
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked hurriedly, half lifting his head with a
+look of alarm. "There's no knowing," he went on, muttering to himself,
+"what may happen in this cursed house."
+
+"Nothing," replied Mary, "but that I have not had anything to eat since
+I left home. I feel rather faint."
+
+"They've given you nothing to eat!" cried Mr. Redmain, but in a tone
+that seemed rather of satisfaction than displeasure. "Ring--no, don't."
+
+"Indeed, I would rather not have anything now till I get home," said
+Mary. "I don't feel inclined to eat where I am not welcome."
+
+"Right! right! right!" said Mr. Redmain. "Stick to that. Never eat
+where you are not welcome. Go home directly. Only say when you will
+come to-morrow."
+
+"I can't very well during the day," answered Mary. "There is so much to
+be done, and I have so little help. But, if you should want me, I would
+rather shut up the shop than not come."
+
+"There is no need for that! Indeed, I would much rather have you in the
+evening. The first of the night is worst of all. It's then the devils
+are out.--Look here," he added, after a short pause, during which Mary,
+for as unfit as she felt, hesitated to leave him, "--being in business,
+you've got a lawyer, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"Then you go to him to-night the first thing, and tell him to come to
+me to-morrow, about noon. Tell him I am ill, and in bed, and
+particularly want to see him; and he mustn't let anything they say keep
+him from me, not even if they tell him I am dead."
+
+"I will," said Mary, and, stroking the thin hand that lay outside the
+counterpane, turned and left him.
+
+"Don't tell any one you are gone," he called after her, with a voice
+far from feeble. "I don't want any of their damned company."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+A FRIEND IN NEED.
+
+
+Mary left the house, and saw no one on her way. But it was better, she
+said to herself, that he should lie there untended, than be waited on
+by unloving hands.
+
+The night was very dark. There was no moon, and the stars were hidden
+by thick clouds. She must walk all the way to Testbridge. She felt
+weak, but the fresh air was reviving. She did not know the way so
+familiarly as that between Thornwick and the town, but she would enter
+the latter before arriving at the common.
+
+She had not gone far when the moon rose, and from behind the clouds
+diminished the darkness a little. The first part of her journey lay
+along a narrow lane, with a small ditch, a rising bank, and a hedge on
+each side. About the middle of the lane was a farmyard, and a little
+way farther a cottage. Soon after passing the gate of the farmyard, she
+thought she heard steps behind her, seemingly soft and swift, and
+naturally felt a little apprehension; but her thoughts flew to the one
+hiding-place for thoughts and hearts and lives, and she felt no terror.
+At the same time something moved her to quicken her pace. As she drew
+near the common, she heard the steps more plainly, still soft and
+swift, and almost wished she had sought refuge in the cottage she had
+just passed--only it bore no very good character in the neighborhood.
+When she reached the spot where the paths united, feeling a little at
+home, she stopped to listen. Behind her were the footsteps plain
+enough! The same moment the clouds thinned about the moon, and a pale
+light came filtering through upon the common in front of her. She cast
+one look over her shoulder, saw something turn a corner in the lane,
+and sped on again. She would have run, but there was no place of refuge
+now nearer than the corner of the turnpike-road, and she knew her
+breath would fail her long before that. How lonely and shelterless the
+common looked! The soft, swift steps came nearer and nearer.
+
+Was that music she heard? She dared not stop to listen. But
+immediately, thereupon, was poured forth on the dim air such a stream
+of pearly sounds as if all the necklaces of some heavenly choir of
+woman-angels were broken, and the beads came pelting down in a cataract
+of hurtless hail. From no source could they come save the bow and
+violin of Joseph Jasper! Where could he be? She was so rejoiced to know
+that he must be somewhere near, that, for very delight of unsecured
+safety, she held her peace, and had almost stopped. But she ran on
+again. She was now nigh the ruined hut with which my narrative has made
+the reader acquainted. In the mean time the moon had been growing out
+of the clouds, clearer and clearer. The hut came in sight. But the look
+of it was somehow altered--with an undefinable change, such as might
+appear on a familiar object in a dream; and leaning against the side of
+the door stood a figure she could not mistake for another than her
+musician. Absorbed in his music, he did not see her. She called out,
+"Joseph! Joseph!" He started, threw his bow from him, tucked his violin
+under his arm, and bounded to meet her. She tried to stop, and the same
+moment to look behind her. The consequence was that she fell--but safe
+in the smith's arms. That instant appeared a man running. He half
+stopped, and, turning from the path, took to the common. Jasper handed
+his violin to Mary, and darted after him. The chase did not last a
+minute; the man was nearly spent. Joseph seized him by the wrist, saw
+something glitter in his other hand, and turned sick. The fellow had
+stabbed him. With indignation, as if it were a snake that had bit him,
+the blacksmith flung from him the hand he held. The man gave a cry,
+staggered, recovered himself, and ran. Joseph would have followed
+again, but fell, and for a minute or two lost consciousness. When he
+came to himself, Mary was binding up his arm.
+
+"What a fool I am!" he said, trying to get up, but yielding at once to
+Mary's prevention. "Ain't it ridic'lous now, miss, that a man of my
+size, and ready to work a sledge with any smith in Yorkshire, should
+turn sick for a little bit of a job with a knife? But my father was
+just the same, and he was a stronger man than I'm like to be, I fancy."
+
+"It is no such wonder as you think," said Mary; "you have lost a good
+deal of blood."
+
+Her voice faltered. She had been greatly alarmed--and the more that she
+had not light enough to get the edges of the wound properly together.
+
+"You've stopped it--ain't you, miss?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Then I'll be after the fellow."
+
+"No, no; you must not attempt it. You must lie still awhile. But I
+don't understand it at all! That cottage used to be a mere hovel,
+without door or window! It can't be you live in it?"
+
+"Ay, that I do! and it's not a bad place either," answered Joseph.
+"That's what I went to Yorkshire to get my money for. It's mine--bought
+and paid for."
+
+"But what made you think of coming here?"
+
+"Let's go into the smithy--house I won't presume to call it," said
+Joseph, "though it has a lean-to for the smith--and I'll tell you
+everything about it. But really, miss, you oughtn't to be out like this
+after dark. There's too many vagabonds about."
+
+With but little need of the help Mary yet gave him, Joseph got up, and
+led her to what was now a respectable little smithy, with forge and
+bellows and anvil and bucket. Opening a door where had been none, he
+brought a chair, and making her sit down, began to blow the covered
+fire on the hearth, where he had not long before "boiled his kettle"
+for his tea. Then closing the door, he lighted a candle, and Mary
+looking about her could scarcely believe the change that had come upon
+the miserable vacuity. Joseph sat down upon his anvil, and begged to
+know where she had just been, and how far she had run from the rascal.
+When he had learned something of the peculiar relations in which Mary
+stood to the family at Durnmelling, he began to think there might have
+been something more in the pursuit than a chance ruffianly assault, and
+the greater were his regrets that he had not secured the miscreant.
+
+"Anyhow, miss," he said, "you'll never come from there alone in the
+dark again!"
+
+"I understand you, Joseph," answered Mary, "for I know you would not
+have me leave doing what I can for the poor man up there, because of a
+little danger in the way."
+
+"No, that I wouldn't, miss. That would be as much as to say you would
+do the will of God when the devil would let you. What I mean is, that
+here am I--your slave, or servant, or soldier, or whatever you may
+please to call me, ready at your word."
+
+"I must not take you from your work, you know, Joseph."
+
+"Work's not everything, miss," he answered; "and it's seldom so
+pressing but that--except I be shoeing a horse--I can leave it when I
+choose. Any time you want to go anywhere, don't forget as you've got
+enemies about, and just send for me. You won't have long to wait till I
+come. But I am main sorry the rascal didn't have something to keep him
+in mind of his manners."
+
+Part of this conversation, and a good deal more, passed on their way to
+Testbridge, whither, as soon as Joseph seemed all right, Mary, who had
+forgotten her hunger and faintness, insisted on setting out at once. In
+her turn she questioned Joseph, and learned that, as soon as he knew
+she was going to settle at Testbridge, he started off to find if
+possible a place in the neighborhood humble enough to be within his
+reach, and near enough for the hope of seeing her sometimes, and having
+what help she might please to give him. The explanation afforded Mary
+more pleasure than she cared to show. She had a real friend near
+her--one ready to help her on her own ground--one who understood her
+because he understood the things she loved! He told her that already he
+had work enough to keep him going; that the horses he once shod were
+always brought to him again; that he was at no expense such as in a
+town; and that he had plenty of time both for his violin and his books.
+
+When they came to the suburbs, she sent him home, and went straight to
+Mr. Brett with Mr. Redmain's message. He undertook to be at Durnmelling
+at the time appointed, and to let nothing prevent him from seeing his
+new client.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+THE NEXT NIGHT.
+
+
+Mr. Bratt found no difficulty in the way of the interview, for Mr.
+Redmain had given Mewks instructions he dared not disobey: his master
+had often ailed, and recovered again, and he must not venture too far!
+As soon as he had shown the visitor into the room he was dismissed, but
+not before he had satisfied himself that he was a lawyer. He carried
+the news at once to Sepia, and it wrought no little anxiety in the
+house. There was a will already in existence, and no ground for
+thinking a change in it boded anything good. Mr. Mortimer never deigned
+to share his thoughts, anxieties, or hopes with any of his people; but
+the ladies met in deep consultation, although of course there was
+nothing to be done. The only operative result was that it let Sepia
+know how, though for reasons somewhat different, her anxiety was shared
+by the others: unlike theirs, her sole desire was--_not_ to be
+mentioned in the will: that could only be for the sake of leaving her a
+substantial curse! Mr. Redmain's utter silence, after, as she well
+knew, having gathered damning facts to her discredit, had long
+convinced her he was but biding his time. Certain she was he would not
+depart this life without leaving his opinion of her and the proofs of
+its justice behind him, carrying weight as the affidavit of a dying
+man. Also she knew Hesper well enough to be certain that, however she
+might delight in opposition to the desire of her husband, she would for
+the sake of no one carry that opposition to a point where it became
+injurious to her interests. Sepia's one thought therefore was: could
+not something be done to prevent the making of another will, or the
+leaving of any fresh document behind him? What he might already have
+done, she could nowise help; what he might yet do, it would be well to
+prevent. Once more, therefore, she impressed upon Mewks, and that in
+the names of Mrs. Redmain and Lady Margaret, as well as in her own
+person, the absolute necessity of learning as much as possible of what
+might pass between his master and the lawyer.
+
+Mewks was driven to the end of his wits, and they were not a few, to
+find excuses for going into the room, and for delaying to go out again,
+while with all his ears he listened. But both client and lawyer were
+almost too careful for him; and he had learned positively nothing when
+the latter rose to depart. He instantly left the room, with the door a
+trifle ajar, and listening intently, heard his master say that Mr.
+Brett must come again the next morning; that he felt better, and would
+think over the suggestions he had made; and that he must leave the
+memoranda within his reach, on the table by his bedside. Ere the lawyer
+issued, Mewks was on his way with all this to his tempter.
+
+Sepia concluded there had been some difference of opinion between Mr.
+Redmain and his adviser, and hoped that nothing had been finally
+settled. Was there any way to prevent the lawyer from seeing him again?
+Could she by any means get a peep at the memoranda mentioned? She dared
+not suggest the thing to Hesper or Lady Malice--of all people they were
+those in relation to whom she feared their possible contents--and she
+dared not show herself in Mr. Redmain's room. Was Mewks to be trusted
+to the point of such danger as grew in her thought?
+
+The day wore on. Toward evening he had a dreadful attack. Any other man
+would have sent before now for what medical assistance the town could
+afford him, but Mr. Redmain hated having a stranger about him, and, as
+he knew how to treat himself, it was only when very ill that he would
+send for his own doctor to the country, fearing that otherwise he might
+give him up as a patient, such visits, however well remunerated, being
+seriously inconvenient to a man with a large London practice. But now
+Lady Margaret took upon herself to send a telegram.
+
+An hour before her usual time for closing the shop, Mary set out for
+Durnmelling; and, at the appointed spot on the way, found her squire of
+low degree in waiting. At first sight, however, and although she was
+looking out for him, she did not certainly recognize him. I would not
+have my reader imagine Joseph one of those fools who delight in
+appearing something else than they are; but while every workman ought
+to look a workman, it ought not to be by looking less of a man, or of a
+_gentleman_ in the true sense; and Joseph, having, out of respect to
+her who would honor him with her company, dressed himself in a new suit
+of unpretending gray, with a wide-awake hat, looked at first sight more
+like a country gentleman having a stroll over his farm, than a man
+whose hands were hard with the labors of the forge. He took off his hat
+as she approached--if not with ease, yet with the clumsy grace peculiar
+to him; for, unlike many whose manners are unobjectionable, he had in
+his something that might be called his own. But the best of it was,
+that he knew nothing about his manners, beyond the desire to give honor
+where honor was due.
+
+He walked with her to the door of the house; for they had agreed that,
+from whatever quarter had come the pursuit, and whatever might have
+been its object, it would be well to show that she was attended. They
+had also arranged at what hour, and at what spot close at hand, he was
+to be waiting to accompany her home. But, although he said nothing
+about it, Joseph was determined not to leave the place until she
+rejoined him.
+
+It was nearly dark when he left her; and when he had wandered up and
+down the avenue awhile, it seemed dark enough to return to the house,
+and reconnoiter a little.
+
+He had already made the acquaintance of the farmer who occupied a
+portion of the great square, behind the part where the family lived: he
+had had several of his horses to shoe, and had not only given
+satisfaction by the way in which he shod them, but had interested their
+owner with descriptions of more than one rare mode of shoeing to which
+he had given attention; he was, therefore, the less shy of being
+discovered about the place.
+
+From the back he found his way into the roofless hall, and there paced
+quietly up and down, measuring the floor, and guessing at the height
+and thickness of the walls, and the sort of roof they had borne. He
+noted that the wall of the house rose higher than those of the ruin
+with which it was in contact; and that there was a window in it just
+over one of those walls. Thinking whether it had been there when the
+roof was on, he saw through it the flickering of a fire, and wondered
+whether it could be the window of Mr. Redmain's room.
+
+Mary, having resolved not to give any notice of her arrival, if she
+could get in without it, and finding the hall-door on the latch,
+entered quietly, and walked straight to Mr. Redmain's bedroom. When she
+opened the door of it, Mewks came hurriedly to meet her, as if he would
+have made her go out again, but she scarcely looked at him, and
+advanced to the bed. Mr. Redmain was just waking from the sleep into
+which he had fallen after a severe paroxysm.
+
+"Ah, there you are!" he said, smiling her a feeble welcome. "I am glad
+you are come. I have been looking out for you. I am very ill. If it
+comes again to-night, I think it will make an end of me."
+
+She sat down by the bedside. He lay quite still for some time,
+breathing like one very weary. Then he seemed to grow easier, and said,
+with much gentleness:
+
+"Can't you talk to me?"
+
+"Would you like me to read to you?" she asked.
+
+"No," he answered; "I can't bear the light; it makes my head furious."
+
+"Shall I talk to you about my father?" she asked.
+
+"I don't believe in fathers," he replied. "They're always after some
+notion of their own. It's not their children they care about."
+
+"That may be true of some fathers," answered Mary; "but it is not the
+least true of mine."
+
+"Where is he? Why don't you bring him to see me, if he is such a good
+man? He might be able to do something for me."
+
+"There is none but your own father can do anything for you," said Mary.
+"My father is gone home to him, but if he were here, he would only tell
+you about _him_."
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Why don't you talk?" said Mr. Redmain, crossly. "What's the good of
+sitting there saying nothing! How am I to forget that the pain will be
+here again, if you don't say a word to help me?"
+
+Mary lifted up her heart, and prayed for something to say to the sad
+human soul that had never known the Father. But she could think of
+nothing to talk about except the death of William Marston. So she began
+with the dropping of her watch, and, telling whatever seemed at the
+moment fit to tell, ended with the dream she had the night of his
+funeral. By that time the hidden fountain was flowing in her soul, and
+she was able to speak straight out of it.
+
+"I can not tell you, sir," she said, closing the story of her dream,
+"what a feeling it was! The joy of it was beyond all expression."
+
+"You're not surely going to offer me a dream in proof of anything!"
+muttered the sick man.
+
+"Yes," answered Mary--"in proof of what it can prove. The joy of a
+child over a new toy, or a colored sweetmeat, shows of what bliss the
+human soul is made capable."
+
+"Oh, capable, I dare say!"
+
+"And more than that," Mary went on, adding instead of replying, "no one
+ever felt such gladness without believing in it. There must be
+somewhere the justification of such gladness. There must be the father
+of it somewhere."
+
+"Well! I don't like to say, after your kindness in coming here to take
+care of me, that you talk the worst rubbish I ever heard; but just tell
+me of what use is it all to me, in the state I am in! What I want is to
+be free of pain, and have some pleasure in life--not to be told about a
+father."
+
+"But what if the father you don't want is determined you shall not have
+what you do want? What if your desire is not worth keeping you alive
+for? And what if he is ready to help your smallest effort to be the
+thing he wants you to be--and in the end to give you your heart's
+desire?"
+
+"It sounds very fine, but it's all so thin, so up in the clouds! It
+don't seem to have a leg to stand upon. Why, if that were true,
+everybody would be good! There would be none but saints in the world!
+What's in it, I'm sure I don't know."
+
+"It will take ages to know what is in it; but, if you should die now,
+you will be glad to find, on the other side, that you have made a
+beginning. For my part, if I had everything my soul could desire,
+except God with me, I could but pray that he would come to me, or not
+let me live a moment longer; for it would be but the life of a devil."
+
+"What do you mean by a devil?"
+
+"A power that lives against its life," said Mary.
+
+Mr. Redmain answered nothing. He did not perceive an atom of sense in
+the words. They gave him not a glimmer. Neither will they to many of my
+readers; while not a few will think they see all that is in them, and
+see nothing.
+
+He was silent for a long time--whether he waked or slept she could not
+tell.
+
+The annoyance was great in the home conclave when Mewks brought the
+next piece of news--namely, that there was that designing Marston in
+the master's room again, and however she got into the house he was sure
+_he_ didn't know.
+
+"All the same thing over again, miss!--hard at it a-tryin' to convert
+'im!--And where's the use, you know, miss? If a man like my master's to
+be converted and get off, I don't for my part see where's the good o'
+keepin' up a devil."
+
+"I am quite of your opinion, Mewks," said Sepia.
+
+But in her heart she was ill at ease.
+
+All day long she had been haunted with an ever-recurring temptation,
+which, instead of dismissing it, she kept like a dog in a string.
+Different kinds of evil affect people differently. Ten thousand will do
+a dishonest thing, who would indignantly reject the dishonest thing
+favored by another ten thousand. They are not sufficiently used to its
+ugly face not to dislike it, though it may not be quite so ugly as
+their _protege_. A man will feel grandly honest against the
+dishonesties of another trade than his, and be eager to justify those
+of his own. Here was Sepia, who did not care the dust of a butterfly's
+wing for causing any amount of family misery, who would without a pang
+have sacrificed the genuine reputation of an innocent man to save her
+own false one--shuddering at an idea as yet bodiless in her brain--an
+idea which, however, she did not dismiss, and so grew able to endure!
+
+I have kept this woman--so far as personal acquaintance with her is
+concerned--in the background of my history. For one thing, I am not
+fond of _post-mortem_ examinations; in other words, I do not like
+searching the decompositions of moral carrion. Analysis of such is,
+like the use of reagents on dirt, at least unpleasant. Nor was any true
+end to be furthered by a more vivid presentation of her. Nosology is a
+science doomed, thank God, to perish! Health alone will at last fill
+the earth. Or, if there should be always the ailing to help, a man will
+help them by being sound himself, not by knowing the ins and outs of
+disease. Diagnosis is not therapy.
+
+Sepia was unnatural--as every one is unnatural who does not set his
+face in the direction of the true Nature; but she had gone further in
+the opposite direction than many people have yet reached. At the same
+time, whoever has not faced about is on the way to a capacity for worse
+things than even our enemies would believe of us.
+
+Her very existence seemed to her now at stake. If by his dying act Mr.
+Redmain should drive her from under Hesper's roof, what was to become
+of her! Durnmelling, too, would then be as certainly closed against
+her, and she would be compelled to take a situation, and teach music,
+which she hated, and French and German, which gave her no pleasure
+apart from certain strata of their literature, to insolent girls whom
+she would be constantly wishing to strangle, or stupid little boys who
+would bore her to death. Her very soul sickened at the thought--as well
+it might; for to have to do such service with such a heart as hers,
+must indeed be torment. All hope of marrying Godfrey Wardour would be
+gone, of course. Did he but remain uncertain as to the truth or
+falsehood of a third part of what Mr. Redmain would record against her,
+he would never meet her again!
+
+Since the commencement of this last attack of Mr. Redmain's malady, she
+had scarcely slept; and now what Mewks reported rendered her nigh
+crazy. For some time she had been generally awake half the night, and
+all the last night she had been wandering here and there about the
+house, not unfrequently couched where she could hear every motion in
+Mr. Redmain's room. Haunted by fear, she in turn haunted her fear. She
+could not keep from staring down the throat of the pit. She was a slave
+of the morrow, the undefined, awful morrow, ever about to bring forth
+no one knows what. That morrow could she but forestall!
+
+If any should think that anxiety and watching must have so wrought on
+Sepia that she came to be no longer accountable for her actions, I will
+not oppose the kind conclusion. For my own part, until I shall have
+seen a man absolutely one with the source of his being, I do not
+believe I shall ever have seen a man absolutely sane. What many would
+point to as plainest proofs of sanity, I should regard as surest signs
+of the contrary.
+
+A sign of my own insanity is it?
+
+Your insanity may be worse than mine, for you are aware of none, and I
+with mine do battle. I believe all insanity has moral as well as
+physical roots. But enough of this. There are questions we can afford
+to leave.
+
+Sepia had got very thin during these trying days. Her great eyes were
+larger yet, and filled with a troubled anxiety. Not paleness, for of
+that her complexion was incapable, but a dull pallor possessed her
+cheek. If one had met her as she roamed the house that night, he might
+well have taken her for some naughty ancestor, whose troubled
+conscience, not yet able to shake off the madness of some evil deed,
+made her wander still about the place where she had committed it.
+
+She believed in no supreme power who cares that right should be done in
+his worlds. Here, it may be, some of my unbelieving acquaintances,
+foreseeing a lurid something on the horizon of my story, will be
+indignant that the capacity for crime should be thus associated with
+the denial of a Live Good. But it remains a mere fact that it is easier
+for a man to commit a crime when he does not fear a willed retribution.
+Tell me there is no merit in being prevented by fear; I answer, the
+talk is not of merit. As the world is, that is, as the race of men at
+present is, it is just as well that the man who has no merit, and never
+dreamed of any, should yet be a little hindered from cutting his
+neighbor's throat at his evil pleasure.--No; I do not mean hindered by
+a lie--I mean hindered by the poorest apprehension of the grandest
+truth.
+
+Of those who do not believe, some have never had a noble picture of God
+presented to them; but whether their phantasm is of a mean God because
+they refuse him, or they refuse him because their phantasm of him is
+mean, who can tell? Anyhow, mean notions must come of meanness, and,
+uncharitable as it may appear, I can not but think there is a moral
+root to all chosen unbelief. But let God himself judge his own.
+
+With Sepia, what was _best_ meant what was best for her, and _best for
+her_ meant _most after her liking_.
+
+She had in her time heard a good deal about _euthanasia_, and had taken
+her share in advocating it. I do not assume this to be anything
+additional against her; one who does not believe in God, may in such an
+advocacy indulge a humanity pitiful over the irremediable ills of the
+race; and, being what she was, she was no worse necessarily for
+advocating that than for advocating cremation, which she
+did--occasionally, I must confess, a little coarsely. But the notion of
+_euthanasia_ might well work for evil in a mind that had not a thought
+for the case any more than for the betterment of humanity, or indeed
+for anything but its own consciousness of pleasure or comfort.
+Opinions, like drugs, work differently on different constitutions.
+Hence the man is foolish who goes scattering vague notions regardless
+of the soil on which they may fall.
+
+She was used to asking the question, What's the good? but always in
+respect of something she wanted out of her way.
+
+"What's the good of an hour or two more if you're not enjoying it?" she
+said to herself again and again that Monday. "What's the good of living
+when life is pain--or fear of death, from which no fear can save you?"
+But the question had no reference to her own life: she was judging for
+another--and for another not for his sake, or from his point of view,
+but for her own sake, and from where she stood.
+
+All the day she wandered about the house, such thoughts as these in her
+heart, and in her pocket a bottle of that concentrated which Mr.
+Redmain was taking much diluted for medicine. But she _hoped not to
+have to use it_. If only Mr. Redmain would yield the conflict, and
+depart without another interview with the lawyer!
+
+But if he would not, and two drops from the said bottle, not taken by
+herself, but by another, would save her, all her life to come, from
+endless anxiety and grinding care, from weariness and disgust, and
+indeed from want; nor that alone, but save likewise that other from an
+hour, or two hours, or perhaps a week, or possibly two weeks, or--who
+could tell?--it might be a month of pain and moaning and weariness,
+would it not be well?--must it not be more than well?
+
+She had not learned to fear temptation; she feared poverty, dependence,
+humiliation, labor, _ennui_, misery. The thought of the life that must
+follow and wrap her round in the case of the dreaded disclosure was
+unendurable; the thought of the suggested frustration was not _so_
+unendurable--was not absolutely unendurable--was to be borne--might be
+permitted to come--to return--was cogitated--now with imagined
+resistance, now with reluctant and partial acceptance, now with faint
+resolve, and now with determined resolution--now with the beaded drops
+pouring from the forehead, and now with a cold, scornful smile of
+triumphant foil and success.
+
+Was she so very exceptionally bad, however? You who hate your brother
+or your sister--you do not think yourself at all bad! But you are a
+murderer, and she was only a murderer. You do not feel wicked? How do
+you know she did? Besides, you hate, and she did not hate; she only
+wanted to take care of herself. Lady Macbeth did not hate Duncan; she
+only wanted to give her husband his crown. You only hate your brother;
+you would not, you say, do him any harm; and I believe you would not do
+him mere bodily harm; but, were things changed, so that hate-action
+became absolutely safe, I should have no confidence what you might not
+come to do. No one can tell what wreck a gust of passion upon a sea of
+hate may work. There are men a man might well kill, if he were anything
+less than ready to die for them. The difference between the man that
+hates and the man that kills may be nowhere but in the courage. These
+are _grewsome_ thinkings: let us leave them--but hating with them.
+
+All the afternoon Sepia hovered about Mr. Rcdmain's door, down upon
+Mewks every moment he appeared. Her head ached; she could hardly
+breathe. Rest she could not. Once when Mewks, coming from the room,
+told her his master was asleep, she crept in, and, softly approaching
+the head of the bed, looked at him from behind, then stole out again.
+
+"He seems dying, Mewks," she said.
+
+"Oh, no, miss! I've often seen him as bad. He's better."
+
+"Who's that whispering?" murmured the patient, angrily, though half
+asleep.
+
+Mewks went in, and answered:
+
+"Only me and Jemima, sir."
+
+"Where's Miss Marston?"
+
+"She's not come yet, sir."
+
+"I want to go to sleep again. You must wake me the moment she comes."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mewks went back to Sepia.
+
+"His voice is much altered," she said.
+
+"He most always speaks like that now, miss, when he wakes--very
+different from I used to know him! He'd always swear bad when he woke;
+but Miss Marston do seem t' 'ave got a good deal of that out of him.
+Anyhow, this last two days he's scarce swore enough to make it feel
+home-like."
+
+"It's death has got it out of him," said Sepia. "I don't think he can
+last the night through. Fetch me at once if--And don't let that Marston
+into the room again, whatever you do."
+
+She spoke with the utmost emphasis, plainly clinching instructions
+previously given, then went slowly up the stair to her own room. Surely
+he would die to-night, and she would not be led into temptation! She
+would then have but to get a hold of the paper! What a hateful and
+unjust thing it was that her life should be in the power of that man--a
+miserable creature, himself hanging between life and death!--that such
+as he should be able to determine her fate, and say whether she was to
+be comfortable or miserable all the rest of a life that was to outlast
+his so many years! It was absurd to talk of a Providence! She must be
+her own providence!
+
+She stole again down the stair. Her cousin was in her own room safe
+with a novel, and there was Mewks fast asleep in an easy-chair in the
+study, with the doors of the dressing-room and chamber ajar! She crept
+into the sick-room. There was the tumbler with the medicine! and her
+fingers were on the vial in her pocket. The dying man slept.
+
+She drew near the table by the bed. He stirred as if about to awake.
+Her limbs, her brain seemed to rebel against her will.--But what folly
+it was! the man was not for this world a day longer; what could it
+matter whether he left it a few hours earlier or later? The drops on
+his brow rose from the pit of his agony; every breath was a torture; it
+were mercy to help him across the verge; if to more life, he would owe
+her thanks; if to endless rest, he would never accuse her.
+
+She took the vial from her pocket. A hand was on the lock of the door!
+She turned and fled through the dressing-room and study, waking Mewks
+as she passed. He, hurrying into the chamber, saw Mary already entered.
+
+When Sepia learned who it was that had scared her, she felt she could
+kill her with less compunction than Mr. Redmain. She hated her far
+worse.
+
+"You _must_ get the viper out of-the house, Mewks," she said. "It is
+all your fault she got into the room."
+
+"I'm sure I'm willing enough," he answered, "--even if it wasn't you as
+as't me, miss! But what am I to do? She's that brazen, you wouldn'
+believe, miss! It wouldn' be becomin' to tell you what I think that
+young woman fit to do."
+
+"I don't doubt it," responded Sepia. "But surely," she went on, "the
+next time he has an attack, and he's certain to have one soon, you will
+be able to get her hustled out!"
+
+"No, miss--least of all just then. She'll make that a pretense for not
+going a yard from the bed--as if me that's been about him so many years
+didn't know what ought to be done with him in his paroxes of pain
+better than the likes of her! Of all things I do loathe a row,
+miss--and the talk of it after; and sure I am that without a row we
+don't get her out of that room. The only way is to be quiet, and seem
+to trust her, and watch for the chance of her going out--then shut her
+out, and keep her out."
+
+"I believe you are right," returned Sepia, almost with a hope that no
+such opportunity might arrive, but at the same time growing more
+determined to take advantage of it if it should.
+
+Hence partly it came that Mary met with no interruption to her watching
+and ministering. Mewks kept coming and going--watching her, and
+awaiting his opportunity. Mr. Redmain scarcely heeded him, only once
+and again saying in sudden anger, "What can that idiot be about? He
+might know by this time I'm not likely to want _him_ so long as _you_
+are in the room!"
+
+And said Mary to herself: "Who knows what good the mere presence of one
+who trusts may be to him, even if he shouldn't seem to take much of
+what she says! Perhaps he may think of some of it after he is dead--who
+knows?" Patiently she sat and waited, full of help that would have
+flowed in a torrent, but which she felt only trickle from her heart
+like a stream that is lost on the face of the rock down which it flows.
+
+All at once she bethought herself, and looked at her watch: Joseph had
+been waiting for her more than an hour, and would not, she knew, if he
+stopped all night, go away without her! And for her, she could not
+forsake the poor man her presence seemed to comfort! He was now lying
+very still: she would slip out and send Joseph away, and be back before
+the patient or any one else should miss her!
+
+She went softly from the room, and glided down the stairs, and out of
+the house, seeing no one--but not unseen: hardly was she from the room,
+when the door of it was closed and locked behind her, and hardly from
+the house, when the house-door also was closed and locked behind her.
+But she heard nothing, and ran, without the least foreboding of mishap,
+to the corner where Joseph was to meet her.
+
+There he was, waiting as patiently as if the hour had not yet come.
+
+"I can't leave him, Joseph. My heart won't let me," she said. "I can
+not go back before the morning. I will look in upon you as I pass."
+
+So saying, and without giving him time to answer, she bade him good
+night, and ran back to the house, hoping to get in as before without
+being seen. But to her dismay she found the door already fast, and
+concluded the hour had arrived when the house was shut up for the
+night. She rang the bell, but there was no answer--for there was Mewks
+himself standing close behind the door, grinning like his master an
+evil grin. As she knocked and rang in vain, the fact flashed upon her
+that she was intentionally excluded. She turned away, overwhelmed with
+a momentary despair. What was she to do? There stood Joseph! She ran
+back to him, and told him they had shut her out.
+
+"It makes me miserable," she went on, "to think of the poor man calling
+me, and me nowhere to answer. The worst of it is, I seem the only
+person he has any faith in, and what I have been telling him about the
+father of us all, whose love never changes, will seem only the idler
+tale, when he finds I am gone, and nowhere to be found--as they're sure
+to tell him. There's no saying what lies they mayn't tell him about my
+going! Rather than go, I will sit on the door-step all night, just to
+be able to tell him in the morning that I never went home."
+
+"Why have they done it, do you think? asked Joseph.
+
+"I dare hardly allow myself to conjecture," answered Mary. "None of
+them like me but Jemima--not even Mrs. Redmain now, I am afraid; for
+you see I never got any of the good done her I wanted, and, till
+something of that was done, she could not know how I felt toward her. I
+shouldn't a bit wonder if they fancy I have a design on his money--as
+if anybody fit to call herself a woman would condescend to such a
+thing! But when a woman would marry for money, she may well think as
+badly of another woman."
+
+"This is a serious affair," said Joseph. "To have a dying man believe
+you false to him would be dreadful! We must find some way in. Let us go
+to the kitchen-door."
+
+"If Jemima happened to be near, then, perhaps!" rejoined Mary; "but if
+they want to keep me out, you may be sure Mewks has taken care of one
+door as well as another. He knows I'm not so easy to keep out."
+
+"If you did get in," said Joseph, speaking in a whisper as they went,
+"would you feel quite safe after this?"
+
+"I have no fear. I dare say they would lock me up somewhere if they
+could, before I got to Mr. Redmain's room: once in, they would not dare
+touch me."
+
+"I shall not go out of hearing so long as you are in that house," said
+Joseph, with decision. "Not until I have you out again do I leave the
+premises. If anything should make you feel uncomfortable, you cry out,
+miss, and I'll make a noise at the door that everybody at Thornwick
+over there shall hear me."
+
+"It is a large house, Joseph: one might call in many a part of it, and
+never be heard out of doors. I don't think you could hear me from Mr.
+Redmain's room," said Mary, with a little laugh, for she was amused as
+well as pleased at the protection Joseph would give her; "it is up two
+flights, and he chose it himself for the sake of being quiet when he
+was ill."
+
+As she spoke, they reached the door they sought--the most likely of all
+to be still open: it was fast and dark as if it had not been unbolted
+for years. One or two more entrances they tried, but with no better
+success.
+
+"Come this way," whispered Joseph. "I know a place where we shall at
+least be out of their sight, and where we can plan at our leisure."
+
+He led her to the back entrance to the old hall. Alas! even that was
+closed.
+
+"This _is_ disappointing," he said; "for, if we were only in there, I
+think something might be done."
+
+"I believe I know a way," said Mary, and led him to a place near, used
+for a wood-shed.
+
+At the top of a great heap of sticks and fagots was an opening in the
+wall, that had once been a window, or perhaps a door.
+
+"That, I know, is the wall of the tower," she said; "and there can be
+no difficulty in getting through there. Once in, it will be easy to
+reach the hall--that is, if the door of the tower is not locked."
+
+In an instant Joseph was at the top of the heap, and through the
+opening, hanging on, and feeling with his feet. He found footing at no
+great distance, and presently Mary was beside him. They descended
+softly, and found the door into the hall wide open.
+
+"Can you tell me what window is that," whispered Joseph, "just above
+the top of the wall?"
+
+"I can not," answered Mary. "I never could go about this house as I did
+about Mr. Redmain's; my lady always looked so fierce if she saw me
+trying to understand the place. But why do you ask?"
+
+"You see the flickering of a fire? Could it be Mr. Redmain's room?"
+
+"I can not tell. I do not think it. That has no window in this
+direction, so far as I know. But I could not be certain."
+
+"Think how the stairs turn as you go up, and how the passages go to the
+room. Think in what direction you look every corner you turn. Then you
+will know better whether or not it might be."
+
+Mary was silent, and thought. In her mind she followed every turn she
+had to take from the moment she entered the house till she got to the
+door of Mr. Redmain's room, and then thought how the windows lay when
+she entered it. Her conclusion was that one side of the room must be
+against the hall, but she could remember no window in it.
+
+"But," she added, "I never was in that room when I was here before,
+and, the twice I have now been in it, I was too much occupied to take
+much notice of things about me. Two windows, I know, look down into a
+quiet little corner of the courtyard, where there is an old pump
+covered with ivy. I remember no other."
+
+"Is there any way of getting on to the top of that wall from this
+tower?" asked Joseph.
+
+"Certainly there is. People often walk round the top of those walls.
+They are more than thick enough for that."
+
+"Are you able to do it?"
+
+"Yes, quite. I have been round them more than once. But I don't like
+the idea of looking in at a window."
+
+"No more do I, miss; but you must remember, if it is his room, it will
+only be your eyes going where the whole of you has a right to be; and,
+if it should not be that room, they have driven you to it: such a
+necessity will justify it."
+
+"You must be right," answered Mary, and, turning, led the way up the
+stair of the tower, and through a gap in the wall out upon the top of
+the great walls.
+
+It was a sultry night. A storm was brooding between heaven and earth.
+The moon was not yet up, and it was so dark that they had to feel their
+way along the wall, glad of the protection of a fence of thick ivy on
+the outer side. Looking down into the court on the one hand, and across
+the hall to the lawn on the other, they saw no living thing in the
+light from various windows, and there was little danger of being
+discovered. In the gable was only the one window for which they were
+making. Mary went first, as better knowing the path, also as having the
+better right to look in. Through the window, as she went, she could see
+the flicker, but not the fire. All at once came a great blaze. It
+lasted but a moment--long enough, however, to let them see plainly into
+a small closet, the door of which was partly open.
+
+"That is the room, I do believe," whispered Mary. "There is a closet,
+but I never was in it."
+
+"If only the window be not bolted!" returned Joseph.
+
+The same instant Mary heard the voice of Mr. Redmain call in a tone of
+annoyance--"Mary! Mary Marston! I want you. Who is that in the
+room?--Damn you! who are you?"
+
+"Let me pass you," said Joseph, and, making her hold to the ivy, here
+spread on to the gable, he got between Mary and the window. The blaze
+was gone, and the fire was at its old flicker. The window was not
+bolted. He lifted the sash. A moment and he was in. The next, Mary was
+beside him.
+
+Something, known to her only as an impulse, induced Mary to go softly
+to the door of the closet, and peep into the room. She saw Hesper, as
+she thought, standing--sidewise to the closet--by a chest of drawers
+invisible from the bed. A candle stood on the farther side of her. She
+held in one hand the tumbler from which, repeatedly that evening, Mary
+had given the patient his medicine: into this she was pouring, with an
+appearance of care, something from a small dark bottle.
+
+With a sudden suspicion of foul play, Mary glided swiftly into the
+room, and on to where she stood. It was Sepia! She started with a
+smothered shriek, turned white, and almost dropped the bottle; then,
+seeing who it was, recovered herself. But such a look as she cast on
+Mary! such a fire of hate as throbbed out of those great black eyes!
+Mary thought for a moment she would dart at her. But she turned away,
+and walked swiftly to the door. Joseph, however, peeping in behind
+Mary, had caught a glimpse of the bottle and tumbler, also of Sepia's
+face. Seeing her now retiring with the bottle in her hand, he sprang
+after her, and, thanks to the fact that she had locked the door, was in
+time to snatch it from her. She turned like a wild beast, and a
+terrible oath came hissing as from a feline throat. When, however, she
+saw, not Mary, but the unknown figure of a powerful man, she turned
+again to the door and fled. Joseph shut and locked it, and went back to
+the closet. Mary drew near the bed.
+
+"Where have you been all this time?" asked the patient, querulously;
+"and who was that went out of the room just now? What's all the hurry
+about?"
+
+Anxious he should be neither frightened nor annoyed, Mary replied to
+the first part of his question only.
+
+"I had to go and tell a friend, who was waiting for me, that I
+shouldn't be home to-night. But here I am now, and I will not leave you
+again."
+
+"How did the door come to be locked? And who was that went out of the
+room?"
+
+While he was thus questioning, Joseph crept softly out of the window;
+and all the rest of the night he lay on the top of the wall under it.
+
+"It was Miss Yolland," answered Mary.
+
+"What business had she in my room?"
+
+"She shall not enter it again while I am here."
+
+"Don't let Mewks in either," he rejoined. "I heard the door unlock and
+lock again: what did it mean?"
+
+"Wait till to-morrow. Perhaps we shall find out then."
+
+He was silent a little.
+
+"I must get out of this house, Mary," he sighed at length.
+
+"When the doctor comes, we shall see," said Mary.
+
+"What! is the doctor coming? I am glad of that. Who sent for him?"
+
+"I don't know; I only heard he was coming."
+
+"But your lawyer, Mary--what's his name?--will be here first: we'll
+talk the thing over with him, and take his advice. I feel better, and
+shall go to sleep again."
+
+All night long Mary sat by him and watched. Not a step, so far as she
+knew, came near the door; certainly not a hand was laid upon the lock.
+Mr. Redmain slept soundly, and in the morning was beyond a doubt better.
+
+But Mary could not think of leaving him until Mr. Brett came. At Mr.
+Redmain's request she rang the bell. Mewks made his appearance, with
+the face of a ghost. His master told him to bring his breakfast.
+
+"And see, Mewks," he added, in a tone of gentleness that terrified the
+man, so unaccustomed was he to such from the mouth of his master--"see
+that there is enough for Miss Marston as well. She has had nothing all
+night. Don't let my lady have any trouble with it.--Stop," he cried, as
+Mewks was going, "I won't have you touch it either; I am fastidious
+this morning. Tell the young woman they call Jemima to come here to
+Miss Marston."
+
+Mewks slunk away. Jemima came, and Mr. Redmain ordered her to get
+breakfast for himself and Mary. It was done speedily, and Mary remained
+in the sick-chamber until the lawyer arrived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+DISAPPEARANCE.
+
+
+"I am afraid I must ask you to leave us now, Miss Marston," said Mr.
+Brett, seated with pen, ink, and paper, to receive his new client's
+instructions.
+
+"No," said Mr. Redmain; "she must stay where she is. I fancy something
+happened last night which she has got to tell us about."
+
+"Ah! What was that?" asked Mr. Brett, facing round on her.
+
+Mary began her story with the incident of her having been pursued by
+some one, and rescued by the blacksmith, whom she told her listeners
+she had known in London. Then she narrated all that had happened the
+night before, from first to last, not forgetting the flame that lighted
+the closet as they approached the window.
+
+"Just let me see those memoranda," said Mr. Brett to Mr. Redmain,
+rising, and looking for the paper where he had left it the day before.
+
+"It was of that paper I was this moment thinking," answered Mr. Redmain.
+
+"It is not here!" said Mr. Brett.
+
+"I thought as much! The fool! There was a thousand pounds there for
+her! I didn't want to drive her to despair: a dying man must mind what
+he is about. Ring the bell and see what Mewks has to say to it."
+
+Mewks came, in evident anxiety.
+
+I will not record his examination. Mr. Brett took it for granted he had
+deliberately and intentionally shut out Mary, and Mewks did not attempt
+to deny it, protesting he believed she was boring his master. The grin
+on that master's face at hearing this was not very pleasant to behold.
+When examined as to the missing paper, he swore by all that was holy he
+knew nothing about it.
+
+Mr. Brett next requested the presence of Miss Yolland. She was nowhere
+to be found. The place was searched throughout, but there was no trace
+of her.
+
+When the doctor arrived, the bottle Joseph had taken from her was
+examined, and its contents discovered.
+
+Lady Malice was grievously hurt at the examination she found had been
+going on.
+
+"Have I not nursed you like my own brother, Mr. Redmain?" she said.
+
+"You may be glad you have escaped a coroner's inquest in your house,
+Lady Margaret!" said Mr. Brett.
+
+"For me," said Mr. Redmain, "I have not many days left me, but somehow
+a fellow does like to have his own!"
+
+Hesper sought Mary, and kissed her with some appearance of gratitude.
+She saw what a horrible suspicion, perhaps even accusation, she had
+saved her from. The behavior and disappearance of Sepia seemed to give
+her little trouble.
+
+Mr. Brett got enough out of Mewks to show the necessity of his
+dismissal, and the doctor sent from London a man fit to take his place.
+
+Almost every evening, until he left Durnmelling, Mary went to see Mr.
+Redmain. She read to him, and tried to teach him, as one might an
+unchildlike child. And something did seem to be getting into, or waking
+up in, him. The man had never before in the least submitted; but now it
+looked as if the watching spirit of life were feeling through the
+dust-heap of his evil judgments, low thoughts, and bad life, to find
+the thing that spirit had made, lying buried somewhere in the frightful
+tumulus: when the two met and joined, then would the man be saved; God
+and he would be together. Sometimes he would utter the strangest
+things--such as if all the old evil modes of thinking and feeling were
+in full operation again; and sometimes for days Mary would not have an
+idea what was going on in him. When suffering, he would occasionally
+break into fierce and evil language, then be suddenly silent. God and
+Satan were striving for the man, and victory would be with him with
+whom the man should side.
+
+For some time it remained doubtful whether this attack was not, after
+all, going to be the last: the doctor himself was doubtful, and, having
+no reason to think his death would be a great grief in the house, did
+not hesitate much to express his doubt. And, indeed, it caused no
+gloom. For there was little love in the attentions the Mortimers paid
+him; and in what other hope could Hesper have married, than that one
+day she would be free, with a freedom informed with power, the power of
+money! But to the mother's suggestions as to possible changes in the
+future, the daughter never responded: she had no thought of plans in
+common with her.
+
+Strange rumors came abroad. Godfrey Wardour heard something of them,
+and laughed them to scorn. There was a conspiracy in that house to ruin
+the character of the loveliest woman in creation! But when a week after
+week passed, and he heard nothing of or from her, he became anxious,
+and at last lowered his pride so far as to call on Mary, under the
+pretense of buying something in the shop.
+
+His troubled look filled her with sympathy, but she could not help
+being glad afresh that he had escaped the snares laid for him. He
+looked at her searchingly, and at last murmured a request that she
+would allow him to have a little conversation with her.
+
+She led the way to her parlor, closed the door, and asked him to take a
+seat. But Godfrey was too proud or too agitated to sit.
+
+"You will be surprised to see me on such an errand, Miss Marston!" he
+said.
+
+"I do not yet know your errand," replied Mary; "but I may not be so
+much surprised as you think."
+
+"Do not imagine," said Godfrey, stiffly, "that I believe a word of the
+contemptible reports in circulation. I come only to ask you to tell me
+the real nature of the accusations brought against Miss Yolland: your
+name is, of course, coupled with them."
+
+"Mr. Wardour," said Mary, "if I thought you would believe what I told
+yon, I would willingly do as you ask me. As it is, allow me to refer
+you to Mr. Brett, the lawyer, whom I dare say you know."
+
+Happily, the character of Mr. Brett was well known in Testbridge and
+all the country round; and from him Godfrey Wardour learned what sent
+him traveling on the Continent again--not in the hope of finding Sepia.
+What became of her, none of her family ever learned.
+
+Some time after, it came out that the same night on which the presence
+of Joseph rescued Mary from her pursuer, a man speaking with a foreign
+accent went to one of the surgeons in Testbridge to have his shoulder
+set, which he said had been dislocated by a fall. When Joseph heard it,
+he smiled, and thought he knew what it meant.
+
+Hesper was no sooner in London, than she wrote to Mary, inviting her to
+go and visit her. But Mary answered she could no more leave home, and
+must content herself with the hope of seeing Mrs. Redmain when she came
+to Durnmelling.
+
+So long as her husband lived, the time for that did not again arrive;
+but when Mary went to London, she always called on her, and generally
+saw Mr. Redmain. But they never had any more talk about the things Mary
+loved most. That he continued to think of those things, she had one
+ground of hoping, namely, the kindness with which he invariably
+received her, and the altogether gentler manner he wore as often and as
+long as she saw him. Whether the change was caused by something better
+than physical decay, who knows save him who can use even decay for
+redemption? He lived two years more, and died rather suddenly. After
+his death, and that of her father, which followed soon, Hesper went
+again to Durnmelling, and behaved better to her mother than before.
+Mary sometimes saw her, and a flicker of genuine friendship began to
+appear on Hesper's part.
+
+Mr. Turnbull was soon driving what he called a roaring trade. He bought
+and sold a great deal more than Mary, but she had business sufficient
+to employ her days, and leave her nights free, and bring her and Letty
+enough to live on as comfortably as they desired--with not a little
+over, to use, when occasion was, for others, and something to lay by
+for the time of lengthening shadows.
+
+Turnbull seemed to hare taken a lesson from his late narrow escape, for
+he gave up the worst of his speculations, and confined himself to
+"_genuine business-principles_"--the more contentedly that, all Marston
+folly swept from his path, he was free to his own interpretation of the
+phrase. He grew a rich man, and died happy--so his friends said, and
+said as they saw. Mrs. Turnbull left Testbridge, and went to live in a
+small county-town where she was unknown. There she was regarded as the
+widow of an officer in her Majesty's service, and, as there was no one
+within a couple of hundred miles to support an assertion to the
+contrary, she did not think it worth her while to make one: was not the
+supposed brevet a truer index to her consciousness of herself than the
+actual ticket by ill luck attached to her--Widow of a linen-draper?
+
+George carried on the business; and, when Mary and he happened to pass
+in the street, they nodded to each other.
+
+Letty was diligent in business, but it never got into her heart. She
+continued to be much liked, and in the shop was delightful. If she ever
+had another offer of marriage, the fact remained unknown. She lived to
+be a sweet, gracious little old lady--and often forgot that she was a
+widow, but never that she was a wife. All the days of her appointed
+time she waited till her change should come, and she should find her
+Tom on the other side, looking out for her, as he had said he would.
+Her mother-in-law could not help dying; but she never "forgave"
+her--for what, nobody knew.
+
+After a year or so, Mrs. Wardour began to take a little notice of her
+again; but she never asked her to Thornwick until she found herself
+dying. Perhaps she then remembered a certain petition in the Lord's
+prayer. But will it not be rather a dreadful thing for some people if
+they are forgiven as they forgive?
+
+Old Mr. Duppa died, and a young man came to minister to his
+congregation who thought the baptism of the spirit of more importance
+than the most correct of opinions concerning even the baptizing spirit.
+From him Mary found she could learn, and would be much to blame if she
+did not learn. From him Letty also heard what increased her desire to
+be worth something before she went to rejoin Tom.
+
+Joseph Jasper became once more Mary's pupil. She was now no more
+content with her little cottage piano, but had an instrument of quite
+another capacity on which to accompany the violin of the blacksmith.
+
+To him trade came in steadily, and before long he had to build a larger
+shoeing-shed. From a wide neighborhood horses were brought him to be
+shod, cart-wheels to be tired, axles to be mended, plowshares to be
+sharpened, and all sorts of odd jobs to be done. He soon found it
+necessary to make arrangement with a carpenter and wheelwright to work
+on his premises. Before two years were over, he was what people call a
+flourishing man, and laying by a little money.
+
+"But," he said to Mary, "I can't go on like this, you know, miss. I
+don't want money. It must be meant to do something with, and I must
+find out what that something is."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+A CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+One winter evening, as soon as his work was over for the day, Joseph
+locked the door of his smithy, washed himself well, put on clean
+clothes, and, taking his violin, set out for Testbridge: Mary was
+expecting him to tea. It was the afternoon of a holiday, and she had
+closed early.
+
+Was there ever a happier man than Joseph that night as he strode along
+the footpath? A day of invigorating and manly toil behind him, folded
+up in the sense of work accomplished; a clear sky overhead, beginning
+to breed stars; the pale amber hope of to-morrow's sunrise low down in
+the west; a frosty air around him, challenging to the surface the glow
+of the forge which his day's labor had stored in his body; his heart
+and brain at rest with his father in heaven; his precious violin under
+his arm; before him the welcoming parlor, where two sweet women waited
+his coming, one of them the brightest angel, in or out of heaven, to
+him; and the prospect of a long evening of torrent-music between
+them--who, I repeat, could have been more blessed, heart, and soul, and
+body, than Joseph Jasper? His being was like an all-sided lens
+concentrating all joys in the one heart of his consciousness. God only
+knows how blessed he could make us if we would but let him! He pressed
+his violin-case to his heart, as if it were a living thing that could
+know that he loved it.
+
+Before he reached the town, the stars were out, and the last of the
+sunset had faded away. Earth was gone, and heaven was all. Joseph was
+now a reader, and read geology and astronomy: "I've got to do with them
+all!" he said to himself, looking up. "There lie the fields of my
+future, when this chain of gravity is unbound from my feet! Blessed am
+I here now, my God, and blessed shall I be there then."
+
+When he reached the suburbs, the light of homes was shining through
+curtains of all colors. "Every nest has its own birds," said Joseph;
+"every heart its own joys!" Just then, he was in no mood to think of
+the sorrows. But the sorrows are sickly things and die, while the joys
+are strong divine children, and shall live for evermore.
+
+When he reached the streets, all the shops he passed were closed,
+except the beer-shops and the chemists'. "The nettle and the dock!"
+said Joseph.
+
+When he reached Mary's shop, he turned into the court to the
+kitchen-door. "Through the kitchen to the parlor!" he said. "Through
+the smithy to the presence-chamber! O my God--through the mud of me, up
+to thy righteousness!"
+
+He was in a mood for music--was he not? One might imagine the violin
+under his arm was possessed by an angel, and, ignoring his ears, was
+playing straight into his heart!
+
+Beenie let him in, and took him up to the parlor. Mary came half-way to
+meet him. The pressure as of heaven's atmosphere fell around him,
+calming and elevating. He stepped across the floor, still, stately, and
+free. He laid down his violin, and seated himself where Mary told him,
+in her father's arm-chair by the fire. Gentle nothings with a down of
+rainbows were talked until tea was over, and then without a word they
+set to their music--Mary and Joseph, with their own hearts and Letty
+for their audience.
+
+They had not gone far on the way to fairyland, however, when Beenie
+called Letty from the room, to speak to a friend and customer, who had
+come from the country on a sudden necessity for something from the
+shop. Letty, finding herself not quite equal to the emergency, came in
+her turn to call Mary: she went as quietly as if she were leaving a
+tiresome visitor. The music was broken, and Joseph left alone with the
+dumb instruments.
+
+But in his hands solitude and a violin were sure to marry in music. He
+began to play, forgot himself utterly, and, when the customer had gone
+away satisfied, and the ladies returned to the parlor, there he stood
+with his eyes closed, playing on, nor knowing they were beside him.
+They sat down, and listened in silence.
+
+Mary had not listened long before she found herself strangely moved.
+Her heart seemed to swell up into her throat, and it was all she could
+do to keep from weeping. A little longer and she was compelled to
+yield, and the silent tears flowed freely. Letty, too, was
+overcome--more than ever she had been by music. She was not so open to
+its influences as Mary, but her eyes were full, and she sat thinking of
+her Tom, far in the regions that are none the less true that we can not
+see them.
+
+A mood had taken shape in the mind of the blacksmith, and wandered from
+its home, seeking another country. It is not the ghosts of evil deeds
+that alone take shape, and go forth to wander the earth. Let but a mood
+be strong enough, and the soul, clothing itself in that mood as with a
+garment, can walk abroad and haunt the world. Thus, in a garment of
+mood whose color and texture was music, did the soul of Joseph Jasper
+that evening, like a homeless ghost, come knocking at the door of Mary
+Marston. It was the very being of the man, praying for admittance, even
+as little Abel might have crept up to the gate from which his mother
+had been driven, and, seeing nothing of the angel with the flaming
+sword, knocked and knocked, entreating to be let in, pleading that all
+was not right with the world in which he found himself. And there Mary
+saw Joseph stand, thinking himself alone with his violin; and the
+violin was his mediator with her, and was pleading and pleading for the
+admittance of its master. It prayed, it wept, it implored. It cried
+aloud that eternity was very long, and like a great palace without a
+quiet room. "Gorgeous is the glory," it sang; "white are the garments,
+and lovely are the faces of the holy; they look upon me gently and
+sweetly, but pitifully, for they know that I am alone--yet not alone,
+for I love. Oh, rather a thousand-fold let me love and be alone, than
+be content and joyous with them all, free of this pang which tells me
+of a bliss yet more complete, fulfilling the gladness of heaven!"
+
+All the time Joseph knew nothing of where his soul was; for he thought
+Mary was in the shop, and beyond the hearing of his pleader. Nor was
+this exactly the shape the thing took to the consciousness of the
+musician. He seemed to himself to be standing alone in a starry and
+moonlit night, among roses, and sweet-peas, and apple-blossoms--for the
+soul cares little for the seasons, and will make its own month out of
+many. On the bough of an apple-tree, in the fair moonlight, sat a
+nightingale, swaying to and fro like one mad with the wine of his own
+music, singing as if he wanted to break his heart and have done, for
+the delight was too much for mortal creature to endure. And the song of
+the bird grew the prayer of a man in the brain and heart of the
+musician, and thence burst, through the open fountain of the violin,
+and worked what it could work, in the world of forces. "I love thee! I
+love thee! I love thee!" cried the violin; and the worship was entreaty
+that knew not itself. On and on it went, ever beginning ere it ended,
+as if it could never come to a close; and the two sat listening as if
+they cared but to hear, and would listen for ever--listening as if,
+when the sound ceased, all would be at an end, and chaos come again.
+
+Ah, do not blame, thou who lovest God, and fearest the love of the
+human! Hast thou yet to learn that the love of the human is love, is
+divine, is but a lower form of a part of the love of God? When thou
+lovest man, or woman, or child, yea, or even dog, aright, then wilt
+thou no longer need that I tell thee how God and his Christ would not
+be content with each other alone in the glories even of the eternal
+original love, because they could create more love. For that more love,
+together they suffered and patiently waited. He that loveth not his
+brother whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom he hath not seen?
+
+A sob, like a bird new-born, burst from Mary's bosom. It broke the
+enchantment in which Joseph was bound. That enchantment had possessed
+him, usurping as it were the throne of his life, and displacing it;
+when it ceased, he was not his own master. He started--to conscious
+confusion only, neither knowing where he was nor what he did. His limbs
+for the moment were hardly his own. How it happened he never could
+tell, but he brought down his violin with a crash against the piano,
+then somehow stumbled and all but fell. In the act of recovering
+himself, he heard the neck of his instrument part from the body with a
+tearing, discordant cry, like the sound of the ruin of a living world.
+He stood up, understanding now, holding in his hand his dead music, and
+regarding it with a smile sad as a winter sunset gleaming over a grave.
+But Mary darted to him, threw her arms round him, laid her head on his
+bosom, and burst into tears. Tenderly he laid his broken violin on the
+piano, and, like one receiving a gift straight from the hand of the
+Godhead, folded his arms around the woman--enough, if music itself had
+been blotted from his universe! His violin was broken, but his being
+was made whole! his treasure taken--type of his self, and a woman given
+him instead!
+
+"It's just like him!" he murmured.
+
+He was thinking of him who, when a man was brought him to be delivered
+from a poor palsy, forgave him his sins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
+
+
+Joseph Jasper and Mary Marston were married the next summer. Mary did
+not leave her shop, nor did Joseph leave his forge. Mary was proud of
+her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but because he was a
+blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right woman, she honored the
+manhood that could do hard work. The day will come, and may I do
+something to help it hither, when the youth of our country will
+recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in
+the old true sense a more _gentle_ thing, to follow a good handicraft,
+if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping
+books, and making up accounts, though therein the hands should remain
+white--or red, as the case may be. Not but that, from a higher point of
+view still, all work, set by God, and done divinely, is of equal honor;
+but, where there is a choice, I would gladly see boy of mine choose
+rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a
+clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in the scale of reality,
+than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, besides,
+easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor,
+of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty! But
+the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into
+temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by
+the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the
+easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even
+to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do.
+
+I must show the blacksmith and the shopkeeper once more--two years
+after marriage--time long enough to have made common people as common
+to each other as the weed by the roadside; but these are not common to
+each other yet, and never will be. They will never complain of being
+_desillusionnes_, for they have never been illuded. They look up each
+to the other still, because they were right in looking up each to the
+other from the first. Each was, and therefore each is and will be, real.
+
+        ".... The man is honest."
+  "Therefore he will be, Timon."
+
+
+It was a lovely morning in summer. The sun was but a little way above
+the horizon, and the dew-drops seemed to have come scattering from him
+as he shook his locks when he rose. The foolish larks were up, of
+course, for they fancied, come what might of winter and rough weather,
+the universe founded in eternal joy, and themselves endowed with the
+best of all rights to be glad, for there was the gladness inside, and
+struggling to get outside of them. And out it was coming in a divine
+profusion! How many baskets would not have been wanted to gather up the
+lordly waste of those scattered songs! in all the trees, in all the
+flowers, in every grass-blade, and every weed, the sun was warming and
+coaxing and soothing life into higher life. And in those two on the
+path through the fields from Testbridge, the same sun, light from the
+father of lights, was nourishing highest life of all--that for the sake
+of which the Lord came, that he might set it growing in hearts of whose
+existence it was the very root.
+
+Joseph and Mary were taking their walk together before the day's work
+should begin. Those who have a good conscience, and are not at odds
+with their work, can take their pleasure any time--as well before their
+work as after it. Only where the work of the day is a burden grievous
+to be borne, is there cause to fear being unfitted for duty by
+antecedent pleasure. But the joy of the sunrise would linger about Mary
+all the day long in the gloomy shop; and for Joseph, he had but to lift
+his head to see the sun hastening on to the softer and yet more hopeful
+splendors of the evening. The wife, who had not to begin so early, was
+walking with her husband, as was her custom, even when the weather was
+not of the best, to see him fairly started on his day's work. It was
+with something very like pride, yet surely nothing evil, that she would
+watch the quick blows of his brawny arm, as he beat the cold iron on
+the anvil till it was all aglow like the sun that lighted the
+world--then stuck it into the middle of his coals, and blew softly with
+his bellows till the flame on the altar of his work-offering was awake
+and keen. The sun might shine or forbear, the wind might blow or be
+still, the path might be crisp with frost or soft with mire, but the
+lighting of her husband's forge-fire, Mary, without some forceful
+reason, never omitted to turn by her presence into a holy ceremony. It
+was to her the "Come let us worship and bow down" of the daily service
+of God-given labor. That done, she would kiss him, and leave him: she
+had her own work to do. Filled with prayer she would walk steadily back
+the well-known way to the shop, where, all day long, ministering with
+gracious service to the wants of her people, she would know the evening
+and its service drawing nearer and nearer, when Joseph would come, and
+the delights of heaven would begin afresh at home, in music, and verse,
+and trustful talk. Every day was a life, and every evening a blessed
+death--type of that larger evening rounding our day with larger hope.
+But many Christians are such awful pagans that they will hardly believe
+it possible a young loving pair should think of that evening, except
+with misery and by rare compulsion!
+
+That morning, as they went, they talked--thus, or something like this:
+
+"O Mary!" said Joseph, "hear the larks! They are all saying: 'Jo-seph!
+Jo-seph! Hearkentome, Joseph! Whatwouldyouhavebeenbutfor Ma-ry,
+Jo-seph?' That's what they keep on singing, singing in the ears of my
+heart, Mary!"
+
+"You would have been a true man, Joseph, whatever the larks may say."
+
+"A solitary melody, praising without an upholding harmony, at best,
+Mary!"
+
+"And what should I have been, Joseph? An inarticulate harmony--sweetly
+mumbling, with never a thread of soaring song!"
+
+A pause followed.
+
+"I shall be rather shy of your father, Mary," said Joseph. "Perhaps he
+won't be content with me."
+
+"Even if you weren't what you are, my father would love you because I
+love you. But I know my father as well as I know you; and I know you
+are just the man it must make him happy afresh, even in heaven, to
+think of his Mary marrying. You two can hardly be of two minds in
+anything!"
+
+"That was a curious speech of Letty's yesterday! You heard her say, did
+you not, that, if everybody was to be so very good in heaven, she was
+afraid it would be rather dull?"
+
+"We mustn't make too much of what Letty says, either when she's merry
+or when she's miserable. She speaks both times only out of half-way
+down."
+
+"Yes, yes! I wasn't meaning to find any fault with her; I was only
+wishing to hear what you would say. For nobody can make a story without
+somebody wicked enough to set things wrong in it, and then all the work
+lies in setting them right again, and, as soon as they are set right,
+then the story stops."
+
+"There's no thing of the sort in music, Joseph, and that makes one
+happy enough."
+
+"Yes, there is, Mary. There's strife and difference and compensation
+and atonement and reconciliation."
+
+"But there's nothing wicked."
+
+"No, that there is not."
+
+"Well!" said Mary, "perhaps it may only be because we know so little
+about good, that it seems to us not enough. We know only the beginnings
+and the fightings, and so write and talk only about them. For my part,
+I don't feel that strife of any sort is necessary to make me enjoy
+life; of all things it is what makes me miserable. I grant you that
+effort and struggle add immeasurably to the enjoyment of life, but
+those I look upon as labor, not strife. There may be whole worlds for
+us to help bring into order and obedience. And I suspect there must be
+no end of work in which is strife enough--and that of a kind hard to
+bear. There must be millions of spirits in prison that want preaching
+to; and whoever goes among them will have that which is behind of the
+afflictions of Christ to fill up. Anyhow there will be plenty to do,
+and that's the main thing. Seeing we are made in the image of God, and
+he is always working, we could not be happy without work."
+
+"Do you think we shall get into any company we like up there?" said
+Joseph. "I must think a minute. When I want to understand, I find
+myself listening for what my father would say. Yes, I think I know what
+he would say to that: 'Yes; but not till you are fit for it; and then
+the difficulty would be to keep out of it. For all that is fit must
+come to pass in the land of fitnesses--that is, the land where all is
+just as it ought to be.'--That's how I could fancy I heard my father
+answer you."
+
+"With that answer I am well content," said Joseph.--"But you don't want
+to die, do you, Mary?"
+
+"No; I want to live. And I've got such a blessed plenty of life while
+waiting for more, that I am quite content to wait. But I do wonder that
+some people I know, should cling to what they call life as they do. It
+is not that they are comfortable, for they are constantly complaining
+of their sufferings; neither is it from submission to the will of God,
+for to hear them talk you must think they imagine themselves hardly
+dealt with; they profess to believe the Gospel, and that it is their
+only consolation; and yet they speak of death as the one paramount
+evil. In the utmost weariness, they yet seem incapable of understanding
+the apostle's desire to depart and be with Christ, or of imagining that
+to be with him can be at all so good as remaining where they are. One
+is driven to ask whether they can be Christians any further than
+anxiety to secure whatever the profession may be worth to them will
+make them such."
+
+"Don't you think, though," said Joseph, "that some people have a trick
+of putting on their clothes wrong side out, and so making themselves
+appear less respectable than they are? There was my sister Ann: she
+used to go on scolding at people for not believing, all the time she
+said they could not believe till God made them--if she had said
+_except_ God made them, I should have been with her there!--and then
+talking about God so, that I don't see how, even if they could, any one
+would have believed in such a monster as she made of him; and then, if
+you objected to believe in such a God, she would tell you it was all
+from the depravity of your own heart you could not believe in him; and
+yet this sister Ann of mine, I know, once went for months without
+enough to eat--without more than just kept body and soul together, that
+she might feed the children of a neighbor, of whom she knew next to
+nothing, when their father lay ill of a fever, and could not provide
+for them. And she didn't look for any thanks neither, except it was
+from that same God she would have to be a tyrant from the
+beginning--one who would calmly behold the unspeakable misery of
+creatures whom he had compelled to exist, whom he would not permit to
+cease, and for whom he would do a good deal, but not all that he could.
+Such people, I think, are nearly as unfair to themselves as they are to
+God."
+
+"You're right, Joseph," said Mary. "If we won't take the testimony of
+such against God, neither must we take it against themselves. Only, why
+is it they are always so certain they are in the right?"
+
+"For the perfecting of the saints," suggested Joseph, with a curious
+smile.
+
+"Perhaps," answered Mary. "Anyhow, we may get that good out of them,
+whether they be here for the purpose or not. I remember Mr. Turnbull
+once accusing my father of irreverence, because he spoke about God in
+the shop. Said my father, 'Our Lord called the old temple his father's
+house and a den of thieves in the same breath.' Mr. Turnbull saw
+nothing but nonsense in the answer. Said my father then, 'You will
+allow that God is everywhere?' 'Of course,' replied Mr. Turnbull.
+'Except in this shop, I suppose you mean?' said my father. 'No, I
+don't. That's just why I wouldn't have you do it.' 'Then you wouldn't
+have me think about him either?' 'Well! there's a time for everything.'
+Then said my father, very solemnly, 'I came from God, and I'm going
+back to God, and I won't have any gaps of death in the middle of my
+life.' And that was nothing to Mr. Turnbull either."
+
+To one in ten of my readers it may be something.
+
+Just ere they came in sight of the smithy, they saw a lady and
+gentleman on horseback flying across the common.
+
+"There go Mrs. Redmain and Mr. Wardour!" said Joseph. "They're to be
+married next month, they say. Well, it's a handsome couple they'll
+make! And the two properties together'll make a fine estate!"
+
+"I hope she'll learn to like the books he does," said Mary. "I never
+could get her to listen to anything for more than three minutes."
+
+Though Joseph generally dropped work long before Mary shut the shop,
+she yet not unfrequently contrived to meet him on his way home; and
+Joseph always kept looking out for her as he walked.
+
+That very evening they were gradually nearing each other--the one from
+the smithy, the other from the shop--with another pair between them,
+however, going toward Testbridge--Godfrey Wardour and Hesper Redmain.
+
+"How strange," said Hesper, "that after all its chances and breakings,
+old Thornwick should be joined up again at last!"
+
+Partly by a death in the family, partly through the securities her
+husband had taken on the property, partly by the will of her father,
+the whole of Durnmelling now belonged to Hesper.
+
+"It is strange," answered Godfrey, with an involuntary sigh.
+
+Hesper turned and looked at him.
+
+It was not merely sadness she saw on his face. There was something
+there almost like humility, though Hesper was not able to read it as
+such. He lifted his head, and did not avoid her gaze.
+
+"You are wondering, Hesper," he said, "that I do not respond with more
+pleasure. To tell you the truth, I have come through so much that I am
+almost afraid to expect the fruition of any good. Please do not
+imagine, you beautiful creature! it is of the property I am thinking.
+In your presence that would be impossible. Nor, indeed, have I begun to
+think of it. I shall, one day, come to care for it, I do not
+doubt--that is, when once I have you safe; but I keep looking for the
+next slip that is to come--between my lip and this full cup of
+hap-piness. I have told you all, Hesper, and I thank you that you do
+not despise me. But it may well make me solemn and fearful, to think,
+after all the waves and billows that have gone over me, such a splendor
+should be mine!--But, do you really love me, Hesper--or am I walking in
+my sleep? I had thought, 'Surely now at last I shall never love
+again!'--and instead of that, here I am loving, as I never loved
+before!--and doubting whether I ever did love before!"
+
+"I never loved before," said Hesper. "Surely to love must be a good
+thing, when it has made you so good! I am a poor creature beside you,
+Godfrey, but I am glad to think whatever I know of love you have taught
+me. It is only I who have to be ashamed!"
+
+"That is all your goodness!" interrupted Godfrey. "Yet, at this moment,
+I can not quite be sorry for some things I ought to be sorry for: but
+for them I should not be at your side now--happier than I dare allow
+myself to feel. I dare hardly think of those things, lest I should be
+glad I had done wrong."
+
+"There are things I am compelled to know of myself, Godfrey, which I
+shall never speak to you about, for even to think of them by your side
+would blast all my joy. How plainly Mary used to tell me what I was! I
+scorned her words! It seemed, then, too late to repent. And now I am
+repenting! I little thought ever to give in like this! But of one thing
+I am sure--that, if I had known you, not all the terrors of my father
+would have made me marry the man."
+
+Was this all the feeling she had for her dead husband? Although Godfrey
+could hardly at the moment feel regret she had not loved him, it yet
+made him shiver to hear her speak of him thus. In the perfected
+grandeur of her external womanhood, she seemed to him the very ideal of
+his imagination, and he felt at moments the proudest man in the great
+world; but at night he would lie in torture, brooding over the horrors
+a woman such as she must have encountered, to whom those mysteries of
+our nature, which the true heart clothes in abundant honor, had been
+first presented in the distortions of a devilish caricature. There had
+been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her
+splendor, he would have turned from her, because of her history, with a
+sad disgust. Was he less pure now? He was more pure, for he was
+humbler. When those terrible thoughts would come, and the darkness
+about him grow billowy with black flame, "God help me," he would cry,
+"to make the buffeted angel forget the past!"
+
+They had talked of Mary more than once, and Godfrey, in part through
+what Hesper told him of her, had come to see that he was unjust to her.
+I do not mean he had come to know the depth and extent of his
+injustice--that would imply a full understanding of Mary herself, which
+was yet far beyond him. A thousand things had to grow, a thousand
+things to shift and shake themselves together in Godfrey's mind, before
+he could begin to understand one who cared only for the highest.
+
+Godfrey and Hesper made a glorious pair to look at--but would theirs be
+a happy union?--Happy, I dare say--and not too happy. He who sees to
+our affairs will see that the _too_ is not in them. There were fine
+elements in both, and, if indeed they loved, and now I think, from very
+necessity of their two hearts, they must have loved, then all would, by
+degrees, by slow degrees, most likely, come right with them.
+
+If they had been born again both, before they began, so to start fresh,
+then like two children hand in hand they might have run in through the
+gates into the city. But what is love, what is loss, what defilement
+even, what are pains, and hopes, and disappointments, what sorrow, and
+death, and all the ills that flesh is heir to, but means to this very
+end, to this waking of the soul to seek the home of our being--the life
+eternal? Verily we must be born from above, and be good children, or
+become, even to our self-loving selves, a scorn, a hissing, and an
+endless reproach.
+
+If they had had but Mary to talk to them! But they did not want her:
+she was a good sort of creature, who, with all her disagreeableness,
+meant them well, and whom they had misjudged a little and made cry!
+They had no suspicion that she was one of the lights of the world--one
+of the wells of truth, whose springs are fed by the rains on the
+eternal hills.
+
+Turning a clump of furze-bushes on the common, they met Mary. She
+stepped from the path. Mr. Wardour took off his hat. Then Mary knew
+that his wrath was past, and she was glad.
+
+They stopped. "Well, Mary," said Hesper, holding out her hand, and
+speaking in a tone from which both haughtiness and condescension had
+vanished, "where are you going?"
+
+"To meet my husband," answered Mary. "I see him coming."
+
+With a deep, loving look at Hesper, and a bow and a smile to Godfrey,
+she left them, and hastened to meet her working-man.
+
+Behind Godfrey Wardour and Hesper Redmain walked Joseph Jasper and Mary
+Marston, a procession of love toward a far-off, eternal goal. But which
+of them was to be first in the kingdom of heaven, Mary or Joseph or
+Hesper or Godfrey, is not to be told: they had yet a long way to walk,
+and there are first that shall be last, and last that shall be first.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Marston, by George MacDonald
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