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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mary Marston, by George MacDonald
+#28 in our series by George MacDonald
+
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+
+
+Title: Mary Marston
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8201]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on July 1, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE 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
+   XLVL-REPARATION
+   XLVII.-ANOTHER CHANGE
+   XLVIIL-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 ho 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 XL
+
+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 lie 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 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! 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 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 ho 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 he 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 AKD 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
+whore 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. Ho 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 STEEET.
+
+
+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 ho 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 ho 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. Ho 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 Eidings, 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 ho 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 ho 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 ho 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 lie 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 oppostion 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 Betty 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, ho 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
+Mary, 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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