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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Far Above Rubies, by George MacDonald
+#40 in our series by George MacDonald
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+Title: Far Above Rubies
+
+Author: George MacDonald
+
+Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8955]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on August 30, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAR ABOVE RUBIES ***
+
+
+
+
+David Garcia, Jonathan Ingram, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FAR ABOVE RUBIES
+
+BY GEORGE MACDONALD
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Hector Macintosh was a young man about five-and-twenty, who, with the
+proclivities of the Celt, inherited also some of the consequent
+disabilities, as well as some that were accidental. Among the rest was
+a strong tendency to regard only the ideal, and turn away from any
+authority derived from an inferior source. His chief delight lay in the
+attempt to embody, in what seemed to him the natural form of verse, the
+thoughts in him constantly moving at least in the direction of the
+ideal, even when he was most conscious of his inability to attain to the
+utterance of them. But it was only in the retirement of his own chamber
+that he attempted their embodiment; of all things, he shrank from any
+communion whatever concerning these cherished matters. Nor, indeed, had
+he any friends who could tempt him to share with them what seemed to him
+his best; so that, in truth, he was intimate with none. His mind would
+dwell much upon love and friendship in the imaginary abstract, but of
+neither had he had the smallest immediate experience. He had cherished
+only the ideals of the purest and highest sort of either passion, and
+seemed to find satisfaction enough in the endeavor to embody such in
+his verse, without even imagining himself in communication with any
+visionary public. The era had not yet dawned when every scribbler is
+consumed with the vain ambition of being recognized, not, indeed, as
+what he is, but as what he pictures himself in his secret sessions of
+thought. That disease could hardly attack him while yet his very
+imaginations recoiled from the thought of the inimical presence of a
+stranger consciousness. Whether this was modesty, or had its hidden base
+in conceit, I am, with the few insights I have had into his mind, unable
+to determine.
+
+That he had leisure for the indulgence of his bent was the result of his
+peculiar position. He lived in the house of his father, and was in his
+father's employment, so that he was able both to accommodate himself to
+his father's requirements and at the same time fully indulge his own
+especial taste. The elder Macintosh was a banker in one of the larger
+county towns of Scotland--at least, such is the profession and position
+there accorded by popular consent to one who is, in fact, only a
+bank-agent, for it is a post involving a good deal of influence and a
+yet greater responsibility. Of this responsibility, however, he had
+allowed his son to feel nothing, merely using him as a clerk, and
+leaving him, as soon as the stated hour for his office-work expired,
+free in mind as well as body, until the new day should make a fresh
+claim upon his time and attention. His mother seldom saw him except at
+meals, and, indeed, although he always behaved dutifully to her, there
+was literally no intercommunion of thought or feeling between them--a
+fact which probably had a good deal to do with the undeveloped condition
+in which Hector found, or rather, did not find himself. Occasionally his
+mother wanted him to accompany her for a call, but he avoided yielding
+as much as possible, and generally with success; for this was one of the
+claims of social convention against which he steadily rebelled--the more
+determinedly that in none of his mother's friends could he take the
+smallest interest; for she was essentially a commonplace because
+ambitious woman, without a spark of aspiration, and her friends were of
+the same sort, without regard for anything but what was--or, at least,
+they supposed to be--the fashion. Indeed, it was hard to understand how
+Hector came ever to be born of such a woman, although in truth she was
+of as pure Celtic origin as her husband--only blood is not spirit, and
+that is often clearly manifest. His father, on the other hand, was not
+without some signs of an imagination--quite undeveloped, indeed, and,
+I believe, suppressed by the requirements of his business relations.
+At the same time, Hector knew that he cherished not a little indignation
+against the insolence of the good Dr. Johnson in regard to both Ossian
+and his humble translator, Macpherson, upholding the genuineness of
+both, although unable to enter into and set forth the points of the
+argument on either side. As to Hector, he reveled in the ancient
+traditions of his family, and not unfrequently in his earlier youth had
+made an attempt to re-embody some of its legends into English, vain as
+regarded the retention of the special airiness and suggestiveness of
+their vaguely showing symbolism, for often he dropped his pen with a
+sigh of despair at the illusiveness of the special aroma of the Celtic
+imagination. For the rest, he had had as good an education as Scotland
+could in those days afford him, one of whose best features was the
+negative one that it did not at all interfere with the natural course of
+his inborn tendencies, and merely developed the power of expressing
+himself in what manner he might think fit. Let me add that he had a good
+conscience--I mean, a conscience ready to give him warning of the least
+tendency to overstep any line of prohibition; and that, as yet, he had
+never consciously refused to attend to such warning.
+
+Another thing I must mention is that, although his mind was constantly
+haunted by imaginary forms of loveliness, he had never yet been what is
+called _in love_. For he had never yet seen anyone who even
+approached his idea of spiritual at once and physical attraction. He was
+content to live and wait, without even the notion that he was waiting
+for anything. He went on writing his verses, and receiving the reward,
+such as it was, of having placed on record the thoughts which had come
+to him, so that he might at will recall them. Neither had he any thought
+of the mental soil which was thus slowly gathering for the possible
+growth of an unknown seed, fit for growing and developing in that same
+unknown soil.
+
+One day there arrived in that cold Northern city a certain cold,
+sunshiny morning, gay and sparkling, and with it the beginning of what,
+for want of a better word, we may call his fate. He knew nothing of its
+approach, had not the slightest prevision that the divinity had that
+moment put his hand to the shaping of his rough-hewn ends. It was early
+October by the calendar, but leaves brown and spotted and dry lay
+already in little heaps on the pavement--heaps made and unmade
+continually, as if for the sport of the keen wind that now scattered
+them with a rush, and again, extemporizing a little evanescent
+whirlpool, gathered a fresh heap upon the flags, again to rush asunder,
+as in direst terror of the fresh-invading wind, determined yet again to
+scatter them, a broken rout of escaping fugitives. Along the pavement,
+seemingly in furtherance of the careless design of the wind, a girl went
+heedlessly scushling along among the unresting and unresisting leaves,
+making with her rather short skirt a mimic whirlwind of her own. Her
+eyes were fixed on the ground, and she seemed absorbed in anxious
+thought, which thought had its origin in one of the commonest causes of
+human perplexity--the need of money, and the impossibility of devising a
+scheme by which to procure any. It was but a few weeks since her father
+had died, leaving behind him such a scanty provision for his widow and
+child that only by the utmost care and coaxing were they able from the
+first to make it meet their necessities. Nor, indeed, would it have been
+possible for them to subsist had not a brother of the widow supplemented
+their poor resources with an uncertain contingent, whose continuance he
+was not able to secure, or even dared to promise.
+
+At the present moment, however, it was not anxiety as to their own
+affairs that occupied the mind of Annie Melville, near enough as that
+might have lain; it was the unhappy condition in which the imprudence of
+a school-friend--almost her only friend--had involved herself by her
+hasty marriage with a man who, up to the present moment, had shown no
+faculty for helping himself or the wife he had involved in his fate, and
+who did not know where or by what means to procure even the bread of
+which they were in immediate want.
+
+Now Annie had never had to suffer hunger, and the idea that her
+companion from childhood should be exposed to such a fate was what she
+could not bear. Yet, for any way out of it she could see, it would have
+to be borne. She might possibly, by herself going without, have given
+her a good piece of bread; but then she would certainly share it with
+her foolish husband, and there would be little satisfaction in that!
+They had already arrived at a stage in their downward progress when not
+gold, or even silver, but bare copper, was lacking as the equivalent for
+the bread that could but keep them alive until the next rousing of the
+hunger that even now lay across their threshold. And how could she, in
+her all but absolute poverty, do anything? Her mother was but one pace
+or so from the same goal, and would, as a mother must, interfere to
+prevent her useless postponement of the inevitable. It was clear she
+could do nothing--and yet she could ill consent that it should be so.
+
+When her father almost suddenly left them alone, Annie was already
+acting as assistant in the Girls' High School--but, alas! without any
+recognition of her services by even a promise of coming payment. She
+lived only in the hope of a small salary, dependent on her definite
+appointment to the office. To attempt to draw upon this hope would be to
+imperil the appointment itself. She could not, even for her friend, risk
+her mother's prospects, already poor enough; and she could not help
+perceiving the hopelessness of her friend's case, because of the utter
+characterlessness of the husband to whom she was enslaved. Why interfere
+with the hunger he would do nothing to forestall? How could she even
+give such a man the sixpence which had been her father's last gift to
+her?
+
+But Annie was one to whom, in the course of her life, something strange
+had not unfrequently happened, chiefly in the shape of what the common
+mind would set aside as mere coincidence. I do not say _many_ such
+things had occurred in her life; but, together, their strangeness and
+their recurrence had caused her to remember every one of them, so that,
+when she reviewed them, they seemed to her many. And now, with a shadowy
+prevision, as it seemed, that something was going to happen, and with a
+shadowy recollection that she had known beforehand it was coming,
+something strange did take place. Of such things she used, in after
+days, always to employ the old, stately Bible-phrase, "It came to pass";
+she never said, "It happened."
+
+As she walked along with her eyes on the ground, the withered leaves
+caught up every now and then in a wild dance by the frolicsome wind, she
+was suddenly aware of something among them which she could not identify,
+whirling in the aerial vortex about her feet. Scarcely caring what it
+was, she yet, all but mechanically, looked at it a little closer, lost
+it from sight, caught it again, as a fresh blast sent it once more
+gyrating about her feet, and now regarded it more steadfastly. Even then
+it looked like nothing but another withered leaf, brown and wrinkled,
+given over to the wind, and rustling along at its mercy. Yet it made an
+impression upon her so far unlike that of a leaf that for a moment more
+she fixed on it a still keener look of unconsciously expectant eyes, and
+saw only that it looked--perhaps a little larger than most of the other
+leaves, but as brown and dead as they. Almost the same instant, however,
+she turned and pounced upon it, and, the moment she handled it, became
+aware that it felt less crumbly and brittle than the others looked, and
+then saw clearly that it was not a leaf, but perhaps a rag, or possibly
+a piece of soiled and rumpled paper. With a curiosity growing to
+expectation, and in a moment to wondering recognition, she proceeded to
+uncrumple it carefully and smooth it out tenderly; nor was the process
+quite completed when she fell upon her knees on the cold flags, her
+little cloak flowing wide from the clasp at her neck in a yet wilder
+puff of the bitter wind; but suddenly remembering that she must not be
+praying in the sight of men, started again to her feet, and, wrapping
+her closed hand tight in the scanty border of her cloak, hurried, with
+the pound-note she had rescued, to the friend whose need was sorer than
+her own--not without an undefined anxiety in her heart whether she was
+doing right. How much good the note did, or whether it merely fell into
+the bottomless gulf of irremediable loss, I cannot tell. Annie's friend
+and her shiftless mate at once changed their dirty piece of paper for
+silver, bought food and railway tickets, left the town, and disappeared
+entirely from her horizon.
+
+But consequences were not over with Annie; and the next day she became
+acquainted with the fact that proved of great significance to her,
+namely, that the same evening she found the money, Mr. Macintosh's
+kitchen-chimney had been on fire; and it wanted but the knowledge of how
+this had taken place to change the girl's consciousness from that of one
+specially aided by the ministry of an angel to that of a young woman,
+honest hitherto, suddenly changed into a thief!
+
+For, in the course of a certain friendly gossip's narrative, it came out
+that that night the banker had been using the kitchen fire for the
+destruction of an accumulation of bank-notes, the common currency of
+Scotland, which had been judged altogether too dirty, or too much
+dilapidated, to be reissued. The knowledge of this fact was the slam of
+the closing door, whereby Annie found her soul shut out to wander in a
+night of dismay. The woman who told the fact saw nothing of consequence
+in it; Mrs. Melville, to whom she was telling it, saw nothing but
+perhaps a lesson on the duty of having chimneys regularly swept, because
+of the danger to neighboring thatch. But had not Annie been seated in
+the shadow, her ghastly countenance would, even to the most casual
+glance, have betrayed a certain guilty horror, for now she _knew_
+that she had found and given away what she ought at once to have handed
+back to its rightful owner. It was true he did not even know that he had
+lost it, and could have no suspicion that she had found it; but what
+difference did or could that make? It was true also that she had neither
+taken nor bestowed it to her own advantage; but again, what difference
+could that make in her duty to restore it? Did she not well remember how
+eloquently and precisely Mr. Kennedy had, the very last Sunday,
+expounded the passage, "Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor."
+Right was right, whatever soft-hearted people might say or think. Anyone
+might give what was his own, but who could be right in giving away what
+was another's? It was time she had done it without thinking; but she had
+known, or might have known, well enough that to whomsoever it might
+belong, it was not hers. And now what possibility was there of setting
+right what she had set wrong? It was just possible a day might come when
+she should be able to restore what she had unjustly taken, but at the
+present moment it was as impossible for her to lay her hand upon a
+pound-note as upon a million. And, terrible thought!--she might have to
+enter the presence of her father--dead, men called him, but alive she
+knew him--with the consciousness that she had not brought him back the
+honor he had left with her.
+
+It will, of course, suggest itself to every reader that herein she was
+driving her sense of obligation to the verge of foolishness; and,
+indeed, the thought did not fail to occur even to herself; but the
+answer of the self-accusing spirit was that had she been thoroughly
+upright in heart, she would at once have gone to the nearest house and
+made such inquiry as must instantly have resulted in the discovery of
+what had happened. This she had omitted--without thought, it is true,
+but not, therefore, without blame; and now, so far as she could tell,
+she would never be able to make restitution! Had she even told her
+mother what befallen her, her mother might have thought of the way in
+which it had come to pass, and set her feet in the path of her duty! But
+she had made evil haste, and had compassed too much.
+
+She found herself, in truth, in a sore predicament, and was on the point
+of starting to her feet to run and confess to Mr. Macintosh what she had
+done, that he might at once pronounce the penalty on what she never
+doubted he must regard as a case of simple theft; but she bethought
+herself that she would remain incapable of offering the least
+satisfaction, and must therefore be regarded merely as one who sought by
+confession to secure forgiveness and remission. What proof had she to
+offer even that she had given the money away? To mention the name of her
+friend would be to bring her into discredit, and transfer to her the
+blame of her own act. There was nothing she could do--and yet, however
+was she to go about with such a load upon her conscience? Confessing,
+she might at least be regarded as one who desired and meant to be
+honest. Confession would, anyhow, ease the weight of her load. Passively
+at last, from very weariness of thought, her mind was but going backward
+and forward over its own traces, heedlessly obliterating them, when
+suddenly a new and horrid consciousness emerged from the trodden slime--
+that she was glad that at least Sophy _had_ the money! For one
+passing moment she was glad with the joy of Lady Macbeth, that what was
+done was done, and could not be altered. Then once more the storm within
+her awoke and would not again be stilled.
+
+But now a third something happened which brought with it hope, for it
+suggested a way of deliverance. Impelled by the same power that causes a
+murderer to haunt the scene of his violence, she left the house, and was
+unaware whither she was directing her steps until she found herself
+again passing the door of the banker's house; there, in that same
+kitchen-window, on a level with the pavement, she espied, in large
+pen-drawn print, the production apparently of the cook or another of the
+servants, the announcement that a parlor-maid was wanted immediately.
+Again without waiting to think, and only afterwards waking up to the
+fact and meaning of what she had done, she turned, went back to the
+entry-door, and knocked. It was almost suddenly opened by the cook, and
+at once the storm of her misery was assuaged in a rising moon of hope,
+and the night became light about her. Ah, through what miseries are not
+even frail hopes our best and safest, our only _true_ guides
+indeed, into other and yet fairer hopes!
+
+"Did you want to see the mistress?" asked the jolly-faced cook, where
+she stood on the other side of the threshold; and, without waiting an
+answer, she turned and led the way to the parlor. Annie followed, as if
+across the foundation of the fallen wall of Jericho; and found, to her
+surprise, that Mrs. Macintosh, knowing her by sight, received her with
+condescension, and Annie, grateful for the good-humor which she took for
+kindness, told her simply that she had come to see whether she would
+accept her services as parlor-maid.
+
+Mrs. Macintosh seemed surprised at the proposal, and asked her the
+natural question whether she had ever occupied a similar situation.
+
+Annie answered she had not, but that at home, while her father was
+alive, she had done so much of the same sort that she believed she could
+speedily learn all that was necessary.
+
+"I thought someone told me," said the lady, who was one of the greatest
+gossips in the town, "that you were one of the teachers in the High
+School?"
+
+"That is true," answered Annie; "I was doing so upon probation; but I
+had not yet begun to receive any salary for it. I was only a sort of
+apprentice to the work, and under no engagement."
+
+Mrs. Macintosh, after regarding Annie for some time, and taking silent
+observation of her modesty and good-breeding, said at last:
+
+"I like the look of you, Miss--, Miss----"
+
+"My name is Annie Melville."
+
+"Well, Annie, I confess I do not indeed _see_ anything particularly
+unsuitable in you, but at the same time I cannot help fearing you may
+be--or, I should say rather, may imagine yourself--superior to what may
+be required of you."
+
+"Oh, no, ma'am!" answered Annie; "I assure you I am too poor to think of
+any such thing! Indeed, I am so anxious to make money at once that, if
+you would consent to give me a trial, I should be ready to come to you
+this very evening."
+
+"You will have no wages before the end of your six months."
+
+"I understand, ma'am."
+
+"It is a risk to take you without a character."
+
+"I am very sorry, ma'am; but I have no one that can vouch for
+me--except, indeed, Mrs. Slater, of the High School, would say a word in
+my favor."
+
+"Well, well!" answered Mrs. Macintosh, "I am so far pleased with you
+that I do not think I can be making a _great_ mistake if I merely
+give you a trial. You may come to-night, if you like--that is, with your
+mother's permission."
+
+Annie ran home greatly relieved, and told her mother what a piece of
+good-fortune she had had. Mrs. Melville did not at all take to the idea
+at first, for she cherished undefined expections for Annie, and knew
+that her father had done so also, for the girl was always reading, and
+had been for years in the habit of reading aloud to him, making now and
+then a remark that showed she understood well what she read. So the
+mother took comfort in her disappointment that her child had, solely for
+her sake, she supposed, betaken herself to such service as would at once
+secure her livelihood and bring her in a little money, for, with the
+shadow of coming want growing black above them, even her first
+half-year's wages was a point of hope and expectation.
+
+"Well, Annie," she answered, after a few moments' consideration, "it is
+but for a time; and you will be able to give up the place as soon as you
+please, and the easier that she only takes you on trial; that will hold
+for you as well as for her."
+
+But nothing was farther from Annie's intention than finding the place
+would not suit her: no change could she dream of before at least she had
+a pound-note in her hand, when at once she would make it clear to her
+mother what a terrible scare had driven her to the sudden step she had
+taken. Until then she must go about with her whole head sick and her
+whole heart faint; neither could she for many weeks rid herself of the
+haunting notion that the banker, who was chiefly affected by her
+crime,--for as such she fully believed and regarded her deed,--was fully
+aware of her guilt.  It seemed to her, when at any moment he happened
+to look at her, that now at last he must be on the point of letting her
+know that he had read the truth in her guilty looks, and she constantly
+fancied him saying to himself, "That is the girl who stole my money;
+she feels my eyes upon her." Every time she came home from an errand
+she would imagine her master looking from the window of his private
+room on the first floor, in readiness to cast aside forbearance and
+denounce her: he was only waiting to make himself one shade surer!
+Ah, how long was the time she had to await her cleansing, the moment
+when she could go to him and say, "I have wronged, I have robbed you;
+here is all I can do to show my repentance. All this time I have been
+but waiting for my wages, to repay what I had taken from you." And,
+oddly enough, she was always mixing herself up with the man in the
+parable, who had received from his master a pound to trade with and make
+more; from her dreams she would wake in terror at the sound of that
+master's voice, ordering the pound to be taken from her and given to the
+school-fellow whom, at the cost of her own honesty, she had befriended.
+Oh, joyous day when the doom should be lifted from her, and she set
+free, to dream no more! For surely, when at length her master knew all,
+with the depth of her sorrow and repentance, he could not refuse his
+forgiveness! Would he not even, she dared to hope, remit the interest
+due on his money?--of which she entertained, in her ignorance, a
+usurious and preposterous idea.
+
+The days went on, and the hour of her deliverance drew nigh. But, long
+before it came, two other processes had been slowly arriving at
+maturity. She had been gaining the confidence of her mistress, so that,
+ere three months were over, the arrangement of all minor matters of
+housekeeping was entirely in her hands. It may be that Mrs. Macintosh
+was not a little lazy, nor sorry to leave aside whatever did not
+positively demand her personal attention; one thing I am sure of, that
+Annie never made the smallest attempt to gain this favor, if such it
+was. Her mistress would, for instance, keep losing the keys of the
+cellaret, until in despair she at last yielded them entirely to the care
+of Annie, who thereafter carried them in her pocket, where they were
+always at hand when wanted.
+
+The other result was equally natural, but of greater importance; Hector,
+the only child of the house, was gradually and, for a long time,
+unconsciously falling in love with Annie. Those friends of the family
+who liked Annie, and felt the charm of her manners and simplicity, said
+only that his mother had herself to blame, for what else could she
+expect? Others of them, regarding her from the same point of view as her
+mistress, repudiated the notion as absurd, saying Hector was not the man
+to degrade himself! He was incapable of such a misalliance.
+
+But, as I have said already, Hector, although he had never yet been in
+love, was yet more than usually ready to fall in love, as belongs to the
+poetic temperament, when the fit person should appear. As to what sort
+she might prove depended on two facts in Hector--one, that he was
+fastidious in the best meaning of the word, and the other that he was
+dominated by sound good sense; a fact which even his father allowed,
+although with a grudge, seeing he had hitherto manifested no devotion to
+business, but spent his free time in literary pursuits. Of the special
+nature of those pursuits his father knew, or cared to know, nothing; and
+as to his mother, she had not even a favorite hymn.
+
+I may say, then, that the love of womankind, which in solution, so to
+speak, pervaded every atomic interstice of the nature of Hector, had
+gradually, indeed, but yet rapidly, concentrated and crystallized around
+the idea of Annie--the more homogeneously and absorbingly that she was
+the first who had so moved him. It was, indeed, in the case of each a
+first love, although in the case of neither love at first sight.
+
+Almost from the hour when first Annie entered the family, Hector had
+looked on her with eyes of interest; but, for a time, she had gone about
+the house with a sense almost of being there upon false pretenses, for
+she knew that she was doing what she did from no regard to any of its
+members, but only to gain the money whose payment would relieve her from
+an ever-present consciousness of guilt; and for this cause, if for no
+other, she was not in danger of falling in love with Hector. She was,
+indeed, too full of veneration for her master and mistress, and for
+their son so immeasurably above her, to let her thoughts rest upon him
+in any but a distantly worshipful fashion.
+
+But it was part of her duty, which was not over well-defined in the
+house, to see that her young master's room was kept tidy and properly
+dusted; and in attending to this it was unavoidable that she should come
+upon indications of the way in which he spent his leisure hours. Never
+dreaming, indeed, that a servant might recognize at a glance what his
+father and mother did not care to know, Hector was never at any pains to
+conceal, or even to lay aside the lines yet wet from his pen when he
+left the room; and Annie could not help seeing them, or knowing what
+they were. Like many another Scotch lassie, she was fonder of reading
+than of anything else; and in her father's house she had had the free
+use of what books were in it; nor is it, then, to be wondered at that
+she was far more familiar with certain great books than was ever many an
+Oxford man. Some never read what they have no desire to assimilate; and
+some read what no expenditure of reading could ever make them able to
+appropriate; but Annie read, understood, and re-read the "Paradise
+Lost"; knew intimately "Comus" as well; delighted in "Lycidas," and had
+some of Milton's sonnets by heart; while for the Hymn on the Nativity,
+she knew every line, had studied every turn and phrase in it. It is
+sometimes a great advantage not to have many books, and so never outgrow
+the sense of mystery that hovers about even an open book-case; it was
+with awe and reverence that Annie, looking around Hector's room, saw in
+it, not daring to touch them, books she had heard of, but never
+seen--among others a Shakspere in one thick volume lay open on his
+table; nor is it, then, surprising that, when putting his papers
+straight, she could not help seeing from the different lengths of the
+lines upon them that they were verse. She trembled and glowed at the
+very sight of them, for she had in herself the instinct of sacred
+numbers, and in her soul felt a vague hunger after what might be
+contained in those loose papers--into which she did not even peep,
+instinctively knowing it dishonorable. She trembled yet more at
+recognizing the beautiful youth in the same house with her, to whom she
+did service, as himself one of those gifted creatures whom most she
+revered--a poet, perhaps another such as Milton! Neither are all ladies,
+nor all servants of ladies, honorable like Annie, or fit as she to be
+left alone with a man's papers.
+
+Hector knew very well how his mother would regard such an alliance as
+had now begun to absorb every desire and thought of his heart, and was
+the more careful to watch and repress every sign of the same, foreseeing
+that, at the least suspicion of the fact, she would lay all the blame
+upon Annie, at once dismiss her from the house, and remain forever
+convinced that she had entered it with the design in her heart to make
+him fall in love with her. He therefore avoided ever addressing her,
+except with a distant civility, the easier to him that his mind was
+known only to himself, while all the time the consciousness of her
+presence in it enveloped the house in a rosy cloud. For a long time he
+did not even dream of attempting a word with her alone, fondly imagining
+that thus he gave his mother time to know and love Annie before
+discovering anything between them to which she might object. But he did
+not yet know how incapable that mother was of any simple affection,
+being, indeed, one of the commonest-minded of women. He believed also
+that the least attempt to attract Annie's attention would but scare her,
+and make her incapable of listening to what he might try to say.
+
+In the meantime, Annie, under the influence of more and better food, and
+that freedom from care which came of the consciousness that she was doing
+her best both for her mother and for her own moral emancipation, looked
+sweeter and grew happier every day; no cloudy sense, no doubt of
+approaching danger had yet begun to heave an ugly shoulder above her
+horizon, neither had Hector begun to fret against the feeling that he
+must not speak to her; in such a silence and in such a presence he felt
+he could live happy for ages; he moved in a lovely dream of still
+content.
+
+And it was natural also that he should begin to burgeon spiritually and
+mentally, to grow and flourish beyond any experience in the past. Within
+a few such days of hidden happiness, the power of verse, and of thoughts
+worthy of verse, came upon him with as sure an inspiration of the
+Almighty as can ever descend upon a man, accompanied by a deeper sense
+of the being and the presence of God, and a stronger desire to do the
+will of the Father, which is surely the best thing God himself can
+kindle in the heart of any man. For what good is there in creation but
+the possibility of being yet further created? And what else is growth
+but more of the will of God?
+
+Something fresh began to stir in his mind; even as in the spring, away
+in far depths of beginning, the sap gives its first upward throb in the
+tree, and the first bud, as yet invisible, begins to jerk itself forward
+to break from the cerements of ante-natal quiescence, and become a
+growing leaf, so a something in Hector that was his very life and soul
+began to yield to unseen creative impulse, and throb with a dim, divine
+consciousness. The second evening after thus recognizing its presence he
+hurried up the stair from the office to his own room, and there, sitting
+down, began to write--not a sonnet to his charmer, neither any dream
+about her, not even some sweet song of the waking spring which he felt
+moving within him, but the first speech of a dramatic poem. It was a
+bold beginning, but all beginners are daring, if not presumptuous.
+Hector's aim was to embody an ideal of check, of rousing, of revival, of
+new energy and fresh start. All that evening he wrote with running pen,
+forgot the dinner-bell after its first summons, and went on until Annie
+knocked at his door, dispatched to summon him to the meal. There was in
+Hector, indeed, as a small part of the world came by-and-by to know, the
+making of a real poet, for such there are in the world at all
+times--yea, even now--although they may not be recognized, or even
+intended to ripen in the course of one human season. I think Annie
+herself was one of such--so full was she of receptive and responsive
+faculty in the same kind, and I remain in doubt whether the genuine
+enjoyment of verse be not a fuller sign of the presence of what is most
+valuable in it than even some power of producing it. For Hector, I
+imagine, it gave strong proof of his being a poet indeed that, when he
+opened the door to her knock, the appearance of Annie herself, instead
+of giving him a thrill of pleasure, occasioned him a little annoyance by
+the evanishment of a just culminating train of thought into the vast
+and seething void, into which he gazed after it in vain. And Annie
+herself, although all the time in Hector's thought, revealed herself
+only, after the custom of celestials, at the very moment of her
+disappearance; her message delivered, she went back to her duties at the
+table; and then first Hector woke to the knowledge that she had been at
+his door, and was there no more. During the last few days he had been
+gradually approaching the resolve to keep silence no longer, but be bold
+and tell Annie how full his heart was of her. One moment he might have
+done so; one moment more, and he could not!
+
+He followed close upon her steps, but not a word with her was possible,
+and it seemed to Hector that she sped from him like a very wraith to
+avoid his addressing her. Had she, then, he asked himself, some dim
+suspicion of his feelings toward her, or was she but making haste from a
+sense of propriety?
+
+Now that very morning Mrs. Macintosh had been talking kindly to
+Annie--as kindly, that is, as her abominable condescension would
+permit--and, what to Annie was of far greater consequence, had paid her
+her wages, rather more than she had expected, so that nothing now lay
+between her and the fall of her burden from her heavy-laden conscience,
+except, indeed, her preliminary confession. Dinner, therefore, being
+over, her mistress gone to the drawing room to prepare the coffee, and
+her master to his room to write a letter suddenly remembered, Hector was
+left alone with Annie. Whereupon followed an amusing succession of
+disconnected attempt and frustration. For no sooner had Mr. Macintosh
+left the room than Annie darted from it after him, and Hector darted
+after Annie, determined at length to speak to her. When Annie, however,
+reached the foot of the stair, her master was already up the first
+flight, and Annie's courage failing her, she, turning sharply round,
+almost ran against Hector, who was close behind her. The look of
+disappointment on her face, to the meaning of which he had no clew,
+quenching his courage next, he returned in silence to the dining room,
+where Annie was now hovering aimlessly about the table, until, upon his
+re-entrance, she settled herself behind Hector's chair. He turned
+half-round, and would have said something to her, but, seeing her pale
+and troubled, he lapsed into a fit of brooding, and no longer dared
+speak to her. Besides, his mother might come to the dining room at any
+moment!
+
+Then Annie, thinking she heard her master's re-descending step, hurried
+again from the room; but only at once to return afresh, which set Hector
+wondering yet more. Why on earth should she be lying in ambush for his
+father? He did not know that she was equally anxious to avoid the eyes
+of her mistress. And while Annie was anxious to keep her secret from the
+tongue of Mrs. Macintosh, Hector was as anxious to keep his from the
+eyes of his mother until a fit moment should arrive for its disclosure.
+But he imagined, I believe, that Annie saw he wanted to speak to her,
+and thought she was doing what she could to balk his intention.
+
+But the necessity for disclosure was strongest in Annie, and drove her
+to encounter what risk might be involved. So when at last she heard a
+certain step of the stair creak, she darted to the door, and left the
+room even while the hand of her mistress, coming to say the coffee was
+ready, was on that which communicated with the drawing room.
+
+"I thought I heard Annie at the sideboard: is she gone?" she said.
+
+"She left the room this moment, I believe," answered Hector.
+
+"What is she gone for?"
+
+"I cannot say, mother," replied Hector indifferently, in the act himself
+of leaving the room also, determined on yet another attempt to speak to
+Annie. In the meantime, however, Annie had found her opportunity. She
+had met Mr. Macintosh halfway down the last flight of stairs, and had
+lifted to him such a face of entreaty that he listened at once to her
+prayer for a private interview, and, turning, led the way up again to
+the room he had just left. There he shut the door, and said to her
+pleasantly:
+
+"Well, Annie, what is it?"
+
+I am afraid his man-imagination had led him to anticipate some complaint
+against Hector: he certainly was nowise prepared for what the poor
+self-accusing girl had to say.
+
+For one moment she stood unable to begin; the next she had recovered her
+resolution: her face filled with a sudden glow; and ere her master had
+time to feel shocked, she was on her knees at his feet, holding up to
+him a new pound-note, one of those her mistress had just given her.
+Familiar, however, as her master was with the mean-looking things in
+which lay almost all his dealings, he did not at first recognize the
+object she offered him; while what connection with his wife's
+parlor-maid it could represent was naturally inconceivable to him. He
+stood for a moment staring at the note, and then dropped a pair of dull,
+questioning eyes on the face of the kneeling girl. He was not a man of
+quick apprehension, and the situation was appallingly void of helpful
+suggestion. To make things yet more perplexing, Annie sobbed as if her
+heart would break, and was unable to utter a word. "What must a stranger
+imagine," the poor man thought, "to come upon such a tableau?" Her
+irrepressible emotion lasted so long that he lost his patience and
+turned upon her, saying:
+
+"I must call your mistress; she will know what to do with you!"
+Instantly she sprang to her feet, and broke into passionate entreaty.
+
+"Oh, please, _please_, sir, have a minute's patience with me," she
+cried; "you never saw me behave so badly before!"
+
+"Certainly not, Annie; I never did. And I hope you will never do so
+again," answered her master, with reviving good-nature, and was back in
+his first notion, that Hector had said something to her which she
+thought rude and did not like to repeat. He had never had a daughter,
+and perhaps all the more felt pitiful over the troubled woman-child at
+his feet.
+
+But, having once spoken out and conquered the spell upon her, Annie was
+able to go on. She became suddenly quiet, and, interrupted only by an
+occasional sob, poured out her whole story, if not quite unbrokenly, at
+least without actual intermission, while her master stood and listened
+without a break in his fixed attention. By-and-by, however, a slow smile
+began to dawn on his countenance, which spread and spread until at
+length he burst into a laugh, none the less merry that it was low and
+evidently restrained lest it should be overheard. Like one suddenly made
+ashamed, Annie rose to her feet, but still held out the note to her
+master.
+
+How was it possible that her evil deed should provoke her master to a
+fit of laughter? It might be easy for him in his goodness to pardon her,
+but how could he treat her offense as a thing of no consequence? Was it
+not a sin, which, like every other sin, could nowise at all be cleansed?
+For even God himself could not blot out the fact that she had done the
+deed! And yet, there stood her master laughing! And, what was more
+dreadful still, despite the resentment of her conscience, her master's
+merriment so far affected herself that she could not repress a
+responsive smile! It was no less than indecent, and yet, even in that
+answering smile, her misery of six months' duration passed totally away,
+melted from her like a mist of the morning, so that she could not even
+recall the feeling of her lost unhappiness. But, might not her
+conscience be going to sleep? Was it not possible she might be growing
+indifferent to right and wrong? Was she not aware in herself that there
+were powers of evil about her, seeking to lead her astray, and putting
+strange and horrid things in her mind?
+
+But, although he laughed, her master uttered no articulate sound until
+she had ended her statement, by which time his amusement had changed to
+admiration. Another minute still passed, however, before he knew what
+answer to make.
+
+"But, my good girl," he began, "I do not see that you have anything to
+blame yourself for--at least, not anything _worth_ blaming yourself
+about. After so long a time, the money found was certainly your own, and
+you could do what you pleased with it."
+
+"But, sir, I did not wait at all to see how it had happened, or whether
+it might not be claimed. I believe, indeed, that I hurried away at once,
+lest anyone should know I had it. I ran to spend it at once, so for
+whatever happened afterward I was to blame. Then, when it was too late,
+I learned that the money was yours!"
+
+"What did you do with it, if I may ask?" said the master.
+
+"I gave it to a school-fellow of mine who had married a helpless sort of
+husband and was in want of food."
+
+"I am afraid you did not help them much by that," murmured the banker.
+
+"Please, sir, I knew no other way to help them; and the money seemed to
+have been given me for them. I soon came to know better, and have been
+sorry ever since. I knew that I had no right to give it away as soon as
+I knew whose it was."
+
+She ceased, but still held out the note to him.
+
+Mr. Macintosh stood again silent, and made no movement toward taking it.
+
+"Please, sir, take the money, and forgive me," pleaded Annie. "And
+please, sir, _please_ do not say anything about it to anybody. Even
+my mother does not know."
+
+"Now there you did wrong. You ought to have told your mother."
+
+"I see that now, sir; but I was so glad to be able to help the poor
+creatures that I did not think of it till afterwards."
+
+"I dare say your mother would have been glad of the money herself; I
+understand she was not left very well off."
+
+"At that time I did not know she was so poor. But now that my mistress
+has paid me such good wages, I am going to take her every penny of them
+this very afternoon."
+
+"And then you will tell her, will you not?"
+
+"I shall not mind telling her when you have taken it back. I was afraid
+to tell her before! It was to pay you back that I asked Mrs. Macintosh
+to take me for parlor-maid."
+
+"Then you were not in service before?"
+
+"No, sir. You see, my mother thought I could earn my bread in a way we
+should both like better."
+
+"So now you will give up service and go back to her?"
+
+"I am not sure, sir. It would be long, I fear, before the school would
+pay me as well. You see, I have my food here too. And everything tells.
+Please, sir, take the pound."
+
+"My dear girl," said her master, "I could not think of depriving you of
+what you have so well earned. It is more than enough to me that you want
+to repay it. I positively cannot take it."
+
+"Indeed, I do want to repay it, sir," rejoined Annie. "It's anything but
+willing I shall be _not_ to repay it. Indeed, there is no other way
+to get my soul free."
+
+Here it seems time I should mention that Hector, weary of waiting
+Annie's return, had left the dining room to look for her; and running up
+the stair, not without the dread of hearing his mother's foot behind
+him, had slid softly into his father's room, to find Annie on her knees
+before him, and hear enough to understand her story before either his
+father or she was aware of his presence.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but indeed you must take it," urged Annie.
+"Surely you would not be so cruel to a poor girl who prays you to take
+the guilt off her back. Don't you see, sir, I never can look my father
+in the face till I have paid the money back!"
+
+Here his father caught sight of Hector, and, perceiving that Annie had
+not yet seen him, and possibly glad of a witness, put up his hand to him
+to keep still. "Where is your father, then?" he asked Annie.
+
+"In heaven somewhere," she answered, "waiting for my mother and me. Oh,
+father!" she broke out, "if only you had been alive you would soon have
+got me out of my shame and misery! But, thank God! it will soon be over
+now; my master cannot refuse to set me free."
+
+"Certainly I will set you free," said Mr. Macintosh, a good deal
+touched. "With all my heart I forgive you the--the--the debt, and I
+thank you for bringing me to know the honestest girl--I mean, the most
+honorable girl I have ever yet had the pleasure to meet."
+
+Hector had been listening, hardly able to contain his delight, and at
+these last words of his father, like the blundering idiot he was, he
+rushed forward, and, clasping Annie to his heart, cried out:
+
+"Thank God, Annie, my father at least knows what you are!"
+
+He met with a rough and astounding check. Far too startled to see who it
+was that thus embraced her, and unprepared to receive such a salutation,
+least of all from one she had hitherto regarded as the very prince of
+gentleness and courtesy, she met it with a sound, ringing box on the
+ear, which literally staggered Hector, and sent his father into a second
+peal of laughter, this time as loud as it was merry, and the next moment
+swelled in volume by that of Hector himself.
+
+"Thank you, Annie!" he cried. "I never should have thought you could hit
+so hard. But, indeed, I beg your pardon. I forgot myself and you too
+when I behaved so badly. But I'm not sorry, father, after all, for that
+box on the ear has got me over a difficult task, and compelled me to
+speak out at once what has been long in my mind, but which I had not the
+courage to say. Annie," he went on, turning to her, and standing humbly
+before her, "I have long loved you; if you will do me the honor to marry
+me, I am yours the moment you say so."
+
+But Annie's surprise and the hasty act she had committed in the first
+impulse of defense had so reacted upon her in a white dismay that she
+stood before him speechless and almost ready to drop. Awakening from
+what was fast growing a mere dream of offense to the assured
+consciousness of another offense almost as flagrant, she stared as if
+she had suddenly opened her eyes on a whole Walpurgisnacht of demons and
+witches, while Hector, recovering from his astonishment to the lively
+delight of having something to pretend at least to forgive Annie, and
+yielding to sudden Celtic impulse, knelt at her feet, seized her hand,
+which she had no power to withdraw from him, covered it with eager
+kisses and placed it on his head. Little more would have made him cast
+himself prone before her, lift her foot, and place it on his neck.
+
+But his father brought a little of his common sense to the rescue.
+
+"Tut, Hector!" he said; "give the lass time to come to her senses. Would
+you woo her like a raving maniac? I don't, indeed, wonder, after what
+you heard her tell me, that you should have taken such a sudden fancy to
+her; but--"
+
+"Father," interrupted Hector, "it is no fancy--least of all a sudden
+one! I fell in love with Annie the very first time I saw her waiting at
+table. It is true I did not understand what had befallen me for some
+time; but I do, and I did from the first, and now forever I shall both
+love and worship Annie!"
+
+"Mr. Hector," said Annie, "it was too bad of you to listen. I did not
+know anyone was there but your father. You were never intended to hear;
+and I did not think you would have done such a dishonorable thing. It
+was not like you, Mr. Hector!"
+
+How was I to know you had secrets with my father, Annie? Dishonorable
+or not, the thing is done, and I am glad of it--especially to have heard
+what you had no intention of telling me."
+
+"I could not have believed it of you, Mr. Hector!" persisted Annie.
+
+"But, now that I think of it," suggested Mr. Macintosh, "may not your
+mother think she has something to say in the matter between you?"
+
+This was a thought already dawning upon her that terrified Annie; she
+knew, indeed, perfectly how his mother would regard Hector's proposal,
+and she dared not refer the matter to her decision.
+
+"I must be out of the house first, Mr. Hector," she said--and I think
+she meant--"before I confess my love."
+
+The impression Annie had made upon her master may be judged from the
+fact that he rose and went, leaving his son and the parlor-maid
+together.
+
+What then passed between them I cannot narrate precisely. Overwhelmed by
+Hector's avowal, and quite unprepared as she had been for it, it was yet
+no unwelcome news to Annie. Indeed, the moment he addressed her, she
+knew in her heart that she had been loving him for a long time, though
+never acknowledging to herself the fact. Such must often be the case
+between two whom God has made for each other. And although he were a
+bold man who said that marriages were made in heaven, he were a bolder
+who denied that love at first sight was never there decreed. For where
+God has fitted persons for each other, what can they do but fall
+mutually in love? Who will then dare to say he did not decree that
+result? As to what may follow after from their own behavior, I would be
+as far from saying that was _not_ decreed as from saying the
+conduct itself _was_ decreed. Surely there shall be room left, even
+in the counsels of God, for as much liberty as belongs to our being made
+in his image--free like him to choose the good and refuse the evil! He
+who _has_ chosen the good remains in the law of liberty, free to
+choose right again. He who always chooses the right, will at length be
+free to choose like God himself, for then shall his will itself be free.
+Freedom to choose and freedom of the will are two different conditions.
+
+Before the lovers, which it wanted no moment to make them, left the
+room, they had agreed that Annie must at once leave the house. Hector
+took her to her mother's door, and when he returned he found that his
+father and mother had retired. But it may be well that I should tell a
+little more of what had passed between the lovers before they parted.
+
+Annie's first thought when they were left together was, "Alas! what will
+my mistress say? She must think the worst possible of me!"
+
+"Oh, Hector!" she broke out, "whatever will your mother think of me?"
+
+"No good, I'm afraid," answered Hector honestly. "But that is hardly
+what we have to think of at this precise moment."
+
+"Take back what you said!" cried Annie; "I will promise you never to
+think of it again--at least, I will _try_ never once to do so. It
+must have been all my fault--though I do not know how, and never dreamed
+it was coming. Perhaps I shall find out, when I think over it, where I
+was to blame."
+
+"I have no doubt you are capable of inventing a hundred reasons--after
+hearing your awful guilty confession to my father, you little innocent!"
+answered Hector.
+
+And the ice thus broken, things went on a good deal better, and they
+came to talk freely.
+
+"Of course," said Hector, "I am not so silly or so wicked as to try to
+persuade you that my mother will open her arms to you. She knows neither
+you nor herself."
+
+"Will she be terribly angry?" said Annie, with a foreboding quaver in
+her voice.
+
+"Rather, I am afraid," allowed Hector.
+
+"Then don't you think we had better give it up at once?"
+
+"Never forever!" cried Hector. "That is not what I fell in love with you
+for! I will not give you up even for Death himself! He is not the ruler
+of our world. No lover is worthy of the name who does not defy Death and
+all his works!"
+
+"I am not afraid of him, Hector. I, too, am ready to defy him. But is it
+right to defy your mother?"
+
+"It is, when she wants one to be false and dishonorable. For herself, I
+will try to honor her as much as she leaves possible to me. But my
+mother is not my parents."
+
+"Oh, please, Hector, don't quibble. You would make me doubt you!"
+
+"Well, we won't argue about it. Let us wait to hear what _your_
+mother will say to it to-morrow, when I come to see you."
+
+"You really will come? How pleased my mother will be!"
+
+"Why, what else should I do? I thought you were just talking of the
+honor we owe to our parents! Your mother is mine too."
+
+"I was thinking of yours then."
+
+"Well, I dare say I shall have a talk with _my_ mother first, but
+what _your_ mother will think is of far more consequence to me. I
+know only too well what my mother will say; but you must not take that
+too much to heart. She has always had some girl or other in her mind for
+me; but if a man has any rights, surely the strongest of all is the
+right to choose for himself the girl to marry--if she will let him."
+
+"Perhaps his mother would choose better."
+
+"Perhaps you do not know, Annie, that I am five-and-twenty years of age:
+if I have no right yet to judge for myself, pray when do you suppose I
+shall?"
+
+"It's not the right I'm thinking of, but the experience."
+
+"Ah, I see! You want me to fall in love with a score of women first, so
+that I may have a chance of choosing. Really, Annie, I had not thought
+you would count that a great advantage. For my part, I have never once
+been in love but with you, and I confess to a fancy that that might
+almost prove a recommendation to you. But I suppose you will at least
+allow it desirable that a man should love the girl he marries? If my
+preference for you be a mere boyish fancy, as probably my mother is at
+this moment trying to persuade my father, at what age do you suppose it
+will please God to give me the heart of a man? My mother is sure to
+prefer somebody not fit to stand in your dingiest cotton frock. Anybody
+but you for my wife is a thing unthinkable. God would never degrade me
+to any choice of my mother's! He knows you for the very best woman I
+shall ever have the chance of marrying. Shall I tell you the sort of
+woman my mother would like me to marry? Oh, I know the sort! First, she
+must be tall and handsome, with red, fashionable hair, and cool, offhand
+manners. She must never look shy or put out, or as if she did not know
+what to say. On the contrary, she must know who's who, and what's what,
+and never wear a dowdy bonnet, but always a stunning hat. And she must
+have a father who can give her something handsome when she is married.
+That's my mother's girl for me. I can't bear to look such a girl in the
+face! She makes me ashamed of myself and of her. The sort I want is one
+that grows prettier and prettier the more you love and trust her, and
+always looks best when she is busiest doing something for somebody. Yes,
+she has black hair, black as the night; and you see the whiteness of her
+face in the darkest night. And her eyes, they are blue, oh, as blue as
+bits of the very sky at midnight! and they shine and flash so--just like
+yours, and nobody else's, my darling."
+
+But here they heard footsteps on the stair--those of Mrs. Macintosh,
+hurrying up to surprise them. They guessed that her husband had just
+left her, and that she was in a wild fury; simultaneously they rose and
+fled. Hector would have led the way quietly out by the front door; but
+Annie turning the other way to pass through the kitchen, Hector at once
+turned and followed her. But he had hardly got up with her before she
+was safe in her mother's house, and the door shut behind them. There
+Hector bade her goodnight, and, hastening home, found all the lights
+out, and heard his father and mother talking in their own room; but what
+they said he never knew.
+
+The next morning Annie had hardly done dressing when she heard a knock
+at the street-door.
+
+"That'll be Hector, mother," she said. "I'm thinking he'll be come to
+have a word with you."
+
+"Annie!" exclaimed her mother, in rebuke of the liberty she took. "But
+if you mean young Mr. Macintosh, what on earth can he want with me?"
+
+"Bide a minute, mother," answered Annie, "and he'll tell you himself."
+
+So Mrs. Melville went to the door and opened it to the young man, who
+stood there shy and expectant.
+
+"Mrs. Melville," he said, "I have come to tell you that I love your
+Annie, and want to make her _my_ Annie as well. I am more sorry
+than I can tell you to confess that I am not able to marry at once, but
+please wait a little while for me. I shall do my best to take you both
+home with me as soon as possible."
+
+She looked for a moment silently in his face, then, throwing her arms
+round his neck, answered:
+
+"And I wonder who wouldn't be glad to wait for your sweet face to the
+very Day of Judgment, sir, when all must have their own at last."
+
+Therewith she burst into tears, and, turning, led the way to the parlor.
+
+"Here's your Hector, Annie," she said as she opened the door. "Take him,
+and make much of him, for I'm sure he deserves it."
+
+Then she drew him hastily into the room, and closed the door.
+
+"You see," Hector went on, "I must let you both know that my mother is
+dead against my having Annie. She thinks, of course, that I might do
+better; but I know she is only far too good for me, and that I shall be
+a fortunate as well as happy man the day we come together. She has
+already proved herself as true a woman as ever God made."
+
+"She is that, sir, as I know and can testify, who have known her longer
+than anybody else. But sit you down and love each other, and never mind
+me; I'll not be a burden to you as long as I can lift a hand to earn my
+own bread. And when I'm old and past work, I'll not be too proud to take
+whatever you can spare me, and eat it with thankfulness."
+
+So they sat down, and were soon making merry together.
+
+But nothing could reconcile Mrs. Macintosh to the thought of Annie for
+her daughter-in-law; her pride, indignation, and disappointment were
+much too great, and they showed themselves the worse that her husband
+would not say a word against either Annie or Hector, who, he insisted,
+had behaved very well. He would not go a step beyond confessing that the
+thing was not altogether as he could have wished, but upheld that it
+contained ground for satisfaction. In vain he called to his wife's mind
+the fact that neither she nor he were by birth or early position so
+immeasurably above Annie. Nothing was of any use to calm her; nothing
+would persuade her that Annie had not sought their service with the
+express purpose of carrying away her son. Her behavior proved, indeed,
+that Annie had done prudently in going at once home to her mother, where
+presently her late mistress sought and found her; acting royally the
+part of one righteously outraged in her dearest dignity. Her worst enemy
+could have desired for her nothing more degrading than to see and hear
+her. She insisted that Hector should abjure Annie, or leave the house.
+Hector laid the matter before his father. He encouraged him to humor his
+mother as much as he could, and linger on, not going every night to see
+the girl, in the hope that time might work some change. But the time
+passed in bitter reproaches on the part of the mother, and
+expostulations on the part of the son, and there appeared no sign of the
+amelioration the father had hoped for. The fact was that Mrs.
+Macintosh's natural vulgarity had been so pampered by what she regarded
+as wealth, and she had grown so puffed up, that her very person seemed
+to hold the door wide for the devil. For self-importance is perhaps a
+yet deeper root of all evil than even the love of money. Any deep,
+honest affection might have made it too hot for the devil, but in her
+heart there was little room for such a love. She seemed to believe in
+nothing but mode and fashion, to care for nothing but what she called
+"the thing." She grew in self-bulk, and gathered more and more weight in
+her own esteem: she wore yet showier and more vulgar clothes, and
+actually cultivated a slang that soon bade farewell to delicacy, so that
+she sank and she sank, and she ate and she drank, until at last she
+impressed her good-natured clergyman himself as one but a very little
+above the beasts that perish--if, indeed, she was in any respect equal
+to a good, conscientious dog! She retained, however, this much respect
+for her son, for which that son gave her little thanks, that by-and-by
+she limited herself to ex-pending all her contempt upon Annie, and
+toward Hector settled into a dogged silence, where upon he, finding it
+impossible to make any progress toward an understanding where he could
+not even get a reply, at last gave up the attempt and became as silent
+as she.
+
+To poor Annie it was a terrible thought that she should thus have come
+between mother and son; but she remembered that she had read of mothers
+who without cause had even hated their own flesh, and how much the more
+might not she who knew her ambitions and designs so utterly opposed to
+the desires of her son?
+
+And thereupon all at once awoke in Annie the motherhood that lies
+deepest of all in the heart of every good woman, making her know in
+herself that, his mother having forsaken him, she had no choice but take
+him up and be to him henceforward both wife and mother. What remains of
+my story will perhaps serve to show how far she succeeded in fulfilling
+this her vow.
+
+At last Mr. Macintosh saw that things could not thus continue, and that
+he had better accept an offer made him some time before by a London
+correspondent--to take Hector into his banking-house and give him the
+opportunity of widening his experience and knowledge of business; and
+Hector, on his part, was eager to accept the proposal. The salary
+offered for his services was certainly not a very liberal one, but the
+chief attraction was that the hours were even shorter than they had been
+with his father, and would yet enlarge his liberty of an evening.
+Hector's delights, as we have seen, had always lain in literature, and
+in that direction the labor in him naturally sought an outlet. Now there
+seemed a promise of his being able to pursue it yet more devotedly than
+before: who could tell but he might ere long produce something that
+people might care to read? Some publisher might even care to put it in
+print, and people might care to buy it! That would start him in a more
+genuine way of living, and he might the sooner be able to marry
+Annie--an aspiration surely legitimate and not too ambitious. He had had
+a good education, and considered himself to be ably equipped. It was
+true he had not been to either Oxford or Cambridge, but he had enjoyed
+the advantages possessed by a Scotch university even over an English
+one, consisting mainly in the freedom of an unhampered development.
+Since then he had read largely, and had cultivated naturally wide
+sympathies. As his vehicle for utterance, we have already seen that he
+had a great attraction to verse, and had long held and argued that the
+best training for effective prose was exercise in the fetters of
+verse--a conviction in which he had lived long enough to confirm
+himself, and perhaps one or two besides.
+
+His relations with his mother, and consequent impediments to seeing
+Annie, took away the sting of having to part with her for awhile; and,
+when he finally closed with the offer, she at once resumed her
+application for a place in the High School, and was soon accepted, for
+there were not a few in the town capable of doing justice to her fitness
+for the office; so that now she had the joy not merely of being able to
+live with her mother as before, and of contributing to her income, but
+of knowing at the same time that she lived in a like atmosphere with
+Hector, where her growth in the knowledge of literature, and her
+experience in the world of thought, would be gradually fitting her for a
+companion to him whom she continued to regard as so much above her. Her
+marked receptivity in the matter of verse, and her intrinsic
+discrimination of nature and character in it, became in her, at length,
+as they grew, sustaining forces, enlarging her powers both of sympathy
+and judgment, so that soon she came to feel, in reading certain of the
+best writers, as if she and Hector were looking over the same book
+together, reading and pondering it as one, simultaneously seeing what
+the writer meant and felt and would have them see and feel. So that, by
+the new intervention of space, they were in no sense or degree
+separated, but rather brought by it actually, that is, spiritually,
+nearer to each other. Also Hector wrote to her regularly on a certain
+day of every week, and very rarely disappointed her of her expected
+letter, in which he uttered his thoughts and feelings more freely than
+he had ever been able to do in conversation. This also was a gain to
+her, for thus she went on to know him better and better, rising rapidly
+nearer to his level of intellectual development, while already she was
+more than his equal in the moral development which lies at the root of
+all capacity for intellectual growth. So Annie grew, as surely--without
+irreverence I may say--in favor both with God and man; for at the same
+time she grew constantly in that loveliest of all things--humanity.
+
+Nor was Hector left without similar consolation in his life, although
+passed apart from Annie. For, not to mention the growing pleasure that
+he derived from poring over Annie's childlike letters--and here I would
+beg my reader to note the essential distinction betwixt childish and
+childlike--full of the keenest perceptions and the happiest phrases, he
+had soon come to make the acquaintance of a kindred spirit, a man whom,
+indeed, it took a long time really to know, but who, being from the
+first attracted to him, was soon running down the inclined plane of
+acquaintanceship with rapidly increasing velocity toward something far
+better than mere acquaintance: nor was there any check in their steady
+approach to a thorough knowledge of each other. He was a slightly older
+man, with a greater experience of men, and a good deal wider range of
+interests, as could hardly fail to be the case with a Londoner. But the
+surprising thing to both of them was that they had so many feelings in
+common, giving rise to many judgments and preferences also in common; so
+that Hector had now a companion in whom to find the sympathy necessary
+to the ripening of his taste in such a delicate pursuit as that of
+verse; and their proclivities being alike, they ran together like two
+drops on a pane of glass; whence it came that at length, in the
+confident expectation of understanding and sympathy, Hector found
+himself submitting to his friend's judgment the poem he had produced
+when first grown aware that he was in love with Annie Melville; although
+such was his sensitiveness in the matter of his own productions that
+hitherto he had not yet ventured on the experiment with Annie herself.
+
+His new friend read, was delighted; read again, and spoke out his
+pleasure; and then first Hector knew the power of sympathy to double the
+consciousness of one's own faculty. He took up again the work he had
+looked upon as finished, and went over it afresh with wider eyes, keener
+judgment, and clearer purpose; when the result was that, through the
+criticisms passed upon it by his friend, and the reflection of the poem
+afresh in his own questioning mind, he found many things that had to be
+reconsidered; after which he committed the manuscript, carefully and
+very legibly re-written, once more to his friend, who, having read it
+yet again, was more thoroughly pleased with it than before, and proposed
+to Hector to show it to another friend to whom the ear of a certain
+publisher lay open. The favorable judgment of this second friend was
+patiently listened to by the publisher, and his promise given that the
+manuscript should receive all proper attention.
+
+On this part of my story there is no occasion to linger; for, strange
+thing to tell,--strange, I mean, from the unlikelihood of its
+happening,--the poem found the sympathetic spot in the heart of the
+publisher, who had happily not delegated the task to his reader, but
+read it himself; and he made Hector the liberal offer to undertake all
+the necessary expenses, giving him a fair share of resulting profits.
+
+Stranger yet, the poem was so far a success that the whole edition, not
+a large one, was sold, with a result in money necessarily small but far
+from unsatisfactory to Hector. At the publisher's suggestion, this first
+volume was soon followed by another; and thus was Hector fairly launched
+on the uncertain sea of a literary life; happy in this, that he was not
+entirely dependent on literature for his bodily sustenance, but was in a
+position otherwise to earn at least his bread and cheese. For some time
+longer he continued to have no experience of the killing necessity of
+writing for his daily bread, beneath which so many aspiring spirits sink
+prematurely exhausted and withered; this was happily postponed, for
+there are as much Providence and mercy in the orderly arrangement of our
+trials as in their inevitable arrival.
+
+His reception by what is called the public was by no means so remarkable
+or triumphant as to give his well-wishers any ground for anxiety as to
+its possible moral effect upon him; but it was a great joy to him that
+his father was much interested and delighted in the reception of the
+poem by the Reviews in general. He was so much gratified, indeed, that
+he immediately wrote to him stating his intention of supplementing his
+income by half as much more.
+
+This reflected opinion of others wrought also to the mollifying of his
+mother's feelings toward him; but those with which she regarded Annie
+they only served to indurate, as the more revealing the girl's
+unworthiness of him. And although at first she regarded with favor her
+husband's kind intention toward Hector, she faced entirely round when he
+showed her a letter he had from his son thanking him for his generosity,
+and communicating his intention of begging Annie to come to him and be
+married at once.
+
+Annie was living at home, feeding on Hector's letters, and strengthened
+by her mother's sympathy. She was teaching regularly at the High School,
+and adding a little to their common income by giving a few music
+lessons, as well as employing her needle in a certain kind of embroidery
+a good deal sought after, in which she excelled. She had heard nothing
+of his having begun to distinguish himself, neither had yet seen one of
+the reviews of his book, for no one had taken the trouble to show her
+any of them.
+
+One day, however, as she stood waiting a moment for something she wanted
+in the principal bookshop of the town, a little old lady, rather
+shabbily dressed, came in, whom she heard say to the shopman, in a
+gentle voice, and with the loveliest smile:
+
+"Have you another copy of this new poem by your townsman, young
+Macintosh?"
+
+"I am sorry I have not, ma'am," answered the shopman; "but I can get you
+one by return of post."
+
+"Do, if you please, and send it me at once. I am very glad to hear it
+promises to be a great success. I am sure it quite deserves it. I have
+already read it through twice. You may remember you got me a copy the
+other day. I cannot help thinking it an altogether remarkable
+production, especially for so young a man. He is quite young, I
+believe?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--to have already published a book. But as to any wonderful
+success, there is so little sale for poetry nowadays. I believe the one
+you had yourself, my lady, is the only one we have been asked for."
+
+"Much will depend," said the lady, "on whether it finds a channel of its
+own soon enough. But get me another copy, anyhow--and as soon as you
+can, please. I want to send it to my daughter. There is matter between
+those Quaker-like boards that I have found nowhere else. I want my
+daughter to have it, and I cannot part with my own copy," concluded the
+old lady, and with the words she walked out of the shop, leaving Annie
+bewildered, and with the strange feeling of a surprise, which yet she
+had been expecting. For what else but such success could come to Hector?
+Had it not been drawing nearer and nearer all the time? And for a moment
+she seemed again to stand, a much younger child than now, amid the gusty
+whirling of the dead leaves about her feet, once more on the point of
+stooping to pick up what might prove a withered leaf, but was in reality
+a pound-note, the thing which had wrought her so much misery, and was
+now filling her cup of joy to the very brim. The book the old lady had
+talked of could be no other than Hector's book. No other than Hector
+could have written it. What a treasure there was in the world that she
+had never seen! How big was it? what was it like? She was sure to know
+it the moment her eyes fell upon it. But why had he never told her about
+it? He might have wanted to surprise her, but she was not the least
+surprised. She had known it all the time! He had never talked about what
+he was writing, and still less would he talk of what he was going to
+write. Intentions were not worthy of his beautiful mouth! Perhaps he did
+not want her to read it yet. When he did, he would send her a copy. And,
+oh! when would her mother be able to read it? Was it a very dear book?
+There could be no thought of their buying it! Between them, she and her
+mother could not have shillings enough for that. When the right time
+came, he would send it. Then it would be twice as much hers as if she
+had bought it for herself.
+
+The next day she met Mr. and Mrs. Macintosh, and the former actually
+congratulated her on what Hector had done and what people thought of him
+for it; but the latter only gave a sniff. And the next post brought the
+book itself, and with it a petition from Hector that she would fix the
+day to join him in London.
+
+Annie made haste, therefore, to get ready the dress of white linen in
+which she meant to be married, and a lady, the sister of Hector's
+friend, meeting her in London, they were married the next day, and went
+together to Hector's humble lodgings in a northern suburb.
+
+Hector's new volume, larger somewhat, but made up of smaller poems, did
+not attract the same amount of attention as the former, and the result
+gave no encouragement to the publisher to make a third venture. One
+reason possibly was that the subjects of most of the poems, even the
+gayest of them, were serious, and another may have been that the common
+tribe of reviewers, searching like other parasites, discovered in them
+material for ridicule--which to them meant food, and as such they made
+use of it. At the same time he was not left without friends: certain of
+his readers, who saw what he meant and cared to understand it, continued
+his readers; and his influence on such was slowly growing, while those
+that admired, feeling the power of his work, held by him the more when
+the scoffers at him grew insolent. Still, few copies were sold, and
+Hector found it well that he had other work and was not altogether
+dependent on his pen, which would have been simple starvation. And, from
+the first, Annie was most careful in her expenditure.
+
+Among the simple people whom husband brought her to know, she speedily
+became a great favorite, and this circle widened more rapidly after she
+joined it. For her simple truth, which even to Hector had occasionally
+seemed some what overdriven, now revealed itself as the ground of her
+growing popularity. She welcomed all, was faithful to all, and
+sympathetic with all. Nor was it longer before her husband began to
+study her in order to understand her--and that the more that he could
+find in her neither plan nor system, nothing but straightforward,
+foldless simplicity. Nor did she ever come to believe less in the
+foreseeing care of God. She ceased perhaps to attribute so much to the
+ministry of the angels as when she took the fiercer blast that rescued
+from the flames the greasy note and blew it uncharred up the roaring
+chimney for the sudden waft of an angel's wing; but she came to meet
+them oftener in daily life, clothed in human form, though still they
+were rare indeed, and often, like the angel that revealed himself to
+Manoah, disappeared upon recognition.
+
+By-and-by it seemed certain that, if ever Hector had had anything of
+what the world counts success, it had now come to a pause. For a long
+time he wrote nothing that, had it been published, could have produced
+any impression like that of his first book; it seemed as if the first
+had forestalled the success of those that should follow. That had been
+of a new sort, and the so-called Public, innocent little
+personification, was not yet grown ready for anything more of a similar
+kind, which, indeed, seemed to lack elements of attraction and interest;
+and the readers to whom the same man will tell even new things are apt
+to grow weary of his mode of saying, even though that mode have improved
+in directness and force; the tide of his small repute had already begun
+to take the other direction. Those who understood and prized his work,
+still holding by him, and declaring that they found in him what they
+found in no other writer, remained stanch in their friendship, and among
+them the little old lady who had at once welcomed his first poem to her
+heart and whose name and position were now well known to Hector. But the
+reviewers, seeming to have forgotten their first favorable reception of
+him, now began to find nothing but faults in his work, pointing out only
+what they judged ill contrived and worse executed in his conceptions,
+and that in a tone to convey the impression that he had somehow wheedled
+certain of them into their former friendly utterances concerning him.
+
+And about the same time it so happened that business began to fall away
+rapidly from the bank of which his father held the chief country agency,
+so that he was no longer able to continue to Hector his former subsidy,
+the announcement of which discouraging fact was accompanied by a lecture
+on the desirableness of a change in his choice of subject as well as in
+his style; if he continued to write as he had been doing of late, no one
+would be left, his father said, to read what he wrote!
+
+And now it began to be evident what a happy thing it was for Hector that
+Annie was now at his side to help him. For, as his courage sank, and he
+saw Annie began to feel straitened in her housekeeping, he saw also how
+her courage arose and shone. But he grew more and more discouraged,
+until it was all that Annie could do to hold him back from despair. At
+length, however, she began to feel that possibly there might be some
+truth in what his father had written to him, and a new departure ought
+to be attempted. She could not herself believe that her husband was
+limited to any style or subject for the embodiment of his thoughts; he
+who had written so well in one fashion might write at least well, if not
+as well, in another! Had she not heard him say that verse was the best
+practice for writing prose?
+
+Gently, therefore, and cautiously she approached the matter with him,
+only to find at first, as she had expected, that he but recoiled from
+the suggestion with increase of discouragement. Still, taking no delight
+in obstinacy, and feeling the necessity of some fresh attempt grow daily
+more pressing, he turned his brains about, and sending them foraging, at
+length bethought him of a certain old Highland legend with which at one
+time he had been a good deal taken, from the discovery in it of certain
+symbolical possibilities. This legend he proceeded to rewrite and
+remodel, doing his best endeavor to preserve in it the old Celtic aroma
+and aerial suggestion, while taking care neither to lose nor reproduce
+too manifestly its half-apparent, still evanishing symbolism. Urged by
+fear and enfeebled by doubt, he wrote feverously, and, after three days
+of laborious and unnatural toil, submitted the result to Annie, who was
+now his only representative of the outer world, and the only person for
+whose criticism he seemed now to care. She, greatly in doubt of her own
+judgment, submitted it to his friend; and together they agreed on this
+verdict: That, while it certainly proved he could write as well in prose
+as in verse, people would not be attracted by it, and that it would be
+found lacking in human interest. His friend saw in it also too much of
+the Celtic tendency to the mystical and allegorical, as distinguished
+from the factual and storial.
+
+Upon learning this their decision, poor Hector fell once more into a
+state of great discouragement, not feeling in him the least power of
+adopting another way; there seemed to him but one mode, the way things
+came to him. And in this surely he was right--only might not things
+come, or be sent to him in some other way? His friend suggested that he
+might, changing the outward occurrences, and the description of the
+persons to whom they happened, in such fashion that there could be no
+identification of them, tell the very tale of how Annie and he came to
+know and love each other, taking especial care to muffle up to
+shapelessness, or at least featurelessness, the part his mother had
+taken in their story. This seeming to Hector a thing possible, he took
+courage, and set about it at once, gathering interest as he proceeded,
+and writing faster and faster as he grew in hope of success. At the same
+time it was not favorable to the result that he felt constantly behind
+him, the darkly lowering necessity that, urging him on, yet debilitated
+every motion of the generating spirit.
+
+It took him a long time to get the story into a condition that he dared
+to consider even passable; and the longer that he had not the delight
+that verse would have brought with it in the process of its production.
+Nevertheless he would now and then come to a passage in writing which
+the old emotion would seem to revive; but in reading these, Annie,
+modest and doubtful as she always was of her own judgment, especially
+where her husband's work was concerned, seemed to recognize a certain
+element of excitement that gave it a glow, or rather, glamour of
+unreality, or rather, unnaturalness, which affected her as inharmonious,
+therefore unfit, or out of place. She thought it better, however, to say
+little or nothing of any such paragraph, and tried to regard it as of
+small significance, and probably carrying little influence in respect of
+the final judgment.
+
+The narrative, such as it might prove, was at length finished, and had
+been read, at least with pleasure and hope, by his friend, who was still
+the only critic on whose judgment he dared depend, for he could not help
+regarding Annie as prejudiced in his favor, although her approval
+continued for him absolutely essential. The sole portions to which his
+friend took any exception were the same concerning which Annie had
+already doubted, and which he found too poetical in their tone--not, he
+took care to say, in their meaning, for that could not be too poetical,
+but in their expression, which must impinge too sharply upon prosaic
+ears that cared only for the narrative, and would recoil from any
+reflection, however just in itself, that might be woven into it.
+
+But, alas, now came what Hector felt the last and final blow to the
+possibility of farther endeavor in the way of literature!
+
+The bank to which Hector had been introduced by his father, and in which
+he had been employed ever since, had of late found it necessary to look
+more closely to its outlay and reduce its expenses; therefore, believing
+that Hector had abundance of other resources, its managers decided on
+giving him notice first of all that they must in future deprive
+themselves of the pleasure of his services. And this announcement came
+at a time when Annie was already in no small difficulty to make the ends
+of her expenditure meet those of her income. In fact, she had no longer
+any income. For a considerable time she had, by the stinting of what had
+before that seemed necessities, been making a shilling do the work of
+eighteenpence, and now she knew nothing beyond, except to go without.
+But how allow Hector to go without? He must die if she did! Already he
+had begun to shrink in his clothes from lack of proper nourishment.
+
+A rumor reaching him of a certain post as librarian, in the gift of an
+old corporation, being vacant, Hector at once made application for it,
+but only to receive the answer that Pegasus must not be put in harness:
+poor Pegasus, on a false pretense of respect, must be kept out of the
+shafts! His fat friends would not permit him to degrade himself earning
+his bread by work he could have done very well; he must rather starve!
+He tried for many posts, one after the other. Heavier and heavier fell
+upon him each following disappointment. Annie had in her heart been
+greatly disappointed that no prospect appeared of a child to sanctify
+their union; but for that she had learned more than to console herself
+with the reflection that at least there was no such heavenly visitor for
+whose earthly sojourn to provide; and now how gladly would she have
+labored for the child in the hope that such a joy and companionship
+might lift him up out of his despondency! Then he would be able to enjoy
+and assimilate the poor food she was able to get for him. It is true he
+always seemed quite content; but, then, he would often, she believed,
+pretend not to be hungry, and certainly ate less and less. Hitherto she
+had fought with all her might against running in debt to the
+tradespeople, for, more than all else, she feared debt. Now, at last,
+however, her resolution was in danger of giving way, when, happily,
+Hector bethought himself of his precious books; to what better use could
+he put them than sell them to buy food--wherein the books he had written
+had failed him? Parcel by parcel in a leather strap, he carried them to
+the nearest secondhand bookseller, where he had so often bought; now he
+wanted to sell, but, unhappily, he soon found that books, like many
+other things, are worth much less to the seller than to the buyer, and
+where Hector had calculated on pounds, only shillings were forthcoming.
+Yet by their sale, notwithstanding, they managed to keep a little longer
+out of debt.
+
+And in these days Annie had at length finished her fair copy of Hector's
+last book, writing it out in her own lovelily legible hand--not such as
+ladies in general count legible, because they can easily read it
+themselves; she could do better than that, she could write so that
+others could not fail to read. For Hector had always believed that the
+acceptance of his first volume had been owing not a little to the fact
+that he had written it out most legibly, and he held that what reveals
+itself at once and without possibility of mistake may justly hope for a
+better reception than what from the first moment annoys the reader with
+a sense of ill-treatment. It is no wonder, he said, if such a manuscript
+be at once tossed aside with an imprecation. Legibility is the first and
+intelligibility the only other thing rendered due by the submission of a
+manuscript to any publisher.
+
+Hector spent a day or two in remodeling and modifying the passages
+remarked upon by his wife and his friend, and then, with hope reviving
+in both their hearts, the manuscript was sent in, acknowledged, and the
+day appointed when an answer would be ready.
+
+Upon a certain dark morning, therefore, in November, having nothing else
+whatever to do, Hector set out in his much-worn Inverness cape to call
+upon his former publisher in the City, with whom of late he had had no
+communication. The weather was cold and damp, threatening rain. But
+Hector was too much of a Scotchman to care about weather, and too full
+of anxiety to mind either cold or wet. He had, indeed, almost always
+felt gloomy weather exciting rather than depressing. For one thing, it
+seemed, when he was indoors, to close him about with protection from
+uncongenial interruption, leaving the freer his inventive faculty; and
+now that he was abroad in it, and no inventive faculty left awake, it
+seemed to clothe him with congenial sympathy, for the weather was just
+the same inside him. And now, as he strode along with his eyes on the
+ground, he scarcely saw any of the objects about him, but sought only
+the heart of the City, where he hoped to find the publisher in his
+office, ready to print his manuscript, and advance him a small sum in
+anticipation of possible profit. So absorbed was he in thought
+undefined, and so sunk in anxiety as to the answer he was about to
+receive, that more than once he was nearly run over by the cart of some
+reckless tradesman--seeming to him, in its over-taking suddenness, the
+type of prophetic fate already at his heels.
+
+At length, however, he arrived safe in the outer shop, where the books
+of the firm were exposed to sight, in process of being subscribed for by
+the trade. There a pert young man asked him to take a seat, while he
+carried his name to the publisher, and there for some time he waited,
+reading titles he found himself unable to lay hold of; and there, while
+he waited, the threatened rain began, and, ere he was admitted to the
+inner premises, such a black deluge came pouring down as, for blackness
+at least, comes down nowhere save in London. With this accompaniment, he
+was ushered at length into a dingy office, deep in the recesses of the
+house, where a young man whom he saw for the first time had evidently,
+while Hector waited in the shop, been glancing at the manuscript he had
+left. Little as he could have read, however, it had been enough, aided
+perhaps by the weather, to bring him to an unfavorable decision; his
+rejection was precise and definite, leaving no room for Hector to say
+anything, for he did not seem ever to have heard of him before. Hector
+rose at once, gathered up his papers from the table where they lay
+scattered, said "Good-morning," and went out into the sooty rain.
+
+Not knowing whitherward to point his foot, he stopped at the corner of
+King William Street, close to the money-shops of the old Lombards, and
+there stood still, in vain endeavor to realize the blow that had stunned
+him. There he stood and stood, with bowed head, like an outcast beggar,
+watching the rain that dropped black from the rim of his saturated hat.
+Becoming suddenly conscious, however, that the few wayfarers glanced
+somewhat curiously at him as they passed, he started to walk on, not
+knowing whither, but trying to look as if he had a purpose somewhere
+inside him, whereas he had still a question to settle--whether to buy a
+bun, and, on the strength of that, walk home, or spend his few remaining
+pence on an omnibus, as far as it would take him for the money, and walk
+the rest of the way.
+
+Then, suddenly, as if out of the depths of despair, arose in him an
+assurance of help on the way to him, and with it a strength to look in
+the face the worst that could befall him; he might at least starve in
+patience. Therewith he drew himself up, crossed the street to the corner
+of the Mansion House, and got into an omnibus waiting there.
+
+If only he could creep into his grave and have done! Why should that
+hostelry of refuge stand always shut? Surely he was but walking in his
+own funeral! Were not the mourners already going about the street before
+ever the silver cord was loosed or the golden bowl broken? Might he not
+now at length feel at liberty to end the life he had ceased to value?
+But there was Annie! He would go home to her; she would comfort
+him--yes, she would die with him! There was no other escape; there was
+no sign of coming deliverance. All was black within and around them.
+That was the rain on the gravestones. He was in a hearse, on his way to
+the churchyard. There the mourners were already gathered. They were
+before him, waiting his arrival. No! He would go home to Annie! He would
+not be a coward soldier! He would not kill himself to escape the enemy!
+He would stand up to the Evil One, and take his blows without flinching.
+He and his Annie would take them together, and fight to the last. Then,
+if they must die, it was well, and would be better.
+
+But alas! what if the obligation of a live soul went farther than this
+life? What if a man was bound, by the fact that he lived, to live on,
+and do everything possible to keep the life alive in him? There his
+heart sank, and the depths of the sea covered it! Did God require of him
+that, sooner than die, he should beg the food to keep him alive? Would
+he be guilty of forsaking his post, if he but refused to ask, and waited
+for Death? Was he bound to beg? If he was, he must begin at once by
+refusing to accept the smallest credit! To all they must tell the truth
+of their circumstances, and refuse aught but charity. But was there not
+something yet he could try before begging? He had had a good education,
+had both knowledge and the power of imparting it; this was still worth
+money in the world's market. And doubtless therein his friend could do
+something for him.
+
+Therewithal his new dread was gone; one possibility was yet left him in
+store! To his wife he must go, and talk the thing over with her. He had
+still, he believed, threepence in his pocket to pay for the omnibus.
+
+It began to move; and then first, waking up, he saw that he had seated
+himself between a poor woman and a little girl, evidently her daughter.
+
+"I am very sorry to incommode you, ma'am," he said apologetically to the
+white-faced woman, whose little tartan shawl scarcely covered her
+shoulders, painfully conscious of his dripping condition, as he took off
+his hat, and laid it on the floor between his equally soaking feet. But,
+instead of moving away from him to a drier position beyond, the woman,
+with a feeble smile, moved closer up to him, saying to her daughter on
+his other side:
+
+"Sit closer to the gentleman, Jessie, and help to keep him warm. She's
+quite clean, sir," she added. "We have plenty of water in our place, and
+I gave her a bath myself this morning, because we were going to the
+hospital to see my husband. He had a bad accident yesterday, but thank
+God! not so bad as it might have been. I'm afraid you're feeling very
+cold, sir," she added, for Hector had just given an involuntary shiver.
+
+"My husband he's a bricklayer," she went on; "he has been in good work,
+and I have a few shillings in hand, thank God! Times are sure to mend,
+for they seldom turns out so bad as they looks."
+
+Involuntarily Hector's hand moved to his trouser pocket, but dropped by
+his side as he remembered the fare. She saw his movement, and broke into
+a sad little laugh.
+
+"Don't mistake me, sir," she resumed. "I told you true when I said I
+wasn't without money; and, before the pinch comes, wages, I dare say,
+will show their color again. Besides, our week's rent is paid. And he's
+in good quarters, poor fellow, though with a bad pain to keep him
+company, I'm afraid"
+
+"Where do you live?" asked Hector "But," he went on, "why should I ask?
+I am as poor as you--poorer, perhaps, for I have no trade to fall back
+upon. But I have a good wife like you, and I don't doubt she'll think of
+something."
+
+"Trust to that, sir! A good woman like I'm sure she is 'll be sure to
+think of many a thing before she'll give in. My husband, he was brought
+up to religion, and he always says there's one as know's and don't
+forget." But now the omnibus had reached the spot where Hector must
+leave it. He got up, fumbling for his threepenny-piece, but failed to
+find it.
+
+"Don't forget your hat, sir; it'll come all right when it's dry," said
+the woman, as she handed it to him. But he stood, the conductor waiting,
+and seemed unable to take it from her: he could not find the little
+coin!
+
+"There, there, sir!" interposed the woman, as she made haste and handed
+him three coppers; "I have plenty for both of us, and wish for your sake
+it was a hundred times as much. Take it, sir," she insisted, while
+Hector yet hesitated and fumbled; "you won't refuse such a small service
+from another of God's creatures! I mean it well."
+
+But the conductor, apparently affected with the same generosity, pushed
+back the woman's hand, saying, "No, no, ma'am, thank you! The gentleman
+'ll pay me another day."
+
+Hector pulled out an old silver watch, and offered it.
+
+"I cannot be so sure about that," he said. "Better take this: it's of
+little use to me now."
+
+"I'll be damned if I do!" cried the conductor fiercely, and down he
+jumped and stood ready to help Hector from the omnibus.
+
+But his kindness was more than Hector could stand; he walked away,
+unable to thank him.
+
+"I wonder now," muttered the conductor to himself when Hector was gone,
+"if that was a put-up job between him and the woman? I don't think so.
+Anyhow, it's no great loss to anybody. I won't put it down; the company
+'ll have to cover that."
+
+Hector turned down a street that led westward, drying his eyes, and
+winking hard to make them swallow the tears which sought to hide from
+him a spectacle that was calling aloud to be seen. For lo! the
+street-end was filled with the glory of a magnificent rainbow. All
+across its opening stretched and stood the wide arch of a wonderful
+rainbow. Hector could not see the sun; he saw only what it was making;
+and the old story came back to him, how the men of ancient time took the
+heavenly bow for a promise that there should no more be such a flood as
+again to destroy the world. And therefore even now the poets called the
+rainbow the bow of hope.
+
+Nor, even in these days of question and unbelief, is it matter of wonder
+that, at sight of the harmony of blended and mingling, yet always
+individual, and never confused colors, and notwithstanding his knowledge
+of optics, and of how the supreme unity of the light was secerned into
+its decreed chord, the imaginative faith of the troubled poet should so
+work in him as to lift his head for a moment above the waters of that
+other flood that threatened to overwhelm his microcosm, and the bow
+should seem to him a new promise, given to him then and individually, of
+the faithfulness of an unseen Power of whom he had been assured, by one
+whom he dared not doubt, that He numbered the very hairs of his head.
+Once more his spirit rose upon the wave of a hope which he could neither
+logically justify nor dare to refuse; for hope is hope whencesoever it
+spring, and needs no justification of its self-existence or of its
+sudden marvelous birth. The very hope was in itself enough for itself.
+And now he was near his home; his Annie was waiting for him; and in
+another instant his misery would be shared and comforted by her! He was
+walking toward the wonder-sign in the heavens. But even as he walked
+with it full in view, he saw it gradually fade and dissolve into the
+sky, until not a thread of its loveliness remained to show where it had
+spanned the infinite with its promise of good. And yet, was not the sky
+itself a better thing, and the promise of a yet greater good? He must
+walk onward yet, in tireless hope! And the resolve itself endured--or
+fading, revived, and came again, and ever yet again.
+
+For ere he had passed the few yards that lay between him and Annie yet
+another wonder befell: as if the rainbow had condensed, and taken shape
+as it melted away, there on the pathway, in the thickening twilight of
+the swift-descending November night, stood a creature, surely not of the
+night, but rather of the early morn, a lovely little child--whether
+wandered from the open door of some neighboring house, or left by the
+vanished rainbow, how was he to tell? Endeavoring afterward to recall
+every point of her appearance, he could remember nothing of her feet, or
+even of the frock she wore. Only her face remained to him, with its
+cerulean eyes--the eyes of Annie, looking up from under the cloud of her
+dark hair, which also was Annie's. She looked then as she stood, in his
+memory of her, as if she were saying, "I trust in you; will you not
+trust in Him who made the rainbow?" For a moment he seemed to stand
+regarding her, but even while he looked he must have forgotten that she
+was there before him, for when again he knew that he saw her, though he
+did not seem ever to have looked away from her, she had changed in the
+gathering darkness to the phantasm of a daisy, which still gazed up in
+his face trustingly, and, indeed, went with him to his own door, seeming
+all the time to say, "It was no child; it was me you saw, and nothing
+but me; only I saw the sun--I mean, the man that was making the
+rainbow." And never more could he in his mind separate the child, whom I
+cannot but think he had verily seen, from the daisy which certainly he
+had not seen, except in the atmosphere of his troubled and confused
+soul.
+
+It may help my reader to understand its confusion if I recall to him the
+fact that Hector had that day eaten nothing. Nor must my wife reader
+think hardly of Annie for having let him leave the house without any
+food, for he had stolen softly away, and closed the door as softly
+behind him, thinking how merrily they would eat together when he came
+back with his good news. And now he was bringing nothing to her but the
+story of a poor woman and her child who had warmed him, and of an
+omnibus-conductor who had trusted him for his fare, and of a rainbow and
+a child and a daisy.
+
+"Oh, you naughty, naughty dear!" cried Annie, as she threw herself into
+his arms, rejoicing. But at sight of his worn and pallid face the smile
+faded from hers, and she thought, "What can have befallen him?"
+
+His lip quivered, and, seeking with a watery smile to reassure her, he
+gave way and burst into tears. Unmanly of him, no doubt, but what is a
+man to do when he cannot help it? And where is a man to weep if not on
+his wife's bosom? Call this behavior un-English, if you will; for,
+indeed, Hector was in many ways other than English, and, I protest,
+English ways are not all human. But I will not allow that it manifested
+any weakness, or necessarily involved shame to him; the best of men, and
+the strongest--yea, the one Man whose soul harbored not an atom of
+self-pity--upon one occasion wept, I think because he could not persuade
+the women whom he loved and would fain console to take comfort in his
+Father. Annie, for one reverent moment, turned her head aside, then
+threw her arms about him, and hid her glowing face in his bosom.
+
+"There's only me in the house, dear," she said, and led the way to their
+room.
+
+When they reached it, she closed the door, and turned to him.
+
+"So they won't take your story?" she said, assuming the fact, with a
+sad, sunny smile.
+
+"They refused it absolutely."
+
+"Well, never mind! I shall go out charing to-morrow. You have no notion
+how strong I am. It is well for you I have never wanted to beat you.
+Seriously, I believe I am much stronger than you have the least notion
+of. There! Feel that arm--I should let you feel it another way, only I
+am afraid of hurting you."
+
+She had turned up the sleeve of her dress, and uncovered a grandly
+developed arm, white as milk, and blossoming in a large, splendidly
+formed hand. Then playfully, but oh! so tenderly, with the under and
+softest part of her arm she fondled his face, rubbing it over first one,
+then the other cheek, and ended with both arms round his neck, her hands
+folding his head to her bosom.
+
+"Wife! wife!" faltered Hector, with difficulty controlling himself; "my
+strong, beautiful wife! To think of your marrying me for this!"
+
+"Hector," answered Annie, drawing herself back with dignity, "do you
+dare to pity me? That would be to insult me! As if I was not fit to be
+your wife when doing _everything_ for my mother! There are
+thousands of Scotch girls that would only be proud to take my place,
+poor as you are--and you couldn't be much poorer--and serve you, without
+being your wife, as I have the honor and pride to be! But, my blessed
+man, I do believe you have eaten nothing to-day; and here am I fancying
+myself your wife, and letting you stand there empty, instead of
+bestirring myself to get you some supper! What a shame! Why, you are
+actually dying with hunger!" she cried, searching his face with pitiful
+eyes.
+
+"On the contrary, I am not in the least hungry," protested Hector.
+
+"Then you must be hungry at once, sir. I will go and bring you something
+the very sight of which will make you hungry."
+
+"But you have no money, Annie; and, not being able to pay, we must go
+without. Come, we will go to bed." "Yes, I am ready; I had a good
+breakfast. But you have had nothing all day. And for money, do you know
+Miss Hamper, the dressmaker, actually offered to lend me a shilling, and
+I took it. Here it is. You see, I was so sure you would bring money home
+that I thought we _might_ run that much farther into debt. So I got
+you two fresh eggs and such a lovely little white loaf. Besides, I have
+just thought of something else we could get a little money for--that
+dainty chemise my mother made for me with her own hands when we were
+going to be married. I will take it to the pawnbroker to-morrow."
+
+"I was never in a pawnshop, Annie. I don't think I should know how to
+set about it."
+
+"_You!_" cried Annie, with a touch of scorn. "Do you think I would
+trust a man with it? No; that's a woman's work. Why, you would let the
+fellow offer you half it was worth--and you would take it too. I shall
+show it to Mrs. Whitmore: _she_ will know what I ought to get for
+it. She's had to do the thing herself--too often, poor thing!"
+
+"It would be like tearing my heart out."
+
+"What! to part with my pretty chemise. Hector, dear, you must not be
+foolish! What does it matter, so long as we are not cheating anybody?
+The pawnshop is a most honorable and useful institution. No one is the
+worse for it, and many a one the better. Even the tradespeople will be a
+trifle the better. I shall be quite proud to know that I have a
+pawn-ticket in my pocket to fall back upon. Oh, there's that old silk
+dress your mother sent me--I do believe that would bring more. It is in
+good condition, and looks quite respectable. If Eve had got into a
+scrape like ours, she would have been helpless, poor thing, not having
+anything _to put away_--that is the right word, I believe. There is
+really nothing disgraceful about it. Come now, dear, and eat your
+eggs--I'm afraid you must do without butter. I always preferred a piece
+of dry bread with an egg--you get the true taste of the egg so much
+better. One day or another we must part with everything. It is sure to
+come. Sooner or later, what does that matter? 'The readiness is all,' as
+Hamlet says. Death, or the pawnshop, signifies nothing. 'Since no man
+has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes?' We do but
+forestall the grave for one brief hour with the pawnshop."
+
+"You deserve to have married Epictetus, Annie, you brave woman, instead
+of Xantippe!"
+
+"I prefer you, Hector."
+
+"But what might you have said if he had asked you, and you had heard me
+bemoaning the pawnshop?"
+
+"Ah, then, indeed! But, in the meantime, we will go to bed and wait
+there for to-morrow. Is it not a lovely thing to know that God is
+thinking about you? He will bring us to _our desired haven,_
+Hector, dearest!"
+
+So in their sadness they laid them down. Annie opened her arms and took
+Hector to her bosom. There he sighed himself to sleep; and God put His
+arms about them both, and kept them asleep until the morning.
+
+  And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.
+
+
+Annie was the first to spring up and begin to dress herself, pondering
+in her mind as she did so whether to go first to the pawnbroker's or to
+the baker, to ask him to recommend her as a charwoman. She would tell
+him just the truth--that she must in future work for her daily bread.
+Then Hector rose and dressed himself.
+
+"Oh, Annie!" he said, as he did so, "is it gone, that awful misery of
+last night in the omnibus? It seemed, as I jolted along, as if God had
+forgotten one of the creatures he had made, and that one was me; or,
+worse, that he thought of me, and would not move to help me! And why do
+I feel now as if He had help for me somewhere near waiting for me? I
+think I will go and see a man who lives somewhere close by, and find out
+if he is the same I used to know at St. Andrews; if he be the same, he
+may know of something I could try for."
+
+"Do," replied Annie. "I will go with you, and on the way call at the
+grocer's--I think he will be the best to ask if he knows of any family
+that wants a charwoman or could give me any sort of work. There's more
+than one kind of thing I could turn my hand to--needle-work, for
+instance. I could make a child's frock as well, I believe, as a
+second-rate dressmaker. Can you tell me who was the first tailor,
+Hector? It was God himself. He made coats of skins for Adam and his
+wife."
+
+"Quite right, dear. You may well try your hand--as I know you have done
+many a time already. And, if I can get hold of ever so young a pupil, I
+shall be glad even to teach him his letters. We must try anything and
+everything. We are long past being fastidious, I hope."
+
+He turned and went on with his toilet.
+
+"Oh, Hector," said Annie suddenly, and walked to the mantelpiece, "I am
+so sorry! Here is a letter that came for you yesterday. I did not care
+to open it, though you have often told me to open any letters I pleased.
+The fact is, I forgot all about it; I believe, because I was so unhappy
+at your going away without breakfast. Or perhaps it was that I was
+frightened at its black border. I really can't tell now why I did not
+open it."
+
+With little interest and less hope, Hector took the
+letter,--black-bordered and black-sealed,--opened it, and glanced
+carelessly at the signature, while Annie stood looking at him, in the
+hope merely that he would find in it no fresh trouble--some forgotten
+bill perhaps!
+
+She saw his face change, and his eyes grow fixed. A moment more and the
+letter dropped in the fender. He stood an instant, then fell on his
+knees, and threw up his hands.
+
+"What is it, darling?" she cried, beginning to tremble.
+
+"Only five hundred pounds!" he answered, and burst into an hysterical
+laugh.
+
+"Impossible!" cried Annie.
+
+"Who _can_ have played us such a cruel trick?" said Hector feebly.
+
+"It's no trick, Hector!" exclaimed Annie. "There's nobody would have the
+heart to do it. Let _me_ see the letter."
+
+She almost caught it from his hands as he picked it from the fender, and
+looked at the signature.
+
+"Hale & Hale?" she read. "I never heard of them!"
+
+"No, nor anyone else, I dare say," answered Hector.
+
+"Let us see the address at the top," said Annie.
+
+"There it is--Philpot Lane."
+
+"Where is that? I don't believe there is such a place!"
+
+"Oh, yes, there is; I've seen it--somewhere in the City, I believe. But
+let us read the letter. I saw only the figures. I confess I was foolish
+enough at first to fancy somebody had sent us five hundred pounds!"
+
+"And why not?" cried Annie. "I am sure there's no one more in want of
+it."
+
+"That's just why not," answered Hector. "Did you ever know a rich man
+leave his money to a poor relation? Oh, I hope it does not mean that my
+father is gone. He may have left us a trifle. Only he could not have had
+so much to leave to anybody. I know he loved you, Annie."
+
+In the meantime Annie had been doing the one sensible thing--reading the
+letter, and now she stood pondering it.
+
+"I have it, Hector. He always uses good people to do his kindnesses.
+Don't you remember me telling you about the little old lady in Graham's
+shop the time your book came out?"
+
+"Yes, Annie; I wasn't likely to forget that; it was my love for you that
+made me able to write the poem. Ah, but how soon was the twenty pounds I
+got for it spent, though I thought it riches then!"
+
+"So it was--and so it is!" cried Annie, half laughing, but crying
+outright. "It's just that same little old lady. She was so delighted
+with the book, and with you for writing it, that she put you down at
+once in her will for five hundred pounds, believing it would help people
+to trust in God."
+
+"And here was I distrusting so much that I was nearly ready to kill
+myself. Only I thought it would be such a terrible shock to you, my
+precious! It would have been to tell God to his face that I knew he
+would not help me. I am sure now that he is never forgetting, though he
+seems to have forgotten. There was that letter lying in the dark through
+all the hours of the long night, while we slept in the weariness of
+sorrow and fear, not knowing what the light was bringing us. God is
+good!"
+
+"Let us go and see these people and make sure," said Annie. "'Hale and
+Hearty,' do they call themselves? But I'm going with you myself this
+time! I'm not going to have such another day as I had yesterday--waiting
+for you till the sun was down, and all was dark, you bad man!--and
+fancying all manner of terrible things! I wonder--I wonder, if--"
+
+"Well, what do you wonder, Annie?"
+
+"Only whether, if now we were to find out it was indeed all a mistake, I
+should yet be able to hope on through all the rest. I doubt it; I doubt
+it! Oh, Hector, you have taught me everything!"
+
+"More, it seems, than I have myself learned. Your mother had already
+taught you far more than ever I had to give you!"
+
+"But it is much too early yet, I fear, to call in the City," said Annie.
+"Don't you think we should have time first to find out whether the
+gentleman we were thinking of inquiring after to-day be your old college
+friend or not? And I will call at the grocer's, and tell him we hope to
+settle his bill in a few days. Then you can come to me, and I will go to
+you, and we shall meet somewhere between."
+
+They did as Annie propose; and before they met, Hector had found his
+friend, and been heartily received both by him and by his young wife.
+
+When at length they reached Philpot Lane, and were seated in an outer
+room waiting for admission, Annie said: "Surely, if rich people knew how
+some they do not know need their help, they would be a little more eager
+to feather their wings ere they fly aloft by making friends with the
+Mammon of unrighteousness. Don't you think it may be sometimes that they
+are afraid of doing harm with their money?"
+
+"I'm afraid it is more that they never think what our Lord meant when he
+said the words. But oh, Annie! is it a bad sign of me that the very
+possibility of this money could make me so happy?"
+
+They were admitted at length, and kindly received by a gray-haired old
+man, who warned them not to fancy so much money would last them very
+long.
+
+"Indeed, sir," answered Annie, "the best thing we expect from it is that
+it will put my husband in good heart to begin another book."
+
+"Oh! your husband writes books, does he? Then I begin to understand my
+late client's will. It is just like her," said the old gentleman. "Had
+you known her long?"
+
+"I never once saw her," said Hector.
+
+"But I did," said Annie, "and I heard her say how delighted she was with
+his first book. Please, sir," she added, "will it be long before you can
+let us have the money?"
+
+"You shall have it by-and-by," answered the lawyer; "all in good time."
+
+And now first they learned that not a penny of the money would they
+receive before the end of a twelvemonth.
+
+"Well, that will give us plenty of time to die first," thought Hector,
+"which I am sure the kind lady did not intend when she left us the
+money."
+
+Another thing they learned was that, even then, they would not receive
+the whole of the money left them, for seeing they could claim no
+relation to the legator, ten per cent must be deducted from their
+legacy. If they came to him in a year from the date of her death, he
+told them he would have much pleasure in handing them the sum of four
+hundred and fifty pounds.
+
+So they left the office--not very exultant, for they were both rather
+hungry, and had to go at once in search of work--with but a poor chance
+of borrowing upon it.
+
+Nevertheless, Hector broke the silence by saying:
+
+"I declare, Annie, I feel so light and free already that I could invent
+anything, even a fairy tale, and I feel as if it would be a lovely one.
+I hope you have a penny left to buy a new bottle of ink. The ink at home
+is so thick it takes three strokes to one mark."
+
+"Yes, dear, I have a penny; I have two, indeed--just twopence left. We
+shall buy a bottle of ink with one, and--shall it be a bun with the
+other? I think one penny bun will divide better than two halfpenny
+ones."
+
+"Very well. Only, mind, _I'm_ to divide it. But, do you know, I've
+been thinking," said Hector, "whether we might not take a holiday on the
+strength of our expectations, for we shall have so long to wait for the
+money that I think we may truly say we have _great_ expectations."
+
+"I think we should do better," answered Annie, "to go back to your old
+friend, Mr. Gillespie, and tell him of our good-fortune, and see whether
+he can suggest anything for us to do in the meantime."
+
+Hector agreed, and together they sought the terrace where Mr. and Mrs.
+Gillespie lived, who were much interested in their story; and then first
+they learned that the lady was at least well enough off to be able to
+help them, and, when they left, she would have Annie take with her a
+dozen of her handkerchiefs, to embroider with her initials and crest;
+but Annie begged to be allowed to take only one, that Mrs. Gillespie
+might first see how she liked her work.
+
+"For, then, you see," she said to her husband, as they went home, "I
+shall be able to take it back to her this very evening and ask her for
+the half-crown she offered me for doing it, which I should not have had
+the face to do with eleven more of them still in my possession. I have
+no doubt of her being satisfied with my work; and in a week I shall have
+finished the half of them, and we shall be getting on swimmingly."
+
+Throughout the winter Hector wrote steadily every night, and every night
+Annie sat by his side and embroidered--though her embroidery was not
+_all_ for other people. Many a time in after years did their
+thoughts go back to that period as the type of the happy life they were
+having together.
+
+The next time Hector went to see Mr. Gillespie, that gentleman suggested
+that he should give a course of lectures to ladies upon English Poetry,
+beginning with the Anglo-Saxon poets, of whom Gillespie said he knew
+nothing, but would be glad to learn a great deal. He knew also, he said,
+some ladies in the neighborhood willing to pay a guinea each for a
+course of, say, half-a-dozen such lectures. They would not cost Hector
+much time to prepare, and would at once bring in a little money.
+Coleridge himself, he suggested, had done that kind of thing.
+
+"Yes," said Hector, "but he was Coleridge. I have nothing to say worth
+saying."
+
+"Leave your hearers to judge of that," returned Gillespie. "Do your
+best, and take your chance. I promise you two pupils at least not
+over-critical--my wife and myself. It is amazing how little those even
+who imagine they love it know about English poetry."
+
+"But where should I find a room?" Hector still objected.
+
+"Would not this drawing room do?" asked his friend.
+
+"Splendidly!" answered Hector. "But what will Mrs. Gillespie say to it?"
+
+"She and I are generally of one mind--about people, at least."
+
+"Then I will go home at once and set about finding what to say."
+
+"And I will go out at once and begin hunting you up an audience."
+
+Gillespie succeeded even better than he had anticipated; and there was
+at the first lecture a very fair gathering indeed. When it was over, the
+one that knew most of the subject was the young lecturer's wife. The
+first course was followed by two more, the third at the request of
+almost all his hearers. And the result; was that, before the legacy fell
+due, Annie had paid all their debts and had not contracted a single new
+one.
+
+But when the happy day dawned Annie was not able to go with her husband
+to receive the money; neither did Hector wish that she had been able,
+for he was glad to go alone. By her side lay a lovely woman-child
+peacefully asleep. Hector declared her the very image of the child the
+rainbow left behind as it vanished.
+
+One day, when the mother was a little stronger, she called Hector to her
+bedside, and playfully claimed the right to be the child's godmother,
+and to give it her name.
+
+"And who else can have so good a right?" answered Hector. Yet he
+wondered just a little that Annie should want the child named after
+herself, and not after her mother.
+
+But when the time for the child's baptism came, Annie, who would hold
+the little one herself, whispered in the ear of the clergyman:
+
+"The child's name is Iris."
+
+I have told my little story. But perhaps my readers will have patience
+with me while I add just one little inch to the tail of the mouse my
+mountain has borne.
+
+Hector's next book, although never so popular as in any outward sense to
+be called a success, yet was not quite a failure even in regard to the
+money it brought him, and even at the present day has not ceased to
+bring in something. Doubtless it has faults not a few, but, happily, the
+man who knows them best is he who wrote it, and he has never had to
+repent that he did write it. And now he has an audience on which he can
+depend to welcome whatever he writes. That he has enemies as well goes
+without saying, but they are rather scorners than revilers, and they
+have not yet caused him to retaliate once by criticising any work of
+theirs. Neither, I believe, has he ever failed to recognize what of
+genuine and good work most of them have produced. One of the best
+results to himself of his constant endeavor to avoid jealousy is that he
+is still able to write verse, and continues to take more pleasure in it
+than in telling his tales. And still his own test of the success of any
+of his books is the degree to which he enjoyed it himself while writing
+it.
+
+His legacy has long been spent, and he has often been in straits since;
+but he has always gathered good from those straits, and has never again
+felt as if slow walls were closing in upon him to crush him. And he has
+hopes by God's help, and with Annie's, of getting through at last,
+without ever having dishonored his high calling.
+
+The last time I saw him, he introduced his wife to me--having just been
+telling me his and her story--with the rather enigmatical words:
+
+"This is my wife. You cannot see her very well, for, like Hamlet, I wear
+her 'in my heart's core, aye, in my heart of hearts!'"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Far Above Rubies, by George MacDonald
+
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