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It Is Never Too Late to Mend

by Charles Reade · English · Gutenberg #4606 · 1,424,160 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: It Is Never Too Late to Mend

Author: Charles Reade


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #4606]
                Most recently updated: March 5, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4606

Credits: Produced by James Rusk and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND ***




Produced by James Rusk








IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND

By Charles Reade


This attempt at a solid fiction is, with their permission, dedicated to
the President, Fellows, and demies of St. Mary Magdalen College. Oxford,
by a grateful son of that ancient, learned, and most charitable house.



CHAPTER I.


George Fielding cultivated a small farm in Berkshire.

This position is not so enviable as it was. Years ago, the farmers
of England, had they been as intelligent as other traders, could have
purchased the English soil by means of the huge percentage it offered
them.

But now, I grieve to say, a farmer must be as sharp as his neighbors,
or like his neighbors he will break. What do I say? There are soils and
situations where, in spite of intelligence and sobriety, he is almost
sure to break; just as there are shops where the lively, the severe, the
industrious, the lazy, are fractured alike.

This last fact I make mine by perambulating a certain great street every
three months, and observing how name succeeds to name as wave to wave.

Readers hardened by the _Times_ will not perhaps go so far as to weep
over a body of traders for being reduced to the average condition of
all other traders. But the individual trader, who fights for existence
against unfair odds, is to be pitied whether his shop has plate glass
or a barn door to it; and he is the more to be pitied when he is sober,
intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky.

George Fielding was all these, who, a few years ago, assisted by his
brother William, filled “The Grove”--as nasty a little farm as any in
Berkshire.

Discontented as he was, the expression hereinbefore written would have
seemed profane to young Fielding, for a farmer's farm and a sailor's
ship have always something sacred in the sufferer's eyes, though one
sends one to jail, and the other the other to Jones.

It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor sour land.
George's father had one hundred acres grass with it, but this had been
separated six years ago.

There was not a tree, nor even an old stump to show for this word
“Grove.”

But in the country oral tradition still flourishes.

There had been trees in “The Grove,” only the title had outlived the
timber a few centuries.

On the morning of our tale George Fielding might have been seen near his
own homestead, conversing with the Honorable Frank Winchester.

This gentleman was a character that will be common some day, but was
nearly unique at the date of our story.

He had not an extraordinary intellect, but he had great natural gayety,
and under that he had enormous good sense; his good sense was really
brilliant, he had a sort of universal healthy mind that I can't
understand how people get.

He was deeply in love with a lady who returned his passion, but she
was hopelessly out of his reach, because he had not much money or
expectations; instead of sitting down railing, or sauntering about
whining, what did me the Honorable Frank Winchester? He looked over
England for the means of getting this money, and not finding it there,
he surveyed the globe and selected Australia, where, they told him, a
little money turns to a deal, instead of dissolving in the hand like a
lozenge in the mouth, as it does in London.

So here was an earl's son (in this age of commonplace events) going
to Australia with five thousand pounds, as sheep farmer and general
speculator.

He was trying hard to persuade George Fielding to accompany him as
bailiff or agricultural adviser and manager.

He knew the young man's value, but to do him justice his aim was not
purely selfish; he was aware that Fielding had a bad bargain in “The
Grove,” and the farmer had saved his life at great personal risk one
day that he was seized with cramp bathing in the turbid waters of Cleve
millpool, and he wanted to serve him in return. This was not his first
attempt of the kind, and but for one reason perhaps he might have
succeeded.

“You know me and I know you,” said Mr. Winchester to George Fielding;
“I must have somebody to put me in the way. Stay with me one year,
and after that I'll square accounts with you about that thundering
millpool.”

“Oh! Mr. Winchester,” said George, hastily and blushing like fire,
“that's an old story, sir?” with a sweet little half-cunning smile that
showed he was glad it was not forgotten.

“Not quite,” replied the young gentleman dryly; “you shall have five
hundred sheep and a run for them, and we will both come home rich and
consequently respectable.”

“It is a handsome offer, sir, and a kind offer and like yourself, sir,
but transplanting one of us,” continued George, “dear me, sir, it's like
taking up an oak tree thirty years in the ground--besides--besides--did
you ever notice my cousin, Susanna, sir?”

“Notice her! why, do you think I am a heathen, and never go to the
parish church? Miss Merton is a lovely girl; she sits in the pew by the
pillar.”

“Isn't she, sir?” said George.

Mr. Winchester endeavored to turn this adverse topic in his favor; he
made a remark that produced no effect at the time. He said, “People
don't go to Australia to die--they go to Australia to make money, and
come home and marry--and it is what you must do--this “Grove” is a
millstone round your neck. Will you have a cigar, farmer?”

George consented, premising, however, that hitherto he had never got
beyond a yard of clay, and after drawing a puff or two he took the cigar
from his mouth, and looking at it said, “I say, sir! seems to me the
fire is uncommon near the chimbly.” Mr. Winchester laughed; he then
asked George to show him the blacksmith shop. “I must learn how to shoe
a horse,” said the honorable Frank.

“Well, I never!” thought George. “The first nob in the country going to
shoe a horse,” but with his rustic delicacy he said nothing, and led Mr.
Winchester to the blacksmith's shop.

While this young gentleman is hammering nails into a horse's hoof,
and Australia into an English farmer's mind, we must introduce other
personages.

Susanna Merton was beautiful and good. George Fielding and she were
acknowledged lovers, but marriage was not spoken of as a near event, and
latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the
young man's name.

Susanna appeared to like George, though not so warmly as he loved her;
but at all events she accepted no other proffers of love. For all that
she had, besides a host of admirers, other lovers besides George;
and what is a great deal more singular (for a woman's eye is quick as
lightning in finding out who loves her), there was more than one of
whose passion she was not conscious.

William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's
sweetheart, but though he trembled with pleasure when she was near him,
he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to
love her.

On the morning of our tale Susan's father, old Merton, had walked over
from his farm to “The Grove,” and was inspecting a field behind George's
house, when he was accosted by his friend, Mr. Meadows, who had seen
him, and giving his horse to a boy to hold had crossed the stubbles to
speak to him.

Mr. Meadows was not a common man, and merits some preliminary notice.

He was what is called in the country “a lucky man”; everything he had
done in life had prospered.

The neighbors admired, respected, and some of them even hated this
respectable man, who had been a carter in the midst of them, and now at
forty years of age was a rich corn-factor and land-surveyor.

“All this money cannot have been honestly got,” said the envious ones
among themselves; yet they could not put their finger on any dishonest
action he had done. To the more candid the known qualities of the man
accounted for his life of success.

This John Meadows had a cool head, an iron will, a body and mind alike
indefatigable, and an eye never diverted from the great objects of sober
industrious men--wealth and respectability. He had also the soul of
business--method!

At one hour he was sure to be at church; at another, at market; in his
office at a third, and at home when respectable men should be at home.

By this means Mr. Meadows was always to be found by any man who
wanted to do business; and when you had found him, you found a man
superficially coy perhaps, but at bottom always ready to do business,
and equally sure to get the sunny side of it and give you the windy.

Meadows was generally respected; by none more than by old Merton, and
during the last few months the intimacy of these two men had ripened
into friendship; the corn-factor often hooked his bridle to the old
farmer's gate, and took a particular interest in all his affairs.

Such was John Meadows.

In person he was a tall, stout man, with iron gray hair, a healthy,
weather-colored complexion, and a massive brow that spoke to the depth
and force of the man's character.

“What, taking a look at the farm, Mr. Merton? It wants some of your
grass put to it, doesn't it?”

“I never thought much of the farm,” was the reply, “it lies cold; the
sixty-acre field is well enough, but the land on the hill is as poor as
death.”

Now this idea, which Merton gave out as his, had dropped into him from
Meadows three weeks before.

“Farmer,” said Meadows, in an undertone, “they are thrashing out new
wheat for the rent.”

“You don't say so? Why I didn't hear the flail going.”

“They have just knocked off for dinner--you need not say I told you, but
Will Fielding was at the bank this morning, trying to get money on their
bill, and the bank said No! They had my good word, _too_. The people of
the bank sent over to me.”

They had his good word! but not his good tone! he had said. “Well,
their father was a safe man;” but the accent with which he eulogized the
parent had somehow locked the bank cash-box to the children.

“I never liked it, especially of late,” mused Merton. “But you see the
young folk being cousins--”

“That is it, cousins,” put in Meadows; “it is not as if she loved him
with all her heart and soul; she is an obedient daughter, isn't she?”

“Never gainsaid me in her life; she has a high spirit, but never with
me; my word is law. You see, she is a very religious girl, is Susan.”

“Well, then, a word from you would save her--but there--all that is your
affair, not mine,” added he.

“Of course it is,” was the reply. “You are a true friend. I'll step
round to the barn and see what is doing.” And away went Susan's father
uneasy in his mind.

Meadows went to the “Black Horse,” the village public house, to see what
farmers wanted to borrow a little money under the rose, and would
pawn their wheat ricks, and pay twenty per cent for that overrated
merchandise.

At the door of the public-house he was met by the village constable, and
a stranger of gentlemanly address and clerical appearance. The constable
wore a mysterious look and invited Meadows into the parlor of the
public-house.

“I have news for you, sir,” said he, “leastways I think so; your pocket
was picked last Martinmas fair of three Farnborough bank-notes with your
name on the back.”

“It was!”

“Is this one of them?” said the man, producing a note.

Meadows examined it with interest, compared the number with a memorandum
in his pocketbook, and pronounced that it was.

“Who passed it?” inquired he.

“A chap that has got the rest--a stranger--Robinson--that lodges at “The
Grove” with George Fielding; that is, if his name is Robinson, but we
think he is a Londoner come down to take an airing. You understand,
Sir.”

Meadows' eyes flashed actual fire. For so rich a man, he seemed
wonderfully excited by this circumstance.

To an inquiry who was his companion, the constable answered _sotto
voce_, “Gentleman from Bow Street, come to see if he knows him.” The
constable went on to inform Meadows that Robinson was out fishing
somewhere, otherwise they would already have taken him; “but we will
hang about the farm, and take him when he comes home.”

“You had better be at hand, sir, to identify the notes,” said the
gentleman from Bow Street, whose appearance was clerical.

Meadows had important business five miles off; he postponed it. He wrote
a line in pencil, put a boy upon his black mare, and hurried him off to
the rendezvous, while he stayed and entered with strange alacrity into
this affair. “Stay,” cried he, “if he is an old hand he will twig the
officer.”

“Oh, I'm dark, sir,” was the answer; “he won't know me till I put the
darbies on him.”

The two men then strolled as far as the village stocks, keeping an eye
ever on the farm-house.

Thus a network of adverse events was closing round George Fielding this
day.

He was all unconscious of them; he was in good spirits. Robinson had
showed him how to relieve the temporary embarrassment that had lately
depressed him.

“Draw a bill on your brother,” said Robinson, “and let him accept it.
The Farnborough Bank will give you notes for it. These country banks
like any paper better than their own. I dare say they are right.”

George had done this, and expected William every minute with this and
other moneys. And then Susanna Merton was to dine at “The Grove” to-day,
and this, though not uncommon, was always a great event with poor
George.

Dilly would not come to be killed just when he was wanted. In other
words, Robinson, who had no idea how he was keeping people waiting,
fished tranquilly till near dinner-time, neither taking nor being taken.

This detained Meadows in the neighborhood of the farm, and was the cause
of his rencontre with a very singular personage, whose visit he knew at
sight must be to him.

As he hovered about among George Fielding's ricks, the figure of an old
man slightly bowed but full of vigor stood before him. He had a long
gray beard with a slight division in the center, hair abundant but
almost white, and a dark, swarthy complexion that did not belong to
England; his thick eyebrows also were darker than his hair, and under
them was an eye like a royal jewel; his voice had the Oriental richness
and modulation--this old man was Isaac Levi; an Oriental Jew who had
passed half his life under the sun's eye, and now, though the town of
Farnborough had long been too accustomed to him to wonder at him, he
dazzled any thoughtful stranger; so exotic and apart was he--so romantic
a grain in a heap of vulgarity--he was as though a striped jasper had
crept in among the paving-stones of their marketplace, or a cactus
grandiflora shone among the nettles of a Berkshire meadow.

Isaac Levi, unlike most Jews, was familiar with the Hebrew tongue, and
this and the Eastern habits of his youth colored his language and his
thoughts, especially in his moments of emotion, and above all, when he
forgot the money-lender for a moment, and felt and thought as one of a
great nation, depressed, but waiting for a great deliverance. He was a
man of authority and learning in his tribe.

At sight of Isaac Levi Meadows' brow towered, and he called out rather
rudely without allowing the old gentleman to speak, “If you are come to
talk to me about that house you are in you may keep your breath to cool
your porridge.”

Meadows had bought the house Isaac rented, and had instantly given him
warning to leave.

Isaac, who had become strangely attached to the only place in which he
had ever lived many years, had not doubted for a moment that Meadows
merely meant to raise the rent to its full value, so he had come to
treat with his new landlord. “Mr. Meadows,” said he persuasively, “I
have lived there twenty years--I pay a fair rent--but, if you think
any one would give you more you shall lose nothing by me--I will pay a
little more; and you know your rent is secure?”

“I do,” was the answer.

“Thank you, sir! well, then--”

“Well, then, next Lady-day you turn out bag and baggage.

“Nay, sir,” said Isaac Levi, “hear me, for you are younger than I. Mr.
Meadows, when this hair was brown I traveled in the East; I sojourned in
Madras and Benares, in Bagdad, Ispahan, Mecca and Bassora, and found no
rest. When my hair began to turn gray, I traded in Petersburg and Rome
and Paris, Vienna and Lisbon and other western cities and found no rest.
I came to this little town, where, least of all, I thought to pitch my
tent for life, but here the God of my fathers gave me my wife, and here
He took her to Himself again--”

“What the deuce is all this to me, man?”

“Much, sir, if you are what men say; for men speak well of you; be
patient, and hear me. Two children were born to me and died from me in
the house you have bought; and there my Leah died also; and there at
times in the silent hours I seem to hear their voices and their feet. In
another house I shall never hear them--I shall be quite alone. Have pity
on me, sir, an aged and a lonely man; tear me not from the shadows of my
dead. Let me prevail with you?”

“No!” was the stern answer.

“No?” cried Levi, a sudden light darting into his eye; “then you must be
an enemy of Isaac Levi?”

“Yes!” was the grim reply to this rapid inference.

“Aha!” cried the old Jew, with a sudden defiance, which he instantly
suppressed. “And what have I done to gain your enmity, sir?” said he, in
a tone crushed by main force into mere regret.

“You lend money.”

“A little, sir, now and then--a very little.”

“That is to say, when the security is bad, you have no money in hand;
but when the security is good, nobody has ever found the bottom of Isaac
Levi's purse.”

“Our people,” said Isaac apologetically, “can trust one another--they
are not like yours. We are brothers, and that is why money is always
forthcoming when the deposit is sound.”

“Well,” said Meadows, “what you are, I am; what I do on the sly you do
on the sly, old thirty per cent.”

“The world is wide enough for us both, good sir--”

“It is!” was the prompt reply. “And it lies before you, Isaac. Go where
you like, for the little town of Farnborough is not wide enough for me
and any man that works my business for his own pocket--”

“But this is not enmity, sir.”

Meadows gave a coarsish laugh. “You are hard to please,” cried he. “I
think you will find it is enmity.”

“Nay! sir, this is but matter of profit and loss. Well, let me stay, and
I promise you shall gain and not lose. Our people are industrious and
skillful in all bargains, but we keep faith and covenant. So be it. Let
us be friends. I covenant with you, and I swear by the tables of the
law, you shall not lose one shilling per annum by me.”

“I'll trust you as far as I can fling a bull by the tail. You gave me
your history--take mine. I have always put my foot on whatever man
or thing has stood in my way. I was poor, I am rich, and that is my
policy.”

“It is frail policy,” said Isaac, firmly. “Some man will be sure to put
his foot on you, soon or late.”

“What, do you threaten me?” roared Meadows.

“No, sir,” said Isaac, gently but steadily. “I but tell you what these
old eyes have seen in every nation, and read in books that never lie.
Goliath defied armies, yet he fell like a pigeon by a shepherd-boy's
sling. Samson tore a lion in pieces with his hands, but a woman laid him
low. No man can defy us all, sir! The strong man is sure to find one
as strong and more skillful; the cunning man one as adroit and stronger
than himself. Be advised, then, do not trample upon one of my people.
Nations and men that oppress us do not thrive. Let me have to bless you.
An old man's blessing is gold. See these gray hairs. My sorrows have
been as many as they. His share of the curse that is upon his tribe has
fallen upon Isaac Levi.” Then, stretching out his hands with a slight
but touching gesture, he said, “I have been driven to and fro like a
leaf these many years, and now I long for rest. Let me rest in my little
tent, till I rest forever. Oh! let me die where those I loved have died,
and there let me be buried.”

Age, sorrow, and eloquence pleaded in vain, for they were wasted on the
rocks of rocks, a strong will and a vulgar soul. But indeed the whole
thing was like epic poetry wrestling with the _Limerick Chronicle_ or
_Tuam Gazette_.

I am almost ashamed to give the respectable western brute's answer.

“What! you quote Scripture, eh? I thought you did not believe in that.
Hear t'other side. Abraham and Lot couldn't live in the same place,
because they both kept sheep, and we can't, because we fleece 'em.
So Abraham gave Lot warning as I give it you. And as for dying on my
premises, if you like to hang yourself before next Lady-day, I give you
leave, but after Lady-day no more Jewish dogs shall die in my house nor
be buried for manure in my garden.”

Black lightning poured from the old Jew's eyes, and his pent-up wrath
burst out like lava from an angry mountain.

“Irreverent cur! do you rail on the afflicted of Heaven? The Founder of
your creed would abhor you, for He, they say, was pitiful. I spit upon
ye, and I curse ye. Be accursed!” And flinging up his hands, like St.
Paul at Lystra, he rose to double his height and towered at his insulter
with a sudden Eastern fury that for a moment shook even the iron
Meadows. “Be accursed!” he yelled again. “Whatever is the secret wish
of your black heart Heaven look on my gray hairs that you have insulted,
and wither that wish. Ah, ah!” he screamed, “you wince. All men have
secret wishes--Heaven fight against yours. May all the good luck you
have be wormwood for want of that--that---that--that. May you be near
it, close to it, upon it, pant for it, and lose it; may it sport, and
smile, and laugh, and play with you till Gehenna burns your soul upon
earth!”

The old man's fiery forked tongue darted so keen and true to some sore
in his adversary's heart that he in turn lost his habitual self-command.

White and black with passion he wheeled round on Isaac with a fierce
snarl, and lifting his stick discharged a furious blow at his head.

Fortunately for Isaac wood encountered leather instead of gray hairs.

Attracted by the raised voices, and unseen in their frenzy by either of
these antagonists, young George Fielding had drawn near them. He had,
luckily, a stout pig-whip in his hand, and by an adroit turn of his
muscular wrist he parried a blow that would have stopped the old Jew's
eloquence perhaps forever. As it was, the corn-factor's stick cut like
a razor through the air, and made a most musical whirr within a foot
of the Jew's ear. The basilisk look of venom and vengeance he instantly
shot back amounted to a stab.

“Not if I know it,” said George. And he stood cool and erect with a calm
manly air of defiance between the two belligerents. While the stick and
the whip still remained in contact, Meadows glared at Isaac's champion
with surprise and wrath, and a sort of half fear half wonder that this
of all men in the world should be the one to cross weapons with and
thwart him. “You are joking, Master Meadows,” said George coolly. “Why
the man is twice your age, and nothing in his hand but his fist. Who are
ye, old man, and what d'ye want? It's you for cursing, anyway.”

“He insults me,” cried Meadows, “because I won't have him for a tenant
against my will. Who is he? A villainous old Jew.”

“Yes, young man,” said the other, sadly, “I am Isaac Levi, a Jew. And
what is your religion” (he turned upon Meadows)? “It never came out of
Judea in any name or shape. D'ye call yourself a heathen? Ye lie, ye
cur; the heathen were not without starlight from heaven; they respected
sorrow and gray hairs.”

“You shall smart for this. I'll show you what my religion is,” said
Meadows, inadvertent with passion, and the corn-factor's fingers grasped
his stick convulsively.

“Don't you be so aggravating, old man,” said the good-natured George,
“and you, Mr. Meadows, should know how to make light of an old man's
tongue; why it's like a woman's, it's all he has got to hit with;
leastways you mustn't lift hand to him on my premises, or you will have
to settle with me first; and I don't think that would suit your book or
any man's for a mile or two round about Farnborough,” said George with
his little Berkshire drawl.

“He!” shrieked Isaac, “he dare not! see! see!” and he pointed nearly
into the man's eye, “he doesn't look you in the face. Any soul that
has read men from east to west can see lion in your eye, young man, and
cowardly wolf in his.”

“Lady-day! Lady-day!” snorted Meadows, who was now shaking with
suppressed rage.

“Ah!” cried Isaac, and he turned white and quivered in his turn.

“Lady-day!” said George, uneasily, “Confound Lady-day, and every day of
the sort--there, don't you be so spiteful, old man--why if he isn't
all of a tremble. Poor old man.” He went to his own door, and called
“Sarah!”

A stout servant-girl answered the summons.

“Take the old man in, and give him whatever is going, and his mug and
pipe,” then he whispered her, “and don't go lumping the chine down under
his nose now.”

“I thank you, young man,” faltered Isaac, “I must not eat with you, but
I will go in and rest my limbs which fail me, and compose myself; for
passion is unseemly at my years.”

Arrived at the door, he suddenly paused, and looking upward, said:

“Peace be under this roof, and comfort and love follow me into this
dwelling.”

“Thank ye kindly,” said young Fielding, a little surprised and touched
by this. “How old are you, daddy, if you please?” added he respectfully.

“My son, I am threescore years and ten--a man of years and grief--grief
for myself, grief still more for my nation and city. Men that are men
pity us; men that are dogs have insulted us in all ages.”

“Well,” said the good-natured young man soothingly--“don't you vex
yourself any more about it. Now you go in, and forget all your trouble
awhile, please God, by my fireside, my poor old man.”

Isaac turned, the water came to his eyes at this after being insulted
so; a little struggle took place in him, but nature conquered prejudice
and certain rubbish he called religion. He held out his hand like the
king of all Asia; George grasped it like an Englishman.

“Isaac Levi is your friend,” and the expression of the man's whole face
and body showed these words carried with them a meaning unknown in good
society.

He entered the house, and young Fielding stood watching him with a
natural curiosity.

Now Isaac Levi knew nothing about the corn-factor's plans. When at
one and the same moment he grasped George's hand, and darted a long,
lingering glance of demoniacal hatred on Meadows, he coupled two
sentiments by pure chance. And Meadows knew this; but still it struck
Meadows as singular and ominous.

When, with the best of motives, one is on a wolf's errand, it is not
nice to hear a hyena say to the shepherd's dog, “I am your friend,” and
see him contemptuously shoot the eye of a rattlesnake at one's self.

The misgiving, however, was but momentary; Meadows respected his own
motives and felt his own power; an old Jew's wild fury could not shake
his confidence.

He muttered, “One more down to your account, George Fielding,” and left
the young man watching Isaac's retreating form.

George, who didn't know he was gone, said:

“Old man's words seem to knock against my bosom, Mr. Meadows--Gone,
eh?--that man,” thought George Fielding, “has everybody's good word,
parson's and all--who'd think he'd lift his hand, leastways his stick
it was and that's worse, against a man of three score and upward--Ugh!”
 thought George Fielding, yeoman of the midland counties--and unaffected
wonder mingled with his disgust.

His reverie was broken by William Fielding just ridden in from
Farnborough.

“Better late than never,” said the elder brother, impatiently.

“Couldn't get away sooner, George; here's the money for the sheep, 13
pounds 10s.; no offer for the cow, Jem is driving her home.”

“Well, but the money--the 80 pounds, Will?”

William looked sulkily down.

“I haven't got it, George! There's your draft again, the bank wouldn't
take it.”

A keen pang shot across George's face, as much for the affront as the
disappointment.

“They wouldn't take it?” gasped he. “Ay, Will, our credit is down, the
whole town knows our rent is overdue. I suppose you know money _must_ be
got some way.”

“Any way is better than threshing out new wheat at such a price,” said
William sullenly. “Ask a loan of a neighbor.”

“Oh, Will,” appealed George, “to ask a loan of a neighbor, and be
denied--it is bitterer than death. _You_ can do it.”

“I! Am I master here?” retorted the younger. “The farm is not farmed my
way, nor ever was. No! Give me the plow-handle and I'll cut the furrow,
George.”

“No doubt, no doubt!” said the other, very sharply, “you'd like to draw
the land dry with potato crops, and have fourscore hogs snoring in the
farmyard; that's your idea of a farm. Oh! I know you want to be elder
brother. Well, I tell'ee what do; you kill me first, Bill Fielding, and
then you will be elder brother, and not afore.”

Here was a pretty little burst of temper! We have all our sore part.

“So be it, George!” replied William, “you got us into the mud, elder
brother, you get us out of the mire!”

George subdued his tone directly.

“Who shall I ask?” said he, as one addressing a bosom counselor.

“Uncle Merton, or--or---Mr. Meadows the corn-factor; he lends money at
times to friends. It would not be much to either of them.”

“Show my empty pockets to Susanna's father! Oh, Will! how can you be so
cruel?”

“Meadows, then.”

“No use for me, I've just offended him a hit; beside he's a man that
never knew trouble or ill luck in his life; they are like flints, all
that sort.”

“Well, look here, I'm pretty well with Meadows. I'll ask him if you will
try uncle; the first that meets his man to begin.”

“That sounds fair,” said George, “but I can't--well--yes,” said he,
suddenly changing his mind. “I agree,” said he, with simple cunning, and
lowered his eyes; but suddenly raising them, he said cheerfully, “Why,
you're in luck, Bill; here's your man,” and he shot like an arrow into
his own kitchen.

“Confound it,” said the other, fairly caught.

Meadows, it is to be observed, was wandering about the premises until
such time as Robinson should return; and while the brothers were
arguing, he had been in the barn, and finding old Merton there had
worked still higher that prudent man's determination to break off
matters between his daughter and the farmer of “The Grove.”

After the usual salutations William Fielding, sore against the grain,
began:

“I did not know you were here, sir! I want to speak to you.”

“I am at your service, Mr. Willum.”

“Well, sir. George and I are a little short just at present; it is only
for a time, and George says he should take it very kind if you would
lend us a hundred pound, just to help us over the stile.”

“Why, Mr. Willum,” replied Meadows, “I should be delighted, and if you
had only asked me yesterday, I could have done it as easy as stand here;
but my business drinks a deal of money, Mr. Willum, and I laid out
all my loose cash yesterday; but, of course, it is of no
consequence--another time--good morning, Mr. Willum.”

Away sauntered Meadows, leaving William planted there, as the French
say.

George ran out of the kitchen.

“Well?”

“He says he has got no money loose.”

“He is a liar! he paid 1,600 pounds into the bank yesterday, and you
knew it; didn't you tell him so?”

“No; what use? A man that lies to avoid lending won't be driven to
lend.”

“You don't play fair,” retorted George. “You could have got it from
Meadows, if you had a mind; but you want to drive your poor brother
against his sweetheart's father; you are false, my lad.”

“You are the only man that ever said so; and you durstn't say it if you
weren't my brother.”

“If it wasn't for that, I'd say a deal more.”

“Well, show your high stomach to Uncle Merton, for there he is.
Hy!--uncle!” cried William to Merton, who turned instantly and came
toward them. “George wants to speak to you,” said William, and shot like
a cross-bow bolt behind the house.

“That is lucky,” said Merton, “for I want to speak to you.”

“Who would have thought of his being about?” muttered George.

While George was calling up his courage and wits to open his subject,
Mr. Merton, who had no such difficulties, was beforehand with him.

“You are threshing out new wheat?” said Merton, gravely.

“Yes,” answered George, looking down.

“That is a bad lookout; a farmer has no business to go to his barn door
for his rent.”

“Where is he to go, then? to the church door, and ask for a miracle?”

“No; to his ship-fold, to be sure.”

“Ay! you can; you have got grass and water and everything to hand.”

“And so must you, young man, or you'll never be a farmer. Now, George, I
must speak to you seriously” (George winced).

“You are a fine lad, and I like you very well, but I love my own
daughter better.”

“So do I!” said George simply.

“And I must look out for her,” resumed Merton. “I have seen a pretty
while how things are going here, and if she marries you she will have to
keep you instead of you her.”

“Heaven forbid! Matters are not so bad as that, uncle.”

“You are too much of a man, I hope,” continued Merton, “to eat a woman's
bread; and if you are not, I am man enough to keep the girl from it.”

“These are hard words to bear,” gasped George. “So near my own house,
old man.”

“Well, plain speaking is best when the mind is made up,” was the reply.

“Is this from Susanna, as well as you?” said George, with a trembling
lip, and scarce able to utter the words.

“Susan is an obedient daughter. What I say she'll stand to; and I hope
you know better than to tempt her to disobey me; you wouldn't succeed.”

“Enough said,” answered George very sternly. “Enough said, old man; I've
no need to tempt any girl.”

“Good morning, George!” and away stumped Merton.

“Good morning, uncle! (ungrateful old thief).”

“William,” cried he, to his brother, who came the next minute to hear
the news, “our mother took him out of the dirt.--I have heard her say
as much--or he'd not have a ship-fold to brag of. Oh! my heart--oh!
Will!--”

“Well, will he lend the money?”

“I never asked him.”

“You never asked him!” cried William.

“Bill, he began upon me in a moment,” said George, looking appealingly
into his brother's face; “he sees we are going down hill, and he as good
as bade me think no more of Susan.”

“Well,” said the other, harshly, “it was your business to own the truth
and ask him help us over the stile--he's our own blood.”

“You want to let me down lower than I would let that Carlo dog of yours.
You're no brother of mine,” retorted George fiercely and bitterly.

“A bargain is a bargain,” replied the other sullenly: “I asked Meadows,
and he said No. You fell talking with uncle about Susan, and never put
the question to him at all. Who is the false one, eh?”

“If you call me false, I'll knock your ugly head off, sulky Bill.”

“You're false, and a fool into the bargain, bragging George!”

“What, you will have it, then?”

“If you can give it me.”

“Well, if it is to be,” said George, “I'll give you something to put you
on your mettle. The best man shall farm 'The Grove,' and the other shall
be a servant on it, or go elsewhere, for I am sick of this.”

“And so am I!” cried William, hastily; “and have been any time this two
years.”

They tucked up their sleeves a little, shook hands, and then retired
each one step, and began to fight.

And how came these two honest men to forget that the blood they proposed
to shed was thicker than water? Was it the farm, money, agricultural
dissension, temper? They would have told you it was, and perhaps thought
it was. It was Susanna Merton!

The secret subtle influence of jealousy had long been fermenting, and
now it exploded in this way and under this disguise.

Ah! William Fielding, and all of you, “Beware of jealousy”--cursed
jealousy! it is the sultan of all the passions, and the Tartar chief of
all the crimes. Other passions affect the character; this changes, and,
if good, always reverses it! Mind that, reverses it! turns honest men to
snakes, and doves to vultures. Horrible unnatural mixture of Love
with Hate--you poison the whole mental constitution--you bandage the
judgment--you crush the sense of right and wrong--you steel the bowels
of compassion--you madden the brain--you corrupt the heart--you damn the
soul.

The Fieldings, then, shook hands mechanically, and receding each a step
began to spar.

Each of these farmers fancied himself slightly the best man; but they
both knew they had an antagonist with whom it would not do to make the
least mistake.

They therefore sparred and feinted with wary eye before they ventured
to close; George, however, the more impetuous, was preparing to come
to closer quarters when all of a sudden, to the other's surprise, he
dropped his hands by his sides, and turned the other way with a face
anything but warlike, fear being now the prominent expression.

William followed the direction of his eye, and then William partook
his brother's uneasiness; however, he put his hands in his pockets, and
began to saunter about, in a circumference of three yards, and to get up
a would-be-careless whistle, while George's hands became dreadfully in
his way, so he washed them in the air.

While they were employed in this peaceful pantomime a beautiful young
woman glided rapidly between the brothers.

Her first words renewed their uneasiness.

“What is this?” cried she, haughtily, and she looked from one to the
other like a queen rebuking her subjects.

George looked at William--William had nothing ready.

So George said, with some hesitation, but in a mellifluous voice,
“William was showing me--a trick--he learned at the fair--that is all,
Susan.”

“That is a falsehood, George,” replied the lady, “the first you ever
told me”--(George colored)--“you were fighting, you two boys--I saw your
eyes flash!”

The rueful wink exchanged by the combatants at this stroke of sagacity
was truly delicious.

“Oh, fie! oh, fie! brothers by one mother fighting--in a Christian
land--within a stone's throw of a church, where brotherly love is
preached as a debt we owe to strangers, let alone our own blood.”

“Yes! it is a sin, Susan,” said William, his conscience suddenly
illuminated. “So I ask _your_ pardon, Susanna.”

“Oh! it wasn't your fault, I'll be bound,” was the gracious reply. “What
a ruffian you must be, George, to shed your brother's blood.”

“La! Susan,” said George, with a doleful whine, “I wasn't going to
shed the beggar's blood. I was only going to give him a hiding for his
impudence.”

“Or take one for your own,” replied William coolly.

“That is more likely,” said Susan. “George, take William's hand; take it
this instant, I say,” cried she, with an air imperative and impatient.

“Well, why not? don't you go in a passion, Susan, about nothing,” said
George coaxingly.

They took hands; she made them hold one another by the hand, which they
did with both their heads hanging down. “While I speak a word to you
two,” said Susan Merton.

“You ought both to go on your knees, and thank Providence that sent me
here to prevent so great a crime; and as for you, your character must
change greatly, George Fielding, before I trust myself to live in a
house of yours.”

“Is all the blame to fall on my head?” said George, letting go William's
hand with no great apparent reluctance.

“Of course it is! William is a quiet lad that quarrels with nobody; you
are always quarreling; you thrashed our carter last Candlemas.”

“He spoke saucy words about you.”

Susan, smiling inwardly, made her face as repulsive outside as lay in
her power.

“I don't believe it,” said Susan; “your time was come round to fight and
be a ruffian, and so it was to-day, no doubt.”

“Ah!” said George, sorrowfully, “it is always poor George that does all
the wrong.

“Oh!” replied the lady, an arch smile playing for a moment about her
lips, “I could scold William, too, if you think I am as much interested
in his conduct and behavior as in yours.”

“No, no!” cried George, brightening up, “don't think to scold anybody
but me, Susan; and William,” said he, suddenly and frankly, “I ask your
pardon.”

“No more about it, George, if you please,” answered William in his
dogged way.

“Susan,” said George, “you don't know all I have to bear. My heart is
sore, Susan, dear. Uncle twitted me not an hour ago with my ill luck,
and almost bade me to speak to you no more, leastways as my sweetheart;
and that was why, when William came at me on the top of such a blow, it
was more than I could bear; and Susan--Susan--uncle said you would stand
to whatever he said.”

“George,” said Susan gently, “I am very sorry my father was so unkind.”

“Thank ye kindly, Susan; that is the first drop of dew that has fallen
on me to-day.”

“But obedience to parents,” continued Susan, interrogating, as it were,
her conscience, “is a great duty. I _hope_ I shall never disobey my
father,” faltered she.

“Oh!” answered the goose George hastily, “I don't want any girl to be
kind to me that does not love me; I am so unlucky, it would not be worth
her while, you know.”

At this Susan answered still more sharply, “No, I don't think it would
be worth any woman's while, till your character and temper undergo a
change.”

George never answered a word, but went and leaned his head upon the side
of a cart that stood half in and half out of a shed close by.

At this juncture a gay personage joined the party. He had a ball
waistcoat, as alarming tie, a shooting jacket, wet muddy trousers and
shoes, and an empty basket on his back.

He joined our group, just as George was saying to himself very sadly, “I
am in everybody's way here”--and he attacked him directly.

“Everybody is in this country.”

The reader is to understand that this Robinson was last from California;
and California had made such an impression upon him, that he turned the
conversation that way oftener than a well-regulated understanding recurs
to any one topic, except, perhaps, religion.

He was always pestering George to go to California with him, and it must
be owned that on this one occasion George had given him a fair handle.

“Come out of it,” continued Robinson, “and make your fortune.”

“You did not make yours there,” said Susan sharply.

“I beg your pardon, miss. I made it, or how could I have spent it?”

“No doubt,” said William. “What comes by the wind goes by the water.”

“Alluding to the dust?” inquired the Cockney.

“Gold dust especially,” retorted Susan Merton.

Robinson laughed. “The ladies are sharp, even in Berkshire,” said he.

Mr. Robinson then proceeded to disabuse their minds about the facility
of gold.

“A crop of gold,” said he, “does not come by the wind any more than a
crop of corn; it comes by harder digging than your potatoes ever saw,
and harder work than you ever did--oxen and horses perspire for you,
Fielding No. 2.”

“Did you ever see a horse or an ox mow an acre of grass or barley?”
 retorted William dryly.

“Don't brag,” replied the other; “they'll eat all you can mow and never
say a word about it.”

This repartee was so suited to their rustic idea of wit, that Robinson's
antagonists laughed heartily, except George.

“What is the matter with him?” said Robinson, sotto voce, indicating
George.

“Oh! he is cross, never mind him,” replied Susan ostentatiously loud.
George winced, but never spoke back to her.

Robinson then proceeded to disabuse the rural mind of the notion that
gold is to be got without hard toil, even in California. He told them
how the miners' shirts were wet through and through in the struggle
for gold; he told them how the little boys demanded a dollar apiece for
washing these same garments; and how the miners to escape this extortion
sent their linen to China in ships on Monday morning, and China sent
them back on Saturday, only it was Saturday six weeks.

Next Mr. Robinson proceeded to draw a parallel between England
and various nations on the other side of the Atlantic, not at all
complimentary to his island home; above all, he was eloquent on the
superior dignity of labor in new countries.

“I heard one of your clodhoppers say the other day, 'The squire is a
good gentleman, he often _gives me a day's work_.' Now I should think it
was the clodhopper gave the gentleman the day's work, and the gentleman
gave him a shilling for it--and made five by it.”

William Fielding scratched his head. This was a new view of things to
him, but there seemed to be something in it.

“Ay! rake that into your upper soil,” cried our republican orator; then
collecting into one his scattered items of argument, he invited his
friend George to take his muscle, pluck, wind, backbone, and self, out
of this miserable country, and come where the best man has a chance to
win.

“Come, George,” he cried, “England is the spot if you happen to be
married to a duke's daughter, and got fifty thousand a year and three
houses.

“_And_ a coach.

“_And_ a brougham.

“_And_ a curricle.

“_And_ ten brace of pointers.

“_And_ a telescope so big the stars must move to it, instead of it to
the stars.

“_And_ no end of pretty housemaids.

“_And_ a butler with a poultice round his neck and whiskers like a
mop-head.

“_And_ a silver tub full of rose-water to sit in and read the _Morning
Post_.

“_And_ a green-house full of peaches--and green peas all the year round.

“_And_ a pew in the church warmed with biling eau de Cologne.

“_And_ a carpet a foot thick.

“_And_ a piano-forte in every blessed room in the house. But this island
is the Dead Sea to a poor man.”

He then, diverging from the rhetorical to the metropolitan style,
proposed to his friend “to open one eye. That will show you this hole
you are in is all poor hungry arable ground. You know you can't work it
to a profit.” (George winced.) “No! steal, borrow, or beg 500 pounds.
Carry out a cargo of pea-jackets and fourpenny bits to swap for
gold-dust, a few tools, a stout heart, and a light pair of--'Oh, no; we
never mention them; their name is never heard'--and we'll soon fill both
pockets with the shiney in California.”

All this Mr. Robinson delivered with a volubility to which Berkshire had
hitherto been a stranger.

“A crust of bread in England before buffalo beef in California,” was
George's reply; but it was not given in that assured tone with which he
would have laughed at Robinson's eloquence a week ago.

“I could not live with all those thieves and ruffians that are settled
down there like crows on a dead horse; but I thank you kindly, my lad,
all the same,” said the tender-hearted young man.

“Strange,” thought he, “that so many should sing me the same tune,” and
he fell back into his reverie.

Here they were all summoned to dinner, with a dash of asperity, by Sarah
the stout farm servant.

Susan lingered an instant to speak to George. She chose an unfortunate
topic. She warned him once more against Mr. Robinson.

“My father says that he has no business nor trade, and he is not a
gentleman, in spite of his red and green cravat, so he must be a rogue
of some sort.”

“Shall I tell you his greatest fault?” was the bitter reply. “He is my
friend; he is the only creature that has spoken kind words to me to-day.
Oh! I saw how cross you looked at him.”

Susan's eyes flashed, and the color rose in her cheek, and the water in
her eyes.

“You are a fool, George,” said she; “you don't know how to read a woman,
nor her looks, nor her words either.”

And Susan was very angry and disdainful, and did not speak to George all
dinner-time.

As for poor George, he followed her into the house with a heart both
sick and heavy.

This Berkshire farmer had a proud and sensitive nature under a homely
crust.

Old Merton's words had been iron passing through his soul, and besides
he felt as if everything was turning cold and slippery and gliding from
his hand. He shivered with vague fears, and wished the sun would set at
one o'clock and the sorrowful day come to an end.



CHAPTER II.

THE meal passed almost in silence; Robinson was too hungry to say a
word, and a weight hung upon George and Susan.

As they were about to rise, William observed two men in the farmyard
who were strangers to him--the men seemed to be inspecting the hogs. It
struck him as rather cool; but apparently the pig is an animal which to
be prized needs but to be known, for all connoisseurs of him are also
enthusiastic amateurs.

When I say the pig I mean the four-legged one.

William Fielding, partly from curiosity to hear these strangers'
remarks, partly hoping to find customers in them, strolled into the
farmyard before his companions rose from the table.

The others, looking carelessly out of the window, saw William join the
two men and enter into conversation with them; but their attention was
almost immediately diverted from that group by the entrance of Meadows.
He came in radiant; his face was a remarkable contrast to the rest of
the party.

Susan could not help noticing it.

“Why, Mr. Meadows,” cried she, “you look as bright as a May morning;
it is quite refreshing to see you; we are all rather down here this
morning.”

Meadows said nothing, and did not seem at his ease under this remark.

George rose from the table; so did Susan; Robinson merely pushed back
his chair and gave a comfortable little sigh, but the next moment he
cried “Hallo!”

They looked up, and there was William's face close against the window.

William's face was remarkably pale, and first he tried to attract
George's attention without speaking, but finding himself observed by the
whole party, he spoke out.

“George, will you speak a word?” said he.

George rose and went out; but Susan's curiosity was wakened, and she
followed him, accompanied by Meadows.

“None but you, George,” said William, with a voice half stern, half
quivering.

George looked at his brother.

“Out with it,” cried he, “it is some deadly ill-luck; I have felt it
coming all day, but out with it; what can't I bear after the words I
have borne this morning?”

William hung his head.

“George, there is a distress upon the farm for the rent.”

George did not speak at first, he literally staggered under these words;
his proud spirit writhed in his countenance, and with a groan, he turned
his back abruptly upon them all and hid his face against the corner of
his own house, the cold hard bricks.

Meadows, by strong self-command, contrived not to move a muscle of his
face.

Up to this day and hour, Susan Merton had always seemed cool, compared
with her lover; she used to treat him a little _de haut en bas_.

But when she saw his shame and despair, she was much distressed.

“George, George!” she cried, “don't do so. Can nothing be done? Where
is my father?--they told me he was here. He is rich, he shall help you.”
 She darted from them in search of Merton; ere she could turn the angle
of the house he met her.

“You had better go home, my girl,” said he gravely.

“Oh, no, no! I have been too unkind to George already,” and she turned
toward him like a pitying angel with hands extended as if they would
bring balm to a hurt soul.

Meadows left chuckling and was red and white by turns.

Merton was one of those friends one may make sure of finding in
adversity.

“There,” cried he, “George, I told you how it would end.”

George wheeled round on him like lightning.

“What, do you come here to insult over me? I must be a long way lower
than I am, before I shall be as low as you were when my mother took you
up and made a man of you.”

“George, George!” cried Susan in dismay; “stop, for pity's sake,
before you say words that will separate us forever. Father,” cried the
peace-making angel, “how can you push poor George so hard and him in
trouble! and we have all been too unkind to him to-day.”

Ere either could answer, there was happily another interruption. A smart
servant in livery walked up to them with a letter. With the instinctive
feeling of class they all endeavored to conceal their agitation from the
gentleman's servant. He handed George the note, and saying, “I was to
wait for an answer, Farmer Fielding,” sauntered toward the farm-stables.

“From Mr. Winchester,” said George, after a long and careful inspection
of the outside.

In the country it is a point of honor to find out the writer of a letter
by the direction, not the signature.

“The Honorable Francis Winchester! What does he write to you?” cried
Merton, in a tone of great surprise. This, too, was not lost on George.

Human nature is human nature. He was not sorry to be able to read a
gentleman's letter in the face of one who had bitterly reproached him,
and of others who had seen him mortified and struck down.

“Seems so,” said George, dryly, and with a glance of defiance; and he
read out the letter.

“George Fielding, my fine fellow, think of it again. I have two berths
in the ship that sails from Southampton to-morrow. You will have every
comfort on the voyage--a great point. I will do what I said for you”
 (“he promised me five hundred sheep and a run”). “I must have an honest
man, and where can I find as honest a man as George Fielding?” (“Thank
you, Mr. Winchester; George Fielding thanks you, sir.”) And there was
something noble and simple in the way the young farmer drew himself up,
and looked fearlessly in all his companions' eyes.

“You saved my life--I can do nothing for you here--and you are doing no
good at 'The Grove'--everybody says so (“everybody says so!”--and George
Fielding winced at the words).

“And it really pains me, my brave fellow, to go without you where I know
I could put you on the way of fortune. My heart is pretty stout; but
home is home; and be assured that I wait with some anxiety to know
whether my eyes are to look on nothing but water for the next four
months, or are to be cheered by the sight of something from home, the
face of a thoroughbred English yeoman, and--a friend--and--and--”

Poor George could read no more, the kind words, coming after his
affronts and troubles, brought his heart to his mouth.

Susan took the letter from him, and read out--

“And an upright, downright honest man”--“AND SO YOU ARE, GEORGE!” cried
she, warmly, drawing to George's side, and darting glances of defiance
vaguely around. Then she continued to read--

“If the answer is favorable, a word is enough. Meet me at 'The Crown,'
in Newborough, to-night, and we will go up to Town by the mail train.”

“The answer is, Yes,” said George to the servant, who was at some
distance.

Susan, bending over the letter, heard, but could not realize the word,
but the servant now came nearer. George said to him, “Tell your master,
Yes.”

“Yes? George!” cried Susan, “what do you mean by yes? It is about going
to Australia.”

“The answer is yes,” said George.

The servant went away with the answer.

The others remained motionless.

“This nobleman's son respects me if worse folk don't. But it is not the
great bloodhounds and greyhounds that bark at misfortune's heels, it is
only the village curs, when all is done. This is my path. I'll pack up
my things and go.” And he did not look at Susan or any of them, but went
into the house like a man walking in his sleep.

There was a stupefied pause.

Then Susan gave a cry like a wounded deer.

“Father! what have you done?”

Merton himself had been staggered, but he replied stoutly:

“No more than my duty, girl, and I hope you will do no less than yours.”

At this moment Robinson threw up the window and jumped out into the
yard.

Meadows, under stronger interests, had forgotten Robinson; but now at
sight of him he looked round, and catching the eye of a man who was
peering over the farmyard wall, made him a signal.

“What is the matter?” cried Robinson.

“George is going to Australia,” replied Merton, coldly.

“Australia!” roared Robinson--“Australia! He's mad. Who ever goes there
unless they are forced? He shan't go there! I wouldn't go there if my
passage was paid, and a new suit of clothes given me, and the governor's
gig to take me ashore to a mansion provided for my reception, fires
lighted, beds aired and pipes laid across upon the table.”

As Robinson concluded this tirade the policeman and constable, who had
crept round the angle of the farm-house, came one on each side, put each
a hand on one of his elbows and--took him!

He looked first down at their hands in turn, then up at their faces in
turn, and when he saw the metropolitan's face a look of simple disgust
diffused itself over his whole countenance.

“Ugh!!!” interjected Robinson.

“Ay!” replied the policeman, while putting handcuffs on him. “To
Australia you'll go, for all that, Tom Lyon, alias Scott, alias
Robinson, and you'll have a new suit of clothes, mostly one color,
and voyage paid, and a large house ashore waiting for you; and the
governor's gig will come alongside for you, provided they can't find the
convicts' barge,” and the official was pleased with himself and his wit
and allowed it to appear.

But by this time Robinson was on his balance again. “Gentlemen,”
 answered he with cold dignity, “what am I to understand by this violence
from persons to whom I am an utter stranger?” and he might have set for
the picture of injured innocence. “I am not acquainted with you, sir,”
 added he; “and by the titles you give me it seems you are not acquainted
with me.”

The police laughed, and took out of this injured man's pocket the stolen
notes which Meadows instantly identified.

Then Mr. Robinson started off into another key equally artistical in its
way.

“Miss Merton,” snuffled he, “appearances are against me, but mark my
words, my innocence will emerge all the brighter for this temporary
cloud.”

Susan Merton ran indoors, saying, “Oh! I must tell George.” She was
not sorry of an excuse to be by George's side, and remind him by her
presence that if home had its thorns it had its rose tree, too.

News soon spreads; rustic heads were seen peeping over the wall to see
the finale of the fine gentleman from “Lunnun.” Meantime the constable
went to put his horse in a four-wheeled chaise destined to convey
Robinson to the county jail.

If the rural population expected to see this worthy discomposed by so
sudden a change of fortune, they were soon undeceived.

“Well, Jacobs,” said he, with sudden familiarity, “you seem uncommon
pleased, and I am content. I would rather have gone to California; but
any place is better than England. Laugh those who win. I shall breathe a
delicious climate; you will make yourself as happy as a prince, that
is to say, miserable, upon fifteen shillings and two colds a week; my
sobriety and industry will realize a fortune under a smiling sun. Let
chaps that never saw the world, and the beautiful countries there are in
it, snivel at leaving this island of fogs and rocks and taxes and nobs,
the rich man's paradise, the poor man's--I never swear, it's vulgar.”

While he was crushing his captors with his eloquence, George and
Susan came together from the house; George's face betrayed wonder and
something akin to horror.

“A thief!” cried he. “Have I taken the hand of a thief?”

“It is a business like any other,” said Robinson deprecatingly.

“If you have no shame I have; I long to be gone now.”

“George!” whined the culprit, who, strange to say, had become attached
to the honest young farmer. “Did ever I take tithe of you? You have got
a silver candle cup, a heavenly old coffee-pot, no end of spoons double
the weight those rogues the silversmiths make them now; they are in a
box under your bed in your room,” added he, looking down. “Count them,
they are all right; and Miss Merton, your bracelet, the gold one with
the cameo: I could have had it a hundred times. Miss Merton, ask him to
shake hands with me at parting. I am so fond of him, and perhaps I shall
never see him again.

“Shake hands with you?” answered George sternly; “if your hands were
loose I doubt I should ram my fist down your throat; but there, you are
not worth a thought at such a time, and you are a man in trouble, and I
am another. I forgive you, and I pray Heaven I may never see your face
again.”

And Honesty turned his back in Theft's face.

Robinson bit his lip and said nothing, but his eyes glistened; just then
a little boy and girl, who had been peering about mighty curious, took
courage and approached hand in hand. The girl was the speaker, as a
matter of course.

“Farmer Fielding,” said she curtsying, a mode of reverence which was
instantly copied by the boy, “we are come to see the thief; they say
you have caught one. Oh, dear!” (and her bright little countenance was
overcast), “I couldn't have told it from a man!”

We don't know all that is in the hearts of the wicked. Robinson was
observed to change color at these silly words.

“Mr. Jacobs,” said he, addressing the policeman, “have you authority to
put me in the pillory before trial?” He said this coldly and sternly;
and then added, “Perhaps you are aware that I am a man, and I might
say a brother, for you were a thief, you know!” Then changing his tone
entirely, “I say, Jacobs,” said he, with cheerful briskness, “do you
remember cracking the silversmith's shop in Lambeth along with Jem
Salisbury and Black George, and--”

“There, the gig is ready,” cried Mr. Jacobs; “you come along,” and the
ex-thief pushed the thief hastily off the premises and drove him away
with speed.

George Fielding gave a bitter sigh. This was a fresh mortification. He
had for the last two months been defending Robinson against the surmises
of the village.

Villages are always concluding there is something wrong about people.

“What does he do?” inquired our village.

“Where does he get his blue coat with brass buttons, his tartan
waistcoat and green satin tie with red ends? We admit all this looks
like a gentleman. But yet, somehow, a gentleman is a horse of another
color than this Robinson.”

George had sometimes laughed at all this, sometimes been very angry, and
always stood up stoutly for his friend and lodger.

And now the fools were right and he was wrong. His friend and protege
was handcuffed before his eyes and carried off to the county jail amid
the grins and stares of a score of gaping rustics, who would make a fine
story of it this evening in both public-houses; and a hundred voices
would echo some such conversational Tristich as this:

1st Rustic. “I tawld un as much, dinn't I now, Jarge?”

2d Rustic. “That ye did, Richard, for I heerd ee.”

1st Rustic. “But, la! bless ye, he don't vally advice, he don't.”

George Fielding groaned out, “I'm ready to go now--I'm quite ready to
go--I am leaving a nest of insults;” and he darted into the house, as
much to escape the people's eyes as to finish his slight preparations
for so great a journey.

Two men were left alone; sulky William and respectable Meadows. Both
these men's eyes followed George into the house, and each had a strong
emotion they were bent on concealing, and did conceal from each other;
but was it concealed from all the world?

The farm-house had two rooms looking upon the spot where most of our
tale has passed.

The smaller one of these was a little state parlor, seldom used by the
family. Here on a table was a grand old folio Bible; the names, births,
and deaths of a century of Fieldings appeared in rusty ink and various
handwritings upon its fly-leaf.

Framed on the walls were the first savage attempts of woman at
worsted-work in these islands. There were two moral commonplaces, and
there was the forbidden fruit-tree, whose branches diverged, at set
distances like the radii of a circle, from its stem, a perpendicular
line; exactly at the end of each branch hung one forbidden
fruit--pre-Raphaelite worsted-work.

There were also two prints of more modern date, one agricultural, one
manufactural.

No. 1 was a great show of farming implements at Doncaster.

No. 2 showed how, one day in the history of man and of mutton, a sheep
was sheared, her wool washed, teased, carded, etc., and the cloth *'d
and *'d and *'d and *'d, and a coat shaped and sewed and buttoned upon a
goose, whose preparations for inebriating the performers and spectators
of his feat appeared in a prominent part of the picture.

The window of this sunny little room was open and on the sill was a row
of flower-pots from which a sweet fresh smell crept with the passing air
into the chamber.

Behind these flower-pots for two hours past had crouched--all eye and
ear and mind--a keen old man.

To Isaac Levi age had brought vast experience, and had not yet dimmed
any one of his senses. More than forty-five years ago he had been
brought to see that men seldom act or speak so as to influence the
fortunes of others without some motive of their own; and that these
motives are seldom the motives they advance; and that their real motives
are not always known to themselves, and yet can nearly always be read
and weighed by an intelligent bystander.

So for near half a century Isaac Levi had read that marvelous page of
nature written on black, white and red parchments, and called “Man.”

One result of his perusal was this, that the heads of human tribes
differ far more than their hearts.

The passions and the heart he had found intelligible and much the same
from Indus to the Pole.

The people of our tale were like men walking together in a coppice;
they had but glimpses of each others' minds. But to Isaac behind his
flower-pots they were a little human chart spread out flat before him,
and not a region in it he had not traveled and surveyed before to-day:
what to others passed for accident to him was design; he penetrated more
than one disguise of manner; and above all his intelligence bored like
a center-bit into the deep heart of his enemy, Meadows, and at each
turn of the center-bit his eye flashed, his ear lived, and he crouched
patient as a cat, keen as a lynx.

He was forgotten, but not by all.

Meadows, a cautious man, was the one to ask himself, “Where is that old
heathen, and what is he doing?”

To satisfy himself, Meadows had come smoothly to the door of the little
apartment, and burst suddenly into it.

There he found the reverend Israelite extended on a little couch, a
bandana handkerchief thrown over his face, calmly reposing.

Meadows paused, eyed him keenly, listened to his gentle but audible,
equable breathing, relieved his mind by shaking his fist at him, and
went out.

Thirty seconds later Isaac _awoke!_ spat in the direction of Meadows,
and crouched again behind the innocent flowers, patient as a cat, keen
as a lynx.

So then; when George was gone in, William Fielding and Mr. Meadows both
felt a sudden need of being alone; each longed to indulge some feeling
he did not care the other should see; so they both turned their faces
away from each other and strolled apart.

Isaac Levi caught both faces off their guard, and read the men as by a
lightning flash to the bottom line of their hearts.

For two hours he had followed the text, word by word, deed by deed,
letter by letter, and now a comment on that text was written in these
faces.

That comment said that William was rejoiced at George's departure and
ashamed of himself for the feeling. That Meadows rejoiced still more and
was ashamed anybody should know he had the feeling.

Isaac withdrew from his lair; his task was done.

“Those men both love that woman, and this Meadows loves her with all his
soul, and she-aha!” and triumph flashed from under his dark brows.
But at his age calm is the natural state of the mind and spirits; he
composed himself for the present, and awaited an opportunity to strike
his enemy with effect.

The aged man had read Mr. Meadows aright; under that modulated exterior
raged as deep a passion as ever shook a strong nature.

For some time he had fought against it. “She is another man's
sweetheart,” he had said to himself; “no good will come of courting
her.” But by degrees the flax bonds of prudence snapped one by one as
the flame every now and then darted at them. Meadows began to reason the
matter coolly.

“They can never marry, those two. I wish they would marry or break off,
to put me out of this torture; but they can't marry, and my sweet Susan
is wasting her prime for nothing, for a dream. Besides, it is not as
if she loved him the way I love her. She is like many a young maid.
The first comer gets her promise before she knows her value. They walk
together, get spoken of; she settles down into a groove, and so goes on,
whether her heart is in it or not; it is habit more than anything.”

Then he watched the pair, and observed that Susan's manner to George was
cool and off-hand, and that she did not seem to seek opportunities of
being alone with him.

Having got so far, he now felt it his duty to think of her interest.

He could not but feel that he was a great match for any farmer's
daughter; whereas “poor young Fielding,” said he compassionately, “is
more likely to break as a bachelor than to support a wife and children
upon 'The Grove.'”

He next allowed his mind to dwell with some bitterness upon the poor
destiny that stood between him and the woman he loved.

“George Fielding! a dull dog, that could be just as happy with any other
girl as with my angel. An oaf, so little alive to his prize that he
doesn't even see he has rivals; doesn't see that his brother loves her.
Ah! but I see that, though; lovers' eyes are sharp. Doesn't see me, who
mean to take her from both these Fieldings--and what harm? It isn't as
if their love was like mine. Heaven forbid I should meddle if it was.
A few weeks, and a few mugs of ale would wash her from what little mind
either of them have; but I never loved a woman before, and never could
look at another after her.”

And so by degrees Meadows saw that he was quite justified in his resolve
to win Susan Merton, PROVIDED IT WAS DONE FAIRLY.

This resolve taken, all this man's words and actions began to be colored
more or less by his secret wishes; and it is not too much to say, that
this was the hand which was gently but adroitly, with a touch here and a
touch there, pushing George Fielding across the Ocean.

You see, a respectable man can do a deal of mischief; more than a rogue
could.

A shrug of the shoulders from Meadows had caused the landlord to
distrain.

A hint from Meadows had caused Merton to affront George about Susan.

A tone of Meadows had closed the bank cash-box to the Fieldings' bill
of exchange, and so on. And now, finding it almost impossible to contain
his exultation--for George once in Australia he felt he could soon
vanquish Susan's faint preference, the result of habit--he turned off,
and went to meet his mare at the gate; the boy had just returned with
her.

He put his foot in the stirrup, but ere he mounted it occurred to him to
ask one of the farm servants whether the old Jew was gone.

“I sin him in the barn just now,” was the reply.

Meadows took his foot out of the stirrup. Never leave an enemy behind
you, was one of his rules. “And why does the old heathen stay?” Meadows
asked himself; he clinched his teeth and vowed he would not leave the
village till George Fielding was on his way to Australia.

He sent his mare to the “Black Horse,” and strolled up the village;
then he showed the boy a shilling and said, “You be sure and run to the
public-house and let me know when George Fielding is going to start--I
should like to see the last of him.”

This was true!



CHAPTER III.

AND now passed over “The Grove” the heaviest hours it had ever known;
hours as weary as they were bitter to George Fielding. “The Grove”
 was nothing to him now--in mind he was already separated from it; his
clothes were ready, he had nothing more to do, and he wished he could
fling himself this moment into the ship and hide his head, and sleep
and forget his grief, until he reached the land whose fat and endless
pastures were to make him rich and send him home a fitter match for
Susan.

As the moment for parting drew nearer there came to him that tardy
consolation which often comes to the honest man then when it can but add
to his pangs of regret.

Perhaps no man is good, manly, tender, generous, honest and unlucky
quite in vain; at last, when such a man is leaving all who have been
unjust or cold to him, scales fall from their eyes, a sense of his value
flashes like lightning across their half-empty skulls and tepid hearts,
they feel and express some respect and regret, and make him sadder to
leave them; so did the neighbors of “The Grove” to young Fielding. Some
hands gave him now their first warm pressure, and one or two voices even
faltered as they said “God bless thee, lad!”

And now the carter's lad ran in with a message from a farmer at the top
of the hill.

“Oh! Master George, Farmer Dodd says, if you please, he couldn't think
to let you walk. You are to go in his gig to Newbury, if you'll walk
up as fur as his farm; he's afeared to come down _our_ hill, a says,
because if _he_ did, _his_ mare 'ud kick _his_ gig into toothpicks, _he_
says. Oh! Master George, _I_ be sorry _you_ be going,” and the boy, who
had begun quite cheerfully, ended in a whimper.

“I thank him! Take my bag, boy, and I'll follow in half an hour.”

Sarah brought out the bag and opened it, and, weeping bitterly, put
into it a bottle with her name on a bit of paper tied round the neck,
to remind poor George he was not forgotten at “The Grove,” and then she
gave George the key and went sadly in, her apron to her eyes.

And now George fixed his eye on his brother William, and said to him,
“Wilham, will you come with me, if _you_ please?”

“Ay, George, sure.”

They went through the farmyard side by side; neither spoke, and George
took a last look at the ricks, and he paused, and seemed minded to
speak, but he did not, he only muttered “not here.” Then George led the
way out into the paddock, and so into the lane, and very soon they saw
the village church. William wondered George did not speak. They passed
under the yewtree into the churchyard. William's heart fluttered. They
found the vicar's cow browsing on the graves. William took up a stone.
George put out his hand not to let him hurt her, and George turned
her gently into the lane; then he stepped carefully among the graves.
William followed him, his heart fluttering more and more with vague
fears. William knew now where they were going, but what was George going
to say to him there? his heart beat faint-like. By-and-by the brothers
came to this--

[Drawing of Grave]

The grave was between the two men--and silence--both looked down.

George whispered, “Good-by, mother! She never thought we should be
parted this way.” Then he turned to William and opened his mouth to
say something more to him; doubtless that which he had come to say,
but apparently it was too much for him. I think he feared his own
resolution. He gasped and with a heavy sigh led the way home. William
walked with him, not knowing what to think or do or say; at last he
muttered, “I wouldn't go, if my heart was here!”

“I shall go, Will,” replied George, rather sternly as it seemed.

When they came back to the house they found several persons collected.

Old Fielding, the young men's grandfather, was there; he had made them
wheel him in his great chair out into the sun.

Grandfather Fielding had reached the last stage of human existence. He
was ninety-two years of age. The lines in his face were cordage, his
aspect was stony and impassible, and he was all but impervious to
passing events; his thin blood had almost ceased to circulate in his
extremities; for every drop he had was needed to keep his old heart
a-beating at all, instead of stopping like a clock that has run down.

Meadows had returned to see George off, and old Merton was also there,
and he was one of those whose hearts gave them a bit of a twinge.

“George,” said he, “I'm vexed for speaking unkind to you to-day of all
days in the year; I didn't think we were to part so soon, lad.”

“No more about it, uncle,” faltered George; “what does it matter now?”

Susan Merton came out of the house; she had caught her father's
conciliatory words; she seemed composed, but pale; she threw her arms
round her father's neck.

“Oh! father,” said she imploringly, “I thought it was a dream, but he is
going, he is really going. Oh! don't let him go from us; speak him fair,
father, his spirit is so high!”

“Susan!” replied the old farmer, “mayhap the lad thinks me his enemy,
but I'm not. My daughter shall not marry a bankrupt farmer, but you
bring home a thousand pounds--just one thousand pounds--to show me you
are not a fool, and you shall have my daughter and she shall have my
blessing.”

Meadows exulted.

“Your hand on that, uncle,” cried George, with ardor; “your hand on that
before Heaven and all present.”

The old farmer gave George his hand upon it.

“But, father,” cried Susan, “your words are sending him away from me.”

“Susan!” said George sorrowfully but firmly, “I am to go, but don't
forget it is for your sake I leave you, my darling Susan--to be a better
man for your sake. Uncle, since your last words there is no ill-will;
but (bluntly) I can't speak my heart before you.”

“I'll go, George, I'll go; shan't be said my sister's son hadn't leave
to speak his mind to letbe who atool,* at such a time.”

     *Let be who it will. Cui libet.

Merton turned to leave them, but ere he had taken two steps a most
unlooked-for interruption chained him to the spot. An old man, with a
long beard and a glittering eye, was among them before they were aware
of him; he fixed his eye upon Meadows, and spoke a single word--but that
word fell like a sledge-hammer.

“No!!” said Isaac Levi in the midst. “No!!” repeated he to John Meadows.

Meadows understood perfectly what “No” meant; a veto upon all his plans,
hopes and wishes.

“Young man,” said Isaac to George, “you shall not wander forth from the
home of your fathers. These old eyes see deeper than yours (and he sent
an eye-stab at Meadows); you are honest--all men say so--I will lend
you the money for your rent, and one who loves you (and he gave another
eye-stab at Meadows) will bless me.”

“Oh! yes, I bless you,” cried Susan innocently.

The late exulting Meadows was benumbed at this.

“Surely Heaven sends you to me,” cried Susan. “It is Mr. Levi, of
Farnborough.”

Here was a diversion. Meadows cursed the intruder, and his own evil star
that had raised him up so malignant an enemy.

“All my web undone in a moment,” thought he, and despair began to take
possession of him.

Susan, on the other hand, was all joy and hope; William more or less
despondent.

The old Jew glanced from one to another, read them all, and enjoyed his
triumph.

But when his eye returned to George Fielding he met with something he
had not reckoned upon.

The young man showed no joy, no emotion. He stood immovable, like
a statue of a man, and when he opened his lips it was like a statue
speaking with its marble mouth.

“No! Susan. No! old man. I am honest, though I'm poor--and proud, though
you have seen me put to shame near my own homestead more than once
to-day. To borrow without a chance of paying is next door to stealing;
and I should never pay you. My eyes are opened in spite of my heart. I
can't farm 'The Grove' with no grass, and wheat at forty shillings. I've
tried all I know, and I can't do it. Will there is dying to try, and
he shall try, and may Heaven speed his plow better than it has poor
George's.”

“I am not thinking of the farm now, George,” said William. “I'm thinking
of when we were boys, and used to play marbles--together--upon the
tombstones.” And he faltered a little.

“Mr. Levi! seems you have a kindness for me. Show it to my brother when
I'm away, if you _will_ be so good.”

“Hum?” said Isaac doubtfully. “I care not to see your stout young heart
give way, as it will. Ah, me! I can pity the wanderer from home. I will
speak a word with you, and then I will go home.”

He drew George aside, and made him a secret communication.

Merton called Susan to him, and made her promise to be prudent, then he
shook hands with George and went away.

Now Meadows, from the direction of Isaac's glance, and a certain
half-surprised half-contemptuous look that stole over George's face,
suspected that his enemy, whose sagacity he could no longer doubt, was
warning George against him.

This made him feel very uneasy where he was, and this respectable man
dreaded some exposure of his secret. So he said hastily, “I'll go along
with you, farmer,” and in a moment was by Merton's side, as that worthy
stopped to open the gate that led out of George's premises. His feelings
were anything but pleasant when George called to him:

“No, sir! stop. You are as good a witness as I could choose of what I
have to say. Step this way, if you please, sir.”

Meadows returned, clinched his teeth, and prepared for the worst, but
inwardly he cursed his uneasy folly in staying here, instead of riding
home the moment George had said “Yes!” to Australia.

George now looked upon the ground a moment; and there was something in
his manner that arrested the attention of all.

Meadows turned hot and cold.

“I am going--to speak--to my brother, Mr. Meadows!” said he, syllable by
syllable to Meadows in a way brimful of meaning.

“To me, George?” said William, a little uneasy.

“To you!--Fall back a bit.” (Some rustics were encroaching upon the
circle.)

“Fall back, if you please; this is a family matter.”

Isaac Levi, instead of going quite away, seated himself on a bench
outside the palings.

It was now William's turn to flutter; he said, however, to himself, “It
is about the farm; it must be about the farm.”

George resumed. “I've often had it on my mind to speak to you, but I was
ashamed, now that's the truth; but now I am going away from her I must
speak out, and I will--William!”

“Yes, George?”

“You've taken--a fancy--to my Susan, William!”

At these words, which, though they had cost him so much to say, George
spoke gravely and calmly like common words, William gave one startled
look all round, then buried his face directly in his hands in a paroxysm
of shame.

Susan, who was looking at George, remonstrated loudly, “How can you be
so silly, George! I am sure that is the last idea poor William--”

George drew her attention to William by a wave of the hand.

She held her tongue in a moment, and turned very red, and lowered her
eyes to the ground. It was a very painful situation--to none more than
to Meadows, who was waiting his turn.

George continued: “Oh, it is not to reproach you, my poor lad. Who could
be near her, and not warm to her? But she is my lass, Will, and no other
man's. It is three years since she said the word. And though it was my
hard luck there should be some coolness between us this bitter day,
she will think of me when the ocean rolls between us if no villain
undermines me--”

“Villain! George!” groaned William. “That is a word I never thought to
hear from you.”

“That's why I speak in time,” said George. “I do suppose I am safe
against villainy here.” And his eye swept lightly over both the men.
“Anyway, it shan't be a _mis_take or a _mis_understanding; it shall be
villainy if _'tis_ done. Speak, Susanna Merton, and speak your real mind
once for all.”

“Oh! George,” cried Susan, fluttering with love; “you shall not go in
doubt of me. We are betrothed this three years, and I never regretted my
choice a single moment. I never saw, I never shall see, the man I could
bear to look on beside you, my beautiful George. Take my ring and my
promise, George.” And she put her ring on his little finger and kissed
his hand. “While you are true to me, nothing but death shall part us
twain. There never was any coolness between us, dear; you only thought
so. You don't know what fools women are; how they delight to tease the
man they love, and so torment themselves ten times more. I always loved
you, but never as I do to-day; so honest, so proud, so unfortunate; I
love you, I honor you, I adore you, oh! my love!--my love!--my love!!”

She saw but George--she thought but of George--and how to soften his
sorrow, and remove his doubts, if he had any. And she poured out these
words of love with her whole soul--with blushes and tears and all the
fire of a chaste and passionate woman's heart. And she clung to her
love; and her tender bosom heaved against his; and she strained him,
with tears and sighs, to her bosom; and he kissed her beautiful head;
and his suffering heart drew warmth from this heavenly contact.

The late exulting Meadows turned as pale as ashes, and trembled from
head to foot.

“Do you hear, William?” said George.

“I hear, George,” replied William in an iron whisper, with his sullen
head sunk upon his breast.

George left Susan, and came between her and William.

“Then, Susan,” said he, rather loud, “here is your brother.”

William winced.

“William! here is my life!” And he pointed to Susan. “Let no man rob me
of it if one mother really bore us.”

It went through William's heart like a burning arrow. And this was why
George had taken him to their mother's grave. That flashed across him,
too.

The poor sulky fellow's head was seen to rise inch by inch till he held
it as erect as a king's.

“Never!” he cried, half shouting, half weeping. “Never, s'help me God!
She's my sister from this hour--no more, no less. And may the red blight
fall on my arm and my heart, if I or any man takes her from you--any
man!” he cried, his temples flushing and his eye glittering; “sooner
than a hundred men should take her from you while I am here I'd die at
their feet a hundred times.”

Well done, sullen and rugged but honest man; the capital temptation of
your life is wrestled with and thrown. That is always to every man a
close, a deadly, a bitter struggle; and we must all wade through this
deep water at one hour or another of our lives. It is as surely our fate
as it is one day to die.

It is a noble sight to see an honest man “cleave his own heart in twain,
and fling away the baser part of it.” These words, that burst from
William's better heart, knocked at his brother's you may be sure. He
came to William, “I believe you,” said he; “I trust you, I thank you.”
 Then he held out his hand; but nature would have more than that, in a
moment his arm was round his brother's neck, where it had not been,
this many a year. He withdrew it as quickly, half ashamed; and Anne
Fielding's two sons grasped one another's hands, and holding hands
turned away their heads and tried to hide their eyes.

They are stronger than bond, deed or indenture, these fleshly compacts
written by moist eyes, stamped by the grip of eloquent hands, in those
moments full of soul when men's hearts beat from their bosoms to their
fingers' ends.

Isaac Levi came to the brothers, and said to William, “Yes, I will now,”
 and then he went slowly and thoughtfully away to his own house.

“And now,” faltered George, “I feel strong enough to go, and I'll go.”

He looked round at all the familiar objects he was leaving, as if to
bid them farewell; and last, while every eye watched his movements, he
walked slowly up to his grandfather's chair.

“Grandfather,” said he, “I am going a long journey, and mayhap shall
never see you again; speak a word to me before I go.”

The impassive old man took no notice, so Susan came to him.
“Grandfather, speak to George; poor George is going into a far country.”

When she had repeated this in his ear their grandfather looked up for a
moment. “George, fetch me some snuff from where you're going.”

A spasm crossed George's face; he was not to have a word of good omen
from the aged man.

“Friends,” said he, looking appealingly to all the rest, Meadows
included, “I wanted him to say God bless you, but snuff is all his
thought now. Well, old man, George won't forget your last word, such as
'tis.”

In a hutch near a corner of the house was William's pointer, Carlo.
Carlo, observing by the general movement that there was something on
foot, had the curiosity to come out to the end of his chain, and as he
stood there, giving every now and then a little uncertain wag of his
tail, George took notice of him and came to him and patted his head.

“Good-by, Carlo,” faltered George, “poor Carlo--you and I shall never go
after the partridges again, Carlo. The dog shows more understanding than
the Christian. By, Carlo.” Then he looked wistfully at William's dog,
but he said nothing more.

William watched every look of George, but he said nothing at the time.

“Good-by, little village church, where I went to church man and boy;
good-by, churchyard, where my mother lies; there will be no church
bells, Susan, where I am going; no Sunday bells to remind me of my soul
and home.”

These words, which he spoke with great difficulty, were hardly out of
young Fielding's mouth when a very painful circumstance occurred; one
of those things that seem the contrivance of some malignant spirit. The
church bells in a moment struck up their merriest peal!

George Fielding started, he turned pale and his lips trembled. “Are they
mocking me?” he cried. “Do they take a thought what I am going through
this moment, the hard-hearted--”

“No, no, no!” cried William; “don't think it, George; I know what
'tis--I'll tell ye.”

“What's it?”

“Well, it is--well, George, it is Tom Clarke and Esther Borgherst
married to-day. Only they couldn't have the ringers till the afternoon.”

“Why, Will, they have only kept company a year, and Susan and I have
kept company three years; and Tom and Esther are married to-day; and
what are George and Susan doing to-day? God help me! Oh, God help me!
What _shall_ I do? what _shall_ I do?” And the stout heart gave way, and
George Fielding covered his face with his hands and burst out sobbing
and crying.

Susan flung her arms round his neck. “Oh! George, my pride is all gone;
don't go, don't think to go; have pity on us both, and don't go.” And
she clung to him--her bonnet fallen off, her hair disheveled--and they
sobbed and wept in one another's arms.

Meadows writhed with the jealous anguish this sad sight gave him, and
at that moment he could have cursed the whole creation. He tried to
fly, but he was rooted to the spot. He leaned sick as death against the
palings.

George and Susan cried together, and then they wiped one another's eyes
like simple country folk with one pocket-handkerchief; and then they
kissed one another in turn, and made each other's tears flow fast again;
and again wiped one another's eyes with one handkerchief.

Meadows griped the palings convulsively--hell was in his heart.

“Poor souls, God help them!” said William to himself in his purified
heart.

The silence their sorrow caused all around was suddenly invaded by
a voice that seemed to come from another world--it was Grandfather
Fielding. “The autumn sun is not so warm as _she_ used to be!”

Yes, there was the whole map of humanity on that little spot in the
county of Berks. The middle-aged man, a schemer, watching the success
of his able scheme, and stunned and wounded by its recoil. And old
age, callous to noble pain, all alive to discomfort, yet man to the
last--blaming any one but Number One, cackling against heavenly bodies,
accusing the sun and the kitchen fire of frigidity--not his own empty
veins! And the two poor young things sobbing as if their hearts would
break over their first great earthly sorrow.

George was the first to recover himself.

“Shame upon me!” he cried; he drew Susan to his bosom, and pressed a
long, burning kiss upon her brow.

And now all felt the wrench was coming. George, with a wild,
half-terrified look, signaled William to come to him.

“Help me, Will! you see I have no more manhood than a girl.”

Susan instinctively trembled. George once more pressed his lips to her,
as if they would grow there. William took her hand. She trembled more
and more.

“Take my hand; take your brother's hand, my poor lass,” said he.

She trembled violently; and then George gave a cry that seemed to tear
his heart, and darted from them in a moment.

Poor Susan uttered more than one despairing scream, and stretched out
both her hands for George. He did not see her, for he dared not look
back.

“Bob, loose the dog,” muttered William hastily, in a broken voice.

The dog was loosed, and ran after George, who, he thought, was only
going for a walk. Susan was sinking pale and helpless upon her brother's
bosom.

“Pray, sister,” said gentle William; “pray, sister, as I must.”

A faint shiver was all the answer; her senses had almost left her.

When George was a little way up the hill, something ran suddenly against
his legs----he started--it was Carlo. He turned and lifted up his hands
to Heaven; and William could see that George was blessing him for this.
Carlo was more than a dog to poor George at that cruel moment. Soon
after that, George and Carlo reached the crown of the hill. George's
figure stood alone a moment between them and the sky. He was seen to
take his hat off, and raise his hands once more to Heaven, while he
looked down upon all he loved and left; and then he turned his sorrowful
face again toward that distant land--and they saw him no more!



CHAPTER IV.

THE world is full of trouble.

While we are young we do not see how true this ancient homely saying is.

That wonderful dramatic prologue, the first chapter of Job, is but a
great condensation of the sorrows that fall like hail upon many a mortal
house. Job's black day, like the day of the poetic prophets--the true
_sacri vates_ of the ancient world--is a type of a year--a bitter human
year. It is terrible how quickly a human landscape all gilded meadow,
silver river and blue sky can cloud and darken.

George Fielding had compared himself this very day to an oak tree, “Even
so am I rooted to my native soil.” His fate accepted his simile. The oak
of centuries yields to an impalpable antagonist, whose very name stands
in proverbs for weakness and insignificance. This thin, light trifle,
rendered impetuous by motion, buffets the king of the forest, tears
his roots with fury out of the earth, and lays his towering head in
the dust; and even so circumstances, none of them singly irresistible,
converging to one point, buffeted sore another oak pride of our fields,
and, for aught I know, of our whole island--an honest English yeoman;
and tore him from his farm, from his house hard by his mother's grave,
from the joy of his heart, his Susan, and sent him who had never
traveled a hundred miles in his life across a world of waters to keep
sheep at the Antipodes. A bereaved and desolate heart went with Farmer
Dodd in the gig to Newborough; sad, desolate and stricken hearts
remained behind. When two loving hearts are torn bleeding asunder it is
a shade better to be the one that is driven away into action, than the
bereaved twin that petrifies at home.

The bustle, the occupation, the active annoyances are some sort of
bitter distraction to the unfathomable grief--it is one little shade
worse to lie solitary and motionless in the old scenes from which the
sunlight is now fled.

It needed but a look at Susan Merton, as she sat moaning and quivering
from head to foot in George's kitchen, to see that she was in no
condition to walk back to Grassmere Farm to-night.

So as she refused--almost violently refused--to stay at “The Grove,”
 William harnessed one of the farm-horses to a cart and took her home
round by the road.

“It is six miles that way 'stead of three, but then we shan't jolt her
going that way,” thought William.

He walked by the side of the cart in silence.

She never spoke but once all the journey, and that was about half way,
to complain in a sort of hopeless, pitiful tone that she was cold. It
was a burning afternoon.

William took off his coat, and began to tie it round her by means of
the sleeves; Susan made a little, silent, peevish and not very rational
resistance; William tied it round her by brotherly force.

They reached her home; when she got out of the cart her eye was fixed,
her cheek white, she seemed like one in a dream.

She went into the house without speaking or looking at William. William
was sorry she did not speak to him; however he stood disconsolately
by the cart, asking himself what he could do next for her and George.
Presently he heard a slight rustle, and it was Susan coming back along
the passage. “She has left something in the cart,” thought he, and he
began to look in the straw.

She came like one still in a dream, and put her hand out to William, and
it appeared that was what she had come back for.

William took her hand and pressed it to his bosom a moment. At this
Susan gave a hysterical sob or two, and crept away again to her own
room.

What she suffered in that room the first month after George's departure
I could detail perhaps as well as any man living; but I will not. There
is a degree of anguish one shrinks from intruding upon too familiarly
in person; and even on paper the microscope should spare sometimes these
beatings of the bared heart. It will be enough if I indicate by-and-by
her state, after time and religion and good habits had begun to
struggle, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing, against the tide of
sorrow. For the present let us draw gently back and leave her, for
she is bowed to the earth--fallen on her knees, her head buried in
the curtains of her bed; dark, faint and leaden, on the borders of
despair--a word often lightly used through ignorance. Heaven keep us all
from a single hour, here or hereafter, of the thing the Word stands for;
and Heaven comfort all true and loving hearts that read me, when their
turn shall come to drain the bitter cup like Susan Merton.



CHAPTER V.

THE moment George Fielding was out of sight, Mr. Meadows went to
the public-house, flung himself on his powerful black mare, and rode
homeward without a word.

One strong passion after another swept across his troubled mind. He
burned with love, he was sick with jealousy, cold with despondency, and
for the first time smarted with remorse. George Fielding was gone, gone
of his own accord; but like the flying Parthian he had shot his keenest
arrow in the moment of defeat.

“What the better am I?” thus ran this man's thoughts. “I have opened
my own eyes, and Susan seems farther from me than ever now--my heart
is like a lump of lead here--I wish I had never been born!--so much for
scheming--I would have given a thousand pounds for this, and now I'd
give double to be as I was before; I had honest hopes then; now where
are they? How lucky it seemed all to go, too. Ah! that is it--'May all
your good luck turn to wormwood!' that was his word--his very word--and
my good luck is wormwood; so much for lifting a hand against gray hairs,
Jew or Gentile. Why did the old heathen provoke me, then? I'd as soon
die as live this day. That's right, start at a handful of straw; lie
down in it one minute and tremble at the sight of it the next, ye idiot.
Oh, Susan! Susan! Why do I think of her? why do I think of her? She
loves that man with every fiber of her body. How she clung to him! how
she grew to him! And I stood there and looked on it, and did not kill
them both. Seen it! I see it now, it is burned into my eyes and my heart
forever; I am in hell!--I am in hell!--Hold up, you blundering fool; has
the devil got into you, too?--Perdition seize him! May he die and rot
before the year's out, ten thousand miles from home! may his ship sink
to the bottom of the ----. What right have I to curse the man, as well
as drive him across the sea? Curse yourself, John Meadows. They are
true lovers, and I have parted them, and looked on and seen their tears.
Heaven pity them and forgive me. So he knew of his brother's love for
her, after all. Why didn't he speak to me, I wonder, as well as to
Will Fielding? The old Jew warned him against me, I'll swear. Why? why
because you are a respectable man, John Meadows, and he thought a hint
was enough to a man of character. 'I do suppose I am safe from villainy
here,' says he. That lad spared me; he could have given me a red face
before them all. Now if there are angels that float in the air and see
what passes among us sinners, how must John Meadows have looked beside
George Fielding that moment? This love will sink my soul! I can't
breathe between these hedges; my temples are bursting!--Oh! you want
to gallop, do you? gallop, then, and faster than you ever did since you
were foaled--confound ye!” With this he spurred his mare furiously up
the bank, and went crushing through the dead hedge that surmounted it.
He struck his hat, at the same moment, fiercely from his head (it was
fast by a black ribbon to his button-hole), and as they lighted by a
descent of some two feet on the edge of a grass-field he again drove his
spurs into his great fiery mare, all vein and bone. Black Rachel snorted
with amazement at the spur, and with warlike delight at finding grass
beneath her feet and free air whistling round her ears, she gave one
gigantic bound like a buck with arching back and all four legs in the
air at once (it would have unseated many a rider but never moved the
iron Meadows), and with dilating nostril and ears laid back she hurled
herself across country like a stone from a sling.

Meadows' house was about four miles and a half distant as the crow
flies, and he went home to-day as the crow flies, only faster. None
would have known the staid, respectable Meadows, in this figure that
came flying over hedge and ditch and brook, his hat dangling and leaping
like mad behind him, his hand now and then clutching his breast, his
heart tossed like a boat among the breakers, his lips white, his teeth
clinched and his eyes blazing! The mare took everything in her stride,
but at last they came somewhat suddenly on an enormous high, stiff
fence. To clear it was impossible. By this time man and beast were
equally reckless; they went straight into it and through it as a bullet
goes through a pane of glass; and on again over brook and fence, plowed
field and meadow, till Meadows found himself, he scarce knew how, at his
own door. His old deaf servant came out from the stable-yard and gazed
in astonishment at the mare, whose flank panted, whose tail quivered,
whose back looked as if she had been in the river, while her belly was
stained with half a dozen different kinds of soil, and her rider's face
streamed with blood from a dozen scratches he had never felt.

Meadows flung himself from the saddle and ran up to his own room. He
dashed his face and his burning hands into water; this seemed to do
him a little good. He came downstairs; he lighted a pipe (we are the
children of habit); he sat with his eyebrows painfully bent. People
called on him; he fiercely refused to see them.

For the first time in his life he turned his back on business. He sat
for hours by the fireplace. A fierce mental struggle wrenched him to and
fro.

Evening came, still he sat collapsed by the fireplace. From his window,
among other objects, two dwellings were visible; one, distant four
miles, was a whitewashed cottage, tiled instead of thatched, adorned
with creepers and roses and very clean, but in other respects little
superior to laborers' cottages.

The other, distant six long miles, was the Grassmere farmhouse, where
the Mertons lived; the windows seemed burnished gold this evening.

In the small cottage lived a plain old woman--a Methodist. She was
Meadows' mother.

She did not admire worldly people, still less envied them.

He was too good a churchman and man of business to permit conventicles
or psalm-singing at odd hours in his house. So she preferred living in
her own, which moreover was her own--her very own.

The old woman never spoke of her son, and checked all complaints of him,
and snubbed all experimental eulogies of him.

Meadows never spoke of his mother, paid her a small allowance with the
regularity and affectionate grace of clock-work; never asked her if she
didn't want any more--would not have refused her if she had asked for
double.

This evening, while the sun was shining with all his evening glory on
Susan Merton's house, Meadows went slowly to his window and pulled down
the blind, and drawing his breath hard shut the loved prospect out.

He then laid his hand upon the table, and he said: “I swear by the holy
bread and wine I took last month that I will not put myself in the way
of this strong temptation. I swear I will go no more to Grassmere Farm,
never so long as I love Susan.” He added faintly, “Unless they send for
me, and they won't do that, and I won't go of my own accord, I swear
it. I have sworn it, however, and I swear it again--unless they send for
me!”

Then he sat by the fire with his head in his hands--a posture he never
was seen in before. Next he wrote a note and sent it hastily with a
horse and cart to that small whitewashed cottage.

Old Mrs. Meadows sat in her doorway reading a theological work called
“Believers' Buttons.” She took the note, looked at it. “Why, this is
from John, I think; what can he have to say to me?” She put on her
spectacles again, which she had taken off on the messenger first
accosting her, and deliberately opened, smoothed and read the note. It
ran thus:


“Mother, I am lonely. Come over and stay awhile with me, if you please.

“Your dutiful son, JOHN MEADOWS”


“Here, Hannah,” cried the old woman to a neighbor's daughter that was
nearly always with her.

Hannah, a comely girl of fourteen, came running in.

“Here's John wants me to go over to his house. Get me the pen and ink,
girl, out of the cupboard, and I'll write him a word or two any way.--Is
there anything amiss?” said she quickly to the man.

“He came in with the black mare all in a lather, just after dinner,
and he hasn't spoke to a soul since. That's all I know, missus. I think
something has put him out, and he isn't soon put out, you know, he
isn't.”

Hannah left the room, after placing the paper as she was bid.

“You will all be put out that trust to an arm of flesh, all of ye,
master or man, Dick Messenger,” said the disciple of John Wesley
somewhat grimly. “Ay, and be put out of the kingdom of heaven, too, if
ye don't take heed.”

“Is that the news I'm to take back to Farnborough, missus?” said
Messenger with quiet, rustic irony.

“No; I'll write to him.”

The old woman wrote a few lines reminding Meadows that the pursuit of
earthly objects could never bring any steady comfort, and telling him
that she should be lost in his great house--that it would seem quite
strange to her to go into the town after so many years' quiet--but that
if he was minded to come out and see her she would be glad to see him
and glad of the opportunity to give him her advice, if he was in a
better frame for listening to it than last time she offered it to him,
and that was two years come Martinmas.

Then the old woman paused, next she reflected, and afterward dried her
unfinished letter. And as she began slowly to fold it up and put it in
her pocket--“Hannah,” cried she thoughtfully.

Hannah appeared in the doorway.

“I dare say--you may fetch--my cloak and bonnet. Why, if the wench
hasn't got them on her arm. What, you made up your mind that I should
go, then?”

“That I did,” replied Hannah. “Your warm shawl is in the cart, Mrs.
Meadows.”

“Oh! you did, did you. Young folks are apt to be sure and certain. I was
in two minds about it, so I don't see how the child could be sure,” said
she, dividing her remark between vacancy and the person addressed--a
grammatical privilege of old age.

“Oh! but _I_ was sure, for that matter,” replied Hannah firmly.

“And what made the little wench so sure, I wonder?” said the old woman,
now in her black bonnet and scarlet cloak.

“Why, la!” says Hannah, “because it's your son, ma'am--and you're his
mother, Dame Meadows!”



CHAPTER VI.

JOHN MEADOWS had always been an active man, but now he was
indefatigable. He was up at five every morning, and seemed ubiquitous;
added a gray gelding to his black mare, and rode them both nearly off
their legs. He surveyed land in half a dozen counties--he speculated in
grain in half a dozen markets, and did business in shares. His plan
in dealing with this ticklish speculation was simple. He listened to
nothing anybody said, examined the venture himself, and, if it had a
sound basis, bought when the herd was selling, and sold wherever the
herd was buying. Hence, he bought cheap and sold dear.

He also lent money, and contrived to solve the usurers' problem--perfect
security and huge interest.

He arrived at this by his own sagacity and the stupidity of mankind.

Mankind are not wanting in intelligence; but, as a body, they have one
intellectual defect--they are muddle-heads.

Now these muddle-heads have agreed to say that land is in all cases five
times a surer security for money lent than movables are. Whereas the
fact is that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Owing to the above
delusion the proprietor of land can always borrow money at four
per cent, and other proprietors are often driven to give
ten--twenty--thirty.

So John Meadows lent mighty little upon land, but much upon oat-ricks,
wagons, advantageous leases and such things, solid as land and more
easily convertible into cash.

Thus without risk he got his twenty per cent. Not that he appeared
in these transactions--he had too many good irons in the fire to let
himself be called a usurer.

He worked this business as three thousand respectable men are working it
in this nation. He had a human money-bag, whose strings he went behind a
screen and pulled.

The human money-bag of Meadows was Peter Crawley.

This Peter Crawley, some years before our tale, lay crushed beneath
a barrowful of debts--many of them to publicans. In him others saw a
cunning fool and a sot--Meadows an unscrupulous tool. Meadows wanted a
tool, and knew the cheapest way to get the thing was to buy it, so he
bought up all Crawley's debts, sued him, got judgments out against him,
and raising the ax of the law over Peter's head with his right hand,
offered him the left hand of fellowship with his left. Down on his knees
went Crawley and resigned his existence to this great man.

Human creatures, whose mission it is to do whatever a man secretly bids
them, are not entitled to long and interesting descriptions.

Crawley was fifty, wore a brown wig, the only thing about him that did
not attempt disguise, and slouched in a brown coat and a shirt peppered
with snuff.

In this life he was an infinitesimal attorney. Previously, unless
Pythagoras was a goose, he had been a pole-cat.

Meadows was ambidexter. The two hands he gathered coin with were Meadows
and Crawley. The first his honest, hard-working hand; the second his
three-fingered Jack, his prestidigital hand; with both he now worked
harder than ever. He hurried from business to business--could not
wait to chat, or drink a glass of ale after it; it was all work! work!
work!--money! money! money! with John Meadows, and everything he touched
turned to gold in his hands; yet for all this burning activity the
man's heart had never been so little in business. His activity was the
struggle of a sensible, strong mind to fight against its one weakness.

“Cedit amor rebus; res age tutus eris,” is a very wise saying, and
Meadows, by his own observation and instinct, sought the best antidote
for love.

But the Latins had another true saying, that “nobody is wise at all
hours.”

After his day of toil and success he used to be guilty of a sad
inconsistency. He shut himself up at home for two hours, and smoked
his pipe, and ran his eye over the newspaper, but his mind over Susan
Merton.

Worse than this, in his frequent rides he used to go a mile or two out
of his way to pass Grassmere farmhouse; and however fast he rode the
rest of his journey he always let his nag walk by the farmhouse, and his
eye brightened with hope as he approached it, and his heart sank as he
passed it without seeing Susan.

He now bitterly regretted the vow he had made, never to visit the
Mertons again unless they sent for him.

“They have forgotten me altogether,” said he bitterly. “Well, the best
thing I can do is to forget them.”

Now, Susan had forgotten him; she was absorbed in her own grief; but
Merton was laboring under a fit of rheumatism, and this was the reason
why Meadows and he did not meet. In fact, farmer Merton often said to
his daughter, “John Meadows has not been to see us a long while.”

“Hasn't he, father?” was Susan's languid and careless reply.

One Sunday, Meadows, weakened by his inner struggle, could not help
going to Grassmere church. At least he would see her face. He had seated
himself where he could see her. She took her old place by the pillar;
nobody was near her. The light from a side window streamed full upon
her. She was pale, and the languor of sorrow was upon every part of her
face, but she was lovely as ever.

Meadows watched her, and noticed that more than once without any visible
reason her eyes filled with tears, but she shed none. He saw how hard
she tried to give her whole soul to the services of the church and to
the word of the preacher; he saw her succeed for a few minutes at a
time, and then with a lover's keen eye he saw her heart fly away in a
moment from prayer and praise and consolation, and follow and overtake
the ship that was carrying her George farther and farther away from her
across the sea; and then her lips quivered with earthly sorrow even as
she repeated words that came from Heaven, and tried to bind to her heavy
heart the prayers for succor in every mortal ill, the promises of help
in every mortal woe, with which holy Church and holier Writ comfort her
and all the pure of heart in every age.

Then Meadows, who up to this moment had been pitying himself, had a
better thought and pitied Susan. He even went so far as to feel that he
ought to pity George, but he did not do it; he could not, he envied him
too much; but he pitied Susan, and he longed to say something kind and
friendly to her, even though there should not be a word or a look of
love in it.

Susan went out by one of the church doors, Meadows by another, intending
to meet her casually upon the road home. Susan saw his intention
and took another path, so that he could not come up with her without
following her.

Meadows turned upon his heel and went home with his heart full of
bitterness.

“She hates the sight of me,” was his interpretation.

Poor Susan, she hated nobody, she only hated to have to speak to a
stranger, and to listen to a stranger; and in her present grief all were
strangers to her except him she had lost and her father. She avoided
Meadows not because he was Meadows, but because she wanted to be alone.

Meadows rode home despondently, then he fell to abusing his folly, and
vowed he would think of her no more.

The next day, finding himself, at six o'clock in the evening, seated
by the fire in a reverie, he suddenly started fiercely up, saddled his
horse, and rode into Newborough, and, putting up his horse, strolled
about the streets and tried to amuse himself looking at the shops before
they closed.

Now it so happened that, stopping before a bookseller's shop, he saw
advertised a work upon “The Australian Colonies.”

“Confound Australia!” said Meadows to himself, and turned on his heel,
but the next moment, with a sudden change of mind, he returned and
bought the book. He did more, he gave the tradesman an order for every
approved work on Australia that was to be had.

The bookseller, as it happened, was going up to London next day, so
that in the evening Meadows had some dozen volumes in his house, and a
tolerably correct map of certain Australian districts.

“Let me see,” said Meadows, “what chance that chap has of making a
thousand pounds out there.” This was no doubt the beginning of it, but
it did not end there. The intelligent Meadows had not read a hundred
pages before he found out what a wonderful country this Australia is,
how worthy a money-getter's attention or any thoughtful man's.

It seemed as if his rival drew Meadows after him wherever he went, so
fascinated was he with this subject. And now all the evening he sucked
the books like a leech.

Men observed, about this time, an irritable manner in Mr. Meadows which
he had never shown before, and an eternal restlessness; they little
divined the cause, or dreamed what a vow he had made, and what it cost
him every day to keep it. So strong was the struggle within him, that
there were moments when he feared he should go mad; and then it was that
he learned the value of his mother's presence in the house.

There was no explanation between them, there could be no sympathy; had
he opened his heart to her he knew she would have denounced his love for
Susan Merton as a damnable crime. Once she invited his confidence. “What
ails you, John?” said the old woman. “You had better tell me; you would
feel easier, I'm thinking.”

But he turned it off a little fretfully, and she never returned to the
charge. But though there could be no direct sympathy, yet there was
a soothing influence in this quaint old woman's presence. She moved
quietly about, protecting his habits, not disturbing them; she seemed
very thoughtful, too, and cast many a secret glance of inquiry and
interest at him when he was not looking at her.

This had gone on some weeks when, one afternoon, Meadows, who had been
silent as death for a full half hour, started from his chair and said
with sudden resolution:

“Mother, I must leave this part of the country for a while.”

“That is news, John.”

“Yes. I shall go into the mining district for six months or a year,
perhaps.”

“Well! go, John! you want a change. I think you can't do better than
go.”

“I will, and no later than to-morrow.”

“That is sudden.”

“If I was to give myself time to think, I should never go at all.”

He went out briskly with the energy of this determination.

The same evening, about seven o'clock, as he sat reading by the fire, an
unexpected visitor was announced--Mr. Merton.

He came cordially in and scolded Meadows for never having been to see
him.

“I know you are a busy man,” said the old farmer, “but you might have
given us a look in coming home from market; it is only a mile out of the
way, and you are pretty well mounted in a general way.”

Then the old man, a gossip, took up one of Meadows' books. “Australia!
ah!” grunted Merton, and dropped it like a hot potato; he tried another,
“Why, this is Australia, too; why, they are all Australia, as I am a
living sinner.” And he looked with a rueful curiosity into Meadows'
face.

Meadows colored, but soon recovered his external composure.

“I have friends there,” said he hastily, “who tell me there are capital
investments in that country, and they say no more than the truth.”

“Do you think he will do any good out there?” asked the old man,
lowering his voice.

“I can't say,” answered Meadows dryly.

“Tell us something about that country, John,” said Merton; “and if you
was to ask me to take a glass of your home-brewed ale I don't think I
should gainsay you.”

The ale was sent for, and over it Meadows, whose powers of acquisition
extended to facts as well as money, and who was full of this new
subject, poured the agricultural contents of a dozen volumes into Mr.
Merton.

The old farmer sat open-mouthed, transfixed with interest, listening
to his friend's clear, intelligent and masterly descriptions of
this wonderful land. At last the clock struck nine; he started up in
astonishment.

“I shall get a scolding if I stay later,” said he, and off he went to
Grassmere.

“Have you nothing else to say to me?” asked Meadows, as the farmer put
his foot in the stirrup.

“Not that I know of,” replied the other, and cantered away.

“Confound him!” muttered Meadows; “he comes and stops here three hours,
drinks my ale, gets my knowledge without the trouble of digging for't,
and goes away, and not a word from Susan, or even a word about her--one
word would have paid me for all this loss of time--but no, I was not to
have it. I will be in Devonshire this time to-morrow--no, to-morrow is
market day--but the day after I will go. I cannot live here and not see
her, nor speak to her--'twill drive me mad.”

The next morning, as Meadows mounted his horse to ride to market, a
carter's boy came up to him, and taking off his hat and pulling his
head down by the front lock by way of salute, put a note into his hand.
Meadows took it and opened it carelessly; it was a handwriting he did
not know. But his eye had no sooner glanced at the signature than his
eyes gleamed and his whole frame trembled with emotion he could hardly
hide. This was the letter:


“DEAR MR. MEADOWS--We have not seen you here a long time, and if you
could take a cup of tea with us on your way home from market, my father
would be glad to see you, if it is not troubling you too much.

“I believe he has some calves he wishes to show you.

“I am, yours respectfully,

                                        “SUSAN MERTON.

“P. S.--Father has been confined by rheumatism, and I have not been well
this last month.”


Meadows turned away from the messenger, and said quietly, “Tell Miss
Merton I will come, if possible.” He then galloped off, and as soon as
there was no one in sight gave vent to his face and his exulting soul.

Now he congratulated himself on his goodness in making a certain vow and
his firmness in keeping it.

“I kept out of their way, and they have invited me; my conscience is
clear.”

He then asked himself why Susan had invited him; and he could not but
augur the most favorable results from this act on her part. True, his
manner to her had never gone beyond friendship, but women, he argued,
are quick to discern their admirers under every disguise. She was dull
and out of spirits, and wrote for him to come to her; this was a great
point, a good beginning. “The sea is between her and George, and I am
here, with time and opportunity on my side,” said Meadows; and as
these thoughts coursed through his heart, his gray nag, spurred by an
unconscious heel, broke into a hand-gallop, and after an hour and a half
hard riding they clattered into the town of Newborough.

The habit of driving hard bargains is a good thing for teaching a man to
suppress his feelings and feign indifference, yet the civil nonchalance
with which Meadows, on his return from Newborough, walked into the
Merton's parlor cost him no ordinary struggle.

The farmer received him cordially--Susan civilly, and with a somewhat
feeble smile. The former soon engaged him in agricultural talk. Susan,
meanwhile, made the tea in silence, and Meadows began to think she was
capricious, and had no sooner got what she asked for than she did not
care for it. After a while, however, she put in a word here and there,
but with a discouraging languor.

Presently Farmer Merton brought her his tea-cup to be replenished, and
upon this opportunity Susan said a word to her father in an undertone.

“Oh, ay!” replied the farmer very loud indeed; and Susan colored.

“What was you saying to me about that country--that Christmas-day is the
hottest day in the year?” began Mr. Merton.

Meadows assented, and Merton proceeded to put other questions, in order,
it appeared, to draw once more from Meadows the interesting information
of last night.

Meadows answered shortly and with repugnance. Then Susan put in: “And
is it true, sir, that the flowers are beautiful to the eye, but have
no smell, and that the birds have all gay feathers, but no song?” Then
Susan, scarcely giving him time to answer, proceeded to put several
questions, and her manner was no longer languid, but bright and
animated. She wound up her interrogatories with this climax:

“And _do_ you think, sir, it is a country where George will be able to
do any good. And will he have his health in that land, so far from every
one to take care of him?”

And this doubt raised, the bright eyes were dimmed with tears in a
moment.

Meadows gasped out, “Why not? why not?” but soon after, muttering
some excuse about his horse, he went out with a promise to return
immediately.

He was no sooner alone than he gave way to a burst of rage and
bitterness.

“So, she only sent for me here to make me tell her about that infernal
country where her George is. I'll ride home this instant--this very
instant--without bidding them good-by.”

Cooler thoughts came. He mused deeply a few minutes, and then, clinching
his teeth, returned slowly to the little parlor: he sat down and took
his line with a brisk and cheerful air.

“You were asking me some questions about Australia. I can tell you all
about that country, for I have a relation there who writes to me. And I
have read all the books about it, too, as it happens.”

Susan brightened up.

Meadows, by a great histrionic effort, brightened up, too, and poured
out a flood of really interesting facts and anecdotes about this
marvelous land.

Then, in the middle of a narrative, which enchained both his hearers, he
suddenly looked at his watch, and putting on a fictitious look of dismay
and annoyance, started up with many excuses and went home--not, however,
till Susan had made him promise to come again next market-day.

As he rode home in the moonlight Susan's face seemed still before him.
The bright look of interest she had given him, the grateful smiles with
which she had thanked him for his narration--all this had been so sweet
at the moment, so bitter upon the least reflection. His mind was in a
whirl. At last he grasped at one idea, and held it as with a vise.

“I shall be always welcome to her if I can bring myself to talk about
that detestable country. Well, I will grind my tongue down to it. She
shall not be able to do without my chat; that shall be the beginning;
the middle shall be different; the end shall be just the opposite. The
sea is between him and her. I am here with opportunity, resolution and
money. I _will_ have her!”

The next morning his mother said to him:

“John, do you think to go to-day?”

“Where, mother?”

“The journey you spoke of.”

“What journey?”

“Among the mines.”

“Not I.”

“You have changed your mind, then?”

“What, didn't you see I was joking?”

“No!” (very dryly.)

Soon after this little dialogue Dame Meadows proposed to end her visit
and return home. Her son yielded a cheerful assent. She went gravely and
quietly back to her little cottage.

Meadows had determined to make himself necessary to Susan Merton. He
brought a woman's cunning to bear against a woman's; for the artifice to
which his strong will bent his supple talent is one that many women have
had the tact and temporary self-denial to carry out, but not one man in
a hundred.

Men try to beat an absent rival by sneering at him, etc. By which means
the asses make their absent foe present to her mind and enlist the whole
woman in his defense.

But Meadows was no ordinary man. Susan had given his quick intelligence
a glimpse of a way to please her. He looked at the end, and crushed his
will down to the thorny means.

Twice a week he called on the Mertons, and much of his talk was
Australia. Susan was grateful. To hear of the place where George would
soon be was the nearest approach she could make to hearing of George.

As for Meadows, he gained a great point, but he went through tortures on
the way. He could not hide from himself why he was so welcome; and many
a time as he rode home from the Mertons he resolved never to return
there, but he took no more oaths; it had cost him so much to keep the
last; and that befell which might have been expected, after a while, the
pleasure of being near the woman he loved, of being distinguished by her
and greeted with pleasure however slight, grew into a habit and a need.

Achilles was a man of steel, but he had a vulnerable part; and iron
natures like John Meadows have often one spot in their souls where
they are far tenderer than the universal dove-eyed, and weaker than the
omnipotent. He never spoke a word of love to Susan, he knew it would
spoil all; and she, occupied with another's image, and looking upon
herself as confessedly belonging to another, never suspected the deep
passion that filled this man's heart. But if an observer of nature had
accompanied John Meadows on market-day he might have seen--diagnostics.

All the morning his eye was cold and quick; his mouth, when silent,
close, firm, and unreadable; his voice clear, decided, and occasionally
loud. But when he got to old Merton's fireside he mellowed and softened
like the sun toward evening. There his forehead unknit itself; his
voice, pitched in quite a different key from his key of business, turned
also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly won the hearer by its
deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety; and his eye turned
deeper in color, and, losing its keenness and restlessness, dwelt calmly
and pensively for minutes at a time upon some little household object
close to Susan; seldom, unless quite unobserved, upon Susan herself.

But the surrounding rustics suspected nothing, so calm and deep ran
Meadows.

“Dear heart,” said Susan to her father, “who would have thought Mr.
Meadows would come a mile out of his way twice a week to talk to me
about Geo--about the country where my heart is--and the folk say he
thinks of nothing but money and won't move a step without making it.”

“The folk are envious of him, girl--that is all. John Meadows is too
clever for fools, and too industrious for the lazy ones; he is a good
friend of mine, Susan; if I wanted to borrow a thousand pounds I have
only to draw on Meadows; he has told me so half a dozen times.”

“We don't want his money, father,” replied Susan, “nor anybody's; but I
think a great deal of his kindness, and George shall thank him when
he comes home--if ever he comes home to Susan again.” These last words
brought many tears with them, which the old farmer pretended not to
notice, for he was getting tired of his daughter's tears. They
were always flowing now at the least word, “and she used to be so
good-humored and cheerful-like.”

Poor Susan! she was very unhappy. If any one had said to her, “to-morrow
you die,” she would have smiled on her own account, and only sighed
at the pain the news would cause poor George. Her George was gone, her
mother had been dead this two years. Her life, which had been full of
innocent pleasures, was now utterly tasteless, except in its hours
of bitterness when sorrow overcame her like a flood. She had a pretty
flower-garden in which she used to work. When George was at home what
pleasure it had been to plant them with her lover's help, to watch them
expand, to water them in the summer evening, to smell their gratitude
for the artificial shower after a sultry day, and then to have George
in, and set him admiring them with such threadbare enthusiasm, simply
because they were hers, not in the least because they were Nature's.

I will go back, like the epic writers, and sketch one of their little
garden scenes.

One evening, after watering them all, she sat down on a seat at the
bottom of the garden, and casting her eyes over her whole domain, said,
“Well, now, I do admire flowers; don't you, George?”

“That I do,” replied George, taking another seat, and coolly turning his
back on the parterre, and gazing mildly into Susan's eyes.

“Why, he is not even looking at them!” cried Susan, and she clapped her
hands and laughed gleefully.

“Oh, yes, he is; leastways he is looking at one of them, and the
brightest of the lot to my fancy.”

Susan colored with pleasure. In the country compliments don't drip
constantly on beauty even from the lips of love. Then, suppressing her
satisfaction, she said, “You will look for a flower in return for that,
young man; come and let us see whether there is one good enough for
you.” So then they took hands, and Susan drew him demurely about the
garden. Presently she stopped with a little start of hypocritical
admiration; at their feet shone a marigold. Susan culled the gaudy
flower and placed it affectionately in George's buttonhole. He received
it proudly, and shaking hands with her, for it was time to part, turned
away slowly. She let him take a step or two, then called him back. “He
was really going off with that nasty thing.” She took it out of his
buttonhole, rubbed it against his nose with well-feigned anger and then
threw it away.

“You are all behind in flowers, George,” said Susan; “here, this is good
enough for you,” and she brought out from under her apron, where she had
carried the furtively culled treasure, a lovely clove-pink. Pretty soul,
she had nursed and watered and cherished this choice flower this three
weeks past for George, and this was her way of giving it him at last; so
a true woman gives--(her life, if need be). George took it and smelled
it, and lingered a moment at the garden gate, and moralized on it.
“Well, Susan, dear, now I'm not so deep in flowers as you, but I like
this a deal better than the marigold, and I'll tell you for why; it is
more like you, Susan.”

“Ay! why?”

“I see flowers that are pretty, but have no smell, and I see women that
have good looks, but no great wisdom nor goodness when you come nearer
to them. Now the marigold is like those lasses; but this pink is good as
well as pretty, so then it will stand for you, when we are apart, as we
mostly are--worse luck for me.”

“Oh, George,” said Susan, dropping her quizzing manner, “I am a long way
behind the marigold or any flower in comeliness and innocence, but at
least I wish I was better.”

“I don't.”

“Ay, but I do, ten times better, for--for--”

“For why, Susan?”

Susan closed the garden gate and took a step toward the house.
Then, turning her head over her shoulder, with an ineffable look of
tenderness, tipped with one tint of lingering archness, she let fall,
“For your sake, George,” in the direction of George's feet, and glided
across the garden into the house.

George stood watching her. He did not at first take up all she had
bestowed on him, for her sex has peculiar mastery over language, being
diabolically angelically subtle in the art of saying something that
expresses 1 oz. and implies 1 cwt.; but when he did comprehend, his
heart exulted. He strode home as if he trod on air and often kissed the
little flower he had taken from the beloved hand, “and with it words
of so sweet breath composed, as made the thing more rich;” and as he
marched past the house kissing the flower, need I tell my reader that so
innocent a girl as Susan was too high-minded to watch the effect of her
proceedings from behind the curtains? I hope not, it would surely be
superfluous to relate what none would be green enough to believe.

These were Susan's happy days. Now all was changed. She hated to water
her flowers now. She bade one of the farm-servants look to the garden.
He accepted the charge, and her flowers' drooping heads told how nobly
he had fulfilled it. Susan was charitable. Every day it had been her
custom to visit more than one poor person; she carried meal to one,
soup to another, linen to another, meat and bread to another, money to
another--to all words and looks of sympathy. This practice she did not
even now give up, for it came under the head of her religious duties;
but she relaxed it. She often sent to places where she used to go. Until
George went she had never thought of herself; and so the selfishness
of those she relieved had not struck her. Now it made her bitter to
see that none of those she pitied, pitied her. The moment she came into
their houses it was, “_My_ poor head, Miss Merton; _my_ old bones do
ache so.”

“I think a bit of your nice bacon would do ME good. I'M a poor sufferer,
Miss Merton. _My_ boy is 'listed. I thought as how you'd forgotten _me_
altogether. But 'tis hard for poor folk to keep a friend.” “You see,
miss, _my_ bedroom window is broken in one or two places. John, he
stopped it up with paper the best way he could, but la, bless you, paper
baint like glass. It is very dull for _me_. You see, miss, I can't get
about now as I used to could, and I never was no great reader. I often
wish as some one would step in and knock me on the head, for I be no
use, I baint, neer a mossel.” No one of them looked up in her face
and said, “Lauks, how pale _you_ ha got to look, miss; I hopes as how
nothing amiss haven't happened to _you_, that have been so kind to us
this many a day.” Yet suffering of some sort was plainly stamped on the
face and in the manner of this relieving angel. When they poured out
their vulgar woes, Susan made an effort to forget her own and to cheer
as well as relieve them. But she had to compress her own heart hard to
do it; and this suppression of feeling makes people more or less bitter.
She had better have out with it, and scolded them well for talking as if
they alone were unhappy; but her woman's nature would not let her. They
kept asking her for pity, and she still gulped down her own heart and
gave it them, till at last she began to take a spite against her pets;
so then she sent to most of them instead of going. She sent rather
larger slices of beef and bacon, and rather more yards of flannel than
when she used to carry the like to them herself. Susan had one or two
young friends, daughters of farmers in the neighborhood, with whom she
was a favorite, though the gayer ones sometimes quizzed her for her
religious tendencies, and her lamentable indifference to flirtation.
But then she was so good and so good-humored, and so tolerant of
other people's tastes. The prattle of these young ladies became now
intolerable to Susan, and when she saw them coming to call on her she
used to snatch up her bonnet and fly and lock herself up in a closet at
the top of the house, and read some good book as quiet as a mouse, till
the servants had hunted for her and told them she must be out. She was
not in a frame of mind to sustain tarlatans, barege, the history of the
last hop, and the prophecies of the next; the wounded deer shrunk from
its gamboling associates, and indeed from all strangers, except John
Meadows. “He talks to me about something worth talking about,” said
Susan Merton. It happened one day, while Susan was in this sad and I may
say dangerous state of mind, that the servant came up to her, and told
her a gentleman was on his horse at the door, and wanted to see Mr.
Merton.

“Father is at market, Jane.”

“Yes, miss, but I told the gentleman you were at home.”

“Me! what have I to do with father's visitors?”

“Miss,” replied Jane mysteriously, “it is a parson, and you are so fond
of them, I could not think to let him go away without getting a word
with anybody; and he has such a face. La, miss, you never saw such a
face.”

“Silly girl, what have I to do with handsome faces?”

“But he is not handsome, miss, not in the least, only he is beautiful.
You go and see else.”

“I hate strangers' faces, but I will go to him, Jane; it is my duty,
since it is a clergyman. I will just go upstairs.”

“La, miss, what for? you are always neat, you are--nobody ever catches
you in your dishables like the rest of 'em.”

“I'll just smooth my hair.”

“La, miss, what for? it is smooth as marble--it always is.”

“Where is he, Jane?”

“In the front parlor.”

“I won't be a moment.”

She went upstairs. There was no necessity; Jane was right there; but it
was a strict custom in the country, and is, for that matter, and will
be till time and vanity shall be no more. More majorum a girl must go up
and look at herself in the glass if she did nothing more, before coming
in to receive company.

Susan entered the parlor; she came in so gently that she had a moment
to observe her visitor before he saw her. He had seated himself with
his back to the light, and was devouring a stupid book on husbandry that
belonged to her father. The moment she closed the door he saw her and
rose from his seat.

“Miss Merton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The living of this place has been vacant more than a month.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It will not be filled up for three months, perhaps.”

“So we hear, sir.”

“Meantime you have no church to go to nearer than Barmstoke, which is a
chapel-of-ease to this place, but two miles distant.”

“Two miles and a half, sir.”

“So then the people here have no divine service on the Lord's day.”

“No, sir, not for the present,” said Susan meekly, lowering her lashes,
as if the clergyman had said, “This is a parish of heathens, whereof you
are one.”

“Nor any servant of God to say a word of humility and charity to the
rich, of eternal hope to the poor, and” (here his voice sunk into sudden
tenderness) “of comfort to the sorrowful.”

Susan raised her eyes and looked him over with one dove-like glance,
then instantly lowered them.

“No, sir, we are all under a cloud here,” said Susan sadly.

“Miss Merton, I have undertaken the duty here until the living shall be
filled up; but you shall understand that I live thirty miles off, and
have other duties, and I can only ride over here on Saturday afternoon
and back Monday at noon.”

“Oh, sir!” cried Susan, “half a loaf is better than no bread! The parish
will bless you, sir, and no doubt,” added she timidly, “the Lord will
reward you for coming so far to us.”

“I am glad you think so,” said the clergyman thoughtfully. “Well, let us
do the best we can. Tell me first, Miss Merton, do you think the absence
of a clergyman is regretted here?”

“Regretted, sir! dear heart, what a question. You might as well ask me
do father's turnips long for rain after a month's drought;” and Susan
turned on her visitor a face into which the innocent venerating love her
sex have for an ecclesiastic flashed without disguise.

Her companion smiled, but it was with benevolence, not with gratified
vanity.

“Let me explain my visit. Your father is one of the principal people
in the village. He can assist me or thwart me in my work. I called to
invite his co-operation. Some clergymen are jealous of co-operation; I
am not. It is a good thing for all parties; best of all for those who
co-operate with us; for in giving alms wisely they receive grace, and
in teaching the ignorant they learn themselves. Am I right?” added he
rather sharply, turning suddenly upon Susan.

“Oh, sir,” said Susan, a little startled, “it is for me to receive your
words, not to judge them.”

“Humph!” said the reverend gentleman rather dryly; he hated intellectual
subserviency. He liked people to think for them-selves; and to end by
thinking with him.

“Father will never thwart you, sir, and I--I will co-operate with you,
sir, if you will accept of me,” said Susan innocently.

“Thank you, then let us begin at once.” He took out his watch. “I have
an hour and a half to spare, then I must gallop back to Oxford. Miss
Merton, I should like to make acquaintance with some of the people.
Suppose we go to the school, and see what the children are learning,
and then visit one or two families in the village, so I shall catch a
glimpse of the three generations I have to deal with. My name is Francis
Eden. You are going to get your bonnet?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you.”

They passed out through the garden. Mr. Eden stopped to look at the
flowers. Susan colored.

“It has been rather neglected of late,” said she apologetically.

“It must have been very well taken care of before, then,” said he, “for
it looks charming now. Ah! I love flowers dearly!” and he gave a little
sigh.

They reached the school, and Mr. Eden sat down and examined the little
boys and girls. When he sat down Susan winced. How angry he will be at
their ignorance! thought Susan. But Mr. Eden, instead of putting on
an awful look, and impressing on the children that a being of another
generation was about to attack them, made himself young to meet their
minds. A pleasant smile disarmed their fears. He spoke to them in very
simple words and childish idioms, and told them a pretty story, which
interested them mightily. Having set their minds really working, he put
questions arising fairly out of his story, and so fathomed the moral
sense and the intelligence of more than one. In short, he drew the brats
out instead of crushing them in. Susan stood by, at first startled at
the line he took, then observant, then approving. Presently he turned to
her.

“And which is your class, Miss Merton?”

Susan colored.

“I take these little girls when I come, sir.

“Miss Merton has not been here this fortnight,” said a pert teacher.

Susan could have beat her. What will this good man think of me now?
thought poor Susan. To her grateful relief, the good man took no notice
of the observation; he looked at his watch.

“Now, Miss Merton, if I am not giving you too much trouble,” and they
left the school.

“You wish to see some of the folk in the village, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Where shall I take you first, sir?”

“Where I ought to go first.”

Susan looked puzzled.

Mr. Eden stopped dead short.

“Come, guess,” said he, with a radiant smile, “and don't look so scared.
I'll forgive you if you guess wrong.”

Susan looked this way and that, encouraged by his merry smile. She let
out--scarce above a whisper, and in a tone of interrogation, as who
should say this is not to be my last chance since I have only asked a
question not risked an answer--

“To the poorest, Mr. Eden?”

“Brava! she has guessed it,” cried the Reverend Frank triumphantly; for
he had been more anxious she should answer right than she had herself.
“Young lady, I have friends with their heads full of Latin and Greek
who could not have answered that so quickly as you; one proof more
how goodness brightens intelligence,” added he in soliloquy. “Here's a
cottage.”

“Yes, sir, I was going to take you into this one, if you please.”

They found in the cottage a rheumatic old man, one of those we alluded
to as full of his own complaints. Mr. Eden heard these with patience,
and then, after a few words of kind sympathy and acquiescence, for he
was none of those hard humbugs who tell a man that old age, rheumatism
and poverty are strokes with a feather, he said quietly:

“And now for the other side; now tell me what you have to be grateful
for.”

The old man was taken aback and his fluency deserted him. On the
question being repeated, he began to say that he had many mercies to
be thankful for. Then he higgled and hammered and fumbled for the said
mercies, and tried to enumerate them, but in phrases conventional and
derived from tracts and sermons; whereas his statement of grievances had
been idiomatic.

“There, that will do,” said Mr. Eden smiling, “say nothing you don't
feel; what is the use? May I ask you a few questions,” added he,
courteously; then, without waiting for permission, he dived skillfully
into this man's life, and fished up all the pearls--the more remarkable
passages.

Many years ago this old man had been a soldier, had fought in more than
one great battle, had retreated with Sir John Moore upon Corunna, and
been one of the battered and weary but invincible band who wheeled round
and stunned the pursuers on 'that bloody and glorious day. Mr. Eden went
with the old man to Spain, discussed with great animation the retreat,
the battle, the position of the forces, and the old soldier's personal
prowess. Old Giles perked up, and dilated, and was another man; he
forgot his rheumatism, and even his old age. Twice he suddenly stood
upright as a dart on the floor, and gave the word of command like a
trumpet in some brave captain's name; and his cheek flushed, and his
eye glittered with the light of battle. Susan looked at him with
astonishment. Then when his heart was warm and his spirits attentive Mr.
Eden began to throw in a few words of exhortation. But even then he did
not bully the man into being a Christian; gently, firmly, and with a
winning modesty, he said: “I think you have much to be thankful for,
like all the rest of us. Is it not a mercy you were not cut off in your
wild and dissolute youth? you might have been slain in battle.”

“That I might, sir; three of us went from this parish and only one came
home again.

“You might have lost a leg or an arm, as many a brave fellow did; you
might have been a cripple all your days.”

“That is true, sir.”

“You survive here in a Christian land, in possession of your faculties;
the world, it is true, has but few pleasures to offer you--all the
better for you. Oh, if I could but make that as plain to you as it is
to me. You have every encouragement to look for happiness there, where
alone it is to be found. Then courage, corporal; you stood firm at
Corunna--do not give way in this your last and most glorious battle. The
stake is greater than it was at Vittoria, or Salamanca, or Corunna, or
Waterloo. The eternal welfare of a single human soul weighs a thousand
times more than all the crowns and empires in the globe. You are in
danger, sir. Discontent is a great enemy of the soul. You must pray
against it--you must fight against it.”

“And so I will, sir; you see if I don't.”

“You read, Mr. Giles?” Susan had told Mr. Eden his name at the
threshold.

“Yes, sir; but I can't abide them nasty little prints they bring me.”

“Of course you can't. Printed to sell, not to read, eh? Here is a book.
The type is large, clear and sharp. This is an order-book, corporal. It
comes from the great Captain of our salvation. Every sentence in it is
gold; yet I think I may safely pick out a few for your especial use at
present.” And Mr. Eden sat down, and producing from his side pockets,
which were very profound, some long thin slips of paper, he rapidly
turned the leaves of the Testament and inserted his markers; but this
occupation did not for a moment interrupt his other proceedings.

“There is a pipe--you don't smoke, I hope?”

“No, sir; leastways not when I han't got any baccy, and I've been out of
that this three days--worse luck.”

“Give up smoking, corporal, it is a foul habit.”

“Ah, sir! you don't ever have a half-empty belly and a sorrowful heart,
or you wouldn't tell an old soldier to give up his pipe.”

“Take my advice. Give up all such false consolation, to oblige me, now.”

“Well, sir, to oblige you, I'll try; but you don't know what his pipe is
to a poor old man full of nothing but aches and pains, or you wouldn't
have asked me,” and old Giles sighed. Susan sighed, too, for she thought
Mr. Eden cruel for once.

“Miss Merton,” said the latter sternly, his eye twinkling all the time,
“he is incorrigible; and I see you agree with me that it is idle to
torment the incurable. So” (diving into the capacious pocket) “here
is an ounce of his beloved poison,” and out came a paper of tobacco.
Corporal's eyes brightened with surprise and satisfaction. “Poison him,
Miss Merton, poison him quick, don't keep him waiting.”

“Poison him, sir?”

“Fill his pipe for him, if you please.”

“That I will, sir, with pleasure.” A white hand with quick and supple
fingers filled the brown pipe.

“That is as it should be. Let beauty pay honor to courage; above all to
courage in its decay.”

The old man grinned with gratified pride. The white hand lighted the
pipe, and gave it to the old soldier. He smiled gratefully all round and
sucked his homely consolation.

“I compound with you, corporal. You must let me put you on the road
to heaven, and, in return, I must let you go there in a cloud of
tobacco--ugh!”

“I'm agreeable, sir,” said Giles dryly, withdrawing his pipe for a
moment.

“There,” said Mr. Eden, closing the marked Testament, “read often in
this book. Read first the verses I have marked, for these very verses
have dropped comfort on the poor, the aged and the distressed for more
than eighteen hundred years, and will till time shall be no more. And
now good-by, and God bless you.”

“God bless you, sir, wherever you go!” cried the old man with sudden
energy, “for you have comforted my poor old heart. I feel as I han't
felt this many a day. Your words are like the bugles sounding a charge
all down the line. You must go, I suppose; but do ye come again and see
me. And, Miss Merton, you never come to see me now, as you used.”

“Miss Merton has her occupations like the rest of us,” said Mr. Eden
quickly; “but she will come to see you--won't she?”

“Oh, yes, sir!” replied Susan, hastily. So then they returned to the
farm, for Mr. Eden's horse was in the stable. At the door they found Mr.
Merton.

“This is father, sir. Father, this is Mr. Eden, that is coming to take
the duty here for a while.”

After the ordinary civilities Susan drew her father aside, and,
exchanging a few words with him, disappeared into the house. As Mr. Eden
was mounting his horse, Mr. Merton came forward and invited him to stay
at his house whenever he should come to the parish. Mr. Eden hesitated.

“Sir,” said the farmer, “you will find no lodgings comfortable within a
mile of the church, and we have a large house not half occupied. You can
make yourself quite at home.”

“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Merton, but must not trespass too far
upon your courtesy.”

“Well, sir,” replied the farmer, “we shall feel proud if you can put up
with the like of us.”

“I will come. I am much obliged to you, sir, and to your daughter.”

He mounted his horse and bade the farmer good morning. Susan came out
and stood on the steps and curtsied low--rustic fashion--but with a
grace of her own. He took off his hat to her as he rode out of the gate,
gave her a sweet, bright smile of adieu, and went down the lane fourteen
miles an hour. Old Giles was seated outside his own door with a pipe
and a book. At the sound of horses' feet he looked up and recognized
his visitor, whom he had seen pass in the morning. He rose up erect and
saluted him, by bringing his thumb with a military wave to his forehead.
Mr. Eden saluted him in the same manner, but without stopping. The old
soldier sat down again and read and smoked. The pipe ended--that solace
was not of an immortal kind--but the book remained; he read it calmly
but earnestly in the warm air till day declined.



CHAPTER VII.

THE next Saturday Susan was busy preparing two rooms for Mr. Eden--a
homely but bright bedroom looking eastward, and a snug room where he
could be quiet downstairs. Snowy sheets and curtains and toilet-cover
showed the good housewife. The windows were open, and a beautiful
nosegay of Susan's flowers on the table. Mr. Eden's eye brightened at
the comfort and neatness and freshness of the whole thing; and Susan,
who watched him furtively, felt pleased to see him pleased.

On Sunday he preached in the parish church. The sermon was opposite to
what the good people here had been subject to; instead of the vague and
cold generalities of an English sermon, he drove home-truths home in
business-like English. He used a good many illustrations, and these
were drawn from matters with which this particular congregation were
conversant. He was as full of similes here as he was sparing of them
when he preached before the University of Oxford. Any one who had
read this sermon in a book of sermons would have divined what sort
of congregation it was preached to--a primrose of a sermon. Mr. Eden
preached from notes and to the people--not the air. Like every born
orator, he felt his way with his audience, whereas the preacher who is
not an orator throws out his fine things, hit or miss, and does not know
and feel and care whether he is hitting or missing. “Open your hand,
shut your eyes, and fling out the good seed so much per foot--that is
enough.” No. This man preached to the faces and hearts that happened
to be round him. He established between himself and them a pulse, every
throb of which he felt and followed. If he could not get hold of them
one way, he tried another; he would have them--he was not there to fail.
His discourse was human; it was man speaking to man on the most vital
and interesting topic in the world or out of it; it was more, it was
brother speaking to brother. Hence some singular phenomena. First,
when he gave the blessing (which is a great piece of eloquence commonly
reduced to a very small one by monotonous or feeble delivery), and
uttered it, like his discourse, with solemnity, warmth, tenderness and
all his soul, the people lingered some moments in the church and seemed
unwilling to go at all. Second, nobody mistook their pew for their
four-poster during the sermon. This was the more remarkable as many of
the congregation had formed a steady habit of coming to this place once
a week with the single view of snatching an hour's repose from earthly
and heavenly cares.

The next morning Mr. Eden visited some of the poorest people in the
parish. Susan accompanied him, all eyes and ears. She observed that his
line was not to begin by dictating his own topic, but lie in wait for
them; let them first choose their favorite theme, and so meet them on
this ground, and bring religion to bear on it. “Oh, how wise he is!”
 thought Susan, “and how he knows the heart!”

One Sunday evening three weeks after his first official visit he had
been by himself to see some of the poor people, and on his return found
Susan alone. He sat down and gave an account of his visits.

“How many ounces of tea and tobacco did you give away, sir?” asked
Susan, with an arch smile.

“Four tea, two tobacco,” replied the reverend gentleman.

“I do notice, sir, you never carry gingerbread or the like for the
children.”

“No; the young don't want lollypops, for they have youth. Old age wants
everything, so the old are my children, and I tea and tobacco them.”

After this there was a pause.

“Miss Merton, you have shown me many persons who need consolation, but
there is one you say nothing about.”

“Have I, sir? Who? Oh, I think I know. Old Dame Clayton?”

“No, it is a young demoiselle.”

“Then I don't know who it can be.”

“Guess.”

“No, sir,” said Susan, looking down.

“It is yourself, Miss Merton.”

“Me, sir! Why, what is the matter with me?”

“That you shall tell me, if you think me worthy of your confidence.”

“Oh, thank you, sir. I have my little crosses, no doubt, like all the
world; but I have health and strength. I have my father.”

“My child, you are in trouble. You were crying when I came in.

“Indeed I was not, sir!--how did you know I was crying?”

“When I came in you turned your back to me, instead of facing me, which
is more natural when any one enters a room; and soon after you made an
excuse for leaving the room, and when you came back there was a drop of
water in your right eyelash.”

“It need not have been a tear, sir!”

“It was not; it was water. You had been removing the traces of tears.”

“Girls are mostly always crying, sir; often they don't know for why, but
they don't care to have it noticed always.”

“Nor would it be polite or generous; but this of yours is a deep grief,
and alarms me for you. Shall I tell you how I know? You often yawn and
often sigh; when these two things come together at your age they are
signs of a heavy grief; then it comes out that you have lost your relish
for things that once pleased you. The first day I came here you told me
your garden had been neglected of late, and you blushed in saying so.
Old Giles and others asked you before me why you had given up visiting
them; you colored and looked down. I could almost have told them, but
that would have made you uncomfortable. You are in grief, and no common
grief.”

“Nothing worth speaking to you about, sir; nothing I will ever complain
of to any one.”

“There I think you are wrong; religion has consoled many griefs; great
griefs admit of no other consolation. The sweetest exercise of my office
is to comfort the heavy hearted. Your heart is heavy, my poor lamb--tell
me--what is it?”

“It is nothing, sir, that you would understand; you are very skilled and
notice-taking, as well as good, but you are not a woman, and you must
excuse me, sir, if I beg you not to question me further on what would
not interest you.”

Mr. Eden looked at her compassionately, and merely said to her again,
“What is it?” in a low tone of ineffable tenderness.

At this Susan looked in a scared manner this way and that. “Sir, do not
ask me, pray do not ask me so;” then she suddenly lifted her hands, “My
George is gone across the sea! What shall I do! what shall I do!!” and
she buried her face in her apron.

This burst of pure Nature--this simple cry of a suffering heart--was
very touching, and Mr. Eden, spite of his many experiences, was not
a little moved. He sat silent, looking on her as an angel might be
supposed to look upon human griefs, and as he looked on her various
expressions chased one another across that eloquent face. Sweet and
tender memories and regrets were not wanting among them. After a long
pause he spoke in a tone soft and gentle as a woman's, and at first in
a voice so faltering that Susan, though her face was hidden, felt there
was no common sympathy there, and silently put out her hand toward it.

He murmured consolation. He said many gentle, soothing things. He told
her that it was very sad the immense ocean should roll between two
loving hearts, “but,” said he, “there are barriers more impassable than
the sea. Better so than that he should be here and jealousy, mistrust,
caprice, or even temper come between you. I hope he will come back; I
think he will come back.”

She blessed him for saying so. She was learning to believe everything
this man uttered.

From consolation he passed to advice.

“You must do the exact opposite of what you have been doing.”

“Must I?”

“You must visit those poor people; ay, more than ever you did; hear
patiently their griefs; do not expect much in return, neither sympathy
nor a great deal of gratitude; vulgar sorrow is selfish. Do it for God's
sake and your own single-heartedly. Go to the school, return to your
flowers, and never shun innocent society, however dull. Milk and water
is a poor thing, but it is a diluent, and all we can do just now is to
dilute your grief.”

He made her promise: “Next time I come tell me all about you and
George. 'Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak whispers the
o'erfraught heart and bids it break.'”

“Oh! that is a true word,” sobbed Susan, “that is very true. Why a
little of the lead seems to have dropped off my heart now I have spoken
to you, sir.”

All the next week Susan bore up as bravely as she could, and did what
Mr. Eden had bade her, and profited by his example. She learned to draw
from others the full history of their woes; and she found that many
a grief bitter as her own had passed over the dwellers in those small
cottages; it did her some little good to discover kindred woes, and much
good to go out of herself a while and pity them.

This drooping flower recovered her head a little, but still the sweetest
hour in all the working days of the week was that which brought John
Meadows to talk to her of Australia.



CHAPTER VIII.

SUSAN MERTON had two unfavored lovers; it is well to observe how
differently these two behaved. William Fielding stayed at home, threw
his whole soul into his farm, and seldom went near the woman he loved
but had no right to love. Meadows dangled about the flame; ashamed and
afraid to own his love, he fed it to a prodigious height by encouraging
it and not expressing it. William Fielding was moody and cross and sad
enough at times; but at others a little spark ignited inside his heart,
and a warm glow diffused itself from that small point over all
his being. I think this spark igniting was an approving conscience
commencing its uphill work of making a disappointed lover, but honest
man, content.

Meadows, on his part, began to feel content and a certain complacency
take the place of his stormy feelings. Twice a week he passed two hours
with Susan. She always greeted him with a smile, and naturally showed an
innocent satisfaction in these visits, managed as they were with so much
art and self-restraint. On Sunday, too, he had always a word or two with
her.

Meadows, though an observer of religious forms, had the character of a
very worldly man, and Susan thought it highly to his credit that he came
six miles to hear Mr. Eden.

“But, Mr. Meadows, your poor horse,” said she, one day. “I doubt it is
no Sabbath to him now.”

“No more it is,” said Meadows, as if a new light came to him from Susan.
The next Sunday he appeared in dusty shoes, instead of top-boots.

Susan looked down at them, and saw, and said nothing; but she smiled.
Her love of goodness and her vanity were both gratified a little.

Meadows did not stop there; wherever Susan went he followed modestly in
her steps. Nor was this mere cunning. He loved her quite well enough to
imitate her, and try and feel with her; and he began to be kinder to the
poor, and to feel good all over, and comfortable. He felt as if he
had not an enemy in the world. One day in Farnborough he saw William
Fielding on the other side of the street. Susan Merton did not love
William, therefore Meadows had no cause to hate him. He remembered
William had asked a loan of him and he had declined. He crossed over to
him.

“Good-day, Mr. William.”

“Good-day, Mr. Meadows.”

“You were speaking to me one day about a trifling loan. I could not
manage it just then, but now--” Here Meadows paused. He had been on the
point of offering the money, but suddenly, by one of those instincts of
foresight these able men have, he turned it off thus: “but I know who
will. You go to Lawyer Crawley; he lends money to people of credit.”

“I know he does; but he won't lend it me.”

“Why not?”

“He does not like us. He is a poor sneaking creature, and my brother
George he caught Crawley selling up some poor fellow or other, and they
had words; leastways it went beyond words, I fancy. I don't know the
rights of it, but George was a little rough with him by all accounts.”

“And what has that to do with this?” said the man of business coolly.

“Why, I am George's brother.”

“And if you were George himself and he saw his way to make a shilling
out of you he would do it, wouldn't he? There, you go to Crawley and
ask him to lend you one hundred pounds, and he will lend it you, only he
will make you pay heavy interest, heavier than I should, you know, if I
could manage it myself.”

“Oh, I don't care,” said simple William; “thank you kindly, Mr.
Meadows,” and off he went to Crawley.

He found that worthy in his office. Crawley, who instantly guessed
his errand, and had no instructions from Meadows, promised himself the
satisfaction of refusing the young man. He asked, with a cringing manner
and a treacherous smile, “What security, sir?”

Poor William higgled and hammered, and offered first one thing, which
was blandly declined for this reason; then another, which was blandly
declined for that, Crawley drinking deep draughts of mean vengeance all
the while from the young man's shame and mortification, when the door
opened, a man walked in, and gave Crawley a note and vanished. Crawley
opened the note; it contained a check drawn by Meadows, and these words:
“Lend W. F. the money at ten per cent on his acceptance of your draft at
two months.”

Crawley put the note and check in his pocket.

“Well, sir,” said he to William, “you stay here, and I will see if I
have got a loose hundred in the bank to spare.” He went over to the
bank, cashed the check, drew a bill of exchange at two months' date,
deducted the interest and stamp, and William accepted it, and Crawley
bowed him out cringing, smiling, and secretly shooting poisoned arrows
out of his venomous eye in the direction of William's heels.

William thanked him warmly.

This loan made him feel happy.

He had paid his brother's debt to the landlord by sacrificing a large
portion of his grain at a time the price was low; and now he was so
cramped he had much ado to pay his labor when this loan came. The very
next day he bought several hogs--hogs, as George had sarcastically
observed, were William Fielding's hobby; he had I confidence in that
animal. Potatoes and pigs versus sheep and turnips was the theory of
William Fielding.

Now the good understanding between William and Meadows was not to last
long. William, though he was too wise to visit Grassmere Farm much, was
mindful of his promise to George, and used to make occasional inquiries
after Susan. He heard that Meadows called at the farm twice a week, and
he thought it a little odd. He pondered on it, but did not quite go the
length of suspecting anything, still less of suspecting Susan. Still, he
thought it odd; but he thought it odder, when, one market-day, old Isaac
Levi said to him:

“Do you remember the promise you made to the lion-hearted young man,
your brother?”

“Do you ask that to affront me?”

“You never visit her; and others are not so neglectful.”

“Who?”

“Go this evening and you will see.”

“Yes, I will go, and I will soon see if there is anything in it,” said
William, not stopping even to inquire why the old Jew took all this
interest in the affair.

That evening, as Meadows was in the middle of a description of the town
of Sydney, Susan started up. “Why, here is William Fielding!” and she
ran out and welcomed him in with much cordiality, perhaps with some
excess of cordiality.

William came in and saluted the farmer and Meadows in his dogged way.
Meadows was not best pleased, but kept his temper admirably, and,
leaving Australia, engaged both the farmers in a conversation on home
topics. Susan looked disappointed. Meadows was content with that, and
the party separated half an hour sooner than usual.

The next market evening in strolls William. Meadows again plays the same
game. This time Susan could hardly restrain her temper. She did not want
to hear about the Grassmere acres, and “The Grove,” and oxen and hogs,
but about something that mattered to George.

But when the next market evening William arrived before Mr. Meadows,
she was downright provoked and gave him short answers, which raised his
suspicions and made him think he had done wisely in coming. This evening
Susan excused herself and went to bed early.

She was in Farnborough the next market-day, and William met her and
said:

“I'll take a cup of tea with you to-night, Susan, if you are agreeable.”

“William,” said Susan sharply, “what makes you always come to us on
market-day?”

“I don't know. What makes Mr. Meadows come that day?”

“Because he passes our house to go to his own, I suppose; but you live
but two miles off; you can come any day that you are minded.”

“Should I be welcome, Susan?”

“What do you think, Will? Speak your mind; I don't understand you.”

“Seems to me I was not very welcome last time.”

“If I thought that I wouldn't come again,” replied Susan, as sharp as
a needle. Then instantly repenting a little, she explained: “You are
welcome to me, Will, and you know that as well as I do, but I want you
to come some other evening, if it is all the same to you.”

“Why?”

“Why? because I am dull other evenings, and it would be nice to have a
chat with you.”

“Would it, Susan?”

“Of course it would; but that evening I have company--and he talks to me
of Australia.”

“Nothing else?” sneered the unlucky William.

Susan gave him such a look.

“And that interests me more than anything you can say to me--if you
won't be offended,” snapped Susan.

William bit his lip.

“Well, then, I won't come this evening, eh! Susan?”

“No, don't, that is a good soul.”

“Les femmes sont impitoyables pour ceux qu'elles n'aiment pas.” This
is a harsh saying, and of course not pure truth; but there is a deal of
truth in it.

William was proud, and the consciousness of his own love for her made
him less able to persist, for he knew she might be so ungenerous as to
retort if he angered her too far. So he altered the direction of his
battery. He planted himself at the gate of Grassmere Farm, and as
Meadows got off his horse requested a few words with him. Meadows ran
him over with one lightning glance, and then the whole man was on the
defensive. William bluntly opened the affair.

“You heard me promise to look on Susan as my sister, and keep her as she
is for my brother that is far away.”

“I heard you, Mr. William,” said Meadows with a smile that provoked
William as the artful one intended it should.

“You come here too often, sir.”

“Too often for who?”

“Too often for me, too often for George, too often for the girl herself.
I won't have George's sweetheart talked about.”

“You are the first to talk about her; if there's scandal it is of your
making.”

“I won't have it--at a word.”

Meadows called out, “Miss Merton, will you step here.”

William was astonished at his audacity; he did not know his man.

Susan opened the parlor window.

“What is it, Mr. Meadows?”

“Will you step here, if you please?” Susan came. :Here is a young man
tells me I must not call on your father or you.”

“I say you must not do it often enough to make her talked of.”

“Who dares to talk of me?” cried Susan, scarlet.

“Nobody, Miss Merton. Nobody but the young man himself; and so I
told him. Is your father within? Then I'll step in and speak with him
anyway.” And the sly Meadows vanished to give Susan an opportunity of
quarreling with William while she was hot.

“I don't know how you came to take such liberties with me,” began Susan,
quite pale now with anger.

“It is for George's sake,” said William doggedly.

“Did George bid you insult my friends and me? I would not put up with it
from George himself, much less from you. I shall write to George and ask
him whether he wishes me to be your slave.”

“Don't ye do so. Don't set my brother against me,” remonstrated William
ruefully.

“The best thing you can do is to go home and mind your farm, and get a
sweetheart for yourself, and then you won't trouble your head about me
more than you have any business to do.”

This last cut wounded William to the quick.

“Good-evening, Susan.”

“Good-evening.”

“Won't you shake hands?”

“It would serve you right if I said no! But I won't make you of so much
importance as you want to be. There! And come again as soon as ever you
can treat my friends with respect.”

“I shan't trouble you again for a while,” said William sadly. “Good-by.
God bless you, Susan dear.”

When he was gone the tears came into Susan's eyes, but she was bitterly
indignant with him for making a scene about her, which a really modest
girl hates. On her reaching the parlor Mr. Meadows was gone, too, and
that incensed her still more against William. “Mr. Meadows is affronted,
no doubt,” said she, “and of course he would not come here to be talked
of; he would not like that any more than I. A man that comes here to us
out of pure good nature and nothing else.”

The next market-day the deep Meadows did not come. Susan missed him and
his talk. She had few pleasures, and this was one of them. But the next
after he came as usual, and Susan did not conceal her satisfaction. She
was too shy and he too wise to allude to William's interference. They
both ignored the poor fellow and his honest, clumsy attempt.

William, discomfited but not convinced, determined to keep his eye upon
them both. “I swore it and I'll do it,” said this honest fellow. “But I
can't face her tongue; it goes through me like a pitchfork; but as for
him”--and he clinched his fist most significantly; then he revolved
one or two plans in his head, and rejected them each in turn. At last
a thought struck him. “Mr. Levi! he 'twas that put me on my guard. I'll
tell him.” Accordingly he recounted the whole affair and his failure to
Mr. Levi. The old man smiled. “You are no match for either of these. You
have given the maiden offense, just offense.”

“Just offence! Mr. Levi. Now don't ye say so; why, how?”

“By your unskillfulness, my son.”

“It is all very well for you to say that, sir, but I can tell you women
are kittle folk--manage them who can? I don't know what to do, I'm
sure.”

“Stay at home and till the land,” replied Isaac, somewhat dryly. “I will
go to Grassmere Farm.”



CHAPTER IX.

“You going to leave us, Mr. Eden, and going to live in a jail? Oh!
Mr. Eden, I can't bear to think of it. You to be cooped up there among
thieves and rogues, and perhaps murderers?”

“They have the more need of me.”

“And you, who love the air of heaven so; why, sir, I see you take off
your very hat at times to enjoy it as you are walking along; you would
be choked in a prison. Besides, sir, it is only little parsons that go
there.”

“What are little parsons?”

“Those that are not clever enough or good enough to be bishops and
vicars, and so forth; not such ones as you.”

“How odd! This is exactly what the Devil whispered in my ear when the
question was first raised, but I did not expect to find you on his
side.”

“Didn't you, sir? Ah! well, if 'tis your duty I know I may as well hold
my tongue. And then, such as you are not like other folk; you come like
sunshine to some dark place, and when you have warmed it and lighted it
a bit, Heaven, that sent you, will have you go and shine elsewhere. You
came here, sir, you waked up the impenitent folk in this village and
comforted the distressed and relieved the poor, and you have saved one
poor broken-hearted girl from despair, from madness, belike; and now we
are not to be selfish, we must not hold you back, but let you run the
race that is set before you, and remember your words and your deeds, and
your dear face and voice to the last hour of our lives.”

“And give me the benefit of your prayers, little sister, do not deny me
them; your prayers, that I may persevere to the end. Ay! it is too true,
Susan; in this world there is nothing but meeting and parting; it is
sad. We have need to be stout-hearted--stouter-hearted than you are. But
it will not always be so. A few short years and we who have fought
the good fight shall meet to part no more--to part no more--to part no
more!”

As he repeated these words, half mechanically, Susan could see that he
had suddenly become scarce conscious of her presence. The light of other
days was in his eye and his lips moved inarticulately. Delicate-minded
Susan left him, and with the aid of the servant brought out the
tea-things and set the little table on the grass square in her garden,
where you could see the western sun. And then she came for Mr. Eden.

“Come, sir, there is not a breath of wind this evening, so the
tea-things are set in the air. I know you like that.”

The little party sat down in the open air. The butter, churned by Susan,
was solidified cream. The bread not very white, but home-made, juicy and
sweet as milk. The tea seemed to diffuse a more flowery fragrance out of
doors than it does in, and to mix fraternally with the hundred odors of
Susan's flowers that now perfumed the air, and the whole innocent meal,
unlike coarse dinner or supper, mingled harmoniously with the scene,
with the balmy air, the blue sky and the bright emerald grass sprinkled
with gold by the descending sun. Farmer Merton soon left them, and then
Susan went in and brought out pen and ink and a large sheet of paper.

Susan sat apart working with her needle, Mr. Eden sketched a sermon and
sipped his tea, and now and then purred three words to Susan, who purred
as many in reply. And yet over this pleasant scene there hung a gentle
sadness, felt most by Susan, as with head bent down she plied her needle
in silence. “He will not sit in my garden many times more, nor write
many more notes of sermons under my eye, nor preach to us all many more
sermons; and then he is going to a nasty jail, where he won't have his
health, I'm doubtful. And then I'm fearful he won't be comfortable in
his house, with nobody to take care of him that really cares for him;
servants soon find out where there is no woman to scold them as should
be, and he is not the man to take his own part against them.” And Susan
sighed at the domestic prospects of her friend, and her needle went
slower and slower.

These reflections were interrupted by the servant, who announced a
visitor. Susan laid down her work and went into the parlor, and there
found Isaac Levi. She greeted him with open arms and heightened
color, and never for a moment suspected that he was come there full of
suspicions of her.

After the first greeting a few things of little importance were said on
either side. Isaac watching to see whether Mr. Meadows had succeeded in
supplanting George, and too cunning to lead the conversation that way
himself, lay patiently in wait like a sly old fox. However, he soon
found he was playing the politician superfluously, for Susan laid bare
her whole heart to the simplest capacity. Instead of waiting for
the skillful, subtle, almost invisible cross-examination which the
descendant of Maimonides was preparing for her, she answered all his
questions before they were asked. It came out that her thought by day
and night was George, that she had been very dull, and very unhappy.
“But I am better now, Mr. Levi, thank God. He has been very good to me:
he has sent me a friend, a clergyman, or an angel in the dress of one, I
sometimes think. He knows all about me and George, sir; so that makes
me feel quite at home with him, and I can--and now Mr. Meadows stops
an hour on market-days, and he is so kind as to tell me all about
Australia, and you may guess I like to hear about--Mr. Levi, come and
see us some market evening. Mr. Meadows is capital company; to hear him
you would think he had passed half his life in Australia. Were you ever
in Australia, sir, if you please?”

“Never, but I shall.”

“Shall you, sir?”

“Yes; the old Jew is not to die till he has drifted to every part in
the globe. In my old days I shall go back toward the East, and there
methinks I shall lay these wandering bones.”

“Oh, sir, inquire after George and show him some kindness, and don't see
him wronged, he is very simple. No! no! no! you are too old; you must
not cross the seas at your age; don't think of it; stay quiet at home
till you leave us for a better world.”

“At home!” said the old man sorrowfully; “I have no home. I had a home,
but the man Meadows has driven me out of it.”

“Mr. Meadows! La, sir, as how?”

“He bought the house I live in, and next Lady-day, as the
woman-worshiper calls it, he turns me to the door.”

“But he won't if you ask him. He is a very good-natured man. You go and
ask him to be so good as let you stay; he won't gainsay you, you take my
word.”

“Susannah!” replied Isaac, “you are good and innocent; you cannot fathom
the hearts of the wicked. This Meadows is a man of Belial. I did beseech
him; I bowed these gray hairs to him to let me stay in the house where I
lived so happily with my Leah twenty years, where my children were
born to me and died from me, where my Leah consoled me for their loss a
while, but took no comfort herself and left me, too.”

“Poor old man! and what did he say?”

“He refused me with harsh words. To make the refusal more bitter
he insulted my religion and my much-enduring tribe, and at the day
appointed he turns me, at threescore years and ten, adrift upon the
earth.”

“Eh, dear! how hard the world is!” cried Susan; “I had a great respect
for Mr. Meadows, but now if he comes here I know I shall shut the door
in his face.”

Isaac reflected. This would not have suited a certain subtle Eastern
plan of vengeance he had formed. “No!” said he, “that is folly. Take
not another man's quarrel on your shoulders. A Jew knows how to revenge
himself without your aid.”

So then her inquisitor was satisfied; Australia really was the topic
that made Meadows welcome. He departed, revolving Oriental vengeance.

Smooth Meadows, at his next visit, removed the impression excited
against him, and easily persuaded Susan that Levi was more in the wrong
than he, in which opinion she stood firm till Levi's next visit.

At last she gave up all hope of dijudicating, and determined to end the
matter by bringing them together and making them friends.

And now approached the day of Mr. Eden's departure. The last sermon--the
last quiet tea in the garden. On Monday afternoon he was to go to
Oxford, and the following week to his new sphere of duties, which he
had selected to the astonishment of some hundred persons who knew him
superficially--knew him by his face, by his pretensions as a scholar,
a divine and a gentleman of descent and independent means, but had not
sounded his depths.

All Sunday Susan sought every opportunity of conversing with him even on
indifferent matters. She was garnering up his words, his very syllables,
and twenty times in the day he saw her eyes fill with tears apropos of
such observations as this:

“We shall have a nice warm afternoon, Susan.”

“It is to be hoped so, sir; the blackbirds are giving a chirrup or two.”

All Monday forenoon Susan was very busy. There was bread to be baked and
butter to be made. Mr. Eden must take some of each to Oxford. They would
keep Grassmere in his mind a day or two longer; and besides they were
wholesome and he was fond of them. Then there was his linen to be looked
over, and buttons sewed on for the last time. Then he must eat a good
dinner before he went, so then he would want nothing but his tea when he
got to Oxford; and the bread would be fit to eat by tea-time, especially
a small crusty cake she had made for that purpose. So with all this
Susan was energetic, almost lively; and even when it was all done and
they were at dinner, her principal anxiety seemed to be that he should
eat more than usual because he was going a journey. But when all bustle
of every kind was over and the actual hour of parting came, she suddenly
burst out crying before her father and the servant, who bade her not
take on and instantly burst out crying too from vague sympathy.

The old farmer ordered the girl out of the room directly, and without
the least emotion proceeded to make excuses to Mr. Eden for Susan.

“A young maid's eyes soon flow over,” etc.

Mr. Eden interrupted him.

“Such tears as these do not scald the heart. I feel this separation from
my dear kind friend as much as she feels it. But I am more than twice
her age and have passed through--I should feel it bitterly if I thought
our friendship and Christian love were to end because our path of duty
lies separate. But no, Susan, still look on me as your adviser, your
elder brother, and in some measure your pastor. I shall write to you and
watch over you, though it some distance--and not so great a distance.
I am always well horsed, and I know you will give me a bed at Grassmere
once a quarter.”

“That we will,” cried the farmer, warmly, “and proud and happy to see
you cross the threshold, sir.”

“And, Mr. Merton, my new house is large. I shall be alone in it.
Whenever you and Miss Merton have nothing better to do, pray come
and visit me. I will make you as uncomfortable as you have made me
comfortable, but as welcome as you have made me welcome.”

“We will come, sir! we will come some one of these days, and thank you
for the honor.”

So Mr. Eden went from Grassmere village and Grassmere farmhouse--but he
left neither as he found them; fifty years hence an old man and woman or
two will speak to their grandchildren of the “Sower,” and Susan Merton
(if she is on earth then) of “the good Physician.” She may well do
so, for it was no vulgar service he rendered her, no vulgar malady he
checked.

Not every good man could have penetrated so quickly a coy woman's grief,
nor, the wound found, have soothed her fever and deadened her smart with
a hand as firm as gentle, as gentle as firm.

Such men are human suns! They brighten and warm wherever they pass.
Fools count them mad, till death wrenches open foolish eyes; they are
not often called “my Lord,” * nor sung by poets when they die; but the
hearts they heal, and their own are their rich reward on earth--and
their place is high in heaven.

   * Sometimes thought.



CHAPTER X.

MR. MEADOWS lived in a house that he had conquered three years ago by
lending money on it at fair interest in his own name. Mr. David Hall,
the proprietor, paid neither principal nor interest. Mr. Meadows
expected this contingency, and therefore lent his money. He threatened
to foreclose and sell the house under the hammer; to avoid this Mr. Hall
said, “Pay yourself the interest by living rent free in the house till
such time as my old aunt dies, drat her, and then I'll pay your money.
I wish I had never borrowed it.” Meadows acquiesced with feigned
reluctance. “Well, if I must, I must; but let me have my money as soon
as you can--” (aside) “I will end my days in this house.”

It had many conveniences; among the rest a very long though narrow
garden inclosed within high walls. At the end of the garden was a door
which anybody could open from the inside, but from the outside only by a
Bramah key.

The access to this part of the premises was by a short, narrow lane,
very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in
old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by
this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate
his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley,
attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to
himself with a look of gratified amazement--“Another year gone, and I
not struck off the Rolls!!!”

Peter had a Bramah key intrusted to him.

His visits to Mr. Meadows were conducted thus: he opened the garden-gate
and looked up at the window in a certain passage. This passage was
not accessible to the servants, and the window with its blinds was a
signal-book.

Blinds up, Mr. Meadows out.

White blind down, Mr. Meadows in.

Blue blind down, Mr. Meadows in, but not alone.

The same key that opened the garden-door opened a door at the back
of the house which led direct to the passage above-mentioned. On the
window-seat lay a peculiar whistle constructed to imitate the whining of
a dog. Then Meadows would go to his book-shelves, which lined one side
of the room, and pressing a hidden spring open a door that nobody
ever suspected, for the books came along with it. To provide for every
contingency, there was a small secret opening in another part of the
shelves by which Meadows could shoot unobserved a note or the like
into the passage, and so give Crawley instructions without dismissing a
visitor, if he had one.

Meadows provided against surprise and discovery. His study had double
doors. Neither of them could be opened from the outside. His visitors or
servants must rap with an iron knocker; and while Meadows went to open,
the secret visitor stepped into the passage and shut the books behind
him.

It was a room that looked business. One side was almost papered with
ordnance maps of this and an adjoining county. Pigeon-holes abounded,
too, and there was a desk six feet long, chock full of little
drawers--contents indicated outside in letters of which the proprietor
knew the meaning, not I.

Between the door and the fireplace was a screen, on which, in place
of idle pictures, might be seen his plans and calculations as a land
surveyor, especially those that happened to be at present in operation
or under consideration. So he kept his business before his eye, on the
chance of a good idea striking him at a leisure moment.

“Will Fielding's acceptance falls due to-morrow, Crawley.”

“Yes, sir, what shall I do?”

“Present it; he is not ready for it, I know.

“Well, sir; what next?”

“Serve him with a writ.”

“He will be preciously put about.”

“He will. Seem sorry; say you are a little short, but won't trouble him
for a month, if it is inconvenient; but he must make you safe by signing
a judgment.”

“Ay! ay! Sir, may I make bold to ask what is the game with this young
Fielding?”

“You ought to know the game--to get him in my power.”

“And a very good game it is, sir! Nobody plays it better than you. He
won't be the only one that is in your power in these parts--he! he!” And
Crawley chuckled without merriment. “Excuse my curiosity, sir, but when
about is the blow to fall?”

“What is that to you?”

“Nothing, sir, only the sooner the better. I have a grudge against the
family.”

“Have you? then don't act upon it. I don't employ you to do your
business, but mine.

“Certainly, Mr. Meadows. You don't think I'd be so ungrateful as to
spoil your admirable plans by acting upon any little feeling of my own.”

“I don't think you would be so silly. For if you did, we should part.”

“Don't mention such an event, sir.”

“You have been drinking, Crawley!”

“Not a drop, sir, this two days.”

“You are a liar! The smell of it comes through your skin. I won't have
it. Do you hear what I say? I won't have it. No man that drinks can do
business--especially mine.”

“I'll never touch a drop again. They called me into the
public-house--they wouldn't take a denial.”

“Hold your prate and listen to me. The next time you look at a
public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house
to you--it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill--for if you go in
there John Meadows, that is your friend, will be your enemy.”

“Heaven forbid, Mr. Meadows.”

“Drink this basinful of coffee.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It is very bitter.”

“Is your head clear now?”

“As a bell.”

“Then go and do my work, and don't do an atom more or an atom less than
your task.”

“No, sir. Oh, Mr. Meadows! it is a pleasure to serve you. You are as
deep as the sea, sir, and as firm as the rock. You never drink, nor
anything else, that I can find. A man out of a thousand! No little
weakness, like the rest of us, sir. You are a great man, sir. You are a
model of a man of bus--”

“Good-morning,” growled Meadows roughly, and turned his back.

“Good-morning, sir,” said Peter mellifluously. And opening the back door
about ten inches, he wriggled out like a weasel going through a chink in
a wall.

William Fielding fell like a child into the trap. “Give me time, and it
will be all right,” is the debtor's delusion. William thanked Crawley
for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his
hogs, fat or lean. Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned
in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to
Meadows' back door.

“You take out an arrest”--Meadows gave him a pocketbook--“put it in
this, and keep it ready in your pocket night and day.”

“I dare say it will come into use before the year is out, sir.”

“I hope not.”

George Fielding gone to Australia to make a thousand pounds by farming
and cattle-feeding, that so he may claim old Merton's promised
consent to marry Susan. Susan observing Mr. Eden's precepts even more
religiously than when he was with her; active, full of charitable deeds,
often pensive, always anxious, but not despondent now, thanks to the
good physician. Meadows falling deeper and deeper in love, but keeping
it more jealously secret than ever; on his guard against Isaac, on
his guard against William, on his guard against John Meadows; hoping
everything from time and accidents, from the distance between the
lovers, from George's incapacity, of which he had a great opinion--“He
will never make a thousand pence”--but not trusting to the things he
hoped. On the contrary, watching with keen eye, and working with subtle
threads to draw everybody into his power who could assist or thwart him
in the object his deep heart and iron will were set on. William Fielding
going down the hill Meadows was mounting; getting the better of his
passion, and substituting, by degrees, a brother-in-law's regard.

Flowers and weeds have one thing in common--while they live they grow.
Natural growth is a slow process, to describe it day by day a slower.
For the next four months matters glided so quietly on the slopes I have
just indicated that an intelligent calculation by the reader may very
well take the place of a tedious chronicle by the writer. Moreover, the
same monotony did not hang over every part of our story. These very four
months were eventful enough to one of our characters; and through him,
by subtle and positive links, to every man and every woman who fills
any considerable position in this matter-of-fact romance. Therefore
our story drags us from the meadows round Grassmere to a massive,
castellated building, glaring red brick with white stone corners. These
colors and their contrast relieve the stately mass of some of that
grimness which characterizes the castles of antiquity; but enough
remains to strike some awe into the beholder.

Two round towers flank the principal entrance. On one side of the
right-hand tower is a small house constructed in the same style as the
grand pile. The castle is massive and grand. This, its satellite, is
massive and tiny, like the frog doing his little bit of bull--like
Signor Hervio Nano, a tremendous thick dwarf now no more. There is one
dimple to all this gloomy grandeur--a rich little flower-garden, whose
frame of emerald turf goes smiling up to the very ankle of the frowning
fortress, as some few happy lakes in the world wash the very foot of the
mountains that hem them. From this green spot a few flowers look up with
bright and wondering wide-opened eyes at the great bullying masonry over
their heads; and to the spectator of both, these sparks of color at the
castle-foot are dazzling and charming; they are like rubies, sapphires
and pink topaz in some uncouth angular ancient setting.

Between the central towers is a sharp arch, filled by a huge oak door
of the same shape and size, which, for further security or ornament, is
closely studded with large diamond-headed nails. A man with keys at
his girdle like the ancient housewives opens the huge door to you with
slight effort, so well oiled is it. You slip under a porch into an
inclosed yard, the great door shuts almost of itself, and now it
depends upon the housewifely man whether you ever see the vain, idle and
every-way objectionable world again.

Passing into the interior of the vast building, you find yourself in
an extensive aisle traversed at right angles by another of similar
dimensions, the whole in form of a cross. In the center of each aisle is
an iron staircase, so narrow that two people cannot pass, and so light
and open that it merely ornaments, not obstructs, the view of the aisle.
These staircases make two springs; the first takes them to the level of
two corridors on the first floor. Here there is a horizontal space of
about a yard, whence the continuation staircase rises to the second
and highest floor. This gives three corridors, all studded with doors
opening on small separate apartments, whereof anon.

Nearly all the inmates of this grim palace wear a peculiar costume and
disguise, one feature of which is a cap of coarse materials, with a
vizor to it, which conceals the features all but the chin and the eyes,
which last peep, in a very droll way, through two holes cut for that
purpose.

They are distinguished by a courteous manner to strangers, whom they
never fail to salute in passing, with great apparent cordiality; indeed,
we fear we shall never meet in the busy world with such uniform urbanity
as in this and similar retreats. It arises from two causes. One is that
here strangers are welcome from their rarity; another, that politeness
is a part of the education of the place, which, besides its other uses,
is an adult

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