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Mary Marston

by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #8201 · 964,168 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mary Marston

Author: George MacDonald


        
Release date: June 1, 2005 [eBook #8201]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, Juliet
        Sutherland and the DP Team. HTML version by Chuck Greif.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY MARSTON ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks, Juliet
Sutherland and the DP Team










MARY MARSTON

A NOVEL.

BY

GEORGE MACDONALD

AUTHOR OF "ANNALS OF A QUIET NEIGHBORHOOD," "ROBERT FALCONER," ETC.,
ETC.




CONTENTS.


   I.--THE SHOP
   II.--CUSTOMERS
   III.--THE ARBOR AT THORNWICK
   IV.--GODFREY WARDOUR
   V.--GODFREY AND LETTY
   VI.--TOM HELMER
   VII.--DURNMELLING
   VIII.--THE OAK
   IX.--CONFUSION
   X.--THE HEATH AND THE HUT
   XI.--WILLIAM MARSTON
   XII.--MARY'S DREAM
   XIII.--THE HUMAN SACRIFICE
   XIV.--UNGENEROUS BENEVOLENCE
   XV.--THE MOONLIGHT
   XVI.--THE MORNING
   XVII.--THE RESULT
   XVIII.--MARY AND GODFREY
   XIX.--MARY IN THE SHOP
   XX.--THE WEDDING-DRESS
   XXI.--MR. REDMAIN
   XXII.--MRS. REDMAIN
   XXIII.--THE MENIAL
   XXIV.--MRS. REDMAIN'S DRAWING-ROOM
   XXV.--MARY'S RECEPTION
   XXVI.--HER POSITION
   XXVII.--MR. AND MRS. HELMER
   XXVIII.--MARY AND LETTY
   XXIX.--THE EVENING STAR
   XXX.--A SCOLDING
   XXXI.--SEPIA
   XXXII.--HONOR
   XXXIII.--TUB INVITATION
   XXXIV.--A STRAY SOUND
   XXXV.--THE MUSICIAN
   XXXVI.--A CHANGE
   XXXVII.--LYDGATE STREET
   XXXVIII.--GODFREY AND LETTY
   XXXIX.--RELIEF
   XL.--GODFREY AND SEPIA
   XLI.--THE HELPER
   XLII.--THE LEPER
   XLIII.--MARY AND MR. REDMAIN
   XLIV.--JOSEPH JASPER
   XLV.--THE SAPPHIRE
   XLVI.--REPARATION
   XLVII.--ANOTHER CHANGE
   XLVIII.--DISSOLUTION
   XLIX.--THORNWICK
   L.--WILLIAM AND MARY MARSTON
   LI.--A HARD TASK
   LII.--A SUMMONS
   LIII.--A FRIEND IN NEED
   LIV.--THE NEXT NIGHT
   LV.--DISAPPEARANCE
   LVI.--A CATASTROPHE
   LVII.--THE END OF THE BEGINNING




CHAPTER I

THE SHOP


It was an evening early in May. The sun was low, and the street was
mottled with the shadows of its paving-stones--smooth enough, but far
from evenly set. The sky was clear, except for a few clouds in the
west, hardly visible in the dazzle of the huge light, which lay among
them like a liquid that had broken its vessel, and was pouring over the
fragments. The street was almost empty, and the air was chill. The
spring was busy, and the summer was at hand; but the wind was blowing
from the north.

The street was not a common one; there was interest, that is feature,
in the shadowy front of almost each of its old houses. Not a few of
them wore, indeed, something like a human expression, the look of
having both known and suffered. From many a porch, and many a latticed
oriel, a long shadow stretched eastward, like a death flag streaming in
a wind unfelt of the body--or a fluttering leaf, ready to yield, and
flit away, and add one more to the mound of blackness gathering on the
horizon's edge. It was the main street of an old country town, dwindled
by the rise of larger and more prosperous places, but holding and
exercising a charm none of them would ever gain.

Some of the oldest of its houses, most of them with more than one
projecting story, stood about the middle of the street. The central and
oldest of these was a draper's shop. The windows of the ground-floor
encroached a little on the pavement, to which they descended very
close, for the floor of the shop was lower than the street. But,
although they had glass on three oriel sides, they were little used for
the advertising of the stores within. A few ribbons and gay
handkerchiefs, mostly of cotton, for the eyes of the country people on
market-days, formed the chief part of their humble show. The door was
wide and very low, the upper half of it of glass--old, and
bottle-colored; and its threshold was a deep step down into the shop.
As a place for purchases it might not to some eyes look promising, but
both the ladies and the housekeepers of Testbridge knew that rarely
could they do better in London itself than at the shop of Turnbull and
Marston, whether variety, quality, or price, was the point in
consideration. And, whatever the first impression concerning it, the
moment the eyes of a stranger began to grow accustomed to its gloom,
the evident size and plenitude of the shop might well suggest a large
hope. It was low, indeed, and the walls could therefore accommodate few
shelves; but the ceiling was therefore so near as to be itself
available for stowage by means of well-contrived slides and shelves
attached to the great beams crossing it in several directions. During
the shop-day, many an article, light as lace, and heavy as broadcloth,
was taken from overhead to lay upon the counter. The shop had a special
reputation for all kinds of linen goods, from cambric handkerchiefs to
towels, and from table-napkins to sheets; but almost everything was to
be found in it, from Manchester moleskins for the navy's trousers, to
Genoa velvet for the dowager's gown, and from Horrocks's prints to
Lyons silks. It had been enlarged at the back, by building beyond the
original plan, and that part of it was a little higher, and a little
better lighted than the front; but the whole place was still dark
enough to have awaked the envy of any swindling London shopkeeper. Its
owners, however, had so long enjoyed the confidence of the
neighborhood, that faith readily took the place of sight with their
customers--so far at least as quality was concerned; and seldom, except
in a question of color or shade, was an article carried to the door to
be confronted with the day. It had been just such a shop, untouched of
even legendary change, as far back as the memory of the sexton reached;
and he, because of his age and his occupation, was the chief authority
in the local history of the place.

As, on this evening, there were few people in the street, so were there
few in the shop, and it was on the point of being closed: they were not
particular there to a good many minutes either way. Behind the counter,
on the left hand, stood a youth of about twenty, young George Turnbull,
the son of the principal partner, occupied in leisurely folding and
putting aside a number of things he had been showing to a farmer's
wife, who was just gone. He was an ordinary-looking lad, with little
more than business in his high forehead, fresh-colored, good-humored,
self-satisfied cheeks, and keen hazel eyes. These last kept wandering
from his not very pressing occupation to the other side of the shop,
where stood, behind the opposing counter, a young woman, in attendance
upon the wants of a well-dressed youth in front of it, who had just
made choice of a pair of driving-gloves. His air and carriage were
conventionally those of a gentleman--a gentleman, however, more than
ordinarily desirous of pleasing a young woman behind a counter. She
answered him with politeness, and even friendliness, nor seemed aware
of anything unusual in his attentions.

"They're splendid gloves," he said, making talk; "but don't you think
it a great price for a pair of gloves, Miss Marston?"

"It is a good deal of money," she answered, in a sweet, quiet voice,
whose very tone suggested simplicity and straightforwardness; "but they
will last you a long time. Just look at the work, Mr. Helmer. You see
how they are made? It is much more difficult to stitch them like that,
one edge over the other, than to sew the two edges together, as they do
with ladies' gloves. But I'll just ask my father whether he marked them
himself."

"He did mark those, I know," said young Turnbull, who had been
listening to all that went on, "for I heard my father say they ought to
be sixpence more."

"Ah, then!" she returned, assentingly, and laid the gloves on the box
before her, the question settled.

Helmer took them, and began to put them on.

"They certainly are the only glove where there is much handling of
reins," he said.

"That is what Mr. Wardour says of them," rejoined Miss Marston.

"By the by," said Helmer, lowering his voice, "when did you see anybody
from Thornwick?"

"Their old man was in the town yesterday with the dog-cart."

"Nobody with him?"

"Miss Letty. She came in for just two minutes or so."

"How was she looking?"

"Very well," answered Miss Marston, with what to Helmer seemed
indifference.

"Ah!" he said, with a look of knowingness, "you girls don't see each
other with the same eyes as we. I grant Letty is not very tall, and I
grant she has not much of a complexion; but where did you ever see such
eyes?"

"You must excuse me, Mr. Helmer," returned Mary, with a smile, "if I
don't choose to discuss Letty's merits with you; she is my friend."

"Where would be the harm?" rejoined Helmer, looking puzzled. "I am not
likely to say anything against her. You know perfectly well I admire
her beyond any woman in the world. I don't care who knows it."

"Your mother?" suggested Mary, in the tone of one who makes a venture.

"Ah, come now, Miss Marston! Don't you turn my mother loose upon me. I
shall be of age in a few months, and then my mother may--think as she
pleases. I know, of course, with her notions, she would never consent
to my making love to Letty--"

"I should think not!" exclaimed Mary. "Who ever thought of such an
absurdity? Not you, surely, Mr. Helmer? What would your mother say to
hear you? I mention her in earnest now."

"Let mothers mind their own business!" retorted the youth angrily. "I
shall mind mine. My mother ought to know that by this time."

Mary said no more. She knew Mrs. Helmer was not a mother to deserve her
boy's confidence, any more than to gain it; for she treated him as if
she had made him, and was not satisfied with her work.

"When are you going to see Letty, Miss Marston?" resumed Helmer, after
a brief pause of angry feeling.

"Next Sunday evening probably."

"Take me with you."

"Take you with me! What are you dreaming of, Mr. Helmer?"

"I would give my bay mare for a good talk with Letty Lovel," he
returned.

Mary made no reply.

"You won't?" he said petulantly, after a vain pause of expectation.

"Won't what?" rejoined Miss Marston, as if she could not believe him in
earnest.

"Take me with you on Sunday?"

"No," she answered quietly, but with sober decision.

"Where would be the harm?" pleaded the youth, in a tone mingled of
expostulation, entreaty, and mortification.

"One is not bound to do everything there would be no harm in doing,"
answered Miss Marston. "Besides, Mr. Helmer, I don't choose to go out
walking with you of a Sunday evening."

"Why not?"

"For one thing, your mother would not like it. You know she would not."

"Never mind my mother. She's nothing to you. She can't bite you.--Ask
the dentist. Come, come! that's all nonsense. I shall be at the stile
beyond the turnpike-gate all the afternoon--waiting till you come."

"The moment I see you--anywhere upon the road--that moment I shall turn
back.--Do you think," she added with half-amused indignation, "I would
put up with having all the gossips of Testbridge talk of my going out
on a Sunday evening with a boy like you?"

Tom Helmer's face flushed. He caught up the gloves, threw the price of
them on the counter, and walked from the shop, without even a good
night.

"Hullo!" cried George Turnbull, vaulting over the counter, and taking
the place Helmer had just left opposite Mary; "what did you say to the
fellow to send him off like that? If you do hate the business, you
needn't scare the customers, Mary."

"I don't hate the business, you know quite well, George. And if I did
scare a customer," she added, laughing, as she dropped the money in the
till, "it was not before he had done buying."

"That may be; but we must look to to-morrow as well as to-day. When is
Mr. Helmer likely to come near us again, after such a wipe as you must
have given him to make him go off like that?"

"Just to-morrow, George, I fancy," answered Mary. "He won't be able to
bear the thought of having left a bad impression on me, and so he'll
come again to remove it. After all, there's something about him I can't
help liking. I said nothing that ought to have put him out of temper
like that, though; I only called him a boy."

"Let me tell you, Mary, you could not have called him a worse name."

"Why, what else is he?"

"A more offensive word a man could not hear from the lips of a woman,"
said George loftily.

"A man, I dare say! But Mr. Helmer can't be nineteen yet."

"How can you say so, when he told you himself he would be of age in a
few months? The fellow is older than I am. You'll be calling me a boy
next."

"What else are you? You at least are not one-and-twenty."

"And how old do you call yourself, pray, miss?"

"Three-and-twenty last birthday."

"A mighty difference indeed!"

"Not much--only all the difference, it seems, between sense and
absurdity, George."

"That may be all very true of a fine gentleman, like Helmer, that does
nothing from morning to night but run away from his mother; but you
don't think it applies to me, Mary, I hope!"

"That's as you behave yourself, George. If you do not make it apply, it
won't apply of itself. But if young women had not more sense than most
of the young men I see in the shop--on both sides of the counter,
George--things would soon be at a fine pass. Nothing better in your
head than in a peacock's!--only that a peacock _has_ the fine feathers
he's so proud of."

"If it were Mr. Wardour now, Mary, that was spreading his tail for you
to see, you would not complain of that peacock!"

A vivid rose blossomed instantly in Mary's cheek. Mr. Wardour was not
even an acquaintance of hers. He was cousin and friend to Letty Lovel,
indeed, but she had never spoken to him, except in the shop.

"It would not be quite out of place if you were to learn a little
respect for your superiors, George," she returned. "Mr. Wardour is not
to be thought of in the same moment with the young men that were in my
mind. Mr. Wardour is not a young man; and he is a gentleman."

She took the glove-box, and turning placed it on a shelf behind her.

"Just so!" remarked George, bitterly. "Any man you don't choose to
count a gentleman, you look down upon! What have you got to do with
gentlemen, I should like to know?"

"To admire one when I see him," answered Mary. "Why shouldn't I? It is
very seldom, and it does me good."

"Oh, yes!" rejoined George, contemptuously. "You _call_ yourself a
lady, but--"

"I do nothing of the kind," interrupted Mary, sharply. "I should _like_
to be a lady; and inside of me, please God, I _will_ be a lady; but I
leave it to other people to call me this or that. It matters little
what any one is _called_."

"All right," returned George, a little cowed; "I don't mean to
contradict you. Only just tell me why a well-to-do tradesman shouldn't
be a gentleman as well as a small yeoman like Wardour."

"Why don't you say--as well as a squire, or an earl, or a duke?" said
Mary.

"There you are, chaffing me again! It's hard enough to have every fool
of a lawyer's clerk, or a doctor's boy, looking down upon a fellow, and
calling him a counter-jumper; but, upon my soul, it's too bad when a
girl in the same shop hasn't a civil word for him, because he isn't
what she counts a gentleman! Isn't my father a gentleman? Answer me
that, Mary."

It was one of George's few good things that he had a great opinion of
his father, though the grounds of it were hardly such as to enable Mary
to answer his appeal in a way he would have counted satisfactory. She
thought of her own father, and was silent.

"Everything depends on what a man is in himself, George," she answered.
"Mr. Wardour would be a gentleman all the same if he were a shopkeeper
or a blacksmith."

"And shouldn't I be as good a gentleman as Mr. Wardour, if I had been
born with an old tumble-down house on my back, and a few acres of land
I could do with as I liked? Come, answer me that."

"If it be the house and the land that makes the difference, you would,
of course," answered Mary.

Her tone implied, even to George's rough perceptions, that there was a
good deal more of a difference between them than therein lay. But
common people, whether lords or shopkeepers, are slow to understand
that possession, whether in the shape of birth, or lands, or money, or
intellect, is a small affair in the difference between men.

"I know you don't think me fit to hold a candle to him," he said. "But
I happen to know, for all he rides such a good horse, he's not above
doing the work of a wretched menial, for he polishes his own
stirrup-irons."

"I'm very glad to hear it," rejoined Mary. "He must be more of a
gentleman yet than I thought him."

"Then why should you count him a better gentleman than me?"

"I'm afraid for one thing, you would go with your stirrup-irons rusty,
rather than clean them yourself, George. But I will tell you one thing
Mr. Wardour would not do if he were a shopkeeper: he would not, like
you, talk one way to the rich, and another way to the poor--all
submission and politeness to the one, and familiarity, even to
rudeness, with the other! If you go on like that, you'll never come
within sight of being a gentleman, George--not if you live to the age
of Methuselah."

"Thank you, Miss Mary! It's a fine thing to have a lady in the shop!
Shouldn't I just like my father to hear you! I'm blowed if I know how a
fellow is to get on with you! Certain sure I am that it ain't _my_
fault if we're not friends."

Mary made no reply. She could not help understanding what George meant,
and she flushed, with honest anger, from brow to chin. But, while her
dark-blue eyes flamed with indignation, her anger was not such as to
render her face less pleasant to look upon. There are as many kinds of
anger as there are of the sunsets with which they ought to end: Mary's
anger had no hate in it.

I must now hope my readers sufficiently interested in my narrative to
care that I should tell them something of what she was like. Plainly as
I see her, I can not do more for them than that. I can not give a
portrait of her; I can but cast her shadow on my page. It was a dainty
half-length, neither tall nor short, in a plain, well-fitting dress of
black silk, with linen collar and cuffs, that rose above the counter,
standing, in spite of displeasure, calm and motionless. Her hair was
dark, and dressed in the simplest manner, without even a reminder of
the hideous occipital structure then in favor--especially with shop
women, who in general choose for imitation and exorbitant development
whatever is ugliest and least lady-like in the fashion of the hour. It
had a natural wave in it, which broke the too straight lines it would
otherwise have made across a forehead of sweet and composing
proportions. Her features were regular--her nose straight--perhaps a
little thin; the curve of her upper lip carefully drawn, as if with
design to express a certain firmness of modesty; and her chin well
shaped, perhaps a little too sharply defined for her years, and rather
large. Everything about her suggested the repose of order satisfied, of
unconstrained obedience to the laws of harmonious relation. The only
fault honest criticism could have suggested, merely suggested, was the
presence of just a possible _nuance_ of primness. Her boots, at this
moment unseen of any, fitted her feet, as her feet fitted her body. Her
hands were especially good. There are not many ladies, interested in
their own graces, who would not have envied her such seals to her
natural patent of ladyhood. Her speech and manners corresponded with
her person and dress; they were direct and simple, in tone and
inflection, those of one at peace with herself. Neatness was more
notable in her than grace, but grace was not absent; good breeding was
more evident than delicacy, yet delicacy was there; and unity was plain
throughout.

George went back to his own side of the shop, jumped the counter, put
the cover on the box he had left open with a bang, and shoved it into
its place as if it had been the backboard of a cart, shouting as he did
so to a boy invisible, to make haste and put up the shutters. Mary left
the shop by a door on the inside of the counter, for she and her father
lived in the house; and, as soon as the shop was closed, George went
home to the villa his father had built in the suburbs.




CHAPTER II.

CUSTOMERS.


The next day was Saturday, a busy one at the shop. From the neighboring
villages and farms came customers not a few; and ladies, from the
country-seats around, began to arrive as the hours went on. The whole
strength of the establishment was early called out. Busiest in serving
was the senior partner, Mr. Turnbull. He was a stout, florid man, with
a bald crown, a heavy watch-chain of the best gold festooned across the
wide space between waistcoat-button-hole and pocket, and a large
hemispheroidal carbuncle on a huge fat finger, which yet was his little
one. He was close-shaved, double-chinned, and had cultivated an
ordinary smile to such an extraordinary degree that, to use the common
hyperbole, it reached from ear to ear. By nature he was good-tempered
and genial; but, having devoted every mental as well as physical
endowment to the making of money, what few drops of spiritual water
were in him had to go with the rest to the turning of the mill-wheel
that ground the universe into coin. In his own eyes he was a strong
churchman, but the only sign of it visible to others was the strength
of his contempt for dissenters--which, however, excepting his partner
and Mary, he showed only to church-people; a dissenter's money being,
as he often remarked, when once in his till, as good as the best
churchman's.

To the receptive eye he was a sight not soon to be forgotten, as he
bent over a piece of goods outspread before a customer, one hand
resting on the stuff, the other on the yard-measure, his chest as
nearly touching the counter as the protesting adjacent parts would
permit, his broad smooth face turned up at right angles, and his mouth,
eloquent even to solemnity on the merits of the article, now hiding,
now disclosing a gulf of white teeth. No sooner was anything admitted
into stock, than he bent his soul to the selling of it, doing
everything that could be done, saying everything he could think of
saying, short of plain lying as to its quality: that he was not guilty
of. To buy well was a care to him, to sell well was a greater, but to
make money, and that as speedily as possible, was his greatest care,
and his whole ambition.

John Turnbull in his gig, as he drove along the road to the town, and
through the street approached his shop-door, showed to the chance
observer a man who knew himself of importance, a man who might have a
soul somewhere inside that broad waistcoat; as he drew up, threw the
reins to his stable-boy, and descended upon the pavement--as he stepped
down into the shop even, he looked a being in whom son or daughter or
friend might feel some honest pride; but, the moment he was behind the
counter and in front of a customer, he changed to a creature whose
appearance and carriage were painfully contemptible to any beholder who
loved his kind; he had lost the upright bearing of a man, and cringed
like an ape. But I fear it was thus he had gained a portion at least of
his favor with the country-folk, many of whom much preferred his
ministrations to those of his partner. A glance, indeed, from the one
to the other, was enough to reveal which must be the better
salesman--and to some eyes which the better man.

In the narrow walk of his commerce--behind the counter, I mean--Mr.
Marston stood up tall and straight, lank and lean, seldom bending more
than his long neck in the direction of the counter, but doing
everything needful upon it notwithstanding, from the unusual length of
his arms and his bony hands. His forehead was high and narrow, his face
pale and thin, his hair long and thin, his nose aquiline and thin, his
eyes large, his mouth and chin small. He seldom spoke a syllable more
than was needful, but his words breathed calm respect to every
customer. His conversation with one was commonly all but over as he
laid something for approval or rejection on the counter: he had already
taken every pains to learn the precise nature of the necessity or
desire; and what he then offered he submitted without comment; if the
thing was not judged satisfactory, he removed it and brought another.
Many did not like this mode of service; they would be helped to buy;
unequal to the task of making up their minds, they welcomed any aid
toward it; and therefore preferred Mr. Turnbull, who gave them every
imaginable and unimaginable assistance, groveling before them like a
man whose many gods came to him one after the other to be worshiped;
while Mr. Marston, the moment the thing he presented was on the
counter, shot straight up like a poplar in a sudden calm, his visage
bearing witness that his thought was already far away--in heavenly
places with his wife, or hovering like a perplexed bee over some
difficult passage in the New Testament; Mary could have told which, for
she knew the meaning of every shadow that passed or lingered on his
countenance.

His partner and his like-minded son despised him, as a matter of
course; his unbusiness-like habits, as they counted them, were the
constantly recurring theme of their scorn; and some of these would
doubtless have brought him the disapprobation of many a business man of
a moral development beyond that of Turnbull; but Mary saw nothing in
them which did not stamp her father the superior of all other men she
knew.

To mention one thing, which may serve as typical of the man: he not
unfrequently sold things under the price marked by his partner. Against
this breach of fealty to the firm Turnbull never ceased to level his
biggest guns of indignation and remonstrance, though always without
effect. He even lowered himself in his own eyes so far as to quote
Scripture like a canting dissenter, and remind his partner of what came
to a house divided against itself. He did not see that the best thing
for some houses must be to come to pieces. "Well, but, Mr. Turnbull, I
thought it was marked too high," was the other's invariable answer.
"William, you are a fool," his partner would rejoin for the hundredth
time. "Will you never understand that, if we get a little more than the
customary profit upon one thing, we get less upon another? You must
make the thing even, or come to the workhouse." Thereto, for the
hundredth time also, William Marston would reply: "That might hold, I
daresay, Mr. Turnbull--I am not sure--if every customer always bought
an article of each of the two sorts together; but I can't make it
straight with my conscience that one customer should pay too much
because I let another pay too little. Besides, I am not at all sure
that the general scale of profit is not set too high. I fear you and I
will have to part, Mr. Turnbull." But nothing was further from
Turnbull's desire than that he and Marston should part; he could not
keep the business going without his money, not to mention that he never
doubted Marston would straightway open another shop, and, even if he
did not undersell him, take from him all his dissenting customers; for
the junior partner was deacon of a small Baptist church in the town--a
fact which, although like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes of
John Turnbull in his villa, was invaluable in the eyes of John Turnbull
behind his counter.

Whether William Marston was right or wrong in his ideas about the rite
of baptism--probably he was both--he was certainly right in his
relation to that which alone makes it of any value--that, namely, which
it signifies; buried with his Master, he had died to selfishness,
greed, and trust in the secondary; died to evil, and risen to good--a
new creature. He was just as much a Christian in his shop as in the
chapel, in his bedroom as at the prayer-meeting.

But the world was not now much temptation to him, and, to tell the
truth, he was getting a good deal tired of the shop. He had to remind
himself, oftener and oftener, that in the mean time it was the work
given him to do, and to take more and more frequently the strengthening
cordial of a glance across the shop at his daughter. Such a glance
passed through the dusky place like summer lightning through a heavy
atmosphere, and came to Mary like a glad prophecy; for it told of a
world within and beyond the world, a region of love and faith, where
struggled no antagonistic desires, no counteracting aims, but unity was
the visible garment of truth.

The question may well suggest itself to my reader--How could such a man
be so unequally yoked with such another as Turnbull?--To this I reply
that Marston's greatness had yet a certain repressive power upon the
man who despised him, so that he never uttered his worst thoughts or
revealed his worst basenesses in his presence. Marston never thought of
him as my reader must soon think--flattered himself, indeed, that poor
John was gradually improving, coming to see things more and more as he
would have him look on them. Add to this, that they had been in the
business together almost from boyhood, and much will be explained.

An open carriage, with a pair of showy but ill-matched horses, looking
unfit for country work on the one hand, as for Hyde Park on the other,
drew up at the door; and a visible wave of interest ran from end to end
of the shop, swaying as well those outside as those inside the counter,
for the carriage was well known in Testbridge. It was that of Lady
Margaret Mortimer; she did not herself like the _Margaret_, and signed
only her second name _Alice_ at full length, whence her _friends_
generally called her to each other Lady Malice. She did not leave the
carriage, but continued to recline motionless in it, at an angle of
forty-five degrees, wrapped in furs, for the day was cloudy and cold,
her pale handsome face looking inexpressibly more indifferent in its
regard of earth and sky and the goings of men, than that of a corpse
whose gaze is only on the inside of the coffin-lid. But the two ladies
who were with her got down. One of them was her daughter, Hesper by
name, who, from the dull, cloudy atmosphere that filled the doorway,
entered the shop like a gleam of sunshine, dusky-golden, followed by a
glowing shadow, in the person of her cousin, Miss Yolland.

Turnbull hurried to meet them, bowing profoundly, and looking very much
like Issachar between the chairs he carried. But they turned aside to
where Mary stood, and in a few minutes the counter was covered with
various stuffs for some of the smaller articles of ladies' attire.

The customers were hard to please, for they wanted the best things at
the price of inferior ones, and Mary noted that the desires of the
cousin were farther reaching and more expensive than those of Miss
Mortimer. But, though in this way hard to please, they were not
therefore unpleasant to deal with; and from the moment she looked the
latter in the face, whom she had not seen since she was a girl, Mary
could hardly take her eyes off her. All at once it struck her how well
the unusual, fantastic name her mother had given her suited her; and,
as she gazed, the feeling grew.

Large, and grandly made, Hesper stood "straight, and steady, and tall,"
dusky-fair, and colorless, with the carriage of a young matron. Her
brown hair seemed ever scathed and crinkled afresh by the ethereal
flame that here and there peeped from amid the unwilling volute rolled
back from her creamy forehead in a rebellious coronet. Her eyes were
large and hazel; her nose cast gently upward, answering the carriage of
her head; her mouth decidedly large, but so exquisite in drawing and
finish that the loss of a centimetre of its length would to a lover
have been as the loss of a kingdom; her chin a trifle large, and
grandly lined; for a woman's, her throat was massive, and her arms and
hands were powerful. Her expression was frank, almost brave, her eyes
looking full at the person she addressed. As she gazed, a kind of love
she had never felt before kept swelling in Mary's heart.

Her companion impressed her very differently.

Some men, and most women, counted Miss Yolland _strangely_ ugly. But
there were men who exceedingly admired her. Not very slight for her
stature, and above the middle height, she looked small beside Hesper.
Her skin was very dark, with a considerable touch of sallowness; her
eyes, which were large and beautifully shaped, were as black as eyes
could be, with light in the midst of their blackness, and more than a
touch of hardness in the midst of their liquidity; her eyelashes were
singularly long and black, and she seemed conscious of them every time
they rose. She did not _use_ her eyes habitually, but, when she did,
the thrust was sudden and straight. I heard a man once say that a look
from her was like a volley of small-arms. Like Hesper's, her mouth was
large and good, with fine teeth; her chin projected a little too much;
her hands were finer than Hesper's, but bony. Her name was Septimia;
Lady Margaret called her Sepia, and the contraction seemed to so many
suitable that it was ere long generally adopted. She was in mourning,
with a little crape. To the first glance she seemed as unlike Hesper as
she could well be; but, as she stood gently regarding the two, Mary,
gradually, and to her astonishment, became indubitably aware of a
singular likeness between them. Sepia, being a few years older, and in
less flourishing condition, had her features sharper and finer, and by
nature her complexion was darker by shades innumerable; but, if the one
was the evening, the other was the night: Sepia was a diminished and
overshadowed Hesper. Their manner, too, was similar, but Sepia's was
the haughtier, and she had an occasional look of defiance, of which
there appeared nothing in Hesper. When first she came to Durnmelling,
Lady Malice had once alluded to the dependence of her position--but
only once: there came a flash into rather than out of Sepia's eyes that
made any repetition of the insult impossible and Lady Malice wish that
she had left her a wanderer on the face of Europe.

Sepia was the daughter of a clergyman, an uncle of Lady Malice, whose
sons had all gone to the bad, and whose daughters had all vanished from
society. Shortly before the time at which my narrative begins, one of
the latter, however, namely Sepia, the youngest, had reappeared, a
fragment of the family wreck, floating over the gulf of its
destruction. Nobody knew with any certainty where she had been in the
interim: nobody at Durnmelling knew anything but what she chose to
tell, and that was not much. She said she had been a governess in
Austrian Poland and Russia. Lady Margaret had become reconciled to her
presence, and Hesper attached to her.

Of the men who, as I have said, admired her, some felt a peculiar
enchantment in what they called her ugliness; others declared her
devilish handsome; and some shrank from her as if with an undefined
dread of perilous entanglement, if she should but catch them looking
her in the face. Among some of them she was known as Lucifer, in
antithesis to Hesper: they meant the Lucifer of darkness, not the
light-bringer of the morning.

The ladies, on their part, especially Hesper, were much pleased with
Mary. The simplicity of her address and manner, the pains she took to
find the exact thing she wanted, and the modest decision with which she
answered any reference to her, made Hesper even like her. The most
artificially educated of women is yet human, and capable of even more
than liking a fellow-creature as such. When their purchases were ended,
she took her leave with a kind smile, which went on glowing in Mary's
heart long after she had vanished.

"Home, John," said Lady Margaret, the moment the two ladies were
seated. "I hope you have got _all_ you wanted. We shall be late for
luncheon, I fear. I would not for worlds keep Mr. Redmain waiting.--A
little faster, John, please."

Hesper's face darkened. Sepia eyed her fixedly, from under the mingling
of ascended lashes and descended brows. The coachman pretended to obey,
but the horses knew very well when he did and when he did not mean them
to go, and took not a step to the minute more: John had regard to the
splendid-looking black horse on the near side, which was weak in the
wind, as well as on one fired pastern, and cared little for the anxiety
of his mistress. To him, horses were the final peak of creation--or if
not the horses, the coachman, whose they are--masters and mistresses
the merest parasitical adjuncts. He got them home in good time for
luncheon, notwithstanding--more to Lady Margaret's than Hesper's
satisfaction.

Mr. Redmain was a bachelor of fifty, to whom Lady Margaret was
endeavoring to make the family agreeable, in the hope he might take
Hesper off their hands. I need not say he was rich. He was a common
man, with good cold manners, which he offered you like a handle. He was
selfish, capable of picking up a lady's handkerchief, but hardly a
wife's. He was attentive to Hesper; but she scarcely concealed such a
repugnance to him as some feel at sight of strange fishes--being at the
same time afraid of him, which was not surprising, as she could hardly
fail to perceive the fate intended for her.

"Ain't Miss Mortimer a stunner?" said George Turnbull to Mary, when the
tide of customers had finally ebbed from the shop.

"I don't exactly know what you mean, George," answered Mary.

"Oh, of course, I know it ain't fair to ask any girl to admire
another," said George. "But there's no offense to you, Mary. One young
lady can't carry _every_ merit on her back. She'd be too lovely to
live, you know. Miss Mortimer ain't got your waist, nor she ain't got
your 'ands, nor your 'air; and you ain't got her size, nor the sort of
hair she 'as with her."

He looked up from the piece of leno he was smoothing out, and saw he
was alone in the shop.




CHAPTER III.

THE ARBOR AT THORNWICK.


The next day was Sunday at last, a day dear to all who do anything like
their duty in the week, whether they go to church or not. For Mary, she
went to the Baptist chapel; it was her custom, rendered holy by the
companionship of her father. But this day it was with more than
ordinary restlessness and lack of interest that she stood, knelt, and
sat, through the routine of observance; for old Mr. Duppa was certainly
duller than usual: how could it be otherwise, when he had been
preparing to spend a mortal hour in descanting on the reasons which
necessitated the separation of all true Baptists from all
brother-believers? The narrow, high-souled little man--for a soul as
well as a forehead can be both high and narrow--was dull that morning
because he spoke out of his narrowness, and not out of his height; and
Mary was better justified in feeling bored than even when George
Turnbull plagued her with his vulgar attentions. When she got out at
last, sedate as she was, she could hardly help skipping along the
street by her father's side. Far better than chapel was their nice
little cold dinner together, in their only sitting-room, redolent of
the multifarious goods piled around it on all the rest of the floor.
Greater yet was the following pleasure--of making her father lie down
on the sofa, and reading him to sleep, after which she would doze a
little herself, and dream a little, in the great chair that had been
her grandmother's. Then they had their tea, and then her father always
went to see the minister before chapel in the evening.

When he was gone, Mary would put on her pretty straw bonnet, and set
out to visit Letty Lovel at Thornwick. Some of the church-members
thought this habit of taking a walk, instead of going again to the
chapel, very worldly, and did not scruple to let her know their
opinion; but, so long as her father was satisfied with her, Mary did
not care a straw for the world besides. She was too much occupied with
obedience to trouble her head about opinion, either her own or other
people's. Not until a question comes puzzling and troubling us so as to
paralyze the energy of our obedience is there any necessity for its
solution, or any probability of finding a real one. A thousand foolish
_doctrines_ may lie unquestioned in the mind, and never interfere with
the growth or bliss of him who lives in active subordination of his
life to the law of life: obedience will in time exorcise them, like
many another worse devil.

It had drizzled all the morning from the clouds as well as from the
pulpit, but, just as Mary stepped out of the kitchen-door, the sun
stepped out of the last rain-cloud. She walked quickly from the town,
eager for the fields and the trees, but in some dread of finding Tom
Helmer at the stile; for he was such a fool, she said to herself, that
there was no knowing what he might do, for all she had said; but he had
thought better of it, and she was soon crossing meadows and cornfields
in peace, by a path which, with many a winding, and many an up and
down, was the nearest way to Thornwick.

The saints of old did well to pray God to lift on them the light of his
countenance: has the Christian of the new time learned of his Master
that the clouds and the sunshine come and go of themselves? If the
sunshine fills the hearts of old men and babes and birds with gladness
and praise, and God never meant it, then are they all idolaters, and
have but a careless Father. Sweet earthy odors rose about Mary from the
wet ground; the rain-drops glittered on the grass and corn-blades and
hedgerows; a soft damp wind breathed rather than blew about the gaps
and gates; with an upward springing, like that of a fountain momently
gathering strength, the larks kept shooting aloft, there, like
music-rockets, to explode in showers of glowing and sparkling song;
while, all the time and over all, the sun as he went down kept shining
in the might of his peace; and the heart of Mary praised her Father in
heaven.

Where the narrow path ran westward for a little way, so that she could
see nothing for the sun in her eyes, in the middle of a plowed field
she would have run right against a gentleman, had he been as blind as
she; but, his back being to the sun, he saw her perfectly, and stepped
out of her way into the midst of a patch of stiff soil, where the rain
was yet lying between the furrows. She saw him then, and as, lifting
his hat, he stopped again upon the path, she recognized Mr. Wardour.

"Oh, your nice boots!" she cried, in the childlike distress of a simple
soul discovering itself the cause of catastrophe, for his boots were
smeared all over with yellow clay.

"It only serves me right," returned Mr. Wardour, with a laugh of
amusement. "I oughtn't to have put on such thin ones at the first smile
of summer."

Again he lifted his hat, and walked on.

Mary also pursued her path, genuinely though gently pained that one
should have stepped up to the ankles in mud on her account. As I have
already said, except in the shop she had never before spoken to Mr.
Wardour, and, although he had so simply responded to her exclamation,
he did not even know who she was.

The friendship which now drew Mary to Thornwick, Godfrey Wardour's
place, was not one of long date. She and Letty Lovel had, it is true,
known each other for years, but only quite of late had their
acquaintance ripened into something better; and it was not without
protestation on the part of Mrs. Wardour, Godfrey's mother, that she
had seen the growth of an intimacy between the two young women. The
society of a shopwoman, she often remarked, was far from suitable for
one who, as the daughter of a professional man, might lay claim to the
position of a gentlewoman. For Letty was the orphan daughter of a
country surgeon, a cousin of Mrs. Wardour, for whom she had had a great
liking while yet they were boy and girl together. At the same time,
however much she would have her consider herself the superior of Mary
Marston, she by no means treated her as her own equal, and Letty could
not help being afraid of her aunt, as she called her.

The well-meaning woman was in fact possessed by two devils--the one the
stiff-necked devil of pride, the other the condescending devil of
benevolence. She was kind, but she must have credit for it; and Letty,
although the child of a loved cousin, must not presume upon that, or
forget that the wife and mother of long-descended proprietors of
certain acres of land was greatly the superior of any man who lived by
the exercise of the best-educated and most helpful profession. She
counted herself a devout Christian, but her ideas of rank, at
least--therefore certainly not a few others--were absolutely opposed to
the Master's teaching: they who did least for others were her
aristocracy.

Now, Letty was a simple, true-hearted girl, rather slow, who honestly
tried to understand her aunt's position with regard to her friend.
"Shop-girls," her aunt had said, "are not fitting company for you,
Letty."

"I do not know any other shop-girls, aunt," Letty replied, with hidden
trembling; "but, if they are not nice, then they are not like Mary.
She's downright good; indeed she is, aunt!--a great deal, ever so much,
better than I am."

"That may well be," answered Mrs. Wardour, "but it does not make a lady
of her."

"I am sure," returned Letty, bewildered, "on Sundays you could not tell
the difference between her and any other young lady."

"Any other well-dressed young woman, my dear, you should say. I believe
shop-girls do call their companions young ladies, but that can not
justify the application of the word. I am scarcely bound to speak of my
cook as a lady because letters come addressed to her as Miss Tozer. If
the word 'lady' should sink at last to common use, as in Italy every
woman is Donna, we must find some other word to ex-press what _used_ to
be meant by it."

"Is Mrs. Cropper a lady, aunt?" asked Letty, after a pause, in which
her brains, which were not half so muddled as she thought them, had
been busy feeling after firm ground in the morass of social distinction
thus opened under her.

"She is received as such," replied Mrs. Wardour, but with doubled
stiffness, through which ran a tone of injury.

"Would you receive her, aunt, if she called upon you?"

"She has horses and servants, and everything a woman of the world can
desire; but I should feel I was bowing the knee to Mammon were I to ask
her to my house. Yet such is the respect paid to money in these
degenerate days that many a one will court the society of a person like
that, who would think me or your cousin Godfrey unworthy of notice,
because we have no longer a tithe of the property the family once
possessed."

The lady forgot there is a Rimmon as well as a Mammon.

"God knows," she went on, "how that woman's husband made his money! But
that is a small matter nowadays, except to old-fashioned people like
myself. Not _how_ but _how much_, is all the question now," she
concluded, flattering herself she had made a good point.

"Don't think me rude, please, aunt: I am really wishing to
understand--but, if Mrs. Cropper is not a lady, how can Mary Marston
not be one? She is as different from Mrs. Croppor as one woman can be
from another."

"Because she has not the position in society," replied Mrs. Wardour,
enveloping her nothing in flimsy reiteration and self-contradiction.

"And Mrs. Cropper has the position?" ventured Letty, with a little
palpitation from fear of offending.

"Apparently so," answered Mrs. Wardour. But her inquiring pupil did not
feel much enlightened. Letty had not the logic necessary to the
thinking of the thing out; or to the discovery that, like most social
difficulties, hers was merely one of the upper strata of a question
whose foundation lies far too deep for what is called Society to
perceive its very existence. And hence it is no wonder that Society,
abetted by the Church, should go on from generation to generation
talking murderous platitudes about it.

But, although such was her reasoning beforehand, heart had so far
overcome habit and prejudice with Mrs. Wardour, that, convinced on the
first interview of the high tone and good influence of Mary, she had
gradually come to put herself in the way of seeing her as often as she
came, ostensibly to herself that she might prevent any deterioration of
intercourse; and although she always, on these occasions, played the
grand lady, with a stateliness that seemed to say, "Because of your
individual worth, I condescend, and make an exception, but you must not
imagine I receive your class at Thornwick," she had almost entirely
ceased making remarks upon the said class in Letty's hearing.

On her part, Letty had by this time grown so intimate with Mary as to
open with her the question upon which her aunt had given her so little
satisfaction; and this same Sunday afternoon, as they sat in the arbor
at the end of the long yew hedge in the old garden, it had come up
again between them; for, set thinking by Letty's bewilderment, Mary had
gone on thinking, and had at length laid hold of the matter, at least
by the end that belonged to _her_.

"I can not consent, Letty," she said, "to trouble my mind about it as
you do. I can not afford it. Society is neither my master nor my
servant, neither my father nor my sister; and so long as she does not
bar my way to the kingdom of heaven, which is the only society worth
getting into, I feel no right to complain of how she treats me. I have
no claim on her; I do not acknowledge her laws--hardly her existence,
and she has no authority over me. Why should she, how could she,
constituted as she is, receive such as me? The moment she did so, she
would cease to be what she is; and, if all be true that one hears of
her, she does me a kindness in excluding me. What can it matter to me,
Letty, whether they call me a lady or not, so long as Jesus says
_Daughter_ to me? It reminds me of what I heard my father say once to
Mr. Turnbull, when he had been protesting that none but church people
ought to be buried in the churchyards. 'I don't care a straw about it,
Mr. Turnbull,' he said. 'The Master was buried in a garden.'--'Ah, but
you see things are different now,' said Mr. Turnbull.--'I don't hang by
things, but by my Master. It is enough for the disciple that he should
be as his Master,' said my father.--'Besides, you don't think it of any
real consequence yourself, or you would never want to keep your
brothers and sisters out of such nice quiet places!'--Mr. Turnbull gave
his kind of grunt, and said no more."

After passing Mary, Mr. Wardour did not go very far before he began to
slacken his pace; a moment or two more and he suddenly wheeled round,
and began to walk back toward Thornwick. Two things had combined to
produce this change of purpose--the first, the state of his boots,
which, beginning to dry in the sun and wind as he walked, grew more and
more hideous at the end of his new gray trousers; the other, the
occurring suspicion that the girl must be Letty's new shopkeeping
friend, Miss Marston, on her way to visit her. What a sweet, simple
young woman she was! he thought; and straightway began to argue with
himself that, as his boots were in such evil plight, it would be more
pleasant to spend the evening with Letty and her friend, than to hold
on his way to his own friend's, and spend the evening smoking and
lounging about the stable, or hearing his sister play polkas and
mazurkas all the still Sunday twilight.

Mary had, of course, upon her arrival, narrated her small adventure,
and the conversation had again turned upon Godfrey just as he was
nearing the house.

"How handsome your cousin is!" said Mary, with the simplicity natural
to her.

"Do you think so?" returned Letty.

"Don't _you_ think so?" rejoined Mary.

"I have never thought about it," answered Letty.

"He looks so manly, and has such a straightforward way with him!" said
Mary.

"What one sees every day, she may feel in a sort of take-for-granted
way, without thinking about it," said Letty. "But, to tell the truth, I
should feel it as impertinent of me to criticise Cousin Godfrey's
person as to pass an opinion on one of the books he reads. I can not
express the reverence I have for Cousin Godfrey."

"I don't wonder," replied Mary. "There is that about him one could
trust."

"There is that about him," returned Letty, "makes me afraid of him--I
can not tell why. And yet, though everybody, even his mother, is as
anxious to please him as if he were an emperor, he is the easiest
person to please in the whole house. Not that he tells you he is
pleased; he only smiles; but that is quite enough."

"But I suppose he talks to you sometimes?" said Mary.

"Oh, yes--now. He used not; but I think he does now more than to
anybody else. It was a long time before he began, though. Now he is
always giving me something to read. I wish he wouldn't; it frightens me
dreadfully. He always questions me, to know whether I understand what I
read."

Letty ended with a little cry. Through the one narrow gap in the yew
hedge, near to the arbor, Godfrey had entered the walk, and was coming
toward them.

He was a well-made man, thirty years of age, rather tall, sun-tanned,
and bearded, with wavy brown hair, and gentle approach. His features
were not regular, but that is of little consequence where there is
unity. His face indicated faculty and feeling, and there was much good
nature, shadowed with memorial suffering, in the eyes which shone so
blue out of the brown.

Mary rose respectfully as he drew near.

"What treason were you talking, Letty, that you were so startled at
sight of me?" he said, with a smile. "You were complaining of me as a
hard master, were you not?"

"No, indeed, Cousin Godfrey!" answered Letty energetically, not without
tremor, and coloring as she spoke. "I was only saying I could not help
being frightened when you asked me questions about what I had been
reading. I am so stupid, you know!"

"Pardon me, Letty," returned her cousin, "I know nothing of the sort.
Allow me to say you are very far from stupid. Nobody can understand
everything at first sight. But you have not introduced me to your
friend."

Letty bashfully murmured the names of the two.

"I guessed as much," said Wardour. "Pray sit down, Miss Marston. For
the sake of your dresses, I will go and change my boots. May I come and
join you after?"

"Please do, Cousin Godfrey; and bring something to read to us," said
Letty, who wanted her friend to admire her cousin. "It's Sunday, you
know."

"Why you should be afraid of him, I can't think," said Mary, when his
retreating steps had ceased to sound on the gravel. "He is delightful!"

"I don't like to look stupid," said Letty.

"I shouldn't mind how stupid I looked so long as I was learning,"
returned Mary. "I wonder you never told me about him!"

"I couldn't talk about Cousin Godfrey," said Letty; and a pause
followed.

"How good of him to come to us again!" said Mary. "What will he read to
us?"

"Most likely something out of a book you never heard of before, and
can't remember the name of when you have heard it--at least that's the
way with me. I wonder if he will talk to you, Mary? I should like to
hear how Cousin Godfrey talks to girls."

"Why, you know how he talks to you," said Mary.

"Oh, but I am only Cousin Letty! He can talk anyhow to me."

"By your own account he talks to you in the best possible way."

"Yes; I dare say; but--"

"But what?"

"I can't help wishing sometimes he would talk a little nonsense. It
would be such a relief. I am sure I should understand better if he
would. I shouldn't be so frightened at him then."

"The way I generally hear gentlemen talk to girls makes me
ashamed--makes me feel as if I must ask, 'Is it that you are a fool, or
that you take that girl for one?' They never talk so to me."

Letty sat pulling a jonquil to pieces. She looked up. Her eyes were
full of thought, but she paused a long time before she spoke, and, when
she did, it was only to say:

"I fear, Mary, I should take any man for a fool who took me for
anything else."

Letty was a rather small and rather freckled girl, with the daintiest
of rounded figures, a good forehead, and fine clear brown eyes. Her
mouth was not pretty, except when she smiled--and she did not smile
often. When she did, it was not unfrequently with the tears in her
eyes, and then she looked lovely. In her manner there was an
indescribably taking charm, of which it is not easy to give an
impression; but I think it sprang from a constitutional humility,
partly ruined into a painful and haunting sense of inferiority, for
which she imagined herself to blame. Hence there dwelt in her eyes an
appeal which few hearts could resist. When they met another's, they
seemed to say: "I am nobody; but you need not kill me; I am not
pretending to be anybody. I will try to do what you want, but I am not
clever. Only I am sorry for it. Be gentle with me." To Godfrey, at
least, her eyes spoke thus.

In ten minutes or so he reappeared, far at the other end of the
yew-walk, approaching slowly, with a book, in which he seemed
thoughtfully searching as he came. When they saw him the girls
instinctively moved farther from each other, making large room for him
between them, and when he came up he silently took the place thus
silently assigned him.

"I am going to try your brains now, Letty," he said, and tapped the
book with a finger.

"Oh, please don't!" pleaded Letty, as if he had been threatening her
with a small amputation, or the loss of a front tooth.

"Yes," he persisted; "and not your brains only, Letty, but your heart,
and all that is in you."

At this even Mary could not help feeling a little frightened; and she
was glad there was no occasion for her to speak.

With just a word of introduction, Godfrey read Carlyle's translation of
that finest of Jean Paul's dreams in which he sets forth the condition
of a godless universe all at once awakened to the knowledge of the
causelessness of its own existence. Slowly, with due inflection and
emphasis--slowly, but without pause for thought or explanation--he read
to the end, ceased suddenly, and lifted his eyes.

"There, Letty," he said, "what do you think of that? There's a bit of
Sunday reading for you!"

Letty was looking altogether perplexed, and not a little frightened.

"I don't understand a word of it," she answered, gulping back her
tears. He glanced at Mary. She was white as death, her lips quivered,
and from her eyes shot a keen light that seemed to lacerate their blue.

"It is terrible!" she said. "I never read anything like that."

"There _is_ nothing like it," he answered.

"But the author is a Unitarian, is he not?" remarked Mary--for she
heard plenty of theology, if not much Christianity, in her chapel.

Godfrey looked at her, then at the book for a moment.

"That may merely seem, from the necessity of the supposition," he
answered; and read again:

"'Now sank from aloft a noble, high Form, with a look of uneffaceable
sorrow, down to the Altar, and all the Dead cried out, "Christ! is
there no God?" He answered, "There is none!" The whole Shadow of each
then shuddered, not the breast alone; and one after the other all, in
this shuddering, shook into pieces.'--"You see," he went on, "that if
there be no God, Christ can only be the first of men."

"I understand," said Mary.

"Do you really then, Mary?" said Letty, looking at her with wondering
admiration.

"I only meant," answered Mary--"but," she went on, interrupting
herself, "I do think I understand it a little. If Mr. Wardour would be
kind enough to read it through again!"

"With much pleasure," answered Godfrey, casting on her a glance of
pleased surprise.

The second reading affected Mary more than the first--because, of
course, she took in more. And this time a glimmer of meaning broke on
the slower mind of Letty: as her cousin read the passage, "Oh, then
came, fearful for the heart, the dead Children who had been awakened in
the Churchyard, into the temple, and cast themselves before the high
Form on the Altar, and said, 'Jesus, have we no Father?' And he
answered, with streaming tears: 'We are all orphans, I and you; we are
without Father!'"--at this point Letty gave her little cry, then bit
her lip, as if she had said something wrong.

All the time a great bee kept buzzing in and out of the arbor, and Mary
vaguely wondered how it could be so careless.

"I can't be dead stupid after all, Cousin Godfrey," said Letty, with
broken voice, when once more he ceased, and, as she spoke, she pressed
her hand on her heart, "for something kept going through and through
me; but I can not say yet I understand it.--If you will lend me the
book," she continued, "I will read it over again before I go to bed."

He shut the volume, handed it to her, and began to talk about something
else.

Mary rose to go.

"You will take tea with us, I hope, Miss Marston," said Godfrey.

But Mary would not. What she had heard was working in her mind with a
powerful fermentation, and she longed to be alone. In the fields, as
she walked, she would come to an understanding with herself.

She knew almost nothing of the higher literature, and felt like a
dreamer who, in the midst of a well-known and ordinary landscape, comes
without warning upon the mighty cone of a mountain, or the breaking
waters of a boundless ocean.

"If one could but get hold of such things, what a glorious life it
would be!" she thought. She had looked into a world beyond the present,
and already in the present all things were new. The sun set as she had
never seen him set before; it was only in gray and gold, with scarce a
touch of purple and rose; the wind visited her cheek like a living
thing, and loved her; the skylarks had more than reason in their
jubilation. For the first time she heard the full chord of intellectual
and emotional delight. What a place her chamber would be, if she could
there read such things! How easy would it be then to bear the troubles
of the hour, the vulgar humor of Mr. Turnbull, and the tiresome
attentions of George! Would Mr. Wardour lend her the book? Had he other
books as good? Were there many books to make one's heart go as that one
did? She would save every penny to buy such books, if indeed such
treasures were within her reach! Under the enchantment of her first
literary joy, she walked home like one intoxicated with opium--a being
possessed for the time with the awful imagination of a grander soul,
and reveling in the presence of her loftier kin.




CHAPTER IV.

GODFREY WARDOUR.


The property of which Thornwick once formed a part was then large and
important; but it had, by not very slow degrees, generation following
generation of unthrift, dwindled and shrunk and shriveled, until at
last it threatened to disappear from the family altogether, like a
spark upon burnt paper. Then came one into possession who had some
element of salvation in him; Godfrey's father not only held the poor
remnant together, but, unable to add to it, improved it so greatly that
at length, in the midst of the large properties around, it resembled
the diamond that hearts a disk of inferior stones. Doubtless, could he
have used his wife's money, he would have spent it on land; but it was
under trustees for herself and her children, and indeed would not have
gone far in the purchase of English soil.

Considerably advanced in years before he thought of marrying, he died
while Godfrey, whom he intended bringing up to a profession, was yet a
child; and his widow, carrying out his intention, had educated the boy
with a view to the law. Godfrey, however, had positively declined
entering on the studies special to a career he detested; nor was it
difficult to reconcile his mother to the enforced change of idea, when
she found that his sole desire was to settle down with her, and manage
the two hundred acres his father had left him. He took his place in the
county, therefore, as a yeoman-farmer--none the less a gentleman by
descent, character, and education. But while in genuine culture and
refinement the superior of all the landed proprietors in the
neighborhood, and knowing it, he was the superior of most of them in
this also, that he counted it no derogation from the dignity he valued
to put his hands upon occasion to any piece of work required about the
place.

His nature was too large, however, and its needs therefore too many, to
allow of his spending his energies on the property; and he did not
brood over such things as, so soon as they become cares, become
despicable. How much time is wasted in what is called thought, but is
merely care--an anxious idling over the fancied probabilities of
result! Of this fault, I say, Godfrey was not guilty--more, however, I
must confess, from healthful drawings in other directions, than from
philosophy or wisdom: he was _a reader_--not in the sense of a man who
derives intensest pleasure from the absorption of intellectual
pabulum--one not necessarily so superior as some imagine to the
_gourmet_, or even the _gourmand_: in his reading Godfrey nourished
certain of the higher tendencies of his nature--read with a constant
reference to his own views of life, and the confirmation, change, or
enlargement of his theories of the same; but neither did he read with
the highest aim of all--the enlargement of reverence, obedience, and
faith; for he had never turned his face full in the direction of
infinite growth--the primal end of a man's being, who is that he may
return to the Father, gathering his truth as he goes. Yet by the simple
instincts of a soul undebased by self-indulgence or low pursuits, he
was drawn ever toward things lofty and good; and life went calmly on,
bearing Godfrey Wardour toward middle age, unruffled either by anxiety
or ambition.

To the forecasting affection of a mother, the hour when she must yield
the first place both in her son's regards and in the house-affairs
could not but have often presented itself, in doubt and pain--perhaps
dread. Only as year after year passed and Godfrey revealed no tendency
toward marriage, her anxiety changed sides, and she began to fear lest
with Godfrey the ancient family should come to an end. As yet, however,
finding no response to covert suggestion, she had not ventured to speak
openly to him on the subject. All the time, I must add, she had never
thought of Letty either as thwarting or furthering her desires, for in
truth she felt toward her as one on whom Godfrey could never condescend
to look, save with the kindness suitable for one immeasurably below
him. As to what might pass in Letty's mind, Mrs. Wardour had neither
curiosity nor care: else she might possibly have been more considerate
than to fall into the habit of talking to her in such swelling words of
maternal pride that, even if she had not admired him of herself, Letty
could hardly escape coming to regard her cousin Godfrey as the very
first of men.

It added force to the veneration of both mother and cousin--for it was
nothing less than veneration in either--that there was about Godfrey an
air of the inexplicable, or at least the unknown, and therefore
mysterious. This the elder woman, not without many a pang at her
exclusion from his confidence, attributed, and correctly, to some
passage in his life at the university; to the younger it appeared only
as greatness self-veiled from the ordinary world: to such as she, could
be vouchsafed only an occasional peep into the gulf of his knowledge,
the grandeur of his intellect, and the imperturbability of his courage.

The passage in Godfrey's life to which I have referred as vaguely
suspected by his mother, I need not present in more than merest
outline: it belongs to my history only as a component part of the soil
whence it springs, and as in some measure necessary to the
understanding of Godfrey's character. In the last year of his college
life he had formed an attachment, the precise nature of which I do not
know. What I do know is, that the bonds of it were rudely broken, and
of the story nothing remained but disappointment and pain, doubt and
distrust. Godfrey had most likely cherished an overweening notion of
the relative value of the love he gave; but being his, I am certain it
was genuine--by that, I mean a love with no small element of the
everlasting in it. The woman who can cast such a love from her is not
likely to meet with such another. But with this one I have nothing to
do.

It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart, but in
that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the keener in
consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine, which no stranger
could have suspected beneath the manner he wore. Under that bronzed
countenance, with its firm-set mouth and powerful jaw--below that clear
blue eye, and that upright easy carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted
by a sense of wrong: he who is not perfect in forgiveness must be
haunted thus; he only is free whose love for the human is so strong
that he can pardon the individual sin; he alone can pray the prayer,
"Forgive us our trespasses," out of a full heart. Forgiveness is the
only cure of wrong. And hand in hand with Sense-of-injury walks ever
the weak sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many--both of
them the children of Philautos, not of Agape. But there was no hate, no
revenge, in Godfrey, and, I repeat, his weakness he kept concealed. It
must have been in his eyes, but eyes are hard to read. For the rest,
his was a strong poetic nature--a nature which half unconsciously
turned ever toward the best, away from the mean judgments of common
men, and with positive loathing from the ways of worldly women. Never
was peace endangered between his mother and him, except when she
chanced to make use of some evil maxim which she thought experience had
taught her, and the look her son cast upon her stung her to the heart,
making her for a moment feel as if she had sinned what the theologians
call the unpardonable sin. When he rose and walked from the room
without a word, she would feel as if abandoned to her wickedness, and
be miserable until she saw him again. Something like a spring-cleaning
would begin and go on in her for some time after, and her eyes would
every now and then steal toward her judge with a glance of awe and
fearful apology. But, however correct Godfrey might be in his judgment
of the worldly, that judgment was less inspired by the harmonies of the
universe than by the discords that had jarred his being and the
poisonous shocks he had received in the encounter of the noble with the
ignoble. There was yet in him a profound need of redemption into the
love of the truth for the truth's sake. He had the fault of thinking
too well of himself--which who has not who thinks of himself at all,
apart from his relation to the holy force of life, within yet beyond
him? It was the almost unconscious, assuredly the undetected,
self-approbation of the ordinarily righteous man, the defect of whose
righteousness makes him regard himself as upright, but the virtue of
whose uprightness will at length disclose to his astonished view how
immeasurably short of rectitude he comes. At the age of thirty, Godfrey
Wardour had not yet become so displeased with himself as to turn
self-roused energy upon betterment; and until then all growth must be
of doubtful result. The point on which the swift-revolving top of his
thinking and feeling turned was as yet his present conscious self, as a
thing that was and would be, not as a thing that had to become.
Naturally the pivot had worn a socket, and such socket is sure to be a
sore. His friends notwithstanding gave him credit for great
imperturbability; but in such willfully undemonstrative men the evil
burrows the more insidiously that it is masked by a constrained
exterior.




CHAPTER V.

GODFREY AND LETTY.


Godfrey, being an Englishman, and with land of his own, could not fail
to be fond of horses. For his own use he kept two--an indulgence
disproportioned to his establishment; for, although precise in his
tastes as to equine toilet, he did not feel justified in the keeping of
a groom for their use only. Hence it came that, now and then, strap and
steel, as well as hide and hoof, would get partially neglected; and his
habits in the use of his horses being fitful--sometimes, it would be
midnight even, when he scoured from his home, seeking the comfort of
desert as well as solitary places--it is not surprising if at times,
going to the stable to saddle one, he should find its gear not in the
spick-and-span condition alone to his mind. It might then well happen
there was no one near to help him, and there be nothing for it but to
put his own hands to the work: he was too just to rouse one who might
be nowise to blame, or send a maid to fetch him from field or barn,
where he might be more importantly engaged.

One night, meaning to start for a long ride early in the morning, he
had gone to the stable to see how things were; and, soon after, it
happened that Letty, attending to some duty before going to bed, caught
sight of him cleaning his stirrups: from that moment she took upon
herself the silent and unsuspected supervision of the harness-room,
where, when she found any part of the riding-equipments neglected, she
would draw a pair of housemaid's gloves on her pretty hands, and polish
away like a horse-boy.

Godfrey had begun to remark how long it was since he had found anything
unfit, and to wonder at the improvement somewhere in the establishment,
when, going hastily one morning, some months before the date of my
narrative, into the harness-room to get a saddle, he came upon Letty,
who had imagined him afield with the men: she was energetic upon a
stirrup with a chain-polisher. He started back in amazement, but she
only looked up and smiled.

"I shall have done in a moment, Cousin Godfrey," she said, and polished
away harder than before.

"But, Letty! I can't allow you to do things like that. What on earth
put it in your head? Work like that is only for horny hands."

"Your hands ain't horny, Cousin Godfrey. They may be a little harder
than mine--they wouldn't be much good if they weren't--but they're no
fitter by nature to clean stirrups. Is it for me to sit with mine in my
lap, and yours at this? I know better."

"Why shouldn't I clean my own harness, Letty, if I like?" said Godfrey,
who could not help feeling pleased as well as annoyed; in this one
moment Letty had come miles nearer him.

"Oh, surely! if you like, Cousin Godfrey," she answered; "but do you
like?"

"Better than to see you doing it."

"But not better than I like to do it; that I am sure of. It is hands
that write poetry that are not fit for work like this."

"How do you know I write poetry?" asked Godfrey, displeased, for she
touched here a sensitive spot.

"Oh, don't be angry with me!" she said, letting the stirrup fall on the
floor, and clasping her great wash-leather gloves together; "I couldn't
help seeing it was poetry, for it lay on the table when I went to do
your room."

"Do my room, Letty! Does my mother--?"

"She doesn't want to make a fine lady of me, and I shouldn't like it if
she did. I have no head, but I have pretty good hands. Of course,
Cousin Godfrey, I didn't read a word of the poetry. I daredn't do that,
however much I might have wished."

A childlike simplicity looked out of the clear eyes and sounded in the
swift words of the maiden; and, had Godfrey's heart been as hard as the
stirrup she had dropped, it could not but be touched by her devotion.
He was at the same time not a little puzzled how to carry himself.
Letty had picked up the stirrup, and was again hard at work with it; to
take it from her, and turn her out of the saddle-room, would scarcely
be a proper way of thanking her, scarcely an adequate mode of revealing
his estimate of the condescension of her ladyhood. For, although Letty
did make beds and chose to clean harness, Godfrey was gentleman enough
not to think her less of a lady--for the moment at least--because of
such doings: I will not say he had got so far on in the great doctrine
concerning the washing of hands as to be able to think her _more_ of a
lady for thus cleaning his stirrups. But he did see that to set the
fire-engine of indignant respect for womankind playing on the
individual woman was not the part of the man to whose service she was
humbling herself. He laid his hand on her bent head, and said:

"I ought to be a knight of the old times, Letty, to have a lady serve
me so."

"You're just as good, Cousin Godfrey," she rejoined, rubbing away.

He turned from her, and left her at her work.

He had taken no real notice of the girl before--had felt next to no
interest in her. Neither did he feel much now, save as owing her
something beyond mere acknowledgment. But was there anything now he
could do for her--anything in her he could help? He did not know. What
she really was, he could not tell. She was a fresh, bright girl--that
he seemed to have just discovered; and, as she sat polishing the
stirrup, her hair shaken about her shoulders, she looked engaging; but
whether she was one he could do anything for that was worth doing, was
hardly the less a question for those discoveries.

"There must be _something_ in the girl!" he said to himself--then
suddenly reflected that he had never seen a book in her hand, except
her prayer-book; how _was_ he to do anything for a girl like that? For
Godfrey knew no way of doing people good without the intervention of
books. How could he get near one that had no taste for the quintessence
of humanity? How was he to offer her the only help he had, when she
desired no such help? "But," he continued, reflecting further, "she may
have thirsted, may even now be athirst, without knowing that books are
the bottles of the water of life!" Perhaps, if he could make her drink
once, she would drink again. The difficulty was, to find out what sort
of spiritual drink would be most to her taste, and would most entice
her to more. There must be some seeds lying cold and hard in her
uncultured garden; what water would soonest make them grow? Not all the
waters of Damascus will turn mere sand sifted of eternal winds into
fruitful soil; but Letty's soul could not be such. And then literature
has seed to sow as well as water for the seed sown. Letty's foolish
words about the hands that wrote poetry showed a shadow of respect for
poetry--except, indeed, the girl had been but making game of him, which
he was far from ready to believe, and for which, he said to himself,
her face was at the time much too earnest, and her hands much too busy;
he must find out whether she had any instincts, any predilections, in
the matter of poetry!

Thus pondering, he forgot all about his projected ride, and, going up
to the study he had contrived for himself in the rambling roof of the
ancient house, began looking along the backs of his books, in search of
some suggestion of how to approach Letty; his glance fell on a
beautifully bound volume of verse--a selection of English lyrics, made
with tolerable judgment--which he had bought to give, but the very
color of which, every time his eye flitting along the book-shelves
caught it, threw a faint sickness over his heart, preluding the memory
of old pain and loss:

"It may as well serve some one," he said, and, taking it down, carried
it with him to the saddle-room.

Letty was not there, and the perfect order of the place somehow made
him feel she had been gone some time. He went in search of her; she
might be in the dairy.

That was the very picture of an old-fashioned English
dairy--green-shadowy, dark, dank, and cool--floored with great
irregular slabs, mostly of green serpentine, polished into smooth
hollows by the feet of generations of mistresses and dairy-maids. Its
only light came through a small window shaded with shrubs and ivy,
which stood open, and let in the scents of bud and blossom, weaving a
net of sweetness in the gloom, through which, like a silver thread,
shot the twittering song of a bird, which had inherited the gathered
carelessness and bliss of a long ancestry in God's aviary.

Godfrey came softly to the door, which he found standing ajar, and
peeped in. There stood Letty, warm and bright in the middle of the
dusky coolness. She had changed her dress since he saw her, and now, in
a pink-rosebud print, with the sleeves tucked above her elbows, was
skimming the cream in a great red-brown earthen pan. He pushed the door
a little, and, at its screech along the uneven floor, Letty's head
turned quickly on her lithe neck, and she saw Godfrey's brown face and
kind blue eyes where she had never seen them before. In his hand glowed
the book: some of the stronger light from behind him fell on it, and it
caught her eyes.

"Letty," he said, "I have just come upon this book in my library: would
you care to have it?"

"You don't mean to keep for my own, Cousin Godfrey?" cried Letty, in
sweet, childish fashion, letting the skimmer dive like a coot to the
bottom of the milk-pool, and hastily wiping her hands in her apron. Her
face had flushed rosy with pleasure, and grew rosier and brighter still
as she took the rich morocco-bound thing from Godfrey's hand into her
own. Daintily she peeped within the boards, and the gilding of the
leaves responded in light to her smile.

"Poetry!" she cried, in a tone of delight. "Is it really for me, Cousin
Godfrey? Do you think I shall be able to understand it?"

"You can soon settle that question for yourself," answered Godfrey,
with a pleased smile--for he augured well from this reception of his
gift--and turned to leave the dairy.

"But, Cousin Godfrey--please!" she called after him, "you don't give me
time to thank you."

"That will do when you are certain you care for it," he returned.

"I care for it very _much_!" she replied.

"How can you say that, when you don't know yet whether you will
understand it or not?" he rejoined, and closed the door.

Letty stood motionless, the book in her hand illuminating the dusk with
gold, and warming its coolness with its crimson boards and silken
linings. One poem after another she read, nor knew how the time passed,
until the voice of her aunt in her ears warned her to finish her
skimming, and carry the jug to the pantry. But already Letty had taken
a little cream off the book also, and already, between the time she
entered and the time she left the dairy, had taken besides a fresh
start in spiritual growth.

The next day Godfrey took an opportunity of asking her whether she had
found in the book anything she liked. To his disappointment she
mentioned one of the few commonplace things the collection contained--a
last-century production, dull and respectable, which, surely, but for
the glamour of some pleasant association, the editor would never have
included. Happily, however, he bethought himself in time not to tell
her the thing was worthless: such a word, instead of chipping the shell
in which the girl's faculty lay dormant, would have smashed the whole
egg into a miserable albuminous mass. And he was well rewarded; for,
the same day, in the evening, he heard her singing gayly over her work,
and listening discovered that she was singing verse after verse of one
of the best ballads in the whole book. She had chosen with the fancy of
pleasing Godfrey; she sang to please herself. After this discovery he
set himself in earnest to the task of developing her intellectual life,
and, daily almost, grew more interested in the endeavor. His main
object was to make her think; and for the high purpose, chiefly but not
exclusively, he employed verse.

The main obstacle to success he soon discovered to be Letty's exceeding
distrust of herself. I would not be mistaken to mean that she had too
little confidence in herself; of that no one can have too little.
Self-distrust will only retard, while self-confidence will betray. The
man ignorant in these things will answer me, "But you must have one or
the other." "You must have neither," I reply. "You must follow the
truth, and, in that pursuit, the less one thinks about himself, the
pursuer, the better. Let him so hunger and thirst after the truth that
the dim vision of it occupies all his being, and leaves no time to
think of his hunger and his thirst. Self-forgetfulness in the reaching
out after that which is essential to us is the healthiest of mental
conditions. One has to look to his way, to his deeds, to his
conduct--not to himself. In such losing of the false, or merely
reflected, we find the true self. There is no harm in being stupid, so
long as a man does not think himself clever; no good in being clever,
if a man thinks himself so, for that is a short way to the worst
stupidity. If you think yourself clever, set yourself to do something;
then you will have a chance of humiliation."

With good faculties, and fine instincts, Letty was always thinking she
must be wrong, just because it was she was in it--a lovely fault, no
doubt, but a fault greatly impeditive to progress, and tormenting to a
teacher. She got on very fairly in spite of it, however; and her
devotion to Godfrey, as she felt herself growing in his sight,
increased almost to a passion. Do not misunderstand me, my reader. If I
say anything grows to a passion, I mean, of course, the passion of that
thing, not of something else. Here I no more mean that her devotion
became what in novels is commonly called love, than, if I said ambition
or avarice had grown to a passion, I should mean those vices had
changed to love. Godfrey Wardour was at least ten years older than
Letty; besides him, she had not a single male relative in this
world--neither had she mother or sister on whom to let out her heart;
while of Mrs. Wardour, who was more severe on her than on any one else,
she was not a little afraid: from these causes it came that Cousin
Godfrey grew and grew in Letty's imagination, until he was to her
everything great and good--her idea of him naturally growing as she
grew herself under his influences. To her he was the heart of wisdom,
the head of knowledge, the arm of strength.

But her worship was quiet, as the worship of maiden, in whatever kind,
ought to be. She knew nothing of what is called love except as a word,
and from sympathy with the persons in the tales she read. Any remotest
suggestion of its existence in her relation to Godfrey she would have
resented as the most offensive impertinence--an accusation of
impossible irreverence.

By degrees Godfrey came to understand, but then only in a measure, with
what a self-refusing, impressionable nature he was dealing; and, as he
saw, he became more generous toward her, more gentle and delicate in
his ministration. Of necessity he grew more and more interested in her,
especially after he had made the discovery that the moment she laid
hold of a truth--the moment, that is, when it was no longer another's
idea but her own perception--it began to sprout in her in all
directions of practice. By nature she was not intellectually quick;
but, because such was her character, the ratio of her progress was of
necessity an increasing one.

If Godfrey had seen in his new relation to Letty a possibility of the
revival of feelings he had supposed for ever extinguished, such a
possibility would have borne to him purely the aspect of danger; at the
mere idea of again falling in love he would have sickened with dismay;
and whether or not he had any dread of such a catastrophe, certain it
is that he behaved to her more as a pedagogue than a cousinly tutor,
insisting on a precision in all she did that might have gone far to
rouse resentment and recoil in the mind of a less childlike woman. Just
as surely, notwithstanding all that, however, did the sweet girl grow
into his heart: it _could_ not be otherwise. The idea of her was making
a nest for itself in his soul--what kind of a nest for long he did not
know, and for long did not think to inquire. Living thus, like an elder
brother with a much younger sister, he was more than satisfied,
refusing, it may be, to regard the probability of intruding change. But
how far any man and woman may have been made capable of loving without
falling in love, can be answered only after question has yielded to
history. In the mean time, Mrs. Wardour, who would have been indignant
at the notion of any equal bond between her idolized son and her
patronized cousin, neither saw, nor heard, nor suspected anything to
rouse uneasiness.

Things were thus in the old house, when the growing affection of Letty
for Mary Marston took form one day in the request that she would make
Thornwick the goal of her Sunday walk. She repented, it is true, the
moment she had said the words, from dread of her aunt; but they had
been said, and were accepted. Mary went, and the aunt difficulty had
been got over. The friendship of Godfrey also had now run into that of
the girls, and Mary's visits were continued with pleasure to all, and
certainly with no little profit to herself; for, where the higher
nature can not communicate the greater benefit, it will reap it. Her
Sunday visit became to Mary the one foraging expedition of the
week--that which going to church ought to be, and so seldom can be.

The beginning and main-stay of her spiritual life was, as we have seen,
her father, in whom she believed absolutely. From books and sermons she
had got little good; for in neither kind had the best come nigh her.
She did very nearly her best to obey, but without much perceiving the
splendor of the thing required, or much feeling its might upon her own
eternal nature. She was as yet, in relation to the gospel, much as the
Jews were in relation to their law; they had not yet learned the gospel
of their law, and she was yet only serving the law of the gospel. But
she was making progress, in simple and pure virtue of her obedience.
Show me the person ready to step from any, let it be the narrowest,
sect of Christian Pharisees into a freer and holier air, and I shall
look to find in that person the one of that sect who, in the midst of
its darkness and selfish worldliness, mistaken for holiness, has been
living a life more obedient than the rest.

And now was sent Godfrey to her aid, a teacher himself far behind his
pupil, inasmuch as he was more occupied with what he was, than what he
had to become: the weakest may be sent to give the strongest saving
help; even the foolish may mediate between the wise and the wiser; and
Godfrey presented Mary to men greater than himself, whom in a short
time she would understand even better than he. Book after book he lent
her--now and then gave her one of the best--introducing her, with no
special intention, to much in the way of religion that was good in the
way of literature as well. Only where he delighted mainly in the
literature, she delighted more in the religion. Some of my readers will
be able to imagine what it must have been to a capable, clear-thinking,
warm-hearted, loving soul like Mary, hitherto in absolute ignorance of
any better religious poetry than the chapel hymn-book afforded her, to
make acquaintance with George Herbert, with Henry Vaughan, with Giles
Fletcher, with Richard Crashaw, with old Mason, not to mention Milton,
and afterward our own Father Newman and Father Faber.

But it was by no means chiefly upon such that Godfrey led the talk on
the Sunday afternoons. A lover of all truly imaginative literature, his
knowledge of it was large, nor confined to that of his own country,
although that alone was at present available for either of his pupils.
His seclusion from what is called the world had brought him into larger
and closer contact with what is really the world. The breakers upon
reef and shore may be the ocean to some, but he who would know the
ocean indeed must leave them afar, sinking into silence, and sail into
wider and lonelier spaces. Through Godfrey, Mary came to know of a land
never promised, yet open--a land of whose nature even she had never
dreamed--a land of the spirit, flowing with milk and honey--a land of
which the fashionable world knows little more than the dwellers in the
back slums, although it imagines it lying, with the kingdoms of the
earth, at its feet.

As regards her feeling toward her new friend, this opener of unseen
doors, the greatness of her obligation to him wrought against
presumption and any possible folly. Besides, Mary was one who possessed
power over her own spirit--rare gift, given to none but those who do
something toward the taking of it. She was able in no small measure to
order her own thoughts. Without any theory of self-rule, she yet ruled
her Self. She was not one to slip about in the saddle, or let go the
reins for a kick and a plunge or two. There was the thing that should
be, and the thing that should not be; the thing that was reasonable,
and the thing that was absurd. Add to all this, that she believed she
saw in Mr. Wardour's behavior to his cousin, in the careful gentleness
evident through all the severity of the schoolmaster, the presence of a
deeper feeling, that might one day blossom to the bliss of her
friend--and we need not wonder if Mary's heart remained calm in the
very floods of its gratitude; while the truth she gathered by aid of
the intercourse, enlarging her strength, enlarged likewise the
composure that comes of strength. She did not even trouble herself much
to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it,
by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks
for a good thing.

Nor was Godfrey without payment for what he did: the revival of ancient
benefits, a new spring-time of old flowers, and the fresh quickening of
one's own soul, are the spiritual wages of every spiritual service. In
giving, a man receives more than he gives, and the _more_ is in
proportion to the worth of the thing given.

Mary did not encourage Letty to call at the shop, because the rudeness
of the Turnbulls was certain to break out on her departure, as it did
one day that Godfrey, dismounting at the door, and entering the shop in
quest of something for his mother, naturally shook hands with Mary over
the counter. No remark was made so long as her father was in the shop,
for, with all their professed contempt of him and his ways, the
Turnbulls stood curiously in awe of him: no one could tell what he
might or might not do, seeing they did not in the least understand him;
and there were reasons for avoiding offense.

But the moment he retired, which he always did earlier than the rest,
the small-arms of the enemy began to go off, causing Mary a burning
cheek and indignant heart. Yet the great desire of Mr. Turnbull was a
match between George and Mary, for that would, whatever might happen,
secure the Marston money to the business. Their evil report Mary did
not carry to her father. She scorned to trouble his lofty nature with
her small annoyances; neither could they long keep down the wellspring
of her own peace, which, deeper than anger could reach, soon began to
rise again fresh in her spirit, fed from that water of life which
underlies all care. In a few moments it had cooled her cheek, stilled
her heart, and washed the wounds of offense.




CHAPTER VI.

TOM HELMER.


When Tom Helmer's father died, his mother, who had never been able to
manage him, sent him to school to get rid of him, lamented his absence
till he returned, then writhed and fretted under his presence until
again he went. Never thereafter did those two, mother and son, meet,
whether from a separation of months or of hours, without at once
tumbling into an obstinate difference. When the youth was at home,
their sparring, to call it by a mild name, went on from morning to
night, and sometimes almost from night to morning. Primarily, of
course, the fault lay with the mother; and things would have gone far
worse, had not the youth, along with the self-will of his mother,
inherited his father's good nature. At school he was a great favorite,
and mostly had his own way, both with boys and masters, for, although a
fool, he was a pleasant fool, clever, fond of popularity, and
complaisant with everybody--except always his mother, the merest word
from whom would at once rouse all the rebel in his blood. In person he
was tall and loosely knit, with large joints and extremities. His face
was handsome and vivacious, expressing far more than was in him to
express, and giving ground for expectation such as he had never met. He
was by no means an ill-intentioned fellow, preferred doing well and
acting fairly, and neither at school nor at college had got into any
serious scrape. But he had never found it imperative to reach out after
his own ideal of duty. He had never been worthy the name of student, or
cared much for anything beyond the amusements the universities provide
so liberally, except dabbling in literature. Perhaps his only vice was
self-satisfaction--which few will admit to be a vice; remonstrance
never reached him; to himself he was ever in the right, judging himself
only by his sentiments and vague intents, never by his actions; that
these had little correspondence never struck him; it had never even
struck him that they ought to correspond. In his own eyes he did well
enough, and a good deal better. Gifted not only with fluency of speech,
that crowning glory and ruin of a fool, but with plausibility of tone
and demeanor, a confidence that imposed both on himself and on others,
and a certain dropsical impressionableness of surface which made him
seem and believe himself sympathetic, nobody could well help liking
him, and it took some time to make one accept the disappointment he
caused.

He was now in his twenty-first year, at home, pretending that nothing
should make him go back to Oxford, and enjoying more than ever the
sport of plaguing his mother. A soul-doctor might have prescribed for
him a course of small-pox, to be followed by intermittent fever, with
nobody to wait upon him but Mrs. Gamp: after that, his mother might
have had a possible chance with him, and he with his mother. But,
unhappily, he had the best of health--supreme blessing in the eyes of
the fool whom it enables to be a worse fool still; and was altogether
the true son of his mother, who consoled herself for her absolute
failure in his moral education with the reflection that she had reared
him sound in wind and limb. Plaguing his mother, amusing himself as
best he could, riding about the country on a good mare, of which he was
proud, he was living in utter idleness, affording occasion for much
wonder that he had never yet disgraced himself. He talked to everybody
who would talk to him, and made acquaintance with anybody on the spur
of the moment's whim. He would sit on a log with a gypsy, and bamboozle
him with lies made for the purpose, then thrash him for not believing
them. He called here and called there, made himself specially agreeable
everywhere, went to every ball and evening party to which he could get
admittance in the neighborhood, and flirted with any girl who would let
him. He meant no harm, neither had done much, and was imagined by most
incapable of doing any. The strange thing to some was that he staid on
in the country, and did not go to London and run up bills for his
mother to pay; but the mare accounted for a good deal; and the fact
that almost immediately on his late return he had seen Letty and fallen
in love with her at first sight, accounted for a good deal more. Not
since then, however, had he yet been able to meet her so as only to
speak to her; for Thornwick was one of the few houses of the middle
class in the neighborhood where he was not encouraged to show himself.
He was constantly, therefore, on the watch for a chance of seeing her,
and every Sunday went to church in that same hope and no other. But
Letty knew nothing of the favor in which she stood with him; for,
although Tom had, as we have heard, confessed to her friend Mary
Marston his admiration of her, Mary had far too much good sense to make
herself his ally in the matter.




CHAPTER VII.

DURNMELLING.


In the autumn, Mr. Mortimer of Durnmelling resolved to give a
harvest-home to his tenants, and under the protection of the occasion
to invite also a good many of his neighbors and of the townsfolk of
Testbridge, whom he could not well ask to dinner: there happened to be
a political expediency for something of the sort: America is not the
only country in which ambition opens the door to mean doings on the
part of such as count themselves gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady
Margaret had never called, and whom she would never in any way
acknowledge again, were invited; nor did the knowledge of what it meant
cause many of them to decline the questionable honor--which fact
carried in it the best justification of which the meanness and insult
were capable. Mrs. Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their
case Lady Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey
positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized, he
said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.

Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had reaped
both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the strength of the
latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon began to embody in his
own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman ought to carry himself;
whence, from being only a small, he became an objectionable man, and
failed of being amusing by making himself offensive. He had never
manifested the least approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although
their houses were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had
Wardour been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance
there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have behaved
differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely, old family, a
small, though indeed _very_ small, property of his own, a university
education, good horses, and the habits and manners of a gentleman--the
men scarcely even saluted when they met. The Mortimer ladies, indeed,
had more than once remarked--but it was in solemn silence, each to
herself only--how well the man sat, and how easily he handled the
hunter he always rode; but not once until now had so much as a greeting
passed between them and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful
that Godfrey should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding,
however, that his mother was distressed at having to go to the
gathering without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was
needful as to what would be thought of his absence, and what excuse it
would be becoming to make, he resolved to go to London a day or two
before the event, and pay a long-promised visit to a clerical friend.

The relative situation of the houses--I mean the stone-and-lime
houses--of Durnmelling and Thornwick, was curious; and that they had at
one time formed part of the same property might have suggested itself
to any beholder. Durnmelling was built by an ancestor of Godfrey's,
who, forsaking the old nest for the new, had allowed Thornwick to sink
into a mere farmhouse, in which condition it had afterward become the
sole shelter of the withered fortunes of the Wardours. In the hands of
Godfrey's father, by a continuity of judicious cares, and a succession
of partial resurrections, it had been restored to something like its
original modest dignity. Durnmelling, too, had in part sunk into ruin,
and had been but partially recovered from it; still, it swelled
important beside its antecedent Thornwick. Nothing but a deep ha-ha
separated the two houses, of which the older and smaller occupied the
higher ground. Between it and the ha-ha was nothing but grass--in front
of the house fine enough and well enough kept to be called lawn, had
not Godfrey's pride refused the word. On the lower, the Durnmelling
side of the fence, were trees, shrubbery, and out-houses--the chimney
of one of which, the laundry, gave great offense to Mrs. Wardour, when,
as she said, wind and wash came together. But, although they stood so
near, there was no lawful means of communication between the houses
except the road; and the mile that implied was seldom indeed passed by
any of the unneighborly neighbors.

The father of Lady Margaret would at one time have purchased Thornwick
at twice its value; but the present owner could not have bought it at
half its worth. He had of late been losing money heavily--whence, in
part, arose that anxiety of Lady Margaret's not to keep Mr. Redmain
fretting for his lunch.

The house of Durnmelling, new compared with that of Thornwick, was yet,
as I have indicated, old enough to have passed also through
vicissitudes, and a large portion of the original structure had for
many years been nothing better than a ruin. Only a portion of one side
of its huge square was occupied by the family, and the rest of that
side was not habitable. Lady Margaret, of an ancient stock, had
gathered from it only pride, not reverence; therefore, while she valued
the old, she neglected it; and what money she and her husband at one
time spent upon the house, was devoted to addition and ornamentation,
nowise to preservation or restoration. They had enlarged both
dining-room and drawing-rooms to twice their former size, when half the
expense, with a few trees from a certain outlying oak-plantation of
their own, would have given them a room fit for a regal assembly. For,
constituting a portion of the same front in which they lived, lay
roofless, open to every wind that blew, its paved floor now and then in
winter covered with snow--an ancient hall, whose massy south wall was
pierced by three lovely windows, narrow and lofty, with simple,
gracious tracery in their pointed heads. This hall connected the
habitable portion of the house with another part, less ruinous than
itself, but containing only a few rooms in occasional use for household
purposes, or, upon necessity, for quite inferior lodgment. It was a
glorious ruin, of nearly a hundred feet in length, and about half that
in width, the walls entire, and broad enough to walk round upon in
safety. Their top was accessible from a tower, which formed part of the
less ruinous portion, and contained the stair and some small rooms.

Once, the hall was fair with portraits and armor and arms, with fire
and lights, and state and merriment; now the sculptured chimney lay
open to the weather, and the sweeping winds had made its smooth
hearthstone clean as if fire had never been there. Its floor was
covered with large flags, a little broken: these, in prospect of the
coming entertainment, a few workmen were leveling, patching, replacing.
For the tables were to be set here, and here there was to be dancing
after the meal.

It was Miss Yolland's idea, and to her was committed the responsibility
of its preparation and adornment for the occasion, in which Hesper gave
her active assistance. With colored blankets, with carpets, with a few
pieces of old tapestry, and a quantity of old curtains, mostly of
chintz, excellent in hues and design, all cunningly arranged for as
much of harmony as could be had, they contrived to clothe the walls to
the height of six or eight feet, and so gave the weather-beaten
skeleton an air of hospitable preparation and respectful reception.

The day and the hour arrived. It was a hot autumnal afternoon. Borne in
all sorts of vehicles, from a carriage and pair to a taxed cart, the
guests kept coming. As they came, they mostly scattered about the
place. Some loitered on the lawn by the flower-beds and the fountain;
some visited the stables and the home-farm, with its cow-houses and
dairy and piggeries; some the neglected greenhouses, and some the
equally neglected old-fashioned alleys, with their clipped yews and
their moss-grown statues. No one belonging to the house was anywhere
visible to receive them, until the great bell at length summoned them
to the plentiful meal spread in the ruined hall. "The hospitality of
some people has no roof to it," Godfrey said, when he heard of the
preparations. "Ten people will give you a dinner, for one who will
offer you a bed and a breakfast:"

Then at last their host made his appearance, and took the head of the
table: the ladies, he said, were to have the honor of joining the
company afterward. They were at the time--but this he did not
say--giving another stratum of society a less ponderous, but yet
tolerably substantial, refreshment in the dining-room.

By the time the eating and drinking were nearly over, the shades of
evening had gathered; but even then some few of the farmers, capable
only of drinking, grumbled at having their potations interrupted for
the dancers. These were presently joined by the company from the house,
and the great hall was crowded.

Much to her chagrin, Mrs. Wardour had a severe headache, occasioned by
her working half the night at her dress, and was compelled to remain at
home. But she allowed Letty to go without her, which she would not have
done had she not been so anxious to have news of what she could not
lift her head to see: she sent her with an old servant--herself one of
the invited guests--to gather and report. The dancing had begun before
they reached the hall.

Tom Helmer had arrived among the first, and had joined the tenants in
their feast, faring well, and making friends, such as he knew how to
make, with everybody in his vicinity. When the tables were removed, and
the rest of the company began to come in, he went about searching
anxiously for Letty's sweet face, but it did not appear; and, when she
did arrive, she stole in without his seeing her, and stood mingled with
the crowd about the door.

It was a pleasant sight that met her eyes. The wide space was gayly
illuminated with colored lamps, disposed on every shelf, and in every
crevice of the walls, some of them gleaming like glow-worms out of mere
holes; while candles in sconces, and lamps on the window-sills and
wherever they could stand, gave a light the more pleasing that it was
not brilliant. Overhead, the night-sky was spangled with clear pulsing
stars, afloat in a limpid blue, vast even to awfulness in the eyes of
such--were any such there?--as say to themselves that to those worlds
also were they born. Outside, it was dark, save where the light
streamed from the great windows far into the night. The moon was not
yet up; she would rise in good time to see the scattering guests to
their homes.

Tom's heart had been sinking, for he could see Letty nowhere. Now at
last, he had been saying to himself all the day, had come his chance!
and his chance seemed but to mock him. More than any girl he had ever
seen, had Letty moved him--perhaps because she was more unlike his
mother. He knew nothing, it is true, or next to nothing, of her nature;
but that was of little consequence to one who knew nothing, and never
troubled himself to know anything, of his own. Was he doomed never to
come near his idol?--Ah, there she was! Yes; it was she--all but lost
in a humble group near the door! His foolish heart--not foolish in
that--gave a great bound, as if it would leap to her where she stood.
She was dressed in white muslin, from which her white throat rose warm
and soft. Her head was bent forward, and a gentle dissolved smile was
over all her face, as with loveliest eyes she watched eagerly the
motions of the dance, and her ears drank in the music of the yeomanry
band. He seized the first opportunity of getting nearer to her. He had
scarcely spoken to her before, but that did not trouble Tom. Even in a
more ceremonious assembly, that would never have abashed him; and here
there was little form, and much freedom. He had, besides, confidence in
his own carriage and manners--which, indeed, were those of a
gentleman--and knew himself not likely to repel by his approach.

Mr. Mortimer had opened the dancing by leading out the wife of his
principal tenant, a handsome matron, whose behavior and expression were
such as to give a safe, home-like feeling to the shy and doubtful of
the company. But Tom knew better than injure his chance by
precipitation: he would wait until the dancing was more general, and
the impulse to movement stronger, and then offer himself. He stood
therefore near Letty for some little time, talking to everybody, and
making himself agreeable, as was his wont, all round; then at last, as
if he had just caught sight of her, walked up to her where she stood
flushed and eager, and asked her to favor him with her hand in the next
dance.

By this time Letty had got familiar with his presence, had recalled her
former meeting with him, had heard his name spoken by not a few who
evidently liked him, and was quite pleased when he asked her to dance
with him.

In the dance, nothing but commonplaces passed between them; but Tom had
a certain pleasant way of his own in saying the commonest, emptiest
things--an off-hand, glancing, skimming, swallow-like way of brushing
and leaving a thing, as if he "could an' if he would," which made it
seem for the moment as if he had said something: were his companion
capable of discovering the illusion, there was no time; Tom was
instantly away, carrying him or her with him to something else. But
there was better than this--there was poetry, more than one element of
it, in Tom. In the presence of a girl that pleased him, there would
rise in him a poetic atmosphere, full of a rainbow kind of glamour,
which, first possessing himself, passed out from him and called up a
similar atmosphere, a similar glamour, about many of the girls he
talked to. This he could no more help than the grass can help smelling
sweet after the rain.

Tom was a finely projected, well-built, unfinished, barely furnished
house, with its great central room empty, where the devil, coming and
going at his pleasure, had not yet begun to make any great racket.
There might be endless embryonic evil in him, but Letty was aware of no
repellent atmosphere about him, and did not shrink from his advances.
He pleased her, and why should she not be pleased with him? Was it a
fault to be easily pleased? The truer and sweeter any human self, the
readier is it to be pleased with another self--save, indeed, something
in it grate on the moral sense: that jars through the whole harmonious
hypostasy. To Tom, therefore, Letty responded with smiles and pleasant
words, even grateful to such a fine youth for taking notice of her
small self.

The sun had set in a bank of cloud, which, as if he had been a lump of
leaven to it, immediately began to swell and rise, and now hung dark
and thick over the still, warm night. Even the farmers were unobservant
of the change: their crops were all in, they had eaten and drunk
heartily, and were merry, looking on or sharing in the multiform
movement, their eyes filled with light and color.

Suddenly came a torrent-sound in the air, heard of few and heeded by
none, and straight into the hall rushed upon the gay company a deluge
of rain, mingled with large, half-melted hail-stones. In a moment or
two scarce a light was left burning, except those in the holes and
recesses of the walls. The merrymakers scattered like flies--into the
house, into the tower, into the sheds and stables in the court behind,
under the trees in front--anywhere out of the hall, where shelter was
none from the perpendicular, abandoned down-pour.

At that moment, Letty was dancing with Tom, and her hand happened to be
in his. He clasped it tight, and, as quickly as the crowd and the
confusion of shelter-seeking would permit, led her to the door of the
tower already mentioned. But many had run in the same direction, and
already its lower story and stair were crowded with refugees--the elder
bemoaning the sudden change, and folding tight around them what poor
wraps they were fortunate enough to have retained; the younger merrier
than ever, notwithstanding the cold gusts that now poked their
spirit-arms higher and thither through the openings of the half-ruinous
building: to them even the destruction of their finery was but added
cause of laughter. But a few minutes before, its freshness had been a
keen pleasure to them, brightening their consciousness with a rare
feeling of perfection; now crushed and rumpled, soiled and wet and
torn, it was still fuel to the fire of gayety. But Tom did not stay
among them. He knew the place well; having a turn for scrambling, he
had been all over it many a time. On through the crowd, he led Letty up
the stair to the first floor. Even here were a few couples talking and
laughing in the dark. With a warning, by no means unnecessary, to mind
where they stepped, for the floors were bad, he passed on to the next
stair.

"Let us stop here, Mr. Helmer," said Letty. "There is plenty of room
here."

"I want to show you something," answered Tom. "You need not be
frightened. I know every nook of the place."

"I am not frightened," said Letty, and made no further objection.

At the top of that stair they entered a straight passage, in the middle
of which was a faint glimmer of light from an oval aperture in the side
of it. Thither Tom led Letty, and told her to look through. She did so.

Beneath lay the great gulf, wide and deep, of the hall they had just
left. This was the little window, high in its gable, through which, in
far-away times, the lord or lady of the mansion could oversee at will
whatever went on below.

The rain had ceased as suddenly as it came on, and already lights were
moving about in the darkness of the abyss--one, and another, and
another, was searching for something lost in the hurry of the
scattering. It was a waste and dismal show. Neither of them had read
Dante; but Letty may have thought of the hall of Belshazzar, the night
after the hand-haunted revel, when the Medes had had their will; for
she had but lately read the story. A strange fear came upon her, and
she drew back with a shudder.

"Are you cold?" said Tom. "Of course you must be, with nothing but that
thin muslin! Shall I run down and get you a shawl?"

"Oh, no! do not leave me, please. It's not that," answered Letty. "I
don't mind the wind a bit; it's rather pleasant. It's only that the
look of the place makes me miserable, I think. It looks as if no one
had danced there for a hundred years."

"Neither any one has, I suppose, till to-night," said Tom. "What a fine
place it would be if only it had a roof to it! I can't think how any
one can live beside it and leave it like that!"

But Tom lived a good deal closer to a worse ruin, and never spent a
thought on it.

Letty shivered again.

"I'm quite ashamed of myself," she said, trying to speak cheerfully. "I
can't think why I should feel like this--just as if something dreadful
were watching me! I'll go home, Mr. Helmer.".

"It will be much the safest thing to do: I fear you have indeed caught
cold," replied Tom, rejoiced at the chance of accompanying her. "I
shall be delighted to see you safe."

"There is not the least occasion for that, thank you," answered Letty.
"I have an old servant of my aunt's with me--somewhere about the place.
The storm is quite over now: I will go and find her."

Tom made no objection, but helped her down the dark stair, hoping,
however, the servant might not be found.

As they went, Letty seemed to herself to be walking in some old dream
of change and desertion. The tower was empty as a monument, not a trace
of the crowd left, which a few minutes before had thronged it. The wind
had risen in earnest now, and was rushing about, like a cold wild
ghost, through every cranny of the desolate place. Had Letty, when she
reached the bottom of the stairs, found herself on the rocks of the
seashore, with the waves dashing up against them, she would only have
said to herself, "I knew I was in a dream!" But the wind having blown
away the hail-cloud, the stars were again shining down into the hall.
One or two forlorn-looking searchers were still there; the rest had
scattered like the gnats. A few were already at home; some were
harnessing their horses to go, nor would wait for the man in the moon
to light his lantern; some were already trudging on foot through the
dark. Hesper and Miss Yolland were talking to two or three friends in
the drawing-room; Lady Margaret was in her boudoir, and Mr. Mortimer
smoking a cigar in his study.

Nowhere could Letty find Susan. She was in the farmer's kitchen behind.
Tom suspected as much, but was far from hinting the possibility. Letty
found her cloak, which she had left in the hall, soaked with rain, and
thought it prudent to go home at once, nor prosecute her search for
Susan further. She accepted, therefore, Tom's renewed offer of his
company.

They were just leaving the hall, when a thought came to Letty: the moon
suddenly appearing above the horizon had put it in her head.

"Oh," she cried, "I know quite a short way home!" and, without waiting
any response from her companion, she turned, and led him in an opposite
direction, round, namely, by the back of the court, into a field. There
she made for a huge oak, which gloomed in the moonlight by the sunk
fence parting the grounds. In the slow strength of its growth, by the
rounding of its bole, and the spreading of its roots, it had so rent
and crumbled the wall as to make through it a little ravine, leading to
the top of the ha-ha. When they reached it, before even Tom saw it,
Letty turned from him, and was up in a moment. At the top she turned to
bid him good night, but there he was, close behind her, insisting on
seeing her safe to the house.

"Is this the way you always come?" asked Tom.

"I never was on Durnmelling land before," answered Letty.

"How did you find the short-cut, then?" he asked. "It certainly does
not look as if it were much used."

"Of course not," replied Letty. "There is no communication between
Durnmelling and Thornwick now. It was all ours once, though, Cousin
Godfrey says. Did you notice how the great oak sends its biggest arm
over our field?"

"Yes."

"Well, I often sit there under it, when I want to learn my lesson, and
can't rest in the house; and that's how I know of the crack in the
ha-ha."

She said it in absolute innocence, but Tom laid it up in his mind.

"Are you at lessons still?" he said. "Have you a governess?"

"No," she answered, in a tone of amusement. "But Cousin Godfrey teaches
me many things."

This made Tom thoughtful; and little more had been said, when they
reached the gate of the yard behind the house, and she would not let
him go a step farther.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE OAK.


In the morning, as she narrated the events of the evening, she told her
aunt of the acquaintance she had made, and that he had seen her home.
This information did not please the old lady, as, indeed, without
knowing any reason, Letty had expected. Mrs. Wardour knew all about
Tom's mother, or thought she did, and knew little good; she knew also
that, although her son was a general favorite, her own son had a very
poor opinion of him. On these grounds, and without a thought of
injustice to Letty, she sharply rebuked the poor girl for allowing such
a fellow to pay her any attention, and declared that, if ever she
permitted him so much as to speak to her again, she would do something
which she left in a cloud of vaguest suggestion.

Letty made no reply. She was hurt. Nor was it any wonder if she judged
this judgment of Tom by the injustice of the judge to herself. It was
of no consequence to her, she said to herself, whether she spoke to him
again or not; but had any one the right to compel another to behave
rudely? Only what did it matter, since there was so little chance of
her ever seeing him again! All day she felt weary and disappointed,
and, after the merrymaking of the night before, the household work was
irksome. But she would soon have got over both weariness and tedium had
her aunt been kind. It is true, she did not again refer to Tom, taking
it for granted that he was done with; but all day she kept driving
Letty from one thing to another, nor was once satisfied with anything
she did, called her even an ungrateful girl, and, before evening, had
rendered her more tired, mortified, and dispirited, than she had ever
been in her life.

But the tormentor was no demon; she was only doing what all of us have
often done, and ought to be heartily ashamed of: she was only emptying
her fountain of bitter water. Oppressed with the dregs of her headache,
wretched because of her son's absence, who had not been a night from
home for years, annoyed that she had spent time and money in
preparation for nothing, she had allowed the said cistern to fill to
overflowing, and upon Letty it overflowed like a small deluge. Like
some of the rest of us, she never reflected how balefully her evil mood
might operate; and that all things work for good in the end, will not
cover those by whom come the offenses. Another night's rest, it is
true, sent the evil mood to sleep again for a time, but did not
exorcise it; for there are demons that go not out without prayer, and a
bad temper is one of them--a demon as contemptible, mean-spirited, and
unjust, as any in the peerage of hell--much petted, nevertheless, and
excused, by us poor lunatics who are possessed by him. Mrs. Wardour was
a lady, as the ladies of this world go, but a poor lady for the kingdom
of heaven: I should wonder much if she ranked as more than a very
common woman there.

The next day all was quiet; and a visit paid Mrs. Wardour by a favorite
sister whom she had not seen for months, set Letty at such liberty as
she seldom had. In the afternoon she took the book Godfrey had given
her, in which he had set her one of Milton's smaller poems to study,
and sought the shadow of the Durnmelling oak.

It was a lovely autumn day, the sun glorious as ever in the memory of
Abraham, or the author of Job, or the builder of the scaled pyramid at
Sakkara. But there was a keenness in the air notwithstanding, which
made Letty feel a little sad without knowing why, as she seated herself
to the task Cousin Godfrey had set her. She, as well as his mother,
heartily wished he were home. She was afraid of him, it is true; but in
how different a way from that in which she was afraid of his mother!
His absence did not make her feel free, and to escape from his mother
was sometimes the whole desire of her day.

She was trying hard, not altogether successfully, to fix her attention
on her task, when a yellow leaf dropped on the very line she was poring
over. Thinking how soon the trees would be bare once more, she brushed
the leaf away, and resumed her lesson.

   "To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,"

she had just read once more, when down fell a second tree-leaf on the
book-leaf. Again she brushed it away, and read to the end of the sonnet:

"Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure."

What Letty's thoughts about the sonnet were, I can not tell: how fix
thought indefinite in words defined? But her angel might well have
thought what a weary road she had to walk before she gained that
entrance. But for all of us the road _has_ to be walked, every step,
and the uttermost farthing paid. The gate will open wide to welcome us,
but it will not come to meet us. Neither is it any use to turn aside;
it only makes the road longer and harder.

Down on the same spot fell the third leaf. Letty looked up. There was a
man in the tree over her head. She started to her feet. At the same
moment, he dropped on the ground beside her, lifting his hat as coolly
as if he had met her on the road. Her heart seemed to stand still with
fright. She stood silent, with white lips parted.

"I hope I haven't frightened you," said Tom. "Do forgive me," he added,
becoming more aware of the perturbation he had caused her. "You were so
kind to me the other night, I could not help wanting to see you again.
I had no idea the sight of me would terrify you so."

"You gave me such a start!" gasped Letty, with her hand pressed on her
heart.

"I was afraid of it," answered Tom; "but what could I do? I was
certain, if you saw me coming, you would run away."

"Why should you think that?" asked Letty, a faint color rising in her
cheek.

"Because," answered Tom, "I was sure they would be telling you all
manner of things against me. But there is no harm in me--really, Miss
Lovel--nothing, that is, worth mentioning."

"I am sure there isn't," said Letty; and then there was a pause.

"What book are you reading, may I ask?" said Tom.

Letty had now remembered her aunt's injunctions and threats; but,
partly from a kind of paralysis caused by his coolness, partly from its
being impossible to her nature to be curt with any one with whom she
was not angry, partly from mere lack of presence of mind, not knowing
what to do, yet feeling she ought to run to the house, what should she
do but drop down again on the very spot whence she had been scared!
Instantly Tom threw himself on the grass at her feet, and there lay,
looking up at her with eyes of humble admiration.

Confused and troubled, she began to turn over the leaves of her book.
She supposed afterward she must have asked him why he stared at her so,
for the next thing she remembered was hearing him say:

"I can't help it. You are so lovely!"

"Please don't talk such nonsense to me," she rejoined. "I am not
lovely, and I know it. What is not true can not please anybody."

She spoke a little angrily now.

"I speak the truth," said Tom, quietly and earnestly. "Why should you
think I do not?"

"Because nobody ever said so before."

"Then it is quite time somebody should say so," returned Tom, changing
his tone. "It may be a painful fact, but even ladies ought to be told
the truth, and learn to bear it. To say you are not lovely would be a
downright lie."

"I wish you wouldn't talk to me about myself!" said Letty, feeling
confused and improper, but not altogether displeased that it was
possible for such a mistake to be made. "I don't want to hear about
myself. It makes me so uncomfortable! I am sure it isn't right: is it,
now, Mr. Helmer?"

As she ended, the tears rose in her eyes, partly from unanalyzed
uneasiness at the position in which she found herself and the turn the
talk had taken, partly from the discomfort of conscious disobedience.
But still she did not move.

"I am very sorry if I have vexed you," said Tom, seeing her evident
trouble. "I can't think how I've done it. I know I didn't mean to; and
I promise you not to say a word of the kind again--if I can help it.
But tell me, Letty," he went on again, changing in tone and look and
manner, and calling her by her name with such simplicity that she never
even noticed it, "do tell me what you are reading, and that will keep
me from _talking_ about you--not from--the other thing, you know."

"There!" said Letty, almost crossly, handing him her book, and pointing
to the sonnet, as she rose to go.

Tom took the book, and sprang to his feet. He had never read the poem,
for Milton had not been one of his masters. He stood devouring it. He
was doing his best to lay hold of it quickly, for there Letty stood,
with her hand held out to take the book again, ready upon its
restoration to go at once. Silent and motionless, to all appearance
unhasting, he read and reread. Letty was restless, and growing quite
impatient; but still Tom read, a smile slow-spreading from his eyes
over his face; he was taking possession of the poem, he would have
said. But the shades and kinds and degrees of possession are
innumerable; and not until we downright love a thing, can we _know_ we
understand it, or rightly call it our own; Tom only admired this one;
it was all he was capable of in regard to such at present. Had the whim
for acquainting himself with it seized him in his own study, he would
have satisfied it with a far more superficial interview; but the
presence of the girl, with those eyes fixed on him as he read--his
mind's eye saw them--was for the moment an enlargement of his being,
whose phase to himself was a consciousness of ignorance.

"It is a beautiful poem," he said at last, quite honestly; and, raising
his eyes, he looked straight in hers. There is hardly a limit to the
knowledge and sympathy a man may have in respect of the finest things,
and yet be a fool. Sympathy is not harmony. A man may be a poet even,
and speak with the tongue of an angel, and yet be a very bad fool.

"I am sure it must be a beautiful poem," said Letty; "but I have hardly
got a hold of it yet." And she stretched her hand a little farther, as
if to proceed with its appropriation.

But Tom was not yet prepared to part with the book. He proceeded
instead, in fluent speech and not inappropriate language, to set forth,
not the power of the poem--that he both took and left as a matter of
course--but the beauty of those phrases, and the turns of those
expressions, which particularly pleased him--nor failing to remark
that, according to the strict laws of English verse, there was in it
one bad rhyme.

That point Letty begged him to explain, thus leading Tom to an
exposition of the laws of rhyme, in which, as far as English was
concerned, he happened to be something of an expert, partly from an
early habit of scribbling in ladies' albums. About these surface
affairs, Godfrey, understanding them better and valuing them more than
Tom, had yet taught Letty nothing, judging it premature to teach
polishing before carving; and hence this little display of knowledge on
the part of Tom impressed Letty more than was adequate--so much,
indeed, that she began to regard him as a sage, and a compeer of her
cousin Godfrey. Question followed question, and answer followed answer,
Letty feeling all the time she _must_ go, yet standing and standing,
like one in a dream, who thinks he can not, and certainly does not
break its spell--for in the act only is the ability and the deed born.
Besides, was she to go away and leave her beautiful book in his hand?
What would Godfrey think if she did? Again and again she stretched out
her own to take it, but, although he saw the motion, he held on to the
book as to his best anchor, hurriedly turned its leaves by fits and
searching for something more to his mind than anything of Milton's.
Suddenly his face brightened.

"Ah!" he said--and remained a moment silent, reading. "I don't wonder,"
he resumed, "at your admiration of Milton. He's very grand, of course,
and very musical, too; but one can't be listening to an organ always.
Not that I prefer merry music; that must be inferior, for the tone of
all the beauty in the world is sad." Much Tom Helmer knew of beauty or
sadness either! but ignorance is no reason with a fool for holding his
tongue. "But there is the violin, now!--that can be as sad as any
organ, without being so ponderous. Hear this, now! This is the violin
after the organ--played as only a master can!"

With this preamble, he read a song of Shelley's, and read it well, for
he had a good ear for rhythm and cadence, and prided himself on his
reading of poetry.

Now the path to Letty's heart through her intellect was neither open
nor well trodden; but the song in question was a winged one, and flew
straight thither; there was something in the tone of it that suited the
pitch of her spirit-chamber. And, if Letty's heart was not easily
found, it was the readier to confess itself when found. Her eyes filled
with tears, and through those tears Tom looked large and injured. "He
must be a poet himself to read poetry like that!" she said to herself,
and felt thoroughly assured that her aunt had wronged him greatly.
"Some people scorn poetry like sin," she said again. "I used myself to
think it was only for children, until Cousin Godfrey taught me
differently."

As thus her thoughts went on interweaving themselves with the music,
all at once the song came to an end. Tom closed the book, handed it to
her, said, "Good morning, Miss Lovel," and ran down the rent in the
ha-ha; and, before Letty could come to herself, she heard the soft
thunder of hoofs on the grass. She ran to the edge, and, looking over,
saw Tom on his bay mare, at full gallop across the field. She watched
him as he neared the hedge and ditch that bounded it, saw him go flying
over, and lost sight of him behind a hazel-copse. Slowly, then, she
turned, and slowly she went back to the house and up to her room,
vaguely aware that a wind had begun to blow in her atmosphere, although
only the sound of it had yet reached her.




CHAPTER IX.

CONFUSION.


Then first, and from that moment, Letty's troubles began. Up to this
point neither she herself nor another could array troublous accusation
or uneasy thought against her; and now she began to feel like a very
target, which exists but to receive the piercing of arrows. At first
sight, and if we do not look a long way ahead of what people stupidly
regard as the end when it is only an horizon, it seems hard that so
much we call evil, and so much that is evil, should result from that
unavoidable, blameless, foreordained, preconstituted, and essential
attraction which is the law of nature, that is the will of God, between
man and woman. Even if Letty had fallen in love with Tom at first
sight, who dares have the assurance to blame her? who will dare to say
that Tom was blameworthy in seeking the society and friendship, even
the love, of a woman whom in all sincerity he admired, or for using his
wits to get into her presence, and detain her a little in his company?
Reasons there are, infinitely deeper than any philosopher has yet
fathomed, or is likely to fathom, why a youth such as he--foolish,
indeed, but not foolish in this--and a sweet and blameless girl such as
Letty, should exchange regards of admiration and wonder. That which
thus moves them, and goes on to draw them closer and closer, comes with
them from the very source of their being, and is as reverend as it is
lovely, rooted in all the gentle potencies and sweet glories of
creation, and not unworthily watered with all the tears of agony and
ecstasy shed by lovers since the creation of the world. What it is, I
can not tell; I only know it is _not_ that which the young fool calls
it, still less that which the old sinner thinks it. As to Letty's
disobedience of her aunt's extravagant orders concerning Tom, I must
leave that to the judgment of the just, reminding them that she was
taken by surprise, and that, besides, it was next to impossible to obey
them. But Letty found herself very uncomfortable, because there now was
that to be known of her, the knowledge of which would highly displease
her aunt--for which very reason, if for no other, ought she not to tell
her all? On the other hand, when she recalled how unkindly, how
unjustly her aunt had spoken, when she confessed her new acquaintance,
it became to her a question whether in very deed she _must_ tell her
all that had passed that afternoon. There was no smallest hope of any
recognition of the act, surely more hard than incumbent, but severity
and unreason; _must_ she let the thing out of her hands, and yield
herself a helpless prey--and that for good to none? Concerning Mrs.
Wardour, she reasoned justly: she who is even once unjust can not
complain if the like is expected of her again.

But, supposing it remained Letty's duty to acquaint her aunt with what
had taken place, and not forgetting that, as one of the old people, I
have to render account of the young that come after me, and must be
careful over their lovely dignities and fair duties, I yet make haste
to assert that the old people, who make it hard for the young people to
do right, may be twice as much to blame as those whom they arraign for
a concealment whose very heart is the dread of their known selfishness,
fierceness, and injustice. If children have to obey their parents or
guardians, those parents and guardians are over them in the name of
God, and they must look to it: if in the name of God they act the
devil, that will not prove a light thing for their answer. The causing
of the little ones to offend hangs a fearful woe about the neck of the
causer. It were a hard, as well as a needless task, seeing there is One
who judges, to set forth how far the child is to blame as toward the
parent, where the parent first of all is utterly wrong, yea out of true
relation, toward the child. Not, therefore, is the child free;
obligation remains--modified, it may be, but how difficult, alas, to
fulfill! And, whether Letty and such as act like her are _excusable_ or
not in keeping attentions paid them a secret, this sorrow for the good
ones of them certainly remains, that, next to a crime, a secret is the
heaviest as well as the most awkward of burdens to carry. It has to be
carried always, and all about. From morning to night it hurts in
tenderest parts, and from night to morning hurts everywhere. At any
expense, let there be openness. Take courage, my child, and speak out.
Dare to speak, I say, and that will give you strength to resist, should
disobedience become a duty. Letty's first false step was here: she said
to herself _I can not_, and did not. She lacked courage--a want in her
case not much to be wondered at, but much to be deplored, for courage
of the true sort is just as needful to the character of a woman as of a
man. Had she spoken, she might have heard true things of Tom,
sufficient so to alter her opinion of him as, at this early stage of
their intercourse, to alter the _set_ of her feelings, which now was
straight for him. It may be such an exercise of courage would have
rendered the troubles that were now to follow unnecessary to her
development. For lack of it, she went about from that time with the
haunting consciousness that she was one who might be found out; that
she was guilty of what would go a good way to justify the hard words
she had so resented. Already the secret had begun to work conscious
woe. She contrived, however, to quiet herself a little with the idea,
rather than the resolve, that, as soon as Godfrey came home, she would
tell him all, confessing, too, that she had not the courage to tell his
mother. She was sure, she said to herself, he would forgive her, would
set her at peace with herself, and be unfair neither to Mr. Helmer nor
to her. In the mean time she would take care--and this was a real
resolve, not a mere act contemplated in the future--not to go where she
might meet him again. Nor was the resolve the less genuine that, with
the very making of it, rose the memory of that delightful hour more
enticing than ever. How beautifully, and with what feeling, he read the
lovely song! With what appreciation had he not expounded Milton's
beautiful poem! Not yet was she capable of bethinking herself that it
was but on this phrase and on that he had dwelt, on this and on that
line and rhythm, enforcing their loveliness of sound and shape; while
the poem, the really important thing, the drift of the whole--it was
her own heart and conscience that revealed that to her, not the
exposition of one who at best could understand it only with his brain.
She kept to her resolve, nevertheless; and, although Tom, leaving his
horse now here now there, to avoid attracting attention, almost every
day visited the oak, he looked in vain for the light of her approach.
Disappointment increased his longing: what would he not have given to
see once more one of those exquisite smiles break out in its perfect
blossom! He kept going and going--haunted the oak, sure of some blessed
chance at last. It was the first time in his life he had followed one
idea for a whole fortnight.

At length Godfrey came. But, although all the time he was away Letty
had retained and contemplated with tolerable calmness the idea of
making her confession to him, the moment she saw him she felt such
confession impossible. It was a sad discovery to her. Hitherto Godfrey,
and especially of late, had been the chief source of the peace and
interest of her life, that portion of her life, namely, to which all
the rest of it looked as its sky, its overhanging betterness--and now
she felt before him like a culprit: she had done what he might be
displeased with. Nay, would that were all! for she felt like a
hypocrite: she had done that which she could not confess. Again and
again, while Godfrey was away, she had flattered herself that the help
the objectionable Tom had given her with her task would at once
recommend him to Godfrey's favorable regard; but now that she looked in
Godfrey's face, she was aware--she did not know why, but she was aware
it would not be so. Besides, she plainly saw that the same fact would,
almost of necessity, lead him to imagine there had been much more
between them than was the case; and she argued with herself, that, now
there was nothing, now that everything was over, it would be a pity if,
because of what she could not help, and what would never be again,
there should arise anything, however small, of a misunderstanding
between her cousin Godfrey and her.

The moment Godfrey saw her, he knew that something was the matter; but
there had been that going on in him which put him on a false track for
the explanation. Scarcely had he, on his departure for London, turned
his back on Thornwick, ere he found he was leaving one whom yet he
could not leave behind him. Every hour of his absence he found his
thoughts with the sweet face and ministering hands of his humble pupil.
Therewith, however, it was nowise revealed to him that he was in love
with her. He thought of her only as his younger sister, loving,
clinging, obedient. So dear was she to him, he thought, that he would
rejoice to secure her happiness at any cost to himself. _Any_ cost? he
asked--and reflected. Yes, he answered himself--even the cost of giving
her to a better man. The thing was sure to come, he thought--nor
thought without a keen pang, scarcely eased by the dignity of the
self-denial that would yield her with a smile. But such a crisis was
far away, and there was no necessity for now contemplating it. Indeed,
there was no _certainty_ it would ever arrive; it was only a
possibility. The child was not beautiful, although to him she was
lovely, and, being also penniless, was therefore not likely to attract
attention; while, if her being unfolded under the genial influences he
was doing his best to make powerful upon her, if she grew aware that by
them her life was enlarging and being tenfold enriched, it was possible
she might not be ready to fall in love, and leave Thornwick. He must be
careful, however, he said to himself, quite plainly now, that his
behavior should lead her into no error. He was not afraid she might
fall in love with him; he was not so full of himself as that; but he
recoiled from the idea, as from a humiliation, that she might imagine
him in love with her. It was not merely that he had loved once for all,
and, once deceived and forsaken, would love no more; but it was not for
him, a man of thirty years, to bow beneath the yoke of a girl of
eighteen--a child in everything except outward growth. Not for a moment
would he be imagined by her a courtier for her favor.

Thus, even in the heart of one so far above ordinary men as Godfrey,
and that in respect of the sweetest of child-maidens, pride had its
evil place; and no good ever comes of pride, for it is the meanest of
mean things, and no one but he who is full of it thinks it grand. For
its sake this wise man was firmly resolved on caution; and so, when at
last they met, it was no more with that _abandon_ of simple pleasure
with which he had been wont to receive her when she came knocking at
the door of his study, bearing clear question or formless perplexity;
and his restraint would of itself have been enough to make Letty, whose
heart was now beating in a very thicket of nerves, at once feel it
impossible to carry out her intent--impossible to confess to him any
more than to his mother; while Godfrey, on his part, perceiving her
manifest shyness and unwonted embarrassment, attributed them altogether
to his own wisely guarded behavior, and, seeing therein no sign of loss
of influence, continued his caution. Thus the pride, which is of man,
mingled with the love, which is of God, and polluted it. From that hour
he began to lord it over the girl; and this change in his behavior
immediately reacted on himself, in the obscure perception that there
might be danger to her in continued freedom of intercourse: he must,
therefore, he concluded, order the way for both; he must take care of
her as well as of himself. But was it consistent with this resolve that
he should, for a whole month, spend every leisure moment in working at
a present for her--a written marvel of neatness and legibility?

Again, by this meeting askance, as it were, another disintegrating
force was called into operation: the moment Letty knew she could not
tell Godfrey, and that therefore a wall had arisen between him and her,
that moment woke in her the desire, as she had never felt it before, to
see Tom Helmer. She could no longer bear to be shut up in herself; she
must see somebody, get near to somebody, talk to somebody; her secret
would choke her otherwise, would swell and break her heart; and who was
there to think of but Tom--and Mary Marston?

She had never once gone to the oak again, but she had not altogether
avoided a certain little cobwebbed gable-window in the garret, from
which it was visible; neither had she withheld her hands from cleaning
a pane in that window, that through it she might see the oak; and
there, more than once or twice, now thickening the huge limb, now
spotting the grass beneath it, she had descried a dark object, which
could be nothing else than Tom Helmer on the watch for herself. He must
surely be her friend, she reasoned, or how would he care, day after
day, to climb a tree to look if she were coming--she who was the
veriest nobody in all other eyes but his? It was so good of Tom! She
_would_ call him Tom; everybody else called him Tom, and why shouldn't
she--to herself, when nobody was near? As to Mary Marston, she treated
her like a child! When she told her that she had met Tom at
Durnmelling, and how kind he had been, she looked as grave as if it had
been wicked to be civil to him; and told her in return how he and his
mother were always quarreling: that must be his mother's fault, she was
sure-it could not be Tom's; any one might see that at a glance! His
mother must be something like her aunt! But, after that, how could she
tell Mary any more? It would not be fair to Tom, for, like the rest,
she would certainly begin to abuse him. What harm could come of it?
and, if harm did, how could she help it! If they had been kind to her,
she would have told them everything, but they all frightened her so,
she could not speak. It was not her fault if Tom was the only friend
she had! She _would_ ask his advice; he was sure to advise her just the
right thing. He had read that sonnet about the wise virgin with such
feeling and such force, he _must_ know what a girl ought to do, and how
she ought to behave to those who were unkind and would not trust her.

Poor Letty! she had no stay, no root in herself yet. Well do I know not
one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself;
each of us needs God and every human soul he has made, before he has
enough; but we ought each to be able, in the hope of what is one day to
come, to endure for a time, not having enough. Letty was unblamable
that she desired the comfort of humanity around her soul, but I am not
sure that she was quite unblamable in not being fit to walk a few steps
alone, or even to sit still and expect. With all his learning, Godfrey
had not taught her what William Marston had taught Mary; and now her
heart was like a child left alone in a great room. She had not yet
learned that we must each bear his own burden, and so become able to
bear each the burden of the other. Poor friends we are, if we are
capable only of leaning, and able never to support.

But the moment Letty's heart had thus cried out against Mary, came a
shock, and something else cried out against herself, telling her that
she was not fair to her friend, and that Mary, and no other, was the
proper person to advise with in this emergency of her affairs. She had
no right to turn from her because she was a little afraid of her.
Perhaps Letty was on the point of discovering that to be unable to bear
disapproval was an unworthy weakness. But in her case it came nowise of
the pride which blame stirs to resentment, but altogether of the
self-depreciation which disapproval rouses to yet greater dispiriting.
Praise was to her a precious thing, in part because it made her feel as
if she could go on; blame, a misery, in part because it made her feel
as if all was of no use, she never could do anything right. She had not
yet learned that the right is the right, come of praise or blame what
may. The right will produce more right and be its own reward--in the
end a reward altogether infinite, for God will meet it with what is
deeper than all right, namely, perfect love. But the more Letty
thought, the more she was sure she must tell Mary; and, disapprove as
she might, Mary was a very different object of alarm from either her
aunt or her cousin Godfrey.

The first afternoon, therefore, on which she thought her aunt could
spare her, she begged leave to go and see Mary. Mrs. Wardour yielded
it, but not very graciously. She had, indeed, granted that Miss Marston
was not like other shop-girls, but she did not favor the growth of the
intimacy, and liked Letty's going to her less than Mary's coming to
Thornwick.




CHAPTER X.

THE HEATH AND THE HUT.


Letty seldom went into the shop, except to buy, for she knew Mr.
Turnbull would not like it, and Mary did not encourage it; but now her
misery made her bold. Mary saw the trouble in her eyes, and without a
moment's hesitation drew her inside the counter, and thence into the
house, where she led the way to her own room, up stairs and through
passages which were indeed lanes through masses of merchandise, like
those cut through deep-drifted snow. It was shop all over the house,
till they came to the door of Mary's chamber, which, opening from such
surroundings, had upon Letty much the effect of a chapel--and rightly,
for it was a room not unused to having its door shut. It was small, and
plainly but daintily furnished, with no foolish excess of the small
refinements on which girls so often set value, spending large time on
what it would be waste to buy: only they have to kill the weary captive
they know not how to redeem, for he troubles them with his moans.

"Sit down, Letty dear, and tell me what is the matter," said Mary,
placing her friend in a chintz-covered straw chair, and seating herself
beside her.

Letty burst into tears, and sat sobbing.

"Come, dear, tell me all about it," insisted Mary. "If you don't make
haste, they will be calling me."

Letty could not speak.

"Then I'll tell you what," said Mary; "you must stop with me to-night,
that we may have time to talk it over. You sit here and amuse yourself
as well as you can till the shop is shut, and then we shall have such a
talk! I will send your tea up here. Beenie will be good to you."

"Oh, but, indeed, I can't!" sobbed Letty; "my aunt would never forgive
me."

"You silly child! I never meant to keep you without sending to your
aunt to let her know."

"She won't let me stop," persisted Letty.

"We will try her," said Mary, confidently; and, without more ado, left
Letty, and, going to her desk in the shop, wrote a note to Mrs.
Wardour. This she gave to Beenie to send by special messenger to
Thornwick; after which, she told her, she must take up a nice tea to
Miss Lovel in her bedroom. Mary then resumed her place in the shop,
under the frowns and side-glances of Turnbull, and the smile of her
father, pleased at her reappearance from even such a short absence.

But the return, in an hour or so, of the boy-messenger, whom Beenie had
taken care not to pay beforehand, destroyed the hope of a pleasant
evening; for he brought a note from Mrs. Wardour, absolutely refusing
to allow Letty to spend the night from home: she must return
immediately, so as to get in before dark.

The rare anger flushed Letty's cheek and flashed from her eyes as she
read; for, in addition to the prime annoyance, her aunt's note was
addressed to her and not to Mary, to whom it did not even allude. Mary
only smiled inwardly at this, but Letty felt deeply hurt, and her
displeasure with her aunt added yet a shade to the dimness of her
judgment. She rose at once.

"Will you not tell me first what is troubling you, Letty?" said Mary.

"No, dear, not now," replied Letty, caring a good deal less about the
right ordering of her way than when she entered the house. Why should
she care, she said to herself--but it was her anger speaking in
her--how she behaved, when she was treated so abominably?

"Then I will come and see you on Sunday," said Mary; "and then we shall
manage to have our talk."

They kissed and parted--Letty unaware that she had given her friend a
less warm kiss than usual. There can hardly be a plainer proof of the
lowness of our nature, until we have laid hold of the higher nature
that belongs to us by birthright, than this, that even a just anger
tends to make us unjust and unkind: Letty was angry with every person
and thing at Thornwick, and unkind to her best friend, for whose sake
in part she was angry. With glowing cheeks, tear-filled eyes, and
indignant heart she set out on her walk home.

It was a still evening, with a great cloud rising in the southwest;
from which, as the sun drew near the horizon, a thin veil stretched
over the sky between, and a few drops came scattering. This was in
harmony with Letty's mood. Her soul was clouded, and her heaven was
only a place for the rain to fall from. Annoyance, doubt, her new sense
of constraint, and a wide-reaching, undefined feeling of homelessness,
all wrought together to make her mind a chaos out of which misshapen
things might rise, instead of an ordered world in which gracious and
reasonable shapes appear. For as the place such will be the thoughts
that spring there; when all in us is peace divine, then, and not till
then, shall we think the absolutely reasonable. Alas, that by our
thoughtlessness or unkindness we should so often be the cause of
monster-births, and those even in the minds of the loved! that we
should be, if but for a moment, the demons that deform a fair world
that loves us! Such was Mrs. Wardour, with her worldly wisdom, that day
to Letty.

About half-way to Thornwick, the path crossed a little heathy common;
and just as Letty left the hedge-guarded field-side, and through a gate
stepped, as it were, afresh out of doors on the open common, the wind
came with a burst, and brought the rain in earnest. It was not yet very
heavy, but heavy enough, with the wind at its back, and she with no
defense but her parasol, to wet her thoroughly before she could reach
any shelter, the nearest being a solitary, decrepit old hawthorn-tree,
about half-way across the common. She bent her head to the blast, and
walked on. She had no desire for shelter. She would like to get wet to
the skin, take a violent cold, go into a consumption, and die in a
fortnight. The wind whistled about her bonnet, dashed the rain-drops
clanging on the drum-tight silk of her parasol, and made of her skirts
fetters and chains. She could hardly get along, and was just going to
take down her parasol, when suddenly, where was neither house nor hedge
nor tree, came a lull. For from behind, over head and parasol, had come
an umbrella, and now came a voice and an audible sigh of pleasure.

"I little thought when I left home this afternoon," said the voice,
"that I should have such a happiness before night!"

At the sound of the voice Letty gave a cry, which ran through all the
shapes of alarm, of surprise, of delight; and it was not much of a cry
either.

"O Tom!" she said, and clasped the arm that held the umbrella. How her
foolish heart bounded! Here was help when she had sought none, and
where least she had hoped for any! Her aunt would have her run from
under the umbrella at once, no doubt, but she would do as she pleased
this time. Here was Tom getting as wet as a spaniel for her sake, and
counting it a happiness! Oh, to have a friend like that--all to
herself! She would not reject such a friend for all the aunts in
creation. Besides, it was her aunt's own fault; if she had let her stay
with Mary, she would not have met Tom. It was not her doing; she would
take what was sent her, and enjoy it! But, at the sound of her own
voice calling him Tom, the blood rushed to her cheeks, and she felt
their glow in the heart of the chill-beating rain.

"What a night for you to be out in, Letty," responded Tom, taking
instant advantage of the right she had given him. "How lucky it was I
chose the right place to watch in at last! I was sure, if only I
persevered long enough, I should be rewarded."

"Have you been waiting for me long?" asked Letty, with foolish
acceptance.

"A fortnight and a day," answered Tom, with a laugh. "But I would wait
a long year for such another chance as this." And he pressed to his
side the hand upon his arm. "Fate is indeed kind to-night."

"Hardly in the weather," said Letty, fast recovering her spirits.

"Not?" said Tom, with seeming pretense of indignation. "Let any one but
yourself dare to say a word against the weather of this night, and he
will have me to reckon with. It's the sweetest weather I ever walked
in. I will write a glorious song in praise of showery gusts and bare
commons."

"Do," said Letty, careful not to say Tom this time, but unwilling to
revert to Mr. Helmer, "and mind you bring in the umbrella."

"That I will! See if I don't!" answered Tom.

"And make it real poetry too?" asked Letty, looking archly round the
stick of the umbrella.

"Thou shalt thyself be the lovely critic, fair maiden!" answered Tom.

And thus they were already on the footing of somewhere about a two
years' acquaintance--thanks to the smart of ill-usage in Letty's bosom,
the gayety in Tom's, the sudden wild weather, the quiet heath, the
gathering shades, and the umbrella! The wind blew cold, the air was
dank and chill, the west was a low gleam of wet yellow, and the rain
shot stinging in their faces; but Letty cared quite as little for it
all as Tom did, for her heart, growing warm with the comfort of the
friendly presence, felt like a banished soul that has found a world;
and a joy as of endless deliverance pervaded her being. And neither to
her nor to Tom must we deny our sympathy in the pleasure which, walking
over a bog, they drew from the flowers that mantled awful deeps; they
will not sink until they stop, and begin to build their house upon it.
Within that umbrella, hovered, and glided with them, an atmosphere of
bliss and peace and rose-odors. In the midst of storm and coming
darkness, it closed warm and genial around the pair. Tom meditated no
guile, and Letty had no deceit in her. Yet was Tom no true man, or
sweet Letty much of a woman. Neither of them was yet _of the truth._

At the other side of the heath, almost upon the path, stood a deserted
hut; door and window were gone, but the roof remained: just as they
neared it, the wind fell, and the rain began to come down in earnest.

"Let us go in here for a moment," said Tom, "and get our breath for a
new fight."

Letty said nothing, but Tom felt she was reluctant.

"Not a soul will pass to-night," he said. "We mustn't get wet to the
skin."

Letty felt, or fancied, refusal would be more unmaidenly than consent,
and allowed Tom to lead her in. And there, within those dismal walls,
the twilight sinking into a cheerless night of rain, encouraged by the
very dreariness and obscurity of the place, she told Tom the trouble of
mind their interview at the oak was causing her, saying that now it
would be worse than ever, for it was altogether impossible to confess
that she had met him yet again that evening.

So now, indeed, Letty's foot was in the snare: she had a secret with
Tom. Every time she saw him, liberty had withdrawn a pace. There was no
room for confession now. If a secret held be a burden, a secret shared
is a fetter. But Tom's heart rejoiced within him.

"Let me see!--How old are you, Letty?" he asked gayly.

"Eighteen past," she answered.

"Then you are fit to judge for yourself. You ain't a child, and they
are not your father and mother. What right have they to know everything
you do? I wouldn't let any such nonsense trouble me."

"But they give me everything, you know--food, and clothes, and all."

"Ah, just so!" returned Tom. "And what do you do for them?"

"Nothing."

"Why! what are you about all day?"

Letty gave him a brief sketch of her day.

"And you call that nothing?" exclaimed Tom. "Ain't that enough to pay
for your food and your clothes? Does it want your private affairs to
make up the difference? Or have you to pay for your food and clothes
with your very thoughts?--What pocket-money do they give you?"

"Pocket-money?" returned Letty, as if she did not quite know what he
meant.

"Money to do what you like with," explained Tom.

Letty thought for a moment.

"Cousin Godfrey gave me a sovereign last Christmas," she answered. "I
have got ten shillings of it yet."

Tom burst into a merry laugh.

"Oh, you dear creature!" he cried. "What a sweet slave you make! The
lowest servant on the farm gets wages, and you get none: yet you think
yourself bound to tell them everything, because they give you food and
clothes, and a sovereign last Christmas!"

Here a gentle displeasure arose in the heart of the girl, hitherto so
contented and grateful. She did not care about money, but she resented
the claim her conscience made for them upon her confidence. She did not
reflect that such claim had never been made by them; nor that the fact
that she felt the claim, proved that she had been treated, in some
measure at least, like a daughter of the house.

"Why," continued Tom, "it is mere, downright, rank slavery! You are
walking to the sound of your own chains. Of course, you are not to do
anything wrong, but you are not bound not to do anything they may
happen not to like."

In this style he went on, believing he spoke the truth, and was
teaching her to show a proper spirit. His heart, as well as Godfrey's,
was uplifted, to think he had this lovely creature to direct and
superintend: through her sweet confidence, he had to set her free from
unjust oppression taking advantage of her simplicity. But in very truth
he was giving her just the instruction that goes to make a slave--the
slave in heart, who serves without devotion, and serves unworthily. Yet
in this, and much more such poverty-stricken, swine-husk argument,
Letty seemed to hear a gospel of liberty, and scarcely needed the
following injunctions of Tom, to make a firm resolve not to utter a
word concerning him. To do so would be treacherous to him, and would be
to forfeit the liberty he had taught her! Thus, from the neglect of a
real duty, she became the slave of a false one.

"If you do," Tom had said, "I shall never see you again: they will set
every one about the place to watch you, like so many cats after one
poor little white mousey, and on the least suspicion, one way or
another, you will be gobbled up, as sure as fate, before you can get to
me to take care of you."

Letty looked up at him gratefully.

"But what could you do for me if I did?" she asked. "If my aunt were to
turn me out of the house, your mother would not take me in!"

Letty was not herself now; she was herself and Tom--by no means a
healthful combination.

"My mother won't be mistress long," answered Tom. "She will have to do
as I bid her when I am one-and-twenty, and that will be in a few
months." Tom did not know the terms of his father's will. "In the mean
time we must keep quiet, you know. I don't want a row--we have plenty
of row as it is. You may be sure _I_ shall tell no one how I spent the
happiest hour of my life. How little circumstance has to do with
bliss!" he added, with a philosophical sigh. "Here we are in a wretched
hut, roared and rained upon by an equinoctial tempest, and I am in
paradise!"

"I must go home," said Letty, recalled to a sense of her situation, yet
set trembling with pleasure, by his words. "See, it is getting quite
dark!"

"Don't be afraid, my white bird," said Tom. "I will see you home. But
surely you are as well here as there anyhow! Who knows when we shall
meet again? Don't be alarmed; I'm not going to ask you to meet me
anywhere; I know your sweet innocence would make you fancy it wrong,
and then you would be unhappy. But that is no reason why I should not
fall in with you when I have the chance. It is very hard that two
people who understand each other can not be friends without other
people shoving in their ugly beaks! Where is the harm to any one if we
choose to have a few minutes' talk together now and then?"

"Where, indeed?" responded Letty shyly.

A tall shadow--no shadow either, but the very person of Godfrey
Wardour--passed the opening in the wall of the hut where once had been
a window, and the gloom it cast into the dusk within was awful and
ominous. The moment he saw it, Tom threw himself flat on the clay floor
of the hut. Godfrey stopped at the doorless entrance, and stood on the
threshold, bending his head to clear the lintel as he looked in.
Letty's heart seemed to vanish from her body. A strange feeling shook
her, as if some mysterious transformation were about to pass upon her
whole frame, and she were about to be changed into some one of the
lower animals. The question, where was the harm, late so triumphantly
put, seemed to have no heart in it now. For a moment that had to Letty
the air of an aeon, Godfrey stood peering.

Not a little to his displeasure, he had heard from his mother of her
refusal to grant Letty's request, and had set out in the hope of
meeting and helping her home, for by that time it had begun to rain,
and looked stormy.

In the darkness he saw something white, and, as he gazed, it grew to
Letty's face. The strange, scared, ghastly expression of it bewildered
him.

Letty became aware that Godfrey did not recognize her at first, and the
hope sprung up in her heart that he might not see Tom at all; but she
could not utter a word, and stood returning Godfrey's gaze like one
fascinated with terror. Presently her heart began again to bear witness
in violent piston-strokes.

"Is it really you, my child?" said Godfrey, in an uncertain voice--for,
if it was indeed she, why did she not speak, and why did she look so
scared at the sight of him?

"O Cousin Godfrey!" gasped Letty, then first finding a little voice,
"you gave me such a start!"

"Why should you be so startled at seeing me, Letty?" he returned. "Am I
such a monster of the darkness, then?"

"You came all at once," replied Letty, gathering courage from the
playfulness of his tone, "and blocked up the door with your shoulders,
so that not a ray of light fell on your face; and how was I to know it
was you, Cousin Godfrey?"

From a paleness grayer than death, her face was now red as fire; it was
the burning of the lie inside her. She felt all a lie now: there was
the good that Tom had brought her! But the gloom was friendly. With a
resolution new to herself, she went up to Godfrey and said:

"If you are going to the town, let me walk with you, Cousin Godfrey. It
is getting so dark."

She felt as if an evil necessity--a thing in which man must not
believe--were driving her. But the poor child was not half so deceitful
inside as the words seemed to her issuing from her lips. It was such a
relief to be assured Godfrey had not seen Tom, that she felt as if she
could forego the sight of Tom for evermore. Her better feelings rushed
back, her old confidence and reverence; and, in the altogether
nebulo-chaotic condition of her mind, she felt as if, in his turn,
Godfrey had just appeared for her deliverance.

"I am not going to the town, Letty," he answered. "I came to meet you,
and we will go home together. It is no use waiting for the rain to
stop, and about as little to put up an umbrella, I have brought your
waterproof, and we must just take it as it comes."

The wind was up again, and the next moment Letty, on Godfrey's arm, was
struggling with the same storm she had so lately encountered leaning on
Tom's, while Tom was only too glad to be left alone on the floor of the
dismal hut, whence he did not venture to rise for some time, lest any
the most improbable thing should happen, to bring Mr. Wardour back. He
was as mortally afraid of being discovered as any young thief in a
farmer's orchard.

He had a dreary walk back to the public house where he had stabled his
horse; but he trudged it cheerfully, brooding with delight on Letty's
beauty, and her lovely confidence in Tom Helmer--a personage whom he
had begun to feel nobody trusted as he deserved.

"Poor child!" he said to himself--he as well as Godfrey patronized
her--"what a doleful walk home she will have with that stuck-up old
bachelor fellow!"

Nor, indeed, was it a very comfortable walk home she had, although
Godfrey talked all the way, as well as a head-wind, full of rain, would
permit. A few weeks ago she would have thought the walk and the talk
and everything delightful. But after Tom's airy converse on the same
level with herself, Godfrey's sounded indeed wise--very wise--but dull,
so dull! It is true the suspicion, hardly awake enough to be troublous,
lay somewhere in her, that in Godfrey's talk there was a value of which
in Tom's there was nothing; but then it was not wisdom Letty was in
want of, she thought, but somebody to be kind to her--as kind as she
should like; somebody, though she did not say this even to herself, to
pet her a little, and humor her, and not require too much of her.
Physically, Letty was not in the least lazy, but she did not enjoy
being forced to think much. She could think, and to no very poor
purpose either, but as yet she had no hunger for the possible results
of thought, and how then could she care to think? Seated on the edge of
her bed, weary and wet and self-accused, she recalled, and pondered,
and, after her faculty, compared the two scarce comparable men, until
the voice of her aunt, calling to her to make haste and come to tea,
made her start up, and in haste remove her drenched garments. The old
lady imagined from her delay she was out of temper because she had sent
for her home; but, when she appeared, she was so ready, so attentive,
and so quick to help, that, a little repentant, she said to herself,
"Really the girl is very good-natured!" as if then first she discovered
the fact. But Thornwick could never more to Letty feel like a home! Not
at peace with herself, she could not be in rhythmic relation with her
surroundings.

The next day, the old manner of life began again; but, alas! it was
only the old manner, it was not the old life; that was gone for ever,
like an old sunset, or an old song, and could not be recalled from the
dead. We may have better, but we can not have the same. God only can
have the same. God grant our new may inwrap our old! Letty labored more
than ever to lay hold of the lessons, to his mind so genial, in hers
bringing forth more labor than fruit, which Godfrey set before her, but
success seemed further from her than ever. She was now all the time
aware of a weight, an oppression, which seemed to belong to the task,
but was in reality her self-dissatisfaction. She was like a poor Hebrew
set to make brick without straw, but the Egyptian that had brought her
into bondage was the feebleness of her own will. Now and then would
come a break--a glow of beauty, a gleam of truth; for a moment she
would forget herself; for a moment a shining pool would flash on the
clouded sea of her life; presently her heart would send up a fresh
mist, the light would fade and vanish, and the sea lie dusky and sad.
Not seldom reproaching herself with having given Tom cause to think
unjustly of her guardians, she would try harder than ever to please her
aunt; and the small personal services she had been in the way of
rendering to Godfrey were now ministered with the care of a devotee.
Not once should he miss a button from a shirt or find a sock
insufficiently darned! But even this conscience of service did not make
her happy. Duty itself could not, where faith was wanting, where the
heart was not at one with those to whom the hands were servants. She
would cry herself to sleep, and rise early to be sad. She resolved at
last, and seemed to gain strength and some peace from the resolve, to
do all in her power to avoid Tom; and certainly not once did she try to
meet him. Not with him, she could resist him.

Thus it went on. Her aunt saw that something was amiss, and watched
her, without attempt at concealment, which added greatly to Letty's
discomfort. But the only thing her keenness discovered was, that the
girl was forwardly eager to please Godfrey, and the conviction began to
grow that she was indulging the impudent presumption of being in love
with her peerless cousin. Then maternal indignation misled her into the
folly of dropping hints that should put Godfrey on his guard: men were
so easily taken in by designing girls! She did not say much; but she
said a good deal too much for her own ends, when she caused her fancy
to present itself to the mind of Godfrey.

He had not failed, no one could have failed, to observe the dejection
that had for some time ruled every feature and expression of the girl's
countenance. Again and again he had asked himself whether she might not
be fancying him displeased with her; for he knew well that, becoming
more and more aware of what he counted his danger, he had kept of late
stricter guard than ever over his behavior; but, watching her now with
the misleading light of his mother's lantern, nor quite unwilling, I am
bound to confess, that the thing might be as she implied, he became by
degrees convinced that she was right.

So far as this, perhaps, the man was pardonable--with a mother to cause
him to err. But, for what followed, punishment was inevitable. He had a
true and strong affection for the girl, but it was an affection as from
conscious high to low; an affection, that is, not unmixed with
patronage--a bad thing--far worse than it can seem to the heart that
indulges it. He still recoiled, therefore, from the idea of such a
leveling of himself as he counted it would be to show her anything like
the love of a lover. All pride is more or less mean, but one pride may
be grander than another, and Godfrey was not herein proud in any grand
way. Good fellow as he was, he thought much too much of himself; and,
unconsciously comparing it with Letty's, altogether overvalued his
worth. Stranger than any bedfellow misery ever acquainted a man withal,
are the heart-fellows he carries about with him. Noble as in many ways
Wardour was, and kind as, to Letty, he thought he always was, he was
not generous toward her; he was not Prince Arthur, "the Knight of
Magnificence." Something may perhaps be allowed on the score of the
early experience because of which he had resolved--pridefully, it is
true--never again to come under the power of a woman; it was unworthy
of any man, he said, to place his peace in a hand which could
thenceforth wring his whole being with agony. But, had he now brought
himself as severely to task as he ought, he would have discovered that
he was making no objection to the little girl's loving him, only he
would not love her in the same way in return; and where was the honor
in that? Doubtless, had he thus examined himself, he would have thought
he meant to take care that the child's love for him should not go too
far--should not endanger her peace; and that, if the thing should give
her trouble, it should be his business to comfort her in it; but
descend he would not--would not _yet_--from his pedestal, to meet the
silly thing on the level ground of humanity, and the relation of the
man and the woman! Something like this, I say, he would have found in
his heart, horrid as it reads. That heart's action was not even, was
not healthy.

When in London he had ransacked Holywell Street for dainty editions of
so many of his favorite authors as would make quite a little library
for Letty; and on his return, had commissioned a cabinet-maker in
Testbridge to put together a small set of book-shelves, after his own
design, measured and fitted to receive them exactly; these shelves, now
ready, he fastened to her wall one afternoon when she was out of the
way, and filled them with the books. He never doubted that, the moment
she saw them, she would rush to find him; and, when he had done,
retreated, therefore, to his study, there to sit in readiness to
receive her and her gratitude with gentle kindness; when he would
express the hope that she would make real friends of the spirits whose
quintessence he had thus stored to her hand; and would introduce her to
what Milton says in his "Areopagitica" concerning good books. There,
for her sake, then, he sat, in mental state, expectant; but sat in
vain. When they met at tea, then, in the presence of his mother, with
embarrassment and broken utterance, she did thank him.

"O Cousin Godfrey!" she said, and ceased; then, "It is so much more
than I deserve, I dare hardly thank you." After another pause, with a
shake of her pretty head, as if she would toss aside her hair, or the
tears out of her eyes, "I don't know--I seem to have no right to thank
you; I ought not to have such a splendid present. Indeed, I don't
deserve it. You would not give it me if you knew how naughty I am."

These broken sentences were by both mother and son altogether
misinterpreted. The mother, now hearing for the first time of Godfrey's
present, was filled with jealousy, and began to revolve thoughts of
dire disquietude: was the hussy actually beginning to gain her point,
and steal from her the heart of her son? Was it in the girl's blood to
wrong her? The father of her had wronged her: she would take care his
daughter should not! She had taken a viper to her bosom! Who was _she_,
to wriggle herself into an old family and property? Had _she_ been born
to such things? She would teach her who she was! When dependents began
to presume, it was time they had a lesson.

Letty could not bear the sight of the books and their shelves; the very
beauty of the bindings was a reproach to her. From the misery of this
fresh burden, this new stirring of her sense of hypocrisy, she began to
wish herself anywhere out of the house, and away from Thornwick. It was
torture to her to think how she had deceived Cousin Godfrey at the hut;
and throughout the night, across the darkness, she felt, though she
could not see, the books gazing at her, like an embodied conscience,
from the wall of her chamber. Twenty times that night she started from
her sleep, saying, "I will go where they shall never see me"; then rose
with the dawn, and set herself to the hardest work she could find.

The next day was Sunday, and they all went to church. Letty felt that
Tom was there, too, but she never raised her eyes to glance at him.

He had been looking out in vain for a sight of her--now from the
oak-tree, now from his bay mare's back, as he haunted the roads about
Thornwick, now from the window of the little public-house where the
path across the fields joined the main road to Testbridge: but not once
had he caught a glimpse of her.

He had seated himself where he could not fail to see her if she were in
the Thornwick pew. How ill she looked! His heart swelled with
indignation.

"They are cruel to her," he said; "that is plain. Poor girl, they will
kill her! She is a pearl in the oyster-maw of Thornwick. This will
never do; I _must_ see her somehow!"

If at this crisis Letty had but had a real friend to strengthen and
advise her, much suffering might have been spared her, for never was
there a more teachable girl. She was, indeed, only too ready to be
advised, too ready to accept for true whatever friendship offered
itself. None but the friend who will strengthen us to stand, is worthy
of the name. Such a friend Mary would have been, but Letty did not yet
know what she needed. The unrest of her conscience made her shrink from
one who was sure to side with that conscience, and help it to trouble
her. It was sympathy Letty longed for, not strength, and therefore she
was afraid of Mary. She came to see her, as she had promised, the
Sunday after that disastrous visit; but the weather was still uncertain
and gusty, and she found both her and Godfrey in the parlor; nor did
Letty give her a chance of speaking to her alone. The poor girl had now
far more on her mind that needed help than then when she went in search
of it, but she would seek it no more from her! For, the more she
thought, the surer she felt that Mary would insist on her making a
disclosure of the whole foolish business to Mrs. Wardour, and would
admit neither her own fear nor her aunt's harshness as reason
sufficient to the contrary. "More than that," thought Letty, "I can't
be sure she wouldn't go, in spite of me, and tell her all about it! and
what would become of me then? I should be worse off a hundred times
than if I had told her myself."




CHAPTER XI

WILLIAM MARSTON.


The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of
altogether another kind from those that enveloped Letty: no troubles
are for one moment to be compared with those that come of the
wrongness, even if it be not wickedness, that is our own. Some clouds
rise from stagnant bogs and fens; others from the wide, clean, large
ocean. But either kind, thank God, will serve the angels to come down
by. In the old stories of celestial visitants the clouds do much; and
it is oftenest of all down the misty slope of griefs and pains and
fears, that the most powerful joy slides into the hearts of men and
women and children. Beautiful are the feet of the men of science on the
dust-heaps of the world, but the patient heart will yield a myriad
times greater thanks for the clouds that give foothold to the shining
angels.

Few people were interested in William Marston. Of those who saw him in
the shop, most turned from him to his jolly partner. But a few there
were who, some by instinct, some from experience, did look for him
behind the counter, and were disappointed if he were absent: most of
them had a repugnance to the over-complaisant Turnbull. Yet Marston was
the one whom the wise world of Testbridge called the hypocrite, and
Turnbull was the plain-spoken, agreeable, honest man of the world,
pretending to be no better either than himself or than other people.
The few friends, however, that Marston bad, loved him as not many are
loved: they knew him, not as he seemed to the careless eye, but as he
was. Never did man do less either to conceal or to manifest himself. He
was all taken up with what he loved, and that was neither himself nor
his business. These friends knew that, when the far-away look was on
him, when his face was paler, and he seemed unaware of person or thing
about him, he was not indifferent to their presence, or careless of
their existence; it was only that his thoughts were out, like heavenly
bees, foraging; a word of direct address brought him back in a moment,
and his soul would return to them with a smile. He stood as one on the
keystone of a bridge, and held communion now with these, now with
those: on this side the river and on that, both companies were his own.

He was not a man of much education, in the vulgar use of the word; but
he was a good way on in that education, for the sake of which, and for
no other without it, we are here in our consciousness--the education
which, once begun, will, soon or slow, lead knowledge captive, and
teaches nothing that has to be unlearned again, because every flower of
it scatters the seed of one better than itself. The main secret of his
progress, the secret of all wisdom, was, that with him action was the
beginning and end of thought. He was not one of that cloud of false
witnesses, who, calling themselves Christians, take no trouble for the
end for which Christ was born, namely, their salvation from
unrighteousness--a class that may be divided into the insipid and the
offensive, both regardless of obedience, the former indifferent to, the
latter contentious for doctrine.

It may well seem strange that such a man should have gone into business
with such another as John Turnbull; but the latter had been growing
more and more common, while Marston had been growing more and more
refined. Still from the first it was an unequal yoking of believer with
unbeliever--just as certainly, although not with quite such wretched
results, as would have been the marriage of Mary Marston and George
Turnbull. And it had been a great trial: punishment had not been
spared--with best results in patience and purification; for so are our
false steps turned back to good by the evil to which they lead us.
Turnbull was ready to take every safe advantage to be gained from his
partner's comparative carelessness about money. He drew a larger
proportion of the profits than belonged to his share in the capital,
justifying himself on the ground that he had a much larger family, did
more of the business, and had to keep up the standing of the firm. He
made him pay more than was reasonable for the small part of the house
yielded from storage to the accommodation of him, his daughter, and
their servant, notwithstanding that, if they had not lived there, some
one must have been paid to do so. Far more than this, careless of his
partner's rights, and insensible to his interests, he had for some time
been risking the whole affair by private speculations. After all,
Marston was the safer man of business, even from the worldly point of
view. Alone, it is true, he would hardly have made money, but he would
have got through, and would have left his daughter the means of getting
through also; for he would have left her in possession of her own peace
and the confidence of her friends, which will always prove enough for
those who confess themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on the
earth--those who regard it as a grand staircase they have to climb, not
a plain on which to build their houses and plant their vineyards.

As to the peculiar doctrines of the sect to which he had joined
himself, right or wrong in themselves, Marston, after having complied
with what seemed to him the letter of the law concerning baptism, gave
himself no further trouble. He had for a long time known--for, by the
power of the life in him, he had gathered from the Scriptures the
finest of the wheat, where so many of every sect, great church and
little church, gather only the husks and chaff--that the only baptism
of any avail is the washing of the fresh birth, and the making new by
that breath of God, which, breathed into man's nostrils, first made of
him a living soul. When a man _knows_ this, potentially he knows all
things. But, _just therefore_, he did not stand high with his sect any
more than with his customers, though--a fact which Marston himself
never suspected--the influence of his position had made them choose him
for a deacon. One evening George had had leave to go home early,
because of a party at _the villa_, as the Turnbulls always called their
house; and, the boy having also for some cause got leave of absence,
Mr. Marston was left to shut the shop himself, Mary, who was in some
respects the stronger of the two, assisting him. When he had put up the
last shutter, he dropped his arms with a weary sigh. Mary, who had been
fastening the bolts inside, met him in the doorway.

"You look worn out, father," she said. "Come and lie down, and I will
read to you."

"I will, my dear," he answered. "I don't feel quite myself to-night.
The seasons tell upon me now. I suppose the stuff of my tabernacle is
wearing thin."

Mary cast an anxious look at him, for, though never a strong man, he
seldom complained. But she said nothing, and, hoping a good cup of tea
would restore him, led the way through the dark shop to the door
communicating with the house. Often as she had passed through it thus,
the picture of it as she saw it that night was the only one almost that
returned to her afterward: a few vague streaks of light, from the
cracks of the shutters, fed the rich, warm gloom of the place; one of
them fell upon a piece of orange-colored cotton stuff, which blazed in
the dark.

Arrived at their little sitting-room at the top of the stair, she
hastened to shake up the pillows and make the sofa comfortable for him.
He lay down, and she covered him with a rug; then ran to her room for a
book, and read to him while Beenie was getting the tea. She chose a
poem with which Mr. Wardour had made her acquainted almost the last
tune she was at Thornwick--that was several weeks ago now, for plainly
Letty was not so glad to see her as she used to be--it was Milton's
little ode "On Time," written for inscription on a clock--one of the
grandest of small poems. Her father knew next to nothing of literature;
having pondered his New Testament, however, for thirty years, he was
capable of understanding Milton's best--to the childlike mind the best
is always simplest and easiest-not unfrequently the _only_ kind it can
lay hold of. When she ended, he made her read it again, and then again;
not until she had read it six times did he seem content. And every time
she read it, Mary found herself understanding it better. It was
gradually growing very precious.

Her father had made no remark; but, when she lifted her eyes from the
sixth reading, she saw that his face shone, and, as the last words left
her lips, he took up the line like a refrain, and repeated it after her:

"'Triumphing over death, and chance, and thee, O Time!'

"That will do now, Mary, I thank you," he said. "I have got a good hold
of it, I think, and shall be able to comfort myself with it when I wake
in the night. The man must have been very like the apostle Paul."

He said no more. The tea was brought, and he drank a cup of it, but
could not eat; and, as he could not, neither could Mary.

"I want a long sleep," he said; and the words went to his child's
heart--she dared not question herself why. When the tea-things were
removed, he called her.

"Mary," he said, "come here. I want to speak to you."

She kneeled beside him,

"Mary," he said again, taking her little hand in his two long, bony
ones, "I love you, my child, to that degree I can not say; and I want
you, I do want you, to be a Christian."

"So do I, father dear," answered Mary simply, the tears rushing into
her eyes at the thought that perhaps she was not one; "I want me to be
a Christian."

"Yes, my love," he went on; "but it is not that I do not think you a
Christian; it is that I want you to be a downright real Christian, not
one that is but trying to feel as a Christian ought to feel. I have
lost so much precious time in that way!"

"Tell me--tell me," cried Mary, clasping her other hand over his. "What
would you have me do?"

"I will tell you. I am just trying how," he responded. "A Christian is
just one that does what the Lord Jesus tells him. Neither more nor less
than that makes a Christian. It is not even understanding the Lord
Jesus that makes one a Christian. That makes one dear to the Father;
but it is being a Christian, that is, doing what he tells us, that
makes us understand him. Peter says the Holy Spirit is given to them
that obey him: what else is that but just actually, really, doing what
he says--just as if I was to tell you to go and fetch me my Bible, and
you would get up and go? Did you ever do anything, my child, just
because Jesus told you to do it?"

Mary did not answer immediately. She thought awhile. Then she spoke.

"Yes, father," she said, "I think so. Two nights ago, George was very
rude to me--I don't mean anything bad, but you know he is very rough."

"I know it, my child. And you must not think I don't care because I
think it better not to interfere. I am with you all the time."

"Thank you, father; I know it. Well, when I was going to bed, I was
angry with him still, so it was no wonder I found I could not say my
prayers. Then I remembered how Jesus said we must forgive or we should
not be forgiven. So I forgave him with all my heart, and kindly, too,
and then I found I could pray."

The father stretched out his arms and drew her to his bosom, murmuring,
"My child! my Christ's child!" After a little he began to talk again.

"It is a miserable thing to hear those who desire to believe themselves
Christians, talking and talking about this question and that, the
discussion of which is all for strife and nowise for unity--not a
thought among them of the one command of Christ, to love one another. I
fear some are hardly content with not hating those who differ from
them."

"I am sure, father, I try--and I think I do love everybody that loves
him," said Mary.

"Well, that is much--not enough though, my child. We must be like
Jesus, and you know that it was while we were yet sinners that Christ
died for us; therefore we must love all men, whether they are
Christians or not."

"Tell me, then, what you want me to do, father dear. I will do whatever
you tell me."

"I want you to be just like that to the Lord Christ, Mary. I want you
to look out for his will, and find it, and do it. I want you not only
to do it, though that is the main thing, when you think of it, but to
look for it, that you may do it. I need not say to you that this is not
a thing to be _talked_ about much, for you don't do that. You may think
me very silent, my love; but I do not talk always when I am inclined,
for the fear I might let my feeling out that way, instead of doing
something he wants of me with it. And how repulsive and full of offense
those generally are who talk most! Our strength ought to go into
conduct, not into talk--least of all, into talk about what they call
the doctrines of the gospel. The man who does what God tells him, sits
at his Father's feet, and looks up in his Father's face; and men had
better leave him alone, for he can not greatly mistake his Father, and
certainly will not displease him. Look for the lovely will, my child,
that you may be its servant, its priest, its sister, its queen, its
slave--as Paul calls himself. How that man did glory in his Master!"

"I will try, father," returned Mary, with a burst of tears. "I do want
to be good. I do want to be one of his slaves, if I may."

"_May!_ my child? You are bound to be. You have no choice but choose
it. It is what we are made for--freedom, the divine nature, God's life,
a grand, pure, open-eyed existence! It is what Christ died for. You
must not talk about _may;_ it is all _must._"

Mary had never heard her father talk like this, and, notwithstanding
the endless interest of his words, it frightened her. An instinctive
uneasiness crept up and laid hold of her. The unsealin

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