MARK RUTHERFORD'S DELIVERANCE

CHAPTER I--NEWSPAPERS

When I had established myself in my new lodgings in Camden Town, Ifound I had ten pounds in my pocket, and again there was no outlook. I examined carefully every possibility. At last I remembered that arelative of mine, who held some office in the House of Commons, addedto his income by writing descriptive accounts of the debates, throwing in by way of supplement any stray scraps of gossip which hewas enabled to collect. The rules of the House as to the admissionof strangers were not so strict then as they are now, and he assuredme that if I could but secure a commission from a newspaper, he couldpass me into one of the galleries, and, when there was nothing to beheard worth describing, I could remain in the lobby, where I shouldby degrees find many opportunities of picking up intelligence whichwould pay. So far, so good; but how to obtain the commission? Imanaged to get hold of a list of all the country papers, and I wroteto nearly every one, offering my services. I am afraid that Isomewhat exaggerated them, for I had two answers, and, after a littlecorrespondence, two engagements. This was an unexpected stroke ofluck; but alas! both journals circulated in the same district. Inever could get together more stuff than would fill about a columnand a half, and consequently I was obliged, with infinite pains, tovary, so that it could not be recognised, the form of what, atbottom, was essentially the same matter. This was work which wouldhave been disagreeable enough, if I had not now ceased in a greatmeasure to demand what was agreeable. In years past I coveted alife, not of mere sensual enjoyment--for that I never cared--but alife which should be filled with activities of the noblest kind, andit was intolerable to me to reflect that all my waking hours were inthe main passed in merest drudgery, and that only for a few momentsat the beginning or end of the day could it be said that the highersympathies were really operative. Existence to me was nothing butthese few moments, and consequently flitted like a shadow. I wasnow, however, the better of what was half disease and half somethinghealthy and good. In the first place, I had discovered that myappetite was far larger than my powers. Consumed by a longing forcontinuous intercourse with the best, I had no ability whatever tomaintain it, and I had accepted as a fact, however mysterious itmight be, that the human mind is created with the impulses of aseraph and the strength of a man. Furthermore, what was I that Ishould demand exceptional treatment? Thousands of men and womensuperior to myself, are condemned, if that is the proper word to use, to almost total absence from themselves. The roar of the world forthem is never lulled to rest, nor can silence ever be secured inwhich the voice of the Divine can be heard. 

My letters were written twice a week, and as each contained a columnand a half, I had six columns weekly to manufacture. These I was inthe habit of writing in the morning, my evenings being spent at theHouse. At first I was rather interested, but after a while theoccupation became tedious beyond measure, and for this reason. In adiscussion of any importance about fifty members perhaps would takepart, and had made up their minds beforehand to speak. There couldnot possibly be more than three or four reasons for or against themotion, and as the knowledge that what the intending orator had tourge had been urged a dozen times before on that very night neverdeterred him from urging it again, the same arguments, diluted, muddled, and mispresented, recurred with the most wearisomeiteration. 

The public outside knew nothing or very little of the real House ofCommons, and the manner in which time was squandered there, for thereports were all of them much abbreviated. In fact, I doubt whetheranybody but the Speaker, and one or two other persons in the sameposition as myself, really felt with proper intensity what the wastewas, and how profound was the vanity of members and the itch forexpression; for even the reporters were relieved at stated intervals, and the impression on their minds was not continuous. Another evilresult of these attendances at the House was a kind of politicalscepticism. Over and over again I have seen a Government arraignedfor its conduct of foreign affairs. The evidence lay in masses ofcorrespondence which it would have required some days to master, andthe verdict, after knowing the facts, ought to have depended upon theapplication of principles, each of which admitted a contraryprinciple for which much might be pleaded. There were not fiftymembers in the House with the leisure or the ability to understandwhat it was which had actually happened, and if they had understoodit, they would not have had the wit to see what was the rule whichought to have decided the case. Yet, whether they understood or not, they were obliged to vote, and what was worse, the constituenciesalso had to vote, and so the gravest matters were settled in utterignorance. This has often been adduced as an argument against anextended suffrage, but, if it is an argument against anything, it isan argument against intrusting the aristocracy and even the Houseitself with the destinies of the nation; for no dock labourer couldpossibly be more entirely empty of all reasons for action than thenoble lords, squires, lawyers, and railway directors whom I have seentroop to the division bell. There is something deeper than thisscepticism, but the scepticism is the easiest and the most obviousconclusion to an open mind dealing so closely and practically withpolitics as it was my lot to do at this time of my life. Men must begoverned, and when it comes to the question, by whom? I, for one, would far sooner in the long run trust the people at large than Iwould the few, who in everything which relates to Government are aslittle instructed as the many and more difficult to move. The veryfickleness of the multitude, the theme of such constant declamation, is so far good that it proves a susceptibility to impressions towhich men hedged round by impregnable conventionalities cannot yield. {1}

When I was living in the country, the pure sky and the landscapeformed a large portion of my existence, so large that much of myselfdepended on it, and I wondered how men could be worth anything ifthey could never see the face of nature. For this belief my earlytraining on the "Lyrical Ballads" is answerable. When I came toLondon the same creed survived, and I was for ever thirsting forintercourse with my ancient friend. Hope, faith, and God seemedimpossible amidst the smoke of the streets. It was now verydifficult for me, except at rare opportunities, to leave London, andit was necessary for me, therefore, to understand that all that wasessential for me was obtainable there, even though I should never seeanything more than was to be seen in journeying through the HighStreet, Camden Town, Tottenham Court Road, the Seven Dials, andWhitehall. I should have been guilty of a simple surrender todespair if I had not forced myself to make this discovery. I cannothelp saying, with all my love for the literature of my own day, thatit has an evil side to it which none know except the millions ofsensitive persons who are condemned to exist in great towns. Itmight be imagined from much of this literature that true humanity anda belief in God are the offspring of the hills or the ocean; and byimplication, if not expressly, the vast multitudes who hardly eversee the hills or the ocean must be without a religion. The longpoems which turn altogether upon scenery, perhaps in foreign lands, and the passionate devotion to it which they breathe, may perhaps dogood in keeping alive in the hearts of men a determination topreserve air, earth, and water from pollution; but speaking fromexperience as a Londoner, I can testify that they are mostdepressing, and I would counsel everybody whose position is what minewas to avoid these books and to associate with those which will helphim in his own circumstances. 

Half of my occupation soon came to an end. One of my editors sent mea petulant note telling me that all I wrote he could easily find outhimself, and that he required something more "graphic and personal. "I could do no better, or rather I ought to say, no worse than I hadbeen doing. These letters were a great trouble to me. I was alwaysconscious of writing so much of which I was not certain, and so muchwhich was indifferent to me. The unfairness of parties haunted me. But I continued to write, because I saw no other way of getting aliving, and surely it is a baser dishonesty to depend upon thecharity of friends because some pleasant, clean, ideal employment hasnot presented itself, than to soil one's hands with a little of theinevitable mud. I don't think I ever felt anything more keenly thanI did a sneer from an acquaintance of mine who was in the habit ofborrowing money from me. He was a painter, whose pictures were neversold because he never worked hard enough to know how to draw, and itcame to my ears indirectly that he had said that "he would ratherlive the life of a medieval ascetic than condescend to thedegradation of scribbling a dozen columns weekly of utter trash onsubjects with which he had no concern. " At that very moment he owedme five pounds. God knows that I admitted my dozen columns to beutter trash, but it ought to have been forgiven by those who saw thatI was struggling to save myself from the streets and to keep a roofover my head. Degraded, however, as I might be, I could not get downto the "graphic and personal, " for it meant nothing less than theabsolutely false. I therefore contrived to exist on the one letter, which, excepting the mechanical labour of writing a second, took upas much of my time as if I had to write two. 

Never, but once or twice at the most, did my labours meet with theslightest recognition beyond payment. Once I remember that I accuseda member of a discreditable manoeuvre to consume the time of theHouse, and as he represented a borough in my district, he wrote tothe editor denying the charge. The editor without any inquiry--and Ibelieve I was mistaken--instantly congratulated me on having"scored. " At another time, when Parliament was not sitting, Iventured, by way of filling up my allotted space, to say a word onbehalf of a now utterly forgotten novel. I had a letter from theauthoress thanking me, but alas! the illusion vanished. I wastempted by this one novel to look into others which I found she hadwritten, and I discovered that they were altogether silly. Theattraction of the one of which I thought so highly, was due not toany real merit which it possessed, but to something I had put intoit. It was dead, but it had served as a wall to re-echo my ownvoice. Excepting these two occasions, I don't think that onesolitary human being ever applauded or condemned one solitary word ofwhich I was the author. All my friends knew where my contributionswere to be found, but I never heard that they looked at them. Theywere never worth reading, and yet such complete silence was ratherlonely. The tradesman who makes a good coat enjoys the satisfactionof having fitted and pleased his customer, and a bricklayer, if he bediligent, is rewarded by knowing that his master understands hisvalue, but I never knew what it was to receive a single response. Iwrote for an abstraction; and spoke to empty space. I cannot helpclaiming some pity and even respect for the class to which Ibelonged. I have heard them called all kinds of hard names, hacks, drudges, and something even more contemptible, but the injustice doneto them is monstrous. Their wage is hardly earned; it is peculiarlyprecarious, depending altogether upon their health, and no matter howill they may be they must maintain the liveliness of manner which isnecessary to procure acceptance. I fell in with one poor fellowwhose line was something like my own. I became acquainted with himthrough sitting side by side with him at the House. He lived inlodgings in Goodge Street, and occasionally I walked with him as faras the corner of Tottenham Court Road, where I caught the lastomnibus northward. He wrote like me a "descriptive article" for thecountry, but he also wrote every now and then--a dignity to which Inever attained--a "special" for London. His "descriptive articles"were more political than mine, and he was obliged to be violentlyTory. His creed, however, was such a pure piece of professionalism, that though I was Radical, and was expected to be so, we neverjarred, and often, as we wandered homewards, we exchanged notes, andwere mutually useful, his observations appearing in my paper, andmine in his, with proper modifications. How he used to roar in theGazette against the opposite party, and yet I never heard anythingfrom him myself but what was diffident and tender. He had acquired, as an instrument necessary to him, an extraordinarily extravagantstyle, and he laid about him with a bludgeon, which inevitablydescended on the heads of all prominent persons if they happened notto be Conservative, no matter what their virtues might be. Onepeculiarity, however, I noted in him. Although he ought every nowand then, when the subject was uppermost, to have flamed out in theGazette on behalf of the Church, I never saw a word from him on thatsubject. He drew the line at religion. He did not mind acting hispart in things secular, for his performances were, I am sure, mostlyhistrionic, but there he stopped. The unreality of his character wasa husk surrounding him, but it did not touch the core. It was as ifhe had said to himself, "Political controversy is nothing to me, and, what is more, is so uncertain that it matters little whether I sayyes or no, nor indeed does it matter if I say yes AND no, and I mustkeep my wife and children from the workhouse; but when it comes tothe relationship of man to God, it is a different matter. " Hisaltogether outside vehemence and hypocrisy did in fact react uponhim, and so far from affecting harmfully what lay deeper, produced amore complete sincerity and transparency extending even to the finestverbal distinctions. Over and over again have I heard him preach tohis wife, almost with pathos, the duty of perfect exactitude inspeech in describing the commonest occurrences. "Now, my dear, ISthat so?" was a perpetual remonstrance with him; and he alwaysinsisted upon it that there is no training more necessary forchildren than that of teaching them not merely to speak the truth inthe ordinary, vulgar sense of the term, but to speak it in a muchhigher sense, by rigidly compelling, point by point, a correspondenceof the words with the fact external or internal. He never wouldtolerate in his own children a mere hackneyed, borrowed expression, but demanded exact portraiture; and nothing vexed him more than tohear one of them spoil and make worthless what he or she had seen, byreporting it in some stale phrase which had been used by everybody. This refusal to take the trouble to watch the presentment to the mindof anything which had been placed before it, and to reproduce it inits own lines and colours was, as he said, nothing but falsehood, andhe maintained that the principal reason why people are souninteresting is not that they have nothing to say. It is ratherthat they will not face the labour of saying in their own tongue whatthey have to say, but cover it up and conceal it in commonplace, sothat we get, not what they themselves behold and what they think, buta hieroglyphic or symbol invented as the representative of a certainclass of objects or emotions, and as inefficient to represent aparticular object or emotion as x or y to set forth the relation ofHamlet to Ophelia. He would even exercise his children in this artof the higher truthfulness, and would purposely make them give him anaccount of something which he had seen and they had seen, checkingthem the moment he saw a lapse from originality. Such was the Torycorrespondent of the Gazette. 

I ought to say, by way of apology for him, that in his day itsignified little or nothing whether Tory or Whig was in power. Politics had not become what they will one day become, a matter oflife or death, dividing men with really private love and hate. Whata mockery controversy was in the House! How often I have seenmembers, who were furious at one another across the floor, quietlyshaking hands outside, and inviting one another to dinner! I haveheard them say that we ought to congratulate ourselves thatparliamentary differences do not in this country breed personalanimosities. To me this seemed anything but a subject ofcongratulation. Men who are totally at variance ought not to befriends, and if Radical and Tory are not totally, but merelysuperficially at variance, so much the worse for their Radicalism andToryism. 

It is possible, and even probable, that the public fury and thesubsequent amity were equally absurd. Most of us have no real lovesand no real hatreds. Blessed is love, less blessed is hatred, butthrice accursed is that indifference which is neither one nor theother, the muddy mess which men call friendship. 

M'Kay--for that was his name--lived, as I have said, in GoodgeStreet, where he had unfurnished apartments. I often spent part ofthe Sunday with him, and I may forestall obvious criticism by sayingthat I do not pretend for a moment to defend myself frominconsistency in denouncing members of Parliament for theirduplicity, M'Kay and myself being also guilty of something very muchlike it. But there was this difference between us and ourparliamentary friends, that we always divested ourselves of allhypocrisy when we were alone. We then dropped the stage costumewhich members continued to wear in the streets and at the dinner-table, and in which some of them even slept and said their prayers. 

London Sundays to persons who are not attached to any religiouscommunity, and have no money to spend, are rather dreary. We triedseveral ways of getting through the morning. If we heard that therewas a preacher with a reputation, we went to hear him. As a rule, however, we got no good in that way. Once we came to a chapel wherethere was a minister supposed to be one of the greatest orators ofthe day. We had much difficulty in finding standing room. Just aswe entered we heard him say, "My friends, I appeal to those of youwho are parents. You know that if you say to a child 'go, ' he goeth, and if you say 'come, ' he cometh. So the Lord"--But at this pointM'Kay, who had children, nudged me to come out; and out we went. Whydoes this little scene remain with me? I can hardly say, but here itstands. It is remembered, not so much by reason of the preacher asby reason of the apparent acquiescence and admiration of theaudience, who seemed to be perfectly willing to take over anexperience from their pastor--if indeed it was really an experience--which was not their own. Our usual haunts on Sunday were naturallythe parks and Kensington Gardens; but artificial limited enclosuresare apt to become wearisome after a time, and we longed for a littlemore freedom if a little less trim. So we would stroll towardsHampstead or Highgate, the only drawback to these regions being thesqualid, ragged, half town, half suburb, through which it wasnecessary to pass. The skirts of London when the air is filled withnorth-easterly soot, grit, and filth, are cheerless, and the leastcheerful part of the scene is the inability of the vast wanderingmasses of people to find any way of amusing themselves. At thecorner of one of the fields in Kentish Town, just about to bedevoured, stood a public-house, and opposite the door was generallyencamped a man who sold nothing but Brazil nuts. Swarms of peoplelazily wandered past him, most of them waiting for the public-houseto open. Brazil nuts on a cold black Sunday morning are notexhilarating, but the costermonger found many customers who boughthis nuts, and ate them, merely because they had nothing better to do. We went two or three times to a freethinking hall, where we wereentertained with demonstrations of the immorality of the patriarchsand Jewish heroes, and arguments to prove that the personal existenceof the devil was a myth, the audience breaking out into uproariouslaughter at comical delineations of Noah and Jonah. One morning wefound the place completely packed. A "celebrated Christian, " as hewas described to us, having heard of the hall, had volunteered toengage in debate on the claims of the Old Testament to Divineauthority. He turned out to be a preacher whom we knew quite well. He was introduced by his freethinking antagonist, who claimed for hima respectful hearing. The preacher said that before beginning heshould like to "engage in prayer. " Accordingly he came to the frontof the platform, lifted up his eyes, told God why he was there, andbesought Him to bless the discussion in the conversion "of these poorwandering souls, who have said in their hearts that there is no God, to a saving faith in Him and in the blood of Christ. " I expectedthat some resentment would be displayed when the wandering soulsfound themselves treated like errant sheep, but to my surprise theylistened with perfect silence; and when he had said "Amen, " therewere great clappings of hands, and cries of "Bravo. " They evidentlyconsidered the prayer merely as an elocutionary show-piece. Thepreacher was much disconcerted, but he recovered himself, and beganhis sermon, for it was nothing more. He enlarged on the fact thatmen of the highest eminence had believed in the Old Testament. Lockeand Newton had believed in it, and did it not prove arrogance in usto doubt when the "gigantic intellect which had swept the skies, andhad announced the law which bound the universe together wassatisfied?" The witness of the Old Testament to the New was anotherargument, but his main reliance was upon the prophecies. From Adamto Isaiah there was a continuous prefigurement of Christ. Christ wasthe point to which everything tended; and "now, my friends, " he said, "I cannot sit down without imploring you to turn your eyes on Him whonever yet repelled the sinner, to wash in that eternal Fountain everopen for the remission of sins, and to flee from the wrath to come. I believe the sacred symbol of the cross has not yet lost itsefficacy. For eighteen hundred years, whenever it has been exhibitedto the sons of men, it has been potent to reclaim and save them. 'I, if I be lifted up, ' cried the Great Sufferer, 'will draw all men untoMe, ' and He has drawn not merely the poor and ignorant but thephilosopher and the sage. Oh, my brethren, think what will happen ifyou reject Him. I forbear to paint your doom. And think again, onthe other hand, of the bliss which awaits you if you receive Him, ofthe eternal companionship with the Most High and with the spirits ofjust men made perfect. " His hearers again applauded vigorously, andnone less so than their appointed leader, who was to follow on theother side. He was a little man with small eyes; his shaven face wasdark with a black beard lurking under the skin, and his nose wasslightly turned up. He was evidently a trained debater who hadpractised under railway arches, discussion "forums, " and in theclasses promoted by his sect. He began by saying that he could notcompliment his friend who had just sat down on the inducements whichhe had offered them to become Christians. The New Cut was not a niceplace on a wet day, but he had rather sit at a stall there all daylong with his feet on a basket than lie in the bosom of some of thejust men made perfect portrayed in the Bible. Nor, being married, should he feel particularly at ease if he had to leave his wife withDavid. David certainly ought to have got beyond all that kind ofthing, considering it must be over 3000 years since he first sawBathsheba; but we are told that the saints are for ever young inheaven, and this treacherous villain, who would have been tried by ajury of twelve men and hung outside Newgate if he had lived in thenineteenth century, might be dangerous now. He was an amorous oldgentleman up to the very last. (Roars of laughter. ) Nor did thespeaker feel particularly anxious to be shut up with all the bishops, who of course are amongst the elect, and on their departure from thisvale of tears tempered by ten thousand a year, are duly supplied withwings. Much more followed in the same strain upon the immorality ofthe Bible heroes, their cruelty, and the cruelty of the God whosanctioned it. Then followed a clever exposition of theinconsistencies of the Old Testament history, the impossibility ofany reference to Jesus therein, and a really earnest protest againstthe quibbling by which those who believed in the Bible as arevelation sought to reconcile it with science. "Finally, " said thespeaker, "I am sure we all of us will pass a vote of thanks to ourreverend friend for coming to see us, and we cordially invite him tocome again. If I might be allowed to offer a suggestion, it would bethat he should make himself acquainted with our case before he paysus another visit, and not suppose that we are to be persuaded withthe rhetoric which may do very well for the young women of hiscongregation, but won't go down here. " This was fair and just, forthe eminent Christian was nothing but an ordinary minister, who, whenhe was prepared for his profession, had never been allowed to seewhat are the historical difficulties of Christianity, lest he shouldbe overcome by them. On the other hand, his sceptical opponents werealmost devoid of the faculty for appreciating the great remains ofantiquity, and would probably have considered the machinery of thePrometheus Bound or of the Iliad a sufficient reason for a sneer. That they should spend their time in picking the Bible to pieces whenthere was so much positive work for them to do, seemed to me asmelancholy as if they had spent themselves upon theology. To waste aSunday morning in ridiculing such stories as that of Jonah was surelyas imbecile as to waste it in proving their verbal veracity. 

CHAPTER II--M'KAY

It was foggy and overcast as we walked home to Goodge Street. Thechurches and chapels were emptying themselves, but the great mass ofthe population had been "nowhere. " I had dinner with M'Kay, and asthe day wore on the fog thickened. London on a dark Sundayafternoon, more especially about Goodge Street, is depressing. Theinhabitants drag themselves hither and thither in languor anduncertainty. Small mobs loiter at the doors of the gin palaces. Costermongers wander aimlessly, calling "walnuts" with a cry somelancholy that it sounds as the wail of the hopelessly lost may beimagined to sound when their anguish has been deadened by themonotony of a million years. 

About two or three o'clock decent working men in their best clothesemerge from the houses in such streets as Nassau Street. It is partof their duty to go out after dinner on Sunday with the wife andchildren. The husband pushes the perambulator out of the dingypassage, and gazes doubtfully this way and that way, not knowingwhither to go, and evidently longing for the Monday, when his work, however disagreeable it may be, will be his plain duty. The wifefollows carrying a child, and a boy and girl in unaccustomed apparelwalk by her side. They come out into Mortimer Street. There are noshops open; the sky over their heads is mud, the earth is mud undertheir feet, the muddy houses stretch in long rows, black, gaunt, uniform. The little party reach Hyde Park, also wrapped inimpenetrable mud-grey. The man's face brightens for a moment as hesays, "It is time to go back, " and so they return, without theinterchange of a word, unless perhaps they happen to see an omnibushorse fall down on the greasy stones. What is there worth thought orspeech on such an expedition? Nothing! The tradesman who kept theoil and colour establishment opposite to us was not to be temptedoutside. It was a little more comfortable than Nassau Street, and, moreover, he was religious and did not encourage Sabbath-breaking. He and his family always moved after their mid-day Sabbath repastfrom the little back room behind the shop up to what they called thedrawing-room overhead. It was impossible to avoid seeing them everytime we went to the window. The father of the family, after hisheavy meal, invariably sat in the easy-chair with a handkerchief overhis eyes and slept. The children were always at the windows, pretending to read books, but in reality watching the people below. At about four o'clock their papa generally awoke, and demanded asuccession of hymn tunes played on the piano. When the weatherpermitted, the lower sash was opened a little, and the neighbourswere indulged with the performance of "Vital Spark, " the father"coming in" now and then with a bass note or two at the end where hewas tolerably certain of the harmony. At five o'clock a prophecy ofthe incoming tea brought us some relief from the contemplation of thelandscape or brick-scape. I say "some relief, " for meals at M'Kay'swere a little disagreeable. His wife was an honest, good littlewoman, but so much attached to him and so dependent on him that shewas his mere echo. She had no opinions which were not his, andwhenever he said anything which went beyond the ordinary affairs ofthe house, she listened with curious effort, and generally respondedby a weakened repetition of M'Kay's own observations. Heperpetually, therefore, had before him an enfeebled reflection ofhimself, and this much irritated him, notwithstanding his love forher; for who could help loving a woman who, without the leasthesitation, would have opened her veins at his command, and havegiven up every drop of blood in her body for him? Over and overagain I have heard him offer some criticism on a person or event, andthe customary chime of approval would ensue, provoking him to such adegree that he would instantly contradict himself with muchbitterness, leaving poor Mrs. M'Kay in much perplexity. Such a shotas this generally reduced her to timid silence. As a rule, he alwaysdiscouraged any topic at his house which was likely to serve as anoccasion for showing his wife's dependence on him. He designedlytalked about her household affairs, asked her whether she had mendedhis clothes and ordered the coals. She knew that these things werenot what was upon his mind, and she answered him in despairing tones, which showed how much she felt the obtrusive condescension to herlevel. I greatly pitied her, and sometimes, in fact, my emotion atthe sight of her struggles with her limitations almost overcame meand I was obliged to get up and go. She was childishly affectionate. If M'Kay came in and happened to go up to her and kiss her, her facebrightened into the sweetest and happiest smile. I recollect onceafter he had been unusually annoyed with her he repented just as hewas leaving home, and put his lips to her head, holding it in bothhis hands. I saw her gently take the hand from her forehead andpress it to her mouth, the tears falling down her cheek meanwhile. Nothing would ever tempt her to admit anything against her husband. M'Kay was violent and unjust at times. His occupation he hated, andhis restless repugnance to it frequently discharged itselfindifferently upon everything which came in his way. His childrenoften thought him almost barbarous, but in truth he did not actuallysee them when he was in one of these moods. What was really presentwith him, excluding everything else, was the sting of something morethan usually repulsive of which they knew nothing. Mrs. M'Kay'sanswer to her children's remonstrances when they were alone with heralways was, "He is so worried, " and she invariably dwelt upon theirfaults which had given him the opportunity for his wrath. 

I think M'Kay's treatment of her wholly wrong. I think that he oughtnot to have imposed himself upon her so imperiously. I think heought to have striven to ascertain what lay concealed in that modestheart, to have encouraged its expression and development, to havedebased himself before her that she might receive courage to rise, and he would have found that she had something which he had not; notHIS something perhaps, but something which would have made his lifehappier. As it was, he stood upon his own ground above her. If shecould reach him, well and good, if not, the helping hand was notproffered, and she fell back, hopeless. Later on he discovered hismistake. She became ill very gradually, and M'Kay began to see inthe distance a prospect of losing her. A frightful pit came in view. He became aware that he could not do without her. He imagined whathis home would have been with other women whom he knew, and heconfessed that with them he would have been less contented. Heacknowledged that he had been guilty of a kind of criminal epicurism;that he rejected in foolish, fatal, nay, even wicked indifference, the bread of life upon which he might have lived and thriven. Hiswhole effort now was to suppress himself in his wife. He read toher, a thing he never did before, and when she misunderstood, hepatiently explained; he took her into his counsels and asked heropinion; he abandoned his own opinion for hers, and in the presenceof her children he always deferred to her, and delighted toacknowledge that she knew more than he did, that she was right and hewas wrong. She was now confined to her house, and the end was near, but this was the most blessed time of her married life. She grewunder the soft rain of his loving care, and opened out, not, indeed, into an oriental flower, rich in profound mystery of scent andcolour, but into a blossom of the chalk-down. Altogether concealedand closed she would have remained if it had not been for thisbeneficent and heavenly gift poured upon her. He had just timeenough to see what she really was, and then she died. There are somenatures that cannot unfold under pressure or in the presence ofunregarding power. Hers was one. They require a clear space roundthem, the removal of everything which may overmaster them, andconstant delicate attention. They require too a recognition of thefact, which M'Kay for a long time did not recognise, that it is follyto force them and to demand of them that they shall be what theycannot be. I stood by the grave this morning of my poor, pale, clinging little friend now for some years at peace, and I thoughtthat the tragedy of Promethean torture or Christ-like crucifixion mayindeed be tremendous, but there is a tragedy too in the existence ofa soul like hers, conscious of its feebleness and ever striving tooverpass it, ever aware that it is an obstacle to the return of theaffection of the man whom she loves. 

Meals, as I have said, were disagreeable at M'Kay's, and when wewanted to talk we went out of doors. The evening after our visit tothe debating hall we moved towards Portland Place, and walked up anddown there for an hour or more. M'Kay had a passionate desire toreform the world. The spectacle of the misery of London, and of thedistracted swaying hither and thither of the multitudes who inhabitit, tormented him incessantly. He always chafed at it, and he neverseemed sure that he had a right to the enjoyment of the simplestpleasures so long as London was before him. What a farce, he wouldcry, is all this poetry, philosophy, art, and culture, when millionsof wretched mortals are doomed to the eternal darkness and crime ofthe city! Here are the educated classes occupying themselves withexquisite emotions, with speculations upon the Infinite, withaddresses to flowers, with the worship of waterfalls and flyingclouds, and with the incessant portraiture of a thousand moods andvariations of love, while their neighbours lie grovelling in themire, and never know anything more of life or its duties than isafforded them by a police report in a bit of newspaper picked out ofthe kennel. We went one evening to hear a great violin-player, whoplayed such music, and so exquisitely, that the limits of life wereremoved. But we had to walk up the Haymarket home, between elevenand twelve o'clock, and the violin-playing became the meresttrifling. M'Kay had been brought up upon the Bible. He had beforehim, not only there, but in the history of all great religiousmovements, a record of the improvement of the human race, or of largeportions of it, not merely by gradual civilisation, but byinspiration spreading itself suddenly. He could not get it out ofhis head that something of this kind is possible again in our time. He longed to try for himself in his own poor way in one of the slumsabout Drury Lane. I sympathised with him, but I asked him what hehad to say. I remember telling him that I had been into St. Paul'sCathedral, and that I pictured to myself the cathedral full, andmyself in the pulpit. I was excited while imagining the opportunityoffered me of delivering some message to three or four thousandpersons in such a building, but in a minute or two I discovered thatmy sermon would be very nearly as follows: "Dear friends, I know nomore than you know; we had better go home. " I admitted to him thatif he could believe in hell-fire, or if he could proclaim the SecondAdvent, as Paul did to the Thessalonians, and get people to believe, he might change their manners, but otherwise he could do nothing butresort to a much slower process. With the departure of a belief inthe supernatural departs once and for ever the chance of regeneratingthe race except by the school and by science. {2} However, M'Kaythought he would try. His earnestness was rather a hindrance than ahelp to him, for it prevented his putting certain important questionsto himself, or at any rate it prevented his waiting for distinctanswers. He recurred to the apostles and Bunyan, and was convincedthat it was possible even now to touch depraved men and women with anidea which should recast their lives. So it is that the mainobstacle to our success is a success which has preceded us. Weinstinctively follow the antecedent form, and consequently we eitherpass by, or deny altogether, the life of our own time, because itsexpression has changed. We never do practically believe that theMessiah is not incarnated twice in the same flesh. He came as Jesus, and we look for Him as Jesus now, overlooking the manifestation ofto-day, and dying, perhaps, without recognising it. 

M'Kay had found a room near Parker Street, Drury Lane, in which heproposed to begin, and that night, as we trod the pavement ofPortland Place, he propounded his plans to me, I listening withoutmuch confidence, but loth nevertheless to take the office of Timeupon myself, and to disprove what experience would disprove moreeffectually. His object was nothing less than gradually to attractDrury Lane to come and be saved. 

The first Sunday I went with him to the room. As we walked over theDrury Lane gratings of the cellars a most foul stench came up, andone in particular I remember to this day. A man half dressed pushedopen a broken window beneath us, just as we passed by, and thereissued such a blast of corruption, made up of gases bred by filth, air breathed and rebreathed a hundred times, charged with odours ofunnameable personal uncleanness and disease, that I staggered to thegutter with a qualm which I could scarcely conquer. At the doors ofthe houses stood grimy women with their arms folded and their hairdisordered. Grimier boys and girls had tied a rope to brokenrailings, and were swinging on it. The common door to a score oflodgings stood ever open, and the children swarmed up and down thestairs carrying with them patches of mud every time they came in fromthe street. The wholesome practice which amongst the decent poormarks off at least one day in the week as a day on which there is tobe a change; when there is to be some attempt to procure order andcleanliness; a day to be preceded by soap and water, by shaving, andby as many clean clothes as can be procured, was unknown here. Therewas no break in the uniformity of squalor; nor was it even possiblefor any single family to emerge amidst such altogether suppressivesurroundings. All self-respect, all effort to do anything more thanto satisfy somehow the grossest wants, had departed. The shops wereopen; most of them exhibiting a most miscellaneous collection ofgoods, such as bacon cut in slices, fire-wood, a few loaves of bread, and sweetmeats in dirty bottles. Fowls, strange to say, black as theflagstones, walked in and out of these shops, or descended into thedark areas. The undertaker had not put up his shutters. He haddrawn down a yellow blind, on which was painted a picture of asuburban cemetery. Two funerals, the loftiest effort of his craft, were depicted approaching the gates. When the gas was alight behindthe blind, an effect was produced which was doubtless much admired. He also displayed in his window a model coffin, a work of art. Itwas about a foot long, varnished, studded with little brass nails, and on the lid was fastened a rustic cross stretching from end toend. The desire to decorate existence in some way or other with moreor less care is nearly universal. The most sensual and the meanestalmost always manifest an indisposition to be content with merematerial satisfaction. I have known selfish, gluttonous, drunken menspend their leisure moments in trimming a bed of scarlet geraniums, and the vulgarest and most commonplace of mortals considers it anecessity to put a picture in the room or an ornament on themantelpiece. The instinct, even in its lowest forms, is divine. Itis the commentary on the text that man shall not live by bread alone. It is evidence of an acknowledged compulsion--of which art is thehighest manifestation--to ESCAPE. In the alleys behind Drury Lanethis instinct, the very salt of life, was dead, crushed out utterly, a symptom which seemed to me ominous, and even awful to the lastdegree. The only house in which it survived was in that of theundertaker, who displayed the willows, the black horses, and thecoffin. These may have been nothing more than an advertisement, butfrom the care with which the cross was elaborated, and the neatnesswith which it was made to resemble a natural piece of wood, I aminclined to believe that the man felt some pleasure in his work forits own sake, and that he was not utterly submerged. The cross insuch dens as these, or, worse than dens, in such sewers! If it beanything, it is a symbol of victory, of power to triumph overresistance, and even death. Here was nothing but sullen subjugation, the most grovelling slavery, mitigated only by a tendency to mutiny. Here was a strength of circumstance to quell and dominate whichneither Jesus nor Paul could have overcome--worse a thousandfold thanScribes or Pharisees, or any form of persecution. The preaching ofJesus would have been powerless here; in fact, no known stimulus, nothing ever held up before men to stir the soul to activity, can doanything in the back streets of great cities so long as they are thecesspools which they are now. 

We came to the room. About a score of M'Kay's own friends werethere, and perhaps half-a-dozen outsiders, attracted by the noticewhich had been pasted on a board at the entrance. M'Kay announcedhis errand. The ignorance and misery of London he said wereintolerable to him. He could not take any pleasure in life when hethought upon them. What could he do? that was the question. He wasnot a man of wealth. He could not buy up these hovels. He could notforce an entrance into them and persuade their inhabitants to improvethemselves. He had no talents wherewith to found a greatorganisation or create public opinion. He had determined, after muchthought, to do what he was now doing. It was very little, but it wasall he could undertake. He proposed to keep this room open as aplace to which those who wished might resort at different times, andfind some quietude, instruction, and what fortifying thoughts hecould collect to enable men to endure their almost unendurablesufferings. He did not intend to teach theology. Anything whichwould be serviceable he would set forth, but in the main he intendedto rely on holding up the examples of those who were greater thanourselves and were our redeemers. He meant to teach Christ in theproper sense of the word. Christ now is admired probably more thanHe had ever been. Everybody agrees to admire Him, but where are thepeople who really do what He did? There is no religion now-a-days. Religion is a mere literature. Cultivated persons sit in theirstudies and write overflowingly about Jesus, or meet at parties andtalk about Him; but He is not of much use to me unless I say tomyself, HOW IS IT WITH THEE? unless I myself become what He was. This was the meaning of Jesus to the Apostle Paul. Jesus was in him;he had put on Jesus; that is to say, Jesus lived in him like a secondsoul, taking the place of his own soul and directing him accordingly. That was religion, and it is absurd to say that the English nation atthis moment, or any section of it, is religious. Its educatedclasses are inhabited by a hundred minds. We are in a state ofanarchy, each of us with a different aim and shaping himselfaccording to a different type; while the uneducated classes areentirely given over to the "natural man. " He was firmly persuadedthat we need religion, poor and rich alike. We need some controllinginfluence to bind together our scattered energies. We do not knowwhat we are doing. We read one book one day and another book anotherday, but it is idle wandering to right and left; it is not advancingon a straight road. It is not possible to bind ourselves down to acertain defined course, but still it is an enormous, an incalculableadvantage for us to have some irreversible standard set up in us bywhich everything we meet is to be judged. That is the meaning of theprophecy--whether it will ever be fulfilled God only knows--thatChrist shall judge the world. All religions have been this. Theyhave said that in the midst of the infinitely possible--infinitelypossible evil and infinitely possible good too--we become distracted. A thousand forces good and bad act upon us. It is necessary, if weare to be men, if we are to be saved, that we should be rescued fromthis tumult, and that our feet should be planted upon a path. Hisobject, therefore, would be to preach Christ, as before said, and tointroduce into human life His unifying influence. He would try andget them to see things with the eyes of Christ, to love with Hislove, to judge with His judgment. He believed Christ was fitted tooccupy this place. He deliberately chose Christ as worthy to be ourcentral, shaping force. He would try by degrees to prove this; toprove that Christ's way of dealing with life is the best way, and soto create a genuinely Christian spirit, which, when any choice ofconduct is presented to us, will prompt us to ask first of all, HOWWOULD CHRIST HAVE IT? or, when men and things pass before us, willdecide through him what we have to say about them. M'Kay added thathe hoped his efforts would not be confined to talking. He trusted tobe able, by means of this little meeting, gradually to gainadmittance for himself and his friends into the houses of the poorand do some practical good. At present he had no organisation and noplans. He did not believe in organisation and plans preceding aclear conception of what was to be accomplished. Such, as nearly asI can now recollect, is an outline of his discourse. It wasthoroughly characteristic of him. He always talked in this fashion. He was for ever insisting on the aimlessness of modern life, on thepowerlessness of its vague activities to mould men into anythinggood, to restrain them from evil or moderate their passions, and hewas possessed by a vision of a new Christianity which was to take theplace of the old and dead theologies. I have reported him in my ownlanguage. He strove as much as he could to make his meaning plain toeverybody. Just before he finished, three or four out of the half-a-dozen outsiders who were present whistled with all their might andran down the stairs shouting to one another. As we went out they hadcollected about the door, and amused themselves by pushing oneanother against us, and kicking an old kettle behind us and amongstus all the way up the street, so that we were covered with splashes. Mrs. M'Kay went with us, and when we reached home, she tried to saysomething about what she had heard. The cloud came over herhusband's face at once; he remained silent for a minute, and gettingup and going to the window, observed that it ought to be cleaned, andthat he could hardly see the opposite house. The poor woman lookeddistressed, and I was just about to come to her rescue by continuingwhat she had been saying, when she rose, not in anger, but introuble, and went upstairs. 

CHAPTER III--MISS LEROY

During the great French war there were many French prisoners in mynative town. They led a strange isolated life, for they knew nothingof our language, nor, in those days, did three people in the townunderstand theirs. The common soldiers amused themselves by makinglittle trifles and selling them. I have now before me a box ofcoloured straw with the date 1799 on the bottom, which was bought bymy grandfather. One of these prisoners was an officer named Leroy. Why he did not go back to France I never heard, but I know thatbefore I was born he was living near our house on a small income;that he tried to teach French, and that he had as his companion ahandsome daughter who grew up speaking English. What she was likewhen she was young I cannot say, but I have had her described to meover and over again. She had rather darkish brown hair, and she wastall and straight as an arrow. This she was, by the way, even intoold age. She surprised, shocked, and attracted all the sober personsin our circle. Her ways were not their ways. She would walk out byherself on a starry night without a single companion, and causethereby infinite talk, which would have converged to a single focusif it had not happened that she was also in the habit of walking outat four o'clock on a summer's morning, and that in the church porchof a little village not far from us, which was her favourite resting-place, a copy of the De Imitatione Christi was found which belongedto her. So the talk was scattered again and its convergenceprevented. She used to say doubtful things about love. One of themstruck my mother with horror. Miss Leroy told a male person once, and told him to his face, that if she loved him and he loved her, andthey agreed to sign one another's foreheads with a cross as aceremony, it would be as good to her as marriage. This may seem atrifle, but nobody now can imagine what was thought of it at the timeit was spoken. My mother repeated it every now and then for fiftyyears. It may be conjectured how easily any other girls of ouracquaintance would have been classified, and justly classified, ifthey had uttered such barefaced Continental immorality. Miss Leroy'sneighbours were remarkably apt at classifying their fellow-creatures. They had a few, a very few holes, into which they dropped theirneighbours, and they must go into one or the other. Nothing was moredistressing than a specimen which, notwithstanding all the violencewhich might be used to it, would not fit into a hole, but remained anexception. Some lout, I believe, reckoning on the legitimacy of hisgeneralisation, and having heard of this and other observationsaccredited to Miss Leroy, ventured to be slightly rude to her. Whatshe said to him was never known, but he was always shy afterwards ofmentioning her name, and when he did he was wont to declare that shewas "a rum un. " She was not particular, I have heard, about personaltidiness, and this I can well believe, for she was certainly notdistinguished when I knew her for this virtue. She cared nothing forthe linen-closet, the spotless bed-hangings, and the bright poker, which were the true household gods of the respectable women of thosedays. She would have been instantly set down as "slut, " and ashaving "nasty dirty forrin ways, " if a peculiar habit of hers had notunfortunately presented itself, most irritating to her critics, soanxious promptly to gratify their philosophic tendency towardsscientific grouping. Mrs. Mobbs, who lived next door to her, averredthat she always slept with the window open. Mrs. Mobbs, likeeverybody else, never opened her window except to "air the room. "Mrs. Mobbs' best bedroom was carpeted all over, and contained a greatfour-post bedstead, hung round with heavy hangings, and protected atthe top from draughts by a kind of firmament of white dimity. Mrs. Mobbs stuffed a sack of straw up the chimney of the fireplace, toprevent the fall of the "sutt, " as she called it. Mrs. Mobbs, if shehad a visitor, gave her a hot supper, and expected her immediatelyafterwards to go upstairs, draw the window curtains, get into thisbed, draw the bed curtains also, and wake up the next morning"bilious. " This was the proper thing to do. Miss Leroy's sitting-room was decidedly disorderly; the chairs were dusty; "yer mightwrite yer name on the table, " Mrs. Mobbs declared; but, nevertheless, the casement was never closed night nor day; and, moreover, MissLeroy was believed by the strongest circumstantial evidence to washherself all over every morning, a habit which Mrs. Mobbs thought"weakening, " and somehow connected with ethical impropriety. WhenMiss Leroy was married, and first as an elderly woman became known tome, she was very inconsequential in her opinions, or at leastappeared so to our eyes. She must have been much more so when shewas younger. In our town we were all formed upon recognisedpatterns, and those who possessed any one mark of the pattern, hadall. The wine-merchant, for example, who went to church, eminentlyrespectable, Tory, by no means associating with the tradesfolk whodisplayed their goods in the windows, knowing no "experience, " andwho had never felt the outpouring of the Spirit, was a specimen of aclass like him. Another class was represented by the dissentingironmonger, deacon, presiding at prayer-meetings, strict Sabbatarian, and believer in eternal punishments; while a third was set forth by"Guffy, " whose real name was unknown, who got drunk, unloaded barges, assisted at the municipal elections, and was never once seen inside aplace of worship. These patterns had existed amongst us from thedimmest antiquity, and were accepted as part of the eternal order ofthings; so much so, that the deacon, although he professed to be surethat nobody who had not been converted would escape the fire--and thewine-merchant certainly had not been converted--was very far fromadmitting to himself that the wine-merchant ought to be converted, orthat it would be proper to try and convert him. I doubt, indeed, whether our congregation would have been happy, or would have thoughtany the better of him, if he had left the church. Such an event, however, could no more come within the reach of our vision than areversal of the current of our river. It would have broken up ourfoundations and party-walls, and would have been considered asominous, and anything but a subject for thankfulness. But Miss Leroywas not the wine-merchant, nor the ironmonger, nor Guffy, and evennow I cannot trace the hidden centre of union from which sprang somuch that was apparently irreconcilable. She was a person whomnobody could have created in writing a novel, because she was soinconsistent. As I have said before, she studied Thomas a Kempis, and her little French Bible was brown with constant use. But thenshe read much fiction in which there were scenes which would havemade our hair stand on end. The only thing she constantly abhorredin books was what was dull and opaque. Yet, as we shall seepresently, her dislike to dulness, once at least in her life, notablyfailed her. She was not Catholic, and professed herself Protestant, but such a Protestantism! She had no sceptical doubts. She believedimplicitly that the Bible was the Word of God, and that everything init was true, but her interpretation of it was of the strangest kind. Almost all our great doctrines seemed shrunk to nothing in her eyes, while others, which were nothing to us, were all-important to her. The atonement, for instance, I never heard her mention, butUnitarianism was hateful to her, and Jesus was her God in every senseof the word. On the other hand, she was partly Pagan, for she knewvery little of that consideration for the feeble, and even for thefoolish, which is the glory of Christianity. She was rude to foolishpeople, and she instinctively kept out of the way of all disease andweakness, so that in this respect she was far below the commonplacetradesman's wife, who visited the sick, sat up with them, and, infact, never seemed so completely in her element as when she could bewith anybody who was ill in bed. 

Miss Leroy's father was republican, and so was my grandfather. Mygrandfather and old Leroy were the only people in our town whorefused to illuminate when a victory was gained over the French. Leroy's windows were spared on the ground that he was not a Briton, but the mob endeavoured to show my grandfather the folly of hisbelief in democracy by smashing every pane of glass in front of hishouse with stones. This drew him and Leroy together, and the resultwas, that although Leroy himself never set foot inside any chapel orchurch, Miss Leroy was often induced to attend our meeting-house incompany with a maiden aunt of mine, who rather "took to her. " Nowcomes the for ever mysterious passage in history. There was amongstthe attendants at that meeting-house a young man who was apprenticeto a miller. He was a big, soft, quiet, plump-faced, awkward youth, very good, but nothing more. He wore on Sunday a complete suit oflight pepper-and-salt clothes, and continued to wear pepper-and-salton Sunday all his life. He taught in the Sunday-school, andafterwards, as he got older, he was encouraged to open his lips at aprayer-meeting, and to "take the service" in the village chapels onSunday evening. He was the most singularly placid, even-temperedperson I ever knew. I first became acquainted with him when I was achild and he was past middle life. What he was then, I am told, healways was; and I certainly never heard one single violent wordescape his lips. His habits, even when young, had a tendency toharden. He went to sleep after his mid-day dinner with the greatestregularity, and he never could keep awake if he sat by a fire afterdark. I have seen him, when kneeling at family worship and prayingwith his family, lose himself for an instant and nod his head, to theconfusion of all who were around him. He is dead now, but he livedto a good old age, which crept upon him gradually with no pain, andhe passed away from this world to the next in a peaceful doze. Henever read anything, for the simple reason that whenever he was notat work or at chapel he slumbered. To the utter amazement ofeverybody, it was announced one fine day that Miss Leroy and he--George Butts--were to be married. They were about the last people inthe world, who, it was thought, could be brought together. My motherwas stunned, and never completely recovered. I have seen her, fortyyears after George Butts' wedding-day, lift up her hands, and haveheard her call out with emotion, as fresh as if the event were ofyesterday, "What made that girl have George I can NOT think--butthere!" What she meant by the last two words we could notcomprehend. Many of her acquaintances interpreted them to mean thatshe knew more than she dared communicate, but I think they weremistaken. I am quite certain if she had known anything she must havetold it, and, in the next place, the phrase "but there" was notuncommon amongst women in our town, and was supposed to mark theconsciousness of a prudently restrained ability to give anexplanation of mysterious phenomena in human relationships. For myown part, I am just as much in the dark as my mother. My father, whowas a shrewd man, was always puzzled, and could not read the riddle. He used to say that he never thought George could have "made up" toany young woman, and it was quite clear that Miss Leroy did noteither then or afterwards display any violent affection for him. Ihave heard her criticise and patronise him as a "good soul, " butincapable, as indeed he was, of all sympathy with her. Aftermarriage she went her way and he his. She got up early, as she waswont to do, and took her Bible into the fields while he was snoring. She would then very likely suffer from a terrible headache during therest of the day, and lie down for hours, letting the house manageitself as best it could. What made her selection of George moreobscure was that she was much admired by many young fellows, some ofwhom were certainly more akin to her than he was; and I have heardfrom one or two reports of encouraging words, and even something morethan words, which she had vouchsafed to them. A solution isimpossible. The affinities, repulsions, reasons in a nature likethat of Miss Leroy's are so secret and so subtle, working towardssuch incalculable and not-to-be-predicted results, that to attempt tomake a major and minor premiss and an inevitable conclusion out ofthem would be useless. One thing was clear, that by marrying Georgeshe gained great freedom. If she had married anybody closer to her, she might have jarred with him; there might have been collision andwreck as complete as if they had been entirely opposed; for she wasnot the kind of person to accommodate herself to others even in thematter of small differences. But George's road through space layentirely apart from hers, and there was not the slightest chance ofinterference. She was under the protection of a husband; she coulddo things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a foreign land, she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice to her was small. This is really the only attempt at elucidation I can give. She wentregularly all her life to chapel with George, but even when he becamedeacon, and "supplied" the villages round, she never would join thechurch as a member. She never agreed with the minister, and he nevercould make anything out of her. They did not quarrel, but shethought nothing of his sermons, and he was perplexed anduncomfortable in the presence of a nondescript who did not respond toany dogmatic statement of the articles of religion, and who yet couldnot be put aside as "one of those in the gallery"--that is to say, asone of the ordinary unconverted, for she used to quote hymns withamazing fervour, and she quoted them to him with a freedom and acertain superiority which he might have expected from an aged brotherminister, but certainly not from one of his own congregation. He wasa preacher of the Gospel, it was true; and it was his duty, a duty onwhich he insisted, to be "instant in season and out of season" insaying spiritual things to his flock; but then they were thingsproper, decent, conventional, uttered with gravity at suitable times--such as were customary amongst all the ministers of thedenomination. It was not pleasant to be outbid in his owndepartment, especially by one who was not a communicant, and to beobliged, when he went on a pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs. Butts happened to be, to sit still and hear her, regardless of theminister's presence, conclude a short mystical monologue withCowper's verse -

"Exults our rising soul, Disburdened of her load, And swells unutterably full Of glory and of God. "

This was NOT pleasant to our minister, nor was it pleasant to theminister's wife. But George Butts held a responsible position in ourcommunity, and the minister's wife held also a responsible position, so that she taxed all her ingenuity to let her friends understand attea-parties what she thought of Mrs. Butts without saying anythingwhich could be the ground of formal remonstrance. Thus did Mrs. Butts live among us, as an Arabian bird with its peculiar habits, cries, and plumage might live in one of our barn-yards with theordinary barn-door fowls. 

I was never happier when I was a boy than when I was with Mrs. Buttsat the mill, which George had inherited. There was a grand freedomin her house. The front door leading into the garden was alwaysopen. There was no precise separation between the house and themill. The business and the dwelling-place were mixed up together, and covered with flour. Mr. Butts was in the habit of walking out ofhis mill into the living-room every now and then, and never dreamedwhen one o'clock came that it was necessary for him to change hisfloury coat before he had his dinner. His cap he also oftenretained, and in any weather, not extraordinarily cold, he sat in hisshirtsleeves. The garden was large and half-wild. A man from themill, if work was slack, gave a day to it now and then, but it wasnot trimmed and raked and combed like the other gardens in the town. It was full of gooseberry trees, and I was permitted to eat thegooseberries without stint. The mill-life, too, was inexpressiblyattractive--the dark chamber with the great, green, dripping wheel init, so awfully mysterious as the central life of the whole structure;the machinery connected with the wheel--I knew not how; the holewhere the roach lay by the side of the mill-tail in the eddy; thehaunts of the water-rats which we used to hunt with Spot, the blackand tan terrier, and the still more exciting sport with the ferrets--all this drew me down the lane perpetually. I liked, and even lovedMrs. Butts, too, for her own sake. Her kindness to me was unlimited, and she was never overcome with the fear of "spoiling me, " whichseemed the constant dread of most of my hostesses. I never lost mylove for her. It grew as I grew, despite my mother's scarcelysuppressed hostility to her, and when I heard she was ill, and waslikely to die, I went to be with her. She was eighty years old then. I sat by her bedside with her hand in mine. I was there when shepassed away, and--but I have no mind and no power to say any more, for all the memories of her affection and of the sunny days by thewater come over me and prevent the calmness necessary for achronicle. She with all her faults and eccentricities will alwayshave in my heart a little chapel with an ever-burning light. She wasone of the very very few whom I have ever seen who knew how to love achild. 

Mrs. Butts and George had one son who was named Clement. He wasexactly my own age, and naturally we were constant companions. Wewent to the same school. He never distinguished himself at hisbooks, but he was chief among us. He had a versatile talent foralmost every accomplishment in which we delighted, but he was notsupreme in any one of them. There were better cricketers, betterfootball players, better hands at setting a night-line, betterswimmers than Clem, but he could do something, and do it well, in allthese departments. He generally took up a thing with much eagernessfor a time, and then let it drop. He was foremost in introducing newgames and new fashions, which he permitted to flourish for a time, and then superseded. As he grew up he displayed a taste for drawingand music. He was soon able to copy little paintings of flowers, oreven little country scenes, and to play a piece of no very greatdifficulty with tolerable effect. But as he never was taught by amaster, and never practised elementary exercises and studies, he wasdeficient in accuracy. When the question came what was to be donewith him after he left school, his father naturally wished him to gointo the mill. Clem, however, set his face steadily against thisproject, and his mother, who was a believer in his genius, supportedhim. He actually wanted to go to the University, a thing unheard ofin those days amongst our people; but this was not possible, andafter dangling about for some time at home, he obtained the post ofusher in a school, an occupation which he considered more congenialand intellectual than that of grinding flour. Strange to say, although he knew less than any of his colleagues, he succeeded betterthan any of them. He managed to impress a sense of his ownimportance upon everybody, including the headmaster. He slid into aposition of superiority. Above three or four colleagues who wouldhave shamed him at an examination, and who uttered many a cursebecause they saw themselves surpassed and put in the shade by astranger, who, they were confident, could hardly construct ahexameter. He never quarrelled with them nor did he grosslypatronise them, but he always let them know that he consideredhimself above them. His reading was desultory; in fact, everythinghe did was desultory. He was not selfish in the ordinary sense ofthe word. Rather was he distinguished by a large and liberal open-handedness; but he was liberal also to himself to a remarkabledegree, dressing himself expensively, and spending a good deal ofmoney in luxuries. He was specially fond of insisting on his halfFrench origin, made a great deal of his mother, was silent as to hisfather, and always signed himself C. Leroy Butts, although I don'tbelieve the second Christian name was given him in baptism. Notwithstanding his generosity he was egotistical and hollow atheart. He knew nothing of friendship in the best sense of the word, but had a multitude of acquaintances, whom he invariably soughtamongst those who were better off than himself. He was popular withthem, for no man knew better than he how to get up an entertainment, or to make a success of an evening party. He had not been at hisschool for two years before he conceived the notion of setting up forhimself. He had not a penny, but he borrowed easily what was wantedfrom somebody he knew, and in a twelvemonth more he had a dozenpupils. He took care to get the ablest subordinates he could find, and he succeeded in passing a boy for an open scholarship at Oxford, against two competitors prepared by the very man whom he had formerlyserved. After this he prospered greatly, and would have prosperedstill more, if his love of show and extravagance had not increasedwith his income. His talents were sometimes taxed when people whocame to place their sons with him supposed ignorantly that his originand attainments were what might be expected from his position; andpoor Chalmers, a Glasgow M. A. , who still taught, for 80 pounds ayear, the third class in the establishment in which Butts began life, had some bitter stories on that subject. Chalmers was a perfectscholar, but he was not agreeable. He had black finger-nails, andwore dirty collars. Having a lively remembrance of his friend's"general acquaintance" with Latin prosody, Chalmers' opinion ofProvidence was much modified when he discovered what Providence wasdoing for Butts. Clem took to the Church when he started forhimself. It would have been madness in him to remain a Dissenter. But in private, if it suited his purpose, he could always be airilysceptical, and he had a superficial acquaintance, second-hand, with amultitude of books, many of them of an infidel turn. I once rebukedhim for his hypocrisy, and his defence was that religious disputeswere indifferent to him, and that at any rate a man associates withgentlemen if he is a churchman. Cultivation and manners he thoughtto be of more importance than Calvinism. I believe that he partlymeant what he said. He went to church because the school would havefailed if he had gone to chapel; but he was sufficiently keen-sightedand clever to be beyond the petty quarrels of the sects, and a songwell sung was of much greater moment to him than an essay on paedo-baptism. It was all very well of Chalmers to revile him for hisshallowness. He was shallow, and yet he possessed in some mysteriousway a talent which I greatly coveted, and which in this world isinestimably precious--the talent of making people give way beforehim--a capacity of self-impression. Chalmers could never havecommanded anybody. He had no power whatever, even when he was right, to put his will against the wills of others, but yielded first thisway and then the other. Clem, on the contrary, without anydifficulty or any effort, could conquer all opposition, and smilinglyforce everybody to do his bidding. 

Clem had a peculiar theory with regard to his own rights and those ofthe class to which he considered that he belonged. He always heldimplicitly and sometimes explicitly that gifted people live under akind of dispensation of grace; the law existing solely for dullsouls. What in a clown is a crime punishable by the laws of the landmight in a man of genius be a necessary development, or at any ratean excusable offence. He had nothing to say for the servant-girl whohad sinned with the shopman, but if artist or poet were to carry offanother man's wife, it might not be wrong. 

He believed, and acted upon the belief, that the inferior ought torender perpetual incense to the superior, and that the superiorshould receive it as a matter of course. When his father was ill henever waited on him or sat up a single night with him. If duty wasdisagreeable to him Clem paid homage to it afar off, but pleadedexemption. He admitted that waiting on the sick is obligatory onpeople who are fitted for it, and is very charming. Nothing was morebeautiful to him than tender, filial care spending itself for abeloved object. But it was not his vocation. His nerves were morefinely ordered than those of mankind generally, and the sight ofdisease and suffering distressed him too much. Everything wassurrendered to him in the houses of his friends. If anyinconvenience was to be endured, he was the first person to beprotected from it, and he accepted the greatest sacrifices, with agraceful acknowledgment, it is true, but with no repulse. To whatbetter purpose could the best wine be put than in cherishing hisimagination. It was simple waste to allow it to be poured out uponthe earth, and to give it to a fool was no better. After hesucceeded so well in the world, Clem, to a great extent, deserted me, although I was his oldest friend and the friend of his childhood. Iheard that he visited a good many rich persons, that he made much ofthem, and they made much of him. He kept up a kind of acquaintancewith me, not by writing to me, but by the very cheap mode of sendingme a newspaper now and then with a marked paragraph in it announcingthe exploits of his school at a cricket-match, or occasionally with areport of a lecture which he had delivered. He was a decent orator, and from motives of business if from no other, he not unfrequentlyspoke in public. One or two of these lectures wounded me a gooddeal. There was one in particular on As You Like It, in which heheld up to admiration the fidelity which is so remarkable inShakespeare, and lamented that in these days it was so rare to findanything of the kind, he thought that we were becoming moreindifferent to one another. He maintained, however, that man shouldbe everything to man, and he then enlarged on the duty of reallycultivating affection, of its superiority to books, and on thepleasure and profit of self-denial. I do not mean to accuse Clem ofdownright hypocrisy. I have known many persons come up from thecountry and go into raptures over a playhouse sun and moon who havenever bestowed a glance or a thought on the real sun and moon to beseen from their own doors; and we are all aware it by no meansfollows because we are moved to our very depths by the spectacle ofunrecognised, uncomplaining endurance in a novel, that therefore wecan step over the road to waste an hour or a sixpence upon theunrecognised, uncomplaining endurance of the poor lone woman left awidow in the little villa there. I was annoyed with myself becauseClem's abandonment of me so much affected me. I wished I could cutthe rope and carelessly cast him adrift as he had cast me adrift, butI could not. I never could make out and cannot make out what was thesecret of his influence over me; why I was unable to say, "If you donot care for me I do not care for you. " I longed sometimes forcomplete rupture, so that we might know exactly where we were, but itnever came. Gradually our intercourse grew thinner and thinner, until at last I heard that he had been spending a fortnight with somesemi-aristocratic acquaintance within five miles of me, and duringthe whole of that time he never came near me. I met him in a railwaystation soon afterwards, when he came up to me effusive andapparently affectionate. "It was a real grief to me, my dearfellow, " he said, "that I could not call on you last month, but thetruth was I was so driven: they would make me go here and go there, and I kept putting off my visit to you till it was too late. "Fortunately my train was just starting, or I don't know what mighthave happened. I said not a word; shook hands with him; got into thecarriage; he waved his hat to me, and I pretended not to see him, butI did see him, and saw him turn round immediately to some well-dressed officer-like gentleman with whom he walked laughing down theplatform. The rest of that day was black to me. I cared fornothing. I passed away from the thought of Clem, and dwelt upon theconviction which had long possessed me that I was INSIGNIFICANT, thatthere was NOTHING MUCH IN ME, and it was this which destroyed mypeace. We may reconcile ourselves to poverty and suffering, but fewof us can endure the conviction that there is NOTHING IN US, and thatconsequently we cannot expect anybody to gravitate towards us withany forceful impulse. It is a bitter experience. And yet there isconsolation. The universe is infinite. In the presence of itscelestial magnitudes who is there who is really great or small, andwhat is the difference between you and me, my work and yours? Isought refuge in the idea of GOD, the God of a starry night with itsincomprehensible distances; and I was at peace, content to be themeanest worm of all the millions that crawl on the earth. 

CHAPTER IV--A NECESSARY DEVELOPMENT

The few friends who have read the first part of my autobiography mayperhaps remember that in my younger days I had engaged myself to agirl named Ellen, from whom afterwards I parted. After some two orthree years she was left an orphan, and came into the possession of asmall property, over which unfortunately she had complete power. Shewas attractive and well-educated, and I heard long after I had brokenwith her, and had ceased to have intercourse with Butts, that the twowere married. He of course, living so near her, had known her well, and he found her money useful. How they agreed I knew not save byreport, but I was told that after the first child was born, the onlychild they ever had, Butts grew indifferent to her, and that she, touse my friend's expression, "went off, " by which I suppose he meantthat she faded. There happened in those days to live near Butts asmall squire, married, but with no family. He was a lethargiccreature, about five-and-thirty years old, farming eight hundredacres of his own land. He did not, however, belong to the farmingclass. He had been to Harrow, was on the magistrates' bench, andassociated with the small aristocracy of the country round. He waslike every other squire whom I remember in my native county, and Ican remember scores of them. He read no books and tolerated theusual conventional breaches of the moral law, but was an intenseworshipper of respectability, and hated a scandal. On one point hediffered from his neighbours. He was a Whig and they were allTories. I have said he read no books, and this, on the whole, istrue, but nevertheless he did know something about the history of theearly part of the century, and he was rather fond at politicalgatherings of making some allusion to Mr. Fox. His father had sat inthe House of Commons when Fox was there, and had sternly opposed theFrench war. I don't suppose that anybody not actually IN IT--noLondoner certainly--can understand the rigidity of the bonds whichrestricted county society when I was young, and for aught I know mayrestrict it now. There was with us one huge and dark exception tothe general uniformity. The earl had broken loose, had ruined hisestate, had defied decorum and openly lived with strange women athome and in Paris, but this black background did but set off theotherwise universal adhesion to the Church and to authorised manners, an adhesion tempered and rendered tolerable by port wine. It mustnot, however, be supposed that human nature was different from thehuman nature of to-day or a thousand years ago. There were then, even as there were a thousand years ago, and are to-day, small, secret doors, connected with mysterious staircases, by which accesswas gained to freedom; and men and women, inmates of castles withwalls a yard thick, and impenetrable portcullises, sought those doorsand descended those stairs night and day. But nobody knew, or if wedid know, the silence was profound. The broad-shouldered, yellow-haired Whig squire, had a wife who was the opposite of him. She camefrom a distant part of the country, and had been educated in France. She was small, with black hair, and yet with blue eyes. She spokeFrench perfectly, was devoted to music, read French books, and, although she was a constant attendant at church, and gave noopportunity whatever for the slightest suspicion, the matrons of thecircle in which she moved were never quite happy about her. This wasdue partly to her knowledge of French, and partly to her having nochildren. Anything more about her I do not know. She was beyond us, and although I have seen her often enough I never spoke to her. Butts, however, managed to become a visitor at the squire's house. Fancy MY going to the squire's! But Butts did, was accepted there, and even dined there with a parson, and two or three half-payofficers. The squire never called on Butts. That was an understoodthing, nor did Mrs. Butts accompany her husband. That also was anunderstood thing. It was strange that Butts could tolerate and evencourt such a relationship. Most men would scorn with the scorn of apersonal insult an invitation to a house from which their wives wereexpressly excluded. The squire's lady and Clem became great friends. She discovered that his mother was a Frenchwoman, and this was a bondbetween them. She discovered also that Clem was artistic, that hewas devotedly fond of music, that he could draw a little, paint alittle, and she believed in the divine right of talent wherever itmight be found to assert a claim of equality with those who werebetter born. The women in the country-side were shy of her; for themen she could not possibly care, and no doubt she must at times havegot rather weary of her heavy husband with his one outlook towardsthe universal in the person of George James Fox, and the Whig policyof 1802. I am under some disadvantage in telling this part of mystory, because I was far away from home, and only knew afterwards atsecond hand what the course of events had been; but I learned themfrom one who was intimately concerned, and I do not think I can bemistaken on any essential point. I imagine that by this time Mrs. Butts must have become changed into what she was in later years. Shehad grown older since she and I had parted; she had seen trouble; herchild had been born, and although she was not exactly estranged fromClem, for neither he nor she would have admitted any coolness, shehad learned that she was nothing specially to him. I have oftennoticed what an imperceptible touch, what a slight shifting in thebalance of opposing forces, will alter the character. I haveobserved a woman, for example, essentially the same at twenty andthirty--who is there who is not always essentially the same?--andyet, what was a defect at twenty, has become transformed andtransfigured into a benignant virtue at thirty; translating the wholenature from the human to the divine. Some slight depression has beenwrought here, and some slight lift has been given there, and beautyand order have miraculously emerged from what was chaotic. The samething may continually be noticed in the hereditary transmission ofqualities. The redeeming virtue of the father palpably present inthe son becomes his curse, through a faint diminution of the strengthof the check which caused that virtue to be the father's salvation. The propensity, too, which is a man's evil genius, and leads him tomadness and utter ruin, gives vivid reality to all his words andthoughts, and becomes all his strength, if by divine assistance itcan just be subdued and prevented from rising in victoriousinsurrection. But this is a digression, useful, however, in its way, because it will explain Mrs. Butts when we come a little nearer toher in the future. 

For a time Clem's visits to the squire's house always took place whenthe squire was at home, but an amateur concert was to be arranged inwhich Clem was to take part together with the squire's lady. Clemconsequently was obliged to go to the Hall for the purpose ofpractising, and so it came to pass that he was there at unusual hoursand when the master was afield. These morning and afternoon callsdid not cease when the concert was over. Clem's wife did not knowanything about them, and, if she noticed his frequent absence, shewas met with an excuse. Perhaps the worst, or almost the worsteffect of relationships which we do not like to acknowledge, is thesecrecy and equivocation which they beget. From the very firstmoment when the intimacy between the squire's wife and Clem began tobe anything more than harmless, he was compelled to shuffle and tobecome contemptible. At the same time I believe he defended himselfagainst himself with the weapons which were ever ready when self roseagainst self because of some wrong-doing. He was not as other men. It was absurd to class what he did with what an ordinary person mightdo, although externally his actions and those of the ordinary personmight resemble one another. I cannot trace the steps by which thetwo sinners drew nearer and nearer together, for the simple reasonthat this is an autobiography, and not a novel. I do not know whatthe development was, nor did anybody except the person concerned. Neither do I know what was the mental history of Mrs. Butts duringthis unhappy period. She seldom talked about it afterwards. I do, however, happen to recollect hearing her once say that her greatesttrouble was the cessation, from some unknown cause, of Clem'sattempts--they were never many--to interest and amuse her. It iseasy to understand how this should be. If a man is guilty of anydefection from himself, of anything of which he is ashamed, everything which is better becomes a farce to him. After he has beenbetrayed by some passion, how can he pretend to the perfect enjoymentof what is pure? The moment he feels any disposition to rise, he isstricken through as if with an arrow, and he drops. Not until weeks, months, and even years have elapsed, does he feel justified insurrendering himself to a noble emotion. I have heard of persons whohave been able to ascend easily and instantaneously from the mud tothe upper air, and descend as easily; but to me at least they areincomprehensible. Clem, less than most men, suffered permanently, orindeed in any way from remorse, because he was so shielded by hispeculiar philosophy; but I can quite believe that when he got intothe habit of calling at the Hall at mid-day, his behaviour to hiswife changed. 

One day in December the squire had gone out with the hounds. Clem, going on from bad to worse, had now reached the point of planning tobe at the Hall when the squire was not at home. On that particularafternoon Clem was there. It was about half-past four o'clock, andthe master was not expected till six. There had been some music, thelady accompanying, and Clem singing. It was over, and Clem, sittingdown beside her at the piano, and pointing out with his right handsome passage which had troubled him, had placed his left arm on hershoulder, and round her neck, she not resisting. He always sworeafterwards that never till then had such a familiarity as this beenpermitted, and I believe that he did not tell a lie. But what wasthere in that familiarity? The worst was already there, and it wasthrough a mere accident that it never showed itself. The accidentwas this. The squire, for some unknown reason, had returned earlierthan usual, and dismounting in the stable-yard, had walked round thegarden on the turf which came close to the windows of the groundfloor. Passing the drawing-room window, and looking in by the edgeof the drawn-down blind, he saw his wife and Clem just at the momentdescribed. He slipped round to the door, took off his boots so thathe might not be heard, and as there was a large screen inside theroom he was able to enter it unobserved. Clem caught sight of himjust as he emerged from behind the screen, and started up instantlyin great confusion, the lady, with greater presence of mind, remaining perfectly still. Without a word the squire strode up toClem, struck out at him, caught him just over the temple, and felledhim instantaneously. He lay for some time senseless, and what passedbetween husband and wife I cannot say. After about ten minutes, perhaps, Clem came to himself; there was nobody to be seen; and hemanaged to get up and crawl home. He told his wife he had met withan accident; that he would go to bed, and that she should know allabout it when he was better. His forehead was dressed, and to bed hewent. That night Mrs. Butts had a letter. It ran as follows:-

"MADAM, --It may at first sight seem a harsh thing for me to write andtell you what I have to say, but I can assure you I do not mean to beanything but kind to you, and I think it will be better, for reasonswhich I will afterwards explain, that I should communicate with yourather than with your husband. For some time past I have suspectedthat he was too fond of my wife, and last night I caught him with hisarms round her neck. In a moment of not unjustifiable anger Iknocked him down. I have not the honour of knowing you personally, but from what I have heard of you I am sure that he has not theslightest reason for playing with other women. A man who will dowhat he has done will be very likely to conceal from you the truecause of his disaster, and if you know the cause you may perhaps beable to reclaim him. If he has any sense of honour left in him, andof what is due to you, he will seek your pardon for his baseness, andyou will have a hold on him afterwards which you would not have ifyou were in ignorance of what has happened. For him I do not care astraw, but for you I feel deeply, and I believe that my franknesswith you, although it may cause you much suffering now, will save youmore hereafter. I have only one condition to make. Mr. Butts mustleave this place, and never let me see his face again. He has ruinedmy peace. Nothing will be published through me, for, as far as I canprevent it, I will have no public exposure. If Mr. Butts were toremain here it would be dangerous for us to meet, and probablyeverything, by some chance, would become common property. --Believe meto be, Madam, with many assurances of respect, truly yours, --. "

I cannot distinguish the precise proportion of cruelty in thisletter. Did the writer designedly torture Butts by telling his wife, or did he really think that she would in the end be happier becauseButts would not have a secret reserved from her, --a temptation tolying--and because with this secret in her possession, he mightperhaps be restrained in future? Nobody knows. All we know is thatthere are very few human actions of which it can be said that this orthat taken by itself produced them. With our inborn tendency toabstract, to separate mentally the concrete into factors which do notexist separately, we are always disposed to assign causes which aretoo simple, and which, in fact, have no being in rerum natura. Nothing in nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone. There is no such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician. Isee no reason why even motives diametrically opposite should notunite in one resulting deed, and think it very probable that thesquire was both cruel and merciful to the same person in the letter;influenced by exactly conflicting passions, whose conflict ended SO. 

As to the squire and his wife, they lived together just as before. Ido not think, that, excepting the four persons concerned, anybodyever heard a syllable about the affair, save myself a long whileafterwards. Clem, however, packed up and left the town, afterselling his business. He had a reputation for restlessness; and hisdeparture, although it was sudden, was no surprise. He betookhimself to Australia, his wife going with him. I heard that they hadgone, and heard also that he was tired of school-keeping in England, and had determined to try his fortune in another part of the world. Our friendship had dwindled to nothing, and I thought no more abouthim. Mrs. Butts never uttered one word of reproach to her husband. I cannot say that she loved him as she could have loved, but she hadaccepted him, and she said to herself that as perhaps it was throughher lack of sympathy with him that he had strayed, it was her dutymore and more to draw him to herself. She had a divine disposition, not infrequent amongst women, to seek in herself the reason for anywrong which was done to her. That almost instinctive tendency inmen, to excuse, to transfer blame to others, to be angry withsomebody else when they suffer from the consequences of their ownmisdeeds, in her did not exist. 

During almost the whole of her married life, before this affairbetween the squire and Clem, Mrs. Butts had had much trouble, although her trouble was, perhaps, rather the absence of joy than thepresence of any poignant grief. She was much by herself. She hadnever been a great reader, but in her frequent solitude she wasforced to do something in order to obtain relief, and she naturallyturned to the Bible. It would be foolish to say that the Bible alonewas to be credited with the support she received. It may only havebeen the occasion for a revelation of the strength that was in her. Reading, however, under such circumstances, is likely to bepeculiarly profitable. It is never so profitable as when it isundertaken in order that a positive need may be satisfied or aninquiry answered. She discovered in the Bible much that persons towhom it is a mere literature would never find. The water of life wasnot merely admirable to the eye; she drank it, and knew what aproperty it possessed for quenching thirst. No doubt the thought ofa heaven hereafter was especially consolatory. She was able toendure, and even to be happy because the vision of lengthening sorrowwas bounded by a better world beyond. "A very poor, barbarousgospel, " thinks the philosopher who rests on his Marcus Antoninus andEpictetus. I do not mean to say, that in the shape in which shebelieved this doctrine, it was not poor and barbarous, but yet we allof us, whatever our creed may be, must lay hold at times forsalvation upon something like it. Those who have been plunged up tothe very lips in affliction know its necessity. To such as these itis idle work for the prosperous and the comfortable to preachsatisfaction with the life that now is. There are seasons when it isour sole resource to recollect that in a few short years we shall beat rest. While upon this subject I may say, too, that some injusticehas been done to the Christian creed of immortality as an influencein determining men's conduct. Paul preached the imminent advent ofChrist and besought his disciples, therefore, to watch, and we askourselves what is the moral value to us of such an admonition. Butsurely if we are to have any reasons for being virtuous, this is asgood as any other. It is just as respectable to believe that weought to abstain from iniquity because Christ is at hand, and weexpect to meet Him, as to abstain from it because by our abstentionwe shall be healthier or more prosperous. Paul had a dream--anabsurd dream let us call it--of an immediate millennium, and of thereturn of his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judgingmankind and adjusting the balance between good and evil. It was abaseless dream, and the enlightened may call it ridiculous. It isanything but that, it is the very opposite of that. Putting asideits temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and the prophecy ofall noble hearts, a sign of their inability to concur in the presentcondition of things. 

Going back to Clem's wife; she laid hold, as I have said, uponheaven. The thought wrought in her something more than forgetfulnessof pain or the expectation of counterpoising bliss. We canunderstand what this something was, for although we know no suchheaven as hers, a new temper is imparted to us, a new spirit breathedinto us; I was about to say a new hope bestowed upon us, when weconsider that we live surrounded by the soundless depths in which thestars repose. Such a consideration has a direct practical effectupon us, and so had the future upon the mind of Mrs. Butts. "Whydost thou judge thy brother, " says Paul, "for we shall all standbefore the judgment-seat of God. " Paul does not mean that God willpunish him and that we may rest satisfied that our enemy will beturned into hell fire. Rather does he mean, what we, too, feel, that, reflecting on the great idea of God, and upon all that itinvolves, our animosities are softened, and our heat against ourbrother is cooled. 

One or two reflections may perhaps be permitted here on this passagein Mrs. Butts' history. 

The fidelity of Clem's wife to him, if not entirely due to the NewTestament, was in a great measure traceable to it. She had learnedfrom the Epistle to the Corinthians that charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; and sheinterpreted this to mean, not merely charity to those whom she lovedby nature, but charity to those with whom she was not in sympathy, and who even wronged her. Christianity no doubt does teach such acharity as this, a love which is to be: independent of mere personallikes and dislikes, a love of the human in man. The natural man, theman of this century, uncontrolled by Christianity, considers himselfa model of what is virtuous and heroic if he really loves hisfriends, and he permits all kinds of savage antipathies to those ofhis fellow creatures with whom he is not in harmony. Jesus on theother hand asks with His usual perfect simplicity, "If ye love themwhich love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans thesame?" It would be a great step in advance for most of us to loveanybody, and the publicans of the time of Jesus must have been a muchmore Christian set than most Christians of the present day; but thatwe should love those who do not love us is a height never scaled now, except by a few of the elect in whom Christ still survives. In thegospel of Luke, also, Mrs. Butts read that she was to hope fornothing again from her love, and that she was to be merciful, as herFather in heaven is merciful. That is really the expression of theIDEA in morality, and incalculable is the blessing that our greatreligious teacher should have been bold enough to teach the idea, andnot any limitation of it. He always taught it, the inward born, theheavenly law towards which everything strives. He always trusted it;He did not deal in exceptions; He relied on it to the uttermost, never despairing. This has always seemed to me to be the realmeaning of the word faith. It is permanent confidence in the idea, aconfidence never to be broken down by apparent failure, or byexamples by which ordinary people prove that qualification isnecessary. It was precisely because Jesus taught the idea, andnothing below it, that He had such authority over a soul like myfriend's, and the effect produced by Him could not have been producedby anybody nearer to ordinary humanity. 

It must be admitted, too, that the Calvinism of those days had apowerful influence in enabling men and women to endure, although Iobject to giving the name of Calvin to a philosophy which is anecessity in all ages. "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. "This is the last word which can be said. Nothing can go beyond it, and at times it is the only ground which we feel does not shake underour feet. All life is summed up, and due account is taken of it, according to its degree. Mrs. Butts' Calvinism, however, hardly tookthe usual dogmatic form. She was too simple to penetrate the depthsof metaphysical theology, and she never would have dared to set downany of her fellow creatures as irrevocably lost. She adapted theCalvinistic creed to something which suited her. For example, shefully understood what St. Paul means when he tells the Thessaloniansthat BECAUSE they were called, THEREFORE they were to stand fast. She thought with Paul that being called; having a duty plainly laidupon her; being bidden as if by a general to do something, she OUGHTto stand fast; and she stood fast, supported against all pressure bythe consciousness of fulfilling the special orders of One who was hersuperior. There is no doubt that this dogma of a personal calling isa great consolation, and it is a great truth. Looking at the massesof humanity, driven this way and that way, the Christian teaching isapt to be forgotten that for each individual soul there is a vocationas real as if that soul were alone upon the planet. Yet it is afact. We are blinded to it and can hardly believe it, because of theimpotency of our little intellects to conceive a destiny which shalltake care of every atom of life on the globe: we are compelled tothink that in such vast crowds of people as we behold, individualsmust elude the eye of the Maker, and be swept into forgetfulness. But the truth of truths is that the mind of the universe is not ourmind, or at any rate controlled by our limitations. 

This has been a long digression which I did not intend; but I couldnot help it. I was anxious to show how Mrs. Butts met her troublethrough her religion. The apostle says that "they drank of thatspiritual Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ. " Thatwas true of her. The way through the desert was not annihilated; thepath remained stony and sore to the feet, but it was accompanied tothe end by a sweet stream to which she could turn aside, and fromwhich she could obtain refreshment and strength. 

Just about the time that we began our meetings near Drury Lane, Iheard that Clem was dead; that he had died abroad. I knew nothingmore; I thought about him and his wife perhaps for a day, but I hadparted from both long ago, and I went on with my work. 

CHAPTER V--WHAT IT ALL CAME TO

For two years or thereabouts, M'Kay and myself continued our laboursin the Drury Lane neighbourhood. There is a proverb that it is thefirst step which is the most difficult in the achievement of anyobject, and the proverb has been altered by ascribing the main partof the difficulty to the last step. Neither the first nor the lasthas been the difficult step with me, but rather what lies between. The first is usually helped by the excitement and the promise of newbeginnings, and the last by the prospect of triumph; but theintermediate path is unassisted by enthusiasm, and it is here we areso likely to faint. M'Kay nevertheless persevered, supporting me, who otherwise might have been tempted to despair, and at the end ofthe two years we were still at our posts. We had, however, learnedsomething. We had learned that we could not make the slightestimpression on Drury Lane proper. Now and then an idler, or sometimesa dozen, lounged in, but what was said was strange to them; they wereout of their own world as completely as if they were in anotherplanet, and all our efforts to reach them by simplicity of statementand by talking about things which we supposed would interest themutterly failed. I did not know, till I came in actual contact withthem, how far away the classes which lie at the bottom of greatcities are from those above them; how completely they areinaccessible to motives which act upon ordinary human beings, and howdeeply they are sunk beyond ray of sun or stars, immersed in theselfishness naturally begotten of their incessant struggle forexistence and the incessant warfare with society. It was an awfulthought to me, ever present on those Sundays, and haunting me atother times, that men, women, and children were living in suchbrutish degradation, and that as they died others would take theirplace. Our civilisation seemed nothing but a thin film or crustlying over a volcanic pit, and I often wondered whether some day thepit would not break up through it and destroy us all. Great townsare answerable for the creation and maintenance of the masses ofdark, impenetrable, subterranean blackguardism, with which we becameacquainted. The filthy gloom of the sky, the dirt of the street, theabsence of fresh air, the herding of the poor into huge districtswhich cannot be opened up by those who would do good, are tremendousagencies of corruption which are active at such a rate that it isappalling to reflect what our future will be if the accumulation ofpopulation be not checked. To stand face to face with the insolubleis not pleasant. A man will do anything rather than confess it isbeyond him. He will create pleasant fictions, and fancy a possibleescape here and there, but this problem of Drury Lane was round andhard like a ball of adamant. The only thing I could do was faintly, and I was about to say stupidly, hope--for I had no rational, tangible grounds for hoping--that some force of which we are not nowaware might some day develop itself which will be able to resist andremove the pressure which sweeps and crushes into a hell, sealed fromthe upper air, millions of human souls every year in one quarter ofthe globe alone. 

M'Kay's dreams therefore were not realised, and yet it would be amistake to say that they ended in nothing. It often happens that agrand attempt, although it may fail--miserably fail--is fruitful inthe end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true, butone which would never have been attained without it. A youth strivesafter the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because he hasnever even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the sweeterfor the striving; and the archer who aims at a mark a hundred yardsaway will send his arrow further than he who sets his bow and his armfor fifty yards. So it was with M'Kay. He did not convert DruryLane, but he saved two or three. One man whom we came to know was alabourer in Somerset House, a kind of coal porter employed incarrying coals into the offices there from the cellars below, and inother menial duties. He had about fifteen or sixteen shillings aweek, and as the coals must necessarily be in the different roomsbefore ten o'clock in the morning, he began work early, and wasobliged to live within an easy distance of the Strand. This man hadoriginally been a small tradesman in a country town. He was honest, but he never could or never would push his trade in any way. He wasfond of all kinds of little mechanical contrivings, disliked hisshop, and ought to have been a carpenter or cabinet-maker--not as amaster but as a journeyman, for he had no ability whatever to controlmen or direct large operations. He was married, and a sense of dutyto his wife--he fortunately had no children--induced him to stand orsit behind his counter with regularity, but people would not come tobuy of him, because he never seemed to consider their buying as anyfavour conferred on him; and thus he became gradually displaced byhis more energetic or more obsequious rivals. In the end he wasobliged to put up his shutters. Unhappily for him, he had never beena very ardent attendant at any of the places of religious worship inthe town, and he had therefore no organisation to help him. Notbeing master of any craft, he was in a pitiable plight, and wasslowly sinking, when he applied to the solicitor of the politicalparty for which he had always voted to assist him. The solicitorapplied to the member, and the member, much regretting the difficultyof obtaining places for grown-up men, and explaining the pressureupon the Treasury, wrote to say that the only post at his disposalwas that of labourer. He would have liked to offer a messengership, but the Treasury had hundreds of applications from great people whowished to dispose of favourite footmen whose services they no longerrequired. Our friend Taylor had by this time been brought very low, or he would have held out for something better, but there was nothingto be done. He was starving, and he therefore accepted; came toLondon; got a room, one room only, near Clare Market, and began hisnew duties. He was able to pick up a shilling or two more weekly bygoing on errands for the clerks during his slack time in the day, sothat altogether on the average he made up about eighteen shillings. Wandering about the Clare Market region on Sunday he found us out, came in, and remained constant. Naturally, as we had so fewadherents, we gradually knew these few very intimately, and Taylorwould often spend a holiday or part of the Sunday with us. He wasnot eminent for anything in particular, and an educated man, selecting as his friends those only who stand for something, wouldnot have taken the slightest notice of him. He had read nothingparticular, and thought nothing particular--he was indeed one of themasses--but in this respect different, that he had not the tendencyto association, aggregation, or clanship which belong to the massesgenerally. He was different, of course, in all his ways from hisneighbours born and bred to Clare Market and its alleys. Althoughcommonplace, he had demands made upon him for an endurance by nomeans commonplace, and he had sorrows which were as exquisite asthose of his betters. He did not much resent his poverty. To that Ithink he would have submitted, and in fact he did submit to itcheerfully. What rankled in him was the brutal disregard of him atthe office. He was a servant of servants. The messengers, whothemselves were exposed to all the petty tyrannies of the clerks, anddared not reply, were Taylor's masters, and sought a compensation fortheir own serfdom by making his ten times worse. The head messenger, who had been a butler, swore at him, and if Taylor had "answered" hewould have been reported. He had never been a person of muchimportance, but at least he had been independent, and it was a newexperience for him to feel that he was a thing fit for nothing but tobe cuffed and cursed. Upon this point he used to get eloquent--aseloquent as he could be, for he had small power of expression, and hewould describe to me the despair which came over him down in thosedark vaults at the prospect of life continuing after this fashion, and with not the minutest gleam of light even at the very end. Nobody ever cared to know the most ordinary facts about him. Nobodyinquired whether he was married or single; nobody troubled himselfwhen he was ill. If he was away, his pay was stopped; and when hereturned to work nobody asked if he was better. Who can wonder thatat first, when he was an utter stranger in a strange land, he wasovercome by the situation, and that the world was to him a dungeonworse than that of Chillon? Who can wonder that he was becomingreckless? A little more of such a life would have transformed himinto a brute. He had not the ability to become revolutionary, or itwould have made him a conspirator. Suffering of any kind is hard tobear, but the suffering which especially damages character is thatwhich is caused by the neglect or oppression of man. At any rate itwas so in Taylor's case. I believe that he would have been patientunder any inevitable ordinance of nature, but he could not lie stillunder contempt, the knowledge that to those about him he was of lessconsequence than the mud under their feet. He was timid and, afterhis failure as a shopkeeper, and the near approach to the workhouse, he dreaded above everything being again cast adrift. Strangeconflict arose in him, for the insults to which he was exposed drovehim almost to madness; and yet the dread of dismissal in a momentchecked him when he was about to "fire up, " as he called it, andreduced him to a silence which was torture. Once he was ordered tobring some coals for the messenger's lobby. The man who gave him theorder, finding that he was a long time bringing them, went to the topof the stairs, and bawled after him with an oath to make haste. Thereason of the delay was that Taylor had two loads to bring up--onefor somebody else. When he got to the top of the steps, themessenger with another oath took the coals, and saying that he "wouldteach him to skulk there again, " kicked the other coal-scuttle downto the bottom. Taylor himself told me this; and yet, although hewould have rejoiced if the man had dropped down dead, and wouldwillingly have shot him, he was dumb. The check operated in aninstant. He saw himself without a penny, and in the streets. Hewent down into the cellar, and raged and wept for an hour. Had hebeen a workman, he would probably have throttled his enemy, or triedto do it, or what is more likely, his enemy would not have dared totreat him in such fashion, but he was powerless, and once losing hissituation he would have sunk down into the gutter, whence he wouldhave been swept by the parish into the indiscriminate heap of Londonpauperism, and carted away to the Union, a conclusion which was worseto him than being hung. 

Another of our friends was a waiter in one of the public-houses andchop-houses combined, of which there are so many in the Strand. Helived in a wretched alley which ran from St. Clement's Church toBoswell Court--I have forgotten its name--a dark crowded passage. Hewas a man of about sixty--invariably called John, without theaddition of any surname. I knew him long before we opened our room, for I was in the habit of frequently visiting the chop-house in whichhe served. His hours were incredible. He began at nine o'clock inthe morning with sweeping the dining-room, cleaning the tables andthe gas globes, and at twelve business commenced with earlyluncheons. Not till three-quarters of an hour after midnight couldhe leave, for the house was much used by persons who supped thereafter the theatres. During almost the whole of this time he was onhis legs, and very often he was unable to find two minutes in the dayin which to get his dinner. Sundays, however, were free. John wasnot a head waiter, but merely a subordinate, and I never knew why athis time of life he had not risen to a better position. He used tosay that "things had been against him, " and I had no right to seekfor further explanations. He was married, and had had threechildren, of whom one only was living--a boy of ten years old, whomhe hoped to get into the public-house as a potboy for a beginning. Like Taylor, the world had well-nigh overpowered John entirely--crushed him out of all shape, so that what he was originally, ormight have been, it was almost impossible to tell. There was noparticular character left in him. He may once have been this orthat, but every angle now was knocked off, as it is knocked off fromthe rounded pebbles which for ages have been dragged up and down thebeach by the waves. For a lifetime he had been exposed to all sortsof whims and caprices, generally speaking of the most unreasonablekind, and he had become so trained to take everything withoutremonstrance or murmuring that every cross in his life came to him asa chop alleged by an irritated customer to be raw or done to acinder. Poor wretch! he had one trouble, however, which he could notaccept with such equanimity, or rather with such indifference. Hiswife was a drunkard. This was an awful trial to him. The worstconsequence was that his boy knew that his mother got drunk. Theneighbours kindly enough volunteered to look after the little manwhen he was not at school, and they waylaid him and gave him dinnerwhen his mother was intoxicated; but frequently he was the first whenhe returned to find out that there was nothing for him to eat, andmany a time he got up at night as late as twelve o'clock, crawleddownstairs, and went off to his father to tell him that "she was verybad, and he could not go to sleep. " The father, then, had to keephis son in the Strand till it was time to close, take him back, andmanage in the best way he could. Over and over again was he obligedto sit by this wretched woman's bedside till breakfast time, and thenhad to go to work as usual. Let anybody who has seen a case of thiskind say whether the State ought not to provide for the relief ofsuch men as John, and whether he ought not to have been able to sendhis wife away to some institution where she might have been tendedand restrained from destroying, not merely herself, but her husbandand her child. John hardly bore up under this sorrow. A man mayendure much, provided he knows that he will be well supported whenhis day's toil is over; but if the help for which he looks fails, hefalls. Oh those weary days in that dark back dining-room, from whichnot a square inch of sky was visible! weary days haunted by a fearthat while he was there unknown mischief was being done! weary days, whose close nevertheless he dreaded! Beaten down, baffled, disappointed, if we are in tolerable health we can contrive to liveon some almost impossible chance, some most distant flicker of hope. It is astonishing how minute a crack in the heavy uniform cloud willrelieve us; but when with all our searching we can see nothing, thenat last we sink. Such was John's case when I first came to know him. He attracted me rather, and bit by bit he confided his story to me. He found out that I might be trusted, and that I could sympathise, and he told me what he had never told to anybody before. I wascurious to discover whether religion had done anything for him, and Iput the question to him in an indirect way. His answer was that"some on 'em say there's a better world where everything will be putright, but somehow it seemed too good to be true. " That was hisreason for disbelief, and heaven had not the slightest effect on him. He found out the room, and was one of our most constant friends. 

Another friend was of a totally different type. His name wasCardinal. He was a Yorkshireman, broad-shouldered, ruddy in theface, short-necked, inclined apparently to apoplexy, and certainly topassion. He was a commercial traveller in the cloth trade, and as hehad the southern counties for his district, London was his home whenhe was not upon his journeys. His wife was a curious contrast tohim. She was dark-haired, pinched-up, thin-lipped, and always seemedas if she suffered from some chronic pain or gnawing--not sufficientto make her ill, but sufficient to make her miserable. They had nochildren. Cardinal in early life had been a member of an orthodoxDissenting congregation, but he had fallen away. He had nobody toguide him, and the position into which he fell was peculiar. Henever busied himself about religion or philosophy; indeed he had hadno training which would have led him to take an interest in abstractquestions, but he read all kinds of romances and poetry without anyorder and upon no system. He had no discriminating faculty, andmixed up together the most heterogeneous mass of trumpery novels, French translations, and the best English authors, provided only theywere unworldly or sentimental. Neither did he know how far to takewhat he read and use it in his daily life. He often selected somefantastical motive which he had found set forth as operative in oneof his heroes, and he brought it into his business, much to theastonishment of his masters and customers. For this reason he wasnot stable. He changed employers two or three times; and, so far asI could make out, his ground of objection to each of the firms whomhe left might have been a ground of dislike in a girl to a suitor, but certainly nothing more. During the intervals of his engagements, unless he was pressed for money, he did nothing--not from laziness, but because he had got a notion in his head that his mind wanted restand reinvigoration. His habit then was to consume the whole day--dayafter day--in reading or in walking out by himself. It may easily besupposed that with a temperament like his, and with nobody near himto take him by the hand, he made great mistakes. His wife and hecared nothing for one another, but she was jealous to the lastdegree. I never saw such jealousy. It was strange that, althoughshe almost hated him, she watched him with feline sharpness andpatience, and would even have killed any woman whom she knew had wonhis affection. He, on the other hand, openly avowed that marriagewithout love was nothing, and flaunted without the least modificationthe most ideal theories as to the relation between man and woman. Not that he ever went actually wrong. His boyish education, hisnatural purity, and a fear never wholly suppressed, restrained him. He exasperated people by his impracticability, and it must beacknowledged that it is very irritating in a difficult complexitydemanding the gravest consideration--the balancing of this againstthat--to hear a man suddenly propose some naked principle with whicheverybody is acquainted, and decide by it solely. I came to know himthrough M'Kay, who had known him for years; but M'Kay at last brokeout against him, and called him a stupid fool when he threw up ahandsome salary and refused to serve any longer under a house whichhad always treated him well, because they, moving with the times, haddetermined to offer their customers a cheaper description of goods, which Cardinal thought was dishonest. M'Kay said, and said truly, that many poor persons would buy these goods who could buy nothingelse, and that Cardinal, before yielding to such scruples, ought tosatisfy himself that, by yielding, he would not become a burden uponothers less fanciful. This was just what happened. Cardinal couldget no work again for a long time, and had to borrow money. I wassorry; but for my part, this and other eccentricities did not disturbmy confidence in him. He was an honest, affectionate soul, and hispeculiarities were a necessary result of the total chaos of a timewithout any moral guidance. With no church, no philosophy, noreligion, the wonder is that anybody on whom use and wont relax theirhold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither andthither, arriving at nothing. Cardinal was adrift, like thousandsand hundreds of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and pitchydarkness of the night, thousands and hundreds of thousands of voicesoffer us pilotage. It spoke well for him that he did nothing worsethan take a few useless phantoms on board which did him no harm, andthat he held fast to his own instinct for truth and goodness. Inever let myself be annoyed by what he produced to me from his books. All that I discarded. Underneath all that was a solid worth which Iloved, and which was mostly not vocal. What was vocal in him was, Iam bound to say, not of much value. 

About the time when our room opened, Mrs. Cardinal had become almostinsupportable to her husband. Poor woman; I always pitied her; shewas alone sometimes for a fortnight at a stretch; she read nothing;there was no child to occupy her thoughts; she knew that her husbandlived in a world into which she never entered, and she had nothing todo but to brood over imaginary infidelities. She was literallypossessed, and who shall be hard upon her? Nobody cared for her;everybody with whom her husband associated disliked her, and she knewperfectly well they never asked her to their houses except for hissake. Cardinal vowed at last he would endure her no longer, and thatthey must separate. He was induced one Sunday morning, when hisresolution was strong within him, and he was just about to giveeffect to it, to come with us. The quiet seemed to soothe him, andhe went home with me afterwards. He was not slow to disclose to mehis miserable condition, and his resolve to change it. I do not knownow what I said, but it appeared to me that he ought not to changeit, and that change would be for him most perilous. I thought thatwith a little care life might become at least bearable with his wife;that by treating her not so much as if she were criminal, but as ifshe were diseased, hatred might pass into pity, and pity intomerciful tenderness to her, and that they might dwell together uponterms not harder than those upon which many persons who have mademistakes in youth agree to remain with each other; terms which, aftermuch consideration, they adjudge it better to accept than to breakloose, and bring upon themselves and those connected with them allthat open rupture involves. The difficulty was to get Cardinal togive up his theory of what two abstract human beings should dobetween whom no love exists. It seemed to him something like atheismto forsake his clearly-discerned, simple rule for a course which wasdictated by no easily-grasped higher law, and it was very difficultto persuade him that there is anything of equal authority in a lawless rigid in its outline. However, he went home. I called on himsome time afterwards, and saw that a peace, or at any rate a truce, was proclaimed, which lasted up to the day of his death. M'Kay and Iagreed to make as much of Mrs. Cardinal as we could, and yielding tourgent invitation, she came to the room. This wonderfully helped toheal her. She began to feel that she was not overlooked, put on oneside, or despised, and the bonds which bound her constricted lipsinto bitterness were loosened. 

Another friend, and the last whom I shall name, was a young man namedClark. He was lame, and had been so from childhood. His father wasa tradesman, working hard from early morning till late at night, andburdened with a number of children. The boy Richard, shut out fromthe companionship of his fellows, had a great love of books. When heleft school his father did not know what to do with him--in factthere was only one occupation open to him, and that was clerical workof one kind or another. At last he got a place in a house in FleetStreet, which did a large business in those days in sendingnewspapers into the country. His whole occupation all day long wasto write addresses, and for this he received twenty-five shillings aweek, his hours being from nine o'clock till seven. The office inwhich he sat was crowded, and in order to squeeze the staff into thesmallest space, rent being dear, a gallery had been run round thewall about four feet from the ceiling. This was provided with desksand gas lamps, and up there Clark sat, artificial light beingnecessary four days out of five. He came straight from the town inwhich his father lived to Fleet Street, and once settled in it thereseemed no chance of change for the better. He knew what his father'sstruggles were; he could not go back to him, and he had not theenergy to attempt to lift himself. It is very doubtful too whetherhe could have succeeded in achieving any improvement, whatever hisenergy might have been. He had got lodgings in Newcastle Street, andto these he returned in the evening, remaining there alone with hislittle library, and seldom moving out of doors. He was unhealthyconstitutionally, and his habits contributed to make him more so. Everything which he saw which was good seemed only to sharpen thecontrast between himself and his lot, and his reading was a curse tohim rather than a blessing. I sometimes wished that he had neverinherited any love whatever for what is usually considered to be theBest, and that he had been endowed with an organisation coarse andcommonplace, like that of his colleagues. If he went into companywhich suited him, or read anything which interested him, it seemed asif the ten hours of the gallery in Fleet Street had been made therebyonly the more insupportable, and his habitual mood was one ofdespondency, so that his fellow clerks who knew his tastes notunnaturally asked what was the use of them if they only made himwretched; and they were more than ever convinced that in theiramusements lay true happiness. Habit, which is the saviour of mostof us, the opiate which dulls the otherwise unbearable miseries oflife, only served to make Clark more sensitive. The monotony of thatperpetual address-copying was terrible. He has told me with a kindof shame what an effect it had upon him--that sometimes for days hewould feed upon the prospect of the most childish trifle because itwould break in some slight degree the uniformity of his toil. Forexample, he would sometimes change from quill to steel pens and backagain, and he found himself actually looking forward with a kind ofjoy--merely because of the variation--to the day on which he hadfixed to go back to the quill after using steel. He would determine, two or three days beforehand, to get up earlier, and to walk to FleetStreet by way of Great Queen Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields, andupon this he would subsist till the day came. He could make nolonger excursions because of his lameness. All this may sound verymuch like simple silliness to most people, but those who have notbeen bound to a wheel do not know what thoughts come into the head ofthe strongest man who is extended on it. Clark sat side by side inhis gallery with other young men of rather a degraded type, and theconfinement bred in them a filthy grossness with which they tormentedhim. They excited in him loathsome images, from which he could notfree himself either by day or night. He was peculiarly weak in hisinability to cast off impressions, or to get rid of mental pictureswhen once formed, and his distress at being haunted by these hateful, disgusting thoughts was pitiable. They were in fact almost more thanthoughts, they were transportations out of himself--real visions. Itwould have been his salvation if he could have been a carpenter or abricklayer, in country air, but this could not be. 

Clark had no power to think connectedly to a conclusion. When anidea came into his head, he dwelt upon it incessantly, and nocorrection of the false path upon which it set him was possible, because he avoided society. Work over, he was so sick of people thathe went back to himself. So it came to pass that when brought intocompany, what he believed and cherished was frequently found to beopen to obvious objection, and was often nothing better than nonsensewhich was rudely, and as he himself was forced to admit, justlyoverthrown. He ought to have been surrounded with intelligentfriends, who would have enabled him to see continually the otherside, and who would have prevented his long and useless wanderings. Like many other persons, too, whom I have known--just in proportionto his lack of penetrative power was his tendency to occupy himselfwith difficult questions. By a cruel destiny he was impelled todabble in matters for which he was totally unfitted. He never couldgo beyond his author a single step, and he lost himself in endlessmazes. If he could but have been persuaded to content himself withsweet presentations of wholesome happy existence, with stories andwith history, how much better it would have been for him! He had hadno proper training whatever for anything more, he was ignorant of theexact meaning of the proper terminology of science, and an unluckyday it was for him when he picked up on a bookstall some very earlytranslation of some German book on philosophy. One reason, as may beconjectured, for his mistakes was his education in dissentingCalvinism, a religion which is entirely metaphysical, and encourages, unhappily, in everybody a taste for tremendous problems. So long asCalvinism is unshaken, the mischief is often not obvious, because aready solution taken on trust is provided; but when doubts arise, theevil results become apparent, and the poor helpless victim, totallyat a loss, is torn first in this direction and then in the other, andcannot let these questions alone. He has been taught to believe theyare connected with salvation, and he is compelled still to busyhimself with them, rather than with simple external piety. 

CHAPTER VI--DRURY LANE THEOLOGY

Such were some of our disciples. I do not think that church orchapel would have done them much good. Preachers are like unskilleddoctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint. They donot know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve whichrobs us of life. If any of these persons just described had gone tochurch or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual settopics, none of which would have concerned them. Their trouble wasnot the forgiveness of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, thepersonality of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist. They all WANTED something distinctly. They had great gaping needswhich they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special. Someof these necessities no words could in any way meet. It was obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his galleryand his copying if he was to live--at least in sanity. He hadfortunately learned shorthand, and M'Kay got him employment on anewspaper. His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect atfirst, but he was sent to attend meetings where verbatim reports werenot necessary, and he quickly advanced. Taylor, too, we tried toremove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an out-of-doors porter. The poor man was now at least in the open air, andfreed from insolent tyranny. This, however, was help such as anybodymight have given. The question of most importance is, What gospelhad we to give? Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday? What wasour justification? In the first place, there was the simplequietude. The retreat from the streets and from miserable cares intoa place where there was peace and room for reflection was something. It is all very well for cultivated persons with libraries to scoff atreligious services. To the poor the cathedral or the church might bean immense benefit, if only for the reason that they present abarrier to worldly noise, and are a distinct invitation byarchitecture and symbolic decoration to meditation on somethingbeyond the business which presses on them during the week. Poorpeople frequently cannot read for want of a place in which to read. Moreover, they require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus thanthat of a book. They willingly hear a man talk if he has anything tosay, when they would not care to look at what he said if it wereprinted. But to come more closely to the point. Our main object wasto create in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even somejoy in it. That was our religion; that was the central thought ofall we said and did, giving shape and tendency to everything. Weadmitted nothing which did not help us in that direction, andeverything which did help us. Our attempts, to any one who had notthe key, may have seemed vague and desultory. We might by a strangerhave been accused of feeble wandering, of idle dabbling, now in thissubject and now in that, but after a while he would have found thatthough we were weak creatures, with no pretence to special knowledgein any subject, we at least knew what we meant, and tried toaccomplish it. For my own part, I was happy when I had struck thatpath. I felt as if somehow, after many errors, I had once moregained a road, a religion in fact, and one which essentially was notnew but old, the religion of the Reconciliation, the reconciliationof man with God; differing from the current creed in so far as I didnot lay stress upon sin as the cause of estrangement, but yetagreeing with it in making it my duty of duties to suppress revolt, and to submit calmly and sometimes cheerfully to the Creator. Thissurely, under a thousand disguises, has been the meaning of all theforms of worship which we have seen in the world. Pain and death arenothing new, and men have been driven into perplexed scepticism, andeven insurrection by them, ever since men came into being. Always, however, have the majority, the vast majority of the race, feltinstinctively that in this scepticism and insurrection they could notabide, and they have struggled more or less blindly afterexplanation; determined not to desist till they had found it, andreaching a result embodied in a multitude of shapes irrational andabsurd to the superficial scoffer, but of profound interest to thethoughtful. I may observe, in passing, that this is a reason why allgreat religions should be treated with respect, and in a certainsense preserved. It is nothing less than a wicked waste ofaccumulated human strivings to sneer them out of existence. Theywill be found, every one of them, to have incarnated certain vitaldoctrines which it has cost centuries of toil and devotion properlyto appreciate. Especially is this true of the Catholic faith, and ifit were worth while, it might be shown how it is nothing less than adivine casket of precious remedies, and if it is to be brutallybroken, it will take ages to rediscover and restore them. Of onething I am certain, that their rediscovery and restoration will benecessary. I cannot too earnestly insist upon the need of ourholding, each man for himself, by some faith which shall anchor him. It must not be taken up by chance. We must fight for it, for only sowill it become OUR faith. The halt in indifference or in hostilityis easy enough and seductive enough. The half-hearted thinks thatwhen he has attained that stage he has completed the term of humanwisdom. I say go on: do not stay there; do not take it for grantedthat there is nothing beyond; incessantly attempt an advance, and atlast a light, dim it may be, will arise. It will not be a completedsystem, perfect in all points, an answer to all our questions, but atleast it will give ground for hope. 

We had to face the trials of our friends, and we had to face death. I do not say for an instant that we had any effectual reply to thesegreat arguments against us. We never so much as sought for one, knowing how all men had sought and failed. But we were able to saythere is some compensation, that there is another side, and this isall that man can say. No theory of the world is possible. Thestorm, the rain slowly rotting the harvest, children sickening incellars are obvious; but equally obvious are an evening in June, thedelight of men and women in one another, in music, and in theexercise of thought. There can surely be no question that the sum ofsatisfaction is increasing, not merely in the gross but for eachhuman being, as the earth from which we sprang is being worked out ofthe race, and a higher type is being developed. I may observe, too, that although it is usually supposed, it is erroneously supposed, that it is pure doubt which disturbs or depresses us. Simplesuspense is in fact very rare, for there are few persons soconstituted as to be able to remain in it. It is dogmatism under thecloak of doubt which pulls us down. It is the dogmatism of death, for example, which we have to avoid. The open grave is dogmatic, andwe say THAT MAN HAS GONE, but this is as much a transgression of thelimits of certitude as if we were to say HE IS AN ANGEL IN BLISS. The proper attitude, the attitude enjoined by the severest exerciseof the reason is, I DO NOT KNOW; and in this there is an element ofhope, now rising and now falling, but always sufficient to preventthat blank despair which we must feel if we consider it as settledthat when we lie down under the grass there is an absolute end. 

The provision in nature of infinity ever present to us is an immensehelp. No man can look up to the stars at night and reflect upon whatlies behind them without feeling that the tyranny of the senses isloosened, and the tyranny, too, of the conclusions of his logic. Thebeyond and the beyond, let us turn it over as we may, let us considerit as a child considers it, or by the light of the newest philosophy, is a constant, visible warning not to make our minds the measure ofthe universe. Underneath the stars what dreams, what conjecturesarise, shadowy enough, it is true; but one thing we cannot helpbelieving as irresistibly as if by geometrical deduction--that thesphere of that understanding of ours, whose function it seems to beto imprison us, is limited. 

Going through a churchyard one afternoon I noticed that nearly allthe people who were buried there, if the inscriptions on thetombstones might be taken to represent the thoughts of the departedwhen they were alive, had been intent solely on their own personalsalvation. The question with them all seemed to have been, shall _I_go to heaven? Considering the tremendous difference between heavenand hell in the popular imagination, it was very natural that thesepoor creatures should be anxious above everything to know whetherthey would be in hell or heaven for ever. Surely, however, this isnot the highest frame of mind, nor is it one to be encouraged. Iwould rather do all I can to get out of it, and to draw others out ofit too. Our aim ought not so much to be the salvation of this poorpetty self, but of that in me which alone makes it worth while tosave me; of that alone which I hope will be saved, immortal truth. The very centre of the existence of the ordinary chapel-goer andchurch-goer needs to be shifted from self to what is outside self, and yet is truly self, and the sole truth of self. If the truthlives, WE live, and if it dies, we are dead. Our theology stands inneed of a reformation greater than that of Luther's. It may be saidthat the attempt to replace the care for self in us by a care for theuniversal is ridiculous. Man cannot rise to that height. I do notbelieve it. I believe we can rise to it. Every ordinary unselfishact is a proof of the capacity to rise to it; and the mother's denialof all care for her own happiness, if she can but make her childhappy, is a sublime anticipation. It may be called an instinct, butin the course of time it will be possible to develop a wider instinctin us, so that our love for the truth shall be even maternallypassionate and self-forgetting. 

After all our searching it was difficult to find anything which, inthe case of a man like John the waiter, for example, could be of anyservice to him. At his age efficient help was beyond us, and in hiscase the problem presented itself in its simple nakedness. Whatcomfort is there discoverable for the wretched which is not basedupon illusion? We could not tell him that all he endured was rightand proper. But even to him we were able to offer something. We didall we could to soothe him. On the Sunday, at least, he was able tofind some relief from his labours, and he entered into a differentregion. He came to see us in the afternoon and evening occasionally, and brought his boy. Father and son were pulled up out of the vault, brought into the daylight, and led into an open expanse. We triedabove everything to interest them, even in the smallest degree, inwhat is universal and impersonal, feeling that in that direction lieshealing. We explained to the child as well as we could some morselsof science, and in explaining to him we explained to the father aswell. When the anguish begotten by some outbreak on the part of thewife more violent than usual became almost too much to bear, we didour best to counsel, and as a last consolation we could point toDeath, divine Death, and repose. It was but for a few more years atthe utmost, and then must come a rest which no sorrow could invade. "Having death as an ally, I do not tremble at shadows, " is animmortal quotation from some unknown Greek author. Providence, too, by no miracle, came to our relief. The wife died, as it was foreseenshe must, and that weight being removed, some elasticity and recoildeveloped itself. John's one thought now was for his child, and bymeans of the child the father passed out of himself, and connectedhimself with the future. The child did in fact teach the fatherexactly what we tried to teach, and taught it with a power ofconviction which never could have been produced by any mere appealsto the reason. The father felt that he was battered, useless, and afailure, but that in the boy there were unknown possibilities, andthat he might in after life say that it was to this battered, uselessfailure of a father he owed his success. There was nothing now thathe would not do to help Tom's education, and we joyfully aided asbest we could. So, partly I believe by us, but far more by natureherself, John's salvation was wrought out at least in a measure;discord by the intervention of another note resolved itself into akind of harmony, and even through the skylight in the Strand aglimpse of the azure was obtained. 

I hope my readers, if I should ever have any, will remember that whatI wish to do is to give some account of the manner in which we soughtto be of service to the small and very humble circle of persons whomwe had collected about us. I have preserved no record of anything; Iam merely putting down what now comes into my mind--the two or threearticles, not thirty-nine, nor, alas! a third of that number--whichwe were able to hold. I recollect one or two more which perhaps areworth preservation. In my younger days the aim of theologians wasthe justification of the ways of God to man. They could not succeed. They succeeded no better than ourselves in satisfying the intellectwith a system. Nor does the Christian religion profess any suchsatisfaction. It teaches rather the great doctrine of a Remedy, of aMediator; and therein it is profoundly true. It is unphilosophicalin the sense that it offers no explanation from a single principle, and leaves the ultimate mystery as dark as before, but it is inaccordance with our intuitions. Everywhere in nature we see exactionof penalties down to the uttermost farthing, but following after thiswe discern forgiveness, obliterating and restorative. Bothtendencies exist. Nature is Rhadamanthine, and more so, for shevisits the sins of the fathers upon the children; but there is in heralso an infinite Pity, healing all wounds, softening all calamities, ever hastening to alleviate and repair. Christianity in strangehistorical fashion is an expression of nature, a projection of herinto a biography and a creed. 

We endeavoured to follow Christianity in the depth of its distinctionbetween right and wrong. Herein this religion is of priceless value. Philosophy proclaims the unity of our nature. To philosophy everypassion is as natural as every act of saintlike negation, and one ofthe usual effects of thinking or philosophising is to bring togetherall that is apparently contrary in man, and to show how it proceedsreally from one centre. But Christianity had not to propound atheory of man; it had to redeem the world. It laid awful stress onthe duality in us, and the stress laid on that duality is the world'ssalvation. The words right and wrong are not felt now as they werefelt by Paul. They shade off one into the other. Nevertheless, ifmankind is not to be lost, the ancient antagonism must be maintained. The shallowest of mortals is able now to laugh at the notion of apersonal devil. No doubt there is no such thing existent; but thehorror at evil which could find no other expression than in thecreation of a devil is no subject for laughter, and if it do not insome shape or other survive, the race itself will not survive. Noreligion, so far as I know, has dwelt like Christianity with suchprofound earnestness on the bisection of man--on the distinctionwithin him, vital to the very last degree, between the higher and thelower, heaven and hell. What utter folly is it because of an antiquevesture to condemn as effete what the vesture clothes! Its doctrineand its sacred story are fixtures in concrete form of preciousthoughts purchased by blood and tears. 

I fancy I see the sneer of theologians and critics at our efforts. The theologians will mock us because we had nothing better to say. Ican only reply that we did our best. We said all we knew, and wewould most thankfully have said more, had we been sure that it mustbe true. I would remind, too, those of our judges who think that wewere such wretched mortals, blind leaders of the blind, that therehave been long ages during which men never pretended to understandmore than we professed to understand. To say nothing of the Jews, whose meagre system would certainly not have been thought eithersatisfying or orthodox by modern Christians, the Greeks and Romanslived in no clearer light than that which shines on me. The critics, too, will condemn because of our weakness; but this defect I at onceconcede. The severest critic could not possibly be so severe as I amupon myself. I KNOW my failings. He, probably, would miss many ofthem. But, again I urge that men are not to be debarred by reason ofweakness from doing what little good may lie within reach of theirhands. Had we attempted to save scholars and thinkers we should havedeserved the ridicule with which no doubt we shall be visited. Weaspired to save nobody. We knew no salvation ourselves. We venturedhumbly to bring a feeble ray of light into the dwellings of two orthree poor men and women; and if Prometheus, fettered to his rock, dwelt with pride on the blind hopes which he had caused to visitmortals, the hopes which "stopped the continued anticipation of theirdestiny, " we perhaps may be pardoned if at times we thought that whatwe were doing was not altogether vanity. 

CHAPTER VII--QUI DEDIT IN MARI VIAM

From time to time I received a newspaper from my native town, and onemorning, looking over the advertisements, I caught sight of one whicharrested me. It was as follows:-

"A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to littlechildren. Address E. B. , care of Mrs. George Andrews, Fancy Bazaar, High Street. "

Mrs. George Andrews was a cousin of Ellen Butts, and that this washer advertisement I had not the slightest doubt. Suddenly, withoutbeing able to give the least reason for it, an unconquerable desireto see her arose within me. I could not understand it. Irecollected that memorable resolution after Miss Arbour's story yearsago. How true that counsel of Miss Arbour's was! and yet it had thedefect of most counsel. It was but a principle; whether it suitedthis particular case was the one important point on which Miss Arbourwas no authority. What WAS it which prompted this inexplicableemotion? A thousand things rushed through my head without reason ororder. I begin to believe that a first love never dies. A boy fallsin love at eighteen or nineteen. The attachment comes to nothing. It is broken off for a multitude of reasons, and he sees itsabsurdity. He marries afterwards some other woman whom he evenadores, and he has children for whom he spends his life; yet in anobscure corner of his soul he preserves everlastingly the cherishedpicture of the girl who first was dear to him. She, too, marries. In process of time she is fifty years old, and he is fifty-two. Hehas not seen her for thirty years or more, but he continually turnsaside into the little oratory, to gaze upon the face as it lastappeared to him when he left her at her gate and saw her no more. Heinquires now and then timidly about her whenever he gets the chance. And once in his life he goes down to the town where she lives, solelyin order to get a sight of her without her knowing anything about it. He does not succeed, and he comes back and tells his wife, from whomhe never conceals any secrets, that he has been away on business. Idid not for a moment confess that my love for Ellen had returned. Iknew who she was and what she was, and what had led to ourseparation; but nevertheless, all this obstinately remained in thebackground, and all the passages of love between us, all our kisses, and above everything, her tears at that parting in her father'shouse, thrust themselves upon me. It was a mystery to me. Whatshould have induced that utterly unexpected resurrection of what Ibelieved to be dead and buried, is beyond my comprehension. However, the fact remains. I did not to myself admit that this was love, butit WAS love, and that it should have shot up with such swift vitalitymerely because I had happened to see those initials was miraculous. I pretended to myself that I should like once more to see Mrs. Butts--perhaps she might be in want and I could help her. I shrank fromwriting to her or from making myself known to her, and at last I hitupon the expedient of answering her advertisement in a feigned name, and requesting her to call at the King's Arms hotel upon a gentlemanwho wished to engage a widow lady to teach his children. To preventany previous inquiries on her part, I said that my name was Williams, that I lived in the country at some little distance from the town, but that I should be there on business on the day named. I took upmy quarters at the King's Arms the night before. It seemed verystrange to be in an inn in the place in which I was born. I retiredearly to my bedroom, and looked out in the clear moonlight over theriver. The landscape seemed haunted by ghosts of my former self. Atone particular point, so well known, I stood fishing. At another, equally well known, where the water was dangerously deep, I wasexamining the ice; and round the corner was the boathouse where wekept the little craft in which I had voyaged so many hundreds ofmiles on excursions upwards beyond where the navigation ends, or, still more fascinating, down to where the water widens and sails areto be seen, and there is a foretaste of the distant sea. It is nopleasure to me to revisit scenes in which earlier days have beenpassed. I detest the sentimental melancholy which steals over me;the sense of the lapse of time, and the reflection that so many whomI knew are dead. I would always, if possible, spend my holiday insome new scene, fresh to me, and full of new interest. I slept butlittle, and when the morning came, instead of carrying out my purposeof wandering through the streets, I was so sick of the mood by whichI had been helplessly overcome, that I sat at a distance from thewindow in the coffee-room, and read diligently last week's Bell'sWeekly Messenger. My reading, however, was nothing. I do notsuppose I comprehended the simplest paragraph. My thoughts wereaway, and I watched the clock slowly turning towards the hour whenEllen was to call. I foresaw that I should not be able to speak toher at the inn. If I have anything particular to say to anybody, Ican always say it so much better out of doors. I dreaded theconfinement of the room, and the necessity for looking into her face. Under the sky, and in motion, I should be more at liberty. At lasteleven struck from the church in the square, and five minutesafterwards the waiter entered to announce Mrs. Butts. I wastherefore right, and she was "E. B. " I was sure that I should not berecognised. Since I saw her last I had grown a beard, my hair hadgot a little grey, and she was always a little short-sighted. Shecame in, and as she entered she put away over her bonnet her thickblack veil. Not ten seconds passed before she was seated on theopposite side of the table to that on which I was sitting, but I re-read in her during those ten seconds the whole history of years. Icannot say that externally she looked worn or broken. I had imaginedthat I should see her undone with her great troubles, but to someextent, and yet not altogether, I was mistaken. The cheek-bones weremore prominent than of old, and her dark-brown hair drawn tightlyover her forehead increased the clear paleness of the face; the justperceptible tint of colour which I recollect being now altogetherwithdrawn. But she was not haggard, and evidently not vanquished. There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a trifle enforced, andalthough the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind it, the sorrow did notseem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if notof joy, at least of resignation. Her ancient levity of manner hadvanished, or at most had left nothing but a trace. I thought Idetected it here and there in a line about the mouth, and perhaps inher walk. There was a reminiscence of it too in her clothes. Notwithstanding poverty and distress, the old neatness--thatparticular care which used to charm me so when I was little more thana child, was there still. I was always susceptible to this virtue, and delicate hands and feet, with delicate care bestowed thereon, were more attractive to me than slovenly beauty. I noticed that thegloves, though mended, fitted with the same precision, and that herdress was unwrinkled and perfectly graceful. Whatever she might havehad to endure, it had not destroyed that self-centred satisfactionwhich makes life tolerable. 

I was impelled at once to say that I had to beg her pardon for askingher there. Unfortunately I was obliged to go over to Cowston, avillage which was about three miles from the town. Perhaps she wouldnot mind walking part of the way with me through the meadows, andthen we could talk with more freedom, as I should not feel pressedfor time. To this arrangement she at once agreed, and dropping herthick veil over her face, we went out. In a few minutes we wereclear of the houses, and I began the conversation. 

"Have you been in the habit of teaching?"

"No. The necessity for taking to it has only lately arisen. "

"What can you teach?"

"Not much beyond what children of ten or eleven years old areexpected to know; but I could take charge of them entirely. "

"Have you any children of your own?"

"One. "

"Could you take a situation as resident teacher if you have a child?"

"I must get something to do, and if I can make no arrangement bywhich my child can live with me, I shall try and place her with afriend. I may be able to hear of some appointment as a dailygoverness. "

"I should have thought that in your native town you would have beeneasily able to find employment--you must be well known?"

There was a pause, and after a moment or so she said:-

"We were well known once, but we went abroad and lost all our money. My husband died abroad. When I returned, I found that there was verylittle which my friends could do for me. I am not accomplished, andthere are crowds of young women who are more capable than I am. Moreover, I saw that I was becoming a burden, and people called on merather as a matter of duty than for any other reason. You don't knowhow soon all but the very best insensibly neglect very poor relativesif they are not gifted or attractive. I do not wonder at being madeto feel this, nor do I blame anybody. My little girl is a cripple, my rooms are dull, and I have nothing in me with which to amuse orentertain visitors. Pardon my going into this detail. It wasnecessary to say something in order to explain my position. "

"May I ask what salary you will require if you live in the house?"

"Five-and-thirty pounds a year, but I might take less if I were askedto do so. "

"Are you a member of the Church of England?"

"No. "

"To what religious body do you belong?"

"I am an Independent, but I would go to Church if my employers wishedit. "

"I thought the Independents objected to go to Church. "

"They do; but I should not object, if I could hear anything at theChurch which would help me. "

"I am rather surprised at your indifference. "

"I was once more particular, but I have seen much suffering, and somethings which were important to me are not so now, and others whichwere not important have become so. "

I then made up a little story. My sister and I lived together. Wewere about to take up our abode at Cowston, but were as yet strangersto it. I was left a widower with two little children whom my sistercould not educate, as she could not spare the time. She wouldnaturally have selected the governess herself, but she was at somedistance. She would like to see Mrs. Butts before engaging herfinally, but she thought that as this advertisement presented itself, I might make some preliminary inquiries. Perhaps, however, now thatMrs. Butts knew the facts, she would object to living in the house. I put it in this way, feeling sure that she would catch my meaning. 

"I am afraid that this situation will not suit me. I could not gobackwards and forwards so far every day. "

"I understand you perfectly, and feared that this would be yourdecision. But if you hesitate, I can give you the best ofreferences. I had not thought of that before. References of coursewill be required by you as well as by me. "

I put my hand in my pocket for my pocket-book, but I could not findit. We had now reached a part of our road familiar enough to both ofus. Along that very path Ellen and I had walked years ago. Underthose very trees, on that very seat had we sat, and she and I werethere again. All the old confidences, confessions, tendernesses, rushed upon me. What is there which is more potent than therecollection of past love to move us to love, and knit love withclosest bonds? Can we ever cease to love the souls who have onceshared all that we know and feel? Can we ever be indifferent tothose who have our secrets, and whose secrets we hold? As I lookedat her, I remembered what she knew about me, and what I knew abouther, and this simple thought so overmastered me, that I could holdout no longer. I said to her that if she would like to rest for onemoment, I might be able to find my papers. We sat down together, andshe drew up her veil to read the address which I was about to giveher. She glanced at me, as I thought, with a strange expression ofexcited interrogation, and something swiftly passed across her face, which warned me that I had not a moment to lose. I took out one ofmy own cards, handed it to her, and said, "Here is a reference whichperhaps you may know. " She bent over it, turned to me, fixed hereyes intently and directly on mine for one moment, and then I thoughtshe would have fallen. My arm was around her in an instant, her headwas on my shoulder, and my many wanderings were over. It was broad, high, sunny noon, the most solitary hour of the daylight in thosefields. We were roused by the distant sound of the town clockstriking twelve; we rose and went on together to Cowston by the riverbank, returning late in the evening. 

CHAPTER VIII--FLAGELLUM NON APPROQUINABIT TABERNACULO TUO

I suppose that the reason why in novels the story ends with amarriage is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, andpartly also because of a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the career of life after it. The epoch once announced, nothing more need be explained; everything else follows as a matterof course. These notes of mine are autobiographical, and not aromance. I have never known much about epochs. I have had one ortwo, one specially when I first began to read and think; but afterthat, if I have changed, it has been slowly and imperceptibly. Mylife, therefore, is totally unfitted to be the basis of fiction. Myreturn to Ellen, and our subsequent marriage, were only partially anepoch. A change had come, but it was one which had long beenpreparing. Ellen's experiences had altered her position, and minetoo was altered. She had been driven into religion by trouble, andknowing nothing of criticism or philosophy, retained the old formsfor her religious feeling. But the very quickness of her emotioncaused her to welcome all new and living modes of expressing it. Itis only when feeling has ceased to accompany a creed that it becomesfixed, and verbal departures from it are counted heresy. I too caredless for argument, and it even gave me pleasure to talk in herdialect, so familiar to me, but for so many years unused. 

It was now necessary for me to add to my income. I had nothing uponwhich to depend save my newspaper, which was obviously insufficient. At last, I succeeded in obtaining some clerical employment. For noother work was I fit, for my training had not been special in any onedirection. My hours were long, from ten in the morning till seven inthe evening, and as I was three miles distant from the office, I wasreally away from home for eleven hours every day, excepting onSundays. I began to calculate that my life consisted of nothing butthe brief spaces allowed to me for rest, and these brief spaces Icould not enjoy because I dwelt upon their brevity. There was someexcuse for me. Never could there be any duty incumbent upon man muchmore inhuman and devoid of interest than my own. How often I thoughtabout my friend Clark, and his experiences became mine. The wholeday I did nothing but write, and what I wrote called forth no singlefaculty of the mind. Nobody who has not tried such an occupation canpossibly forecast the strange habits, humours, fancies, and diseaseswhich after a time it breeds. I was shut up in a room half below theground. In this room were three other men besides myself, two ofthem between fifty and sixty, and one about three or four-and-twenty. All four of us kept books or copied letters from ten to seven, withan interval of three-quarters of an hour for dinner. In all three ofthese men, as in the case of Clark's companions, there had beendeveloped, partly I suppose by the circumstance of enforced idlenessof brain, the most loathsome tendency to obscenity. This was the onesubject which was common ground, and upon which they could talk. Itwas fostered too by a passion for beer, which was supplied by thepublican across the way, who was perpetually travelling to and frowith cans. My horror when I first found out into what society I wasthrust was unspeakable. There was a clock within a hundred yards ofmy window which struck the hours and quarters. How I watched thatclock! My spirits rose or fell with each division of the day. Fromten to twelve there was nothing but gloom. By half-past twelve Ibegan to discern dinner time, and the prospect was brighter. Afterdinner there was nothing to be done but doggedly to endure untilfive, and at five I was able to see over the distance from five toseven. My disgust at my companions, however, came to be mixed withpity. I found none of them cruel, and I received many littlekindnesses from them. I discovered that their trade was largelyanswerable for the impurity of thought and speech which so shockedme. Its monotony compelled some countervailing stimulus, and as theyhad never been educated to care for anything in particular, theyfound the necessary relief in sensuality. At first they "chaffed"and worried me a good deal because of my silence, but at last theybegan to think I was "religious, " and then they ceased to torment me. I rather encouraged them in the belief that I had a right toexemption from their conversation, and I passed, I believe, for aPlymouth brother. The only thing which they could not comprehend wasthat I made no attempt to convert them. 

The whole establishment was under the rule of a deputy-manager, whowas the terror of the place. He was tall, thin, and sufferedoccasionally from spitting of blood, brought on no doubt fromexcitement. He was the strangest mixture of exactitude and passion. He had complete mastery over every detail of the business, and henever blundered. All his work was thorough, down to the very bottom, and he had the most intolerant hatred of everything which was looseand inaccurate. He never passed a day without flaming out into oathsand curses against his subordinates, and they could not say in hiswildest fury that his ravings were beside the mark. He was wrong inhis treatment of men--utterly wrong--but his facts were alwayscorrect. I never saw anybody hated as he was, and the hatred againsthim was the more intense because nobody could convict him of amistake. He seemed to enjoy a storm, and knew nothing whatever ofthe constraints which with ordinary men prevent abusive and brutallanguage to those around them. Some of his clerks suffered greatlyfrom him, and he almost broke down two or three from the constantnervous strain upon them produced by fear of his explosions. For myown part, although I came in for a full share of his temper, I atonce made up my mind as soon as I discovered what he was, not to openmy lips to him except under compulsion. My one object now was to geta living. I wished also to avoid the self-mortification which mustensue from altercation. I dreaded, as I have always dreaded beyondwhat I can tell, the chaos and wreck which, with me, followssubjugation by anger, and I held to my resolve under all provocation. It was very difficult, but how many times I have blessed myself foradhesion to it. Instead of going home undone with excitement, andtrembling with fear of dismissal, I have walked out of my dungeonhaving had to bite my lips till the blood came, but still conqueror, and with peace of mind. 

Another stratagem of defence which I adopted at the office was neverto betray to a soul anything about myself. Nobody knew anythingabout me, whether I was married or single, where I lived, or what Ithought upon a single subject of any importance. I cut off my officelife in this way from my life at home so completely that I was twoselves, and my true self was not stained by contact with my otherself. It was a comfort to me to think the moment the clock struckseven that my second self died, and that my first self sufferednothing by having anything to do with it. I was not the person whosat at the desk downstairs and endured the abominable talk of hiscolleagues and the ignominy of serving such a chief. I knew nothingabout him. I was a citizen walking London streets; I had my opinionsupon human beings and books; I was on equal terms with my friends; Iwas Ellen's husband; I was, in short, a man. By this scrupulousisolation, I preserved myself, and the clerk was not debarred fromthe domain of freedom. 

It is very terrible to think that the labour by which men are to liveshould be of this order. The ideal of labour is that it should besomething in which we can take an interest and even a pride. Immensemasses of it in London are the merest slavery, and it is asmechanical as the daily journey of the omnibus horse. There is nopossibility of relieving it, and all the ordinary copybook advice ofmoralists and poets as to the temper in which we should earn ourbread is childish nonsense. If a man is a painter, or a physician, or a barrister, or even a tradesman, well and good. The maxims ofauthors may be of some service to him, and he may be able toexemplify them; but if he is a copying clerk they are an insult, andhe can do nothing but arch his back to bear his burden and find somecompensation elsewhere. True it is, that beneficent Nature here, asalways, is helpful. Habit, after a while, mitigated much of thebitterness of destiny. The hard points of the flint became smoothedand worn away by perpetual tramping over them, so that they no longerwounded with their original sharpness; and the sole of the foot wasin time provided with a merciful callosity. Then, too, there wasdeveloped an appetite which was voracious for all that was best. Whoshall tell the revulsion on reaching home, which I should never haveknown had I lived a life of idleness! Ellen was fond of hearing meread, and with a little care I was able to select what would bearreading--dramas, for example. She liked the reading for thereading's sake, and she liked to know that what I thought wascommunicated to her; that she was not excluded from the sphere inwhich I lived. Of the office she never heard a word, and I neverwould tell her anything about it; but there was scarcely a singlebook in my possession which could be read aloud, that we did not gothrough together in this way. I don't prescribe this kind of life toeverybody. Some of my best friends, I know, would find itintolerable, but it suited us. Philosophy and religion I did nottouch. It was necessary to choose themes with varying humaninterest, such as the best works of fiction, a play, or a poem; andthese perhaps, on the whole, did me more good at that time thanspeculation. Oh, how many times have I left my office humiliated bysome silently endured outbreak on the part of my master, more gallingbecause I could not put it aside as altogether gratuitous; and inless than an hour it was two miles away, and I was myself again. Ifa man wants to know what the potency of love is, he must be a menial;he must be despised. Those who are prosperous and courted cannotunderstand its power. Let him come home after he has suffered whatis far worse than hatred--the contempt of a superior, who knows thathe can afford to be contemptuous, seeing that he can replace hisslave at a moment's notice. Let him be trained by his tyrant todwell upon the thought that he belongs to the vast crowd of people inLondon who are unimportant; almost useless; to whom it is a charityto offer employment; who are conscious of possessing no gift whichmakes them of any value to anybody, and he will then comprehend thedivine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear. God's mercy be praised ever more for it! I cannot write poetry, butif I could, no theme would tempt me like that of love to such aperson as I was--not love, as I say again, to the hero, but love tothe Helot. Over and over again, when I have thought about it, I havefelt my poor heart swell with a kind of uncontrollable fervour. Ihave often, too, said to myself that this love is no delusion. If wewere to set it down as nothing more than a merciful cheat on the partof the Creator, however pleasant it might be, it would lose itscharm. If I were to think that my wife's devotion to me is nothingmore than the simple expression of a necessity to love somebody, thatthere is nothing in me which justifies such devotion, I should bemiserable. Rather, I take it, is the love of woman to man arevelation of the relationship in which God stands to him--of whatOUGHT to be, in fact. In the love of a woman to the man who is of noaccount God has provided us with a true testimony of what is in Hisown heart. I often felt this when looking at myself and at Ellen. "What is there in me?" I have said, "is she not the victim of someself-created deception?" and I was wretched till I considered that inher I saw the Divine Nature itself, and that her passion was a streamstraight from the Highest. The love of woman is, in other words, aliving witness never failing of an actuality in God which otherwisewe should never know. This led me on to connect it withChristianity; but I am getting incoherent and must stop. 

My employment now was so incessant, for it was still necessary that Ishould write for my newspaper--although my visits to the House ofCommons had perforce ceased--that I had no time for any schemes ordreams such as those which had tormented me when I had more leisure. In one respect this was a blessing. Destiny now had prescribed forme. I was no longer agitated by ignorance of what I ought to do. Mypresent duty was obviously to get my own living, and having got that, I could do little besides save continue the Sundays with M'Kay. 

We were almost entirely alone. We had no means of making anyfriends. We had no money, and no gifts of any kind. We were neitherof us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless, what it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance withpersons who thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth atwopenny omnibus fare. Certain it is, that we went out of our waysometimes to induce people to call upon us whom we thought we shouldlike; but, if they came once or twice, they invariably dropped off, and we saw no more of them. This behaviour was so universal that, without the least affectation, I acknowledge there must be somethingrepellent in me, but what it is I cannot tell. That Ellen was thecause of the general aversion, it is impossible to believe. The onlytheory I have is, that partly owing to a constant sense of fatigue, due to imperfect health, and partly to chafing irritation at meregossip, although I had no power to think of anything better, or sayanything better myself, I was avoided both by the commonplace andthose who had talent. Commonplace persons avoided me because I didnot chatter, and persons of talent because I stood for nothing. "There was nothing in me. " We met at M'Kay's two gentlemen whom wethought we might invite to our house. One of them was anantiquarian. He had discovered in an excavation in London some Romanremains. This had led him on to the study of the position andboundaries of the Roman city. He had become an authority upon thissubject, and had lectured upon it. He came; but as we were utterlyignorant, and could not, with all our efforts, manifest any sympathywhich he valued at the worth of a pin, he soon departed, and departedfor ever. The second was a student of Elizabethan literature, and Irashly concluded at once that he must be most delightful. Helikewise came. I showed him my few poor books, which he condemned, and I found that such observations as I could make he considered asmere twaddle. I knew nothing, or next to nothing, about the editionsor the curiosities, or the proposed emendations of obscure passages, and he, too, departed abruptly. I began to think after he had gonethat my study of Shakespeare was mere dilettantism but I afterwardscame to the conclusion that if a man wishes to spoil himself forShakespeare, the best thing he can do is to turn Shakespeariancritic. 

My worst enemy at this time was ill health, and it was moredistressing than it otherwise would have been, because I had suchresponsibilities upon me. When I lived alone I knew that if anythingshould happen to me it would be of no particular consequence, but nowwhenever I felt sick I was anxious on account of Ellen. What wouldbecome of her--this was the thought which kept me awake night afternight when the terrors of depression were upon me, as they oftenwere. But still, terrors with growing years had lost their ancientstrength. My brain and nerves were quiet compared with what theywere in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lessonwhich is taught by familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part ofwhat is dreadful in it lies in the imagination. The true Gorgon headis seldom seen in reality. That it exists I do not doubt, but it isnot so commonly visible as we think. Again, as we get older we findthat all life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet wewalk courageously on. The labourer marries and has children, whenthere is nothing but his own strength between him and ruin. Amillion chances are encountered every day, and any one of the millionaccidents which might happen would cripple him or kill him, and putinto the workhouse those who depend upon him. Yet he treads his pathundisturbed. Life to all of us is a narrow plank placed across agulf, which yawns on either side, and if we were perpetually lookingdown into it we should fall. So at last, the possibility of disasterceased to affright me. I had been brought off safely so many timeswhen destruction seemed imminent, that I grew hardened, and lay downquietly at night, although the whim of a madman might to-morrow castme on the pavement. Frequently, as I have said, I could not do this, but I strove to do it, and was able to do it when in health. 

I tried to think about nothing which expressed whatever in the worldmay be insoluble or simply tragic. A great change is just beginningto come over us in this respect. So many books I find are writtenwhich aim merely at new presentation of the hopeless. Thecontradictions of fate, the darkness of death, the fleeting of manover this brief stage of existence, whence we know not, and whitherwe know not, are favourite subjects with writers who seem to thinkthat they are profound, because they can propose questions whichcannot be answered. There is really more strength of mind requiredfor resolving the commonest difficulty than is necessary for theproduction of poems on these topics. The characteristic of so muchthat is said and written now is melancholy; and it is melancholy, notbecause of any deeper acquaintance with the secrets of man than thatwhich was possessed by our forefathers, but because it is easy to bemelancholy, and the time lacks strength. 

As I am now setting down, without much order or connection, thelessons which I had to learn, I may perhaps be excused if I add oneor two others. I can say of them all, that they are not booklessons. They have been taught me by my own experience, and as arule I have always found that in my own most special perplexities Igot but little help from books or other persons. I had to find outfor myself what was for me the proper way of dealing with them. 

My love for Ellen was great, but I discovered that even such love asthis could not be left to itself. It wanted perpetual cherishing. The lamp, if it was to burn brightly, required daily trimming, forpeople became estranged and indifferent, not so much by open quarrelor serious difference, as by the intervention of trifles which needbut the smallest, although continuous effort for their removal. Thetrue wisdom is to waste no time over them, but to eject them at once. Love, too, requires that the two persons who love one another shallconstantly present to one another what is best in them, and toaccomplish this, deliberate purpose, and even struggle, arenecessary. If through relapse into idleness we do not attempt tobring soul and heart into active communion day by day, what wonder ifthis once exalted relationship become vulgar and mean?

I was much overworked. It was not the work itself which was such atrial, but the time it consumed. At best, I had but a clear space ofan hour, or an hour and a half at home, and to slave merely for thisseemed such a mockery! Day after day sped swiftly by, made up ofnothing but this infernal drudgery, and I said to myself--Is thislife? But I made up my mind that NEVER WOULD I GIVE MYSELF TONGUE. I clapped a muzzle on my mouth. Had I followed my own natural bent, I should have become expressive about what I had to endure, but Ifound that expression reacts on him who expresses and intensifieswhat is expressed. If we break out into rhetoric over a toothache, the pangs are not the easier, but the worse to be borne. 

I naturally contracted a habit of looking forward from the presentmoment to one beyond. The whole week seemed to exist for the Sunday. On Monday morning I began counting the hours till Sunday shouldarrive. The consequence was, that when it came, it was not enjoyedproperly, and I wasted it in noting the swiftness of its flight. Oh, how absurd is man! If we were to reckon up all the moments which wereally enjoy for their own sake, how few should we find them to be!The greatest part, far the greatest part, of our lives is spent indreaming over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is consumed inthe anticipation of a brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged, even to the grave. This tendency, unconquerable though it may appearto be, can to a great extent at any rate, be overcome by strenuousdiscipline. I tried to blind myself to the future, and many and manya time, as I walked along that dreary New Road or Old St. PancrasRoad, have I striven to compel myself not to look at the image ofHampstead Heath or Regent's Park, as yet six days in front of me, butto get what I could out of what was then with me. 

The instinct which leads us perpetually to compare what we are withwhat we might be is no doubt of enormous value, and is the springwhich prompts all action, but, like every instinct, it is the sourceof greatest danger. I remember the day and the very spot on which itflashed into me, like a sudden burst of the sun's rays, that I had noright to this or that--to so much happiness, or even so much virtue. What title-deeds could I show for such a right? Straightway itseemed as if the centre of a whole system of dissatisfaction wereremoved, and as if the system collapsed. God, creating from Hisinfinite resources a whole infinitude of beings, had created me witha definite position on the scale, and that position only could Iclaim. Cease the trick of contrast. If I can by any means getmyself to consider myself alone without reference to others, discontent will vanish. I walk this Old St. Pancras Road on foot--another rides. Keep out of view him who rides and all personsriding, and I shall not complain that I tramp in the wet. So alsowhen I think how small and weak I am. 

How foolish it is to try and cure by argument what time will cure socompletely and so gently if left to itself. As I get older, theanxiety to prove myself right if I quarrel dies out. I hold mytongue and time vindicates me, if it is possible to vindicate me, orconvicts me if I am wrong. Many and many a debate too which I havehad with myself alone has been settled in the same way. The questionhas been put aside and has lost its importance. The ancient Churchthought, and seriously enough, no doubt, that all the vital interestsof humanity were bound up with the controversies upon the Divinenature; but the centuries have rolled on, and who cares for thosecontroversies now. The problems of death and immortality once upon atime haunted me so that I could hardly sleep for thinking about them. I cannot tell how, but so it is, that at the present moment, when Iam years nearer the end, they trouble me but very little. If I couldbut bury and let rot things which torment me and come to nosettlement--if I could always do this--what a blessing it would be. 

CHAPTER IX--HOLIDAYS

I have said that Ellen had a child by her first husband. Marie, forthat was her name, was now ten years old. She was like neither hermother nor father, and yet was SHOT as it were with strange gleamswhich reminded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, and thendisappeared. She had rather coarse dark hair, small black eyes, round face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the nose inparticular being so. She had a tendency to be stout. For books shedid not care, and it was with the greatest difficulty we taught herto read. She was not orderly or careful about her person, and inthis respect was a sore disappointment--not that she was positivelycareless, but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her room andher wardrobe neat. She was fond of bright colours, which was anothertrial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to gaudiness. She was notby any means a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode ofexpressing herself upon persons and things. A stranger looking ather would perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sensuousness, anddull. She was neither one nor the other. She ate little, althoughshe was fond of sweets. Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cutoutline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she wascapable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is moreremarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was notpassion which she suffered to explode. I remember once when she wasa little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea. She was dressedand ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could notgo. She besought, but it was in vain. We could not afford cabs, andthere was no omnibus. Marie, finding all her entreaties wereuseless, quietly walked out of the room; and after some little timeher mother, calling her and finding she did not come, went to lookfor her. She had gone into the back-yard, and was sitting there inthe rain by the side of the water-butt. She was soaked, and her bestclothes were spoiled. I must confess that I did not take very kindlyto her. I was irritated at her slowness in learning; it was, infact, painful to be obliged to teach her. I thought that perhaps shemight have some undeveloped taste for music, but she showed none, andour attempts to get her to sing ordinary melodies were a failure. She was more or less of a locked cabinet to me. I tried her with thetwo or three keys which I had, but finding that none of them fitted, I took no more pains about her. 

One Sunday we determined upon a holiday. It was a bold adventure forus, but we had made up our minds. There was an excursion train toHastings, and accordingly Ellen, Marie, and myself were at LondonBridge Station early in the morning. It was a lovely summer's day inmid-July. The journey down was uncomfortable enough in consequenceof the heat and dust, but we heeded neither one nor the other in thehope of seeing the sea. We reached Hastings at about eleven o'clock, and strolled westwards towards Bexhill. Our pleasure was exquisite. Who can tell, save the imprisoned Londoner, the joy of walking on theclean sea-sand! What a delight that was, to say nothing of thebeauty of the scenery! To be free of the litter and filth of aLondon suburb, of its broken hedges, its brickbats, its tornadvertisements, its worn and trampled grass in fields half given overto the speculative builder: in place of this, to tread theimmaculate shore over which breathed a wind not charged with soot; toreplace the dull, shrouding obscurity of the smoke by a distance sodistinct that the masts of the ships whose hulls were buried belowthe horizon were visible--all this was perfect bliss. It was notvery poetic bliss, perhaps; but nevertheless it is a fact that thecleanness of the sea and the sea air was as attractive to us as anyof the sea attributes. We had a wonderful time. Only in the countryis it possible to note the change of morning into mid-day, of mid-dayinto afternoon, and of afternoon into evening; and it is only in thecountry, therefore, that a day seems stretched out into its properlength. We had brought all our food with us, and sat upon the shorein the shadow of a piece of the cliff. A row of heavy white cloudslay along the horizon almost unchangeable and immovable, with theirsummit-lines and the part of the mass just below them steeped insunlight. The level opaline water differed only from a floor by ascarcely perceptible heaving motion, which broke into the faintest ofripples at our feet. So still was the great ocean, so quietly dideverything lie in it, that the wavelets which licked the beach wereas pure and bright as if they were a part of the mid-ocean depths. About a mile from us, at one o'clock, a long row of porpoisesappeared, showing themselves in graceful curves for half-an-hour orso, till they went out farther to sea off Fairlight. Some fishing-boats were becalmed just in front of us. Their shadows slept, oralmost slept, upon the water, a gentle quivering alone showing thatit was not complete sleep, or if sleep, that it was sleep withdreams. The intensity of the sunlight sharpened the outlines ofevery little piece of rock, and of the pebbles, in a manner whichseemed supernatural to us Londoners. In London we get the heat ofthe sun, but not his light, and the separation of individual partsinto such vivid isolation was so surprising that even Marie noticedit, and said it "all seemed as if she were looking through a glass. "It was perfect--perfect in its beauty--and perfect because, from thesun in the heavens down to the fly with burnished wings on the hotrock, there was nothing out of harmony. Everything breathed onespirit. Marie played near us; Ellen and I sat still, doing nothing. We wanted nothing, we had nothing to achieve; there were nocuriosities to be seen, there was no particular place to be reached, no "plan of operations, " and London was forgotten for the time. Itlay behind us in the north-west, and the cliff was at the back of usshutting out all thought of it. No reminiscences and noanticipations disturbed us; the present was sufficient, and occupiedus totally. 

I should like, if I could, to write an essay upon the art of enjoyinga holiday. It is sad to think how few people know how to enjoy one, although they are so precious. We do not sufficiently consider thatenjoyment of every kind is an art carefully to be learnt, andspecially the art of making the most of a brief space set apart forpleasure. It is foolish, for example, if a man, city bred, has buttwelve hours before him, to spend more of it in eating and drinkingthan is necessary. Eating and drinking produce stupidity, at leastin some degree, which may just as well be reserved for town. It isfoolish also to load the twelve hours with a task--so much to bedone. The sick person may perhaps want exercise, but to thetolerably healthy the best of all recreation is the freedom fromfetters even when they are self-imposed. 

Our train homewards was due at Bexhill a little after seven. By fiveo'clock a change gradual but swift was observed. The clouds whichhad charmed us all through the morning and afternoon were in realitythunder-clouds, which woke up like a surprised army under perfectdiscipline, and moved magnificently towards us. Already afar off weheard the softened echoing roll of the thunder. Every now and thenwe saw a sharp thrust of lightning down into the water, and shudderedwhen we thought that perhaps underneath that stab there might be aship with living men. The battle at first was at such a distancethat we watched it with intense and solemn delight. As yet not abreath of air stirred, but presently, over in the south-east, a darkruffled patch appeared on the horizon, and we agreed that it was timeto go. The indistinguishable continuous growl now became articulatedinto distinct crashes. I had miscalculated the distance to thestation, and before we got there the rain, skirmishing in advance, was upon us. We took shelter in a cottage for a moment in order thatEllen might get a glass of water--bad-looking stuff it was, but shewas very thirsty--and put on her cloak. We then started again on ourway. We reached the station at about half-past six, before thethunder was overhead, but not before Ellen had got wet, despite allmy efforts to protect her. She was also very hot from hurrying, andyet there was nothing to be done but to sit in a kind of covered shedtill the train came up. The thunder and lightning were, however, sotremendous, that we thought of nothing else. When they were at theirworst, the lightning looked like the upset of a cauldron of whiteglowing metal--with such strength, breadth, and volume did itdescend. Just as the train arrived, the roar began to abate, and inabout half-an-hour it had passed over to the north, leaving behindthe rain, cold and continuous, which fell all round us from a dark, heavy, grey sky. The carnage in which we were was a third-class, with seats arranged parallel to the sides. It was crowded, and wewere obliged to sit in the middle, exposed to the draught which thetobacco smoke made necessary. Some of the company were noisy, andbefore we got to Red Hill became noisier, as the brandy-flasks whichhad been well filled at Hastings began to work. Many were drenched, and this was an excuse for much of the drinking; although for thatmatter, any excuse or none is generally sufficient. At Red Hill wewere stopped by other trains, and before we came to Croydon we werean hour late. We had now become intolerably weary. The songs weredisgusting, and some of the women who were with the men had also beendrinking, and behaved in a manner which it was not pleasant thatEllen and Marie should see. The carriage was lighted fortunately byone dim lamp only which hung in the middle, and I succeeded at lastin getting seats at the further end, where there was a knot of moredecent persons who had huddled up there away from the others. Allthe glory of the morning was forgotten. Instead of three happy, exalted creatures, we were three dejected, shivering mortals, halfpoisoned with foul air and the smell of spirits. We crawled up toLondon Bridge at the slowest pace, and, finally, the railway companydischarged us on the platform at ten minutes past eleven. Not aplace in any omnibus could be secured, and we therefore walked for amile or so till I saw a cab, which--unheard-of expense for me--Iengaged, and we were landed at our own house exactly at half-pasttwelve. The first thing to be done was to get Marie to bed. She wasinstantly asleep, and was none the worse for her journey. With Ellenthe case was different. She could not sleep, and the next morningwas feverish. She insisted that it was nothing more than a bad cold, and would on no account permit me even to give her any medicine. Shewould get up presently, and she and Marie could get on well enoughtogether. But when I reached home on Monday evening, Ellen wasworse, and was still in bed. 

I sent at once for the doctor, who would give no opinion for a day ortwo, but meanwhile directed that she was to remain where she was, andtake nothing but the lightest food. Tuesday night passed, and thefever still increased. I had become very anxious, but I dared notstay with her, for I knew not what might happen if I were absent frommy work. I was obliged to try and think of somebody who would comeand help us. Our friend Taylor, who once was the coal-porter atSomerset House, came into my mind. He, as I have said when talkingabout him, was married, but had no children. To him accordingly Iwent. I never shall forget the alacrity with which he prompted hiswife to go, and with which she consented. I was shut up in my ownsufferings, but I remember a flash of joy that all our efforts in ourroom had not been in vain. I was delighted that I had securedassistance, but I do believe the uppermost thought was delight thatwe had been able to develop gratitude and affection. Mrs. Taylor wasan "ordinary woman. " She was about fifty, rather stout, and entirelyuneducated. But when she took charge at our house, all her bestqualities found expression. It is true enough, omnium consensu capaximperii nisi imperasset, but it is equally true that under thepressure of trial and responsibility we are often stronger than whenthere is no pressure. Many a man will acknowledge that in difficultyhe has surprised himself by a resource and coolness which he neversuspected before. Mrs. Taylor I always thought to be rather weak anduntrustworthy, but I found that when WEIGHT was placed upon her, shewas steady as a rock, a systematic and a perfect manager. There wasno doubt in a very short time as to the nature of the disease. Itwas typhoid fever, the cause probably being the impure water drunk aswe were coming home. I have no mind to describe what Ellen suffered. Suffice it to say, that her treatment was soon reduced to watchingher every minute night and day, and administering small quantities ofmilk. Her prostration and emaciation were excessive, and without themost constant attention she might at any moment have slipped out ofour hands. I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in a polarcountry, whose existence depends upon one spark of fire, which hetries to cherish, left glimmering in a handful of ashes. Oh thosedays, prolonged to weeks, during which that dreadful struggle lasted--days swallowed up with one sole, intense, hungry desire that herlife might be spared!--days filled with a forecast of the blacknessand despair before me if she should depart. I tried to obtainrelease from the office. The answer was that nobody could of courseprevent my being away, but that it was not usual for a clerk to beabsent merely because his wife was not well. The brute added with asneer that a wife was "a luxury" which he should have thought I couldhardly afford. We divided between us, however, at home the twenty-four hours during which we stood sentinels against death, andoccasionally we were relieved by one or two friends. I went on dutyfrom about eight in the evening till one in the morning, and was thenrelieved by Mrs. Taylor, who remained till ten or eleven. She thenwent to bed, and was replaced by little Marie. What a change cameover that child! I was amazed at her. All at once she seemed tohave found what she was born to do. The key had been discovered, which unlocked and revealed what there was in her, of which hithertoI had been altogether unaware. Although she was so little, shebecame a perfect nurse. Her levity disappeared; she was grave as amatron, moved about as if shod in felt, never forgot a singledirection, and gave proper and womanly answers to strangers whocalled. Faculties unsuspected grew almost to full height in a singleday. Never did she relax during the whole of that dreadful time, orshow the slightest sign of discontent. She sat by her mother's side, intent, vigilant; and she had her little dinner prepared and taken upinto the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed. I rememberonce going to her cot in the night, as she lay asleep, and almostbreaking my heart over her with remorse and thankfulness--remorse, that I, with blundering stupidity, had judged her so superficially;and thankfulness, that it had pleased God to present to me so much ofHis own divinest grace. Fool that I was, not to be aware thatmessages from Him are not to be read through the envelope in whichthey are enclosed. I never should have believed, if it had not beenfor Marie, that any grown-up man could so love a child. Such love, Ishould have said, was only possible between man and woman, or, perhaps, between man and man. But now I doubt whether a love of thatparticular kind could be felt towards any grown-up human being, loveso pure, so imperious, so awful. My love to Marie was love of GodHimself as He is--an unrestrained adoration of an efflux from Him, adoration transfigured into love, because the revelation had clotheditself with a child's form. It was, as I say, the love of God as Heis. It was not necessary, as it so often is necessary, to qualify, to subtract, to consider the other side, to deplore the obscurity orthe earthly contamination with which the Word is delivered to us. This was the Word itself, without even consciousness on the part ofthe instrument selected for its vocalisation. I may appearextravagant, but I can only put down what I felt and still feel. Iappeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself for justification. I had seen thekingdom of God through a little child. I, in fact, have done nothingmore than beat out over a page in my own words what passed throughHis mind when He called a little child and set him in the midst ofHis disciples. How I see the meaning of those words now! and so itis that a text will be with us for half a lifetime, recognised asgreat and good, but not penetrated till the experience comes round tous in which it was born. 

Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of light which flickeredon the wick began to turn white and show some strength. At last, however, day by day, we marked a slight accession of vitality whichincreased with change of diet. Every evening when I came home I wasgladdened by the tidings which showed advance, and Ellen, I believe, was as much pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery asshe was pleased for her own sake. She, too, was one of thosecreatures who always generously admit improvement. For my own part, I have often noticed that when I have been ill, and have been gettingbetter, I have refused to acknowledge it, and that it has been aneffort to me to say that things were not at their worst. She, however, had none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only forthe sake of her friends, took the cheerful side. Mrs. Taylor nowleft us. She left us a friend whose friendship will last, I hope, aslong as life lasts. She had seen all our troubles and our poverty:we knew that she knew all about us: she had helped us with the mostprecious help--what more was there necessary to knit her to us?--andit is worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and hernoble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in her opinion, in herdebt, only seemed to her a reason why she should be more deeplyattached to us. 

It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly recovered, butat last we said that she was as strong as she was before, and wedetermined to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday beforethe cold weather came. It was again Sunday--a perfectly still, warm, autumnal day, with a high barometer and the gentlest of airs from thewest. The morning in London was foggy, so much so that we doubted atfirst whether we should go; but my long experience of London fog toldme that we should escape from it with that wind if we got to thechalk downs away out by Letherhead and Guildford. We took the earlytrain to a point at the base of the hills, and wound our way up intothe woods at the top. We were beyond the smoke, which rested like alow black cloud over the city in the north-east, reaching a third ofthe way up to the zenith. The beech had changed colour, and glowedwith reddish-brown fire. We sat down on a floor made of the leavesof last year. At mid-day the stillness was profound, broken only bythe softest of whispers descending from the great trees which spreadover us their protecting arms. Every now and then it died downalmost to nothing, and then slowly swelled and died again, as if theGods of the place were engaged in divine and harmonious talk. Bymoving a little towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld theplain all spread out before us, bounded by the heights of Sussex andHampshire. It was veiled with the most tender blue, and above it wasspread a sky which was white on the horizon and deepened by degreesinto azure over our heads. The exhilaration of the air satisfiedMarie, although she had no playmate, and there was nothing specialwith which she could amuse herself. She wandered about looking forflowers and ferns, and was content. We were all completely happy. We strained our eyes to see the furthest point before us, and wetried to find it on the map we had brought with us. The season ofthe year, which is usually supposed to make men pensive, had no sucheffect upon us. Everything in the future, even the winter in London, was painted by Hope, and the death of the summer brought no sadness. Rather did summer dying in such fashion fill our hearts with repose, and even more than repose--with actual joy. 

Here ends the autobiography. A month after this last holiday myfriend was dead and buried. He had unsuspected disease of the heart, and one day his master, of whom we have heard something, was morethan usually violent. Mark, as his custom was, was silent, butevidently greatly excited. His tyrant left the room; and in a fewminutes afterwards Mark was seen to turn white and fall forward inhis chair. It was all over! His body was taken to a hospital andthence sent home. The next morning his salary up to the day of hisdeath came in an envelope to his widow, without a single word fromhis employers save a request for acknowledgment. Towards mid-day, his office coat, and a book found in his drawer, arrived in a brownpaper parcel, carriage unpaid. 

On looking over his papers, I found the sketch of his life and a massof odds and ends, some apparently written for publication. Many ofthese had evidently been in envelopes, and had most likely, therefore, been offered to editors or publishers, but all, I am sure, had been refused. I add one or two by way of appendix, and hope theywill be thought worth saving. 

R. S. 

Footnotes:

{1} This was written many years ago, but is curiously pertinent tothe discussions of this year. --EDITOR, 1884. 

{2} Not exactly untrue, but it sounds strangely now when socialism, nationalisation of the land, and other projects have renewed in menthe hope of regeneration by political processes. The reader will, however, please remember the date of these memoirs. --EDITOR, 1884.