CHAPTER XXXV.

UNDER THE WHITE STARS.

During the whole glad evening Wenna had been queen of the feast, and her

subjects had obeyed her with a joyous submission. They did not take

quite so kindly to Mabyn, for she was sharp of tongue and imperious in

her ways, but they knew that they could tease her elder sister with

impunity--always up to the well-understood line at which her authority

began. That was never questioned.

Then at nine o'clock the servants came, some on foot and some on

dog-carts, and presently there was a bundling of tiny figures in rugs

and wraps, and Wenna stood at the door to kiss each of them and say

good-bye. It was half-past nine when that performance was over.

"Now, my dear Miss Wenna," said the old clergyman, "you must be quite

tired out with your labors. Come into the study; I believe the tray has

been taken in there."

"Do you know, Mr. Trewhella," said Mabyn boldly, "that Wenna hadn't time

to eat a single bit when all those children were gobbling up cake?

Couldn't you let her have a little bit--a little bit of cold meat, now?"

"Dear! dear me!" said the kind old gentleman in the deepest distress,

"that I should not have remembered!"

There was no use in Wenna protesting. In the snug little study she was

made to eat some supper; and if she got off with drinking one glass of

sherry, it was not through the intervention of her sister, who

apparently would have had her drink a tumblerful.

It was not until a quarter past ten that the girls could get away.

"Now I must see you young ladies down to the village, lest some one

should run away with you," the old clergyman said, taking down his

top-coat.

"Oh no, you must not--you must not indeed, Mr. Trewhella!" Mabyn said

anxiously. "Wenna and I always go about by ourselves; and far later than

this, too. It is a beautiful, clear night. Why--"

Her impetuosity made her sister smile. "You talk as if you would rather

like to be run away with, Mabyn," she said. "But indeed, Mr. Trewhella,

you must not think of coming with us. It is quite true what Mabyn

says."

And so they went out into the clear darkness together, and the door was

shut, and they found themselves in the silent world of the night-time,

with the white stars throbbing overhead. Far away in the distance they

could hear the murmur of the sea.

"Are you cold, Mabyn, that you tremble so?" said the elder sister.

"No, only a sort of shiver in coming out into the night-air."

Whatever it was, it was soon over. Mabyn seemed to be unusually

cheerful. "Wenna," she said, "you're afraid of ghosts."

"No, I'm not."

"I know you are."

"I'm not half as much afraid of ghosts as you are, that's quite

certain."

"I'll bet you you won't walk down through the wood."

"Just now?"

"Yes."

"Why, I'll not only go down through the wood, but I'll undertake to be

home before you, though you've a broad road to guide you."

"But I did not mean you to go alone."

"Oh," said Wenna, "you propose to come with me? Then it is you who are

afraid to go down by yourself? Oh, Mabyn!"

"Never mind, Wenna: let's go down through the wood, just for fun."

So the two sisters set out arm in arm, and through some spirit of

mischief Wenna would not speak a word. Mabyn was gradually overawed by

the silence, the night, the loneliness of the road, and the solemn

presence of the great living vault above them. Moreover, before getting

into the wood they had to skirt a curious little dingle, in the hollow

of which are both a church and churchyard. Many a time the sisters had

come up to this romantic dell in the spring-time to gather splendid

primroses, sweet violets, the yellow celandine, and other wild flowers

that grew luxuriantly on its steep banks; and very pretty the old church

looked then, with the clear sunshine of April streaming down through the

scantily-leaved trees into this sequestered spot. Now the deep hole was

black as night, and they could only make out a bit of the spire of the

church as it appeared against the dark sky. Nay, was there not a sound

among the fallen leaves and underwood down there in the direction of the

unseen graves?

"Some cow has strayed in there, I believe," said Mabyn in a somewhat low

voice, and she walked rather quickly until they got past the place and

out on to the hill over the wooded valley.

"Now," said Wenna cheerfully, not wishing to have Mabyn put in a real

fright, "as we go down I am going to tell you something, Mabyn. How

would you like to have to prepare for a wedding in a fortnight?"

"Not at all," said Mabyn promptly, even fiercely.

"Not if it was your own?"

"No. Why, the insult of such a request!"

According to Mabyn's way of thinking it was an insult to ask a girl to

marry you in a fortnight, but none to insist on her marrying you the day

after to-morrow.

"You think that a girl could fairly plead that as an excuse--the mere

time to get one's dresses and things ready?"

"Certainly."

"Oh, Mabyn," said Wenna far more seriously, "it is not of dresses I am

thinking at all; but I shudder to think of getting married just now. I

could not do it. I have not had enough time to forget what is past; and

until that is done how could I marry any man?"

"Wenna, I do love you when you talk like that," her sister cried. "You

can be so wise and reasonable when you choose. Of course you are quite

right, dear. But you don't mean to say he wants you to get married

before he goes to Jamaica, and then to leave you alone?"

"Oh no. He wants me to go with him to Jamaica."

Mabyn uttered a short cry of alarm: "To Jamaica! To take you away from

the whole of us! Why--Oh, Wenna, I do hate being a girl so, for you're

not allowed to swear! If I were a man now! To Jamaica! Why don't you

know that there are hundreds of people always being killed there by the

most frightful hurricanes and earthquakes and large serpents in the

woods? To Jamaica! No, you are not going to Jamaica just yet. I don't

think you are going to Jamaica just yet."

"No, indeed, I am not," said Wenna with a quiet decision. "Nor could I

think of getting married in any case at present. But then--don't you

see, Mabyn?--Mr. Roscorla is just a little peculiar in some ways--"

"Yes, certainly."

"--and he likes to have a definite reason for what you do. If I were to

tell him of the repugnance I have to the notion of getting married just

now, he would call it mere sentiment, and try to argue me out of it:

then we should have a quarrel. But if, as you say, a girl may fairly

refuse in point of time--"

"Now, I'll tell you," said Mabyn plainly: "no girl can get married

properly who hasn't six months to get ready in. She might manage in

three or four months for a man she was particularly fond of; but if it

is a mere stranger, and a disagreeable person, and one who ought not to

marry her at all, then six months is the very shortest time. Just you

send Mr. Roscorla to me and I'll tell him all about it."

Wenna laughed: "Yes, I've no doubt you would. I think, he's more afraid

of you than of all the serpents and snakes in Jamaica."

"Yes, and he'll have more cause to be before he's much older," said

Mabyn confidently.

They could not continue their conversation just then, for they were

going down the side of the hill between short trees and bushes, and the

path was only broad enough for one, while there were many dark places

demanding caution.

"Seen any ghosts yet?" Wenna called out to Mabyn, who was behind her.

"Ghosts, sir? Ay, ay, sir! Heave away on the larboard beam. I say,

Wenna, isn't it uncommon dark?"

"It is uncommonly dark?"

"Gentlemen always say uncommon, and all the grammars are written by

gentlemen. Oh, Wenna, wait a bit: I've lost my brooch."

It was no _ruse_, for a wonder: the brooch had indeed dropped out of her

shawl. She felt all over the dark ground for it, but her search was in

vain.

"Well, here's a nice thing! Upon my--"

"Mabyn!"

"Upon my--trotting pony: that was all I was going to say. Wenna, will

you stay here for a minute, and I'll run down to the foot of the hill

and get a match?"

"How can you get a match at the foot of the hill? You'll have to go on

to the inn. No, tie your handkerchief round the foot of one of the

trees, and come up early in the morning to look."

"Early in the morning?" said Mabyn. "I hope to be in--I mean asleep

then."

Twice she had nearly blurted out the secret, and it is highly probable

that her refusal to adopt Wenna's suggestion would have led her sister

to suspect something had not Wenna herself by accident kicked against

the missing brooch. As it was, the time lost by this misadventure was

grievous to Mabyn, who now insisted on leading the way, and went along

through the bushes at a rattling pace. Here and there the belated

wanderers startled a blackbird, that went shrieking its fright over to

the other side of the valley, but Mabyn was now too much preoccupied to

be unnerved.

"Keeping a lookout ahead?" Wenna called.

"Ay, ay, sir! No ghosts on the weather quarter! Ship drawing twenty

fathoms and the mate fast asleep. Oh, Wenna, my hat!"

It had been twitched off her head by one of the branches of the young

trees through which she was passing, and the pliant bit of wood, being

released from the strain, had thrown it down into the dark bushes and

briers.

"Well I'm--No, I'm not!" said Mabyn as she picked out the hat from among

the thorns and straightened the twisted feather. Then she set out again,

impatient over these delays, and yet determined not to let her courage

sink.

"Land ahead yet?" called out Wenna.

"Ay, ay, sir, and the Lizard on our lee. Wind south-south-west and the

cargo shifting a point to the east. Hurrah!"

"Mabyn, they'll hear you a mile off."

It was certainly Mabyn's intention that she should be heard at least a

quarter of a mile off, for now they had got down to the open, and they

could hear the stream some way ahead of them, which they would have to

cross. At this point Mabyn paused for a second to let her sister

overtake her: then they went on arm-in-arm.

"Oh, Wenna," she said, "do you remember 'young Lochinvar'?"

"Of course."

"Didn't you fall in love with him when you read about him? Now, there

_was_ somebody to fall in love with! Don't you remember when he came

into Netherby Hall, that

The bride-maidens whispered, ''Twere better by far

To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar'?

And then you know, Wenna--

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,

When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood near;

So light to the croup the fair lady he swung,

So light to the saddle before her he sprung!

'She is won! we are gone--over bank, bush and scaur!

They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.

That _was_ a lover now!"

"I think he was a most impertinent young man," said Wenna.

"I rather like a young man to be impertinent," said Mabyn boldly.

"Then there won't be any difficulty about fitting you with a husband,"

said Wenna with a light laugh.

Here Mabyn once more went on ahead, picking her steps through the damp

grass as she made her way down to the stream. Wenna was still in the

highest of spirits.

"Walking the plank yet, boatswain?" she called out.

"Not yet, sir," Mabyn called in return. "Ship wearing round a point to

the west, and the waves running mountains high. Don't you hear 'em,

captain?"

"Look out for the breakers, boatswain."

"Ay, ay, sir. All hands on deck to man the captain's gig! Belay away

there! Avast! Mind, Wenna, here's the bridge."

Crossing over that single plank in the dead of night was a sufficiently

dangerous experiment, but both these young ladies had had plenty of

experience in keeping their wits about them in more perilous places.

"Why are you in such a hurry, Mabyn?" Wenna asked when they had crossed.

Mabyn did not know what to answer: she was very much excited, and

inclined to talk at random merely to cover her anxiety. She was now very

late for the appointment, and who could tell what unfortunate

misadventure Harry Trelyon might have met with?

"Oh, I don't know," she said. "Why don't you admire young Lochinvar?

Wenna, you're like the Laodiceans."

"Like the what?"

"Like the Laodiceans, that were neither cold nor hot. Why don't you

admire young Lochinvar?"

"Because he was interfering with another man's property."

"That man had no right to her," said Mabyn, talking rather wildly, and

looking on ahead to the point at which the path through the meadows went

up to the road. "He was a wretched animal, I know: I believe he was a

sugar-broker, and had just come home from Jamaica."

"I believe," said Wenna--"I believe that young Lochinvar--" She stopped.

"What's that?" she said. "What are those two lights up there?"

"They're not ghosts: come along, Wenna," said Mabyn, hurriedly.

* * * * *

Let us go up to this road, where Harry Trelyon, tortured with anxiety

and impatience, is waiting. He had slipped away from the house pretty

nearly as soon as the gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room after

dinner, and on some excuse or other had got the horses put to a light

and yet roomy Stanhope phaeton. From the stable-yard he drove by a back

way into the main road without passing in front of the Hall: then he

quietly walked the horses down the steep hill and round the foot of the

valley to the point at which Mabyn was to make her appearance.

But he dared not stop there, for now and again some passer-by came along

the road; and even in the darkness Mrs. Trelyon's gray horses would be

recognized by any of the inhabitants of Eglosilyan, who would naturally

wonder what Master Harry was waiting for. He walked them a few hundred

yards one way, then a few hundred yards the other; and ever, as it

seemed to him, the danger was growing greater of some one from the inn

or from the Hall suddenly appearing and spoiling the whole plan.

Half-past ten arrived, and nothing could be heard of the girls. Then a

horrible thought struck him that Roscorla might by this time have left

the Hall, and would he not be coming down to this very road on his way

up to Basset Cottage? This was no idle fear: it was almost a matter of

certainty.

The minutes rolled themselves out into ages: he kept looking at his

watch every few seconds, yet he could hear nothing from the wood or the

valley of Mabyn's approach. Then he got down into the road, walked a few

yards this way and that, apparently to stamp the nervousness out of his

system, patted the horses, and finally occupied himself in lighting the

lamps. He was driven by the delay into a sort of desperation. Even if

Wenna and Mabyn did appear now, and if he was successful in his prayer,

there was every chance of their being interrupted by Roscorla, who had

without doubt left the Hall some time before.

Suddenly he stopped in his excited walking up and down. Was that a faint

"Hurrah!" that he heard in the distance. He went down to the stile at

the junction of the path and the road, and listened attentively. Yes, he

could hear at least one voice, as yet a long way off, but now he had no

more doubt. He walked quickly back to the carriage. "Ho, ho, my

hearties!" he said, stroking the heads of the horses, "you'll have a

Dick Turpin's ride to-night."

All the nervousness had gone from him now: he was full of a strange

sort of exultation--the joy of a man who feels that the crisis in his

life has come, and that he has the power and courage to face it.

He heard them come up through the meadow to the stile: it was Wenna who

was talking--Mabyn was quite silent. They came along the road.

"What is this carriage doing here?" Wenna said.

They drew still nearer.

"They are Mrs. Trelyon's horses, and there is no driver."

At this moment Harry Trelyon came quickly forward and stood in the road

before her, while Mabyn as quickly went on and disappeared. The girl was

startled, bewildered, but not frightened; for in a second he had taken

her by the hand, and then she heard him say to her, in an anxious, low,

imploring voice, "Wenna, my darling, don't be alarmed. See here: I have

got everything ready to take you away; and Mabyn is coming with us; and

you know I love you so that I can't bear the notion of your falling into

that man's hands. Now, Wenna, don't think about it. Come with me. We

shall be married in London: Mabyn is coming with you."

For one brief second or two she seemed stunned and bewildered: then,

looking at the carriage, and the earnest suppliant before her, the whole

truth appeared to flash in upon her. She looked wildly round. "Mabyn--"

she was about to say, when he guessed the meaning of her rapid look:

"Mabyn is here. She is quite close by--she is coming with us. My

darling, won't you let me save you? This indeed is our last chance,

Wenna."

She was trembling so that he thought she would fall; and he would have

put his arms round her, but that she drew back, and in so doing she got

into the light, and then he saw the immeasurable pity and sadness of her

eyes.

"Oh, my love," she said with the tears running down her face, "I love

you! I will tell you that now, when we speak for the last time. See, I

will kiss you; and then you will go away."

"I will not go away--not without you--this night. Wenna, dearest, you

have let your heart speak at last: now let it tell you what to do."

"Oh, must I go? Must I go?" she said; and then she looked wildly round

again.

"Mabyn!" called out Trelyon, half mad with joy and triumph--"Mabyn, come

along! Look sharp! jump in! This way, my darling!"

And he took the trembling girl and half lifted her into the carriage.

"Oh, my love, what am I doing for you this night?" she said to him with

her eyes swimming in tears.

But what was the matter with Mabyn? She was just putting her foot on the

iron step when a rapidly approaching figure caused her to utter a cry of

alarm, and she stumbled back into the road again. The very accident that

Trelyon had been anticipating had occurred: here was Mr. Roscorla,

bewildered at first, and then blind with rage when he saw what was

happening before his eyes. In his desperation and anger he was about to

lay hold of Mabyn by the arm when he was sent staggering backward half a

dozen yards.

"Don't interfere with me now, or by God I will kill you!" Trelyon said

between his teeth, and then he hurried Mabyn into the carriage.

What was the sound then that the still woods heard under the throbbing

stars through the darkness that lay over the land? Only the sound of

horses' feet, monotonous and regular, and not a word of joy or sorrow

uttered by any one of the party thus hurrying on through the night.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

CAMP-FIRE LYRICS.

I.--CAMP--IN THREE LIGHTS.

Against the darkness sharply lined

Our still white tents gleamed overhead,

And dancing cones of shadow cast

When sudden flashed the camp-fire red,

Where fragrant hummed the moist swamp-spruce,

And tongues unknown the cedar spoke,

While half a century's silent growth

Went up in cheery flame and smoke.

Pile on the logs! A flickering spire

Of ruby flame the birch-bark gives,

And as we track its leaping sparks,

Behold in heaven the North-light lives!

An arch of deep supremest blue,

A band above of silver shade,

And, like the frost-work's crystal spears,

A thousand lances grow and fade,

Or shiver, touched with palest tints

Of pink and blue, and changing die,

Or toss in one triumphant blaze

Their golden banners up the sky,

With faint, swift, silken murmurings,

A noise as of an angel's flight,

Heard like the whispers of a dream

Across the cool clear northern night.

Our pipes are out, the camp-fire fades,

The wild auroral ghost-lights die,

And stealing up the distant wood

The moon's white spectre floats on high,

And lingering sets in awful light

A blackened pine tree's ghastly cross,

Then swiftly pays in silver white

The faded fire, the aurora's loss.

EDWARD KEARSLEY.

OVERWORKED WOMEN.

In traveling through continental Europe one sees in the fields certain

coarse and blackened creatures who walk somewhat erect, and in that

respect resemble human beings. If you regard them with attention, they

will stop to offer you some rude but humble mark of respect: if you heed

them not, they will go on, as they have always gone on, with the work

that is before them, and from which they never cease but to sleep or

die. They have hands which are large and horny: they have faces somewhat

like those of men, but coarse, hideous and furrowed with the lines of

exposure. They speak, they have a language, but their words are few and

relate only to the heavy drudgery which is before them. These humble and

debased animals are women.

I remember, while traveling some years ago through the State of

Pennsylvania with Mr. Foster, who was then the Vice-President of the

United States, we saw from the window of the railway-carriage in which

we were sitting a woman barelegged and at work in the fields. She was

digging potatoes on some mountain-patch.

"Thank God," said Mr. Foster, "that I never saw such a sight in my own

country before!"

According to the census of 1870 there were in the United States, out of

a total population of 38,500,000, less than 400,000 females occupied in

the labor of agriculture, either as field-hands or indoor workers. Of

this number, 373,332 were hired laborers, and 22,681 the cultivators of

their own lands. All of the former, and two-thirds of the latter, were

freed-women in the late Slave States, and only 7994 females were

employed in agriculture, either as laborers or proprietors, in or out of

doors, in the Free States.

The States in which these few farm-women of the North were chiefly found

were Wisconsin, which claimed 1387; Pennsylvania, 1279; and Illinois,

1034. In Pennsylvania the farm-women belonged almost exclusively to the

population known as the "Pennsylvania Dutch," descendants of the

Hessians and other Germans who settled in the State at the close of the

Revolutionary War; in Illinois and Wisconsin they were recent immigrants

from Europe, chiefly Germans, and for the most part, it is presumed,

widows, who preferred to till the land left by their husbands rather

than part with it.

With the exception of these trifling numbers, which, including even the

freed-women, amount to but seven per cent. of the whole number of males

employed in agriculture, it may be said, with entire correctness, that

in the United States woman has been raised above the necessity of

field-labor.

This is so far from being the case in Europe that in some countries all

the women, except the few belonging to the aristocratic and bourgeois

classes, are employed in the fields. One-third of the entire rural

laboring population of Prussia and one-half of that of Russia are

females. The following figures are from official sources:

COUNTRY. Total population. Total occupied

in agriculture.

United States, 1870 38,558,371 5,922,471

Prussia, 1867 19,607,710 3,286,954

Europ. Russia, exclud.

Baltic Provs., 1863 59,097,859 26,362,435

Of whom Percentage of female

Males. Females. to male agriculturists.

5,525,503 396,968 7

2,232,741 1,054,213 47

13,444,842 12,917,593 98

To every 100 men employed in field-work, there are in Russia 98 women,

in Prussia 47, and in the United States but 7; and of the latter, nearly

all are freed-women of the African race. I have heard men sneer at this

statement, which I regard as matter for boasting--men who regretted it

was true: "You Americans make too much of your women. You educate them

above their rank in life, dress them like dolls and keep them for show.

They are idle, and become enfeebled and vicious, and their progeny, if

indeed they have any, partake of the same characteristics."

It is not alone foreigners who hold this language. There is among our

own countrymen a growing class of admirers of what they are pleased to

term the robust female, and "robust" with this class means hard-worked.

We have already seen the debased condition to which field-work,

apparently, has reduced the peasant-women of continental Europe: we have

seen that they resemble animals as much as they do women, so heavy and

unremitting is the toil with which they are burdened.

"This only makes them hardy," cries the advocate of the robust school,

who believes that hard work is good for everybody, even for women, yet

carefully avoids it himself--avoids even hard thinking, which might

teach him better doctrine. "It is thus that women become the mothers of

a race of heroes."

Heroes! Moon-calves, rather; but we shall see.

Mr. Harris-Gastud in his late report to the British Foreign Office on

Prussia, after mentioning the north-eastern provinces of that country,

and the immorality, drunkenness and thieving propensities of its

peasantry, thus continues (p. 361): "The system of contract laborers,

under obligation to bring one or two other laborers into the field, is

in some measure responsible for the immorality, inasmuch as the one or

two, so to speak, gang-laborers, are usually girls, who live in the same

room as the family. Children are not carefully tended and reared. The

wives are obliged to work daily throughout summer and autumn, and on

many properties in winter also. They go very early to work, are free

half an hour before midday to prepare the dinner and do other household

work, and return to work till sunset. The children come badly off.

Often there is no older child to take charge of the little ones, who are

consequently left to themselves in the house. A direct result is the

great mortality of children. From 1858 to 1861 there died in the

province of Prussia, out of a total population of 2,190,072, an annual

average of 21,290 children under one year, and of 40,845 children under

ten years, being 0.97 and 1.86 per cent. of the population; whereas in

the Rhine province, with a population of 2,112,959, the percentages were

0.57 and 1.12 respectively."

In 1870 in the United States, with a total population in town and

country of 38,558,371, the number of deaths of children under one year

was 110,445, and under ten years 229,542, being 0.29 and 0.59

respectively. In other words, where one child dies in the United States,

_two_ die in the Rhenish provinces of Prussia, and _more than three_ in

one of the north-eastern provinces.

I was in Berlin in the autumn of 1872, when there was a meeting there of

the emperors of Germany, Russia and Austria. Every preparation had been

made for this august convocation, among others that of banishing from

the streets all unpleasant sights. Yet on that occasion, when Unter den

Linden was crowded with carriages and horsemen and well-dressed people,

when Russia and Austria were dashing about in open barouches, with

outriders before and guardsmen behind, and the eye encountered on all

sides the bravery of military uniforms and arms and waving pennants, I

saw in a side-street a woman drawing a hand-cart laden with some heavy

substance that was piled up to the height of four or five feet above the

rails of the cart. Beside this poor slave, who withal carried an infant

upon her back which could not have been more than a few weeks old,

struggled a dog, with whom she was harnessed to the cart. Poor wretch! I

thought, and the husband recently dead, too! I could not think of her as

a _widow_, for, in truth, she did not look human enough. She was not

over thirty years of age, but a coarser-looking hag I never saw the

picture of. Presently a man in crossing the street indulged in some

pleasantry at her expense, when she threatened to call her husband to

chastise him. Husband? Yes, sure enough, there he was, walking leisurely

_behind_ the cart, with his hands in his pockets, smoking his pipe and

gazing at the sights along the route.

If we would know the origin of this brutality to women wherever it is

practiced, we must look for it in the history of slavery, for there we

shall always find it. It was not the peasant-man who first brutalized

his wife and daughter, but the lord. If the ancient rights of the

peasantry had not been molested, and an oppressive system of feudal

exactions forced upon men who once were free and owners of the soil they

tilled, the slavery of women could hardly have occurred. It is now

nearly seventy years since the first decree that eventually resulted in

the abolition of serfdom in Prussia was promulgated, and time is rapidly

effacing many of the social evils which that institution entailed. But

this is not the case with Russia, where emancipation was only declared

ten years ago, and is not completed even yet. The causes that

superinduce the degradation and debasement of women can therefore still

be seen at work in that country, and are thus depicted by an

eye-witness. He is speaking of the condition of the peasantry of Russia

subsequent to the decree of emancipation, and so far as my own

observation in that country goes, I can corroborate all that he says:

"Their food begins to get scantier and scantier, and toward spring they

get more and more famished. The officer of government (who since the act

of emancipation replaces the officer of the lord of the manor) comes and

energetically demands the payment of arrears. Driven to desperation, the

peasant acknowledges to the mayor of the village the cause of his want

of punctuality--viz., the demands made upon him by his family, and

particularly by his wife. 'Give her a good thrashing,' is the advice of

the mayor. The mujik goes home, ties his wife by her hair to the tail of

a cart, and flogs her unmercifully with a whip. At a convenient

opportunity he will give his mother a knock or two on the head with a

log of wood. If any member of the family should die from privation, his

death is attributed to fate." Passing to the description of a village

community of higher civilization, the author continues: "The chief

features of such a village are fewer thrashings, a more perceptible

tendency to personal adornment on the part of the women, a larger number

of bachelors, and the existence even of old maids--_i. e._, in the sense

only of unmarried women. In such villages _fetes_ are held each Sunday,

and all the village games, accompanied by much kissing, terminate in the

coarsest sensuality. Immorality prevails, followed by infanticide."

(_Condition of the Laboring Classes of Russia_, by N. Flerofski, 1869.)

For the sake of obtaining an additional laborer in the family it was

customary for the Russian serf to marry his son of tender years to a

woman of riper age, particularly in households where the father had

become a widower, and where, consequently, the family had lost a female

laborer. The son was then sent out to work in the fields, and this

circumstance, together with the subjection and degradation of women in a

social organization in which even the man was a mere chattel, favored

the existence of a crime that greatly complicated the relations of blood

in a peasant family, and often led to the brutal treatment of helpless

wives by infuriated husbands. Nor did the evil stop even with a partial

amelioration of the cause, but tended for a time to reproduce itself;

for the son, grown to a ripe age and bound to a wife now old and

wrinkled, would revenge himself by treating his own son in the manner in

which he had been treated himself.

Says Flerofski: "Women who assist in floating barges down the rivers

from the province of Vologda (in North-eastern Russia, three hundred to

five hundred miles above Nijni-Novgorod) to Nijni-Novgorod receive two

and a half roubles (about $2) for the journey. Both men and women work

until they become exhausted, and return back to their villages on foot.

Their master, the contractor, who is bound to support them until they

return, hastens as much as possible their homeward tramp, in order to

save expense, compelling them to walk eighty versts (fifty-five miles) a

day along village roads and byways. They will sometimes have to wade for

twenty miles through water and mud up to their knees.... The peasant is

ready to carry any burden, to suffer anything, to impose any privations

on his family, provided his principal object be attained, which is to

obtain means of paying his quit-rent and taxes. For that purpose he will

not unfrequently send his young daughter alone to float timber down the

rivers. Bending under the weight of labor unfitted for her age or sex,

the unhappy creature becomes the object of every form of bad usage.

Without sufficient experience or force of will, compelled to spend days

and nights among dissolute men, she falls an unwilling victim.... The

laborer is so poor, miserable and debased that he cannot save his

daughter from exposure to positions in which she must voluntarily or

involuntarily be drawn into a course of immorality. His principal care

is to place her where she can earn some money."

In some of the industrial districts of Russia villages may still be

found populated at certain seasons of the year exclusively by women and

children. The women plough the land, sow, reap, work on the roads and

pay the taxes. They fill the offices of _starosta_ (policeman) and

tax-gatherer; in short, conduct the entire communal administration. On

the shores of the White Sea women often drive the post-carts, whence

that branch of the service has taken the name of _sarafannaya_ or

"petticoat post." Where are the men who should be seen in these villages

of Amazons--the fathers, husbands, brothers, sons of these hard-worked

women? Drafted into the army or gone to seek work in the adjacent towns.

The terrible burdens which the government and social system of Russia

heap upon the peasant-man can best be realized from a description of its

effects upon the unhappy creature whom this man, himself a slave in all

but name, may treat--nay, almost must treat--as a slave. To pay the

quit-rent and taxes the peasant hires himself to the neighboring lord to

mow his corn at sixty-five cents an acre--a price which falls to forty

cents an acre before the harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn

an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his

body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders

at its work. Yet swath after swath marks the sweep of his arms, and his

poor dull mind is filled with the thought of the day of liberation that

is drawing nigh. Still, he has not earned by a good deal the sum that

will save him from starvation. Starvation! Why? Because should he fail

to pay, the lord has the power, and will not fail, to seize every piece

of property which the peasant has in the world--his cow, his bed, his

clothing, even the uncut corn upon his little field, the very bread from

off his table. Where is that lord? Has he no heart, no mercy? Alas! he

is far away, in Vienna, in Rome, in Paris. He is at the Carnival, the

opera, the club-house. He has presented a diamond necklace to Schneider,

he has bought a new race-horse, he has lost fifty thousand francs at

_rouge et noir_. Meanwhile, his agent and the law do his cruel bidding

far away at home upon the bleak plains of Russia, and the peasant works

under them as Damocles sat under the sword.

In such peril and fear shall the woman stand idle? Idle she never is,

even from inclination, her household duties, the care of the young, the

ministration to the sick and feeble, the preparation of the daily meal,

being sufficient to keep her fully employed. But shall she stop at these

when failure on the man's part may to-morrow sweep away not only the few

articles of clothing and the one or two of furniture they possess, but

also the food which is to last them during the coming year? The thought

is death itself. She must go to the fields. No matter how young her

child, nor how near to death her aged mother or father; no matter how

rigorous the climate or deficient her clothing: she must go to the

fields. They are miles away, perhaps--for in Russia, serfdom, the

communal system and other circumstances have forced the peasantry to

live in villages--but go she must, with the child on her back or left

ailing and uncared-for in the hut, with the sick or dying behind her and

misery all around. Arrived at the scene of her unnatural labors, she

applies herself to them with an energy which despair alone could

engender, and which ends in completely unsexing her. She becomes

weatherbeaten, coarse and repulsive. Her hands are like knots of wood;

she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is

ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights.

Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in

harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but three times,

but gathered and threshed with insufficient skill or barbarous tools, it

scarcely more than doubles the perilous investment. Then this poor

creature casts herself upon the earth and weeps, for are not both parent

and child dead from exposure, from insufficient food, from the lack of

that attention which she alone could have conferred? The links that

bound her poor, rugged, but still woman's heart to both the sad past and

the hopeful future are severed, and she is almost alone in the world.

But her husband returns, and his joyful looks reanimate her. He has

succeeded. The tax is paid, and they are free for another year. But at

what a cost!

This sketch is far from being exaggerated. Too often does it happen that

despite these sacrifices the tax is not paid. Says Flerofski: "Along

that road walks a peasant's family in sorrowful procession, shedding

bitter tears. Is it a funeral? No, it is only the last calf being led

for sale with the aid of the local authorities. It is necessary to levy

rents with strictness, for are not the proprietors already ruined?" (He

means, ironically, by the emancipation of the serfs.) "And, in fact,

were it not for the deep impression thus made on the peasant, did he not

know that his last food-giving beast would be taken from him, his last

pot of milk carried out of his hut, although wanted for his newborn

child, which would perish without it, the landed proprietors could not

collect the tenth part of their rents."

In 1856 the Rev. T. Giliarofski, gold-medalist and corresponding member

of the Russian Geographical Society, published an inquiry into the

frequency and causes of infant mortality in the province of Novgorod,

the results of which are true to this day concerning the greater part of

Central, Eastern and Northern Russia. Let those who believe that it is

wise and merciful to subject women to hard work read the ghastly story.

In the first place, the reverend author mentions the notorious fact that

the statistics of illegitimate births in Russia, in which they are

stated to be but one-thirtieth of all the births, are kept down by the

great prevalence of certain practices, to which it is not necessary to

make further allusion here than to say that they put to shame all the

implications contained in Dr. Storer's erroneous pamphlet as to the

habits of Massachusetts women. Next, the Russian priest states that the

number of births is nearly the same in each month of the year, and that

out of 10,000 children born, 5537 die during the month of their birth.

Three out of four registered births in the months of July and August are

deaths before the termination of those months severally. By the twelfth

month death summons three-fourths, five-sevenths, or even six-sevenths,

of the infants born in some districts of Novgorod.

Now listen to the cause of this frightful waste of human life: "It is

the great mortality in July and August that causes the terrible

destruction of infant life in Russia. Those months are the months of

harvest, when the peasant-women are forced by necessity to leave their

newborn infants to be nursed by children four or five years old, or by

old women whose hands can no longer grasp the reaping-hook. Fed on sour

rye bread and cabbage- or mushroom-water, working as much as the men,

having less sleep, keeping more religious fasts, the peasant-women are

only exceptionally capable of rearing their children by the natural

process."... "I have seen children not a year old left for twenty-four

hours entirely alone, and in order that they should not die of hunger

feeding-bottles were attached to their hands and feet." In other cases

poultices of rye bread, oatmeal, curds, etc. are placed over the

infants' mouths by the miserable mothers who are obliged to leave them

to work in the fields. These poultices frequently choke or suffocate the

child. Domestic animals invade the hut, and deprive the infant of even

this wretched food. The cries of the child for sustenance produce

internal distensions which result in hernia and other disorders of a

like nature, which are very common in Russia. We shall see presently to

what degree these sad marks of neglect affect the strength and physical

capacity of those who survive such an infancy and become men.

Meanwhile, let us regard for a moment the sufferings of the peasant

mothers. Their confinement frequently takes place in a hut devoted to

the purposes of a steam-bath, or, in summer, in a barn, stable or

outhouse. Many a poor woman is obliged to bear her great trial

unattended--perhaps even without those appliances the absence of which

will compel her, even against her better nature, to follow the instinct

of brutes. In three days, at the utmost, she leaves the scene of her

unspeakable agony and resumes her household duties, even her hard

field-work. Cases occur in which the mother of only one day is forced by

the hardship of circumstances to take to the field. Of course, these

women, so cruelly enslaved, are to the last degree ignorant. What time,

even if opportunity offered, have they for schooling, or even discourse?

None whatever. They are but little superior in intellect to animals.

Naturally, this ignorance begets superstition, and from this source

arise new perils for their miserable offspring. On the third day after

birth it is considered necessary to baptize the child by complete

immersion in water, from which it is held by the Russian Church to be a

sin to remove the chill. A large proportion of the deaths of infants in

the colder months of the year are attributed by native writers to this

cause.

Mothers who have been able to suckle their own children generally wean

them at the expiration of twelve months, and popular custom, which takes

rank as a superstition, has appointed two days in the year for that

purpose--one in July, the other in January. Both of these periods are

unfavorable to the child: in July the cattle are mostly afflicted with

disorders, and their milk is hurtful; in January they give but little

milk. Various devices, more or less prejudicial to health, are resorted

to by the mother to effect a purpose to which the grossest ignorance and

superstition alone impel her. One of the mildest of these is separation

from her child for a week or longer: frequently she returns to find it a

corpse.

And now let us see what sort of men are born of these overworked women.

According to the statistical tables of Brun and Zernof, the number of

persons of both sexes alive between the ages of fifteen and sixty was in

Russia only 265 in 1000; in the United States in 1870 the number was

558. In Great Britain there are 548 adults to every 1000 population, and

in Belgium 518; so that Russia, which, from the subjection of the weaker

sex and their exposure to hardship, should, according to some persons,

produce the greatest number of heroes, in fact produces but half as many

adults, heroes or otherwise, as the other countries named, where women

do but little field-labor.

Even among those who from their ages are to be classed in Russia as

productive, great allowance must be made for physical incapacity. A

large number of the men are afflicted with deformity or disease: many of

them can scarcely drag themselves along. Out of 174,000 men brought up

from the villages to recruiting centres to supply the annual contingent

(84,000 men) of 1868, more than one-fourth (44,000) were rejected for

disease and other physical defects, not inclusive of short stature. In

Prussia, the other principal European country where women are compelled

to field-work, out of every 1000 men liable to military service in 1864,

no less than 467 were rejected for disease and other physical defects,

not inclusive of short stature. These are the heroes whom female slavery

brings forth!

Woman is an invalid, says Michelet, therefore she must not work. Woman

is not an invalid, therefore she is willing to work, and does work. But

that work has its proper sphere at the domestic hearth; and so long as

fortune does not lift the family above the cares of daily want, or

genius elevate the individual to the rank of teacher or leader, there

should it be suffered to remain.

ALEXANDER DELMAR.

SPRING JOY

The wet red glebe shines in the April light,

The gray hills deepen into green again;

The rainbow hangs in heaven; thin vapors white

Drift o'er the blue, and freckle hill and plain

With many moving shades; the air is strong

With earth's rich exhalations after rain.

Like a new note breaks forth the ancient song

Of spring-tide birds, with fresh hope, fresh delight.

Low o'er the fields the marsh-hawk sails along;

Aloft small flocks of pigeons wing their flight;

Alive with sound and movement is the air;

The short young grass with sunlight rain is bright;

The cherry trees their snow-white garlands wear;

The garden pranks itself with leaf and flower;

Quick with live seeds the patient earth lies bare.

Oh joy! to see in this expectant hour

The spirit of life, as on creation's day,

Striving toward perfect form! No fear hath power,

No sense of failure past hath strength to sway

The immortal hope which swells within the breast,

That this new earth matures not toward decay,

But toward a beauty hitherto unguessed,

A harvest never dreamed. These mild bright skies,

This lovely uncompleted world, suggest

A powerful joy, a thrill of high surprise,

Which no fruition ever may inspire,

Albeit each bud should flower, each seed should rise.

EMMA LAZARUS.

HOW LADY LOUISA MOOR AMUSED HERSELF.

I.

The earl of Birndale was the magnate of the district. He was a tall,

strong, coarse-looking man: had he chanced to have been born in the

position of a coal-heaver, no one would have been surprised if he had

been hauled up before a magistrate for beating his wife or for squaring

his fists at any time and at any person as the humor seized him; or if

he had been a wharf-porter, he would have heaved a load on his shoulders

and carried it in a way to make puny specimens of the race sick with

envy. But he was born the son of an earl, and the coal-heaver

propensities had been trained and trimmed in patrician fashion. An earl

on occasion may fly into a passion, but he may not beat his wife: the

earl of Birndale did the one, and didn't do the other, nor was he in the

least conscious of the undeveloped coal-heaver he carried about with

him. On the contrary, his pride of birth and rank was enormous. His

physical strength not having been exercised in carrying loads, it had

brought him to his sixtieth year younger and more erect than many men of

forty, and even yet he employed it in felling trees: a high civilization

goes back for its amusement to what was the toil of primeval times. And

he never walked about his property without a hammer and nails, so that

if he came to any fence broken or breaking down, he could mend it, as

was very right and proper; but when people hear of an earl, they connect

the title with something lofty in the way of employment, and it is

certain that the village joiner would have mended the fences better than

the earl. But no doubt it was an innocent amusement, and _noblesse_ did

not _oblige_ the earls of Birndale: every man of them had always done

what was right in his own eyes. Why, the brother whom this earl had

succeeded passed a good deal of his time knitting, but he was the only

one of his race that had taken to that peaceful, aged-woman-looking

employment: the rest had not knitted anything except their brows, and

all of them had been pretty good at that.

There had been statesmen of the race, and there had been blackguards,

and there had been some of them who combined both characters in their

own persons. This earl had been in Parliament, for a short time even in

the cabinet, and for several years he had been governor in one of the

colonies; and in each of these positions he had made a respectable

figure. Every one has heard of the Swedish chancellor's remark to his

son: "Go, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."

If the earl had not great wisdom, he had a strong will; and a strong

will, backed by rank and wealth, will go a very long way even when

accompanied by a small modicum of intellect. He was a Tory of the

Tories--not of course, however, for the family had never stuck to one

line of politics--and he held that most men need to be governed, and

that only a few are fit to govern the rest, of which few he himself was

an illustrious example. But since his return from abroad he had not

taken, or desired to take, a lead in political matters: he preferred

living quietly on his estates, and for the greater part of the year at

Birns Castle, as the seat of the Birndale family was called, the village

in its neighborhood being known as "The Birns."

Birns Castle was an ambitious building, and really had accomplished its

design of looking "lordly," as the guidebooks say. When you entered it

by the main entrance, you stepped into a large hall lighted from the

roof, and looking up to such a height was very grand: all round this

hall there ran a gallery, and when high carnival was held at the castle,

in this gallery servants, retainers and other privileged persons were

stationed to see the nobility and gentry dancing below; and it was all

"mighty fine," as Pepys would have said. It was even more than mighty

fine on the occasion of the marriage of Lady Mary, the earl's eldest

daughter, to an English duke, the duke of Dover. From her father down to

the poorest and farthest-off relations of the Birndale family this

marriage had made the nerves of every one tingle with delight. But,

alas! grand as the marriage was, it had not turned out a happy one:

there had been no violent outbreak nor any public scandal, but the duke

and duchess saw as little of each other as possible: they both visited

now and then at Birns Castle, but never together. The duke appeared to

enjoy himself, and so, for that matter, did the duchess, but each went

his and her way. Besides the duchess of Dover, the earl had two

daughters, Ladies Helen and Louisa: he had no son, and his wife had been

dead some years.

When there happened to be no company at the castle the young ladies felt

it decidedly dull. It was true they had no end of china, old and new,

foreign and of home manufacture; they had a gallery of paintings

worth--it is better not to say how much--but the work of old masters and

new, besides ancestors looking at them from every wall; they had

drawing-rooms swarming with every unnecessary of life; they had the

spacious and lofty hall with armor and swords and spears and shields,

"all useful," as an auctioneer would say--"all useful, gentlemen, for

decorative purposes"--with trophies of the chase in its milder home

forms and as carried on in African or Bengal jungles; they had a library

filled from floor to ceiling with books containing, it is to be

presumed, the life-blood of master spirits, but they did not often tap

the vessels. The earl himself valued his library, but he was not a

reading man either. In short, they were in the unhappy position of

living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at.

II.

At one end of the Birns village stood a house, small, not comparatively,

but positively--a house out of which you could emerge and be

astonished--if you were young or had anything of the genius which is

always young--at Birns Castle, which is greatly to be preferred to

living in Birns Castle and having nothing to be astonished at, as has

been remarked by a high authority in connection with another castle.

There was no dullness in this house, although only four people lived in

it, but they were all busy always. It was surrounded by a wall which

enclosed not only the house, but a garden, a miniature courtyard and a

stable: the premises were small, but complete and compact, and the

owners were very well pleased with them. On the gate leading to the

house was a brass plate with the name "Dr. Brunton" on it. He was the

doctor of the place, and had only recently settled in it: he was young

and enthusiastic. If a man wants to spend and to be spent in doing good,

he has every opportunity as a country doctor, but if he wants to make

money, he has no opportunity at all. However, people who are young and

enthusiastic don't think much about money, and Dr. Brunton did not, nor

did his sister, who lived with him and attended to affairs in-doors.

They had one female servant and a man for the stable and garden.

They were very happy, this brother and sister--happy to be together, for

they had no very near relations, and they suited each other well; and

happy because they had not been accustomed to great things, and were not

ambitious. Of matrimony neither of them had ever thought, at least on

their own account, or if they had it was as a possible thing in the far

distance. Happy, busy, satisfied people don't readily think of change,

and certainly they don't seek for it; but it may come to them from very

unexpected quarters.

Mary Brunton had a young lady friend who visited her now and then, but

it never occurred to her as at all likely that this friend of hers and

her brother would draw together. If the idea had struck her, it is

difficult to say whether she would have been pleased or displeased--a

little of both, perhaps: she would have known that she ought to be

pleased, but she would not have enjoyed being supplanted in her

brother's affections, as she could not have helped feeling she would be.

Miss Robertson herself, the young lady in question, was not little and

dark, with a talent for keeping every one right and sacrificing herself

on all hands; neither was she tall and fair and handsome, with manners

petulant and somewhat haughty; but she had one quality which is rather

coming into fashion among heroines--namely, pliable affections.

How happy could she be with either, were t' other dear charmer away!

When visiting at The Birns she could be exceedingly happy with Dr.

Brunton: she had a great admiration for him, and having heard him spoken

of as a rising man, and a series of clever papers which he had

contributed to a medical journal having got unqualified praise, she was

disposed to appreciate him, being one of the many people who can always

appreciate what has been appreciated. Very likely, Dr. Brunton might

have secured her and her fortune--which was not a trifle, and would have

been a large addition to his income--if he had tried to do so, but he

did not try: her attractions, personal and otherwise, did not strike him

at all. It might have been well if they had: at least it is

possible--one can't tell. She made a good wife in an ordinary way to the

man who got her, and a good wife in an ordinary way is a blessing. A

man's mind is not always agape for company, but his mouth is for a good

dinner; a book or a newspaper will be company to him, but he wants the

comfort that comes only through his wife; and if she gets burdened with

the mystery of the universe or stretches her thoughts toward matters too

high for her, or even if she takes an interest in politics, she is apt

to lose sight of the hundred and one things that make up the every-day

comfort that ought to pervade a house like the atmosphere. Perhaps this

is the reason that good wives in an ordinary way are so thickly sown,

for which let us be truly thankful. But, though Miss Robertson had not

by any means embarked the whole of her affections in one venture, she

would not have objected to making some impression on her host, and if

she had, it is possible, as has been said, that it might have been well

for him.

As the doctor went in at his gate one day he found a gypsy-looking woman

at the front door selling, or endeavoring to sell, baskets to Miss

Robertson; but that young lady had the good sense never to buy what she

did not need, and also she had an idea of the value of household

articles (both qualifications of the good wife in an ordinary way), and

knew that the woman was asking three prices for her goods: at least, in

the end she was ready and even anxious to take a third of what she had

first named as the price of her wares. And as Dr. Brunton came on the

scene she was saying, "Or if ye hae ony auld coat o' the maister's, I'll

gie ye the choice o' my baskets for 't."

"What is it? What are you about?" said the doctor as he came toward

them.

"I was just sayin' to yer wife, sir, that if--"

"My wife!" said Dr. Brunton, laughing: "I have no wife, and don't want

one."

"Ay but, sir," said the woman, taking the solemn oracular tone of a

sibyl, being in the habit of combining fortune-telling with

basket-selling if she thought she saw an opportunity, "it'll no be as ye

like: it'll be as it's ordained. A bonnie lassie'll maybe ask ye yet,

an' ye'll no say na; an' I could tell ye mair about it if ye want to

hear."

"Come, move off," said the doctor, tossing a coin to her, "and try some

better trade."

"If I had been a beauty," said Miss Robertson, "I should have thought

the woman personal, and have taken offence."

"Why," said he, looking at her as if to form an opinion, "you're well

enough."

Now in her heart Miss Robertson thought she looked considerably better

than well enough, but Dr. Brunton was honest and said just what he

thought.

"Well enough for what?" she asked.

"Oh, well enough in the way of looks, I mean."

"But not so intensely beautiful as to be justified in making a

matrimonial offer?"

"You can exercise your discretion as to that."

"Indiscretion perhaps?" she said.

"Either," said he.

III.

"I think, Mary," Miss Robertson said to her friend, "you don't need to

be afraid of your brother marrying in a hurry."

"Afraid?" said Mary.

"Yes. Now, confess you wouldn't like it. You would not like to be

shunted, you know."

"Well I should not, but I should like to see him happy, and if he got a

good wife--"

"Ay, but what wife would you think good enough for him? There's the

rub."

"I hope he'll be wisely guided," Mary said.

"So do I; but, as I said, I don't think you need be afraid: he won't be

in a hurry--he does not even care for a flirtation."

"Oh no: my brother is always in earnest whatever he does--in thorough

earnest. I don't think he could even imagine such a thing as a

flirtation."

"Well, he is very much stupider than I take him to be if he couldn't."

"He is not stupid: it is the want of stupidity or silliness that makes

trifling of that kind impossible to him," said Mary.

"It's a pity," her friend said. "What's the use of taking things so

seriously? I think a little flirtation a nice amusement, very much

suited to young people."

"To some young people: I should not like to try it. I should be sure to

burn my fingers."

"Singe your heart, you mean; but it goes off in a little, I suppose, for

I can't speak from experience."

"No, I trust not."

"Do you know," said Miss Robertson, "that I have a great ambition for

your brother? I think it a thousand pities that he should settle here. I

am far more ambitious for him than you are, or than I believe he is for

himself."

"It seemed the best opening that offered at the time," said Mary.

"A far inferior man would suit this place just as well. He'll work

himself to death, and nobody be the wiser or the better, whereas if he

had been in town he would have come to the surface, and might have been

driving his carriage shortly. That little thick-set, red-haired,

bulldog-looking man that was here the other night--Dr. What's-his-name,

your nearest medical neighbor?--that's the kind of man for a country

doctor. He has the bodily strength and the rough-and-ready manners for

the place: he is not too bright or good for human nature's daily drugs.

Were you present when he told about his attendance on Sir James Grieve,

the great man of his district?"

"No, I did not hear him speak of that."

"Sir James had a cold, and there was an ado made about it as if there

had not been another man in the world. The doctor was nights in the

house, and there were consultations and forms and ceremonies, and as

many fykes, he said, and his time was uselessly taken up, and other

patients neglected; and he could not charge at all in proportion. Even

as it was, Sir James went over every item of his account singly, and had

it explained. Imagine your brother going through all that if the earl of

Birndale takes a cold!"

"He would not go through it: he would give what attendance he thought

necessary, and if his charge were called in question he would decline

payment altogether: that's what he would do."

"And how would it work, do you think?"

"It would work well: upright, honorable dealing always works well in the

long run."

"But in the short? Why, the displeasure of the earl would be enough to

ruin him. Upright, honorable conduct is often its own reward. Now, our

little red-haired friend can put his manners in a strait-jacket for a

time and accommodate himself to the whims of the gentry; and he is not

squeamish in money-matters, so that he gets money, and enough of it."

"James is very contented here, and he likes better to live in the

country than in the town: so do I, but I must say I could wish him to

achieve reputation; it may be wrong, but I wish it;" and her eyes

sparkled.

"Wrong!" said Miss Robertson: "it's perfectly right, and what he should

do and will do; only, as I said, I think it a pity he settled here."

"I like reputation," said Mary, "because it is the result of great

ability well and thoroughly used: I hope mine is not a vulgar ambition."

"Oh dear, no!" said Miss Robertson; "but a quack has often a far greater

reputation than an honest man."

"Well, but people are always known sooner or later."

"Yes, sooner or later," echoed Miss Robertson: "I hope your brother will

be known sooner."

"Do you know," said Mary, "we are so happy as we are that it is a shame

to wish for anything better or different: I really don't know two

happier people."

"Just allow me to be a third: I am very happy too. The idea of calling

this world a vale of tears!"

"By the way," said Mary, "did you see the Ladies Moor ride past to-day?

It is the first time I have seen them. I think I never saw such a face

as the youngest has: they say her sister, the duchess of Dover, is a

great beauty, but surely she can't be more lovely than Lady Louisa."

"Yes, I met them when I was walking, and I was as much struck as you: I

am sure they don't get their beauty from their father: he is a

coarse-looking man."

"I don't know where they get it, but they have it, certainly," said

Mary: "that girl will drive some people crazy yet."

"Do you think beauty has so much power?" asked Miss Robertson.

"Oh, power! I know nothing like it: it is an intense pleasure to me to

see a face like Lady Louisa's."

"And yet beauty has not brought happiness to the duchess of Dover."

"We need not moralize about it," said Mary. "She is unhappy, not because

of her beauty, but in spite of it; besides, though she and her husband

don't get on together, she may have other sources of happiness. It would

give me great happiness to know that people got pleasure by merely

looking at me."

"Her Grace of Dover may have got accustomed to that kind of pleasure by

this time. I hope her sister may have a happier lot: it must be horridly

provoking to be a duchess and unhappy," said Miss Robertson.

"'Provoking' is hardly the word for the situation, I think," said Mary.

"To seem to have a thing and not to have it is very provoking," Miss

Robertson said; "besides, other people may hope for some turn of affairs

that will make things better, but what can she hope for? Why, she has

everything this world can give."

"Her case seems a very sad one--all glitter and no gold," Miss Brunton

said.

IV.

Dr. Brunton had been attending an old woman who kept one of the gates of

the castle-grounds and lived in the lodge. It was the least frequented

of all the entrances to the castle, and the least important. The gate

was rustic, and the lodge was rustic and thatched, and looked like a big

beehive, standing as it did at the corner of a fir plantation, the trees

coming up almost to its walls and overshadowing it entirely. It seemed

an eerie, solitary place for one lone woman to inhabit, but she had been

there for many years, and, whatever she had or wanted, time had come and

time had gone. It was a place where you might have thought Death would

have called early any day if he was passing, in case he might forget it

altogether; but he had not, and not only did he not forget it, but he

had come to this house months ago, and hovered about since as if he had

nothing to do elsewhere, or as if he could not have despatched his

business in a moment. At this very time he was seizing some of the great

ones of the earth with little ceremony, for rank and wealth can't keep

him waiting in an anteroom till they are ready to receive him: if they

could, he might get leave to wait long enough. How was it worth his

while to look in on this poor woman every night and show her his face as

king of terrors, and yet hang back from enforcing his rights?

Another elderly woman, lonely like herself, had been got to wait on her.

Women of this kind are not scarce: as life closes in on them they drift

away into little remote houses in the country, or into single rooms up

three or four stairs in towns, like the leaves of autumn that have had

their spring and summer, and are only waiting for the kindly mother

earth to absorb them again. It looks but a dreary last chapter in their

lives, yet it may not be so. In one such instance, at least, which had

been utterly obscure and unknown but that it stood within the charmed

circle of genius, it was not so--that of Christophine, the eldest sister

of Schiller, who, after a self-denying life, died the last survivor of

her family in her ninety-first year, having lived in the loneliness of

widowhood for thirty years on the slenderest of means, yet, we are told,

"in a noble, humbly admirable, and even happy and contented manner;" and

there are many such women. But Bell Thomson, the keeper of this outlying

lodge of the earl's, had no chance of the bull's eye from the lantern of

genius throwing her into a strong permanent light, nor had the friend

who had come to be with her. Happily, the pathetic in their

circumstances did not strike themselves as it might strike others, and

no doubt they had their own interests and enjoyments. At this time they

looked forward to the doctor's daily visit, not merely in the

expectation of gathering hope and comfort from his words, but because

they liked the man himself: he was kind and courteous even to poor old

women, and it was a break in the continuous monotony of their lives.

It chanced on one occasion that the doctor did not get the length of the

lodge till toward the gloaming, having been occupied the whole day: he

was tired, and rather reluctant to hear the minute history of Bell's

sensations for the last twenty-four hours, but he did drive up to the

lodge, and, leaving his gig at the gate, walked in. "How is this?" he

said to Bell: "are you alone? what's become of your nurse?"

"Oh, she had to gang hame for an hour or twa, but I'm no my lane: a

lassie offered to bide wi' me till Ann cam back."

"That's right," said the doctor, and he talked for a little. "Now," he

said, "you're better to-day than you were yesterday, just admit that."

"Weel, I'm nae waur, but, doctor, ye aye see me at my best, come when ye

like. Whether it's you comin' in that sets me up a wee I dinna ken, but

I'm aye lighter when ye're here than ony other time."

"I must try and act the other way," he said: "it won't do for me to

rival my own medicine."

He turned round and saw standing with her back to him, and looking out

at the little window, a girl, apparently the daughter of one of the

neighboring hinds, as farm-servants who live in the cottages on a farm

are called in Scotland. She wore a striped woolen petticoat, short

enough to show her thick worsted stockings and stout little shoes that

were tied close round her ankles; a striped pink-and-white cotton

short-gown, as it is called, with a small tartan shawl pinned round her

neck. This was her dress--the dress common to female farm-servants,

which to neatness joins fitness: it is not in the way, and it gives all

the muscles free room for exercise; but it is rapidly becoming a thing

of the past now, the more's the pity! Her hair was all drawn behind and

twisted up at the back of her head, where it was fastened by a little

common horn comb: she had also a string of amber glass beads round her

neck.

This girl turned round and looked at the doctor with a simple stare of

curiosity, such as her class fix on a stranger.

The doctor was startled, he almost uttered a low cry of admiration: the

face was perfect, heavenly, indescribable.

Bell, who was sitting up in bed supported by pillows, said, "Isn't she a

bonnie lassie, doctor?"

"Hoot!" said the girl--"hoot, Bell! that's nae news. Could ye no tell us

something we dinna ken?"

From some lips this might have been an impertinent remark: from hers it

had the most piquant charm of simplicity.

The doctor, having recovered from his first thrill of surprise, said,

"Where do you live, my good girl?"

"Wi' my faither, sir," she said simply.

"Who is your father?" he asked.

"He is ane o' our neighbors," Bell answered.

"Just up the gate a bit," the girl said.

"Over at Claygates?" said the doctor.

"A wee bit farrer yont, sir," the girl said, and disappeared into an

inner room.

"I wonder I never saw her before," the doctor said to his patient.

"Weel, she's worth seeing: she's--"

But the rustic beauty reappeared, and Bell did not speak further.

Dr. Brunton's visit had exceeded its ordinary limits, and he rose to go.

The girl opened the door for him, and as he was passing out he said to

her, "Are you often here?"

"Gey an' often: Bell's an auld friend o' my mither's, and I run over to

speir for her aye when I've time."

"Shall you be here to-morrow?"

"Oh, ay: I'll be here the morn and the next day, and maybe the day

after: I'll be often here as lang as I'm at hame."

"And where will you be when you are not at home?"

"Weel, sir"--and she hesitated a little--"weel, sir, where can the like

o' me be but at service? We hae nae muckle choice, folk like us."

"Choice!" thought the doctor. "At service! Why, to be served by a being

wearing such a face must be like being waited on by an angel: she might

have her choice of the crowned heads of Europe."

He sprang into his gig: all his sense of fatigue had vanished, and a new

and strange feeling had taken possession of him.

"And they are going to send her to service!" he said to himself. "What a

shame!"

And yet he knew he was unreasonable. As she herself had said, what

choice was there in her rank of life? and it was only her beautiful face

that made it seem at all out of place; but what an _only_ that was!

"Why," he thought, "I have been five and twenty years in the world, and

I have never seen a face to match it--never!"

At dinner that day Dr. Brunton was rather preoccupied and taciturn till

his sister asked him if he had yet happened to see Lady Louisa Moor.

"No," he said, "I have not had that pleasure."

"Well, it is a pleasure," she said: "I think she is as pretty a girl as

I ever saw."

"Pretty!" said he: "why, I saw a girl to-day--a hind's daughter--so

beautiful that I can't think how I never heard of her before: her beauty

is a thing to be spoken about."

"The style of good looks that pleases one person often does not please

another," said Miss Robertson.

"But she is not good-looking--I tell you no one would speak of good

looks in connection with her--she is simply and perfectly beautiful; and

she is going to service. Imagine yon creature brushing your boots and

bringing them to you! The bare idea is profanation. She only wants

education to make her a thing to be worshiped; but she is quite

uncultured: I shouldn't wonder if she can't even read or write decently,

but she has no want of natural ability: everything she said proved

that."

"I am afraid you have fallen in love," said Miss Robertson.

"I am afraid of it," he said.

"I think hardly," said his sister. "I think you have more sense, James,

than to be taken with a pretty face belonging to a young lady who can

neither read nor write."

"Millions of people can read and write," said he, "but how many have a

face like hers?"

"I must find her out and have a look at her," said Miss Robertson.

"Wait, James," said Mary, "till you see Lady Louisa."

"Lady Louisa may be anything she likes," said he, "but it is impossible

she can match this peasant-girl without a single grace of dress or

culture. I never saw anything like her--never."

"I have heard of gentlemen picking up pretty girls and sending them to

be educated with a view of marrying them," said Miss Robertson.

"I've heard of that too," said the doctor. "Well, beauty is a wonderful

gift; that is, the transcendent beauty that every one acknowledges."

"And very rare," said Mary. "I should like to see the beauty every one

would acknowledge. If this girl seemed as beautiful to every one as she

does to you, I think she would have been advanced to a tobacconist's

shop at least by this time."

"Don't speak of it!" said her brother.

V.

On the following day about the same hour Dr. Brunton approached the

lodge where he had come so often full of pity, and had submitted to be

bored with a good grace. But instead of dragging himself up to make this

visit as a tiresome duty, which he had sometimes felt it to be, it had

floated before his mind all day, and he went through the gate with the

most vivid and even tremulous expectation and interest. But the

celestial beauty in the amber beads was not there. He sat and listened

patiently to the old woman's story, and various times tried to draw her

out about her visitor of yesterday; but she was so occupied with herself

that she could speak of nothing else, and he left with a stinging, empty

sense of disappointment, as he did on the next day, and the next; but on

the fourth the rustic beauty reappeared, as innocently simple and

slightly sheepish in manner as before.

"You have not been here for some days?" the doctor said to her.

"Na, I couldna coom."

"Why not?"

"My faither said I was to bide in the house and mind my wark."

"What do you do? Can you read well?"

"Oh, ay, I can read no that ill: I whiles take a lesson on the

newspapers."

"Can you write?"

"Weel, I canna say muckle for my writing, but the likes o' us hae nae

time to put off writing;" and she sent her eyes right into the eyes of

the doctor, as they stood beside Bell's little window--innocently,

simply, appealingly, the doctor felt--and from that moment he was a lost

man: his prudence went down like straws before the wind.

"You are far too beautiful," he said with deep earnestness, "to go to

service: would you not like to be educated and be a lady?"

"Oh, I wad like it weel aneuch, I daur say, but I'll just hae to be

content wi' the place I'm in: I've a heap to be thankfu' for, and I maun

bide wi' my faither."

"But you'll not be with him if you are at service?"

"No, but I can help him with the siller I mak."

The doctor was silent. This girl was good, then, as well as beautiful.

"Are you his only child?" he asked: "have you no brothers or sisters?"

"I've nae brothers, but I've twa sisters."

"And what do they do?"

"The ane's married, and, the ither bides at name like me, except when

she's awa'."

"She can't be so beautiful as you?"

"Do ye think me so extra weel-faured, sir?" she said with much

simplicity, and glancing at the morsel of looking-glass that hung by the

window. "Whether do ye like my yellow beads or my blue anes best? I put

on my blue anes the day: my sister's gudeman give me them when they were

married."

"Are you fond of beads?"

"Oh, ay--they set a body off, divn't they?"

"You set them off: everything near you looks well because it is near

you."

"Ye've a fair tongue, sir."

"I always speak the truth."

"I believe that," she said; and again her eyes looked into the doctor's

with childish simplicity.

"You can trust me?" he said.

"What about, sir?"

"About anything: if you want a friend you'll trust me?"

"Oh, ay, sir: I'll do that; but I'm no ill off for friends."

"I should think not," he said. "Where does your married sister live?"

"Oh, far away--away up on the English hand."

"What is her husband?"

"He has a bit land o' his ain, sir: she made a gude marriage, it's

thought, but I whiles jalouse he's no very gude to her."

"Surely not, surely not," said the doctor; and a vision crossed him of

this beautiful and simple girl he was speaking to marrying some coarse

working-man, and being made a hardly-used drudge of to the end of her

days; and he determined it should not be. He determined it should not

be: surely, she was born for some better fate. The very idea of it made

him feel dazed, and it was possible that even now she was pledged to

some such thing. Another man would have had no difficulty in "chaffing"

her on such a subject and finding out all he wanted to know, but this

man could not: even if chaffing had been a habit with him, he could not

have done it in this instance: his feeling was far too deep and real and

reverent to admit of it. He went back to his patient and tried to listen

to her story as usual, but in truth it was little of it that he heard.

He was in a dream.

After he went away, Bell looked across to her young attendant, who was

sweeping up about the fireside in active business-style, and said, "My

bonnie leddy, see that ye dinna wark mischief."

"I'm no settin' up a stour, am I?" the girl said.

"Weel, see that ye dinna set up a stour," Bell answered.

VI.

Early next forenoon, as Dr. Brunton was driving home after having been

out the most of the night, he saw two ladies on horseback approaching,

followed by a servant in livery: he liked to look at a pleasant sight,

and first his eye caught the horses, and he thought what fine animals

they were; then he glanced at the ladies. The one nearest bowed to him

and touched her hat: the action could not be called "fast;" still, it

piquantly broke the bounds of very exact stiff propriety. He hurriedly

roused himself to look in her face, which he had not thought of doing

till he saw her action, and lo! it was the face, with the smile, of the

girl with the amber beads!

Beautiful as she was, she might have been the head of the Medusa, for

Dr. Brunton felt suddenly as if turned to stone. When he went into his

house all chance of an hour's sleep was gone. He met his sister in the

passage: she stopped and said, "Oh, James, you must have passed the

Ladies Moor as you came home: did you notice Lady Louisa?--did you?"

"Yes," he said shortly.

"Well, allow that she excels your rustic beauty."

"I allow it," he said. "I'm going to bed: don't call me for an hour or

two unless it's something urgent."

Not that he wanted to sleep or could have slept, but he wanted to think:

he wanted to cast out the dream he had been dreaming, and from which he

had been roused so thoroughly. The girl, the peasant-girl that he had

purposed to take from her rude, coarse setting, that he had yearned to

love and protect while he lived,--she had disappeared like the mists of

the morning, and in her place was left a lady of rank and fashion, the

daughter of an earl, the sister of a duchess. How she must have been

laughing at him! how she had taken him in! He, whose very business it

was to observe, and who prided himself on his powers of observation, to

be so thoroughly deceived! Was he densely stupid, or was she

superlatively clever? He leaned to the last solution. No actual daughter

of a hind could have played the part better. Her language, both in the

pronunciation and accent, was perfect: she had even caught the trick of

phrase and idea natural to the peasantry; and she had neither underdone

it nor overdone it. She was not only perfectly beautiful, she was

excessively clever, down to twisting her hands in her apron, which she

was always doing, as if it had been a piece of rustic awkwardness, when

it was to hide them of course: if her hands had been visible, they would

at once have betrayed her. But he might as well think to win a star from

heaven as her. It was a conflict, but it was soon over: there was no

doubt about it, no uncertainty. He gave up the thought of her at once:

his peasant-girl had taken wings and soared into a region where he could

not follow.

He began to dress wearily, as people do when the zest of life has been

taken out of it: the world was not the world of yesterday, nor even the

world of last week, when he had been his own master and felt no want. If

only he had never seen her, or seen and known her only as the Lady

Louisa Moor, when the idea of loving her never would have occurred to

him--when she would simply to him have been a beautiful creature to look

at without exciting the shadow of a thought of appropriation, and not

the peasant-girl, the beautiful peasant-girl, he had thought he might

possibly win and wear!

While he was still dressing he saw a man in livery ride up to the door

and hand in a note, which was sent up to him at once. He opened it and

read:

"THE CASTLE, Tuesday.

"DEAR DOCTOR BRUNTON: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make

it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at

the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be

able to read this.

"I am yours sincerely,

"LOUISA MOOR."

He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly

and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it

possible--was it in the least degree possible--that she really cared for

him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see

when we meet," he thought as he laid it down.

He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the

amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to

his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said

somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last."

"She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring

ever so little.

"That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of

the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in

her short-gown and amber beads--"do you know that my visits here are of

no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is

certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more

seldom than I have done."

"Will you?" she said softly.

"Yes, I will."

"No you won't," she said pleadingly--"not if I wish you to come."

"Do you wish me to come?"

"Certainly I wish it."

"Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?"

"Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her

well attended to."

The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his

mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll

see her every day," meaning his patient.

Which he did--not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted

in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the

peasant-girl, or in any other role she chose to assume: it was an

amusement she was fond of.

Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he

called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he

felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what

chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did

not--But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had

matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed.

Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for

love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain

man--he was the reverse--but he held that human beings were men and

women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank

should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the

corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which

his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.

One day when he went in he found his patient alone, and she explained to

him that her ladyship had been there, but had gone away, saying she

might be back in a little.

"It was a thoughtless thing o' her to gang awa' and leave me my lane,

after she had tell't Ann she might bide at her ain house for an hour,"

the old woman said, feeling injured; "but what can ye expect o' the like

o' her?"

"I'll stay till one or other of them comes," said the doctor; and he sat

down by the bedside, and did _not_ listen to the history of Bell's last

severe attack. His ears were at the door, and when he heard a movement

outside he went and looked out; but it was only an old beggar-woman he

saw, much bent with age and with her head pearled. She was the

impersonation of clean, decent, thread-bare poverty: she had a plain

snowy muslin mutch close round her face, which was small and wrinkled,

and a black ribbon bound round her head, as the fashion used to be. A

basket with some pins and tapes in it served as a kind of apology for

her visit.

When she saw the doctor she said, "Maybe ye wad tak some preens frae a

puir auld body that can neither work nor want?"

She spoke in a thin, shaky voice, and Dr. Brunton's compassion was

moved. "Do you belong to this district?" he asked.

"'Deed, div I, sir. Eh, but auld age and poverty are ill neighbors!"

"You ought to be looked after: have you ever applied for relief?"

"Frae the parish? Na, nane o' our family hae come to that yet, let me be

thankfu', and I'll mak a fend without it."

"Then how do you live?"

"Ye may say that. Whiles the young leddies at the castle gie me a pickle

tea or the like--that's the youngest ane, her they ca' Leddy Louisa:

she's just an angel o' licht. Eh, if a' body was like her!"

"I'll inquire into your case and see that something is done for your

comfort."

"Oh, mony thanks, sir! I'm no very able noo to travel wi' the basket.

Eh, what time does! Little did I think I wad ever come to this."

The doctor dropped a shilling into her hand, which, cased in a

carefully-mended big coarse worsted glove, she held out: when she saw

what she had got she bowed her head, overcome with thankfulness, and

passed on.

The doctor resumed his watch, and in a little he was rewarded: Lady

Louisa came in.

"If I had not promised Bell to look in again," she said, "I would not

have been here. See, there's your shilling. If I worked as hard for my

money as you do, I would not give it to every impostor: I don't do it,

as it is."

"I don't understand," he said.

"You gave a shilling to an old woman at the door?"

"Yes: was _she_ an impostor?"

"Rank," said Lady Louisa; and she pulled a cap from her pocket, put it

on her head, drew it close round her face, which she threw into age and

wrinkles with marvelous effect, and looked at the doctor, shaking her

head like the pearled old woman.

"Didn't I give myself a high character?" she said, laughing.

"It was the truth," the doctor said--"nothing but the truth."

"The whole truth, and just a little more, don't you think?"

VII.

Shortly after, as the Ladies Moor were walking through the village, Lady

Louisa said to her sister suddenly, "I'm going to call at the doctor's

house."

"Why?" said Lady Helen.

"I want to see what it is like. It must be a queer little nutshell of a

place, and yet I fancy," she said, glancing her eye along the village

street, "people are happy enough in these birdcages."

"They may easily be as happy as people who live in big houses, but what

excuse are you going to make for calling at the doctor's? Do you want

anything?"

"Nothing except to see the house: it is mere curiosity."

"Won't it seem impertinent?"

"Oh no: they ought to think it an honor. We'll ask for Miss Brunton: the

doctor won't be in at this hour."

They were shown into the ordinary sitting-room of the house, in which

was Dr. Brunton engaged in reading the newspapers, but from the news of

the day his thoughts were straying away to the visit he was to make to

his singularly interesting patient at the lodge. Would _she_ be there or

would she not? It was not merely that his eyes were fed by her beauty,

but it seemed to him that custom could not stale her infinite variety:

she had all the qualities that make life noble. He had got to this point

of his meditations when the door opened and the lady walked in.

"How do you do?" she said. "This is my sister, Dr. Brunton. I was sure

you would be out at this hour."

"In general I am, but I have had a most fortunate lazy fit to-day."

"Why, Loo," said her sister, "I don't know how you always come to know

everything. I should not know in the least when Dr. Brunton was likely

to be in or out."

"That's different," said Loo: "I'm intimate with the doctor."

"We called," said Lady Helen, feeling that the visit needed to be

accounted for in some shape, and that her sister was in the humor for

speaking nonsense--"we called to see Miss Brunton: we thought we should

like to know her."

"Dr. Brunton," said Lady Louisa, "the truth is I came to see your house.

I was curious, and I like to gratify myself. I don't see why your house

should not be open to inspection as well as ours: ours is open to the

public two days a week all summer--Wednesdays and Saturdays, I

think--and it is a great nuisance. Have you ever been through it? If

not, I shall be happy to be your guide any day: if every person were as

sick of it as I am, fewer would come to see it."

"Sick of it, are you?" said the doctor.

"Yes, sick. It's just like a well-organized prison, with papa for

jailer--an upright, humane man, no doubt, but always feeling responsible

for his prisoners, and giving them very little indulgence."

"Loo," said Lady Helen, "you talk nonsense.--You must not believe all

she says, Dr. Brunton."

"You want to see my house?" he said. "Why do you want to see it?"

"Why do you _not_ want to see ours?" said Lady Louisa.

"I do want to see it."

"Well, I want to see yours for the same reason you want to see

ours--curiosity. I like to poke my nose in wherever I can get it."

"This, then, is our chief apartment."

"You live, move and have your being here?"

"Yes, my in-doors being: my sister will show you the rest."

"Oh, we don't want to see any more. We only show our own public rooms,

and not all of them: we generally keep one for a refuge."

Miss Brunton appeared, and the ladies prolonged their call a few

minutes: in leaving they invited her to the castle. Miss Brunton and her

brother went with them to the gate, and when they came in again and were

standing in the nutshell room, Miss Brunton said, "James, one feels as

if there had been a bright light here, and it had gone suddenly out."

"There has been a bright light here, and it has gone suddenly out," he

said.

In a few days there came an invitation to Dr. and Miss Brunton from the

earl to dine at the castle.

The earl fastened on Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh

blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his

very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them

before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed the evening, even though Lady Louisa did

not bring her charms specially to bear upon him. The earl had mixed much

in the world and seen a great deal of life; and a man who has done so

must be stupid indeed if he can't say something that shall be both

interesting and profitable. As man to man the doctor felt every inch the

earl's equal, and more, for he discovered that the earl was commonplace

in intellect, and informed only in one or two beats; nor did it require

strained attention to take in the meaning of his lordship's talk, so

that Dr. Brunton could listen and at the same time think of the many

instances--which only of late had stuck to his memory--of ladies of rank

who had married professional men; indeed, it seemed, now that his

thoughts were occupied with the subject, that he never opened a book of

gossip or memoirs but he came on some such instance in it. Why should

this not be his case? Why, indeed?

It has been said that the founder of civil society was the man who first

staked off a piece of ground, said it was his, and got fools to believe

him: possibly the earldom of Birndale had been founded in some such way;

and there it was. But the ancestors of Dr. Brunton had had neither the

boldness nor the originality for such a stroke; and there he was, in the

estimation of society at a very long distance indeed from equality with

the earl of Birndale. But the doctor shut his eyes to this answer to his

question, and began to let the tow of discretion go with the bucket of

hope.

"Well," said Miss Robertson when Miss Brunton and her brother got

home--"well, doctor, has the beauty the gypsy-woman spoke of asked you

to marry her yet?"

"I don't suppose ladies ever do that," said Mary, "but Lady Louisa

might, I am sure, if beauty may be a law to itself."

Seeing she got no answer from her host, Miss Robertson said, "And what

kind of an evening had you?"

"Very pleasant," said Mary: "they were good and kind, and the house is

well worth seeing, although, as a rule, I don't care for seeing

gentlemen's houses, they are all so much alike. Still, where there are

the gatherings of two or three hundred years, it is wonderfully

interesting."

The old woman at the lodge still lingered. Never was an old woman so

well looked after. Was she proud of the attention she got? did it

please her that a doctor and an earl's daughter should wait on her every

day? or had the nearness of the eternal world brought everything to its

level? It would depend on her natural temperament: there are people

whose vanity and self-love can be flattered at the grave's brink. She

lingered, and stuck to life like a beech leaf to the tree, which a

child's breath might almost blow to the ground. But she had weathered

the winter, and the days were stretching out again: it was almost the

end of March, with bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the

atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his

afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and

hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in

the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine and the caller

air.

"Eh, doctor," she said, "do ye no think I might get the length of the

door, just to see how things are looking?"

"Hardly yet, I doubt," he was saying, knowing well that never more would

she walk to her own doorstep, when Lady Louisa came in.

"I have only time," she said to Bell, "to ask you how you are and run

home again, and I have not time to speak to you at all, Dr. Brunton."

"I'll not detain you," he said. "I go your way, and I'll walk with you:

I have a visit to make near the castle."

"Very well," she said; and they left the lodge.

They had often met in Bell's little room, and they had met at the

castle, but they had never walked together before; and it seemed to the

doctor that this was something closer and nearer than had yet been.

"Do you know," said Lady Louisa, "that I have got my carte taken again?

Papa wished it: my sister Mary is here, and we all three were in town

yesterday getting them done. Had you ever your photograph taken?"

"Yes."

"And was it good?"

"It is like, I believe."

"But not good: that's often the case. Have you got it? I should like to

see it."

"I haven't it with me, if you mean that."

"Oh, it doesn't signify, but I am rather fond, do you know, of

collecting the photos of people I know."

They had been walking up hill, and had now descended a little, and had

come to a seat above a waterfall in the grounds. They did not sit

down--neither proposed that--but they stood a moment at this spot. The

waterfall was an artificial feature in the grounds, and bore about as

great a resemblance to the reality as a glass eye does to the living

orb, or a drawing-room polka to the wild war-dance of a tribe of

savages. The water fell smoothly and peacefully over a smooth ledge of

masonry, then got up quietly and went on its way again, as if slightly

ashamed of its tumble; a wild green bank sloped up toward the seat, but

as the gardener had planned and made it, it was in keeping with the

waterfall: there, however, the primrose showed its richly-embossed

leaves and clusters of pale stars, the first love of the year. How is it

that all first things are so delicate and pure? Overhanging the bank

behind the seat stood what the gardener had not planted, a gigantic

Scotch fir, its arms spread out hither and thither, scarred and

weatherbeaten: if it had clung to a mountain-side over a raging torrent,

it might have seemed the genius of the storm: even as it was, in the

afternoon light of the spring day, it had a haggard, weird effect; but

the pale green spines at the end of every twig, contrasting with the

dark green of a former year, showed that, bare and battered as it

looked, it was strong with the strength of renewed life. On the other

side of the stream was a smooth green haugh; the clouds of the early

part of the day had vanished, and the blue sky stretched overhead;

innumerable crows flying homeward dotted it all over and patterned the

azure dome.

"Don't those crows flying often look like a lady's veil floating and

fluttering against the blue?" said Lady Louisa. "I like to watch the

flight of birds. 'Oh, had I the wings of a dove!'"

"What would you do?" asked Dr. Brunton.

"I should be pretty frequently absent from Birns Castle."

"Should you?"

"Yes, but a railway-train does equally well, only it is a fussier way of

traveling than merely spreading one's wings would be. I am not at all

romantic. Good-bye," she suddenly said, flinging a bright glance at him,

and running down the narrow winding path that led to the side of the

stream.

"Oh, stay," he cried in a tone of entreaty--"stay only a moment!" But

she heard as if she heard not, and running on crossed a little rustic

wooden bridge below the fall, when she turned round and waved her hand

to him, still standing where she had left him: then she disappeared

through a gate and went up the gardens to the castle.

"When or how is this to end?" he said to himself.

Going away from her presence into the little sordid houses where disease

and sickness were rife, he felt as if he had dropped from heaven to

earth, from paradise to purgatory. When in heaven and paradise every

obstacle to his wishes vanished, and he was lapped in elysium; but when

he returned to earth and purgatory, the idea of marrying Lady Louisa

seemed the most wild and improbable dream.

He went home and wrote to Lady Louisa, enclosing his photograph--had she

not almost asked for it?--and as he did it he felt that according as it

should turn out he was committing an act either of great folly or great

wisdom. He did not sleep, thinking of it and continually balancing the

probabilities of the case; but even if he had been sleepier than he was,

the roar of the wind, which rose almost to a tempest, would have

prevented sleep.

In the morning a messenger came to let him know that his patient at the

lodge had died suddenly during the night. It has been recorded that the

soul of the Lord Protector Cromwell passed away in the midst of a

tempest; but it was not remarked at the time, nor has it been noticed

since, except on this page, that Bell Thomson breathed her last when the

fury of the wind was at its height. Whether the one fact was

significant, and the other insignificant, I do not know.

It is to be feared that Dr. Brunton's first thought in connection with

the intelligence sent him was, the excuse for meeting at the lodge being

over, where or how was he to see Lady Louisa?

VIII.

At the very time Dr. Brunton was thinking of this, the family at the

castle were sitting at breakfast, and the letter-bag came in. As the

earl was looking over the letters he said, "Here's a thick despatch for

you, Loo: open it, and tell me what it is?" She opened it.

"Well?" said her father.

"It is a likeness of the doctor," she said.

"The doctor! what doctor?"