than the bedstead on which you lie," and she rose and flung herself out
of the house. In those days there was, perhaps there is now, a
path--it could not be called a road--from the southern end of London
Bridge to Bankside. It went past St. Saviour's Church, and then
trending towards the river, dived, scarcely four feet wide, underneath
some mill or mill offices, skirting a little dock which, ran up between
the mill walls. Barges sometimes lay moored in this dock, and
discharged into the warehouses which towered above it. The path then
emerged into a dark trench between lofty buildings connected overhead
with bridges, and finally appeared in Bankside amidst heaps of old iron
and broken glass, the two principal articles of merchandise in those
parts. A dismal, most depressing region, one on which the sun never
shone, gloomy on the brightest day. It was impossible to enter it
without feeling an instantaneous check to all lightness of heart. The
spirits were smitten as if with paralysis directly St. Saviour's was
passed. Thither went Miriam aimlessly that night; and when she reached
the dock, the temptation presented itself to her with fearful force to
throw herself in it and be at rest. Usually in our troubles there is a
prospect of an untried resource which may afford relief, or a glimmer
of a distance which we may possibly reach, and where we may find peace,
but for Miriam there was no distance, no reserve: this was her first
acquaintance with an experience not rare, alas! but below it humanity
cannot go, when all life ebbs from us, when we stretch out our arms in
vain, when there is no God--nothing but a brazen Moloch, worse than the
Satan of theology ten thousand times, because it is dead. A Satan we
might conquer, or at least we should feel the delight of combat in
resisting him; but what can we do against this leaden "order of things"
which makes our nerves ministers of madness? Miriam did not know that
her misery was partly a London misery, due to the change from fresh air
and wholesome living to foul air and unnatural living. If she had
known it, it would not have helped her. She could not have believed
it, for it is the peculiarity of certain physical disorders that their
physical character does not appear, and that they disguise themselves
under purely mental shapes. Montgomery, her brother, the desperate
outlook in the future, it is true, were real; but her lack of health
was the lens which magnified her suffering into hideous dimensions.
The desire to get rid of it by one sudden plunge was strong upon her,
and the friendly hand which at the nick of time intervenes in romances
did not rescue her. Nevertheless, she held back and passed on.
Afterwards the thought that she had been close to suicide was for
months a new terror. She was unaware that the distance between us and
dreadful crimes is much greater often than it appears to be. The man
who looks on a woman with adulterous desire has already committed
adultery in his heart if he be restrained only by force or fear of
detection; but if the restraint, although he may not be conscious of
it, is self-imposed, he is not guilty. Nay, even the dread of
consequences is a motive of sufficient respectability to make a large
difference between the sinfulness of mere lust and that of its
fulfilment. No friendly hand, we say, interrupted her purpose, but she
went on her way. Hardly had she reached the open quay, when there came
a peal of thunder. In London the gradual approach of a thunderstorm
working up from a long distance is not perceived, and the suddenness of
the roar for a moment startled her. But from her childhood she had
always shown a strange liking to watch a thunderstorm, and, if
possible, to be in it. It was her habit, when others were alarmed and
covered their eyes, to go close to the window in order to see the
lightning, and once she had been caught actually outside the door
peering round the corner, because the strength of the tempest lay in
that direction. The rain in an instant came down in torrents, the
flashes were incessant, and flamed round the golden cross of St. Paul's
nearly opposite to her. She took off her bonnet and prayed that she
might be struck, and so released with no sin and no pain. She was not
heard; a bolt descended within a few feet of her, blinding her, but it
fell upon a crane, passed harmlessly down the chain into a lot of rusty
old scrap, and so spent itself. She remained standing there alone and
unnoticed, for the street was swept clear as if by grapeshot of the
very few persons who might otherwise have been in it at that hour.
Gradually the tumult ceased, and was succeeded by a steady, dull
downpour; Miriam then put on her bonnet and walked home.
The next day she was ill, unaccountably feverish and in great pain.
Hers was one of those natures--happy natures, it may perhaps be
said--which hasten always to a crisis. She had nothing of that
miserable temperament which is never either better or worse, and
remains clouded with slow disease for months or years. She managed to
do her work, but on the following morning she was delirious. She
remembered nothing more till one afternoon when she seemed to wake.
She looked up, and whose face was that which bent over her? It was
Miss Tippit's. Miss Tippit had learned through the doctor what was the
state of affairs, and had managed, notwithstanding the demand which the
lodgings made upon her, to take her share in watching over the
sufferer. Her stepmother had been summoned from Cowfold, and these
two, with the landlady, had tended her and had brought her back to
life. In an instant the scene in Miss Tippit's room when she was sick
passed through Miriam's brain, and she sobbed piteously, lifted up her
arms as if to clasp her heroic benefactor, but the thought was too
great for her, and she fainted. Nevertheless she was recovering, and
when she came to herself again, Miss Tippit was ready with the
intervention of some trifle to distract her attention. As her strength
returned she was able to talk a little, and her first question was--
"Miss Tippit, why did you come here? Oh, if you but knew! What claim
have I on you?"
"Hush, my dear; those days are past. You did not love me then perhaps;
but what of that? I am sure, you will not mind my saying it: 'If ye
love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the
publicans the same?' But I know you did love me really."
"Where is Andrew?"
"Quite well, at home in Cowfold."
That was as much as Miriam could stand then. For weeks to come she was
well-nigh drained of all vitality, and it flowed into her gradually and
with many relapses. The doctor thought she ought to be moved into the
country. Mrs. Tacchi had some friends in one of the villages lying by
the side of the Avon in Wiltshire, just where that part of Salisbury
Plain on which stands Stonehenge slopes down to the river. Miriam knew
nothing of the history of the Amesbury valley, but she was sensible--as
who must not be?--to its exquisite beauty and the delicacy of the
contrasts between the downs and the richly-foliaged fields through
which the Avon winds. It is a chalk river, clear as a chalk river
always is if unpolluted; the downs are chalk, and though they are
wide-sweeping and treeless, save for clusters of beech here and there
on the heights, the dale with its water, meadows, cattle, and dense
woods, so different from the uplands above them, is in peculiar and
lovely harmony with them.
One day she contrived to reach Stonehenge. She was driven there by the
farmer with whom she was staying, and she asked to be left there while
he went forward. He was to fetch her when he returned. It was a clear
but grey day, and she sat outside the outer circle on the turf looking
northwards over the almost illimitable expanse. She had been told as
much as is known about that mysterious monument,--that it had been
built ages before any record, and that not only were the names of the
builders forgotten, but their purpose in building it was forgotten too.
She was oppressed with a sense of her own, nothingness and the
nothingness of man. If those who raised that temple had so utterly
passed away, for how long would the memory of her existence last?
Stonehenge itself too would pass. The wind and the rain had already
worn perhaps half of it; and the place that now knows it will know it
no more save by vague tradition, which also will be extinguished.
Suddenly, and without any apparent connection with what had gone
before, and indeed in contrast with it, it came into Miriam's mind that
she must do something for her fellow-creatures. How came it there?
Who can tell? Anyhow, there was this idea in the soul of Miriam Tacchi
that morning.
The next question was, What could she do? There was one thing she
could do, and she could not go astray in doing it. Whatever may be
wrong or mistaken, it cannot be wrong or a mistake to wait upon the
sick and ease their misery. She knew, however, that she could not take
up the task without training, and she belonged to no church or
association which could assist her. Perhaps one of the best
recommendations of the Catholic Church was that it held out a hand to
men who, having for some reason or other, learned to hold their lives
lightly, were candidates for the service of humanity--men for whom
death had no terrors--by whom it was even courted, and who were willing
therefore to wait upon the plague-smitten, or to carry the Cross
amongst wild and savage tribes. Those who are skilled in quibbling may
say that neither in the case of the Catholic missionary nor in that of
the Sister of Mercy is there any particular merit. What they do is
done not from any pure desire for man's welfare, but because there is
no healthy passion for enjoyment. Nothing is idler than disputes about
the motives to virtuous deeds, or the proportion of praise to be
assigned to the doers of them. It is a common criticism that a sweet
temper deserves no commendation, because the blessed possessor of it is
naturally sweet-tempered, and undergoes no terrible struggle in order
to say the sweet word which he who is cursed with spite only just
manages to force himself to utter. What we are bound to praise or
blame, however, is the result, and the result only--just as we praise
or blame perfect or imperfect flowers. If it comes to a remorseless
probing of motives, there are none of us who can escape a charge of
selfishness; and, in fact, a perfectly _abstract_ disinterestedness is
a mere logical and impossible figment.
To revert to what was said a moment ago, it may be urged that no
sufficient cause is shown for Miriam's determination. What had she
undergone? A little poverty, a little love affair, a little sickness.
But what brought Paul to the disciples at Damascus? A light in the sky
and a vision. What intensity of light, what brilliancy of vision,
would be sufficient to change the belief and the character of a modern
man of the world or a professional politician? Paul had that in him
which could be altered by the pathetic words of the Crucified One, "I
am He whom thou persecutest." The man of the world or the politician
would evade an appeal from the heaven of heavens, backed by the glory
of seraphim and archangel. Miriam had a vitality, a susceptibility or
fluidity of character--call it what you will--which did not need great
provocation. There are some mortals on this earth to whom nothing more
than a certain, summer morning very early, or a certain chance idea in
a lane ages ago, or a certain glance from a fellow-creature dead for
years, has been the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, or
the Descent of the Holy Ghost.
A man now old and nearing his end is known to Miriam's biographer, who
one Sunday November afternoon, when he was but twenty years old, met a
woman in a London street and looked in her face. Neither he nor she
stopped for an instant; he looked in her face, passed on, and never saw
her again. He married, had children, who now have children, but that
woman's face has never left him, and the colours of the portrait which
hangs in his soul's oratory are as vivid as ever. A thousand times has
he appealed to it; a thousand times has it sat in judgment; and a
thousand times has its sacred beauty redeemed him.
Miriam wrote to Miss Tippit expressing her newly-formed wish. Miss
Tippit, with some doubts as to her friend's fitness for the duty,
promised to do what she could; and at last, after complete recovery,
Miriam was allowed to begin a kind of apprenticeship to the art of
nursing in a small hospital, recommended by Miss Tippit's friend, the
doctor. One morning, a bright day in June, she was taken there. When
the door opened, there was disclosed a long white room with beds on
either side, and a broad passage down the middle. The walls were
relieved by a few illuminated sentences, scriptural and secular; women
dressed in a blue uniform were moving about noiselessly, and one of the
physicians on the staff, with some students or assistants, was standing
beside a patient happily unconscious, and demonstrating that he could
not live. Round one of the beds a screen was drawn; Miriam did not
quite know what it meant, but she guessed and shuddered. She passed on
to a little room at the end, and here she was introduced to her new
mistress, the lady-superintendent. She was a small, well-formed woman
of about thirty, with a pale thin face, lightish brown hair, grey eyes,
and thinnish lips. She also was dressed in uniform, but with a
precision and grace which showed that though the material might be the
same as that used by her underlings, it was made up at the West End.
She was evidently born to command, as little women often are. It was
impossible to be five minutes in her company without being affected by
her domination. Her very clothes felt it, for not a rebellious wrinkle
or crease dared to show itself. The nurses came to her almost every
moment for directions, which were given with brevity and clearness, and
obeyed with the utmost deference. The furniture was like that of a
yacht, very compact, scrupulously clean, and very handy. There was a
complete apparatus for instantaneously making tea, a luxurious little
armchair specially made for its owner, a minute writing-case, and, for
decorations, there were dainty and delicate water-colours.
Half-a-dozen books lay about, a novel or two of the best kind, and two
or three volumes of poems.
"You wish to become a nurse?" said Miss Dashwood.
"Yes."
"I am afraid you hardly know what it is, and that when you do know you
will find it very disagreeable. So many young women come here with
entirely false notions as to their duties."
Miriam was silent; Miss Dashwood's manner depressed her.
"However, you can try. You will have to begin at the very bottom. I
always insist on this with my probationers. It teaches them how the
work ought to be done, and, in addition, proper habits of
subordination. For three months you will have to scrub the floors and
assist in keeping the wards in order."
Miriam had imagined that she would at once be asked to watch over
grateful patients, to give them medicine, and read to them. However,
she was determined to go through with her project, and she assented.
The next morning saw her in coarse clothes, busy with a pail and soap
and water. It was very hard. She was not a Catholic novice; she was
not penetrated with the great religious idea that, done in the service
of the Master, all work is alike in dignity; she had, in fact, no
religion whatever, and she was confronted with a trial severe even to
an enthusiast received into a nunnery with all the pomp of a gorgeous
ritual and sustained by the faith of ages.
Specially troublesome was her new employment to Miriam, because she was
by nature so unmethodical and careless. Perhaps there are no habits so
hard to overcome as those of general looseness and want of system.
They are often associated with abundance of energy. The corners are
not shirked through fatigue, but there is an unaccountable persistency
in avoiding them, which resolution and preaching are alike unable to
conquer. The root of the inconsistency is a desire speedily to achieve
results. To keep this desire in subjection, to shut the eyes to
results, but patiently to remove the dust to the last atom of it lying
in the dark angle, is a good part of self-culture.
In a hospital Miriam's defect was one of the deadly sins, and many were
the admonitions which she received from Miss Dashwood. One evening,
after a day in which they had been more frequent than usual, she went
to bed, but lay awake. She was obliged to confess to herself that the
light of three months ago, which had then shone round her great design,
had faded. To conceive such a design is one thing, to go down on the
knees and scour floors week after week is something different.
She did not intend, however, to give up. When she rose in the morning
she looked out over the London tiles and through the smoke with a
miserable sinking of heart, hoping, if she hoped for anything, for the
end of the day, and still more for the end of life; but still she
persevered, and determined to persevere.
One day a new case came into the ward. It was evidently serious. A
man returning home late at night, drunk or nearly so, had fallen under
a cart in crossing a road and had been terribly crushed. He had
received some injury to the head and was unconscious. Miriam, to whom
such events were now tolerably familiar, took no particular notice
until her work brought her near the bed, and then she saw to her
amazement and horror that the poor wretch was Montgomery. Instantly
all that had slumbered in her, as fire slumbers in grey ashes, broke
out into flame. She continually crept as well as she could towards
him, and listened for any remark which might be dropped by nurse or
doctor upon his condition. Three days afterwards he died, without
having once regained his reason save just one hour before death. He
then opened his eyes--they fell upon Miriam; he knew her, and with a
faint kind of astonishment muttered her name. Before she could come
close to him he had gone.
Another month passed, and as Miriam's constitutional failings showed no
sign of mitigation, Miss Dashwood found herself obliged to take serious
notice of them. The experienced, professional superintendent knew
perfectly well that the smart, neat, methodical girl, with no motive in
her but the desire of succeeding and earning a good living, was worth a
dozen who were self-sacrificing but not soldierly. One morning, after
Miss Dashwood's patience had been more than usually tried, she sent for
Miriam, and kindly but firmly told her that she was unsuitable for a
hospital and must prepare to leave. She was not taken by surprise; she
had said the same thing to herself a dozen times before; but when it
was made certain to her by another person, it sounded differently.
She sought her friend Miss Tippit. To Miss Tippit the experience was
not new. She had herself in her humble way imagined schemes of
usefulness, which were broken through personal unfitness; she knew how
at last the man who thinks he will conquer a continent has to be
content with the conquest of his own kitchen-garden, fifty feet by
twenty. She knew this in her own humble way, although her ambition, so
far from being continental, had never extended even to a parish. She,
however, could do Miriam no good. She had learned how to vanquish her
own trouble, but she was powerless against the very same trouble in
another person. She had the sense, too, for she was no bigot, to see
her helplessness, and she gave Miriam the best of all advice--to go
home to Cowfold. Alpine air, Italian cities, would perhaps have been
better, bat as these were impossible, Cowfold was the next best.
Perhaps the worst effect of great cities, at any rate of English
cities, is not the poverty they create and the misery which it brings,
but the mental mischief which is wrought, often unconsciously, by their
dreariness and darkness. In Pimlico or Bethnal Green a man might have
a fortune given him, and it would not stir him to so much gratitude as
an orange if he were living on the South Downs, and the peculiar
sourness of modern democracy is due perhaps to deficiency of oxygen and
sunlight. Miriam had no objection to return. She was beaten and
indifferent; her father and mother wrote to welcome her, and she
recollected her mother's devotion to her when she was ill. She had not
the heart to travel by the road on which she and Andrew came to London,
and she chose a longer route by which she was brought to a point about
ten miles from Cowfold. She found affection and peace, and Andrew, who
had lost his taste for whisky, was quietly at work in his father's shop
at his old trade. There was at the same time no vacant space for her
in the household. There was nothing particular for her to do, and
after a while, when the novelty of return had worn off, she grew weary,
and longed unconsciously for something on which fully to exercise her
useless strength.
In Cowfold at that time dwelt a basketmaker named Didymus Farrow. Why
he was called Didymus is a very simple story.
His mother had once heard a sermon preached by a bishop from the text,
"Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples,
Let us also go, that we may die with Him." The preacher enlarged on
the blessed privilege offered by our Lord, and observed how happy he
should have been--how happy all his dear brethren in Christ would have
been, if the same privilege had been extended to them. But, alas! God
had not so decreed. When the day arrived on which they would see their
Master in glory, they could then assure Him, and He would believe them,
how willingly they would have borne His cross--aye, and even have hung
with Him on the fatal tree.
Some weeks before Didymus Farrow was born, Mrs. Farrow remembered the
bishop and part of his discourse, but what she remembered most
distinctly was, "Thomas, which is called Didymus." These words were
borne in upon her, she said, and accordingly the son was baptized
Didymus. When he grew up, he entered upon his father's trade, which
was that of making the willow hampers for fruit-growers, of whom there
were a good many round Cowfold, and who sent their fruit to London,
stacked high on huge broad-wheeled waggons. Didymus also manufactured
hand-baskets, all kinds of willow ware and white wood goods. He had a
peculiar aptitude for the lathe, and some of his bread-plates were
really as neatly executed as any that could be seen in London. He had
even turned in poplar some vases, which found their way to a
drawing-master, and were used as models. He was now about thirty, had
yellow hair, blue eyes, a smiling face, widish mouth, always a little
open, nose a little turned up, whistled a good deal, and walked with a
peculiar dance-like lilt. He was a gay, innocent creature, honest in
all his dealings, and fairly prosperous. He had been married early,
but had lost his wife when he was about twenty-six, and had been left
with one daughter, whom his sister had in charge. The sister was about
to be married, and when her brother knew that the day for her departure
was fixed, it came into his head that he ought to be married again.
Otherwise, who could manage his house and his family?
He was not a man to seek any recondite reasons for doing or not doing
anything. He was not in the habit of pausing before he acted, and
demanding the production of every conceivable argument, yea or nay, and
then with toil adjusting the balance between them. If a lot of withies
looked cheap, he bought them straightway, and did not defer the bargain
for weeks till he could ascertain if he could get them cheaper
elsewhere.
Going home one evening, he passed his friend Giacomo's shop, and
through the window saw Miriam talking to her father. Instantly it
struck him that Miriam was the girl for him, and he began to whistle
the air to "Hark the Lark," for he was a member of the Cowfold Glee
Club, and sang alto. This was on the 25th May. Miriam being
accustomed to walk in the fields in the evening, and Mr. D. Farrow
being fully aware of her custom, he met her on the 26th and after some
preliminary skirmishing requested her to take him for better or for
worse. She was surprised, but did not say so, and asked time for
consideration. She did consider, but consideration availed nothing.
It is so seldom even at the most important moments that our faculties
are permitted fully to help us. There is no free space allowed, and we
are dragged hither and thither by a swarm of temporary impulses. The
result has to stand, fixed for ever, but the operative forces which
determine it are those of the moment, and not of eternity. Miriam,
moreover, just then lacked the strong instinct which mercifully for us
so often takes us in hand. She was not altogether unhappy, but dull
and careless as to what became of her. No oracle advised her. There
is now no pillar of cloud or of fire to guide mortals; the heavenly
apparition does not appear even in extremities; and consequently a week
afterwards she said yes, and six months afterwards she was Mrs. Farrow.