JOHN MEADOWS had always been an active man, but now he was
indefatigable. He was up at five every morning, and seemed ubiquitous;
added a gray gelding to his black mare, and rode them both nearly off
their legs. He surveyed land in half a dozen counties--he speculated in
grain in half a dozen markets, and did business in shares. His plan
in dealing with this ticklish speculation was simple. He listened to
nothing anybody said, examined the venture himself, and, if it had a
sound basis, bought when the herd was selling, and sold wherever the
herd was buying. Hence, he bought cheap and sold dear.
He also lent money, and contrived to solve the usurers' problem--perfect
security and huge interest.
He arrived at this by his own sagacity and the stupidity of mankind.
Mankind are not wanting in intelligence; but, as a body, they have one
intellectual defect--they are muddle-heads.
Now these muddle-heads have agreed to say that land is in all cases five
times a surer security for money lent than movables are. Whereas the
fact is that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Owing to the above
delusion the proprietor of land can always borrow money at four
per cent, and other proprietors are often driven to give
ten--twenty--thirty.
So John Meadows lent mighty little upon land, but much upon oat-ricks,
wagons, advantageous leases and such things, solid as land and more
easily convertible into cash.
Thus without risk he got his twenty per cent. Not that he appeared
in these transactions--he had too many good irons in the fire to let
himself be called a usurer.
He worked this business as three thousand respectable men are working it
in this nation. He had a human money-bag, whose strings he went behind a
screen and pulled.
The human money-bag of Meadows was Peter Crawley.
This Peter Crawley, some years before our tale, lay crushed beneath
a barrowful of debts--many of them to publicans. In him others saw a
cunning fool and a sot--Meadows an unscrupulous tool. Meadows wanted a
tool, and knew the cheapest way to get the thing was to buy it, so he
bought up all Crawley's debts, sued him, got judgments out against him,
and raising the ax of the law over Peter's head with his right hand,
offered him the left hand of fellowship with his left. Down on his knees
went Crawley and resigned his existence to this great man.
Human creatures, whose mission it is to do whatever a man secretly bids
them, are not entitled to long and interesting descriptions.
Crawley was fifty, wore a brown wig, the only thing about him that did
not attempt disguise, and slouched in a brown coat and a shirt peppered
with snuff.
In this life he was an infinitesimal attorney. Previously, unless
Pythagoras was a goose, he had been a pole-cat.
Meadows was ambidexter. The two hands he gathered coin with were Meadows
and Crawley. The first his honest, hard-working hand; the second his
three-fingered Jack, his prestidigital hand; with both he now worked
harder than ever. He hurried from business to business--could not
wait to chat, or drink a glass of ale after it; it was all work! work!
work!--money! money! money! with John Meadows, and everything he touched
turned to gold in his hands; yet for all this burning activity the
man's heart had never been so little in business. His activity was the
struggle of a sensible, strong mind to fight against its one weakness.
“Cedit amor rebus; res age tutus eris,” is a very wise saying, and
Meadows, by his own observation and instinct, sought the best antidote
for love.
But the Latins had another true saying, that “nobody is wise at all
hours.”
After his day of toil and success he used to be guilty of a sad
inconsistency. He shut himself up at home for two hours, and smoked
his pipe, and ran his eye over the newspaper, but his mind over Susan
Merton.
Worse than this, in his frequent rides he used to go a mile or two out
of his way to pass Grassmere farmhouse; and however fast he rode the
rest of his journey he always let his nag walk by the farmhouse, and his
eye brightened with hope as he approached it, and his heart sank as he
passed it without seeing Susan.
He now bitterly regretted the vow he had made, never to visit the
Mertons again unless they sent for him.
“They have forgotten me altogether,” said he bitterly. “Well, the best
thing I can do is to forget them.”
Now, Susan had forgotten him; she was absorbed in her own grief; but
Merton was laboring under a fit of rheumatism, and this was the reason
why Meadows and he did not meet. In fact, farmer Merton often said to
his daughter, “John Meadows has not been to see us a long while.”
“Hasn't he, father?” was Susan's languid and careless reply.
One Sunday, Meadows, weakened by his inner struggle, could not help
going to Grassmere church. At least he would see her face. He had seated
himself where he could see her. She took her old place by the pillar;
nobody was near her. The light from a side window streamed full upon
her. She was pale, and the languor of sorrow was upon every part of her
face, but she was lovely as ever.
Meadows watched her, and noticed that more than once without any visible
reason her eyes filled with tears, but she shed none. He saw how hard
she tried to give her whole soul to the services of the church and to
the word of the preacher; he saw her succeed for a few minutes at a
time, and then with a lover's keen eye he saw her heart fly away in a
moment from prayer and praise and consolation, and follow and overtake
the ship that was carrying her George farther and farther away from her
across the sea; and then her lips quivered with earthly sorrow even as
she repeated words that came from Heaven, and tried to bind to her heavy
heart the prayers for succor in every mortal ill, the promises of help
in every mortal woe, with which holy Church and holier Writ comfort her
and all the pure of heart in every age.
Then Meadows, who up to this moment had been pitying himself, had a
better thought and pitied Susan. He even went so far as to feel that he
ought to pity George, but he did not do it; he could not, he envied him
too much; but he pitied Susan, and he longed to say something kind and
friendly to her, even though there should not be a word or a look of
love in it.
Susan went out by one of the church doors, Meadows by another, intending
to meet her casually upon the road home. Susan saw his intention
and took another path, so that he could not come up with her without
following her.
Meadows turned upon his heel and went home with his heart full of
bitterness.
“She hates the sight of me,” was his interpretation.
Poor Susan, she hated nobody, she only hated to have to speak to a
stranger, and to listen to a stranger; and in her present grief all were
strangers to her except him she had lost and her father. She avoided
Meadows not because he was Meadows, but because she wanted to be alone.
Meadows rode home despondently, then he fell to abusing his folly, and
vowed he would think of her no more.
The next day, finding himself, at six o'clock in the evening, seated
by the fire in a reverie, he suddenly started fiercely up, saddled his
horse, and rode into Newborough, and, putting up his horse, strolled
about the streets and tried to amuse himself looking at the shops before
they closed.
Now it so happened that, stopping before a bookseller's shop, he saw
advertised a work upon “The Australian Colonies.”
“Confound Australia!” said Meadows to himself, and turned on his heel,
but the next moment, with a sudden change of mind, he returned and
bought the book. He did more, he gave the tradesman an order for every
approved work on Australia that was to be had.
The bookseller, as it happened, was going up to London next day, so
that in the evening Meadows had some dozen volumes in his house, and a
tolerably correct map of certain Australian districts.
“Let me see,” said Meadows, “what chance that chap has of making a
thousand pounds out there.” This was no doubt the beginning of it, but
it did not end there. The intelligent Meadows had not read a hundred
pages before he found out what a wonderful country this Australia is,
how worthy a money-getter's attention or any thoughtful man's.
It seemed as if his rival drew Meadows after him wherever he went, so
fascinated was he with this subject. And now all the evening he sucked
the books like a leech.
Men observed, about this time, an irritable manner in Mr. Meadows which
he had never shown before, and an eternal restlessness; they little
divined the cause, or dreamed what a vow he had made, and what it cost
him every day to keep it. So strong was the struggle within him, that
there were moments when he feared he should go mad; and then it was that
he learned the value of his mother's presence in the house.
There was no explanation between them, there could be no sympathy; had
he opened his heart to her he knew she would have denounced his love for
Susan Merton as a damnable crime. Once she invited his confidence. “What
ails you, John?” said the old woman. “You had better tell me; you would
feel easier, I'm thinking.”
But he turned it off a little fretfully, and she never returned to the
charge. But though there could be no direct sympathy, yet there was
a soothing influence in this quaint old woman's presence. She moved
quietly about, protecting his habits, not disturbing them; she seemed
very thoughtful, too, and cast many a secret glance of inquiry and
interest at him when he was not looking at her.
This had gone on some weeks when, one afternoon, Meadows, who had been
silent as death for a full half hour, started from his chair and said
with sudden resolution:
“Mother, I must leave this part of the country for a while.”
“That is news, John.”
“Yes. I shall go into the mining district for six months or a year,
perhaps.”
“Well! go, John! you want a change. I think you can't do better than
go.”
“I will, and no later than to-morrow.”
“That is sudden.”
“If I was to give myself time to think, I should never go at all.”
He went out briskly with the energy of this determination.
The same evening, about seven o'clock, as he sat reading by the fire, an
unexpected visitor was announced--Mr. Merton.
He came cordially in and scolded Meadows for never having been to see
him.
“I know you are a busy man,” said the old farmer, “but you might have
given us a look in coming home from market; it is only a mile out of the
way, and you are pretty well mounted in a general way.”
Then the old man, a gossip, took up one of Meadows' books. “Australia!
ah!” grunted Merton, and dropped it like a hot potato; he tried another,
“Why, this is Australia, too; why, they are all Australia, as I am a
living sinner.” And he looked with a rueful curiosity into Meadows'
face.
Meadows colored, but soon recovered his external composure.
“I have friends there,” said he hastily, “who tell me there are capital
investments in that country, and they say no more than the truth.”
“Do you think he will do any good out there?” asked the old man,
lowering his voice.
“I can't say,” answered Meadows dryly.
“Tell us something about that country, John,” said Merton; “and if you
was to ask me to take a glass of your home-brewed ale I don't think I
should gainsay you.”
The ale was sent for, and over it Meadows, whose powers of acquisition
extended to facts as well as money, and who was full of this new
subject, poured the agricultural contents of a dozen volumes into Mr.
Merton.
The old farmer sat open-mouthed, transfixed with interest, listening
to his friend's clear, intelligent and masterly descriptions of
this wonderful land. At last the clock struck nine; he started up in
astonishment.
“I shall get a scolding if I stay later,” said he, and off he went to
Grassmere.
“Have you nothing else to say to me?” asked Meadows, as the farmer put
his foot in the stirrup.
“Not that I know of,” replied the other, and cantered away.
“Confound him!” muttered Meadows; “he comes and stops here three hours,
drinks my ale, gets my knowledge without the trouble of digging for't,
and goes away, and not a word from Susan, or even a word about her--one
word would have paid me for all this loss of time--but no, I was not to
have it. I will be in Devonshire this time to-morrow--no, to-morrow is
market day--but the day after I will go. I cannot live here and not see
her, nor speak to her--'twill drive me mad.”
The next morning, as Meadows mounted his horse to ride to market, a
carter's boy came up to him, and taking off his hat and pulling his
head down by the front lock by way of salute, put a note into his hand.
Meadows took it and opened it carelessly; it was a handwriting he did
not know. But his eye had no sooner glanced at the signature than his
eyes gleamed and his whole frame trembled with emotion he could hardly
hide. This was the letter:
“DEAR MR. MEADOWS--We have not seen you here a long time, and if you
could take a cup of tea with us on your way home from market, my father
would be glad to see you, if it is not troubling you too much.
“I believe he has some calves he wishes to show you.
“I am, yours respectfully,
“SUSAN MERTON.
“P. S.--Father has been confined by rheumatism, and I have not been well
this last month.”
Meadows turned away from the messenger, and said quietly, “Tell Miss
Merton I will come, if possible.” He then galloped off, and as soon as
there was no one in sight gave vent to his face and his exulting soul.
Now he congratulated himself on his goodness in making a certain vow and
his firmness in keeping it.
“I kept out of their way, and they have invited me; my conscience is
clear.”
He then asked himself why Susan had invited him; and he could not but
augur the most favorable results from this act on her part. True, his
manner to her had never gone beyond friendship, but women, he argued,
are quick to discern their admirers under every disguise. She was dull
and out of spirits, and wrote for him to come to her; this was a great
point, a good beginning. “The sea is between her and George, and I am
here, with time and opportunity on my side,” said Meadows; and as
these thoughts coursed through his heart, his gray nag, spurred by an
unconscious heel, broke into a hand-gallop, and after an hour and a half
hard riding they clattered into the town of Newborough.
The habit of driving hard bargains is a good thing for teaching a man to
suppress his feelings and feign indifference, yet the civil nonchalance
with which Meadows, on his return from Newborough, walked into the
Merton's parlor cost him no ordinary struggle.
The farmer received him cordially--Susan civilly, and with a somewhat
feeble smile. The former soon engaged him in agricultural talk. Susan,
meanwhile, made the tea in silence, and Meadows began to think she was
capricious, and had no sooner got what she asked for than she did not
care for it. After a while, however, she put in a word here and there,
but with a discouraging languor.
Presently Farmer Merton brought her his tea-cup to be replenished, and
upon this opportunity Susan said a word to her father in an undertone.
“Oh, ay!” replied the farmer very loud indeed; and Susan colored.
“What was you saying to me about that country--that Christmas-day is the
hottest day in the year?” began Mr. Merton.
Meadows assented, and Merton proceeded to put other questions, in order,
it appeared, to draw once more from Meadows the interesting information
of last night.
Meadows answered shortly and with repugnance. Then Susan put in: “And
is it true, sir, that the flowers are beautiful to the eye, but have
no smell, and that the birds have all gay feathers, but no song?” Then
Susan, scarcely giving him time to answer, proceeded to put several
questions, and her manner was no longer languid, but bright and
animated. She wound up her interrogatories with this climax:
“And _do_ you think, sir, it is a country where George will be able to
do any good. And will he have his health in that land, so far from every
one to take care of him?”
And this doubt raised, the bright eyes were dimmed with tears in a
moment.
Meadows gasped out, “Why not? why not?” but soon after, muttering
some excuse about his horse, he went out with a promise to return
immediately.
He was no sooner alone than he gave way to a burst of rage and
bitterness.
“So, she only sent for me here to make me tell her about that infernal
country where her George is. I'll ride home this instant--this very
instant--without bidding them good-by.”
Cooler thoughts came. He mused deeply a few minutes, and then, clinching
his teeth, returned slowly to the little parlor: he sat down and took
his line with a brisk and cheerful air.
“You were asking me some questions about Australia. I can tell you all
about that country, for I have a relation there who writes to me. And I
have read all the books about it, too, as it happens.”
Susan brightened up.
Meadows, by a great histrionic effort, brightened up, too, and poured
out a flood of really interesting facts and anecdotes about this
marvelous land.
Then, in the middle of a narrative, which enchained both his hearers, he
suddenly looked at his watch, and putting on a fictitious look of dismay
and annoyance, started up with many excuses and went home--not, however,
till Susan had made him promise to come again next market-day.
As he rode home in the moonlight Susan's face seemed still before him.
The bright look of interest she had given him, the grateful smiles with
which she had thanked him for his narration--all this had been so sweet
at the moment, so bitter upon the least reflection. His mind was in a
whirl. At last he grasped at one idea, and held it as with a vise.
“I shall be always welcome to her if I can bring myself to talk about
that detestable country. Well, I will grind my tongue down to it. She
shall not be able to do without my chat; that shall be the beginning;
the middle shall be different; the end shall be just the opposite. The
sea is between him and her. I am here with opportunity, resolution and
money. I _will_ have her!”
The next morning his mother said to him:
“John, do you think to go to-day?”
“Where, mother?”
“The journey you spoke of.”
“What journey?”
“Among the mines.”
“Not I.”
“You have changed your mind, then?”
“What, didn't you see I was joking?”
“No!” (very dryly.)
Soon after this little dialogue Dame Meadows proposed to end her visit
and return home. Her son yielded a cheerful assent. She went gravely and
quietly back to her little cottage.
Meadows had determined to make himself necessary to Susan Merton. He
brought a woman's cunning to bear against a woman's; for the artifice to
which his strong will bent his supple talent is one that many women have
had the tact and temporary self-denial to carry out, but not one man in
a hundred.
Men try to beat an absent rival by sneering at him, etc. By which means
the asses make their absent foe present to her mind and enlist the whole
woman in his defense.
But Meadows was no ordinary man. Susan had given his quick intelligence
a glimpse of a way to please her. He looked at the end, and crushed his
will down to the thorny means.
Twice a week he called on the Mertons, and much of his talk was
Australia. Susan was grateful. To hear of the place where George would
soon be was the nearest approach she could make to hearing of George.
As for Meadows, he gained a great point, but he went through tortures on
the way. He could not hide from himself why he was so welcome; and many
a time as he rode home from the Mertons he resolved never to return
there, but he took no more oaths; it had cost him so much to keep the
last; and that befell which might have been expected, after a while, the
pleasure of being near the woman he loved, of being distinguished by her
and greeted with pleasure however slight, grew into a habit and a need.
Achilles was a man of steel, but he had a vulnerable part; and iron
natures like John Meadows have often one spot in their souls where
they are far tenderer than the universal dove-eyed, and weaker than the
omnipotent. He never spoke a word of love to Susan, he knew it would
spoil all; and she, occupied with another's image, and looking upon
herself as confessedly belonging to another, never suspected the deep
passion that filled this man's heart. But if an observer of nature had
accompanied John Meadows on market-day he might have seen--diagnostics.
All the morning his eye was cold and quick; his mouth, when silent,
close, firm, and unreadable; his voice clear, decided, and occasionally
loud. But when he got to old Merton's fireside he mellowed and softened
like the sun toward evening. There his forehead unknit itself; his
voice, pitched in quite a different key from his key of business, turned
also low and gentle, and soothed and secretly won the hearer by its
deep, rich and pleasant modulation and variety; and his eye turned
deeper in color, and, losing its keenness and restlessness, dwelt calmly
and pensively for minutes at a time upon some little household object
close to Susan; seldom, unless quite unobserved, upon Susan herself.
But the surrounding rustics suspected nothing, so calm and deep ran
Meadows.
“Dear heart,” said Susan to her father, “who would have thought Mr.
Meadows would come a mile out of his way twice a week to talk to me
about Geo--about the country where my heart is--and the folk say he
thinks of nothing but money and won't move a step without making it.”
“The folk are envious of him, girl--that is all. John Meadows is too
clever for fools, and too industrious for the lazy ones; he is a good
friend of mine, Susan; if I wanted to borrow a thousand pounds I have
only to draw on Meadows; he has told me so half a dozen times.”
“We don't want his money, father,” replied Susan, “nor anybody's; but I
think a great deal of his kindness, and George shall thank him when
he comes home--if ever he comes home to Susan again.” These last words
brought many tears with them, which the old farmer pretended not to
notice, for he was getting tired of his daughter's tears. They
were always flowing now at the least word, “and she used to be so
good-humored and cheerful-like.”
Poor Susan! she was very unhappy. If any one had said to her, “to-morrow
you die,” she would have smiled on her own account, and only sighed
at the pain the news would cause poor George. Her George was gone, her
mother had been dead this two years. Her life, which had been full of
innocent pleasures, was now utterly tasteless, except in its hours
of bitterness when sorrow overcame her like a flood. She had a pretty
flower-garden in which she used to work. When George was at home what
pleasure it had been to plant them with her lover's help, to watch them
expand, to water them in the summer evening, to smell their gratitude
for the artificial shower after a sultry day, and then to have George
in, and set him admiring them with such threadbare enthusiasm, simply
because they were hers, not in the least because they were Nature's.
I will go back, like the epic writers, and sketch one of their little
garden scenes.
One evening, after watering them all, she sat down on a seat at the
bottom of the garden, and casting her eyes over her whole domain, said,
“Well, now, I do admire flowers; don't you, George?”
“That I do,” replied George, taking another seat, and coolly turning his
back on the parterre, and gazing mildly into Susan's eyes.
“Why, he is not even looking at them!” cried Susan, and she clapped her
hands and laughed gleefully.
“Oh, yes, he is; leastways he is looking at one of them, and the
brightest of the lot to my fancy.”
Susan colored with pleasure. In the country compliments don't drip
constantly on beauty even from the lips of love. Then, suppressing her
satisfaction, she said, “You will look for a flower in return for that,
young man; come and let us see whether there is one good enough for
you.” So then they took hands, and Susan drew him demurely about the
garden. Presently she stopped with a little start of hypocritical
admiration; at their feet shone a marigold. Susan culled the gaudy
flower and placed it affectionately in George's buttonhole. He received
it proudly, and shaking hands with her, for it was time to part, turned
away slowly. She let him take a step or two, then called him back. “He
was really going off with that nasty thing.” She took it out of his
buttonhole, rubbed it against his nose with well-feigned anger and then
threw it away.
“You are all behind in flowers, George,” said Susan; “here, this is good
enough for you,” and she brought out from under her apron, where she had
carried the furtively culled treasure, a lovely clove-pink. Pretty soul,
she had nursed and watered and cherished this choice flower this three
weeks past for George, and this was her way of giving it him at last; so
a true woman gives--(her life, if need be). George took it and smelled
it, and lingered a moment at the garden gate, and moralized on it.
“Well, Susan, dear, now I'm not so deep in flowers as you, but I like
this a deal better than the marigold, and I'll tell you for why; it is
more like you, Susan.”
“Ay! why?”
“I see flowers that are pretty, but have no smell, and I see women that
have good looks, but no great wisdom nor goodness when you come nearer
to them. Now the marigold is like those lasses; but this pink is good as
well as pretty, so then it will stand for you, when we are apart, as we
mostly are--worse luck for me.”
“Oh, George,” said Susan, dropping her quizzing manner, “I am a long way
behind the marigold or any flower in comeliness and innocence, but at
least I wish I was better.”
“I don't.”
“Ay, but I do, ten times better, for--for--”
“For why, Susan?”
Susan closed the garden gate and took a step toward the house.
Then, turning her head over her shoulder, with an ineffable look of
tenderness, tipped with one tint of lingering archness, she let fall,
“For your sake, George,” in the direction of George's feet, and glided
across the garden into the house.
George stood watching her. He did not at first take up all she had
bestowed on him, for her sex has peculiar mastery over language, being
diabolically angelically subtle in the art of saying something that
expresses 1 oz. and implies 1 cwt.; but when he did comprehend, his
heart exulted. He strode home as if he trod on air and often kissed the
little flower he had taken from the beloved hand, “and with it words
of so sweet breath composed, as made the thing more rich;” and as he
marched past the house kissing the flower, need I tell my reader that so
innocent a girl as Susan was too high-minded to watch the effect of her
proceedings from behind the curtains? I hope not, it would surely be
superfluous to relate what none would be green enough to believe.
These were Susan's happy days. Now all was changed. She hated to water
her flowers now. She bade one of the farm-servants look to the garden.
He accepted the charge, and her flowers' drooping heads told how nobly
he had fulfilled it. Susan was charitable. Every day it had been her
custom to visit more than one poor person; she carried meal to one,
soup to another, linen to another, meat and bread to another, money to
another--to all words and looks of sympathy. This practice she did not
even now give up, for it came under the head of her religious duties;
but she relaxed it. She often sent to places where she used to go. Until
George went she had never thought of herself; and so the selfishness
of those she relieved had not struck her. Now it made her bitter to
see that none of those she pitied, pitied her. The moment she came into
their houses it was, “_My_ poor head, Miss Merton; _my_ old bones do
ache so.”
“I think a bit of your nice bacon would do ME good. I'M a poor sufferer,
Miss Merton. _My_ boy is 'listed. I thought as how you'd forgotten _me_
altogether. But 'tis hard for poor folk to keep a friend.” “You see,
miss, _my_ bedroom window is broken in one or two places. John, he
stopped it up with paper the best way he could, but la, bless you, paper
baint like glass. It is very dull for _me_. You see, miss, I can't get
about now as I used to could, and I never was no great reader. I often
wish as some one would step in and knock me on the head, for I be no
use, I baint, neer a mossel.” No one of them looked up in her face
and said, “Lauks, how pale _you_ ha got to look, miss; I hopes as how
nothing amiss haven't happened to _you_, that have been so kind to us
this many a day.” Yet suffering of some sort was plainly stamped on the
face and in the manner of this relieving angel. When they poured out
their vulgar woes, Susan made an effort to forget her own and to cheer
as well as relieve them. But she had to compress her own heart hard to
do it; and this suppression of feeling makes people more or less bitter.
She had better have out with it, and scolded them well for talking as if
they alone were unhappy; but her woman's nature would not let her. They
kept asking her for pity, and she still gulped down her own heart and
gave it them, till at last she began to take a spite against her pets;
so then she sent to most of them instead of going. She sent rather
larger slices of beef and bacon, and rather more yards of flannel than
when she used to carry the like to them herself. Susan had one or two
young friends, daughters of farmers in the neighborhood, with whom she
was a favorite, though the gayer ones sometimes quizzed her for her
religious tendencies, and her lamentable indifference to flirtation.
But then she was so good and so good-humored, and so tolerant of
other people's tastes. The prattle of these young ladies became now
intolerable to Susan, and when she saw them coming to call on her she
used to snatch up her bonnet and fly and lock herself up in a closet at
the top of the house, and read some good book as quiet as a mouse, till
the servants had hunted for her and told them she must be out. She was
not in a frame of mind to sustain tarlatans, barege, the history of the
last hop, and the prophecies of the next; the wounded deer shrunk from
its gamboling associates, and indeed from all strangers, except John
Meadows. “He talks to me about something worth talking about,” said
Susan Merton. It happened one day, while Susan was in this sad and I may
say dangerous state of mind, that the servant came up to her, and told
her a gentleman was on his horse at the door, and wanted to see Mr.
Merton.
“Father is at market, Jane.”
“Yes, miss, but I told the gentleman you were at home.”
“Me! what have I to do with father's visitors?”
“Miss,” replied Jane mysteriously, “it is a parson, and you are so fond
of them, I could not think to let him go away without getting a word
with anybody; and he has such a face. La, miss, you never saw such a
face.”
“Silly girl, what have I to do with handsome faces?”
“But he is not handsome, miss, not in the least, only he is beautiful.
You go and see else.”
“I hate strangers' faces, but I will go to him, Jane; it is my duty,
since it is a clergyman. I will just go upstairs.”
“La, miss, what for? you are always neat, you are--nobody ever catches
you in your dishables like the rest of 'em.”
“I'll just smooth my hair.”
“La, miss, what for? it is smooth as marble--it always is.”
“Where is he, Jane?”
“In the front parlor.”
“I won't be a moment.”
She went upstairs. There was no necessity; Jane was right there; but it
was a strict custom in the country, and is, for that matter, and will
be till time and vanity shall be no more. More majorum a girl must go up
and look at herself in the glass if she did nothing more, before coming
in to receive company.
Susan entered the parlor; she came in so gently that she had a moment
to observe her visitor before he saw her. He had seated himself with
his back to the light, and was devouring a stupid book on husbandry that
belonged to her father. The moment she closed the door he saw her and
rose from his seat.
“Miss Merton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The living of this place has been vacant more than a month.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It will not be filled up for three months, perhaps.”
“So we hear, sir.”
“Meantime you have no church to go to nearer than Barmstoke, which is a
chapel-of-ease to this place, but two miles distant.”
“Two miles and a half, sir.”
“So then the people here have no divine service on the Lord's day.”
“No, sir, not for the present,” said Susan meekly, lowering her lashes,
as if the clergyman had said, “This is a parish of heathens, whereof you
are one.”
“Nor any servant of God to say a word of humility and charity to the
rich, of eternal hope to the poor, and” (here his voice sunk into sudden
tenderness) “of comfort to the sorrowful.”
Susan raised her eyes and looked him over with one dove-like glance,
then instantly lowered them.
“No, sir, we are all under a cloud here,” said Susan sadly.
“Miss Merton, I have undertaken the duty here until the living shall be
filled up; but you shall understand that I live thirty miles off, and
have other duties, and I can only ride over here on Saturday afternoon
and back Monday at noon.”
“Oh, sir!” cried Susan, “half a loaf is better than no bread! The parish
will bless you, sir, and no doubt,” added she timidly, “the Lord will
reward you for coming so far to us.”
“I am glad you think so,” said the clergyman thoughtfully. “Well, let us
do the best we can. Tell me first, Miss Merton, do you think the absence
of a clergyman is regretted here?”
“Regretted, sir! dear heart, what a question. You might as well ask me
do father's turnips long for rain after a month's drought;” and Susan
turned on her visitor a face into which the innocent venerating love her
sex have for an ecclesiastic flashed without disguise.
Her companion smiled, but it was with benevolence, not with gratified
vanity.
“Let me explain my visit. Your father is one of the principal people
in the village. He can assist me or thwart me in my work. I called to
invite his co-operation. Some clergymen are jealous of co-operation; I
am not. It is a good thing for all parties; best of all for those who
co-operate with us; for in giving alms wisely they receive grace, and
in teaching the ignorant they learn themselves. Am I right?” added he
rather sharply, turning suddenly upon Susan.
“Oh, sir,” said Susan, a little startled, “it is for me to receive your
words, not to judge them.”
“Humph!” said the reverend gentleman rather dryly; he hated intellectual
subserviency. He liked people to think for them-selves; and to end by
thinking with him.
“Father will never thwart you, sir, and I--I will co-operate with you,
sir, if you will accept of me,” said Susan innocently.
“Thank you, then let us begin at once.” He took out his watch. “I have
an hour and a half to spare, then I must gallop back to Oxford. Miss
Merton, I should like to make acquaintance with some of the people.
Suppose we go to the school, and see what the children are learning,
and then visit one or two families in the village, so I shall catch a
glimpse of the three generations I have to deal with. My name is Francis
Eden. You are going to get your bonnet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.”
They passed out through the garden. Mr. Eden stopped to look at the
flowers. Susan colored.
“It has been rather neglected of late,” said she apologetically.
“It must have been very well taken care of before, then,” said he, “for
it looks charming now. Ah! I love flowers dearly!” and he gave a little
sigh.
They reached the school, and Mr. Eden sat down and examined the little
boys and girls. When he sat down Susan winced. How angry he will be at
their ignorance! thought Susan. But Mr. Eden, instead of putting on
an awful look, and impressing on the children that a being of another
generation was about to attack them, made himself young to meet their
minds. A pleasant smile disarmed their fears. He spoke to them in very
simple words and childish idioms, and told them a pretty story, which
interested them mightily. Having set their minds really working, he put
questions arising fairly out of his story, and so fathomed the moral
sense and the intelligence of more than one. In short, he drew the brats
out instead of crushing them in. Susan stood by, at first startled at
the line he took, then observant, then approving. Presently he turned to
her.
“And which is your class, Miss Merton?”
Susan colored.
“I take these little girls when I come, sir.
“Miss Merton has not been here this fortnight,” said a pert teacher.
Susan could have beat her. What will this good man think of me now?
thought poor Susan. To her grateful relief, the good man took no notice
of the observation; he looked at his watch.
“Now, Miss Merton, if I am not giving you too much trouble,” and they
left the school.
“You wish to see some of the folk in the village, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Where shall I take you first, sir?”
“Where I ought to go first.”
Susan looked puzzled.
Mr. Eden stopped dead short.
“Come, guess,” said he, with a radiant smile, “and don't look so scared.
I'll forgive you if you guess wrong.”
Susan looked this way and that, encouraged by his merry smile. She let
out--scarce above a whisper, and in a tone of interrogation, as who
should say this is not to be my last chance since I have only asked a
question not risked an answer--
“To the poorest, Mr. Eden?”
“Brava! she has guessed it,” cried the Reverend Frank triumphantly; for
he had been more anxious she should answer right than she had herself.
“Young lady, I have friends with their heads full of Latin and Greek
who could not have answered that so quickly as you; one proof more
how goodness brightens intelligence,” added he in soliloquy. “Here's a
cottage.”
“Yes, sir, I was going to take you into this one, if you please.”
They found in the cottage a rheumatic old man, one of those we alluded
to as full of his own complaints. Mr. Eden heard these with patience,
and then, after a few words of kind sympathy and acquiescence, for he
was none of those hard humbugs who tell a man that old age, rheumatism
and poverty are strokes with a feather, he said quietly:
“And now for the other side; now tell me what you have to be grateful
for.”
The old man was taken aback and his fluency deserted him. On the
question being repeated, he began to say that he had many mercies to
be thankful for. Then he higgled and hammered and fumbled for the said
mercies, and tried to enumerate them, but in phrases conventional and
derived from tracts and sermons; whereas his statement of grievances had
been idiomatic.
“There, that will do,” said Mr. Eden smiling, “say nothing you don't
feel; what is the use? May I ask you a few questions,” added he,
courteously; then, without waiting for permission, he dived skillfully
into this man's life, and fished up all the pearls--the more remarkable
passages.
Many years ago this old man had been a soldier, had fought in more than
one great battle, had retreated with Sir John Moore upon Corunna, and
been one of the battered and weary but invincible band who wheeled round
and stunned the pursuers on 'that bloody and glorious day. Mr. Eden went
with the old man to Spain, discussed with great animation the retreat,
the battle, the position of the forces, and the old soldier's personal
prowess. Old Giles perked up, and dilated, and was another man; he
forgot his rheumatism, and even his old age. Twice he suddenly stood
upright as a dart on the floor, and gave the word of command like a
trumpet in some brave captain's name; and his cheek flushed, and his
eye glittered with the light of battle. Susan looked at him with
astonishment. Then when his heart was warm and his spirits attentive Mr.
Eden began to throw in a few words of exhortation. But even then he did
not bully the man into being a Christian; gently, firmly, and with a
winning modesty, he said: “I think you have much to be thankful for,
like all the rest of us. Is it not a mercy you were not cut off in your
wild and dissolute youth? you might have been slain in battle.”
“That I might, sir; three of us went from this parish and only one came
home again.
“You might have lost a leg or an arm, as many a brave fellow did; you
might have been a cripple all your days.”
“That is true, sir.”
“You survive here in a Christian land, in possession of your faculties;
the world, it is true, has but few pleasures to offer you--all the
better for you. Oh, if I could but make that as plain to you as it is
to me. You have every encouragement to look for happiness there, where
alone it is to be found. Then courage, corporal; you stood firm at
Corunna--do not give way in this your last and most glorious battle. The
stake is greater than it was at Vittoria, or Salamanca, or Corunna, or
Waterloo. The eternal welfare of a single human soul weighs a thousand
times more than all the crowns and empires in the globe. You are in
danger, sir. Discontent is a great enemy of the soul. You must pray
against it--you must fight against it.”
“And so I will, sir; you see if I don't.”
“You read, Mr. Giles?” Susan had told Mr. Eden his name at the
threshold.
“Yes, sir; but I can't abide them nasty little prints they bring me.”
“Of course you can't. Printed to sell, not to read, eh? Here is a book.
The type is large, clear and sharp. This is an order-book, corporal. It
comes from the great Captain of our salvation. Every sentence in it is
gold; yet I think I may safely pick out a few for your especial use at
present.” And Mr. Eden sat down, and producing from his side pockets,
which were very profound, some long thin slips of paper, he rapidly
turned the leaves of the Testament and inserted his markers; but this
occupation did not for a moment interrupt his other proceedings.
“There is a pipe--you don't smoke, I hope?”
“No, sir; leastways not when I han't got any baccy, and I've been out of
that this three days--worse luck.”
“Give up smoking, corporal, it is a foul habit.”
“Ah, sir! you don't ever have a half-empty belly and a sorrowful heart,
or you wouldn't tell an old soldier to give up his pipe.”
“Take my advice. Give up all such false consolation, to oblige me, now.”
“Well, sir, to oblige you, I'll try; but you don't know what his pipe is
to a poor old man full of nothing but aches and pains, or you wouldn't
have asked me,” and old Giles sighed. Susan sighed, too, for she thought
Mr. Eden cruel for once.
“Miss Merton,” said the latter sternly, his eye twinkling all the time,
“he is incorrigible; and I see you agree with me that it is idle to
torment the incurable. So” (diving into the capacious pocket) “here
is an ounce of his beloved poison,” and out came a paper of tobacco.
Corporal's eyes brightened with surprise and satisfaction. “Poison him,
Miss Merton, poison him quick, don't keep him waiting.”
“Poison him, sir?”
“Fill his pipe for him, if you please.”
“That I will, sir, with pleasure.” A white hand with quick and supple
fingers filled the brown pipe.
“That is as it should be. Let beauty pay honor to courage; above all to
courage in its decay.”
The old man grinned with gratified pride. The white hand lighted the
pipe, and gave it to the old soldier. He smiled gratefully all round and
sucked his homely consolation.
“I compound with you, corporal. You must let me put you on the road
to heaven, and, in return, I must let you go there in a cloud of
tobacco--ugh!”
“I'm agreeable, sir,” said Giles dryly, withdrawing his pipe for a
moment.
“There,” said Mr. Eden, closing the marked Testament, “read often in
this book. Read first the verses I have marked, for these very verses
have dropped comfort on the poor, the aged and the distressed for more
than eighteen hundred years, and will till time shall be no more. And
now good-by, and God bless you.”
“God bless you, sir, wherever you go!” cried the old man with sudden
energy, “for you have comforted my poor old heart. I feel as I han't
felt this many a day. Your words are like the bugles sounding a charge
all down the line. You must go, I suppose; but do ye come again and see
me. And, Miss Merton, you never come to see me now, as you used.”
“Miss Merton has her occupations like the rest of us,” said Mr. Eden
quickly; “but she will come to see you--won't she?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” replied Susan, hastily. So then they returned to the
farm, for Mr. Eden's horse was in the stable. At the door they found Mr.
Merton.
“This is father, sir. Father, this is Mr. Eden, that is coming to take
the duty here for a while.”
After the ordinary civilities Susan drew her father aside, and,
exchanging a few words with him, disappeared into the house. As Mr. Eden
was mounting his horse, Mr. Merton came forward and invited him to stay
at his house whenever he should come to the parish. Mr. Eden hesitated.
“Sir,” said the farmer, “you will find no lodgings comfortable within a
mile of the church, and we have a large house not half occupied. You can
make yourself quite at home.”
“I am much obliged to you, Mr. Merton, but must not trespass too far
upon your courtesy.”
“Well, sir,” replied the farmer, “we shall feel proud if you can put up
with the like of us.”
“I will come. I am much obliged to you, sir, and to your daughter.”
He mounted his horse and bade the farmer good morning. Susan came out
and stood on the steps and curtsied low--rustic fashion--but with a
grace of her own. He took off his hat to her as he rode out of the gate,
gave her a sweet, bright smile of adieu, and went down the lane fourteen
miles an hour. Old Giles was seated outside his own door with a pipe
and a book. At the sound of horses' feet he looked up and recognized
his visitor, whom he had seen pass in the morning. He rose up erect and
saluted him, by bringing his thumb with a military wave to his forehead.
Mr. Eden saluted him in the same manner, but without stopping. The old
soldier sat down again and read and smoked. The pipe ended--that solace
was not of an immortal kind--but the book remained; he read it calmly
but earnestly in the warm air till day declined.