"HOPE."
"The wit, the vivid energy of sense,
The truth of nature, which, with Attic point,
And kind, well-temper'd satire, smoothly keen,
Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects."
Yes, she it was of whom I had thought and dreamt, and built airy castles
on imaginative foundations--chateaux en Espagne--that had almost
crumbled into vacancy during those long and weary weeks, and monotonous
months, of waiting, and watching, and longing!
She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn
floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up
evergreens, its mass of piled forms, its lumbering desks and hassocks,
its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed
changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand,
into an enchanted palace.
The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been
awakened; and all was altered.
The semi-transparent sprig of mistletoe, which Seraphine Dasher had
mischievously suspended over the doorway, looked like a chaplet of
pearls; the pointed stems of yew became frosted in silver; the
variegated holly was transformed into branches of malachite, ornamented
with a network of gold, its bright red berries glowing with a ruddy
reflection as of interspersed rubies; while, above all, the glorious
sunshine, streaming in through the shattered panes of the oriel at the
eastern end, cast floods of quickening, mellow light, to the remotest
corners of the room, making the floating atoms of dust turn to waves of
powdery amber, and enriching every object it touched with its luminous
rays. Even the very representations of Europe, Asia, and Africa, on the
walls, lost their typographical characteristics, and shone out to me in
the guise of tapestried chronicles, ancient as those of Bayeux,
describing deeds of gallant chivalry--so my fancy pictured--and love,
and knight-errantry, painted over with oriental arabesques in crimson
gilding, the cunning handiwork of the potent sun-god. Her coming in
effected all this to my mind.
What a darling she looked, sitting there, with a pretty little scarlet
and white sontag, of soft wool knitting, crossed over her bosom and
clasped round her dainty, dainty waist; her busy fingers industriously
weaving broad ivy garlands for the church columns, and her sweet, calm
face bent earnestly over her task--the surrounding foliage, scattered
here, there, and everywhere, bringing out her well-formed figure in
relief, just like a picture in some rustic portrait frame! Micat inter
omnes, as Virgil sang of "the young Marcellus," his hero: she "glistened
out before them all."
Of course she was introduced to me.
"Mr Lorton--Miss Minnie Clyde." Now, at last, I had met her and knew
her name! What a pretty name she had, too, as little Miss Pimpernell
had said! Just in keeping with its owner.
As my name was pronounced, she raised her beautiful grey eyes from the
garland in her lap; and I could perceive, from a sudden gleam of
intelligence which shot through them for an instant, that I was at once
recognised:--from my face, I'm sure, she must have noticed that _she_
had not been forgotten.
I was in heaven; I would not have relinquished my position, kneeling at
her feet and stripping off ivy leaves for her use, no, not for a
dukedom!
Our conversation became again imperceptibly of a higher tone. Hers was
light, sparkling, brilliant; and one could see that she possessed a fund
of native drollery within herself, despite her demure looks and downcast
eyes. She had a sweet, low voice, "that most excellent thing in woman;"
while her light, silvery laughter rippled forth ever and anon, like a
chime of well-tuned bells, enchaining me as would chords of Offenbach's
champagne music.
In comparison with her, Lizzie Dangler's prosy platitudes, which some
deemed wit--Horner, par exemple--sank into nothingness, and Baby Blake,
one of the "gushing" order of girlhood, appeared as a stick, or, rather,
a too pliant sapling--her inane "yes's" and lisping "no's" having an
opportunity of being "weighed in the balance," and consequently, in my
opinion, "found wanting." All were mediocre beside her. Perhaps I was
prejudiced; but, now, the remarks of the other girls seemed to me
singularly silly.
From light badinage, we got talking of literature. Some one, Mr Mawley
the curate, I think, drew a parallel between Douglas Jerrold and
Thackeray, describing both, in his blunt, dogmatic way, as cynics.
To this I immediately demurred. In the first place, because Mawley was
so antipathetical to me, that I dearly loved to combat his assertions;
and, secondly, on account of his disparaging my beau ideal of all that
is grand and good in a writer and in man.
"You make a great mistake," I said, "for Thackeray is a satirist pur et
simple. Jerrold was a cynic, if you please, although he had a wonderful
amount of kindly feeling even in his bitterest moods--indeed I would
rather prefer calling him a one-sided advocate of the poor against the
rich, than apply to him your opprobrious term."
"Well, cynic or satirist, I should like to know what great difference
lies between the two?" the curate retorted, glad of an argument, and
wishing, as usual, to display his critical acumen by demolishing me.
"I will tell you with pleasure," said I, not a bit "put out," according
to his evident wish and expectation, "and I will use the plainest
language in my exposition, so that you may be able to understand me! A
cynic, I take it, is one who talks or writes bitterly, in the
gratification of a malicious temperament, merely for the sake of
inflicting pain on the object of his attack, just as a bad-dispositioned
boy will stick pins in a donkey, or persecute a frog, for the sheer sake
of seeing it wince: a satirist, on the contrary, is a philosopher who
ridicules traits of character, customs and mannerisms, with the
intention of remedying existing evils, abolishing abuses, and reforming
society--in the same way as a surgeon performs an operation to remove an
injured limb, inflicting temporary pain on his patient, with the
prospect of ultimate good resulting from it. I have never seen this
definition given anywhere; consequently, as it is but my own private
opinion, you need only take it for what it is worth."
"Thank you, Mr Lorton," said _somebody_, giving me a gratefully
intelligent look from a pair of deep, thinking grey eyes.
"Oh, indeed! so that's your opinion, Lorton?" put in Mr Mawley, as
antagonistic as ever. "So that's your opinion, is it? I _will_ do as
you say, and take it for what it is worth--that is, keep my own still!
You may be very sharp and clever, and all that sort of thing, my dear
fellow; but I don't see the difference between the two that you have so
lucidly pointed out. Satire and cynicism are co-equal terms to my mind:
your argument won't persuade me, Lorton, although I must say that you
are absolutely brilliant to-day. You should really start a school of
Modern Literature, my dear fellow, and set up as a professor of the
same!"
"Please get my scissors, Frank," said Miss Pimpernell, trying to stop
our wordy warfare. I got them; but I had my return blow at the curate
all the same.
"I suppose you'd be one of my first pupils, Mr Mawley," I said. "I
think I could coach you up a little!"
He was going to crush me with some of his sledge-hammer declamation,
being thoroughly roused, when Bessie Dasher averted the storm, by
entering the arena and changing the conversation to a broader footing.
"How I dote on Thackeray!" she exclaimed with all her natural
impulsiveness. "What a dear, delicious creature Becky Sharp is; and
that funny old baronet, Sir Pitt something or other, too! When I first
took up _Vanity Fair_ I could not let it out of my hands until I
finished it."
"That's more than I can say," said the curate. "I don't like Thackeray.
He cuts up every one and everything. Is not that a cynic for you?"
"Not everybody," said Min--I cannot call her anything else now--coming
to my assistance, "not everybody, Mr Mawley. I think Thackeray, with
all his satire and kindly laughter in his sleeve at persons that ought
to be laughed down, has yet given us some of the most pathetic touches
of human nature existing in English literature. There's the old colonel
in _The Newcomes_, for instance. That little bit about his teaching his
tiny grandson to say his prayers, before he put him into bed in his poor
chamber in the Charter House, to which he was reduced, would make any
one cry. And Henry Esmond, and Warrington, and Laura--where would you
find more nobly-drawn characters than those?" and she stopped, out of
breath with her defence of one of the greatest writers we have ever had,
indignant, with such a pretty indignation, at his merits being
questioned for a moment.
"Of course I must bow to your decision, Miss Clyde," said the curate,
with one of those stock ceremonial bows that stood him in such good
stead amongst the female community of the parish. He was a cunning
fellow, Mawley. Knew which way his interest lay; and never went against
the ladies if he could help it. "But," he continued, "if we talk of
pathos, there's `the great master of fiction,' Dickens; who can come up
to him?"
"Ah, yes! Mr Mawley,"--chorused the majority of the girls--"we quite
agree with you: there's nobody like Dickens!"
It is a strange thing how perverse the divine sex is, in preferring
confectionery to solid food; and superficial writers, to those who dive
beneath the surface of society and expose its rottenness--like as they
esteem Tupper's weak-minded version of Solomon's Proverbs beyond the
best poetry that ever was written!
I wasn't going to be beaten by the curate, however, prattled he never so
wisely with the cunning of the serpent-charmer. "I grant you," said I,
"that Dickens appeals oftener to our susceptible sympathies; but he is
_unreal_ in comparison with Thackeray. The one was a far more correct
student of human nature than the other. Dickens selected
exceptionalities and invested them with attributes which we never see
possessed by their prototypes whom we may meet in the world. He gives
us either caricature, or pictures of men and women seen through a rose-
coloured medium: Thackeray, on the other hand, shows you life _as it
is_. He takes you behind the scenes and lets you perceive for yourself
how the `dummies' and machinery are managed, how rough the distemper
painting, all beauty from the front of `the house,' looks on nearer
inspection, how the `lifts' work, and the `flats' are pushed on; besides
disclosing all the secrets connected with masks and `properties.' He is
not content in merely allowing you to witness the piece from before the
curtain, in the full glory of that distance from the place of action
which lends enchantment to the view, and with all the deceptive
concomitants of music and limelights and Bengal fire! To adopt another
illustration, I should say that Dickens was the John Leech of fictional
literature, Thackeray its Hogarth. Even Jerrold, I think, in his most
bitter, cynical moods, was truer to life and nature than Dickens. Did
you ever read the former's _Story of a Feather_, by the way?"
"No," answered Mawley, testily, "I can't say I ever did; and I don't
think it likely I ever will."
"Well, I dare say you are quite right, Frank," said the kindly voice of
my usual ally little Miss Pimpernell, interposing just at the right
time--as she always did, indeed--to throw oil on the troubled waters.
"But, still, I like Dickens the best. Do you know, children," she went
on, looking round, as we all sat watching her dear old wrinkled face
beaming cheerily on us through her spectacles, "do you know, children,
I've no doubt you'll laugh at me for telling you, but, when I first read
`David Copperfield'--and I was an old woman then--I cried my eyes out
over the account of the death of poor Dora's little dog Gyp. Dear
little fellow! Don't you recollect how he crawled out of his tiny
Chinese pagoda house, and licked his master's hand and died? I think
it's the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life."
"And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell," said Min, in her soft, low voice,
which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in
her clear grey eyes--silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her
heart. "I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of
now--except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the `Christmas Carol,'
where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy
would die. That affected me equally, I believe; and I could not read it
dry-eyed now."
"Nor I," lisped Baby Blake, following suit, in order to keep up her
reputation for sentimentality; "I would thob my eyth out!"
"See," quoted the curate, grandiloquently, "how `one touch of nature
makes the whole world kin!'"
"For my part," exclaimed Miss Spight, who had taken no share in our
conversation since we had dropped personalities, "I don't see the use of
people crying over the fabulous woes of a lot of fictitious persons that
never existed, when there is such an amount of real grief and misery
going on in the world."
"That is not brought home to us," said Min, courageously; "but the
troubles and trials of the people in fiction are; and I believe that
every kind thought which a writer makes throb through our hearts, better
enables us to pity the sorrows of actual persons."
"Bai-ey Je-ove!" exclaimed Horner, twisting his eye-glass round and
making an observation for the first time--the discussion before had been
apparently beyond his depth,--"Bai-ey Je-ove! Ju-ust what I was gaw-ing
to say! Bai-ey Je-ove, yaas! But Miss Spight is much above human
emawtion, you know, and all that sawt of thing, you know-ah!"
"Besides," continued Min, not taking any notice of our friend's original
remark I was glad to see, "one does not always cry over novels. I'm
sure I've laughed more than I've wept over Dickens, and other authors."
"Ah!" said Lady Dasher, with a melancholy shake of her head, "life is
too serious for merry-making! It is better to mourn than to rejoice, as
I've often heard my poor dear papa say when he was alive."
"Nonsense, ma!" pertly said her daughter Seraphine; "you can't believe
that. I'm sure I'd rather laugh than cry, any day. And so would you,
too, ma, in spite of your seriousness!"
"Your mamma is quite right in some respects, my dear," said little Miss
Pimpernell. "We should not be always thinking of nothing but merry-
making. Don't you recollect those lines of my favourite Herrick?--
"`Time flies away fast!
The while we never remember,
How soon our life here
Grows old with the year,
That dies in December.'"
"Yes, I do, you cross old thing!" said the seraph, shaking her golden
locks and laughing saucily; "and I remember also that your `favourite
Herrick' says something else about one's `gathering rose-buds whilst one
may.'"
"You naughty girl!" said Miss Pimpernell, trying to look angry and frown
at her; but the attempt was such a palpable pretence that we all laughed
at her as much as the delinquent.
"And what is your favourite style of poetry, Miss Clyde?" asked the
curate, taking advantage of the introduction of Herrick to change the
subject.
And then there followed a chorus of discussion: Miss Spight declared she
adored Wordsworth: Mr Mawley tried to show off his superiority, and I
attempted to put him down; I believe I was jealous lest Min should agree
with him.
"Now, Frank," exclaimed Miss Pimpernell, "I will not have any more
sparring between you and Mr Mawley, for I'm sure you've argued enough.
It is `the merry Christmas-time,' you know; and we ought all to be at
peace, and gay and happy, too! What do you say, girls?"
"But what shall we do to be merry?" asked Bessie Dasher.
"Ah! my dear," groaned her mother; "it is not right to be foolishly
`merry,' as you call it. This season of the year is a very sad one, and
we ought to be thinking, as my poor dear papa used to say, of what our
Saviour did for us and the other world! We have now arrived at the end
of another year, and it is very sad, very sad!"
"What!" exclaimed Min, "wrong to be merry at Christmas? The vicar said
in his sermon last Sunday, that our hearts ought to expand with joy at
this time; and that we should try, not only to be glad and happy in
ourselves, but also to make others glad and happy, too. It appears to
me," and her face flushed with excitement as she spoke, "a very
erroneous idea of religion that would only associate it with gloom and
sadness. The same Creator endowed us with the faculty to laugh as well
as cry; and we must take poor comfort in him if we cannot be glad in his
company, to which the Christmas season always brings us nearer and into
more intimate connection, as it were."
"Bravo, my little champion!" said the vicar, who had again stolen in
unperceived by us all. "That is the spirit of true Christianity. You
have preached a more practical sermon than I, my dear." Then, seeing
her confusion at being thus singled out and her embarrassment at having,
as she thought, been too forward in speaking out impulsively on the spur
of the moment, the vicar created a diversion. "And now, young ladies,"
he said, "as we are going to be merry, what shall we play at?"
"Oh, puss in the corner!" cried Seraphine Dasher. "That will be
delightful!"
"With all my heart; puss in the corner be it," said the vicar, who could
be a boy again on fitting occasions, and play with the best of us.
"Come, Mawley," he added, "come and exert yourself; and help to pull
these forms out of the way," setting to work vigorously at the same
time, himself.
In another minute or two we were in the middle of a wild romp, wherein
little Miss Pimpernell and the vicar were the most active participants--
they showing themselves to be quite as active as the younger hands;
while Miss Spight and Lady Dasher were the only idle spectators. Min at
first did not join in, as she was not accustomed to the ways of us old
habitues, but she presently participated, being soon as gay and noisy as
any. What fun we had in blindfolding Horner, and manoeuvring so that he
should rush into the arms of Miss Spight! What a shout of laughter
there was when he exclaimed, clasping her the while, "Bai-ey Je-ove!
Yaas, I've cawght you at lawst!"
The look of pious horror which settled on the face of the elderly maiden
was a study.
Thus our working day ended; and it became time to separate and go home.
I had the further happiness of seeing Min to her door, both of us living
in the same direction.
It was the same on the morrow, and on the morrow after that, for a whole
week.
Of course, we did not talk "Shakspeare and the musical glasses" always.
Our discourse was generally composed of much lighter elements,
especially when Mr Mawley and I did not come in contact--argument being
then, naturally, as a dead letter. Our conversation during these
peaceful interregnums mainly consisted in friendly banter, parish news,
and gossip. Scandal Miss Pimpernell never permitted; indeed, no one
would have had the heart to say an ill-natured thing of anybody else in
her presence.
Day after day Min and I were closely associated together, learning to
know more of one another than we might have acquired in years of
ordinary society intercourse; day after day, I would watch her dainty
figure, and study her beautiful face, and gaze into the fathomless
depths of her honest grey eyes, my love towards her increasing by such
rapid strides, that, at length, I almost worshipped the very ground on
which she trod.
And so the week wore by, until Christmas Eve arrived. Then our task was
finished, and we decorated Saint Canon's old church with all the wreaths
and garlands, the crosses and illuminations, on which we had been so
busy in the school-room; making it look quite modern in its festal
preparation for the ensuing day, when the result of our handiwork would
be displayed to the admiration, we hoped, of the congregation at large.
On parting with Min late in the evening at her door--for our work at the
church had occupied us longer than usual--I thought it the happiest
Christmas Eve I had ever passed; and, as I went to bed that night, I
wondered, dreamily, if the morning's sun would rise for another as happy
a day, while I prayed to God that He would shape my life in accordance
with the fervent desire of my heart.