‘TROP BELLE POUR MOI, VOILÀ MON TRÉPAS.’
The actual machinery of life, the common details of domestic
existence, underwent little change after Joshua Haggard’s second
marriage, and the introduction of a fair girl-wife into the sober
household. The change was in the minds of the household, not in
outward things. Aunt Judith abated no jot or tittle of her authority.
Her assumption of her accustomed post at the tea-table upon the
evening of Cynthia’s arrival was symbolical of her maintenance of
supreme authority in all domestic matters. She did not even offer to
surrender the keys of those awful and impenetrable repositories in
which she kept the jams and jellies, the pickles and home-made wines,
and all those items which, in Jim’s opinion, gave savour and relish
to life--the ornamental margin of existence’s daily needs, like the
labyrinthine scroll-work and illumination which border the text in
a mediæval Bible. She retained supreme authority in the kitchen; and
this young wife’s coming did not benefit her stepson by so much as an
extra pudding on weekdays, or a currant cake flavoured with saffron,
and of that golden hue his soul loved, on Sundays.
Before Cynthia had been established in her new home for the space of
a week she had discovered that her domestic duties and rights were
alike usurped by another, that in yielding the teapot she had given
up her place in her husband’s home. This was a disappointment; for in
her happy dreams of life with Joshua she had seen herself ministering
to him, providing for his comforts, working with those busy clever
hands of hers for his small needs and simple luxuries, lending new
graces and pleasures to his daily life, were they but the smallest
things, such as a bunch of fresh flowers on his breakfast-table, or a
dish of light cakes at tea-time. She had a natural taste for and love
of household work--a handiness in all womanly offices which had won
her the approval of her mistresses at Penmoyle; and to be shut out of
these offices was a hardship she felt keenly.
Not one word of complaint was ever spoken by her, or Joshua would
have promptly transferred the domestic sceptre. She was by nature
submissive, and the experience of her brief life had made obedience a
habit. She bowed her neck to Judith’s yoke, and resigned her simple
household privileges without a murmur. Joshua thought it right, no
doubt, or he would not look on approvingly. She did not know that
Joshua--whose temporal and spiritual duties filled his time and
thoughts to overflowing--had never thought about the matter at all.
She remembered what he had said on that first evening--‘Let there
be peace in the household, and no foolish fuss about trifles;’ and
she accepted this speech as a command. Any opposition to aunt Judith
would be rebellion against her husband.
Cynthia’s position in the family, therefore, seemed rather that of
daughter than wife. She sat by her husband’s side at meals; she spent
her mornings in needlework, and her afternoons in serious reading,
or occasionally in a ramble on the sea-shore or in the woods with
Jim. She would have been better pleased to accompany her husband on
his pastoral visits to distant homesteads and cottages, but Joshua
told her gently that her presence would be out of place on such
occasions. She taught in Mr. Haggard’s Sunday-school, held in a roomy
loft at the top of the chapel. She often went to read to the sick and
aged among her husband’s flock, delighted to be of some use in this
manner; but these occupations left a wide margin of her life to be
filled somehow; and there were afternoon hours in which she sat with
the Bible or Baxter open before her, and her thoughts wandering far
from the text.
There were some sad thoughts mingled with her full contentment in an
union which had seemed to her royal and triumphant as Esther’s bridal
with Ahasuerus. She had been quick to perceive the consternation
her appearance had occasioned on that first evening; and she
was conscious that beneath Judith’s cold civility and somewhat
exaggerated politeness there lurked a disapproving spirit that was
not to be conciliated. Let her be never so assiduous to please
her husband’s sister, Judith would never love her; and, more than
this, Judith had contrived to let her know, without any apparent
unkindness of intention, that Joshua’s marriage had lowered him in
the esteem of his flock.
‘We can’t all be apostles and martyrs,’ said Judith; ‘but folks
expected a great deal of my brother. “He that is unmarried careth
for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord,”
and he that’s married doesn’t. St. Paul says that pretty plain, you
see; there’s no getting away from the right meaning of his words. And
people will naturally cast that up at my brother--marrying a second
time, and a girl younger than his daughter. I don’t blame you, my
dear. I daresay if you’d thought of these things you’d have said no,
especially as your own inclination would have led you to prefer a
younger man.’
‘I could never have loved or honoured any one as I love and honour my
husband,’ protested Cynthia, flushing with anger at the suggestion.
‘Ah,’ sighed Judith, with a world of significance, ‘of course it was
a great thing for you to come to such a home as this, and a husband
as comfortably off as my brother. It isn’t many young women in
service that get as well provided for.’
‘I hope you don’t think--’ cried Cynthia eagerly.
‘I trust I’m too much of a Christian to think evil of any one,’
replied aunt Judith, with dignity. ‘I’m thinking what _other_ people
will say. You can’t stop their tongues. If they choose to say that my
brother Joshua was led away from his own principles and the First of
Corinthians by a pretty face, and that you married him for the sake
of a home, there’s no law in the land to hinder ’em from having their
say.’
Thus for the first time in her life Cynthia heard of that invisible
and irresponsible tribunal which is always sitting outside our
doors; and was taught to feel that it was not to her Creator and her
own conscience alone she had to answer, but that she ought also to
shape her acts to meet the views of other people; other people would
measure her conduct by their standard, sound the depths of her heart
with their plummet; and unheard, undefended, ignorant alike of her
indictment and her sentence, she would be convicted and condemned.
This was a chilling revelation to one as innocent of life’s
complexities as Miranda or Perdita. One of the few lessons in the
world’s bitter school which Cynthia had thoroughly learned was to
endure undeserved affliction patiently. She bore aunt Judith’s sharp
stings and quiet stabs as meekly as she had borne ill-usage from the
tyrants of her childhood. But she felt her punishment none the less
keenly; and already, ere she had been married a month, began to ask
herself if Joshua had verily done wisely in marrying her, and whether
it would not have been better for her to have gone on worshipping him
at a distance all her life, spending her tranquil industrious days
in the little kitchen at Penmoyle, doing her duty, and being praised
for faithful service, among people who were in no wise scandalised by
her existence. It had been a very monotonous life, containing little
for memory to dwell on, offering still less for hope to build upon;
and the river of life, which youth would fain sail upon, is a bright
and swiftly flowing current--not a tideless canal. But it had been
a life full of peace, and already in this new life there had come a
feeling which was not peace. Unhappily Judith’s Christianlike and
candid remarks upon popular feeling at Combhaven were sustained by a
foundation of truth. The minister’s congregation did not contemplate
his second marriage with entire approval. They were not prepared to
take his youthful flaxen-haired wife to their hearths and bosoms
with any warmth of affection. She would be invited out to tea, of
course, and best teapots would be taken out of their chamois-leather
enfoldings, and amber-hued cakes would be baked for her regalement;
but there would be little heartiness in her reception--it would
be ceremonial and civic only, like the welcome of a foreign
princess when the nation feels their prince has made a foolish or
insignificant choice.
There were so many things to be said against this marriage of Joshua
Haggard’s. In the first place, why marry at all? In the second, if he
must needs marry, why not choose one of his own flock--a comfortable
widow, for instance--and there were several comfortable widows among
the Bethelites--whose antecedents would be patent to everybody at
Combhaven, whose life from the cradle upwards would be as well
known to the community as the pattern of her parlour carpet, or the
furniture in her best bedroom? Such a marriage, though unspiritual,
and, in somewise, depoetising the ideal pastor, would at least have
recommended itself to the more practical members of the congregation
as prudent and suitable.
Whatever disappointment such a marriage might have caused in those
loftier minds which had elevated the preacher and teacher into the
Saint and Apostle--minds to be found chiefly among the spinsters of
Joshua’s flock--it could hardly have occasioned scandal; but this
unannounced, unexplained union with an unknown young woman from the
far West of Cornwall--a girl who had worked in the mines, perhaps,
and worn unholy attire, and toiled shoulder-to-shoulder with rough
barbarians, speaking a strange tongue--this was enough to inspire
unpleasant doubts in the minds of Joshua’s congregation, to call all
their prejudices to arms against the fair intruder.
Who was she--supposing that she had not worked in the mines? Who
was she? whence came she? to whom belonged she?--questions to which
no one could supply any categorical or satisfactory answer, though
speculative answers and suggestions were to be had in abundance.
Whence came this wandering rumour, traceable to no particular source,
yet in everybody’s mouth, that Joshua had found his young wife by
the wayside, a beggar, with bare feet, houseless, friendless, not
even knowing the name of her kindred, or the place of her birth, nor
on what parish she might fasten her helplessness; the merest waif
upon the stream of life? This notion could hardly have arisen from
any imprudent communicativeness upon the part of aunt Judith, for,
when sounded by solicitous friends upon the subject of her brother’s
marriage, that lady had refrained from all expression of opinion
save such dumb, inscrutable movements as shoulder-shrugs, elevation
of the eyebrows, lips tightly drawn, and head shaken with a solemn
significance. Whatever this dumbshow meant, Combhaven felt assured
that it meant a great deal, and meant no good.
There was a general and growing conviction that Joshua had acted
foolishly, if not wickedly, in marrying this strange young woman.
‘How are the mighty fallen!’ cried the Bethelites; and in their
lamentations over the degradation of their pastor, they indulged
in a great deal of Scriptural language to his disadvantage. Perhaps
the value of our Bible never comes so fully home to us as when we
quote it against our erring neighbour. It was felt that Joshua held
the same position in Combhaven that David must have occupied in
Jerusalem after that lamentable episode in the princely life which
brought greatness to the level of the sinful herd. The preacher read
disapproval in the faces of his flock on the first Sabbath after his
marriage; he discovered a coldness, an alteration in the tone of
those customers at the shop who were of his congregation. His Church
of England patrons, on the contrary, congratulated him heartily upon
his marriage, and praised his wife’s pretty face in the friendliest
manner. But they had never canonised the pastor; they contemplated
him solely in his aspect as a general dealer; and what more natural,
what more distinctly human, than that a well-to-do grocer should
beautify the autumn of his life with the charms and graces of a young
wife?
Joshua saw the change in his flock, and his heart rebelled against
their hardness. Pride sustained him--a manly and honest pride, and a
spiritual pride, which told him that he was better than the best of
those who presumed to sit in judgment upon him. Who among them had
toiled for the good cause as he had done? Who, among these professing
Methodists, had trodden in the footsteps of the great founder of
Methodism as he had trodden, faithfully imitating that pious man’s
asceticism and self-denial? And were these people, whom he had served
so faithfully, for whose spiritual welfare he had laboured so hard,
to turn the light that he had kindled against him, to distort the
law he had taught them, in order to pass an iniquitous sentence upon
their teacher? He felt these cold looks and altered greetings keenly
as a deep injustice, and shut himself up in the armour of offended
pride. God had given him this infinite blessing--the love of a pure
and lovely woman--and was man’s malice to poison his cup of bliss?
No, he told himself. He could live without the world’s regard. He
had never served mankind for their own sake, and he could dispense
with their affection. In his prayers and sermons at this time of
estrangement he raised himself so far above the level of daily life
and earthly ills, that there was no taint of personal feeling to be
perceived in any of his words, no murmur against man’s injustice
crept into his communion with God. Never had his teaching been
clearer or more elevated; never were his prayers more fervent. Into
that spiritual world of which he possessed the key neither worldly
malice nor worldly misconception could follow him.
Again, at the worst, were his flock never so ungrateful, he knew
of one listener whose mute enthusiasm was in itself sufficient
for inspiration. If he had not been able, of his own unassisted
strength, to lift up his soul to the very gates of heaven, that
look of Cynthia’s, as she sat in the narrow little pew just under
the square box of a pulpit, would have been the source of pure
imaginings and holy thoughts. His Sabbaths were now such blessed
days; for all the time he did not owe to duty he gave to his young
wife. They walked together by that lovely sea which in its jewel-like
colouring so often recalled the Oriental imagery of Holy Writ.
They talked together of spiritual things, with a fond familiarity
which is natural to those whose only poetry, whose only knowledge
of the beautiful, has been drawn from Scripture. Cynthia’s greatest
delight at this time was to hear her husband talk of his youthful
career, his discouragements and successes, his alternate despair and
triumph; those hysterical gusts of enthusiasm in the newly-converted
which had promised so much, those chilling disappointments caused by
backsliding in his brightest disciples, the sudden going out of the
sacred fire.
Perfectly blessed in such perfect love, Joshua was able to live his
own life with supreme indifference as to the opinion of the outside
world; and this independence of feeling speedily revealing itself
to the flock, there was a general sense of disappointment at the
discovery that Mr. Haggard had not been crushed by their disapproval,
and then the cold looks began to give place to friendly smiles and
salutations, as of old. The pastor was complimented on his last
sermon; the more select of the community were pressing in their
invitations to tea-parties of a ceremonious character.
Joshua, who had felt his affections outraged, was not so easily to
be won back to the pleasant path of brotherly love. He rejected all
invitations to tea, responded coldly to the warmest salutations, and
heard men’s praises of his eloquence unmoved. But in all pastoral
duties he was faithful, as of old; ministered to the sick, taught
in his school, gave three evenings a week to a class of young men
belonging to the labouring community, who met in the loft over the
chapel for serious reading and conversation by the light of two
dip candles, and joined in a hymn before they separated. It may be
supposed, therefore, that, with the exception of those tranquil
Sabbath hours between the services, there was not much time left
for him to devote to his young wife, and that Cynthia had plenty of
leisure in which to meditate upon things spiritual and temporal.