GRANNIE APPEALS TO WIDDLES.
One sultry evening in summer, Lucy was seated at her piano, which had
its place in Mr. Kitely's back parlor, near the black oak cabinet, but
she was not playing. She had just been singing a little song from some
unknown pen, which she had found with music of her father's in the
manuscripts he had left her. This was the song:
1.
Sunshine fair,
In the air,
On the earth!
Everywhere
Waking mirth!
Stay not there.
I sit apart
By the hearth
Of my heart
In the dark.
Dost thou mark
How I sit
In the dark,
With my grief,
Nursing it?
Bring relief,
Sunny gold!
Look, I set
Open door
Thee before,
And the fold
Of my curtain draw aside.
Enter, enter, golden tide.
2.
Summer Wind,
Nature's laughter!
Of sweet smiling
Waker, wafter!
Care beguiling,
Toying, wiling,
Never glance
Throw behind.
In the dance
Still advance,
To the past
Deaf and blind,
Follow after,
Fleet and fast,
Newer gladness,
Careless wind!
See the sadness
Of my mind.
Over river.
Hill and hollow,
Resting never,
Thou dost follow
Other graces,
Lovelier places,
Newer flowers,
Leafier bowers:
I still sit
Nursing it--
My old sorrow--
Night and morrow.
All my mind
Looks behind,
And I fret.
Look, I set
A wide door
Thee before,
And my casement open lay:
Come, and blow my cares away.
3.
Sunshine fair!
Of the saint
Gild the hair;
Wake the child,
With his mirth
Send him wild.
To the faint
Give new breath;
From the earth
Take the death,
Take the dearth.
'Tis in vain
To complain,
And implore
Thee to glide,
Thee to glow,
In my mind;
For my care
Will nevermore
Rise and go.
Open door,
Windows wide,
I do find
Yield no way
To the mind.
Glow and play,
Come and go,
Glance and glow,
To and fro,
Through the air!
Thou would'st say,
As ye use,
Thou and Wind,
_Forget_;
But not yet
I would choose
That way:
Shine and glitter, come and go;
Pass me by, and leave me so.
4.
And I whisper
To the wind,
Evening lisper
In the curl
Of the girl,
Who, all kind,
Waits her lover--
Waft and hover,
Linger over
Her bright color,
Waft her dolor
O'er the ocean,
With a faint,
Reviving motion.
Blow her plaint
From the maiden
Sorrow-laden;
Take all grief,
Which to lose
Were relief.
Leave me, leave me, for I choose
Still to clasp my grief.
5.
Sunshine fair!
Windy air!
Come and go,
Glance and glow,
Shine and show,
Waft and blow!
Neither choosing
Nor refusing,
Neither fretting
Nor forgetting
I will set
Open yet
Door and pane.
You may come,
Or the rain:
I will set,
Indifferent,
Open yet
Door and pane.
Sun and wind,
Rain-cloud blind,
Parted, blent,
There is room,
Go and come.
Loving only
To be lonely,
To be sad.
I repent,
Sun and wind,
That I went
You to find:
I was rent
In my mind.
Sun and wind, do what ye will;
I sit looking backward still.
Lucy, I say, had finished this song, and was sitting silent before the
instrument, with her hands laid on the keys, which had just ceased the
long-drawn sound, and again sunk into stillness. Two arms came round
her from behind. She did not start. She was taken by but not with
surprise. She was always with him in mood, if not in thought, and his
bodily presence therefore overcame her only as a summer cloud. She
leaned back into his embrace, and burst into tears. Then she would rise
to look at him, and he let her go. She saw him rather ragged, rather
dirty, quite of a doubtful exterior to the eye of the man who lives to
be respectable, but her eye saw deeper. She looked into his face--the
window of his being--and was satisfied. Truth shone there from the true
light and fire within. He did not fall at her feet as once before. The
redeemed soul stood and looked her in the face. He put out his arms
once more, and she did not draw back. She knew that he was a man, that
he was true, and she was his. And he knew, in the testimony thus given
him, that the last low-brooding rims of the cloud of his shame had
vanished from his heaven, and that a man may have sinned and yet be
glad. He could give God thanks for the shame, whose oppression had led
him to understand and hate the sin. For sin gives birth to shame, and
in this child-bearing is cleansed. Verily there is One, I repeat, who
bringeth light out of darkness, good out of evil. It comes not of the
evil, but out of the evil, because He is stronger than the evil; and
He, not evil, is at the heart of the universe. Often and often yet in
the course of life, would Thomas have to be humbled and disappointed.
But not the less true was the glow of strength that now pervaded his
consciousness. It was that this strength, along with a thousand other
virtues, might be perfected, that the farther trials were to come. It
was true, so true that it was worth making fact.
But my young reader, who delights in the emotion rather than in the
being of love, will grumble at these meditations, and say, "Why don't
you go on? why don't you tell us something more of their meeting?"
I answer, "Because I don't choose to tell you more. There are many
things, human things too, so sacred that they are better left alone.
If you cannot imagine them, you don't deserve to have them described.
We want a little more reticence as well as a great deal more openness
in the world--the pulpit included. But against stupidity the gods
themselves are powerless." Ah no! that is a heathen utterance. Let
the stupid rage, and when they imagine, let it be vain things. The
stupid, too, have a God that will slay their stupidity by the sword
of his light. The time will come when even they will repent, not of
their stupidity, for that they could not help, but of the arrogance
of fancied knowledge that increased instead of diminishing it, and
made them a thorn in the flesh of them that saw and would have opened
their eyes. No doubt many of them that suppose they see, fancy it only
in virtue of this same stupidity; but the end will show all. Meantime
the tares and the wheat must grow together, and there are plenty of
intellectual tares that spring from the root of the moral tares, and
will be separated with them.
After awhile, when their feelings were a little composed, Thomas began
to tell Lucy all his adventures. In the middle, however, Mrs. Boxall
returned. She had most opportunely been calling on a neighbor, and if
Thomas had not learned this from Mr. Kitely, he would have sent for
Lucy instead of going in as he did. They heard her voice in the shop.
"Don't tell grannie anything about it yet," said Lucy. "She's much
quieter in her mind now, and if we were to set her off again it would
only do her harm. Any thing certain she has a right to know, but I
don't think she has a right to know all that you are trying to do for
her. That is your business. But you mustn't mind how she behaves to
you, Tom dear. She thinks you and your father all one in the affair."
When the old lady entered she saw at a glance how things were going;
but she merely gave a very marked sniff, and retreated to her chair
by the window. She first seated herself, and then proceeded to take
off her bonnet and shawl. But she could not keep silent long, and the
beginning of speech as well as of strife is like the letting out of
water.
"Thomas," she said--for people of her degree of education became more
familiar in their address when they are angry--"is this room mine or
yours?"
"Grannie," said Lucy, "Thomas has nothing to do with it. He was away
from home, I assure you, when--when--things went wrong."
"Very convenient, no doubt, for both of you! It's nothing to you, so
long as you marry him, of course. But you might have waited. The money
would have been yours. But you'll have it all the sooner for marrying
the man that turned your grandmother into the street. Well, well! Only
I won't sit here and see that scoundrel in my room."
She rose as she spoke, though what she would or could have done she
did not know herself. It was on Lucy's lips to say to her--"The room's
mine, grannie, if you come to that, and I won't have my friend turned
out of it." But she thought better of it, and taking Thomas's hand,
led him into the shop. Thereupon grannie turned to Widdles for refuge,
not from the pain of Thomas's presence, but from the shame of her own
behavior, took him out of his cage, and handled him so roughly that one
of the three wing feathers left on one side came off in her hand. The
half of our ill-temper is often occasioned by annoyance at the other
half.
Thomas and Lucy finished their talk in a low voice, hidden in the leafy
forest of books. Thomas told her all about it now; how he wanted to
find the man Jack Stevens, and how Robins and he had followed him to
Lisbon, and found him there and brought him home; how he had had to
part with her ring as well as his own watch for money to start them in
their search, and how even then they had had to work their passage to
Lisbon and back. But if the representation she and Mr. Fuller had given
him of the state of the case was correct, he said, there could be no
doubt but Jack's testimony would reverse the previous decision, and
grannie would have her own.
"I can't help being rather sorry for it," concluded Tom; "for it'll
come to you then, Lucy, I suppose, and you will hardly be able to
believe that it was not for my own sake that I went after Jack Stevens.
I've got him safe, and Robins too, at the Mermaid. But I can't be grand
and give you up. If you were as rich as Miss Coutts, I couldn't give
you up--though I should like to, almost, when I think of the money and
my father."
"Don't give me up, Tom, or I'll give you up, and that would be a bad
job for me."
Then they made it clear to each other that nothing was further from the
intention of either of them.
"But what am I to do next, Lucy? You must tell me the lawyers that
conducted your side of the case."
"I am afraid I can't ask _him_ to do anything more."
"Who's _him_, Lucy?"
"Mr. Sargent."
"Sargent--Sargent--I think I have heard the name. He's a barrister. If
you are not satisfied with him, the firm you employed will speak to
another."
"He did everything, Thomas. But--"
Lucy hesitated. Thomas saw that she was blushing. Perhaps it was the
consciousness of his own unworthiness that made him jealous.
"Oh, very well, Lucy! If you don't want to tell me, of course--"
"Thomas! Thomas! Can't you trust me yet? I have trusted you, Thomas."
He had the grace to feel ashamed of himself at once.
"Forgive me, Lucy," he said. "I was wrong. Only I love you so!"
"I will tell you all about it, Tom, dear."
"You shan't tell me a word about it. I can guess. But what are we to
do?"
"I will go and consult Mr. Morgenstern."
"There is no time to lose."
"Come with me to his office, then, at once. It is not far to Old Broad
Street."
They set out instantly, found Mr. Morgenstern, and put him in
possession of the discovered evidence. He was delighted with the news.
"We must find Sargent at once," he said.
Lucy began to stammer out some objection.
"Oh! I know all about that, Lucy," said he. "But this is no time for
nonsense. In fact you would be doing the honest fellow a great wrong if
you deprived him of the pleasure of gaining his case after all. Indeed,
he would feel that far more than your refusal of him. And quite right,
too. Sargent will be delighted. It will go far to console him, poor
fellow."
"But will it be right of me to consent to it?" asked Thomas, with
hesitation.
"It is a mere act of justice to him," said Mr. Morgenstern; "and,
excuse me, I don't see that you have any right to bring your feelings
into the matter. Besides, it will give Mrs. Boxall the opportunity
of making him what return she ought. It will be a great thing for
him--give him quite a start in his profession, of which he is not a
little in want. I will go to him at once," concluded Mr. Morgenstern,
taking his hat.