Stephen whispered to Gerard and after a moment’s pause, he asked

the fair president for a couple of tickets for each of which he paid

threepence; a sum however, according to the printed declaration of

the voucher, convertible into potential liquid refreshments, no great

compensation to a very strict member of the Temperance Society of

Mowbray.

A handsome staircase with bright brass bannisters led them to an ample

landing-place, on which opened a door, now closed and by which sate a

boy who collected the tickets of those who would enter it. The portal

was of considerable dimensions and of architectural pretension; it was

painted of a bright green colour, the panels gilt. Within the pediment,

described in letters of flaming gas, you read, “THE TEMPLE OF THE

MUSES.”

Gerard and Morley entered an apartment very long and sufficiently lofty,

though rather narrow for such proportions. The ceiling was even richly

decorated; the walls were painted, and by a brush of considerable power.

Each panel represented some well-known scene from Shakespeare, Byron,

or Scott: King Richard, Mazeppa, the Lady of the Lake were easily

recognized: in one panel, Hubert menaced Arthur; here Haidee rescued

Juan; and there Jeanie Deans curtsied before the Queen. The room was

very full; some three or four hundred persons were seated in different

groups at different tables, eating, drinking, talking, laughing, and

even smoking, for notwithstanding the pictures and the gilding it was

found impossible to forbid, though there were efforts to discourage,

this practice, in the Temple of the Muses. Nothing however could be more

decorous than the general conduct of the company, though they consisted

principally of factory people. The waiters flew about with as much

agility as if they were serving nobles. In general the noise was great,

though not disagreeable; sometimes a bell rang and there was comparative

silence, while a curtain drew up at the further end of the room,

opposite to the entrance, and where there was a theatre, the stage

raised at a due elevation, and adorned with side scenes from which

issued a lady in a fancy dress who sang a favourite ballad; or a

gentleman elaborately habited in a farmer’s costume of the old comedy,

a bob-wig, silver buttons and buckles, and blue stockings, and who

favoured the company with that melancholy effusion called a comic song.

Some nights there was music on the stage; a young lady in a white robe

with a golden harp, and attended by a gentleman in black mustachios.

This was when the principal harpiste of the King of Saxony and his first

fiddler happened to be passing through Mowbray, merely by accident, or

on a tour of pleasure and instruction, to witness the famous scenes of

British industry. Otherwise the audience of the Cat and Fiddle, we mean

the Temple of the Muses, were fain to be content with four Bohemian

brothers, or an equal number of Swiss sisters. The most popular

amusements however were the “Thespian recitations:” by amateurs, or

novices who wished to become professional. They tried their metal on an

audience which could be critical.

A sharp waiter, with a keen eye on the entering guests, immediately

saluted Gerard and his friend, with profuse offers of hospitality:

insisting that they wanted much refreshment; that they were both

very hungry and very thirsty: that, if not hungry, they should order

something to drink that would give them an appetite: if not inclined to

quaff, something to eat that would make them athirst. In the midst of

these embarrassing attentions, he was pushed aside by his master with,

“There, go; hands wanted at the upper end; two American gentlemen from

Lowell singing out for Sherry Cobler; don’t know what it is; give them

our bar mixture; if they complain, say it’s the Mowbray slap-bang, and

no mistake. Must have a name, Mr Morley; name’s everything; made the

fortune of the Temple: if I had called it the Saloon, it never would

have filled, and perhaps the magistrates never have granted a licence.”

The speaker was a very portly man who had passed the maturity of

manhood, but active as Harlequin. He had a well-favoured countenance;

fair, good-humoured, but very sly. He was dressed like the head butler

of the London Tavern, and was particular as to his white waistcoats and

black silk stockings, punctilious as to his knee-buckles, proud of his

diamond pin; that is to say when he officiated at the Temple.

“Your mistress told us we should find you here,” said Stephen, “and that

you wished to see us.

“Plenty to tell you,” said their host putting his finger to his

nose. “If information is wanted in this part of the world, I flatter

myself--Come, Master Gerard, here’s a table; what shall I call for?

glass of the Mowbray slap-bang? No better; the receipt has been in our

family these fifty years. Mr Morley I know won’t join us. Did you say

a cup of tea, Mr Morley? Water, only water; well, that’s strange. Boy

alive there, do you hear me call? Water wanted, glass of water for the

Secretary of the Mowbray Temperance and Teatotal. Sing it out. I like

titled company. Brush!”

“And so you can give us some information about this--”

“Be back directly.” exclaimed their host: and darting off with a swift

precision, that carried him through a labyrinth of tables without the

slightest inconvenience to their occupiers. “Beg pardon, Mr Morley,”

he said, sliding again into his chair; “but saw one of the American

gentlemen brandishing his bowie-knife against one of my waiters; called

him Colonel; quieted him directly; a man of his rank brawling with

a help; oh! no; not to be thought of; no squabbling here; licence in

danger.”

“You were saying--” resumed Morley.

“Ah! yes, about that man Hatton; remember him perfectly well; a matter

of twenty or it may be nineteen years since he bolted. Queer fellow;

lived upon nothing; only drank water; no temperance and teetotal then,

so no excuse. Beg pardon, Mr Morley; no offence I hope; can’t bear

whims; but respectable societies, if they don’t drink, they make

speeches, hire your rooms, leads to business.”

“And this Hatton--” said Gerard.

“Ah! a queer fellow; lent him a one-pound note--never saw it

again--always remember it--last one-pound note I had. He offered me an

old book instead; not in my way; took a china jar for my wife. He kept a

curiosity shop; always prowling about the country, picking up old books

and hunting after old monuments; called himself an antiquarian; queer

fellow, that Hatton.”

“And you have heard of him since?” said Gerard rather impatiently.

“Not a word,” said their host; “never knew any one who had.”

“I thought you had something to tell us about him,” said Stephen.

“So I have; I can put you in the way of getting hold of him and anything

else. I havn’t lived in Mowbray man and boy for fifty years; seen it

a village, and now a great town full of first-rate institutions and

establishments like this,” added their host surveying the Temple with a

glance of admiring complacency; “I say I havn’t lived here all this time

and talked to the people for nothing.”

“Well, we are all attention,” said Gerard with a smile.

“Hush!” said their host as a bell sounded, and he jumped up. “Now

ladies, now gentlemen, if you please; silence if you please for a song

from a Polish lady. The Signora sings English like a new-born babe;”

and the curtain drew up amid the hushed voices of the company and the

restrained clatter of their knives and forks and glasses.

The Polish lady sang “Cherry Ripe” to the infinite satisfaction of her

audience. Young Mowbray indeed, in the shape of Dandy Mick and some

of his followers and admirers, insisted on an encore. The lady as she

retired curtseyed like a Prima Donna; but the host continued on his

legs for some time, throwing open his coat and bowing to his guests, who

expressed by their applause how much they approved his enterprise. At

length he resumed his seat; “It’s almost too much.” he exclaimed; “the

enthusiasm of these people. I believe they look upon me as a father.”

“And you think you have some clue to this Hatton?” resumed Stephen.

“They say he has no relations,” said their host.

“I have heard as much.”

“Another glass of the bar mixture, Master Gerard. What did we call it?

Oh! the bricks and beans--the Mowbray bricks and beans; known by that

name in the time of my grandfather. No more! No use asking Mr Morley

I know. Water! well, I must say--and yet, in an official capacity,

drinking water is not so unnatural.”

“And Hatton.” said Gerard; “they say he has no relations, eh?”

“They do, and they say wrong. He has a relation; he has a brother; and I

can put you in the way of finding him.”

“Well, that looks like business,” said Gerard; “and where may he be?”

“Not here,” said their host; “he never put his foot in the Temple to my

knowledge; and lives in a place where they have as much idea of popular

institutions as any Turks or heathen you ever heard of.”

“And where might we find him?” said Stephen.

“What’s that?” said their host jumping up and looking around him. “Here

boys, brush about. The American gentleman is a whittling his name on

that new mahogany table. Take him the printed list of rules, stuck up

in a public place, under a great coat, and fine him five shillings for

damaging the furniture. If he resists (he has paid for his liquor), call

in the police; X. Z. No. 5 is in the bar, taking tea with your mistress.

Now brush.”

“And this place is--”

“In the land of mines and minerals,” said their host; “about ten miles

from ----. He works in metals on his own account. You have heard of

a place called Hell-house Yard; well, he lives there; and his name is

Simon.”

“And does he keep up any communication with his brother, think you?”

said Gerard.

“Nay, I know no more; at least at present,” said their host. “The

secretary asked me about a person absent without leave for twenty years

and who was said to have no relations, I found you one and a very near

one. You are at the station and you have got your ticket. The American

gentleman’s violent. Here’s the police. I must take a high tone.” And

with these words Chaffing Jack quitted them.

In the meantime, we must not forget Dandy Mick and his two young friends

whom he had so generously offered to treat to the Temple.

“Well, what do you think of it?” asked Caroline of Harriet in a whisper

as they entered the splendid apartment.

“It’s just what I thought the Queen lived in,” said Harriet; “but indeed

I’m all of a flutter.”

“Well, don’t look as if you were,” said her friend.

“Come along gals,” said Mick; “who’s afraid? Here, we’ll sit down at

this table. Now, what shall we have? Here waiter; I say waiter!”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir.”

“Well, why don’t you come when I call,” said Mick with a consequential

air. “I have been hallooing these ten minutes. Couple of glasses of bar

mixture for these ladies and go of gin for myself. And I say waiter,

stop, stop, don’t be in such a deuced hurry; do you think folks can

drink without eating;--sausages for three; and damme, take care they are

not burnt.”

“Yes, sir, directly, directly.”

“That’s the way to talk to these fellows,” said Mick with a

self-satisfied air, and perfectly repaid by the admiring gaze of his

companions.

“It’s pretty Miss Harriet,” said Mick looking up at the ceiling with a

careless nil admirari glance.

“Oh! it is beautiful,” said Harriet.

“You never were here before; it’s the only place. That’s the Lady of the

Lake,” he added, pointing to a picture; “I’ve seen her at the Circus,

with real water.”

The hissing sausages crowning a pile of mashed potatoes were placed

before them; the delicate rummers of the Mowbray slap-bang, for the

girls; the more masculine pewter measure for their friend.

“Are the plates very hot?” said Mick;

“Very sir.”

“Hot plates half the battle,” said Mick.

“Now, Caroline; here, Miss Harriet; don’t take away your plate, wait for

the mash; they mash their taters here very elegant.”

It was a very happy and very merry party. Mick delighted to help his

guests, and to drink their healths.

“Well,” said he when the waiter had cleared away their plates, and left

them to their less substantial luxuries. “Well,” said Mick, sipping a

renewed glass of gin twist and leaning back in his chair, “say what they

please, there’s nothing like life.”

“At the Traffords’,” said Caroline, “the greatest fun we ever had was a

singing class.”

“I pity them poor devils in the country,” said Mick; “we got some

of them at Collinson’s--come from Suffolk they say; what they call

hagricultural labourers, a very queer lot, indeed.”

“Ah! them’s the himmigrants,” said Caroline; “they’re sold out of

slavery, and sent down by Pickford’s van into the labour market to bring

down our wages.”

“We’ll teach them a trick or two before they do that,” urged Mick.

“Where are you, Miss Harriet?”

“I’m at Wiggins and Webster’s, sir.”

“Where they clean machinery during meal-time; that won’t do,” said Mick.

“I see one of your partners coming in,” said Mick, making many signals

to a person who very soon joined them. “Well, Devilsdust, how are you?”

This was the familiar appellation of a young gentleman, who really had

no other, baptismal or patrimonial. About a fortnight after his mother

had introduced him into the world, she returned to her factory and put

her infant out to nurse, that is to say, paid threepence a week to an

old woman who takes charge of these new-born babes for the day, and

gives them back at night to their mothers as they hurriedly return from

the scene of their labour to the dungeon or the den, which is still by

courtesy called “home.” The expense is not great: laudanum and treacle,

administered in the shape of some popular elixir, affords these

innocents a brief taste of the sweets of existence, and keeping

them quiet, prepares them for the silence of their impending grave.

Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in England, as it

is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently has not

yet engaged the attention of the Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel in Foreign Parts. But the vital principle is an impulse from an

immortal artist, and sometimes baffles, even in its tenderest phasis,

the machinations of society for its extinction. There are infants

that will defy even starvation and poison, unnatural mothers and demon

nurses. Such was the nameless one of whom we speak. We cannot say he

thrived; but he would not die. So at two years of age, his mother being

lost sight of, and the weekly payment having ceased, he was sent out

in the street to “play,” in order to be run over. Even this expedient

failed. The youngest and the feeblest of the band of victims, Juggernaut

spared him to Moloch. All his companions were disposed of. Three

months’ “play” in the streets got rid of this tender company,--shoeless,

half-naked, and uncombed,--whose age varied from two to five years. Some

were crushed, some were lost, some caught cold and fevers, crept back

to their garret or their cellars, were dosed with Godfrey’s cordial, and

died in peace. The nameless one would not disappear. He always got out

of the way of the carts and horses, and never lost his own. They gave

him no food: he foraged for himself, and shared with the dogs the

garbage of the streets. But still he lived; stunted and pale, he defied

even the fatal fever which was the only habitant of his cellar that

never quitted it. And slumbering at night on a bed of mouldering straw,

his only protection against the plashy surface of his den, with a

dungheap at his head and a cesspool at his feet, he still clung to the

only roof which shielded him from the tempest.

At length when the nameless one had completed his fifth year, the pest

which never quitted the nest of cellars of which he was a citizen, raged

in the quarter with such intensity, that the extinction of its swarming

population was menaced. The haunt of this child was peculiarly visited.

All the children gradually sickened except himself; and one night when

he returned home he found the old woman herself dead, and surrounded

only by corpses. The child before this had slept on the same bed of

straw with a corpse, but then there were also breathing beings for his

companions. A night passed only with corpses seemed to him in itself

a kind of death. He stole out of the cellar, quitted the quarter of

pestilence, and after much wandering laid down near the door of a

factory. Fortune had guided him. Soon after break of day, he was woke

by the sound of the factory bell, and found assembled a crowd of

men, women, and children. The door opened, they entered, the child

accompanied them. The roll was called; his unauthorized appearance

noticed; he was questioned; his acuteness excited attention. A child

was wanted in the Wadding Hole, a place for the manufacture of waste and

damaged cotton, the refuse of the mills, which is here worked up into

counterpanes and coverlids. The nameless one was prefered to the vacant

post, received even a salary, more than that, a name; for as he had

none, he was christened on the spot--DEVILSDUST.

Devilsdust had entered life so early that at seventeen he combined

the experience of manhood with the divine energy of youth. He was a

first-rate workman and received high wages; he had availed himself of

the advantages of the factory school; he soon learnt to read and write

with facility, and at the moment of our history, was the leading spirit

of the Shoddy-Court Literary and Scientific Institute. His great friend,

his only intimate, was Dandy Mick. The apparent contrariety of their

qualities and structure perhaps led to this. It is indeed the most

assured basis of friendship. Devilsdust was dark and melancholy;

ambitious and discontented; full of thought, and with powers of patience

and perseverance that alone amounted to genius. Mick was as brilliant as

his complexion; gay, irritable, evanescent, and unstable. Mick enjoyed

life; his friend only endured it; yet Mick was always complaining of

the lowness of his wages and the greatness of his toil; while Devilsdust

never murmured, but read and pondered on the rights of labour, and

sighed to vindicate his order.

“I have some thoughts of joining the Total Abstinence,” said Devilsdust;

“ever since I read Stephen Morley’s address it has been in my mind.

We shall never get our rights till we leave off consuming exciseable

articles; and the best thing to begin with is liquors.”

“Well, I could do without liquors myself,” said Caroline. “If I was a

lady, I would never drink anything except fresh milk from the cow.”

“Tea for my money,” said Harriet; “I must say there’s nothing I grudge

for good tea. Now I keep house, I mean always to drink the best.”

“Well, you have not yet taken the pledge, Dusty,” said Mick: “and so

suppose we order a go of gin and talk this matter of temperance over.”

Devilsdust was manageable in little things, especially by Mick; he

acceded, and seated himself at their table.

“I suppose you have heard this last dodge of Shuffle and Screw, Dusty,”

said Mick.

“What’s that?”

“Every man had his key given him this evening--half-a-crown a week round

deducted from wages for rent. Jim Plastow told them he lodged with his

father and didn’t want a house; upon which they said he must let it.”

“Their day will come,” said Devilsdust, thoughtfully. “I really think

that those Shuffle and Screws are worse even than Truck and Trett. You

knew where you were with those fellows; it was five-and-twenty per cent,

off wages and very bad stuff for your money. But as for Shuffle and

Screw, what with their fines and their keys, a man never knows what

he has to spend. Come,” he added filling his glass, “let’s have a

toast--Confusion to Capital.”

“That’s your sort,” said Mick. “Come, Caroline; drink to your partner’s

toast, Miss Harriet. Money’s the root of all evil, which nobody can

deny. We’ll have the rights of labour yet; the ten-hour bill, no fines,

and no individuals admitted to any work who have not completed their

sixteenth year.”

“No, fifteen,” said Caroline eagerly.

“The people won’t bear their grievances much longer,” said Devilsdust.

“I think one of the greatest grievances the people have,” said Caroline,

“is the beaks serving notice on Chaffing Jack to shut up the Temple on

Sunday nights.”

“It is infamous,” said Mick; “aynt we to have no recreation? One might

as well live in Suffolk, where the immigrants come from, and where they

are obliged to burn ricks to pass the time.”

“As for the rights of labour,” said Harriet, “the people goes for

nothing with this machinery.”

“And you have opened your mouth to say a very sensible thing Miss

Harriet,” said Mick; “but if I were Lord Paramount for eight-and-forty

hours, I’d soon settle that question. Wouldn’t I fire a broadside into

their ‘double deckers?’ The battle of Navarino at Mowbray fair with

fourteen squibs from the admiral’s ship going off at the same time,

should be nothing to it.”

“Labour may be weak, but Capital is weaker,” said Devilsdust. “Their

capital is all paper.”

“I tell you what,” said Mick, with a knowing look, and in a lowered

tone, “The only thing, my hearties, that can save this here nation,

is--a--good strike.”

Book 2 Chapter 11

“Your lordship’s dinner is served,” announced the groom of the chambers

to Lord de Mowbray; and the noble lord led out Lady Marney. The rest

followed. Egremont found himself seated next to Lady Maud Fitz-Warene,

the younger daughter of the earl. Nearly opposite to him was Lady Joan.

The ladies Fitz-Warene were sandy girls, somewhat tall, with rather good

figures and a grand air; the eldest very ugly, the second rather pretty;

and yet both very much alike. They had both great conversational

powers, though in different ways. Lady Joan was doctrinal; Lady Maud

inquisitive: the first often imparted information which you did not

previously possess; the other suggested ideas which were often before

in your own mind, but lay tranquil and unobserved, till called into

life and notice by her fanciful and vivacious tongue. Both of them were

endowed with a very remarkable self-possession; but Lady Joan wanted

softness, and Lady Maud repose.

This was the result of the rapid observation of Egremont, who was

however experienced in the world and quick in his detection of manner

and of character.

The dinner was stately, as becomes the high nobility. There were many

guests, yet the table seemed only a gorgeous spot in the capacious

chamber. The side tables were laden with silver vases and golden shields

arranged on shelves of crimson velvet. The walls were covered with

Fitz-Warenes, De Mowbrays, and De Veres. The attendants glided about

without noise, and with the precision of military discipline. They

watched your wants, they anticipated your wishes, and they supplied all

you desired with a lofty air of pompous devotion.

“You came by the railroad?” enquired Lord de Mowbray mournfully, of Lady

Marney.

“From Marham; about ten miles from us,” replied her ladyship.

“A great revolution!”

“Isn’t it?”

“I fear it has a very dangerous tendency to equality,” said his lordship

shaking his head; “I suppose Lord Marney gives them all the opposition

in his power.”

“There is nobody so violent against railroads as George,” said Lady

Marney; “I cannot tell you what he does not do! He organized the whole

of our division against the Marham line!”

“I rather counted on him,” said Lord de Mowbray, “to assist me in

resisting this joint branch here; but I was surprised to learn he had

consented.”

“Not until the compensation was settled,” innocently remarked Lady

Marney; “George never opposes them after that. He gave up all opposition

to the Marham line when they agreed to his terms.”

“And yet,” said Lord de Mowbray, “I think if Lord Marney would take a

different view of the case and look to the moral consequences, he would

hesitate. Equality, Lady Marney, equality is not our metier. If we

nobles do not make a stand against the levelling spirit of the age, I

am at a loss to know who will fight the battle. You many depend upon it

that these railroads are very dangerous things.”

“I have no doubt of it. I suppose you have heard of Lady Vanilla’s trip

from Birmingham? Have you not, indeed! She came up with Lady Laura, and

two of the most gentlemanlike men sitting opposite her; never met, she

says, two more intelligent men. She begged one of them at Wolverhampton

to change seats with her, and he was most politely willing to comply

with her wishes, only it was necessary that his companion should move

at the same time, for they were chained together! Two of the swell mob,

sent to town for picking a pocket at Shrewsbury races.”

“A countess and a felon! So much for public conveyances,” said

Lord Mowbray. “But Lady Vanilla is one of those who will talk with

everybody.”

“She is very amusing though,” said Lady Marney.

“I dare say she is,” said Lord de Mowbray; “but believe me, my dear Lady

Marney, in these times especially, a countess has something else to do

than be amusing.”

“You think as property has its duties as well as its rights, rank has

its bores as well as its pleasures.”

Lord Mowbray mused.

“How do you do, Mr Jermyn?” said a lively little lady with sparkling

beady black eyes, and a very yellow complexion, though with good

features; “when did you arrive in the North? I have been fighting your

battles finely since I saw you,” she added shaking her head, rather with

an expression of admonition than of sympathy.

“You are always fighting one’s battles Lady Firebrace; it is very kind

of you. If it were not for you, we should none of us know how much we

are all abused,” replied Mr Jermyn, a young M.P.

“They say you gave the most radical pledges,” said Lady Firebrace

eagerly, and not without malice. “I heard Lord Muddlebrains say that if

he had had the least idea of your principles, you would not have had his

influence.”

“Muddlebrains can’t command a single vote,” said Mr Jermyn. “He is a

political humbug, the greatest of all humbugs; a man who swaggers about

London clubs and consults solemnly about his influence, and in the

country is a nonentity.”

“Well, that can’t be said of Lord Clarinel,” rejoined Lady Firebrace.

“And have you been defending me against Lord Clarinel’s attacks?”

inquired Mr Jermyn.

“No; but I am going to Wemsbury, and then I have no doubt I shall have

the opportunity.”

“I am going to Wemsbury myself,” said Mr Jermyn.

“And what does Lord Clarinel think of your pledge about the pension

list?” said Lady Firebrace daunted but malignant.

“He never told me,” said Mr Jermyn.

“I believe you did not pledge yourself to the ballot?” inquired Lady

Firebrace with an affected air of inquisitiveness.

“It is a subject that requires some reflection,” said Mr Jermyn. “I must

consult some profound politician like Lady Firebrace. By the bye, you

told my mother that the conservatives would have a majority of fifteen.

Do you think they will have as much?” said Mr Jermyn with an innocent

air, it now being notorious that the whig administration had a majority

of double that amount.

“I said Mr Tadpole gave us a majority of fifteen,” said Lady Firebrace.

“I knew he was in error; because I had happened to see Lord Melbourne’s

own list, made up to the last hour; and which gave the government a

majority of sixty. It was only shown to three members of the cabinet,”

she added in a tone of triumphant mystery.

Lady Firebrace, a great stateswoman among the tories, was proud of

an admirer who was a member of the whig cabinet. She was rather an

agreeable guest in a country-house, with her extensive correspondence,

and her bulletins from both sides. Tadpole flattered by her notice, and

charmed with female society that talked his own slang, and entered with

affected enthusiasm into all his dirty plots and barren machinations,

was vigilant in his communications; while her whig cavalier, an

easy individual who always made love by talking or writing politics,

abandoned himself without reserve, and instructed Lady Firebrace

regularly after every council. Taper looked grave at this connection

between Tadpole and Lady Firebrace; and whenever an election was

lost, or a division stuck in the mud, he gave the cue with a nod and a

monosyllable, and the conservative pack that infests clubs, chattering

on subjects of which it is impossible they can know anything, instantly

began barking and yelping, denouncing traitors, and wondering how the

leaders could be so led by the nose, and not see that which was flagrant

to the whole world. If, on the other hand, the advantage seemed to go

with the Canton Club, or the opposition benches, then it was the whig

and liberal hounds who howled and moaned, explaining everything by

the indiscretion, infatuation, treason, of Lord Viscount Masque, and

appealing to the initiated world of idiots around them, whether any

party could ever succeed, hampered by such men, and influenced by such

means.

The best of the joke was, that all this time Lord Masque and Tadpole

were two old foxes, neither of whom conveyed to Lady Firebrace a single

circumstance but with the wish, intention, and malice aforethought, that

it should be communicated to his rival.

“I must get you to interest Lord de Mowbray in our cause,” said Sir

Vavasour Firebrace, in an insinuating voice to his neighbour, Lady Joan;

“I have sent him a large packet of documents. You know, he is one of us;

still one of us. Once a baronet, always a baronet. The dignity merges,

but does not cease; and happy as I am to see one covered with high

honours, who is in every way so worthy of them, still I confess to you

it is not so much as Earl de Mowbray that your worthy father interests

me, as in his undoubted character and capacity of Sir Altamont

Fitz-Warene, baronet.”

“You have the data on which you move I suppose well digested,” said Lady

Joan, attentive but not interested.

“The case is clear; as far as equity is concerned, irresistible; indeed

the late king pledged himself to a certain point. But if you would do me

the favour of reading our memorial.”

“The proposition is not one adapted to our present civilisation,” said

Lady Joan. “A baronetcy has become the distinction of the middle class;

a physician, our physician for example, is a baronet; and I dare say

some of our tradesmen; brewers, of people of that class. An attempt to

elevate them into an order of nobility, however inferior, would partake

in some degree of the ridiculous.”

“And has the duke escaped his gout this year?” enquired Lord Marney of

Lady de Mowbray.

“A very slight touch; I never knew my father so well. I expect you will

meet him here. We look for him daily.”

“I shall be delighted; I hope he will come to Marney in October. I keep

the blue ribbon cover for him.”

“What you suggest is very just,” said Egremont to Lady Maud. “If we only

in our own spheres made the exertion, the general effect would be great.

Marney Abbey, for instance, I believe one of the finest of our monastic

remains,--that indeed is not disputed--diminished yearly to repair

barns; the cattle browsing in the nave; all this might be prevented, If

my brother would not consent to preserve or to restore, still any member

of the family, even I, without expense, only with a little zeal as you

say, might prevent mischief, might stop at least demolition.”

“If this movement in the church had only revived a taste for Christian

architecture,” said Lady Maud, “it would not have been barren, and it

has done so much more! But I am surprised that old families can be so

dead to our national art; so full of our ancestors, their exploits,

their mind. Indeed you and I have no excuse for such indifference Mr

Egremont.”

“And I do not think I shall ever again be justly accused of it,” replied

Egremont, “you plead its cause so effectively. But to tell you the

truth, I have been thinking of late about these things; monasteries

and so on; the influence of the old church system on the happiness and

comfort of the People.”

“And on the tone of the Nobles--do not you think so?” said Lady Maud. “I

know it is the fashion to deride the crusades, but do not you think

they had their origin in a great impulse, and in a certain sense, led

to great results? Pardon me, if I speak with emphasis, but I never can

forget I am a daughter of the first crusaders.”

“The tone of society is certainly lower than of yore,” said Egremont.

“It is easy to say we view the past through a fallacious medium. We have

however ample evidence that men feel less deeply than of old and

act with less devotion. But how far is this occasioned by the modern

position of our church? That is the question.”

“You must speak to Mr St Lys about that,” said Lady Maud. “Do you know

him?” she added in a lowered tone.

“No; is he here?”

“Next to mamma.”

And looking in that direction, on the left hand of Lady Mowbray,

Egremont beheld a gentleman in the last year of his youth, if youth

according to the scale of Hippocrates cease at thirty-five. He was

distinguished by that beauty of the noble English blood, of which in

these days few types remain; the Norman tempered by the Saxon; the fire

of conquest softened by integrity; and a serene, though inflexible habit

of mind. The chains of convention, an external life grown out of

all proportion with that of the heart and mind, have destroyed this

dignified beauty. There is no longer in fact an aristocracy in England,

for the superiority of the animal man is an essential quality of

aristocracy. But that it once existed, any collection of portraits from

the sixteenth century will show.

Aubrey St Lys was a younger son of the most ancient Norman family in

England. The Conqueror had given them the moderate estate on which they

now lived, and which, in spite of so many civil conflicts and religious

changes, they had handed down to each other, from generation to

generation, for eight centuries. Aubrey St Lys was the vicar of Mowbray.

He had been the college tutor of the late Lord Fitz-Warene, whose mind

he had formed, whose bright abilities he had cultivated, who adored him.

To that connection he owed the slight preferment which he possessed, but

which was all he desired. A bishopric would not have tempted him from

his peculiar charge.

In the centre of the town of Mowbray teeming with its toiling thousands,

there rose a building which might vie with many of the cathedrals of

our land. Beautiful its solemn towers, its sculptured western front;

beautiful its columned aisles and lofty nave; its sparkling shrine

and delicate chantry; most beautiful the streaming glories of its vast

orient light!

This magnificent temple, built by the monks of Mowbray, and once

connected with their famous house of which not a trace now remained, had

in time become the parish church of an obscure village, whose

population could not have filled one of its side chapels. These strange

vicissitudes of ecclesiastical buildings are not singular in the north

of England.

Mowbray Church remained for centuries the wonder of passing peasants,

and the glory of county histories. But there is a magic in beautiful

buildings which exercises an irresistible influence over the mind of

man. One of the reasons urged for the destruction of the monasteries

after the dispersion of their inhabitants, was the pernicious influence

of their solemn and stately forms on the memories and imagination of

those that beheld them. It was impossible to connect systematic crime

with the creators of such divine fabrics. And so it was with Mowbray

Church. When manufactures were introduced into this district, which

abounded with all the qualities which were necessary for their

successful pursuit, Mowbray offering equal though not superior

advantages to other positions, was accorded the preference, “because it

possessed such a beautiful church.” The lingering genius of the monks of

Mowbray hovered round the spot which they had adorned, and sanctified,

and loved; and thus they had indirectly become the authors of its

present greatness and prosperity.

Unhappily for a long season the vicars of Mowbray had been little

conscious of their mission. An immense population gathered round the

sacred citadel and gradually spread on all sides of it for miles. But

the parish church for a long time remained the only one at Mowbray when

the population of the town exceeded that of some European capitals. And

even in the parish church the frigid spell of Erastian self-complacency

fatally prevailed. A scanty congregation gathered together for form, and

as much influenced by party as higher sentiments. Going to church was

held more genteel than going to meeting. The principal tradesmen of

the neighbouring great houses deemed it more “aristocratic;” using

a favourite and hackneyed epithet which only expressed their own

servility. About the time the Church Commission issued, the congregation

of Mowbray was approaching zero. There was an idea afloat for a time of

making it the seat of a new bishopric; the cathedral was ready; another

instance of the influence of fine art. But there was no residence for

the projected prelate, and a jobbing bishop on the commission was afraid

that he might have to contribute to building one. So the idea died away;

and the living having become vacant at this moment, instead of a bishop,

Mowbray received a humble vicar in the shape of Aubrey St Lys, who came

among a hundred thousand heathens to preach “the Unknown God.”

Book 2 Chapter 12

“And how do you find the people about you, Marney?” said Lord de Mowbray

seating himself on a sofa by his guest.

“All very well, my lord,” replied the earl, who ever treated Lord

de Mowbray with a certain degree of ceremony, especially when the

descendant of the crusaders affected the familiar. There was something

of a Puck-like malignity in the temperament of Lord Marney, which

exhibited itself in a remarkable talent for mortifying persons in a

small way; by a gesture, an expression, a look, cloaked too very often

with all the character of profound deference. The old nobility of

Spain delighted to address each other only by their names, when in the

presence of a spick-and-span grandee; calling each other, “Infantado,”

“Sidonia,” “Ossuna,” and then turning round with the most distinguished

consideration, and appealing to the Most Noble Marquis of Ensenada.

“They begin to get a little uneasy here,” said Lord de Mowbray.

“We have nothing to complain of,” said Lord Marney. “We continue

reducing the rates, and as long as we do that the country must improve.

The workhouse test tells. We had the other day a case of incendiarism,

which frightened some people: but I inquired into it, and am quite

satisfied it originated in purely accidental circumstances; at least

nothing to do with wages. I ought to be a judge, for it was on my own

property.”

“And what is the rate of wages, in your part of the world, Lord Marney?”

inquired Mr St Lys who was standing by.

“Oh! good enough: not like your manufacturing districts; but people

who work in the open air, instead of a furnace, can’t expect, and

don’t require such. They get their eight shillings a week; at least

generally.”

“Eight shillings a week!” said Mr St Lys. “Can a labouring man with a

family, perhaps of eight children, live on eight shillings a week!”

“Oh! as for that,” said Lord Marney; “they get more than that, because

there is beer-money allowed, at least to a great extent among us,

though I for one do not approve of the practice, and that makes nearly

a shilling per week additional; and then some of them have potatoe

grounds, though I am entirely opposed to that system.

“And yet,” said Mr St Lys, “how they contrive to live is to me

marvellous.”

“Oh! as for that,” said Lord Marney, “I have generally found the higher

the wages the worse the workman. They only spend their money in the

beer-shops. They are the curse of this country.”

“But what is a poor man to do,” said Mr St Lys; “after his day’s work if

he returns to his own roof and finds no home: his fire extinguished,

his food unprepared; the partner of his life, wearied with labour in the

field or the factory, still absent, or perhaps in bed from exhaustion,

or because she has returned wet to the skin, and has no change of

raiment for her relief. We have removed woman from her sphere; we may

have reduced wages by her introduction into the market of labour; but

under these circumstances what we call domestic life is a condition

impossible to be realized for the people of this country; and we must

not therefore be surprised that they seek solace or rather refuge in the

beer-shop.”

Lord Marney looked up at Mr St Lys, with a stare of high-bred

impertinence, and then carelessly observed, without directing his

words to him, “They may say what they like, but it is all an affair of

population.”

“I would rather believe that it is an affair of resources,” said Mr St

Lys; “not what is the amount of our population, but what is the amount

of our resources for their maintenance.

“It comes to the same thing,” said Lord Marney. “Nothing can put this

country right but emigration on a great scale; and as the government do

not choose to undertake it, I have commenced it for my own defence on a

small scale. I will take care that the population of my parishes is not

increased. I build no cottages and I destroy all I can; and I am not

ashamed or afraid to say so.”

“You have declared war to the cottage, then,” said Mr St Lys, smiling.

“It is not at the first sound so startling a cry as war to the castle.”

“But you think it may lead to it?” said Lord Mowbray.

“I love not to be a prophet of evil,” said Mr St Lys.

Lord Marney rose from his seat and addressed Lady Firebrace, whose

husband in another part of the room had caught Mr Jermyn, and was

opening his mind on “the question of the day;” Lady Maud, followed

by Egremont, approached Mr St Lys, and said, “Mr Egremont has a great

feeling for Christian architecture, Mr St Lys, and wishes particularly

to visit our church of which we are so proud.” And in a few moments they

were seated together and engaged in conversation.

Lord Mowbray placed himself by the side of Lady Marney, who was seated

by his countess.

“Oh! how I envy you at Marney,” he exclaimed. “No manufactures, no

smoke; living in the midst of a beautiful park and surrounded by a

contented peasantry!”

“It is very delightful,” said Lady Marney, “but then we are so very

dull; we have really no neighbourhood.”

“I think that such a great advantage,” said Lady Mowbray: “I must say

I like my friends from London. I never know what to say to the people

here. Excellent people, the very best people in the world; the way they

behaved to poor dear Fitz-Warene, when they wanted him to stand for

the county, I never can forget; but then they do not know the people we

know, or do the things we do; and when you have gone through the routine

of county questions, and exhausted the weather and all the winds, I am

positively, my dear Lady Marney, aux abois, and then they think you are

proud, when really one is only stupid.”

“I am very fond of work,” said Lady Marney, “and I talk to them always

about it.”

“Ah! you are fortunate, I never could work; and Joan and Maud, they

neither of them work. Maud did embroider a banner once for her brother;

it is in the hall. I think it beautiful; but somehow or other she never

cultivated her talent.”

“For all that has occurred or may occur,” said Mr St Lys to Egremont,

“I blame only the Church. The church deserted the people; and from that

moment the church has been in danger and the people degraded. Formerly

religion undertook to satisfy the noble wants of human nature, and by

its festivals relieved the painful weariness of toil. The day of rest

was consecrated, if not always to elevated thought, at least to sweet

and noble sentiments. The church convened to its solemnities under its

splendid and almost celestial roofs amid the finest monuments of art

that human hands have raised, the whole Christian population; for there,

in the presence of God, all were brethren. It shared equally among all

its prayer, its incense, and its music; its sacred instructions, and the

highest enjoyments that the arts could afford.”

“You believe then in the efficacy of forms and ceremonies?”

“What you call forms and ceremonies represent the divinest instincts of

our nature. Push your aversion to forms and ceremonies to a legitimate

conclusion, and you would prefer kneeling in a barn rather than in a

cathedral. Your tenets would strike at the very existence of all art,

which is essentially spiritual.”

“I am not speaking abstractedly,” said Egremont, “but rather with

reference to the indirect connection of these forms and ceremonies

with another church. The people of this country associate them with an

enthralling superstition and a foreign dominion.”

“With Rome,” said Mr St Lys; “yet forms and ceremonies existed before

Rome.”

“But practically,” said Egremont, “has not their revival in our service

at the present day a tendency to restore the Romish system in this

country?”

“It is difficult to ascertain what may be the practical effect of

certain circumstances among the uninformed,” said Mr St Lys. “The church

of Rome is to be respected as the only Hebraeo-christian church extant;

all other churches established by the Hebrew apostles have disappeared,

but Rome remains; and we must never permit the exaggerated position

which it assumed in the middle centuries to make us forget its early and

apostolical character, when it was fresh from Palestine and as it were

fragrant from Paradise. The church of Rome is sustained by apostolical

succession; but apostolical succession is not an institution complete in

itself; it is a part of a whole; if it be not part of a whole it has no

foundation. The apostles succeeded the prophets. Our Master announced

himself as the last of the prophets. They in their turn were the heirs

of the patriarchs: men who were in direct communication with the Most

High. To men not less favoured than the apostles, the revelation of the

priestly character was made, and those forms and ceremonies ordained,

which the church of Rome has never relinquished. But Rome did not invent

them: upon their practice, the duty of all congregations, we cannot

consent to her founding a claim to supremacy. For would you maintain

then that the church did not exist in the time of the prophets? Was

Moses then not a churchman? And Aaron, was he not a high priest? Ay!

greater than any pope or prelate, whether he be at Rome or at Lambeth.

“In all these church discussions, we are apt to forget that the second

Testament is avowedly only a supplement. Jehovah-Jesus came to complete

the ‘law and the prophets.’ Christianity is completed Judaism, or it is

nothing. Christianity is incomprehensible without Judaism, as Judaism

is incomplete; without Christianity. What has Rome to do with its

completion; what with its commencement? The law was not thundered forth

from the Capitolian mount; the divine atonement was not fulfilled upon

Mons Sacer. No; the order of our priesthood comes directly from Jehovah;

and the forms and ceremonies of His church are the regulations of His

supreme intelligence. Rome indeed boasts that the authenticity of the

second Testament depends upon the recognition of her infallibility. The

authenticity of the second Testament depends upon its congruity with the

first. Did Rome preserve that? I recognize in the church an institution

thoroughly, sincerely, catholic: adapted to all climes and to all ages.

I do not bow to the necessity of a visible head in a defined locality;

but were I to seek for such, it would not be at Rome. I cannot discover

in its history however memorable any testimony of a mission so sublime.

When Omnipotence deigned to be incarnate, the Ineffable Word did not

select a Roman frame. The prophets were not Romans; the apostles were

not Romans; she, who was blessed above all women, I never heard she was

a Roman maiden. No, I should look to a land more distant than Italy, to

a city more sacred even than Rome.”

Book 2 Chapter 13

It was a cloudy, glimmering dawn. A cold withering east wind blew

through the silent streets of Mowbray. The sounds of the night had died

away, the voices of the day had not commenced. There reigned a stillness

complete and absorbing.

Suddenly there is a voice, there is movement. The first footstep of the

new week of toil is heard. A man muffled up in a thick coat, and bearing

in his hand what would seem at the first glance to be a shepherd’s

crook, only its handle is much longer, appears upon the pavement. He

touches a number of windows with great quickness as he moves rapidly

along. A rattling noise sounds upon each pane. The use of the long

handle of his instrument becomes apparent as he proceeds, enabling him

as it does to reach the upper windows of the dwellings whose inmates

he has to rouse. Those inmates are the factory girls, who subscribe

in districts to engage these heralds of the dawn; and by a strict

observance of whose citation they can alone escape the dreaded fine that

awaits those who have not arrived at the door of the factory before the

bell ceases to sound.

The sentry in question, quitting the streets, and stooping through one

of the small archways that we have before noticed, entered a court. Here

lodged a multitude of his employers; and the long crook as it were by

some sleight of hand seemed sounding on both sides and at many windows

at the same moment. Arrived at the end of the court, he was about to

touch the window of the upper story of the last tenement, when that

window opened, and a man, pale and care-worn and in a melancholy voice

spoke to him.

“Simmons,” said the man, “you need not rouse this story any more; my

daughter has left us.”

“Has she left Webster’s?”

“No; but she has left us. She has long murmured at her hard lot; working

like a slave and not for herself. And she has gone, as they all go, to

keep house for herself.”

“That’s a bad business,” said the watchman, in a tone not devoid of

sympathy.

“Almost as bad as for parents to live on their childrens’ wages,”

replied the man mournfully.

“And how is your good woman?”

“As poorly as needs be. Harriet has never been home since Friday night.

She owes you nothing?”

“Not a halfpenny. She was as regular as a little bee and always paid

every Monday morning. I am sorry she has left you, neighbour.”

“The Lord’s will be done. It’s hard times for such as us,” said the man;

and leaving the window open, he retired into his room.

It was a single chamber of which he was the tenant. In the centre,

placed so as to gain the best light which the gloomy situation could

afford, was a loom. In two corners of the room were mattresses placed

on the floor, a check curtain hung upon a string if necessary concealing

them. In one was his sick wife; in the other, three young children:

two girls, the eldest about eight years of age; between them their baby

brother. An iron kettle was by the hearth, and on the mantel-piece, some

candles, a few lucifer matches, two tin mugs, a paper of salt, and an

iron spoon. In a farther part, close to the wall, was a heavy table or

dresser; this was a fixture, as well as the form which was fastened by

it.

The man seated himself at his loom; he commenced his daily task.

“Twelve hours of daily labour at the rate of one penny each hour; and

even this labour is mortgaged! How is this to end? Is it rather not

ended?” And he looked around him at his chamber without resources: no

food, no fuel, no furniture, and four human beings dependent on him, and

lying in their wretched beds because they had no clothes. “I cannot sell

my loom,” he continued, “at the price of old firewood, and it cost me

gold. It is not vice that has brought me to this, nor indolence, nor

imprudence. I was born to labour, and I was ready to labour. I loved my

loom and my loom loved me. It gave me a cottage in my native village,

surrounded by a garden of whose claims on my solicitude it was not

jealous. There was time for both. It gave me for a wife the maiden

that I had ever loved; and it gathered my children round my hearth with

plenteousness and peace. I was content: I sought no other lot. It is not

adversity that makes me look back upon the past with tenderness.

“Then why am I here? Why am I, and six hundred thousand subjects of

the Queen, honest, loyal, and industrious, why are we, after manfully

struggling for years, and each year sinking lower in the scale, why are

we driven from our innocent and happy homes, our country cottages that

we loved, first to bide in close towns without comforts, and gradually

to crouch into cellars, or find a squalid lair like this, without even

the common necessaries of existence; first the ordinary conveniences of

life, then raiment, and, at length, food, vanishing from us.

“It is that the Capitalist has found a slave that has supplanted the

labour and ingenuity of man. Once he was an artizan: at the best, he now

only watches machines; and even that occupation slips from his grasp, to

the woman and the child. The capitalist flourishes, he amasses immense

wealth; we sink, lower and lower; lower than the beasts of burthen; for

they are fed better than we are, cared for more. And it is just, for

according to the present system they are more precious. And yet they

tell us that the interests of Capital and of Labour are identical.

“If a society that has been created by labour suddenly becomes

independent of it, that society is bound to maintain the race whose only

property is labour, from the proceeds of that property, which has not

ceased to be productive.

“When the class of the Nobility were supplanted in France, they did not

amount in number to one-third of us Hand-Loom weavers; yet all Europe

went to war to avenge their wrongs, every state subscribed to maintain

them in their adversity, and when they were restored to their own

country, their own land supplied them with an immense indemnity. Who

cares for us? Yet we have lost our estates. Who raises a voice for us?

Yet we are at least as innocent as the nobility of France. We sink

among no sighs except our own. And if they give us sympathy--what

then? Sympathy is the solace of the Poor; but for the Rich, there is

Compensation.”

“Is that Harriet?” said his wife moving in her bed.

The Hand-Loom weaver was recalled from his reverie to the urgent misery

that surrounded him.

“No!” he replied in a quick hoarse voice, “it is not Harriet.”

“Why does not Harriet come?”

“She will come no more!” replied the weaver; “I told you so last night:

she can bear this place no longer; and I am not surprised.”

“How are we to get food then?” rejoined his wife; “you ought not to have

let her leave us. You do nothing, Warner. You get no wages yourself; and

you have let the girl escape.”

“I will escape myself if you say that again,” said the weaver: “I have

been up these three hours finishing this piece which ought to have been

taken home on Saturday night.”

“But you have been paid for it beforehand. You get nothing for your

work. A penny an hour! What sort of work is it, that brings a penny an

hour?”

“Work that you have often admired, Mary; and has before this gained a

prize. But if you don’t like the work,” said the man quitting his loom,

“let it alone. There was enough yet owing on this piece to have allowed

us to break our fast. However, no matter; we must starve sooner or

later. Let us begin at once.”

“No, no, Philip! work. Let us break our fast come what may.”

“Twit me no more then,” said the weaver resuming his seat, “or I throw

the shuttle for the last time.”

“I will not taunt you,” said his wife in a kinder tone. “I was wrong; I

am sorry; but I am very ill. It is not for myself I speak; I want not to

eat; I have no appetite; my lips are so very parched. But the children,

the children went supperless to bed, and they will wake soon.”

“Mother, we ayn’t asleep,” said the elder girl.

“No, we aynt asleep, mother,” said her sister; “we heard all that you

said to father.”

“And baby?”

“He sleeps still.”

“I shiver very much!” said the mother. “It’s a cold day. Pray shut the

window Warner. I see the drops upon the pane; it is raining. I wonder if

the persons below would lend us one block of coal.”

“We have borrowed too often,” said Warner.

“I wish there were no such thing as coal in the land,” said his wife,

“and then the engines would not be able to work; and we should have our

rights again.”

“Amen!” said Warner.

“Don’t you think Warner,” said his wife, “that you could sell that piece

to some other person, and owe Barber for the money he advanced?”

“No!” said her husband shaking his head. “I’ll go straight.”

“And let your children starve,” said his wife, “when you could get five

or six shillings at once. But so it always was with you! Why did not you

go to the machines years ago like other men and so get used to them?”

“I should have been supplanted by this time,” said Warner, “by a girl or

a woman! It would have been just as bad!”

“Why there was your friend Walter Gerard; he was the same as you, and

yet now he gets two pound a-week; at least I have often heard you say

so.”

“Walter Gerard is a man of great parts,” said Warner, “and might have

been a master himself by this time had he cared.”

“And why did he not?”

“He had no wife and children,” said Warner; “he was not so blessed.”

The baby woke and began to cry.

“Ah! my child!” exclaimed the mother. “That wicked Harriet! Here Amelia,

I have a morsel of crust here. I saved it yesterday for baby; moisten

it in water, and tie it up in this piece of calico: he will suck it; it

will keep him quiet; I can bear anything but his cry.”

“I shall have finished my job by noon,” said Warner; “and then, please

God, we shall break our fast.”

“It is yet two hours to noon,” said his wife. “And Barber always keeps

you so long! I cannot bear that Barber: I dare say he will not advance

you money again as you did not bring the job home on Saturday night. If

I were you, Philip, I would go and sell the piece unfinished at once to

one of the cheap shops.”

“I have gone straight all my life,” said Warner.

“And much good it has done you,” said his wife.

“My poor Amelia! How she shivers! I think the sun never touches this

house. It is indeed a most wretched place!”

“It will not annoy you long, Mary,” said her husband: “I can pay no

more rent; and I only wonder they have not been here already to take the

week.”

“And where are we to go?” said the wife.

“To a place which certainly the sun never touches,” said her husband,

with a kind of malice in his misery,--“to a cellar!”

“Oh! why was I ever born!” exclaimed his wife. “And yet I was so happy

once! And it is not our fault. I cannot make it out Warner, why you

should not get two pounds a-week like Walter Gerard?”

“Bah!” said the husband.

“You said he had no family,” continued his wife. “I thought he had a

daughter.”

“But she is no burthen to him. The sister of Mr Trafford is the Superior

of the convent here, and she took Sybil when her mother died, and

brought her up.”

“Oh! then she is a nun?”

“Not yet; but I dare say it will end in it.”

“Well, I think I would even sooner starve,” said his wife, “than my

children should be nuns.”

At this moment there was a knocking at the door. Warner descended from

his loom and opened it.

“Lives Philip Warner here?” enquired a clear voice of peculiar

sweetness.

“My name is Warner.”

“I come from Walter Gerard,” continued the voice. “Your letter reached

him only last night. The girl at whose house your daughter left it has

quitted this week past Mr Trafford’s factory.”

“Pray enter.”

And there entered SYBIL.

Book 2 Chapter 14

“Your wife is ill?” said Sybil.

“Very!” replied Warner’s wife. “Our daughter has behaved infamously to

us. She has quitted us without saying by your leave or with your leave.

And her wages were almost the only thing left to us; for Philip is not

like Walter Gerard you see: he cannot earn two pounds a-week, though why

he cannot I never could understand.”

“Hush, hush, wife!” said Warner. “I speak I apprehend to Gerard’s

daughter?”

“Just so.”

“Ah! this is good and kind; this is like old times, for Walter Gerard

was my friend, when I was not exactly as I am now.”

“He tells me so: he sent a messenger to me last night to visit you this

morning. Your letter reached him only yesterday.”

“Harriet was to give it to Caroline,” said the wife. “That’s the girl

who has done all the mischief and inveigled her away. And she has left

Trafford’s works, has she? Then I will be bound she and Harriet are

keeping house together.”

“You suffer?” said Sybil, moving to the bed-side of the woman; “give me

your hand,” she added in a soft sweet tone. “‘Tis hot.”

“I feel very cold,” said the woman. “Warner would have the window open,

till the rain came in.”

“And you, I fear, are wet,” said Warner, addressing Sybil, and

interrupting his wife.

“Very slightly. And you have no fire. Ah! I have brought some things for

you, but not fuel.”

“If he would only ask the person down stairs,” said his wife, “for a

block of coal; I tell him, neighbours could hardly refuse; but he never

will do anything; he says he has asked too often.”

“I will ask,” said Sybil. “But first, I have a companion without,” she

added, “who bears a basket for you. Come in, Harold.”

The baby began to cry the moment a large dog entered the room; a young

bloodhound of the ancient breed, such as are now found but in a few old

halls and granges in the north of England. Sybil untied the basket, and

gave a piece of sugar to the screaming infant. Her glance was sweeter

even than her remedy; the infant stared at her with his large blue eyes;

for an instant astonished, and then he smiled.

“Oh! beautiful child!” exclaimed Sybil; and she took the babe up from

the mattress and embraced it.

“You are an angel from heaven,” exclaimed the mother, “and you may well

say beautiful. And only to think of that infamous girl, Harriet, to

desert us all in this way.”

Sybil drew forth the contents of the convent basket, and called Warner’s

attention to them. “Now,” she said, “arrange all this as I tell you, and

I will go down stairs and speak to them below as you wish, Harold rest

there;” and the dog laid himself down in the remotest corner.

“And is that Gerard’s daughter?” said the weaver’s wife. “Only think

what it is to gain two pounds a-week, and bring up your daughters in

that way--instead of such shameless husseys as our Harriet! But with

such wages one can do anything. What have you there, Warner? Is that

tea? Oh! I should like some tea. I do think tea would do me some good.

I have quite a longing for it. Run down, Warner, and ask them to let us

have a kettle of hot water. It is better than all the fire in the world.

Amelia, my dear, do you see what they have sent us. Plenty to eat. Tell

Maria all about it. You are good girls; you will never be like that

infamous Harriet. When you earn wages you will give them to your poor

mother and baby, won’t you?”

“Yes, mother,” said Amelia.

“And father, too,” said Maria.

“And father, too,” said the wife. “He has been a very good father to you

all; and I never can understand why one who works so hard should earn

so little; but I believe it is the fault of those machines. The police

ought to put them down, and then every body would be comfortable.”

Sybil and Warner re-entered; the fire was lit, the tea made, the meal

partaken. An air of comfort, even of enjoyment, was diffused over this

chamber, but a few minutes back so desolate and unhappy.

“Well,” said the wife, raising herself a little up in her bed, “I feel

as if that dish of tea had saved my life. Amelia, have you had any tea?

And Maria? You see what it is to be good girls; the Lord will never

desert you. The day is fast coming when that Harriet will know what the

want of a dish of tea is, with all her fine wages. And I am sure,” she

added, addressing Sybil, “what we all owe to you is not to be told. Your

father well deserves his good fortune, with such a daughter.”

“My father’s fortunes are not much better than his neighbours,” said

Sybil, “but his wants are few; and who should sympathise with the poor,

but the poor? Alas! none else can. Besides, it is the Superior of our

convent that has sent you this meal. What my father can do for you, I

have told your husband. ‘Tis little; but with the favour of heaven, it

may avail. When the people support the people, the divine blessing will

not be wanting.”

“I am sure the divine blessing will never be wanting to you,” said

Warner in a voice of great emotion.

There was silence; the querulous spirit of the wife was subdued by the

tone of Sybil; she revolved in her mind the present and the past; the

children pursued their ungrudged and unusual meal; the daughter of

Gerard, that she might not interfere with their occupation, walked to

the window and surveyed the chink of troubled sky, which was visible in

the court. The wind blew in gusts; the rain beat against the glass. Soon

after this, there was another knock at the door. Harold started from his

repose, and growled. Warner rose, and saying, “they have come for the

rent. Thank God, I am ready,” advanced and opened the door. Two men

offered with courtesy to enter.

“We are strangers,” said he who took the lead, “but would not be such. I

speak to Warner?”

“My name.”

“And I am your spiritual pastor, if to be the vicar of Mowbray entitles

me to that description.”

“Mr St Lys.”

“The same. One of the most valued of my flock, and the most influential

person in this district, has been speaking much of you to me this

morning. You are working for him. He did not hear of you on Saturday

night; he feared you were ill. Mr Barber spoke to me of your distress,

as well as of your good character. I came to express to you my respect

and my sympathy, and to offer you my assistance.”

“You are most good, sir, and Mr Barber too, and indeed, an hour ago, we

were in as great straits--.”

“And are now, sir,” exclaimed his wife interrupting him. “I have been in

this bed a-week, and may never rise from it again; the children have

no clothes; they are pawned; everything is pawned; this morning we had

neither fuel, nor food. And we thought you had come for the rent which

we cannot pay. If it had not been for a dish of tea which was charitably

given me this morning by a person almost as poor as ourselves that is to

say, they live by labour, though their wages are much higher, as high as

two pounds a-week, though how that can be I never shall understand, when

my husband is working twelve hours a day, and gaining only a penny an

hour--if it had not been for this I should have been a corpse; and yet

he says we were in straits, merely because Walter Gerard’s daughter, who

I willingly grant is an angel from heaven for all the good she has done

us, has stepped into our aid. But the poor supporting the poor, as she

well says, what good can come from that!”

During this ebullition, Mr St Lys had surveyed the apartment and

recognised Sybil.

“Sister,” he said when the wife of Warner had ceased, “this is not the

first time we have met under the roof of sorrow.”

Sybil bent in silence, and moved as if she were about to retire: the

wind and rain came dashing against the window. The companion of Mr St

Lys, who was clad in a rough great coat, and was shaking the wet off an

oilskin hat known by the name of a ‘south-wester,’ advanced and said to

her, “It is but a squall, but a very severe one; I would recommend you

to stay for a few minutes.”

She received this remark with courtesy but did not reply.

“I think,” continued the companion of Mr St Lys, “that this is not the

first time also that we have met?”

“I cannot recall our meeting before,” said Sybil.

“And yet it was not many days past; though the sky was so very

different, that it would almost make one believe it was in another land

and another clime.”

Sybil looked at him as if for explanation.

“It was at Marney Abbey,” said the companion of Mr St Lys.

“I was there; and I remember, when about to rejoin my companions, they

were not alone.”

“And you disappeared; very suddenly I thought: for I left the ruins

almost at the same moment as your friends, yet I never saw any of you

again.”

“We took our course; a very rugged one; you perhaps pursued a more even

way.”

“Was it your first visit to Marney?”

“My first and my last. There was no place I more desired to see; no

place of which the vision made me so sad.”

“The glory has departed,” said Egremont mournfully.

“It is not that,” said Sybil: “I was prepared for decay, but not for

such absolute desecration. The Abbey seems a quarry for materials to

repair farm-houses; and the nave a cattle gate. What people they must

be--that family of sacrilege who hold these lands!”

“Hem!” said Egremont. “They certainly do not appear to have much feeling

for ecclesiastical art.”

“And for little else, as we were told,” said Sybil. “There was a fire at

the Abbey farm the day we were there, and from all that reached us, it

would appear the people were as little tendered as the Abbey walls.”

“They have some difficulty perhaps in employing their population in

those parts.”

“You know the country?”

“Not at all: I was travelling in the neighbourhood, and made a diversion

for the sake of seeing an abbey of which I had heard so much.”

“Yes; it was the greatest of the Northern Houses. But they told me the

people were most wretched round the Abbey; nor do I think there is any

other cause for their misery, than the hard hearts of the family that

have got the lands.”

“You feel deeply for the people!” said Egremont looking at her

earnestly.

Sybil returned him a glance expressive of some astonishment, and then

said, “And do not you? Your presence here assures me of it.”

“I humbly follow one who would comfort the unhappy.”

“The charity of Mr St Lys is known to all.”

“And you--you too are a ministering angel.”

“There is no merit in my conduct, for there is no sacrifice. When I

remember what this English people once was; the truest, the freest, and

the bravest, the best-natured and the best-looking, the happiest and

most religious race upon the surface of this globe; and think of them

now, with all their crimes and all their slavish sufferings, their

soured spirits and their stunted forms; their lives without enjoyment

and their deaths without hope; I may well feel for them, even if I were

not the daughter of their blood.”

And that blood mantled to her cheek as she ceased to speak, and her dark

eye gleamed with emotion, and an expression of pride and courage hovered

on her brow. Egremont caught her glance and withdrew his own; his heart

was troubled.

St Lys. who had been in conference with the weaver, left him and went

to the bedside of his wife. Warner advanced to Sybil, and expressed his

feelings for her father, his sense of her goodness. She, observing that

the squall seemed to have ceased, bade him farewell, and calling Harold,

quitted the chamber.

Book 2 Chapter 15

“Where have you been all the morning, Charles?” said Lord Marney coming

into his brother’s dressing-room a few minutes before dinner; “Arabella

had made the nicest little riding party for you and Lady Joan, and you

were to be found nowhere. If you go on in this way, there is no use of

having affectionate relations, or anything else.”

“I have been walking about Mowbray. One should see a factory once in

one’s life.”

“I don’t see the necessity,” said Lord Marney; “I never saw one, and

never intend. Though to be sure, when I hear the rents that Mowbray gets

for his land in their neighbourhood, I must say I wish the worsted works

had answered at Marney. And if it had not been for our poor dear father,

they would.”

“Our family have always been against manufactories,

railroads--everything,” said Egremont.

“Railroads are very good things, with high compensation,” said Lord

Marney; “and manufactories not so bad, with high rents; but, after all,

these are enterprises for the canaille, and I hate them in my heart.”

“But they employ the people, George.”

“The people do not want employment; it is the greatest mistake in the

world; all this employment is a stimulus to population. Never mind that;

what I came in for, is to tell you that both Arabella and myself think

you talk too much to Lady Maud.”

“I like her the best.”

“What has that to do with it my dear fellow? Business is business. Old

Mowbray will make an elder son out of his elder daughter. The affair

is settled; I know it from the best authority. Talking to Lady Maud is

insanity. It is all the same for her as if Fitz-Warene had never died.

And then that great event, which ought to be the foundation of your

fortune, would be perfectly thrown away. Lady Maud, at the best, is

nothing more than twenty thousand pounds and a fat living. Besides, she

is engaged to that parson fellow, St Lys.

“St Lys told me to-day that nothing would ever induce him to marry. He

would practise celibacy, though he would not enjoin it.”

“Enjoin fiddle-stick! How came you to be talking to such a sanctified

imposter; and, I believe, with all his fine phrases, a complete radical.

I tell you what, Charles, you must really make way with Lady Joan. The

grandfather has come to-day, the old Duke. Quite a family party. It

looks so well. Never was such a golden opportunity. And you must be

sharp too. That little Jermyn, with his brown eyes and his white hands,

has not come down here, in the month of August, with no sport of any

kind, for nothing.”

“I shall set Lady Firebrace at him.”

“She is quite your friend, and a very sensible woman too, Charles, and

an ally not to be despised. Lady Joan has a very high opinion of her.

There’s the bell. Well, I shall tell Arabella that you mean to put up

the steam, and Lady Firebrace shall keep Jermyn off. And perhaps it is

as well you did not seem too eager at first. Mowbray Castle, my dear

fellow, in spite of its manufactories, is not to be despised. And with

a little firmness, you could keep the people out of your park. Mowbray

could do it, only he has no pluck. He is afraid people would say he was

the son of a footman.”

The Duke, who was the father of the Countess de Mowbray, was also lord

lieutenant of the county. Although advanced in years, he was still

extremely handsome; with the most winning manners; full of amenity

and grace. He had been a roue in his youth, but seemed now the perfect

representative of a benignant and virtuous old age. He was universally

popular; admired by young men, adored by young ladies. Lord de Mowbray

paid him the most distinguished consideration. It was genuine. However

maliciously the origin of his own father might be represented, nobody

could deprive him of that great fact, his father-in-law; a duke, a duke

of a great house who had intermarried for generations with great houses,

one of the old nobility, and something even loftier.

The county of which his grace was Lord Lieutenant was very proud of its

nobility; and certainly with Marney Abbey at one end, and Mowbray Castle

at the other, it had just cause; but both these illustrious houses

yielded in importance, though not in possessions, to the great peer who

was the governor of the province.

A French actress, clever as French actresses always are, had persuaded,

once upon a time, an easy-tempered monarch of this realm, that the

paternity of her coming babe was a distinction of which his majesty

might be proud. His majesty did not much believe her; but he was a

sensible man, and never disputed a point with a woman; so when the

babe was born, and proved a boy, he christened him with his name;

and elevated him to the peerage in his cradle by the title of Duke of

Fitz-Aquitaine and Marquis of Gascony.

An estate the royal father could not endow him with, for he had spent

all his money, mortgaged all his resources, and was obliged to run in

debt himself for the jewels of the rest of his mistresses; but he did

his best for the young peer, as became an affectionate father or a

fond lover. His majesty made him when he arrived at man’s estate

the hereditary keeper of a palace which he possessed in the north of

England; and this secured his grace a castle and a park. He could wave

his flag and kill his deer; and if he had only possessed an estate, he

would have been as well off as if he had helped conquer the realm with

King William, or plundered the church for King Harry. A revenue must

however be found for the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine, and it was furnished

without the interference of Parliament, but with a financial dexterity

worthy of that assembly--to whom and not to our sovereigns we are

obliged for the public debt. The king granted the duke and his heirs for

ever, a pension on the post-office, a light tax upon coals shipped to

London, and a tithe of all the shrimps caught on the southern coast.

This last source of revenue became in time, with the development of

watering-places, extremely prolific. And so, what with the foreign

courts and colonies for the younger sons, it was thus contrived very

respectably to maintain the hereditary dignity of this great peer.

The present Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine had supported the Reform Bill, but

had been shocked by the Appropriation clause; very much admired Lord

Stanley, and was apt to observe, that if that nobleman had been the

leader of the conservative party, he hardly knew what he might not have

done himself. But the duke was an old whig, had lived with old whigs all

his life, feared revolution, but still more the necessity of taking his

name out of Brookes’, where he had looked in every day or night since he

came of age. So, not approving of what was going on, yet not caring to

desert his friends, he withdrew, as the phrase runs, from public

life; that is to say, was rarely in his seat; did not continue to Lord

Melbourne the proxy that had been entrusted to Lord Grey; and made tory

magistrates in his county though a whig lord lieutenant.

When forces were numbered, and speculations on the future indulged in

by the Tadpoles and Tapers, the name of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine was

mentioned with a knowing look and in a mysterious tone. Nothing more

was necessary between Tadpole and Taper; but, if some hack in statu

pupillari happened to be present at the conference, and the gentle

novice greedy for party tattle, and full of admiring reverence for

the two great hierophants of petty mysteries before him, ventured to

intimate his anxiety for initiation, the secret was entrusted to him,

“that all was right there; that his grace only watched his opportunity;

that he was heartily sick of the present men; indeed, would have gone

over with Lord Stanley in 1835, had he not had a fit of the gout, which

prevented him from coming up from the north; and though to be sure his

son and brother did vote against the speaker, still that was a mistake;

if a letter had been sent, which was not written, they would have voted

the other way, and perhaps Sir Robert might have been in at the present

moment.”

The Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine was the great staple of Lady Firebrace’s

correspondence with Mr Tadpole. “Woman’s mission” took the shape to her

intelligence of getting over his grace to the conservatives. She was

much assisted in these endeavours by the information which she so

dexterously acquired from the innocent and incautious Lord Masque.

Egremont was seated at dinner to-day by the side of Lady Joan.

Unconsciously to himself this had been arranged by Lady Marney. The

action of woman on our destiny is unceasing. Egremont was scarcely in a

happy mood for conversation. He was pensive, inclined to be absent; his

thoughts indeed were of other things and persons than those around him.

Lady Joan however only required a listener. She did not make enquiries

like Lady Maud, or impart her own impressions by suggesting them as your

own. Lady Joan gave Egremont an account of the Aztec cities, of which

she had been reading that morning, and of the several historical

theories which their discovery had suggested; then she imparted her own,

which differed from all, but which seemed clearly the right one. Mexico

led to Egypt. Lady Joan was as familiar with the Pharaohs as with the

Caciques of the new world. The phonetic system was despatched by the

way. Then came Champollion; then Paris; then all its celebrities,

literary and especially scientific; then came the letter from Arago

received that morning; and the letter from Dr Buckland expected

to-morrow. She was delighted that one had written; wondered why the

other had not. Finally before the ladies had retired, she had invited

Egremont to join Lady Marney in a visit to her observatory, where they

were to behold a comet which she had been the first to detect.

Lady Firebrace next to the duke indulged in mysterious fiddle-fadde as

to the state of parties. She too had her correspondents, and her letters

received or awaited. Tadpole said this; Lord Masque, on the contrary,

said that: the truth lay perhaps between them; some result developed by

the clear intelligence of Lady Firebrace acting on the data with

which they supplied her. The duke listened with calm excitement to

the transcendental revelations of his Egeria. Nothing appeared to be

concealed from her; the inmost mind of the sovereign: there was not

a royal prejudice that was not mapped in her secret inventory; the

cabinets of the whigs and the clubs of the tories, she had the “open

sesame” to all of them. Sir Somebody did not want office, though he

pretended to; and Lord Nobody did want office, though he pretended he

did not. One great man thought the pear was not ripe; another that it

was quite rotten; but then the first was coming on the stage, and the

other was going off. In estimating the accuracy of a political opinion,

one should take into consideration the standing of the opinionist.

At the right moment, and when she was sure she was not overheard, Lady

Firebrace played her trump card, the pack having been previously cut by

Mr Tadpole.

“And who do you think Sir Robert would send to Ireland?” and she looked

up in the face of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine.

“I suppose the person he sent before,” said his grace.

Lady Firebrace shook her head.

“Lord Haddington will not go to Ireland again,” replied her ladyship,

mysteriously; “mark me. And Lord De Grey does not like to go; and if he

did, there are objections. And the Duke of Northumberland, he will not

go. And who else is there? We must have a nobleman of the highest rank

for Ireland; one who has not mixed himself up with Irish questions; who

has always been in old days for emancipation; a conservative, not an

orangeman. You understand. That is the person Sir Robert will send, and

whom Sir Robert wants.”

“He will have some difficulty in finding such a person,” said the duke.

“If, indeed, the blundering affair of 1834 had not occurred, and things

had taken their legitimate course, and we had seen a man like Lord

Stanley for instance at the head of affairs, or leading a great party,

why then indeed your friends the conservatives,--for every sensible

man must be a conservative, in the right sense of the word,--would have

stood in a very different position; but now--,” and his grace shook his

head.

“Sir Robert will never consent to form a government again without Lord

Stanley,” said Lady Firebrace.

“Perhaps not,” said the duke.

“Do you know whose name I have heard mentioned in a certain quarter

as the person Sir Robert would wish to see in Ireland?” continued Lady

Firebrace.

His grace leant his ear.

“The Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine,” said Lady Firebrace.

“Quite impossible,” said the duke. “I am no party man; if I be anything,

I am a supporter of the government. True it is I do not like the way

they are going on, and I disapprove of all their measures; but we must

stand by our friends, Lady Firebrace. To be sure, if the country were in

danger, and the Queen personally appealed to one, and the conservative

party were really a conservative party, and not an old crazy faction

vamped up and whitewashed into decency--one might pause and consider.

But I am free to confess I must see things in a very different condition

to what they are at present before I could be called upon to take that

step. I must see men like Lord Stanley--”

“I know what you are going to say, my dear Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine. I

tell you again Lord Stanley is with us, heart and soul; and before long

I feel persuaded I shall see your grace in the Castle of Dublin.”

“I am too old; at least, I am afraid so,” said the Duke of

Fitz-Aquitaine, with a relenting smile.

Book 2 Chapter 16

About three miles before it reaches the town, the river Mowe undulates

through a plain. The scene, though not very picturesque, has a glad and

sparkling character. A stone bridge unites the opposite banks by three

arches of good proportion; the land about consists of meads of a vivid

colour, or vegetable gardens to supply the neighbouring population,

and whose various hues give life and lightness to the level ground.

The immediate boundaries of the plain on either side are chiefly woods;

above the crest of which in one direction expands the brown bosom of a

moor. The few cottages which are sprinkled about this scene being built

of stone, and on an ample scale, contribute to the idea of comfort and

plenty which, with a serene sky and on a soft summer day, the traveller

willingly associates with it.

Such was the sky and season in which Egremont emerged on this scene a

few days after the incidents recorded in our last chapter. He had been

fishing in the park of Mowbray, and had followed the rivulet through

many windings until, quitting the enclosed domain it had forced its way

through some craggy underwood at the bottom of the hilly moors we have

noticed, and finally entering the plain, lost itself in the waters of

the greater stream.

Good sport had not awaited Egremont. Truth to say, his rod had played in

a very careless hand. He had taken it, though an adept in the craft when

in the mood, rather as an excuse to be alone, than a means to be amused.

There are seasons in life when solitude is a necessity; and such a one

had now descended on the spirit of the brother of Lord Marney.

The form of Sybil Gerard was stamped upon his brain. It blended with all

thoughts; it haunted every object. Who was this girl, unlike all women

whom he had yet encountered, who spoke with such sweet seriousness of

things of such vast import, but which had never crossed his mind, and

with a kind of mournful majesty bewailed the degradation of her race?

The daughter of the lowly, yet proud of her birth. Not a noble lady in

the land who could boast a mien more complete, and none of them thus

gifted, who possessed withal the fascinating simplicity that pervaded

every gesture and accent of the daughter of Gerard.

Yes! the daughter of Gerard; the daughter of a workman at a manufactory.

It had not been difficult, after the departure of Sybil, to extract this

information from the garrulous wife of the weaver. And that father,--he

was not unknown to Egremont. His proud form and generous countenance

were still fresh in the mind’s eye of our friend. Not less so his

thoughtful speech; full of knowledge and meditation and earnest feeling!

How much that he had spoken still echoed in the heart, and rung in the

brooding ear of Egremont. And his friend, too, that pale man with

those glittering eyes, who without affectation, without pedantry, with

artlessness on the contrary and a degree of earnest singleness, had

glanced like a master of philosophy at the loftiest principles of

political science,--was he too a workman? And are these then THE PEOPLE?

If so, thought Egremont, would that I lived more among them! Compared

with their converse, the tattle of our saloons has in it something

humiliating. It is not merely that it is deficient in warmth, and depth,

and breadth; that it is always discussing persons instead of principles,

and cloaking its want of thought in mimetic dogmas and its want of

feeling in superficial raillery; it is not merely that it has neither

imagination, nor fancy, nor sentiment, nor feeling, nor knowledge

to recommend it; but it appears to me, even as regards manner and

expression, inferior in refinement and phraseology; in short, trivial,

uninteresting, stupid, really vulgar.

It seemed to Egremont that, from the day he met these persons in the

Abbey ruins, the horizon of his experience had insensibly expanded; more

than that, there were streaks of light breaking in the distance, which

already gave a new aspect to much that was known, and which perhaps

was ultimately destined to reveal much that was now utterly obscure.

He could not resist the conviction that from the time in question, his

sympathies had become more lively and more extended; that a masculine

impulse had been given to his mind; that he was inclined to view public

questions in a tone very different to that in which he had surveyed them

a few weeks back, when on the hustings of his borough.

Revolving these things, he emerged, as we have stated, into the plain of

the Mowe, and guiding his path by the course of the river, he arrived at

the bridge which a fancy tempted him to cross. In its centre, was a man

gazing on the waters below and leaning over the parapet. His footstep

roused the loiterer, who looked round; and Egremont saw that it was

Walter Gerard.

Gerard returned his salute, and said, “Early hours on Saturday afternoon

make us all saunterers;” and then, as their way was the same, they

walked on together. It seemed that Gerard’s cottage was near at hand,

and having inquired after Egremont’s sport, and receiving for a reply

a present of a brace of trout,--the only one, by the bye, that was in

Egremont’s basket,--he could scarcely do less than invite his companion

to rest himself.

“There is my home,” said Gerard, pointing to a cottage recently built,

and in a pleasing style. Its materials were of a fawn-coloured stone,

common in the Mowbray quarries. A scarlet creeper clustered round one

side of its ample porch; its windows were large, mullioned, and neatly

latticed; it stood in the midst of a garden of no mean dimensions

but every bed and nook of which teemed with cultivation; flowers and

vegetables both abounded, while an orchard rich with promise of many

fruits; ripe pears and famous pippins of the north and plums of every

shape and hue; screened the dwelling from that wind against which the

woods that formed its back-ground were no protection.

“And you are well lodged! Your garden does you honour.”

“I’ll be honest enough to own I have no claim to the credit,” said

Gerard. “I am but a lazy chiel.”

They entered the cottage, where a hale old woman greeted them.

“She is too old to be my wife, and too young to be my mother,” said

Gerard smiling; “but she is a good creature, and has looked after me

many a long day. Come, dame,” he said, “thou’lt bring us a cup of tea;

‘tis a good evening beverage,” he added, turning to Egremont. “and what

I ever take at this time. And if you care to light a pipe, you will find

a companion.”

“I have renounced tobacco,” said Egremont; “tobacco is the tomb of

love,” and they entered a neatly-furnished chamber, that had that

habitable look which the best room of a farmhouse too often wants.

Instead of the cast-off furniture of other establishments, at the same

time dingy and tawdry, mock rosewood chairs and tarnished mahogany

tables, there was an oaken table, some cottage chairs made of beech

wood, and a Dutch clock. But what surprised Egremont was the appearance

of several shelves well lined with volumes. Their contents too on closer

inspection were very remarkable. They indicated a student of a high

order. Egremont read the titles of works which he only knew by fame, but

which treated of the loftiest and most subtle questions of social

and political philosophy. As he was throwing his eye over them, his

companion said, “Ah! I see you think me as great a scholar as I am a

gardener: but with as little justice; these books are not mine.”

“To whomsoever they belong,” said Egremont, “if we are to judge from his

collection, he has a tolerably strong head.”

“Ay, ay,” said Gerard, “the world will hear of him yet, though he

was only a workman, and the son of a workman. He has not been at your

schools and your colleges, but he can write his mother tongue, as

Shakespeare and Cobbett wrote it; and you must do that, if you wish to

influence the people.”

“And might I ask his name,” said Egremont.

“Stephen Morley, my friend.”

“The person I saw with you at Marney Abbey?”

“The same.”

“And he lives with you?”

“Why, we kept house together, if you could call it so. Stephen does not

give much trouble in that way. He only drinks water and only eats herbs

and fruits. He is the gardener,” added Gerard, smiling. “I don’t know

how we shall fare when he leaves me.”

“And is he going to leave you?”

“Why in a manner he has gone. He has taken a cottage about a quarter of

a mile up the dale; and only left his books here, because he is going

into --shire in a day or two, on some business, that may be will take

him a week or so. The books are safer here you see for the present, for

Stephen lives alone, and is a good deal away, for he edits a paper at

Mowbray, and that must be looked after. He is to be my gardener still.

I promised him that. Well done, dame,” said Gerard, as the old woman

entered; “I hope for the honour of the house a good brew. Now comrade

sit down: it will do you good after your long stroll. You should eat

your own trout if you would wait?”

“By no means. You will miss your friend, I should think?”

“We shall see a good deal of him, I doubt not, what with the garden and

neighbourhood and so on; besides, in a manner, he is master of his own

time. His work is not like ours; and though the pull on the brain is

sometimes great, I have often wished I had a talent that way. It’s a

drear life to do the same thing every day at the same hour. But I never

could express my ideas except with my tongue; and there I feel tolerably

at home.”

“It will be a pity to see this room without these books,” said Egremont,

encouraging conversation on domestic subjects.

“So it will,” said Gerard. “I have got very few of my own. But my

daughter will be able to fill the shelves in time, I warrant.”

“Your daughter--she is coming to live with you?”

“Yes; that is the reason why Stephen quits us. He only remained here

until Sybil could keep my house, and that happy day is at hand.”

“That is a great compensation for the loss of your friend,” said

Egremont.

“And yet she talks of flitting,” said Gerard, in a rather melancholy

tone. “She hankers after the cloister. She has passed a still, sweet

life in the convent here; the Superior is the sister of my employer and

a very saint on earth; and Sybil knows nothing of the real world except

its sufferings. No matter,” he added more cheerfully; “I would not have

her take the veil rashly, but if I lose her it may be for the best. For

the married life of a woman of our class in the present condition of our

country is a lease of woe,” he added shaking his head, “slaves, and the

slaves of slaves? Even woman’s spirit cannot stand against it; and it

can bear against more than we can, master.”

“Your daughter is not made for the common cares of life,” said Egremont.

“We’ll not talk of them,” said Gerard. “Sybil has an English heart, and

that’s not easily broken. And you, comrade, you are a traveller in these

parts, eh?”

“A kind of traveller; something in the way of your friend

Morley--connected with the press.”

“Indeed! a reporter, eh? I thought you had something about you a little

more knowing than we provincials.”

“Yes; a reporter; they want information in London as to the real state

of the country, and this time of the year, Parliament not sitting--Ah;

I understand, a flying commission and a summer tour. Well, I often wish

I were a penman; but I never could do it. I’ll read any day as long as

you like, but that writing, I could never manage. My friend Morley is a

powerful hand at it. His journal circulates a good deal about here; and

if as I often tell him he would only sink his high-flying philosophy and

stick to old English politics, he might make a property of it. You’ll

like to know him?”

“Much.”

“And what first took you to the press, if I may ask!”

“Why--my father was a gentleman--“, said Egremont in a hesitating tone,

“and I was a younger son.”

“Ah!” said Gerard, “that is as bad as being a woman.”

“I had no patrimony,” continued Egremont, “and I was obliged to work; I

had no head I believe for the law; the church was not exactly in my way;

and as for the army, how was I to advance without money or connexions! I

had had some education, and so I thought I would turn it to account.”

“Wisely done! you are one of the working classes, and will enlist I hope

in the great struggle against the drones. The natural friends of the

people are younger sons, though they are generally enlisted against us.

The more fools they; to devote their energies to the maintenance of a

system which is founded on selfishness and which leads to fraud; and

of which they are the first victims. But every man thinks he will be an

exception.”

“And yet,” said Egremont, “a great family rooted in the land, has been

deemed to be an element of political strength.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Gerard, “there is a great family in this

country and rooted in it, of which we have heard much less than they

deserved, but of which I suspect we shall hear very soon enough to make

us all think a bit.”

“In this county?”

“Ay; in this county and every other one; I mean the PEOPLE.”

“Ah!” said Egremont, “that family has existed for a long time.”

“But it has taken to increase rapidly of late, my friend--how may I call

you?”

“They call me, Franklin.”

“A good English name of a good English class that has disappeared.

Well, Mr Franklin, be sure of this, that the Population Returns of this

country are very instructive reading.”

“I can conceive so.”

“I became a man when the bad times were beginning,” said Gerard; “I have

passed through many doleful years. I was a Franklin’s son myself, and we

had lived on this island at least no worse for a longer time than I care

to recollect as little as what I am now. But that’s nothing; I am not

thinking of myself. I am prosperous in a fashion; it is the serfs I live

among of whom I am thinking. Well, I have heard, in the course of years,

of some specifics for this constant degradation of the people; some

thing or some person that was to put all right; and for my part, I was

not unready to support any proposal or follow any leader. There was

reform, and there was paper money, and no machinery, and a thousand

other remedies; and there were demagogues of all kinds, some as base as

myself, and some with blood in their veins almost as costly as flows in

those of our great neighbour here. Earl de Mowbray, and I have always

heard that was very choice: but I will frankly own to you, I never

had much faith in any of these proposals or proposers; but they were a

change, and that is something. But I have been persuaded of late that

there is something going on in this country of more efficacy; a remedial

power, as I believe, and irresistible; but whether remedial or not,

at any rate a power that will mar all or cure all. You apprehend me?

I speak of the annual arrival of more than three hundred thousand

strangers in this island. How will you feed them? How will you clothe

them? How will you house them? They have given up butcher’s meat; must

they give up bread? And as for raiment and shelter, the rags of the

kingdom are exhausted and your sinks and cellars already swarm like

rabbit warrens.

“‘Tis an awful consideration,” said Egremont musing.

“Awful,” said Gerard; “‘tis the most solemn thing since the deluge.

What kingdom can stand against it? Why go to your history--you’re a

scholar,--and see the fall of the great Roman empire--what was that?

Every now and then, there came two or three hundred thousand strangers

out of the forests and crossed the mountains and rivers. They come to

us every year and in greater numbers. What are your invasions of the

barbarous nations, your Goths and Visigoths, your Lombards and Huns, to

our Population Returns!”

END OF THE SECOND BOOK