CHAPTER XXXVI.

A TALK WITH THE MAJOR.

While she meditated thus, major Marvel made his appearance. He had been

watching outside, saw her uncle go, and an hour after was shown to the

room where she still sat, staring out on the frosty trees of the square.

"Why, my child," he said, with almost paternal tenderness, "your hand is

as cold as ice! Why do you sit so far from the fire?"

She rose and went to the fire with him. He put her in an easy chair, and

sat down beside her. Common, pudgy, red-faced, bald-headed as he was,

she come to him, and that out of regions of deepest thought, with a

sense of refuge. He could scarcely have understood one of her

difficulties, would doubtless have judged not a few of her scruples

nonsensical and over-driven; yet knowing this it was a comfort to her to

come from those regions back to a mere, honest, human heart--to feel a

human soul in a human body nigh her. For the mere human is divine,

though not _the_ divine, and to the mere human essential comfort.

Should relations be broken between her and lord Gartley, she knew it

would delight the major; yet she was able to look upon him as a friend

in whom she could trust. Unity of _opinion_ is not necessary to

confident friendship and warm love.

As they talked, the major, seeing she was much depressed, and thinking

to draw her from troubled thought, began to tell her some of the more

personal parts of his history, and in these she soon became so

interested that she began to ask him questions, and drew from him much

that he would never have thought of volunteering. Before their talk was

over, she had come to regard the man as she could not have imagined it

possible she should. She had looked upon him as a man of so many and

such redeeming qualities, that his faults must be over-looked and

himself defended from any overweighing of them; but now she felt him a

man to be looked up to--almost revered. It was true that every now and

then some remark would reveal in him a less than attractive commonness

of thinking; and that his notions in religion were of the crudest, for

he regarded it as a set of doctrines--not a few of them very

dishonouring to God; yet was the man in a high sense a true man. There

is nothing shows more how hard it has been for God to redeem the world

than the opinions still uttered concerning him and his so-called

_plans_ by many who love him and try to obey him: a man may be in

possession of the most precious jewels, and yet know so little about

them that his description of them would never induce a jeweller to

purchase them, but on the contrary make him regard the man as a fool,

deceived with bits of coloured glass for rubies and sapphires. Major

Marvel was not of such. He knew nothing of the slang of the Pharisees,

knew little of the language of either the saints or the prophets, had,

like most Christians, many worldly ways of looking at things, and yet I

think our Lord would have said there was no guile in him.

With her new insight into the man's character came to Hester the

question whether she would not be justified in taking him into her

confidence with regard to Cornelius. She had received no injunctions to

secrecy from her father: neither he nor her mother ever thought of such

a thing with her; they knew she was to be trusted as they were

themselves to be trusted. Her father had taken no step towards any

effort for the rescue of his son, and she would sorely need help in what

she must herself try to do. She could say nothing to the major about

lord Gartley, or the influence her brother's behaviour might have on her

future: that would not be fair either to Gartley or to the major; but

might she not ask him to help her to find Corney? She was certain he

would be prudent and keep quiet whatever ought to be kept quiet; while

on the other hand her father had spoken as if he would have nothing of

it all concealed. She told him the whole story, hiding nothing that she

knew. Hardly could she restrain her tears as she spoke, but she ended

without having shed one. The major had said nothing, betrayed nothing,

only listened intently.

"My dear Hester," he said solemnly, after a few moments' pause, "the

mysteries of creation are beyond me!"

Hester thought the remark irrelevant, but waited. "It's such a mixture!"

he went on. "There is your mother, the loveliest woman except yourself

God ever made! Then comes Cornelius--a--well!--Then comes yourself! and

then little Mark! a child--I will not say too good to live--God

forbid!--but too good for any of the common uses of this world! I declare

to you I am terrified when left alone with him, and keep wishing for

somebody to come into the room!"

"What about him terrifies you?" asked Hester, amused at the idea, in

spite of the gnawing unrest at her heart.

"To answer you," replied the major, "I must think a bit! Let me see! Let

me see! Yes! it must be that! I am ashamed to confess it, but to a saint

one must speak the truth: I believe in my heart it is simply fear lest I

should find I must give up everything and do as I know he is thinking I

ought."

"And what is that?"

"Turn a saint like him."

"And why should you be afraid of that?"

"Well, you see, I'm not the stuff that saints--good saints, I mean, are

made of; and rather than not be a good one, if I once set about it, I

would, saving your presence, be the devil himself."

Hester laughed, yet with some self-accusation.

"I think," she said softly, "one day you will be as good a saint as love

can wish you to be."

"Give me time; give me time, I beg," cried the major, wiping his

forehead, and evidently in some perturbation. "I would not willingly

begin anything I should disgrace, for that would be to disgrace myself,

and I never had any will to that, though the old ladies of our village

used to say I was born without any shame. But the main cause of my

unpopularity was that I hated humbug--and I do hate humbug, cousin

Hester, and shall hate it till I die--and so want to steer clear of it."

"I hate it, I hope, as much as you do, major Marvel," responded Hester.

"But, whatever it may be mixed up with, what is true, you know, cannot

be humbug, and what is not true cannot be anything else than humbug."

"Yes, yes! but how is one to know what is true, my dear? There are so

many differing claims to the quality!"

"I have been told, and I believe it with all my heart," replied Hester,

"that the only way to know what is true is to do what is true."

"But you must know what is true before you can begin to do what is

true."

"Everybody knows something that is true to do--that is, something he

ought to lose no time in setting about. The true thing to any man is the

thing that must not be let alone but done. It is much easier to know

what is true to do than what is true to think. But those who do the one

will come to know the other--and none else, I believe."

The major was silent, and sat looking very thoughtful. At last he rose.

"Is there anything you want me to do in this sad affair, cousin Hester?"

he said.

"I want your help to find my brother."

"Why should you want to find him? You cannot do him any good!"

"Who can tell that? If Christ came to seek and save his lost, we ought

to seek and save our lost."

"Young men don't go wrong for the mere sake of going wrong: you may find

him in such a position as will make it impossible for you to have

anything to do with him."

"You know that line of Spenser's.--

Entire affection hateth nicer hands'?"

asked Hester.

"No, I don't know it; and I don't know that I understand it now you tell

it me," replied the major, just a little crossly, for he did not like

poetry; it was one of his bugbear humbugs. "But one thing is plain: you

must not expose yourself to what in such a search would be unavoidable."

The care of men over some women would not seldom be ludicrous but for

the sad suggested contrast of their carelessness over others.

"Answer me one question, dear major Marvel," said Hester: "Which is in

most danger from disease--the healthy or the sickly?"

"That's a question for the doctor," he answered cautiously; "and I don't

believe he knows anything about it either. What it has to do with the

matter in hand I cannot think."

Hester saw it was not for her now to pursue the argument. And one would

almost imagine it scarce needed pursuing! For who shall walk safe in the

haunts of evil but those upon whom, being pure, evil has no hold? The

world's notions of purity are simply childish--because it is not itself

pure. You might well suppose its cherished ones on the brink of all

corruption, so much afraid does it seem of having them tainted _before

their time_. Sorry would one be, but for the sake of those for whom

Christ died, that any woman should be pained with the sight of evil, but

the true woman may, even like God himself, know all evil and remain just

as lovely, as clean, as angelic and worshipful as any child in the

simplest country home. The idea of a woman like Hester being _in any

sense_ defiled by knowing what her Lord knows while she fills up what

is left behind of the sufferings of Christ for her to suffer for the

sake of his world, is contemptible. As wrong melts away and vanishes in

the heart of Christ, so does the impurity she encounters vanish in the

heart of the pure woman: it is there burned up.

"I hardly see what is to be done," said the major, after a moment's

silence. "What do you say to an advertisement in _The Times_, to

the effect that, if C. R. will return to his family, all will be

forgiven?"

"That I must not, dare not do. There is surely some other way of finding

persons without going to the police!"

"What do you think your father would like done?"

"I do not know; but as I am Corney's sister, I will venture as a sister

may. I think my father will be pleased in the end, but I will risk his

displeasure for the sake of my brother. If my father were to cast him

off, would you say I was bound to cast him off?"

"I dare say nothing where you are sure, Hester. My only anxiety would be

whether you thoroughly knew what you were about."

"If one were able to look upon the question of life or death as a mere

candle-flame in the sun of duty, would she not at least be more likely

to do right than wrong?"

"If the question were put about a soldier I should feel surer how to

answer you," replied the major. "But you are so much better than I--you

go upon such different tactics, that we can hardly, I fear, bring our

troops right in front of each other.--I will do what I can for

you--though I greatly fear your brother will never prove worth the

trouble."

"People have repented who have gone as far wrong as Corney," said

Hester, with the tears in her voice it not in her eyes.

"True!" responded the major; "but I don't believe he has character

enough to repent of anything. He will be fertile enough in excuse! But I

will do what I can to find out where he is."

Hester heartily thanked him, and he took his leave.

Her very estrangement from him, the thought of her mother's misery and

the self-condemnation that must overtake her father if he did nothing,

urged her to find Cornelius. But if she found him, what would come of

it? Was he likely to go home with her? How would he be received if he

did go home? and if not, what was she to do with or for him? Was he to

keep the money so vilely appropriated? And what was he to do when it was

spent? If want would drive him home, the sooner he came to it the

better! We pity the prodigal with his swine, but then first a ray of

hope begins to break through the darkness of his fate.

To do nothing was nearly unendurable, and she saw nothing to do. She

could only wait, and it took all the patience and submission she could

find. She wrote to her father, told him what there was to tell, and

ended her letter with a message to her mother:--"Tell darling mother,"

she said, "that what a sister can do, up to the strength God gives her,

shall be done for my brother. Major Marvel is doing his best to find

him."

Next day she heard from her father that her mother was slowly

recovering; and on the following day that her letter was a great comfort

to her; but beyond this he made no remark. Even his silence however was

something of a relief to Hester.

In the meantime she was not idle. Hers was not the nature even in grief

to sit still. The moment she had dispatched her letter, she set out to

visit her poor friends. On her way she went into Mrs. Baldwin's shop and

had a little talk with her, in the course of which she asked if she had

ever heard anything more of the Frankses. Mrs. Baldwin replied that she

had once or twice heard of their being seen in the way of their

profession; but feared they were not getting on. Hester was sorry, but

had many more she knew better to think of.

There was much rejoicing at her return. But there were changes--new

faces where she had left friends, and not the best news of some who

remained. One or two were in prison of whom when she left she was in

great hope. One or two were getting on better in the sense of this

world, but she could see nothing in themselves to make her glad of their

"good luck." One who had signed the pledge some time before she went,

had broken out fearfully, and all but killed his wife. One of whom she

had been hopeful, had disappeared--it was supposed with another man's

wife. In spite of their sufferings the evil one seemed as busy among

them as among the world's elect.

The little ones came about her again, but with less confidence, both

because she had been away, and because they had grown more than they had

improved. But soon things were nearly on the old footing with them.

Every day she went among them. Certain of the women--chiefly those who

had suffered most with least fault--were as warmly her friends as

before. Amongst them was just one who had some experience of the

Christian life, and she had begun to learn long before Hester came to

know her: she did not seem, however, to have gained any influence even

with those who lived in the same house; only who can trace the slow

working of leaven?

CHAPTER XXVII.

RENCONTRES.

There was no news of Cornelius. In vain the detective to whom the major

had made liberal promises continued his inquiries. There was a rumour of

a young woman in whose company he had lately been seen, but she too had

disappeared from public sight.

Sarah did her best to make Hester comfortable, and behaved the better

that she was humbled by the consciousness of having made a bad job of

her caretaking with Cornelius.

One afternoon--it had rained, but the sun was now shining, and Hester's

heart felt lighter as she took deep breaths of the clean-washed air--she

turned into a passage to visit the wife of a book-binder who had been

long laid up with rheumatism so severe as to render him quite unable to

work.

They had therefore been on the borders of want, and for Hester it was

one of those happy cases in which she felt at full liberty to help with

money. The part of the house occupied by them was pretty decent, but the

rest of it was in bad repair and occupied by yet poorer people, of none

of whom she knew much.

It was in fact a little way beyond what she had come to count her limit.

She knocked at the door. It was opened by the parish doctor.

"You cannot come in, Miss Raymount," he said. "We have a very bad case

of small-pox here. You good ladies must make up your minds to keep away

from these parts for a while. Their bodies are in more danger than their

souls now."

"That may very well be," replied Hester. "My foot may be in more danger

than my head, but I can better afford to lose the one than the other."

The doctor did not see the point, and thought there was none.

"You will only carry the infection," he said.

"I will take every precaution," answered Hester. "I always take more, I

am certain, than it can be possible for you to take. Why should not I

also do my part to help them through?"

"While the parish is in my care," answered the doctor, "I must object to

whatever increases the risk of infection. It is hard while we are doing

all we can to stamp out the disease, to have you, with the best of

motives I admit, carrying it from one house to another. How are we to

keep it out of the West End, if you ladies carry the seeds of it?"

The hard-worked man spoke with some heat.

"So the poor brothers are to be left for fear of hurting the rich ones?"

"That's not fair--you know it is not!" said the doctor. "We are set here

to fight the disease, and fight it we must."

"And I am set here to fight something worse," returned Hester with a

smile.

The doctor came out and shut the door.

"I must beg of you to go away," he said. "I shall be compelled to

mention in my report how you and other ladies add to our difficulties."

He slipped in again and closed the door. Hester turned and went down the

stair, now on her part a little angry. She knew it was no use thinking

when she was angry, for when the anger was gone she almost always

thought otherwise. The first thing was to get rid of the anger.

Instinctively she sat down and began to sing; it was not the first time

she had sat and sung in a dirty staircase. It was not a wise thing to

do, but her anger prevented her from seeing its impropriety.

In great cities the children are like flies, gathering swiftly as from

out of the unseen: in a moment the stair below was half-filled with

them. The tenants above opened their doors and came down. Others came in

from the street and were pushed up by those who came behind them. The

stair and entrance were presently filled with people, all shabby, and

almost all dirty--men and women, young and old, good and bad, listening

to the voice of the singing lady, as she was called in the

neighborhood.

By this time the doctor had finished his visit at the bookbinder's, and

appeared on the stair above. He had heard the singing, and thought it

was in the street; now he learnt it was actually in the house, and had

filled it with people! It was no wonder, especially when he saw who the

singer was, that he should lose his temper. Through the few women and

children above where Hester sat, he made his way towards the crowd of

faces below. When he reached her he seized her arm from behind and began

to raise at once and push her down the stair. He, too, was an enthusiast

in his way. Some of the faces below grew red with anger, and their eyes

flamed at the doctor. A loud murmur arose, and several began to force

their way up to rescue her, as they would one of their own from the

police. But Hester, the moment she saw who it was that had laid hold of

her, rose and began to descend the stair, closely followed by the

doctor. It was not easy; and the annoyance of a good many in the crowd,

some because Hester was their friend, others because the doctor had

stopped the singing, gave a disorderly and indeed rather threatening

look to the assemblage.

As she reached the door she saw, on the opposite side of the crowded

passage, the pale face and glittering eyes of Mr. Blaney looking at her

over the heads between. The little man was mounted on a box at the door

of a shop whose trade seemed to be in withered vegetables and salt fish,

and had already had the pint which, according to his brother-in-law, was

more than he could stand.

"Sarves you right, miss," he cried, when he saw who was the centre of

the commotion; "sarves you right! You turned me out o' your house for

singin', an' I don't see why you should come a singin' an' a misbehavin'

of yourself in ourn! Jest you bring her out here, pleeceman, an' let me

give her a bit o' my mind. Oh, don't you be afeared, I won't hurt her!

Not in all my life did I ever once hurt a woman--bless 'em! But it's

time the gentry swells knowed as how we're yuman bein's as well as

theirselves. We don't like, no more'n they would theirselves, havin' our

feelin's hurt for the sake o' what they calls bein' done good to. Come

you along down over here, miss!"

The crowd had been gathering from both ends of the passage, for high

words draw yet faster than sweet singing, and the place was so full that

it was hardly possible to get out of it. The doctor was almost wishing

he had let ill alone, for he was now anxious about Hester. Some of the

rougher ones began pushing. The vindictive little man kept bawling, his

mouth screwed into the middle of his cheek. From one of the cross

entrances of the passage came the pulse of a fresh tide of would-be

spectators, causing the crowd to sway hither and thither. All at once

Hester spied a face she knew, considerably changed as it was since last

she had seen it.

"Now we shall have help!" she said to her companion, making common cause

with him notwithstanding his antagonism. "--Mr. Franks!"

The athlete was not so far off that she needed to call very loud. He

heard and started with eager interest. He knew the voice, sent his eyes

looking and presently found her who called him. With his great lean

muscular arms he sent the crowd right and left like water, and reached

her in a moment.

"Come! come! don't you hurt her!" shouted Mr. Blaney from the top of his

box. "She ain't nothing to you. She's a old friend o' mine, an' I ain't

a goin' to see her hurt."

"You shut up!" bawled Franks, "or I'll finish the pancake you was meant

for."

Then turning to Hester, who had begun to be a little afraid he too had

been drinking, he pulled off his fur cap, and making the lowest and

politest of stage bows, said briefly,

"Miss Raymount--at your service, miss!"

"I am very glad to see you again, Mr. Franks," said Hester. "Do you

think you could get us out of the crowd?"

"Easy, miss. I'll _carry_ you out of it like a baby, miss, if

you'll let me."

"No, no; that will hardly be necessary," returned Hester, with a smile.

"Go on before, and make a way for us," said the doctor, with an

authority he had no right to assume.

"There is not the least occasion for you to trouble yourself about me

farther," said Hester. "I am perfectly safe with this man. I know him

very well. I am sorry to have vexed you."

Franks looked up sharply at the doctor, as if to see whether he dared

acknowledge a claim to the apology; then turning to Hester,--

"Nobody 'ain't ha' been finding fault with you, miss?" he said--a little

ominously.

"Not more than I deserved," replied Hester. "But come, Franks! lead the

way, or all Bloomsbury will be here, and then the police! I shouldn't

like to be shut up for offending Mr. Blaney!"

Those near them heard and laughed. She took Franks's arm. Room was

speedily made before them, and in a minute they were out of the crowd,

and in one of the main thoroughfares.

But as if everybody she knew was going to appear, who should meet them

face to face as they turned into Steevens's Road, with a fringe of the

crowd still at their heels, but lord Gartley! He had written from town,

and Mrs. Raymount had let him know that Hester was in London, for she

saw that the sooner she had an opportunity of telling him what had

happened the better. His lordship went at once to Addison square, and

had just left the house disappointed when he met Hester leaning on

Franks's arm.

"Miss Raymount!" he exclaimed almost haughtily.

"My lord!" she returned, with unmistakable haughtiness, drawing herself

up, and looking him in the face, hers glowing.

"Who would have expected to see you here?" he said.

"Apparently yourself, my lord!"

He tried to laugh.

"Come then; I will see you home," he said.

"Thank you, my lord. Come, Franks."

As she spoke she looked round, but Franks was gone. Finding she had met

one of her own family, as he supposed, he had quietly withdrawn: the

moment he was no longer wanted, he grew ashamed, and felt shabby. But he

lingered round a corner near, to be certain she was going to be taken

care of, till seeing them walk away together he was satisfied, and went

with a sigh.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

IN THE HOUSE.

The two were silent on their way, but from different causes. Lord

Gartley was uneasy at finding Hester in such a position--led into it by

her unreflecting sympathies, no doubt, so unbefitting the present

century of the world's history! He had gathered from the looks and words

of the following remnants of the crowd that she had been involved in

some street-quarrel--trying to atone it no doubt, or to separate the

combatants. For a woman of her refinement, she had the strangest

proclivity for low company!

Hester was silent, thinking how to begin her communication about

Cornelius. Uncomfortable from the contretemps, as well as from what she

had now to do, and irritated at the tone in which his lordship had

expressed the surprise he could not help feeling at sight of her so

accompanied and attended, she had felt for a moment as if the best thing

would be to break with him at once. But she was too just, had she not

had too much regard for him, to do so. She felt, however, for that one

moment very plainly, that the relation between them was far from the

ideal. Another thing was yet clearer: if he could feel such surprise and

annoyance at the circumstances in which he had just met her, it would be

well to come to a clearer understanding at once concerning her

life-ideal and projects. But she would make up her mind to nothing till

she saw how he was going to carry himself now his surprise had had time

to pass off: perhaps it would not be necessary to tell him anything

about Corney! they might part upon other grounds! In the one case it

would be she, in the other it would be he that broke off the engagement:

she would rather it were his doing than hers! No doubt she would stand

better in the eyes of the world if she dismissed him; but that was an

aspect of the affair she would never have deigned to heed had it

presented itself.

These thoughts, with what of ratiocination was in them, hardly passed

through her mind; it was filled, rather, with a confused mass of tangled

thought and feeling, which tossed about in it like the nets of a fishing

fleet rolled together by a storm.

Not before they reached the house did lord Gartley speak, and Hester

began to wonder if he might not already have heard of Cornelius. It was

plain he was troubled; plain too he was only waiting for the coverture

of the house to speak. It should be easy, oh, very easy for him to get

rid of her. He need not be anxious about that!

It was doubtless shock upon shock to the sensitive nature of his

lordship to find, when they reached the house, that, instead of ringing

the bell, she took a latch-key from her pocket, opened the door herself,

and herself closed it behind them. It was just as a bachelor might enter

his chambers! It did not occur to him that it was just such as his

bachelor that ought not to have the key, and such as Hester that ought

to have it, to let them come and go as the angels. She led the way up

the stair. Not a movement of life was audible in the house! The

stillness was painful.

"Did no one come up with you?" he asked.

"No one but major Marvel," she answered, and opened the door of the

drawing-room.

As she opened it, she woke to the consciousness that she was very cross,

and in a mood to make her unfair to Gartley: the moment she had closed

it, she turned to him and said,

"Forgive me, Gartley; I am in trouble; we are all in trouble. When I

have told you about it, I shall be more at ease."

Without preamble, or any attempt to influence the impression of the

dreadful news, she began her story, softening the communication only by

making it as the knowledge had come to her--telling first her mother's

distress at Sarah's letter, then the contents of that letter, and then

those of her uncle's. She could not have done it with greater fairness

to her friend: his practised self-control had opportunity for perfect

operation. But the result was more to her satisfaction than she could

have dared to hope. He held out his hand with a smile, and said,

"I am very sorry. What is there I can do?"

She looked up in his eyes. They were looking down kindly and lovingly.

"Then--then--," she said, "you don't--I mean there's no--I mean, you

don't feel differently towards me?"

"Towards you, my angel!" exclaimed Gartley, and held out his arms.

She threw herself into them, and clung to him. It was the first time

either of them had shown anything approaching to _abandon_.

Gartley's heart swelled with delight, translating her confidence into

his power. He was no longer the second person in the compact, but had

taken the place belonging to the male contracting party! For he had been

painfully conscious now and then that he played but second fiddle.

They sat down and talked the whole thing over.

Now that Hester was at peace she began to look at it from Gartley's

point of view.

"I am so sorry for you!" she said. "It is very sad you should have to

marry into a family so disgraced. What _will_ your aunt say?"

"My aunt will treat the affair like the sensible woman she is," replied

the earl. "But there is no fear of disgrace; the thing will never be

known. Besides, where is the family that hasn't one or more such loose

fishes about in its pond? The fault was committed inside the family too,

and that makes a great difference. It is not as if he'd been betting,

and couldn't pay up!"

From the heaven of her delight Hester fell prone. Was this the way her

almost husband looked at these things? But, poor fellow! how could he

help looking at them so? Was it not thus he had been from earliest

childhood taught to look at them? The greater was his need of all she

could do for him! He was so easy to teach anything! What she saw clear

as day it could not be hard to communicate to one who loved as he loved!

She would say nothing now--would let him see no sign of disappointment

in her!

"If he don't improve," continued his lordship, "we must get him out of

the country. In the meantime he will go home, and not a suspicion will

be roused. What else should he do, with such a property to look after?"

"My father will not see it so," answered Hester. "I doubt if he will

ever speak to him again. Certainly he will not except he show some

repentance."

"Has your father refused to have him home?"

"He has not had the chance. Nobody knows what has become of him."

"He'll have to condone, or compromise, or compound, or what do they call

it, for the sake of his family--for your sake, and my sake, my darling!

He can't be so vindictive as expose his own son! We won't think more

about it! Let us talk of ourselves!"

"If only we could find him!" returned Hester.

"Depend upon it he is not where you would like to find him. Men don't

come to grief without help! We must wait till he turns up."

Far as this was from her purpose, Hester was not inclined to argue the

point: she could not expect him or any one out of their own family to be

much interested in the fate of Cornelius. They began to talk about other

things; and if they were not the things Hester would most readily have

talked about, neither were they the things lord Gartley had entered the

house intending to talk about. He too had been almost angry, only by

nature he was cool and even good-tempered. To find Hester, the moment

she came back to London, and now in the near prospect of marriage with

himself, yielding afresh to a diseased fancy of doing good; to come upon

her in the street of a low neighbourhood, followed by a low crowd,

supported and championed by a low fellow--well, it was not agreeable!

His high breeding made him mind it less than a middle-class man of like

character would have done; but with his cold dislike to all that was

poor and miserable, he could not fail to find it annoying, and had

entered the house intending to exact a promise for the future--not the

future after marriage, for a change then went without saying.

But when he had heard her trouble, and saw how deeply it affected her,

he knew this was not the time to say what he had meant; and there was

the less occasion now that he was near to take care of her!

He had risen to go, and was about to take a loving farewell, when

Hester, suddenly remembering, drew back, with almost a guilty look.

"Oh, Gartley!" she said, "I thought not to have let you come near me!

Not that _I_ am afraid of anything! But you came upon me so

unexpectedly! It is all very well for one's self, but one ought to heed

what other people may think!"

"What _can_ you mean, Hester?" exclaimed Gartley, and would have

laid his hand on her arm, but again she drew back.

"There was small-pox in the house I had just left when you met me," she

said.

He started back and stood speechless--manifesting therein no more

cowardice than everyone in his circle would have justified: was it not

reasonable and right he should be afraid? was it not a humiliation to be

created subject to such a loathsome disease? The disgrace of fearing

anything except doing wrong, few human beings are capable of conceiving,

fewer still of actually believing.

"Has it never occurred to you what you are doing in going to such

places, Hester?" he faltered. "It is a treachery against every social

claim. I am sorry to use such hard words, but--really--I--I--cannot help

being a little surprised at you! I thought you had more--more--sense!"

"I am sorry to have frightened you."

"Frightened!" repeated Gartley, with an attempt at a smile, which closed

in a yet more anxious look, "--you do indeed frighten me! The whole

world would agree you give me good cause to be frightened. I should

never have thought _you_ capable of showing such a lack of

principle. Don't imagine I am thinking of myself; _you_ are in most

danger! Still, you may carry the infection without taking it yourself!"

"I didn't know it was there when I went to the house--only I should have

gone all the same," said Hester. "But if seeing you so suddenly had not

made me forget, I should have had a bath as soon as I got home. I

_am_ sorry I let you come near me!"

"One has no right either to take or carry infection," insisted lord

Gartley, perhaps a little glad of the height upon which an opportunity

of finding fault set him for the first time above her. "But there is no

time to talk about it now. I hope you will use what preventives you can.

It is very wrong to trifle with such things!"

"Indeed it is!" answered Hester; "and I say again I am sorry I forgot.

You see how it was--don't you? It was you made me forget!"

But his lordship was by no means now in a smiling mood. He bade her a

somewhat severe good night, then hesitated, and thinking it hardly

signified now, and he must not look too much afraid, held out his hand.

But Hester drew back a third time, saying, "No, no; you must not," and

with solemn bow he turned and went, his mind full of conflicting

feelings and perplexing thoughts:--What a glorious creature she

was!--and what a dangerous! He recalled the story of the young woman

brought up on poisons, whom no man could come near but at the risk of

his life. What a spirit she had! but what a pity it was so ill-directed!

It was horrible to think of her going into such abominable places--and

all alone too! How ill she had been trained!--in such utter disregard of

social obligation and the laws of nature! It was preposterous! He little

thought what risks he ran when he fell in love with _her_! If he

got off now without an attack he would be lucky! But--good heavens! if

she were to take it herself! "I wonder when she was last vaccinated!" he

said. "I was last year; I daresay I'm all right! But if she were to die,

or lose her complexion, I should kill myself! I know I should!" Would

honor compel him to marry her if she were horribly pock-marked? Those

dens ought to be rooted out! Philanthropy was gone mad! It was strict

repression that was wanted! To sympathize with people like that was only

to encourage them! Vice was like hysterics--the more kindness you showed

the worse grew the patient! They took it all as their right! And the

more you gave, the more they demanded--never showing any gratitude so

far as he knew!

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE MAJOR AND THE SMALL-POX.

His lordship was scarcely gone when the major came. So closely did the

appearance of the one follow on the disappearance of the other, that

there was ground for suspecting the major had seen his lordship enter

the house, and had been waiting and watching till he was gone. But she

was not yet to be seen: she had no fear of the worst small-pox could do

to her, yet was taking what measures appeared advisable for her

protection. Her fearlessness came from no fancied absence of danger, but

from an utter disbelief in chance. The same and only faith that would

have enabled him to face the man-eating tiger, enabled her to face the

small-pox; if she did die by going into such places, it was all right.

For aught I know there may be a region whose dwellers are so little

capable of being individually cared for, that they are left to the

action of mere general laws as sufficient for what for the time can be

done for them. Such may well to themselves seem to be blown about by all

the winds of chaos and the limbo--which winds they call chance? Even

then and there it is God who has ordered all the generals of their

condition, and when they are sick of it, will help them out of it. One

thing is sure--that God is doing his best for _every_ man.

The major sat down and waited.

"I am at my wits' end!" he said, when she entered the room. "I can't

find the fellow! That detective's a muff! He ain't got a trace of him

yet! I must put on another!--Don't you think you had better go home? I

will do what can be done, you may be sure!"

"I _am_ sure," answered Hester. "But mamma is better; so long as I

am away papa will not leave her; and she would rather have papa than a

dozen of me."

"But it must be so dreary for you--here alone all day!" he said, with a

touch of malice.

"I go about among my people," she answered.

"Ah! ah!" he returned. "Then I hope you will be careful what houses you

go into, for I hear the small-pox is in the neighborhood."

"I have just come from a house where it is now," she answered. The major

rose in haste. "--But," she went on, "I have changed all my clothes, and

had a bath since."

The major sat down again.

"My dear young lady!" he said, the roses a little ashy on his

cheek-bones, "do you know what you are about?"

"I hope I do--I _think_ I do" she answered.

"Hope! Think!" repeated the major indignantly.

"Well, _believe_," said Hester.

"Come, come!" he rejoined with rudeness, "you may hope or think or

believe what you like, but you have no business to act but on what you

_know_."

"I suppose you never act where you do not know!" returned Hester. "You

always _know_ you will win the battle, kill the tiger, take the

small-pox, and be the worse for it?"

"It's all very well for you to laugh!" returned the major; "but what is

to become of us if you take the small-pox! Why, my dear cousin, you

might lose every scrap of your good looks!"

"And then who on earth would care for me any more!" said Hester, with

mock mournfulness, which brought a glimmer of the merry light back to

the major's face.

"But really, Hester," he persisted, "this is most imprudent. It is your

life, not your beauty only you are periling!"

"Perhaps," she answered.

"And the lives of us all!" added the major.

"Is the small-pox worse than a man-eating tiger?" she asked.

"Ten times worse," he answered. "You can fight the tiger, but you can't

fight the small-pox. You really ought _not_ to run such fearful

risks."

"How are they to be avoided? Every time you send for the doctor you run

a risk! You can't order a clean doctor every time!"

"A joke's all very well! but it is our duty to take care of ourselves."

"In reason, yes," replied Hester.

"You may think," said the major, "that God takes special care of you

because you are about his business--and far be it from me to say you are

not about his business or that he does not take care of you; but what is

to become of me and the like of me if we take the small-pox from you?"

Hester had it on her lips to say that if he was meant to die of the

small-pox, he might as well take it of her as of another; but she said

instead that she was sure God took care of her, but not sure she should

not die of the small-pox.

"How can you say God takes care of you if he lets you die of the

small-pox!"

"No doubt people would die if God forgot them, but do you think people

die because God forgets them?"

"My dear cousin Hester, if there is one thing I have a _penchant_

for, it is common sense! A paradox I detest with my whole soul!"

"One word, dear major Marvel: Did God take care of Jesus?"

"Of course! of course! But he wasn't like other men, you know."

"I don't want to fare better, that is, I don't want to have more of

God's care than he had."

"I don't understand you. I should think if we were sure God took as good

care of us as of him--"

But there he stopped, for he began to have a glimmer of where she was

leading him.

"Did he keep him what you call safe?" said Hester. "Did he not allow the

worst man could do to overtake him? Was it not the very consequence of

his obedience?"

"Then you have made up your mind to die of the small-pox?--In that

case----"

"Only if it be God's will," interrupted Hester.

"To that, and that alone, have I made up my mind. If I die of the

small-pox, it will not be because it could not be helped, or because I

caught it by chance; it will be because God allowed it as best for me

and for us all. It will not be a punishment for breaking his laws: he

loves none better, I believe, than those who break the laws of nature to

fulfil the laws of the spirit--which is the deeper nature, 'the nature

naturing nature,' as I read the other day: of course it sounds nonsense

to anyone who does not understand it."

"That's your humble servant," said the major. "I haven't a notion what

you or the author you quote means, though I don't doubt both of you mean

well, and that you are a most courageous and indeed heroic young woman.

For all that it is time your friends interfered; and I am going to write

by the next post to let your father know how you are misbehaving

yourself."

"They will not believe me quite so bad as I fear you will represent me."

"I don't know. I must write anyhow."

"That they may order me home to give them the small-pox? Wouldn't it be

better to wait and be sure I had not taken it already? Your letter, too,

might carry the infection. I think you had better not write."

"You persist in making fun of it! I say again it is not a thing to be

joked about," remarked the major, looking red.

"I think," returned Hester, "whoever lives in terror of infection had

better take it and have done with it. I know I would rather die than

live in the fear of death. It is the meanest of slaveries. At least, to

live a slave to one's fears is next worst to living a slave to one's

likings. Do as you please, major Marvel, but I give you warning that if

you interpose--I will not say _interfere_--because you do it all

for kindness--but if you interpose, I will never ask you to help me

again; I will never let you know what I am doing, or come to you for

advice, lest, instead of assisting me, you should set about preventing

me from doing what I may have to do."

She held out her hand to him, adding with a smile:

"Is it for good-bye, or a compact?"

"But just look at it from my point of view," said the major, disturbed

by the appeal. "What will your father say if he finds me aiding and

abetting?"

"You did not come up at my father's request, or from the least desire on

his part to have me looked after. You were not put in charge of me, and

have no right to suppose me doing anything my parents would not like.

They never objected to my going among my friends as I thought fit.

Possibly they had more faith in my good sense, knowing me better than

major Marvel."

"But when one sees you doing the thing that is plainly wrong----"

"If it be so plainly wrong, how is it that I who am really anxious to do

right, should not see it wrong? Why should you think me less likely to

know what is right than you, major Marvel?"

"I give in," said the major, "and will abide by the consequences."

"But you shall not needlessly put yourself in danger. You must not come

to me except I send for you. If you hear anything of Corney, write,

please."

"You don't imagine," cried the major, firing up, "that I am going to

turn tail where you advance? I'm not going to run from the small-pox any

more than you. So long as he don't get on my back to hunt other people,

I don't care. By George! you women have more courage ten times than we

men!"

"What we've got to do we just go and do, without thinking about danger.

I believe it is often the best wisdom to be blind and let God be our

eyes as well as our shield. But would it be right of you, not called to

the work, to put yourself in danger because you would not be out where I

am in? I could admire of course, but never quite justify sir Philip

Sidney in putting off his cuisses because his general had not got his

on."

"You're fit for a field-marshal, my dear!" said the major

enthusiastically--adding, as he kissed her hand, "I will think over what

you have said, and at least not betray you without warning."

"That is enough for the present," returned Hester, shaking hands with

him warmly.

The major went away hardly knowing whither, so filled was he with

admiration of "cousin Helen's girl."

"By Jove!" he said to himself, "it's a confounded good thing I didn't

marry Helen; she would never have had a girl like that if I had! Things

are always best. The world needs a few such in it--even if they be

fools--though I suspect they will turn out the wise ones, and we the

fools for taking such care of our precious selves!"

But the major was by no means a selfish man. He was pretty much mixed,

like the rest of us. Only, if we do not make up our minds not to be

mixed with the one thing, we shall by and by be but little mixed with

the other.

That same evening he sent her word that one answering the description of

Cornelius had been descried in the neighborhood of Addison square.

CHAPTER XL.

DOWN AND DOWN.

Down the hill and down!--to the shores of the salt sea, where the

flowing life is dammed into a stagnant lake, a dead sea, growing more

and more bitter with separation and lack of outlet. Mrs. Franks had come

to feel the comforting of her husband a hopeless thing, and had all but

ceased to attempt it. He grew more hopeless for the lack of what she

thought moved him no more, and when she ceased to comfort him, the

fountain of her own hope began to fail; in comforting him she had

comforted herself. The boys, whose merriment even was always of a sombre

kind, got more gloomy, but had not begun to quarrel; for that evil, as

interfering with their profession, the father had so sternly crushed

that they had less than the usual tendency to it.

They had reached at last the point of being unable to pay for their

lodging. They were indeed a fort-night's rent behind. Their landlady was

not willing to be hard upon them, but what could a poor woman do, she

said. The day was come when they must go forth like Abraham without a

home, but not like Abraham with a tent and the world before them to set

it up in, not like Abraham with camels and asses to help them along. The

weakly wife had to carry the sickly baby, who, with many ups and downs,

had been slowly pining away. The father went laden with the larger

portion of the goods yet remaining to them, and led the Serpent of the

Prairies, with the drum hanging from his neck, by the hand. The other

boys followed, bearing the small stock of implements belonging to their

art.

They had delayed their departure till it was more than dusk, for Franks

could not help a vague feeling of blame for the condition of his family,

and shrank from being seen of men's eyes; every one they met must know

they had not a place to lay their heads! The world was like a sea before

them--a prospect of ceaseless motion through the night, with the hope of

an occasional rest on a doorstep or the edge of the curb-stone when the

policeman's back was turned. They set out to go nowhither--to tramp on

and on. Is it any wonder--does it imply wickedness beyond that lack of

trust in God which is at the root of all wickedness, if the thought of

ending their troubles by death crossed his mind, and from very

tenderness kept returning? At the last gasp, as it seemed, in the close

and ever closer siege of misfortune, he was almost ready, like the Jews

of Masada, to conquer by self-destruction. But ever and again the sad

eyes of his wife turned him from the thought, and he would plod on,

thinking, as near as possible, about nothing.

At length as they wandered they came to a part where seemed to be only

small houses and mews. Presently they found themselves in a little lane

with no thoroughfare, at the back of some stables, and had to return

along the rough-paved, neglected way. Such was the quiet and apparent

seclusion of the spot, that it struck Franks they had better find its

most sheltered corner, in which to sit down and rest awhile, possibly

sleep. Scarcely would policeman, he thought, enter such a forsaken

place! The same moment they heard the measured tread of the enemy on the

other side of the stables. Instinctively, hurriedly, they looked around

for some place of concealment, and spied, at the end of a blank wall,

belonging apparently to some kind of warehouse, a narrow path between

that and the wall of the next property. Careless to what it led, anxious

only to escape the annoyance of the policeman, they turned quickly into

it. Scarcely had they done so when the Serpent, whose hand his father

had let go, disappeared with a little cry, and a whimper ascended

through the darkness.

"Hold your n'ise, you rascal!" said his father sharply, but under his

breath; "the bobby will hear you, and have us all to the lock-up!"

Not a sound more was heard. Neither did the boy reappear.

"Good heavens, John!" cried the mother in an agonized whisper, "the

child has fallen down a sewer! Oh, my God! he is gone for ever!"

"Hold your n'ise," said Franks again, "an' let's all go down a'ter him!

It's better down anywheres than up where there ain't nothing to eat an'

nowheres to lie down in."

"'Tain't a bad place," cried a little voice in a whisper broken with

repressed sobs. "'Tain't a bad place, I don't think, only I broken one

o' my two legs; it won't move to fetch of me up again."

"Thank God in heaven, the child's alive!" cried the mother. "--You ain't

much hurt, are you, Moxy?"

"Rather, mother!"

By this time the steps of the policeman, to which the father had been

listening with more anxiety than to the words of wife or child, were

almost beyond hearing. Franks turned, and going down a few steps found

his child, where he half lay, half sat upon them. But when he lifted

him, he gave a low cry of pain. It was impossible to see where or how

much he was hurt. The father sat down and took him on his knees.

"You'd better come an' sit here, wife," he said in a low dull voice.

"There ain't no one a sittin' up for us. The b'y's a bit hurt, an' here

you'll be out o' the wind at least."

They all got as far down the stair as its room would permit--the elder

boys with their heads hardly below the level of the wind. But by and by

one of them crept down past his mother, feebly soothing the whimpering

baby, and began to feel what sort of a place they were in.

"Here's a door, father!" he said.

"Well, what o' that?" returned his father. "'Taint no door open to us or

the likes on us. There ain't no open door for the likes of us but the

door o' the grave."

"Perhaps this is it, father," said Moxy.

"If it be," answered his father with bitterness, "we'll find it open,

I'll be bound."

The boy's hand had come upon a latch; he lifted it, and pushed.

"Father," he cried with a gasp, "_it is open_!"

"Get in then," said his father roughly, giving him a push with his foot.

"I daren't. It's so dark!" he answered.

"Here, you come an' take the Sarpint," returned the father, with faintly

reviving hope, "an' I'll see what sort of a place it is. If it's any

place at all, it's better than bein' i' the air all night at this

freezin' time!"

So saying he gave Moxy to his bigger brother and went to learn what kind

of a place they had got to. Ready as he had been a moment before for the

grave, he was careful in stepping into the unknown dark. Feeling with

foot and hand, he went in. He trod upon an earthen floor, and the place

had a musty smell: it might be a church vault, he thought. In and in he

went, with sliding foot on the soundless floor, and sliding hand along

the cold wall--on and on, round two corners, past a closed door, and

back to that by which he had entered, where, as at the grave's mouth,

sat his family in sad silence, waiting his return.

"Wife," he said, "we can't do better than to take the only thing that's

offered. The floor's firm, an' it's out o' the air. It's some sort of a

cellar--p'r'aps at the bottom of a church. It do look as if it wur left

open jest for us!--You _used_ to talk about _him_ above, wife!"

He took her by the hand and led the way into the darkness, the boys

following, one of them with a hold of his mother, and his arm round the

other, who was carrying Moxy. Franks closed the door behind them, and

they had gained a refuge. Feeling about, one of the boys came upon a

large packing-case; having laid it down against the inner wall, Franks

sat, and made his wife lie upon it, with her head on his knees, and took

Moxy again in his arms, wrapt in one of their three thin blankets. The

boys stretched themselves on the ground, and were soon fast asleep. The

baby moaned by fits all the night long.

In about an hour Franks, who for long did not sleep, heard the door open

softly and stealthily, and seemed aware of a presence besides themselves

in the place. He concluded some other poor creature had discovered the

same shelter; or, if they had got into a church-vault, it might be some

wandering ghost; he was too weary for further speculation, or any

uneasiness. When the slow light crept through the chinks of the door, he

found they were quite alone.

It was a large dry cellar, empty save for the old packing-case. They

must use great caution, and do their best to keep their hold of this

last retreat! Misfortune had driven them into the earth; it would be

fortune to stay there.

When his wife woke, he told her what he had been thinking. He and the

boys would creep out before it was light, and return after dark. She

must not put even a finger out of the cellar-door all day. He laid Moxy

down beside her, woke the two elder boys, and went out with them.

They were so careful that for many days they continued undiscovered.

Franks and the boys went and returned, and gained bread enough to keep

them alive, but it may well seem a wonder they did not perish with cold.

It is amazing what even the delicate sometimes go through without more

than a little hastening on the road the healthiest are going as well.

CHAPTER XLI.

DIFFERENCE.

About noon the next day, lord Gartley called. Whether he had got over

his fright, or thought the danger now less imminent, or was vexed that

he had _appeared_ to be afraid, I do not know. Hester was very glad

to see him again.

"I think I am a safe companion to-day," she said. "I have not been out

of the house yet. But till the bad time is over among my people, we had

better be content not to meet, I think."

Lord Gartley mentally gasped. He stood for a moment speechless,

gathering his thoughts, which almost refused to be gathered.

"Do I understand you, Hester?" he said. "It would trouble me more than I

can tell to find I do."

"I fear I understand you, Gartley!" said Hester. "Is it possible you

would have me abandon my friends to the small-pox, as a hireling his

sheep to the wolf?"

"There are those whose business it is to look after them."

"I am one of those," returned Hester.

"Well," answered his lordship, "for the sake of argument we will allow

it _has_ been your business; but how can you imagine it your

business any longer?"

Indignation, a fire always ready "laid" in Hester's bosom, but seldom

yet lighted by lord Gartley, burst into flame, and she spoke as he had

never heard her speak before.

"I am aware, my lord," she said, "that I must by and by have new duties

to perform, but I have yet to learn that they must annihilate the old.

The claims of love cannot surely obliterate those of friendship! The new

should make the old better, not sweep it away."

"But, my dear girl, the thing is preposterous!" exclaimed his lordship.

"Don't you see you will enter on a new life! In the most ordinary cases

even, the duties of a wife are distinct from those of an unmarried

woman."

"But the duties of neither can supersede those of a human being. If the

position of a wife is higher than that of an unmarried woman, it must

enable her to do yet better the things that were her duty as a human

being before."

"But if it be impossible she should do the same things?"

"Whatever is impossible settles its own question. I trust I shall never

desire to attempt the impossible."

"You have begun to attempt it now."

"I do not understand you."

"It is impossible you should perform the duties of the station you are

about to occupy, and continue to do as you are doing now. The attempt

wuld be absurd."

"I have not tried it yet."

"But I know what your duties will be, and I assure you, my dear Hester,

you will find the thing cannot be done."

"You set me thinking of more things than I can manage all at once," she

replied in a troubled way. "I must think."

"The more you think, the better satisfied you will be of what I say. All

I want of you is to think; for I am certain if you do, your good sense

will convince you I am right."

He paused a moment. Hester did not speak. He resumed:

"Just think," he said, "what it would be to have you coming home to go

out again straight from one of these kennels of the small-pox! The idea

is horrible! Wherever you were suspected of being present, the house

would be shunned like the gates of death."

"In such circumstances I should not go out."

"The suspicion of it would be enough. And in your absence, as certainly

as in your presence, though not so fatally, you would be neglecting your

duty to society."

"Then," said Hester, "the portion of society that is healthy, wealthy,

and--merry, has stronger claims than the portion that is poor and sick

and in prison!"

Lord Gartley was for a moment bewildered--not from any feeling of the

force of what she said, but from inability to take it in. He had to turn

himself about two or three times mentally before he could bring himself

to believe she actually meant that those to whom she alluded were to be

regarded as a portion of the same society that ruled his life. He

thought another moment, then said:

"There are the sick in every class: you would have those of your own to

visit. Why not leave others to visit those of theirs?"

"Then of course you would have no objection to my visiting a duchess in

the small-pox?"

Lord Gartley was on the point of saying that duchesses never took the

smallpox, but he did not, afraid Hester might know to the contrary.

"There could be no occasion for that," he said. "She would have

everything she could want."

"And the others are in lack of everything! To desert them would be to

desert the Lord. He will count it so."

"Well, certainly," said his lordship, returning on the track, "there

would be less objection in the case of the duchess, in as much as every

possible precaution would in her house be taken against the spread of

the disease. It would be horribly selfish to think only of the person

affected!"

"You show the more need that the poor should not be deserted of the rich

in their bitter necessity! Who among them is able to take the right

precautions against the spread of the disease? And if it spread among

them, there is no security against its reaching those at last who take

every possible care of themselves and none of their neighbours. You do

not imagine, because I trust in God, and do not fear what the small-pox

can do to me, I would therefore neglect any necessary preventive! That

would be to tempt God: means as well as results are his. They are a way

of giving us a share in his work."

"If I should have imagined such neglect possible, would not yesterday go

far to justify me?" said lord Gartley.

"You are ungenerous," returned Hester. "You know I was then taken

unprepared! The smallpox had but just appeared--at least I had not heard

of it before."

"Then you mean to give up society for the sake of nursing the poor?"

"Only upon occasion, when there should be a necessity--such as an

outbreak of infectious disease."

"And how, pray, should I account for your absence--not to mention the

impossibility of doing my part without you? I should have to be

continually telling stories; for if people came to know the fact, they

would avoid me too as if I were the pest itself!"

It was to Hester as if a wall rose suddenly across the path hitherto

stretching before her in long perspective. It became all but clear to

her that he and she had been going on without any real understanding of

each other's views in life. Her expectations tumbled about her like a

house of cards. If he wanted to marry her, full of designs and aims in

which she did not share, and she was going to marry him, expecting

sympathies and helps which he had not the slightest inclination to give

her, where was the hope for either of anything worth calling success?

She sat silent. She wanted to be alone that she might think. It would be

easier to write than talk further! But she must have more certainty as

to what was in his mind.

"Do you mean then, Gartley," she said, "that when I am your wife, if

ever I am, I shall have to give up all the friendships to which I have

hitherto devoted so much of my life?"

Her tone was dominated by the desire to be calm, and get at his real

feeling. Gartley mistook it, and supposed her at length betraying the

weakness hitherto so successfully concealed. He concluded he had only to

be firm now to render future discussion of the matter unnecessary.

"I would not for a moment act the tyrant, or say you must never go into

such houses again. Your own good sense, the innumerable engagements you

will have, the endless calls upon your time and accomplishments, will

guide you--and I am certain guide you right, as to what attention you

can spare to the claims of benevolence. But just please allow me one

remark: in the circle to which you will in future belong, nothing is

considered more out of place than any affectation of enthusiasm. I do

not care to determine whether your way or theirs is the right one; all I

want to say is, that as the one thing to be avoided is peculiarity, you

would do better not to speak of these persons, whatever regard you may

have for their spiritual welfare, as _your friends_. One cannot

have so many friends--not to mention that a unity of taste and feeling

is necessary to that much-abused word _friendship_. You know well

enough such persons cannot be your friends."

This was more than Hester could bear. She broke out with a vehemence for

which she was afterwards sorry, though nowise ashamed of it.

"They _are_ my friends. There are twenty of them would do more for

me than you would."

Lord Gartley rose. He was hurt. "Hester," he said, "you think so little

of me or my anxiety about your best interests, that I cannot but suppose

it will be a relief to you if I go."

She answered not a word--did not even look up, and his lordship walked

gently but unhesitatingly from the room.

"It will bring her to her senses!" he said to himself. "--How grand she

looked!"

Long after he was gone, Hester sat motionless, thinking, thinking. What

she had vaguely foreboded--she knew now she had foreboded it all the

time--at least she thought she knew it--was come! They were not, never

had been, never could be at one about anything! He was a mere man of

this world, without relation to the world of truth! To be tied to him

for life would be to be tied indeed! And yet she loved him--would gladly

die for him--not to give him his own way--for that she would not even

marry him; but to save him from it--to save him from himself, and give

him God instead--that would be worth dying for, even if it were the

annihilation unbelievers took it for! To marry him, swell his worldly

triumphs, help gild the chains of his slavery was not to be thought of!

It was one thing to die that a fellow-creature might have all things

good! another to live a living death that he might persist in the pride

of life! She could not throw God's life to the service of the stupid

Satan! It was a sad breakdown to the hopes that had clustered about

Gartley!

But did she not deserve it?

Therewith began a self-searching which did not cease until it had

prostrated her in sorrow and shame before him whose charity is the only

pledge of ours.

Was it then all over between them? Might he not bethink himself, and

come again, and say he was sorry he had so left her? He might indeed;

but would that make any difference to her? Had he not beyond a doubt

disclosed his real way of thinking and feeling? If he could speak thus

now, after they had talked so much, what spark of hope was there in

marriage?

To forget her friends that she might go into _society_ a countess!

The thought was as contemptible as poverty-stricken. She would leave

such ambition to women that devoured novels and studied the peerage! One

loving look from human eyes was more to her than the admiration of the

world! She would go back to her mother as soon as she had found her poor

Corney, and seen her people through the smallpox! If only the house was

her own, that she might turn it into a hospital! She would make it a

home to which any one sick or sad, any cast out of the world, any

betrayed by seeming friends, might flee for shelter! She would be more

than ever the sister and helper of her own--cling faster than ever to

the skirts of the Lord's garment, that the virtue going out of him might

flow through her to them! She would be like Christ, a gulf into which

wrong should flow and vanish--a sun radiating an uncompromising love!

How easy is the thought, in certain moods, of the loveliest, most

unselfish devotion! How hard is the doing of the thought in the face of

a thousand unlovely difficulties! Hester knew this, but, God helping,

was determined not to withdraw hand or foot or heart. She rose, and

having prepared herself, set out to visit her people. First of all she

would go to the bookbinder's, and see how his wife was attended to.

The doctor not being there, she was readily admitted. The poor husband,

unable to help, sat a picture of misery by the scanty fire. A neighbor,

not yet quite recovered from the disease herself, had taken on her the

duties of nurse. Having given her what instructions she thought it least

improbable she might carry out, and told her to send for anything she

wanted, she rose to take her leave.

"Won't you sing to her a bit, miss, before you go?" said the husband

beseechingly. "It'll do her more good than all the doctor's stuff."

"I don't think she's well enough," said Hester.

"Not to get all the good on it, I daresay, miss," rejoined the man; "but

she'll hear it like in a dream, an' she'll think it's the angels a

singin'; an' that'll do her good, for she do like all them creaturs!"

Hester yielded and sang, thinking all the time how the ways of the

open-eyed God look to us like things in a dream, because we are only in

the night of his great day, asleep before the brightness of his great

waking thoughts. The woman had been tossing and moaning in an undefined

discomfort, but as she sang she grew still, and when she ceased lay as

if asleep.

"Thank you, miss," said the man. "You can do more than the doctor, as I

told you! When he comes, he always wakes her up; you make her sleep

true!"

CHAPTER XLII.

DEEP CALLETH UNTO DEEP.

In the meantime yet worse trouble had come upon the poor Frankses. About

a week after they had taken possession of the cellar, little Moxy, the

Serpent of the Prairies, who had been weakly ever since his fall down

the steps, by which he had hurt his head and been sadly shaken, became

seriously ill, and grew worse and worse. For some days they were not

much alarmed, for the child had often been ailing--oftener of late since

they had not been faring so well; and even when they were they dared not

get a doctor to him for fear of being turned out, and having to go to

the workhouse.

By this time they had contrived to make the cellar a little more

comfortable. They managed to get some straw, and with two or three old

sacks made a bed for the mother and the baby and Moxy on the

packing-case. They got also some pieces of matting, and contrived to put

up a screen betwixt it and the rickety door. By the exercise of their

art they had gained enough to keep them in food, but never enough to pay

for the poorest lodging. They counted themselves, however, better off by

much than if they had been crowded with all sorts in such lodging as a

little more might have enabled them to procure.

The parents loved Moxy more tenderly than either of his brothers, and it

was with sore hearts they saw him getting worse. The sickness was a mild

smallpox--so mild that they did not recognize it, yet more than Moxy

could bear, and he was gradually sinking. When this became clear to the

mother, then indeed she felt the hand of God heavy upon her.

Religiously brought up, she had through the ordinary troubles of a

married life sought help from the God in whom her mother had

believed:--we do not worship our fathers and mothers like the

Chinese--though I do not envy the man who can scorn them for it--but

they are, if at all decent parents, our first mediators with the great

father, whom we can worse spare than any baby his mother;--but with

every fresh attack of misery, every step further down on the stair of

life, she thought she had lost her last remnant of hope, and knew that

up to that time she had hoped, while past seasons of failure looked like

times of blessed prosperity. No man, however little he may recognize the

hope in him, knows what it would be to be altogether hopeless. Now Moxy

was about to be taken from them, and no deeper misery seemed, to their

imagination, possible! Nothing seemed left them--not even the desire of

deliverance. How little hope there is in the commoner phases of

religion! The message grounded on the uprising of the crucified man, has

as yet yielded but little victory over the sorrows of the grave, but

small anticipation of the world to come; not a little hope of

deliverance from a hell, but scarce a foretaste of a blessed time at

hand when the heart shall exult and the flesh be glad. In general there

is at best but a sad looking forward to a region scarcely less shadowy

and far more dreary than the elysium of the pagan poets. When Christ

cometh, shall he find faith in the earth--even among those who think

they believe that he is risen indeed? Margaret Franks, in the cellar of

her poverty, the grave yawning below it for her Moxy, felt as if there

was no heaven at all, only a sky.

But a strange necessity was at hand to compel the mother to rouse afresh

all the latent hope and faith and prayer that were in her.

By an inexplicable insight the child seemed to know that he was dying.

For, one morning, after having tossed about all the night long, he

suddenly cried out in tone most pitiful,

"Mother, don't put me in a hole."

As far as any of them knew, he had never seen a funeral--at least to

know what it was--had never heard anything about death or burial: his

father had a horror of the subject!

The words went like a knife to the heart of the mother. She sat silent,

neither able to speak, not knowing what to answer.

Again came the pitiful cry,

"Mother, don't put me in a hole."

Most mothers would have sought to soothe the child, their own hearts

breaking the while, with the assurance that no one should put him into

any hole, or anywhere he did not want to go. But this mother could not

lie in the face of death, nor had it ever occurred to her that no

_person_ is ever put into a hole, though many a body.

Before she could answer, a third time came the cry, this time in

despairing though suppressed agony,--

"Mother, don't let them put me in a hole."

The mother gave a cry like the child's, and her heart within her became

like water.

"Oh, God!" she gasped, and could say no more.

But with the prayer--for what is a prayer but a calling on the name of

the Lord?--came to her a little calm, and she was able to speak. She

bent over him and kissed his forehead.

"My darling Moxy, mother loves you," she said.

What that had to do with it she did not ask herself. The child looked up

in her face with dim eyes.

"Pray to the heavenly father, Moxy," she went on--and there stopped,

thinking what she should tell him to ask for. "Tell him," she resumed,

"that you don't want to be put in a hole, and tell him that mother does

not want you to be put in a hole, for she loves you with all her heart."

"Don't put me in the hole," said Moxy, now using the definite article.

"Jesus Christ was put in the hole," said the voice of the next elder boy

from behind his mother. He had come in softly, and she had neither seen

nor heard him. It was Sunday, and he had strolled into a church or

meeting-house--does it matter which?--and had heard the wonderful story

of hope. It was remarkable though that he had taken it up as he did, for

he went on to add, "but he didn't mind it much, and soon got out again."

"Ah, yes, Moxy!" said the poor mother, "Jesus died for our sins, and you

must ask him to take you up to heaven."

But Moxy did not know anything about sins, and just as little about

heaven. What he wanted was an assurance that he would not be put in the

hole. And the mother, now a little calmer, thought she saw what she

ought to say.

"It ain't your soul, it's only your body, Moxy, they put in the hole,"

she said.

"I don't want to be put in the hole," Moxy almost screamed. "I don't

want my head cut off!"

The poor mother was at her wits' end.

But here the child fell into a troubled sleep, and for some hours a

silence as of the grave filled the dreary cellar.

The moment he woke the same cry came from his fevered lips, "Don't put

me in the hole," and at intervals, growing longer as he grew weaker, the

cry came all the day.

CHAPTER XLIII.

DELIVERANCE.

Hester had been to church, and had then visited some of her people,

carrying them words of comfort and hope. They received them in a way at

her hand, but none of them, had they gone, would have found them at

church. How seldom is the man in the pulpit able to make people feel

that the things he is talking about are things at all! Neither when the

heavens are black with clouds and rain, nor when the sun rises glorious

in a blue perfection, do many care to sit down and be taught astronomy!

But Hester was a live gospel to them--and most when she sang. Even the

name of the Saviour uttered in her singing tone and with the expression

she then gave it, came nearer to them than when she spoke it. The very

brooding of the voice on a word, seems to hatch something of what is in

it. She often felt, however, as if some new, other kind of messengers

than she or such as she, must one day be sent them; for there seemed a

gulf between their thoughts and hers, such as neither they nor she could

pass.

In fact they _could not_ think the things she thought, and had no

vocabulary or phrases or imagery whereby to express their own thinkings.

God does not hurry such: have we enough of hope for them, or patience

with them? I suspect their teachers must arise among themselves. They

too must have an elect of their own kind, of like passions with

themselves, to lift them up, and perhaps shame those that cannot reach

them. Our teaching to them is no teaching at all; it does not reach

their ignorance; perhaps they require a teaching that to our ignorance

would seem no teaching at all, or even bad teaching. How many things are

there in the world in which the wisest of us can ill descry the hand of

God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in

the pebble-like acorn? God's beginnings do not _look_ like his

endings, but they _are_ like; the oak _is_ in the acorn, though

we cannot see it. The ranting preacher, uttering huge untruths, may yet

wake vital verities in chaotic minds--convey to a heart some saving fact,

rudely wrapped in husks of lies even against God himself.

Mr. Christopher, thrown at one time into daily relations with a good

sort of man, had tried all he could to rouse him to a sense of his

higher duties and spiritual privileges, but entirely without success. A

preacher came round, whose gospel was largely composed of hell-fire and

malediction, with frequent allusion to the love of a most unlovely God,

as represented by him. This preacher woke up the man. "And then," said

Christopher, "I was able to be of service to him, and get him on. He

speedily outgrew the lies his prophet had taught him, and became a

devout Christian; while the man who had been the means of rousing him

was tried for bigamy, convicted and punished."

This Sunday Hester, in her dejection and sadness about Gartley, over

whom--not her loss of him--she mourned deeply, felt more than ever, if

not that she could not reach her people, yet how little she was able to

touch them, and there came upon her a hopelessness that was heavy,

sinking into the very roots of her life, and making existence itself

appear a dull and undesirable thing. Hitherto life had seemed a good

thing, worth holding up as a heave-offering to him who made it; now she

had to learn to take life itself from the hand of God as his will, in

faith that he would prove it a good gift. She had to learn that in

_all_ drearinesses, of the flesh or spirit, even in those that seem

to come of having nothing to do, or from being unable to do what we

think we have to do, the refuge is the same--he who is the root and

crown of life. Who would receive comfort from anything but love? Who

would build on anything but the eternal? Who would lean on that which

has in itself no persistence? Even the closest human loves have their

only endurance, only hope of perfection, in the eternal perfect love of

which they are the rainbow-refractions. I cannot love son or daughter as

I would, save loving them as the children of the eternal God, in whom

his spirit dwells and works, making them altogether lovely, and me more

and more love-capable. That they are mine is not enough ground for

enough love--will not serve as operative reason to the height of the

love my own soul demands from itself for them. But they are mine because

they are his, and he is the demander and enabler of love.

The day was a close, foggy, cold, dreary day. The service at church had

not seemed interesting. She laid the blame on herself, and neither on

prayers nor lessons nor psalms nor preacher, though in truth some of

these might have been better; the heart seemed to have gone out of the

world--as if not Baal but God had gone to sleep, and his children had

waked before him and found the dismal gray of the world's morning full

of discomfortable ghosts. She tried her New Testament; but Jesus too

seemed far away--nothing left but the story about him--as if he had

forgotten his promise, and was no longer in the world. She tried some of

her favourite poems: each and all were infected with the same

disease--with common-place nothingness. They seemed all made up--words!

words! words! Nothing was left her in the valley but the shadow, and the

last weapon, All-prayer. She fell upon her knees and cried to God for

life. "My heart is dead within me," she said, and poured out her lack

into the hearing of him from whom she had come that she might have

himself, and so be. She did not dwell upon her sorrows; even they had

sunk and all but vanished in the gray mass of lost interest.

The modern representatives of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar would comfort

us with the assurance that all such depression has physical causes:

right or wrong, what does their comfort profit! Consolation in being

told that we are slaves! What noble nature would be content to be cured

of sadness by a dose of medicine? There is in the heart a conviction

that the soul ought to be supreme over the body and its laws; that there

must be a faith which conquers the body with all its tyrants; and that

no soul is right until it has that faith--until it is in closest, most

immediate understanding with its own unchangeable root, God himself.

Such faith may not at once remove the physical cause, if such there be,

but it will be more potent still; in the presence of both the cause and

the effect, its very atmosphere will be a peace tremulous with unborn

gladness. This gained, the medicine, the regimen, or the change of air

may be resorted to without sense of degradation, with cheerful hope and

some indifference. Such is perhaps the final victory of faith. Faith, in

such circumstances, must be of the purest, and may be of the strongest.

In few other circumstances can it have such an opportunity--can it rise

to equal height. It may be its final lesson, and deepest. God is in it

just in his seeming to be not in it--that we may choose him in the

darkness of the feeling, stretch out the hand to him when we cannot see

him, verify him in the vagueness of the dream, call to him in the

absence of impulse, obey him in the weakness of the will.

Even in her prayers Hester could not get near him. It seemed as if his

ear were turned away from her cry. She sank into a kind of lethargic

stupor. I think, in order to convey to us the spiritual help we need, it

is sometimes necessary--just as, according to the psalmist, "he giveth

to his beloved in their sleep"--to cast us into a sort of mental

quiescence, that the noise of the winds and waters of the questioning

intellect and roused feelings may not interfere with the impression the

master would make upon our beings. But Hester's lethargy lasted long,

and was not so removed. She rose from her knees in a kind of despair,

almost ready to think that either there was no God, or he would not hear

her. An inaccessible God was worse than no God at all! In either case

she would rather cease!

It had been dark for hours, but she had lighted no candle, and sat in

bodily as in spiritual darkness. She was in her bedroom, which was on

the second floor, at the back of the house, looking out on the top of

the gallery that led to the great room. She had no fire. One was burning

away unheeded in the drawing-room below. She was too miserable to care

whether she was cold or warm. When she had got some light in her body,

then she would go and get warm!

What time it was she did not know. She had been summoned to the last

meal of the day, but had forgotten the summons. It must have been about

ten o'clock. The streets were silent, the square deserted--as usual. The

evening was raw and cold, one to drive everybody in-doors that had doors

to go in at.

Through the cold and darkness came a shriek that chilled her with

horror. Yet it seemed as if she had been expecting it--as if the cloud

of misery that had all day been gathering deeper and deeper above and

around her, had at length reached its fullness, and burst in the

lightning of that shriek. It was followed by another and yet another.

Whence did they come? Not from the street, for all beside was still;

even the roar of London was hushed! And there was a certain something in

the sound of them that assured her that they rose in the house. Was

Sarah being murdered? She was half-way down the stairs before the

thought that sent her was plain to herself.

The house seemed unnaturally still. At the top of the kitchen stairs she

called aloud to Sarah--as loud, that is, as a certain tremor in her

throat would permit. There came no reply. Down she went to face the

worst: she was a woman of true courage--that is, a woman whom no amount

of apprehension could deter when she knew she ought to seek the danger.

In the kitchen stood Sarah, motionless, frozen with fear. A candle was

in her hand, just lighted. Hester's voice seemed to break her trance.

She started, stared, and fell a trembling. She made her drink some

water, and then she came to herself.

"It's in the coal-cellar, miss!" she gasped. "I was that minute going to

fetch a scuttleful! There's something buried in them coals as sure as my

name's Sarah!"

"Nonsense!" returned Hester. "Who could scream like that from under the

coals? Come; we'll go and see what it is."

"Laws, miss! don't you go near it now. It's too late to do anything.

Either it's the woman's sperrit as they say was murdered there, or it's

a new one."

"And you would let her be killed without interfering?"

"Oh, miss, all's over by this time!" persisted Sarah, with white lips

trembling.

"Then you are ready to go to bed with a murderer in the house?" said

Hester.

"He's done his business now, an' 'll go away."

"Give me the candle. I will go alone."

"You'll be murdered, miss--as sure's you're alive!"

Hester took the light from her, and went towards the coal-cellar. The

old woman sank on a chair.

I have already alluded to the subterranean portion of the house, which

extended under the great room. A long vault, corresponding to the

gallery above, led to these cellars. It was rather a frightful place to

go into in search of the source of a shriek. Its darkness was scarcely

affected by the candle she carried; it seemed only to blind herself. She

tried holding it above her head, and then she could see a little. The

black tunnel stretched on and on, like a tunnel in a feverish dream, a

long way before the cellars began to open from it. She advanced, I

cannot say fearless, but therefore only the more brave. She felt as if

leaving life and safety behind, but her imagination was not much awake,

and her mental condition made her almost inclined to welcome death. She

reached at last the coal-cellar, the first that opened from the passage,

and looked in. The coal-heap was low, and the place looked large and

very black. She sent her keenest gaze through the darkness, but could

see nothing; went in and moved about until she had thrown light into

every corner: no one was there. She was on the point of returning when

she bethought herself there were other cellars--one the wine-cellar,

which was locked: she would go and see if Sarah knew anything about the

key of it. But just as she left the coal-cellar, she heard a moan,

followed by a succession of low sobs. Her heart began to beat violently,

but she stopped to listen. The light of her candle fell upon another

door, a pace or two from where she stood. She went to it, laid her ear

against it, and listened. The sobs continued a while, ceased, and left

all silent. Then clear and sweet, but strange and wild, as if from some

region unearthly, came the voice of a child: she could hear distinctly

what it said.

"Mother," it rang out, "you _may_ put me in the hole."

And the silence fell deep as before.

Hester stood for a moment horrified. Her excited imagination suggested

some deed of superstitious cruelty in the garden of the house adjoining.

Nor were the sobs and cries altogether against such supposition. She

recovered herself instantly, and ran back to the kitchen.

"You have the keys of the cellars--have you not, Sarah?" she said.

"Yes, miss, I fancy so."

"Where does the door beyond the coal-cellar lead out to?"

"Not out to nowhere, miss. That's a large cellar as we never use. I

ain't been into it since the first day, when they put some of the

packing-cases there."

"Give me the key," said Hester. "Something is going on there we ought to

know about."

"Then pray send for the police, miss!" answered Sarah, trembling. "It

ain't for you to go into such places--on no account!"

"What! not in our own house?"

"It's the police's business, miss!"

"Then the police are their brothers' keepers, and not you and me,

Sarah?"

"It's the wicked as is in it, I fear, miss."

"It's those that weep anyhow, and they're our business, if it's only to

weep with them. Quick! show me which is the key."

Sarah sought the key in the bunch, and noting the coolness with which

her young mistress took it, gathered courage from hers to follow, a

little way behind.

When Hester reached the door, she carefully examined it, that she might

do what she had to do as quickly as possible. There were bolts and bars

upon it, but not one of them was fastened; it was secured only by the

bolt of the lock. She set the candle on the floor, and put in the key as

quietly as she could. It turned without much difficulty, and the door

fell partly open with a groan of the rusted hinge. She caught up her

light, and went in.

It was a large, dark, empty place. For a few moments she could see

nothing. But presently she spied, somewhere in the dark, a group of

faces, looking white through the circumfluent blackness, the eyes of

them fixed in amaze, if not in terror, upon herself. She advanced

towards them, and almost immediately recognized one of them--then

another; but what with the dimness, the ghostliness, and the strangeness

of it all, felt as if surrounded by the veiling shadows of a dream. But

whose was that pallid little face whose eyes were not upon her with the

rest? It stared straight on into the dark, as if it had no more to do

with the light! She drew nearer to it. The eyes of the other faces

followed her.

When the eyes of the mother saw the face of her Moxy who died in the

dark, she threw herself in a passion of tears and cries upon her dead.

But the man knelt upon his knees, and when Hester turned in pain from

the agony of the mother, she saw him with lifted hands of supplication

at her feet. A torrent of divine love and passionate pity filled her

heart, breaking from its deepest God-haunted caves. She stooped and

kissed the man upon his upturned forehead.

Many are called but few chosen. Hester was the disciple of him who could

have cured the leper with a word, but for reasons of his own, not far to

seek by such souls as Hester's, laid his hands upon him, sorely defiling

himself in the eyes of the self-respecting bystanders. The leper himself

would never have dreamed of his touching him.

Franks burst out crying like the veriest child. All at once in the

depths of hell the wings of a great angel were spread out over him and

his! No more starvation and cold for his poor wife and the baby! The

boys would have plenty now! If only Moxy--but he was gone where the

angels came from--and theirs was a hard life! Surely the God his wife

talked about must have sent her to them! Did he think they had borne

enough now? Only he had borne it so ill! Thus thought Franks, in

dislocated fashion, and remained kneeling.

Hester was now kneeling also, with her arms round her whose arms were

about the body of her child. She did not speak to her, did not attempt a

word of comfort, but wept with her: she too had loved little Moxy! she

too had heard his dying words--glowing with reproof to her faithlessness

who cried out like a baby when her father left her for a moment in the

dark! In the midst of her loneliness and seeming desertion, God had

these people already in the house for her help! The back-door of every

tomb opens on a hill-top.

With awe-struck faces the boys looked on. They too could now see Moxy's

face. They had loved Moxy--loved him more than they knew yet.

The woman at length raised her head, and looked at Hester.

"Oh, miss, it's Moxy!" she said, and burst into a fresh passion of

grief.

"The dear child!" said Hester.

"Oh, miss! who's to look after him now?"

"There will be plenty to look after him. You don't think he who provided

a woman like you for his mother before he sent him here, would send him

there without having somebody ready to look after him?"

"Well, miss, it wouldn't be like him--I don't think!"

"It would _not_ be like him," responded Hester, with

self-accusation.

Then she asked them a few questions about their history since last she

saw them, and how it was they had sunk so low, receiving answers more

satisfactory than her knowledge had allowed her to hope.

"But oh miss!" exclaimed Mrs. Franks, bethinking herself, "you ought not

to ha' been here so long: the little angel there died o' the small-pox,

as I know too well, an' it's no end o' catching!"

"Never mind me," replied Hester; "I'm not afraid. But," she added,

rising, "we must get you out of this immediately."

"Oh, miss! where would you send us?" said Mrs. Franks in alarm. "There's

nobody as 'll take us in! An' it would break both our two

hearts--Franks's an' mine--to be parted at such a moment, when us two's

the father an' mother o' Moxy. An' they'd take Moxy from us, an' put him

in the hole he was so afeared of!"

"You don't think I would leave my own flesh and blood in the cellar!"

answered Hester. "I will go and make arrangement for you above and be

back presently."

"Oh thank you, miss!" said the woman, as Hester sat down the candle

beside them. "I do want to look on the face of my blessed boy as long as

I can! He will be taken from me altogether soon!"

"Mrs. Franks," rejoined Hester, "you musn't talk like a heathen."

"I didn't know as I was saying anything wrong, miss!"

"Don't you know," said Hester, smiling through tears, "that Jesus died

and rose again that we might be delivered from death? Don't you know

it's he and not Death has got your Moxy? He will take care of him for

you till you are ready to have him again. If you love Moxy more than

Jesus loves him, then you are more like God than Jesus was!"

"Oh, miss, don't talk to me like that! The child was born of my own

body?"

"And both you and he were born of God's own soul: if you know how to

love he loves ten times better."

"You know how to love anyhow, miss! the Lord love you! An angel o' mercy

you been to me an' mine."

"Good-bye then for a few minutes," said Hester. "I am only going to

prepare a place for you."

Only as she said the words did she remember who had said them before

her. And as she went through the dark tunnel she sang with a voice that

seemed to beat at the gates of heaven, "Thou didst not leave his soul in

hell."

Mrs. Franks threw herself again beside her child, but her tears were not

so bitter now; she and hers were no longer forsaken! She also read her

New Testament, and the last words of Hester had struck her as well as

the speaker of them:

"And she'll come again and receive us to herself!" she said. "--An'

Christ'll receive my poor Moxy to himself! If he wasn't, as they say, a

Christian, it was only as he hadn't time--so young, an' all the hard

work he had to do--with his precious face a grinnin' like an angel

between the feet of him, a helpin' of his father to make a livin' for us

all! That would be no reason why he as did the will o' _his_ father

shouldn't take to him. If ever there was a child o' God's makin' it was

that child! I feel as if God must ha' made him right off, like!"

Thoughts like these kept flowing through the mind of the bereaved mother

as she lay with her arm over the body of her child--ever lovely to her,

now more lovely than ever. The small-pox had not been severe--only

severe enough to take a feeble life from the midst of privation, and the

expression of his face was lovely. He lay like the sacrifice that sealed

a new covenant between his mother and her father in heaven. We have yet

learned but little of the blessed power of death. We call it an evil! It

is a holy, friendly thing. We are not left shivering all the world's

night in a stately portico with no house behind it; death is the door to

the temple-house, whose God is not seated aloft in motionless state, but

walks about among his children, receiving his pilgrim sons in his arms,

and washing the sore feet of the weary ones. Either God is altogether

such as Christ, or the Christian religion is a lie.

Not a word passed between husband and wife. Their hearts were too full

for speech, but their hands found and held each the other. It was the

strangest concurrence of sorrow and relief! The two boys sat on the

ground with their arms about each other. So they waited.

CHAPTER XLIV.

ON THE WAY UP.

Hearing only the sounds of a peaceful talk, Sarah had ventured near

enough to the door to hear something of what was said, and set at rest

by finding that the cause of her terror was but a poor family that had

sought refuge in the cellar, she woke up to better, and was ready to

help. More than sufficiently afraid of robbers and murderers, she was

not afraid of infection: "What should an old woman like me do taking the

small-pox! I've had it bad enough once already!" She was rather

staggered, however, when she found what Hester's plan for the intruders

was.

Nothing more, since the night of the concert, had been done to make the

great room habitable by the family. It had been well cleaned out and

that was all. Now and then a fire was lighted in it, and the children

played in it as before, but it had never been really in use. What better

place, thought Hester, could there be for a small-pox ward! Thither she

would convey her friends rescued from the slimy embrace of London

poverty.

She told Sarah to light a great fire as speedily as possible, while she

settled what could be done about beds. Almost all in the house were

old-fashioned wooden ones, hard to take down, heavy to move, and hard to

put up again: with only herself and Sarah it would take a long time! For

safety too it would be better to hire iron beds which would be easily

purified--only it was Sunday night, and late! But she knew the little

broker in Steevens's Road: she would go to him and see if he had any

beds, and if he would help her to put them up at once!

The raw night made her rejoice the more that she had got hold of the

poor creatures drowning in the social swamp. It was a consolation,

strong even against such heavy sorrows and disappointments as housed in

her heart to know that virtue was going out of her for rescue and

redemption.

She had to ring the bell a good many times before the door opened, for

the broker and his small household had retired for the night: it was now

eleven o'clock. He was not well pleased at being taken from his warm bed

to go out and work--on such a night too! He grounded what objection he

made, however, on its being Sunday, and more than hinted his surprise

that Hester would ask him to do such a thing. She told him it was for

some who had nowhere to lay their heads, and in her turn more than

hinted that he could hardly know what Sunday meant if he did not think

it right to do any number of good deeds on it. The man assented to her

argument, and went to look out the two beds she wanted. But what in

reality influenced him was dislike to offending a customer; customers

are the divinities of tradesmen, as society is the divinity of society:

in her, men and women worship themselves. Having got the two bedsteads

extracted piecemeal from the disorganized heaps in his back shop, he and

Hester together proceeded to carry them home--and I cannot help wishing

lord Gartley had come upon her at the work--no very light job, for she

went three times, and bore good weights. It was long after midnight

before the beds were ready--and a meal of coffee, and toast, and bread

and butter, spread in the great room. Then at last Hester went back to

the cellar.

"Now, come," she said, and taking up the baby, which had just weight

enough to lie and let her know how light it was, led the way.

Franks rose from the edge of the packing-case, on which lay the body of

Moxy, with his mother yet kneeling beside it, and put his arm round his

wife to raise her. She yielded, and he led her away after their hostess,

the boys following hand in hand. But when they reached the cellar door,

the mother gave a heart-broken cry, and turning ran and threw herself

again beside her child. They all followed her.

"I can't! I can't!" she said. "I can't leave my Moxy lyin' here all

alone! He ain't used to it. He's never once slep' alone since he was

born. I can't bear to think o' that lovely look o' his lost on the dark

night--not a soul to look down an' see it! Oh, Moxy! was your mother

a-leavin' of you all alone!"

"What makes you think there will not be a soul to see it?" said Hester.

"The darkness may be full of eyes! And the night itself is only the

black pupil of the Father's eye.--But we're not going to leave the

darling here. We'll take him too, of course, and find him a good place

to lie in."

The mother was satisfied, and the little procession passed through the

dark way, and up the stair.

The boys looked pleased at sight of the comforts that waited them, but a

little awed with the great lofty room. Over the face of Franks,

notwithstanding his little Serpent of the Prairies had crept away

through the long tangled grass of the universe, passed a gleam of joy

mingled with gratitude: much was now begun to be set to rights between

him and the high government. But the mother was with the little body

lying alone in the cellar. Suddenly with a wild gesture she made for the

door.

"Oh, miss!" she cried, "the rats! the rats!" and would have darted from

the room.

"Stop, stop, dear Mrs. Franks!" cried Hester. "Here! take the baby;

Sarah and I are going immediately to bring him away, and lay him where

you can see him when you please."

Again she was satisfied. She took the baby, and sat down beside her

husband.

I have mentioned a low pitched room under the great one: in this Hester

had told Sarah to place a table covered with white: they would lay the

body there in such fashion as would be a sweet remembrance to the

mother: she went now to see whether this was done. But on the way she

met Sarah coming up with ashy face.

"Oh, miss!" she said, "the body mustn't be left a minute: there's a

whole army of rats in the house already! As I was covering the table

with a blanket before I put on the sheet, there got up all at once

behind the wainscot the most uprageous hurry-scurry o' them horrid

creaturs. They'll be in wherever it is--you may take your bible-oath!

Once when I was--"

Hester interrupted her.

"Come," she said, and led the way.

She looked first into the low room to see that it was properly prepared,

and was leaving it again, when she heard a strange sound behind the

wainscot as it seemed.

"There, miss!" said Sarah.

Hester made up her mind at once that little Moxy should not be left

alone. Her heart trembled a little at the thought, but she comforted

herself that Sarah would not be far off, and that the father and mother

of the child would be immediately over her head. The same instant she

was ashamed of having found this comfort first, for was he not

infinitely nearer to her who is lord of life and death?

They went to the cellar.

"But how," said Hester on the way, "can the Frankses have got into the

place?"

"There is a back door to it, of course!" answered Sarah. "The first load

of coals came in that way, but master wouldn't have it used: he didn't

like a door to his house he never set eyes on, he said."

"But how could it have been open to let them in?" said Hester.

When they reached the cellar, she took the candle and went to look at

the door. It was pushed to, but not locked, and had no fastening upon it

except the lock, in which was the key. She turned the key, and taking it

out, put it in her pocket.

Then they carried up the little body, washed it, dressed it in white,

and laid it straight in its beauty--symbol--passing, like all

symbols--of a peace divinely more profound--the little hands folded on

the breast under the well-contented face, repeating the calm expression

of that conquest over the fear of death, that submission to be "put in

the hole," with which the child-spirit passed into wide spaces. They

lighted six candles, three at the head and three at the feet, that the

mother might see the face of her child, and because light not darkness

befits death. To Hester they symbolized the forms of light that sat, one

at the head and one at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had

lain. Then they went to fetch the mother.

She was washing the things they had used for supper. The boys were

already in bed. Franks was staring into the fire: the poor fellow had

not even looked at one for some time. Hester asked them to go and see

where she had laid Moxy, and they went with her. The beauty of Death's

courtly state comforted them.

"But I can't leave him alone!" said the mother "--all night too!--he

wouldn't like it! I know he won't wake up no more; only, you know,

miss--"

"Yes, I know very well," replied Hester.

"I'm ready," said Franks.

"No, no!" returned Hester. "You are worn out and must go to bed, both of

you: I will stay with the beautiful thing, and see that no harm comes to

it."

After some persuasion the mother consented, and in a little while the

house was quiet. Hester threw a fur cloak round her, and sat down in the

chair Sarah had placed for her beside the dead.

When she had sat some time, the exceeding stillness of the form beside

her began to fill her heart with a gentle awe. The stillness was so

persistent that the awe gradually grew to dismay, and fear,

inexplicable, unreasonable fear, of which she was ashamed, began to

invade her. She knew at once that she must betake her to the Truth for

refuge. It is little use telling one's self that one's fear is silly. It

comes upon no pretence of wisdom or logic; proved devoid of both, it

will not therefore budge a jot. She prayed to the Father, awake with her

in the stillness; and then began to think about the dead Christ. Would

the women who waited for the dawn because they had no light by which to

minister, have been afraid to watch by that body all the night long? Oh,

to have seen it come to life! move and wake and rise with the informing

God! Every dead thing belonged to Christ, not to something called Death!

This dead thing was his. It was dead as he had been dead, and no

otherwise! There was nothing dreadful in watching by it, any more than

in sitting beside the cradle of a child yet unborn! In the name of

Christ she would fear nothing! He had abolished death!

Thus thinking, she lay back in her chair, closed her eyes, and thanking

God for having sent her relief in these his children to help, fell fast

asleep.

She started suddenly awake, seeming to have been roused by the opening

of a door. The fringe of a departing dream lay yet upon her eyes: was

the door of the tomb in which she had lain so long burst from its

hinges? was the day of the great resurrection come? Swiftly her senses

settled themselves, and she saw plainly and remembered clearly. Yet

could she be really awake? for in the wall opposite stood the form of a

man! She neither cried out nor fainted, but sat gazing. She was not even

afraid, only dumb with wonder. The man did not look fearful. A smile she

seemed to have seen before broke gradually from his lips and spread over

his face. The next moment he stepped from the wall and came towards her.

Then sight and memory came together: in that wall was a door, said to

lead into the next house: for the first time she saw it open!

The man came nearer and nearer: it was Christopher! She rose, and held

out her hand.

"You are surprised to see me!" he said, "--and well you may be! Am I in

your house?--And this watch! what does it mean? I seem to recognize the

sweet face! I must have seen you and it together before!--Yes! it is

Moxy!"

"You are right, Mr. Christopher," she answered. "Dear little Moxy died

of the small-pox in our cellar. He was just gone when I found them

there."

"Is it wise of you to expose yourself so much to the infection?" said

the doctor.

"Is it worthy of you to ask such a question?" returned Hester. "We have

our work to do; life or death is the care of him who sets the work."

The doctor bent his head low, lower, and lower still, before her.

Nothing moves a man more than to recognize in another the principles

which are to himself a necessity of his being and history.

"I put the question to know on what grounds you based your action," he

replied, "and I am answered."

"Tell me then," said Hester, "how you came to be here. It seemed to my

sleepy eyes as if an angel had melted his own door through the wall! Are

you free of ordinary hindrances?" She asked almost in seriousness; for,

with the lovely dead before her, in the middle of the night, roused

suddenly from a sleep into which she had fallen with her thoughts full

of the shining resurrection of the Lord, she would have believed him at

once if he had told her that for the service of the Lord's poor he was

enabled to pass where he pleased. He smiled with a wonderful sweetness

as he made answer:

"I hope you are not one of those who so little believe that the world

and its ways belong to God, that they want to have his presence proved

by something out of the usual way--something not so good; for surely the

way He chooses to work almost always, must be a better way than that in

which he only works now and then because of a special necessity!"

By these words Hester perceived she was in the presence of one who

understood the things of which he spoke.

"I came here in the simplest way in the world," he went on, "though I am

no less surprised than you to find myself in your presence."

"The thing is to me a marvel," said Hester.

"It shall not be such a moment longer. I was called to see a patient.

When I went to return as I came, I found the door by which I had entered

locked. I then remembered that I had passed a door on the stair, and

went back to try it. It was bolted on the side to the stair. I withdrew

the bolts, opened the door gently, and beheld one of the most impressive

sights I ever saw. Shall I tell you what I saw?"

"Do," answered Hester.

"I saw," said Christopher with solemnity, "the light shining in the

darkness, and the darkness comprehending it not--six candles, and only

the up-turned face of the dead, and the down-turned face of the

sleeping! I seemed to look into the heart of things, and see the whole

waste universe waiting for the sonship, for the redemption of the body,

the visible life of men! I saw that love, trying to watch by death, had

failed, because the thing that is not needs not to be watched. I saw all

this and more. I think I must have unconsciously pushed the door against

the wall, for somehow I made a noise with it, and you woke."

Hester's face alone showed that she understood him. She turned and

looked at Moxy to calm the emotion to which she would not give scope.

Christopher stood silent, as if brooding on what he had seen. She could

not ask him to sit down, but she must understand how he had got into the

house. Where was his patient? "In the next house, of course!" she

concluded. But the thing wanted looking into! That door must be secured

on their side? Their next midnight visitor might not be so welcome as

this, whose heart burned to the same labour as her own! "But what we

really want," she thought, "is to have more not fewer of our doors open,

if they be but the right ones for the angels to come and go!"