When he arrived he made it his first business to find 'Widow Walker.'

She was evidently one of the worst of her class; and could it have been

accomplished without scandal, and without interfering with the quietness

upon which he believed that the true effect of his labours in a large

measure depended, he would not have scrupled simply to carry off the

child. With much difficulty, for the woman was suspicious, he contrived

to see her, and was at once reminded of the child he had seen in the

cart on the occasion of Shargar's recognition of his mother. He fancied

he saw in her some resemblance to his friend Shargar. The affair ended

in his paying the woman a hundred and fifty pounds to give up the girl.

Within six months she had drunk herself to death. He took little Nancy

Kennedy home with him, and gave her in charge to his housekeeper. She

cried a good deal at first, and wanted to go back to Mother Walker, but

he had no great trouble with her after a time. She began to take a share

in the house-work, and at length to wait upon him. Then Falconer began

to see that he must cultivate relations with other people in order

to enlarge his means of helping the poor. He nowise abandoned his

conviction that whatever good he sought to do or lent himself to aid

must be effected entirely by individual influence. He had little faith

in societies, regarding them chiefly as a wretched substitute, just

better than nothing, for that help which the neighbour is to give to

his neighbour. Finding how the unbelief of the best of the poor is

occasioned by hopelessness in privation, and the sufferings of those

dear to them, he was confident that only the personal communion of

friendship could make it possible for them to believe in God. Christians

must be in the world as He was in the world; and in proportion as the

truth radiated from them, the world would be able to believe in Him.

Money he saw to be worse than useless, except as a gracious outcome of

human feelings and brotherly love. He always insisted that the Saviour

healed only those on whom his humanity had laid hold; that he demanded

faith of them in order to make them regard him, that so his personal

being might enter into their hearts. Healing without faith in its source

would have done them harm instead of good--would have been to them a

windfall, not a Godsend; at best the gift of magic, even sometimes the

power of Satan casting out Satan. But he must not therefore act as if

he were the only one who could render this individual aid, or as if

men influencing the poor individually could not aid each other in their

individual labours. He soon found, I say, that there were things he

could not do without help, and Nancy was his first perplexity. From this

he was delivered in a wonderful way.

One afternoon he was prowling about Spitalfields, where he had made many

acquaintances amongst the silk-weavers and their families. Hearing a

loud voice as he passed down a stair from the visit he had been paying

further up the house, he went into the room whence the sound came,

for he knew a little of the occupant. He was one De Fleuri, or as

the neighbours called him, Diffleery, in whose countenance, after

generations of want and debasement, the delicate lines and noble cast of

his ancient race were yet emergent. This man had lost his wife and

three children, his whole family except a daughter now sick, by a

slow-consuming hunger; and he did not believe there was a God that ruled

in the earth. But he supported his unbelief by no other argument than

a hopeless bitter glance at his empty loom. At this moment he sat

silent--a rock against which the noisy waves of a combative Bible-reader

were breaking in rude foam. His silence and apparent impassiveness

angered the irreverent little worthy. To Falconer's humour he looked a

vulgar bull-terrier barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish

arguments against infidelity, drawn from Paley's Natural Theology, and

tracts about the inspiration of the Bible, touched the sore-hearted

unbelief of the man no nearer than the clangour of negro kettles affects

the eclipse of the sun. Falconer stood watching his opportunity. Nor

was the eager disputant long in affording him one. Socratic fashion,

Falconer asked him a question, and was answered; followed it with

another, which, after a little hesitation, was likewise answered;

then asked a third, the ready answer to which involved such a flagrant

contradiction of the first, that the poor sorrowful weaver burst into

a laugh of delight at the discomfiture of his tormentor. After some

stammering, and a confused attempt to recover the line of argument, the

would-be partizan of Deity roared out, 'The fool hath said in his heart

there is no God;' and with this triumphant discharge of his swivel,

turned and ran down the stairs precipitately.

Both laughed while the sound of his footsteps lasted. Then Falconer

said,

'My. De Fleuri, I believe in God with all my heart, and soul, and

strength, and mind; though not in that poor creature's arguments. I

don't know that your unbelief is not better than his faith.'

'I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Falconer. I haven't laughed so for

years. What right has he to come pestering me?'

'None whatever. But you must forgive him, because he is well-meaning,

and because his conceit has made a fool of him. They're not all like

him. But how is your daughter?'

'Very poorly, sir. She's going after the rest. A Spitalfields weaver

ought to be like the cats: they don't mind how many of their kittens are

drowned.'

'I beg your pardon. They don't like it. Only they forget it sooner than

we do.'

'Why do you say we, sir? You don't know anything of that sort.'

'The heart knows its own bitterness, De Fleuri--and finds it enough, I

dare say.'

The weaver was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, there was a

touch of tenderness in his respect.

'Will you go and see my poor Katey, sir?'

'Would she like to see me?'

'It does her good to see you. I never let that fellow go near her. He

may worry me as he pleases; but she shall die in peace. That is all I

can do for her.'

'Do you still persist in refusing help--for your daughter--I don't mean

for yourself?'

Not believing in God, De Fleuri would not be obliged to his fellow.

Falconer had never met with a similar instance.

'I do. I won't kill her, and I won't kill myself: I am not bound to

accept charity. It's all right. I only want to leave the whole affair

behind; and I sincerely hope there's nothing to come after. If I were

God, I should be ashamed of such a mess of a world.'

'Well, no doubt you would have made something more to your mind--and

better, too, if all you see were all there is to be seen. But I didn't

send that bore away to bore you myself. I'm going to see Katey.'

'Very well, sir. I won't go up with you, for I won't interfere with what

you think proper to say to her.'

'That's rather like faith somewhere!' thought Falconer. 'Could that man

fail to believe in Jesus Christ if he only saw him--anything like as he

is?'

Katey lay in a room overhead; for though he lacked food, this man

contrived to pay for a separate room for his daughter, whom he treated

with far more respect than many gentlemen treat their wives. Falconer

found her lying on a wretched bed. Still it was a bed; and many in the

same house had no bed to lie on. He had just come from a room overhead

where lived a widow with four children. All of them lay on a floor

whence issued at night, by many holes, awful rats. The children could

not sleep for horror. They did not mind the little ones, they said, but

when the big ones came, they were awake all night.

'Well, Katey, how are you?'

'No better, thank God.'

She spoke as her father had taught her. Her face was worn and thin, but

hardly death-like. Only extremes met in it--the hopelessness had turned

through quietude into comfort. Her hopelessness affected him more than

her father's. But there was nothing he could do for her.

There came a tap at the door.

'Come in,' said Falconer, involuntarily.

A lady in the dress of a Sister of Mercy entered with a large basket on

her arm. She started, and hesitated for a moment when she saw him. He

rose, thinking it better to go. She advanced to the bedside. He turned

at the door, and said,

'I won't say good-bye yet, Katey, for I'm going to have a chat with your

father, and if you will let me, I will look in again.'

As he turned he saw the lady kiss her on the forehead. At the sound

of his voice she started again, left the bedside and came towards him.

Whether he knew her by her face or her voice first, he could not tell.

'Robert,' she said, holding out her hand.

It was Mary St. John. Their hands met, joined fast, and lingered, as

they gazed each in the other's face. It was nearly fourteen years since

they had parted. The freshness of youth was gone from her cheek, and the

signs of middle age were present on her forehead. But she was statelier,

nobler, and gentler than ever. Falconer looked at her calmly, with

only a still swelling at the heart, as if they met on the threshold of

heaven. All the selfishness of passion was gone, and the old earlier

adoration, elevated and glorified, had returned. He was a boy once more

in the presence of a woman-angel. She did not shrink from his gaze, she

did not withdraw her hand from his clasp.

'I am so glad, Robert!' was all she said.

'So am I,' he answered quietly. 'We may meet sometimes then?'

'Yes. Perhaps we can help each other.'

'You can help me,' said Falconer. 'I have a girl I don't know what to do

with.'

'Send her to me. I will take care of her.'

'I will bring her. But I must come and see you first.'

'That will tell you where I live,' she said, giving him a card.

Good-bye.'

'Till to-morrow,' said Falconer.

'She's not like that Bible fellow,' said De Fleuri, as he entered his

room again. 'She don't walk into your house as if it was her own.'

He was leaning against his idle loom, which, like a dead thing, filled

the place with the mournfulness of death. Falconer took a broken chair,

the only one, and sat down.

'I am going to take a liberty with you, Mr. De Fleuri,' he said.

'As you please, Mr. Falconer.'

'I want to tell you the only fault I have to you.'

'Yes?'

'You don't do anything for the people in the house. Whether you believe

in God or not, you ought to do what you can for your neighbour.'

He held that to help a neighbour is the strongest antidote to unbelief,

and an open door out of the bad air of one's own troubles, as well.

De Fleuri laughed bitterly, and rubbed his hand up and down his empty

pocket. It was a pitiable action. Falconer understood it.

'There are better things than money: sympathy, for instance. You could

talk to them a little.'

'I have no sympathy, sir.'

'You would find you had, if you would let it out.'

'I should only make them more miserable. If I believed as you do, now,

there might be some use.'

'There's that widow with her four children in the garret. The poor

little things are tormented by the rats: couldn't you nail bits of wood

over their holes?'

De Fleuri laughed again.

'Where am I to get the bits of wood, except I pull down some of those

laths. And they wouldn't keep them out a night.'

'Couldn't you ask some carpenter?'

'I won't ask a favour.'

'I shouldn't mind asking, now.'

'That's because you don't know the bitterness of needing.'

'Fortunately, however, there's no occasion for it. You have no right to

refuse for another what you wouldn't accept for yourself. Of course I

could send in a man to do it; but if you would do it, that would do her

heart good. And that's what most wants doing good to--isn't it, now?'

'I believe you're right there, sir. If it wasn't for the misery of it, I

shouldn't mind the hunger.'

'I should like to tell you how I came to go poking my nose into other

people's affairs. Would you like to hear my story now?'

'If you please, sir.'

A little pallid curiosity seemed to rouse itself in the heart of the

hopeless man. So Falconer began at once to tell him how he had been

brought up, describing the country and their ways of life, not excluding

his adventures with Shargar, until he saw that the man was thoroughly

interested. Then all at once, pulling out his watch, he said,

'But it's time I had my tea, and I haven't half done yet. I am not fond

of being hungry, like you, Mr. De Fleuri.'

The poor fellow could only manage a very dubious smile.

'I'll tell you what,' said Falconer, as if the thought had only just

struck him--'come home with me, and I'll give you the rest of it at my

own place.'

'You must excuse me, sir.'

'Bless my soul, the man's as proud as Lucifer! He won't accept a

neighbour's invitation to a cup of tea--for fear it should put him under

obligations, I suppose.'

'It's very kind of you, sir, to put it in that way; but I don't choose

to be taken in. You know very well it's not as one equal asks another

you ask me. It's charity.'

'Do I not behave to you as an equal?'

'But you know that don't make us equals.'

'But isn't there something better than being equals? Supposing, as you

will have it, that we're not equals, can't we be friends?'

'I hope so, sir.'

'Do you think now, Mr. De Fleuri, if you weren't something more to me

than a mere equal, I would go telling you my own history? But I forgot:

I have told you hardly anything yet. I have to tell you how much nearer

I am to your level than you think. I had the design too of getting you

to help me in the main object of my life. Come, don't be a fool. I want

you.'

'I can't leave Katey,' said the weaver, hesitatingly.

'Miss St. John is there still. I will ask her to stop till you come

back.'

Without waiting for an answer, he ran up the stairs, and had speedily

arranged with Miss St. John. Then taking his consent for granted, he

hurried De Fleuri away with him, and knowing how unfit a man of his

trade was for walking, irrespective of feebleness from want, he called

the first cab, and took him home. Here, over their tea, which he judged

the safest meal for a stomach unaccustomed to food, he told him about

his grandmother, and about Dr. Anderson, and how he came to give himself

to the work he was at, partly for its own sake, partly in the hope of

finding his father. He told him his only clue to finding him; and that

he had called on Mrs. Macallister twice every week for two years, but

had heard nothing of him. De Fleuri listened with what rose to great

interest before the story was finished. And one of its ends at least was

gained: the weaver was at home with him. The poor fellow felt that such

close relation to an outcast, did indeed bring Falconer nearer to his

own level.

'Do you want it kept a secret, sir?' he asked.

'I don't want it made a matter of gossip. But I do not mind how many

respectable people like yourself know of it.'

He said this with a vague hope of assistance.

Before they parted, the unaccustomed tears had visited the eyes of

De Fleuri, and he had consented not only to repair Mrs. Chisholm's

garret-floor, but to take in hand the expenditure of a certain sum

weekly, as he should judge expedient, for the people who lived in that

and the neighbouring houses--in no case, however, except of sickness,

or actual want of bread from want of work. Thus did Falconer appoint a

sorrow-made infidel to be the almoner of his christian charity, knowing

well that the nature of the Son of Man was in him, and that to get him

to do as the Son of Man did, in ever so small a degree, was the readiest

means of bringing his higher nature to the birth. Nor did he ever repent

the choice he had made.

When he waited upon Miss St. John the next day, he found her in the

ordinary dress of a lady. She received him with perfect confidence and

kindness, but there was no reference made to the past. She told him that

she had belonged to a sisterhood, but had left it a few days before,

believing she could do better without its restrictions.

'It was an act of cowardice,' she said,--'wearing the dress yesterday.

I had got used to it, and did not feel safe without it; but I shall not

wear it any more.'

'I think you are right,' said Falconer. 'The nearer any friendly act is

associated with the individual heart, without intervention of class or

creed, the more the humanity, which is the divinity of it, will appear.'

He then told her about Nancy.

'I will keep her about myself for a while,' said Miss St. John, 'till

I see what can be done with her. I know a good many people who without

being prepared, or perhaps able to take any trouble, are yet ready to do

a kindness when it is put in their way.'

'I feel more and more that I ought to make some friends,' said Falconer;

'for I find my means of help reach but a little way. What had I better

do? I suppose I could get some introductions.--I hardly know how.'

'That will easily be managed. I will take that in hand. If you will

accept invitations, you will soon know a good many people--of all

sorts,' she added with a smile.

About this time Falconer, having often felt the pressure of his

ignorance of legal affairs, and reflected whether it would not add to

his efficiency to rescue himself from it, began such a course of study

as would fit him for the profession of the law. Gifted with splendid

health, and if with a slow strength of grasping, yet with a great power

of holding, he set himself to work, and regularly read for the bar.

CHAPTER VIII. MY OWN ACQUAINTANCE.

It was after this that my own acquaintance with Falconer commenced. I

had just come out of one of the theatres in the neighbourhood of the

Strand, unable to endure any longer the dreary combination of false

magnanimity and real meanness, imported from Paris in the shape of

a melodrama, for the delectation of the London public. I had turned

northwards, and was walking up one of the streets near Covent Garden,

when my attention was attracted to a woman who came out of a gin-shop,

carrying a baby. She went to the kennel, and bent her head over, ill

with the poisonous stuff she had been drinking. And while the woman

stood in this degrading posture, the poor, white, wasted baby was

looking over her shoulder with the smile of a seraph, perfectly

unconscious of the hell around her.

'Children will see things as God sees them,' murmured a voice beside me.

I turned and saw a tall man with whose form I had already become a

little familiar, although I knew nothing of him, standing almost at my

elbow, with his eyes fixed on the woman and the child, and a strange

smile of tenderness about his mouth, as if he were blessing the little

creature in his heart.

He too saw the wonder of the show, typical of so much in the world,

indeed of the world itself--the seemingly vile upholding and ministering

to the life of the pure, the gracious, the fearless. Aware from his

tone more than from his pronunciation that he was a fellow-countryman, I

ventured to speak to him, and in a home-dialect.

'It's a wonnerfu' sicht. It's the cake o' Ezekiel ower again.'

He looked at me sharply, thought a moment, and said,

'You were going my way when you stopped. I will walk with you, if you

will.'

'But what's to be done about it?' I said.

'About what?' he returned.

'About the child there,' I answered.

'Oh! she is its mother,' he replied, walking on.

'What difference does that make?' I said.

'All the difference in the world. If God has given her that child, what

right have you or I to interfere?'

'But I verily believe from the look of the child she gives it gin.'

'God saves the world by the new blood, the children. To take her child

from her, would be to do what you could to damn her.'

'It doesn't look much like salvation there.'

'You mustn't interfere with God's thousand years any more than his one

day.'

'Are you sure she is the mother?' I asked.

'Yes. I would not have left the child with her otherwise.'

'What would you have done with it? Got it into some orphan asylum?--or

the Foundling perhaps?'

'Never,' he answered. 'All those societies are wretched inventions for

escape from the right way. There ought not to be an orphan asylum in the

kingdom.'

'What! Would you put them all down then?'

'God forbid. But I would, if I could, make them all useless.'

'How could you do that?'

'I would merely enlighten the hearts of childless people as to their

privileges.'

'Which are?'

'To be fathers and mothers to the fatherless and motherless.'

'I have often wondered why more of them did not adopt children. Why

don't they?'

'For various reasons which a real love to child nature would blow to the

winds--all comprised in this, that such a child would not be their own

child. As if ever a child could be their own! That a child is God's

is of rather more consequence than whether it is born of this or that

couple. Their hearts would surely be glad when they went into heaven to

have the angels of the little ones that always behold the face of their

Father coming round them, though they were not exactly their father and

mother.'

'I don't know what the passage you refer to means.'

'Neither do I. But it must mean something, if He said it. Are you a

clergyman?'

'No. I am only a poor teacher of mathematics and poetry, shown up the

back stairs into the nurseries of great houses.'

'A grand chance, if I may use the word.'

'I do try to wake a little enthusiasm in the sons and daughters--without

much success, I fear.'

'Will you come and see me?' he said.

'With much pleasure. But, as I have given you an answer, you owe me

one.'

'I do.'

'Have you adopted a child?'

'No.'

'Then you have some of your own?'

'No.'

'Then, excuse me, but why the warmth of your remarks on those who--'

'I think I shall be able to satisfy you on that point, if we draw

to each other. Meantime I must leave you. Could you come to-morrow

evening?'

'With pleasure.'

We arranged the hour and parted. I saw him walk into a low public-house,

and went home.

At the time appointed, I rang the bell, and was led by an elderly woman

up the stair, and shown into a large room on the first-floor--poorly

furnished, and with many signs of bachelor-carelessness. Mr. Falconer

rose from an old hair-covered sofa to meet me as I entered. I will first

tell my reader something of his personal appearance.

He was considerably above six feet in height, square-shouldered,

remarkably long in the arms, and his hands were uncommonly large and

powerful. His head was large, and covered with dark wavy hair, lightly

streaked with gray. His broad forehead projected over deep-sunk eyes,

that shone like black fire. His features, especially his Roman nose,

were large, and finely, though not delicately, modelled. His nostrils

were remarkably large and flexile, with a tendency to slight motion: I

found on further acquaintance that when he was excited, they expanded in

a wild equine manner. The expression of his mouth was of tender power,

crossed with humour. He kept his lips a little compressed, which gave a

certain sternness to his countenance: but when this sternness dissolved

in a smile, it was something enchanting. He was plainly, rather shabbily

clothed. No one could have guessed at his profession or social position.

He came forward and received me cordially. After a little indifferent

talk, he asked me if I had any other engagement for the evening.

'I never have any engagements,' I answered--'at least, of a social kind.

I am burd alane. I know next to nobody.'

'Then perhaps you would not mind going out with me for a stroll?'

'I shall be most happy,' I answered.

There was something about the man I found exceedingly attractive; I had

very few friends; and there was besides something odd, almost romantic,

in this beginning of an intercourse: I would see what would come of it.

'Then we'll have some supper first,' said Mr. Falconer, and rang the

bell.

While we ate our chops--

'I dare say you think it strange,' my host said, 'that without the least

claim on your acquaintance, I should have asked you to come and see me,

Mr.--'

He stopped, smiling.

'My name is Gordon--Archie Gordon,' I said.

'Well, then, Mr. Gordon, I confess I have a design upon you. But you

will remember that you addressed me first.'

'You spoke first,' I said.

'Did I?'

'I did not say you spoke to me, but you spoke.--I should not have

ventured to make the remark I did make, if I had not heard your voice

first. What design have you on me?'

'That will appear in due course. Now take a glass of wine, and we'll set

out.'

We soon found ourselves in Holborn, and my companion led the way towards

the City. The evening was sultry and close.

'Nothing excites me more,' said Mr. Falconer, 'than a walk in the

twilight through a crowded street. Do you find it affect you so?'

'I cannot speak as strongly as you do,' I replied. 'But I perfectly

understand what you mean. Why is it, do you think?'

'Partly, I fancy, because it is like the primordial chaos, a

concentrated tumult of undetermined possibilities. The germs of infinite

adventure and result are floating around you like a snow-storm. You do

not know what may arise in a moment and colour all your future. Out

of this mass may suddenly start something marvellous, or, it may be,

something you have been looking for for years.'

The same moment, a fierce flash of lightning, like a blue sword-blade

a thousand times shattered, quivered and palpitated about us, leaving a

thick darkness on the sense. I heard my companion give a suppressed cry,

and saw him run up against a heavy drayman who was on the edge of the

path, guiding his horses with his long whip. He begged the man's pardon,

put his hand to his head, and murmured, 'I shall know him now.' I was

afraid for a moment that the lightning had struck him, but he assured

me there was nothing amiss. He looked a little excited and confused,

however.

I should have forgotten the incident, had he not told me

afterwards--when I had come to know him intimately--that in the moment

of that lightning flash, he had had a strange experience: he had seen

the form of his father, as he had seen him that Sunday afternoon, in the

midst of the surrounding light. He was as certain of the truth of the

presentation as if a gradual revival of memory had brought with it the

clear conviction of its own accuracy. His explanation of the phenomenon

was, that, in some cases, all that prevents a vivid conception from

assuming objectivity, is the self-assertion of external objects. The

gradual approach of darkness cannot surprise and isolate the phantasm;

but the suddenness of the lightning could and did, obliterating

everything without, and leaving that over which it had no power standing

alone, and therefore visible.

'But,' I ventured to ask, 'whence the minuteness of detail, surpassing,

you say, all that your memory could supply?'

'That I think was a quickening of the memory by the realism of the

presentation. Excited by the vision, it caught at its own past, as it

were, and suddenly recalled that which it had forgotten. In the rapidity

of all pure mental action, this at once took its part in the apparent

objectivity.'

To return to the narrative of my first evening in Falconer's company.

It was strange how insensible the street population was to the grandeur

of the storm. While the thunder was billowing and bellowing over and

around us--

'A hundred pins for one ha'penny,' bawled a man from the gutter, with

the importance of a Cagliostro.

'Evening Star! Telegrauwff!' roared an ear-splitting urchin in my very

face. I gave him a shove off the pavement.

'Ah! don't do that,' said Falconer. 'It only widens the crack between

him and his fellows--not much, but a little.'

'You are right,' I said. 'I won't do it again.'

The same moment we heard a tumult in a neighbouring street. A crowd

was execrating a policeman, who had taken a woman into custody, and was

treating her with unnecessary rudeness. Falconer looked on for a few

moments.

'Come, policeman!' he said at length, in a tone of expostulation.

'You're rather rough, are you not? She's a woman, you know.'

'Hold your blasted humbug,' answered the man, an exceptional specimen of

the force at that time at all events, and shook the tattered wretch, as

if he would shake her out of her rags.

Falconer gently parted the crowd, and stood beside the two.

'I will help you,' he said, 'to take her to the station, if you like,

but you must not treat her that way.'

'I don't want your help,' said the policeman; 'I know you, and all the

damned lot of you.'

'Then I shall be compelled to give you a lesson,' said Falconer.

The man's only answer was a shake that made the woman cry out.

'I shall get into trouble if you get off,' said Falconer to her. 'Will

you promise me, on your word, to go with me to the station, if I rid you

of the fellow?'

'I will, I will,' said the woman.

'Then, look out,' said Falconer to the policeman; 'for I'm going to give

you that lesson.'

The officer let the woman go, took his baton, and made a blow at

Falconer. In another moment--I could hardly see how--he lay in the

street.

'Now, my poor woman, come along,' said Falconer.

She obeyed, crying gently. Two other policemen came up.

'Do you want to give that woman in charge, Mr. Falconer?' asked one of

them.

'I give that man in charge,' cried his late antagonist, who had just

scrambled to his feet. 'Assaulting the police in discharge of their

duty.'

'Very well,' said the other. 'But you're in the wrong box, and that

you'll find. You had better come along to the station, sir.'

'Keep that fellow from getting hold of the woman--you two, and we'll go

together,' said Falconer.

Bewildered with the rapid sequence of events, I was following in the

crowd. Falconer looked about till he saw me, and gave me a nod which

meant come along. Before we reached Bow Street, however, the offending

policeman, who had been walking a little behind in conversation with

one of the others, advanced to Falconer, touched his hat, and said

something, to which Falconer replied.

'Remember, I have my eye upon you,' was all I heard, however, as he left

the crowd and rejoined me. We turned and walked eastward again.

The storm kept on intermittently, but the streets were rather more

crowded than usual notwithstanding.

'Look at that man in the woollen jacket,' said Falconer. 'What a

beautiful outline of face! There must be something noble in that man.'

'I did not see him,' I answered, 'I was taken up with a woman's face,

like that of a beautiful corpse. It's eyes were bright. There was gin in

its brain.'

The streets swarmed with human faces gleaming past. It was a night of

ghosts.

There stood a man who had lost one arm, earnestly pumping bilge-music

out of an accordion with the other, holding it to his body with the

stump. There was a woman, pale with hunger and gin, three match-boxes

in one extended hand, and the other holding a baby to her breast. As

we looked, the poor baby let go its hold, turned its little head, and

smiled a wan, shrivelled, old-fashioned smile in our faces.

Another happy baby, you see, Mr. Gordon,' said Falconer. 'A child, fresh

from God, finds its heaven where no one else would. The devil could

drive woman out of Paradise; but the devil himself cannot drive the

Paradise out of a woman.'

'What can be done for them?' I said, and at the moment, my eye fell upon

a row of little children, from two to five years of age, seated upon the

curb-stone.

They were chattering fast, and apparently carrying on some game, as

happy as if they had been in the fields.

'Wouldn't you like to take all those little grubby things, and put them

in a great tub and wash them clean?' I said.

'They'd fight like spiders,' rejoined Falconer.

'They're not fighting now.'

'Then don't make them. It would be all useless. The probability is that

you would only change the forms of the various evils, and possibly

for worse. You would buy all that man's glue-lizards, and that man's

three-foot rules, and that man's dog-collars and chains, at three times

their value, that they might get more drink than usual, and do nothing

at all for their living to-morrow.--What a happy London you would make

if you were Sultan Haroun!' he added, laughing. 'You would put an end to

poverty altogether, would you not?'

I did not reply at once.

'But I beg your pardon,' he resumed; 'I am very rude.'

'Not at all,' I returned. 'I was only thinking how to answer you. They

would be no worse after all than those who inherit property and lead

idle lives.'

'True; but they would be no better. Would you be content that your

quondam poor should be no better off than the rich? What would be gained

thereby? Is there no truth in the words “Blessed are the poor”? A deeper

truth than most Christians dare to see.--Did you ever observe that there

is not one word about the vices of the poor in the Bible--from beginning

to end?'

'But they have their vices.'

'Indubitably. I am only stating a fact. The Bible is full enough of the

vices of the rich. I make no comment.'

'But don't you care for their sufferings?'

'They are of secondary importance quite. But if you had been as much

amongst them as I, perhaps you would be of my opinion, that the poor are

not, cannot possibly feel so wretched as they seem to us. They live in a

climate, as it were, which is their own, by natural law comply with it,

and find it not altogether unfriendly. The Laplander will prefer his

wastes to the rich fields of England, not merely from ignorance, but for

the sake of certain blessings amongst which he has been born and brought

up. The blessedness of life depends far more on its interest than upon

its comfort. The need of exertion and the doubt of success, renders life

much more interesting to the poor than it is to those who, unblessed

with anxiety for the bread that perisheth, waste their poor hearts about

rank and reputation.'

'I thought such anxiety was represented as an evil in the New

Testament.'

'Yes. But it is a still greater evil to lose it in any other way than by

faith in God. You would remove the anxiety by destroying its cause: God

would remove it by lifting them above it, by teaching them to trust in

him, and thus making them partakers of the divine nature. Poverty is a

blessing when it makes a man look up.'

'But you cannot say it does so always.'

'I cannot determine when, where, and how much; but I am sure it does.

And I am confident that to free those hearts from it by any deed of

yours would be to do them the greatest injury you could. Probably their

want of foresight would prove the natural remedy, speedily reducing them

to their former condition--not however without serious loss.'

'But will not this theory prove at last an anæsthetic rather than an

anodyne? I mean that, although you may adopt it at first for refuge from

the misery the sight of their condition occasions you, there is surely a

danger of its rendering you at last indifferent to it.'

'Am I indifferent? But you do not know me yet. Pardon my egotism. There

may be such danger. Every truth has its own danger or shadow. Assuredly

I would have no less labour spent upon them. But there can be no true

labour done, save in as far as we are fellow-labourers with God. We must

work with him, not against him. Every one who works without believing

that God is doing the best, the absolute good for them, is, must be,

more or less, thwarting God. He would take the poor out of God's hands.

For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him. If we could thoroughly

understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that

which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its

relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred. But through all this

darkness about the poor, at least I can see wonderful veins and fields

of light, and with the help of this partial vision, I trust for the

rest. The only and the greatest thing man is capable of is Trust in

God.'

'What then is a man to do for the poor? How is he to work with God?' I

asked.

'He must be a man amongst them--a man breathing the air of a higher

life, and therefore in all natural ways fulfilling his endless human

relations to them. Whatever you do for them, let your own being, that

is you in relation to them, be the background, that so you may be a

link between them and God, or rather I should say, between them and the

knowledge of God.'

While Falconer spoke, his face grew grander and grander, till at last

it absolutely shone. I felt that I walked with a man whose faith was his

genius.

'Of one thing I am pretty sure,' he resumed, 'that the same recipe

Goethe gave for the enjoyment of life, applies equally to all work: “Do

the thing that lies next you.” That is all our business. Hurried results

are worse than none. We must force nothing, but be partakers of the

divine patience. How long it took to make the cradle! and we fret that

the baby Humanity is not reading Euclid and Plato, even that it is not

understanding the Gospel of St. John! If there is one thing evident in

the world's history, it is that God hasteneth not. All haste implies

weakness. Time is as cheap as space and matter. What they call the

church militant is only at drill yet, and a good many of the officers

too not out of the awkward squad. I am sure I, for a private, am not.

In the drill a man has to conquer himself, and move with the rest by

individual attention to his own duty: to what mighty battlefields the

recruit may yet be led, he does not know. Meantime he has nearly enough

to do with his goose-step, while there is plenty of single combat,

skirmish, and light cavalry work generally, to get him ready for

whatever is to follow. I beg your pardon: I am preaching.'

'Eloquently,' I answered.

Of some of the places into which Falconer led me that night I will

attempt no description--places blazing with lights and mirrors, crowded

with dancers, billowing with music, close and hot, and full of the

saddest of all sights, the uninteresting faces of commonplace women.

'There is a passion,' I said, as we came out of one of these dreadful

places, 'that lingers about the heart like the odour of violets, like a

glimmering twilight on the borders of moonrise; and there is a passion

that wraps itself in the vapours of patchouli and coffins, and streams

from the eyes like gaslight from a tavern. And yet the line is ill to

draw between them. It is very dreadful. These are women.'

'They are in God's hands,' answered Falconer. 'He hasn't done with them

yet. Shall it take less time to make a woman than to make a world? Is

not the woman the greater? She may have her ages of chaos, her centuries

of crawling slime, yet rise a woman at last.'

'How much alike all those women were!'

'A family likeness, alas! which always strikes you first.'

'Some of them looked quite modest.'

'There are great differences. I do not know anything more touching than

to see how a woman will sometimes wrap around her the last remnants of a

soiled and ragged modesty. It has moved me almost to tears to see such

a one hanging her head in shame during the singing of a detestable song.

That poor thing's shame was precious in the eyes of the Master, surely.'

'Could nothing be done for her?'

'I contrived to let her know where she would find a friend if she wanted

to be good: that is all you can do in such cases. If the horrors of

their life do not drive them out at such an open door, you can do

nothing else, I fear--for the time.'

'Where are you going now, may I ask?'

'Into the city--on business,' he added with a smile.

'There will be nobody there so late.'

'Nobody! One would think you were the beadle of a city church, Mr.

Gordon.'

We came into a very narrow, dirty street. I do not know where it is. A

slatternly woman advanced from an open door, and said,

'Mr. Falconer.'

He looked at her for a moment.

'Why, Sarah, have you come to this already?' he said.

'Never mind me, sir. It's no more than you told me to expect. You knowed

him better than I did. Leastways I'm an honest woman.'

'Stick to that, Sarah; and be good-tempered.'

'I'll have a try anyhow, sir. But there's a poor cretur a dyin'

up-stairs; and I'm afeard it'll go hard with her, for she throwed a

Bible out o' window this very morning, sir.'

'Would she like to see me? I'm afraid not.'

'She's got Lilywhite, what's a sort of a reader, readin' that same Bible

to her now.'

'There can be no great harm in just looking in,' he said, turning to me.

'I shall be happy to follow you--anywhere,' I returned.

'She's awful ill, sir; cholerer or summat,' said Sarah, as she led the

way up the creaking stair.

We half entered the room softly. Two or three women sat by the chimney,

and another by a low bed, covered with a torn patchwork counterpane,

spelling out a chapter in the Bible. We paused for a moment to hear what

she was reading. Had the book been opened by chance, or by design? It

was the story of David and Bathsheba. Moans came from the bed, but the

candle in a bottle, by which the woman was reading, was so placed that

we could not see the sufferer.

We stood still and did not interrupt the reading.

'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed a coarse voice from the side of the chimney: 'the

saint, you see, was no better than some of the rest of us!'

'I think he was a good deal worse just then,' said Falconer, stepping

forward.

'Gracious! there's Mr. Falconer,' said another woman, rising, and

speaking in a flattering tone.

'Then,' remarked the former speaker, 'there's a chance for old Moll and

me yet. King David was a saint, wasn't he? Ha! ha!'

'Yes, and you might be one too, if you were as sorry for your faults as

he was for his.'

'Sorry, indeed! I'll be damned if I be sorry. What have I to be sorry

for? Where's the harm in turning an honest penny? I ha' took no man's

wife, nor murdered himself neither. There's yer saints! He was a rum

'un. Ha! ha!'

Falconer approached her, bent down and whispered something no one could

hear but herself. She gave a smothered cry, and was silent.

'Give me the book,' he said, turning towards the bed. 'I'll read you

something better than that. I'll read about some one that never did

anything wrong.'

'I don't believe there never was no sich a man,' said the previous

reader, as she handed him the book, grudgingly.

'Not Jesus Christ himself?' said Falconer.

'Oh! I didn't know as you meant him.'

'Of course I meant him. There never was another.'

'I have heard tell--p'raps it was yourself, sir--as how he didn't come

down upon us over hard after all, bless him!'

Falconer sat down on the side of the bed, and read the story of Simon

the Pharisee and the woman that was a sinner. When he ceased, the

silence that followed was broken by a sob from somewhere in the room.

The sick woman stopped her moaning, and said,

'Turn down the leaf there, please, sir. Lilywhite will read it to me

when you're gone.'

The some one sobbed again. It was a young slender girl, with a face

disfigured by the small-pox, and, save for the tearful look it wore,

poor and expressionless. Falconer said something gentle to her.

'Will he ever come again?' she sobbed.

'Who?' asked Falconer.

'Him--Jesus Christ. I've heard tell, I think, that he was to come again

some day.'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because--' she said, with a fresh burst of tears, which rendered the

words that followed unintelligible. But she recovered herself in a few

moments, and, as if finishing her sentence, put her hand up to her poor,

thin, colourless hair, and said,

'My hair ain't long enough to wipe his feet.'

'Do you know what he would say to you, my girl?' Falconer asked.

'No. What would he say to me? He would speak to me, would he?'

'He would say: Thy sins are forgiven thee.'

'Would he, though? Would he?' she cried, starting up. 'Take me to

him--take me to him. Oh! I forgot. He's dead. But he will come again,

won't he? He was crucified four times, you know, and he must ha' come

four times for that. Would they crucify him again, sir?'

'No, they wouldn't crucify him now--in England at least. They would only

laugh at him, shake their heads at what he told them, as much as to say

it wasn't true, and sneer and mock at him in some of the newspapers.'

'Oh dear! I've been very wicked.'

'But you won't be so any more.'

'No, no, no. I won't, I won't, I won't.'

She talked hurriedly, almost wildly. The coarse old woman tapped her

forehead with her finger. Falconer took the girl's hand.

'What is your name?' he said.

'Nell.'

'What more?'

'Nothing more.'

'Well, Nelly,' said Falconer.

'How kind of you to call me Nelly!' interrupted the poor girl. 'They

always calls me Nell, just.'

'Nelly,' repeated Falconer, 'I will send a lady here to-morrow to take

you away with her, if you like, and tell you how you must do to find

Jesus.--People always find him that want to find him.'

The elderly woman with the rough voice, who had not spoken since he

whispered to her, now interposed with a kind of cowed fierceness.

'Don't go putting humbug into my child's head now, Mr. Falconer--'ticing

her away from her home. Everybody knows my Nell's been an idiot since

ever she was born. Poor child!'

'I ain't your child,' cried the girl, passionately. 'I ain't nobody's

child.'

'You are God's child,' said Falconer, who stood looking on with his eyes

shining, but otherwise in a state of absolute composure.

'Am I? Am I? You won't forget to send for me, sir?'

'That I won't,' he answered.

She turned instantly towards the woman, and snapped her fingers in her

face.

'I don't care that for you,' she cried. 'You dare to touch me now, and

I'll bite you.'

'Come, come, Nelly, you mustn't be rude,' said Falconer.

'No, sir, I won't no more, leastways to nobody but she. It's she makes

me do all the wicked things, it is.'

She snapped her fingers in her face again, and then burst out crying.

'She will leave you alone now, I think,' said Falconer. 'She knows it

will be quite as well for her not to cross me.'

This he said very significantly, as he turned to the door, where he

bade them a general good-night. When we reached the street, I was too

bewildered to offer any remark. Falconer was the first to speak.

'It always comes back upon me, as if I had never known it before, that

women like some of those were of the first to understand our Lord.'

'Some of them wouldn't have understood him any more than the Pharisee,

though.'

'I'm not so sure of that. Of course there are great differences. There

are good and bad amongst them as in every class. But one thing is clear

to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so

much as respectable selfishness.'

'I am afraid you will not get society to agree with you,' I said,

foolishly.

'I have no wish that society should agree with me; for if it did, it

would be sure to do so upon the worst of principles. It is better that

society should be cruel, than that it should call the horrible thing a

trifle: it would know nothing between.'

Through the city--though it was only when we crossed one of the main

thoroughfares that I knew where we were--we came into the region of

Bethnal Green. From house to house till it grew very late, Falconer

went, and I went with him. I will not linger on this part of our

wanderings. Where I saw only dreadful darkness, Falconer always would

see some glimmer of light. All the people into whose houses we went

knew him. They were all in the depths of poverty. Many of them were

respectable. With some of them he had long talks in private, while I

waited near. At length he said,

'I think we had better be going home, Mr. Gordon. You must be tired.'

'I am, rather,' I answered. 'But it doesn't matter, for I have nothing

to do to-morrow.'

'We shall get a cab, I dare say, before we go far.'

'Not for me. I am not so tired, but that I would rather walk,' I said.

'Very well,' he returned. 'Where do you live?'

I told him.

'I will take you the nearest way.'

'You know London marvellously.'

'Pretty well now,' he answered.

We were somewhere near Leather Lane about one o'clock. Suddenly we came

upon two tiny children standing on the pavement, one on each side of

the door of a public-house. They could not have been more than two and

three. They were sobbing a little--not much. The tiny creatures stood

there awfully awake in sleeping London, while even their own playmates

were far off in the fairyland of dreams.

'This is the kind of thing,' I said, 'that makes me doubt whether there

be a God in heaven.'

'That is only because he is down here,' answered Falconer, 'taking such

good care of us all that you can't see him. There is not a gin-palace,

or yet lower hell in London, in which a man or woman can be out of God.

The whole being love, there is nothing for you to set it against and

judge it by. So you are driven to fancies.'

The house was closed, but there was light above the door. We went up

to the children, and spoke to them, but all we could make out was

that mammie was in there. One of them could not speak at all. Falconer

knocked at the door. A good-natured-looking Irishwoman opened it a

little way and peeped out.

'Here are two children crying at your door, ma'am,' said Falconer.

'Och, the darlin's! they want their mother.'

'Do you know her, then?'

'True for you, and I do. She's a mighty dacent woman in her way when the

drink's out uv her, and very kind to the childher; but oncet she smells

the dhrop o' gin, her head's gone intirely. The purty craytures have

waked up, an' she not come home, and they've run out to look after her.'

Falconer stood a moment as if thinking what would be best. The shriek of

a woman rang through the night.

'There she is!' said the Irishwoman. 'For God's sake don't let her get

a hould o' the darlints. She's ravin' mad. I seen her try to kill them

oncet.'

The shrieks came nearer and nearer, and after a few moments the woman

appeared in the moonlight, tossing her arms over her head, and screaming

with a despair for which she yet sought a defiant expression. Her head

was uncovered, and her hair flying in tangles; her sleeves were torn,

and her gaunt arms looked awful in the moonlight. She stood in the

middle of the street, crying again and again, with shrill laughter

between, 'Nobody cares for me, and I care for nobody! Ha! ha! ha!'

'Mammie! mammie!' cried the elder of the children, and ran towards her.

The woman heard, and rushed like a fury towards the child. Falconer too

ran, and caught up the child. The woman gave a howl and rushed towards

the other. I caught up that one. With a last shriek, she dashed her head

against the wall of the public-house, dropped on the pavement, and lay

still.

Falconer set the child down, lifted the wasted form in his arms, and

carried it into the house. The face was blue as that of a strangled

corpse. She was dead.

'Was she a married woman?' Falconer asked.

'It's myself can't tell you sir,' the Irishwoman answered. 'I never saw

any boy with her.'

'Do you know where she lived?'

'No, sir. Somewhere not far off, though. The children will know.'

But they stood staring at their mother, and we could get nothing out of

them. They would not move from the corpse.

'I think we may appropriate this treasure-trove,' said Falconer, turning

at last to me; and as he spoke, he took the eldest in his arms. Then,

turning to the woman, he gave her a card, saying, 'If any inquiry is

made about them, there is my address.--Will you take the other, Mr.

Gordon?'

I obeyed. The children cried no more. After traversing a few streets, we

found a cab, and drove to a house in Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

Falconer got out at the door of a large house, and rung the bell; then

got the children out, and dismissed the cab. There we stood in the

middle of the night, in a silent, empty square, each with a child in

his arms. In a few minutes we heard the bolts being withdrawn. The door

opened, and a tall graceful form wrapped in a dressing-gown, appeared.

'I have brought you two babies, Miss St. John,' said Falconer. 'Can you

take them?'

'To be sure I can,' she answered, and turned to lead the way. 'Bring

them in.'

We followed her into a little back room. She put down her candle, and

went straight to the cupboard, whence she brought a sponge-cake, from

which she cut a large piece for each of the children.

'What a mercy they are, Robert,--those little gates in the face! Red

Lane leads direct to the heart,' she said, smiling, as if she rejoiced

in the idea of taming the little wild angelets. 'Don't you stop. You are

tired enough, I am sure. I will wake my maid, and we'll get them washed

and put to bed at once.'

She was closing the door, when Falconer turned.

'Oh! Miss St. John,' he said, 'I was forgetting. Could you go down to

No. 13 in Soap Lane--you know it, don't you?'

'Yes. Quite well.'

'Ask for a girl called Nell--a plain, pock-marked young girl--and take

her away with you.'

'When shall I go?'

'To-morrow morning. But I shall be in. Don't go till you see me.

Good-night.'

We took our leave without more ado.

'What a lady-like woman to be the matron of an asylum!' I said.

Falconer gave a little laugh.

'That is no asylum. It is a private house.'

'And the lady?'

'Is a lady of private means,' he answered, 'who prefers Bloomsbury to

Belgravia, because it is easier to do noble work in it. Her heaven is on

the confines of hell.'

'What will she do with those children?'

'Kiss them and wash them and put them to bed.'

'And after that?'

'Give them bread and milk in the morning.'

'And after that?'

'Oh! there's time enough. We'll see. There's only one thing she won't

do.'

'What is that?'

'Turn them out again.'

A pause followed, I cogitating.

'Are you a society, then?' I asked at length.

'No. At least we don't use the word. And certainly no other society

would acknowledge us.'

'What are you, then?'

'Why should we be anything, so long as we do our work?'

'Don't you think there is some affectation in refusing a name?'

'Yes, if the name belongs to you? Not otherwise.'

'Do you lay claim to no epithet of any sort?'

'We are a church, if you like. There!'

'Who is your clergyman?'

'Nobody.'

'Where do you meet?'

'Nowhere.'

'What are your rules, then?'

'We have none.'

'What makes you a church?'

'Divine Service.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'The sort of thing you have seen to-night.'

'What is your creed?'

'Christ Jesus.'

'But what do you believe about him?'

'What we can. We count any belief in him--the smallest--better than any

belief about him--the greatest--or about anything else besides. But we

exclude no one.'

'How do you manage without?'

'By admitting no one.'

'I cannot understand you.'

'Well, then: we are an undefined company of people, who have grown

into human relations with each other naturally, through one attractive

force--love for human beings, regarding them as human beings only in

virtue of the divine in them.'

'But you must have some rules,' I insisted.

'None whatever. They would cause us only trouble. We have nothing

to take us from our work. Those that are most in earnest, draw most

together; those that are on the outskirts have only to do nothing, and

they are free of us. But we do sometimes ask people to help us--not with

money.'

'But who are the we?'

'Why you, if you will do anything, and I and Miss St. John and twenty

others--and a great many more I don't know, for every one is a centre to

others. It is our work that binds us together.'

'Then when that stops you drop to pieces.'

'Yes, thank God. We shall then die. There will be no corporate

body--which means a bodied body, or an unsouled body, left behind to

simulate life, and corrupt, and work no end of disease. We go to ashes

at once, and leave no corpse for a ghoul to inhabit and make a vampire

of. When our spirit is dead, our body is vanished.'

'Then you won't last long.'

'Then we oughtn't to last long.'

'But the work of the world could not go on so.'

'We are not the life of the world. God is. And when we fail, he can and

will send out more and better labourers into his harvest-field. It is a

divine accident by which we are thus associated.'

'But surely the church must be otherwise constituted.'

'My dear sir, you forget: I said we were a church, not the church.'

'Do you belong to the Church of England?'

'Yes, some of us. Why should we not? In as much as she has faithfully

preserved the holy records and traditions, our obligations to her are

infinite. And to leave her would be to quarrel, and start a thousand

vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them, for which life is too

serious in my eyes. I have no time for that.'

'Then you count the Church of England the Church?'

'Of England, yes; of the universe, no: that is constituted just like

ours, with the living working Lord for the heart of it.'

'Will you take me for a member?'

'No.'

'Will you not, if--?'

'You may make yourself one if you will. I will not speak a word to

gain you. I have shown you work. Do something, and you are of Christ's

Church.'

We were almost at the door of my lodging, and I was getting very weary

in body, and indeed in mind, though I hope not in heart. Before we

separated, I ventured to say,

'Will you tell me why you invited me to come and see you? Forgive my

presumption, but you seemed to seek acquaintance with me, although you

did make me address you first.'

He laughed gently, and answered in the words of the ancient mariner:--

'The moment that his face I see,

I know the man that must hear me:

To him my tale I teach.'

Without another word, he shook hands with me, and left me. Weary as I

was, I stood in the street until I could hear his footsteps no longer.

CHAPTER IX. THE BROTHERS.

One day, as Falconer sat at a late breakfast, Shargar burst into his

room. Falconer had not even known that he was coming home, for he had

outstripped the letter he had sent. He had his arm in a sling, which

accounted for his leave.

'Shargar!' cried Falconer, starting up in delight.

'Major Shargar, if you please. Give me all my honours, Robert,' said

Moray, presenting his left hand.

'I congratulate you, my boy. Well, this is delightful! But you are

wounded.'

'Bullet--broken--that's all. It's nearly right again. I'll tell you

about it by and by. I am too full of something else to talk about

trifles of that sort. I want you to help me.'

He then rushed into the announcement that he had fallen desperately in

love with a lady who had come on board with her maid at Malta, where she

had been spending the winter. She was not very young, about his own

age, but very beautiful, and of enchanting address. How she could have

remained so long unmarried he could not think. It could not be but that

she had had many offers. She was an heiress, too, but that Shargar felt

to be a disadvantage for him. All the progress he could yet boast of was

that his attentions had not been, so far as he could judge, disagreeable

to her. Robert thought even less of the latter fact than Shargar

himself, for he did not believe there were many women to whom Shargar's

attentions would be disagreeable: they must always be simple and manly.

What was more to the point, she had given him her address in London, and

he was going to call upon her the next day. She was on a visit to Lady

Janet Gordon, an elderly spinster, who lived in Park-street.

'Are you quite sure she's not an adventuress, Shargar?'

'It's o' no mainner o' use to tell ye what I'm sure or no sure o',

Robert, in sic a case. But I'll manage, somehoo, 'at ye sall see her

yersel', an' syne I'll speir back yer ain queston at ye.'

'Weel, hae ye tauld her a' aboot yersel'?'

'No!' answered Shargar, growing suddenly pale. 'I never thocht aboot

that. But I had no richt, for a' that passed, to intrude mysel' upo' her

to that extent.'

'Weel, I reckon ye're richt. Yer wounds an' yer medals ought to weigh

weel against a' that. There's this comfort in 't, that gin she bena

richt weel worthy o' ye, auld frien', she winna tak ye.'

Shargar did not seem to see the comfort of it. He was depressed for the

remainder of the day. In the morning he was in wild spirits again. Just

before he started, however, he said, with an expression of tremulous

anxiety,

'Oucht I to tell her a' at ance--already--aboot--aboot my mither?'

'I dinna say that. Maybe it wad be equally fair to her and to yersel'

to lat her ken ye a bit better afore ye do that.--We'll think that

ower.--Whan ye gang doon the stair, ye'll see a bit brougham at the door

waitin' for ye. Gie the coachman ony orders ye like. He's your servant

as lang 's ye're in London. Commit yer way to the Lord, my boy.'

Though Shargar did not say much, he felt strengthened by Robert's truth

to meet his fate with something of composure. But it was not to be

decided that day. Therein lay some comfort.

He returned in high spirits still. He had been graciously received both

by Miss Hamilton and her hostess--a kind-hearted old lady, who spoke

Scotch with the pure tone of a gentlewoman, he said--a treat not to

be had once in a twelvemonth. She had asked him to go to dinner in the

evening, and to bring his friend with him. Robert, however, begged him

to make his excuse, as he had an engagement in--a very different sort of

place.

When Shargar returned, Robert had not come in. He was too excited to

go to bed, and waited for him. It was two o'clock before he came home.

Shargar told him there was to be a large party at Lady Patterdale's

the next evening but one, and Lady Janet had promised to procure him an

invitation.

The next morning Robert went to see Mary St. John, and asked if she

knew anything of Lady Patterdale, and whether she could get him an

invitation. Miss St. John did not know her, but she thought she could

manage it for him. He told her all about Shargar, for whose sake he

wished to see Miss Hamilton before consenting to be introduced to her.

Miss St. John set out at once, and Falconer received a card the next

day. When the evening came, he allowed Shargar to set out alone in his

brougham, and followed an hour later in a hansom.

When he reached the house, the rooms were tolerably filled, and as

several parties had arrived just before him, he managed to enter without

being announced. After a little while he caught sight of Shargar.

He stood alone, almost in a corner, with a strange, rather raised

expression in his eyes. Falconer could not see the object to which they

were directed. Certainly, their look was not that of love. He made his

way up to him and laid his hand on his arm. Shargar betrayed no little

astonishment when he saw him.

'You here, Robert!' he said.

'Yes, I'm here. Have you seen her yet? Is she here?'

'Wha do ye think 's speakin' till her this verra minute? Look there!'

Shargar said in a low voice, suppressed yet more to hide his excitement.

Following his directions, Robert saw, amidst a little group of gentlemen

surrounding a seated lady, of whose face he could not get a peep,

a handsome elderly man, who looked more fashionable than his years

justified, and whose countenance had an expression which he felt

repulsive. He thought he had seen him before, but Shargar gave him no

time to come to a conclusion of himself.

'It's my brither Sandy, as sure 's deith!' he said; 'and he's been

hingin' aboot her ever sin' she cam in. But I dinna think she likes him

a'thegither by the leuk o' her.'

'What for dinna ye gang up till her yersel', man? I wadna stan' that gin

'twas me.'

'I'm feared 'at he ken me. He's terrible gleg. A' the Morays are gleg,

and yon marquis has an ee like a hawk.'

'What does 't maitter? Ye hae dune naething to be ashamed o' like him.'

'Ay; but it's this. I wadna hae her hear the trowth aboot me frae that

boar's mou' o' his first. I wad hae her hear 't frae my ain, an' syne

she canna think I meant to tak her in.'

At this moment there was a movement in the group. Shargar, receiving no

reply, looked round at Robert. It was now Shargar's turn to be surprised

at his expression.

'Are ye seein' a vraith, Robert?' he said. 'What gars ye leuk like that,

man?'

'Oh!' answered Robert, recovering himself, 'I thought I saw some one I

knew. But I'm not sure. I'll tell you afterwards. We've been talking too

earnestly. People are beginning to look at us.'

So saying, he moved away towards the group of which the marquis still

formed one. As he drew near he saw a piano behind Miss Hamilton. A

sudden impulse seized him, and he yielded to it. He made his way to the

piano, and seating himself, began to play very softly--so softly that

the sounds could scarcely be heard beyond the immediate neighbourhood of

the instrument. There was no change on the storm of talk that filled

the room. But in a few minutes a face white as a shroud was turned round

upon him from the group in front, like the moon dawning out of a cloud.

He stopped at once, saying to himself, 'I was right;' and rising,

mingled again with the crowd. A few minutes after, he saw Shargar

leading Miss Hamilton out of the room, and Lady Janet following. He did

not intend to wait his return, but got near the door, that he might slip

out when he should re-enter. But Shargar did not return. For, the moment

she reached the fresh air, Miss Hamilton was so much better that Lady

Janet, whose heart was as young towards young people as if she had never

had the unfortunate love affair tradition assigned her, asked him to see

them home, and he followed them into her carriage. Falconer left a few

minutes after, anxious for quiet that he might make up his mind as to

what he ought to do. Before he had walked home, he had resolved on the

next step. But not wishing to see Shargar yet, and at the same time

wanting to have a night's rest, he went home only to change his clothes,

and betook himself to a hotel in Covent Garden.

He was at Lady Janet's door by ten o'clock the next morning, and sent in

his card to Miss Hamilton. He was shown into the drawing-room, where she

came to him.

'May I presume on old acquaintance?' he asked, holding out his hand.

She looked in his face quietly, took his hand, pressed it warmly, and

said,

'No one has so good a right, Mr. Falconer. Do sit down.'

He placed a chair for her, and obeyed.

After a moment's silence on both sides:

'Are you aware, Miss--?' he said and hesitated.

'Miss Hamilton,' she said with a smile. 'I was Miss Lindsay when you

knew me so many years ago. I will explain presently.'

Then with an air of expectation she awaited the finish of his sentence.

'Are you aware, Miss Hamilton, that I am Major Moray's oldest friend?'

'I am quite aware of it, and delighted to know it. He told me so last

night.'

Somewhat dismayed at this answer, Falconer resumed,

'Did Major Moray likewise communicate with you concerning his own

history?'

'He did. He told me all.'

Falconer was again silent for some moments.

'Shall I be presuming too far if I venture to conclude that my friend

will not continue his visits?'

'On the contrary,' she answered, with the same delicate blush that in

old times used to overspread the lovely whiteness of her face, 'I expect

him within half-an-hour.'

'Then there is no time to be lost,' thought Falconer.

'Without presuming to express any opinion of my own,' he said quietly,

'a social code far less severe than that which prevails in England,

would take for granted that an impassable barrier existed between Major

Moray and Miss Hamilton.'

'Do not suppose, Mr. Falconer, that I could not meet Major Moray's

honesty with equal openness on my side.'

Falconer, for the first time almost in his life, was incapable of speech

from bewilderment. But Miss Hamilton did not in the least enjoy his

perplexity, and made haste to rescue both him and herself. With a blush

that was now deep as any rose, she resumed,

'But I owe you equal frankness, Mr. Falconer. There is no barrier

between Major Moray and myself but the foolish--no, wicked--indiscretion

of an otherwise innocent and ignorant girl. Listen, Mr. Falconer: under

the necessity of the circumstances you will not misjudge me if I compel

myself to speak calmly. This, I trust, will be my final penance. I

thought Lord Rothie was going to marry me. To do him justice, he never

said so. Make what excuse for my folly you can. I was lost in a mist

of vain imaginations. I had had no mother to teach me anything, Mr.

Falconer, and my father never suspected the necessity of teaching me

anything. I was very ill on the passage to Antwerp, and when I began to

recover a little, I found myself beginning to doubt both my own conduct

and his lordship's intentions. Possibly the fact that he was not quite

so kind to me in my illness as I had expected, and that I felt hurt in

consequence, aided the doubt. Then the thought of my father returning

and finding that I had left him, came and burned in my heart like fire.

But what was I to do? I had never been out of Aberdeen before. I did not

know even a word of French. I was altogether in Lord Rothie's power. I

thought I loved him, but it was not much of love that sea-sickness could

get the better of. With a heart full of despair I went on shore. The

captain slipped a note into my hand. I put it in my pocket, but pulled

it out with my handkerchief in the street. Lord Rothie picked it up. I

begged him to give it me, but he read it, and then tore it in pieces. I

entered the hotel, as wretched as girl could well be. I began to dislike

him. But during dinner he was so kind and attentive that I tried to

persuade myself that my fears were fanciful. After dinner he took me

out. On the stairs we met a lady whose speech was Scotch. Her maid

called her Lady Janet. She looked kindly at me as I passed. I thought

she could read my face. I remembered afterwards that Lord Rothie turned

his head away when we met her. We went into the cathedral. We were

standing under that curious dome, and I was looking up at its strange

lights, when down came a rain of bell-notes on the roof over my head.

Before the first tune was over, I seemed to expect the second, and then

the third, without thinking how I could know what was coming; but when

they ended with the ballad of the Witch Lady, and I lifted up my head

and saw that I was not by my father's fireside, but in Antwerp Cathedral

with Lord Rothie, despair filled me with a half-insane resolution.

Happily Lord Rothie was at some little distance talking to a priest

about one of Rubens's pictures. I slipped unseen behind the nearest

pillar, and then flew from the church. How I got to the hotel I do not

know, but I did reach it. 'Lady Janet,' was all I could say. The waiter

knew the name, and led me to her room. I threw myself on my knees, and

begged her to save me. She assured me no one should touch me. I gasped

'Lord Rothie,' and fainted. When I came to myself--but I need not tell

you all the particulars. Lady Janet did take care of me. Till last

night I never saw Lord Rothie again. I did not acknowledge him, but he

persisted in talking to me, behave as I would, and I saw well enough

that he knew me.'

Falconer took her hand and kissed it.

'Thank God,' he said. 'That spire was indeed the haunt of angels as I

fancied while I played upon those bells.'

'I knew it was you--that is, I was sure of it when I came to think about

it; but at the time I took it for a direct message from heaven, which

nobody heard but myself.'

'It was such none the less that I was sent to deliver it,' said

Falconer. 'I little thought during my imprisonment because of it, that

the end of my journey was already accomplished.'

Mysie put her hand in his.

'You have saved me, Mr. Falconer.'

'For Ericson's sake, who was dying and could not,' returned Falconer.

'Ah!' said Mysie, her large eyes opening with wonder. It was evident she

had had no suspicion of his attachment to her.

'But,' said Falconer, 'there was another in it, without whom I could

have done nothing.'

'Who was that?'

'George Moray.'

'Did he know me then?'

'No. Fortunately not. You would not have looked at him then. It was

all done for love of me. He is the truest fellow in the world, and

altogether worthy of you, Miss Hamilton. I will tell you the whole story

some day, lest he should not do himself justice.'

'Ah, that reminds me. Hamilton sounds strange in your voice. You

suspected me of having changed my name to hide my history?'

It was so, and Falconer's silence acknowledged the fact.

'Lady Janet brought me home, and told my father all. When he died a few

years after, she took me to live with her, and never rested till she

had brought me acquainted with Sir John Hamilton, in favour of whom my

father had renounced his claim to some disputed estates. Sir John had

lost his only son, and he had no daughter. He was a kind-hearted old

man, rather like my own father. He took to me, as they say, and made me

change my name to his, leaving me the property that might have been my

father's, on condition that whoever I married should take the same name.

I don't think your friend will mind making the exchange,' said Mysie in

conclusion, as the door opened and Shargar came in.

'Robert, ye're a' gait (everywhere)!' he exclaimed as he entered. Then,

stopping to ask no questions, 'Ye see I'm to hae a name o' my ain efter

a',' he said, with a face which looked even handsome in the light of his

gladness.

Robert shook hands with him, and wished him joy heartily.

'Wha wad hae thocht it, Shargar,' he added, 'that day 'at ye pat bonnets

for hose upo' Black Geordie's huves?'

The butler announced the Marquis of Boarshead. Mysie's eyes flashed. She

rose from her seat, and advanced to meet the marquis, who entered behind

the servant. He bowed and held out his hand. Mysie retreated one step,

and stood.

'Your lordship has no right to force yourself upon me. You must have

seen that I had no wish to renew the acquaintance I was unhappy enough

to form--now, thank God, many years ago.'

'Forgive me, Miss Hamilton. One word in private,' said the marquis.

'Not a word,' returned Mysie.

'Before these gentlemen, then, whom I have not the honour of knowing, I

offer you my hand.'

'To accept that offer would be to wrong myself even more than your

lordship has done.'

She went back to where Moray was standing, and stood beside him. The

evil spirit in the marquis looked out at its windows.

'You are aware, madam,' he said, 'that your reputation is in the hand I

offer you?'

'The worse for it, my lord,' returned Mysie, with a scornful smile. 'But

your lordship's brother will protect it.'

'My brother!' said the marquis. 'What do you mean? I have no brother!'

'Ye hae mair brithers than ye ken o', Lord Sandy, and I'm ane o' them,'

said Shargar.

'You are either a liar or a bastard, then,' said the marquis, who

had not been brought up in a school of which either self-restraint or

respect for women were prominent characteristics.

Falconer forgot himself for a moment, and made a stride forward.

'Dinna hit him, Robert,' cried Shargar. 'He ance gae me a shillin', an'

it helpit, as ye ken, to haud me alive to face him this day.--No liar,

my lord, but a bastard, thank heaven.' Then, with a laugh, he instantly

added, 'Gin I had been ain brither to you, my lord, God only knows what

a rascal I micht hae been.'

'By God, you shall answer for your damned insolence,' said the marquis,

and, lifting his riding-whip from the table where he had laid it, he

approached his brother.

Mysie rang the bell.

'Haud yer han', Sandy,' cried Shargar. 'I hae faced mair fearsome foes

than you. But I hae some faimily-feelin', though ye hae nane: I wadna

willin'ly strike my brither.'

As he spoke, he retreated a little. The marquis came on with raised

whip. But Falconer stepped between, laid one of his great hands on the

marquis's chest, and flung him to the other end of the room, where he

fell over an ottoman. The same moment the servant entered.

'Ask your mistress to oblige me by coming to the drawing-room,' said

Mysie.

The marquis had risen, but had not recovered his presence of mind when

Lady Janet entered. She looked inquiringly from one to the other.

'Please, Lady Janet, will you ask the Marquis of Boarshead to leave the

house,' said Mysie.

'With all my hert,' answered Lady Janet; 'and the mair that he's a kin'

o' a cousin o' my ain. Gang yer wa's, Sandy. Ye're no fit company for

decent fowk; an' that ye wad ken yersel', gin ye had ony idea left o'

what decency means.'

Without heeding her, the marquis went up to Falconer.

'Your card, sir.'

Lady Janet followed him.

''Deed ye s' get nae cairds here,' she said, pushing him aside.

'So you allow your friends to insult me in your own house as they

please, cousin Janet?' said the marquis, who probably felt her

opposition the most formidable of all.

''Deed they canna say waur o' ye nor I think. Gang awa', an' repent.

Consider yer gray hairs, man.'

This was the severest blow he had yet received. He left the room,

'swearing at large.'

Falconer followed him; but what came of it nobody ever heard.

Major and Miss Hamilton were married within three months, and went out

to India together, taking Nancy Kennedy with them.

CHAPTER X. A NEOPHYTE.

Before many months had passed, without the slightest approach to any

formal recognition, I found myself one of the church of labour of which

Falconer was clearly the bishop. As he is the subject, or rather object

of my book, I will now record a fact which may serve to set forth his

views more clearly. I gained a knowledge of some of the circumstances,

not merely from the friendly confidences of Miss St. John and Falconer,

but from being a kind of a Scotch cousin of Lady Janet Gordon, whom

I had taken an opportunity of acquainting with the relation. She was

old-fashioned enough to acknowledge it even with some eagerness. The

ancient clan-feeling is good in this, that it opens a channel whose very

existence is a justification for the flow of simply human feelings along

all possible levels of social position. And I would there were more of

it. Only something better is coming instead of it--a recognition of the

infinite brotherhood in Christ. All other relations, all attempts

by churches, by associations, by secret societies--of Freemasons and

others, are good merely as they tend to destroy themselves in the wider

truth; as they teach men to be dissatisfied with their limitations. But

I wander; for I mentioned Lady Janet now, merely to account for some of

the information I possess concerning Lady Georgina Betterton.

I met her once at my so-called cousin's, whom she patronized as a dear

old thing. To my mind, she was worth twenty of her, though she was

wrinkled and Scottishly sententious. 'A sweet old bat,' was another

epithet of Lady Georgina's. But she came to see her, notwithstanding,

and did not refuse to share in her nice little dinners, and least of

all, when Falconer was of the party, who had been so much taken with

Lady Janet's behaviour to the Marquis of Boarshead, just recorded, that

he positively cultivated her acquaintance thereafter.

Lady Georgina was of an old family--an aged family, indeed; so old, in

fact, that some envious people professed to think it decrepit with age.

This, however, may well be questioned if any argument bearing on the

point may be drawn from the person of Lady Georgina. She was at least as

tall as Mary St. John, and very handsome--only with somewhat masculine

features and expression. She had very sloping shoulders and a long

neck, which took its finest curves when she was talking to inferiors:

condescension was her forte. Of the admiration of the men, she had had

more than enough, although either they were afraid to go farther, or she

was hard to please.

She had never contemplated anything admirable long enough to comprehend

it; she had never looked up to man or woman with anything like

reverence; she saw too quickly and too keenly into the foibles of all

who came near her to care to look farther for their virtues. If she had

ever been humbled, and thence taught to look up, she might by this time

have been a grand woman, worthy of a great man's worship. She patronized

Miss St. John, considerably to her amusement, and nothing to her

indignation. Of course she could not understand her. She had a vague

notion of how she spent her time; and believing a certain amount of

fanaticism essential to religion, wondered how so sensible and ladylike

a person as Miss St. John could go in for it.

Meeting Falconer at Lady Janet's, she was taken with him. Possibly she

recognized in him a strength that would have made him her master, if he

had cared for such a distinction; but nothing she could say attracted

more than a passing attention on his part. Falconer was out of her

sphere, and her influences were powerless to reach him.

At length she began to have a glimmering of the relation of labour

between Miss St. John and him, and applied to the former for some

enlightenment. But Miss St. John was far from explicit, for she had no

desire for such assistance as Lady Georgina's. What motives next led her

to seek the interview I am now about to record, I cannot satisfactorily

explain, but I will hazard a conjecture or two, although I doubt if she

understood them thoroughly herself.

She was, if not blasée, at least ennuyée, and began to miss excitement,

and feel blindly about her for something to make life interesting. She

was gifted with far more capacity than had ever been exercised, and was

of a large enough nature to have grown sooner weary of trifles than most

women of her class. She might have been an artist, but she drew like a

young lady; she might have been a prophetess, and Byron was her greatest

poet. It is no wonder that she wanted something she had not got.

Since she had been foiled in her attempt on Miss St. John, which she

attributed to jealousy, she had, in quite another circle, heard strange,

wonderful, even romantic stories about Falconer and his doings among the

poor. A new world seemed to open before her longing gaze--a world, or a

calenture, a mirage? for would she cross the 'wandering fields of barren

foam,' to reach the green grass that did wave on the far shore? the

dewless desert to reach the fair water that did lie leagues beyond its

pictured sweetness? But I think, mingled with whatever motives she may

have had, there must have been some desire to be a nobler, that is a

more useful woman than she had been.

She had not any superabundance of feminine delicacy, though she had

plenty of good-breeding, and she trusted to her position in society to

cover the eccentricity of her present undertaking.

One morning after breakfast she called upon Falconer; and accustomed

to visits from all sorts of people, Mrs. Ashton showed her into his

sitting-room without even asking her name. She found him at his piano,

apologized, in her fashionable drawl, for interrupting his music, and

accepted his offer of a chair without a shade of embarrassment. Falconer

seated himself and sat waiting.

'I fear the step I have taken will appear strange to you, Mr. Falconer.

Indeed it appears strange to myself. I am afraid it may appear stranger

still.'

'It is easy for me to leave all judgment in the matter to yourself,

Miss--I beg your pardon; I know we have met; but for the moment I cannot

recall your name.'

'Lady Georgina Betterton,' drawled the visitor carelessly, hiding

whatever annoyance she may have felt.

Falconer bowed. Lady Georgina resumed.

'Of course it only affects myself; and I am willing to take the risk,

notwithstanding the natural desire to stand well in the opinion of any

one with whom even my boldness could venture such a step.'

A smile, intended to be playful, covered the retreat of the sentence.

Falconer bowed again. Lady Georgina had yet again to resume.

'From the little I have seen, and the much I have heard of you--excuse

me, Mr. Falconer--I cannot help thinking that you know more of the

secret of life than other people--if indeed it has any secret.'

'Life certainly is no burden to me,' returned Falconer. 'If that implies

the possession of any secret which is not common property, I fear it

also involves a natural doubt whether such secret be communicable.'

'Of course I mean only some secret everybody ought to know.'

'I do not misunderstand you.'

'I want to live. You know the world, Mr. Falconer. I need not tell

you what kind of life a girl like myself leads. I am not old, but the

gilding is worn off. Life looks bare, ugly, uninteresting. I ask you to

tell me whether there is any reality in it or not; whether its past glow

was only gilt; whether the best that can be done is to get through with

it as fast as possible?'

'Surely your ladyship must know some persons whose very countenances

prove that they have found a reality at the heart of life.'

'Yes. But none whose judgment I could trust. I cannot tell how soon they

may find reason to change their minds on the subject. Their satisfaction

may only be that they have not tried to rub the varnish off the gilding

so much as I, and therefore the gilding itself still shines a little in

their eyes.'

'If it be only gilding, it is better it should be rubbed off.'

'But I am unwilling to think it is. I am not willing to sign a bond of

farewell to hope. Life seemed good once. It is bad enough that it seems

such no longer, without consenting that it must and shall be so. Allow

me to add, for my own sake, that I speak from the bitterness of no

chagrin. I have had all I ever cared--or condescended to wish for. I

never had anything worth the name of a disappointment in my life.'

'I cannot congratulate you upon that,' said Falconer, seriously. 'But

if there be a truth or a heart in life, assurance of the fact can only

spring from harmony with that truth. It is not to be known save by

absolute contact with it; and the sole guide in the direction of it must

be duty: I can imagine no other possible conductor. We must do before we

can know.'

'Yes, yes,' replied Lady Georgina, hastily, in a tone that implied, 'Of

course, of course: we know all about that.' But aware at once, with the

fine instinct belonging to her mental organization, that she was

thus shutting the door against all further communication, she added

instantly: 'But what is one's duty? There is the question.'

'The thing that lies next you, of course. You are, and must remain, the

sole judge of that. Another cannot help you.'

'But that is just what I do not know.'

I interrupt Lady Georgina to remark--for I too have been a pupil of

Falconer--that I believe she must have suspected what her duty was, and

would not look firmly at her own suspicion. She added:

'I want direction.'

But the same moment she proceeded to indicate the direction in which she

wanted to be directed; for she went on:

'You know that now-a-days there are so many modes in which to employ

one's time and money that one does not know which to choose. The lower

strata of society, you know, Mr. Falconer--so many channels! I want the

advice of a man of experience, as to the best investment, if I may use

the expression: I do not mean of money only, but of time as well.'

'I am not fitted to give advice in such a matter.'

'Mr. Falconer!'

'I assure you I am not. I subscribe to no society myself--not one.'

'Excuse me, but I can hardly believe the rumours I hear of you--people

will talk, you know--are all inventions. They say you are for ever

burrowing amongst the poor. Excuse the phrase.'

'I excuse or accept it, whichever you please. Whatever I do, I am my own

steward.'

'Then you are just the person to help me! I have a fortune, not very

limited, at my own disposal: a gentleman who is his own steward, would

find his labours merely facilitated by administering for another as

well--such labours, I mean.'

'I must beg to be excused, Lady Georgina. I am accountable only for my

own, and of that I have quite as much as I can properly manage. It

is far more difficult to use money for others than to spend it for

yourself.'

'Ah!' said Lady Georgina, thoughtfully, and cast an involuntary glance

round the untidy room, with its horse-hair furniture, its ragged array

of books on the wall, its side-table littered with pamphlets he never

read, with papers he never printed, with pipes he smoked by chance

turns. He saw the glance and understood it.

'I am accustomed,' he said, 'to be in such sad places for human beings

to live in, that I sometimes think even this dingy old room an absolute

palace of comfort.--But,' he added, checking himself, as it were, 'I

do not see in the least how your proposal would facilitate an answer to

your question.'

'You seem hardly inclined to do me justice,' said Lady Georgina, with,

for the first time, a perceptible, though slight shadow crossing the

disc of her resolution. 'I only meant it,' she went on, 'as a step

towards a further proposal, which I think you will allow looks at least

in the direction you have been indicating.'

She paused.

'May I beg of you to state the proposal?' said Falconer.

But Lady Georgina was apparently in some little difficulty as to the

proper form in which to express her object. At last it appeared in the

cloak of a question.

'Do you require no assistance in your efforts for the elevation of the

lower classes?' she asked.

'I don't make any such efforts,' said Falconer.

Some of my lady-readers will probably be remarking to themselves, 'How

disagreeable of him! I can't endure the man.' If they knew how Falconer

had to beware of the forwardness and annoyance of well-meaning women,

they would not dislike him so much. But Falconer could be indifferent to

much dislike, and therein I know some men that envy him.

When he saw, however, that Lady Georgina was trying to swallow a lump in

her throat, he hastened to add,

'I have only relations with individuals--none with classes.'

Lady Georgina gathered her failing courage. 'Then there is the more hope

for me,' she said. 'Surely there are things a woman might be useful

in that a man cannot do so well--especially if she would do as she was

told, Mr. Falconer?'

He looked at her, inquiring of her whole person what numen abode in the

fane. She misunderstood the look.

'I could dress very differently, you know. I will be a sister of

charity, if you like.'

'And wear a uniform?--as if the god of another world wanted to make

proselytes or traitors in this! No, Lady Georgina, it was not of a dress

so easily altered that I was thinking; it was of the habit, the dress of

mind, of thought, of feeling. When you laid aside your beautiful dress,

could you avoid putting on the garment of condescension, the most

unchristian virtue attributed to Deity or saint? Could you--I must be

plain with you, Lady Georgina, for this has nothing to do with the forms

of so-called society--could your temper endure the mortifications of

low opposition and misrepresentation of motive and end--which, avoid

intrusion as you might, would yet force themselves on your perception?

Could you be rudely, impudently thwarted by the very persons for whom

you were spending your strength and means, and show no resentment? Could

you make allowances for them as for your own brothers and sisters, your

own children?'

Lady Georgina was silent.

'I shall seem to glorify myself, but at that risk I must put the reality

before you.--Could you endure the ugliness both moral and physical which

you must meet at every turn? Could you look upon loathsomeness, not

merely without turning away in disgust, and thus wounding the very heart

you would heal, but without losing your belief in the Fatherhood of God,

by losing your faith in the actual blood-relationship to yourself of

these wretched beings? Could you believe in the immortal essence

hidden under all this garbage--God at the root of it all? How would the

delicate senses you probably inherit receive the intrusions from which

they could not protect themselves? Would you be in no danger of finding

personal refuge in the horrid fancy, that these are but the slimy

borders of humanity where it slides into, and is one with bestiality? I

could show you one fearful baboon-like woman, whose very face makes

my nerves shudder: could you believe that woman might one day become a

lady, beautiful as yourself, and therefore minister to her? Would you

not be tempted, for the sake of your own comfort, if not for the pride

of your own humanity, to believe that, like untimely blossoms, these

must fall from off the boughs of the tree of life, and come to nothing

at all--a theory that may do for the preacher, but will not do for the

worker: him it would paralyze?--or, still worse, infinitely worse, that

they were doomed, from their birth, to endless ages of a damnation,

filthy as that in which you now found them, and must probably leave

them? If you could come to this, you had better withhold your hand; for

no desire for the betterment of the masses, as they are stupidly called,

can make up for a lack of faith in the individual. If you cannot hope

for them in your heart, your hands cannot reach them to do them good.

They will only hurt them.'

Lady Georgina was still silent. Falconer's eloquence had perhaps made

her ashamed.

'I want you to sit down and count the cost, before you do any mischief

by beginning what you are unfit for. Last week I was compelled more than

once to leave the house where my duty led me, and to sit down upon a

stone in the street, so ill that I was in danger of being led away as

intoxicated, only the policeman happened to know me. Twice I went back

to the room I had left, crowded with human animals, and one of them

at least dying. It was all I could do, and I have tolerable nerve and

tolerable experience.'

A mist was gathering over Lady Georgina's eyes. She confessed it

afterwards to Miss St. John. And through the mist he looked larger than

human.

'And then the time you must spend before you can lay hold upon them

at all, that is with the personal relation which alone is of any real

influence! Our Saviour himself had to be thirty years in the world

before he had footing enough in it to justify him in beginning to teach

publicly: he had been laying the needful foundations all the time. Not

under any circumstances could I consent to make use of you before you

had brought yourself into genuine relations with some of them first.'

'Do you count societies, then, of no use whatever?' Lady Georgina asked,

more to break the awkwardness of her prolonged silence than for any

other reason.

'In as far as any of the persons they employ fulfil the conditions of

which I have spoken, they are useful--that is, just in as far as they

come into genuine human relations with those whom they would help. In as

far as their servants are incapable of this, the societies are hurtful.

The chief good which societies might effect would be the procuring of

simple justice for the poor. That is what they need at the hands of

the nation, and what they do not receive. But though few can have the

knowledge of the poor I have, many could do something, if they would

only set about it simply, and not be too anxious to convert them; if

they would only be their friends after a common-sense fashion. I know,

say, a hundred wretched men and women far better than a man in general

knows him with whom he claims an ordinary intimacy. I know many more by

sight whose names in the natural course of events I shall probably know

soon. I know many of their relations to each other, and they talk about

each other to me as if I were one of themselves, which I hope in God I

am. I have been amongst them a good many years now, and shall probably

spend my life amongst them. When I went first, I was repeatedly robbed;

now I should hardly fear to carry another man's property. Two years ago

I had my purse taken, but next morning it was returned, I do not know by

whom: in fact it was put into my pocket again--every coin, as far as I

could judge, as it left me. I seldom pretend to teach them--only now and

then drop a word of advice. But possibly, before I die, I may speak to

them in public. At present I avoid all attempt at organization of any

sort, and as far as I see, am likely of all things to avoid it. What I

want is first to be their friend, and then to be at length recognized

as such. It is only in rare cases that I seek the acquaintance of any of

them: I let it come naturally. I bide my time. Almost never do I offer

assistance. I wait till they ask it, and then often refuse the sort they

want. The worst thing you can do for them is to attempt to save them

from the natural consequences of wrong: you may sometimes help them out

of them. But it is right to do many things for them when you know them,

which it would not be right to do for them until you know them. I am

amongst them; they know me; their children know me; and something is

always occurring that makes this or that one come to me. Once I have a

footing, I seldom lose it. So you see, in this my labour I am content to

do the thing that lies next me. I wait events. You have had no training,

no blundering to fit you for such work. There are many other modes of

being useful; but none in which I could undertake to direct you. I am

not in the habit of talking so much about my ways--but that is of no

consequence. I think I am right in doing so in this instance.'

'I cannot misunderstand you,' faltered Lady Georgina.

Falconer was silent. Without looking up from the floor on which her eyes

had rested all the time he spoke, Lady Georgina said at last,

'Then what is my next duty? What is the thing that lies nearest to me?'

'That, I repeat, belongs to your every-day history. No one can answer

that question but yourself. Your next duty is just to determine what

your next duty is.--Is there nothing you neglect? Is there nothing you

know you ought not to do?--You would know your duty, if you thought in

earnest about it, and were not ambitious of great things.'

'Ah then,' responded Lady Georgina, with an abandoning sigh, 'I suppose

it is something very commonplace, which will make life more dreary than

ever. That cannot help me.'

'It will, if it be as dreary as reading the newspapers to an old deaf

aunt. It will soon lead you to something more. Your duty will begin to

comfort you at once, but will at length open the unknown fountain of

life in your heart.'

Lady Georgina lifted up her head in despair, looked at Falconer through

eyes full of tears, and said vehemently,

'Mr. Falconer, you can have no conception how wretched a life like mine

is. And the futility of everything is embittered by the consciousness

that it is from no superiority to such things that I do not care for

them.'

'It is from superiority to such things that you do not care for them.

You were not made for such things. They cannot fill your heart. It has

whole regions with which they have no relation.'

'The very thought of music makes me feel ill. I used to be passionately

fond of it.'

'I presume you got so far in it that you asked, “Is there nothing more?”

Concluding there was nothing more, and yet needing more, you turned from

it with disappointment?'

'It is the same,' she went on hurriedly, 'with painting, modelling,

reading--whatever I have tried. I am sick of them all. They do nothing

for me.'

'How can you enjoy music, Lady Georgina, if you are not in harmony with

the heart and source of music?'

'How do you mean?'

'Until the human heart knows the divine heart, it must sigh and complain

like a petulant child, who flings his toys from him because his mother

is not at home. When his mother comes back to him he finds his toys are

good still. When we find Him in our own hearts, we shall find him in

everything, and music will be deep enough then, Lady Georgina. It is

this that the Brahmin and the Platonist seek; it is this that the mystic

and the anchorite sigh for; towards this the teaching of the greatest of

men would lead us: Lord Bacon himself says, “Nothing can fill, much less

extend the soul of man, but God, and the contemplation of God.” It is

Life you want. If you will look in your New Testament, and find out

all that our Lord says about Life, you will find the only cure for your

malady. I know what such talk looks like; but depend upon it, what I am

talking about is something very different from what you fancy it. Anyhow

to this you must come, one day or other.'

'But how am I to gain this indescribable good, which so many seek, and

so few find?'

'Those are not my words,' said Falconer emphatically. 'I should have

said--“which so few yet seek; but so many shall at length find.”'

'Do not quarrel with my foolish words, but tell me how I am to find

it; for I suppose there must be something in what so many good people

assert.'

'You thought I could give you help?'

'Yes. That is why I came to you.'

'Just so. I cannot give you help. Go and ask it of one who can.'

'Speak more plainly.'

'Well then: if there be a God, he must hear you if you call to him.

If there be a father, he will listen to his child. He will teach you

everything.'

'But I don't know what I want.'

'He does: ask him to tell you what you want. It all comes back to the

old story: “If ye then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your

children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the holy Spirit

to them that ask him!” But I wish you would read your New Testament--the

Gospels I mean: you are not in the least fit to understand the Epistles

yet. Read the story of our Saviour as if you had never read it before.

He at least was a man who seemed to have that secret of life after the

knowledge of which your heart is longing.'

Lady Georgina rose. Her eyes were again full of tears. Falconer too was

moved. She held out her hand to him, and without another word left the

room. She never came there again.

Her manner towards Falconer was thereafter much altered. People said

she was in love with him: if she was, it did her no harm. Her whole

character certainly was changed. She sought the friendship of Miss St.

John, who came at length to like her so much, that she took her with

her in some of her walks among the poor. By degrees she began to do

something herself after a quiet modest fashion. But within a few years,

probably while so engaged, she caught a fever from which she did not

recover. It was not till after her death that Falconer told any one of

the interview he had had with her. And by that time I had the honour of

being very intimate with him. When she knew that she was dying, she sent

for him. Mary St. John was with her. She left them together. When he

came out, he was weeping.

CHAPTER XI. THE SUICIDE.

Falconer lived on and laboured on in London. Wherever he found a man

fitted for the work, he placed him in such office as De Fleuri already

occupied. At the same time he went more into society, and gained the

friendship of many influential people. Besides the use he made of this

to carry out plans for individual rescue, it enabled him to bestir

himself for the first and chief good which he believed it was in

the power of the government to effect for the class amongst which he

laboured. As I have shown, he did not believe in any positive good

being effected save through individual contact--through faith, in a

word--faith in the human helper--which might become a stepping-stone

through the chaotic misery towards faith in the Lord and in his Father.

All that association could do, as such, was only, in his judgment, to

remove obstructions from the way of individual growth and education--to

put better conditions within reach--first of all, to provide that the

people should be able, if they would, to live decently. He had no notion

of domestic inspection, or of offering prizes for cleanliness and order.

He knew that misery and wretchedness are the right and best condition

of those who live so that misery and wretchedness are the natural

consequences of their life. But there ought always to be the possibility

of emerging from these; and as things were, over the whole country, for

many who would if they could, it was impossible to breathe fresh air, to

be clean, to live like human beings. And he saw this difficulty ever

on the increase, through the rapacity of the holders of small

house-property, and the utter wickedness of railway companies, who

pulled down every house that stood in their way, and did nothing to

provide room for those who were thus ejected--most probably from a

wretched place, but only, to be driven into a more wretched still. To

provide suitable dwellings for the poor he considered the most pressing

of all necessary reforms. His own fortune was not sufficient for doing

much in this way, but he set about doing what he could by purchasing

houses in which the poor lived, and putting them into the hands of

persons whom he could trust, and who were immediately responsible to him

for their proceedings: they had to make them fit for human abodes,

and let them to those who desired better accommodation, giving the

preference to those already tenants, so long as they paid their

reasonable rent, which he considered far more necessary for them to do

than for him to have done.

One day he met by appointment the owner of a small block, of which

he contemplated the purchase. They were in a dreadfully dilapidated

condition, a shame that belonged more to the owner than the inhabitants.

The man wanted to sell the houses, or at least was willing to sell them,

but put an exorbitant price upon them. Falconer expostulated.

'I know the whole of the rent these houses could bring you in,' he said,

'without making any deduction for vacancies and defalcations: what you

ask is twice as much as they would fetch if the full rent were certain.'

The poor wretch looked up at him with the leer of a ghoul. He was

dressed like a broken-down clergyman, in rusty black, with a neck-cloth

of whitey-brown.

'I admit it,' he said in good English, and a rather educated tone. 'Your

arguments are indisputable. I confess besides that so far short does

the yield come of the amount on paper, that it would pay me to give them

away. But it's the funerals, sir, that make it worth my while. I'm an

undertaker, as you may judge from my costume. I count back-rent in

the burying. People may cheat their landlord, but they can't cheat the

undertaker. They must be buried. That's the one indispensable--ain't it,

sir?'

Falconer had let him run on that he might have the measure of him. Now

he was prepared with his reply.