When the Reverend Paul entered the parlor at the Rectory, he found that
his friend had arrived before him. Mr. Barholm, his wife and Anice, with
their guest, formed a group around the fire, and Grace saw at a glance
that Derrick had unconsciously fallen into the place of the centre
figure. He was talking and the others were listening--Mr. Barholm in
his usual restless fashion, Mrs. Barholm with evident interest, Anice
leaning forward on her ottoman, listening eagerly.
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Barholm, when the servant announced the visitor,
“this is fortunate. Here is Grace. Glad to see you, Grace. Take a seat
We are talking about an uncommonly interesting case. I dare say you know
the young woman.”
Anice looked up.
“We are talking about Joan Lowrie,” she said. “Mr. Derrick is telling us
about her.”
“Most interesting affair--from beginning to end,” continued the Rector,
briskly. “Something must be done for the young woman. We must go and see
her,--I will go and see her myself.”
He had caught fire at once, in his usual inconsequent, self-secure
style. Ecclesiastical patronage would certainly set this young woman
right at once. There was no doubt of that. And who was so well qualified
to bestow it as himself?
“Yes, yes! I will go myself,” he said. “That kind of people is easily
managed, when once one understands them. There really is some good
in them, after all. You see, Grace, it is as I have told you--only
understand them, and make them understand you, and the rest is easy.”
Derrick glanced from father to daughter. The clear eyes of the girl
rested on the man with a curious expression.
“Do you think,” she said quickly, “that they like us to go and see them
in that sort of way, papa? Do you think it is wise to remind them that
we know more than they do, and that if they want to learn they must
learn from us, just because we have been more fortunate? It really seems
to me that the rebellious ones would ask themselves what right we had to
be more fortunate.”
“My dear,” returned the Rector, somewhat testily--he was not partial to
the interposition of obstacles even in suggestion--“My dear, if you had
been brought into contact with these people as closely as I have, or
even as Grace has, you would learn that they are not prone to regard
things from a metaphysical stand-point. Metaphysics are not in their
line. They are more apt to look upon life as a matter of bread and bacon
than as a problem.”
A shadow fell upon Anice's face, and before the visit ended, Derrick
had observed its presence more than once. It was always her father who
summoned it, he noticed. And yet it was evident enough that she was
fond of the man, and in no ordinary degree, and that the affection was
mutual. As he was contented with himself, so Barholm was contented
with his domestic relations. He was fond of his wife, and fond of his
daughter, as much, perhaps, through his appreciation of his own
good taste in wedding such a wife, and becoming the father of such a
daughter, as through his appreciation of their peculiar charms. He was
proud of them and indulgent to them. They reflected a credit on him of
which he felt himself wholly deserving.
“They are very fond of him,” remarked Grace afterward to his friend;
“which shows that there must be a great deal of virtue in the man.
Indeed there _is_ a great deal of virtue in him. You yourself, Derrick,
must have observed a certain kindliness and--and open generosity,” with
a wistful sound in his voice.
There was always this wistful appeal in the young man's tone when he
spoke of his clerical master--a certain anxiety to make the best of
him, and refrain from any suspicion of condemnation. Derrick was always
reminded by it of the shadow on Anice's face.
“I want to tell you something,” Miss Barholm said this evening to Grace
at parting. “I do not think I am afraid of Riggan at all. I think I
shall like it all the better because it is so new. Everything is so
earnest and energetic, that it is a little bracing--like the atmosphere.
Perhaps--when the time comes--I could do something to help you with
that girl. I shall try at any rate.” She held out her hand to him with
a smile, and the Reverend Paul went home feeling not a little comforted
and encouraged.
The Rector stood with his back to the fire, his portly person expressing
intense satisfaction.
“You will remind me about that young woman in the morning, Anice,” he
said. “I should like to attend to the matter myself. Singular that Grace
should not have mentioned her before. It really seems to me, you know,
that now and then Grace is a little deficient in interest, or energy.”
“Surely not interest, my dear,” suggested Mrs. Barholm, gently.
“Well, well,” conceded the Rector, “perhaps not interest, but energy
or--or appreciation. I should have seen such a fine creature's
superiority, and mentioned it at once. She must be a fine creature. A
young woman of that kind should be encouraged. I will go and see her in
the morning--if it were not so late I would go now. Really, she ought to
be told that she has exhibited a very excellent spirit, and that people
approve of it. I wonder what sort of a household servant she would make
if she were properly trained?”
“That would not do at all,” put in Anice, decisively. “From the pit's
mouth to the kitchen would not be a natural transition.”
“Well, well, as usual, perhaps you are right. There is plenty of time to
think of it, however. We can judge better when we have seen her.”
He did not need reminding in the morning. He was as full of vague plans
for Joan Lowrie when he arose as he had been when he went to bed. He
came down to the charming breakfast-room in the most sanguine of moods.
But then his moods usually were sanguine. It was scarcely to be wondered
at. Fortune had treated him with great suavity from his earliest years.
Wellborn, comfortably trained, healthy and easy-natured, the world had
always turned its pleasant side to him. As a young man, he had been
a strong, handsome fellow, whose convenient patrimony had placed him
beyond the possibility of entire dependence upon his profession. When
a curate he had been well enough paid and without private
responsibilities; when he married he was lucky enough to win a woman who
added to his comfort; in fact, life had gone smoothly with him for so
long that he had no reason to suspect Fate of any intention to treat him
ill-naturedly. It was far more likely that she would reserve her scurvy
tricks for some one else.
Even Riggan had not perplexed him at all. Its difficulties were not
such as would be likely to disturb him greatly. One found ignorance, and
vice, and discomfort among the lower classes always; there was the same
thing to contend against in the agricultural as in the mining districts.
And the Rectory was substantial and comfortable, even picturesque. The
house was roomy, the garden large and capable of improvement; there
were trees in abundance, ivy on the walls, and Anice would do the rest.
The breakfast-room looked specially encouraging this morning. Anice, in
a pretty pale blue gown, and with a few crocuses at her throat, awaited
his coming behind the handsomest of silver and porcelain, reading his
favorite newspaper the while. Her little pot of emigrant violets exhaled
a faint, spring-like odor from their sunny place at the window; there
was a vase of crocuses, snow-drops and ivy leaves in the centre of the
table; there was sunshine outside and comfort in. The Rector had a good
appetite and an unimpaired digestion. Anice rose when he entered, and
touched the bell.
“Mamma's headache will keep her upstairs for a while,” she said. “She
told me we were not to wait for her.” And then she brought him his
newspaper and kissed him dutifully.
“Very glad to see you home again, I am sure, my dear,” remarked the
Rector. “I have really missed you very much. What excellent coffee this
is!--another cup, if you please.” And, after a pause,
“I think really, you know,” he proceeded, “that you will not find the
place unpleasant, after all. For my part, I think it is well enough--for
such a place; one cannot expect Belgravian polish in Lancashire miners,
and certainly one does not meet with it; but it is well to make the best
of things. I get along myself reasonably well with the people. I do not
encounter the difficulties Grace complains of.”
“Does he complain?” asked Anice; “I did not think he exactly
complained.”
“Grace is too easily discouraged,” answered the Rector in off-handed
explanation. “And he is apt to make blunders. He speaks of, and to,
these people as if they were of the same fibre as himself. He does not
take hold of things. He is deficient in courage. He means well, but he
is not good at reading character. That other young fellow now--Derrick,
the engineer--would do twice as well in his place. What do you think of
that young fellow, by the way, my dear?”
“I like him,” said Anice. “He will help Mr. Grace often.”
“Grace needs a support of some kind,” returned Mr. Barholm, frowning
slightly, “and he does not seem to rely very much upon me--not so much
as I would wish. I don't quite understand him at times; the fact is,
it has struck me once or twice, that he preferred to take his own path,
instead of following mine.”
“Papa,” commented Anice, “I scarcely think he is to blame for that. I
am sure it is always best, that conscientious, thinking people--and Mr.
Grace is a thinking man--should have paths of their own.”
Mr. Barholm pushed his hair from his forehead. His own obstinacy
confronted him sometimes through Anice in a finer, more baffling form.
“Grace is a young man, my dear,” he said, “and--and not a very
strong-minded one.”
“I cannot believe that is true,” said Anice. “I do not think we can
blame his mind. It is his body that is not strong. Mr. Grace himself has
more power than you and mamma and myself all put together.”
One of Alice's peculiarities was a certain pretty sententiousness,
which, but for its innate refinement, and its sincerity, might have
impressed people as being a fault. When she pushed her opposition in that
steady, innocent way, Mr. Barholm always took refuge behind an inner
consciousness which “knew better,” and was fully satisfied on the point
of its own knowledge.
When breakfast was over, he rose from the table with the air of a
man who had business on hand. Anice rose too, and followed him to the
hearth.
“You are going out, I suppose,” she said.
“I am going to see Joan Lowrie,” he said complacently. “And I have
several calls to make besides. Shall I tell the young woman that you
will call on her?”
Anice looked down at the foot she had placed on the shining rim of the
steel fender.
“Joan Lowrie?” she said reflectively.
“Certainly, my dear. I should think it would please the girl to feel
that we are interested in her.”
“I should scarcely think--from what Mr. Grace and his friend say--that
she is the kind of a girl to be reached in that way,” said Anice.
The Rector shrugged his shoulders.
“My dear,” he answered, “if we are always to depend upon what Grace
says, we shall often find ourselves in a dilemma. If you are going to
wait until these collier young women call on you after the manner of
polite society, I am afraid you will have time to lose interest in them
and their affairs.”
He had no scruples of his own on the subject of his errand. He felt very
comfortable as usual, as he wended his way through the village toward
Lowrie's cottage, on the Knoll Road. He did not ask himself what he
should say to the collier young woman, and her unhappy charge. Orthodox
phrases with various distinct flavors--the flavor of encouragement, the
flavor of reproof, the flavor of consolation,--were always ready with
the man; he never found it necessary to prepare them beforehand. The
flavor of approval was to be Joan's portion this morning; the flavor of
rebuke her companion's. He passed down the street with ecclesiastical
dignity, bestowing a curt, but not unamiable word of recognition here
and there. Unkempt, dirty-faced children, playing hop-scotch or marbles
on the flag pavement, looked up at him with a species of awe, not
un-mingled with secret resentment; women lounging on door-steps, holding
babies on their hips, stared in critical sullenness as he went by.
“Theer's th' owd parson,” commented one sharp-tongued matron. “Hoo's
goin' to teach some one summat, I warrant What th' owd lad dunnot know
is na worth knowin'. Eh! hoo's a graidely foo', that hoo is. Our Tommy,
if tha dost na let Jane Ann be, tha'lt be gettin' a hidin'.”
Unprepossessing as most of the colliers' homes were, Lowrie's cottage
was a trifle less inviting than the majority. It stood upon the
roadside, an ugly little bare place, with a look of stubborn desolation,
its only redeeming feature a certain rough cleanliness. The same
cleanliness reigned inside, Barholm observed when he entered; and yet on
the whole there was a stamp upon it which made it a place scarcely to
be approved of. Before the low fire sat a girl with a child on her knee,
and this girl, hearing the visitor's footsteps, got up hurriedly, and
met him with a half abashed, half frightened look on her pale face.
“Lowrie is na here, an' neyther is Joan,” she said, without waiting for
him to speak. “Both on 'em's at th' pit. Theer's no one here but me,”
and she held the baby over her shoulder, as if she would like to have
hidden it.
Mr. Barholm walked in serenely, sure that he ought to be welcome, if he
were not.
“At the pit, are they?” he answered. “Dear me! I might have remembered
that they would be at this time. Well, well; I will take a seat, my
girl, and talk to you a little. I suppose you know me, the minister at
the church--Mr. Barholm?”
Liz, a slender slip of a creature, large-eyed, and woe-begone, stood up
before him, staring at him irresolutely as he seated himself.
“I--I dunnot know nobody much now,” she stammered. “I--I've been away
fro' Riggan sin' afore yo' comn--if yo're th' new parson,” and then she
colored nervously and became fearfully conscious of her miserable little
burden, “I've heerd Joan speak o' th' young parson,” she faltered.
Her visitor looked at her gravely. What a helpless, childish creature
she was, with her pretty face, and her baby, and her characterless,
frightened way. She was only one of many--poor Liz, ignorant, emotional,
weak, easily led, ready to err, unable to bear the consequences of
error, not strong enough to be resolutely wicked, not strong enough to
be anything in particular, but that which her surroundings made her.
If she had been well-born and well brought up, she would have been a
pretty, insipid girl, who needed to be taken care of; as it was, she had
“gone wrong.” The excellent Rector of St. Michael's felt that she must
be awakened.
“You are the girl Elizabeth?” he said.
“I'm 'Lizabeth Barnes,” she answered, pulling at the hem of her child's
small gown, “but folks nivver calls me nowt but Liz.”
Her visitor pointed to a chair considerately. “Sit down,” he said, “I
want to talk to you.”
Liz obeyed him; but her pretty, weak face told its own story of distaste
and hysterical shrinking. She let the baby lie upon her lap; her fingers
were busy plaiting up folds of the little gown.
“I dunnot want to be talked to,” she whimpered. “I dunnot know as talk
can do folk as is i' trouble any good--an' th' trouble's bad enow wi'out
talk.”
“We must remember whence the trouble comes,” answered the minister, “and
if the root lies in ourselves, and springs from our own sin, we must
bear our cross meekly, and carry our sorrows and iniquities to the
fountain head. We must ask for grace, and--and sanctification of
spirit.”
“I dunnot know nowt about th' fountain head,” sobbed Liz aggrieved.
“I amna religious an' I canna see as such loike helps foak. No Methody
nivver did nowt for me when I war i' trouble an' want Joan Lowrie is na
a Methody.”
“If you mean that the young woman is in an unawakened condition, I am
sorry to hear it,” with increased gravity of demeanor. “Without the
redeeming blood how are we to find peace? If you had clung to the Cross
you would have been spared all this sin and shame. You must know, my
girl, that this,” with a motion toward the frail creature on her knee,
“is a very terrible thing.”
Liz burst into piteous sobs--crying like an abused child:
“I know it's hard enow,” she cried; “I canna get work neyther at th' pit
nor at th' factories, as long as I mun drag it about, an' I ha' not
got a place to lay my head, on'y this. If it wur na for Joan, I might
starve, and the choild too. But I'm noan so bad as yo'd mak' out. I--I
wur very fond o' _him_--I wur, an' I thowt he wur fond o' me, an' he wur
a gentleman too. He were no laboring-man, an' he wur kind to me, until
he got tired. Them sort allus gets tired o' yo' i' time, Joan says. I
wish I'd ha' towd Joan at first, an' axed her what to do.”
Barholm passed his hand through his hair uneasily. This shallow,
inconsequent creature baffled him. Her shame, her grief, her misery,
were all mere straws eddying on the pool of her discomfort It was not
her sin that crushed her, it was the consequence of it; hers was not a
sorrow, it was a petulant unhappiness. If her lot had been prosperous
outwardly, she would have felt no inward pang.
It became more evident to him than ever that something must be done, and
he applied himself to his task of reform to the best of his ability.
But he exhausted his repertory of sonorous phrases in vain. His grave
exhortations only called forth fresh tears, and a new element
of resentment; and, to crown all, his visit terminated with a
discouragement of which his philosophy had never dreamed.
In the midst of his most eloquent reproof, a shadow darkened the
threshold, and as Liz looked up with the explanation--“Joan!” a young
woman, in pit girl guise, came in, her hat pushed off her forehead, her
throat bare, her fustian jacket hanging over her arm. She glanced from
one to the other questioningly, knitting her brows slightly at the sight
of Liz's tears. In answer to her glance Liz spoke querulously.
“It's th' parson, Joan,” she said. “He comn to talk like th' rest on 'em
an' he maks me out too ill to burn.”
Just at that moment the child set up a fretful cry and Joan crossed the
room and took it up in her arms.
“Yo've feart th' choild betwixt yo',” she said, “if yo've managed to do
nowt else.”
“I felt it my duty as Rector of the parish,” explained Barholm somewhat
curtly, “I felt it my duty as Rector of the parish, to endeavor to bring
your friend to a proper sense of her position.”
Joan turned toward him.
“Has tha done it?” she asked.
The Reverend Harold felt his enthusiasm concerning the young woman dying
out.
“I--I--” he stammered.
Joan interrupted him.
“Dost tha see as tha has done her any good?” she demanded. “I dunnot
mysen.”
“I have endeavored to the best of my ability to improve her mental
condition,” the minister replied.
“I thowt as much,” said Joan; “I mak' no doubt tha'st done thy best,
neyther. Happen tha'st gi'en her what comfort tha had to spare, but if
yo'd been wiser than yo' are, yo'd ha' let her alone. I'll warrant theer
is na a parson 'twixt here an' Lunnon, that could na ha' towd her that
she's a sinner an' has shame to bear; but happen theer is na a parson
'twixt here an' Lunnon as she could na ha' towd that much to, hersen.
Howivver, as tha has said thy say, happen it 'll do yo' fur this toime,
an' yo' can let her be for a while.”
Mr. Barholm was unusually silent during dinner that evening, and as
he sat over his wine, his dissatisfaction rose to the surface, as it
invariably did.
“I am rather disturbed this evening, Anice,” he said.
Anice looked up questioningly.
“Why?” she asked.
“I went to see Joan Lowrie this morning,” he answered hesitatingly, “and
I am very much disappointed in her. I scarcely think, after all, that I
would advise you to take her in hand. She is not an amiable young woman.
In fact there is a positive touch of the vixen about her.”