Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives,
And feed my mind, that dies for want of her.
--MARLOWE: _Tamburlaine the Great_.
Hardly any one in Treby who thought at all of Mr. Lyon and his daughter
had not felt the same sort of wonder about Esther as Felix felt. She was
not much liked by her father's church and congregation. The less serious
observed that she had too many airs and graces and held her head much
too high; the stricter sort feared greatly that Mr. Lyon had not been
sufficiently careful in placing his daughter among God-fearing people,
and that, being led astray by the melancholy vanity of giving her
exceptional accomplishments, he had sent her to a French school, and
allowed her to take situations where she had contracted notions not
only above her own rank, but of too worldly a kind to be safe in any
rank. But no one knew what sort of woman her mother had been, for Mr.
Lyon never spoke of his past domesticities. When he was chosen as pastor
at Treby in 1825, it was understood that he had been a widower many
years, and he had no companion but the tearful and much-exercised Lyddy,
his daughter being still at school. It was only two years ago that
Esther had come home to live permanently with her father, and take
pupils in the town. Within that time she had excited a passion in two
young Dissenting breasts that were clad in the best style of Treby
waistcoat--a garment which at that period displayed much design both in
the stuff and the wearer; and she had secured an astonished admiration
of her cleverness from the girls of various ages who were her pupils;
indeed, her knowledge of French was generally held to give a distinction
to Treby itself as compared with other market-towns. But she had won
little regard of any other kind. Wise Dissenting matrons were divided
between fear lest their sons should want to marry her and resentment
that she should treat those "undeniable" young men with a distant scorn
which was hardly to be tolerated in a minister's daughter; not only
because that parentage appeared to entail an obligation to show an
exceptional degree of Christian humility, but because, looked at from a
secular point of view, a poor minister must be below the substantial
householders who keep him. For at that time the preacher who was paid
under the Voluntary system was regarded by his flock with feelings not
less mixed than the spiritual person who still took his tithe-pig or his
_modus_. His gifts were admired, and tears were shed under best bonnets
at his sermons; but the weaker tea was thought good enough for him; and
even when he went to preach a charity sermon in a strange town, he was
treated with home-made wine and the smaller bedroom. As the good
Churchman's reverence was often mixed with growling, and was apt to be
given chiefly to an abstract parson who was what a parson ought to be,
so the good Dissenter sometimes mixed his approval of ministerial gifts
with considerable criticism and cheapening of the human vessel which
contained those treasures. Mrs. Muscat and Mrs. Nuttwood applied the
principle of Christian equality by remarking that Mr. Lyon had his
oddities, and that he ought not to allow his daughter to indulge in such
unbecoming expenditure on her gloves, shoes, and hosiery, even if she
did pay for them out of her earnings. As for the Church people who
engaged Miss Lyon to give lessons in their families, their imaginations
were altogether prostrated by the incongruity between accomplishments
and Dissent, between weekly prayer-meetings and a conversance with so
lively and altogether worldly a language as the French. Esther's own
mind was not free from a sense of irreconcilableness between the objects
of her taste and the conditions of her lot. She knew that Dissenters
were looked down upon by those whom she regarded as the most refined
classes; her favorite companions, both in France and at an English
school where she had been a junior teacher, had thought it quite
ridiculous to have a father who was a Dissenting preacher; and when an
ardently admiring school-fellow induced her parents to take Esther as a
governess to the younger children, all her native tendencies toward
luxury, fastidiousness, and scorn of mock gentility, were strengthened
by witnessing the habits of a well-born and wealthy family. Yet the
position of servitude was irksome to her, and she was glad at last to
live at home with her father, for though, throughout her girlhood, she
had wished to avoid this lot, a little experience had taught her to
prefer its comparative independence. But she was not contented with her
life; she seemed to herself to be surrounded with ignoble, uninteresting
conditions, from which there was no issue; for even if she had been
unamiable enough to give her father pain deliberately, it would have
been no satisfaction to her to go to Treby church, and visibly turn her
back on Dissent. It was not religious differences, but social
differences, that Esther was concerned about, and her ambitious taste
would have been no more gratified in the society of the Waces than in
that of the Muscats. The Waces spoke imperfect English and played whist;
the Muscats spoke the same dialect and took in the "Evangelical
Magazine." Esther liked neither of these amusements. She had one of
those exceptional organizations which are quick and sensitive without
being in the least morbid; she was alive to the finest shades of manner,
to the nicest distinctions of tone and accent; she had a little code of
her own about scents and colors, textures and behavior, by which she
secretly condemned or sanctioned all things and persons. And she was
well satisfied with herself for her fastidious taste, never doubting
that hers was the highest standard. She was proud that the best-born
and handsomest girls at school had always said that she might be taken
for a born lady. Her own pretty instep, clad in a silk stocking, her
little heel, just rising from a kid slipper, her irreproachable nails
and delicate wrist, were the objects of delighted consciousness to her;
and she felt that it was her superiority which made her unable to use
without disgust any but the finest cambric handkerchiefs and freshest
gloves. Her money all went in the gratification of these nice tastes,
and she saved nothing from her earnings. I can not say that she had
pangs of conscience on this score; for she felt sure that she was
generous: she hated all meanness, would empty her purse impulsively on
some sudden appeal to her pity, and if she found out that her father had
a want, she would supply it with some pretty device of a surprise. But
then the good man so seldom had a want--except the perpetual desire,
which she could never gratify, of seeing her under convictions, and fit
to become a member of the church.
As for little Mr. Lyon, he loved and admired this unregenerate child
more, he feared, than was consistent with the due preponderance of
impersonal and ministerial regards: he prayed and pleaded for her with
tears, humbling himself for her spiritual deficiencies in the privacy of
his study; and then came down stairs to find himself in timorous
subjection to her wishes, lest, as he inwardly said, he should give his
teaching an ill savor, by mingling it with outward crossing. There will
be queens in spite of Salic or other laws of later date than Adam and
Eve; and here in this small dingy house of the minister in Malthouse
Yard, there was a light-footed, sweet-voiced Queen Esther.
The stronger will always rule, say some, with an air of confidence which
is like a lawyer's flourish, forbidding exceptions or additions. But
what is strength? Is it blind wilfulness that sees no terrors, no
many-linked consequences, no bruises and wounds of those whose cords it
tightens? Is it the narrowness of a brain that conceives no needs
differing from its own, and looks to no results beyond the bargains of
to-day; that tugs with emphasis for every small purpose, and thinks it
weakness to exercise the sublime power of resolved renunciation? There
is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and
of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to
irremediable weakness.
Esther had affection for her father: she recognized the purity of his
character, and a quickness of intellect in him which responded to her
own liveliness, in spite of what seemed a dreary piety, which selected
everything that was least interesting and romantic in life and history.
But his old clothes had a smoky odor, and she did not like to walk with
him, because, when people spoke to him in the street, it was his wont,
instead of remarking on the weather and passing on, to pour forth in an
absent manner some reflections that were occupying his mind about the
traces of the Divine government, or about a peculiar incident narrated
in the life of the eminent Mr. Richard Baxter. Esther had a horror of
appearing ridiculous even in the eyes of vulgar Trebians. She fancied
that she should have loved her mother better than she was able to love
her father; and she wished she could have remembered that mother more
thoroughly.
But she had no more than a broken vision of the time before she was five
years old--the time when the word oftenest on her lips was "Mamma"; when
a low voice spoke caressing French words to her, and she in her turn
repeated the words to her rag doll; when a very small white hand,
different from any that came after, used to pat her, and stroke her, and
tie on her frock and pinafore, and when at last there was nothing but
sitting with a doll on a bed where mamma was lying, till her father once
carried her away. Where distinct memory began, there was no longer the
low caressing voice and the small white hand. She knew that her mother
was a Frenchwoman, that she had been in want and distress, and that her
maiden name was Annette Ledru. Her father had told her no more than
this; and once, he had said, "My Esther, until you are a woman, we will
only think of your mother: when you are about to be married and leave
me, we will speak of her, and I will deliver to you her ring and all
that was hers; but, without a great command laid upon me, I cannot
pierce my heart by speaking of that which was and is not." Esther had
never forgotten these words, and the older she became, the more
impossible she felt it that she should urge her father with questions
about the past.
His inability to speak of that past to her depended on manifold causes.
Partly it came from an initial concealment. He had not the courage to
tell Esther that he was not really her father: he had not the courage to
renounce that hold on her tenderness which the belief in his natural
fatherhood must help to give him, or to incur any resentment that her
quick spirit might feel at having been brought up under a false
supposition. But there were other things yet more difficult for him to
be quite open about--deep sorrows of his life as a Christian minister
that were hardly to be told to a girl.
Twenty-two years ago, when Rufus Lyon was no more than thirty-six years
old, he was the admired pastor of a large Independent congregation in
one of our southern seaport towns. He was unmarried, and had met all
exhortations of friends who represented to him that a bishop, _i.e._,
the overseer of an Independent church and congregation--should be the
husband of one wife, by saying that St. Paul meant this particular as a
limitation, and not as an injunction; that a minister was permitted to
have one wife, but that he, Rufus Lyon, did not wish to avail himself of
that permission, finding his studies and other labors of his vocation
all-absorbing, and seeing that mothers in Israel were sufficiently
provided by those who had not been set apart for a more special work.
His church and congregation were proud of him: he was put forward on
platforms, was made a "deputation," and was requested to preach
anniversary sermons in far-off towns. Wherever noteworthy preachers were
discussed, Rufus Lyon was almost sure to be mentioned as one who did
honor to the Independent body; his sermons were said to be full of fire;
and while he had more of human knowledge than many of his brethren, he
showed in an eminent degree the marks of a true ministerial vocation.
But on a sudden this burning and shining light seemed to be quenched:
Mr. Lyon voluntarily resigned his charge and withdrew from the town.
A terrible crisis had come upon him; a moment in which religious doubt
and newly-awakened passion had rushed together in a common flood, and
had paralyzed his ministerial gifts. His thirty-six years had been a
story of purely religious and studious fervor; his passion had been for
doctrines, for argumentative conquest on the side of right; the sins he
had chiefly to pray against had been those of personal ambition (under
such forms as ambition takes in the mind of a man who has chosen the
career of an Independent preacher), and those of a too restless
intellect, ceaselessly urging questions concerning the mystery of that
which was assuredly revealed, and thus hindering the due nourishment of
the soul on the substance of the truth delivered. Even at that time of
comparative youth, his unworldliness and simplicity in small matters
(for he was keenly awake to the larger affairs of this world) gave a
certain oddity to his manners and appearance; and though his sensitive
face had much beauty, his person altogether seemed so irrelevant to a
fashionable view of things, that well-dressed ladies and gentlemen
usually laughed at him, as they probably did at Mr. John Milton after
the Restoration and ribbons had come in, and still more at that apostle,
of weak bodily presence, who preached in the back streets of Ephesus and
elsewhere, a new view of a religion that hardly anybody believed in.
Rufus Lyon was the singular-looking apostle of the Meeting in Skipper's
Lane. Was it likely that any romance should befall such a man? Perhaps
not; but romance did befall him.
One winter's evening in 1812, Mr. Lyon was returning from a village
preaching. He walked at his usual rapid rate, with busy thoughts
undisturbed by any sight more distinct than the bushes and the hedgerow
trees, black beneath a faint moonlight, until something suggested to him
that he had perhaps omitted to bring away with him a thin account-book
in which he recorded certain subscriptions. He paused, unfastened his
outer coat, and felt in all his pockets, then he took off his hat and
looked inside it. The book was not to be found, and he was about to walk
on, when he was startled by hearing a low, sweet voice, say, with a
strong foreign accent--
"Have pity on me, sir."
Searching with his short-sighted eyes, he perceived some one on a
side-bank; and approaching, he found a young woman with a baby on her
lap. She spoke again more faintly than before.
"Sir, I die with hunger; in the name of God take the little one."
There was no distrusting the pale face and the sweet low voice. Without
pause, Mr. Lyon took the baby in his arms and said, "Can you walk by my
side, young woman?"
She rose, but seemed tottering. "Lean on me," said Mr. Lyon, and so they
walked slowly on, the minister for the first time in his life carrying a
baby.
Nothing better occurred to him than to take his charge to his own house;
it was the simplest way of relieving the woman's wants, and finding out
how she could be helped further; and he thought of no other
possibilities. She was too feeble for more words to be spoken between
them till she was seated by his fireside. His elderly servant was not
easily amazed at anything her master did in the way of charity, and at
once took the baby, while Mr. Lyon unfastened the mother's damp bonnet
and shawl, and gave her something warm to drink. Then, waiting by her
till it was time to offer her more, he had nothing to do but to notice
the loveliness of her face, which seemed to him as that of an angel,
with a benignity in its repose that carried a more assured sweetness
than any smile. Gradually she revived, lifted up her delicate hands
between her face and the firelight, and looked at the baby which lay
opposite to her on the old servant's lap, taking in spoonfuls with much
content, and stretching out naked feet toward the warmth. Then, as her
consciousness of relief grew into contrasting memory, she lifted up her
eyes to Mr. Lyon, who stood close by her, and said, in her pretty broken
way:
"I knew you had a good heart when you took your hat off. You seemed to
me as the image of the _bien-amié Saint Jean_."
The grateful glance of those blue-gray eyes, with their long
shadow-making eyelashes, was a new kind of good to Rufus Lyon; it seemed
to him as if a woman had never really looked at him before. Yet this
poor thing was apparently a blind French Catholic--of delicate nurture,
surely, judging from her hands. He was in a tremor; he felt that it
would be rude to question her, and he only urged her now to take a
little food. She accepted it with evident enjoyment, looking at the
child continually, and then, with a fresh burst of gratitude, leaning
forward to press the servant's hand and say, "Oh, you are good!" Then
she looked up at Mr. Lyon again and said, "Is there in the world a
prettier _marmot?_"
The evening passed; a bed was made up for the strange woman, and Mr.
Lyon had not asked her so much as her name. He never went to bed himself
that night. He spent it in misery, enduring a horrible assault of Satan.
He thought a frenzy had seized him. Wild visions of an impossible future
thrust themselves upon him. He dreaded lest the woman had a husband; he
wished that he might call her his own, that he might worship her beauty,
that she might love and caress him. And what to the mass of men would
have been only one of many allowable follies--a transient fascination,
to be dispelled by daylight and contact with those common facts of which
common-sense is the reflex--was to him a spiritual convulsion. He was as
one who raved, and knew that he raved. These mad wishes were
irreconcilable with what he was, and must be, as a Christian minister,
nay, penetrating his soul as tropic heat penetrates the frame, and
changes for it all aspects and all flavors, they were irreconcilable
with that conception of the world which made his faith. All the busy
doubt which had before been mere impish shadows flitting around a belief
that was strong with the strength of an unswerving moral bias, had now
gathered blood and substance. The questioning spirit had become suddenly
bold and blasphemous; it no longer insinuated scepticism--it prompted
defiance; it no longer expressed cool, inquisitive thought, but was the
voice of a passionate mood. Yet he never ceased to regard it as the
voice of the tempter: the conviction which had been the law of his
better life remained within him as a conscience.
The struggle of that night was an abridgment of all the struggles that
came after. Quick souls have their intensest life in the first
anticipatory sketch of what may or will be, and the pursuit of their
wish is the pursuit of that paradisiacal vision which only impelled
them, and is left farther and farther behind, vanishing forever even out
of hope in the moment which is called success.
The next morning Mr. Lyon heard his guest's history. She was the
daughter of a French officer of considerable rank, who had fallen in the
Russian campaign. She had escaped from France to England with much
difficulty in order to rejoin her husband, a young Englishman, to whom
she had become attached during his detention as a prisoner of war on
parole at Vesoul, where she was living under the charge of some
relatives, and to whom she had been married without the consent of her
family. Her husband had served in the Hanoverian army, had obtained his
discharge in order to visit England on some business, with the nature of
which she was not acquainted, and had been taken prisoner as a suspected
spy. A short time after their marriage he and his fellow-prisoners had
been moved to a town nearer the coast, and she had remained in wretched
uncertainty about him, until at last a letter had come from him telling
her that an exchange of prisoners had occurred, that he was in England,
that she must use her utmost effort to follow him, and that on arriving
on English ground she must send him word under a cover which he
enclosed, bearing an address in London. Fearing the opposition of her
friends, she started unknown to them, with a very small supply of money;
and after enduring much discomfort and many fears in waiting for a
passage which she at last got in a small trading smack, she arrived at
Southampton--ill. Before she was able to write, her baby was born; and
before her husband's answer came, she had been obliged to pawn some
clothes and trinkets. He desired her to travel to London where he would
meet her at the Belle Sauvage, adding that he was himself in distress,
and unable to come to her: when once she was in London they would take
ship and quit the country. Arrived at the Belle Sauvage, the poor thing
waited three days in vain for her husband: on the fourth a letter came
in a strange hand, saying that in his last moments he had desired this
letter to be written to inform her of his death, and recommend her to
return to her friends. She could choose no other course, but she had
soon been reduced to walking, that she might save her pence to buy bread
with: and on the evening when she made her appeal to Mr. Lyon, she had
pawned the last thing, over and above needful clothing, that she could
persuade herself to part with. The things she had not borne to part with
were her marriage-ring, and a locket containing her husband's hair, and
bearing his baptismal name. This locket, she said, exactly resembled one
worn by her husband on his watch-chain, only that his bore the name
Annette, and contained a lock of her hair. The precious trifle now hung
round her neck by a cord, for she had sold the small gold chain which
formerly held it.
The only guarantee of this story, besides the exquisite candor of her
face, was a small packet of papers which she carried in her pocket,
consisting of her husband's few letters, the letter which announced his
death, and her marriage certificate. It was not so probable a story as
that of many an inventive vagrant; but Mr. Lyon did not doubt it for a
moment. It was impossible to him to suspect this angelic-faced woman,
but he had strong suspicions concerning her husband. He could not help
being glad that she had not retained the address he had desired her to
send to in London, as that removed any obvious means of learning
particulars about him. But enquiries might have been made at Vesoul by
letter, and her friends there might have been appealed to. A
consciousness, not to be quite silenced, told Mr. Lyon that this was the
course he ought to take, but it would have required an energetic
self-conquest, and he was excused from it by Annette's own
disinclination to return to her relatives, if any other acceptable
possibility could be found.
He dreaded, with a violence of feeling which surmounted all struggles,
lest anything should take her away, and place such barriers between them
as would make it unlikely or impossible that she should ever love him
well enough to become his wife. Yet he saw with perfect clearness that
unless he tore up his mad passion by the roots, his ministerial
usefulness would be frustrated, and the repose of his soul would be
destroyed. This woman was an unregenerate Catholic; ten minutes'
listening to her artless talk made that plain to him: even if her
position had been less equivocal, to unite himself to such a woman was
nothing less than a spiritual fall. It was already a fall that he had
wished there was no high purpose to which he owed an allegiance--that he
had longed to fly to some backwoods where there was no church to
reproach him, and where he might have this sweet woman to wife, and to
know the joys of tenderness. Those sensibilities which in most lives are
diffused equally through the youthful years, were aroused suddenly in
Mr. Lyon, as some men have their special genius revealed to them by a
tardy concurrence of conditions. His love was the first love of a fresh
young heart full of wonder and worship. But what to one man is the
virtue which he has sunk below the possibility of aspiring to, is to
another the backsliding by which he forfeits his spiritual crown.
The end was, that Annette remained in his house. He had striven against
himself so far as to represent her position to some chief matrons in his
congregation, praying and yet dreading that they would so take her by
the hand as to impose on him that denial of his own longing not to let
her go out of his sight, which he found it too hard to impose on
himself. But they regarded the case coldly; the woman was, after all, a
vagrant. Mr. Lyon was observed to be surprisingly weak on the
subject--his eagerness seemed disproportionate and unbecoming; and this
young Frenchwoman, unable to express herself very clearly, was no more
interesting to those matrons and their husbands than other pretty young
women suspiciously circumstanced. They were willing to subscribe
something to carry her on her way, or if she took some lodgings they
would give her a little sewing, and endeavor to convert her from
Papistry. If, however, she was a respectable person, as she said, the
only proper thing for her was to go back to her own country and friends.
In spite of himself, Mr. Lyon exulted. There seemed a reason now that he
should keep Annette under his own eyes. He told himself that no real
object would be served by his providing food and lodging for her
elsewhere--an expense which he could ill afford. And she was apparently
so helpless, except as to the one task of attending to her baby, that it
would have been folly to think of her exerting herself for her own
support.
But this course of his was severely disapproved by his church. There
were various signs that the minister was under some evil influence: his
preaching wanted its old fervor, he seemed to shun the intercourse of
his brethren, and very mournful suspicions were entertained. A formal
remonstrance was presented to him, but he met it as if he had already
determined to act in anticipation of it. He admitted that external
circumstances, conjoined with a peculiar state of mind, were likely to
hinder the fruitful exercise of his ministry, and he resigned it. There
was much sorrowing, much expostulation, but he declared that for the
present he was unable to unfold himself more fully; he only wished to
state solemnly that Annette Ledru, though blind in spiritual things, was
in a worldly sense a pure and virtuous woman. No more was to be said,
and he departed to a distant town. Here he maintained himself, Annette
and the child, with the remainder of his stipend, and with the wages he
earned as a printer's reader. Annette was one of those angelic-faced
helpless women who take all things as manna from heaven: the good image
of the well-beloved Saint John wished her to stay with him, and there
was nothing else that she wished for except the unattainable. Yet for a
whole year Mr. Lyon never dared to tell Annette that he loved her: he
trembled before this woman; he saw that the idea of his being her lover
was too remote from her mind for her to have any idea that she ought not
to live with him. She had never known, never asked the reason why he
gave up his ministry. She seemed to entertain as little concern about
the strange world in which she lived as a bird in its nest: an avalanche
had fallen over the past, but she sat warm and uncrushed--there was food
for many morrows, and her baby flourished. She did not seem even to care
about a priest, or about having her child baptized; and on the subject
of religion Mr. Lyon was as timid, and shrank as much from speaking to
her, as on the subject of his love. He dreaded anything that might cause
her to feel a sudden repulsion toward him. He dreaded disturbing her
simple gratitude and content. In these days his religious faith was not
slumbering; it was awake and achingly conscious of having fallen in a
struggle. He had had a great treasure committed to him, and had flung it
away: he held himself a backslider. His unbelieving thoughts never
gained the full ear and consent of his soul. His prayers had been
stifled by the sense that there was something he preferred to complete
obedience; they had ceased to be anything but intermittent cries and
confessions, and a submissive presentiment, rising at times even to an
entreaty, that some great discipline might come, that the dull spiritual
sense might be roused to full vision and hearing as of old, and the
supreme facts become again supreme in his soul. Mr. Lyon will perhaps
seem a very simple personage, with pitiably narrow theories; but none of
our theories are quite large enough for all the disclosures of time, and
to the end of men's struggles a penalty will remain for those who sink
from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd for whom the heroes fight
and die.
One day, however, Annette learned Mr. Lyon's secret. The baby had a
tooth coming, and being large and strong now, was noisily fretful. Mr.
Lyon, though he had been working extra hours and was much in need of
repose, took the child from its mother immediately on entering the house
and walked about with it, patting and talking soothingly to it. The
stronger grasp, the new sensations, were a successful anodyne, and baby
went to sleep on his shoulder. But fearful lest any movement should
disturb it, he sat down, and endured the bondage of holding it still
against his shoulder.
"You do nurse baby well," said Annette, approvingly. "Yet you never
nursed before I came?"
"No," said Mr. Lyon. "I had no brothers and sisters."
"Why were you not married?" Annette had never thought of asking that
question before.
"Because I never loved any woman--till now. I thought I should never
marry. Now I wish to marry."
Annette started. She did not see at once that she was the woman he
wanted to marry; what had flashed on her mind was, that there might be a
great change in Mr. Lyon's life. It was as if the lightning had entered
into her dream and half awaked her.
"Do you think it foolish, Annette, that I should wish to marry?"
"I did not expect it," she said, doubtfully. "I did not know you thought
about it."
"You know the woman I should like to marry?"
"I know her?" she said, interrogatively, blushing deeply.
"It is you, Annette--you whom I have loved better than my duty. I
forsook everything for you."
Mr. Lyon paused: he was about to do what he felt would be ignoble--to
urge what seemed like a claim.
"Can you love me, Annette? Will you be my wife?" Annette trembled and
looked miserable.
"Do not speak--forget it," said Mr. Lyon, rising suddenly and speaking
with loud energy. "No, no--I do not want it--I do not wish it."
The baby awoke as he started up; he gave the child into Annette's arms,
and left her.
His work took him away early the next morning and the next again. They
did not need to speak much to each other. The third day Mr. Lyon was too
ill to go to work. His frame had been overwrought; he had been too poor
to have sufficiently nourishing food, and under the shattering of his
long deferred hope his health had given away. They had no regular
servant--only occasional help from an old woman, who lit the fires and
put on the kettles. Annette was forced to be the sick-nurse, and this
sudden demand on her shook away some of her torpor. The illness was a
serious one, and the medical man one day hearing Mr. Lyon in his
delirium raving with an astonishing fluency in Biblical language,
suddenly looked round with increased curiosity at Annette, and asked if
she were the sick man's wife, or some other relative.
"No--no relation," said Annette, shaking her head. "He has been good to
me."
"How long have you lived with him?"
"More than a year."
"Was he a preacher once?"
"Yes."
"When did he leave off being a preacher?"
"Soon after he took care of me."
"Is that his child?"
"Sir," said Annette, coloring indignantly, "I am a widow."
The doctor, she thought, looked at her oddly, but he asked no more
questions.
When the sick man was getting better, and able to enjoy invalid's food,
he observed one day, while he was taking some broth, that Annette was
looking at him; he paused to look at her in return, and was struck with
a new expression in her face, quite distinct from the merely passive
sweetness which usually characterized it. She laid her little hand on
his, which was now transparently thin, and said, "I am getting very
wise; I have sold some of the books to make money--the doctor told me
where; and I have looked into the shops where they sell caps and bonnets
and pretty things, and I can do all that, and get more money to keep
us. And when you are well enough to get up, we will go out and be
married--shall we not? See! and _la petite_" (the baby had never
been named anything else) "shall call you Papa--and then we shall never
part."
Mr. Lyon trembled. This illness--something else, perhaps--had made a
great change in Annette. A fortnight after that they were married. The
day before he had ventured to ask her if she felt any difficulty about
her religion, and if she would consent to have _la petite_ baptized and
brought up as a Protestant. She shook her head and said very simply--
"No: in France, in other days, I would have minded; but all is changed.
I never was fond of religion, but I knew it was right. _J'aimais les
fleurs, les bals, la musique, et mon mari qui était beau_. But all that
is gone away. There is nothing of my religion in this country. But the
good God must be here, for you are good; I leave all to you."
It was clear that Annette regarded her present life as a sort of death
to the world--an existence on a remote island where she had been saved
from wreck. She was too indolent mentally, too little interested, to
acquaint herself with any secrets of the isle. The transient energy, the
more vivid consciousness and sympathy which had been stirred in her
during Mr. Lyon's illness, had soon subsided into the old apathy to
everything except her child. She withered like a plant in strange air,
and the three years of life that remained were but a slow and gentle
death. Those three years were to Mr. Lyon a period of such
self-suppression and life in another as few men know. Strange! that the
passion for this woman, which he felt to have drawn him aside from the
right as much as if he had broken the most solemn vows--for that only
was right to him which he held the best and highest--the passion for a
being who had no glimpse of his thoughts induced a more thorough
renunciation than he had ever known in the time of his complete devotion
to his ministerial career. He had no flattery now, either from himself
or the world; he knew that he had fallen, and _his_ world had forgotten
him, or shook their heads at his memory. The only satisfaction he had
was the satisfaction of his tenderness--which meant untiring work,
untiring patience, untiring wakefulness even to the dumb signs of
feeling in a creature whom he alone cared for.
The day of parting came, and he was left with little Esther as the one
visible sign of that four years' break in his life. A year afterward he
entered the ministry again, and lived with the utmost sparingness that
Esther might be so educated as to be able to get her own bread in case
of his death. Her probable facility in acquiring French naturally
suggested his sending her to a French school, which would give her a
special advantage as a teacher. It was a Protestant school, and French
Protestantism had the high recommendation of being non-Prelatical. It
was understood that Esther would contract no Papistical superstitions;
and this was perfectly true; but she contracted, as we see, a good deal
of non-Papistical vanity.
Mr. Lyon's reputation as a preacher and devoted pastor had revived; but
some dissatisfaction beginning to be felt by his congregation at a
certain laxity detected by them in his views as to the limits of
salvation, which he had in one sermon even hinted might extend to
unconscious recipients of mercy, he had found it desirable seven years
ago to quit this ten years' pastorate and accept a call from the less
important church in Malthouse Yard, Treby Magna.
This was Rufus Lyon's history, at that time unknown in its fullness to
any human being besides himself. We can perhaps guess what memories they
were that relaxed the stringency of his doctrine on the point of
salvation. In the deepest of all senses his heart said--
"Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives,
And feed my mind, that dies for want of her."