never been within it before, and looked about with wondering eyes at the
furniture of the big kitchen. Did any idea of her future destiny flash
upon her then, I wonder? But she did not pause here a moment, but was
led up to the bed-room above stairs, where Barty was lying on his
mother’s bed.
“Is it Mally herself?” said the voice of the weak youth.
“It’s Mally herself,” said the mother, “so now you can say what you
please.”
“Mally,” said he, “Mally, it’s along of you that I’m alive this moment.”
“I’ll not forget it on her,” said the father, with his eyes turned away
from her. “I’ll never forget it on her.”
“We hadn’t a one but only him,” said the mother, with her apron up to
her face.
“Mally, you’ll be friends with me now?” said Barty.
To have been made lady of the manor of the cove for ever, Mally couldn’t
have spoken a word now. It was not only that the words and presence of
the people there cowed her and made her speechless, but the big bed, and
the looking-glass, and the unheard-of wonders of the chamber, made her
feel her own insignificance. But she crept up to Barty’s side, and put
her hand upon his.
“I’ll come and get the weed, Mally; but it shall all be for you,” said
Barty.
“Indeed, you won’t then, Barty dear,” said the mother; “you’ll never go
near the awsome place again. What would we do if you were took from us?”
“He mustn’t go near the hole if he does,” said Mally, speaking at last
in a solemn voice, and imparting the knowledge which she had kept to
herself while Barty was her enemy; “’specially not if the wind’s any way
from the nor’rard.”
“She’d better go down now,” said the father.
Barty kissed the hand which he held, and Mally, looking at him as he did
so, thought that he was like an angel.
“You’ll come and see us to-morrow, Mally?” said he.
To this she made no answer, but followed Mrs. Gunliffe out of the room.
When they were down in the kitchen the mother had tea for her, and thick
milk, and a hot cake,--all the delicacies which the farm could afford. I
don’t know that Mally cared much for the eating and drinking that night,
but she began to think that the Gunliffes were good people,--very good
people. It was better thus, at any rate, than being accused of murder
and carried off to Camelford prison.
“I’ll never forget it on her--never,” the father had said.
Those words stuck to her from that moment, and seemed to sound in her
ears all the night. How glad she was that Barty had come down to the
cove,--oh, yes, how glad! There was no question of his dying now, and as
for the blow on his forehead, what harm was that to a lad like him?
“But father shall go with you,” said Mrs. Gunliffe, when Mally prepared
to start for the cove by herself. Mally, however, would not hear of
this. She could find her way to the cove whether it was light or dark.
“Mally, thou art my child now, and I shall think of thee so,” said the
mother, as the girl went off by herself.
Mally thought of this, too, as she walked home. How could she become
Mrs. Gunliffe’s child; ah, how?
I need not, I think, tell the tale any further. That Mally did become
Mrs. Gunliffe’s child, and how she became so the reader will understand;
and in process of time the big kitchen and all the wonders of the
farmhouse were her own. The people said that Barty Gunliffe had married
a mermaid out of the sea; but when it was said in Mally’s hearing I
doubt whether she liked it; and when Barty himself would call her a
mermaid she would frown at him, and throw about her black hair, and
pretend to cuff him with her little hand.
Old Glos was brought up to the top of the cliff, and lived his few
remaining days under the roof of Mr. Gunliffe’s house; and as for the
cove and the right of seaweed, from that time forth all that has been
supposed to attach itself to Gunliffe’s farm, and I do not know that any
of the neighbours are prepared to dispute the right.
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE WIDOW’S MITE.
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE WIDOW’S MITE.
“But I’m not a widow, and I haven’t got two mites.”
“My dear, you are a widow, and you have got two mites.”
“I’ll tell both of you something that will astonish you. I’ve made a
calculation, and I find that if everybody in England would give up their
Christmas dinner--that is, in Scotland, and Ireland too----”
“They never have any in Ireland, Bob.”
“Hold your tongue till I’ve done, Charley. They do have Christmas
dinners in Ireland. It’s pretty nearly the only day that they do, and I
don’t count much upon them either. But if everybody gave up his special
Christmas dinner, and dined as he does on other days the saving would
amount to two millions and a half.”
Charley whistled.
“Two millions and a half is a large sum of money,” said Mrs. Granger,
the elder lady of the party.
“Those calculations never do any good,” said the younger lady, who had
declared herself not to be a widow.
“Those calculations do a great deal of good,” continued Bob, carrying on
his argument with continued warmth. “They show us what a great national
effort would do.”
“A little national effort, I should call that,” said Mrs. Granger, “but
I should doubt the two millions and a half.”
“Half-a-crown a-head on thirty million people would do it. You are to
include all the beer, wine, and whisky. But suppose you take off
one-fifth for the babies and young girls, who don’t drink.”
“Thank you, Bob,” said the younger lady--Nora Field by name.
“And two more fifths for the poor, who haven’t got the half-crown
a-head,” said the elder lady.
“And you’d ruin the grocer and butcher,” said Charley.
“And never get your half-crown, after all,” said Nora.
It need hardly be said that the subject under discussion was the best
mode of abstracting from the pockets of the non-suffering British public
a sufficiency of money to sustain the suffering portion during the
period of the cotton famine.
Mr. Granger was the rector of Plumstock, a parish in Cheshire,
sufficiently near to the manufacturing districts to give to every
incident of life at that time a colouring taken from the distress of the
neighbourhood; which had not, however, itself ever depended on
cotton,--for Plumstock boasted that it was purely agricultural. Mr.
Granger was the chairman of a branch relief committee, which had its
centre in Liverpool; and the subject of the destitution, with the
different modes by which it might be, should be, or should not be
relieved, were constantly under discussion in the rectory. Mr. Granger
himself was a practical man, somewhat hard in his manners, but by no
means hard in his heart, who had in these times taken upon himself the
business of alms-begging on a large scale. He declined to look at the
matter in a political, statistical, or economical point of view, and
answered all questions as to rates, rates in aid, loans, and the
Consolidated Fund, with a touch of sarcasm, which showed the bent of his
own mind.
“I’ve no doubt you’ll have settled all that in the wisest possible way
by the time that the war is over, and the river full of cotton again.”
“Father,” Bob replied, pointing across the Cheshire flats to the
Mersey, “that river will never again be full of American cotton.”
“It will be all the same for the present purpose, if it comes from
India,” said the rector, declining all present argument on the great
American question.
To collect alms was his immediate work, and he would do nothing else.
Five-pound notes, sovereigns, half-crowns, shillings, and pence! In
search of these he was urgent, we may almost say day and night, begging
with a pertinacity which was disagreeable, but irresistible. The man who
gave him five sovereigns instantly became the mark for another petition.
“When you have got your dinner, you have not done with the butcher for
ever,” he would say in answer to reproaches. “Of course, we must go on
as long as this thing lasts.”
Then his friends and neighbours buttoned up their pockets; but Mr.
Granger would extract coin from them even when buttoned.
The two young men who had taken part in the above argument were his
sons. The elder, Charles, was at Oxford, but now in these Christmas
days--for Christmas was close at hand--had come home. Bob, the second
son, was in a merchant’s house in Liverpool, intending to become, in the
fulness of time, a British merchant prince. It had been hinted to him,
however, more than once, that if he would talk a little less and work a
little harder, the path to his princedom would be quicker found than if
his present habits were maintained. Nora Field was Mrs. Granger’s niece.
She was Miss Field, and certainly not a widow in the literal sense of
the word; but she was about to become a bride a few weeks after
Christmas.
“It is spoil from the Amalekites,” Mr. Granger had said, when she had
paid in some contribution from her slender private stores to his
treasury:--“spoil from the Amalekites, and therefore the more precious.”
He had called Nora Field’s two sovereigns spoil from the Amalekites,
because she was about to marry an American.
Frederic Frew, or Frederic F. Frew, as he delighted to hear himself
called, for he had been christened Franklin as well as Frederic,--and to
an American it is always a point of honour that, at any rate, the
initial of his second Christian name should be remembered by all
men,--was a Pennsylvanian from Philadelphia; a strong Democrat,
according to the politics of his own country, hating the Republicans, as
the Tories used to hate the Whigs among us before political feeling had
become extinct; speaking against Lincoln the president, and Seward his
minister, and the Fremonts, and Sumners, and Philipses, and Beechers of
the Republican party, fine hard racy words of powerful condemnation,
such as used to be spoken against Earl Grey and his followers, but
nevertheless as steady for the war as Lincoln, or Seward, or any
Republican of them all;--as steady for the war, and as keen in his
bitterness against England.
His father had been a partner in a house of business, of which the chief
station had been in Liverpool. That house had now closed its
transactions, and young Frew was living and intended to live an easy
idle life on the moderate fortune which had been left to him; but the
circumstances of his family affairs had made it necessary for him to
pass many months in Liverpool, and during that sojourn he had become
engaged to Nora Field. He had travelled much, going everywhere with his
eyes open, as Americans do. He knew many things, had read many books,
and was decided in his opinion on most subjects. He was good-looking
too, and well-mannered; was kindly-hearted, and capable of much
generosity. But he was hard, keen in his intelligence, but not broad in
genius, thin and meagre in his aspirations,--not looking to or even
desirous of anything great, but indulging a profound contempt for all
that is very small. He was a well-instructed, but by no means learned
man, who greatly despised those who were ignorant. I fear that he hated
England in his heart; but he did not hate Nora Field, and was about to
make her his wife in three or four weeks from the present time.
When Nora declared to her aunt that she was not a widow, and that she
possessed no two mites, and when her aunt flatly contradicted her,
stating that she was a widow, and did possess two mites, they had not
intended to be understood by each other literally. It was an old dispute
between them.
“What the widow gave,” said Nora, “she gave off her own poor back, and
therefore was very cold. She gave it out of her own poor mouth, and was
very hungry afterwards in consequence. I have given my two pounds, but I
shall not be cold or hungry. I wish I was a widow with two mites! only,
the question is whether I should not keep them for my own back after
all, and thus gain nothing by the move.”
“As to that,” replied her aunt, “I cannot speak. But the widowhood and
the two mites are there for us all, if we choose to make use of them.”
“In these days,” said Bob, “the widows with two mites should not be
troubled at all. We can do it all without them, if we go to work
properly.”
“If you had read your Bible properly, Sir,” said Mrs. Granger, “you
would understand that the widows would not thank you for the
exemption.”
“I don’t want the widows to thank me. I only want to live, and allow
others to live according to the existing circumstances of the world.” It
was manifest from Bob’s tone that he regarded his mother as little
better than an old fogey.
In January, Nora was to become Mrs. Frederic F. Frew, and be at once
taken away to new worlds, new politics, and new loves and hatreds. Like
a true, honest-hearted girl as she was, she had already become half an
American in spirit. She was an old Union American, and as such was
strong against the South; and in return for her fervour in that matter,
her future husband consented to abstain from any present loud abuse of
things English, and generously allowed her to defend her own country
when it was abused. This was much as coming from an American. Let us
hope that the same privilege may be accorded to her in her future home
in Philadelphia. But in the meantime, during these last weeks of her
girlhood, these cold, cruel weeks of desperate want, she strove
vigorously to do what little might be in her power for the poor of the
country she was leaving. All this want had been occasioned by the
wretched rebels of the South.
This was her theory. And she was right in much of this. Whether the
Americans of the South are wretched or are rebels we will not say here;
but of this there can be no doubt, that they created all the misery
which we then endured.
“But I have no way of making myself a widow,” she said again. “Uncle
Robert would not let me give away the cloak he gave me the other day.”
“He would have to give you another,” said Mrs. Granger.
“Exactly. It is not so easy, after all, to be a widow with two mites!”
Nora Field had no fortune of her own, nor was her uncle in a position to
give her any. He was not a poor man; but like many men who are not poor,
he had hardly a pound of his own in the shape of ready money.
To Nora and to her cousins, and to certain other first cousins of the
same family, had been left, some eighteen months since, by a grand-aunt,
a hundred pounds a-piece, and with this hundred pounds Nora was
providing for herself her wedding trousseau.
A hundred pounds do not go far in such provision, as some young married
women who may read this will perhaps acknowledge; but Mr. Frederic F.
Frew had been told all about it, and he was contented. Miss Field was
fond of nice clothes, and had been tempted more than once to wish that
her great-aunt had left them all two hundred pounds a-piece instead of
one.
“If I were to cast in my wedding veil?” said Nora.
“That will be your husband’s property,” said her aunt.
“Ah, but before I’m married.”
“Then why have it at all?”
“It is ordered, you know.”
“Couldn’t you bedizen yourself with one made of false lace” said her
uncle. “Frew would never find it out, and that would be a most
satisfactory spoiling of the Amalekite.”
“He isn’t an Amalekite, uncle Robert. Or if he is, I’m another.”
“Just so; and therefore false lace will be quite good enough for you.
Molly,”--Mrs. Granger’s name was Molly,--“I’ve promised to let them have
the use of the great boiler in the back kitchen once a-week, and you are
to furnish them with fuel.”
“Oh, dear!” said Mrs. Granger, upon whose active charity this loan of
her own kitchen boiler made a strain that was almost too severe. But she
recovered herself in half a minute. “Very well, my dear; but you won’t
expect any dinner on that day.”
“No; I shall expect no dinner; only some food in the rough. You may boil
that in the copper too if you like it.”
“You know, my dear, you don’t like anything boiled.”
“As for that, Molly, I don’t suppose any of them like it. They’d all
prefer roast mutton.”
“The copper will be your two mites,” whispered the niece.
“Only I have not thrown them in of my own accord,” said Mrs. Granger.
Mr. Frew, who was living in Liverpool, always came over to Plumstock on
Friday evening, and spent Saturday and Sunday with the rector and his
family. For him those Saturdays were happy days, for Frederick F. Frew
was a good lover. He liked to be with Nora, to walk with her, and to
talk with her; he liked to show her that he loved her, and to make
himself gracious and pleasant. I am not so sure that his coming was
equally agreeable to Mr. Granger. Mr. Frew would talk about American
politics, praising the feeling and spirit of his countrymen in the
North; whereas Mr. Granger, when driven into the subject, was
constrained to make a battle for the South. All his prejudices, and what
he would have called his judgment, went with the South, and he was not
ashamed of his opinion; but he disliked arguing with Frederic F. Frew. I
fear it must be confessed that Frederic F. Frew was too strong for him
in such arguments. Why it should be so I cannot say; but an American
argues more closely on politics than does an Englishman. His
convictions are not the truer on that account; very often the less true,
as are the conclusions of a logician, because he trusts to syllogisms
which are often false, instead of to the experience of his life and
daily workings of his mind. But though not more true in his political
convictions than an Englishman, he is more unanswerable, and therefore
Mr. Granger did not care to discuss the subject of the American war with
Frederic F. Frew.
“It riles me,” Frew said, as he sat after dinner in the Plumstock
drawing-room on the Friday evening before Christmas Day, “to hear your
folks talking of our elections. They think the war will come to an end,
and the rebels of the South have their own way, because the Democrats
have carried their ticket.”
“It will have that tendency,” said the parson.
“Not an inch; any more than your carrying the Reform Bill or repealing
the Corn Laws had a tendency to put down the throne. It’s the same sort
of argument. Your two parties were at daggers drawn about the Reform
Bill; but that did not cause you to split on all other matters.”
“But the throne wasn’t in question,” said the parson.
“Nor is the war in question; not in that way. The most popular Democrat
in the States at this moment is M‘Clellan.”
“And they say no one is so anxious to see the war ended.”
“Whoever says so slanders him. If you don’t trust his deeds, look at his
words.”
“I believe in neither,” said the parson.
“Then put him aside as a nobody. But you can’t do that, for he is the
man whom the largest party in the Northern States trusts most
implicitly. The fact is, Sir,” and Frederic F. Frew gave the proper
twang to the last letter of the last word, “you, none of you here,
understand our politics. You can’t realise the blessing of a----”
“Molly, give me some tea,” said the rector in a loud voice. When matters
went as far as this he did not care by what means he stopped the voice
of his future relative.
“All I say is this,” continued Frew, “you will find out your mistake if
you trust to the Democratic elections to put an end to the war, and
bring cotton back to Liverpool.”
“And what is to put an end to the war?” asked Nora.
“Victory and union,” said Frederic F. Frew.
“Exhaustion,” said Charley, from Oxford.
“Compromise,” said Bobby, from Liverpool.
“The Lord Almighty, when He shall have done His work,” said the parson.
“And, in the meantime, Molly, do you keep plenty of fire under the
kitchen boiler.”
That was clearly the business of the present hour, for all in Mr.
Granger’s part of the country;--we may say, indeed, for all on Mr.
Granger’s side of the water. It mattered little, then, in Lancashire,
whether New York might have a Democratic or a Republican governor. The
old cotton had been burned; the present crop could not be garnered; the
future crop--the crop which never would be future, could not get itself
sown.
Mr. Granger might be a slow politician, but he was a practical man,
understanding the things immediately around him; and they all were
aware, Frederic F. Frew with the rest of them, that he was right when he
bade his wife keep the fire well hot beneath the kitchen boiler.
“Isn’t it almost wicked to be married in such a time as this?” It was
much later in the evening when Nora, still troubled in her mind about
her widow’s mite, whispered these words into her lover’s ears. If she
were to give up her lover for twelve months, would not that be a
throwing in of something to the treasury from off her own back and out
of her own mouth? But then this matter of her marriage had been so fully
settled that she feared to think of disturbing it. He would never
consent to such a postponement. And then the offering, to be of avail
for her, must be taken from her own back, not from his; and Nora had an
idea that in the making of such an offering as that suggested, Mr.
Frederic F. Frew would conceive that he had contributed by far the
greater part. Her uncle called him an Amalekite, and she doubted whether
it would be just to spoil an Amalekite after such a fashion as that.
Nevertheless, into his ears she whispered her little proposition.
“Wicked to get married!” said Frederic; “not according to my idea of the
Christian religion.”
“Oh! but you know what I mean,” and she gave his arm a slight caressing
pinch.
At this time her uncle had gone to his own room; her cousins had gone to
their studies, by which I believe they intended to signify the proper
smoking of a pipe of tobacco in the rectory kitchen; and Mrs. Granger,
seated in her easy chair, had gone to her slumbers, dreaming of the
amount of fuel with which that kitchen boiler must be supplied.
“I shall bring a breach of promise against you,” said Frederic, “if you
don’t appear in church with bridal array on Monday, the 12th of January,
and pay the penalty into the war-treasury. That would be a spoiling of
the Amalekite.”
Then he got hold of the fingers which had pinched him.
“Of course I sha’n’t put it off, unless you agree.”
“Of course you won’t.”
“But, dear Fred, don’t you think we ought?”
“No; certainly not. If I thought you were in earnest I would scold you.”
“I am in earnest, quite. You need not look in that way, for you know
very well how truly I love you. You know I want to be your wife above
all things.”
“Do you?”
And then he began to insinuate his arm round her waist; but she got up
and moved away, not as in anger at his caress, but as showing that the
present moment was unfit for it.
“I do,” she said, “above all things. I love you so well that I could
hardly bear to see you go away again without taking me with you. I could
hardly bear it--but I could bear it.”
“Could you? Then I couldn’t. I’m a weaker vessel than you, and your
strength must give way to my weakness.”
“I know I’ve no right to tax you, if you really care about it.”
Frederic F. Frew made no answer to this in words, but pursued her in
her retreat from the sofa on which they had sat.
“Don’t, Fred. I am so much in earnest! I wish I knew what I ought to do
to throw in my two mites.”
“Not throw me over, certainly, and break all the promises you have made
for the last twelve months. You can’t be in earnest. It’s out of the
question, you know.”
“Oh! I am in earnest.”
“I never heard of such a thing in my life. What good would it do? It
wouldn’t bring the cotton in. It wouldn’t feed the poor. It wouldn’t
keep your aunt’s boiler hot.”
“No; that it wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Granger, starting up; “and coals are
such a terrible price.”
Then she went to sleep again and ordered in large supplies in her
dreams.
“But I should have done as much as the widow did. Indeed I should, Fred.
Oh, dear! to have to give you up! But I only meant for a year.”
“As you are so very fond of me----”
“Of course I’m fond of you. Should I let you do like that if I was not?”
At the moment of her speaking he had again got his arm round her waist.
“Then I’m too charitable to allow you to postpone your happiness for a
day. We’ll look at it in that way.”
“You won’t understand me, or rather you do understand me, and pretend
that you don’t, which is very wrong.”
“I always was very wicked.”
“Then why don’t you make yourself better? Do not you too wish to be a
widow? You ought to wish it.”
“I should like to have an opportunity of trying married life first.”