I’m going to bed.” Then she returned again across the room, and
whispered to her lover, “I’ll tell you what, Sir, I’ll marry you on
Monday, the 12th of January, if you’ll take me just as I am now; with a
bonnet on, and a shawl over my dress, exactly as I walked out with you
before dinner. When I made the promise, I never said anything about fine
clothes.”
“You may come in an old red cloak, if you like it.”
“Very well; now mind I’ve got your consent. Good-night, Sir. After all
it will only be half a mite.”
She had turned towards the door, and had her hand upon the lock, but she
came back into the room, close up to him.
“It will not be a quarter of a mite,” she said. “How can it be anything
if I get you!” Then she kissed him, and hurried away out of the room,
before he could again speak to her.
“What, what, what!” said Mrs. Granger, waking up. “So Nora has gone, has
she?”
“Gone; yes, just this minute,” said Frew, who had turned his face to the
fire, so that the tear in his eyes might not be seen. As he took himself
off to his bed, he swore to himself that Nora Field was a trump, and
that he had done well in securing for himself such a wife; but it never
occurred to him that she was in any way in earnest about her wedding
dress. She was a trump because she was so expressive in her love to
himself, and because her eyes shone so brightly when she spoke eagerly
on any matter; but as to her appearing at the altar in a red cloak, or,
as was more probable, in her own customary thick woollen shawl, he never
thought about it. Of course she would be married as other girls are
married.
Nor had Nora thought of it till that moment in which she made the
proposition to her lover. As she had said before, her veil was ordered,
and so was her white silk dress. Her bonnet also had been ordered, with
its bridal wreath, and the other things assorting therewith. A vast hole
was to be made in her grand-aunt’s legacy for the payment of all this
finery; but, as Mrs. Granger had said to her, in so spending it, she
would best please her future husband. He had enough of his own, and
would not care that she should provide herself with articles which he
could afterwards give her, at the expense of that little smartness at
his wedding which an American likes, at any rate, as well as an
Englishman. Nora, with an honesty which some ladies may not admire, had
asked her lover the question in the plainest language.
“You will have to buy my things so much the sooner,” she had said.
“I’d buy them all to-morrow, only you’ll not let me.”
“I should rather think not, Master Fred.”
Then she had gone off with her aunt, and ordered her wedding-clothes.
But now as she prepared for bed, after the conversation which has just
been recorded, she began to think in earnest whether it would not be
well to dispense with white silk and orange-wreaths while so many were
dispensing with--were forced to dispense with--bread and fuel. Could she
bedizen herself with finery from Liverpool, while her uncle was, as she
well knew, refusing himself a set of new shirts which he wanted sorely,
in order that he might send to the fund at Liverpool the money which
they would cost him. He was throwing in his two mites daily, as was her
aunt, who toiled unceasingly at woollen shawls and woollen stockings,
so that she went on knitting even in her sleep. But she, Nora, since the
earnestness of these bad days began, had done little or nothing. Her
needle, indeed, had been very busy, but it had been busy in preparation
for Mr. Frederic F. Frew’s nuptials. Even Bob and Charley worked for the
Relief Committee; but she had done nothing--nothing but given her two
pounds. She had offered four, but her uncle, with a self-restraint never
before or afterwards practised by him, had chucked her back two, saying
that he would not be too hard even upon an Amalekite. As she thought of
the word, she asked herself whether it was not more incumbent on her,
than on any one else, to do something in the way of self-sacrifice. She
was now a Briton, but would shortly be an American. Should it be said of
her that the distress of her own countrywomen--the countrywomen whom she
was leaving--did not wring her heart? It was not without a pang that she
prepared to give up that nationality, which all its owners rank as the
first in the world, and most of those who do not own it, rank, if not as
the first, then as the second. Now it seemed to her as though she were
deserting her own family in its distress, deserting her own ship in the
time of its storm, and she was going over to those from whom this
distress and this storm had come! Was it not needful that she should do
something--that she should satisfy herself that she had been willing to
suffer in the cause?
She would throw in her two mites if she did but know where to find them.
“I could only do it, in truth,” she said to herself, as she rose from
her prayers, “by throwing in him. I have got one very great treasure,
but I have not got anything else that I care about. After all, it isn’t
so easy to be a widow with two mites.”
Then she sat down and thought about it. As to postponing her marriage,
that she knew to be in truth quite out of the question. Even if she
could bring herself to do it, everybody about her would say that she was
mad, and Mr. Frederic F. Frew might not impossibly destroy himself with
one of those pretty revolvers which he sometimes brought out from
Liverpool for her to play with. But was it not practicable for her to
give up her wedding-clothes? There would be considerable difficulty even
in this. As to their having been ordered, that might be overcome by the
sacrifice of some portion of the price. But then her aunt, and even her
uncle, would oppose her; her cousins would cover her with ridicule; in
the latter she might, however, achieve something of her widowhood;--and,
after all, the loss would fall more upon F. F. Frew than upon herself.
She really did not care for herself, in what clothes she was married, so
that she was made his wife. But as regarded him, might it not be
disagreeable to him to stand before the altar with a dowdy creature in
an old gown? And then there was one other consideration. Would it not
seem that she was throwing in her two mites publicly, before the eyes of
all men, as a Pharisee might do it? Would there not be an ostentation in
her widowhood? But as she continued to reflect, she cast this last
thought behind her. It might be so said of her, but if such saying were
untrue, if the offering were made in a widow’s spirit, and not in the
spirit of a Pharisee, would it not be cowardly to regard what men might
say? Such false accusation would make some part of the two mites.
“I’ll go into Liverpool about it on Monday,” she said to herself as she
finally tucked the clothes around her.
Early in the following morning she was up and out of her room, with a
view of seeing her aunt before she came down to breakfast; but the first
person she met was her uncle. He accosted her in one of the passages.
“What, Nora, this is early for you! Are you going to have a morning
lovers’ walk with Frederic Franklin?”
“Frederic Franklin, as you choose to call him, uncle,” said Nora,
“never comes out of his room much before breakfast time. And it’s
raining hard.”
“Such a lover as he is ought not to mind rain.”
“But I should mind it, very much. But, uncle, I want to speak to you,
very seriously. I have been making up my mind about something.”
“There’s nothing wrong; is there, my dear?”
“No; there’s nothing very wrong. It is not exactly about anything being
wrong. I hardly know how to tell you what it is.”
And then she paused, and he could see by the light of the candle in his
hand that she blushed.
“Hadn’t you better speak to your aunt?” said Mr. Granger.
“That’s what I meant to do when I got up,” said Nora; “but as I have met
you, if you don’t mind----”
He assured her that he did not mind, and putting his hand upon her
shoulder caressingly, promised her any assistance in his power.
“I’m not afraid that you will ask anything I ought not to do for you.”
Then she revealed to him her scheme, turning her face away from him as
she spoke. “It will be so horrid,” she said, “to have a great box of
finery coming home when you are all giving up everything for the poor
people. And if you don’t think it would be wrong----”
“It can’t be wrong,” said her uncle. “It may be a question whether it
would be wise.”
“I mean wrong to him. If it was to be any other clergyman, I should be
ashamed of it. But as you are to marry us----”
“I don’t think you need mind about the clergyman.”
“And of course I should tell the Foster girls.”
“The Foster girls?”
“Yes; they are to be my bridesmaids, and I am nearly sure they have not
bought anything new yet. Of course they would think it all very dowdy,
but I don’t care a bit about that. I should just tell them that we had
all made up our minds that we couldn’t afford wedding-clothes. That
would be true; wouldn’t it?”
“But the question is about that wild American?”
“He isn’t a wild American.”
“Well, then, about that tamed American. What will he say?”
“He said I might come in an old cloak.”
“You have told him, then?”
“But I am afraid he thought I was only joking. But uncle, if you’ll help
me, I think I can bring him round.”
“I dare say you can--to anything, just at present.”
“I didn’t at all mean that. Indeed, I’m sure I couldn’t bring him round
to putting off the marriage.”
“No, no, no; not to that; to anything else.”
“I know you are laughing at me, but I don’t much mind being laughed at.
I should save very nearly fifteen pounds, if not quite. Think of that!”
“And you’d give it all to the soup kitchen?”
“I’d give it all to you for the distress.”
Then her uncle spoke to her somewhat gravely.
“You’re a good girl, Nora,--a dear good girl. I think I understand your
thoughts on this matter, and I love you for them. But I doubt whether
there be any necessity for you to make this sacrifice. A marriage should
be a gala festival according to the means of the people married, and the
bridegroom has a right to expect that his bride shall come to him fairly
arrayed, and bright with wedding trappings. I think we can do, my pet,
without robbing you of your little braveries.”
“Oh, as for that, of course you can do without me.”
There was a little soreness in her tone; not because she was feeling
herself to be misunderstood, but because she knew that she could not
explain herself further. She could not tell her uncle that the poor
among the Jews might have been relieved without the contribution of
those two mites, but that the widow would have lost all had she not so
contributed. She had hardly arranged her thoughts as to the double
blessing of charity, and certainly could not express them with reference
to her own case; but she felt the need of giving in this time of trouble
something that she herself valued. She was right when she had said that
it was hard to be a widow. How many among us, when we give, give from
off our own backs, and from out of our own mouths? Who can say that he
has sacrificed a want of his own; that he has abandoned a comfort; that
he has worn a threadbare coat, when coats with their gloss on have been
his customary wear; that he has fared roughly on cold scraps, whereas a
well-spread board has been his usual daily practice? He who has done so
has thrown in his two mites, and for him will charity produce her double
blessing.
Nora thought that it was not well in her uncle to tell her that he could
do without her wedding clothes. Of course he could do without them. But
she soon threw those words behind her, and went back upon the words
which had preceded them. “The bridegroom has a right to expect that the
bride shall come to him fairly arrayed.” After all, that must depend
upon circumstances. Suppose the bride had no means of arraying herself
fairly without getting into debt; what would the bridegroom expect in
that case?
“If he’ll consent, you will?” she said, as she prepared to leave her
uncle.
“You’ll drive him to offer to pay for the thing himself.”
“I dare say he will, and then he’ll drive me to refuse. You may be quite
sure of this, uncle, that whatever clothes I do wear, he will never see
the bill of them;” and then that conference was ended.
“I’ve made that calculation again,” said Bob at breakfast, and I feel
convinced that if an act of parliament could be passed restricting the
consumption of food in Christmas week,--the entire week, mind,--to that
of ordinary weeks, we should get two millions of money, and that those
two millions would tide us over till the Indian cotton comes in. Of
course I mean by food, butchers’ meat, groceries, spirits, and wines.
Only think, that by one measure, which would not entail any real
disappointment on any one, the whole thing would be done.”
“But the act of parliament wouldn’t give us the money,” said his father.
“Of course I don’t really mean an act of parliament; that would be
absurd. But the people might give up their Christmas dinners.”
“A great many will, no doubt. Many of those most in earnest are pretty
nearly giving up their daily dinners. Those who are indifferent will go
on feasting the same as ever. You can’t make a sacrifice obligatory.”
“It would be no sacrifice if you did,” said Nora, still thinking of her
wedding clothes.
“I doubt whether sacrifices ever do any real good,” said Frederick F.
Frew.
“Oh, Fred!” said Nora.
“We have rather high authority as to the benefit of self-denial,” said
the parson.
“A man who can’t sacrifice himself must be selfish,” said Bobby; “and we
are all agreed to hate selfish people.”
“And what about the widow’s mite?” said Mrs. Granger.
“That’s all very well, and you may knock me down with the Bible if you
like, as you might do also if I talked about pre-Adamite formations. I
believe every word of the Bible, but I do not believe that I understand
it all thoroughly.”
“You might understand it better if you studied it more,” said the
parson.
“Very likely. I won’t be so uncourteous as to say the same thing of my
elders. But now about these sacrifices. You wouldn’t wish to keep
people in distress that you might benefit yourself by releasing them?”
“But the people in distress are there,” said Nora.
“They oughtn’t to be there; and as your self-sacrifices, after all, are
very insufficient to prevent distress, there certainly seems to be a
question open whether some other mode should not be tried. Give me the
country in which the humanitarian principle is so exercised that no one
shall be degraded by the receipt of charity. It seems to me that you
like poor people here in England that you may gratify yourselves by
giving them, not as much to eat as they want, but just enough to keep
their skins from falling off their bones. Charity may have its double
blessing, but it may also have its double curse.”
“Not charity, Mr. Frew,” said Mrs. Granger.
“Look at your Lady Bountifuls.”
“Of course it depends on the heart,” continued the lady; “but charity,
if it be charity----”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Frederic F. Frew interrupting her. “In
Philadelphia, which in some matters is the best organised city I
know----”
“I’m going down to the village,” said the parson jumping up. “Who is to
come with me?” and he escaped out of the room before Frew had had an
opportunity of saying a word further about Philadelphia.
“That’s the way with your uncle always,” said he, turning to Nora,
almost in anger. “It certainly is the most conclusive argument I
know--that of running away.”
“Mr. Granger meant it to be conclusive,” said the elder lady.
“But the pity is that it never convinces.”
“Mr. Granger probably had no desire of convincing.”
“Ah! Well, it does not signify,” said Frew. “When a man has a pulpit of
his own, why should he trouble himself to argue in any place where
counter arguments must be met and sustained?”
Nora was almost angry with her lover, whom she regarded as stronger and
more clever than any of her uncle’s family, but tyrannical and sometimes
overbearing in the use of his strength. One by one her aunt and cousin
left the room, and she was left alone with him. He had taken up a
newspaper as a refuge in his wrath, for in truth he did not like the
manner in which his allusions to his own country were generally treated
at the parsonage. There are Englishmen who think that every man
differing with them is bound to bet with them on any point in dispute.
“Then you decline to back your opinion,” such men say when the bet is
refused. The feeling of an American is the same as to those who are
unwilling to argue with him. He considers that every intelligent being
is bound to argue whenever matter of argument is offered to him; nor can
he understand that any subject may be too sacred for argument. Frederic
F. Frew, on the present occasion, was as a dog from whose very mouth a
bone had been taken. He had given one or two loud, open growls, and now
sat with his newspaper, showing his teeth as far as the spirit of the
thing went. And it was in this humour that Nora found herself called
upon to attack him on the question of her own proposed charity. She knew
well that he could bark, even at her, if things went wrong with him.
“But then he never bites,” she said to herself. He had told her that she
might come to her wedding in an old cloak if she pleased, but she had
understood that there was nothing serious in this permission. Now, at
this very moment, it was incumbent on her to open his eyes to the
reality of her intention.
“Fred,” she said, “are you reading that newspaper because you are angry
with me?”
“I am reading the newspaper because I want to know what there is in it.”
“You know all that now, just as well as it you had written it. Put it
down, Sir!” And she put her hand on to the top of the sheet. “If we are
to be married in three weeks’ time, I expect that you will be a little
attentive to me now. You’ll read as many papers as you like after that,
no doubt.”
“Upon my word, Nora, I think your uncle is the most unfair man I ever
met in my life.”
“Perhaps he thinks the same of you, and that will make it equal.”
“He can’t think the same of me. I defy him to think that I’m unfair.
There’s nothing so unfair as hitting a blow, and then running away when
the time comes for receiving a counterblow. It’s what your Lord Chatham
did, and he never ought to have been listened to in parliament again.”
“That’s a long time ago,” said Nora, who probably felt that her lover
should not talk to her about Lord Chatham just three weeks before their
marriage.
“I don’t know that the time makes any difference.”
“Ah! but I have got something else that I want to speak about. And,
Fred, you mustn’t turn up your nose at what we are all doing here,--as
to giving away things I mean.”
“I don’t turn up my nose at it. Haven’t I been begging of every American
in Liverpool till I’m ashamed of myself?”
“I know you have been very good, and now you must be more good
still,--good to me specially, I mean. That isn’t being good. That’s only
being foolish.” What little ceremony had led to this last assertion I
need not perhaps explain. “Fred, I’m an Englishwoman to-day, but in a
month’s time I shall be an American.”
“I hope so, Nora,--heart and soul.”
“Yes; that is what I mean. Whatever is my husband’s country must be
mine. And you know how well I love your country; do you not? I never run
away when you talk to me about Philadelphia,--do I? And you know how I
admire all your institutions,--my institutions, as they will be.”
“Now I know you’re going to ask some very great favour.”
“Yes, I am; and I don’t mean to be refused, Master Fred. I’m to be an
American almost to-morrow, but as yet I am an Englishwoman, and I am
bound to do what little I can before I leave my country. Don’t you think
so?”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, it’s about my wedding-clothes. It does seem stupid talking about
them, I know. But I want you to let me do without them altogether. Now
you’ve got the plain truth. I want to give Uncle Robert the money for
his soup-kitchen, and to be married just as I am now. I do not care one
straw what any other creature in the world may say about it, so long as
I do not displease you.”
“I think it’s nonsense, Nora.”
“Oh, Fred, don’t say so. I have set my heart upon it. I’ll do anything
for you afterwards. Indeed, for the matter of that, I’d do anything on
earth for you, whether you agree or whether you do not. You know that.”
“But, Nora, you wouldn’t wish to make yourself appear foolish? How much
money will you save?”
“Very nearly twenty pounds altogether.”
“Let me give you twenty pounds, so that you may leave it with your uncle
by way of your two mites, as you call it.”
“No, no, certainly not. I might just as well send you the milliner’s
bill, might I not?”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t do that.”
“Ah, but I do. You wouldn’t wish me to be guilty of the pretence of
giving a thing away, and then doing it out of your pocket. I have no
doubt that what you were saying about the evil of promiscuous charity is
quite true.” And then, as she flattered him with this wicked flattery,
she looked up with her bright eyes into his face. “But now, as the
things are, we must be charitable, or the people will die. I feel almost
like a rat leaving a falling house, in going away at this time; and if
you would postpone it----”
“Nora!”
“Then I must be like a rat, but I won’t be a rat in a white silk gown.
Come now, say that you agree. I never asked you for anything before.”
“Everybody will think that you’re mad, and that I’m mad, and that we are
all mad together.”
“Because I go to church in a merino dress? Well; if that makes madness,
let us be mad. Oh, Fred, do not refuse me the first thing I’ve asked
you! What difference will it make? Nobody will know it over in
Philadelphia!”
“Then you are ashamed of it?”
“No, not ashamed. Why should I be ashamed? But one does not wish to have
that sort of thing talked about by everybody.”
“And you are so strong-minded, Nora, that you do not care about finery
yourself?”
“Fred, that’s ill-natured. You know very well what my feelings are. You
are sharp enough to understand them without any further explanation. I
do like finery, quite well enough, as you’ll find out to your cost some
day. And if ever you scold me for extravagance, I shall tell you about
this.”
“It’s downright Quixotism.”
“Quixotism leads to nothing, but this will lead to twenty pounds’ worth
of soup,--and to something else too.”
When he pressed her to explain what that something else was, she
declined to speak further on the subject. She could not tell him that
the satisfaction she desired was that of giving up something,--of having
made a sacrifice,--of having thrown into the treasury her two
mites,--two mites off her own back, as she had said to her aunt, and out
of her own mouth. He had taxed her with indifference to a woman’s usual
delight in gay plumage, and had taxed her most unjustly. “He ought to
know,” she said to herself, “that I should not take all this trouble
about it, unless I did care for it.” But, in truth, he did understand
her motive thoroughly, and half approved them. He approved the spirit of
self-abandonment, but disapproved the false political economy by which,
according to his light, that spirit was accompanied. “After all,” said
he, “the widow would have done better to have invested her small capital
in some useful trade.”
“Oh, Fred;--but never mind now. I have your consent, and now I’ve only
got to talk over my aunt.”
So saying, she left her lover to turn over in his mind the first
principles of that large question of charity.
“The giving of pence and halfpence, of scraps of bread and sups of soup,
is, after all, but the charity of a barbarous, half-civilised race. A
dog would let another dog starve before he gave him a bone, and would
see his starved fellow-dog die without a pang. We have just got beyond
that, only beyond that, as long as we dole out sups of soup. But
charity, when it shall have made itself perfect, will have destroyed
this little trade of giving, which makes the giver vain and the receiver
humble. The charity of the large-hearted is that which opens to every
man the profit of his own industry; to every man and to every woman.”
Then having gratified himself with the enunciation of this fine theory,
he allowed his mind to run away to a smaller subject, and began to think
of his own wedding garments. If Nora insisted on carrying out this
project of hers, in what guise must he appear on the occasion? He also
had ordered new clothes. “It’s just the sort of thing that they’ll make
a story of in Chestnut Street.” Chestnut Street, as we all know, is the
West End of Philadelphia.