They drove a long distance, much of the way through uninteresting regions. Pitt stopped the cab at last, took Betty out, and led her through one and another street and round corner after corner, till at last he turned into an alley again.
'Where are you taking me now, Mr. Pitt?' she asked, in some trepidation. 'Not another Martin's Court?'
'I want you to look well at this place.'
'I see it. What for?' asked Betty, casting her eyes about her. It was a very narrow alley, leading again, as might be seen by the gleam of light at the farther end, into a somewhat more open space—another court.Herethe word open had no application. The sides of the alley were very near together and very high, leaving a strange gap between walls of brick, at least strange when considered with reference to human habitation; all of freedom or expanse there was indicated anywhere being a long and very distant strip of blue sky overhead when the weather was clear. Not even that to-day. The heavy clouds hung low, seeming to rest upon the house-tops, and shutting up all below under their breathless envelopment. Hot, sultry, stifling, the air felt to Betty; well-nigh unendurable; but Pitt seemed to be of intent that she should endure it for a while, and with some difficulty she submitted. Happily the place was cleaner than Martin's Court, and no dead cats nor decaying vegetables poisoned what air there was. But surely somewhat else poisoned it. The doors of dwellings on the one side and on the other stood open, and here and there a woman or two had pressed to the opening with her work, both to get light and to get some freshness, if there were any to be had.
Half way down the alley, Pitt paused before one of these open doors. A woman had placed herself as close to it as she could, having apparently some fine work in hand for which she could not get light enough. Betty could without much difficulty see past her into the space behind. It was a tiny apartment, smaller than anything Miss Frere had ever seen used as a living room; yet a living room it was. She saw that a very minute stove was in it, a small table, and another chair; and on some shelves against the wall there was apparently the inmate's store of what stood to her for china and plate. Two cups Betty thought she could perceive; what else might be there the light did not serve to show. The woman was respectable-looking, because her dress was whole and tolerably clean; but it showed great poverty nevertheless, being frequently mended and patched, and of that indeterminate dull grey to which all colours come with overmuch wear. She seemed to be middle-aged; but as she raised her head to see who had stopped in front of her, Betty was so struck by the expression and tale-telling of it that she forgot the question of age. Age? she might have been a hundred and fifty years old, to judge by the life-weary set of her features. A complexion that told of confinement, eyes dim with over-straining, lines of face that spoke weariness and disgust; and further, what to Betty's surprise seemed a hostile look of defiance. The face cleared, however, as she saw who stood before her; a great softening and a little light came into it; she rose and dropped a curtsey, which was evidently not a mere matter of form.
'How do you do, Mrs. Mills?' said Pitt, and his voice was very gentle as he spoke, and half to Betty's indignation he lifted his hat also. 'This is rather a warm day!'
'Well, it be, sir,' said the woman, resuming her seat. 'It nigh stifles the heart in one, it do!'
'I am afraid you cannot see to work very well, the clouds are so thick?'
'I thank you, sir; the clouds is allays thick, these days. Had you business with me, Mr. Dallas?'
'Not to-day, Mrs. Mills. I am showing this lady a bit of London.'
'And would the lady be your wife, sir?'
'Oh no,' said Pitt, laughing a little; 'you honour me too much. This is an American lady, from over the sea ever so far; and I want her to know what sort of a place London is.'
'It's a bitter poor place for the likes of us,' said the woman. 'You should show her where the grand folk lives, that built these houses for the poor to be stowed in.'
'Yes, I have showed her some of those, and now I have brought her to see your part of the world.'
'It's not to call a part o' the world!' said the woman. 'Do you call this a part of the world, Mr. Dallas? I mind when I lived where trees grow, and there was primroses in the grass; them's happier that hasn't known it. If you axed me sometimes, I would tell you that this is hell! Yet it ain't so bad as most. It's what folk call very decent. Oh yes! it's decent, it is, no doubt. I'll be carried out of it some day, and bless the day!'
'How is your boy?'
'He's fairly, sir, thank you.'
'No better?' said Pitt gently.
'He won't never be no better,' the woman said, with a doggedness which Betty guessed was assumed to hide the tenderer feeling beneath. 'He's done for. There ain't nothin' but ill luck comes upon folks as lives in such a hole, and couldn't other!'
'I'll come and see you about Tim,' said Pitt. 'Keep up a good heart in the mean while. Good-bye! I'll see you soon.'
He went no farther in that alley. He turned and brought Betty out, called another cab, and ordered the man to drive to Kensington Gardens. Till they arrived there he would not talk; bade Betty wait with her questions. The way was long enough to let her think them all over several times. At last the cab stopped, Pitt handed her out, and led her into the Gardens. Here was a change. Trees of noble age and growth shadowed the ground, greensward stretched away in peaceful smoothness, the dust and the noise of the great city seemed to be escaped. It was fresh and shady, and even sweet. They could hear each other speak, without unduly raising their voices. Pitt went on till he found a place that suited him, and they sat down, in a refreshing greenness and quiet.
'Now,' said Betty, 'I suppose I may ask. What did you take me to that last place for?'
'That will appear in due time. What did you think of it?'
'It is difficult to tell you what I think of it. Is much of London like that?'
'Much of it is far worse.'
'Well, there is nothing like that in New York or Washington.'
'Do not be too sure. There is something like that wherever rich men are congregated in large numbers to live.'
'Rich men!' cried Betty.
'Yes. So far as I know, this sort of thing is to be found nowhere else, but where rich men dwell. It is the growth of their desire for large incomes. That woman we visited—what did you think of her?'
'She impressed me very much, and oddly. I could not quite read her look. She seemed to be in a manner hostile, not to you, but I thought to all the world beside; a disagreeable look!'
'She is a lace-mender'—
'A lace-mender!' broke in Betty. 'Down in that den of darkness?'
'And she pays— Did you see where she lived?'
'I saw a room not bigger than a good-sized box; is that all?'
'There is an inner room—or box—without windows, where she and her child sleep. For that lodging that woman pays half-a-crown a week—that is, about five shillings American money—to one of the richest noblemen in England.'
'A nobleman!' cried Betty.
'The Duke of Trefoil.'
'A nobleman!' Betty repeated. 'A duke, and a lace-mender, and five shillings a week!'
'The glass roofs of his hothouses and greenhouses would cover an acre of ground. His wife sits in a boudoir opening into a conservatory where it is summer all the year round; roses bloom and violets, and geraniums wreathe the walls, and palm trees are grouped around fountains. She eats ripe strawberries every day in the year if she chooses, and might, like Judah, "wash her feet in the blood of the grape," the fruit is so plenty, the while my lace-mender strains her eyes to get half-a-crown a week for his Grace. All that alley and its poor crowded lodgings belong to him.'
'I don't wonder she looks bitter, poor thing. Do you suppose she knows how her landlord lives?'
'I doubt if she does. She perhaps never heard of the house and gardens at Trefoil Park. But in her youth she was a servant in a good house in the country,—not so great a house,—and she knows something of the difference between the way the rich live and the poor. She is very bitter over the contrast, and I cannot much blame her!'
'Yet it is not just.'
'Which?' said Pitt, smiling.
'That feeling of the poor towards the rich.'
'Is it not? It has some justice. I was coming home one night last winter, late, and found my way obstructed by the crowd of arrivals to an entertainment given at a certain great house. The house stood a little back from the street, and carpeting was laid down for the softly shod feet to pass over. Of course there were gathered a small crowd of lookers-on, pressing as near as they were allowed to come; trying to catch, if they might, a gleam or a glitter from the glories they could not approach. I don't know if the contrast struck them, but it struck me; the contrast between those satin slippers treading the carpet, and the bare feet standing on the muddy stones; feet that had never known the touch of a carpet anywhere, nor of anything else either clean or soft.'
'But those contrasts must be, Mr. Dallas.'
'Must they? Is not something wrong, do you think, when the Duke of Trefoil eats strawberries all the year long, and my lace-mender, in the height of the season, perhaps never sees one?—when the duchess sits in her bower of beauty, with the violets under her feet and the palms over her head, and the poor in her husband's houses cannot get a flower to remind them that all the world is not like a London alley? Does not something within you say that the scales of the social balance might be a little more evenly adjusted?'
'How are you going to do it?'
'If you do not feel that,' Pitt went on, 'I am afraid that some of the lower classes do. I said I did not know whether the contrast struck the people that night, but I do know it did. I heard words and saw looks that betrayed it. And when the day comes that the poor will know more and begin to think about these things, I am afraid there will be trouble.'
'But what can you do?'
'That is exactly what I was going to ask you,' said Pitt, changing his tone and with a genial smile. 'Take my lace-mender for an example. These things must be handled in detail, if at all. She is bitter in the feeling of wrong done her somewhere, bitter to hatred; what can, not you, but I, do for her, to help her out of it?'
'I should say that is the Duke of Trefoil's business.'
'I leave his business to him. What is mine?'
'You have done something already, I can see, for she makes an exception of you.'
'I have not done much,' said Pitt gravely. 'What do you think it was? Her boy was ill; he had met with an accident, and was a thin, pale, wasted-looking child when I first saw them. I took him a rosebush, in full flower.'
'Were they so glad of it?'
Pitt was silent a minute.
'It was about as much as I could stand, to see it. Then I got the child some things that he could eat. He is well now; as well as he ever will be.'
'I did not see the rosebush.'
'Ah, it did not live. Nothing could there.'
'Well, Mr. Pitt, haven't you done your part, as far as this case is concerned?'
'Have I? Wouldyoustop with that?'
Betty sat very quiet, but internally fidgeted. What did Pitt ask her these questions for? Why had he taken her on this expedition? She wished she had not gone; she wished she had not come to England; and yet she would not be anywhere else at this moment but where she was, for any possible consideration. She wished Pitt would be different, and not fill his head with lace-menders and London alleys; and yet—even so—things might be worse. Suppose Pitt had devoted his energies to gambling, and absorbed all his interests in hunters and racers. Betty had known that sort of thing; and now summarily concluded that men must make themselves troublesome in one way or another. But this particular turn this man had taken did seem to set him so far off from her!
'What would you do, Mr. Pitt?' she said, with a somewhat weary cadence in her voice which he could not interpret.
'Look at it, and tell me, from your standpoint.'
'If you took that woman out of those lodgings, there would come somebody else into them, and you might begin the whole thing over again. In that way the Duke of Trefoil might give you enough to do for a lifetime.'
'Well?—the conclusion?'
'How can you ask? Some things are self-evident.'
'What do you think that means: "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none"?'
'I don't think it meansthat,' said Betty. 'That you are to give away all you have, till you haven't left yourself an overcoat.'
'Are you sure? Not if somebody else needed it more? That is the question. We come back to the—"Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you." "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." How, do you think, can I best do that in the case of Mrs. Mills and her boy? One thing at a time. Never mind what the Duke of Trefoil may complicate in the future.'
'Raise the dead!' Betty echoed.
'Ay,' he said. 'There are worse deaths than that of the body.'
Betty paused, but Pitt waited.
'If they are to be kept alive in any sense,' she said at last, 'they must be taken out of that hole where they are now.'
'And, as you truly suggest that the number of persons wanting such relief is unlimited, the first thing to be done is to build proper houses for the poor. That is what I have set about.'
'Youhave!' cried Betty.
'I cannot do much. True, but that is nothing whatever to the question. I have begun to put up a few houses, which shall be comfortable, easy to keep clean, and rentable for what the industrious poor can afford to pay. That will give sufficient interest for the capital expended, and even allow me, without further outlay, to go on extending my accommodations. Mrs. Mills will move into the first of my new houses, I hope, next month.'
'What have you taken me all this day's expedition for, Mr. Dallas?'Betty asked suddenly. The pain of the thing was pressing her.
'You remember, you asked a question of me; to wit, whether I were minded still as I seemed to be minded last year. I have showed you a fraction of the reasons why I should not have changed, and you have approved them.'
Betty found nothing to answer; it was difficult not to approve them, and yet she hated the conclusion. The conversation was not resumed immediately. All the quiet beauty of the scene around them spoke, to Betty, for a life of ease and luxury; it seemed to say, Keep at a distance from disagreeable things; if want and squalor are in the world, you belong to a different part of the world; let London be London, you stay in Kensington Gardens. Take the good of your advantages, and enjoy them. That this was the noblest view or the justest conclusion, she would not say to herself; but it was the view in which she had been brought up; and the leopard's spots, we know, are persistent. Pitt had been brought up so too; what a tangent he had taken from the even round of society in general! Not to be brought back?
'I see,' she began after a while,—'from my window at your house I see at some distance what looks like a large and fine mansion, amongst trees and pleasure grounds; whose is it?'
'That is Holland House.'
'Holland House! It looks very handsome outside.'
'It is one of the finest houses about London. And it is better inside than outside.'
'You have been inside?'
'A number of times. I am sorry I cannot take you in; but it is not open to strangers.'
'How did you get in?'
'With my uncle.'
'Holland House! I have heard that the society there is very fine.'
'It has the best society of any house in London; and that is the same,I suppose, as to say any house in the world.'
'Do you happen to know that by experience?'
'Yes; its positive, not its relative character,' he said, smiling.
'But you— However, I suppose you pass for an Englishman.'
'Yes, but I have seen Americans there. My late uncle, Mr. Strahan, was a very uncommon man, full of rare knowledge, and very highly regarded by those who knew him. Lord Holland was a great friend of his, and he was always welcomed at Holland House. I slipped in under his wing.'
'Then since Mr. Strahan's death you do not go there any more?'
'Yes, I have been there. Lord Holland is one of the most kindly men in the kingdom, and he has not withdrawn the kindness he showed me as Mr. Strahan's nephew and favourite.'
'If you gothere, you must go into a great deal of London society,' said Betty, wondering. 'I am afraid you have been staying at home for our sakes. Mrs. Dallas would not like that.'
'No,' said Pitt, 'the case is not such. Once in a while I have gone toHolland House, but I have not time for general society.'
'Not time!'
'No,' said Pitt, smiling at her expression.
'Not time for society! That is—isit possibly—because of Martin's court, and the Duke of Trefoil's alley, and the like?'
'What do you think?' said Pitt, his eyes sparkling with amusement. 'There is society and society, you know. Can you drink from two opposite sides of a cup at the same time?'
'But one hasdutiesto Society!' objected Betty, bewildered somewhat by the argument and the smile together.
'So I think, and I am trying to meet them. Do not mistake me. I do not mean to undervaluerealsociety; I will take gladly all I can that will give me mental stimulus and refreshment. But the round of fashion is somewhat more vapid than ever, I grant you, after a visit to my lace-mender. Those two things cannot go on together. Shall we walk home? It is not very far from here. I am afraid I have tired you!'
Betty denied that; but she walked home very silently.
This interruption of the pleasure sights was alone in its kind. Pitt let the subject that day so thoroughly handled thenceforth drift out of sight; he referred to it no more; and continually, day after day, he gave himself up to the care of providing new entertainment for his guests. Drives into the country, parties on the river, visits to grand places, to picture galleries, to curiosities, to the British Museum, alternated with and succeeded each other. Pitt seemed untireable. Mrs. Dallas was in a high state of contentment, trusting that all things were going well for her hopes concerning her son and Miss Frere; but Betty herself was going through an experience of infinite pain. It was impossible not to enjoy at the moment these enjoyable things; the life at Pitt's old Kensington house was like a fairy tale for strangeness and prettiness; but Betty was living now under a clear impression of the fact that itwasa fairy tale, and that she must presently walk out of it. And gradually the desire grew uppermost with her to walk out of it soon, while she could do so with grace and of her own accord. The pretty house which she had so delighted in began to oppress her. She would presently be away, and have no more to do with it; and somebody else would be brought there to reign and enjoy as mistress. It tormented Betty, that thought. Somebody else would come there, would have a right there; would be cherished and cared for and honoured, and have the privilege of standing by Pitt in his works and plans, helping him, and sympathizing with him. A floating image of a fair, stately woman, with speaking grey eyes and a wonderful pure face, would come before her when she thought of these things, though she told herself it was little likely thatshewould be the one; yet Betty could think of no other, and almost felt superstitiously sure at last that Esther it would be, in spite of everything. Esther it would be, she was almost sure, if she, Betty, spoke one little word of information; would she have done well to speak it? Now it was too late.
'I think, Mrs. Dallas,' she began, one day, 'I cannot stay much longer with you. Probably you and Mr. Dallas may make up your minds to remain here all the winter; I should think you would. If I can hear of somebody going home that I know, I will go, while the season is good.'
Mrs. Dallas roused up, and objected vehemently. Betty persisted.
'I am in a false position here,' she said. 'It was all very well at first; things came about naturally, and it could not be helped; and I am sure I have enjoyed it exceedingly; but, dear Mrs. Dallas, I cannot stay here always, you know. I am ashamed to remember how long it is already.'
'My dear, I am sure my son is delighted to have you,' said Mrs. Dallas, looking at her.
'He is not delighted at all,' said Betty, half laughing. Poor girl, she was not in the least light-hearted; bitterness can laugh as easily as pleasure sometimes. 'He is a very kind friend, and a perfect host; but there is no reason why he should care about my coming or going, you know.'
'Everybody must care to have you come, and be sorry to have you go,Betty.'
'"Everybody" is a general term, ma'am, and always leaves room for important exceptions. I shall have his respect, and my own too, better if I go now.'
'My dear, I cannot have you!' said Mrs. Dallas uneasily, but afraid to ask a question. 'No, we shall not stay here for the winter. Wait a little longer, Betty, and we will take you down into the country, and make the tour of England. It is more beautiful than you can conceive. Wait till we have seen Westminster Abbey; and then we will go. You can grant me that, my dear?'
Betty did not know how to refuse.
'Has Pitt got over his extravagancies of last year?' the older lady ventured, after a pause.
'I do not think he gets over anything,' said Betty, with inward bitter assurance.
The day came that had been fixed for a visit to the Abbey. Pitt had not been eager to take them there; had rather put it off. He told his mother that one visit to Westminster Abbey was nothing; that two visits were nothing; that a long time and many hours spent in study and enjoyment of the place were necessary before one could so much as begin to know Westminster Abbey. But Mrs. Dallas had declared she did not want toknowit; she only desired to see it and see the monuments; and what could be answered to that? So the visit was agreed upon and fixed for this day.
'You did not want to bring us here, because you thought we would not appreciate it?' Betty said to Pitt, in an aside, as they were about entering.
'Nobody can appreciate it who takes it lightly,' he answered.
That day remained fixed in Betty's memory for ever, with all its details, sharp cut in. The moment they entered the building, the greatness and beauty of the place seemed to overshadow her, and roused up all the higher part of her nature. With that, it stirred into keen life the feeling of being shut out from the life she wanted. The Abbey, with the rest of all the wonders and antiquities and rich beauties of the city, belonged to the accessories of Pitt's position and home; belonged so in a sort to him; and the sense of the beauty which she could not but feel met in the girl's heart with the pain which she could not bid away, and the one heightened the other, after the strange fashion that pain and pleasure have of sharpening each other's powers. Betty took in with an intensity of perception all the riches of the Abbey that she was capable of understanding; and her capacity in that way was far beyond the common. She never in her life had been quicker of appreciation. The taste of beauty and the delight of curiosity were at times exquisite; never failing to meet and heighten that underlying pain which had so moved her whole nature to sentient life. For the commonplace and the indifferent she had to-day no toleration at all; they were regarded with impatient loathing. Accordingly, the progress round the Poets' corner, which Mrs. Dallas would make slowly, was to Betty almost intolerable. She must go as the rest went, but she went making silent protest.
'You do not care for the poets, Miss Betty,' remarked Mr. Dallas jocosely.
'I see here very few names of poets that I care about,' she responded. 'To judge by the rest, I should say it was about as much of an honour to be left out of Westminster Abbey as to be put in.'
'Fie, fie, Miss Betty! what heresy is here! Westminster Abbey! why, it is the one last desire of ambition.'
'I am beginning to think ambition is rather an empty thing, sir.'
'See, here is Butler. Don't you readHudibras?'
'No, sir.'
'You should. It's very clever. Then here is Spenser, next to him. You are devoted toThe Faerie Queene, of course!'
'I never read it.'
'You might do worse,' remarked Pitt, who was just before them with his mother.
'Does anybody read Spenser now?'
'It is a poor sign for the world if they do not.'
'One cannot read everything,' said Betty. 'I read Shakspeare; I am glad to seehismonument.'
It was a relief to pass on at last from the crowd of literary folk into the nobler parts of the Abbey; and yet, as the impression of its wonderful beauty and solemn majesty first fully came upon Miss Frere, it was oddly accompanied by an instant jealous pang: 'He will bring somebody else here some day, who will come as often as she likes, be at home here, and enjoy the Abbey as if it were her own property.' And Betty wished she had never come; and in the same inconsistent breath was exceedingly rejoiced that she had come. Yes, she would take all of the beauty in that she could; take it and keep it in her memory for ever; taste it while she had it, and live on the after-taste for the rest of her life. But the taste of it was at the moment sharp with pain.
Pitt had procured from one of the canons, who had been his uncle's friend, an order which permitted them to go their own way and take their own time, unaccompanied and untrammelled by vergers. No showman was necessary in Pitt's presence; he could tell them all, and much more than they cared about knowing. Mrs. Dallas, indeed, cared for little beyond the tokens of England's antiquity and glory; her interest was mostly expended on the royal tombs and those connected with them. For was not Pitt now, virtually, one of the favoured nation, by habit and connection as well as in blood? and did not England's greatness send down a reflected light on all her sons?—only poetical justice, as it was earlier sons who had made the greatness. But of that Mrs. Dallas did not think. 'England' was an abstract idea of majesty and power, embodied in a land and a government; and Westminster Abbey was in a sort the record and visible token of the same, and testimony of it, in the face of all the world. So Mrs. Dallas enjoyed Westminster Abbey, and her heart swelled in contemplation of its glories; but its real glories she saw not. Lights and shadows, colouring, forms of beauty, associations of tenderness, majesties of age, had all no existence for her. The one feeling in exercise, which took its nourishment from all she looked upon, was pride. But pride is a dull kind of gratification; and the good lady's progress through the Abbey could not be called satisfactory to one who knew the place.
Mr. Dallas was neither proud nor pleased. He was, however, an Englishman, and Westminster Abbey was intensely English, and to go through and look at it was the right thing to do; so he went; doing his duty.
And beside these two went another bit of humanity, all alive and quivering, intensely sensitive to every impression, which must needs be more or less an impression of suffering. Her folly, she told herself, it was which had so stripped her of her natural defences, and exposed her to suffering. The one only comfort left was, that nobody knew it; and nobody should know it. The practice of society had given her command over herself, and she exerted it that day; all she had.
They were making the tour of St. Edmund's chapel.
'Look here, Betty,' cried Mrs. Dallas, who was still a little apart from the others with her son,—'come here and see this! Look here—the tomb of two little children of Edward III.!'
'After going over some of the other records, ma'am, I can but call them happy to have died little.'
'But isn't it interesting? Pitt tells me there weresixof the little princess's brothers and sisters that stood here at her funeral, the Black Prince among them. Just think of it! Around this tomb!'
'Why should it be more interesting to us than any similar gathering of common people? There is many a spot in country graveyards at home where more than six members of a family have stood together.'
'But, my dear, these were Edward the Third's children.'
'Yes. He was something when he was alive; but what is he to us now? And why should we care,'—Betty hastily went on to generalities, seeing the astonishment in Mrs. Dallas's face,—'why should we be more interested in the monuments and deaths of the great, than in those of lesser people? In death and bereavement all come down to a common humanity.'
'Not acommonhumanity!' said Mrs. Dallas, rather staring at Betty.
'All are alike on the other side, mother,' observed Pitt. 'The king's daughter and the little village girl stand on the same footing, when once they have left this state of things. There is only one nobility that can make any difference then.'
'"One nobility!"' repeated Mrs. Dallas, bewildered.
'You remember the words,—"Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same ismy mother,and my sister,and brother." The village girl will often turn out to be the daughter of the King then.'
'But you do not think, do you,' said Betty, 'thatallthat one has gained in this life will be lost, or go for nothing? Education—knowledge—refinement,—all that makes one man or woman really greater and nobler and richer than another,—willthatbe all as though it had not been?—no advantage?'
'What we know of the human mind forbids us to think so. Also, the analogy of God's dealings forbids it. The child and the fully developed philosopher do not enter the other world on an intellectual level; we cannot suppose it.But, all the gain on the one side will go to heighten his glory or to deepen his shame, according to the fact of his having been a servant of God or no.'
'I don't know where you are getting to!' said Mrs. Dallas a little vexedly.
'If we are to proceed at this rate,' suggested her husband, 'we may as well get leave to spend all the working days of a month in the Abbey. It will take us all that.'
'After all,' said Betty as they moved, 'you did not explain why we should be so much more interested in this tomb of Edward the Third's children than in that of any farmer's family?'
'My dear,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'I am astonished to hear you speak so. Are notyouinterested?'
'Yes ma'am; but why should I be? For really, often the farmer's family is the more respectable of the two.'
'Are you such a republican, Betty? I did not know it.'
'There is a reason, though,' said Pitt, repressing a smile, 'which even a republican may allow. The contrast here is greater. The glory and pomp of earthly power is here brought into sharp contact with the nothingness of it, So much yesterday,—so little to-day. Those uplifted hands in prayer are exceedingly touching, when one remembers that all their mightiness has come down to that!'
'It is not every fool that thinks so,' remarked Mr. Dallas ambiguously.
'No,' said Betty, with a sudden impulse of championship; 'fools do not think at all.'
'Here is a tablet to Lady Knollys,' said Pitt, moving on. 'She was a niece of Anne Boleyn, and waited upon her to the scaffold.'
'But that is only a tablet,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'Who is this, Pitt?' She was standing before an effigy that bore a coronet; Betty beside her.
'That is the Duchess of Suffolk; the mother of Lady Jane Grey.'
'I see,' said Betty, 'that the Abbey is the complement of the Tower. Her daughter and her husband lie there, under the pavement of the chapel. How comes she to be here?'
'Her funeral was after Elizabeth came to the throne. But she had been in miserable circumstances, poor woman, before that.'
'I wonder she lived at all,' said Betty, 'after losing husband and daughter in that fashion! But people do bear a great deal and live through it!'
Which words had an application quite private to the speaker, and which no one suspected. And while the party were studying the details of the tomb of John of Eltham, Pitt explaining and the others trying to take it in, Betty stood by with passionate thoughts. 'Theydo not care,' she said to herself; 'but he will bring some one else here, some day, who will care; and they will come and come to the Abbey, and delight themselves in its glories, and in each other, alternately. What do I here? and what is the English Abbey to me?'
She showed no want of interest, however, and no wandering of thought; on the contrary, an intelligent, thoughtful, gracious attention to everything she saw and everything she heard. Her words, she knew, though she could not help it, were now and then flavoured with bitterness.
In the next chapel Mrs. Dallas heard with much sympathy and wonder the account of Catharine of Valois and her remains.
'I don't think she ought to lie in the vault of Sir George Villiers, if hewasfather of the Duke of Buckingham,' she exclaimed.
'That Duke of Buckingham had more honour than belonged to him, in life and in death,' said Betty.
'It does not make much difference now,' said Pitt.
They went on to the chapel of Henry VII. And here, and on the way thither, Betty almost for a while forgot her troubles in the exceeding majesty and beauty of the place. The power of very exquisite beauty, which always and in all forms testifies to another world where its source and its realization are, came down upon her spirit, and hushed it as with a breath of balm; and the littleness of this life, of any one individual's life, in the midst of the efforts here made to deny it, stood forth in most impressive iteration. Betty was awed and quieted for a minute. Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were moved differently.
'And this was Henry the Seventh's work!' exclaimed Mr. Dallas, making an effort to see all round him at once. 'Well, I didn't know they could build so well in those old times. Let us see; when was he buried?—1509? That is pretty long ago. This is a beautiful building! And that is his tomb, eh? I should say this is better than anything he had in his lifetime. Being king of England was not just so easy to him as his son found it. Crowns are heavy in the best of times; and his was specially.'
'It is a strange ambition, though, to be glorified so in one's funeral monument,' said Betty.
'A very common ambition,' remarked Pitt. 'But this chapel was to be much more than a monument. It was a chantry. The king ordered ten thousand masses to be said here for the repose of his soul; and intended that the monkish establishment should remain for ever to attend to them. Here around his tomb you see the king's particular patron saints,—nine of them,—to whom he looked for help in time of need; all over the chapel you will find the four national saints, if I may so call them, of the kingdom; and at the end there is the Virgin Mary, with Peter and Paul, and other saints and angels innumerable. The whole chapel is like those touching folded hands of stone we were speaking of,—a continual appeal, through human and angelic mediation, fixed in stone; though at the beginning also living in the chants of the monks.'
'Well, I am sure that is being religious!' said Mrs. Dallas. 'If such a place as this does not honour religion, I don't know what does.'
'Mother, Christ said, "Iam the door."'
'Yes, my dear, but is not all this an appeal to Him?'
'Mother, he said, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." What have saints and angels to do with it? "He thatbelieth."'
'Surely the builder of all this must have believed,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'or he would never have spent so much money and taken so much pains about it.'
'If he had believed on Christ, mother, he would have known he had no need. Think of those ten thousand masses to be said for him, that his sins might be forgiven and his soul received into heaven; you see how miserably uncertain the poor king felt of ever getting there.'
'Well,' said Mrs. Dallas, 'every one must feel uncertain! He cannotknow—how can he know?'
'How can he live and not know?' Pitt answered in a lowered tone. 'Uncertainty on that point would be enough to drive a thinking man mad. Henry the Seventh, you see, could not bear it, and so he arranged to have ten thousand masses said for him, and filled his chapel with intercessory saints.'
'But I do not see how any one is to have certainty, Mr. Pitt,' Betty said. 'One cannot see into the future.'
'It is only necessary to believe, in the present.'
'Believe what?'
'The word of the King, who promised,—"Whosoever liveth and believeth in meshall never die." The love that came down here to die for us will never let slip any poor creature that trusts it.'
'Yes; but suppose one cannot trustso?' objected Betty.
'Then there is probably a reason for it. Disobedience, even partial disobedience, cannot perfectly trust.'
'How can sinful creatures do anything perfectly, Pitt?' his mother asked, almost angrily.
'Mamma,' said he gravely, 'you trustmeso.'
Mrs. Dallas made no reply to that; and they moved on, surveying the chapels. The good lady bowed her head in solemn approbation when shown the place whence the bodies of Cromwell and others of his family and friends were cast out after the Restoration. 'They had no business to be there,' she assented.
'Where were they removed to?' Betty asked.
'Some of them were hanged, as they deserved,' said Mr. Dallas.
'Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, at Tyburn,' Pitt added. 'The others were buried, not honourably, not far off. One of Cromwell's daughters, who was a Churchwoman and also a royalist, they allowed to remain in the Abbey. She lies in one of the other chapels, over yonder.'
'Noble revenge!' said Betty quietly.
'Very proper,' said Mrs. Dallas. 'It seems hard, but it is proper. People who rise up against their kings should be treated with dishonour, both before and after death.'
'How about the kings who rise up against their people?' asked Betty.
She could not help the question, but she was glad that Mrs. Dallas did not seem to hear it. They passed on, from one chapel to another, going more rapidly; came to a pause again at the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots.
'I am beginning to think,' said Betty, 'that the history of England is one of the sorrowfullest things in the world. I wonder if all other countries are as bad? Think of this woman's troublesome, miserable life; and now, after Fotheringay, the honour in which she lies in this temple is such a mockery! I suppose Elizabeth is here somewhere?'
'Over there, in the other aisle. And below, the two Tudor queens, Elizabeth and Mary, lie in a vault together, alone. Personal rivalries, personal jealousies, political hatred and religious enmity,—they are all composed now; and all interests fade away before the one supreme, eternal; they are gone where "the honour that cometh from God" is the only honour left. Well for them if they have that! Here is the Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. She was of kin or somehow connected, it is said, with thirty royal personages; the grand-daughter of Catharine of Valois, grandmother of Henry VIII., Elizabeth's great-grandmother. She was, by all accounts, a noble old lady. Now all that is left is these pitiful folded hands.'
Mrs. Dallas passed on, and they went from chapel to chapel, and from tomb to tomb, with unflagging though transient interest. But for Betty, by and by the brain and sense seemed to be oppressed and confused by the multitude of objects, of names and stories and sympathies. The novelty wore off, and a feeling of some weariness supervened; and therewith the fortunes and fates of the great past fell more and more into the background, and her own one little life-venture absorbed her attention. Even when going round the chapel of Edward the Confessor and viewing the grand old tombs of the magnates of history who are remembered there, Betty was mostly concerned with her own history; and a dull bitter feeling filled her. It was safe to indulge it, for everybody else had enough beside to think of, and she grew silent.
'You are tired,' said Pitt kindly, as they were leaving the Confessor's chapel, and his mother and father had gone on before.
'Of course,' said Betty. 'There is no going through the ages without some fatigue—for a common mortal.'
'We are doing too much,' said Pitt. 'The Abbey cannot be properly seen in this way. One should take part at a time, and come many times.'
'No chance for me,' said Betty. 'This is my first and my last.' She looked back as she spoke towards the tombs they were leaving, and wished, almost, that she were as still as they. She felt her eyes suffusing, and hastily went on. 'I shall be going home, I expect, in a few days—as soon as I find an opportunity. I have stayed too long now, but Mrs. Dallas has over-persuaded me. I am glad I have had this, at any rate.'
She was capable of no more words just then, and was about to move forward, when Pitt by a motion of his hand detained her.
'One moment,' said he. 'Do you say that you are thinking of returning to America?'
'Yes. It is time.'
'I would beg you, if I might, to reconsider that,' he said. 'If you could stay with my mother a while longer, it would be, I am sure, a great boon to her; forIam going away. I must take a run over to America—I have business in New York—must be gone several weeks at least. Cannot you stay and go down into Westmoreland with her?'
It seemed to Betty that she became suddenly cold, all over. Yet she was sure there was no outward manifestation in face or manner of what she felt. She answered mechanically, indifferently, that she 'would see'; and they went forward to rejoin their companions. But of the rest of the objects that were shown them in the Abbey she simply saw nothing. The image of Esther was before her; in New York, found by Pitt; in Westminster Abbey, brought thither by him, and lingering where her own feet now lingered; in the house at Kensington, going up the beautiful staircase, and standing before the cabinet of coins in the library. Above all, found by Pitt in New York. For he would find her; perhaps even now he had news of her;shewould be coming with hope and gladness and honour over the sea, while she herself would be returning, crossing the same sea the other way,—in every sense the other way,—in mortification and despair and dishonour. Not outward dishonour, and yet the worst possible; dishonour in her own eyes. What a fool she had been, to meddle in this business at all! She had done it with her eyes open, trusting that she could exercise her power upon anybody and yet remain in her own power. Just the reverse of that had come to pass, and she had nobody to blame but herself. If Pitt was leaving his father and mother in England, to go to New York, it could be on only one business. The game, for her, was up.
There were weeks of torture before her, she knew,—slow torture,—during which she must show as little of what she felt as an Indian at the stake. She must be with Mrs. Dallas, and hear the whole matter talked of, and from point to point as the history went on; and must help talk of it. For if Pitt was going to New York now, Betty was not; that was a fixed thing. She must stay for the present where she was.
She was a little pale and tired, they said on the drive home. And that was all anybody ever knew.
Pitt sailed for America in the early days of Autumn; and September had not yet run out when he arrived in New York. His first researches, as on former occasions, amounted to nothing, and several days passed with no fruit of his trouble. The intelligence received at the post office gave him no more than he had been assured of already. They believed a letter did come occasionally to a certain Colonel Gainsborough, but the occasions were not often; the letters were not called for regularly; and the address, further than that it was 'New York,' was not known. Pitt was thrown upon his own resources, which narrowed down pretty much to observation and conjecture. To exercise the former, he perambulated the streets of the city; his brain was busy with the latter constantly, whenever its energies were not devoted to seeing and hearing.
He roved the streets in fair weather and foul, and at all hours. He watched keenly all the figures he passed, at least until assured they had no interest for him; he peered into shops; he reviewed equipages. In those days it was possible to do this to some purpose, if a man were looking for somebody; the streets were not as now filled with a confused and confusing crowd going all ways at once; and no policeman was needed, even for the most timid, to cross Broadway where it was busiest. What a chance there was then for the gay part of the world to show itself! A lady would heave in sight, like a ship in the distance, and come bearing down with colours flying; one all alone, or two together, having the whole sidewalk for themselves. Slowly they would come and pass, in the full leisure of display, and disappear, giving place to a new sail just rising to view. No such freedom of display and monopoly of admiration is anywhere possible any longer in the city of Gotham.
Pitt had been walking the streets for days, and was weary of watching the various feminine craft which sailed up and down in them. None of them were like the one he was looking for, neither could he see anything that looked like the colonel's straight slim figure and soldierly bearing. He was weary, but he persevered. A man in his position was not open to the charge of looking for a needle in a haystack, such as would now be justly brought to him. New York was not quite so large then as it is now. It is astonishing to think what a little place it was in those days; when Walker Street was not yet built on its north side, and there was a pond at the corner of Canal Street, and Chelsea was in the country; when the 'West End' was at State Street, and St. George's Church was in Beekman Street, and Beekman Street was a place of fashion. The city was neither so dingy nor so splendid as it is now, and the bright sun of our climate was pouring all the gold it could upon its roofs and pavements, those September days when Pitt was trying to be everywhere and to see everything.
One of those sunny, golden days he was sauntering as usual down Broadway, enjoying the clear aether which was troubled by neither smoke nor cloud. Sauntering along carelessly, yet never for a moment forgetting his aim, when his eye was caught by a figure which came up out of a side street and turned into Broadway just before him. Pitt had but a cursory glance at the face, but it was enough to make him follow the owner of it. He walked behind her at a little distance, scrutinizing the figure. It was not like what he remembered Esther. He had said to himself, of course, that Esther must be grown up before now; nevertheless, the image in his mind was of Esther as he had known her, a well-grown girl of thirteen or fourteen. This was no such figure. It was of fair medium height, or rather more. The dress was as plain as possible, yet evidently that of a lady, and as unmistakeable was the carriage. Perhaps it was that more than anything which fixed Pitt's attention; the erect, supple figure, the easy, gliding motion, and the set of the head. For among all the multitude that walk, a truly beautiful walk is a very rare thing, and so is a truly fine carriage. Pitt could not take his eye from this figure. A few swift strides brought him near her, and he followed, watching; balancing hopes and doubts. That was not Esther as he remembered her; but then years had gone by; and was not that set of the head on the shoulders precisely Esther's? He was meditating how he could get another sight of her face, when she suddenly turned and ran up a flight of steps and went in at a door, without ever giving him the chance he wanted. She had a little portfolio under her arm, like a teacher, and she paused to speak to the servant who opened the door to her; Pitt judged that it was not her own house. The lady was probably a teacher. Esther could not be a teacher. But at any rate he would wait and get another sight of her. If she went in, she would probably come out again.
But Pitt had a tiresome waiting of an hour. He strolled up and down or stood still leaning against a railing, never losing that door out of his range of vision. The hour seemed three; however, at the end of it the lady did come out again, but just when he was at his farthest, and she turned and went up the street again the way she had come, walking with a quick step. Pitt followed. Where she had turned into Broadway she turned out of it, and went down an unattractive side street; passing from that into another and another, less and less promising with every corner she turned, till she entered the one which we know was not at all eligible where Colonel Gainsborough lived. Pitt's hopes had been gradually falling, and now when the quarry disappeared from his sight in one of the little humble houses which filled the street, he for a moment stood still. Could she be living here? He would have thought she had come merely to visit some poor protégé, but that she had certainly seemed to take a latch-key from her pocket and let herself in with it. Pitt reviewed the place, waited a few minutes, and then went up himself the few steps which led to that door, and knocked. Bell there was none. People who had bells to their doors did not live in that street.
But as soon as the door was opened Pitt knew where he was; for he recognised Barker. She was not the one, however, with whom he wished first to exchange recognitions; so he contented himself with asking in an assured manner for Colonel Gainsborough.
'Yes, sir, he's in,' said Barker doubtfully; as he stood in the doorway she could not see the visitor well. 'Who will I say wants to see him, sir?'
'A gentleman on business.'
Another minute or two, and Pitt stood in the small room which was the colonel's particular room, and was face to face with his old friend. Esther was not there; and without looking at anything Pitt felt in a moment the change that must have come over the fortunes of the family. The place was so small! There did not seem to be room in it for the colonel and him. But the colonel was like himself. They stood and faced each other.
'Have I changed so much, colonel?' he said at last. 'Do you not know me?'
'William Dallas?' said the colonel. 'I know the voice! But yes, you have changed,—you have changed, certainly. It is the difference between the boy and the man. What else it is, I cannot see in this light,—or this darkness. It grows dark early in this room. Sit down. So you have got back at last!'
The greeting was not very cordial, Pitt felt.
'I have come back, for a time; but I have been home repeatedly before this.'
'So I suppose,' said the colonel drily. 'Of course, hearing nothing of you, I could not be sure how it was.'
'I have looked for you, sir, every time, and almost everywhere.'
'Looked for us? Ha! It is not very difficult to find anybody, when you know where to look.'
'Pardon me, Colonel Gainsborough, that was precisely not my case. I did not know where to look. I have been here for days now, looking, till I was almost in despair; only I knew you must be somewhere, and I would not despair. I have looked for you in America and in England. I went down to Gainsborough Manor, to see if I could hear tidings of you there. Every time that I came home to Seaforth for a visit I took a week of my vacation and came here and hunted New York for you; always in vain.'
'The shortest way would have been to ask your father,' said the colonel, still drily.
'My father? I asked him, and he could tell me nothing. Why did you not leave us some clue by which to find you?'
'Clue?' said the colonel. 'What do you mean by clue? I have not hid myself.'
'But if your friends do not know where you are?'
'Your father could have told you.'
'He did not know your address, sir. I asked him for it repeatedly.'
'Why did he not give it to you?' said the colonel, throwing up his head like a war-horse.
'He said you had not given it to him.'
'That is true since we came to this place. I have had no intercourse with Mr. Dallas for a long time; not since we moved into our present quarters; and our addressherehe does not know, I suppose. He ceased writing to me, and of course I ceased writing to him. From you we have never heard at all, since we came to New York.'
'But I wrote, sir,' said Pitt, in growing embarrassment and bewilderment. 'I wrote repeatedly.'
'What do you suppose became of your letters?'
'I cannot say. I wrote letter after letter, till, getting no answer, I was obliged to think it was in vain; and I too stopped writing.'
'Where did you direct your letters?'
'Not to your address here, which I did not know. I enclosed them to my father, supposing he did know it, and begged him to forward them.'
'I never got them,' said the colonel, with that same dry accentuation. It implied doubt of somebody; and could Pitt blame him? He kept a mortified silence for a few minutes. He felt terribly put in the wrong, and undeservedly; and—but he tried not to think.
'I am afraid to ask, what you thought of me, sir?'
'Well, I confess, I thought it was not just like the old William Dallas that I used to know; or rather, not like theyoungWilliam. I supposed you had grown old; and with age comes wisdom. That is the natural course of things.'
'You did me injustice, Colonel Gainsborough.'
'I am willing to think it. But it is somewhat difficult.'
'Take my word at least for this. I have never forgotten. I have never neglected. I sought for you as long as possible, and in every way that was possible, whenever I was in this country. I left off writing, but it was because writing seemed useless. I have come now in pursuance of my old promise; come on the mere chance of finding you; which, however, I was determined to do.'
'Your promise?'
'You surely remember? The promise I made you, that I would come to look for you when I was free, and if I was not so happy as to findyou, would take care of Esther.'
'Well, I am here yet,' said the colonel meditatively. 'I did not expect it, but here I am. You are quit of your promise.'
'I have not desired that, sir.'
'Well, that count is disposed of, and I am glad to see you.' (But Pitt did not feel the truth of the declaration.) 'Now tell me about yourself.'
In response to which followed a long account of Pitt's past, present, and future, so far as his worldly affairs and condition were concerned, and so far as his own plans and purposes dealt with both. The colonel listened, growing more and more interested; thawed out a good deal in his manner; yet maintained on the whole an indifferent apartness which was not in accordance with the old times and the liking he then certainly cherished for his young friend. Pitt could not help the feeling that Colonel Gainsborough wished him away. It began to grow dark, and he must bring this visit to an end.
'May I see Esther?' he asked, after a slight pause in the consideration of this fact, and with a change of tone which a mother's ear would have noted, and which perhaps Colonel Gainsborough's was jealous enough to note. The answer had to be waited for a second or two.
'Not to-night,' he said a little hurriedly. 'Not to-night. You may see her to-morrow.'
Pitt could not understand his manner, and went away with half a frown and half a smile upon his face, after saying that he would call in the morning.
It had happened all this while that Esther was busy up-stairs, and so had not heard the voices, nor even knew that her father had a visitor. She came down soon after his departure to prepare the tea. The lamp was lit, the little fire kindled for the kettle, the table brought up to the colonel's couch, which, as in old time, he liked to have so; and Esther made his toast and served him with his cups of tea, in just the old fashion. But the way her father looked at her wasnotjust in the old fashion. He noticed how tall she had grown,—it was no longer the little Esther of Seaforth times. He noticed the lovely lines of her supple figure, as she knelt before the fire with the toasting-fork, and raised her other hand to shield her face from the blaze. His eye lingered on her rich hair in its abundant coils; on the delicate hands; but though it went often to the face it as often glanced away and did not dwell there. Yet it could not but come back again; and the colonel's own face took a grim set as he looked. Oddly enough, he said never a word of the event of the afternoon.
'You had somebody here, papa, a little while ago, Barker says?'
'Yes.'
'Who was it?'
'Called himself a gentleman on business.'
'What business, papa? It is not often that business comes here. It wasn't anything about taxes?'
'No.'
'I've got allthatready,' said Esther contentedly, 'so he may come when he likes,—the tax man, I mean. What business was this then, papa?'
'It was something about an old account, my dear, that he wanted to set right. There had been a mistake, it seems.'
'Anything to pay?' inquired Esther with a little anxiety.
'No. It's all right; or so he says.'
Esther thought it was somewhat odd, but, however, was willing to let the subject of a settled account go; and she had almost forgotten it, when her father broached a very different subject.
'Would you like to go to live in Seaforth again, Esther?'
'Seaforth, papa?' she repeated, much wondering at the question. 'No, I think not. I loved Seaforth once—dearly!—but we had friends there then; or we thought we had. I do not think it would be pleasant to be there now.'
'Then what do you think of our going back to England? You do not likethisway of life, I suppose, in this pitiful place? I have kept you here too long!'
What had stirred the colonel up to so much speculation? Esther hesitated.
'Papa, I know our friends there seem very eager to have us; and so far it would be good; but—if we went back, have we enough to live upon and be independent?'
'No.'
'Then I would rather be here. We are doing very nicely, papa; you are comfortable, are you not? I am very well placed, and earning money—enough money. Really we are not poor any longer. And it is so nice to be independent!'
'Not poor!' said the colonel, between a groan and a growl. 'What do you call poor? For you and for me to be in this doleful street is to be all that, I should say.'
'Papa,' said Esther, her lips wreathing into a smile, 'I think nobody is poor who can live and pay his debts. And we have no debts at all.'
'By dint of hard work on your part, and deprivation on mine!'
'Papa,' said Esther, the smile fading away,—what did he mean by deprivation?—'I thought—I hoped you were comfortable?'
'Comfortable!' groaned and growled the colonel again. 'I believe, Esther, you have forgotten what comfort means. Or rather, you never knew. Forusto be in a prison like this, and shut out from the world!'
'Papa, I never thought you cared for the world. And this does not feel like a prison to me. I have been very happy here, and free, and oh, so thankful! If you remember how we were before, papa.'
'All the same,' said the colonel, 'it is not fitting that those who are meant for the world should live out of it. I wish I had taken you home years ago. You see nobody. You have seen nobody all your life but one family; and I wish you had never seen them!'
'The Dallases? Oh, why, papa?'
'You do not care for them, I suppose,now?'
'I do not care for them at all, papa. I did care for one of them very much, once; but I have given him up long ago. When I found he had forgotten us, it was not worth while for me to remember. That is all dead. His father and mother,—I doubt if ever they were real friends, to you or to me, papa.'
'I am inclined to think William was not so much to blame. It was his father's fault, perhaps.'
'It does not make much difference,' said Esther easily. 'If anything could make him forsake us—after the old times—he is not worth thinking about; and I do not think of him. That is an ended thing.'
There was a little something in the tone of the last words which allowed the hearer to divine that the closing of that chapter had not been without pain, and that the pain had perhaps scarcely died out. But he did not pursue the subject, nor say any more about anything. He only watched his daughter, uninterruptedly, though stealthily. Watched every line of her figure; glanced at the sweet, fair face; followed every quiet graceful movement. Esther was studying, and part of the time she was drawing, absorbed in her work; yet throughout, what most struck her father was the high happiness that sat on her whole person. It was in the supreme calm of her brow; it was in a half-appearing smile, which hardly broke, and yet informed the soft lips with a constant sweetness; it seemed to the colonel to appear in her very positions and movements, and probably it was true, for the lines of peace are not seen in an uneasy figure, nor do the movements of grace come from a restless spirit. The colonel's own brow should have unbent at the sweet sight, but it did not. He drew his brows lower and lower over his watching eyes, and now and then set his teeth, in a grim kind of way for which there seemed no sort of provocation. 'The heart knoweth his own bitterness;' no doubt Colonel Gainsborough's tasted its own particular draught that night, which he shared with nobody.