Ralph Herkimer reached the station as the train was about to start. M. Rouget was in the act of assisting his wife and daughter into the parlour car, and Ralph sprang in after him just as the train moved from the platform. M. Rouget owned the seigniory of La Hache, on the outskirts of St. Euphrase, an outlying fragment of which Ralph had purchased and built upon, hoping that with the other products of the soil there would spring up an intimacy with the Rouget family, and thereby an entrance to that French circle which so few English-speaking Canadians ever penetrate. Not that that circle is more wealthy, or of necessity more cultured than others on the great American continent; but language, religion, and customs make it less accessible and more exclusive, and therefore, like other things difficult, both desirable and distinguished. A certain prescriptive precedence, too, naturally attaches to the first comers everywhere, if only they are strong enough to enforce it; and it must be remembered that these Lower Canada seigniors represent the earliest settlers, and as a body are the only approach to a landed aristocracy in North America. North America, it is true, is the chosen home of democracy and equality; but democratic equality--what is it? Does it not mean, my brother, that you are on no pretext whatever to claim any sort of betterness overme, whileI, if I can secure distinction or superiority am to be protected in the enjoyment of my acquisition; for is it not a free and a law-abiding country that we live in? Witness the army of the decorated in democratic France! or the shoals of colonels, generals, and judges in the United States. Such is democracy.Youmust have nothing which I have not, butImay take whatever I can lay my hands on; and you, sir, are to bow down to me for having it. It is the autocrat's crown cut up in slices, and placed on the head of every one self-asserting enough to wear his fraction.
Ralph had made money--secured a substantial hunch of the bread of subsistence, and now he was minded to butter it with all the social distinctions and advantages he could attain to. M. Rouget passed up the car before him, preceded by madame and the demoiselle, his daughter. These ladies had not called upon Ralph's wife on her coming to reside in the neighbourhood; but then Martha, as he told himself, though a worthy creature, and one who had made him an excellent wife in his day of small things, was scarcely equal to the promotion which had overtaken her. She was undeniably diffident and undistinguished; perhaps even dowdy, he added with a sigh, as the fresh crisp dresses of the French ladies, befringed, bebugled, and "relieved" with streamers of lace and ribbon, swam on in front of him. He would claim his neighbour's acquaintance, he thought, who doubtless would introduce him to his family; and then he doubted not he should make himself so pleasant that the ladies would re-consider their previous reserve and call on Martha forthwith. Already he saw himself at La Hache, invited to meet Monseigneur the Archbishop and the Honourable the Minister of Drainage and Irrigation, whom after that, if he were but civil, he should feel bound to support at future elections, though hitherto he had votedrouge.
So quick is thought, all this and more had flashed through his mind, illustrated withvignettesof gracious smiling ladies and gesticulating Frenchmen--the prismatic glintings of a snob's beatific vision--and he had not yet reached the middle of the car. M. Rouget was walking on before. Another step and he would overtake him. Already his hand was raised to touch the seignior's arm, when, hsh!--the prod of a parasol point dexterously planted in the small of his back made him start, exclaim, stop, and turn round.
In the corner of a sofa he had passed, a wizened little woman, somewhat dusty and tumbled was smiling, to him from under the frizzes of her false front, wide-mouthedly smiling, till every gold pin in her best set of teeth shone in the slanting sunbeams of the afternoon. She held out a clawlike hand in a cotton glove, by way of welcome, making room on the sofa beside her, and dropping the parasol point, as the wild Indian lays down his tomahawk in sign of amity.
"Judy!" said Ralph in some disgust; but while he spoke he saw the Rouget party seat themselves with some friends, and recognized that the opportunity for his littlecoupwas past, so he recovered himself and dropped into the place so effusively offered.
"And how comeyouto be here, ma'am? The general car does not seem over-crowded. If the treasurer of the diocesan fund were to see you travelling in parlour cars, he would doubt the need of that augmentation we have been petitioning for."
"It would be just like him if he did. He is mean enough for anything in the way of prying into the private affairs of the rural clergy. I wonder how he would like it himself? Still, therearea few whose goings on he might inquire into more closely. But he has favourites. I wish Synod would make a change."
"But they will sayyouare a favourite if you travel in this regardlessly extravagant way."
"Let them, if they dare! But there is no fear of that. They cannot but know that on the five hundred dollars of stipend they allow Mr. Bunce, a clergyman's family cannot travel at all, except on foot; and even that takes more shoe leather than they can afford. They understand perfectly well, that, but for my little income, Mr. Bunce could not have afforded to accept the parish of St. Euphrase at all--a fact which is no credit to our church. And I think, Ralph, it would have been more respectful to Mr. Bunce, and kinder to me, if you had not alluded to our pecuniary circumstances. We cannot all be brokers, you must remember."
"Beg pardon, Judy. No offence. And you remind me that I have not yet inquired after the health of my respected uncle," he added with an impertinent laugh. "I hope he is well."
Ralph's acquisition of an uncle on his Aunt Judith's marriage was rather an ancient ground of amusement by this time, for the marriage had taken place years before; but the idea of his maiden aunt created a wife, and the cleric, his junior, transformed into his uncle, was a perennial joke, from which time and familiarity could not rub the point. His other uncle, Gerald, had been one to make a nephew quail; and that this mild, shaven, unwealthy, and, so far, youthful parson should have stepped into the redoubtable title, was inexhaustibly droll. It is notable how long the same quip and jest will serve to tickle the busy man engrossed in material interests; but in this case there was the excuse that the Bunces really were an oddly-assorted pair. A stranger could not but have inquired how they had come to marry each other--she, so mature, he, with his drab-coloured hair and round smooth cheeks. "Cherubical," his bride had called the cheeks to her bridesmaid in a moment of enthusiasm and confidence; but they were too loose and pasty to deserve the title, or if not, the cherub must have been out of health--cloyed with ambrosia perhaps, or too much nectar, in the Elysian Fields.
Judith herself had rejuvenated, or brightened, perhaps, since we saw her first, with hair and clothing severely plain, and a look of reproving superiority to all things pleasant. She was an old young woman in those days, and now she was a young old one. Then, leanness and the tight-drawn skin prevented the crows' feet round the eyes from being strongly marked, and the low-toned colouring harmonized in its way with the grizzling of the hair; now, with some gain of adipose tissue, and the relaxed tension incident to a mind relieved from the imaginary reproach of spinsterhood, the lines and creases showed quite clearly, like ripple marks on the sand left by the ebbing waves of time. The hair, too, with its faded browns sympathizing with the greyness of the flesh tints was changed; for now the lady shone in a new capillary outfit, and seemingly, when buying it, she had chosen to revert to the livelier colouring of her youth. The "front," "bang," "fringe," or whatever she may have called it, was of a cheerful gingerbread hue, which quenched any lingering lustre of the eye, or aspiration toward pinkness in the cheek, and gave her somewhat the look of a mummy, which, after ages wasted in darkness, comes forth again to taste the happiness of life, and the warmth of the upper world.
The love tale of these two had no doubt been as thrilling an idyl to themselves as that of any pair of nightingales in all Arcadia, but it appeared rather a drab-coloured romance, or, better, no romance at all, to their friends, who opened their eyes in blank amaze when the project of marriage was announced, and vowed the strangely-assorted couple had lost their wits. Judith, the severely Protestant virgin of St. Silas, to the High Church--the very high--curate of St. Wittikind's! It seemed incredible. It was true that for some time she had visited a good deal among the poor of St. Wittikind's parish, frequented its schools, guilds and sisterhoods, where things were conducted not precisely as the good people of St. Silas thought best; but still that was "Church work," and as she continued to distribute tracts as copiously as ever in the Catholic neighbourhood selected by the St. Silas' ladies as their experimental farm of controversy, they had agreed to regard the vagary as only showing great breadth of view, and a largely comprehensive charity, which they hoped would lead to reciprocity, and bring some darkling wanderer from the other pen to their own better-lighted fold.
The reality of the case was far otherwise. Miss Judith had a leisure and energy ravenous of occupation, and which would not be filled up, and appeased with fancy-work, and dispensing printed leaves to French people who could not understand what she said. These are pleasing occupations, but they grow monotonous after a time. She had tried improving her mind, too, a good work, but it postulates a mind capable of being improved by printed matter, and the minds of many who have done the world's work, and done it well, have not been of that kind. Miss Judith's mind was practical rather than contemplative, and her studies did not go great lengths, while nature had blessed her with a sustaining self-content. When her book wearied her she laid it down and sought some other occupation--somebody else to improve, when her own mind had had enough of it. Her sister Susan declined her offices, knowing the teacher too well to set much store by the lessons, and therefore she had to carry her instructions farther afield.
Such is the sad lot of spinsterhood in modern life, when woman misses her natural vocation of house-mother, and fortune exempts her from the need to earn her living. The instincts and traits which society for its own entertainment encouraged and cultivated in youth lose their power to please when bloom and sprightliness have vanished. Then the love of applause and excitement so attractive in the youthful beauty turn like famished hounds on their forsaken mistress, and rend her own heart when she can furnish them no other game. She has been taught to think highly of herself, and to claim much, and she may have learned the world and its lessons well, but the world has grown weary of her, and goes its way in search of a fresher plaything. There is tragedy in this of the unspoken kind, but it is so common, and it drags its course so slowly--for people do not easily die of spinsterhood--that we fail to note the restless gnawing of hearts and brains condemned to inaction, and only laugh at thebizarrerie, when, growing intolerable, it breaks out into lady-doctors of divinity, law, or physic.
When Judith made the acquaintance of the Rev, Dionysius Bunce, it was with something of the trepidation with which an explorer clambers up the side of an unknown volcano. "Could he be a Jesuit in disguise, as some people said?" she wondered, "or was he a well-meaning but uninstructed person who had lost his way, and now unwittingly was travelling the broad and flowery road, whose course is ever downward, and which leads, we all know whither?" What an achievement it would be could she lead back the wanderer, if indeed he were astray! Or if he were, as she had been taught to think, a wolf in sheep's clothing, what a privilege to unmask him and save true Protestantism from his insidious wiles!
But there was a single-minded earnestness in this young man which interested her from the first, and soon assured her he was no Jesuit; and he was so strangely willing to listen, to discuss, and even to admit that there might be much in her view of a question. This was new to Judith, whose guides hitherto, knowing all about everything, had tolerated no differences of opinion, and had shown her the path of orthodoxy laid down with square and compass from which no one must venture to diverge under pain of running up against some text of Scripture, set like a curbstone by the wayside, to the peril of unwary wheels meandering off the track. Dionysius was self-denying in his charity, too. He would give his dinner to the poor any day, instead of dining first and bestowing the leavings, as is more usual; and self-denial is a virtue which enthusiastic women delight in. Enthusiasm is catching, and when it has caught, it makes scattered units run together and cohere like drops of quicksilver. Judith had caught it from him as had the members of his guilds; and they worked away with a happy feeling of earnestness which made things very pleasant, and over-rode all misgivings as to whether the dance were worth the candle, or at least as to the usefulness or wisdom of what they were about.
Judith was drawn by the fervour of St. Wittikind's curate into visiting his poor, and even decorating his sanctuary--a Low Church lady actually embroidering crosses and polemical symbols!--and yet in her new frame of mind it did not occur to her she had at first discussed with disapproval the use of papistical emblems. He had treated her view with every respect while differing from it, and then had talked round the point to the other side, and shown the amiable and pious feeling in which such things may be done when looked at the other way, till Judith, won by his toleration, could not but be tolerant too, and actually joined in the work.
It must have been this mixture of docility and independence which won on Dionysius, and recalled the sacred feelings with which in his boyhood he had regarded a venerable aunt and a saintly mother both deceased. He was a young man of a pre-eminently earnest cast of mind, which turned churchwards. He greatly admired and fain would have copied the saints and heroes of early times. Had the Church of Canada kept a wilderness for retiring into, like the Thebæid of antiquity, he would have turned hermit; or had there been some real genuine pagans within its confines he would have been a missionary; but the Indian of the North-West, part horse-thief, part fur-trader, and altogether indifferent, offers no opening to aspirants to the rank of martyr or confessor; so he was forced to do like the rest, and stay at home.
He did what he could in St. Wittikind's, but it was discouraging work. The men there were mostly wealthy, and all engrossed in business. They could not be induced to attend either daily matins or evensong, and though scrupulously polite when he approached them, were sure to have an important appointment somewhere, and forced to hurry away. The young ladies of course were ready, nay charmed, to attend matins or anything else, provided the hour was reasonable and there had been no ball overnight. Evensong he found unpopular with them, as interfering with "home duties," to wit afternoon tea; but they were eager for "Church work," at least in the shape of elaborate embroideries in gold thread and ecclesiastical patterns. If Dionysius would have interested himself in croquet or lawn tennis, or if he would have nourished a taste for music of a form less severe than Gregorians, he would have come to have influence; but the young man at that stage of his growth was too single-minded to have any mistress but Religion; and Mrs. Silvertongue, his rector's worldly-minded wife, was heard to compare him to a shaggy young Baptist broke loose from the desert, when Judith rushed to the rescue by declaring that he seemed to be a very sound Churchman indeed, and everybody laughed at both the ladies.
As years went on, the intimacy grew closer. Judith found it delightful to be busy and of importance--to be authorized to interfere with people too poor to dare resent it; telling them what they must do, scolding and physicking them as seemed best, and really being kind, though in a provoking way; consulting with a clergyman, talking and being listened to by a gentleman with interest and respect. It was so very long ago since any gentleman had shown interest in her conversation, or anything but weariness, and now this ordained pastor sometimes even consulted her. It made her feel that she was not yet all of the past, that there was something to live for still, and afforded some of the old time satisfaction in being minded by one of the stronger sex, mixed at once with the reverence she owed a spiritual guide, and motherly interest in one so much her junior.
Dionysius, too, grew attached, though not precisely in the same way as if she had been twenty years younger. He was so good a young man, and so shy, that he failed, perhaps, to fill all the social uses of a curate, and grew somewhat out of intimacy with the younger ladies of his cure, who, though they saw him daily at matins, had learned not to look for his presence at garden parties and afternoon teas. Judith listened to him with so ardent an interest that he forgot his diffidence and reserve in conversing with her, and grew even eloquent at times, as he knew by the admiring reverence in her face; and then, in the gratification of appreciated merit, he would forget the disparity in their ages, and hail her as a sister spirit travelling the same heavenward road with himself. And so they continued to fare on together in amity and trust, the brother uttering words of wisdom, the sister accepting them humbly, and ignorant that they were leading her far from the truth according to St. Silas, where with her sister on Sundays she still went to church; for Judith's theological mind was of the emotional not the argumentative sort; though she loved to use the party catch-words, and believed she set great store by them, they conveyed to her no clearly defined ideas. Warmth was what she longed for, and friendship, and these she drew most readily from the curate of St. Wittikind.
The intimacy between the two might have gone on for ever unchanged, but at length Dionysius fell ill, and then the crisis in their friendship and their lives arrived. Judith called regularly at her friend's lodging to inquire for his health. By-and-by she had messages to carry him from his poor, she sat down by his bedside and conversed, and he declared himself so much refreshed by her visit that it would have been inhuman if she had not called again. She did call again, and again; and by-and-by she fell into the way of bringing jellies and little dainties to tempt the sick man's appetite. One day as he was dining on a warm and greasy broth, misnamed beef tea, he laid it down scarce tasted on her entrance, and with manifest disrelish pushed it away. Judith peered and sniffed at the ungrateful preparation, and pressed him to try her jelly instead. "I know how beef-tea should be made, and I shall bring your landlady a supply, and then she will only have to warm a little from time to time as you want it."
The next day Judith arrived, carrying upstairs with difficulty a large stone jar in a basket. In the study, which was also the ante-chamber to the sick-room, she encountered the landlady coming out. Mrs. McQuirter looked her full in the face, flushing indignantly and eyeing with a sniff and a toss of the head the jar which Judith was lifting with difficulty to the table.
"Good morning, Mrs. McQuirter," said Judith in her most conciliatory manner.
"Morning, miss," replied the other with a side-long glance which was far from friendly.
"How do you think Mr. Bunce is to-day, Mrs. McQuirter?"
"Guess you're going in, miss, and will see for yourself; so there's no good me telling you. You'd be sure to think you knew a deal better," and she sailed towards the door in her grandest style; then turning as if an idea had struck her, and as if fearing that she had not already been sufficiently provoking, she added:
"Say, miss! Is that sleigh as brought you and your basket still at the door? We've a deal of old crockery here as don't belong to us, and we'd be right glad to be rid on. Odd bowls, and plates, and chipped jelly glasses as don't match our sets, and make me feel kind o' mean when neighbours come in at dish-washing time with their 'Laws, Mrs. McQuirter, now! and where in goodness did you ever pick up all them cracked dishes?' If you're agreeable, I will just get 'em all together and send them back by the carman before they get broke, for it 'ud cost more than the valy of all the messes they brought here to replace 'em with new."
Judith felt indignant, and coloured deeply, but as to reply in kind would have been to raise a dragon in the path to her friend's bedside, she restrained herself, and merely answered: "By all means, Mrs. McQuirter. Kindly help me to lift this jar out of the basket, and then you can take it."
"And what may you be bringing here in your large crock, miss?" asked the landlady contemptuously. It seemed so impossible to irritate this old maid into the scolding match she thirsted for, that she was growing to despise as well as detest her.
"This is some beef-tea--a most excellent form in which to give nourishment to invalids like Mr. Bunce."
"Beef-tea, indeed! It's more like half-melted glue to look at. Ugh!"
"Quite natural in you to say so, Mrs. McQuirter. So few people know what beef-tea really should be like. It is the strength of the stock, which has jellied in cooling, that gives it the appearance you allude to. If you will just warm a cupful in a saucepan as it is wanted, without letting it boil, you will find it delicious. Try a little of it yourself, I know you will like it."
"Not me! And do you know, miss, how many large knuckles of beef I have boiled into tea in the last ten days? And scarce a drop has he let pass his lips! All clean gone to waste. I don't hold with beef-tea for Mr. Bunce no ways. He seems to hate it like pizen."
"I am not surprised at his having refused the decoction I saw sent up to him yesterday," said Judith with a relish. It seemed that notwithstanding her forbearance she was to have an innings, and she meant to use it in truly Christian fashion; not to exult openly, but to rub any blistering truth which came to hand well into the bone. "In making beef-tea all fat is carefully removed, and the meat is then placed in a jar with salt and cold water, near the fire, where it must stand for hours without boiling or even simmering. Now, really, Mrs. McQuirter," and she dipped a teaspoon in the jar, "just taste how good it is! If you will warm a cup or so of it two or three times a day I am confident you will have no difficulty in getting Mr. Bunce to drink it."
"I think I see me trying it, miss! And it shows your assurance to be evening me to the like. You are but a young lady yet, so to say, though you were born ten years before myself, I guess, as am the mother of six--leastways you are but an old maid, when all is said, and to take upon you to tell me how to make beef-tea! Me, as am the mother of six, and has buried a good husband. And many a bowl of my beef-tea the poor man drank, and him lying on the very feather bed where the parson lies now."
"And he died, Mrs. McQuirter? I am not surprised," said Miss Judith, thinking more of her argument and less of conciliation as the talk went on. "I observed the mixture yesterday when Mr. Bunce was unable to swallow it--a mere mixture of grease and warm water. Do you not know that at boiling point albumen coagulates, and becomes insoluble, like the white of a hard-boiled egg? You would not expect the water you boil eggs in to be very nourishing? Your beef-tea is just like that, and if your late husband's dietary contained no more nourishing items, I cannot wonder that he did not survive."
"You owdacious old maid, you! How daar you? To insinniwate that me as has fairly slaved for my man and his children had a hand to his taking off. But I'll have the law of you, I will! and I take Mr. Bunce in there as must have heard ye, if he's awake yet, to witness that you said it. Me, the mother of six, to be insulted and put upon by an old thing as never was able to get married at all! And it shows the men's good sense, that same. And here you come with your broths and your messes after my poor young gentleman, as is laid on the broad of his back, and too sick to run away from you like the rest. And it's a disgrace to your sect, you are, miss! for all your silk, and your sealskin, and me but a poor lone widdy with a quiet lodger--to be coming here at all hours acourting a gentleman as don't want you--you that are old enough to be his grandmother and should be at home making your soul, for your change as must come before long, 'stead of running that shameless after the men to make them marry you."
"Oh!" was all that Judith could utter, throwing up her black gloved hands to the ceiling and then dropping in a heap on a stool in the corner and burying her face in her handkerchief. The wordy hurricane had fallen on the flower--an elderflower--and beaten it down and crushed it; and there she cowered in her confusion, convulsed with sobs, while the hurricane whistled but the more wildly in its triumph, and would fain have scattered and dispersed the ruin it had already made.
"And well may you hide your face after sich ongoings! and it don't become one as sets up for quality to have done the like; to be coming here a worritting of a poor young gentleman to marry her, as it's quite oncertain if he will see the light of next week! Or is it that you think you will make the people say he has treated you bad if he don't, after you coming here so often? But the people knows better, miss! and they say you're too old for him; and that you've been worritting around him that long, it's a fair amazement between his patience and your perseverance whatever comes of it. The very rector of the parish takes notice on it, and the rector's lady says its shameless the way you go on to make him marry you!"
"Silence, Mrs. McQuirter! with your bad and cruel tongue."
Mrs. McQuirter turned and stood aghast. The door of the sleeping-room had opened without noise, and framed in the opening stood Dionysius, like the picture of his canonized namesake stepped out of some Gothic window. One arm was thrust into the sleeve of a purple dressing-gown which was wrapped about him, leaving exposed his chest and other arm clothed in their snowwhite sleeping gear. Excitement caused by the altercation he must have overheard, and the exertion of rising had brought a feverish flush to his cheeks, burning into hectic spots amid the pallor of illness, and there was a lustre in his eye, which could the world have seen, it would have reconsidered its judgment of his appearance as ordinary and commonplace.
"How dare you address my kind visitor--my friend--in the wicked words I have heard you use?"
Mrs. McQuirter was taken aback; but being now, to use her own phrase, "in for it," as having sinned beyond forgiveness, and sure to lose her lodger, it seemed best to retreat in good order, and show neither fear nor remorse.
"What a lone widdy like me says, Mr. Bunce, ain't of no 'count to a gentleman like you, sir, and I have always done my very best to make you comfortable, so my mind's easy. It's what the rector's lady says, and the quality in your church, and if you like to have them speaking that way of you and that--that female there, as is ashamed to look an honest woman in the face, 'taint no affairs of mine."
Judith felt as if she would gladly die, and sank from the stool to the carpet in a collapsed heap. If the ground would have opened and swallowed her, how thankful she would have been; but it did not, and she could but bury her face deeper in her lap.
"The lady you have presumed to scandalize so shamefully," the curate resumed, "has called here at my earnest request. If I could induce her to come more frequently she would be even more welcome; and in case you should still have any doubts, let me tell you plainly that if this lady would condescend to accept me, there is no one I would so gladly make my wife. Now! I have said all that can possibly interest you. Leave the room instantly, and close the door."
The door closed behind Mrs. McQuirter and the two were left together. Judith's confusion was too great to permit her to lift her head, but there was a tremor of expectancy in the heap of silk and sealskin into which she had collapsed, which made itself felt in the surrounding air. She had ceased to sob, and became all ear. Even the silk of her gown, though she was crouched so close that to draw breath without a movement seemed impossible, forbore to rustle.
Dionysius stood still in his white and purple like a Gothic saint, but less erect now that the impulse of battle had spent itself. He stood a committed man, yet a man who has not yet spoken, shivering on the brink of the proposal which he has bound himself to make. You remember the feeling, my married friend, when the words grew too unwieldy to articulate, and there was a pause. The leading up to the grand climax had been achieved, the lady and the universe were waiting, the very next word must be the word of fate, and you were not dreaming of drawing back, but still it lingered; and oh! the effort it took to launch that ill-formed sentence! Dionysius stood, and his strength was waning. Before him there was the prostrate heap of clothing which waited but made no sign, and the air around was still and listening. The very fire forgot to blaze and crackle, and looked at him silently in red unblinking expectation. Only the clock on the mantelpiece went on unmoved, counting the fleeting seconds as they sped with dispassionate calmness. They were slipping away, and so too was his strength, and yet he had not spoken.
"Judith," he said at last with a great effort; but when he had so far found his voice the words came easier.
"Judith, my fr----Judith!" and he went and laid a tremulous hand upon her shoulder. "You have heard the words I spoke to Mrs. McQuirter. Will you forgive me that I should thus have declared myself in the presence of a stranger before having spoken to yourself. Believe me, dear, it was from no disrespect, no lack of appreciation; but you know how we have been with each other. Our close fellowship in the higher life may have made us forgetful of mere earthly relations, but we must remedy that now. This foolish woman, with her idle tongue, has spoken words of more wisdom than she knew, and if we are to be companions on the heavenward way, is it not well that our earthly paths should be united?"
A thrill ran all through Judith's frame. He felt her tremble beneath his hand, but still she did not lift her head.
"Judith, my own dear, you must marry me! It is necessary for your good name. If that is not enough to move you, it is necessary for mine. I will not have them say that I could trifle with a woman's regard. Though what care we, either you or I, for people's idle talk? Have we not been walking hand-in-hand, each helping and supporting the other to live aright? And has not our companionship been for good to both? Let us marry, Judith! and silence babbling tongues. It will be best so. Look up, my friend, and answer. And yet, Judith, I must own it, I am poor. I have nothing but the stipend of my curacy; and when the poor, my brothers, have had their share, and my yearly bills are paid, there is nothing over. Not a cent. It will explain to you how I never came to think of marriage before."
Then Judith raised her face suffused with blushes, and lighted with a happy eager look which had not been seen there before in twenty years; and under the transfiguring influence of an unexpected joy, she looked for the moment almost beautiful. So, when the fogs and rain of autumn have spent their strength, and the frosts of winter still linger in their coming, there fall halcyon days, when nature, not yet stripped bare of flower and foliage, blooms out again in her Indian summer. The trees are hung with wreaths of gold-bright leaves, or garlanded with crimson, the sod renewed by rains after the summer scorchings, is green with a greenness unseen at other times; the garden is still cheered by marigolds and asters, larkspur and phlox, and the sky and the waters have a sunny blueness, shining but the brighter for the smoky grey which conceals the distance--the distance which harbours winter, tempest, rain, too soon to be let loose.
A tear was quivering on Judith's eyelash. A happy sob gave a tremor to her voice when she tried to speak.
"Dionysius. And do you mean it? Marry--marry me! But it is only your gentlemanly feeling which will not have me talked about. I dare not take you at your word, however--however much--I might----" and her colour deepened, and the drops rained down, and again she hid her face.
"Indeed, it is not so, Judith. You may indeed believe me--if only you will have it so. And we have been so much to each other--and now we must be nothing any more, unless you will consent to marry."
Judith moved as if trying to gain her feet, and Dionysius took her hand to lend assistance, and so it came about that they stood with their arms entwined. Judith's head dropped on the curate's shoulder, and felt as if it would gladly linger there for ever. And he, the lady clinging and half-supported in his arms, had a vague sense of heroic worth and power as man; standing thus before the universe, lord of another life besides his own; and many other feelings, surging and confused, which would not lend themselves to words. And little more was said, though much was understood and agreed between them; and by-and-by the striking of the clock recalled them to common life, and both sat down. Then Dionysius, exhausted with excitement, grew faint and returned to his room.
Judith lingered till she was assured that the faintness was wearing off, and then she stole softly downstairs on her way home. Softly as she stepped, however, she was overheard, and ere she could reach the door, Mrs. McQuirter stood before her blocking the way; but it was Mrs. McQuirter in a different part from the one she had played so lately. Then, she was the dragon landlady ready to devour an intrusive and defenceless spinster, now she was the lone widow, the mother of six. One little toddler held on to her gown, she led another by the hand, while her other hand held a napkin saturated with the moisture which ran from her streaming eyes and bedewed her face.
"Oh, miss!" she cried with a sob, and the little ones piped a small chorus of sympathy, "I was wishful to speak to you as you went out, to make it up with you for what I said upstairs. And I'm free to confess, miss, it was not my place to speak the way I did. But I'm hot by nature, miss, and when once I begin, my tongue runs clean away from me. But I bear no malice, miss, as John McQuirter often said. 'She bears no malice,' he'd say, and them's his very words."
"It is of no consequence, Mrs. McQuirter; I'm willing to overlook," and Judith endeavoured to slide past in the narrow hallway, but the little ones, with faces damp and sticky, and threatening damage to any article of apparel which might rub against them in passing, blocked the way.
"And it's good of you to say so much, miss; and it does credit to Mr. Bunce's choice. And oh, Miss! you'll remember, will you not? I'm a lone widdy, and the mother of six! And it's hoping you'll have a fine family of your own some day," which made Judith blush. "And you won't be for allowing Mr. Bunce to change his lodging, and all along of a few thoughtless words, as I'm truly sorry for the saying on. You won't now? Will'e, miss? Like a dear."
"I have told you, already, Mrs. McQuirter, I shall overlook the offence. Mr. Bunce is too ill to think of moving. He feels quite faint after the disturbance you caused him, and he needs nourishment. You had better warm him a cupful of that beef-tea I brought. Warm it in a saucepan, but don't let it boil; and send up a few sippets of dry toast along with it. The sooner you can let him have it the better." And having prescribed this penance to the spirit-broken mother of six, she got away.
It was near the end of Lent before the secret of the engagement was divulged, though the wedding was to be immediately after Easter; but then a storm of ridicule arose which could not but offend those most interested. Judith's own family were as provokingly sarcastic as any one in the churches of St. Silas or St. Wittikind, and that is saying much. It became clear to the young couple that they must leave the city; so Dionysius resigned his curacy and accepted the small missionary parish of St. Euphrase. The emoluments there were less than he had enjoyed in the city, but his wife was possessed of a modest competency, on which in that sequestered place, they contrived to live in comfort and respect.
If the taste in which Judith had endeavoured to rejuvenate her appearance was doubtful, the acquisition of a spouse had still had the best influence in softening and sweetening her nature, and her gratitude and devotion to the man who had looked on her in her loneliness were pleasant to see. For him, it was only after marriage and the worship which it brought him at his own fireside, that it began to dawn on Mr. Bunce what a very superior man he must surely be, and he felt beholden to his helpmate for making the discovery. So Mahomet no doubt, felt to the elderly Kadijah, his first wife, the earliest of his converts, and the first to recognize him as a prophet. In after years he married women younger and more beautiful, but none ever held a place so high in his affection as the wealthy widow who had married him in his poverty and youth.
It was on the same afternoon as that referred to, previous to the long digression in the last chapter, but perhaps a trifle earlier, though the torrid glare of mid-day had passed, and the cool shadows below the trees had begun to creep eastward on the shaven lawn. The air was full of warmth and sunshine, with just stir enough to move the aspen leaves upon the tree, and scatter more faint and widely the scent of roses beyond the alleys, where it hung in drowsy sweetness, mingling with the droning of bees and inviting to mid-day sleep, that crowning deliciousness of summer weather.
The Misses Stanley were in their grounds, and they had friends. They were in their grounds, that is to say in a shady corner of the lawn by the house, where three or four grand hemlocks, survivors of the forest, spread out umbrageous arms over a glimmering arcade of gloom, where never sunbeam stole, and the shady air was fresh with the fragrant breath of resins drawn from the upper branches by the sun. There, lounging on cane chairs and garden seats, they plied their fans calmly, and chatted, but not too much or loud, in sociable repose. It was early in July, when everything is green and fresh and vigorous--bud, bloom, and spray instinct with brimming life, and not a yellowing leaf to tell of memories or regret, all hope and promise and delight in the flowery present and the fruitful days to come. Great butterflies were tumbling in the brightness, and there was a low continuous murmur in the grass from the thousand living things too small to be separately or distinctly heard; and ever and anon from around the banks of shrubs would come the gurgling laughter of youthful voices, so lightsome in its freedom from care and adult emotion.
There were six of them, those youthful ones, whose merry voices disturbed the slumbrous heat, walking or running, heedless alike of shade and sunshine, their hands full of roses. Muriel was one of them, the ladies' niece, and Tilly Martindale, Miss Matilda's goddaughter, and Betsey Bunce, a niece of the rector, and so a sort of cousin to the family. There was Gerald Herkimer, Ralph's only child, whose mother Martha was sitting with the ladies in the shade, and Randolph Jordan, the son of Matilda's friend Amelia who was sitting by her at that moment. And, last, there was Pierre Bruneau, a black-eyedhabitantboy, the son of Jean, who managed the farm. He had been working in the garden, and seeing Muriel, had found some small service to render her, and had lingered near, unconscious of the sidelong glances of her companions. She had given him her flowers to carry and bade him bring them to the house, and he, intoxicated with their fragrance, or rather, perhaps, at being permitted to carry them for his mistress when the young gentlemen were by, joined gaily in the general laughter, and even ventured to put in a jest in his queer French-English, to the amusement and placation of the not over-well pleased company.
They were all between fifteen and seventeen years old, all except Muriel. Muriel was eleven, and all the promise of her babyhood, which had dropped so unexpectedly into the ladies' arms, had been more than fulfilled. The roses and the butterflies were pale dim things beside her, as she skipped among the rest, her long hair shining like threads of gold where it caught the light, and melting into a warm shadow beneath the leaf of her spreading garden-hat, from beneath whose brim there shone a pair of eyes luminous in their glee and innocency, penetrating without sharpness and soft without being dull; lips short, red, and parted, displaying teeth small, regular, well apart, like a string of evenly-assorted pearls.
The fête was hers--her birthday it was called--and in reality it was the anniversary of her appearance in her present life, on the night after the thunderstorm, when the ladies had found her on their doorsteps. Penelope, prudent and timid, would rather have left the day unmarked, in case talk should arise; but Matilda, emboldened by success in her plan of adoption, insisted that fears were now idle, "that their darling must keep her birthday like other children, and that it would be unthankful to the good Providence who had sent the little one to brighten their humdrum lives, if they kept the feast on any other day." Besides, what was there to fear? Every servant in the house had been changed over and over in the ten years which had intervened since then; even Smithers the nurse, who had stayed the longest, was gone these three years, and she had not only been paid to hold her tongue, but was too fond of the child to let slip a word which could injure her. Only Bruneau and his family remained about the place, and they were such quiet and respectfulhabitantsthey would not babble; and even if they would, who could understand them? The servants did not understand French, and Jean's and his wife's English was so awkward and hard to come, they never spoke to any of them if it could be avoided. There was the boy Pierre, to be sure, "But remember, sister, how respectful he has always been, even when, years ago, we used to send for him to come and play with Muriel; and now that he has grown big and able to work, he seems to pay far more attention to the orders she gives him than to any of ours." So Penelope shrugged her shoulders with a sigh, as she always did in the end when Matilda was "positive," and yielded the point.
"What a pretty, graceful child Muriel is," said Mrs. Martindale, Tilly's mother, a widow. They had come from Montreal for the fête.
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Jordan, "she will make a sensation in Montreal when you bring her out, Matilda; but that is some years in the future yet. The other girls had better make haste and arrange themselves before she appears," and she glanced at Mrs. Martindale, which was gratuitously unkind, seeing that Tilly, being only fifteen, would not appear in the world for two winters to come, and she promised to be a remarkably fine girl, and in quite a different style. But then her boy Randolph had been essaying to pipe his first small note for ladies' ears in those of the damsel, and she, though not yet out, was grown woman enough to desiderate whiskers or a moustache in an admirer, and to scorn with youth's uncompromising freedom the advances of a callow swain of her own tender years. Ten years later, how different her views will be! But so, in ten years' time, will his be too--and the gentleman will have the pull then, as much as the lady has it now. Wherefore, my dear Mrs. Amelia, you might very well have forborne to resent the seeming slight upon your boy! But women are such partisans, especially the good ones; and she who is not, even if she be half a philosopher, is but half a woman--and not the best half either.
And now the creaking of the entrance gate was heard, and the crunching of wheels on the gravel; and presently from among the clumps of shrubbery which screened them from the road there issued acalèche, the French Canadian substitute for an American buggy, high set and hung on leather straps instead of springs; and in it swung the rector and his spouse, trundling along to the front of the house.
Mrs. Jordan lifted herpince-nezto her eyes. "Ha! a calash! Mr. Bunce, of course. Nobody else would get into such a thing."
"Do you know, I like them, and they are very much used down at Quebec," observed Mrs. Martindale, rendered generally contradictious by the tone of the other's recent remarks.
"They make me seasick. I feel as if I were in a cradle."
"Was that the effect your cradle had, Amelia dear? You have certainly an uncommon memory to recollect so well; for surely you were in the advanced class at Mrs. Jones' when I was learning my letters."
"Quite true, Louisa," said the other, biting her lip; "but you know you were a backward child. Great talent is often slow in showing itself, you know. What a droll pair those two make, swinging up there in company--as contented as Darby and Joan carrying their eggs to market. Ah, now they are out of sight--gone round to the front door. I am told that on their wedding tour they were mistaken for mother and son--and, strange to say, the error did not put them out in the least."
"I think it nice, myself," said Penelope, "to see people so content to be happy in their own way, and so indifferent to the world's idle talk. It is idle talk, Amelia. When two people find each other's company desirable, are they not foolish to give it up for fear that somebody else will laugh? How much would that somebody else do to make either of them happy? And how little hecoulddo. Perhaps you do not know, Amelia, that Mr. Bunce is our cousin, and therefore we feel bound to like him. At the same time he is your rector, of course, while you are living at St. Euphrase, and I admit your right to criticise him."
And here the clerical pair coming through a window from the drawing-room descried the party in the shade and joined them, which changed the conversation; at the same time the crunching gravel gave notice of other arrivals. First, a waggonette carrying Jordan, Considine and Ralph; and before these had time to alight and join the rest, a rockaway, with the family from La Hache. Mrs. Martha Herkimer, who had been enjoying the heat and the coolness and the buzz of talk in a large lounging chair, with her fan drooping listlessly in her hand, and her pose indicating enjoyment of the quiescent if not somnolent kind, roused herself, shook out her skirts, and sat down again bolt upright, ready to become acquainted with the French people her husband so wished to know, as soon as possible.
Madame Rouget led by her lord, hat in hand, and followed by her daughter, all smiles and sweetness, fluttered through the window to the grass, where her hostesses met her and exchanged salutations eked out with gesture, in which gloves a little brighter and eyebrows a trifle more arched than the Anglo-Saxon pattern bore an important part. Madame's English was not fluent; the Misses Stanley, with the backwardness of their nation, did not venture to use French, and there was some obscurity and delay in the opening phrases, during which M. Rouget stood benevolently by, still uncovered and regardless of sun and sunstroke. In time they reached the grateful shade of the hemlocks, where the newcomers inhaled the perfumed coolness with infinite relish, after the glare and dust of their recent drive; and then there came presentations of the lately come neighbours, with profuse explanations from Madame, "that her English sodifficilehad made her delay, till she was socombléeof confusions, that---- Ah, well! she prayed the ladies to excuse;" and she smiled very graciously, and pressed the hands of Amelia and Martha, lisping hopes to be better acquainted; meaning, no doubt, as with Penelope and her sister, the exchange of half-yearly visits, which, in view of differences of church as well as language, was as much as could be expected. That church counted for a great deal became evident when "Mrs. Bunce, the wife of my cousin the rector," was next presented. The smile died out of Madame's face, and theempressementfaded from her manner as she bowed more deeply than before with eyes fastened on the ground. "Thebêtise," as she said to her daughter afterwards, "of those English! To introduce the wife of one of their married priests to me, the niece of My Lord the Archbishop!"
"But he is of their family, we must recollect, my mother," replied this judicious young person. "And perhaps they do not know of my great uncle the Archbishop. At least the ladies intended to be kind, and Monsieur Gerald Herkimaire, and Monsieur Randolphe are bothtrés comme il faut?" On which Madame patted the precocious utterer of so much wisdom--she was not yet sixteen--with her fan, and laughed heartily. But this did not occur till the following morning.
Penelope was not slow to perceive that the last presentation had not been a success, and came promptly to the rescue, by asking Mrs. Bunce a question, while Matilda drew off the attention of the others by asking Mademoiselle if she would not join the young people, and leading her away, while the mother and the rest fell into conversation with the gentlemen.
The young ones by this time had sent Pierre to the house with their flowers, and were lingering on Muriel's croquet ground until Miss Martindale should persuade herself that she was not too grown up to play, a conclusion which she speedily arrived at on the appearance of the new comer, who was quite as advanced as herself and seemed eager to begin.
"How your niece is mostgracieuse, and so prettee!" said the Frenchwoman to Matilda when she rejoined the elders.
"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Martindale, "she is one of the very nicest little girls I know; and so clever. You should hear her play. It is more like a grown person's performance than a child's. And to think she should never have had any governess but dear Matilda here! I call it quite remarkable."
"Ah!" said Madame sympathetically. It is always a safe observation to make, especially in reply to what has not been very clearly understood, and the inflection of the voice can make it stand for so many things, that if it is only uncertain it will mean whatever the hearer likes best.
"It is a loss to society that women like you should be independent, Matilda," said Amelia. "What a governess you would have made! You need not shrug; it is a compliment, and one which very few people can claim. If you knew the troubles of governess-ridden mothers, you would understand me; so few are worth much, and those few keep one in constant dread of their growing dissatisfied and leaving, till the mother's life becomes a burden. I am so glad my family consists only of a boy, and it is Jordan's business to think what is to become of him," glancing at the croquet players.
"That young gentleman," said Madame, following the direction of the other's eyes. "Distingué!What joy to have one so fine son!"
Mrs. Jordan smiled her gratification and could not help glancing across at Mrs. Martindale, whose daughter's depreciation of the paragon must have ruffled her maternal plumage not a little.
"Yes," she said, "he is a dear boy--so manly and yet so affectionate," and her eyes drooped, and her voice fell, as it will when one talks of something near the heart; and there were signs--woman of the world though she was--of her maundering on upon the same sweet theme, if only there were an attentive silence.
But this Mrs. Martha's patience could not yield. She saw nothing so remarkable in the Jordan boy "for that affected French woman to make a fuss about. If it had been her Gerald now, there might have been some sense in it--with his delicate fair skin like a girl's, and his sturdy broad shoulders. It was true young Jordan had the advantage in height; but what matters half an inch? And as to the manliness----" And again she seemed to be standing in an upper window of her town house, securely hid behind a curtain, looking down on the two boys in a tussle. How her boy tumbled the other over, let him get up and knocked him down again, and pummelled him till he had had enough. And she? Had she been a right-minded person--taken in the abstract--of course she would have interfered; but being only a woman and a mother, and seeing it was her side which played the winning game, she merely stood and looked on. Lady lecturers and authors often tell us of the higher moral plane from which the gentle sex surveys the world's affairs, but for honest old-world delight in sheer physical force and muscular prowess, can a woman be equalled? It must be a survival from the days of savagery and marriage by capture. The learned professor's wife may expect to be led out to dinner before plain mistress, but as likely as not she is innocent of even a smattering of the "ology" on which her husband's reputation is built; but she whom good fortune has wed to a Victoria Cross knows every detail of his achievements and believes herself married to a demigod.
But this is digression. It seemed to Martha that Amelia was about to moralize aloud upon her boy, and having a kindness for her and being unwilling that she should make herself absurd, she broke the momentary silence with
"And really. Miss Matildy now"--Martha was a lady 'Noo Hampshire'--"doo tell! Have you taught the child her letters and pothooks and some of the multiplication table all by yourself; and you not married? Well, now, I call it real smart--you might almost do for a school marm. That you might, with just taking pains--at least, if you, had begun earlier."
Ralph was standing within earshot, and it is not unlikely that he wished his wife had not spoken. She was a good soul, he well knew. She had been a beauty, and once there had seemed a quaint charm in the direct and high-pitched utterances which stole from between those coral lips. But that was years ago. The lips were withered now; it was on account of her poor health they had come to live at St. Euphrase, and only the unusual and impolite utterances remained to wound the sensibilities of polished ears--now, too, when he had become rich, and he could buy her whatever she wanted, and would have bought her some conventional refinement as gladly as her diamonds from Tiffany's. It was Matilda, however, who replied in support of her own achievements.
"Letters and pothooks, my dear Mrs. Herkimer? Muriel can read the newspapers and even 'Paradise Lost' perfectly well. She reads me to sleep every Sunday afternoon with 'Paradise Lost' or Young's 'Night Thoughts.' I think poetry is improving for the child, you know, and I enjoy it myself. It soothes me. And, by-the-way, it was she who wrote asking you to come here to-day."
"Well now! You don't----" ejaculated Martha; but Matilda, though mollified, ran on: "Indeed, I believe I have gained quite as much as Muriel by her lessons. One must know a thing in order to teach it. I found my own education had grown sadly rusty, and needed brushing up. I had no idea there was so much interesting information to be got from 'Mangnall's Questions' and 'The Child's History of England' till I went over them with Muriel. As to music, I used to play, but was getting out of practice; she has revived my interest in it, and now we both play and sing together--in a mild way, my dear Amelia; pray do not look apprehensive, I am not meditating an exhibition. But I was going to say, I think Muriel needs better teaching than mine, now; so we propose going to Montreal for the winter. I cannot teach languages, and her voice seems worth cultivating."
"Take her to Selby, Miss Matildy," cried the worthy Martha, little dreaming how her husband and his aunt wished her a lockjaw. "He is married to a sister of Judy's there--plays the organ at St. Wittikind's--does it beautiful, my dear, but you will have heard him--and if there is any sing in the child it is he will bring it out. He'd make the kettle sing."
"We can all do that," said Judith disgusted. "Put another stick in the stove, that's all it wants. And this is little Muriel's birthday. Miss Matilda? How old is she today? Twelve? Ah--Pretty child, but not very tall. But that is in the family, I suppose. Dionysius is almost short, and Betsey there is really stumpy. But I do not see much resemblance in her to Betsey."
"Neither do I."
"But one would expect to see a family-likeness."
"Between second cousins? I do not see the necessity."
"Blood always tells, you know. Yet she is not even like Dionysius----no trace of his square intellectual forehead, or anything."
"Your niece and her uncle are Bunces, perhaps, and Muriel a Stanley."
"But she is not like you either."
"I confess I never was clever about seeing likenesses, but I am sure I could not be fonder of the child if she were ever so like me. Penelope, do you not think we might have tea, now?"
Considine had heard Martha's mention of Selby. It was the first time in years that he had heard the name. It awoke recollections which had long been asleep. Jordan, his co-trustee in the Herkimer fortune had no doubt told him the family story on his return to Montreal, but at that time his mind was full of his own cares, and since then the mere periodical investment of dividends had not called for a recurrence to the subject. Though, doubtless, he remembered his old attachment, and would still have felt a kindness for its object had his thoughts wandered that way, the preoccupations of business led them in other directions; the tender passages were relegated to the same limbo as the memories of childhood, and hisante bellumpossessions wiped out of existence by the event of war. Love-dreams, longings, the yearnings of what we call our "hearts," are luxuries of the well-to-do, living at their ease. When the wolf comes to the door, and the means of subsistence are in doubt or danger, Cupid, the ethereal sprite, feeding daintily on sighs and idle fancies, wings himself way; and in the turmoil of hard material facts, he is not missed. It is best so. The heart wounds, forgotten, skin over and heal, where head and arms are in danger from the blows of fortune; and so the undivided energies are free for the combat. But now, his personal affairs having arranged themselves in an easy well-to-do routine which gave no anxiety, his mind was open to other interests, and of these there were not enough to engage it. He often felt dull and lonely. He would now and then accompany Ralph to St. Euphrase, remaining over night and returning to town in the morning, thereby killing a long afternoon, as on the present occasion; but this could be only an occasional palliation. The "planting" years of his youth, as he called them, and the fighting years which followed, had not been the apprenticeship to make him take an undivided interest in business for its own sake after he had secured income sufficient for his needs. He had outlived his relish for the society of young men--young men of business, at least--the middle-aged had withdrawn into domestic life, and he found himself a good deal alone.
The mention of Selby's name stirred old associations which time and adventure had long deprived of bitterness; and now he looked back with only a plaintive yearning to the happiness which might have been, if he had had his way, and pitied himself in his solitary estate. If he had married, what wealth of love was his to have bestowed! And how he could have enjoyed being cosseted and purred to by a wife of his own, instead of depending on hirelings whose servile smile betrayed the hollowness of their attentions. The smoking-room at his club, and his own rooms at the hotel rose before his eye in their dull solid unsatisfying comfort, and he could not but compare them with the clean, unsmoky freshness and brightness of the woman's world around him, and confess the two as different and apart as the close warm stuffiness of a winter sick-room, from the clear keen day out of doors in early spring.
"What ails you, gineral? You look that glum you might have been hearing of your brother's death," said Martha, making room for him on the garden seat where she sat.
"I am well, madam. I heard you allude just now to a Mr. Selby as having married the sister of Mrs. Bunce. Are you acquainted with the lady?"
"To be sure I am. She is Ralph's aunt. A dear good soul as ever lived, but real sorrowful-like and sickly now--she that used to be as peart and blooming as the flowers in May. It's heart-breaking to see her. She has never got over the loss of her child ten years ago, and it has fairly broke her up. Her hair is white like a woman of sixty. She might be older than Judy, there; and yet she is just one age with Ralph--not forty yet."
"I recollect her very distinctly in her brother Gerald's lifetime--a beautiful young lady. That was before the war; the first time I was in Canada."
"Were you in Canady then? But to be sure you were! You were Gerald's friend, and are a trustee of his property. Ah, yes! I recollect. And you were----"
But she did not say any more; only she looked in his face with a new interest, and what would have been a kind and sympathizing smile if good manners had not restrained the manifestation. Nothing awakens the interest of a good woman so warmly as a story of true enduring love. If the love have been unrequited, its constancy seems but the more rarely and touchingly beautiful. It is something to be dealt with delicately, and spoken to in low, soft, ambiguous words that may soothe but will not flutter the tender thing. It was such love that Martha dreamed of in her youth, and humbly hoped for; and when Ralph, young, eager and impetuous, found her in the New England homestead, she dreamed the divine influence had descended to stir the hushed and waiting waters of her life. She cheerfully left home and kindred to dwell with the man who loved her, and she had been his true and devoted wife. Yet often when she recalled the enthusiasm of that early time it seemed to her that the love-feast had been but a Barmecide's banquet after all, or like the husks with which another adventurer had to stay his hunger when he left the shelter of the paternal home. She lavished the wealth of her own affection, but the return had seemed but slender and humdrum to her high-wrought expectations. The young couple went to housekeeping, which is something quite different from the life of the hummingbirds among the flowers: Love's dainty fare of sighs and kisses gave place to the grosser nourishment of bread and beef. The bread had to be earned, the house had to be kept, and very soon the pair of Arcadians found themselves toilers like the rest of the world. He toiled with a will, nay with a relish; it was what he was better fitted for than the fantastic joys of feeling; and she did her part at least without repining. It was what she had promised, and she did it loyally, if wearily at times, in the colourless greyness of daily life, when she recalled the rosy dawn of maiden love, with the heavens above all shining and the world sparkling with dew. So Eve, mayhap, looked back on Paradise when she was sent forth with her lord into common life, and doubtless she would sigh at times to remember it, even with her boys growing up around her. And so with Martha in her prosperity, to fancy Considine cherishing the ashes of a blighted love, stirred feelings not dead, but long since grown to be a mere luxurious pain--a poignancy of plaintive delight.
"Yes," said Considine, after allowing time for the completion of Martha's interrupted sentence, "yes, I believe it was to Miss Mary's adherence to her own choice in the matter of a husband that I owe my association with Jordan as trustee under that eccentric will. People cannot control their likings, I suppose, and I do think the young lady was hardly dealt with. I hope the marriage she was so set on has turned out well. Is she in good circumstances?"
"They are very comfortable; but not rich, of course. People do not make fortunes in Selby's profession; but when a woman throws away one fortune she has no right to expect another. However they'd have done well enough if it had not been for losing the child. That has fairly broke them up. They live retired, and don't care to see anybody. Mary keeps her room half the time, and if it was not for Susan, who lives with them since Judy married, I don't know what they would do. But it gives me the dumps to think of them. Is this not a nice place, gineral? And how do you like the ladies? Seems to me Miss Matildy is just too altogether awful nice for anything."
And so she ran on, good soul. She was bent on withdrawing Considine from what she considered his "just too beautiful" contemplation of an ancient grief, and resolved to find him a suitable consoler. The consoler, indeed, was already fixed upon in her own mind, and ere she went home that afternoon, she had already begun to depict the interesting bachelor in colours which, but for the incipient baldness above his temples, the shaggy moustache, and the absence of wings, might have stood for the Cupid on an old-fashioned valentine.
Her auditor was quite interested, in a pleasant heart-whole way, and much as she might have been over a new variety of Brahmah or other fowl; for besides her lively sensibility, Matilda had a considerable fund of sober sense, though she was scarcely herself aware of it. Nevertheless, itwasinteresting to hear of the vanquished hero. Martha dwelt much on his warlike exploits, and his cherishing through years and battles the memory of his old attachment. Captain Lorrimer--who knew?--might have done the same, and Matilda still thought kindly of him, though she had never read his name in any list of killed or wounded, and she had seen or heard nothing of him since he marched his men on board the steamer to the strains of "The girl I left behind me," amid the waving handkerchiefs of the ladies on the wharf; and henceforth Matilda felt very friendly and exerted herself to be pleasant whenever she found herself in Considine's company.