Chapter Thirty Eight.

Chapter Thirty Eight.The Victims.If Mrs Rowland was dissatisfied with her success, while seeing that some resources of comfort remained to the Hopes and Margaret, a view of the interior of the corner-house would probably have affected her deeply, and set her moralising on the incompleteness of all human triumphs. There was peace there which even she could not invade—could only, if she had known it, envy. Her power was now exhausted, and her work was unfinished. For many weeks, she had made Margaret as miserable as she had intended to make her. Margaret had suffered from an exasperating sense of injury; but that was only for a few hours. Hers was not a nature which could retain personal resentment for any length of time. She needed the relief of compassionate and forgiving feelings; and she cast herself into them for solace, as the traveller, emerging from the glaring desert, throws himself down beside the gushing spring in the shade. From the moment that she did this, it became her chief trouble that Philip was blamed by others. Her friends said as little as they could in reference to him, out of regard for her feelings; but she could not help seeing that Maria’s indignation was strong, and that Hester considered that her sister had had a happy escape from a man capable of treating her as Philip had done. If it had been possible to undertake his defence, Margaret would have done so. As there were no means of working upon others to forgive her wrongs, she made it her consolation to forgive them doubly herself; to cheer up under them; to live for the aim of being more worthy of Philip’s love, the less he believed her to be so. Her lot was far easier now than it had been in the winter. She had been his; and she believed that she still occupied his whole soul. She was not now the solitary, self-despising being she had felt herself before. Though cut off from intercourse with him as if the grave lay between them, she knew that sympathy with her heart and mind existed. She experienced the struggles, the moaning efforts, of affections doomed to solitude and silence; the shrinking from a whole long life of self-reliance, of exclusion from domestic life; the occasional horror of contemplating the waste and withering of some of the noblest parts of the immortal nature,—a waste and withering which are the almost certain consequence of violence done to its instincts and its laws. From these pains and terrors she suffered; and from some of smaller account,—from the petty insults, or speculations of the more coarse-minded of her neighbours, and the being too suddenly reminded by passing circumstances of the change which had come over her expectations and prospects; but her love, her forgiveness, her conviction of being beloved, bore her through all these, and saved her from that fever of the heart, in the paroxysms of which she had, in her former and severer trial, longed for death, even for non-existence.She could enjoy but little of what had been her favourite solace at that time. She had but few opportunities now for long solitary walks. She saw the autumn fading away, melting in rain and cold fog, without its having been made use of. It had been as unfavourable a season as the summer,—dreary, unproductive, disappointing in every way; but there had been days in the latter autumn when the sun had shown his dim face, when the dank hedges had looked fresh, and the fallen leaves in the wood-paths had rustled under the tread of the squirrel; and Margaret would on such days have liked to spend the whole morning in rambles by herself. But there were reasons why she should not. Almost before the chilliness of the coming season began to be felt, hardship was complained of throughout the country. The prices of provisions were inordinately high; and the evil consequences which, in the rural districts, follow upon a scarcity, began to make themselves felt. The poachers were daring beyond belief; and deep was the enmity between the large proprietors and the labourers around them. The oldest men and women, and children scarcely able to walk, were found trespassing day by day in all plantations, with bags, aprons, or pinafores, full of fir-cones, and wood snapped off from the trees, or plucked out of the hedges. There was no end to repairing the fences. There were unpleasant rumours, too, of its being no longer safe to walk singly in the more retired places. No such thing as highway robbery had ever before been heard of at Deerbrook, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant; the oldest of the inhabitants being Jim Bird, the man of a hundred years. But there was reason now for the caution. Mr Jones’s meat-cart had been stopped on the high-road, by two men who came out of the hedge, and helped themselves to what the cart contained. An ill-looking fellow had crossed the path of Mrs James and her young sister in the Verdon woods, evidently with the intention of stopping the ladies; but luckily the jingling of a timber-wain was heard below, and the man had retreated. Mr Grey had desired that the ladies of his family would not go further without his escort than a mile out and back again on the high-road. They were not to attempt the lanes. The Miss Andersons no longer came into Deerbrook in their pony-chaise; and Mrs Howell reported to all her customers that Lady Hunter never walked in her own grounds without a footman behind her, two dogs before her, and the game-keeper within hearing of a scream. Mr Walcot was advised to leave his watch and purse at home when he set forth to visit his country patients; and it did not comfort him much to perceive that his neighbours were always vigilant to note the hour and minute of his setting forth, and to learn the precise time when he might be looked for at home again. It was observed, that he was generally back half-an-hour sooner than he was expected, with a very red face, and his horse all in a foam.In addition to these grounds of objection to solitary walks, Margaret had strong domestic reasons for denying herself the rambles she delighted in. As the months rolled on, poverty pressed closer and closer. When the rent was secured, and some of the comforts provided which Hester must have in her confinement, so little was left that it became necessary to limit the weekly expenses of the family to a sum small enough to require the nicest management, and the most strenuous domestic industry, to make it suffice. Hope would not pledge his credit while he saw so little prospect of redeeming it. His family were of one mind as to purchasing nothing which they were not certainly able to pay for. This being his principle, he made every effort to increase his funds. A guinea or two dropped in now and then, in return for contributions to medical periodicals. Money was due to him from some of his patients. To these he sent in his bills again, and even made personal application. From several he obtained promises; from two or three the amount of whose debt was very small, he got his money, disgraced by smiles of wonder and contempt. From the greater number he received nothing but excuses on account of the pressure of the times. The small sums he did recover were of a value which none of the three had ever imagined that money could be to them. Every little extra comfort thus obtained,—the dinner of meat once oftener in the week, the fire in the evening, the new gloves for Hope, when the old ones could no longer, by any mending, be made to look fit for him,—what a luxury it was! And all the more for being secretly enjoyed. No one out of the house had a suspicion how far their poverty had gone. Mr Grey had really been vexed at them for withdrawing from the book club; had attributed this instance of economy to the “enthusiasm” which was, in his eyes, the fault of the family; and never dreamed of their not dining on meat, vegetables, and pudding, with their glass of wine, every day. The Greys little knew what a blessing they were conferring on their cousins, when they insisted on having them for a long day once more before Hester’s confinement, and set them down to steaming soup, and a plentiful joint, and accompaniments without stint. The guests laughed, when they were at home again, over the new sort of pleasure they had felt, the delight at the sight of a good dinner, to which nothing was wanting but that Morris should have had her share. Morris, for her part, had been very happy at home. She had put aside for her mistress’s luncheon next day, the broth which she had been told was for her, and had feasted on potatoes and water, and the idea of the good dinner her young ladies were to enjoy. While their affairs were in this state, it was a great luxury in the family to have any unusual comfort which betokened that Hope had been successful in some of his errands,—had received a fee, or recovered the amount of a bill. One day, Morris brought in a goose and giblets, which had been bought and paid for by Mr Hope, the messenger said. Another morning, came a sack of apples, from the orchard of a country patient who was willing to pay in kind. At another time Edward emptied his pockets of knitted worsted stockings and mittens, the handiwork of a farmer’s dame, who was flattered by his taking the produce of her evening industry instead of money, which she could not well spare at the present season. There was more mirth, more real gladness in the house, on the arrival of windfalls like these, than if Hope had daily exhibited a purse full of gold. There was no sting in their poverty; no adventitious misery belonging to it. They suffered its genuine force, and that was all.What is Poverty? Not destitution, but poverty? It has many shapes,—aspects almost as various as the minds and circumstances of those whom it visits. It is famine to the savage in the wilds; it is hardship to the labourer in the cottage; it is disgrace to the proud; and to the miser despair. It is a spectre which “with dread of change perplexes” him who lives at ease. Such are its aspects: but what is it? It is a deficiency of the comforts of life,—a deficiency present and to come. It involves many other things; but this is what it is. Is it then worth all the apprehension and grief it occasions? Is it an adequate cause for the gloom of the merchant, the discontent of the artisan, the foreboding sighs of the mother, the ghastly dreams which haunt the avaricious, the conscious debasement of the subservient, the humiliation of the proud? These are severe sufferings; are they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving life itself unimpaired. “The life is more than food, and the body than raiment;” and the untimely extinction of the life itself would not be worth the pangs which apprehended poverty excites. But poverty involves woes which, in their sum, are far greater than itself. To a multitude it is the loss of a pursuit which they have yet to learn will be certainly supplied. For such, alleviation or compensation is in store, in the rising up of objects new, and the creation of fresh hopes. The impoverished merchant, who may no longer look out for his argosies, may yet be in glee when he finds it “a rare dropping morning for the early colewort.” To another multitude, poverty involves loss of rank,—a letting down among strangers whose manners are ungenial, and their thoughts unfamiliar. For these there may be solace in retirement, or the evil may fall short of its threats. The reduced gentlewoman may live in patient solitude, or may grow into sympathy with her neighbours, by raising some of them up to herself, and by warming her heart at the great central fire of Humanity, which burns on under the crust of manners as rough as the storms of the tropics, or as frigid as polar snows. The avaricious are out of the pale of peace already, and at all events. Poverty is most seriously an evil to sons and daughters, who see their parents stripped of comfort, at an age when comfort is almost one with life itself: and to parents who watch the narrowing of the capacities of their children by the pressure of poverty,—the impairing of their promise, the blotting out of their prospects. To such mourning children there is little comfort, but in contemplating the easier life which lies behind, and (it may be hoped) the happier one which stretches before their parents, on the other side the postern of life. If there is sunshine on the two grand reaches of their path, the shadow which lies in the midst is necessarily but a temporary gloom. To grieving parents it should be a consoling truth, that as the life is more than food, so is the soul more than instruction and opportunity, and such accomplishments as man can administer: that as the fowls are fed and the lilies clothed by Him whose hand made the air musical with the one, and dressed the fields with the other, so is the human spirit nourished and adorned by airs from heaven, which blow over the whole earth, and light from the skies, which no hand is permitted to intercept. Parents know not but that Providence may be substituting the noblest education for the misteaching of intermediate guardians. It may possibly be so; but if not, still there is appointed to every human being much training, many privileges, which capricious fortune can neither give nor take away. The father may sigh to see his boy condemned to the toil of the loom, or the gossip and drudgery of the shop, when he would fain have beheld him the ornament of a university; but he knows not whether a more simple integrity, a loftier disinterestedness, may not come out of the humbler discipline than the higher privilege. The mother’s eyes may swim as she hears her little daughter sing her baby brother to sleep on the cottage threshold,—her eyes may swim at the thought how those wild and moving tones might have been exalted by art. Such art would have been in itself a good; but would this child then have been, as now, about her Father’s business, which, in ministering to one of his little ones, she is as surely as the archangel who suspends new systems of worlds in the furthest void? Her occupation is now earnest and holy; and what need the true mother wish for more?What is poverty to those who are not thus set in families? What is it to the solitary, or to the husband and wife who have faith in each other’s strength? If they have the higher faith which usually originates mutual trust, mere poverty is scarcely worth a passing fear. If they have plucked out the stings of pride and selfishness, and purified their vision by faith, what is there to dread? What is their case? They have life, without certainty how it is to be nourished. They do without certainty, like “the young ravens which cry,” and work for and enjoy the subsistence of the day, leaving the morrow to take care of what concerns it. If living in the dreariest abodes of a town, the light from within shines in the dark place, and, dispelling the mists of worldly care, guides to the blessing of tending the sick, and sharing the food of to-day with the orphan, and him who has no help but in them. If the philosopher goes into such retreats with his lantern, there may he best find the generous and the brave. If, instead of the alleys of a city, they live under the open sky, they are yet lighter under their poverty. There, however blank the future may lie before them, they have to-day the living reality of lawns and woods, and flocks in “the green pasture and beside the still waters,” which silently remind them of the Shepherd, under whom they shall not want any real good thing. The quiet of the shady lane is theirs, and the beauty of the blossoming thorn above the pool. Delight steals through them with the scent of the violet, or the new mown hay. If they have hushed the voices of complaint and fear within them, there is the music of the merry lark for them, or of the leaping waterfall, or of a whole orchestra of harps, when the breeze sweeps through a grove of pines. While it is not for fortune to “rob them of free nature’s grace,” and while she leaves them life and strength of limb and soul, the certainty of a future, though they cannot see what, and the assurance of progression, though they cannot see how,—is poverty worth, for themselves, more than a passing doubt? Can it ever be worth the torment of fear, the bondage of subservience?—the compromise of free thought,—the sacrifice of free speech,—the bending of the erect head, the veiling of the open brow, the repression of the salient soul? If; instead of this, poverty should act as the liberator of the spirit, awakening it to trust in God and sympathy for man, and placing it aloft, fresh and free, like morning on the hill-top, to survey the expanse of life, and recognise its realities from beneath its mists, it should be greeted with that holy joy before which all sorrow and sighing flee away.Their poverty, which had never afflicted them very grievously, was almost lost sight of by the corner-house family, when Hester’s infant was born. They were all happy and satisfied then, though there were people in Deerbrook who found fault with their arrangements, and were extremely scandalised when it was found that no nurse had arrived from Blickley, and that Morris took the charge of her mistress upon herself. The Greys pronounced by their own fireside that it was a strange fancy—carrying an affection for an old servant to a rather romantic extreme—that it was a fresh instance of the “enthusiasm” which adversity had not yet moderated in their cousins, as might have been wished. Out-of-doors, however, Sophia vaunted the attachment of Morris to her young mistress—an attachment so strong, as that she would have been really hurt if any one else had been allowed to sit up with Hester; and indeed no one could have filled her place half so much to the satisfaction of the family—Morris had had so much experience, and was as fond of her charge as a mother could be. No one knew what a treasure her cousins had in Morris. All of which was true in its separate particulars, though altogether it did not constitute the reason why Hester had no nurse from Buckley.They were happy and satisfied. Yes, even Margaret. This infant opened up a spring of consolation in her heart, which she could not have believed existed there. On this child she could pour out some of her repressed affections, and on him did she rest her baffled hopes. He beguiled her into the future, from which she had hitherto recoiled. That helpless, unconscious little creature, cradled on her arm, and knowing nothing of its resting-place, was more powerful than sister, brother, or friend—than self-interest, philosophy, or religion, in luring her imagination onward into future years of honour and peace. Holy and sweet was the calm of her mind, as, forgetting herself and her griefs, she watched the first efforts of this infant to acquaint himself with his own powers, and with the world about him; when she smiled at the ungainly stretching of the little limbs, and the unpractised movement of his eyes seeking the light. Holy and sweet were the tears which swelled into her eyes when she saw him at his mother’s breast, and could not but gaze at the fresh and divine beauty now mantling on that mother’s face, amidst the joy of this new relation. It was a delicious moment when Hope came in, the first day that Hester sat by the fireside, when he stopped short for a brief instant, as if arrested by the beauty of what he saw; and then glanced towards Margaret for sympathy. It was a delicious moment to her—the moment of that full, free, unembarrassed glance, which she had scarcely met since the first days of their acquaintance.It was a pleasure to them all to see Hester well provided with luxuries. Maria, knowing that her surgeon would not accept money from her, took this opportunity of sending in wine. Oh, the pleasure of finding the neglected corkscrew, and making Morris take a glass with them! The Greys brought game, and Hester’s little table was well served every day. With what zeal did Margaret apply herself, under Morris’s teaching, to cook Hester’s choice little dinners! Yes, to cook them. Margaret was learning all Morris’s arts from her; for, of two troubles which somewhat disturbed this season of comfort, one was that it appeared too certain that Morris must go, as Susan and Charles had gone before her. No one had expressly declared this: it was left undiscussed, apparently by common consent, till it should be ascertained that baby was healthy and Hester getting strong; but the thought was in the minds of them all, and their plans involved preparation for this.The other trouble was, that with peace and comfort, some slight, very slight symptoms recurred of Hester’s propensity to self-torment. It could not be otherwise. The wonder was, that for weeks and months she had been relieved from her old enemy to the extent she had been. The reverence with which her husband and sister regarded the temper in which she had borne unbounded provocation and most unmerited adversity, sometimes beguiled them into a hope that her troubles from within were over for ever; but a little reflection, and some slight experience, taught them that this was unreasonable. They remembered that the infirmity of a lifetime was not to be wholly cured in half-a-year; and that they must expect some recurrence of her old malady at times when there was no immediate appeal to her magnanimity, and no present cause for anxiety for those in whom she forgot herself.The first time that Hester was in the drawing-room for the whole day, Morris was laying the cloth for dinner, and Margaret was walking up and down the room with the baby on her arm, when Hope came in. Hester forgot everybody and everything else when her husband appeared—a fact which Morris’s benevolence was never weary of noting and commenting upon to herself. She often wondered if ever lady loved her husband as her young mistress did; and she smiled to herself to see the welcome that beamed upon Hester’s whole face when Hope came to take his seat beside her on the sofa. This was in her mind to-day, when her master presently said:“Where is my boy? I have not seen him for hours. Why do you put him out of his father’s way? Oh, Margaret has him! Come, Margaret, yield him up. You can have him all the hours that I am away. You do not grudge him to me, do you?”“My master won’t have to complain, as many gentlemen do,” said Morris, “or as many gentlemen feel, if they don’t complain, that he is neglected for the sake of his baby.”“If you enjoy your dinner to-day, love,” said Hester, “you must not give me the credit of it. You and I are to sit down to our pheasant together, they tell me. Margaret and Morris will have it that they have both dined.”“There is little in getting a comfortable dinner ready,” said Morris, “whether it is the lady herself, or another, that looks to a trifle like that. It is the seeing his wife so full of care and thought about her baby as to have none to spare for him, that frets many an one who does not like to say anything about it. Fathers cannot be so taken with a very young baby as the mothers are, and it is mortifying to feel themselves neglected for a newcomer. I have often seen that, my dears; but I shall never see it here, I find.”“I do not know how you should, Morris,” said Hester, in something of the old tone, which made her sister’s heart throb almost before it reached her ear. “Margaret will save me from any such danger. Margaret takes care that nobody shall be engrossed with the baby but herself. She has not a thought to spare for any of us while she has baby in her arms. The little fellow has cut us all out.”Margaret quickly transferred the infant to her brother’s arm, and left the room. She thought it best; for her heart was very full, and she could not speak. She restrained her tears, and went into the kitchen to busy herself about the dinner she had cooked.“’Tis a fine pheasant, indeed, Miss Margaret, my dear, and beautifully roasted, I am sure: and I hope you will go up and see them enjoy it. I am so sorry, my dear, for what I said just now. I merely spoke what came up in my mind when I felt pleased, and never thought of its bringing on any remark. Nor was anything intended, I am sure, that should make you look so sad: so do you go up, and take the baby again, when they sit down to dinner, as if nothing had been said. Do, my dear, if I may venture to say so. I will follow you with the dinner in a minute.”“I wonder how it is, my love,” said Hope, in a voice which spoke all the tenderness of his heart; “I wonder how it is that you can endure wrong so nobly, and that you cannot bear the natural course of events. Tell me how it is, Hester, that you have sustained magnanimously all the injuries and misfortunes of many months, and that you now quarrel with Margaret’s affection for our child.”“Ah why, indeed, Edward?” she replied, humbly. “Why, but that I am unworthy that such an one as Margaret should love me and my child.”“Enough, enough. I only want to show you how I regard the case about this new love of Margaret’s. Do you not see how much happier she has been since this little fellow was born?”“Oh, yes.”“One may now fancy that she may be gay again. Let us remember what an oppressed heart she had, and what it must be to her to have a new object, so innocent and unconscious as this child, to lavish her affection upon. Do not let us grudge her the consolation, or poison the pleasure of this fresh interest.”“I am afraid it is done,” cried Hester, in great distress. “I was wicked—I was more cruel than any of our enemies, when I said what I did. I may well bear with them; for, God knows, I am at times no better than they. I have robbed my Margaret of her only comfort—spoiled her only pleasure.”“No, no. Here she comes. Look at her.”Margaret’s face was indeed serene, and she made as light of the matter as she could, when Hester implored that she would pardon her hasty and cruel words, and that she would show her forgiveness by continuing to cherish the child. He must not begin to suffer already for his mother’s faults, Hester said. There could be no doubt of Margaret’s forgiveness, nor of her forgetfulness of what had been said, as far as forgetfulness was possible. But the worst of such sayings is, that they carry in them that which prevents their being ever quite forgotten. Hester had effectually established a constraint in her sister’s intercourse with the baby, and imposed upon Margaret the incessant care of scrupulously adjusting the claims of the mother and the child. The evils arising from faulty temper may be borne, may be concealed, but can never be fully repaired. Happy they whose part it is to endure and to conceal, rather than to inflict, and to strive uselessly to repair!Margaret’s part was the easiest of the three, as they sat at the table—she with the baby in her arms, and all agreeing that the time was come for an explanation with Morris—for depending on themselves for almost all the work of the house.“Come, Morris,” said Hester, when the cloth was removed; “you must spare us half-an-hour. We want to consult with you. Come and sit down.”Morris came, with a foreboding heart.“It will be no news to you,” said Hope, “that we are very poor. You know nearly as much of our affairs as we do ourselves, as it is right that you should. We have not wished to make any further change in our domestic plans till this little fellow was born. But now that he is beginning to make his way in the world, and that his mother is well and strong, we feel that we must consider of some further effort to spend still less than we do now.”“There are two ways in which this may be done, we think, Morris,” said Hester. “We may either keep the comfort of having you with us, and pinch ourselves more as to dress and the table—”“Oh! ma’am, I hope you will not carry that any further.”“Well, if we do not carry that any further, the only thing to be done, I fear, is to part with you.”“Is there no other way, I wonder,” said Morris, as if thinking aloud. “If it must be one of these ways, it certainly seems to me to be better for ladies to work hard with good food, than to have a servant, and stint themselves in health and strength. But who would have thought of my young ladies coming to this?”“It is a situation in which hundreds and thousands are placed, Morris; and why not we, as well as they?”“May be so, ma’am: but it grieves one, too.”“Do not grieve. I believe we all think that this parting with you is the first real grief that our change of fortune has caused us. Somehow or other, we have been exceedingly comfortable in our poverty. If that had been all, we should have had a very happy year of it.”“One would desire to say nothing against what is God’s will, ma’am; but one may be allowed, perhaps, to hope that better times will come.”“I do hope it, and believe it,” said her master.“And if better times come, Morris, you will return to us. Will you not?”“My dear, you know nothing would make me leave you now (as you say I am a comfort to you) if I had any right to say I would stay. I could live upon as little as anybody, and could do almost without any wages. But there is my poor sister, you know, ladies. She depends upon me for everything, now that she cannot work herself: and I must earn money for her.”“We are quite aware of that,” said Margaret. “It is for your sake and hers, quite as much as for our own, that we think we must part.”“We wish to know what you would like to do,” said Hester. “Shall we try to find a situation for you near us, or would you be happier to go down among your old friends?”“I had better go where I am sure of employment, ma’am. Better go down to Birmingham at once. I should never have left it but for my young ladies’ sakes. But I should be right glad, my dears, to leave it again for you, if you can at any time write to say you wish for me back. There is another way I have thought of sometimes; but, of course, you cannot have overlooked anything that could occur to me. If you would all go to Birmingham, you have so many friends there, and my master would be valued as he ought to be; which there is no sign of his being in this place. I do not like this place, my dears. It is not good enough for you.”“We think any place good enough for us where there are men and women living,” said Hope, kindly but gravely. “Others have thought as you do, Morris, and have offered us temptations to go away; but we do not think it right. If we go, we shall leave behind us a bad character, which we do not deserve. If we stay, I have very little doubt of recovering my professional character, and winning over our neighbours to think better of us, and be kind to us again. We mean to try for it, if I should have to hire myself out as a porter in Mr Grey’s yards.”“Pray, don’t say that, sir. But, indeed, I believe you are so far right as that the good always conquers at last.”“Just so, Morris: that is what we trust. And for the sake of this little fellow, if for nothing else, we must stand by our good name. Who knows but that I may leave him a fine flourishing practice in this very place, when I retire or die?—always supposing he means to follow his father’s profession.”“Sir, that is looking forward very far.”“So it is, Morris. But however people may disapprove of looking forward too far, it is difficult to help it when they become parents. Your mistress could tell you, if she would own the truth, that she sees her son’s manly beauty already under that little wry mouth, and that odd button of a nose. Why may not I just as well fancy him a young surgeon?”“Morris would say, as she once said to me,” observed Margaret, “‘Remember death, my dear; remember death.’”“We will remember it,” said Morris, “but we must remember at the same time God’s mercy in giving life. He who gave life can preserve it: and this shall be my trust for you all, my dears, when I am far away from you. There is a knock! I must go. Oh! Miss Margaret, who will there be to go to the door when I am gone, but you?”Mr Jones had knocked at the door, and left a letter. These were its contents:—“Sir,—I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in applying to you for my own satisfaction. My wife and I have perceived with much concern that we have lost much of your custom of late. We mind little the mere falling off of custom in any quarter, in comparison with failing to give satisfaction. We have always tried, I am sure, to give satisfaction in our dealings with your family, sir; and if there has been any offence, I can assure you it is unintentional, and shall feel obliged by knowing what it is. We cannot conceive, sir, where you get your meat, if not from us; and if you have the trouble of buying it from a distance, I can only say we should be happy to save you the trouble, if we knew how to serve you to your liking; for, sir, we have a great respect for you and yours.“Your obedient servants,“John Jones,“Mary Jones.”“The kind soul!” cried Hester. “What must we say to them?”“We must set their minds at ease about our good-will to them. How that little fellow stares about him, like a child of double his age! I do believe I could make him look wise at my watch already. Yes, we must set the Joneses at ease, at all events.”“But how? We must not tell them that we cannot afford to buy of them as we did.”“No; that would be begging. We must trust to their delicacy not to press too closely for a reason, when once assured that we respect them as highly as they possibly can us.”“You may trust them,” said Margaret, “I am convinced. They will look in your face, and be satisfied without further question; and my advice, therefore, is, that you do not write, but go.”“I will; and now. They shall not suffer a moment’s pain that I can save them. Good-night, my boy! What! you have not learned to kiss yet. Well, among us all, you will soon know how, if teaching will do it. What a spirit he has! I fancy he will turn out like Frank.”

If Mrs Rowland was dissatisfied with her success, while seeing that some resources of comfort remained to the Hopes and Margaret, a view of the interior of the corner-house would probably have affected her deeply, and set her moralising on the incompleteness of all human triumphs. There was peace there which even she could not invade—could only, if she had known it, envy. Her power was now exhausted, and her work was unfinished. For many weeks, she had made Margaret as miserable as she had intended to make her. Margaret had suffered from an exasperating sense of injury; but that was only for a few hours. Hers was not a nature which could retain personal resentment for any length of time. She needed the relief of compassionate and forgiving feelings; and she cast herself into them for solace, as the traveller, emerging from the glaring desert, throws himself down beside the gushing spring in the shade. From the moment that she did this, it became her chief trouble that Philip was blamed by others. Her friends said as little as they could in reference to him, out of regard for her feelings; but she could not help seeing that Maria’s indignation was strong, and that Hester considered that her sister had had a happy escape from a man capable of treating her as Philip had done. If it had been possible to undertake his defence, Margaret would have done so. As there were no means of working upon others to forgive her wrongs, she made it her consolation to forgive them doubly herself; to cheer up under them; to live for the aim of being more worthy of Philip’s love, the less he believed her to be so. Her lot was far easier now than it had been in the winter. She had been his; and she believed that she still occupied his whole soul. She was not now the solitary, self-despising being she had felt herself before. Though cut off from intercourse with him as if the grave lay between them, she knew that sympathy with her heart and mind existed. She experienced the struggles, the moaning efforts, of affections doomed to solitude and silence; the shrinking from a whole long life of self-reliance, of exclusion from domestic life; the occasional horror of contemplating the waste and withering of some of the noblest parts of the immortal nature,—a waste and withering which are the almost certain consequence of violence done to its instincts and its laws. From these pains and terrors she suffered; and from some of smaller account,—from the petty insults, or speculations of the more coarse-minded of her neighbours, and the being too suddenly reminded by passing circumstances of the change which had come over her expectations and prospects; but her love, her forgiveness, her conviction of being beloved, bore her through all these, and saved her from that fever of the heart, in the paroxysms of which she had, in her former and severer trial, longed for death, even for non-existence.

She could enjoy but little of what had been her favourite solace at that time. She had but few opportunities now for long solitary walks. She saw the autumn fading away, melting in rain and cold fog, without its having been made use of. It had been as unfavourable a season as the summer,—dreary, unproductive, disappointing in every way; but there had been days in the latter autumn when the sun had shown his dim face, when the dank hedges had looked fresh, and the fallen leaves in the wood-paths had rustled under the tread of the squirrel; and Margaret would on such days have liked to spend the whole morning in rambles by herself. But there were reasons why she should not. Almost before the chilliness of the coming season began to be felt, hardship was complained of throughout the country. The prices of provisions were inordinately high; and the evil consequences which, in the rural districts, follow upon a scarcity, began to make themselves felt. The poachers were daring beyond belief; and deep was the enmity between the large proprietors and the labourers around them. The oldest men and women, and children scarcely able to walk, were found trespassing day by day in all plantations, with bags, aprons, or pinafores, full of fir-cones, and wood snapped off from the trees, or plucked out of the hedges. There was no end to repairing the fences. There were unpleasant rumours, too, of its being no longer safe to walk singly in the more retired places. No such thing as highway robbery had ever before been heard of at Deerbrook, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant; the oldest of the inhabitants being Jim Bird, the man of a hundred years. But there was reason now for the caution. Mr Jones’s meat-cart had been stopped on the high-road, by two men who came out of the hedge, and helped themselves to what the cart contained. An ill-looking fellow had crossed the path of Mrs James and her young sister in the Verdon woods, evidently with the intention of stopping the ladies; but luckily the jingling of a timber-wain was heard below, and the man had retreated. Mr Grey had desired that the ladies of his family would not go further without his escort than a mile out and back again on the high-road. They were not to attempt the lanes. The Miss Andersons no longer came into Deerbrook in their pony-chaise; and Mrs Howell reported to all her customers that Lady Hunter never walked in her own grounds without a footman behind her, two dogs before her, and the game-keeper within hearing of a scream. Mr Walcot was advised to leave his watch and purse at home when he set forth to visit his country patients; and it did not comfort him much to perceive that his neighbours were always vigilant to note the hour and minute of his setting forth, and to learn the precise time when he might be looked for at home again. It was observed, that he was generally back half-an-hour sooner than he was expected, with a very red face, and his horse all in a foam.

In addition to these grounds of objection to solitary walks, Margaret had strong domestic reasons for denying herself the rambles she delighted in. As the months rolled on, poverty pressed closer and closer. When the rent was secured, and some of the comforts provided which Hester must have in her confinement, so little was left that it became necessary to limit the weekly expenses of the family to a sum small enough to require the nicest management, and the most strenuous domestic industry, to make it suffice. Hope would not pledge his credit while he saw so little prospect of redeeming it. His family were of one mind as to purchasing nothing which they were not certainly able to pay for. This being his principle, he made every effort to increase his funds. A guinea or two dropped in now and then, in return for contributions to medical periodicals. Money was due to him from some of his patients. To these he sent in his bills again, and even made personal application. From several he obtained promises; from two or three the amount of whose debt was very small, he got his money, disgraced by smiles of wonder and contempt. From the greater number he received nothing but excuses on account of the pressure of the times. The small sums he did recover were of a value which none of the three had ever imagined that money could be to them. Every little extra comfort thus obtained,—the dinner of meat once oftener in the week, the fire in the evening, the new gloves for Hope, when the old ones could no longer, by any mending, be made to look fit for him,—what a luxury it was! And all the more for being secretly enjoyed. No one out of the house had a suspicion how far their poverty had gone. Mr Grey had really been vexed at them for withdrawing from the book club; had attributed this instance of economy to the “enthusiasm” which was, in his eyes, the fault of the family; and never dreamed of their not dining on meat, vegetables, and pudding, with their glass of wine, every day. The Greys little knew what a blessing they were conferring on their cousins, when they insisted on having them for a long day once more before Hester’s confinement, and set them down to steaming soup, and a plentiful joint, and accompaniments without stint. The guests laughed, when they were at home again, over the new sort of pleasure they had felt, the delight at the sight of a good dinner, to which nothing was wanting but that Morris should have had her share. Morris, for her part, had been very happy at home. She had put aside for her mistress’s luncheon next day, the broth which she had been told was for her, and had feasted on potatoes and water, and the idea of the good dinner her young ladies were to enjoy. While their affairs were in this state, it was a great luxury in the family to have any unusual comfort which betokened that Hope had been successful in some of his errands,—had received a fee, or recovered the amount of a bill. One day, Morris brought in a goose and giblets, which had been bought and paid for by Mr Hope, the messenger said. Another morning, came a sack of apples, from the orchard of a country patient who was willing to pay in kind. At another time Edward emptied his pockets of knitted worsted stockings and mittens, the handiwork of a farmer’s dame, who was flattered by his taking the produce of her evening industry instead of money, which she could not well spare at the present season. There was more mirth, more real gladness in the house, on the arrival of windfalls like these, than if Hope had daily exhibited a purse full of gold. There was no sting in their poverty; no adventitious misery belonging to it. They suffered its genuine force, and that was all.

What is Poverty? Not destitution, but poverty? It has many shapes,—aspects almost as various as the minds and circumstances of those whom it visits. It is famine to the savage in the wilds; it is hardship to the labourer in the cottage; it is disgrace to the proud; and to the miser despair. It is a spectre which “with dread of change perplexes” him who lives at ease. Such are its aspects: but what is it? It is a deficiency of the comforts of life,—a deficiency present and to come. It involves many other things; but this is what it is. Is it then worth all the apprehension and grief it occasions? Is it an adequate cause for the gloom of the merchant, the discontent of the artisan, the foreboding sighs of the mother, the ghastly dreams which haunt the avaricious, the conscious debasement of the subservient, the humiliation of the proud? These are severe sufferings; are they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving life itself unimpaired. “The life is more than food, and the body than raiment;” and the untimely extinction of the life itself would not be worth the pangs which apprehended poverty excites. But poverty involves woes which, in their sum, are far greater than itself. To a multitude it is the loss of a pursuit which they have yet to learn will be certainly supplied. For such, alleviation or compensation is in store, in the rising up of objects new, and the creation of fresh hopes. The impoverished merchant, who may no longer look out for his argosies, may yet be in glee when he finds it “a rare dropping morning for the early colewort.” To another multitude, poverty involves loss of rank,—a letting down among strangers whose manners are ungenial, and their thoughts unfamiliar. For these there may be solace in retirement, or the evil may fall short of its threats. The reduced gentlewoman may live in patient solitude, or may grow into sympathy with her neighbours, by raising some of them up to herself, and by warming her heart at the great central fire of Humanity, which burns on under the crust of manners as rough as the storms of the tropics, or as frigid as polar snows. The avaricious are out of the pale of peace already, and at all events. Poverty is most seriously an evil to sons and daughters, who see their parents stripped of comfort, at an age when comfort is almost one with life itself: and to parents who watch the narrowing of the capacities of their children by the pressure of poverty,—the impairing of their promise, the blotting out of their prospects. To such mourning children there is little comfort, but in contemplating the easier life which lies behind, and (it may be hoped) the happier one which stretches before their parents, on the other side the postern of life. If there is sunshine on the two grand reaches of their path, the shadow which lies in the midst is necessarily but a temporary gloom. To grieving parents it should be a consoling truth, that as the life is more than food, so is the soul more than instruction and opportunity, and such accomplishments as man can administer: that as the fowls are fed and the lilies clothed by Him whose hand made the air musical with the one, and dressed the fields with the other, so is the human spirit nourished and adorned by airs from heaven, which blow over the whole earth, and light from the skies, which no hand is permitted to intercept. Parents know not but that Providence may be substituting the noblest education for the misteaching of intermediate guardians. It may possibly be so; but if not, still there is appointed to every human being much training, many privileges, which capricious fortune can neither give nor take away. The father may sigh to see his boy condemned to the toil of the loom, or the gossip and drudgery of the shop, when he would fain have beheld him the ornament of a university; but he knows not whether a more simple integrity, a loftier disinterestedness, may not come out of the humbler discipline than the higher privilege. The mother’s eyes may swim as she hears her little daughter sing her baby brother to sleep on the cottage threshold,—her eyes may swim at the thought how those wild and moving tones might have been exalted by art. Such art would have been in itself a good; but would this child then have been, as now, about her Father’s business, which, in ministering to one of his little ones, she is as surely as the archangel who suspends new systems of worlds in the furthest void? Her occupation is now earnest and holy; and what need the true mother wish for more?

What is poverty to those who are not thus set in families? What is it to the solitary, or to the husband and wife who have faith in each other’s strength? If they have the higher faith which usually originates mutual trust, mere poverty is scarcely worth a passing fear. If they have plucked out the stings of pride and selfishness, and purified their vision by faith, what is there to dread? What is their case? They have life, without certainty how it is to be nourished. They do without certainty, like “the young ravens which cry,” and work for and enjoy the subsistence of the day, leaving the morrow to take care of what concerns it. If living in the dreariest abodes of a town, the light from within shines in the dark place, and, dispelling the mists of worldly care, guides to the blessing of tending the sick, and sharing the food of to-day with the orphan, and him who has no help but in them. If the philosopher goes into such retreats with his lantern, there may he best find the generous and the brave. If, instead of the alleys of a city, they live under the open sky, they are yet lighter under their poverty. There, however blank the future may lie before them, they have to-day the living reality of lawns and woods, and flocks in “the green pasture and beside the still waters,” which silently remind them of the Shepherd, under whom they shall not want any real good thing. The quiet of the shady lane is theirs, and the beauty of the blossoming thorn above the pool. Delight steals through them with the scent of the violet, or the new mown hay. If they have hushed the voices of complaint and fear within them, there is the music of the merry lark for them, or of the leaping waterfall, or of a whole orchestra of harps, when the breeze sweeps through a grove of pines. While it is not for fortune to “rob them of free nature’s grace,” and while she leaves them life and strength of limb and soul, the certainty of a future, though they cannot see what, and the assurance of progression, though they cannot see how,—is poverty worth, for themselves, more than a passing doubt? Can it ever be worth the torment of fear, the bondage of subservience?—the compromise of free thought,—the sacrifice of free speech,—the bending of the erect head, the veiling of the open brow, the repression of the salient soul? If; instead of this, poverty should act as the liberator of the spirit, awakening it to trust in God and sympathy for man, and placing it aloft, fresh and free, like morning on the hill-top, to survey the expanse of life, and recognise its realities from beneath its mists, it should be greeted with that holy joy before which all sorrow and sighing flee away.

Their poverty, which had never afflicted them very grievously, was almost lost sight of by the corner-house family, when Hester’s infant was born. They were all happy and satisfied then, though there were people in Deerbrook who found fault with their arrangements, and were extremely scandalised when it was found that no nurse had arrived from Blickley, and that Morris took the charge of her mistress upon herself. The Greys pronounced by their own fireside that it was a strange fancy—carrying an affection for an old servant to a rather romantic extreme—that it was a fresh instance of the “enthusiasm” which adversity had not yet moderated in their cousins, as might have been wished. Out-of-doors, however, Sophia vaunted the attachment of Morris to her young mistress—an attachment so strong, as that she would have been really hurt if any one else had been allowed to sit up with Hester; and indeed no one could have filled her place half so much to the satisfaction of the family—Morris had had so much experience, and was as fond of her charge as a mother could be. No one knew what a treasure her cousins had in Morris. All of which was true in its separate particulars, though altogether it did not constitute the reason why Hester had no nurse from Buckley.

They were happy and satisfied. Yes, even Margaret. This infant opened up a spring of consolation in her heart, which she could not have believed existed there. On this child she could pour out some of her repressed affections, and on him did she rest her baffled hopes. He beguiled her into the future, from which she had hitherto recoiled. That helpless, unconscious little creature, cradled on her arm, and knowing nothing of its resting-place, was more powerful than sister, brother, or friend—than self-interest, philosophy, or religion, in luring her imagination onward into future years of honour and peace. Holy and sweet was the calm of her mind, as, forgetting herself and her griefs, she watched the first efforts of this infant to acquaint himself with his own powers, and with the world about him; when she smiled at the ungainly stretching of the little limbs, and the unpractised movement of his eyes seeking the light. Holy and sweet were the tears which swelled into her eyes when she saw him at his mother’s breast, and could not but gaze at the fresh and divine beauty now mantling on that mother’s face, amidst the joy of this new relation. It was a delicious moment when Hope came in, the first day that Hester sat by the fireside, when he stopped short for a brief instant, as if arrested by the beauty of what he saw; and then glanced towards Margaret for sympathy. It was a delicious moment to her—the moment of that full, free, unembarrassed glance, which she had scarcely met since the first days of their acquaintance.

It was a pleasure to them all to see Hester well provided with luxuries. Maria, knowing that her surgeon would not accept money from her, took this opportunity of sending in wine. Oh, the pleasure of finding the neglected corkscrew, and making Morris take a glass with them! The Greys brought game, and Hester’s little table was well served every day. With what zeal did Margaret apply herself, under Morris’s teaching, to cook Hester’s choice little dinners! Yes, to cook them. Margaret was learning all Morris’s arts from her; for, of two troubles which somewhat disturbed this season of comfort, one was that it appeared too certain that Morris must go, as Susan and Charles had gone before her. No one had expressly declared this: it was left undiscussed, apparently by common consent, till it should be ascertained that baby was healthy and Hester getting strong; but the thought was in the minds of them all, and their plans involved preparation for this.

The other trouble was, that with peace and comfort, some slight, very slight symptoms recurred of Hester’s propensity to self-torment. It could not be otherwise. The wonder was, that for weeks and months she had been relieved from her old enemy to the extent she had been. The reverence with which her husband and sister regarded the temper in which she had borne unbounded provocation and most unmerited adversity, sometimes beguiled them into a hope that her troubles from within were over for ever; but a little reflection, and some slight experience, taught them that this was unreasonable. They remembered that the infirmity of a lifetime was not to be wholly cured in half-a-year; and that they must expect some recurrence of her old malady at times when there was no immediate appeal to her magnanimity, and no present cause for anxiety for those in whom she forgot herself.

The first time that Hester was in the drawing-room for the whole day, Morris was laying the cloth for dinner, and Margaret was walking up and down the room with the baby on her arm, when Hope came in. Hester forgot everybody and everything else when her husband appeared—a fact which Morris’s benevolence was never weary of noting and commenting upon to herself. She often wondered if ever lady loved her husband as her young mistress did; and she smiled to herself to see the welcome that beamed upon Hester’s whole face when Hope came to take his seat beside her on the sofa. This was in her mind to-day, when her master presently said:

“Where is my boy? I have not seen him for hours. Why do you put him out of his father’s way? Oh, Margaret has him! Come, Margaret, yield him up. You can have him all the hours that I am away. You do not grudge him to me, do you?”

“My master won’t have to complain, as many gentlemen do,” said Morris, “or as many gentlemen feel, if they don’t complain, that he is neglected for the sake of his baby.”

“If you enjoy your dinner to-day, love,” said Hester, “you must not give me the credit of it. You and I are to sit down to our pheasant together, they tell me. Margaret and Morris will have it that they have both dined.”

“There is little in getting a comfortable dinner ready,” said Morris, “whether it is the lady herself, or another, that looks to a trifle like that. It is the seeing his wife so full of care and thought about her baby as to have none to spare for him, that frets many an one who does not like to say anything about it. Fathers cannot be so taken with a very young baby as the mothers are, and it is mortifying to feel themselves neglected for a newcomer. I have often seen that, my dears; but I shall never see it here, I find.”

“I do not know how you should, Morris,” said Hester, in something of the old tone, which made her sister’s heart throb almost before it reached her ear. “Margaret will save me from any such danger. Margaret takes care that nobody shall be engrossed with the baby but herself. She has not a thought to spare for any of us while she has baby in her arms. The little fellow has cut us all out.”

Margaret quickly transferred the infant to her brother’s arm, and left the room. She thought it best; for her heart was very full, and she could not speak. She restrained her tears, and went into the kitchen to busy herself about the dinner she had cooked.

“’Tis a fine pheasant, indeed, Miss Margaret, my dear, and beautifully roasted, I am sure: and I hope you will go up and see them enjoy it. I am so sorry, my dear, for what I said just now. I merely spoke what came up in my mind when I felt pleased, and never thought of its bringing on any remark. Nor was anything intended, I am sure, that should make you look so sad: so do you go up, and take the baby again, when they sit down to dinner, as if nothing had been said. Do, my dear, if I may venture to say so. I will follow you with the dinner in a minute.”

“I wonder how it is, my love,” said Hope, in a voice which spoke all the tenderness of his heart; “I wonder how it is that you can endure wrong so nobly, and that you cannot bear the natural course of events. Tell me how it is, Hester, that you have sustained magnanimously all the injuries and misfortunes of many months, and that you now quarrel with Margaret’s affection for our child.”

“Ah why, indeed, Edward?” she replied, humbly. “Why, but that I am unworthy that such an one as Margaret should love me and my child.”

“Enough, enough. I only want to show you how I regard the case about this new love of Margaret’s. Do you not see how much happier she has been since this little fellow was born?”

“Oh, yes.”

“One may now fancy that she may be gay again. Let us remember what an oppressed heart she had, and what it must be to her to have a new object, so innocent and unconscious as this child, to lavish her affection upon. Do not let us grudge her the consolation, or poison the pleasure of this fresh interest.”

“I am afraid it is done,” cried Hester, in great distress. “I was wicked—I was more cruel than any of our enemies, when I said what I did. I may well bear with them; for, God knows, I am at times no better than they. I have robbed my Margaret of her only comfort—spoiled her only pleasure.”

“No, no. Here she comes. Look at her.”

Margaret’s face was indeed serene, and she made as light of the matter as she could, when Hester implored that she would pardon her hasty and cruel words, and that she would show her forgiveness by continuing to cherish the child. He must not begin to suffer already for his mother’s faults, Hester said. There could be no doubt of Margaret’s forgiveness, nor of her forgetfulness of what had been said, as far as forgetfulness was possible. But the worst of such sayings is, that they carry in them that which prevents their being ever quite forgotten. Hester had effectually established a constraint in her sister’s intercourse with the baby, and imposed upon Margaret the incessant care of scrupulously adjusting the claims of the mother and the child. The evils arising from faulty temper may be borne, may be concealed, but can never be fully repaired. Happy they whose part it is to endure and to conceal, rather than to inflict, and to strive uselessly to repair!

Margaret’s part was the easiest of the three, as they sat at the table—she with the baby in her arms, and all agreeing that the time was come for an explanation with Morris—for depending on themselves for almost all the work of the house.

“Come, Morris,” said Hester, when the cloth was removed; “you must spare us half-an-hour. We want to consult with you. Come and sit down.”

Morris came, with a foreboding heart.

“It will be no news to you,” said Hope, “that we are very poor. You know nearly as much of our affairs as we do ourselves, as it is right that you should. We have not wished to make any further change in our domestic plans till this little fellow was born. But now that he is beginning to make his way in the world, and that his mother is well and strong, we feel that we must consider of some further effort to spend still less than we do now.”

“There are two ways in which this may be done, we think, Morris,” said Hester. “We may either keep the comfort of having you with us, and pinch ourselves more as to dress and the table—”

“Oh! ma’am, I hope you will not carry that any further.”

“Well, if we do not carry that any further, the only thing to be done, I fear, is to part with you.”

“Is there no other way, I wonder,” said Morris, as if thinking aloud. “If it must be one of these ways, it certainly seems to me to be better for ladies to work hard with good food, than to have a servant, and stint themselves in health and strength. But who would have thought of my young ladies coming to this?”

“It is a situation in which hundreds and thousands are placed, Morris; and why not we, as well as they?”

“May be so, ma’am: but it grieves one, too.”

“Do not grieve. I believe we all think that this parting with you is the first real grief that our change of fortune has caused us. Somehow or other, we have been exceedingly comfortable in our poverty. If that had been all, we should have had a very happy year of it.”

“One would desire to say nothing against what is God’s will, ma’am; but one may be allowed, perhaps, to hope that better times will come.”

“I do hope it, and believe it,” said her master.

“And if better times come, Morris, you will return to us. Will you not?”

“My dear, you know nothing would make me leave you now (as you say I am a comfort to you) if I had any right to say I would stay. I could live upon as little as anybody, and could do almost without any wages. But there is my poor sister, you know, ladies. She depends upon me for everything, now that she cannot work herself: and I must earn money for her.”

“We are quite aware of that,” said Margaret. “It is for your sake and hers, quite as much as for our own, that we think we must part.”

“We wish to know what you would like to do,” said Hester. “Shall we try to find a situation for you near us, or would you be happier to go down among your old friends?”

“I had better go where I am sure of employment, ma’am. Better go down to Birmingham at once. I should never have left it but for my young ladies’ sakes. But I should be right glad, my dears, to leave it again for you, if you can at any time write to say you wish for me back. There is another way I have thought of sometimes; but, of course, you cannot have overlooked anything that could occur to me. If you would all go to Birmingham, you have so many friends there, and my master would be valued as he ought to be; which there is no sign of his being in this place. I do not like this place, my dears. It is not good enough for you.”

“We think any place good enough for us where there are men and women living,” said Hope, kindly but gravely. “Others have thought as you do, Morris, and have offered us temptations to go away; but we do not think it right. If we go, we shall leave behind us a bad character, which we do not deserve. If we stay, I have very little doubt of recovering my professional character, and winning over our neighbours to think better of us, and be kind to us again. We mean to try for it, if I should have to hire myself out as a porter in Mr Grey’s yards.”

“Pray, don’t say that, sir. But, indeed, I believe you are so far right as that the good always conquers at last.”

“Just so, Morris: that is what we trust. And for the sake of this little fellow, if for nothing else, we must stand by our good name. Who knows but that I may leave him a fine flourishing practice in this very place, when I retire or die?—always supposing he means to follow his father’s profession.”

“Sir, that is looking forward very far.”

“So it is, Morris. But however people may disapprove of looking forward too far, it is difficult to help it when they become parents. Your mistress could tell you, if she would own the truth, that she sees her son’s manly beauty already under that little wry mouth, and that odd button of a nose. Why may not I just as well fancy him a young surgeon?”

“Morris would say, as she once said to me,” observed Margaret, “‘Remember death, my dear; remember death.’”

“We will remember it,” said Morris, “but we must remember at the same time God’s mercy in giving life. He who gave life can preserve it: and this shall be my trust for you all, my dears, when I am far away from you. There is a knock! I must go. Oh! Miss Margaret, who will there be to go to the door when I am gone, but you?”

Mr Jones had knocked at the door, and left a letter. These were its contents:—

“Sir,—I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in applying to you for my own satisfaction. My wife and I have perceived with much concern that we have lost much of your custom of late. We mind little the mere falling off of custom in any quarter, in comparison with failing to give satisfaction. We have always tried, I am sure, to give satisfaction in our dealings with your family, sir; and if there has been any offence, I can assure you it is unintentional, and shall feel obliged by knowing what it is. We cannot conceive, sir, where you get your meat, if not from us; and if you have the trouble of buying it from a distance, I can only say we should be happy to save you the trouble, if we knew how to serve you to your liking; for, sir, we have a great respect for you and yours.“Your obedient servants,“John Jones,“Mary Jones.”

“Sir,—I hope you will excuse the liberty I take in applying to you for my own satisfaction. My wife and I have perceived with much concern that we have lost much of your custom of late. We mind little the mere falling off of custom in any quarter, in comparison with failing to give satisfaction. We have always tried, I am sure, to give satisfaction in our dealings with your family, sir; and if there has been any offence, I can assure you it is unintentional, and shall feel obliged by knowing what it is. We cannot conceive, sir, where you get your meat, if not from us; and if you have the trouble of buying it from a distance, I can only say we should be happy to save you the trouble, if we knew how to serve you to your liking; for, sir, we have a great respect for you and yours.

“Your obedient servants,

“John Jones,

“Mary Jones.”

“The kind soul!” cried Hester. “What must we say to them?”

“We must set their minds at ease about our good-will to them. How that little fellow stares about him, like a child of double his age! I do believe I could make him look wise at my watch already. Yes, we must set the Joneses at ease, at all events.”

“But how? We must not tell them that we cannot afford to buy of them as we did.”

“No; that would be begging. We must trust to their delicacy not to press too closely for a reason, when once assured that we respect them as highly as they possibly can us.”

“You may trust them,” said Margaret, “I am convinced. They will look in your face, and be satisfied without further question; and my advice, therefore, is, that you do not write, but go.”

“I will; and now. They shall not suffer a moment’s pain that I can save them. Good-night, my boy! What! you have not learned to kiss yet. Well, among us all, you will soon know how, if teaching will do it. What a spirit he has! I fancy he will turn out like Frank.”

Chapter Thirty Nine.The Long Nights.Almost as soon as Hope had left the house, Sydney Grey arrived, looking full of importance. He took care to shut the door before he would tell his errand. His mother had been obliged to trust him for want of another messenger; and he delivered his message with a little of the parade of mystery he had derived from her. Mr Grey’s family had become uneasy about his returning from the markets in the evening, since robberies had become so frequent as they now were, and the days so short; and had at length persuaded him to sleep at the more distant market-towns he had to visit, and return the next morning. From Blickley he could get home before the evening closed in; but on two days in the week he was to remain out all night. When he had agreed to this, his family had applauded him and felt satisfied: but as the evening drew on, on occasion of this his first absence, Mrs Grey and Sophia had grown nervous on their own account. They recalled story after story, which they had lately heard, of robberies at several solitary houses in the country round; and, though their house was not solitary, they could not reconcile themselves to going to rest without the comfort of knowing that there was, as usual, a strong man on their premises. If they had been aware how many strong men there were sometimes on their premises at night, they would not have been satisfied with having one within their walls. Not having been informed, however, how cleverly their dogs were silenced, how much poached game was divided under the shelter of their stacks of deals, and what dextrous abstractions were at such times made from the store of corn in their granaries, and coal in their lighters, they proposed nothing further than to beg the favour of Mr Hope that he would take a bed in their house for this one night. They dared not engage any of the men from the yards to defend them; they had not Mr Grey’s leave, and he might not be pleased if they showed any fear to their own servants: but it would be the greatest comfort if Mr Hope would come, as if to supper, and stay the night. The spare room was ready; and Mrs Grey hoped he would not object to leaving his family just for once. Mr Grey intended to do the same thing twice a week, till the days should lengthen, and the roads become safer.Though Sydney made the most of his message, he declared himself not thoroughly pleased with it.“They might have trusted me to take care of them,” said he. “If they had just let me have my father’s pistols—.”“Come, come, Sydney, do not talk of pistols,” said Hester, who did not relish any part of the affair.“He would not talk of them if he thought they were likely to be wanted,” observed Margaret.“Likely! when were they ever more likely to be wanted, I should like to know! Did you hear what happened at the Russell Taylors’ last night?”“No; and we do not wish to hear. Do not tell us any horrible stories, unless you mean my husband to stay at home to-night.”“Oh, you must just hear this, because it ended well; that is, nobody was killed. Mr Walcot told Sophia all about it this morning; and it was partly that which made her so anxious to have some one sleep in the house to-night.”“Well, then, do not tell us, or you will make us anxious for the same thing.”“What would your mother say if you were to carry home word that Mr Hope could not come—that his family dare not part with him?”“Oh, then she must let me have my father’s pistols, and watch for the fellows. If they came about our windows as they did about the Russell Taylors’, how I would let fly among them! They came rapping at the shutters, at two this morning; and when Mr Taylor looked out from his bedroom above, they said they would not trouble themselves to get in, if he would throw out his money!”“And did he?”“Yes. They raised a hat upon a pole, and he put in four or five pounds—all he had in the house, he told them. So they went away; but none of the family thought of going to bed again.”“I dare say not. And what sort of thieves are these supposed to be? They set about their business very oddly.”“Not like London thieves,” said Sydney, consequentially, as if he knew all about London thieves. “They are the distressed country people, no doubt—such as would no more think of standing a second shot from my pistol, than of keeping the straits of Thermopylae. Look here,” he continued, showing the end of a pistol, which peeped from a pocket inside his coat; “here’s a thing that will put such gentry into a fine taking.”“Pray, is that pistol loaded?” inquired Hester, pressing her infant to her.“To be sure. What is the use of a pistol if it is not loaded? It might as well be in the shop as in my pocket, then. Look at her, cousin Margaret! If she is not in as great a fright as the cowardly thieves! Why, cousin Hester, don’t you see, if this pistol went off, it would not shoot you or the baby. It would go straight through me.”“That is a great comfort. But I had rather you would go away, you and your pistol. Pray, does your mother know that you carry one?”“No. Mind you don’t tell her. I trust you not to tell her. Remember, I would not have told you if I had not felt sure of you.”“You had better not have felt sure of us. However, we will not tell your mother; but my husband will tell Mr Grey to-morrow, when he comes home. If he chooses that you should carry loaded pistols about, there will be no harm done.”“I have a great mind to say I will shoot you if you tell,” cried Sydney, presenting the pistol with a grand air. But he saw that he made his cousins really uneasy, and he laid it down on the table, offering to leave it with them for the night, if they thought it would make them feel any safer. There were plenty more at home.“Thank you,” said Margaret, “but I believe we are more afraid of loaded pistols than of thieves. The sooner you take it away the better. You can go now, presently, for here comes my brother.”Sydney quickly pocketed his pistol. Hope agreed to go, and promised to be at Mr Grey’s to supper by nine o’clock.Margaret was incessantly thinking of Maria in these long evenings, when alarms of one kind or another were all abroad. She now thought she would go with Sydney, and spend an hour or two with Maria, returning by the time her brother would be going to the Greys’. Maria’s landlord would see her home, no doubt.She found her friend busy with book and needle, and as well in health as usual, but obviously somewhat moved by the dismal stories which had travelled from mouth to mouth through Deerbrook during the day. It seemed hardly right that any person in delicate health should be lonely at such a time; and it occurred to Margaret that her friend might like to go home with her, and occupy the bed which was this night to spare. Maria thankfully accepted the offer, and let Margaret put up her little bundle for her. The farrier escorted them to the steps of the corner-house, and then left them.The door was half-open, as Morris was talking with some one on the mat in the hall. An extremely tall woman, with a crying baby in her arms, made way for the ladies, not by going out of the house, but by stepping further into the hall.“Morris, had you not better shut the door?” said Margaret; “the wind blows in so, it is enough to chill the whole house.”But Morris held the door open, rather wider than before.“So the gentleman is not at home,” said the tall woman, gruffly. “If I come again in an hour with my poor baby, will he be at home then?”“Is my brother gone, Morris?”“Yes, Miss, three minutes ago.”“Then he will not be back in an hour. We do not expect him—.”“This good woman had better go to Mr Walcot, ma’am, as I have been telling her. There’s no doubt he is at home.”“I could wait here till the gentleman comes home,” said the tall woman; “and so get the first advice for my poor baby. ’Tis very ill, ma’am.”“Better go to Mr Walcot,” persisted Morris.“Or to my brother at Mr Grey’s,” said Margaret, unwilling to lose the chance of a new patient for Edward, and thinking his advice better, for the child’s sake, than Mr Walcot’s.“It is far the readiest way to go to Mr Walcot’s,” declared Maria, whose arm Margaret felt to tremble within her own.“I believe you are right,” said Margaret. “You had better not waste any more time here, good woman. It may make all the difference to your child.”“If you would let me wait till the gentleman comes home,” said the tall woman.“Impossible. It is too late to-night for patients to wait. This lady’s landlord, without there, will show you the way to Mr Walcot’s. Call him, Morris.”Morris went out upon the steps, but the tall woman passed her, and was gone. Morris stepped in briskly, and put up the chain.“You were very ready to send a new patient to Mr Walcot, Morris,” said Margaret, smiling.“I had a fancy that it was a sort of patient that my master would not be the better for,” replied Morris. “I did not like the looks of the person.”“Nor I,” said Maria.The drawing-room door was heard to open, and Morris put her finger on her lips. Hester had been alone nearly ten minutes; she was growing nervous, and wanted to know what all this talking in the hall was about. She was told that Mr Hope had been inquired for, about a sick baby; and the rest of the discourse went to the account of Maria’s unexpected arrival. Hester welcomed Maria kindly, ordered up the cold pheasant and the wine, and then, leaving the friends to enjoy themselves over the fire, retired to rest. Morris was desired to go too, as she still slept in her mistress’s room, and ought to keep early hours, since, in addition to her labours of the day, she was at the baby’s call in the night. Margaret would see her friend to her room. Morris must not remain up on their account.“How comfortable this is!” cried Maria, in a gleeful tone, as she looked round upon the crackling fire, the tray, the wine, and her companion. “How unlooked for, to pass a whole evening and night without being afraid of anything!”“What an admission from you!—that you are afraid of something every night.”“That is just the plain truth. When I used to read about the horrors of living in a solitary house in the country, I little thought how much of the same terror I should feel from living solitary in a house in a village. You wonder what could happen to me, I dare say; and perhaps it would not be very easy to suppose any peril which would stand examination.”“I was going to say that you and we are particularly safe, from being so poor that there is no inducement to rob us. We and you have neither money nor jewels, nor plate, that can tempt thieves!—for our few forks and spoons are hardly worth breaking into a house for.”“People who want bread, however, may think it worth while to break in for that: and while our thieves are this sort of people, and not the London gentry whom Sydney is so fond of talking of, it may be enough that gentlemen and ladies live in houses to make the starving suppose that they shall find something valuable there.”“They would soon learn better if they came here. I doubt whether, when you and I have done our supper, they would find anything to eat. But how do you show your terrors, I should like to know? Do you scream?”“I never screamed in my life, as far as I remember. Screaming appears to me the most unnatural of human sounds. I never felt the slightest inclination to express myself in that manner.”“Nor I: but I never said so, because I thought no one would believe me.”“No: the true mood for these doleful winter nights is, to sit trying to read, but never able to fix your attention for five minutes, for some odd noise or another. And yet it is almost worse to hear nothing but a cinder falling on the hearth now and then, startling you like a pistol-shot. Then it seems as if somebody was opening the shutter outside, and then tapping at the window. I have got so into the habit of looking at the window at night, expecting to see a face squeezed flat against the pane, that I have yielded up my credit to myself, and actually have the blinds drawn down when the outside shutters are closed.”“How glad I am to find you are no braver than the rest of us!”“No; do not be glad. It is very painful, night after night. Every step clinks or craunches in the farrier’s yard, you know. This ought to be a comfort: but sometimes I cannot clearly tell where the sound comes from. More than once lately I have fancied it was behind me, and have turned round in a greater hurry than you would think I could use. My rooms are a good way from the rest of the house; you remember the length of the passage between. I do not like disturbing the family in the evenings; but I have been selfish enough to ring, once or twice this week, without any sufficient reason, just for the sake of a sight of my landlady.”“A very sufficient reason. But I had no idea of all this from you.”“You have heard me say some fine things about the value of time to me—about the blessings of my long evenings. For all that (true as it is), I have got into the way of going to bed soon after ten, just because I know every one else in the house is in bed, and I do not like to be the only person up.”“That is the reason why you are looking so well, notwithstanding all these terrors. But, Maria, what has become of your bravery?”“It is just where it was. I am no more afraid than I used to be of evils which may be met with a mature mind: and just as much afraid as ever of those which terrified my childhood.”“Our baby shall never be afraid of anything,” asserted Margaret. “But Maria, something must be done for your relief.”“That is just what I hoped and expected you would say, and the reason why I exposed myself to you.”“Why do not the Greys offer you a room there for the winter? That seems the simplest and most obvious plan.”“It is not convenient.”“How should that be?”“The bed would have to be uncovered, you know; and the mahogany wash-stand might be splashed.”“They can get a room ready for a guest, to relieve their own fears, but not yours. Can nothing be done about it?”“Not unless the Rowlands should take in Mr Walcot, because he is afraid to live alone: in such case, the Greys would take me in for the same reason. But that will not be so, Margaret, I will ask you plainly, and you will answer as plainly—could you, without too much pain, trouble, and inconvenience, spend an evening or two a week with me, just till this panic is passed? If you could put it in my power to be always looking forward to an evening of relief, it would break the sense of solitude, and make all the difference to me. I see the selfishness of this; but I really think it is better to own my weakness than to struggle uselessly against it any longer.”“I could do that—should like of all things to do it till Morris goes: but that will be so soon—.”“Morris! where is she going?”Margaret related this piece of domestic news, too private to be told to any one else till the last moment. Maria forgot her own troubles, or despised them as she listened, so grieved was she for her friends, including Morris. Margaret was not very sorry on Morris’s own account. Morris wanted rest—an easier place. She had had too much upon her for some time past.“What then will you have, when she is gone?”“If I have work enough to drive all thought out of my head, I shall be thankful. Meantime, I will bestow my best wit upon your case.”“I am ashamed of my case already. While sitting in all this comfort here, I can hardly believe in my own tremors, of no earlier date than last night. Come, let us draw to the fire. I hope we shall not end with sitting up all night; but I feel as if I should like it very much.”Margaret stirred up a blaze, and put out the candles. No economy was now beneath her care. As she took her seat beside her friend, she said:“Maria, did you ever know any place so dull and dismal as Deerbrook is now? Is it not enough to make any heart as heavy as the fortunes of the place?”“Even the little that I see of it, in going to and from the Greys, looks sad enough. You see the outskirts, which I suppose are worse still.”“The very air feels too heavy to breathe. The cottages, and even the better houses, appear to my eyes damp and weather-stained on the outside, and silent within. The children sit shivering on the thresholds—do not they?—instead of shouting at their play as they did. Every one looks discontented, and complains—the poor of want of bread, and every one else of hard times, and all manner of woes, that one never hears of in prosperous seasons. Mr James says the actions for trespass are beyond all example; Mr Tucker declares his dog, that died the other day, was poisoned; and I never pass the Green but the women are even quarrelling for precedence at the pump.”“I have witnessed some of this, but not all: and neither, I suspect, have you, Margaret, though you think you have. We see the affairs of the world in shadow, you know, when our own hearts are sad.”“My heart is not so sad as you think. You do not believe me: but that is because you do not believe what I am sure of—that he is not to blame for anything that has happened—that, at least, he has only been mistaken,—that there his been no fickleness, no selfishness, in him. I could not speak of this, even to you, Maria, if it were not a duty to him. You must not be left to suppose from my silence that he is to blame, as you think he is. I suffer from no sense of injury from him. I got over that, long ago.”Maria would not say, as she thought, “You had to get over it, then?”“It makes me very unhappy to think how he is suffering,—how much more he has to bear than I; so much more than the separation and the blank. He cannot trust me as I trusted him; and that is, indeed, to be without consolation.”“Do men ever trust as women do?”“Yes, Edward does. If he were to go to India for twenty years, he would know, as certainly as I should, that Hester would be widowed in every thought till his return. And the time will come when Philip will know this as certainly of me. It is but a little while yet that I have waited, Maria; but it does sometimes seem a weary waiting.”Maria took her friend’s hand, in token of the sympathy she could not speak,—so much of hopelessness was there mingled with it.“I know you and others think that this waiting is to go on for ever.”“No, love; not so.”“Or that a certainty which is even worse will come some day. But it will be otherwise. His love can no more be quenched or alienated by the slanders of a wicked woman, than the sun can be put out by an eclipse, or sent to enlighten another world, leaving us mourning.”“You judge by your own soul, Margaret; and that should be a faithful guide. You judge him by your own soul,—and how much by this?” she added, with a smile, fixing her eyes on the turquoise ring, which was Philip’s gift, and which, safely guarded, was on a finger of the hand she held.Margaret blushed. She could not have denied, if closely pressed, that some little tinge of the Eastern superstition had entered into this sacred ring, and lay there, like the fire in the opal. She could not have denied, that, when she drew it on every morning, she noted with satisfaction that its blue was as clear and bright as ever.“How is it that this ring is still here?” asked Maria. “Is it possible that he retains gifts of yours? Yet, I think, if he did not, this ring would not be on your finger.”“He does keep whatever I gave him. Thank God! he keeps them. This is one of my greatest comforts: it is the only way I have left of speaking to him. But if it were not so, this ring would still be where it is. I would not give it up. I am not altered. I am not angry with him. His love is as precious to me as it ever was, and I will not give up the tokens of it. Why, Maria, you surely cannot suppose that these things have any other value or use but as given by him! You cannot suppose that I dread the imputation of keeping them for their own sakes!”“No: but—”“But what?”“Is any proof of his former regard of value now? That is the question. It has only very lately become a question with me. I have only lately learned to think him in fault. I excused him before... I excused him as long as I could.”“You will unlearn your present opinion of him. Yes; everything that was ever valuable from him is more precious than ever now,—now that he is under a spell, and cannot speak his soul. If it were, as you think, if he loved me no longer, they would be still more precious, as a relic of the dead. But it is not so.”“If faith can remove mountains, we may have to rejoice for you still, Margaret; for there can be no mass of calumnies between you and him which you have not faith enough to overthrow.”“Thank you for that. It is the best word of comfort that has come to me from without for many a day. Now there is one thing more in which you can perhaps help me. I have heard nothing about him for so long! You see Mr Rowland sometimes (I know he feels a great friendship for you); and you meet the younger children. Do you hear nothing whatever abouthim?”“Nothing: nor do they. Mr Rowland told me, a fortnight ago, that Mrs Rowland and he are seriously uneasy at obtaining no answers to their repeated letters to Mr Enderby. Mrs Rowland is more disturbed, I believe, than she chooses to show. She must feel herself responsible. She has tried various means of accounting for his silence, all the autumn. Now she gives that up, and is silent in her turn. If it were not for the impossibility of leaving home at such a time as this, Mr Rowland would go to London to satisfy himself. Margaret, I believe you are the only person who has smiled at this.”“Perhaps I am the only one who understands him. I had rather know of this silence than of all the letters he could have written to Mrs Rowland. If he had been ill, they would certainly have heard.”“Yes; they say so.”“Then that is enough. Let us say no more now.”“You have said that which has cheered me for you, Margaret, though, as we poor irreligious human beings often say to each other, ‘I wish I had your faith.’ You have given me more than I had, however. But are we to say no more about anything? Must we leave this comfortable fire, and go to sleep?”“Not unless you wish it. I have more to ask, if you are not tired.”“Come, ask me.”“Cannot you tell me of some way in which a woman may earn money?”“A woman? What rate of woman? Do you mean yourself? That question is easily answered. A woman from the uneducated classes can get a subsistence by washing and cooking, by milking cows and going to service, and, in some parts of the kingdom, by working in a cotton mill, or burnishing plate, as you have no doubt seen for yourself at Birmingham. But, for an educated woman, a woman with the powers which God gave her, religiously improved, with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would make every species of responsibility safe,—for such a woman there is in all England no chance of subsistence but by teaching—that almost ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education of circumstances, and for which not one in a thousand is fit—or by being a superior Miss Nares—the feminine gender of the tailor and the hatter.”“The tutor, the tailor, and the hatter. Is this all?”“All; except that there are departments of art and literature from which it is impossible to shut women out. These are not, however, to be regarded as resources for bread. Besides the number who succeed in art and literature being necessarily extremely small, it seems pretty certain that no great achievements, in the domains of art and imagination, can be looked for from either men or women who labour there to supply their lower wants, or for any other reason than the pure love of their work. While they toil in any one of the arts of expression, if they are not engrossed by some loftier meaning, the highest which they will end with expressing will be, the need of bread.”“True—quite true. I must not think of any of those higher departments of labour, because, even if I were qualified, what I want is not employment, but money. I am anxious to earn some money, Maria. We are very poor. Edward is trying, one way and another, to earn money to live upon, till his practice comes back to him, as he is for ever trusting it will. I wish to earn something too, if it be ever so little. Can you tell me of no way?”“I believe I should not if I could. Why? Because I think you have quite enough to do already, and will soon have too much. Just consider. When Morris goes, what hour of the day will you have to spare? Let us see;—do you mean to sweep the rooms with your own hands?”“Yes,” said Margaret, smiling.“And to scour them too?”“No; not quite that. We shall hire a neighbour to come two or three times a week to do the rougher parts of the work. But I mean to light the fire in the morning (and we shall have but one), and get breakfast ready; and Hester will help me to make the beds. That is nearly all I shall let her do besides the sewing; for baby will give her employment enough.”“Indeed, I think so; and that will leave you too much. Do not think, dear, of earning money. You are doing all you ought in saving it.”“I must think about it, because earning is so much nobler and more effectual than saving. I cannot help seeing that it would be far better to earn the amount of Morris’s maintenance, than to save it by doing her work badly myself. Not that I shrink from the labour: I am rather enjoying the prospect of it, as I told you. Hark! what footstep is that?”“I heard it a minute or two ago,” whispered Maria, “but I did not like to mention it.”They listened in the deepest silence for a while. At first they were not sure whether they heard anything above the beating of their own hearts; but they were soon certain that there were feet moving outside the room door.“The church clock has but lately gone twelve,” said Maria, in the faint hope that it might be some one of the household yet stirring.Margaret shook her head. She rose softly from her seat, and took a candle from the table to light it, saying she would go and see. Her hand trembled a little as she held the match, and the candle would not immediately light. Meantime, the door opened without noise, and some one walked in and quite up to the gazing ladies. It was the tall woman. Maria made an effort to reach the bell, but the tall woman seized her arm, and made her sit down. A capricious jet of flame from a coal in the fire at this moment lighted up the face of the stranger for a moment, and enabled Maria to “spy a creat peard under the muffler.”“What do you want at this time?” said Margaret.“I want money, and what else I can get,” said the intruder, in the no longer disguised voice of a man. “I have been into your larder, but you seem to have nothing there.”“That is true,” said Margaret, firmly; “nor have we any money. We are very poor. You could not have come to a worse place, if you are in want.”“Here is something, however,” said the man, turning to the tray. “With your leave, I’ll see what you have left us to eat.”He thrust one of the candles between the bars of the grate to light it, telling the ladies they had better start no difficulty, lest they should have reason to repent it. There were others with him in the house, who would show themselves in an instant, if any noise were made.“Then do you make none—I beg it as a favour,” said Margaret. “There is a lady asleep up-stairs, with a very young infant. If you respect her life you will be quiet.”The man did not answer, but he was quiet. He cut slices from the loaf, and carried them to the door, and they were taken by somebody outside. He quickly devoured the remains of the pheasant, tearing the meat from the bones with his teeth. He drank from the decanter of wine, and then carried it where he had taken the bread. Two men put their heads in at the door, nodded to the ladies before they drank, and again withdrew. The girls cast a look at each other—a glance of agreement that resistance was not to be thought of: yet each was conscious of a feeling of rather pleasant surprise that she was not more alarmed.“Now for it!” said the man, striding oddly about in his petticoats, and evidently out of patience with them. “Now for your money!” As he spoke, he put the spoons from the tray into the bosom of his gown, proceeding to murmur at his deficiency of pockets.Margaret held out her purse to him. It contained one single shilling.“You don’t mean this is all you are going to give me?”“It is all I have: and I believe there is not another shilling in the house. I told you we have no money.”“And you?” said he, turning to Maria.“I have not my purse about me; and if I had there is nothing in it worth your taking. I assure you I have not got my purse. I am only a visitor here for this one night—and an odd night it is to have chosen, as it turns out.”“Give me your watches.”“I have no watch. I have not had a watch these five years,” said Maria.“I have no watch,” said Margaret. “I sold mine a month ago. I told you we were very poor.”The man muttered something about the plague of gentlefolks being so poor, and about wondering that gentlefolks were not ashamed of being so poor. “You have got something, however,” he continued, fixing his eye on the ring on Margaret’s finger. “Give me that ring. Give it me, or else I’ll take it.”Margaret’s heart sank with a self-reproach worse than her grief, when she remembered how easily she might have saved this ring—how easily she might have thrust it under the fender, or dropped it into her shoe, into her hair, anywhere, while the intruder was gone to the room door to his companions. She felt that she could never forgive herself for this neglect of the most precious thing she had in the world—of that which most belonged to Philip.“She cannot part with that ring,” said Maria. “Look! you may see she had rather part with any money she is ever likely to have than with that ring.”She pointed to Margaret, who was sitting with her hands clasped as if they were never to be disjoined, and with a face of the deepest distress.“I can’t help that,” said the man. “I must have what I can get.”He seized her hands, and, with one gripe of his, made hers fly open. Margaret could no longer endure to expose any of her feelings to the notice of a stranger of this character. “Be patient a moment,” said she; and she drew off the ring after its guard, made of Hester’s hair, and put them into the large hand which was held out to receive them; feeling, at the moment, as if her heart was breaking. The man threw the hair ring back into her lap, and tied the turquoise in the corner of the shawl he wore.“The lady up-stairs has got a watch, I suppose.”“Yes, she has: let me go and fetch it. Do let me go. I am afraid of nothing so much as her being terrified. If you have any humanity, let me go. Indeed I will bring the watch.”“Well, there is no man in the house, I know, for you to call. You may go, Miss: but I must step behind you to the room door; no further—she shan’t see me, nor know any one is there, unless you tell her. This young lady will sit as still as a mouse till we come back.”“Never mind me,” said Maria, to her friend. While they were gone, she sat as she was desired, as still as a mouse, enforced thereto by the certainty that a man stood in the shadow by the door, with his eye upon her the whole time.Margaret lighted a chamber candle, in order, as she said, to look as usual if her sister should see her. The robber did tread very softly on the stairs, and stop outside the chamber-door. Morris was sitting up in her truckle-bed, evidently listening, and was on the point of starting out of it on seeing that Margaret’s face was pale, when Margaret put her finger on her lips, and motioned to her to lie down. Hester was asleep, with her sleeping infant on her arm. Margaret set down the light, and leaned over her, to take the watch from its hook at the head of the bed.“Are you still up?” said Hester, drowsily, and just opening her eyes. “What do you want? It must be very late.”“Nearly half-past twelve, by your watch. I am sorry I disturbed you. Good-night.”As she withdrew with the watch in her hand, she whispered to Morris:“Lie still. Don’t be uneasy. I will come again presently.” So, in a few minutes, as seemed to intently listening ears, the house was clear of the intruders. Within a quarter of an hour Margaret had beckoned Morris out of Hester’s room, and had explained the case to her. They went round the house, and found that all the little plate they had was gone, and the cheese from the pantry. Morris’s cloth cloak was left hanging on its pin, and even Edward’s old hat. From these circumstances, and from the dialect of the only speaker, Margaret thought the thieves must be country people from the neighbourhood, who could not wear the old clothes of the gentry without danger of detection. They had come in from the surgery, whose outer door was sufficiently distant from the inhabited rooms of the house to be forced without the noise being heard. Morris and Margaret barricaded this door as well as they could, with such chests and benches as they were able to move without making themselves heard up-stairs: and then Morris, at Margaret’s earnest desire, stole back to bed. Anything rather than alarm Hester.While they were below, Maria had put on more coals, and restored some order and comfort to the table and the fireside. She concluded that sleep was out of the question for this night. For some moments after Margaret came and sat down by her, neither of them spoke. At length Margaret said, half laughing:“That you should have come here for rest this night, of all nights in the year!”“I am glad it happened so. Yes; indeed, I am. I know it must have been a comfort to you to have some one with you, though only poor lame me. And I am glad on my own account too, I assure you. Such a visitation is not half so dreadful as I had fancied—not worth half the fear I have spent upon it all my life. I am sure you felt as I did while he was here; you felt quite yourself, did not you? If it had not been for the woman’s clothes, it would really have been scarcely terrifying at all. There is something much more human about a housebreaker than I had fancied. But yet it was very inhuman of him to take your ring.”Margaret wept more bitterly than any one had seen her weep since her unhappy days began, and her friend could not comfort her. It was a case in which there was no comfort to be given, unless in the very faint and unreasonable hope that the ring might be offered for sale to some jeweller in some market town in the county; a hope sadly faint and unreasonable; since country people who would take plate and ornaments must, in all probability, be in communication with London rogues, who would turn the property into money in the great city. Still, there was a possibility of recovering the lost treasure; and on this possibility Maria dwelt perseveringly.“But, Margaret,” she went on to ask, “what is this about your watch? Have you indeed sold it?”“Yes. Morris managed that for me while Hester was confined. I am glad now that I parted with it as I did. It has paid some bills which I know made Edward anxious; and that is far better than its being in a housebreaker’s hands.”“Yes, indeed: but I am sorry you all have such a struggle to live. Not a shilling in the house but the one you gave up!”“So much for Edward’s being out. It happened very well; for he could not have helped us, if he had been here. You saw there were three of them. What I meant was, that Edward has about him the little money that is to last us till Christmas. The rent is safe enough. It is in Mr Grey’s strong box or the bank at Blickley. The rent is too important a matter to be put to any hazard, considering that Mr Rowland is our landlord. It is all ready and safe.”“That is well. Now, Margaret, could you swear to this visitor of ours?”“No,” said Margaret, softly, looking round, as if to convince herself that he was not there still. “No: his bonnet was so large, and he kept the shadow of it so carefully upon his face, that I should not know him again—at least, not in any other dress; and we shall never see him again in this. It is very disagreeable,” she continued, shuddering slightly, “to think that we may pass him any day or every day, and that he may say to himself as we go by, ‘There go the ladies that sat with their feet on the fender so comfortably when I went in, without leave!’”“Poor wretch! he will rather say, ‘There goes the young lady that I made so unhappy about her ring. I wish I had choked with the wine I drank, before I took that ring!’ The first man you meet that cannot look you in the face is the thief, depend upon it, Margaret.”“I must not depend upon that. But, Maria, could you swear to him?”“I am not quite sure at this moment, but I believe I could. The light from the fire shone brightly upon his black chin, and a bit of lank hair that came from under his mob cap. I could swear to the shawl.”“So could I: but that will be burned to-morrow morning. Now, Maria, do go to bed.”“Well, if you had rather—. Cannot we be together? Must I be treated as a guest, and have a room to myself?”“Not if you think we can make room in mine. We shall be most comfortable there, shall not we—near to Morris and Hester?”Rather than separate, they both betook themselves to the bed in Margaret’s room. Maria lay still, as if asleep, but wide awake and listening. Margaret mourned her turquoise with silent tears all the rest of the night.

Almost as soon as Hope had left the house, Sydney Grey arrived, looking full of importance. He took care to shut the door before he would tell his errand. His mother had been obliged to trust him for want of another messenger; and he delivered his message with a little of the parade of mystery he had derived from her. Mr Grey’s family had become uneasy about his returning from the markets in the evening, since robberies had become so frequent as they now were, and the days so short; and had at length persuaded him to sleep at the more distant market-towns he had to visit, and return the next morning. From Blickley he could get home before the evening closed in; but on two days in the week he was to remain out all night. When he had agreed to this, his family had applauded him and felt satisfied: but as the evening drew on, on occasion of this his first absence, Mrs Grey and Sophia had grown nervous on their own account. They recalled story after story, which they had lately heard, of robberies at several solitary houses in the country round; and, though their house was not solitary, they could not reconcile themselves to going to rest without the comfort of knowing that there was, as usual, a strong man on their premises. If they had been aware how many strong men there were sometimes on their premises at night, they would not have been satisfied with having one within their walls. Not having been informed, however, how cleverly their dogs were silenced, how much poached game was divided under the shelter of their stacks of deals, and what dextrous abstractions were at such times made from the store of corn in their granaries, and coal in their lighters, they proposed nothing further than to beg the favour of Mr Hope that he would take a bed in their house for this one night. They dared not engage any of the men from the yards to defend them; they had not Mr Grey’s leave, and he might not be pleased if they showed any fear to their own servants: but it would be the greatest comfort if Mr Hope would come, as if to supper, and stay the night. The spare room was ready; and Mrs Grey hoped he would not object to leaving his family just for once. Mr Grey intended to do the same thing twice a week, till the days should lengthen, and the roads become safer.

Though Sydney made the most of his message, he declared himself not thoroughly pleased with it.

“They might have trusted me to take care of them,” said he. “If they had just let me have my father’s pistols—.”

“Come, come, Sydney, do not talk of pistols,” said Hester, who did not relish any part of the affair.

“He would not talk of them if he thought they were likely to be wanted,” observed Margaret.

“Likely! when were they ever more likely to be wanted, I should like to know! Did you hear what happened at the Russell Taylors’ last night?”

“No; and we do not wish to hear. Do not tell us any horrible stories, unless you mean my husband to stay at home to-night.”

“Oh, you must just hear this, because it ended well; that is, nobody was killed. Mr Walcot told Sophia all about it this morning; and it was partly that which made her so anxious to have some one sleep in the house to-night.”

“Well, then, do not tell us, or you will make us anxious for the same thing.”

“What would your mother say if you were to carry home word that Mr Hope could not come—that his family dare not part with him?”

“Oh, then she must let me have my father’s pistols, and watch for the fellows. If they came about our windows as they did about the Russell Taylors’, how I would let fly among them! They came rapping at the shutters, at two this morning; and when Mr Taylor looked out from his bedroom above, they said they would not trouble themselves to get in, if he would throw out his money!”

“And did he?”

“Yes. They raised a hat upon a pole, and he put in four or five pounds—all he had in the house, he told them. So they went away; but none of the family thought of going to bed again.”

“I dare say not. And what sort of thieves are these supposed to be? They set about their business very oddly.”

“Not like London thieves,” said Sydney, consequentially, as if he knew all about London thieves. “They are the distressed country people, no doubt—such as would no more think of standing a second shot from my pistol, than of keeping the straits of Thermopylae. Look here,” he continued, showing the end of a pistol, which peeped from a pocket inside his coat; “here’s a thing that will put such gentry into a fine taking.”

“Pray, is that pistol loaded?” inquired Hester, pressing her infant to her.

“To be sure. What is the use of a pistol if it is not loaded? It might as well be in the shop as in my pocket, then. Look at her, cousin Margaret! If she is not in as great a fright as the cowardly thieves! Why, cousin Hester, don’t you see, if this pistol went off, it would not shoot you or the baby. It would go straight through me.”

“That is a great comfort. But I had rather you would go away, you and your pistol. Pray, does your mother know that you carry one?”

“No. Mind you don’t tell her. I trust you not to tell her. Remember, I would not have told you if I had not felt sure of you.”

“You had better not have felt sure of us. However, we will not tell your mother; but my husband will tell Mr Grey to-morrow, when he comes home. If he chooses that you should carry loaded pistols about, there will be no harm done.”

“I have a great mind to say I will shoot you if you tell,” cried Sydney, presenting the pistol with a grand air. But he saw that he made his cousins really uneasy, and he laid it down on the table, offering to leave it with them for the night, if they thought it would make them feel any safer. There were plenty more at home.

“Thank you,” said Margaret, “but I believe we are more afraid of loaded pistols than of thieves. The sooner you take it away the better. You can go now, presently, for here comes my brother.”

Sydney quickly pocketed his pistol. Hope agreed to go, and promised to be at Mr Grey’s to supper by nine o’clock.

Margaret was incessantly thinking of Maria in these long evenings, when alarms of one kind or another were all abroad. She now thought she would go with Sydney, and spend an hour or two with Maria, returning by the time her brother would be going to the Greys’. Maria’s landlord would see her home, no doubt.

She found her friend busy with book and needle, and as well in health as usual, but obviously somewhat moved by the dismal stories which had travelled from mouth to mouth through Deerbrook during the day. It seemed hardly right that any person in delicate health should be lonely at such a time; and it occurred to Margaret that her friend might like to go home with her, and occupy the bed which was this night to spare. Maria thankfully accepted the offer, and let Margaret put up her little bundle for her. The farrier escorted them to the steps of the corner-house, and then left them.

The door was half-open, as Morris was talking with some one on the mat in the hall. An extremely tall woman, with a crying baby in her arms, made way for the ladies, not by going out of the house, but by stepping further into the hall.

“Morris, had you not better shut the door?” said Margaret; “the wind blows in so, it is enough to chill the whole house.”

But Morris held the door open, rather wider than before.

“So the gentleman is not at home,” said the tall woman, gruffly. “If I come again in an hour with my poor baby, will he be at home then?”

“Is my brother gone, Morris?”

“Yes, Miss, three minutes ago.”

“Then he will not be back in an hour. We do not expect him—.”

“This good woman had better go to Mr Walcot, ma’am, as I have been telling her. There’s no doubt he is at home.”

“I could wait here till the gentleman comes home,” said the tall woman; “and so get the first advice for my poor baby. ’Tis very ill, ma’am.”

“Better go to Mr Walcot,” persisted Morris.

“Or to my brother at Mr Grey’s,” said Margaret, unwilling to lose the chance of a new patient for Edward, and thinking his advice better, for the child’s sake, than Mr Walcot’s.

“It is far the readiest way to go to Mr Walcot’s,” declared Maria, whose arm Margaret felt to tremble within her own.

“I believe you are right,” said Margaret. “You had better not waste any more time here, good woman. It may make all the difference to your child.”

“If you would let me wait till the gentleman comes home,” said the tall woman.

“Impossible. It is too late to-night for patients to wait. This lady’s landlord, without there, will show you the way to Mr Walcot’s. Call him, Morris.”

Morris went out upon the steps, but the tall woman passed her, and was gone. Morris stepped in briskly, and put up the chain.

“You were very ready to send a new patient to Mr Walcot, Morris,” said Margaret, smiling.

“I had a fancy that it was a sort of patient that my master would not be the better for,” replied Morris. “I did not like the looks of the person.”

“Nor I,” said Maria.

The drawing-room door was heard to open, and Morris put her finger on her lips. Hester had been alone nearly ten minutes; she was growing nervous, and wanted to know what all this talking in the hall was about. She was told that Mr Hope had been inquired for, about a sick baby; and the rest of the discourse went to the account of Maria’s unexpected arrival. Hester welcomed Maria kindly, ordered up the cold pheasant and the wine, and then, leaving the friends to enjoy themselves over the fire, retired to rest. Morris was desired to go too, as she still slept in her mistress’s room, and ought to keep early hours, since, in addition to her labours of the day, she was at the baby’s call in the night. Margaret would see her friend to her room. Morris must not remain up on their account.

“How comfortable this is!” cried Maria, in a gleeful tone, as she looked round upon the crackling fire, the tray, the wine, and her companion. “How unlooked for, to pass a whole evening and night without being afraid of anything!”

“What an admission from you!—that you are afraid of something every night.”

“That is just the plain truth. When I used to read about the horrors of living in a solitary house in the country, I little thought how much of the same terror I should feel from living solitary in a house in a village. You wonder what could happen to me, I dare say; and perhaps it would not be very easy to suppose any peril which would stand examination.”

“I was going to say that you and we are particularly safe, from being so poor that there is no inducement to rob us. We and you have neither money nor jewels, nor plate, that can tempt thieves!—for our few forks and spoons are hardly worth breaking into a house for.”

“People who want bread, however, may think it worth while to break in for that: and while our thieves are this sort of people, and not the London gentry whom Sydney is so fond of talking of, it may be enough that gentlemen and ladies live in houses to make the starving suppose that they shall find something valuable there.”

“They would soon learn better if they came here. I doubt whether, when you and I have done our supper, they would find anything to eat. But how do you show your terrors, I should like to know? Do you scream?”

“I never screamed in my life, as far as I remember. Screaming appears to me the most unnatural of human sounds. I never felt the slightest inclination to express myself in that manner.”

“Nor I: but I never said so, because I thought no one would believe me.”

“No: the true mood for these doleful winter nights is, to sit trying to read, but never able to fix your attention for five minutes, for some odd noise or another. And yet it is almost worse to hear nothing but a cinder falling on the hearth now and then, startling you like a pistol-shot. Then it seems as if somebody was opening the shutter outside, and then tapping at the window. I have got so into the habit of looking at the window at night, expecting to see a face squeezed flat against the pane, that I have yielded up my credit to myself, and actually have the blinds drawn down when the outside shutters are closed.”

“How glad I am to find you are no braver than the rest of us!”

“No; do not be glad. It is very painful, night after night. Every step clinks or craunches in the farrier’s yard, you know. This ought to be a comfort: but sometimes I cannot clearly tell where the sound comes from. More than once lately I have fancied it was behind me, and have turned round in a greater hurry than you would think I could use. My rooms are a good way from the rest of the house; you remember the length of the passage between. I do not like disturbing the family in the evenings; but I have been selfish enough to ring, once or twice this week, without any sufficient reason, just for the sake of a sight of my landlady.”

“A very sufficient reason. But I had no idea of all this from you.”

“You have heard me say some fine things about the value of time to me—about the blessings of my long evenings. For all that (true as it is), I have got into the way of going to bed soon after ten, just because I know every one else in the house is in bed, and I do not like to be the only person up.”

“That is the reason why you are looking so well, notwithstanding all these terrors. But, Maria, what has become of your bravery?”

“It is just where it was. I am no more afraid than I used to be of evils which may be met with a mature mind: and just as much afraid as ever of those which terrified my childhood.”

“Our baby shall never be afraid of anything,” asserted Margaret. “But Maria, something must be done for your relief.”

“That is just what I hoped and expected you would say, and the reason why I exposed myself to you.”

“Why do not the Greys offer you a room there for the winter? That seems the simplest and most obvious plan.”

“It is not convenient.”

“How should that be?”

“The bed would have to be uncovered, you know; and the mahogany wash-stand might be splashed.”

“They can get a room ready for a guest, to relieve their own fears, but not yours. Can nothing be done about it?”

“Not unless the Rowlands should take in Mr Walcot, because he is afraid to live alone: in such case, the Greys would take me in for the same reason. But that will not be so, Margaret, I will ask you plainly, and you will answer as plainly—could you, without too much pain, trouble, and inconvenience, spend an evening or two a week with me, just till this panic is passed? If you could put it in my power to be always looking forward to an evening of relief, it would break the sense of solitude, and make all the difference to me. I see the selfishness of this; but I really think it is better to own my weakness than to struggle uselessly against it any longer.”

“I could do that—should like of all things to do it till Morris goes: but that will be so soon—.”

“Morris! where is she going?”

Margaret related this piece of domestic news, too private to be told to any one else till the last moment. Maria forgot her own troubles, or despised them as she listened, so grieved was she for her friends, including Morris. Margaret was not very sorry on Morris’s own account. Morris wanted rest—an easier place. She had had too much upon her for some time past.

“What then will you have, when she is gone?”

“If I have work enough to drive all thought out of my head, I shall be thankful. Meantime, I will bestow my best wit upon your case.”

“I am ashamed of my case already. While sitting in all this comfort here, I can hardly believe in my own tremors, of no earlier date than last night. Come, let us draw to the fire. I hope we shall not end with sitting up all night; but I feel as if I should like it very much.”

Margaret stirred up a blaze, and put out the candles. No economy was now beneath her care. As she took her seat beside her friend, she said:

“Maria, did you ever know any place so dull and dismal as Deerbrook is now? Is it not enough to make any heart as heavy as the fortunes of the place?”

“Even the little that I see of it, in going to and from the Greys, looks sad enough. You see the outskirts, which I suppose are worse still.”

“The very air feels too heavy to breathe. The cottages, and even the better houses, appear to my eyes damp and weather-stained on the outside, and silent within. The children sit shivering on the thresholds—do not they?—instead of shouting at their play as they did. Every one looks discontented, and complains—the poor of want of bread, and every one else of hard times, and all manner of woes, that one never hears of in prosperous seasons. Mr James says the actions for trespass are beyond all example; Mr Tucker declares his dog, that died the other day, was poisoned; and I never pass the Green but the women are even quarrelling for precedence at the pump.”

“I have witnessed some of this, but not all: and neither, I suspect, have you, Margaret, though you think you have. We see the affairs of the world in shadow, you know, when our own hearts are sad.”

“My heart is not so sad as you think. You do not believe me: but that is because you do not believe what I am sure of—that he is not to blame for anything that has happened—that, at least, he has only been mistaken,—that there his been no fickleness, no selfishness, in him. I could not speak of this, even to you, Maria, if it were not a duty to him. You must not be left to suppose from my silence that he is to blame, as you think he is. I suffer from no sense of injury from him. I got over that, long ago.”

Maria would not say, as she thought, “You had to get over it, then?”

“It makes me very unhappy to think how he is suffering,—how much more he has to bear than I; so much more than the separation and the blank. He cannot trust me as I trusted him; and that is, indeed, to be without consolation.”

“Do men ever trust as women do?”

“Yes, Edward does. If he were to go to India for twenty years, he would know, as certainly as I should, that Hester would be widowed in every thought till his return. And the time will come when Philip will know this as certainly of me. It is but a little while yet that I have waited, Maria; but it does sometimes seem a weary waiting.”

Maria took her friend’s hand, in token of the sympathy she could not speak,—so much of hopelessness was there mingled with it.

“I know you and others think that this waiting is to go on for ever.”

“No, love; not so.”

“Or that a certainty which is even worse will come some day. But it will be otherwise. His love can no more be quenched or alienated by the slanders of a wicked woman, than the sun can be put out by an eclipse, or sent to enlighten another world, leaving us mourning.”

“You judge by your own soul, Margaret; and that should be a faithful guide. You judge him by your own soul,—and how much by this?” she added, with a smile, fixing her eyes on the turquoise ring, which was Philip’s gift, and which, safely guarded, was on a finger of the hand she held.

Margaret blushed. She could not have denied, if closely pressed, that some little tinge of the Eastern superstition had entered into this sacred ring, and lay there, like the fire in the opal. She could not have denied, that, when she drew it on every morning, she noted with satisfaction that its blue was as clear and bright as ever.

“How is it that this ring is still here?” asked Maria. “Is it possible that he retains gifts of yours? Yet, I think, if he did not, this ring would not be on your finger.”

“He does keep whatever I gave him. Thank God! he keeps them. This is one of my greatest comforts: it is the only way I have left of speaking to him. But if it were not so, this ring would still be where it is. I would not give it up. I am not altered. I am not angry with him. His love is as precious to me as it ever was, and I will not give up the tokens of it. Why, Maria, you surely cannot suppose that these things have any other value or use but as given by him! You cannot suppose that I dread the imputation of keeping them for their own sakes!”

“No: but—”

“But what?”

“Is any proof of his former regard of value now? That is the question. It has only very lately become a question with me. I have only lately learned to think him in fault. I excused him before... I excused him as long as I could.”

“You will unlearn your present opinion of him. Yes; everything that was ever valuable from him is more precious than ever now,—now that he is under a spell, and cannot speak his soul. If it were, as you think, if he loved me no longer, they would be still more precious, as a relic of the dead. But it is not so.”

“If faith can remove mountains, we may have to rejoice for you still, Margaret; for there can be no mass of calumnies between you and him which you have not faith enough to overthrow.”

“Thank you for that. It is the best word of comfort that has come to me from without for many a day. Now there is one thing more in which you can perhaps help me. I have heard nothing about him for so long! You see Mr Rowland sometimes (I know he feels a great friendship for you); and you meet the younger children. Do you hear nothing whatever abouthim?”

“Nothing: nor do they. Mr Rowland told me, a fortnight ago, that Mrs Rowland and he are seriously uneasy at obtaining no answers to their repeated letters to Mr Enderby. Mrs Rowland is more disturbed, I believe, than she chooses to show. She must feel herself responsible. She has tried various means of accounting for his silence, all the autumn. Now she gives that up, and is silent in her turn. If it were not for the impossibility of leaving home at such a time as this, Mr Rowland would go to London to satisfy himself. Margaret, I believe you are the only person who has smiled at this.”

“Perhaps I am the only one who understands him. I had rather know of this silence than of all the letters he could have written to Mrs Rowland. If he had been ill, they would certainly have heard.”

“Yes; they say so.”

“Then that is enough. Let us say no more now.”

“You have said that which has cheered me for you, Margaret, though, as we poor irreligious human beings often say to each other, ‘I wish I had your faith.’ You have given me more than I had, however. But are we to say no more about anything? Must we leave this comfortable fire, and go to sleep?”

“Not unless you wish it. I have more to ask, if you are not tired.”

“Come, ask me.”

“Cannot you tell me of some way in which a woman may earn money?”

“A woman? What rate of woman? Do you mean yourself? That question is easily answered. A woman from the uneducated classes can get a subsistence by washing and cooking, by milking cows and going to service, and, in some parts of the kingdom, by working in a cotton mill, or burnishing plate, as you have no doubt seen for yourself at Birmingham. But, for an educated woman, a woman with the powers which God gave her, religiously improved, with a reason which lays life open before her, an understanding which surveys science as its appropriate task, and a conscience which would make every species of responsibility safe,—for such a woman there is in all England no chance of subsistence but by teaching—that almost ineffectual teaching, which can never countervail the education of circumstances, and for which not one in a thousand is fit—or by being a superior Miss Nares—the feminine gender of the tailor and the hatter.”

“The tutor, the tailor, and the hatter. Is this all?”

“All; except that there are departments of art and literature from which it is impossible to shut women out. These are not, however, to be regarded as resources for bread. Besides the number who succeed in art and literature being necessarily extremely small, it seems pretty certain that no great achievements, in the domains of art and imagination, can be looked for from either men or women who labour there to supply their lower wants, or for any other reason than the pure love of their work. While they toil in any one of the arts of expression, if they are not engrossed by some loftier meaning, the highest which they will end with expressing will be, the need of bread.”

“True—quite true. I must not think of any of those higher departments of labour, because, even if I were qualified, what I want is not employment, but money. I am anxious to earn some money, Maria. We are very poor. Edward is trying, one way and another, to earn money to live upon, till his practice comes back to him, as he is for ever trusting it will. I wish to earn something too, if it be ever so little. Can you tell me of no way?”

“I believe I should not if I could. Why? Because I think you have quite enough to do already, and will soon have too much. Just consider. When Morris goes, what hour of the day will you have to spare? Let us see;—do you mean to sweep the rooms with your own hands?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, smiling.

“And to scour them too?”

“No; not quite that. We shall hire a neighbour to come two or three times a week to do the rougher parts of the work. But I mean to light the fire in the morning (and we shall have but one), and get breakfast ready; and Hester will help me to make the beds. That is nearly all I shall let her do besides the sewing; for baby will give her employment enough.”

“Indeed, I think so; and that will leave you too much. Do not think, dear, of earning money. You are doing all you ought in saving it.”

“I must think about it, because earning is so much nobler and more effectual than saving. I cannot help seeing that it would be far better to earn the amount of Morris’s maintenance, than to save it by doing her work badly myself. Not that I shrink from the labour: I am rather enjoying the prospect of it, as I told you. Hark! what footstep is that?”

“I heard it a minute or two ago,” whispered Maria, “but I did not like to mention it.”

They listened in the deepest silence for a while. At first they were not sure whether they heard anything above the beating of their own hearts; but they were soon certain that there were feet moving outside the room door.

“The church clock has but lately gone twelve,” said Maria, in the faint hope that it might be some one of the household yet stirring.

Margaret shook her head. She rose softly from her seat, and took a candle from the table to light it, saying she would go and see. Her hand trembled a little as she held the match, and the candle would not immediately light. Meantime, the door opened without noise, and some one walked in and quite up to the gazing ladies. It was the tall woman. Maria made an effort to reach the bell, but the tall woman seized her arm, and made her sit down. A capricious jet of flame from a coal in the fire at this moment lighted up the face of the stranger for a moment, and enabled Maria to “spy a creat peard under the muffler.”

“What do you want at this time?” said Margaret.

“I want money, and what else I can get,” said the intruder, in the no longer disguised voice of a man. “I have been into your larder, but you seem to have nothing there.”

“That is true,” said Margaret, firmly; “nor have we any money. We are very poor. You could not have come to a worse place, if you are in want.”

“Here is something, however,” said the man, turning to the tray. “With your leave, I’ll see what you have left us to eat.”

He thrust one of the candles between the bars of the grate to light it, telling the ladies they had better start no difficulty, lest they should have reason to repent it. There were others with him in the house, who would show themselves in an instant, if any noise were made.

“Then do you make none—I beg it as a favour,” said Margaret. “There is a lady asleep up-stairs, with a very young infant. If you respect her life you will be quiet.”

The man did not answer, but he was quiet. He cut slices from the loaf, and carried them to the door, and they were taken by somebody outside. He quickly devoured the remains of the pheasant, tearing the meat from the bones with his teeth. He drank from the decanter of wine, and then carried it where he had taken the bread. Two men put their heads in at the door, nodded to the ladies before they drank, and again withdrew. The girls cast a look at each other—a glance of agreement that resistance was not to be thought of: yet each was conscious of a feeling of rather pleasant surprise that she was not more alarmed.

“Now for it!” said the man, striding oddly about in his petticoats, and evidently out of patience with them. “Now for your money!” As he spoke, he put the spoons from the tray into the bosom of his gown, proceeding to murmur at his deficiency of pockets.

Margaret held out her purse to him. It contained one single shilling.

“You don’t mean this is all you are going to give me?”

“It is all I have: and I believe there is not another shilling in the house. I told you we have no money.”

“And you?” said he, turning to Maria.

“I have not my purse about me; and if I had there is nothing in it worth your taking. I assure you I have not got my purse. I am only a visitor here for this one night—and an odd night it is to have chosen, as it turns out.”

“Give me your watches.”

“I have no watch. I have not had a watch these five years,” said Maria.

“I have no watch,” said Margaret. “I sold mine a month ago. I told you we were very poor.”

The man muttered something about the plague of gentlefolks being so poor, and about wondering that gentlefolks were not ashamed of being so poor. “You have got something, however,” he continued, fixing his eye on the ring on Margaret’s finger. “Give me that ring. Give it me, or else I’ll take it.”

Margaret’s heart sank with a self-reproach worse than her grief, when she remembered how easily she might have saved this ring—how easily she might have thrust it under the fender, or dropped it into her shoe, into her hair, anywhere, while the intruder was gone to the room door to his companions. She felt that she could never forgive herself for this neglect of the most precious thing she had in the world—of that which most belonged to Philip.

“She cannot part with that ring,” said Maria. “Look! you may see she had rather part with any money she is ever likely to have than with that ring.”

She pointed to Margaret, who was sitting with her hands clasped as if they were never to be disjoined, and with a face of the deepest distress.

“I can’t help that,” said the man. “I must have what I can get.”

He seized her hands, and, with one gripe of his, made hers fly open. Margaret could no longer endure to expose any of her feelings to the notice of a stranger of this character. “Be patient a moment,” said she; and she drew off the ring after its guard, made of Hester’s hair, and put them into the large hand which was held out to receive them; feeling, at the moment, as if her heart was breaking. The man threw the hair ring back into her lap, and tied the turquoise in the corner of the shawl he wore.

“The lady up-stairs has got a watch, I suppose.”

“Yes, she has: let me go and fetch it. Do let me go. I am afraid of nothing so much as her being terrified. If you have any humanity, let me go. Indeed I will bring the watch.”

“Well, there is no man in the house, I know, for you to call. You may go, Miss: but I must step behind you to the room door; no further—she shan’t see me, nor know any one is there, unless you tell her. This young lady will sit as still as a mouse till we come back.”

“Never mind me,” said Maria, to her friend. While they were gone, she sat as she was desired, as still as a mouse, enforced thereto by the certainty that a man stood in the shadow by the door, with his eye upon her the whole time.

Margaret lighted a chamber candle, in order, as she said, to look as usual if her sister should see her. The robber did tread very softly on the stairs, and stop outside the chamber-door. Morris was sitting up in her truckle-bed, evidently listening, and was on the point of starting out of it on seeing that Margaret’s face was pale, when Margaret put her finger on her lips, and motioned to her to lie down. Hester was asleep, with her sleeping infant on her arm. Margaret set down the light, and leaned over her, to take the watch from its hook at the head of the bed.

“Are you still up?” said Hester, drowsily, and just opening her eyes. “What do you want? It must be very late.”

“Nearly half-past twelve, by your watch. I am sorry I disturbed you. Good-night.”

As she withdrew with the watch in her hand, she whispered to Morris:

“Lie still. Don’t be uneasy. I will come again presently.” So, in a few minutes, as seemed to intently listening ears, the house was clear of the intruders. Within a quarter of an hour Margaret had beckoned Morris out of Hester’s room, and had explained the case to her. They went round the house, and found that all the little plate they had was gone, and the cheese from the pantry. Morris’s cloth cloak was left hanging on its pin, and even Edward’s old hat. From these circumstances, and from the dialect of the only speaker, Margaret thought the thieves must be country people from the neighbourhood, who could not wear the old clothes of the gentry without danger of detection. They had come in from the surgery, whose outer door was sufficiently distant from the inhabited rooms of the house to be forced without the noise being heard. Morris and Margaret barricaded this door as well as they could, with such chests and benches as they were able to move without making themselves heard up-stairs: and then Morris, at Margaret’s earnest desire, stole back to bed. Anything rather than alarm Hester.

While they were below, Maria had put on more coals, and restored some order and comfort to the table and the fireside. She concluded that sleep was out of the question for this night. For some moments after Margaret came and sat down by her, neither of them spoke. At length Margaret said, half laughing:

“That you should have come here for rest this night, of all nights in the year!”

“I am glad it happened so. Yes; indeed, I am. I know it must have been a comfort to you to have some one with you, though only poor lame me. And I am glad on my own account too, I assure you. Such a visitation is not half so dreadful as I had fancied—not worth half the fear I have spent upon it all my life. I am sure you felt as I did while he was here; you felt quite yourself, did not you? If it had not been for the woman’s clothes, it would really have been scarcely terrifying at all. There is something much more human about a housebreaker than I had fancied. But yet it was very inhuman of him to take your ring.”

Margaret wept more bitterly than any one had seen her weep since her unhappy days began, and her friend could not comfort her. It was a case in which there was no comfort to be given, unless in the very faint and unreasonable hope that the ring might be offered for sale to some jeweller in some market town in the county; a hope sadly faint and unreasonable; since country people who would take plate and ornaments must, in all probability, be in communication with London rogues, who would turn the property into money in the great city. Still, there was a possibility of recovering the lost treasure; and on this possibility Maria dwelt perseveringly.

“But, Margaret,” she went on to ask, “what is this about your watch? Have you indeed sold it?”

“Yes. Morris managed that for me while Hester was confined. I am glad now that I parted with it as I did. It has paid some bills which I know made Edward anxious; and that is far better than its being in a housebreaker’s hands.”

“Yes, indeed: but I am sorry you all have such a struggle to live. Not a shilling in the house but the one you gave up!”

“So much for Edward’s being out. It happened very well; for he could not have helped us, if he had been here. You saw there were three of them. What I meant was, that Edward has about him the little money that is to last us till Christmas. The rent is safe enough. It is in Mr Grey’s strong box or the bank at Blickley. The rent is too important a matter to be put to any hazard, considering that Mr Rowland is our landlord. It is all ready and safe.”

“That is well. Now, Margaret, could you swear to this visitor of ours?”

“No,” said Margaret, softly, looking round, as if to convince herself that he was not there still. “No: his bonnet was so large, and he kept the shadow of it so carefully upon his face, that I should not know him again—at least, not in any other dress; and we shall never see him again in this. It is very disagreeable,” she continued, shuddering slightly, “to think that we may pass him any day or every day, and that he may say to himself as we go by, ‘There go the ladies that sat with their feet on the fender so comfortably when I went in, without leave!’”

“Poor wretch! he will rather say, ‘There goes the young lady that I made so unhappy about her ring. I wish I had choked with the wine I drank, before I took that ring!’ The first man you meet that cannot look you in the face is the thief, depend upon it, Margaret.”

“I must not depend upon that. But, Maria, could you swear to him?”

“I am not quite sure at this moment, but I believe I could. The light from the fire shone brightly upon his black chin, and a bit of lank hair that came from under his mob cap. I could swear to the shawl.”

“So could I: but that will be burned to-morrow morning. Now, Maria, do go to bed.”

“Well, if you had rather—. Cannot we be together? Must I be treated as a guest, and have a room to myself?”

“Not if you think we can make room in mine. We shall be most comfortable there, shall not we—near to Morris and Hester?”

Rather than separate, they both betook themselves to the bed in Margaret’s room. Maria lay still, as if asleep, but wide awake and listening. Margaret mourned her turquoise with silent tears all the rest of the night.

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