Fromtime to time I received a newspaper from my native town, and one morning, looking over the advertisements, I caught sight of one which arrested me. It was as follows:—
“A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to little children. Address E. B., care of Mrs. George Andrews, Fancy Bazaar, High Street.”
“A Widow Lady desires a situation as Daily Governess to little children. Address E. B., care of Mrs. George Andrews, Fancy Bazaar, High Street.”
Mrs. George Andrews was a cousin of Ellen Butts, and that this was her advertisement I had not the slightest doubt. Suddenly, without being able to give the least reason for it, an unconquerable desire to see her arose within me. I could not understand it. I recollected that memorable resolution after Miss Arbour’s story years ago. How true that counsel of Miss Arbour’s was! and yet it had the defect of most counsel. It was but a principle; whether it suited this particular case was the one important point on which Miss Arbour was no authority. Whatwasit which prompted this inexplicable emotion? A thousand things rushed through my head without reason or order. I begin to believe that a first love never dies. A boy falls in love at eighteen or nineteen. The attachment comes to nothing. It is broken off for a multitude of reasons, and he sees its absurdity. He marries afterwards some other woman whom he even adores, and he has children for whom he spends his life; yet in an obscure corner of his soul he preserves everlastingly the cherished picture of the girl who first was dear to him. She, too, marries. In process of time she is fifty years old, and he is fifty-two. He has not seen her for thirty years or more, but he continually turns aside into the little oratory, to gaze upon the face as it last appeared to him when he left her at her gate and saw her no more. He inquires now and then timidly about her whenever he gets the chance. And once in his life he goes down to the town where she lives, solely in order to get a sight of her without her knowing anything about it. He does not succeed, and he comes back and tells his wife, from whom he never conceals any secrets, that he has been away on business. I did not for a moment confess that my love for Ellen had returned. I knew who she was and what she was, and what had led to our separation; but nevertheless, all this obstinately remained in the background, and all the passages of love between us, all our kisses, and above everything, her tears at that parting in her father’s house, thrust themselves upon me. It was a mystery to me. What should have induced that utterly unexpected resurrection of what I believed to be dead and buried, is beyond my comprehension. However, the fact remains. I did not to myself admit that this was love, but itwaslove, and that it should have shot up with such swift vitality merely because I had happened to see those initials was miraculous. I pretended to myself that I should like once more to see Mrs. Butts—perhaps she might be in want and I could help her. I shrank from writing to her or from making myself known to her, and at last I hit upon the expedient of answering her advertisement in a feigned name, and requesting her to call at the King’s Arms hotel upon a gentleman who wished to engage a widow lady to teach his children. To prevent any previous inquiries on her part, I said that my name was Williams, that I lived in the country at some little distance from the town, but that I should be there on business on the day named. I took up my quarters at the King’s Arms the night before. It seemed very strange to be in an inn in the place in which I was born. I retired early to my bedroom, and looked out in the clear moonlight over the river. The landscape seemed haunted by ghosts of my former self. At one particular point, so well known, I stood fishing. At another, equally well known, where the water was dangerously deep, I was examining the ice; and round the corner was the boathouse where we kept the little craft in which I had voyaged so many hundreds of miles on excursions upwards beyond where the navigation ends, or, still more fascinating, down to where the water widens and sails are to be seen, and there is a foretaste of the distant sea. It is no pleasure to me to revisit scenes in which earlier days have been passed. I detest the sentimental melancholy which steals over me; the sense of the lapse of time, and the reflection that so many whom I knew are dead. I would always, if possible, spend my holiday in some new scene, fresh to me, and full of new interest. I slept but little, and when the morning came, instead of carrying out my purpose of wandering through the streets, I was so sick of the mood by which I had been helplessly overcome, that I sat at a distance from the window in the coffee-room, and read diligently last week’sBell’s Weekly Messenger. My reading, however, was nothing. I do not suppose I comprehended the simplest paragraph. My thoughts were away, and I watched the clock slowly turning towards the hour when Ellen was to call. I foresaw that I should not be able to speak to her at the inn. If I have anything particular to say to anybody, I can always say it so much better out of doors. I dreaded the confinement of the room, and the necessity for looking into her face. Under the sky, and in motion, I should be more at liberty. At last eleven struck from the church in the square, and five minutes afterwards the waiter entered to announce Mrs. Butts. I was therefore right, and she was “E. B.” I was sure that I should not be recognised. Since I saw her last I had grown a beard, my hair had got a little grey, and she was always a little short-sighted. She came in, and as she entered she put away over her bonnet her thick black veil. Not ten seconds passed before she was seated on the opposite side of the table to that on which I was sitting, but I re-read in her during those ten seconds the whole history of years. I cannot say that externally she looked worn or broken. I had imagined that I should see her undone with her great troubles, but to some extent, and yet not altogether, I was mistaken. The cheek-bones were more prominent than of old, and her dark-brown hair drawn tightly over her forehead increased the clear paleness of the face; the just perceptible tint of colour which I recollect being now altogether withdrawn. But she was not haggard, and evidently not vanquished. There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a trifle enforced, and although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind it, the sorrow did not seem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if not of joy, at least of resignation. Her ancient levity of manner had vanished, or at most had left nothing but a trace. I thought I detected it here and there in a line about the mouth, and perhaps in her walk. There was a reminiscence of it too in her clothes. Notwithstanding poverty and distress, the old neatness—that particular care which used to charm me so when I was little more than a child, was there still. I was always susceptible to this virtue, and delicate hands and feet, with delicate care bestowed thereon, were more attractive to me than slovenly beauty. I noticed that the gloves, though mended, fitted with the same precision, and that her dress was unwrinkled and perfectly graceful. Whatever she might have had to endure, it had not destroyed that self-centred satisfaction which makes life tolerable.
I was impelled at once to say that I had to beg her pardon for asking her there. Unfortunately I was obliged to go over to Cowston, a village which was about three miles from the town. Perhaps she would not mind walking part of the way with me through the meadows, and then we could talk with more freedom, as I should not feel pressed for time. To this arrangement she at once agreed, and dropping her thick veil over her face, we went out. In a few minutes we were clear of the houses, and I began the conversation.
“Have you been in the habit of teaching?”
“No. The necessity for taking to it has only lately arisen.”
“What can you teach?”
“Not much beyond what children of ten or eleven years old are expected to know; but I could take charge of them entirely.”
“Have you any children of your own?”
“One.”
“Could you take a situation as resident teacher if you have a child?”
“I must get something to do, and if I can make no arrangement by which my child can live with me, I shall try and place her with a friend. I may be able to hear of some appointment as a daily governess.”
“I should have thought that in your native town you would have been easily able to find employment—you must be well known?”
There was a pause, and after a moment or so she said:—
“We were well known once, but we went abroad and lost all our money. My husband died abroad. When I returned, I found that there was very little which my friends could do for me. I am not accomplished, and there are crowds of young women who are more capable than I am. Moreover, I saw that I was becoming a burden, and people called on me rather as a matter of duty than for any other reason. You don’t know how soon all but the very best insensibly neglect very poor relatives if they are not gifted or attractive. I do not wonder at being made to feel this, nor do I blame anybody. My little girl is a cripple, my rooms are dull, and I have nothing in me with which to amuse or entertain visitors. Pardon my going into this detail. It was necessary to say something in order to explain my position.”
“May I ask what salary you will require if you live in the house?”
“Five-and-thirty pounds a year, but I might take less if I were asked to do so.”
“Are you a member of the Church of England?”
“No.”
“To what religious body do you belong?”
“I am an Independent, but I would go to Church if my employers wished it.”
“I thought the Independents objected to go to Church.”
“They do; but I should not object, if I could hear anything at the Church which would help me.”
“I am rather surprised at your indifference.”
“I was once more particular, but I have seen much suffering, and some things which were important to me are not so now, and others which were not important have become so.”
I then made up a little story. My sister and I lived together. We were about to take up our abode at Cowston, but were as yet strangers to it. I was left a widower with two little children whom my sister could not educate, as she could not spare the time. She would naturally have selected the governess herself, but she was at some distance. She would like to see Mrs. Butts before engaging her finally, but she thought that as this advertisement presented itself, I might make some preliminary inquiries. Perhaps, however, now that Mrs. Butts knew the facts, she would object to living in the house. I put it in this way, feeling sure that she would catch my meaning.
“I am afraid that this situation will not suit me. I could not go backwards and forwards so far every day.”
“I understand you perfectly, and feared that this would be your decision. But if you hesitate, I can give you the best of references. I had not thought of that before. References of course will be required by you as well as by me.”
I put my hand in my pocket for my pocket-book, but I could not find it. We had now reached a part of our road familiar enough to both of us. Along that very path Ellen and I had walked years ago. Under those very trees, on that very seat had we sat, and she and I were there again. All the old confidences, confessions, tendernesses, rushed upon me. What is there which is more potent than the recollection of past love to move us to love, and knit love with closest bonds? Can we ever cease to love the souls who have once shared all that we know and feel? Can we ever be indifferent to those who have our secrets, and whose secrets we hold? As I looked at her, I remembered what she knew about me, and what I knew about her, and this simple thought so overmastered me, that I could hold out no longer. I said to her that if she would like to rest for one moment, I might be able to find my papers. We sat down together, and she drew up her veil to read the address which I was about to give her. She glanced at me, as I thought, with a strange expression of excited interrogation, and something swiftly passed across her face, which warned me that I had not a moment to lose. I took out one of my own cards, handed it to her, and said, “Here is a reference which perhaps you may know.” She bent over it, turned to me, fixed her eyes intently and directly on mine for one moment, and then I thought she would have fallen. My arm was around her in an instant, her head was on my shoulder, and my many wanderings were over. It was broad, high, sunny noon, the most solitary hour of the daylight in those fields. We were roused by the distant sound of the town clock striking twelve; we rose and went on together to Cowston by the river bank, returning late in the evening.
Isupposethat the reason why in novels the story ends with a marriage is partly that the excitement of the tale ceases then, and partly also because of a theory that marriage is an epoch, determining the career of life after it. The epoch once announced, nothing more need be explained; everything else follows as a matter of course. These notes of mine are autobiographical, and not a romance. I have never known much about epochs. I have had one or two, one specially when I first began to read and think; but after that, if I have changed, it has been slowly and imperceptibly. My life, therefore, is totally unfitted to be the basis of fiction. My return to Ellen, and our subsequent marriage, were only partially an epoch. A change had come, but it was one which had long been preparing. Ellen’s experiences had altered her position, and mine too was altered. She had been driven into religion by trouble, and knowing nothing of criticism or philosophy, retained the old forms for her religious feeling. But the very quickness of her emotion caused her to welcome all new and living modes of expressing it. It is only when feeling has ceased to accompany a creed that it becomes fixed, and verbal departures from it are counted heresy. I too cared less for argument, and it even gave me pleasure to talk in her dialect, so familiar to me, but for so many years unused.
It was now necessary for me to add to my income. I had nothing upon which to depend save my newspaper, which was obviously insufficient. At last, I succeeded in obtaining some clerical employment. For no other work was I fit, for my training had not been special in any one direction. My hours were long, from ten in the morning till seven in the evening, and as I was three miles distant from the office, I was really away from home for eleven hours every day, excepting on Sundays. I began to calculate that my life consisted of nothing but the brief spaces allowed to me for rest, and these brief spaces I could not enjoy because I dwelt upon their brevity. There was some excuse for me. Never could there be any duty incumbent upon man much more inhuman and devoid of interest than my own. How often I thought about my friend Clark, and his experiences became mine. The whole day I did nothing but write, and what I wrote called forth no single faculty of the mind. Nobody who has not tried such an occupation can possibly forecast the strange habits, humours, fancies, and diseases which after a time it breeds. I was shut up in a room half below the ground. In this room were three other men besides myself, two of them between fifty and sixty, and one about three or four-and-twenty. All four of us kept books or copied letters from ten to seven, with an interval of three-quarters of an hour for dinner. In all three of these men, as in the case of Clark’s companions, there had been developed, partly I suppose by the circumstance of enforced idleness of brain, the most loathsome tendency to obscenity. This was the one subject which was common ground, and upon which they could talk. It was fostered too by a passion for beer, which was supplied by the publican across the way, who was perpetually travelling to and fro with cans. My horror when I first found out into what society I was thrust was unspeakable. There was a clock within a hundred yards of my window which struck the hours and quarters. How I watched that clock! My spirits rose or fell with each division of the day. From ten to twelve there was nothing but gloom. By half-past twelve I began to discern dinner time, and the prospect was brighter. After dinner there was nothing to be done but doggedly to endure until five, and at five I was able to see over the distance from five to seven. My disgust at my companions, however, came to be mixed with pity. I found none of them cruel, and I received many little kindnesses from them. I discovered that their trade was largely answerable for the impurity of thought and speech which so shocked me. Its monotony compelled some countervailing stimulus, and as they had never been educated to care for anything in particular, they found the necessary relief in sensuality. At first they “chaffed” and worried me a good deal because of my silence, but at last they began to think I was “religious,” and then they ceased to torment me. I rather encouraged them in the belief that I had a right to exemption from their conversation, and I passed, I believe, for a Plymouth brother. The only thing which they could not comprehend was that I made no attempt to convert them.
The whole establishment was under the rule of a deputy-manager, who was the terror of the place. He was tall, thin, and suffered occasionally from spitting of blood, brought on no doubt from excitement. He was the strangest mixture of exactitude and passion. He had complete mastery over every detail of the business, and he never blundered. All his work was thorough, down to the very bottom, and he had the most intolerant hatred of everything which was loose and inaccurate. He never passed a day without flaming out into oaths and curses against his subordinates, and they could not say in his wildest fury that his ravings were beside the mark. He was wrong in his treatment of men—utterly wrong—but his facts were always correct. I never saw anybody hated as he was, and the hatred against him was the more intense because nobody could convict him of a mistake. He seemed to enjoy a storm, and knew nothing whatever of the constraints which with ordinary men prevent abusive and brutal language to those around them. Some of his clerks suffered greatly from him, and he almost broke down two or three from the constant nervous strain upon them produced by fear of his explosions. For my own part, although I came in for a full share of his temper, I at once made up my mind as soon as I discovered what he was, not to open my lips to him except under compulsion. My one object now was to get a living. I wished also to avoid the self-mortification which must ensue from altercation. I dreaded, as I have always dreaded beyond what I can tell, the chaos and wreck which, with me, follows subjugation by anger, and I held to my resolve under all provocation. It was very difficult, but how many times I have blessed myself for adhesion to it. Instead of going home undone with excitement, and trembling with fear of dismissal, I have walked out of my dungeon having had to bite my lips till the blood came, but still conqueror, and with peace of mind.
Another stratagem of defence which I adopted at the office was never to betray to a soul anything about myself. Nobody knew anything about me, whether I was married or single, where I lived, or what I thought upon a single subject of any importance. I cut off my office life in this way from my life at home so completely that I was two selves, and my true self was not stained by contact with my other self. It was a comfort to me to think the moment the clock struck seven that my second self died, and that my first self suffered nothing by having anything to do with it. I was not the person who sat at the desk downstairs and endured the abominable talk of his colleagues and the ignominy of serving such a chief. I knew nothing about him. I was a citizen walking London streets; I had my opinions upon human beings and books; I was on equal terms with my friends; I was Ellen’s husband; I was, in short, a man. By this scrupulous isolation, I preserved myself, and the clerk was not debarred from the domain of freedom.
It is very terrible to think that the labour by which men are to live should be of this order. The ideal of labour is that it should be something in which we can take an interest and even a pride. Immense masses of it in London are the merest slavery, and it is as mechanical as the daily journey of the omnibus horse. There is no possibility of relieving it, and all the ordinary copybook advice of moralists and poets as to the temper in which we should earn our bread is childish nonsense. If a man is a painter, or a physician, or a barrister, or even a tradesman, well and good. The maxims of authors may be of some service to him, and he may be able to exemplify them; but if he is a copying clerk they are an insult, and he can do nothing but arch his back to bear his burden and find some compensation elsewhere. True it is, that beneficent Nature here, as always, is helpful. Habit, after a while, mitigated much of the bitterness of destiny. The hard points of the flint became smoothed and worn away by perpetual tramping over them, so that they no longer wounded with their original sharpness; and the sole of the foot was in time provided with a merciful callosity. Then, too, there was developed an appetite which was voracious for all that was best. Who shall tell the revulsion on reaching home, which I should never have known had I lived a life of idleness! Ellen was fond of hearing me read, and with a little care I was able to select what would bear reading—dramas, for example. She liked the reading for the reading’s sake, and she liked to know that what I thought was communicated to her; that she was not excluded from the sphere in which I lived. Of the office she never heard a word, and I never would tell her anything about it; but there was scarcely a single book in my possession which could be read aloud, that we did not go through together in this way. I don’t prescribe this kind of life to everybody. Some of my best friends, I know, would find it intolerable, but it suited us. Philosophy and religion I did not touch. It was necessary to choose themes with varying human interest, such as the best works of fiction, a play, or a poem; and these perhaps, on the whole, did me more good at that time than speculation. Oh, how many times have I left my office humiliated by some silently endured outbreak on the part of my master, more galling because I could not put it aside as altogether gratuitous; and in less than an hour it was two miles away, and I was myself again. If a man wants to know what the potency of love is, he must be a menial; he must be despised. Those who are prosperous and courted cannot understand its power. Let him come home after he has suffered what is far worse than hatred—the contempt of a superior, who knows that he can afford to be contemptuous, seeing that he can replace his slave at a moment’s notice. Let him be trained by his tyrant to dwell upon the thought that he belongs to the vast crowd of people in London who are unimportant; almost useless; to whom it is a charity to offer employment; who are conscious of possessing no gift which makes them of any value to anybody, and he will then comprehend the divine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear. God’s mercy be praised ever more for it! I cannot write poetry, but if I could, no theme would tempt me like that of love to such a person as I was—not love, as I say again, to the hero, but love to the Helot. Over and over again, when I have thought about it, I have felt my poor heart swell with a kind of uncontrollable fervour. I have often, too, said to myself that this love is no delusion. If we were to set it down as nothing more than a merciful cheat on the part of the Creator, however pleasant it might be, it would lose its charm. If I were to think that my wife’s devotion to me is nothing more than the simple expression of a necessity to love somebody, that there is nothing in me which justifies such devotion, I should be miserable. Rather, I take it, is the love of woman to man a revelation of the relationship in which God stands to him—of whatoughtto be, in fact. In the love of a woman to the man who is of no account God has provided us with a true testimony of what is in His own heart. I often felt this when looking at myself and at Ellen. “What is there in me?” I have said, “is she not the victim of some self-created deception?” and I was wretched till I considered that in her I saw the Divine Nature itself, and that her passion was a stream straight from the Highest. The love of woman is, in other words, a living witness never failing of an actuality in God which otherwise we should never know. This led me on to connect it with Christianity; but I am getting incoherent and must stop.
My employment now was so incessant, for it was still necessary that I should write for my newspaper—although my visits to the House of Commons had perforce ceased—that I had no time for any schemes or dreams such as those which had tormented me when I had more leisure. In one respect this was a blessing. Destiny now had prescribed for me. I was no longer agitated by ignorance of what I ought to do. My present duty was obviously to get my own living, and having got that, I could do little besides save continue the Sundays with M’Kay.
We were almost entirely alone. We had no means of making any friends. We had no money, and no gifts of any kind. We were neither of us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless, what it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance with persons who thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth a twopenny omnibus fare. Certain it is, that we went out of our way sometimes to induce people to call upon us whom we thought we should like; but, if they came once or twice, they invariably dropped off, and we saw no more of them. This behaviour was so universal that, without the least affectation, I acknowledge there must be something repellent in me, but what it is I cannot tell. That Ellen was the cause of the general aversion, it is impossible to believe. The only theory I have is, that partly owing to a constant sense of fatigue, due to imperfect health, and partly to chafing irritation at mere gossip, although I had no power to think of anything better, or say anything better myself, I was avoided both by the commonplace and those who had talent. Commonplace persons avoided me because I did not chatter, and persons of talent because I stood for nothing. “There was nothing in me.” We met at M’Kay’s two gentlemen whom we thought we might invite to our house. One of them was an antiquarian. He had discovered in an excavation in London some Roman remains. This had led him on to the study of the position and boundaries of the Roman city. He had become an authority upon this subject, and had lectured upon it. He came; but as we were utterly ignorant, and could not, with all our efforts, manifest any sympathy which he valued at the worth of a pin, he soon departed, and departed for ever. The second was a student of Elizabethan literature, and I rashly concluded at once that he must be most delightful. He likewise came. I showed him my few poor books, which he condemned, and I found that such observations as I could make he considered as mere twaddle. I knew nothing, or next to nothing, about the editions or the curiosities, or the proposed emendations of obscure passages, and he, too, departed abruptly. I began to think after he had gone that my study of Shakespeare was mere dilettantism but I afterwards came to the conclusion that if a man wishes to spoil himself for Shakespeare, the best thing he can do is to turn Shakespearian critic.
My worst enemy at this time was ill health, and it was more distressing than it otherwise would have been, because I had such responsibilities upon me. When I lived alone I knew that if anything should happen to me it would be of no particular consequence, but now whenever I felt sick I was anxious on account of Ellen. What would become of her—this was the thought which kept me awake night after night when the terrors of depression were upon me, as they often were. But still, terrors with growing years had lost their ancient strength. My brain and nerves were quiet compared with what they were in times gone by, and I had gradually learned the blessed lesson which is taught by familiarity with sorrow, that the greater part of what is dreadful in it lies in the imagination. The true Gorgon head is seldom seen in reality. That it exists I do not doubt, but it is not so commonly visible as we think. Again, as we get older we find that all life is given us on conditions of uncertainty, and yet we walk courageously on. The labourer marries and has children, when there is nothing but his own strength between him and ruin. A million chances are encountered every day, and any one of the million accidents which might happen would cripple him or kill him, and put into the workhouse those who depend upon him. Yet he treads his path undisturbed. Life to all of us is a narrow plank placed across a gulf, which yawns on either side, and if we were perpetually looking down into it we should fall. So at last, the possibility of disaster ceased to affright me. I had been brought off safely so many times when destruction seemed imminent, that I grew hardened, and lay down quietly at night, although the whim of a madman might to-morrow cast me on the pavement. Frequently, as I have said, I could not do this, but I strove to do it, and was able to do it when in health.
I tried to think about nothing which expressed whatever in the world may be insoluble or simply tragic. A great change is just beginning to come over us in this respect. So many books I find are written which aim merely at new presentation of the hopeless. The contradictions of fate, the darkness of death, the fleeting of man over this brief stage of existence, whence we know not, and whither we know not, are favourite subjects with writers who seem to think that they are profound, because they can propose questions which cannot be answered. There is really more strength of mind required for resolving the commonest difficulty than is necessary for the production of poems on these topics. The characteristic of so much that is said and written now is melancholy; and it is melancholy, not because of any deeper acquaintance with the secrets of man than that which was possessed by our forefathers, but because it is easy to be melancholy, and the time lacks strength.
As I am now setting down, without much order or connection, the lessons which I had to learn, I may perhaps be excused if I add one or two others. I can say of them all, that they are not book lessons. They have been taught me by my own experience, and as a rule I have always found that in my own most special perplexities I got but little help from books or other persons. I had to find out for myself what was for me the proper way of dealing with them.
My love for Ellen was great, but I discovered that even such love as this could not be left to itself. It wanted perpetual cherishing. The lamp, if it was to burn brightly, required daily trimming, for people became estranged and indifferent, not so much by open quarrel or serious difference, as by the intervention of trifles which need but the smallest, although continuous effort for their removal. The true wisdom is to waste no time over them, but to eject them at once. Love, too, requires that the two persons who love one another shall constantly present to one another what is best in them, and to accomplish this, deliberate purpose, and even struggle, are necessary. If through relapse into idleness we do not attempt to bring soul and heart into active communion day by day, what wonder if this once exalted relationship become vulgar and mean?
I was much overworked. It was not the work itself which was such a trial, but the time it consumed. At best, I had but a clear space of an hour, or an hour and a half at home, and to slave merely for this seemed such a mockery! Day after day sped swiftly by, made up of nothing but this infernal drudgery, and I said to myself—Is this life? But I made up my mind thatnever would I give myself tongue. I clapped a muzzle on my mouth. Had I followed my own natural bent, I should have become expressive about what I had to endure, but I found that expression reacts on him who expresses and intensifies what is expressed. If we break out into rhetoric over a toothache, the pangs are not the easier, but the worse to be borne.
I naturally contracted a habit of looking forward from the present moment to one beyond. The whole week seemed to exist for the Sunday. On Monday morning I began counting the hours till Sunday should arrive. The consequence was, that when it came, it was not enjoyed properly, and I wasted it in noting the swiftness of its flight. Oh, how absurd is man! If we were to reckon up all the moments which we really enjoy for their own sake, how few should we find them to be! The greatest part, far the greatest part, of our lives is spent in dreaming over the morrow, and when it comes, it, too, is consumed in the anticipation of a brighter morrow, and so the cheat is prolonged, even to the grave. This tendency, unconquerable though it may appear to be, can to a great extent at any rate, be overcome by strenuous discipline. I tried to blind myself to the future, and many and many a time, as I walked along that dreary New Road or Old St. Pancras Road, have I striven to compel myself not to look at the image of Hampstead Heath or Regent’s Park, as yet six days in front of me, but to get what I could out of what was then with me.
The instinct which leads us perpetually to compare what we are with what we might be is no doubt of enormous value, and is the spring which prompts all action, but, like every instinct, it is the source of greatest danger. I remember the day and the very spot on which it flashed into me, like a sudden burst of the sun’s rays, that I had no right to this or that—to so much happiness, or even so much virtue. What title-deeds could I show for such a right? Straightway it seemed as if the centre of a whole system of dissatisfaction were removed, and as if the system collapsed. God, creating from His infinite resources a whole infinitude of beings, had created me with a definite position on the scale, and that position only could I claim. Cease the trick of contrast. If I can by any means get myself to consider myself alone without reference to others, discontent will vanish. I walk this Old St. Pancras Road on foot—another rides. Keep out of view him who rides and all persons riding, and I shall not complain that I tramp in the wet. So also when I think how small and weak I am.
How foolish it is to try and cure by argument what time will cure so completely and so gently if left to itself. As I get older, the anxiety to prove myself right if I quarrel dies out. I hold my tongue and time vindicates me, if it is possible to vindicate me, or convicts me if I am wrong. Many and many a debate too which I have had with myself alone has been settled in the same way. The question has been put aside and has lost its importance. The ancient Church thought, and seriously enough, no doubt, that all the vital interests of humanity were bound up with the controversies upon the Divine nature; but the centuries have rolled on, and who cares for those controversies now. The problems of death and immortality once upon a time haunted me so that I could hardly sleep for thinking about them. I cannot tell how, but so it is, that at the present moment, when I am years nearer the end, they trouble me but very little. If I could but bury and let rot things which torment me and come to no settlement—if I could always do this—what a blessing it would be.
Ihavesaid that Ellen had a child by her first husband. Marie, for that was her name, was now ten years old. She was like neither her mother nor father, and yet wasshotas it were with strange gleams which reminded me of her paternal grandmother for a moment, and then disappeared. She had rather coarse dark hair, small black eyes, round face, and features somewhat blunt or blurred, the nose in particular being so. She had a tendency to be stout. For books she did not care, and it was with the greatest difficulty we taught her to read. She was not orderly or careful about her person, and in this respect was a sore disappointment—not that she was positively careless, but she took no pride in dress, nor in keeping her room and her wardrobe neat. She was fond of bright colours, which was another trial to Ellen, who disliked any approach to gaudiness. She was not by any means a fool, and she had a peculiarly swift mode of expressing herself upon persons and things. A stranger looking at her would perhaps have adjudged her inclined to sensuousness, and dull. She was neither one nor the other. She ate little, although she was fond of sweets. Her rather heavy face, with no clearly cut outline in it, was not the typical face for passion; but she was capable of passion to an extraordinary degree, and what is more remarkable, it was not explosive passion, or rather it was not passion which she suffered to explode. I remember once when she was a little mite she was asked out somewhere to tea. She was dressed and ready, but it began to rain fast, and she was told she could not go. She besought, but it was in vain. We could not afford cabs, and there was no omnibus. Marie, finding all her entreaties were useless, quietly walked out of the room; and after some little time her mother, calling her and finding she did not come, went to look for her. She had gone into the back-yard, and was sitting there in the rain by the side of the water-butt. She was soaked, and her best clothes were spoiled. I must confess that I did not take very kindly to her. I was irritated at her slowness in learning; it was, in fact, painful to be obliged to teach her. I thought that perhaps she might have some undeveloped taste for music, but she showed none, and our attempts to get her to sing ordinary melodies were a failure. She was more or less of a locked cabinet to me. I tried her with the two or three keys which I had, but finding that none of them fitted, I took no more pains about her.
One Sunday we determined upon a holiday. It was a bold adventure for us, but we had made up our minds. There was an excursion train to Hastings, and accordingly Ellen, Marie, and myself were at London Bridge Station early in the morning. It was a lovely summer’s day in mid-July. The journey down was uncomfortable enough in consequence of the heat and dust, but we heeded neither one nor the other in the hope of seeing the sea. We reached Hastings at about eleven o’clock, and strolled westwards towards Bexhill. Our pleasure was exquisite. Who can tell, save the imprisoned Londoner, the joy of walking on the clean sea-sand! What a delight that was, to say nothing of the beauty of the scenery! To be free of the litter and filth of a London suburb, of its broken hedges, its brickbats, its torn advertisements, its worn and trampled grass in fields half given over to the speculative builder: in place of this, to tread the immaculate shore over which breathed a wind not charged with soot; to replace the dull, shrouding obscurity of the smoke by a distance so distinct that the masts of the ships whose hulls were buried below the horizon were visible—all this was perfect bliss. It was not very poetic bliss, perhaps; but nevertheless it is a fact that the cleanness of the sea and the sea air was as attractive to us as any of the sea attributes. We had a wonderful time. Only in the country is it possible to note the change of morning into mid-day, of mid-day into afternoon, and of afternoon into evening; and it is only in the country, therefore, that a day seems stretched out into its proper length. We had brought all our food with us, and sat upon the shore in the shadow of a piece of the cliff. A row of heavy white clouds lay along the horizon almost unchangeable and immovable, with their summit-lines and the part of the mass just below them steeped in sunlight. The level opaline water differed only from a floor by a scarcely perceptible heaving motion, which broke into the faintest of ripples at our feet. So still was the great ocean, so quietly did everything lie in it, that the wavelets which licked the beach were as pure and bright as if they were a part of the mid-ocean depths. About a mile from us, at one o’clock, a long row of porpoises appeared, showing themselves in graceful curves for half-an-hour or so, till they went out farther to sea off Fairlight. Some fishing-boats were becalmed just in front of us. Their shadows slept, or almost slept, upon the water, a gentle quivering alone showing that it was not complete sleep, or if sleep, that it was sleep with dreams. The intensity of the sunlight sharpened the outlines of every little piece of rock, and of the pebbles, in a manner which seemed supernatural to us Londoners. In London we get the heat of the sun, but not his light, and the separation of individual parts into such vivid isolation was so surprising that even Marie noticed it, and said it “all seemed as if she were looking through a glass.” It was perfect—perfect in its beauty—and perfect because, from the sun in the heavens down to the fly with burnished wings on the hot rock, there was nothing out of harmony. Everything breathed one spirit. Marie played near us; Ellen and I sat still, doing nothing. We wanted nothing, we had nothing to achieve; there were no curiosities to be seen, there was no particular place to be reached, no “plan of operations,” and London was forgotten for the time. It lay behind us in the north-west, and the cliff was at the back of us shutting out all thought of it. No reminiscences and no anticipations disturbed us; the present was sufficient, and occupied us totally.
I should like, if I could, to write an essay upon the art of enjoying a holiday. It is sad to think how few people know how to enjoy one, although they are so precious. We do not sufficiently consider that enjoyment of every kind is an art carefully to be learnt, and specially the art of making the most of a brief space set apart for pleasure. It is foolish, for example, if a man, city bred, has but twelve hours before him, to spend more of it in eating and drinking than is necessary. Eating and drinking produce stupidity, at least in some degree, which may just as well be reserved for town. It is foolish also to load the twelve hours with a task—so much to be done. The sick person may perhaps want exercise, but to the tolerably healthy the best of all recreation is the freedom from fetters even when they are self-imposed.
Our train homewards was due at Bexhill a little after seven. By five o’clock a change gradual but swift was observed. The clouds which had charmed us all through the morning and afternoon were in reality thunder-clouds, which woke up like a surprised army under perfect discipline, and moved magnificently towards us. Already afar off we heard the softened echoing roll of the thunder. Every now and then we saw a sharp thrust of lightning down into the water, and shuddered when we thought that perhaps underneath that stab there might be a ship with living men. The battle at first was at such a distance that we watched it with intense and solemn delight. As yet not a breath of air stirred, but presently, over in the south-east, a dark ruffled patch appeared on the horizon, and we agreed that it was time to go. The indistinguishable continuous growl now became articulated into distinct crashes. I had miscalculated the distance to the station, and before we got there the rain, skirmishing in advance, was upon us. We took shelter in a cottage for a moment in order that Ellen might get a glass of water—bad-looking stuff it was, but she was very thirsty—and put on her cloak. We then started again on our way. We reached the station at about half-past six, before the thunder was overhead, but not before Ellen had got wet, despite all my efforts to protect her. She was also very hot from hurrying, and yet there was nothing to be done but to sit in a kind of covered shed till the train came up. The thunder and lightning were, however, so tremendous, that we thought of nothing else. When they were at their worst, the lightning looked like the upset of a cauldron of white glowing metal—with such strength, breadth, and volume did it descend. Just as the train arrived, the roar began to abate, and in about half-an-hour it had passed over to the north, leaving behind the rain, cold and continuous, which fell all round us from a dark, heavy, grey sky. The carnage in which we were was a third-class, with seats arranged parallel to the sides. It was crowded, and we were obliged to sit in the middle, exposed to the draught which the tobacco smoke made necessary. Some of the company were noisy, and before we got to Red Hill became noisier, as the brandy-flasks which had been well filled at Hastings began to work. Many were drenched, and this was an excuse for much of the drinking; although for that matter, any excuse or none is generally sufficient. At Red Hill we were stopped by other trains, and before we came to Croydon we were an hour late. We had now become intolerably weary. The songs were disgusting, and some of the women who were with the men had also been drinking, and behaved in a manner which it was not pleasant that Ellen and Marie should see. The carriage was lighted fortunately by one dim lamp only which hung in the middle, and I succeeded at last in getting seats at the further end, where there was a knot of more decent persons who had huddled up there away from the others. All the glory of the morning was forgotten. Instead of three happy, exalted creatures, we were three dejected, shivering mortals, half poisoned with foul air and the smell of spirits. We crawled up to London Bridge at the slowest pace, and, finally, the railway company discharged us on the platform at ten minutes past eleven. Not a place in any omnibus could be secured, and we therefore walked for a mile or so till I saw a cab, which—unheard-of expense for me—I engaged, and we were landed at our own house exactly at half-past twelve. The first thing to be done was to get Marie to bed. She was instantly asleep, and was none the worse for her journey. With Ellen the case was different. She could not sleep, and the next morning was feverish. She insisted that it was nothing more than a bad cold, and would on no account permit me even to give her any medicine. She would get up presently, and she and Marie could get on well enough together. But when I reached home on Monday evening, Ellen was worse, and was still in bed.
I sent at once for the doctor, who would give no opinion for a day or two, but meanwhile directed that she was to remain where she was, and take nothing but the lightest food. Tuesday night passed, and the fever still increased. I had become very anxious, but I dared not stay with her, for I knew not what might happen if I were absent from my work. I was obliged to try and think of somebody who would come and help us. Our friend Taylor, who once was the coal-porter at Somerset House, came into my mind. He, as I have said when talking about him, was married, but had no children. To him accordingly I went. I never shall forget the alacrity with which he prompted his wife to go, and with which she consented. I was shut up in my own sufferings, but I remember a flash of joy that all our efforts in our room had not been in vain. I was delighted that I had secured assistance, but I do believe the uppermost thought was delight that we had been able to develop gratitude and affection. Mrs. Taylor was an “ordinary woman.” She was about fifty, rather stout, and entirely uneducated. But when she took charge at our house, all her best qualities found expression. It is true enough,omnium consensu capax imperii nisi imperasset, but it is equally true that under the pressure of trial and responsibility we are often stronger than when there is no pressure. Many a man will acknowledge that in difficulty he has surprised himself by a resource and coolness which he never suspected before. Mrs. Taylor I always thought to be rather weak and untrustworthy, but I found that whenweightwas placed upon her, she was steady as a rock, a systematic and a perfect manager. There was no doubt in a very short time as to the nature of the disease. It was typhoid fever, the cause probably being the impure water drunk as we were coming home. I have no mind to describe what Ellen suffered. Suffice it to say, that her treatment was soon reduced to watching her every minute night and day, and administering small quantities of milk. Her prostration and emaciation were excessive, and without the most constant attention she might at any moment have slipped out of our hands. I was like a man shipwrecked and alone in a polar country, whose existence depends upon one spark of fire, which he tries to cherish, left glimmering in a handful of ashes. Oh those days, prolonged to weeks, during which that dreadful struggle lasted—days swallowed up with one sole, intense, hungry desire that her life might be spared!—days filled with a forecast of the blackness and despair before me if she should depart. I tried to obtain release from the office. The answer was that nobody could of course prevent my being away, but that it was not usual for a clerk to be absent merely because his wife was not well. The brute added with a sneer that a wife was “a luxury” which he should have thought I could hardly afford. We divided between us, however, at home the twenty-four hours during which we stood sentinels against death, and occasionally we were relieved by one or two friends. I went on duty from about eight in the evening till one in the morning, and was then relieved by Mrs. Taylor, who remained till ten or eleven. She then went to bed, and was replaced by little Marie. What a change came over that child! I was amazed at her. All at once she seemed to have found what she was born to do. The key had been discovered, which unlocked and revealed what there was in her, of which hitherto I had been altogether unaware. Although she was so little, she became a perfect nurse. Her levity disappeared; she was grave as a matron, moved about as if shod in felt, never forgot a single direction, and gave proper and womanly answers to strangers who called. Faculties unsuspected grew almost to full height in a single day. Never did she relax during the whole of that dreadful time, or show the slightest sign of discontent. She sat by her mother’s side, intent, vigilant; and she had her little dinner prepared and taken up into the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed. I remember once going to her cot in the night, as she lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her with remorse and thankfulness—remorse, that I, with blundering stupidity, had judged her so superficially; and thankfulness, that it had pleased God to present to me so much of His own divinest grace. Fool that I was, not to be aware that messages from Him are not to be read through the envelope in which they are enclosed. I never should have believed, if it had not been for Marie, that any grown-up man could so love a child. Such love, I should have said, was only possible between man and woman, or, perhaps, between man and man. But now I doubt whether a love of that particular kind could be felt towards any grown-up human being, love so pure, so imperious, so awful. My love to Marie was love of God Himself as He is—an unrestrained adoration of an efflux from Him, adoration transfigured into love, because the revelation had clothed itself with a child’s form. It was, as I say, the love of God as He is. It was not necessary, as it so often is necessary, to qualify, to subtract, to consider the other side, to deplore the obscurity or the earthly contamination with which the Word is delivered to us. This was the Word itself, without even consciousness on the part of the instrument selected for its vocalisation. I may appear extravagant, but I can only put down what I felt and still feel. I appeal, moreover, to Jesus Himself for justification. I had seen the kingdom of God through a little child. I, in fact, have done nothing more than beat out over a page in my own words what passed through His mind when He called a little child and set him in the midst of His disciples. How I see the meaning of those words now! and so it is that a text will be with us for half a lifetime, recognised as great and good, but not penetrated till the experience comes round to us in which it was born.
Six weeks passed before the faint blue point of light which flickered on the wick began to turn white and show some strength. At last, however, day by day, we marked a slight accession of vitality which increased with change of diet. Every evening when I came home I was gladdened by the tidings which showed advance, and Ellen, I believe, was as much pleased to see how others rejoiced over her recovery as she was pleased for her own sake. She, too, was one of those creatures who always generously admit improvement. For my own part, I have often noticed that when I have been ill, and have been getting better, I have refused to acknowledge it, and that it has been an effort to me to say that things were not at their worst. She, however, had none of this niggardly baseness, and always, if only for the sake of her friends, took the cheerful side. Mrs. Taylor now left us. She left us a friend whose friendship will last, I hope, as long as life lasts. She had seen all our troubles and our poverty: we knew that she knew all about us: she had helped us with the most precious help—what more was there necessary to knit her to us?—and it is worth noting that the assistance which she rendered, and her noble self-sacrifice, so far from putting us, in her opinion, in her debt, only seemed to her a reason why she should be more deeply attached to us.
It was late in the autumn before Ellen had thoroughly recovered, but at last we said that she was as strong as she was before, and we determined to celebrate our deliverance by one more holiday before the cold weather came. It was again Sunday—a perfectly still, warm, autumnal day, with a high barometer and the gentlest of airs from the west. The morning in London was foggy, so much so that we doubted at first whether we should go; but my long experience of London fog told me that we should escape from it with that wind if we got to the chalk downs away out by Letherhead and Guildford. We took the early train to a point at the base of the hills, and wound our way up into the woods at the top. We were beyond the smoke, which rested like a low black cloud over the city in the north-east, reaching a third of the way up to the zenith. The beech had changed colour, and glowed with reddish-brown fire. We sat down on a floor made of the leaves of last year. At mid-day the stillness was profound, broken only by the softest of whispers descending from the great trees which spread over us their protecting arms. Every now and then it died down almost to nothing, and then slowly swelled and died again, as if the Gods of the place were engaged in divine and harmonious talk. By moving a little towards the external edge of our canopy we beheld the plain all spread out before us, bounded by the heights of Sussex and Hampshire. It was veiled with the most tender blue, and above it was spread a sky which was white on the horizon and deepened by degrees into azure over our heads. The exhilaration of the air satisfied Marie, although she had no playmate, and there was nothing special with which she could amuse herself. She wandered about looking for flowers and ferns, and was content. We were all completely happy. We strained our eyes to see the furthest point before us, and we tried to find it on the map we had brought with us. The season of the year, which is usually supposed to make men pensive, had no such effect upon us. Everything in the future, even the winter in London, was painted by Hope, and the death of the summer brought no sadness. Rather did summer dying in such fashion fill our hearts with repose, and even more than repose—with actual joy.