Thetrial took place at Lancaster. Zachariah was sorely tempted to go; but, in the first place, he had no money, and, in the second place, he feared arrest. Not that he would have cared two pins if he had been put into jail; but he could not abandon his wife. He was perfectly certain what the result would be, but nevertheless, on the day when the news was due, he could not rest. There was a mail coach which ran from Lancaster to Liverpool, starting from Lancaster in the afternoon and reaching Liverpool between eleven and twelve at night. He went out about that time and loitered about the coach-office as if he were waiting for a friend. Presently he heard the wheels and the rapid trot of the horses. His heart failed him, and he could almost have fainted.
“What’s the news?” said the clerk to the coachman. “All the whole d—d lot convicted, and one of ’em going to be hung.”
“One of them hung! Which one is that?”
“Why, him as killed the soldier, of course—the Frenchman.”
“A d—d good job too,” replied the clerk. “I should like to serve every — Frenchman in the country the same way.”
Zachariah could not listen any longer, but went home, and all night long a continuous series of fearful images passed before his eyes—condemned cells, ropes, gallows and the actual fall of the victim, down to the contortion of his muscles. He made up his mind on the following day that he would see Caillaud before he died, and he told his wife he was going. She was silent for a moment, and then she said:
“You will do as you like, I suppose: but I cannot see what is the use of it. You can do no good; you will lose your place here; it will cost you something; and when you get there you may have to stop there.”
Zachariah could not restrain himself.
“Good God!” he cried, “you hear that one of my best friends is about to be hung, and you sit there like a statue—not a single word of sympathy or horror—you care no more than a stone.Useof going! I tell you I will go if I starve, or have to rot in jail all my lifetime. Furthermore, I will go this instant.”
He went out of the room in a rage, rammed a few things into a bag, and was out of the house in ten minutes. He was excusably unjust to his wife—excusably, because he could not help thinking that she was hard, and even cruel. Yet really she was not so, or if she was, she was not necessarily so, for injustice, not only to others, but to ourselves, is always begotten by a false relationship. There were multitudes of men in the world, worse than Zachariah, with whom she would have been, not only happier, but better. He, poor man, with all his virtues, stimulated and developed all that was disagreeable in her.
He was in no mood to rest, and walked on all that night. Amidst all his troubles he could not help being struck with the solemn, silent procession overhead. It was perfectly clear—so clear that the heavens were not a surface, but a depth, and the stars of a lesser magnitude were so numerous and brilliant that they obscured the forms of the greater constellations. Presently the first hint of day appeared in the east. We must remember that this was the year 1817, before, so it is commonly supposed, men knew what it was properly to admire a cloud or a rock. Zachariah was not, therefore, on a level with the most ordinary subscriber to a modern circulating library. Nevertheless he could not help noticing—we will say he did no more—the wonderful, the sacredly beautiful, drama which noiselessly displayed itself before him. Over in the east the intense deep blue of the sky softened a little. Then the trees in that quarter began to contrast themselves against the background and reveal their distinguishing shapes. Swiftly, and yet with such even velocity that in no one minute did there seem to be any progress compared with the minute preceding, the darkness was thinned, and resolved itself overhead into pure sapphire, shaded into yellow below and in front of him, while in the west it was still almost black. The grassy floor of the meadows now showed its colour, grey green, with the dew lying on it, and in the glimmer under the hedge might be discerned a hare or two stirring. Star by star disappeared, until none were left, save Venus, shining like a lamp till the very moment almost when the sun’s disc touched the horizon. Half a dozen larks mounted and poured forth that ecstasy which no bird but the lark can translate. More amazing than the loveliness of scene, sound, and scent around him was the sense of irrestisible movement. He stopped to watch it, for it grew so rapid that he could almost detect definite pulsations. Throb followed throb every second with increasing force, and in a moment more a burning speck of gold was visible, and behold it was day! He slowly turned his eyes away and walked onwards.
Lancaster was reached on the second evening after he left Liverpool. He could not travel fast nor long together, for he was not yet completely strong. He secured a bed in a low part of the town, at a public-house, and on the morning of the third day presented himself at the prison door. After some formalities he was admitted, and taken by a warder along a corridor with whitewashed walls to the condemned cell where Caillaud lay. The warder looked through a grating, and said to Zachariah that a visitor was already there. Two were not allowed at a time, but he would tell the prisoner that somebody was waiting for him.
“Let’s see, what’s your name?” said the warder. Then it suddenly struck him that he had been fool enough, in the excitement of entering the prison, to sign his real name in the book. There was no help for it now, and he repeated that it was Coleman.
“Ah yes, Coleman,” echoed the man, in a manner which was significant.
“Who is the other visitor?” said Zachariah.
“It is his daughter.”
His first thought was to ask to be let in, but his next was, that it would be profanity to disturb the intercourse of father and child, and he was silent. However, he had been announced, and Caillaud appeared at the grating begging permission for his friend to enter. It was at first refused; but presently something seemed to strike the jailer, for he relented with a smile.
“You won’t want to come again?” he observed interrogatively.
“No; that is to say, I think not.”
“No; that is to say, I think not,” he repeated slowly, word for word, adding, “I shall have to stay with you while you are together.”
Zachariah entered, the warder locking the door behind him, and seating himself on the edge of the bedstead, where he remained during the whole of the interview, jingling his keys and perfectly unmoved.
The three friends spoke not a word for nearly five minutes. Zachariah was never suddenly equal to any occasion which made any great demands upon him. It often made him miserable that it was so. Here he was, in the presence of one whom he had so much loved, and who was about to leave him for ever, and he had nothing to say. That could have been endured could he but havefeltand showed his feeling, could he but have cast himself upon his neck and wept over him, but he was numbed and apparently immovable. It was Caillaud who first broke the silence.
“It appears I shall have to console you rather than you me; believe me, I care no more about dying, as mere dying, than I do about walking across this room. There are two things which disturb me—the apprehension of some pain, and bidding good-bye to Pauline and you, and two or three more.”
There was, after all, but just a touch needed to break up Zachariah and melt him.
“You are happier than I,” he cried. “Your work is at an end. No more care for things done or undone; you are discharged, and nobly discharged, with honour. But as for me!”
“With honour!” and Caillaud smiled. “To be hung like a forger of bank-notes—not even to be shot—and then to be forgotten. Forgotten utterly! This does not happen to be one of those revolutions which men remember.”
“No! men will not remember,” said Pauline, with an elevation of voice and manner almost oratorical. “Men will not remember, but there is a memory in the world which forgets nothing.”
“Do you know,” said Caillaud, “I have always loved adventure, and at times I look forward to death with curiosity and interest, just as if I were going to a foreign country.”
“Tell me,” said Zachariah, “if there is anything I can do.”
“Nothing. I would ask you to see that Pauline comes to no harm, but she can take care of herself. I have nothing to give you in parting. They have taken everything from me.”
“What a brute I am! I shall never see you again, and I cannot speak,” sobbed Zachariah.
“Speak! What need is there of speaking? What is there which can be said at such a time? To tell you the truth, Coleman, I hardly cared about having you here. I did not want to imperil the calm which is now happily upon me; we all of us have something unaccountable and uncontrollable in us, and I do not know how soon it may wake in me. But I did wish to see you, in order that your mind might be at peace about me. Come, good-bye!”
Caillaud put his hand on Zachariah’s shoulder.
“This will not do,” he said. “For my sake forbear. I can face what I have to go through next Monday if am not shaken. Come, Pauline, you too, my child, must leave me for a bit.”
Zachariah looked at Pauline, who rose and threw her shawl over her shoulders. Her lips were tightly shut, but she was herself. The warder opened the door. Zachariah took his friend’s hand, held it for a moment, and then threw his arms round his neck. There is a pathos in parting which the mere loss through absence does not explain. We all of us feel it, even if there is to be a meeting again in a few months, and we are overcome by incomprehensible emotion when we turn back down the pier, unable any longer to discern the waving of the handkerchief, or when the railway train turns the curve in the cutting and leaves us standing on the platform. Infinitely pathetic, therefore, is the moment when we separate for ever.
Caillaud was unsettled for an instant, and then, slowly untwining the embrace, he made a sign to Pauline, who took Zachariah’s hand and led him outside; the heavy well-oiled bolt of the lock shooting back under the key with a smooth strong thud between them. She walked down the corridor alone, not noticing that he had not followed her, and had just passed out of sight when an officer stepped up to him and said:
“Your name is Coleman?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry to hear it. My name is Nadin. You know me, I think. You must consider yourself my prisoner.”
Zachariah was in prison for two years. He had not been there three months when his wife died.
* * * *
Let us now look forward to 1821; let us walk down one of the new streets just beginning to stretch northwards from Pentonville; let us stop opposite a little house, with a little palisade in front, enclosing a little garden five and twenty feet long and fifteen feet broad; let us peep through the chink between the blind and the window. We see Zachariah and Pauline. Another year passes; we peep through the same chink again. A cradle is there, in which lies Marie Pauline Coleman; but where is the mother? She is not there, and the father alone sits watching the child.
Cowfold, half village, half town, lies about three miles to the west of the great North Road from London to York. As you go from London, about fifty miles from the Post-Office in St. Martin’s le Grand—the fiftieth milestone is just beyond the turning—you will see a hand-post with three arms on it; on one is written in large letters, “ToLondon;” on the second, in equally large letters, “ToYork;” and on the third, in small italic letters, “To Cowfold.” Two or three years before the events narrated in the following chapters took place—that is to say, about twenty years after the death of Zachariah’s second wife—a hundred coaches a day rolled past that hand-post, and about two miles beyond it was a huge inn, with stables like cavalry barracks, where horses were changed. No coach went through Cowfold. When the inhabitants wished to go northwards or southwards they walked or drove to the junction, and waited on the little grassy triangle till a coach came by which had room for them. When they returned they were deposited at the same spot, and the passengers who were going through from London to York or Scotland, or who were coming up to London, always seemed to despise people who were taken up or who were left by the roadside there.
There was, perhaps, some reason for this contempt. The North Road was at that time one of the finest roads in the world, broad, hard-metalled, and sound in the wettest weather. That which led to Cowfold was under the control of the parish, and in winter-time was very bad indeed. When you looked down it it seemed as if it led nowhere, and indeed the inhabitants of the town were completely shut off from any close communication with the outer world. How strange it was to emerge from the end of the lane and to see those wonderful words, “ToLondon,” “ToYork!” What an opening into infinity! Boys of a slightly imaginative turn of mind—for there were boys with imagination even in Cowfold—would, on a holiday trudge the three miles eastward merely to get to the post and enjoy the romance of those mysterious fingers. No wonder; for the excitement begotten by the long stretch of the road—London at one end, York at the other—by the sight of theStar,Rover,Eclipse, orTimesracing along at twelve miles an hour, and by the inscriptions on them, was worth a whole afternoon’s cricket or wandering in the fields. Cowfold itself supplied no such stimulus. The only thing like it was the mail-cart, which every evening took the letters from the post-office, disappeared into the dark, nobody could tell whither, and brought letters in the morning, nobody could tell whence, before the inhabitants were out of bed. There was a vague belief that it went about fifteen miles and “caught” something somewhere; but nobody knew for certain, except the postmistress and the mail-cart driver, who were always remarkably reticent on the point. The driver was dressed in red, carried a long horn slung at the side of the cart, and was popularly believed also to have pistols with him. He never accosted anybody; sat on a solitary perch just big enough for him; swayed always backwards and forwards a little in a melancholy fashion as he rode; was never seen during the day-time, and was not, in any proper sense, a Cowfold person.
Cowfold had four streets, or, more correctly, only two, which crossed one another at right angles in the middle of the town, and formed there a kind of square or open place, in which, on Saturdays, a market was held.
The “Angel” was in this square, and the shops grouped themselves round it. In the centre was a large pump with a great leaden spout that had a hole bored in it at the side. By stopping up the mouth of the spout with the hand it was possible through this hole to get a good drink, if a friend was willing to work the handle; and as the square was a public playground, the pump did good service, especially amongst the boys, all of whom preferred it greatly to a commonplace mug. On Sundays it was invariably chained up; for although it was no breach of the Sabbath to use the pump in the backyard, the line was drawn there, and it would have been voted by nine-tenths of Cowfold as decidedly immoral to get water from the one outside. The shops were a draper’s, a grocer’s, an ironmonger’s, a butcher’s and a baker’s. All these were regular shops, with shop-windows, and were within sight of one another.
There were also other houses where things were sold; but these were mere dwelling-houses, and were at the poorer and more remote ends of Cowfold. None of the regular shops aforesaid were strictly what they professed to be. Each of them diverged towards “the general.” The draper sold boots and shoes; the grocer sold drugs, stationery, horse and cow medicines, and sheep ointment; and the ironmonger dealt in crockery. Even the butcher was more than a butcher, for he was never to be seen at his chopping block, and his wife did all the retail work. He himself was in the “jobbing” line, and was always jogging about in a cart, in the hind part of which, covered with a net, was a calf or a couple of pigs. Three out of the four streets ran out in cottages; but one was more aristocratic. This was Church Street, which contained the church and the parsonage. It also had in it four red brick houses, each surrounded with large gardens. In one lived a brewer who had a brewery in Cowfold, and owned a dozen beer-shops in the neighbourhood; another was a seminary for young ladies; in the third lived the doctor; and in the fourth old Mr. and Mrs. Muston, who had no children, had been there for fifty years; and this, so far as Cowfold was aware, was all their history. Mr. and Mrs. Muston and the seminary were the main strength of the church. To be sure the doctor and the landlord of the “Angel” professed devotion to the Establishment, but they were never inside the church, except just now and then, and were charitably excused because of their peculiar calling. The rest of Cowfold was Dissenting or “went nowhere.” There were three chapels; one the chapel, orthodox, Independent, holding about seven hundred persons, and more particularly to be described presently; the second Wesleyan, new, stuccoed, with grained doors and cast-iron railing; the third, strict Baptist, ultra-Calvinistic, Antinomian according to the other sects, dark, down an alley, mean, surrounded by a small long-grassed graveyard, and namedZoarin large letters over the long window in front. The “went nowhere” class was apparently not very considerable. On Sunday morning at twelve o’clock Cowfold looked as if it had been swept clean. It was only by comparison between the total number of church-goers and chapel-goers and the total population that it could be believed that there was anybody absent from the means of grace; but if a view could have been taken of the back premises an explanation would have been discovered. Men and women “did up their gardens,” or found, for a variety of reasons, that they were forced to stay at home. In the evening they grew bolder, and strolled through the meadows. It is, however, only fair to respectable Cowfold to say that it knew nothing of these creatures, except by employing them on week-days.
With regard to the Wesleyan Chapel, nothing much need be said. Its creed was imported, and it had no roots in the town. The Church disliked it because it was Dissenting, and the Dissenters disliked it because it was half-Church, and, above all, Tory. It was supported mainly by the brewer, who was drawn thither for many reasons, one of which was political. Another was, that he was not in trade, and although he objected to be confounded with his neighbours who stood behind counters, the Church did not altogether suit him, because there Mr. and Mrs. Muston and the seminary stood in his way. Lastly, as he owned beer-shops, supplied liquor which was a proverb throughout the county, and did a somewhat doubtful business according to the more pious of the Cowfold Christians, he preferred to be accredited as a religious person by Methodism than by any other sect, the stamp of Methodism standing out in somewhat higher relief.
As for Zoar, it was a place apart. Its minister was a big, large-jawed, heavy-eyed man, who lived in a little cottage hard by. His wife was a very plain-looking person, who wore even on Sundays a cotton gown without any ornament, and who took her husband’s arm as they walked down the lane to the chapel. The Independent minister, the Wesleyan minister, and, of course, the rector had nothing to do with the minister of Zoar. This was not because of any heresy or difference of doctrine, but because he was a poor man and poor persons sat under him. Nevertheless he was not in any way a characteristic Calvinist. The Calvinistic creed was stuck in him as in a lump of fat, and had no organising influence upon him whatever. He had no weight in Cowfold, took part in none of its affairs, and his ministrations were confined to about fifty sullen, half stupid, wholly ignorant people who found in the Zoar services something sleepier and requiring less mental exertion than they needed elsewhere; although it must be said that the demands made upon the intellect in none of the places of worship were very extensive. There was a small endowment attached to Zoar, and on this, with the garden and house rent free, the minister lived. Once now and then—perhaps once in every three or four years—there was a baptism in Zoar, and at such times it was crowded. The children of the congregation, as a rule fell away from it as they grew up; but occasionally a girl remained faithful and was formally admitted to its communion. In front of the pulpit was an open space usually covered; but the boards could be taken up, and then a large kind of tank was disclosed, which was filled with water when the ceremony was performed. After hymns had been sung the minister went down into the water, and the candidate appeared dressed in a long white robe very much like a night-gown. The dear sister, during a short address, stood on the brink of the tank for a few moments, and then descended into it beside the minister, who, taking her by the neck and round the waist, ducked her fairly and completely. She emerged, and walked dripping into the vestry, where it was always said that hot brandy and water was ready.
Many of us have felt that we would give all our books if we could but see with our own eyes how a single day was passed by a single ancient Jewish, Greek, or Roman family; how the house was opened in the morning; how the meals were prepared; what was said; how the husband, wife, and children went about their work; what clothes they wore, and what were their amusements. Would that the present historian could do as much for Cowfold! Would that he could bring back one blue summer morning, one afternoon and evening, and reproduce exactly what happened in Cowfold Square, in one of the Cowfold shops, in one of the Cowfold parlours, and in one Cowfold brain and heart. Could this be done with strictest accuracy, a book would be written, although Cowfold was not Athens, Rome, nor Jerusalem, which would live for many many years longer than much of the literature of this century. But alas! the preliminary image in the mind of the writer is faint enough, and when he comes to trace it, the pencil swerves and goes off into something utterly unlike it. An attempt, however, to show what the waking hours in Cowfold Square were like may not be out of place. The shopkeeper came into his shop at half-past seven, about half an hour after the shutters had been taken down by his apprentice. At eight o’clock breakfast was ready; but before breakfast there was family worship, and a chapter was read from the Bible, followed by an extempore prayer from the head of the household. If the master happened to be absent, it was not considered proper that the mistress should pray extempore, and she used a book of “Family Devotions.” A very solid breakfast followed, and business began. It was very slow, but it was very human—much more so than business at the present day in the City. Every customer had something to say beyond his own immediate errand, and the shop was the place where everything touching Cowfold interests was abundantly discussed. Cowfold too, did much trade in the country round it. Most of the inhabitants kept a gig, and two or three times, perhaps, in a week a journey somewhere or other was necessary which was not in the least like a journey in a railway train. Debts in the villages were collected by the creditor in person, who called and invited his debtors to a most substantial dinner at the inn. At one o’clock Cowfold dined. Between one and two nobody was to be seen in the streets, and the doors were either fastened or a bell was put upon them. After dinner the same duties returned in the shop; but inside the house dinner was the turning-point of the day. When the “things were washed, up,” servant and mistress began to smarten themselves, and disappearing into their bedrooms, emerged at four, to make preparations for tea, the meal most enjoyed in all Cowfold. If any spark of wit slept in any Cowfoldian male or female, it appeared then. No invitations to dinner were ever heard of; but tea was the opportunity for hospitality, especially amongst women. The minister, when he visited, invariably came to tea. The news circulated at tea, and, in fact, at tea between five and six, Cowfold, if its intellect could have been measured by a properly constructed gauge, would have been found many degrees higher in the scale than at any other hour. Granted that the conversation was personal, trivial, and even scandalous, it was in a measure philosophical. Cowfold, though it knew nothing, or next to nothing of abstractions, took immense interest in the creatures in which they were embodied. It would have turned a deaf ear to any debate on the nature of ethical obligation; but it was very keen indeed in apportioning blame to its neighbours who had sinned, and in deciding how far they had gone wrong. Cowfold in other words believed that flesh and blood, and not ideas, are the school and the religion for most of us, and that we learn a language by the examples rather than by the rules. The young scholar fresh from his study is impatient at what he considers the unprofitable gossip about the people round the corner; but when he gets older he sees that often it is much better than his books, and that distinctions are expressed by a washerwoman, if the objects to be distinguished eat and drink and sleep, which he would find it difficult to make with his symbols. Moreover, the little Cowfold clubs and parties understood what they were saying, and so far had an advantage over the clubs and parties which, since the days of penny newspapers, now discuss in Cowfold the designs of Russia, the graduation of the Income Tax, or the merits and demerits of the administration. The Cowfold horizon has now been widened, to use the phrase of an enlightened gentleman who came down and lectured there on the criminality of the advertisement duty; but unfortunately the eyes remain the same. Cowfold now looks abroad, and is very eloquent upon the fog in the distance, and the objects it thinks it sees therein; but, alas! what it has gained in inclusive breadth it has lost in definition. Politics, however, were not unknown in Cowfold; for before 1832 it was a borough, and after 1832 it was one of the principal polling-places for the county. Nevertheless it was only on the eve of an election that anybody dabbled in them, and even then they were very rudimentary. The science to most of the voters meant nothing more than a preference of blue to yellow, or yellow to blue; and women had nothing whatever to do with it, excepting that wives always, of course, took their husbands’ colours. Politics, too, as a rule, were not mentioned in private houses. They were mostly reserved for the “Angel,” and for the brandies and water and pipes which collected there in the evening.
To return. After tea the master went back once more to his counter, and the shutters were put up at eight. From eight to nine was an hour of which no account can be given: The lights were left burning in the shops, and the neighbour across the way looked in and remained talking till his supper was ready. Supper at nine, generally hot, was an institution never omitted, and, like tea, was convivial; but the conviviality was of a distinctly lower order. Everybody had whisky, gin, or brandy afterwards, and every male person who was of age smoked. There was, as a rule, no excess, but the remarks were apt to be disconnected and woolly; and the wife, who never had grog for herself, but always sipped her husband’s went to sleep. Eleven o’clock saw all Cowfold in bed, and disturbed only by such dreams as were begotten of the previous liver and bacon and alcohol.
There were no villains amongst that portion of the inhabitants with which this history principally concerns itself, nor was a single adventure of any kind ever known to happen beyond the adventures of being born, getting married, falling sick, and dying, with now and then an accident from a gig. Consequently it might be thought that there was no romance in Cowfold. There could not be a greater mistake. The history of every boy or girl of ordinary make is one of robbery, murder, imprisonment, death sentence, filing of chains, scaling of prison walls, recapture, scaffold, reprieve, poison, and pistols; the difference between such a history and that in the authorised versions being merely circumstantial. The garden of Eden, the murder of Cain, the deluge, the salvation of Noah, the exodus from Egypt, David and Bathsheba, with the murder of Uriah, the Assyrian invasion, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection from the Dead; to say nothing of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the tragedy of Count Cenci, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the Inquisition in Spain, and Revolt of the Netherlands, all happened in Cowfold, as well as elsewhere, and were perhaps more interesting there because they could be studied in detail and the records were authentic.
Church Street, Cowfold—that is to say, the street in which the church stood—was tolerably broad going east and west, so that the sun shone full on the white window-frames and red brick of Mr. Muston’s house, in which everything seemed to sleep in eternal calm. On the opposite side was the seminary, also red brick and white paint, facing the north; but, to make amends, the garden had a southern aspect, and the back of the house was covered with a huge magnolia whose edges curled round to the western side, so that it could be seen by wayfarers. It was a sight not to be forgotten—the red brick, the white paint, the July sun; the magnolia leaves, the flanking elms on the east high above the chimneys, the glimpse of the acre of lawn through the great gates when they happened to be open, the peace, so profound, of summer noon! How lovely it looks as it hovers unsteadily before the eye, seen through the transfiguring haze of so many years! It was really, there is no doubt about it, handsomer than the stuccoed villa which stares at us over the way; but yet, if Cowfold Church Street, red brick, white paint, elms, lawn, and midsummer repose could be restored at the present moment, would it be exactly what the vision of it is? What is this magic gift which even for the humblest of us paints and frames these enchanting pictures? It is nothing less than the genius which is common to humanity. If we are not able to draw or model, we possess the power to select, group, and clothe with an ideal grace, which is the very soul of art, and every man and woman, every bush, nay, every cabbage, cup, and saucer, provided only it be not actually before us, becomes part of a divine picture. Would that we could do with the present what we do with the past! Wecando something if we try.
At the end of Church Street came the vicarage, and then the churchyard, with the church. Beyond was the park, which half embraced Cowfold, for it was possible to enter it not only from Church Street, but from North Street, which ran at right angles to it. The Hall was not much. It was a large plain stone mansion, built in the earlier part of the eighteenth century; but in front of the main entrance was a double row of limes stretching for a quarter of a mile, and the whole of the park was broken up into soft swelling hills, from whose tops, owing to the flatness of the country round, an almost immeasurable distance could be seen, gradually losing itself in deepening mist of tenderest blue. The park, too, was not rigidly circumscribed. Public roads led through it. It melted on two or three sides into cultivated fields, and even the private garden of the Hall seemed a part of it, for there was nothing between them but a kind of grassy ditch and an almost invisible fence. The domain of Cowfold Hall was the glory of Cowfold and the pride of its inhabitants. The modern love of scenery was not known in Cowfold, and still less was that worship of landscape and nature known which, as before observed, is peculiar to the generation born under the influence of Wordsworth. We have learnt, however, from Zachariah that even before Wordsworth’s days people were sometimes touched by dawn or sunset. The morning cheered, the moon lent pathos and sentiment, and the stars awoke unanswerable interrogations in Cowfold, although it knew no poetry, save Dr. Watts, Pollok’sCourse of Time, and here and there a little of Cowper. Under the avenue, too, whose slender columns, in triple rows on either side, rose to an immense height, and met in a roof overhead with all the grace of cathedral stone, and without its superincumbent weight and imprisonment—a roof that was not impervious to the sunlight, but let it pass and fall in quivering flakes on the ground—Cowfold generally took off its hat, partly, no doubt, because the place was cool, but also as an act of homage. Here and in the woods adjoining youths and maidens for three hundred years had walked and made love, for, though the existing house was new, it stood on the site of a far older building. Dead men and women, lord and churl, gone to indistinguishable dust, or even beyond that—gone perhaps, into vapour and gas, which had been blown to New Zealand, and become men and women again—had burned with passion here, and vowed a union which was to last beyond the Judgment Day. They wept here, quarrelled here, rushed again into one another’s arms here, swore to one another here, when Henry the Eighth was king; and they wept here, quarrelled here, embraced here, swore here, in exactly the same mad fashion, when William the Fourth sat upon the throne. Half-way up the avenue was a stone pillar commanding a gentle descent, one way to the Hall, and the other way to the lodge. It set forth the anguish of a former lord of the time of Queen Anne, who had lost his wife when she was twenty-six years old. She was beneath him in rank, but very beautiful, and his affection for her had fought with and triumphed over the cruel opposition of father, mother, and relations, who had other designs. He had made enemies of them all; but he won his wife, and, casting her in the scale, father, mother, and friends were as gossamer. She died two years after the wedding—to the very day. Rich in her love, he had never taken a thought to propitiate anybody, nor to make friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness, and when she suddenly departed, he turned round and found himself alone. So far from knocking at men’s doors, he more fiercely hated those who now, touched with pity, would gladly have welcomed him. He broke from them all, lived his own life, was reputed to be a freethinker, and when he came to his estate, a long while afterwards, he put up the obelisk, and recorded in Latin how Death, the foul adulterer, had ravished his sweet bride—the coward Death whom no man could challenge—and that the inconsolable bridegroom had erected this monument in memory of her matchless virtues. That was all: no blessed resurrection nor trust in the Saviour. The Reverend John Broad, minister of Tanner’s Lane Chapel, when he brought visitors here regularly translated the epitaph. He was not very good at Latin, but he had somehow found out its meaning. He always observed that it was not classic, and consequently not easy to render. He pointed out, too, as a further curiosity, which somewhat increased the difficulty to any ordinary person, that V was used for U, and I for J. He never, as might be expected, omitted to enlarge upon the omission of any reference to the Atoning Blood and the Life to Come, and remarked how the poor man’s sufferings would have been entirely “assuaged”—a favourite word with Mr. Broad—if he had believed in those “remedies.” At the same time Mr. Broad dwelt upon the “associations” of the avenue, which, he thought, added much to its natural “attractiveness.” Cowfold thought so too, and welcomed the words as exactly expressing what it felt. John Broad and Cowfold were right, and more right, perhaps, than they knew. The draper’s young man, who walked through the park with his arm round his young woman’s waist, looked up at the obelisk, repeated its story, and became more serious. Thus it came to pass that the old lord’s love lived again somewhat in the apprentice, and that which to the apprentice seemed most particularly himself was a little bit of the self of the Queen Anne’s earl long since asleep in the vault under Cowfold Church.
TheReverend John Broad was minister of Tanner’s Lane Chapel, or, more properly, Meeting-house, a three gabled building, with the date 1688 upon it, which stood in a short street leading out of North Street. Why it was called Tanner’s Lane nobody knew; for not in the memory of man had any tanner carried on his trade there. There was nothing of any consequence in it but the meeting-house, and when people said Tanner’s Lane this was what they meant. There were about seven hundred and fifty sittings in it, and on Sundays it was tolerably full, for it was attended by large numbers of people from the surrounding villages, who came in gigs and carts, and brought their dinners with them, which they ate in the vestry. It was, in fact, the centre of the Dissenting activity for a whole district. It had small affiliated meeting-houses in places like Sheepgate, Hackston Green, and Bull’s Cross, in which service was held on Sunday evening by the deacons of Tanner’s Lane, or by some of the young men whom Mr. Broad prepared to be missionaries. For a great many years the congregation had apparently undergone no change in character; but the uniformity was only apparent. The fervid piety of Cowper’s time and of the Evangelical revival was a thing almost of the past. The Reverend John Broad was certainly not of the Revival type. He was a big, gross-feeding, heavy person, with heavy ox-face and large mouth, who might have been bad enough for anything if nature had ordained that he should have been born in a hovel at Sheepgate or in the Black Country. As it happened, his father was a woollen draper, and John was brought up to the trade as a youth; got tired of it, thought he might do something more respectable; went to a Dissenting College; took charge of a little chapel in Buckinghamshire; married early; was removed to Tanner’s Lane, and became a preacher of the Gospel. He was moderate in all of what he called his “views;” neither ultra-Calvinist nor Arminian not rigid upon Baptism, and certainly much unlike his lean and fervid predecessor, the Reverend James Harden, M.A., who was educated at Cambridge; threw up all his chances there when he became convinced of sin; cast in his lot with the Independents, and wrestled even unto blood with the world, the flesh, and the devil in Cowfold for thirty years, till he was gathered to his rest. A fiery, ardent, untamable soul was Harden’s, bold and uncompromising. He never scrupled to tell anybody what he thought, and would send an arrow sharp and swift through any iniquity, no matter where it might couch. He absolutely ruled Cowfold, hated by many, beloved by many, feared by all—a genuine soldier of the Cross. Mr. Broad very much preferred the indirect mode of doing good, and if he thought a brother had done wrong, contented himself with praying in private for him. He was, however, not a hypocrite, that is to say, not an ordinary novel or stage hypocrite. There is no such thing as a human being simply hypocritical or simply sincere. We are all hypocrites, more or less, in every word and every action, and, what is more, in every thought. It is a question simply of degree. Furthermore, there are degrees of natural capacity for sincerity, and Mr. Broad was probably as sincere as his build of soul and body allowed him to be. Certainly no doubt as to the truth of what he preached ever crossed his mind. He could not doubt, for there was no doubt in the air; and yet he could not believe as Harden believed, for neither was Harden’s belief now in the air. Nor was Mr. Broad a criminal in any sense. He was upright, on the whole, in all his transactions, although a little greedy and hard, people thought, when the trustees proposed to remit to Widow Oakfield, on her husband’s death, half the rent of a small field belonging to the meeting-house, and contributing a modest sum to Mr. Broad’s revenue. He objected. Widow Oakfield was poor; but then she did not belong to Tanner’s Lane, and was said to have relations who could help her. Mr. Broad loved his wife decently, brought up his children decently, and not the slightest breath of scandal ever tarnished his well-polished reputation. On some points he was most particular, and no young woman who came to him with her experience before she was admitted into the church was ever seen by him alone. Always was a deacon present, and all Cowfold admitted that the minister was most discreet. Another recommendation, too, was that he was temperate in his drink. He was not so in his meat. Supper was his great meal, and he would then consume beef, ham, or sausages, hot potatoes, mixed pickles, fruit pies, bread, cheese, and celery in quantities which were remarkable even in those days; but he never drank anything but beer—a pint at dinner and a pint at supper.
On one Monday afternoon in July, 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Broad sat at tea in the study. This was Mr. Broad’s habit on Monday afternoon. On that day, after the three sermons on the Sunday, he always professed himself “Mondayish.” The morning was given over to calling in the town; when he had dined he slept in his large leathern chair; and at five husband and wife had tea by themselves. Thomas, the eldest son, and his two younger sisters, Priscilla and Tryphosa, aged seventeen and fifteen, were sent to the dining-room. Mr. Broad never omitted this custom of spending an hour and a half on Monday with Mrs. Broad. It gave them an opportunity of talking over the affairs of the congregation, and it added to Mr. Broad’s importance with the missionary students, because they saw how great were the weight and fatigue of the pastoral office.
A flock like that which was shepherded by Mr. Broad required some management. Mrs. Broad took the women, and Mr. Broad the men; but Mrs. Broad was not a very able tactician. She was a Flavel by birth, and came from a distant part of the country. Her father was a Dissenting minister; but he was Dr. Flavel, with a great chapel in a great town. Consequently she gave herself airs, and occasionally let fall, to the great displeasure of the Cowfold ladies, words which implied some disparagement of Cowfold. She was a shortish, stout, upright little woman, who used a large fan and spoke with an accent strange to the Midlands. She was not a great help to the minister, because she was not sufficiently flexible and insinuating for her position; but nevertheless they always worked together, and she followed as well as she could the directions of her astuter husband, who, considering his bovine cast, was endowed with quite a preternatural sagacity in the secular business of his profession.
On this particular afternoon, however, the subject of the conversation was not the congregation, but young Thomas Broad, aged eighteen, the exact, and almost ridiculously exact, counterpart of his father. He had never been allowed to go to school, but had been taught at home. There was only one day-school in Cowfold, and his mother objected to the “mixture.” She had been heard to say as much, and Cowfold resented this too, and the Cowfold youths resented it by holding Tommy Broad in extreme contempt. He had never been properly a boy, for he could play at no boyish games; had a tallowy, unpleasant complexion, went for formal walks, and carried gloves. But though in a sense incompletely developed, he was not incompletely developed in another direction. He was at what is called an awkward age, and both father and mother had detected in him an alarming tendency to enjoy the society of young women—a tendency much stimulated by his unnatural mode of life. Thomas was already a member of the church and was a teacher in the Sunday-school; but his mother was uneasy, for a serious attachment between Thomas and anybody in the town would have been very distasteful to her. The tea having been poured out, and Mr. Broad having fairly settled down upon the buttered toast and radishes, Mrs. Broad began:
“Have you thought anything more about Thomas, my dear?”
Being a minister’s son, he was never called Tom by either papa or mamma.
“Yes, my love; but it is very difficult to know how to proceed judiciously in such a case.”
“Mrs. Allen asked me, last Wednesday, when he was going to leave home, and I told her we had not made up our minds. She said that her brother in Birmingham wanted a youth in his office, but my answer was directly that we had quite determined that Thomas should not enter into any trade.”
“What did she say?”
“That she was not surprised, for she hardly thought Thomas was fitted for it.”
The minister looked grave and perplexed, for Mr. Allen was in trade, and was a deacon. Mrs. Broad proceeded:
“I am quite sure Thomas ought to be a minister; and I am quite sure, too, he ought to leave Cowfold and go to college.”
“Don’t you think this event might be procrastinated; the expense would be considerable.”
“Well, my dear, Fanny Allen came here to tea the day before yesterday. When she went away she could not find her clogs. I was on the landing, and saw what happened, though they did not think it. Fanny’s brother was waiting outside. Priscilla had gone somewhere far the moment—I don’t know where—and Tryphosa was upstairs. Thomas said he would look for the clogs, and presently I saw him fastening them for her. Then he walked with her down the garden. I just went into the front bedroom and looked. It was not very dark, and,—well, I may be mistaken, but I do believe—” The rest of the sentence was wanting. Mrs. Broad stopped at this point. She felt it was more becoming to do so. She shifted on her chair with a fidgety motion, threw her head back a little, looked up at the portrait of Dr. Flavel in gown and bands which hung over the fireplace, straightened her gown upon her knees, and pushed it forward over her feet so as to cover them altogether—a mute protest against the impropriety of the scene she had partly described. Mr. Broad inwardly would have liked her to go on; but he always wore his white neckerchief, except when he was in bed, and he was still the Reverend John Broad, although nobody but his wife was with him. He therefore refrained, but after a while slowly observed:
“Thomas has not made much progress in systematic theology.”
“They do not require much on admission, do they? He knows the outlines, and I am sure the committee will recollect my father and be glad to get Thomas. I have heard that the social position of the candidates is not what it used to be, and that they wish to obtain some of a superior stamp, who ultimately may be found adapted to metropolitan churches.”
“One of the questions last year, my dear, was upon the office of the Comforter, and you remember Josiah Collins was remanded. I hardly think Thomas is sufficiently instructed on that subject at present; and there are others. On the whole, it is preferable that he should not go till September twelvemonths.”
“His personal piety would have weight.”
“Undoubtedly.”
There was a pause, and Mrs. Broad then continued:
“Well, my dear, you know best; but what about Fanny? I shall not ask her again. How very forward, and indeed altogether”— Another stoppage, another twitch at her gown, with another fidget on the chair, the eyes going up to Dr. Flavel’s bands as before. “Inourhouse too—to put herself in Thomas’s way!”
Ah! Mrs. Broad, are you sure Thomas did not go out of his way—even in your house, that eminently respectable, eminently orthodox residence—even Thomas, your Samuel, who had been granted to the Lord, and who, to use his own words when his written religious autobiography was read at the church-meeting, being the child of pious parents, and of many prayers, had never been exposed to those assaults of the enemy of souls which beset ordinary young men, and consequently had not undergone a sudden conversion?
“But,” observed Mr. Broad, leaning back in his easy-chair, and half covering his face with his great broad, fat hand, “we shall offend the Allens if Fanny does not come, and we shall injure the cause.”
“Has George Allen, Fanny’s brother, prayed at the prayer-meeting yet? He was admitted two months ago.”
“No.”
“Then ask his father to let him pray; and we need not invite Fanny till Thomas has left.”
The papa objected that perhaps Thomas might go to the Allen’s, but the mamma, with Dr. Flavel’s bands before her, assured him that Thomas would do nothing of the kind. So it was settled that Mr. Broad should call at the Allen’s to-morrow, and suggest that George should “engage” on the following Thursday. This, it was confidently hoped, would prevent any suspicion on their part that Fanny had been put aside. Of course, once having begun, George would be regularly on the list.
Occasionally, in the summer months, Tanner’s Lane indulged in a picnic; that is to say, the principal members of the congregation, with their wives and children, had an early dinner, and went in gigs and four-wheel chaises to Shott Woods, taking hampers of bread, cake, jam, butter, ham, and other eatables with them. At Shott Woods, in a small green space under an immense oak, a fire was lighted and tea was prepared. Mr. Broad and his family always joined the party. These were the days when Dissenters had no set amusements, and the entertainment at Shott mainly consisted in getting the sticks for the fire, fetching the water, and waiting on one another; the waiting being particularly pleasant to the younger people. Dancing, of course, was not thought of. In 1840 it may safely be said that there were not twenty Independent families in Great Britain in which it would have been tolerated, and, moreover, none but the rich learned to dance.
No dancing-master ever came into Cowfold; there was no music-master there; no concert was ever given; and Cowfold, in fact, never “saw nor heard anything;” to use a modern phrase, save a travelling menagerie with a brass band. What an existence! Howdidthey live? It’s certain, however, that they did live, and, on the whole, enjoyed their life.
The picnics were generally on a Monday, as a kind of compliment to Mr. Broad, who was supposed to need rest and change on Monday, and who was also supposed not to be able to spare the time on any other day. About a month after the conversation recorded in the previous chapter Tanner’s Lane was jogging along to Shott on one of its excursions. It was a brilliant, blazing afternoon towards the end of August. The corn stood in shocks, and a week with that sun would see it all stacked. There was no dreary suburb round Cowfold, neither town nor country, to shut out country influences. The fields came up to the gardens and orchards at the back of half the houses, and flowed irregularly, like an inundation, into the angles of the streets. As you walked past the great gate of the “Angel” yard you could see the meadow at the bottom belonging to Hundred Acres. Consequently all Cowfold took an interest in agriculture, and knew a good deal about it. Every shopkeeper was half a farmer, and understood the points of a pig or a horse. Cowfold was not a town properly speaking, but the country a little thickened and congested. The conversation turned upon the crops, and more particularly upon turnips and drainage, both of them a new importation. Hitherto all the parishes round had no drainage whatever, excepting along the bottoms of the ridges, and the now familiar red pipes had just made their appearance on a farm belonging to a stranger to those parts—a young fellow from Norfolk. Everybody was sceptical, and called him a fool. Everybody wanted to know how water was going to get through fifteen inches of heavy land when it would lie for two days where a horse trod. However, the pipes went in, and it so happened that the first wet day after they were laid was a Sunday. The congregation in Shott Church was very restless, although the sermon was unusually short. One by one they crept out, and presently they were followed by the parson. All of them had collected in the pouring rain and were watching the outfall in the ditches. To their unspeakable amazement the pipes were all running! Shott scratched its head and was utterly bewildered. A new idea in a brain not accustomed to the invasion of ideas produces a disturbance like a revolution. It causes giddiness almost as bad as that of a fit, and an extremely unpleasant sensation of having been whirled round and turned head over heels. It was the beginning of new things in Shott, the beginning of a breakdown in its traditions; a belief in something outside the ordinary parochial uniformities was forced into the skull of every man, woman, and child by the evidence of the senses; and when other beliefs asked, in the course of time, for admittance they found the entrance easier than it would have been otherwise.
The elderly occupants of the Tanner’s Lane gigs and chaises talked exclusively upon these and other cognate topics. The sons and daughters talked about other things utterly unworthy of any record in a serious history. Delightful their chatter was to them. What does it signify to eighteen years what is said on such an afternoon by seventeen years, when seventeen years is in a charming white muslin dress, with the prettiest hat? Words are of importance between me and you, who care little or nothing for one another. But there is a thrice blessed time when words are nothing. The real word is that which is not uttered. We may be silent, or we may be eloquent with nonsense or sense—it is all one. So it was between George Allen and Miss Priscilla Broad, who at the present moment were sitting next to one another. George was a broad, hearty, sandy-haired, sanguine-faced young fellow of one and twenty, eldest son of the ironmonger. His education had been that of the middle classes of those days. Leaving school at fourteen, he had been apprenticed to his father for seven years, and had worked at the forge down the backyard before coming into the front shop. On week-days he generally wore a waistcoat with sleeves and a black apron. He was never dirty; in fact, he was rather particular as to neatness and cleanliness; but he was always a little dingy and iron-coloured, as retail ironmongers are apt to be. He was now in charge of the business under his father; stood behind the counter; weighed nails; examined locks brought for repair; went to the different houses in Cowfold with a man under him to look at boiler-pipes, the man wearing a cap and George a tall hat. He had a hard, healthy, honest life, was up at six o’clock in the morning, ate well, and slept well. He was always permitted by his father to go on these excursions, and, in fact, they could not have been a success without him. If anything went wrong he was always the man to set it right. If a horse became restive, George was invariably the one to jump out, and nobody else thought of stirring. He had good expectations. The house in which the Allens lived was their own. Mr. Allen did a thriving trade, not only in Cowfold, but in all the country round, and particularly among the village blacksmiths, to whom he sold iron. He had steadily saved money, and had enlarged the original little back parlour into a room which would hold comfortably a tea-party of ten or a dozen.
Miss Priscilla Broad was framed after a different model. Her face was not much unlike that of one of those women of the Restoration so familiar to us in half a hundred pictures. Not that Restoration levity and Restoration manners were chargeable to Miss Priscilla. She never forgot her parentage; but there were the same kind of prettiness, the same sideways look, the same simper about the lips, and there were the same flat unilluminated eyes. She had darkish brown hair, which fell in rather formal curls on her shoulder, and she was commonly thought to be “delicate.” Like her sister and brother, she had never been to school, on account of the “mixture,” but had been taught by her mother. Her accomplishments included Scripture and English history, arithmetic, geography, the use of the globes, and dates. She had a very difficult part to play in Cowfold, for she was obliged to visit freely all Tanner’s Lane, but at the same time to hold herself above it and not to form any exclusive friendships. These would have been most injudicious, because, in the first place, they would have excited jealousy, and, in the next place, the minister’s daughter could not be expected to be very intimate with anybody belonging to the congregation. She was not particularly popular with the majority, and was even thought to be just a bit of a fool. But what could she have been with such surroundings? The time had passed when religion could be talked on week-days, and the present time, when ministers’ children learn French, German, and Latin, and read selected plays of Shakespeare, had not come. Miss Priscilla Broad found it very difficult, also, to steer her course properly amongst the young men in Cowfold. Mrs. Broad would not have permitted any one of them for a moment to dream of an alliance with her family. As soon might a Princess of the Blood Royal unite herself with an ordinary knight. Miss Broad, however, as her resources within herself were not particularly strong, thought about little or nothing else than ensnaring the hearts of the younger Cowfold males—that is to say, the hearts which were converted, and yet she encouraged none of them, save by a general acceptance of little attentions, by little mincing smiles, and little mincing speeches.
“Such a beautiful day,” said George, “and such pleasant company!”
“Really, Mr. Allen, don’t you think it would have been pleasanter for you in front?”
“What did you say, my dear?” came immediately from her mother, the ever-watchful dragon just before them. She forthwith turned a little round, for the sun was on her left hand, and with her right eye kept Priscilla well in view for the rest of the journey.
In the chaise behind pretty much the same story was told, but with a difference. In the back part were Mr. Thomas Broad and Miss Fanny Allen. The arrangement which brought these two together was most objectionable to Mrs. Broad; but unfortunately she was a little late in starting, and it was made before she arrived. She could not, without insulting the Allens, have it altered; but she consoled herself by vowing that it should not stand on the return journey in the dusk. Miss Fanny was flattered that the minister’s son should be by her side, and the minister’s son was not in the least deterred from playing with Miss Fanny by the weight of responsibility which oppressed and checked his sister. He did not laugh much; he had not a nature for wholesome laughter, but he chuckled, lengthened his lips, half shut his eyes; asked his companion whether the rail did not hurt her, put his arm on the top, so that she might lean against it, and talked in a manner which even she would have considered a little silly and a little odd, if his position, that of a student for the ministry, had not surrounded him with such a halo of glory.
Presently Shott Woods were reached; the parcels and hampers were unpacked, the fire was lit, the tea prepared, and the pastor asked a blessing. Everybody sat on the grass, save the reverend gentleman and his wife, who had chairs which had been brought on purpose. It would not have been considered proper that Mr. or Mrs. Broad should sit upon the grass, and indeed physically it would have been inconvenient to Mr. Broad to do so. He ate his ham in considerable quantities, adding thereto much plumcake, and excusing himself on the ground that the ride had given him an appetite. The meal being over, grace was said, and the victuals that were left were repacked. About an hour remained before the return journey began. This was usually passed in sauntering about or in walking to the springs, a mile away, down one of the grass drives. Mrs. Broad never for a moment lost sight of Thomas, and pressed him as much as possible into her service; but when Mrs. Allen announced that the young people had all determined to go to the springs, Mrs. Broad could not hold out. Accordingly off they started, under strict orders to be back by eight. They mixed themselves up pretty indiscriminately as they left their seniors; but after a while certain affinities displayed themselves, George being found with Priscilla, for example, and Thomas with Fanny. The party kept together; but Thomas and Fanny lagged somewhat till they came to a little opening in the underwood, which Thomas said was a short cut, and he pressed her to try it with him. She agreed, and they slipped out of sight nearly, but not, quite, unobserved. Thomas professed himself afraid Fanny might be tired, and offered his arm. She again consented, not without a flutter, and so they reached a clearing with three or four paths branching from it. Thomas was puzzled, and as for Fanny, she knew nothing. To add to their perplexity some drops of rain were felt. She was a little frightened, and was anxious to try one of the most likely tracks which looked, she thought, as if it went to the springs, where they could take shelter in the cottage with the others. Thomas, however, was doubtful, and proposed that they should stand up in a shed which had been used for faggot-making. The rain, which now came down heavily, enforced his arguments, and she felt obliged to stay till the shower had ceased.
“Only think, Fanny,” he said, “to be here alone with you!”
He called her Fanny now; he had always called her Miss Allen before.
“Yes,” said she, not knowing what answer to make.
“You are cold,” he added, with a little trembling in his voice and a little more light than usual in his eyes.
“Oh no, I am not cold.”
“I know you are,” and he took her hand; “why, it is quite cold.”
“Oh dear no, Mr. Thomas, it is really not cold,” and she made a movement to withdraw it, but it remained.
The touch of the hand caused his voice to shake a little more than before.
“I say you are cold; come a little closer to me. What will your mamma say if you catch a chill?” and he drew Fanny a little nearer to him. The thick blood now drove through him with increasing speed: everything seemed in a mist, and a little perspiration was on his forehead. His arm found its way round Fanny’s waist, and he pressed her closer and closer to him till his hot lips were upon her cheek. She made two or three futile attempts to release herself; but she might as well have striven with that brazen, red-hot idol who was made to clasp his victims to death. She was frightened and screamed, when suddenly a strong man’s voice was heard calling “Fanny, Fanny.” It was her brother. Knowing that she and Thomas had no umbrellas, he had brought them a couple.
“But, Fanny,” he cried, “did I not hear you scream? What was the matter?”
“Nothing,” hastily interposed Thomas; “she thought she saw it lighten.” Fanny looked at Thomas for a moment; but she was scared and bewildered, and held her peace.
The three went down to the rendezvous together, where the rest of the party had already assembled. Mrs. Broad had been very uneasy when she found that Thomas and Fanny were the only absentees, and she had urged George the moment she saw him to look for his sister without a moment’s delay. The excuse of the rain was given and accepted; but Mrs. Broad felt convinced from Fanny’s forward look that she had once more thrown herself in the way of her beloved child, her delicate Samuel. She was increasingly anxious that he should go to college, and his papa promised at once to transmit the application. Meanwhile, in the few days left before the examination, he undertook to improve Thomas where he was weakest, that is to say, in Systematic Theology, and more particularly in the doctrine of the Comforter.