"Don't tell my cousin Judy," I said. "She would believe itwasMissClare."
"There isn't much danger," he returned. "Even if I knew your cousin, I should not be likely to mention such an incident in her hearing."
"Could it have been she?" said Percivale thoughtfully.
"Absurd!" said Roger. "Miss Clare is a lady, wherever she may live."
"I don't know," said his brother thoughtfully; "who can tell? It mightn't have been beer she was carrying."
"I didn't say it was beer," returned Roger. "I only said it was a beer-jug,—one of those brown, squat, stone jugs,—the best for beer that I know, after all,—brown, you know, with a dash of gray."
"Brown jug or not, I wish I could get a few sittings from her. She would make a lovely St. Cecilia," said my husband.
"Brown jug and all?" asked Roger.
"If only she were a little taller," I objected.
"And had an aureole," said my husband. "But I might succeed in omitting the jug as well as in adding the aureole and another half-foot of stature, if only I could get that lovely countenance on the canvas,—so full of life and yet of repose."
"Don't you think it a little hard?" I ventured to say.
"I think so," said Roger.
"I don't," said my husband. "I know what in it looks like hardness; but I think it comes of the repression of feeling."
"You have studied her well for your opportunities," I said.
"I have; and I am sure, whatever Mrs. Morley may say, that, if there be any truth at all in those reports, there is some satisfactory explanation of whatever has given rise to them. I wish we knew anybody else that knew her. Do try to find some one that does, Wynnie."
"I don't know how to set about it," I said. "I should be only too glad."
"I will try," said Roger. "Does she sing?"
"I have heard Judy say she sang divinely; but the only occasion on which I met her—at their house, that time you couldn't go, Percivale—she was never asked to sing."
"I suspect," remarked Roger, "it will turn out to be only that she's something of a Bohemian, like ourselves."
"Thank you, Roger; but for my part, I don't consider myself a Bohemian at all," I said.
"I am afraid you must rank with your husband, wifie," saidmine, as the wives of the working people of London often call their husbands.
"Then you do count yourself a Bohemian: pray, what significance do you attach to the epithet?" I asked.
"I don't know, except it signifies our resemblance to the gypsies," he answered.
"I don't understand you quite."
"I believe the gypsies used to be considered Bohemians," interposed Roger, "though they are doubtless of Indian origin. Their usages being quite different from those amongst which they live, the name Bohemian came to be applied to painters, musicians, and such like generally, to whom, save by courtesy, no position has yet been accorded by society—so called."
"But why have they not yet vindicated for themselves a social position," I asked, "and that a high one?"
"Because they are generally poor, I suppose," he answered; "and society is generally stupid."
"May it not be because they are so often, like the gypsies, lawless in their behavior, as well as peculiar in their habits?" I suggested.
"I understand you perfectly, Mrs. Percivale," rejoined Roger with mock offence. "But how would that apply to Charlie?"
"Not so well as to you, I confess," I answered. "But there is ground for it with him too."
"I have thought it all over many a time," said Percivale; "and I suppose it comes in part from inability to understand the worth of our calling, and in part from the difficulty of knowing where to put us."
"I suspect," I said, "one thing is that so many of them are content to be received as merely painters, or whatever they may be by profession. Many, you have told me, for instance, accept invitations which do not include their wives."
"They often go to parties, of course, where there are no ladies," saidRoger.
"That is not what I mean," I replied. "They go to dinner-parties where there are ladies, and evening parties, too, without their wives."
"Whoever does that," said Percivale, "has at least no right to complain that he is regarded as a Bohemian; for in accepting such invitations, he accepts insult, and himself insults his wife."
Nothing irritated my bear so much as to be asked to dinner without me. He would not even offer the shadow of a reason for declining the invitation. "For," he would say, "if I give the real reason, namely, that I do not choose to go where my wife is excluded, they will set it down to her jealous ambition of entering a sphere beyond her reach; I will not give a false reason, and indeed have no objection to their seeing that I am offended; therefore, I assign none. If they have any chivalry in them, they may find out my reason readily enough."
I don't think I ever displeased him so much as once when I entreated him to accept an invitation to dine with the Earl of H——. The fact was, I had been fancying it my duty to persuade him to get over his offence at the omission of my name, for the sake of the advantage it would be to him in his profession. I laid it before him as gently and coaxingly as I could, representing how expenses increased, and how the children would be requiring education by and by,—reminding him that the reputation of more than one of the most popular painters had been brought about in some measure by their social qualities and the friendships they made.
"Is it likely your children will be ladies and gentlemen," he said, "if you prevail on their father to play the part of a sneaking parasite?"
I was frightened. He had never spoken to me in such a tone, but I saw too well how deeply he was hurt to take offence at his roughness. I could only beg him to forgive me, and promise never to say such a word again, assuring him that I believed as strongly as himself that the best heritage of children was their father's honor.
Free from any such clogs as the possession of a wife encumbers a husband withal, Roger could of course accept what invitations his connection with an old and honorable family procured him. One evening he came in late from a dinner at Lady Bernard's.
"Whom do you think I took down to dinner?" he asked, almost before he was seated.
"Lady Bernard?" I said, flying high.
"Her dowager aunt?" said Percivale.
"No, no; Miss Clare."
"Miss Clare!" we both repeated, with mingled question and exclamation.
"Yes, Miss Clare, incredible as it may appear," he answered.
"Did you ask her if it was she you saw carrying the jug of beer inTottenham Court Road?" said Percivale.
"Did you ask her address?" I said. "That is a question more worthy of an answer."
"Yes, I did. I believe I did. I think I did."
"What is it, then?"
"Upon my word, I haven't the slightest idea."
"So, Mr. Roger! You have had a perfect opportunity, and have let it slip!You are a man to be trusted indeed!"
"I don't know how it could have been. I distinctly remember approaching the subject more than once or twice; and now first I discover that I never asked the question. Or if I did, I am certain I got no answer."
"Bewitched!"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Or," suggested Percivale, "she did not choose to tell you; saw the question coming, and led you away from it; never let you ask it."
"I have heard that ladies can keep one from saying what they don't want to hear. But she sha'n't escape me so a second time."
"Indeed, you don't deserve another chance," I said. "You're not half so clever as I took you to be, Roger."
"When I think of it, though, it wasn't a question so easy to ask, or one you would like to be overheard asking."
"Clearly bewitched," I said. "But for that I forgive you. Did she sing?"
"No. I don't suppose any one there ever thought of asking such a dingy-feathered bird to sing."
"You had some music?"
"Oh, yes! Pretty good, and very bad. Miss Clare's forehead was crossed by no end of flickering shadows as she listened."
"It wasn't for want of interest in her you forgot to find out where she lived! You had better take care, Master Roger."
"Take care of what?"
"Why, you don't know her address."
"What has that to do with taking care?"
"That you won't know where to find your heart if you should happen to want it."
"Oh! I am past that kind of thing long ago. You've made an uncle of me."
And so on, with a good deal more nonsense, but no news of Miss Clare's retreat.
I had before this remarked to my husband that it was odd she had never called since dining with us; but he made little of it, saying that people who gained their own livelihood ought to be excused from attending to rules which had their origin with another class; and I had thought no more about it, save in disappointment that she had not given me that opportunity of improving my acquaintance with her.
One Saturday night, my husband happening to be out, an event of rare occurrence, Roger called; and as there were some things I had not been able to get during the day, I asked him to go with me to Tottenham Court Road. It was not far from the region where we lived, and I did a great part of my small shopping there. The early closing had, if I remember rightly, begun to show itself; anyhow, several of the shops were shut, and we walked a long way down the street, looking for some place likely to supply what I required.
"It was just here I came up with the girl and the brown jug," said Roger, as we reached the large dissenting chapel.
"That adventure seems to have taken a great hold of you, Roger," I said.
"Shewasso like Miss Clare!" he returned. "I can't get the one face clear of the other. When I met her at Lady Bernard's, the first thing I thought of was the brown jug."
"Were you as much pleased with her conversation as at our house?" I asked.
"Even more," he answered. "I found her ideas of art so wide, as well as just and accurate, that I was puzzled to think where she had had opportunity of developing them. I questioned her about it, and found she was in the habit of going, as often as she could spare time, to the National Gallery, where her custom was, she said, not to pass from picture to picture, but keep to one until it formed itself in her mind,—that is the expression she used, explaining herself to mean, until she seemed to know what the painter had set himself to do, and why this was and that was which she could not at first understand. Clearly, without ever having taken a pencil in her hand, she has educated herself to a keen perception of what is demanded of a true picture. Of course the root of it lies in her musical development.—There," he cried suddenly, as we came opposite a paved passage, "that is the place I saw her go down."
"Then you do think the girl with the beer-jug was Miss Clare, after all?"
"Not in the least. I told you I could not separate them in my mind."
"Well, I must say, it seems odd. A girl like that and Miss Clare! Why, as often as you speak of the one, you seem to think of the other."
"In fact," he returned, "I am, as I say, unable to dissociate them. But if you had seen the girl, you would not wonder. The likeness was absolutely complete."
"I believe you do consider them one and the same; and I am more than half inclined to think so myself, remembering what Judy said."
"Isn't it possible some one who knows Miss Clare may have seen this girl, and been misled by the likeness?"
"But where, then, does Miss Clare live? Nobody seems to know."
"You have never asked any one but Mrs. Morley."
"You have yourself, however, given me reason to think she avoids the subject. If she did live anywhere hereabout, she would have some cause to avoid it."
I had stopped to look down the passage.
"Suppose," said Roger, "some one were to come past now and see Mrs.Percivale, the wife of the celebrated painter, standing in Tottenham CourtRoad beside the swing-door of a corner public-house, talking to a youngman."
"Yes; it might have given occasion for scandal," I said. "To avoid it, let us go down the court and see what it is like."
"It's not a fit place for you to go into."
"If it were in my father's parish, I should have known everybody in it."
"You haven't the slightest idea what you are saying."
"Come, anyhow, and let us see what the place is like," I insisted.
Without another word he gave me his arm, and down the court we went, past the flaring gin-shop, and into the gloom beyond. It was one of those places of which, while the general effect remains vivid in one's mind, the salient points are so few that it is difficult to say much by way of description. The houses had once been occupied by people in better circumstances than its present inhabitants; and indeed they looked all decent enough until, turning two right angles, we came upon another sort. They were still as large, and had plenty of windows; but, in the light of a single lamp at the corner, they looked very dirty and wretched and dreary. A little shop, with dried herrings and bull's-eyes in the window, was lighted by a tallow candle set in a ginger-beer bottle, with a card of "Kinahan's LL Whiskey" for a reflector.
"They can't have many customers to the extent of a bottle," said Roger. "But no doubt they have some privileges from the public-house at the corner for hanging up the card."
The houses had sunk areas, just wide enough for a stair, and the basements seemed full of tenants. There was a little wind blowing, so that the atmosphere was tolerable, notwithstanding a few stray leaves of cabbage, suggestive of others in a more objectionable condition not far off.
A confused noise of loud voices, calling and scolding, hitherto drowned by the tumult of the street, now reached our ears. The place took one turn more, and then the origin of it became apparent. At the farther end of the passage was another lamp, the light of which shone upon a group of men and women, in altercation, which had not yet come to blows. It might, including children, have numbered twenty, of which some seemed drunk, and all more or less excited. Roger turned to go back the moment he caught sight of them; but I felt inclined, I hardly knew why, to linger a little. Should any danger offer, it would be easy to gain the open thoroughfare.
"It's not at all a fit place for a lady," he said.
"Certainly not," I answered; "it hardly seems a fit place for human beings.These are human beings, though. Let us go through it."
He still hesitated; but as I went on, he could but follow me. I wanted to see what the attracting centre of the little crowd was; and that it must be occupied with some affair of more than ordinary interest, I judged from the fact that a good many superterrestrial spectators looked down from the windows at various elevations upon the disputants, whose voices now and then lulled for a moment only to break out in fresh objurgation and dispute.
Drawing a little nearer, a slight parting of the crowd revealed its core to us. It was a little woman, without bonnet or shawl, whose back was towards us. She turned from side to side, now talking to one, and now to another of the surrounding circle. At first I thought she was setting forth her grievances, in the hope of sympathy, or perhaps of justice; but I soon perceived that her motions were too calm for that. Sometimes the crowd would speak altogether, sometimes keep silent for a full minute while she went on talking. When she turned her face towards us, Roger and I turned ours, and stared at each other. The face was disfigured by a swollen eye, evidently from a blow; but clearly enough, if it was not Miss Clare, it was the young woman of the beer-jug. Neither of us spoke, but turned once more to watch the result of what seemed to have at length settled down into an almost amicable conference. After a few more grumbles and protestations, the group began to break up into twos and threes. These the young woman seemed to set herself to break up again. Here, however, an ill-looking fellow like a costermonger, with a broken nose, came up to us, and with a strong Irish accent and offensive manner, but still with a touch of Irish breeding, requested to know what our business was. Roger asked if the place wasn't a thoroughfare.
"Not for the likes o' you," he answered, "as comes pryin' after the likes of us. We manage our own affairs down here—wedo. You'd better be off, my lady."
I have my doubts what sort of reply Roger might have returned if he had been alone, but he certainly spoke in a very conciliatory manner, which, however, the man did not seem to appreciate, for he called it blarney; but the young woman, catching sight of our little group, and supposing, I presume, that it also required dispersion, approached us. She had come within a yard of us, when suddenly her face brightened, and she exclaimed, in a tone of surprise,—
"Mrs. Percivale! You here?"
It was indeed Miss Clare. Without the least embarrassment, she held out her hand to me, but I am afraid I did not take it very cordially. Roger, however, behaved to her as if they stood in a drawing-room, and this brought me to a sense of propriety.
"I don't look very respectable, I fear," she said, putting her hand over her eye. "The fact is, I have had a blow, and it will look worse to-morrow. Were you coming to find me?"
I forget what lame answer either of us gave.
"Will you come in?" she said.
On the spur of the moment, I declined. For all my fine talk to Roger, I shrunk from the idea of entering one of those houses. I can only say, in excuse, that my whole mind was in a condition of bewilderment.
"Can I do any thing for you, then?" she asked, in a tone slightly marked with disappointment, I thought.
"Thank you, no," I answered, hardly knowing what my words were.
"Then good-night," she said, and, nodding kindly, turned, and entered one of the houses.
We also turned in silence, and walked out of the court.
"Why didn't you go with her?" said Roger, as soon as we were in the street.
"I'm sorry I didn't if you wanted to go, Roger; but"—
"I think you might have gone, seeing I was with you," he said.
"I don't think it would have been at all a proper thing to do, without knowing more about her," I answered, a little hurt. "You can't tell what sort of a place it may be."
"It's a good place, wherever she is, or I am much mistaken," he returned.
"You may be much mistaken, Roger."
"True. I have been mistaken more than once in my life. I am not mistaken this time, though."
"I presume you would have gone if I hadn't been with you?"
"Certainly, if she had asked me, which is not very likely."
"And you lay the disappointment of missing a glimpse into the sweet privacy of such a home to my charge?"
It was a spiteful speech; and Roger's silence made me feel it was, which, with the rather patronizing opinion I had of Roger, I found not a little galling. So I, too, kept silence, and nothing beyond a platitude had passed between us when I found myself at my own door, my shopping utterly forgotten, and something acid on my mind.
"Don't you mean to come in?" I said, for he held out his hand at the top of the stairs to bid me good-night. "My husband will be home soon, if he has not come already. You needn't be bored with my company—you can sit in the study."
"I think I had better not," he answered.
"I am very sorry, Roger, if I was rude to you," I said; "but how could you wish me to be hand-and-glove with a woman who visits people who she is well aware would not think of inviting her if they had a notion of her surroundings. That can't be right, I am certain. I protest I feel just as if I had been reading an ill-invented story,—an unnatural fiction. I cannot get these things together in my mind at all, do what I will."
"There must be some way of accounting for it," said Roger.
"No doubt," I returned; "but who knows what that way may be?"
"You may be wrong in supposing that the people at whose houses she visits know nothing about her habits."
"Is it at all likely they do, Roger? Do you think it is? I know at least that my cousin dispensed with her services as soon as she came to the knowledge of certain facts concerning these very points."
"Excuse me—certain rumors—very uncertain facts."
When you are cross, the slightest play upon words is an offence. I knocked at the door in dudgeon, then turned and said,—
"My cousin Judy, Mr. Roger"—
But here I paused, for I had nothing ready. Anger makes some people cleverer for the moment, but when I am angry I am always stupid. Roger finished the sentence for me.
—"Your cousin Judy is, you must allow, a very conventional woman," he said.
"She is very good-natured, anyhow. And what do you say to Lady Bernard?"
"She hasn't repudiated Miss Clare's acquaintance, so far as I know."
"But, answer me,—do you believe Lady Bernard would invite her to meet her friends if she knew all?"
"Depend upon it, Lady Bernard knows what she is about. People of her rank can afford to be unconventional."
This irritated me yet more, for it implied that I was influenced by the conventionality which both he and my husband despised; and Sarah opening the door that instant, I stepped in, without even saying good-night to him. Before she closed it, however, I heard my husband's voice, and ran out again to welcome him.
He and Roger had already met in the little front garden. They did not shake hands—they never did—they always met as if they had parted only an hour ago.
"What were you and my wife quarrelling about, Rodge?" I heard Percivale ask, and paused on the middle of the stair to hear his answer.
"How do you know we were quarrelling?" returned Roger gloomily.
"I heard you from the very end of the street," said my husband.
"That's not so far," said Roger; for indeed one house, with, I confess, a good space of garden on each side of it, and the end of another house, finished the street. But notwithstanding the shortness of the distance it stung me to the quick. Here had I been regarding, not even with contempt, only with disgust, the quarrel in which Miss Clare was mixed up; and half an hour after, my own voice was heard in dispute with my husband's brother from the end of the street in which we lived! I felt humiliated, and did not rush down the remaining half of the steps to implore my husband's protection against Roger's crossness.
"Too far to hear a wife and a brother, though," returned Percivale jocosely.
"Go on," said Roger; "pray go on.Let dogs delightcomes next. I beg Mrs. Percivale's pardon. I will amend the quotation: 'Let dogs delight to worry'"—
"Cats," I exclaimed; and rushing down the steps, I kissed Roger before I kissed my husband.
"I meant—I mean—I was going to saylambs."
"Now, Roger, don't add to your vices flattery and"—
"And fibbing," he subjoined.
"I didn't say so."
"You only meant it."
"Don't begin again," interposed Percivale: "Come in, and refer the cause in dispute to me."
We did go in, and we did refer the matter to him. By the time we had between us told him the facts of the case, however, the point in dispute between us appeared to have grown hazy, the fact being that neither of us cared to say any thing more about it. Percivale insisted that there was no question before the court. At length Roger, turning from me to his brother, said,—
"It's not worth mentioning, Charley; but what led to our irreconcilable quarrel was this: I thought Wynnie might have accepted Miss Clare's invitation to walk in and pay her a visit; and Wynnie thought me, I suppose, too ready to sacrifice her dignity to the pleasure of seeing a little more of the object of our altercation. There!"
My husband turned to me and said,—
"Mrs. Percivale, do you accept this as a correct representation of your difference?"
"Well," I answered, hesitating—"yes, on the whole. All I object to is the worddignity."
"I retract it," cried Roger, "and accept any substitute you prefer."
"Let it stand," I returned. "It will do as well as a better. I only wish to say that it was not exactly my dignity"—
"No, no; your sense of propriety," said my husband; and then sat silent for a minute or two, pondering like a judge. At length he spoke:—
"Wife," he said, "you might have gone with your brother, I think; but I quite understand your disinclination. At the same time, a more generous judgment of Miss Clare might have prevented any difference of feeling in the matter."
"But," I said, greatly inclined to cry, "I only postponed my judgment concerning her."
And I only postponed my crying, for I was very much ashamed of myself.
Of course my husband and I talked a good deal more about what I ought to have done; and I saw clearly enough that I ought to have run any risk there might be in accepting her invitation. I had been foolishly taking more care of myself than was necessary. I told him I would write to Roger, and ask him when he could take me there again.
"I will tell you a better plan," he said. "I will go with you myself. And that will get rid of half the awkwardness there would be if you went with Roger, after having with him refused to go in."
"But would that be fair to Roger? She would think I didn't like going with him, and I would go with Roger anywhere. It was I who did not want to go. He did."
"My plan, however, will pave the way for a full explanation—or confession rather, I suppose it will turn out to be. I know you are burning to make it, with your mania for confessing your faults."
I knew he did not like me the worse for thatmania, though.
"The next time," he added, "you can go with Roger, always supposing you should feel inclined to continue the acquaintance, and then you will be able to set him right in her eyes."
The plan seemed unobjectionable. But just then Percivale was very busy; and I being almost as much occupied with my baby as he was with his, day after day and week after week passed, during which our duty to Miss Clare was, I will not say either forgotten or neglected, but unfulfilled.
One afternoon I was surprised by a visit from my father. He not unfrequently surprised us.
"Why didn't you let us know, papa?" I said. "A surprise is very nice; but an expectation is much nicer, and lasts so much longer."
"I might have disappointed you."
"Even if you had, I should have already enjoyed the expectation. That would be safe."
"There's a good deal to be said in excuse of surprises," he rejoined; "but in the present case, I have a special one to offer. I was taken with a sudden desire to see you. It was very foolish no doubt, and you are quite right in wishing I weren't here, only going to come to-morrow."
"Don't be so cruel, papa. Scarcely a day passes in whichIdo not long to seeyou. My baby makes me think more about my home than ever."
"Then she's a very healthy baby, if one may judge by her influences. But you know, if I had had to give you warning, I could not have been here before to-morrow; and surely you will acknowledge, that, however nice expectation may be, presence is better."
"Yes, papa. We will make a compromise, if you please. Every time you think of coming to me, you must either come at once, or let me know you are coming. Do you agree to that?"
"I agree," he said.
So I have the pleasure of a constant expectation. Any day he may walk in unheralded; or by any post I may receive a letter with the news that he is coming at such a time.
As we sat at dinner that evening, he asked if we had lately seen MissClare.
"I've seen her only once, and Percivale not at all, since you were here last, papa," I answered.
"How's that?" he asked again, a little surprised. "Haven't you got her address yet? I want very much to know more of her."
"So do we. I haven't got her address, but I know where she lives."
"What do you mean, Wynnie? Has she taken to dark sayings of late,Percivale?"
I told him the whole story of my adventure with Roger, and the reports Judy had prejudiced my judgment withal. He heard me through in silence, for it was a rule with him never to interrupt a narrator. He used to say, "You will generally get at more, and in a better fashion, if you let any narrative take its own devious course, without the interruption of requested explanations. By the time it is over, you will find the questions you wanted to ask mostly vanished."
"Describe the place to me, Wynnie," he said, when I had ended. "I must go and see her. I have a suspicion, amounting almost to a conviction, that she is one whose acquaintance ought to be cultivated at any cost. There is some grand explanation of all this contradictory strangeness."
"I don't think I could describe the place to you so that you would find it. But if Percivale wouldn't mind my going with you instead of with him, I should be only too happy to accompany you. May I, Percivale?"
"Certainly. It will do just as well to go with your father as with me. I only stipulate, that, if you are both satisfied, you take Roger with you next time."
"Of course I will."
"Then we'll go to-morrow morning," said my father.
"I don't think she is likely to be at home in the morning," I said. "She goes out giving lessons, you know; and the probability is, that at that time we should not find her."
"Then why not to-night?" he rejoined.
"Why not, if you wish it?"
"I do wish it, then."
"If you knew the place, though, I think you would prefer going a little earlier than we can to-night."
"Ah, well! we will go to-morrow evening. We could dine early, couldn't we?"
So it was arranged. My father went about some business in the morning. We dined early, and set out about six o'clock.
My father was getting an old man, and if any protection had been required, he could not have been half so active as Roger; and yet I felt twice as safe with him. I am satisfied that the deepest sense of safety, even in respect of physical dangers, can spring only from moral causes; neither do you half so much fear evil happening to you, as fear evil happening which ought not to happen to you. I believe what made me so courageous was the undeveloped fore-feeling, that, if any evil should overtake me in my father's company, I should not care; it would be all right then, anyhow. The repose was in my father himself, and neither in his strength nor his wisdom. The former might fail, the latter might mistake; but so long as I was with him in what I did, no harm worth counting harm could come to me,—only such as I should neither lament nor feel. Scarcely a shadow of danger, however, showed itself.
It was a cold evening in the middle of November. The light, which had been scanty enough all day, had vanished in a thin penetrating fog. Round every lamp in the street was a colored halo; the gay shops gleamed like jewel-caverns of Aladdin hollowed out of the darkness; and the people that hurried or sauntered along looked inscrutable. Where could they live? Had they anybody to love them? Were their hearts quiet under their dingy cloaks and shabby coats?
"Yes," returned my father, to whom I had said something to this effect, "what would not one give for a peep into the mysteries of all these worlds that go crowding past us. If we could but see through the opaque husk of them, some would glitter and glow like diamond mines; others perhaps would look mere earthy holes; some of them forsaken quarries, with a great pool of stagnant water in the bottom; some like vast coal-pits of gloom, into which you dared not carry a lighted lamp for fear of explosion. Some would be mere lumber-rooms; others ill-arranged libraries, without a poets' corner anywhere. But what a wealth of creation they show, and what infinite room for hope it affords!"
"But don't you think, papa, there may be something of worth lying even in the earth-pit, or at the bottom of the stagnant water in the forsaken quarry?"
"Indeed I do; though Ihavemet more than one in my lifetime concerning whom I felt compelled to say that it wanted keener eyes than mine to discover the hidden jewel. But then therearekeener eyes than mine, for there are more loving eyes. Myself I have been able to see good very clearly where some could see none; and shall I doubt that God can see good where my mole-eyes can see none? Be sure of this, that, as he is keen-eyed for the evil in his creatures to destroy it, he would, if it were possible, be yet keener-eyed for the good to nourish and cherish it. If men would only side with the good that is in them,—will that the seed should grow and bring forth fruit!"
We had now arrived at the passage. The gin-shop was flaring through the fog. A man in a fustian jacket came out of it, and walked slowly down before us, with the clay of the brick-field clinging to him as high as the leather straps with which his trousers were confined, garter-wise, under the knee. The place was quiet. We and the brickmaker seemed the only people in it. When we turned the last corner, he was walking in at the very door where Miss Clare had disappeared. When I told my father that was the house, he called after the man, who came out again, and, standing on the pavement, waited until we came up.
"Does Miss Clare live in this house?" my father asked.
"She do," answered the man curtly.
"First floor?"
"No. Nor yet the second, nor the third. She live nearer heaven than 'ere another in the house 'cep' myself. I live in the attic, and so do she."
"There is a way of living nearer to heaven than that," said my father, laying his hand, "with a right old man's grace," on his shoulder.
"I dunno, 'cep' you was to go up in a belloon," said the man, with a twinkle in his eye, which my father took to mean that he understood him better than he chose to acknowledge; but he did not pursue the figure.
He was a rough, lumpish young man, with good but dull features—only his blue eye was clear. He looked my father full in the face, and I thought I saw a dim smile about his mouth.
"You know her, then, I suppose?"
"Everybody in the house knowsher. There ain't many the likes o' her as lives wi' the likes of us. You go right up to the top. I don't know if she's in, but a'most any one'll be able to tell you. I ain't been home yet."
My father thanked him, and we entered the house, and began to ascend. The stair was very much worn and rather dirty, and some of the banisters were broken away, but the walls were tolerably clean. Half-way up we met a little girl with tangled hair and tattered garments, carrying a bottle.
"Do you know, my dear," said my father to her, "whether Miss Clare is at home?"
"I dunno," she answered. "I dunno who you mean. I been mindin' the baby. He ain't well. Mother says his head's bad. She's a-going up to tell grannie, and see if she can't do suthin' for him. You better ast mother.—Mother!" she called out—"here's a lady an' a gen'lem'."
"You go about yer business, and be back direckly," cried a gruff voice from somewhere above.
"That's mother," said the child, and ran down the stair.
When we reached the second floor, there stood a big fat woman on the landing, with her face red, and her hair looking like that of a doll ill stuck on. She did not speak, but stood waiting to see what we wanted.
"I'm told Miss Clare lives here," said my father. "Can you tell me, my good woman, whether she's at home?"
"I'm neither good woman nor bad woman," she returned in an insolent tone.
"I beg your pardon," said my father; "but you see I didn't know your name."
"An' ye don't know it yet. You've no call to know my name. I'll ha' nothing to do wi' the likes o' you as goes about takin' poor folks's childer from 'em. There's my poor Glory's been an' took atwixt you an' grannie, and shet up in a formatory as you calls it; an' I should like to know what right you've got to go about that way arter poor girls as has mothers to help."
"I assure you I had nothing to do with it," said my father. "I'm a country clergyman myself, and have no duty in London."
"Well, that's where they've took her—down in the country. I make no doubt but you've had your finger in that pie. You don't come here to call upon us for the pleasure o' makin' our acquaintance—ha! ha! ha!—You're allus arter somethin' troublesome. I'd adwise you, sir and miss, to let well alone. Sleepin' dogs won't bite; but you'd better let 'em lie—and that I tell you."
"Believe me," said my father quite quietly, "I haven't the least knowledge of your daughter. The country's a bigger place than you seem to think,—far bigger than London itself. All I wanted to trouble you about was to tell us whether Miss Clare was at home or not."
"I don't know no one o' that name. If it's grannie you mean, she's at home, I know—though it's not much reason I've got to care whether she's at home or not."
"It's a young—woman, I mean," said my father.
"'Tain't a young lady, then?—Well, I don't care what you call her. I dare say it'll be all one, come judgment. You'd better go up till you can't go no further, an' knocks yer head agin the tiles, and then you may feel about for a door, and knock at that, and see if the party as opens it is the party you wants."
So saying, she turned in at a door behind her, and shut it. But we could hear her still growling and grumbling.
"It's very odd," said my father, with a bewildered smile. "I think we'd better do as she says, and go up till we knock our heads against the tiles."
We climbed two stairs more,—the last very steep, and so dark that when we reached the top we found it necessary to follow the woman's directions literally, and feel about for a door. But we had not to feel long or far, for there was one close to the top of the stair. My father knocked. There was no reply; but we heard the sound of a chair, and presently some one opened it. The only light being behind her, I could not see her face, but the size and shape were those of Miss Clare.
She did not leave us in doubt, however; for, without a moment's hesitation,she held out her hand to me, saying, "Thisiskind of you, Mrs.Percivale;" then to my father, saying, "I'm very glad to see you, Mr.Walton. Will you walk in?"
We followed her into the room. It was not very small, for it occupied nearly the breadth of the house. On one side the roof sloped so nearly to the floor that there was not height enough to stand erect in. On the other side the sloping part was partitioned off, evidently for a bedroom. But what a change it was from the lower part of the house! By the light of a single mould candle, I saw that the floor was as clean as old boards could be made, and I wondered whether she scrubbed them herself. I know now that she did. The two dormer windows were hung with white dimity curtains. Back in the angle of the roof, between the windows, stood an old bureau. There was little more than room between the top of it and the ceiling for a little plaster statuette with bound hands and a strangely crowned head. A few books on hanging shelves were on the opposite side by the door to the other room; and the walls, which were whitewashed, were a good deal covered with—whether engravings or etchings or lithographs I could not then see—none of them framed, only mounted on card-board. There was a fire cheerfully burning in the gable, and opposite to that stood a tall old-fashioned cabinet piano, in faded red silk. It was open; and on the music-rest lay Handel's "Verdi Prati,"—for I managed to glance at it as we left. A few wooden chairs, and one very old-fashioned easy-chair, covered with striped chintz, from which not glaze only but color almost had disappeared, with an oblong table of deal, completed the furniture of the room. She made my father sit down in the easy-chair, placed me one in front of the fire, and took another at the corner opposite my father. A moment of silence followed, which I, having a guilty conscience, felt awkward. But my father never allowed awkwardness to accumulate.
"I had hoped to have been able to call upon you long ago, Miss Clare, but there was some difficulty in finding out where you lived."
"You are no longer surprised at that difficulty, I presume," she returned with a smile.
"But," said my father, "if you will allow an old man to speak freely"—
"Say what you please, Mr. Walton. I promise to answeranyquestionyouthink proper to ask me."
"My dear Miss Clare, I had not the slightest intention of catechising you, though, of course, I shall be grateful for what confidence you please to put in me. What I meant to say might indeed have taken the form of a question, but as such could have been intended only for you to answer to yourself,—whether, namely, it was wise to place yourself at such a disadvantage as living in this quarter must be to you."
"If you were acquainted with my history, you would perhaps hesitate, Mr.Walton, before you said Iplaced myselfat such disadvantage."
Here a thought struck me.
"I fancy, papa, it is not for her own sake Miss Clare lives here."
"I hope not," she interposed.
"I believe," I went on, "she has a grandmother, who probably has grown accustomed to the place, and is unwilling to leave it."
She looked puzzled for a moment, then burst into a merry laugh.
"I see," she exclaimed. "How stupid I am! You have heard some of the people in the house talk aboutgrannie: that's me! I am known in the house as grannie, and have been for a good many years now—I can hardly, without thinking, tell for how many."
Again she laughed heartily, and my father and I shared her merriment.
"How many grandchildren have you then, pray, Miss Clare?"
"Let me see."
She thought for a minute.
"I could easily tell you if it were only the people in this house I had to reckon up. They are about five and thirty; but unfortunately the name has been caught up in the neighboring houses, and I am very sorry that in consequence I cannot with certainty say how many grandchildren I have. I think I know them all, however; and I fancy that is more than many an English grandmother, with children in America, India, and Australia, can say for herself."
Certainly she was not older than I was; and while hearing her merry laugh, and seeing her young face overflowed with smiles, which appeared to come sparkling out of her eyes as out of two well-springs, one could not help feeling puzzled how, even in the farthest-off jest, she could have got the name of grannie. But I could at the same time, recall expressions of her countenance which would much better agree with the name than that which now shone from it.
"Would you like to hear," she said, when our merriment had a little subsided, "how I have so easily arrived at the honorable name of grannie,—at least all I know about it?"
"I should be delighted," said my father.
"You don't know what you are pledging yourself to when you say so," she rejoined, again laughing. "You will have to hear the whole of my story from the beginning."
"Again I say I shall be delighted," returned my father, confident that her history could be the source of nothing but pleasure to him.
Thereupon Miss Clare began. I do not pretend to give her very words, but I must tell her story as if she were telling it herself. I shall be as true as I can to the facts, and hope to catch something of the tone of the narrator as I go on.
"My mother died when I was very young, and I was left alone with my father, for I was his only child. He was a studious and thoughtful man. Itmaybe the partiality of a daughter, I know, but I am not necessarily wrong in believing that diffidence in his own powers alone prevented him from distinguishing himself. As it was, he supported himself and me by literary work of, I presume, a secondary order. He would spend all his mornings for many weeks in the library of the British Museum,—reading and making notes; after which he would sit writing at home for as long or longer. I should have found it very dull during the former of these times, had he not early discovered that I had some capacity for music, and provided for me what I now know to have been the best instruction to be had. His feeling alone had guided him right, for he was without musical knowledge. I believe he could not have found me a better teacher in all Europe. Her character was lovely, and her music the natural outcome of its harmony. But I must not forget it is about myself I have to tell you. I went to her, then, almost every day for a time—but how long that was, I can only guess. It must have been several years, I think, else I could not have attained what proficiency I had when my sorrow came upon me.
"What my father wrote I cannot tell. How gladly would I now read the shortest sentence I knew to be his! He never told me for what journals he wrote, or even for what publishers. I fancy it was work in which his brain was more interested than his heart, and which he was always hoping to exchange for something more to his mind. After his death I could discover scarcely a scrap of his writings, and not a hint to guide me to what he had written.
"I believe we went on living from hand to mouth, my father never getting so far ahead of the wolf as to be able to pause and choose his way. But I was very happy, and would have been no whit less happy if he had explained our circumstances, for that would have conveyed to me no hint of danger. Neither has any of the suffering I have had—at least any keen enough to be worth dwelling upon—sprung from personal privation, although I am not unacquainted with hunger and cold.
"My happiest time was when my father asked me to play to him while he wrote, and I sat down to my old cabinet Broadwood,—the one you see there is as like it as I could find,—and played any thing and every thing I liked,—for somehow I never forgot what I had once learned,—while my father sat, as he said, like a mere extension of the instrument, operated upon, rather than listening, as he wrote. What I thenthought, I cannot tell. I don't believe I thought at all. I onlymusicated, as a little pupil of mine once said to me, when, having found her sitting with her hands on her lap before the piano, I asked her what she was doing: 'I am only musicating,' she answered. But the enjoyment was none the less that there was no conscious thought in it.
"Other branches he taught me himself, and I believe I got on very fairly for my age. We lived then in the neighborhood of the Museum, where I was well known to all the people of the place, for I used often to go there, and would linger about looking at things, sometimes for hours before my father came to me but he always came at the very minute he had said, and always found me at the appointed spot. I gained a great deal by thus haunting the Museum—a great deal more than I supposed at the time. One gain was, that I knew perfectly where in the place any given sort of thing was to be found, if it were there at all: I had unconsciously learned something of classification.
"One afternoon I was waiting as usual, but my father did not come at the time appointed. I waited on and on till it grew dark, and the hour for closing arrived, by which time I was in great uneasiness; but I was forced to go home without him. I must hasten over this part of my history, for even yet I can scarcely bear to speak of it. I found that while I was waiting, he had been seized with some kind of fit in the reading-room, and had been carried home, and that I was alone in the world. The landlady, for we only rented rooms in the house, was very kind to me, at least until she found that my father had left no money. He had then been only reading for a long time; and, when I looked back, I could see that he must have been short of money for some weeks at least. A few bills coming in, all our little effects—for the furniture was our own—were sold, without bringing sufficient to pay them. The things went for less than half their value, in consequence, I believe, of that well-known conspiracy of the brokers which they callknocking out. I was especially miserable at losing my father's books, which, although in ignorance, I greatly valued,—more miserable even, I honestly think, than at seeing my loved piano carried off.
"When the sale was over, and every thing removed, I sat down on the floor, amidst the dust and bits of paper and straw and cord, without a single idea in my head as to what was to become of me, or what I was to do next. I didn't cry,—that I am sure of; but I doubt if in all London there was a more wretched child than myself just then. The twilight was darkening down,—the twilight of a November afternoon. Of course there was no fire in the grate, and I had eaten nothing that day; for although the landlady had offered me some dinner, and I had tried to please her by taking some, I found I could not swallow, and had to leave it. While I sat thus on the floor, I heard her come into the room, and some one with her; but I did not look round, and they, not seeing me, and thinking, I suppose, that I was in one of the other rooms, went on talking about me. All I afterwards remembered of their conversation was some severe reflections on my father, and the announcement of the decree that I must go to the workhouse. Though I knew nothing definite as to the import of this doom, it filled me with horror. The moment they left me alone, to look for me, as I supposed, I got up, and, walking as softly as I could, glided down the stairs, and, unbonneted and unwrapped, ran from the house, half-blind with terror.
"I had not gone farther, I fancy, than a few yards, when I ran up against some one, who laid hold of me, and asked me gruffly what I meant by it. I knew the voice: it was that of an old Irishwoman who did all the little charing we wanted,—for I kept the rooms tidy, and the landlady cooked for us. As soon as she saw who it was, her tone changed; and then first I broke out in sobs, and told her I was running away because they were going to send me to the workhouse. She burst into a torrent of Irish indignation, and assured me that such should never be my fate while she lived. I must go back to the house with her, she said, and get my things; and then I should go home with her, until something better should turn up. I told her I would go with her anywhere, except into that house again; and she did not insist, but afterwards went by herself and got my little wardrobe. In the mean time she led me away to a large house in a square, of which she took the key from her pocket to open the door. It looked to me such a huge place!—the largest house I had ever been in; but it was rather desolate, for, except in one little room below, where she had scarcely more than a bed and a chair, a slip of carpet and a frying-pan, there was not an article of furniture in the whole place. She had been put there when the last tenant left, to take care of the place, until another tenant should appear to turn her out. She had her houseroom and a trifle a week besides for her services, beyond which she depended entirely on what she could make by charing. When she had no house to live in on the same terms, she took a room somewhere.
"Here I lived for several months, and was able to be of use; for as Mrs. Conan was bound to be there at certain times to show any one over the house who brought an order from the agent, and this necessarily took up a good part of her working time; and as, moreover, I could open the door and walk about the place as well as another, she willingly left me in charge as often as she had a job elsewhere.
"On such occasions, however, I found it very dreary indeed, for few people called, and she would not unfrequently be absent the whole day. If I had had my piano, I should have cared little; but I had not a single book, except one—and what do you think that was? An odd volume of the Newgate Calendar. I need hardly say that it had not the effect on me which it is said to have on some of its students: it moved me, indeed, to the profoundest sympathy, not with the crimes of the malefactors, only with the malefactors themselves, and their mental condition after the deed was actually done. But it was with the fascination of a hopeless horror, making me feel almost as if I had committed every crime as I perused its tale, that I regarded them. They were to me like living crimes. It was not until long afterwards that I was able to understand that a man's actions are not the man, but may be separated from him; that his character even is not the man, but may be changed while he yet holds the same individuality,—is the man who was blind though he now sees; whence it comes, that, the deeds continuing his, all stain of them may yet be washed out of him. I did not, I say, understand all this until afterwards; but I believe, odd as it may seem, that volume of the Newgate Calendar threw down the first deposit of soil, from which afterwards sprung what grew to be almost a passion in me, for getting the people about me clean,—a passion which might have done as much harm as good, if its companion, patience, had not been sent me to guide and restrain it. In a word, I came at length to understand, in some measure, the last prayer of our Lord for those that crucified him, and the ground on which he begged from his Father their forgiveness,—that they knew not what they did. If the Newgate Calendar was indeed the beginning of this course of education, I need not regret having lost my piano, and having that volume for a while as my only aid to reflection.
"My father had never talked much to me about religion; but when he did, it was with such evident awe in his spirit, and reverence in his demeanor, as had more effect on me, I am certain, from the very paucity of the words in which his meaning found utterance. Another thing which had still more influence upon me was, that, waking one night after I had been asleep for some time, I saw him on his knees by my bedside. I did not move or speak, for fear of disturbing him; and, indeed, such an awe came over me, that it would have required a considerable effort of the will for any bodily movement whatever. When he lifted his head, I caught a glimpse of a pale, tearful face; and it is no wonder that the virtue of the sight should never have passed away.
"On Sundays we went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon, in fine weather, went out for a walk; or, if it were raining or cold, I played to him till he fell asleep on the sofa. Then in the evening, after tea, we had more music, some poetry, which we read alternately, and a chapter of the New Testament, which he always read to me. I mention this, to show you that I did not come all unprepared to the study of the Newgate Calendar. Still, I cannot think, that, under any circumstances, it could have done an innocent child harm. Even familiarity with vice is not necessarily pollution. There cannot be many women of my age as familiar with it in every shape as I am; and I do not find that I grow to regard it with one atom less of absolute abhorrence, although I neither shudder at the mention of it, nor turn with disgust from the person in whom it dwells. But the consolations of religion were not yet consciously mine. I had not yet begun to think of God in any relation to myself.
"The house was in an old square, built, I believe, in the reign of Queen Anne, which, although many of the houses were occupied by well-to-do people, had fallen far from its first high estate. No one would believe, to look at it from the outside, what a great place it was. The whole of the space behind it, corresponding to the small gardens of the other houses, was occupied by a large music-room, under which was a low-pitched room of equal extent, while all under that were cellars, connected with the sunk story in front by a long vaulted passage, corresponding to a wooden gallery above, which formed a communication between the drawing-room floor and the music-room. Most girls of my age, knowing these vast empty spaces about them, would have been terrified at being left alone there, even in mid-day. But I was, I suppose, too miserable to be frightened. Even the horrible facts of the Newgate Calendar did not thus affect me, not even when Mrs. Conan was later than usual, and the night came down, and I had to sit, perhaps for hours, in the dark,—for she would not allow me to have a candle for fear of fire. But you will not wonder that I used to cry a good deal, although I did my best to hide the traces of it, because I knew it would annoy my kind old friend. She showed me a great deal of rough tenderness, which would not have been rough had not the natural grace of her Irish nature been injured by the contact of many years with the dull coarseness of the uneducated Saxon. You may be sure I learned to love her dearly. She shared every thing with me in the way of eating, and would have shared also the tumbler of gin and water with which she generally ended the day, but something, I don't know what, I believe a simple physical dislike, made me refuse that altogether.
"One evening I have particular cause to remember, both for itself, and because of something that followed many years after. I was in the drawing-room on the first floor, a double room with folding doors and a small cabinet behind communicating with a back stair; for the stairs were double all through the house, adding much to theeerinessof the place as I look back upon it in my memory. I fear, in describing the place so minutely, I may have been rousing false expectations of an adventure; but I have a reason for being rather minute, though it will not appear until afterwards. I had been looking out of the window all the afternoon upon the silent square, for, as it was no thoroughfare, it was only enlivened by the passing and returning now and then of a tradesman's cart; and, as it was winter, there were no children playing in the garden. It was a rainy afternoon. A gray cloud of fog and soot hung from the whole sky. About a score of yellow leaves yet quivered on the trees, and the statue of Queen Anne stood bleak and disconsolate among the bare branches. I am afraid I am getting long-winded, but somehow that afternoon seems burned into me in enamel. I gazed drearily without interest. I brooded over the past; I never, at this time, so far as I remember, dreamed of looking forward. I had no hope. It never occurred to me that things might grow better. I was dull and wretched. I may just say here in passing, that I think this experience is in a great measure what has enabled me to understand the peculiar misery of the poor in our large towns,—they have no hope, no impulse to look forward, nothing to expect; they live but in the present, and the dreariness of that soon shapes the whole atmosphere of their spirits to its own likeness. Perhaps the first thing one who would help them has to do is to aid the birth of some small vital hope in them; that is better than a thousand gifts, especially those of the ordinary kind, which mostly do harm, tending to keep them what they are,—a prey to present and importunate wants.
"It began to grow dark; and, tired of standing, I sat down upon the floor, for there was nothing to sit upon besides. There I still sat, long after it was quite dark. All at once a surge of self-pity arose in my heart. I burst out wailing and sobbing, and cried aloud, 'God has forgotten me altogether!' The fact was, I had had no dinner that day, for Mrs. Conan had expected to return long before; and the piece of bread she had given me, which was all that was in the house, I had eaten many hours ago. But I was not thinking of my dinner, though the want of it may have had to do with this burst of misery. What I was really thinking of was,—that I could do nothing for anybody. My little ambition had always been to be useful. I knew I was of some use to my father; for I kept the rooms tidy for him, and dusted his pet books—oh, so carefully! for they were like household gods to me. I had also played to him, and I knew he enjoyed that: he said so, many times. And I had begun, though not long before he left me, to think how I should be able to help him better by and by. For I saw that he worked very hard,—so hard that it made him silent; and I knew that my music-mistress made her livelihood, partly at least, by giving lessons; and I thought that I might, by and by, be able to give lessons too, and then papa would not require to work so hard, for I too should bring home money to pay for what we wanted. But now I was of use to nobody, I said, and not likely to become of any. I could not even help poor Mrs. Conan, except by doing what a child might do just as well as I, for I did not earn a penny of our living; I only gave the poor old thing time to work harder, that I might eat up her earnings! What added to the misery was, that I had always thought of myself as a lady; for was not papa a gentleman, let him be ever so poor? Shillings and sovereigns in his pocket could not determine whether a man was a gentleman or not! And if he was a gentleman, his daughter must be a lady. But how could I be a lady if I was content to be a burden to a poor charwoman, instead of earning my own living, and something besides with which to help her? For I had the notion—howit came I cannot tell, though I know well enoughwhenceit came—that position depended on how much a person was able to help other people; and here I was, useless, worse than useless to anybody! Why did not God remember me, if it was only for my father's sake? He was worth something, if I was not! And I would be worth something, if only I had a chance!—'I am of no use,' I cried, 'and God has forgotten me altogether!' And I went on weeping and moaning in my great misery, until I fell fast asleep on the floor.
"I have no theory about dreams and visions; and I don't know what you, Mr. Walton, may think as to whether these ended with the first ages of the church; but surely if one falls fast asleep without an idea in one's head, and a whole dismal world of misery in one's heart, and wakes up quiet and refreshed, without the misery, and with an idea, there can be no great fanaticism in thinking that the change may have come from somewhere near where the miracles lie,—in fact, that God may have had something—might I not say every thing?—to do with it. For my part, if I were to learn that he had no hand in this experience of mine, I couldn't help losing all interest in it, and wishing that I had died of the misery which it dispelled. Certainly, if it had a physical source, it wasn't that I was more comfortable, for I was hungrier than ever, and, you may well fancy, cold enough, having slept on the bare floor without any thing to cover me on Christmas Eve—for Christmas Eve it was. No doubt my sleep had done me good, but I suspect the sleep came to quiet my mind for the reception of the new idea.
"The way Mrs. Conan kept Christmas Day, as she told me in the morning, was, to comfort her old bones in bed until the afternoon, and then to have a good tea with a chop; after which she said she would have me read the Newgate Calendar to her. So, as soon as I had washed up the few breakfast things, I asked, if, while she lay in bed, I might not go out for a little while to look for work. She laughed at the notion of my being able to do any thing, but did not object to my trying. So I dressed myself as neatly as I could, and set out.
"There were two narrow streets full of small shops, in which those of furniture-brokers predominated, leading from the two lower corners of the square down into Oxford Street; and in a shop in one of these, I was not sure which, I had seen an old piano standing, and a girl of about my own age watching. I found the shop at last, although it was shut up; for I knew the name, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a stout matron, with a not unfriendly expression, who asked me what I wanted. I told her I wanted work. She seemed amused at the idea,—for I was very small for my age then as well as now,—but, apparently willing to have a chat with me, asked what I could do. I told her I could teach her daughter music. She asked me what made me come to her, and I told her. Then she asked me how much I should charge. I told her that some ladies had a guinea a lesson; at which she laughed so heartily, that I had to wait until the first transports of her amusement were over before I could finish by saying, that for my part I should be glad to give an hour's lesson for threepence, only, if she pleased, I should prefer it in silver. But how was she to know, she asked, that I could teach her properly. I told her I would let her hear me play; whereupon she led me into the shop, through a back room in which her husband sat smoking a long pipe, with a tankard at his elbow. Having taken down a shutter, she managed with some difficulty to clear me a passage through a crowd of furniture to the instrument, and with a struggle I squeezed through and reached it; but at the first chord I struck, I gave a cry of dismay. In some alarm she asked what was the matter, calling mechildvery kindly. I told her it was so dreadfully out of tune I couldn't play upon it at all; but, if she would get it tuned, I should not be long in showing her that I could do what I professed. She told me she could not afford to have it tuned; and if I could not teach Bertha on it as it was, she couldn't help it. This, however, I assured her, was utterly impossible; upon which, with some show of offence, she reached over a chest of drawers, and shut down the cover. I believe she doubted whether I could play at all, and had not been merely amusing myself at her expense. Nothing was left but to thank her, bid her good-morning, and walk out of the house, dreadfully disappointed.