I should like much, before in my narrative approaching a certain hard season we had to encounter, to say a few words concerning my husband, if I only knew how. I find women differ much, both in the degree and manner in which their feelings will permit them to talk about their husbands. I have known women set a whole community against their husbands by the way in which they trumpeted their praises; and I have known one woman set everybody against herself by the way in which she published her husband's faults. I find it difficult to believe either sort. To praise one's husband is so like praising one's self, that to me it seems immodest, and subject to the same suspicion as self-laudation; while to blame one's husband, even justly and openly, seems to me to border upon treachery itself. How, then, am I to discharge a sort of half duty my father has laid upon me by what he has said in "The Seaboard Parish," concerning my husband's opinions? My father is one of the few really large-minded men I have yet known; but I am not certain that he has done Percivale justice. At the same time, if he has not, Percivale himself is partly to blame, inasmuch as he never took pains to show my father what he was; for, had he done so, my father of all men would have understood him. On the other hand, this fault, if such it was, could have sprung only from my husband's modesty, and his horror of possibly producing an impression on my father's mind more favorable than correct. It is all right now, however.
Still, my difficulty remains as to how I am to write about him. I must encourage myself with the consideration that none but our own friends, with whom, whether they understood us or not, we are safe, will know to whom the veiled narrative points.
But some acute reader may say,—
"You describe your husband's picture: he will be known by that."
In this matter I have been cunning—I hope not deceitful, inasmuch as I now reveal my cunning. Instead of describing any real picture of his, I have always substituted one he has only talked about. The picture actually associated with the facts related is not the picture I have described.
Although my husband left the impression on my father's mind, lasting for a long time, that he had some definite repugnance to Christianity itself, I had been soon satisfied, perhaps from his being more open with me, that certain unworthy representations of Christianity, coming to him with authority, had cast discredit upon the whole idea of it. In the first year or two of our married life, we had many talks on the subject; and I was astonished to find what things he imagined to be acknowledged essentials of Christianity, which have no place whatever in the New Testament; and I think it was in proportion as he came to see his own misconceptions, that, although there was little or no outward difference to be perceived in him, I could more and more clearly distinguish an under-current of thought and feeling setting towards the faith which Christianity preaches. He said little or nothing, even when I attempted to draw him out on the matter; for he was almost morbidly careful not to seem to know any thing he did not know, or to appear what he was not. The most I could get out of him was—but I had better give a little talk I had with him on one occasion. It was some time before we began to go to Marion's on a Sunday evening, and I had asked him to go with me to a certain, little chapel in the neighborhood.
"What!" he said merrily, "the daughter of a clergyman be seen going to a conventicle?"
"If I did it, I would be seen doing it," I answered.
"Don't you know that the man is no conciliatory, or even mild dissenter, but a decided enemy to Church and State and all that?" pursued Percivale.
"I don't care," I returned. "I know nothing about it. What I know is, that he's a poet and a prophet both in one. He stirs up my heart within me, and makes me long to be good. He is no orator, and yet breaks into bursts of eloquence such as none of the studied orators, to whom you profess so great an aversion, could ever reach."
"You may well be right there. It is against nature for a speaker to be eloquent throughout his discourse, and the false will of course quench the true. I don't mind going if you wish it. I suppose he believes what he says, at least."
"Not a doubt of it. He could not speak as he does from less than a thorough belief."
"Do you mean to say, Wynnie, that he issureof every thing,—I don't want to urge an unreasonable question,—but is hesurethat the story of the New Testament is, in the main, actual fact? I should be very sorry to trouble your faith, but"—
"My father says," I interrupted, "that a true faith is like the Pool ofBethesda: it is when troubled that it shows its healing power."
"That depends on where the trouble comes from, perhaps," said Percivale.
"Anyhow," I answered, "it is only that which cannot be shaken that shall remain."
"Well, I will tell you what seems to me a very common-sense difficulty. How is any one to besureof the things recorded? I cannot imagine a man of our time absolutely certain of them. If you tell me I have testimony, I answer, that the testimony itself requires testimony. I never even saw the people who bear it; have just as good reason to doubt their existence, as that of him concerning whom they bear it; have positively no means of verifying it, and indeed, have so little confidence in all that is called evidence, knowing how it can be twisted, that I should distrust any conclusion I might seem about to come to on the one side or the other. It does appear to me, that, if the thing were of God, he would have taken care that it should be possible for an honest man to place a hearty confidence in its record."
He had never talked to me so openly, and I took it as a sign that he had been thinking more of these things than hitherto. I felt it a serious matter to have to answer such words, for how could I have any better assurance of that external kind than Percivale himself? That I was in the same intellectual position, however, enabled me the better to understand him. For a short time I was silent, while he regarded me with a look of concern,—fearful, I fancied, lest he should have involved me in his own perplexity.
"Isn't it possible, Percivale," I said, "that God may not care so much for beginning at that end?"
"I don't quite understand you, Wynnie," he returned.
"A man might believe every fact recorded concerning our Lord, and yet not have the faith in him that God wishes him to have."
"Yes, certainly. But will you say the converse of that is true?"
"Explain, please."
"Will you say a man may have the faith God cares for without the faith you say he does not care for?"
"I didn't say that God does not care about our having assurance of the facts; for surely, if every thing depends on those facts, much will depend on the degree of our assurance concerning them. I only expressed a doubt whether, in the present age, he cares that we should have that assurance first. Perhaps he means it to be the result of the higher kind of faith which rests in the will."
"I don't, at the moment, see how the higher faith, as you call it, can precede the lower."
"It seems to me possible enough. For what is the test of discipleship the Lord lays down? Is it not obedience? 'If ye love me, keep my commandments.' 'If a man love me, he will keep my commandments.' 'I never knew you: depart from me, ye workers of iniquity.' Suppose a man feels in himself that he must have some saviour or perish; suppose he feels drawn, by conscience, by admiration, by early memories, to the form of Jesus, dimly seen through the mists of ages; suppose he cannot be sure there ever was such a man, but reads about him, and ponders over the words attributed to him, until he feels they are the right thing, whetherhesaid them or not, and that if he could but be sure there were such a being, he would believe in him with heart and soul; suppose also that he comes upon the words, 'If any man is willing to do the will of the Father, he shall know whether I speak of myself or he sent me;' suppose all these things, might not the man then say to himself, 'I cannot tell whether all this is true, but I know nothing that seems half so good, and I will try to do the will of the Father in the hope of the promised knowledge'? Do you think God would, or would not, count that to the man for faith?"
I had no more to say, and a silence followed. After a pause of some duration, Percivale said,—
"I will go with you, my dear;" and that was all his answer.
When we came out of the little chapel,—the same into which Marion had stepped on that evening so memorable to her,—we walked homeward in silence, and reached our own door ere a word was spoken. But, when I went to take off my things, Percivale followed me into the room and said,—
"Whether that man iscertainof the facts or not, I cannot tell yet; but I am perfectly satisfied he believes in the manner of which you were speaking,—that of obedience, Wynnie. He must believe with his heart and will and life."
"If so, he can well afford to wait for what light God will give him on things that belong to the intellect and judgment."
"I would rather think," he returned, "that purity of life must re-act on the judgment, so as to make it likewise clear, and enable it to recognize the true force of the evidence at command."
"That is how my father came to believe," I said.
"He seems to me to rest his conviction more upon external proof."
"That is only because it is easier to talk about. He told me once that he was never able to estimate the force and weight of the external arguments until after he had believed for the very love of the eternal truth he saw in the story. His heart, he said, had been the guide of his intellect."
"That is just what I would fain believe. But, O Wynnie! the pity of it if that story should not be true, after all!"
"Ah, my love!" I cried, "that very word makes me surer than ever that it cannot but be true. Let us go on putting it to the hardest test; let us try it until it crumbles in our hands,—try it by the touchstone of action founded on its requirements."
"There may be no other way," said Percivale, after a thoughtful pause, "of becoming capable of recognizing the truth. It may be beyond the grasp of all but the mind that has thus yielded to it. There may be no contact for it with any but such a mind. Such a conviction, then, could neither be forestalled nor communicated. Its very existence must remain doubtful until it asserts itself. I see that."
"Please, ma'am, is Master Fido to carry Master Zohrab about by the back o' the neck?" said Jemima, in indignant appeal, one afternoon late in November, bursting into the study where I sat with my husband.
Fido was our Bedlington terrier, which, having been reared by Newcastle colliers, and taught to draw a badger,—whatever that may mean,—I am hazy about it,—had a passion for burrowing after any thing buried. Swept away by the current of the said passion, he had with his strong forepaws unearthed poor Zohrab, which, being a tortoise, had ensconced himself, as he thought, for the winter, in the earth at the foot of a lilac-tree; but now, much to his jeopardy, from the cold and the shock of the surprise more than from the teeth of his friend, was being borne about the garden in triumph, though whether exactly as Jemima described may be questionable. Her indignation at the inroad of the dog upon the personal rights of the tortoise had possibly not lessened her general indifference to accuracy.
Alarmed at the danger to the poor animal, of a kind from which his natural defences were powerless to protect him, Percivale threw down his palette and brushes, and ran to the door.
"Do put on your coat and hat, Percivale!" I cried; but he was gone.
Cold as it was, he had been sitting in the light blouse he had worn at his work all the summer. The stove had got red-hot, and the room was like an oven, while outside a dank fog filled the air. I hurried after him with his coat, and found him pursuing Fido about the garden, the brute declining to obey his call, or to drop the tortoise. Percivale was equally deaf to my call, and not until he had beaten the dog did he return with the rescued tortoise in his hands. The consequences were serious,—first the death of Zohrab, and next a terrible illness to my husband. He had caught cold: it settled on his lungs, and passed into bronchitis.
It was a terrible time to me; for I had no doubt, for some days, that he was dying. The measures taken seemed thoroughly futile.
It is an awful moment when first Death looks in at the door. The positive recognition of his presence is so different from any vividest imagination of it! For the moment I believed nothing,—felt only the coming blackness of absolute loss. I cared neither for my children, nor for my father or mother. Nothing appeared of any worth more. I had conscience enough left to try to pray, but no prayer would rise from the frozen depths of my spirit. I could only move about in mechanical and hopeless ministration to one whom it seemed of no use to go on loving any more; for what was nature but a soulless machine, the constant clank of whose motion sounded only, "Dust to dust; dust to dust," forevermore? But I was roused from this horror-stricken mood by a look from my husband, who, catching a glimpse of my despair, motioned me to him with a smile as of sunshine upon snow, and whispered in my ear,—
"I'm afraid you haven't much more faith than myself, after all, Wynnie."
It stung me into life,—not for the sake of my professions, not even for the honor of our heavenly Father, but by waking in me the awful thought of my beloved passing through the shadow of death with no one beside him to help or comfort him, in absolute loneliness and uncertainty. The thought was unendurable. For a moment I wished he might die suddenly, and so escape the vacuous despair of a conscious lingering betwixt life and the something or the nothing beyond it.
"But I cannot go with you!" I cried; and, forgetting all my duty as a nurse, I wept in agony.
"Perhaps another will, my Wynnie,—one who knows the way," he whispered; for he could not speak aloud, and closed his eyes.
It was as if an arrow of light had slain the Python coiled about my heart. Ifhebelieved,Icould believe also; ifhecould encounter the vague dark,Icould endure the cheerless light. I was myself again, and, with one word of endearment, left the bedside to do what had to be done.
At length a faint hope began to glimmer in the depths of my cavernous fear. It was long ere it swelled into confidence; but, although I was then in somewhat feeble health, my strength never gave way. For a whole week I did not once undress, and for weeks I was half-awake all the time I slept. The softest whisper would rouse me thoroughly; and it was only when Marion took my place that I could sleep at all.
I am afraid I neglected my poor children dreadfully. I seemed for the time to have no responsibility, and even, I am ashamed to say, little care for them. But then I knew that they were well attended to: friends were very kind—especially Judy—in taking them out; and Marion's daily visits were like those of a mother. Indeed, she was able to mother any thing human except a baby, to whom she felt no attraction,—any more than to the inferior animals, for which she had little regard beyond a negative one: she would hurt no creature that was not hurtful; but she had scarcely an atom of kindness for dog or cat, or any thing that is petted of woman. It is the only defect I am aware of in her character.
My husband slowly recovered, but it was months before he was able to do any thing he would call work. But, even in labor, success is not only to the strong. Working a little at the short best time of the day with him, he managed, long before his full recovery, to paint a small picture which better critics than I have thought worthy of Angelico, I will attempt to describe it.
Through the lighted windows of a great hall, the spectator catches broken glimpses of a festive company. At the head of the table, pouring out the red wine, he sees one like unto the Son of man, upon whom the eyes of all are turned. At the other end of the hall, seated high in a gallery, with rapt looks and quaint yet homely angelican instruments, he sees the orchestra pouring out their souls through their strings and trumpets. The hall is filled with a jewelly glow, as of light suppressed by color, the radiating centre of which is the red wine on the table; while mingled wings, of all gorgeous splendors, hovering in the dim height, are suffused and harmonized by the molten ruby tint that pervades the whole.
Outside, in the drizzly darkness, stands a lonely man. He stoops listening, with one ear laid almost against the door. His half-upturned face catches a ray of the light reflected from a muddy pool in the road. It discloses features wan and wasted with sorrow and sickness, but glorified with the joy of the music. He is like one who has been four days dead, to whose body the music has recalled the soul. Down by his knee he holds a violin, fashioned like those of the orchestra within; which, as he listens, he is tuning to their pitch.
To readers acquainted with a poem of Dr. Donne's,—"Hymn to God, my God, in my sickness,"—this description of mine will at once suggest the origin of the picture. I had read some verses of it to him in his convalescence; and, having heard them once, he requested them often again. The first stanza runs thus:—
"Since I am coming to that holy roomWhere with the choir of saints forevermoreI shall be made thy musique, as I come,I tune the instrument here at the door;And what I must do then, think here before."
The painting is almost the only one he has yet refused to let me see before it was finished; but, when it was, he hung it up in my own little room off the study, and I became thoroughly acquainted with it. I think I love it more than any thing else he has done. I got him, without telling him why, to put a touch or two to the listening figure, which made it really like himself.
During this period of recovery, I often came upon him reading his Greek New Testament, which he would shove aside when I entered. At length, one morning, I said to him,—
"Are you ashamed of the New Testament, Percivale? One would think it was a bad book from the way you try to hide it."
"No, my love," he said: "it is only that I am jealous of appearing to do that from suffering and weakness only, which I did not do when I was strong and well. But sickness has opened my eyes a good deal I think; and I am sure of this much, that, whatever truth there is here, I want it all the same whether I am feeling the want or not. I had no idea what there was in this book."
"Would you mind telling me," I said, "what made you take to reading it?"
"I will try. When I thought I was dying, a black cloud seemed to fall over every thing. It was not so much that I was afraid to die,—although I did dread the final conflict,—as that I felt so forsaken and lonely. It was of little use saying to myself that I mustn't be a coward, and that it was the part of a man to meet his fate, whatever it might be, with composure; for I saw nothing worth being brave about: the heart had melted out of me; there was nothing to give me joy, nothing for my life to rest up on, no sense of love at the heart of things. Didn't you feel something the same that terrible day?"
"I did," I answered. "I hope I never believed in Death all the time; and yet for one fearful moment the skeleton seemed to swell and grow till he blotted out the sun and the stars, and was himself all in all, while the life beyond was too shadowy to show behind him. And so Death was victorious, until the thought of your loneliness in the dark valley broke the spell; and for your sake I hoped in God again."
"And I thought with myself,—Would God set his children down in the dark, and leave them to cry aloud in anguish at the terrors of the night? Would he not make the very darkness light about them? Or, if they must pass through such tortures, would he not at least let them know that he was with them? How, then, can there be a God? Then arose in my mind all at once the old story, how, in the person of his Son, God himself had passed through the darkness now gathering about me; had gone down to the grave, and had conquered death by dying. If this was true, this was to be a God indeed. Well might he call on us to endure, who had himself borne the far heavier share. If there were an Eternal Life who would perfect my life, I could be brave; I could endure what he chose to lay upon me; I could go whither he led."
"And were you able to think all that when you were so ill, my love?" I said.
"Something like it,—practically very like it," he answered. "It kept growing in my mind,—coming and going, and gathering clearer shape. I thought with myself, that, if there was a God, he certainly knew that I would give myself to him if I could; that, if I knew Jesus to be verily and really his Son, however it might seem strange to believe in him and hard to obey him, I would try to do so; and then a verse about the smoking flax and the bruised reed came into my head, and a great hope arose in me. I do not know if it was what the good people would call faith; but I had no time and no heart to think about words: I wanted God and his Christ. A fresh spring of life seemed to burst up in my heart; all the world grew bright again: I seemed to love you and the children twice as much as before; a calmness came down upon my spirit which seemed to me like nothing but the presence of God; and, although I dare say you did not then perceive a change, I am certain that the same moment I began to recover."
But the clouds returned after the rain. It will be easily understood how the little money we had in hand should have rapidly vanished during Percivale's illness. While he was making nothing, the expenses of the family went on as usual; and not that only, but many little delicacies had to be got for him, and the doctor was yet to pay. Even up to the time when he had been taken ill, we had been doing little better than living from hand to mouth; for as often as we thought income was about to get a few yards ahead in the race with expense, something invariably happened to disappoint us.
I am not sorry that I have nospecialfaculty for saving; for I have never known any, in whom such was well developed, who would not do things they ought to be ashamed of. The savings of such people seem to me to come quite as much off other people as off themselves; and, especially in regard of small sums, they are in danger of being first mean, and then dishonest. Certainly, whoever makes savingtheend of her life, must soon grow mean, and will probably grow dishonest. But I have never succeeded in drawing the line betwixt meanness and dishonesty: what is mean, so far as I can see, slides by indistinguishable gradations into what is plainly dishonest. And what is more, the savings are commonly made at the cost of the defenceless. It is better far to live in constant difficulties than to keep out of them by such vile means as must, besides, poison the whole nature, and make one's judgments, both of God and her neighbors, mean as her own conduct. It is nothing to say that you must be just before you are generous, for that is the very point I am insisting on; namely, that one must be just to others before she is generous to herself. It will never do to make your two ends meet by pulling the other ends from the hands of those who are likewise puzzled to make them meet.
But I must now put myself at the bar, and cryPeccavi; for I was often wrong on the other side, sometimes getting things for the house before it was quite clear I could afford them, and sometimes buying the best when an inferior thing would have been more suitable, if not to my ideas, yet to my purse. It is, however, far more difficult for one with an uncertain income to learn to save, or even to be prudent, than for one who knows how much exactly every quarter will bring.
My husband, while he left the whole management of money matters to me, would yet spend occasionally without consulting me. In fact, he had no notion of money, and what it would or would not do. I never knew a man spend less upon himself; but he would be extravagant for me, and I dared hardly utter a foolish liking lest he should straightway turn it into a cause of shame by attempting to gratify it. He had, besides, a weakness for over-paying people, of which neither Marion nor I could honestly approve, however much we might admire the disposition whence it proceeded.
Now that I have confessed, I shall be more easy in my mind; for, in regard of the troubles that followed, I cannot be sure that I was free of blame. One word more in self-excuse, and I have done: however imperative, it is none the less hard to cultivate two opposing virtues at one and the same time.
While my husband was ill, not a picture had been disposed of; and even after he was able to work a little, I could not encourage visitors: he was not able for the fatigue, and in fact shrunk, with an irritability I had never perceived a sign of before, from seeing any one. To my growing dismay, I saw my little stock—which was bodily in my hand, for we had no banking account—rapidly approaching its final evanishment.
Some may think, that, with parents in the position of mine, a temporary difficulty need have caused me no anxiety: I must, therefore, mention one or two facts with regard to both my husband and my parents.
In the first place, although he had as complete a confidence in him as I had, both in regard to what he said and what he seemed, my husband could not feel towards my father as I felt. He had married me as a poor man, who yet could keep a wife; and I knew it would be a bitter humiliation to him to ask my father for money, on the ground that he had given his daughter. I should have felt nothing of the kind; for I should have known that my father would do him as well as me perfect justice in the matter, and would consider any money spent upon us as used to a divine purpose. For he regarded the necessaries of life as noble, its comforts as honorable, its luxuries as permissible,—thus reversing altogether the usual judgment of rich men, who in general like nothing worse than to leave their hoards to those of their relatives who will degrade them to the purchase of mere bread and cheese, blankets and clothes and coals. But I had no right to go against my husband's feeling. So long as the children had their bread and milk, I would endure with him. I am confident I could have starved as well as he, and should have enjoyed letting him see it.
But there were reasons because of which even I, in my fullest freedom, could not have asked help from my father just at this time. I am ashamed to tell the fact, but I must: before the end of his second year at Oxford, just over, the elder of my two brothers had, without any vice I firmly believe, beyond that of thoughtlessness and folly, got himself so deeply mired in debt, both to tradespeople and money-lenders, that my father had to pay two thousand pounds for him. Indeed, as I was well assured, although he never told me so, he had to borrow part of the money on a fresh mortgage in order to clear him. Some lawyer, I believe, told him that he was not bound to pay: but my father said, that, although such creditors deserved no protection of the law, he was not bound to give them a lesson in honesty at the expense of weakening the bond between himself and his son, for whose misdeeds he acknowledged a large share of responsibility; while, on the other hand, he was bound to give his son the lesson of the suffering brought on his family by his selfishness; and therefore would pay the money—if not gladly, yet willingly. How the poor boy got through the shame and misery of it, I can hardly imagine; but this I can say for him, that it was purely of himself that he accepted a situation in Ceylon, instead of returning to Oxford. Thither he was now on his way, with the intention of saving all he could in order to repay his father; and if at length he succeeds in doing so, he will doubtless make a fairer start the second time, because of the discipline, than if he had gone out with the money in his pocket.
It was natural, then, that in such circumstances a daughter should shrink from adding her troubles to those caused by a son. I ought to add, that my father had of late been laying out a good deal in building cottages for the laborers on his farms, and that the land was not yet entirely freed from the mortgages my mother had inherited with it.
Percivale continued so weak, that for some time I could not bring myself to say a word to him about money. But to keep them as low as possible did not prevent the household debts from accumulating, and the servants' wages were on the point of coming due. I had been careful to keep the milkman paid; and for the rest of the tradesmen, I consoled myself with the certainty, that, if the worst came to the worst, there was plenty of furniture in the house to pay every one of them. Still, of all burdens, next to sin, that of debt, I think, must be heaviest.
I tried to keep cheerful; but at length, one night, during our supper of bread and cheese, which I could not bear to see my poor, pale-faced husband eating, I broke down.
"Whatisthe matter, my darling?" asked Percivale.
I took a half-crown from my pocket, and held it out on the palm of my hand.
"That's all I've got, Percivale," I said.
"Oh! that all—is it?" he returned lightly.
"Yes,—isn't that enough?" I said with some indignation.
"Certainly—for to-night," he answered, "seeing the shops are shut. But is that all that's troubling you?" he went on.
"It seems to me quite enough," I said again; "and if you had the housekeeping to do, and the bills to pay, you would think a solitary half-crown quite enough to make you miserable."
"Never mind—so long as it's a good one," he said. "I'll get you more to-morrow."
"How can you do that?" I asked.
"Easily," he answered. "You'll see. Don't you trouble your dear heart about it for a moment."
I felt relieved, and asked him no more questions.
The next morning, when I went into the study to speak to him, he was not there; and I guessed that he had gone to town to get the money, for he had not been out before since his illness, at least without me. But I hoped of all things he was not going to borrow it of a money-lender, of which I had a great and justifiable horror, having heard from himself how a friend of his had in such a case fared. I would have sold three-fourths of the things in the house rather. But as I turned to leave the study, anxious both about himself and his proceedings, I thought something was different, and soon discovered that a certain favorite picture was missing from the wall: it was clear he had gone either to sell it or raise money upon it.
By our usual early dinner-hour, he returned, and put into my hands, with a look of forced cheerfulness, two five-pound notes.
"Is that all you got for that picture?" I said.
"That is all Mr. —— would advance me upon it," he answered. "I thought he had made enough by me to have risked a little more than that; but picture-dealers—Well, never mind. That is enough to give time for twenty things to happen."
And no doubt twenty things did happen, but none of them of the sort he meant. The ten pounds sank through my purse like water through gravel. I paid a number of small bills at once, for they pressed the more heavily upon me that I knew the money was wanted; and by the end of another fortnight we were as badly off as before, with an additional trouble, which in the circumstances was any thing but slight.
In conjunction with more than ordinary endowments of stupidity and self-conceit, Jemima was possessed of a furious temper, which showed itself occasionally in outbursts of unendurable rudeness. She had been again and again on the point of leaving me, now she, now I, giving warning; but, ere the day arrived, her better nature had always got the upper hand,—she had broken down and given in. These outbursts had generally followed a season of better behavior than usual, and were all but certain if I ventured the least commendation; for she could stand any thing better than praise. At the least subsequent rebuke, self would break out in rage, vulgarity, and rudeness. On this occasion, however, I cannot tell whence it was that one of these cyclones arose in our small atmosphere; but it was Jemima, you may well believe, who gave warning, for it was out of my power to pay her wages; and there was no sign of her yielding.
My reader may be inclined to ask in what stead the religion I had learned of my father now stood me. I will endeavor to be honest in my answer.
Every now and then I tried to pray to God to deliver us; but I was far indeed from praying always, and still farther from not fainting. A whole day would sometimes pass under a weight of care that amounted often to misery; and not until its close would I bethink me that I had been all the weary hours without God. Even when more hopeful, I would keep looking and looking for the impossibility of something to happen of itself, instead of looking for some good and perfect gift to come down from the Father of lights; and, when I awoke to the fact, the fog would yet lie so deep on my soul, that I could not be sorry for my idolatry and want of faith. It was, indeed, a miserable time. There was, besides, one definite thought that always choked my prayers: I could not say in my conscience that I had been sufficiently careful either in my management or my expenditure. "If," I thought, "I could be certain that I had done my best, I should be able to trust in God for all that lies beyond my power; but now he may mean to punish me for my carelessness." Then why should I not endure it calmly and without complaint? Alas! it was not I alone that thus would be punished, but my children and my husband as well. Nor could I avoid coming on my poor father at last, who, of course, would interfere to prevent a sale; and the thought was, from the circumstances I have mentioned, very bitter to me. Sometimes, however, in more faithful moods, I would reason with myself that God would not be hard upon me, even if I had not been so saving as I ought. My father had taken his son's debts on himself, and would not allow him to be disgraced more than could be helped; and, if an earthly parent would act thus for his child, would our Father in heaven be less tender with us? Still, for very love's sake, it might be necessary to lay some disgrace upon me, for of late I had been thinking far too little of the best things. The cares more than the duties of life had been filling my mind. If it brought me nearer to God, I must then say it had been good for me to be afflicted; but while my soul was thus oppressed, how could my feelings have any scope? Let come what would, however, I must try and bear it,—even disgrace, if it washiswill. Better people than I had been thus disgraced, and it might be my turn next. Meantime, it had not come to that, and I must not let the cares of to-morrow burden to-day.
Every day, almost, as it seems in looking back, a train of thought something like this would pass through my mind. But things went on, and grew no better. With gathering rapidity, we went sliding, to all appearance, down the inclined plane of disgrace.
Percivale at length asked Roger if he had any money by him to lend him a little; and he gave him at once all he had, amounting to six pounds,—a wonderful amount for Roger to have accumulated; with the help of which we got on to the end of Jemima's month. The next step I had in view was to take my little valuables to the pawnbroker's,—amongst them a watch, whose face was encircled with a row of good-sized diamonds. It had belonged to my great-grandmother, and my mother had given it me when I was married.
We had had a piece of boiled neck of mutton for dinner, of which we, that is my husband and I, had partaken sparingly, in order that there might be enough for the servants. Percivale had gone out; and I was sitting in the drawing-room, lost in any thing but a blessed reverie, with all the children chattering amongst themselves beside me, when Jemima entered, looking subdued.
"If you please, ma'am, this is my day," she said.
"Have you got a place, then, Jemima?" I asked; for I had been so much occupied with my own affairs that I had thought little of the future of the poor girl to whom I could have given but a lukewarm recommendation for any thing prized amongst housekeepers.
"No, ma'am. Please, ma'am, mayn't I stop?"
"No, Jemima. I am very sorry, but I can't afford to keep you. I shall have to do all the work myself when you are gone."
I thought to pay her wages out of the proceeds of my jewels, but was willing to delay the step as long as possible; rather, I believe, from repugnance to enter the pawn-shop, than from disinclination to part with the trinkets. But, as soon as I had spoken, Jemima burst into an Irish wail, mingled with sobs and tears, crying between the convulsions of all three,—
I thought there was something wrong, mis'ess. You and master looked so scared-like. Please, mis'ess, don't send me away."
"I never wanted to send you away, Jemima. You wanted to go yourself."
"No, ma'am;thatI didn't. I only wanted you to ask me to stop. Wirra! wirra! It's myself is sorry I was so rude. It's not me; it's my temper, mis'ess. I do believe I was born with a devil inside me."
I could not help laughing, partly from amusement, partly from relief.
"But you see I can't ask you to stop," I said. "I've got no money,—not even enough to pay you to-day; so I can't keep you."
"I don't want no money, ma'am. Let me stop, and I'll cook for yez, and wash and scrub for yez, to the end o' my days. An' I'll eat no more than'll keep the life in me. Imusteat something, or the smell o' the meat would turn me sick, ye see, ma'am; and then I shouldn't be no good to yez. Please 'm, I ha' got fifteen pounds in the savings bank: I'll give ye all that, if ye'll let me stop wid ye."
When I confess that I burst out crying, my reader will be kind enough to take into consideration that I hadn't had much to eat for some time; that I was therefore weak in body as well as in mind; and that this was the first gleam of sunshine I had had for many weeks.
"Thank you very much, Jemima," I said, as soon as I could speak. "I won't take your money, for then you would be as poor as I am. But, if you would like to stop with us, you shall; and I won't pay you till I'm able."
The poor girl was profuse in her thanks, and left the room sobbing in her apron.
It was a gloomy, drizzly, dreary afternoon. The children were hard to amuse, and I was glad when their bedtime arrived. It was getting late before Percivale returned. He looked pale, and I found afterwards that he had walked home. He had got wet, and had to change some of his clothes. When we went in to supper, there was the neck of mutton on the table, almost as we had left it. This led me, before asking him any questions, to relate what had passed with Jemima; at which news he laughed merrily, and was evidently a good deal relieved. Then I asked him where he had been.
"To the city," he answered.
"Have you sold another picture?" I asked, with an inward tribulation, half hope, half fear; for, much as we wanted the money, I could ill bear the thought of his pictures going for the price of mere pot-boilers.
"No," he replied: "the last is stopping the way. Mr. —— has been advertising it as a bargain for a hundred and fifty. But he hasn't sold it yet, and can't, he says, risk ten pounds on another. What's to come of it, I don't know," he added. "But meantime it's a comfort that Jemima can wait a bit forhermoney."
As we sat at supper, I thought I saw a look on Percivale's face which I had never seen there before. All at once, while I was wondering what it might mean, after a long pause, during which we had been both looking into the fire, he said,—
"Wynnie, I'm going to paint a better picture than I've ever painted yet. I can, and I will."
"But how are we to live in the mean time?" I said.
His face fell, and I saw with shame what a Job's comforter I was. Instead of sympathizing with his ardor, I had quenched it. What if my foolish remark had ruined a great picture! Anyhow, it had wounded a great heart, which had turned to labor as its plainest duty, and would thereby have been strengthened to endure and to hope. It was too cruel of me. I knelt by his knee, and told him I was both ashamed and sorry I had been so faithless and unkind. He made little of it, said I might well ask the question, and even tried to be merry over it; but I could see well enough that I had let a gust of the foggy night into his soul, and was thoroughly vexed with myself. We went to bed gloomy, but slept well, and awoke more cheerful.
As we were dressing, it came into my mind that I had forgotten to give him a black-bordered letter which had arrived the night before. I commonly opened his letters; but I had not opened this one, for it looked like a business letter, and I feared it might be a demand for the rent of the house, which was over due. Indeed, at this time I dreaded opening any letter the writing on which I did not recognize.
"Here is a letter, Percivale," I said. "I'm sorry I forgot to give it you last night."
"Who is it from?" he asked, talking through his towel from his dressing-room.
"I don't know. I didn't open it. It looks like something disagreeable."
"Open it now, then, and see."
"I can't just at this moment," I answered; for I had my back hair half twisted in my hands. "There it is on the chimney-piece."
He came in, took it, and opened it, while I went on with my toilet.Suddenly his arms were round me, and I felt his cheek on mine.
"Read that," he said, putting the letter into my hand.
It was from a lawyer in Shrewsbury, informing him that his god-mother, with whom he had been a great favorite when a boy, was dead, and had left him three hundred pounds.
It was like a reprieve to one about to be executed. I could only weep and thank God, once more believing in my Father in heaven. But it was a humbling thought, that, if he had not thus helped me, I might have ceased to believe in him. I saw plainly, that, let me talk to Percivale as I might, my own faith was but a wretched thing. It is all very well to have noble theories about God; but where is the good of them except we actually trust in him as a real, present, living, loving being, who counts us of more value than many sparrows, and will not let one of them fall to the ground without him?
"I thought, Wynnie, if there was such a God as you believed in, and with you to pray to him, we shouldn't be long without a hearing," said my husband.
There was more faith in his heart all the time, though he could not profess the belief I thought I had, than there ever was in mine.
But our troubles weren't nearly over yet. Percivale wrote, acknowledging the letter, and requesting to know when it would be convenient to let him have the money, as he was in immediate want of it. The reply was, that the trustees were not bound to pay the legacies for a year, but that possibly they might stretch a point in his favor if he applied to them. Percivale did so, but received a very curt answer, with little encouragement to expect any thing but the extreme of legal delay. He received the money, however, about four months after; lightened, to the great disappointment of my ignorance, of thirty pounds legacy-duty.
In the mean time, although our minds were much relieved, and Percivale was working away at his new picture with great energy and courage, the immediate pressure of circumstances was nearly as painful as ever. It was a comfort, however, to know that we might borrow on the security of the legacy; but, greatly grudging the loss of the interest which that would involve, I would have persuaded Percivale to ask a loan of Lady Bernard. He objected: on what ground do you think? That it would be disagreeable to Lady Bernard to be repaid the sum she had lent us! He would have finally consented, however, I have little doubt, had the absolute necessity for borrowing arrived.
About a week or ten days after the blessed news, he had a note from Mr. ——, whom he had authorized to part with the picture for thirty guineas. How much this was under its value, it is not easy to say, seeing the money-value of pictures is dependent on so many things: but, if the fairy godmother's executors had paid her legacy at once, that picture would not have been sold for less than five times the amount; and I may mention that the last time it changed hands it fetched five hundred and seventy pounds.
Mr. —— wrote that he had an offer of five and twenty for it, desiring to know whether he might sell it for that sum. Percivale at once gave his consent, and the next day received a check for eleven pounds, odd shillings; the difference being the borrowed amount upon it, its interest, the commission charged on the sale, and the price of a small picture-frame.
The next day, Percivale had a visitor at the studio,—no less a person than Mr. Baddeley, with his shirt-front in full blossom, and his diamond wallowing in light on his fifth finger,—I cannot call it his little finger, for his hands were as huge as they were soft and white,—hands descended of generations of laborious ones, but which had never themselves done any work beyond paddling in money.
He greeted Percivale with a jolly condescension, and told him, that, having seen and rather liked a picture of his the other day, he had come to inquire whether he had one that would do for a pendant to it; as he should like to have it, provided he did not want a fancy price for it.
Percivale felt as if he were setting out his children for sale, as he invited him to look about the room, and turned round a few from against the wall. The great man flitted hither and thither, spying at one after another through the cylinder of his curved hand, Percivale going on with his painting as if no one were there.
"How much do you want for this sketch?" asked Mr. Baddeley, at length, pointing to one of the most highly finished paintings in the room.
"I put three hundred on it at the Academy Exhibition," answered Percivale. "My friends thought it too little; but as it has been on my hands a long time now, and pictures don't rise in price in the keeping of the painter, I shouldn't mind taking two for it."
"Two tens, I suppose you mean," said Mr. Baddeley.
"I gave him a look," said Percivale, as he described the interview to me; and I knew as well as if I had seen it what kind of a phenomenon that look must have been.
"Come, now," Mr. Baddeley went on, perhaps misinterpreting the look, for it was such as a man of his property was not in the habit of receiving, "you mustn't think I'm made of money, or that I'm a green hand in the market. I know what your pictures fetch; and I'm a pretty sharp man of business, I believe. What do you really mean to say and stick to? Ready money, you know."
"Three hundred," said Percivale coolly.
"Why, Mr. Percivale!" cried Mr. Baddeley, drawing himself up, as my husband said, with the air of one who knew a trick worth two of that, "I paid Mr. —— fifty pounds, neither more nor less, for a picture of yours yesterday—a picture, allow me to say, worth"—
He turned again to the one in question with a critical air, as if about to estimate to a fraction its value as compared with the other.
"Worth three of that, some people think," said Percivale.
"The price of this, then, joking aside, is—?"
"Three hundred pounds," answered Percivale,—I know well how quietly.
"I understood you wished to sell it," said Mr. Baddeley, beginning, for all his good nature, to look offended, as well he might.
"I do wish to sell it. I happen to be in want of money."
"Then I'll be liberal, and offer you the same I paid for the other. I'll send you a check this afternoon for fifty—with pleasure."
"You cannot have that picture under three hundred."
"Why!" said the rich man, puzzled, "you offered it for two hundred, not five minutes ago."
"Yes; and you pretended to think I meant two tens."
"Offended you, I fear."
"At all events, betrayed so much ignorance of painting, that I would rather not have a picture of mine in your house."
"You're the first man ever presumed to tell me I was ignorant of painting," said Mr. Baddeley, now thoroughly indignant.
"You have heard the truth, then, for the first time," said Percivale, and resumed his work.
Mr. Baddeley walked out of the study.
I am not sure that he was so very ignorant. He had been in the way of buying popular pictures for some time, paying thousands for certain of them. I suspect he had eye enough to see that my husband's would probably rise in value, and, with the true huckster spirit, was ambitious of boasting how little he had given compared with what they were really worth.
Percivale in this case was doubtless rude. He had an insuperable aversion to men of Mr. Baddeley's class,—men who could have no position but for their money, and who yet presumed upon it, as if it were gifts and graces, genius and learning, judgment and art, all in one. He was in the habit of saying that the plutocracy, as he called it, ought to be put down,—that is, negatively and honestly,—by showing them no more respect than you really entertained for them. Besides, although he had no great favors for Cousin Judy's husband, he yet bore Mr. Baddeley a grudge for the way in which he had treated one with whom, while things went well with him, he had been ready enough to exchange hospitalities.
Before long, through Lady Bernard, he sold a picture at a fair price; and soon after, seeing in a shop-window the one Mr. —— had sold to Mr. Baddeley, marked ten pounds, went in and bought it. Within the year he sold it for a hundred and fifty.
By working day and night almost, he finished his new picture in time for the Academy; and, as he had himself predicted, it proved, at least in the opinion of all his artist friends, the best that he had ever painted. It was bought at once for three hundred pounds; and never since then have we been in want of money.
My reader may wonder, that, in my record of these troubles, I have never mentioned Marion. The fact is, I could not bring myself to tell her of them; partly because she was in some trouble herself, from strangers who had taken rooms in the house, and made mischief between her and her grandchildren; and partly because I knew she would insist on going to Lady Bernard; and, although I should not have minded it myself, I knew that nothing but seeing the children hungry would have driven my husband to consent to it.
One evening, after it was all over, I told Lady Bernard the story. She allowed me to finish it without saying a word. When I had ended, she still sat silent for a few moments; then, laying her hand on my arm, said,—
My dear child, you were very wrong, as well as very unkind. Why did you not let me know?"
"Because my husband would never have allowed me," I answered.
"Then I must have a talk with your husband," she said.
"I wish you would," I replied; "for I can't help thinking Percivale too severe about such things."
The very next day she called, and did have a talk with him in the study to the following effect:—
"I have come to quarrel with you, Mr. Percivale," said Lady Bernard.
"I'm sorry to hear it," he returned. "You're the last person I should like to quarrel with, for it would imply some unpardonable fault in me."
"It does imply a fault—and a great one," she rejoined; "though I trust not an unpardonable one. That depends on whether you can repent of it."
She spoke with such a serious air, that Percivale grew uneasy, and began to wonder what he could possibly have done to offend her. I had told him nothing of our conversation, wishing her to have her own way with him.
When she saw him troubled, she smiled.
"Is it not a fault, Mr. Percivale, to prevent one from obeying the divine law of bearing another's burden?"
"But," said Percivale, "I read as well, that every man shall bear his own burden."
"Ah!" returned Lady Bernard; "but I learn from Mr. Conybeare that two different Greek words are there used, which we translate only by the Englishburden. I cannot tell you what they are: I can only tell you the practical result. We are to bear one another's burdens of pain or grief or misfortune or doubt,—whatever weighs one down is to be borne by another; but the man who is tempted to exalt himself over his neighbor is taught to remember that he has his own load of disgrace to bear and answer for. It is just a weaker form of the lesson of the mote and the beam. You cannot get out at that door, Mr. Percivale. I beg you will read the passage in your Greek Testament, and see if you have not misapplied it. Yououghtto have let me bear your burden."
"Well, you see, my dear Lady Bernard," returned Percivale, at a loss to reply to such a vigorous assault, "I knew how it would be. You would have come here and bought pictures you didn't want; and I, knowing all the time you did it only to give me the money, should have had to talk to you as if I were taken in by it; and I really couldnotstand it."
"There you are altogether wrong. Besides depriving me of the opportunity of fulfilling a duty, and of the pleasure and the honor of helping you to bear your burden, you have deprived me of the opportunity of indulging a positive passion for pictures. I am constantly compelled to restrain it lest I should spend too much of the money given me for the common good on my own private tastes; but here was a chance for me! I might have had some of your lovely pictures in my drawing-room now—with a good conscience and a happy heart—if you had only been friendly. It was too bad of you, Mr. Percivale! I am not pretending in the least when I assert that I am really and thoroughly disappointed."
"I haven't a word to say for myself," returned Percivale.
"You couldn't have said a better," rejoined Lady Bernard; "but I hope you will never have to say it again."
"That I shall not. If ever I find myself in any difficulty worth speaking of, I will let you know at once."
"Thank you. Then we are friends again. And now I do think I am entitled to a picture,—at least, I think it will be pardonable if I yield to theverystrong temptation I am under at this moment to buy one. Let me see: what have you in the slave-market, as your wife calls it?"
She bought "The Street Musician," as Percivale had named the picture taken from Dr. Donne. I was more miserable than I ought to have been when I found he had parted with it, but it was a great consolation to think it was to Lady Bernard's it had gone. She was the only one, except my mother or Miss Clare, I could have borne to think of as having become its possessor.
He had asked her what I thought a very low price for it; and I judge that Lady Bernard thought the same, but, after what had passed between them, would not venture to expostulate. With such a man as my husband, I fancy, she thought it best to let well alone. Anyhow, one day soon after this, her servant brought him a little box, containing a fine brilliant.
"The good lady's kindness is long-sighted," said my husband, as he placed it on his finger. "I shall be hard up, though, before I part with this. Wynnie, I've actually got a finer diamond than Mr. Baddeley! Itisa beauty, if ever there was one!"
My husband, with all his carelessness of dress and adornment, has almost a passion for stones. It is delightful to hear him talk about them. But he had never possessed a single gem before Lady Bernard made him this present. I believe he is child enough to be happier for it all his life.
Suddenly I become aware that I am drawing nigh the close of my monthly labors for a long year. Yet the year seems to have passed more rapidly because of this addition to my anxieties. Not that I haven't enjoyed the labor while I have been actually engaged in it, but the prospect of the next month's work would often come in to damp the pleasure of the present; making me fancy, as the close of each chapter drew near, that I should not have material for another left in my head. I heard a friend once remark that it is not the cares of to-day, but the cares of to-morrow, that weigh a man down. For the day we have the corresponding strength given, for the morrow we are told to trust; it is not ours yet.
When I get my money for my work, I mean to give my husband a long holiday. I half think of taking him to Italy,—for of course I can do what I like with my own, whether husband or money,—and so have a hand in making him a still better painter. Incapable of imitation, the sight of any real work is always of great service to him, widening his sense of art, enlarging his idea of what can be done, rousing what part of his being is most in sympathy with it,—a part possibly as yet only half awake; in a word, leading him another step towards that simplicity which is at the root of all diversity, being so simple that it needs all diversity to set it forth.
How impossible it seemed to me that I should ever write a book! Well or ill done, it is almost finished, for the next month is the twelfth. I must look back upon what I have written, to see what loose ends I may have left, and whether any allusion has not been followed up with a needful explanation; for this way of writing by portions—the only way in which I could have been persuaded to attempt the work, however—is unfavorable to artistic unity; an unnecessary remark, seeing that to such unity my work makes no pretensions. It is but a collection of portions detached from an uneventful, ordinary, and perhaps in partthereforevery blessed life. Hence, perhaps, it was specially fitted for this mode of publication. At all events, I can cast upon it none of the blame of what failure I may have to confess.
A biography cannot be constructed with the art of a novel, for this reason: that a novel is constructed on the artist's scale, with swift-returning curves; a biography on the divine scale, whose circles are so large that they shoot beyond this world, sometimes even before we are able to detect in them the curve by which they will at length round themselves back towards completion. Hence, every life must look more or less fragmentary, and more or less out of drawing perhaps; not to mention the questionable effects in color and tone where the model himself will insist on taking palette and brushes, and laying childish, if not passionate, conceited, ambitious, or even spiteful hands to the work.
I do not find that I have greatly blundered, or omitted much that I ought to have mentioned. One odd thing is, that, in the opening conversation in which they urge me to the attempt, I have not mentioned Marion. I do not mean that she was present, but that surely some one must have suggested her and her history as affording endless material for my record. A thing apparently but not really strange is, that I have never said a word about the Mrs. Cromwell mentioned in the same conversation. The fact is, that I have but just arrived at the part of my story where she first comes in. She died about three months ago; and I can therefore with the more freedom narrate in the next chapter what I have known of her.
I find also that I have, in the fourth chapter, by some odd cerebro-mechanical freak, substituted the name of my AuntMarthafor that of my Aunt Millicent, another sister of my father, whom he has not, I believe, had occasion to mention in either of his preceding books. My Aunt Martha is Mrs. Weir, and has no children; my Aunt Millicent is Mrs. Parsons, married to a hard-working attorney, and has twelve children, now mostly grown up.
I find also, in the thirteenth chapter, an unexplained allusion. There my husband says, "Just ask my brother his experience in regard of the word to which you object." The word wasstomach, at the use of which I had in my ill-temper taken umbrage: however disagreeable a word in itself, surely a husband might, if need be, use it without offence. It will be proof enough that my objection arose from pure ill-temper when I state that I have since asked Roger to what Percivale referred. His reply was, that, having been requested by a certain person who had a school for young ladies—probably she called it a college—to give her pupils a few lectures on physiology, he could not go far in the course without finding it necessary to make a not unfrequent use of the word, explaining the functions of the organ to which the name belonged, as resembling those of a mill. After the lecture was over, the school-mistress took him aside, and said she really could not allow her young ladies to be made familiar with such words. Roger averred that the word was absolutely necessary to the subject upon which she had desired his lectures; and that he did not know how any instruction in physiology could be given without the free use of it. "No doubt," she returned, "you must recognize the existence of the organ in question; but, as the name of it is offensive to ears polite, could you not substitute another? You have just said that its operations resemble those of a mill: could you not, as often as you require to speak of it, refer to it in the future asthe mill?" Roger, with great difficulty repressing his laughter, consented; but in his next lecture made far more frequent reference tothe millthan was necessary, using the word every time—I know exactly how—with a certain absurd solemnity that must have been irresistible. The girls went into fits of laughter at the first utterance of it, and seemed, he said, during the whole lecture, intent only on the new term, at every recurrence of which their laughter burst out afresh. Doubtless their school-mistress had herself prepared them to fall into Roger's trap. The same night he received a note from her, enclosing his fee for the lectures given, and informing him that the rest of the course would not be required. Roger sent back the money, saying that to accept part payment would be to renounce his claim for the whole; and that, besides, he had already received an amount of amusement quite sufficient to reward him for his labor. I told him I thought he had been rather cruel; but he said such a woman wanted a lesson. He said also, that to see the sort of women who sometimes had the responsibility of training girls must make the angels weep; none but a heartless mortal like himself could laugh where conventionality and insincerity were taught in every hint as to posture and speech. It was bad enough, he said, to shape yourself into your own ideal; but to have to fashion yourself after the ideal of one whose sole object in teaching was to make money, was something wretched indeed.
I find, besides, that several intentions I had when I started have fallen out of the scheme. Somehow, the subjects would not well come in, or I felt that I was in danger of injuring the persons in the attempt to set forth their opinions.