|
Story
FIRST CHAPTER
IT happened in this wise -
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again,
without descrying any hint in them of the words that should follow,
it comes into my mind that they have an abrupt appearance. They
may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very
difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth
phrase: and yet I do not see my way to a better.
SECOND CHAPTER
IT happened in THIS wise -
But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former
opening, I find they are the self-same words repeated. This is the
more surprising to me, because I employ them in quite a new
connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard
the commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the
preference to another of an entirely different nature, dating my
explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will make a
third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that
it is not my design to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they
be of head or heart.
THIRD CHAPTER
NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon
it by degrees. The natural manner, after all, for God knows that
is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant
home was a cellar in Preston. I recollect the sound of father's
Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above, as being different
in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I
recollect, that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used
tremblingly to speculate on her feet having a good or an ill-
tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will
be seen that I was timid, and that the cellar-steps were steep, and
that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her
figure, and not least of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high-
pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by the compression of
bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her
eyes about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and
hungry. Father, with his shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a
three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate, until she would
pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money
home. Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my
ragged shirt and trousers together with a hand (my only braces),
would feint and dodge from mother's pursuing grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether I
cried for that I was in the dark, or for that it was cold, or for
that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself into a warm corner
when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
would still say, 'O, you worldly little devil!' And the sting of
it was, that I quite well knew myself to be a worldly little devil.
Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed, worldly as to
wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly
compared how much I got of those good things with how much father
and mother got, when, rarely, those good things were going.
Sometimes they both went away seeking work; and then I would be
locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my
worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly
yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death
of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on
whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole
courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil,
I would stand about, musingly fitting my cold bare feet into
cracked bricks and crevices of the damp cellar-floor, - walking
over my grandfather's body, so to speak, into the courtful of
houses, and selling them for meat and drink, and clothes to wear.
At last a change came down into our cellar. The universal change
came down even as low as that, - so will it mount to any height on
which a human creature can perch, - and brought other changes with
it.
We had a heap of I don't know what foul litter in the darkest
corner, which we called 'the bed.' For three days mother lay upon
it without getting up, and then began at times to laugh. If I had
ever heard her laugh before, it had been so seldom that the strange
sound frightened me. It frightened father too; and we took it by
turns to give her water. Then she began to move her head from side
to side, and sing. After that, she getting no better, father fell
a-laughing and a-singing; and then there was only I to give them
both water, and they both died.
FOURTH CHAPTER
WHEN I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came
peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I
could hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the
road-way, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around
me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly
little devil, I broke silence by saying, 'I am hungry and thirsty!'
'Does he know they are dead?' asked one of another.
'Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?' asked
a third of me severely.
'I don't know what it is to be dead. I supposed it meant that,
when the cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over
them. I am hungry and thirsty.' That was all I had to say about
it.
The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked
around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor,
thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great
vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me; and then they all
looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was
brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I
couldn't help it.
I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had
begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I
heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, 'My name is
Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.' Then the ring
split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad
all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman
and another official of some sort. He came forward close to the
vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself
carefully, and me copiously.
'He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just
dead too,' said Mr. Hawkyard.
I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner,
'Where's his houses?'
'Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave,' said Mr.
Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my
devil out of me. 'I have undertaken a slight - a very slight -
trust in behalf of this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of
mere honour, if not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon
myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged.'
The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much
more favourable than their opinion of me.
'He shall be taught,' said Mr. Hawkyard, '(O, yes, he shall be
taught!) but what is to be done with him for the present? He may
be infected. He may disseminate infection.' The ring widened
considerably. 'What is to be done with him?'
He held some talk with the two officials. I could distinguish no
word save 'Farm-house.' There was another sound several times
repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I
knew afterwards to be 'Hoghton Towers.'
'Yes,' said Mr. Hawkyard. 'I think that sounds promising; I think
that sounds hopeful. And he can be put by himself in a ward, for a
night or two, you say?'
It seemed to be the police-officer who had said so; for it was he
who replied, Yes! It was he, too, who finally took me by the arm,
and walked me before him through the streets, into a whitewashed
room in a bare building, where I had a chair to sit in, a table to
sit at, an iron bedstead and good mattress to lie upon, and a rug
and blanket to cover me. Where I had enough to eat too, and was
shown how to clean the tin porringer in which it was conveyed to
me, until it was as good as a looking-glass. Here, likewise, I was
put in a bath, and had new clothes brought to me; and my old rags
were burnt, and I was camphored and vinegared and disinfected in a
variety of ways.
When all this was done, - I don't know in how many days or how few,
but it matters not, - Mr. Hawkyard stepped in at the door,
remaining close to it, and said, 'Go and stand against the opposite
wall, George Silverman. As far off as you can. That'll do. How
do you feel?'
I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't feel hungry, and
didn't feel thirsty. That was the whole round of human feelings,
as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten.
'Well,' said he, 'you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to
be purified. Keep in the air there as much as you can. Live an
out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away. You had better
not say much - in fact, you had better be very careful not to say
anything - about what your parents died of, or they might not like
to take you in. Behave well, and I'll put you to school; O, yes!
I'll put you to school, though I'm not obligated to do it. I am a
servant of the Lord, George; and I have been a good servant to him,
I have, these five-and-thirty years. The Lord has had a good
servant in me, and he knows it.'
What I then supposed him to mean by this, I cannot imagine. As
little do I know when I began to comprehend that he was a prominent
member of some obscure denomination or congregation, every member
of which held forth to the rest when so inclined, and among whom he
was called Brother Hawkyard. It was enough for me to know, on that
day in the ward, that the farmer's cart was waiting for me at the
street corner. I was not slow to get into it; for it was the first
ride I ever had in my life.
It made me sleepy, and I slept. First, I stared at Preston streets
as long as they lasted; and, meanwhile, I may have had some small
dumb wondering within me whereabouts our cellar was; but I doubt
it. Such a worldly little devil was I, that I took no thought who
would bury father and mother, or where they would be buried, or
when. The question whether the eating and drinking by day, and the
covering by night, would be as good at the farm-house as at the
ward superseded those questions.
The jolting of the cart on a loose stony road awoke me; and I found
that we were mounting a steep hill, where the road was a rutty by-
road through a field. And so, by fragments of an ancient terrace,
and by some rugged outbuildings that had once been fortified, and
passing under a ruined gateway we came to the old farm-house in the
thick stone wall outside the old quadrangle of Hoghton Towers:
which I looked at like a stupid savage, seeing no specially in,
seeing no antiquity in; assuming all farm-houses to resemble it;
assigning the decay I noticed to the one potent cause of all ruin
that I knew, - poverty; eyeing the pigeons in their flights, the
cattle in their stalls, the ducks in the pond, and the fowls
pecking about the yard, with a hungry hope that plenty of them
might be killed for dinner while I stayed there; wondering whether
the scrubbed dairy vessels, drying in the sunlight, could be goodly
porringers out of which the master ate his belly-filling food, and
which he polished when he had done, according to my ward
experience; shrinkingly doubtful whether the shadows, passing over
that airy height on the bright spring day, were not something in
the nature of frowns, - sordid, afraid, unadmiring, - a small brute
to shudder at.
To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I
had had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in
this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar-steps into
the street, and glared in at shop-windows, I had done so with no
higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or
wolf-cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in
the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been
solitary often enough, but nothing better.
Such was my condition when I sat down to my dinner that day, in the
kitchen of the old farm-house. Such was my condition when I lay on
my bed in the old farm-house that night, stretched out opposite the
narrow mullioned window, in the cold light of the moon, like a
young vampire.
FIFTH CHAPTER
WHAT do I know of Hoghton Towers? Very little; for I have been
gratefully unwilling to disturb my first impressions. A house,
centuries old, on high ground a mile or so removed from the road
between Preston and Blackburn, where the first James of England, in
his hurry to make money by making baronets, perhaps made some of
those remunerative dignitaries. A house, centuries old, deserted
and falling to pieces, its woods and gardens long since grass-land
or ploughed up, the Rivers Ribble and Darwen glancing below it, and
a vague haze of smoke, against which not even the supernatural
prescience of the first Stuart could foresee a counter-blast,
hinting at steam-power, powerful in two distances.
What did I know then of Hoghton Towers? When I first peeped in at
the gate of the lifeless quadrangle, and started from the
mouldering statue becoming visible to me like its guardian ghost;
when I stole round by the back of the farm-house, and got in among
the ancient rooms, many of them with their floors and ceilings
falling, the beams and rafters hanging dangerously down, the
plaster dropping as I trod, the oaken panels stripped away, the
windows half walled up, half broken; when I discovered a gallery
commanding the old kitchen, and looked down between balustrades
upon a massive old table and benches, fearing to see I know not
what dead-alive creatures come in and seat themselves, and look up
with I know not what dreadful eyes, or lack of eyes, at me; when
all over the house I was awed by gaps and chinks where the sky
stared sorrowfully at me, where the birds passed, and the ivy
rustled, and the stains of winter weather blotched the rotten
floors; when down at the bottom of dark pits of staircase, into
which the stairs had sunk, green leaves trembled, butterflies
fluttered, and bees hummed in and out through the broken door-ways;
when encircling the whole ruin were sweet scents, and sights of
fresh green growth, and ever-renewing life, that I had never
dreamed of, - I say, when I passed into such clouded perception of
these things as my dark soul could compass, what did I know then of
Hoghton Towers?
I have written that the sky stared sorrowfully at me. Therein have
I anticipated the answer. I knew that all these things looked
sorrowfully at me; that they seemed to sigh or whisper, not without
pity for me, 'Alas! poor worldly little devil!'
There were two or three rats at the bottom of one of the smaller
pits of broken staircase when I craned over and looked in. They
were scuffling for some prey that was there; and, when they started
and hid themselves close together in the dark, I thought of the old
life (it had grown old already) in the cellar.
How not to be this worldly little devil? how not to have a
repugnance towards myself as I had towards the rats? I hid in a
corner of one of the smaller chambers, frightened at myself, and
crying (it was the first time I had ever cried for any cause not
purely physical), and I tried to think about it. One of the farm-
ploughs came into my range of view just then; and it seemed to help
me as it went on with its two horses up and down the field so
peacefully and quietly.
There was a girl of about my own age in the farm-house family, and
she sat opposite to me at the narrow table at meal-times. It had
come into my mind, at our first dinner, that she might take the
fever from me. The thought had not disquieted me then. I had only
speculated how she would look under the altered circumstances, and
whether she would die. But it came into my mind now, that I might
try to prevent her taking the fever by keeping away from her. I
knew I should have but scrambling board if I did; so much the less
worldly and less devilish the deed would be, I thought.
From that hour, I withdrew myself at early morning into secret
corners of the ruined house, and remained hidden there until she
went to bed. At first, when meals were ready, I used to hear them
calling me; and then my resolution weakened. But I strengthened it
again by going farther off into the ruin, and getting out of
hearing. I often watched for her at the dim windows; and, when I
saw that she was fresh and rosy, felt much happier.
Out of this holding her in my thoughts, to the humanising of
myself, I suppose some childish love arose within me. I felt, in
some sort, dignified by the pride of protecting her, - by the pride
of making the sacrifice for her. As my heart swelled with that new
feeling, it insensibly softened about mother and father. It seemed
to have been frozen before, and now to be thawed. The old ruin and
all the lovely things that haunted it were not sorrowful for me
only, but sorrowful for mother and father as well. Therefore did I
cry again, and often too.
The farm-house family conceived me to be of a morose temper, and
were very short with me; though they never stinted me in such
broken fare as was to be got out of regular hours. One night when
I lifted the kitchen latch at my usual time, Sylvia (that was her
pretty name) had but just gone out of the room. Seeing her
ascending the opposite stairs, I stood still at the door. She had
heard the clink of the latch, and looked round.
'George,' she called to me in a pleased voice, 'to-morrow is my
birthday; and we are to have a fiddler, and there's a party of boys
and girls coming in a cart, and we shall dance. I invite you. Be
sociable for once, George.'
'I am very sorry, miss,' I answered; 'but I - but, no; I can't
come.'
'You are a disagreeable, ill-humoured lad,' she returned
disdainfully; 'and I ought not to have asked you. I shall never
speak to you again.'
As I stood with my eyes fixed on the fire, after she was gone, I
felt that the farmer bent his brows upon me.
'Eh, lad!' said he; 'Sylvy's right. You're as moody and broody a
lad as never I set eyes on yet.'
I tried to assure him that I meant no harm; but he only said
coldly, 'Maybe not, maybe not! There, get thy supper, get thy
supper; and then thou canst sulk to thy heart's content again.'
Ah! if they could have seen me next day, in the ruin, watching for
the arrival of the cart full of merry young guests; if they could
have seen me at night, gliding out from behind the ghostly statue,
listening to the music and the fall of dancing feet, and watching
the lighted farm-house windows from the quadrangle when all the
ruin was dark; if they could have read my heart, as I crept up to
bed by the back way, comforting myself with the reflection, 'They
will take no hurt from me,' - they would not have thought mine a
morose or an unsocial nature.
It was in these ways that I began to form a shy disposition; to be
of a timidly silent character under misconstruction; to have an
inexpressible, perhaps a morbid, dread of ever being sordid or
worldly. It was in these ways that my nature came to shape itself
to such a mould, even before it was affected by the influences of
the studious and retired life of a poor scholar.
SIXTH CHAPTER
BROTHER HAWKYARD (as he insisted on my calling him) put me to
school, and told me to work my way. 'You are all right, George,'
he said. 'I have been the best servant the Lord has had in his
service for this five-and-thirty year (O, I have!); and he knows
the value of such a servant as I have been to him (O, yes, he
does!); and he'll prosper your schooling as a part of my reward.
That's what HE'll do, George. He'll do it for me.'
From the first I could not like this familiar knowledge of the ways
of the sublime, inscrutable Almighty, on Brother Hawkyard's part.
As I grew a little wiser, and still a little wiser, I liked it less
and less. His manner, too, of confirming himself in a parenthesis,
- as if, knowing himself, he doubted his own word, - I found
distasteful. I cannot tell how much these dislikes cost me; for I
had a dread that they were worldly.
As time went on, I became a Foundation-boy on a good foundation,
and I cost Brother Hawkyard nothing. When I had worked my way so
far, I worked yet harder, in the hope of ultimately getting a
presentation to college and a fellowship. My health has never been
strong (some vapour from the Preston cellar cleaves to me, I
think); and what with much work and some weakness, I came again to
be regarded - that is, by my fellow-students - as unsocial.
All through my time as a foundation-boy, I was within a few miles
of Brother Hawkyard's congregation; and whenever I was what we
called a leave-boy on a Sunday, I went over there at his desire.
Before the knowledge became forced upon me that outside their place
of meeting these brothers and sisters were no better than the rest
of the human family, but on the whole were, to put the case mildly,
as bad as most, in respect of giving short weight in their shops,
and not speaking the truth, - I say, before this knowledge became
forced upon me, their prolix addresses, their inordinate conceit,
their daring ignorance, their investment of the Supreme Ruler of
heaven and earth with their own miserable meannesses and
littlenesses, greatly shocked me. Still, as their term for the
frame of mind that could not perceive them to be in an exalted
state of grace was the 'worldly' state, I did for a time suffer
tortures under my inquiries of myself whether that young worldly-
devilish spirit of mine could secretly be lingering at the bottom
of my non-appreciation.
Brother Hawkyard was the popular expounder in this assembly, and
generally occupied the platform (there was a little platform with a
table on it, in lieu of a pulpit) first, on a Sunday afternoon. He
was by trade a drysalter. Brother Gimblet, an elderly man with a
crabbed face, a large dog's-eared shirt-collar, and a spotted blue
neckerchief reaching up behind to the crown of his head, was also a
drysalter and an expounder. Brother Gimblet professed the greatest
admiration for Brother Hawkyard, but (I had thought more than once)
bore him a jealous grudge.
Let whosoever may peruse these lines kindly take the pains here to
read twice my solemn pledge, that what I write of the language and
customs of the congregation in question I write scrupulously,
literally, exactly, from the life and the truth.
On the first Sunday after I had won what I had so long tried for,
and when it was certain that I was going up to college, Brother
Hawkyard concluded a long exhortation thus:
'Well, my friends and fellow-sinners, now I told you when I began,
that I didn't know a word of what I was going to say to you (and
no, I did not!), but that it was all one to me, because I knew the
Lord would put into my mouth the words I wanted.'
('That's it!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'And he did put into my mouth the words I wanted.'
('So he did!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'And why?'
('Ah, let's have that!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'Because I have been his faithful servant for five-and-thirty
years, and because he knows it. For five-and-thirty years! And he
knows it, mind you! I got those words that I wanted on account of
my wages. I got 'em from the Lord, my fellow-sinners. Down! I
said, "Here's a heap of wages due; let us have something down, on
account." And I got it down, and I paid it over to you; and you
won't wrap it up in a napkin, nor yet in a towel, nor yet
pocketankercher, but you'll put it out at good interest. Very
well. Now, my brothers and sisters and fellow-sinners, I am going
to conclude with a question, and I'll make it so plain (with the
help of the Lord, after five-and-thirty years, I should rather
hope!) as that the Devil shall not be able to confuse it in your
heads, - which he would be overjoyed to do.'
('Just his way. Crafty old blackguard!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'And the question is this, Are the angels learned?'
('Not they. Not a bit on it!' from Brother Gimblet, with the
greatest confidence.)
'Not they. And where's the proof? sent ready-made by the hand of
the Lord. Why, there's one among us here now, that has got all the
learning that can be crammed into him. I got him all the learning
that could be crammed into him. His grandfather' (this I had never
heard before) 'was a brother of ours. He was Brother Parksop.
That's what he was. Parksop; Brother Parksop. His worldly name
was Parksop, and he was a brother of this brotherhood. Then wasn't
he Brother Parksop?'
('Must be. Couldn't help hisself!' from Brother Gimblet.)
'Well, he left that one now here present among us to the care of a
brother-sinner of his (and that brother-sinner, mind you, was a
sinner of a bigger size in his time than any of you; praise the
Lord!), Brother Hawkyard. Me. I got him without fee or reward, -
without a morsel of myrrh, or frankincense, nor yet amber, letting
alone the honeycomb, - all the learning that could be crammed into
him. Has it brought him into our temple, in the spirit? No. Have
we had any ignorant brothers and sisters that didn't know round O
from crooked S, come in among us meanwhile? Many. Then the angels
are NOT learned; then they don't so much as know their alphabet.
And now, my friends and fellow-sinners, having brought it to that,
perhaps some brother present - perhaps you, Brother Gimblet - will
pray a bit for us?'
Brother Gimblet undertook the sacred function, after having drawn
his sleeve across his mouth, and muttered, 'Well! I don't know as
I see my way to hitting any of you quite in the right place
neither.' He said this with a dark smile, and then began to
bellow. What we were specially to be preserved from, according to
his solicitations, was, despoilment of the orphan, suppression of
testamentary intentions on the part of a father or (say)
grandfather, appropriation of the orphan's house-property, feigning
to give in charity to the wronged one from whom we withheld his
due; and that class of sins. He ended with the petition, 'Give us
peace!' which, speaking for myself, was very much needed after
twenty minutes of his bellowing.
Even though I had not seen him when he rose from his knees,
steaming with perspiration, glance at Brother Hawkyard, and even
though I had not heard Brother Hawkyard's tone of congratulating
him on the vigour with which he had roared, I should have detected
a malicious application in this prayer. Unformed suspicions to a
similar effect had sometimes passed through my mind in my earlier
school-days, and had always caused me great distress; for they were
worldly in their nature, and wide, very wide, of the spirit that
had drawn me from Sylvia. They were sordid suspicions, without a
shadow of proof. They were worthy to have originated in the
unwholesome cellar. They were not only without proof, but against
proof; for was I not myself a living proof of what Brother Hawkyard
had done? and without him, how should I ever have seen the sky look
sorrowfully down upon that wretched boy at Hoghton Towers?
Although the dread of a relapse into a stage of savage selfishness
was less strong upon me as I approached manhood, and could act in
an increased degree for myself, yet I was always on my guard
against any tendency to such relapse. After getting these
suspicions under my feet, I had been troubled by not being able to
like Brother Hawkyard's manner, or his professed religion. So it
came about, that, as I walked back that Sunday evening, I thought
it would be an act of reparation for any such injury my struggling
thoughts had unwillingly done him, if I wrote, and placed in his
hands, before going to college, a full acknowledgment of his
goodness to me, and an ample tribute of thanks. It might serve as
an implied vindication of him against any dark scandal from a rival
brother and expounder, or from any other quarter.
Accordingly, I wrote the document with much care. I may add with
much feeling too; for it affected me as I went on. Having no set
studies to pursue, in the brief interval between leaving the
Foundation and going to Cambridge, I determined to walk out to his
place of business, and give it into his own hands.
It was a winter afternoon, when I tapped at the door of his little
counting-house, which was at the farther end of his long, low shop.
As I did so (having entered by the back yard, where casks and boxes
were taken in, and where there was the inscription, 'Private way to
the counting-house'), a shopman called to me from the counter that
he was engaged.
'Brother Gimblet' (said the shopman, who was one of the
brotherhood) 'is with him.'
I thought this all the better for my purpose, and made bold to tap
again. They were talking in a low tone, and money was passing; for
I heard it being counted out.
'Who is it?' asked Brother Hawkyard, sharply.
'George Silverman,' I answered, holding the door open. 'May I come
in?'
Both brothers seemed so astounded to see me that I felt shyer than
usual. But they looked quite cadaverous in the early gaslight, and
perhaps that accidental circumstance exaggerated the expression of
their faces.
'What is the matter?' asked Brother Hawkyard.
'Ay! what is the matter?' asked Brother Gimblet.
'Nothing at all,' I said, diffidently producing my document: 'I am
only the bearer of a letter from myself.'
'From yourself, George?' cried Brother Hawkyard.
'And to you,' said I.
'And to me, George?'
He turned paler, and opened it hurriedly; but looking over it, and
seeing generally what it was, became less hurried, recovered his
colour, and said, 'Praise the Lord!'
'That's it!' cried Brother Gimblet. 'Well put! Amen.'
Brother Hawkyard then said, in a livelier strain, 'You must know,
George, that Brother Gimblet and I are going to make our two
businesses one. We are going into partnership. We are settling it
now. Brother Gimblet is to take one clear half of the profits (O,
yes! he shall have it; he shall have it to the last farthing).'
'D.V.!' said Brother Gimblet, with his right fist firmly clinched
on his right leg.
'There is no objection,' pursued Brother Hawkyard, 'to my reading
this aloud, George?'
As it was what I expressly desired should be done, after
yesterday's prayer, I more than readily begged him to read it
aloud. He did so; and Brother Gimblet listened with a crabbed
smile.
'It was in a good hour that I came here,' he said, wrinkling up his
eyes. 'It was in a good hour, likewise, that I was moved yesterday
to depict for the terror of evil-doers a character the direct
opposite of Brother Hawkyard's. But it was the Lord that done it:
I felt him at it while I was perspiring.'
After that it was proposed by both of them that I should attend the
congregation once more before my final departure. What my shy
reserve would undergo, from being expressly preached at and prayed
at, I knew beforehand. But I reflected that it would be for the
last time, and that it might add to the weight of my letter. It
was well known to the brothers and sisters that there was no place
taken for me in THEIR paradise; and if I showed this last token of
deference to Brother Hawkyard, notoriously in despite of my own
sinful inclinations, it might go some little way in aid of my
statement that he had been good to me, and that I was grateful to
him. Merely stipulating, therefore, that no express endeavour
should be made for my conversion, - which would involve the rolling
of several brothers and sisters on the floor, declaring that they
felt all their sins in a heap on their left side, weighing so many
pounds avoirdupois, as I knew from what I had seen of those
repulsive mysteries, - I promised.
Since the reading of my letter, Brother Gimblet had been at
intervals wiping one eye with an end of his spotted blue
neckerchief, and grinning to himself. It was, however, a habit
that brother had, to grin in an ugly manner even when expounding.
I call to mind a delighted snarl with which he used to detail from
the platform the torments reserved for the wicked (meaning all
human creation except the brotherhood), as being remarkably
hideous.
I left the two to settle their articles of partnership, and count
money; and I never saw them again but on the following Sunday.
Brother Hawkyard died within two or three years, leaving all he
possessed to Brother Gimblet, in virtue of a will dated (as I have
been told) that very day.
Now I was so far at rest with myself, when Sunday came, knowing
that I had conquered my own mistrust, and righted Brother Hawkyard
in the jaundiced vision of a rival, that I went, even to that
coarse chapel, in a less sensitive state than usual. How could I
foresee that the delicate, perhaps the diseased, corner of my mind,
where I winced and shrunk when it was touched, or was even
approached, would be handled as the theme of the whole proceedings?
On this occasion it was assigned to Brother Hawkyard to pray, and
to Brother Gimblet to preach. The prayer was to open the
ceremonies; the discourse was to come next. Brothers Hawkyard and
Gimblet were both on the platform; Brother Hawkyard on his knees at
the table, unmusically ready to pray; Brother Gimblet sitting
against the wall, grinningly ready to preach.
'Let us offer up the sacrifice of prayer, my brothers and sisters
and fellow-sinners.' Yes; but it was I who was the sacrifice. It
was our poor, sinful, worldly-minded brother here present who was
wrestled for. The now-opening career of this our unawakened
brother might lead to his becoming a minister of what was called
'the church.' That was what HE looked to. The church. Not the
chapel, Lord. The church. No rectors, no vicars, no archdeacons,
no bishops, no archbishops, in the chapel, but, O Lord! many such
in the church. Protect our sinful brother from his love of lucre.
Cleanse from our unawakened brother's breast his sin of worldly-
mindedness. The prayer said infinitely more in words, but nothing
more to any intelligible effect.
Then Brother Gimblet came forward, and took (as I knew he would)
the text, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Ah! but whose was, my
fellow-sinners? Whose? Why, our brother's here present was. The
only kingdom he had an idea of was of this world. ('That's it!'
from several of the congregation.) What did the woman do when she
lost the piece of money? Went and looked for it. What should our
brother do when he lost his way? ('Go and look for it,' from a
sister.) Go and look for it, true. But must he look for it in the
right direction, or in the wrong? ('In the right,' from a
brother.) There spake the prophets! He must look for it in the
right direction, or he couldn't find it. But he had turned his
back upon the right direction, and he wouldn't find it. Now, my
fellow-sinners, to show you the difference betwixt worldly-
mindedness and unworldly-mindedness, betwixt kingdoms not of this
world and kingdoms OF this world, here was a letter wrote by even
our worldly-minded brother unto Brother Hawkyard. Judge, from
hearing of it read, whether Brother Hawkyard was the faithful
steward that the Lord had in his mind only t'other day, when, in
this very place, he drew you the picter of the unfaithful one; for
it was him that done it, not me. Don't doubt that!
Brother Gimblet then groaned and bellowed his way through my
composition, and subsequently through an hour. The service closed
with a hymn, in which the brothers unanimously roared, and the
sisters unanimously shrieked at me, That I by wiles of worldly gain
was mocked, and they on waters of sweet love were rocked; that I
with mammon struggled in the dark, while they were floating in a
second ark.
I went out from all this with an aching heart and a weary spirit:
not because I was quite so weak as to consider these narrow
creatures interpreters of the Divine Majesty and Wisdom, but
because I was weak enough to feel as though it were my hard fortune
to be misrepresented and misunderstood, when I most tried to subdue
any risings of mere worldliness within me, and when I most hoped
that, by dint of trying earnestly, I had succeeded.
SEVENTH CHAPTER
MY timidity and my obscurity occasioned me to live a secluded life
at college, and to be little known. No relative ever came to visit
me, for I had no relative. No intimate friends broke in upon my
studies, for I made no intimate friends. I supported myself on my
scholarship, and read much. My college time was otherwise not so
very different from my time at Hoghton Towers.
Knowing myself to be unfit for the noisier stir of social
existence, but believing myself qualified to do my duty in a
moderate, though earnest way, if I could obtain some small
preferment in the Church, I applied my mind to the clerical
profession. In due sequence I took orders, was ordained, and began
to look about me for employment. I must observe that I had taken a
good degree, that I had succeeded in winning a good fellowship, and
that my means were ample for my retired way of life. By this time
I had read with several young men; and the occupation increased my
income, while it was highly interesting to me. I once accidentally
overheard our greatest don say, to my boundless joy, 'That he heard
it reported of Silverman that his gift of quiet explanation, his
patience, his amiable temper, and his conscientiousness made him
the best of coaches.' May my 'gift of quiet explanation' come more
seasonably and powerfully to my aid in this present explanation
than I think it will!
It may be in a certain degree owing to the situation of my college-
rooms (in a corner where the daylight was sobered), but it is in a
much larger degree referable to the state of my own mind, that I
seem to myself, on looking back to this time of my life, to have
been always in the peaceful shade. I can see others in the
sunlight; I can see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on
the glistening water, or speckled with the moving lights of sunlit
leaves; but I myself am always in the shadow looking on. Not
unsympathetically, - God forbid! - but looking on alone, much as I
looked at Sylvia from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at
the red gleam shining through the farmer's windows, and listened to
the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in
the quadrangle.
I now come to the reason of my quoting that laudation of myself
above given. Without such reason, to repeat it would have been
mere boastfulness.
Among those who had read with me was Mr. Fareway, second son of
Lady Fareway, widow of Sir Gaston Fareway, baronet. This young
gentleman's abilities were much above the average; but he came of a
rich family, and was idle and luxurious. He presented himself to
me too late, and afterwards came to me too irregularly, to admit of
my being of much service to him. In the end, I considered it my
duty to dissuade him from going up for an examination which he
could never pass; and he left college without a degree. After his
departure, Lady Fareway wrote to me, representing the justice of my
returning half my fee, as I had been of so little use to her son.
Within my knowledge a similar demand had not been made in any other
case; and I most freely admit that the justice of it had not
occurred to me until it was pointed out. But I at once perceived
it, yielded to it, and returned the money -
Mr. Fareway had been gone two years or more, and I had forgotten
him, when he one day walked into my rooms as I was sitting at my
books.
Said he, after the usual salutations had passed, 'Mr. Silverman, my
mother is in town here, at the hotel, and wishes me to present you
to her.'
I was not comfortable with strangers, and I dare say I betrayed
that I was a little nervous or unwilling. 'For,' said he, without
my having spoken, 'I think the interview may tend to the
advancement of your prospects.'
It put me to the blush to think that I should be tempted by a
worldly reason, and I rose immediately.
Said Mr. Fareway, as we went along, 'Are you a good hand at
business?'
'I think not,' said I.
Said Mr. Fareway then, 'My mother is.'
'Truly?' said I.
'Yes: my mother is what is usually called a managing woman.
Doesn't make a bad thing, for instance, even out of the spendthrift
habits of my eldest brother abroad. In short, a managing woman.
This is in confidence.'
He had never spoken to me in confidence, and I was surprised by his
doing so. I said I should respect his confidence, of course, and
said no more on the delicate subject. We had but a little way to
walk, and I was soon in his mother's company. He presented me,
shook hands with me, and left us two (as he said) to business.
I saw in my Lady Fareway a handsome, well-preserved lady of
somewhat large stature, with a steady glare in her great round dark
eyes that embarrassed me.
Said my lady, 'I have heard from my son, Mr. Silverman, that you
would be glad of some preferment in the church.' I gave my lady to
understand that was so.
'I don't know whether you are aware,' my lady proceeded, 'that we
have a presentation to a living? I say WE have; but, in point of
fact, I have.'
I gave my lady to understand that I had not been aware of this.
Said my lady, 'So it is: indeed I have two presentations, - one to
two hundred a year, one to six. Both livings are in our county, -
North Devonshire, - as you probably know. The first is vacant.
Would you like it?'
What with my lady's eyes, and what with the suddenness of this
proposed gift, I was much confused.
'I am sorry it is not the larger presentation,' said my lady,
rather coldly; 'though I will not, Mr. Silverman, pay you the bad
compliment of supposing that YOU are, because that would be
mercenary, - and mercenary I am persuaded you are not.'
Said I, with my utmost earnestness, 'Thank you, Lady Fareway, thank
you, thank you! I should be deeply hurt if I thought I bore the
character.'
'Naturally,' said my lady. 'Always detestable, but particularly in
a clergyman. You have not said whether you will like the living?'
With apologies for my remissness or indistinctness, I assured my
lady that I accepted it most readily and gratefully. I added that
I hoped she would not estimate my appreciation of the generosity of
her choice by my flow of words; for I was not a ready man in that
respect when taken by surprise or touched at heart.
'The affair is concluded,' said my lady; 'concluded. You will find
the duties very light, Mr. Silverman. Charming house; charming
little garden, orchard, and all that. You will be able to take
pupils. By the bye! No: I will return to the word afterwards.
What was I going to mention, when it put me out?'
My lady stared at me, as if I knew. And I didn't know. And that
perplexed me afresh.
Said my lady, after some consideration, 'O, of course, how very
dull of me! The last incumbent, - least mercenary man I ever saw,
- in consideration of the duties being so light and the house so
delicious, couldn't rest, he said, unless I permitted him to help
me with my correspondence, accounts, and various little things of
that kind; nothing in themselves, but which it worries a lady to
cope with. Would Mr. Silverman also like to -? Or shall I -?'
I hastened to say that my poor help would be always at her
ladyship's service.
'I am absolutely blessed,' said my lady, casting up her eyes (and
so taking them off me for one moment), 'in having to do with
gentlemen who cannot endure an approach to the idea of being
mercenary!' She shivered at the word. 'And now as to the pupil.'
'The -?' I was quite at a loss.
'Mr. Silverman, you have no idea what she is. She is,' said my
lady, laying her touch upon my coat-sleeve, 'I do verily believe,
the most extraordinary girl in this world. Already knows more
Greek and Latin than Lady Jane Grey. And taught herself! Has not
yet, remember, derived a moment's advantage from Mr. Silverman's
classical acquirements. To say nothing of mathematics, which she
is bent upon becoming versed in, and in which (as I hear from my
son and others) Mr. Silverman's reputation is so deservedly high!'
Under my lady's eyes I must have lost the clue, I felt persuaded;
and yet I did not know where I could have dropped it.
'Adelina,' said my lady, 'is my only daughter. If I did not feel
quite convinced that I am not blinded by a mother's partiality;
unless I was absolutely sure that when you know her, Mr. Silverman,
you will esteem it a high and unusual privilege to direct her
studies, - I should introduce a mercenary element into this
conversation, and ask you on what terms - '
I entreated my lady to go no further. My lady saw that I was
troubled, and did me the honour to comply with my request.
EIGHTH CHAPTER
EVERYTHING in mental acquisition that her brother might have been,
if he would, and everything in all gracious charms and admirable
qualities that no one but herself could be, - this was Adelina.
I will not expatiate upon her beauty; I will not expatiate upon her
intelligence, her quickness of perception, her powers of memory,
her sweet consideration, from the first moment, for the slow-paced
tutor who ministered to her wonderful gifts. I was thirty then; I
am over sixty now: she is ever present to me in these hours as she
was in those, bright and beautiful and young, wise and fanciful and
good.
When I discovered that I loved her, how can I say? In the first
day? in the first week? in the first month? Impossible to trace.
If I be (as I am) unable to represent to myself any previous period
of my life as quite separable from her attracting power, how can I
answer for this one detail?
Whensoever I made the discovery, it laid a heavy burden on me. And
yet, comparing it with the far heavier burden that I afterwards
took up, it does not seem to me now to have been very hard to bear.
In the knowledge that I did love her, and that I should love her
while my life lasted, and that I was ever to hide my secret deep in
my own breast, and she was never to find it, there was a kind of
sustaining joy or pride, or comfort, mingled with my pain.
But later on, - say, a year later on, - when I made another
discovery, then indeed my suffering and my struggle were strong.
That other discovery was -
These words will never see the light, if ever, until my heart is
dust; until her bright spirit has returned to the regions of which,
when imprisoned here, it surely retained some unusual glimpse of
remembrance; until all the pulses that ever beat around us shall
have long been quiet; until all the fruits of all the tiny
victories and defeats achieved in our little breasts shall have
withered away. That discovery was that she loved me.
She may have enhanced my knowledge, and loved me for that; she may
have over-valued my discharge of duty to her, and loved me for
that; she may have refined upon a playful compassion which she
would sometimes show for what she called my want of wisdom,
according to the light of the world's dark lanterns, and loved me
for that; she may - she must - have confused the borrowed light of
what I had only learned, with its brightness in its pure, original
rays; but she loved me at that time, and she made me know it.
Pride of family and pride of wealth put me as far off from her in
my lady's eyes as if I had been some domesticated creature of
another kind. But they could not put me farther from her than I
put myself when I set my merits against hers. More than that.
They could not put me, by millions of fathoms, half so low beneath
her as I put myself when in imagination I took advantage of her
noble trustfulness, took the fortune that I knew she must possess
in her own right, and left her to find herself, in the zenith of
her beauty and genius, bound to poor rusty, plodding me.
No! Worldliness should not enter here at any cost. If I had tried
to keep it out of other ground, how much harder was I bound to try
to keep it out from this sacred place!
But there was something daring in her broad, generous character,
that demanded at so delicate a crisis to be delicately and
patiently addressed. And many and many a bitter night (O, I found
I could cry for reasons not purely physical, at this pass of my
life!) I took my course.
My lady had, in our first interview, unconsciously overstated the
accommodation of my pretty house. There was room in it for only
one pupil. He was a young gentleman near coming of age, very well
connected, but what is called a poor relation. His parents were
dead. The charges of his living and reading with me were defrayed
by an uncle; and he and I were to do our utmost together for three
years towards qualifying him to make his way. At this time he had
entered into his second year with me. He was well-looking, clever,
energetic, enthusiastic; bold; in the best sense of the term, a
thorough young Anglo-Saxon.
I resolved to bring these two together.
NINTH CHAPTER
SAID I, one night, when I had conquered myself, 'Mr. Granville,' -
Mr. Granville Wharton his name was, - 'I doubt if you have ever yet
so much as seen Miss Fareway.'
'Well, sir,' returned he, laughing, 'you see her so much yourself,
that you hardly leave another fellow a chance of seeing her.'
'I am her tutor, you know,' said I.
And there the subject dropped for that time. But I so contrived as
that they should come together shortly afterwards. I had
previously so contrived as to keep them asunder; for while I loved
her, - I mean before I had determined on my sacrifice, - a lurking
jealousy of Mr. Granville lay within my unworthy breast.
It was quite an ordinary interview in the Fareway Park but they
talked easily together for some time: like takes to like, and they
had many points of resemblance. Said Mr. Granville to me, when he
and I sat at our supper that night, 'Miss Fareway is remarkably
beautiful, sir, remarkably engaging. Don't you think so?' 'I
think so,' said I. And I stole a glance at him, and saw that he
had reddened and was thoughtful. I remember it most vividly,
because the mixed feeling of grave pleasure and acute pain that the
slight circumstance caused me was the first of a long, long series
of such mixed impressions under which my hair turned slowly gray.
I had not much need to feign to be subdued; but I counterfeited to
be older than I was in all respects (Heaven knows! my heart being
all too young the while), and feigned to be more of a recluse and
bookworm than I had really become, and gradually set up more and
more of a fatherly manner towards Adelina. Likewise I made my
tuition less imaginative than before; separated myself from my
poets and philosophers; was careful to present them in their own
light, and me, their lowly servant, in my own shade. Moreover, in
the matter of apparel I was equally mindful; not that I had ever
been dapper that way; but that I was slovenly now.
As I depressed myself with one hand, so did I labour to raise Mr.
Granville with the other; directing his attention to such subjects
as I too well knew interested her, and fashioning him (do not
deride or misconstrue the expression, unknown reader of this
writing; for I have suffered!) into a greater resemblance to myself
in my solitary one strong aspect. And gradually, gradually, as I
saw him take more and more to these thrown-out lures of mine, then
did I come to know better and better that love was drawing him on,
and was drawing her from me.
So passed more than another year; every day a year in its number of
my mixed impressions of grave pleasure and acute pain; and then
these two, being of age and free to act legally for themselves,
came before me hand in hand (my hair being now quite white), and
entreated me that I would unite them together. 'And indeed, dear
tutor,' said Adelina, 'it is but consistent in you that you should
do this thing for us, seeing that we should never have spoken
together that first time but for you, and that but for you we could
never have met so often afterwards.' The whole of which was
literally true; for I had availed myself of my many business
attendances on, and conferences with, my lady, to take Mr.
Granville to the house, and leave him in the outer room with
Adelina.
I knew that my lady would object to such a marriage for her
daughter, or to any marriage that was other than an exchange of her
for stipulated lands, goods, and moneys. But looking on the two,
and seeing with full eyes that they were both young and beautiful;
and knowing that they were alike in the tastes and acquirements
that will outlive youth and beauty; and considering that Adelina
had a fortune now, in her own keeping; and considering further that
Mr. Granville, though for the present poor, was of a good family
that had never lived in a cellar in Preston; and believing that
their love would endure, neither having any great discrepancy to
find out in the other, - I told them of my readiness to do this
thing which Adelina asked of her dear tutor, and to send them
forth, husband and wife, into the shining world with golden gates
that awaited them.
It was on a summer morning that I rose before the sun to compose
myself for the crowning of my work with this end; and my dwelling
being near to the sea, I walked down to the rocks on the shore, in
order that I might behold the sun in his majesty.
The tranquillity upon the deep, and on the firmament, the orderly
withdrawal of the stars, the calm promise of coming day, the rosy
suffusion of the sky and waters, the ineffable splendour that then
burst forth, attuned my mind afresh after the discords of the
night. Methought that all I looked on said to me, and that all I
heard in the sea and in the air said to me, 'Be comforted, mortal,
that thy life is so short. Our preparation for what is to follow
has endured, and shall endure, for unimaginable ages.'
I married them. I knew that my hand was cold when I placed it on
their hands clasped together; but the words with which I had to
accompany the action I could say without faltering, and I was at
peace.
They being well away from my house and from the place after our
simple breakfast, the time was come when I must do what I had
pledged myself to them that I would do, - break the intelligence to
my lady.
I went up to the house, and found my lady in her ordinary business-
room. She happened to have an unusual amount of commissions to
intrust to me that day; and she had filled my hands with papers
before I could originate a word.
'My lady,' I then began, as I stood beside her table.
'Why, what's the matter?' she said quickly, looking up.
'Not much, I would fain hope, after you shall have prepared
yourself, and considered a little.'
'Prepared myself; and considered a little! You appear to have
prepared YOURSELF but indifferently, anyhow, Mr. Silverman.' This
mighty scornfully, as I experienced my usual embarrassment under
her stare.
Said I, in self-extenuation once for all, 'Lady Fareway, I have but
to say for myself that I have tried to do my duty.'
'For yourself?' repeated my lady. 'Then there are others
concerned, I see. Who are they?'
I was about to answer, when she made towards the bell with a dart
that stopped me, and said, 'Why, where is Adelina?'
'Forbear! be calm, my lady. I married her this morning to Mr.
Granville Wharton.'
She set her lips, looked more intently at me than ever, raised her
right hand, and smote me hard upon the cheek.
'Give me back those papers! give me back those papers!' She tore
them out of my hands, and tossed them on her table. Then seating
herself defiantly in her great chair, and folding her arms, she
stabbed me to the heart with the unlooked-for reproach, 'You
worldly wretch!'
'Worldly?' I cried. 'Worldly?'
'This, if you please,' - she went on with supreme scorn, pointing
me out as if there were some one there to see, - 'this, if you
please, is the disinterested scholar, with not a design beyond his
books! This, if you please, is the simple creature whom any one
could overreach in a bargain! This, if you please, is Mr.
Silverman! Not of this world; not he! He has too much simplicity
for this world's cunning. He has too much singleness of purpose to
be a match for this world's double-dealing. What did he give you
for it?'
'For what? And who?'
'How much,' she asked, bending forward in her great chair, and
insultingly tapping the fingers of her right hand on the palm of
her left, - 'how much does Mr. Granville Wharton pay you for
getting him Adelina's money? What is the amount of your percentage
upon Adelina's fortune? What were the terms of the agreement that
you proposed to this boy when you, the Rev. George Silverman,
licensed to marry, engaged to put him in possession of this girl?
You made good terms for yourself, whatever they were. He would
stand a poor chance against your keenness.'
Bewildered, horrified, stunned by this cruel perversion, I could
not speak. But I trust that I looked innocent, being so.
'Listen to me, shrewd hypocrite,' said my lady, whose anger
increased as she gave it utterance; 'attend to my words, you
cunning schemer, who have carried this plot through with such a
practised double face that I have never suspected you. I had my
projects for my daughter; projects for family connection; projects
for fortune. You have thwarted them, and overreached me; but I am
not one to be thwarted and overreached without retaliation. Do you
mean to hold this living another month?'
'Do you deem it possible, Lady Fareway, that I can hold it another
hour, under your injurious words?'
'Is it resigned, then?'
'It was mentally resigned, my lady, some minutes ago.'
Don't equivocate, sir. IS it resigned?'
'Unconditionally and entirely; and I would that I had never, never
come near it!'
'A cordial response from me to THAT wish, Mr. Silverman! But take
this with you, sir. If you had not resigned it, I would have had
you deprived of it. And though you have resigned it, you will not
get quit of me as easily as you think for. I will pursue you with
this story. I will make this nefarious conspiracy of yours, for
money, known. You have made money by it, but you have at the same
time made an enemy by it. YOU will take good care that the money
sticks to you; I will take good care that the enemy sticks to you.'
Then said I finally, 'Lady Fareway, I think my heart is broken.
Until I came into this room just now, the possibility of such mean
wickedness as you have imputed to me never dawned upon my thoughts.
Your suspicions - '
'Suspicions! Pah!' said she indignantly. 'Certainties.'
'Your certainties, my lady, as you call them, your suspicions as I
call them, are cruel, unjust, wholly devoid of foundation in fact.
I can declare no more; except that I have not acted for my own
profit or my own pleasure. I have not in this proceeding
considered myself. Once again, I think my heart is broken. If I
have unwittingly done any wrong with a righteous motive, that is
some penalty to pay.'
She received this with another and more indignant 'Pah!' and I made
my way out of her room (I think I felt my way out with my hands,
although my eyes were open), almost suspecting that my voice had a
repulsive sound, and that I was a repulsive object.
There was a great stir made, the bishop was appealed to, I received
a severe reprimand, and narrowly escaped suspension. For years a
cloud hung over me, and my name was tarnished.
But my heart did not break, if a broken heart involves death; for I
lived through it.
They stood by me, Adelina and her husband, through it all. Those
who had known me at college, and even most of those who had only
known me there by reputation, stood by me too. Little by little,
the belief widened that I was not capable of what was laid to my
charge. At length I was presented to a college-living in a
sequestered place, and there I now pen my explanation. I pen it at
my open window in the summer-time, before me, lying in the
churchyard, equal resting-place for sound hearts, wounded hearts,
and broken hearts. I pen it for the relief of my own mind, not
foreseeing whether or no it will ever have a reader.
|
